stands_for_hope | The Metropolis Dork Squad, Captain America, and the Falcon in... Angst, Death, and Taxes

The opportunity was right there in front of him, and he took it. "Our niece," he answered, then nodded down the stairs and started down at speed, practically jumping down each flight. If the building was empty, then they needed to be on the ground outside to finish mopping up.

There was one in the stairwell that he flattened with a single left-handed punch before he went on.

"Well," Clint said as he picked off one last agent, "that could've gone... both better and worse. Don't worry, I'll apologise to your boy."

But despite some plumes of smoke, everything had gone well. The roads needed repair, but the empty building had been a good choice. It didn't seem like there had been any outside casualties.

The last of the HYDRA agents were down and 'her boy' was doing his part in wrapping them up, using the handcuffs on the largest of them and the zip ties on the rest. After a couple, Falcon started helping him out and the two worked as a quite effective team.

Once the last of them was all trussed up, Superman was suddenly there beside them, looking over Lois as she did the same, rubbing her hand lightly on his stomach as he gave her a quick shake of the head (I'm fine) and then a firm kiss on the mouth.

...that took a couple of seconds before he pulled away to give Hawkeye an easy, if somewhat tired, smile.

"Want a ride down to the rest of them?"

Steve raced after him, knocking his shoulder against a wall at a particularly sharp turn as he pushed himself to keep up.

"What do you mean, 'niece'?! Bucky?!"

He swallowed.

"Jim?"

"Just don't tell me to clench up," he answered, bundling up his bow and his arrows before stepping up. "Sorry about the crazy circuitry-shooting thing. I figured it'd knock out. Worked on the Chitauri."

Jim. It was the 'right' name that made him pause. Made him decide. He took a breath and looked back at Steve. "Lois is Dum-Dum's granddaughter," he said. "With one of your chorus girls."

But he kept going - down the stairs and out into the open where... where more had happened than he'd thought. He looked around himself with eyes narrowed behind the goggles.

Steve stood there, slackjawed for a good second before putting on speed again to catch up.

"Is that why-- she's not really HYDRA, right? And... seriously? Dugan?"

Beat.

"Which one of the girls?"

Because, yes, he still remembered them all by name.

Clark scooped up Hawkeye and tightened his hold on Lois before flying them down into the now-peaceful battlefield where Falcon was pulling off his goggles and flopping down onto the remains of the bench now that everything was done. Once they were on the ground, Clark put them both down and turned to Hawkeye with a faint smile.

"I'll be fine. You couldn't have known."

Then he was looking around for one particular face, quirking up his face for a minute before putting his fingers to his lips to let out one hell of a whistle.

Falcon winced from his seat even as he threw off a tired salute.

"Nice work, Hawk. And, uh... Superman? That's what they call you, right?"

"You can all call me 'Kal', I think. We're... a little past formalities."

"She's no more Hydra than you are," he answered, but at hearing that whistle, he headed off toward Clark and Lois. His suit was hiding a couple of bullet grazes he'd gotten. Just flesh wounds and nothing to be worried about. They'd heal within the week, easy. "And I don't know which one. You'll have to ask her."

He vaulted over a piece of wreckage and found his friends there. Clark and Lois, both in one piece. Thank God. His shoulders lost a measure of tension and he reached up, pulling off both goggles and mask. "Good," he said quietly. "Everyone's all right."

Clint offered his hand in a handshake over to Sam. "Nice wings, Falcon. Just tell me we're not going for shawarma again. I like the stuff, but it's not a habit I wanna make."

Sam takes the hand and gives him a good shake before following it up with a firm shake of his head as well.

"Oh hell no. I want a damn steak, nice and rare. Maybe potatoes if I can get 'em."

Steve follows B--Jim through the wreckage until they get to the rest of the group and he takes a moment to look everyone over. No obvious or serious injuriest, about thirty or forty tied up HYDRA agents, and...

Lois runs right over and immediately starts looking him over, glomping his left arm mostly because she knows it can't be injured and she has to hug him right now.

"Thank Christ you're all right!"

Clark, on the other hand, gives him a look that says he can smell the wounds however small they might be and that he's going to attack him with the first aid kit as soon as they're back at the apartment. What comes out of his mouth, however, is just a contented sigh.

"I'm fine. It looks like... we actually pulled things off."

Then his head tilts to the side to look past Jim at Steve and he raises an eyebrow before his attention focuses on Jim again.

"Everything work out inside?"

"Yeah," he answered, his right hand lifted to cup the back of Lois' head. "I'm fine. We're all fine. Maybe a little bruised. Let's..."

He looked around again. "Let's clean up what of this we can. Then we'll see about getting everybody cleaned up and having a good meal."

"Sounds reasonable," Clint nodded. "At least get the stuff off the road, block off the streets if the cops haven't gotten there first?" He looked at the ground under their feet. "Man, they broke everything, didn't they."

"I may have had a talk with Captain Sawyer alerting her to the fact that this area was going to have some unusual activity," Clark says with a little smile before nodding to Lois. She passes her phone to him and he dials a familiar number before putting the device up to his ear.

"Sorry for any confusion. Miss Lane has been kind enough to lend me her phone. The area I mentioned the other night is now ready for police intervention."

He glanced around the battlefield for a moment before turning back to the phone.

"You're going to need a lot of paddywagons, Maggie. We've got close to forty HYDRA agents laid out here. Yeah, we. It's complicated. I'll come by with a statement later, if that works for you." A slight pause. "Thank you, Maggie."

And he closes the phone to hand it back to her.

"The police will be here in roughly five minutes. She 'advised' me that we might want to be clear by then."

Lois had taken the time in between to give Jim another hug, mostly because it was affirmation that he was both alive and there but at Clark's announcement, she lets out a huff of a sigh.

"I need to get back to my laptop. There is no way in hell I'm letting anyone else get the first byline on this."

Clark can't help but laugh a little.

Sam looked up then.

"That sounds like we need to get out of here. We, uh, wanna bring this rodeo someplace where we can all talk?"

Steve walks up to the rest of them, envying Lois in a way he doesn't particularly like about himself for how easily she can step into his space, how plain and simple her concern for him is. He doesn't begrudge it, exactly, but it makes something inside of him ache.

"Hawkeye," he says with a respectful nod towards the other man, then he turns to Superman. There's something there too, a familiarity that confuses him, but at least Superman looks as 'professional' about things as he's trying to be.

"Sam and I have a hotel room across town, if you'd all like to..."

Superman nods.

"We'll meet you there in an hour. That enough time, Lois?"

"Plenty," she agrees with a nod.

"And then we can talk?" and Steve does his best not to sound desperate, but the look from Sam says that he sounds just a little pathetic.

Superman and Lois both nod, but they turn to look at Jim for confirmation.

Jim looked over all of them and he nodded - and then he suggested, "And we'll go get some food afterward."

An hour. An hour to shower, scrub off, get bandaged, put on clothes that weren't thick leather...

He was going to get rid of the tac suit, he decided. There was no use pretending he was the Winter Soldier anymore. After this, he couldn't fool Hydra again. And that was fine. "Let's go."

Hawkeye nodded. "Let's go. If you guys don't mind, I'll come with you," he said, looking over at Steve and Sam. He had his own hotel room, but it was easier just to go with them.

Steve looked over at Sam.

"You mind flying back? The bike's only good for two."

Falcon stood up then and gave the assembled a grin.

"Don't need to give me an excuse to fly. And I'm gathering that this city's a fan of heroes in the sky. See you in a bit, Superman."

Superman throws off a playful salute as Sam takes to the sky. Steve, feeling all at once too hyped to function and too tired to argue, points over to where he'd stashed his bike. Thankfully, it wasn't anywhere the destruction had taken out.

"That's our ride."

He turned back to 'Jim' with a faint smile.

"You're explaining about our 'niece'."

Lois smirked a little and Steve could almost see Dugan's grin there and it made his chest hurt in the best kind of way.

Then he was turning around and heading for his bike.

Clark breathed out a sigh of relief before gathering up his three passengers.

"You know how this works."

Because they'd talk once they were back at the apartment.

...and then they were flying.

Jim watched Hawkeye follow Steve, and then he was airborne, and then he had his head leaning against Clark's shoulder. He was holding on with his left arm, the right a little sore - and a little bloody. His head ached, his heart ached, but he'd done something good. Hydra would think twice before trying to move in to Metropolis again, and Lois had all sorts of data from their 'interview.'

Once they landed, Jim said quietly, "I don't want to go. And I want to more than anything."

Clark slowed them a little once they got high enough not to attract attention, but he didn't like staying up that high too long; Lois got cold. Thankfully, it wasn't far to get to their apartment.

"You might regret it if you go. You'll definitely regret it if you don't go," he said gently.

Lois, who had honestly suffered the least out of everyone other than perhaps Hawkeye, patted his metal arm.

"The best part about going with Clark is you've got an immediate exit no matter what. No waiting."

Clark cleared his throat.

"And his wonderful company, of course."

Jim looked at both of them and gathered them into a hug again. "Both of you were great today. If you weren't a reporter, Lois, you could be an actress. And without you, the fight would've probably cost lives. Thank you."

He still wanted to shower. Still needed to get bandaged. But for now, he needed to come back to himself. Not the Soldier, not Bucky.

"Not the first time I've played a part for a story. Pulitzers don't win themselves," she said playfully before leaning into the hug. Clark did as well.

"Then again, I'm not the one who punched out the giant spider machines."

Clark shrugged, as if to say it was just one of his many skills, before leaning down and kissing into her hair. The smile went a bit lopsided as he turned to Jim.

"You need a shower, and then I'm going to attack you with that first aid kit."

Lois's eyes went wide as she realized something, she leaned up to peck Jim's cheek and Clark's right after, and then she was slipping away to get to her laptop. Clark watched her go with a grin before turning to Jim.

"I'll figure out where we should go for food while you're in."

He nodded, looking at both of them gratefully. "We can take turns in the shower. I'll... make it quick."

Quick but thorough, he amended mentally, and went to go clean off. Another latex glove for the sake of not getting his hand caught in his hair, and he scrubbed off, careful around the wounds - a few more than he'd expected. Two on his arm, one on his side that had gone deeper than he'd thought, and a nick on his leg that he'd not even felt. It must have been from the window, he decided when he saw it, a few small shards of glass clinging to his skin.

Soon enough, though, he and his clean hair (tied back instead of still in braids, he didn't anticipate needing to aim tonight) were ready to leave the bathroom in boxers and a towel around his shoulders. If he was going to get bandaged, more clothes would've meant more trouble. "Somebody else's turn," he said, dabbing at his jaw. "Do I need to shave again?"

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