Author's note: If you don't remember who Agent 45 is, you may want to refer back to Chapter 7 of this story real quick (or read "The Third Life of Steve Rogers") to refresh your memory.

Also, if you're waiting for an update to "Third Life," rest assured I've been hard at it! The latest chapter isn't quite polished enough to publish yet.

Chapter 27

It was good to be back to work again.

Time had crept by at the pace of a turtle those first months after Steve had awoken from the ice, but now it seemed to fairly fly as his work became a blur of Quinjet flights and swift landings in foreign countries where he and his hand-picked teams carried out their mission objectives to the best of their ability.

Nat was frequently made available to work alongside him, and sometimes Clint too, although Fury had a tendency to assign Clint lone-wolf missions, given the versatility of his skills and the unshakable trust Fury seemed to have in him. Steve sometimes wondered why Nat didn't get many solo missions like that, given that she was every bit as versatile as Clint, but when Steve brought up the subject, Nat was unconcerned about it.

"Fury trusts me just fine, if that's what you're worried about," she said coolly. "But I asked him to put me on your teams as much as possible."

"Why?" Steve asked.

She laughed at him and didn't bother to answer, and Steve couldn't help but smile knowingly in return. The truth was, it was almost ridiculous how easily the two of them got along. Their backgrounds could not have been more different, and maybe that was part of the reason why. Sometimes Steve felt like Nat had almost become an interpreter for him, helping him understand the way the other S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives thought, teaching him how to bend to the changing times when and where he could.

And in return, Nat was picking up things from Steve at a lightning-fast pace, and not just his tactics. At first she had seemed as puzzled as the rest of them when Steve stubbornly held his ground on some moral point that everyone else seemed to think was a minor concern, but now she could be depended on to side with him. She could even anticipate his resistance to certain practices and lobby to get them changed to something more acceptable before he even had a chance to raise his objections.

Steve had never been afraid to stand alone on moral questions. But he couldn't deny that it was a relief to have someone standing beside him. It was almost as comforting as his trust in Peggy had once been.

He was grateful every day for Nat's friendship. And when the holidays came around and Clint left town to celebrate them with his folks back in Iowa, Nat stayed behind and insisted on doing all the Christmas traditions with Steve, starting by dragging a real live tree into his apartment and draping it with so much tinsel that the branches practically disappeared, and ending with an ambitious baking session despite the fact that both of them were terrible cooks and the sugar cookies ended up half-burnt and not particularly attractive or delicious.

But Steve's last Christmas had been so lonely that he didn't even care about the needles in his carpet and the massive pile of dishes in his kitchen. Nat kept him smiling the whole day with her enthusiasm, and she managed to coax a lot of stories out of him about his childhood Christmases, back when it was just him and his mom in Brooklyn. Then it was his turn to coax her, and she quietly acknowledged that Christmas was not celebrated in the Red Room; her first "real" Christmas was the one she had spent with Clint just a few months after she had joined S.H.I.E.L.D. She told him all about it, and Steve's respect for Clint kicked up a notch if that was even possible. He saw now that Nat was trying to give him the same Christmas Clint had given her.

It worked. Nat spent Christmas Eve on Steve's couch "just in case" Santa decided to leave gifts, which of course he did, and Christmas morning was the explosion of wrapping paper and candy and overflowing stockings that it was meant to be.

They were called up for a mission the next day, and just like that they were back in the swing of work.

Winter changed into spring, and spring changed into summer. Early one June morning, Steve was lacing up his running shoes to go for his usual run around the National Mall when he got a call from Clint.

"Steve? Gonna have to bail on going to the game with you tonight," Clint said over the line.

"Not sure the Nationals can win if you aren't there to cheer for them," Steve said.

"Well, they'll have to man up and do it on their own this time. I'm heading out."

"Where to?" Steve asked.

"Afghanistan."

"Need a hand?"

Clint snorted. "I wish. Fury wants me going solo."

"Okay. Be safe."

"Thanks," Clint said. "You running yet?"

"About to."

"Try not to make all those other poor saps jogging along in slow motion feel bad," Clint said.

"Not making any promises," Steve said briskly. "See you when you get back."

"Yep."

June 18, 2014

Right about the time the blue of the Atlantic Ocean was spread out before him with no land in sight, Clint's ears perked up; there was a strange sound woven in with the ordinary roar of the Quinjet's engines. Some kind of hissing or sparking. He had just leaned over the readouts to make sure there wasn't anything wrong when suddenly he heard a deep voice behind him.

"You know, Hawkeye, you really should check for stowaways before you take off."

Clint whirled around, nearly wrenching a muscle in his neck, to see a man standing behind him with both hands resting on his belt buckle. He was dressed in blue jeans and a bomber jacket and somehow managed to look robust and fit despite the silvering hair at his temples. He had a mildly reproving expression on his face.

"I'm pretty sure I taught you better than that," he added.

"Agent 45," Clint said in some astonishment, and took his hand off the butt of the gun that was strapped out of sight under the instrumentation. He blinked several times. "But I did check it, stem to stern." He glanced around the cargo space of the Quinjet, puzzled. "Where were you?"

"Oh, I think a former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. is allowed to keep at least a few secrets, right?" Agent 45 settled himself comfortably into the co-pilot seat and flashed Clint a smile.

"More than a few," Clint said wryly. "Always thought you'd tell me your name when you retired."

"Well, I would, but then I'd have to kill you," 45 explain blandly. He held out his hand, and Clint shook it gladly, feeling his old trainer's reassuringly firm grip.

"It's been a long time," Clint said.

"Too long," he agreed. He shot Clint a genuine smile. "How's Laura?"

"Gone crazy," Clint said readily. "She keeps telling me she wants another kid."

"Is that crazy?"

"We'll be outnumbered," Clint said as if it were obvious.

Agent 45's smile deepened. "That's not so bad. My wife and I were outnumbered two to one."

"Uh-huh." Clint arched an eyebrow. "And I suppose next you're going to tell me that you never lost control of the little tykes?"

"Just the one. Which is why I firmly believe that any parent who thinks their kids are under their control deserves to have their illusion shattered as quickly as possible." 45 slapped his shoulder good-naturedly. "How are Cooper and Lila?"

"They're good," Clint answered. "What about your family? Enjoying the grandkids?"

"They keep me young," 45 quipped with a wide smile, eyes softening, and it certainly seemed to be true; he must be nearing his seventies now, but he seemed as energetic as Clint remembered him from his training days.

"So," Clint said, leaning back and mimicking 45's casual body language, "you planning to explain why you're hitching a ride with me to Afghanistan? Don't tell me you're itching to get back into the saddle at this stage in the game."

"The thing about this profession is, you never really seem to leave the saddle," 45 said with gentle resignation. "But to answer your question, no, I'm not going to Afghanistan, and neither are you."

"Uh, yeah, actually, I am," Clint said. "There's some kinda mess developing over there. Someone's gotta clean it up, and it's my lucky day."

"You mean the Ten Rings?" Agent 45 said knowingly. "Actually, they've been pretty quiet lately. I kinda fed Fury some information to make him think they were gearing up for something. An ugly little scenario tailor-made for your skills. But the East China Sea is where you and I are headed today."

Clint paused for a long moment. "What?" he said blankly.

"I have a mission for you," 45 said patiently. "Off the books. It's important, it's urgent, and I need you specifically to do it, or I wouldn't be here now."

Clint stared for a long moment. "You lied to Nick Fury?"

45 waggled his head a little. "Well, not directly. I work through intermediaries. He doesn't actually know me."

"You lied to Fury?" Clint repeated in astonished tones. Agent 45 had always been the morally upright type, to the point of being thought odd by some of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s other trainers, who seemed to think a man like that didn't belong in an intelligence organization where high-stakes missions led many agents to stray into a gray area more often than not. But 45 had inspired Clint to believe that it didn't have to be that way, that the values he had learned as a child still applied out in the real world... and he had never had cause to regret the faith he'd put in the things Agent 45 had taught him.

"I didn't have much of a choice," 45 said matter-of-factly. "Don't misunderstand, Hawkeye. I trust Fury. He's a little rough around the edges — not much like the director I worked under in my day — but his heart's in the right place. The trouble is that he has people watching him right now. The kind of people I would really rather not find out that I'm still in the game. I was lying to them, not Fury."

"What people?" Clint asked, mystified. "What are you talking about? What game are you still in, and why are you diverting me to the East China Sea?"

Agent 45 took a deep breath and let it out as a long sigh. "Hawkeye... I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But there are some pretty ugly things going down within the walls of S.H.I.E.L.D. right now. There are moles embedded within the agency — a pretty sizable number of them, actually — and they're on the verge of unmasking themselves. They intend to use S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to carry out acts of terrorism. A lot of them, and soon."

Clint stared at him in horror. "What? People who are in S.H.I.E.L.D.? Are you sure?"

"The intelligence I've seen is irrefutable. And not just agents. Officers, too."

It took a minute for Clint's mind to accept the monstrosity of what his old mentor was saying. But he believed him implicitly. Agent 45 was nothing if not honest, often brutally so, and it was rumored that he had been on the inside track since his earliest days at the agency, quickly becoming Director Carter's right-hand man. If he said this was happening, then this was happening.

"Where are they attacking?" Clint demanded, his pulse spiking. "When?" The faces of his family suddenly flashed through his mind, and a fear unlike anything he'd ever felt before seized him. If something bad happened anywhere near his home... If any of them got hurt...

He didn't know what he would do. But he knew it wouldn't be good.

"Their targets are all over the globe," Agent 45 said quietly. "They intend to kill millions in a matter of days. And S.H.I.E.L.D. has the firepower to do it. I know you know that."

"Then what are we doing on this Quinjet?" Clint demanded, leaping to his feet and reaching instinctively for his bow. "We have to go back. We have to warn Fury. We have to stop it!"

"No, Hawkeye," 45 said sharply, catching him by the sleeve to still him. "I told you, they're watching him. If Fury gets tipped off too soon, it'll go badly for him. Trust me. He'll find out at the right time. Everything's gonna work out just the way it needs to. I've taken care of everything."

Despite the intensity in his voice, there was a serene confidence in 45's eyes that Clint readily recognized from his first few missions, the heavily supervised kind that the trainees had jokingly called "being babysat." In those days Agent 45 had displayed the same kind of insanely implacable courage Steve Rogers himself had, running into the maelstrom of a firefight without a moment's thought for his own safety, yet somehow everything always seemed to work out in the end. Would that hold true even now, with the best of his days behind him?

"If you want to help, then come with me to the East China Sea," Agent 45 emphasized. "That's where our fight is. That's where you can do the most good."

"Why, what's there?" Clint asked.

"S.H.I.E.L.D.'s helicarrier."

"You mean the one that I-" Clint started, and then involuntarily stiffened as the memories flashed through his brain: Loki pressing the point of the scepter against his chest, his mocking eyes only inches away from his own, and the strangeness of the thoughts that had flooded Clint's mind then, intruding into the most private corners of his brain, making him say things he shouldn't have said, making him think things he had never thought before, making him do things he had never dreamed of doing.

Things like hijacking a helicarrier and sabotaging it. Nearly killing everyone on board, including his future fellow Avengers, and who knew how many more people down on the ground. He'd even attacked Natasha personally, and it was only by the most desperate effort that he had managed to make himself fight just a step below his real abilities, knowing that of all the terrible things he could do while under Loki's control, hurting Natasha must not be one of them, no matter what it cost him to resist...

Agent 45 was looking at him with open concern. "Unfortunately-" he began carefully.

"Let me guess," Clint said grimly. "Those terrorists pretending to be S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives, they're on board."

"Yeah," 45 said soberly. "Quite a few of them. Including the commanding officer."

"Is that old thing even still functional?" Clint said, trying to tamp down a spike of fear. "Nat and I have been hearing rumors that S.H.I.E.L.D. is building a new helicarrier or two. Bigger, nicer, better. They'll probably be scrapping that one soon."

"I know," 45 said. "But it's still crewed and armed, and any helicarrier in the hands of these people is a disaster waiting to happen."

"You planning to sink it?"

"We're hoping to handle things a little more quietly that that," 45 said smoothly. "We need to purge the crew of the traitors and then move it to a safer location. It might not be as nice as the newer ones under construction, but we'd like to store it in mothballs for Fury if we can. Never know when it might come in handy."

Clint stared at him. "You seriously have the resources to hide something that big and keep it secure?"

Agent 45 shrugged casually. "I have friends in high places."

"You realize, of course, that S.H.I.E.L.D. has no doubt tweaked the security systems since I last hacked into it?" Clint said dryly. "Not to mention the fact that I didn't do it single-handedly; I had a whole team of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s old enemies helping me out. You really think you and I can do this alone?"

"We won't be alone," 45 said calmly.

"Why, how many more S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are you planning to kidnap?" Clint joked. "You bringing in Steve Rogers or Natasha Romanoff too?" He couldn't keep hope from tinging his words. As far as he knew, Agent 45 didn't have any connections with either one of them, but you never knew.

But 45 dashed his hopes by shaking his head firmly. "They'll have their own parts to play back in D.C. Fury will need their help. But don't worry, Hawkeye. I have a team assembled. Independents, not S.H.I.E.L.D. People I can trust absolutely."

Clint scoffed. "No one can be trusted absolutely."

45 smiled briefly. "These people can. You on board?"

"Always."

Agent 45 nodded, looking satisfied. "Good."

The instant the Quinjet was sealed off from the salty ocean air and the engines revved up for departure from the Lemurian Star, Brock Rumlow was up in Natasha Romanoff's face, his face red with anger.

"What happened, Romanoff?" he demanded, his voice rough from spending the last hour shouting orders to his team over the roar of the ocean. "I needed you to help me protect the crew! Twenty hostages, my team spread out all over the ship, Bactroc on the loose, and Natasha Romanoff's a no-show!" His dark eyes bored into her. "Do you realize what could have happened if Bactroc had come upon the hostages? This guy doesn't have any compunction about slaughtering non-combatants, do you get that?"

Nat stared right back into Rumlow's eyes, eyebrows knit together fiercely, not backing away an inch. "You think I don't know that? I ran into some trouble in the engine room."

Rumlow laughed humorlessly. "Right. Little Miss KGB couldn't handle a couple of ham-handed pirates who probably never even heard her coming."

"I only pretend to be invincible, Rumlow," Nat shot back with a scowl. "I got swarmed. It took me time to get out of it." She glanced up at Steve as if looking for support, but he remained silent. What could he say? Nat was standing there lying through her teeth to Rumlow, just as she'd lied to Steve by omission by failing to tell him that Fury had given her some extra mission that no one had seen fit to inform him of. Downloading information onto a memory stick when the lives of 20 people were on the line? Steve pressed his lips together to stop himself from joining Rumlow in his angry rebuke. What good would it do now? By sheer luck they'd gotten the hostages out in one piece. All had ended well despite Nat's duplicity.

Except Steve had the uneasy feeling that maybe things hadn't ended as well as it seemed. The ship was retaken, yes, and the hostages freed. But this mission had felt off from the start. Why was Jasper Sitwell, one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top-ranking officers, posted on a satellite-launching ship that was trespassing in Indian waters? Things like that didn't happen by mistake. There was more than just Nat's extra-curricular activities going on here, and he resented the fact that he didn't know what it was.

When Steve had gone into active duty for S.H.I.E.L.D. after the Battle of New York, he'd made a private vow to himself that he would not allow Nick Fury to point him at a battlefield as he would a gun. That he would educate himself thoroughly on the geopolitics and be sure the work he was doing for S.H.I.E.L.D. was worthwhile... and justified. It hadn't taken him long after waking up from the ice to realize that moral relativism reigned supreme in this time, even among well-meaning people like his superiors at S.H.I.E.L.D., and he was determined not to let himself — and the power Dr. Erskine had entrusted him with — be misused.

But despite his best efforts, his suspicions were growing that somehow he was being used anyway. If there was nothing shady going on, why all the secrecy? Why hadn't he been let in on the loop?

Rumlow threw up his hands with a growl and stalked away toward the cockpit, clearly unsatisfied with Nat's explanation. He'd probably savage her in his mission report. Not that it would matter. Nat had been ordered to do what she had done, and it was almost certainly Fury himself who had given her that order.

Nat leaned close to Steve so that the STRIKE team guys making themselves comfortable in the jump seats behind them wouldn't hear. "Thanks for backing me up," she said with a faint scowl.

"I could say the same thing to you," he murmured back.

A stricken look crossed her face, the same one she'd worn moments after Batroc's explosive had gone off in the control room, and her cool and casual facade had cracked long enough for her to admit that it was her fault that Batroc got away. She knew Steve well enough to know when he was genuinely angry, even though she was rarely the target of it, and it obviously bothered her deeply.

"Look, Steve, I'm sorry," she said, with the full force of sincerity in her eyes.

He didn't question her sincerity. But if she didn't want him to be angry with her, maybe she should have thought of that before she decided to lie to him. And so Steve held his tongue, arms folded across his chest. There was no question he'd forgive her. They were friends, and he wouldn't give up on her that easily. But the disappointment was like a crushing weight on his shoulders. He was no longer surprised when people like Nick Fury, or the Council he ultimately answered to, twisted themselves into pretzels trying to justify their morally ambiguous actions. But he had trusted Nat. If she spoiled her apology with rationalizations just like all the rest of them...

"Steve, you and I both know," Nat began in an undertone, "he wouldn't have asked me to do it if there wasn't a good reason-"

He lifted a hand to cut her off. "I can't do this with you right now," he said briefly. "I need to think."

Looking both irritated and hurt, Nat opened her mouth as if to argue, but after a long moment she seemed to think better of it, and went to the other side of the cargo area and found an empty jump seat. She pulled her knees up against her chest, leaned against a bulkhead and tried to get comfortable enough to sleep during the long flight back, pointedly avoiding Steve's gaze.

Steve felt a little guilty for pushing her away like that. It wasn't really Nat's fault, or at least, it was more Fury's fault than hers. It was Fury who deserved his righteous anger. But Nat had chosen to go along with it, and there was no getting around it.

He sat down across from her, turning his body the opposite way and leaning his head back against a large rucksack of supplies that had been left on the seat beside him. He didn't pull out his compass to hold in his hand — there were too many people around — but he could feel its weight in his pocket, reminding him of the whole reason he was here in the first place. Steve hadn't spent much time considering Fury's offer of employment when it came shortly after his recovery from the ice: S.H.I.E.L.D. had belonged to Peggy Carter, and that made it the closest thing to home he had in this strange time.

At its founding, S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to be about protecting innocents. But over time it had become clear to him that something had happened to the agency between then and now. Now, just like countless institutions throughout history, it seemed to be just as concerned with maintaining its own power than fulfilling its original mission. It had become mired in politics. Had Peggy noticed it happening before she retired?

Worse, had she become a part of it?

The thought of it made him sick. Peggy had been his guiding light since they moment they'd met. One of the few people he'd known who had the same uncompromising commitment to goodness that he did. But she had lived an entire lifetime without him. Was it possible she had changed over the years? Grown cynical right along with the rest of society? Discarded her principles as a fool's dream, and followed the rest of her agency down into the gutter?

And if she had, did that mean that one day he would, too?

He squeezed his eyes shut, vowing he would never let that happen. But he was no longer certain that it couldn't happen. Already he could feel the cynicism poisoning his thoughts, driving his anger at Nat and Fury ever deeper, like a knife in his heart. What if joining S.H.I.E.L.D. had been a mistake? He had never hesitated to risk bodily harm to do what needed to be done, but what if it was his conscience that was in danger here?

A thread of sadness wove itself into his brooding. Back in Brooklyn, he hadn't fit in. People had been more accepting of him after his experiment, but even in the Army he had never really stopped feeling like an outsider. He had allowed himself to hope that S.H.I.E.L.D. was where he finally belonged, but now he was beginning to doubt that, too. But if he ever decided to leave S.H.I.E.L.D., where else would he go? What else was he fit for?

Long ago, before the war, his head had been filled with thoughts of chasing the good old American dream. Get a job that was better than anything his father had been able to get, and earn enough to buy a home of his own. Have a wife, raise children, and mow the lawn every Saturday like everybody else. He could have lived, and died, happy like that.

He couldn't go back to those dreams now. The thought was absurd. Every day he'd open the paper and see all the terrible things he could have stopped, and the guilt would tear him apart. He had an obligation to use the gift Erskine had given him for the common good. He couldn't think only of himself. Quitting was not an option. He'd just have to find some way through this moral thicket.

Usually Steve had trouble falling asleep on these long flights, but as the Quinjet rocked beneath him, his head relaxed against the rucksack until he fell into a strange half-sleep, slipping in and out of awareness, at times aware of the roar of the engine and the rough fabric against his cheek, and sometimes not. Eventually, he dreamed, and in his dream he was fighting the Red Skull, until suddenly his opponent stopped to offer him a choice: he could be taken back to his own time, but only if he gave up his new body. Without hesitation, Steve accepted the offer, and in the very next moment he was back at Camp Lehigh, and he was small and weak again but he didn't care because he was just so happy to finally be home. Where he really belonged.

And in his dream, Peggy was even more beautiful than he remembered her, but when he tried to explain to her what had happened to him and where he had been all this time, she didn't disbelieve him, as he had worried she would... she simply ignored him. She just walked right on past him, never once meeting his eyes, never showing any hint that she had even seen him there. He was too small to attract her notice, and he knew with sickening certainty that he had made the wrong choice, that he didn't belong back in the past any more than he did the future, that now he was a quitter and he wasn't fit for Peggy, no matter how much he wanted her.

But there was no going back. No undoing his choice. He was stuck back in the past forever, in his old body, in a time when Captain America had never happened and was never going to happen. A slow horror crept over him as he realized that the Allies were going to lose the war and Hydra would reign supreme... and all because of his selfish choice.

And then the Quinjet suddenly jolted beneath him in a patch of turbulence and his eyes popped open, the dream dissipating like smoke. Everyone else in the cargo area was sleeping or trying to and, looking at them, Steve felt as alone as it was possible to feel without actually being alone.

It wasn't the first time he'd had that dream. It probably wouldn't be the last, either. Steve sat up straight and forced himself to stay awake until they got back to the Triskelion and the Quinjet settled onto the landing pad at the top of the North tower.

"Hey, Cap. Want me to come in with you when you make the report?" Rumlow asked Steve as they disembarked side by side.

"I'll talk to Fury alone. After Agent Romanoff makes her report," Steve said briefly. He wondered if Rumlow would object, but the STRIKE leader only nodded and followed the rest of his team to the showers. He probably had some idea that Steve wasn't any happier with Nat's performance than he was, and figured Fury would take a complaint more seriously if it came from Captain America. Steve himself wasn't so sure of that, though.

"Should I tell Fury how ticked off you are, or would you like to surprise him?" Nat asked him conversationally as they got into the elevator.

"Tell him whatever you want," Steve said. "It's a free country."

"You know what, Rogers? I really regret teaching you that particular phrase," Nat said. "Somehow Gen X lingo just sounds wrong in the mouth of the Greatest Generation." She gave him a sidelong glance, clearly hoping that she would get a smile and break him out of his current mood, but he couldn't give her what she wanted. Not today.

It was an awkward elevator ride to Fury's office.

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: I'd love to hear what you think!