when old faces come to haunt us

Emilia Vale

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She still wasn't used to it. Her reflection. She never imagined that there would come a time when she would look into a mirror and see an entirely different person staring back at her. It wasn't meant to be poetic or figurative or anything like that either. She literally looked nothing like herself anymore. She was a completely different person now with a completely different identity and she had a task to complete. If she didn't have to, she wouldn't do it, but Hydra had strategies for convincing even the most stubborn and hardheaded people to do their dirty work.

She was doing this for her family. She needed to keep them safe. That's what she kept on telling herself, and it was truthfully the only thing that kept her going. If she cooperated, and did everything that they asked her to do then no harm would come to them. She didn't want to do this, he seemed like a good person, but Hydra was giving her no other choice. She needed to help them take down Steve Rogers.

Steve sat, staring at the exhibit. Again.

He knew he should leave, should stop coming here so often. But he didn't know where else to go. The attack of the Chitauri had made for a break in the monotonous buzz that the future seemed to be full of, but battle didn't keep the memories away for long. Fights didn't last forever, and every lull in adrenaline bought the memories back again, reliable as the tide each day.

If he wanted, he could probably visit graves. But stone slabs would do nothing, at least the colour photos and short snippets of film reel held some life. Gravestones could never tell him much of Dumdum's future, aside this death date, and the flowers across Gabe's well kept patch of grass couldn't tell him what other great things he went on to do. The text across these walls could. And Steve tried to get lost in them, tried to see how he'd fit in in the lives his team mates went on to lead, but never quite managing.

There was one person it didn't mention. However painful it was to see Bucky and Peggy on those walls, last moments and achievements, there was nothing on her. Grace, the chorus girl he'd grown close to on all those tours, the girl he'd-

Well. He never got to say goodbye to her, never found much trace of her at all. The chorus line of his ridiculous show was never mentioned, her face not even in the background of the pictures on display. No one but him would notice the absence, but her absence was one of the starkest of all.

They'd been keeping tabs on him for a while now. It was easy to do considering they were concealed in plain sight. No one knew that Hydra still existed within SHIELD. The ones who did were already involved, and they all knew better than to say a word. Even the ones who did so unwillingly knew better. That was the category that she fell into. As unwilling as she was to complete this task, she knew that she didn't have much of a choice. If she didn't do this, they'd go after her family, and she wouldn't allow for that to happen. He seemed like a nice guy, but she didn't know him personally.

This was nothing personal for her. It was no skin off of her back. That was what she kept trying to tell herself anyway. If she kept trying to convince herself of that, she liked to think that she wouldn't feel guilty about what she was being forced to do. It was wishful thinking on her part really.

He'd been visiting the exhibit a lot recently. It was convenient for her. That was what she'd been told anyway. All she needed to do right now was have him notice her. She didn't necessarily need to approach him, he just had to see her. Everything would fall right into place once he saw her.

Now she just needed to figure out a way to get his attention.

The melancholy was threatening to pull him down again. Being surrounded by his old friend's faces was both reassuringly nostalgic- a confirmation that it actually happened, that he lived then and his past or his present wasn't just an illusion- and woefully miserable.

He rubbed his palms against his jeans, grounding himself with the harsh drag of denim against the rough callouses that came from his shield. It was time to go, no more of this for now. He could come back tomorrow, or maybe the next day. Maybe it was time to start weening off of the collection of memories and validation.

Steve sighed and hauled himself to his feet. He automatically reached up to adjust his cap as he weaved through the people milling about the exhibit, muttering his "excuse me"s and "pardon me, ma'am"s as he went.

He was leaving. If she was going to get his attention, she was going to have to act fast. She doubted that Hydra would be very happy if she reported back with no progress made whatsoever. She shuddered at the thought of what they might do to her, or worse, what they might do to her family.

She was quick to pull out her cellphone and started in the direction he was walking. She kept her eyes locked on the touch screen, and pretended to be completely enthralled with whatever was on it. Just as she'd hoped, she walked right on into him, a feigned apologetic expression written across her face as she looked to him with wide, blue eyes. "I'm so sorry! I really should have been watching where I was going." She said, mustering up a small smile.

Despite trying to weave through the crowd, Steve supposed he still wasn't quite used to his large frame when he ended up walking into a woman. He was so much broader, so much taller. When he went to sit on chairs they'd feel so much further away, when he moved through half open doors he had to turn where before he didn't...

He bought a hand up to the woman's arm, cupping her elbow automatically in case she'd lost her balance as the standard apologies spilled from his lips.

"Not at all, my fault entirely, m-"

The woman's face breached the rim of his cap when he glanced up and- It couldn't be, it couldn't.

It was impossible that she'd be here, after all these years, untouched by time and age and-

But then he was here, wasn't he?

His hand flexed on her elbow compulsively, squeezing gently before he dropped his hand and stepped back, eyes wide.

"Grace?" he asked, before his mind could convince him of the impossibility, that it was a relative, that it was anyone but the girl he'd loved.

He hadn't seen her face yet. The unfazed expression on his face as he started apologizing to her made that very clear. She knew that, the moment he did see her face, his demeanor would change entirely.

Hydra had given her a file to study before sending her out to complete the task. Inside were a few photos of the woman she now looked liked as well as a fact sheet and some background information on her. Her name was Grace. She was a chorus girl. The photos Hydra had of her were few and far between, but they clearly knew enough about her to know that she'd been important to Steve Rogers. Important enough to use as bait.

Her eyes widened slightly when he squeezed her arm, and she allowed her eyebrows to knit together in confusion as he spoke the woman's name. The woman whose face she now wore.

"Sorry?"