Clara emerged from the tunnel with a scowl deep in her expression. Her legs were shaking a little as the adrenaline wore off, and her shoulder was burning furiously. 'Jesus, what happened to you?' Bucky asked, seeing her appear from the door he and Walker had left through not long before.

'Sharon shot me,' she said dryly, moving past him to continue to the main road where she could see the blue and red flashing lights of medical responders.

'Sharon shot you?' he repeated, walking beside her.

'That's what I said, wasn't it?'

'I'm assuming you got in her way,' Bucky told her. Clara's jaw tightened, not seeing the humour in his joke. He sighed. 'What happened?'

'I was in her way,' Clara told him, earning a short burst of laughter, quickly shut off by the glare she gave him. 'It's not like I moved into the line of fire, Bucky. She shot me so she could get a clear shot on Karli and stop her from shooting Sam.'

'Well, she had to, right?'

'No, Bucky, she didn't have to shoot the superhuman with the ability to stop bullets,' she said, feeling more than irritated by his dismissal of her actions. 

'Maybe she forgot; it's not like she's used to having someone like that as an ally,' he offered.

'How about you stop making excuses for her, and actually listen to what I've been trying to tell you,' Clara snapped, stopping in the middle of the path. 'Something isn't right with Sharon. There's too many things that don't add up.'

'Okay, stop,' Bucky scowled, speaking as though scolding a child. 'Sharon's a good friend to me and Sam. She was there for us when nobody else was. She gave up everything to help us and Steve, so watch your mouth.'

Clara blinked back in surprise. She wanted to yell at him, scream until he finally listened to what she was trying to tell him, but in that moment, every ounce of willpower seemed to drain from her body. She was tired. She tired from the fight, and tired of losing. 'Oh...' Was all she could manage to verbalise.

'I trust Sharon with my life. Sam and I both do. Stop with all the crap about her not being who she seems - you don't even know her, Clara. You're just being paranoid.'

She broke eye contact with him, her shoulders dropping. 'I'm gonna go find a paramedic.'

Bucky sighed as she walked ahead, raising a hand and rubbing a palm over his eyes. 'Clara, wait-' 

Clara didn't wait, just carrying on down the road as she pressed her lips into a thin line, trying to stop her bottom lip shaking. His words stung more than the bullet had done, though that didn't help either, and she could feel the emotions start to get the better of her. 

'Clara!' He called out again. This time she did stop, but reluctantly.

'Yeah?' She asked, her voice tighter than usual as she faced him. With only a short distance separating them, Bucky could see the tears welling in her eyes. 

'I'm sorry we couldn't put her away,' he said earnestly. 'I know you needed that.'

'Yeah,' Clara sighed, beginning to feel a slight fatigue from holding the compression on her shoulder for so long, and from the multitude of new tricks she had tried out in the one fight. At least she wasn't bleeding out, though. 'I'm gonna pass out in, like, five minutes so...'

'Okay, come on,' he started, stepping towards her. 'We gotta get you to a hospital.'

'I know,' she grumbled, dragging her feet down the path until she reached the first paramedic she saw. 'Gunshot wound to the shoulder, minimal blood loss, but I'm gonna need you to take over. And I'm gonna need to sit down.' 

As Clara dropped to sit on the step of the ambulance, a little more heavily than she had meant to, and winced at the jolt running up her spine. After a moment of the young medic standing motionless in front of her, she looked up at him. 

He stared down at her shoulder, and the purple glow encasing it, his mouth agape. Clara sighed, really not wanting to have to explain anything to him. 'You have literally about five seconds until I take my hand away and blood starts staining your ambulance,' she told him.

Bucky waved a hand in front of the medic's face, who eventually snapped out of it. 'Sorry, I- Err... Let me just- Let me go and get my supervisor-' He stammered.

'It's a gunshot wound,' Clara said obviously. 'You know how to deal with that, no? It's no different with me than any other person. So please, just do what you usually would - preferably before I pass out.' 

'Oh, God, okay,' he said, looking a little pale himself as he climbed onto the ambulance, rummaging around for what he needed. Bucky stood a few metres away, watching Clara's eyes become heavier as she glared at the ground in front of her. 

'You need a hand?' He asked the medic, who was currently peering through the slowly fading purple, trying to assess the wound before removing the pressure around it. 

'Yes, from a hospital and a qualified team of surgeons,' he told Bucky. 'The bullet missed the brachial artery, but it's made a mess of the tissue. I can reduce the bleeding with compression, the same as you're doing now, but I can't perform field surgery.'

'Fine,' Clara sighed. 'Just wrap it up for now.'

'Wrap it up? Is she serious?' He asked Bucky, blinking in surprise. 

'Clara, you need to go to a hospital,' he repeated what the medic had said, as if that would convince her to do so. 

'I know,' she rolled her eyes. 'And I'll go to the doctors at S.H.I.E.L.D. when...' She trailed off, hearing someone speaking nearby, the chatter of the crowds surrounding them dying down. She lent sideways a little, peering around Bucky to see Sam talking to a group of the GRC senators he had rescued not long before.

Everyone was held with rapt attention, even the reporters pausing their never-ending questions in order to hear what the brand new Captain America had to say. 'You have to stop calling them terrorists,' Sam told them.

'What else would we call them?' The male senator asked, dumbfounded. 

'Your peacekeeping troops carrying weapons are forcing millions of people into settlements around the world, right?' Sam asked. 'What do you think those people are gonna call you? These labels; "terrorists," "refugee," "thug," they're often used to get around the question "why." '

'Those settlements that happened five years ago - do you think it is fair for governments to have to support them?' Another senator asked, her hair already neatened after the event they had gone through.

'Yes,' Sam said, the word spoken firmly, no hesitation about it. 

'And the people who reappeared only to find someone else living in their family home, they just end up homeless?' The man asked. 'You have no idea how complicated this situation is.' 

'You know what? You're right,' Sam agreed. 'And that's a good thing. We finally have a common struggle. For once, all the people who've been begging - and I mean literally begging for you to feel how hard any given day is... Now you know. How did it feel to be helpless?' 

He paused for a moment, letting the words sink in. 'If you could remember what it was like to be helpless, and face a force so powerful it could erase half the planet, you would know that you're about to have the exact same impact. This isn't about easy decisions, Senator.'

'You just don't understand,' he scowled. 

Sam scoffed. 'I'm a Black man carrying the stars and stripes. What don't I understand? Every time I pick this thing up,' he gestured to the shield on his back, 'I know there are millions of people out there who are gonna hate me for it.'

He looked around at the people closest to him, most lowering their sights and looking away from the man guiltily. 'Even now... I feel it - the stares, the judgement, and there's nothing I can do to change it. Yet, I'm still here. No super serum, no blond hair, or blue eyes. The only power I have is that I believe we can do better.'

'We can't demand that people step up if we don't meet them halfway. You control the banks - Shit, you can move borders! You can knock down a forest with an email, you can feed a million people with a phone call. But the question is, who's in the room with you when you're making those decisions?

'Is it the people you're gonna impact? Or, is it just more people like you?' He sighed. 'I mean, this girl died trying to stop you, and no one has stopped for one second to ask why.'

Sam turned to the man, pointing a finger at him. 'You've gotta step up, Senator, because if you don't, then the next Karli will. People believed in her cause so much that they helped her defy the strongest governments in the world. Why do you think that is?' 

The man broke eye contact with him too, looking away with a shame evident in his expression. 'Look, you people have just as much power as an insane god, or a misguided teenager. The question you have to ask yourself is, "How are you going to use it?" ' 

Sam ended the speech with the loaded question, walking from the group, who was then hounded by reporters - all of whom leaving Captain America be. He caught sight of Bucky and Clara a little ways off, and started towards the ambulance they resided in and around.

'Sorry,' Bucky started. 'I was, uh, I was texting and so, all I heard was "a Black guy in stars and stripes." ' He earned a chuckle from Sam. 'Nice job, Cap.' 

Please comment and vote - It lets me know a you're enjoying it!