I know him so well

by Snoot37

Following the events of Captain America Civil War, Sharon Carter and Steve Rogers find themselves adrift and in hiding. Where do they go from here? SPOILERS for Civil War

1. Chapter 1

Poster's Note:

Well, she's back! Once again, I am posting for my friend the author who took a break from writing following some personal hardships the last few years. I'm so relieved to see her writing again, and this one looks to be a good one! As always, I didn't write this, I'm just posting for her. Enjoy folks! Snoot37

Author's Note:

I can't believe it's been so long since I wrote some fanfic! I've had to deal with a lot of heavy personal stuff (deaths and job drama) that seemed to have chased away my muse, but we went to see Captain America Civil War this weekend and my Marvel Fanfic Muse has returned! I'm a hopeless Steve/Sharon shipper, (not easy to ship a rarepair around here) and I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of straight Steve/Sharon fic out there. There's some really good ones (Love The Best By Far is Youand The Colonel and the Cop, go read now!), but it seems like fanfic involving Steve is dominated by the Steve/Bucky craze. Nothing wrong with that, mind you, some of it's pretty good, but even the best Steve/Sharon fics can't seem to escape the Stucky wave. This is straight Steve + Sharon *only* so if it ain't your thang, move along, no hate please. Also, I was a tad upset with all the Sharon hate I'm seeing on Tumblr and other areas. She's a great character with decades of relationship history with Steve, smart, sharp and loyal. And a lot of people seem to be going on saying she's useless and unnecessary in the movies. Not in the least! CW would have turned out very differently without her, starting with the line "we have orders to shoot on sight." That line right there changed the whole movie and only she could have delivered it the way it was set up. Hopefully my little fic here clears some of that up and explains some of those notions people have about MCU Sharon. Thankfully my husband is a walking encyclopedia of Marvel, comics and MCU, and has already watched all the cut scenes, so he's been a big help on this one. Enjoy everyone! This one is looking to be a couple chapters long.

::::::::::::::SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR!::::::::::::::::::::::::

I Know Him So Well

No one in your life is with you constantly

No one is completely on your side.

And though I move my world to be with him

Still the gap between us is too wide.

Looking back I could have played it differently

Learned about the man before I fell.

But I was ever so much younger then

Now at least I know I know him well.

-Elaine Paige

"I know him so well"

Chapter 1: Sharon

The day had started out pleasant enough, but now the sky was threatening a late afternoon rain, hovering over the road where the beat up old pickup truck lumbered around a mountain road. It was not uncommon in this area of the Shenandoah Valley this time of year, but the timing couldn't have been worse. The truck hit several potholes that didn't seem to bother the occupants in the cab, but would make anyone else start considering eulogies to his spinal cord and backside. After a brief climb up another mountainside, gears grinding, the truck pulled to a stop billowing dust behind it, and the slim, lithe figure of a young woman wearing jeans and a hoodie, her blonde hair pulled in a ponytail under baseball cap, vaulted over the wall of the back of the truck where she had been lying down, nervously judging the growing cloud cover in the sky, but also to ensure no one saw her riding in the back and possibly recognize her. Sharon Carter was likely a wanted fugitive by now, and she had no intention of letting herself be arrested by some backwoods country bumpkin of a Sherriff. Her Aunt Peggy would roll over three times in her grave and bemoan from Heaven, where she was undoubtedly watching through a hole in one of those clouds, how little ten years of SHIELD and CIA training had served her niece in basic undercover subterfuge. Not that any small town law enforcement would be able to take her, much less hold her, but it was the principle of the thing and she didn't want to hurt anyone in an escape attempt. That and she didn't feel like letting the newspapers know in what direction she had fled when it made the gossip section of whatever local newspaper ran around here.

Her hiking boots crunched in the loose gravel of the road as she walked up to the passenger side of the truck, hefting her backpack onto her back, and thumping the door firmly.

"Thanks for the lift!" she said with a smile.

An older woman's graying head poked out of the open window and friendly civilian eyes looked at her with real worry.

"I don't know about this, honey. This is the middle of nowhere. Ain't nothing around for miles. You sure you want us to let you out here?"

"Oh yeah I'm sure," said Sharon, pointing to the mile marker on the side of the road. "This is where I get off. My friend' place is just up through the trees over there," she said, indicating vaguely over her shoulder with her thumb.

The older man who had been driving also leaned out of the window over his wife. "I ain't heard of anyone living up there in those parts. Don't know of any drive leading up to a place either. I don't think you have the right location."

Sharon shrugged. "The driveway got washed out in a storm not too long ago and it grew over pretty quick. But I've been up here plenty of times. I know where it is."

"Well we don't mind driving you up to the cabin," said that the older woman.

Thunder rumbled in the distance and Sharon looked up, starting to feel a little anxious. She still had quite a hike in front of her and she did not want these nice older people to be caught up in her situation if she could help it. It had been risky even asking them for a ride. But she had hitchhiked all the way from the Carter estate in Virginia and didn't have a vehicle that wasn't going to give her away in some way, so she had taken the chance. Now she was within sight of her destination and she really needed these people to move on before she was spotted and things got ugly. She knew if she didn't set off immediately for the cabin that was her destination that she was looking at the very real possibility of making the hike in the rain and dark with very little on her except what was in her backpack. Like most people in her line of work, she always kept a bag packed with necessities if she needed to run at a moment's notice. It had not been an easy thing to escape her CIA job in Berlin and get out of the country without her supervisors knowing it. But again, in her line of work, she always had several escape routes planned from any location before she went there. She had flown out of Luxembourg wearing an aubrun wig and a dress that was two sizes too big sporting a fake ID and passport that were so professional that security agents and customs officials had not glanced twice at it. When she had landed in Miami, she had ditched the disguise and adopted another one, "borrowed" a car and driven to the estate that had been owned by her aunt Peggy in Virginia where the rest of the family, including her mother, still lived. She had woken her somewhat hysterical mother up at two in the morning to explain to her that she was going undercover for a while and that people might be asking questions. She told her mother that she was to answer the questions truthfully and not try to locate her. Then she had left, ditching the "borrowed" car, hitchhiking her way to the Shenandoah Valley to where she knew SHIELD safe house was hidden high up in the mountains. She had no idea if the place was still usable or not after the fall of SHIELD or whether not it was occupied, but she was really short on options and needed a place to lay low so she could figure out what her next move would be.

She was not exactly lying to the older people about its inaccessibility, however. There actually was no road leading to the SHIELD cabin. Most people either hiked it from the highway, as she intended to do, or landed a quinjet in the field next-door. She looked at the kindly couple and shrugged.

"No, like I said, the road is washed out. In fact, that's why we're all gathering up here. To fix the road so we can get the cars up. I really appreciate your help, though. You guys take care and drive safe."

The couple still didn't look convinced.

"Well," said the older man, "we live up the road apiece about three or so miles from here. You have any hard time, you hike on up this road to our place and well drive you to town."

Sharon smiled a real smile. "Thanks so much. I appreciate that and I'll keep it in mind."

She gave them a wave as they waved back, put the truck in gear and slowly ambled up the road. Once they were out of sight, however, her smile vanished and a look of grim determination came over her face. Another roll of thunder hastened her along as she settled the backpack more comfortably on her back, carefully looked around to make sure she wasn't being watched, and then plunged into the dense forest in the opposite direction that she had indicated to the couple. She had the advantage of a head start on the CIA, who were undoubtedly plastering her face on the necessary bulletins sent out to law-enforcement around the world by now. She could thank SHIELD for the fact that she had such a head start, several days in fact, for despite being infested with Hydra almost from the beginning, SHIELD had been a far more efficient intelligence agency than the CIA ever would be. She had been out of Germany and back in America before anyone even realized she had taken the gear from the evidence lock up to give back to Steve Rogers and his friends. But that head start would not last forever and she needed to be out of sight. She just hoped the friendly elderly couple would not recognize her or get in any trouble for giving her a lift, or worse, show the authorities where they had left her. While she did have about 2 miles to walk straight through the forest, just enough of a distance to be a burden, anyone in an aircraft could find the cabin that was her destination.

She walked for about an hour, her normally brisk and strong gait hampered by the fact that she was plunging straight through the forest and not on a footpath, before finally emerging at an electrified fence that went 30 feet into the air and disappeared into the tree cover. The low hum surrounding the fence and the fact that her hair started to stand on end when she got close told her that the electrified fence was still operational. Getting her bearing on direction from the position of moss growing on the north side of the trees, she turned and headed towards her left, walking along the fence knowing that she would come to the entrance soon enough. Thunder cracked overhead and the first heavy cold drops started to make their way down to the ground. She pulled the hood of her jacket over the baseball cap, but it would not keep her dry for a long, and even though her backpack was somewhat water resistant, it was not waterproof and she had electronics inside. She hurried faster. Finally, she came to a gate in the fence, but to the casual observer, there would appear to be no way to open it. There was no handle and no keypad. It didn't matter, for Sharon had been here before and knew how to open it. She walked over to a tree that looked like any other, but pressed her hand on a knothole.

She saw the green laser scan her palm print and she bent down to look in another smaller knothole as another laser scanned her retina. Green lights flashed around her palm three times and she heard the clank of the gate as it swung open. She exhaled a sigh of relief she had not realized she had been holding. SHIELD had fallen almost 2 years ago and many of its assets have been grabbed by both remaining SHIELD agents and Hydra agents. She had heard rumors about pockets of agents still loyal to SHIELD operating on their own, trying to reform the agency. She had also heard conflicting reports about Hydra operating as well, and reports could not seem to indicate whether or not the remainder of SHIELD was winning or if Hydra had not been eliminated as previously thought. She had thought seriously about trying to join up with one of the SHIELD groups, but she had no way of knowing which one was truly SHIELD and which one was Hydra. Ultimately, Maria Hill had encouraged her to sign up for the CIA and remain there, undoubtedly in case the remaining true SHIELD agents needed an insider in the agency. But as the months had passed with no word from any of her previous colleagues, she accepted that her new lot in life was to dedicate her hard won intelligence agent skills to the CIA, and this was where she remained. It was difficult not to feel a little bit left behind, but she told herself that counterterrorism was certainly worthwhile work and gave it her all.

She had, of course, just thrown it all away a few days ago to help Steve Rogers. And she had done it without a second thought. She had also told to herself to not regret the decision no matter what the circumstances, and she wasn't going to start now. She was just thankful that the security system at this old SHIELD safe house still recognized her credentials, even after the Fall. There had been no way of telling, when she ran for it, whether or not this would even be a safe location and she still didn't know. She didn't intend to approach the house via the front door without reliable intel on the place. She intended to spend a good deal of time scoping out the area and making sure that the house wasn't trapped or occupied. Surely Hydra agents would have known that fugitive SHIELD agents would have known of some of the safe houses and attempted to locate their enemies there. But the fall had been over two years ago and she hoped that whatever battles might have played out at the safe houses was over now.

As she finally caught sight of the cabin in the clearing by the lake, she approached carefully from the north side, finally glad for the dark cloud cover that obscured her in the dark underbrush. Her nearly white blond hair could be a real problem in situations like these, and she pulled the hood tighter around her face to keep it from breaking free. She made two complete circles around the cabin before finally deciding that there was no evidence of habitation from the outside. Carefully and silently, she approached one of the side entrances. There were no obvious locks on the door, but she knew better than to try the handle, for it would be locked. Instead she pressed her thumb to what appeared to be a knothole in the wood of the door frame, and just as with the tree, it glowed green three times and the lock disengaged. Carefully, she opened the door, slid inside, and closed it behind her just as the sky really opened up.

The sound of the storm became muted as the door closed behind her. She shivered a little bit, but not entirely from the damp outside. Her senses were on high alert and the entire building was dark and gloomy. The air had a musty smell to it, as if nobody had been inside the cabin in months, maybe even years. She didn't hear any sounds that would indicate that there was another person in the building, but she knew better than to take chances. Carefully, she slipped one of the three guns she carried from her waistband holster and settled into traditional stalking stance. She was all too familiar with the scenario where a building might appear to be abandoned and empty, only to discover in a rather nasty surprise that it was not. There was a brief mental flash in her mind back to a mission she had run for SHIELD in Cambodia, back when she was still a fairly new and inexperienced agent. She was acting as team leader for the three-person crew who had gone in to sweep the building for hostiles. Even their extra careful search had not turned up the individual hiding in a hidden closet they had missed, and she had just radioed that the building was secure when he came out guns blazing. Years of target shooting with her Aunt Peggy had allowed her to quickly and easily put a bullet between his eyes before he had caused any serious damage, but the other two members of her team had both taking hits to the extremities and needed to be evacuated. It was only due to the fortune of fact that the man had been a dreadful shot, especially in the dark, that meant he had missed her comrades' vital organs when he fired. She knew she deserved the dressing down she got from her S. O. and she took it with dignity. She had never made that mistake again. And she certainly wasn't going to make it now alone in the middle of nowhere with no back up.

Like most SHIELD safe houses, this one was built on a predetermined floor plan that she was familiar with. She knew where all the nooks and crannies were, even though she had personally only been to this location once before. It had served as a retreat or sanctuary for agents that had been too overwhelmed by the work and needed a break, but could not be left to go on vacation alone. She had come here herself after a particularly upsetting mission early in her career and had found it quite relaxing, even though she had had to share the cabin with two other people also on retreat. But perhaps the main reason she was most familiar with the cabin was because Steve Rogers had spent some time here after he had woken up. After he had first awakened from the ice, he spent a month in the SHIELD facility in New York, submitting to a battery of physicals and tests and psychiatric evaluations. Finally, when it became obvious that they could not keep him there indefinitely, Fury had sent him to this cabin to start to get a bearing on the world he now found himself in, armed with a tablet loaded with books, movies, documentaries and music to help catch him up. When she had accepted the assignment from Fury to live across the hall from Rogers and keep an eye on him for SHIELD, she had absorbed every bit of information that SHIELD had acquired on him since he woke up, as well as everything they already had previously, which she had memorized but had read again. She knew this particular safe house, like most SHIELD facilities, was bugged with audio and video equipment, which was why one of the first things she did was to move to a hallway and slide back a hidden panel and shut down the signals to the devices. She plugged in a thumb drive she always kept in her grab to go bag, which had footage of the cabin on a long loop, showing it when it was empty. She rebooted the system with the thumb drive, which would now show the video feeds to anybody who logged into look, but it would be a video feed of an empty cabin not showing her moving around in it. But because of the video and audio, she had been able to watch Steve Rogers when he stayed there, trying to get a handle on the kind of man he was and what he was experiencing. She had watched him as he had moved around between the rooms, at first sharing them with two other agents on retreat the first week, and then finally having the cabin to himself for the rest of the month he was there, only broken up by periodic visits from therapists and doctors. He had stayed there until Fury had arranged for the apartments for both her and him next-door to each other, as she was settled in before Steve arrived at his new home, giving the appearance of having lived there for quite some time already, and hopefully putting him at ease.

Her thoughts returned back to her search of the building and she spent a good hour and a half making two thorough sweeps throughout the cabin, searching in every place a person might be able to hide. The sound of the storm pounding on the roof overhead didn't add to the hominess of the place, but the rain was finally starting to subside as she reluctantly admitted that the building was clear and secure and she could finally relax. She dropped her backpack on the sofa and turned on one of the lights. She knew it would come on, for the cabin had its own sustainable power system comprising of solar panels and wind mills up in the trees, but it was still a relief to actually see the light come on. Wearily, she sank down to the sofa and tilted her head onto the backrest, closing her eyes. She took a few deep breaths and tried to focus. She was exhausted. She had been up for 36 hours so far and sleep was edging around her field of vision. But she had not been able to sleep or relax until she got to a safe spot. Maslow's pyramid of basic needs ordered that she find food, water, shelter and security before any true rational thought could commence. Until she had acquired these things, which she had, she wouldn't completely trust any decisions she made about her immediate and long term future.

Of course Maslow also had said that sex was a basic requirement, which she would tend to agree, but seeing as how she had not had sex in over three years, she doubted that that particular requirement would affect her logical thinking at this point. In fact, she had mostly sworn off men following the fall of SHIELD and the Triskelion when, still nursing a slashed arm courtesy of Rumlow, who had gotten away despite her emptying a clip at him, she had led a group of frightened control room techs with zero agent training (including one very rattled Cameron Klein, the brave tech who had been the first to refuse the launch order, stating "Captain's orders") to the nearest exit, and encountered the last man she had slept with rounding a corner and shooting a crying tech woman in the back. She had hooked up with the man after one too many drinks at the last holiday party, and had sobered up pretty quickly during the whole sex thing, after which he had not even come close to getting her off, forcing her to lie that it had been great and mutter something about early duty in the morning in order to escape his apartment and face spending the night. The woman he had just killed had been one of the ones who had frantically tried to abort the launch at her station after Rumlow had overridden Cameron's station to launch the helicarriers himself, but she had bolted out of the room when the shooting started. Given that she had tried to stop the launch, Sharon figured she had been SHIELD, and thus if her erstwhile hookup date was shooting her in the back, he must be Hydra. It was the thought that she had actually had sex with a Hydra agent, as much as the fact that he shot a woman in the back, that had made Sharon raise her gun and put three bullets into his chest. He was dead before he hit the ground, and she had shuffled the shaking techs out into the parking garage, yelling at them to get off campus as fast as they could. Cameron had driven her to the ER for stitches and had wanted to wait to bring her home, but she had insisted he get home to his wife and children and get them to safety. She had taken a bus back to her apartment next to Steve's, grabbed the few items she actually wanted, for everything was rented and impersonal anyway, including the fake pictures on the walls of nonexistent family and friends. She had slipped into the only other apartment on the floor besides hers and Steve's, also owned by SHIELD and empty, and waited. She had waited for him to come home. He didn't. She had waited for Hydra agents to show. They hadn't. So she had gone into his apartment, letting herself in with the key he never knew she had, and quickly boxed up anything that looked like personal effects, and brought them to the Carter estate, hiding the boxes in the basement. The furniture of both apartments had been cleaned out, Steve got out of the hospital and went to live at Stark Tower in New York, and she had moved back in with her mother temporarily at the Carter estate until she had been accepted by the CIA.

The Carter estate had been built in the 1950s for her Aunt Peggy and Uncle Gabe by Howard Stark following their wedding. As another wedding gift, Stark had put a few of his patents in Peggy's name, thereby ensuring that the family, while never billionaires like the Starks, would never hurt for money or ever have to struggle to send their kids to college. Peggy and her husband and children lived in the main house, but a smaller house with a separate drive had been built for Peggy's brother Michael when he came to America and brought his young wife. This was where Sharon's father had been born. Then, he had grown up and married Sharon's mother, who had moved to Michael Carter's house when some ill-timed heart attacks and illnesses left Michael and his wife gone before their time. Sharon had been born in 1986 and had been 7 years old when her father, a military man, had been deployed in Desert Storm. He had been killed in battle only three weeks after arriving. With her mother's parents already gone, the only grandparent figures in Sharon's life had been Peggy and Gabe, until Gabe's undiagnosed high blood pressure had taken him too. Over the years, another small house had been built on the property where Peggy's daughter lived with her family, and her son had moved his family into the main house after Peggy had moved into the nursing home. Although a Carter only by marriage, Sharon's mother remained in the house built for her in-laws and was considered as much a part of the family as anyone. Anything Sharon truly valued was kept there, such as irreplaceable mementoes and her old teddy bear. She knew all too well how working in intelligence left your home and personal belongings up for search by unwanted hands. The Carter estate had a security system of Stark design that rivaled the ones in Tony's various mansions, so anything she wanted to keep stayed there.

It had been here that Sharon had fled when she first arrived back in the States following her traitorous assistance to Steve Rogers regarding Barnes. Perhaps she should have waited to see if either of the Rosses would actually know or be mad at her, but she figured if she had waited around, she'd be in a cell on the Raft by now with the rest of the Avengers who had fought with Captain America and been taken prisoner. Her heart had actually hurt when she had read the last briefing to arrive on her phone as she strode off the plane from Berlin. The fight at the airport had shut down everything and her flight had been one of the last to leave before the fighting started. She had already been in the air, having left for a plane right after handing off the gear to Rogers. And then kissing him. She shook her head to clear it of the memory. She had read the message on her phone. Rogers and Barnes escaped. Four other Avengers had been arrested and sent to the Raft. Hawkeye. Wilson. The Maximoff kid. Lang. They had stayed behind so Steve could escape. Rhodes was seriously injured, and Stark was an emotional wreck. And had employed an unknown fifteen year old kid with mad acrobatic skills and synthetic spiderwebs to fight on his side who now had to be flown home. (Which as far as she was concerned put Stark liable for charges of endangering a minor, or even utilizing a child soldier) She shook her head, trying not to face facts that the Avengers had splintered. She was also more than a little pissed off at Tony Stark. None of this would have happened had it not been for him. Surely no other human being on the planet reacted in quite the way he did, thanks to his money and ability to do so. He had been taken prisoner by terrorists and learned that his weapons from Stark Industries, meant for the US military, were being used by the bad guys, and his response was to shut down his factories, and then build the Iron Man suit, one of the most devastating weapons ever created, followed by the War Machine upgrades to his original suit. He discovers he's dying of Palladium poisoning, and proceeds to go on a self-destructive rampage, which Natasha Romanoff had a first row seat to undercover with Stark. He suffers PTSD from the incident in New York, and proceeded to build an army of 42 Iron Man suits, and later the Iron Legion, which, had anyone else created a personal army of soldier robots, should have landed him in jail for endangerment of the US and every other country on the planet. The Mandarin, a crazed terrorist, had injured Stark's bodyguard and Stark's reaction had been to call the terrorist out on national TV and give his home address, apparently forgetting his girlfriend Pepper Potts also lived there, and both of them only barely survived the missile attack that sent Stark's mansion into the sea. Finally, Stark decided that the best way to "keep the world safe" was to create a super robot with artificial intelligence, which spent 3 minutes on the Internet and decided humans were too damaged to save and had to be exterminated, which directly led to the incident in Sokovia, which had then directly led to the breakdown between the Avengers. It seemed to her that the only thing Steve Rogers was guilty of was not trusting politicians, or Tony, to fuck everything up royally again, and she had to say she agreed with him on that. She failed to see how Steve was the one who should be in a jail cell. As far as she was concerned, Tony Stark should have been arrested multiple times over for the last several years. She had heard that Pepper Potts had finally walked away from him recently, which was probably contributing to Tony's aggressive emotional breakdown, though honestly, Sharon wasn't sure how the woman had held out as long as she had. She had a certain amount of admiration for Pepper for putting up with Tony as long as she had. Sharon would have shot him by now.

Sharon knew it had been her informing Steve that the CIA had orders to shoot Barnes on sight that had changed everything. If orders had been to take Barnes alive, send him for psychiatric evaluation and trial, she doubted Steve Rogers would have reacted as aggressively to save his friend the way he had, thus requiring Stark, and later T'Challa to fight as well. He might even have joined the CIA in hunting down Barnes with the idea of having him get the psychiatric help he required and the fair trial every America was supposed to have. The order to shoot on sight had effectively made her and all other CIA agents the judge, jury and executioner, and it had turned out that Barnes had not even been the one responsible for the U.N. bombing. He had been framed by the man who had impersonated the psychiatrist to get at Barnes in the CIA facility. She didn't know who he was, but Steve had explained on the phone, when asking her to get his gear, that the man intended to release other Winter Soldiers and had been using them to get at Barnes. After that information, she didn't think twice about helping Steve, but was pissed that Stark had apparently not even listened to this information. Now he was legitimately allowed to go super-heroing all over the world, and Steve was in hiding and the Avengers who had stood by him were in cells on the Raft. It infuriated her.

In the air she had written two nearly identical letters, one to her mom and one to Everett Ross. They explained what she had done and why. That she had believed Rogers when he said Barnes was not responsible for his actions. That he was not guilty of the U.N. bombing or King T'Chaka's death. That another force was at work controlling things from the shadows. That the doctor, now known to be an imposter, had set Bucky off. That there were other Winter Soldiers that needed to be stopped. She had taken their gear from evidence and returned it to them, hoping they could stop the mastermind and Winter Soldiers and clear Barnes of the bombing. She explained that neither she nor Rogers would have felt the need to do this had there not been a shoot on sight order on Barnes. If there was a chance the man was innocent, he should stand trial before execution. Everything she admitted to technically counted as insubordination at best, treason at worst. She might be able to avoid jail time, but either way, she was fired. Before Ross realized she was gone without permission and froze her credentials, she had been able to log in to the server and see that Stark had brought forth evidence that Rogers had been right, apparently having finally either listened or found his own evidence that Steve had been right about the mastermind all along. Then, T'challa had brought in both Zemo and Stark from Siberia, explaining about the fight, the extermination of the other Winter Soldiers, and that Barnes and Rogers had vanished. Then, her credentials had been suspended and she knew no more.

She had arrived at the Carter a state in the middle of the night and woken her frantic mother up at two in the morning. She had explained briefly what had happened and that she was going to have to go underground for a little while. She had allowed her mother to get exactly 3 minutes of venting out of her, going on and on about why she had disagreed with Sharon's decision to enlist in SHIELD, and then the CIA, and why couldn't she have a normal life, find a nice guy and settle down and have a couple of kids like a normal person? Then Sharon had calmly said that she had her reasons, and handed her mother the envelope with the typed up letter she had written, explaining everything. She also left another envelope, sealed for Everett Ross, for she knew they would show up at the Carter estate looking for her, and she intended to be long gone, but not without leaving behind an explanation. A brief text to her cousin Kathy from a burner phone that she later ditched had confirmed that CIA agents had indeed shown up at the estate and brought her mother in for questioning, but that her mother had given them the envelope and had been allowed to return home after it was determined that Sharon was nowhere on the property and had left no evidence as to where she had gone. It sucked, but for now, her mother and cousins were safe and unlikely to be bothered much by her actions. The CIA would keep them under surveillance for a while in case she showed, but Ross must know that Sharon wouldn't be so stupid as to hang around the Carter property.

So now here she was, holed up in an old SHIELD safe house trying to get her bearings and having no idea what she was supposed to do. All her life, she had trained with her Aunt Peggy, then director of SHIELD, later moving on to more intensive training preparing to become an agent. SHIELD was all she ever wanted to do. She didn't want to coast on her aunt's coattails, but she did want to carry on Peggy's legacy of bringing justice to the world and flushing out nests of Hydra and other terrorist cells. When she worked for SHIELD, she had been filled with a sense of righteous purpose and pride in belonging to the most advanced intelligence organization on the planet. SHIELD had been formed to carry on the work Captain America had started, built on principles of honor and patriotism, innovation and doing what was right. She had been on missions that resulted in disruption of human trafficking of teenage girls, the toppling of totalitarian governments run by cartels, and a massive takedown of sleeper cells of terrorists living in the US. She had had friends. She stayed in touch with her classmates Natasha Romanoff and Bobbi Morse and ate lunch with a group from analytics every day. She had been the first one Coulson had called when they had found the Valkyrie with Steve Rogers still inside, as the Carters had considered himself next of kin. She had watched as they thawed him out, had watched as he freaked out and ran out of the SHIELD facility. She had willingly accepted the downgrade from field agent to undercover neighbor to keep an eye on him, since she felt he was her responsibility and no one else had the right.

She knew everything about him that Peggy had known, but she read through every scrap of information SHIELD had on him anyway. She began compiling her own profile on him as a man living in present day. Where he liked to eat, what music he listened to, how often he slept, who he talked to. She knew that it was quite likely that she was the only person in the world who knew him that well. But she had not been allowed to know him deeper. She had just enough passing conversations with him in the stairwell to keep up friendly appearances, but knew she had to turn down his offer for a coffee date, as much as she had wanted to go. She was lying to him about who she was and her intentions. She couldn't go on a date with him under those conditions. It wasn't fair to either of them. But she had wanted to.

Then SHIELD had fallen. Infected from within by Hydra, probably from day one. All of her aunt's work, all of Sharon's work, people she had thought of as friends, the very organization she had believed in enough to pledge her life to, her whole world all came crumbling down in one afternoon. It had to be done, she knew that. But she missed SHEILD. She missed the comradery and competence. She missed having a purpose. For a while after the Fall, she had waited to hear from pockets of surviving SHIELD agents about reforming the organization. There were rumors of such groups trying to link up to reform. But none contacted her and she hadn't been able to locate any herself. Bobbi went dark, possibly dead. Natasha was with the Avengers of course, but Sharon had been left adrift. So she had applied to the CIA where her skills could be used. They were suspicious of her, given SHIELD's recent downturn in the minds of public opinion, but she had been cleared of any wrongdoing and hired. The job was ok, but her skills were mostly underutilized. She had a hard time making friends, especially after seeing so many from SHIELD turn out to be Hydra, so she kept her distance. The transfer to Germany had been almost a relief, but her solitude had deepened. She rarely went out or socialized, and most nights were spent watching TV or reading.

She often wondered about Steve. In her mind, she always thought of him as simply Steve. Not Captain Rogers, not Captain America. Just Steve, for that had been how Aunt Peggy had spoken of him to her. She had the small picture Peggy had always kept in a drawer, the picture of Steve Rogers before Project Rebirth when he was still frail and sickly. She could hardly believe it was the same man. "This is one of the few pictures of Steve Rogers, the man I loved. There's plenty of Captain America, but never forget, behind the shield, he was always Steve Rogers," Peggy had told her. She wondered if he was safe and what he was doing. Was he happy? With friends? Dating anyone? That last one always made her heart hurt. She had known he was very lost and lonely when he lived next door to her and he never dated, but surely he must have had some successes by now? Many nights across the hall, she heard the mournful sound of 1940s big band music coming from behind his door, knowing he was sitting in the dark listening, trying not to cry. On those nights she had cried for him, wishing she could go to him.

Then Sokovia had happened and SHIELD helicarriers had arrived. She saw him and the Avengers on TV fighting Ultron and his minions. She had cheered inwardly as she watched on TV, while also feeling a stab of jealousy and hurt. It took no less than 500 people to run those helicarriers. They had to be SHIELD personnel on them. So why had she not gotten a phone call to come join in? She later heard that technician Cameron Klein had been on the carrier. Couldn't someone have come found her? After the battle and the death toll had come in, and the SHIELD carrier had been relegated to wherever it had been previously, it was with bitter remorse that she turned her back on SHIELD forever. They were done with her, and do she was done with them. Steve had a life, and the last time he had laid eyes on her, his frosty acknowledgement of "neighbor" told her she needed to know of what he had thought of her. Their paths had diverged and he hadn't looked back. But she had. She had wanted that coffee. She had wanted his blue eyes to look at her with earnest interest as they had in their hallway. But she had missed the chance.

Or so she thought. Peggy's death had come as a shock in its suddenness but not unexpected given her condition. She had texted Natasha for Steve's number and had sent him the fateful text. "She's gone. In her sleep." Neither of them had had the chance to say goodbye. He had texted back. "On my way now." She had texted back the details of the funeral and he had not responded nor asked who it was texting him in the first place. She figured he had ways of verifying it. The day of the funeral had been wrought with anxiety for her. When her cousins had asked her to do the eulogy, she had jumped at the chance, but then realized she'd be less than twenty feet away from him delivering it, with her own deceased aunt who he had loved another twenty feet away. He was going to see her for the first time in two years, and she him. And he was going to know who she really was. Was she ready for that? She barely slept the night before and reworked to eulogy three times before letting it rest. When she had approached the podium at the funeral, she forced herself to look at him. Sam had nudged him to look and he had. And that same look of shock washed over his face that she had seen on him the night Nick Fury was shot and she blew her cover to help. The shock and betrayal. Followed by the hard irritation and flash of anger. Her heart had sunk both times, but she forced herself to speak. Peggy deserved her best. And so she had spoken. She talked about her beloved aunt who had inspired her, while looking at Steve as she explained why she had kept her relationship a secret. As she spoke, to those gathered but mostly to him, she saw his face soften. The anger and betrayal left his eyes and the sadness she knew floated in her own eyes mirrored in his as he realized that she truly was Peggy's niece, and just like him, she was missing her terribly. In that moment, she saw the forgiveness in his eyes, the acceptance, and even the gratitude as she told him Peggy's words on standing your ground when all hope was gone. For the first time in two years, her heart didn't hurt at the sight of Steve Rogers.

She sat down after the eulogy and tried to ignore his constant glances in her direction. After the service, he remained inside while she filed out with the family, stopping to greet Natasha with a hug.

"Hey tramp, long time no see," she had joked to her old classmate.

Natasha smiled. "I'd say something equally insulting in return, but it would fall flat. Although I do want to know why you never told me your aunt was the director at one point. Given my background, you know I don't judge. I'm sorry by the way."

Sharon just shrugged and looked away.

"I told him to call you. Did he?" Natasha asked.

Sharon looked at her with surprise. "Nope. But that's not surprising. Nobody called."

"I would have if I thought you wanted a call," Nat replied. "As for him well, he's bull stubborn. Don't take it personal."

Sharon smiled at that and hugged her old friend. They said their goodbyes and Sharon stood to watch the hearse leave, silently saying by goodbye to the only person who had ever understood her, more so than her own mother. She had felt tears well up and she blinked them back, waving goodbye to her cousins who were also leaving.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" his voice had come from behind her, startling her. But she didn't turn around.

"I wanted to tell you from day one," she replied softly. "I thought you'd want to know you weren't completely alone. But Fury wouldn't let me. He said it was better for your health if you didn't think we were breathing down your neck."

She turned to face him. And her breath caught in her chest. He had taken off his suit jacket and slung it over his shoulder. Good god, he was gorgeous. She had known he was handsome from the wealth of pictures of him as Captain America, especially the vintage USO posters. Peggy had always described him as good looking. But the real flesh and blood man before her was just as alluring as she remembered from when she lived next to him. Only in a suit, that Greek god factor got dialed up a few notches. Chiseled jaw and blue eyes, and a body she knew for a fact was ripped. When he had stayed in the cabin, initially he had slept in a t-shirt and sweatpants. But when the other occupants had left and he had it to himself, he had taken to sleeping only in boxers and walking to the kitchen to make breakfast in just his shorts. She had rewound the video several times, just looking at his abs and biceps. She rarely let herself be so taken with a man that she forgot how to breathe, but Steve Rogers had the unnerving ability to do just that to her.

"Look, Steve...uh...captain. I'm sorry. I never meant to cause you trouble. And I'm...I'm sorry about Peggy." She looked away.

He sighed. "Yeah me too. I guess this is tough for you too?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her grief was still too fresh and his presence in front of her was throwing her for a loop. And from the way he was shuffling his feet and jamming his hands in his pockets not quite looking at her, she got the impression that he was feeling somewhat as nervous as she was. Their last encounter had been tense and frosty, and a lot had happened to both of them in the last two years. She felt like she knew him well enough, but understood that he really didn't know her. The question was did he want to.

"She was more like a grandmother to me," Sharon started hesitantly. "My own grandparents passed away when I was pretty young. My dad too, in Desert Storm. Mom was kind of thrown for a loop and well, Peggy took us in. She was a godsend."

"Is your mom here?" Steve asked looking around.

"No, she couldn't make it and she's sick about it. She's been on a missionary trip down in Belize for the last three months. Ironically she's due to come home next week. But they couldn't get her a flight in time to make the funeral."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said.

"Yeah," said Sharon.

They both stood in another awkward silence shuffling their feet before Steve finally said, "So when I asked you out for coffee, did you say no because you were on assignment or because you didn't want to go?"

She looked up at him in surprise and her eyes met his. At first he thought she was not going to answer but then she said "I was on assignment."

"So you did want to go?"

(More than you'll ever know).

"Yes. But I didn't want to go anywhere with you under false pretenses. I was already lying to you about who I was. It wouldn't have been right."

"And now that I know who you are," he said somewhat hesitantly, "if I were to ask again, would you still say no?"

"Are you asking?"

"Sort of. Well yeah."

She tilted her head to the side and gave him a somewhat ironic smile. "Well you know I can't help but wonder why you asking. Last time I saw you, you seem kind of pissed at me."

"Well I was," he shrugged. "And for a while after that too. I'm just kind of sick of being lied to, you know. Not knowing who I can trust or who is a friend and who isn't. This isn't the world I'm used to and it's not how I am used to operating. I uh, well, really liked you. And for you to turn out to be spying on me for SHIELD, well, it was sort of the final straw, and if you remember a lot of things were going on..."

"Oh I remember," she said grimly, holding out her arm where there was still a faint scar where Rumlow had slashed her. His eyes widened in shock and he reached out to take her arm. She tried not to think about how warm his hands were touching her skin.

"How did this happen?" he asked softly.

"Your buddy Rumlow. I was in the control room the day the Trisk fell. That was an impressive speech you gave by the way. Anyway, Rumlow went up to a technician who is a friend of mine and ordered him to launch the helicarriers. When he refused to do so, hilarity ensued. I got this trying to stop Rumlow. God what an ass. Ultimately it did no good."

She gently took her arm back and rubbed the scar before looking up at him again. The look on his face was one of somewhat pained impressiveness.

"Thanks. Thanks for standing up against Hydra. If you bought us even a few seconds of time delaying those heloticarriers from launching, then thanks."

Her eyes hardened. "Hydra. The bane of Aunt Peggy's existence and then mine. Few things make me want to strangle something with my bare hands like the words 'Hydra agent.'"

He looked a little surprised, but then smiled.

"So uh...that coffee?"

She blinked in surprise, but then smiled. "Sure. I mean, if you really want to go. It's probably overdue anyway. And I'm…well…not busy. At least not busy spying on you."

He had laughed a little at that.

They had turned and walked together down the street looking for a coffeehouse. Steve had texted Sam to let him know where he was going and then received a text from Natasha saying that she was at the airport flying to Vienna for the accords. The funeral had been in the morning and the accords had been scheduled for the afternoon, and so Natasha should have a decent amount of time to arrive for the signing. And since he wasn't going, that had freed up most of his day to spend with Sharon. In lieu of a coffeehouse, they settled on a restaurant and ordered lunch that just happened to include coffee. She smiled at the memory of the day. He had watched with fascination as she had shoveled five spoons of sugar into her coffee.

"Having a little coffee with your sugar?" He quipped.

"Nope." She replied. "Having a little coffee with my creamer."

She added a generous amount of cream to her cup.

"Why would you butcher perfectly good coffee like that?"

She glanced down at his mug of black coffee.

"You know, there's been some recent studies that seem to indicate that drinking black coffee can be tied to psychosis." She sipped her over sugared, over creamed coffee, just the way she liked it, but kept her eyes on him with a smirk.

"Is that right?" He asked, unconcerned.

"Yup. Saw it on the Internet."

"Ah, well then it must be true," he snorted.

She bit back a giggle that she was afraid might make her sound like an airhead and asked about the Avengers instead. He had told her about the division of opinion amongst the Avengers, and how he had argued with Tony Stark. He explained his reasons for not wanting to sign and Sharon had to admit that after everything she had personally witnessed and experienced in her life that she had to agree with him. Perhaps the Avengers had needed some oversight and SHIELD had provided that early on, but without SHIELD to direct them, then who was qualified to tell people like these what to do and what not to do and when to do it? There probably had to be someone overseeing them, but politicians have their own agendas and her own distrust of politicians led her to believe that whoever ended up as oversight of the Avengers it couldn't be a politician from any country. She had to admit that a lot of these problems would likely be solved if SHIELD would just reform and the Avengers operate under them as before, but that probably wasn't going to happen at this point.

Conversation then switched to more personal details. He told her a bit about his life growing up in the Depression, which she found fascinating. He told her about his part-time job working at a corner grocery store not far from his mother's apartment in Brooklyn, and where he had attended high school and then later art school, hoping to work as a cartoonist before the war had broken out. She remembered Peggy telling her that Steve could draw quite well, but had not known that he had been an art student.

"Do you still draw?" she had asked.

He shrugged. "I probably should more," he responded. "It would probably be relaxing and help me work out some of the noise that constantly screams around in my head. What about you? Any hobbies?"

She laughed. "I sort of liked fooling around with photography when I was younger, but really what I'm into now is that adult coloring book craze. Have you seen them in stores? Peggy's doctor thought that if she took up adult coloring, it would serve as a way of focusing her mind and providing some stress relief. He said they were trying it out in hospitals with patients confined to hospital beds, and they had found some success in distracting them from their pain, and helping them to focus on something creative. I was willing to try anything that would help her mind, of course, so I picked up a few books and a couple of those expensive prismacolor pencils. Sure enough, she enjoyed it. So I picked up a few for myself and anytime I would visit her even if she couldn't quite remember who I was, we would just sit together coloring in a coloring books and watching daytime television. Best time I spent with her, really."

"I saw those books in her room," he admitted. "I thought they were pretty. I figured one of her kids had given them to her. She did seem to enjoy it."

"Yeah. Anyway, that's the extent of my creative talent. Coloring in coloring books so as not to lose my mind with stress and start chasing small animals with the Weedwhacker." She finished off her salad as he laughed.

"Was I that much of a hard assignment?" he quipped.

"Well," she said softly, growing serious for a moment," I did worry about you. You weren't really making friends and it seems like you were having a hard time adjusting. That, and you had come out of World War II, in your mind, like only a few months prior and we know now that soldiers from that war and a lot of subsequent wars suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder. PTSD and isolation and lack of connection with community, well soldiers have committed suicide over less."

"You thought I was suicidal?" he asked softly.

"I figured you probably weren't, but I wasn't ready to take the chance," she said. "More than once I just wanted to go across the hall with a big bag of Chinese food and plop on your couch and keep you company. You seemed pretty lost."

He smiled at that. "You should have. Thanks to my ramped up metabolism, I have to consume something like 4000 calories a day. I never turn down free food."

She had laughed at that and they had continue talking for what seemed like hours. They only finally got up to leave when they started to get dirty looks from the waiters. Then they had walked. Walked and talked. Sharon couldn't remember the last time she had spent this much time with a guy just talking and learning about him. She thought she knew most of what there was to know about him, but she learned that day how much she really didn't know. And he was learning about her too, and her family, which she knew allowed her to give him some insight as to what Peggy's life had been like after he had crashed the plane and vanished out of her life. At first, she had thought that describing Peggy's life with another man and having that other man's children might be too painful for Steve, but it didn't seem to bother him, in fact it's seemed to give him a certain measure of peace. She told him what she knew of Peggy's career in the SSR and later in SHIELD. She told him about her Uncle Gab, who had also fought with him in World War II, and all that she knew about her cousins.

"When did she start showing problems with her mind ?" he asked quietly, as if he wasn't sure he wanted the answer.

Sharon thought for a moment before answering. "I would say definitely by the time I was about fifteen, but maybe as much as by the time I was seven. It was little things at first, of course, the usual misplacing your keys or leaving things in odd locations and finding them weeks later. Everyone does that to a certain extent, but then she began to forget the words for things. I remember one time we had company over at the main house, and she asked me to please bring in from the dining room those things that you sit in, and for the life of her she couldn't remember the word 'chair' until I asked her if that's what she meant. Then sometimes, I would stay with her after Uncle Gabe died, and my cousins had moved out. Since my mom was frequently doing charity missions in South America, nobody minded me staying with her. I didn't mind staying with Aunt Peggy either because that's when she would usually show me the good stuff, like how to do a roundhouse kick to someone's head, or how to fire an Uzi at the gun range. She figured mom wouldn't necessarily approve of that, so we kept it on the down low. Anyway, I remember she had started to hear things that no one else could hear, like she would swear someone was having a conversation somewhere, and I knew it was just the two of us in the house. Well, I remember one night, I was sound asleep in my cousin Kathy's old room when suddenly she was shaking me awake I had always known Aunt Peggy was a secret agent of some kind, but I had never actually seen her in secret agent mode. She had a pistol in the other hand and was telling me to quickly get up, that someone was in the house. I don't mind telling you, I was terrified, because I could tell she was scared too, although hiding it well. I jumped up behind her and grabbed Kathy's baseball bat from under the bed. She had been training me to fight by that time, and I guess I was the equivalent of a black belt in some form of martial arts, but I had never had to use it before, and I was freaked out. I remember following behind her, keeping one hand on her back like I was afraid she would run off after some bad guy and leave me standing on the stairs. And it was crazy, because she was like 83 at the time. I didn't know many people that age who would be willing to take on home invaders. But she kept insisting that she had heard voices downstairs, and honestly, Steve, I couldn't hear anything. That was the night I learned how to check every nook and cranny for someone hiding in a building. We looked everywhere, and both of us were on high alert. We never did find anyone. And none of the perimeter alarms had been tripped. I wanted to call my cousin Greg, her son, but she didn't want anyone else in the family to be on the property just in case there really was trouble. I could see she was terrified, but not for herself. I knew then that she was scared something would happen to me. We looked again and again until the point I was crying, begging her to see that there was nobody there and couldn't we call somebody? I knew she didn't want to call SHIELD with me there, but finally she did, and they sent out a team to search the area.

"Did they find anything?" Steve asked

"No, nothing. No footprints or tire tracks or any evidence that anyone was there who wasn't supposed to be. I remember an agent took me aside in the kitchen and asked me what had happened, and I told him everything I just told you. He asked me if I thought anybody had ever been in the house at all, and I had to answer truthfully that no, I didn't think that had been. Besides, I had been asleep, I never heard anything myself. When I went into the living room looking for Peggy, I remember her sitting in her favorite chair with her shoulders kind of slumped, looking almost defeated. I went over and gave her a big hug, and the agent questioning her was asking her basically the same thing. Could she have been mistaken and there was never anyone in the house? She was adamant that she had heard something, but had to admit that there was no evidence. One of the agents stayed with us the rest of the night, and through the next day. But it wasn't until later that I understood that that might have been one of the first real signs of the dementia setting in. One of the side effects of that is hearing things that aren't there, or auditory hallucinations. Then she began to forget important things, like details of missions. I had just joined SHIELD at that point, and was completing my college degree in criminal psychology when she was gently asked to step down as director by the board, due to declining health reasons and Nick Fury took over. I had the option of living in SHIELD provided apartments or housing, but I opted to stay up at the main house with her on the Carter property. Honestly, I think the rest of the family was relieved, nobody wanted her to be alone. Then it started getting dangerous, like she would leave the coffee pot on or the oven. One day, when I had to go back to the house because I forgot something, I found her asleep on the sofa and the toaster oven on fire because she forgot she was using it. That was a rough day for everyone, especially her. It was pretty obvious that the point that it was too dangerous to leave her by herself at the house, and she reluctantly agreed to go in assisted-living. Then Greg moved his family into the main house and I moved back in with mom temporarily until I got my own place. Which was watching a 98 year old soldier from WW2 who was moving in across the hall. You pretty much know the rest."

Steve was looking off in the distance and nodding slowly. "When I would visit her, sometimes she knew what year it was and that I was back in present day, and other times she thought we were back in 1945. I knew that, in a lot of ways, she wasn't the same woman I had known and loved, and that really I had said goodbye to that woman 80 years ago."

"Still hurts, though," said Sharon.

"Yeah," he agreed.

They had arrived at her hotel when he asked her when she decided to join SHIELD.

As they walked into the lobby, she said "Well my mom was against me enlisting, but Aunt Peggy supported me of course. She got me my first thigh holster."

Steve chuckled. "Sounds practical."

"And stylish," she countered with a smirk.

She pressed the button for the elevator and turned back to him.

"So where does the CIA have you station these days?" he asked.

"Berlin," she said. "Joint counterterrorism department."

He looked slightly impressed as he nodded. "Right. Sounds fun."

She smiled, "I know right?"

He nodded and then gave her somewhat sheepish smile as if trying to decide whether not to say something before he finally looked at her and said, "I've been meaning to ask you….when you were spying on me from across the hall..."

"You mean when I was doing my job?" she countered with affectionate snark.

He nodded with a smile of resignation before asking, "Did Peggy know?"

Sharon sighed. She figured this question was going to come up eventually if she ever got to have a conversation with him, and she was rather surprised it hadn't come up earlier. She looked at him with sympathy and understanding.

"She kept so many secrets," she replied, shaking her head. "I didn't want her to have one with you."

She'd left out the part about being afraid that admitting to Peggy that Steve Rogers was her assignment that it would either upset her, or would cause Peggy to accidentally slip and let Steve know. She had idolized aunt, but the older woman was slipping too far mentally to be trusted with top-secret information anymore, and while it was very true that Sharon had not wanted to put her aunt in the position of lying to Steve Rogers, it was equally true that she wasn't sure her aunt would not interfere accidentally. Perhaps that bit of information hurt Sharon more than anything else, and for the sake of sparing him, she chose not to mention it, although surely he must be thinking about it. He had not been blind to Peggy's condition himself.

The elevator chimed behind her.

"Thanks for walking me back," she said.

"Sure," he said with a nod and another one of his disarming smiles that frankly should be illegal.

They had spent the entire day together and realistically should part ways now, but Sharon found herself unwilling to get in the elevator and leave him behind. Her eyes locked with his, the strangest feeling that he felt the same way. She knew she wasn't supposed to, but God help her, she liked this guy. And she didn't just like him because he was Captain America or because of her connection with him through his past with her aunt. In the month that she had spent studying him, even sneaking into his apartment to do her laundry unbeknownst to him, while sifting through his drawers looking for signs that he might be going off the deep end, which she had found instead was a fairly decent guy who didn't leave his crap everywhere and honestly wanted to help anytime he saw someone in need of a hand, whether it was their landlady trying to take the garbage out, or stopping a city from being hefted into the sky by a homicidal robot. He was decent and kind and thoughtful, good looking to boot, and there was a quality about him that made a person want his approval simply because if a good man like him approved of you, then you couldn't be a total fuck up like she often felt.

And now he was looking at in the same way she knew she was looking at him, and there was something in his eyes that shifted suddenly. His pupils dilated slightly in response to how she knew her own were doing the same, and he looked as if he was ready to say something, but wasn't sure if he could get it out in time without sounding like a dork. She was on the verge of asking him if he wanted to come up to her room and maybe continue talking (or maybe something else, though she gave herself a mental shake to clear her head of that image) when a voice came from her right.

"Steve?"

They had turned to see Sam Wilson standing there almost apologetically.

"Something you got to see," he said.

"What is it?" asked Steve.

"The accords. There was a bombing," Sam said. "It's on the news."

"Crap," Sharon muttered as the elevator door started to close. She reached out her hand to stop the door and motioned for the two men to follow her. "We can watch it in my room," she said. "I'll need to call into the office and see what's going on."

Wordlessly, the two men followed her and suddenly the prospect of bringing Steve back to her hotel room took on a whole new meaning. She was overcome with a sudden irrational hope that she had not left any underwear lying around. She wasn't a slob, but she wasn't necessarily neat freak either. Not like Steve, if the condition of his apartment across from hers had been any indication. She flipped on the television to the nearest news channel as soon as they walked into her room. Sure enough, there was the image of a burning building and reports that the Wakandan King T'Chaka had died in the blast. She dropped her handbag on the bed and went for her phone to call her supervisor as the two men watched in horror. She suddenly remembered that Natasha was supposed to be in that building, having left for those meetings just a few hours ago. She hoped the other woman had made it out of OK.

As the two men continued to watch, she spoke with the supervisor on call at the Berlin office. "Who's coordinating?" she asked, trying to ignore the sight of the building on fire on the screen. She continued back and forth until her clearance was approved, as well as managing to secure plane seats for Steve and Sam, right as the newscaster on the screen had indicated that the suspect was one James Buchanan Barnes and showed the grainy image of the Winter Soldier. She saw Steve's shoulders slump and she resisted the urge to go over and give him a hug. This had to be killing him to see his friend accused of such a heinous crime. She was only thankful that Aunt Peggy wasn't here to be watching the news now. Hearing that Bucky was also still alive and possibly responsible for the bombing would have really upset her.

She hung up and came to stand between the two men. It was not lost on her that if they had agreed to sign the accords, they might have been in that burning building themselves.

"I have to go to work," she told them.

They had gone back to their own hotels to pack, and she had changed out of her dress into travel clothes while firing off apologetic texts to her mom and family. She met Steve and Sam at the airport, and they took the same flight to Vienna. It was a three hour flight, so she and Steve had ended up being able to spend more time talking, though it was not the way she would have wanted it, and it mostly centered around Bucky and the fact that there was little Steve could do to intervene. She could see that he hated being hamstrung this way. When they landed, Sharon agreed to find out what was going on and meet the two men at a nearby bar. Which she had done. She had warned Steve that law enforcement had orders to shoot Barnes on sight, which she realized later had probably changed everything about how Steve would handle the situations that followed. Likely, if he had thought they would take Bucky alive, he might not have been so quick to defend him against the swat teams and others who had gone after Bucky in Bucharest which had resulted in putting Steve on the opposite end of the law.

But when they had all ended up arrested and flown back to Berlin, she had been there to meet them with Everett Ross. She didn't particularly like standing across the line from Steve again, but she was determined to be the one that his gear, primarily the shield, was handed over to and she couldn't avoid it otherwise. But she didn't want anyone else's fingers on Captain Americas shield. She had run her own fingers over the smooth surface, finding the small dent near one side clearly put there by small arms fire before the metal had been cured and painted.

Peggy.

Her aunt had told her about seeing Steve kiss another girl and had fired her gun at him cowering behind the shield in retaliation as Howard Stark had dived for cover under a table. Sharon only regretted that security cameras had not been commonplace at the time. She would have paid money to see that.

She had locked it away with Sam's wings and given Sam an invoice for his own armor.

"Bird suit?!" He read with indignation.

"I didn't write it," she shot back in her defense before surreptitiously pressing the audio button that allowed Steve to listen in on the interrogation of his friend. Then all hell had broken loose. Bucky had gotten loose and she found herself running down a hallway with Stark and Natasha, grateful her old SHIELD friend had survived the blast, to find herself tag teaming with them to fight Bucky, now on a rampage, who had dispatched all of them easily, including tossing her into a table, which shattered beneath her and ensured she'd have a headache for the next three days. She had been in the infirmary nursing a lump on the side of her head when her phone chimed with a secure text from Steve.

Any chance you could get our gear for us?

Meet me at the airport in two hours she had texted back with coordinates.

She had excused herself from the infirmary and told Ross she needed to go home and lie down. He had nodded sympathetically and given her leave. She had rushed down to the evidence lockup and badged her way through, grabbing a large canvas bag. There was no way to fake her access ID on such short notice so she had to use her own credentials. She had known even as she did it that she was giving up her job in the CIA for doing so. Oddly, she felt nothing, not even regret. She also couldn't believe how easily she just strolled out carrying a huge bag with Captain America's shield and Sam Wilton's wings in it. Nobody gave her a second glance. She hopped into her VW Jetta and took off to her apartment. She had done the "flight of the bumblebee" run through the apartment grabbing her escape backpack and anything else she felt like keeping. Nothing of personal value was here, all that was back at the Carter estate in Virginia. It took her twenty minutes, then she had jumped back in her car to meet Steve and Sam at the airport parking garage.

She had tried not to burst out laughing at the sight of three men, one of them Barnes, packed into the ancient Volkswagen Beetle. Steve had gotten out to meet her and had to practically unfold himself out of the driver's seat.

"I'm not sure you understand the concept of a getaway car," she joked.

"It's low profile," he said coming over to her.

"Good," she said lifting the trunk. "Cause this stuff tends to draw a crowd."

He looked down at the gear. "I owe you again," he said quietly.

"I'm keeping a list," she said. Then she looked over at Barnes sitting in the backseat of the beetle. Steve's glance followed hers.

"You know your friend tried to kill me?" she said, looking back at his apologetic expression.

"Sorry," he said genuinely. "I'll put it on the list."

She smiled. They both looked down at the gear, knowing what it meant that she had taken it and returned it to him.

"They're gonna come looking for you," he said.

"I know." She had always known. And she had done it anyway.

He looked at her with real respect and her heart skipped a beat. "Thank you Sharon"

She wanted to reply, maybe crack another joke, find some way of making the heaviness of this conversation not so heavy but she couldn't seem to find the right words. At least none that wouldn't make her sound glib or trite. Instead she just nodded and gave him what she hoped was a companionable smile that said 'no worries.' Instead her eyes met his and the look he gave her was one he had given her before, but this time more intense. It was put longing. And desire.

Now she stopped breathing. She knew her own expression told him the same. That she felt the same. No more hiding from him, she decided. And apparently he decided the same thing, because he seemed to come to a decision. He moved closer to her, looped an arm around her waist and drew her in. The next thing she knew, his lips were on hers and the entire world stopped spinning. Her eyes slid closed and she surrendered to him easily. Part of her logical brain tried to chastise her for giving in so quickly to anyone, even him. It certainly wasn't in her nature to give in to any man this easily, but she found she had no defense against him. And God, he felt good. She leaned in more and brought her hand up to his head, running her fingers through his soft hair and her other arm looped around his broad, muscular back. He pressed her slightly harder and she bit back a whimper. His scent filled her nostrils, something slightly musky and piney, and uniquely him. He was gentle but insistent. And she knew that if they had been alone behind a closed door, this would escalate quickly. The tiny ember of attraction she had always felt around him flared into a full on bonfire and her breathing sped up. She noticed that his did as well. Reluctantly, she pulled back. She knew the other two men were watching, and she had to regain some of her dignity. But she didn't pull away entirely. She rested her forehead against his and felt his sheepish chuckle as if he had surprised himself.

"That was..." She wasn't sure how to finish the sentence. Awesome? Hot? Unexpected?

"Late," he said with a smile.

"Damn right," she agreed. It *had* been late. She had wanted him long before now and she realized now that he wanted her. But how? And why? Because of her connection to Peggy? Or had he wanted her before he knew, back when she was just his friendly neighbor? With sadness, she knew that she might never find out, because they both had to be on their way.

She knew she had to let him go. He had to get Bucky to safety and find out who was really behind all this. But damn. She slowly pulled back, letting her hand drop from his head to his well-defined chest, then arm.

"I should go," she whispered looking into his eyes. He looked at her with longing.

"Yeah," he said reluctantly. She hoped they would cross paths again, it was all they could do right now. She had to hustle to make her flight to the states before all hell broke loose if he couldn't get Bucky away. And before anyone realized that she had done. But she hoped when all this was done, she could see him again. Clearly they had a lot more to discuss. Her heart was heavy as she walked away from him and drove away, trying not to look in the rear view mirror and seeing him watch her leave.

After that, she had made it home and made her escape. And Steve and his friends had fought Stark and his, splintering the Avengers. Nobody died, but Rhodes was seriously injured. And now Steve was in hiding and so was she, with no indication of when either of them could come back up. There was no way to know for sure how to get in touch with him, let alone see him again, for he likely wasn't looking to be found. And now here she was, at an abandoned dark cabin in the middle of nowhere, alone and with few prospects that didn't involve her ending up in a jail cell.

The memories faded from behind her closed eyelids like a movie going dark, and she opened them to the gloomy interior of the cabin with the sound of rain pouring down outside. She blinked back tears threatening around her eyes. She was lonely, and slightly afraid, and she wasn't out of trouble yet. She had to take stock of her surroundings. Searching for people inside had not included searching for equipment and provisions. And besides, crying was useless and unproductive, a sign of weakness she couldn't afford. She had made her choices. No sense crying about them.

She jumped up from the sofa and headed to look around the bedrooms. It was getting late and she was exhausted. She needed to decide where she was going to sleep. Most of the rooms looked like they hadn't been touched in a while and still had plastic sheeting over all the furniture. But two rooms didn't. In one room, she found evidence that the bed had been used somewhat recently and a thin jacket, covered in a film of dust, had been bunched up on the dresser left behind by the previous occupant. The name "Skye" was written on the tag.

Huh. Odd. Apparently named Skye someone had used this cabin after the fall of SHIELD. But whoever it was likely wasn't coming back any time soon. The dust on this jacket was several months old. Sharon didn't much feel like staying in the room herself if someone else had been homey enough in it to leave clothes behind, so she moved on. The second room was where she had figured to stay anyway. It had been the room Steve had used when he had stayed here. Tactically, it had been a good choice. It was on the top level and farthest away from the stairs, around a corner and easy to defend if anyone ever stormed the downstairs. Jumping from the window landed one on top of the AC unit, thus making it a plausible escape route. It also had its own bathroom. And maybe it was her imagination, but it didn't seem quite so dusty in here.

She dropped her bag on the bed and turned on a light. She retrieved a few cleaning supplies from downstairs, and within an hour had the room and bathroom mostly comfortable. She dug a travel bar out of her backpack, meant to provide a day's allotment of calories, fiber and vitamins, (though it tasted like ass) and munched on it while sifting through some emergency clothes she had found downstairs as well, since SHIELD had always kept its safe houses stocked with potential necessities. She found a shirt and thin cotton pants that would do for sleepwear. After ensuring that the downstairs was clear and secure, and that the perimeter alarms were functioning, she went upstairs to take a shower, the first she'd had since leaving Germany really. She knew she had to smell funky. As she let the tepid water rush down her back and through her hair, she suddenly realized that if these walls could talk, they'd be able to tell her what Steve Rogers looked like naked, for he had showered in this bathroom too. She gulped, not sure she should allow herself to follow that line of thought. But she was tired and her defenses were down. She briefly imagined him there in the shower with her, kissing her again. And then Peggy's face flashed in her mind and it was like being doused in cold water. She knew it was wrong. She shouldn't feel anything but kinship, loyalty, maybe even affection for the man who had almost been her uncle. It was too weird. But she did feel something. She couldn't deny it. And she suspected he did too, if the kiss at the airport was any indication. But what was even crazier was, knowing Aunt Peggy the way she had, she suspected her aunt would not have been unhappy about it either.

She dried off, threw on the unfamiliar clothes, brushed her teeth and collapsed into the bed. The videos of Steve using this room that she had studied showed that he liked to sleep on the left side of the bed, so she felt herself naturally rolling to the right side. But the left side was bare and cold. He wasn't here. Nobody was here. She rolled back over, snatched the pillow he had used, and hugged it to herself, burying her face in it. If she used her imagination, she could almost smell his scent still lingering on it. But that had been four years ago. It would have long since dissipated. Still, she needed something to hug, so the pillow he had used would have to do. She was exhausted but she knew she was in for a night of restless sleep anyway. She still didn't feel secure here, she was completely alone in the middle of nowhere with no one she trusted to share watch duties with in case there was an attack in the middle of the night. She was still thunderstruck at what had happened to the Avengers, consumed with worry over what had happened to Steve Rogers and where he might be, and on top of all that, she had just thrown away her career, rendered herself a fugitive from the CIA, and was still reeling from grief over burying her beloved Aunt Peggy only a few days ago, to say nothing of not knowing when or if she'd ever see her family or home again.

Was it worth it? her mom had asked.

Sharon still believed that yes, it was. And she'd do it again. She had vowed, even as she unlocked the evidence room to grab the shield, not to regret her decision. That had been easy enough during all the action in the daytime in another country, especially during the kiss. At that point in her life, everything had felt justified. But now that she was removed from everything, hiding in the Appalachians, with Steve far away and God knows where, in a dark room with the sound of rain outside, now that the mental noise had stopped, she could truly grasp the gravity of her situation. Briefly it overwhelmed her and a sob tore from her throat. She buried her face in the pillow and cried. Normally she would be angry at herself for crying like a baby, but just this once, she'd give herself ten minutes. She could always chalk it up to exhaustion later. She had never felt so alone or lonely in her life, not since she lost her entire world when SHIELD fell, not since she was transferred to Germany and never made friends, not since learning her Aunt Peggy, her mentor and role model, had died. She couldn't even cry to her mother now, for she had to stay away from her family to protect them. She had no career, no purpose, no close friends, and nowhere to go. She was adrift and unwanted. She was a fugitive, a criminal, for helping the man whose mere presence calmed and called her soul. Where was he?

She wished more than anything that he would walk in through the door, maybe having decided to come hide out here himself. Would they talk? Or do something else? Would she agree to it if it was "something else?" Her mind kept drifting back to the kiss. It had felt so good. So right. So long overdue. She wanted him, desperately she knew, but she was also a realist. He might be intrigued by her, but he didn't need her, not like she apparently needed him. He had his own issues, his friends, his life, and currently she didn't fit in it. He might desire her but that was probably only because he couldn't have Peggy. As she curled into the pillow, her sobs subsiding, but not the lonely ache around her heart, she slowly drifted off to sleep knowing she would likely never see Steve Rogers again, and she'd best just stop thinking about him and put him behind her. Even if every fantasy she had since moving in next door to him had featured him in a starring role, even if she had that unexpected kiss to remember him by, he was gone from her. She needed to start thinking about where she was going to go and what she was going to do with herself from now on. She'd need to disappear somewhere, maybe invent a new identity. She couldn't spend her life pining for a man who was out of reach. Because one thing was for certain: no matter how much he might have desired her, wherever he was, he was not up all night losing sleep over her the way she was over him.