Coffee, Courage and a Captain

Chapter Thirty-Five: Final Goodbyes

Charlotte looked at the clock for the tenth time in the past five minutes. Her body ached all over, especially as she had been climbing the stairs to the operations booth that overlooked the aircraft hangar. Which struck her as odd, seeing as her healing abilities and the charge she had received from the HYDRA blasts should have boosted her healing process.

The past hour had been spent deactivating the automatic weapons systems around the base, and patching through to London to relay information to them. Falsworth had found her a woollen blanket, which she had draped and then secured over her shoulders to hide her shirt- which looked more like a colander at that point, given how many holes were in it.

"They've wired a self-destruct into everything!" Howard complained from where he was lying under the main control panel.

"They are shoddy engineers, aren't they?" Charlotte commented, as the bottom of the control panel fell off the moment she touched it with her screwdriver.

"Charlie, if you could refrain from nearly being squashed by metal panelling, I'd appreciate it. Steve would kill me if you died," Howard remarked, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Are you two nearly done?" Morita asked boredly from where he sat with Peggy beside the radio.

"Yes," Charlotte answered, rolling out from underneath the bank of monitors and scrambling to her feet. "Everything under this one is fully deactivated. I don't know about Howard's side though."

She tossed the final battery that she had removed from the self-destruct sequence- a battery that had been wired to detonate if any of the protocols were tripped- into the box in the corner near where Phillips and Peggy stood.

"I'm done," Howard declared, sliding out from under his bank. "You underestimate me, Charlie."

The radio they had been using to track the progress of the Valkyrie crackled into life.

"Come in. This is Captain Rogers. Do you read me?" Steve's voice filled the room, and Charlotte exchanged a look with Peggy.

Morita leaned forward and pressed a button

"Captain Rogers, what is your-"

Peggy shoved Morita out of the way of the receiver. "Rogers, are you alright?" she asked.

Morita glared at them as he and the rest of the Howling Commandos exited the room to descend to the hangar and assist with the processing of the HYDRA soldiers.

"Yes. Is Charlotte okay?" he replied.

Charlotte moved over to the receiver at Peggy's gesture. "Steve!" she said, trying to calm herself down. "I'm fine. What happened?"

"Schmidt's dead," he responded, and she could hear the wince in his voice as he spoke. It was clear he was in pain, most likely from fighting Schmidt and whoever had been on board the Valkyrie.

"What about the plane?" Peggy asked.

"That's a little tougher to explain," Steve began hesitantly. Charlotte rubbed her face with her hand as she tried to think of a solution, seeing as she knew he had barely any knowledge on how to fly a plane, much less a complex plane where the instructions and switches were in a different order and in German.

"Give me your coordinates. I'll find you a safe landing site," Peggy suggested, startling Charlotte from her thoughts.

"There's not going to be a safe landing," Steve replied, and Charlotte let out a small whimper as she checked the progress report for the Valkyrie, her face going pale.