Steve was taking the North with his team, and you were directed to the South with yours. Normally the two of you worked as a pair and had done so for every mission since you joined the Avengers a few years ago, so the feeling of running in opposite directions felt foreign and admittedly scary to you.

"Get your ass back here safe, understand?"

"You first," he smiled, snapping the chin strap of his helmet together and raising his arm to summon the shield with a solid snap against the magnets imbedded in his sleeve.

"You can't just say 'you first' when I'm the one who actually said it first, Rogers. But I meant it. No funny business, just get the job done and come back in one piece," you commanded with a sharp poke of the silver star covering the chest of his uniform. "It's movie night and you know I hate it when you make me wait."

"Yes, ma'am," he saluted coyly, reluctantly turning away to join his team and leaving you to gather yours.

Looking back one last time before leaving, you saw that he was feeling as nervous as you were, but neither of you could let that affect your mission or the job at hand. It was easy to say to yourselves, but much harder to actually do, each of you wondering if you would ever see your best friend again.

~~~

"thirteen...fourteen...fifteen. Okay, everyone's accounted for on my team," you said with a long sigh of relief, standing in the center of the med bay of the helicarrier and watching half of your group getting patched up after a vicious fight. "Hey, Maria? Has Steve's group checked in yet?"

"Not sure. Nick is in charge of the North teams...hey, you're bleeding, (Y/N)." She took a few long strides to stand next to you and push you towards a nearby gurney, practically lifting you onto it despite your resistance to her help. "Didn't you realize that you were making a pool of blood on the floor?"

"Tis but a scratch. It's just a flesh wound," you joked, but quickly grew serious when she didn't laugh in return. "Monty Python? No? Okay," you coughed quietly, "um, no, I didn't realize that I was making such a mess, sorry." You watched her summon one of the nurses over to tend to your wound, but once Maria left your side you continued to look for Steve, or at least for Nick to tell you if he had heard anything.

"Sam!" you whispered harshly, doing your best to not disrupt the patients around you, throwing your pen at him to get his attention when he didn't immediately reply. "Sam, have you heard from Cap?"

"Ow, hey," he snapped, grabbing the pen and throwing it back at you with a quick flip of his wrist, "you don't have to throw things, (Y/N). I can hear you."

"Have you heard from Steve?"

"No, I haven't. Now let me get my stitches in peace," he groaned, closing his eyes again and turning away to ignore you. "I wouldn't have to get stitches if I got to be on Cap's team..." he grumbled quietly, but not quietly enough to escape you.

"I could give you a few more?"

"No, ma'am, sorry," he conceded with his hands raised in deference, "my bad. You are an excellent commander and the stitches were my completely fault. Your leadership is second only to Captain Rogers and I should never question your authority."

"Quality save," you sighed, lowering yourself onto to the pillow and resolving that the search for your friend would have to wait just a bit longer.

~~~

"Has anyone seen (Y/N)?" Steve asked frantically, bruised and beaten, moving from agent to agent to check their rosters of teams that had arrived from the mission. "Has her team checked in?"

"I'm not sure, Captain," one of the nameless agents replied with his tablet in hand. "Agent Hill is in charge of the South teams. Woah, you're bleeding pretty bad there, sir."

Without a care to what the agent had said, Steve grabbed the list from his hand and swiped his thumb frantically over the screen, seeing name after name pass by but not seeing yours amongst those who had been accounted for. He shoved the tablet back at the agent with a growl, knocking the man off of his footing under the force. "Where's Hill?" he demanded.

"I think she's on the bridge, sir."

"Bridge," he mumbled, laying his shield against the bulkhead without a thought and making his way through the narrow hallways to the elevator. He tripped over his feet a few times in his haste, stopping to take a deep breath and re-center himself, wiping a line of blood from his cheek. "She's here," he whispered to himself anxiously, "she has to be here by now." He felt the helicarrier begin to shift its position and recognized the rush of the engines as they powered up to leave the area. "She has to be here," he repeated, not realizing that his grip on the elevator railing was leaving a dent in the metal.

When the doors finally opened after the eternity it took to rise only six floors, Steve bounded out and straight to Nick at the command center, paying no care to the fact that he was in the midst of giving directions to his own crew.

"Did (Y/N) check in? Is Hill here? Why are we leaving?"

"Hello to you too, Cap," Nick greeted with a complacent smile, turning back to the view ahead. "We're leaving because the mission is completed. I don't know if (Y/N)'s team checked in, but I assumed that they did when I was given the clear to leave. Hill is in the med bay."

"Med bay," Steve nodded, returning to the lift to continue his frustrating search for you. All he wanted to know is if you made it back, and it pissed him off to no end that he was having this much trouble finding out.

~~~

Once Maria was content that you had been stitched and bandaged to her liking, you set off to find Steve once and for all, with Sam reluctantly following. You had looked in his quarters, the hangar bay, the flight deck, and now were heading for the lab to talk to Tony as the last place you could think to find him.

"(Y/N)? What the hell happened to you?" Tony asked with a quick step to meet you at the door and taking your hand. "That looks terrible."

"I'm fine," you said with a swat to his hands, "have you seen Steve?"

"Girl's obsessed with finding him, so please tell me that you know where he is," Sam sighed and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. "I just wanna take a nap."

"Sorry, kid, I haven't seen him."

"What if something happened? Maybe they just aren't telling me."

"I'm sure he's here somewhere. There's no way that Fury would move this tin can without Rogers on it, right?" Tony paused and looked at your wound again, your pants leg shredded around it where the nurse had cut the material away. "Seriously, (Y/N), I don't think you should be walking on that."

"Already told her that," Sam groaned quietly, his eyes now closed while the wall held him upright.

"Then at least take a break for a minute," Tony tried again.

"She won't."

"I could carry you?"

"Duck."

"What?" Tony asked, albeit a bit too late when your hand connected with the back of his head. "Ow, dammit! Okay! Okay, I get it! You're fine!"

The three of you stopped your bickering, your attention caught by an overhead announcement that the carrier had arrived back to headquarters and to prepare to disembark. Sam pushed away from the wall and closed the gap between you, taking your arm in his hand with a gentleness that you weren't expecting. "I'm sure he's here, and he's okay. We would've heard by now if he wasn't."

"Yeah," you nodded hesitantly, "yeah, you're probably right. I'm just gonna take one last sweep through. If you find him, hold him down if you have to until I can get there."

~~~

Steve was on the first plane to come down to land from the carrier, scurrying out to stand ready to watch each plane empty until he could see you and know that you were okay. With each plane that released agents and his fellow teammates, and with each passing minute with no sight of you, he grew more anxious and fearful that you weren't going to be there. He talked himself into the idea that you were dead and they were keeping the information from him on purpose. When the final plane landed, he held his breath as he watched the door open, exhaling with a pained and shaking breath at the sight of you; his knees nearly buckled beneath him when he moved towards you, but before he got more than a few steps away, you had leapt into his ready arms.

"You're late. I thought you were dead," he panted, his face nuzzled into your neck. "I couldn't find you."

"You're the one who's late. I couldn't find you," you replied tearfully with a tight grip around him. "I don't ever want to be apart like that again. I was so worried."

"So was I," he agreed, and suddenly his lips were pressed to yours with so much desperation that you almost couldn't breathe, but you welcomed it. You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him in closer, deepening the kiss and feeling the tears that had rolled down his cheeks mixing with your own. It was completely unexpected, but it made complete sense.

"It's about damn time you two figured this out," Sam grumbled, rubbing his fatigued eyes as he stopped next to you, interrupting the moment and breaking the two of you apart. "I've only been trying to tell you thickheads for months, but noooo, nobody listens to me."

"I never heard him say anything, did you?"

"No," Steve smirked, "not a word."

"Whatever, man. I know what I know," Sam waved indifferently and made his way to the door.

Steve turned back and looked at you with a wide grin, rubbing his thumb over your cheek to dry the remnants of your tears away. "I know that I'll never tell him that he was right. We'll never live that down."

"Hey, Wilson!" Tony called out from behind you, jolting you to attention at the volume and excitement in his voice. "What is it that Cap thinks you're so right about?" Steve groaned and reached around you to try to grab the edge of Tony's shirt as he breezed past, but the material slipped just through the tips of his fingers before he could fully connect.

"Stark," he hissed through clenched teeth, releasing you to follow him. "Tony, don't you dare."

Tony laughed out loud, scurrying to stand behind Sam, who was now more than eager to listen to what Steve had to say and dodging the Captain's hands to keep him from reaching the man hiding behind him. "Let the man speak, Steve."

"I said you were right," Steve spat out quickly before Tony could say any more. "We heard you try to tell us, but we didn't believe it, and you were right. There."

"Well that just sucked all of the fun out of it," Tony sulked away, upset that Steve had stolen the moment from him. Steve stood steady and waited to hear what punishment that Sam would choose, but it never came. Sam simply smiled with a great satisfaction, leaning to the side around Steve to be sure that you saw it too, then turned and left the room without another word.

"That wasn't so bad?" you offered, moving to stand behind him.

"Doll, it couldn't be worse," he sighed, "he's gonna make this torture for us." He turned back to you to wrap his arms around you again, looking down with a gentle smile. "But I'm ready to make it worth every second."