Laying It All On the Line

All characters belong to Marvel Studios

He never expected her to understand. Detachment. Sorrow. A broken heart. A constant guilt that would harbor him back to the moment when he had to make a defining choice. Giving her a chance to embrace a new purpose had become a testament crushing against his own heart. Standing on the front lines of this cold war, he knew it was never going to be easy. As he drifted out of the barraged of thoughts, Steve listened to the distant sound of a train's horn blaring, the rush of cold air penetrated through his uniform. Everything was still—impending.

He stood inside the ramshackle apartment, staring at the faint vestiges of falling snow blotting over the bustling street below his view. It felt distressing, uncertain at first, as his heart pounded against his solid chest. The world became dark by a cast of shadow and an unpredictable storm. Evolution of his trust within the governmental circle was being stripped, innocent people were condemned as monsters. He stood firm between the dividing line of good versus evil.

Despite, his true intentions to harbor a sense of residual peace within himself, Steve was walking in the shadows of his past, chasing ghosts and unreeling threads of deception. He desperately tried to convince himself, that hope was limited, but even that was being stolen from him. This wasn't freedom. It was a waiting game of risk and his players were being outnumbered.

"For the record, I'm glad I found you before anyone else," Steve felt his heart clench, listening to the ease of betrayal evident in her husky tone. He didn't turn around at first when the muzzle of her loaded pistol caressed his broad neck. "You have no place to run. Stark has his Iron Legion patrolling the main exits. If you want out of this alive, you need to surrender the fight, Cap."

Those words clawed against his heart. This prestige of betrayal grounded him. He stood firm, shadows darkened his crystalline blue eyes as he found his resolve on a newspaper with his face, printed in red on the photo was "traitor". It seemed that everything he once protected was against him. He felt used, distant and hardened.

Embers of fierce remorse kindled in him, but Steve never showed it. He had control, and the value of his friendship with Bucky, the truth that Stark tried to bury down to preserve a future. The turning of events were turning the world into negative shades of black. Shadows were hidden in a false light and good people, who carried the will to fight, were becoming prisoners under the Human Resignation Act. Evil was loitering, waiting for the moment to seize control once the obstacles—The Avengers—were erased.

He released a deep breath, pressing his lips into a flat line. "You're gonna arrest me for trying to save lives from Stark's warpath, Natasha?"

"You have a choice, Captain Rogers. Either you trade in your shield or you will pay the consequences for serving in uniform above the law." His hands were clasped behind his back, the muzzle of the gun felt like a cold wake of tension as he stood rigid in the paleness of morning light that reflected in his eyes. He refused to surrender. "You can't win this war, Steve."

"I'm not trying to build an army," Steve drew out in a compressed breath, setting his jaw into a solid clench of discontentment. "You're on the losing side. Tony's iron soldiers will fall one at a time. Don't make the choice to follow his orders." He spun around, and seized her wrist in one pulse of friction, pulling her arm into a firm hold at her side. His blue eyes burned with moisture as intense flares scolded her leveled stare. He couldn't look at her without feeling a pent of anger rising in his veins. He was very much awake from the suspended daze Stark's resentment had forced him into after certain past secrets had been unlocked. Dark shades of betrayal and guilt blotted out the light; he was alone to defend the free world, no longer holding back. "Find a way to win in the shadows instead of pulling the trigger."

Recognizing the depth of emotion in his baritone, Natasha recoiled a step back; the dominance between them was becoming addicting to harbor within. She couldn't evade giving him a confession that weighed against her chest. His clear azure eyes held prisms of regrets as she dared to look into his unwavering gaze. "You know there's no winning side in this war," her words were sharp and cool, but faltering as she glanced down at the white star insignia of his shield. There was shadow casting over the alloy, darkening the red and blue paint as tension mounted like a barrier among them. "Steve, why keep fighting..."

"It's the right thing to do, Natasha," he returned with a leveled hitch in his tone, his breath was laborious from exhaustion. Natasha couldn't stare at his battered face, not the visages of pain that were embedded into the chiseled lines of his broad jaw. Patches of dried blood smeared over his serrated cheekbones and the full swell of his lips held a pastel color of pink as his guarded stance tipped off balance. He tried to ground his impregnable weight firm over the floorboards. He wasn't Captain America anymore, just a stark reflection of a degraded illusion that mirrored broken defiance. His compromising actions no longer gave him a free hand to defend the right of liberty; he was a defiled soldier.

Natasha tried to avert her gaze away, but it was a damning process that she couldn't abate, not when she felt stripped down to expose her guarded feelings. Steve never sent judgment her way, he was reserved against her choice to step over the division line Tony had drawn out between them.

Everything felt neutral as both sides: Team Iron Man and Team Captain America held secures and ideals to create a free world without a corrupt government-hand controlling their civil rights to morality. Tony had fallen into disillusion after Ultron's destructive conquest, he had used order and imprisonment as his safeguard to prevent another global threat and redeem his mistakes. He installed an underwater prison—The Raft—and left an empty cell open for Bucky Barnes to fall into. That was Steve's reason to create division—it wasn't freedom in his eyes.

To the dismay of his choice of moral defiance, Steve became a fugitive, protecting his best friend from becoming a part of the Raft's collection. "You wanted to pick the winning side..."A faint wavering of discontentment emitted from the back of his strained throat. His azure eyes leveled on hers; changeless and unyielding. "Nat, don't become a soldier for Stark. I know it's not what you think is right—it's what you think has to be..."

"Stop making this hard, Steve," she shot back, holding her pistol with a steady clutch of her hand. This wasn't something she had wanted to fight against, he never belonged to her. He was a traitor—a defender of false hope that was reserved in the faith he carried for Bucky Barnes. Biting hard on her lip, she tore her teal eyes away, russet strands of her long hair shadowed her paling face as the cold brush of winter graced her exposed skin from the cracked window. "Don't do this to us," she whispered in a broken pitch, allowing pain to settle on her rigid bones. "Prove to me that I can still trust you...Hand over your shield, please?"

Steve narrowed his dismal gaze, blood coated over his bruised lips, as he tasted the sourness running down his tensed throat. With an effort of strength, he leveled his fierce azure eyes at her, trying to reach her logic with a measure of reverence in his strained baritone. "You know that I can't do that, Nat," he returned in an evened hitch, holding back the sting of his remorse. "I've come too far to end this...I'm not willing to take a risk because we're more than friends." Natasha remained unnaturally silent. "So go ahead and pull that trigger. Prove to Stark that you're on his side..."

Abandoning all regrets, Natasha clicked her spiked boots another inch closer to him, gravity forced her to become off balance as her gloved hand raised unabashedly to his sculpted chest. The embossed chrome star has always served as a center point for her redemption. Finally, she felt compelled to part her lips, a slow breath escaped as she met the stillness of his blue irises, and returned his question with a disguised confession. It hurt, but in some ways, it felt that what she was about to say had become necessary. "You and I both know what's at stake, Steve. Many lives are tangled up in this mess because you wanted to save Bucky."

Natasha sucked in an another despondent breath, the taste of venomous acid scraped against her throat and she looked down at his shield that was no longer a symbol of the spirit of liberty, but treason. "I know he's your friend, but what's he's done has given him a death sentence. You can't save him from this storm, Rogers."

"Buck is one of the few good men left to fight for, he's all I got left," Steve clenched his jaw, tightly, in defense of protecting his best friend from the new order that was built from Tony Stark's betrayal when truth revealed certain ghosts that should have been left in the dark.

Nobody had expected that everything would fall apart into chaos, ruining trust among friends and turning them into rival enemies on the tipping sides of the scale of justice. It happened, and now Captain America was public enemy number one: a betrayer and opposing force to governmental structures. He refused to pick a fight with Tony. Not when they were still friends...Avengers in his eyes. He guessed that he was blinded by irrelevant disillusion of what he thought could be worth believing in.

'We can build a better world...'

Feeling a sense that they are reaching the end game, Steve involuntarily stepped aside, prepared to lift up his shield from the table. Natasha saw the stir of emotions flaring in his blue eyes, it's unyielding determination that can't be compromised. An unnerving sense ignited in his chest, as the ache that forced him to surrender a benevolent look back at her. He had to leave her behind. He made a promise to fight for her, to give her a reason to look back on this moment.

She had been cheated, following twisted and false orders, because her past was on the verge to condemn her on the gallows that Stark had lined up for those who have no desire to burn in the firestorm of his mistakes. Peace had always come at a price...This time, blood held a higher value than numbers.

"Steve, don't walk away from this..." Natasha urged, trying to reset the orders she received, her hand lowers to her side, her fingers curl into a tight fist. Resistance was all she wanted to feel.

Absently her hand brushes over the holster strapped over the curve of her hip, her pulse vibrates as she tries to control herself. The recesses of her mind prevent her from taking aim at him. It became irritating for her to hold back, to disobey her orders. This irrational act of hesitation proved to him that she is still on his side, just in the shadows. Gritting her teeth, Natasha allowed her gaze to drift away from him. This wasn't what she wanted, engaging him in the cross hairs. "I can't hold a gun to you, Steve."

Steve breathed steadily, knowing that Natasha would somehow find a way to bring herself back to the light. He took a moment to recapture her angelic, dangerous visage; the silken hue of her alabaster skin, untouchable and barely exposed to the light of dawn. Her blazing russet strands of hair twirling against her cheek, every color of red was a thread in each ringlet.

Mostly he stared into her eyes, blue and green fused together into an icy teal. Everything faded as the haunting vestiges of Bucky's soulless, deaden pale blue eyes plagued his disturbed thoughts, rimmed with smudged kohl, and the metallic sheen of the bionic arm. He couldn't allow Bucky to face elimination, not when there's a chance to redeem their lost friendship—their brotherhood. He refused to waste another second dwelling on the past.

Picking up his shield into the firm clutch of his gloved fingers, the super-soldier slowly walked away to the balcony door leading to the stairway. He'd walked alone on the battlefield before, plenty of times. Only this time it became painful for him to say goodbye to her. All the moments they had, slowly fell into a distant memory that would eventually burn under the crimson shadow. He wished that he could hold onto her, face everything with her, but nothing felt secure to consider her the right partner. He had dreamt of living a new existence with her, without the guns and shields; maybe as something more than what they could expect.

"I'm one who needs to pay, Natasha. It's my fault. Not Bucky's," he admitted with a sincere edge in his raspy voice. His eyes narrowed, and his broad jaw tensed as he gulped down, and kept his body still against the gusts of wind. Natasha watched intently, her dismal gaze boldly trails onto ruffles in his blond hair, as short unkempt tresses fell over his furrowed brow. He looked suddenly disheveled by choice. He wasn't America's champion, for the ultimate soldier…he was just a man fighting obstructive forces on a dark road that prevented him from embracing the light. "I can't be a hero anymore because it's just not good enough to fight for what people used to believe in... I'm a soldier and when I walk out of this place, that's how I want to be seen as..."

"Steve..."

He shook his head, dismissing her beckoning call. "No, this is my choice, Nat. I'll admit not my best one, but I have to do what feels right—"

"You mean trying to fix Bucky's mistakes, by putting your own life on the line?" she spoke darkly, cutting him off with unfaltering diction evident in her low voice, barely filled with empathy. "Isn't that the honest truth, Captain Rogers?"

"Bucky is my best friend," Steve declared evenly, not taking a breath to hesitate an answer. "He deserves a chance to know that he never pulled the trigger on those lives. It was HYDRA. Not him."

Natasha folded her arms over her breasts dismissively, leveling her glare at him. A spike of resentment jolted in her veins, and she felt the Odessa scar burning with pressure, almost like the bullet was still melding in her flesh. A cold reminder of the Winter Soldier's true nature. With that, her tone became offensive, lacing with spite. "Do you remember what Barnes did to me? All the lives he extracted..."

She trained her eyes down at his torso, imaging the welts and gashes left by assassin's metal fist. Her heart clenched. Steve needed to wake up; the Winter Soldier was manipulating him, playing out a false performance to dissuade him from the truth—that people don't really change. They can only make good choices, and sometimes results aren't enough to prove that good still exists in monsters.

At this moment of breaking through a wall of tension, Natasha made the defining choice to stop him. With tentative steps, she breached his space, holding nothing back, no matter how unreachable he seemed to her. "I think you've forgotten about a lot of things, Steve. Including that he almost killed you, like every other target written on his file."

"Enough, Natasha," he grounded flatly, his voice wavered with a ridden state of soul crushing exhaustion. "It hurts to see him so broken," he glanced around the despaired safe house that Bucky had taken refuge in for a few months. Scattered pages ripped out of notebooks were stashed into cupboards with scrawls of Bucky's chaotic thoughts and confessions that bled out over those discarded pages. "They took everything from him," he fused his lips into a taut line, holding back angry tears. "I bet he fought hard when I couldn't do that for him."

The weight of his despairing words breached her emotions. Natasha effortlessly moved towards him, and lifted her hand, reaching to grasp his broad shoulder. The choice to breach with contact seemed delicate to consider, as she felt distant with him, but then again, his reason to detached himself from the Avengers was pure and filled with heart. He wanted Bucky to reclaim the value of redemption, not become a prisoner at the Raft.

Natasha knew that Tony wouldn't dismantle himself from the path of vengeance for that brutal and heartless assassination of Howard and Maria Stark. "Don't do this to yourself, Steve," she whispered, holding his deepened stare of slate-blue, as tears blurred the clarity of reflection. "You know that what happened to Bucky was out of your hands..." She declared evenly, gesturing a hand to the pages and notebooks scattered on the countertop. "It wasn't your fault. "

"I let Buck fall into HYDRA's hands..." He pulled out the engraved dog tags that held his best friend's name on the tarnished silver plates. Peggy had kept the remnant of his past secured in an envelope that she gave to him before she passed away. Clutching that chained necklace into the possessive strength of his fisted hand, Steve felt the plates gauge into his palm, using that recognition of pain as a form of guilt to remind him of the cold hard truth. "Everything that he is..." His throat seized up. "It's all my fault, Natasha."

"You're saving him now, Steve," Natasha returned in a light rasp, swiping a notebook off the counter and handed it to him. In that moment, his dispirited look speared through her defenses. "I think that counts as something."

He nodded in silence, grabbing his shield and fastened it over the buckled straps molded over the sculpted expanse of his back. "He's on the move, Nat, with a bullseye on his back. The longer he remains out there alone, the greater the chance that he winds up in someone else's crosshairs; and I'm not talking about Stark," the grim urgency in his tone was enough to remind her there were more interested parties involved here, some of which operated from the shadows too dark to be seen through. The imploring look in his deep blue eyes entreated her to see his desperation, even if she held enmity towards Bucky for their past encounters. "He needs me…"

Fighting against the residual ache in her chest, Natasha surrendered her words to the measure of dejection that ghosted from the embers of remorse doused in her veins. She watched restrained emotion recollecting in his reserved blue eyes, as he stared back at her, waiting for her to release him from the hollow silence that wouldn't fracture apart. Like a strike of lightning, she crashed into him. She felt his chiseled bulk flexing against her lithe body as charges of ravaging desires fueled her heart, to end the false hope of embracing a new life: a rebirth of existence without shadows of red holding everything back.

She needed to know that Steve wanted the same dream before they branded a promise. They needed to rise above this division, embrace the pureness of trust and remain grounded against the intolerable voids that forced them to drift away. Closing her eyes, her thoughts chased the speeding pulse of her heartbeat as a cool breath brushed over the strong clench of his jaw. All emotions ran on the tipping edge to betray her stoic demeanor. She was content in this shared moment with him, no distractions, just silence and his warmth. "One day you won't be alone, Steve."

He had said nothing at first, the surprise of her sudden embrace had claimed all semblance of a response from him. The floral scent of her silky red tresses stirred him, along with the fulfilling sensation of having her close that he didn't hesitate to enclose her in his arms. His eyes fluttered closed then as a soft sigh brushed past his lips. It was bittersweet—to have her so close but still feel so far away due to the sides they had chosen. For a short yet significant moment, he struggled with himself; the weight of his mission would lead him down a path there would be no turning back from. Lives would be changed, friendships tested, partnerships broken. Natasha was the one thing—the one person—he didn't want to lose to this conflict. The very thought of it opened a void within that was too familiar and dreadful.

Steve didn't want to attach himself to that promise, it was a repeated echo that he couldn't grasp.

"I'm not alone right now." He spoke gently to her, his lips pressed into a thin line as a quiver of ache ran through them. There was much he wanted to tell her—how important she was to him and how much he actually cared and felt about her. He hadn't just come to appreciate her being by his side over the past four years, he had come to thrive on it. The years working with her, knowing her, had helped him to rise above the bitter despair of feeling displaced in the modern world without a shred of his past to grasp onto. It was ironic, that despite how different they were and their histories, they both brought something into each other's lives that they each sorely needed…except for the one thing that mattered most. The one thing that had gone unspoken of in their profound and intimate bond, but it was always there, Steve knew.

They both felt it, they just never acted on it.

As the gravity of his situation and her close proximity began to weigh on him, gently he eased her back so that their eyes could once again meet while remaining close in each other's arms. "And there's something I've been waiting a long time to do." He confessed with his deep baritone, full of warmth that radiated through his chest as time froze into a blur of regeneration. Tentatively, his gloved hand moved with idle grace over the curved shape of her hips, as Natasha gave him an opening purchase to a kiss.

Hesitation was teeming to the surface, and his pulse sped into notches. He breathed in deep, stowing down all reservations to avoid giving into a rash compromise of inferred devotion. He tilted his head to look into her eyes, the intensity in her watery green orbs was spellbinding as they gazed searchingly—emotionally into his own. It shattered any lingering uncertainty inside of him. Their closeness once again began to increase as his gaze shifted from her anticipated stare to the lush of her slightly parted red lips. A brush of air caressed his mouth as he leaned downwards and finally, with a gradual and conditional effort, he claimed her lips in an avid and passionate embrace.

Natasha followed his silent command, a pulse of heat swelled fluidly against her mouth as she caught the softness of his full lips, and felt faint breaths grow into feverish surges of devotion. She accepted his kiss completely, exchanging her equal devotion into a tender collide that felt limitless to break away from. She had kissed many unjust men in her lifetimes but it was all for the mission.

What Natasha was feeling in this powerful engaging moment with the super soldier was a measure of liberating purity beyond compromise. Her icy heart was sailing each time her urging lips attached to his, and the dominating kiss grew deeper as the vibrations of their lips revved into submission, and the flow of blood solidified in their veins. She could taste a salty tang coating her mouth as the wet heat of their mashed lips became an intense and slick burn that almost numbed their senses.

All restrictions had been diminished as control became favorable to wield and his large hands clung to her with encompassing force, grounding her against him. Chests heaved as breath drained and the mounting guilt they both carried dissolved as they became lost into an exploration of something that still could be real to challenge if they braved enough to charge through it.

With another recoil of a single breath, Steve captured her lips one last time, the soft compression of his heady kiss was visceral and endearing to claim as they both felt strong enough to finish the mission that awaited behind the division lines. It took fighting resistance to end the kiss, as their bodies merged into a solid piece of muscle, fire and strength. He wrapped her into the secured clench of his arms and whispered as she stilled against his broad chest. She listened to his heartbeat become distant. "See you on the other side, Nat?"

She wasn't certain if tomorrow they would standing on parallel lines of the battlefield; after feeling the shielding warmth of his body leaving hers, Natasha knew what she would be fighting to reclaim, and in a soft echo that Steve easily heard return back to him, as she grasped onto a small thread of hope, for she was Russian after all. "Maybe..."

{The End}