Disclaimer: Not mine.

"Call D.C. This one's waited long enough." Coulson almost couldn't believe the words coming out of his own mouth, any more than he could believe the sight before him. The brightly-painted shield glowed through the ice, even in the faint lights of the flashlights. Coulson knew the pattern on the shield by heart—the rings of red and white, the dark blue core, and the white star. Even with the distortion of the ice, he would have recognized the emblem of the lost WWII hero.

"He wants to talk to you, sir," the aide said beside him, pressing a cellphone into Coulson's gloved hand.

He took the phone and held it to his ear, shoving it beneath the thick fur that lined his hood. "Coulson here."

"What exactly have you found, Coulson?" Fury's voice sounded calm, but Coulson had been working with the Director long enough to hear the undercurrent of excitement in the deep tones.

Coulson felt his cold face curve into a grin. "Captain America, sir."

"You've found Captain America? The Captain America?"

"Well, we've at least found his shield, Director," Coulson corrected. "It seems to have been trapped in some kind of aircraft that crashed in the ice."

"His shield. Well that's just great. You called me at three in the morning because you found a shield. What about a body, Coulson?" Fury demanded.

Coulson glanced at the men who had followed him into the frozen ship and gestured sharply, ordering them to direct their flashlights onto the mass of ice in the center of what had once been the ship bridge. The greenish-white glare of the flashlights flared against the ice, dazzling his eyes as he crouched by the shapeless mound. "Hold on, Director," he said into the phone before handing it to one of the other men. His feet slipped slightly on the frozen deck, and he grabbed at the ice with one hand, feeling the cold radiate through his thick glove.

The ice was murky to the point of being opaque, and at first Coulson couldn't see anything beyond the shield, which lay at the edge of the mound. Then he realized that the shadows that he thought were being cast onto the ice by the flashlights and his men were actually in the ice. "Hold the lights steady!" he ordered, and the other men walking around the mound stopped and stood in place. Coulson peered at the shadowy shapes trapped in the ice. Some were square or rectangular, or too thin or too thick to be a human body. Coulson frowned, searching the area by the shield, but found nothing useful.

He stood up with a sigh, his knees creaking in the cold. He glanced around the frozen ship, trying to recreate the crash in his mind. From what his team had already uncovered, it looked like the wings and tail had been blown off in the initial crash, while the bridge and the body of the ship had remained mostly intact. Seawater had flowed into the rents and tears, flooding the bridge and leaving behind a room of grotesque ice sculptures when the water had frozen—

Water, Coulson thought suddenly, of course! He had been looking in the wrong place, focusing on the objects resting directly on the deck, like the shield. But the shield was metal and would have sunk immediately as the water flooded the bridge, but a body—a body would initially float.

Coulson scrambled on top of the ice mound, snatching a flashlight from one of his aides. His knees slipped on his icy perch, but his fingers locked around a handhold in the ice, and he managed to hold himself steady.

And he had found Captain America. The body had floated, and apparently the water had frozen within a matter of hours if not minutes, because the body was only a few inches below the surface of the ice mound. Coulson could make out the lines of the long limbs, the way the head was thrown back so that the back arched slightly. One arm was out flung, as if the captain had been trying to reach his shield in his final moments. The other arm looked like it was wrapped across the lean stomach, and Coulson could clearly picture the captain's final moments, the force of the crash sending him flying into the air, one arm curling around in front to protect his face and chest from flying debris, the other reaching for his shield, like a dying warrior trying to hold onto his sword, before the sea swallowed both him and the ship, drowning them in oblivion.

For a moment Coulson couldn't move, frozen as surely as the body beneath him, but after a moment he shook his head, freeing himself from a daze. He waved his aide over and traded his flashlight for the cellphone. "He's here, Director," he informed Fury. He heard one of his team mutter an oath in disbelief.

"Is the body intact, Coulson?" Fury didn't bother to hide the excitement in his voice this time.

"Yes, sir," Coulson confirmed. "I'm looking right at him."

"I'm sending a team over tonight, Coulson," Fury said, and Coulson could hear the sudden flurry of activity at the other end of the line. "They'll help you and your men with cutting the body free and prepping it for the scientists. Make sure you don't damage it, though! Keep it frozen—that body might hold the key to the super-soldier serum."

"Yes, sir," Coulson repeated. Fury threw more instructions at him, but he wasn't really listening. When Fury finally ended the call, Coulson closed the phone absently and shoved it into his pocket. He patted the ice gently. "It's time to come home, Cap."

"Are you still here, Coulson?" The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent jumped in surprise and turned to face the other man. He hadn't heard Dr. Davidson approach. "Weren't you supposed to clock out hours ago?" Davidson continued, coming to stand beside him by the window.

Coulson shrugged sheepishly. "It's not every day you get to dig your childhood hero out of a glacier," he replied in his quiet voice. He tried to tuck the Captain America trading cards that he had been flipping through away into his pocket, but Davidson saw them and chuckled.

"Come on in, Phil," the scientist said, opening the door with his key card and ushering the smaller man inside before him.

"Really? I won't contaminate anything?"

Davidson shook his head. "No, not as long as you don't touch anything. Besides, I think we need you in here with us."

"Why?" Coulson asked in confusion, approaching the lab table almost hesitantly. A man and a woman in white coats—Davidson's assistants—held heat lamps in their hands, passing them slowly over the frozen body, thawing the thick layers of ice. They had already uncovered Captain America's head and most of his torso, leaving his legs still trapped by an inch or so of ice.

Davidson picked up his own heat lamp, turning his attention to a lump of ice that still held one of the captain's hands trapped against his stomach. "Because we need someone to remind us that this was once a living, breathing man, and not just a science experiment."

The female assistant looked up at Davidson in excitement. "The cadaver has been perfectly preserved from what we can tell, Doctor," she said in gleeful tones. "The dissection should prove illuminating—" She stopped abruptly, seeing both Davidson and Coulson frown at her. She cleared her throat nervously, flushing furiously. "And of course we'll treat Captain America's body with the greatest respect," she assured Coulson.

Coulson smiled at her. "I'm certain you will," he replied in the level tone that his aides had never disobeyed. "After all, he is one of the country's greatest heroes." Coulson moved around the table, stepping carefully over the electrical cords that powered the heat lamps surrounding the table until he stood by Captain America's head. The scientists had removed the winged hood, baring the frozen face. "My God," Coulson said in surprise, staring down at him. "He's so young."

The male assistant glanced up. "According to records, he was twenty-three when he went MIA."

Coulson nodded in agreement. "I know. I just—never imagined that he would look so young."

Davidson paused in his effort to gently work the stiff hand free from the clinging ice. "He might have been young, but he went through hell before he died," the scientist commented. He gestured to the remnants of the torn uniform. "We've found over a dozen deep lacerations, plus half of his ribs appear to be broken. And these just look like the wounds from the crash that killed him—we've found evidence of older, half-healed wounds, and most of them look like bullet wounds or burns." Davidson shook his head. "They must have pushed this kid really hard back in his day, Agent Coulson."

Coulson didn't need to look at the wounds on Captain America's body to realize that. As ugly as the gashes and bruises were, dark blue stains against the bluish-white skin, the signs of war and suffering were written on the lean face, in the way the blue lips were pressed firmly together, the clenching of the jaw. Coulson had known how old—how young—Captain America had been, had in fact memorized all of the hero's stats years ago when he was first given access to Project Rebirth's files. But Captain America had always seemed larger than life in his imagination. Now, though, seeing the body stretched out on the metal lab table, Coulson saw a kid who had had the hopes of the whole world placed on his shoulders, only to find the weight too heavy to bear.

"Ah ha!" Davidson said suddenly as the gloved hand suddenly came free. "There we go." The seventy-year-old cloth and leather fell apart as the scientist gently pulled the stiff arm up and away from the body. "It really is remarkable, though—there are absolutely no signs of decomposition of the body itself, even though the uniform has been disintegrating almost as soon as we uncover it."

"He was a remarkable person," Coulson offered in response.

The female assistant sniffed slightly. "I think it's actually a side effect of the super-soldier serum," she informed him in a patronizing tone. Coulson ignored her.

He knew he wasn't supposed to touch anything, but he found his hand inching towards Captain America's head. It's because he looks so young, Coulson decided, feeling a strange urge to comfort the dead man. Young and alone. The scientists were professionals, working on a case assigned to them by Director Fury, their one goal to find the secret of the serum locked in the dead vessel in front of them. Maybe Davidson was right—maybe Coulson was needed here, not to remind the scientists that they were working on a him and not an it, but to hold vigil over a fallen soldier and to guard his sleep until he could be delivered to his final resting place. Coulson gently brushed the fair hair away from the broad forehead, wincing slightly as he uncovered an ugly, open gash right at the hairline. The edges of the torn skin were ragged and tinged blue, the congealed blood a deep reddish-purple. Water droplets dripped from the blond hair, running down the pale face in streams stained red by the light of the heat lamps.

Coulson's fingertips were wet from the dead man's hair. He raised his hand to his lapel to brush them dry when he noticed something red on the tip of his finger. Thinking it was a drop of water reflecting the red lights of the lamps, he rubbed his finger against his thumb, smearing the red droplet across his finger. Frowning slightly, Coulson glanced down at the laceration across the broad forehead and wondered if the congealed blood was more red than purple now, or if his imagination was simply running away with him. Hesitantly he raised his hand to his mouth, touching his fingertip to his tongue.

He tasted the unmistakable tang of blood.

Coulson had a lot of experience with dead bodies, though most people passing him on the street wouldn't think so. He knew that bodies bled for some time after clinical death, but for a body to bleed seventy years after death? Admittedly he had never before had the chance to observe a body frozen in ice, but that seemed—impossible. His heart pounding, Coulson reached out, pressing his hand firmly against the captain's cold forehead and sliding it over the gash. A fine, thin layer of scabbing came off under his rough touch, and a narrow line of blood welled and oozed from the wound.

"Agent Coulson, please don't touch—" Dr. Davidson began to cry out in alarm, but he stopped when Coulson showed him his blood-smeared hand. Davidson dropped the cold hand he had been studying, letting it slap against the metal table. Coulson noticed that the hand and arm fell limply, slackly, no longer frozen and stiff.

Davidson rushed to the end of the table by the captain's head, running his own hand over the wound, staring in disbelief at the fresh, deep-red blood staining his fingers. "That's—that's not possible," he stammered, leaning heavily against the table.

Coulson realized he was grinning, his hands cupping Captain America's head as Davidson's weight made the table shift on its wheels. "He is a remarkable man," Coulson said in his quiet voice.

The two assistants noticed his use of the present tense and frowned in confusion, pausing in their movements. Davidson was shaking his head in denial, but he reached out and pressed two trembling fingers against the body's neck. His eyes widened. "My God," he breathed. "This man's alive!"

"What?" the woman shrieked in surprise as her companion gasped. The three scientists stared at the thawing body in shock and disbelief. Coulson gave them three seconds before he cleared his throat.

"Shouldn't you be trying to help him now?" he suggested quietly.

He watched in admiration as Dr. Davidson visibly pulled himself back together again and began snapping orders at his assistants, calling for a full medical team to come to the lab immediately over the base-wide conn. Coulson kept holding the captain's head as the scientists began to move frantically around the table, ramping up the heat of the lamps and checking the almost-negligible vital signs.

"This isn't possible," Davidson repeated, waiting for the med team to arrive.

Coulson shifted his fingers slightly and smiled. "His pulse is getting stronger," he commented calmly.

Davidson shook his head in concern. "Coulson, even if he is alive—and only God knows how that's possible—he's been frozen for seventy years! Hypothermia—the shock of the temperature change alone—the damage to his brain from lack of oxygen—there's no way we can revive him successfully!"

"Doc—" Coulson interrupted gently but firmly. "He'll make it."

Davidson looked at him and sighed as the med team rushed into the lab, followed by Director Fury himself. "You sound very certain about that," Davidson replied.

Coulson shrugged, feeling the weight of his trading cards shift in his jacket pocket. "He's Captain America. He'll make it."