Ch. 2: a lot to figure out
Steve is an hour and a half late to work.
Everyone is staring at him when he walks in, and even though he knows it's probably because he's never been more than thirty-two seconds late his entire life he can't help but feel like they're looking at him because they know, so he tucks his chin and walks up the stairs as quickly as he can without looking like he's escaping from something. He walks through the doors of the briefing room with his head down, muttering apologies, and as he falls into his chair a familiar cough makes him look up.
His heart sinks as he realizes that the briefing room is completely full, save for the empty chair beside him that he can't bear to look at. The only time everyone comes in to the Avengers facility is when there's a high-profile, super important mission that takes more than a few of them, and as he glances around he silently curses the universe for dropping this on him today, of all days. Steve tightens his grip on his shield and silently waits for instructions, hoping that taking out some bad guys will at least take his mind off the woman who should be next to him, trying to get him to laugh through mission briefings and break his consistently professional demeanor.
The instructions never come. Instead, there's a long silence that Steve hardly notices, until he hears Fury clear his throat and say his name.
Steve forces himself to look up into the face of the man who has been the cause of his pain for the last 13 hours, and with great difficulty, says "Yes, sir."
"What was Agent Romanoff doing at your apartment last night?"
It's the last question he's expecting, and it's the last question he wants to answer right now. There's a quiet, cold fury building inside him, and there is a clear warning in his voice when he says "How did you know she was at my apartment?"
"We have other agents living around the area," Fury says, and when Steve is silent he continues to press. "Why was she there? We asked her to go straight to a destination that she was ten minutes late to, thanks to that little detour. If she's told you anything, leaked any private information—"
"She didn't tell me anything," Steve says flatly. "She just came to say goodbye."
Fury looks like he doesn't quite believe him, but something in Steve's face must keep him from continuing that line of questioning, because he switches tack quickly.
"Then who drove her there? She opted not to take her own car, but none of our drivers took her."
Steve shrugs, and the fact that he really could not care less about her driver, of all things, must show on his face, because Fury's face hardens. "This is important, Rogers. Someone we don't know is giving our agent rides. If she's working for someone else, putting this organization in jeopardy—"
He doesn't quite know how it happens, but suddenly Steve is standing with both fists clenched and there's a roaring in his ears that has drowned out the rest of Fury's sentence.
"Don't you dare insinuate—"
"It was me," someone says quickly, and Steve looks down in surprise to see Tony Stark pick his head up off the table. "I drove her."
Whatever answer Fury was expecting, it wasn't this, because he looks more shocked than he did after Bucky shot a bullet through five walls and his back. "You?"
"Yeah, it was me. She called me after your sweet little chat and was practically in hysterics, at least by her standards. Said she wasn't in the mood to drive and asked for a ride. You shouldn't be surprised, you know. I was the first Avenger she knew that wasn't assigned to kill her at first, only I wasn't an Avenger until you couldn't survive without me because I had—what was it? An unpredictable temperament."
If Fury hears the end of Tony's jab, he doesn't show it. "Did she say what business she had with Rogers?"
"Like the Captain said. Just wanted to say goodbye." There's a hard edge to Tony's voice, and as Steve stares at him he slowly realizes that he may not be the only one who wants to throw Fury off a cliff for sending Nat on a life-threatening, long-term mission on a five minutes notice.
Fury holds both of their gazes with his one eye, somehow, which Steve thinks is patently unfair, and when neither of them says anything else he sighs. "Fine. I know that she was close to both of you. I'll see you later."
Steve continues staring stonily at the door for long after Fury exits, until he remembers why he's here in the first place.
"Wait," he says, turning back around, "what was the mission?"
He's answered with a mix of raised eyebrows and expressions of concern, and as he opens his mouth in annoyance to repeat his question Tony says, "You."
"Me?"
"Yeah, you. We all know she was the one person you really, truly trusted when Bucky was still gone. We all just wanted to check in, make sure you were okay."
"So, what, you called a meeting so that everyone could come and throw their pity at me?" It's unfair, he knows it is, but he's annoyed and he's angry and he's sad and it's the first response that comes into his head.
"No," Clint says quietly. "Nobody called anybody. We all showed up here on our own after Fury told us where he'd sent Nat. We care about you, Cap. We're all on your team."
And he doesn't know if it's because it's Clint, Nat's oldest friend, or if it's because he's just so tired, but Steve feels all the anger and frustration leave his body as he slumps down onto the table in front of him.
"Sorry."
"It's quite alright," Tony says, smirking. "At least you got to, you know, say goodbye. And I think I speak for all of us when I say, finally."
"I—wait, what?"
He's greeted by about ten different sighs and ten different eyerolls, and even though this should annoy him he feels some of the tension leave his shoulders instead.
"Okay, fine. You all saw it coming. Happy?"
"Very," Peter Parker pipes up. "I'd like it on the record that I saw something coming before Captain America himself. Can we call the court reporter? Or whoever takes minutes at these meetings?"
Despite himself, Steve feels a grin start to form. "Okay, first of all, you're a sixteen-year-old kid. If you didn't have better eyesight than a seventy-year-old man I'd be concerned."
Tony snorts, and Steve starts to think that maybe this whole experience won't be as bad as he thought, but then Bruce asks "did she tell you how long this would take?" and all the tension is back.
"No," he mutters. "Anywhere from months to years."
His words are met with a general intake of breath, and for some reason he feels responsible, so he follows up with, "It's okay, though. She'll be fine. She's Nat."
It's eerily similar to what he'd said to her the night before, and he winces inwardly at the memory, but it seems to have done the trick.
"Yeah," says Peter, looking marginally more cheerful. "She's the Black Widow! She can do anything, take down anyone. And Ammo is such a stupid name, there's no way that guy is smart enough to outwit her."
"You're right, kid," Tony says, giving Peter a high-five, and it's just naïve teenage optimism, Steve knows it is, but he really wants to believe it.
"I hate to interrupt this beautiful moment," comes Clint's sardonic voice, "but we have to go. Duty calls. See you later, Cap."
Everyone files out the door, patting Steve on the back and murmuring expressions of sympathy on their way out. After he and Tony are the only ones left, Steve stands up to leave, but Tony gets up abruptly and shuts the door.
"Hang on. I wanted to talk to you alone for a sec." Then, seeing Steve's apprehensive look, he says, "Relax, dude. It's nothing bad. Just thought we could have some guy talk, you know?"
"No," Steve says, his apprehension morphing into incredulity, "I don't know."
Tony rolls his eyes. "Fine. I'll start. I wanted to say that I'm sorry. About Natasha."
"It's not your fault."
"Well, no. But it still sucks."
"Yes," Steve sighs. "It really does."
There's a silence that stretches out for what seems like an eternity, and Steve knows that neither of them can stop thinking about Nat, and what might happen to her, or when she'll come back (if she'll come back). He's in the middle of envisioning a particularly gruesome scene where she gets ripped in two by a group of weird robot-dog hybrids when Tony speaks up.
"Did you know that the first day I met Nat, she kicked Happy's ass in the boxing ring?"
Steve smiles slightly. "She might've mentioned it, but she was always too uncomfortable with talking about herself to go into detail."
Tony snorts. "It was insane. She strolled into my office, pretending to be an assistant, and then I stuck her in the ring with Happy so that I could talk to Pepper. He tried to teach her some moves and she just fucking slammed him into the ground. She decked my head of security in ten seconds! Happy was so mortified afterwards he almost quit."
Steve is full-on grinning, now, and Tony keeps going. "And then, when Rhodey's suit got compromised and was trying to kill me, she snuck into the headquarters to reset it and knocked out like forty guards in the time it took Phil Coulson to beat one. He told me he was so proud of beating his guy until he looked up just to see a hallway lined with bodies and her hair whipping around the corner."
Steve laughs, really laughs, for the first time since the night before, and Tony smiles.
"All I'm saying, Cap, is that men have always underestimated her and her abilities. And they've been proven wrong, time after time. And Ammo is definitely gonna be one of those men, but I think we might be too."
"You're right," Steve says, and he means it. "She'll be okay. Thanks, Tony."
Their eyes meet, and Steve feels something in the air shift.
"You know," Tony says in a low voice, "she may have acted like she was a lone wolf who didn't need friends for a long time, but she did always have our backs."
"Yes," Steve says slowly, "she definitely did."
"And I think it's only right," Tony continues, as if Steve had never spoken, "that we have hers too. At all times."
Something about Tony's tone of voice makes Steve lower his voice and ask, "What are you saying?"
Tony rolls his eyes again (Steve swears to himself that he's going to punch him next time) and says, with an air of infuriating superiority, "I'm saying, grandpa, that just because Nat's on a solo mission doesn't mean she's actually alone. We can work it from here, right? We might not know where she is, but we know what she's generally trying to do and the guy she's ultimately after. There has to be a way we can make her job easier without revealing her identity or tipping off Ammo that the Avengers are behind this. We can help her. We just have to figure out how."
And maybe it's Tony's use of the very dig Nat had used a mere 14 hours before, or maybe it's Steve's body protesting against the amount of sheer pining he's been doing and begging for some actual action, but Steve suddenly thinks that this is the best idea he's ever heard.
When he tells Tony this, Tony grins. "That's what I'd hope you'd say. Now come on. We've got a friend to help."
They both get up, and as Tony opens the door he looks back and says with a smirk, "Or rather, I've got a friend to help. You've got a girlfriend to help."
Steve is the one rolling his eyes, this time, and even as he starts to say "she's not my girl—" he feels something in him swallow his words whole.
He thinks it might be hope.
