The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 52

Much to her relief, she didn't have to interrupt. Steve clapped Barnes' shoulder a second time before peering out through the snow gusting between the Quinjet and the bunker entrance a couple hundred feet before them.

"Is it impolitic to say the years show?" she piped up, continuing the teasing over their technical ages before she could help herself. It immediately drew both men's attention around to her. Steve frowned, bewildered, until she held up the helmet she'd scooped up from where he'd nearly forgotten it on the seats near Nina. A huffing chuckle burst free as he shook his head, grinning almost self-consciously as he took it from her. Next to him, Barnes was far less successful in stifling his amusement, grinning brightly again as he laughed softly at his best friend's expense. Steve shot him a nearly petulant look before turning his warm gaze back to Nadine.

"What would we do without you," he murmured good-naturedly, but no less gratefully as he slipped the helmet on, habitually fastening the chinstrap as he smiled over at her. She patted him lightly on the arm, her hand lingering for a moment.

"I'm sure you'd manage," she quipped back dryly, "it would just take you longer." And with the shadow of a mischievous grin, she slipped between the two super soldiers and down the boarding ramp.

She only paused to look back as the ramp began to lift once Barnes stepped onto the snow, sparing Nina one final look where she stood next to the ramp's control panel.

"She'll be okay, Nadine." Nadine turned, meeting Steve's eye. His smile wasn't quite so light as it had been when joking with her and Barnes, but it was encouraging nontheless. And despite the bleakness of the situation, it helped. She inhaled deeply, steeling herself.

"I know," she said, forcing back the anxious ache in her gut that had intensified the instant Nina was hidden from sight. It was a distraction, one she was long accustomed to acknowledging and setting aside, she reminded herself. There had been a time, after all, where she'd regularly left Nina for the sake of her missions and she'd had to quickly grow accustomed to leaving her fear behind with Nina, lest it prove a dangerous distraction.

She pointedly ignored the fact that this situation was nothing like any of the missions she had departed for in the past. There were no assurances, and the odds certainly weren't in her favour as she'd used to work diligently to ensure was the case. They weren't in any of their favour. That made all the difference, the pragmatic voice tried to argue.

She pushed that thought aside too.

After a short conference, their course of action was set. Steve and Barnes would enter through the main doors to confront the doctor and the Five other soldiers head on, while Nadine would circle to the secondary emergency entrance built into the base of the missile silo's launch door not far away. From there, she would either use it to—hopefully—give themselves an edge as well as to cut off any attempts by the Soldiers to slip away, or to confirm that it was blocked as Barnes was fairly certain he remembered was the case.

They needed to be sure the Five's potential routes out of the base were as limited as possible. It was a risk—they could just as easily box themselves in—but one they had to take.

They couldn't risk even one Soldier getting out.

Even the way her lips still tingled with the fleeting kiss Steve had stolen before they'd separated couldn't distract her from that single, critical fact.

Nadine's senses were on high alert, her gun firm against her shoulder as she made her way toward the massive, rounded structure jutting out from the snow-covered landscape just shy of the cliff-face.

Oddly enough, the way the frigid wind and the sharp crystals it whipped around her burned at every scrap of exposed skin was bizarrely comforting. Unsettling, given how it brought with it a sense of timelessness—it was hard not to recall exercises and training sessions carried out in similar conditions years and years before—but still...comforting. It helped centre her, helping her allow everything but her focus on the mission to melt away. She knew this. She knew how to block out discomforts like the sting of blowing ice crystals on her cheeks or the way her cold fingertips nearly felt hot before the sensation slowly gave way to numbness. She knew how to cope with the cold, and she made excellent use of the skills the Red Room taught her to do just that.