Author's note: Thanks to Nzie, Sofiarose613 and everyone else who has left a review!

Chapter 13

Sharon slumped in front of her computer screen, eyes bleary, watching Rogers browse the internet.

The moment he had started running last night, she'd gone straight back to base. No point in trying to follow him. She'd watched him on the tracker, running all over the neighborhood. He hadn't stopped anywhere, as usual. Just running and running. Finally, he'd come back, showered, and tried to go to sleep. But no luck. She'd stayed awake with him, every step of the way. When the sun rose, he got dressed and went about his morning routine with a set face. Sharon was sick on his behalf. He had been doing so well.

There was a knock at the door, and Sharon roused herself to go open it. That would be her replacement for the day shift. But when she opened the door, it wasn't Agent Berman like she was expecting, but a red-headed woman in blue jeans and a black jacket.

"Agent Romanoff!" Sharon moved aside to let her in, surprise jarring her back into alertness. "Is Fury moving you to this detail?" she asked. Surely there were better uses for Natasha Romanoff's time than sitting around watching a video feed. Sharon had the impression that she was at the top of the food chain, so to speak, at S.H.I.E.L.D. She'd been lucky to work with Romanoff a couple of times as support over the last few years.

"I won't be a regular," Romanoff answered, coming inside and shutting the door. "Fury wants me to get familiar with all the potential candidates for the Avengers Initiative. So where is Rogers now?"

Sharon pointed up at the ceiling. "Right above us. He's on the computer." She gestured at her laptop, which was currently mirroring Rogers' screen.

Romanoff perched on the edge of the desk and looked at the screen. "Why is he Googling that?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

Sharon glanced back at the screen. "It isn't out of prurient interest, believe me," she said. "Some girl at The Flamingo said that to him last night. I don't think he knew quite what it meant."

"Wow. Did he let her?"

"Nope," Sharon said, perching on the edge of the desk as Romanoff plunked down into the chair. "He ghosted her."

"Not cute enough?"

"She was pretty cute. I don't think he went there for that. I think he thought he was going to meet a nice girl to court or something."

Romanoff stared. "At The Flamingo?"

Sharon felt compelled to defend Rogers for some reason. "If it were anyone else, it would be funny," she said. "But I felt awful for him. He had no idea what he was walking into."

"I'm actually kind of relieved," Romanoff said wryly. "I thought we had another Tony Stark on our hands for a second there."

"Have you met Stark?" Sharon asked curiously.

Romanoff nodded. "Last year, undercover. I had the privilege of watching him get smashed at his own birthday party. And when I say smashed, I mean I watched him drunkenly destroy five different rooms in his own mansion, screwing around with his suit." She quirked an eyebrow at Sharon.

"Great," Sharon said. "So I guess the playboy reputation is well-deserved?"

"Oh, yes," Romanoff said meaningfully. "Guess what kind of photos I had to Photoshop my face onto to make sure I got his attention in the first place?" She shrugged. "That's the job. To tell you the truth, Stark's so charismatic that it's hard to hate him."

"What about Dr. Banner?" Sharon asked. "Did you get assigned to him yet?"

"I was watching him at Culver University. Got to see him smash a bunch of Humvees, a couple of cannons, and a helicopter." Romanoff leaned back in a chair and grinned at Sharon. "I'm going to be disappointed if I don't see Rogers smash anything in the next 12 hours."

"You're going to be disappointed," Sharon said. "For a guy with PTSD, he's..." She trailed off, unsure how to explain. "I mean, Fury hasn't put him on active duty for good reason. His symptoms are bad. Sometimes really bad. You can see it in his eyes. But... he doesn't drink. He doesn't take it out on other people or wreck his apartment or curse his fate. I've never even seen him cry. And he lost-" She took a deep breath and slowly shook her head. "-everything."

Romanoff's eyebrows were slowly contracting. "Are you telling me," she said with more than a hint of skepticism, "that the whole squeaky-clean, Mr. Perfect, there's-nothing-I-can't-handle Captain America schtick isn't really a schtick?" She made a soft scoffing noise. "No one's that good."

Sharon knew she couldn't exactly say anything about her Aunt Peggy personally vouching for Rogers' character, so she just shrugged. "I can't read his mind. All I know is, the most transgressive thing I've ever seen him do is eat pie for breakfast. Once."

"Naughty," Romanoff said. She looked at Rogers' computer screen and then shook her head slowly, a smile playing on her lips. "Fury, Fury, Fury," she said softly. "He's really going to try to get these guys together at some point? As a functional team? All three of them are walking disasters."

"Rogers just needs some time to get it together," Sharon said quickly. "He's been doing pretty well lately, up until last night."

Romanoff's eyes flicked up to Sharon's face. "How long have you been watching him?"

"About four months," Sharon said.

"Ah," Romanoff said with a knowing look. "Long enough to get attached."

"I'm not attached," Sharon objected. "I'm just... it's kind of hard to watch sometimes, you know? He's a nice guy. He didn't ask for any of this to happen to him."

"A nice guy, looking for a nice girl," Romanoff said, glancing back at the video feed. Rogers had closed the browser and was now sitting at the kitchen table with his head down on his arms. "There are nice girls here in the 21st century. Someone needs to tell him where to find them."

"Well, it can't be me," Sharon said. "Fury said no contact."

"I'll tell him," Romanoff said casually. She reached into the candy bowl on the table and pulled out a sucker.

Sharon paused, surprised. "Fury said you could make contact?"

"Not yet," Romanoff said, pulling off the wrapper and popping the sucker into her mouth, tucking it into one cheek so she could still talk. "But I figure he wouldn't be getting me familiar with potential Avengers unless he intended for me to work with them at some point. I'll tell Rogers then. As soon as I can."

"You're going to tell Captain America where to find a date?" Sharon repeated slowly, making sure she had actually understood correctly.

Romanoff pulled the sucker out of her mouth and shrugged. "Sure, why not? It'll be fun."

"Okay then," Sharon said. She patted her pocket, making sure she had her keys, and walked toward the door. She stopped there, and patted her pocket again. She looked back over at the video feed.

"Agent 13?" Romanoff said.

"Yeah?"

"I got this. Don't worry."

"I'm not worried," Sharon said.

"You kind of look worried."

It was true. She hated to leave him when he was like this, which was ridiculous. It wasn't like it made a difference to Rogers either way; as far as he knew, he was alone whether it was Sharon watching him, or some other agent, or no one at all. It was just that he had been doing so well. She had really hoped, for his sake, that he would be taken off psychological hold soon.

"Okay," Sharon said at last. "All my reports are on that computer if you want to catch up on him during your downtime. Call me if you have any questions."

His head resting on his arms at the kitchen table, Steve's thoughts whirled around like snow in a blizzard, and try as he might he could not seem to get a grasp on what exactly the source of the storm was.

He told himself that he didn't really care about the girl from the nightclub. She had been awful, and as a result the night had been a disappointment, but that was nothing. It wasn't like he couldn't try again. Live and learn, do better next time. His mother's unofficial motto. Steve clung to her optimistic attitude like a life preserver, although underneath it an uneasy feeling stirred. What if the women of this time period were all like that? He had detected a certain kind of coarseness to that woman on Rumlow's STRIKE team, which he had assumed was just a result of her place in a rough-and-tumble profession dominated by men, but now he was beginning to doubt that was the full explanation. Clearly something had gone terribly wrong between the sexes while he slept in the ice. How else to explain all the marriages that failed these days, not to mention the number of people who didn't bother getting married in the first place, even when there were children involved? All of that hadn't happened in a vacuum.

It was just one bad experience, Steve told himself firmly. Just a stroke of bad luck. It would have been too much to expect to find another woman like Peggy so quickly. But the episode last night had been bad. One of his worst. An almost continual stream of flashbacks: memories of things he would rather forget twisted into new and disturbing variations, until he thought he would go crazy from the onslaught of images and mood swings. It had been a relief when the numb phase had finally arrived just as the sun rose, but he couldn't really relax even now. He was getting a short respite, as he sometimes did, but it could start up again at any moment.

What's happened to me? he wondered. Where did the real Steve Rogers go?

Once, he had thought of himself as just a regular guy. Life in his youth had not exactly been easy, but it hadn't been miserable, either. He had vivid memories of happy times with his mother. Times of careless fun with Bucky, of carnival rides and baseball games and sleepovers. The lulls between battles when he had relaxed with the Howling Commandos and felt more a part of something than he ever had before in his life. Just because the ones he loved were now dead, did that mean that those parts of him had died with them? Just who exactly had come out of the ice? What if Steve Rogers really had died all those years ago, and now all that was left was an empty shell of a man who simply resembled him? Was he doomed to grief and anger for the rest of his life?

He had to snap out of this. He had to find the old Steve Rogers and bring him back. He just wasn't sure how. The compass wasn't working for him anymore, and that scared him more than anything. It hadn't made a dent in his episode last night. He had held it, feeling the metal grow warm in his hand, but he couldn't picture Peggy anymore. Instead what he saw was an empty dance hall, filled with all the remnants of everyone else's happiness and joy, but nothing left over for him. Not a glass of wine, not a note of music, not a soul to keep him company.

No one to dance with.

Beneath the table, his hand clenched into a fist. He needed to see Peggy. He needed to hear her voice. He needed her wisdom, her compassion, her perspective. She had been right about him; sometimes he was too dramatic. He needed her good plain common sense.

There was a chance, however remote, that he could have it right now.

Steve could feel a trickle of sweat moving down the back of his neck and soaking into his collar. All it would take was a phone call to Maria Hill, and he could have the question answered.

In all this time, he never had asked Agent Hill the one thing he really wanted to ask. Never dared to search it on the internet. And he knew what it was that he feared. Peggy had been 24 when he left. Now she would be in her 90s. If she was still alive at all. Knowledge of her death would hurt him, but then again, how could he possibly hurt more than he already was? Whether she was alive or not, it was over. Time had destroyed whatever chance at happiness they could have had.

And there was another problem. While he knew a little about what Peggy had done for S.H.I.E.L.D., he had only guesses about what may have happened in her personal life. Once he asked the question, all of that would become real. Permanent. He'd been clinging to her memory these past few months, thinking of her as belonging to him. But Peggy being what she was — a beautiful woman, and an unusually accomplished one — he knew there was a good chance that she didn't belong to him at all anymore. He didn't know what would hurt him more: the knowledge that maybe she had belonged to someone else all these years, or the possibility that she had lived out her life in loneliness. He felt a stab of shame at his own cowardice. Whichever way it had happened, it was already over and done with. Nothing he could control. Nothing to do but accept it and move on.

Looking at the compass didn't work anymore. He needed something more to make Peggy real again.

Watching on the video feed, Natasha saw Rogers go over to the phone and make a call.

She reached over and tapped the control that activated the bug in the phone. Immediately the number he'd dialed popped up on the screen. It was a secure S.H.I.E.L.D. number.

A woman answered. "Hello?"

"Agent Hill? It's Steve Rogers. Are you busy?"

Involuntarily, Nat found herself smiling. His voice sounded exactly like she'd remembered it from his old films, deep and business-like, with something of the military cadence to it. He was facing the camera fully for the first time, holding the phone to his ear, and suddenly she pictured him as he would have looked, wearing his uniform and talking into a radio, ordering a strike against some Hydra base. It should have been quite the picture, except it was spoiled by a strange kind of blankness in Rogers' expression. Disconnected. Like the lights were on but nobody was home.

Agent Hill was responding. "I'm never too busy for you, Steve. What can I do for you?"

"I was wondering if I could get copies of some S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel files."

Nat frowned, and when Hill answered, it sounded like she was frowning, too. "Files? What files?"

"The files..." Rogers hesitated. "The files for my guys. The Howling Commandos. And some of the people from the SSR. Colonel Phillips and Howard Stark and..." He paused again. "The ones who founded S.H.I.E.L.D. All of those."

Hill didn't answer right away. Finally, she said, "Yes, of course. I'll have an agent bring them by right now."

"Thank you."

The call ended. Nat hardly had time to wonder what that was all about, when her own phone rang. She glanced at it, and saw that it was Hill.

She pressed accept. "Romanoff," she said.

"Were you listening in on that call?" Hill asked. "What's going on with Rogers?"

Nat sat up straight. "I'm not sure. Agent 13 just left. She said he had a bad experience with a girl last night."

"With a girl?" Hill sighed. "Fantastic. Then he's already worked up, and this is just going to make it worse."

"What's with the files?" Nat asked.

"Those are all the people he knew, back in the day. He's never asked to look at them before."

"He's not going to be surprised by anything in them, is he?" Nat asked. "I mean, they're all dead by now, right? He must know that."

"Yes, I'm sure he's guessed that," Hill said. "Seeing it in black and white might be something else, though." She blew out a sigh. "And he's been doing so well. But this is exactly the kind of thing that tends to send him over the edge. You'll have to watch him carefully. I'll send you a copy of the same files so you can see what he sees. Let me know if he gets out of control."

She ended the call.

Nat sat back to wait. Rogers was pacing the apartment, but true to Hill's word, it wasn't long before Nat heard a soft scrape, and glanced over in time to see someone push a file under her door. She heard footsteps going up the stairs, and a few moments later, on the video feed, Rogers got up and answered his door. An agent handed him the files he'd asked for and left again.

Rogers stood there for a long time, holding the files but not opening them. Holding her own copies, Nat suddenly felt uneasy. What exactly had Hill meant by "watch him if he gets out of control"? What was "out of control" for Rogers? Agent 13 had said he wasn't violent, but then again Bruce Banner was pretty mild-mannered, and the sight of him laying waste to Culver University's campus was all too fresh in her mind. True, Rogers wasn't powered by gamma-enhanced rage, but Nat had a better idea than most of what a super-soldier was capable of.

In a flash, she saw it all over again — the masked man with the metal arm raising his gun to point it at her — and involuntarily she flinched, feeling once again the bullet tear through her body and hearing the surprised grunt of the nuclear scientist behind her as the same bullet pierced him. The Winter Soldier had been unnaturally fast and unnaturally strong, more than even Nat could handle, and he had been implacable in his ferocity. The one thing that stuck out in her mind more than anything else was the strange blankness in his eyes as he attacked. Like the lights were on but nobody was home.

It had looked an awful lot like the blankness in Rogers' expression right now.

Heart beating a little faster, Nat shrugged off her jacket and tapped the wrist control on her gauntlets underneath, powering up the Widow's Bite, and then pulled out her gun to make sure it was loaded and ready to go.

Better safe than sorry.

Using a quick inhalation to steel himself, Steve sat down at his kitchen table and opened the folder that had just been delivered.

Dum Dum Dugan's picture was on top. The word "deceased" was stamped in large red letters under his photo. A cold chill went down Steve's spine. Dum Dum had had a gift for inspiring the men with his rough confidence. Steve saw that he had been put in command of the Commandos after his own disappearance, and he wasn't surprised. Dum Dum had seemed as solid as the Swiss Alps. Unbreakable. He had died in his 70s, of a heart attack.

This isn't a surprise, he reminded himself sternly. Most of them are probably gone. Maybe all of them.

Reluctantly Steve turned over the page. Jim Morita's file came next. Marked "Deceased." He'd missed Jim's sarcasm and irreverence, and the way he could turn off the jokes like a switch whenever he was needed for his steady competence with the equipment, whether it was a radio or a gun in his hand. And now all that was lost forever. Steve squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, and turned over the page.

Junior Juniper. James Montgomery Falsworth. Gabe Jones. Pinky Pinkerton. Jacques Dernier. One by one, he looked at their files. All gone. Not a single one left alive. Blowing out a shaky breath, Steve turned over Jacques' sheet. And Colonel Phillips was dead. No surprise there; he had been quite a bit older than Steve's buddies. Three pages left to go.

Howard Stark was dead, and Steve lingered on that file for a while. Howard had been a decent guy, although he had been prone to bouts of condescension and self-centeredness. Steve hadn't held it against him; there was something about an overabundance of money that tended to do that to a guy. But he had been a self-made man; he had earned everything he had, and his genius was undisputed. Steve had put his own life into his hands, undergoing his procedure in the Vita-Ray chamber Howard had built, and he had come out on the other side safe and well. Howard had been extremely generous with his resources and talents, too, setting Steve up with all his gear and constantly tinkering around to improve it, and Steve was grateful for that. He saw with some surprise that Howard had not died of natural causes like the others. Both he and his wife had died in a car crash in the '90s.

He turned the page. The next one was a file he hadn't asked for: Howard's son, Tony. He was listed as an advisor to S.H.I.E.L.D., which meant there was a chance Steve would meet him through work someday. That was probably why Hill had included it. He'd already read about Iron Man in the newspaper and seen him on TV and all over the internet. In fact, the topic of Iron Man was pretty much impossible to avoid; Tony Stark seemed to have his father's talent for showmanship and then some. He was obviously his own biggest fan. Steve pushed the page aside.

The last page lay on the table, and Steve looked away instinctively, his heart thudding loudly in his ears. Did he really want to do this? Once he had looked, he wouldn't be able to unsee it. He wouldn't be able to unknow it.

I can do this.

He braced himself, and looked.

The page was labeled "Margaret Carter." He frowned; he had never heard anyone call her Margaret, although he knew that was her name. She was always just Peggy. She was young in the photo, with a serious expression, looking professional and business-like in a button-up shirt and blazer.

There was no bright red stamp of "DECEASED" beneath the photo. Steve felt a crashing sense of relief, quickly followed by a thrill of... what? Fear? Anticipation?

Eyes flicking rapidly all over the page, Steve saw that the file marked her as "Retired." And underneath her photo, there was a box with the last known contact information.

Address: 57-J Merryweather, Winchester, UK

Telephone: 020-7946-03560

Marital status: Married (cross reference file GEB-061418 redacted)

He stared at the word "married," waiting for the panic to wash over him, but he felt nothing. Not one thing.

She was in England. So close to him. He realized that he'd been thinking of her as still being in 1945, in a time and place so far removed that she might as well have been on another planet. Unreachable. Untouchable. But she was only a plane ride away. A phone call away. He could be talking to her in minutes if he wanted to.

Was that what he wanted? Suddenly Steve wasn't sure.

He ran his eyes over the file again. He wasn't surprised to see the information on her family was redacted. There had been a number of SSR agents back in the day with similar arrangements, he knew, especially the ones who specialized in espionage. It was an extra layer of protection for them, vulnerable as they were to betrayals or blackmail. Of course Peggy would have been protective of her family. Of course she would have kept them off the record. She hadn't even taken her husband's surname, it seemed. He was glad, actually. He didn't want to know anything about the man who had benefitted from what he had lost. Not even his name.

His eyes flicked over to the phone. Should he call? Would he be able to keep his emotions in check? What would he say to her? What if her husband answered the phone? What if Peggy did? Would she even want to speak with him? Steve was now in her far-distant past, maybe nothing more than a single chapter in a full and happy life.

Suddenly he realized he did not even know if she had been informed of his revival. If he called her now... if she still thought he was dead... what if he scared her? What if she didn't believe it was him? What if, at her age, she was already confused? The sound of his voice might upset her. Might make her doubt her own mind.

The relief he had felt from realizing she was still alive evaporated like fog in the morning sun. It didn't really make a difference that she was still alive, Steve realized with sinking heart. Not to him. She was still untouchable. Unreachable. If he called he might hurt her. And even if he didn't...

He wasn't ready for this.

Maybe one day he would be able to make the call. Maybe one day he would be ready. But it wasn't going to be today.

The sheet of paper bearing Peggy's photograph blurred. Steve blinked rapidly, and a tear broke loose and slid down his cheek. The blessed numbness slipped away from him, and the pain came flooding back. His face crumpled, and he put his hand up to his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut, letting it come. No point in fighting it.

Maybe if he let himself grieve hard enough now, he would be tired enough to sleep tonight.

Nat brushed impatiently at the tear that was tickling her cheek. Sniffling, and a little embarrassed, she tucked away her gun and tapped the control on her gauntlet to power down the Widow's Bite. It was obvious now that she wasn't going to need it. Steve Rogers was no Winter Soldier.

She made herself lean back in her chair, her neck muscles tense and sore from leaning close to the monitor for so long without even realizing it.

"Okay, Rogers..." she murmured out loud, feeling more than a little foolish as she smeared the rest of the tear across her cheek with the palm of her hand. "What are we doing here? Why are we crying for the one that's still alive?"

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: This is the first time I've written something from Natasha Romanoff's point of view, and I really enjoyed it. She's fun. :-) Obviously I couldn't have her meet Steve yet since we saw their first meeting on the helicarrier in "The Avengers," but she clearly already knew about his return by then. I figured it wasn't much of a stretch to think she got a turn spying on Steve, especially since we know from "Iron Man 2" that she spied on Tony and from the comic book "Fury's Big Week" that she spied on Bruce.

As always, let me know what you thought, whether it's about Nat's entrance to the story, Sharon's thoughts about Steve, or Steve's grief over Peggy.