steve rogers. (tenbucks) wrote in gravitationlogs, @ 2013-06-09 10:17:00 |
|
|||
Supervising a clean-up operation was not necessarily the purview of Agent 13 -- older, more venerated agents were often treated to such delights -- but still and yet, she found herself deep within the bowels of SHIELD’s New York headquarters. There were others to strategize, others to spin and countless hands to see the work done. Agent 13 knew that they knew their place and further, innately understood that as soon as she was handed several dossiers which not only delved into the history of the Avengers but their role in the Chitauri attack, suggested that facilitating the clean-up effort in New York City meant something else entirely.
In the midst of reviewing the data given to her and seeking out more of her own, she found herself drawn to the Avenger known as Captain America. His history was perhaps one of the more straightforward; a young man possessed of not patriotism but humanistic fervor sought to do his duty during the last World War. With the other Howling Commandos -- including his best friend Bucky Barnes lost in the Scandinavian wilderness -- he successfully disabused HYDRA of its power.
But his actions - and the results of his actions - were such that she intimated that here was the moral centre of the Avenger Initiative. If Tony Stark was its long arm and Bruce Banner its raw strength, Steve Rogers was its beating heart. And if SHIELD were wise, they would curry his favour in that way.
It didn’t take long to ascertain his whereabouts. In her neat, inescapably flourished hand, she wrote down his address and less than an hour later gave three smart taps on his door.
An improbable number of decades spent in an unnatural state of sleep meant that this beating heart was now, in the lull between the last battle and whatever was to come next, tearing his way through the history books whilst throwing things in a bag in preparation for the months'-long road trip it was long past time to take. That is: as the rich voice narrated a particularly gruesome chapter of the Vietnam War, Steve Rogers was carefully folding near identical shirts into a compact bag that had something of the military in its shape and its stitches. Trousers; tightly rolled socks; neatly folded underwear.
He needed -- he didn't know what he needed, but he suspected it had to do with space. The great outdoors, the sky as it swelled over a horizon uninterrupted by the looming scraps of metal that were Manhattan's skyscrapers. It was not that the skyline of his city had changed overly much, but aliens pouring in from a hole in the crystalline blue just as he'd gotten over the initial shockwaves of waking up from what he was sure had been his death took more than just fast-food and the somewhat grudging thanks of an entire city. He certainly didn't need anymore photospreads or well scripted interviews.
The knock sounded out in the middle of the narrator's musings over a series of atrocities carried out by the Americans (one of many, it seemed). A breath, then (relief; tension released in the simple gesture of an exhalation) as he rocked up to his feet. Moments later, the door swung open under the gentle pull of a pawing hand. And his brow creased before he realised that this was certainly no casual passerby. SHIELD kept them all under close surveillance -- Steve was sure at least one corner of the modest apartment he was in was bugged -- this woman must have been one of theirs.
"Hi." The smile was akin to the one reserved for utter strangers, if more guarded (befitting one he suspected was normally uniformed and addressed by rank). "Agent…?"
“ … thirteen,” she said automatically, gifting Captain Steve Rogers with a smile of her own. For all of the video, all of the photographs and study of the battle’s aftermath, she had not expected a man gifted with such extraordinary ability to seem so very human. Perhaps it lacked foresight - she knew his story as well as her own - but suspected that this was part of his charm. She covered his neat disarmament with a laugh and an extension of her hand. “Lucky Agent 13. On loan from Great Britain, as it were.”
Then (and perhaps it didn’t matter too much if she demurred from the full truth) she arched a brow. “If you suspect you’re being followed, you’re probably right. SHIELD likes to keep track of its assets and …” she leaned around him to gesture toward the half-packed knapsack. “ … you need to learn how to cover your tracks.”
The step taken back was of equal proportion to her advance, maintaining a comfortable (polite; neutral) distance between them even as it served to offer her an unspoken invitation. The apartment was probably owned by the organisation that had borrowed her, and as he’d come to expect these sort of calls from Fury’s staff, there was little point in blocking her way. His life, as it were, in full view: the desire to escape the limelight centred on the bag, containing most of his worldly possessions (and most of them replaceable anyway).
“I never had to worry about covering my tracks.” Everyone always knew when Captain America was about. (Steve Rogers, however...?)
“Do you think you ought to worry about covering your tracks?” she asked him, taking a step into the apartment as she turned on her heel to face him once again. “ -- the man, not the super hero. Please do not assume that I would conflate the two. You look very different out of your tights, after all.” A smile.
“You’re running from something -- or perhaps you’re running to something? -- I suppose I’ve come just in time to see you off.”
I thought the point of SHIELD was that they covered them for you. But that went unspoken as he shut the door behind her (carefully, always carefully; he’d been quick to get used to the strength imbued in his most gentle of gestures, but this sort of precision was now a habit best kept in full and active rotation).
“When I woke up, I didn’t explore much beyond the city.” An explanation of sorts. “Now I have time before whatever comes next.” Beat. “Are you here to talk me out of it?”
“Whatever comes next. It’s good that you’re honest with yourself about it,” she told him, pressing a ridge of knuckles along her hip before offering up a crooked smile. So proper, he ran by a code in a bygone time. “I’m not here to do anything of the sort; I’m introducing myself, really, and also trying (just a bit) to figure you out.”
“There isn’t much to figure out, ma’am.” He was never going to be able to iron that term of address out of his everyday speech, was he? A mildly rueful thought that brought a faint quirk to his lips as he dropped his comb into the bag. Now was the time to explore (no need to explain to a stranger that there were specifics involved, numbers that rang and rang and rang before breaking into static).
“There’s always a next. This is just my way of getting rack time.”
“ … you can call me Sharon if you want, I’d like it very much if we could be friends.” She bit the underside of her lip, watching him before she fell back a step and took a breath, running out of things to discuss and ways to stall his progress. She waited a beat and turned to look out his windows to the street below. What was it -- within and without. Yes. “Are any of your Avenger counterparts going with you?”
The former words were so unexpected in that they emerged from the throat of a SHIELD agent that Steve, for one protracted moment, could only blink at her, held in thrall by mute disbelief. Once he would have been flattered by such an invitation, but recent events had taught him a thing or two about this organisation that had pulled him from the icy oblivion of sleep.
When he found his voice again, it was with a short cough and a quick shrug of his shoulders. “No, this is something I need to do by myself, m-- uh. Sharon.”
Her brow arched as she turned back to him, directing her comment over her shoulder with a nod. “Mind if I ask you where you’re going? Not strictly asking for SHIELD’s benefit. I’m just curious.” He needn’t know that her aunt -- and her aunt’s dreadful memory -- hung curtain like over her for as long as she could remember and as soon as she could, she strove to rip it off. Until, of course, her assignment in New York City brought a piece of it directly into her path. Peggy had a part in this one’s making. It was the foundation of her curiosity.
“Out of the city.” Straightening from his crouch, the movement afforded him a moment’s time to study her, the firm stance and the loosely curling locks; the steel in her gaze. Steve knew that look well. So, a smile -- no point in trying to fool a spy employed by spies. “I have some people I need to check in on. I missed a lot of dates while I was out for the count, as I’m sure you know.” No bite to the remark.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“I do not but thank you, all the same.” A pause. “I was stationed in the north just before I got here so summer in New York is something I’m not ready to give up just yet. Safe travels, though.” She could feel his eyes on her, could feel him weighing and measuring what he saw versus what he could only guess at. As soon as he admitted his dates, however, she felt something unlock in her chest.
This might be the linchpin to the Avengers but her hold was far deeper than even that.
“She’s vegetative -- it happened just before the Chitauri attack -- and unresponsive.”
The words seemed to come from far away: he heard them, but it took several solid beats of his heart before they registered, before they elicited any sort of reaction. Steve rarely looked anything other than what he was, and what he was right now was emotionally flattened by such a calm delivery of fatalistic words (all of them uninvited).
He had to crouch back down again, hands with their broad palms and long fingers flattened against the bag he had so carefully packed, as though it would lend him some form of support. Vegetative. Before the Chitauri attack. He’d waited too long. His jaw hardened.
“That doesn’t change the fact I need to see her.”
“ -- it was a bunker collapse,” here she heard her father’s voice and nearly shuddered for all she managed to ape his words. “Not long after V-E day. Though it rendered her more or less immobile, she was still dynamic and involved until about ten years ago when her health declined and she was put in a home.” A pause. Her tone did not modulate -- did not leave the impassivity that shielded her from the ripple of emotion that passed through Steve Rogers regarding her impossible aunt -- but forged ahead until she swallowed.
“I’m sorry.”
V-E Day. Yes, that was one of the first things he’d read up on, desperate to know what had happened. What he hadn’t read about was this, the condensed story of a woman’s life that had the power to fell him in ways few other things could. Peggy, immobile. Peggy, unresponsive.
Pressure in his skull as he squeezed his eyes shut before blinking in rapid succession.
“Okay,” he finally managed to say (a ridiculous response, but there it was). A beat before he summoned the will to push himself back up to his feet.
“I guess you folks had better update your file on her, then.”
She’s my aunt. stuck hard in Sharon’s throat, her lip caught in her teeth again. It still didn’t stay him; nothing, she supposed, truly would despite any feelings otherwise. Get to know Captain Rogers, they said. Keep him here. She was failing miserably and it was - perhaps - because for the first time SHIELD sought to capitalize on that one fact she had long attempted to ignore.
“I’ll see it done myself.”
A smile -- thin lipped, but genuine enough, given the circumstances. Perhaps she was conceding him some kindness. Perhaps she still strove to keep him here, even though the world at large fell easily enough to SHIELD’s far-seeing eyes.
“Thank you.” And with a gesture at his bag -- “I still need to see her.”
“Alright.” Her own smile faded with the gesture toward his bag and as she stepped away (her hand on the door that would lead her away) she offered one last measure of information -- “Tell her I said hello.” Steve Rogers -- so haunted by her aunt -- needed to be left alone to drown in it. That would be her report, anyway.
“Check in when you return.” Then, with a duck of her head, she opened the door and was gone.