Pierce kept his smug gaze flitting between the two women for a few seconds longer before moving himself over to the computer. Eleanor followed him with her eyes, jaw tight with anger. If Natasha's life wasn't practically being held hostage as he kept a tight grasp on his phone, she would have loved to punch the smirk off of his face.

But instead, she had to watch as he pulled up a map on the giant glass wall that contained the position of the helicarriers, and giant red dots of areas where people were going to be eliminated. A nauseous feeling bubbled up inside of her as she looked at the map, it was all down to Steve and Sam now, if they didn't make it then so many people were going to die, including the group themselves.

She was snapped out of her thoughts, quite literally, by Pierce snapping his fingers and gesturing for Nat to take a few steps further towards the screen. There was no useful purpose for her moving closer, it was all just a power trip for the guy. Nat looked at Eleanor briefly before moving forward, she didn't have any choice but to comply.

"Lieutenant, how much longer?", he spoke into a radio in his possession.

"Sixty-five seconds to satellite link", one of his men responded. Fuck. Eleanor started looking around without drawing too much attention to herself, seeing if there was anything that she could do to throw Pierce off, but even if she could, it wasn't like she could do anything about the satellite linking. That was all down to the targeting blades being replaced.

"Targeting grid engaged. Lowering weapons array now".

The three in Pierce's office could only stare in horror at the screen, and the horror somehow increased tenfold when the voice rang through the radio for a third time, "We've reached three thousand feet. Sat link coming online now".

"Deploy algorithm", a new one spoke.

"Algorithm deployed".

This was it, they'd failed. All of the blood, sweat, and tears that had gone into the last few days had amounted to nothing. Project Insight was being activated, whether they had intervened or not.

"We are go to target". Eleanor's head turned to face Pierce as he spoke again, but her head immediately whipped around to the screen as she saw the number of targets acquired going up through the hundreds of thousands at a terrifying rate. She wanted to reach out and grab Natasha's hand, but she didn't dare do anything that would trigger Pierce making her pin burn up.

"Target saturation reached". The entire portion of the U.S. that they were currently standing in, spanning through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina, even spanning to the Southern parts of New York, was red. So much death. "All targets assigned".

"Fire when ready", the person in charge on the helicarriers spoke.

It was all over. "Firing in three, two, one". Eleanor's face scrunched up as she anticipated their deaths, but it never came. Her eyes opened and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she saw Pierce looking infuriated.

"Where are the targets?", the radio went off again. They all stared at the now blank map. Steve must have done it at the very last second, just when everyone was preparing for their lives to end. Perfect timing.

"Where are the targets?", that same voice came through but a lot firmer this time around, making Eleanor let out a short breathy laugh as she brought her hands up to rest on the back of her head. Man, was she relieved.

Natasha didn't turn around, still in fear of Pierce's pin on her blazer, but she smirked at the screen as they all watched three red dots appear, one for each helicarrier. The weapons were going to annihilate each other.

After a few seconds of silence, as they stared at the screen, loud explosions sounded through the air, causing everyone in the office to turn around and stare out of the window, seeing the helicarriers were being shot to smithereens. Smoke billowed from them as they slowly got blown up.

The relief that they all felt was immense, it was a close call but all of the work put in as they gave up their freedom over the last few days had paid off.

"What a waste", Pierce muttered as he too looked at the destruction occurring outside. His plan had ended, and the upper hand that his organisation once had, had been taken from his grasp.

"So, you still on the fence about Rogers' chances?", Nat turned to him just to rub their victory in his face more. Eleanor turned to face him as well, to see his reaction, but he didn't seem phased by her quip.

"Time to go, Councilwoman. This way, come on". Eleanor's face immediately dropped, but Natasha still seemed to have a small smile on her face as she started being guided away by Pierce, which Eleanor found quite odd considering the situation. "You're going to fly me out of here".

Eleanor desperately reached to get her gun from the table that Pierce had placed them on, but Natasha looked over and subtly shook her head, again a bit odd but she supposed that it was because of the pin risk.

"You know there was a time I would have taken a bullet for you", Fury spoke as he slowly turned to face Pierce and Natasha, an unsettlingly blank look on his face.

"You already did".

Eleanor watched helplessly as the two continued making their way across the office, she didn't know what to do. If she took a shot at Pierce there is a high chance that the shock could make him drop the phone, but there was also a high chance that in his last moments he still manages to press the button before Nat can get the pin off. She didn't want to risk it, but this meant watching this madman escorting her girlfriend away.

But then her thoughts were cut off and her eyes narrowed at Natasha as she reached for something in her collar. Of course, this was Natasha. She always had something up her sleeve, most of the time quite literally. Moments later bolts of electricity ran up her body and she painfully collapsed to the floor. The widow bites discs. They were able to render the pin useless for a few seconds, but unfortunately also rendered Natasha's muscles useless as she lay on the floor unconscious.

Fury immediately reached for a gun from one of the Counsellors' dead bodies on the floor as Pierce looked at his phone in shock, waiting for the pin to reboot. Eleanor had also immediately turned to get hers from the table that she had tried to reach before, but by the time it was on her person again Fury had taken two shots at Pierce, sending him flying through the glass wall.

Eleanor turned on her heels at the sound of a huge amount of glass shattering and watched with wide eyes as Pierce landed on the floor. But she didn't focus on it for long, both she and Fury wasted no time in rushing to Natasha and crouching next to her to try and wake her up.

"Romanoff", Fury barked out but in a more whispered tone, "Natasha", he reiterated as she still didn't wake up.

Eleanor gently rubbed her arm and shook her slightly, hoping that the physical contact would stir her, which it didn't. This situation was entering the territory of being extremely worrying again. "Nat, wake up".

"Natasha! Come on!", Fury tried again.

Eleanor breathed out a sigh of relief when she saw Nat's eyebrows furrowing in pain and her eyes slightly opening. "Ow", she quietly groaned, "Those really do sting".

"Uh huh", Eleanor sighed as she helped Natasha into a seated position, "I thought you were dead, you okay?".

"Fine and dandy", she responded in pure sarcasm as she used Eleanor as a crutch to stand up, her muscles screaming at her to wait at least a few minutes to rest from that blast of electricity that had just run through them.

"Hey, it's the courteous thing to ask", Eleanor deadpanned as Fury gestured for them to walk to the helicopter, they needed to get everyone away before the helicarriers came crashing down onto them.

"Romanoff, we have more suitable clothing for you in the back", Fury told the two as he held the office doors open for them. The short walk had woken up Natasha's muscles so she was able to walk on her own at this point.

"We do?", Eleanor pondered out loud, she didn't remember bringing anything with them to the helicopter as they left that base back at the dam.

"Had my contact leave some SHIELD uniforms in a duffel bag".

Both women nodded, and as they neared the helicopter Eleanor hopped into the driver's seat and started prepping the vehicle for taking off again, Natasha was going to sprint to the bathroom adjoining Pierce's office to get into the uniform, and then hurry back. As soon as she got back to the helicopter they would need to be ready to leave immediately.

So, she powered up the engine and put on her headset as Fury got settled next to her and turned the helicopter's communications to be on Sam, Steve and Maria's channel. It was an anxious few minutes as they waited for Natasha to return, they may be out of danger from being shot at, but Sam and Steve were still in real danger from the helicarrier explosions. It was agreed that Maria would evacuate with everyone else in Headquarters once she had initiated the new targets, so she would hopefully be in safety with everyone else.

Natasha soon returned and Eleanor immediately took to the skies, the crashing noises and explosions from the helicarriers only becoming more prominent. She started flying away from the Triskelion but keeping them at a good distance so that they could get back if needed, but not wanting to be too close considering that was what the helicarriers would be barreling into.

They could see the notable damage already taking place as one of the helicarriers crashed into the water below, taking out part of the Triskelion in the process.

As Eleanor turned to start circling the perimeter of the other side of the Triskelion, they saw one of the helicarriers begin slamming directly into the middle part of the main tower, causing that part of the building to start collapsing in its wake. "Holy shit", Eleanor breathed out, hoping that no one was in there.

Her hopes were blatantly ignored when Sam's frantic yelling blared into their headsets, "Please tell me you got that chopper in the air?!".

"Sam, where are you?", Nat shouted back in response to him, Eleanor was too distracted by trying not to let the flying debris hit them now that they were close to the building.

"41st floor Northwest corner!". Eleanor immediately sped up and flew towards the correct corner of the building. The fear of what would happen if she didn't get there in time was almost paralysing.

"We're on it! Stay where you are!", Natasha's response almost made Eleanor turn around and look at her as though she was crazy, that part of the building was collapsing in on itself, there was no way he would be able to stay on the spot.

"Not an option!", Sam yelled back.

"Fury, which one's the 41st?", Eleanor quickly asked as she neared the wall that was being destroyed.

"A few higher!", he yelled back, trying to be heard over the noise. She nodded and pulled the helicopter up a few more floors, but her heart dropped to her stomach as she heard glass shattering and saw Sam falling from about six floors higher than they were.

Immediately she tilted the helicopter onto its side and moved forward so that Sam would hopefully be able to land through the open doors. She did so whilst muttering a string of profanities, this could go very wrong.

Luckily, he fell through the gap that the open door had left, but landed on top of the closed one on the other side, he would have fallen through as the door was ripped off of its hinges if it weren't for Natasha grabbing and holding him tightly as Eleanor worked to stabilise the helicopter.

"41st floor, 41st!".

Eleanor shook her head as she moved away from the building and Fury responded, "It's not like they put the floor numbers on the outside of the building".

"Just be glad that I wasn't a few floors too high", Eleanor piled on. She navigated the vehicle underneath the falling helicarrier, once again avoiding the debris. She was pretty chuffed with herself, this morning she was a person who hadn't flown a helicopter in years, and now she was flying expertly through the masses amounts of debris.

"Hill! Where's Steve? You got a location on Rogers?", Nat shouted into her headset.

It took a few seconds to get a response, but Maria's voice eventually came through, sounding incredibly unhappy about what she was saying, "He's on the Charlie carrier".

Everyone in the helicopter suddenly froze, that was the helicarrier still in the sky with multiple explosions passing through it, surely even a super soldier wouldn't survive that?

The helicopter harshly changed directions, everyone but Eleanor having to grab onto something for balance as the helicopter went at a higher speed than it had done today. "Does anyone see him?", Eleanor raised her voice as she got as close to the edge as she could without putting everyone else in danger as well.

It was a tense moment as everyone kept their eyes peeled as she circled the carrier, trying to get a view from every possible angle. She couldn't do much searching of her own as her main focus was on flying, but she did what she could if she was able to hover for a few seconds.

"He just fell through!", Sam desperately started pointing in the direction that he saw him in.

"Okay crap, hang on!", she once again made harsh but precise manoeuvres of the vehicle and sent them into a speedy descent. Everyone tried to hide their fear as it felt like they too were going to start falling into the water, but Eleanor had proved that she had good control, so there was an element of trust pushing past the instinctual response.

And sure enough, as they got lower they spotted the Captain falling into the water below, suddenly being dragged into the depths of it and out of sight.