Chapter 17

Chapter 17

"Why Hawkeye?" Steve asked. "I thought you wanted me in charge?"

"We do," Nick Fury said, his usually grim expression softening into one of sympathy. "But ever since Peggy died, you've been off your game. I'd usually place Natasha in charge, but…"

Nick's voice trailed off. They both glanced over to where Natasha sat polishing her gun. The small scar between her eye socket and eyeball had faded to a tiny pink dot, but ever since she'd woken up from her coma, something had been a little bit 'off.' None of them could quite put their finger on it, especially in light of Hawkeye's insistence there was nothing wrong with her. But at least Fury was taking Steve's reservations seriously.

"It wouldn't be fair to bust down Natasha," Fury said softly enough that Natasha couldn't hear. "And not do the same with you."

Fury was right. He had been off his game lately, finding himself in neighborhoods he hadn't visited in years with no memory of walking there and spacing out during training, earning more than a few bruises from Hawkeye and Thor. Ever since Peggy had died, he hadn't been able to sleep, hoping fervently when he did drift off he'd be reunited with her in his dreams and, instead of finding Peggy, being plagued with nightmare after nightmare of a village they'd walked into in occupied France during the Great War after Herr Klaiser had decimated it. Shapeshifters. The local villagers had whispered tales of creatures that would suck the brains out of the skulls of the locals and then assume their shapes. If Peggy was sending him intel from the other side, as she'd often joked she would do to make light of the fact she'd been dying, it wasn't that she wished him to pine for her passing.

"Hawkeye's a good man," Steve finally answered. "It will give him experience taking charge instead of always following someone else's lead."

The flawed Avenger with a checkered past, same as Natasha. As much of a pain in the backside as Tony Stark was with his narcissistic personality and tendency to go overboard on just about everything he did, Stark's loyalties had never been called into question. Thor was … Thor. And Banner was never really all that in control of damage the Hulk did whenever his alter-ego took over. But Clint 'Hawkeye' Barton had led a life of crime before being rehabilitated with a little gentle persuasion from the Black Widow. Clint's sole reason for towing the straight and narrow was sitting across the room, polishing her gun.

If Natasha proved unreliable in the line of fire, would it throw Hawkeye off his game, as well? His total trust in Natasha had already almost gotten him killed. Steve just hoped their de facto commander wouldn't be lulled into a false sense of security a second time.

"Let's get this over with," Fury said. He turned to the larger group. "All right, everyone. Listen up! As you all know, our grey-skinned lizard friends have not all left the building as we had all hoped. Some of them have decided to hang around and see if they can't regroup. What their plans are, nobody knows. All we have are puzzle pieces. Some of them pretty old puzzle pieces…"

Fury eyeballed Steve with his one good eye. Steve didn't see the humor in the situation.

"…and some of them pretty new. Doctor Banner. Do you care to tell us what you know?"

Bruce Banner stepped forward and hit the button on a remote control. The green button, Steve noted to himself. Images of the native Melanesian islanders they'd been forced to kill during the botched mission in the South Pacific leaped onto various screens around the room.

"Anybody notice anything peculiar about our victims?" Banner asked.

"They're all dead?" Tony Stark volunteered.

Banner raised one eyebrow at Tony Stark, but didn't grace his poor humor with an answer. He looked to Thor, then Natasha, before settling his gaze upon Hawkeye. The team leader for whatever mission Nick Fury was warming them up to go on.

"I never realized African-Americans could have blonde hair," Hawkeye said. He shot an apologetic glance at Nick Fury.

"Not African," Banner corrected him. "At least not for 35,000 years. These people are descended from a different sub-species of humans. Between 4-6% of the average Melanasian Islander's DNA is Denisovan Hominid. A race even older than homo sapiens and Neanderthal man. They carry a rare genetic sequence that went extinct except for isolated pockets of northern Europeans and Japanese cut off by glaciers from the rest of mankind. And a few isolated South Pacific islands."

Banner looked straight at Steve.

"Part of that extinct genetic sequence contains the allele for blonde hair."

"I'm a blonde," Thor protested.

"No kidding," Tony Stark muttered under his breath.

Even Steve got that joke. It was the first chuckle they'd elicited from him in weeks. The errant mirth disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, but not before leaving Thor looking from one teammate to the other, a perplexed expression upon his face.

"You find amusement at my expense?" Thor growled.

"No," Banner said. "Actually … that's why I called this meeting. Thor … how long have the Asgardians been visiting Earth?"

"Of that I'm not sure," Thor said. "It is said that the All Father's father's father, Búri, was licked out of a block of ice upon this world by the primordial cow, Auðumbla. But Búri died long before I was born. Even within the lifespan of those you humans call gods, that was a very long time ago."

"An ice age?" Tony Stark said, leaning forward in his seat and running his fingers through his goatee. He turned to Steve. "Perhaps this ancestor was revived from the ice like Steve was?"

"Doctor Erskine said the formula Red Skull ordered him to research was based upon Norse mythology," Steve said, leaning back in his seat and wracking his brains to remember what Erskine had told him about the origins of the super-soldier serum. He looked across the table at Thor. "Perhaps Erskine was on the trail of the same science that makes Asgardians, well, Asgardian?"

"I have undergone no treatment such as that described by Deputy Director Fury," Thor said. He looked at Steve and gave him an approving nod. "-I- would have been brave enough to undergo such a painful process such as that endured by Steve Rogers, but I can assure you many of my fellow Asgardians would not have tolerated such a treatment. Not, at least, without remembering it."

"Is the super-serum enhancement passed along to your children?" Hawkeye asked. Steve noted the way he looked at Natasha when he asked that question.

"The Infinity Formula," Nick Fury said, "the less complete version which is all we've been able to recreate from Doctor Erskine's research, wears off and needs to be replenished every few months. Only Steve's treatment has proven permanent."

"Any little Steve's running around we should know about?" Tony Stark asked, waggling his eyebrows.

"No." Steve glowered at the former playboy, whose baser impulses were only being held in check by the fact Miss Potts would dump his sorry mechanically-clad rear end in a heartbeat if Tony so much as glanced at another woman. Stark's bad behavior these days was relegated to snarky comments and failed attempts to drink Thor under the table.

"Because back in 1945 they didn't have paternity testing like they do now," Tony continued, ignoring the warning glance from Nick Fury. "I mean … if you went riding the pony bareback, you never know what's out there waiting to pop up and shout 'you owe me back child support."

"I said no!" Steve snapped.

"Is that why you've taken such an interest in my father's old personal assistant and her comely granddaughter," Stark kept right on taunting him, ignoring the warning glance from Nick Fury. "She disappeared shortly after your plane went down. Hmmm… it's awfully odd, the way you just integrated yourself into Peggy's family the minute you got back to the future."

"Enough!" Steve stood and pounded his fists upon the table, veins popping out of his neck as he tried to calm himself. Peggy wasn't here to defend her honor, but even had they taken their relationship to that level of intimacy before he'd been shot down, they'd have been in church the next morning tying the knot. Or as was the custom in 1945, pounded on the door to the nearest church and begged the minister to hitch them on the spot before they ran home to consummate their relationship, which is why he'd bought the ring the moment he'd realized his feelings for her weren't totally one-sided. Steve lowered his voice to an angry hiss.

"Unlike some low-life among us, some of us believe in waiting for the right woman before we, what is it you call it? Ride the pony."

Steve felt two pairs of hands reach out on either side to restrain him before he leaped over the table and snapped Tony Stark's neck. Nick Fury. And Thor. One of whom knew just how much Peggy had meant to him, the other who shared similar views of not forcing one's baser impulses upon a woman unless you intended to marry them.

Tony Stark's dark eyes twinkled with the challenge he had just issued. Pushing the envelope of what he could get away with. As always. Steve could see the information click in the cocky peacock's mind, his mouth going into a surprised 'o'. Next to him, Hawkeye did the same thing, while Natasha held a neutral expression. Stark looked at Hawkeye and gave him a wink.

"Well I'll be," Tony Stark said, dancing that razor's edge. "What we have here is a 90-year-old virgin."

Steve flushed, not sure if it was anger or embarrassment. Even back in 1945, that was the kind of admission you made proudly to your priest and your mother, while amongst your male friends you feigned experience. He'd been so appalled at the … things … openly displayed on modern television that he'd stopped watching it.

"Enough, Stark!" Nick Fury barked. "And that's an order! The last thing we need is you two at each other's throats again!"

"Guys!" Bruce Banner interrupted. "And … uh … lady. What I was getting at was that we don't know whether or not the changes wrought by the super-soldier serum will be passed along to the next generation. It appears that Steve's cells were changed on a molecular level, right down to his DNA, while the serum given to Clint, Natasha and Director Fury only enhances cells existing in the body at the time of treatment. In other words, the moment those cells die off and are replaced through natural mitosis, they're back to square one."

"And then there's the matter of who can successfully take the serum," Hawkeye interjected. "It only works in a very small percentage of those who take it."

Steve thought back to what had happened to Red Skull. Johann Schmidt had always blamed Erskine for the undesirable side effects of the serum, which had wrought the desired physiological enhancements, but at the expense of increasing his level of psychopathology and wreaking grotesque changes in his appearance. Erskine had been adamant that not only must his next test subject possess certain physical characteristics, traits he had taken with him to the grave, but also the correct psychological temperament as well.

"Doctor Erskine said the serum makes you more of what you already are," Steve finally said. "But he refused to disclose more."

"And we still don't know why," Banner said. He pointed to the images of the poor dead Melanesians who'd been hijacked by the Chitauri. "But the Nazi's were obsessed with restructuring German society to breed a perfect soldier, not just create them through training. And they performed horrific experiments upon people they didn't want to be a part of their society. Experiments which, to this day, do not make sense. And now all of a sudden the Chitauri are going after tow-headed aboriginals? Part of the equation has to do with genetics."

Thor tapped upon his chin, his expression thoughtful.

"By your leave, Director Fury," Thor said. "As soon as this next mission is completed, I would like to return to Asgard and research our people's visits here. I have never nurtured an affinity for the study of ancient history, but the All Father has."

"Thank you, Thor," Fury said. He crossed his arms in front of his chest in a gesture Steve had come to recognize as Fury would put up with no further antics. "And now we have a mission to brief for…"

X

Note: the Nazi's were obsessed with breeding a perfect German soldier. Heinrich Himmler set up a breeding program to increase the Aryan birthrate called the Lebensborn, a support system of financial assistance, maternity hospitals, and adoption for the wives of SS soldiers, unmarried young women, and the placement of 'genetically pure' orphans. Unmarried mothers of tall stature, good physical health, blonde hair and blue eyes who'd become pregnant by German soldiers with those same genetic characteristics were accepted into the program and made up approximately 60% of births. Blonde hair and blue eyes are both recessive genes, so the only way a child can inherit them is if –both- parents have so-called 'pure blood.' The Nazi's were obsessed with genetic purity.

There were 31-37 of these homes operated throughout occupied Europe, 9-15 of them in Norway as that was the country with the highest number of women with the desired 'Aryan' traits. As many as 20,000 'genetically pure' children were born. This was in addition to an additional 10,000 tow-headed Polish (and other) children kidnapped from occupied countries and brought to Germany to be 'germanized' in a separate program started by Himmler, a program with the same essential aim … to create a perfect Aryan race which could take over the Earth.

Although the Lebensborn was not coercive in nature … the young women who took part in the program did so voluntarily because they were better cared for than the surrounding population, who were often starving as a result of German occupation, many of the young women who entered the Lebensborn in Norway were –not- initially pregnant. They became so after being paired with specific German soldiers for the sole purpose of begetting genetically perfect Aryan offspring. Any child born who did not manifest those 'pure' features was expelled.

These facts are –real-. Not just some story cooked up for a superhero fanfiction!

Thanks for reading and be sure to hit that gold 'happy' star on your way out the door!  It will make my day :-)