Novi Grad, Sokovia

Spring 2015

"Rhodes, are you clear?" There was no one left so far as Nadine could tell, robot or human. Just as the Avengers had, the sentries had converged on Ultron's Core. But since the city was still rising, the Team was obviously managing to hold Ultron's minions at bay.

That left her and Rhodes to finish rounding up civilians.

And as it stood, it certainly appeared to Nadine that everyone had been rounded up. Breaking into a light jog, she glanced up as War Machine made another pass overhead, making use of his suit's advanced sensor tech to check the buildings for any remaining bio-signs, she suspected.

"I'm all clear, Ryker," his voice came through her earpiece, "I'm not picking up anyone else. You're good to catch your ride out of here. It looks like the rest of the Team are making their way back, too." Well that was a relief. It meant there was a chance this was all over. That all that was left to do was finish evacuating the city.

Then Stark could blow it and they could all go home.

Not that Nadine was entirely sure where home was going to be just then. But so long as Nina was safe, she honestly didn't care.

"Already on my way," she confirmed. Only to frown in confusion as the Quinjet roared overhead, heading toward the last remaining lifeboat. Her stomach twisted uncomfortably. The small square where she'd put the jet down hadn't been anywhere near the church where the Avengers had been facing off against Ultron, so who would've retrieved it? No one had said anything over the comm, so she couldn't even begin to speculate. Who could've made it so quickly? The Maximoff boy, certainly, but she very much doubted he knew how to fly it. Could he have brought someone else to it? Natasha, perhaps? She knew he could do that, bring other people along with him. She pushed her thoughts on the matter aside. They were distracting and she needed to get back to the lifeboats. Back to Nina. She was sure she'd find out what was going on with the Quinjet soon enough.

But moments later, as she drew closer to Novi Grad's main square, she heard the distant, distinct sound of the jet's high-calibre rounds and Hulk's furious bellow. A chill ran through her and she suddenly couldn't fight the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

"Who's got the Quinjet," she asked anxiously into the comms. But no one answered, not even Rhodes, who she'd only been speaking to moments before. "Natasha? Barton?"

The apprehensive feeling intensified.

Especially when the ground beneath her feet shuddered.

For a split-second she thought the city was about to drop out from under her, causing her heart to leapfrog around her insides as she nearly stumbled on the uneven street, her keenly developed reflexes the only thing preventing her from nose-diving into the fractured pavement.

But when nothing of the sort happened, when she and the city didn't begin its plummet to the Earth below, a faint wash of relief went through her.

Though it did nothing to ease the anxiously tightening knot in her gut.

She quickened her pace.

Unsettled feeling or not, she was running out of time.

The main square was deserted when she finally reached it, the last straggling few Sokovians scrambling onto the lifeboat. The city effectively felt—cliché as it seemed to think as much—like a ghost town. Dust hung thickly in the quickly thinning air...or was it more cloud; it was certainly cool enough, and moisture was beginning to cling to Nadine's skin again. The ground was pockmarked with great gouges and craters, the lifeless husks of destroyed sentries littering the ground everywhere she looked.

It truly did look unsettlingly like a war-zone.

Piles of rubble and debris choked the streets. Everywhere cars stood abandoned, already looking like they'd been left untouched for years beneath a coating of grime and refuse from the battle despite the fact that some were still running, their headlights lending a haunting glow to the devastation around them.

As she reached the lifeboat Nina had boarded where it hovered at the cliff-like edge of the city, Rogers was just stepping back off the boarding ramp, surveying the square. The boats were full and the city was empty. The lifeboat next to them was the last one, waiting only for the remaining Avengers. Rogers was the only one left on the ground, literally, lingering just past the bottom of the ramp as he scanned the abandoned city square one final time.

But she paused at the grim, shadowed expression on his face as she stepped onto the ramp. Her gut twisted as she inadvertently recalled his reaction to her past with the Winter Soldier, but she pushed it aside; now was not the time for that.

"The city's clear," she called to him, causing the Captain to turn his troubled gaze to her. She nearly hesitated in her report. "Colonel Rhodes confirmed it. The Avengers are all that's left." He nodded, not quite meeting her eye. She frowned, the anxious knot in her stomach tightening further still, uncertain what the expression meant; was it stemming from his anger toward her from the Quinjet on the way to Seoul...or from something else? She couldn't help the distinct impression that his behaviour didn't quite have to do with the revelations about the Winter Soldier.

"Rogers, what's wrong?" she questioned. As he looked over to her, dread pooled sickeningly in her gut. This was definitely not about the Winter Soldier thing. There was no anger or feelings of betrayal behind this. The alarmingly sympathetic worry in his eyes made that perfectly clear. It was something else. Something about...

"Nina..." Immediately she was turning to the lifeboat's occupants, her eyes roving over the dusty, frightened and relieved faces desperately in search of one in particular. "Where's Nina?"

"She's on board, Ryker," he hurried to assure her. Nadine spun back to him, not liking the careful, even wary cast of his tone one bit. It did not help assuage the quickly intensifying dread pooling in her gut.

"What happened, Rogers," she demanded, not caring to hide the blatant fear in her voice or the way it nearly cracked. The Captain's expression of concern and sympathy became even more apparent, his mouth already opening to comply with her fearful plea.

But something in the air changed in that instant, a disconcerting tingle that had them both freezing almost defensively as a sense of sick anticipation settled over them.

They didn't even have time to wonder what it meant.

For at that moment, the ground lurched beneath them.

As the ground dropped out from under him, Rogers turned and made a desperate leap for the lifeboat, only just barely hooking his arms over the edge.

Before she could even think to react, Nadine was lunging forward, skidding across the boarding ramp toward the grimacing Captain—reaching—he was slipping, losing his grip on the edge—she wasn't going to reach him in time—

But then his hand closed around her wrist as her fingers clamped around his.

Pain seared through her shoulders, trying to rip a cry from her throat. But she bit it back, managing to keep it to herself even as a grimace twisted her features from the wrenching strain of holding on to Rogers' weight while struggling to brace herself so that she didn't get pulled over too.

She held on, though, the Captain dangling from the edge of the lifeboat's ramp for what felt like an eternity, his suddenly unreadable ocean-hued eyes latched almost disconcertingly on hers. But in reality, he was almost immediately swinging his arm up, managing to latch his fingers onto the lip of the ramp, alleviating some of the agonizing strain his weight was putting on Nadine's arm and shoulders—her whole body—as she refused to let go. She couldn't let go.

With a pained groan she began to help haul him aboard, the pair of them working together to heave the Captain up and onto the lifeboat. There was no understating the relief that surged through her as Rogers finished pulling himself onto the craft and she was able to release the death grip she'd had on his wrist or the secondary one she'd grabbed on the harness for his shield.

Neither of them said a word as they collapsed onto the boarding ramp, chests heaving as though they'd just run a marathon.

As Nadine met Steve's eye again, time seemed to stand still as the gravity of what had nearly happened sank in.

After a long, loaded moment, Steve nodded in thanks, unable to put it into words just then. Even as her lingering guilt tried to re-emerge, she returned it earnestly, unable to keep her relief from her features.

But the moment passed and they both pulled themselves up enough to lean over the edge of the ramp to watch as, far below, the falling city was vaporized in a blinding flash of light.

"It's over," she breathed. Absently Steve nodded before pausing, glancing over to her as the worried look that had caught her attention before reemerged on his dirt-streaked face. Immediately her entire body tensed, her unease returning with a vengeance before slipping headlong into fear. Rogers swallowed reluctantly, meeting her eye with a serious expression that had that fear twisting painfully in her stomach. But she couldn't voice it. Her mouth was suddenly bone dry, the taste of bile beginning to rise in her throat.

"Nadine," he said quietly, holding up a hand in silent warning, "something happened."

There had been several times in the last week or so when Nadine could've easily said she had never been so scared in her whole life. True terror did not come easily to her; it had been long ago conditioned out of her.

But the instant those words left Steve's mouth?

It was like she didn't even hear them, her pulse beginning to roar in her ears as his mouth formed the words. In an instant she was scrambling to her feet, eyes desperately searching the lifeboat as she barrelled through the rows of seats, pushing past people as she anxiously tried to find the one face she needed to see.

Then she saw a glimmer of pale hair behind a set of huddled S.H.I.E.L.D. medics. Well, no other instance of terror and panic had even come close. Not by a long shot.

She couldn't breathe, she couldn't speak, she couldn't move.

The pressure of her dread and fear colliding like a maelstrom in her chest felt like it wasn't even allowing her heart to beat, sucking all feeling and all emotion mercilessly from her body. It was so intense and so encompassing that she could've been tempted to say she felt...nothing.

And the intensity of it had only increased when she had pushed past the medics and Barton to see her little girl's still form laid out next to the Maximoff boy in the wide aisle between the batches of seats. Blood was soaking their clothes, vibrant and hypnotic as it began to blot through the bandages the medics had been using to try and stem the bleeding. She couldn't seem to process it, like part of her was trying desperately to believe it wasn't happening. But it had happened.

Ultron had shot her child.

She couldn't breathe.

In that moment she had felt like she'd been physically wounded too, like her crushed heart had been gouged, pulverized and bleeding, from her chest by great, ragged metal fingers.

The same metal fingers that had pulled the trigger.

It was only as she fell to her knees next to the utilitarian grey seats by Nina's head, her trembling hands reaching out to tentatively brush some of her daughter's pale hair from her face that some measure of feeling began to return to her.

Beneath her fingers, Nina's cheek was still warm, and her chest was visibly rising and falling, shallow and faint as the movement was. Nadine's first shuddering sob broke through, then.

Nina was still alive.

Her heart was still beating steadily, if weakly, within her chest.

Unable to help herself, she was immediately gathering Nina into her arms, moving so that she cradled her little girl against her. She didn't even notice as Barton's hand came to rest on her shoulder, the archer offering a measure of support and comfort she wasn't capable of processing right in that moment.

She did, however, notice as one of the medics inched forward, tentatively looking to her as he reached out to continue his attention to the ragged bullet wound along Nina's ribcage.

Mercifully, Nadine was aware enough to understand what the medic was doing, though part of her still threatened to lash out at the man for daring to touch her daughter, her protective instincts kicking into overdrive. But Barton's hand tightening fractionally on her shoulder helped her keep herself under control, helping to ground her enough to allow the medic to do his job and work to staunch the flow of blood trickling from the ugly gash on Nina's side. Yet, even as she watched the man work, the numb, concentrated pressure in her chest left her feeling hollow and utterly detached from what was happening around her.

It was like her mind had shut off from the sheer shock of what had happened.

But slowly it was beginning to come back online, the long-ingrained instincts born out of her time in the Red Room not allowing her to remain in any manner of disassociative state, emotionally or traumatically inflicted or otherwise. Whether she liked it or not, she slowly became aware of what was going on around her beyond what was happening with Nina. Barton still stood next to her, though he kept glancing over to where another set of medics were working on the Maximoff boy where he lay on the ground next to Nina, the medics murmuring urgently to each other as they worked. Just past them Steve stood watching them all, standing with his arms crossed over his chest as though standing guard—or standing vigil—over them. His face was impassive, though there was worry clearly present in his eyes, especially whenever his gaze fell on Nina or Pietro. Around them relief was beginning to stir through the other Sokovians on the lifeboat, the realization that they had miraculously escaped an impossible situation starting to sink in even as the lifeboat made its way back to the Helicarrier it belonged to.

For the most part, though, Nadine's attention was reserved wholly for Nina.

It wasn't as bad as it looked. Even with the icy fear and panic still churning deep in her gut, she was capable of recognizing that. The way the medic's frame slowly began to relax as he tended to the blonde teen made that clear. Besides, she could see it with her own two eyes. The bleeding was already beginning to ease.

It was only then that it finally began to sink in, her whole body beginning to shake. Even as the medic glanced up to her with a cautious expression of relief and reassurance, she couldn't stop it.

"She's going to be okay," Barton's voice said softly, cutting through the haze of panic and anguish struggling to reassert itself as he knelt down beside her, his reassuring grip on her shoulder tightening briefly again.

"I know," she croaked out, reaching up to rest a grateful hand on his. "I know. I just—"

"—for a minute there—" he continued when she trailed off before he too hesitated. "I know. When the Quinjet...I thought we...I thought that might be it. But then the Maximoff boy...and Nina? I don't know what happened, but...they saved us, Ryker. Him and Nina." Nadine gulped in a deep breath, forcing back the tears threatening in the corner of her eyes as she glanced over to the Sokovian boy. The medics were still working on him, their faces grim but determined. Meanwhile, next to him, her head now pillowed against her mother's lap, Nina looked surprisingly peaceful despite everything, her face clear of the pain Nadine knew she was going to feel once she regained consciousness. Nadine couldn't help the heavy breath that shuddered from her body.

It was over.

Nina was going to be okay.

And in that moment, that was all that mattered.

A/N: Thanks for Reading!

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