"I heard a rumor yesterday," said Fury, "about a criminal APB."

Jamie shifted her left arm slightly and stuffed what was left of her burger into her mouth with her right hand. Cait, still nursing, broke off to stare at her mother. Jamie stared back for the length it took to chew and swallow her food, and told her, "It's right there. You don't get to be picky."

Steve began, "Jamie..."

"Seems the new KGB lost their best weapon," Fury continued, clearing out her throat with a sip of water. "Escaped, a year and a half ago. My source didn't know how long they'd been looking, but they provided a physical description."

Cait whimpered.

"Jamie," repeated Steve.

"One night without a full belly won't kill her," his wife muttered, reaching for the corn.

"I am not going to bed with a hungry baby."

"She's tired. She'll fall asleep."

"Yeah, and wake up crying in an hour!"

Jamie tightened her jaw.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've found tonight's hill to die on.

"I'll make the formula," he told her, and left the table.

Steve came back with a warm bottle to find his daughter nursing happily, held at the angle she preferred, and his wife's eyes vacant.

"I explained things to her," said Fury, clearing her place at the table. "As I was saying," she continued, addressing Jamie, "Hydra knows you're gone. It won't be long before the media picks up on it. You'll be in the papers soon enough.

"Keep her quiet," she added, gesturing to Cait. "Once they figure out who you are, your husband'll be under a microscope. We'll be cutting back on your mission times."

"Is that really –" Steve cut in. "You don't have to do that."

Jamie valued all the time she had outside, so much so that Fury had reprimanded her for going AWOL after her missions and walking around undisguised in public. She always came back happier, though, sometimes even talkative, and didn't fade back into her withdrawn, tight-wound shell for up to a week after.

"She's stuck inside enough as it is. And Hydra hasn't caught sight of her yet – at least wait until then. Or when they ID her."

Fury assessed him for a long second – Cait breathed happily as she nursed, cutting through her mother's silence – and replied, "Who here has thirty years of field experience."

"It's the only time she has outside."

"And she won't have any more if she gets caught."

"It's a – it's her freedom, if she thinks it's worth the risk –"

"She's not thinking objectively. She can't do a rational risk analysis –"

"Because you don't fucking let her go outside!" Steve shouted.

Fury got that look, the one that said that she'd found a soft spot and she wouldn't press on it now but if she ever had to in the future she wouldn't –

Cait wailed.

Jamie walked between her husband and her handler, grabbing their dishes, and left for the kitchen. On the table Cait kicked, cried, forcing Steve to rush to pick her up before she fell to the floor.

"Eighteen hundred, tomorrow," Fury said, and took her coat off the rack. "Captain, you already have your briefing."

Sure enough, an electronic copy sat in his email inbox and the physical folder on their kitchen counter. He hadn't even noticed Fury put it there.

Steve had a good mission, with Barton and one of the Strike teams not completely infected with Hydra. They ran into a Black Widow again but scuttled her own mission and saved the target, who they black-bagged and spirited away to a safehouse for her own well-being. It was too bad she was smart enough to build an actual black hole, otherwise she wouldn't've been on the wish list for every intelligence and terrorist group out there.

The Widow slipped away to Clint's annoyance – "She's doing it to me on purpose, I swear." – but this time they followed her GPS location a whole five blocks before she got rid of her tagged hat. So, progress.

Steve walked into their apartment and found Jamie washing her vest in the kitchen. "When'd you get back?"

She gestured to Cait sitting in her playpen, red smears on her unzipped snow jacket.

"Jason could've kept her until you got cleaned up."

"Phil has a fever."

"Is it contagious?"

Jamie held the vest up to inspect.

That would be a no.

"How'd your mission go?"

Not well, if she was scrubbing blood out of her clothes.

"Do we have any of the chicken left? I'm starving."

"The stroganoff's warm."

Steve opened the fridge, found the chicken and replaced it for the stroganoff in the microwave. "I'm not gonna eat it if you wanted to," he told her.

Jamie clenched the cloth in her hands hard, paralyzed where she stood. The sink water was pink.

Steve left the chicken to reheat, scooped his daughter up and said, "It's late. I'll put her to bed."

Cait fell asleep in Steve's arms as he walked her to the bathroom, so he opted to skip a bath and just changed her into her pajamas. She hadn't yet weaned from bedtime nursing but Steve wouldn't force that on Jamie, and Cait wasn't fussing at all so she'd probably eaten with Phil.

"I didn't even have to sing to her," Steve said when he returned to the kitchen. "Her head hit the pillow and she was gone." He steered around his wife to collect his plate and settled in the dining room, as far away from her as possible.

He never touched her, pushed her boundaries when she was in one of her bad moods. He knew better than to make it worse when she was already slipping towards a shutdown.

Steve finished his food, loaded the dishwasher – Jamie sat still as stone over her half-eaten stroganoff – and went to bed. Well, to his bedroom, to catch up on paperwork and review mission reports from his Strike team.

The clock said 23:38 when Jamie entered the room. Steve kept his eyes trained on his forms as he listened to her change.

"How was your day?" she asked.

Steve returned the papers to their folder. "It was good. Clint tagged the Black Widow's hat."

"How long did it take?"

"For her to ditch it? Ten minutes. But we got our woman."

"Mhmm."

He turned, finally, and asked her, "How was yours?"

"Well," said Jamie slowly, trailing her fingers along the bedcovers, "I cracked a few skulls, loaded a few hard drives and left a few surprises for the cleanup teams – yeah, a good mission."

"Did you kill anyone?"

A frown flickered across her face, as good as a yes. That she encountered anyone at all meant something had gone wrong – or Fury had her on more active assignments ever since the news dropped that the Winter Soldier had gone AWOL, and no one told Steve about it.

"I'm sorry, Jamie."

She shrugged. "It happens."

"Still. I'm sorry."

"Yeah."

Time to change the topic: "Thanksgiving is next month."

"Hmm?"

"I'm going down to New York, for, uh..."

He spent the holidays with Jamie's family, the only relatives he had left. To his sisters-in-law's kids he was the weird uncle they spent too much time hearing about as kids, who turned out to be very good with their kids and open to hearing all the old stories that everyone else had tired of.

Steve came back and told the stories to Jaime, and if he was lucky she cracked a smile.

"Let me know how they're all doing."

"Sure. But I'm coming back on Saturday. We can do something special over the weekend."

"Like what?"

Good of her to ask. "I can show you..."

Steve backed his wife against a wall, slid his hand up her pajamas and around her underwear and rubbed until her kisses turned harsh. She lifted her back off the wall and he pulled the elastic bands down. They didn't need condoms anymore – she had an IUD and he'd gotten a vasectomy – so Steve unzipped his fly, gave himself a couple good pumps before he pushed his dick inside of her.

Oh, God, that friction...

"Someone's been waiting up for this," she murmured.

Steve didn't usually talk during sex – Jamie had never liked to, anyway, and she was his only experience – but the first few times in this century he'd taken care to ask her how she was feeling and if she was okay or wanted to stop.

Jamie took that and ran with it, usually chatting happily right up until she orgasmed.

"You were out, then I was out – yeah," Steve told her, "it's been too long. You feel so good."

"Wet and tight, just for you."

It used to be she hated the tiniest hint of friction, spent too long dating boys who didn't realize foreplay was necessary instead of a favor to their partner. Truth be told Steve was just happy she still enjoyed having sex even when she'd been so desensitized it was a challenge to work her up to an orgasm. It took time, hours sometimes, but they had the stamina and the will for it.

"Good." Steve kissed her, keeping his thrusts frustratingly steady and long. "Wouldn't want it any other way."

They fell into an odd silence, panting and gasping as Steve shoved Jamie slowly higher up the brick wall. She pushed her hips down against his thrusts so he ran his finger around her waist – there she was, shivering, she was too wound up to get anywhere near a climax if she didn't –

"I don't mind."

"Mhmm?"

Jamie continued, "That SHIELD owns me," and grabbed his hair to bring him in to kiss again.

Steve pulled back. "What?"

"I don't mind that they own me. You can let Fury know, right? I think she's worried I'm not happy."

By definition, people with depression weren't happy.

"Jamie –"

No, that was the wrong way to say it. He always defaulted to that tone, "I don't want to hurt you but your conditioning made you think something was so when it isn't actually so", and she always reacted badly.

Steve pulled out and rested his forehead on the wall. "Why do you think SHIELD owns you?"

Jamie shot back, "Why do you think they don't."

Yup. She was upset.

"No one's – they're not hurting you, are they? On missions? Yeah. And if you don't want to do a mission you don't have to." Steve scrambled for other examples, objective ways to prove that Jamie had her freedom. "We can leave –"

"No, you can leave. I'm stuck in here. Stuck with food and housework and the baby" – she thrust her hand towards Cait's room – "and the only time – the only time I can get out is – are the missions! And Fury knows that, tosses 'em at me like scraps and – and –"

I wasn't let out at all. I know it was wrong but I had to go outside. I just wanted to see the sun.

"And how do you think Hydra broke me? After I didn't know why I was fighting, that's what they did!"

"I'm not – we're not Hydra," he stuttered, and she rolled her eyes.

"Not this again. I know that. You think I would've carried Cait to term if I didn't?"

Steve suppressed a shiver, because this was their daughter, his baby girl, a little brown-haired ray of sunshine, and how could Jamie even think about –

No, of course she could. His stiff, ever-alert wife who called herself broken even when she'd gathered the pieces and only ever tripped over the ragged edges that held them together. She spent sixty years protecting herself against the people who owned her, and why would she act any different if she thought SHIELD did too?

"SHIELD owns me. Fury, she thinks I'm not happy with it. Tell her I'm fine, okay? Make sure she knows. And when this is finished..."

Jamie held his hands, pressed her thumbs into his palms. "When this is finished, when Hydra's gone, you promise me – take Cait and go. Get out of here before she finds some way to keep you, too."

"I'm not going to leave you!" Steve wrenched his hands away. "When this is over, when we take them down – we can go wherever we want. No more SHIELD, no –"

" 'We'?"

He knew what she meant: "You, but – but I hope you let me come, too. And Cait. But if you want to go places yourself – I'll take care of her for as long as you need, to figure yourself out. I'll be here."

And if you don't come back...

"And if I don't come back?"

My heart would break. Again.

"Then..."

He told the truth, the part that wouldn't make him feel shitty for saying it: "I can't stop you."

She gauged him coolly for a dead, never-ending moment, then shook her head. "Fury won't let me go. I'm her ticket up the SHIELD ladder."

"Not everything is – you're not a tool."

"That's exactly what I am. There's sixty years of –"

"It's not who you are now."

"I'm not anything. Legally I'm dead. There's nothing written down that says how Fury can treat me – she could order me out of here, never come back, and I..."

For all that Steve didn't want to know what she would do, he had to: "And you'd do it? Leave me and Cait and never look back?"

Oh, God, those were tears in her eyes. He'd never seen her cry before, not... not now.

"I won't have a choice," replied Jamie, and her voice cracked.

"She doesn't own you! You don't have to do what she says!"

She closed her eyes, shook her head, took a shaky breath. "When did you bury your head in the sand?" she asked, and...

Steve's phone rang. The caller ID said it was Barton, the scrolling alert of a text from him contained «BW» – if he wanted to talk about that damn Widow again Steve swore –

"You should take that," said Jamie, her voice thick and quiet. "I'm going to sleep."

She grabbed a blanket and stalked out of the room.

He accepted the call but it was too staticky for him to make out Clint's words; it dropped not a minute later. Instead of reading the text Steve went in search of his wife, and found her curled up on the couch. Jamie always fell asleep in moments, woke up just as quickly too. No doubt she'd relied on that to avoid him so many times in the last couple years.

She looked so peaceful asleep, her frowns and heavy eyes disappeared as her face smoothed over. If Steve ignored the scars and the perfect teeth – at some point the KGB decided to play dentist – he could pretend it was 1939 and they were newlyweds in Brooklyn, or 1944 and on-leave from the hell of the Western Front.

It was 2005. Steve pretended his wife wasn't imprisoned in this house. Jamie pretended it didn't kill her.

He adjusted the pillow to keep her straight on the couch, checked in on Cait – still asleep, thank God that Jason always fed her if no one picked her up by 8PM – and walked back to the bedroom. His phone weighed heavily in his hand, a decision he had to make before Jamie woke up and he had to pretend again that everything was fine.

Steve dialed.

"Hi," he said. "I need to talk to Director Johnson. Now."

"I'm sorry, sir, but she's unavailable. If you give me your name I can make an appointment."

"Sure. Steve Rogers."

He heard the cogs work through the secretary's brain, and then, sooner than he'd expected: "Please hold."

Director Johnson knew about Jamie. She had to – there was no way Fury could get approval for a long-term op like this without the director authorizing money transfers and personnel reassignments. Steve had only talked to his boss a handful of times, and just twice about Operation Freezer Burn – Tony's name for it, not Steve's – but he couldn't think of any other way to help Jamie right now.

Jamie didn't know about Director Johnson.

"Captain. What's this about?"

"I quit."