Hey, everybody!

Thank you all for your responses; you guys are so wonderful!

I don't own Captain America.

Enjoy!

-:-

January, 1944

Natasha had decided to try harder.

She hadn't decided much since arriving at the SSR base. Well, arriving wasn't the right word. She hadn't exactly had a choice. Which, thinking about it, wasn't exactly, completely true either. She could've escaped at any time while Captain America and his fellow Commandos brought her to the base weeks ago. So she supposed choosing not to escape had been her first decision. Accepting the Captain's offer to repay the debt she owed him was her second. Changing her name (which she'd fallen right into the familiarity of like it was the name she'd been born with) was her third decision.

Behaving was her latest, decent, decision.

Not that she hadn't made decent decisions before coming here. She just hadn't had to think about making the moral or right or honorable decision. She'd been trained to take out a target. Not to ask questions or, for that matter, even question the morality of shooting someone in the head. She'd been given orders and she followed them.

Lately she hadn't had to do that. At least not to the same extent. And she found it harder to break out of the habit than she would have thought. Being raised pretty much her whole life in the Red Room, where any sign of weakness meant unbearable, cruel punishments—or worse—she wasn't used to…well, acting like a normal human being. She was used to the feeling of blood under her fingernails, of bruises that lasted for weeks, of being chained up at night like an animal. Even soldiers, like the ones she was now surrounded by, felt remorse for the lives they took. That had been beaten out of her at such a young age… So, Natasha felt nothing. She could remember the faces of her victims, and thus far, they had not haunted her one bit.

So, when the Captain had given her that look…when he'd realized what she'd done at the Hydra facility, torturing that man, it was quite a shock when she felt the tiniest hint of regret worming its way around her stomach. Looking back, she couldn't say she felt incredibly guilty about it, since they'd gotten the answers they needed, and she hadn't done nearly enough damage to kill the man. But there was a small part of her—miniscule, actually—that wished she hadn't done it.

She hated that part of herself.

And now she'd decided that she was going to make a better effort to cut back on her old methods. She was out of the Red Room. It was gone and she never had to go back. There were no more handcuffs to hold her down anymore…it was time to let Natalia Romanova go and start living up to her new name. And she wasn't necessarily doing this out of the goodness of her heart (she wasn't even sure how much goodness there was in her heart), or because it was the right thing to do….no, it was because damn Captain America had basically said that, despite everything, she deserved a second chance. She deserved to be saved. And that small part of her that she hated, had broken down under those words, made her want to do better. If even for just the short time that she was here.

Because the second she fulfilled this damn debt, she was going to disappear. She'd probably change her name again, become someone new. Do whatever the hell she wanted and never have to look at Rogers again. God, was he naïve. And trusting. Completely out of place in the war he had landed himself in, where bad people did bad things and felt nothing but satisfaction afterwards. It was actually infuriating, how absolutely…good he was. She hadn't decided if she liked his unwaveringly loyal best friend yet, but at least Barnes knew how fucked up the world they were living in was. Instead, even in the middle of a warzone where men were falling around his feet, choking on their own blood, Rogers only saw the best in everything and everyone. He'd managed to find something good inside of her and damn if that didn't annoy the hell out of her.

Natasha exhaled slowly as she laced up her boots, tucking the bottoms of her pants into them. Barnes had just left, addressing her shortly in one sentence, letting her know there was a mission briefing in ten. Shed had a couple missions since that first unfortunate one, and Barnes still hadn't seemed to have given her one inch of trust. She couldn't really blame him, though. She didn't trust him either. Rogers…there were times he would look at her and his gaze was hard, disapproving. But for the most part he'd miraculously decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. And she'd been behaving on the last few missions, only doing what was necessary to stop any Hydra soldiers that came her way.

"Knock, knock," a voice sounded gently from the doorway, and Natasha looked up to see Peggy Carter standing there. Carter stepped a little farther into the room, smiling politely. "Just wanted to see if there was anything you needed before the mission debrief."

"I'm good, thank you," Natasha responded as she stood. "Did the Colonel send you? Or was it Rogers?"

Peggy kept her gaze level with Natasha's. "Nobody sent me, Natasha. I don't know yet if I can call myself your friend, but I would like to think of myself as your ally. You don't seem to have too many around here, and I think you need as many as you can get. Especially after that first mission of yours."

"Mm," Natasha nodded. "Right. That mission. Where I tortured somebody. Yeah, I don't think that allying yourself with me is going to make anyone forget that. About the only thing it will do is ruin your reputation."

"I doesn't really matter what anyone thinks of me," Peggy said. "No matter what I do it will still be questioned because I am a woman. Just like you. Hence, all the attention you're suddenly getting."

"Attention, yes," Natasha agreed. "It's not like I get to sit at the popular table now, though."

"No." Peggy pursed her lips. "But I think everyone is making quite a big deal out of it. It's not like they didn't know what you did before coming here. And I'm not going to presume to know anything about your past or what you went through, but from what I've gathered, it sounds like you didn't have much of a choice—then and now. And before, it seems like it was life or death. And the fact that you chose life—even surrounded by so much death—tells me one thing."

"Yeah? And what's that?" Natasha asked skeptically.

"That you're a survivor," Peggy replied earnestly. "I think you and Steve share that quality. So you might be stuck here a while if saving his life is what's going to set you free. He doesn't often need saving."

"Everyone needs to be saved from something." Natasha told Peggy quietly. "Whether it's from a bullet or themselves or something in between. I might lie about a lot of things, but I was not lying when I said that I would fulfill my debt to him. I'm going to save him. Only seems fair, since he's so hell bent on saving me. Even if I'm too far gone."

"Mm," Peggy hummed in disagreement. "He must not think you're so far gone that you can't be saved. Otherwise he wouldn't be wasting his time."

Natasha didn't know what to say to that, so she kept her mouth shut.

"If you ever need anything, don't hesitate to ask, Natasha." Peggy smiled, and then disappeared out the door.

-:-

The mission briefing made it seem simple enough. A small band of Hydra members had holed up in an abandoned, and mostly destroyed town nearby, and all they had to do was eliminate them, to keep them from joining up with Red Skull's larger force. But now Steve and his Howling Commandos were far outnumbered against a horde of Hydra numbers, so clearly the mission was not the piece of cake everyone assumed it would be.

"Everybody get down!" Dugan yelled out as he pulled the pin from a grenade and pitched it towards half a dozen Hydra soldiers heading their way.

Steve ducked behind a wall with Bucky and Jim Morita, Junior Juniper and Pinky Pinkerton joining them just as the grenade exploded, the screams of dying Hydra members accompanied by the noise of debris raining down. They waited a few seconds before heading back around the corner and heading back into the fight. Steve wielded his shield as another dozen Hydra soldiers appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. He heard the chatter of Bucky's submachine gun, and Dugan shouting insults and profanity at the enemy. Just when it seemed like they'd gotten the upper hand, and explosion went off on the other side of the street, where the rest of the Commandos and Natasha were.

"You got this?" Steve shouted to Bucky and Dugan over the commotion.

"Oh, no worries, Cap," Dugan tilted his bowler's hat. "We'll be just fine here. You go help the others."

Steve nodded and headed out the back way, taking a few Hydra members down as he exited the building and crossed the street. The building the others were in could hardly be called a building anymore, considering how riddled with holes it was and how many chunks of wall and roof were missing. And now, along with the old damage, there was fresh smoke—a thick, black cloud of it—rolling into the sky, flames licking out of gaps in the building's structure. As he approached, the sound of gunfire rang in his ears and it gave him hope that the rest of his team was still putting up a fight.

He bared his shield as he entered the building, heading towards the sound of combat. He could tell he was getting closer when the Hydra members started coming at him. He flung his shield expertly, taking down a few guys at a time as he made his way towards his team. When he found the five of them—Jones, Dernier, Falsworth, Happy Sam Sawyer, and Natasha—they were up against almost two dozen Hydra soldiers. Steve broke his way into the melee, bowling through a couple guys with just the force of his body. At the sight of him—clad in his red, white, and blue—his fellow Commandos smiled and started firing back with renewed vigor. Natasha looked over at him and gave him a quick nod, before she set back to firing her twin set of guns.

Just as the Hydra numbers dwindled, more came. As the fighting continued, Jones and the others ended up on the other side of the room, making a stand against the entrance the Hydra members seemed to be coming from. Steve found himself side by side with Natasha.

"So, there were a few more Hydra members here than you thought, huh?" Natasha commented slightly breathlessly.

"Ah, just a few," Steve replied. "Nothing we can't handle, right?"

As he threw his shield again, he almost missed the small smile that Natasha gave him. Another wave of Hydra soldiers flooded in through one of the large holes in the wall behind him and Natasha. Steve barely had time to warn the others of the incoming enemies before the Hydra soldiers started firing. About the only advantage they had was the fact that these Hydra soldiers didn't have the upgraded weapons that most of Red Skull's armies had been given. It was regular bullets being fired at them instead of Tesseract energy beams.

"You think someone told Hydra we were coming?" Steve asked Natasha as she stood shoulder to shoulder with him.

"Either that or they guessed we were going to come anyway, and decided to make it a little harder for us," she responded.

It seemed as if the Hydra agents had stopped coming, but there were still plenty left, firing magazine after magazine at them. The other Commandos were holding their own on the other side of the room, but that was because most of the Hydra soldiers had decided to go up against him and Natasha. Natasha had run out of bullets and was going after Hydra soldiers using her assassin training, armed with nothing more than her body and a small knife that shone ruby red with blood. As Steve caught his shield in his hand, he spun and caught sight of Natasha. She was fighting off two Hydra soldiers in front of her and she didn't notice the one coming up behind her.

"Natasha, down!" Steve shouted.

She heard him and used her body to bring one of the Hydra agents she was battling down with her. But she wasn't quite fast enough, the other Hydra soldier in front hindering her movement. The Hydra soldier that had been creeping up behind her had managed to get a few rounds out of his gun before Steve could fight of his own adversaries long enough to take the guy out. He heard Natasha cry out shortly in pain, before stabbing the Hydra agent she'd wrestled to the ground in the neck, blood spurting out over her hand.

"Natasha?" Steve shouted her name, worried.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her grit her teeth and stand, taking out the other Hydra soldier as she did so. The fight was dying down and Steve saw her take a second to press a hand to the wound on her thigh, which is where she must've gotten hit. Not long after, all the Hydra soldiers were down. Steve headed over to Natasha, wiping the back of his gloved hand across his dirt streaked face.

"You all right?" he asked, reaching out a hand to help her if need-be.

But she was stubborn. She looked at his hand, but didn't move any closer to him to accept the support. "I'm fine," she muttered. "I've had worse."

Steve clenched his jaw but didn't say anything. Jones, Falsworth, Happy Sam, and Dernier made their way over to the two of them. It looked like Jones had gotten clipped by a bullet, his upper part of his left sleeve soaked with blood, and Happy Sam looked like he had a dislocated shoulder. Dernier was streaked with dirt and scratches, Falsworth in similar state except he had a large gash on his temple, blood running down the side of his face.

"You guys okay?" Steve asked his Commandos.

"Just fine, Cap." Jones smiled. "We killed a whole lot of Hydra today, so I, personally, couldn't be in a better mood."

Falsworth laughed and nodded in agreement. "I'm sure Red Skull guess we were coming here and decided to keep us a little more occupied. Guess he underestimated us."

Steve smiled, allowing himself to feel victorious for a moment. "Let's go regroup with the others."

The other Commandos chattered excitedly with each other as they made their way out through one of the holes in the building and back across the street to where the rest of their team was. Steve fell back and walked with Natasha, who was limping. Her hand was pressed to the wound on her left thigh. From what he could tell, it was on the outside of her leg, nothing that couldn't be made better with some bandages and a shot or two of whiskey. And even though she didn't want his help—nor did she really seem to need it—he put a hand low on her back to steady her. Steve felt her tense up for just a moment, but then she seemed to relax. And considering she didn't shove him off or threaten to break his fingers for touching her, he figured it was all right.

When they rejoined the other Howling Commandos, they were greeted with grins of victory and Hydra bodies littering the ground. Dugan, Bucky, Juniper, and Pinky looked a little banged up and dirty, but otherwise fine. Morita was putting pressure on a bullet wound to his shoulder. They were all a little bruised and battered, but it was dozens of Hydra soldiers lying dead on the ground, not them. Bucky came up to Steve first, but when he spotted Natasha, bloody and holding her injured leg, Steve swore there was a flash of concern in his best friend's eyes.

"Pinky, Dernier, help Natasha back to the trucks," Steve ordered. Natasha didn't look too happy about getting helped to go anywhere, but she didn't protest. "Gabe, Happy Sam, Morita, you guys head back to the truck, too. The rest of us are going to do one last sweep, see if we can find anything."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Pinky consented before stepping forward with Dernier to give Natasha a hand.

Steve took the others and finished their sweep, before heading back to their trucks. Dernier had been standing guard and nodded at them as they approached. Dugan hopped in the driver's seat as the rest of them piled in. Steve found himself in the back of the truck, seated in between Natasha and Bucky. As they headed back to base, the sound of the engines, combined with the noise from the rough road they were driving on, Steve almost missed the quiet thank you Natasha whispered to him.

-:-

All right, so we got to see some more of Peggy :) She'll show up again some more in upcoming chapters. Next chapter takes place right after this one (will be posted in a week), and we'll get to see Steve and Nat interact some more, as well as a Steve and Peggy moment, and more of Bucky and Nat interacting!

Take a second and leave a review, let me know what you think! The feedback has been absolutely wonderful so far, so keep it up!

Thanks for reading!

-DaughterOfPoseidon333