Waking up seventy years in the future was kind of like the first time Steve and the Commandos had run an op outside of the states. It was some little town in Estonia, he couldn't even remember the name of it now, where a few HYDRA operatives had been spotted sniffing around. It was an easy job, barely took two days, and one of the few they were allowed actual accommodations.

In those early days there hadn't been much of a need for secrecy, they hadn't done enough to be recognized on sight by just any HYDRA agent, and (with the exception of Dum Dum) they didn't look much like a stereotypical soldier, so the SSR was able to put them up in the only inn at town without too much worry of them compromising the mission. It was the downtime spent in the inn and walking through the town square that Steve found himself comparing the future too.

Estonia in the mid-40's and New York at the start of the twenty-first century weren't at all alike in any way but the deep sense of not belonging that they elicited in Steve. The air in that little countryside town had smelled so different from what he hadn't ever paid attention to back home, the people- even the ones who spoke English- spoke with a dialect too strange for him to always follow, and even the familiar foods, breads and fruits, staples that could be found anywhere in the world, tasted different.

And it was just the same in this weird future where cars didn't fly and people didn't live underwater. There was so much, too much, different. It was the worst kind of culture shock made even worse by the fact that this wasn't a temporary thing, there wasn't a home to return to after a long trip overseas. This place, this now, was forever.

But the one thing that hadn't changed even after almost a century was Steve's own ability to cope by distraction. Work was the easiest method, if he could find some job, no matter how small, to throw his entire focus and every bit of his energy into, he would be all right.

And luckily, an alien invasion had just wrecked what felt like half of Manhattan so there was plenty of work to be done around the city.

The cleanup was a harrowing job; the debris of an entire block of buildings jammed up most of Park Avenue, one of the enormous whale like creatures-Leviathans they were being called- was still draped over a half crumbled skyscraper several hundred feet off the ground, fires from exploded gas mains, detonated alien grenades, and crashed hovercars still burned unchecked, and the corpses and remnants of hundreds of said aliens and their varying weapons were scattered throughout the city. Laying about for any average Joe to make off with.

Stark had purchased some kind of damage control unit to help with the cleanup post battle and it was with them Steve worked most closely with, even if it was more a formality than anything else. He met with the coordinator only twice a day; once in the morning to check the grids to find which zone he'd be working in that day, and once in the evening to confirm a bit of fallen debris or poorly placed weapon hadn't done what seventy years in the ice and an alien invasion to boot hadn't been able to do. He was alone most of his days, shifting rubble and clearing building in the zones labeled too dangerous or unstable to be approached without significantly more manpower than the restoration crew already had. And it was nice, the work kept his mind occupied just as he'd intended, and by the end of his day he was always just worn out enough to sleep without dreams.

It wasn't a foolproof plan, the constant work. Being alone so many hours gave his mind plenty of time to wander, and while usually focusing on removing scorched debris in just the right way to keep from bringing it all down on his head was a suitable distraction, every now and then he got caught in a task dull enough his thoughts had nothing to do but venture into dangerous territory.

It was always the people that his thoughts went back to; the Colonel, the Commandos, Howard, Peggy, Bucky. They were gone, dead most of them but even the ones still alive weren't the men he'd know once.

And Peggy, god she was the worst of them. Beautiful even ninety years gone with lines carved deep in her face and those once immaculate victory rolls gone white and wispy, but with a memory he was told that failed her at irregular intervals. He hadn't gone to see her yet, couldn't bring himself to do it, even though he knew too well that with every day gone was another of the few she had left wasted. And lord did that thought hurt, because once she was gone, that was it, the last person of his time gone. Then there'd be no one, no one who'd been there with him, no one who'd he'd shared moments and memories with. They'd all be dead.

Some of those deaths he'd seen with his own eyes and relived every time he closed them. Some of them he'd only had the reports and battle briefings on. And some he didn't know, hadn't seen, couldn't confirm but they-he'd been lost, taken right from Steve's care, and after all this time and uncertainty, dead was the only state in which he could be.

There was blood in his hair.

He couldn't see it, wouldn't have been able to even with a mirror, the dark of his hair hid the red of the ICW's innards too well. But there was a lot of it, enough that it dripped down the back of his neck, seeped into the collar of his sleep shirt, trickled its way down his spine. He wanted to shiver from the sensation of it (and shiver for other reasons too) but any movement on his part would translate as weakness and they were in dangerous company.

"I thought we were clear on how things were meant to proceed."

Strucker was two paces ahead of him and as animated as Harry was stoic as he bickered with a wall of digital screens.

"We put a great amount of work deciding our timeline, and when it was approved you had nothing to say against it."

"I have no excuse," Strucker gave a cavalier shrug, too relaxed considering the events that had led them all to this room. "Tempers were hot and when I gave the order, I didn't expect my boy to be quite so…efficient."

Every eye fell on him, present and computerized, and Harry met the gaze of the one closest to him without shame.

It hadn't even been an hour, the bodies of the wizards and witches he'd slaughtered hadn't even begun to cool and somehow Strucker's fellow heads had already received words of the spontaneous turn of events and coordinated a video conference to hear the whole of it straight from Strucker's own mouth.

They weren't pleased with what they heard, it was an impulsive command the Baron had given and one that was sure to bring about some kind of consequence.

"We expect they'll retaliate?" one of the computerized faces said, a woman with a face too soft, too gentle for the organization she helped run. "Unless you managed to kill their entire ranks?"

"There are still a few of their organization lurking under rocks, waiting for safety to come around again. But I don't think them to be any reason for concern, they've been spread too thin already with the continued attacks of the task force which, after our hit on the recruiting center, are sure to increase exponentially.

"They can't fight two wars, not with their limited manpower and surely plummeting moral, and though they are cowards, they're not all idiots. The wizards will direct their resources toward the task force. To just about anyone they do appear to be the bigger threat, by the time they realize the error in their decision they'll be dead."

"That doesn't mean your actions are without consequences," spat the screen directly to their left, the man within known only as the Sheikh. "We are a collective head for good reason, to take such action without consulting the rest of us undermines each and every one of our positions."

"And yet there are times when a decision must be made in that moment, without chance to consult my colleagues. I'd hope you'd have the same faith in my decision making as I do yours."

There was a pause, then a third, a squirrely man with thick, black framed glasses, the Banker, said. "This union wouldn't work without such trust, but the step you made was a big one, the impact it has on all we've planned is enormous."

"Not so much as you'd think," Strucker refuted. "Cutting ties with our allies in the ICW had always been intended, and though we hadn't planned it quite so soon, we all were already very aware that there was no way a separation could be successfully imparted without a little violence.

"We continue exactly as planned, but now with a bit more hurry. My mages are ready, I blooded them just yesterday and they proved themselves twice over."

"My own asset is on standby," a man, aged well with pale blonde hair and eyes like two ice picks said. He was familiar, Harry had the feeling he'd met him before, but he kept his jaw tight and his gaze forward and he didn't allow an inkling of a reaction. "He hasn't been out in the field in a few, I'm sure he'd be eager for a mission."

"What of your reserve team, Baron?" the woman said.

"Strong and prepared for fieldwork. I've not sent them out yet but for this sort of job they're more than ready."

"We'd planned for the State of the Union," the Banker chipped in, "but if you intend to make a move sooner we would need to find and alternative, one equally as televised."

"That'll hardly pose a challenge," the familiar man said, "Ellis is a peacock, he's always finding a reason to get in front of a camera."

"There's been talk of a memorial to be held at the capital," the woman said. "To honor those who fell during the invasion."

"How soon?"

"A month from now, the death toll is still being counted. It'll be broadcasted nationwide, and of course Ellis will attend."

"A month then." Strucker hadn't yet lost that manic energy that had prompted him to order the deaths of his wizard allies, and this conversation only seemed to be worsening it. "A month and then we strike."

When the wizards they'd sent to retrieve the hoarded mages didn't return, Supreme Mugwump of the International Convention of Wizards, Babajide Akingbade, knew something had gone horribly wrong.

They'd been handpicked by the heads of each magical province, the very best aurors, hitwizards, and duelists to go and collect the soldiers they'd been promised. Casualties had been expected, they knew the force they were going up against, but for none to return?

"Should we send in the reserves?" asked the patriarch of the Macmillan family and one of close Akingbade's advisors. "They were meant to return near two hours ago."

"Give them a while longer," Akingbade said, striving for calm he didn't feel, "we knew this wouldn't be a quick or easy job. These aren't our usual muggles."

Perfectly timed, the fireplace at the head of the room roared green. The entirety of the ICW held their breath as they waited to see who crossed through. A moment passed. And then another. Until finally just one figure came tumbling from the flames.

He was hard to recognize at first, on the ground and curled up into himself as he was. But the red of his robes gave him away as one of the British aurors.

"Hemmings?" Macmillan had stood from his seat and leaned over the partition that looked down on the center of the room. He clearly recognized the auror. "Hemmings, where are the others?"

The man, no boy, he couldn't be much older than Macmillan's own son looked up and the entire room flinched. His robes held a dark shadow to them, but it wasn't until he revealed his ashen face that they realized it was blood. He was drenched in it, nearly every available bit of skin stained red, making the whites of his wide, terrified eyes stand out even more prominently in his face.

"Dead. Dead, they're all dead."

A tsunami of whispers swept the hall, then fell dead when Akingbade held up his hand. The boy wasn't done.

"I-I-I pretended, he killed Mullin and I hid under his body and he didn't see me, he couldn't find me. And the rest they fought and they tried and they died and I hid, I hid for so long." He tripped over a hiccupping sob, folded in on himself for a moment, but then he kept going, as if he had to get the words out. "He didn't see me. I thought I was safe. But then they found me, pulled me from under and I thought...I thought they would kill me, feed me to his monster. But they left me alive, pushed me through the fire so I could tell you..." He trailed off, body rattling from the force of his terror so hard he couldn't push out the words.

"Tell us what?" Akingbade prompted.

"The deal's off."

Macmillan had gone as pale as the boy. "The deal..."

"Is off. The mages belong to them now. If we try to retaliate, we'll meet the same fate as the others."

"They'll send the mages to kill us?" the man gaped. "They're wizards, our people, they wouldn't turn on us."

"They're his. They belong to the baron."

"We'll send more men this time. Twice as many. Triple."

"No," tears cut rivulets through the blood on his cheeks. "They'll die, and then they'll send him to finish the rest of us."

"Him?" Akingbade hadn't missed the nameless "him" the traumatized auror kept referring to. "Who is him?"

"Potter."

Directly opposite the rush of sound Hemming's first words had caused, this one sent a blanket of silence across the room.

"Harry Potter is alive, and he's angry."

There was something wrong with Harry. Something deeply, intrinsically wrong. Because he'd just slaughtered over a dozen men and women (some who he knew had family, children), he'd torn them free from their limbs, sicced his vicious shadow monster on them, stood even now soaked through with their blood and he just felt cold.

Numb.

Nothing.

The commotion that followed the attack had finally died down, the heads of HYDRA had shelved the rest of their strategizing for a more reasonable hour, and Harry was finally given permission to return to his quarters to wash away the blood tugging uncomfortably at the tiny hairs on his skin.

That should have been his immediate priority, scrubbing down in the cramped shower cubicle with its odorless soap and lukewarm water. But he made it to the privacy of his quarters and his whole body sort of just locked up right there in the center of the room, as if now that he wasn't operating under the scrutiny of HYDRA and all of its heads, the link between his brain and his limbs shut off. He fell into a half kneel, half sit as his ability to stand fled just as quickly; his legs folded up beneath him, his back slumped against the edge of his cot, and his hands fisted on either side of his ruined pants.

And he stayed there.

For hours maybe, because that's what it felt, even if he had no way to measure the time within the four white, windowless walls of his prisonhome. And where before he couldn't shake the intruding faces of his victims, now he couldn't even picture them. Because whatever had laid waste to that highly trained team of wizards and ICW delegates hadn't been him.

It had been his hand, his wand, his magic but he'd been led, possessed, by an energy and a power that was terrifyingly foreign even though he knew exactly from where it came.

"It worked."

There wasn't a chill to herald his arrival as there'd been before, Harry just looked up and Death was there.

"You can feel it, can't you quark? You nourished it, fed it the souls of those who wronged it, wronged you, and now our Heart does as intended."

His magic was bound, the collar reactivated before Diggory even hit the ground, but he still felt it, something not quite his magic vibrating in his bones. He'd told Hermione once that there didn't exist words that could describe it, that it was like trying to explain color to someone without sight, song to someone who couldn't hear sound. Words, as fleeting and meaningless as they could sometimes be, just weren't able.

"It's changing you, slowly, piece by little piece, but it's there. I can see it."

Harry quivered, just the once, the movement starting at the base of his spine and rattling all the way up to his clenched teeth. And for a minute he showed his hand, that awful feeling lurking just at the edge of numbness. Not guilt for the lives he'd taken or even the pride he should by all rights be feeling for doing HYDRA proud, no it was terror. Because he knew what he'd looked like drenched in those wizards' blood, knew what his allies saw when they'd looked at him, and it shook him to the marrow. Because the gore spattered image he'd become was the exact antithesis of everything he'd ever tried or wanted to be.

Death circled around Harry, came to a stop just before him, then knelt so they sat nearly level with each other. Harry wanted to flinch when he placed a cool, dry hand at the back of his neck, but the energy that required was more than he had.

"Release, quark. It's all right." The man, the entity, sat so close their foreheads nearly touched and their exhalations mingled between them. "Push it out, scream and rage and break something, there is no room for judgment between us. Not any longer. After all this is a time of mourning."

"What?" The word barely existed Harry had said it so quietly, but as close as they were Death still heard. "What are we mourning?"

"You." He flinched, but the hand at his neck didn't allow him to go far. "We mourn Harry Potter for he's dying at last."

There was that terror again, eeking through the cracks of his numbness, but finally there was something else. Anticipation.

"Let him go, let him end. And once he has, what's left of you will finally be worthy of calling himself my equal."

Harry's hands, still tangled in the fabric of his trousers, clenched until he felt the prick of his fingernails along his palms, that feeling rattling his bones was growing so strong it burned.

His collar was on.

They'd turned it back on before he turned it on them. They hadn't forgotten, he'd felt that awful contraction at the base of his skull when his magic was abruptly cut off from him.

His collar was on.

But he felt warm, not from the unreliable air conditioning unit he couldn't control, but from something inside him. And along his knuckles, across the top of his clenched fists, magic danced.

Steve hadn't had much contact with the Avengers post alien invasion. Thor had gone off world to deal with Loki, Barton sent off to recover from his brainwashing misadventure with Natasha to keep him company, while Banner and Stark were rooming together up in Stark Tower. Fighting off a hoard of aliens and the disgruntled god that led them was a great bonding experience, but it turned out they didn't have much in common outside of that.

So a visit from Natasha while he was dislodging the wreckage of a two hovercar pileup from the roof of the Helmsley Building was a surprise. Even if not an unwelcome one.

"They have machines to do all that for you now, you know." It was like she appeared from nowhere. If he didn't know any better, he'd think she could teleport, but he knew from experience even that made a very distinctive sound. "No need to do all the heavy lifting yourself."

"Elevator's down and we're thirty stories up," he said around a grunt as the main body of one chariot finally wrenched free of the bit of roof it'd caved through. "This was quicker than waiting for them to put together a rig. How did you get up here?"

"Walked same as you."

He cast a dubious look over her choice of footwear and completely unruffled appearance, then shook it off just as quick. If anyone could walk up thirty-five flights of stairs in a pair of heeled boots and not lose a single curl, it'd be Natasha.

"You come up all this way to chat?" he asked, focus already shifting to the next chariot, it'd been torn in half by something and he couldn't see the other half anywhere nearby.

"There's a job."

"I've already got one."

"It's big."

Steve paused a familiar trickle of dread starting in his gut. "Not more aliens?"

"Worse actually." She circled around so they were face to face. "How much do you know about the wizarding community?"

It was like a punch to the gut, the reminder of their existence. Outside of the stray, half formed thought, he didn't try to linger on the memories of wizards and magic and the boy who'd introduced him to it all. There was too much grief to unpack there, and it had already been established that Steve's preferred way of coping was by not.

"I feel like you already know." He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back on the half wall that protected any rooftop visitors from a thirty-story drop. "So why don't you tell me?"

Natasha quirked a little half smile. "Unconfirmed reports say they were working alongside HYDRA with the intent to double cross. The Commandos encountered them on the field a few times and remain the only force to return from such an encounter with all your men alive and intact," she recited. "There's no concrete evidence, but from your unprecedented success against wizards of HYDRA and a few redacted files, we suspect you might have worked directly with one or more at some point during the war. Close?"

"Expectedly. SHIELD has allies in the wizarding world?"

"Not for lack of trying. They're very insular, almost impossible to get a man in. Or at least they were."

Steve didn't like the sound of that. "Were?"

Natasha's head dipped to the side, she looked genuinely curious as she said. "You've been awake now almost a month. You haven't picked up a paper? Looked at the news?"

"I was a little caught up processing the whole waking up in a new century thing, and then there were-you know- the aliens and their aftermath to deal with."
"Maybe pick up a paper on the way home tonight. Or has anyone shown you the internet? Google?"

"I've got a working knowledge." He shrugged. "You said you have a job so what's it got to do with the wizards? You want me to be your man in?"

"Were, remember? There's been some...upheaval among the wizards, they're not so much a secret as they used to be."

Work on the crashed Chitauri vehicles completely forgotten, Steve moved closer to Natasha so as not to miss a single word. "What does that mean?"

"Almost four years ago there was an incident. The official story was an agricultural community somewhere in England was attacked by a couple of gangbangers, the casualties on both sides were high, both groups nearly wiped out. The farmers who survived received healthy reparations and their attackers locked away for good."

"Okay," Steve said, already sensing the 'but' sure to follow. "What's the real story?"

"The farmers were wizards. They'd been working that land for decades, hidden under serious spell work that kept any of their neighbors from knowing they even existed. But then the spells failed and the farmers in the surrounding area found a plot of land bigger than all of theirs combined right where it hadn't been when they'd gone to sleep that evening. They went to investigate, the wizards tried to drive them off their land, and things got out of hand.

"The ending stays the same, the wizards die and take most of their attackers with them." Too casual for the morbid tale, Natasha hopped up on the half wall Steve had been leaning against, not even sparing a glance to the steep drop right at her back. "That was the start of their exposing. The first recorded event of their secrecy spells and wards failing. But it didn't stop, didn't slow down.

"It started in England; entire homes and city blocks appearing from nowhere, encounters with suspicious figures in robes that always ended violently, a dragon flying over Wales. Word spread and then footage got out and the government couldn't keep covering it up.

"The conspiracist got ahold of it, started doing some digging and found decades of coverups where non-magicals were injured, had their minds meddled with, or outright killed at the hands of wizards. They formed a coalition with the intent of uncovering the truth and forcing measures into place to keep those without magic safe from this new sect of humans. It grew out of hand."

"Things of that nature usually do," Steve scoffed.

"They call themselves the Task Force of Traditional Biological Preservation, they started off mostly harmless with a few hundred in the British Isles but four years from their start and they're in the thousands. They have recruiting centers on nearly every continent and they're hunting wizards."

That dread in his gut was only getting worse, this was a story that was too familiar. "For what?"

"Registration, regulation, control is what they claim. They want to make wizards easily identifiable, restrict where they live, where they cast. But this isn't a sanctioned government entity, the only rules they have are the ones they impose upon themselves and there's no accountability among their ranks, things get out of hand very easily and people on both sides end up dead.

"SHIELD has done their best to clean up the mess but this task force is proving surprisingly difficult to snuff out and the wizards had been evading every offer of aid we extended. Turns out they'd made an alliance already with another entity, but it went bad, really bad from the sound of it, and now what's left of their government has come begging us to help fight enemies on both sides."

She was drawing it out on purpose, withholding that one last piece of information. "Who was the other entity, Natasha?"

Her eyes darted across his face, searching for something. He didn't know if she'd found it, but she gave him his answer anyway. "HYDRA."

Steve threw his head back and sighed.

HYDRA.

Of fucking course.

There were four wizards waiting for them back at SHIELD's New York headquarters, all dressed in pressed shirts and neat slacks rather than the robes Steve had been expecting. They were exceedingly polite, standing upon Steve and company's entrance and introducing themselves with firm handshakes all around. There was Babajide Akingbade, the wizard in charge, his right-hand Ernest Macmillan, and delegates from the American and Japanese ministries, Herron and Iko.

"You've met Director Fury," Maria Hill, Fury's new deputy said, taking over introductions as they took seats around the table. "We're joined by Agent Romanoff and Captain Rogers."

"Agent Romanoff, Captain Rogers," Akingbade acknowledged with a nod of his head. "We truly appreciate-"

"I'm sorry but you said Captain Rogers?" Herron cut in before her boss could get too deep into the pleasantries. "As in Captain Steve Rogers?"

"The one and the same," Steve confirmed.

Akingbade frowned, not bothering to hide his confusion. "I don't understand the significance."

America's delegate fluttered her hands nervously before folding them on the tabletop in an attempt to control herself. "Captain America, he fought in the muggles' second world war. But you were meant to be dead, have been for decades."

"I was found in the Arctic sometime around a month ago," Steve explained, only mildly put off by her strange behavior, "buried in ice and in some kind of stasis. I didn't think the wizarding world knew much of me."

"Most don't," Macmillan said, just as bewildered as Akingbade. "But you seem familiar with us?"

"Captain Rogers was brought on to work with you as he's dealt with wizards in the past, worked with one even," Natasha stepped in. Steve had given her, Fury and Hill a brief rundown of his encounters with magic on the way in to this meeting. "Of anyone in SHIELD he knows best what to expect from your world."

Understanding Steve didn't get washed over Akingbade's expression. "That must have been some sixty or so years ago? Sixty-four?"

"Closer to seventy."

"Who was your associate in the wizarding world? Out of curiosity."

Steve frowned, unsure of the man's sudden interest. "A dead man, like all the rest. Like I said it was close to seventy years ago and he was taken before the war's end. I doubt you'd know him."

"Yes, of course," Macmillan said. "Forgive us, we don't often here of our kind taking an interest in muggle wars, let alone aiding in them. Call it professional curiosity. But to the issue at hand."

Natasha nodded. "Your soured alliance with HYDRA."

"That exactly," Iko said. "We put our trust in them and during this...tumultuous time in our society, their betrayal is devastating."

"Why did you?" Steve asked evenly. "Put your trust in them? I've heard SHIELD offered their help during the early days of your crisis, but you chose the Nazis."

"We were ignorant," Akingbade said. "The wizarding world is far removed from muggle history, we didn't know the sort of men they were. And they came to us at our most vulnerable, offered us what looked like salvation, and we, in our desperation believed them so easily. He was good at it, their leader, at hiding what they were and what they'd done."

"Dressing the shit up in sweet perfumes and pretty disguises," the words sounded too bitter to be Herron's own, even as she said them. "He made it very easy to miss his true intentions."

Well, that did sound like HYDRA.

"What was the deal?" Hill asked. "What did they offer that made you jump into that alliance without doing any kind of homework on these people?"

"A new breed of wizards."

That was an answer absolutely none of them had been expecting. Even Natasha's carefully blank expression faltered long enough to show her surprise. "Excuse me?"

"Our magic is failing, you've seen this," Macmillan said. "The wards keeping us hidden and safe are falling and letting in the likes of this task force who are proving to be a threat. But what you haven't seen is the sickness. It's a plague, incredibly infectious and deadly. Casualties are high and the ones who do manage to survive lose their magic. We had no cure, not even the start of the solution, and we were dying; projections showed at the rate we were going our entire population would be wiped out in just a lifetime.

"But then Strucker came, walked right into our Ministry and he had a girl. She'd been a victim of the disease, survived but lost all ability to cast magic, but he'd fixed her, made her stronger, more powerful than an we've seen before. He had a solution to the greatest threat to our people and all he wanted in return was to study us, understand how our magic worked. How could we refuse him?"

"So what went wrong?"

Herron shrugged. "Nothing at first. We'd been working together for years, peaceably we thought, but then just a few months ago we began running into delays, new problems every day. They needed more wizards, more magic, more time and all the while the plague and the muggles were wiping us out. We went to them for answers and when they had nothing but excuses, we began talking off pulling out."

"That was when they attacked," Macmillan said. "The wizards whose magic we helped to restore, mages we call them, attacked us on their orders and wiped out the contingent we sent to renegotiate our alliance. They kept one alive to deliver the message that the alliance was broken.

"After, we could no longer reach them, the ports of communication and travel between us went dead. We suspect they've all been destroyed."

"So from what I'm gathering," Hill said slowly, "you spent years working with HYDRA, breeding- in your own words- a type of wizard more powerful than any you've seen before. And once you'd helped engineer an entire team of these...mages, they betray you, slaughter your men, and cut off all means of reaching them. Right so far?"

"So far," Akingbade sighed.

"And now you've come to us, after the worst of the damage has been done. Seeking aide in exchange for...what?"

"Your continued existence. We didn't see what he was before, the evil that man and his organization were capable of. But we do now and we're afraid because, with those mages, he can do anything he wants and no force on earth can stop them."

Natasha and Steve exchanged a loaded look. Not even three weeks post Loki and they were already looking at a new world-ending crisis.

Hill braced her hands on the table and let out one quiet, weary sigh before pulling the notepad she'd left mostly untouched closer to herself. "We're going to need a lot more intel. Starting with HYDRA, name every single person you ever had contact with."

"Just the two in charge, Strucker- Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, and his second in command Dr. List. The rest were medics, lab assistants, guards, we were never introduced."

"What of their location? Strucker did his work in house, right? And you had access. Where was it? As exact of a location as you can manage, please."

"We don't know."

Maria looked up from her notes. "You don't know?"

"Our two locations were connected via a magical travel network, floo, we spoke the assigned name of our locations, in this instance 'Strucker's Lab', stepped into the fireplace, and were transported to the connected fireplace."

"Fireplace," Maria repeated blankly. "You walked through fireplaces."

"It's a very common means of magical travel," Herron said defensively. "In most cases the addresses of each fireplace connected to the floo network is recorded by the Department of Magical Transportation. But as part of our agreement with Strucker, we were to leave no record of his exact location."

"And this never struck you as suspicious?"

"He had his secrets, so did we."

"Okay." Hill tapped her pen on the face of her notepad, the only sign of her frustration, before moving on. "Tell us more about these mages. How many had been successfully created by the time of the betrayal?"

"Twenty at the least. Most considered failed, but his last six showed promise."

"Failed how?"

Iko hesitated just a moment before answering. "In order to restore their magic, we drew from the power of healthy wizards, volunteers, like a transfusion of blood. It gave them the ability to draw on their innate ability to cast but they were changed, they took on the magical qualities of their donor. Say for instance the donor was particularly good at herbology-"

"Magical botany," Macmillan supplied before the question could be asked.

"-then they had some degree of control over plant life. If the donor was a potions master the resulting mage could manipulate the chemical makeup of plants, animals, humans. The transfusion took the innate magical ability of the donor and amplified it in the mage."

That sounded pretty familiar to Steve. "Good becomes great," he murmured, mostly to himself.

"Those sound plenty dangerous to me," Natasha said. "How did they constitute as failures?"

"Because they had just the one skill, more powerful than any spell like it, yes, but before our abilities were varied, near endless even if they packed less of a punch.

"Strucker suggested we find someone of old blood, whose magical lineage could date centuries. He believed that their magic would be more potent and so would offer a wider variety in the mages. We were able to find one such donor and from him came our six successful mages."

"But...?" Natasha prompted, sensing there was more to what they were saying.

"But the power was dark, deadly." Iko's voice was hushed as she spoke. "The donor's magic was rooted in death and when it went to the mages..."

"Bad became worse," Steve murmured.

"Exactly. They kill, they rot, they destroy. Their power is catastrophic."

"And the donor? He's still with Strucker so he could make more of these mages?"

Herron shook her head. "There's a limit to how many mages can be made from one wizard, like a blood transfusion, taking too much will kill the donor. Most other donors couldn't produce more than five, to try anymore would kill him."

"But they could try to find others like him?" Hill wondered. "What do you know about this donor? Do you have a name? Where he came from?"

Macmillan made to respond, but Akingbade beat him with a firm, "Nothing. All donors were pulled from a pool of volunteers, we knew none of them."

"Whole lot of nothing your giving us," Fury said, speaking up for the first time since the start of the meeting cum interrogation. "You expect us to do anything with the little you're offering?"

"He's dangerous," Macmillan said, desperation tinging his tone.

"Yeah, Strucker's dangerous, most HYDRA members are."

"No, the donor." The other three wizards gave their colleague sharp looks, but he ignored them, focus entirely on Fury. "The kind of magic this donor has to possess in order to create those mages is dangerous. Strucker might not be able to use him to create more mages, but he will still find some way to utilize him."

There was a long moment where no one spoke, Fury remained reclined in his seat sizing up Macmillan, searching for cracks.

"All right," he finally drawled, leaning forward to fold his arms on the table "let's negotiate."

There was a lot to think about after that meeting with the wizards. They didn't have much knowledge to offer, but what they did was damning. And with New York still cleaning itself up after the world's first alien invasion, the last thing Nick Fury wanted to be dealing with was the threat of a joint Nazi/mutant-wizard attack.

Days like these made that pipe dream of retirement so much more fucking tempting.

"I heard we had some high-profile visitors this afternoon."

Without even having to think, Fury was drawing the S&W from the folds of his trench coat and leveling at the motherfucker stupid enough to break into his private office.

At the other end of the barrel, Secretary of the World Security Council, Alexander Pierce, lounged in his seat, sipping at his finger of whiskey unbothered.

"Oh, it's this motherfucker." Fury tucked the Smith back in its holster and plucked up the glass Pierce had already poured for him. "Insight's lost your interest already?"

"It's been put on hold for the time being," Pierce shrugged. "A few new developments have come into play."

Fury snorted into his drink. "Fucking wizards."

"So it's true then? They accepted your offer?"

"Only after handing over the magical equivalent of the super soldier serum to a supposed to be extinct Nazi organization."

Pierce's nonchalant front was betrayed by the sharpness in his ice blue eyes, he was interested. "Sounds like a story."

Fury sunk into his seat with a sigh, there were only two people he'd ever allowed to see this unguarded, bone weary, human side of him. One had been skewered by an alien staff and the other sat across from him. "How much time do you have?"

"However much you need," Pierce crossed his leg over the other, getting comfortable, but his gaze never wavered from Fury. "Tell me everything."

A/N: Ya'll we did it. We stuck through all that doom and gloom and now it's time for...the good stuff.