The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 25

Vienna, Austria

Spring 2016

It was actually quite a nice little cafe. Really, it reminded Nadine a bit of the one she and Nina used to go to when they'd lived in Vienna. The latte sitting in front of her was even almost as good.

Really, it was entirely possible that it was every bit as good, if she was being honest. There were just too many external factors tainting the experience, she supposed.

First was that Nina wasn't here to enjoy it with her...she was safe in Cambridge, thank God. They had been texting sporadically since the news had broken about Vienna, and it was a weight on her chest to realize her daughter was shaken enough that she could read it in her anxious messages. Though, some of it had thankfully eased when Nadine and Nina both had heard from Natasha. But seemingly reassured or not, a large part of Nadine wished she was home, so that she could pull her little girl close and reassure her...and herself.

Especially after the scare with Natasha. Nadine wanted to just hold her sister close too, come to think of it. To reassure herself in person that Natasha was safe and unhurt by the attack. She said she was okay and she had assured Nadine she would call again once she knew more. But that didn't assuage Nadine's worry for her little sister entirely. Capable and resilient as she knew Natasha to be, she did still worry, after all. People had died in that blast. People Natasha had been in the same room with. It hadn't been an unreasonable fear, whether Nadine had been compartmentalising it away or not.

But Natasha was safe. So, no matter the lingering worry that likely wouldn't completely dissipate until she saw Natasha again in person, it was a worry that was much more manageable now.

Then there was the threat of Agent Carter acting on the revelation she was The Ghost gnawing away at the back of her mind...why had she thought it would be a good idea to reveal that? 

Because it was pragmatic. It was arguably for the same reason she had told Sam about her history with Barnes; Carter was going to figure it out eventually. And telling her willingly? Well, it would hopefully create a sense of loyalty, even if only on a small, unconscious level, since Nadine had offered the knowledge, the secret. It was a calculated risk, sure, but one that Nadine was reasonably sure would serve its purpose given what little she had learned about Sharon Carter. Whether people consciously knew it or not, most were conditioned to treat secrets shared in confidence as contracts of trust, contracts to keep. Since Nadine had 'given' Sharon her secret, she would likely hesitate before sharing it, especially with the strong personal code she suspected Peggy Carter had instilled in her great-niece. And Nadine wasn't one to pass up any manner of advantage.

Add in Sharon Carter's loyalty to Steve and the fact that she was already prepared to break the rules to help him? Nadine wasn't too proud to admit she was tapping into that too. After all, Sharon knew she was helping Steve find Bucky. So that was in her favor too, which helped keep her worries on that front at bay as well.

And then there was the sheer stress of not knowing what was going on with Barnes weighing in on her on top of everything else. She simply didn't know. She tapped at her phone, refining the algorithm she was using; she was fairly confident that she had narrowed her list of potential safehouses Barnes might be using to just two on her list—one in Belgrade and the other in Bucharest—and was now in the process of tapping into each city's CCTV so she could start running some facial recognition. One of the windows on her phone blinked and she knew she had Bucharest; another few taps and the facial recognition program she'd cloned from Stark's servers began its search for Barnes. Yet, she couldn't quite manage more than a grim flash of satisfaction.

Everything about what had supposedly happened in Vienna felt wrong. There was undoubtedly more to what was going on than seemed apparent. That much was obvious. And that was what was bothering Nadine. They simply didn't know enough. And she hated flying into a situation blind. Had he been coerced? Had his programming been activated? If that was the case, was it likely he would still be trapped by its influence when they caught up to him—because they would find him, Nadine affirmed to herself, pushing aside her doubts—or will he have already managed to break himself free of its hold? It was a potentially deadly bit of intel not to have. There was no telling how Barnes' programming would manifest if he was still caught in its hold when they found him.