Author's Note: Now that summer vacation is over, I'll be able to update again!

Third-floor flat in Kreuzberg, Berlin, German

Sharon woke up sitting up in bed, her gun in one hand and her phone in the other. She was naked, stiff, and her heart was pounding as she looked around wildly. She blinked away fragments of her dreams– Steve Rogers falling, cats in Iron Man suits, Nick Fury still alive – until she finally settled into her own body.

She was in her own bedroom, in her own bed, with the morning light coming in the windows. Her phone was beeping.

"Scheiss drauf," she muttered to herself as she thumbed off the alarm and looked at the time. 5:45. German swears didn't feel sufficient so she switched to Russian. "Yob tvoyu mat," she muttered. Today was going to be fun.

During her long hot shower, she sorted out her plans and contingencies and back-ups. She also had a long hard think about Steve.

He was making certain assumptions about their relationship which were based entirely on his relationship with Peggy. It wasn't being done with malice, of course. Steve would never hurt her deliberately. But she needed to think about what she was going to do if he continued to treat her like… like… a replacement goldfish.

She snorted and cranked the water off. Romanov was right – she was a woman and a spy. She knew what she was going to do. Which meant she needed to blow her hair dry and straight instead of pulling it back into a braid while it was still damp. Her outfit had to walk a line between, too. She chose skinny jeans and a well-fitted Barbour jacket with knee-high boots.

The boots made her hesitate. They were cute but … would Steve Rogers notice? And was it worth the compromise in her ability to fight if things went south? When things went south. This whole thing was a JANFU from start to finish and she had to assume that nothing would go as planned.

No. She switched back into the boots she'd worn yesterday.

Her reflection in the mirror was pretty and polished, maybe a little too casual for a normal workday but not noteworthy. She nodded at herself once, in approval, and then looked around the flat. If everything went right, she could come home tonight. Nothing was going right this week, so she gave it even odds.

It was a cute little flat and she'd miss it if it came to that, but nothing here was irreplaceable. Even the framed photos of her parents and Aunt Peg were copies of prints she had in her DC condo.

In the kitchen, she lay on her side in front of the free-standing kitchen cabinet that had come with the place. The kickboard was, despite her best efforts, a slightly brighter shade of polished birch than the rest of the piece. She gave a tug in just the right place and the whole board swung open, revealing a tidy little hidey hole. Reaching her arm inside, she felt around until… there. The large envelope came away with a tearing sound – the tape was getting old. Another grope and she found the second smaller envelope, tucked further back. The first went into the large zippered compartment inside her purse. The second, she slipped into one of the many handy pockets that Barbour put in all of their jackets.

Not only that, but all of their jackets also fit neatly over her holster. Barbour – the fashionable choice of lady spies!

Her phone went into her pocket, not her purse.

Finally, she grabbed a banana and a bowl of yogurt with granola and sat down to read the tiny slip of paper she'd picked up at the Starbucks last night. It was a string of numbers – the significant digits of some GPS coordinates and "10:30." She pulled out her phone and flipped it open to an incognito browser to type in the coordinates. It was fiddly work to do on her phone, especially with the extra CIA encryption programs, but she'd keep her phone with her while she might have to abandon her laptop to whatever investigators came after.

The coordinates pointed to an overpass in one of the Soviet-era sections of East Berlin. It was near one of the possible meeting points/safe houses that she'd laid out when they were flying from London to Berlin. This one was a panzerkaserne in Bernau – a 20-years abandoned barracks for the Red Army and before that, the 90th panzerdivison. She'd also laid out the dead drop at the Checkpoint Charlie Starbucks and given them the location of three of her oh-shit stashes scattered around the city. Assuming they remembered the stashes, they would have a gun and ammo, food and water, cash in Euros, a burner phone, several flavors of rail passes, and a bag full of size 6 women's clothing.

Assuming, of course, that they'd managed not to get caught during the night.

She finished up her hasty breakfast, grabbed a few protein bars, and started checking messages and emails as she headed out. Her inbox was full and her phone was blinking with various notifications, but a quick scan indicated that, indeed, her boys were still at large.

She wasn't sure if she should be impressed with the guys or annoyed at the Task Force. How hard could it be to find two young and beautiful men in skin-tight t-shirts and ball caps – their teeth and their clothes alone would scream "These two are Americans!" She'd chosen the dead drop based on the idea that they might be a little less conspicuous amongst the welter of ex-military Americans that frequented Checkpoint Charlie, but frankly most vets would recognize Steve Rogers on sight. They really should recognize Sam Wilson, too, but …

Well, if she could take advantage of sexist attitudes, she supposed Wilson could take advantage of racist ones.

She finally finished checking through all her emails while she was standing in line at Starbucks. Routines are important. She also checked the dead drop again, but there was no new note from the fugitives, thankfully. They had enough sense to keep their heads down, at least.

Pausing just outside of the video surveillance perimeter, Sharon checked the time. 6:24. Pierre was a very strictly organized man – it's how he got the gig in charge of inventory. And he came in, every day, at 6:30. She fluffed her hair and touched up to her lipstick and pretended to noodle on her phone while privately praying that yesterday's disruptions hadn't been enough to make him sleep in just this one time.

"Sharon!" Pierre's voice caroled out, loud and clear in the quiet streets. "Sharon!"

"Pierre! Guten Morgen!" she turned with a big smile. I love it when a plan comes together.

"How are you this morning? You look refreshed!"

"Is that your way of saying I looked terrible last night?"

He laughed but didn't deny it.

They strode towards the building side by side and Sharon didn't say a thing. Silence has always been a spy's best weapon.

He lasted three whole steps.

"So… Captain America is on the run?"

"So it seems," she added a tiny lilt into her voice.

Pierre glanced at her and she smiled back, a smug and secret smile. She'd practiced it in the mirror this morning.

"He didn't sign the Accords, did he?" Pierre murmured.

"No, he didn't."

"All he did was help a friend," he managed to add all sorts of implications to the word friend.

"He and Bucky are very close," Sharon said, nodding and trying to put implications into her own voice.

He gave her a look and she could see his pupils dilate in the early morning sunlight.

They'd reached the clusters of guards, incongruous in their black fatigues against the pretty plaza with its potted trees. After the debacle yesterday, all the tables and chairs were gone, stacked neatly in a corner and roped off. She and Pierre performed the ID ritual and were waved past.

"What are you up to today?" Pierre asked.

"I imagine I'll be cleaning up Ross's mess. All of this is going to splash back on him, eventually. My job is to make sure it doesn't land on anyone else, right?" she nudged him with her elbow.

"That will be tricky. He doesn't seem like the sort of man to fall on his sword, no?"

"He'll try to dodge, but I've got his number," she smiled a sincere and angry smile.

"Yes?"

"Yes. It's all going to fall straight down on his head and no one else's," she carefully didn't put too much emphasis on the last phrase. He had to make the leap by himself.

"All of it? That is an impressive feat."

"He walked onto the Task Force yesterday and spent the day screwing up and pissing people off," she shrugged. "He's rude, incompetent, and I'm pretty sure that they sent him over here as a sacrificial lamb in the first place. It shouldn't be too hard to make sure the whole thing lands in his lap."

A few more steps. They were getting very close to the HQ. C'mon, Pierre. Bite.

"Well, if there's anything I can do to help," he drawled, finally.

Yes!

"Now that you mention it," she laid her fingers gently on his forearm, coaxing him to a stop so that they could have this conversation in full view of the security cams but out of earshot of the second line of perimeter guards. "I have an errand I have to run for a friend this morning and I could use some help."

"A friend?"

"An old family friend."

"What sort of errand?"

"He left something behind last time he was visiting."

Sharon watched Pierre carefully and could see the moment that he realized the magnitude of what she was proposing. He was a well-trained agent but she could still see the hitch in his breathing and a slight parting of his lips.

He blinked, slowly, and her heart sank as his lips flattened into a narrow line. He was going to refuse.

"Will his friend be there?"

"I assume so." Did he mean Wilson or Barnes? Did it matter?

"Will B… he have more than one friend?"

"He certainly will once I see him," Sharon smiled, cocking her head in a slightly suggestive manner. "But yes, I expect he'll have a couple of buddies with him."

There was another long pause and Pierre's eyes went distant. Sharon couldn't tell if he was fantasizing about a threesome between her, Steve, and Barnes, or if he was dealing with the logistics of what she was asking. Or both.

"What would help a lot is if you just spilled your coffee on your lap and had to pop into the bathroom to clean up at, say… 7:37."

"There's a lot of security in place, even if I'm not there."

"Yes."

"If anything goes missing, it's going to make a big mess."

"Yes," she smiled. "And it's all going to land on one person."

Pierre's eyes lit up.

"All on one person?"

"The whole mess, right in one lap."

"Sharon, you are a little minx, has anyone ever told you that?"

"In fact, yes," she nudged him with her shoulder, a flirtatious bump that started him walking again. "Just yesterday, an old family friend said much the same thing to me."

Pierre let out a small involuntary sound, a nearly silent pant of desire, and Sharon smiled. Her morning was going just as planned.