Natasha was allocated private apartments (vacant and already reserved for her) a few stories below Steve's.

And the Avengers were whole again.

As for Steve, he felt whole again as well to some extent, now that one piece of his mind was no longer wandering off along with Natasha. It found peace after she had returned.

As per usual, she was very secretive on her whereabouts and as badly as he wished she could have confined in him, he was too pleased to have her back to sulk over her quietness. But she did drop some locations. One mostly, London. His only attempt at getting answers was dodged craftily.

"How was London?" he asked her one morning as they were in the elevator.

"Rainy," she smirked.

The doors opened and she stepped out.

The men were all sitting on the leather couches, having small talks.

"Did I tell you Pepper received a nomination for most successful businessman of the year?" Tony said, then smirked smugly. "And yes, I said businessman. The gender was just a detail for Pepper."

"Oh I wouldn't know about that," Thor answered with a cockier smirk than Stark's, standing in the middle room as if to make an official announcement. "I've been too busy reveling in Jane's Prize. You may not know, but she was rewarded for her brilliant essay on Monecular Energy Transfer."

Tony rolled his eyes. But soon he and Thor turned to look at the only other teammate in a relationship, Bucky, who was gobbling a handful of peanuts. He looked up at them.

"What?" he shrugged carelessly. He wiped his hands noisily then stood up, too. "Maria could kill them both using just two fingers while typing a new strategic action plan with her other hand."

He wiggled his eyebrows contently. Thor and Stark stared at each other. Clint watched the whole interaction with an amused and slightly mocking smirk then sipped his coffee.

"There's...a sick logic in what you just said," Tony eventually spoke, rubbing the back of his neck. Thor didn't say a word but a subtle nod of the head was enough to express he thought likewise. The two men sat back down, completely mute. Bucky never looked so proud than at this moment.

He chuckled. "She wouldn't do it by the way," he eventually said in a reassuring way as if that needed to be said out loud. And, heading to the kitchen to grab a snack, he paused, squinted his eyes and added with a grave voice and a mischievous look. "Or would she?"

Steve and Natasha snorted quietly while James was spinning his finger around in a dramatic, slow motion close to his temple as a thought for the two Avengers to mull over then walked over to them.

"Tasha," he began after he walked up to them. "When are you going to admit you came back because you missed me too damn much?"

She smirked. "Not gonna lie. I missed the sheer satisfaction I feel every time I put you back to your place."

Bucky cocked his eyebrow at her. "That's how it always begins. Maria gave me hell for months before falling for my charm and it was all the fun in it. Just give in, already."

"Maria has always been more...," Nat paused, feigning to choose her next world carefully, "...magnanimous than me. A trait of hers I have learned to appreciate now more than ever since you've been dating. And besides, you couldn't handle me."

She smirked and he smiled back. He shook his head slightly. "It's great to have you back," he said quietly.

Stark's phone beeped.

"Looks like we might have found a lead on the Krumer's investigation. His gang just struck the bank in Brooklyn." He said, scrolling his finger down the screen.

"Alright," Steve spoke. "Barton, you go check it out and interrogate the witnesses."

Clint nodded then gulped down the last sip of coffee laying at the bottom of his mug.

"I'm coming with you," Natasha said, leaving Steve's side. She and her best friend stepped into the elevator and the doors closed.

"Banner and I are gonna see what J.A.R.V.I.S. can find in the security footage," Stark went on, jumping off his seat, followed closely behind by the doctor.

Thor offered to go patroll in case Krumer and his gang might turn up somewhere in the city. Steve approved with a nod then threw a glance at Bucky who nodded in return.

"Going as well," he said in response and soon Steve found himself alone in the room.

He went to his office and looked into the files again for clues he might have missed.

"Captain Rogers", he heard a familiar voice call.

"Yes, J.A.R.V.I.S.?" He answered, his eyes skimming across the documents.

"I have completed the fingerprint search you asked for."

He paused and put the file down.

"My apologies for taking so long but I mistakenly presumed that you wanted me to search for a match in the database of 1940's."

Steve frowned. "Yes, that's what I wanted. Why? You didn't find any match?"

"Not so outdated. There was no match to find. However, I have found one in the recent database."

"Recent?" He asked, utterly intrigued. He had given up on the idea of finding the mysterious spy alive. "Who is it?"

"There is a match with agent Romanoff's fingerprints."

The words came into in his ears and left them ringing.

"That's...impossible. I found this hairpin over seventy years ago. Natasha was not even born, then. Did you check again?"

"Affirmative, Captain. I have run the scan twice."

Steve found himself thrown into a black hole of nonsense. There was no theory or explanation that could justify how her fingerprint had ended up on an object from his decade.

"Is it possible that there's been a mistake somewhere?"

"It is very unlikely." Jarvis answered. "It is true the fingerprint is quite small and has undergone through seventy years that might have resulted in some advanced state of decay but if the scan does find a match then its result is indubitable."

Steve rubbed his forehead. "Thank you J.A.R.V.I.S. Keep this information classified for now."

"Of course, Captain."

Steve remained sitting in his office until an hour later, when the team eventually came back.

Natasha and Clint were sharing all the information they had managed to gather. She smiled at Steve when she saw him walk in. He barely grinned but kept his composure throughout briefing, while Bucky threw glances in his direction from time to time.

As soon as it ended, everybody rose to their feet to get to informal activities, mostly sharing a beer in the living room.

When it got eventually quiet later in the evening, Natasha sitting by his side, he asked the question that bad been lingering on his mind.

"Nat, you...you never took the hairpin out of the bag, did you?"

Her making an error was the only plausible theory he had come up with so far.

Natasha furrowed her brows, her face split between an amused smirk and a quizzical look.

"Is that a trick question? Are you going to ask me next if I splutter on all the exhibits to leave my DNA? Cause I will have to use my joker for this one," she teased then went serious when she realized he remained serious. "Of course I didn't. Why?"

It was the answer that he expected and that made the most sense and he felt thrown back to square one.

"Apparently the fingerprint is compromised," he said vaguely without getting into details.

Natasha pouted, looking genuinely disappointed. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I know how much it meant to you. We'll find another lead."

He nodded faintly and she turned her attention back to Clint but his mind was still buzzing with a thousand questions.

The next morning for breaskfast, Steve found Bucky in the kitchen (as they both remained the early birds of the team).

James poured him a glass of orange juice and slid it down the counter over to him. He took it and sipped it slowly.

Bucky was watching him.

"How long before you tell me what's on your mind?"

"What makes you think I have something on my mind?" He asked.

Bucky smiled. "Very simple: one, because you always do that thing with your face and two, you always have something on your mind."

Steve snorted humorlessly.

"J.A.R.V.I.S. ran a print scan on the hairpin and there is a match," Bucky's eyebrows rose high with excitment. "With Natasha."

His friend's brows dropped and furrowed deeply.

" How is that -"

"—Possible?" Steve finished. "That's what I've been asking myself since I found out."

"That doesn't make any sense," Bucky exclaimed. "Two people can't share the same fingerprints last time I checked."

He paused, tapping his fingers on the counter. His voice went quieter, almost like a whisper. "Don't you think Natasha might have compromised the hairpin on purpose?"

Steve sighed. He saw that one coming.

"Why would she do that, though?" he asked. "She has no reason to want to undermine my investigation."

"Or so you think," James said. "I mean, she's the spitting image of your former girlfriend and now we find her fingerprints on an object that belonged to a German spy from one of our missions. That's beginning to make a lot of coincidences."

Steve frowned. "You're being paranoid," he uttered.

"And you're being naive," Bucky retorted.

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Why would she want to hide the identity of the woman on the train? And how does it have anything to do with Natalie?"

Bucky gawked. "I don't know!" he howled. "And I'm not pretending to have the answers or even clearly see the beginning of them. All I'm saying is that Natasha has a fishy connection with our past."

After a pause to let his statement sink in, he added:

"What does she have to say about the fingerprint?"

"She says she didn't touch the pin."

"Shocker," Bucky commented ironically. "Did you expect a blatant confession?"

Steve stared at him incredulously.

"So you think she's lying?" he sighed. "And I thought you had dropped the whole conspiracy theory about her ages ago."

"Natasha cares about you -I don't doubt that. But she's also very protective of her past and she'd keep her secrets hidden at any cost."

He looked intently at him with a hard expression and Steve's mouth went agape, listening to his friend's words with sheer outrage.

"She divulged HYDRA's secrets at the cost of her own," he defended, merely audible, staring back as steadily as James before. "Did you forget?"

"I haven't forgotten," Bucky answered gravely. "But maybe she has other secrets bigger than those."

Steve heard his best friend's words but found them to sound senseless. What could Natasha possibly be hiding from her remote past that could somehow be connected to his old mission on the HYDRA train? Why would she bound to keep secret a matter that didn't personally concern her since she wasn't even born then?

Moreover, he had seen it in her eyes - she hadn't lied. Nobody could be that good at feigning oblivion. This wasn't him being naive, he was certain Natasha had been truthful and honest regarding the whole investigation (and even about Natalie, for that matter, had he come to conclude over time), and nobody could convince him otherwise - not even Bucky.

He looked into his friend's eyes.

"I believe her," he said adamantly. Reasoning, guts and trust weighed on the side of Natasha's innocence on the balance and his verdict was incontestable.

Bucky muffled a sigh. "She is a spy," he objected.

This sounded like Bucky's biggest argument.

"So is Maria," Steve retorted calmly. "And yet you trust her."

James paused. He looked pensive for a short moment and then he smiled with a genuine soft expression. He nodded in soundless agreement and this was how the hairpin revelation was a dismissed case.

Steve sort of dropped the investigation after that. Not because he had run out of leads and clues, but because, over the weeks, he found the fulfillment he needed in his life in leading the Avengers and in having Bucky and Natasha by his side. Maybe what they said was true: maybe there wasn't anything that time couldn't heal, even the loss of the person you thought you loved the most. He still thought of Natalie, very often, but the memory of her didn't sting like salt on a wound anymore. It hurt in a painless way if that made sense to anyone other than him, playing fond and bittersweet memories of her in his head. And, as much as he attached himself to his past, he didn't let it grasp him back. Bucky's words made sense as he realized that solving this old case or not solving it at all wouldn't made any difference. Maybe he would get back to it, someday. Someday. What a beautiful way to envision time without giving it any definite shape. Someday was a shape-shifting concept that he could mold to his liking, an open window hovering in the corner of a room; distant enough not to become an obsession, close enough to be accessible any time he would decide.

In one word, he was serene and that was probably the best thing Bucky could ever wish on him.

One day for a mission, the whole team was out to catch Krumer and his gang in hiding in some valleys in New Mexico.

The capture went rather smoothly but the extreme heat made the Hulk particularly cranky but very efficient.

"We got a fugitive heading East towards the warehouse," Barton called out in the transmitter from the flying jet. "Fugitive heading East."

Steve pressed two fingers on his earbud. "I'm on it," he said, leaving the main group of prisoners to Bucky.

Banner was the first to arrive at the abandoned warehouse, breathing heavily. He heard noises coming from the far right corner and ran up to it growling, only to find the spot behind the crates unoccupied.

He was suddenly struck by a high electric discharge that made him roar with rage. He flipped around and hit the wanted criminal, who was holding an electric baton which, judging from the size and the advanced technology, had been especially designed for him. The man fell unconscious while Banner bent in, prepping his thick knuckles on the ground and grunted threateningly.

Steve ran inside and found the Hulk leaning above the criminal, he ran straight to him but was violently struck in an instinctive move from Banner. His body flew across the warehouse and hit a metal pillar that left him a little dizzy. The ground shook under the Hulk's frantic running and he glanced up. Banner looked furious (more than usual when his alter ego was out), growling at him.

"Doctor, it's me." He said hardly with a jerky breathing because of the hit he had just received. The Hulk raised his two fists high together, ready to strike again.

"Steve!" He heard Natasha call alarmingly.

She ran through the door over to him.

"Nat, no!" he shouted out forcefully after gathering enough breath to speak up. But Natasha didn't listen. She stood tall and firm before him, making herself the physical barrier between him and the Hulk.

"Easy, Banner." Her voice was calm but firm, holding a steady gaze on him although the fear her trembling pupils betrayed the trauma she had from their last confrontation in the helicarrier . The Hulk growled right back at her, so close to her face her hair fly up and her body staggered for a second. But Natasha didn't step back an inch. She even glanced down at Steve to check on him. "It's okay Bruce," she said more softly, taking a step closer to him which earned her a disapproving grunt from Steve. She held her hand out to him and grinned, quietly inviting him to do the same.

The Hulk was first disconcerted, then slowly, after sensing her good intentions, gave in. He raised his hand up and reached out to hers; his fingers gently grazed her palm while he looked closely into her eyes. She nodded reassuringly and his heavy lids closed. His breathing slowed down, his muscles relaxed and soon his body shrank back to his normal size. Dr Banner fell to his knees, physically exhausted.

Natasha immediately turned around and helped Steve up. She pressed her hand on his arm, examining him up and down.

"I'm okay. Thank you." he breathed out then frowned. "How did you do that?"

They turned their attention back to their teammate.

"Dr Banner, are you alright?" Steve asked him. Bruce took his eyes off the ground up to them with an apologetic (and shameful) expression.

"Sorry about that, Captain" he murmured then forced a little grin. Once he took ful posession of his senses again and realized the condition he was in in front of his colleagues, he cleared his throat.

"Agent Romanoff," he started bashfully. "Would you..?"

He wrapped his arms around himself and it made Natasha raise an eyebrow in amused puzzlement.

"Don't worry about me. If that can make you feel any better, I've seen more men in the nude than you would in the locker room after a football game." She said coolly with a nonchalant shrug. It made Steve twitch and frown at her.

"Well it doesn't," Banner murmured before clearing his throat again.

Natasha slightly rolled her eyes and headed out of the warehouse.

"What did I do to deserve to be surrounded by a bunch of prudish and modest males?" she said under her breath as she walked out.

"That's something I can easily fix if you like," Bucky sniggered deviously in the transmitter.

"Shut up," her voice answered on the line.

The incident in the warehouse was a big revelation for the team in that it meant The Hulk could be controlled to some extent. Summoning him had become an easy thing for Banner but putting him to sleep was always a more difficult task. Stark suggested that this "lullaby" as he called it should be put into further practice.

Natasha and Banner began to spend more time together than they had ever before as making the lullaby effective rested on a solid bonding. Not only did the Hulk become easier to put to sleep in the following missions but even Dr Banner's behavior and demeanor changed. He seemed more relaxed and approachable; Natasha had this power to crack open any person she intended to, and not even Dr Banner's thick walls look so impenetrable to her. She made him laugh and often found the right words to take some guilt off his shoulders.

As a team leader, Steve could only be pleased by the results and the evolution of their connection, and yet he wasn't. As an person and Nat's friend, he couldn't help being bothered. As selfish and unreasonable as it sounded, part of him resented Bruce for taking some of the time Natasha could have spent with him instead. As he would walk by Banner's laboratory or stand by the kitchen counter or even from the couch he was sitting on, Steve always yielded in to the urge to watch them interact out of the corner of his eye.

"So how are things going between you and Banner?" he asked her once in the gym in a very professional tone, while holding the sandbag for her to hit.

"They're going well," she breathed out between two punches.

He found the answer too vague for his liking and for putting his mind at rest.

"Looks like you two are hitting it off," he commented, watching her reactions closely.

Natasha shrugged, brushed a damp lock of hair behind her ear and resumed hitting the bag.

"Yeah," she said. He found her lack of loquacity at times he needed the most very frustrating, even more so at this very moment, "I never would have guessed it at first, but we get each other."

His grip went loose just when she threw a punch and the bag shook sideways. She frowned at him, her silent way of scolding him, and he cleared his throat before holding it tight again.

"What do you mean you get each other?" he asked.

"I think he's the person who's the most like me" she said simply. "I can tell him things."

Her words left him speechless. He couln't see what made them so alike. And what did she mean by 'most"? Most than him? He felt a sudden surge of jealousy toward Banner, he who had managed to get Natasha to confide in him in such a short length of time.

"You can tell me things," he said softly and his hand reached out to rest softly on hers.

Natasha paused, staring absent-mindedly at his hand that was laying on her knuckles then her green eyes rose up to him watching him from behind the damp strands of her hair. She had never looked so vulnerable.

"I...I can't," she began, shutting her lids with a subtle grunt of frustration. "I can't have you look at me differently."

She took her hands off the sandbag and stepped away to face him. "I've been trying so hard to change and become better. But no matter how hard I wipe out my ledger, I know the red will always remain. It's part of me. But you..." Her voice slightly broke and she plunged her eyes into his so deep he was at a loss for words. "The way you look at me, the way you treat me...like I am your equal — sometimes even like you wonder at me — that's unsettling. I can't live up to it."

His eyes filled up with water and began to sting, he glanced away to gather his composure again. When he stared back into her eyes, he found they looked the same as his.

"I'll never reach—," she went on then interrupted herself. "You're you and I'm me. If you knew everything, it would never be the same between us. I would lose...you wouldn't look at me the same. But not with Bruce. He's become a friend and he understands how I feel."

He raised his hands up to her arms.

"Then please tell me," he pleaded gently, begging her to confide in with every fibre in his body. "How do you feel?"

Natasha pursed her lips together, weakly trying to break out of his grip and giving up on the idea immediately. She looked at him with the exhausted look of someone who had had enough trying to keep heavy secrets buried.

"We're both fighting a darkness inside waiting for us to wane to consume us completely. We're both damaged..." she whispered in a thin breath, staring blankly. He cupped her cheek and his thumb stroke her skin in a desperate attempt to soothe her. "...beyond repair."

Her words had the same effect than a blade ripping his chest open, and everything inside him hurt in the most acute pain. It was something he had always suspected, but hearing her say it made the truth even uglier. He couldn't comprehend how the woman who had helped him heal his broken heart could not see the beauty in herself; how she could not see herself the way he saw her.

He didn't think she had a darkness that could take her at any moment. She had the heart of a hero. Truly. A brave heart could not be corrupted so easily.

He lept forward, pressing her body against his in the softest collision. "Oh, Natasha," he cried out in a whispering voice as he held her tight against his chest.

"I know your value," he said into her ear, his fingers sliding down her ponytail to the back of her warm neck. "And you're worth so much."

And he continued to hold her tight as long as it would take to begin to repair her.

"So much."