The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 21

London, England

Spring 2016

It was dusty, dingy and small and Nadine could positively feel the neglect haunting the little apartment clinging to her skin and clothes like a film. Or rather, the little flat, she reminded herself, considering they were in Britain; old habits of assimilation died hard. It had taken a conscious effort not to adopt a distinctly British cadence to her accent upon finding herself in London, the impulse to blend in still deeply ingrained.

Flat or apartment, terminology was beside the point. More importantly, the flat was empty. Nadine withheld a heavy sigh as she paced cautiously across the living space toward the little kitchen, her keen eyes carefully taking in every detail from the lifting, water-stained floorboards to the missing finial on the curtain rod above the window behind the moth-eaten, formerly green couch. A puff of dust was disturbed with each step of her deceptively functional black boots.

It was painfully obvious the flat was as defunct as a safehouse got and that it hadn't been used in years. Decades, even.

They were very clearly the first people to so much as step foot in this flat in a very long time.

Barnes wasn't here.

He never had been. Not even in passing. The dust and grime and stillness of the safehouse had been left undisturbed for far too long.

She fought against the way her breath tried to hitch in her chest.

It was another dead end. Just like the other two sites Nat and Sam had investigated. Exhaling slowly, she bowed her head for a moment, enforcing her composure. She'd known it was a long shot that Barnes would've even stopped over at this safehouse as compared to the others. He'd shown little inclination in what movements of his she had been able to discern to come so far north. But, it had fit her and Natasha's meticulous compilation of criteria perfectly, so they had decided to leave it on the list just in case.

Better safe than sorry, and all that.

Still, even having known it was unlikely he'd be here—she'd even said as much to Natasha—she had still hoped...

After all, there had been a chance.

"So you and Steve, huh?" Though it was said quietly enough, in the cloying stillness of the neglected flat, Sam's voice felt like a shout. Nadine tensed before she could help herself. Immediately, she was scolding herself for the reaction even as she glanced to the former paratrooper with an instinctively indifferent look. His open features gave surprisingly little away as he met her eye.

"And what's that supposed to mean," she prompted, attempting to sound disinterested as she looked away to step further into the flat. Troublingly, she wasn't entirely sure how successful she was.

"You heard me," he said, a hint of a chuckle in his voice and the trace of a cheeky grin on his lips. "C'mon, now, Ryker. Don't think I didn't see the way you two were holding hands during the service." She fixed him with another look, this one intended to make the point that she was neither convinced nor impressed.

"Holding hands, Sam?" she chided lightly. "What are you, twelve? It was his old girlfriend's funeral; the woman he's still in love with. You're reading too much into a simple gesture of support. I'd have done the same thing for you had you been in Steve's place," she dismissed with a careful measure of casual indifference. Yet, she could feel him watching her with skepticism. She absently brushed at the dust clinging to the sleeve of her jacket, the rich chocolate leather already seeming dulled just from walking through the abandoned apartment.

"Maybe," he ceded, "but after a moment we both would've let go. He didn't let go of you until the end of the service, when he had to get up at the end," Sam pointed out, his tone a curious mix of gentle teasing and subtle prompting. "And neither did you."