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

11

~11~

     Clara and Steve walked down the warm sands of a beach in Malibu. With Tony gone for the week, Clara invited her friend down to show him around. It had been five months since the incident in New York, and Clara felt that Steve needed to take a break from it all. "So I've been thinking..."

"Oh no," Steve commented, making Clara hit his arm away with a laugh.

"No seriously," she started. "Tony's been remodeling STARK Tower, you know that big ugly building in New York,"

Steve chuckled at the memory from the first week of them knowing each other. "How could I forget it?" He asked, a smile playing at his lips.

"Well, he's made everyone their own floors. Natasha, Bruce, Clint, Thor if he ever comes back..." Clara tried to find her words. "And I mean, I still have my apartment here in Malibu, but I practically live there now anyways..."

"Use your words Clara." Steve said, already having the slightest feeling of what she was going to ask.

"Why don't you stay?" She asked. The two stopped walking and faced each other, Clara tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as the breeze on the beach blew through it.

"But I leave for Washington in a week." Steve said, tucking his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"What if you don't leave?"

Steve let out a sigh as he looked down at the ground, trying to find the words to say. The friendship he had with Clara meant the world to him. Over the past five months he was able to adapt more to this new life than he would have without her. But he was still missing something. A part of himself wanted to stay in New York with his friend, but the other wanted to help SHIELD. Though he didn't care for how they ran things, it was his only connection to his lost love and his old friends. The only real connection to his old life. Clara let out a sad laugh as she already knew his answer. She wasn't upset, she knew that Steve was still adapting. "I'm sorry," he said, though there was nothing to be sorry about.

"Don't be," she smiled, wrapping her arm around his arm and leading him down the beach, immediately changing the topic to something less emotional for the two of them.

A week had passed and Clara was forced to say goodbye to her friend. While they had promised to keep in touch, they would only have a few phone calls or text messages a week. And those few became less and less as the months went by.

Flash forward a few more months and Clara was hanging onto a large piece of metal, pain like fire running through her veins, before she fell to her 'death.' The look on her brother's face would never leave her mind. The pain she could see in them a mile away shattered her heart whenever she closed her eyes. She helped her brother defeat the Mandarin before she had the extremis removed from her bloodstream.

After Clara recovered, the siblings began to live a somewhat normal life with what they were given. Tony got rid of his suits and the two decided to move back to New York for good where they lived in the newly designed Avengers Tower. Natasha moved in shortly after, giving Clara a way to ease her mind as the assassin trained her before she had to leave on another mission. She would call Steve whenever she could, but he barely picked up. She understood, being that he worked for SHIELD and how time consuming their work could be. She didn't dwell on it though. She knew that being who they were, relationships were really the last thing on their minds.

One day, Clara and Tony were working on her new 'weapon,' since alien guns wouldn't cut it. They decided on a simple design, two bracelets, gold for now, that when activated, turned into Iron Man blasters. Tony refused to give her a whole suit and Clara sort of liked the idea of having a blaster with her at all times rather than a bulky old suit. "Well?" Tony asked.

"Well?" Clara mocked.

"Are you going to test it out?" Tony asked, kicking his feet up on his desk. Clara lifted her blaster and aimed at the targets they had set up. She shot all ten of them, in the center on each. "Beginner's luck," Tony said in annoyance as Clara's phone rang. The caller ID said Steve. Tony picked it up and tried to answer it, but Clara snatched it from his grasp.

"Hello?" Clara answered, still laughing from what just happened.

"Is this Clara Stark?" A voice, not belonging to Steve, asked. Clara looked back at her phone to make sure she saw it correctly that Steve was calling her.

"Who is this?" Clara asked.

"I know you must have thought this was Steve. My name is Sam Wilson..." He stated.

"And why are you calling from this number?"

"Well you see, Steve is in the hospital right now." Clara's eyes winded as he continued. "He's been unconscious for a day or two and I remember him mentioning you before, I thought it'd be worth a shot to get you down here to see him."

"Is he alright?" Clara asked, gaining a confused yet concerned look from her brother. "What happened? Did somebody hurt him?"

"Yes, well, um..."

"It wasn't you was it?" Clara asked.

"You really think I'd be calling an Avenger if I put Captain America in the hospital." Sam asked with a hint of sarcasm.

"Right. I'll be there as fast as I can." Clara hung up and immediately and got a text from the same number with an address. "Steve's in the hospital," Clara said, picking up her jacket off the back of her chair and putting it on. "I don't know when I'll be back." Before Tony could ask her anything else, she bolted upstairs and to her car before taking one of her private jets to Washington.

Clara arrived almost as soon as she left. She walked down the hall of the hospital, gaining the looks of everyone. It wasn't everyday they saw one of the richest people in the world/an Avenger. She turned the corner to Steve's room, seeing a dark skinned man sitting by his side. Clara could make out the music playing in the background. "Marvin Gaye?" She smiled, making the man turn around and smiled.

"Yeah," He chuckled as he got up from his seat and shook her hand. "I'm Sam," Clara went to introduce herself.

"I'm..." Sam cut her off.

"Clara Stark. I know who you are." Sam smiled again, letting go of her hand. Clara's eyes landed on Steve and her heart broke. His cheeks were bruised and swollen along with one of his eyes. His lip was busted up pretty badly and bruises tracked up and down his arms.

"What happened?" Her voice was quiet as she sat down beside his bed. She gently placed her hand over his.

"Hydra had been infiltrating SHIELD all along." Clara's eyes widened as she looked from Steve to Sam. Hearing that the cooperation that her father helped created, that Peggy Carter founded, the good guys in the world were really their enemies the whole time made Clara's stomach turn. "He had a friend, Barnes," Sam sat down with a sigh. "Hydra used him to target and assassinate their enemies for more than fifty years." Clara nodded her head in understanding, though she didn't really understand. What she had thought was the good in world turned out to be the pure evil she had wanted to stop.

Clara brushed some of Steve's hair to the side and out of his face as she whispered to him, "what have we gotten ourselves into." They had since spent their time laughing and enjoying the other's company, when in reality they had to face new enemies with every turn. Natasha joined them later, giving them both coffee and greeting her old friend before Sam and her both left, leaving Clara alone with Steve. She propped her feet up on the bottom of his bed, falling asleep in the chair as she watched him.

Steve woke up late that night. He had forgotten he was in the hospital, but he was even more shocked to see Clara at his bedside, head propped up by her arm and fast asleep until her eyes slowly opened and she let out a soft yawn.

"Hey." Steve whispered.

"Hey." Clara smiled.