Dearest Diary,

I've had a very, very long week or so. It's just been hard hiding out the whole time, I mean. Like, when I was 5'4" and preserum, there wasn't a problem in the world for me. I could hide within the masses without a problem.

Now, being 6'2" and a literal, absolute unit... it's incredibly difficult to be unseen. 

The classic aviators, sweatshirt and baseball cap don't really seem to be cutting it anymore, now that the world's greatest spies are looking for me.

Either way, I've already waited too long. I should have gone back the same day to that damned hospital to retrieve the flash drive Fury gave me before he died. I just hope it's not too late.

—————

I made my way down the hall towards the vending machine as inconspicuously as I possibly could, though, I felt pretty obvious.

Once I made it to the vending machine, after what felt like the longest few minutes of my life, I checked the slot I had put it in - 510 - and it wasn't there. Hell, all the gum was gone, too.

I had no idea what I was gonna do now, I mean, who would- Natasha walked up behind me. She blew a pink bubble and it popped across her lips. How did she know I was coming here today? I grabbed her by the shoulders and started pushing her into the nearest closed-door room. Once inside, I pushed her against the wall.

"Where is it?" I demanded.

"Safe," she swore.

"Do better," I warned.

"Where did you get it?" She asked.

"Why would I tell you?" I sneered, pushing my face closer to hers.

"Fury gave it to you," she deduced. "Why?"

"What's on it?"

"I don't know," she replied defensively.

"Stop lying," I badgered her, bringing myself even closer.

"I only act like I know everything, Rogers," she revealed.

"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?"

She looked surprised and hesitated a second. "Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you-"

"I'm not gonna ask you again," I shook her where she stood. She looked between my eyes trying to think of something quick.

"I know who killed Fury," she blurted out, pausing for a moment thereafter and allowing me to absorb it fully. "Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years."

"So, he's a ghost story," I said.

"Five years ago," she began. "I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff- I pulled us out... but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer so he shot him straight through me," she lifted up her shirt to show me a scar in line with her belly button but a bit farther to the right. "Soviet slug. No rifling. Bye-bye, bikinis."

My expression didn't change, though, the thought of that just kind of flash through my mind for a second- "Yea, I bet you look terrible in them now," I commented.

"Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried. Like you said," she held up the flash drive. "He's a ghost story."

I took it. "Well, let's find out what the ghost wants."

We swiftly and unnoticeably made our way out of the hospital. We had to get to a computer, she'd said, in order to figure out what was on the flash drive. And where better to do that than somewhere with a lot of them, like, a mall?

"First rule of going on the run is don't run, walk," she told me as we made our way through the mall.

"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off," I replied.

Eventually, we entered a very big, white-colored store full of new technology and... a giant bitten-out-of apple as its logo? Natasha told me it was called an Apple Store, though, they didn't seem to be selling any produce...

"The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up S.H.I.E.L.D. will know exactly where we are," she told me as she started to operate a really, really thin silver device called a computer, or laptop, and that's apparently named after a Macintosh apple, like, the fruit.

"How much time will we have?" I questioned.

"About nine minutes from..." she plugged the drive in. "Now. Fury was right about that ship," she started as soon as she got further into the files. "Somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI. It keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."

I moved closer to her, trying to cover the screen from any passerby. "Can you override it?"

"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me," she admitted. "Slightly... I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that S.H.I.E.L.D. developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."

A map popped up on the screen of the East Coast and then a man with a beard and very long blonde hair walked up to us and asked, "can I help you guys with anything?"

"Oh, no. My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations," she answered cheerily, grabbing my shoulders from behind.

"Right," I added as she went back over to the computer. "We're getting married."

"Congratulations. Where you guys thinking about going?" he asked.

"New Jersey," I said after looking down at the map and reading it directly off the screen.

"Oh," he reacted, kind of like that was a weird place to go for a honeymoon. And then he started to look at me like he knew who I was... he put his finger up like he was about to say it out loud, too. "I... have the exact same glasses," he eventually blurted out.

"Wow, you two are practically twins," Natasha jumped in monotonously.

"Yea, I wish," the man replied wistfully. He put his arms up and motioned to me. "Specimen," he described me. "Uh, if you guys need anything, I've been Aaron," he then said, holding up his name tag before walking off.

"Thank you," I replied as he walked away. I immediately looked at my watch and looked over her shoulder. "You said nine minutes, come on."

"Relax," she responded, still doing her thing on the laptop. "Got it," she announced to me.

I watched as the map materialized further and zoomed into the more exact location of the malware's origination. It read Wheaton, NJ. I looked closer, making sure I didn't misread anything.

"You know it?" she asked.

"I used to. Let's go," I said, pulling out the drive and walking us out of the store.

"Standard tac team. Two behind, two across. Two coming straight at us," I warned. If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south elevator to the metro."

"Shut up and put your arm around me. Laugh at something I said," she directed.

"What?"

"Do it," she demanded. I did.

It worked.

We made it to the escalators and had to get to the ground level, so we started down, standing with her one step below me. I didn't think much of it, but I probably should have been paying attention to who was around me. It was crowded and they could have been anywhere.

Nat spun around. "Kiss me."

"What?" I was... confused. And also unsure if I even wanted to.

"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable," she explained.

"Yes," I agreed. "They do."

But, then, she grabbed my neck and pulled me down to her face. Her lips met mine unexpectedly and I almost didn't even know what to do. It was simple, as it wasn't exactly like we were going to make out in the mall, but it was... it was still a kiss; I couldn't help but feel a little something. Was that normal?

She pulled away and turned around. "You still uncomfortable?" she asked.

"That's not exactly the word I would use," I replied, still feeling a bit... odd. Kind of like I really did enjoyed it but not really sure if I was okay with that feeling yet, sort of a thing.

We made our way to the parking garage because we'd walked to the mall and I was not about to take my bike to Jersey. I'm really gonna steal someone's vehicle, aren't I?

After I worked my magic and we got going, we made our way past the Welcome to New Jersey sign that Bucky and I passed a bunch of times before. Hell, last time I was here besides boot camp was to go to the beach with him.

"Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?" Nat asked me suspiciously.

I shifted in my seat. "Nazi Germany," I lied.

What was I supposed to say? When my best friend and I stole a truck in the 1930s to drive upstate and have sex in the woods one weekend? Umm, no.

"Mmm," she mumbled.

"And, we're borrowing," I corrected her. "Take your feet off the dash."

She looked at me, then did as I told her to. "Alright, I have a question for you, uh- which you do not have to answer." I looked over at her for a second. "I feel like, if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know-"

"What?" I interrupted.

"Was that your first kiss since 1945?" she asked slyly and with a smirk across her face.

"That bad, huh?" I gathered.

"I didn't say that-"

"Well, it kinda sounds like that's what you're saying," I explained.

"No, I didn't... I just wondered how much practice you've had," she tried to backpedal.

You have no idea, Nat, you don't even wanna know.

"You don't need practice," I defended myself, not wanting to explain that she was only my second kiss with a woman, well, technically third.

"Everybody needs practice," she talked over me.

"It was not my first kiss since 1945," I declared. "I'm 95, I'm not dead."

"Nobody special, though?"

There was. And... after him, no one else really seems worth it anymore, I guess.

I chuckled, not really knowing how to react. "Believe it or not, it's kinda hard to find someone with shared life experience."

"Well, that's alright. You just make something up," she tried to help.

"What, like you?"

"I don't know. The truth is a matter of circumstance. It's not all things to all people, all the time," she made sense of it all. "Neither am I."

"That's a tough way to live," I commented.

"It's a good way not to die, though."

"You know, it's kinda hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is," I tried to tell her.

"Yea," she paused. "Who do you want me to be?"

"How about a friend?" I requested, hoping she wasn't trying to get... romantic.

She smiled and chuckled. "Well, there's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers."

We pulled up and the gate was closed and there was a stop sign on it; the inside all looked the same as it used to, too, just older. I parked the truck and we got out.

"This is it," I said.

"The file came from these coordinates," she replied, almost confused as to where we where.

I looked at the sign that read CAMP LEHIGH U.S ARMY RESTRICTED AREA. "So did I."

We made our way in, eventually making our way all throughout the grounds trying to find wherever the file could have come from. "This camp is where I was trained," I mentioned as we wandered.

"Change much?" she asked.

"A little," I replied, looking up at the flag pole. There wasn't a flag up there anymore- maybe they just never put it back up after I took it down in 1939.

"Pick up the pace, ladies!" I heard the drill sergeant yell at me. Is this a flashback? Is that what's happening? I never thought that something like this would happen to me, nevermind feel so real. "Let's go! Let's go! Double time!" I felt like I was watching my past replay itself as an outsider- like I'm still me, with all the same memories, but not actually the same anymore as I once was... As I feel I rightfully and truly am. "Come on, Rogers! Move it!" he yelled at me, er- my shadow self. "Come on! Fall in!" the drill sergeant commanded. I watched as the former me stopped and stared at me. It was like looking in a mirror that showed me a real reflection of what I felt I was. For once, I felt more myself than whoever I've been pretending to be. "Rogers! I said fall in!"

"This is a dead end," Romanoff broke off my daydream to tell me. "Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio. whoever wrote the file must've used a router to throw people off... what is it?"

I was looking at a building behind her. One that was not there 70 years ago. We started walking towards it as I explained. "Army regulations forbid storing munitions within 500 yards of the barracks. This building's in the wrong place."

It was locked, too, so I hit the lock with my shield and broke us in. We then made our way down the stairs and looked for why everything seemed so... wrong. I turned the lights on. A massive logo was on the far wall beyond all the desks reading STRATEGIC HOMELAND INTERVENTION ENFORCEMENT - LOGISTICS DIVISION.

"This is S.H.I.E.L.D.," she pointed out.

We walked in farther. "Maybe where it started," I corrected her.

We walked through a door at the far wall. It was a filing room and there were 3 photos on the wall. "And there's Stark's father," she said to me, as if I wouldn't recognize him. He was between Colonel Philips and Agent Carter.

"Howard," I added.

"Who's the girl?" she questioned, noticing how I lingered on her picture. I just walked away. I didn't wanna talk about this, not now and not with her.

I continued looking around and noticed a draft coming between some of the shelves. There was something behind there- I knew something was up. "If you're already working in a secret office," I forced the metal book shelves aside, revealing a hallway. "Why do you need to hide the elevator?"

We got in after Nat put in the password. The elevator went down to a singular destination. The doors then opened again, revealing a dark room. We walked in farther and, eventually, the lights turned on all by themselves, showing us that the room was full of one massive computer- an original computer from the 1930s.

"This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient," Nat announced. Though, almost immediately after, she spotted a new-era USB input, as she called it. She plugged in the flash drive and everything around us came to life.

I hear whirring and saw machines begin to spin and light up and it was like a trip back in time. Then, the computer started talking to us and typing its words out across the monitor.

INITIATE SYSTEM? it began.

She approached the keyboard "Y-E-S spells yes," she typed YES out on the screen. "Shall we play a game?" she asked, jokingly. "it's from a movie that was really-"

"I know, I saw it," I cut her off, knowing she was talking about WarGames from 1983. Please, I've had plenty of time to catch up over the past two years.

The computer started to- glitch? No, a face appeared on the monitor. "Rogers, Steven," it spoke. "Born 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna born 1984."

"It's some kind of recording," Nat clarified to me.

"I am not a recording, Fraeulein," the computer replied. "I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am."

"You know this thing?" she asked me, looking at the picture displayed of his former self on the screen.

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years," I told her.

"First correction," the computer continued. "I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972, I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however, that was worth saving, on 200,000 feet of databanks. You are standing in my brain."

"How did you get here?" I asked.

"Invited," he simply replied.

"It was Operation: Paperclip after World War II," Nat informed me. "S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited German scientists with strategic value."

"They thought I could help their cause," he continued in his accent that came through even as a computer. "I also helped my own."

"HYDRA died with the Red Skull," I cut in.

The Hydra insignia popped up on the screen. "Cut off one head, two more shall take it's place."

"Prove it," I demanded.

"Accessing archive," he relayed, showing us video footage on a separate screen on the left. "HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded, and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D. For 70 years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed."

"That's impossible, S.H.I.E.L.D. would have stopped you," Nat came in.

"Accidents will happen," he said, showing a screen that read HOWARD AND MARIA STARK DIE IN CAR ACCIDENT. "HYDRA created a world so chaotic, that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice it's freedom to gain its security. Once a purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise... We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life. A zero sum-"

I punched the main screen and it shattered beneath my fist. His face showed up on another monitor.

"As I was saying," he said anew.

"What's on this drive?" I asked.

"Project: Insight requires insight. So, I wrote an algorithm."

"What kind of algorithm?" Nat jumped in. "What does it do?"

"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it," he threatened, closing the main elevator doors behind massive metal barriers.

"Steve, we got a bogey," Nat informed me, looking at her device. "Short range ballistic. 30 seconds, tops."

"Who fired it?" I inquired urgently.

"S.H.I.E.L.D." she answered.

"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain," Zola interrupted. "Admit it. It's better this way." Natasha grabbed the flash drive and came towards me. "We are - both of us - out of time." I pulled the grate off the floor and we both jumped into it just as the ballistic hit the building.

I was able to cover us with my shield, but I ended up having to push huge amounts of debris off of us before we were able to get out. Everything was on fire and Natasha was out cold. I picked her up and made my way out ahead of the corrupt SHIELD agents that were on their way in after us.

—————

I don't think I've had a terribly long day like that in ages.

It felt like literally everything that could possibly happen, did.

I would say I hated this, but, honestly, I liked the action for once. I've been sort of missing it.

~ S.R.