Chapter 9

I woke up with a start and flailed around in my bed. There was cold water everywhere. How did that get in my bed?!

"Get up! I want to do something today and no one else will play with me." I think it was Tony but you never know. I dragged myself out of bed and stood dripping wet, glaring at him.

"What. Do you want?" I said through gritted teeth as Tony walked to my closet and opened it up. "Why are you going through my closet?" I asked, becoming a bit confused. He took my "Bad Ass Battle Outfit" out and threw it at me.

"Put it on kid, we've gotta go somewhere quick." And he walked out. I quickly changed and ran out of my room as I buckled the belt around my waist. I looked around and spotted Steve in his red, white, and blue outfit carrying his shield.

"Steve! What's going on?" He looked at me and seemed to struggle for a moment before he walked over to me quickly.

"Fury's calling us in for something. Follow me." I followed him as we went to the Quinjet pad and climbed into the one that had the back open. Everyone but Tony was there. Something about him just using his suit to get there. The jet took off the moment we got in and I stumbled a bit. As I did, Steve reached out and slipped his arms around me to stop me from falling. I looked up at him quickly as he helped me steady myself. He blushed as he slowly removed his arms and looked down then back up at me.

"Thank you." I almost whispered as I turned around and looked out the front windows. I didn't know what to do with talking to him anymore. I was scared that if I tried talking to him more than just saying thank you, he would shut me out again, so I decided to not say anything. Darn you Steve.

Suddenly the jet landed and we all got out and I looked around.

"Does anyone know what's going on?" I asked everyone as we stood in front of a boring old building. At that moment, Tony landed next to us and his shield moved out of his face as he spoke.

"I just got a call from Fury. It's an old Hydra supporter who got ahold of a chitauri helmet and decided it would be a swell idea to put it on. Somehow, the helmet linked with his brain and now we've got a super strong Hydra fanatic on our hands. Yay." He informed us. After he was done talking, Clint and Natasha took off to check out the building. Tony's face shield fell back over his face as he and Steve walked to the building and entered. Bruce and I stood around quietly for half a minute. Bruce had his hands in his pockets and looked up at me with a half amused smile.

"Hi." He said, braking the silence.

"...Hi." I said back, a little confused.

"They'll probably leave us out here until they need us." He said to explain as we stood there in silence again. I nodded. Once again, silence.

"Do you think they'll need us?" I asked after a few seconds.

"To be honest with you, they'll probably only call me if they need help. I guess I'm kind of last resort seeing as the other guy does a large amount of damage." I nodded my head as he spoke, trying to not get hurt that I wouldn't be called in. "It's only because the Captain didn't want you in there. If it were up to Tony or anyone else, you would have been walking in there with them. I looked down.

"So Steve wants to stay away from me this badly?" I said as I kicked a rock.

"No." Bruce said as he shook his head. "He likes you too much and didn't want you to get hurt. But I wasn't supposed to say that so don't tell him I told you." He said as he kicked a rock too and looked up at the building. Suddenly he turned completely to face it and started walking towards it. "Stay out here! This should be taken care of soon!" He yelled over his shoulder as he disappeared through the door. Great! Now it's just me who's the last resort. Ugh.

I waited a minute and no one came out so I looked around slowly and snuck into the building.

I walked down a long hallway and looked around.

"Geez. You'd think they would be done by now." I mumbled under my breath as I crouched a little as I walked. I mean really, one dude. Take him out. Come apologize to me for dumping water on me this morning to come to a mission that don't even need me. Simple, right? Apparently not. I heard something behind me so I whipped around quickly with my gun out and saw I was pointing it at Natasha. Oops. I lowered it and she moved closer to me.

"What are you doing in here?!" She whisper yelled at me.

"No ones come out yet so I made the executive decision to come in and check on you guys." I whispered back. She was probably about to tell me to go outside when we heard a yell in the distance. She looked at me seriously and motioned for me to follow her. Yes! Action! We both crouched a bit lower and moved towards the noise. We came across descending stairs and carefully walked down them with guns up.

We walked into the next room and let me just be the first to say, that was not one person. It was multiple people and it looked like the fight was close to being over but we went in anyways. Natasha started taking people out as I was careful with my aim because I really didn't want to hit one of my friends. Before I really had the chance to do much, I was hit in the head by something. It wasn't too hard because I didn't black out but it hurt. I stumbled around for a second before Steve rushed over and laid me down on the ground as gently as he could and stood over me as he fought, not moving away from me at all. I got one good shot in before it was over and Tony was restraining one of the guys probably to interrogate.

Steve looked down and me and put his shield on his back as he bent down to pick me up. I let him. My head hurt and I didn't want to walk. I tried to wrap my arms around his neck but I found that I was too weak. Maybe the hit to my head was worse than I thought. It must have been because once he brought me outside and I was looking up into the sun, I blacked out.

...

I woke up in a bed. My bed I think. I didn't open my eyes just yet. I didn't want to. I groaned and shifted a little bit.

"Jackie?"

Someone was in the room with me. Who?

"Jackie, thank goodness you're awake."

Steve. That's who it was. I slowly opened my eyes and looked at him. He was still in his Captain America outfit and had horribly messy hair and dirt all over his face. We must have just gotten back. He looked at me with worry in his eyes.

"How are you feeling?" He asked softly as he moved a bit of hair out of my face.

"Ok. I think. When did we get back? How long have I been out?" I asked in a slightly raspy voice. Steve looked at his watch.

"18 hours." He said and looked back up at me. My eyes widened a little.

"That long?!" I said as I tried to sit up. No wonder I was so thirsty. "What are you doing still in that? Did something else happen? What did I miss?" Steve shook his head.

"Nothing else happened. I've been in here since Natasha was done putting you in bed. She wouldn't let me in so I had to wait outside the door..." He trailed off.

"So you've been sitting by my bed waiting for me to wake up for 18 hours?" I asked him. Steve thought for a moment then nodded.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Why?" I asked him in confusion. Steve looked a bit confused as well as he answered.

"Well...you were hurt and I wanted to make sure you were ok..." He trailed off again.

"Well that's nice of you and all but I was under the impression that you didn't want to have anything to do with me." I said as I looked away from him and looked up to the ceiling. Steve shifted uncomfortably in the chair he was sitting in.

"It's not that I didn't want to talk to you, it's just that...I didn't know what to say. This whole thing was such a surprise to me. I mean. The man killed people I knew. I'm not saying you're like him..I'm just saying it...confused me." By this time he was rushing through his sentences trying to get it all out. "I mean...because I-I obviously have feeling for you. I mean, what i mean to say is that I like you and I didn't want to say something stupid and mess it up with you...and I think it might be safer for me to just stop talking before I say even more stupid stuff." He rested his head in one of his hands. I looked at him and placed my hand on his hand that was on the bed. He looked up at me.

"It's ok." I said softly. His eyes grew big as a smile teased the corners of his mouth.

"R-really?" He said, obviously trying to not get too hopeful. I nodded.

"It's ok." I said again and smiled a bit at him and he let the smile go on his face as he sat up straighter and looked at me happily. "By the way Steve."

"Yeah Jackie?" He said back, still smiling. I wrapped my fingers around his hand.

"I like you too."

...

Well I know it's been a while but here it is. I got writers block because I rea. Rise of the guardian fanfics but I read some avengers ones and got back on track. I wrote this all toda. Ugh. I love you to whoever is still waing for this. Also please review if you have any ideas and thanks for reading!