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Because this story went so many places before I worked out where it was going, and still ended up with a good 10,000 'spare' words.
Here's about 2,500 of them, disjointed oddments of scenes or conversations that got discarded because they didn't lead where I wanted them to...
--
The scrape of boots against stone is the only warning they get, and only Rogers' sharp hearing catches it.
HYDRA soldiers.
How the hell can Rogers not feel the cold?
Supersoldier, right, Maria thinks as she presses herself against the unyielding face of the rock. It doesn't do much to keep her out of the knife-like winds that whip along the edges of this mountain, and she thinks longingly of Florida beaches as Rogers clambers back along the ledge towards her.
"There's a path – if you can call it that." He's shouting, but the wind drags his words away almost as soon as they leave his mouth. "But it runs almost vertically down, and at the rate this storm's coming along, it'll be dark in an hour."
--
Maria's still not sure she understands why Fury handed her the job of babysitting the Avengers. Other than that Phil wasn't there to take it.
Sometimes, when she's dealing with Stark, she swears she can hear Phil chuckle in her head. Now you know what I had to deal with.
Right now, though, her task is a considerably easier one, and one that makes Phil-in-her-head rather overly helpful. She's just handing over the legal paperwork and documentation for Steve Rogers, along with the details of his accounts, his housing arrangements, and the contractual requirements SHIELD has made for him should he choose to take them up on it.
"It was necessary to adjust your birthdate," she notes as she slides the passport across the polished walnut of the dining table in his suite in 'Avengers Tower'. "Otherwise there isn't an airline in the world that will take you as a passenger, and you probably don't want to be flying Stark Industries all the time."
Rogers looks up from his study of the document, turning the passport over in his hands. "I...hadn't really planned to travel. Won't I be working with SHIELD most of the time?"
"Working with SHIELD, yes," Maria tells him. "But contracted, not employed. You're paid a retainer and a fee for 'services rendered'. Including hazard pay."
He leans back in the chair and smiles a little. "Like taking on dragons single-handed?"
She doesn't smile back. Going into that fight was heroic and stupid; five minutes more and he'd have had backup in the form of Stark and Thor. She'd have expected such behaviour of Iron Man or the Asgardian, not from Captain America. "Like that. You also have a birth certificate, social security number, and IRS account."
"I hope the IRS doesn't expect seventy years of unpaid taxes from me." His gaze flicks up to hers, ridiculously long lashes on a man, yet somehow not detracting from his masculinity one bit. Maria is careful not to stare.
"There's a waiver clause seeing as you were MIA."
--
Thank Colonel Phillips. He was the one who set all this up in perpetua."
"Son of a gun," Rogers murmured, his lips quirking in the start of a smile.
"Well, I think Agent Carter and your Howling Commandoes had a little to do with it, too." Maria doesn't mean to smile in memory, but she does. Rogers glances up and catches her.
"Is there a story I should know about?"
It's too late to take it back, and she supposes he has a right to know if anyone does. "Colonel Phillips refused to sign off on your death certificate. He complained that you were the most mule-ass stubborn man he'd ever had the misfortune to imagine he commanded and that the moment he signed your death certificate, they'd find you in the ice, probably asking what had taken them so long."
--
For a man who revels at living in the spotlight of media attention, Tony Stark is insisting on a very distinct sense of privacy for his fellow Avengers.
--
"Rogers?" She pushes her body up - grimacing as her legs straddle his thigh, but reaching to check his pulse anyway. The blot of blood against the twisted metal decking by his throat gives her a bad moment, but the pulse under her fingertips is steady, if a little fast. Still, her own heart is pounding from the adrenaline, and he survived seventy years on ice, so she figures he's okay. Sort of.
Every muscle aches as she pulls herself up and over to the crumpled cockpit, the view out the cracked windshield
She can't say the same for the shuttle pilots. Blood stains the cracked glass of the windshield in front of the pilot, and the angle of the co-pilot's head is all wrong. Maria swallows. The pilots got them down in one piece, but at the cost of their own lives. The view out the front of the shuttle is mostly dirt and corn crop out in the middle of Nebraska.
The people who shot them down are still out there, doubtless already looking for them.
"Rogers!" She slaps his face once, twice, thr--
"Hey!" He catches her hand before she can slap him the third time, warm fingers hard around her wrist. "What's--"
"We need to get out of here." Maria yanks a survival pack from beneath one of the seats and tosses it to him. He catches it one-handed and climbs to his feet, with nothing more than a wince as he puts his hand to the back of his head.
"What about the pilot--? Oh."
--
She doesn't like what the Avengers do to 'ordinary humans' - that Loki was right in some fashion when he told the Berlin crowd that their natural instinct was to worship. He thought worship meant servitude to a higher power; Maria thinks it just means learned helplessness.
--
Warned by the lieutenant's shout, Steve has just enough time to turn and punch out the lead mook.
Then the fight's on and he ducks and dodges and weaves and punches on instinct, sliding his shield off and using it as attack and defence both. The men aren't trying to kill him – at least, not that he can tell. They have weapons, but most stay in their holsters.
Most, not all.
The shots echo in the cold, clear air – sharp and vicious among the snowy ridges, and Steve hears the return fire from Hill behind him. He delivers an uppercut with the edge of his shield to the jaw of the nearest man. The crunch of bone against the metal rim is both painful and satisfying as the man stumbles back, tripping over the body of one of his companions at the ledge.
His arms windmill as he slips onto damp rock, and his scream is torn away by the still-blowing wind.
Steve glances around – eight men, capped and uniformed, seven dead and bleeding out or down for the count, and one dead – or rapidly on his way there.
"I think they're old friends of yours," Hill says from where she's leaning against the rock face, her gun still out and ready as she indicates the nearby downed man. It takes Steve a moment to realise she's pointing at the man's shoulder and the circular patch there, but when he does...
The skull and tentacles are a grim, steely grey against the black rather than the blood-bright red they used to be, but the HYDRA insignia is unchanged.
Steve yanks the patch away and stares at it, a cold anger balling in his gut. For a moment, all he can hear is Schmidt declaring, if a head is cut off, two more shall take its place! Then he focuses on Hill. "Sorry, what did you say?"
"They didn't come very far. They're not dressed for mountain climbing."
"You think they had a camp within walking distance?"
"It's possible."
Steve glances around at the bodies and feels a wave of hatred for the evil he thought he'd left seventy years behind. "We'll search them first. They might have something--" He stops as he realises Maria is leaning heavily against the cliff face, her hand pressing against her side, just under her arm,. "You got hit? Why didn't you say--?"
"It's more of a graze than an actual wound." But it's still bleeding pretty heavily, although the cold seems to have slowed it a little. Steve helps Maria down to the ground, and she lets him, which is probably a pretty good indicator that she's in shock. She rests her head against the rock for a moment, closing her eyes. Alarmed, Steve gives her a little shake and her lashes fly up.
"Hey. Stay with me."
"Not like I'm going anywhere."
The humour startles him, lifting his gaze from the torn edges of her jacket to her face. Maria's nose is red with the wind and her face milk-white with the shock, but Steve's surprised at how green her eyes are. For some reason, he'd thought they were blue.
"Well, stay awake. How bad is it?"
"Didn't hit anything vital." She hisses as he pulls at the cloth beneath her bloody hand, and pushes him away, gesturing towards the dead. "See if there's anything informative on them."
"And you?"
Her lips part in something that's almost a smile. "I promise not to bleed out."
Steve steals glances at her as he searches the pockets of the dead men, one eye on the oncoming storm. Maria deals with her wound with a grit-toothed practicality, even though her hands are shaking by the time he returns with what little he's collected off the dead men.
"Need help with that?"
She hesitates. Then, "Thank you."
Steve pins the edges of her clothing together, his fingers clumsy in the thick gloves. He wants to tell her not to be so insistent on doing for herself, but in the last few months since he woke up, he's come to understand that a woman - especially a beautiful one - might not want to seem helpless, even when injured.
"We'll head back the way they came," he says as he finishes up. "I got you one of their coats, too, since your own is ripped."
Maria starts easing herself up, and Steve resists the urge to help by picking up the coat - a man's size and over large for her - and holding it out for her to put on. She makes it pretty clear she doesn't want him hovering, but it's also pretty clear that she's not quite steady on her feet.
"Here, lean on me--"
She makes a strangled noise, like a laugh quickly aborted, but her hand loops up under his arm and grips his shoulder in a grip that's pretty strong for an ordinary human. "I hate being the damsel."
Steve smiles as the weight of her presses into his side, her need of support overriding her natural instinct to stand on her own two feet. "Hill, you'll never be a damsel."
--
Maria could kick herself for not shooting the HYDRA agent first. She'd been aiming for his compatriot behind him, figuring that Rogers would be taking care of them.
Too late for regrets, though. At least the bullet had just grazed her ribs, not hitting anything vital. And she hadn't fainted. Yet. Although it was getting harder to focus on anything.
That might have been the fading light though. The incoming storm had decided to make good on its threat, and was sweeping in over the mountains with imperious certainty. Maria adjusted her grip on Steve Rogers' shoulder and blew out a steadying breath.
"You okay?"
"Yes."
"Hang on," he says, speaking almost into her hair so she can hear him over the blowing wind. "I think we're pretty close..."
Less than a minute later they stop and stare at the metal box apparently wedged into a crevice in the mountain. About the size of a shipping container, it carries only the lightest dusting of snow.
"That's new."
The keycard Rogers relieved from one of the HYDRA agents opens the door, and he leads the way, with Maria covering the near half of the cube as he makes his way into the rear half.
"All clear," she reports, then turns when she gets no response.
She finds him staring at the HYDRA banner set up against the wall, a scarlet octopus ominous on black velvet.
--
But she figured that Rogers would take the ones close in, which meant she was responsible for taking out the ones further away. And she took too long to get the man just coming through the rocky pass, which gave one of the HYDRA agents in the mid-range the chance to get a couple of shots off before she targeted him.
It could have been worse.
The bullet could have actually hit her instead of scraping her ribcage. There might have been more HYDRA agents in the unit. She might have actually fainted instead of just needing a rock face to lean against. She could have been stuck with Stark Stark rather than Steve Rogers, which would probably have meant death and blood and all kinds of extremely inconvenient paperwork.
Never ascribe to reluctance what you can ascribe to paperwork. Phil taught her that.
Rogers leans so his mouth is nearly on her hair, his words being yanked from his lips by the wind, which has upped its pace. "I think we're almost there."
--
Her thoughts drift as they pick their way along the trail of footprints the HYDRA agents left behind them, like breadcrumbs leading home. Rogers is big and warm and solid beside her, solicitous and slightly apologetic at having to put his arm around her, even through four layers of clothing and in a situation that is hardly sexual.
The running definition of Steve Rogers among female SHIELD agents is that 'he's a sweetie and a woman could just eat him up with a spoon'.
Light-headed, cold, and with her brain full of fractures, Maria thinks they're not wrong.
--
"Good service." Bruce leans against the bar, his expression slightly sardonic.
"Stark knows how to throw a party."
"He knows how to throw a curve ball. We might be Earth's mightiests heroes, but we're still a disaster waiting to happen."
"Is that why you're leaving?"
"One of the reasons." Bruce shrugs. "Fury wants me out of town. And I don't think the National Guard is too keen on my presence in New York. I'm a liability at best."
"You're a friend," Steve says.
"And the other guy?"
"He's a comrade in arms." At Bruce's querying look, Steve adds, "We haven't exactly spent a lot of time together."
--
"I've had that reaction a few times tonight," she says as though he hasn't just babbled at her. "I think it's like kids and schoolteachers. Teachers don't really exist outside of school hours. Neither do SHIELD agents."
--
I'll have the full thing up in a few days. Monday at the latest.
Here's about 2,500 of them, disjointed oddments of scenes or conversations that got discarded because they didn't lead where I wanted them to...
--
The scrape of boots against stone is the only warning they get, and only Rogers' sharp hearing catches it.
HYDRA soldiers.
How the hell can Rogers not feel the cold?
Supersoldier, right, Maria thinks as she presses herself against the unyielding face of the rock. It doesn't do much to keep her out of the knife-like winds that whip along the edges of this mountain, and she thinks longingly of Florida beaches as Rogers clambers back along the ledge towards her.
"There's a path – if you can call it that." He's shouting, but the wind drags his words away almost as soon as they leave his mouth. "But it runs almost vertically down, and at the rate this storm's coming along, it'll be dark in an hour."
--
Maria's still not sure she understands why Fury handed her the job of babysitting the Avengers. Other than that Phil wasn't there to take it.
Sometimes, when she's dealing with Stark, she swears she can hear Phil chuckle in her head. Now you know what I had to deal with.
Right now, though, her task is a considerably easier one, and one that makes Phil-in-her-head rather overly helpful. She's just handing over the legal paperwork and documentation for Steve Rogers, along with the details of his accounts, his housing arrangements, and the contractual requirements SHIELD has made for him should he choose to take them up on it.
"It was necessary to adjust your birthdate," she notes as she slides the passport across the polished walnut of the dining table in his suite in 'Avengers Tower'. "Otherwise there isn't an airline in the world that will take you as a passenger, and you probably don't want to be flying Stark Industries all the time."
Rogers looks up from his study of the document, turning the passport over in his hands. "I...hadn't really planned to travel. Won't I be working with SHIELD most of the time?"
"Working with SHIELD, yes," Maria tells him. "But contracted, not employed. You're paid a retainer and a fee for 'services rendered'. Including hazard pay."
He leans back in the chair and smiles a little. "Like taking on dragons single-handed?"
She doesn't smile back. Going into that fight was heroic and stupid; five minutes more and he'd have had backup in the form of Stark and Thor. She'd have expected such behaviour of Iron Man or the Asgardian, not from Captain America. "Like that. You also have a birth certificate, social security number, and IRS account."
"I hope the IRS doesn't expect seventy years of unpaid taxes from me." His gaze flicks up to hers, ridiculously long lashes on a man, yet somehow not detracting from his masculinity one bit. Maria is careful not to stare.
"There's a waiver clause seeing as you were MIA."
--
Thank Colonel Phillips. He was the one who set all this up in perpetua."
"Son of a gun," Rogers murmured, his lips quirking in the start of a smile.
"Well, I think Agent Carter and your Howling Commandoes had a little to do with it, too." Maria doesn't mean to smile in memory, but she does. Rogers glances up and catches her.
"Is there a story I should know about?"
It's too late to take it back, and she supposes he has a right to know if anyone does. "Colonel Phillips refused to sign off on your death certificate. He complained that you were the most mule-ass stubborn man he'd ever had the misfortune to imagine he commanded and that the moment he signed your death certificate, they'd find you in the ice, probably asking what had taken them so long."
--
For a man who revels at living in the spotlight of media attention, Tony Stark is insisting on a very distinct sense of privacy for his fellow Avengers.
--
"Rogers?" She pushes her body up - grimacing as her legs straddle his thigh, but reaching to check his pulse anyway. The blot of blood against the twisted metal decking by his throat gives her a bad moment, but the pulse under her fingertips is steady, if a little fast. Still, her own heart is pounding from the adrenaline, and he survived seventy years on ice, so she figures he's okay. Sort of.
Every muscle aches as she pulls herself up and over to the crumpled cockpit, the view out the cracked windshield
She can't say the same for the shuttle pilots. Blood stains the cracked glass of the windshield in front of the pilot, and the angle of the co-pilot's head is all wrong. Maria swallows. The pilots got them down in one piece, but at the cost of their own lives. The view out the front of the shuttle is mostly dirt and corn crop out in the middle of Nebraska.
The people who shot them down are still out there, doubtless already looking for them.
"Rogers!" She slaps his face once, twice, thr--
"Hey!" He catches her hand before she can slap him the third time, warm fingers hard around her wrist. "What's--"
"We need to get out of here." Maria yanks a survival pack from beneath one of the seats and tosses it to him. He catches it one-handed and climbs to his feet, with nothing more than a wince as he puts his hand to the back of his head.
"What about the pilot--? Oh."
--
She doesn't like what the Avengers do to 'ordinary humans' - that Loki was right in some fashion when he told the Berlin crowd that their natural instinct was to worship. He thought worship meant servitude to a higher power; Maria thinks it just means learned helplessness.
--
Warned by the lieutenant's shout, Steve has just enough time to turn and punch out the lead mook.
Then the fight's on and he ducks and dodges and weaves and punches on instinct, sliding his shield off and using it as attack and defence both. The men aren't trying to kill him – at least, not that he can tell. They have weapons, but most stay in their holsters.
Most, not all.
The shots echo in the cold, clear air – sharp and vicious among the snowy ridges, and Steve hears the return fire from Hill behind him. He delivers an uppercut with the edge of his shield to the jaw of the nearest man. The crunch of bone against the metal rim is both painful and satisfying as the man stumbles back, tripping over the body of one of his companions at the ledge.
His arms windmill as he slips onto damp rock, and his scream is torn away by the still-blowing wind.
Steve glances around – eight men, capped and uniformed, seven dead and bleeding out or down for the count, and one dead – or rapidly on his way there.
"I think they're old friends of yours," Hill says from where she's leaning against the rock face, her gun still out and ready as she indicates the nearby downed man. It takes Steve a moment to realise she's pointing at the man's shoulder and the circular patch there, but when he does...
The skull and tentacles are a grim, steely grey against the black rather than the blood-bright red they used to be, but the HYDRA insignia is unchanged.
Steve yanks the patch away and stares at it, a cold anger balling in his gut. For a moment, all he can hear is Schmidt declaring, if a head is cut off, two more shall take its place! Then he focuses on Hill. "Sorry, what did you say?"
"They didn't come very far. They're not dressed for mountain climbing."
"You think they had a camp within walking distance?"
"It's possible."
Steve glances around at the bodies and feels a wave of hatred for the evil he thought he'd left seventy years behind. "We'll search them first. They might have something--" He stops as he realises Maria is leaning heavily against the cliff face, her hand pressing against her side, just under her arm,. "You got hit? Why didn't you say--?"
"It's more of a graze than an actual wound." But it's still bleeding pretty heavily, although the cold seems to have slowed it a little. Steve helps Maria down to the ground, and she lets him, which is probably a pretty good indicator that she's in shock. She rests her head against the rock for a moment, closing her eyes. Alarmed, Steve gives her a little shake and her lashes fly up.
"Hey. Stay with me."
"Not like I'm going anywhere."
The humour startles him, lifting his gaze from the torn edges of her jacket to her face. Maria's nose is red with the wind and her face milk-white with the shock, but Steve's surprised at how green her eyes are. For some reason, he'd thought they were blue.
"Well, stay awake. How bad is it?"
"Didn't hit anything vital." She hisses as he pulls at the cloth beneath her bloody hand, and pushes him away, gesturing towards the dead. "See if there's anything informative on them."
"And you?"
Her lips part in something that's almost a smile. "I promise not to bleed out."
Steve steals glances at her as he searches the pockets of the dead men, one eye on the oncoming storm. Maria deals with her wound with a grit-toothed practicality, even though her hands are shaking by the time he returns with what little he's collected off the dead men.
"Need help with that?"
She hesitates. Then, "Thank you."
Steve pins the edges of her clothing together, his fingers clumsy in the thick gloves. He wants to tell her not to be so insistent on doing for herself, but in the last few months since he woke up, he's come to understand that a woman - especially a beautiful one - might not want to seem helpless, even when injured.
"We'll head back the way they came," he says as he finishes up. "I got you one of their coats, too, since your own is ripped."
Maria starts easing herself up, and Steve resists the urge to help by picking up the coat - a man's size and over large for her - and holding it out for her to put on. She makes it pretty clear she doesn't want him hovering, but it's also pretty clear that she's not quite steady on her feet.
"Here, lean on me--"
She makes a strangled noise, like a laugh quickly aborted, but her hand loops up under his arm and grips his shoulder in a grip that's pretty strong for an ordinary human. "I hate being the damsel."
Steve smiles as the weight of her presses into his side, her need of support overriding her natural instinct to stand on her own two feet. "Hill, you'll never be a damsel."
--
Maria could kick herself for not shooting the HYDRA agent first. She'd been aiming for his compatriot behind him, figuring that Rogers would be taking care of them.
Too late for regrets, though. At least the bullet had just grazed her ribs, not hitting anything vital. And she hadn't fainted. Yet. Although it was getting harder to focus on anything.
That might have been the fading light though. The incoming storm had decided to make good on its threat, and was sweeping in over the mountains with imperious certainty. Maria adjusted her grip on Steve Rogers' shoulder and blew out a steadying breath.
"You okay?"
"Yes."
"Hang on," he says, speaking almost into her hair so she can hear him over the blowing wind. "I think we're pretty close..."
Less than a minute later they stop and stare at the metal box apparently wedged into a crevice in the mountain. About the size of a shipping container, it carries only the lightest dusting of snow.
"That's new."
The keycard Rogers relieved from one of the HYDRA agents opens the door, and he leads the way, with Maria covering the near half of the cube as he makes his way into the rear half.
"All clear," she reports, then turns when she gets no response.
She finds him staring at the HYDRA banner set up against the wall, a scarlet octopus ominous on black velvet.
--
But she figured that Rogers would take the ones close in, which meant she was responsible for taking out the ones further away. And she took too long to get the man just coming through the rocky pass, which gave one of the HYDRA agents in the mid-range the chance to get a couple of shots off before she targeted him.
It could have been worse.
The bullet could have actually hit her instead of scraping her ribcage. There might have been more HYDRA agents in the unit. She might have actually fainted instead of just needing a rock face to lean against. She could have been stuck with Stark Stark rather than Steve Rogers, which would probably have meant death and blood and all kinds of extremely inconvenient paperwork.
Never ascribe to reluctance what you can ascribe to paperwork. Phil taught her that.
Rogers leans so his mouth is nearly on her hair, his words being yanked from his lips by the wind, which has upped its pace. "I think we're almost there."
--
Her thoughts drift as they pick their way along the trail of footprints the HYDRA agents left behind them, like breadcrumbs leading home. Rogers is big and warm and solid beside her, solicitous and slightly apologetic at having to put his arm around her, even through four layers of clothing and in a situation that is hardly sexual.
The running definition of Steve Rogers among female SHIELD agents is that 'he's a sweetie and a woman could just eat him up with a spoon'.
Light-headed, cold, and with her brain full of fractures, Maria thinks they're not wrong.
--
"Good service." Bruce leans against the bar, his expression slightly sardonic.
"Stark knows how to throw a party."
"He knows how to throw a curve ball. We might be Earth's mightiests heroes, but we're still a disaster waiting to happen."
"Is that why you're leaving?"
"One of the reasons." Bruce shrugs. "Fury wants me out of town. And I don't think the National Guard is too keen on my presence in New York. I'm a liability at best."
"You're a friend," Steve says.
"And the other guy?"
"He's a comrade in arms." At Bruce's querying look, Steve adds, "We haven't exactly spent a lot of time together."
--
"I've had that reaction a few times tonight," she says as though he hasn't just babbled at her. "I think it's like kids and schoolteachers. Teachers don't really exist outside of school hours. Neither do SHIELD agents."
--
I'll have the full thing up in a few days. Monday at the latest.
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