A/N: Please read and review!


I was still reading (freaking out over) my LSAT when Lauren came back to our dorm room, waving her cellphone around my face.

"Do you see it? Isn't it weird?" She asked very quickly, but I couldn't really see whatever she was trying to show me.

I just as quickly grabbed her wrist. "Stop moving your arm. I can't see anything."

"Oh, right."

It was a live video feed from The Rising Tide that showed a tall man wearing a hooded sweatshirt, face obscured by shadow. The strange man cradled an unconscious woman to his chest as he leapt down from the upper story of the factory just as the inside began to blow up even more behind him. He landed on the ground, briefly waiting until the woman slowly regained consciousness before he disappeared into the awestruck crowd.

My attention went to what was left of the company's name on the side of the factory building, which looked like Cybertek or something like that, and I mentally reminded myself to tell my grandma about it. She needed to know what was happening. If she hadn't already. This fit with what we were working on.

"Not weird," I told her. "Been dealing with this for how long?"

"Well. . ." She went to say. "You're way too cool about this."

"No, I'm not," I told her, truthfully. "I'm just seeing something else right now. Nothing even remotely close to what you're thinking about."

"Really?" She asked me, and she shook her head. "You're really. . ."

"Yeah, yeah," I said. "You should've known that by now."

"I do, but you just surprise me a lot of times."

"Which is why you love me," I replied as I went to answer my phone.

It was my grandma with an update.

"Ward made contact," she told me.

"Because of what's on The Rising Tide?" I asked in Low German as I walked through the hallway. No one should ever be able to understand me in that language which, with what we were talking about, was a good thing.

"Parts of it. Yes."

"So Coulson is really alright?" I asked after a while. "How?"

"Tahiti is a magical place," she told me almost automatically.

There was something about it that pricked through my memory. That name meant something, but at the time, I couldn't really remember why.

"He's creating his own little team," she told me.

"That'll be good," I said. "He'll need them in the time to come."

"You'll hate to lose your Rising Tide source. He's been trying to get her to join S.H.I.E.L.D."

"I'm fine with that. She'll be perfect."

I walked back into our dorm room, and Lauren had her arms crossed as she stared me down.

"What?" I asked her.

"You. . ." She said, but she shook her head. "Still won't tell me?"

"Not yet."

Lauren rolled her eyes. "You think you're James Bond or something?"

"Or something."

I went to argue with her. Just because, but my phone went off another time. I looked at the text message to see it was from Steve, and he wanted to see me.

"Was that Steve?" Lauren asked, reaching out to grab my phone, so she could see the text message. "Let me see."

I had the phone out of her reach. "What makes you say that?"

"You wore your Steve-smile," she told me, and she was able to grab my phone, being able to read the text. "Go see him. Go!"

She actually pushed me through the door, and I rolled my eyes as I started to walk away before I went to meet with Steve. When I was out of the building, I saw Steve waiting for me under one of the closer trees. Steve smiled at me when he saw me.

"Hey you," I said to him, smiling almost shyly at him when I was nearer to him.

"Hey," he said, and he had a gentle hold of one of my hands.

For a moment, we didn't really say anything to each other, just looked at each other. Steve quickly cleared his throat.

"Have you ever been here?" He asked.

"Class trip in eighth grade," I told him. "Been awhile, and it was more of a cliff notes version." I gave him another smile. "Were you going to ask me to see some of the stuff with you?"

"If you want to."

I wrapped my arm through his. "Of course I do."

He smiled at me again as we started to walk off campus. We were talking and laughing as we walked, seeing the monuments at night was our excuse to spend some time together.

"Were you aware of what happened in Los Angeles?" He asked me.

"Lauren showed me," I told him. For a moment I was wondering why whenever we met, we only talked about "work." It sort of cut through me, and it really hurt that was all we would really talk about. "Right before I left."

"And, you're not interested?" He asked. Steve was giving me a strange look when he noticed I was a little monotone when I was speaking with him.

"I am," I told him, sounding emotionless. "In my own way. Did they send you to L.A.?"

He shook his head. "Didn't want me involved."

"Weird. . ." But, I wasn't surprised.

They didn't want to deal with the backlash of us finding out about Coulson, the one catalyst that worked to bring us all together to save the world, was still alive just yet.

"Yeah. . ." He told me, shaking his head.

I was still hanging on his arm, slightly resting my head on his arm. I was forcing myself to ignore the hurt of him only talking about "work" at first because that was the way he was. He was the type of person who wanted to get that out of the way, I would always tell myself, and at that moment, we were talking about random, non-work-related things. Steve had stopped walking at that point, and I went to face him.

He went to brush some of my hair out of my face as he looked down at me, and I felt my face become a little warmer. It was starting to become very difficult for me to look him in the eyes, and he quietly tipped my head back to get me to look at him. For a moment, he could only look back at me before he gave me one of the sweetest and lightest kissed he had ever given me. After awhile, he pulled away only a little and rested his forehead against mine, one of his hands still resting against my cheek.

After awhile, he quickly cleared his throat and slowly pulled away from me, and he was looking around us, frowning a little.

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

"I think someone's been watching us," he quietly told me.

I went to look around, but Steve was trying to stop me. I only grabbed his wrist. He wasn't going to stop me. At first, I didn't really see anything, but the longer I looked, the easier it was for me to see Scott Summers and Jean Grey.

Why they were in D.C. was a mystery to me at the time.

Jean still had that almost supernatural expression on her face that she had been wearing from the moment she had returned after her "death."

"I'm not even sure why they would follow us," I remarked, and I started to pull away from Steve.

He was still wearing a frown of concentration as he looked back at those two, and he quickly grabbed my arm to stop me.

"Something's not right," he told me.

"Maybe they want to talk to Hank or something like that," I replied.

He shook his head. "Look at the man. . ."

Scott wore a very vacant and expressionless look. It was a look one would immediately know that the person was under some kind of mind control, and it was far more pronounced for Jean. Every time Scott would speak to her, the more human and more caring part of Jean began to disappear.

That wasn't right.

"You're right," I said, but it was very absentminded. I was starting to scan around me, looking for the person controlling Jean through Scott.

When Jean returned, it became very obvious that she was very powerful, so someone needed to exploit the link between Scott and Jean to control her. Scott looked back at me before he disappeared into the crowd around them.

It was like he was trying to tell me something without saying anything to me out loud. I don't think he was even aware of it.

The last image I saw of Jean was her dark, red hair blowing around her with no wind around us, and there was that curious trick of the light, again. There was the fiery, birdlike aura that began to surround Jean. Unlike before when the aura was brighter, and it was more like the light of sun and stars, but at that moment, it was almost blood red and almost like a hellfire.

Then they were gone, but I had a feeling that would he some kind of problem much later. something big and something bad. I could see why Nate was so concerned.

Steve had my hand, and I snapped back into reality, shaking my head for a moment.

"What's wrong?" He asked me.

"I was thinking about something," I told him, and I looked up at him. "Don't worry about it."

"You seemed pretty worried."

I made a face, knowing he just caught me. "Fine. . .I have no idea what that was about, and I hate not knowing about anything." I paused a moment. "Lauren says I freak out about anything."

Steve did relax when I said that, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders as we started to walk again. It was pretty clear he was going to keep a closer eye on me from that point on, knowing I would do something about what I had just seen. He knew enough to know he wouldn't be able to stop me in any way when I had my mind set on something, but he was going to step in if he feels like I need him to.

"Do you think you have enough time?" He asked me, knowing that I would be working on it in the time to come.

"I can make time if I think I feel like I have to," I told him, going back to hanging on his arm as we walked.

I heard him sigh when I said that, and he had me look up at him.

"You need to be careful," he told me very quietly. "For me."