Road to War Part II: Yes, Anastasia

We'll see how brave you are, we'll see how you'll be running

The news of the Avengers eventually died down, and she was able to go back to work like she always had.  Things had changed, certainly; people who had previously been unaware of SHIELD were now interested in what they were doing.  She was recognized occasionally, though knew what it took to blend in.  Her red hair was a problem and she dyed it for a while before going back.  After what she had gone through in her youth, it seemed very daring to let her vanity potentially blow her covers, but it was a good kind of rebellion.  It wasn't a problem, at any rate, and most of her missions didn't rely so much on pretending to be someone else.

Whether or not it was a PR move, Fury liked to have Avengers go on missions together.  Since Tony was always doing his own thing, Thor was who knew where, and Bruce didn't want to be the other guy, that meant she spent a lot of time with Steve and Clint.  Steve was certainly recognizable, well-known.  So any mission with him was not going to require covert ops, even if he did prefer a more subdued suit than the stars and stripes.

In the two years since he was unfrozen, Steve had made great strides.  He had learned to hone his strength into something ruthlessly efficient (though perhaps the lesson was not quite as well-learned for him as for his best friend), and he had started dressing like most other people his age.  Maybe a little old-fashioned, sure, but not so obviously.  He moved up in SHIELD and worked well for them, despite the fact that he didn't like how Fury ran things.  He was still a soldier, not a spy, and probably always would be.

She rarely went on solo missions anymore, but Steve always made sure she had some freedom to do her own thing.  She appreciated that.  It wasn't that she didn't like working with a team, just that she's always felt more comfortable if there weren't any variables introduced on her side of the op.   There would be enough unpredictability coming from places she couldn't control.  So Steve let her handle parts of the missions using her own discretion, and that was why she continued to work with him.

Clint was always a great partner, and she had gone on missions with him since she had first come to SHIELD.  They worked in sync almost perfectly, requiring little verbal communication.  In the field, being able to be on the same page as your team was integral to success.  Fury had seen, early on, that she and Clint could communicate that way, despite their differences in how they approached most things.  When it came to the job, they were the same.  Being stuck under cover with him for extended periods of time was not her favorite (how Laura could handle it was a mystery), but she did enjoy his company regardless of their situation.

She can't help but wonder if she might have made a different decision if she had been with Clint instead of Steve when the truth about SHIELD came out.  Clint had been undercover; the news had been a shock for him, of course, but he was as adaptable as she was.  Not that they would have gone over to HYDRA, but perhaps destroying everything and starting over wasn't what they would have chosen.  Steve always saw the world in binary terms, everything was black and white.  That was an idealistic approach to life, one which she had never considered accurate.  Seeing Steve use it, though, made her think that perhaps it was a valid viewpoint after all.

When her mission on the Lemurian Star was not transparent, not known to Steve, he had been upset enough to talk to Fury about it.  She had tried to play it off to him in the field, but she felt bad when it was because of her that Batroc escaped.  It was sloppy, and she knew that Steve would have changed the op if he had known of her side assignment.  Still, Fury was keeping things close to the chest (for good reason), so she knew better than to share with anyone what she was doing.  Not with Clint or Steve or Maria.  As one of Fury's most trusted agents, she was aware that she was the sole confidant of his on any number of missions.  Perhaps between Maria and herself they knew everything, but she wouldn't be surprised if there were things neither of them knew.