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two.

WASHINGTON D.C.
2014

"NICE car you've got here," June remarked with authentic appraise as she stooped into the passengers' seat of Nat's gleaming black corvette, raising her eyebrows, grudgingly impressed. "Shield treats its favorites well."

Natasha clucked her tongue against her teeth. "Always about the money with you, huh?" There was a brief pause as the engine revved angrily, harshly disrupting the still, silent evening. Nat adjusted her rear-view mirror. "But thanks."

They eased into the street below June's apartment, the brilliant sun shrinking behind the clouds and thrusting long gray shadows over the skyscrapers and brownstone structures. The interior of the Stingray was muted and comfortable, sleek and expensive, leather seats cool and smooth beneath her thighs. June had changed hastily into more accommodating attire: jeans that hugged her legs, arms clad in a tan leather jacket, its many pockets holding her various badges and licenses, should a situation in which they were needed present itself. The jacket also played a pivotal role in concealing the handgun she had holstered upon her belt and twisted behind her back, an accessory that Natasha had insisted she take along.

As they drifted onto a main street, moving lackadaisically through the city, Natasha spoke up, "It's a good thing you live alone. It gets messy when family starts wanting explanations."

June scowled, smiling uneasily. "That felt like a personal dig, Romanoff."

"It wasn't," Natasha assured her. "I'm more of a loner, myself."

"Well," June's gaze became askance, her hands fidgeting uncomfortably. "I wouldn't exactly call myself a loner."

Traffic picked up, and Nat slowed the corvette. She stared on straight ahead, her feline eyes and flaming hair set aglow by the waning sunset. "Then why are you alone?"

June pressed her lips together, eyes falling to her lap as a pang of hurt gripped her core. "I don't know," she whispered. And she meant it. As brash as Natasha was, she caught the hollowness in June's suddenly soft voice, and did not press the subject. A few awkward moments passed, June having lost the desire to converse.

"You ever met Captain America?" Natasha asked carefully after a while, as if their earlier conversation had never occurred. June's eyes lifted again, irises like ever-shifting kaleidoscopes. She forgot her sulking.

"No. Why?"

Natasha smirked frighteningly to herself. "Just a question." She tightened her grip around the steering wheel. "He's a real catch."

• • •

TO June's surprise, Natasha halted in the visitor's lot of a hospital. The day was over, and now all who drifted in and out of the sleek sliding doors were tired nurses and doctors ready to end their shifts, and caffeinated employees whose nights were just beginning.

"Is this Shield's new headquarters?" June asked, only partially joking.

"No," Natasha pushed open her door and swung a leg out of the corvette. "I'm just feeling a bit peckish."

June raised a resigned eyebrow, rightfully puzzled but somehow entertained at the agent's barefaced behavior. She climbed out from the Stingray and shuffled alongside Nat, hands buried in her pockets as the sterile air of the lobby chilled her, icy fingers dancing over her skin. Gazes lifted as they ventured deeper into the lobby, though no one seemed off-put by their entrance, which June supposed was all they could hope for.

A kind-looking nurse approached them tentatively. "Can I help you with anything, ma'am?" She directed the question to Natasha, who considered the dark-eyed woman with cool regard and replied smoothly, "No, thank you. My sister and I are here to visit our grandfather. He's a real nice guy—World War Two veteran, actually. Struggling with dementia."

June gaped at Nat, dumbstruck at her seamless ability to create a persona out of nothing. Not entirely trusting herself to keep up the act, June kept her mouth shut and wore upon her face a pleasant and refined smile.

"Oh," the nurse tilted her head, clutching a clipboard against her breast. "Well, I hope his condition improves. How old is he?"

"Ninety-five," Natasha said promptly with feigned pride. Before the nurse could implore them any longer, she grabbed June's arm and tugged her through the first floor, leading her through a maze of decorative generic paintings and poor lighting. The hallways blended together, but June noticed eventually that the deeper Natasha lead her into the hospital, the shabbier the interior appeared. They halted finally in an operation corridor, fluorescent lights hanging above them and glowing dimly, a few straggling doctors filtering through, scribbling incomprehensible notes on various charts.

"This way," Natasha hummed, marching a way's further down the hall until she reached a vending machine. She fished a dollar bill out of her pocket.

"You like bubblegum?"

June shrugged. "Sure."

Natasha punched in the code, almost aggressively. A tense moment passed as the candy package was pushed over the edge, yet when it fell, June noticed immediately that the thunk  it emitted as it smacked against the bottom of the machine was much too heavy for a pack of gum. It sounded metallic, and very solid. As Natasha stooped down to snatch up her purchase, June's suspicions were fueled. Along with the bubblegum, she retrieved a flash drive, and swiftly clipped it to her belt, as if she feared it might be stolen away.

"What is that?" June asked, stepping forward.

Natasha straightened, pushed out a hip, and smiled tightly, tossing June the pack. "Bubblegum. I told you."

June wrinkled her nose. "No," she tore open the package and stuck a piece in her mouth. "The drive. What is it?"

"Imperative information that you're not cleared for."

"Well, if Shield is down, clearance levels don't exactly matter, do they?"

June did not receive an answer. Before Natasha could open her mouth, June was yanked back and dragged into a back room by a pair of unseen hands that gripped her arms with unescapable strength. She was spun around and thrust roughly into a wall, everything happening so instantaneously she could not think of fighting back, and she was pinned down before she could swing a single strike. A door slammed behind her and the attacker, their feet scuffling as one struggled to contain the flailing other.

"Who are you?" A man's voice asked, fierce and full of ire.

June struggled wildly. "Who are you?"

"Don't play dumb with me. What are you doing here? Where's the flash drive?"

She found herself looking wildly into a pair of blue eyes that seemed too soft to belong to the owner of such vexed prose. The man those blue eyes belonged to had a mop of sandy hair atop his head, disheveled by a jacket hood, which had fallen around his broad shoulders, and a stature so imposing and muscled June promptly realized who had her shoved against the wall.

"Captain Rogers?" She glowered up at him, shocked, incredulous, squirming beneath his painful hold, his hard body blocking her every twitch.

"I'm not gonna ask you agai—"

Someone clucked their tongue behind the two of them, mocking the display. "Steve, if this is how you go about introducing yourself, I can see why we haven't found you any dates." Natasha smirked infuriatingly as she leaned in the doorway, dancing between her fingers the very object Captain America was hunting for. "You're certainly not very charming."

June was suddenly released, and Steve Rogers leaped from her to Nat, swiping for the flash drive.

"Give it to me," he snapped.

Natasha held it out of his reach, taunting him. "Where did you get it?

"Why would I tell you?" Steve said this as if he'd never heard anything more preposterous in his life.

Even as he spoke, a sudden realization dawned over Nat's face, and suspicion flickered across her features. "Fury gave it to you. Why?"

Steve ignored her. "What's on it?"

Natasha stared right back. "I don't know."

Steve grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a sharp jolt. "Stop lying!"

"I only act like I know everything, Rogers!"

"Captain," June cut in, growing increasingly weary of being forgotten in the dark. She itched to know just what was going on, but it would be impossible to assess the circumstances if Steve continued to storm about throwing people around. "Could you step away from Miss Romanoff for a second?"

Steve's focus snapped to her, unnerved and bristling with frustration. "Who's this?" He asked shortly, glancing at Natasha and consciously moving back from her, looking a bit sheepish.

"My name's June Ivanski, I work with the FBI," she explained calmly, taking her badge from her pocket and letting him see her legitimacy. "Natasha asked me to help in her investigation of Shield's disruption."

"Oh," Steve nodded his head in realization, a hand going to the base of his neck in embarrassment. "Well . . . then, I'm sorry about all that. I guess I was out of line."

"Completely unorthodox," Natasha agreed.

"Hey," Steve spun back around, eyes suddenly snapping once again. "You're not looking so good, either. Stop ducking my questions. Did you know Fury hired those pirates?"

"I thought it made sense; the ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so did you . . ."

Steve stared at her with unsettling contempt, appearing as if he might grow angry again. Natasha, not intimidated in the slightest, took ready advantage of his silence.

"I know who killed Fury."

Steve froze, face slackening from rage to disbelief in a nanosecond. Even June found herself rattled by Nat's words, and she inched forward in sudden heed, her past incertitude melting away. Why had she not told me earlier?

"Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists," Natasha went on ominously, looking up at Steve beneath black crescents of eyelashes. "Those who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two-dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

The Winter Soldier. The name disturbed June, disturbed her profoundly, digging filthy nails beneath her skin, a profanity to her ears, blasphemy to her soul. The Winter Soldier. She knew that title, had heard that name long ago, somewhere in her blurred, distant past, uttered by a voice soaked in venom and evil and pursued by an abusive hand that held her down in squalor and subjected her to agonies no mortal spirit should have been able to endure. The Winter Soldier . . .

"So he's a ghost story," Steve muttered.

Natasha lifted her eyebrows pointedly, far from amusement. "Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, and someone shot out my tires. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me." Her tone was dry, spiked with the unpleasant memory, hateful humor strung loosely within it. Her fingers found the hem of her shirt, and she tugged it up to reveal a nasty, faded bullet scar indenting the edge of her stomach that wiped all resentment from Steve's face.

"A Slavic slag," Nat drawled. "No rifling. Bye-bye bikinis."

Despite himself, Steve gave a half-smile. "Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now."

"Has anyone tried to go after him before?" June asked in a slight strain, her head swimming from the buried recollection. Natasha pursed her rosy lips.

"I have. But it's a dead end," her feline gaze swept back to Steve. "Like you said, he's a ghost story." She held up the flash drive lazily, and Steve plucked it from her grasp.

"Well," he said, stepping back and glancing between the two women before him. "Let's find out what the ghost wants."

"I'm sure you two will do an excellent job," Natasha replied, straightening her hoodie and tucking a piece of blazing hair behind her ear. "Please hesitate to call—we're all undercover."

"What are you talking about?" June canvassed in ignorance, a skeptical eyebrow lifting accusingly. Steve pulled a face, just as nonplussed.

"I can't stick around. Something's come up. This one's on you two. If you run into a fix, you're posing as a couple. Disguise yourselves and lay low. All eyes are looking toward you, Steve, but they haven't noticed June. Yet."

"So you're just leaving us?"

"Essentially," Natasha didn't smile. "You're both grown-ups with combat training and field experience. The world's changing. If you can't handle this, you certainly can't handle what's coming."

And without even a goodbye, the fiery-haired Soviet spy turned on her heel and strode ardently down the hallway, leaving Steve and June staring after her, bemused and aggravated and at pitiful losses for words.

• • •

so as much as it probably looks like it, June will not simply be replacing Nat during this whole thing. She'll bring her own nuances and she and Steve will form their own relationship.
(lmao I beckon my sin shippers)

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