Six (Captain America)

Six part 12: Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

Steve felt his heart plummet as he saw the remnants of the burning car. He momentarily went blank. Then he dropped his shield and tore towards the burning pile, just as Bucky, Mayday, Natasha, and Wade rounded the corner of the barn.

"Oh my God." Mayday stated in a low voice, screeching to a halt and taking in the scene before her.

"Was Six in the car?" Bucky asked, not even giving it a second thought before racing after Cap. They began pulling jagged pieces of metal from the wreckage, burning through their gloves.

"I think so." Steve replied, trying his hardest to see if there was any trace of her in the vehicle. He kicked a piece of the car roof out of the way. He couldn't see her. He couldn't see much of anything. His heart sank.

Bucky grunted, singing his fingers as he grasped the demolished car door and pulled it off, throwing it to the side. "Fuck!" he exclaimed, looking down at his blistered hands. They both stood back from the car- it was too hot to be near it for too long.

"I don't see.. anything." Natasha stated, peering at the wreckage. "Are we sure she was in there?"

Steve's eye caught something. "Wade, let me borrow your sword?" Wade nodded, flipping his katana around and handing it to Cap by the hilt. Steve poked the end of it into the car, down below the steering wheel and in front of where the driver's seat had once been. He removed something; two things actually. A melted smattering of metal that had been one of Six's guns, and a torn scrap of material. Thick canvas and Kevlar. His entire body went numb. It was part of Six's jumpsuit.

"What is that?" Mayday asked.

Bucky shivered, looking at the two objects. They were both two hot to touch still; Steve had deposited them on the ground. Bucky looked down at Mayday. "She was in the car."

Steve dropped to his knees, watching the flames. He had gone cold, and his mind had gone blank. For the second time in his life, he had lost his girl. Once through his own supposed death, and now through hers.

* * *

Tony Stark had offered to send a cleanup team to the site, but everyone had ultimately decided against it. If Hydra had killed Six, Steve wanted it to be out in the open. It would be what would protect her family. If they knew she was dead, it wouldn't matter if Marina or Luc were in hiding or not; there was no reason to go after them. So in the morning, the two DGSE agents woke up feeling very drugged, in the closet of the safe house, and found a mess of dead Hydra agents, a deceased cyborg, and an exploded car. One of them found a note pinned to his shirt. "She was in the car." Was all it said. The DGSE investigation found the mangled remnants of Tony Stark's phone in the vehicle, as well as more pieces of her jumpsuit and a pair of earrings that Dan Lagherty confirmed to them that she had been wearing earlier in the day. It was quickly determined by the government that the enigma that had been Agent Y/N Marceau had been killed.

* * *

They'd all gone back to the safe house the night of the fight with the One-Thousand, and Steve had disappeared into the room that had been Six's. The room he had shared with her, in reality. He peeled off the borrowed armor, letting it drop to the floor piece by piece along with his shield, and sat down on the bed. The whole room smelled like her. She'd liked lavender; that first grocery store trip, they had gone through the whole place, figuring out what she liked and didn't like. In the skin care aisle she had found a perfume roller of lavender essential oil, and he'd bought it for her. He'd never noticed the smell, really. He'd thought she smelled good, but now he could sense it all around him, closing in on him and reminding him of the woman who he could never touch again. She was gone. She hadn't even had enough time to establish a life. All he had to remember her with were old photographs from a file, and the faint smell of perfume. There had been no holidays, no photo-booths, no selfies on anyone's phone. No trips to Coney Island, no cheap vacation souvenirs, no camping trips, no bug bites or nights under the stars. Nothing. He'd heard it was a bad idea to form relationships with people after traumatic or violent events; now he knew why. If they didn't end in a breakup, they ended in premature death with no memories of any good times.