5. Sins Of The Father 4

The following months were a time of slow congealing for the team, which was rather a disgusting image but Steve honestly thought it fit, because they were not a puzzle with neatly-fitting joints and they were not not a family with blood ties to cover the rough patches. They were an odd, mismatched group of superheroes trying to work together and live together and at best it felt like they were firming up into something nearly solid. So as slightly repulsive metaphors went, it was accurate. Steve thought Bruce would appreciate it, in any case.

They were not regularly called in by SHIELD or the government, so they only "worked" about twice a month. The rest of the time they trained together and separately did whatever else they did in their real lives. Which, for Steve, was drawing. He liked hanging out at the little cafe with the sweet waitress which was only a block from the Tower. The waitress, Beth, was a fan and after thanking him for saving her life she set about scaring off anyone who tried to get near him so that he could enjoy his coffee and his sketchbook in peace. She performed her self-appointed task with a ferocious and somewhat frightening zeal that reminded Steve of Secret Service agents he had met. He thought that maybe she missed her calling, and toyed with the idea of tipping Phil off to her talents.

"Huh. I forget you were good at that," Tony said, leaning over Steve's shoulder. He was dressed in his trademark 'incognito' style, which was for him a baseball cap and a poofy winter parka that had seen better days. Beth glared at Tony from where she was serving someone else, but Steve shook his head, letting her know it was okay for her to relax.

"Thanks, Tony, that means so much to me, coming from you."

"Ow, I'm hurt." Tony sat down jauntily, looking anything but chastised. "No really, you're good. I know that. I've seen your work, I just forgot about it. Your career as an illustrator isn't really germane to the whole Captain America shtick, is it?"

"You've seen my work?" Steve asked, horrified, as visions of a baby Tony Stark playing with Tijuana bibles danced in his mind's eye.

"Sure. Medical illustrations and dime novel covers, right? And that comic book. No offense, Cap, that was horrible."

"And yet, you still used the name Iron Man." Steve smirked.

"From the song, from the song." Tony waved his hands around. He was far more expressive, physically, than Howard, and Steve enjoyed watching Tony's dramatics. At least, he did when it came to inconsequential things like the weather and Amazing Avengers. In the middle of battle, though, it was always infuriating.

Steve laughed. "It's okay. I knew it wasn't great, that wasn't the point. I was trying to build up a versatile portfolio, and my publisher owed me a favor, so he printed the comics." He sighed, closing his sketchbook. "Up until Pearl Harbor, I expected to be an illustrator my whole life. I didn't have anything else going for me."

Tony studied him, sipping his coffee delicately. His high-class upbringing came out in the oddest moments when he ate or discussed subjects like philosophy and art, and it always threw Steve a little. Part of him always expected the miner's son (grandson) to appear.

Tony fiddled with the cup. "It is still hard to remember that Pearl Harbor is something you actually remember, not just read about in a book or saw in a movie."

"That was a horrible, horrible movie and—"

"Relax!" Tony laughed, his whole face lighting up. "We're all in agreement with that. Tora Tora Tora, though, now that was a good movie."

Steve nodded, still amazed by the way the movie had dramatized something Steve never expected to see. Bruce explained how dated it was, and compared to other movies Steve understood what he was talking about, but that did not lessen the impact it had on Steve at all. "True."

Tony nudged him with his foot. "So what are you drawing down here?"

"People, sometimes. Angles, buildings, weather — just trying to capture moments, practice, get back in shape. During the war I drew a little but not often."

"The war sketchbooks," Tony said, nodding, his expression solemn.

"The what?"

"Nothing. Never mind." Tony sat up, and Steve could see the wheels turning in his mind. "What you need is an art studio."

"Tony, no—"

"Like you even use that third bedroom. Don't worry, I can probably renovate it without you noticing."

"No. Tony, no—"

"Jarvis, get my architect. Have him come by the Tower, tell him we're renovating. Small job, but it's for Steve." Tony was talking into his phone.

Steve rubbed his face. Tony was adorable, like a dog eager to please, when he got on a track of trying to do something for someone. He had been as excited as a kid on Christmas the day he gave Clint his own archery range-slash-obstacle-course. Sighing, Steve sat back in his chair and watched Tony.

He was handsome, very similar to his father in some ways, but different enough not to be a copy. Tony's mother was present in his leaner features, his fuller lips, his large eyes. He was a devilishly handsome man, and before Steve realized it he had his sketchpad in his hand and was quickly marking out the lines of Tony's face, the set of his shoulders, the quirk of his mouth. It was a familiar, comforting moment, with Tony already sidetracked by Jarvis into some other discussion while Steve nursed his coffee and tried to capture the essence of the handsome man sitting next to him.

"Avengers assemble," Tony broke into Steve's thoughts, his face blank. He tucked the phone in his pocket and stood up. "C'mon, Cap, SHIELD just sent out the signal."

On cue, Steve's phone buzzed in his pocket. Within moments they were jogging towards the tower, and soon they were suited up and running onto the Quinjet to get carried to Boston where, Coulson told them dryly, HYDRA had pulled a wonderfully complex and stupid attack involving hostages and a cranky tentacled machine splashing around in Boston Harbor.

By the time they showed up, the crisis was not quite in full swing, as far as Steve could tell. He coordinated with Coulson to get the Hulk, Thor and Iron Man over to contain the strange tentacled machine, then set himself and the Widow on rescuing the hostages from the dock-side warehouse. Hawkeye was trailing them, somewhere within sight but high up out of the way, to cover their six and read out the situation as they got closer to their marks.

Even with his own physical abilities making him quiet on his feet, it was always eerie for Steve to trail the Widow, who moved with as much notice as a breeze of air. She paused and motioned for him to stop as she crouched down, gun drawn, to peer around a corner.

"Hey!" Hawkeye's exclamation was so quiet over the comm that Steve almost didn't catch it, but that didn't matter when he felt the arrow shoot through his shoulder, pitching him forward straight onto the Widow. Pain blossomed in Steve's mind and he bit his lip as he tried instinctively to roll away from what was hurting him.

The Widow had moved faster than he could track and was stretched out over him, hissing in his ear. "Don't move!"

Steve stilled, the pain from the arrow sticking out from both his front and back throbbing, but he could already feel his body starting to heal. "Pull it out!" He growled through clinched teeth.

The Widow shook her head, then seemed to remember the problem. "I can't yank it through, the arrow tip will rip you up going in reverse." She got out a knife but Steve was out of patience, because Hawkeye had fucking shot him. He reached up and with a snap of his fingers broke the arrow tip off. Natasha gave him a short, annoyed look but then grabbed the shaft and yanked it. The muscle that had already started healing around it ripped anew and Steve held back a howl of agony.

The following few minutes were a riot of nausea and pain as his body warred with itself to heal up from the wound while the rest of the Avengers tried to salvage the operation without (more) bloodshed. Hawkeye had dropped off the comms after shooting Steve, for which Steve was grateful because he was in the right mood to cuss the guy out but good. Somehow, while Steve tried to crawl up off the ground, Phil and Natasha settled everything with the HYDRA agents holding the hostages, and Steve found himself being grabbed and carried up and away by a strangely tight-lipped Thor.

"Put me down, Thor!" Steve shouted over the wind rushing his face.

"No, I cannot. I have my orders from Son of Coul. We are going to the tower!" Thor shouted back.

Steve knew a losing battle when he was in one while several thousand feet in the air, so he shut up and let Thor fly them home. When they landed, Steve pushed Thor away and went to change out of his bloodied uniform. After a hot shower, his shoulder was still sore but he was feeling back to normal, so he dressed in civvies to crash the debriefing Jarvis told him was underway in the Avengers Conference room.

He walked in and everyone went quiet. Phil looked angry, but Steve could not get a bead on the rest of the team. In lieu of conversation, he zeroed in on Hawkeye. "You have an excuse, Agent Barton?"

"Yes, I do," Barton snapped, leaning back in his chair with the obvious intent of not saying anything else about it. Steve stomped around the table and yanked Barton out of his chair, holding him in the air by his vest and shaking him while everyone else started yelling.

"You don't miss. You never miss. You shot me on purpose!"

"Hey! Stop it!" Tony yanked at Steve's right arm with both hands. What bothered Steve, though, was that Hawkeye was just hanging limply in Steve's grip. He looked angry but he was not fighting back or denying the accusation. Steve lowered him slowly and let Tony pull him over to a chair.

"What the hell is going on?"

"We don't know, that's the problem." Tony sighed, retaking his own seat. "Barton just explained what happened and we were talking about what the implications of an attempted assassination were, and then you walked in acting all butch. A good look on you, by the way—"

"Thank you, Stark," Coulson broke in. "And thanks for bringing up what we agreed not to mention to the Captain." Coulson's eyes were dark and furious.

Steve held up a hand for quiet. "Was the attempted assassination an inside job? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like one of my own team shot me. I want to know why."

Natasha huffed softly. "The Winter Soldier."

Barton's hand slapped on the table. "We don't know that! We don't!"

"I can't believe you think an antique cold war relic is something we should worry about," Tony added derisively.

Natasha's posture went stiffer. "I saw a shadow. I know it's him."

"Someone care to explain to the rest of the class?" Bruce finally spoke up through chewing, sounding tired and looking the worse for wear. He had a pile of power bars in front of him and was slowly working through them .

Coulson sighed. "The reason Barton shot you was because he was out of time."

"What?" Steve twisted to look at Clint.

"You had a laser tag on your head. I know you've got super healing powers but I'm not sure we want to test whether you can regrow most of your brain back or not. I had a micro-second to act, and I knew my shot would be less lethal than his." He glanced at Natasha. "Whoever he is."

Steve blinked at the information. He glanced over at Tony, who looked pale and shaken and angry, then at the rest of his team, one by one. They were all upset, he could see it then. "So someone had a rifle scope tag on me?"

"Yes." Coulson nodded. "In fact once you were down, the entire operation folded like a house of cards." He waited for Steve to catch on.

"It was a set up, to bring me out into the open."

"You go out in the open every morning for a twenty mile run," Tony snapped, shifting in the chair restlessly. "No, this was to set it up so it didn't look like an assassination, to make it plausible that maybe you just died in battle."

Natasha pointed at him. "A classic tactic of the Winter Soldier!"

"For fuck's sake, Nat." Barton leaned back in his chair and refused to look at any of them.

"I still don't know who the Winter Soldier is," Bruce said, swallowing as he talked and ripping open another power bar. He paused and then tossed one to Steve, who suddenly realized he was ravenous. Healing from major injuries always took the vim and vigor out of him.

Coulson finally sat down at his place at the head of the table. While it was circular and officially had no "head" position, it was a role that seemed to gravitate towards Coulson. "The Winter Soldier started showing up in the 1950s, and appeared irregularly after that. He was more of a blunt force instrument of the Soviet Union, performing 'impossible' assassinations and other wet work. Every few years word would leak out of the USSR that the Winter Solider had been activated, and often some head of state would die soon after." Phil frowned. "Or a government would fall, or, at least once, a major corporation would collapse." He glanced over at Natasha, who nodded tersely. "During the height of the cold war, the USSR created a program called the Red Room, a training program for spies and assassins that was heavy on brainwashing and genetic engineering. It was said to have originated with work on the Winter Soldier."

Steve saw where this was going, and grimaced. "The super soldier serum."

"Possibly," Coulson agreed, although he was clearly not happy about it. "No one is really sure. In fact that's the main problem we had then, and still have today: we don't know if the Winter Soldier is a man, or a title given to different men over the years, or is even a code name for a sub-organization."

"He's a man," Natasha snapped. "He trained me."

Barton folded forward and put his face in his hands. "Nat."

Steve looked over at Phil, whose expression had morphed into complete shock. It was not a good look on him.

Natasha picked up the narrative. "The Red Room never shut down, not even after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. I was placed in the program as a child, I don't know how young I was, but nothing changed for us after the USSR was dissolved. We kept training. And every few years, the Winter Soldier was brought in to train us, evaluate us, and kill us."

"What?" Steve exclaimed before he could stop himself.

"We trained with him, but we also trained against him. He went easy on us, his mission was not to eliminate valuable assets, but if we messed up badly enough…he showed no mercy." She pursed her lips and looked out the window. "He was not a young man, but not old either. But he was the same man every time, and he never grew older even though we did. He told me once about Cuba before Castro; he was there, in the 1950s. He was there. He never dies," she finished reverently, looking off into the distance.

"For years we have canvassed every contact within our reach, and SHIELD has never come up with half the information you just dropped here, Agent Romanoff." Coulson was furious.

"So write me up, Phil. I don't care. It's my story, mine to tell. I'm telling it now. The Winter Soldier has not been on the radar since before 9/11 and the last time I saw him, I was fourteen years old. But he's back, I know he is, I recognize his work. He's been given a job, and he will not rest until it is done."

"And you're saying his job is to assassinate me?" Steve asked, breaking into the fight.

Natasha looked at him, and for the first time since he had met her Steve could see deep, honest pain in her eyes, although he could not tell if it was for him or for her former trainer. "Yes."