Chasing Shadows ;; Steve Rogers

fourteen.

When she woke up, she was in a hospital bed in what looked like a lab. Steve was beside her, holding her hand as he rested his head on her bed. He woke up from her movement. "Hi," he smiled at her.

It wasn't a dream. She had been afraid she had imagined it all and she would wake up in her cell. But it was real.

"You came for me," she said quietly.

"Of course we did," he said sadly, as if it pained him to hear the disbelief in her voice.

"Why?" she asked. Because she didn't understand and she needed to. He had told her he had feelings for her and she had rejected him. She wouldn't have been surprised if he left her there to rot afterwards. It just didn't make sense.

"Ana," he said, taking her hand again. "I know you don't trust us. I know you don't know how to let anyone in. They spent years making you think you were alone. But you're not. You matter. You matter to Natasha and Yelena. You matter to me. And I will always, always come for you."

She didn't know what to say. She wanted to believe him, to trust him. But he was right. There had been too many years of believing she was alone. She didn't know how to believe she wasn't. But his words, his actions, they proved it, didn't they? They had come for her. He had come for her. She hadn't been alone.

She took a deep breath, noticing it was easier to breathe now. She assumed it was the magic machine that had fixed Yelena after she had been shot. She looked at Steve questioningly. "How did you find me?"

"Your look alike," Steve said. "We put a tracker on her."

"But how did you know she wasn't me?" Ana asked. They barely knew her. She had been sure they would never be able to spot the difference. She was just as much a stranger to them as that woman.

"We um we figured it out," he answered vaguely.

"Steve, how did you know?" she asked again.

"She um she did things that gave her away," Steve said, again not quite answering the question.

Before she could ask him to elaborate, the lab door opened and Natasha, Yelena, Bucky and Bruce walked in. "You're awake!" Yelena exclaimed happily. "Finally. Took you enough time."

Natasha rolled her eyes before smiling at Ana. "How are you feeling?"

She saw Bucky stand back as the others came over to her, and she could guess his hesitation to crowd her like the others.

"Better," she said honestly. "I'm guessing this is the work of the miracle machine of Dr. Banner's that Yelena was talking about."

Bruce began clicking some buttons on a screen. "Just Bruce is fine, and it's not my machine. Dr. Helen Cho donated this one to us. But it looks like it did the job. Your injuries look healed."

"You were in it for hours," Yelena said. "Your injuries were very bad."

"Yeah, I can imagine," Ana said darkly. Natasha and Steve exchanged a look. They weren't sure if they wanted to press her on what had happened, though at some point they would have to. Ana noticed the quiet conversation between them and rolled her eyes. "You can ask me."

"We don't want to push you if you're not ready," Natasha said.

"I'm not some delicate flower, Natasha," Ana rolled her eyes again. "I'm not going to break."

But that wasn't true, was it? Leviathan had broken her once again. If they hadn't saved her, who knows what Leviathan would have done to her? And she would have let them. But Natasha didn't need to know that. She saw Bucky raise an eyebrow at that, but kept his silence. Of them all, she knew he knew she was lying. He had seen it firsthand.