The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 38

Dresden, Germany

Spring 2016

Steve just watched in silence as Nadine stood at the small peninsula in the safehouse's—or bolthole, as she'd called it—tiny kitchen. Stripping, cleaning and reassembling her guns. It had grown oddly familiar. Not to mention oddly evocative of the reprieve a year before when they'd regrouped at the Barton Farm.

It hadn't been long after Bucky started goading Steve like his old self when Nadine had returned, bags of take-out in hand. Their meal had passed in relative, if somewhat tense silence, the only conversation proving to be a short, stilted back and forth spurred by Bucky's curiosity about how Nadine had gotten mixed up with the Avengers at all. Though, Sam's wry 'she just never left afterward' after Nadine's brief and entirely unsatisfying explanation of needing Natasha and the Team's help with a mission had managed to somewhat diffuse the tension, getting a chuckle out of everyone. Mercifully the silence that had resumed after their mirth quieted had been far more companionable.

Not that there was much call for conversation, their meal commanding the bulk of all their focus anyway. Nadine's conviction that they needed food was easily shown to be spot on as they were all proven ravenous with how quickly the mountains of local favourites she'd ordered had disappeared.

Followed shortly after by Nadine. Though Steve had known from the armload of trash mirroring her armload of food not long before that she was slipping out to dispose of it elsewhere—what abandoned building had trash, after all—it hadn't quite stopped the worry that had pooled in his gut, regardless.

She had been far more reserved during their dinner than she had been in the Beetle and Steve had to admit it concerned him. Nadine was a pro at hiding what she was truly feeling when she felt the need arose. And since she rarely felt secure enough to broadcast when she was unsettled, he had learned it was an indicator of a mix of comfort and how truly disquieted she must be for him to pick up on it.

He could definitely pick up on it.

And since she couldn't quite seem to bring herself to truly look at Bucky the way she did with Sam and himself?

It wasn't hard to guess what had her so unsettled. Though, he also suspected that was only one factor of many.

Heck, he was unsettled by what they would likely be facing in a few hours. Morning was coming quickly and with it the need to move on the facility where Bucky had been kept for so many long years. It went without saying why that was unsettling alone. Add in why?

Not to mention why even getting to Siberia in the first place was likely going to be complicated?

Steve was almost certain their mission was going to be challenged by Tony and the remaining Avengers, either here in Germany or in Siberia should Stark and the rest manage to track them. His instincts said it was inevitable. Somehow, Tony and Company were going to be able to find them and confront them. It was not a challenge Steve was eager to face. Though, if the confrontation between his team and Tony's had to happen? Hopefully it wouldn't happen until they'd already reached the abandoned HYDRA base. At least then they might be able to reason with the others better, having proof on hand why the doctor had done what he did...why what he was trying was bigger than the divide of the Accords.

There was a great deal to be unsettled over.

And that wasn't even counting some of Nadine's more personal reasons.

Like the fact that she was now in the same room as her daughter's father after so many years searching. The very man she'd long believed she had wronged even though, according to Bucky—and according to Natasha and what Steve himself had concluded based solely on what Nadine had revealed—she had been just as much a victim as Bucky had been.