Tell Me Where Can I Run
I want to hear it from you
Let me know how you feel
You've got to make up your mind
Tell me where I can run
When my roof tumbles in?
--"I Want to Hear it From You", Gordon Lightfoot
They find the information they’re looking for, and get the building dropped on them in the process. Steve carries Natasha out of the wreckage and into the nearby woods, and makes it a couple of miles before she starts protesting.
“I’m fine, Steve. Put me down.”
“Are you sure?”
“Put me down, or so help me I will stab this knife—”
“I get it, I get it,” he says hastily, and sets her on her feet.
She doesn’t, in fact, look too terrible—a bit battered, sure, but she doesn’t seem to be bleeding heavily or have any obviously broken bones. Considering the odds against them, this probably counts as a win.
Steve himself is sore and exhausted and he’s pretty sure his back is just one big bruise, but he’s had worse, so he ignores it.
“Okay,” she says. “Next step.”
“I don’t know what our next step is,” he admits.
She starts walking, threading her way through the underbrush with uncharacteristic stiffness. “We need someplace to lie low,” she says. “Food. Water. That sort of thing.”
He ducks a branch, then nearly trips over a log. “I’d suggest Peggy’s, but…”
“They’re sure to have eyes on her,” she finishes. “That’s probably where they expect us to go.”
This leads his thoughts in another direction. “Will she be safe? The last time they—I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time they went after her.”
Natasha stops long enough to give him a look that’s part exasperation, part sympathy. “Steve. There is literally nothing you can do for Pegs right now. We need to worry about us.”
“But—”
“We need somewhere to go.”
It rankles with him, but he knows she’s right. He also knows that Peggy is more than capable of taking care of herself, and probably wouldn’t thank him for his protectiveness. She knows what’s going on, and she knows what she’s doing. Let her do her job, and get on with yours.
“There’s a guy I know,” he says after a moment. “Sam Wilson. We—we’ve hung out, a few times. He seems pretty decent.”
“‘Seems pretty decent’,” says Natasha in disbelief. “Really, Steve? That’s all you’ve got?”
“Natasha,” he says, a little irritably, “Can you think of a single better option right now? ‘Cause if you do, I’d love to hear it.”
There’s a pause. Then she sighs. “Okay, fine. Let’s find this Wilson guy. If he turns out to be HYDRA, we can always kill him.”
“I can’t believe this is my life,” Steve mutters, but he feels marginally better for having a clear goal ahead of him, even if it’s just the next step.
Now all they have to do is find a car.
***
Sam opens his door, and his eyebrows shoot upwards. There’s a silence of several seconds, while Steve realizes how they must look—dirty and bruised, Natasha’s make-up smeared, his shirt speckled with dried blood.
“Hey, man,” Sam says at last. “What’s up?”
Steve steels himself, guilt settling on his shoulders even as he opens his mouth. But they don’t have a choice. They’ve exhausted all their other options. “I’m really sorry about this,” he says, “but we need your help.”
Natasha shifts beside him. “Everyone we know is trying to kill us,” she says flatly.
Sam looks at her, then back at Steve, his expression unreadable.
He’s gonna turn us down, Steve thinks. He can’t blame him. The guy barely knows him.
“Not everyone,” says Sam, and steps back to let them in.
***
Steve comes out of the bathroom to find Natasha staring into space, one hand frozen in the midst of toweling her hair dry.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, fine.” She starts toweling her hair again, avoiding his gaze.
Since fine, by Natasha’s standards, pretty much means not dead or about to die, this isn’t particularly helpful.
“Hey,” he says, sitting down next to her. “What’s wrong?”
“I just…” She sighs, looks down at her lap. “I thought I was going straight.”
He chews on that for a second, then says, “Nat, I know it’s—they’ve got a bigger hold than we thought. But we’ve done good work with the Avengers. I don’t think we’ve just been—doing HYDRA’s bidding, all this time. Hell, I bet we’ve screwed up more than a few of their plans. That’s why they’re coming after us in the first place, right?”
“I’m not talking about the Avengers,” she says quietly. “I’ve done a lot of dirty work for Nick, Steve. I thought—” She breaks off, twists the towel around her hands. “I’m not like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just—I grew up in the Red Room, Steve. I went straight from the KGB to the GRU. I never—whatever moral compass I had? I’m pretty sure it’s—I don’t know—damaged. Skewed. So I… I needed—” She takes a breath. “I thought, with SHIELD, I could—I thought I knew whose lies I was telling. But I—I guess I just can’t tell the difference.”
Steve regards her silently for a moment, then holds out his arms in invitation. It’s a sign of how far they’ve come that Natasha doesn’t hesitate, burrowing into his hug like she’s hiding from something. He presses his cheek to the top of her damp hair and says softly, “You have a moral compass, Tasha. You know how I know?”
Her voice is muffled. “How?”
“‘Cause four years ago, you made the choice to come to SHIELD, because you wanted to do something good in the world. And you have. You’ve been a good friend and a good ally, and you’ve faced down aliens and HYDRA and AIM and God knows what else, and here you are doing it again. And maybe HYDRA pulled the wool over our eyes, but guess what? They fooled Nick, too, and he’s—he was—damned hard to fool. So maybe a few of our—your—missions weren’t—what we thought they were. I think it evens out.”
She pulls away from him, managing a weary smile. “You make a damn good speech, Rogers.”
“Well, all those PR stunts had to be good for something, right?”
This gets a chuckle from her. “Yeah, yeah. Captain Rogers, king of the media.”
“You better believe it.”
They’re interrupted by Sam, still looking bemused and a little wary at having a pair of fugitive super-soldiers (or one super-soldier and one super-spy) sitting in his guest room.
“I’ve got breakfast,” he says, leaning in the doorway. “If you, uh, eat that sort of thing.”
***
Over breakfast, Natasha texts Peggy, updating her on their situation. The phone buzzes, and she nearly knocks over Steve’s orange juice in her haste to grab it.
“What did she say?”
Natasha hands him her phone. “Not sure yet. I need—hey, Wilson—”
“Sam is fine.”
“Okay, Sam. I need something to write with, do you have—”
“Yeah, hang on a sec.”
Sam hands her a pencil and an envelope, and Natasha nods to Steve. “Okay. Read them out slowly.”
Steve scrolls to the first text, and reads:
Still here, cloudy atm but chance of showers later on. I’ve got a brolly, so hopefully i won’t get wet.
Sound wanted a traffic acumen6, but no luck. 36 mph winds predicted.
My piercing’s infected—i’m keeping an eye on it, but i expect i’ll need medication.
Bunker is un-particled19 too attached to charlie
Do give my love to the robinsons!
He looks up at Natasha. “What the hell?”
“She’s okay, but expecting trouble,” says Natasha. “Go to thesaurus.com and look up ‘acumen’, will you? Read me the sixth synonym down.”
Steve looks it up, and feels himself stiffen. “’Insight.’ It’s ‘insight’.”
“Okay,” she murmurs. “So Fury tried to delay Insight, but it’s going ahead. We’ve got thirty-six hours.”
“Wait, how do you—”
“It’s association,” she says patiently. “Nick Fury is ‘Sound’—”
“The Sound and the Fury,” says Sam, coming over with a plate full of eggs. “Nice.”
She shoots him a brief smile. “Exactly. Traffic means delay. And miles-per-hour—”
“Hours,” Steve finishes. “Okay. I can guess the next one—Pierce, right? He’s HYDRA, she’s keeping an eye on him. What’s Bunker?”
“Maria Hill. Un-particled, though…”
“Hang on, looking up a synonym.” He looks at his phone. “Um. nineteenth synonym for ‘particle’ is ‘mote.’”
Natasha looks frustrated. “Un-mote? That’s not a word.”
“Demote,” says Sam.
They both look at him, and he shrugs.
“What? Always been good at crossword puzzles.”
“Alright, then,” says Steve. “So Maria got… demoted because—who’s Charlie?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Captain starts with C, phonetic code is Charlie, and it’s not as obvious as the other ideas we tossed around.”
Steve buries his face in his hands. “Do I want to know?”
She grins. “Well, we thought about ‘Sparkler’, but…”
“Naat,” he groans, but he can’t help smiling. It feels good to have information, to know who they’re fighting, even if the odds are pretty damned intimidating. “Okay,” he says. “So Hill’s probably an ally, for all the good that does right now. What’s the thing with the Robinsons?”
To his surprise, Natasha flushes. “In-joke,” she says shortly. “Anyway, we need to figure out what the hell is up with this Insight thing—”
“Which means we need to figure out who’s in charge of this Insight thing.”
“We already know Pierce—”
“We need someone lower-level, someone we can—”
“persuade—”
“Jasper Sitwell,” says Steve. “He was on the Lemurian Star, remember?”
Natasha’s lips form a silent “oh”. “So the question is, how do two of the most wanted people in Washington kidnap a SHIELD officer in broad daylight?”
Sam, who’s been listening attentively in the background, shakes his head. “They don’t. You need someone who won’t send up a dozen red flags the minute he walks outside.”
He hands Steve a manila envelope, his expression hovering somewhere between excitement and studied nonchalance.
“What’s this?”
Sam grins, leaning back on the counter behind him. “Call it a resume.”