So, I realize that the explanation kind of sucks, but this is a Cap/OC story that revolves around my OC, Evangeline St. James, and her relationship with Captain Steve Rogers. Includes Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Bucky Barnes, and a whole slew of other familiar characters that I don't own.
All rights around anything that's familiar got to their owners. Mostly Marvel.
Give it a chance and see what you think. I'll be updating fairly soon and I apologize if you're a fan of my other story, Avenging Angel. As you can tell, plot bunnies got stuck in my head and I had to get them out. Hopefully I'll be able to return to updating Avenging Angel soon.
Thank you and all reviews and favorites are appreciated!
"I'm going to need you to get the hell up, Cap. There's no way to get a team in to save your ass and you need to get out of there. Like, right now." Eve barked into her headpiece, the images from Captain Rogers' latest disaster of a mission flashing past her on the largest screen in the darkened viewing room. There were only two other analysts in the room with her, neither allowed to say a word while the coms were live. Eve was the only thing keeping the Captain alive and moving at the moment, the only person he could hear while he was working on destroying yet another HYDRA base in the middle of nowhere. The volume was turned almost all the way down to keep the coms unit hidden from any curious parties, but the Captain's hearing was so advanced that it didn't matter.
Her best friend and assistant, Nova Maddox, blew up an aerial view of the rubble the Captain was currently buried under, the dust and dirt settling until she could make out the shifting of concrete blocks in the midst of the disaster. Even after the ceiling of the building collapsed on him, he was going to get up. He had to, she wasn't about to allow him to give up after so long fighting.
"There are three HYDRA agents on their way to you, the Widow is waiting with an evac a mile out. You can do this. I've seen you do better." She reminded him cautiously, wincing herself when he managed to fling a chunk of building as big as she was off of his chest. The star right in the middle of the uniform shone in the late afternoon light as he took a deep breath, coughing out the dust from his lungs.
"You do care." Came crackling through the static on the line. It was a small miracle that the coms unit Nova had come up with was still working considering the damage both the coms and the Captain had taken over the course of the mission. There was a pained grunt and the Captain shifted his weight, pushing up to a kneeling position in the midst of the rubble. Eve stood up out of her own chair, planting her hands firmly on her desk right around the keyboard to her computer, staring holes into the image of him on the screen. He groaned as he got his feet under him, his back bowed and his breathing turning to ragged pants. His large hands found purchase against the large bricks of rubble, his entire body tensing like a bow string being drawn. His shoulders were scrunched up to nearly brush his ears and he slowly straightened up, fingers clenching into tight fists.
"Of course I care, stupid. Now get your ass in gear, Captain. Your shield is to your right, embedded in what remains of the wall there. You're going to need it. Three agents are coming from the North exit so your best escape route is…" Eve turned to look at her other analyst, a guy named Lewis Jacobson. He'd been a specialist before he'd been transferred onto her team after a mission gone wrong. She wasn't sure what she would do without his expertise and wasn't keen on finding out. He motioned to a hole in the wall that had been the South window on the building. The window had opened into an alley with a dumpster right below, a soft landing for the injured Captain. "what's left of the window behind you. There's a fifty foot drop into a dumpster, but it'll make a soft enough landing for you. As long as you get out of there, you'll probably be the only one to survive the fall."
"You're so good to me." He teased gently, even as he went against her instructions and turned to the opposite entrance.
"You're not going to listen to me, are you?" Eve muttered to herself, muting her coms with a deep sigh before she started calling out new orders to her team. "Get me a medical staff on standby, I want the Widow prepped for takeoff as soon as he gets his ass down there. Lewis, find me an alternate route out of there just in case. Nova, find out where the hell the other half of Strike Team: Delta is and tell him I want his ass on a platter for abandoning the mission. Get me a direct link to Hill, I want this all documented and I want disciplinary action as soon as we get them home! We're bringing them all home, come hell or high water. It's going to be another long night."
Turning back to her own screens and unmuting her comes, Eve watched as the Captain yanked his shield out of the wall with brute force, turning to square off against three HYDRA agents. The one on the far left was almost as big as the Captain himself and Eve sucked in a deep, calming breath, knowing she couldn't let her concern show. She was supposed to help him remember what he was capable of and get him home safe. Freaking out about who he was fighting would come later, when they were all stateside and in medical.
The man on the left, a short little man with a compact build, whipped out a cattle prod, a shiver running up Eve's spine as she ran a soft finger against her own side, where she'd been attacked with one. The cattle prods hurt like a bitch and HYDRA agents sure knew how to wield the damn things for maximum pain. Various missions and safe houses had been compromised when SHIELD had fallen and Eve hadn't been immune to the ramifications. Many good agents had been lost because of the information dump. Eve was one of the only ones who didn't blame the entire debacle on Captain Rogers or the Avengers.
"Cap, this isn't one of your best ideas. In fact, this might be in the running for the worst." Eve kept her voice calm and soothing, watching closely as one of the HYDRA team attacked, swinging a fist at the Captain like a moron. If they were all as stupid as that one, it could prove to be a fairly stable idea. However, the Captain had already been shot twice and quite literally beaten into the ground, not to mention the three floors of the building that had landed on his head not ten minutes ago. If he wasn't a little more careful, Eve would have to send the Widow in and no one wanted that. Especially not the Captain.
"Do I…. ever have… good ideas?" The Captain's rough voice bit out as he pummeled the man who attacked him. He did have a point. Most of his ideas were incredibly terrible and Eve had to explain why he managed to pull them off right under her nose to Maria Hill, who almost always burst into laughter by the end of Eve's colorful reports. The only good news about his repeated stupidity was that Eve avoided getting court marshalled when he went off track because it was to be expected at this point.
"Honestly? No. So maybe you should listen to me this time and get out that goddamned window before I come through this microphone and beat you with it." She threatened, knowing it would only prove to amuse the super solider. His warm chuckle brought a small tilt to her lips as he threw the second HYDRA agent out the huge hole in the west wall, sending him right down to the unforgiving concrete below.
"I'll be out in a minute. Hold your horses, would ya?" He complained good-naturedly, grabbing the two remaining agents and smashing their heads together with little to no remorse. Yanking them back, he threw them into separate piles of debris, reaching for his shield as if he hadn't just blown her mission wide open once again. Once his shield was secure, he took a running jump at the window she'd wanted him out of originally, shield stretched out before him. The collision crumbled the rest of the wall, sending him falling with a cloud of dust before he slammed into the dumpster just as she said he would. Eve winced when he landed, but he just rolled to his feet and jumped out of the dumpster without really breaking stride, the only sign of the beating he'd taken a small limp and the sweat and blood that matted his hair. "Are you happy now?"
"Ecstatic." Eve bit out, letting her dry voice betray her annoyance. Muting her coms again, she shouted out a new set of orders. "Lewis, I want full coverage of any street he could possibly go down. You know how he is, get me aerial views of the entire city. Nova, get me names. I want to know who those assholes are and how they knew we were coming. I don't care whose databases you have to access to find out. Names, addresses, credit card numbers, I want it all. And Lewis, make sure that the Widow is granted access to restricted airspace. Two alternate routes, if necessary."
The room burst into motion as her team went to work doing as she asked, her own fingers tapping away at her keyboard as she flipped her coms on again. Eve watched from a distance as the Captain ran down one street after another, one hand pressed firmly into his side. He'd been grazed by a bullet and she felt a flicker of remorse for yelling at him when he was so obviously hurt. Too bad the Captain didn't respond any other way. He ignored most of what anyone said to him on the coms and she'd been his communication's specialist for the majority of his missions in the last five years. The fact that he still didn't listen to her had little to do with her as it did to do with his inability to follow a goddamned plan. He knew she had his best interest at heart, but he still insisted on breaking protocol and tempting death whenever he was out in the field.
There was a reason no one else would work with him anymore.
"Next intersection, take a left." Eve ordered, watching as he nodded slightly. He had no way to know if she could see him, but it was pretty obvious by that point that he didn't particularly care if she knew he would do what she wanted. She made no comment on that subject when he actually did turn, too relieved to come up with a smart ass remark. "You're going to come up on a three way intersection, keep going straight until you hit the dead end. You'll want to make a right there."
"Given that you've been mission control for me since I woke up, when do I actually get to meet you again?" The Captain had met her before. A few times, actually, not that he knew that. Or remember, she was sure. There wasn't much to see when it came to Evangeline St. James. She'd tried to tell him that more often than not, but he refused to listen to that either. They'd been arguing about meeting since her second mission with him. It came up no matter how much danger he was in or how injured he was. She was just lucky that she had a codename and hadn't blurted out her real name at any point in their meetings because he would find her if he had enough information.
He only knew her as Seraphim. Seraphim were the highest tier of angels in Christianity and it was an ongoing joke that ran with her name. After all, Evangeline literally had the word Angel in it. Nick had had a field day the moment he'd found out what her new code name was and Maria had snorted a milkshake out her nose. Eve herself had threatened to run the man who had given it to her, Greg Maddox, into a wall with his car after he'd spouted off the ridiculous nickname. It had, sadly, stuck.
"When you finally actually listen to what I tell you to do instead of going completely off the books." Eve informed the Captain clinically, checking the time on one of her open screens. She also switched her main screen to the Widow, who was sitting in the quinjet, her feet kicked up on the dash with some Russian ballet music blasting through the speakers. Obviously, she wasn't too worried that the Captain was over twenty minutes late for the rendezvous.
"I do listen. Just not the way you want me to." Eve switched back to the view of the Captain right as he took the turn she'd told him to. She typed out a quick message to the Widow to let her know that she was going to be up soon and the music in the quinjet fell silent. The serious woman who kicked major ass came back into play, her hands flying over the buttons and various controls of the plane so that it would be ready to take off as soon as the Captain made his appearance.
"You don't. Ever. Remember Botswana?" Eve asked distractedly. A quick message was typed out to Maria to let her know there was a serious ass chewing coming her way as well as a filed complaint against the Hawk, which was nothing new. She sent him a quick message as well, effectively chewing him out while informing him that she wanted contact as soon as he got the message. It was hard to get someone to pin the Hawk down no matter if he was on her mission or not because she was insistent on not meeting with the people she ran missions for. If they knew who she was, it would ruin their easy going banter in the field and compromise her objectivity.
"I listened to you!" The Captain complained, sliding into a wall as he took the turn at too high a speed. Eve snorted as she watched him attempt to regain his balance, fighting back a laugh when he almost fell over. He was off again without too much trouble, looking kind of like a cartoon character to her.
"Twenty feet, take a hard left and the quinjet will be in sight. And you went in when I told you not to, got blown up, and were in medical for a week and a half with a punctured lung." Eve reminded him. The Captain winced visibly at her sharp retort while Nova and Lewis snickered in the background, obviously enjoying the banter. Neither of them had spoken to him since Nova had taken over his coms for almost four months while Eve was in medical after the DC incident.
Apparently, Captain Rogers could be worse than he was on a normal basis with her. He'd almost gotten ten SHIELD agents killed before they'd finally wheeled Eve out of medical against the recommendations of her doctors to take over mission control and calm him down enough so he wouldn't jump into a burning building without his shield. He'd been almost subdued in the weeks after she was officially back as his communication's specialist, as if he could sense that she hadn't been at one hundred percent.
"And you didn't even visit me." The Captain complained as he turned onto the street holding the quinjet. Eve let out a relieved sigh as he ran through the doors, losing sight of him until Lewis changed the camera views to those within the quinjet. Eve switched her coms to talk to the entire jet, not too concerned about being heard by both of them.
There was a very good chance that Natasha Romanoff already knew who she was, not just her codename but her entire back story as well. The Black Widow didn't work under people she didn't know or trust and it was too much to ask of her to leave Eve's private life just that. Private. It was a little concerning to know that the assassin knew everything she could about her, but Eve tried to think of it as a good thing. At least she wasn't dead yet.
"You don't know that. You were unconscious for four days." Eve reminded the man as he dropped his shield against the wall and slumped into a seat. "Bring him home safe, Widow. And beat the Hawk up for me next time you see him."
Eve kept her voice convincingly light, even though she meant every word. She had visited the Captain as soon as he got stateside after Botswana, checking in on his health whenever she got the chance. She'd even left flowers at some point, not that he knew that. She wasn't a sign the card kind of gal. But she was someone who cared deeply about her agents and she would do the same for the Widow and the Hawk, though the Hawk tended to get more strongly worded letters than flowers. The Hawk always brought home strays and went off missions if he thought his moral standing was above her mission parameters, leaving her to clean up the messes he brought home with him. There was a reason he was the most written up agent in SHIELD history before the collapse.
"Will do, Seraphim." The Widow nodded towards the camera they were currently using to view the quinjet through and Eve felt herself relax into a small smile, dropping back into her desk chair for a deep, calming breath. Her tense muscles relaxed just a fraction as the adrenaline started to drain from her system. Missions like this one always shot her stress through the roof. She was always high strung when it came to the people she cared about being on dangerous missions. They're teams were predetermined and Eve hated when they split the Captain and the Widow up because they were her main objective. Strike Team: Delta was her other main team, though they worked together without coms a lot. The only difference between them was that she was Cap's primary communication's specialist and she could yell at him without fearing for her life. Yelling at the Widow or the Hawk always came with the fine printed chance of retaliation.
"Where did the Hawk get off to anyway?" The Captain asked open air, obviously talking to anyone who could give him an answer. Eve glanced at Nova, not surprised to see that she was tapping away furiously at her computer. Eve waited while the other woman worked, pressing her fingertips into her temples as a headache started to form from the lack of caffeine and/or adrenaline powering her. The Captain could go for days without sleep, he was enhanced enough that he had been running for the last thirteen hours and fifty three minutes straight, not to mention two days of recon before that. Eve wasn't enhanced by a secret super soldier serum and had been keeping herself going by pure adrenaline and about three gallons of coffee that was dropped off whenever she had a moment to take a sip.
"Looks like he's on his way back home. I'll contact him for you." Nova murmured in a low voice, making sure that she didn't pick up on the coms. The Captain hadn't been very impressed with Nova's communication's style when she'd run his missions for those few months. She was careful not to talk to him afterwards, no longer a huge fan of the man Eve got along with so well.
"Looks like he's being a dick." Eve informed the Widow and the Captain, the Widow letting out a smile at the assertion. The Captain laughed, groaning when it hurt him to do so. "He's alive, though, so that's good. I guess."
"Switching you over to the Hawk com link." Nova informed her, switching the feed on the big screen to the camera on the Hawk's vest. He was definitely in a car going somewhere, a nice one by the looks of the extensive leather interior and manual stick shift.
"Want to explain where the hell you went?" Eve snapped into his ear, gratified when he jumped at the sudden noise. She'd expected that much at least, since she didn't usually talk to him when he wasn't active. He was supposed to be active at the moment, which meant that she was more than willing to yell at him for leaving Cap and Widow on their own in the middle of a HYDRA mine field.
"I was stationed as a sniper, Seraphim. I sniped. Then I got the hell out of there, like you told me to." He sounded gruff and Eve let herself sympathize for a moment. The building he'd been on had been blown up. Obviously, he hadn't still been on it when it happened or they wouldn't even be having this conversation, but it was probably painful to be so close to that sort of thing.
"How bad are your injuries?" Eve asked, motioning for Lewis to get to work on contacting the right people. She sat up and started typing into her own computer, attempting to find the closest safe house to his position that hadn't been compromised in the internet leak. She'd need a med team close by as well and that was trickier than it had been two years ago.
"I'm perfectly fine." The Hawk lied. Eve could have figured it out without seeing his vitals flashing across the screen in front of her, staggering and jumping. The Captain's were fairly stable for being shot twice, but he was a super soldier with advanced healing and advanced durability. The Hawk was a normal man and he would need professional help before he could get to the Tower. He was probably losing a lot of blood and she had a limited time frame to get him to a safe house before he decided to take care of it himself. It only got worse if he did something like that.
"Found one!" Nova spun in her chair, sending Eve the files on the house she'd found that he could go to. Eve grinned when she realized the other woman was pulling out a specialized joy stick and taking over the Hawk's car's GPS and navigation system, driving him to the safe house herself through her own patented handheld device.
"Did you just fucking take over my car?!" The Hawk yelped in her ear, his nice Ford taking off into the distance.
"It's not my fault you decided to take a smart car, Hawk. You're being directed to a safe house with a med team already on standby. You even try to make a run for it and I'll make sure your life is hell for the next week at least. You know I have that power." Eve threatened, thinking of all the ways she could make him suffer. First and foremost, she'd take away his shooting range clearance. "Besides, I'm not the only one who isn't happy with you. The Widow is pretty annoyed that you missed the planned evac."
"I hate you all." The Hawk informed her brusquely, his car whipping around and speeding him towards the safe house Nova had found.
"Contact HQ when you're patched up and someone will come pick you up. Talk to you later, Hawk Man." Eve held up a hand to stop Nova from switching the feed, already knowing what was coming.
"Let Widow know I'm alive, Seraphim. And thanks." The last part was muttered almost too low to hear, but Eve could make out the words and felt an odd bit of affection for the difficult Hawk. He was just as much as pain in her ass as the Captain, though with a little less insistence on meeting her. Either way, she'd grown fond of all of her agents over the last five years and she smiled at the view as he leaned back a little, trying to get comfortable.
"I'll let them know you're going to be alright, Hawk. Get home safe." With that, she motioned to switch feeds, the quinjet splashing across the large screen.
"You know, you're scarily good with them." Nova offered, still driving the Hawk's car. She was two years younger than Evangeline, who was twenty seven, and was one of the best mechanics that Eve had ever worked with. They'd been together since the academy and got along fantastically. Nova was her roommate on one of the SHIELD designated floors of the Avengers Tower, both of them unfailingly loyal to the company that had saved their lives.
"You really are. Maybe you should be their leader." Lewis quipped, pulling up any good camera angles he could before deleting the evidence of their involvement in the takedown while simultaneously capitalizing on the good shots of the Captain fighting in his uniform. Lewis would sift through it all in the next few days and send the good shots to the PR rep, who would probably send them to magazines for good publicity. It was the same routine, different day.
Eve's work mates had each taken lunch breaks and two other short breaks each to shower, eat, and caffeinate, taking turns to run to the bathroom at different points in the mission. Eve had left the room twice for bathroom breaks and that was it, intent on staying on the coms and ensuring that the Captain did as he was told. Both of the other members of her team were phenomenal and she adored working with them, but the Captain was her responsibility, first and foremost. Even the other Avengers sometimes took a back burner.
"I haven't actually officially met any of them. I'm just their communication's specialist." Eve reminded the two, grimacing at her title. Something had to be written in the books and that was the best they'd been able to come up with for the title of her job.
"They would literally kill to meet you." Nova reminded her. The other woman wasn't wrong. The Captain had threatened a few times to have the Widow find her so they could meet face to face. Apparently, he thought of her as a close friends. She figured it had to do with keeping him alive and didn't think too much about it. Eve had no super powers, she was completely normal. Just a tech that had worked her way up the latter. The superheroes she worked with had much better things to do than track her down.
"Compartmentalization, my friends. I'm not allowed to meet them, they aren't allowed to meet me. Now, get the Hawk home safe and you're dismissed, Nova. Lewis, once you're finished with the wipe, you're free to go as well." Eve let out her last order, unmuting her coms and curling up like a cat in the comfortable chair she'd bought for long missions. Her back ached from keeping rigid for so long and she sighed in content when the Captain and the Widow's voices reached her ears. She listened to the low hum of their conversation, knowing that they both were aware she was listening, they had worked with her long enough to know that she wouldn't get off coms until they were back home, safe and sound. They were smart about their conversations and kept to topics they didn't care if she heard. Listening to the low hum of their voices helped calm her down immensely, the panic from the mission slowly melting away.
Lewis left after another fifteen minutes of wiping the different cameras and Nova got up about a half hour after. She scrounged up a blanket from under her desk and tucked it around Eve, who blinked wearily at her best friend, offering her a small smile. Nova just squeezed her shoulder and pressed a kiss into her wild curls before leaving the room, flicking the lights off as she went. The low lighting of the monitors were the only lights left on. Eve peeked every once and a while at the screens displaying the quinjet, watching the two agents she'd helped bring home talk to one another.
The hum of their voices lulled her into a sense of security and there she stayed until they were safely home.