Ghosts of the Past

"You alright?" Steve asked as he and Olivia made their way through the halls of the hospital.

"Fine," she answered quietly, "I just don't care for these jeans."

Steve cracked a small smile despite the situation. He and Olivia always kept an extra stash of clothing in the side pouch of his motorcycle. Nothing they would mind being soiled or lost, just something to keep incase they needed a very quick change after a mission. Olivia had thrown a pair of jeans, a hoodie, and a pair of flat shoes in, similar to what he'd put in there as well. Mostly because she thought she would never need to wear it. It had been the first outfit Natasha had tried to sneak into their closet. Olivia hadn't wanted to be rude and donate it, so she'd put it as a back up outfit, only for Natasha to sneak more outfits in after.

"For what it's worth," he murmured, "I think you look good."

Olivia gave a small smile of her own, before ducking her head, her hoodie up much like Steve's was, as a pair of doctors passed them, deep in conversation. Steve began to walk faster, leading them back the way they'd come before, towards the room Fury had been tended to in, and over to the vending machine. She frowned when Steve let out a breath, staring at the machine.

"What?" she asked.

"It's gone," he muttered, tapping the glass to the row where he'd put the flashdrive behind a line of gum.

Olivia's gaze flickered to the side, seeing Natasha appear behind them in the reflection of the glass…popping a bubble of gum.

Steve didn't even hesitate to turn, grabbing her arm and pushing her into a room behind them, Olivia looking up and down the hall to make sure no one had seen and shutting the door after them, locking it to be twice as sure.

"Where is it?" Steve demanded.

"Safe," was all Natasha said.

"Tasha," Olivia gave her a firm look as she stepped over to them, reaching out to place a hand on Steve's arm so he would lighten the grip he had on the woman.

She sighed, "Here," she pulled the flashdrive out of her pocket, handing it over to Olivia, knowing Steve probably wouldn't actually lighten up till the two of them had the drive once more, "Where did you get it?"

"Why would we tell you?" Steve countered.

Natasha snorted at that, shaking her head, "Fury gave it to you," she answered for him, "Why?"

"We don't know," Olivia told her, knowing Steve was too angry she'd taken it to trust her right now, and also knowing Natasha would probably be more inclined to answer if she was getting honest answers instead of hostility. Right now Natasha was in danger just for knowing where the flashdrive was, "We don't even know what was on it."

"Do you?" Steve looked at her.

"No," Natasha answered.

"Stop lying!" Steve nearly shouted, getting tired of everyone lying to the two of them.

"I only act like I know everything, Rogers."

"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?"

"Well, it makes sense," Natasha shrugged, not perturbed, "The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you."

Olivia hadn't thought of it that way. She had been so sure that Fury wouldn't have done something like that, because of how Pierce had implied it was to sell the information to their enemies. But the way Natasha had put it…it made more sense given what she knew of Fury. If SHIELD had been compromised, he would have needed a reason and an excuse to be there, to get a team onto the base and save the data from being used by their enemies.

It also explained why they hadn't been informed Natasha was backing up the information. If it had been part of the mission, there was no telling if any compromised agents on their team might learn about it and have gone after Natasha to stop her.

She wasn't sure how she felt to think Fury had, at some point, feared they were compromised instead of someone he could trust. At least he had proven he thought them trustworthy now if he had given them the flashdrive.

"I'm not gonna ask you again," Steve spoke, his voice firm but just a little calmer now that they were getting some sort of answer from her.

"Tasha," Olivia cut in gently, "Right now, we need to know anything you can tell us. It doesn't have to be about the flashdrive or the pirates, just…something. You've got to give us something."

Natasha sighed, but nodded, "I know who killed Fury."

Steve stiffened at that, "Who?"

"Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists, the ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

"How is that possible?" Olivia frowned.

"He's a ghost story," Steve remarked as an answer. There was no way someone could have done that many assassinations over 50 years. Given the time training and what age they might have been when they started, this person would be at least 70 years old. It had to be a ghost story, a series of assassins the enemy wanted others to believe was the same person doing all this.

"Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran," Natasha told them, "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…straight through me," she lifted up the side of her shirt to show them a scar to the side of her stomach, "Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis."

"So that's how you knew about the ammunition used on Fury," Olivia realized, thinking back to how Natasha had seemed too certain of what was used on the Director.

She nodded, "In each of the assassinations on report, it's been the same thing. Soviet slug, no rifling."

"So we find this Winter Soldier, we find out who ordered him to kill Fury," Steve reasoned.

But Natasha shook her head, "Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried. Like you said, he's a ghost story."

"We have at least one advantage in all this," Olivia murmured, holding up the flashdrive.

Steve nodded, "Let's find out what the ghost wants."

~8~

Natasha glanced over at Steve and Olivia as they made their way through a crowded mall, Steve and Olivia both now with a pair of bulky glasses on their faces to help them blend in more. It was amusing to think that was their definition of being incognito, glasses and the hoods up on their hoodies. Granted she had her hood up too, but it was just amusing to see.

"First rule of going on the run is, don't run, walk," she commented to them.

"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off," Steve muttered.

"At least you could still run without them," Olivia grumbled somewhat, "I'm not sure I can run in these pants. Honestly, these are almost as bad as iced tea."

Natasha smirked, "They're called skinny jeans. They're not so bad once you break them in a little. Which you'd know if you wore them more."

"I wear them!"

Natasha snorted, "Still a terrible liar."

Steve finally cracked another smile, reaching out to wind an arm around Olivia's shoulders, "I like your skirts," he reassured her that there was nothing wrong with a distaste for jeans.

"Only because you can see her legs."

"Hey!" Steve huffed, though Olivia smiled a bit when she saw a faint flush creep onto his cheeks, "I just prefer her to be in clothes she feels comfortable in."

"Sure you do," Natasha smirked, leading them into an Apple store, heading right for one of the test Mac books resting open on a table, "The drive has a Level Six homing program so, as soon as we boot up, SHIELD will know exactly where we are."

"How long will it take them to track us?" Olivia asked.

"Uh...about nine minutes from..." she popped the flashdrive into the laptop, "Now."

"Whatever's on here had better be worth all this trouble," Olivia muttered.

Natasha quickly opened the drive, skimming around to see if there was anything useful in it, and boy was there, "Fury was right about that ship, somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."

"Can you override it?" Steve frowned.

"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly."

"Maybe I could help?" Olivia offered, "I did a bit of codebreaking during the war…"

"No offense, but things have gotten a little more complicated since the 1940s. Unless you've got a computer in your head, a tracer might be a better way to go," she started to input a different command, "This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."

"Can I help you guys with anything?" a voice spoke beside them as one of the Apple employees stepped over to them. He was a normal looking fellow, wearing the standard uniform, but with longer blond hair and a bit of stubble.

Immediately Steve and Olivia moved to stand on Natasha's side, blocking the man's view of what she was doing on the computer, "No, no," Olivia offered with a tense smile, "We're fine."

Natasha shook her head behind them, mouthing 'SUCH a terrible liar,' before she called out, "I'm just helping my cousin and her fiancé here figure out some honeymoon destinations."

Steve nearly clenched his jaw at that, but couldn't stop himself from shaking his head, of course Natasha would bring up something to do with a wedding or honeymoon. And of course she would do it in spite of the fact they were likely about to be hunted down by SHIELD any moment now. She just wouldn't let it go.

"Right," Steve nodded, reaching out to put an arm around Olivia once more as she wound an arm around his waist, "We're getting married."

The employee beamed at that, "Congratulations! Where do you guys thinking about going?"

Steve had just looked back over his shoulder at the laptop to see it had traced the signal to somewhere in New Jersey, when Olivia blurted out, "Russia!"

He looked over at her, sure that Natasha had done the same at the odd location, but he couldn't help but smile at her answer when she looked at him and gave him a sheepish shrug.

"Oh, nice," the employee kept smiling, before his attention was pulled to Steve, a frown starting to come to his face as he eyed the man more intently, "I have the exact same glasses!" he cheered.

"Wow, you two are practically twins," Natasha remarked dryly behind them.

"Yeah, I wish," the man looked Steve up and down, sounding almost wistful, "Specimen."

"Yes," Olivia nodded, smiling at Steve, "My specimen."

Steve grinned at that, especially when the man seemed to snap himself out of his thoughts, "Uh...if you guys need anything, I'm Aaron."

"Thank you," Steve offered, watching as the man walked away.

"Well, now I've seen everything," Natasha murmured when they turned around to rejoin her, "Major Williams has a possessive streak too, who knew?"

Steve snorted, "Peggy."

Olivia flushed deeply at that, burying her face in her hands as she recalled the stories Peggy had regaled Steve with before they had even admitted their feelings. She had not been…pleased…with how she saw some women fawn all over Steve. She had thought she'd kept enough of a lid on it, been civil enough when asked about it, but Peggy had seen right through it. She'd been jealous, especially when he was surrounded by all those showgirls and she was being carted around her country and unable to be with him. She'd managed to convince herself it was nothing though, because each time she saw Steve he would smile at her and stutter and he didn't do that when he spoke to other women and it had to mean something.

Seeing him with Private Lorraine had been harder to bear. But she had been adamant that it wasn't her right to feel the way she had when Steve and her weren't together. He'd nipped that in the bud, asking to be with her, and it had been wonderful after. She hadn't exactly been possessive just now, it wasn't like she was feeling threatened by Aaron or anyone else, she knew Steve was hers and hers alone, just like she was his, but she'd thought that's what a 'fiancé' would say when someone complimented their partner, at least in this day and age.

She slowly pulled her hands away from her face when they chuckled, her expression morphing into alarm, "You said nine minutes," Olivia remarked.

Steve followed her line of sight to see that Rumlow and his team had arrived at the mall and were walking past the store looking for them, "Come on…" he tried to tug Natasha away.

"Relax," Natasha remained where she was, typing a few more things into the computer and smirking when the signal pinged, "Got it. You know it?" she asked them as the program showed 'Wheaton, NJ' as the location of the AI.

"Oh, dear," Olivia stared at the location.

Steve nodded at the sentiment, "We used to. Let's go," he pulled the flashdrive from the computer, handing it to Olivia as they quickly made their way out of the store, keeping the members of the STRIKE team in sight, "Standard tac-team. Two behind, two across, two coming straight at us."

"We need to be very careful," Olivia warned, "They'll attack despite the civilians. If they've been compromised, they may even use them as leverage."

"If they make us, I'll engage, you two hit the south escalator to the metro," Steve devised as two agents came straight towards them.

"Shut up and put your arm around Liv," Natasha hissed at him, slowing her walk so she could move just behind them, "Laugh at something she said."

"What?"

"Do it!"

Steve quickly put his arm around Olivia, the two of them falling into a natural semi-cuddle as he laughed as though at something she said. He caught sight of the agents out of the corner of his eye as they didn't even glance at them. He let out a breath of relief and nodded his head at the logic. The agents would be looking for two soldiers on the run, not a couple having a good time in a mall.

"Come on, lovebirds, break it up," Natasha teased them, "The escalator's up ahead, we get past that and the entrance is close."

"Almost there," Olivia took a deep breath once they reached the elevator, her and Steve in front of Natasha.

A moment later, Natasha had nudged Steve in the middle of his back, "Kiss her!"

"What?" Steve started to look back at her.

"Don't look at me!" she hissed.

"Rumlow," Olivia caught sight of him, as Natasha had, coming up the escalator next to them as they were going down.

"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable."

"Yes, they do," Steve agreed.

Natasha rolled her eyes, seeing a limited opportunity when Rumlow turned away to look down one final time, and reached out to turn them to each other, "Kiss!"

The moment their lips were together, they went with it, it wasn't anything they hadn't done a thousand times before.

Natasha smirked as she looked away, seeing Rumlow had done the same at the display, and turned back only after they'd passed him…but the two super soldiers hadn't stopped. Her smirk grew wider as they neared the bottom of the escalator.

"Alright, save it for the wedding," she said behind them, startling them to pull away in time to step off the escalator, "Nice one," she remarked, moving past them to lead them to the door.

"I can HEAR the smirk in her voice," Olivia murmured to Steve as he took her hand.

"Yeah, me too," Steve muttered.

"You still uncomfortable?" Natasha called back to them.

Steve rolled his eyes at that.

"You know, I'm not quite sure I agree with Natasha's logic," Olivia remarked to him.

"Why not?" he asked.

"I always thought public displays of affection were sweet."

Steve considered it a moment, "Depends who I'm being affectionate to."

Olivia smiled.

"Seriously, guys," Natasha called, "Save it for the vows."

This time Olivia rolled her eyes.

~8~

"Ok," Natasha spoke as Steve drove them down a highway towards New Jersey in a car, "Captain America, I can guess. But where does Major Britannia learn how to steal a car?"

"From Captain America," Olivia quipped, before laughing when Steve chuckled.

"Let me guess, you got it from growing up in Brooklyn."

"Nazi Germany," he corrected.

"No, Tasha," Olivia glanced back at the woman sitting in the back seat, her elbows on either of their chairs so she could talk to them both, "It was something the Commandos taught me."

"Oh, yeah," Steve chuckled more, "Those were some interesting lulls."

"Lulls?" Natasha asked.

"Sometimes, when we didn't have a target and we weren't needed elsewhere, the guys would bet each other which of them could steal a tank faster."

"Wild," Natasha smirked.

"Bucky won," Olivia recalled, "Something about stealing a car to drive you to the emergency room."

"Yeah," Steve smiled lightly in remembrance, "And then you told them you'd never driven a car before…"

"What?" Natasha looked at her.

"I was always ill," she shrugged, "Not exactly in the best shape to learn."

"Bucky wouldn't stand for it," Steve laughed, "So he hotwired a car and took Liv for a joyride. Showed her how to hotwire it too incase she needed to know in the future."

"Shame on you, Rogers," Natasha teased, "Your best friend teaches your girl to drive, not you?"

"I taught her," Steve defended.

"Once he found out," Olivia reminded him, "Though I rather enjoyed those lessons more," she reached out to take his hand, making him smile, "I had a wonderful teacher."

"Sorry," Natasha shook her head, "I'm just trying to picture America's golden boy running around Germany and stealing cars."

"It's happening right now, just not in Germany."

"Hey, we're borrowing," Steve defended.

"Ah yes, borrowing without asking with no intention of returning," Olivia quipped.

"I fully intend to return this," Steve countered, "Or at least make it easy to be returned to its owners."

They rode along in silence for a few more minutes, when Natasha spoke again, "Alright, I have a question for you, oh, which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know?"

"Tasha, just ask," Olivia cut in, turning around to look at her.

"What is it?" Steve asked.

"Was that your first public kiss since 1945?" she smirked.

Olivia laughed as Steve shook his head.

"No," he answered, "It was not our first public kiss since 1945. We're in our nineties, not dead."

"It's just…you're so old-fashioned," Natasha continued, "I'm surprised you even hold hands in public."

"Well, as you keep saying, it's not the 1940s any longer," Olivia defended.

"So does that mean I'll be getting a wedding invite when this is over?"

"Why are you so fixated on us getting married?"

Natasha shrugged, settling back in the seat now, "I don't know, it's just…nice," she offered, not able to think of another word for it, "I mean, everyone's heard the stories of you, especially in SHIELD. Your legends, the things you did during the war. And yeah, I'm not a born American, but what you both sacrificed for your country was commendable. Waking up after being frozen, I can't imagine it. I guess it's just nice that you have each other. It's not exactly easy to find someone with shared life experiences, someone who understands what you've been through."

The two super soldiers fell silent at that. They didn't know much about Natasha, just what was in the basic file they'd gotten during the Avengers Initiative, and small things they either heard from others, from Fury, or from Natasha herself. They knew she had been taken at a young age and trained to be an assassin. She had had everything taken away from her and had been forced to do things she didn't want to do. From what they understood of that program, there weren't many people who Natasha could turn to to who had endured the same as her. It was likely those who went through that program were either dead or still loyal to it.

"You lost a lot," she continued, "You still have each other. From what I've seen, that doesn't always last, so you need to make it last. No regrets, no waiting," she looked between them, "It's been almost 70 years, Rogers, haven't you made the girl wait long enough?"

"I'm honestly more surprised you're focused on this wedding and not the proposal," Steve tried to joke.

But all it did was make Natasha sit bolt upright again, "You haven't proposed yet!? Rogers!"

"What?" he laughed.

"You've been together 70 years! Pull over."

"What?" this time it was Olivia who asked that.

"He needs to pull over and get down on one knee and propose to you, like now."

"I'm not going to propose on the fly," Steve shook his head, continuing his drive, "How is that romantic?"

"I think I'd take romantic over rushed," Olivia agreed.

Natasha rolled her eyes, flopping back down on the seat, "Have it your way then."

"Good," Steve nodded, smiling.

"What about you, Tasha?" Olivia glanced at her, "Anyone you want a proposal from?"

She snorted, "I'd need someone who wants to propose to me first. Or even date me."

"I'm sure you'll find someone someday."

"Maybe," Natasha let out a long breath, "It's hard when you can't tell them the truth, or they know too much of the truth," she considered that a moment, either lie to a civilian and hope they never find out, or date a SHIELD agent scared to death of her, great options.

"If they truly love you, they'd accept you no matter if they knew the entire truth."

"The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I."

"That's a tough way to live," Steve remarked.

"It's a good way not to die, though."

"You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is."

"Yeah. Who do you want me to be?"

"A friend," Olivia answered, earning a nod from Steve.

Natasha smiled, "I guess I could do with more of them."

"Well, now you've got two."

"Thanks."

~8~

It had been a smoother ride than any of them were expecting it to be. Despite making it out of the mall undetected, there was always the lingering suspicion that SHIELD would be able to find them, somehow some way. It felt like every mile one of them would be looking over their shoulder, afraid one of SHIELD's vehicles would be racing towards them, ready to run them off the road. Every exit they passed made them tense as though a quinjet was going to rise up before them and fire at them. It made for a smooth, yet rather tense journey.

But eventually they made it to an old, abandoned military base, exactly where the signal Natasha had cracked led them.

It was with a heavy heart and a great solemnity that Steve and Olivia stepped out of the car and looked up at it, Olivia with her holsters on her leg and Steve with his shield on his arm.

"This is it," Steve murmured, reaching out to the side without looking, reaching for Olivia as she took his hand and stepped closer to him, knowing this was affecting him just as much as it was her.

"The file came from these coordinates," Natasha confirmed.

"So did I," Steve remarked, Olivia squeezing his hand more.

"What?" Natasha looked over at him.

"This way," Olivia spoke, the two of them leading her through the base with an ease of someone who knew the facility, which they both did.

This was the base where Steve had come for basic training. This was the place Dr. Erskine had brought her to help him select the next subject for Project Rebirth. This was where they had met, where their love began. It was such an important place…and it had fallen so desolate, so forgotten. It was heartbreaking to see it in such a state of disrepair. This was where it had all begun…would this be where it all ended as well?

Steve and Olivia tried very hard to keep focused on trying to pinpoint where the signal had come from, but it was as though, at every turn, there was something that reminded them of the past. No one else would be able to see it, probably not even those who had trained there and were still alive. They would be too old to recall, but it felt as though it were just yesterday to the two of them.

Olivia reached up to the necklace she wore, needing to pull it out from within her hoodie and fiddle with it. She could still remember standing in the bathroom of the small room she'd been given, trying desperately to get her tie right until Peggy had stepped in to help. She could remember the first time she had seen Steve standing in the lineup, so small and frail yet so determined and with such a good heart. She could remember their talks, tending to his minor wounds, speaking with him the night before his procedure. It all happened right here.

"This camp is where I was trained," Steve murmured, his thoughts on much the same track.

He reached up to his chest with his free hand, resting it just on the necklace he too wore, feeling it beneath the fabric, NEEDING to know it was still there.

Standing there again, it was like he was back in that place, where he'd been tiny and weak and playing at being a soldier. Where the other men were so much better at it, where the colonels put him down constantly and the only people who seemed to see his value were Erskine, Peggy, and Olivia. He needed to remember he wasn't that boy any longer, he was better now, stronger, he wasn't in the past dreaming of this but in the future, with Olivia beside him.

That wasn't to say he didn't have any good memories. This was where he'd met the love of his life, the girl who was their medic who became so much more to him. He could remember sneaking peeks at her when she wasn't looking, trying to get through the exercises better to impress her, even allowing himself to be injured when he saw a prank from the others coming or playing up an injury so he'd have an excuse to be near her.

"Changed much?" Natasha asked, both joking but also somewhat curious. With the hype surrounding Captain America, she'd have thought a place like this would have been restored or better kept…which made her wonder if it had always looked like this.

"A little," Steve looked around, his gaze catching on the flag pole he'd brought down.

He could almost picture himself running with the other privates, with Sergeant Duffy shouting at him to pick up the pace.

"As have we," Olivia murmured, pulling him from his thoughts.

He looked over at her with a soft smile, lifting her left hand to kiss her knuckles before turning to look around, "Any readings?" he asked Natasha.

She shook her head, a small device in her hand that was helping her track, "This is a dead end. Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off…"

Steve looked over when Olivia stopped walking to see her frowning at a building ahead of them, "That's wrong," she pointed at it, "It's designed like an ammunition holding."

"And that's a problem?" Natasha shook her head, following them as they walked over to it.

Steve observed it closer, nodding his head as he realized she was right, and the building truly was wrong, "Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place."

"Which means it was built after this base closed down," Olivia finished, "And there should be no reason for it to be locked if this place is really abandoned," she pointed out, spotting a lock on the door.

"Exactly," Steve agreed, stepping up and raising his shield to break the lock. He pushed the doors open, the three of them stepping inside and turning on the lights to see it was a SHIELD office.

Olivia couldn't help but think things were about to get far more complicated than they originally feared.

A/N: SO sorry this is up so late. I had an orientation for a new job yesterday and I couldn't update my DW story, I got it up today and then had to edit this one but it's still technically Saturday for me, just cutting it close lol ;)

As for this chapter, a lot of fond memories and not so fond memories coming up :/ But Natasha's always there to keep the conversation going to the most important topic, honeymoon, wedding, proposal lol :) I feel like her reasons for being so fixated and pushy about it come across a little more in this chapter, she sort of opens up to Steve and Olivia about it, about her past just a bit, in a show of trust and friendship. She has no one who shared her experiences that she can talk to or lean on, but they do, and she knows how important that is so she sort of wants them to not take time for granted and BE together before it's too late. She's both an optimist and pessimist at the same time lol :)

Just to touch on a bunch of reviews, thank you all so much for your congrats :) I've basically been a nervous wreck about getting a job since April so this is an immense relief lol :) It may mean a bit of a slower update for some stories, but hopefully less stress for me which should work out better in the long run :)

Some notes on reviews...

I'm very glad you're enjoying the stories and the OCs :D So far I have the Percy/OC and Henry/OC on my profile, so I definitely plan to get to them. I can't give a specific timeframe just yet though :( I have so much to catch up on first, but once I get caught up I plan to try and work out what my future updating schedule will be and I should know more then ;)