hoo boy. here i am folks, with a fic that i promised to write ages ago. just like like ships in the night, this is what i'd like to image the aftermath of civil war to look like, if marvel loved me and even remotely cared about sharon. this fic isn't connected to that one, but like that one, it's rife with headcanons. it's been a long while in the making, so hopefully you guys enjoy it!

So, help me decide
Help me to make up,
Make up my mind
Wouldn't that save you?
Wouldn't that save you?
Wouldn't that save you?
- Matthew Perryman Jones, Save You

Steve says, "They're going to come looking for you."

Sharon says, "I know."

She means it. She sees the consequences and thinks, I can do this. Whatever happens, I can face it. I can be strong. And then she does the one thing that she swore she'd never do, the one thing that she's never done before: she runs.

Sharon runs; not because she has to, not because she feels like she doesn't have another choice. It's not like she can't lie, can't cover up the truth of everything that has happened with Steve. Everything that she'd done for Steve, no matter how much she tells herself it was for the cause, for the mission. Because no one ever gave her any orders to do what she did. She came up with it all on her own. (Lying to Ross would be easy, simple. She's done it plenty, and she could do it plenty more, if she wanted to. None of them at the CIA take her seriously anyway. She's just another SHIELD reject to them, someone to file paperwork and buy coffee.)

Sharon wants to believe that she's a good person, that she'd have helped the right side regardless, even if it wasn't Steve. But Tony was there, and she could've joined his side, too, done what the CIA told her to. And she didn't. So now she has to live with that, live with the choices that she's made. She has to live with the fact that she hasn't spoken to Tony for weeks since what happened in Germany.

She'd thought that not running was what made her more than just a spy; what made her a SHIELD agent, different than someone like Natasha. But now, the lines between the two are so blurry that Sharon can't even tell the difference anymore. Sharon runs because she's followed rules her entire life, and it's sort of freeing to let go.

Sure, she's challenged authority here and there. She wouldn't be a Carter if she hadn't. But besides that, Sharon's done everything right. She got accepted to the Academy on merit alone, changing her name and fudging her family history. Aunt Peggy hadn't even known that she was applying.

Which, to be fair: Aunt Peggy knew. Becoming a SHIELD agent was the only thing Sharon had talked about her entire life, of course Aunt Peggy knew. She wouldn't be Aunt Peggy if she didn't.

But she had't stopped Sharon, either, hadn't told her not to do it, hadn't even revealed an inkling of her knowledge to Sharon. And Sharon had gotten in. She'd gotten in and she became the best damn SHIELD agent that she could've been, whatever that was worth now. SHIELD is basically gone, the Avengers are broken up, and Sharon's jobless and (probably) homeless. She has money saved up, but not enough. If she'd been speaking to Tony, she knows that he'd offer her help, but that obviously isn't an option anymore. Not that she'd ever taken his money, anyway.

She hasn't heard from Steve in weeks, either. From anyone, really, not just Steve and Tony. It's too dangerous to be in contact with known fugitives, but then again, she's a fugitive now, too, isn't she?

In the first few weeks after Leipzig, Sharon spends a lot of time flitting from town to town across Europe, through cafes and foreign markets, hostels and barely held together apartments for rent. She becomes, in essence, exactly the type of person that Bucky had had to become after he'd escaped the fall of the Trisk. Of course it makes Sharon sick to her stomach to compare herself to him, to pretend like her situation is in any way similar to his, to what he'd had to go through.

She's nowhere near as strong as him, or as brave. She's a little girl again, running away from home, pretending like she knows what she's doing.

Planes are too dangerous, public transportation less so, and any type of Uber-like service out of the question. The last thing she needs is someone tracking her every move, even if she had dumped her phone, stomped to death, in a trashcan at the Leipzig airport. She cuts her hair, dyeing it a shade of ashy-blonde that reminds her too much of her mother, and finds the closest person to the airport who'll take her across the border without asking too many questions.

Sharon's thankful for the millions of languages that the Academy had forced her to learn over her four years when she makes it to Poland. Even more thankful to Bobbi for forcing her to actually study them all back when they were roommates there, when she had nothing better to do than rebel and pretend to be braver than she was, braver than she ever has been. She has no idea where she's even going, but she knows that she can't stay in one place, and she can't go home, not yet.

If there's even still a home for her to go to.

She spends a week in an older woman's apartment in Ukraine, who feeds her and lets her use the shower as many times as she wants without charging Sharon extra. She tells Sharon, in her accented English, about a daughter that's Sharon's age away at university, and Sharon misses her Aunt Peggy like someone cut a hole in her.

Vlada Petrovna makes Sharon tea and feeds her like she thinks Sharon has never eaten before in her life, lunch and dinner and what seems like hundreds of snacks in between. The tea makes her think of Aunt Peggy, how she'd always put milk in Sharon's tea even when Angie wrinkled her nose and said that that was disgusting. ("There's nothing a cup of tea can't fix, love," Peggy used to say. She had made Sharon a cup the day her first boyfriend had broken up with her.)

Aunt Peggy had indulged Sharon's every whim without question, Tony following right along with her, because they were family and that's what family did for one another.

Sharon tries to hold back tears when Vlada Petrovna brings up Sokovia and the Accords. She's a political woman, Sharon's temporary landlord is, despite the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. She's as sharp as the knives that she uses to cook, catches every little movement that Sharon makes, quietly cataloging it and using it, in her own way, to help Sharon heal.

The problem is, Sharon doesn't think she's ever going to be whole again, not in the way that she used to be.

She watches the Ukrainian news every night and thinks about how everything that she's done, everything that the Avengers did, it wasn't in some vacuum. And it wasn't a one-time thing, either. Her heart is torn between Steve and Tony, understanding both sides for wanting to sign the Accords, for the first time in her life not knowing what's right.

That third night, two weeks after she'd left Steve with his promises and a jagged, tiny piece of her heart under a bridge in Germany, she watches the news and cries. For herself, for Tony, for Aunt Peggy, for Steve, hell—even for SHIELD. Because when you're in it, when you're there and you're fighting, it feels like you're the only person that exists in the entire world, you and the people around you.

But you're not, they're not, and everything that they did is sending ripples and shocks and aftershocks across the world. Everything that she did. Sharon doesn't even know where they are, where any of them are, not Clint or Vision or Sam or Steve or Tony—god, Tony. He was her person, you know? Before she had Bobbi, before she had Natasha, she had Tony and the family that Aunt Peggy tried to make for them, after Howard and Maria died. She had Tony and she'd felt whole, like a child with a functional family, even if her mother didn't understand her and her father was too oblivious to try.

And now she doesn't even have that. This is what she'd gotten for following her heart over her head, this mess, with no phone and no internet, no contacts to reach out to, to see what happened to the people that were hurt; no trying to fix it. Without technology and her connections in the CIA, all she does is think, day after day.

It's all she can do now: think. Think about Aunt Peggy, and how disappointed she probably is in Sharon, in the things that she's done. About Bobbi, and SHIELD—what her oldest friend is doing. They haven't spoken in years, not since the fall of the Trisk, but Sharon still thinks about her every day. They'd been such a pair back at the Academy, Agent 13 and Agent 19, roommates, friends, sparring partners.

Bobbi's probably doing her best to repair SHIELD, which is more than Sharon can say for herself. She had felt like such a fraud, showing her face at Peggy's funeral, when she knew full well that she'd fled to the CIA like a coward. She didn't stick around, didn't try to repair what had broken. What her aunt had built, all those years ago.

And she's fleeing again, now, no matter how many times that she tells herself that it's necessary or that she had no other choice.

Sharon turns off the TV and decides that she's tired of running.

Sharon stays two more days, planning, asking Vlada Petrovna about the different types of transportation here in Ukraine, learning anything she can, before she leaves again. This time, though, she has a destination in mind. This time, she's going to make it right. And if she gets arrested as a consequence, then so be it.

Steve and Tony had risked everything, everything, for what they believed in. The least she can do is exactly the same.

She makes it back to America in one piece, if not a bit greasy and worse for wear. She'd found a guy, remembering some old contacts of Natasha's, that specialized in creating fake documents. She need a new passport and identification, now that she not only looked different, but needed to become a completely new person. The name that she'd settled on felt symbolic, in a way, a nod to Steve and her work for SHIELD, even though SHIELD means nothing to the world now, not really.

SHIELD is gone, as far as she knows. She'd left and never looked back, no matter how much she wanted to. That's what she's good at, isn't it? Good at cutting people off, good at closing herself off, focusing on the mission and nothing else. What was her mission, now? What was she even trying to do?

Sharon doesn't even know.

The worker at the gate asks Sharon if she's in America for business or pleasure.

"Business," she tells him, ignoring the way that his eyebrows shove into one other at her dirt-stained face and ratty skirt. He clucks his tongue and stamps her (fake) passport, reading off her (fake) name.

"Welcome to the United States, Kate Dawson," he says, waving her through.

Sharon doesn't go home, not right away. She doesn't even know if her apartment in DC is still there, after all of this. If the CIA hadn't raided it, looking for her.

She'd landed at JFK with one hundred euros, all that was left of the money she'd managed to pull from her accounts before cutting up her credit cards and throwing away every last piece of identification with her name on it. All that was left after endless drives with handsy cabbies and greedy motel owners.

Everywhere she goes, there's whispers about it. A "Civil War", the media has decided to call it, something that twists Sharon up inside and makes her see red. They really love to do that, don't they? Make things black and white for people. Good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, even a turncoat traitor (Sharon misses Natasha with her whole heart, wishes there was some way that she could just get in touch with her); "Team Tony" and "Team Steve", as if actual people hadn't died for this. So many innocent people, King T'Chaka and all of those innocents at the UN, countless US soldiers and government agents. Good people, innocent people, and they feasted on it like the harpies that they were.

There's shots of empty holding cells on the TV screens at the airport, front page newspaper articles with Tony and Steve's faces plastered all over them, pieces titled "Where Are The Avengers Now?". Piece by piece, Sharon puts the story together; ties all of the information into a neat little narrative, fills in the gaps of her knowledge after she'd gotten out of Germany. There's a particularly compelling article that she reads by a woman named Karen Page that seems to be a bright star in the sea of filth that the other newspapers and gossip rags spew. It's so simple, so elegantly done, that Sharon wants to meet this Karen girl and give her a huge hug.

Of course there's more to this than two different sides, more than different ideologies at war. She had lived it, had been there to see Barnes' devastated face when he'd been captured. She doesn't think she'll ever forget it, the way that he'd looked, locked up without a single shred of hope in the world.

It's why she needs to do something, to make something right, to find Tony and try to explain herself, try to make things better. She just has no idea how she's going to do it.

Sharon wanders through Brooklyn that first day, heart clenching as she looks for the street that Steve used to live on. She spends a whole day sitting on the bench in front of his old place, figuring out what to do. She doesn't know how to go about fixing it, fixing this entire thing, trying to find Tony or Steve or anyone, really.

Days go by and she has no place to sleep, sneaks naps on public benches and in libraries. More often than not, Sharon sits in tiny booths in cheap coffee shops and finds herself thinking about Steve, about the way his hands had shook against her back, the smell of sweat and fresh air and something uniquely him that was there when he'd kissed her.

She thinks about how it's partially her fault that he and Bucky and Sam are probably holed up somewhere, moving from place to place with targets on their backs, all because she hadn't listened to her boss. In her defense, the insinuations that Ross had made had been vile, but now that she thinks back on it, he was sort of right. Maybe some part of her did want Steve, and that was why she'd done what she did.

She'll never forgive herself for it, for losing sight of what was important. It had felt right at the time, but what had it led to? Sharon Carter, fake name and all, all alone in New York with no one and nothing to help her.

Steve and Bucky and Sam, somewhere in Europe, maybe lost, maybe hurt, trying to pull themselves back together.

Tony Stark licking his wounds back at Avengers Tower, half of his team gone and his best friend severely injured. She can picture him now, sulking, just like he used to when they were younger. He'd always had a particular proclivity towards brooding, Sharon remembers, and she knows that it's what's made him so attractive to women over the years.

She knows that Rhodey's probably with him. There's no way that Tony would let his best friend suffer on his own, especially after what had happened in Germany.

Especially now that Pepper's gone.

Sharon shakes herself off, clearing her mind of all thoughts of family and emotion, trying to think of her next logical step. She steels herself, counts the meager amount of money left in her pocket, and heads towards Manhattan.

It seems like the place hasn't changed at all since the last time that Sharon was there, a few months before Aunt Peggy made the decision to move to the home in DC. She remembers the address exactly, burned into her brain from repeating it over and over when she was a toddler: 890 5th Avenue, Manhattan, New York, 10021. The house that her Uncle Howard had given Peggy back after the war, when they were still trying to pull their lives together.

Sharon thinks that that's exactly what she needs, too. A place to figure things out, to find out who she is and what she wants. A place to heal.

Nearing the front of the building, Sharon can see that all of the flowers that Angie had planted around the front and sides of the house have long withered away, the windows slightly rusted. Sharon hopes against hope that the key is in the same place that they'd always left it, hidden under a fake bottom in the mailbox near the front door.

She reaches in, nails digging against the fake bottom and tugging it out. She has to stand up on her tiptoes to see inside, and a sigh of relief leaves her body when she sees the old key there, slightly discolored with age, but safe and sound.

Turning the key in the lock, Sharon steps inside and turns the light on, and—

Freezes instantly. She can tell immediately that something is wrong, even though she hasn't stepped foot in this house in years. The blinds are open, and she knows for certain that Angie hasn't been in in at least a year (she'd passed last December). Something about the place feels off, and Sharon's breath hitches in her throat as she tries to put together the reason why.

Creeping down the main hallway, she pauses near the entrance of each room, flicking her eyes over the old, dusty, covered furniture, the mothballs in the corners, searching for an intruder. The place has been abandoned for a while, but the deed is still in the Stark family name, and Sharon supposes that someone could've found out; a fangirl, someone with not so simple intentions, or worse, Hydra.

She moves towards the large living room, cursing the fact that she hadn't found time to secure a weapon in the days that she's been skulking around New York. A creak in the room makes her stop in her tracks, and she evaluates her options. Looking around, she debates what she can use as a weapon. Angie's mom's old candelabra sits on a table near the entrance to the kitchen and she snatches it up, moving back towards the living room.

Her ratty left sneaker makes a squeak on the hardwood floor and Sharon silently curses, hoping she hasn't given herself away. And that's when the intruder speaks.

"Whoever you are, I'm seriously not in the mood." Sharon's eyes widen, recognizing the arrogance in the voice (and the sass) at once. It's a voice that used to yell at her to get out of his room, and the same one that had read to her from textbooks to help her fall asleep.

"Tony?" she yelps in surprise, jumping out of her hiding spot behind the door and into his view.

"Sharon?" He looks almost as surprised as she feels. Sharon feels something swoop low in her stomach as she takes a hesitant step closer to him. She doesn't know if he's angry with her, if he ever was angry with her, if he even knows that she's the one that stole Steve's shield and Sam's armor from the government, if—

The breath whooshes out of her chest as Tony, taking three quick bounds towards her, crushes Sharon against his chest and wraps his arms around her. Well. That settles that.

They stand there for what could be hours but is probably minutes, Sharon burying her head against Tony's shoulder, breathing in the familiar metal and gasoline smell of him, the way that she used to when she was a kid and he came back from his workshop after being gone all day. She feels herself shudder, the emotions hitting her like a wave after she's tried so hard to keep them at bay. But now that she's here, now that he's here, she can't help it.

She lets out a small, surprised sob, barely more than a hiccup, and digs her fingers into the back of his t-shirt. Just for a minute, Sharon lets herself shed the tears that she's held back since that night in Ukraine over a month ago. "Hey," Tony says soothingly, "come on, Share-bear, it's okay. Don't cry."

Sharon pulls away from him, hands clutching his shoulders. She doesn't miss the way that he flinches when she does it, so she lightens her grip, painfully aware of what he's been through. Studying his face, which is now blessedly free from any bruises, she asks him, suspiciously, "What are you doing here?"

Tony lets out a soft laugh. "Me? What are you doing here?"

"I had nowhere else to go."

It's quiet. Sharon feels like she can hear her own heart thudding in the silence of the room, waiting for the blow—Tony snapping to his senses, remembering what she'd done, ready to kick her out of his father's old home.

"Where were you, Sharon? I looked for you, but I couldn't find you anywhere. I was going out of my mind. Steve sent me a letter—"

"A letter? What did—"

"I'll let you read it later, but where did you—"

It's so easy with with him, it's always been easy. She can't help but crack a tiny smile at the way that they slip back into their old patterns, finishing each other's sentences and immediately understanding what it is that the other is trying to convey.

This next part, however, isn't so easy. Tony had stayed. Tony had fought until the very end, and Sharon had scampered off like a wounded puppy, even though nothing had even happened to her. She thought that she could handle it, but she'd been so lost. She had told Steve that she would be okay, but she wasn't, none of them were. She doesn't even know where to start, how to explain it to him. "I don't—in Europe. I was in Europe. I didn't know where to go, I thought you were mad at me, I thought I ruined everything. I don't… I don't know," she finishes lamely. "I was so scared."

That was it, wasn't it? What she had refused to admit to herself, to admit to anyone. They let go of each other, Tony inspecting her for injuries in the same way that she had done for him. That was what family did: they looked out for each other. They always did.

"I don't even know why I'm here," Tony starts. "I just thought, if there was even a small chance that you could be here, I had to try. I can't believe you're actually here, that we actually ended up here after everything." A beat. "Come back with me," he tells her. "To Avengers Tower. We're missing half its tenants, anyway," he grins, but Sharon can tell that it's halfhearted. It lacks his usual acerbic wit, the joke falling flat.

Still, the offer is tempting. A warm bed, an entire floor to herself, delicious food and a shower whenever she wants them. It's more than she can say of her time overseas.

"So you're not mad?" she asks ruefully, and Tony laughs then, a real, warm laugh. She has a feeling that he probably hasn't laughed like that since Germany. Sharon knows that she hasn't. Tony reaches over and ruffles her hair, and for a second, Sharon's transported back in time to this same room, twenty years ago.

Aunt Peggy and Uncle Gabe cuddling on the couch, Aunt Angie baking cookies in the kitchen, and Sharon and Tony coloring on the rug, the fire blazing. Sharon had had Tony wrapped around her finger back then, she knows that now, but at the time she'd adored him, had felt so special whenever he agreed to do whatever it is that she wanted. She doesn't think she had a single bad thought about him until she was at least thirteen.

"I was never mad at you, Sharon," Tony says. "I don't know why you did what you did, but I know you, and I know you had a good reason for it." He pauses, reaches over to tug on a strand of her shorter curls. "That hair, on the other hand…"

Sharon snorts, smacking his hand away from her face. She lets out a sigh, tucking her arms into her armpits, a stance that makes her feel warm and safe in the cold, empty home. "Can you believe it?" she asks him, "A Stark and a Carter in this place again."

Tony's eyes are sad when they meet her own, but he manages to throw her a weak smile. "We're the only ones left." Sharon bites her lip, looks down at the floor. It's surreal to be back here, to think that she has a connection to a place as filled with history as this house is.

"You really want me to come with you?" she asks him, her shoulders still sense, as if she can't believe that he'd so quickly forgive her after everything.

"Don't be stupid, Share-bear, of course I do. Let's go home."

would it even be a fic by me if it didn't involve tony/sharon moments? probably not. there'll be more steve in the next chapter, i promise. this is more of a prologue chapter, the real action starts in the next one. i can't promise regular updates, since i'm in school, but i'll try my best. please let me know what you think of this!