Upstate New York, USA
Winter 2015/16
Nadine was honestly beginning to develop a rather large headache. She was not making much headway at all—at least, not as much as she would've liked—and Nadine was beginning to move past mildly restless into full on frustrated. But she had to persevere.
It had been weeks since Nina had been dropped off in Cambridge. Weeks since the anxious, unsettled missing feeling had settled in her chest, refusing to abate.
"Congrats on being an empty nester," Nat had teased the day after the two of them had seen Nina happily settled in her dorm at MIT. Not that her chipper projection had quite hidden the wary way she'd been eying Nadine ever since 'The Drop-Off,' as the day had been unofficially christened. And for good reason, not that Nadine was interested in showing it.
Especially as Nadine seemed to be having a harder time adjusting than Nina. Every time she talked to her daughter, Nina's enthusiasm was nearly tangible. She was enjoying her classes even though the stress was starting to pile on with assignments and midterms fast approaching. But all in all, Nina seemed to be flourishing. She had made some study friends and still kept regular contact with Pietro and Wanda and even the Bartons on top of Nadine and Natasha.
She was thriving, really. Nina had even gone on at length about how she had been reaching out to Stark at his insistence to talk over concepts discussed in her lectures or her practicals, sometimes even topics touched on in her textbooks that they weren't due to talk about until much later.
Nadine was not so lucky. She honestly missed her daughter terribly and it was wearing on her. Enough so that she'd very nearly broken the agreement that the two of them had made that Nadine wouldn't visit until after midterms. To let Nina adjust, had been the reasoning.
At least Spring Break was coming soon.
Hell, that thought alone had been part of what had gotten her through dropping Nina off in the first place; the reminder that she would see her again soon enough. Especially as she'd—probably foolishly—decided to stay at the Compound until at least then...just so Nina had a secure and familiar place to retreat to if she had trouble adjusting, or so she was continuously convincing herself. Besides, the decision had made Nina happy. And seeing Nina so happy that day reassured Nadine that letting her go was the right call. It reassured her more than she could say. It had made the aching hole in her chest feel a little less potent.
Not that she'd allowed Nina to see how emotional she'd felt even if the knowing and suspiciously bright gleam in her daughter's eyes that day had suggested Nina had been on the same page. For all that Nina's visible excitement and confidence had been immeasurably reassuring, it had still been a hard day. An emotional day.
Parents usually cried, right? Didn't they? Wasn't that the typical experience? The child, no longer wholly a child, was dropped off, ready and eager and nervous about starting the next stage of their life while the parent looked on, proud and sad and equally nervous all at once?
Well, Nadine had certainly held to the norm, there. She was proud. More proud than she could ever hope to put into words. So proud of her little girl's determination her chest felt like were it to expand any further there would be physical damage done.
And there had been the requisite sadness too. Still was. It was the end of a chapter. Of many chapters, really; some big, some small and some welcome while others certainly weren't. She missed having her baby close by.
Then there were the nerves. Only, in Nadine's case, 'nerves' was a sore understatement. She was near terrified. The campus was as secure as a campus could be. And that wasn't even counting the measures Nat had apparently worked up with Stark.
But she hadn't cried...okay, maybe her eyes had gotten a little damp, but she hadn't cried outright the way she imagined some of the other mothers and no few fathers had back when the majority of the new students had been dropped off.
But frustrating as her own inability to stop dwelling on the hole Nina's absence left, that wasn't what was at the heart of her current bout of frustration.
Just as it had been weeks since Nina left, it had been weeks since Nadine had been freed to devote her time and energy solely to her mission. To finding Barnes.
But so far, she was failing.
Or, at least, so it felt. The track she was on was a good one. She knew it was. An absent comment from Natasha on one of their visits over the course of the Fall to the Barton homestead had gotten Clint thinking and he'd proceeded to ask if Nadine had given any thought to safehouses. Old safehouses. Defunct ones.
HYDRA ones.
And her mind had started working and hadn't stopped.
So, between what she'd dug up during her clean up after Madame B and what Natasha had made public during the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nadine had started looking into just that. For the last while, the bulk of her efforts had been devoted to digging into HYDRA records and whatever KGB records she could find to search for safehouses that Barnes could potentially know about to use; tracing financial records, old mission reports, holdings of confirmed HYDRA fronts, searching for anywhere Barnes could've gone to ground.
Unfortunately, seventy years was a long time and HYDRA kept surprisingly good records, if sometimes oblique and less than forthright—not surprising considering the secretive, shadowy nature of the organization. There was a great deal of analysis, deciphering, cross-referencing and reading between the lines required to so much as make heads or tails of any of it, much less make a comprehensive list of potential safehouse sites.
Luckily, making such connections was near child's play for someone as extensively trained and experienced as Nadine. Not to mention she had the advanced assistance of Stark's state of the art U.I. systems and a particularly clever little algorithm Nina had been working on with Natasha before she'd made her decision to head off to school. But nevertheless, it was still drudging, time-consuming work thanks to the sheer volume of data to be sorted through.
And that wasn't even counting the follow-up still to be done on the ever-growing list of sites she had identified to eliminate the most unlikely sites. Like ones that had only been active outside the Winter Soldier's periods of activity or ones that literally no longer existed. Even ones that were still active would be unlikely options; too much risk of someone unfriendly showing up intending to use it.
To say her brain was starting to hurt was an understatement of the highest degree.
But at this point? She was running out of avenues that held any promise. Even now that it had been reconstructed to some degree after Ultron's meddling, the worldwide facial recognition program S.H.I.E.L.D. had developed was so far drawing a blank no matter how Nadine adjusted the parameters; it was either finding too much or nothing...though, admittedly, was still helping to narrow down locations as well, to some extent.
So her only real option besides keeping her ear to the ground and her eyes peeled for him to reappear or let some sort of clue to his whereabouts slip, was this one. As far as she was concerned? She was down to her last real shot. And now that Nina was off at school? She had the uninterrupted time to devote her complete and undivided attention to the process; a silver lining to Nina's absence, or so she tried to convince herself.
As it stood right now? She was estimating that, at her current rate, she was looking at a couple months to narrow her still compiling master list to a much more manageable and workable list of sites to investigate. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than sitting and waiting in the hopes that Barnes would make a mistake and show up on her radar. Besides, she was used to the long game.
So she had settled in and resolved to keep at it. However long it took. She was persistent, and it would pay off.
It had to.
It also helped that, from time to time, Natasha would lend her own substantial skill to the search, keeping Nadine company as she did and appraising her of the Compound's goings on; updating her on the Twins' progress and how the hunt for Crossbones was going, and so on. Sadly, it was not as often as Nadine might have liked. Nat had her own responsibilities, after all, what with her work with the Avengers on her plate and the search for Rumlow still weighing heavily on the Team. The man was proving frustratingly adept at cropping up and vanishing again, slipping away before the Avengers had even hit the ground to engage him.
If they even managed to get in the air in the first place once they'd caught wind that he was moving.
Not to mention they were still having...internal issues.
Pietro was still having trouble adjusting. It wasn't the most accurate term, but it came the closest. He just couldn't seem to get used to the idea that he now had a team to back him up. When they spoke to him about it, he seemed to genuinely understand well enough, but in practice?
"Pietro's still struggling with doing what he's told in favour of doing what he thinks needs to be done. He just can't seem to see the big picture when actually on mission. That on top of his preoccupation with looking out for Wanda even knowing that she doesn't need him to? It's driving Steve up the wall," Natasha had grumbled the last time she'd dropped in to lend her expertise to Nadine's search and escape to the quiet of Nadine's work area. "And frankly, me too. I get that it's hard to get used to suddenly working with a team when you've only ever been on your own—believe me—but still." Even the trial mission to bring down an arms ring operating out of southern Turkey they'd gone out on to give Pietro another chance to prove himself following the Crossbones incident had been less than encouraging. Despite his apparent improvements during training since Sudan?
Pietro had broken ranks and gone in on his own. The mission had ultimately been a success, but that hadn't been the point.
What made it worse was that his heart was in the right place; his sole focus was on getting the bad guy and keeping his companions out of harm's way. But in their line of work? Noble an intention as it was, it wasn't how being part of a team worked. Not to mention it was dangerous.
So until he learned that? The Twins had been grounded until Pietro could get his act together to Steve and Natasha's satisfaction.
"I'm sure it doesn't help either that he has issues with taking orders in the first place," Nadine had commented dryly, only barely managing to hide her small grin of amusement at the unimpressed look Nat had spared her at the admittedly on-the-nose observation. "How's Wanda managing?" she'd asked then, changing the subject slightly. Nat had sighed, shrugging absently.
"Wanda's still holding back," Natasha had admitted, a thread of disappointment to her tone. "She's still antsy about her powers. She really scared herself bad in Sokovia, with Ultron and the sentries. And Paris didn't help her work past it as much as we thought it did." Nadine had hummed in agreement. It was something she had noticed during the training she'd been heading before Nina had gone off to school. Something she had yet to take back up again, she'd realized then; a pang of regret had hit her at the thought but she'd brushed it aside. She had to make Barnes her priority the way it should have been since she'd decided to stay at the Compound. She'd looked to Natasha then.
"Do you still think they're ready for the field?" At Nadine's question Natasha had leaned back in her chair, her features going nearly blank as resignation thinned her lips.
"Honestly?" she said, sounding particularly weary as she absently rubbed her temple, "Pietro? No. Not if you're sending them both out; he's still too overprotective and I think that's at the heart of his other issues. Especially now that he's 'adopted' the team as his responsibility; a subconscious impulse, I think, but still a problem. But Wanda?" Natasha had shrugged. "That's a much harder call to make. As it stands now, I'd be inclined to say no. But then, before our mission in Paris, I was prepared to say the same thing, and she did step up. I'm still not entirely convinced she was ready, but it did her good." She had looked up to Nadine then. "I think if we were to bring her out, she'd step up again. She knows her stuff, she just needs the field experience to build her confidence." Nadine had nodded absently in agreement as she processed her sister's assessment. She was inclined to agree with all she'd heard since Natasha and Steve had made the decision to start considering the Twins active members of the Avengers.
Natasha had promptly huffed then, dropping her head back against the back of her seat as she continued her line of thought. "But Pietro? We're just not sure how to get through to him. I think we've finally done it, but then? As soon as we're out there, facing real bad guys and real weapons? It's like all the exercises go right out the window. He just...he reverts," Natasha had vented. "It's like he's still trying to operate as though it's just him and Wanda taking out...theft rings or whatever in Nova Grad. But I know he knows the Team can't operate like that. He just..." she had trailed off with a huff, then, straightening to tap angrily at her keyboard as she adjusted the sorting algorithm she had been working up. Nadine had offered her sister a sympathetic look at that, but she'd had little advice to offer beyond giving him time and continuing to work with him...and maybe only bringing one twin out on missions at a time.
Rather like her work with tracking Barnes; time and persistence and focusing on one thing at a time was going to be the key in her search just like it would be with Pietro.
Nadine sighed, leaning back in her chair as she set another set of parameters for the Compound's iteration of Stark's U.I. to implement. Satisfied, she rolled away from the computer back to the table where she had the folders containing meticulously organized financial reports laid out, picking up the one she'd been partway through cross-referencing.
"You know, I'm starting to think you're avoiding me." Nadine very nearly started, turning to look up at the wry yet still somehow concerned comment. Steve stood in the door to her private workroom in the Compound where she housed all her research, his arms loosely crossed and watching her with an oddly unreadable expression. She offered an attempt at an apologetic smile and turned back to the file in her hands.
"Sorry," she said, fully aware of how distracted she sounded, "I've been a little preoccupied, I suppose." She could practically feel how unconvinced he was with the answer.
"You know, it's okay to miss her. But you don't have to bury yourself away back here." Nadine looked up to Steve sharply, a lump forming in her throat. And suddenly realization was edging in on her.
She was suddenly struck by the unsettled feeling that her single-minded focus had been just as much about having a means of getting her mind off the fact that Nina was no longer at the Compound and safely under her supervision as about tracking down Barnes.
She inhaled deeply as she closed the file, collecting herself and ensuring her voice would be level when she answered.
"You're right," she said then, looking up to Steve. "I do miss having her close, and I suppose it's not an adjustment I'm making as well as I thought I was...but I do also have to focus on this," she said, gesturing to the file in her hands, "I've spent so much time—"
"You'll find him, Nadine. Neither Nat nor I have any doubts on that. We all know it'll take time. But you're allowed to have a life too," he interrupted then. She could only blink at him.
"I—I do—"
"No, you don't. You have Nina, and while Nina was here, you also had training; with the team, with me and Nat... But since she left? Don't think we all haven't noticed you've been pulling back from that. You enjoyed it, I know you did. I think you even enjoyed giving us pointers on finding Rumlow. Why give all that up just because Nina's not involved anymore?" A faint grin tugged at his lips, and her stomach flipped uncomfortably.
"I have, haven't I," she murmured almost to herself. That really was what she'd been doing, wasn't it. Nadine was once again retreating into herself now that she didn't have Nina around to keep the more social and interpersonal part of herself from being overwhelmed by her drive to focus on her mission; her bridge she recalled with a small, unconscious smile.
It was then that the implications truly sunk in about the fact that it had been a couple weeks since she'd last consulted with Nat and Steve about tracing Rumlow's movements just like she had yet to take her role as a consulting instructor back up since Nina left. She was distancing herself even as she was turning her focus to her mission.
And her gut ached as she realized that—guilty as she suddenly felt for indulging in even the idea that she wanted to do more than just focus on her task to find Barnes—she missed it. All of it. Her role as a consulting instructor. Her down time with her sister.
Her sparring sessions with Steve and the increasingly pleasant time in each other's company that had often followed.
Her focus had turned wholly to her objective to find Barnes at the expense of everything else. She just hadn't been able to help the impulse. Now that she was thinking about it, on more than one occasion of the past few weeks, she would turn around and realize that several days had passed without so much as leaving her work save to eat and sleep. She couldn't remember the last time she'd talked to the Bartons. Steve smiled sympathetically, edging further into the room to lean against the table next to her.
"You've been sequestering yourself away in here," he said lightly but no less soberly, "and believe it or not, we all actually miss having you around," he added, his friendly grin widening. Nadine's stomach flipped again, twisting this time in a way that was unsettlingly pleasant. He actually, genuinely meant it, she realized as she studied his features. As though sensing that he'd managed to get through to her, he smiled and the irritating little flutter returned.
"C'mon," he said firmly, nodding behind him toward the door, "sparring session. Then I have it on good authority that Nat is intending to drag you away from the Compound for—and I quote—retail therapy." He looked mildly bewildered at the idea but grinned when she snorted out a laugh. But then she sobered as her gaze fell back on the spread of files before her.
"But, Steve—" she protested weakly with a half-hearted gesture around her. But he was already shaking his head.
And then he was taking hold of her wrist in such a way that she automatically gripped his back, nudging her chair back with his foot to pull her to her feet. "No buts, Ryker," he countered with a thread of authority in his amused tone. "You've been holed up in here by yourself for too long. You need a break. A real break," he added as she opened her mouth to object. "Something different than staring at files and computer screens all day." Huffing and putting on a scowl to mask her own involuntary grin, she let him herd her from the room.
And a little part of her was disappointed that he'd let go of her as he did so. She shook the thought away.
There she'd been hoping she was beginning to move past that...apparently not.
Exiting her workroom, they walked in a companionable silence for a while, long enough that the antsy, guilty feeling that she shouldn't be wasting time that she could be spending on her mission began to grow once again. Something that she was suddenly wondering if Steve had picked up on as he turned to glance down at her before speaking.
"So how's Nina doing?" Nadine smiled at the question, the hollow spot in her chest suddenly feeling minutely smaller.
"Good. She'd doing very well. She loves it there, and it sounds like she'd doing better than expected; her professors seem quite impressed. She was even saying that a couple of them have made noises about 'skipping' her up to a couple of the higher-level courses. But then," Nadine said with a proud yet sly grin, "she does have a Stark in her back pocket that she's been taking advantage of. Both of them, actually, come to think of it. Last we talked, she was telling me about some of the ideas, and calculations she'd been passing back and forth with Stark about tactile user interfaces, frequency modulations and something about streamlining the processing requirements that a comment from one of her professors got her thinking of. They might even have something, she thinks." She grinned up at Steve, nearly faltering at the fond expression he was watching her with. One that didn't seem entirely due to her rambling update on Nina.
It was then that she realized what he'd been doing and a grateful smile of her own broke out on her face. "Thank you, Steve." His lip quirked as he looked away.
"What for?"
She was nearly tempted to roll her eyes at the faint smile belying the feigned innocence in his tone.
"For this," she finally said simply. "For getting me out of my own head." He shrugged.
"Everyone needs a break from themselves from time to time," he said with a wry grin even as his eyes began to twinkle. "Helps keep everyone in top form." She bit back a chuckle at the faintly wry way he'd said it, easing the very real point he had. "And since Nina's not here to help keep you from getting stuck inside your own head? Well, we'll call my looking out for you in her stead a way for me to show her my appreciation for her excellent sense of what to give people for Christmas," he teased gently. The corner of her lip quirked before she could help herself; Steve had been rather blown away by the Brooklyn Dodgers cap that Nina and Wanda had put their heads together to track down. But she could feel her grin at the memory of his emotion-filled features and disbelieving laugh—not to mention the tight hug he'd pulled Nina into or the almost choked way he'd thanked her—begin to grow sad, fighting the way her thoughts threatened to turn sombre again...to confess just where her morose mood was coming from. But around him? She wasn't entirely successful. She sighed. Around him she felt comfortable letting herself be honest.
"It's just...doing this?" she finally said, "focusing in on searching for him? I feel like I'm doing something...useful. Necessary. Constructive, even, if you want to put it that way. And when Nina's around? Even though she doesn't actively need me to look after her anymore? It's still the same feeling to just be there for her. Like I'm doing something meaningful. Like I have a purpose. I can't...I can't just turn it off. And if I try to even take a step back? Then I'm left fighting the feeling that I have to leave, to go back underground; that it's time to move on. And I can't move on yet. Not with Nina still thinking of the Compound as home and Barnes..." she trailed off wearily, at a loss for words.
"I can't just do nothing," she finally concluded, feeling suddenly self-conscious at having just rambled on. Steve paused, his fingertips brushing against her elbow to stop her in the middle of the corridor. His features were simultaneously sympathetic and thoughtful as he looked down at her...and determined. Nadine frowned.
"Start working with us, then," he said, "as more than just a training consultant." Nadine blinked, not even aware that she was looking to him in very clear bewilderment.
"What?"
He grinned faintly, studying her as he clarified: "with the Avengers." At once Nadine's head was shaking as she processed what he was saying.
'No. No, Steve," she objected, carefully keeping the stunned waver from her voice, "I'm not an Avenger. Training is one thing, but...I'm not going there." His grin once more grew sympathetic as his hand landed on her shoulder. She pointedly ignored the pleasant warmth of the gesture or the sudden pleased flutter in her belly.
"You don't have to," he countered. "Just run support. Consult with us. Help us out when we need an extra set of eyes. You don't even have to go in on the ground if you don't want to." She swallowed thickly, looking away from the Captain's earnest gaze. She resumed their leisurely pace, Steve easily falling into step beside her.
"I don't know, Steve," she finally admitted softly, part of her uneasy at how vulnerable she suddenly sounded. He let out a slow exhale.
"I know," he said, his voice low and soothing. "Just think about it."
As much as part of her insisted she shouldn't even entertain the notion, she knew even as her pulse began to speed up with anticipation that she would do just that.
Just as another part of her already knew the decision had been made the instant he'd made the offer.
A/N: Thanks for Reading!
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