The Man My Father Always Talked About • A CAPTAIN AMERICA STORY

2

~2~

The next morning, Clara walked outside the helicarrier, the wind blowing her chocolate curls around. Her hands were tucked into a black leather jacket over a plain white t-shirt. She didn't have much time to pack when Coulson visited her the night before. Clara had spent most of the jet ride reading over everyone's files including her brother's out of curiosity, the world famous scientist Bruce Banner, and the super soldier Steve Rogers.

"I see you got here rather quickly," Clara turned around to see Natasha Romanoff standing with her hands behind her back a smirk on her red lips.

"I see you got a haircut," Clara smiled, squinting her eyes slightly because of the sun. Natasha let out a small chuckle and came up beside the younger Stark before they walked together down the helicarrier. "This is some pretty crazy stuff right?" Clara started. "Gods. Powerful cubes that could destroy humanity."

"A little out of my pay grade if you ask me." Natasha said, her bright red hair bouncing in the wind. "I can't say I'm surprised your brother hasn't shown up yet."

"Oh you know Tony," Clara chuckled. "Never follows anyone's schedule."

"Agent Romanoff," someone called before asking for her assistance. Natasha said goodbye to Clara, leaving the brunette alone in unfamiliar territory. She spotted a figure, almost confused to her new surroundings as she was, standing on the runway on a brown leather jacket. She smiled slightly to herself when she realized who he was. She approached him before she gained his attention.

"Mr. Rogers?" Clara asked. The figure in a faded brown leather jacket turned to the young women. She put her hand out for him to shake as she approached him. "Clarissa Stark, but please, call me Clara."

"You're a Stark?" He asked, almost surprised.

"You seem surprised." Clara said, crossing her arms. Wind continued to blow her hair all over the place as she met the eyes of the super soldier.

"It's just, you're beautiful...not that...I mean...You are beautiful but..." he chuckled and ran a hand through his hair, a slight shade of red rising in his cheeks. "Shut up Steve," he mumbled to himself.

Clara smiled and let out a small laugh. "You're not so bad yourself."

"Steve Rogers, but you already know that." He met her eyes, already becoming curious about the girl in front of him. "I saw your brother's files but I didn't see anything about you."

"Sort of last minute recruitment I guess. Not really here to do any fighting, just to find the cube." Clara shrugged her shoulders. The new acquaintances began to walk down the helicarrier, watching as the pilots worked on their ships and agents filed into the control rooms. "I watched the news nonstop when they brought you out of the ice." Clara said, knowing how weird and awkward it sounded. "I was always a huge fan, though I think Coulson is a bigger one. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?" Clara raised her eyebrow as they walked together.

"Trading cards?" Steve asked. Clara chuckled softly before crossing her arms over her chest.

"They're vintage, he's very proud." Clara answered. The two stopped walking for a second as they noticed a man looking around without a clue of what was going on.

"Doctor Banner," Steve said, making the doctor turned around and face the two new faces.

"Oh, yeah. Hi. They told me you'd be coming." Bruce said as he shook Steve's hand. He let go and shook Clara's too. "Stark, right?" Clara nodded.

"It's nice to finally meet you Dr. Banner. I've read several of your works," Clara smiled as she shook his hand.

"Word is you can find the cube," Steve said, making Bruce shift on his feet.

"Is that the only word on me?" Bruce asked, not truly wanting to know the answer.

"Only word I care about," Steve smiled. It was strange for Bruce, being acknowledged as himself rather than the big guy.

"Must be strange for you, all of this." Clara said to Steve as the three walked down the side of hellicarrier.

"Well, this is actually kind of familiar," He shrugged.

"Gentlemen, Clara, it's good to see you've all met," Natasha said as she came back after finishing her business. "You may wanna step inside in a minute. It's gonna get a little hard to breath."

"Is this is a submarine?" Steve asked, amazed at what would come next.

Clara look at Natasha, "Would have been nice to have a heads up." The redhead smirked at her unease.

"Really? They wanted me in a submerged pressurized metal container?" Bruce asked with a raised eyebrow. The two men walked to the side of the ship and looked down to see what was really happening. Clara realized instead of going down, they were now going up. "Oh no this is much worse." Bruce said with a big sarcastic smile.

Natasha and Clara shared a look again, "You couldn't just tell me what the hell I was getting on?"

"Where would be the fun in that?" Natasha asked. Playfully nudging her friend's shoulder, the two women trailed behind Bruce and Steve as they made their way to the control room. Standing in the center of it all was Nick Fury, a man Clara could honestly say she would not have minded never seeing again.

"Gentlemen. Miss Stark," Fury began. Clara watched in confusion as Steve handed Fury a ten dollar bill. "Doctor, thank you for coming." Fury looked at Bruce as he tried to be welcoming.

"Thanks for asking nicely. So, uh... how long am I staying?" Bruce asked.

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear. We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us." Fury explained as Clara looked around at all of the scanners.

"That's still not gonna find him in time." Natasha crossed her arms and walked down the metal steps to the watch some of the monitors.

"You have to narrow the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Bruce asked.

"How many are there?" Fury asked as he raised his eyebrow.

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

"Miss Romanoff, would you show Dr. Banner and Miss Stark to the laboratory, please."

She smiled and led the two down the hall. "You're gonna love it, Doc. We got all the toys."