The Death of Captain America Act 2 - The Burden of Dreams: Part 2

Doctor Faustus has just finished telling the Red Skull that, thanks to Sharon Carter, the Winter Soldier got away as they fled a SHIELD raid led by Falcon and the Black Widow. The Red Skull is furious and says that if he still didn’t need him, Faustus would be dead.[1] The Red Skull is furious because Winter Soldier knows their secrets and is now in the hands of the enemy. As a result, they’ll need to push ahead their timeline.

At that moment, the Winter Soldier is sitting in an interrogation room aboard the SHIELD helicarrier. Watching him from the security monitors is the Black Widow, who wonders what they’re going to do with her former lover now that they have her.[2] In one of the labs, SHIELD scientists are examining the Winter Soldier’s mechanical arm and discovering that it was provided to him by former SHIELD director, Nick Fury.[3][4] Suddenly, the arm comes to life and knocks out the scientists before climbing into the ventilation system.

Meanwhile, Tony Stark — the current Director of SHIELD — is providing the Falcon with an update while the hero is out looking for leads on Sharon Carter and Doctor Faustus. Stark wants the Widow to be the first to speak to him given their shared past. Sam reminds Tony of how important Bucky was to Captain America. Tony understands and tells him to focus on finding Carter and he’ll worry about Bucky. As Tony ends the call, the power briefly shuts off. Suspecting the worst, he calls the Black Widow and she says the camera to interrogation room went down. Deducing that the Winter Soldier is trying to escape, Tony suits up as Iron Man to try and stop him. When the Widow goes down and confirms, Tony calls a red alert and orders all SHIELD agent to be on the look out for the Winter Soldier. However, he orders them that lethal force is not authorized.

That’s when Iron Man is ambushed by the Winter Soldier who has been reunited with his mechanical arm. He tries to shut down Tony’s armor with an electromagnetic pulse, but Stark has long since come up with a means to counter just such an attack. Still, Winter Soldier is spoiling for a fight. They two brawl in the hanger, wrecking SHIELD helicopters. Iron Man doesn’t want to hurt, so he tries to reason with him. Bucky, however, just wants to kill Tony to avenge the death of Captain America. He even manages to rip off the face plate on Tony’s armor. Pinning Tony to the ground, the two have a stand off with a gun to Stark’s head and Iron Man’s repulsors on either side of Bucky’s head. Tony tells Bucky to stand down that he has an important letter that he needs him to read, saying that Steve would never forgive them if they killed each other.

Moments later, the Black Widow leads a team of SHIELD agent up to Tony Stark’s office. However, the fighting is over now that Tony has Bucky reading over the letter written by Steve Rogers before he died. Tony hopes that by reading this letter, Bucky can finally put their differences aside so they can go after the person really responsible for Steve’s death: The Red Skull. That’s when Bucky tells them that Aleksander Lukin and the Red Skull are somehow merged together.[6] This comes as a shock to Tony, who puts on the news. The top story is regarding the death of Aleksander Lukin, who was reportedly killed when his corporate jet crash landed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Now that he knows the Red Skull’s secret, Tony knows that the report is a fake. He also knows that whatever the Red Skull is planning he’s planning on doing it soon and they need to stop him. There is also the matter of rescuing Sharon Carter who is still the Skull’s prisoner. That’s when Tony asks James if he is going to respect Steve’s final wishes and become the new Captain America. Since this was Steve’s final wishes, Bucky agrees on two conditions: That SHIELD probes his mind and removes any remaining failsafe’s that may be leftover from his days as the Winter Soldier. The second condition is that James answers to nobody, he does things on his own, just like Steve did. Stark can provide the first, and after a moment’s consideration he admits that he doesn’t have a problem with the second.

Moments later, James is undergoing deprogramming, Natasha voices her concerns. She isn’t certain that James is ready for this, much less be a suitable replacement for Steve Rogers. Tony says that Steve thought he was right for the job and that’s enough for him. Besides, Bucky already has Steve’s shield.

Recurring Characters

Winter Soldier, Black Widow, Falcon, Iron Man, Doctor Faustus, Red Skull/Aleksander Lukin, SHIELD

Continuity Notes

1. A lot going on off the top, so let’s break it down:

   • The Red Skull’s mind is sharing the same body as Aleksander Lukin, a situation that promises to drive them both mad with they aren’t separated. Doctor Faustus was brought in to help mitigate thins until a solution could be found. See Captain America (vol. 5) #1 and 14.

   • The plan that is currently in motion was to time displace Captain America by killing his physical body in Captain America (vol. 5) #25. They will eventually bring him back to the present in the hopes that the Red Skull will take over his body, as we’ll see in Captain America: Reborn #1-5.

   • Part of this plan also includes using Sharon Carter as an anchor to the present. To that end, Faustus had begun mentally conditioning Sharon to do their bidding since Captain America (vol. 5) #22.

   • Winter Soldier was also captured by the Red Skull in issue #30. Sharon managed to fight her conditioning enough to free Winter Soldier last issue.

2. It was revealed in Captain America (vol. 5) #27 that the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow had a brief affair when they were both Russian operatives. However, when their romance was discovered they were forcibly separated by their handlers.

3. Nick Fury went AWOL from SHIELD when it was discovered that he led an unsanctioned attack on Latveria, as seen in Secret Wars #1-5, or so it seemed. In reality, he went under deep cover after uncovering a Skrull plot to invade the Earth, as seen in Mighty Avengers #12. See also Secret Invasion #1-8.

4. The Winter Soldier’s original arm was built by the Russians from stolen from British intelligence in the 1950s, as explained in Captain America (vol. 5) #11. This arm was destroyed in a fight with a Nazi Sleeper robot in issue #21. Nick Fury provided Bucky with a brand new bionic arm when they he started working for him in the following issue.

5. Captain America wrote a letter before his death and had it delivered to Tony in Captain America (vol. 5) #28. In issue #30 we learned it was a plea to Tony to save Bucky from his path of revenge and make him the new Captain America.

6. The Red Skull cheated death by using the Cosmic Cube to transfer his mind into Lukin’s body, see Captain America (vol. 5) #1 and 14. This will remain the status quo until issue #42.

Topical References

• When Iron Man shows Bucky and the Black Widow reports of Aleksander Lukin’s death, he puts it on CNN. This should be considered a topical reference as this is a real world television station.