Elsie had to get to the hospital fast. Steve knew she needed medical help, and he needed to get the thumb drive. Thankfully, Elsie had friends in the ER, and they promised to not reveal the couple was ever there. They tended to her wounds quickly and gave her an IV since she was dehydrated and exhausted.
"She should be fine in a few hours," the ER doctor told Steve once she was all bandaged up. "She's very lucky to have only second-degree burns on her fingers and no broken bones from that fall. However, she did need twelve stitches on her arm, but no trace of glass was in her."
"I'm just happy she's alive," Steve says as he slips his hoodie on. "If S.H.I.E.L.D. comes looking, we were never here."
Giving his sleeping girlfriend one last kiss on her forehead, he heads to the floor where the vending machine was to retrieve the thumb drive. However, to his horror, the bubblegum space was completely empty. A popping sound is heard behind him, and he sees Natasha's reflection in the glass, her chewing away on the bubblegum. When he turns around to see her standing there, he knows she took it and immediately drags her into an empty room.
"Where is it?!" he growls, pushing her against a wall.
"Safe," she replies calmly.
"Do better."
"Where did you get it?" Her brows furrowed.
"Why would I tell you?"
A beat. "Fury gave it to you. Why?"
"What's on it?"
"I don't know."
Steve was getting impatient. "Stop lying."
"I'm not," Natasha insists. "I only act like I know everything, Rogers."
"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?"
She looks at him shocked. "Well, makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you."
He grips her harder. "I'm not gonna ask you again."
Knowing he wasn't gonna give up, Natasha decides to tell him what she knows. "I know who killed Fury," she finally says.
Steve is silent. Maybe he would finally get somewhere with what she had to say.
"Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists," she continues. "The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."
"So, he's a ghost story," Steve says, not sure if he believed her.
"Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him" -she lifts up her shirt to show him her scar- "straight through me. Soviet slug. No rifling. Bye-bye, bikinis."
"Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now," Steve retorts.
She just stares at him for a moment before continuing. "Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried." She finally hands him the thumb drive she had hidden in her pocket. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."
He takes the device. "Well, let's find out what the ghost wants."
Steve then heads back to Elsie's room to check on her. Still napping, but her phone was lighting up non stop with missed calls and texts. Stark was trying to get in touch with her. How the phone didn't get crushed or smashed after what happened, he didn't know.
"I'll handle this," Natasha says, taking the phone and answering the many missed calls while Steve stays by Elsie's side.
"Stark," she answers once she's outside of the room.
"Romanoff?" Stark replies. "Where's my niece? And why are she and Rogers wanted fugitives like they're Bonnie and Clyde?"
"To answer your first question, she's in the hospital, but she'll be fine. Your second question is a little more complicated to answer." She looks back at her teammate. The man she saw now was not the guy who angrily interrogated her five minutes ago. This man was gently holding his girlfriend's hand while she slept, brushing her brown locks out of her face, and basically acting as her guardian angel looking at her with love and worry.
"What do you mean complicated?" Tony pressed.
Natasha took a deep breath. "Did Elsie ever tell you she had a boyfriend?"
There was a long pause before Tony spoke again. "She never said it was Steve Rogers," he groans. "Okay, why is she in the hospital, and how long are they keeping her?"
"About three hours. Long story short, she and Rogers were escaping arrest, and she got some cuts and bruises. They're mainly letting her sleep and making sure she's hydrated."
"Don't let either of them leave until I'm there," he demands. "I'm going there now."
"Okay." She hangs up before Tony could say anything else.
"Stark's on his way here," she announces as she comes back into the room, placing the phone on the side table.
"I'm guessing he's not too happy," Steve replies, not taking his eyes off of Elsie.
"More or less. I think he's mostly concerned with her being in the hospital, but I told him she's going to be fine." She sits at the foot of the bed, careful not to disturb Elsie. "Did Stark not know you and Elsie were together?"
Steve shakes his head.
"And you two have been dating for how long?"
"About a year."
Natasha's eyes grew wide. "And neither of you thought to at least tell someone?"
"We wanted to," Steve snapped. "But life got in the way, and we didn't know how to tell without freaking everyone out."
"What do you mean by 'freak out?' Because in all honesty, I think you two are the cutest couple. And I'm not saying that because we're friends."
He sighs. "I just don't want to be kicked off the team."
Natasha laughs. "Rogers, no one's gonna kick you out of the Avengers for dating Elsie. You're literally the leader."
"Stark could try."
"Dude, you're not in Romeo and Juliet."
"No," Elsie chimes in with a yawn, "he's just dramatic."
Looking over at Elsie, Steve smiles softly. "You're supposed to be sleeping," he points out, kissing her hand.
"Then, you two should have been whispering."
Natasha chuckles before standing. "How are you feeling, Agent Walker?"
"Okay for the most part," Elsie shrugs. "But I think 'Agent' has been thrown out of the window. No pun intended."
"Sure it wasn't," Natasha shakes her head, "but you're still an agent in my book."
About an hour later Tony showed up, a look of both relief and annoyance on his goatee-clad face. He wasn't in his usual t-shirt paired with an expensive suit and vans combo topped with sunglasses, but rather in pajama pants, tennis shoes, a shirt, and a coffee in his hand.
"Let me get this straight," he pondered as he entered the ER bay she was in and stood by her bedside, "I'm having a nice breakfast with Pepper. Sunny side up eggs, pancakes, maple syrup, and don't forget the orange slices and milk. And then I look up at the flat screen connected to S.H.I.E.L.D. to see my precious niece's face next to Captain Rogers, all because the man is now a wanted fugitive and somehow Elsie is involved. She's now in the hospital because you two escaped?"
"Pretty much," Elsie nods. "Are you done?"
"Not quite," he replies while giving his coffee a stir. "To top it all off, the man Elsie has been dating for a year now is also Captain Rogers."
"Tony, I just have a few stitches on my arm and two burn marks on my fingers," she defends. "I'm okay. And I told you that we needed to talk, so let's talk since you're here. Yes, I've been dating Steve for a year, and I've been living with him for about five months."
"Why didn't you just say 'Hey, Tony. I'm dating Captain Rogers'?"
Elsie sighed. "We didn't know how, and I didn't want you to freak."
"I wouldn't have freaked," Tony scoffed, taking a sip of his coffee. "Kept you apart? Possibly."
"Same thing."
Before he could shoot something back, Steve steps in. "Look, Stark, we were going to tell you, and we're sorry you had to find out like this; but if we don't finish this mission that we have-"
"Mission?" Tony's brow raised.
Elsie didn't want to put her uncle in danger, and while she wanted to tell him everything, she was keeping her promise to Fury.
"If we tell you," Elsie gulped, taking her uncle's hand, "one of two things can happen. Either a bounty is placed on your head like there is mine and Steve's, or you rat us out to S.H.I.E.L.D. We can't trust anyone."
Tony thinks for a moment before nodding in understanding. "Can I still sign you out of here?" he asks. "Just leave your co-pay to me."
After Elsie is released, Tony takes care of her hospital bill and promises to never tell anyone she, Steve, and Natasha were ever there. While he didn't like the idea of his niece putting herself in danger, he had faith in her that she was going to do something great.
"Just promise me she doesn't get hurt," Tony requests before heading back home.
"I've got her," Steve swears.
Natasha then makes a quick run to a nearby thrift store to get Elsie some new clothes and helps her tie and pin her hair up in a way that conceals her bright-red ends underneath a heather gray beanie. Steve is given some fake glasses and a baseball cap for a disguise, and Natasha wears a jacket with the hood up to keep a low profile. Once out of the hospital, Natasha discards the bloodied S.H.I.E.L.D. clothes in a nearby trash can outside the hospital. The three of them then head to the mall to find an electronics store where they would have access to a computer in order to subtly try to decode what's on the thumb drive.
The mall was a good place to hide out for the time being, and being a regular Tuesday afternoon in April it was packed. Perfect place to hide if agents were there, but at the same time, someone could recognize them easily.
The whole being on the run thing was new to both Steve and Elsie, so they were thankful Natasha was there to be their guide.
"First rule of going on the run is don't run, walk," she instructs as they navigate through the mall.
"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off," Steve complains, his feet practically sliding around in the first pair Natasha had grabbed for him.
They find an Apple store and beeline to the first available display laptop there. Natasha immediately logs into it while Steve and Elsie keep watch.
"The file has a Level Six homing program," she informs them, "so as soon as we boot up, S.H.I.E.L.D. will know exactly where we are."
"How much time will we have?" Steve asks.
"About nine minutes from" -she inserts the thumb drive- "now."
Elsie sets her watch to time it. "Go quickly," she tells her.
Natasha focused on the task at hand, searching through files until she found what she was looking for.
"Fury was right about that ship," she realized. "Somebody's trying to hide something." Another file pops up. "This drive is protected by some sort of AI. It keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."
"Can you override it?" Elsie asks.
"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly."
Elsie checks her watch. "Five minutes."
"I'm gonna try running a tracer," Natasha decides and begins to type away. "This is a program S.H.I.E.L.D. developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."
A satellite image of the U.S. East Coast pops up followed by a signal seemingly pinging from the Northern region.
"Can I help you guys with anything?" a male employee with long blond hair, stocky build, and a beard approaches them in a friendly manner.
"Oh no," Elsie quickly replies, shaking her head and giving him a smile. "My sister was helping my fiancé and I look for honeymoon destinations." She holds Steve's hand and looks at him adoringly.
"Right," he follows along, kissing her temple. "We're getting married."
"Aren't they cute?" Natasha adds with a soft smile before focusing back on the computer.
"Congratulations!" the man rejoiced. "Where are you guys thinking about going?"
Steve glances at the computer as a location lights up. "New Jersey," he says, hoping the man didn't figure them out. Elsie keeps an eye on the screen, trying to play off the story they just gave.
The employee gives Steve a look as if he knew something about him. Had they been caught by an undercover agent? Were they recognized?
"I have the exact same glasses," the employee finally says, Elsie letting go of a breath she didn't realize she had been holding.
"Wow, you two are practically twins," Natasha sarcastically chimes in as she keeps her focus.
"Yeah, I wish." The man chuckles before admiring Steve's physique. "Specimen. If you guys need anything, I've been Aaron."
"Thank you," Elsie nods.
Natasha continued to find as much information as she could, but she was cutting close on time. S.H.I.E.L.D. would be arriving with the S.T.R.I.K.E. team at any moment, and they had to leave now. Elsie's watch beeped, and she quickly shut it off.
"You said nine minutes," Steve reminds her impatiently. "Come on."
"Relax," Natasha shushed him before finishing up. "Got it."
A location popped up: Wheaton, New Jersey.
"You know it?" Elsie asks Steve as he looks at it with a sense of familiarity.
"I used to," he confirms. "Let's go."
Once he removed to thumb drive, the trio exited the store, Elsie lacing her fingers with Steve's as they briskly walked. Agents were now searching the mall and they had the S.T.R.I.K.E. team with them.
"Standard tac team," Steve alerts the two women. "Two behind, two across, and two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you two hit the south escalator to the metro."
"Shut up and put your arm around Elsie," Natasha commands. "Laugh at something she said."
Elsie quickly puts Steve's arm around her shoulder, and he turns his head towards her to where their eyes meet. Steve laughs like he's told, Elsie and Natasha following along as if they all cracked a joke as agents walked by them. Steve looks back and sees the agents walk away, but he still holds onto his girlfriend to keep up the act.
The nearest exit was down one floor, but when they took the escalator, Rumlow was coming up the opposite one to search the floor above.
"You two, kiss," Natasha commanded as she pulled a fake phone out.
"Excuse me?" Elsie was taken aback. She loved giving Steve kisses, but was now the time?
"Public displays of affection makes people very uncomfortable."
"Yes, they do," Steve agrees and turns Elsie to him.
He embraces her and presses a kiss to her lips while Natasha pretends to text someone and keeps her head down just as Rumlow ascends by them. Once they had passed him, he let go of her.
"Still uncomfortable?" Natasha asks as they reach the first floor.
"Not exactly the word I would use," Steve replies, smiling a little at Elsie.