chapter forty-eight
the man with blue and silver hair

𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐃𝐈𝐃𝐍'𝐓 𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 why she was helping the Avengers continue to take down HYDRA bases, but here she was in Sokovia, fighting in the snow. "Was this somebody's idea of a silly joke?" she asked with a huff. "Adelaide Snow fighting in the snow?"

"Of course it was," Tony replied and she rolled her eyes, ducking her head at the incoming swing from a soldier. "You really don't find it just a little bit funny?"

"I really don't," she said, placing her hands on her hips. "It's not as though people have been saying that to me for my entire life."

"Would you two please focus?" Steve asked, interrupting their banter. "We have a job to do. You can bicker later."

Adelaide sighed and turned her attention back on the task when she was kicked in the stomach and sent flying into a tree. "Um, ow!" she said, looking up at the soldier. "Okay, that was uncalled for. What did I ever do to you, huh?"

Meanwhile, Tony flew up to the HYDRA base when he hit the forcefield. "Shit!" he exclaimed.

"Language!" Steve said and Adelaide quirked her eyebrow upward. "Jarvis, what's the view from upstairs?"

"The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield," the AI replied while Adelaide blocked another kick from the soldier and sent him backward, knocking him unconscious. "Strucker's technology is well beyond any other HYDRA base we've taken."

"Loki's scepter must be here," Thor concluded and Adelaide went over to fight the soldiers Natasha was facing off against. "Strucker couldn't mount this defense without it. At long last."

Natasha locked her fingers and Adelaide stepped on her hands, allowing the redheaded agent to lift her in the air. Adelaide landed on the soldier's shoulders and choked him until he passed out. "'At long last' is lasting a little long, boys."

"Yeah, I think we lost the element of surprise," Clint agreed, hiding behind a tree while soldiers shot at him. Adelaide fired her gun at them and he peeked around the tree trunk. "Thanks."

"Wait a second." Adelaide sighed and looked in the direction that Tony was flying. "No one else is going to deal with the fact that Cap just said 'language'?"

"It does make you seem old," Adelaide told him.

Steve nodded. "I know." He threw his bike at a truck full of soldiers and watched as it exploded. "It just slipped out."

"I thought Grace told you to stop destroying all of your bikes on every mission," Adelaide said, punching a soldier. "She's not going to be very happy with you."

"I'm not scared of her." Adelaide raised her eyebrows and looked over at him. "Please don't tell her."

Adelaide chuckled when she felt herself get flipped upside down and landed on her stomach. Groaning, she looked up and her eyes landed on a man around her age with silver and blue hair. "You didn't see that coming?" he asked playfully. Adelaide tilted her head at his accent.

"No," she replied, getting to her knees. "Because most people don't go by in a flash." The man shrugged and zoomed off leaving Adelaide confused. "We got more than just soldiers..."

"We have an enhanced in the field," Steve said having gotten knocked over, too.

"Clint's hit!" Nat told them, hurrying over to the agent. "Somebody want to deal with that bunker?" Hulk obliged and barreled through the building, destroying it in an instant. "Thank you."

Adelaide rolled over Steve's back and kicked a soldier's face. "There's getting to be too many of them. Stark, we really need to get inside."

"I'm working on it!" he replied. "JARVIS, am I... closing in? Do you see a power source for that shield?"

"There's a particle wave below the north tower."

"Great." Tony nodded. "I wanna poke it with something." Adelaide looked over and saw the forcefield blow up. "Drawbridge is down, people."

"The enhanced?" Thor asked Steve.

"He's a blur," he replied. "All the new players we've faced, I've never seen this. In fact, I still haven't."

"He has blue and silver hair," Adelaide told them and they looked at her. "Really fast, very blue eyes. Has an accent, must be from around here. Sarcastic, kinda cute."

Steve blinked at her. "You spoke to him?"

"Only for a few sentences," she said with a shrug and he nodded. "You have a lot to learn, Steve. Girls can read a lot from just a little."

He cleared his throat. "I'll take your word on that."

"I can get Barton to the jet," Thor said to Steve. "The sooner we're gone, the better. You and Stark secure the scepter."

Steve nodded. "Copy that."

Thor looked over at the soldiers who were approaching them in a tank. "It looks like they're lining up."

"Well, they're just excited," Steve replied. Adelaide covered her ears and ducked as Thor hit his hammer against Steve's shield, sending a wave knocking out the soldiers.

"Find the scepter," Thor said before flying off.

"And for gosh sake, watch your language!" Tony mocked making Steve sigh.

"That's not going away anytime soon."

Adelaide watched as he ran toward the building and she looked around at the pile of unconscious soldiers surrounding her. "And I'll just... find somebody to punch..."

⸻ ~~~ ⸻

"𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐕𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐑𝐒, 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐄𝐃 me that you would stop destroying all of your motorcycles!"

Steve winced at Grace's shout and Tony looked at him. "You're in trouble," he teased with a smile, having great pleasure at Grace yelling at somebody else.

"How did you find out?" Steve asked as Grace walked onto the jet with Maria behind her. "Addy promised that she wouldn't say anything."

Maria clicked her tongue. "Sorry, Cap, she's always been my boss," she said and Grace smiled at him. "She's also the one who supplies you with the motorcycles."

Steve sighed. "Okay, Gracie, I'm sorry I destroyed another motorcycle, but they were coming at us, I had to do something."

She nodded and crossed her arms. "Right... Just like in the war when you threw your motorcycle into a fire? You just had to do something."

"Oh, this is much more entertaining than I could have ever imagined it to be," Tony said, looking between the two before wincing when Addy flicked him in the forehead. "Ow! What was that for?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I just felt like it."

Grace watched as Addy ran away laughing and Tony followed her in a huff. "They act like siblings..." she muttered before looking back at Steve. "Just stop destroying all my hard work, please. It's not like I make them out of thin air. It usually involves a lot of groaning and sweat."

"Copy that."

"Great." Grace took the tablet from Maria and she and Steve walked out of the jet. "So, I heard that you met some interesting people today."

"Yeah, the enhanced?"

She nodded, pulling up the file. "Steve, meet Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. They're from Sokovia and were orphaned at ten when a shell collapsed on their apartment building, killing their parents in an instant. Been on their own ever since."

"Their abilities?"

"He's got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis," Maria replied. "Her thing is neural electric interfacing telekinesis, mental manipulation."

Steve looked at her in confusion. "Hill, Steve probably stopped listening when all the fancy science words started coming out," Grace said with a sigh. "Bottom line is, he can run really fast and she can manipulate minds."

"Well, they're going to show up again."

Maria nodded. "Agreed. File says they volunteered for Strucker's experiments. It's nuts."

"Right." Steve nodded, getting onto the elevator with Grace. "What kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?"

Maria tilted her head. "We're not at war, Captain."

"They are."

Grace let out a breath as the doors closed and she looked at Steve. "Are you sure we shouldn't be helping them? Not in World Destruction or whatever, but... they were just kids. Maybe all they need is a little guidance in their life. And the only guidance they've ever had was... well, Hydra."

"They chose this, Grace," he told her and she sighed. "Right now we have to make sure that they aren't a threat to peoples' safety."

"Yeah, but maybe they only made that choice because they were orphaned at ten and only had each other from then on." She shrugged and ran a hand through her hair. "You're telling me you don't have just a little bit of sympathy for them?"

"Of course I do," he said. "It's terrible that they lost their parents. But they're working with Hydra which means they're dangerous."

Grace shook her head. "Or maybe they're people who only had one option and it's all they've ever known."

Steve sighed. "I love that you look on the bright side about everybody, it's one of the things I love most about you."

She looked up at him. "But?"

"But we don't know much about them," he said and she rolled her neck. "All we know is what's in this file and it isn't much."

The elevator doors opened and Grace let out a breath. "You're not giving up on Bucky," she told him, glancing back at him. "I'm not giving up on them."

"Why do you care so much about them?"

She shrugged. "I don't know," she replied quietly. "Maybe because I believe that everybody has a little bit of goodness inside of them. That's something I'd like to believe in everyone."

⸻ ~~~ ⸻

𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐒𝐀𝐓 𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 kitchen table, a file spread out in front of her. "Hey, we're going to be late for Tony's party," he said, walking out of their bedroom.

"I've been to enough of his parties to know that we won't be missing anything if we're a little late," she replied, not looking up from the files. "I'll just be a sec."

"What are you reading?" he asked, looking at the files over her shoulder. "The article about your brother's death?"

She nodded, pressing her lips together. "I just don't understand how they were able to make it look like it was a car accident," she said, looking up with a sigh and leaning against his chest. "If it really was Hydra... why'd they kill Maria?"

"I don't know," he replied softly and she let out a breath. "I'm sorry it's all coming back up again. I know you had put it all in the past."

Grace shrugged. "I just want to know why," she said, running a hand over her face. "Are you sure I can't tell Tony that it was Hydra and not a car crash? They're his parents, he deserves to know. More importantly, he was inconsolable when his mother died, he loved her more than anything in the world. He'd want to know that she was killed and it wasn't an accident."

"But what if Zola wasn't even telling the truth?" he replied and she sighed. "Zola wasn't that reliable of a source when he was alive, but now he's in a machine that claims that they were killed by Hydra. If we told him and it wasn't true—"

"It'd probably be worse," Grace finished with a nod. "Right. I just hate lying to him. I mean, I did it once and it almost broke me."

Steve put his hand on her cheek. "I'm sorry. I just think it's a safer option right now. At least until we know more."

Grace nodded. "Okay. Okay, I won't tell him."

⸻ ~~~ ⸻

an: welcome to act 4!

I had a very philosophical
discussion with my
mother last night about
civil war that made me
rethink how it's going to
play out in this book

please don't hate me
for what'll happen, i
need the drama... and
it'll all be resolved by
the end, i promise