A young man in his twenties was sitting in a diner sipping his coffee. He glanced at his watch for what seemed like the hundredth time. He was tall, athletic an in peak physical health. With dark brown short hair, steel grey eyes a straight nose, chiseled chin, he wasn't bad looking. Heck, he was handsome and knew it. He looked out the window and finally release a sigh of relief, as he spied an older man walking in the diner's direction.
The door of the diner chimed softly as it opened, the older man walked to the young man's booth and sat down.
"It good to see you again my young friend." He said as he gave a faint but tired smile.
"I see you've been burning the midnight oil again. I thought I told you to take it easy." The younger man said in a worried tone.
"You do realize that a lot is riding on this, and you getting sick is no good for anyone. So please for the love of god take better care of yourself or you'll end up driving yourself into the ground at the pace you're working." A frown had appeared with that last statement as he worried again that the old man would ignore him.
A chuckle came from the old man."My, my. Listening to you nag, this is a welcoming change from the usual groveling or yelling."
"So how are you professor, since the last time we spoke."
"Tell me, are they safe." This time the old man lost any amusement he had as he looked intensely at the young man.
"Yes, Mila is safe. Your niece is doing well, in a new and happy family. She's getting along very well with her new stepmother and Brother." The younger man said in a warm an reassuring tone.
"And what of my brother is he still angry. Is he also happy." You could hear his worried and reluctance in his voice.
*Sigh* "Professor Reinstein, we talked about this. Your brother still blames you, us for what happened to his life back in Germany. But yes he is happy, hell, he even remarried. He still is not willing to see you though, not yet, I'm sorry." The young man said in a defeated tone, for months he had tried to ease the tension between the two. But it not easy when one was a renowned scientist, who had defected to the states. The other was a farmer who had lost his lands, his home, and all his friends.
"Friedrich is rights to be angry not only did he warn me about my ex-employer before I took the job, but we also had to move away because of me defecting." Josef Reinstein held his head down and his shoulders sagged in defeat at the memory of his younger brother's rage months ago.
"Professor please, you of all people know what those monsters would have done to them just to get to you. The important thing is that they are safe." The younger man reached out and placed his hand on Josef's shoulder.
"Thank you, agent Grey, you've gone above and beyond for me and my family." Josef said.
Alexandre Grey waved the man gratefulness away and told him it was nothing, they continued to chat and exchange pleasantries for a few more minutes. Ordering breakfast, as was their custom over the months, they talked until 10am when they both got up, a handshake and they walk out of the dinner going each their own way.
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As Alexandre Grey walked to his car, he mourned the fact that his plan of eleven years ago crumbled like a sand castle in the tide. His plan was simple, replace Steve Rogers as Captain America. Not so easy it turns out, for the first step thing went well. His grade remained all A+, but then he had to figure how to approche the super serum creator. He thought about joining the army, but he wasn't sure he wanted so many officer telling him what to do. So he figure science, but then he rememberer that this is the marvel universe, the chances of him getting into a acciden and ganing some crap or powerful power was just to unstable for his taste.
So the last option was going for being a spy. He was lucky that some recruiters had already approche him, he wasthen fast-tracked up quickly, he found that he had a natural talent for it. The only problem was that he was, to good, so on the way he made ennemy, but with the possible war looming. His ennemy left him alone since they needed more agents on the ground. He was sent out in the field, he managed to get himself stationed in Germany.
He had the idea of finding professor Abraham Erskine, gaining his trust and acquiring the super serum, then he wouldn't need to replace Steve and could simply power himself up.
Sounds easy enough, the only problem is that nothing went according to plan once he got to meet Abraham. First off the guy had a family, a brother and niece that he loved very much, of course this wasn't in any comic or story he knew so already the world was fucking him over. Then the niece was taken hostage by Heinrich Zemo a closes agent for the red skull, she was taken in an attempt to force the doctor to work for him.
And his brother was beaten half to death as a message to Abraham. So one thing led to another, and he found himself helping the Prof in springing his niece out of her captures hands, and spirited away his brother from his farm, all the way to the good old USA. You would think that after all that, he would be the Prof's first pick on 'project super soldier'. But no, the guy was so grateful that he didn't want to risk losing possibly the only friend and ally he had, so no serum.
Let not forget that his boss, being one the peope that hated him. Complain about him, not being of the right stuff. So instead he was designated as the handler, to monitoring the Erskine's family safety. Ensuring that Hydra never found them, and also passing on secret monitoring info on Abraham between the CIA and the army. Oh and also gaining the Abraham Erskine aka Josef Reinstein trust. And if possible the serum formula as well.
"Who knew going up against the origin story would be so fucking difficult." Alex got into his car and drove away, he kept to the speed limit and drove in circles to make sure he wasn't being followed. He pulled into a parking lot, dropped off his car and walked to a building. The name of the building was Stark Industries. It was his new cover, not even the famous Howard Stark knew he worked for the CIA. Here he was Paul Monroe, a tech-savvy engineer. He wasn't the smartest in the room by far, but he could keep up with them.
Which is one of the reason his boss put him here, Stark was too smart for his own good, add his ego and, well, some people wanted some eyes on him. They figured since he seemed to understand all this egghead stuff, and he had proven his loyalty to the presidency he was the best fitted at keeping tabs on all the things that went over at Starks. Plus he was working on making sure thar project Rebirth went on without any sabotage.
"Well since the serum plan didn't work, maybe I could get my hands on some of Howard's personal tech..." He did not really think he would be that lucky, but he was involved in the direct building of project Rebirth, the same that gave Cap his tranformation. He also found that most of his investments had started to pay off. If one was to check his account, his fortune was rising at staggering rates. How you might ask? Well, he followed the future. Knowing how things develop, investing heavily in Stark Industries and any tech company he could find that he remembered the names of the big one that had seem to be everywhere. He was setting himself up to have quite a nice mountain of gold in a few years. Of course he had to be careful some of the investment, he had to dig into the agency funds. But he was confident of it not coming back to bite him in the ass later.