Trust Me (Steve Rogers Fanfiction)

Chapter 39

AMERICA'S POV

Everyone is silent as we pull up to an abandoned facility. Steve helps me out of the van, but I refuse his help walking until I realize how unsteady I am. He and Sam keep gentle hands on my back as we walk towards the entrance, urging me forward. I can tell Hill wants to get inside as soon as possible, but ironically, it's me that's slowing us down.

She pulls open a set of metal bar doors and leads us inside a dark hallway. Everyone's hurrying, probably because of me, and I'm just trying not to trip over my own feet. It's frustrating, being slow. I've never met someone faster than myself. A shorter man comes running towards us, and I can't help but tense up until Hill speaks to him. "GSW. She's lost at least a pint," she says, referring to me.

"Maybe two," Sam corrects, glancing at me. I catch my reflection in the window: my skin is much paler than usual.

"Let me take her," the man, who I assume is a doctor, says.

Take me? I draw back into Steve and Sam the slightest bit. Steve, who knows about my phobia of doctors and labs very well, opens his mouth to protest, but Hill cuts over him.

"She'll want to see him first."

Whoever 'him' was, I did not expect it to be Nick Fury, lying in a hospital bed but alive. And whatever I expected him to say after essentially coming back from the dead, it wasn't, "about damn time." But I guess life is full of surprises.

The doctor starts to clean out my wound as Fury speaks. I mainly stay out of the conversation, as I'm too preoccupied with looking like I don't care that my side feels like it's on fire. At least once he's done, my cells will finally decide to start being nice and heal me faster than average. It's a plus to being a super-soldier.

"Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, one hell of a headache," Fury says, explaining his many injuries.

"Don't forget your collapsed lung," the doctor adds, putting additional pressure on my side. I let out a low hiss. Steve's blue eyes keep going back and forth between me and Fury.

"Oh, let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good."

Natasha still seems unable to believe it. "They cut you open. Your heart stopped."

"Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it."

"Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?" Steve asks, a touch of anger in his tone. But it's deeper than that. It's betrayal. Steve can't live with the idea that the government may not always be telling the truth. Me, that's all I've ever known. Loopholes and inner-workings don't surprise me anymore.

"Any attempt on the director's life had to look successful," Hill answers dismissively.

"Can't kill you if you're already dead," Fury answers. "Besides, I wasn't sure who to trust."

-------------------

In what I guess would be considered a meeting room but is actually a dusty basement, Fury holds up a picture of Pierce. "This man declined the Nobel Peace Prize. He said, 'Peace wasn't an achievement, it was a responsibility.' See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues." 

"We have to stop the launch," Natasha says, nodding along with herself. 

"I don't think the Council's accepting my calls anymore." Fury pulls out a case and reveals three chips. 

"What's that?" Sam asks. I feel a little bad that we dragged him into this, but I stop those thoughts. He chose this. And I'm glad to have him here with us. 

"Once the Helicarriers reach three thousand feet, they'll triangulate with Insight satellites becoming fully weaponized," Hill explains. 

Fury continues, "we need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own."

"One or two won't cut it. We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational a whole lot of people are gonna die." The two of them are like a well-oiled machine of plans. Too bad their entire organization was infiltrated by terrorists. 

"We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA. We need to get past them, insert the server blades, and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's left." 

"We're not salvaging anything," Steve says sharply. I turn to look at him, surprised. Before, Steve wasn't really one to defy authority. But considering SHIELD doesn't exist anymore, Nick Fury has no jurisdiction over us. For the first time, I am completely free to do whatever I want. Hm. "We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick, we're taking down SHIELD." 

"SHIELD had nothing to do with it," Fury protests. 

"SHIELD had everything to do with it," I say quietly, but my words affect everyone. I know Hydra like the back of my hand, and I can clearly see how much it's damaged what was once a good organization. 

"You gave me this mission, this is how it ends," Steve says, blue eyes flashing. "SHIELD's been compromised, you said so yourself. HYDRA grew right under your nose and nobody noticed." 

"Why do you think we're meeting in this cave? I noticed!" 

"And how many paid the price before you did?" I ask him, not exactly angrily, but not calmly, either. 

He looks me dead in the eyes. "Look, I didn't know about Barnes." 

"But you knew about ones like us, didn't you? You didn't lift a finger." Everyone falls dead silent. I don't talk about my past very often. "I spent ten years killing good people, Fury. You don't know what that's like." 

"If you mean I don't know what it's like to kill someone, Evans, you are very, very wrong." 

"That's not what I mean at all. I don't think you can understand, but let me try to paint the picture. Imagine waking up in a dark room having no idea who you are. These people in the room tell you that you're safe, that you're a soldier for them, that you're fighting for the world's freedom. And then they send you on a mission. It's not what people think of when they think of mind control. You are completely aware of your surroundings. You raise your arm, use your pointer finger to pull the trigger. You watch the light leave someone's eyes. And this has no impact on you. They took away your sense of morals, so you clean the blood off of your knife and return to base. Eventually, you realize that you probably had a name at some point, and the pieces start connecting. You try to escape, but of course, you're caught. They catch you, brainwash you, and you wake up in the dark to do it all again. And again. And again." 

"Evans-" 

"I'm not going to save something that was poisoned with an organization like that," I snarl. "If you ask me to, I'll spit on your face and leave. SHIELD, Hydra, it all goes." I stand up from the table, ignoring the dull throb in my abdomen. "Come find me when you've made a decision." 

I leave them all without another word. 

New chapter, hope you all liked it! Please vote and please comment!!!!