from_the_outside | [ WWII AU ] a ghost story

It's been almost two years since she's been home, and little by little, the grief has gotten easier to live with.

It hasn't gone away. But she's able to focus on her job, watch movies, chat with friends, sleep most nights. She still dreams about him, but the dreams are tinged with wistful longing and only sometimes does she wake up with tears on her cheeks. She can't have his picture out in this apartment, Kate's apartment, but it's safe in the mountain house, along with his last letter to her, and she has a scan on her phone to look at when the long day is over and she's in bed, the stars from the lamp he'd given her filling her dark room.

Steve has helped, more than she could ever explain, and she hopes she's helped him in return. Aside from a few deeply classified missions here and there, they haven't worked together all that much, but she still sees him almost every day. In the halls, she's undercover as his mild-mannered neighbor, Kate, but in her secure apartment they can talk over anything, everything.

And it works. Every day is a little easier. They lean on each other when they need to, and they spend hours remembering and reminiscing about Bucky, talking shop, chatting about how Steve's fitting into the future. It's nice. She still misses Bucky, an ache that never really goes away, but they can both breathe through it, work through it, live through it.

She's on her way up from the basement laundry machines when she hears a familiar step in the hall, and has to smile to herself – first her own, then Kate's sweeter, more open one. "Hey, neighbor."

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From:

marvel_npc

He drops down at the end of the dam through the cover of the trees and lands her as gently as she can. She looks pale and trembling, and he's pretty sure it's not because of their flight.

"They'll get here soon," he says, gently. The lady's got grit, that's for sure, but she's been through a hell of a lot today. "As fast as Steve runs, they could almost have beaten us here."

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from_the_outside

"Steve's injured," she reminds him, and that hits her all over again, like those bullets had smacked into her torso and not his. "He heals fast, but not that fast. And we've got to get those bullets out of him."

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marvel_npc

"We will," he promises. "We'll take care of him." Of both of you, he thinks.

"Want me to do a flyby back to look for them? I hate to leave you alone, though."

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from_the_outside

"That's okay," comes a voice from the doorway leading into the dam. "She won't be alone."

Sharon turns and pins Maria Hill with a bewildered, exasperated glance. "Hill. What the hell are you doing here?"

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marvel_npc

"I could ask you the same question," Hill replies, eyeing Sam. He gives her an easy smile.

"Just stopping by."

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from_the_outside

Hill doesn't smile back, and Sharon doesn't feel much like smiling, either. "Have you been here this whole time?" she snaps, moving towards the other woman. "We could have used a little more backup, Hill."

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marvel_npc

"Need to know basis only," Hill says, holding position and pinning Sharon with a cool stare. "You'll understand why shortly. Who's he?"

"Sam Wilson," he says. "Friend of a friend."

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from_the_outside

"My friend," says Steve's voice, as his step sounds. Sharon turns to see him and Nat coming along the dam walkway, Steve still holding his middle, Nat's arm around him.

Damn Hill, anyway. "Steve – " Sharon comes swiftly over to him, her fingers gentle on his hand and wrist as she tries to lift them away from his torso. "How bad?"

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marvel_npc

"It's all right." He lets her lift his hand away, figuring she'll feel better if she sees for herself. "Not great, but it's healing."

What hurts more than the wounds themselves is the fact that it was Bucky who shot him, without even the slightest hesitation. He can't ignore that, but he pushes it away for now and meets Hill's eyes. "Sam can be trusted. Can you?"

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from_the_outside

She checks his front, back, and side, trying to determine if the shots went through and through. Not all of them did; at least two are probably still inside him. She meets Nat's glance with her own worried one as Maria Hill eyes Steve.

"Could've used a little of that paranoia earlier," she tells him, then jerks her head toward the interior of the dam. "Come on. We've got medical supplies. And there's something you all need to see."

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marvel_npc

Nat trades a look with Sharon, then moves to link her arm with Sam's. "Come on," she says, lightly. "Hill doesn't bite. Much."

Hill rolls her eyes and turns away, leading the way through a large blast door and into what looks like some kind of maintenance building. Sam and Nat go after her, and he rests a hand on Sharon's shoulder for a moment before coaxing her to walk beside him to follow the others.

From:

from_the_outside

She sets a light hand on his back, worry coursing through her along with the adrenaline that hasn't subsided and the fatigue poisons of having been awake for... hell, who knows, at this point?

Hill has medical supplies. They can patch Steve up, reconvene, figure out their next approach. She isn't giving up, not by a long shot. "Have any idea what this surprise might be?"

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marvel_npc

“No idea. But I guess we’ll find out pretty quick.” He’s not sure he wants any more surprises, but as Hill rounds the corner of the hallway ahead of them he sees Nat stop dead, staring wide-eyed.

Steve quickens his pace, only to stop as well, startled, on spotting Nick Fury in a hospital bed in the next room. “About damn time,” Fury drawls. “Where have you been?”

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from_the_outside

Sharon stares. "Where have we been?" she manages, finally, forcing words through her shock. "What the hell were you playing at? We thought you were dead!"

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marvel_npc

"You were supposed to," Hill puts in, unruffled.

"I damn near was," Fury points out. "Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, and one hell of a headache."

"Don't forget your collapsed lung," another voice puts in. It's a doctor, Steve thinks, or some kind of white-coated medic anyway.

Fury grunts and tries to push himself up a little in the bed. "Oh, let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good."

"Good?" Nat manages, though her shock. "They cut you open! Your heart stopped!"

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from_the_outside

"Tetrodotoxin B," Fury tells them. "Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it."

Nat looks like she wants to punch something. Steve, already in a state of shock from everything that happened at the boatyard, shakes his head. "Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?"

Hill shrugs. "Any attempt on the director's life had to look successful."

Nick, annoyingly, looks as though this makes perfect sense. "Can't kill you if you're already dead," he points out. "Besides, I wasn't sure who to trust.

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marvel_npc

"Smart of you not to trust STRIKE, it turns out," Steve says. Rumlow had been standing right there watching when Fury had 'died', as he recalls. "But you could have trusted me, Nick."

"I did," Fury points out. "That's why I came to your apartment. But you're a bad liar, Rogers. We figured burdening you with trying to hide it would be a problem."

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from_the_outside

"Can we talk about the specifics later?" Sharon asks, before striding over to grab the medic by the arm.

"Hey. We've got multiple GSWs here. Could you maybe go ahead and get those bullets out of Captain America so he can stop bleeding internally?"

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marvel_npc

"Would it have killed you people to mention we had wounded?" the medic snaps, dropping the scan he was reading.

"It's fine, I'm probably healing around them already," Steve tries to reassure him. "Check Sharon over first, she's been through something of an ordeal."

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from_the_outside

"I didn't get shot," Sharon says, a little of her Aunt Peggy's gimlet glint in her eye. She stares down the medic.

"Priority is Captain Rogers. And by 'priority,' I mean check him out right the hell now."

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marvel_npc

Sam purses his lips in a silent whistle and leans carefully back against the wall, hands in his pockets. Nat lets out a breath of laughter. "I'd listen to her," she calls."

"Everyone can get in line," the medic says, sharply. "You first, Captain. Welcome to my clinic. Sit here."

Steve sighs and sits on the stool the man drags out from under what's clearly a makeshift work table, and pulls off his shirt.

"Nick, how much do you know about what's going on?"

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from_the_outside

"Hill filled me in on our shooter," Fury says, dry. "I kind of figured Pierce has gone bad for myself."

Sharon parks herself next to Steve, keeping an eye on the medic as he starts to check him over. "You said SHIELD was compromised," she says – to Nick, despite not looking at him. "By who? Or what?"

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marvel_npc

"That's what I was trying to find out when I sent Romanoff to collect intel from the Lemurian Star," Fury says. "Someone was spoofing my security access and locking me out of things. I needed information that couldn't be tampered with. But I didn't get a chance to tear it apart. I was kind of hoping the two of you might have."

Steve hisses in a quiet breath and reaches for Sharon's hand. There's no way to soften this blow, but he can at least give her something to hold on to. "HYDRA," he says, succinctly. "SHIELD's been infiltrated by HYDRA. There's no doubt."

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from_the_outside

Sharon stares at him, barely able to feel his fingers on her hand.

"No," she says, blank. She can feel the slow seep of horror rising like bile, but it's all very distant. "HYDRA? But they're, they're gone. You ended them. Decades ago."

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Behind them, Nat murmurs, "It was Operation Paperclip. That's where it started. After the war, SHIELD recruited scientists with strategic value. And among them--"

Steve cuts her off there. "Arnim Zola." The wave of bitterness that washes over him threatens to drown him, but he makes himself hold on. "He told us himself. He was still alive, sort of, his mind uploaded into some kind of computer bank in a compound at Lehigh. He wrote some kind of algorithm for Project Insight, something that's going to help HYDRA reach its ultimate goal somehow. HYDRA's been working to undermine SHIELD since the beginning."