The Irony of it All

27

      Steve gripped the wheel a little harder than necessary. Not hard enough to break, but hard enough for the metal within to faintly groan in protest. He loosened his grip a little and scratched his now full beard.
 
       Last time he'd seen her, Natasha suggested he grow out his hair, and grow a beard so he wouldn't be so recognisable. She had a point, and he'd followed her suggestion, but it still felt strange and so not him. He'd never grown out a beard before. Or worn his hair this long before.

       Nobody told him that there were so many downfalls of having a beard. Like food or sauce, constantly getting stuck in it and you don't know about it for a while cause your team finds it too funny to just let you walk around like that. Or constantly getting randomly checked at security checkpoints because he was a big guy with a beard. Or what about little Italian girls telling you that you look just like their grandfather. And then you meet the man, and you don't know what's scarier: The fact that he looks like you or that he's actually a grandfather.

         He ran his hands through his dirty, blonde hair. He really needed a shower. He'd been driving for a couple days. He'd gotten as much information as he could gather up and after combining it with what he already knew, he figured Natasha must have been captured by the Red Room.

          He knew that it was highly possible that if the Red Room had Nat, they might have already killed her. They weren't going to be interested in a ransom or a trade. They'd either take their revenge by torturing her and killing her, or they'd torture her by trying to get her to go back. But he knew. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. She was still alive.

         With the information he'd gathered, combined with what he'd learned from Nat about the Red Room, he figured the best place to look for her was in Kiev, Ukraine. The Red Room had an old base their, a lot of contacts, allies, and old KGB agents with aliases still in use.

           He rolled his shoulders and set his jaw as he pressed the gas down and the car speeded up. She was still alive. And he was going to get his wife back.

_______________________________________

                            2 days later

      Natasha was in her cell, wearing a long t-shirt and a pair of comfortable leggings they had supplied her with. She was wrapped in her heavy blankets, sitting on her bed, actually enjoying the first book of an American series called Divergent, translated in Russian.

      Don't get her wrong, though. She hated this place, and she had a plan to get out. Well, half a plan...Quarter of a plan? Whatever, she was working on it. She was going to get out of this prison. But first, she'd been planning and hating all day, and now she was going to rest her swollen ankles, and hope Tris doesn't flinch when that knife gets thrown at her.

      She'd just gotten to the part whereFour was aiming to to throw the knife at Tris when she jerked out of her trance by a muffled scream outside the steel door, and something that sounded like a couple bodies hitting the floor before the door started to creak and groan at the hinges and lock. She had to duck as the bolts from the hinges suddenly started to fly everywhere, making pinging sounds. But the door didn't fall down. No. Two hands appeared and started to turn the door. Steve's face appeared as he maneuvered the giant door into the room and set it down gently against the wall.

      She smiled at him. "Only you," She said, "Would take the time to put the giant prison door off to the side."

      He turned to her, but his eyebrows were knitted and he took in his breaths like the relief of seeing her ok was physically paining him.  He wasted a moment running his eyes over her before he ran towards her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and burying his face in her hair.