11 ╸ghost story

STEVE WALKS THROUGH the hospital with his hoodie up, hands inside the pockets, head bowed as he tried to keep his identity away from the other hospital staff. He walked up to the vending machine that he had placed the flash drive in, and, with a heavy sigh, he couldn't seem to find it; it was gone. A flash of pink and a soft popping noise made him turn around to see both Natasha and Diana standing behind him, the Amazon staring at her nails as Natasha continued to chew her bubble gum. Steve grabs onto both of their biceps, squeezing as he took them into a free room.

He pushes them into the wall and throws off his hoodie, angry eyes staring at the two women. "Where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"Safe," Natasha and Steve ignore her question as they glare at each other; Diana takes this as a notice that she wasn't needed so she begins to wander away, but Steve forces her back to the wall. She lets out an audible sigh, rolling her dark eyes. "A flash drive," Steve notifies her quickly. "Do better!" He growls at Natasha.

"Where did you get it?"

"Why would I tell you?"

"Fury gave it to you," Natasha now knows about him. "Why?"

"What's on it?"

"I don't know," Natasha shrugs, Steve shakes her lightly; though he was furious, he still cared for his friend's safety. "Stop lying," he demands, but Natasha doesn't waiver, she just throws back a sarcastic, but true, comment. "I only act like I know everything, Rogers." Steve looks towards the door, making sure no one was near it, and Diana decides to stand guard as they talked, clearly knowing that since she didn't know what was on the flash drive, it had nothing to do with her. "I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?" Diana's eyebrows furrowed, something clearly troubling her, something from what was said about Fury. "Well, it makes sense; the ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in and so did you."

"I'm not going to ask you again."

"I know who killed Fury," Natasha says, making Diana perk up. "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."

"So he's a ghost story," Steve remarks.

"Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out my tires near Odessa," Natasha recalls one of her missions. "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." She lifts up the bottom left corner of her shirt, letting the two people in front of her see the almost quarter-sized scar on her stomach. "Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis." Steve is silent for a moment, thinking of what to say, but he decides to make a comment from her last sentence, "Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now." There was a hint of a smile from Natasha.

"You said it was a Soviet slug?" Diana pipes up, making Steve and Diana look at her. Natasha nods, eyebrows furrowed. "If it is a Soviet slug, and you say the Winter Soldier was there, it could've possibly been ━"

"HYDRA," Steve finishes, looking down at his feet, thinking over what Diana said. The Winter Soldier was credited for over two dozen assassinations over the past fifty years, Soviet-made weapons, metal arm, and faster and stronger than a normal man. The face behind the Winter Soldier was just a regular man that had been experimented on without consent, and now he was forced to do all these things; it was something HYDRA would do. "Well, let's see what the ghost wants."


STEVE, NATASHA, AND Diana were inside an Apple store in a mall, using one of their computers to hack into the flash drive they had.
At first, Steve was confused at why they were going into a public place, but soon realized that it was better; more people around them meant that the HYDRA agents were going to become frustrated at where they went. "The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up S.H.I.E.L.D will know exactly where we are," Natasha informs them, typing something on the computer. "How much time do we have?" Diana asks. "Um. . . nine minutes from. . ." Natasha puts in the flash drive, "now." A blue screen with writing on it shows up, Steve noticing that it looked like it came out of a spy movie. "Fury was right about that ship, somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."

"Can you override it?"

"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me," Natasha sasses. "Slightly." Rumlow and his team ride up to the mall, the tires to their large black Chevy SUV's screeching as they halt, all of them stepping out into the bright sunlight. Back in the store, Natasha was still trying to hack into the drive. "I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that S.H.I.E.L.D developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."

"Can I help you with anything?" An employee walks up to them, his long blonde hair moving smoothly.

"Oh, no," Natasha places a hand on Steve's chest. "My fiance was just helping me find some honeymoon destinations." Steve catches on to her lie and tries to slant as well, but it was slightly harder for him. "Right!" He nods. "We're getting married." The employee's eyes wander to Diana, his eyebrows furrowed as he took in her figure. "And you are the. . . mistress, I believe?" Diana shakes her head, a warm smile spreading across her lips as she replies, "No, I'm just the best friend that throws suggestions."

"Congratulations, then!" The employee smiles. "Where do you guys think you're going?" Diana answers it quickly, "New Jersey." The worker nods and begins staring at Steve, looking into his eyes as the supersoldier becomes uncomfortable. After a while of awkward silence, he speaks up. "I have the exact same glasses."

"Wow, you guys are practically twins," Natasha says from her spot at the computer.

"Yeah, I wish," the worker gestures towards Steve with his hands. "Specimen. Uh. . . if you guys need anything, I've been Aaron."

"Thank you," Steve replies respectfully, turning back to Natasha. "You said nine minutes, come on."

"Sh, relax," the agent waves him away. "Got it." They get a signal from Wheaton, New Jersey. "You know it?" She notices Steve's head comes closer to the screen, Diana breaking from her moment of guarding to listen in. "Diana and I used to. Let's go." He pulls the drive from the computer and puts it in his pocket, the three walking out of the store as coolly as possible, Diana lowering her hat as they walk through the mass of people. "Standard tac-team. Two behind, to across, two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro."

"Shut up and put your arm around me," Natasha orders. "Laugh at something I said."

"What?"

"Do it," Steve complies and does so as two agents walk past them, Diana pretending to be looking at something on her phone. An agent looks around the Apple store and sees no sign of Diana, Steve, or Natasha, "Negative at the source." Rumlow listens to the message and finally replies, "Give me a floor rundown."

"Negative on three."

"Negative on two," Rumlow goes to the escalator the three HYDRA criminals walked onto, "Snake the upper levels, work down to me." As the three are going down, Natasha spots Rumlow coming up, and, with a quick thought, she turns around to Steve and orders, "Kiss me."

"What?"

"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable."

"Yeah," Natasha takes an annoyed breath out and, with a roll of her eyes, Diana grabs onto the woman's head and forces her lips up to hers, kissing the woman with such a ferocious fever that Natasha believed that Diana was more lesbian than straight. . . not that Natasha complained. Steve hides behind his hat and both Diana's and Natasha's mingling hair, some men on the escalator taking pictures of the two women while Rumlow looked away. "You still uncomfortable?" Natasha asks as soon as she pulls away, seeing Brock Rumlow's jacket sweep past a group of women that were behind them. "Not the word I would use," Diana smiles and makes her way down the moving steps.


STEVE DRIVES THE vehicle they stole, a blue Chevy truck, Natasha resting her feet on the dashboard as Diana sat in the back, staring out the window.
They all have driven past a blue sign that read '𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐘, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦', the blur of green trees rolling past them smoothly, "Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?"

"Nazi Germany," Steve makes himself a little more comfortable on the seat. "And we're borrowing, take your feet off the dash." With a small smile, Natasha places her feet back on the floor of the cabin, a question popping into her head. "Alright, I have a question for you, oh, which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know?"

"What?"

"Why didn't you want to kiss me?" Natasha asks, but instead of looking defeated, her eyes seemed happy. "Diana did so without a problem."

"That's because Diana lived on an island with women," Steve answers. "And, I'm still a bit nervous about kissing a woman, but before you ask, I didn't just have one kiss, I'm ninety-five, not dead." Natasha's head turns towards the window. "Nobody special, though?"

"Believe it or not, it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience."

"Well, that's alright, you just make it up," Natasha shrugs.

"What, like you?"

"I don't know," Natasha shrugs again. "The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I."

"That's a tough way to live."

"A good way not to die, though."

"You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is," this comment makes Natasha look back at Diana, who wasn't paying attention to them, just leaning her head on her hand and staring out at the foliage. "Like some people," Natasha whispers. "And what do you want me to be?"

"A friend?" This makes Natasha laugh softly.

"There's a chance you might be on the wrong business, Rogers."