Chapter Text
Steve isn’t as used to the twenty-first century as he could be. He has more teammates than friends, and not that many of either. He’s trying to adjust, and he’s learning about as many of the things he’s missed as he can, but there’s still a hole in him—a place where Peggy and Bucky and the Commandos used to fit, a place where Brooklyn used to fit.
A place where he used to fit.
He was never all that sociable as it was, and throwing seventy years of changes into the pot doesn’t help. People are still people, though, so at least that hasn’t changed. Again, though, Steve’s always been kind of hit or miss with people. Leading a charge into enemy territory is one thing, but making small talk is an entirely different kind of minefield.
Natasha will never stop bothering him if he doesn’t at least try to go out, though, so today he’s out and about for no good reason, going to a random science lecture someone’s giving. He thinks Natasha thinks riding him about his social life is a normal thing to do, and he honestly doesn’t know enough to say if it’s not. Bucky was even worse than she is, so . . .
Bucky liked science. He was always interested in that kind of thing. Steve just picked it because it was the first poster he saw on the bulletin board of the coffee shop he’s been trying to frequent enough to count as a regular.
“Children of the Atom,” the lecture’s called, or something like that. Steve actually probably should’ve picked something different to do; he’s still angry about how long it took SHIELD to tell him about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Considering he died to keep similar attacks on innocent civilians from happening, he thinks that one should’ve come up before the Council tried to do the same thing to New York City.
He looks up at the lecture hall, and thinks about skipping out on this altogether. Natasha will sense blood in the water if he does, but so what? He can find some other way to get in his weekly allotment of human contact.
A dark-haired man in thick red glasses walks past him and distracts him, and Steve glances after him.
“There’s a step in front of you,” he says automatically as the other approaches the stairs. The man in the red glasses pauses, and looks back to him. Steve can’t really read his face, mostly because of the size of said glasses. He can’t see his eyes through them at all.
“I’m not blind,” the man says.
“Sorry,” Steve says. He probably should’ve realized that—the man doesn’t have a cane or a dog or anything similar—but the comment was instinctive.
“Don’t be,” the man says, then heads up the stairs. Steve watches him go for a moment, then looks ahead to the doors of the lecture hall. He thinks about leaving again, but instead heads inside himself. He’s already out anyway; he might as well. He can always leave if it’s too upsetting.
A man in a wheelchair is at the front of the hall, and the seats are half-full at best. Steve takes one in the back. He glimpses the man in red glasses—sunglasses, he guesses they must be—sitting closer to the front. He doesn’t seem to be with anyone either.
Steve settles in and pulls out his sketchbook, resigning himself to an hour or two of sitting and listening, and starts to sketch a few random strangers to give himself something to do. Someone does a sound check, and then the man in the wheelchair approaches the microphone and starts to talk.
The lecture, as it turns out, is not about the bomb.
Steve knows mutants are a lot more common these days and that people are barely any kinder to them than they were in his time, but he’s never really stopped and listened to anyone talk about that. SHIELD gave him a very brief—and he’s sure very sanitized—rundown of the situation, but that was just a random agent reading a random report, not someone speaking from their lived experience. With so many other things to process and no immediate reason to, he hadn’t thought to follow up from there.
He feels a bit foolish, and focuses more intently on the lecture. This is important, and something he should know about. The man—Xavier, he calls himself—Xavier talks about evolution, and adaptation, and DNA and research and scientific fact and studies. He talks about what mutants are, and what humans should be, and how they can both live together. How mutants are just people, and what the world doesn’t understand, and the divisive nature of hatred and fear.
He’s not really saying much Steve doesn’t already know or agree with—aside from the scientific parts, which he knows very little about—but he’s a very convincing speaker, and Steve forgets entirely about his sketchbook and just listens.
He would keep just listening, but that’s when the gunmen barge in and start screaming about “mutie freaks”, and then he’s just really wishing he had his shield on him.
The gunmen make one mistake, though, and that mistake was picking the door next to Captain America to come in through. Neither of them gets anywhere near the rest of the audience, much less the stage. The ceiling’s going to need some replastering and the wall is very firmly dented, but Steve figures that’s a small price to pay to keep anyone from getting shot.
He looks back at the audience automatically, mostly to make sure that a stray bullet didn’t hit someone, and finds himself face to face with the man in the red sunglasses, who’s standing a few rows back and looks very startled. At least, Steve thinks he’s startled—the glasses really do make him hard to read.
“Would you mind calling the police?” Steve asks. “I don’t have a cell phone.”
“Are you a mutant?” the man says.
“Er, no,” Steve says. He hasn’t actually had to introduce himself to anyone in quite some time. “I’m Captain America.”
“What?” The man looks bemused.
“I really don’t have any way to contain these men,” Steve says, gesturing at the semi-conscious gunmen on the floor, and then someone finally does call the police, who turn up mercifully quickly but seem disgruntled once they realize what they’ve turned up to serve and protect is a mutant-centric event. Steve is not impressed, frankly.
“See, this is what happens when you let these people talk,” one of the officers mutters derisively to another as they’re taping off the front doors. She probably didn’t intend to be heard by anyone else, but Steve has very good ears. He just looks at her, and she falls awkwardly silent and edges back a few steps.
“I thought it was very informative, personally,” he says.
Most of the audience cleared out immediately after the shooting, before the police even showed up—for reasons Steve only suspects, but definitely doesn’t blame them for—but Steve sticks around and the police question him. He answers honestly, which once or twice results in the questioning officer looking very confused. Steve clarifies where necessary, but it doesn’t seem to clear much up.
“Why were you here, though?” the officer finally asks, gesturing meaningfully around the lecture hall. It seems to be the point they’ve been edging around getting to for the last few questions.
“I saw a poster in a coffee shop,” Steve says.
“A poster,” the officer echoes. “In a coffee shop.”
“Yes,” Steve says.
“You’re Captain America,” the officer stresses.
“Yes,” Steve agrees. “If that’s all, officer, the reporters out there look very excited and I’d like to avoid them if at all possible.”
“Please do,” the officer says, looking ill. Normally Steve would consider that a good reason to go straight out to the reporters but he’s been harassed by more than enough of them since the Chitauri attack and would really rather just go home right now.
He leaves out the back and only has to climb two fences to get away, which is nice, at least.
He makes it all of three meters before he runs into Xavier and the man in the red sunglasses.
“Hello, Captain Rogers,” Xavier says.
“Hello,” Steve says. He’s a little surprised the police let Xavier go without questioning him, but then again maybe someone did that while he was getting questioned himself.
“My name is Charles Xavier,” Xavier says.
“I know,” Steve says. “I was at your lecture.”
“Yes, you were, weren’t you,” Xavier says. The man in the red sunglasses doesn’t say anything. “Thank you for what you did. I’m not sure anyone else could’ve minimized the damage so effectively.”
“It was luck,” Steve said. “If they’d come in a different door, it would’ve gone a lot worse.”
“Luck, perhaps, but also a great deal of skill,” Xavier says.
“And dubiously ethical government experiments,” Steve says with a wry smile, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Are you alright? That was a lot.”
Xavier pauses, and gives him a mildly surprised look—or a measuring one, maybe. Steve can’t quite tell.
“We’re fine, Captain. Thank you,” Xavier says, and then they go their separate ways and that, Steve expects, will be the last he sees or hears of either of them.
SHIELD didn’t get around to briefing him on the X-Men either, is the thing.
“I’m sorry, they do what?” Steve says, his eyebrows shooting up. They’re sat around a table having a meeting at Stark Tower, because apparently they do that now. Thor’s not here, because Thor’s busy on another planet—another thing that everyone in the future has apparently just taken in stride—but the rest of the Avengers are.
“The terrorism thing is an exaggeration, obviously,” Bruce says.
“Obviously,” Steve says. What, like he’s new? He’s from the forties, not the goddamn dawn of time. “Is this like the Black Panthers?”
“Depends on what you think the Black Panthers are like,” Natasha says neutrally, leaned back in her seat. Steve could go on for a mile about the Black Panthers, and is about to when Tony interrupts.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not blow Capsicle’s mind too hard here,” he says. “It’s just the X-Men. They’re mostly busy fighting each other, far as I can tell.”
“The Brotherhood is not exactly the X-Men, Stark,” Clint says. His seat is leaned against Natasha’s.
“Are you sure about that? Because I am not sure about that,” Tony says. “You never know who’s gonna turn up on which side over there. And let’s not even get into Magneto.”
“Who’s Magneto?” Steve asks.
Natasha and Clint share a wary look. Bruce grimaces. They tell him.
“WHAT?!”
“SHIELD really has not been giving you a rounded education, have they,” Tony says.
“About those files you got from them . . .” Steve says, and goes home with a reading list the length of his arm. Most of it is classified.
He does not do his weekly outing this week. He does do a lot of reading, and also accidentally breaks a tablet while reading about the U.S. government’s current opinion of the X-Men, which is unfortunate because Tony is going to think he can’t use modern technology right, again.
"How'd the reading go?" Clint asks at their next meeting.
"Magneto was right," Steve says darkly, tossing the broken tablet onto the table.
"Uh-oh."
“Great, we broke the old man,” Tony says, throwing his hands up in the air. “I am not explaining this one to Fury, for the record.”
The meeting gets derailed, and they don’t really talk Avenging all that much. Steve doesn’t care, and may say some things that under a certain light might appear to amount to very passionate treason. Tony looks appalled, and also thrilled. Natasha and Clint look a bit impressed. Bruce just looks like he’s developing a migraine. By the time they break it up, Steve’s worked himself into a quiet fervor and needs to go burn the energy off.
He’s thinking about hitting up the gym. What he gets, however . . .
“Are you fucking kidding me,” Steve says. He’s known what Sentinels are for less than forty-eight hours, and there’s two bashing around in the middle of the city.
At least he has his shield on him this time.
There’s a lot of people running and screaming, but only two people being chased: a pair of teenage girls, both looking frantic. One of them vaults a hot dog cart and throws a burst of firecracker-light back over her shoulder. The other one starts tearing off her skin.
Well, if Steve didn’t already know that Sentinels specialized in mutants, he’d probably be figuring it out.
The damn things are tall. He pulls out his shield and runs towards the fleeing girls, running down the list of possible Sentinel capabilities SHIELD had in their data and not for the first time grateful for the photographic memory. One of the Sentinels lets out an energy blast that hits the street between the girls. They scream, throwing their arms up to protect their heads. Steve leaps over a car and hits the ground between them just in time to deflect the follow-up blast with his shield. It wouldn’t have hit the girls, but debris might’ve.
“Whoa!” the firecracker girl cries, looking alarmed, and the other one grabs her by the arm with a metal hand and they keep running, which is a good thing.
Less a good thing when one of the Sentinels lifts off the ground to fly after them.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Steve says under his breath, and whips his shield at a convenient truck to ricochet into the Sentinel’s eyes, or optic sensors, or whatever they’ve got. The Sentinel reels back, and the other one steps over him. Steve shoves an abandoned car underneath its foot, and it stumbles and falls. He manages not to get landed on, if only barely, and catches his shield as it comes ricocheting back. He has no idea how to actually take these things out—SHIELD, apparently, was not concerned with that—but hell if he’s going to let them get their hands on those kids if he can help it.
He considers calling the other Avengers—they can’t have gotten too far, and a Hulk would come in real handy right about now—but before he can reach for his communicator, a blast of ruby-bright concussive force hits the reeling Sentinel in the face and takes its head right off.
Steve . . . blinks.
Well. That was useful, whatever the hell that was, he thinks, then jumps up onto the felled one and starts smashing his shield into the back of its neck until he can see circuits. It tries to get up. He smashes harder. That ruby-bright light sears his eyes again and the Sentinel is left a headless, smoking mess.
Threat defused, Steve finally looks to see what did the defusing, and to his surprise finds a familiar face. The surprise is mostly that it is a familiar face, since there aren’t too many of those around for him.
“Thanks,” he says. The man in the red sunglasses stares at him from the street below, the girls standing behind him. His name is Scott Summers, Steve knows now—Cyclops.
“What are you doing?” Scott Summers asks.
“I don’t know, really,” Steve admits, because he really does have no clue how to deal with a Sentinel. “I just figured if I hit it hard enough it’d probably stay down. Are the kids okay?”
“They’re fine,” Scott says; the girls peer out from behind him.
“We’re not kids,” huffs the firecracker girl, who’s fourteen if she’s a day. The other girl’s skin is all ripped up, revealing naked shining metal beneath, and Steve frowns a bit.
“Do you need a jacket?” he asks her. She looks startled, then looks down at herself.
“Oh—no, ah’m fine,” she says in a thick Southern accent, and then tears off the metal as easily as she’d torn off her skin to begin with, revealing normal skin and a tight red—uniform? it looks like a uniform—beneath. “Uh. Thank ya kindly.”
“You should probably get out of here,” Steve advises, glancing down the street. He can hear approaching sirens. “Do you have somewhere safe to go?”
“They do,” Scott says. Or maybe he’d rather be thought of as Cyclops; Steve doesn’t really know.
“Good.” Steve slings his shield onto his back and jumps down from the Sentinel. Scott is still staring at him, or at least it feels like he’s staring. Admittedly, Steve can’t see his eyes. The glasses are ruby quartz, according to SHIELD’s files, and the only reason Scott’s stare isn’t vaporizing him. Steve should’ve recognized the blasts, really; there’d been footage of most of the X-Men in action.
“Are you seriously Captain America?” the firecracker girl asks skeptically. “Like, the for-real same dude from World War Two?”
“Yes,” Steve confirms with a nod. “You can call me Steve.”
“Steve,” the girl repeats incredulously. The sirens get louder, and the other three seem to notice them for the first time. It occurs to Steve that maybe they couldn’t hear them until now. Sometimes it’s hard for him to judge when he’s noticing something a baseline human might not.
Well. Baseline mutants, in this case.
“You should definitely get out of here,” he says. “I’ll deal with the police.”
“Get to the Blackbird,” Scott says to the girls, then glances back to Steve. “They might not be very happy with you.”
“What are they going to do, arrest me?” Steve asks wryly. “For fighting murderous robots?”
“Or property damage,” Scott says. The girls have retreated slightly, but not very far.
“Not if they want me available the next time there’s an alien invasion,” Steve says with a shrug. There is almost definitely going to be a next time, judging by the way his life’s been going lately. “It’s fine. Worst case scenario, I’m in jail a night or two before SHIELD bails me out.”
“Worse case scenario,” Scott echoes.
“It’s not like I’ve never been in jail before,” Steve says reasonably. Not since getting the serum, admittedly, and not in the twenty-first century, but it can’t be that different.
Scott tilts his head and looks at him for a long moment, then just nods and leaves with the girls. Steve assumes they’re some of Xavier’s students, since Scott expected them to know what the Blackbird was and where it would be. He waits for the police to show up and cordon everything off, and calmly explains what happened but not anything about where Scott and the girls went. The questioning officers look both frustrated and baffled. Steve is the politest stone wall possible on the subject.
He doesn’t get arrested, possibly because the cops don’t actually want to but possibly because doing that in the middle of the city while surrounded by civilians with cameraphones would not be great PR for the NYPD. Either way, he walks, and calls Natasha on his communicator as he leaves.
“Did you know Sentinels can fly?” he asks.
“Why do you know that?” she asks.
“Unfortunate experience,” Steve says. “Does SHIELD have Professor X’s number?”
“Probably a number, at least,” Natasha says. “Let me see what I can find. I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks,” he says.
He goes to the gym after all, because his adrenaline’s still up and he wants to punch something pretty damn badly. The heavy bag suffers for it, but that’s what it’s there for. He spends a very long time working out, and almost feels calm again after.
Almost.
Natasha calls him back with perfect timing the moment he steps out of the gym, because she’s Natasha. She gives him a phone number and doesn’t ask why he wanted it. He thanks her and goes home.
He calls the number. Xavier answers.
“Yes?”
“It’s Steve Rogers,” Steve says, opening his fridge to look inside. There’s leftover Chinese; that’s dinner enough, he figures. “I wanted to make sure Cyclops and the kids got back okay.”
“They did, Captain Rogers,” Xavier says. “They’re all fine. Thank you for your concern.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Steve says, taking out the Chinese and popping the lid open. He’ll just eat it cold. Not like it matters.
“And you, Captain?” Xavier asks. “Were you injured?”
“Didn’t even chip the paint on my shield,” Steve says. He gets a fork out of the drying rack and sticks it in his food.
“No trouble with the police?”
“No.” Steve takes a bite of rice. Xavier hums.
“That’s good news,” he says. “Did they inquire after the others?”
“Yes,” Steve says. “I told them I didn’t see which way they went.”
“I imagine you did, didn’t you,” Xavier says musingly. Steve takes another bite of rice, not really understanding the tone.
“I didn’t really see how it was any of their business,” he says.
“I see,” Xavier says. “You do realize that assisting mutants may not go well for you in the future, yes? People will not approve.”
“Then those people are wrong,” Steve says.
Xavier makes a quiet humming noise again. Steve could go on, but he wouldn’t be saying anything Xavier doesn’t already know, he’s sure.
“I’d do the same thing again. It was the right thing to do,” he says, at least, because he wants to make it clear that he knows that. “If other humans have a problem with that, that’s their problem.”
“They might have a very violent problem with that, in fact,” Xavier says. “Or the sort where the tide of public opinion might turn against you.”
“If public opinion thinks I shouldn’t be protecting innocent people, public opinion can go to hell,” Steve says.
“You aren’t very much like I’ve heard, Captain Rogers,” Xavier says. “But you are exactly like I’ve heard, all the same.”
“I’m the same man I’ve always been,” Steve says, not sure if that’s a compliment or a condemnation. He’s trying to do what’s right, and what’s right in this scenario seems very obvious to him.
“Yes,” Xavier says. “I imagine you are.”
Steve, again, doesn’t know how to take that. Xavier says his goodbyes and hangs up. Steve looks at his leftovers, and takes another bite. The rice is dry.
He feels like he should be doing something, but he’s not sure what. More reading, probably; he’s still got a few more SHIELD files to go through, and no doubt there’s a lot more he could be looking up. He also has mission reports to go over.
First, though, he’s going to eat. He’ll worry about the rest of it later.
Steve eats his food, goes over some mission reports, and goes to bed. He sleeps, more or less. He dreams about the train. It feels like he dreams about the train more than the ice.
Which would make sense, really. They were very different. The ice was cold, and terrifying, and slow. The train was fast and merciless and the worst thing he’s ever felt.
He never stops thinking about the train, so of course that’s the one he’s dreaming about.
Steve wakes up to the sensation of falling, and has to spend half an hour getting himself to some imitation of normal before he can actually get up and get ready. He takes a very hot shower. He goes through the motions of the day.
That night, his mattress is too soft, and he dreams about the train again. For three nights he dreams about the train, and on the fourth he doesn’t sleep, because if he dreams one more time about Bucky’s hand falling out of his reach, he’s going to lose his mind.
He misses Peggy. He misses the Commandos. He misses Bucky, and Brooklyn, and his life.
Steve leaves the apartment and wanders the city streets. It’s still New York, but it’s not New York as he knows it. It’s still here, because of what he did and what the Avengers did and especially what Tony did, but it’s so different it doesn’t know him anymore.
That’s fine—that’s probably even good, in certain ways—but it still hurts.
He goes to a bar, a slightly seedy but quiet place where the patrons don’t bother each other, and devotes all the money in his wallet to the process of trying to get drunk, even knowing the best he can possibly manage will be a low-level buzz. That’s probably for the better, all things considered, but he doesn’t resent it any less. The bartender recognizes him, and tries to give him the first drink on the house. Steve just tips extra.
He doesn’t get drunk, unsurprisingly.
Something surprising does happen, though.
“Hey,” a familiar—and that’s so rare, so rare and so damn precious—voice says, and Steve turns to find Scott Summers leaning against the bar beside him. He puts down his drink, and puts on a smile.
“Hey,” he says, and it sounds light and easy even to his own ears. Probably the part where he’s drinking alone in a bar he barely knows makes it less convincing, but it’s automatic all the same. “Funny to see you outside of a crisis situation.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Scott says wryly, folding his arms.
“Buy you a drink?” Steve offers, because they are in a bar after all. Scott shakes his head, but sits down beside him. He glances at the little row of empty glasses, but doesn’t comment. Steve puts on a sheepish smile. “Alcohol doesn’t work very well on me.”
“You sure picked a strange way to spend your evening, then,” Scott says.
“I’ve had cheaper ideas,” Steve says with a laugh. He doesn’t feel it, but Scott’s not the telepath, so it doesn’t matter. Scott orders a drink, and Steve finishes his. He doesn’t feel even the slightest bit tipsy, and he definitely doesn’t feel any kind of better.
“You been here before?” Scott says.
“There was a dance hall here in the forties,” Steve says, which is technically an answer.
“Spend a lot of time there?” Scott asks.
“I can’t dance,” Steve says with another smile. Bucky’d been a great dancer, though, and Steve’d wound up at dance halls himself often enough as a result, even if he’d never properly participated.
It makes him think of Peggy, of course.
“Didn’t you do USO shows?” Scott asks, and Steve snorts.
“Yeah, and the girls did the dancing,” he says, miming a punch. “I just pretended to knock out Hitler. Badly, usually. Almost broke the poor guy’s jaw a few times.”
“Didn’t read that in any of my history books,” Scott says.
“They seem to leave out a lot of things,” Steve says. Just from how people talk to him, he can tell that. If one more person assumes one more thing about him based off their eighth-grade history classes or conservative pundits’ talking points, he might just get back in a plane and make sure nobody finds it this time.
Or maybe he’ll just stop avoiding all the reporters and give an interview. One or the other.
“Hm,” Scott says, and then, oddly: “Do you play pool?”
“I once hit a guy with a pool cue in a bar fight and then he kicked my ass,” Steve says. “So no.”
“Wanna learn?” Scott says with a faint smile.
Long story short, that’s how Steve gets in his first bar fight of the twenty-first century. Scott Summers, apparently, is very good at pool, and not everyone in the bar appreciates that.
“How the hell did you make that last shot?” Steve asks on the curb afterwards.
“I have enhanced spatial awareness,” Scott says with a shrug, prodding gingerly at his rapidly-bruising jaw.
“As what, a superpower?”
“Yes.”
“That’s amazing,” Steve says, and Scott laughs.
“You seem pretty good with angles yourself,” he says. “I saw what you pulled off hitting that Sentinel with your shield. The ricochet was perfect.”
“Somehow, it never occurred to me to translate those skills into hustling pool,” Steve says. Scott laughs again.
“Gotta do something with our downtime,” he says. “Want to try another bar?”
“Sure,” Steve says. It’s better than sleeping.
The tabloids the next morning are very interesting, though.
“Do you know you’re on the front page of the Enquirer again?” Tony asks. Steve regrets answering his communicator.
“Do they still think I’m a government-sanctioned clone?” he says. “Or a Russian doppelganger?”
“No, they think you spent last night running around downtown with the X-Men.”
“An X-Man,” Steve corrects.
“What?” Tony says.
“We weren’t running,” Steve says, deciding to be willfully obtuse on this one. “He has a motorcycle.”
“Oh my God, Rogers, did you actually go on a date?”
“No, Tony,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “We had a few beers and played pool.”
“That is the most boring thing that I have ever heard,” Tony says. “Unless it’s a euphemism, in which case it’s just the worst euphemism that I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s not a euphemism,” Steve says.
“You went on a date with an X-Man and played pool,” Tony says.
“It wasn’t a date,” Steve says.
“No, no, of course it wasn’t, being a date would’ve been interesting and we can’t have that,” Tony snorts. “Did you even get drunk?”
“Alcohol doesn’t work on me,” Steve says.
“Of course it doesn’t,” Tony mutters in exasperation. “Listen, this’ll probably blow over, but you do realize what publically hanging out with X-Men looks like, right?”
“Of course I do,” Steve says.
“. . . that tone of voice is worrying me, Cap. Should I be worried, Cap?”
“Depends on what kind of things would worry you, Stark,” Steve says, and hangs up on him. He doesn’t actually think Tony would be worried about anything he did with Scott, but it seems like a nonzero portion of the world might be.
Definitely nonzero, he realizes when he steps out of his apartment building and gets mobbed by reporters.
Well. That’s inconvenient, he thinks, and exhales.
“Can I help you?” he asks politely, then spends the next five minutes fielding increasingly stupid questions until:
“What are your feelings on the mutant threat?!” one of the reporters shouts, and Steve just looks at him.
“I think anyone threatening mutants should be stopped,” he says calmly, and the swarm of reporters explodes, a dozen camera flashes going off at once. Steve waits patiently for them to calm down a bit, then says, “Excuse me,” and waits for the crowd to let him through. They do, although they keep asking questions. Steve ignores them and leaves them there to head down the street.
That’s enough reporters for one day, he thinks.
Natasha calls him on his communicator with her usual perfect timing. Steve doesn’t bother wondering how she does it.
“Have you read the papers today?” she asks.
“Wait ‘til you see tomorrow’s,” he says, and she hums. He can hear the way her smirk curves her mouth.
“I’ll look forward to it,” she says. “Do you need a ride?”
“I’m good,” he says. That probably means she’s watching him, but it’s Natasha, so that’s not exactly unexpected.
“If you say so,” she says.
“I know how to shake a tail,” Steve says, because again: he’s from the forties, but he’s not new. The paparazzi following him aren’t going to be following him much longer.
“You’re going to have to tell him that, then,” Natasha says, and that’s when Steve recognizes the engine pulling up behind him. He pauses, and turns to look. It’s Scott Summers on his motorcycle, driving right past the paparazzi like they’re not even there.
“I’ll call you back,” he says to Natasha, and hangs up. Scott pulls up beside him. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Scott says. “Do you need a ride?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” Steve says, and slings a leg over the back of the bike. Scott smiles, and takes off down the street. Steve braces a hand on the other’s waist and doesn’t bother looking back at the paparazzi. “How’d you know where I live?”
“It’s not really a secret,” Scott says, which does make sense. Steve hasn’t really been trying to be subtle.
“Good timing, then,” he says. “Did you need something?”
“Just luck,” Scott says. “And not really. I wanted to talk to you.”
“Sure,” Steve says. “What about?”
“What are your thoughts on finding out just where those Sentinels the other day came from?” Scott says, and Steve’s attention sharpens.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” he says.
“Then I have good news for you,” Scott says, turning his head just enough to spare him a smirk. They drive out of the city together, and Steve glances back to its familiar/unfamiliar skyline and feels a pang of . . . something. He can’t quite define it, whatever it is.
“Not that I’m complaining, but why didn’t you pick another X-Man for this?” he asks.
“They’re on missions or downtime, mostly,” Scott says. “Anyway, it’s just a scouting mission.”
“I should warn you, I haven’t been on ‘just’ a scouting mission in about seventy years,” Steve says, and Scott chuckles.
“It’s like riding a bike,” he says.
“I more meant they usually turn into disasters.”
“Well, in that case, I hope your shield is in that bag,” Scott says.
It is, which turns out to be very lucky when they end up pinned down behind a pile of crates behind a New Jersey warehouse with four Sentinels advancing on their position.
“Told you,” Steve says. Scott adjusts his glasses.
“You did,” he agrees. “You take left, I’ll take right?”
“Down,” Steve says, and throws himself and his shield over Scott just in time to deflect a Sentinel blast.
“Thanks,” Scott says.
“Anytime.” Steve glances back over his shoulder. “So, left?”
They split up, running opposite directions, and the Sentinels all turn towards Scott. Not a smart decision on their parts. Steve nails one in the back of the knee with his shield and it staggers; the ricochet hits another in the side of the head, and the shield comes right back to him. Not as reliable as Mjolnir, maybe, but at least he knows where to stand to catch it. Scott’s optic blast sears into the chest of one of the other Sentinels, but doesn’t penetrate as easily as it did with the ones they’d dealt with back in New York. Maybe these ones are an upgrade.
The Sentinels advance on Scott. They ignore Steve. He’s appalled, frankly, because the Sentinels ignoring him while he’s attacking them implies they’re not programmed to handle humans, which means humans aren’t fighting them. The mere fact that one of these damned things can turn up wherever it likes and expect to go unmolested by the majority of the population is enough to make him sick. As far as he’s concerned, these things belong in the scrap heap.
Still, for the moment, it’s working out for him. He calculates a few angles quickly, then whips his shield at the nearest wall. It ricochets into one of the Sentinels’ necks and sticks, which is good because it nearly takes the thing’s head off but bad because now he doesn’t have the shield. Scott hits the opening with an optic blast and the Sentinel topples over, taking Steve’s shield with it. He curses under his breath and goes running towards it. These things are huge; he needs a weapon.
It takes a couple yanks, but he manages to get the shield out of the fallen Sentinel’s neck. Scott’s been keeping the other three busy, but they’re dangerously close to surrounding him and getting better and better at dodging his optic blasts, almost like they’re learning.
Better not give them anymore time to do that, then.
Steve exhales, and straps the shield to his arm. Direct shots aren’t doing it? That’s fine.
“Cyclops! Here!” he barks, hefting his shield, and Scott, mercifully, understands what he means and fires a blast straight for him. It hits the shield’s cocked surface and recoils right into a Sentinel’s back, tearing straight through its metal spine. The Sentinel wobbles in place, just for a moment, and then comes falling down. Steve barely gets out of the way in time.
What’s left of it starts crawling towards Scott. Steve gets on its back and starts smashing, and keeps it up until it stops moving. In the meantime, Scott’s taken out another one, which leaves them with just one more.
The thing doesn’t stand a chance.
“That was good work,” Steve says breathlessly after, as he’s brushing shards off metal off himself. Scott looks amused.
“Usually I’m the one saying that,” he says. “Give me a minute, I need to call the professor.”
He does, and Steve keeps an eye on the destroyed Sentinels as they talk, just to make sure none of them are getting up again. None of them so much as twitch.
Scott hangs up and turns back to him, and Steve glances away from the Sentinels’ remains. He heard the whole conversation—couldn’t help hearing it, more like—but he waits to hear what Scott’s going to say anyway.
“Professor says to head back,” Scott says, jerking his head back towards the way they’d parked. “He doesn’t want us getting caught out without a team again.”
“How many Sentinels are out there?” Steve says.
“Too many,” Scott says grimly, and they head back to the bike. Steve would rather poke around a bit more, but this is Scott’s show and if he wants to listen to Xavier, then they’re listening to Xavier.
They’re barely on the bike before Steve hears a familiar electric whine, and whips his shield behind his head just in time to block the Sentinel blast.
“Dammit,” Scott says.
“Chase scene?” Steve says.
“Chase scene,” Scott confirms, and tears off. Steve keeps an eye behind them, shield at the ready, and the approaching group of Sentinels flies after them. Scott’s motorcycle is ludicriously fast—Steve wants one, frankly—but he doubts it’s going to be faster than giant flying robots.
“Can we actually escape them?” he asks.
“Not me,” Scott says. “They can detect mutants.”
“Of course they can,” Steve mutters, and deflects another blast. He tries to get this one to hit another Sentinel, but can’t get the right angle fast enough. “There’s a lot of them, for the record.”
“There always are,” Scott says resignedly as they take a corner so sharply that Steve’s nearly thrown out of his seat. Scott curses, and Steve looks ahead to find cars in the street in front of them.
They do not want innocent people involved in this, obviously.
“Go back!” Steve says.
“I really hope that means you have a plan,” Scott says, and skids the bike into a sharp U-turn that, again, nearly throws Steve off. He’s a little bit better at this than that, though, and manages to keep his seat.
“Arguably,” he says.
“Arguably you have a plan?” Scott says, revving the engine once before driving straight towards the Sentinels.
“Yeah,” Steve says. “It’s ‘don’t die’.”
“Ah, the old classic.”
The Sentinels slow, and land. Their blasters start to glow.
“Dodging is also in the plan,” Steve says.
“We can do that,” Scott says, and leans forward. Steve wraps an arm tight around his waist, pretty certain they’re about to take a lot more sharp turns and really not wanting thrown off the bike. He keeps his shield at the ready, just in case, and Scott drives the bike right into the middle of the Sentinels.
They do not get hit, or at least don’t get hit anywhere Steve can’t cover with his shield. Once he has to put it straight in front of Scott’s face, and Scott doesn’t so much as slow the bike and in fact veers between two Sentinels’ feet at full speed.
That’d be that increased spatial awareness, Steve guesses as he lowers his shield again. They tear through the cluster of Sentinels no worse for the wear, and the Sentinels turn slowly, blasters still glowing. They’re not very smart, at least, and not very quick either. They can work with this.
“Your turn to think of a plan,” Steve says, because he’s running pretty low on ideas right now and Scott’s the one with more Sentinel experience, anyway.
“Hang on tight,” Scott says, and somehow gets the bike to go even faster. Steve manages not to fall off. The Sentinels fly after them, almost close enough to touch, and reach forward with grasping hands. Steve assumes their orders are capture, not kill, because they could be firing a lot more of those blasts. “Cover your head.”
Steve covers his head. Scott hits the brakes. The Sentinels fly over them, and Scott fires an optic blast into the parked propane truck that’s directly beneath them.
The results are one hell of an explosion.
“Jesus!” Steve says, impressed. Scott takes off again, and the surviving Sentinels follow them. Some of them are in better condition than others, but just about all of them took some damage, and the group’s been cut down severely—Scott might’ve gotten a full half of them with that move, in fact. “Nicely done.”
“Doing my best,” Scott says as he takes the next turn. Steve deflects another blast and this time manages to knock back one of the other Sentinels with it, so at least he’s helping a bit.
“Tenacious bastards,” he says.
“Preaching to the choir,” Scott sighs, then turns into a skinny alley. “Duck.”
Steve ducks, putting his shield over both of them, and narrowly avoids getting clipped by the Dumpster. The Sentinel blast hits it and it explodes, but they’re already on the other side of the alley and tearing out of the mouth of it—he mentioned how fast Scott’s motorcycle was, right? Because the thing is fast.
Steve takes some shrapnel from the Dumpster, but nowhere too painful. His shield gets most of it and he manages not to get his bell rung, which is the important part.
“Don’t suppose that trick’ll work again,” he says, looking back at the Sentinels. One of them’s stuck in the alley opening, bricks and mortar coming out around it, but the others have flown over or around the buildings. It delayed them a bit, but they’re still catching up.
“Not likely,” Scott says. “They’re not always smart, but they can learn.”
“They make smart ones?” Steve demanded. “What stupid asshole’s idea was that?!”
“A very stupid asshole,” Scott says. “How many are left?”
“Six, if the stuck one doesn’t catch up,” Steve says, and Scott sighs.
“Okay,” he says. “Six is manageable. We can manage six.”
“Seven,” Steve corrects as he glimpses the stuck one breaking free in the distance. Scott curses under his breath.
“I need a faster motorcycle,” he says.
“You do,” Steve agrees. “How much gas you got left in this thing?”
“Let’s not talk about that.”
“Oh boy,” Steve mutters. “Bridge ahead.”
“That won’t slow them down much,” Scott says.
“Guess that’d be too much to hope for.” Steve looks back to the Sentinels, brandishing his shield. They are very close. “This is going to be a problem.”
“Sentinels usually are,” Scott says. Steve blocks another energy blast and grimaces at the impact. That’s starting to sting.
“I have a bad idea,” he says.
“Yeah?” Scott glances back at him.
“You’re going to have to turn around again,” Steve says, automatically wrapping his arm around the other’s stomach again.
“Got it,” Scott says, and whips the bike around real quick. Steve is very grateful he decided to put the arm around him.
“Get past them,” he says.
“Sure,” Scott says wryly. He revs the engine, then takes off. “I notice you didn’t say get us past them.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Steve says, and crouches on the back of the motorcycle. He can jump pretty high, and what he can’t jump, he can climb.
He really misses having a Hulk right now.
“The plan is still ‘don’t die’, right?” Scott says, and the Sentinels slow in their approach, reaching out for Scott, and the motorcycle tears right through them.
“Sure,” Steve says, and leaps off the back of the bike. He lands on a Sentinel’s grasping arm and runs up the length of it to smash his shield into its face, splintering its faceplate.
It’s not as easy as knocking over a flagpole, put it that way.
The Sentinel reels, and Steve barely grabs on in time to keep from being thrown off. He keeps smashing with his shield, and on the ground below Scott swerves the motorcycle back and forth through the Sentinels’ legs. He hits one with an optic blast and trips two others. Steve leaps off the Sentinel he’s been bashing as it falls and lands on the back of another to start bashing anew. He is, not for the first time, very glad he brought his shield.
Scott’s optic blasts light up the street, and Steve does his damnedest with his shield, and the Sentinels fall one by one. Scott nearly gets hit more times than Steve can count, but the Sentinels continue to ignore him even as he’s contributing to their destruction. It’s very convenient, but doesn’t impress him.
He does get thrown off one, finally, but Scott takes care of it with an optic blast before he even hits the street. The asphalt cracks, and possibly so do a couple of his ribs. That’s going to bruise.
That’s the job, though, so Steve forces himself to his feet—good, nothing’s broken—and uses a convenient lamppost to ricochet his shield into another Sentinel’s spine. Scott hits it with an optic blast at the same time, and it falls down smoking. Steve catches his shield and looks around for the next target, but the only thing moving in the street is Scott, skidding his motorcycle to a stop just past the wreckage of the Sentinels.
“Is that all of them?” Steve asks, breathing heavily.
“You should get back on the bike,” Scott says, and they tear ass out of town. If there’s more Sentinels, they don’t find them. That’s probably for the best, because Steve feels like he just went ten rounds with . . . well, giant killer robots. “You hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Steve says dismissively. “You?”
“I’m fine,” Scott says in the exact same tone. He can still drive the bike, so Steve figures he’s probably not lying. At least, not very much. He does look like he had some pretty close calls with those energy blasts.
They have to stop for gas pretty soon, but otherwise they make it back to New York in record time. Steve wonders if this is ending up in any papers too, but is too exhausted to care.
The reporters are still at his apartment. He groans, and drops his head against the back of Scott’s shoulder. Scott takes the better part of valor and zips right past them.
“I’m getting a hotel room tonight,” Steve says decidedly.
“Might be a good idea,” Scott says.
In the morning, Steve gets up, eats the hotel’s continental breakfast, and decides he does not give a damn what ended up in the papers. Natasha calls him as soon as he finishes eating, and he answers.
“You weren’t kidding about today’s papers,” she says.
“Really not worried about it,” he says.
“Are you coming to the meeting today?” she asks.
“Sure,” Steve sighs, and shows up to the day’s Avengers’ meeting in yesterday’s torn and scorched clothes. Tony takes one look at him and raises his eyebrows.
“Rough night, champ?” he asks.
“Slept like a baby,” Steve says, taking a bite of one of the apples he took from the breakfast spread on his way out of the hotel.
“You fought evil mutant-killing robots with Cyclops,” Tony says. “Cyclops. The oatmeal of X-men! The most boring X to ever X-ist!”
“We were on a scouting mission,” Steve says.
“And you blew up half of New Jersey!” Tony says.
“I mean, it’s only Jersey,” Steve says.
“Oh my God,” Tony says.
“Everything okay?” Bruce asks warily. “Or do we, uh, need to do something.”
“I figure they’ll tell me if we do,” Steve says with a shrug, taking another bite of his apple. It’s a pretty good apple, for being from a hotel breakfast bar. “So what’s on the docket today?”
“The thing where you’re dating an X-Man!” Tony says.
“We’re not dating,” Steve says. “Does The Enquirer think we’re dating?”
“Yes!” Tony says.
“It seems to be a popular theory,” Natasha says mildly. “There’s a bit of public outrage happening.”
“Hm.” Steve takes another bite. “If I say we’re dating, will you all stop bothering me about my social life?”
“Not unless you’re marrying him,” Natasha says.
“Is that legal?” Steve asks, surprised.
“Please don’t take this as our approval,” Tony says. “Not that I’m against the idea in principle, people do what they want to do, whatever, just how would you ever have sex with a guy who can’t even take his glasses off without frying you?”
“I mean, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt,” Steve says with a shrug. “I’m sure he’s used to working around it by now.”
“Please find an excuse to say that on live TV,” Clint begs him. “Please.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Steve says dryly.
The meeting’s normal, otherwise, and Steve leaves an hour later with some new mission reports to go over and a few more of those files SHIELD probably doesn’t want him to have. He heads home, because home is where his stuff is and also the rest of those files SHIELD probably doesn’t want him to have, which he probably shouldn’t leave unsupervised for too long. There are no blatantly obvious reporters, mercifully, but there’s definitely a few creeping around.
He goes inside, and puts the new files with the old ones. He calls Scott.
“Everything alright?” Scott says.
“Fine,” Steve says. “I was just wondering if you wanted to get a beer later. No evil robots, just hanging out.”
“Oh,” Scott says, sounding a bit surprised. “Yeah, sure.”
“Great,” Steve says. “You mind picking me up? I want to torture the reporters outside a little.”
Scott laughs, and Steve smiles to himself. There’s that hole in him still that even the Avengers haven’t managed to fill, that Brooklyn doesn’t fit in anymore, and he’s not as used to the twenty-first century as he could be, but at least people are still people. It’s worth it, for that.
And at least he can still figure out how to make a friend or two.