Amalgam: Shield and Lasso

Part Two - Shadows

After returning from his visit with Peggy Carter, Steve realizes that there's more to getting on with his life than he'd expected. Part Two of Amalgam: Shield and Lasso.

As always, all rights to this story are hereby given to DC and Marvel and/or their parent companies and/or the applicable copyright owners

Steve Rogers returned from his spur-of-the-moment trip to England emotionally drained. As if waking in a new century and fighting off an alien invasion within the week weren't stressful enough, he'd also been reunited with a friend he'd thought dead and spent time with the woman who'd been his first love and would always be his best girl.

Even Job's patience would be tested, and Steve knew he was nowhere near as good as Job.

Steve paid the cabbie who'd brought him from the airport to his apartment - and how he'd convinced Tony Stark not to send him a limousine was a minor miracle, as far as he was concerned - and strode up the steps to his apartment two at a time.

Almost before he'd fully finished opening the door, something struck his senses as wrong, and his instincts went on alert. Steve silently lowered the single duffel bag he had to the floor and crept forward, senses extended as best he could as he tried to identify the wrongness in his apartment.

Rounding a corner into the living room, he saw a figure silhouetted against the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun.

"I don't like it when my agents go off grid, Cap."

Steve recognized Nick Fury's voice immediately and wanted to relax because the intruder was familiar, but anger welled in him as he processed what Fury had actually said.

"I'm not your agent, sir," Steve shot back.

Fury didn't move from where he stood. "I understood Commander Hill offered you a place with S.H.I.E.L.D."

"She did. I haven't accepted it yet, and I'm not sure I'm going to."

"Why not?" Fury's tone lost its imperious edge thanks, no doubt, to surprise.

"Because I'm not ready to join this world. I don't know enough."

"S.H.I.E.L.D. will brief you on what you need to know."

"And who decides what I need to know, in that scenario?" Steve asked.

"All agents are briefed on their mission requirements. We have entire teams of people doing the necessary research."

"For mission requirements," Steve repeated. "But what about the world? I have seventy years of history and culture to catch up on. I can't do that if I'm out in the field all the time."

"So you refuse."

"For now," Steve corrected. Given what Peggy had told him, he wasn't certain he could ever work for S.H.I.E.L.D., but he didn't want to tip his hand just yet.

"I see." Fury stepped forward and now that his face wasn't in shadow, Steve could read the disappointment in his expression. "In that case, you'll have to vacate this apartment."

Had Steve heard him correctly? "Vacate?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. provides a housing allowance for its agents," Fury said. "As you are not an agent, you will no longer receive that allowance."

Steve had known Fury was a manipulative bastard from the moment he'd met the man. There was no other explanation for the elaborate hospital charade he'd found when he woke from his frozen nap. He hadn't realized just how blatant Fury's manipulation could become.

"I see," was all he said. "In that case, if you'll wait a moment, I'll change into my uniform and you can have these clothes as well."

Fury blinked. "Pardon?"

"Agent Hill told me the cost of the clothes would be deducted from my first paycheck."

"You can keep them," Fury said hurriedly. "At least what you're wearing."

"Thank you for the loan," Steve said. "I'll have them cleaned and returned to you as soon as possible."

He turned and grabbed his duffel. After carrying it to the bedroom, he dumped its contents on the bed, only to replace them with the star-spangled uniform he'd worn during the war and his shield.

Fury was still standing where he'd been when Steve left the room. Steve had the sense that the other man was trying to process what the hell had just happened.

"Thank you for all you've done for me, Nick," Steve said and watched Fury's good eye narrow at the familiarity - appropriate now, as Fury wasn't his future supervisor. "I hope there'll be a place for me at S.H.I.E.L.D. when I'm ready."

"My door is always open for you."

It wasn't a promise, but then Steve hadn't expected one. He slung the duffel bag over his shoulder and turned for the door. Almost as an afterthought, he pulled the cellular telephone Agent Hill had given him from a pocket and laid it on the key-shelf by the door, keeping the one Tony Stark had given him.

He left the apartment before Fury could say anything else, turning toward one part of New York that remained much as he remembered it - Central Park.

Only when he was sitting on a bench overlooking one of the many water features did Steve allow himself to feel the anger he'd been controlling since he entered his apartment.

He'd trusted Fury - he'd wanted to trust Fury - because he was the director of an organization Peggy Carter helped create. To have that trust turned against him, even if the motive were benign, which Steve doubted, hurt. It hurt more to think that all of Peggy's work might have been in vain.

So what are you going to do about it?

There was, really, only one thing he could do. He pulled out the StarkPhone Tony had given him before he left for England and touched one of the three numbers programmed into it.

JARVIS answered immediately. "Good afternoon, Captain Rogers."

"Hello, JARVIS," Steve responded, automatically polite even if JARVIS wasn't really a person. "I wondered if Tony might let me stay with him for a few days. I've been evicted from my apartment."

There was a long pause before JARVIS said, "Sir says please come straight to the Tower, as he would like to know, and I quote, what the hell happened that Rogers got himself evicted."

Steve chuckled. "It's quite a story, JARVIS. I'll tell all of you when I get there."

Fifteen minutes later, Steve found himself stepping off the elevator at Stark Tower and into Tony's private apartment, rather than the lab he'd expected since Tony seemed to spend most of his waking hours there.

Tony himself was behind a bar in the far corner.

"Pepper would say it's a little early for a drink, but the situation calls for more than coffee. Scotch? Bourbon?"

One of the side-effects of Erskine's serum was that Steve couldn't get drunk anymore - at least not without significant effort and a case or two of ninety-proof alcohol. He had to admit, though, that the warmth of whisky sounded good right now.

Still, if it were Howard offering, he'd have no qualms about teasing the man. Why should Howard's son be any different?

"Sounds like it calls for hot chocolate, then."

Tony could only stare at him, clearly horrified. Steve held his laughter in as long as he could. When he finally let it out, Tony's expression shifted to more surprise at the joke than horror at the suggestion.

"Whichever you're having," Steve said and took a seat on the sofa Tony waved him toward.

Moments later, Tony brought him a glass with three fingers of a caramel colored liquid. Matching glass in hand, Tony flopped down on the far end of the sofa.

Steve sipped the liquid cautiously, feeling the burn as it slid down his throat. "That's good."

"Small batch bourbon from a distillery in western North Carolina," Tony said. "I bought the barrel."

"Of course you did," Steve said, unable to hide his amusement. "But I thought bourbon came from Kentucky."

"Bourbon's defined by what's in it, not where it's made," Tony replied, "and do you really want to be talking about bourbon right now?"

"Yes," Steve admitted. "But only because I really don't want to be talking about the rest of it."

"That's not ominous," Tony muttered. "But it's better to lance the boil, as it were, so spill."

Steve swallowed. "I'd like Diana to hear it, too - she was there for the first part."

Tony's eyebrows flew up, but all he said was, "Okay. JARVIS?"

"If you'll provide the number, Captain?" JARVIS prompted, and Steve recited Diana's number from memory.

Minutes later, a large screen over the fireplace came to life, and Diana's face filled it.

"Steve," she said. "Mr. Stark."

"Beautiful women can always call me Tony," Tony said magnanimously before turning to Steve. "So, the gang's all here. What's up?"

Steve took another sip of bourbon before setting the glass aside and straightening to face Diana more than Tony.

"You were right," he told her. "The lasso did help her stay … alert much longer. We talked for almost the whole time I was with her."

"I'm glad," Diana said.

"Her?" Tony asked. "You mean - Peggy?"

Steve nodded. "And a lot of what we talked about is - personal. The part that's relevant -" he broke off for a moment, considering how to proceed, then plunged in. "Did you know that after the war, a lot of Nazi scientists and technicians were brought into the States to work here?"

Diana looked surprised, but Tony nodded. "Operation Paperclip," he said. "Something like 1500 Germans were given jobs after the war, to help us gain a military advantage over the Soviet Union in the Cold War and the space race. To be fair, the Soviets did the same thing - they got over 2000 German scientists in Operation Osoaviakim. What's your point?"

Steve's mind rebelled at the numbers, but he shook that off. "My point is that a lot of Hydra scientists went straight into S.H.I.E.L.D. They've been there since the beginning."

Tony shrugged. "Brought a wealth of technical expertise with them."

"Along with their philosophy," Diana murmured.

"I guess I understand bringing scientists to work for the government," Steve said. "But why bring them to work in a spy organization, where by definition they're subversive from the beginning?"

"They saw it as a fair trade," Tony said. "We needed any advantage we could get against the Soviets - or that's the way we thought of it at the time. We didn't know that the Soviet Union would eventually collapse in on itself. Why does ancient history have you freaked out so much?"

"I realize the Second World War was before you were born," Diana said, "but that does not make it ancient history. The Peloponnesian War, the Gallic wars are ancient history, not Nazis."

Tony glared at her, but Steve thought there was no heat in it. "Spoilsport."

"Hydra named itself after the mythical monster," Steve said before Diana could respond to that. "If you cut off one head -"

"Two more will take its place," Diana finished with him.

"We cut off a lot of heads in the war," Steve said. "So how many more have grown to take their place?"

"They've been safe," Diana said, "in a country that prizes individuality and freedom of expression and belief, so they were never questioned about their loyalties, much less punished for them."

Tony stared at her. "You think they're acting like a giant sleeper cell."

"Mm," Diana hemmed. "I think I have no reason to believe they're not."

"That's pretty far-fetched," Tony declared. "Thinking they've been growing like a cancer right under the director's nose? It's crazy."

"Unless Fury's part of it," Steve said quietly.

"What?" The question came from both Tony and Diana, and Steve would've smiled at the chorus, except the situation was hardly funny.

"Wait -" Tony added. "Does this have anything to do with you being evicted from your apartment?"

"Evicted?" Diana asked.

"I don't know that it's related," Steve said. "But as Diana pointed out, I don't know that it's not, either. Which is why I wanted to talk to you both."

He related his conversation with Nick Fury to them, uncertain how to feel when their expressions mirrored his own reaction.

"Well," Tony said finally. "I know we don't have hard evidence either way, but that didn't sound like a Hydra … agent? mole? whatever … trying to get you to stay so they could do nefarious things to you or with you."

"How do we get hard evidence?" Steve asked. "Whether or not Fury's involved, having a Hydra - what did you call it, a sleeper cell? - embedded in an intelligence agency can't be good."

"No," Tony agreed. "It can't." He tapped his fingers on the glass he still held, despite it being empty. "The only way to figure out the truth is a massive data crawl - go back to the earliest scientists recruited, then their friends, people they recommended to the organization, and do a counter-intelligence investigation like nothing ever seen before."

"That sounds - difficult," Steve said, picturing the manpower it would take to go through seventy years of records for that kind of analysis. "If not impossible."

"JARVIS could do it," Tony said at the same time Diana said, "I know someone who can do it."

"Who do you know?" Tony demanded. "Are they any good?"

Diana smiled. "He may even be better than your JARVIS."

"Ooh - a challenge," Tony said. "Fine - put up or shut up, Ms. Prince."

"Give me a moment." Diana tapped something out of sight on her desk, and then she picked up a phone that looked more like what Steve remembered than any of the cellular phones he'd seen since he woke up.

"A landline?" Tony sounded stunned. "She's using a landline?"

Apparently, whatever Diana had done had muted the sound on her end, because even with his enhanced senses, Steve couldn't hear anything she said.

She spoke to whoever was on the other end of the line for just a minute, perhaps two, before hanging up and restoring the sound.

"He'll conference in," she said. "Steve - I have to warn you, his appearance is … unusual."

"Conference in?" Tony repeated, even as Steve wondered what unusual meant in this instance. "Into a call JARVIS placed?"

"Sir," JARVIS said, "I am receiving a request to join your call."

"From who?" Tony snapped.

"Victor Stone, who says he is a friend of Ms. Prince."

Tony stared at Diana, who simply raised an eyebrow as if in challenge.

"Fine," Tony said. "Let him join."

The image on the screen before them split into two halves, Diana to the right, and to the left -

Steve's breath caught, and he tried not to stare at the black man on the screen. The entire upper left quadrant of his head was covered in metal, his left eye glowing a dull mechanical red. In the center of his forehead, a light or gem of some kind glowed an icy pale blue.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Stark, Captain Rogers," the man said. "Diana says you have a problem that I can help with?"

"Uh, yeah," Tony said, recovering more quickly than Steve had. "You want to fill him in, Capsicle?"

Steve summarized their discussion and the suspicion that Hydra had been with S.H.I.E.L.D. ab initio.

When he was finished, Victor Stone let out a low whistle. "There's a challenge - not just identifying any moles, but dealing with them effectively."

"Leave that to us," Steve said. "President Ellis wants to talk to me - something about a celebration that I'm back. I can talk to him about it then."

"You might ask him for a pardon while you're there," Tony said.

"A pardon? For what?"

"Hacking a more-classified-than-God intelligence organization. Because I don't think we can get a warrant for what we're about to do, and even if we could, it would tip off the bad guys."