Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There isn’t a lot these days – nor has there ever been – much in this life which Natasha feels ever really, truly stuns her. She’s seen everything from magic to secret military technology. She has fought side-by-side with an actual God, and fought tooth and nail against another. For all that she has seen and done, she likes to think she has remained largely unflappable. She’s rolled with the punches and shrugged off the unimaginable. Nothing, she likes to think, has ever truly stopped her in her tracks.

Not until right now.

She stares with wide eyes at the two pink lines staring back up at her. Two bright pink lines; telling her in no uncertain terms that the little stick sitting on the sink edge before her must be faulty.

But the lines are so damn bright.

Something is wrong with her. Something has been wrong with her for weeks now. She’s been chalking it up to being nothing more than the toll that being on the run takes on a body. Greasy food, shitty hotel beds, and late nights driving into new towns, followed moving on in the early mornings. That isn’t even to mention the ungodly amounts of coffee and energy drinks she’s been relying on to keep up with it all. Her heart sinks with the thought of all that, because if this test isn’t a faulty… if it’s true, then God she’s already gone and fucked it up.

She breathes in. She leans her hands against the counter of the sink and tries to steady herself.

She thought she was just getting older. She thought she got too complacent living in New York. That it’s just been too long since she last went into hiding and her body was fighting the transience; telling her she is too old for this shit and she would be better off turning herself in for a deal like Clint and Scott.

She took the test just to have the negative in her back pocket. In case things got worse and she had to walk into an emergency room or a clinic; easier to tell them she took a test that came back negative than to try and explain the forced hysterectomy.

“Nat?”

The motel room door opening and her name being called breaks through the heavy silence of the bathroom. It’s Steve’s voice, and she can hear Sam closing the door behind him and the shuffling of grocery bags.

“In here.” She calls back to them, “One second.”

It’s a figure of speech, but she feels like that is all the time which she has to make a decision.

She runs the sink to hopefully buy herself another half a second, and as she turns the dial to off she snatches up the test and shoves it into her back pocket. She makes up her mind about what she’s doing as she is marching out the bathroom door. She pushes past Sam and seizes Steve by the forearm, dragging him out into the motel parking lot while Sam splutters something in the background about dinner, and where are they going?

She doesn’t care. She couldn’t care if she tried. The last thing she has the energy for right now is Sam Wilson and the answers that he is going to be asking for when she and Steve inevitably go filing back into the motel room with their tales between their legs.

“Nat? What-?”

She doesn’t let him finish. In the true spirit of ripping off the Band-Aid, Nat drags him to the side of their latest “liberated” car parked in the third spot in the lot, and she whips the test from her back pocket; shoving it into his hands with one blunt growl.

“I don’t know.”

“What? What do you mean you don’t…” He trails off, and Nat would assume that is because his hands have stopped fumbling and he is now blinking down at the stick she’s shoved into his grasp.

He knows what it is. For all the grief they like to give him and Bucky for being a hundred years old, the reality is that the two of them are mostly caught up on modernity by now. Nat can see the recognition light up in his eyes before his brow furrows, and he looks up at her for an explanation she has already made clear she doesn’t have.

He just stares at her. His eyes rake her from head to toe, and while Nat has never allowed herself to be one to feel self-conscious, she stands there with her arms crossed tightly over herself; her fingers pressing firmly against her ribs as though she could literally hold herself together.

When he starts to breathe heavier, and she sees genuine worry etch into his eyes, she finally says something.

“You know they say if a guy gets that result it means he’s dying?” She asks, going for levity, which falls flat, but she keeps at it anyway. “Cancer, specifically. It would really suck if it’s that.”

A beat. A long, long beat of him breathing heavy, and watching her as though she has lost her mind.

Frankly, she hasn’t ruled that out.

“Nat.”

“If we’re lucky that one’s a dud.” She excuses, “I’ll get another one, maybe two, and when they both come back negative we can laugh about how I scared the crap out of you with this.”

“Nat.” He says her name more as a plea this time, with just the tiniest tilt of his head that just makes her want to punch the pity out of him before crumpling into his arms and crying out how scared she is because, seriously, what the fuck is happening?

“Problem is I still don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She manages to keep her voice indifferent, almost casual.

He is having none of it.

“Nat.”

“I’ve been tired.” She confesses at his breathlessness. “Like, really tired.” She leans against the back of the car, her folded arms coming in contact squarely against her chest.

She doesn’t show it on her face the slight sting which zaps through her at the contact.

“I’ve never had a period.” She bluntly admits, before Steve can open his mouth and try getting her to be reasonable; or whatever he has been attempting to do thus far.

“Every once in a while I’ll spot.” She says with a shrug. “Not often, but scar tissue isn’t immune to getting inflamed after bad injuries.”

He takes a half step closer to her this time, and thank God he doesn’t say her name again. He simply watches and waits her out.

“The last time was a couple months ago. After we… blew off some steam.”

It hangs in the air; the unspoken – potential - explanation. It is the only way she can think of in which this could ever make sense. If… If the super serum that courses through him extends that far, and if it survives through the - for lack of a better term - through the release, during the coping mechanism they’ve taken up in the last year, then maybe there is a chance this isn’t some shared delusion or a death sentence.

Of course, that would mean it’s real.

“And… when you say a couple of months?”

She shrugs, but she knows what he’s thinking, so while she can’t bring herself to look at him just yet, she manages to shake her head.

“I don’t think it’s an indicator.” She says, “That’s my point. I don’t have anything to count back from to figure out when this could have happened.”

As he steps closer, leaning against the car with her, she keeps her eyes locked firmly on the motel pool in the distance. She brings her thumb to her teeth, and tears at some of the skin fraying around her cuticles. It’s a bad habit, she knows. But, desperate times.

“You must have some kind of an indicator.” Steve says, a gentle version of prying for information.

Her first instinct is to remind him that no, she doesn’t, but that isn’t true. Of course she has some version of an indicator; people who are supposed to be barren don’t take pregnancy tests just because they’ve been tired for a couple days.

“I feel like I’m peeing more.” She says, finally daring to look at him, and the raised eyebrow she is met with almost makes this easier.

Almost.

“I don’t know.” She says, biting at her nail again. “I feel… off, I guess. So I took the test just to be able to show a clinic the negative if things got worse and I had to go in somewhere.”

He nods to her. What might have been a smirk starting to pull at his lips after her comment about her pee is now returning to a concerned frown. He folds his arms, and when he looks off into the distance she follows his lead. There isn’t anyone swimming in the motel pool. Perhaps there hasn’t been anyone swimming in it in ages.

“Is this something you would want?”

She scoffs at his question.

“You realize it’s more likely that I’m dying?” She asks, even if… Even if she is smirking when he looks at her with the fear that maybe she’s serious. Even if she isn’t serious, when she should be, because the idea that the test actually picked up some kind of cancer eating away at her – while far more plausible – it feels even further away then they idea that the test could be right. That she could – somehow – be pregnant.

“Assume you’re not dying?” Steve asks, evidently picking up on how un-committed she is to the idea of dying. “Assume the test is right.” He pauses, and looks down at the test again, running his thumb over it as though it is something to revere and not something she held between her legs and peed on. “Do you want it?”

“Do I want the tiny plastic stick?”

For the first time in this conversation, he might be growing legitimately frustrated with her.

She sees that she’s testing her luck; he’s getting fed up with her deflections to the point that if she tries again, he might either walk away or – worse – look her in the eyes and calmly ask for a straight answer from her.

She licks her lips, and unfolds her arms and settles her hands into her jacket pockets as she leans further back against the car.

“What I want and what I can have are two different things.”

It’s an answer; the best she has at least. For one thing, they are literally wanted fugitives living out of a stolen car and hopping from dusty motel to even dustier motel. Now even setting that aside, that still leaves the very true fact that she shouldn’t be able to get pregnant. So – for arguments sake – say that against all odds, she did. That doesn’t mean she is capable of staying that way. She could easily wake up in a pool of blood on any given night, and what if they aren’t close to a hospital? They can sew up bullet and stab wounds in a motel room, but they can’t do much about it if she starts to lose too much blood from a miscarriage.

It's a real possibility, enough so that Natasha swallows thickly and tips her head back solidly against the car. She closes her eyes and tries to focus on nothing but the solid aluminum behind her head and back. She can all but hear Steve thinking; if she had to guess, he is trying to decide between the want to comfort her and tell her she is allowed to want this all to be real, and the reality that he would be a fool to not see the danger.

“I know you don’t get a period.” He reiterates, “But, you said you’ve been feeling off. How far along do you think you are?”

Natasha scrunches her brows together, not yet opening her eyes. She doesn’t need to think too hard on it; it’s been running through her head non-stop for the last ten days at least.

“Seven or eight weeks?” She ventures, cracking one eye open to see him looking at her with mild surprise. “Give or take.”

It’s a sufficient enough answer, it would seem. Enough that she is able to watch him mull his next words over in his head.

“Still early.” He muses, “But you’re still alive.”

She manages a chuckle, even if there is some fear still simmering under her skin.

“What do you think?” He asks, “You want to hit an ER now? Or give it another day to wrap your head around?”

Her lips part, but the words don’t come yet. The smart thing to do would be to go to an ER right now and worry about skipping town earlier than they’ve planned, once they have their answer. She’s tempted, though, to give it another day. Just one day to get her head on straight and really think this through.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the door to their room swinging open, and Nat doesn’t need to crane her head around the car to know Sam it’s Sam stalking out.

So, she doesn’t. Steve does, but Nat waits until the third member of their little fugitive gang has rounded the corner and is standing indignantly at her side; looking her and Steve up and down and assessing what level of sarcasm is appropriate here.

She’s never been more confident that he’ll get it wrong.

“If you two are getting divorced, you’re gonna have to be that really pissed off, broke couple that still lives together. I’m not splitting time.”

Nat laughs, while Steve simply rolls his eyes.

“That would suck.” Nat says, rolling her head towards Steve. “You wouldn’t divorce a dying woman, would you?”

Steve rolls his eyes even harder at her playing along, even if Sam definitely isn’t playing anymore. She can practically hear him standing straighter behind her.

“You’re not dying.” Steve insists, pushing off the car. “Now do you want to go in and eat? Or do you want to go somewhere to confirm that?”

She doesn’t think on it long. They’re both staring at her, and she knows that Sam’s patience with being out of the loop is only going to last so long. So, she too pushes herself off the car, and starts walking around for the passenger seat.

Chapter Text

Sam cracks exactly one joke between being caught up on the reason they’re going to an emergency room, and the reason it constitutes as an emergency. He feels like a complete ass for it too, which is why he drops Steve and Nat at the door and then decides he may as well make himself useful. He takes the car back to the motel and he starts packing up their stuff with no further questions asked.

They’re going to have to move on the second Nat and Steve get out, and figure everything else out from there. It’s funny, drifting from town to town has become second-nature these last two years. But suddenly, Sam isn’t sure where the hell they’re supposed to start.

He’s got a feeling this is all gonna come back that Nat’s pregnant, and that’s something a person has actually got to sit down and deal with. The three of them can’t be on the run with a baby. It would call too much attention. Of course, one could argue it’s actually the perfect cover. Nobody chasing after their asses is out there looking for a pregnant woman, much less a pregnant ex-avenger.

“That’s low.” He whispers to himself, criticizing himself for thinking about a baby in terms of tactical advantage vs disadvantage.

Not just any baby. Steve and Nat’s baby.

Trying not to get too caught up in his thoughts again, he loads their three backpacks and what had been the groceries for dinner into the car. Then, he goes and settles up with the college kid running the lobby. In the time it takes him to do that, Sam decides that he isn’t going to be able to keep himself from thinking and planning. So, he makes a deal with himself. He is allowed to plan, but it’s not his place to be weighing options, so any plans he makes have no business coming out of his mouth until either Nat or Steve asks for them.

He's glad he makes this deal with himself, because he ends up sitting in the ER parking lot for over an hour waiting, and his crossword book sure isn’t holding his attention.

They could go way, way off the grid. They could hide out somewhere in the mountains, or maybe in the desert. Crossing borders is a no-go without cashing in any favors. But, they could find some backwoods little town miles from the nearest truck stop. Somewhere where The Avengers are nothing but fairytale, and there is nowhere and everywhere to run if the authorities come knocking. They could drum up a cover story about Nat and Steve being a couple wanting to raise their kid away from the city, and Sam can tell anybody who asks that he followed his friends out to the middle of nowhere because rent in the city is a pain in the ass.

He's still working through this story when Nat and Steve finally come out; the two of them looking like they lost weeks of sleep in the span of the few hours they were in there.

They climb into the car with no ceremony. Nat hops into the back, and Steve up with him in the front. Sam gives them a few seconds, watching from the side of his eye as neither of them relaxes, nor seems to be willing to break the silence.

Fine.

“So what’s the verdict?” He asks, and from behind him comes an exhausted huff.

“The verdict is I hate hospitals.” Nat sighs, and then she leans forward, so that her arms can rest on the center console between the two front seats and she can properly converse. “They couldn’t tell us anything.”

“What?”

“They couldn’t clear anything up.” Steve amends. “They ran a blood pregnancy test; it came back positive. But thanks to budget cuts they don’t have an ultrasound machine in the emergency department. So in order to do an ultrasound and confirm the pregnancy they would have to admit her to the hospital.”

“Which is obviously not an option.” Nat interjects, “They advised me to see my regular gynecologist. Which is also, obviously, not an option.”

“Ok.” Sam says, not liking the lack of options. “Dare I ask where that leaves us?”

Steve and Nat look to each other, and Sam will take that to mean no, he shouldn’t dare ask.

Steve isn’t sure how to answer Sam’s question.

For the duration of the drive into their next town, they don’t talk about the hospital or what their next move should be regarding Nat definitely being pregnant. With his kid. While they’re running from most of the world’s governments.

Steve scrubs a hand over his face. He dares one glance over his shoulder to Nat after about an hour of driving, when he hears the rustling of the grocery bag. He finds that Nat has the hood of her grey sweatshirt drawn up, which is her usual for when they drive. It’s to block the view of her face from any nosy passengers in the cars they pass by.

Right now, Steve can’t help but wonder if she is trying to hide herself from the world for more reasons than one.

Anyhow, she’s raided the grocery bag and currently has the package of open and two slices balanced across her lap, and the package of bologna held in her hand.

“Want one?” She asks, flicking her eyes to him. There is a certain steeliness to her gaze, daring him to say anything that is not an answer to her question.

“Please.” He accepts, and she nods, and finishes making the sandwich in her lap before handing it to him.

“Don’t hold out on me.” Sam chimes, and in the rearview mirror Steve catches sight of Nat snickering to herself before she makes another sandwich and passes it to Sam, then finally starts on one to keep for herself.

So, they eat their dinner of bologna sandwiches, and after another two hours they pull off the main highway and onto a local one, and then it’s another twenty minutes before they find a motel with vacancy.

Checking in and unpacking is their usual routine. Or, a version of it, at least. Sam is the one who approaches the desk and handles telling the clerk they need a room, preferably one with two beds. But, this time, once they’re in the room and they see there are – in fact – two queen sized beds, he doesn’t murmur any sort of “thank God”.

Their usual night routines are done in silence. Nat grabs her pajamas and heads into the bathroom, and once they hear the shower turn on Sam begins to change for sleep, all while Steve puts away any food they have that needs to go in the fridge.

Steve gets the feeling that if he were to bring it up, Sam would listen to him talk about the elephant on the room. Maybe tomorrow, he decides. But tonight it’s just too much.

Usually on their first night in a new room, the three of them will allow themselves a little time to decompress. They’ll sit around a small table if the room has one, or just on their beds, and compare notes on different restaurants or cafes they happened to notice on their drive into town. They’ll agree on one for breakfast tomorrow, and then they’ll play a round of cards or something.

Not tonight.

Tonight they settle in early. Sam stretches out on one of the beds and starts channel surfing on the room’s boxy TV. Steve is sitting on the edge of the second bed, debating for the first time in months sleeping on the floor, when Nat comes and crawls into the space next to him.

He leans back against the headboard of the bed for now, but he doesn’t crawl under the covers yet. He’ll make up his mind in a few minutes, but right now, committing to either the bed or the floor feels like it would be too bold a statement.

“What is this?” He asks when the two main characters of the movie Sam has settled on hit a deer with their car.

“Tommy Boy.” Sam answers, “I would’ve told you to put it on your list, but it’s not worth it.”

Next to him, Nat hums in agreement, and that’s that.

Despite the movie not being anything great, Sam never changes the channel. It’s a mindless movie, with jokes that really aren’t Steve’s sense of humor on a normal day – nor Sam or Nat’s. But, for right now, he pays mild attention and cracks a smile when the deer the two characters hit, killed, and stuffed in the back of their car turns out to still be alive and wakes up as they’re driving.

Eventually, Nat starts to move from sitting to lying down in her space next to him, and so as she moves the covers around to get settled Steve slides his legs under the sheets.

Nat seems content enough with his decision. She settles onto her back reaches one arm up behind her head to serve as an extra pillow so that she can still watch the movie. Her other arm is limp along her side, her hand resting on her thigh. Each time he looks her way, Steve is careful not to let his eyes linger on her mid-section, nor to call attention to the fact that she has positioned herself so that her hands don’t cross it.

When morning comes the three of them still aren’t talking much, and specifically nothing about it. But, they’ve been traveling together long enough that they don’t need many words to get through a morning.

Sam and Steve go on their morning run as usual and, when they get back, Nat gets the distinct impression that they didn’t tear the Band-Aid off without her.

After the two of them have taken their turns showering and changing, they all head to the nearest local diner they could fine for breakfast. This one is cleaner than some of what they’ve seen. The walls are painted an inviting sky blue with a large chalkboard hanging over the counter and advertising the daily specials. Being that it’s early morning on a Wednesday it isn’t overly crowded, and the three of them have no trouble procuring a booth over by the far window.

Nat slides into the booth seat opposite of Steve, which isn’t unusual, but once Sam is sitting at his side she suddenly thinks it might have been a mistake to put herself in a prime position for the two of them to scrutinize her every move.

Oh well.

“Morning guys.” A cheerful voice interrupts her thoughts, as a girl who can’t be older than twenty starts to lay menus out in front of them. “Anyone doing coffee?”

“Please.” Sam answers, and Steve flicks his eyes to her, hesitating slightly, before he echoes Sam’s answer.

“Is there any way I could do half regular, half decaf?” Nat asks the woman, and she very pointedly ignores the gazes lingering on her from across the table.

“Absolutely.” The girl replies without batting an eye, “Be right back.”

Thankfully, by the time she comes back and fills their mugs, Steve and Sam have distracted themselves from her by looking at the menus.

They spend breakfast like they usually do. Steve picked up a map and a local paper from the motel lobby this morning, so they spread the two of those out and discuss their options for the next few days.

They discuss things like help wanted section; anything that is a one- or two-day job, and pays cash. They discuss the nearby towns, where they are going to go next, how they are going to split up the tasks of surviving where they are now.

Most importantly, they don’t talk about how this would all look with a baby along for the ride.

Today, Nat draws the straw of heading to the local library. It isn’t hard to find, and it’s a large building but no more populated than the diner. She finds the computers quickly, and after choosing one at the end of the table, she begins to catch up on world affairs.

She doesn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Climate change, North Korea being North Korea, and some new protests against the U.S.’s current actions towards immigration. No new bounties on the heads of former Avengers, and nothing boasting the capture of Wanda and/or Vision. There is nothing which Nat would flag as a sign of a God of Mischief or one of Tony’s inventions rising up against humanity.

She slumps back in the wooden library chair, her foot knocking idly against the table leg. She looks down at her lap and a frown pulls at her lips. She isn’t going to lie and say she hasn’t been feeling bloated lately along with everything else. It isn’t so bad that her pants have felt tighter, or her jacket has clung to her differently after she’s zipped it. But it’s enough that she’s noticed and assumed it was a result of living off greasy take out and pre-packed corner store snacks. You know, the natural consequence of all that to any normal person.

She tips her head back with a tired sigh, thinking that “any normal person” should have been her first clue something was wrong.

It’s with no small effort that Nat forces her head upright again and drags her attention back to the computer. Sooner or later the three of them are going to have to talk about this, and she suspects that before that happens, she and Steve are going to have to discuss it in private. She needs to have a plan in place for when that happens.

She starts with the basics. She looks up pregnancy symptoms by the week, which – much to her frustration – gives her more questions than answers. According to the chart, she could be anywhere between four and twelve weeks along. She’s felt only a fraction of the symptoms, to the point that she starts to look into other causes of false positives in women. She disregards the possibility of a faulty test, no matter how much she would like for that to be the answer. Her one drugstore test she could believe, but it’s harder to argue with a blood test from a hospital.

After that there are only two distinct possibilities: either she is dying, or she was pregnant, and if she was pregnant then that is a whole other problem because it means she still might be dying.

After a little more research she shoves that possibility aside; as everything tells her that if she had miscarried without knowing it she wouldn’t have likely survived to this point. In the event that she did, she would at least be in a lot more pain and have seen a lot more blood.

So, that leaves her with pregnant - which is impossible - and this time when she sinks back in the chair and looks down at herself she does something which she knows is very, very dangerous.

She starts to think.

She imagines her stomach rounded out a bit. She loses herself in a daydream of sitting in some other town library doing her usual routine of recon, only she has to pull the keyboard closer to the edge of the table and type with one hand, because there is something nudging her insides in a demand for her attention.

She knows she is crossing the line into torturing herself, but Nat allows the daydream to go on for a bit. She imagines a small hand grabbing at the hem of her shirt. She wonders what it might be like to have the warm weight of a sleeping infant on her chest, and how brightly Steve would smile when a little voice called him “dada” in speech so garbled that she wouldn’t be sure it even counts.

She goes further. Let’s herself think about more than lying in a motel bed with Steve and his legs tangled with hers. More than his hands holding securely at her hips, then falling lazily over her stomach as the two of them drift off to sleep. It’s a terrible idea, but Nat decides she will allow herself one minute here to long for more.

She imagines kissing him in public for more than hiding from Hydra agents. She imagines a reality where they’re able to patch things up with Shield and with Tony and go back to New York. They already work together like a well-oiled machine in combat, but now she pictures something more. She can feel him at her back, some ex-Hydra goon under her foot, and while a projectile bounces off his shield she reminds him that they need to sign a school permission slip for the kid when they get home.

Home.

Nat sighs, that one word yanking her from her idealism like one of those cartoon shepherd’s canes.

She blinks her focus back to the computer screen. She’s staring at a list of symptoms; some of which she’s felt, and many that she hasn’t. Enough daydreaming and self-rationalizing. She needs answers and a plan.

She clears the search bar, and she starts again.

Chapter Text

Steve is a little distracted throughout the day.

While Nat heads to the library and Sam opts to take a walk through downtown and get a feel for the local atmosphere, he responds to an ad placed in the paper by an elderly woman looking for someone to mow her lawn.

He’s slower in finding the address than he usually is when he’s following up on a job. These help wanted ads can be hit or miss, and half the time the job has already been done by the time he gets to the address. So, usually, he tries his best to find the houses as quicky as possible. But today he’s lost in his thoughts.

How could he not be?

Personally, Steve would like to get Nat to another hospital or clinic ASAP. He understands they shouldn’t show their faces in too many emergency rooms and risk being looked into, but he is right at the point of not caring.

He and Nat talked about pregnancy the first time they slept together, however briefly, and surmise to say this is not a situation which they thought they would find themselves in.

“Wait.” He had said, and Nat frowned underneath him, her fingers still curled under the hem of his t-shirt as she stopped trying to pull it up and off. “We don’t have any of those condoms.”

“I don’t have any diseases, Rogers.” She’d said, and bunched his shirt up a little more. “Do you?”

“No, but-”

“Then we’re fine.” She had insisted, “The Red Room took care of everything else.”

He’d blinked at her. She said it so plainly, but there was still a guarded flicker in her eyes. It warned him not to ask any further questions, and screamed that she didn’t want his pity.

He had settled for leaning in closer, his hands gently curling over hers and reaffirming her grip on his shirt. As she hiked his shirt up further he’d brushed his nose against hers, his lips only ghosting hers in a plea for access. It wasn’t until his shirt was over his head and she’d started kissing him that he reciprocated the effort.

He waited until her hands reached for his belt before he dared to touch hers. He brushed her short and freshly dyed blonde hair from her face to ensure she would only need to open her eyes to see anything and everything that he was doing.

Whatever she had endured that left her to say pregnancy was “taken care of” he couldn’t change. But, he could do everything in his power to show her that no one will ever lay a hand on her like that again.

He does his best to push that all from his mind for the time being. Right now he needs to focus on finding the house for this ad, and returning to the motel tonight with something to show for his day. As he turns the corner and starts counting house numbers, he focuses on how it’s a street of small and slightly run-down two-story homes. Still, many of the homes seem well cared for. There are small patches of flowers underneath windowsills, and lawn ornaments such as ceramic gnomes guarding front doors.

For all the hardships that have come with being on the run, Steve has found in their travels that he prefers the small towns of the Midwest to the hustling city of New York. Back when was still being rejected by the army at every turn – before he ever heard the words Captain America and back before the ice – he never gave any thought to a life in the suburbs. In fact, the suburbs didn’t even exist for him to think about. The only other kind of living was the farms upstate, and that wasn’t the direction he was running in.

But now - in this day and age – he can see the appeal. Out here there is room to breathe without choking on smog, you can see the stars in the night sky, and some people even still listen to the baseball game on the radio.

He’s thinking about what it might be like to fall off the grid forever in a place like this - to leave the door closed on Shield for good and settle down - when he finds the house number he’s been searching for. He shakes the thoughts of retirement and a quiet life away from his mind. It wouldn’t be that simple anyway.

By dinner, Nat is seriously regretting allowing herself to think.

Thinking led to research, which led to phone calls made from her burner, which has led to her sitting around the room’s small table with Sam and Steve eating from a pizza box and working up the courage to tell them what she did with her day.

She swallows down a lump of hamburger and washes it down with some water. She isn’t exactly looking for an opening in the conversation, because that would mean there is actually a conversation to provide her an opening. Apart from deciding on the kind of pizza to get and how they need more paper towels the next time they’re at a store, the three of them haven’t said much yet.

“I’m going back to finish that lawn mowing job tomorrow.” Steve says, just as Nat was starting to think she might finally break. “Sweet old lady didn’t realize she needed a part for her lawnmower. She sent me to the hardware store.”

“How old?” Sam asks around a mouthful of pizza, and Steve shrugs.

“I don’t know, probably a few years younger than me.” He answers, and Sam chuckles, and for five seconds the air around their trio doesn’t feel quite so heavy.

Nat hates to ruin the moment, but it’s necessary.

“You should see if she has any other jobs for you to do.” She suggests, and she clears her throat when her words come out a bit thicker than she’d intended. “I um… I’d like to stay here a week, if that’s ok with you guys. I found a Planned Parenthood and called, but I couldn’t get in until Thursday.”

So, not quite a week. Five days, which they’ve stayed in a town for that length of time before, and she knows it won’t be an issue because – as the resident spy who has done this before - she is generally in charge of their schedule anyway.

But, doable as it is, she’s never asked them to stay put for any reason that was not purely tactical before.

“We can do that.” Steve answers, “Do um… Do you want me to go with you?”

She shrugs, “Up to you.” She answers, her eyes focused firmly on her pizza as she lifts it to her mouth.

She takes a bite, chewing slowly at first, and then a little faster when she realizes both Steve as well as Sam are still staring at her and likely trying to figure out what her plan is exactly.

She would love an answer as much as they would.

“It’s just to confirm there’s something there.” She explains, swallowing what’s in her mouth. “Like, anything.” She specifies, “Last I knew I was missing all those parts. So if something’s growing I would love to know where it came from and what the hell it’s latched onto.”

Her voice cracks again, more noticeable this time. She brings her water bottle to her lips and takes a long drink as she tries to disguise it, and she doesn’t think she is fooling either of them for a second.

“I can go for a walk.” Sam says, pushing away his plate and starting to stand.

“You don’t have to.” She insists, all but pleading with him to stay, which maybe isn’t the wisest idea because she and Steve do need to talk alone.

She just… She doesn’t ask for much, and now she is asking that they stay until Thursday, and Thursday is exactly the next time she would like to next think about this. She knows that isn’t possible. So, if he could be so kind, she would settle for dinner. Just finish dinner. If the three of them could just eat, and talk about Steve’s lawnmowing job, current events, and just be their version of normal for another five minutes, she would appreciate it greatly.

“Finish your pizza.” She adds, definitely pleading this time.

He and Steve share a look over her head. She wants to be angry about it – offended at the very least. But, they’re worried, and why shouldn’t they be? She’s worried.

“Fine.” Sam finally agrees, sitting back down. “But after I finish my pizza, you two are walking to the store and getting the paper towels.”

Nat nods in relief, and it isn’t lost on her that it’s the first time in twenty-four hours that she’s felt such a feeling.

“And maybe some ice cream.” Sam adds, and she almost able to laugh.

Steve is going to have to to get Sam a thank you card for his keen ability to read a room.

After a rocky start, dinner seemed to sweep away the tension the three of them have been surrounded in since yesterday. Giving Nat a time, a place, and most importantly an objective to be met alongside with the conversation he and her very much need to have was a stroke of genius. It helped them all to breathe and to talk about normal things. Well, what counts as normal for them, at least. Nat had nothing to report on the front of them being tracked, and it turns out that Sam’s day feeling out the locals helped him get a new plate for their car. Steve doesn’t have much to add to the conversation himself, only that he fixed the old lady’s lawnmower but hadn’t yet started on her yard before the sun had gone down and he’d left her house.

Eventually, they finish dinner, and the tension settles in again. They clean up the table and all it takes is one look shared with Nat for Steve to know they can’t avoid this forever. So, a deal’s a deal.

“What kind of ice cream do you want?” He asks Sam, just before his friend can close himself in the bathroom.

“Doesn’t matter.” He says, but then just before the door closes he stops and pokes his head back out. “Mint chip would be nice.”

As she ties up her shoe, Nat chuckles, and it’s such a small and guarded sound, but it gives Steve hope that they might be able to get through this after all.

Once they’ve left the motel, however, he is starting to have his doubts.

They walk a few blocks in silence. On their way they pass four different places where they could have bought paper towels and ice cream, but they’ll make the stop on the way back. First, one of them needs to work up the courage to say something.

“The things I need to tell you about me…” Nat eventually sighs, her eyes focused out ahead, and her hands balled into fists in the pockets of the vest she’d zipped up over her fleece. “Only two people know every detail of it. One of them is Barton.”

Steve nods, not surprised in the least by that.

Well, not by Barton.

“Can I ask who the other is?”

If he had to guess, he would put his money on Fury, who probably got it all from her file. He supposes it could also be Bruce. The two of them were never official - and he’s never known Nat to trust like this quickly – but still, he won’t make assumptions about how far their relationship went, nor how deep.

“My sister.”

Well, that’s a bet he would have lost.

“You have a sister.” He says, not asks.

“I do.” She agrees, her voice a drawl. “Her name is Yelena. We aren’t biologically related but I’ll explain all that later. Before I came and found you, and we broke Sam out of prison, I was with her. I was helping her take down The Red Room.”

Steve can taste bile in his mouth at the heaviness in her voice. They’ve barely begun, but it’s obvious that this isn’t a conversation she is ready to have.

“Nat, if you don’t want to talk about this-”

“Then what, I don’t have to?” She asks, her words sharp. “Tell me Steve, does that help either of us?”

He sighs, and he debates asking her the same question, because he wants to at least try and be fair to her. But, nothing about this situation is fair. This isn’t how this kind of thing is supposed to go, and he has a sinking feeling that she knows that even better than he does.

“Ok. So can we start with The Red Room?” He asks, “You’ve mentioned it before, and I still don’t know what it is.”

“It’s where Yelena and I were trained.” She answers, her voice dipping low.

“That’s where you met her?” He asks, both trying for more information as well as trying to maybe make this a little more personal and less like she is about to bare her soul to him out of necessity.

“Sort of.” She answers, “We met when we were assigned to the same mission.”

He nods, and debates asking for more details about that mission.

“The Red Room…” She starts, and she swallows down a gulp of air.

Steve watches her. He watches her start to avoid his eyes again and plow her hands even deeper into the pockets of her vest. She licks her lips, and overall she just seems so unlike herself that he wants to plead with her to stop. Moreover, he wants to wrap his arm around her shoulders and pull her into him. If he could shield her away from the dark and bloody shadows of her past, he would do so in a heartbeat.

But, Nat is a person with whom it’s best to precede with caution.

“They have a graduation ceremony.” She starts to explain, her words slow and assured; like she is falling back on a script. “At the end of your training, they sterilize you. They make sure nothing will ever be more important to you than a mission.”

“Christ.” He breathes, scrubbing a hand over his face. “So what you said back at the motel, you weren’t exaggerating?”

“Not even a little.” She answers, her expression stoic. “They took out my uterus, my ovaries, fallopian tubes… Everything. The only explanation I can think of for me being pregnant-”

“Is me.” He finishes for her, and she nods.

“I was modified with a version of your super serum.” She continues, although that detail about her he already knows. “The Soviet’s replication of it, anyway. Both before and after my graduation.”

“Ok.” Steve sighs, and it feels like his head and his heart are racing faster than what even his body can keep up with. “So what? My serum and your serum… What? Teamed up and regenerated your reproductive system?”

“Best guess.” She answers with a shrug, as if this whole thing isn’t insane. “No guarantee it did it right.”

All of a sudden, it crashes over him like a ton of bricks why she was so insistent yesterday that she could be dying.

He wants to throw up at the thought. Throw up, and then go and get his hands on the people who did this to her in the first place.

“You said you and Yelena took The Red Room down?”

She nods again, with barely a hum of verbal acknowledgement. Steve thinks she is looking a little pale as well, though it’s hard to tell under the rusty luminescent of the streetlights.

At least The Red Room is gone. That assurance clears his mind just a little bit. Enough, at least, at he is able to bring himself back to the matter at hand.

“So… What you want, and what you can have?” He carefully asks, echoing her from last night, and in reply she closes her eyes and sighs.

They come to a stop. They’re walking now away from downtown, and there is what is likely the last of bus stops within the city limits just ahead of them. Steve nods to the bench, and Nat follows. The two of them sit down and Nat finally pulls her hands from her pockets.

She starts to tear at the corner of her thumbnail with her teeth. It’s something Steve has noticed her doing only over the past few weeks, and it makes him wonder just how long she’s been dealing with all this uncertainty.

Nat sinks into the space next to Steve on the bench.

She tries to ground herself in the feeling of the cool iron slats on her back, but it does little good. Instead she brings a hand out of her pocket and immediately busies herself by biting away a frayed edge of hangnail which she left behind earlier.

It hurt too much this morning when it first broke, and it had started to bleed. But, after a day of her doing absolutely nothing to it, it’s withered away from her and died.

She hears the faint snap as her teeth tear it away, and she wonders if Steve hears it too with his enhanced senses.

She also tells herself that doesn’t matter.

She breathes. She tries to calm her racing heart, and tells herself it doesn’t matter if Steve can hear that either.

She also doesn’t let herself dwell on how bad stress is supposed to be for a baby, and so if she is pregnant she is doing a really shitty job right now of keeping it safe.

No, none of that matters right now. Not just yet. In a few minutes, maybe.

First, Steve asked her a question.

What she wants, and what she can have.

“This is the part only Clint and Yelena know about.” She forewarns him, shifting slightly as to bring her heels up on the bench, knees close to her chest. “I’ve never actually told either of them, but they know.”

She can’t even remember the last time she said it aloud to herself, if she is being honest. It’s something that exists right alongside the notion of her mother, and even her father. A far away dream of another life that she sometimes thinks about. Something she might have had if things had gone differently… if only someone had protected her.

“Ok.” Steve drawls, and Nat closes her eyes before she forces herself to look at him.

It takes everything she has in her to bring herself to speak. His deep blue eyes are staring into her very soul, the lines of his face etched with concern, and for a moment a thought flits through her mind unbidden; a thought of something so impossible and yet so tangible she finds herself straddling an edge worse than that of the thinking she allowed herself this morning.

For all of three seconds, Nat imagines a fair skinned little baby with blue eyes every bit as intense as Steve’s – it’s father’s - staring at her just like this for whatever it may have. For all of two seconds, she believes such a baby could be real. Then – most dangerous of all – for one second her hand slips from atop her bent knee, and her fingers make the briefest of contact against her stomach before she thinks better of herself and reposition her hand to its previous spot.

“If it’s safe…” She begins her answer, trying to choose her words carefully. “Yes, I would want it.”

It feels like a weight off her chest. It’s terrifying, but it’s also freeing. It feels like all of the weirdness which has surrounded them in the past twenty-four hours has evaporated up into the night sky. Now, she’s just watching Steve. The ball is in his court and his face is thoughtful.

He settles in deeper on the bench, rather than running away from her. That has to be a good sign.

“When you say ‘safe’?” He asks, looking to her to fill in the blank.

“Not the world.” She confirms for him, “That’s always a mess no matter what.”

He chuckles, tipping his head back to look up at the stars.

“But, we still go on.” She says, sliding her legs down and scooting the tiniest bit closer to him.

She props her elbow up on the back of the bench, turning herself sideways as so to watch his profile as he considers her.

“We hold each other together. People have families and, you know, sometimes it sucks. But sometimes it’s really great.”

He’s closed his eyes by this point, but he cracks one open as she leans over him. At this angle, in the pale glow of the streetlight, Nat feels like she can see just how much two years on the run has hardened him. It’s more than the darkness of his hair and beard as he’s grown it out; the golden blonde she used to associate with him now a distant memory. There is now a different sharpness around his eyes, carved there from always looking over his shoulder. He is still in his top condition, of course. The serum does it’s part in ensuring that, and most of the odd jobs he finds are physically demanding enough. Still, sitting here like this, it’s more apparent that his t-shirt has some extra fabric when he is slouched back. If she looks long enough, she can start to see that there really was once a scrawny kid from Brooklyn standing in his army surplus work boots.

She wonders if his child would inherit those pre-Captain America parts of him. Probably not; any baby of his – and especially one which could defy the odds and come from her – would likely inherit his serum. It would be athletically adept by nature, and possibly have his strength, which would be something to deal with.

She shakes her head; she is getting ahead of herself.

“I mean physically safe.” She clarifies her answer to him. “If… If I am pregnant, and it’s alive, and the odds are decent that both it and me will stay that way, then I don’t think I have it in me to get rid of it.”

Steve won’t lie and say he has loved Nat from the moment he first saw her. He also won’t lie and say that he has pictured anything like this moment before.

He also won’t lie and say that this right now isn’t up there in the top three most terrifying moments of his life.

But God he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

It’s all still a lot for him to wrap his head around. He wasn’t brought up this way. Back in his day if you got a girl pregnant – and his mom made sure before she died that he knew she would come haunting him if that ever happened– you married her. He knows things are different now. Families are different, and people are more understanding. Communities are less religious and the political scene has changed the public view of marriage quite a bit. Now, with all that being said, looking up at Nat right now and the way that despite all her reservations, she can’t quite seem to keep herself from smiling just a little, Steve thinks he would marry her in a heartbeat if she’d let him.

Maybe someday down this line he’ll find the courage to tell her that.

For the time being he settles for reaching for her hand. She allows him to take it, which is more than she usually grants him outside of the bedroom. He knows it’s just the moment and he is pushing his luck too, because he can hear the faint echo of her heart hammering wildly inside her and see the slight tick in her jaw. Still, her pupils are wide and watching him with interest, so he doesn’t think the intrusion is completely unwelcome.

“Guess I should expect my mom’s ghost to come haunting me.” He says aloud, and she laughs outright. “She promised she would if I ever got a girl pregnant.”

“Don’t go thinking we’re getting married, Rogers.” She teases, like she can read his mind, so he shoots her a half-serious look.

“It was literally her dying wish.” He comments, though frankly, it was more of a “last few days” warning.

Nat laughs again, and now she stands, still holding his hand.

“Come on.” She says, pulling him up to his feet. “We promised Sam ice cream.”

He chuckles, and when she starts to relax her grip on his hand and walk away Steve makes the split-second decision to pull her back.

“Hey.” He says as she turns back, surprise written on her face. It’s a risk, but he lightly tugs on her hand, pulling her to him, and when she closes her eyes as he leans in he presses a chaste kiss to her lips. “We’re having a baby.”

She hums, rolling her lips as he pulls back, her fingers still locked loosely with his.

“Tell me again after Thursday.” She says, “Then I might believe you.”

“Thursday.” He promises her, “It’s a date.”

She snorts a laugh, and this time when she turns to lead him back towards town he releases her hand and follows her.

Chapter Text

Nat is doing her best to keep in mind that five days isn’t really a lot of time. She has survived far worse in her life than five days of uncertainty. She can do this.

She manages to convince herself of this fact midway through Sunday, which is only day one, so she would call that a strong start. She knows she is going to get her answers on Thursday and then she can stress and plan accordingly from there. In the meantime, she has to work with what she knows, easy.

So, Sunday is uneventful. Steve finishes mowing the little old lady’s lawn, as well as does some work on her car for her. Monday almost feels normal. They lay low, spend a little more time in the library, and at night they play a game of blackjack. The only difference Nat finds herself making in the routine is her newfound request for half-calf coffee, and at night she has a bottle of water in her hands as she studies her cards as opposed to beer. Other than that, all is normal.

Tuesday is when normal flies out the window.

She wakes up feeling nauseous. Not sick per-say, but queasy. She is hoping it will go away on its own but that hope is fading when they sit down at the diner and she is only feeling worse. She’s debating passing on her usual order of over easy eggs and bacon in favor of just a side of toast when the waitress comes and asks about coffee.

“Half regular, half decaf please.” She requests, even if coffee doesn’t sound overly appealing right now.

Within a few minutes the waitress comes back with their coffees and takes their orders for food. Immediately the smell of the coffee hits her, and not in a good way. Her voice is strained as she orders a plate of French toast; deciding that is a good compromise between real food and something to keep her nausea at bay.

The waitress leaves to go put their orders in and Steve and Sam start talking about something or other. Vaguely, Nat is aware they are discussing Wanda, and the fact that she was due to call them a week ago and assure them she is still alive. The details, however, she isn’t listening to. Something about Vision hasn’t made any headlines lately, which means he is probably still with Wanda and she is fine.

Nat, however, is the opposite of fine.

In what may be the worst descion she has ever made she silently convinces herself the coffee – despite how wretched it smells – will make her feel better. She picks up her mug and raises it to her lips, and immediately she regrets her decision.

“Excuse me.” She says, calmly, and then she gets up without further explanation. Her stomach feels like it is flipping over itself as she walks between closely set tables to the door of chipping white paint and a silhouette of a woman hung at its front.

She stumbles inside the door, finding it is a single room of a toilet and sink, just barely large enough for her to close the door all the way as she crumples to her knees and begins retching up last night’s peanut butter sandwich.

The vomit splashes into the toilet bowl in heavy, sour-smelling chunks. The outpouring of it fills her senses and makes the whole ordeal so much worse. Tears are pricking at the corners of her eyes by the time she is able to gasp for a breathe, and Nat grimaces as she looks down into the bowl.

She tastes the ends of her short hair in her mouth, and when she goes to move them it proves useless. She gets sick all over again. The bile burns at her throat and through her nostrils as she violently heaves out her dinner from last night.

The next time she is able to catch her breathe she is careful to keep her eyes closed and her gasping to a minimum; lest she want to smell her own sick again and go for round three.

“Nat?” Steve’s voice calls to her, following a light knock on the door. “Nat, are you ok in there?”

She groans, loud enough for him to hear, and without picking her head up off the seat of the toilet.

“Ok, Nat, I’m coming in.”

Of course he is.

She doesn’t bother trying to argue with him or pretend like everything is fine. Instead, she musters up the strength to pillow her head properly on her elbow and tilt slightly to the side so that she can at least look at him.

The door only opens a crack with her feet blocking it. There really isn’t room for two people in here – at all – but Steve manages to slip in anyway and closed the door behind him.

Nat has seemed a little off all morning.

Steve first noticed her color seemed pale as they were leaving the motel. For the first minute or two, he had chalked it up to the morning light. But she’s been so quiet and clearly in her head. He has been trying to work out if it’s stress, planning, or potentially morning sickness.

That last one still seems surreal to consider, and yet he is the most suspicious of it.

“I can’t tell if this goes in the ‘pregnant’ or ‘dying’ category.” She croaks, bringing him back to the moment.

He does his best to smile for her. Currently, she is kneeling in a sweaty heap before him on the floor of a diner’s ladies’ room. Her head is propped lazily in the crook of her elbow on the seat of the toilet, with her hair falling over her forearm and dangling over the bowl.

“Is there an answer that doesn’t make it my fault?” He asks, and she huffs, like she is trying to laugh.

Any hope of that, however, is unfortunately lost when she starts to pick up her head. Her hair falls against her cheek and she grimaces as the bile caked into the tips slides against her face.

“Here, let me help.” He more instructs as opposed to offers, but she doesn’t argue with him.

He crouches down, and thanks to the close quarters of the room that is all he has to do in order to get her situated between his knees.

“Can I borrow this?” He asks, his fingers gently prodding at the hair tie she keeps secured around her wrist.

“Go for it.” She says, holding her hand up for him.

He takes the hair tie, and as he works on gathering the upper layers of her hair back into a topknot she reaches her arm up to flush the toilet.

“You know this is the women’s room, right Rogers?” She asks as he finishes tying her hair up.

“You know you were turning green walking in here?” He asks in return, “Believe me, the waitress isn’t worried about me.”

She groans, and rather than flopping her head forward against the toilet she leans herself back against his chest.

He moves with her, his arms circling her, and it isn’t on purpose, but one of his hands slides palm flat over her belly, and at that point he can’t bring himself to pull away.

There isn’t anything there to feel yet, especially not underneath her sweatshirt zipped over a t-shirt, and the denim of her jeans still as snuggly secured around her waist as ever. Yet, he knows that hidden beneath all the normal, their child is beginning to grow.

He presses his hand a touch more firmly against her, just long enough to keep her attention as he presses a kiss to her temple.

“Come on.” He whispers to her, and he slides his hand to her hip, beginning to nudge her up. “Sam’s getting the food to go. We’ll go back to the motel and you can lay down.”

Nat hasn’t taken a lot of sick days in her lifetime; they don’t tend to be one of her employment benefits. But, technically, she is off the clock right now, so maybe everything balances out.

Anyway, she feels a lot better once she is out of the diner and into the fresh air. Her stomach is still a little uneasy, so before they arrive back at the motel she convinces the boys to stop in at a gas station where she picks up one bottle of water and one bottle of Gatorade, along with a box of mini saltine crackers.

She’s glad they stopped, because it turns out her body doesn’t want to hold down anything more than that today.

She puts her leftovers from the diner in the fridge until lunchtime, at which point she passes them over in favor of eating two handfuls of crackers. By dinner she knows she needs to at least try eating some real food, so when Steve suggests ordering Chinese she asks for some soup, and promises she will be ok waiting here for him and Sam to get back.

She probably would have been too, had she not opened up her container from the diner to try and test one bite of something other than crackers before she winds up regretting the soup.

So now she is kneeling on the tile of the motel bathroom floor, curling in more and more on herself by the minute. She flushes the toilet with one hand and pushes with the other at the strands of hair which have fallen from the tie Steve did for her earlier.

She whines shamelessly as she eases down from her knees and onto her side. She pillows her head with one arm as she sucks in deep breathes, and the other hand she slides over her stomach much like Steve had earlier at the restaurant.

She’s been careful, up until this morning, to keep her distance from… it.

It sounds ridiculous, because for one thing it is literally inside of her. For another, she hasn’t exactly been doing a standout job of emotional distance keeping. She keeps daring to hope, to imagine, and then earlier when Steve placed his hand over the surface of her stomach she thought it was the most ridiculous thing in the world that it actually made her feel a little better; like the thing inside of her might be real, and if it’s real, it somehow knew Steve was there.

She breathes in through a wave of tears and nausea. She presses her hand against her belly with a little more pressure, cupping her flesh and grounding herself somewhere between the moment and the fantasy.

“You in there kid?” She murmurs, her voice thick and raspy from vomiting. “Hm?”

She slips her fingers under the black denim of her waistband, stroking lightly over her flesh even though it is far too early for a baby to feel any kind of touch.

Still, she can’t seem to stop daydreaming.

“I think you’re in there.” She finally admits aloud, “The question is, are you where you’re supposed to be?”

Because that would be her luck. She and Steve have been sleeping together in the fun way for about seven months now, but she can’t say for sure when their combined serums started regenerating anything. With her luck, she only has part of a uterus, or just her ovaries and a fallopian tube, or some other incomplete combination of parts. She can already see the horror on the ultrasound tech’s face on Thursday. They will press that wand down on her stomach and tell her the pregnancy isn’t viable. They will tell her they are so sorry, but the only course of action now is to abort what’s there before it progresses any further and kills her.

She slides her hand still against her skin in an attempt to will away the nightmare. She tries to bring back a little bit of the daydream; the fantasy that she will go in on Thursday and everything will be ok.

“Everything will be ok.” She whispers the words aloud, as though speaking them will somehow make it true. “Everything will be ok, baby. We’re ok.”

“Nat?” Steve calling her name and the door opening out in the main room is the best answer her prayers are going to get.

“In here.” She calls back, swallowing down more bile and more pleas. “Out in a minute.”

Chapter Text

Wednesday it’s pouring rain out, so the three of them are confined to the motel room.

Nat is just fine with that, personally. She wakes up queasy yet again and drags her feet on eating anything other than her crackers.

“We can get you more soup.” Steve offers at one point. She had managed to hold down the wonton soup from the Chinese place last night; she even finished her bowl.

She cranes her head up to better let him see the crinkle of her nose, because as tempting as the offer of more soup is, she isn’t in love with the idea of moving into an upright position; let alone venturing out into the rain.

He would probably go alone, maybe take Sam with him. Leaving her here curled up on their bed whilst he braves the storm for her is probably his intention, and she doesn’t know exactly how to feel about that.

“Maybe later.” She says, and promptly flops her head back down, “I just got comfy.”

It isn’t a lie. Later she might be itching to move after having been cooped up all day, and venturing out to get her own food would be the perfect remedy. But for now her stomach is finally starting to settle. The sounds of rain pattering down outside, and the news playing on a low volume on the TV make the small motel room feel cozy rather than cramped.

She’d finally concede to the need to lay down about half an hour ago. Steve was already sitting on his side of their shared bed, flipping through a novel he’d picked up somewhere in their travels. She flopped down her on her side next to him with her head at the foot of the bed and her bare feet tucked up under her pillow for warmth. She is curled around her box of saltines like a snake coiled around a treasure, and when he emerges from the shower Sam shoots her a look of pity and soon drops her Gatorade into her snack space.

Steve frowns at her as Sam moves on. She knows he is likely still debating clarifying who exactly he is volunteering to get her soup. She’s grateful he doesn’t end up saying anything, and rather, he shifts his book into one hand and sets the other on her thigh.

Nat could fall asleep right here and now. Between the lulling atmosphere of the room, the lack of caffeine in her system, and Steve’s hand rubbing gentle on her leg, Nat can’t stop her eyes from fluttering closed. She could drift off and not be surprised in the least if she weren’t to wake until late tonight. The idea is so appealing-

“Shit.”

Her eyes snap open at Sam’s whispered curse.

She props herself up on her elbow and crawls up on her hands and knees. Steve leans forward next to her, his eyes equally glued to the television as he sets aside his book and Sam turns up the volume.

“The ship appears to be extra-terrestrial in origin, and much of the Greenwich Village neighborhood has already been destroyed. Witnesses have reported a sighting of Spider-Man…”

The broadcast floods every one of Nat’s senses. She can’t tear her eyes away from the images of a shining red and gold suit being thrown past the camera, and parts of what were once buildings and cars being hurled as weaponry by these giant mechanical tentacles. The words hammer against her eardrums like sirens. This isn’t just Tony; the damn kid is in the fray.

A new wave of nausea swirls in her stomach, her skin feels clammy, and suddenly the room smells stale and suffocating as a horrible realization hits her over the head.

It’s time to go back.

Nat closes her eyes and sits back on her haunches. She gives the nausea and whatever other feelings of panic flooding through her right now exactly five seconds to settle, and when she opens her eyes again there is a dull buzzing growing louder under the sound of the broadcast. Steve is the culprit; now on his feet and pulling his old phone from his pocket.

He should have gotten rid of that thing a long time ago. She has – in fact - told him that many times. But he’s always brushed her off. He’s said it hasn’t brought him trouble yet, and if it ever does, he will fight his way out and deal with it then.

He’s kept it for this moment. Whether he’s admitted it or not, he has kept it knowing that somehow, in some world-ending way, today would come.

He flips it open, and it feels like the final nail in the coffin.

“Tony.” He says, and then it’s a beat, his brow furrowing in a confused way that Nat wasn’t expecting. Then.. “Bruce.”

Talk about unexpected.

She glances to Sam, who is equally surprised; enough so he’s frozen with the car keys in his hand and is returning her look. The two of them come to a silent agreement whilst Steve listens to whatever Bruce is saying on the other end; whatever this is, it is very, very bad.

“Vision?” Steve asks, and this time when Nat and Sam look his way he acknowledges them. He has this crease in his forehead and an impatience ticking in the way he shuffles on his feet. He knows they’re trying to put together their next moves, and knows he is going to have to explain.

Speaking of explaining, Nat gets the feeling that is what Bruce is trying to do at this point. Steve looks more and more confused by the second, and it’s longer this time before he speaks again.

“I might.” He finally says, his voice and his glance to her and Sam indicating he’s wrapping up. “We’ll check it out. Thanks Bruce, bye.”

He sighs as he hangs up, and spends a moment staring down at the phone. Nat gets up to her feet, snagging her Gatorade with her, just in case.

She isn’t blind to the way Steve’s eyes linger on her. She swallows, but inclines her head. They can’t… They can’t ignore the fact that she’s pregnant – most likely pregnant, at least – but, they also can’t ignore whatever was on the other end of that phone.

Steve is starting to think he should have been listening to Nat all these months and thrown away that cell phone.

In the blink of an eye, the three of them have gone from a rainy day in the room, to packing up their things and driving through the storm, boarding the Quinjet Nat and some old friend from some old mission have stashed away up in the mountains, to Scotland, to make sure Wanda and Vision are still alive.

To make matters worse, the answer they find to that question, would be ‘barely’.

“Why do I know that is them?” Sam asks as he pilots the jet into the air territory of Edinburg, and already they can see four neon bright laser beams cutting through the night sky.

“Because of course it is.” Steve answers, heading from his seat to the back of the jet. “We’re gonna want to come at them from all angles. Drop me first, then catch up.”

“Aye-aye Cap.”

Walking out of the main cockpit of the jet, Steve is still shaking his head. He really, really should have thrown away that phone.

Of course, he still would have seen the news this morning. By now reports are circulating that Tony Stark has disappeared; not-so-coincidentally in the aftermath of that fight. Loath as he is to accept it; that phone doesn’t make a difference. They would still be here right now had he not gotten that call. This is still the people they are, and the lives they lead.

The quiet life just isn’t what they have.

Nat is already in the back of the jet when he arrives. She is securing the straps of her tactical vest. Laid out on the bench next to her she has a chest plate ready to go, with two slots for a pair of tonfa at the back.

Her eyes flit up to him. There is no guardedness or challenge in them; she knows he trusts her judgement and her abilities to keep herself safe. Yet, it’s like the very air is demanding they acknowledge their new situation in some way.

“I think we’re going to miss that appointment.” He says, picking up the chest plate and handing it to her.

“Looks like it.” She agrees in a soft voice, and she accepts the armor from him.

He watches as she secures that to herself, and then pulls a set of arm plates from the storage case at her left. She lays the first plate over her bicep and holds it in place with her middle and ring fingers while her thumb and other fingers grab at the strap and bring it around to snap with practiced ease. She moves on to the forearm plate next, and then her other bicep, and by the time she is snapping the clasps of her right forearm she is giving him an amused little grin and he realizes just how intensely he’s been staring.

“I’m a realist, Rogers.” She says, “Sometimes a pessimist. But I’m not reckless.”

He nods, and over the jet’s engines he thinks he hears the sounds of a battle. They’re getting closer, and so he goes and takes his place across from her as to be ready when Sam drops the landing bay door.

Well, semi-ready. They likely still have another few minutes, so he stands slouched against the wall and returns to watching Nat.

“What if I just want to ask how you’re doing?”

She pauses on her final strap and cuts her eyes up at him in warning. Her emotions are not an aspect of this which she wants to get into right before the mission.

“I haven’t thrown up since we first got in the air.” She remarks, shifting the conversation back towards the hard facts. “That’s good.”

He chuckles, and after she loads her tonfas into their sheathes she grabs ahold of the security handle by the door. She’s right to; Sam will be opening the hatch any second. So, Steve grabs hold of the handle on his side.

They lock eyes from across the hanger, and despite the fact that they are about to jump into battle, this little grin tugs at the corner of her mouth.

It’s the real answer to his question, she realizes. They may not technically know for sure that she is pregnant, but the evidence is overwhelmingly pointing that way. She’s already told him she would want the baby so long as the confirmation comes back that the pregnancy is safe for her to carry. But this little grin, it’s the hint of happiness; of hope she hasn’t found the words for yet.

Steve isn’t sure how it is that despite everything she’s been through - all the torture, the abuse, and combat that she never asked to see – she has managed to keep the light inside of her.

However she’s managed it, her resilience is by far one of the things he admires most about her. It’s something he suddenly realizes he would hope their child would never need, but would inherit from her all the same. Along with her resilience he would hope the baby gets her kind heart, her smile – especially when she thinks nobody is looking -, and the fire which ignites in her eyes whenever someone dares to threaten her or somebody she loves.

The bay door drops, and Steve shoves all those thoughts of the baby away to be examined later. For now he spots a train passing over a bridge below, and he makes that his landing target.

Nat hangs back with Sam to land the jet after Steve jumps. They find a spot on the roof of a warehouse to land, and Steve rides the train all the way into the station where the lights from the fight have disappeared into.

She and Sam end up less than a minute behind Steve, which is a good thing, because Vision already has a massive tear down his chest that would have killed him already if he were human.

It’s a hard fight. The kind Nat hasn’t fought in a long, long time. It takes the combined efforts of herself, Steve, and Sam to subdue the two alien creatures who have beaten Vision within an inch of his life. Then, the fight is over as quickly as it started. The creatures are extracted away in a tractor beam, leaving the five of them behind to lick their wounds.

“I thought we had a deal.” Nat chides as she watches the bay door close as they take off. “Stay close, check in, don’t take any chances.”

“Sorry.” Wanda doesn’t exactly sound sincere in her apology, “We just wanted time.”

She wouldn’t have expected it, but the excuse strikes a bit of a nerve in Nat. Enough that she marches right past Wanda and Vision, and Steve, on her way to her seat and sits down telling herself that snapping at Wanda isn’t going to do any good. They all want time. They all want that little bubble they have been living in for the past two years. They have all been watching the clock counting down, not sure exactly when it is going to hit zero, but knowing their bubble will be gone when it does.

They all want that bubble to be real.

She thinks back to this morning. Back to pretending everything could be easier. She thinks about all the mornings she’s woken with an arm slung over Steve, or his over her. Back to all the late-night drives, and early morning coffee runs. All the time’s Sam has joked with motel clerks, waitresses, and barflies about her and Steve being a married couple, and at some point they stopped giving him more argument than an eyeroll. She thinks about the other night at the bus stop, the words “we’re having a baby” coming off his lips like this could be no different for them than it is for any other couple; for any real couple.

Her stomach flips and brings her back to the present. She reaches down for her Gatorade and takes a sip, and that seems to be enough to keep her lunch where it belongs. Still, she tips her head back, closes her eyes, and begins to count the hours until they land back in New York.

Chapter Text

Nat closes her eyes and tucks her chin, just barely managing to keep her head from smashing against the ground as she lands harshly on her back. All around her pillars of earth shoot up and quickly block out the light, the last thing she sees is Groot plowing his fists into the Earth. One pillar erects itself between her right arm and her side, while on her left the earth squeezes her arm in and crowds her leg so that her knee is awkwardly bent over it. For a moment, she thinks this might be the end. She is being buried alive and Thanos’ next move is going to be to open up the ground underneath her, and she will sink so deep that the lava at the Earth’s core will burn her up.

Maybe she is more pessimistic than she likes to admit.

Fortunately for her, her imprisonment stops at the entombment.

She coughs away crumbs of dirt as they fall onto her face. Outside her tent, she can still hear that sounds of what can barely be considered a battle. Thanos has swatted them each away like flies. A team comprised of enhanced soldiers, master strategists, whatever Groot is, and some of the most advanced technology on the planet, and he has discarded them all with the wave of his hand.

Nat manages to wriggle one of her arms up to her face to wipe more dirt from her eyes. She breathes steadily, and assesses her confinement. She rolls one ankle with success, and the other is stopped by one of the pillars, but she would rather that than a burst of pain. She already has her left arm, and her right she tries to raise but gets maybe an inch before her hand taps the face of another pillar.

“Ok.” She breathes, looking around at the few holes in the earth tent’s structure. Patches of sunlight are few and far between, but they’re enough that her eyes can trace the outline of the pillars.

She rolls her ankles again in experiment. The left is the one with more freedom, but also is attached to her knee bent up at that odd angle. Her right leg is pinned pretty tight at the calf, but she has almost full use of that arm.

Small movements are going to be her friends here.

She kicks lightly on her right, slowly inching her leg higher and closer to freedom. On her left, she digs her heel in until she can make this small hopping motion onto her foot. She grunts and struggles, and rolls her body as sideways to her right as she can. With her hands on either side of one pillar she digs her fingers into the earth until she has carved herself some handholds. She is inching herself up, slowly but surely dragging herself out, and trying to gauge how far her leg can go like this when everything outside suddenly goes quiet.

Too quiet.

Her panting breaths echo off the walls of her tent, and she just barely manages to claw her way closer to one of the cracks between the pillars as she hears T’Challa’s voice.

“Up, General, up! This is no place to die.”

She sees him, hurrying towards someone on the ground, then… he’s gone in a cloud of dust, leaving a stunned Okoye gaping at where he just was.

Defeat begins to sink into Nat’s chest. Confusion and understanding are at war in her mind as more dust billows past her peephole.

Then, her heart truly sinks.

It’s like a gust of nothing inside of her. No blood, no pain, just a mildly irritating sensation of more dirt on her skin but this time it’s seeped between her thighs, and then that’s gone too.

Her eyes blow wide with terror and fury in equal measures. She begins clawing at the pillars keeping her trapped here with a renewed urgency. She kicks with both her legs until the pillar finally gives and she tumbles out of her tomb. Ahead of her, Okoye has just barely gotten to her feet herself. She is still standing and staring around in shock, and Nat pays her no mind.

She runs.

Her feet hammer hard against the earth. She tears around the bend of trees to another side of the clearing. This can’t be true, it can’t be real, she must have missed something trapped underneath that pile of dirt and unable to see whatever truly happened.

When she sees Steve crouched on the ground, she stumbles to a stop.

Vaguely, she is aware of Bruce in the mech suit behind her. Him and Rhodes, and Thor, and this anthropomorphic racoon sitting on a log with its head hung and tears in its eyes. But, all she sees is Steve.

Steve, kneeling over Vision’s grey, lifeless body on a bed of dust on the forest floor. Her hand goes to her stomach automatically as a disgusted nausea swirls there; far too different than what she has felt the last few days.

All of the “wrong” she has felt for the past few weeks suddenly isn’t there. She feels like herself again, and it is the most sickening feeling she has ever felt.

Just as Rhodes asks aloud what is happening, Steve collapses onto his ass, and Nat feels hot tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

God no. Her mind’s eye shows her this nightmare scenario where he keeps falling onto his back. Where he would look up at her as he too fades away into dust, and she would have to stand there and watch him go, until there would be nothing left of him and her knees would finally buckle. She’d sink there in the pile of dust, fingers of one hand skimming it, the other still pressed to her belly.

Thankfully, Steve doesn’t dissipate away. He stays solidly sat in front of her, catching his breath, as reality dawns over them all.

“Oh God.” He whispers, and for a long moment, those words hang in the still air as the last spoken.

Eventually, Okoye comes limping into the clearing. She is still looking about wildly, distraught, and Nat can’t say she doesn’t share the sentiment. The others start to look and move around too, calling out for the likes of Sam and some of the Wakandan soldiers who followed them this far into the battlefield.

Steve, however, turns over his shoulder and looks up at her.

His eyes rake her over, and Nat has to bite her lip to keep her tears from spilling when his gaze lands on the hand she still has pressed over herself and she sees his own ragged breath before he looks to her to assuage his fears.

She wishes more than anything that she could give him that.

She offers him her other hand. He stares at it a minute, still sitting there catching his breath, like he isn’t ready yet to move from the pit of defeat. But eventually he takes her hand and lets her pull him to his feet. She doesn’t waste any time. She helps him up and immediately wraps her arms around his shoulders.

She doesn’t worry about the others. They don’t know the details of the last two years, and that is what she is counting on. All the others know is that she and Steve were the only two to evade the authorities completely in the last two years, and that they went to retrieve Wanda and Vision as a trio with Sam. They know that the two of them have traveled and only had each other to confide in for some length of time in the past two years. They know they have always been friends. They won’t question this display as Nat stands up on her toes to bury her face in Steve’s shoulder, or the way his arms wrap around her waist in a tight hold.

“It’s gone.” She whispers to him, too quiet for anyone else to hear.

His already ragged breath stutters in her ear. He pulls back, his hands remaining firm on her side and on her hip as his eyes search her for a hint of uncertainty.

God she wishes she were uncertain.

“It’s gone.”

Nat whispers those two words into his ear, and Steve would consider it a miracle he doesn’t collapse back to the ground.

He pulls back from her. There is a glassiness to her eyes, one which she blinks away quickly, and Steve forces himself to do the same.

He drops his hands from her side, and as she steps back from him he gives her fingers a partial squeeze before he faces the others.

Those who are still here haven’t wandered far. Most of them are too caught up in stumbling about and scanning for survivors to have witnessed this small moment between himself and Nat. Bruce is the only one obviously diverting his attention; pretending to be frustrated by the damage the battle caused to his Iron Mech suit.

“Come on.” Steve says, “Let’s get back to the palace. Take stock.”

He has no idea how they are supposed to do that, but on the trek back they begin to adopt of a system of keeping their eyes and ears peeled, and collecting disoriented Wakandan soldiers as they go.

For every survivor who joins their caravan, they also find themselves marking a body. That is the hardest pill to swallow. Thanos turned a countless number of living beings to dust with a snap of his fingers, but there are still bodies. So far they have counted one hundred and nine soldiers who gave their lives before Thanos snapped his fingers. One hundred and nine who had to feel the pain of dying, and for what?

Steve stops and watches as Nat crouches and tags another body. She hasn’t spoken a work since the clearing, and he doesn’t blame her. Overall, very few of them have said much. It’s been a somber walk, the only real conversation coming from Bruce or Rhodes whenever another found soldier asks what happened.

“I should’ve asked if you’re ok to walk.” He says as Nat stands up, not a hint of pain on her face nor in her body language.

Even if it isn’t physical, he’s sure the pain is there.

The hard part is going to be getting her to talk about it.

“I’m fine.” She answers, falling into step beside him. “It’s like it was never there.”

Steve has to swallow down the threat of bile, as well as the urge to reach out and grab her hand.

“It was Thanos.” She says, her eyes locked on the palace in the distance. “I know I didn’t specify.”

Steve squints against the evening sun, and how the light glints off the shattered edges of what was one the palace’s large windows.

“I know it was.”

As they trek on in silence, Steve can’t help but to play the battle back in his mind.

Okoye landed hard on the ground, large beams of dirt shot up from the earth and pinned Nat between them. Groot slammed his fists into the ground and when the earth moved at his command Steve slid right under Thanos. He got in a grand total of three hits. One to Thanos’ knee, one to his side, and one good uppercut. Then, Thanos moved to grab him, to throw him away like he had all the others.

And Steve grabbed on.

It took two hands and all his strength just to keep Thanos’ hand inches from his chest, but he managed. He dug in his heels. He knew Wanda and Vision were right behind him. They were out of time. Vision knew they were out of time and Steve could feel the runoff of Wanda’s magic as she was destroying the stone. He couldn’t let Thanos touch them. He couldn’t let this go any further.

Then, he was out cold.

He should have seen that coming. How could he have been so stupid he didn’t see that coming? One punch; that was all it took for Thanos to take him down. He should have been smarter than that.

He should have been stronger than that.

When they reach the palace and start comparing notes Nat does the only thing she knows how to do. She puts her shit aside, and she plays her part.

She finds a few computers in the war room that weren’t destroyed in the fight, and she turns on different news outlets from all over the world. Understandably, the world is even more confused than they are here in the center of Wakanda. Every monitor shows her reports of grief and hysteria. In addition to the lives Thanos took, there is a climbing tally of other deaths caused by his actions. Car accidents, plane crashes, surgeons and other doctors vanishing mid-procedure, house fires, the list goes on and on.

In addition to monitoring the media, Nat compares notes with Nakia and Rhodes, who have found themselves in charge of verifying the survivors within Wakanda and they’re own team respectfully.

“I haven’t been able to get ahold of Clint.” Rhodes tells her solemnly. “I’ll try again. I’m still trying to reach Scott Lang too. And Tony…”

He can’t bring himself to say it, and Nat nods in understanding. Tony is still M.I.A., and considering he disappeared after a battle with aliens and their fleeing ship, it’s safe to say they are going to continue struggling to get ahold of him.

If he’s even still out there.

“Sounds like a plan.” She says, “I can try them too, if you want.”

He gives her this small, grateful smile, like he would want for nothing more. She can only imagine the calls he has made today. She knows the first was to Pepper. She knows Pepper answered on the first ring and in a fit of hysterics, and she and Happy are fielding the chaos back at The Avengers Compound in New York right now. Despite it being good news that those two are still here, Nat knows it wasn’t an easy call. She can only imagine how awfully similar the other answered calls he’s made have been.

“There’s just one thing I need to take care of first.”

“Take your time.” Rhodes says, “I’ll let you know if I hear from them in the meantime.”

Nat makes sure to smile gratefully as he leaves her be, but once she is alone, she suddenly feels as though she might stop breathing at any moment.

She has never felt much in the way of anxiety. There isn’t any room for it in the lives she’s lead, and there never has been. But she has always had a thorough understanding of her own body, and that has been essential to her survival.

It was essential even in the Red Room. The procedures and injections which she and the other widows were subjected to were all done without consent, but not without explanation. Whether it came beforehand or after the fact, everything was always laid out for them in great detail. Dreykov always made sure they knew exactly what they were capable of.

Now, even knowing with upmost certainty the baby is gone, not knowing what she is left with is quickly eating her alive.

She ducks out of the war room and heads to the laboratory. The palace has been such a flurry of activity these past few hours that no one questions her. In fact, the only questions she gets come from a handful of palace staff, asking if she has seen Okoye or Queen Ramonda, and she gives whatever answers she has.

The laboratory is significantly quieter than anything upstairs. Since Shuri was dusted away with Thanos’ snap Bruce is the only one left around here who understands the majority of the equipment, and so anyone who had initially followed him down has since left him to his own devices and gone to make themselves useful elsewhere.

“Bruce?” Nat calls as she steps out of the elevator.

“In here.”

She follows his call, her steps slow as her eyes wander in awe around the high-tech equipment.

“This place blows Tony’s lab out of the water.” She remarks as she wanders into the small side-room where Bruce is hovering by a computer desk.

“I know.” He says, “You know before I was hoping he’s still alive just based on principle. Now, I want him alive so I can see his face when he sees this.”

Nat manages a chuckle, because if nothing else, that certainly would be a sight. She looks around a bit more before broaching the subject of what she came in here for. She is trying to figure out the different types of equipment. Most of it she isn’t entirely sure what it is she’s looking at, but she thinks she pick out which ones are specially designed by Shuri, and what are more standard issue around the globe.

“Shuri has medical equipment down here, right?”

“Yeah.” Bruce answers, immediately looking at her with worried eyes over the top of his computer. “Why? Did you get hit?”

She wants to scoff, but it’s a valid question. It’s been hours since the battle, but she would get stabbed or shot and wait this long to bring it up, given the circumstances.

“No, I didn’t get hit.” She says, wrapping her arms around herself as she tries to will herself to have this conversation.

“Ok…” Bruce trails when she has been quiet for too long. “Did someone else get hit?”

She shakes her head, “No.” She says, and to hell with it, this is going to be an awkward conversation no matter what. “I um… I need you to check on something for me.”

“Check on what?”

Nat sighs, and honestly, right now, a part of her wishes she could have just been one of the dust victims.

“For a couple months now, while we’ve been hiding out, Steve and I have been kind of… a thing.”

It is the lamest, most pathetic explanation which she has ever given for anything in her life. A thing? She doesn’t even know what “a thing” means. But, she doesn’t know what she and Steve are either; not really. They’re friends, she knows that much. Saying they’re “fuck buddies” seems a little brash, but “friends with benefits” isn’t something she wants to say out loud. Not to Bruce, at least.

“Oh, yeah.” Bruce says, sounding only marginally dejected. “I was wondering about that earlier. You know, with you guys hugging and all.”

Great, so maybe that wasn’t as excusable as she’d thought.

“Anyway, what’s that got to do with anything medical?” He asks, “I mean it’s not like you can…”

Whether it is the look she is sending his way or if he is just realizing that his trail of thinking really is the only explanation, he gets it. She sees happiness and despair fighting for dominance in his expression, and she knows he understands what’s happened to her.

A portion of it, at least.

“We think the super serum in Steve’s DNA combined with mine at some point, and the healing factors regenerated some things.”

“Things like… Just so I’m clear, we’re talking about your… You know-”

“My reproductive system?” She asks, taking pity on him and his stammering. “Yeah. Two pink lines on the pregnancy test were a pretty big tip off.”

He gasps, and she thinks it’s a happy sound, and that only makes her dig her fingers even deeper into her sides.

“That part doesn’t matter now.” She warns him, before he can get one congratulating word out. “We didn’t get a chance to have it confirmed, but I felt it turn to dust when Thanos snapped his fingers.”

“What?” He whispers, nearly tripping as he comes out from behind his desk. “Nat-”

“I just need you to tell me what is there.” She says, steeling her features, daring him with her tone to try again at telling her how sorry he is. “Any baby that was there is gone. But I need to know what exactly regenerated. If any of it is still missing or if it’s all intact, or if Thanos somehow took away whatever I had and I’m back where I started.”

She can practically see him shoving his pity and his condolences away in a little emotional box. She feels a little bad, because maybe the graceful thing to do would have been to hear out his apology and pretend it was of any comfort. But, sue her, she doesn’t have that kind of energy right now.

“Of course.” He says, “Come on, let’s see what Shuri has laying around here.”

Chapter Text

In most cases, asking your ex to put a probe up your vagina and examine your insides – with your current “friend with benefits” present – probably isn’t the best idea. But, these are extenuating circumstances. For one thing, they’re all adults, who have problems bigger than a petty dating history. For another, Nat trusts Bruce, and she would rather him be doing this than anyone else they know.

“Ok.” Bruce says, turning his screen out so that she and Steve can see.

She called Steve down here once she and Bruce found the ultrasound machine. She had debated not, but it felt wrong doing this without him. Even if they never got to see it, it was his baby too. He deserves the confirmation it’s gone and the answers as to what its original chances of survival may have been just as much as she does.

Then there was this little voice she couldn’t quite silence in the back of her mind. What if… Just what if she’s wrong, and somehow, it’s still there?

“So, this is your uterus Nat.” Bruce says, and he shifts the prob a bit, and Nat squeezes her hand on the cushion of the exam table when he does, though it’s more due to nerves than the actual pressure of the probe.

It won’t be there. She needs to remember that. The baby won’t be there, and it is ridiculous that something in her is hoping otherwise.

Steve places his hand on her arm, because of course he does, and she really wishes she could relax under his touch.

“There are your ovaries, your fallopian tubes. I don’t see any cysts or scars. No baby, but, I know you were expecting that.”

She was, but it still hurts.

“So my body regenerated a whole set of organs, and I didn’t notice?” She asks, because frankly, the more she has been thinking about it, the more unsettling that has been.

“Actually, I think you did notice.” Bruce says, “You said you’d been feeling bloated?”

“And tired.” Nat reiterates, “But, I was pregnant.”

“Right.” Bruce says with a nod, “But, far as you knew, that wasn’t possible.”

He waits a beat, gives her a chance to answer, but she doesn’t. She’s too busy hanging on to his every conclusion, and finally he turns his attention fully from the screen and to her.

“Nat, I’m not going to assume anything.” He says, “But if I had to guess, you probably got pregnant not long after your uterus regenerated. You said you had been experiencing some of your symptoms for weeks. I think at least at the start, some of what you were seeing was from the hormonal shift of the regeneration.”

“What if that’s all this was?”

Nat tilts her head up at Steve’s question. She is fully prepared to demand he spell that question out; to suggest in no uncertain terms that she may never have been pregnant to begin with. That she didn’t feel their baby dissipate inside of her today. Go ahead, say that in those exact words.

But she stops when she sees the sadness still etched into every line of his face. Like somehow, the idea that it was never there at all is even worse for him than the fact that they lost it.

“I don’t think so.” Bruce’s voice is equally sad, and he moves the probe around again, returning to the visual of her uterus. “I’m not a gynecologist, but from what I can tell her uterine lining is thicker than what’s normal. Definitely something an embryo could have survived on.”

With that he turns off the machine and begins sanitizing the probe, and Nat does her best to put the word “survived” into the back of her mind. She scoots up on the table and maneuvers her feet out of the stirrups. She also rolls her eyes when she realizes that her peeling off the towel they had covered her lap with has resulted in Steve turning and watching the closed door, as though he thinks someone is going to come bursting in. That, and Bruce is very pointedly hunched over that sanitizing equipment.

She doesn’t bother making a joke about how little modesty matters to her right now. She just goes along with it, and waits until she’s pulled her pants back into place before she says anything.

“Thank you Bruce, for doing this.”

Suddenly cautious, Bruce peeks at her over his shoulder. When he realizes she is standing and fully dressed the tension in his shoulders seems to ease a bit.

“Of course.” He says, “Look, I don’t know if the baby was good or bad news for you guys or what. But Nat, everything in there looks like it should function normally. You should expect to start getting a period soon. Other than that…. Well, uh, I think… I think you guys should talk.”

Nat nods, and in her peripherals she notes that Steve does too. With that, Bruce tosses his gloves into the trash and then excuses himself from the room. He shuffles past her and Steve, and when he closes the door behind him, and it feels like he took all the air in the room with him.

The minute Bruce suggests that they should talk Steve feels like he is watching walls rise from the earth and consume Nat all over again.

He’s brought back to that motel parking lot. All over again he is holding that pregnancy test in his hands while Nat’s insistence that she must be dying grows by the minute. He can see so many possibilities suddenly before them, and before he can so much try and process any of them, Nat has grabbed onto the bleakest one and is digging in her heels. First, she had to be dying. Then - after entertaining the idea of the pregnancy - it had to be the thing which was killing her. She couldn’t believe in their baby until after Thursday, not out loud.

Christ, it’s Thursday.

That fact was not lost on Steve when he walked in here. It was all he could think about when Nat texted him, and all he could see as he watched that screen and kept one hand steady on the back of the exam chair, and the other on her arm; for his own comfort as much as hers.

It was all he could think of as he prayed that maybe, just maybe, “it’s gone” was rooted in fear. Maybe they would be lucky, and Bruce would find a resilient pea-sized baby still hanging on.

But, they aren’t so lucky, and now he is watching the walls rise up in Nat’s eyes.

“I don’t know what he expects us to talk about.” She says, hooking her thumbs into her pants pockets as she tries to be casual about this.

“Maybe he expects you to explain condoms to me.”

She chuckles, even if the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. Still, it’s something.
“Hey Nat-”

“I’m fine Steve.” She cuts him off, though he can see that even she knows she’s just given herself away; “Steve” is usually reserved for when she is either mad at him, or distinctly not fine. “What about you?”

He sighs, but he’ll roll with it for now. He takes a step back in order to give her some space, and winds up sitting on the edge of the exam bed.

“I think it’s going to hit me later.” He admits, “We lost a lot of people today.”

“Too many to count.” She agrees, and he nods.

They’re quiet for a minute. Maybe they’re trying to let it hit them here, while they have some privacy, and each other, but the fact of the matter is they did lose too many people to count today. Bucky, T’Challa, Wanda, Vision,… Sam.

Steve scrubs a hand over his face. Sam was the only other person who knew. It might be selfish, but he can’t help but to wonder what Sam would say if he were here right now. He’d probably be keeping everyone from looking for them. He’d keep coming up with things for Rhodes to check, or would be running triage with the wounded Wakandan soldiers.

Steve wonders what might have happened if he had dissipated away instead of Sam. He supposes Sam would be the one sitting here, and not him. He wouldn’t have let Nat do this alone. Sam would have stood by her side and he would still be sitting here now, asking her how she’s doing, and he would know as well as Steve does that the answer is not “I’m fine.”

Steve doesn’t want to imagine the sorrowful look Sam would be giving him had Nat been the one dusted away.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Nat’s voice pulls him from his thoughts, “I know I said I would want it if the pregnancy was safe, but given what happened today, I’d rather not go trying again anytime soon.”

For a moment, he feels like he has whiplash. He hadn’t even considered that.

“No.” He says, still unable to really imagine such a thing. “Me either.”

Maybe once upon a time, in another life, a simple life, the idea of him and Nat together and trying for a baby could feel like the right thing to do. But not right now. Maybe not ever. Not… Not after today.

He feels like he is being punched by Thanos all over again. They didn’t just lose some sort of possibility today. They lost something real, and living, and theirs.

“Nat.” He says, just as she is starting to look towards the door.

“Hm?” She hums, turning back to him, and he gives it a minute, trying to work out exactly what he wants to say to her.

“When this hits you, promise me you won’t go through it alone. Ok?”

She blinks away something. Maybe it’s a tear, or maybe it’s an argument. At this point Steve thinks she could go either way and – frankly – so could he.

“Ok.” She agrees, “Promise me the same?”

He nods, “Deal.”

She nods, satisfied, and that’s that.

Nat doesn’t have the heart to tell Steve she isn’t expecting this to “hit her” in the way it will eventually hit him.

She understands his point. She gets why he is expecting to grieve this loss as if it were something real. It wassomething real. She felt it dissipate, so it was real enough to do that. It was real enough that it counted. Thanos eradicated half of all living things, and the little thing inside of her fell victim. It was alive enough to do that.

That thought is bitter and it invades her waking thoughts and to drives her to doubling up on the coffee she is once again able to drink. She’d rather not be left alone with that thought at night, when it becomes so much harder to remember that it doesn’t matter if it was alive enough to count or not. For one thing, just because her uterus and other reproductive organs are intact, it doesn’t mean nothing would have gone wrong. Things very easily could have gone south. She doesn’t even know how far along she was, only that it had to have been early. Serum or not, with her history, she probably would have lost the baby regardless.

Kids were never in the cards for her. Even before her graduation, she had heard the rumors of the ceremony. Ohio was the last place she may have dared to dream that – somehow – she might be spared her fate, and even back then she knew it was a fantasy.

So, while Steve is expecting to grieve something which was real, Nat doesn’t see much of a point in grieving something she never should have had.

They spend a week in Wakanda. They run triage, and help Queen Ramonda address the masses of her country. Now she is someone who has lost everything. How is it fair that both T’Challa and Shuri were victims of Thanos? When Ramonda doesn’t even have T’Chaka to lean on in the aftermath? And she is expected to step forward and bring her country back from shambles in this time. She is expected to be the pillar of hope when so many are grieving. She stands before her people with her head held high, and her hands steady as she picks up the pieces of her government.

The people know what she’s lost, and that is the part Nat is truly in awe of. When she stands at the head of the tribal council the people all know the depths of her pain. They know her children are gone, and she acknowledges this to them, and then speaks of moving forward; how it is the only thing left for the world to do.

After the week, The Avengers head back to New York. Turns out Ross was among those who turned to dust, so he isn’t a problem they have to push through in order to get back into their old residences.

Not exactly how Nat wanted to avoid fighting him, but, it is what it is.

The first week back in New York Nat feels like she never sleeps. The fact of the matter is they’re spread too thin. They’re fielding calls and meetings from various diplomats left and right. They’re dispatching what is left of S.H.I.E.L.D. to nations which seem to have been devastated more than others, which are incredibly hard distinctions to make. They’re running in circles looking for their allies, and drowning trying to keep those they’ve found from spiraling over the edge of despair. Thor isn’t speaking. In fact, Nat isn’t sure that he’s eating. They’ve declared Scott a vanishing victim along with his partner, and Clint hasn’t answered one phone call despite the daily voicemails they’ve been leaving.

The only reason Nat knows he’s alive is because Happy told her so. Apparently the day after the battle, Clint showed up at the compound, demanding answers. His whole family were victims, and the news of that is nearly enough to finally break her. The mental images of Laura, Cooper, Lila, and Nathanial dissipating away is not a nightmare which she is looking forward to seeing. So, she does what she can to avoid it, and continues to work late into the night.

At five minutes to midnight Nat is cracking open her second Red Bull. They’ve turned the compound living room into a war room of sorts. The holo-table is running a constant loop of rising death tolls, and the computer at the desk has become a black hole of blaming emails and cries for help. Somebody has to answer those things, and Nat needs a break from the aimless research in the lab with Bruce and Rhodes.

Another few minutes and she gets up to go to the bathroom. Despite the confirmation that she is no longer pregnant, she still feels like she is peeing every hour of the day. Bruce says her hormones are still resetting, though personally, she thinks it’s more to do with her return to a diet of mainly caffeine.

Anyway, the nearest bathroom is technically a “men’s” bathroom. The distinction doesn’t mean much to her around here, and it never has. They only bothered labeling the bathrooms when Wanda moved in. She was young and traumatized as it was, they didn’t want to add the awkwardness of sharing a bathroom with mostly grown men.

So, she could go in there. But, she bypasses it anyway and walks the extra five feet to the women’s room, and upon walking in she immediately forgets urgency.

Pepper is slumped on the floor of the first stall. The door is hanging open and allowing Nat a clear view of her friend with her back against the wall, sweat clinging to her skin, and her long hair tied back in a haphazard braid.

“Stress or food poisoning?” Nat asks after it seems like she and Pepper have been staring at one another for too long without speaking.

Pepper closes her eyes and breathes in a deep sigh.

“Tony wanted a kid.” She answers, her voice strained.

Nat blinks, and immediately she takes in the scene before her with new eyes. This was her only two weeks ago. Something in the back of her mind whispers that she should be bothered by this. This should be what breaks her.

But how could it?

Pepper is her friend, and in the midst of all this death – in the midst of Tony still missing – she suddenly has this tiny promise of life which needs her attention and her energy.

If there is one thing Nat learned in her week of knowingly being pregnant, it’s that a baby forces you to consider the future; and the future hasn’t been something which has seemed real lately. She can’t imagine trying to think about a baby in Pepper’s circumstances, let alone long for it.

So, Nat sinks down next to Pepper. Back against the wall, knees bent, and Pepper bows her head in sadness.

“I hear saltines help with morning sickness.” Nat offers after a minute. “And Gatorade.”

Despite the tears in her eyes, Pepper chuckles. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

They sit in more silence, for several minutes. Eventually Pepper begins to explain that before the fight with Thanos’ minions, she and Tony were out jogging, and Tony mentioned he’d dreamed that they had a kid. Then, the story is broken by Pepper dry heaving, and eventually real-heaving. She vomits up mostly bile, and when that’s done the two of them settle against the wall once again.

“I don’t even know why I took the test.” Pepper confesses, sniffling. “I wasn’t even late yet. But, Tony said that, and usually I feel cramps beforehand and I hadn’t, and he just got in my head.”

Nat hums, the next thing she knows Pepper is sick again. So, they deal with that, and this time when they slump against the wall in the aftermath Pepper sags into her side.

Nat wants to promise her that they will find Tony, but she can’t bring herself to make such a hollow promise. So, she does what she knows isn’t enough, but it’s all she can do. She flushes the toilet, and she fixes Pepper’s braid, and when Pepper thanks her for sitting here with her, she smiles and tells her it’s the least she could do.

Chapter Text

“This is a nightmare.”

It’s the only thing Steve can think to say anymore. They’ve been back in New York a little over a week, and the global death tolls are still climbing by the second.

Most of them are only sleeping an hour or so at a time, and usually on couches. It’s under the guise that they can be found and woken quickly and easily if they’re needed, but really, it’s more so that they won’t wake up alone. For Steve, it’s been two days since his last shower. Frankly, he always thought that if they ever came out of hiding, the first thing he would do would be to cut his hair again and shave off this beard. But the idea of doing those things feels wrong now. It feels like pretending this isn’t happening, and that everything is normal.

“I’ve had better nightmares.” Nat murmurs, her eyes glued to the holographic display of rising death tolls.

He doesn’t doubt that. He’s shared enough motel beds with her to know she rarely has pleasant dreams.

“Hey.” Rhode’s voice calls for them before Steve can think any further on how much he would rather be living in one of Nat’s nightmares right now. “So that thing just stopped doing whatever the hell it was doing.”

They don’t know what they’re walking into, but he and Nat abandon the holo-table and follow Rhodes down to the lab. “That thing” is a pager which was found on the streets of Manhattan. Specifically, it was next to Fury’s car. No sign of Fury, so they’re operating under the assumption that he vanished.

The idea that Fury disintegrated away into nothing is one of the worst parts of this nightmare. Ever since the attack in his apartment, Steve has learned that Nick Fury is like a cat with nine lives. If he’s gone, then maybe the world really is lost.

Turns out, the pager was a distress signal to a Carol Danvers. She shows up not thirty seconds after he and Nat take their look at the pager, and she doesn’t set off a single security measure on her way in.

She gives them what Steve thinks is an abridged rundown of her past, and she also helps them locate Fury’s personnel files on her to back up her claims. She was an Air Force pilot in the 80’s, and then she was exposed to the Tesseract while on a mission. Between the Tesseract and having been experimented on by aliens, she came out the other side with a whole slew of superhuman powers.

By the end of the night, Steve still isn’t decided on whether he trusts her or not. But it isn’t like they can be picky with their allies right now, and it helps that Rocket recognizes her reputation. He calls her “that light-up vigilante”, and frankly, her story isn’t any less trustworthy than Bucky’s. So, they tell her what happened. They’ve recounted the story so many times Steve could tell you the whole process by heart. Bruce starts, Nat picks up when he gets to Edinburg, then it’s his turn as soon as they get to the battle in Wakanda, and Thor makes himself scarce before they get to the end. Rhodes takes on the answering of whatever questions are thrown their way; God bless him for that.

At least Carol doesn’t have too many questions. She’s heard of Thanos and his plans for the universe before. She’s even run into his followers laying waste to different worlds or searching for the Infinity Stones.

She never thought he’d really pull it off.

Steve wants to be angry at her over that. If she’s faced Thanos’ minions before then maybe there was something she could have done differently. She could have stopped this all before it started.

He has to remind himself how low the chances of that really are. Even with the powers she possesses, she is just one person.

It isn’t fair to put their failure on her.

She doesn’t seem to share that sentiment.

She takes out a good deal of her anger on the trees outside of the compound. After she has properly vented, Rocket adapts some space-communication thing that she has so it will work with their computers. She is insistent on going back out there; maybe put together some allies to help her with the welfare of other planets.

It’s easy to see the thirst for vengeance still simmering under her skin. Steve only hopes one of these allies she plans to find will be able to keep her in check out there, before she gets herself killed.

A part of him almost hopes she won’t be so lucky. She seems like the type who if she dies, she is taking her enemy down with her.

That isn’t a part of himself he wants to admit exists.

“Wait.” Nat says to Carol just before she leaves.

When Carol turns, Nat walks towards her, and she walks her out the front door of the compound. Steve hangs back, still caught up in his thoughts of self-loathing.

A few minutes later the doors swoosh open again, and Nat returns alone. Steve inclines his head to her, letting her know he’ll walk back with her to the living room, and they can continue watching the death tolls as they were before.

“I asked her to keep an eye out for Tony.” Nat says as she falls into step beside him.

“Good.” Steve says, and he presses the button for the elevator.

They step inside, the doors close, the elevator starts to rise, and Nat reaches forward and stops it.

“Pepper’s pregnant.” She blurts out, before he has a chance to get the words out and question her actions.

For a moment, he doesn’t process what it is she’s said. She hasn’t told him she is pregnant. She hasn’t said Bruce was wrong, that she took another test because she just couldn’t believe the baby is gone, and it came back pregnant. She hasn’t said that scan was wrong. She hasn’t said that she is pregnant.

“Sorry, what?” He asks after a minute.

“I found her sick in the bathroom the other night.” She explains, and finally he remembers that she said Pepper. “Morning sickness doesn’t only happen in the mornings.”

“And… she’s sure?” He stammers, not sure what else to say.

“She said she took a test.” Nat shrugs, “She seemed sure. She said Rhodey knows, and she asked me to tell you. She doesn’t want to drag us all into one room and tell us like it’s some big announcement. She said that would feel too weird right now. Especially without Tony here.”

“Ok…” Steve drawls, still processing, and trying to figure out what part of this he is supposed to react to. “And how did you do? Finding her like that?”

“I was fine.” She says, her voice steady and hard to argue with. “I don’t think I was much help, but, I don’t know what would have been.”

“Did you tell her?”

“About before Thanos?” She asks, “No, I didn’t. I don’t want her to feel guilty.”

Steve hums. To Nat’s credit, she does sound “fine”. She is looking him in the eye when she needs to and casually watching the doors otherwise. Her voice is steady, her eyes are dry, and when they arrive on the main living floor there is a smile tugging at her lips as they step out of the elevator.

“I’m happy for her.” She confesses, her voice low so they aren’t overheard, but otherwise light, which is something none of them have been since before the fight.

Before Thanos.

She didn’t say she didn’t tell Pepper “about the baby”. She didn’t use the words “about losing the baby”. Not even “about me being pregnant.”

It was “Before Thanos.”

Those were her words, and Steve sees them for what they are.

He almost broaches the subject, but Rocket emerges from the lab and crosses their path before he has the chance.

Nat rubs at her eyes as she settles onto her bed. She is going to sleep tonight, she swears it. She just has a few things to take care of first.

She opens up her laptop and checks her inboxes. At this point, there really isn’t a purpose behind her VPNs or her coded subject lines for her emails. But, old habits die hard. Besides, there may be no point in her hiding her business, but the same can’t be said for the people she is trying to reach.

If any of them are still alive.

So far, she has reached out to Rick Mason, as well as another contractor she has gone through before, and neither has contacted her back. She has also sent various emails and letters to addresses Yelena, Alexei, and Melina might answer. She’s even tried getting ahold of some other ex-widows or contacts in and around Russia, hoping that someone can get back to her with the fate of her family.

So far, nothing.

She types out another email. This one, she writes both in Russian and in code. She’s tried reaching Yelena this way before, and while it hasn’t worked yet, she tries again. Then, she tries Alexei. Then, Melina.

Once she has sent the last email, refreshed her inbox, searched up the latest death notices from Russia, refreshed her inbox again, and then repeated the process, Nat finally closes her laptop.

She needs to go to sleep. At the very least she needs to change into some pajamas and make the effort to convince herself she will get real sleep tonight. She just… There are too many horrors to face in the real world. The idea sleeping long enough to see what’s waiting in her nightmares is a daunting one.

For a moment, one bitter thought slips through her defenses; it might not be so bad if she weren’t facing it alone.

At that, she forces herself to her feet with a groan. She didn’t mean to get used to sharing a bed with Steve while they were on the run. It just happened. Before they broke Sam out of prison it was just the two of them hiding out in a shared motel room. Sometimes there were two beds, but sometimes there was only one. Then Sam was a part of their group, and suddenly two beds still meant somebody had to share.

“So, how do we do this?” Sam had asked as the door shut behind the three of them.

It’d been a long day to say the least. After weeks of careful planning, they had finally broken him out of prison early this morning. They flew off in the Quinjet, and then while Steve and Sam took off in one direction on foot, Nat went in another. She handed the keys to the jet off to another former widow – Mila - as well as apologized for the trouble which might come her way traveling in the jet.

“Makes for more fun.” Mila had said with a shrug. “If it’s still in one piece when I’m done, you know where to go.”

Nat had nodded, as well as warned Mila the jet better be in one piece the next time she calls for the keys.

After sending Mila on her way, Nat had walked to the nearest town and found the boys at a Goodwill getting Sam a change of clothes.

Then, after a full day of losing federal heat, they’d made it to a motel.

“You’ve had a rough time on prison mattresses.” She had said, walking deeper into the room and dropping her backpack onto the first bed.

She had looked at Steve, “We’ve shared before.”

They had - here and there. In about three out of ten motel rooms that they had stayed in. They’d slept casually side-by-side, when they’d needed to.

“Wait, are you guys some kind of couple now?” Sam had asked as Steve accepted her invitation and came to set his own bag at the foot of the bed she’d claimed for them.

“Of course not.” He’d said, sitting on the bed and facing Sam. “But, sometimes we can only get a place with one-bed.” He’d looked to her then, as he reminded her “You know I’m comfortable on the floor.”

“We have enough problems.” She’d reminded him, rolling her eyes all the way to Sam. “No reason to add a bad back to the list.”

“A super soldier with a bad back.” Sam had mumbled with a snort, shaking his head as he accepted their explanation and made his way to the second bed. “Sure.”

Nat heard the call of bullshit in Sam’s tone that day, but she’d only rolled her eyes and smirked. There was nothing going on between her and Steve at that point. It was just Sam being Sam, and it was nice to have him back.

In retrospect, she wonders if he knew something they didn’t. At some point with her and Steve, things shifted. Sharing a bed became sleeping together; in more respects than one. At some point, Steve began to roll over in his sleep, and the two of them would wake up closer than when they went to bed. Sometimes, Nat would wake on her right side, with her head in the crook of Steve’s shoulder, or an arm thrown out over him.

At some point, Nat went from waking up and immediately rising for coffee, to lying there and watching the way Steve’s hair brushed over his forehead while he slept. At some point, she began counting the freckles on his face which are hardly noticeable during the day. At some point, if she awoke earlier than she’d planned, she would let her eyes close again and she would drift back off to the sounds of his soft snoring.

At some point during all her musings, Nat realizes she is standing with one hand resting flat against her belly.

She knows it’s a dangerous thing, but she allows herself to stay like that for a moment. She strokes her finger back once. The fabric of her t-shirt is rough under her touch,, so she slips her hand up under it to rest against her bare skin.

She isn’t so delusional as to get lost in a field of hope. She is coming up on the end – hopefully – of her first ever period; which has been an experience in and of itself. The cramps made themselves known before the first sign of blood, neither of which was pleasant. It’s been more blood than what she would have been expecting, but given what Bruce said during her ultrasound about her uterus looking survivable, she isn’t going to worry about it this month. At this point she isn’t feeling the cramps at all, and the blood is light enough she is debating taking this stupid pad out and just letting what’s left stain her underwear.

It's enough to ground her in reality. Underneath her hand is nothing but an emptiness. It should be a comfort that at least it’s a functioning emptiness. It’s more than what she had before. She could… She could decide now, if she wants. If she could ever find herself in a position again to have a child… she has that choice now.

She takes her hand from her belly and swipes at her eyes with her thumb. She sniffs and puts away the tears, and she begins to pull some old sweats and a t-shirt from her dresser drawer to change for bed the mirror of her vanity begins to tremble, and she hears the rumbling of something overhead of the compound.

Chapter Text

When Carol returns after only a little over a week with a burnt-out spaceship in tow, Steve realizes he hadn’t been expecting for her to return of her own accord at all.

Not unless she found Tony.

It’s hard to read her expression as the ramp of the ship descends. She looks sorry, and as two figures appear at the top of the ramp he understands why. One of the figures is definitely Tony, but he is leaning heavily on this blue humanoid cyborg for support. Steve rushes forward and grabs onto Tony’s other arm just as the two are reaching the bottom of the stairs, and he almost freezes in place as he realizes how much of his friend’s weight he is taking; and how little of it there is.

“I couldn’t stop him.” Tony says as the two of them step off the ramp and onto the ground. He is practically drowning in a borrowed leather jacket, his face is gaunt, and Steve knows that were he to let go right now he would crumple to the ground.

Yet the first words out of his mouth are of self-loathing.

“Neither could I.” Steve says, trying his best to cushion the blow.

None of them could. Now having Tony here – emaciated and still blaming himself – it’s easier for Steve to see that fact than it was before. They did everything they could, but even with all their power, they just couldn’t stop Thanos.

Tony manages to stand straight for a moment, and to look him in the eye.

“I lost the kid.”

Steve swallows. He’s been wondering about Peter; they all have. There’s been no answer at his apartment, and when Happy drove out there the day after Thanos, he reported the place looked as lived in as ever, but there was no sign of May or Peter. He said he staked it out for hours, before Pepper finally came and dragged him back to The Compound.

“Tony we lost.” Steve says, because he is sorry, but it seems like Tony isn’t grasping the scope of what happened.

It was more than him and the kid. They all lost so much. So many teammates, and friends. Family. The world – the whole universe - lost so much and is losing more every day.

Plain and simple; they lost.

Tony starts breathing rapidly again, working up the strength to speak, and for a moment Steve worries he is going to be sick.

“Is… Is um…”

That’s when Steve catches sight of Pepper bounding up to them. He’d almost forgotten she had led the charge out here.

“Oh my God.”  She gasps, tears in her voice as well as in her eyes. She wraps her arms around Tony, and Steve relinquishes his hold on his arm and lets Pepper take over supporting him.

He takes a step back, and watching the two of them cling to one another, something inside of him turns sour.

Steve clenches his teeth to keep himself from shuttering, or maybe it’s shouting. He can’t watch as Tony presses a kiss to Pepper’s cheek, but he can’t leave the two of them there for Pepper to help Tony limp back into the compound. He feels like if he were to do that, the others would see his bitterness. So, he stands resolute whilst the two of them reunite, and in doing so he catches Nat’s eyes. She is standing not fifteen feet away, with her thumbs hooked into her jacket pockets, and she inclines her head to him when she catches him looking her way.

Even from partway across the compound’s field at ten o’clock at night, Nat can see the tension in Steve’s jaw as Tony clings on to Pepper. She nods to him in silent invitation, and so later on, after they’ve recapped for Tony everything that happened in the battle and what has been happening on Earth in the three weeks since, she isn’t surprised in the least when he knocks on her door.

She opens it quickly. He’s finally shaved off his beard, and one would think that would help him to look less ragged, but instead it only serves to pronounce how sunken and wet his eyes are.

He hasn’t changed into any pajamas yet, and for a moment a pang of disappointment flares in her chest. It’s ridiculous, because she very purposely didn’t change either. She isn’t so delusional as to think he came in here to crawl into bed with her, nor is that why she invited him.

She just… Well, it doesn’t matter right now.

What matters is the hitch of his breath and the way he scrubs a hand over his face as she gestures for him to come in and he does. What matters is the way he paces left and then right as she closes the door, his eyes flitting from her bed, to the chair at her desk, and still he paces a small circle around her floor.

Nat crosses her arms as she watches him. It’s like all this pent-up energy is radiating from him with nowhere to go. She’s seen him angry before when things don’t go his way. She has seen when he so badly wants to hit something, but there is nothing suitable to take the brunt of his strength.

“Do you want to take this to the training room?” She suggests, and when he looks at her he practically deflates before her eyes.

There are tears already spilling onto his cheeks, and immediately she surges forward. She wraps him in her arms. She stands on her toes and wraps her arms tight around his shoulders. She winds up pulling him down a bit, trying her best to bridge the height gap between them so that he can bury his head into her shoulder as he clings desperately to her shoulders and his breath starts to hitch, and the shuttering sobs begin to make their way out.

“It’s ok.” She promises him in a whisper. “It’s ok.”

She decides that walking the two of them to the bed is going to be her best option. She steps back, but doesn’t let go or loosen her grip on him. He stumbles along with her, and after she guides him down to sit on the edge of the bed he lets out a particularly unfiltered cry.

At this much better angle, Steve lays his head against her shoulder, with his arms still wrapped around her in a hold he doesn’t seem intent on breaking anytime soon. She brings one of her hands to the back of his head. Her fingers disappear almost completely as she begins to comb through his hair. She wonders if he was planning to cut it tonight after he’d shaved, but then Tony’s return got in the way. Or maybe he isn’t planning to cut it at all. She thinks back to that night at the bus stop, and how she had studied him in the pale glow of the streetlight as they sat. She was able to stretch ever-so-slightly over him on that bench, and to note all the changes time on the run had brought in him.

She feels like they have changed more in these last three weeks than they ever could have in those two years.

Well aware there are no words which can help, Nat continues to card her fingers through his hair. With her other hand she reaches over and rests it on his forearm, her thumb moving in gentle strokes. She goes so far as to press a kiss to the crown of his head. She all but curls herself against him, bending a leg up and behind him so that he may as well be in her lap, and she rocks the two of them back and forth ever-so-lightly.

Eventually – with trembling shoulders - he begins to will himself into calming down.

“I’m sorry.” He sniffs, pulling his head off her.

“Don’t be.” She tells him, chasing his face with her hand as he tries to straighten his posture and compose himself, and so she unfurls her leg and rights herself as well.

Still, she lays her hand on his cheek. It feels strange under her fingers now without his beard. She strokes her thumb over his skin, getting used to the new texture. It’s damp from his tears, and for a moment Nat envisions herself leaning closer and kissing that moisture away. The heat of his skin, brought on by the tears. She wonders what he might think if she did that; if she crossed that threshold here at the compound.

She sighs and chases that thought away. She settles for bringing her other hand up so that she can frame his face properly. She wipes his tears away with her thumbs and her forefingers, and in response he breathes evenly for the first time since he came in here.

He closes his eyes and leans forward until his head rests against hers. Nat doesn’t dare breath or move too sharply. She is careful to follow his lead and not step an inch further. She closes her eyes against much like him, and moves one hand to scratch lightly at the base of his scalp.

“It’s hitting you?” She asks, though she knows the answer.

“I think so.” He confesses in a whisper. “Worse than I thought it would.”

She opens her eyes, and finds his cast down in sadness.

“How so?”

He shutters at her question, and so she buries her fingers deeper into his hair. He drags his head up as so to look at her properly, and Nat finds herself looking into two walls of glassy tears. She suddenly finds it impossible to ignore the burning behind her own eyes, but she does it anyway. As for him, she moves her thumb to brush away the tears threatening to spill from his eyes and back onto his cheeks.

This time, however, he intercepts her hand.

His hand is much larger than hers. It seems impossible he is so gentle as he intertwines their fingers and guides their joined hands to rest in his lap.

“I thought I’d be sad.” He murmurs his confession. “And I am. But, I didn’t think I would be this angry.”

Nat quirks her eyebrow; both at his words, as well as the furious tremor in his voice.

“At Thanos?” She asks, even if she knows it’s the wrong answer. Angry is the weakest of words for how they are all feeling towards Thanos. Better options would be furious, livid, homicidal… the list could go on and on.

But it’s the best guess she has. Even in the darkest parts of her mind, she can’t imagine he means he is angry at her. For all the scenarios in which losing their baby could have been either her fault or the fault of her past, this isn’t one of them. This is - in fact - the one scenario she can come up with in which she is in no way the reason the baby is gone. They couldn’t beat Thanos, and that isn’t on any one of them alone. He was the one who snapped his fingers and destroyed everything. They threw everything they had at him and then some. The fact that it wasn’t enough and what their failure took from them isn’t you can blame on only one person.

“No.” Steve says, swallowing thickly. “Tony.”

In an instant, he’s pulled away from her. The wild look he’d entered with is back in his eyes, and as he rises to his feet Nat allows him the space to go. Her hand falls from his hair, and her other one detangles from his fingers as he moves to lean against her desk.

For a moment, he just stands there. He keeps his eyes trained on her cream-colored area rug. He has his arms crossed and tension is practically wafting off his shoulders, and she can easily hear the unsteady, slowly drawn breathes coming from his lips.

Nat scoots a hair closer to the edge of the mattress, but otherwise she remains where she is. She listens carefully for a change in his breathing; a sign that he may need her to help him compose himself before he is ready to explain his anger any further.

“I know we all lost different people.” He very slowly manages to say. “And I know that kid was important to Tony. And I’m sorry he was one of the ones we lost.”

He looks up at her then. It’s like he needs her to see the earnestness he feels before he can say anything more; like it’s a warning he is about to contradict it all.

She nods, and he breathes out a deep breath.

“But Tony got to come back here tonight.” He says softly. “To Pepper still here, and their baby still here.”

It’s quiet; deadly so. What is she supposed to say to that?

“It isn’t like he knows.” She manages around a lump which she can feel forming in her throat.

“I know.” Steve agrees, “And don’t worry, I’m not going to tell them.”

It should make her feel better, but instead Nat’s shoulders and heart sink as she realizes she hadn’t considered until now that he might say anything, to anyone.

She told Bruce about the pregnancy because she didn’t have any other choice. She had needed to confirm the loss more urgently than she’d needed to confirm its existence in the first place, before her mind could creep to fears of sepsis and drive her insane. Besides, she told Bruce the details of her damaged past years ago. She didn’t think that continuing on as normal after the fact of asking for his help would be an issue.

She was wrong.

Ever since her ultrasound, Bruce looks at her in much the same way Steve does; like he is just waiting for her to fall apart.

His eyes linger on her with this sorrowful gleam every time she walks into a room. He does it to Steve too. Then, to make matters worse, he looks at the two of them together like they are an equation that he can’t solve. He doesn’t know what their history is, only that they have one, and it is infuriating her more and more every day. It feels like it is only a matter of time before someone else notices and starts asking questions.

Most days, she wonders who and when it will be, and how much time she has before the rest of the team learns exactly how broken she is.

“Do you want to say something?” She asks, the lump in her throat that much harder now to speak through. She never considered Steve might tell someone; that it might help him to have someone else who knows what she and him lost.

How is she supposed to stand in his way is that’s what he needs?

She can’t describe how big a relief it is when he shakes his head.

“No.” He says, “You didn’t tell Pepper, and you’re right; there’s no point in making them feel guilty.”

She nods in agreement, though she feels like that wasn’t exactly an answer, and the relief she is feeling starts to fade.

“I’m sorry.” Steve says through a sigh, cutting off her train of thought as he scrubs a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean to dump this on you. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.” She says, furrowing her brow, if only because she thought they already talked about how she is handling Pepper’s pregnancy.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” She answers, maybe a touch more forcefully than what is necessary, but in her defense, they have had this conversation before. More than once. “Why?

He frowns, his teeth grit like he is debating whether or not he really wants to pick this battle.

“It hasn’t hit you yet?”

Evidently he does.

With a sigh Nat gets to her feet. There is a part of her which wants to reach out and wrap her arms up and around his shoulders again. She would really love to just hug him, and promise him that no, it hasn’t hit her the way it’s hit him, and it never will. But that’s ok, and if he needs to fall apart some more, then go on ahead. She can handle that.

Another part of her thinks it might be better to settle for taking his hand and promising him all that. But, then it would be all too easy to intertwine their fingers, and that – right now – feels like it’s crossing a line into something which the two of them really are not.

In the end, she settles for leaning beside him; her back against the desk, and her arms crossed in a mirror of his posture.

“I was never supposed to have a baby.” She reminds him, “Even when I was kid, I knew what was waiting for me.”

“Nat-” He says her name with so much heartache, she can’t stand it.

“Please let me finish.”

He swallows, and nods for her to continues.

“I know it was real.” She says, through a sigh. “But it wasn’t supposed to be. I hadn’t adjusted to that yet.”

“I understand that.”

“I don’t think you do.”

The words are out before she can really think them through, and Steve is looking at her with eyes so hurt, all she wants to do is splutter her way through an apology and forget this whole part of the conversation ever happened.

But, she never has been good at sorry.

“It’s getting late.” Steve finally says, after what feels like hours of the two of them standing there, those five words hanging in the air. “I should go.”

She doesn’t say anything, apart from an exchange of murmured goodnights as he leaves, and it’s only after he’s gone that the first of her tears finally slips past her lashes.

Chapter Text

Steve doesn’t sleep much after he leaves Nat’s room.

Granted, he hasn’t been sleeping much anyway. This is only the third night in which he has ventured to try spending the entirety of it in his room, and just as before, he isn’t successful. In fact, he would go so far as to call this his worst night yet.

Both last night and the night before he fell asleep as soon as his head it the pillow. It was more of a collapse from exhaustion rather than an actual ability to sleep, and he would wake after only two or three hours. But this time he finds himself lying awake for hours upon hours; mentally playing back his breakdown in Nat’s room over and over again.

It’s at the point he should just get up and go make himself useful somewhere. He could check the messages from Queen Ramonda, see if she needs any more reinforcements in Wakanda. He isn’t sure if they have any agents to spare, but checking on that would be as good a distraction as any right now.

Sniffling and scrubbing a hand over his face, Steve sits up on his bed as he shutters his way through more tears. As he is debating calming himself down and venturing up for his laptop, he glances to the left side of the bed. The blankets are bunching up in the beginnings of a rumpled mess, but it is only from his own twisting and turning.

Apparently he is really feeling the need to torture himself tonight.

He whimpers and sniffs again as he thinks about how badly he wishes Nat were lying in that place, and how she may never take that spot again. Every day that possibility seems more real, and every day it breaks him down a little more.

He has wanted to talk to her about it. But everything has been so crazy since they’ve been back. Sleep is rare, and even if it weren’t, Steve feels like he has forgotten how to talk to her. It’s like they lost the baby and they need to hash that out before they can be allowed to try and talk to her about them.

As if there is a “them” to talk about.

He supposes he was hoping to find that out tonight. All the grief over losing the baby slammed into him in a jealous rage that he isn’t proud of tonight. He went to Nat and, if he is being honest for himself, he was hoping things would end with a little bit of what they’ve been to each other put back into place.

His shoulders shake and his tears begin to well up again as he thinks about it all. He would give anything to go back to motel nights and days spent in cars. If he could only feel Nat’s hair tickling his nose in the middle of the night. What he wouldn’t give for the steady rhythm of her breathing lulling him into peaceful dreams.

Their lives have become nothing nightmares. Nothing but counting deaths. People whom they failed to protect are gone, and more are going every day. They’re trying to pick up the pieces and guide what’s left of the world into moving on, but how can they? How are they supposed to move on?

Nat seems to have a handle on that, for the most part. At first he thought she was only putting on a brave face, but now he isn’t so sure. She is still grieving their defeat as much as any of them, but the personal effects are different for her.

“I know it was real.” She said, her voice dripping in defense of herself; still reeling from his interruption. “But it wasn’t supposed to be. I hadn’t adjusted to that yet.”

“I understand that.”

“I don’t think you do.”

She said it so readily, a fire in her eyes that burned intense even as regret seeped into her eyes. But she never took the words back, she didn’t try to sugarcoat them, and frankly, he doesn’t blame her.

He hasn’t been understanding her side of this at all.

She has been screaming it to him from the moment she handed him the test in that parking lot, and he hasn’t been listening.

He of all people should have been listening.

How many times in his childhood did he lose his breath to the point of passing out just trying to keep up with the other kids? How many nights did he wake up in coughing fits, or curled in on himself with an unyielding pain in his stomach? How many bones did he break? How many lies did he tell trying to get into the army, even though he knew they wouldn’t take him?

Telling Nat she can have a baby isn’t all that different from telling that scrawny kid from Brooklyn he can be Captain America. He still remembers the way he clung onto Erskine’s every word. He remembers how he was willing to do anything and everything to reach Erskine’s promises, but he can’t say there wasn’t always a nagging voice in the back of his mind, wondering if maybe it just wouldn’t work. He wasn’t able to silence that voice completely until he was stepping out of the infusion chamber and not collapsing entirely.

Steve buries his face in his hands and groans aloud. He keeps replaying all the times in these past few weeks when he has asked Nat how she is doing, as if he was waiting for the loss of their child to hit her in a way they both know it never will. She wanted their baby so much – she cut down her caffeine, she took precautions in battle, and she told him and she told Sam things she never would have had to share about herself otherwise – but, she still had that voice in her head. What if it doesn’t work? What if this is asking too much? What if she has to move on from this?

He spends another half-hour crying. If it isn’t over the loss of the baby, or Tony’s obliviousness to how much he still has, so much as it’s over losing Nat.

He cries because it’s really hitting him; those small moments of bliss he and Nat shared while on the run may really be gone forever.

More than once the thought crosses his mind to go to her room. He doesn’t want to run the risk of waking her if she has managed to actually get some sleep; God knows they all need it. He also isn’t sure if she’ll want to see him again tonight. He wouldn’t blame her if she has been stewing on presumption ever since he left, and if she opens her door with a scolding retort on her tongue, he is afraid he will break down in a mess of tears all over again.

“You know what?” He finally decides, wiping his eyes so he at least doesn’t get caught in the hallway with tears on his face. “That’s fine.”

He can live with it if he dissolves into a puddle in her bedroom all over again. He can live with the “I told you so” before she can accept his apology. He isn’t too proud to knock on her door with his outer walls already broken twice in one night.

He throws back his covers and leaves his room before he can talk himself out of it, and immediately, he regrets his decision.

The door to the bathroom at the end of the hall is open, but the light is glowing from inside, and the walls are echoing sounds of guttural heaving.

He stands frozen in his place for a moment; listening to the sounds of the toilet flushing and hitched gasps.

It sounds like Pepper. Given what he knows it most definitely is Pepper, and he would assume she wants some privacy. She was just in too much a hurry to close the door. But he can’t shake the image of Nat in that diner restroom from his mind. The idea of Pepper sprawled out on the ground like that alone isn’t something he can ignore. So, he wipes away the last of his tears and schools his face as he approaches the open doorway, knocking lightly on the outside wall before he peeks his head in.

Oh.

It is Pepper, but she already has company.

Nat.

“Sorry.” He awkwardly says, “I just… I heard someone getting sick.”

This is one of the single-occupant bathrooms. It’s a small room, though larger than what that diner had. Nat is sat with her back against the wall and her legs stretched out. Her lap is occupied by Pepper’s head. It’s obvious Pepper slumped herself over soon as she was done being sick, and while she tips her head to the side and looks up at him through bleary eyes, Nat is positively glaring at his intrusion.

“Sorry.” Pepper murmurs, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.” He promises, offering Pepper a smile.

She tries to smile in return, but doesn’t quite manage it.

“Do you girls want me to bring you anything?” He offers, his eyes scanning the bathroom and seeing a distinct lack of Saltines or Gatorade bottles.

“Mph, water.” Pepper croaks, her fingers gripping onto Nat’s knee as she cranes her head up. “If you don’t mind.”

He chuckles, smiling softly at Pepper. “Of course I don’t mind.”

He glances to Nat, meaning to ask if she wants anything while she sits here. But he changes his mind when he sees just how pointedly she is avoiding his eyes. Her thumb is working gentle, purposeful, strokes on Pepper’s shoulder. There is tension radiating from her, and with a sinking in his chest Steve decides not to push her any further tonight.

“I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Steve ducks out of the bathroom, and Nat feels like she can relax.

She hates that feeling; hates that it’s the absence of Steve which triggers it. She would much rather the days when seeing him brought about a sense of calm in her rather than whatever the hell this is she’s been feeling lately.

“So,” Pepper rasps from her lap. “How long has it been official?”

“Hm?”

Pepper sucks in a deep breath. “You and Steve.” She clarifies, and while Nat is busy trying to silence her internal alarm bells, Pepper rolls herself over.

She grimaces as she moves, and the silence seem to stretch on far longer than only a few seconds. Once she’s rolled onto her other side and seems to have deemed herself safe from vomiting from the movement, Nat finds herself looking down into a set of very knowing blue eyes.

“You’re always together.”

Nat hums, aware she can’t deny that fact.

“There was a time I was always with Clint.” She muses, “I wasn’t sleeping with him.”

Pepper snorts, lines of amusement etching into every inch of her face. “There was a point Tony thought you were.” She informs Nat, and Nat scrunches her nose. “Anyway, I didn’t accuse you of sleeping with him.”

This time Nat scrunches her nose at her own stupidity. She chooses to blame the Freudian slip on the late hour and exhaustion. The best she can do is accept her error with grace, so she is about to ask if this insight really came from observations of her and Steve, or if it was Bruce who gave them away.

Unfortunately Pepper cuts off her chance by clamoring up to her knees and retching into the toilet. Nat sits back and waits for it to be over, one eye careful on Pepper just in case. In the time Pepper is vomiting Steve returns with a thermos of water, and quietly leaves it on the floor. Nat exchanges a look with him as he pulls the door closed. She’s a little less wary now, and she hopes he can see that much. Long after his footsteps have faded away she is still watching the door, and she only comes back to the moment when Pepper is pulling back from the toilet.

Nat hands her the thermos Steve left, and Pepper gasps her thanks. She sits beside Nat this time, her breath heaving as she slowly sips on the water.

“God.” She huffs, “I didn’t think morning sickness meant ‘as soon as the clock strikes midnight’.”

Nat chuckles, and if there is a pang of longing in her heart this time, she ignores it. She tells herself morning sickness isn’t something she misses, and she is certainly grateful she never got to the point of having it bad like this.

“There’s something about the way you look at him these days.” Pepper says as she sets her water onto the ground. “Like, Thank God you didn’t lose him.”

Nat sets her head back against the wall, considering that. The urge to argue with Pepper gnaws at her, to claim she is of course grateful she didn’t lose Steve. She’s grateful for everyone they didn’t lose in the snap; being glad Steve is still here doesn’t mean she is in love with him.

Fortunately, the words don’t make it past her lips this time, because Pepper didn’t accuse her of being in love with Steve either.

Over the next few days Steve isn’t sure how exactly he is supposed to broach a new conversation with Nat. There are moments where he thinks it might be best to just bite the bullet. He could pull her aside, and tell her bluntly that he is sorry he has been so bullheaded. He does understand that this is a complicated matter for her, and he never meant to make her feel like he’s been waiting for the grief to hit her in the same specific way in which it is hitting him.

There are also moments in which it seems like they shouldn’t revisit that talk. He thinks through different ways to get right to the point. What if he just pulled her aside before breakfast? Or late at night in the hall? What if he tells her point blank that he misses her, and they don’t have to talk about the baby ever again, if it means they can go back to what they were when they were in hiding?

He goes back and forth on what to do for days, which turn into another week. They get busy and Steve never can find a good moment in which to try and get her alone.

They’re busy with their first real job since what the world is now referring to as “The Snap” or “The Vanishing”. As it turns out, Nat wasn’t the only one to send Carol back to space with the request she look for someone. Thor, evidently, gave her the last coordinates he had for a ship full of Asgardian refugees. She returns with those who are left of that ship, and thus it becomes their responsibility to find somewhere for them here on Earth.

They’re all involved with the efforts, but between that and other calls for their attention around the globe, he and Nat seem to have wound up on opposite schedules. Every time he sees her it’s in the living room or the lab they’re surrounded by some number of their friends. It feels wrong to try and discreetly pull her aside to apologize when they’re just massing one another in the hall. It’s always in the middle of the day, too. When she is busy on her laptop coordinating assignments for agents, fielding more phone calls, or whispering with Valkyrie about how worried they should be about Thor. No matter how she processes her emotions, it doesn’t seem fair to dredge this up when she is in the middle of something. If they’re going to talk about this, he would much rather catch her with some time.

Steve should know by now that the universe doesn’t really give a damn what he would rather.

Today, he catches Nat in the hallway early in the morning. She’s dressed for the day already; in a pair of black leggings and her green cargo vest zipped over a long-sleeved shirt. What really grabs his attention – however – is the backpack hanging off her shoulder.

“You going somewhere?” He asks, turning on his heel and falling into step beside her.

“I’m taking a road trip.” She answers, not slowing her pace until they reach the elevator. “To Iowa.”

“Iowa?” He asks, though he knows already exactly what she must be doing. There is only one person left in Iowa for them. “You’re going after Clint?”

“It’s been a month.” She reasons as she presses the button for the elevator. “We know he’s alive. He’s maxed out the number of calls he is allowed to ignore.”

The elevator opens, and there is a shining in her eyes as she looks up at him, as if she is waiting for him to say something.

“Are you going alone?”

“Is that a problem?”

He smiles at her, regardless of the fact that the challenge of her words hits a nerve. He isn’t even sure what nerve it is, anyway.

 He pushes away any thoughts of offering to go with her. If a day or two alone on the highway is what she needs, then he can understand that. After that she’ll have Clint, and maybe that will make things just a little more normal when they have had so little of that lately.

“Just give me a call when you get there?” He requests, “And put Clint on while you’re add it; tell him I need proof of life.”

Steve is expecting one of two responses; either for her to nod stoically and then leave him with some instructions of her own for this place in her absence. Or – if he’s lucky – a smirk and a quip about him waiting by the phone for her call. Maybe even something about sending a carrier pigeon for him.

Instead, however, her eyes flit down. There is a frown pulling at the corner of her lips, but it’s all wiped away before he can ask her what’s bothered her. She chooses to hide it by glancing down the hall.

“Keep an eye on Thor.” She requests, “And Valkyrie. Trying to get through to him is harder on her than she lets on.”

Much like someone else he knows, but, he won’t tell her that right now.

“Got it.”

She hardly looks reassured, but, the elevator is about to close without her. So she steps inside and presses the button for the lobby, and the moment the doors close Steve exhales a shaky breath.

She’ll be back by the end of the week; he tries to remind himself. She will be back by the end of the week with Clint in tow, and maybe by then, he will have his head on straight.

Chapter Text

As the elevator closes her in Nat feels her heart give a stutter. She breathes out slowly, and shoves down any disappointment. For a minute there she thought Steve might actually offer to come with her. But no, of course he didn’t. There is a bitter twist in her heart and she tells herself that is uncalled for. She and Steve, they were never anything more than two warm bodies keeping each other company. It went further than intended with the pregnancy, and they would have made the best of it. But, they don’t have to worry about that now.

This will be for the best, she tells herself. Two days on the road alone. Two whole days where she can curse Steve out loud all she wants, and she can get over whatever this unrequited attachment is that she seems to have for him.

“He could’ve come with me.” She huffs yet again, this time just as she is passing a sign loudly boasting Pennsylvania Welcomes You. “He asks if I’m going somewhere, he asks if I’m going alone, but he doesn’t want to come.”

She taps her finger on the side of the steering wheel, and considers that she is being more than a little unfair to Steve. In the grand scheme of things, it’s extremely reasonable that he didn’t offer to come with her. The Compound is a delicate balance right now as both a place of world affairs and their home. The personalities living there are even more delicate, and if she is going to pack a bag and take off for a week, then she may have boxed him into a corner. She can’t blind herself to the fact that Tony is still recovering, they hardly know Nebula, they hardly know Rocket and he seems to be more of a safety hazard than a hero, and Bruce has never exactly been runner up for team leader. It’s fair, she begrudgingly supposes, that Steve just might be needed at The Compound more than with her.

“He could’ve said that.” She mutters to herself. “I’d love to come with you Nat, but this place will fall apart if we both leave.”

She frowns at herself, and the fact that she has evidently resorted to hashing out conversations which never happened.

“Whatever.” She sighs, and she swears it right now, by the time she crosses back over the New York line with Clint’s depressed ass in tow, she will mean it.

Whatever.

She drives a total of eight hours and twenty minutes, until she comes to a little motel on the outskirts of Columbus Ohio. Realistically, she could drive another two hours before she has to stop. But she is tired from driving, and this stop is almost exactly halfway through her trip. Another eight and a half hours tomorrow, and she’ll be pulling up the dirt road.

She shifts the car into park, but she doesn’t hurry to get out. She eyes the backpack next to her, and thinks about the photo from Melina’s scrapbook stowed away inside.

Drive one more hour, out of the way, and she could be in Mount Vernon.

Nat never thought she would ever feel an urge to go back there. But now she can’t shake the idea. What if they’re there? Yelena, Alexi, or Melina. What if any one of them went back there in the aftermath of The Snap, hoping the others would have the same thought?

She’s sent correspondences’ to the old house, though she doubts it’s sitting empty for her family to reconvene in. She thought maybe a new owner would write her back; apologizing for her loss, but no one showed up at the front door after The Snap wondering if their wayward daughter or sister had been by looking for survivors.

She swallows down the thoughts of the house and grabs her bag. Clint first, and then she can deal with anything else as time permits.

The kid running the front desk is more frazzled than any of the half-asleep, sometimes stoned, clerks she has been used to seeing running motel lobbies. He apologizes four times for how long it takes him to find the key to the room he is renting her, and asks her to sign three different log books because he isn’t sure which one is the right one.

Nat doesn’t fault him for it. He doesn’t look a day older than fifteen; she would bet his parent was the actual clerk here before being dusted away.

Checking into a motel room alone is a bitter feeling. The only consolation is she will only have to do it once. On the way home – and anywhere they go after - she’ll have Clint with her. After that she doesn’t intend on taking any more road trips for quite a while.

She flicks on the light and dumps her bag on the bed nearest to the door, and she unzips it for her pajamas out of habit, but doesn’t let herself go any farther.

She doesn’t need to take her pajamas with her. She doesn’t have Sam to be respectful of, and furthermore she didn’t come with any leftovers to eat for dinner after a lunch stop.

Fine.

She dumps her bag to the side of the bed. There isn’t anything in it worth properly hiding, and frankly, what does it matter if there were? Foreign and domestic governments have all either forgiven her crimes or are indifferent to them at this point. Dreykov and his lackeys are dead. Anyone still out there who might be tracking her are all people she is looking for in return, so if one of them breaks into her motel room while she’s gone, she’ll take it as a win.

She is sorely disappointed when she returns an hour later with a cold cut grinder and finds her lock secure, and her bag completely untouched.

Nat eats her dinner, and then she heads into the bathroom for a shower to wash away the long drive. She leaves her pajamas out on the bed, because she needs to get used to existing on her own again. Normal people who are on their own come out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel.

As she undresses for the shower, she can’t help but to think about how close she came to not being on her own.

She sighs, meeting her own eyes in the mirror before anything else.

“This is getting pathetic.” She mutters to herself, but, she wanders her gaze over her reflection anyway.

She hasn’t looked at herself undressed since before Thanos. She has been careful that she sleeps on her side, and hooks her thumbs into her pockets when she is standing idle. She doesn’t allow her hands to ever drift towards her belly or for her mind to wander too far. But now - as she pulls her shirt over her head, and her eyes land on her now half-dressed reflection in the streak-stained mirror - she can’t help herself.

The mirror is large, and hung low over a square sink along the back wall. It’s enough Nat can see where her leggings wrap around her waist without taking several steps back. The puckered scar from Iran is peeking out from below her waistband. She follows the curvature of her body upwards from there. Her waist is still cinched inwards ever so slightly below her ribs, before her skeleton brings her shape back out again and then her bra interrupts the lines. She’s never been one to stand at her side and examine her profile. She wouldn’t know much of the differences if there were any. Yet, as she turns to the side, she finds herself keenly aware that it doesn’t matter. There are no differences.

But there could be.

She would be showing by now. Whether only starting out or getting to the point of needing to buy new clothes, she has no idea. But the image flashes through her mind all the same of how she could be standing here now looking at a very different reflection.

Her skin feels too tight on her body as she drags her hand up over toned plain of her stomach, and she stares herself down until she feels like an idiot standing here baiting a fantasy.

The second day driving is much the same as the first. Nat makes an extra stop for something to eat midway through the day and hits some traffic around Indianapolis, so by the time she is turning onto the dirt road down to the Barton family farm the sky is beginning to turn a soft pink color with the setting sun.

She squints against the light of the sunset as she draws nearer to the house. Both Laura’s car and Clint’s truck are home, and yet there is something about the way the pollen is caked to both windshields that gives Nat an uneasy feeling.

She gets out of the car and slams the door behind her harder than what is necessary. She is deliberate in scuffing her boots along the dirt and she kicks a stray rock into the edge of the barn. As she approaches the two vehicles and inspects the obvious neglect she whistles out, but the only answer she receives is from a stray bird.

This is not a good feeling.

She makes her way closer to the house. She whistles again as she draws nearer, and allows her feet to land on the exact spots of the steps onto the porch where she knows the wood will creak the most.

The car and the truck aren’t the only places where pollen has settled in. The wooden floor and handrails of the porch all have a thin layer of yellow dust coating their surfaces. The door is locked when she tries it, and peering in the windows she can’t find a single light on.

Clint took the time to close the place up, and she isn’t sure whether that is a good sign or a bad one.

Still whistling to herself, Nat crouches down and pry’s up the loose board which gives access to the spare key hidden underneath the next one. She doesn’t bother putting the board back; she is leaving Clint every damn hint that she’s been here.

The creak of the door is louder than she has ever heard it as she pushes it open, though it’s hard to be sure if it’s due to disuse, or if she has just never heard the Barton house anything but a hub of bustling noise.

“Clint?” She finally calls as she steps into the mudroom. She is immediately hit with the stale air of the house. Dust particles float around her, and there are thick strings of cobwebs reflecting the golden light coming in through the windows.

Fuck.

“Barton?” She tries again, regardless of the truth all around her. “It’s me.”

It doesn’t matter.

After kicking the door closed Nat inspects the kitchen and finds Clint at least had the self-curtesy to not leave anything in the sink to grow mold. But there are still fruit flies buzzing about by the fridge and under the cabinets.

As she walks through the kitchen, Nat traces her fingers over the top of a wooden chair at the table and frowns as she recognizes the feel of dust on her fingertips. She wipes the grim on her leggings and steps into the hallway.

She has never seen this hallway without a toy abandoned in the middle of it, Laura and Clint constantly in a losing battle against their children creating a “hazardous walkway”.

She frowns, looking down the stretch of tidy darkness before her.

In the living room, the couch and the armchair smell as stale and unused as the walls around them. The final nail in the coffin, however, is the sight of both Clint’s S.H.I.E.L.D. phone as well as his personal on the coffee table.

Nat picks up the personal phone first, but it’s dead, and then she discovers the same with the second. All she can imagine is her calls ringing out to an empty room, his personal phone giving out first. The S.H.I.E.L.D. phone is much more durable, and she can imagine it held out days longer. But, eventually, it stopped ringing too.

And she kept calling. Trying to reach someone who wasn’t there to pick up.

Nat can’t help but to think of her bag in the car; containing her laptop and all the letters she is yet to mail. People she is trying to reach, but they aren’t there to answer.

The sound of her own breathing begins to hit her ears. It’s firm, and even, and it is the only sound there is.

Because Clint isn’t here.

Because Laura isn’t here to pull her into a hug or to greet her with a smile, or a warning of whatever common cold the kids brought back from school this week.

Nathaniel isn’t here to jump into her arms. Lila and Cooper aren’t here, wrestling on the couch for the remote, until she comes and joins the fight and effectively turns it into a pig pile.

Nat’s thoughts swirl faster and faster, and the sound of her breathing follows suit.

Her mind takes her back to the field in Russia, where Dreykov’s new Red Room crashed and burned. Her forehead pressed against Yelena’s. Melina, leaning on Alexi, her family whom she spent so long telling herself was never really real.

All her letters sitting unopened. Her e-mails. Every correspondence she has sent out, all for nothing; because they aren’t out there.

Her breath hitches and she can’t stop it.

Why didn’t she come sooner? She should’ve known Clint wasn’t here. Where would he go? Where? Where would he run to that isn’t here?
Budapest? Maybe. Her sob comes stuttering out and it’s harder to breathe. What if he has already been and gone from Budapest? What if… What if she’s too late, and he is as dead as the rest of them?

The next sob brings tears streaming down her face and her knees finally give out. She cries loud and unashamed; after all, no one is left to hear her.

Steve’s words ring in her mind as her face turns beat red and she wails aloud to the empty room.

“When this hits you, promise me you won’t go through it alone. Ok?”

She screams out louder. How could he ask such a promise from her? There is no one left for her. They lost half of all life with Thanos’ snap, but what is abundantly clear to her now is that she somehow managed to lose everyone. It wasn’t just strangers. It wasn’t just allies. It wasn’t just her baby. Laura and the Barton kids were ripped away. Her parents, her sister… she can’t kid herself anymore. They’re gone too. She has no idea whether Clint is dead or alive. Any of The Avengers who are left are all too caught up in their own grief and their jobs for her to burden any further. And Steve…

She chokes on the dusty air as she further loses control of herself. Steve may as well be as gone as the rest of them. It’s like nothing ever happened between them, and yet everything did. All the nights sharing a bed, the feel on his bare skin under hers, his fingers drawing invisible patterns on her arms.

She cries out again; and this time it is a butchered version of his name. Why did they have to lose? Why did they have to go back to New York and to being Avengers? Nat could have easily lived out the rest of her life hiding away in some small town with Steve. Losing their baby to Thanos? Of course it fucking hurts, but she can handle that.

It’s Steve she wasn’t ready to lose.

She isn’t ready.

She grabs onto that thought like a lifeline. She needs to calm down enough to speak. However little their days on the run meant to him, he did ask her to promise not to go through this alone.

She takes deep, guttural breathes, and in the process of trying to calm herself so quickly Nat winds up scrambling to her feet and darting to the downstair bathroom. She collapses again in front of the toilet, her feet sticking out the door of the tiny room.

It doesn’t matter anyway.

Her cheap gas-station hot dog comes surging back up and splashing into the toilet bowl in chunks. She cries more as the sour smell of her sick assaults her nose, and her mind can’t help but to go back to that diner bathroom.

“Ok, Nat, I’m coming in.”

Her shoulders shake with the memory; her head burring in her arms folded atop the toilet seat.

She manages to calm down. She needs to be able to call him. She needs to speak. If he made her make that promise, the least he can do is be the one to fulfil it.

Eventually, with her goal in mind, she is able to get ahold on herself. She is still breathing in shallow gasps as she flushes the toilet, and with her hand still shaking she fishes her phone from her pocket.

She glares at it with one thought; he had better pick up.

Her resolve slips more with each number she dials. She can hardly see the phone throughout the wall of her tears. She hits the faintly glowing green blur, and raises the phone to her ear.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Ri-

“Hey Nat.”

“Hey.” She murmurs, scrubbing her free hand over her face and up through her hair. “Are you busy?”

There’s a beat, and there is no way he isn’t hearing the tears in her voice.

“No. Why?”

She sighs, deep and tired.

“It um… It’s hitting me.”

Chapter Text

The motel Steve has been living out of for the past couple of months is in sight when a strange feeling settles over him. He can’t explain it; there are still cars driving by him as he walks down the edge of the state highway, and the air is still cool with the damp endings of winter. The late-night sky is the same deep blue with the same stars shining above him. He can’t pinpoint what about the atmosphere has shifted, only that he can sense something is waiting for him at the motel.

He considers running, but it would be futile. Whoever is waiting for him has no doubt been staking him out and knows he is already here. His best move is going to be to continue on his way and contain the fight to the motel parking lot.

So, he walks. He keeps his stride easy and his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Sure enough when he turns the corner into the drive of the motel lot, he sees a figure seated in the hard plastic chair outside his door.

A smile tugs at his lips.

The figure is a lithe outline with legs pulled up and crossed in the seat with her knees resting against the flimsy arms of the deck chair. Her head is ducked and her focus is on something in her lap, and while her face is further obscured but the hood draped loose over her head and the short tendrils of blonde hair in her face, Steve is well aware that she is watching him. As he draws closer he can see that the thing in her lap is an open book, and she has the butt end of a pencil tapping against her lip while she waits for him.

By the time he is standing at the threshold of the breezeway Steve finally lets himself breathe and take in her presence for what it is; a sight for sore eyes.

“What’s the present tense of ‘Martyr’?”

She doesn’t look up when she asks, nor when Steve steps onto the concrete slab of the breezeway and yet he still doesn’t answer her. Instead she waits patiently while he rakes his eyes over the backpack slumped next to her seat, up to the combat boots on her feet, the crossword book in her lap, set against her unzipped hoodie and the faded Pink Floyd t-shirt underneath. When he reaches her face she finally squints up at him. Her eyes which he has always known to be blue look closer to brown under the dim light of the lanterns on the wall, and he doesn’t doubt she is wearing colored contacts.

“Martyrize.” He answers her question, and she hums in approval before scribbling down her answer.

While she is doing that, Steve unlocks the door for the room. He steps inside and she follows behind him.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding out?” She asks, her eyes raking the room over from corner to corner.

He keeps it clean; old habits. The bed is made and his changes of clothes are either put away neatly behind the sliding door of the closet, or in the pop-up hamper he’d bought. He has a go-bag sitting just on the other side of the bed, and there is a tin of instant coffee next to the pot on the counter. The table is clean, but he hasn’t taken out the trash yet.

“How long?” She asks, though considering she was waiting for him, Steve would wager she had a pretty good idea before she even got here.

“A few months.” He answers, “It’s about a forty-minute walk to this local antique shop, which I have experience in.”

“You shouldn’t stay in one place too long.” She chides him, frowning as she closes the door behind herself.

“Well, it was this or a career as a truck driver.”

She gives him this little half smile. “Is that what the beard is for?”

He smirks at her teasing, and the glint of pride in her eyes. He wonders if she knows that when it all went to shit and became clear they couldn’t go home again – when he first found himself alone, and with nowhere to turn – his cornerstone was a simple question to himself.

What would Natasha do?

Nat would make herself unrecognizable, and yet she wouldn’t change much at all. Nat would make a million little choices and add them all up to a new persona. So, that’s what he did. He grew out his hair and his beard, got his hands on some Carhartt clothes at a yard sale, and headed for the sticks of Connecticut; plenty far from New York City, but still closer than where he thinks Ross would guess he would stay.

Now that she is standing before him, Steve takes in the collection of choices Nat made this week so that she could take the risk of contacting him.

Her hair is the only significant change; chopped to her shoulders and dyed a platinum blonde. Her combat boots have seen better days; either she thrifted them or they’re a beater pair she’s had stashed away forever. Her black jeans are ripped up at the knees, and the open black sweatshirt she’s wearing is hanging off her at two sizes too big and smells faintly of marijuana. He’s sure she’s had him tracked for weeks now. She knew she was coming to a dirty little motel off the side of the road, where the people staying aren’t always travelers.

“So, is this an end-of-the-world visit?” He asks, and she smirks again.

“Not yet.” She allows, “I need your help.”

Steve scrubs a hand over his face as he pulls open the door to the Quinjet. He never should have let her go alone. He should have known Clint’s radio silence was a bad sign. They’ve been chalking it up to him needing time. They’ve been saying he lost so much and he thinks coming back here right now means being an Avenger again, and he can’t handle that. He’s better off at home, taking the time he needs.

The truth is they’ve been naïve. They’ve all been drowning in their own grief and well aware that Clint coming back would be one more person added to the mess. One more person to watch, to console, to see the pain in his eyes every morning as he tries to muddle through another day with the rest of them. They’ve kept him out of sight, out of mind, because it’s been easier for them.

Some friends they are.

“Hey, where you going Cap?”

Steve has to keep himself from growling when Tony’s voice hits his ears. He looks up, and to Tony’s credit, the furrow of his brow as he is stepping into the hanger is genuine. He isn’t accusing him of running off to do something stupid. He probably is only here because he was in the garage down the hall and heard the door.

“Nat called.” He explains, hoping they can just blow over this conversation. “She made it to the farm. She said it looks like Barton abandoned the place awhile ago. I’m going to get her.”

Tony is still moving slow since coming back, still in the throes of recovery. So he is more meandering into the hanger than anything, and while Steve understands it is quite literally the best that he can do right now, it is still sending an infuriating simmer through his blood that he might be delayed in getting to Nat because Tony is standing too close to the jet for take-off and can’t step away fast enough.

“She isn’t driving back?” Tony asks, and Steve grits his teeth, but again he knows Tony doesn’t understand what he is saying; not really. “When she didn’t take a jet there, I figured her plan was to make some stops along the way. Damage assessment.”

Frankly, that would be a very Nat-esque plan. Two birds, one stone. They have hundreds of news stations from around the world playing constantly all throughout the compound, and checking reports of the damage from Thanos seems to have become his and Nat’s full-time positions. It only makes sense Tony would assume that if Nat is opting to drive through five states over the course of two days, she would have a second itinerary in mind, and she would only double down on it in the event of not having Clint to handle on her way back.

“She’s taking it pretty hard.” He says flatly, “Barton is her best friend.”

For an instant, Tony looks like he wants to say something. Either ask another question or perhaps say that Nat is the strongest of them all and Steve is over reacting flying out to get her. But, thank God, a better thinking falls over his face. It isn’t quite understanding, but maybe an understanding that this isn’t an argument he would win.

“Fly safe.” Is all he says, and Steve nods and closes himself into the jet.

He can still feel the bitterness brewing inside him. He hopes it’s going to get better, easier. Maybe when Tony is at least recovered, though something tells him that will only make it worse. For now, Steve forces himself to be grateful Tony is clearing the area. He even hits the button on the wall to open the hanger door.

Steve holds the door open and ushers Wanda along inside, meeting Nat’s eyes behind her and finding an anxiety there which mirrors his own.

They didn’t go breaking onto The Raft without as much preparation as they could manage. They knew before they started their plan that Barton and Lang took plea deals. They found whilst hacking into government systems that Sam Wilson was transferred into another maximum-security prison; this one off the Californian coast near Alcatraz Island. Apparently S.H.I.E.L.D. thought imprisoning two Avengers in one place was too dangerous long term. So, going in, they knew they were only going after Wanda. They just didn’t know what kind of condition she would be in when they got to her.

What they found is so much worse than anything Steve would have imagined.

She is slow to let go of his arm as he holds the door open for her, and pulls the sleeves of her prison jumpsuit over her fingers. She looks as much of a shattered child as she did the day they first brought her to New York from Sokovia. Her dark hair has grown past her waist and hangs around her hollow face in snarly tendrils. He’d had to carry her for a portion of their escape, and her weight on his back was so light he’d wanted to be sick.

She stands just beyond the door and surveys the room. There are two double beds with dated patterned quilts sticking out from the left wall. There is also a small table with two chairs, and Steve knows already this arrangement is going to require more shuffling than normal for a dynamic of three people, but they’ll make it worse.

“Do you want to shower?” Nat asks, nodding towards the door on the far side of the room, leading to an unlit bathroom.

Wanda hesitates at first. She eyes the door, and she tugs a little harder on the cuffs of her sleeve. Nat sees that too, and Steve can tell she is just about to offer something else; maybe food or new clothes first.

“Yes.” Wanda answers, her voice impossibly small. She crosses the room decisively, as if pushing herself into the bathroom. She only turns to look at them after she has flicked on the light and is slowly closing the door over.

Steve doesn’t move his eyes from the door even after it’s closed.

“What do we think they did to her?” He asks, his voice low so that she won’t hear through the door.

“They tortured her.” Nat answers, voice equally quiet. “Hopefully nothing else.”
So, they’re on the same page. That fact alone twists his stomach and makes him thinks they should have left more casualties behind in their escape.

“We’ll see how she feels about sleeping arrangements.” Nat continues, now eyeing the two beds. “If she feels safer with someone, I can share with her. If she’d rather be alone…” She stops, and flits her eyes up to him. “We’re both adults.”

He blinks at her, and to her credit, she waits without hint of an amused smirk for him to process her proposition.

It’s one of those things where he feels the clash of the two eras he’s lived in. Back in the day you didn’t just share a bed with a woman; no matter who it was. There were plenty of times when he’d slept on the floor of a motel room or shared with Bucky because that is the respectful thing to do.

He knows it’s still considered respectful. He knows it’s still done. But he also knows Nat is aware of these things too and yet she still offered, and she’s right, they’re both adults.

“I can sleep on the floor.” He offers anyway, and now she allows herself to smirk.

“I know you can.” She says, and then cocks her head to the nearest bed. “You and I should take the one closer to the door.”

Or just him, but that is something they can figure out later.

The bathroom door opens, and when he sees Wanda peeking out still dressed in her prison jumpsuit Steve realizes that at no point while he and Nat were talking did he hear the shower start.

“Natasha?” Wanda timidly asks, and Nat wastes no time. She marches across the room, and the two of them talk softly in the doorway for a moment, and then they both disappear into the bathroom.

Steve doesn’t dare move until he hears the shower start a few minutes later.

Nat closes her eyes tightly, and she tries her best to breathe, but all that comes out is this pained whining sound.

She understands now why taking a shower had been too intimidating for Wanda those first few days after she and Steve had rescued her.

After talking with Steve on the phone for long enough that she was able to keep ahold of herself, he insisted he is coming to the farm. He said he would take Quinjet, and he’d be here within two hours. After hanging up with him Nat decided there was no point in sitting on the bathroom floor – or anywhere in the house – sobbing to an empty room. She didn’t want to either. Steve was coming, and so maybe she isn’t so alone after all.

She had decided she may as well take a shower while she waits for him. After an entire day spent driving and now crying and vomiting into Clint’s toilet, she certainly feels like she needs one. But she wasn’t expecting this surge of panic.

From the moment she’d tugged the curtain closed the panic had begun to rise in her chest. The spray of the water is too loud echoing off the enclosing walls of the shower. The air is too thick with steam. Nat sinks to her knees trying to find some fresh air and she winds up slinking into the dry spot directly behind the spray of the water.

She crosses her legs and sits with her eyes firm on the curtain, her back against the tub. Her breathing becomes faster, closer to sobs again, and her fingers curl against her knees in an attempt to keep her thoughts from spiraling.

What if something happens and Steve never gets here? What if something happens to Clint, if it hasn’t already? More and more horrible images fly through her mind at lightning speed. She thinks back to when she sat on the toilet seat in that motel room, talking to Wanda while she showered.

She is too far from the world in here. Anything could be waiting for her when she comes out, and what if it is another fight she can’t win?

She reaches up and fumbles her hand for the water knob. She’ll try this again later, when she can at least be sure Steve is in the house with her.

Hopefully that will be enough of a difference.

She pulls herself up with leverage on the knob and turns off the water. Once she pulls the curtain aside and can see the light cloud of steam in the bathroom and her phone unlit on the sink she feels a little better. She is better able to breath, and she wipes away the tears which had crept into the corners of her eyes. She checks her phone before drying herself off, and there are no missed notifications, which she has to believe is better than several missed notifications. She gets changed back into her clothes and does her best to rake through her hair with her fingers.

That’s one of the perks of having it short, at least. It’s easier to manage. Still, sometimes she misses being able to braid it. That’s always been one of the few things she’s been able to do for herself. For all his rules, Dreykov never regulated what the widows did with their hair. He always said change was encouraged because you would spend your entire career changing to suit your mission. He never could have understood the power behind something so simple.

She started braiding her hair as a teenager after it grew out again in the aftermath of Ohio. Melina had taught her during those two years even though her own hair was too short to work with. Sometimes, Nat hadn’t wanted to learn. She liked her hair short, and never anticipated a day in which she might take her one freedom and choose to grow it out. But Yelena was always begging to be her and Melina’s test subject, and Melina would tell her she could help her out by learning to do her sister’s hair.

She pushes aside the thoughts of her family, not wanting to work herself up again. Still, she leans in close to the mirror and threads her fingers into her roots. She lifts her hand and closely examines the shadows of red starting to grow back in.

“You know I’m still not used to the blonde.”

Nat snorts, still studying her cards. She assumes they’re talking about this because she spent the afternoon touching up her dye job.

She and Steve are staying put for the next few days while Sam is off with a group of corn harvesters he found work with. The group is traveling from Texas, to Oklahoma, to Kansas harvesting, and they receive room and board as part of their contract. So, Steve and Nat followed him as far as Oklahoma, and they’ll meet him in Kansas before his job there is done.

“Sometimes the beard still throws me off.” She admits, and Steve chuckles as he peeks out at her from behind his cards.

“What? Don’t you like it?”

He makes and exaggeration of stroking his chin, making her laugh. It’s been awhile since it was just him and her, and while she has no complaints about traveling with Wanda and now with Sam, she will admit that this is a nice change of pace.

She and Steve are good at coexisting. They watch each-others backs, and in the quiet moments they can just be.

Nat hasn’t had that in a long, long time.

They play a few more hands, and eventually Nat feels like it is too warm in the room for her to be wearing the thick sweatshirt that she is. So while Steve is shuffling up the deck she shucks the sweatshirt off and tugs her t-shirt underneath back into place when it rides up.

And she catches Steve flicking his eyes back down to the deck.

She doesn’t bother hiding her smile as she tosses the sweatshirt aside.

“You want to move on to strip-poker, Rogers?” She teases, and he snorts in response.

“Sure, why not?” He teases in return, and Nat knows she should leave it there.

But as they start the next hand it is still on her mind. It’s a line, she knows that. But she’s crossed lines before, and now that it is in her head it’s becoming one of those things that she won’t be able to simply push to the side.

So, she folds her hand a little early, and then as Steve reshuffles she slides her way out of her shorts.

This time Steve doesn’t hide the fact that he’s watching her. However he isn’t watching her with any hint of interest, but rather straight confusion.

“What are you doing?”

“Well I’m already barefoot.” She excuses, unbothered by his lack of interest. “Shorts seemed to be the next logical place to start.”

He looks her up and down, again, with wide-eyed confusion and very little more.

“You were serious?”

“Why not?” She challenges, but she says it simply enough. She won’t blame him if he puts the cards down right now and calls it a night. If she’s pushed too far, she can accept that, and she’s confident there is still room for the two of them to come back from this moment if that is what he wants.

Steve deals out the next hand.

This time when she loses it is fair and square, and already being without her shorts Nat decides the next logical move is to discard her shirt.

“So we’re really doing this?” Steve asks, though this time there is more desire in his eyes as he looks at her rather than the cards he is shuffling.

“I am.” She shrugs, “Be nice if you lost a hand though.”

He hums, and when he folds early on in the next hand, she swears he did it on purpose.

He stripes his pants off, leaving himself in his boxers. They’re just simple boxer briefs; black in color, and hugging his legs and sitting low on his hips. Nat won’t deny that she stares for a moment, and when she looks back to his face, it’s clear in his grin that he isn’t unaware of her interest.

They play another hand, and again he folds too early.

“This is a bad idea.” He states plainly.

“Probably.” She agrees, “I won’t kiss and tell if you won’t.”

He thumbs at the edges of his cards, a chuckle dying on his lips as he considers her words.

Then, slowly, he stands up. He walks around the table and leans over her, his hand resting on the back of her chair as he lowers himself down.

“Tell me if this is a bad idea.” He whispers, his breathe warm and intoxicating as it washes over her face.

“It is.” She confirms, her eyes fluttering closed as she stretches up to meet him. “It’s a really bad idea…”

Her words trail off as her lips ghost over his, and then he increases the pressure and she rises to her feet. The hair of his beard tickles her face and feels rough under her hands as she lays them over his cheek. His fingers find her waist, and before she can talk herself out of it she is jumping up and wrapping her legs around him.

He kisses her harder. She leans back, sitting on his arms, needing to breathe. She blinks her eyes open and sees him looking back at her; his eyes now full of desire and so she pulls herself back in.

This is a bad idea. This is well and truly one of the worst ideas she has ever had. But Nat can’t help herself. They are living hopping from motel to motel. They are running from people they once called family. She is trying her best to scrape that family back together but Wanda took off, and she has no idea how she is supposed to broach the subject of mending things with Tony or even if that will ever be possible. Clint wants nothing to do with her plans.

She kisses Steve harder, trying to convey that even if this is a terrible idea, it’s something she has zero reservations about. It means everything to her that he is still here with her. As he walks with her through the room, she wonders if he knows this isn’t the first time she’s imagined something like this.

She wonders if he knows all those times she would needle him about “getting out there”, there was always a part of her wondering what she would say if he retorted her by asking her to be this date she was convinced he needed.

She wonders if he knows how deeply his and Tony’s feud cut her. Clint she knew she would have, no matter how things ended, but she couldn’t say the same for him and that… That wasn’t an easy thing to come to terms with.

She bounces as he deposits her onto the bed. The cheap mattress squeaks underneath her weight, and then Steve’s, climbing up to straddle her lap. She bunches her hands up at the sides of his t-shirt as she leans back to give him more room.

“Wait.” He gaps, and while she frowns at the sudden change, she keeps her fingers curled lightly where they are. “We don’t have any of those condoms.”

The fact that his voice is still husky with desire is the only thing which keeps her from outright rolling her eyes at him.

“I don’t have any diseases Rogers.” She says, daring to bunch up his shirt a little further. “Do you?”

“No, but-”

“Then we’re fine.” She firmly promises him. This isn’t a conversation she wants to have right now. It’s surefire way to kill the mood, and at this point if she is going to lose out on this, it is going to be because one of them comes to their goddamn senses and nothing else. “The Red Room took care of everything else.”

He blinks down at her, but she isn’t going to give him any further details. Not right now. The only way The Red Room is going to ruin this is if he decides to take that little fact and decide it makes her too broken for him.

And he would never do that.

He leans in closer, giving her every chance to pull away, but she has no intentions on taking it. With a gentle grip he curls his hands around her own at the hem of his shirt. His nose brushes against hers and he captures her lips in a kiss that is so different from before. It isn’t hungry or hurried; not preoccupied with making the most of this before one of them thinks better of it. Instead it is soft, and sorry, but also promising. He never speaks a word but, all the same, she can hear him swear that no monster like Dreykov will ever touch her again.

Chapter Text

The only place to land the jet is the back field of the Barton farm. It’s dark by the time Steve arrives. The air is crisp with a slight chill as spring patiently waits for the heat of summer. Bright stars are twinkling overhead in the clear sky, and as Steve disembarks he can’t help but to think of all the nights in the past two years when he would stand in motel parking lots and admire a sky like this. You can’t see stars clearly like this in New York; it was one of his favorite things about being a fugitive.

Now there’s an oxymoron if he’s ever heard one.

The lights from the jet allows him to see the distant figure of Nat sitting on the steps of the back porch waiting for him, and he promptly forces away any further thoughts of their time on the run.

She stands up as he starts to draw closer. The closer he gets, the better he can see her and how her hair is damp and hanging in messy tendrils around her face. Her lips are set in a firm frown, and he picks up his pace crossing the field. When he reaches her he can see that while her eyes are dry, when he really looks, he sees there is a red tint left under her lashes.

He wants nothing more than to reach out and pull her into his arms. The urge is so strong that his fingers twitch at his side. She might even let him, considering it’s just the two of them out here.

But, for now, he refrains.

“Do you want to go inside?” He decides it’s the safest question he can ask.

She called him here, and that isn’t a small thing. He can see the walls still stories high behind her irises. He needs to be patient with her. She wouldn’t have called if she wasn’t planning on letting him in, it’s just a matter of finding the right words.

“Not really.” She answers, her voice thick, and she clears her throat as a result.

Steve smiles at her, at least, he does the best he can. He can’t even imagine what coming here and not finding Barton must have been like for her. He doesn’t want to try and picture that moment of her walking into this house. This place which has been her safe haven since the day she defected to S.H.I.E.L.D., now dark and abandoned.

He decides he may as well sit down. He leaves enough space for her to sit next to him, and eventually she takes that opening. She leans her shoulder against the post of the railing, her eyes staring distantly out into the darkness.

It’s quiet for a minute, and then two. Steve is sure Nat is aware of just how long the silence is dragging out for, and he will wait as long as she needs him to.

“He didn’t leave a note.” She eventually murmurs, “Or any kind of clue as to where he went.”

Steve isn’t surprised to hear that; he has a feeling that had Clint left any indication as to where he went, then Nat would have told him so when she called.

Not to mention, he doubts all the grief would have hit her in the way that it did.

“I keep reaching out to Yelena, but I’m not hearing back. I don’t think she’s out there.”

She lets him sit with that for a moment, the gravity of her words seeming to settle over her in the same time that it does him.

“I’m sorry.” He offers her, “Did she have anyone else?”

He’s sure that if she did, Nat has already tried contacting that person, and that effort has come up empty as well.

“Our parents.” Her voice is strained, and the look in her eyes becomes even more pained and distant.

Steve blinks at her. He thinks back to when she first told him she has a sister, and how she specified the two of them aren’t related biologically. That much he had been able to make sense of. She said they met on a mission, and that both she and Yelena were trained in The Red Room. Without further details, he could venture to guess they became close on that mission. They were friends who didn’t have anyone else in the world. Sisters.

But he had assumed this mission took place when they were adults. Young adults, granted. He doesn’t think he would be surprised to learn they were teenagers. But he never would have guessed there were any parents in the picture.

He is about to ask her to clear up those details, except there is a slight tremor which wracks through her otherwise still body. She’s curled her legs up too; her feet perched on the edge of the top step and her chest hunched into her knees. The corner of her thumbnail is snagged between her teeth as well, and so Steve decides that there will be a better time for his questions later on.

“No luck with them either?” He asks instead.

“Uh-uh.” She hums, minutely shaking her head. “Everyone is gone.”

Her whispered words come out so broken, Steve feels the tears pricking at his own eyes.

“Nat-”

She shudders again, hard. She doesn’t seem to have been expecting it either, because she clamps a hand over her mouth as though she is trying to physically hold back her tears.

That is when Steve decides enough is enough. He inches himself closer and reaches out and slides his arm around her shoulder. He is fully prepared for her to push him away as he dares to try and pull her close, but she doesn’t. The opposite, actually. She all but collapses over her side so that she is lying across his lap as her whole body trembles and she finally lets go of her resolve.

The sounds of her sobs are muffled by her hand, until Steve works his own hand up over her fingers and gently he nudges her grip free from her mouth.

No longer muffling the sounds of her own cries, she digs her fingers into his knee as she sobs loud and violently. Steve isn’t sure what he can do as her shoulders hitch and her leg bounces wildly up and down. Before his eyes, she transitions from shaking with sobs to full on convulsions wracking through her. All he can think to do is to is lay one hand up on her thigh, the other resting on her shoulder. He rubs what he hopes are comforting strokes along her thigh and her hip as her sobs fill the evening air and have him biting back tears of his own.

“It’s alright Nat.” He whispers to her. “It’s alright.”

She cries louder, some shout of protest lost in the sound, and so Steve accepts that words aren’t going to be of any use here.

He keeps stroking her thigh, and it takes a few minutes, but the bouncing of her leg eventually slows and the hitching of her sobs peter out into occasional sniffles. Her shaking doesn’t stop completely, but it becomes less and less, until Steve starts to think it’s turned to a slight shiver in the night air, despite the thick sleeves of her fleece.

Soon, when her body is mostly steady, she begins to peel herself off his lap and she straightens to sit beside him once again.

“That better?” He asks, watching as she wipes at her eyes.

She sniffles and nods, “Yeah.” She croaks, “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me.” He promises her, “Especially not after my breakdown on you.”

She hums, seemingly only half convinced.

There is a tiredness to her expression as she gazes down at the base of the steps. It’s something which either wasn’t there before, or it was much better masked. Some sort of confession in all this which she still needs to make him understand.

“I messed up, Rogers.”

He furrows his brow at her blunt statement. “What do you mean?”

She sighs, long and drawn out. She stretches her arms out and then draws them back in, folding them in her lap and then hunching in on herself again. It’s unsettling. Steve doesn’t think he has ever been this lost with her. Even when they had first met and he wasn’t exactly sure where she drew her lines or even what side she was on some of the time, he always felt like he could know what realm her thoughts were in.

But now, as she sits quiet and sinking her teeth into the edge of her thumb again, Steve honestly has no idea what is going through her head.

“We were just having fun.” She confesses quietly, “Having sex. Then I got pregnant, and we were going to deal with that… And now we’re not.”

He frowns, nodding solemnly.

“These last few weeks since Thanos… I have realized how badly I wanted to deal with it.”

“I know.” He murmurs, “You didn’t mess up, Nat.” He says, praying that she will believe him. “The baby being a victim of Thanos isn’t some cosmic punishment for wanting-”

“I’m not talking about the baby.”

He stares at her, and she stares at him. It feels like time is at a standstill as she slowly drops her hand back into her lap.

“Not only the baby.” She admits, “The past few weeks, I haven’t been able to sleep. And it isn’t because I’m having nightmares of Thanos, or the fact that I don’t want to wake up in the morning and remember what’s happened…”

She trembles, another small sob wracking through her body, and for a moment Steve worries she is about to break down all over again. But she is able to catch her breath, and she takes a moment where she sits there with her head tilted up and her eyes closed, just breathing.

Then, finally, she lowers her head and she looks out into the darkness once again.

“It’s because I let myself crawl into bed with you, and I stopped correcting Sam when he made jokes, and I let myself imagine a world where we never had to go back.”

Steve blinks, dumbfounded. His mind races back to all the small towns they traveled to, and how he would admire the ranch homes, bungalows, and split levels which could never sustain a life in New York City. But out in the suburbs and the country sides people thrived in these homes. Kids left their toys scattered on the front lawns, and senior citizens carpooled to church on Sundays, and teenagers walked or biked to their first job, or came home from college for their first summer.

“I think about that world too.” He admits, “I started picturing it in every town we went to. What would happen if we could just settle down there. If we never had to worry about Ross or anyone else finding us.”

“And?” She asks, and despite the heaviness of the word, he smiles to himself.

“We would have gotten one of those two-family houses.” He says, willing those fantasies he has been so deliberately ignoring lately back to the forefront of his mind. “The kind that’s falling apart a little. It’s all we could afford, and Sam already told everyone you and I are married, so it makes the most sense.”

She laughs at that. It’s the first Steve has seen her smile in he isn’t sure how long, but he is determined it isn’t going to be the last.

They take a moment where they each turn to lean backs against the rail posts behind them. Nat proms one knee up on the actual deck, allowing her hand to drum lightly on her kneecap as she listens to him spin this tale of a life they could have had.

“You and I live downstairs.” He elaborates, “And Sam lives in the apartment upstairs. We fix up the house, and sometimes Wanda comes back to visit. Sometimes she brings Vision, sometimes she doesn’t. We always try and convince her to stay, but she never does.”

“Of course she doesn’t.” Nat snorts good-naturedly, and Steve chuckles.

“We tell all the neighbors she’s my younger sister.” He continues, “And when she brings Vision Sam gives them crap too; he keeps threatening to install carpeting in his apartment to buffer the sound from below.”

Nat outright laughs at that, making Steve laugh too; these fantasies bringing a smile to his face for the first time in weeks.

“So you and I live downstairs?” Nat asks, beginning to sober. Steve nods and she tips her head down just enough that she can look at him. “One bedroom or two?”

He sucks in a breath, the air around him suddenly feeling too charged to answer her with something else from his daydreams.

“One.” He answers, still going to casual. “I guess. I always figured a second one would be for Wanda. But…”

He sighs, he isn’t sure he really wants to spoil the moment by plunging this deep into reality. But with the way Nat is watching him – waiting patiently and so intently for his answer – he knows he owes her the honesty.

“After you told me you were pregnant, I guess that was really when I first pictured two.”

She blinks at him, staring long enough that he starts to brace himself for her to say he was being too hopeful.

“You thought about this before then?”

He freezes. She is looking at him still with wide, surprised eyes. But now he understands that surprise isn’t rooted in bitterness or sorrow, or even that pessimism of hers.

“Yes.” He answers, unsure of how else to admit it, because here he thought that was what they’ve been talking about this whole time.

“So you and I being together,” Nat slowly begins to ask, “It’s all to keep up Sam’s charade?”

His first instinct is to say no, of course that wouldn’t be the only reason. But then, would that be a lie? That’s how she and him started, isn’t it? Sam would crack a joke about being a third wheel, and it seemed to sell their cover story, so he and Nat started ignoring it.

“Where are you going with this Nat?” He finally asks, because he can feel himself teetering on the edge of going too far. “All of that was just… Wishful thinking, I guess. It was a daydream.”

She hums, and bites at her nail again, a storm of thoughts in her eyes which Steve wishes he could begin to understand.

“I want it.” She murmurs, and as she allows her hand to rest on her bent knee she looks up at him. “I know it doesn’t work that way.” She says seriously. “We have a job to do, and right now everything will fall apart if we walk away. But I miss you, Steve.”

All at once, Steve feels like his heart has sunk into his stomach and then catapulted back up into his throat. He has to suppress the urge to reach forward and pull her into his arms. He needs to be sure before he does anything.

“When you say you want ‘it’? What exactly do you mean?” He asks, and she shrugs, her thumb beginning to trace invisible patterns on her knee.

“Whatever parts of it we can hold onto.” She shrugs, “Like I said, we can’t walk away from S.H.I.E.L.D. right now. The world needs us, our friends need us.” She sighs and hugs her knee to her chest a little tighter. “I still don’t think I want try for another baby right now. But… What if I want more than sex this time?”

Finally, Steve allows himself to chuckle.

“You mean if I ask you to marry me you’ll say yes?”

She snorts, her smile returning to her face in the easy way that sometimes makes Steve wonder how she has such a success rate as a spy. She has the widest, brightest smile that he has ever seen. It’s honest and – when she is happy – there is no stopping it. He could look at it all day, how could anyone ever not give it a thought?

“Not tonight.” She chuckles, and then her face falls serious again. “You would marry me without a baby?”

The words hit him worse than any punch. He wants to ask her how she could ask such a question, and then he realizes he knows exactly how.

He isn’t unaware of the fact that they haven’t discussed what they are to each other since they’ve been back in New York. He also isn’t unaware of the fact that they haven’t discussed what they are to each other ever. Really, the conversation is due. But Steve hadn’t realized this kind of doubt had seeped into Nat while he thought space was what she needed.

He crawls towards her. He can see her well enough in the glow of the porch light, but this is important. He needs to be certain she understands him.

She welcomes him into her space automatically. She drops one leg down so her foot can rest on the next step, and tips the other knee to the side so that his back brushes against it. He lays a hand over her cheek and leans in close, her hair now stringy and dry as it brushes over his knuckles.

“Just say when.” He answers, and then he leans in, daring for the first time to kiss her in the way he has wanted to for longer than he can remember.

Softly, outside of the bedroom, and slow enough that he can hope she understands just how much he loves her.

In fact, with that thought, he pulls back, even though she is starting to reciprocate the kiss.

“I love you.” He whispers. He needs her to know. He needs to be sure that she knows, now more than ever.

She hums, and while she is pulling back, her arms wrap up around his neck. When Steve opens his eyes he sees tears shining in hers, and so he swipes one away with his thumb.

She closes her eyes a moment, lets him watch as she allows him to wipe her tears and as she tears down a layer of her armor. She takes a ragged breath as she opens her eyes again, and while her shoulders are beginning to shake again, she seems lighter when she looks at him.

“I’m not good with this sappy stuff.” She forewarns, and with his forehead now pressing into hers Steve chuckles, and she echoes the sound, and it’s the sweetest sound he has ever heard from her.

After a few seconds, she sobers herself. Her hand finding his cheek and her nose brushing his as she pulls herself back into him.

“But I love you too.”

Then, she kisses him. Her lips are soft and slightly salty from all her tears tonight, and while he never wants to taste her sadness like this again, it is easily the best kiss which Steve has ever had.

Chapter Text

By the time they go inside, Nat is exhausted. She and Steve talk for all of thirty seconds about just leaving the car she drove here and heading back to The Compound in the jet. It’s a decent idea – they don’t need the car desperately back in New York, and it will be a damn obvious sign to Clint they were here if he ever comes back – but it is also one which can wait until morning. It’s late, and while they’re very much needed in New York, the others can handle themselves for a night.

Nat has just enough energy in her to go out to the car and grab her bag, and by the time she gets back in and drags herself upstairs and into the guest room, Steve is already there and clearing off the bed. He is taking gentle care as he pulls a stuffed tiger of Nathaniel’s off a displaced pillow, his eyes scanning the room for a proper place for it.

“Looks like the kids were having a party in here.” Nat muses, glancing to the rest of the toys still on the bed.

Two Barbies, two smaller tigers, an oversized lemur, and Lila’s American Girl Doll are all propped up against the pillows as though they’ve congregated for a family meeting. She doesn’t doubt that’s the case either. Or, perhaps the toys were all gathered to watch a movie on the TV at the foot of the bed. She picks up one of the Barbies and traces her fingers over the headband twisted around it’s body to serve as a dress. She’s sure the doll has some actual clothes somewhere around this house; lost either to time or a spring cleaning. But, clearly, time was of the essence. Nat is sure Nathaniel had been the real driving force behind this game; pestering Lila to play with him after dinner. Still, Nat sees her niece’s care for her toys in the careful alignment of their group on the bed, and the braid in the American Girl Doll’s hair.

Nat sets the Barbie down on the bedside table, while Steve has settled for sitting the tiger off to the side of the TV.

“This feels weird.” Steve says as the two of them continue to relocate the toys from the bed.

“We could sleep on the couch.” Nat suggests, turning and setting the second Barbie down with the first.

Frankly, this does feel a little weird, but she has slept in Clint’s house enough times before – both with him home and not - that she is able to get past it.

Behind her, she hears Steve chuckle, and then there’s a pause, and when she turns he is staring thoughtfully down at the face of the American Girl Doll.

“I know he’s not coming back.” He muses, “But, imagine if he did, and he found the two of us squished onto the couch?”

Nat snorts at the thought. She can, in fact, picture it. For a moment she allows herself to entertain a reality where they got this all wrong. She came here and jumped to conclusions. Clint isn’t really gone; he just went off to help a neighbor for a couple of days and the cars are here because someone else drove him. Early in the morning he’ll get dropped off and see the S.H.I.E.L.D. car, and he’ll walk in and see she and Steve one on top of the other on the living room couch.

She sighs and clears away the over-sized lemur, setting him down behind the door.

“He’d tell us there are literally five beds in this house.”

Steve chuckles at her comment, sad and amused all at once. With all the toys cleared they peel back the duvet and the sheets. They crawl into bed like they have so many times before, and as they do there is a layer of tension which Nat feels slip away. She lays her head on Steve’s chest, her arm circling over his torso. She isn’t normally this attached to him when they first lay down. But sue her, this is all she has been craving for weeks. His warm breath tickles her scalp and his thumb slips under the cuff of her t-shirt and works soft, mindless patterns on her shoulder. For how exhausted she is, Nat isn’t apt to fall asleep just yet. She would much rather soak in this small moment of reprieve from all the stress and grief they’ve been facing lately.

When morning comes Steve is acutely aware of one fact; he is waking up from an entire night’s worth of sleep.

Not only that, but he isn’t waking up in a cold sweat. Instead he is waking up warm and his body feels stiff in the way that comes from having slept on one side for too long. He stretches out his arm, and when it slides easily across the sheets he realizes he had been expecting his reach to collide with Nat curled in on her side.

He opens his eyes with a furrowed brow. Her side of the bed is empty. The covers are drawn back up, and for a moment a panic rushes through Steve that something might have happened. He isn’t sure what; she would have woken him if she decided to go out after Clint. A nightmare of her having turned to dust in the middle of the night flashes before his open eyes. He knows it has been weeks since Thanos, but nothing is impossible, right?

He breathes in deep and gets up. He tells himself some things are impossible. Nat is fine. He is going to walk out of this guest room, down the hall, down the creaking wooden stairs…

He sighs in relief when he doesn’t even get that far.

As soon as he opens the bedroom door he hears the distant sound of the shower running.

Already up, he decides he may as well get a start on the day. The idea crosses his mind to go and join her in the shower, but he ultimately decides against it. He doesn’t doubt she would welcome his intrusion, but maybe next time. This time around, he wants very much for their relationship to go beyond sex, just as she does, and jumping her first thing in the morning probably isn’t the most modest note to start off on.

He heads downstairs where he finds the kitchen lights on, despite the fact that he is sure they turned them off last night. He also finds a brown paper bag on the counter along with a cardboard drink tray boating two to-go coffee cups.

Steve inspects the coffees and the bag. They’re both made with cream and sugar, and the bag contains two blueberry muffins with sugar crystals on top. Nat is the only explanation, so he helps himself, and he is halfway through the muffin and almost done with the coffee when she comes downstairs dressed for the day and her hair hanging damp around her face, much like last night.

“Didn’t you shower last night?”

She looks at him with surprise, and maybe something stronger, before she picks up the second coffee.

“I didn’t do my hair last night.” She answers, “I turned the water on, I got in, and I felt like the walls were closing in around me.”

Steve knows he is gawking at her. She watches him over the lid of the coffee cup as she takes a sip. She is waiting for his reaction to something like that.

“And this time?” He asks. He figures she told him; that has to count for something. Either she was ok this time, and she is telling him in the name of transparency, or she is fresh off another panic attack and she needs him to know.

“Better.” She answers, and takes another sip of her coffee.

“Good.” He says, and she offers him a small smile.

He finishes off his muffin and what’s left of his coffee, and when he gets up to throw away his garbage he frowns to himself, looking around for the trash.

“Cabinet under the sink.” Nat helps him out, even kicking towards where she is directing him.

“Thanks.” He says, and so he tosses away the coffee cup and the wrapper, and then he leans next to Nat against the counter, his arms folded over himself.

She is looking at him from the side of her eyes; patiently waiting for him to gather his thoughts.

“So when we go back.” He carefully starts, “What do we tell the others?”

“Do we have to tell them anything?” She asks around another sip of her coffee. “I mean if they ask, we’ll tell them. Otherwise they’re smart people, I’m sure they’ll figure it out eventually.”

He considers that. Frankly, that sounds like a good plan. It seems a little ridiculous to go home and gather everyone or hunt them down individually just to make a point of letting them know the two of them are… what? Dating?

Steve is still caught on that word, thinking about he’s never been in a position where it applied before, when Nat breaks the silence.

“Pepper already suspects it.” She says, “That night you came into the bathroom, after you left, she asked me how long you and I have been ‘official’ for.”

She is eyeing him with a half amused, half embarrassed smirk and her eyebrow raised as he tries to process that. Moreso, that wasn’t exactly their best night. He still remembers the way Nat had avoided his eyes when he first poked his head into that bathroom, not ready yet to talk to him and certainly not in the mood for him and Pepper in the same room.

“What did you say?”

To that, Nat hums, the smirks on her face growing.

“I told her the fact that you and I were monitoring things together didn’t mean we were sleeping together. She said she never accused me of sleeping with you.”

Steve furrows his brow, “So, they all think we’ve been together this whole time?”

“I guess.” Nat shrugs, “Or, at the least, they aren’t going to be surprised to hear we are.”

Well, that’s something.

Nat finishes her coffee and they clean up whatever they used, which isn’t much apart from the bed upstairs. Nat decides she is going to wash her clothes from yesterday as well as the towel she stole out of the linin closet, so they throw the sheets in the wash too.

“So we’ll head back in about two hours?” Steve ventures to assume as she comes up from the basement and putting in the laundry.

She hesitates a moment before answering, just long enough that it’s noticeable.

“Yeah.” She answers, “Um, we’re leaving the car? In case he ever comes back?”

“That was the plan.” He says, “Unless you want the time to yourself driving back?”

“No.” She says with a shake of her head. “No, we can leave it. But do you mind if we make a stop on the way back?”

“Of course I don’t mind.” He promises, “Where are we going?”

She hesitates one more moment.

“Mount Vernon, Ohio.” She answers, her words drawling.

He nods, “What’s there?”

“Probably nothing.” She sighs, coming around and opening the fridge, even though they’d put nothing in there. “Definitely nothing.” She says, scrunching her nose at the stale smell which escapes the empty fridge. “But I need to make sure.”

Suddenly, all the hesitation and the seriousness in her eyes makes sense.

Yelena.

When she had mentioned that she has been reaching out to her sister and parents with no luck on any front, Steve is realizing he had been a little too dumbstruck by learning they existed to think about where she has been looking. He supposes he had assumed Russia. If for no other reason, she did say that was where she left Yelena before she came and found him in Connecticut.

“Ok.” He says, “Mount Vernon, Ohio.”

Chapter Text

“So,” Steve starts as he and Nat strap into their seats in the jet. “I think I know who we’re looking for. Not to push, but are you ever going to tell me the story behind this family of yours?”

It’s a serious enough question. Nat can hear in his voice that Steve debated asking it. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to tell him the ins and outs of the family she only a year ago accepted she has. The opposite, in fact. She would love to talk about them like she is prepping him to meet them. She would love for her and Steve to be a normal-ish couple, who does normal-ish things, including meeting families. She is trying to imagine what that might look like – end of the world factored in or not - and oh God, she is starting to think that the only thing worse than not finding any of them in Ohio might, in fact, be finding them.

Honestly, trying to put her family into words, everything she comes up with sounds like either a tragedy or the start of a bad joke.

The sound of the jet revving up gives her a few minutes to think it over. Steve gets them up into the air, and once they’ve passed above the clouds and he has steadied out their flight path he looks to her from the corner of his eye.

“I know you said you and Yelena met on a mission.” He offers, and she figures that is as good a place as any to start.

“We all did.” She says, and he takes his eyes off the sky ahead just long enough to look at her in a show that she has his attention.

She tells him the whole story. How the KGB RB assigned two of their top agents – Alexei and Melina – to go undercover in Mount Vernon in 1992 and infiltrate a branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. operating there. She explains how she and Yelena were only ten and four years old at the time, but that didn’t mean anything other than they were perfect to play the parts of innocent children. The four of them were disguised as a perfect American family. Alexei coached Yelena’s soccer team, and Melina was a part of the school P.T.A.. She took ballet lessons, and rode her bike around the neighborhood.

“Some nights I would forget to remind myself that none of it was real.” She finishes off the story, lolling her head lazily against the back of her seat as she watches Steve for a reaction.

His expression is quiet and thoughtful, as it has remained pretty much since she started.

“Well,” He eventually sighs, his shoulders rolling. “We are on our way to what you just described as your childhood home. To look for the rest of that gang of spies you keep referring to as your family.” He glances to her, a gentle glint in his serious eyes. “Seems like it was pretty real to me.”

She smiles, even if it is dimmed by the looming suspicion that the family she just described may very well be nothing but a memory.

“After the mission, Dreykov made sure to keep the four of us apart.” She details, because right now she feels like she has two options; she can either go quiet, or she can keep talking about her family.

Much to her own surprise, she would much prefer option number two. It feels like tempting fate to tell Steve anything about who they are as people, but she probably should prepare him on the off chance the two of them do find somebody at the house.

“He sold Alexei out the first chance he got, and threw him in prison.” Steve raises an eyebrow at that, but Nat shrugs it off. “Melina was shot when we were escaping Ohio and had to be taken to medical. Yelena and I always thought she died there.”

“But she didn’t?”

“No.” Nat confirms, and there is something about the anger which twists through Steve’s expression, and the way his grip tightens on the flight controls, as he tries to process yet another layer of crappy things The Red Room did to her.

It’s comforting.

“Yelena and I were in different age groups in The Red Room.” She continues, “And for good measure, they put us into different specialties.”

“Specialties?” Steve asks, “They have specialties in spy school?”

Nat chuckles at his choice of terminology, which – based on the smirk creeping onto his face - she is almost certain was exactly his point.

“They do.” She confirms, “I was trained with a heavier emphasis on espionage. Yelena is more of a marksman and weapons expert.”

“Yelena is the marksman?” He asks, “But you’ve always been our sniper. You didn’t learn that in The Red Room.”

“No, I did.” She clarifies, “They trained us all in everything. That said, if you have a choice, you want me undercover, and Yelena manning the rifle.”

Steve shakes his head, and focuses back on the sky.

“Don’t piss off the Romanoff sisters. Got it.”

The house is a very ordinary looking house, which granted, Steve doesn’t know what else he was expecting. It’s a raised ranch with the top section made of white siding and black shudders around the windows, while the lower section and the small offshoot to the side are composed of dark, mossy brick. The front lawn doesn’t boast much in the way of grass; mostly scrawny weeds and brown blades which have all withered and died of dehydration.

Steve looks to Nat, gauging her carefully as she looks up at the house. He sees her swallow down a lump in her throat, her hands balling into fists at her sides.

“Are you ready?” He asks, and she sighs.

“We aren’t going to find anyone standing in the driveway.”

In theory, they very well could find someone by standing in the driveway. If they stand here long enough, eventually, anyone inside might notice and come on out. But, Nat starts up the cracked concrete walkway to the house, and so Steve follows behind her.

As they approach the door he can’t help but to notice the thin cobwebs hanging from the lamplights mounted into the brick. The thin layer of dirt on the pathway isn’t exactly a vote of confidence either.

As they come to stand before the door, Nat unclenches and then re-clenches her fists. She licks her lips, and then she raises one of her fists to the door and knocks three times, and then a fourth.

Steve wonders, briefly, if she has a plan for what to do if no one answers. How long she will want to wait here, or if she’ll resort to breaking into the house in order to leave no stone unturned.

She whistles twice, looking around as though she is scanning to make sure she hasn’t missed anyone hiding in the overgrown bushes or around the side of the house. Steve is just starting to lean his shoulder against the brick by the door, content to wait as long as Nat wants to be here.

When the door creaks open.

Steve jumps off the side of the house, and Nat takes a step back. He doesn’t need to be told that this isn’t Yelena peeking out at them through the crack in the door, and it certainly isn’t Melina or Alexei.

The door opens a little further, granting them full view of the young girl who has opened it. If Steve had to guess, he would put her at only nine or ten years old. She stands about a foot shorter than Nat. She is dressed in what appears to be an adult man’s sweatshirt which swallows her entire frame, and pair of dirty jeans only becoming visible at the line of her knees. What he really notices, though, is how her freckled face is framed by a thick, mangy nest of auburn hair barely contained by the hood of the sweatshirt.

“Hi.” Nat says, the surprise evident in her voice. “Um, sorry to bother you. Do you live here?”

The girl nods slowly, and while Nat is focused on the girl, Steve looks over her head and into what he can see of the house behind her.

It’s dark inside, but what he can make out is a coffee table overrun with what appears to be toys. The air outside is warm, yet he can feel a chill wafting out from the house; like the heat quit too early in the season for it to take care of the morning cold.

“Is your mom or dad home?” Nat gently asks the girl, but Steve can hear the doubt in her voice. She has the same awful suspicion he does, and when the girl looks behind her as though she is scanning for an adult the effort is less than half-hearted.

“Did your mom and dad go away?” Steve asks, crouching to her level. “In The Snap?”

At that, the girl seems to sink into her sweatshirt even further. Like a turtle retreating into its shell, and for good measure she begins to nudge the door closer to its previously closed position.

“I’m sorry.” Steve says, keeping his voice as gentle as he can manage, as well as resisting the urge to reach out and place his hand on the door. “Hey, it’s ok. We understand, you didn’t realize you were opening the door to strangers.”

More than likely, she did realize. She seems capable enough that she would have peered out the window and seen them before she answered the door. But it’s been over a month since Thanos, and if she has really been alone all this time, then Steve would bet money she made the conscious decision that it was worth the risk opening the door to two strangers, only now she is at a loss for what to do.

On the heels of his words, Nat lowers herself fully and sits crisscross on the doormat. Steve decides to follow the example, which puts them slightly below the eyeline of the little girl so that she is now looking down at them.

“My name is Steve.” He continues gently. “This is Natasha.”

He gestures with his whole hand to Nat, who gives the girl a friendly smile, though the girl’s thoughtful expression hardly softens.

“She used to live here.” He continues anyways, “When she was little, and she hasn’t heard from her parents since before The Snap. We thought – if they’re still out there – they might have come back here. Has anyone else been here?”

The girl appears thoughtful for a second, and while they have clearly just stumbled upon a much bigger problem than finding Nat’s family, Steve can’t help the hope that lights in his heart when she begins to think. Has anyone else been here? Yelena? Or either of Nat’s parents? From what Nat shared, he doubts any of them would have left this girl here all alone. But, what if she hid? What if they came too soon, and she wasn’t ready to open the door to strangers yet?

All of a sudden, the girl holds up a finger and then she turns on her heel. She scurries back into the house and in the moment she is gone Steve exchanges a look with Nat.

It’s a quick, silent conversation. They aren’t sure how long they are staying here, nor what they are going to do, but they are not leaving this kid here alone.

Quick as she left, the girl comes scurrying back. She didn’t go further than the coffee table, and back with her she has brought a pile of papers which she urgently holds out to Nat.

As Nat slowly takes them, Steve catches a glimpse of what they are. It’s a pile of handwritten letters. Each one is only a few lines long, but as soon as Steve realizes those few lines are penned in the Russian his hope begins to soar.

“These are mine.” Nat says, running her thumb gingerly over one of the letters, and looking back to the girl. “I sent these looking for them.”

Well, so much for hope.

The girl frowns too, like she had had the same thought Steve did; that the letters were for Nat rather than from her.

“Sorry,” The girls says in a squeak of a voice, her eyes downcast. “I didn’t know what they said. I would have wrote back to say no one was here.”

“That’s ok.” Nat says, discarding the letters next to her. “I’m glad we came out here.”

She lets that hang in the air, just a moment, just long enough that the girl starts to awkwardly fiddle with the drawstring of her hoodie.

She doesn’t try to go back inside, Steve realizes. She is choosing to stay, to feel them out, despite the fact that they’re strangers.

“We didn’t get your name.” Nat gently presses the girl after a minute, and when she all but whines as she starts to draw herself back into her shelter of a hood, Steve is sure she isn’t going to be sharing her name.

But, he’s been wrong before.

“Doreen.” Her voice is all but a whisper, and her eyes looking anywhere but at them.

Nat smiles warmly at her, regardless.

“Thank you for my letters, Doreen.” She says, “Can we get you some food as a thank you?”

Steve sees it; the shine of interest in Doreen’s eyes. It makes him wonder what she’s been eating, all these months alone. He wonders how much she knows how to prepare, or even what she’s been able to access.

Has she ventured outside the house at all?

The prospect of food seems to be the key to starting to coax her out from herself. She pushes some of her matted hair away from her face to better be able to look at them, though her fingers still twist manically at her drawstring once they are out of her hair.

“Steve can go.” Nat offers, barely glancing to him, which is fine; he is more than happy to hike wherever she and Doreen want him to if it means Doreen won’t be holed up in this house alone another minute. “He can go get some food to-go from a restaurant, and bring it back here, and we can all sit right where we are and eat.”

Doreen seems more interested with every word. She looks back and forth between them, but Steve doesn’t dare get to his feet just yet. He’ll wait for the girl to answer. He will wait for her to decide they are safe, and then he will do whatever it takes to prove that to her.

“Does it have to be from a restaurant?” She timidly asks, and Nat smiles.

“No, it doesn’t.” She says, “Why? What would you like?”

For the first time, a blush and a shy grin tint the girl’s face a bright red. She twirls the string between her fingers faster and faster, channeling needless embarrassment into the action.

“A cheeseburger.” Her voice is little more than a whisper when she makes her request, and Steve gets the sense it is finally safe to get to his feet, and he does so with a chuckle.

“I think we can do that.” He says, and girl tracks his rising movement with that smile of hers creeping wider and wider, exposing to him a hole where her left canine tooth should go.

Looking down at her, and at Nat still sitting before her, smirking up at him, a new hope and a terrible idea start to take root in his mind.

Chapter Text

As it turns out, sending Steve to the grocery store for cheeseburger supplies is as good a method as any to earn some trust with Doreen.

There aren’t exactly a lot of places in suburban Ohio to stash a Quinjet, but the airfield where Alexei had hidden their escape plane is still here. In fact, upon landing, it appeared even more abandoned now than it was back then. So, they hid the jet there, walked an hour here to the house, and when Doreen realized Steve was going to walk to the store she very awkwardly stopped him and handed him the keys to her dad’s truck.

After that, Nat would assume she didn’t see much point in making her wait out on the porch.

It’s a strange feeling, being in the Ohio house again, even more so given that it belongs to another family now. The walls have been repainted, and the pictures hung on them display the very real history of a family so unlike the fake one who camouflaged themselves within these walls in the nineties.

So unlike them, and yet so much like them.

There are wedding pictures of who Nat assumes are Doreen’s parents. A young bride and groom posed under a wooden archway with lilies strung all over it. There are snapshots of the same couple posed with groups of friends at the beach, at the zoo, and tables at restaurants. There are some with Doreen and some without. One in particular which catches Nat’s eye is that of a young Doreen standing with her soccer team in the same neon jerseys which Yelena used to wear.

Nat smiles at the picture, and then turns her attention to the couch. The coffee table just in front of it is overrun with a gang of small toys. On the actual couch is a pillow contained in a soft pink casing, and a throw blanket bunched into the cushions with the brightly colored characters of some kids movie boasted over it. There are also two more stuffed animals mixed up in the blanket; a squirrel and a rabbit, and each of them looks as though they have endured years of a clingy child.

“I like to watch TV before I go to sleep.” Doreen explains, though Nat would suspect there are a few reasons as to why she has camped out on the couch in her parents absence. “You used to live here?”

Nat nods, “I did.”

Doreen nods, and looks around. “Sorry it’s such a mess.”

Really, the house isn’t all that messy. It’s dark, and cold, and the living room resembles more of a campsite than an actual home. But there are no signs of bugs, and as the two of them journey into the kitchen there aren’t any dishes piled in the sink, nor trash overflowing in the bin.

“Do the lights work?” Nat asks, her brow furrowed. There have been all sorts of stories circulating in the media; cities and towns shutting down water and electric to homes where no one is paying the bills, or even when someone is paying the bills but the department is such a mess in the wake of Thanos that no one has been there to track the records.

However, her fears are marginally assuaged when Doreen nods vigorously and flips on a switch on the nearby wall. Automatically, Nat glances up to the dome light in the ceiling; her body still in tune to the fifteen second delay it takes that particular light to turn on.

“I try to only use them at night.” Doreen explains as the light flicks to life. “I don’t know how long they’ll last.”

“We’ll help you figure that out.” Nat says, at least that much, she can promise.

In truth, she doesn’t have any intentions on leaving Doreen here alone again. But, she’ll tell Doreen that when she and Steve figure out exactly what they’re going to do with her. She needs to do some recon first. There have been relief efforts all over the globe dedicated to creating shelters for kids in situations just like this, but they’re less than ideal. She’s heard some organizations have been focusing on placing children into homes with distant relatives willing to take them, or registered foster parents. There have even been talks in more rural areas of reviving a system similar to the Orphan Train.

At that point, they may as well just take Doreen back to New York with them. Which is… a thought.

For now, Nat returns to her assessment of the house and the task of preparing dinner once Steve comes back. She turns a knob on the oven and the gas burner rapidly clicks a grand total of nine times, before a flame whooshes to life all at once. Nat puts it out quickly; no sense in wasting the gas. She continues to look around at the kitchen, ghosts of the past coming and going in her mind’s eye.

Nat jumps back as the fire of the burner ignites all in one whoosh, and of course, it dissipates quick as it came with the loss of her hand on the knob.

“It’s ok.” Melina assures her, “It’s just a testy knob.”

Melina reaches over and presses the knob in again, Nat still standing back. She watches as the burner clicks and she counts a total of six clicks before again the flame comes back just as strong and sudden as before. Melina, however, is unfazed by the sudden fire and keeps her hand steady on the knob as it dies down. She turns the knob and lowers the heat so that it is safely heating the underside of the pot so that the water can boil.

Nat has an apology on the tip of her tongue. But, Melina’s assuring smile tells her to disregard it.

“Here.” Melina says, handing her a plastic bag from the grocery store, as well as a potato and a peeler. “Start peeling. Hopefully by the time the water boils your father and Yelena will be back with the rest of the potatoes.”

Nat blinks at her, but much like with the apology, she is able to bite her tongue. She understands their cover and the importance of commitment – really, she does – but it’s still so strange to her that Melina says things like “your father” when they are alone in the confines of the house. One day, Nat would like to ask her if it ever seems strange to her. If not, when does that feeling of strange on a mission go away?

The opening of the front door interrupts Nat’s thoughts, footsteps and giggles announcing the very return they have been waiting for, and soon Alexei is standing in the kitchen doorway with a bag of potatoes in one hand, and a store-bought chocolate cake in the other.

“What is that?” Melina asks, crossing the kitchen to collect the potatoes. “From what I understand, people eat pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving.”

Before Alexei can answer, Yelena comes bounding in from behind him, her jacket falling off her arms.

“Pumpkin pie is gross.” She bluntly answers the question, Alexei looking down at her and chuckling, before he looks back to Melina with that not-really-sorry blush on his face.

“Pumpkin pie is gross.” He repeats Yelena’s claim, and Melina hums.

Times like now, when the two of them look at each other like that, Nat wonders if the act that they are in love is really just that.

It’s nice having people in the house for dinner.

It’s a little weird – Doreen is not saying it isn’t – but it’s nice.

When Steve comes back from the store with supplies for cheeseburgers Doreen is so excited for dinner that she offers to start cooking right away. Of course, she’s never actually made cheeseburgers before – she didn’t exactly think this far ahead – but, she is more than happy to figure it out.

“It isn’t complicated.” Natasha promises her, “Is it ok if I show you?”

“Yeah.” Doreen answers, silently thanking her lucky stars that Natasha is going to show her, because the lastthing she wants to do is burn cheeseburgers.

Turns out, it really isn’t that complicated. The hardest part is making sure the burgers are cooked all the way on the inside, and the grossest part is picking up the raw meat to make the patties. Natasha does that part for her – thank God – because had Natasha not offered to do that part, Doreen thinks she would have just said “never mind” and they would be eating macaroni and cheese for dinner.

Steve sets the table while her and Natasha cook, which usually, is only ever done in this house on holidays. But Steve had started doing it before Doreen could stop him, and Natasha says to “just let him.”

The cheeseburgers are literally the best cheeseburgers ever, by the way, maybe even worth touching the raw meat for. Doreen has never in her life eaten more than one cheeseburger in one sitting, but tonight might be the night.

“So Doreen,” Steve asks when she is almost done with her first cheeseburger. “You don’t have to answer, but, can I ask you who else you lost in The Snap?”

She very slowly chews what is in her mouth.

Him and Natasha are both kind of looking at her, and kind of looking at each other. He did say she doesn’t have to answer, but, what is he going to say if she doesn’t?

“My grandma.” She says, swallowing what is in her mouth. “I think my uncle, and my aunt. I haven’t heard from them. I called but no answer.”

“What about your friends?” Natasha asks, and Doreen shrugs.

“I FaceTime my friend Hannah sometimes.” She answers, “I think she’s the only one left.”

“You think?” Steve asks, and Doreen nods.

“I don’t have a phone.” She explains, “I use my mom’s, so does Hannah. But mom only had Hannah’s mom’s number.”

For a moment, it feels like that might be it for their question. She has told them everyone who is left, and how she talks to them.

She still isn’t hungry for that second cheeseburger anymore.

“What about school?” Natasha asks, “Is that still a thing?”

Doreen shrugs. She inches closer to the edge of her seat, her fingers grabbing onto the string on her sweatshirt and playing with it.

“It is.” She answers, “But I don’t go.”

She knows as soon as she says it that isn’t going to be enough of an answer.

It’s quiet though, and for a moment Doreen almost believes it just might be enough. It shouldn’t be, but they don’t ask her for more. She even gets to finish her cheeseburger.

“Can we ask why you don’t go to school?” Steve finally breaks the silence, just when she was really starting to think she might be safe.

Doreen bites her lip. She can’t tell them no, please don’t ask. But, she can’t not answer. She also can’t kick them out of the house. That would be rude.

Besides, she really doesn’t want them to go.

“I can’t get there.” She quietly answers. “No bus, and it’s too far to walk.”

It’s the easiest of all the answers. The others would be she can’t go to school with her hair such a mess, but every time she tries to brush it, it only gets worse. That, and what’s the point anyway?

“What school do you go to?” Natasha asks, “You’re right, they’re all pretty far from here. I’m just curious.”

“Highland school.”

Natasha nods. “My mom always had to drive my sister and me there.”

This time as the table gets quiet, it’s a little easier for Doreen to relax. She gave the right answers, and they don’t ask any more questions.

Maybe she will have another cheeseburger.

Doreen lets them sleep in her parents’ room for the night. Which, of course, is the same room which used to belong to Nat’s parents. Nat comments on how different it is from when it belonged to her parents; she cites the new wall color, mostly, as well as the presence of a TV atop the tall bureau kiddie-cornered in the left of the room. Still, it’s an odd feeling even for Steve. It feels wrong sleeping in another couples’ bed. True, technically speaking, he and Nat have only ever done exactly that. They started out in motel rooms, and only last night graduated to Clint Barton’s guest room. But, this is different. This is a bed – a room - which belonged to people.

People who just vanished. People who were collateral damage in the wake of their failure, and their poor daughter was left behind to pick up the pieces.

“This is weird.” Nat comments, closing the bedroom door behind her as she returns from the bathroom. “Being back here, but it belongs to some other family.”

Steve looks her up and down, trying to gauge for himself exactly how weird “weird” is.

She appears ok. The bags which have become fixtures under her eyes - just has they have for everyone else since Thanos – don’t appear any darker than this morning. She has color to her face, and she is dressed in her sweatpants and a souvenir t-shirt that he recognizes from a stop they made in St. Louis while they were on the run. She seems alright. Not unbothered, obviously, but alright.

“Weird enough you regret coming?”

She shakes her head, “No.”

He didn’t think so, but it’s still assuring to hear.

He flicks on the light at his bedside table and she turns off the main light. She crawls into bed beside him, the two of them adjusting under their borrowed duvet. Then, they just sit there, listening to the distant sounds of the tv playing at a low volume out in the living room.

“I think I’m going to go down to that school tomorrow afternoon.” Nat breaks the silence. “Find out what’s happening around here with other kids like her.”

Steve nods, and after another moment Nat shifts next to him so that she is on her side with her head pillowed on his shoulder.

He wraps his arm around her, pulling her closer, and in response she drapes one arm across his middle and one leg over his.

He sighs and rubs gentle strokes on her shoulder with his thumb. The reminder creeps into his mind that it was only yesterday she’d called him in a meltdown of all that they lost finally hitting her. It was yesterday that he’d raced to get to her. Last night was the first night in weeks that he got to hold her like this again.

It was only yesterday that the fear had a chokehold on him; that Thanos took everything from him.

Just like he did from Doreen.

Steve presses a kiss to the crown of Nat’s head.

He still has her.

Tomorrow, they will find what Doreen still has, too. Be that a distant relative, or a friend, or a teacher, something. They will find her something.

Somehow.

Chapter Text

“Now here’s a face I never thought I’d see again.”

Nat glances to the side at the sound of words being directed towards her. There is an older woman walking out from behind the desk of Highland Elementary School’s main office area and coming her way. The woman has her curly grey hair pulled back into a low ponytail, as well as colorful glasses framing her eyes. She is looking at Nat with a patient – but expectant – smile, and Nat racks her brain to place the slight familiarity of the woman’s face. Mentally, she tries to erase some of the age lines on the woman’s face. She tries to picture her thirty years younger, hair shorter, darker, and loose around her shoulders.

Her mind flings her back to her fifth-grade classroom, and yes, this very woman standing kindly by the front door each morning with a bottle of diet coke in her hand.

“Mrs. Reynolds?” She asks, blinking gapingly at the woman, whose smile turns softer and pleased at her question.

“You look good Natasha, how are you?”

“I’m… alright.” Nat stammers, feeling as though she is now trying to drag her brain back to the present moment. “Been better.”

Mrs. Reynolds hums, a soft understanding in her eyes. Nat can’t help but to wonder how many versions of this conversation her old teacher has had in the aftermath of The Snap.

Though, that isn’t a question she will ask her to answer.

“You remember me?”

“I have a fairly good memory for faces.” Mrs. Reynolds says, before raising an eyebrow. “Plus, when one of my students disappears in the middle of the night and the town starts whispering about Russian spies, and twenty years later that same student makes headlines as an Avenger… She tends to make an impression.”

Possibly for the first time since before Thanos, Nat honestly laughs. Mrs. Reynolds smiles at her, seeming aware it’s the first real laugh for Nat in a while. That, or maybe it is just as few and far between of a moment of levity for her as well.

Either way, it has to end at some point.

“So, what brings you back here sweetheart?”

“I came looking for my sister, or my parents. I thought if any of them were still out there they might have come back here.”

The smile turns softer, sympathy and understanding clear as day on Mrs. Reynolds face.

“They weren’t.” Nat hurries to say, and from there, a whole recap of yesterday and this morning pours out. She tells Mrs. Reynolds – apparently the assistant principal now – about how she and Steve found Doreen alone in the house and about their conversations with her. Nat tried to come to the school earlier today and bring Doreen with her, but Doreen was adamant that she wanted no part in going, and well, she and Steve aren’t exactly in a position to force her.

So, they spent the day helping Doreen clean up what needed cleaning in the house, and in the yard, and as three o’clock approached Steve persuaded Doreen to go back with him to the grocery store so that she could pick out the food that she would like to have in the house. They dropped Nat off here on their way, where again, Nat did offer for Doreen to come with her and Steve even offered to stay. But, again, no luck.

“Sadly, Doreen isn’t the only student in such a situation.” Mrs. Reynolds says when Nat has completed her story, the two of them having since made their way into her office and each taken a seat on either side of the big metal desk.

“I’d imagine not.” Nat muses, “How many are there?”

“In this school?” Mrs. Reynolds asks, and Nat nods. “Too many.”

Nat frowns, and for a moment the two of them are quiet, both well aware that they can talk about this all they want but the fact of the matter is that if there were anything that could be done, then it would already be in motion.

“Many of our students lost at least one parent in The Snap.” She continues, “Others lost grandparents, siblings, even pets. Some, like Doreen, lost access to their transportation to get here. Others simply don’t want to come. Sadly, there are some who have become too depressed to motivate themselves. School seems pointless to them in the wake of everything.”

Nat nods along. She can’t help but to think of the state of Doreen’s hair, and how firmly she had refused to come to school this morning even when offered a ride.

Granted, Doreen seems more embarrassed and traumatized than she does actually depressed, which, Nat supposes, is a small victory.

“What about the rest of the district?” She asks, “Back in New York, we’ve been trying to keep track of things like this, but every local government is handling things differently.”

“There’s no universal system.” Mrs. Reynolds agrees through a sigh. “Or even a local system. Some kids from the high school have reached out, they’ve started a canned food drive. Others have stopped going to school or started going late so that they’re able to bring their siblings. Social workers and teachers are doing what they can for the kids like Doreen.”

Nat scrunches her nose, well aware that it goes without saying all the efforts just isn’t enough. The social workers and teachers are drowning, and this shouldn’t be falling on the shoulders of high school kids to fix, but there isn’t another option.

With that thought, however, a thought crosses her mind.

“Which high school?” She asks, “Back when I was a kid there were two. There was the regular high school, and the vocational high school.”

“The main school.” Mrs. Reynolds answers, though with a scrunch to her brow as though she doesn’t understand why it matters. “Some kids on the student council organized the food drive.”

“Is the vocational school still there?” Nat asks, an idea playing through her head. It isn’t a full solution, not by a long shot, but maybe… Maybe it could be a place to start.

“It is.” Mrs. Reynolds confirms, nodding slowly. “There have been budget cuts over the years, but it’s still there.”

“Do they still have the cosmetology shop?”

Melina had taken her there, after the first box dye of her hair ended in a mess of tears and way too much bleach. A very patient cosmetology student had fixed her mistakes and laid the groundwork which eventually saved her natural red hair. She was even the one to kindly encourage her to pick out a “fun” color in the meantime.

“They do.” Mrs. Reynolds answers, “I’m not sure how many of their students are left, though we could give them a call. Why do you ask?”

Walking with Doreen through the grocery store is a vastly different experience for Steve than walking around by himself.

The grocery store itself is mostly business as usual for a grocery store prior to The Snap. It’s mostly self-checkout lines, and not too crowded given that it’s a small town. There are a handful of sparsely stocked shelves and the price of eggs has surged. Like everything else in the world, there are echoes of The Snap all around the store. But – all things considered – those echoes were easier to ignore on his own yesterday.

Not so much today.

Doreen changed into a set of her actual clothes before accompanying him. Another pair of jeans and a grey t-shirt with the fading graphic of a bouquet of daisies on it. She’d shucked off the men’s sweatshirt – which Steve is guessing actually belongs to her father – and grabbed a jean jacket of her own to replace it. She pulled back her mess of hair and tied it with a hair-tie, leaving it hanging at the back of her head in one big knot that she claims is a bun.

She keeps raking her eyes over the shelves as she leads him through the store, steering their cart and occasionally bumping into corners. She picks out boxes of Kraft mac and cheese and frozen chicken nuggets, along with a box of frozen pizza bagels and jars of peanut butter and jelly.

“Doreen, were you allowed to use an oven before The Snap?” He finally asks the dreaded question as she is putting a loaf of bread in their cart to make use of the peanut butter and jelly.

He doesn’t want to insult or embarrass her; though judging by the sudden hunch of her shoulders, he would assume he has failed in that department. Still, it’s the best way he can think to phrase the question without asking it outright if there is anything she knows how to cook.

“When someone’s home.” She says, “I can make pasta and butter. But, I like mac and cheese better.”

Steve frowns, surveying their cart again. Along with Doreen’s selections he also has a few contributions in here. Namely, some broccoli and chicken which he is intending to cook for them tonight. But, long term, maybe he should be teaching Doreen things which are a little more practical for a ten-year-old; things which won’t go bad in the time it takes her to walk or bike from her house to the store.

He swallows down the guilt and even dash of hope which rise in his throat at that thought. They will figure something out for Doreen. He isn’t sure what yet – he is waiting to compare notes with Nat before he makes any suggestions – but, whatever it is, she won’t be living in that house all alone anymore.

“How about eggs?” He asks, deciding eggs are something easy enough for a little girl to manage unsupervised, and so long as she doesn’t break them on the way home, they can offer her some protein as well as sit in the refrigerator for weeks at a time. For that, he’ll pay the inflated cost. “Do you like eggs?”

She nods, and he smiles. “Well good, let’s get some eggs. And maybe a box of brownie mix.”

At that suggestion she breaks out in the widest grin he’s seen from her yet, and turns their cart so quickly she bumps the corner of another shelf, and Steve can’t help but to chuckle.

Later, after they’ve all gone back to the house, Nat tucks herself away in the bedroom she and Steve have been staying in and gives Pepper a call to check on things at the compound.

“It’s more of the same.” Pepper reports, “Tony’s doing better. We’re still working him back onto solid foods, but progress is progress.”

“And what about you?” Nat asks, and over the line she hears Pepper’s tired chuckle.

“I am mostly holding down solid foods.”

Nat hums, grateful that the small twinge of bitterness in her chest is less than it was the last time she gave any thought to Pepper’s pregnancy. Maybe by the end of it, she won’t feel it at all and will only have joy in her heart for the addition of the baby.

“Everyone else is hanging in there?” She asks, deciding the best way towards getting rid of the bitterness, might be to only entertain it in small doses.

“As much as they can.” Comes Pepper’s reply. “The hardest part is figuring out where we’re needed the most. Without Fury, we’re still trying to touch base with the agents who are left.”

Nat hums in agreement. She had been hitting a dead end in that exact task before she left New York. In fact, it’s a big part as to why she finally went looking for Clint in the first place. Not only was she at the end of her rope with him ignoring her calls, but if nothing else, he is an agent who she thought she could find. It would have at least felt like progress.

The twinge of bitterness she feels with those thoughts is going to take much longer to go away, she has no doubts about that.

“How about Thor?” She has to ask that question, much as she hates to.

“The same.” Pepper murmurs this time. “I think Valkyrie touched a nerve with him. I could hear them in the training room this morning, fighting. But now he’s gone quiet again. She stormed off somewhere but she said she’d be back.”

Nat hums again, “Ok.” She says, “Um, Rogers and I are going to be a few extra days, if that’s ok. We made a stop and ran into a detour.”

“What kind of detour?”

Nat bites her lip. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to tell Pepper about Doreen, exactly, but more that if she tells Pepper it means Pepper is going to ask what the plan is, and she and Steve haven’t exactly gotten that far yet.

“Think of it as community outreach.” She says, “I’ll give you more details later when I have them.”

“Ok.” Pepper huffs, “I’ll try and keep everyone alive here.”

“Thanks, bye.” Nat says, and she hangs up the phone.

After hanging up she stays rooted where she is, her eyes raking around the room for a hundredth round.

There are photos of Doreen’s parents framed atop the bureau in the corner. One with Doreen, and one without. The one with Doreen, in particular, catches her eye. Doreen can’t be older than five; smiling so proudly in a paper cap and gown colored with streaks of crayon, her mom and dad crouched on either side of her.

“Don’t worry.” She says aloud to the picture. “We’re not going to leave her alone again.”

Nat isn’t sure if she believes in things like an afterlife in the first place, and if she does, she doesn’t know the logic of those being dusted by Thanos winding up there. Still, it seems like the least she can do, promising to ensure their daughter isn’t left to fend for herself, considering she and Steve have all but invaded their home.

Speaking of Steve, he should be almost done with dinner.

Nat turns off the light for the bedroom on her way out, and when she rounds the corner into the kitchen she is immediately greeted by Steve and Doreen standing side-by-side with identical lines of confusion etched into their foreheads as they stare down at a pan on the stovetop.

Nat comes around to see what has their attention held so tightly. Steve is holding a spatula in one hand and as he steps aside and allows her to investigate, and there are some shreds of chicken still stuck to the lip of said spatula. In the pan is the rest of that chicken; two breast pieces crammed side-by-side and each missing oddly shaped chunks out of their backsides.

“Did you grease the pan, Rogers?” Nat asks, because really, that is the only explanation she can come up with for his massacring of the chicken.

“No.” He confidently answers, staring at her as though she is the crazy one here. “Last night when you made the burgers you said not to grease it for meat.”

“You don’t grease it for red meat.” She explains, eyeing a lidded pot on the back burner. “Red meat makes its own grease as it cooks, and really, you still want some butter for anything that isn’t ground beef or bacon.”

“Well how was I supposed to know that?”

She snorts, and before she dignifies that question with a response, she allows her curiosity to get the better of her and she lifts the lid off the covered pot.

When she is greeted by an entire head of broccoli rolling around in boiling water, she simply replaces the lid and levels a glare with Steve.

“You have been living alone for seven years.” She says, “Is this how you’ve been cooking for yourself?”

For about ten seconds he seems genuinely taken aback, before a smirk starts to tug on his lips and he holds the spatula out her, a piece of chicken falling off it and onto poor Doreen’s head.

“Think you can do better, Romanoff?”

She hums, and steps back as she takes the offered spatula, as so to allow Doreen to not be stuck between them.

Although, frankly, she looks pretty entertained by the whole exchange.

“Doreen?” Nat asks as she gives Steve a gentle shove out of her way so that she can turn off the back burner. “Do you have any tongs around here? And a cutting board? We need to try and save Steve’s broccoli before it’s too late.”

While Doreen giggles and ducks into a lower cabinet to hopefully pull out a cutting board, Steve – very dramatically, in Nat’s opinion – clasps a hand over his chest and stumbles to the side to nurse the wound to his pride.

“I guess I’ll stick to setting the table.” He chuckles, but Nat grabs him by the wrist before he can go too far.

“Not so fast Soldier.” She pulls him back, and when he catches his dramatic stumbling with a hand on her waist, his eyes gleaming down at her with a sudden and serious attention… Well, Nat doesn’t exactly blame Doreen for the way she ducks her head back into the cabinet.

“Watch and learn.” She instructs Steve, pushing the spatula back against his chest, though she doesn’t let go even when he wraps his hand around it to take it. “Otherwise, you and I are going to have a lot of bologna sandwiches in our future.”

Chapter Text

The plan which Steve and Nat have come up with is very loose. Really, Steve would be more inclined to call it a guideline as opposed to a plan. They’re going to spend the next few days trying to help the community of Mount Vernon get back on its feet as much as they are able to help, and then, they’ll go from there.

Tomorrow Nat is going to take Doreen down to the vocational school where the seniors studying cosmetology usually run a discount hair salon. She and the vice principal down at Doreen’s school called, apparently the salon still has two girls running it. In fact, based on how Nat described the call, Steve has a feeling they are living out of it too. So while Nat and Doreen are in there, Steve plans to explore the other shops in the school and see how those kids are faring, and maybe they can figure out some way for the shops to reach out to the community.

As far as Doreen and her future are concerned, they’re still dealing with that when they get to it.

“Natasha?” Speaking of Doreen, she interrupts the companionable silence which has fallen over the dinner table, and is picking at her broccoli in a way that makes Steve realize she has likely been mulling over her words ever since they sat down. “Do… Do you think we could bring Hannah with us tomorrow?”

Nat glances his way, slowly chewing the chicken in her mouth, and then her eyes slide back to Doreen.

“That’s fine.” She says, “But, I have to ask you a question.”

Doreen freezes mid stab of broccoli, her eyes wide and her breath visibly held as she turns her undivided attention to them.

“Three questions, actually.” Nat clarifies, not letting herself be phased by Doreen’s sudden rapt attention. In fact, she keeps eating, and so Steve follows her lead and take another bite of his own broccoli. “One, does Hannah have an adult she is living with?”

They’ve tried to keep their questions to a minimum so far when it comes to Doreen. Despite three days in the house, they are both well aware that it is her house. She has been kind enough to let them in, and to borrow her dad’s truck. She has been lonely enough to allow them to start to take care of her. But, they aren’t naïve. They are still, essentially, strangers to her.

But, if they are going to continue on like this, certain lines are going to have to be flexible.

Fortunately, Doreen’s shoulders relax a little when she hears Nat’s question, and she starts to nod.

“Her dad.” She says, “She asked him. He said it was ok.”

“He knows neither of us is your parent?” Nat asks, and Steve waits for Doreen’s reaction, which so far, is an embarrassed blush. “Or aunt or uncle? Or anything like that?”

“I don’t know.” Doreen murmurs, and Steve watches as Nat’s brow furrows, and then back to Doreen stirring her broccoli around her plate. “She said she asked him and he said it was ok.”

Steve feels like he is spectating a meeting back in the conference room of Avengers Compound; watching the two of them for back and forth, waiting for something here to go south and praying it never does.

“Ok.” Nat accepts Doreen’s answer. “Do you know if she is planning to get her hair done too? And if her dad knows about that?”

Doreen freezes up at that, stirring the broccoli around again before finally taking a small bite.

“I think so.” She murmurs, and Nat doesn’t give much of a reaction. The gears are turning in her head, equally aware of how close to the razors edge they are.

After dinner, fortunately, the house remains what has become business as usual. The three of them clean up and then Doreen goes off to watch TV while Nat takes her shower. After she is finished she changes into her pajamas, and when she heads into the living room she finds Steve and Doreen side-by-side on the couch and watching The Wizard of Oz. They are at the part where Dorothy comes upon the Scarecrow, the sound of his proclaiming “some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?” makes Doreen giggle and Nat smile as she drops into the space on Steve’s other side.

Immediately, Steve stretches his arm out behind her shoulders. She scoots in another inch, but really, she is very aware of the way Doreen is glancing to her out the side of her curious eyes. She doesn’t seem uncomfortable with the light PDA from the two of them; only curious. But especially after dinner, Nat doesn’t want to push the boundary lines too much.

They watch the movie a little while longer, until after the Tin Man’s introduction. At that point, Doreen’s slowly waning interest officially gives and she excuses herself off to take her turn in the shower.

Nat tracks her movements as she leaves the room, and continues to listen as her footsteps fade down the hall and then the bathroom door closes. She gives it a few minutes, until she hears the distant sound of water and then another minute still, before she finally lays her head on Steve’s shoulder with a sigh.

“Are we ever going to say it out loud?” She murmurs, and in reply Steve hums and looks down to her with a crease in his brow.

She tilts her head and meets his eyes, staring back up at him until he finally reaches for the remote and lowers the volume of the TV. The two of them shift to sit up properly and to better face each other, Nat curling one leg up on the couch.

Steve sighs, and scrubs a hand over his face as he thinks.

“You know what I’m talking about, right?” She probes.

“The option of bringing her back to New York with us?” He asks, and Nat nods.

He remains quiet for a moment. The only sound that of the TV and the initial arrival of Dorothy and her gang in The Emerald City.

“I’ve been thinking about it.” Steve finally confesses, and Nat keeps her face neutral.

“So have I.” She says, and Steve looks to her with a half-amused smirk and an eyebrow raised.

“And?”

She frowns, leaning back a little against the couch.

“And… I don’t know.” She shrugs, “I don’t think it’s the first option. She would be happier here, and that isn’t an option for you and me.”

Much as she would like for that, it just isn’t possible. Now more than ever.

“I know.” Steve agrees through a sigh. “Plus, back in New York, our lives aren’t exactly kid friendly.”

“Wasn’t going to stop us before.”

The words are out before she can try and understand what has possessed her to say them. For one thing, she is supposed to be arguing against bringing Doreen back to New York. Presenting the case at the very least. Taking in Doreen would be a whole different kind of bad idea from her and Steve’s relationship; this would be a bad idea which they can’t afford to indulge.

For another thing, before was a completely different world than this, complete with a future that was a different kind of uncertain.

The pitying look Steve is hitting her with tells her he understands all of this and more, and she flits her eyes away from his gaze.

“Doreen…” He eventually drawls out, his face thoughtful as he searches for exactly what he wants to say. “Is ten.”

It’s the most obvious fact he could have settled on, but, he isn’t wrong. Before they were facing a pregnancy and then starting from scratch with a baby. They would have had time to prepare, and while Nat is aware that a newborn baby is on par with a traumatized ten-year-old in terms of the amount of work involved, it is two different kinds work. They would be diving into the deep end with Doreen, and frankly, they would be asking her to dive into the deep end with them.

“And,” Steve adds, quickly checking over his shoulder to be sure Doreen isn’t about to appear behind them. “I don’t think she knows who we are.”

Nat has gotten that sense too. It doesn’t surprise her; they are a long way from New York, and Doreen watches things like The Wizard of Oz rather than the nightly news. She hasn’t seen any of Tony’s commissioned Avengers merchandise in the house, either.

“Do you really want to take her in?” Steve’s next question nearly freezes Nat’s heart in her chest, as well as makes her keenly aware of just how tightly her fist has balled in her lap, and she forces her fingers to release.

In the same moment, the distant sound of the shower running squeaks to a stop, and Nat is well aware they don’t have much time.

“I want to talk about it.” She answers in a low whisper, “See where tomorrow lands things. But, I wanted it out in the open before that.”

Steve nods, his eyes darting over his shoulder once again, and he gives her a nod before snaking his arm back along her shoulders and pulling her close again. With his other hand he takes hold of the remote again and raises the volume of the TV back to its original level, and his lips are pressing a kiss into her hair just as Doreen returns.

The next day, driving to pick up Doreen’s friend Hannah, Steve can’t pull his thoughts from the conversation last night.

Frankly, he would like nothing more than to send in his resignation to The Avengers and to stay here in Mount Vernon. They could stay in the house, which would mean Doreen would be able to stay in the community she has always known, and the three of them could be… something.

Maybe not a family, at least, not at first, and not any kind out of those sitcoms Wanda was always watching. It would be awkward for a while; him and Nat hesitant to touch anything in the house without permission, and Doreen, always so hunched in on herself, like she is as afraid one wrong move will send them running away just as they feel with her. They’re still learning one another, and perhaps there is a version of events where, in time, they could have the chance to be successful at that.

He can almost picture it. A day when it slips their mind that this SUV they’re driving is borrowed from Doreen’s mother. A day when Nat knows this new map of her hometown as well as she does the old, and Doreen doesn’t sit on the edge of the backseat the whole drive to pick up her friend. He imagines that he and Nat could know Hannah as well as they do Doreen. Hannah could come over to the house on Friday nights for dinner, and she and Doreen could have sleepovers out in the living room. On normal nights, Doreen would sleep safe and unbothered in her own bed.

“This house.” Doreen’s small voice interrupts his daydreaming, which is for the best, in his opinion.

He pulls into the driveway of the house she’s indicated, and immediately, the alarms in his mind start ringing.

The house is an old bungalow style with chipping yellow paint, and the Subaru in the driveway has a thick enough layer of pollen on it that Steve would guess it hasn’t moved in a few days. What really sets him on alert, though, is the green recycling bucket against the garage overflowing with beer cans.

Steve glances to Nat, who most definitely sees the cans as well. Movement at the front door brings their eyes back front, just in time to see a little girl exiting the house.

Steve narrows his eyes and turns off the car. The girl is dressed in green cargo pants and a too small pink tank-top, with no sign of a jacket for the damp spring weather. Her dark hair is every bit as matted as Doreen’s, which given that she supposedly has a parent, does not sit well with him.

“Doreen,” Nat says, unbuckling. “I’m just going to go in and let Hannah’s dad know how long we’ll be.”

Steve sees it in the rearview mirror, the sheer panic which falls over Doreen’s face. Her eyes nearly bulge out of her head and her mouth gapes open to protest.

“Doreen.” He says, before she gets a chance, careful to keep his voice calm and collected. “What’s going on with Hannah’s dad?”

In reply, Doreen stammers, but she can’t come up with anything intelligible.

“I don’t have to go!” Nat ignores Hannah’s pleas as she walks up the concrete steps of the house. “Really. If it’s a problem-”

“It’s not a problem, Hannah.” She says, as gently as she can, and she crouches down slightly to better look Hannah in her wide, frightened eyes.

She glances off to the side at the over flowing bin of beer cans, and Hannah follows her gaze, her boney shoulders hunching in so much like how Doreen does when she starts to get self-conscious. Speaking of Doreen, Nat can hear her and Steve getting out of the car. She is only going to have a few minutes here before Doreen breaks away from the car and from Steve and comes up here to join the conversation.

“Is your dad ok?” She softly asks, and Hannah blinks, her body swaying back and forth with anxiety as she looks back to the house.

“He just misses them.” She answers, her voice so low it’s hard to hear.

“Who?”

“My mom.” Hannah says, “And my sisters.”

Nat closes her eyes and swallows down the sadness which accompanies Hannah’s words.

When she opens her eyes, she takes Hannah in with a very critical eye. Her hair is matted but, really, it isn’t as bad as Doreen’s. One side is cut on an edge shorter than the other, as though somebody tried to fix it but gave up halfway through. She certainly isn’t dressed for the cool morning. But, the tank-top does assuage the worst of Nat’s fears. Hannah’s bare arms are free of any bruises or cuts, as is the sliver of the girl’s midriff exposed above her cargo pants. She isn’t stained with dirt, and despite the pile of cans, Nat doesn’t detect the scent of the alcohol on her.

“Let Steve and I go in and talk to him.”

She is trying to be gentle. Trying to use a “less is more” approach. If she doesn’t lay it on thick that she is only concerned for her wellbeing, then maybe Hannah will stand down.

But, no such luck. She waits with baited breath while Hannah thinks it over, until finally, she rapidly shakes her head from side-to-side.

“It’s ok.” Nat tries one last time, but as expected, Hannah doubles down. She shakes her head faster, and takes a step back up onto the steps.

Nat frowns, she knows when she is outmatched.

“Ok.” She huffs, standing up before Hannah can turn tail and run back inside. “Your house, your rules. Come on, get in the car.”

At first, Hannah doesn’t move, still looking up at her with uncertainty. So, Nat turns back first. She is just at the top of the driveway when she finally hears the sound of hurrying feet behind her. She meets Steve’s eyes as Doreen hovers by the open door of the backseat, and the two of them exchange a look over the hood of the car.

Chapter Text

Fortunately, the awkwardness of Hannah nearly backing out wears off by the time they’re turning off her street. The girls spend the ride giggling in the backseat about some show they’re watching on Netflix – it’s nothing Steve recognizes – and paying no attention at all to what is happening up front. That’s good; as it affords him and Nat the opportunity to amend their plan with a few hushed words and pointed looks which aren’t picked up on by the girls.

Recon at the school is going to have to wait.

Upon arriving at the school they all file out of the car, and Nat begins to lead them to a set of double doors at the front only to be corrected by Doreen; apparently all the vocation workshops are located on the east side of the building and they need to walk farther down.

“I would have parked closer had I known.” Steve says as the girls lead the way, and with a smirk, Nat gestures ahead at them.

“I didn’t hear them directing you on where to park.” She quips, “I moved out of here when I was twelve. You’re lucky I found the house and the airfield.”

While Steve is chuckling at her, Doreen spins on her heel, never breaking her stride and instead walking backwards so that she can see the two of them.

“Where did you move to?”

Instantly, Steve’s grin falls away.

It’s the first question Doreen has asked either of them. Sure, she has asked for them small things; confirmation that Nat grew up in the house, and to pass the ketchup at dinner. But, so far, she has refrained from prying deeper into any information they’ve given her.

“We moved to Russia.” Nat answers, her voice nothing short of conversational, though Steve can see the flicker in her eyes that lets him know she is well aware of how big of a deal this is. “That’s where I was born.”

Now, Hannah turns to walk backwards as well, interested in the conversation.

“So you moved here and then to Russia?” Hannah asks, “Why?”

“My dad’s job.” Nat answers, “His company transferred him here for a few years, and then they wanted him back in the home office. Now, turn around before one of you walks into a tree.”

That puts an end to the conversation, which Steve is sure was most certainly the idea. Doreen and Hannah might be just a little too young to have learned about tactics of The Cold War in school already, but that doesn’t mean they’ve never heard of it. Who knows what they’ve learned at home or from TV and movies. Not that it would be the end of the world if one of them were to make the connection – the fact itself that Nat is defected KGB isn’t classified information – but, that isn’t exactly an ideal way to start off the conversation of who the two of them are.

“Ok.” Nat says, as they come up on another set of double doors. “This one, right?”

“Right.” Doreen answers, and with a smirk to her Nat then looks up at him.

“Catch up with you in an hour?” She asks him, “You’re gonna check out the other shops?”

“Yes ma’am.” He confirms, though they both know he is lying. “I think I’ll head back to that other door first. That’s the front office?” He directs his question more at the girls, who nod at him. “I’ll see whose there. Maybe get a better headcount of this place.”

Nat nods, and Steve could swear the pull of a grin on her face is pride that he’s learned to lie properly. A backwards thing to take pride in, but hey, she’s the one who taught him.

“You girls have fun.” He wishes them, before turning to Nat. “I’ll call if I find anything interesting.”

At that, Hannah screws up her face.
“Why don’t you just text her?”

Steve laughs, and if he had to pick a reason, he wouldn’t be able to. It is a three-way tie between the comment itself, the way Nat laughs at the comment, and the withering look Doreen hits her friend with.

“I’m old school, Hannah.” He excuses, already taking a step back. “Don’t worry, Nat’s used to it.”

Nat is rolling her eyes as he turns his back and begins his trip back to the front of the building, past the main entry doors, and back to the car.

He drives all the way back to Hannah’s house. He frowns as he passes the recycling bin on his approach up the driveway. He knocks once on the door, then twice, and then he rings the doorbell. He waits a few minutes with his hands balled in the pockets of his jacket, his eyes combing over the exterior of the house and the yard while he waits for an answer.

The grass isn’t as overgrown as it is at Doreen’s house. At least, not everywhere. Along the fence line is the worst, and there are some patches which are cut shorter than others in a nonsense zigzag; as though the lawnmower was a foreign object with a little girl at the helm.

That, or a drunken man.

Speaking of a drunken man, Steve is beginning to consider that this one isn’t home. He knocks again, keeping in mind that Hannah’s first excuse to Nat had been that her father was asleep when they came an hour ago and picked her up, not that he was out. He is finally peering over through the window when he hears a shuffling coming from inside the house, and then a figure moving on the other side of the dingy glass.

Steve straightens himself, looking again at the face of the door just in time for it to swing open. The man he finds standing before him is roughly his own height, though maybe six or seven years older. He is a heavy-set man with scruffy, greying brown hair, and a five o’clock shadow. He is dressed in sweatpants and a plain grey t-shirt and squints against the mid-morning light.

“Can I help you?” The man asks, conversationally enough, at least.

“Just thought I’d swing by sir.” Steve answers, “You’re Hannah’s father?”

“Yes.” The man answers with a nod, “You’re the ones staying with her friend Doreen, right? Is Hannah giving you trouble?”

“No sir.” Steve says, “No, she’s great. Her and Doreen are with my girlfriend right now, Natasha. She and I felt bad we didn’t get a chance to meet you when we picked Hannah up, and I had some time to kill.”

As he holds his hand out, the man stares at him as though he has two heads. Still, Steve remains undeterred, and eventually, the man accepts his handshake with a firm grip.

“Steve Rogers,” He introduces himself, and he catches the way the man’s eyebrows knit together, like he’s made the connection but he isn’t so confident in it that he is going to say anything.

That’s for the best, as far as Steve is concerned. Public opinion on not only The Avengers, but his, accord-opposing faction of The Avengers, has been splint for a long time, and their failure against Thanos didn’t do much to win them any favors.

So long as Hannah’s father isn’t berating him yet, he may as well try his luck.

“May I come in?”

If Hannah is mad about what happened when they first picked her up, she isn’t saying so.

Doreen doesn’t think she is mad. She’s sitting with Natasha while she is waiting for her turn to get her hair cut and she is trying to describe for Natasha everything that has happened in the first two seasons of Avatar. Doreen is biting her tongue to keep from chiming in; Hannah is an episode behind her and she doesn’t want to spoil the fact that Jet comes back and dies.

“Ok Doreen.” The girl doing her hair – Skylar - says as she puts down the spray bottle she’d sprayed all over the back of her head. “You let me know if anything hurts, ok? I’m going to try my best to keep from cutting anything.”

Yes, not cutting would be very much preferred.

“Ok.”

Skylar starts at the bottom of her hair. She moves the comb through her tips in quick, jerking strokes that don’t hurt all that much.

“Is that your friend and her mom you came with?” Skylar asks, and Doreen frowns.

“No.” She answers, “Well, not her mom. Hannah is my friend. Natasha is…um, she’s also my friend.”

It sounds so stupid coming out of her mouth that all Doreen wants to do is to turn around and see how embarrassed, disappointed, angry, happy, or whatever Natasha is and go with it from there. But she can’t move with Skylar working on her hair, so she is just going to have to hope that that answer is ok.

“I get it.” Skylar promises, like maybe she can see the sweats of panic on the back of her neck. “We’re seeing a lot of that in here. I have two of my brother’s friends living with me.”

Doreen has it on the tip of her tongue that Natasha isn’t living with her, because living would mean she is staying. Not that Natasha and Steve are for sure not staying. They just haven’t said anything about if they are or not. Actually, they haven’t said anything about where they came from in the first place. Not only that, but they haven’t mentioned where Steve grew up, or if anyone in his family is still alive after The Snap, or even whether they’re married or just dating.

That last one is by far her most burning question.

Doreen has been wanting so badly to ask these things. It’s driving her crazy to keep her distance, but she is determined to be careful. Mom always says it’s rude to ask people too many questions. You have to be polite, and respect their privacy, otherwise they won’t want to eb around you.

The last thing she wants to do is to scare Natasha and Steve away. Still, she finally got one piece of the puzzle today; Natasha moved to Russia when she was a kid.

It makes sense, considering all the letters Natasha sent looking for her family were written in Russian. But Doreen isn’t convinced that Russia is where she and Steve came from. They don’t talk with thick accents like people from other countries usually do, and besides, there is nothing to say Natasha’s family didn’t move out of Russia at some point; she and Steve could literally be from anywhere.

So, one question down, about a million more to go.

The haircuts are mostly successful, in Nat’s opinion.

Skylar - the high school senior who was willing to attempt the jobs – managed to only need to take four inches off Doreen’s hair. Doreen isn’t thrilled with it, but she’s coping. Hannah, on the other hand, had jumped into the chair for her turn and excitedly asked Skylar to shave one side of her head. Thankfully Skylar hesitated to agree, and between two of them, Nat and Skylar managed to talk Hannah down to a bob cut with some tinsel woven in.

If she wants to go home and take it up with her dad that she wants a shaved head, then Nat will happily bring her back here. But, for today, she is not bringing her home with that drastic of a change.

Doreen also got back in the chair for tinsel.

“Tinsel, that’s a new one.” Steve comments as Nat finishes recounting for him the trip to the salon. “Glad it’s found a market outside of Christmas trees.”

Nat chuckles as she leans her back against the doorframe. It’s getting late. Doreen was settled in on the couch with a Disney movie when they came out to sit on the back steps, and Nat would bet that she will be asleep by the time they go back in.

“So,” Nat begins, fishing a lukewarm can from the open end of the six-pack Steve returned with; a “present” from Hannah’s father; or so he claims. “Is this a peace offering? Or did he throw it at you?”

Steve chuckles, pulling the tab on his own can. “I’d call it an olive branch.” He answers, studying his can. “He wasn’t as bad as we were expecting.”

“No?”

“No.” Steve confirms, taking a sip. “I mean, he definitely drinks alone in that house, but he functions.”

Nat hums, mulling over all the possibilities.

She isn’t unaware that there is a certain area of leeway when it comes to parenting and adult vices. Hell, to think of a world without such leeway wouldn’t be practical. The world is more complicated than that, and it always has been. Her own parents always had beer or vodka in the house when she and Yelena were growing up, as did the parents of plenty of her friends. Even herself in the week before Thanos; she had traded alcohol for water so long as she was pregnant, but she never gave thought remaining around-the-clock sober once she had the baby.

Granted, she never gave much thought to anything concerning ‘once she had the baby’.

“Define functions?” She asks Steve, before she can look too far down that road.

It doesn’t matter anymore.

But it could, if she wanted it to.

“He works nights.” Steve answers her question, and Nat wills herself to give him her undivided attention; no more thoughts on things that don’t – will never – matter. “He’s a factory worker. So he works third shift, and he sleeps during the day. Sometimes he pulls a double, and he has anywhere between one and four beers when he gets back.”

Steve shrugs, his frown etching deeper into his face as he studies his can and considers his next words.

“He knows it isn’t a good habit.” He continues, “But, the trash pickup has gone to once every two weeks now, and recycling every three. So what we saw outside-”

“Was three weeks’ worth of buildup.” Nat finishes for him, and he nods. She is well aware that is true about the trash; it’s one of the things she came across while she was figuring out the standings of the utility bills for Doreen.

“He lost two daughters and his wife in The Snap.” Steve says, confirming what Hannah had told them. “He’s trying to keep a roof over the head of the daughter he has left, and grieving when he gets home.”

It’s a strange feeling, the bitterness Nat is beginning to feel inside of her. It isn’t like she wanted Steve to come back saying he found Hannah’s father stumbling around the house with glazed eyes and a bottle in his hand, but, she supposes reality is just a harder pill to swallow.

It isn’t an ideal situation over in that house, but what in this world is an ideal situation anymore?

And as Nat sets her can down on the step and leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees, her mind running all the potential ways in which they could help, she realizes the solution is the exact opposite of where she was expecting this to end.

“Do you think we should see if he would take in Doreen?”

Steve blinks at her, surprised but clear understanding on his face.

He sighs, takes a quick sip, and then moves to mirror her posture.

“I don’t think it would be unsafe.” He carefully says, “Doreen would be another mouth for him to feed.”

Nat hums her agreement, “One drawback.” She admits, “But, another person in that house.”

“Less silence.” Steve concedes, “He’s used to three daughters. He’d know how to handle her.”

“Hm, closer to his normal.” Nat agrees, “Hannah wouldn’t be alone all day, every day.”

“Neither would Doreen.” Steve admits, “Biggest problem is she would have to leave this house.”

“She’s going to have to do that no matter what.”

“Right.” Steve agrees, and for a moment the silence hangs over them, the grim truth finally creeping it’s way over them that this is how things are, and the world has to start moving on.

Chapter Text

Steve is well aware of the dopey look on his face as his eyes rake over Peggy. He can’t help it. Only she could be sat in a beach chair with a book in her lap, a floppy hat on her head to block out the sun, and still have the same seriousness about her which she does in a war room.

“Is there something I can help you with Captain?” She asks without taking her eyes off her book for so much as a moment.

“You could tell me what it is you’re reading.” He chuckles, “I might need to start taking notes.”

“On?”

“Whatever’s in that book.”

She smirks at his comment, and for the first time all morning – even though she still doesn’t look his way – Steve thinks she has paused in her reading.

“Are you feeling neglected?” She asks, and finally she sets her book to the side and turns to him. “Missing your star-spangled suit?”

“Don’t think you’ve seen the last of it yet.” He half-warns her, and she hums; perfectly well knowing.

It’s right then that a shadow comes creeping up their way. It stretches out over the sand and eventually hovers over Peggy. Steve squints against the bright sun of the approaching afternoon; up at Bucky dripping wet from a dip in the ocean and with a girl they certainly didn’t come here with hanging off his left arm.

Steve smiles, and he has a taunt for Buck on the tip of his tongue.

Steve’s eyes open as steadily as a drawing curtain. The bright scene of the beach at Coney Island retreats to the back of his mind, quickly replaced by the dark shadows of a borrowed bedroom which is becoming increasingly familiar, and the outline of Nat sleeping soundly next to him.

He crooks a small smile and doesn’t dare breathe too harshly; not wanting to wake her.

Like in every bed they have ever shared, Nat has opted for the side closest to the door. She normally sleeps with her back to said door, but at some point tonight she has rolled flat onto her stomach. Her head is buried in the mattress rather than the pillow. That poor pillow; Nat has stretched her arms up over her head and as a result she has shoved her pillow into the headboard. She looks so peaceful; dead to the world, but peaceful. She is sleeping in a depth which their line of work rarely allows for her.

“I’ve had better nightmares.”

Steve hadn’t realized when she said those words all the different kinds of nightmares there are, and it makes him wonder how many nightmares she has had right next to him and he’s never known.

She has never been one to shout or ramble in her sleep. She isn’t much for tossing and turning, either. Once or twice Steve has been only half-asleep next to her and caught an unsteady huff of her breath before her eyes open, but that’s the only tell he knows. Sometimes she will talk about it, and sometimes she won’t. When she doesn’t talk she swears it’s fine, that it was just a dream.

That’s the thing about “better” nightmares, he is now realizing. Sometimes, they aren’t so scary until after you wake up.

In trying to forget his own dream, Steve ends up watching Nat sleep with rapt attention. The rise and fall of her shoulders mesmerizes him, her breathing soft like a lullaby to his ear. Steve can just see her face on the other side of the wall her arm has created between them. In the daylight, he often forgets she has this light dusting of freckles on her cheeks and over her nose. But now, with her makeup removed, he can see them even in the dark and under the strands of her hair falling into her face.

The longer he listens to the steadiness of her breathing, the more his eyes begin to droop. Her gentle inhales and exhales mix perfectly with the sound of a light rain pattering outside the bedroom windows.

Rain.

His eyes draw open again. Did they close the back door all the way when they came in? It’s a main door, as well as a screen. Steve knows they closed the screen, but what about the wooden one?

Logically, he knows that regardless of the fact that he can’t remember shutting the wood door, they must have done it. They have lived two years with every world government hunting them, and before that, their line of work depends heavily on security. He and Nat are simply not people who forget things such as shutting and locking the door.

They had to have closed it.

They have a kid asleep in the living room.

He lays awake another minute, and then sighs to himself in defeat.

He is slow getting up; being careful not to disturb Nat. Of course there is no such thing as a clean getaway when it comes to her, and just as he is inching his first leg over the edge of the mattress there is a hitch to Nat’s beathing before she starts to pick her head up.

“Shh,” Steve whispers, taking his hand and bushing some hair away from her face. “Shh, go back to sleep.” He whispers, “It’s alright, it’s just me. I’m coming right back.”

“Hmph.” She hums, and Steve chuckles, and slowly she reburies her face in the crook of her elbow.

Getting up Steve is still smiling to himself, wondering how it ever was that he went so long back in New York sleeping apart from Nat.

As he opens the bedroom door it gives a slow creak. He looks back to be sure he hasn’t woken Nat again but – if he has - she does an excellent job of concealing it. He slips from the room and out into the main area of the house, and all he has to do is duck his head into the kitchen to see the back door.

Closed, wooden door and all, just as it should be.

Just before he can head back to bed, a shuffling catches his ear.

He quickly leans back into the kitchen, looking through the doorway to the living room, and if he were less used to far worse surprises, he thinks he might have jumped at the sight of Doreen sitting upright on the couch, staring at him through the darkness.

“Doreen?” He whispers, stepping through the kitchen.

She pushes her hair back from her face, giving a small sniffle just as he steps fully into the living room and can see her tired eyes illuminated by the moonlight coming in through the window.

“Sorry.” She whispers, “I heard a noise.”

“It was just me.” He promises, “I woke up and heard the rain. I wanted to make sure the back door was closed all the way.”

She nods, and looks out the window at the rain, as though she is just now noticing it.

Steve watches the rain for a moment as well. Has it rained since Thanos? It must have, somewhere. Though this is the first he’s seeing it. The dust is all gone; it seemed to settle into pure nothingness within minutes of The Snap. Still, he can’t help but to envision piles of it scattered all about the forests of Wakanda; now washed away by rain falling from the sky.

“Doreen.” Steve says, but he stops when she whirls her head to him; her complete and undivided attention.

In the shadows of the night, she looks too much like the frighted little girl who had answered the front door earlier in the week. She is once again drowning in her father’s sweatshirt, and her newly refreshed hair is mussed up all over again from sleep.

Steve sighs and comes around and sits in front of her on the coffee table.

“Do you want to talk at all?” He gently prods her, “About your mom and dad?”

She blinks at him, like a deer in the headlights, before she slowly shakes her head from side-to-side.

“Are you sure?” He asks, and this time she nods.

“Yes.” She says, and then she seems to think. “Do you want to talk about yours?”

He isn’t sure if that is meant to be a challenge or a genuine question, but he sighs and runs a hand through his hair all the same.

“I lost my parents long before The Snap.” He says, figuring that maybe if he opens up to her, she’ll feel more comfortable opening up to him. “My dad was in the army, and he died before I was born. My mom, she always believed I could do anything.”

Doreen scoots closer to the edge of the couch, and pulls her stuffed squirl into her lap with a tight grip.

Steve smiles, he hasn’t talked about his mom in he isn’t sure how long. He tells Doreen all the basics. She was a nurse, who went to church every Sunday and dragged him along with her, and now what he wouldn’t give to be sitting in that pew with her. He tells Doreen all about the countless times his mom patched him up after he got into fights with the neighborhood bullies, and how she told him that if he was going to take on boys twice his size, then he needed to at least learn how to use his head before his fists.

He leaves out any defining details; such as which war his father died in, and war he grew up to join. One o’clock in the morning isn’t exactly an ideal time to clue Doreen in on who he is; even if he is going to have to do it eventually.

“My mom always said never to fight.” Doreen says, “She always said to just walk away from people being mean to you.”

“That is very good advice.” Steve chuckles, “I think my mom knew I was too stubborn to listen to good advice.”

Doreen laughs a little, with a thoughtfulness on her face that has Steve waiting patiently, just in case.

“Do you miss your mom?” She asks, which isn’t quite what he had in mind, and nor is it what he was prepared for.

In hindsight, he should have been.

“Everyday.” He answers, “It takes time, but, the memories you have become enough. You learn how to keep living, because that’s what the people we’ve lost would have wanted.”

Doreen nods, her fingers dug a little tighter into the plush of her toy.

The two of them sit in a long silence. Steve is debating asking again about her parents, or perhaps asking if she would like to sleep in her bed tonight.

“Steve?” Her voice interrupts his debate.

“Yeah?”

She hesitates. Her mouth opens as though she has a word on the tip of her tongue, and then she closes it again.

“Who…” She hesitates again, but he waits. He will wait all night if that’s what she needs. “My grandma died, when I was little.” She darts her eyes away from him. “This hurts more than that.”

“I know.” He says, his heart aching. “Parents are hard. And this… What happened to your parents – to all the people we lost – has never happened before. It’s different.”

“Will it happen again?”

Steve pushes down the urge to tear up at the sincerity of her words. He leans forward, willing her to look him in the eyes.

“Not as long as I’m alive.”

He feels as though it is a hollow promise. They failed to stop Thanos once; he shouldn’t be so bold as to assume things would work out any different should he or some other monster like him return for act II.

But God forbid they see that day, he will follow that promise to the grave.

Time is ticking, Nat is very aware of that.

As one more day turns into one more week, and then another, her check-ins with Pepper are becoming less of tired updates and more of thinly veiled pleas for her and Steve to come home. The pressure on The Avengers is growing by the day. There are people who want them prosecuted for their failure against Thanos. There are far more who aren’t taking it that far – yet - but are demanding to know what they are doing in the aftermath. Thor and Valkyrie destroyed the training room. Bruce hasn’t left the lab since before she and Steve left, and they are flooded with calls for help controlling the rise in crime all over the world. Everything from petty thefts, to street gang activity, to an uptick in assassinations among organized crime. It’s quickly becoming too much for their crippled organization to handle, and on top of it, Nebula and Rocket left to return to space. They left contact information but still, it’s another blow to their manpower.

Moral of the story; Nat and Steve can’t afford to stay in Mount Vernon much longer.

They’re able to get a head count of students still attending and/or operating shops at the vocational school. Summer is approaching quickly, so they focus their efforts on cataloging the headcounts which were done by the remaining teachers in the aftermath of The Snap. From there, they focus on the kids who have been reported alive but haven’t been showing up for school. Nat and Steve – along with Mrs. Reynolds and a few other volunteer teachers – spend their days visiting the last known addresses for those children. Some they find in better conditions than others. There are some who have left town to live with other relatives, and unfortunately, some who seem to have run away from the shadows of their empty homes. Doreen, Hannah, and some of their other friends help keep records of who has been visited and who needs what type of aid, and Skylar and her brother turn out to be a huge asset at the tech school. Her brother – Riker – graduated from the carpentry shop last year. He and some of his old classmates - along with those left from the current class – come up with a proposal to turn one of the town’s four elementary schools into a dormitory for the displaced kids. It’s going to take the summer to complete, but it’s a good plan.

It's also another option for Doreen.

In helping with the town, they have been picking Hannah up and dropping her off, and that means more peeks behind the curtain of her home life.

Nat squeezes her bicep, her arms crossed as she looks at the photos hung in a line in the hallway. Steve took the girls out with him to help deliver the food donations from the student council at the main high school. Nat opted to stay behind today, at Hannah’s house. She has had a more interactions with Hannah’s father – Dominic – these past few weeks, and she’s determined Steve got a good read on him. There are some problems for sure, but, they could be much worse.

The three framed photos before her proudly display the girls who once gave noise and life to this quiet house. The first photo – Hannah’s oldest sister, Riley – shows a girl with her dark hair curled and pinned intricately for her prom. She is standing in front of a rose bush with a group of other girls; all of them wearing dresses that glitter in the sunlight.

“That was junior prom.” Dominic says, closing the door behind himself. The two of them just came in from the garage after bringing in the empty trash barrels. “Senior prom was supposed to be the 30^th.”

Nat nods, and she swallows down the apology which won’t bring Riley back. The 30^th was only a week from the day of The Snap; she probably had a new dress all ready to go.

The next photo is Hannah’s second sister; Moira. It shows a girl of about fourteen, wearing exaggerated makeup and her hair pinned back tight. It’s a headshot, but Nat can see the glitter details of a leotard on her shoulders.

The last one, Hannah, makes Nat snort with laughter. Hannah is a little bit younger – maybe seven or eight – and is hanging upside-down by her knees hooked over a monkey bar; her mouth wide open in a deranged smile.

“What time are you leaving for work?” Nat asks, but Dominic waves her off.

“Not until eleven-thirty.” He says, “I got up around three.”

Nat nods. It’s four o’clock now, and she has become familiar with the fact that he usually gets home around eight-thirty, and goes to bed after making sure Hannah has breakfast.

Well, he goes to his room.

The first time Nat walked into the house it was very similar to Doreen’s in terms of functionality. No mold or infestation of bugs, and more importantly no stench of alcohol. There was a case of beer next to the fridge and a few cans on the top shelf of the door. A little too easily accessible to Hannah for Nat’s liking, but, not any worse than the parents of her childhood who left their cartons of cigarettes out on the coffee tables.

There was more trash than in Doreen’s house, but that’s to be expected with two people as opposed to one; and there was evidence of real food too. The counters and tables were cluttered with toys and mail Hannah didn’t know what to do with.

Nat follows Dominic into the living room. The house hasn’t really been cleaned, but he’s tidied up, and more importantly there is a game of Monopoly on the coffee table waiting for Doreen and Hannah to come home and finish it.

“Thank you for letting me stop over.” Nat says as they take a seat on the couch.

“Can’t say I haven’t been expecting it.” Dominic says, and if nothing else, Nat can appreciate the honesty.

She leans back into the cushions of the couch and takes in the room. More family photos decorate the mantel above the fireplace. There is a Nintendo Switch hooked up to the TV and it’s pink and green controller off to the side. Nat tries to imagine Doreen’s stuffed animals on this couch instead of the one she has been sleeping on, or perhaps seated at the head of a bed.

“Steve and I have to leave soon.” She says, opting to get right to the point. “Doreen can’t stay in that house by herself.”

Dominic nods, “Are you thinking of taking her with you?”

Again, Nat squeezes her fingers against her side. The simple answer is yes, of course they are considering taking her with them. How could they not?

But as she looks around at Monopoly and the video games, and she tries to envision them scattered about a room in the compound, it feels more like a fantasy than anything else.

“We’ve talked about it.” She says, “But, it doesn’t seem right to ask her to leave her friends. Plus, Steve and I… our jobs right now aren’t really conducive to taking her in.”

“So The Avengers are back together?”

At first, Nat is surprised. She and Steve have had their suspicions that Dominic knows who they are, but so far he hasn’t said anything.

“More or less.” She answers, “We’re still trying to figure out what we are now, and how to best do our jobs.”

She watches him for some form of an opinion, but he simply nods along.

“It might be different if Doreen were younger.” Nat decides, “Or even older, and ready to be more self-reliant. But what she needs is a place where she can feel safe again, and be a kid. And right now we don’t know what’s going to happen to The Avengers, or how dangerous it could be for her.”

“I understand that.” Dominic hums, “I mean, I’m grateful for everything you two have done for Hannah, and for Doreen. For me, and for this town. But, there’s a reason I’ve kept my mouth shut.”

“We appreciate that.” Nat says with a hum, grateful for the confirmation as to where he stands.

“So,” He huffs after a moment. “Are you asking for my opinion? Or are you asking me to take her?”

Isn’t that the question of the hour?

“I’m asking if you think you can take her.” She decides on, and the seriousness of his face matches hers; which is a good sign. “I know it’s a lot to ask, and the last thing I want to do is make things harder for you.”

“I know I have to clean up.” He sighs, his shoulders deflating. “Actually, I’d love to have Doreen here. She’s good for Hannah. They can have each other during the day and… I miss the life my girls brought to this house.” He looks to her out of the side of his eyes, “I can clean up.”

Nat finds she believes him, besides, they both know that one call from either of the girls and she and Steve will be on his doorstep within the hour if he goes in the wrong direction.

Something is up.

Doreen’s first clue that something is going on was a few days ago, when Natasha spent a long time in the bedroom on the phone and then came out and hand it to Steve. Her second clue was earlier today; when Steve brought her and Hannah to do food deliveries but Natasha stayed behind at Hannah’s house. Now, the three of them are sitting eating dinner, and Natasha and Steve keep looking at each other in a way that is very different from the usual way they look at each other.

Doreen feels like she is going to explode if she keeps sitting here with them like this. So, finally, she accidentally cuts her chicken a little too forcefully and scratches the plate loud enough they both look over at her.

“Sorry.” She murmurs, eating a bite of her chicken.

“It’s ok.” Natasha says, and then she clears her throat. “I uh… I talked with Hannah’s dad today, about what’s going to happen when Steve and I have to go home.”

Oh. Of course.

Deep down, Doreen knew that was what was coming. She’s known this whole time that they can’t stay forever. She looks over at Steve, who is staring at her every bit as seriously as Natasha is.

Why did she have to cut her chicken so loud?

They’re waiting for her to say something, but what do they want her to say?

“What did he say?”

They look at each other. Was that the wrong thing for her to say?

“He said,” Natasha begins, “That if you want to go live with him and Hannah, you can.”

“I want to stay here.” She blurts it out before she can really think about it, and worse, she hears the tears in her own voice.

“Doreen,” Steve says in this really sorry voice that makes her want to scream. “You can’t. You’re too young to be living alone.”

She grits her teeth and tightens her fingers on her fork. She was living alone just fine before they showed up, and why did they stay if they were just going to leave her anyway?

“Where is ‘home’ anyway?” She asks, because she doesn’t want to leave here, but if she has to maybe they aren’t going far.

“New York City.”

Natasha answers her, and her heart sink completely, because nope, that is too far.

“If you wanted to come with us.” Natasha slowly continues, looking at Steve, and then back to her. “That’s something we could talk about.”

She shakes her head. No, she won’t go that far from home. At least if she goes to live with Hannah she can still come here, and she’ll still have her best friend.

“No.” She grumbles, “I’ll go live with Hannah.”

She may as well go right now. She won’t, but she sure as heck isn’t going to keep sitting here so that they can keep telling her all about how they’re going to leave her behind. She pushes away her plate and scoots out her chair.

“I’m gonna take a shower.” She informs them before either of them can tell her to stay at the table.

What right do they have to tell her to do anything, anyway? She stomps through the house and into the bathroom, slams the door behind her, and only once she is alone in the bathroom does the world finally stand still.

Too still.

The air is still. There is no sound from outside the bathroom. They aren’t chasing after her. They aren’t coming for her.

With a shuddering breath Doreen sits down with her back against the wall and her knees drawn to her chest, and silently, she lets her tears start to slip out.

Chapter Text

 Friday, before dark.

On Tuesday morning, that is the ETA which Nat relays to Pepper. They will be back at The Compound on Friday, before dark.

Steve knows it’s for the best. He knows they need to get back sooner rather than later. It isn’t fair to be asking Pepper and Tony to be the sole two holding The Avengers together; especially not now. Not with Tony barely on his feet, and not with Pepper entering into her second trimester. The two of them should have the right to step to the side and think about the future that they’re still lucky enough to have. The fact that going back means watching them take that step is something Steve is still contending with, and he is telling himself he will get over it. For now, his focus is on making sure their departure goes as smooth as possible.

After dinner on Monday night Doreen makes every effort to shut him and Nat out; everything short of literally shutting them out of the house. She packs her toys in her suitcase, and drags one which belonged to her mother from the garage to use for her clothes. She thanks them with murmured words when they buy her some moving boxes, but when they offer to help her pack those boxes she rejects them. On Wednesday afternoon Hannah comes over to help her, and while the two of them are holed up in the downstairs of the house Steve heads out to the air field to make sure the Quinjet is ready to fly in two days’ time. He’s happy to find it still has plenty of fuel, and it hasn’t sat idle long enough for the engine to fall victim to things such as curious mice or squirrels.

Later in the afternoon, when he returns to the house, he walks inside to the sounds of carrying voices still occupied downstairs, and he finds Nat in the kitchen.

She is leaned with her hip against the counter, her lips pursed as she glares down at a sandwich on a plate.

“What’s the matter? Do your culinary skills stop with sandwiches?” He asks from the doorway, to which she snickers.

“I can manage a peanut butter sandwich.” She says, “I’m just debating if I should expect Doreen to eat it, ignore it, or throw it at me.”

Ah.

“How’s the jet?” Nat asks, changing the subject.

“It has fuel.” He reports, stepping into the kitchen, coming to stand before her. “It’ll get us home.”

Nat hums, something wistful in her eyes. Steve would like to think he understands, even if he knows he doesn’t. This town, this house, it was her home once. She’s lived plenty of places since, but the idea of there being another home must not be something she fully believes; especially New York.

He almost blurts out a suggestion to stay.

“Did you climb inside the fuel tank?” Nat asks, yanking Steve from his reverie, and making him realize she has turned to the sink and wet a paper towel.

“Hm?” He hums, but Nat is already standing on her toes. She lays one hand against his cheek to keep him still and to angle his face to where she needs it, and she wipes at his opposite cheek with her paper towel.

She pulls it away long enough for him to see the run of black grease smeared onto it, frowning to herself as she wipes his face again and then plops the towel into the sink.

“Thanks.” He says, straightening up, but before he knows it she has produced another damp towel from the sink and is reaching for him again.

“Wait, I’m not done.”

He chuckles, humoring her and that way she bites her tongue in concentration until she pulls on the shell of his ear.

“Ow. Ok, thanks.” He chuckles, and he tries to step away, but she follows him.

“Hold still.” She says, and this time as he stumbles he backs right into the other counter, and so he grabs onto her waist in order to keep himself steady.

“I think you’re done Nat.”

“No, it’s all down your face.”

He laughs outright, if only because she is so very clearly trying to keep herself from laughing.

“Then stop digging in my ear.”

She doesn’t have a dignified response to that, and he pulls her closer, his other hand having found its way to her waist now. All of a sudden she is blinking up at him with a seriousness slowly dawning over her face. It feels like coming up for air after having been trapped at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a little ridiculous too, because it isn’t like they haven’t been sleeping next to each other for weeks now, or stealing touches and kisses here and there. It isn’t like he hasn’t had butterflies in his chest every time he explains their relationship to someone in town; the word “girlfriend” still a strange sensation coming off his lips, but oh how he loves it. It isn’t like they haven’t been them this entire time.

It's just, they’ve been them on slow.

A sudden clearing of a throat yanks him right out of his thoughts and the moment. He turns, Nat too, and though she slides her hands to his chest and thus puts some distance between them, she doesn’t go far.

Standing in the doorway to the kitchen are Hannah – clearly the one to have sounded the alarm, standing there looking right at them – and Doreen; looking anywhere but at them.

“There are kids here.” Hannah bluntly reminds them, and if nothing else, the way Doreen rolls her eyes while fighting a smirk is the closest to “not angry” Steve has seen from her since Monday.

By the time her eyes open Nat is already sitting upright.

She already has the blankets thrown off herself, and one foot on the ground, ready to jump from the bed and charge at the figure in the doorway…

Then she blinks. Her senses come to her and she processes the four-foot-seven figure standing in the bedroom doorway which she’d pushed open with a creak, and the hall light behind her illuminating the tear tracks stained onto her red cheeks.

“Doreen?” Nat asks, beginning to stand, and she has just gotten to her feet when Doreen comes racing into the bedroom.

Nat stumbles back with the sudden force of Doreen barreling into her. She stands shell-shocked, her arms circling around Doreen the only thing way she can think to respond to the their previously bitter child suddenly hitching sobs into her chest. The sound of blankets shuffling behind her alerts her that Steve has woken, and sure enough, when she turns her head she sees him propping himself on one arm and rubbing sleep from his eyes.

He blinks bleary eyes up at her, and she imagines that she must look every bit as confused as he does; she certainly feels it.

All the while Doreen is still gripping her shirt in two fistfuls and sniveling against her chest. Nat rubs her thumb in careful strokes over Doreen’s shoulder, and eventually works her other hand up onto the back of her head. She stands holding her, slowly rocking her back and forth, and after a few minutes she looks back at Steve again. He is now wide awake and every bit as lost in all this as she is; that much is obvious. With another hitching sob reverberating against her chest, Nat rests her chin on Doreen’s head.

Her eyes find their way up to the ceiling. The popcorn texture is the very same that she used to look at every night when she was Doreen’s age in this house. Mapping these very bumps and swirls, tracing with her eyes the faint impressions of the struts from the attic floor on the other side.

The next shuddering breath is her own, and it’s followed by a sharp hitch from Doreen.

For both their sakes, Nat drags herself back to the present. She squeezes Doreen to encourage her to stay and move with her, and then she sits the two of them back on the bed.

Doreen sniffles as they land on the mattress, and as Nat scoots to sit against the pillows, Doreen crawls over her leg so that she can curl into her side rather than lying on top of her. As her stuttering sobs start to come faster with a tell-tale effort to calm down, Nat meets Steve’s eyes over the top of her head.

He is now wide awake; sitting and watching the meltdown before him. When he meets her eyes it has the effect of stirring him. He starts to get to his feet, and Nat isn’t sure if he is going for the door or the light but it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t get far.

Doreen unfurls herself from her side.

“N…No!” She stammers, all but lunging out at Steve. “I’m.. I’m.. So.. Sorry…”

Her words peter out in whimpers, her sobs turning to coughs. Nat stares at Steve frozen where he stands.

“Come back to bed Steve.”

He follows her order, crawling back over the foot of the bed and – for now – staying sat there in the middle of the mattress.

Doreen – for her part – scoots her knees up to her chest and keeps stammering out apologies.

“Doreen stop.” Nat orders in the same firm tone she’d spoken to Steve in, pulling Doreen back to her with an arm fully around her shoulder so that the message doesn’t get misconstrued. “Stop apologizing.” She says, “Take your time, then tell us what’s going on.”

Doreen whimpers and nods, and the next few minutes go on like that. Doreen’s sobs slowly but surely waning in both volume and intensity. Eventually, Steve comes crawling back up to his place and props his pillows to sit against them. Doreen scoots to make more room for him, climbing back over Nat’s leg and winding up laying her head against her chest once again. Nat keeps arms wrapped loose around Doreen, now laying along her front and between her legs. She alternates her fingers between scratching along her back and her scalp. There isn’t much to do other than to wait, and occasionally exchange a worried look with Steve.

“I miss my mommy and daddy.” Doreen finally murmurs in clear – if quiet – words. It makes Nat swallow tears of her own and hug her tighter.

“I know.” She agrees, “I miss mine too.”

She tilts her head to Steve, looking for help; remembering that he’d mentioned to her he and Doreen had a similar conversation to this the other night.

Steve reaches out and tucks some hair which has fallen over Doreen’s face behind her ear.

“I do too.” He tells her, “And I miss my best friend, his name’s Bucky. Thanos took him.”

Against her, Doreen shifts. Nat loosens her arms as so to allow Doreen to move if she wants, but, all she does is roll so that she is lying more on her side over Nat rather than face -flat down; better able to see them.

“I miss my friend Sam, who Thanos took. My friends Wanda, and Clint.”

Nat blinks away the guilt which washes through her. She realizes she has barely thought about Clint since they’ve been here, and she wonders if she will ever see him again.

She pushes the thoughts away, though, when she realizes Steve is watching her with parted lips. There is someone else – she realizes – on the tip of his tongue.

She frowns, smushing her cheek against Doreen’s hair and hugging her tighter once again.

“We lost a lot of family.” She murmurs, flashing Steve a warning look not to elaborate. “And moving on from that isn’t easy.”

Doreen hums in agreement, and rolls again, this time fully onto her back. She takes Nat’s hand in hers, playing with her fingers in very much the way of a distracted child.

She sniffles again, just a little, and with the hand Doreen isn’t holding Nat runs her fingers through the shorn ends of her hair.

“It’s scary.” She acknowledges for Doreen. “Not knowing what comes next.” She shudders, the echoes of this bedroom, her own past, suddenly too loud around her. She looks down at Doreen and sees the outline of a slightly older girl with scragglier hair dyed blue, approaching the coffee table in the living room, grabbing for a single scrapbook.

“Don’t! Leave it, leave it!.”

She blinks away a tear, remembering the sight of that very book so many years later, on a shelf in Melina’s home.

“Do you still want to live with Hannah?”

“I have to leave here?” Doreen asks, her eyes shining as she meets Nat’s gaze for confirmation.

“Yes.” She answers, “You can’t stay here alone, and right now, Steve and I have to go back to New York.”

Doreen nods, her face sullen as she continues to play with Nat’s fingers.

“Doreen.” Steve says, “You can always change your mind, ok?” He says, “If you go to live with Hannah and you find you don’t like it, you can call us anytime. It can be an hour after we leave, or it can be two years from now. If anything ever changes, just call. We’ll come get you. Ok?”

Nat hums in agreement, smiling when Doreen nods against her.

“Call us regardless.” She says, “Please. I am going to need updates on Hannah convincing her dad to let her shave half her head.”

At that Doreen giggles, agrees, and then it’s a nice companionable silence until Doreen eventually bids them both goodnight and leaves the room. Nat watches her go, and round the corner into her own bedroom.

She sighs, and she almost asks Steve if maybe they’re making a mistake by leaving.

Almost.

Chapter Text

Going back to New York means having a team meeting.

Steve doesn’t recall anyone suggesting it, per se. He and Nat spend a portion of the flight home going over their talking points, and anticipating what some of the others might say, but in the end… He doesn’t remember anyone making the plan.

Whoever came up with the idea, they scheduled it within an hour of him and Nat returning. The two of them have enough time to set down their bags and shower, and before he knows it, Steve feels like he is dragging himself into the conference room on leaden legs.

A part of him still can’t believe they left Doreen behind. He feels like if he thinks too hard about it, he will open his eyes and still be standing in the bedroom in Hannah’s house instead. He’d helped Doreen bring the boxes up, and told her again to call if she needs anything, and even if she doesn’t.

He shakes himself from the memory. They have other problems to deal with right now.

The conference room seems so much colder than Ohio. The large table is flanked by their surviving and sullen friends on either side; a far cry from the giggling smirks of Nat and Doreen across from one another and taking notes on his cooking techniques over dinner.

No, instead of a timid ten-year-old, Tony is sat across from Nat. He looks better than when Steve saw him last; more able to hold himself upright. The evidence of a man with emotional walls rivaled only by Nat’s is back to shining in his eyes, and Steve doesn’t miss how close to Pepper he has moved his chair.

Pepper, who seems to have one eye glued to him as he enters, and the other to Tony. It’s as though she is waiting for her husband – whom is still being nursed back to health – to jump across the table and pick up where they left off in Germany.

Frankly, a part of Steve wishes he would.

Steve flits his eyes away from them, and from the way Pepper has one hand resting atop the gentle curve of her stomach. He makes a mental note that he seriously needs to get himself in check when it comes to Tony, specifically before the baby arrives. For now, he takes a strange comfort in his confidence that there is more than just jealousy at play in his mind. His and Tony’s issues run deep, and they aren’t going to be hashed out in one day.

Certainly not on this day.

He looks around at the rest of the table. Rhodey is sitting next to Nat, and he looks like he may fall asleep at any moment. The bags under his eyes have only gotten worse in the time he and Nat have been gone, and for that, Steve feels guilty.

On the other side of him is Bruce, who also looks worse for wear. He has his head propped in his hand and his eyes are drooping as though he is fighting sleep and losing.

Down at the end of the table are Thor and Valkyrie. Steve hasn’t ventured down to the training room yet to see in person the damage they supposedly did, but the preview is written all over their faces. Thor has a shining purple bruise under each eye, while Valkyrie sports one to match as well as a busted lip. She is also leaning heavy into one side of her chair, like someone who is nursing a broken rib or three.

Yep, Earth’s mightiest heroes.

“Is everyone here?” Steve asks, dropping into his seat at Nat’s other side. His question is answered by a chorus of silent nods, and so he sighs.

“Ok, so,” He begins, “As you all know, Nat and I spent the last few weeks in Mount Vernon, Ohio. We stopped there on our way back from Barton’s for fuel, and we ended up helping some people there.”
He pauses, looking to Nat, and she nods for him to go on.

“Some of those people realized who we were.” He says, “Some didn’t. Outside of the major cities, people don’t really expect to see The Avengers. We had some anonymity, and, it gave me an idea of what next steps might look like for us; as a team.”

He lets that sit there, watching them all to gauge their reactions. Most of them are looking at him and Nat with curiosity piqued, and then Tony straightens in his seat.

“If this is your bid for retirement Cap, I have to say, I’m all ears.”

Not exactly what Steve had in mind.

Also, not exactly what Nat had in mind either, if the way she leans forward into her elbows is any indicator.

“Whose retirement, Tony?” She asks, and in response Tony gestures vaguely around at the table.

“This.” Tony says, as though it should be obvious. “All of us. Some of us. Whoever.” He pauses, tapping his fingers against the table in the way which Steve has come to know him to do when he is making every effort to not offend the entire room.

It doesn’t usually work, and Steve has a strong suspicion this won’t be an exception.

He’s already off to a bad start.

“We haven’t been The Avengers in a long time.” Tony continues, “We ran our course long before Thanos came along.”

“Maybe.” A partial agreement; Steve will give him that much. “But when Thanos came, the world looked to us.”

“Did it?” Tony asks, “Or are we just a gang of masochists who tell ourselves that?”

“Ok, enough.” Nat interjects, before Steve can formulate a response to that. “We all want to help? Can we agree on that much?”

She looks around the table for an answer, and Steve notices he isn’t the only one avoiding her gaze like a scolded child.

Bruce, in particular, swivels his seat a little more so that his shoulder is to Nat. But, no one outright contradicts her and, after a moment, that is good enough.

“From what Steve and I saw in Ohio, the best mission for S.H.I.E.L.D. right now might be relief efforts. Take who we have and volunteer at shelters, community centers, perform wellness checks. That sort of thing.”

“Starting where?” Pepper asks, and Nat shrugs.

“New York?” She offers, “Wherever we can. Ideally we’ll enlist more help as we go, and maybe we can dispatch some of the agents we’ve managed to hold onto to other major cities.”

This time, as everyone takes in her words, it seems like more of a silent discussion, and Steve finds himself holding his breath as he awaits a decision.

Finally, Valkyrie pushes out her chair and gets to her feet.

“Well, I’m all for community outreach.” She says, but the way she levels her eyes at him and Nat sends a warning. “But, my first concern is with my community; the Asgardians.” She glances to Thor, who doesn’t break his thousand-yard stare in the direction of the table’s surface. “There’s a fishing village in Norway. Our ancestors would visit it millennia ago. The population there was nearly wiped out by Thanos. Those who are left have agreed to give refuge to the displaced Asgardians.” She looks again to Thor, and then back around at their group. “We came this morning to say goodbye.”

It's a blow, but Steve can’t say he doesn’t understand. He can’t even say he doesn’t agree. Much as they need her help, Valkyrie has already extended them more than what is fair to ask of her by staying here in the time he and Nat were away. She doesn’t owe S.H.I.E.L.D. any loyalty or favors. As it is, Steve is well aware the only reason she has stayed this long has been out of respect to Thor’s loyalty to them.

He hasn’t missed her use of the term “we”, and he doesn’t blame her for that either. For as much as they could use Thor’s help, he clearly isn’t in a mental state right now to be providing it. If what he needs right now is to be with his people, then so be it.

“I like the idea,” Bruce chimes in, in much the same forewarning tone as Valkyrie. “Maybe I can pick back up with you guys after a few weeks or something. But, first, I think I gotta go to get the big guy sorted out.”

“He’s still not coming out?” Nat asks, and Bruce shakes his head.

“No.”

It’s a solemn word. This time, Steve feels the flicker of anger in the back of his mind, but he can’t bring himself to entertain it. The pain is clear in Bruce’s eyes. So much so, that Steve could swear there is an echo of Hulk staring a back at him, and that pain is worse than what wafts from Thor. It’s clear there won’t be any arguing or convincing Bruce to stay. So, Steve turns to Rhodey.

“What about you?” He asks, and with a long sigh, Rhodey meets his eyes.

“What else do I got to do?”

Steve doesn’t smile, but he’s grateful all the same. It’s the vote of confidence from that which gives him the courage to look at Tony across the table. He doesn’t ask anything, just waits.

“Tell me where to write the check.” Tony says, “But, like I said, retirement.”

With that he pushes himself away from the table and grabs the cane hooked on the back of his chair. They all watch him leave, Pepper included, and when she doesn’t argue with him, well, Steve figures he doesn’t have any right to.

For months after their return to the compound they’re occupied with finding a new normal. It’s a lot of work, and for a while, Nat is able to handle it as easily as she always has.

It’s just the two of them and Rhodey, with the occasional appearance of Happy. Pepper is keeping the paper trail of all their relief efforts from a cabin in the woods, which Tony purchased and is actually fixing up himself rather than paying someone else to do it.

It’s good. It’s good for him. He needs it. They need it.

As she electronically files away yet another of the correspondences from Pepper, Nat swallows down a lump in her throat. She’s been doing that more and more lately, she’s noticed. Specifically, at regular – monthly – intervals.

She first noticed it towards the end of their first month back in the compound. A wave of guilt over having left Doreen behind in Mount Vernon had snuck up on her one morning and spurred her to call and check in, despite the fact that she had talked to Doreen and Hannah only two days earlier and they were fine. Happy, even. They had drug out an old game console which once belonged to Hannah’s sisters and they were excitedly working their way through the corresponding bin of “retro” games.

Nat told them to have fun, promptly swallowed this bitter lump, and considered there might be a correlation when her period came the next morning and the bitterness was nothing but a memory.

She felt it again the next month; and far worse. That time is was grief which hit her, and it outweighed the guilt so severely she had hardly known the guilt was there. It was more than Doreen, and Hannah. She told herself it was to be expected; inevitable. The mourning of what she and Steve lost couldn’t be expected to be resolved with one mental breakdown on the back porch of Clint’s house. Of course, then she felt the grief over losing Clint, and he family. But, to be expected. Nothing she can’t handle. A few days later her period came, and the grief and the guilt drained away overnight.

So, PMS is more intense than she’d realized. That’s fine. She can handle that.

Now, another month, and it’s back. Grief, guilt, and anger.

She can handle it. Really, she can. She just needs to figure out how.

Slowly, Nat sets her laptop to the side. She stares vacantly out at the grey of the bedroom wall, her thoughts moving back to the soft blue of the bedroom in Ohio. The bureau in the corner. All the pictures of a life lived by a real family and now… This. Four cold steel walls, and even colder vinyl tiles hidden under a flimsy black area rug that she bought at Home Depot. She and Steve have combined their living quarters into this one room which used to be hers and you would never even know. Steve’s laptop and a baseball cap on her desk are the only evidence of his presence here outside of the closet.

She takes in a deep breath, and wills herself to keep from tearing up.

Steve isn’t surprised he hasn’t seen Nat since he got back to The Compound. Last he saw her was after lunch, and she was taking her laptop into their bedroom and informing him she would be catching up on Pepper’s reports, which, there are a lot of.

“Hey.” He says, walking into the room, noting how she is sat cross-legged on the bed with her laptop closed next to her. “Rhodey and I just got back from the shelter and…”

He trails off, closing the door behind himself as he looks at her and he realizes that something is wrong.

She is sitting stoically, like she is in a trance. There are no tears stained onto her cheeks, nor is there a sniffle or even a thickness to her voice as she murmurs a “hey” in reply to him. But, there is something very evident in the rigidness about her that lets him know that whatever this is, it is more than exhaustion.

“Are you ok?” He asks, and she parts her lips as though to answer him, but then closes them again.

He waits, gives her a moment, but the only answer he gets is a sigh and a shake of her head.

“No?” He asks, to which she gives no reply.

“Ok.” He sighs, and he crawls onto the bed next to her. She looks at him, lets him come and settle beside her, but she doesn’t so much as crack a smile.

Sagging himself against the wall, Steve looks out at their room; not sure exactly what has set Nat in this state. At some point, he drapes his arm along her shoulders. She allows that, which he is thankful for. In fact, she leans into his side with her head on his shoulder.

“Do you remember when you told me you were angry with Tony?”

He raises an eyebrow, and grunts a little uncomfortably as he gathers his thoughts.

“I’m working on that.”

“How’s it going?” She asks, curling her knees up and folding her arms in her lap. “Because I am really starting to get pissed off.”

Steve tries not to jump right into that; he knows it’s a complicated issue. In general, he tries not to ask Nat toooften about her feelings regarding Pepper and Tony. He worries sometimes, that she might be compartmentalizing too much. He does understand that her grief over what they lost isn’t quite the same as his; that she doesn’t necessarily feel the stab of how the randomness of the cosmos decreed Tony and Pepper could keep the very same thing it ripped from the two of them. But, he can’t help but to worry that she swallows down too much when it comes to Pepper. She keeps insisting she’s fine, she’s happy for them, and listening to Pepper’s tales of woe over the strain of pregnancy makes her pity her rather than feel any bitterness.

“Why did they get to leave?” She murmurs, drawing her knees in close. “Them, and Bruce, and Thor and Valkyrie.”

Steve shifts a little uncomfortably. They haven’t heard much from those three since they left, and they have been assuming it’s been for very good reason.

“I mean… I know why.” Nat says, giving word to his thoughts. “But why not us? We were gone a month and they were calling us every night.” This time, there is a shudder to her voice. “I know it’s stupid-”

“No, it’s not stupid.” He can’t help but to swear that to her right then, because it is not stupid.

“It’s not stupid at all. It’s not fair.”

She hums, “I promise I’m not always like this.” She says, craning her head back so that she he is better able to see her, and the moisture in her eyes. “Just the last few months, right before I get my period, it’s like everything just slams into me.”

Steve frowns, then leans in and plants a chaste kiss on her lips. She accepts it, which he’ll count as a plus.

“I haven’t asked you how you’re doing with that.” He sighs, realizing this for the first time.

Sighing and trying not to beat himself up too much, Steve gently toys his fingers up to the hair tie securing the low ponytail of her short hair. He pulls it, and rolling it onto his wrist and letting the faded blonde fall over his hand.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not really.” She murmurs, staring off at seemingly nothing. “Some cramps on the first day, but I take a Tylenol and I’m fine.” She brings her hand up to his chest, her thumb stroking in nonsense patterns, and he can tell she’s thinking. “I just feel like I’m wasting it.”

“Wasting it?”

Another sigh, another long moment of her thinking.

“I wasn’t supposed to get this back.” She says, flashing her eyes up at him. “My reproductive system.” She explains, “But… I did. And… I still don’t think I want…”

She trails off, her lips twisting into a frown.

“Hey, Nat.” Steve tries, “It’s ok.”
She hums, an acknowledgement that she knows it’s ok, or at least Steve hopes that’s what it is.

“I… Trying for another baby, it feels like replacing them.” She blinks up at him when he holds her tighter, and squeezes one of her hands in his own.

He… Yeah, he supposes that is the sentiment. When they were sitting down in Shuri’s lab it was barely a conversation. The idea of actively trying for another baby just felt wrong. They had lost too much that day to consider the idea.

“And I don’t want to leave.” She continues, “I don’t think I could. But I am really getting pissed that we had every reason to, and it didn’t matter.”

Steve nods along. He isn’t sure if she means it didn’t matter to the universe that the two of them had every right and reason to walk away from this job, or if she means it didn’t matter to their friends. Frankly, that doesn’t seem to matter.

“How about this,” Steve says, “Why don’t, you and I, do our best to stop thinking?” She raises an eyebrow at him, to which he chuckles. “I’m serious.”

“I figured.” She says, and she peels herself off him, just enough so that she can better see him. “How do you mean?”

“The way I see it is, we could drown ourselves in self-pity if we wanted.” He says with a sigh, “We’re already on our way there, and it’s going to take time to come back from. So, why don’t, we do our best to turn our brains off for a while? We let the dust settle, we do what we came back here to do, and we do whatever else it is that we do. Then down the line, we’ll see where we land?”

She purses her lips, and Steve is perfectly content to wait her out. It isn’t a bad plan, not to him, at least. He knows it isn’t going to be possible to forget about all their anger and their grief. But, maybe with some time, some of it might either fade or sort itself out somehow. The rest they can pick up later to deal with, and with any luck, it will be easier.

“Ok.” She agrees, and Steve smiles a close mouth smile.

“Ok.”

Chapter Text

Nat chuckles against Steve’s lips as she bounces against the mattress. He’s following her down; his weight warm and slightly crushing on top of her in the best way.

“You know we don’t have time right now.” She chides him, though it’s also a reminder for herself. He’s been gone for three whole weeks on an outreach trip and back for fifteen whole minutes; ten of which had to be spent unpacking, using the bathroom, saying hello of Rhodey, and all sorts of menial things like that. Sue her if she wants to skip out on a meeting with Rick Mason and the whole lot of nothing he’ll have to report on rogue and presumed dead agents. She would much rather spend the afternoon catching up with Steve.

“Guess we’ll have to be quick.” Steve snarks, diving back in for another kiss.

At that, Nat nearly laughs at him outright. She grins widely, and captures his lips in one last kiss as she flutters her eyes open and studies the crease of his brow.

“Since when are you quick?” She teases, a very confident doubt coating her every word.

“Well.” He chides her, “Parden me for having standards.” He leans down, kisses her cheek. “But,” another kiss, on her other cheek. “I could be quick.”

Physically, she has no doubts about that.

“Mm,” She hums, looping her arms up around his shoulders. “And yet, you’re still talking about it.”

A sudden seriousness falls over his face as he watches her now, and she does her best to keep from squirming self-consciously under him.

“Good day or bad day?”

“Good day.” She answers, pulling herself up with the leverage she’s given herself at his shoulders, and she plants a chaste kiss to his lips. “Promise.”

He smiles against her lips, and the next thing she knows he is easing her back once again, until her head is cradled in the mattress.

They keep kissing, hands roaming, and as his hands start to bunch up the material of her shirt and his fingers skate over her ribcage Nat shivers in anticipation.

Over a year since Thanos now; really, closer to two. There are still moments where it all feels like it was yesterday. Slowly, those are becoming fewer and farther between, thankfully. Sometimes it feels like the world – and even the two of them – are finally beginning to think about moving forwards. Sometimes it’s hard, but sometimes it’s easy. Good days and bad days.

Steve wraps his hands around to the hook of her bra, looking at her once again, and she knows it won’t be the last. Even when she swears to him up and down that she is having a good day - that the memories of their fallen friends as well as their child are secured in the back of her mind where they belong – he stops at every checkpoint to ensure nothing is changing. At first it drove her crazy, but at this point they have ridden the waves of grief so many times she is able to accept it. Afterall, she does the same to him.

Speaking of which, she should check in with him.

“What about you?” She asks, drawing herself up as he undoes the clasp of her bra; just enough so that he has the room to slip his hands underneath her. “You just got back, are you ok?”

“Yeah.” He answers, though there is a slight heaviness to his huff, and he drags her bra up her arms and discards it rather unceremoniously onto the floor. “It was a long trip, but I’m good.”

She quirks an eyebrow, and he smirks at her.

“I’m good.” He swears, leaning back in and kissing her.

She doesn’t allow him to slip his tongue past her lips, which is so painfully clearly his intention. He laughs though, chuckling as she levels her glare at him.

“I swear.” He laminates, “It was a long trip, but that’s all.”

“That’s never all.” She says skeptically.

“No.” He agrees, taking her hands in his and just holding them for a moment. He squeezes her fingers, held their between their two bodies, and then he presses a kiss to her knuckles. “It was a lot of talk, and a lot of mourning.”

Nat gives him a small, understanding smile, and then she shifts to lean up on her elbows. Steve scoots back to give her room, but not much. He stays close enough that she can easily kiss him, once, then twice, then three and four times. They’ve had this system for their good and bad days for a while now; after far too many nights ended in tears or arguments. They trust each other. Their feelings and the last two years are complicated. If he says he’s fine, then maybe later he will talk.

For now, Nat stops counting the kisses and she falls back to her back, pulling at Steve’s shirt on her way down and accepting that she is definitely going to be late to that meeting with Mason, and she is definitely never going to hear the end of it.

Natasha is running as timely as ever, and frankly, a part of Rick is hoping she won’t show at all. This isn’t a report he is eager to give. Hardly any of the reports he sends her way are happy ones, or impactful for that matter. Normally, he just sends an email and calls it a day. If he happens to be in the neighborhood with some time to kill, then he will pop in to see her in person. He is hoping she bought it when he told her that was his reason for requesting an in-person rendezvous today. He said he has a flight out of New York tonight, and he wants to borrow her couch for a nap beforehand, which is most certainly true.

The sound of approaching footsteps draws him from his thoughts. He looks over his shoulder to see her - as well as Rogers - coming down the hall, and he chuckles to himself.

“So this is why you’ve kept me waiting.” He taunts them, leaning back even further in the office chair as so to better see them as they enter the compound’s library.

They’re only five minutes late, he’ll allow the record to show that. But, when you live and work in the same building, it shouldn’t be that hard to keep track of time.

“We thought about making you come find us.” Nat snarks in return, and he chuckles.

While Nat rounds the desk to sit in the other chair, Rick nods at Rogers. “Captain.” He says, “How was your trip?”

“It was good.” Roger’s answers, pulling up an extra chair for himself at the side of the desk. “We went to San-Francisco. They want to construct a monument out there; something to honor the fallen from The Snap.”

Rick nods, trying to imagine such a monument. God knows he has never given thought to monument construction or zoning but he is tempted to ask all about it if it means delaying this report.

Nat seems to catch a whiff of that. He sees the way her smile flees her face. She picks up a pen and twirls it between two fingers, and leans her elbows onto the surface of the desk.

“What’s going on Rick?”

Point blank, no punches pulled.

He sighs, and pulls from behind him his simple manila folder which weighs barely an ounce, and yet it feels like a two-ton brick in his hand. He sets it on the desk as lightly as he can, not wanting to hear that slap as it hits the surface, and yet he hears it regardless. He thumbs open the folder, revealing the black-and-white photo pulled from his own surveillance camera in Mexico.

A hooded figure. Known only as Ronin, he is a ruthless assassin. He’s been on a crusade against seemingly the black market as a whole. He has left mobsters of rivaling families disemboweled, cartel dealers without their limbs, and stabbed mercenaries straight through their hearts. He appears to work only for himself, and he has been on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar for quite some time.

Now, finally, one grainy shot of the side of his face.

“I’ve found him.”

The next time he goes on a trip, Steve is going to be sure to wait a full twenty-four hours before unpacking.

Soon as Rick has given them his full report - the location of the camera which picked up Barton as well as where he believes he might be heading next – himself and Nat are packing their bags and fueling up a Quinjet with enough gas to get them to Mexico.

They manage to land by dusk. The plan is to meet Bruce, because whatever he has been doing with Hulk at some point led him down here. From what Steve understands he is living and/or working out of a property that Tony bought years before he became Iron Man. It was intended to be opened as a bar, only Tony never got around to it because he was too busy patroning at other bars.

Speaking of Tony, the only thing to surprise Steve more than this horrifying revelation that Barton is the assassin they’ve been trying to find, is to learn that Tony is coming down to investigate Rick’s findings along with them.

“I thought he was retired.” He comments as he closes himself and Nat into the backseat of the cab.

“Yeah, well, Barton’s family.” Nat murmurs, sitting rigid next to him.

Steve frowns, and while he wants to push the issue again, he ultimately decides that he won’t. She’s right; Barton is family, and this needs to be about bringing him home.

Ideally not in handcuffs, but that may not be an option.

The drive to the address Bruce forwarded them is just over an hour, and that hour feels like it is the longest of Steve’s life. He and Nat don’t say much during the drive. For one thing – while he is sure Tony could have easily replaced their taxi driver with someone whom he has vetted – Steve doesn’t want to take any chances with discussing sensitive information. For another thing, it’s hard to talk about the family reunion you’re about to walk into when you really have no idea what to expect.

They haven’t seen Bruce since the day he, Tony, Thor, and Valkyrie all left The Compound. They’ve heard from him. Supposedly he has made some progress with Hulk, and in the past few months he has even been reaching out regularly to see if there is anything he can do to help on science and tech side of things.

There isn’t; that isn’t really what they’re doing at S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore. But he’s been reluctant to come back and help in the day to day. So - not wanting to alienate him – they’ve tasked him with keeping them up-to-date on whatever projects he finds for himself down here. The reports are always menial, but at least he’s keeping contact.

When they arrive at the address Bruce sent them there isn’t much to see, or anything at all in fact. The taxi pulls up to a rusty steel gate guarding nothing but a vast grove of trees and an overgrown dirt road; no structure of anything in sight. Steve exchanges a look with Nat and sees his own curiosity mirrored in her eyes. They get out and pay the driver; who seems equally confused by their being dropped off in the middle of nowhere. But, he takes the money and speeds off, leaving them there with nothing but their backpacks and each other.

“What do you think?” He asks Nat, “Underground bunker?”

“I don’t know.” She says, her eyes surveying the tree line. “Maybe. But Tony said this place was supposed to be a bar. Wouldn’t a bar need a building?”

“Maybe they tore down the structure?” Steve ventures to guess, “Or maybe he meant he was going to build it from scratch? He just had the property?”

Nat seems to consider that, her eyes squinting into the trees as if she is looking for something shrouded between the night sky and the canopy of the jungle.

“Do you hear that?” She asks after a moment.

At first no, he doesn’t hear anything. But, then he realizes that he does. This distant revving of an engine. He’s been hearing it, but he attributed it to the taxi still driving away in the distance. Now, he realizes it is coming from within the trees, and it’s getting closer instead of further.

Soon, a light flashes, bounding over a dip in the road deep in the trees. Then it’s back; headlights, Steve realizes. The sound of a running engine keeps on drawing closer and soon Steve can make out the boxy frame of a Jeep driving towards them with a large figure in the driver’s seat.

He and Nat take a step back as the Jeep emerges from the trees and pulls to a stop on the other side of the rusted gate. Steve furrows his brow, his mind processing what he is seeing in the dim light of the setting sun. A part of him is having trouble believing it’s real; the large, hulking figure sat in the driver’s seat – fully clothed in a pair of gray beach shorts and a too-tight muscle t-shirt - and fixing him and Nat with a timid smile.

“Hey guys,” He chuckles, in Banner’s voice, “Welcome.”