He knew she liked a little coffee with her cream, a little salt on her caramels, and hated ketchup.
He knew she never smelled quite the same from day to day because she had an expensive addiction to scented body lotion.
He knew she'd clawed her way out of the foster system and into SHIELD with a single-minded determination to both serve her country and get a paid education.
He knew how her laugh would burst out of her, big and bold, how her sobs were always stifled deep in her chest, and how filthy her mouth could be when she was roused to temper or passion.
And he knew to give her a little time, a little distance, before he went after her if he didn't want her to cut him off at the knees.
Their daughter (he had a daughter) didn't have that time, though, and so he followed her out into the chilly autumn day after only three minutes and twenty-four seconds.
He counted.
Finding her in a face-off with Sharon and Fury was not how he wanted more of this awful day to go.
Sharon, slim and military straight, angled her body toward him as he stepped into the tableau, her brown eyes annoyed as they cut to him. Moira, fierce and hunched, angled her body away from him, arms crossed defensively over her breasts. Fury, calm and implacable and slightly amused at something if the curl to his lip was any sort of measure, jerked his head to indicate Steve should take up his habitual spot to the left and slightly behind, guarding Fury's flank; Steve, a spurt of defiance curdling his stomach and stiffening his spine, instead stepped up until he stood nearly hip to hip with Moira, the back of his hand brushing the softness of her sweater. The curl of Fury's lip increased as he declared, "Sharon will be point man on the retrieval op."
"Do you think that's a good idea, Director?" Steve asked, aware he was digging a deep, wide hole as Sharon's lips compressed and Fury's smirk eased into slightly beetled brows. Next to him, Moira flinched and Steve let his fingertips press into her side, a butterfly brush of solidarity.
"Are you implying I can't do my job?"
He considered his words carefully, picking over each one as if his life ( his daughter's life) depended on them. Moira was there first. "I think you might be compromised." When Sharon scoffed and Fury hmmed, Moira dropped her hands, cocking her hip to hide that her pinky had curled around his, and Steve found the words, "She's mine, Sharon."
"The child or the woman, Captain?" Fury asked then waved away the sound neither Moira nor Sharon could stifle. Steve's belly quivered. "I know where this is going." Fury pointed at Moira. "You cannot lead this operation."
"If you think I'm sitting on my hands, you're insane."
"You're no longer an agent." Sharon's voice was flat and final but Steve felt Moira's fingers brush the center of his palm and watched Fury watch Moira and Steve whispered,
"Take the girl out of the agency…" Moira's hand slipped completely into his as grief ripped a hole through Steve's heart, stealing his breath. He had said that to her in the long ago, his hand possessive on her belly, a question, "What would you do, Moira, if you weren't an agent?"
And Moira remembered, too, her giddy laugh, her hand pressing over his over the life they'd created together by accident but that she already loved absolutely, as absolutely and completely as she loved Steve Rogers: "Be yours."
Then she wasn't his anymore and she had a baby to feed and Natasha knocking on her door and James, his eyes so sad but his smile so wide when he picked Berry up out of her crib and cradled her in his metal arm and she cooed at him, blowing bubbles. "She likes me," he declared and Moira had to agree that, yes, Captain America's daughter did, indeed, like the best friend of the man who'd abandoned them.
"You've been out of the field for three years." Sharon's voice wanted to be firm but it wavered as did her eyes, from Fury back to Moira and then to Steve, a plea in them that had him frowning in consternation at her and taking the final half step so his body was touching Moira's from shoulder to ankle.
Moira shivered, goosebumps racing across her arms, down her legs, but she let out a slow, careful breath. She could already see what she wanted in Fury's expression, in the slight head tilt he made, acknowledging the secrets she'd kept and mocking the ones he'd always known.
"Not completely," he said, slowly. "On paper, Ms. Mackney works for Interpol."
"As a lab tech reading dead lan…Widow," Sharon hissed and everyone, including Fury, instinctively looked over their shoulder for the woman who wasn't there. Steve coughed and Moira tightened her lips so she wouldn't laugh.
"Yes, Widow and the Soldier and I suspect our little mole who can't keep her nose out of SHIELD business." When neither Moira nor Steve said anything, Fury's remaining eye rolled in its socket. "All right, if that's the way you want to play it. I know you're still field rated in all the ways that count, Ms. Mackney." He turned his attention to Steve. "But you, Captain, are moving on."
For a moment, Steve was balanced on the knife age of the decisions he'd made in the past, the decision to leave Peggy waiting for a date that was never going to come home for a promise of a better future, the decision to let Moira raise a child (their child) alone and lonely to protect other children, the decision to abjure everything in his life that was good for everything he'd thought was right.
The decision to be Fury's dog with no bone to call his own.
He felt Moira's hand, soft and small and capable, squeeze his and then start to let go. He held on tight, lacing his fingers with hers, and thought of himself as a tree, planted firmly beside the woman and the child he had let down in the most terrible, awful, blood and bone way, by the river of his life that had, until now, flowed swiftly past him, and said, "No. You move."
Moira felt hope burst so hard and fast in her belly that she stumbled, only Steve's hand in hers keeping her from falling.
To perhaps even her own surprise, it was Sharon who capitulated, "We'll need a staging area. Mackney?"