Goodbye To The Old Me - Steve Rogers {2}

Chapter 3: Don't Hold Your Breath

Steve was using his body as a wall, shielding Nellie from the rest of the team, or better yet, shielding him from them. As they travelled at high speed back to Washington, Nellie's anger had been slowly subsiding whilst Steve's had been building.

The Batroc brothers had escaped by the skin of their teeth, a speedboat had collected them with no trace left to follow. A secondary team was following up, the issue no longer critical enough for Nellie and Steve to take part in. These factors were what had Nellie so fired up in the first place, not to mention the grenade and distraction caused by Natasha.

Moments after the explosion Nellie was hard to console... the mission had partly failed. They were sent to clean up yet another of Fury's messes and it was evident that Fury did not trust them. Worst of all Natasha had lied, Nellie did not want to seem naive, but she thought herself and Natasha were closer than that.

Inside her head it was chaos. She wanted to scream at Natasha, to blame her for the Batroc brothers escaping. An effective team leader would reprimand her, but in this case, Nellie wasn't a leader, and neither was Steve, because Fury had been pulling the strings all along.

As time passed Nellie tried to collect herself, hiding behind her wall of Steve. She had moved herself to the corner of the Quinjet and pressed herself into the seat against the wall. She felt the gazes of the team, not sure if they felt sorry for her (which she hated), embarrassed for her (which she loathed), or she wondered if they had knowledge of Natasha's side mission before theirs had even started (they did know it was a Shield vessel before Nellie and Steve after all). The simmering blonde decided to try and keep herself to herself, basking in Steve's warmth and loving touches, keeping her eyes on him and only him. It helped.

Steve, on the other hand, had started off quite calm but behind his very impassive demeanour the rage was bubbling up inside. The small victory was that all hostages were now safe, and a large number of mercenaries had been captured which could help towards finding the brothers, but Fury had sent them on a mission and not told them all the facts.

For Steve, the tip of the iceberg was that Nellie could have been seriously injured. If she hadn't got that force field up in time who knows what damage could have been done. He regretted diving for Natasha, he should've put Nellie first, but his instinctual faith in his girlfriend was sky high and he just assumed she would've dealt with the problem. She did of course, but the 'what if' remained.

Eventually, when the jet touched down in Washington just after three in the afternoon, Steve wasted no time in stomping out of the aircraft as soon as the hanger doors were open. Reluctantly he tore himself away from Nellie's side, brushed past Natahsa whilst ignoring her concern, and headed straight across the tarmac towards the Triskelion entrance. Nellie blinked at his retreating figure, a little stunned by the ferocity of his anger before she stood too and followed after him.

"Nellie!" Natahsa said hastily, catching Nellie's bicep as she forced her to stop. Nellie's eyes darted from Steve's muscular and tense back and then to Natasha's worried face. "Look, I'm sorry-" She began fretfully but Nellie shook her off, her expression cold.

"Don't bother." Nellie snapped, looking her over and trying her best to ignore the hurt in Natasha's eyes. She pressed her lips into a fine line as she stepped away, the guilt already settling in, Natahsa was most likely about to apologise, however Steve was the priority. She carried on with her pursuit, feeling Natsha's eyes burning holes in the back of her skull. "Steve!" Nellie called out as the Triskelion's shadow enveloped her, the lack of warmth from the sun sent a chill down her spine.

The automatic doors opened before Nellie, and the sight of Steve entering one of the elevators had her sprinting to reach him in time. She slipped through the metal doors just as they were closing, he had spun around to face her, his face was expressionless, but his eyes were furious. "Director's Level." He said sternly as the doors closed with a slick locking sound behind her.