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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 about the (massive) delay. My arch nemesis, Writers Block took revenge upon me, my muse went on strike, and worst of all, I had *gasp* gainful employment. History buffs, the planes discussed in this are all real, and in use in WWII. The Lisunovs were decommisioned in the eighties, but other than that, all true, right down to Twin Beech model 18's spar weakness.
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The sun rose over the city skyline bright and red. On the top floor of Kings County Hospital Center, a recovery suite looking out over Albany Avenue, the reflected light seemed a grim reminder of danger.
“Red sky at morning, sailors take warning....” Steve’s voice was faint and distracted. He was trying to focus on the meeting, but his mind was pulling at him, at his memory of what had happened in the early hours. It was almost painful to meet Agent Cate McCann’s eyes, the remembered shame was so strong. Yet, he knew the meeting was vitally important to keeping the girl he had dreamt of alive.
“…We need to reach a decision, people. Do. We. Tell. The girl? There are people out there gunning for her, and the Cap, people who will not wait for us to finish our powow.” Tony waved his hands about as he paced the room. He had been jumpy and restless all morning. Protecting Steve’s identity had been his responsibility. The inventor never took failure well.
“That’s not the bigger picture, Stark. Agent McCann has put years into her cover. S.H.I.E.L.D. has put millions of dollars into her cover. Her safe house is the only one in New York with all the bells, whistles, and add-ons that exist, and a few that don’t, officially speaking. Telling her sister the truth will blow that cover out of the water. Are you prepared for the fall-out from that?” Nick Fury was perhaps the only one in the room who remained calm. His steady voice held no more anxiety than when he stood on the bridge of the Helicarrier.
“With all due respect, sir, I would burn a thousand covers to protect Karen from Hydra. Keep the damn safe house, if I can’t protect my sister, why am I here? You choose to let her die, and I’ll quit.” The thin agent almost shook as she spoke, but her tone, while sharp, was even. Her gaze was ice as she stared at her commanding officer. No one doubted her threat.
“Fury, you got balls saying something like that. Not a one of us in this room would value time or money more than an innocent’s life.” Banner looked at his friends. Steve, still recovering from the removal of his jaw cast opted to nod, but he knew that the figure in the armchair in the corner saw it. “We aren’t monsters. Well, I turn into one, but even the big guy would call you on this. Hell, if you turn this into a numbers game, I’LL walk out. I’m on international threat lists, with shoot-to-kill orders in most countries, and I will still walk out that door, even if you put every Hulkbuster unit in the world outside it.” The doctor’s voice rose as he spoke, his growing anger making everyone nervous. Everyone except the thunder god, that is.
“Friend Banner speaks wisely, mortal. Truly, I too would object most strongly, should you jeopardize the girl through inaction. I believe you would regret angering a son of Asgard.” His voice deepened with menace, only increased by the characteristic understatement.
“Widow? Hawkeye? You feel like this warrants the burning of a six-year cover?” The spy master looked at his two former operatives, steepling his fingers in front of him in his trademark pose. The two looked at each other, needing only a moment to reach a silent agreement. When they spoke it was in that perfect unison born of long partnership.
“Damn straight.”
“Good. I just wanted to put us all on the same page.” Fury let a small, satisfied smile play at the corner of his mouth, more expression than the stoic man was known for. “At 0400 hours this morning, we caught the person who leaked the real identity of the patient checked in as Mr. Grant. Rest assured, that is one med student who will not be graduating.”
“And people complain about student loan rates. I’m sure higher education would have been a waste, anyway.” Tony’s eyes held a dangerous gleam, one that told of painful retribution for the traitorous scholar. “I assume you have a plan, Director.”
“Don’t I always? You’re the one who ‘wings it’.” The spy master stood and checked his watch. “In five minutes, Karen McCann will be in route to a rendezvous point near the Holland Tunnel. From there, we all go to a checkpoint to switch vehicles, five cars will leave, only one carrying our charges, all going different ways. Only the driver of the right car will know its final destination. Let’s move, people. Traffic is a nightmare, so we’re going up.”
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Although Steve was still weak, he did not need any of the equipment, and getting out of the hospital was surprisingly easy. It helped that they left via cloaked Quinjet from the roof, not a car on ground level. The flight was smoother than he expected, but then, his only other experience in one had been flying much faster, over the Atlantic. The machines of this time were so advanced, that they might as well have been from seven hundred years later, not just seventy. “Hey, Tony, did you know back in my day we didn’t call something that went this fast an airplane?”
“No, and what else would you call it, there’s not really a better word.” Stark replied grumpily.
“Sure there was, we called it science fiction.’’ Steve gave the man a smirk, knowing that only teasing the inventor would shake him out of his funk. Howard had been the same.
“Very funny, Captain Anachronism. I suppose you just hiked everywhere, and rowed a boat to get to Europe.”
“No, but it still took the Skymaster over fourteen hours to cross the same distance it took one of these under three. And that was pushing the manufacturing specs. At cruising speed it was more like twenty. Piloting those things was an endurance effort.”
“He’s right, Stark. The Russian Lisunov went 300 mph at top speed. I used one once, and I damn near jumped out just to escape the shaking and noise. Of course, it was pushing fifty years old.” The red headed spy shuddered at what was apparently a bad memory, even for her. “We really should have scrapped them all once the Cold War ended, everyone thought we did, but the KGB is frustratingly tightfisted about money.”
“Oh, I see, you’re all going to show off with your vast knowledge of 1940’s aircraft tech. I can play that game too, you know. Dad’s old Twin Beech was in one of the subbasements. I used to play in it, and know it inside and out. Go ahead, ask me anything.” He made a ‘come and get it’ gesture, plainly confident in his own knowledge.
“I remember that thing. I nearly threw up in it once, on the first parachute drop I did in the war. Did he ever fix the spar problem?”
Tony paused for a long moment, clearly shocked that his father’s plane was known better by a man who used it only a few times than it was by him. “So! When can we land?”
Steve chuckled at the change in subject. At least if he was busy avoiding a topic, he couldn’t get trapped in his own head. The curse of the Stark men was, it seemed, to over think everything. The craft was landing, though, so a quick change in conversational gears was appropriate. The cloaked jet landed in a structure that would look like a burnt-out warehouse to a casual observer. The roof was half gone, and they touched down in the clear spot. Once out of the jet, the wreckage seemed staged. The five gleaming sedans at the far end were a dead give-away as well. As he walked up toward the impromptu motor pool, a sixth car drove in.
Out of it came Karen, in a vividly yellow sweater and a dark knee length skirt. *Oh boy, we are going to have to change that top. She looks like a giant target.* The thought came and went quickly, as she ran to him and her sister, who stood beside him. She was clearly terrified, and her fear gave her more strength than perhaps she would have had as she embraced them. Steve wasn’t complaining however much she crushed is chest. Not often in his life had a beautiful woman clung to him, and never when he was small and weak. Unsure of the right response, he held her gently as she hugged him, murmuring soft sounds into her hair, which was really all he could get to with her face buried in his shirt. The Agent beside him looked at her sister’s instinctual choice of who to comfort her. She had been worried that Karen would fall for a man whose whole existence was essentially a lie, that her heart would be broken when that man was called back to action. Karen’s heart was already fragile, and Cate died inside a little whenever her sister was hurt. Things changed, though, when her sister’s life was threatened. However much it chafed to feel passed up, Steve Rogers was also protective, and even weakened, she knew he would fight tooth and nail for the ones he loved.
“What is going on? Who were those men? What are you doing out of the hospital?” It seemed that Karen could go from paralyzing terror to rapid-fire questioning in a blink. She also appeared to have a spit-fire buried inside. Unable to answer, caught off guard and still reeling from the emotions that her embrace stirred up, Steve said the first things that came to mind.
“Captain Steven Rogers, of the ‘Howling Commandos’ unit out of the OSS, reporting for duty.” He had said those words so often at one point that they came out as fluid and confidant as if he were still Captain America, suited up and ready for everything. The change in his voice shocked him, his ability to even sound like that when he likely couldn’t even run a mile. It also surprised his companions.
Each of the people in hearing distance reacted differently. The normally unflappable Catherine McCann let her jaw drop, Bruce turned to stare, Tony rolled his eyes and muttered “Why me?”, and Fury puffed out his chest like a proud parent. The only one whose response he could not have predicted was Karen’s. Rather than disbelief, she reacted with anger. Specifically, she slapped him.
“What the hell!! Who do you think you are, mister? You lied to me! You said your name was Roger, not Steven! And I didn’t sleep through history class you know! The Howling Commandos were from the freaking Second World War. At least come up with a vaguely believable lie, if you respect my intelligence in the slightest. Cate, what kind of whacko are you renting to?”
“It’s incredibly complicated, and a very long story, so let’s call it a duck and move on. We need to get out of here, pronto. We’ll go in the white one.” Cate gripped her fuming sister by the arm and pulled her over to a white Ford. Opening the door, she slid in, pulling Karen in after her. Steve went to the other side and got in the passenger seat. The terse agent corrected his choice immediately. “No, we need to have you back here, where the glass tint is darker, Captain.”
Switching seats, the confused man asked the only question he could wrap his mind around. “What did you mean, ‘call it a duck’?”
Miss Romanova got behind the wheel, and Clint in the passenger seat, as the others who had come from the hospital chose other cars. “Story time should wait. Whenever Widow drives all focus should be on bladder control and not screaming in terror.” Clint called back, ducking a half-hearted strike from his partner. “C’mon, ‘Tasha, it’s only fair to warn them. Remember Iraklion? I will not clean this upholstery.”
“Greece doesn’t count, it’s all hills and mountains. The car was too big for Crete anyway, and the turn radius wasn’t suitable for anywhere in Europe. That Ambassador was just a cry-baby.”
“That cry-baby controlled all diplomatic transactions with Turkey. I’m fairly certain if he hadn’t been moonlighting as a gun-runner Fury would have killed you for real.”
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The good-natured bickering continued, providing amusement and confusion in equal parts for the back seat audience. And although they did take the turns a bit fast, it wasn’t that bad. The redhead was just too good an agent to break the traffic laws with two high-risk individuals in the back. Their route seemed to be going south, until a large knot of similar cars provided a good cover to double back. Then they turned west, then south again, each time with some form of cover. Once satisfied that he couldn’t figure out their destination, Steve picked back up on his earlier question.
“So, about the duck thing? If that’s slang, it’s from after ’43. I’ve never heard it. What does it mean?”
“No, it’s not slang, just an in-joke. And it’s from the nineties.” Cate pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “These two guys we knew back when, Monkey George and Hamburger Jerry, they used to fight all the time about these birds that would fly over the park. Jerry would say “That sure is a really small goose.” And George would say “No, that’s a duck.” Of course Jerry couldn’t ever just agree to disagree, and even though they probably were ducks, he would go on and on. Eventually, George would wind up tired of it, and say “Jerry, it may not be a duck, but I call it a duck, so to me, it’s a duck. Ok?” Everyone who knew them knew that argument, and anytime one of us wanted to end a disagreement, we’d say “It’s a duck.” Then the other would know that the problem needed to wait.”
“And I’ve waited. I want answers. Good ones, to all the questions I asked. I also want to know who Mata Hari and Jason Bourne here are.”
“Hey! She gets a famous historical femme fatale and I get a fictional character with existential issues? Not fair, so not fair.” The archer crossed his arms in a stereotypical ‘pout’ position.
“Not fair, no, but she has a good eye, Clint. You’ve been a bit too angsty since Loki…” Natasha paused, searching for the right word.
“Hijacked my brain and used my body to attempt world domination? Sorry, I tend to over think being mind-fucking-controlled! You weren’t exactly sunshine and puppies after Red Room, ya’know.”
“Sorry. I’ll make it up to you, dinner, on me. Just nothing middle-eastern, that Shawarma joint gave me heartburn”
“Agreed. We should stop and switch drivers, though, if we want to get there before tomorrow. I hope Fury knows what he’s doing, sending us to him.” Clint sighed, and shook his head. “Damn maniac.”
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Next time on Secret bit of Right From Wrong, does Karen get her answers? Will she forgive our cute Captain? Will our intrepid heroes ever be safe? Where are they going, and who is the 'maniac' they'll meet there? And will the Marvel Universe ever be the same again? Stay tuned, folks, for another exciting episode!
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Secret Bit of Right From Wrong