A/N: We won't talk about the nightmares that went into writing this chapter; SATs, computer overheating and sleep deprivation, oh my. But this is here now, and I try my best to never disappoint all of you. Falling Slowly from Once inspired this heavily, so I do suggest just listening to it over and over and over again for maximum feels. Thank you so so much for all of the sweet reviews you left last chapter; I do read them and it always makes me happy to get a notification that someone else has favorited or followed this story, or left some really nice comment. You all always never fail to disappoint me in giving me and this story your love, so please, enjoy as I do my best to pay you back.
Chapter Eleven: Risking it All
Sleepless nights were a familiarity in Katniss' world; her mind was a scary place to be and it tended to not be the most ideal place when one was trying to sleep in peace, or get sleep at all. She spent most of the night, sitting in the windowsill and staring at the lake off in the distance. The moon's reflection was barely visible on the surface of the water, and while it was serene from the diminutive glance she had at the sight, everything still felt off kilter. Natasha's transmission, the urgency in her voice; Natasha Romanoff wasn't one to be scared. She was fearless, even when she wasn't, and when there was unstableness to her, Katniss knew something was terribly wrong. Ever since the transmission had ended, the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach had yet to go away.
Somewhere late into the night, she traipsed downstairs for a glass of water after the realization sleep wasn't going to come as easily as she hoped sank in. Steve was already occupying the kitchen when she made it down the stairs, sitting at the end of the kitchen table and absentmindedly fiddling with the flash drive Natasha had thrust into their possession before taking off. "You know it's two in the morning, right?"
She watched closely as his shoulders moved up and down in a simple shrug. "There are more ungodly hours," Steve countered. She was silent for a moment; it had been a long day for the both of them, and she didn't understand why he could still be awake. If her brain permitted it, she would have been out like a light. Surely he wasn't the same way.
"Can't sleep?" she pondered aloud as she passed by the table, in a beeline towards the refrigerator.
"Like you," he pointed out softly. "You're awake."
"I'm used to it," Katniss replied, opening the door to the refrigerator in search of something to drink. "Sleeping is not exactly something I do a lot of anymore." Glancing over her shoulder briefly in his direction, she could see him still toying with the drive, twirling it in between his index finger and thumb. It was like he was studying it, there in the incredibly-dim lighting. Sighing at the fact she could find nothing inside the refrigerator, she pushed the door back to a close.
"Scared of falling asleep?"
"Scared of dreaming," she corrected him, standing up on her tiptoes as she opened a cabinet door to find a glass. "When you're asleep, you're completely submissive to whatever your mind conjures up. There's no hope of controlling it. To me, it's better to just be sleep deprive underneath your eyes than playing prisoner to your mind."
Steve fell silent behind her; the only sound filling the room was the tap running, water sloshing around in the glass Katniss had found. As she twisted the knob on the sink to turn it off, turning around slowly and leaning against the sink, she could see the somewhat despaired look on Steve's face. Right, this didn't affect just you. They were trying to kill all of us. "We know why I'm awake, but what about you?" she found herself saying.
He didn't speak for a moment, eyes still trained on the small little flash drive in his hands. She watched as his upper lip twitched, his mouth parting to say something. "I just…this drive has answers, answers to questions we haven't even begun to ask ourselves, and we're nowhere closer to figuring out how to even get in it than we were when Natasha got it off that ship," he mumbled.
"Hey," Katniss chastised gently, padding over to the table and taking the seat to the right of his seat at the head of the table. "We'll figure it out. It's not like we have anywhere to go, or anything to do. We're kind of out in the middle of nowhere."
"Technically, we're in the middle of New Jersey," Steve corrected her, setting the drive down on the table's surface. "We really don't have much of a choice when it comes to cracking this thing."
She smiled sadly, inching her hand closer to his. "When have we ever?" she asked cryptically, tilting her head to the side.
Lifting up her glass and taking a slow swallow of her water, she kept her eyes trained on him. He seemed completely tangled in the mystery of that stupid flash drive, and she couldn't really blame him, even though she wanted to. "We're just in the dark on everything, it seems," he noted, staring down at the drive.
"We pretty much live there, Steve."
He lifted his gaze for a moment, glancing up at her. "I just thought those days were over the minute we busted Fury for the Tesseract."
One of Katniss' shoulders rose and fell quickly in a simple shrug. "SHIELD's nothing but secrets, there will always be another wall to break through." Her choice of words didn't seem to be the best, as Steve's face fell. It was the truth, though. Her life and everything she knew was constructed on a foundation of secrets, and he was probably no different. That was what happened when you got involved with an intelligence organization like SHIELD. Your life was composed of secrets and living with a perpetual veil overhead. "I'll make breakfast tomorrow," she offered after a moment of silence, a hopeful smile spreading across her lips. "To go along with your daily dosage of concern."
"I'd like that," Steve admitted, giving her a half a smile. He then gestured his head back towards the stairs. "Go on, go back to sleep. You need your rest. Besides, this will all be here when we wake up." She wanted to argue with him and insist that she would stay, but she was too tired to fight with him. She rose from her chair slowly, and with one last look at Steve, started back up the stairs at a sluggish pace, each foot dragging against the stairs as she climbed.
Making it into her room, she closed the door and leaned up against the back of it for a moment, eyes fluttering shut. God, how she wanted to go to sleep like Steve had asked of her, but she knew how much good that would do her. A few moments had passed after her door clicked shut, the soft sound of Steve's footsteps moving through the cabin and up the stairs. The sound faded away as they grew closer in distance, Katniss' breath hitching in her throat. He had to be standing on the other side of that door—what he was waiting for, something, or maybe nothing at all, she didn't have the first inkling of an idea. Her heartbeat was erratic; the odd little thumping in her chest after several missed beats, and completely out of its pattern. The sensation was so familiar to her, and she hadn't had this sort of anomaly occur in two years. For once in a long time, she wanted for Steve to just do something, anything—even if it was nothing. Her hand still hovering over the doorknob as she waited, she finally felt a sigh push past her lips as the footsteps resumed, Steve heading in the direction of his room.
She hardly slept.
. . .
The smell of something cooking downstairs startled Katniss awake, disoriented and trying to recall when she'd lost consciousness during the night. Sleep had fallen over her at some godforsaken hour, she assumed, and she had no idea how long she'd been asleep. Rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand, she began to untangle herself from the knotted blankets around her legs and rolled over so both feet were resting on the floor. With her bare feet, the cold touch of the floor got her up and moving a lot faster than she would have otherwise.
Dragging herself slowly down the stairs, she was treated to the sight of Steve's back to her, slaving away over what she assumed was the stovetop. He had yet to notice her presence, completely absorbed by his work fixing breakfast. Katniss folded her arms over her chest as she stepped off the stairs, leaning up against the edge of the banister. "I said I'd make breakfast," she pointed out carefully, making her presence known to him.
"Didn't want to wake you; when I came in to check on you earlier, you were out like a light," he reasoned, shooting a brief glance over his shoulder at her. Katniss kept her eyes trained on his back, moving to sit down at the place at the kitchen table where he'd been last night. Resting both elbows on the surface, she leaned forward.
"You could have always woken me up," Katniss insisted. "I probably would have thanked you for it." Steve turned back around in the middle of her grumblings, a plate in either of his hand with an omelet sitting on each. She had to give him credit where it was due; breakfast looked incredibly enticing. Although, trusting a meal on first glance was a mistake she made all too often with her godfather, who had the capabilities of screwing up a task as simple as making toast.
"If it really bothers you that much, you can make us lunch." He strode across the kitchen, setting down a plate in front of her and his own to her right. "I didn't take you for someone who was dying for the chance to display her newfound skills in the culinary arts," he explained, the beginnings of a smirk spreading over his lips.
Katniss gave a one-shouldered shrug, reaching for the fork he'd set on the table before she'd arrived. "Over the past two years, I kind of had to get creative on ways to pass the time. Archery and keeping up with Tony or the Kardashians can only occupy you for so long. It was something Pepper and I did for fun," she explained. The memories of messing around the kitchen briefly flashed through her mind; she and Pepper would look up recipes on the Internet and usually pull off mediocre versions of whatever it was they were making, Tony often whirling through and wondering what had exploded over the counter.
Steve settled down into his chair, stabbing the omelet with his own fork. "You don't really speak a lot about your time at the Tower, you know," he mentioned, a clear sign of his piqued interest.
"Like I said, there wasn't much talk about," she muttered under her breath.
"I'm sure there was," he insisted.
"Not like you would've ever been around to know." The words went sour the moment they spilled off her tongue, blood freezing and her body going rigid. Great, I've started the next fucking World War, she thought to herself as she braced for impact. They'd been doing so well, too; the slow warming back up to him had appeared to be steady, and she'd probably ruined it all with a few words. She gave it three minutes before they started hurtling the knives they were using to cut up food at each other's heads after what she'd done.
If Steve had picked up on the unintentional-but-inevitable iciness over her comment, he sure didn't let her know it. She watched cautiously as he swallowed, opening his mouth to speak. "Since we're out here and clearly not going anywhere any time soon, we might as well start making some headway on what's on that drive," he proposed. Katniss nodded in agreement.
"Let's start with the basics—we know that it came from the Lemurian Star's hard drive."
"And Pierce sent me to make sure Natasha didn't get her hands on it, and wanted me to turn it in the minute he found out I failed," Katniss added, waving her fork around absentmindedly as she rested her elbow upright on the table's surface.
"So we know that whatever it is, Pierce wants to keep it a secret. Do we think it came off his desk, that he's the one behind it?"
"You'd think I'd be surprised by you saying that, but at this point, if you told me he was behind global warming, I'd believe you," she reasoned, rolling her eyes. "He has to be, unless Fury's one twisted son of a bitch."
"I doubt Fury would send Natasha to retrieve information off his own ship," Steve argued.
"Unless we're saying that Fury's the one who wanted the information all along."
"Then we would be assuming that Fury is the enemy here and that Pierce is trying to stop him, or that Fury and Pierce are working together. Judging by what Fury's told me himself, he doesn't trust Pierce as far as he can throw him." This much was true; as much as she hated to place any sort of faith in Fury, she knew that he wasn't a snake, like Alexander Pierce. Steve paused for a moment, before opening his mouth again. "Natasha is better with technology—anyone would be better than the two of us—but I suppose we're just going to have to figure this out old school."
He was right; the both of them had been the two out of time, were not accustomed to the modern world as the rest of their team mates. But Katniss had spent a great deal of time with Tony, and she had picked up quite a few tricks along the way. A smirk began to settle across her lips as she pushed her plate away from her, leaning back in the chair. "Not necessarily," she hummed satisfactorily. Steve's eyebrows rose in confusion, as she thought to herself, this should be good.
. . .
"I'm telling you, this is a terrible idea," Steve warned, not taking his eyes off of the road. Katniss groaned, rolling her eyes as her head lolled back against the headrest of the passenger seat. Steve had been complaining since she'd presented the plan, but she knew that somewhere within him, he agreed with her. Otherwise, he wouldn't have hopped behind the wheel and left the cabin, against pretty much all of Natasha's wishes from the get-go. She didn't have to see the guidelines of Inferno to know she was breaking the rules.
"And I'm telling you, this is our only decent option," she argued. "Neither of us know step one to hacking into unauthorized, encrypted files, and it's not like we can just call up Natasha or Tony or Clint for an over-the-phone tutorial. We're left to our devices, and so far, this is the only one that's presented itself possible of actually working."
"Yes, and it's also a surefire way of getting us killed."
"Only if we get caught."
"Which we probably will."
"Relax, Rogers, we'll be fine."
"You really are your mother's child, you know."
The plan seemed pretty simple when Katniss had first come up with it. The two of them would make their way to the nearest mall, where there would be some sort of electronics store—she didn't have much of a preference, so long as they could access a laptop that wouldn't be traced back to their location. They'd plug in the drive there, mess with it a little themselves, and if they couldn't get it to work, they'd be surrounded by tech experts. She had been formulating the perfect cover story the entire car ride to the mall, as Steve spent the time griping and criticizing every aspect of the plan.
"Look," she finally interrupted, holding up one of her hands in his direction. "Unless you can think of some other genius plan between now and when we get to the mall, we're sticking with this. What do we have to lose?" Steve glared over at her, the look in his eyes almost feral. She slouched back into her seat slightly; trying to avoid the answer he was giving that rhetorical question through his steely glower.
The rest of the car ride was silent, Steve navigating his way to the mall with the directions that his phone was giving him every few feet along the road. He pulled into the parking lot, whipping their truck into the closest parking spot to the front doors. "Hood up," he instructed, pushing his pair of fake glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "If we're going to make our being on the run public knowledge, might as well try to keep our identities as closely reigned in as we can."
Katniss smirked, pulling up the hood on her jacket as she opened the door. "They didn't teach you much at SHIELD training; rule number one of going on the run is not to run. You walk."
Steve was visibly tense as they strode through the mall, in search of a promising store. "My mother is not going to pop out of nowhere," she hissed to him out of the corner of her mouth. "Try not to look as though you're violating the terms of your house arrest."
"Since when did you become the rebellious one?"
"Well, I am the wild card of the team," she pointed out, a jab at the comments she always overheard in reference to herself. Her footsteps were in long strides, Steve clearly having trouble keeping up with the poor excuses of shoes on his feet. Eyes catching sight of a fluorescent apple in the distance, she smiled to herself.
Steve leaned in, tugging on his ball cap to pull it down further over his eyes. "If something happens and we're made—"
"Relax," she sang. "We aren't going to be made. Natasha's out selling the story that I'm under the sea at the moment, along with the rest of Tony's house. No one's looking for you either, hotshot; you're not exactly Undesirable Number One."
"You say that now," Steve whispered through clenched teeth, hot on Katniss' heels as she rounded through the opened doors to the Apple Store. She stopped in her tracks, eyes scanning across the room as she examined their scope. Her head tilted in the direction of an empty laptop on the far end of a table, somewhere in the middle of the room. He trailed after her like a lost puppy as she sauntered over casually, like there was nothing going on. She found herself surprised at the sheer confidence that oozed from her and how well she was doing under the circumstances. Going undercover almost suited her.
Stopping in front of the computer, she held her hand out in front of Steve's torso. He wordlessly protruded the flash drive from the back pocket of his jeans, placing it in her hand. It was plugged in a second, the lights on the drive illuminating. "See?" she said, gesturing towards it. "Nothing bad has happened so far."
"So far," he reminded her, Katniss rolling her eyes. "SHIELD flash drives can come along with homing programs, you know."
"Then we better not take too long," she replied, beginning to search for any way into the drive's contents. It was encrypted, just as promised, and everything that she learned from Tony about hacking into, well, anything, seemed to backfire on her. Steve stood behind her, peering over her shoulder as she worked if he wasn't glancing over his own shoulder and making sure there weren't any SHIELD agents on his tail.
After a few minutes of fiddling around with it, Katniss sighed as her hands slid off the keyboard. "I can't think of any other way around this AI system, except maybe a tracer, see if we can locate where this is coming from," she said.
"You can pull off something that advanced?" Steve asked the tone in his partially genuine and partially digging on her knowledge of technology. Katniss glanced up at him, scowling.
"Go over there, talk to that guy who keeps staring over here at us and distract him while I figure something out." Steve opened his mouth to protest, but she made it clear that there was no room for debate. He wordlessly made his way over to where the employee eyeing them was standing, striking up a conversation with the man.
There was a pinging noise from her computer a few seconds later, terrifying her slightly as she jumped. Eyes darting over the computer screen, she could see that there was a new transmission coming in, straight from something similar to the drive's programming. Katniss skimmed over the number, recognizing it as the same one that Natasha had used the night before to contact them. As she scanned over the basics, it was evident that its contents were addressed to none other than Captain Rogers. Glancing over at him, still across the room and awkwardly chatting with the Apple employee, Katniss quickly opened it.
STEVE:
PROBLEMS IN DC—SECRETARY PIERCE WANTS ANSWERS AND WANTS TO USE KATNISS AS A MEANS OF GETTING THEM. BARTON IS ABOUT TO FLY OFF THE HANDLE AND COMPROMISE THE MISSION. NEED YOU HERE. DON'T TELL KATNISS, LEAVE HER WHERE SHE IS. YOU HAVE TWO HOURS. –BW
The blood was pounding in Katniss' ears as she read over the transmission once, twice, a third time, trying to make sure she was seeing what she was. Something was wrong in DC, Natasha was contacting them and for some odd reason, she didn't want for Katniss to know about any of it. Katniss was unsure of what that could possible mean. Was she trying to protect her wellbeing? Was she trying to stick to the MIA story? Did it have to do with her? Either way, it was cryptic enough that Katniss knew she had to dig in deeper, despite her mother's wishes.
There, standing at the computer, Katniss made a split second decision, one that she knew was riskier than leaving the safe house and plugging in a flash drive somewhere in public to try and access its contents. This decision would be the one to get her killed; she knew that somewhere in her gut. But she also knew that it was important that she get to the bottom of all the secrets and face all of her problems head on. Hiding didn't do it any good.
Yanking the drive out of its port, she met Steve halfway with shaking hands. "What did you get from the tracer?" he asked, reaching out for the drive. She handed it over, wiping her now sweating palms on the side of her jeans.
"I uh, not much, something happened and it got corrupted, we'll have to try again," she lied. "Look, I need to run to the restroom really quick before we leave, wait here for me?" It was a poor excuse, but she had to break away from Steve as soon as possible. Judging by the look on his face, she could tell that he was getting the impression something was wrong. He nodded, clearly unsure by giving her that answer. She flashed him a quick smile in gratitude, all but running out of the store on him.
She moved as fast as her legs would carry her towards the doors, dialing for a cab on her phone with still trembling fingers. Katniss gave Steve about thirty seconds before he caught on to the fact she was making an escape. So she took a deep breath, pulled the hood up on her head a little bit farther and did her best to blend in with the masses of people weaving their way through the mall.
Now she was running.
A/N: Well AREN'T THESE CHARACTERS JUST GREAT AT LISTENING? It hasn't even been a freaking day and here's Katniss, already breaking every rule that she's been asked to follow for her own safety and running up to DC to help Natasha. What do you think Steve's going to do when he finds out Katniss read his transmission and snuck off to figure out what was going on? Why do you think Natasha needs to see him in DC, what could possibly be there for him? Do you think there's anything fishy about this? WILL STEVENISS EVER JUST LOVE EACH OTHER AGAIN? Sorry, got carried away. #Steveniss4life. Anyways, let me know what you think is going to happen next, as well as any other thoughts or comments you had for this chapter. Reviews are a girl's best friend, and make her almost-birthday better. Wink.