It only took Adrienne a quarter of a second to grab the gun hidden in the waistband of her pants and aim it straight at her visitors head. Then, her entire body went numb. Time suddenly passed by slowly and she felt every beat of her heart pounding against her chest. It wasn't that she was scared, she just wasn't prepared for such a sight in her living room. Each second seemed to last an eternity as she glared at his face and suddenly, she was a seventeen-year-old kid back in Brooklyn.

"Steve," she breathed out shakily, carefully pulling her gun away from his face. "Oh my–"

His face was just as surprised as hers, his blue eyes taking in her stronger figure and her shocked features. "You look different."

"How did you find me?" She quickly asked.

"That's a long story," he stepped towards her but she quickly raised her hands, balling them into fists. "I'm not your enemy Ally, you know me."

She turned, but too slowly for it to be normal. When she spoke her voice trailed off slowly, like her words were unwilling to take flight. There was a sadness in her eyes, the golden of her eyes too glossy to be anything else. "I'm not her anymore, I don't know you."

"Adrienne Redford right?" he asked. "And Angelica DeLuca, Natalie Daye, Ellis York and Paris Farrell. I tracked all your false identities, every single one since 1951."

"It's not easy coming up with a false identity Rogers," she kept her fists up, watching her surroundings in case more unwanted visitors decided to drop by. "I can't really do much if the world knows that Alchemy Jones is still running around."

Steve put down his shield and put his hands up. "I'm not here to cause any trouble Ally."

"Really?" she snapped. "Because it seems you went through hell just to find me."

"After I found out you were still alive, I had to find you." Steve told her, his voice weak. "They aren't stupid, at least Director Fury isn't, he knows that you've hacked the system and have all the files. He's been tracking you since 2012."

"Alchemy Jones died on a mission in 1951," Ally remained in her stance. "I'm not alive anymore Steve, not since I thought I lost you and–"

Steve flinched, his eyes darting to the ground. "Since you lost Bucky." The name came out of Steve so breathlessly it almost cut through her like a knife.

"I'm not clueless," Ally told him. "I know what you've done since you came out of the ice. Your work with the Avengers has been incredible and the world owes you their undying gratitude. But while you were saving the world, I was hiding from it."

"Why didn't you try and find me after I came out of the ice?" Steve finally asked, the burning question finally reaching the surface.

"I watched the world change. I saw the world develop new weapons and new enemies. I never had a constant and all the people I had met would eventually die." Steve frowned as Ally explained this to him. "I wanted to see you Steve, more than anything but I couldn't and in case you have forgotten, you pushed me out of a plane! I was trying to move on from all that."

"You were afraid."

Ally nodded her head shamefully. "I'm a different person now, I'm not the same Ally you grew up with."

"You've been through too much not to be," he put his hands on top of her fists and lowered them. "I wasn't expecting you to be the same."

"Why are you here?"

"Director Nick Fury– Fury had mentioned your name during a meeting between myself and him. I guess he saw something in my body expression and thought it was time I knew the truth," Steve's body was still tense, despite Ally lowering her guard. "I was mad when I found out he'd been keeping it from me for two years."

"Who else knows?"

"Just me and Fury. I guess he had enough respect and trust towards you to allow you to continue hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Forgive me for being so questioning," she apologized but not as sincerely as it came off as. "You can sit down you know Steve, it's not 1945, nobody is polite anymore." Steve looked down at the small cat rubbing his nose against his leg. Uncomfortably, he tried to push it away with his foot but the cat wouldn't budge. "That's Finch, he doesn't bite."

"I didn't think of you as a cat person," Steve muttered, shuffling towards the couch with Finch following after him. "No offence."

"I didn't think of you as someone who breaks into someone's apartment building," she kicked her legs up on the couch. "No offence."

"None taken," Steve gritted his teeth together. "Would you get this cat off of me?"

Ally called Finch over and he happily listened. Then there was a long, sticky silence. The silence gnawed at her insides. It hung in the air like the a gaping void, needing to be filled with sounds, words, anything. The silence was poisonous in its nothingness, cruelly underscoring how intense their conversation had been. "I had a son," Ally finally muttered. "His name was James Nicolaus-Steven Taker."

As Steve scanned Ally's face, he expected her to crumple, wail or dissolve into tears, but she did none of those things. "I know, I read about that."

"Quincy and I–" her throat tightened. "It happened slowly and softly. He understood that I would never stop loving...Bucky." she breathed out. "James was barely a year old when a couple of rogue HYDRA agents attacked them when I was out on a mission."

Steve's face fell quickly, his mouth hanging open with lips slightly parted and his eyes were as wide as they could stretch. "I read about that too," he told her. "I'm so sorry Ally."

"I know," she stopped him. "You'd think that after losing so many people, you'd just get used to it. It's been almost seventy years Steve and I can still smell the rain that fell on the day of my family's funeral. I can still remember his blue eyes and how he smelt of pine, dust and drugstore cologne," she shuddered. "I still feel my baby's tiny finger wrap around my thumb when he was first born."

"I don't know what to say Ally," Steve tried to swallow the lump in his throat. "Except for that I'm sorry– I'm sorry I wasn't there and what happened to you wasn't fair. You were my best friend Ally and seeing you after coming out of the ice– it might as well be one of the best things that happened so far."

Ally wiped her nose, looking up at Steve with glossy eyes. "I missed you so much," she leant into his side and he wrapped a protective arm over her. "I can't believe you're here."

Steve didn't say anything, he just basked in the moment he thought he'd never have ever again. She was still like everything he had remember but sadder– tougher...damaged.

—

"I'm not clueless," Ally told him. "I know what you've done since you came out of the ice. Your work with the Avengers has been incredible and the world owes you their undying gratitude. But while you were saving the world, I was hiding from it."