"Why do you always do that thing?"

"Do what?" Natasha asked as she paid for their supplies, looking over her shoulder to see Yelena tossing her head back. Nat looked to Steve, but he just raised his brows, as confused as she was. He hadn't said a word since they got on the train. He didn't say a word when Yelena referred to him as one of the 'Big Avengers' and he didn't say a word when she stared him in the eye and said the Avengers weren't really Natasha's family. But now, as she slid onto the ground with her leg out, whipping her hair back, Steve cracked a smile. It was the first smile Nat had seen since they'd left New York.

"This- this thing that you do when you're fighting, with the arm and the hair," she explained as she threw her arm to the side and tossed her head back and forth before looking up at Steve, "You know what I'm talking about, right? The pose? The fighting pose, you're a total poser."

Natasha scoffed, looking from Yelena to Steve, finding him holding his mouth to hide his grin, "I'm not- I'm not a poser-"

Yelena laughed as she stood, "I mean, they're great poses, but it does look like you think everybody's looking at you, like, all the time. Which, maybe they are." Yelena looked to Steve, trying to gauge his reaction before adding, "She's clearly the most beautiful Avenger, isn't she?"

He shifted his weight against the doorframe, sizing Natasha up as she was handed her change. After a moment, he shrugged, looking to Yelena with a knowing look, "She's worth a lot more than her looks. Wish I could say the same for me, since I'm the useless one."

Natasha cracked a smile at his self-depreciating joke, grabbing their bag and following him out the door. When she passed Yelena, she smacked below the cut on her arm, causing the girl to hiss, "Stop it. I see what you're trying to do. There's nothing between Steve and I."

"I don't know, you two are pretty touchy-feely for coworkers. Unless you're both just that shallow, but what he said about you was actually kinda nice. I like him." When Natasha kept walking away, Yelena jogged to keep up, noticing how easily Natasha kept pace with the super soldier. He looked around before nodding towards a patio at the far edge of the gas station, a silent suggestion that they rest for a while.

He pulled out a chair to sit, keeping his gaze locked wearily on Yelena as she sat beside him, "They sold beer in there. If we're gonna be here a while, maybe we should relax." Turning to Steve she noted, "You should go get us a couple so Steve and I can talk."

Sparing a look between the two of them, Natasha turned to go back into the store, leaving Yelena Belova to harass her friend.

She opened the bag and pulled out a little bottle of alcohol before carefully unwrapping her arm, "I'm sorry about your daughter."

This surprised Steve, and he shifted to face her a little as she carefully peeled the blood-stained fabric from her upper arm. He shifted to reach behind himself, grabbing the photo and slapping it on the table, "I was gonna leave her with her aunt. Let her have a normal life. Dallas and Brooklyn never had parents and they turned out fine…" He trailed off as he stared at the gas station, noting the sun going down and ending their day. Denver had been gone almost twenty-four hours. When he looked to Yelena, he realized she'd picked up the photo and was studying it, "Her name is Denver. She's three."

"Natasha said her mother died. Were you married?"

"No." Steve admitted when she handed him the photo back, "I didn't even know she was pregnant, and I didn't know I had a kid until after she died. She fell. Broke her spine." He dropped his head and sighed as he rubbed his thumb along the worn edge of the photograph. "Brooklyn wanted Denver to have a normal life. She didn't want her to be Captain America's daughter, she wanted her to be a kid. I should have given her that, but I went back for her when we went on the run. I didn't want her to grow up without me."

Yelena leaned back, unscrewing the cap of her alcohol, "Denver. Brooklyn. These are all American cities, right?"

"Yeah. It was a family tradition. Dallas is her aunt, she's back in New York with the rest of the Avengers."

The woman pursed her lips and nodded, pouring the alcohol over her arm and hissing, "It's kinda weird, but your kid's cute. She looks like you." She blew air out through her lips and groaned, "How's she with Natasha?"

"She loves Natasha. They're really close." Steve replied, feeling hopeless. The idea that his child was taken to the place where Natasha was tortured her entire childhood shook him to his soul. Maybe he was useless, but it was only because he was broken, and the missing part of his heart was lost somewhere in this endless world.

Natasha sat down a beer in front of Yelena, then Steve, before plopping down across from the woman, "You two been good?"

Yelena nodded a little, looking to Steve as he tipped back his beer, "He showed me a picture of Denver… Denver, right? Like the city. Said it was a family tradition, all the women were named after cities, did you know that?"

With a tiny smile, Natasha murmured, "I did. I, uh, actually knew Denver's mom. Recently, we worked together, for SHIELD. I know her aunt pretty well too, she tried to make out with me once." Nat leaned back and took a long sip, turning to Steve to see what he'd say, but he just chuckled and shook his head, draining his beer.

"She actively tried to make out with you once, but she mentioned it several times."

"Dallas is fun." Natasha met Steve's eyes, noticing how they sparkled in the orange glow of the old lights. "You miss her?"

Steve sat down his bottle and shifted in his chair, looking down at the table as he twisted the glass bottle by the rim, "I do. I miss the way things were before Vienna. I miss Bucky, and Sam… even that dog Buck got Denny."

"Denny? Who's Denny?"

"His daughter. We call her Denny." Natasha explained to Yelena, but she just gazed into a nearby garage with a blank expression before mumbling, "A weird nickname to a weird name."

"So, the Red Room." Steve said to Natasha, and she sighed as she dragged her chair around the table to sit next to Yelena and clean her wound. Steve leaned his elbow on the table and studied her as she worked, allowing her a moment before asking, "What will they do to Denver?"

Yelena shrugged and Natasha hissed at her to sit still, so the younger widow carefully turned her head to look back at Steve, "Depends on whether they want her as a widow or whether they want her as bait. If we're lucky, they only took her to draw you two out of hiding. If Taskmaster was the one who took her, I'm sure Dreykov knows who she is, he knows everything." Yelena looked to Natasha as she patched up her arm, taking a moment to collect her thoughts before continuing. "If we aren't lucky, they'll begin trying to break her. If she's old enough to talk, they'll teach her different languages, if she's old enough to think, they'll teach her what to think. They'll put a gun in her hand and tell her to shoot, or they'll tell her to pin down the other little girls until they can't breathe."

The young woman stared past the gas station into the night, her lower lip quivering as Natasha finished her bandage, "That gas is a counter agent to mind control. It's all that's left. I was sent to retrieve it, and I killed the widow who freed me." She shook her head and looked Steve in the eye, "Dreykov takes more little girls like yours every day. This," she pointed to the vials, "is the only thing that can stop him and his network of widows."

The three sat in silence for a few moments, unsure what to say next. After a while, Natasha looked to her sister, "Where you gonna go?"

She shrugged, "I don't know. I don't… I don't really have anywhere to go back to, so, I guess anywhere." Yelena leaned her nose against her beer bottle, staring at the table while Natasha watched her. Finally, Natasha leaned forward, and Yelena chuckled, "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"You're going to give me some big hero speech, I can feel it."

"That's not my thing." Natasha answered, looking over to Steve, "It's his."

Steve grunted and leaned his elbows on the table to get even closer to Natasha, ignoring the way he leaned across Yelena to get to her, "That's Captain America's thing. I'm just a dad who needs to save his daughter."

"First we gotta find her. And for that we're gonna need help." Natasha turned to Yelena, cocking her head to the side to ask her silent question.

With a groan, Yelena covered her face, "You want to go to the Red Room, kill Dreykov, save the little city girl, and, what, save the world? Sounds like a shitload of work."

"We save Denver, we save the other widows, and we kill Dreykov. Really not that much work." Natasha said as she looked to Steve, "We've done a lot harder things."

"Aliens. Robots. That one time Tony Stark shot out my shoulder at Disney World."

"Shit, the Avengers are such a mess. God, no wonder you didn't come back to save us yet." Yelena groaned before backhanding Steve's bicep. She stared at her hand, then his arm, "Did you even feel that?"

"I mean, yeah, but it didn't hurt." Steve confessed and she punched him harder, and he just stared at her, "Still didn't hurt."

Yelena stood and reached across the table to the seat beside Natasha, grabbing a green vest and pulling it over her shoulders, "I have nothing better to do, might as well meet this little city girl you two are so invested in finding. Could be fun. Probably won't be, but, like I said, I've got nothing else going on, so…"

With a tilt of her head and a wink of her eye, Natasha made Steve's stomach flip and he felt his cheeks start to turn red as she murmured, "I saw where he put the keys."

"Top drawer, green cabinet." Yelena answered before looking to Steve, "You okay stealing a car? I stole one earlier and Natasha freaked out, I just gotta make sure you aren't going to, like, scold me or something, since you're so old."

Steve scoffed as Natasha held back her giggles, "Well, I'll give you that, I've been around a while, but I promise, this isn't my first time stealing a car. I normally hot wire it, but since you ladies are so fancy and want to use the key, I guess we can do that too."

"I like him." Yelena told Natasha, and she clenched her bottle a little tighter as she looked at Steve, noticing the way his ears were pink and his mouth hung open ever so slightly, as if he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. "I like him, too."

They'd been driving for almost two hours when Yelena called from the backseat, "Steve! Steve, what do you think of my vest?"

"It's very nice." Steve droned without looking back at the woman, earning a chuckle from Natasha.

"It's the first piece of clothing I've ever bought for myself." Yelena told them proudly, tugging on the vest as Steve glanced up at her in the rearview mirror. "I'm very proud of it."

"That?" Natasha asked incredulously, peeking up in the mirror at Yelena before popping her gum, "What is it, like, army surplus?"

Yelena sighed loudly, "It has a lot of pockets, okay? And I use all of them, all the time. Steve understands, I can tell." Steve turned to look over his shoulder, seeing Yelena wink at him before leaning towards Natasha, "The pockets are very helpful, you should put some pockets in your- your Black Widow costume that you wear. If they fit, it looks pretty tight. Steve likes it though, he told me."

"No, I didn't."

"So you don't like Natasha's costume, you think she looks bad in it?"

"I didn't say that." Steve argued, turning to Nat, "You look great, we just didn't talk about it."

Natasha shot Steve a look that told him she already knew that. She shook her head and looked back to the road as Yelena rambled from the backseat, "Seriously though, I've never… I've never had control of my own life before, and now I do, and I want to do things. I want to see places and find a place for myself in the world. I'm not like you, I don't know where home is, because I've never really had one. Not since Ohio."

After a long moment, Natasha looked up in the rearview to see Yelena. She murmured quietly, almost under her breath, "I like your vest."

"Gah- I knew it. I knew you did, it's so cool! I told you she liked it, didn't I Steve?" Steve and Natasha turned to each other in unison, smiling as Yelena continued on, pretending she didn't notice the two Avengers gazing lovingly at each other in the front seat. "I don't know why I'm stuck in the back, I'm not the baby. I think Steve should be in the back, he's not helping at all, he doesn't even know where we're going."

"Oh yeah? Do you?" Natasha challenged, smacking her gum loudly as she drove. Steve leaned back into his seat, getting comfortable for the ride. He dropped his hand onto the center console, letting his finger drape across to ghost over Natasha's leg. Touching her brought him peace, because as hopeless as Steve felt, having Natasha beside him reminded him that they could do anything. They'd done much harder missions before.

Yelena noticed Steve's hand on Nat's thigh and hummed, but chose not to mention it, "I don't know where the Red Room is." She mumbled, looking out the window, "I'm sorry. If I did, I'd tell you."

"I know. I think I know somebody who does though." Natasha said quietly. When Yelena asked who, Natasha took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before answering, "We're gonna need to break dear old dad out of prison."

Boisterous laughter erupted from the backseat, and Steve turned around fully to see Yelena cracking up, "What- you think- you think that's a good idea? You want to break Alexei out of prison to help you rescue Captain America's daughter? That'll end well. I can't wait."

"Do you have any better ideas?" Natasha snapped, and Yelena's laughter died down to a wheeze before she finally answered, "No." She shrugged, leaning to the side to get a better look at Steve, "This is going to be so good."

When they were about ten miles from the Siberian prison, Natasha handed control of the chopper to Steve. "We're going to get changed. I wouldn't if I were you. Alexei won't take well to be rescued by Captain America."

Steve pulled the headset over his shaggy hair and grabbed the controls, looking at the GPS as they approached their destination. "Hopefully, this prison break goes better than the last one we initiated."

"What are you talking about? We got out. Eventually." Natasha called from the back, and Steve casually looked over his shoulder to see Natasha with a white suit around her waist. She cocked her head to the side to tell him they needed privacy, and he looked ahead and cleared his throat.

Once the prison came into view, Steve called loudly, "Almost there. You two about ready?"

Yelena smacked Steve on the back of the head and gestured behind her, "Out of my seat." She continued to smack Steve's upper arm as he pulled off the headset and climbed out of the pilot's seat. "Hurry up, you're so slow. Go bother Natasha. We have very important mission and you're not being helpful."

"I like your suit. The vest, it's a nice touch. Wish it covered your mouth though." Steve grumbled down at the woman as Natasha took the seat beside Yelena, who glared up at Steve darkly while Natasha put on her headset. Steve stood between the two, and he didn't so much as flinch when Yelena socked in in the stomach. He just looked down and shrugged, "It's like you're not even trying."

"He's got the earpiece in." Natasha told Yelena, who swung her right hand again in an attempt to hit Steve lower this time, "Stop it! Both of you! Shh!"

"Alright, alright… damn it, Steve, you're the worst. Always messing everything up."

Steve snorted and sat behind Natasha, listening to the directions she gave Alexei to get out of prison. Before long though, Natasha's tone grew more exasperated, and the wail of alarms sounded from below as they got closer.

"So, this guy, your dad-"

"He's not our dad." Natasha called back sharply, but Yelena swerved the chopper and Steve just continued his questioning.

"So, this Alexei- he's a super soldier."

Yelena chuckled, "Russia's answer to Captain America. The Red Guardian or something, right?"

"Yeah, something like that." Natasha answered while Yelena mumbled that he was never going to make it. Nat groaned and ordered, "Get me closer. Steve, take over please."

"See, it's really not that difficult, is it?" Steve taunted Yelena as he took Natasha's seat and pulled on the headset. He looked back as Natasha swung from the helicopter's cable and landed on the upper level of the prison walkway. "She really is something." Steve leaned back in the seat to watch Natasha fight off the prison guards.

"The sexual tension between you two is ridiculous. It makes me nauseous. Can you two just… you know…" She pounded her fist into her opposite hand and stared at Steve to make sure he understood, "Can you just, as you Americans say, bang, and get out with it."

Steve cringed and looked to the left in time to see the prison guard begin to shoot at them, "Hey, look out."

Yelena ducked as the bullets pierced the chopper, accidentally losing control for a moment and swinging the back end towards Natasha. She fell to her back and started yelling up at them, "Really? What are you doing? Back up!"

"We're both doing a really good job!" Yelena called, then leaned over to Steve, "Not you, though."

Steve chuckled, "I really don't get what I did to make you dislike me so much-"

"I don't dislike you. It's just that you make Natasha weak, and that scares me." Yelena shared a look with Steve as more bullets penetrated the side of the chopper. "She's vulnerable with you in a way I've never seen before. Not just from her, but from any widow. I'm worried that the Avengers have made her soft."

As one of the shots finally broke through the glass above Yelena's head, Steve let out a frustrated groan, "Enough of this!" He stood and stormed over to the open side of the chopper, grabbing a rocket launcher and aiming it at the guard tower in the distance, blowing it up and ending the fire on them.

Yelena looked impressed as he came back to sit with her, "Nice job, Captain. So, back to what I was saying, you really need to have sex with Natasha. I just think, I think it'll make everything a lot less awkward between all of us if you guys just figure out what your deal is."

"I was this close," Steve put his thumb and his index finger a centimeter apart, "from having sex with her when I was infected with sex pollen. She took me to Brooklyn and we went seventeen rounds. I almost killed her. That's how Denver was conceived."

"What? That's absolutely ridiculous! Seventeen rounds? God, most men can go twice if I'm lucky, but seventeen… you know, if you're worried about getting Natasha pregnant, you shouldn't. We don't- we don't have a reproductive system, so she can't get pregnant. You could go eighteen rounds and not have to worry about it. Still might kill her, but it sounds like a fun way to go, you know?" She froze, staring out the window until Steve leaned around to see what she was looking at. The blast from taking out the guard tower had caused the mountains to rumble and an avalanche to rush towards them. "Whoa, this would be a cool way to die."

Steve swallowed, "Take it from someone who knows, it's not." They shared a knowing look before Yelena pulled back on the controls, taking them higher as they waited for Alexei to reach Nat at the upper level.

"Get us out of here!" Natasha yelled, and Yelena followed directions as Steve leaned forward to get a better look. "Should I go after her?"

"Naw, she's got this."

Before he could argue, the cable swung past Natasha and she grabbed onto it, hooking her boot into the loop and clenching it with one hand. Yelena and Steve moved the helicopter towards Alexei for Natasha to scoop up, holding their breath to see if it worked before rising up through the cloud of snow overtaking the prison.

When the dust settled, Steve scrambled from his chair to lean out the door, seeing Natasha and Alexei clinging to the cord. He beamed and yelled, "They made it!" He grabbed the rope and started pulling them up, straining until Natasha was finally able to crawl in with Alexei right behind her.

She stood and patted Steve on the chest before taking her seat beside her sister. Steve turned to Alexei, hearing the man screaming down in Russian before struggling to close the door.

When he turned, Steve and Alexei stared at each other for a long moment. Steve held his breath as the older man stared him down, eventually turning to the two women in the front, "Who's this?"

"This is Steve. He's Natasha's American friend." Yelena yelled before adjusting her headset over her ears and fiddling with the controls.

"Natasha's American friend, huh." Alexei growled as he took a step closer to Steve, who didn't back up despite how close they now were. "You make love with my daughter?"

"No- uh, no Sir." Steve stammered, looking over to Natasha for help, but she just rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I'm just a friend from work."

"Good. You're too scrawny for my Natasha." Alexei grunted before turning his attention to his girls, clearly not recognizing Captain America in the man before him, "I'm so proud of you girls! Oh- oh you can't hear me." He grabbed the headset behind Natasha and leaned forward in between the two of them before being socked in the face by Yelena.

The action caused Steve to grin, realizing maybe her verbal ribbing was better than the alternative. "Ow, why- why the aggression, huh? Is it your time of the month?"

"I don't get my period, dipshit. I don't have a uterus. That's what happens when the Red Room gives you an involuntary hysterectomy. They just go up in there and rip out all your reproductive organs, so you can't have babies…" Yelena bit back, looking to Natasha before adding, "I was just explaining this to Steve, in case, you know, you two want to…"

Alexei looked over his shoulder at Steve in horror, "You just told me you weren't making sexy time with her, but you lied? It was literally the first thing out your mouth, you didn't even tell me your name."

"Steve?"

"Yeah, I mean, Yelena said it, but you didn't, you just said you weren't making love with Natasha, you were very adamant about it, but it was a lie?" He shook his head, looking up at the clouds as they continued flying away from the prison, "Natasha, you are an Avenger, you can do so much better."

"Tell us where the Red Room is." Natasha droned, but Alexei wasn't done harassing her about Steve.

"I always thought you'd end up with someone more like- like me, not this shrimpy American man, you'd break him in half. Natasha! I beg you to reconsider, you can do so much better."

Natasha groaned as Steve lowered his elbows to rest on his knees and groan, "We've never even kissed, let alone had sex. We're just friends."

"I mean, there was that one time we kissed." Natasha called, smirking over her shoulder at Steve despite Alexei's stunned expression.

Steve lifted his head to look at her, "That was for a mission."

"No, I meant the time in the bathroom. After you found out your daughter's mother was trying to arrest you."

Steve had forgotten about that. In his frustration and despair in realizing Brooklyn was Hydra, Steve had kissed Natasha just outside Sam's bathroom. It had been short, but desperate, and it had been good. They'd never mentioned it again. Things had gotten out of hand very quickly after that. Brooklyn died. Bucky stayed. Steve found out he had Denver. That little moment between the two of them was washed away in the flood of emotions and life changes that followed. Now though, Steve couldn't think of anything else.

He must have been thinking about it for a while, because when he brought his attention back to the Russians at the front of the chopper, Natasha was trying to get the location of the Red Room out of Alexei, but he just wanted to talk about the Avengers.

"I chose to move out west to become an Avenger. They treated me like family."

Steve's breath caught at that, and he couldn't help the smile that formed. She was family. She was the glue that kept the Avengers together. If she'd stayed behind, the team would have been okay. He could only imagine that they were crumbling without her because she chose to come with him.

"Really? Family?" Alexei scoffed, "Well, where are they now? Where is that family now?"

Swallowing hard, Steve reached into his back pocket and pulled out the photo of him and Denver. The reason Natasha didn't have her Avengers family was because of him, and the reason Denver was taken from her family was because of him. The only blood relative Steve had left was his daughter, and he acted like it. He'd been selfish. He'd been brash and he should have never left. If he'd have just gone home and accepted the consequences of his actions, maybe talked through what happened with Tony and the other, maybe none of them would be in this situation right now.

Natasha ignored Alexei's taunts and said, "Tell me where the Red Room is. We don't have time for this, they have Steve's daughter. We need to find her, and we need to kill Dreykov."

At this revelation, Alexei turned to Steve, "I don't know. Dreykov had me locked up in prison for life, I don't know where his Red Room is. He didn't trust me with that information, apparently." Alexei grunted and leaned back in the seat as Natasha stood up and knocked his headset off, sitting across from him with Steve. "I was the Soviet Union's first and only super soldier, I could have been more famous than Captain America! But he buried me in that Ohio mission- bored to tears for three years, and how does Dreykov repay me? He puts me in prison for the rest of my life."

"There is no scenario where we don't find the Red Room. If you can't tell us where it is, you'll tell us who can find it."

"Ask Melina, she'll know where it is." Alexei grumbled, looking to Steve, "Women, they can be so demanding, am I right?"

Natasha shot Steve a warning look, and he raised his hands in defense, not planning on responding to that comment anyway. Nat turned to Alexei and asked, "Mom Melina? I thought she was dead?"

"No, she works remotely outside of St. Petersburg. She worked more closely to Dreykov than I ever did, still probably does. If anyone knows how to find the Red Room, and your little girl, it's Melina."

Yelena looked at the gauges and told the group, "I don't think we have enough fuel for St. Petersburg-"

"No, we're good. We'll make it." Alexei told her, winking at Steve as he leaned against a crate.

With a sigh, Yelena answered, "Okay."

"So, I need to know more about this bathroom kiss you two shared, and why he's so adamant that you two aren't doing the hanky panky. Why? Is there something wrong with her?" Alexei gestured to Natasha and she groaned, telling him to shut up as Steve gaped back like a fish.

"N-no, there's nothing wrong with her. I just- I have a daughter, and her mother died, and- we just aren't in that kind of relationship." Steve stammered, looking to Nat to see if that was okay, but she just snapped at Alexei, "What I do, and whom I do it with is none of your business. You are not my father."

"All I'm saying is you brought this American man, who you aren't dating and clearly don't find attractive, all the way here to break me out of prison. It just seems a little weird to me, like, you're leading the poor man on."

"First off, we're here because Dreykov's guy kidnapped his daughter. Second of all, that's rude to assume I don't find Steve attractive. I can find my guy friends attractive." Natasha argued and Alexei just chuckled under his breath, "I mean, he's no Captain America, that's for sure."

Steve just shook his head in disbelief, leaning on his knees and looking back at Natasha. She rolled her eyes but didn't respond, and they sat in silence for another half hour before the helicopter started losing altitude from running out of fuel.