Broken

Four

We pull into a mall to read the flash drive in a public space. Harder for them to track and find us. "I'm going to wait out here, I'll call once I notice they've arrived." Natasha says as we walk into the mall. "Wonderful." I sigh looking at Steve before walking in, parting ways as Nat hides out in the parking lot. Steve and I walk through the mall, I notice he wants to speed up but I place a hand on his arm. "First rule of going on the run is don't run, walk." I tell him as he slows down. "If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off."
We walk into an Apple Store and open a display laptop, "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." I say breaking down possible blocks. "How much time will we have?"
"About nine minutes from.." I place the drive in. "now."
I get to work trying to open the drive to see what's on it. "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." I keep Steve updated as he hasn't taken his eyes off of me working. "Can you override it?"
I give a small chuckle at the question, "I didn't spend extra time with Stark and Banner just for the hell of it." I say working as fast as I can. "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 guys with anything?" A worker walks up to us."
"No. My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations." I say hugging Steve coming up with the story on the spot. "Right.. We're getting married." He goes along with as I keep working.
"Congratulations. Where are you guys thinking about going?"
I traced New Jersey before working to get a precise location.
"New Jersey." Steve says keeping the conversation.
"I have the exact same glasses." The worker keeps making small talk. "Wow, you two are practically twins." I joke giving them both a side eye.
"Yeah, I wish..Specimen." He calls Steve making me smile. "If you guys need anything, I've been Aaron."
"Thank you." He finally walks away.
"You said nine minutes. Come on." He says trying to hurry me up.
"Relax." I say as I finish finding the location. "Got it." It zooms into Wheaton, NJ. I look to Steve as that's where we met. "Looks like a trip down memory lane." I say to him.
"They're on route." We hear Natasha in our ears. I pull the flash drive out and we leave the store.
"Standard tac team. Two behind, two across, and two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro." He says getting in work mode again. I see two approaching us. "Shut up and put your arm around me. Laugh at something I said." I order him. "What?" He looks uncomfortable. "Do it." I say getting closer and he does as he's told.
"You've seen me naked, Rogers." I say making him look the other way.
We head down an escalator and I quickly see Rumlow getting on to go up. I spin to Steve. "Kiss me."
"What?" He says taken aback. "Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable." I explain. "Yes, they do-"
I pulled him by his collar and give him a kiss. Truthfully, after so long, it felt nice. I couldn't help but remember New York and how great we were then. Now it's just a mess.
I open my eyes to see Rumlow pass us and I pull away. I realized he had a moment of coming towards me again but pulled back as well.
We make our way out the mall and meet with Natasha. She looks at Steve, "You kinda got a shine to your lips there.." She points out as my lip salve was still on his lips. He just rubs lips and looks away as Natasha wiggles her eyebrows at me. "Anywho..We need to get out of here quick." She points out. Steve only walked to a nearby truck and Hot-wires to start it up. We quickly jump in, me in passenger, Natasha in the back.

Natasha fell into a nap in the back, a silent drive from tension will do that to you. I tried to keep my eyes out the window as much as I could the drive to Jersey. "You should've told me." Steve says breaking the hour long silence. "You're gonna have to be specific, soldier." I say still looking out the window. "You know what I mean. What the hell was that anyways?" He says seemingly upset. I had a pause, I guess with the time we had together I've never talked about the scientists. "I think I deserve some kind of explanation." He says not giving me the chance to answer.
"My experimentation. That's what it was." I say making him dead silent. "I never used any of my abilities cause it was too many memories. That's why only two people know."
"So you told two people before me." He looks to me aggravated. "Fury was supposed to be the only one since he rescued me. Stark just did deep.. deep research and I threatened his life if he told anyone." I explain. I turn to see him. He looked lost in thought. "I didn't confide in either.. I was just caught." I say making him look back at me for a moment before his eyes go back to the road.
"You know.. you never talk about anything from back then." He brings up. "Can you blame me? 80% of the time I was brainwashed, the other, tortured and experimented on. I can't remember majority of it and what I do it feels like a reoccurring nightmare."
He only reaches his hand out and holds mine. "I'm not the best with you, but I wish you would talk to me." He takes accountability. That's a first. He's given me hell, why would I want to talk to him. "So is that the only thing you can do?" He asks still playing nice. "Stop it."
"Stop what?"
"You're acting on pitty alone right now. I can tell and I don't need it."
"Don't tell me what to do or how I'm feeling. I'm only making conversation." He says upset. I sigh and lean my chair back a bit to get comfortable. "Well that teleport thing with the cloud. But you knew that."
"Oh now you want to tell me?"
"Do you want to listen or not?" I ask him, making him stay quiet. I look at the fake glasses that were on the dash and make them open and plop on his face, just to put them back. "Don't even have to lift a finger for that one." I pause for a moment then chuckle, "You're gonna hate this but I've been down playing my strength for you." He looks over to me aghast. "I can sit here and tell you it's not that much if it makes you feel better." I say with a smile. He just smiles back. I've missed conversations like this. "Um it's not much just cause I don't know how to since I just recently found out I can but to dumb it down energy is my bitch."
"Energy?" He asks. "Yea, well, remember when our TV was messed up and I gave it a hit and it came back on? Or when I quickly rewarmed your coffee and you were even surprised at how quick it was? That's when I found out. All because of the stupid tesseract." I shrug.
"I'll tell you this, if you were up front about it, it would've made missions a lot less complicated." He confesses. "I just felt that if I did then I'd be the monster killing machine they wanted me to be." I say making myself quiet down.
"You're not a monster." I jump at Nat who had woken up listening. I look back to see her still having her eyes closed. "Don't give them the power that they took from you." She says opening her eyes looking at me. "Use it for good. Take that power back." She says. I look to Steve who had looked visibly concerned. I look ahead and make a cloud portals in front of the car as we drive through it. We were now on a road in Jersey. "What'd you do?" Steve says looking around. "We're 20 minutes minutes from the coordinations rather than 2 more hours." I say quietly. "I don't have a tight grasp on specific locations for far distances." I shrug looking out the window.
"Thank you." Steve says catching me off guard. I just stayed looking out the window waiting for us to arrive.