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Secret Bit of Right From Wrong	By : ChrisCross Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Avengers, The Views: 9417 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Captain America or The Avengers. I make no money, and live on reveiws alone

Chapter List
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*A.N. Sorry for the delay, folks. I fell off the holiday cliff. But here it is. If you detect genre-savvy snark, heart-tugging heroics, or uncannily accurate character voice, these may be a rare but amazing side affect of me finally getting betas, one of whom was otaku330, who requested this fic in the first place. Give 'em a round of applause, and don't forget to feed the Muse a review*

Staying away from his attractive house guest wasn’t as easy as Steve had thought. They were in separate bedrooms, both locked, sure. Then he woke up, or rather gave up on sleeping, first. The time lag between the two schedules kept them from absolutely needing to be in the same part of the apartment. So did his work on his art, which he focused on for the purpose of maintaining his cover. But his life had never been easy before, and this was no different. He really just did not understand when folks said good things came in threes, for him trouble came in threes. First he could find no way around simple conversation. She insisted on being kind and polite, and he could not very well ignore her friendly attempt at talking with him, nor could he brush her off with rudeness. Even if his mother’s spirit didn’t rise up to whap the back of his head from beyond the grave, the guilt alone would eat at his sanity until he set things right. He was capable of fighting, had been a soldier, but he was totally incapable of bullying, of meanness toward an innocent. This led to trouble number two; when Cate came to subtly remove her from the building, she invited him to go with them to the café where his bodyguard would have tried to convince her to go to a hotel. Had she been rude or cold earlier, Steve could have said no to her. He had once defied orders from a superior officer; saying no to an invitation offered purely from social convention would have been easy. But, from the brief conversation, Steve knew she didn’t care about social convention. She issued the invitation because she wanted to include him, and he had no defense against honest niceness. His acceptance of her invitation resulted in the third trouble, the most dramatic of them.
The little bistro they ate at was simple and charming. Sitting in open air was refreshing, and the food was basic but tasty. Karen knew her sister had taken her there to keep her calm, so the smart money was on bad news or an argument to go back home. *Tough luck, all bad news can be dealt with, and no force on this planet could send me back to the Midwest while my family lives there. No freaking way.*
So Karen enjoyed her food and snuck glances at the sweet, charming man at the table with them. All day, Roger was kind to her. He listened to her, thought about what she said, and responded with an amount of diplomacy she was unused to. He never raised his voice, never spoke rudely or with meanness. If it weren’t for the swiftness and aggressiveness of his reaction upon their meeting, she would have said Roger Grant was incapable of violence in thought, word, and deed. Sooner or later, as kindly as possible, he would reject her; pretty much everyone did eventually, so she made it a rule to keep an emotional distance. In the meantime, she would enjoy his quiet, sympathetic calm. And the fact he was cute and funny didn’t hurt. Even her sister’s perpetual chill thawed around him. Cate laughed at his jokes, and she was sooo not a laugher. That alone was proof he was too good to last. So she would bask in that goodness and store it up for when he left.
Of course, this was New York. Tokyo was the matchstick city, home of freaky giant monsters; but New York was the super-human hub of America. The taxi replacement needed for Manhattan alone had pulled the automotive manufacturers through the debt crisis. She never knew why Cate chose to settle in the most dangerous city for innocent bystanders after her wanderlust faded. So when a guy in a stupid looking spandex outfit ran by, knocking people over, she just sighed. *Why do super powers always seem to instill an unhealthy fascination with skintight clothing? Of course, the heroes do pull it off… Or maybe not.* The hero in pursuit of the rude pedestrian was wearing a color scheme that offended even her rather liberal aesthetic sensibilities. Well, the commotion bypassed the café they were in at least.
Within moments she realized that last thought was in the same class as saying “That was easy” or “It could be worse”. It was typical of this city that the troublemakers weren’t even normal criminals. Why a perfectly nice little French restaurant was attacked by three talking monkeys was beyond her. The employees and patrons were ordered to stand along one wall and stay quiet. The leader emptied the register, and then went to rob the hostages. When they started going down the line of captives taking wallets, purses, watches and jewelry, she saw her sister stiffen and go pale. She didn’t know Cate had a phobia of simians. At any rate, Karen had no money or credit cards with her. She tended to lose purses, and since she wasn’t paying for lunch she left her purse in the safety of the loft. The baboon-looking leader reached the three of them and told them to hand over valuables.   All she had with her in the way of valuables was a simple silver ring engraved with stars on her right hand. She told them that it wasn’t worth much, but it had sentimental value. Her balking angered the furry bandit, and he raised a fist to hit her. Karen was no good in a fight; this was definitely going to hurt. But before the blow landed, a flying object hit the baboon on the head. He looked away from her to find its source. She also looked over, and to her great surprise, Roger stood out from the line a plate in his hands.
“You’re going to want to leave the lady alone, mister. I don’t like bullies, and I don’t particularly care what they look like.”
“That was very brave, human…and very stupid. You can’t possibly believe such a weakling, even by the standards of fragile humans, can win against us.”
“No, I don’t believe that. I know that I will win. You’re probably right that I will lose this battle, but I know for a fact forces stronger than you have been beaten. And I’ m not overly invested in actually seeing the war won myself. You wouldn’t understand it, of course. Not understanding that is why bullies always lose in the end.”
The speech stunned Karen. This man was not the shy, quiet artist she had talked to all day. This man was the one who knocked her over and very well could have killed her, but pulled his strike. He looked frail, and was shaking enough he dropped the plate, but he was anything but weak. As the ape launched himself at the stoic figure of Roger Grant, an unaccustomed, anger-fueled bravery filled her for just a moment. Roger was getting hurt, knocked over, but he kept standing up. For her, for all of them, he was making himself a target. That short period of emotional strength was all it took to slide off a shoe and lob it at the creature attacking her rescuer.
The throw was miserable, flying by an inch from the head of her target. It didn’t even distract the creature from punching the man. But it triggered a chain reaction in the hostages. Shoes flew, purses were swung, and some people even tried to land punches or kicks. Totally normal people wielded makeshift weapons against stronger opponents. Half the missiles didn’t hit hard enough to do anything, or hit at all, honestly. Out of a group numbering under seventy-five people, only a handful knew anything about real fighting. The chaos of that many impressively horrible attempts, however, was amazing. Similar to the effect of shouting "Hey, Rube" at a carnival.
About ten minutes in, more of this city’s numerous spandex-wearing super-heroes showed up and took the simian criminals off to justice. Following them in a bizarre parody on ambulance-chasing lawyers was a fleet of paramedics. They were impressed by how few civilians took real damage in the fight. Considering their appearance, Karen wasn’t surprised. Most of the damage was dramatically superficial; torn clothing, missing shoes, mussed hair, smeared make-up.   A few had scratches and bruises, and one man was proudly sporting two black eyes from a broken nose. In the madness of the fight, Karen, like many, had been separated from her companions. After being checked by a first responder, she went looking for them. What she found cut her to the core.
She heard her sister before seeing them. She followed the familiar voice to a group standing around a gurney. The first sentences she could make out scared her, icy fear running along her back.
“If he dies, I swear to God I will personally put your asses into a world of hurt.”
“EMTs are just human. We do the best we can at our job, but our job is not pulling miracles out of thin air on demand!”
Karen ran to the group, pushing aside bodies to see for her own eyes. She didn’t want to believe they could be saying what she knew they were saying. Looking at the figure on the gurney hurt her in a way she had not known she could hurt. Sandy blonde hair was matted with blood, the kind face covered in bruises, his knuckles torn open from fighting back. The rest of his unconscious form was mostly okay. In a way, the contrast between the intense facial damage and the intactness of everything else made it worse. Karen was not prone to fainting, but in that moment she thought maybe she should develop the habit, like some of the more dramatic women in her theater group back home. Turning away she dry-heaved as she cried. Someone, probably Cate, led Karen to the van and fastened her seat belt for her. As her sister pulled away from the curb, she felt like she would suffocate.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
He hurt. All over, at a level he had never felt before. Breathing hurt, swallowing hurt, his pulse hurt. He grunted, the only sound he could make, and that hurt. Hearing a sound in the room hurt. But the sound was followed by sweet, sweet numbness. Now he could consider opening his eyes. But he found that was much too hard. So he tried to ask what was going on, but it just came out as a longer, more complex grunt. He heard more sounds, and slowly focusing on the words, he recognized the voice. Bruce Banner was telling him to keep calm. Ah, the irony of that.
“You can’t move much for the moment, we immobilized you so reflex twitches wouldn’t undo our hard work. You’ve been under for about two days. In that time, we repaired a punctured lung, set two broken ribs and your nose, fixed a dislocated finger, stitched up a gash on your scalp, and did our best to help your skin heal even though we couldn’t do anything for the bruising on your face but wait. You’ve been on your own, under cover, for months. You leave your apartment, and in less than an hour you start a flash riot during a stick-up, your undercover bodyguard’s civilian sister has been practically glued to your side and we can’t transfer you to the S.H.E.I.L.D. hospital because of that, and you managed to get so injured that Tony had to bribe half the staff to keep quiet about bringing in doctors from said hospital. I don’t even want to think about how he’s keeping this thing out of the papers. Even I haven’t managed to screw up this badly, this fast.”
“Friend Banner, you need not lecture him in this state. I am sure that there was no other path. One cannot stop being a warrior simply by removing armor. From what I have learned of his story, and from what I myself have seen, Steve Rogers is a true warrior, worthy of the Halls of Odin. His heart will not allow him to abandon innocents by fleeing a fight.”
“Eh, yeah, what Thor said” Tony’s voice joined in. “Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed, Thor came back. He got in late three nights ago, when you met the sister. I gotta say; I never knew guys in the Forties moved so fast. She managed to fall for you and fall hard after less than a day.” Steve really felt like punching Stark, so it was probably a good thing he couldn’t move. “Of course, that is a major pain for me, so I hope you appreciate the effort it took to get her out of this room while we’re here.”
“I’m surprised you have yet to make a comment on her appearance. Does your chauvinism actually have limits other than “female and breathing”? Or was I not in the room for the Tony Stark Innuendo Hour?” Thank goodness Miss Romanova was there to deflate the ego of their teammate. Any more of this and he’d have had to find a way to strangle the inventor in spite of the immobility.
“I’m learning to not say everything I may think. It cuts down on fights with Pepper. Plus, Karen’s obviously stuck on Cap; I know not to pit my charm, good looks, and money against a guy who oozes heroics like sweat.” Steve tried and failed to roll his eyes. In the war, Howard Stark, Tony’s own father, once cautioned him that any time a man thought he knew what was going on in a woman’s head he was in deep trouble. ‘Goose is well and truly cooked’ was the phrase he used. And it was plain to see why. If Tony thought he knew about how to read a woman’s reaction to Steve’s pre-serum body, he was wrong.
“Hey, guys, we only have about two minutes, max, left before she gets back. No matter the size of the bribe, a barista can only stall for so long.” Hawkeye had excellent timing for interrupting Stark’s delusions. “Hi Steve, did they tell you that you’re the same color as my costume right now? Don’t worry; the docs say you’ll look normal again soon. Okay, time’s up, she's in the elevator, everybody to the roof.”
A chorus of good byes sounded as his friends left. A few moments after, the door opened again, and he smelled coffee. Karen muttered a bit about poor service, and then fell quiet. Apparently she had not been told he was awake. The knowledge that she was there, waiting for him to recover, warmed him. He still thought Stark was crazy, but then Tony didn’t know Karen. She was probably there because she felt bad he got hurt, not some grand infatuation. Steve could tell she was the kind of dame who did that sort of thing for friends. Tony was dramatizing this, like he did everything.
*He’s so still, barely moving his chest as he breathes.* she thought tiredly. The bruises were fading, but he couldn’t talk yet, so she didn’t know if he was aware of her. The doctors here were very closemouthed about when he would again. Karen didn’t even know if he had family, no-one came to see him but her. The man sacrificed himself to stop violent super-villains, and there were no reporters, no mention of it in the news. But she was grateful enough that the thought of letting him walk out before she got to say thank you was intolerable. Her carefully maintained emotional walls would just have to come down. Now she saw that life was too short and too precious to block absolutely everyone out like that. It was the first time she considered bending one of her rules: “give as little of your heart as you can, so they can’t walk off with it”. He earned it.   He got hurt for her; she could risk hurt feelings for him.
“I wish I knew if you were awake in there.”
A grunt rose from the man on the bed.
“Oh, wow, so I guess you are. Do you need anything? I can call a doctor if you’re in pain. Um, grunt once for yes, twice for no.”
She couldn’t call it two grunts, more like a muffled moan. But it was long enough to figure on a negative answer. Now was the best chance she had. He couldn’t very well walk out on her at this point.
“I wanted to say thank you. Without you, I don’t know what would have happened to me, or if those thugs would have been caught. The news hasn’t said much, so you aren’t likely to get special treatment, this stupid city has an obsession with spandex and masks. You should know that even though you don’t wear a dumb outfit, I think you’re a hero, Roger Grant, and I’ll always remember you. I guess I should let you get some sleep. I’ll be with Catie when she picks you up to come home.”
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Secret Bit of Right From Wrong