Just Steve

T W E N T Y - E I G H T

Boston is an amazing city. No doubt about it.

The architecture of the pre-war brownstones and churches combined with the timeless cobblestone streets could transport you to different eras and centuries. The North End was overflowing with the most delicious Italian food anyone had ever tasted. The people in the city were always too focused on moving from one place to another than to bother you or make small talk, a particular pet peeve of yours. On the off chance that anyone ever did come up to you all you had to do was send them a simple "fuck the Patriots" or "go Yankees" and they would cuss you out then leave you alone. God bless New England sports fans.

While all of those things made the city favorable, the best thing about Boston was that it was exactly two hundred and seventeen miles from the man who broke your heart.

Three weeks had passed since you had last seen him. You still weren't allowing yourself to say or even think his name. Was this a valid coping mechanism? Not really, but you didn't care. It was keeping you from falling apart completely at the moment. You needed to keep you-know-who at a distance physically and mentally for the time being, wanting to stay as stress free as possible for your baby's sake.

As a result you had spent the last twenty or so days doing everything you could to prevent he-who-must-not-be-named from figuring out where you were. You weren't stupid enough to think he wouldn't come after you or that you'd be able to hide from him forever. You were pregnant with his child so seeing him again was an inevitable, inescapable truth. But you weren't ready for that day yet, so you were using every possible tool at your disposal to prolong that day as much as possible.

The fact was you had lived at Stark Tower long enough and overheard enough of the team's strategy meetings to learn some basic things about how to avoid being found. That was why you had left your phone at your mom's apartment. That was also why you had been relying solely on emergency stashes of cash and not touching your credit cards. While those were useful, albeit somewhat obvious, things to do when trying to stay hidden there was one factor that had truly helped you to learn not just how to hide, but to disappear altogether. One person who had taught you everything you needed to know about not just going off the grid, but erasing yourself from it completely.

About two months ago the team had a huge scare. You didn't know that many of the details other than the fact that someone dangerous had tried to go after somebody that was close to Clint. Everything had turned out fine but it seemed to shake Nat up especially hard. As a result, she had taken it upon herself to teach you how to avoid being found if you, god forbid, ever found yourself in a similar situation. She had made it clear that it was very unlikely somebody would come after you but it gave her peace of mind to know you wouldn't be completely helpless if something did happen.

At the time Nat said to keep this between the two of you. When you asked her why she had said Steve- shoot, no... she had said that the annoyingly attractive star spangled man wanted to keep you completely separated from that aspect of his life. He hadn't wanted you to be exposed to anything having to do with his work, which you had understood but in the end agreed with Nat that it was important to be able to protect yourself should the worst happen.

You were sure that by now Nat would have come clean about the things she had taught you but here you were three weeks later successfully hiding from some of the most powerful people in America. Maybe she was trying to help give you the space you so desperately needed or maybe she was just scared of how you-know-who would react to learning the truth. In either case, you were extremely grateful.

She had taught you everything about how to avoid being seen on CCTV's or other street cameras, explained the importance of a burner phone, and even taught you how to scramble the IP address on your computer to make any location someone might be able to determine from there essentially untraceable. To be safe, you hadn't used your computer at all but it was nice to know you had the option if you really needed it.