Previously,

She counted her footsteps as she strode inside, holding the gun in front of her only to be faced with the one person she didn't expect to see. "Steve."

XX

"Steve. What are you doing here?" she asked, not sure whether she was happy to see him or not. No, she decided, she definitely was not happy to see him. How could she be after what he did? She was still angry with him. There was a reason she'd broken off their engagement and it was a good one at that. She'd stick with her guns on it, that was her decision.

"You really going to use that?" he asked, pointing to the gun she still held in her hands, pointed in his general vicinity. Her hands were shaking and she wasn't certain if it was because of fear or anticipation. Was this even her?

She had to think about that. She had to think about whether she'd use the gun too. "Give me a good reason why I shouldn't Steve." She announced, her voice low as she marched forward, deciding to hold the butt of the gun to his chest. "Why are you here?" she asked through gritted teeth.

He stuttered, clearly unsure of what to say "I-I…" he began and Samantha wasn't sure whether to let him continue with this.

"I'm waiting."

"Could you just put the gun down, it'd make this whole thing a heck of a lot easier." She bit her lip for a moment, unsure as to how to proceed. Then she placed the gun on a nearby side table. "I-I… honestly, I didn't think I'd get this far, I thought you'd have kicked me out by now."

"Don't tempt me. Why are you here." Her voice was gravelly, applying the same tone she used when interrogating someone, she'd perfected that one. She was angry with him, so angry. She was latching onto his claim that she was disloyal if only because she didn't want to deal with her mislaid trust in Steve. She was still coming to grips with the fact that he'd pushed her out of a plane, that he'd barely even cared enough to make sure that she was alright.

"I-I guess I wanted to know why you didn't take sides during the fight at the airport. Why not just pick a side, it would have been easier?" he asked, giving her those puppy dog eyes – the ones that used to make her melt. She'd thought it over, the fact that she didn't pick a side. She knew that she'd made enough of a show at the time to make it look like she was on her father's side – that way she could keep herself out of prison. At the time, she'd been protecting her identity, the one she'd been handed, the one she'd recently destroyed by revealing her true identity in the middle of a press briefing. She could only support a part of Steve's agenda, the part where an innocent man wasn't executed. The part where the Accord wasn't signed? Even now, especially now, that wasn't something she could ever get behind. Whether she could tell Steve all that was another matter entirely.

"Why does it even matter? It's over and done with, been and gone."

"It matters because we ended things over it."

She wasn't even going to let the fact that he'd called a two-and-a-half-year relationship 'things' hurt her. She was way past that now. "We didn't end anything. I ended our relationship because you called me disloyal. I ended whatever the hell we were because you threw me from a goddamn plane!"

"You changed sides by the minute Samantha. What was I supposed to think? What was I supposed to do?" he yelled. The anger was there in his eyes, guttural as it escaped from his lips and Samantha found herself unwittingly taking a step back. There was desperation in there too.

She yelled out a noise, unintelligible even to her, it was rough and loud – perhaps a little high-pitched – slamming her hand on the wall behind her. "You were supposed to trust me! You weren't supposed to try and kill me!" She exploded before quickly calming herself. She couldn't get angry with him. No, she had to give him a more definitive answer. At least then she could satiate whatever appetite for truth he suddenly had – not that he'd really bothered to ask her when it counted. "You act like that last part is nothing – and maybe it is for you. Maybe that doesn't matter to you. Your own best friend has tried to kill you enough times for Christ's sake. To me, it means something when your fiancé throws you from a plane, possibly to your doom, with barely a second thought." She added, trying to remain calm, trying to retain some sense of calm. "As for what I was thinking? I was thinking that both you and my dad were being stupid. I knew that the Accords were something we needed, something we still need. Your actions – in Berlin and Siberia – proved that more than anything. Yeah, I knew that Bucky couldn't have done what they were saying he did but he's still a criminal!" she yelled, her breath heavy.

"So, why not just stay out of it?" he asked.

"You think I had a choice back in Brussels? One minute I was asleep in a hotel room, the next I woke up in a cell at the JCTC. I had everything hanging in the balance, I had to maintain some sort of façade the whole way through otherwise that cell would become my home. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. And anyway, it was you who once told me that sometimes the easiest choice is the wrong one." She said, trying to justify her actions. She was basically throwing his own words back at him, not that she cared. He deserved it. She watched as his eyes softened, the anger changing to something akin to understanding. "Anyway, you wanted answers, now you've got them." It was her way of indicating that he ought to leave. She turned away from him so that he couldn't see the tears she was anxious to wipe away.

He walked past her, closing the door behind him with a click. She was left, breathing heavily as she sobbed, her right hand on the nearby side table, her left over her mouth. She was emotionally spent. It couldn't have been more than a minute before the door opened again and she turned around to see Steve stood in front of her, once again "What more could you possibly want?" she screamed at him, a cocktail of anger and upset filling her.

"I didn't push you. Not intentionally anyway. I knocked you and you fell backwards and trust me, if I could have caught you or found some way of making sure you were okay, I would have." He said it so earnestly and she believed him. She wasn't sure that Steve could lie to her even if he wanted to.

In a matter of seconds, her inhibitions and her ire were gone as her lips crashed into his. She wrapped her legs around his waist and snaked her arms around the back of her neck. He was reciprocating her kiss and she was being pushed up against the wall. Of course, it was at that moment that her phone rang. "Leave it." He told her, both of them had ragged breath.

"I can't. It's probably work." She panted, hoisting herself down from her awkward position (it never seemed that way in the movies).

"On a Sunday?"

"I'm the Prime Minister's Press Secretary and an MI6 Agent. Work is 24/7 now." She explained, rifling through her bag until she found the offending item.