My Star Spangled Invisi-Gal [MCU/Dispatch]

[Zetakille]

Oh that's a downright EVIL way to give SDN Corporate their just desserts. Completely deserved and satisfying.

Edit: Also, Tony is going to have an absolute LAUGH when he hears about Robert and then make a toast to his success and Robert effectively saying "fuck corporate, I'm going to improve the world".

 

[Simonbob]

I have to admit, "Take the deal, violate the deal so I don't get the money, but I'll be out of the dimention, so what do I care?" isn't what I expected, but it's pretty dammed funny!

 

[cliffc999]

I have to admit, "Take the deal, violate the deal so I don't get the money, but I'll be out of the dimention, so what do I care?" isn't what I expected, but it's pretty dammed funny!

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It's even more funny when you find out that Courtney is going to be far richer in the MCU than she could ever dream of being by taking the SDN settlement, because the bionic tech in her lungs is worth a fucking fortune to the medical industry - and Tony is entirely capable of reverse-engineering it, and will give her the royalties on it.

 

[Lillie Jones]

Thanks for Journey
Cheers!

 

[KaitouPrism12]

Thank you for writing this and the journey you gave us. Hope you have a great day!

 

[cliffc999]

Don't worry, there's a few more chapters yet. But yeah, we're moving into the wrap-up phase.

 

[The Unicorn]

@cliffc999 Very nice, even if oddly disappointing, although I expect I'd feel that regardless of how you chose to end the story.
I do note with interest that "what I have said is not a lie" is very different from "what I have said is the truth", which makes me wonder what the Ancient one is actually planning.

I really liked the lawyer scene but the line about Payne's contingency fee bugs me, for two reasons.
First - Why would they hire a lawyer to work on contingency fee when they have the 2 million reward to fund the legal battle?
Second - while I can see the SDN lawyer being as moronic as depicted, Payne reacting with amusement instead of anger to their blatant attempt to convince him to act against both his clients best interest and their instructions. I'm not sure if that is a criminal offense or not(offering a bribe? doesn't seem to quite fit), but it's definitely a gross violation of professional ethics.
On the other hand, while writing this it occurred to me Payne might simply be a good enough actor to fake amusement while he starts composing his report to the ethics committee, or actually be amused at how they keep digging their hole deeper...

 

[deathzealotzero]

So, when I read this over at Spacebattles I really didn't what happened with the whole SDN Legal Scene and how they are pretty much SOL. Now reading the comments here, I guess that pretty much SDN tried to keep everything hush-hush by giving them a very large amount of money to shut up about what they tried to do and enforced it with a NDA. However, since Courtney is going to be leaving for the Marvel Verse with Steve, she ended up spilling the beans anyway, pretty much bringing down the whole SDN's corporate leadership as a result. Did I get that correct?

 

[The Unicorn]

So, when I read this over at Spacebattles I really didn't what happened with the whole SDN Legal Scene and how they are pretty much SOL. Now reading the comments here, I guess that pretty much SDN tried to keep everything hush-hush by giving them a very large amount of money to shut up about what they tried to do and enforced it with a NDA. However, since Courtney is going to be leaving for the Marvel Verse with Steve, she ended up spilling the beans anyway, pretty much bringing down the whole SDN's corporate leadership as a result. Did I get that correct?

Click to shrink...

Pretty close, but the only reason Courtney even considered accepting was that they were going to have to leave so couldn't drag SDN through the full, public court process. Her original plan was "Crucify 'em with dull nails, then skin and salt the hide." and the only reason they looked at the settlment offer was that their lawyer was required to present it to them before he could report it was rejected.
Given they were leaving they couldn't drag out the process so tricked SDN to sign a confession thinking the money would keep it private when Courtney never cared about the money in the first place.

 

[cliffc999]

First - Why would they hire a lawyer to work on contingency fee when they have the 2 million reward to fund the legal battle?

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Because he wouldn't work for less, and they considered his price worth paying to get the best lawyer available.

Second - while I can see the SDN lawyer being as moronic as depicted, Payne reacting with amusement instead of anger to their blatant attempt to convince him to act against both his clients best interest and their instructions. I'm not sure if that is a criminal offense or not(offering a bribe? doesn't seem to quite fit), but it's definitely a gross violation of professional ethics.

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The people he's talking to are already going to be mind blowingly ruined both professionally, financially, and criminally, why shouldn't he laugh at their desperation?

Also note that the only thing they asked him to do was 'please convince your client that they really want the thirty million dollars instead of our public humiliation', which is not actually illegal or unethical to ask for.

or actually be amused at how they keep digging their hole deeper...

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That latter one.

 

[The Unicorn]

Because he wouldn't work for less, and they considered his price worth paying to get the best lawyer available.

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My point was, if they establish their goal of making SDN hurt rather than getting as much money as they could from them, they could end up not getting paid much (relatively speaking)

That latter one.

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[cliffc999]

My point was, if they establish their goal of making SDN hurt rather than getting as much money as they could from them, they could end up not getting paid much (relatively speaking)

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Note that if the corporation is offering $30 million as an out-of-court settlement, that means they're expecting the punitive damages that a jury would award to be MUCH higher than $30 million. Maybe even a full order of magnitude higher.

If Steve and Courtney had not had to return to the MCU and could have stuck around for the full trial phase, Mr. Payne was standing to make an absolute bundle.

(And note that even in the 'we're tapping out right away', he outlines exactly how he can make an absolute bundle - because SDN's public confession in this case means that the class action lawsuit he can file on behalf of all their other screwed employees will make him 'sued the tobacco companies' lawyer money.)

 

[The Unicorn]

Also note that the only thing they asked him to do was 'please convince your client that they really want the thirty million dollars instead of our public humiliation', which is not actually illegal or unethical to ask for.

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The line I was referring to was

"Payne!" Legal sputtered. "You were working on contingent fee! You're losing out-!"

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Which seems to be a request for Payne to pressure his client to agree based on Payne's financial interest. That is extremely unethical and possibly illegal.

If Steve and Courtney had not had to return to the MCU and could have stuck around for the full trial phase, Mr. Payne was standing to make an absolute bundle.

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Fair enough, and I suppose even if they were pushing to maximize pain and humiliation for SDN rather than financial damages he'd still be making a lot more than Courtney could pay him.

(And note that even in the 'we're tapping out right away', he outlines exactly how he can make an absolute bundle - because SDN's public confession in this case means that the class action lawsuit he can file on behalf of all their other screwed employees will make him 'sured the tobacco companies' lawyer money.)

Click to shrink...

Sure, but that's no reason not to make a second bundle Although thinking about it it really was either or - if he'd been working Courtney's case by the time he'd been free to work on building the class action suit there'd be a a bounch of other lawyers handling it, since the case is shut and he's the one with all the information he's perfectly positioned to be the lead on the class action suit.

 

[cliffc999]

Which seems to be a request for Payne to pressure his client to agree based on Payne's financial interest. That is extremely unethical and possibly illegal.

Click to shrink...

It's skeevy as fuck but technically not illegal, which is exactly the airspace that a corporation's 'not getting us sued' lawyer lives in full-time.

 

[The Unicorn]

It's skeevy as fuck but technically not illegal, which is exactly the airspace that a corporation's 'not getting us sued' lawyer lives in full-time.

Click to shrink...

I can see it not being illegal, but it's definitely enough to at the very least get them an "invitation" to defend themselves to the ethics committee or get disbarred.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 41

"Intruder alert-!" the smooth mechanical voice announced, before immediately interrupting itself and continuing in a slightly stunned tone of voice. "Captain Rogers. I think I speak for all of us when I say that it is most unexpected but also most gratifying to see you again."

Steve and Courtney both landed lightly on the floor of the penthouse suite as the portal behind them closed, each of them dressed in neat civilian clothing and holding a duffel bag. "JARVIS?" Steve greeted the voice. "We're in New York, then?"

"Correct, Captain." JARVIS answered. "You are in the living room of the master suite of Stark Tower, and it is 9:34 am on January 7th​, 2014. You have been missing and presumed dead for sixty-five days."

"Well, that certainly beats seventy years." Steve answered amusedly. "Courtney, this is JARVIS, the artificial intelligence built by my friend Tony Stark. JARVIS, this is Courtney Jane Doe, she's a very good friend of mine."

"Welcome to Stark Tower, Miss Doe." JARVIS greeted her amiably. "Protocol requires that I obtain the permission of either Mister Stark or Miss Potts before inviting you to stay, but I can certainly offer you the hospitality of a visit while-"

"Holy shit, it is you." Steve and Courtney both turned to see Tony standing in the doorway of the master bedroom nearby. The haggard-looking man was dressed in a bathrobe that was half-open enough to reveal bandages still wrapped around his chest, and he was pale and slightly unsteady on his feet. "I thought the pain meds were making me hallucinate. JARVIS, I'm not hallucinating am I?"

"No Sir, you are not hallucinating. Captain Rogers is physically present, and arrived in the Tower by what appeared to be an unknown variety of controllable wormhole approximately two minutes ago." JARVIS replied.

"You're back." Tony stepped forward and drew the stunned Steve into a hug as he manfully struggled not to cry. "You're really really back. We thought that wormhole vaporized you, man. But you were just stuck somewhere over the rainbow, then?"

"Alternate Earth. Different history, different people. It's a long story, but for right now… it's good to see you, Tony."

"Good to see you too." Tony choked out. "Fuck, when we thought you were gone I just completely crashed the hell out. Never do that to me again. Please."

"Are you okay?" Steve asked him. "You look like you just walked out of the hospital."

"Kinda just did." Tony agreed. "Had a thing with some terrorists a little while ago. They blew up my Malibu house, almost killed me, left me needing heart surgery - it was some serious déjà vu all over again. Really sucked, but me and Rhodey eventually wrapped up all that shit. And at least the latest round of repairs finally let me get the Arc Reactor out. I tossed it somewhere." He thumped his chest.

"I think I found it, actually." Steve drew the Arc Reactor out of his pocket. "The person who helped me get back here brought it with them to prove that they were really from here."

"Huh." Tony glanced incuriously at the reactor and then tossed it onto the nearby coffee table. "Weird. Anyway, I-" Tony stopped and blinked several times, then looked to the side, then blinked again. "Uh, Cap? Who's she?" he pointed at Courtney, who he'd only just noticed was standing there.

"Tony, this is my girlfriend Courtney. I met her over there, and she came back with me." Steve said proudly.

"Girlfriend?" Tony blinked in shock. "Um, did you mean 'friend who happens to genetically possess a double X chromosome', or did you mean-?"

"He means that I'm the girl he's fucking on the regular." Courtney replied amusedly.

Tony stopped dead and then burst out in wheezing, helpless laughter. "Oh my God don't do that! I literally just had a heart transplant, I'm gonna need some more recovery time before it can take that kind of strain!" He looked back at Steve. "Are all the girls on her home planet like her? Because if they are, I'm gonna need to see if I can figure out how to wormhole back there-"

"And why would you need to do that?" an amused female voice broke in, and Tony gave a guilty flinch. The beautiful redheaded woman entering the master suite from the elevator smiled at everyone. "Welcome to Stark Tower, and please make yourself at home." she greeted Courtney. "And Steve-" Pepper Potts drew up in front of him and smiled tremulously, keeping her composure only with a visible effort. "There… really aren't words adequate to describe how I'm feeling – how we're all feeling – right now, but I'm sure you already know. Welcome home."

"Thank you, Pepper." Steve smiled back at her. "Courtney Jane Doe, meet Tony Stark and his girlfriend, Pepper Potts. Guys, this is Courtney."

"You journeyed to another planet entirely to stay with the one you fell in love with." Pepper greeted Courtney in awe. "You must be a remarkable person. The only other person I know who's done anything like that is literally a god."

"He's the remarkable one." Courtney nodded towards Steve. "I'm just a girl, really." She continued embarrassedly. "Are you sure it's okay if we stay here? I mean, do you have room-?"

"I am the single richest person in human history." Tony stated matter-of-factly, and Courtney gasped in shock. "And right now we're standing on top of the skyscraper that I built and own. There's a whole suite downstairs I keep for Steve that he almost never uses, just like the ones I keep for the rest of the team. And you mentioned that you guys were already at the co-habiting stage so sure, move on in."

"Thanks, Tony." Steve agreed. "I was hoping you could help Courtney set up something, in fact. Not that SHIELD couldn't do her paperwork to move here, but-"

"Fury is a lot less likely to try and dick her around on the terms if old one-eye knows that I'm lurking in the background ready to put in a competitive bid." Tony nodded vigorously. "Because there are a lot of people who are going to immediately leap to the conclusion that she's a potential handle on you that they can crank, and some of them are the people who signed your paychecks." Tony blinked. "JARVIS? Counter-surveillance status on the penthouse?"

"Counter-surveillance was increased to maximum as soon as I detected anomalous phenomena and Captain Rogers' arrival on my own initiative, Sir." JARVIS answered him. "I… calculated that you would wish privacy on this matter until you could release the information on your own terms."

"And you calculated correctly, just like you always do." Tony thanked JARVIS. "Seriously, Cap, you're dead right now. You had the big funeral at Arlington and everything. The President gave a speech-"

"The President?" Courtney mouthed incredulously.

"-and everybody was there. I had front-row seats." Tony continued heedlessly. "Which that plus what JARVIS just said means that until after we actually pick up a phone and tell someone that you're back… nobody knows that you're back." He looked at Steve. "If you want, you can leave here with a completely new identity for both you and her. I hack some databases, slide you a few million bucks on the down-low to set yourselves up with… and you get a new life. You could settle down with your girl, find yourself some peace and happiness. Stop having to jump on Fury's string all the damn time." Tony smiled at Steve. "Honestly, one of the biggest regrets I had when I thought you were dead is that I didn't offer you a life-line out of that spook shit earlier. Because I really didn't think that you were happy there. Were you?"

"No, I wasn't." Steve agreed matter-of-factly. "Unfortunately, retiring is not an option for me right now." Steve exhaled. "How I got back was with the help of a sorceress from here, she called herself 'The Ancient One'. She said she knew Thor at least a little, so I'll double-check about her with him next time I talk to him. But she told me that I had to come back here, because whatever was behind the Chitauri? We were right, they're coming for a rematch. She didn't know exactly when or who, but it sounded like it's going to be bad, Tony. Bad enough that it'll need every Avenger all pulling together again and at the top of our game. Bad enough that I won't get to sit it out, no matter how much I might want to."

"We were already talking about maybe getting the band back together when we met up at your funeral." Tony nodded soberly. "Nothing's come of it yet, we've all had other shit on our plate recently and the threat board's been mostly clear except for local stuff-" He thumped his chest again. "But yeah, if you're up for being officially alive again then we definitely need to have another team meeting about all that stuff you just said. You want me to ping all the guys first and we have a huddle here, and then we only get around to telling Fury you're alive a few days after we've done that?"

"Sounds good to me." Steve agreed. "And Tony… thank you. Even if I couldn't accept it, that's still one of the kindest things anybody's ever offered to do for me."

"Any time." Tony agreed. "JARVIS? Tell the Avengers- shit, get together with Pepper first and come up with some kind of story that gets them all here soonest and not expecting horrible shit, but which doesn't tip Fury off too much. She'll know what to say. Then call the team meeting. Pep, what else do we need to be doing right now?"

"I go talk to Legal about a hypothetical case involving a dimensional refugee/immigrant and what would be the way to start setting that up, and you ask our houseguests if they need anything to eat." Pepper said calmly. "Then we can show them their suite after early brunch."

"There's something else." Steve suddenly remembered. "Tony, Courtney has a cybernetic implant in her lung. A bad guy promised her a cure for her asthma, then turned the implant off when she wouldn't work for him. The techs back where she's from couldn't do anything with it-"

"Asthma, huh?" Tony interrupted. "I'm kinda on medical restriction from doing lab stuff for at least another week, but yeah, as soon as I can I'll definitely have a look at it. An asthma cure would help tons of people, and if this bad guy solved the general implantation problem for something as sensitive as lung tissue then that by itself has implications- hell, the patent rights could potentially be worth hundreds of millions if the anti-rejection factor I'm hypothesizing turns out to be valid, and as this would be relic tech she'd brought to our Earth she'd have the discovery rights on it-" He stopped his own torrent of mad science with an effort. "And I get it, if this was originally bad guy tech then somebody needs to make sure it doesn't have nasty surprises lurking in it to jump out and hurt your girl later, and I can definitely do something about that. We had, uh, our own bad experience with that kind of thing recently."

Steve took in Pepper's pale face and drawn expression and rapidly worked out just what Tony had meant. "Are any of these terrorists you went around with recently still left, and would you like some help fixing that situation if they are?" he asked Tony firmly.

"Oh, we clean sweeped." Tony said proudly. "But thanks for offering."

"Hold up." Courtney stopped everyone, and turned to Steve. "The President gave the eulogy at your funeral. Your hero team apparently didn't just fight in an alien invasion but was the entire fight against the alien invasion and does all the big strategy for the rematch. Your power-armor friend you mentioned isn't just a rich guy but is the richest guy. And alphabet agency directors personally want to mess with your life, and-" She looked Steve penetratingly. "You summed up your whole life story for me already, but I'm starting to think you might have just been a tiny bit modest about the details. Steve, exactly how famous are you here, really?"

"Um-" Steve began to stammer, and Tony's laughter cut him off.

"JARVIS?" Tony grinned ear to ear. "I think Courtney needs the multi-media presentation on the old Living Legend here. Put together an executive summary and send it to…" he looked around and grunted in relief at spotting something on a nearby table. "Here, use this tablet." He handed it to Courtney. "Oh, and make sure to use the right opening credits music!"

"Tony, no." Steve moaned softly. "Please."

"Opening credits mus-?" Courtney puzzled, and then looked down at the Youtube video that had just opened up and started playing on the tablet and stopped dead at the sight. Steve gave Tony a mock death glare as a very familiar opening flourish of trumpets began to sound from the speakers and his least favorite song in the entire world began playing.

Who's strong and brave,
Here to save the American wayyyyy?

"Why did I miss this again?" Steve sighed quietly, as Courtney began to grin ear to ear before choking helplessly with laughter.

Who vows to fight like a man
For what's right, night and dayyyyy?
Who will campaign door-to-door for America?
Carry the flag shore-to-shore for America

Pepper laid a commiserating hand on Steve's shoulder at their mutual inability to stop the Tony train once it had lost its brakes, and then gave Tony her own icy stare that bounced right off his mirth as if from a force field.

From Hoboken to Spokane
The Star Spangled Man with a Plan!

* * * * *​

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 40

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today-" Tony began smugly.

"Tony." Pepper cut him off firmly but affectionately, before she turned to the Avengers all sitting in the master suite's living room. "First off, thank you all for coming so promptly, especially when I had to be a little vague about exactly why we were calling this meeting because we didn't want any of the many people-"

"Fury." Tony coughed loudly.

"-who eavesdrop on our communications sometimes to know about this just yet." Pepper continued. "Thor, where's Jane?"

"She had to remain behind with Dr. Solveig. Her researches are at an important juncture." Thor nodded.

"Well, I'm sorry she'll have missed this." Pepper's beaming smile finally broke loose from where she'd been restraining it the entire time. "Because we have very, very good news. Just yesterday we safely recovered someone that we'd all been missing and had thought was dead."

Natasha's eyes widened and Clint rapidly began to look around, as Bruce and Thor were just starting to straighten up in realization.

Tony wiped tears out of his eyes and grinned more wildly than all the rest. "Yeah, you're right." Tony nodded. "Cap pulled off the 'everybody thinks I'm dead but here I am' thing again."

Steve Rogers, dressed casually in jeans and a collared shirt, stepped out of the nearby bedroom door and only barely kept a straight face himself as he stepped out to greet his friends. "Hello, everyone. I'm sorry I gave you all such a fright, but it really wasn't anything I'd planned on."

"Steve." Natasha said softly, wonderingly, before immediately turning to look intently at Tony. "Are you sure it's actually him?"

Steve broke out in soft laughter. "Never change, Natasha."

"Yeah, we tested everything from DNA on up." Tony nodded back at her vigorously. "Definitely the 100% original Capuccino, accept no substitute flavors."

"What was the first question you asked me?" Clint nodded at Steve, a slight smile at his face.

"I asked if you knew how to fly one of those jets." Steve acknowledged their original meeting onboard the Helicarrier, immediately after Clint had been freed from Loki's mind control. "And the next question I asked was if you had a suit."

Clint's thin smile broke out into a beaming one at the further confirmation. "It's really you." He stepped forward to shake Steve's hand. "You gotta stop doing this whole 'heroic return from death' thing, Captain. The gag will only get stale if you overwork it." Steve laughed out loud at Clint's cheerful sarcasm.

"We must celebrate!" Thor boomed out joyously, stepping forward to clasp Steve by the shoulders and shake him gently. "We had all thought you dead, Steven! Even far-sighted Heimdall could discover no trace of you, nor the most vigorous explorations of the wormhole's possible course via the Bifrost. You must lay out a feast, Tony, one fit for the occasion!"

"The caterers are already standing by, big guy." Tony gave Thor a thumbs-up. "Soon enough we'll have to let Cap check back in, but right now the only people who know he's back are all standing in my penthouse. So tonight's just for the team."

"Welcome back, Steve." Bruce Banner nodded at him quietly, before chuckling. "And now I can finally stop apologizing for not being able to make your funeral."

Natasha finally broke loose from her shock and finished regaining control of her expressions enough to step forward and just barely avoid grabbing Steve by his forearms. "Welcome back." she forced out. "Steve, I'm so sorry that I wasn't with you on that mission. If I had been, then maybe-"

"Natasha." Steve reassured the upset woman. "It's okay. It's really okay. What happened wasn't your fault. And honestly, I would not have given that wormhole trip up for anything."

"Which segues right into the even better part of this whole thing!" Tony said eagerly. "You guys are gonna flip when you see this!" Tony looked around and saw nothing. "Hey! Where are you? You're missing your cue!"

"Uh, hi?" a shy female voice broke into everyone's awareness, as they all turned to see a strange young woman with short black hair and olive skin standing silhouetted against the one-way panoramic windows of the penthouse.

"How did you get over there without me seeing you?" Natasha went taut and her hand almost reached for her weapon, before she caught up to her reflexes and realized that clearly this person wasn't an intruder.

"Yeah." Clint agreed, his own posture relaxing from a ready stance. "I have really good peripheral vision, and there's no way you would have been able to reach where you're standing from any of the nearby cover without being in my field of view at least once. Even Nat's not that sneaky."

Courtney answered the question by turning invisible and then immediately rematerializing.

"… okay, I'm a little jealous." Natasha immediately admitted. "Seriously, so useful a power."

"You are not merely a new prospect for the team that Stark discovered. You returned with Steven, from the world that had been sent to." Thor reasoned wisely. "That is why you are also being introduced to us at this time, instead of later."

"Yeah." Courtney nodded nervously. "Um, it's very nice to meet you-"

"Hey." Steve said warmly, stepping up alongside her and laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "There's no need to be shy. Everybody will like you."

Four people immediately took in the significance of Steve's facial expression and body language, which they had never seen him use before with any woman – not Natasha, not Pepper, not anyone.

"Damn." Clint said knowingly, before turning to face a gleeful Tony. "So Steve returning from an alien planet he got randomly wormholed to really was only the second-biggest surprise you had for us."

"It kinda is." Steve agreed proudly. "Everyone, this is Courtney Jane Doe – yes, that actually is her real name – and yes, she's my girlfriend. Courtney, these are-"

"People who hope that Steve's warned you what kind of madhouse you're about to step into." Bruce interrupted sympathetically. "Seriously, Steve Rogers returns from being lost on another world, and a mystery woman comes back with him to become the official Star-Spangled Girlfriend? You're going to be a media frenzy."

"Please don't remind me." Courtney shook his head. "Tony and Pepper have already been trying to prepare me for what kind of a circus this is going to be, but-"

"But the truly important thing here is not the chattering of malicious gossips or the curiosity of idle masses." Thor said gravely as he came to his feet. The massive and imposing frame of the God of Thunder cast a shadow over her as he stepped forward, and Courtney almost stepped back before Thor surprised her by kneeling down enough to bring his head level with her own. "I am presuming that the manner of your return here with my shield-brother does not allow for regular travel back to your home?"

"The sorceress- she said it was a one-way trip, yes." Courtney acknowledged.

Thor beamed at her with approval. "Then clearly your love for Steven is genuine and heartfelt. To leave your home behind forever to remain with they whom you love is a great sacrifice indeed, and proves beyond doubt that you have a great and worthy heart." Thor nodded to her respectfully as he stood up. "I am Thor Odinson, Prince of Asgard, and I too once faced the choice you did – and not even to such great extent as yours, for I at least can return to visit my home with sufficient effort while you are denied even that much. That a man such as Steven Rogers would choose you to share his life with is already testimonial enough to prove the good character and strength of spirit of any woman, but to see such a valorous and loving deed done with my own eyes is a remarkable thing indeed. Be welcome to Midgard, beloved of my shield-brother, and know that my arm will strike down any foe in your defense as readily as Steven's own."

"That's not true." Courtney denied immediately. "My, uh, good character and spirit thing. I mean, maybe I'm not horrible, but-" She shook her head. "Let's just get it out right away. I was a thief and a criminal."

"Was." Steve stated firmly.

Natasha stepped forward and gave Courtney a gentle smile. "We don't all have uncheckered pasts either. And nothing you said contradicts a single thing that Thor just said."

"Courtney doesn't like talking about herself, so I just want to get out that she'd already given up her whole life of crime thing before I even got there." Steve said. "I just helped her get clear of some of the lingering consequences of it."

"So you're ahead of me then." Natasha acknowledged. "Has Steve mentioned anything to you about my past?"

"If you're the woman he partnered with who used to, um, assassinate people? Then yes." Courtney replied nervously.

"I didn't even begin to change my ways until after Clint reached out a hand to me." Natasha reassured Courtney. "I wasn't even really able to conceive that I could change. But eventually I did, and they still accepted me despite all that. So don't ever feel that you need to apologize for being you."

"And if you ever need to talk to someone about how it feels to have red in your ledger that you still want to wipe out? Come to either of us, we'll understand." Clint nodded, and then stepped forward to introduce himself. "Clint Barton, and she's Natasha Romanov."

"Dr. Bruce Banner." the shy scientist nodded to her.

"If he's the god, and you're the two operatives, then you're the… one that transforms?" Courtney asked diffidently, and Bruce exhaled heavily and nodded.

"That's me. Don't ask to see it, though. This is a little bit of a confined space to bring out the Other Guy." Bruce joked nervously.

"I'm sorry if I stepped on a landmine." Courtney acknowledged his tension. "Steve's talked all about you, of course, but-" she trailed off.

"But there'll be plenty of time for everybody to get to know everybody." Pepper broke in gently.

"Seriously, guys, she's usually much feistier than this. I think you all are kinda overwhelming her." Tony added.

"Yeah, we are crowding the space a little." Clint acknowledged and everybody stepped back to let Courtney breathe. "But Steve, you have got to tell us all about it soon or the curiosity is going to kill us."

"I will, I will, I promise." Steve held up placating hands. "And for my own confession?" He looked down at Courtney. "I was this close to deciding not to come back. No, I actually did decide not to come back at first, and the only reason I'm not a complete wreck right now is Courtney's own decision to come back with me. That's how much she means to me."

"We would sorely have missed you, believing you dead, but I would not have derided you for such a choice." Thor agreed. "You have already done your duty and more, and even the doughtiest warrior eventually earns their peace."

"Unfortunately, seems like not so much in this case." Steve replied soberly. "Do you know anyone called 'the Ancient One of Kamar-Taj'?"

"I do." Thor acknowledged. "I have not spoken to her for over a century but she is the Sorcerer Supreme of Midgard, the seniormost of a secret order of mystics who act as some of your world's hidden defenders against threats from the other realms. She is the sorceress your beloved spoke of, then? The one that facilitated your return here?"

"She was." Steve said. "And she convinced me to come back when she warned me that the same threat that was behind the Chitauri is eventually coming here for a rematch. She didn't have a time frame except for 'sometime after the next several years', or much detail on the threat, but-" Steve took a deep breath. "She said that if we weren't all unified, and prepared to fight harder than we've ever done before, we were going to lose everything."

"Oh, Fury's going to love hearing that." Natasha murmured.

"So, we're officially teaming up again?" Bruce asked. "Like we were already starting to discuss while you were gone?"

"We've still got some time." Steve acknowledged. "But yeah, even if it's going to take me some time to figure out how to disentangle from SHIELD-" He nodded apologetically to Natasha and Clint.

"We get it." Clint acknowledged. "We can do the detached duty thing as needed, but we're just senior agents and you're STRIKE Ops commander. That's not a part-time job, and you're too prominent in SHIELD to really be able to take any lesser position. For you it's all or nothing."

"And while I'll give Nick a few months of notice before I resign, it's gonna be nothing." Steve gave a meaningful look at Courtney. "Kinda hard to juggle both SHIELD and a- personal life."

"Well, some people manage." Clint agreed evenly. "But yeah, it's not always possible."

"We shall speak further of war and sorrow at the proper time." Thor broke in firmly. "Today is a day of joy, and a celebration of friendships old and new."

"Truer words were never spoken." Tony agreed. "JARVIS? Tell them to bring up the good stuff, and let's get this party started!"

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And so they return to the MCU. I've went back and readjusted the 'D Minus' dates for the earlier MCU segments because I always knew how shortly before Insight I wanted Steve to arrive back here, I just didn't know exactly how long the Dispatch sergment would be taking.

That is indeed the events of Iron Man 3 that Tony had just recently gone through and is referring to. (In fact, Iron Man 3 canonically happens only five to six weeks before TWS, which is why Tony has no involvement in the events of TWS – he's still in recovery.) And Killian jamming the Extremis in Pepper is what Tony was thinking of when he hears that Steve's new girl also had a bad guy putting stuff in her, so Tony can really relate to that right now.

There will be a couple more chapters, and then we're done.

 

[Marchewmen]

Kinda sad this isn't earth mightiest heroes avengers. I watched whatever was on youtube, and damn was that show good.

Much better connection from avengers to overall marvel world, fights are super fun to see.

 

[The Unicorn]

Should be only a couple more chapters and we'll be done.

Click to shrink...

There will be a couple more chapters, and then we're done.

Click to shrink...

Hmm...I think I like this trend, you should keep it up

 

[cliffc999]

Hmm...I think I like this trend, you should keep it up

Click to shrink...

We just dropped chapter 25, and chapters 26, 27, and a post-credits stinger are yet to come. So at a 2/day update it should be finished tomorrow afternoon.

When I did this on SB it originally had only 25 chapters and the MCU return skipped over a lot of the reactions to Steve and Courtney's return/arrival because I was stuck on writing them. Then later on I actually managed to get some of them out as sidestory chapters. Then I later redid my chapters there to splice them all in-line. You're getting the final production version here.

 

[htgriffin]

"Sounds good to me." Steve agreed. "And Tony… thank you. Even if I couldn't accept it, that's still one of the kindest things anybody's ever offered to do for me."

Click to shrink...

Okay. Kept Boy of Independently Wealthy Non-Convicted Ex Thief, and now this? Man's duty keeps him away from so many retirement options.

"Oh, and make sure to use the right opening credits music!"

"Tony, no." Steve moaned softly. "Please."

Click to shrink...

Now Courtney begins to truly grasp where Steve's Thing about PR Dog&Pony shows comes from.

 

[cliffc999]

Now Courtney begins to truly grasp where Steve's Thing about PR Dog&Pony shows comes from.

Click to shrink...

As foretold in the prophecy:

"Look. I get that you like to always be the star-spangled man with a plan-" Courtney began, only to stop dead at Steve's flinch. "… another landmine?"

"Embarrassing one." Steve blushed. "It's okay, it didn't hurt. Except my dignity."

"Oh, you gotta explain this one to me." Courtney asked eagerly.

"No, I don't think I will." Steve replied politely after a distinct pause.

Click to shrink...

 

[The Unicorn]

We just dropped chapter 25, and chapters 26, 27, and a post-credits stinger are yet to come. So at a 2/day update it should be finished tomorrow afternoon.

When I did this on SB it originally had only 25 chapters and the MCU return skipped over a lot of the reactions to Steve and Courtney's return/arrival because I was stuck on writing them. Then later on I actually managed to get some of them out as sidestory chapters. Then I later redid my chapters there to splice them all in-line. You're getting the final production version here.

Click to shrink...

Yah, but the joke is that we were two chapters from the end, and after two chapters we're still two chapters from the end.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 39

"Sir? You asked me to give you a five-minute warning." Maria Hill's voice interrupted Nick Fury's concentration.

"That's right, I did." Fury wrenched his concentration away from the analyses he'd been concentrating on and looked up from his desk. "Stark still on schedule, or is he going to flake out at the last minute?"

"It's not Stark." Maria corrected him. "Barton and Romanov are the ones who requested the secure teleconference."

"I'll be damned, they finally remembered who they worked for?" Fury said ironically. "But if they're calling from the Tower then no, Stark approved the call."

"I just hope they're not calling to submit their resignations." she worried. "Sudden Avengers team reunion meeting out of nowhere? If Stark really did carry out his threat and reform the group, then they would have had to pick a side and pick it fast."

"To be honest, if push really did come to shove then I'd rather have them inside Stark's tent and pissin' out then be stuck out in the cold with us just pissin' into the wind." Fury sardonically mangled President Lyndon Johnson's famous quote. "They don't need to take a paycheck from us to remember which side they're on, and the idea of Stark, Thor, and Banner running loose without adult supervision is a nightmare."

"Well, we'll find out soon enough." Maria shrugged philosophically.

"Computer? Seal my office, full countersurveillance suite, hold all my other calls. Open secure teleconference line to Stark Tower and signal we're available." Fury ordered.

"Office sealed. Communications request sent." the SHIELD computer replied. "Request acknowledged. Teleconference starting."

The big wall screen flickered on to show Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov both sitting at a table in the conference room of the Avengers' quarters in Stark Tower. Fury's eyes widened at not only the relaxed body language of the two agents but also Natasha's smile – the first genuine, non-forced smile either SHIELD's Director or Deputy Director had seen from her in over two months.

"Good news, then?" Maria greeted them.

"Very good news." Clint nodded. "Sorry about the comms blackout, boss, but we needed a whole day just to process the ramifications of what we were told… and also to let the hangover wear off." He broke out in a beaming grin. "So starting from the top – somebody just became the first person in history who will need to be taken off the MIA list and restored to life twice."

Fury's mouth fell open, the first time in over a decade he'd shown that much visible shock. "You'd better not be fucking with me, Barton!" he swore viciously.

"He's back, Nick." Natasha smiled at him. "Steve's alive. And yes, we have confirmation of identity." she continued more professionally. "DNA, full biometrics, test questions, everything."

Maria exhaled heavily and blinked away tears, visibly fighting to keep control of her expression. "What happened to him? And what's his condition?"

"The wormhole sent him to an alternate timeline, apparently. A pretty distant one. He got back slightly less than two days ago with some significant help from that, uh, mystical sector that we really don't know much about. " Clint explained. "Not much names or detail available there, but Thor confirmed that whatever it was it was genuine and non-malicious."

"Two days." Fury blinked. "Stark sat on this for two days?"

"Nick, we all know that Tony doesn't trust you any further than he could throw the Triskelion without a suit." Natasha said reasonably. "He never really has. Honestly, we should count our blessings that he actually told us this soon. Knowing Tony he probably at least seriously considered helping Steve continue to fake his death and offering to fund a luxury retirement under a new ID."

"Valid." Fury conceded reluctantly. "Captain Rogers' condition?"

"Better than ever." Clint replied cheerfully. "His involuntary vacation did him a world of good."

"Which brings me to the part that's really going to flip your pancakes." Natasha said impishly. "Steve didn't return alone."

"How many?" Hill asked tautly. "And hostile or non-?"

"One, and about as friendly as it can possibly get." Clint reassured her. "It was like something out of pulp sci-fi. Hero gets cast away to a place where nobody knows him and finds a quiet life after falling in love with a local girl, then has to answer the call again anyway." He turned serious. "And we're very lucky that she agreed to come back with him, or we would not have gotten him back at all."

"We need to get this up front." Natasha said seriously. "Nick, we cannot let anyone else decide to play games with this. Not that you would, but we both know that-"

"Seriously, boss?" Clint interrupted soberly. "If you want shooting that nuke at New York to become only the second stupidest-ass decision in the history of SHIELD, then let anybody on the Council or anywhere else even suggest trying to use her as leverage against Cap. First, Steve would go completely off the reservation if that happened. It would literally be as bad an idea as kidnapping Peggy Carter from the retirement home, if not actually worse. Second, Stark would flip his shit – he's already best friends with her, not to mention his whole reaction to Steve's death and how he's overcompensating for it now. And last but definitely not least, Thor would declare war over it. Remember that he also emigrated to an entirely different planet in order to be with someone he'd fallen in love with, so he very much was impressed by Courtney doing the same thing. And it was enough for him to immediately put her in the same category he keeps Dr. Foster and Darcy Lewis. Touch her and the hammer comes down."

"What the-?" Fury goggled. "Who even is this girl?"

"She's nice." Natasha surprised the two directors. "As for more details we have a whole preliminary dossier compiled, plus she thought ahead enough to bring some paperwork from home. The short version is she's Courtney Jane Doe – yes, that's her actual name – age 27, enhanced with the power to turn invisible for short durations, and was working over in her home timeline for a private security company as a local superpowered backup to law enforcement." Natasha said. "We wrote up the rest. JARVIS? Stream it."

"Datapacket sent." JARVIS' voice broke in on the line. "Files received." SHIELD's own non-sentient computer systems acknowledged. "Malware scan negative."

The computer monitor screen on Fury's desk lit up and a couple of silent minutes passed as him and Hill speed-read through the several pages of the preliminary file.

"Well, it could definitely be worse. A lot worse." Hill nodded. "So, we need to set up a legal identity for her and a 'welcome to Earth' cultural series and otherwise leave her entirely alone?"

"The full cultural series won't be necessary, their parallel Earth appears to have been similar enough to ours that the only thing she needs is a modern history class." Natasha assured them. "And as for rations and quarters, she's already been offered the full hospitality of Stark Tower for the duration so we don't need to do anything there either. The rest is spot on."

"Is she…" Hill broke off. "Did she impress you as a… decent person? Or are we going to have a severely depressed Captain Rogers to deal with at some point?"

"Start picking out your wedding present." Natasha answered immediately. "Well maybe not quite that soon, but… no, they really are one of those almost offensively cute couples. I've never seen Steve happier or more relaxed, and if she doesn't legitimately think that he hung the moon then she's a better actress than I am. Admittedly I've only known her for less than 24 hours, but initial read is that they're for the long haul."

"Good." Hill nodded. "Not just in the sense that we won't have a psychological crisis to deal with in the near future, but he deserves to have something go right for him for once."

"He's not coming back to SHIELD, is he?" Fury said evenly, and Hill turned to him in surprise.

"Start picking out your next STRIKE Ops commander and composing your PR scripts for the Captain's retirement." Clint acknowledged. "Steve said he'd give you several months of notice, minimum, but in half a year at the outside he'll be gone. He's looking forward to family life in the future, and unlike me he doesn't want to balance it against SHIELD."

"And the Avengers?" Fury continued.

"After Steve leaves SHIELD, they'll be reforming." Natasha confirmed. "We're both invited, so we'll have to step back from full-time duty as well."

"In the event of the Avengers returning to active status, extended detached duty is already approved." Fury agreed immediately. "You're both very useful here, but the absolute last thing I want is them running loose without any points of contact."

"We understand." Clint acknowledged.

"How far has the information of Steve's return spread?" Maria asked.

"Right now, you're the only two people outside of the Stark Tower penthouse who know." Clint said. "However, that status will rapidly change. Pepper's already drawn up the press release, and unless SHIELD puts out a release first it will go live at 1600 Eastern time today. So that gives you a little more than seven hours to decide how you're going to make the initial public notification before Stark does it for you."

"Can we get a delay on that?" Fury asked. "Even so much as a day? Because I actually would like to talk to somebody above even my pay grade before just hipshooting this."

"Tony said that you can either get a delay on the press release or you can get the last pair of your new Helicarrier engines delivered on schedule, but pick only one." Natasha said ruefully. "Sorry. He's in a mood."

"Sometimes I wish I'd never convinced him to sell me those damned things, because he's done nothing but twist my arm with them ever since." Fury muttered. "All right, tell him we'll have something out by three."

"Understood. Anything else?" Natasha asked.

"Just one question. Why isn't Rogers reporting in along with you?" Fury inquired.

"Because he's sleeping it off." Clint laughed. "Apparently they actually do make booze that can get him drunk, it's just that they only make it on Asgard."

"I see what you mean about him finally being able to relax." Fury said stolidly. "All right, that's enough to go on for now. I've got to make some calls, but as of 1500 today we go public. In the meantime, just stay there as long as they'll let you and let me know if anything else looks to go haywire. Fury out."

"Acknowledged. Barton out." And the screen blanked out.

"It finally happened." Maria chuckled. "We officially have a 'Cap's girlfriend' to deal with, and it's nobody we ever expected." She gave Nick an amused side-eye. "Disappointed to have all your attempted matchmaking fail?"

"Those ladies were entirely and genuinely self-motivated." Nick protested.

"Yes, and I'm sure it was entirely coincidental that you cycled that many young, attractive, and hero-worshipping junior female staff through Steve's agent supports and liaisons." Maria rolled her eyes. "Seriously, before the wormhole you were just about getting desperate enough to send in Agent Thirteen, weren't you?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny." Fury shook his head flatly. "What's your advice on the initial press release?"

"It's a rope that we're being sold, and Stark wants to see how we hang ourselves with it." Maria answered immediately. "So we do not mention Girlfriend America anywhere in it, even by implication. That's the test."

"What I figured." Fury nodded. "As for the rest, I was thinking we keep it barebones. And we imply that Stark's mad science helped fetch Captain Rogers back – because I am like hell going to mention the word 'magic' in anything officially written down – but we don't actually say that directly."

"I'll start composing it." Maria nodded. "But note, if I have to consult with PR staff about this then it'll be all over the building inside an hour."

"I have to conference call with the Secretary and the President to give them a heads-up." Fury said. "Computer, do we have any non-SHIELD visitors in the building at present?"

"Negative. A Department of Defense liaison will arrive for the counter-terrorism briefing at 1400 hours. That is the only scheduled outside party today." the computer answered.

"Right. Computer, immediate voice call to the Secretary and then patch that into conference call with White House Signals as soon as they get on the line." Fury ordered. "And after we finish that, I have an announcement to make."

* * * * *​

"Attention all SHIELD personnel. This is the Director." Fury's voice rang out from every interior speaker in the Triskelion. "We have just had an unscheduled but very positive event."

Heads looked up confusedly from their work all over the building. An 'unscheduled event' almost always meant a crisis announcement. An 'unscheduled but very positive' event was unheard of.

"We have just received word from Stark Tower that thanks to an unprecedented and experimental effort, under circumstances not likely to be repeated, a successful recovery mission has been completed for a senior SHIELD officer who was missing and presumed dead."

Agent Rollins stood up from his firing crouch and absent-mindedly flicked the selector switch on his assault rifle to 'safe' as him and several others on the STRIKE team paused where they were going through the indoor urban assault course to stare at each other incredulously.

"There will be a public announcement of this news at 1500 hours local time today, and any premature communication of this news outside the building before that time will be the worst – and last – idea that anyone has ever had in their SHIELD career." Fury continued.

SHIELD agents and analysts all over the building turned incredulous stares away from the nearest PA speakers towards each other, and a rumble of conversation began to build as everyone questioned each other if this really meant what they thought it did-

"But at this time I am very very pleased to announce that Captain Rogers has returned to us, safe and sound."

Brock Rumlow stood in the operations control center of SHIELD where he had been monitoring suspected terrorist installations via satellite and shook his head wonderingly from side to side. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me." he muttered to himself.

"Preliminary reports are that he is in good condition and high spirits. At present he is convalescing at Stark Tower, and we currently anticipate his return to active duty, after suitable debriefing and evaluations, within the next several weeks."

Sharon Carter sat at her desk, her face buried in her hands and heaving with sobs as the tension of over two months' worth of suppressed grief all discharged at once. She reached for a tissue and loudly and unashamedly blew her nose as she smiled through her tears.

"And in conclusion, all I can say is… God bless America. Fury out."

One heartbeat passed, and then another… and then the sound of cheers resounded through every hallway in the building.

* * * * *​

"No sir, I don't think Captain Rogers will want a whole ceremony." Secretary Alexander Pierce said into the phone as he sat at his desk in his office at the very top of the Triskelion, SHIELD's headquarters building. "We'll do a press conference, of course." He paused to listen to the caller. "He apparently had some extra-terrestrial assistance returning from where the wormhole had sent him. Unfortunately we're still a little thin on details, because Mr. Stark has been his usual eccentric self about sharing them. The Captain will be debriefed almost as soon as he's back here, of course, and I'll make sure those reports are sent right to you." He paused again. "Of course, Mr. President. And yes, it's a very good day for America that he's miraculously survived yet again."

Pierce hung up the phone and the politician's smile fell off his face as if surgically removed. He looked up at the tall, muscular man standing at attention in front of his desk.

"Sorry about the delay." Pierce nodded. "The President was in a very chatty mood, and it's not like I can put him on hold. That's the second time he's called today." The Secretary looked down briefly to check the display panel built into his desk and tapped a control. "All right, the room's secure. We can speak plainly."

"Yes sir." Brock Rumlow nodded as he relaxed to at-ease. "So, the Cap really is back then?"

"Safe and sound, from whatever alternate universe he got randomly wormholed into." Pierce nodded. "I'm sure it's a very remarkable tale."

"It's a very remarkable what the fuck is it going to take to kill that guy?" Rumlow burst out incredulously. "I'm starting to wonder if even Project Insight's going to bring enough gun if he can survive this kind of crap!"

"Let's not exaggerate." Pierce reassured his best agent. "While it certainly can't be denied that he's by far the luckiest person known to history – twice over - there's some things that no amount of luck can defend against. Particularly if you don't see them coming."

"You're right, sir." Rumlow apologized. "Sorry, I'm just a little spooked. You personally see a guy get nuclear disintegrated and then he pops up again a couple months later fresh as a daisy, it makes a man start to question the nature of his reality."

"Oh trust me, you're not alone in feeling that way." Pierce agreed. "Which is why I wanted to speak to you. We can – and will – use up several weeks giving the Captain some convalescent leave, debriefing, medical exams, et cetera, but it's not guaranteed we'll be able to continue that pace all the way up to Insight Day. Which means STRIKE will have to prepare for the possibility that you'll be deploying with him at least once more before then, which means you need to make sure every man on the team has his poker face solidly back in place and is prepared not to leak even the slightest thing. And to have all that done before Captain Rogers reports back for duty full-time."

"You can count on me, sir. I'll keep 'em in line." Rumlow nodded. "I also heard the Cap's got a girl now? Are we, uh, doing anything about that?"

"Absolutely. We're rolling out the bureaucratic red carpet for the young lady while smiling and staying on our very best behavior." Pierce nodded at him.

"Good." Rumlow exhaled with relief. "I was afraid that they were thinking that we should black-bag her for leverage or something, and I was already rehearsing how I was going to have to try and explain how that would not be a good idea."

"Exactly." Pierce agreed. "We're less than six weeks out from Insight and so far nobody suspects a thing. Even the recent Avengers surprise team meeting we were worrying about turns out just to have been them privately celebrating Captain Rogers' return before they notified us. Which means that the only thing we need to keep doing is nothing to raise any further alarm."

"Yeah. Plus, the more weekends off he takes to run back up to New York and spend 'em with his lady friend playing honeymoon, the less he's hanging around the office here and possibly noticing anything – which is exactly what we want happening." Rumlow agreed, and then chuckled. "Gotta admit I'm personally a little curious, though. There's barely a woman in the building who wouldn't gladly jump in bed with the Captain if he just crooked a finger at 'em – and some of them work for us! But none of them even got to first base with him, and now he comes back from another planet all shacked up? What, is she like Aphrodite or something?"

"Agent, if I could understand and predict human behavior that exactly then we wouldn't need Project Insight." Pierce chuckled. "Even the best predictive algorithms are only statistical, that's precisely why we're using as much… overcompensation… as we are."

"True enough." Rumlow grinned back. "Okay, so I get STRIKE back solidly into undercover mode and get ready to play Prince Charming if Cap ever brings his lady friend around. Anything else in the program that we need to change?"

"That reminds me." Pierce said. "Given that the Avengers are speaking to each other again, however innocently, we're going to need to take some extra care with distraction ops around Insight Day. I want as few Avengers as possible in North America, let alone in DC, when the time comes."

"Well, Stark doesn't even have a suit to wear anymore, not after the AIM thing, and while he likely intends to rebuild one eventually he's still in surgical recovery now." Rumlow analyzed. "Banner's self-isolating anyway, the only way to get him within a hundred miles of a military base – let alone here – is if he already knew Insight was going down. And Rogers and Romanov were people we were already expecting to be around the building full-time and already planned for. So the sticking point is Thor and Barton. Off the top of my head I don't know what the heck I can do about the thunder god, though."

"I'll handle Thor." Pierce nodded. "I anticipate that the government of Iceland is going to invite him and Dr. Foster to attend some ceremonies in honor of him and Asgard that week, an honor that I'm sure he'll be glad to accept. What I really wanted from you was a suggestion on how to deal with Barton."

"Well I certainly hope you don't want him whacked, because in addition to the fact that dropping his corpse would send Romanov entirely berserk we're talking about the operative that SHIELD originally sent to go shoot her here." Rumlow shook his head. "He's the actual best assassin in this entire building, even if everybody thinks it's her. Plus he's basically impossible to sneak up on. I swear to God that guy has to be enhanced, I don't care what his gene tests say." He took a deep breath. "However, he's also a full-time agent so he still takes orders. And once Project Insight is online we won't need a lot of the terrorist proxies we're using now anymore, so why not just cut one of 'em out early and hang 'em out to dry? We could use one of the Central Asian terror proxies, one of the really brutal ones. If Barton's busy running around in the mountains of Afghanistan or wherever sniping a bunch of mass murdering assholes in the head, then he's not here to potentially back up Rogers and Romanov when shit kicks loose."

"Sounds ideal." Pierce said. "Pick the one you like least, then write up an outline of how to arrange for Barton to go eliminate them at the opportune time and send it to my office."

"Yes sir." Rumlow nodded. "Anything else?"

"That'll do for now." Pierce shook his head. "Dismissed."

"Yes sir." Rumlow came to attention again and saluted. "Hail Hydra."

Pierce nodded in acknowledgement of the salute. "Hail Hydra."

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And now we get the reaction shots of their arrival from both SHIELD and HYDRA.

'Agent Thirteen' is Sharon Carter's canonical code name. Seriously, you cannot tell me Peggy's niece ended up assigned to Steve's detail in TWS by coincidence.

And honestly, given the amount of hero-worship and 'Aunt Peggy would want me to make sure he's okay' Sharon had to be carrying at first, only Nick Fury could possibly screw that setup up as hard as he did by assigning her to watch over Steve while undercover so nothing could ever happen between them due to it starting out on a basis of lies. It's the same sort of 'can you just think like a fucking normal person for once in your life?' that was behind the absurdity of Steve's original wakeup from the ice in the first place. Because while I still headcanon that Fury intended for something to happen there, he did the exact wrongest thing to actually try and make it happen. *g*

Oh well, she's missing her window in this timeline due to Courtney (not that canon also wasn't cruel to her in that regard) but at least I can still be nice to her in other ways. NGL, this one was largely an excuse to get that one camera moment of Sharon weeping with happiness in the first place. Sometimes when I'm writing fanfic, I like to imagine I'm a movie director. *g*

And we close out on a glimpse of our HYDRA villains being HYDRA, and Pierce using his brief screentime to prove that he's far smarter than Shroud will ever be. Because he is one of my very favorite MCU villains, as is Rumlow, and even if they're both headed for their fates in the events of TWS I can pay some respect first.

There will be one more chapter after that, and a post-credits stinger, and then our tale is done.

 

[Lillie Jones]

thanks for the chapters
Continue on
Cheers!

 

[htgriffin]

"Well, it could definitely be worse. A lot worse." Hill nodded.

Click to shrink...

I dunno, Malevola seems a chill sort despite the worse rap sheet, although the PR side is... harder.

If you are talking Destinations... recall Empowered?

"Good." Rumlow exhaled with relief. "I was afraid that they were thinking that we should black-bag her for leverage or something, and I was already rehearsing how I was going to have to try and explain how that would not be a good idea."

Click to shrink...

Two Smart Minions. Glad to see it.

 

[cliffc999]

Two Smart Minions. Glad to see it.

Click to shrink...

MCU Rumlow is an absolutely top tier supervillain goon that any evil organization would be proud to have as one of their top soldiers. Dude is charismatic, lethal, effective, cunning, and has guts enough to not even begin to flinch from Captain America even after the other ten guys he brought to the elevator fight are all on the floor. And for all that I hate seeing Sharon take Ls, remember that we're talking about a woman who once jumped the Winter Soldier with her bare hands and was still able to leave the fight not on a stretcher and Rumlow still managed to beat her in a knife fight... when she'd brought a gun.

I mean, sure, he's an absolutely horrible person but see 'HYDRA's chief goon'. As a villain, he's great.

 

[Prince Charon]

I wonder how quiet Fury is keeping Courtney's invisibility. I might have missed it, but it doesn't look like Pierce or Rumlow are aware of that, which has interesting implications.

 

[cliffc999]

I wonder how quiet Fury is keeping Courtney's invisibility. I might have missed it, but it doesn't look like Pierce or Rumlow are aware of that, which has interesting implications.

Click to shrink...

Excellent spot. They are entirely unaware of it.

Not that I plan to go into detail much on the events of TWS - I regard that movie as so close to perfect that I am not even going to try to improve on it - but I will at least explain what happened differently in this timeline.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus Zero

"Fire now." Captain America's voice came hoarsely through the headset.

"Steve! No!" Courtney cried into her microphone. Next to her, Sam Wilson placed a steadying hand on her shoulder.

"Do it!" Cap ordered. "Do it now!"

"Firing." Maria Hill acknowledged regretfully from her station in Flight Ops Control.

The three Insight Helicarriers each locked in on the other two with their main railguns and went to continuous rapid fire. The reinforced hulls on the three ultra-sophisticated engines of death had been built to withstand almost anything, but against their own orbital artillery at point blank range their armor was as much use as balsa wood versus a bullet. With great gouts of flame spurting from every seam the hovering vessels groaned, shuddered, and began to helplessly descend towards the ground. The comms cut out with a horrible flare of static.

"What a waste." Secretary Pierce whispered sadly, as he stood watching the destruction of Project Insight through the paranoramic windows of the conference room adjacent to his office. Scattered around his feet were the unconscious bodies of the HYDRA soldiers that the infiltrating Black Widow and Invisigal had subdued to rescue the World Security Council, and behind him stood Nick Fury with a levelled pistol.

"You're goddamn right it is." Invisigal spat hatefully at the arch-traitor and leader of HYDRA. "But we're really not talking about the same thing."

"Time to go, Mister Secretary." Natasha commanded him with a voice of ice as she stepped up to take his arm. "You're flying out with us."

"To be the guest of honor at the trial of the century?" Pierce smiled down at her slightly, his dignitas still wrapped around him like an invisible shield. "Thank you for the offer, but I'm afraid I must decline." And suddenly his face drew up tightly in a grimace, his left arm clutched tightly to his side, and he collapsed to the ground.

"Damn it!" Sam swore, running over to the fallen man and swiftly examining him. "Did he have a heart condition?"

"Yes." Nick answered him tonelessly. "He had a pacemaker put in five years ago."

"Well it must have had a manual override." Sam said grimly as he finished taking Pierce's pulse. "He just put his own heart into ventricular fibrillation. There's nothing I can do for him."

Pierce smiled thinly up at the surrounding heroes. "Hail… Hydra…" he silently mouthed, and died.

Fury exhaled heavily as he turned to face the stunned World Security Council members who'd silently been watching the entire tableau. "This whole place is about to come down. The escape elevator is in the Secretary's office, use it and get the hell to the basement shelter and then out the evac tunnel. We'll fly out."

"Are you staying dead, Nicholas?" Councilor Singh asked him. "Or can we report having seen you here?"

"Stay quiet for now, if you would." Fury acknowledged the gesture. "Officially Hill and Rogers had command of this op. We thought HYDRA was gone once before and obviously we were wrong. Might be useful for us to keep a hole card out this time."

"I understand. Thank you for saving us." the Councilor nodded back to Fury and his team. "All of us… from the consequences of our own mistake." He looked back out the window at the falling Helicarriers and then led his fellow Councilors into Pierce's office nearby.

"Let's go." Natasha said, and the four of them trotted back out to the helipad and the sleek black machine waiting for them there. Fury took the controls and Natasha the copilot's seat, and they lifted off into the air.

Courtney stared out the side window, white-faced, at the nearest of the three crashing Helicarriers – the one that Captain America was still on, facing off against the Winter Soldier. The helicopter lifted off just in time to avoid being caught as the edge of the Helicarrier's flight deck brushed against the side of the Triskelion and the skyscraper began to shudder and collapse. Undeterred, the Helicarrier continued its slow, tragic descent over the Potomac.

"Can we land on it? Get him off before it crashes?" Courtney begged.

"No." Sam shook his head, "Its descent is too erratic and half the flight deck is on fire. Plus he's on the bottom of the damned thing, in the targeting blister."

"Steve can do a five-thousand-foot fall into water without a parachute and swim it off." Natasha insisted. "All he has to do is get out while it's still over the river and he'll be fine."

"Then why hasn't he?!?" Courtney fretted.

Steve's voice came back into their headsets, full of static, as Natasha managed to partially restore radio contact.

"Your name… is James Buchanan Barnes…" Steve's voice came painedly over the headset, followed by the thunderous clang of a metal arm punching against a vibranium shield..

"Is that idiot still trying to talk him down?" Sam swore viciously.

"I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend." Steve continued, as a grunt of rage and another furious punch was heard faintly in the background.

The sounds of combat continued, as the Winter Soldier furiously pressed the attacks. Steve grunted in pain several times, but appeared to be successfully blocking or dodging most of his opponent's blows.

"But I'm not just gonna lie down and let you kill me either. I can't do that." Steve continued, as Courtney sniffled.

"Shut up!" the Soldier's voice came faintly through the microphone as he continued attacking.

"I met a girl, you see." Steve explained. "She's wonderful. Feisty on the outside, sweet on the inside… everything you'd ever hoped I'd find…"

"I don't CARE!" the Soldier shouted.

"I can't wait to introduce you to her." Steve said. "You'll get along great, I know you will. But you gotta come with me, Buck. Just stop fighting and let me get us out of here."

"You… don't know me!" the Soldier swore hoarsely. "You're! My! Mission!"

"We're running out of time, Buck." Steve pleaded. "Her name's Courtney. I can't abandon her. But I can't abandon you either. Please don't make me choose between you two… because I don't know how I can."

Several more frantic clangs of the shield sounded as the Soldier's voice faded away to incoherent grunts of pain.

"'Cause she's the woman I love, and you're my brother. And I want us all to be together… till the end of the line."

Silence fell for one awful moment before the armored-glass viewing blister on the bottom of the Helicarrier was smashed open by a huge chunk of debris falling through it from the inside. The radio cut out again with a horrible finality, and Courtney sobbed.

"I see him! One o'clock!" Sam suddenly pointed between the pilots' seats and out the windscreen, where two barely visible man-sized silhouettes were falling towards the Potomac from the torn-open blister. One of them had a glint of metal coming from their arm, and the other was clearly dressed in a bright red, white, and blue costume.

"I'm going after him!" Fury put the helicopter into a steep dive, and Sam fought his way back into the helicopter's passenger compartment and over to the side door as they levelled out.

"Keep a tight hold on that strap!" he ordered Courtney, and then furiously pulled on the door handle and slid it back. "Right door open!" he called out, and then immediately began hyperventilating, charging himself with oxygen.

"Going into a hover… now!" Natasha called back from the pilot's compartment, and the helicopter came to a standstill barely six feet over the river.

"Diver in the water!" Sam acknowledged as he leapt out the door, followed almost immediately by Courtney. The two of them arced down into the depths of the Potomac where Cap had just fallen and swam down towards the struggling figure in the flag costume. Off to their side, just at the edge of visibility, another swimmer saw them coming and turned away.

The two divers each grabbed on to one side of the struggling Cap and managed to, with some assistance from their rescue, use their combined muscle power to haul him back up to the surface.

"Ugh, I still can't believe how heavy he is!" Courtney complained as everybody's head broke the water.

"He had a big breakfast." Sam snarked as the three of them dog-paddled towards the nearest shore. "And what the hell were you thinking, jumping in after me? I'm the one with pararescue training and you're not even a lifeguard! I could have ended up having to try and rescue two drowning people!" he insisted.

"And I'm the one with the bionic lungs, remember?" Courtney called back heatedly. "Maybe I would have ended up having to save you from drowning!"

"It's nice to see… you're all getting along… so well." Cap joked weakly as they helped the battered and bleeding hero up onto the muddy shore.

"Jesus, man, you've got at least three bullet holes in you!" Sam swore as he examined the wounded Cap. "Did you ever consider ducking?"

"And I thought you had a problem with getting stabbed!" Courtney lovingly fussed over Steve, before a motion out of the corner of her eye made her look up. "Guys!" Courtney called out alarmedly. Both men turned and then tensed at the sight of the cyborg assassin standing maybe fifty feet away from them down the riverbank, also bedraggled and soaking from where he'd just swam up out of the river.

"Bucky?" Steve asked plaintively. "Are you okay?"

"… Steve." Bucky nodded slowly back at him, as the other two gasped. "I… don't know." he continued faintly. "I know you… but I don't know how I know you."

"HYDRA messed with your head. Took away your memories." Steve pleaded. "Come with us. We can help you."

"It's not safe here." Bucky shook his head as he stepped away. "I have to go."

"We won't force you to do anything." Courtney interrupted Steve. "But please come back when you can, Bucky. Steve misses you so much."

"You're his girl?" Bucky looked at her curiously.

"Yes." Courtney smiled tearfully. "I'm Courtney. It's nice to meet you."

Bucky fought for words that he couldn't find and then nodded somberly to her. He turned swiftly and disappeared into the nearby underbrush.

"I'll be goddamned, you were right." Sam stared after him wonderingly. "He was still in there, even if he's still pretty messed up."

"Told you so." Steve grunted, and then leaned back painedly and gasped.

"Yeah, now lie still." Sam turned back to Steve and then looked up again as the helicopter landed nearby. "He's stable for right now, but he's not going much further without medical attention!" Sam called out.

"Hill's staying at what's left of the Triskelion to coordinate search-and-rescue!" Fury yelled down to them from the pilot's seat. "We already contacted her, she's finding someone to swipe a vehicle and give you a medevac. Natasha, stay with them. I've got to get out of here before someone else comes along to notice I'm still alive. Besides, the chopper can't lift all of us."

"I'm on it." Natasha acknowledged as she jumped down out of the helicopter with the first-aid kit. "Here, let's at least get some dressings on him."

"Yeah." Sam said as Fury nodded good-bye to everyone and took off again. The three of them finished giving Steve what first aid they could and then started helping him stagger up the embankment toward the nearby frontage road.

"Van coming." Sam said warily as a nondescript service utility van with no insignia made an appearance after several minutes. Its headlights flashed at them once, then thrice.

"It's okay, I know the driver." Natasha said, and unhesitatingly led the others towards the van. The vehicle came to a stop and the driver, an athletic young blonde woman with a bloody bandage tied around one arm, leapt out.

"How bad is it?" she greeted them worriedly.

"Bad enough I'm thinking hospital rather than safe house, but not bad enough we need to run all the red lights." Sam answered her.

"This is Sam and she's Courtney." Natasha introduced them. "Sam's the medic, so right now we follow his lead."

"Straight to the nearest ER, got it." the blonde agent acknowledged. "Okay, I swiped a trauma kit if you need more supplies, it's in the back of the van. Now everybody load up, we need to get out of here before half the alphabet agencies in Washington start setting up a containment perimeter and then let people leave only in the back of a detention vehicle."

Sam and Natasha helped the wounded Steve into the back compartment and got to work on him with the trauma kit, leaving Courtney sitting nervously in the passenger seat. After spending several blocks driving quickly yet cautiously to escape the immediate perimeter, the agent relaxed enough to turn and speak to her passenger.

"So you're the one." she greeted Courtney. "The girl from another universe."

Courtney looked knowingly back at the woman questioning her. "Did you know Steve well?" she asked with just a touch of frost.

"We met at work a few times, but no, we weren't close." she acknowledged Courtney respectfully. "I was originally supposed to be heading up a new special security detail for him, but that got changed after his wormhole trip. As is, we were just office acquaintances."

"I'm imagining Steve was a very popular sight around the building." Courtney replied suspiciously.

"Oh he was." the woman acknowledged. "But I wasn't kidding myself that I had any… claim on part of his life." She trailed off embarrassedly. "Sorry, I'm trying not to make this awkward but in my case I literally grew up on stories of him from when I was a little girl, so it was never not going to be awkward actually meeting him at SHIELD. Or meeting anyone else who was close to him."

"Do most little girls in this world grow up on Captain America fairy tales?" Courtney inquired tentatively.

The agent actually chuckled at that. "Do you know what the difference between a fairy tale and a war story is?"

"One of them starts out with 'Once upon a time' and the other one starts out with 'Now this is no shit.'" Sam called amusedly from the back compartment.

"Exactly." the young woman smiled. "And in my case I got all the war stories direct from the source, my Aunt Peggy."

"Peggy-?" Courtney blinked, before her voice took on a knowing tone. "Ohhhhh. You're an Agent Carter."

"Guilty." she nodded back to Courtney. "So I was really just… hoping that you were a nice person." She looked out the windshield pensively. "Aunt Peggy said that Captain Rogers was always the one looking after everyone else, but that he made it almost impossible to properly look after him." The van came to a halt at a red light and she turned to look at Courtney imploringly. "So I know it's not my place to talk but please take good care of him, all right? Because he'll never do enough of that for himself."

"I'm not that bad." Came a weak protest from in back.

"Yes you are." Sam and Natasha both replied immediately.

Courtney relaxed and smiled warmly at the woman alongside her. "I will. I promise. And my friends call me Courtney."

"I'm Sharon." she replied, and they shook hands – and then Sharon winced as she put exertion on her wounded arm.

"I'm sorry!" Courtney drew her hand back. "Sam, you need to look at Sharon's arm once you've got a moment."

"I'm fine, it's just a knife slash." Sharon protested ."Superficial, barely broke the skin."

"What happened?" Courtney asked her.

"I was in Launch Control trying to stop the Helicarriers from even getting out of the bay." Sharon sighed. "It was a standoff in there between me and a few other loyalists and several of the STRIKE goons. Rumlow had his pistol to the head of one of the techs, but I had the drop on Rumlow … or I thought I did, at any rate. As soon as I blinked he pulled a sleight-of-hand trick with his holdout knife and suddenly I don't have a pistol anymore and he's using my weapon to shoot up the room. And then he made it to the launch panel and hit the controls despite everything I could throw at him." She slumped dejectedly. "I'm sorry I screwed it all up. If I'd done my job right then Captain Rogers wouldn't have needed to get himself shot up there at all."

"How long did you delay the launch?" Natasha asked matter-of-factly.

"Maybe sixty seconds, ninety at the outside." Sharon shook her head. "Barely any time at all."

"Sixty seconds was the difference between me and Sam getting onto the Helicarriers in the first place and them already being well into the air before we'd even made it back outside the building." Steve assured her. "What you did was as much part of saving everybody's lives as what we did. You did good, Sharon. Peggy would be proud of you."

Sharon blushed to the tips of her hair and furiously concentrated on the drive ahead, unable to answer. "We're almost at the hospital. What story am I telling?" she eventually asked.

"Drop me off a block away." Natasha ordered. "Sam, Courtney, you're just passers-by who found Steve at the side of the river. Sharon, you swiped the van from the Triskelion motor pool on your own initiative and went looking for crash survivors along the shore. I was never here."

"Got it." Sharon acknowledged, and stopped the van to let Natasha get out and disappear before resuming motion. "All right, we'll be at the ER in a couple of minutes. Everybody clear on what to say?"

"Natasha made it kinda easy to follow, yeah." Steve acknowledged with a grunt.

Sam forced Steve to lie down again, and Courtney turned to Sharon. "Are you going to vanish too once we get there?" she asked.

"I'm sure Natasha will be back in touch soon, she just doesn't want to get pinned down anywhere until she's had a chance to scope out the immediate reactions to the event and set up some fallback positions." Sharon assured her. "As for me, I might not have a job anymore but I still have friends to take care of… several of whom are riding in this van right now. So I'll stick with you guys at least until she turns up again to help brainstorm next moves."

"Glad to hear it." Courtney said. "Because honestly, I'm kinda out of my depth with all these spy games. I just drove down overnight from New York once the whole 'Captain America Fugitive' thing went public, and even then I couldn't actually find anyone until the whole mess on the causeway gave me a breaking news spot to go follow."

"If you're someone that Romanov and Hill would take along for the Triskelion raid at all, then you were not out of your depth." Sharon assured her. "Everything else, you can learn."

"Thanks." Courtney said. "I just hope I can keep up."

Sharon's expression turned from approving to sly. "And speaking of 'keeping up'…" she whispered to Courtney. "On behalf of all 'red-blooded American womanhood'…" she sardonically imitated the radio announcer from the old "Captain America Adventure Hour" show. "Well done."

* * * * *​

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Plus 2

"Sorry I wasn't there when you needed me. They had me decoyed all the way out to the middle of Azerbaijan and then cut off my extraction." Clint swore vehemently as he entered the conference room in Stark Tower.

"Thor and Banner haven't even made it back yet." Steve replied. "We did miss having you there, but it's not your fault. HYDRA did their best to make sure everybody was as far out of position on Insight Day as they could arrange."

"Steve and I were lucky that even we were in town at the critical moment." Natasha reassured him.

"What's going on, Cap?" Tony asked as he arrived. "I thought the big team meeting wasn't until tomorrow, when the others finally get here."

"There's something that I needed to bring up with you first." Cap said gravely. "And I'm not going to lie, I was really tempted to not bring it up at all. But Courtney convinced me that under these circumstances keeping it secret would only be selfish… and stupid."

"Really not the most reassuring opener." Tony said heavily as he sat down. "What's worse than finding out that the most powerful and influential security agency in the world was actually secretly run by Nazis and you had to burn it to the ground and upload all its secrets to the Internet to stop their secret plan to kill me, you, and millions of other people at the last minute?"

"There's no way to sugar-coat it." Steve sighed heavily. "But as near as we can figure, your parents' deaths weren't an accident. HYDRA had them assassinated."

Tony's expression immediately went blank, then red with rage. "You're sure?" he asked with dangerous mildness.

"The computer-Zola basically bragged as much to our faces in that bunker in New Jersey." Natasha said quietly. "We just finished digging through the SHIELD datadump looking for confirmation. There's no direct references, just a lot of separate data points to be correlated, but we're confident in our analysis."

"Why would they even do that?" Tony shook his head, dumbfounded. "Dad- dad made weapons. HYDRA loved weapons. He was alive and producing for SHIELD, which means he was producing for them."

"You told me once that he went from being pretty relaxed when you were a little kid to paranoid and suspicious later on." Steve said. "And he died when you were in college. We think he was starting to suspect something was rotten at SHIELD, that's why he closed himself off and started encrypting everything. Even his arc reactor research and the synthetic vibranium formula."

"And when they caught on that he was starting to catch on-" Tony said jerkily, as his hands twitched and fidgeted. "Okay, that fits. But your aunt didn't stop being SHIELD Director until a few years after Dad was killed." He turned to where Sharon was sitting silently at the foot of the table next to a pile of analyses. "How come she didn't catch on?"

"The same reason Fury didn't, until almost the very last moment." Sam answered for her. "Running an agency as large as SHIELD is like being a four-star general. Your job eats up basically all your waking hours. Howard Stark was a highly intelligent man who not only would have had access to everything but also have the relative leisure time to stop and lengthily ponder things he'd seen in hindsight instead of always having to be in crisis management mode. It's almost certain he'd spot it first."

"Yeah, okay." Tony nodded. "I get that. But this entire conversation doesn't make sense. HYDRA killed my parents, but by itself that's not something you'd want to keep secret from me. I was already all-in on the 'help finish the job' parade regarding our remnant Nazi problem, that's why we were getting the band back together in the first place. This would just be more motivation for me… so what's the part you didn't want to tell me?"

"We don't know who at HYDRA ordered the assassination." Steve said reluctantly. "It almost certainly wasn't Pierce, he wasn't senior enough then. But we do know who actually carried it out." Steve sighed and continued. "HYDRA sent their very best assassin on that job, no one less."

Tony's hand slammed down on the table. "Your old war buddy." He spat. "You really would have hidden him from me?"

"Tony, he was brainwashed." Natasha said. "He's not the one you need to go after."

"Brainwashed, shmainwashed-" Tony began furiously, only to be cut off by a furious "HEY!" from Clint.

"You remember that time you almost went face-first through the original Helicarrier's engine?" Clint continued. "Remind me again exactly how that happened?" He tapped his own finger against his temple twice. "Loki got in my head with the Mind Gem and made me almost kill you and everybody else in this room except for Sharon, Courtney, and Sam. And I did kill at least a dozen other SHIELD agents that day-" He winced and continued. "Anybody who said back then that it was my fault and I should hang for it, they get to stand up now and say Barnes should eat the guilt for what HYDRA forced him to do. But anybody who didn't say that back then is just trying to have it both ways."

"Tony." Courtney pleaded. "I heard the Winter Soldier try to kill Cap repeatedly… and I saw Bucky Barnes stop trying. That day by the river, he wasn't under their control anymore. He'd broken free. But that means he had something to break free from."

"And as a more practical concern." Sharon began diffidently. "We just got through saying that we don't know who ordered your parents' deaths. Which means that to the best of our knowledge, there's currently only one living person who might know."

"The guy they originally ordered to do it." Tony followed along. "Just- just give me a minute, okay?" he stammered out. "Let me work through this." He got up and started to pace furiously.

"You don't have to help me find him." Steve offered after a long moment. "I'm not asking you to do anything you don't want to do. I'm just asking… please don't hurt him."

"You-" Tony shook his head. "Okay, at least you came to me up front. If you'd kept this behind my back then I really would never have forgiven you. But as for the rest-" Tony stopped in shock and then slumped back into his chair. "You were talking about Loki, and I just realized something." He stopped and swallowed heavily, and then continued. "The day the Chitauri came, you remember that I flew back to the Tower ahead of you guys. Loki was already waiting for me in the penthouse when I got there. I had to stall him and keep him monologueing while I changed suits."

"I remember." Steve said. "What about it?"

"I skipped over the part where he tried using the Glowstick of Destiny on me, to send me out as his mind-controlled killbot against you." Tony said. "I mean, why bring it up? He tried his zappy thing with the Mind Gem, it didn't work, we had a ton of other shit on our plate that day anyway, so didn't occur to me to make a thing out of it afterwards. But only just now did I finally figure that if I hadn't lucked out massively-" He tapped his own chest. "If the Arc Reactor I had in my chest then hadn't somehow shorted out the Mind Gem then I really would have been turned into Loki's techno-zombie. And I'd have come out trying to murder you just as hard as Legolas here did."

He traded a grave look with the archer. "Only I wouldn't have been shooting at you with just a bow and arrow. If I'd been mind-controlled and wearing the Mark VII then I could have torn through all of you except Thor and Banner without breaking stride, and they'd never have been able to snap me out of it without disabling the suit entirely." He sighed. "Which means, of course, that I wouldn't have been available to get the nuke through the portal when they shot it at us and all of Manhattan would be gone. And if that wasn't bad enough, in hindsight we now know that us all dying there would also have meant that HYDRA would have inherited the Earth just a few days ago." Tony blinked. "Which come to think of it finally answers the question about who in SHIELD would even want to shoot a nuke at us that day and why, because Fury certainly didn't."

"If the nuke had detonated on us that would indeed have happened." Natasha agreed ruefully. "And yes, in hindsight that nuclear launch order was almost certainly Pierce's helpful 'suggestion' to the Council."

"So yeah. Mind control. It's really bad shit." Tony nodded. "Maybe I didn't use to take it as seriously as I should have, but I'll definitely have to keep a better eye out in the future." He looked at Clint and then Steve. "And maybe I should make more allowances for the people who weren't as lucky as I was."

"Thank you, Tony." Steve gasped in relief. "Bucky's in the wind right now, and just on my own hook I'd be lucky if I could find him in anything under months, if not years. But with you and JARVIS added to the equation-"

"Yeah, yeah. Sooner begun, sooner done, sooner we're finding what's left of HYDRA and busting all their asses." Tony agreed resolutely. "So when do we start?"

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And so our tale ends, not with a full rewrite of the MCU but with a close-out on the climactic events of TWS and then enough foreshadowing so that it's plain how Courtney's presence will change canon as the butterflies have flapped their pretty little wings. Because you just saw the moment at which they dodged the bullet for Civil War, and we're almost certainly not even on track to Ultron because Tony has in hindsight learned a newer respect for the Mind Gem, as well as learning to actually talk more with his friends. Because yeah, if Tony hadn't lucked out massively against Loki in Avengers 1, everybody would have died right then and there. Only took him two years to finally clue in, but hey, canon Tony never clued in at all so he's still ahead of the curve there.

Courtney's role in TWS was largely as already stated – she didn't even come down from NYC until after shit broke loose publicly, and still didn't catch up to the rest of the group until about the same time Maria did and only joined them for the final raid on the Triskelion. However, her contributions butterflied things just enough that Pierce was wrapped up before he could kill the Council and Rumlow was dealt with expeditiously enough that Sam could make it to the top floor to evacuate with the others. And, of course, her presence changed Steve's final confrontation with Bucky from the canon 'I'm willing to die here rather than abandon you' to 'I can't die here, I promised my best girl I'd come back to her', which of course butterflied things with Bucky as well.

As for Sharon's appearance – well, for one thing, she's just one of my favorite MCU characters and I think she really got done dirty in canon. But I also felt her presence in this fic to be necessary because I'm enough of a romantic that if I can work in a graceful passing of the torch, then that torch is going to be passed. And no, Sharon is not carrying that torch herself. Despite her whole hero-worship she was raised with thing, and her desire to help look out for Steve because it's what Aunt Peggy would want, and possibly a wee bit of a crush, her sole contact with Steve in this timeline has been meeting him several times at work in the weeks in-between his return and the events of TWS, plus the riverside medevac here.

But Peggy, who is the previous bearer of that torch, isn't really up to speaking for herself right now. She's still alive for Steve to take Courtney to visit her in the retirement home, but her Alzheimer's has progressed enough that there's no guarantees there. And if there's any person who has the right to speak on Peggy's behalf in this regard, it's Sharon. So as the proxy for her aunt, she gets to be here and give the 'Please take good care of him' speech that the graceful ex is privileged to give to the current incumbent.

Canonically, the short period of time the loyal agents helped delay things in Launch Control did make all the difference. And everybody credits the computer tech with a gun to his head for his bravery there, and he earned it, but fewer people credit Sharon with her end of that achievement as well. So I did.

Just the post-credits stinger left, and we're done.