The Corrupt and the Pure; Chapter 6: The Armor
[INFO]Title: The Corrupt and the Pure
Author: Del Rion (delrion.mail (at) gmail.com)
Fandom: The Avengers & Captain America (MCU)
Timeline: post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Genre: Drama, action, hurt/comfort
Rating: MA / FRAO
Characters: Steve Rogers (Captain America), Tony Stark (Iron Man). Also: Bruce Banner (Hulk), James “Bucky” Barnes (Winter Soldier), Clint Barton (Hawkeye), J.A.R.V.I.S., James “Rhodey” Rhodes (War Machine), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Thor, Sam Wilson (Falcon)
Pairing: Steve/Tony
Summary: When the Steve Rogers from an alternate universe appears in the middle of the Avengers Tower, two worlds are about to collide: one where Captain America became the tool of HYDRA and fell into a relationship with the hero Iron Man - and one where Tony and Steve are tentatively getting along. The latter are forced to reconsider their relationship when the Commander kidnaps Tony to replace his dead lover.
Complete.
Written for: A story commissioned by Susanne (ChickenHax @ AO3 / starkred @ Tumblr).
Warnings: Rape/non-con, major character death (alternate universe), graphic canonical violence, M/M sexual content, language.
~ ~ ~
Chapter 6: The Armor
His equivalent in this world was tough, but Steve was on a mission and he would not be deterred. Once the Captain lay still on the floor, blood running down his face, he turned to fetch his shield and his prize - only to realize all opposition had not yet been overcome: the armor he had tackled to the floor was leaning over Tony Stark’s still form.
With a growl of frustration, Steve looked around for his shield. He located it - still laying where he’d left it on the other side of the room after setting his trap for the Captain while Tony was still hiding in his lab.
While Tony’s armors did not often act on their own, he knew of J.A.R.V.I.S. and that the AI could make independent choices. There had been instances where Tony had been incapacitated and J.A.R.V.I.S. had shown his true colors and capabilities; the AI was capable of truly astonishing levels of destruction, all of it precise and calculated in order to reach the intended goal.
Not knowing how the J.A.R.V.I.S. of this world matched the one he had dealt with, Steve chose the next best thing and slowly walked over to the Captain’s fallen shield, picking it up. Identical to his own in weight and shape if not the paint job, it would work just as well as his own.
As he began to approach the armor, the helmet turned towards him, making it abundantly clear his presence had been noted. “Deactivate the Tranq-Ex,” the AI demanded through the armor’s speakers.
“Can’t do that yet,” Steve replied, moving closer.
“Cannot or will not?” J.A.R.V.I.S. challenged, the armor standing up and facing him. The repulsors whined, coming to life in blatant threat, and the right arm rose in one of Tony’s signature poses, ready to fire.
Briefly he wondered if Tony and the Captain had ever really fought each other. Did J.A.R.V.I.S. know how to best counter his attacks, or would Steve be facing a standard pattern detection? There was no way of knowing and he had wasted enough time on his copy as it was.
“I’m taking him with me,” Steve announced. “You can try to stop me, but you will fail.”
The AI did not reply verbally, firing instead. Steve brought up the shield, the blast bouncing off it, striking the armor in the shoulder, forcing it to take a step back and stumble in order not to land on top of Tony’s unconscious body.
Taking the opening, Steve charged, slamming shield first into the armor’s chest, barreling them both down to the floor. Without hesitation, knowing he might get shot or shocked at any second, he lifted the shield and turned it on its side, hands squeezing the edges hard as he brought it down against the armor’s chest, just beside the arc reactor, seeking to severe its connection to the rest of the armor.
He had tried to slice an arc reactor in two back in the day - and had come to regret it instantly. Sure, the following explosion had almost finished both him and Iron Man, but he still carried various old burn marks that ached in a certain kind of cool, damp weather, and there were so many other ways to dismantle the suit without getting both of them killed.
Not that there was a pilot inside right now, and he could not afford to forget that: man and machine moved differently. That was why the armor’s hand came up to punch him to the side, almost dislocating his jaw; he may have caused damage, but J.A.R.V.I.S. was much harder to shock and surprise than his creator, and the AI’s response time was that of an intelligent, sentient program.
With a deep gash in its chest spitting sparks, the armor got to its knees and then to its feet, aiming at Steve again, firing a repulsor. Steve twisted his body, getting the shield between himself and the blast just in time. The repulsor blast rebounded and hit a wall, carving a deep hole into it.
J.A.R.V.I.S. decided not to shoot at him for a third time, learning from his previous two attempts. It was more than could be said for Tony, who had spent countless battles tirelessly attempting to get past Steve’s defenses - even though Cap’s use of his shield had been legendary since WWII.
Some people never learned - or they thought that if they kept pounding on the unyielding obstacle long enough, it would eventually yield.
Steve was not about to wait that long, knowing that if he went head-to-head with J.A.R.V.I.S., he would lose.
Knowing it was a risk, not knowing how well aware the AI was of his fighting tactics, Steve sent the shield flying. It collided with the armor’s forehead before bouncing against the ceiling and back to his hand when he moved to the side to catch it. Then he sent it flying again, this time catching the armor’s knee with it, almost sending it tumbling down.
Third time, the armor tried to catch the shield, but was too slow to do more than scrape against the metal disc.
Smiling, Steve moved to intercept the shield once more - then sent it flying with much more force, right at the armor’s faceplate. While he knew J.A.R.V.I.S. could use the cameras in the room, the AI was likely to rely more on the sensors of the armor, and that put him into a similar position as a human pilot: reflexively, the armor’s arms moved up to block the shield.
It was too late to stop the projectile from striking its mark, sending the armor stumbling back, and Steve turned and ran, knowing this was his chance to go and fetch his own shield. As similar as the borrowed shield was, it was not the same, and besides, two weapons were always better than one.
He heard the Captain’s shield being flung to the side and the armor moving back to its feet - then taking flight. That surprised him, making his steps falter slightly, but he still continued on towards his shield, bending down to fetch it from the floor and turning around to face the armor which was now hovering in the relatively tight space of the room. What advantage J.A.R.V.I.S. thought he would have by flying, Steve did not know, but he had defeated Iron Man on open ground and he could do so in the confines of an enclosed space, especially when he knew the AI would try to avoid damaging the building around them.
The gash on the armor’s chest was still spitting sparks every now and then, but it seemed J.A.R.V.I.S. had contained the damage. It was also possible this armor was a stronger design, seeing as this Tony clearly didn’t rely on Extremis as much as his Tony had.
Steve decided it didn’t matter: he fought to win, to get back what he had lost, and no one would stand in his way as long as he was still breathing. He had come this far - had crossed the barrier between two realities - and he could almost taste Tony’s skin under his lips…
The telltale whine of a repulsor warned him before the armor fired at him again, giving him ample time to get out of the way. Another shot followed, almost grazing his shin, and Steve decided he had wasted enough time; the armor had a certain advantage at being airborne, even indoors, and they could continue the game of hit-and-miss until the Captain stirred and Tranq-Ex ran out of juice.
Steve was not about to lose this chance to reunite with his lover. He had come too far, burned the bridges behind him, and besides, Steve Rogers never gave up. Not as a 90-pound asthmatic weakling, and not as a 240-pound serum-enhanced soldier.
‘You gave up when you rolled onto your back for HYDRA, spread your legs, and stopped thinking of America.’ Tony had told him that once, in the moment of his own defeat, his armor broken as he lie on the ground, bloodied and full of spite. Steve had hit him, feeling angry - feeling ashamed - and relished the taste of copper as he had kissed Tony for the first time.
He had tried to fuck the fight out of Tony, but no matter how hard, the words had always been at the tip of Tony’s tongue, ready to remind him of his shortcomings, of what he had allowed HYDRA to twist him into over the years.
The poison in Tony’s words had not weakened even when his insults had grown father apart; stinging remarks had been exchanged for gentler reminders of his downfall, and for a time Steve had preferred the words filled with hatred and disdain. Tony’s anger had always been easier to dismiss than his true feelings.
With Tony’s death, Steve felt like he had lost the only chance at ever reclaiming the man he used to be. He hadn’t known whether that was even possible anymore, nor had he truly considered atonement, but there had been a small seed growing in the recesses of his mind that would have eventually blossomed into a choice to cut ties with HYDRA, even if it meant a life on the run or being forced to destroy HYDRA in its entirety to ensure his own survival.
Without Tony’s influence, he never would have grown to challenge HYDRA’s conditioning. Serving HYDRA’s cause hadn’t made his life intolerable. However, if they had thought removing Tony from the equation would make him fall back in line, they were sorely mistaken.
HYDRA ought to be thankful the Tesseract had transported him into a different world, because otherwise he would have burned them to the ground after reuniting with Tony. In this world, his counterpart had already finished the job for him - an added bonus to the fact that he had Tony within his grasp once more.
His resolve had never been harder: not HYDRA, Captain America, nor J.A.R.V.I.S. were going to stand in his way.
As the Iron Man armor fired at him once more, Steve dodged and leapt, one foot landing on an upturned couch, boosting him up. He spun as he jumped, sending the shield flying, and he saw it hitting the armor on the head as he landed back on the floor, dashing towards the Captain’s abandoned shield.
The armor was not out of the game yet, but the hit bought him enough time to pick up the identical weapon and use it to block the next two blasts from the repulsors as he rounded the room to locate his own shield once more. He saw it on the floor near the hovering armor and raced to it, the Captain’s shield raised to protect him as he set his foot down with extra force, the tip of his boot landing on the edge of the shield in a practiced move that bounced the shield into the air and into his waiting hand without him missing a beat.
It was time to end this.
With the armor right above him, Steve braced himself and jumped up. His left arm, bearing the borrowed shield, arched back and then forward, striking the armor with the edge of the vibranium disc. With the shield digging into the armor, just deep enough to keep him from falling, Steve struck with all his strength and brought his own shield against the nape of the armor’s neck.
His arms ached from the force of his strikes, but the shield cleaved the armor’s helmet clear off its mechanical shoulders, crashing them both to the floor. With control of the armor momentarily lost, J.A.R.V.I.S. was incapacitated. Steve knew better than to believe the battle was won before its time, however: a headless chicken could still run around, and the armor was functional even though its helmet had been removed. J.A.R.V.I.S. would switch to external cameras - or worse, bring up another armor - so there was no time to waste.
Steve dug into his pocket, ignoring the throbbing pain in his muscles. He would have time to recover once this was over, and allowing physical pain to interfere with a mission had long since been trained from his body. That had clearly been another advantage over his version inhabiting this world.
His fingers closed around a small device in his pocket: an EMP generator. It had a short range and no internal power supply, but depending on the external power source used, its range and effectiveness grew exponentially.
The first time Steve had used it on the Iron Man armor, the end result had been spectacular and fried anything within a five-mile radius. Since then, Tony had devised ways to block it, but he doubted they had anything remotely like it in this world. Even if they did, plugging the EMP into the arc reactor would disable J.A.R.V.I.S. long enough to ensure he made a clean getaway.
He pulled out the device, pressed on two of its sides to prompt it to open up like a flower, then slammed it smack-dab in the center of the armor’s chest. The petal-like extensions flattened out over the arc reactor and tiny little spikes burrowed down through the reactor’s cover like a half-dozen drills, having detected an energy source. The tiny blinking lights brightened and flashed on and off at an increasing pace, the charge growing. Steve rolled away from the EMP generator, anticipating the wave just before it darkened the room around him, blowing up a couple lamps before a silence grew thick around him, steadily expanding as the building’s functions died.
Slowly rising to his feet, Steve looked around, checking the dark room. The EMP had no effect on the surrounding blocks, limited to the building they were in. His eyes checked the Manhattan skyline for the first time, searching for differences, but he could find none that were too glaring.
He would have time for that later; right now, he needed to focus on leaving the premises, and he had limited time to do that.
As Steve’s eyes fell on Tony Stark’s unconscious form, a sudden wave of anxiousness filled him. He crouched down to blindly retrieve his shield, placing it on the magnetic hold at the back of his uniform while he kept his eyes on the prize.
“You will see,” Steve mused out loud, walking over to Tony. “You will see, just as he did,” he decided and dropped down on one knee, sliding his arms beneath the other’s body to pick him up.
As he rose, his eyes moved towards Captain America’s fallen figure. Steve could kill him easily, but taking out a defenseless target usually left a bad taste in his mouth, and he couldn’t be certain at this time that the Captain would even come to oppose him later.
He chose to leave him and kicked the Captain’s shield over to him as he passed it on his way to the door leading to the stairwell. If they crossed paths again and the Captain insisted on a fight, Steve would finish the job. Until then, his double did not pose an immediate threat.
Maybe he just didn’t want to kill himself, simple as that, but the Commander had done worse things and he dismissed that as the primary reason for letting the other Steve Rogers keep on breathing. After all, he had gotten what he came for, and that didn’t involve his double in any way.
to be continued…
Story info
Author: Del Rion (delrion.mail (at) gmail.com)
Fandom: The Avengers & Captain America (MCU)
Timeline: post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Genre: Drama, action, hurt/comfort
Rating: MA / FRAO
Characters: Steve Rogers (Captain America), Tony Stark (Iron Man). Also: Bruce Banner (Hulk), James “Bucky” Barnes (Winter Soldier), Clint Barton (Hawkeye), J.A.R.V.I.S., James “Rhodey” Rhodes (War Machine), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Thor, Sam Wilson (Falcon)
Pairing: Steve/Tony
Summary: When the Steve Rogers from an alternate universe appears in the middle of the Avengers Tower, two worlds are about to collide: one where Captain America became the tool of HYDRA and fell into a relationship with the hero Iron Man - and one where Tony and Steve are tentatively getting along. The latter are forced to reconsider their relationship when the Commander kidnaps Tony to replace his dead lover.
Complete.
Written for: A story commissioned by Susanne (ChickenHax @ AO3 / starkred @ Tumblr).
Warnings: Rape/non-con, major character death (alternate universe), graphic canonical violence, M/M sexual content, language.
~ ~ ~
Chapter 6: The Armor
His equivalent in this world was tough, but Steve was on a mission and he would not be deterred. Once the Captain lay still on the floor, blood running down his face, he turned to fetch his shield and his prize - only to realize all opposition had not yet been overcome: the armor he had tackled to the floor was leaning over Tony Stark’s still form.
With a growl of frustration, Steve looked around for his shield. He located it - still laying where he’d left it on the other side of the room after setting his trap for the Captain while Tony was still hiding in his lab.
While Tony’s armors did not often act on their own, he knew of J.A.R.V.I.S. and that the AI could make independent choices. There had been instances where Tony had been incapacitated and J.A.R.V.I.S. had shown his true colors and capabilities; the AI was capable of truly astonishing levels of destruction, all of it precise and calculated in order to reach the intended goal.
Not knowing how the J.A.R.V.I.S. of this world matched the one he had dealt with, Steve chose the next best thing and slowly walked over to the Captain’s fallen shield, picking it up. Identical to his own in weight and shape if not the paint job, it would work just as well as his own.
As he began to approach the armor, the helmet turned towards him, making it abundantly clear his presence had been noted. “Deactivate the Tranq-Ex,” the AI demanded through the armor’s speakers.
“Can’t do that yet,” Steve replied, moving closer.
“Cannot or will not?” J.A.R.V.I.S. challenged, the armor standing up and facing him. The repulsors whined, coming to life in blatant threat, and the right arm rose in one of Tony’s signature poses, ready to fire.
Briefly he wondered if Tony and the Captain had ever really fought each other. Did J.A.R.V.I.S. know how to best counter his attacks, or would Steve be facing a standard pattern detection? There was no way of knowing and he had wasted enough time on his copy as it was.
“I’m taking him with me,” Steve announced. “You can try to stop me, but you will fail.”
The AI did not reply verbally, firing instead. Steve brought up the shield, the blast bouncing off it, striking the armor in the shoulder, forcing it to take a step back and stumble in order not to land on top of Tony’s unconscious body.
Taking the opening, Steve charged, slamming shield first into the armor’s chest, barreling them both down to the floor. Without hesitation, knowing he might get shot or shocked at any second, he lifted the shield and turned it on its side, hands squeezing the edges hard as he brought it down against the armor’s chest, just beside the arc reactor, seeking to severe its connection to the rest of the armor.
He had tried to slice an arc reactor in two back in the day - and had come to regret it instantly. Sure, the following explosion had almost finished both him and Iron Man, but he still carried various old burn marks that ached in a certain kind of cool, damp weather, and there were so many other ways to dismantle the suit without getting both of them killed.
Not that there was a pilot inside right now, and he could not afford to forget that: man and machine moved differently. That was why the armor’s hand came up to punch him to the side, almost dislocating his jaw; he may have caused damage, but J.A.R.V.I.S. was much harder to shock and surprise than his creator, and the AI’s response time was that of an intelligent, sentient program.
With a deep gash in its chest spitting sparks, the armor got to its knees and then to its feet, aiming at Steve again, firing a repulsor. Steve twisted his body, getting the shield between himself and the blast just in time. The repulsor blast rebounded and hit a wall, carving a deep hole into it.
J.A.R.V.I.S. decided not to shoot at him for a third time, learning from his previous two attempts. It was more than could be said for Tony, who had spent countless battles tirelessly attempting to get past Steve’s defenses - even though Cap’s use of his shield had been legendary since WWII.
Some people never learned - or they thought that if they kept pounding on the unyielding obstacle long enough, it would eventually yield.
Steve was not about to wait that long, knowing that if he went head-to-head with J.A.R.V.I.S., he would lose.
Knowing it was a risk, not knowing how well aware the AI was of his fighting tactics, Steve sent the shield flying. It collided with the armor’s forehead before bouncing against the ceiling and back to his hand when he moved to the side to catch it. Then he sent it flying again, this time catching the armor’s knee with it, almost sending it tumbling down.
Third time, the armor tried to catch the shield, but was too slow to do more than scrape against the metal disc.
Smiling, Steve moved to intercept the shield once more - then sent it flying with much more force, right at the armor’s faceplate. While he knew J.A.R.V.I.S. could use the cameras in the room, the AI was likely to rely more on the sensors of the armor, and that put him into a similar position as a human pilot: reflexively, the armor’s arms moved up to block the shield.
It was too late to stop the projectile from striking its mark, sending the armor stumbling back, and Steve turned and ran, knowing this was his chance to go and fetch his own shield. As similar as the borrowed shield was, it was not the same, and besides, two weapons were always better than one.
He heard the Captain’s shield being flung to the side and the armor moving back to its feet - then taking flight. That surprised him, making his steps falter slightly, but he still continued on towards his shield, bending down to fetch it from the floor and turning around to face the armor which was now hovering in the relatively tight space of the room. What advantage J.A.R.V.I.S. thought he would have by flying, Steve did not know, but he had defeated Iron Man on open ground and he could do so in the confines of an enclosed space, especially when he knew the AI would try to avoid damaging the building around them.
The gash on the armor’s chest was still spitting sparks every now and then, but it seemed J.A.R.V.I.S. had contained the damage. It was also possible this armor was a stronger design, seeing as this Tony clearly didn’t rely on Extremis as much as his Tony had.
Steve decided it didn’t matter: he fought to win, to get back what he had lost, and no one would stand in his way as long as he was still breathing. He had come this far - had crossed the barrier between two realities - and he could almost taste Tony’s skin under his lips…
The telltale whine of a repulsor warned him before the armor fired at him again, giving him ample time to get out of the way. Another shot followed, almost grazing his shin, and Steve decided he had wasted enough time; the armor had a certain advantage at being airborne, even indoors, and they could continue the game of hit-and-miss until the Captain stirred and Tranq-Ex ran out of juice.
Steve was not about to lose this chance to reunite with his lover. He had come too far, burned the bridges behind him, and besides, Steve Rogers never gave up. Not as a 90-pound asthmatic weakling, and not as a 240-pound serum-enhanced soldier.
‘You gave up when you rolled onto your back for HYDRA, spread your legs, and stopped thinking of America.’ Tony had told him that once, in the moment of his own defeat, his armor broken as he lie on the ground, bloodied and full of spite. Steve had hit him, feeling angry - feeling ashamed - and relished the taste of copper as he had kissed Tony for the first time.
He had tried to fuck the fight out of Tony, but no matter how hard, the words had always been at the tip of Tony’s tongue, ready to remind him of his shortcomings, of what he had allowed HYDRA to twist him into over the years.
The poison in Tony’s words had not weakened even when his insults had grown father apart; stinging remarks had been exchanged for gentler reminders of his downfall, and for a time Steve had preferred the words filled with hatred and disdain. Tony’s anger had always been easier to dismiss than his true feelings.
With Tony’s death, Steve felt like he had lost the only chance at ever reclaiming the man he used to be. He hadn’t known whether that was even possible anymore, nor had he truly considered atonement, but there had been a small seed growing in the recesses of his mind that would have eventually blossomed into a choice to cut ties with HYDRA, even if it meant a life on the run or being forced to destroy HYDRA in its entirety to ensure his own survival.
Without Tony’s influence, he never would have grown to challenge HYDRA’s conditioning. Serving HYDRA’s cause hadn’t made his life intolerable. However, if they had thought removing Tony from the equation would make him fall back in line, they were sorely mistaken.
HYDRA ought to be thankful the Tesseract had transported him into a different world, because otherwise he would have burned them to the ground after reuniting with Tony. In this world, his counterpart had already finished the job for him - an added bonus to the fact that he had Tony within his grasp once more.
His resolve had never been harder: not HYDRA, Captain America, nor J.A.R.V.I.S. were going to stand in his way.
As the Iron Man armor fired at him once more, Steve dodged and leapt, one foot landing on an upturned couch, boosting him up. He spun as he jumped, sending the shield flying, and he saw it hitting the armor on the head as he landed back on the floor, dashing towards the Captain’s abandoned shield.
The armor was not out of the game yet, but the hit bought him enough time to pick up the identical weapon and use it to block the next two blasts from the repulsors as he rounded the room to locate his own shield once more. He saw it on the floor near the hovering armor and raced to it, the Captain’s shield raised to protect him as he set his foot down with extra force, the tip of his boot landing on the edge of the shield in a practiced move that bounced the shield into the air and into his waiting hand without him missing a beat.
It was time to end this.
With the armor right above him, Steve braced himself and jumped up. His left arm, bearing the borrowed shield, arched back and then forward, striking the armor with the edge of the vibranium disc. With the shield digging into the armor, just deep enough to keep him from falling, Steve struck with all his strength and brought his own shield against the nape of the armor’s neck.
His arms ached from the force of his strikes, but the shield cleaved the armor’s helmet clear off its mechanical shoulders, crashing them both to the floor. With control of the armor momentarily lost, J.A.R.V.I.S. was incapacitated. Steve knew better than to believe the battle was won before its time, however: a headless chicken could still run around, and the armor was functional even though its helmet had been removed. J.A.R.V.I.S. would switch to external cameras - or worse, bring up another armor - so there was no time to waste.
Steve dug into his pocket, ignoring the throbbing pain in his muscles. He would have time to recover once this was over, and allowing physical pain to interfere with a mission had long since been trained from his body. That had clearly been another advantage over his version inhabiting this world.
His fingers closed around a small device in his pocket: an EMP generator. It had a short range and no internal power supply, but depending on the external power source used, its range and effectiveness grew exponentially.
The first time Steve had used it on the Iron Man armor, the end result had been spectacular and fried anything within a five-mile radius. Since then, Tony had devised ways to block it, but he doubted they had anything remotely like it in this world. Even if they did, plugging the EMP into the arc reactor would disable J.A.R.V.I.S. long enough to ensure he made a clean getaway.
He pulled out the device, pressed on two of its sides to prompt it to open up like a flower, then slammed it smack-dab in the center of the armor’s chest. The petal-like extensions flattened out over the arc reactor and tiny little spikes burrowed down through the reactor’s cover like a half-dozen drills, having detected an energy source. The tiny blinking lights brightened and flashed on and off at an increasing pace, the charge growing. Steve rolled away from the EMP generator, anticipating the wave just before it darkened the room around him, blowing up a couple lamps before a silence grew thick around him, steadily expanding as the building’s functions died.
Slowly rising to his feet, Steve looked around, checking the dark room. The EMP had no effect on the surrounding blocks, limited to the building they were in. His eyes checked the Manhattan skyline for the first time, searching for differences, but he could find none that were too glaring.
He would have time for that later; right now, he needed to focus on leaving the premises, and he had limited time to do that.
As Steve’s eyes fell on Tony Stark’s unconscious form, a sudden wave of anxiousness filled him. He crouched down to blindly retrieve his shield, placing it on the magnetic hold at the back of his uniform while he kept his eyes on the prize.
“You will see,” Steve mused out loud, walking over to Tony. “You will see, just as he did,” he decided and dropped down on one knee, sliding his arms beneath the other’s body to pick him up.
As he rose, his eyes moved towards Captain America’s fallen figure. Steve could kill him easily, but taking out a defenseless target usually left a bad taste in his mouth, and he couldn’t be certain at this time that the Captain would even come to oppose him later.
He chose to leave him and kicked the Captain’s shield over to him as he passed it on his way to the door leading to the stairwell. If they crossed paths again and the Captain insisted on a fight, Steve would finish the job. Until then, his double did not pose an immediate threat.
Maybe he just didn’t want to kill himself, simple as that, but the Commander had done worse things and he dismissed that as the primary reason for letting the other Steve Rogers keep on breathing. After all, he had gotten what he came for, and that didn’t involve his double in any way.
to be continued…
Story info