Scott Lang - Florida

The room's completely dark.

Scott stares around him, breathing hard, having just started out of a deep and dreamless sleep after hearing a loud THUNK from someplace. He's not sure if it was his imagination, a dream, or a real noise made by a real person, but it's always better to be safe than sorry; he gropes around on his nightstand for something to hit someone with, but finds only his phone and a mug that Cassie gave him.

He can't see it in the dark, but with a fond smile he remembers the words on the mug: All I Need In Life Are Caffeine and Mascara. Cassie given it to him because she thought "it was cute, and I thought it would make you think of me and smile, Daddy!" Maybe he'd regift that to her on her sixteenth birthday or something. Assuming people were still drinking from mugs by that time. You'd be hard pressed to come up with an invention to replace a drinking vessel, but then again you'd be hard pressed to create a suit that shrank people to the size of ants, so there. One never knew what the future held.

What's he even thinking about? Being up in the middle of the night sure does make him loopy.

THUNK!

Scott grabs the mug. That sure wasn't his imagination. He slides out of bed and moves for the the lightswitch, gripping the mug handle tightly. He's never used a mug as a weapon before, but he's sure he can figure it out. Besides, he doesn't have much of a choice.

The light switches on quite suddenly, and he finds himself standing with an arrow pressed against his chest. The mug shatters on the floor as he raises his hands into the air.

"Hi," says the archer, lowering his bow - and it's none other than Clint Barton himself, the Avenger they call Hawkeye. Scott stares in absolute amazement.

"Hawkeye?!" he gasps.

"When I'm not killing people," says that man, sticking his arrow back in his quiver, "I go by Clint. I gotta admit, I thought you'd have better security or something, whoever you are...Who are you, anyway?"

"Scott Lang," answers Scott eagerly, extending his hand.

"Never heard of him, but nice to meet you," says Clint, with a firm shake in return. "We're going to Germany."

"We're...um, excuse me?"

"I said, we're going to Germany," says Clint loudly, as if Scott is deaf, or maybe mentally impaired. "We gotta pick someone else up on the way, but we need you."

"Who's we? Who needs me?" Scott asks, stumbling over his words in his haste. "Is this about what happened at the Avengers facility? Because I am so, so sorry -"

He stops talking at the look on Clint's face.

"You were at the Avengers facility?" he gasps. "Now we really gotta talk. You know the location of that place is classified, right?"

"It was an accident," Scott said quickly, taking a step forward. In his eagerness he forgets about the mug he dropped on the floor, and a small piece of it drives itself into the arch of his foot.

"Ow!" he howls. "God, that hurt. I can't be Ant-Man anymore."

"You can't be what?"

"Ant-Man," Scott echoes. "Wait. Are you here because you need Scott Lang, or because you need Ant-Man? Because if you're here for Scott Lang, I've never even heard of Ant-Man before."

Clint looks at the ceiling and mutters something Scott can't hear. "Bandage that up and come on," he says aloud. "We can't wait any longer."

Peter Parker - New York

"This is amazing," Peter says. "This is amazing!"

"Try it out," says Tony Stark, (Tony Stark!) leaning back against his couch and massaging his forehead. "See what you think."

They're someplace, Peter isn't quite sure where - Mr. Stark called it a classified location and didn't say what it was exactly - and Peter Parker just suited up in a Stark-designed suit. Ever since Mr. Stark showed up at his Queens apartment a few hours ago, albeit strangely bruised and banged up, Peter's been high on adrenaline and admittedly low on common sense. But look, who wouldn't be?! He's wearing something born of the mind of Anthony Stark, and he'll be headed with him to Germany soon. He's still not exactly sure what he'll be doing in Germany, but really, does it matter?

"It's amazing!" Peter tells him again, fervently. "It feels incredible, Mr. Stark! I can't even begin to th-"

Tony's left eyebrow darts toward his hairline. "See that open window, Parker?"

"Yeah," says Peter, glancing at it out of the corner of his eye, "but -"

"Swing out of it, use your webby stuff or whatever. Try the suit out. Just stop talking at me, for God's sake." Stark closes his eyes as he speaks, rubbing his forehead and eyeing an unopened bottle of scotch on the corner table.

"Okay, sir," says Peter quickly. "Whatever you say!"

Wanda - Somewhere in Germany, several hours later

"So what's the plan exactly?" Wanda asks Clint.

They're in the white 12-passenger van Clint rented, on their way to meet Steve, Sam and Barnes. Scott Lang, the man Steve instructed Clint to recruit, is fast asleep in the backseat, after having talked Wanda and Clint's ears off on the flight from the US.

"Why exactly does he need us?"

Clint shrugs, eyes on the road. "There's a Quinjet at this airport we're headed to. Steve's trying to get there so that he can fly someplace, and he has to be at this place so that he can stop some guy from releasing some more Buckys into the wild."

Wanda stares at him. "More Buckys?"

Clint nods, glancing at her. "Yup."

"I thought he was the only one. If there are more, why have we never heard of them, or is Bucky not responsible for all the Winter Soldier appearances?"

Clint shrugs. "HYDRA's leaked files state that James Barnes was the Winter Soldier in every known assassination. These others are maybe not exactly like him. But they're more programmed assassins like him, except crazier, or something. I don't really understand, I'm sure Steve will explain once we see him."

"Crazier than Bucky?" asks Wanda, trying to think it through. "What does Steve need us for?"

Clint looks grim.

"He wouldn't say, exactly," he says. "But I've never known anyone with better intuition that Steve when it comes to this kind of thing. If he called us, that means that he thinks he needs us, and if he thinks he needs us than it's serious."

"Why couldn't we have flown a Quinjet to him, instead of flying commercially?" Wanda asks. "That way he wouldn't have to go to this airport to get it?"

Clint raises a skeptical eyebrow at her. "Look, you totally dominated Mr. Sharpie back at the facility, I acknowledge that. But there's no way we could have gotten a Quinjet out of there without him stopping us, plus Rhodey might have tried to come to the rescue, and blah blah blah. And there's nowhere else other than the facility that we could have gotten a Quinjet. Trust me, Steve thought all this through."

Wanda doesn't answer. She studies her hands, lying still in her lap; in her head, she can still see Vision's face when she turned on him, and though an android cannot have facial expressions she could have sworn he looked grieved for her.

Over the past few hours, she's been thinking, and she's come to realize something. As an omniscient being, Vision has more knowledge than anyone in the world could ever hope to possess at one time. But that does not mean he knows the future, and it does not mean that he is any wiser than a human. Perhaps he can predict it better than most, but Wanda has always believed that human intuition is more valuable than artificial intelligence (although that was, admittedly, before she'd met Stark). It was an algorithm created by an artificial intelligence that made S.H.I.E.L.D. think that they had the right to kill people they thought would become dangerous. (Yes, it was a HYDRA plan under the surface, but the people at S.H.I.E.L.D. had agreed to it).

As much as he might care about her, Vision cannot know what is best for her. If people choose to see a monster when they look at her, she cannot change their minds no matter how long she hides behind the excuse that they might. It is always unwise to make a decision based on fear - in this case, fear of the unknown, fear of rejection. That is really why she is here, by Clint's side. That is why she will fight for Steve. Not because she disagrees with Tony and the Accords, or because she hates being locked up (although both are the case), but because if she were to go the opposite way, and choose to stay locked in the compound and sign the Accords and go with whatever it is they want from her, she would be making that decision based on fear and fear alone.

She'd wanted this power that she now has for all the wrong reasons - revenge, hatred - but now that she actually has it, she can remedy all of that. She cannot be afraid any longer of the damage that she might cause, or the idea that people might hate her for what she is. For better or worse, she has her power, and she has become whatever that power makes her. She will always be that, and because she's the only one with that power, she has the responsibility to use it and to do what she can to save as many people as she can.

No one can defend the world against the new, rising threats better than she and the other Avengers. She understands that maybe better than anyone else on the team; she knows that she and Pietro were not the only people von Strucker experimented on, and that there are other enhanced threats in the world, and when they turn up, it will always be her responsibility to stop them, because she has this power, because she can stop them, and that any law that tries to tie her hands or take away her judgement in that regard is wrong.

So she will fight, and she will face whatever is coming. She will do what she is meant to do.

Sharon - En route to Saxony, a few hours later

In the years following his disappearance and preceding his rediscovery, the world had come to see Captain America one way: as a man who was a firm believer in the establishment, the government - after all, his name was Captain America. But Aunt Peggy had always painted a different picture of Steve, for Sharon and for anyone else who would listen. Sharon has been thinking about both Steve and Aunt Peggy almost nonstop the last few hours, and her picture of him as a man both from Aunt Peggy's eyes and her own is quite clear now.

He never believed in power structures just because they were power structures; he believed in them because he thought they were right. And if at any point he didn't think they were right, he'd go against them. His first official mission after he'd become Captain America was, Aunt Peggy had explained to Sharon, completely against orders. And he'd done it anyway, to save his friend and all those other men.

That was mostly why Sharon had given Steve the information on Barnes, because she'd heard Aunt Peggy talk about how much he meant to Steve. That's why she'd taken his shield and his gear, along with that of Sam Wilson, from the station in Berlin and was driving it to him now.

But there's another reason, one that has nothing to do with Aunt Peggy for once: after all, Sharon's conscience is the highest authority that she needs to answer to, not the CIA or anyone else, and her conscience is telling her this is the right thing to do. She believes in him, in everything he stands for. She suspects that one or another of her higher-ups is onto her, and there's no telling what's going to happen to her if that's the case, but it doesn't matter, because this is one of those things that she can't compromise on.

For better or worse, Sharon Carter has put her trust completely in Steve Rogers, and she doesn't regret it at all, not even a little.

James Rhodes - En route to Leipzig/Halle Airport, a few minutes later

It's not a long ride from the station in Berlin to the airport in Saxony, but it sure does feel that way.

According to the people that followed Sharon Carter, that's where Steve is headed, so that's where they will apprehend him and whoever he's recruited. They've got a solid team, Rhodes thinks, glancing around the jet. Tony's sitting silently by the window; Natasha is flying the jet (what can't that woman do?) Also present is King T'Challa of Wakanda, dressed in his black woven vibranium suit with the mask resting on his knee (Ross doesn't think it's a good idea for him to come after what happened in Bucharest, but he can't stop him); the oddly dressed person from Tony brought with him from Queens who still hasn't said anything (Spider-Man, Tony calls him - Rhodes doesn't know his real name, hasn't seen his face, and doesn't want to, because this is highly illegal and the less he knows the better), and the Vision, sans civilian clothing. Everyone's suited up, with the exception of Rhodes and Tony, and ready for action.

Tony is quieter than Rhodes has ever seen him. This conflict has clearly been taking its toll on him emotionally, as has his separation from Pepper. He probably hadn't realized exactly how much he leaned on her until he couldn't lean on her any longer. By his own acknowledgement, Rhodes knows he is no replacement for her, even though he's let Tony know time and time again that he'll be there for him.

Rhodes understands Tony better than anyone right now. He might have everyone in this jet on his side, but Tony's the one who is singlehandedly trying to take on the responsibility of this mess on his shoulders, including all of Steve's latest fuck-ups and the resulting split between the Avengers. He's the one who tried repeatedly to get Steve to sign without a fight, the one who wanted to bring in Steve himself because he was afraid someone else would hurt them. Everytime Rhodes really thinks about it, he's pissed at Steve for not just standing down for once.

Steve may be right as far as his argument goes. The Avengers are needed to save people, that's a given. But who's going to save the Avengers from themselves? Who's going to step in the next time Tony has a brilliant idea that he thinks will save the world - and he will - and keep him in check? It's a joke to think that the other Avengers will stop him - they did a pretty poor job of when Ultron was created and when Vision was created. Lucky for Tony, Vision didn't turn out evil or psychotic, but what if he had? The whole world would be destroyed by now, because the Avengers operated independently. And as for Barnes - well, he's an assassin. That man deserves to be six feet under for everything he's done.

Steve is a good man, and he's only doing what he's doing because he thinks it's right, but maybe he's too idealistic. Maybe that's blinding him to the real truth about this issue. He has never been the sort of man to back down because of pressure, or to do anything he doesn't think is explicitly right; Rhodes can respect that, but sometimes a little compromise is necessary. Things didn't have to come to this.

"10 more minutes," Natasha says from the front. "Get ready, team."

Sam - Leipzig/Halle Airport, same time

Sam tugs a strap over his shoulder, clicking it into place over his chest and feeling the familiar weight of his pack settle against his back. Beside him, Bucky's pulling on his gloves and Steve is fastening his helmet under his chin. Clint snaps his bow, and little red sparks dance off of Wanda's hands. Scott Lang is dressed in his weird red ant-suit and is sitting in the ground waiting for everyone else, helmet in hand.

Steve's face is set into a hard, grim expression. Sam hasn't seen that look on his face in a while, but he knows what it means - Steve is getting ready for a fight that he isn't looking forward to. Steve is an enigma to him when it comes to fighting - he hates killing and he avoids using lethal weapons whenever he can, yet he charges into every fight as if it's calling his name.

These Accords are absolute bullshit. Sam hasn't said it because he knows that Steve respects Tony, and he respects that. But it's absolutely the stupidest idea he's ever heard of, and both Tony and Ross' arguments in favor of the Accords are incredibly weak. Do any of the Avengers REALLY think that Tony is actually going to follow any of these rules? Tony does whatever the hell he wants whenever the fit seizes him, and his guilt is not going to change that. That woman, Charlie Spencer's mother, made it a whole hell of a lot worse. He's sorry that he lost her, but doesn't she realize that Charlie would have died just as surely if they hadn't been there? Along with - oh, just the entire world?

And the footage Ross showed of the disasters for which the Avengers had been present was just the cherry on top of the cake, intended to manipulate them into giving into their guilt. First, New York - that time the Avengers saved the world only from Loki and his minions, but from the government dropping a nuke on New York. Washington D.C. - the one time they saved millions of people from being gunned down by HYDRA. The list went on and on and on.

The bottom line was, without the Avengers' actions, the battles would still have had to be fought, and the consequences would have been a thousand times bigger than what they were. No one deserved to die, but they just couldn't save everyone, and the Accords would not help all those people. Not even close. Sam can't see any sense of the Accords, no matter how he looks at it. Vision's 'equation' only convinced him further - if the number of enhanced threats is growing, then why they hell should they back up and let the government decide if the Avengers are going to fight them? How else are they planning on dealing with them? There is no decision to make, no council that could save the world from collateral damage.

And he's not the only one that thinks this. Almost all these people are here because they agree with him. Wanda is very young, but she's been through a lifetime of grief and pain and they have aged her; she is more than capable of making a decision about this. Clint is protecting his family's anonymity. Barnes has no choice (although if he did, Sam thinks he might almost agree with the Accords. That man is hiding decades of guilt and grief under a relatively calm facade). The only loose thread here is Scott - he doesn't exactly seem to know what he's getting himself into, and Sam almost wishes he hadn't suggested that Steve call him, but they need as many people as they can get. Assuming Ross decides to send the official Avengers - aka the UN's new lackeys - after them, they'll have Stark and the whole kit and caboodle on their tail.

"Ready?" says Steve, picking up his shield.

Sam looks at him, remembering that moment two years ago when Steve stood in the control room at S.H.I.E.L.D. and addressed the entire compound, his speech stirring and full of conviction. Today is different; there is no speech in Steve now. There is only grim determination.

"Ready," he says with a nod.

"Ready," says Lang, springing to his feet.

"Ready," says Wanda.

"Ready," says Clint.

They all look at Barnes, who's looking at the pistol in his hand. He says nothing for a long moment; then he pulls the cartridge out of the pistol and drops it on the ground, crushing it under his foot.

"Ready," he says.

This story was revamped a little and will finally be updated next week. I got around to watching the film for the second time now that it's on DVD. Thank you for reading! I'd love your feedback.