A/N – So I haven't written for a while, and never for the Avengers. I think I last posted a story two years ago, so I'm hoping my writing has improved a little bit since then. I'll try to update as often as I can.
This chapter sort of flowed out of me, and we're starting just before the Avengers. Please review if you feel so inclined.

Disclaimer – I do not own anything you recognise. The Avengers and the characters therein, belong to Marvel.

Chapter One

The first thing Steve noticed about the doctor was that she looked too young to be there. Heck, she didn't look old enough to drink. Her dark brown hair was drawn back in a messy bun, a few stubborn curls falling onto her forehead and around her glasses, which she pushed up her nose as they slid down her pert, pointed nose. To Steve she looked like some sort of pixie, with her small hands, her cute nose and the fact she couldn't be taller than five-feet.

She trailed behind Director Fury, whose hands were clasped behind his back, surveying Steve with his one remaining eye.

'This is Doctor Nadia Paolera. She'll take care of you, Captain.' With a nod to Steve, and what seemed like a reassuring glance aimed at Doctor Paolera, he swept from the room, his black trench coat swishing behind him. The door closed and Doctor Paolera turned to look Steve in the eye for the first time since she'd entered the room.

Steve decided her eyes were liked storm clouds. Dark, grey, and mysterious. Wordlessly, she picked up the clipboard attached to the end of the hospital bed he was sitting on. She read the charts silently, lifting the paperwork and not saying a word. The clock ticked on the wall.

'You look a little too young to be a Doctor.' Steve blurted. Doctor Paolera looked up at him, staring him right in the eyes.

She replied, 'You look a little too young to be a World War II veteran.'

Steve was surprised at her comeback and could only gape wordlessly. His ability to speak to women hadn't improved in the last seventy-odd years.

She pulled a pen out of her lab coat pocket. 'Could you follow the light with your eyes please?' she asked, turning the small flashlight on. After a moment, she said, 'I graduated high school at fifteen. I was accepted into medical school on a scholarship soon afterwards and SHIELD recruited me right out of medical school. I'm twenty-four. I mostly work in the E.R at Bellevue Hospital. I only get called in when Fury wants me to do something off the record.'

'Fifteen?' Steve repeated. She had a slight accent that Steve couldn't place. Doctor Paolera shut the light off and unlooped her stethoscope.

'I have a high IQ. I was bored in high-school and I always wanted to help people growing up. So, I became a doctor. Breathe in, please.'

Steve nodded. 'So what did you do to catch SHIELD's attention?'

The corner of Doctor Paolera's mouth twitched upwards as if she were going to smile. 'I have a few talents. One of them, it seems, is making sure a super soldier from 1945, who was frozen in ice, is alright to leave the hospital after his final assessment.'

Steve shifted a little, uncomfortable suddenly. She put the stethoscope away and picked up the clipboard. 'Yes it's been…an experience.'

She clicked her pen and began scribbling notes. 'Must be like waking up on a different planet.' she said.

Steve stared at her. 'Yes, ma'am. Exactly.'

Doctor Paolera laughed. 'You don't need to call me that, although it's very refreshing.' She stowed away her pen in her pocket and tucked the clipboard against her chest. 'You can just call me Nadia.'

'All due respect, ma'am, but when it comes to doctors, it seems wrong to call them by their first names.' Steve said, standing up from the bed.

'Well, then, Captain,' She stressed the word, smiling and pushing her glasses up her nose again, 'I am clearing you as medically fit. All your bloodwork is good and your heart and lungs are working fine.'

Steve hesitated. What now? He doubted his apartment would still be available. And it's not like he had friends to stay with. This was a completely different world than he was used to.

Doctor Paolera noticed his hesitation. 'Look. I don't know what you're going through. Nobody does. So, there's no right or wrong way to take your next step. But whether you want to or not, you have to. My advice? Make one decision at a time and don't rush.'

Steve stood up with an almost inaudible sigh. He looked down at her. She was taller than he originally thought, the top of her head coming to his shoulder. 'I need to place to stay.'

The door swung open and Fury walked in, glancing at them both before settling his gaze on Steve. 'We've organised a small apartment for you, Captain. Nothing too flashy, but you'll be comfortable. We left a few files and pulled some things from storage for you.' He paused. 'Doctor Paolera, I assume this means that you've officially cleared him?'

'Yes.'

'Then would you please see the Captain out and show him his new apartment? I need to see to something elsewhere.'

'Yes, sir.'

Fury nodded respectfully at Steve. 'Captain.'

'Sir.' Steve inclined his head and Fury left the room as quickly as he entered. 'Is he always like that?'

'No.' Doctor Paolera shrugged out of her lab coat and draped it over her arm. Instead of scrubs underneath, she was wearing jeans, battered sneakers and a button up blouse. She grinned at Steve. 'Sometimes he gets grumpy. Come on.' She waved a hand for him to follow her.

He trailed behind her, glancing at all the offices, labs and jumping out of the way when agents dressed in black suits ran past, talking quickly into their headsets. Doctor Paolera picked up a small messenger's bag from the front desk and then walked out onto the busy New York street.

'Are you a SHIELD agent?' Steve asked when they paused at a cross walk. She shook her head, looking amused.

'Oh, no, definitely not. I'm more of a consultant.'

'And…just what is SHIELD? Nobody will give me a straight answer.' Steve added, annoyed. Doctor Paolera bit her lip as they crossed the road.

'After the war was over, Howard Stark, Colonel Phillips and Peggy Carter decided that there should be some kind of system in place. People who could deal with the strange, mysterious and taboo. To protect people from threats and, if they had to, neutralise them.' She glanced up at Steve. 'A lot of people think they chose the acronym 'shield' for you. So that you could be part of saving the world, even if you were gone.'

Steve was silent for a beat. 'What happened after I…went under?'

'Well, we defeated the Germans eventually. Hitler committed suicide rather than be captured. But the Japanese didn't surrender until the Allies dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.' She shuddered and Steve didn't ask what she meant. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. They walked in silence.

'Did you even hesitate?' she asked suddenly. Steve started.

'What?'

'When you realised that people were in danger and that to save them you had to sacrifice yourself, did you hesitate? Knowing that if you did it, you would never go home?'

Steve shook his head. 'No. Not for a second ma'am.'

She peered at him curiously from behind those dark rimmed glasses. Her grey eyes gave Steve the impression she was seeing right through him. 'You really are one of a kind, aren't you, Captain?'

Steve grinned, shrugging. 'I'm just a kid from Brooklyn.' Doctor Paolera laughed and they walked in silence for a while.

'Where are you from?' Steve asked after a while, his hands in his pockets.

'All over really. My parents died when I was little. I went into the foster system. I was lucky. When I graduated early and got a scholarship, my foster parents let me go away to college. So long as they got that cheque in the mail, they would have let me run wild.' She smirked. 'Which I did, anyway.'

'No husband?'

She scoffed. 'God, no.'

'Oh.'

'Oh?" she repeated. 'Is that surprising?'

'Well, I just figured…' Steve babbled feeling his face flush as the Doctor smiled a little sadly.

'No. No husband. Nobody, really.'

'You must have friends.' Steve reasoned.

'I moved around too much as a kid to really make friends. And when you're a teenager in med-school, people aren't lining up to hang out with you when they can go and get drunk at Frat parties.' She shifted her bad on her shoulder. 'I do better on my own anyway.'

'That seems a little lonely.'

'It is.'

She suddenly made her way into an apartment building and walked up to the man behind the desk. Steve hurried after her. The Doctor wasn't what he expected. She was smart and obviously tough to have survived in the foster system, and despite what Steve knew were defensive walls, she was kind too. He could tell that much in the way she smiled at the receptionist.

Steve arrived at the desk just as Doctor Paolera was handed the key, which she handed to him. They climbed the stairs to the sixth floor, to apartment 6A. Steve put the key in the lock and opened the door. The inside was furnished. Nothing lavish, just a couch, coffee table and a rug. The kitchen had a few strange appliances that Steve would have to learn to use. Steve ventured a little further into the – his – apartment. There were a few boxes and files on a desk to his left and there, hanging neatly on a hook, was his military uniform. The one with his badges and medals. It had been cleaned and ironed, looking as new as the day Steve had originally gotten it.

'Whoa.' Doctor Paolera whispered, staring at the uniform. Steve noticed, shockingly, there were tears in her eyes. 'Sorry, it's just…my family served in the World Wars too.'

'What unit?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know. All of that was lost after my parents died. I just remember my dad telling me about my grandfather once when I was really young before he died. He didn't go into details.'

Steve nodded. Doctor Paolera handed him a slip of paper. It had numbers on it, along with her name. 'It's my phone number. I live a few blocks over, near Central Park. If you need any help, or want company or anything. Call.'

Steve took the phone number and nodded gratefully. So far, everyone he'd met had wanted to run tests on him, spoke seriously and never smiled. Doctor Nadia Paolera had been a breath of fresh air after a very stifling week.

'Will do, Doctor.'

'I told you to call me Nadia.' She said, turning towards the door.

'Yes ma'am.' Steve grinned. Nadia shook her head.

'Goodbye Captain.'

It had been two weeks and she hadn't heard from him. Nadia had checked her phone a few times for any missed calls and according to Fury, Captain Rogers hadn't checked in with him or anybody.

Nadia hadn't expected him to be so handsome. Sure, there were the posters and photographs, but they were from the 40's – they weren't exactly reliable. But in this case, they weren't lying. His eyes were a lot bluer than she thought, and his hair was still in that coif to the side, the fashion from before he went into the ice. A little out of style, but he made it work. She knew he'd been tall too, and muscular, but he was built like…well…like a solider.

She knew what it was like to be one of a kind. Literally, there was nobody like him on the planet. Nobody had managed to perfect the super soldier serum in the last seventy years. Not since him. And well, she was a different story. She'd been born this way. Not made.

Nadia sighed, trying once again to concentrate on her meditation, but it just wasn't happening. Her mind just wouldn't settle. She let her feet touch the ground again, after hovering in the air above the rug in the living room for an hour. Quickly, she dragged some shoes on and grabbed her bag, heading out the door of the apartment and out onto the streets. She could have flown to Steve's apartment, but it was broad daylight.

Amongst flight, Nadia could control the elements around her as well as shifting into the bodies of animals. After a while, she'd learned how to apply her gifts to everyday life, as well as how to use them to defend herself. Nobody knew how she'd gotten these abilities. There was something in her DNA that nobody could identify. Nadia had spent years trying to track down some sort of cure, a way to be normal, even just to understand why she'd been born this way. But nobody could give her an answer. Eventually she'd had enough of the poking and prodding and just accepted that this was the way she was.

I'm just a freak of nature, she thought with a sigh.

SHIELD saw her as an asset. When they'd found out about her, they'd wanted to recruit her for field missions. Of course, Nadia wasn't one for violence and destruction. She wanted to help people, heal people, not hurt them. Instead, she went on the registry for superhuman's and did the odd consultation job for Fury. When she got the call to come in and examine Captain America, Nadia had thought someone was playing a practical joke on her. But no. The man was real. Very real and very alive. Very attractive too.

Nadia was at his door and knocking before she'd had a chance to get her thoughts together. He opened it, looking more than surprised to see her there.

'Doctor Paolera. What are you doing here?' He'd shaved since she'd seen him, and his hair was wet from the shower. He was also wearing the same outfit she'd last seen him in – khaki pants, white shirt and boots.

'Nobody has heard from you in two weeks.' Nadia explained, 'So I thought I'd come and check on you.'

'Making sure I'm alive?' he asked dryly.

She smiled. 'Something like that.'

He stepped aside, sweeping his arm out in invitation for her to come in. She walked into his living room, glancing around. It was still the same, except now it looked lived in. There was fruit in a bowl on the counter. A record player sitting on a shelf, and the boxes had been opened. There were files and papers all over the desk.

'How are you adjusting?' Nadia asked.

'Alright I guess. The food is better. I worked out how to use all the kitchen appliances. Fury told me that my back pay from the army has been put into an account for me.' He glanced around. 'I guess I've been trying to find out what happened to the people I knew.'

'And did you?' She asked, dropping her bag next to the couch and leaning against the armrest.

Steve nodded, looking sad. 'Most of them are dead. But…Peggy is still alive. In a nursing home, somewhere uptown.'

'I'm sorry.' Nadia knew it sounded lame, but it was the only thing she could think of to say. Steve shifted his feet. 'You look tired.'

Indeed, his eyes had purple shadows underneath them and his skin was paler. He still looked healthy, but exhausted.

'I slept for seventy years. I think I've had enough.'

Nadia nodded, standing up straight and crossing her arms. 'Nightmares?'

Steve started, 'How did you – '

'I've had some experience with this sort of thing. I'm a doctor, remember?' She reminded him, trying to keep her tone light. 'It's normal. You went through something traumatic. Your mind is trying to cope with it in the only way it can.'

'By making me relive it over and over?' Steve asked bitterly, picking up some files and shoving them into the boxes haphazardly.

'By trying to make sense of it.' She clarified. Nadia felt sympathy for him. He was all alone in this world. 'Did you ever think to ask someone for help?'

'Who would I ask?'

'Me?' She suggested.

'I don't really know you that well, ma'am.'

'Okay. True enough.' Nadia walked forward, holding her hand out. 'I'm Nadia. I'm twenty four years old and I've always wanted to go to Egypt. I'm allergic to pine nuts and I'm an avid Harry Potter fan.'

Steve looked at her hand for a moment before taking it. 'Steve Rogers.'

'Well, Steve, I think it's time to get you into the twenty-first century.' She said, looking him up and down. 'Starting with those clothes.'