AN: This is the sequel to my other story, Blasphemy. It can be read on it's own, but you'll be missing a few details. Enjoy!

A year had passed since (ex) Sergeant Moriah Fox, now Doctor Moriah Fox PhD, had been called into action by her old friend Sam Wilson. She'd been sucked into a different life in that time, where she'd helped Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, through his PTSD, his anxiety, his depression. A full year had passed, and in that time she'd graduated, earning her doctorate. And, in that time, she hadn't heard a word from any of them.

The Winter Soldier Trial had been ugly, and she'd thought, surely, someone would contact her then. She'd reached out to them enough times. Apparently, someone had let slip that the Winter Soldier was living with Captain America. Bucky had surrendered himself willingly at that point, had turned himself in, and had endured a three month long media circus of a trial. Was he a terrorist? A traitor? Or was he a victim? Oh, they'd loved it. Mo had called them, texted them, told them that she would testify if she had to. But all of her calls had been ignored, gone without answer.

So, like any other American citizen, she'd kept up with the trial through the media—the news, the internet, magazines, newspapers, full of interviews and inside information on the trial. Steve had testified. So had Sam, and so had Tony. Even the Black Widow had stepped up to say a piece, all of them vouching for Bucky, doing their best to save him from what everyone knew would be an execution. And, in doing so, they'd succeeded in trashing their own names. People called Steve a traitor to his country, and Tony's name had been dragged through the mud. All the love and affection the world had had for them had quickly turned to a burning hatred, betrayal.

It was everywhere. The defense had taken up the argument that Bucky had been brainwashed, that he had been turned into a weapon, that he and the Winter Soldier were two different entities. She hadn't been able to escape it. Everyone was talking about it, and she'd had to play along as though she knew nothing about it. And, on the night when it was to be decided—was Bucky Barnes innocent or guilty?—she'd sat with the rest of America, watching the courtroom on her TV screen, where people were waiting outside with signs, ready to riot.

And when Bucky Barnes had been cleared of all charges, riot they had. Things had been burned to the ground. People had been killed. America was outraged. There were the scarce few, mostly psychologists interviewed on TV who claimed to understand the ruling, but most people showed little mercy or compassion for the man who'd killed so many people.

That had been a few months ago. Mo had called them that night and found their phone numbers had all been disconnected.

She was furious with them, but shouldn't have been surprised. She'd been a fool to think that the nearly three months she'd spent living with them had really added up to anything. They had bigger, more important things to take care of. So, finally, she decided to move on with her life. She stopped checking news sources and magazines for any information on them (and the tabloids were vicious) and she'd gone about her life. She'd graduated, and she'd had no one there to wait for her or congratulate her. And, as a result of having graduated and no longer being in school, the act that had been paying her bills had run out.

Getting a job was difficult. As it turned out, she wasn't able to list Helped the Winter Soldier acclimate to normal life, taught him to cope with PTSD, and taught him to accept his past on her resume. So she was working as an assistant in a VA hospital in Long Beach. She'd even tried to be a bartender, at one point, to make extra cash, but as it turned out having a missing limb and burn scars that nearly disfigured half your body didn't make you pretty enough to be a bartender. But she liked this job well enough, and it paid the bills; she worked full time at the hospital, keeping the elderly veterans company, delivering medication, being a companion, and it thankfully kept her busy enough to avoid the news and the tabloids about the men she'd spent the summer with and had apparently been forgotten by.

The leg Tony Stark had built her out of guilt for being the reason she'd lost it in the first place, and ended up with the scars, and had lost all of her friends, was easy enough to hide under black slacks and shoes. No one paid much attention to her, aside from staring at her scars, which didn't bother her as much as it used to. The patients, all war veterans themselves, would ask for the story, and she would tell them the half-truth that she told everyone: She'd been a combat medic and had gotten blown up.

No one knew that she'd been the only one to survive that day years ago that Tony Stark had been taken hostage in the Middle East, and she wanted it to stay that way.

She was just getting off work, heading to her car when her she noticed three missed calls from Tony Stark of all people. She hesitated; the calls were from hours ago and there was no voicemail. She wasn't as mad at him as she was at the others, considering they'd never really made it to the friendship level, but she didn't particularly feel like talking to him. Finally, worried that maybe something was wrong, she sat in her car and called him back.

"Dr. Fox," he said, "hello, dear."

"What do you want?"

"How's the job hunt going?"

"Fine. I just got off work."

"Ah," he said. "Where's that at?"

"Why did you call me, Stark?"

"Well, you know how the American people basically hate me, yes? You've noticed."

"Yeah," she said coldly.

"Well, what if I asked you to help me change that? I've got a plan, and I'll pay you more than any job you could possibly get would pay you. What do you say?"

"What's the job?" she asked suspiciously.

"The job is to make me look good," he said. "Like I said, I've got a plan. Basically, you stand around, look pretty, act like we're good friends."

"What would that accomplish?"

"Ah, yes," he said, "well, the other part of the plan is that I reveal to everyone that you're the sole survivor of the attack that happened years ago, and that we've just been reunited, and I built you a leg because I'm such a nice guy, and I've given you a job as my right-hand woman, and we get along oh so well with each other. There may or may not be some tears on your end. Also speeches and interviews. How does that sound?"

She hung up the phone, but it started ringing in her hand again. She answered it.

"Is that a yes, dear?"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because my new publicist thinks it's a good idea, and so do I. I'm Iron Man. People can't hate Iron Man. I've got to remind them that I'm a good guy and whatever, and I figured since Pepper's in treatment—also my fault—and also running a company, I really could use an assistant, and it just makes sense that you'd be that person. Can't you picture it? Tony Stark Reunited with Sole Survivor of Tragedy—Tony Stark Builds Wounded Veteran a New Limb—Tony Stark Hires Wounded Veteran—"

"Enough," she said, "I get it. It's a publicity stunt."

"And…? What do you say?"

Steve sat between Bucky and Sam. They were in the Stark tower for a meeting with their new publicist, hired courtesy of Tony because, according to him, their image "needed work". Steve didn't care much. After the fiasco with the Winter Soldier Trial, after America seemed to have turned it's collective back on him, he couldn't really be bothered to care much about what anyone thought as this moment. He'd never been one to go out of his way to please people.

He'd never actually met or talked to this publicist, Olivia Tate, in person; only brief phone calls or she-saids from Tony. But apparently he'd finally screwed up so badly that it had warranted a visit from Miss Olivia Tate herself.

"She's the best," Tony had insisted. "Trust me, I didn't want the help either, but she knows what she'd doing and she's young. She's taking this industry by storm, mark my words, and we're a project that could make her career. She's going to give us more than anyone else would. Plus… she's the only one who'd agree to help us."

"That doesn't sound promising," Steve had pointed out.

And now he was waiting for her in some conference room in the Stark tower. Tony had gone down to meet her and bring her back up. They waited in silence, feeling like caught schoolboys, and Steve nearly jumped when the glass doors behind them opened. He turned around and saw Tony first, who pulled out a seat at the head of the table, and Miss Olivia Tate stood there for a moment and tossed a magazine on the table at them. They all looked at each other. She wore high heels, a pair of black high-waisted shorts, a low-cut white lace top, and a soft pink blazer. The look suited her; she was young, but something about her commanded the room as soon as she'd walked in.

She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow at them, motioning at the magazine. "Well?" she asked, her voice rang through the room. She knew how to make an entrance, he'd give her that. Finally, she sat at the head of the table and Tony took the seat at the opposite end.

"This is Olivia—" Tony started, but Olivia Tate waved him off.

"We don't need introductions, Mr. Stark," she said coolly. "We all know who we are."

Steve and Tony exchanged a glance; Tony looked mildly taken aback, but his interest had clearly been sparked. Beside Steve, Bucky whistled lowly, eyebrows raised in such a way that said "damn" and he wasn't sure if it was in a good way or a bad way yet. But then Bucky pointed at his hair, nodding at Olivia Tate, and Steve looked, noting that there was something odd about her hair. The roots were dark black that quickly turned to a bright silver.

"Aren't you a little young for gray hair?" Steve asked, and her cool brown eyes cut to him.

"You've noticed that I'm young and that I have gray hair. How observant of you, Captain Rogers. Your deductive skills are impressive. Yes, I am young for my hair to be silver, but there's this lovely invention now called bleach. I'm not sure if they had it in your era, Captain, but times have changed a lot since then, as I'm sure you've noticed."

She gave him a cool smile, adjusting her glasses, tucking her shoulder length, thick silver hair behind one ear. "Any other questions, boys?" Bucky was grinning and Steve glared at him.

"Damn," Sam said, "just tore you a new one. I like her."

"Fantastic," she said. "Now that I've proved myself, would someone care to explain this?"

She motioned at the magazine with a long, tan hand. He noticed freckles, which were also splashed across her nose and cheekbones. Steve reached forward and took the magazine, reading the headline. Captain America—Bar Crawl and Bar BRAWL. Is the Captain Spiraling into Drunken Rages? Details inside.

"This is trash," Steve said, looking at the picture of him with a cut on his nose, shouting and being held back by a group of men. Bucky was in the background. The men he was after weren't pictured.

"Maybe so," Olivia said, "but it doesn't matter. The article inside paints you as an angry drunk getting into bar fights because a man looked at you funny. Is that the way you want to be perceived, Captain Rogers?"

"That's not what happened," Steve insisted. The men had cornered him and Bucky, who'd talked him into going to a bar in disguise, and they'd been found out. The men had taunted, taunted, and taunted, and had finally hit a nerve when they'd gone after Bucky and Steve had snapped. The cut on his nose was still healing.

"You put one of them in the hospital," Olivia replied. "Look, my point is that the American people hate you all right now. Especially you." She nodded at Steve.

"Why him?" Sam asked. "If it's because we stood up for Bucky, why don't they hate us all?"

"Oh, they do, don't worry," she said dryly. "But Steve's just the one they're focusing on. He was the biggest name. Captain America. And seeing you testify against your country and defend a terrorist? That didn't sit too well with anyone. You're a traitor. You were like a beacon of hope to them, a symbol of America, something good, and in their eyes you turned your back on all of that."

"I did not," Steve said. "This country was founded on the idea that—"

"I don't need to hear it," Olivia said. "It's them you should be convincing. Not me. I believe you."

"And how much did Stark have to pay you to believe us?"

She smiled a slow, cool smile at him, but ignored the question. "You guys need work. A lot of work. This is fixable—people are malleable, and their opinions are easy to shape with the right tools."

"Where d'we start?" Bucky asked.

"Well, try and avoid putting people in the hospital, for one," Olivia said with a roll of her brown eyes. She adjusted her glasses. "But I think it would be a good idea to get out there, let the world see you all doing some good. They need to see that Sergeant Barnes is basically a lapdog now—no offense—and that he's the same man they all looked up to in the Smithsonian, in the comic books and the history books. They need to see you as Captain America's best friend again. They need to see that Captain America isn't an angry, drunk traitor. They need to see that Mr. Stark isn't an asshole who throws his country under the bus—they need to see compassion. You'll be working closely with the military, as always, Mr. Stark. They need to see that you, Sam Wilson, are more than Steve's new buddy who does whatever he says."

"And how do we do that?" Sam asked.

"Events," Olivia said. "Photo ops. Interviews. Get in with the right people. Starting now, I'll be running your publicity schedules. We need to work on appearances—literally, starting with that star on Sergeant Barnes's shoulder there. It can't be that mark anymore, but it should be easy enough to fix—Mr. Stark, Sergeant Barnes, how do you feel about working together to modify it?"

She pulled out a manila envelope from her purse (labeled PROJECT LAZARUS) and pulled a sheet of paper out of that folder. On it was a sketch of Bucky's arm with the star, except white and blue rings had been painted around it so that it resembled Steve's shield.

"I thought of this," she said, sliding it to them. They all looked at it. "I think it would say a lot for them to see that symbol."

Tony nodded. "This is doable."

"Good," she said. "The next time Sergeant Barnes goes out in public, anywhere where his picture might be snapped, I need that to be on his shoulder. They'll notice." She sighed, folding her hands together on the table. "I know you don't know me," she said to them, "but I need you to trust me and do as I say. This can be very simple or it can be very difficult. You may not like everything that I do, but I ask you to trust it."

"That's a lot to ask," Steve pointed out.

"Maybe," she said. "But you boys need me."

Steve's eyes dropped the to Project Lazarus folder and he nodded at it.

"What's that?"

"What? Oh, Project Lazarus?" She smiled a little. "It's what I'm calling this. You're familiar with the story of Lazarus, right? Dead, brought back to life by Jesus?" They nodded, not following. "Well, let's just say that right now, Lazarus is your public image."

"That make you Jesus?" Bucky asked.

She shrugged, leaving them with the drawing and putting the manila envelope back in her purse. With that she stood. "Anyone have anything else they'd like to say?" She waited a moment, and they were silent. Steve wasn't entirely on board with this idea, but he didn't bother to mention it. "Alright then," she said. "I'll see you all soon. Remember what I said and just—call be before you do anything. Please don't make my job harder than it needs to be."

She made to leave and Tony hurried after her. "Can I talk to you?" he asked lowly, but Steve heard. "I've actually got an idea." They stepped out of the room, closing the doors behind them.

Olivia folded her arms, glancing over her shoulder at the boys in the conference room. "What is it, Mr. Stark?"

"You're a cold little one, you know that?"

"I've been told."

"Anyways, I have an idea—but you're sworn to secrecy."

"You pay me enough," she said, tucking a silver strand of hair behind her ear.

"There's this kid—well, not a kid, she's probably around your age—anyway, remember that incident a few years ago when I got kidnapped and as a result I became Iron Man?"

"Yes."

"Well, remember how it was so tragic and there were no survivors?" She nodded, still waiting. "Well, there was a survivor. One. Girl named Moriah Fox. She lost her leg in the attack. Around a year ago she was here helping those guys out with an issue—she's an official shrink now and everything. But here's my idea—what if I bring her in, pretend none of that stuff happened a year ago, like we're just reuniting. So picture this: I take in poor, amputee, wounded Moriah Fox. I build her a kickass leg. I give her a job. We're good friends, we're so glad we've met again, and I'm so glad she's survived, and isn't it such a small world? And we do a few interviews, do some wounded soldier's events together…"

He trailed off and Olivia was thinking, nodding slowly. "That's a great idea, actually," she said coolly. "Everyone loves a good sob story, and this is a great one. High profile, too. Everyone remembers the day Tony Stark got kidnapped. As long as no one finds out you all actually met before—it would have to seem real to pull it off as a chance happening. And if you could throw some stuff in there about how she forgives you, since your weapons did it, since they were killed and she was wounded as they tried to get to you… yeah, I think it'd go a long way. Give her a call."

Tony nodded.

"You did good in there, killer," he said, "I think they like you."

"I don't care if they like me, Mr. Stark," she said waspishly, turning to walk away. "I don't need to be liked. You're not paying me to be liked."

"You'll love it," Tony assured her, putting an arm around her shoulders. "Photoshoots, interviews, appearances. You can be my little orphan Annie, and I'll be Daddy Warbucks. Exact same concept. Get it?"

"I get it, Stark," she said with a roll of her eyes.

"Oh, that reminds me. Rules. So, when we're in public where people can overhear, you call me Tony. Because we're friends. When you're working for me in private, it's Mr. Stark. You're my personal assistant. That's just how it works, nothing personal.

"You can have your own room," he went on. "I'm going to need you to be on-call 24/7, so it makes it easier if you live here. You're going to need a makeover as well. We're going to doll you up. You're going to look deadly. Also, no more pants. As long as this goes on, you'll be wearing dresses and skirts. If it gets cold, wear a jacket, but you'll be showing off that leg. I'm working on a few more models, for publicity's sake."

Her head was spinning. What had she gotten herself into? She half wanted to back out and half wanted to get started immediately.

"Get your sleep tonight," Tony rambled on. "You're meeting the publicist tomorrow, and she's taking you out to pick out your wardrobe. She knows what she's doing. It'll be a busy day for you tomorrow, Dr. Fox, I hope you're excited."

"Oh, it's killing me," she drawled.

"Finally," he said, "because I can see that it's eating at you, I'll just answer the question you've been dying to ask. Yes, I've talked to Sam, Bucky, and Steve. Yes, they're fine. Yes, they're avoiding you. I'm sure you'll run into them eventually; they tend to pop in from time to time and we're all working with this publicist, so that's going to be nice and awkward, I'm sure."

"Do they know I'm here?"

"They do not."

They'd stopped outside her door. Her heart pounded. He'd been right; she'd been avoiding asking, but the answers didn't make the feeling any better. She stepped inside her room, closing the door between her and Tony.

It had been three weeks since the call; it had taken her a week to agree and then two weeks to quit her job and go work for Tony Stark on this publicity stunt, which was basically what it was. She'd be lying and working very closely with him, hoping to sway the public in his favor again. And, now that she had the answers to the questions she'd been dying to know, she hoped that she didn't run into them.

AN: Chapter one! Since this is the first chapter to the sequel, reviews are really important to me! Let me know who's following and let me know what you think of the new OC, Olivia Tate. I love her, but I'd like to know what you think of her first impression.

Thank you all for your support! I hope you continue to enjoy this story – it'll be more romance-centered, in some ways. That romance I know you were all waiting for in the last one will be in this one. :)