Disclaimer: anything you recognize, I do not own

A/N I had expected to update much quicker, but obviously that didn't happen. I'd had a plan for what I wanted to do, then I rethought it and am doing something almost completely different. But I will be continuing to update this story, so that's the good news. I hope you like this chapter, as we are moving into our Avengers phase. Comments, questions or even constructive criticism are welcome, just please review and tell me what you think!

Back in his time, Steve had thought of having a family, but it always seemed so unlikely for him. No girl so much wanted to dance with him, let alone settle down with him. When the war started, it didn't seem to matter as much. When he met Peggy and became Captain America, it started to matter again, but his thoughts mainly remained on the war. Throughout those scattered thoughts of having a child, he had never imagined it being as it was with Shadow.

She wasn't touchy-feely, she wasn't open or emotional. She would rather go on a run than talk to him in the morning. And her idea of a run apparently involved a dead sprint for as long as possible. She would come back, eat lunch, something she rarely had an excuse to skip with him and then retreat to her room. She insisted that dinner was eaten on the couch while she introduced him to movies, books or TV shows he'd missed, which left little room for talking. She claimed to go to bed early, but he could always see a light underneath her door until early hours of the morning. She was constantly on edge. The only real times he'd seen her relax was when he'd managed to totally distract her, usually with stories of the war or by working out with her. Once she had even a second where she wasn't totally distracted, she was back to being a soldier on guard.

Still, he learned little things about her. She preferred soda and coffee over anything else. She rarely smiled; if she was amused, she let him known with a quirk of her lips. She hated being called Sarah. In fact, she never responded to her real name and he'd learned very quickly to just call her 'Shadow'. She hated being touched. She loved music. She was the sassiest person Steve had ever met; thinking of how she and Bucky would've gone at it never failed to simultaneously amuse and sadden Steve. She was stir crazy. Steve was told she was under the careful eye of SHIELD, but she seemed to think it was worse than it was. She was always fidgeting, pacing. If she left the apartment, it was to go out sprinting, shop for the essentials and then return acting angrier and more on edge than before.

It took two weeks before he heard her laugh. She had left for her morning sprint and he'd decided to go and run with her after she'd left. He caught up to her easily and announced 'on your left' as he passed. Obviously, she had expected that, because she tripped and face-planted on the concrete. He stopped and gone back to her, sure she'd just taken the skin off her entire face, but she was sitting up and actually laughing, though there was some dirt on her cheek now.

"Jeez, you are fast." She told him, pushing herself to her feet.

"Thought I'd join you."

"You mean you want to see if I can keep up with you?"

"Well..." He actually hadn't thought about it; she'd been captured because she had inherited some of the serum. But she smirked at him like he had just had the greatest idea in the world.

"You're on." With that, she took off sprinting and he'd had to take off after her.

After that, they were a bit more comfortable with each other. She wasn't open or touchy-feely but she was a bit less on edge. He wasn't sure what exactly had triggered that. Maybe it was because he'd shown her that he actually wanted to be with her, he wasn't being forced to interact with her by SHIELD. But, in any case, she wasn't so against him anymore.

He sat on the metro train, watching the view go by. He had been slowly exploring the new New York City. It gave him a chance to get out and think, something he could never do enough.

Three weeks. He'd been unfrozen for three weeks, one spent out in the middle of nowhere and two with Shadow. It seemed like so much longer and yet so much shorter at the same time.

"Hey." Steve jumped and whirled. Shadow was sitting behind him, with her infamous smirk.

"How long have you-?"

"Since you got on. You're unobservant when you're thinking." She stood up in her seat, swung her leg over the back of his and sat down next to him.

"You've been following me?" He questioned; honestly, he was just surprised she'd gone this far from her apartment.

"I was bored; I had to make my own fun. Also, SHIELD agents came to our apartment." She informed him casually.

"What for?"

"I don't know. Not completely sure they were SHIELD either." Shadow explained, glancing subtly around the train. Steve was beginning to think she was a bit paranoid, but he figured she deserved a little slack after what she'd gone through, whether it was Hydra or not. She had scars and stories behind those scars that he'd just begun to hear; if she thought she was in danger, he was on alert.

She looked ready to run. Not in a morning routine way in sweatpants and a tank top, but in a disappear sort of way. She wore black pants, combat boots, a grey tank top and a green army jacket. All of it said that she was going to blend into a crowd, kick butt easily if cornered and keep warm outside. Her hair was tied back in a braid and tucked underneath the collar of her jacket.

Steve's hand went towards her shoulder, but she flinched away from his touch and his hand dropped. She looked out the window.

"We're getting off at this stop." She announced matter-of-factly. He wasn't about to argue; he trusted her to know what she was doing when it came to avoiding possible danger.

She led him off the metro train as soon as it stopped and kept moving so silently and swiftly he actually found it hard to keep up and keep her in sight. She glanced over her shoulder and slowed somewhat reluctantly so he could fall into step beside her. Shadow seemed to know where she was going; she went straight to what was a gym closed for the night and kneeled down to pick the lock with a pin from her hair.

"What's the plan?" Steve asked.

"Run. Hide. Kill. Repeat as necessary. The only SHIELD agent I trust is Barton and he wasn't there. I checked." She assured him in a devil-may-care tone. Like this was just an adventure that she wanted to see play out. Like if someone shot her, she'd be able to joke about it. She shouldered open the door and slipped inside. He followed her in and she shut the door behind them.

"You're subtly is to be admired." A voice said behind them and Shadow whirled, pulling something long and shiny from her sleeve. Steve put his arm up to stop her as Fury watched them with interest. "But you do have a tracker attached to your wrist, so..."

"You here with a mission, sir?" Steve cut in. He could feel Shadow shaking anger and wisely kept his arm up to separate her from Fury. Fury flipped the lights on, momentarily blinding them and Shadow lunged against Steve's arm. He pushed her back and reached to grab the pocket knife from her hand, but she quickly stepped out of his reach.

"Here." Fury handed Steve a file, not even bothering to watch Shadow as she edged away from them. Steve gave him a questioning look, but opened the file. He examined the pictures inside and then looked back at Fury.

"Hydra's secret weapon." Shadow slowly edged forward again, wanting a look at the file.

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you. He thought what we think, the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs."

"Who took it from you?"

"He's called Loki. He's not from around here."

"Name like that? Must be from Crazy Town." Shadow murmured and Steve and Fury both looked at her, knowing there was more she wanted to say. "Where's Barton and why did you send some agents to my apartment without warning?"

"Barton's been compromised."

"Great. That explains everything, thanks so much." Sarcasm rolled off her tongue easily, though she still held her knife up threatening.

"There's a lot we'll have to bring you both up to speed on if you're in."

"In? In on what?" Shadow demanded.

"Stopping this threat."

"I don't stop threats, I am a threat!" Shadow felt compelled to point out. She lowered her knife, rolling her eyes at the pure stupidity of Fury's offer.

"Someone took this from you and is trying to take over the world?" Steve asked, sounding annoyed and frustrated.

"The world has gotten even stranger than you already know."

"At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me."

"Ten bucks says you're wrong. There's a debriefing package waiting for you back at your apartment." Fury informed them.

"Ooh, does it have connect the dots and crossword puzzles?" Shadow asked with a light laugh. Fury looked at her with a tight smile but addressed Steve again.

"Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?"

"You should've left it in the ocean." Steve turned and walked out of the gym with an air of finality. Shadow glanced at Fury and then followed him, letting the door bang shut behind her and jogging to catch up with Steve's brisk walk.

It didn't take a genius to see that he was upset now. She'd pushed him for two weeks, testing him in any way possible to see who he really was and he'd been nothing but patient with her. One conversation with Fury and suddenly he was borderline furious. That in itself was enough to interest her.

"I get that people are annoying but you seem a bit peeved." She noted, folding up her knife and sticking it back up her sleeve as she caught up with him.

"They should've left it in the ocean."

"Yeah, I got that when you said it five seconds ago."

"If the one person gets a hold of that, it's World War 2 all over again!"

"History repeating itself minus the cute girl you can... fondue... right?" She asked, arching an eyebrow. He shot her a look and she shrugged it off, turning to look ahead of her again. "Just saying, wars are going to happen. Might as well keep far, far away from them. I'm saying we go to Hawaii. Hear there's hot surfer dudes there."

"And leave SHIELD to try and deal with... whatever this is?" He demanded.

"We don't owe anyone anything." She told him pointedly, tossing her braid that had come loose from behind her collar.

"Innocent people are going to die if this Loki takes the tesseract and-." Shadow stopped walking and Steve halted as well, her glaring eyes stopping him short.

"Innocent people? No such thing. Also, I don't care. I care about myself and, like, two other people. I am not going to loose sleep over people I don't know."

"That's the difference between us-."

"Oh, honey, there's a lot more differences between us than that." She told him in that patronizing tone he'd grown accustomed to hearing. She turned and hurried back towards the apartment, putting a lot of distance between them in a short amount of time, effectively ending their conversation.

Steve didn't want to go into another war. But with the Tesseract out there... The next morning he found himself putting on his jacket and preparing to head down to the airfield where a quin-jet was waiting for him. Footsteps sounded from behind him and he didn't bother to turn around.

"Should I expect you to be in Hawaii by the time I get back?"

"I'm going too." Shadow ground out. He turned to look at her. She had a black backpack slung over one shoulder, dressed very similarly as the day before.

"What?"

"You heard me." She snapped, brushing past him to get to the door. "SHIELD wants to play ball, fine. Anything that gets them to leave me alone and get this off." She held up her wrist to show the tech-bracelet.

"So you're doing this for you."

"Finally, you're starting to get it." She smirked and then stormed out the door.

Shadow wasn't claustrophobic. She wasn't afraid of heights. But being in a metal container thousands of in the air? Not her idea of fun, if she was being honest. Watching Agent Phil Coulson fanboy over her father, however, was exactly her idea of fun. She pretended to read her battered copy of The Maze Runner but she couldn't stop herself from peeking over the top of it every once and a while.

Steve was reading the files on the rest of the 'Avengers' and didn't even notice how Coulson was staring at him.

"So this Dr. Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?" Steve questioned, eyes still glued to the file.

"A lot of people were." Coulson explained and neither one of them missed how Shadow's hands clenched around her book at his words. "You were the world's first superhero."

"Unless you count Superman. First comic was published in 1938." Shadow piped up.

"He's not real." Coulson told her.

"Not with that attitude he's not..."

"Well, anyway." Coulson said, turning back to Steve. "Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula."

"Didn't really go his way, did it?"

"Not so much. When he's not that thing, though, guy's like a Stephen Hawking." He explained. Steve looked at Shadow for an explanation. She didn't miss a beat.

"He's like a really smart dude."

"You know, I gotta say, it's an honor to finally meet you, officially. I sort of met you, I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping. I mean, I was present when you were unconscious." Despite Coulson's attempts to salvage his own awkward words, Shadow nearly fell out out of her seat laughing. Steve fought back a smile himself while Coulson just started to look uncomfortable.

"Ooh, whoa." Shadow said, still giggling like a school girl. "Thank you, Agent Coulson. You just made my day." She winked at him and then went back to her book.

The plane lightly touched down a few minutes later and Shadow followed the men off the quin-jet. They appeared to be on some sort of aircraft carrier, in the middle of the ocean no less. Nowhere to hide for miles around, they have the advantage if it comes to a fire-fight... Awesome,she thought to herself. She shrugged her shoulder, letting her backpack slide down her arm so she could unzip it. She stuffed her book inside and quickly slipped a knife up her sleeve.

When she looked up, Steve had already gone over to talk to who Shadow could only assume was Dr. Banner, given the nervous way he was acting. Right beside him was Natasha Romanoff. Shadow, hating her inability to just take off and disappear, hurried to catch up with them in time to catch the end of Banner's comment to Steve:

"Must be strange for you... all of this."

"Well, this is actually kind of familiar."

"Bunch of monkeys running around taking orders? Must be..." Shadow grumbled, tossing her hair out of her face. Steve glanced at her but Natasha was speaking before he could say whatever he wanted to.

"You might want to step inside. It's going to get a bit hard to breathe in a minute."

"Is this a submarine?" Steve questioned.

"Really, they want me in a pressurized metal container? No, this is much worse." Banner informed them as they stepped closer to the edge. Turbines were spinning below them and slowly Shadow felt the carrier lift into the air. Oh, yeah, she thought, this is much worse. Having seen enough, they slowly followed Natasha into the hallways of the carrier.

"So what happened to Barton?" Shadow finally questioned and saw Natasha's jaw clench.

"He's been compromised."

"Yeah, see, that can mean a lot of different things. Has he suddenly become addicted to Lucky Charms and they appear to be mind-controlling him. Is he driving a wheelchair with his tongue now? I mean, be specific."

"Uh... Is she always like this?" Bruce asked Steve quietly from behind the women.

"Every day."

"Oh."

"He's being mind-controlled." Natasha explained shortly to Shadow.

"By Lucky Charms?"

"By Loki." Natasha snapped. She led them into the bridge. While Steve paused to talk to Fury, Shadow moved look at the wall of windows overlooking the sky below them. Shadow felt herself pale. Confining hallways. Everyone armed. No escape. This was not what she'd signed up for. She clutched her backpack straps and turned back around to look around the bridge, trying to keep an eye on everyone at once. Even the computer techs could be dangerous. She was on high alert. She hated that she had to be. But they had just put her in a cage without telling her.

If we're still over water, can I survive the jump? How far would I have to swim? Are we near Hawaii? She wondered. Some part of her mind registered that people were talking louder now. The word 'shadow' was thrown out, but she didn't pay attention.

"тень!" She whirled at the Russian, eyes flaring and instantly focusing on Natasha. "Come with me." With that, the red head walked out of the room. Shadow hesitated, then hurried after her and Bruce.