35

Chapter 35Summary:

Stiwell's history.

Xandar calls for help.

Chapter Text

Before anyone could answer him, JARVIS spoke up. "Excuse me? Jasper Sitwell has entered the building and is asking to speak to Sir or… in his words… Agent Barton, Agent Romanov or Captain Rogers." Silence met his words. "If I May, he seems quite upset, I would say almost on the verge of a panic atta-"

"JARVIS?" Tony looked sharply at a corner of the room.

"I apologise, Sir, Agent Sitwell's comments caught me off-guard." JARVIS replied. "Oh, dear… He says that he had information regarding a threat against international security. He mentioned Thanos, Sir."

Clint stood up. "We'll go get him. Steve? Nat?"

"Coming." Both stood and joined Clint as he stalked from the room.

"Right, that's going to be awkward." Sam muttered.

"Oh?" Tony asked.

"Yeah. Nat and Steve threw him off a building to find out about HYDRA in the leadup to the Triskelion thing." Sam grimaced.

"Ouch…" Tony winced.

~~~

June 22nd 2012

"The verdict?" Pepper asked Howard, Tony, Bucky and Steve as they entered her office.

"Complicated." Tony sighed.

"Uncomplicate it… please…" Pepper sighed back.

"His parents were chosen by Peggy for the express purpose of going undercover, long-term undercover, with HYDRA way back in the late sixties, way before Jasper was even born. He was raised as a double agent without even knowing it. He confronted his parents when he overheard them meeting with Peggy. It was at that point that he decided to join the family business, so to speak. He went to HYDRA's Prep Academy, in the eighties and early nineties, and was slowly seduced by their dogma."

"Crap…"

"It wasn't until the 11th of January… 2014… and Cap and Nat throwing him off the roof of a twenty-storey building, that anything changed."

Pepper sat up quickly, her eyes wide. "What?"

"Yeah…." Tony sighed.

"It was less than an hour later that… HYDRA attacked and he was killed. Or so we thought." Steve added.

Bucky took over the explanation. "Apparently having HYDRA's weapon come at him with intent to kill him, gave him a wake-up-call. He survived and went to ground, we think that Peggy set up something for him, an off-book bug-out Id or something of that nature. He lived through Thanos' attack and the Snap, only to die in the Return. A driver swerved to miss a Returned child and took out his car." He shrugged. "He woke up, here in this timeline, early last year. Somehow, and we're not quite sure how, his name never came out when Fury and Coulson started cleaning out SHIELD. He stayed low for a while but admitted to bugging Coulson's flat and when he heard that I was involved in the chitauri invasion, he felt the need to investigate further. Steve, Nat and Clint not working for SHIELD set off some alarms and when Fury visited Coulson and mentioned the trip to the Norns and our debriefing, he felt that he needed to act."

"Has any of this been verified, in any way?"

"Yeah." Tony nodded. "Dad and I took a trip to see Peggy. The home said it was a good day, that she was recognising their staff, so we figured that we'd go straight to the source."

"And?"

"She backed him." Howard said from his wheelchair. Being in his mid-nineties had left the man frail, physically, but hadn't slowed his mind, at all. "She also added a few other pieces of information that, while unimportant to us, were very helpful to Coulson and Nick."

"I see…" Pepper narrowed her eyes and looked at the ceiling. "And what are we going to do with this information?"

"Sitwell wants out of SHIELD." Steve said.

Bucky shrugged, again. "He's not too sure about working with me, but even after everything that happened, he still trusts Coulson. He's asked to come on board with us and be isolated from any potential HYDRA contact. He says, if he sees them, he'll shoot them, on sight."

"Huh…" Pepper grunted. "Where are we putting him?"

"With me." Bucky grinned ferally. "He knows my triggers are gone, knows that the Winter Soldier can't be activated. Valkyrie's agreed to babysit, if I need to leave him for any reason. If he messes up, I'll deal with him. He's agreed to it."

"I think he wants someone else to be his moral compass." Steve put in.

"Right…" Pepper just shook her head. "Bucky? He's all yours. Try to keep him alive and unbroken. Please?"

"No promises." Bucky muttered.

~~~

August 6th 2013 (maybe… approximately...)

"I hope this works…" Denarian Saal grimaced as he tapped the connect symbol on his communications array. He was greeted by a buzz then a polite voice.

"You have reached Iron Technologies. May I ask who is calling?" The male voice asked.

"Denarian Saal. I need to speak with either Miss Rushmanov or Miss Nebula." Saal replied, his voice tense.

"One moment, Denarian, while I connect you to Miss Rushmanov." The voice informed him and a different tone buzzed over the connection.

"Saal?" Natashalie Rushmanov asked.

"Miss Rushmanov, we have a situation, here." Saal replied. "Thanos has arrived. He has given us one day to relinquish the Power Stone before he destroys the planet." He wasted no time in pleasantries.

"Give me half an hour to notify the team and call back." The call disconnected.

"Well…" Saal looked over to Nova Prime Rael. "That was… quick."

"Continue with assembling civilians for evacuation, Denarian." Rael barely glanced at him.

"Yes, ma'am." Saal turned his attention to directing ground troops as they emptied building after building.

Thirty-two minutes and he tapped the connect symbol again, this time Rushmanov's voice greeted him, instantly.

"Saal. We've got fighters from three locations here, ready to travel." Rushmanov said. "As well as fighters from Asgard and a small contingent of aerial fighters from the Ravagers and the Knowhere Installation."

"And how is that supposed to help us, Miss Rushmanov?" Saal asked. "Travel time between Terra and Xandar is approximately one-hundred-sixty hours."

"By conventional transport, yes." Rushmanov agreed. "But we have access to instantaneous portals. The people generating those portal would need a visual reference and we recommend that it be somewhere with enough space for roughly ten thousand ground troops and another thousand aerial fighters. Their transports vary in size from single-seat fighters to ships that are three and four times the size of what the Nova Corps provided to Nebula."

"I… I don't…" Saal took a deep breath. "How long until they're ready to travel?"

"The first wave of five hundred troops will be ready in two hours." Rushmanov replied. "And they'll continue to arrive, one wave every half hour. That will give enough time to disperse troops to other locations and for a strategy meeting of group leaders."

"Two hours?!" Saal gasped. "You can have five hundred fighters here within two hours?"

"We could have the entire force there inside two hours, but we're not prepared to push our portal makers beyond their comfort point, we may need them to transport injured and we will need them to get everyone home, again."

Saal exchanged stunned looks with Rael. Ten thousand troops moved from Terra to Xandar. Instantly.

Ten thousand troops in five hours…

Seven hours and forty-five minutes and Saal welcomed Rushmanov and Nebula as they stepped up onto a hastily erected stage. In front of that stage were nearly two hundred beings from probably a dozen worlds. Asgardians, Celestials, Sakaarans, Kronans and so many Terrans, that Saal guessed that they would account for nearly half the visiting forces.

"Thank you all for coming." Rushmanov spoke into the amplification system. "Thanos is currently holding at approximately one-hundred-thousand metres. At least his command ship is, anyway. The rest of his ship range from one-hundred-thousand to one-hundred-twenty-thousand metres," she told them. "We know from prior intelligence that he'll put a large force on the ground and only if that force looks to be in danger of failure, will he launch an aerial attack. And even then, a fair amount of his attack will be artillery fired from some of the larger ships…" for the next hour Rushmanov gave an in-depth briefing of how Thanos was likely to use his army. It was a surprisingly detailed briefing and had Saal and Rael reassessing Terra and its military prowess.

The rest of the night was spent getting as many civilians as possible out of the prospective warzone, as they possibly could. That turned out to be a higher percentage of the local population than either Saal or Rael had expected.

The disappointment on the face of Ebony Maw when Tony cut Cull Obsidian off at the neck was amusing to most who were watching, but it also signalled the start of Thanos' offensive against Xandar.

~~~