agent rogers • j. thompson

call it what you want.

slowly i said, "you don't need to save me
but would you run away with me?"

—
CHARLOTTE ROGERS

The next morning, the group divided into two separate teams — one of four and one of five.

I was on a team with Peggy, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, and two others whilst Jack and three others headed off in a different direction.

Our team snuck into a currently vacant school where we discovered a room with a strange film reel. In another room, we found beds with handcuffs attached.

Amidst the creepy, abandoned building, there was a little girl crying in the corner of the room.

Dugan approached her. She seemed like such a sweet, innocent girl.

I gasped harshly when she stabbed Dugan and shot Junior Jupiner. Dugan was able to get back up, but Junior had blood pooling rapidly beneath him.

I stared down at him with a mixture of shock and fear. A man was shot by a substantially young girl and died right before my eyes.

Meanwhile, the little girl ran off into a vent.

Dugan moved to go after her, but Peggy yelled at him to stop. She argued that she was only a little girl.

She was only a little girl.

"Peggy, she may be a little girl, be she's a killer!" Dugan huffed, though we'd already lost her by now.

"Dugan's right. But we don't have to hurt her — we could save her," I tried weakly.

Jack and his team joined us in the midst of our discussion. As Peggy and Dugan briefed them on what just happened, Jack shot me a concerned look.

I blankly stared back. I felt like I might've needed to lie down.

The team pushed onward down the halls of the eerie building to find the girl.

In our search, we came across a couple of prisoners.

The claimed that they were trapped here. I inhaled sharply when they said they forced to build one of Stark's weapons off of a blueprint bought on the black market.

They begged for us to help them. The one man did most of the talking. His hysterical friend lingered behind.

Peggy shot the lock and let them out just as Russian soldiers came to attack. We shot and ran away from the soldiers attacking us until we got caught in a sticky situation.

We hid behind large metal boxes and occasionally shot back that those shooting at us.

Suddenly, the hysterical man from the cell grabbed one of our men and held him at gunpoint. He yelled to the men shooting that he would give them us Americans if they let him go.

Peggy yelled at him warning him that he had three seconds to put down his weapon.

"ONE!"

BANG!

His friend shot him with a grim look on his face.

"I'm sorry Nicolai!" The poor man uttered as we continued to shoot. 

Jack froze up and just sat there. Peggy leapt over and yelled at him to try to get him back whilst I kept shooting.

Finally, Dugan came smashing in through the brick wall shouting his famous WAH-HOO before complaining that he had only been gone for five minutes.

Peggy, Dugan, and I stayed to shoot at the remaining soldiers. Dugan and Peggy pointlessly argued over what Cap would say.

"Both of you go, I've got this covered." I demanded. My voice was a little shaky, but it was still mostly recovered now.

"Charlotte, we aren't going without you!" Peggy instantly argued.

"I'll be right behind you!" I promised.

She nodded hesitantly and they left. I took care of the rest of them and quickly followed them to the car wagon.

I was almost there when I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my lower back.

I knew I'd be dead if I stopped, so with a sudden surge of energy and strength I caught up to the retreating car.

Dugan and Peggy gripped my hand and pulled me into the back whilst blood casually gushed out of my side.

"Oh my god Charlotte this is all my fault! I'm so sorry!" Peggy exclaimed with tears welling in her eyes.

"Peg, it isn't your fault! It's my fault," I managed.

Jack hopped over by me and he placed his hand on my shoulder.

"I should've been out there by you," Jack mumbled.

"No." I said firmly.

"Cap would be so disappointed in me," Dugan sighed.

"No!"

"I should've have let you just st-"

"STOP! It is all one hundred percent my fault so stop blaming yourselves. I'm wounded, not dead. Just get this bullet out of me!" I snapped.

"Okay, you are right," Dugan awkwardly paused. "We... uh... we need to take your top off."

"It's fine, just help me." I said hoarsely.

Jack unbuttoned the top of my jumpsuit and pulled it off of my shoulders. He peeled off the blood stained shirt I wore underneath it, so I was left in my bra. Another team member came over with a knife and a cloth.

"This is going to hurt," the man stated when he handed me the cloth.

"What could possibly be more painful than anything that has happened in the past year?" I frowned before giving the cloth back. I gripped onto Jack for support instead.

I groaned a bit, but I didn't scream when the bullet was dug out of me.

Once it was out, they cleaned and stitched me up on the bumpy road. When they finished, I was passed a ruddy white t-shirt to wear until we were back on the plane.

After getting on the small plane and changing into a fresh shirt, Jack, Peggy, and I sat by a window and talked.

"Not bad for a codebreaker," Peggy half-joked to Jack.

Jack smiled, but it wasn't a full, amused smile. "Pretty bad for the navy cross winner."

"Everybody freezes up sometimes."

He hesitated a little before talking. "They were carrying a white flag.. the soldiers that came into my camp in Okinawa. The ones I killed. They were coming to surrender. I just didn't realize it until it was too late. I buried the flag before anyone else saw it. Everybody thinks that I'm this guy that I never was. And every day, it gets harder and harder to live with." He sighed. "I've been trying to tell that story since I got home from the war."

"You just did." Peggy said.

I grabbed his hand and rubbed circles on his knuckles with my thumb. I gave him a hug and whispered in his ear, "You are a good man, Jack. Nothing will make me change my mind."

He wrapped his arms around me in return and whispered back a thank you.