We Rise, Only To Fall / Steve Rogers

12

Steve quickly finished and his head came back around into the doorway and he frowned at our now wistful silence. Nat quickly excused herself as I took my hair out of it's updo and began to finger-comb through it. "You okay?" he asked, always the concerned friend.

I glanced up briefly then back down. "Yeah. I think."

Steve sighed. He threw the towel aside and came closer, sitting down opposite me. He grabbed my hands gently to stop myself from fiddling with my hair and brought them down to our nearly touching knees. I had to bring myself to look into his clear blue eyes. "What's going on?" 

I stared at him for a few moments, my heart hammering in my chest as he looked at me with concern flooded in his eyes, in his face. That damn face. I breathed in deeply. "When I first joined S.H.I.E.L.D. I did it because I wanted to make something of myself. Tony...Tony was off being Tony. You heard him; he was a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. And what was I? His kid sister? I was smart, really damn smart. I graduated college and then what? I stayed home, built stuff, hacked a few computers and that was it. S.H.I.E.L.D gave me an opportunity to do something with my life. To help people. To protect the world. And then becoming an Avenger? I felt like I'd finally done something right for once. I wasn't just a genius screw up going nowhere." I told him honestly, and he listened intently, hanging on to every word I said. "But now? Everything's changed. I thought my parents died in a car accident, and now I find it was murder? Nick Fury murdered, too? By a company I trusted, wanted to believe in. It was HYDRA. All the damn time. And I'm a part of that. I just feel...used. Like I'm HYDRA, too."

Steve moved to sit on the bed next to me and brushed a piece of damp hair from my face, his hand resting on the base of my neck. My eyes flickered shut a second before I opened them. "You are not HYDRA. You are Rosalie Stark." 

And in that moment, I believed him. Instead of replying, I stared at him, this strange, beautiful man beside me. For a brief instant, he leaned forward but before I could close my eyes and reach up, too, Sam appeared in the doorway. "I made breakfast," he said and Steve and I quickly jumped apart, looking at Sam. "If you guys eat that sort of thing."

I flew up and coughed, about to say something, but deciding against it, instead walking past Sam and going back into the kitchen, Natasha smirking at me and my reddened cheeks. 

~

We sat around Sam's coffee table. "So, the question is," Nat began. "Who at S.H.I.E.L.D. could launch a domestic missile strike?"

"There's only one man I know," I said grimly, looking to Steve as Sam finished making breakfast. 

"Pierce." He realised. 

"Who happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world," Nat added. 

"But he's not working alone," Steve thought aloud. "Zola's algorithm was on the Lemurian Star."

I bit my lip and looked to Nat and Steve. "So was Jasper Sitwell." 

Steve looked shocked, before sighing and nodding his head. "So the real question is, how do the three most wanted people in Washington kidnap a S.H.I.E.L.D. officer in broad daylight?"

Sam walked around the table, a brown file in his hand. "The answer is, you don't." He said, dropping the file in front of Steve and I. 

"What's this?" Steve asked, reaching for it.

"Call it a resume," Sam shrugged in reply. 

Steve and I stood up as Nat took it from Steve's hands, eyeing up the images in the file. "Is this Bakhmala?" she asked. "The Khalid Khandil mission, that was you?"