The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 64

Upstate New York, USA

Late Spring 2015

Whatever it was that had passed between them during their brief conversation, it had proven a critical step to clearing the air between Steve and Nadine. And after that odd, subtle exchange of understanding the other day, things had shifted again just as it had after she'd opened up about her past with Barnes back on the Helicarrier.

She was beginning to feel, well...not exactly comfortable around the Captain, but close. As soon as her secret had come out followed by the subsequent inevitable conversation, Nadine had felt compelled to revert back to wearing her instinctive unreadable, professional persona again, instinctively keeping her feelings and her reactions to herself. Especially around Rogers. But after that conversation as they'd both stood watching over Nina, she found her defences beginning to slip again as they had at the Barton homestead. And once she realized she was doing it, the more she realized that she was okay with it, that she actually enjoyed the feeling of not having to school every minute expression or carefully police her tone or her words.

In barely a week between when she'd first sought out the Avengers and the disastrous Seoul flight, she'd started to enjoy not having to maintain control of herself nearly every second. That not only had she not felt the need to, but that she'd begun to enjoy letting her guard down around the Avengers. She hadn't even entirely realized she'd been doing it at first, and once she had? Well, it was only after Seoul and Novi Grad that she realized just how liberating it had felt...and that she missed it.

Really, she was beginning to suspect that Nina's improving feelings—and even Rogers' shifting behaviour—were related in part to her own loosening hold over the projected reserve and impassivity she'd been hiding behind for most of her life.

Well, if that was what it took, Nadine wasn't about to object or complain. It felt good to do it, and not just because it was apparently having an effect on healing the damage her secrets had done.

That wasn't to say it wasn't difficult. It was not coming easily, and there were definitely times where it felt like it was far too difficult to override her long-ingrained instincts to hide away behind the masks the Red Room had forced her to develop. Those days people gave her a wide berth in the halls if she was out and about. But that didn't bother her. Part of her was still adamant on keeping herself closed off, after all. It was safe and it was familiar to hide herself away.

Opening herself up to others was very much not.

In that Natasha was an invaluable ally. Having gone through the process of retraining herself to open up around others, especially those she cared about, her patience and encouragement had thus far kept Nadine from regressing too much whenever her Red Room training tried to reassert itself. Not to mention how effective Natasha's periodic bouts of her self-proclaimed tough love had proven. Her sister certainly wasn't afraid to tell it like it was, that was for sure. More than once she'd pointed out when Nadine was reverting, not letting up until she'd dropped her mask and shared what she was really thinking. Just the week before, Natasha had let her have it when Nadine had effectively gone cold, as her sister had put it, at one of Stark's quips about needing to bring in a babysitter with 'all the kids running around,' shutting him down with a cool comment about her daughter being none of his concern and certainly not a child anymore.

"It was a joke, Nadine," Natasha had seethed, "and you know it. You know he knows what happened to her, right down to her fighting back. And after knowing she'd been kidnapped? After Sokovia? Hell, after the HYDRA fiasco with S.H.I.E.L.D.? After seeing this place? You know Stark wouldn't even consider bringing anyone in to work with Nina or the Twins without vetting them in every way known to man. He's almost as paranoid as I am, as you are!