An ear-splitting scream drowns out the music and immediately sobers Steve and me. We glance at each other before pushing through the throngs of people hand in hand. The person is still crying out, so it isn't that difficult to find the source. A girl in a short, shimmering, silver cocktail dress is stumbling away from the back door with a man clinging tightly to her arm in fear. I nod at her to Cap and he heads over to talk to her. I head out the back door and into the dark alley. It must have rained since Steve and I arrived because the concrete is shining from the nearby streetlight. The only sound is my footsteps in the dim alley, but there is a coppery smell mixed with burning that I recognize immediately. That's burning flesh. I move towards the right near some black trash bags still covered in rivulets of water. The smell hits me like a wall when I walk further into the alley behind a dumpster. I gasp when I see what must have frightened the woman and the other man. I hear the door open, alerting me to Cap's presence.

"Victoria?" He calls out to me. He can't see me because the dumpster is in the way.

"Steve?" I respond. I hear him making his way over to me, and also hear him stop when he sees what I'm looking at. A young man, probably around Steve and I's age, lays dead on the wet trash bags. His clothes are dry, so he must have literally just been dumped here. His clothes are the least interesting part of him, though. His fingers and toes are covered in small green scales as well as being misshapen and seemingly half grown. The soles of his feet are burned as well, in a pattern similar to mine, although not nearly as severe. I keep scanning the body for something to cause the smell. The burns on his feet aren't fresh enough to be the source. Steve moves from behind me and takes the man's shirt in between his fingers to flick the fabric to the side. Another gasp slips through my lips at finding the source of the smell of burning flesh. Written, no, burned, into his chest are the words, 'V, we've found you.' I look at Steve and find him already looking at me. We both know the message is for me.

"I have to call the team, Victoria." Steve tells me. I nod slowly, still in shock. I'm still staring at the body when Steve notifies the team. "Stark, yeah. We're okay, but we've found something the team needs to see. I'd call Director Fury too. Send agents to our location and to block off the area. Have them send everything they find to the tower. We'll be back soon." He pauses as I assume Tony interjects. "She's fine, Stark, I promise." He continues and assures Tony. I stand and hold my hand out for the phone after turning towards Steve. His blue eyes flit over me, then he hands me the phone.

"Tony." I greet him and hear the slightest tremor in my voice. I return my eyes to the body.

"Victoria." He whispers with relief coloring his voice. "What the hell is going on, kiddo?" He asks me immediately after.

"Listen, Tony. My full name is Victoria Elaine Redhallow." I tell him urgently, the smell of the dead man's singed flesh filling my nose.

"What? Victoria, why are you telling me that?" Tony asks, confused.

"Victoria Elaine Redhallow. Type it into your system and find out everything you can about...me. My...parents, my life. Only you Tony, make sure that you're the only one who sees it, yeah?" I give him explicit instructions as he splutters on the other side of the phone. When I'm finished I'm greeted with silence. I turn to Cap and his questioning eyes as Tony finally answers.

"Okay. Whatever you say, Queen." I breathe a sigh of relief and hang up. I hand the phone back to Cap, then grab his hand and pull him back to his bike. Steve gets the message and gets on the bike, then stares at me waiting for me to get on. I pause and lay a hand on his shoulder to make him pause. I look away at the shining pavement for a few moments before Steve's voice pulls me out of my reverie.

"Victoria. Are you alright?" He asks softly. I look at him and his worried face. The corner of my mouth twitches just slightly at how endearing he is. I lean in and put my lips on his. My hand on his shoulder moves to the back of his neck to keep him close and I feel his hands find their way to my waist. For a few seconds, only he and I exist. I kiss him harder than before, more insistently. With the things that are about to come to light, this may be my last chance to kiss him like this, or at all. My other hand gently cradles his face and I run my thumb across his cheek. When we part, I don't move away. We put our foreheads together and stare into each other's eyes. Steve's eyes are confused, worried, and slightly afraid. I know he's not afraid of the body we found. I know what he must be thinking, Steve is a smart man. The kiss I just gave him, the emotions I'm sure that he sees in my eyes, he knows something is wrong. Especially given the message given via the dead man. I tenderly brush my lips across his before mounting the bike. After a second, Steve follows my lead and starts up his bike. We fly back to the tower and are greeted by Tony standing outside. He's at my side the minute I dismount and grabs my arm. I watch him knowingly and grimace. He knows everything now.

"Hey, we need to talk. Now." Tony says and begins dragging me away.

"Hey." Cap dismounts as well and tenderly grabs my hand. That gesture alone almost makes me cry. "You can't just drag her away like that. Tell us what's going on." Steve says. I sigh looking at Cap.

"I already know what's going on, Steve. Come on, let's follow Tony. You should see this too." I respond. Cap lets me coax him forward until he's following Tony and I into the tower and into the elevator.

"That was a lot of information you dumped on me, kiddo." Tony tells me as the elevator continues to go up. His hand is still on my arm and Steve is still holding firmly to my hand. Stretched between my boys, I start to get even more nervous about the information I know I have to share with them.

"I know, T. I know. Did you call Nick in?" I ask. Tony's eyes narrow at the use of T, but he nods.

"Yep. Fury should be waiting in the tech room, eye patch and all." Tony confirms. I look at him thankfully and shimmy my arm up so he's just holding my hand.

"Is someone going to tell me what's going on?" Cap says from my other side in exasperation. I squeeze his hand when I turn and look at him. The doors to the elevator open and Tony leads us out like a train, Steve being the caboose.

"Listen, I told Tony my real name so he could look up my history. It matters in this case. Steve, you know that message was meant for me." I explain as well as I can while almost jogging after Tony. Steve nods behind me, but I don't miss the shine of concern in his eyes.

Finally, we reach the tech room and Tony releases me, but Cap and I hold onto one another. Nick is the only other person in the room, and he looks grim. I nod to him and he nods back at me in greeting. I look up at the screens and almost cringe. There are more bodies on the screens. More than the one that Cap and I just discovered. Their hands and feet are also mutilated and also have burns on the bottoms of all of their feet. I turn slowly, counting each different body. I count seven, then my eyes flit to writing that's up on every screen

"V, we're looking for you." I whisper the words out loud before turning to Nick. I drop Cap's hand and march up to face Fury. "You knew about this!" I exclaim in his face as he watches me calmly. "You knew that they were back and you said nothing! Why wouldn't you tell me? I could have done something, I could have hunted them down!"

"I still didn't know if you were a risk or not." He tells me and I scoff. Realization dawns on me and I get even angrier.

"That's what your check-up a few days ago was, wasn't it?" I ask, outraged. "Wasn't it?" I raise the volume of my voice and abruptly feel two arms wrap around my waist, pulling me back and away from Fury.

"Wait, everyone just wait. Someone fill me in about what's going on." Steve says while holding me away from Fury. I huff and let him hold me, for now anyway. Tony presses a few buttons on his monitor then shoots it up on the screens around us so we can see clearly.

"This is what's going on." Tony says and comes down next to Cap and me with a small tablet so he can still use his computers.

"And what is this?" Cap asks, releasing me and turning to look around him. I send Fury a death glare, but leave him be.

"This is me." I say simply. There's only a few pictures of me and all of them have been within the past few days, all except one. There's one picture that caught me looking particularly ragged. From my first year on the streets. I look at Nick, finally recognizing where I am in the picture. "The diner?" I ask him, feeling the betrayal rise up in my heart. Nick holds out a hand.

"Hold on. You were a potential asset, we monitor all the Avengers." Nick defends himself, but earns glares from Steve and Tony. I turn back to Steve, to explain.

"You and Tony both know the story of who I am. At least how I got to be this way. I just never told you who made me this way." I take a breath to brace myself as I look back and forth between Tony's dark eyes and Steve's light ones. "The people that made me this way, I knew them." Tears threaten my composure and I turn to Fury. "You know what? Get out. I can't have you in here right now." I tell him and point at the door. His mouth opens to protest, but after looking at me for a little longer, he leaves. I heave another sigh and turn back towards Tony and Steve. Their worried faces do nothing to steady me, but I plow on. "The people who made me this way, the ones who experimented on me..." I swallow and feel tears gather in my eyes. "They're my parents." Both of the boys' jaws drop and I take the chance to point at some very blurry pictures on the screen. "My mom and dad were very good at what they did." I point at more pictures of them. You can't see their faces in any of them. "I thought that they'd stopped." Tears almost flood my eyes, but I can't stop, not now. I point to picture of the dead bodies, more deaths that were because of me. "I was their only success, so when I got out I'd figured that they'd give up. I did my best to destroy most of the lab on my way out, so they couldn't salvage any of my records. But all of these wounds?" I point to the fingers, the toes, the burns on their feet. "I have the same." Just then, the rest of the team comes in and I fall silent and practically inhale my unshed tears. I retreat towards Steve and he takes my hand in support. Nick comes in last and takes his previous place in the middle of the room. I stare at his feet to keep my blood from boiling.

"The problem at hand is a few deaths. The bodies have been found in...let's say less than perfect condition. Someone is experimenting and it needs to be ended before more people die, or they succeed." Nick says dramatically. I swear he is the biggest drama queen ever. "Everything we have is on your hard-drive. It's not much, but I trust you all will get to the bottom of it. Good luck, Avengers." He ends and, as always, walks out of the room with a dramatic swish of his long coat. I stick my tongue out at him as he leaves and hear Tony's quiet chuckle. I look over at him and feel my spirits lift a bit just looking at his smile. Natasha stands next to me with Clint by her side, Vision goes up to the other monitors to look around, and Wanda stands to my far left, on the other side of Tony.

"Damn. What the hell is this?" Clint asks as he walks closer to the screen. He's also staring at the photos.

"Are those...scales?" Wanda asks with trepidation. She points to the fingers and toes of the victims and sure enough, she's correct.

"It's from forced regeneration." I say. Everyone's eyes swivel to me in surprise and interest. Steve and Tony's eyes worry me the most though. Tony's are almost heartbroken while Steve's are angry and uncomprehending in the face of such cruelty. I know that they've both noticed my shimmering fingers and toes before. "These people cut off the fingers and toes to see if the subject can recreate them perfectly. Obviously, these subjects failed." I recite the words like a speech. I had heard these words a few times before. They gave me chills each time.

"What kind of monster were they trying to make?" Vision asks incredulously. Me. They're trying to recreate me. Steve squeezes my hand for reassurance, immediately knowing what I'm thinking. But everything is just too much for me. I turn around and head out of that room as everyone continues to stare at me. I hit the stairs at a sprint and keep going until I finally burst through the doors and am on the roof. I take deep, desperate breaths as thoughts from my past run through my head. I feel the burning pain I would feel when they burned my feet, making sure that I wouldn't run away. I bite my tongue to make me feel pain now. It's sharper, more insistent that I pay attention to it and not my past. I agree. I go over to the ledge and sit down with my feet dangling over the edge. I look down and feel my instincts kick in, clearing my head of all other thought. I breathe in relief and sigh. I stare out at the towering buildings and dark blue sky. I hear the door open and shut behind me and almost laugh at how time is repeating itself. But this time the steps coming towards me definitely don't belong to Tony. I get up and go straight into Steve's arms. He wraps his arms around me and I bury my face in his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Victoria. God, I'm so sorry." He whispers to me and runs a hand through my hair repeatedly to soothe me. I nod into his chest, struggling to take deep breaths to calm myself. I know what I have to do. I know exactly what I have to do. I step away from Steve and sniffle a little. I shut my eyes for a moment, then look into his big blue ones.

"Thank you for all that you've given me, Steve. I'm indebted to you, truly. You've made me feel more human than anyone ever has and that's something I'll never forget." Tears mar my speech and Steve becomes wary. I know he knows something is off. Sweet little smarty. I walk backwards bit by bit, slowly getting closer to the edge. "Make sure you tell Tony that I'll miss him." Realization dawns on Steve's face. "I'll miss you too." I add with a humorless laugh.

"You can't just leave, Victoria. We'll fix this, all of it, together. As a team." Steve tells me seriously. His blue eyes burn and shine, but that just makes my choice easier.

"Do you know what they'd do if they captured you?" I ask him with a thick voice. "The super soldier who is ninety-five, but looks twenty-three?" I ask him emotionally. "They'd rip you apart, Steve. All of you. Hell, the only reason they didn't tear me apart was because they didn't have a replacement." I step up on the ledge and Steve steps forward and reaches out a hand to stop me, but I still and he freezes. "So, I can't. I can't let you go after them." A few tears slip out of my eyes and trickle down my face. I can see it pains Steve to stay still, but he stays still all the same. "I loved dancing with you, Steve." I partially sob, but try to smile. Steve smiles painfully back at me.

"We'll dance again, Ria. I swear, I won't stop until I find you. I won't stop." He says forcefully. I laugh a little and nod.

"I'll come back. If I make it, I'll come back. Ipromise, Steve." I take one last look at him and take a deep breath, then turnand dive off the roof. I shift in the air, changing into a bald eagle, just forSteve. I can't stay that way for long, the shape is too easily tracked bycameras. I change into a pigeon after rounding the first corner and continue onmy way. I ran away a while ago from the place I'm going to, but I know the wayback easily. I do my best not to think of ice blue eyes and dirty blond hair onmy way.    

A/N

...I'm sorry...my heart broke just writing this. It's so hard because I understand both sides, but *sighs* they'll figure it out. Hopefully...

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