Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel or any characters you recognize. I write this purely for my own pleasure.

PART I: Chapter 1

The Triskelion, Washington D.C.

October 8, 2013

The first time Steve saw the Triskelion, he had not understood the gravity of the moment. All he'd been thinking about was getting inside. It hadn't been the first time he'd been to Washington D.C.—he'd made a trip there as the bond-selling Captain America in 1942—but he had no memory of the sweltering heat.

"D.C. was built on a swamp," Natasha had said blithely, looking his opposite in composure as he shed his leather jacket and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "It gets pretty steamy in the summertime."

It was the first of July. "Is it air-conditioned—oh," he'd sighed when he opened the door for Nat and a rush of cold wind froze the sweat on his skin. "Thank God."

"C'mon, Cap," she'd said, coaxing him from the atrium into a glass elevator.

He was so distracted by the coolness that he hadn't noticed the hundreds of curious glances from the agents milling about, nor how the ceiling was made of glass and vaulted so high above him that it seemed almost pointless to have a roof at all. It was only after the hour-long meeting with Director Fury in his office, after he returned to the atrium without Natasha, clutching the keys to his new apartment that S.H.I.E.L.D. had set him up with, that he saw the glances and the sky. For such a secretive organization, it was uncomfortably open. He rushed to avoid the gawking.

After three months of running missions and coming to regular meetings with Fury, however, no one even blinked twice at Steve striding in in a t-shirt and sweatpants, a duffel bag slung across his body. He checked his watch to make sure he wasn't late to the training session that Nat suggested through text message. He wasn't, though he had no doubt that Nat was already in the gym. She was the only person he knew that was more punctual than he was, even if she'd just gotten back from an assignment.

"You took your time," she said when she heard him come into their regular training room, never ceasing her rapid-fire kicks on a punching bag. "Have you considered getting one of those motorized wheelchairs? A lot of people your age have them."

"Ha, ha," he said sarcastically, dropping his bag in the corner. She made a joke about his age once in the middle of a mission and he'd laughed, so now the jokes were nonstop. He didn't mind, though he wondered how differently their friendship would've progressed if he hadn't laughed at that first joke. He brushed that possibly lonely thought away by asking, "How'd the job go?"

She shrugged loosely and took a long pull from her water bottle. "Standard extraction," she said after she swallowed. "Not much room for failure."

Knowing Natasha, it had probably been far more life-threatening than she let on. He let it go, anyway. If she'd been in serious danger, he hoped she would tell him. They weren't very close—not like she was with Barton—but he thought they were getting there.

"No shield," she ordered, capping her bottle and tossing it onto a pile of folded towels.

"No weapons," he added. Adding that caveat meant that he then had to wait for her while she stripped her body of every knife she'd hidden on it. He didn't know how she hid eight knives in a tank top and work-out pants, but then he didn't know a lot about Natasha.

When all her knives were in a pile at her feet, she smirked and asked, "You ready to go or do you need a little more time? I've only been waiting half an hour for you to show up."

He scoffed and got into position. "I'm hearing a lot of talk and seeing no action."

She laughed and they began.

They both hold back when they spar. Steve because he didn't want to hurt Natasha; Natasha because she didn't want to kill Steve. And Steve had no doubt that in a weaponless, no-holds-barred fight, Natasha would kill him. Armed with his shield, he knew it was a different story.

"Keep telling yourself that," she said when he voiced that thought. Then she threw him onto his back again with little more than a grunt.

She just got back from a mission, he thought, groaning as he got to his feet. Shouldn't she be exhausted?

When they go another round, he was quicker. A few jabs, some feints, and she was down—his forearm pinning her to the mat. She was as stoic as ever.

"I'm just tired," she said so seriously that it took Steve a second to realize that she was joking.

"Keep telling yourself that," he quipped back as he helped her to her feet. Natasha smirked. They attacked again.

Neither Steve nor Natasha had it in them to spar for more than an hour that day. Nat waited for Steve just outside the room as he gathered his things and neatly packed them into his duffel.

You can take the man out of the army, but you can't take the army out of the man, Nat had said the first time she came to his apartment and seen the Spartan furnishings and neatly folded blankets on his bed. Nat herself wasn't so messy, but he'd seen her locker in the gym and found that it was in a perpetual state of organized chaos.

When he joined Nat, her eyes were fixed on an agent running on one of the many treadmills. Nat was not the only one watching, though. A quick scan around the room at the other agents surprised Steve. Nearly every one of them was scowling at her, some covertly, others overtly. He even saw one agent roll her eyes, much to her companions' amusement.

The only thing that Steve noticed about the running woman was her hair—long, pulled back into a ponytail; the top half dark, the bottom a bright blue that hurt his eyes even halfway across the gym. Otherwise, she was wholly unremarkable. He didn't know why she was attracting so much attention.

He tapped Nat's shoulder. "You ready?"

She narrowed her eyes and nodded. But when they walked past the blue-haired agent, Nat paused and leaned against the treadmill.

"You're doing a great job," she encouraged softly.

The agent was so startled—whether by the praise or the source or at the sudden appearance of someone at her elbow, Steve didn't know—that she tripped, catching herself just in time to avoid flying off the belt.

"Agent Romanoff!" she squeaked, pushing her thick-framed glasses up her nose nervously. "Oh, thanks."

"I can kick a few asses, if you'd like," Nat offered. Then she turned and glared at the agent on the next treadmill over, the one openly gawking at the two of them. He immediately turned his face at the blank wall in front of him, eyes wide in fear.

The blue-haired agent laughed. "Aw, that's so sweet," she gushed through heavy pants, her cheeks turning even redder. The offer was anything but sweet, but Steve was so bewildered that he couldn't even say anything. "But I wouldn't be doing this if I couldn't handle a few stares."

What 'this' is, Steve didn't know. But Natasha seemed to understand, smiling once more at the agent before gesturing to Steve to follow her out of the gym.

When they entered the atrium, he asked, "What was that about?"

She punched the 'up' arrow on the elevator. As they waited for the doors to open, she explained, "A lot of the scientists are too scared to use the gym because the field agents intimidate them into staying out. It's some stupid S.H.I.E.L.D. thing."

Steve frowned. "You're S.H.I.E.L.D., too."

Natasha shook her head. "Not like them. It's a rivalry that starts at the academy. Scientists think they're smarter than field agents and field agents think the scientists are undisciplined and everyone thinks they're better than the analysts. I never went to the academy; I was brought in later."

She was the infamous assassin for the Russians before Hawkeye brought her in, Steve recalled. The rivalry between divisions was probably quite foreign to her. Steve remembered the rivalry between the branches of military, however, so he found it less strange. Disappointing, yes—he'd hoped that society had advanced beyond petty rivalries—but normal.

"So you were encouraging her. That's…nice of you." And totally out-of-character, as far as Steve was concerned.

She smiled like she knew what he was thinking. "I'm a nice girl."

"Um, okay." She punched his arm lightly, giving him a mock-glare. He held his hands up. "Sorry. I emphatically agree."

The elevator doors opened. Natasha stepped in, stopping him from following her in.

"Hey!" he exclaimed. Steve's hand shot out to stop the doors from closing in his face.

Natasha smiled softly at his disgruntled expression. "Go do something fun, Steve. You've been working too hard."

"You're one to talk," he retorted. "When'd you get back, three hours ago?"

"Four," she corrected him without a hint of sheepishness. "But I didn't just take back-to-back-to-back assignments." Unfortunately, that was true. In an effort to spend as little time alone in his apartment in its depressingly unfurnished state, Steve had taken three assignments in a row, spanning a month's time and taking him to five countries on three continents. He'd gotten back a week earlier, but he was already antsy for another job. When he was silent, Natasha quirked her eyebrow in amusement. "Yeah. You need to decompress."

He ran his hand through his sweaty hair and sighed. "Fine," he agreed, removing his hand from the door. Natasha radiated smugness. She clearly enjoyed every victory she won.

He was determined to have the final word. Just as the doors closed, he quickly added, "But so do you." The last thing he saw before the doors closed were Natasha's teeth glinting in a smile.

Now what? Steve thought as he stood there staring dumbly at the elevator. The only plans he'd made that day were with Nat. He'd been counting on meeting with Fury to fill up another week, until Natasha ordered him to have fun without her. He knew what she had in mind; something "fun" meant going on a date or hanging out with friends.

I need friends first, Steve thought sullenly.

He wished things were different. He wished he had it in him to make friends, but the part of him that was afraid of the brave new world couldn't stop missing Bucky and Howard and Peggy long enough to do that.

Steve shifted his duffel bag strap on his shoulder and trudged out of the Triskelion, foreseeing yet another night alone in his bare apartment.

Dr. Mallory Cohen could take a lot of examination. She didn't like it, but she'd gotten used to it over the years. Being a mutant numbs you to scrutiny.

Of course, no one in S.H.I.E.L.D. knew she was a mutant. In the eight years she'd been working for S.H.I.E.L.D, she'd never revealed her mutation to her superiors. Being a scientist had made Mal nervous to let her curious coworkers know that she was a genetic anomaly.

Thankfully, her mutation didn't express itself through her skin or her eyes or her hair—which was blue only because she dyed it. Others weren't nearly so lucky. Mal knew this; she'd been able to lead a relatively normal life up to this point because she didn't look at all like what people conjured up when they thought of mutants.

No, the current scrutiny wasn't from being a mutant. The scrutiny was because she was in the wrong place.

Mal almost laughed at how timid the agents were. They all scoffed and rolled their eyes, but not one of them came up to her and told her to leave. Especially not after Agent Romanoff gave her her blessing to be there.

"You're doing a great job," she'd said with a beautiful smile. Mal took a mental picture of that smile.

Unfortunately, Mal had to be a total dork in front of the Black Widow because she was incapable of staying cool around gorgeous redheads. She stuttered and blushed and almost flew off the treadmill in shock. And, to her unending credit, Agent Romanoff pretended not to see it.

"Agent Romanoff!" she'd said—in a cool, punk-rock way, Mal tried to convince herself later—before thanking her graciously.

"I can kick a few asses, if you'd like," she'd offered, shooting deadly glares at the agents ogling nearby.

As a pacifist, Mal was horrified. As a bisexual woman who'd idolized Black Widow the moment she'd first learned of her existence, however, she was very aroused. She'd giggled—again, in a cool, punk-rock way that definitely made Agent Romanoff admire her—and said, "Aw, that's so sweet! But I wouldn't be doing this if I couldn't handle a few stares."

Agent Romanoff had raised a carefully plucked eyebrow and shrugged (Mal later convinced herself that Agent Romanoff was impressed with her blasé attitude and was now resolving to learn her name and phone number). With one final smile that left Mal swooning and nearly flying off the treadmill again, she gestured to the man beside her. In her star-struck awe, Mal had failed to notice Steve Rogers—Captain freaking America—waiting patiently for them to finish their conversation.

After they left, Mal was so jittery that she forgot that she was a mutant scientist in a gym full of field agents and turned the speed up to the highest setting. She ran until her muscles were properly tired, exhausted before they could knit back together again, a difficult feat for someone with an accelerated healing factor.

Fifteen minutes later, she stopped off at her office to drop off her sports-bag and pick up her tablet. Then she headed for the laboratory down the hall, humming a jingle under her breath.

"The prodigal daughter returns," Colton said when Mal floated into the lab. Despite her utter contentment, she rolled her eyes.

"Am I still a member of the tribe?" she asked sarcastically.

He pretended to consider it. "You'll have to submit another application. Processing takes six to eight weeks."

"I don't have time for that!" she exclaimed. "You know what, how about I just fire you instead?"

"…Welcome back, boss."

She nodded smugly as he stuck his tongue out at her. Dr. Colton Ford was her assistant on Project Salamander. And while they'd become good friends since he'd been assigned to her in June, interns were laughably replaceable. Mal knew one engineer two floors down who had a new assistant every week. She wasn't sure where the old ones went, but no one ever saw them again. Colton liked to spread the rumor that they were shot and killed and that the cadavers at the SciTech Academy are actually former students who didn't last as interns.

Colton, the sick bastard, asked, "How was your slog through sweaty, macho hell?"

Mal sighed exasperatedly. "I don't know what you're imagining, Colt. It's not Fight Club down there. It's really nice. There's a juice bar."

He shook his head. "I don't care if the swimming pool is filled with chocolate; I'm never setting foot in that place."

"That's surprising, considering your diet is mainly Olympic-sized chocolate swimming pools."

"Hey, I had an apple this morning!" When she looked at him blankly, he amended, "I had fruit. Okay, it was Fruit by the Foot."

Another intern, Dr. Ashley Reardon, piped up sullenly, "It's unfair. You can eat a family-sized bag of Doritos and still be a stick, but if I eat one spoonful of ice cream, I gain five pounds."

Mal sent her a sympathetic smile and reassured her, "Take comfort in the fact that Colt's a deeply unhappy person." To prove her point, he jauntily saluted them with his slide and put his face to the microscope's eyepiece, grinning maniacally. The women shared annoyed looks.

"Ash, I'd really like a work-out buddy, if you ever want to join me," Mal offered. "Blood circulation is good for brain activity, too. If you're ever stuck on something, an hour of jogging can really do wonders."

Ashley winced and rubbed the back of her neck. "It's okay. I, erm, don't want to use the gym here. The agents are scary enough when you're not working out right next to them."

Ashley wasn't what Mal would call fat, but she was clearly not in the kind of shape any of the field agents were in. And as the sweetest person Mal knows, it killed Mal to know that she was tremendously self-conscious. She'd often expressed her desire to start working out, but she was so busy with work that getting a gym membership would only be a waste of money. And of course, no scientist wanted to use the in-house gym on the bottom floor of the Triskelion because of the stupid rivalry between divisions.

Mal pounded her fist on the table, startling Colton away from his microscope. "Damn those sexy bastards. We can't keep letting these field agents ruin our lives! Scientists!" she said loudly to the five other scientists in the lab. She stood up, raising a fist to the ceiling. "I urge you to stand up for your rights! I don't want to be your leader, but leadership has been thrust upon upon me! Together, we can get our post-summer bodies back into pre-summer shape! Who's with me?"

No one stopped their work. After working with her for three months, they're all used to her bi-weekly stub-speeches. And because they're all interns, none of them were willing to tell her to sit down.

None except for Dr. Jennifer Esposito. "Mal, sit down," she barked, aggressively signing a tablet one of her interns shakily handed to her. "People are trying to work."

Dr. Esposito was the only other scientist in their lab that headed her own project. She never liked Mal, not from the moment Mal got reassigned from San Francisco to the lab table across from her, and especially not when she got her project approved before Esposito got hers. Mal found her intimidating as all hell.

"Fine, but I'm not letting this go," she said, hoisting herself up onto the table beside Colton.

"Get off the table, Cohen."

"No." She got off the table. "We're not technically banned from the gym, you know. It's just a stupid fake rule."

Esposito glowered at her over her microscope. "Don't you have work to do?"

"I said I wasn't letting this go."

She rolled her eyes. Mal took this as enough invitation to continue, "No one said anything to me the whole time I was there, Ash. 'Cause they knew they didn't have a leg to stand on."

Ashley nodded and smiled weakly, still not convinced.

"And," she added giddily, "Agent Roma-freakin'-noff told me I was doing a great job, so yeah. Best day ever? I think so! Gimme some fin, Ford." Ever faithful, Colton slapped her hand when she held it up for a high-five.

Without moving her eye from her microscope, Esposito drawled sarcastically, "Wow, Agent Romanoff said that? You two should get married!"

She sighed dramatically. "Yeah, if only she wasn't straight, out of my league, and dating Barton," she replied. Esposito rolled her eyes.

Ever sweet, Ashley steered them back on course with soft words. "I appreciate it, Mal, but I'm just not ready," she said quietly, glancing down at her hands.

Mal sighed, trying to hide her disappointment. It would've been nice to have someone to work out with, especially considering that it was the only personal time she allotted to herself. "Alright. But you let me know as soon as you are, okay?" Ashley gave her a weak smile and turned her attention back to her tablet.

It was then, as she glanced around her laboratory filled with people she barely knew, that Mal suddenly missed being in San Francisco, where she had good friends and her family didn't feel so far away. Even surrounded by people, she felt lonelier than she'd ever felt in her life.

She prodded Colton's shoulder, doing her best to hide the desperation in her voice when she asked, "Hey, you wanna hang out tonight?"

He winced and leaned back to look at her. "Oo, can't. Got a hot date with Marlene. Our third date, actually. You know what that means."

"Yeah."

"Likely to end—"

"Don't finish that."

"In sex times," he finished.

"Yuck," she replied with a grimace.

To his credit, he seemed sad about refusing her offer. "I'm free tomorrow," he suggested instead.

Mal waved him off. "It's fine. I'm working tomorrow night, anyway. The results from the GWAS should be coming in tomorrow." She shrugged. "Maybe another time."

He sighed, running a hand through his sandy blond hair in exasperation. "You work too hard."

Esposito made an annoyed sound at that. "Not hard enough," she snapped. "If you're just gonna keep talking, do it outside."

Mal blinked dumbly and shook her head. "Right, actually, I'm gonna work from my office for the rest of the day," she announced to the tabletop. "Colt, get the sequence from LR-C 18 to me before you leave."

"You got it, boss." She caught his worried look just before she left the lab.

Even three months after getting her own office, it was almost bare. It was not for a lack of photos, though. She had one of her parents in front of their house in Hawaii, and another of her best friends from the SciTech academy, but no others. The ones from her days at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters were carefully catalogued in photo albums in her apartment, behind two locked doors. She wasn't taking any chances when it came to her mutation.

Mal slumped into her chair and opened her laptop. She smiled faintly at the unread message from Jemma Simmons and clicked on it. It had to be decrypted before she could access it. Before the girls got reassigned in June, they'd agreed that encrypting their messages was the safest way to stay up to date with one another. S.H.I.E.L.D. is, after all, an intelligence agency and it would be naïve of them to think that their messages weren't being monitored.

It only took a few minutes for her decryption program to open the email. Inside, there were a dozen photos—Jemma and Leo making funny faces at the camera in front of an Incan ruin; Jemma and Leo wearing safety glasses making funny faces in their cramped laboratory; Jemma and unfamiliar girl grinning together on a couch. The attached message was lengthy, but Mal immediately began reading. She missed her old coworkers and she'd been eager to hear from them since they officially started in the field.

Hey, Mal!

It's been a crazy couple of weeks, but I've finally gotten enough time to send you a message. Obviously, I can't get into the details (damn these security levels!) but we're all fine—that is, Fitz and I, as well as our new colleagues. The girl in the photos is Skye; she's a brilliant hacker and quite nice as well. You two would get along, I think. Hopefully, we'll touch down in D.C. one of these days so we can have a hen night, like the good old days. Maybe with fewer scientific samples, though.

We're slowly adjusting to being out in the field. There's a lot more running around than we researchers are used to, but I think it's quite exciting! Already, we've been to Peru, Malta, and we've just touched down in Stockholm. I doubt we'll be here long though, which is a shame; we were looking forward to visiting the Vasa Museum. It has some really cool shipwrecks. I would've gotten pictures. Oh, well. We'll just have to go together someday!

It's been so much fun, though I do wish you were here. You and your bloody research, needing all of your fancy equipment and your lab rats. I'm joking (kind of). Actually, Fitz and I have done some of our best work on the Bus. We came up with a non-lethal firearm that can incapacitate an enemy without any long-lasting effects. Which reminds me: we need a better name than a "Night-Night Gun," which is what Fitz has taken to calling it. Unfortunately, it's really caught on with the agents here, so you have to come up with something less stupid. Don't tell Fitz I said it was stupid.

The message went on for several more pages, which had always been Jemma's way. She wasn't one to do something half-way. It took her at least half an hour to get to the bottom of the email, which ended with:

I've got to go now; we're taking off. Fitz says hello, as usual. And Skye's been reading over my shoulder; she says hello as well. We miss you terribly! Write back soon!

Love, Jemma

P.S. Don't work too hard. Get out and do something fun!

She rested her face in her hand. Fitz had always been content with puttering around a lab, but from the moment they met, she knew Jemma would never be satisfied with that life. She had an adventurous spirit, just as Mal did. If she wasn't so intent on her project, she would've requested a transfer to the field with them.

She snorted at Jemma's hopeful post-script. Fun, she thought, gazing at her old friends' smiling faces. No one wants to have fun anymore, Jem.

And instead of going home like she'd planned, Mal stayed at work until early into the morning, until the lights went out and she was the only one there.

This is a bit of a crossover story between Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers, the X-Men franchise, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Most accurately, it should be in the Captain America section because Cap is the main canon character and because the beginning takes place from October to CA:TWS. After that, there will be more appearances from the X-Men and the Avengers, but the focus will still be on characters from TWS.

I try to reply to every review I can, so if you have any questions, comments, concerns, let me know and I'll get back to you ASAP!

Edited 2018.