What If...? Rumlow Turned Against Hydra: Book One

6

As Steve Rogers left the hospital with Rumlow and the STRIKE team, Natasha Romanov stayed behind. Her face was blank, her manner calm, collected and focused which she was, but inside there was a part of her that was reeling as a result of Nick Fury's death. The one person who had been so far beyond normal competence, even in SHIELD, that no one should have been able to successfully target him. The person who had managed to get a disparate group of superheroes, assassins, along with a Hulk to actually work together to do some good. The person who had seen something in her, rather than have her killed for what she had done and who she had been, had instead brought her into SHIELD to give her a second chance. Her shock and grief wouldn't interfere with her ability to focus on what she saw as the job at hand, but it was there. It was strong enough she took a moment to compose herself fully before she walked back to where she'd last seen Steve.

Natasha was very aware that something was wrong. She had no idea exactly what was going on, other than SHIELD was no longer to be trusted. The mission prior to Fury's death, on the Lemurian Star had been odd as well, as had Fury's orders to retrieve as much information as she could from the ship. He had known something was wrong, something big enough that he'd been killed for it. She suspected he'd been killed before even he could figure it out, or tell anyone, but she knew he would have left breadcrumbs. Since there weren't any obvious breadcrumbs she could find, it made sense that Steve had been chosen as the most trustworthy person Fury knew.

That idea might have stung someone else, but Natasha wasn't sensitive. Steve was the logical choice to trust in that situation, when no one else could be trusted. She herself trusted him to do the right thing. As she looked around the hallway where she'd last talked with him, she allowed herself a small smile. He was trustworthy, but he was not great at anything covert, it just wasn't in his nature. A few minutes and just over three dollars later she had too many packs of gum along with the thumb drive she'd taken from the Lemurian Star. It would have seemed like a great hiding place for Steve, but to her it was obvious. She was relieved she had been the one to retrieve it.

After that, she'd waited, as unobtrusively as she could, avoiding anyone that seemed as if they were in any way attached to SHIELD. She monitored communications from SHIELD, as much as she could remotely, unwilling to leave the hospital when she was sure Steve would be back for the thumb drive. Hours went by, longer than it should have been for him to return as the chatter from SHIELD remained calm, no indication of any problems. By her estimation there should have been problems, the situation wouldn't have been so quiet with Steve there. He wasn't an undercover operative, but he knew there was something wrong, and he wouldn't stand by and allow things to continue like that. Natasha used simple logic to get to the conclusion that she'd already reached by the ice-cold sensation radiating from every nerve ending along her spinal cord: something had happened to Steve Rogers.

In no hurry, outwardly at least, she'd finally left the hospital after dark, unsure of where to go or who to contact. It wasn't simply a matter of who to trust, though that was a major consideration, it was also who she could potentially be putting in danger. She knew who had killed Fury, it was someone she'd tried to track herself and had been not only unsuccessful, she hadn't even gotten close. Having been in the crosshairs of that particular assassin herself, knowing she couldn't track him, she was incredibly wary of setting the Winter Soldier on someone else's trail. She considered contacting Clint Barton, but he was with his family, he had been off and on since being put under mind control by Loki. She didn't want to drag him into a mess that had every likelihood of getting him killed. She couldn't do that to him or his family.

Natasha had to avoid the Triskelion; she had no idea who to trust there. If she went back to SHIELD headquarters there was a strong possibility she would put herself in a potential trap that she may not be able to fight her way free of. She had to find Steve but had no place to begin. The task was formidable, made more so by the small voice in the back of her mind that whispered to her he could already be dead. Fury's death had been bad enough, the idea of Steve being killed was more than she wanted to think about. Without leads, she made her way to Steve's apartment, slipping in without difficulty through the secure exterior doors. The floor he lived on was still under an evacuation order in light of what had happened less than twenty-four hours earlier. The apartment was unlocked, allowing her to enter and as she automatically locked the door behind her, she stared at the mess in what had been a very tidy space. War had followed Captain America home.