SO let me just start by saying THANK YOU everybody for all the reviews and the favorites and the follows! You are all so amazing and wonderful and know that I am so grateful that you read my story and enjoy it so much!

I definitely meant to update sooner. I'm not really sure what happened, but thank you for the patience :)

I don't own anything.

Enjoy!

-:-

When Steve had woken up after being on ice for 70 years, he had felt out of place. There was no sound of distant gunfire, no sound of orders being shouted or jeeps being driven, no squeak of the bunk next to him as his fellow soldiers woke. That's when he had first known something was wrong. He had woken far too easily. So easily, in fact, that it was downright peaceful. A peace that had been fabricated for his benefit. Because, though he hadn't really expected to wake at all, he definitely hadn't expected to wake up in a different century. If only Bucky had known how right he'd been when he had said they were going to the future…

As Steve woke now, it was harder. He struggled to pull himself out from underneath unconsciousness and the haze of drugs that took away his pain but made his thoughts fuzzy. He swallowed as he tried to open his eyes. His throat felt dry, full of cotton. His eyelids felt so, so heavy. Couldn't he just stay like this forever? It would be so much easier, to stay unconscious, to not be responsible for the weight of the world on his shoulders, to not have to live with the pain and the guilt and the nightmares. But then again, he never had been the one to take the easy way out. So, fighting back his exhaustion and the drugs he could feel coursing through his limbs, making them heavy, he tried again to open his eyes.

Everything was fuzzy at first, nothing more than a blurry mess of possible shapes and maybe-outlines. Then the shapes and outlines took color, though there wasn't much color. Whites and tans and beiges. White, mostly, though. Hospital, he thought, surprised he could even form that much of a coherent thought. His head felt heavy, like lead, weighing him down and urging him to slip back under. As he managed to fully open his eyes, the colors and shapes fully formed, indeed creating a picture of a hospital room around him. As he took in the room around him, trying to move his head as little as possible, his gaze fell upon a familiar form.

"On your left," he croaked out, voice rough from disuse.

He saw Sam turn his head at the sound of his voice, giving Steve a small smile.

"Yeah, that's real funny, especially considering how freaked you're had us all, thinking you weren't going to wake up." Sam said, sounding a little scolding, though his friend looked relieved that Steve had opened his eyes.

"How long have I been out?" Steve asked, attempting to clear his throat.

"Almost a week."

Steve worked to think back. A week. He remembered being on the Helicarrier. Bucky. The Helicarrier falling from the sky, so much like Red Skull's plane. Falling and burning, smoke covering the blue of the sky gray and black. You're my mission! Glass shattering, metal groaning. Then finish it. 'Cause I'm with you till the end of the line. An explosion. Fire and heat, the world around him colored orange and yellow with flames. Then, falling, falling from the sky. Falling, falling, falling. Falling till he drowned. Water so cold, cold like the ice. A metal hand reaching out for him. Then everything went black.

"What happened?" Steve asked. "The Helicarriers went down, but what about S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D.s gone," Sam replied solemnly. "There are still Hydra agents out there, but for right now, it seems like they're laying low."

Steve nodded, but didn't say anything. So, the mission had succeeded. They had managed to take down S.H.I.E.L.D. Steve knew that, eventually, it would be rebuilt. There were still plenty of them out there loyal to the agency. Hydra, on the other hand…well, they didn't know how many of them there were, who went down with the ship and who just went into hiding. There were too many questions regarding the agency he had once dedicated his life to taking down, and not enough answers. It all just made his head hurt worse than it already did.

Sam continued to tell him what had happened since they (or rather Natasha) had found him on the beach. Steve listened quietly. He didn't have anything to say, and talking also took a lot of energy. He just felt drained. Every movement either hurt, like a thousand needles piercing his skin, or exhausted him. As Sam spoke, Steve moved to sit up a little further in bed, and by the time he had finished doing so, a sheen of sweat had broken out over his forehead, every muscle ached anew, and his breaths came out in little pants. He wasn't used to feeling this way, not since the super-soldier serum had been injected into his body. Then again, he'd never fought someone with a metal arm before.

"I'm gonna go find a nurse." Sam said suddenly, interrupting Steve's thoughts.

Too tired to even protest, Steve nodded, watching as Sam pulled himself up out of his chair and walked out the door, shutting it quietly behind him. Steve knew it was best not to dwell, so he pushed all thoughts of his metal-armed, brain-washed best friend out of his mind. Besides, it wasn't like he could do anything at the moment anyway. Even the thought of walking made him want to keel over.

Steve probably would have nodded off again if Sam didn't come back with the nurse just then. The nurse—a petite blonde who Natasha probably would have told him to ask out on a date—smiled kindly and used gentle hands as she checked his bandages. After a few minutes of watching her work, the nurse injected more drugs into his IV. Steve, with his still exhausted and drug-addled brain wouldn't have been able to say what kind of drugs they were if the nurse had told him. All he knew was that he felt the effects immediately. The pain that he'd started to feel again lessened and his lids started to get heavy. The nurse left and Sam took her place by Steve's bedside. Sam laid a hand comfortingly on his shoulder, which Steve barely felt.

"Get some rest." Sam advised. "Just make sure you wake up in this century, okay?"

The last thing Steve did before he slipped back under was smile.

As he slept, he dreamt.

The dreams he had were fragmented, bits and pieces of scenes and memories. Vivid, the colors burning against the white canvas of his mind. I'm gonna need a rain check on that dance. Cerulean sky, pearly clouds, very picturesque if he ignored the fact that he was in a plane only destined to go down. All right. A week next Saturday at The Stork Club. Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late. Understood? He wanted to say yes, of course he understood. But he couldn't bring himself to utter the words. They wouldn't have made it past the lump in his throat, anyway. You know, I still don't know how to dance. He was going to die. He knew that. Peggy was smart. She knew he wasn't going to make it either. I'll show you how. Just be there. The plane was coming closer and closer to the ground. More specifically, ice. Ice as far as he could see. He could already feel the cold seeping in from the broken window. He would've been shivering if the adrenaline coursing through his veins wasn't making him feel like he was on fire. We'll have the band play something slow. I'd hate to step on your—

A dark place with cages. Cages for men like they were animals. Shadowed hallways and a room with a table where his best friend lay. Steve wonders if they used a table like that when they took his arm or when they brainwashed him. I thought you were dead. Relieved that he isn't. I thought you were smaller. Tested on or not, he was still Bucky. Bucky who followed him out of the place with the cages and leapt over fire, fire like Hell brought to life. Bucky who refused to leave until Steve had made the hurdle as well.

Then, the other side of the coin, another place with snow and ice. Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone on Coney Island? Memories within memories. A laugh at old times right before the bad times, the worst of times. Everything always started according to plan. They were flying. Just like on the Helicarrier. Sailing through the sky. Only that time—that bad time that started as a good time—they were flying on a wire. Their lives depended on a single thread. How a piece of string suspended in space ending up being safer than the walls of a train, Steve had no idea. Then it was just the two of them. A team, like old times.

Things went wrong when Steve lost his shield. Then, Bucky was the one with the red, white, and blue. The one with the white star, before he became the one with the red star. Then Steve was reaching out his hand. They were opposite. Bucky had always been the one to reach out his hand, to pick Steve up off the ground after a fight, to help him brush off the dust. Bucky had been the strong one. Now, it seemed, like he was the strong one, but he was only strong with Bucky by his side. So Bucky was still the strong one. And Bucky continued to hold on, on to the railing as Steve reached out his hand. And he was so close. So close. And then Bucky fell. Bucky! Steve had always looked up to Bucky, and now Bucky looked up to him as he fell. Opposite again as Steve fell from the ship in the sky. Back to normal as he, once again, looked up at Bucky. Like old times, once again, as he watched the flames dance. Till the end of the line.

Then there were the new times. The images came faster now. New York when he woke up and New York during the Battle. Leaving New York because it wasn't his New York. The lies and the secrets that consumed Peggy's agency, the agency he now worked for. Dark. The world was so dark. All lit up by one little flame. Deadly, beautiful, her hair a fiery red. Just hang on, okay? Hang on for me, Steve. Red hair, fair skin, covered in black, like her namesake. Come on, Steve, wake up! Poise and precision, a predator. A killer who radiated life. She was a beacon. He focused on her light, on her warmth, on her strength, on her.

Steve's eyes snapped open. The images of his dreams faded away. He turned, expecting to see Sam—

"Natasha," he said quietly, mostly because he didn't think he could talk any louder.

"Hey, Cap." She gave him a sideways smile, her eyes alight with relief and the spark of amusement she seemed to always carry with her.

At the sight of her, Steve relaxed. Somehow, she had become an anchor for him. Despite her multiple identities and her dark and daunting past, she was one of the most real things in his life as of late. And seeing her now, whole, smiling despite the exhaustion lining her features, he felt better. Looking at her, he vaguely remembered seeing her first on the beach. In that moment, as he'd drifted in and out of consciousness, bleeding and broken, she'd tethered him to reality, urged him to hold on. In that moment, she had given him hope, even as the world around him burned and smoked.

Steve moved to sit up and Natasha's hands immediately shot out. Whether she reached out to help him or keep him lying down, he couldn't be sure, but he waved her off nonetheless. She pinched her full lips together, watching him, and he could see her struggling not to assist him. It took him a minute to sit up, but less time than it did when Sam had been there. Steve blew out a breath. It had been a long time since he'd been this weak. Since taking the super soldier serum had been injected in him, he was so used to being strong, able to stand tall even when his enemies tried to knock him down. Fighting Bucky had taken more out of him than he had realized. And not just physically, either. He was still working on processing the fact that his best friend was alive.

"Do you want me to get a nurse?" Natasha asked gently, taking up her seat next to his bed, and moving the chair closer so she was right beside him.

Steve shook his head. "No."

"Steve—"

"I'm okay right now." He interrupted. If she went and got the nurse, the nurse would give him more drugs and he would go back to sleep. He didn't want to sleep anymore. "Really, Nat. I'll let you know if it hurts."

"Okay," she agreed, the wrinkle in her brow the only indication of how worried she actually was.

"How are you holding up?" he asked.

Natasha raised her eyebrows in surprise. "You're worried about me?"

He nodded, giving her a one-sided shrug with his good shoulder.

"If I'm remembering correctly, you got shot three times, stabbed, beaten to a pulp, nearly drowned, and then passed out for a week, and you're worried about me?"

"Just humor me, all right?"

A small smile was playing on her lips, but her gray-green eyes were serious. "I'm fine, I guess. Shoulder's healing up just fine."

"And how are you feeling about having your whole life open for the world to see?" he questioned softly, watching her expression.

She glanced away from him, staring at her hands, as if seeing something on them that he couldn't. He studied her, realizing quite suddenly that he wanted to draw her. He imagined sketching out the soft curves of her body that covered the hardened muscles underneath. He could see in his head the way his pencil would move to trace the outline of her full lips, the way her hair fell around her face in a fiery curtain, the nimble, skillful hands that so often were curled into fists.

"I don't know," she whispered in answer to his question, though she refused to meet his gaze. "Guess I just have to figure out who I'm going to be, since all my covers are blown."

"Well…" Steve started slowly. "Why can't you just stay being Natasha?"

She looked up then, the surprise evident on her face as her eyes widened and her mouth formed a small, uncertain little o. She looked almost taken aback, but also a little dumbfounded, like the thought had never occurred to her.

"Is that who you want me to be?" she asked in the same quiet tone as before, reminding him of their conversation in the car days ago. Who do you want me to be? How about a friend.

"Yes." he replied, meeting her eyes with his own. He still wanted her as a friend. He'd come to trust her immensely in the past couple weeks. But more than that, he wanted her to just stay the person he'd come to know—Natasha. Natasha was strong and deadly and independent and funny. Natasha was beautiful. Steve didn't want her to lose all of that by assuming a new identity. He wanted her to stay being Natasha. She was one of the first people he'd met after coming out of the ice, and he felt like, if she let go of Natasha, he'd lose her as well. He'd lose the part of him that was anchored to the world by her.

"Being Natasha isn't so bad, I suppose." She smiled softly. "I'll think about keeping her around a little while longer."

"Good. I'd like that." He responded.

He leaned over to grab the glass of water on the bedside table, but stopped as bolts of pain arced throughout his body. He gasped putting a hand to his abdomen. Natasha was already standing, easing him gently back against his pillow. He gritted his teeth, breathing in slowly. Natasha grabbed the water and brought it over to him. He tried to take the glass from her, but she pulled it out of his reach.

"Let me." She whispered.

Steve tried to protest, wanted to say that he could do it, but Natasha shushed him.

"Just let me baby you for a minute here, okay?" she urged.

The dryness of his tongue and throat eventually won over and he allowed Natasha to cradle the back of his head gently, bringing the glass of water to his parched lips with her other hand. He gulped down several mouthfuls, before Natasha took the glass away. And, he might have imagined it, but he thought her fingers lingered at the nape of his neck a second longer than they normally would have. But then her hand was gone and she was sitting down again and he was sure it was just the exhaustion.

"You know, Steve," she started. "It's okay to need help every once in a while. And if I'm being honest—"

"You? Honest?" he teased, giving her a smirk.

She looked like she was trying hard not to laugh. "You're really lucky I'm feeling sympathetic about you being hurt; otherwise you definitely would've just gotten a fist right in those pretty little stiches you're sporting."

Steve chuckled. "I'm sorry. Continue, please."

"Anyway," she smiled. "I'm not very good at admitting when I need help. I don't like relying on others. But, I guess…working with you these past couple years, I've learned that it's okay to lean on someone else every once in a while. It doesn't necessarily mean you're weak, but more so that you're strong enough to admit that you can't do everything by yourself all the time."

She paused, as if uncertain about what she was admitting.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm here for you." she continued. "Especially now. Super soldier or not, you're still human, Steve. You have saved my life multiple times now, so just let me start repaying the favor. Let me shield you for a while."

Steve stared at her for a moment, so unsure of what to say. The whole time he'd known Natasha, she'd never been that open, that honest, all at one time. Her truthfulness was so sudden, that for the moment, he was dumfounded.

"Okay." He nodded in agreement.

"Speaking of…" Natasha trailed off, reaching back behind her, just out of Steve's line of sight.

What she pulled out almost surprised Steve more than her honesty. The round vibranium disk was wasn't dented in the slightest, thanks to the metal it was forged from, but it still showed the signs of all that it had been through in the past days. The red, white, and blue paint was mostly there, but still missing in several places. Scorch marks covered its surface like scars. In all honesty, Steve wasn't sure he'd ever see the shield again. Natasha laid the object gently across his legs, the lightweight metal causing him no pain. He ran his fingers over its surface.

"We fished it out of the Potomac for you." Natasha explained without him even having to ask. "It's in good shape. The straps are a little waterlogged, but those can be replaced. Stark said he'd fix it up for you. Said he's even looking for some vibranium he can forge into a spare for you. I told him that was probably a good idea. Just in case you decided to go dropping it out of a plane again."

Steve smiled at her, then lifted the shield up towards her. "There's not a whole lot I can do with it right now. You should hang on to it. Especially if you're going to be shielding me and all until I can get out of this bed."

"Fair enough." She said, taking the shield from him, and setting it up against the bedside table, this time, where just enough of the rim was poking out that he could see it.

Feeling exhaustion creeping up on him once again, he settled back against his pillow, not even objecting when Natasha paged the nurse. As more drugs entered his system, his lids weighing down till all light vanished, the last thing he saw was her bright red hair. He thought he even felt her fingers brush against his, if even for a fraction of a second. Steve didn't really want to sleep anymore, but with her there, it wasn't so bad. Just as he was about to drift off, he let one word slip past his lips, just like on the beach when she found him.

"Natasha."

He would have said more, would have asked her if he could draw her sometime, asked her if she would slip her arm through his shield so he could see her holding it. He would have asked her so many things, but he was already too far gone. He just hoped that when he woke up, she wouldn't be gone too.

-:-

Music for this chapter:

Dauoalogn; Sigur Ros (Steve's dream sequence especially)

Sleeping at the Wheel; Matchbox Twenty

Broken; Seether feat. Amy Lee

So there's chapter 3! Hope you guys liked it!

Just a little note on Steve's dream sequence, it was meant to come out super fragmented, just bits and pieces of thought at a time, flashes of memory, that kind of thing, so I hope it read that way!

Also, there will definitely be one more chapter, and that next chapter will be really where Steve and Natasha's relationship peaks in this story. And I will try to get that up sooner than I got this one up!

Please review! The feedback has been wonderful so far, and I really appreciate it, so keep 'em coming! I love hearing your guys' thoughts!

Thank you for reading!

-DaughterOfPoseidon333