𝐋𝐈𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐘 & 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌𝐒 | 𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞

𝟎𝟎. 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

"𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐎?" It was the question repelling around her mind at a hundred miles per hour as she climbed over the chain mail fence. Steve was a hero, but what exactly did that mean? Sure, he had the super-soldier serum coursing through his veins, but she considered him a hero long before then.

According to the dictionary, a hero was defined as a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability; however, in her mind she created a much simpler answer: someone willing to stand up for the little guy. Was that the reason she felt compelled to follow in his steps, was she just trying to be a hero as a means to step out from under the long shadow Steve Rogers cast? She shook her head and similarly cleared the unwanted thought from her mind before muttering a reply under her breath. "No, this is to make sure his legacy doesn't die."

And she genuinely believed that as she walked past the sign warning trespassers of stepping foot on the private property. There were at least a dozen other signs that she ignored as she approached the large facility, checking her shoulder briefly to ensure that the sound of heavy breathing was just her own.

An inconvenienced frown formed on her face as she bent down and twisted the lock attached to the door in hand. She had to convince herself that it was just another obstacle that she was willing to overcome for the greater good. Whipping her head in both directions, she offered a pleased nod to no one but herself as she set her sights on an iron pipe discarded in a rubbish heap just a few feet from the building. Without hesitation, she took the pipe in hand and steadied her stance as if swinging a baseball bat.

She had the expectation that with a satisfying crack, the lock would snap off in one blow. That wasn't the case. Five minutes later she was finally inside. How no one had heard the ruckus, was either a miracle or the fact that the building was evacuated for a demolition set for the following morning.

How did she know this information if the so-called 'private property' belonged to the government? Easy. Howard Stark was the wrong man to trust with state secrets. With the right amount of booze, he gave her everything she needed to know and even information she hadn't planned to pry out of him, such as the government's latest attempt at a super-soldier serum. Something she didn't believe belonged in government hands. They'd already failed to protect her brother, why would this time be any different? No, that serum belonged in the hands of someone who actually cared.

She wasn't necessarily saying that she was the perfect person, but she finally realized why Steve was so desperate to join the fight in the first place. That same feeling of uselessness had shrouded her in a veil of darkness the second that she'd learned of his fate, and the call to take matters into her own hands was strong, too strong to ignore. So that pretty much explained how she had come to the decision that breaking into Stark Industries' disbanded laboratory was the only solution.

The serum was quite simple to find, sitting out in the open on top of a desk. It was almost like someone had been begging her to take it. She lifted one of the two remaining vials on the table and rolled it around in her hand, analyzing the purple liquid that had started to glow at the contact on the other side of the glass. Although she should have been startled, there was a strange allure to the glow that made her desire it all the more.

After another minute of standing there, basking in the silence, she picked up the injection gun that had also been placed on the table. If she remembered Howard's words correctly, the vita-rays had already been absorbed in the liquid which created the need for a single vial rather than the whole show of Project Rebirth. The rest of Stark's presentation had been masked by theatrics and jargon that went unexplained, so she missed most of the side effects that the drunken man had rambled off, but she'd been so preoccupied with the idea of another serum that she'd stopped paying attention soon thereafter.