Steve "Captain America" Rogers breaks into Shadow Pillar, a secret American prison, and subdues guards until he reaches the cell with his evil duplicate. He thinks to himself that he doesn't know why he's there. The evil Rogers says he isn't surprised to see the good Rogers there, and the good Rogers thinks that he hates looking at his evil duplicate even as he notes the similarities between them.
The evil Rogers says he knows the good Rogers isn't there to gloat or to assassinate him. The good Rogers says that the evil Rogers will stand trial for his crimes, but the evil Rogers says that he didn't break any laws. His assumption of total power was legal under the SHIELD Act, the construction of the planetary shield was ordered by Maria Hill and Carol "Captain Marvel" Danvers, Pleasant Hill was Hill's fault as well, and HYDRA only grew strong because Johann "Red Skull" Shmidt was good at advocating for it. Furthermore, the evil Rogers made sure to pardon himself and everyone in HYDRA for everything they did after HYDRA took power. The evil Rogers notes that it may seem ridiculous that everything he did was legal, but that society's corruption and incompetence, as well as the good Rogers' weak ideology which infested that society, helped build a system where he indeed can't legally be held responsible for his actions. The good Rogers says they'll figure out a way to have the evil Rogers convicted anyways, but the evil Rogers responds that doing so will prove that American laws aren't really sacrosanct but instead are just used by the powerful to arbitrarily go after their enemies. He says that he'll settle for demonstrating that fundamental hypocrisy in American culture, and disproving the idea that America is a nation of laws and not men. The good Rogers, though, says he's fine with being a hypocrite if that allows for his evil duplicate to pay for all the things he did, including bombing Las Vegas, imprisoning thousands of Inhumans, and killing Jack Flag, Rick Jones, and Natasha "Black Widow" Romanov.
At Romanov's funeral service, Clint "Hawkeye" Barton breaks down in tears and has to be led away by others. In Madripoor, Bucky "Winter Soldier" Barnes watches the funeral on television, then leaves and tracks down a military general who became prominent by forging an alliance with HYDRA and now wants to set himself up as a dictator. The general is suddenly assassinated by a sniper, and by analyzing the shot, placement, timing, and every other aspect of the kill, Barnes concludes that Romanov is alive and is in fact the sniper.
The evil Rogers tells the good one that he did his best to stop everyone from getting hurt. He even begged Rick Jones to at least pretend to support HYDRA so that he could justify pardoning him, but Jones refused. The evil Rogers says that he also planned to bring everyone back with the cosmic cube, fixing the whole world to be strong and pure. He notes that the good Rogers may be surprised by how hard it is to fix everything without the cube.
In New Tian, the American military uses Sentinels to demolish all signs of the mutant government's rule. Emma Frost and Hank "Beast" McCoy watch the destruction from a distance and talk, with McCoy noting that New Tian is in the process of surrendering to America. Frost muses that they could still fight the government, but McCoy points out that the American government is back to full strength and has access to all the heroes who were trapped in space. SHIELD has been dissolved, but even so, the mutants would lose badly. Frost sighs that for all her boasting that mutants would never kneel, that's exactly what they're doing; now mutants will once again live under the threat of fascist rule as they've always done. McCoy tells Frost she should be proud that, for however short a time, she made New Tian into the home mutants had always wanted and deserved. He adds that now mutants know that them having a homeland is possible and will be able to work towards it in the future. Frost snaps that in the history books nobody will know what she did, as she was ruling from the shadows while Kuan-Yin Xorn was the public face of her government. She'll only be remembered as one of Xorn's thugs. She leaves, saddened, while McCoy continues to watch the Sentinels destroying the remnants of the New Tian regime.
The good Rogers tells the evil Rogers that his ideal world, in which the Cosmic Cube remade everyone to be loyal to HYDRA, would have been a dystopia since nobody would have had free will. The evil Rogers says that he would just be changing things back to what history should have been and was before the Allies used their own Cosmic Cube to alter the course of the second World War. The good Rogers says that Kobik made that up, but the evil Rogers says it doesn't matter; he will always believe that HYDRA would have won World War 2 if not for the Allies' Cube, and many others believe this too. He says that HYDRA will no longer fight to take over the world but will instead fight to take it back, as HYDRA now believes they rightfully won the world twice over but had it stolen from them due to Cosmic Cubes. The good Rogers says that the heroes can just defeat HYDRA and imprison its leaders again and again as they always have, but the evil Rogers says that HYDRA flourishes in part because the heroes imprison their enemies instead of killing them. This motivates future enemies, who don't fear death at the hands of the heroes. The evil Rogers asks when the good Rogers and the other heroes will be held accountable for all the lives they lost through their mercy.
Elsewhere, Frank "Punisher" Castle kills several remaining HYDRA soldiers and burns down their base. He reflects on how letting himself be manipulated by the evil Rogers into joining HYDRA was the worst mistake he ever made, and now he wants to make things right. From a nearby roof, Nick Fury watches Castle and tells an unseen 'Control' that Castle is 'ready.'
The good Rogers says that the heroes will defeat any and all evil that might attack. The evil Rogers points out that they nearly lost, and he himself is not ashamed for going down fighting for what he believed in. He also notes that the heroes only won through the help of Kobik, which was essentially divine intervention. Without her the heroes would have lost and the evil Rogers could have fixed the world that he sees as so horribly infected and broken. He then asks the good Rogers why he's there, and the good Rogers says that while he was helping to cleanup rubble from the battle in Washington, a civilian that he offered a hand to just shied away from him. The good Rogers says that he went to Shadow Pillar in order to take the measure of the man who cost him the reputation he spent decades building up and turned him into a hated, feared figure that—even though everyone saw him beat his evil duplicate and even though Tony "Iron Man" Stark spent millions to explain the real story—will never be fully trusted again.
The evil Rogers asks how the good Rogers sees him, and the good Rogers calls his duplicate lazy, saying that all the evil Rogers did was lie to people—there was nothing grand or impressive about his actions. He also notes that he's happy that his reputation is destroyed, since he's been advocating for people to stop putting blind trust in authority figures and heroes for years and now maybe people will understand it. He finishes by saying that looking at his duplicate feels like looking at a Skrull or a Life Model Decoy; he doesn't see any of himself in his evil duplicate besides surface appearance.
The evil Rogers says that what should scare the good Rogers is that people were willing to support him. The good Rogers assumed that people would support goodness and righteousness; instead they all flocked to him when he offered them power. He says that people will remember how amazing it felt to be part of something bigger than themselves, fighting off the monsters and oppressors that have plagued humanity for years, and imposing real order on the chaos that threatens to engulf society. He predicts that someday people will rise up to support HYDRA again.
An alarm sounds and the good Rogers prepares to leave, threatening to go after the evil Rogers if he ever leaves his cell again. He says he finally sees what the evil Rogers is, and that he's been fighting the essence of his evil duplicate his whole life; though he won this battle, the war will never end. Meanwhile, guards come in to subdue the evil Rogers, and one whispers 'Hail HYDRA' in his ear.
Tropes:
- And the Adventure Continues: The good Rogers notes that while HYDRA lost this time, he'll have to keep fighting HYDRA (and fascism more generally) forever. The presence of the HYDRA prison guard also indicates that the heroes will have to keep fighting HYDRA in the future.
- I Reject Your Reality: The HYDRA Steve states that he still believes Kobik's history of the Allies using the cube to rewrite reality is true and nothing Steve can say will convince him otherwise.
