The wind coming off the Potomac was cold. We stood at a quiet overlook a few miles down the river, far enough away to avoid the sirens, but close enough to see the grey pillar of smoke rising from the Triskelion.
Nick Fury was leaning against the stone railing. He was in civilian clothes, a plain dark hoodie and sunglasses. He just stared at the smoke. He looked older than I'd ever seen him.
"Decades," Fury said, his voice rough. "I spent my entire life building that network. Setting up the walls to keep the rest of the world safe."
"The walls were fine, Nick," I said, standing a few feet away. "The problem was you let the wolves live inside the house."
Fury turned his head slightly. "We could have salvaged it. Cut out Pierce and his people, kept the infrastructure. But you dumped the entire database onto the public web. Every black site, every undercover agent, every secret we had. You didn't just burn HYDRA down. You burned us with them."
"If I left the system intact, someone else would just slide right into Pierce's place," I told him. "You know how Washington works. They would have classified the whole thing, buried the truth, and kept the Helicarriers for themselves. It had to be pulled out by the roots."
Fury didn't argue. He just looked back at the burning remains of his life's work. He was angry, but he was a spy. He knew I was right.
Steve Rogers walked up the paved path toward us. He was covered in dirt, and his uniform was torn to shreds, but the suffocating weight he had been carrying for the last few days seemed gone.
Down near the tree line, sitting alone on a wooden bench, was Bucky. He wasn't wearing tactical gear anymore. Sam had given him a heavy jacket to cover the metal arm. He was just watching the water. He wasn't fixed not by a long shot but the empty, dead stare of the Winter Soldier was completely gone. He looked like a guy who had just woken up from a seventy years nightmare.
"Sam secured a truck," Steve said as he reached us. "We're going to get out of D.C. before the military completely locks down the perimeter."
"Keep him off the radar," I said, nodding toward Bucky. "The government is going to be looking for a scapegoat by tomorrow morning. They won't care that he was brainwashed."
"I know," Steve said. He looked at me, his expression tired but genuine. "Thank you, Adrian. For pulling him out of there. For... giving him his mind back."
"He was a prisoner of war," I said simply. "It was time someone sent him home."
Steve gave a tight nod. He turned and walked back down the path to his friend.
Maria Hill walked up a moment later. She looked exhausted. She stopped next to Fury and pulled her silver S.H.I.E.L.D. badge out of her pocket. She looked at it for a second, then tossed it into a nearby public trash can. It hit the bottom with a dull clatter.
"It's officially a freefall," Hill said, crossing her arms against the wind. "The intelligence community is blind. Without us monitoring the grid, there is a massive vacuum. A lot of very bad people are going to realize nobody is watching them anymore."
She looked at me. She wasn't angry, just deeply concerned about the logistics of the mess I had just created.
"It's going to be messy," I agreed, looking out at the city. "But those bad people were always there, Maria."
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