Daisy waved both hands in front of her. "Just so we're clear—my villa is full of women. Don't go dumping him on me."
"Then where's he supposed to live? I'm a director scraping by on a government salary—I don't own a villa." Nick Fury's face was dark with displeasure.
Daisy gave a quiet snort. Put a price tag on those secret bases of yours and you'd come out richer than Stark.
She scratched her cheek. "How about we send Cap back to his old place? He lived somewhere in Brooklyn, didn't he?"
Baldy looked thoroughly impatient. "That whole block's been turned into a museum. Did you even study your World War Two history?"
Honestly, Daisy didn't know the first thing about this world's version of the war. Church schools had looked down on Captain America—they considered enhancing the human body an affront to God...
New York had too many people and too many prying eyes; it was no place for him to lie low. The two of them agreed to find Captain America somewhere to live in Washington, DC.
They argued over the housing question for a good while, and in the end it was Daisy who came up short. Thick-skinned as she was, she still couldn't outlast the naturally gifted Baldy.
Fury went off to handle the paperwork—identity registration, a driver's license, a military ID, the works. That left Daisy to brief Captain America on the state of the modern world. It came down to which of the two of them was better looking: a perpetually grim, gloomy Baldy didn't exactly inspire warm feelings, whereas Daisy had a clear advantage on that front.
She watched Baldy turn and walk off, then went over to Captain America herself.
"I'm S.H.I.E.L.D. Level 8 agent Daisy Johnson. Captain—"
He cut her off gently before she could finish. "Call me Steve—assuming you all haven't changed how names work too much by now."
Plenty of Captain America's decisions left something to be desired, and his own strength didn't exactly tower over his peers. But there was no denying that his presence was beyond compare. It wasn't the affected, theatrical brooding of someone playing a part. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, looked a great deal like him, yet the two were worlds apart in bearing.
Here was a man who wasn't especially powerful, but whose character was beyond reproach.
In his own quiet way, he warmed and dissolved the darkness and the cold in the hearts of everyone around him.
His faith was solid as bedrock, and it spared him the anguish and the doubt that gnawed at other heroes. Among the world's superheroes, he was an outlier.
Iron Man lost his way. Spider-Man brooded. Superman, over in the next universe, hesitated, while Batman walked a tightrope between reason and madness. Only Captain America stayed as steadfast as the day he'd started. Every choice he made was his own, measured against his own standard of justice. Right or wrong, he never once strayed from his own heart.
A little dense. A little foolish. A little out of step with the times.
But that was exactly what made him precious. When everyone around you is smoking and tells you that you don't fit in unless you light up too, can you still say smoking's wrong? When everyone insists a couple of drinks before driving never hurt anyone, can you still say you won't touch a drop?
To hold to your principles when every last person around you is against you, and not give an inch—that was the thing about Captain America most worth admiring.
By K'un-Lun's reckoning, by the measure of the heart, Steve Rogers was the most resolute soul alive. No exceptions.
"All right, Steve. You probably won't care for the noise of New York. I've got a place in Washington—let me take you to see it first." Standing before such noble character, Daisy ultimately swallowed any mention of rent.
She did own a small apartment in Washington. She'd rented it when she first started the job, then bought it once she had the money. It wasn't large, but the key thing was that she'd converted the garage into a training room—which suited the current Captain America just fine.
Teleporting him there didn't feel quite right. Daisy waved a hand to the side, and an agent soon pulled up in a Chevrolet.
It was standard S.H.I.E.L.D. issue. She waved Cap into the car, and the two of them were soon driving out of New York.
Staring out at the wholly unfamiliar city, Captain America fell silent. But his sheer force of will was off the charts; he gathered himself in no time, then turned and asked Daisy with a smile, "Has women's status really risen this far? A couple of those agents seemed almost afraid of you."
Daisy didn't mention that two of those agents were Hydra—they'd simply inherited the average American's gift for face-blindness and never once recognized Cap.
She answered only the first question. "It has. The war cost a tremendous number of men their lives on the battlefield, and governments everywhere had no choice but to bring women into every industry. The global women's liberation movement won its victory in a way nobody had ever predicted."
"What kind of organization is S.H.I.E.L.D.?"
"It's the Strategic Scientific Reserve you used to serve in. After a fair amount of reshuffling, it became S.H.I.E.L.D.—officially, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."
Daisy skated over S.H.I.E.L.D.'s history in a handful of sentences. She didn't think Cap was ready yet to face Peggy Carter.
Hearing the name of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, Cap did go quiet for a moment. He let out a sigh. "So we won the war, then?"
"We did." Daisy answered breezily, then ran him through everything from the Cold War to the fall of the Eastern Bloc to the new millennium, skimming the surface of it all.
It was a 360 km (224 mi) drive, and she covered it in two hours flat. Back in Cap's day there'd been no such thing as a speed limit, and with his mind elsewhere, he simply assumed that these days you drove as fast as you pleased...
They stepped into Daisy's apartment. She hadn't been here in a long while, but she paid a cleaning service to come on schedule, so the place wasn't in any disarray.
More than the apartment itself, Captain America took to her training room. The equipment here couldn't compare to the Long Island villa, but by ordinary standards it was already lavish.
"I like it here. Thank you for your help."
Daisy shook his hand and said a cheerful goodbye. She had a mountain of things to deal with.
On her way out, she got the feeling someone was watching her—a gaze coming from the sky.
The frequency was nothing like anything on Earth, and it caught her off guard. Daisy looked up. Two ravens were circling high overhead, and that strange frequency was coming from them.
Odin's ravens? A dozen thoughts hit her at once. What's the old man getting at? Is he happy with how the script's playing out, or not?
No one offered her an answer. All she could do was stick to the plan and dutifully go hunt down Thor.
Back in New York again, she put the word out to everyone she knew to help with the search for Thor. She was so busy she kept driving right past her own front door without ever stopping in.
...
Midtown High School, the middle-school section. A clatter of footsteps signaled that the day's classes had finally ended.
"Lorna, are you really sure about this?" Red-haired Mary Jane whispered the question.
The moment Mary Jane had first heard Lorna talk about sneaking into the Principal's Office, she'd thought it sounded thrilling and had agreed in a heartbeat.
Both girls were bold to the point of recklessness. When they'd happened to spot Coulson hurrying off campus, the two of them had decided to dig into the secret behind it.
They'd waited an age for the final bell. Lorna sent off the bodyguard-chauffeur who'd come to pick her up, and the two of them dawdled around until night finally fell.