Somewhere over the Atlantic

Spring 2015

With an indulgent grin, Steve turned from Tony and Thor, leaving the Asgardian and the billionaire to chat and plot about the upcoming 'revels.' He'd known it was time to back away from the conversation when Tony started talking about inviting some World War II vets so Steve would 'have someone to talk to.'

Pacing through the Quinjet, Steve couldn't help but take stock of his team again. It was a habit, and instinct even. It had been a rough outing this time, and it inevitably left him concerned for his teammates; Barton had been injured, which of course unsettled everyone, especially Natasha, even if she worked hard not to show it; Banner was now recovering from an unexpected Code Green; something else had shaken Tony—badly, not that he'd admit it—which he was now hiding extremely well. Then there'd been Ryker's episode...

For all that had gone right on this mission, a lot had also gone wrong. It had paid off, of course—Loki's Sceptre had finally been retrieved—but there had certainly been a cost. Luckily, it also seemed everyone was holding up alright, considering.

It could have been a lot worse...

Barton was resting as comfortably as could be expected. He'd even managed a snappy quip when asked how he was holding up before Steve had gone over to check in with Thor about the Sceptre.

Bruce was looking much better, Nat's efforts to bolster his spirits following the Hulk's unplanned appearance not going to waste. Even despite Thor's slip, the scientist had visibly relaxed thanks to the rest of his team's support, and that was a relief to the rest of the team, Steve noted. None of them liked seeing the reserved scientist so distraught over something he had such tenuous control over...particularly since both Banner and the Hulk were both such valuable members of the team.

Tony definitely looked better, Steve noted wryly as he glanced back to where the billionaire was still chuckling with Thor. He had no idea precisely what had been bothering Stark when he'd emerged from the bowels of Strucker's base, but he had a fair idea given what Tony had described when he told them about what all he'd found down there; they all carried troubling memories from the Battle of New York. Coming face to face with a Leviathan again? Even a dead one? Steve had a feeling he'd have been shaken too...though his gut told him there was more to it than that. But looking back at Tony, Steve pushed the thought aside. If he needed to talk about it, he would. But prying rarely got anywhere with Tony, even when the ones doing the prying were those he trusted most. If he did choose to talk about it, it would likely be Banner the billionaire chose to open up to, not Steve.

Even Nat was mostly herself again now that it was clear Barton's life wasn't in danger and Banner was slowly getting back to his own normal, unassuming self. Though, having gotten to know the redheaded spy as he had, Steve still got the feeling that something else was bothering her, and he suspected it had everything to do with what had happened to her oldest friend inside Strucker's base.

It was then that Steve realized there was a face he didn't see.

He didn't see Ryker.

Holding back a groan, he scanned the interior of the Quinjet, searching the handful of faces for the one he suddenly worried was actually missing. Immediately he was considering that she'd slipped away again the way she had in Chernivtsi, though his instincts insisted it was unlikely. He knew she had boarded the Quinjet; he'd been right behind her, watching her warily after her alarming reaction to Nina's disappearance back at Strucker's base. Whether or not she'd managed to get off again without anyone noticing? No, he decided, that was unlikely. Someone would have noticed.

Besides, given how deep in shock she'd seemed, Steve doubted very much that she had the will to even try and disappear on them. But she was a complete enigma, no matter how Steve felt he could read her most of the time despite her nearly impeccable reserve...and no matter that Natasha still felt like she knew Ryker just as she had when they'd been children together. She might very well have stolen from the Quinjet no matter the emotional condition she'd been in, her training taking over no matter her shock or the crushing despair he'd seen in her veiled eyes. Really, there was no telling what she was capable of.

The incident at the base had made that painfully clear.

Before they'd even left New York for Sokovia, Steve had pulled Natasha aside to try and gauge just that; what Ryker was capable of.

"Do you trust her," he'd asked, his voice low as he observed his friend's reaction carefully. Nat in turn had glanced over to Nadine, who had been waiting with an impatient air at the foot of the Quinjet's boarding ramp, studying the blonde woman as she thought the question over. He'd practically been able to read exactly what Natasha had been thinking from the minute flashes of emotion she'd been unable to quite hide. Did she? He'd been able to piece together just from Nat's behaviour around the blonde that Nat had trusted Ryker more than anyone once, nearly a lifetime ago when she'd been Nadya and Nat had been little more than a child. But it had been just that...a lifetime. Nadine may once have been Nadya, but there was no telling how much of Nat's friend—her sister, Steve now suspected, in name though they weren't in blood—was still in the blonde assassin. Trust did not come easily to people like them. Not in their line of work, and for good reason. Natasha had made that perfectly clear when their friendship had still been new and Steve had still been adjusting to the new world he'd woken into. It had taken nearly everything burning down around them—figuratively and literally—for him and the redheaded spy to finally trust each other.

So the question came down to whether or not they could trust Nadine Ryker. And that rested on whether or not Natasha trusted her old friend.

"No," Natasha had said honestly when she'd finally looked back to Steve. It was the answer he'd anticipated. "I don't. But I trust that she is willing to do whatever it takes to get her daughter back. And right now, she needs us to do that." Steve had sighed heavily at the truth to Natasha's assessment. It was the same conclusion he'd come to. He'd looked over to the blonde then, well aware that Natasha had been watching him just as he'd been her. When he'd turned back to his teammate again, he'd known she knew what he was about to ask next. He'd seen in her eyes that she'd been asking herself the same question.

"And when she doesn't need us anymore?" At that Natasha had shrugged, looking back to Ryker.

"When that happens, we need to be ready for anything."

He hadn't been ready, not for the scene he'd come across when he'd found Ryker. Not for the woman Natasha had identified as Katerina Zhirova—the one who had given Strucker Ryker and her daughter—looking as though she were still laughing even as she lay lifeless, Nadine not seeming to register that the other woman was gone—bled out or strangled, Steve wasn't certain—even as Steve had pulled her away. In that moment before Steve had been able to get through to her that Nina was still alive, he been shaken himself at what he'd seen in her face.

She seemed so...devastated, shattered—destroyed, even—and worryingly so, once the fight and the fire in her had broken when he'd pulled her off the lifeless HYDRA agent.

Even when he'd assured her that they had proof—once they'd shown her the footage, even, that J.A.R.V.I.S. had discovered before Steve had reached her—that her daughter was still alive, if anything, she'd retreated even further into herself, barely saying a word even to Natasha as they'd wrapped up their business at the base. He couldn't help but think that she wasn't only shaken by very nearly believing her daughter had been killed by Strucker's experiments, but also by what she'd very nearly become when she'd believed it. Something in her had broken when she'd thought Nina had been killed, and Steve had the distinct feeling that that terrified the blonde assassin almost as much as the thought of losing her daughter.

The thought suddenly struck him that he wouldn't even blame her for sneaking away had she recovered herself enough to manage it. It would make a certain amount of sense. The Enhanced weren't likely to have gone far, not given the condition Nina appeared to be in from the lab's surveillance. There was a chance they were still in Sokovia, possibly even still in Novi Grad for the time being.

But even so, Nadine had to realize that her best chance to find the Enhanced, and by extension Nina, lay with the Avengers and their resources.

Unless she didn't believe them when both he and Natasha had said they would help her find her daughter now that their own mission had been completed.

He had to admit, he wouldn't exactly blame her for thinking that, either.

She'd been alone and unable to trust anyone but herself for a long time, after all.

It was then that he caught a glimpse of pale hair peeking out from a hunched, blanket-wrapped bundle in the farthest corner of the main cabin, about as far away from anyone else as the confined space allowed. For all that Ryker—Nadine—was slightly taller than the average woman, she looked so small curled up against the bulkhead, her forehead laying tiredly on her folded and blanket-enveloped limbs. She looked completely apart from everyone else on the Quinjet, like they all might as well not even be there.

But she wasn't quite so lost inside her head as she appeared. As he approached she looked up, nearly causing him to falter. When he'd first encountered her, he never would have expected to see such an expression on this woman's face, and now he'd seen it not once, but twice. As she looked up at him now, though, she seemed far more herself than she had back at Strucker's base, but traces of the lost and defeated expression still lingered, especially in her closed-off grey eyes. It was still disconcerting to see, and he couldn't help but equate the look to the one he'd seen on Natasha's face as they'd sat in Sam's place after learning HYDRA had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.. It was unsettling to see such a vulnerable expression in a face that only ever seemed to exude an almost impossible level of self-confidence and self-assurance. Seeing that expression in Nadine now, even if it wasn't so intense and consuming as it had been back in Sokovia?

He tried to give her a reassuring look, but he couldn't tell how successful it was; her expression didn't change, though the worry in her eyes only seemed to deepen.

"You'll get her back, Ryker," he found himself assuring her softly as he lowered himself down next to her, "we will help you find her." She replied only with a tight, half-hearted smile.

After a long, quiet moment she sighed heavily, her legs unfolding from beneath the shock blanket she had huddled beneath.

"That doesn't take away from the fact that I failed her in the first place," she said just as softly, the faintest of wavers in her voice. "I didn't protect her well enough." Steve shook his head slowly.

"You didn't fail her, Nadine. You protected her as best you could. And you're going to do everything you can to get her back safe and sound. I barely know you and I can tell you'd do anything for her. You'll find her." Again, she smiled wanly, though it still didn't reach her troubled eyes.

"But it wasn't enough, was it," the waver grew more pronounced, "they still found me, and through me found her. The only reason Strucker wanted her was because of what I am." She sighed heavily again, shifting against the bulkhead before glancing to Steve, a brittle, almost patronizing half-smile curling her lips.

"If you ever have kids, you'll understand," she said, her voice thick with resignation. It was said sympathetically enough, as though she didn't blame him for not understanding, but her expression had grown veiled, the blonde assassin's face no longer so open as it had been a moment before. Oddly enough, Steve found it reassuring. He huffed in response to her statement, glancing around to the rest of his team.

"I don't know," he said lightly, earning a curious glance from the blonde. He bit back a grin as he gestured to the rest of his team, "with this bunch? Sometimes I feel like I'm parenting all of them." A faint sound came from Nadine, and when Steve glanced back to her, he was pleased to find a genuine trace of amusement on her face as she fought back a laugh. Something in him eased at the sound and the renewed spark in her grey eyes. It felt...good, to see her finally waking up from the despair that had gripped her until now.

"That's not at all hard to imagine," she remarked easily back with a light laugh before adding on, "especially with the man-child that is Stark." Steve couldn't hold back his own chuckles any longer. They both nearly burst into peals of laughter as, only a moment later, Stark was announcing in his characteristically theatrical way that they were approaching the Avenger's Tower. Around them, the tenor of the Quinjet's engines shifted, reinforcing Stark's warning that they were on approach to their Tower.

As Steve started to stand, the light brush of her hand on his arm caused him to pause and glance back at the blonde. There was nothing insincere about the gratitude in her eyes.

"Thank you, Captain Rogers," she said softly. Steve smiled warmly back, ignoring the odd warmth in his chest as she smiled up at him.

"You're welcome," he replied simply, "and Steve is fine." She smiled again, nodding slightly in recognition.

"Thank you, Steve." Straightening, Steve held out a hand, pleased that she took it and allowed him to help her to her feet. There was still a long way to go before she trusted him and he trusted her, but it was a start.

But as she stood, Steve caught sight of a small pool of blood where she'd been sitting and a faint, dark smear on the bulkhead she'd been leaning against. Another surreptitious look told him the blanket she was pulling from around her shoulders bore a similar stain; she was injured. Suddenly, he wasn't looking so covertly anymore, his eyes scanning her frame before zeroing in on the vibrant trail of blood trickling down her side from just below her ribcage, turning the pale grey of her uniform a rich crimson as it soaked into the fabric.

"When did that happen," he asked, not bothering to try and sound anything but concerned. She merely blinked at him for a moment before twisting to look at her side when he finally glanced pointedly to her injury. The quickly hidden look on her face said she regretted the action instantly.

"Katerina caught me with a wrist-blade, near the end of our fight. It's nothing." she said, waving it off. Steve eyed her with uncertainty before glancing back to the blood on the floor, blanket and bulkhead. It was a little more than nothing.

"That's a lot of blood, Ryker," he countered softly. She glanced up at him, a flicker of bewilderment in her grey eyes. But it was gone almost as soon as he'd spotted it, leaving him with a faint feeling of sorrow that the idea of someone being concerned for her was so foreign to the blonde assassin.

"You should get it looked at," he advised, a trace of command-borne insistence threading through the comment. She smiled tightly at the remark, only just barely keeping the extent of her discomfort hidden away.

"I'm fine. It's already healing. Another day or two and I'll be as good as new. Perk of being Enhanced," she quipped dryly. Steve couldn't help but chuckle. But as the Quinjet settled down he found himself sobering, especially as two of Dr. Cho's assistants rushed in the moment the hatch had opened to whisk Barton off the jet and out to where Dr. Cho could be seen approaching with an expression of concern and calculation on her face. As he watched Natasha disappear into the tower with Barton and the focused team of doctors while Maria Hill made her way toward the jet, he turned back to Nadine, his expression unmistakably resolved.

"Perk or not, it needs to be checked out. As soon as Dr. Cho has stabilized Barton, get her to take a look at you too." Nadine's grey eyes flashed with annoyance at Steve, especially when it became apparent that he wasn't going to let up anytime soon. But there was also no mistaking the stubborn glint hiding behind the annoyance. As Steve turned back to gather up his things, Nadine was already virtually storming out of the jet after Thor, though her collected pace and relaxed stance said nothing of the sort.

Even as Hill called out to Stark and Stark made his requisite quips back, Steve couldn't help but grin at the blonde's reaction.

Nadine was going to be okay, and for some reason, that was a huge relief to the Captain.    

A/N: Thanks for reading!

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