My Star Spangled Invisi-Gal [MCU/Dispatch] (Complete)

[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.

 

[cliffc999]

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Plus 110

Courtney took a deep breath and tried to calm her racing pulse. She'd faced down sadistic supervillains, Agent Rumlow and an entire building full of HYDRA killers, Shroud's giant spider mech, and her own imminent death by suffocation, but right at the moment she couldn't recall being this terrified of anything in her entire life. And worse of all, this was a challenge that none of the Avengers could help her confront – not Steve, not Tony, not Natasha, not anyone. Even those of her friends who with her at this moment, as opposed to nervously waiting back home to see how it shook out, could still do nothing except support her from the sidelines-

"Even if you've got bionic lungs, don't forget to breathe." Sharon urged her gently. "And whatever you do, don't go invisible on camera." she teased.

"Hey, it wouldn't be anything that they already haven't seen before." Courtney teased back weakly. One of the makeup people tsked slightly and leaned in to briefly touch up Courtney's face, then stepped back.

"Miss Doe? You're in one." One of the production assistants nodded to her, and she stepped slightly closer to the edge of the curtain at stage left.

"Short answers. Speak in complete thoughts, because they'll chop it up into sound bites. Pause before speaking." Pepper coached her. "And don't panic, you've got this."

"Welcome back, everyone." The host began as the show cut in from commercial. "For our first segment, NewsWatch At Night is proud to bring you the first one-on-one exclusive interview with the luckiest woman in America, the lady that has been memed all across the Internet as 'the Star-Spangled Girlfriend'. Everyone, please welcome Courtney Jane Doe!"

Girding her loins as intently as if she were stepping out into an artillery barrage, Courtney strode forward into the spotlight and turned to smile nervously at the wildly applauding crowd. She took her seat at one end of the interview couch and after a nod at the camera turned to face her interviewer.

"Thank you for having me on, Janet." Courtney nodded to the host.

"Courtney, we're all already familiar with the outline of your life and how you arrived here, and of course with the fact that you are the latest member of the Avengers. But there are still so many questions I want to ask right now." Janet smiled disarmingly. "Unfortunately, we only have so much time, so I'll start with the one that everybody's been wondering at ever since the very first public announcement about you. Is that really your name, or was SHIELD just too rushed towards the end to actually be creative with aliases?"

"It is genuinely my name." Courtney answered, only remembering to cut off from making a lengthier explanation at the last minute.

"How did you get such a name? Were you an orphan?" Janet asked compassionately.

Courtney kept her expression even only with effort. "I was abandoned by my parents."

"I'm very sorry to hear that." Janet answered after a brief pause. "So, on to a more pleasant topic. Is there a name change coming in the near future?" she asked with a knowing grin.

"Steve and I are very close, but nothing is scheduled right now." Courtney eventually decided on her exact wording. "The Avengers have a lot on their plate at the moment dealing with the fallout of HYDRA's public reveal and the dismantling of SHIELD, and likely will for some time."

"You were there on Insight Day, weren't you?" Janet pressed. "Fighting alongside the Captain?"

"I was there, but not alongside him." Courtney answered. "My job was helping back up Natasha inside the Triskelion."

"The surviving World Security Council members have already credited your last-minute intervention with being the decisive factor that kept Secretary Pierce from being able to kill them." Janet acknowledged. "Quite an introduction to superheroing that you've had!"

"I had already been a superhero back on my birthworld for almost six months prior to arriving here, but that was my debut on this Earth, yes." Courtney agreed.

"Can you really turn invisible?" Janet asked eagerly.

Courtney cast an apologetic smile to stage left towards where Sharon was standing behind the curtain and obligingly vanished for the camera for five seconds.

"Incredible." Janet breathed before turning to address the camera. "And no, folks, that wasn't CGI, as our live studio audience can confirm!" The aforementioned audience broke out in gentle laughter. "So, you've only had your powers for around a year?"

"I've had them since I was fourteen." Courtney corrected. "I only started using them for superheroing about year ago."

"You waited that long to start? What were you doing with them in the meanwhile?" Janet asked curiously.

Courtney paused for several heartbeats before her head came back up and looked firmly into Janet's eyes. "I'd been a supervillain."

Backstage, Pepper groaned and facepalmed. Sharon sighed sympathetically and shrugged at the older woman.

The studio audience did a collective gasp, and for the first time in years the experienced anchorwoman did a visible double-take on live broadcast. "… excuse me?"

"I had been a criminal." Courtney admitted openly. "I used my powers to break into places and steal things." She looked briefly downcast. "I'm very ashamed of that period in my life, but I won't pretend that it didn't happen."

"That sounds like a tremendously longer story just begging to be told." Janet recovered. "Why did you stop?"

"… in my experience, there's two kinds of people who can make a career out of hurting others." Courtney eventually answered. "The kind who are lying to themselves about how wrong what they're doing is, and the kind who know exactly what they're doing and just don't care. HYDRA was full of the second kind. I was the first kind. And eventually, I just ran out of lies that I could tell myself." She paused regretfully and continued. "I only wish it hadn't taken me so long."

"That… is a tremendously courageous thing to admit." Janet eventually found words. "And from what you just said, it was a realization you had come to several months before you first met him. Do you think your… capacity for redemption is what initially attracted Captain Rogers to you?"

"Steve and I have entirely had that conversation." Courtney's grin made a slight, involuntary appearance. "And his answer to my question was 'Pretty girl who can choke out a bad guy like nothing but who's got a good heart deep down… what can I say, I've got a type.'"

Janet laughed gently. "That very much sounds like something he'd say. So he knew about your past before you'd started a relationship?"

"I told him everything up front, even the things I'd never admitted to anyone else before." Courtney agreed. "And he-" Courtney blushed. "Genuine acceptance for who you are is truly the single most precious gift that anyone can give anyone else in a relationship. You opened this interview calling me perhaps the luckiest woman in America, and honestly? You're not wrong. Steve is the most remarkable person that I've ever met, and I still pinch myself sometimes to make sure I'm not dreaming."

"You are indeed the envy of a great many women around the world, some of whom are currently in this studio." Janet agreed eagerly. "Do you have any message for them?"

Courtney peered at Janet suspiciously, before turning to the camera. "I'm sorry that there's only one Captain America, and he's taken. But girls, there are more men out there who are genuinely decent people deep-down so don't give up on finding one for yourself. The looks, the muscles, the celebrity… that's all superficial. This is what matters." She tapped her own heart with several fingers and turned back to Janet. "Back where I'm from, Steve once got an offer from a much more famous superteam than the one I'd met him working at for a much more prestigious position, and he turned it down without hesitation. And when I asked him why he did that, he said that he'd never met anyone who'd been made happy just from having money and fame. And that a satisfying life came from having useful work to do, and having good people to share your life with and care for – and who'd also be there to care for you."

"That is a very positive and life-affirming message." Janet agreed. "Now, on to more superhero-y questions. There's some people who say that your role on the team is very redundant with Black Widow's and that you are only on the team as a favor to your boyfriend. What is your answer for them?"

"There is exactly one requirement for membership on the Avengers – the other team members have to agree that you're making a useful contribution and are the sort of person they could all trust with their lives." Courtney answered firmly. "And I will remind 'these people' out there that two out of the original six members had no superpowers at all." She took a breath and continued more mildly. "That having been said, Natasha can do a great many things that I can't do. And she actually welcomes my presence on the team because my being available for going all ambush predator on the bad guys frees up a lot of her time to go do those other things."

"You are indeed an exceptional hand-to-hand combatant, particularly for someone who hasn't had SHIELD or elite military training like the Black Widow, Hawkeye, or Captain America." Janet redirected. "Where did you learn?"

"Actually, I'm enhanced." Courtney admitted. "It turns out that invisibility isn't my only superpower – I also have a reaction time, hand-eye coordination, and physical strength incrementally above theoretical human maximum. It's nowhere near as significant a set of physical enhancements as what Steve has, of course, but it makes me a lot tougher to deal with in close-quarters than would be normally expected from a woman my size. Plus, even before I started going to the Natasha Romanov school of martial arts – and yes, Nat, you're a sadist and I will say that on live TV, so there! – I had years of practical experience and more conventional kickboxing training."

Backstage, Sharon managed to restrain herself from laughing loudly enough to be picked up on live microphone only with a visible effort.

"I notice that you keep saying 'back where I'm from' or 'my birth world'." Janet asked after a pause for thought. "Why not 'homeworld'?"

"Home is where Steve is." Courtney answered immediately, and there was a subdued 'Awwwww.' from the audience.

"On another topic, I have a question regarding Stark Industries' recent groundbreaking announcement in the fields of medical implant technology and transplant anti-rejection measures. What exactly was your role in that, and why has Tony Stark assigned you the royalties from those new patents? Are you also a scientist in addition to your other accomplishments?"

"Hah, no." Courtney waved away the very idea. "And my role in it was to be the person who brought an example of the new technology from my birth world for Tony to reverse-engineer." She tapped her chest again. "One of the last things I did before ending my villain career was volunteer to be subject to an experiment in very unlicensed medicine by another supervillain." Her expression turned sad. "My asthma – yes, there's a reason the first Stark medical cybernetics implant announced was a lung implant – had been getting pretty bad, so I did something stupid and desperate. And it worked… and then the bad guy deliberately turned the implant off and tried to hold my own lungs hostage against me to force me to work for him." She shrugged. "Which anybody with the common sense of a gerbil should have seen coming in advance, but I didn't. So I walked out on him and on supervillaining altogether, and to skip to the very ending, the mad scientist is eventually brought to justice some months later – that was the first major case I worked in conjunction with Steve on, as it happens – and ends up facing multiple consecutive life sentences for his various crimes against humanity. And I end up emigrating to another world with a deactivated piece of highly experimental tech in my lungs that's basically nothing but dead weight… until Tony Stark takes one look at it and needs less than a week to figure out how to reactivate the implant. And not much time after that to reverse-engineer all the principles the tech is based on, and to do so safely and in a completely humane manner. Which is why we're looking forward to not only a whole lot of people not having to suffer the way I or Steve-"

"Excuse me, Captain Rogers had asthma?" Janet asked, shocked.

"He had a lot of illnesses in childhood, before the super-soldier serum fixed them all." Courtney corrected her. "I thought that was public record here."

"It was, but I hadn't known that asthma had been one of them." Janet acknowledged. "I'm sorry I interrupted, please go on."

"At any rate, hopefully the asthma cure will make it through FDA approval soon, and the advancements in material science that will bring in a whole new age of rejection-free implants and transplants are already most of the way through." Courtney finished proudly. "As to your question for why Tony assigned me the royalties instead of himself, he's taking the position that since all of the advancements in question are due to his examination of a piece of technology from an alternate world that I own and was the first to bring to this Earth, I should get the rights on the basis of salvage law and explorer's first discovery." She shrugged. "Which I'm not sure is how the law even works, but since the only other possible legal position is that the royalties are his and he's voluntarily signed them over to me anyway, moot point." She chuckled. "I actually asked him how he could give it up just like that, and he looked at me like I was an idiot and said 'Courtney, do you really think I need more money?'"

Janet laughed softly. "I certainly can't argue with that! And speaking of money, you are looking at a potential income of hundreds of millions of dollars when the technology in question starts hitting the market, which it's almost certainly going to do in the next year. And as I understand it, Mr. Stark has already paid you a very generous advance. Since by all accounts you arrived on our world with all of your worldly goods in a single duffel bag, how are you reacting to being part of such a wonderful rags-to-riches story?"

"I already mentioned the part where I'm regularly pinching myself." Courtney chuckled. "And while I will certainly keep enough to support myself and Steve comfortably, I intend to use the vast majority of the money to set up a new charitable endeavor."

"What type of charity would it be?" Janet asked interestedly.

"A foundation to try and make full-spectrum counseling, rehabilitation, and legal assistance services available for at-risk youth or ex-cons. Particularly enhanced people. We're still working out what safeguards to use to make sure we only get the sincere redemption cases and not people just interested in trying to take us for a ride, but…" She trailed off and continued more soberly. "I screwed up my own life repeatedly and for years, and in the end I still got a second chance anyway. And it was an outright miraculous chance, one that I could never have possibly expected. So if I'm going to have a lot of money coming in… well, I might not be able to guarantee miracles, but I can't think of a better use for that money than trying to help other people out there like I was get their second chance too."

"That is an absolutely wonderful thought, Courtney, and it says a great many good things about you as a person that this would be your first idea on how to use your new fame and fortune." Janet smiled at her. "Do you have a name in mind for your new charity?"

"The Phoenix Foundation." Courtney answered. "Because it symbolizes rebirth… and in honor of some old friends."

"Well, we all wish you the best of luck." Janet asked. "But we are just about out of time, so let me just leave you my best wishes for your new life and thank you for being on the show."

"You're welcome, Janet, and thank you for having me on." The two women shook hands and the red camera light winked out.

"And, cut!" the director called. "Okay, we'll be back from commercial in three so please clear the stage for the next guest. And somebody get Janet a glass of water!"

Courtney walked backstage to be greeted by an amused Sharon and an exasperated Pepper. "Why do I even bother writing media scripts for people if they don't stick to them?" the latter moaned. "You avoid being the worst person I know in that regard only by the existence of Tony!" Pepper broke out in a beaming smile. "That having been said, you were wonderful. You had them eating out of the palm of your hand, and you weren't even trying to."

"As they say in Hollywood, the most important thing is sincerity… and once you can fake that, you've got it made!" Sharon grinned.

"Look, you know Tony and I both have ADHD. So if you don't want our mouths to run on autopilot, don't put us on camera alone and for longer than a couple of minutes while we're already stressed!" Courtney retorted.

"Well, we had to get the solo interview done sometime." Pepper sighed. "Joint appearances with Steve are all well and good, but if you ever want to be taken seriously you have to speak for yourself."

"Which she just did, and very well indeed." Sharon defended Courtney as they walked through the backstage corridors towards the rear exit. "And- hold up." Sharon's expression turned serious and she touched her earpiece to activate her throat mike as Pepper and Courtney tensed. "Understood. Carter out." She turned her mike off and turned to them. "That was JARVIS. Avengers mission alert just got called, and Steve and Clint will be meeting us at the Tower garage."

Courtney looked down at the formalwear she'd appeared on TV in. "Well, I hope we can at least head up to the suite so I can get changed first! And what's the mission?"

"They didn't want to say on the air, so something sensitive." Sharon said briskly.

The ride back to Stark Tower from the studio took only several minutes, and an eager-looking Steve and Clint both greeted them.

"Whoa, you guys look pumped. What's going on?" Courtney said.

"We've got a location on Bucky." Steve beamed. "Eastern Europe, turned up on the surveillance grid while we were searching for a remnant HYDRA lab. Looks like he's searching for it too."

"Unless they've gotten back in his head again and he's actually coming from the lab." Courtney said worriedly.

"Well, that possibility among several others is why we're flying out right away." Clint agreed seriously. "Oh yeah, and one more thing. In the possibility that he has been reactivated or his memory's still enough of a mess, then Natasha's worried that her presence might be a trigger – remember, she was once a secondary target on one of the Winter Soldier's missions even prior to the whole Insight mess. So she's standing down on this one, and if she's not there then that means that in addition to us three as the primary operators we also need someone else for field intel support."

"Please do not be kidding me right now." Sharon gasped. "Please tell me you're serious."

"Suit up, Agent Carter. You're coming off the reserve bench for this one." Steve smiled at her, and all parties present politely ignored the quiet squeal of Yes! that slipped out in response.

"Welcome aboard!" Courtney congratulated Sharon warmly.

"Just make sure to not get stabbed this time, hrm?" Clint teased as the four of them headed up the Tower towards the Avengers ready room and the Quinjet hangar.

"Was that advice for her or for me?" Steve asked amusedly as the elevator doors opened, and everybody laughed.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: I would like to thank poster @htgriffin for their comment about charity work giving me the inspiration for this. And now I can get some of Courtney's future foreshadowing into actual story content instead of just buried in a WoG post. As well as Sharon's future foreshadowing, as in this timeline she followed Maria Hill into Stark Industries as Avengers support staff instead of going to the CIA.

I am going with the theory proposed earlier in-thread that Courtney has physical enhancements, because her performance in several scenes of the game is explainable only either by her being above physical baselines or else having training comparable to a Red Room graduate's and we already know it's not that. But superpeople in 'Dispatch' do seem to commonly run a set of physical buffs in addition to their unique powers in more than a few cases, so it fits.

If you're wondering at how the interviewer is being so nice, the answer is of course 'Pepper not only picked the most sympathetic venue she could find, she personally came along to the studio to give her Intimidating CEO Glare at people and remind them that they only got this exclusive interview by agreeing to be nice about it.' And even then she still asked a couple rude questions.

Also, I finally was able to get Courtney's ADHD mouth back on screen after it stopped appearing after the fic's early chapters. Just assume it was there the whole time but not getting in the way of anything important. (Steve actually finds Courtney's rambling habit charming, in fact.)

And even if I'm not doing a sequel, I can at least wrap things up and show a little bit of how the adventure will be continuing in this newer and nicer timeline.

Thanks for reading!