Goddess | Natasha Romanoff

Chapter 6: Ghost

Aloisia and Steve manage to get some more suitable casual clothes, compared to Aloisia's combat gear and Steve's patriotic outfit. Steve looks much more disguised as a civilian dressed in a hoody and some joggers. The pair go back to the hospital to retrieve the flash drive from the vending machine but sees it's gone, then Natasha appears behind them chewing some gum, in anger Steve pushes her into a room.

"Steve!" Aloisia exclaims, not liking the super soldiers aggression.

"Where is it?" Steve snarls angrily, pushing Natasha harshly against the wall, he's living up to furys wish, not trusting anyone.

"Safe" Nat replies vaguely

"Do better!"

"Where did you get it?"

"Why would I tell you?"

"Fury gave it to you. Why?" Al almost smiles, there was no way Steve was going to manage lying to Natasha.

"What's on it?" Steve asks, hoping Natasha has the answer as she was ht done to transfer the information onto the drive.

"I don't know"

"Stop lying!"

"She's not lying Steve, I know Fury told you not to trust people but come on, be reasonable" Aloisia argues, she knows Natasha much better than she knows Steve or Fury, and trusts the woman.

"I only act like I know everything, Rogers"

"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?"

"Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you" Nat argues, Aloisia stands awkwardly, not really sure what to say, she doesn't want to escalate the situation anymore, and would much rather stay out of the argument.

"I'm not gonna ask you again"

"I know who killed Fury. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists, the ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years" Natasha explains, Steve slowly loosens his grip on her, dropping his hands.

"So he's a ghost story" Steve says, pointing out how useless her information is if no one knows where is or who the man is, and even if he's real.

"Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me" Natasha pulls up her shirt to show him the scar on the side of her stomach "Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis"

"Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now" there's a hit of a smile from Natasha, Aloisia knows how big of a lie that is, shaking her head at Steve's words.

"Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried" Natasha holds up the flash drive "Like you said, he's a ghost story" Steve takes the flash drive from her.

"Well, let's find out what the ghost wants"

——— . ———

the group walk through the shopping centre, Aloisia and Natasha wonder through, understanding the rules of being on the run, blending in and becoming almost invisible. Steve is less subtle, constantly glancing around and his pace faster than normal.

"First rule of going on the run is, don't run, walk" Natasha explains

"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off"

"You need to look normal, if you are obviously looking around and moving quickly you draw attention to yourself. To hide in public you need to act normal, pretend you are not hiding"