AMERICA'S POV

"First rule of going on the run is, don't run, walk," Natasha says this pointedly to me, as I can't seem to stay in one place or slow down.

We're all dressed as 'civilians' now. At this point, all three of us are easily recognized recognizable in any public place, even a mall. I pull my purple hoodie lower on my face, hoping the combination of the hood and my hair will cover the healing gash on my face. As a super-soldier, I do heal faster than average, but it's still going to take a few days.

"Sorry." We duck into a Mac store and choose a more remote side.

"The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up SHIELD will know exactly where we are," Natasha warns.

"How much time do we have?" Steve asks warily.

"Uh... about nine minutes from... now. Fury was right about that ship, somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands." She types something in, only to be overridden again.

"Can you override it?" Steve asks. I hold in a sigh. Steve is very smart, but he still has no idea how computers work.

Natasha shrugs. "The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly. I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."

"Can I help you guys with anything?" An Apple employee with a beard and glasses asks. Steve and I inconspicuously move in front of Natasha to shield her work.

"Oh, no," Natasha says sweetly from behind us. "I'm just helping my clients with some honeymoon destinations."

"Right!" Steve jumps in. He plasters on a smile and quickly puts an arm around my shoulder.

"Congratulations. Where are you guys thinking about going?"

I sneak a glance behind me. "Um... New Jersey."

"Oh." The employee stares intently at Steve long enough to make all three of us uncomfortable. What if we get recognized? "I have the exact same glasses."

I grin, nudging Steve. "You two are practically twins."

"Yeah, I wish. Specimen. Uh...if you guys need anything, I'm Aaron."

"Thank you," Steve says politely, just waiting for him to leave before turning to Natasha. "You said nine minutes, come on."

"Shhh, relax." She points to a signal on the computer coming from Wheaton, NJ. "You know it?"

A strang expression comes onto his face as he stares at the location. "I used to. Let's go." He pulls the flash drive out of the Mac and we all leave the store. It's easy to tell we're being followed. I see agents everywhere, and I duck my head. "Standard tac-team. Two behind, to across, two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro."

"Shut up and put your arm around me, laugh at something I said," Natasha orders.

"What?" Steve asks.

"Do it!" He does, and I pretend to laugh along, too. We get by without suspicion and step onto the escalator.

But they're on the other side.

Natasha spins around to face us. She addresses Steve. "Kiss her."

"What?" We ask at the same time.

"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable," she explains.

"Yeah, they do," I say defensively. Natasha groans, pulls Steve's head down, and kisses him. My eyes are probably bugging out of my sockets, but we get past Rumlow and the other agents.

"I apologize," she says, leading the way out. Steve, who is bright red, mouths sorry and takes my hand before following.

A while later, we're in a car on the way to New Jersey. Natasha pokes her head into the front, because I didn't let her take shotgun. I know I shouldn't be mad at her, but I am.

"Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?" She asks, smirking.

"Nazi Germany," he answers before addressing me. "And we're borrowing. Take your feet off of the dash."

"How do you expect us to return it?" I ask, but I still move my feet. "What do we say? 'Sorry, we were on the run from SHIELD and needed your car, but we're actually great people'?"

He rolls his eyes. "We could just put it back," Natasha suggests. "Or lie."

"What, like you?" Steve asks. I don't think he means to be harsh, but his tone is a little jarring.

"I don't know. The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I."

"That's a tough way to live," he says.

"It's a good way not to die, though," I point out.

"You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is," Steve tells Natasha.

She smiles. "Yeah? Who do you want me to be?"

"How about a friend?"

She chuckles softly. "Well, there's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers."

Eventually, we pull up to a building. I recognize it as an abandoned military base of some kind. Steve steps out of the car first and glances around. "This is it."

"The file came from these coordinates," Natasha says. She seems perfectly comfortable here, but then again, she's an actress, and she's good at what she did.

"So did I." I realize what he must mean but he elaborates anyway. "This camp is where I was trained."

"Changed much?"

"A bit."

Natasha starts wandering around looking for who-knows-what. I turn to Steve, who seems completely lost in thought. Or memory. Jealousy surges through me, just because he has those memories. Anything I am is what I made up. I criticize Natasha for being a liar, but I might be the biggest one here. America is not my real name. I didn't acquire my powers through good deeds. I came from a damned lab where they forced me to kill for over ten years. And whether he likes what he remembers, he can't deny how lucky he is to remember it at all. I want that so badly it hurts.

"This is a dead end. Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off." Natasha comes back over shaking her head. Steve walks towards a building, ignoring the two of us. Natasha and I exchange glances before following.

"Steve, what is it?" I ask.

"Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place." He breaks the lock with his shield and we all file into what looks like an office.

"This is SHIELD," Natasha murmurs, staring at the pictures on the wall.

My eyes find one in particular that looks familiar. "That's Tony's father."

"Howard," Steve supplies. His eyes fall on another picture. Peggy Carter. I'm not the only one who notices this.

"Who's the girl?" Natasha asks, but he doesn't reply. He just keeps walking. My gaze lingers on the photograph. Even in black and white, I can't help but think that she's so much prettier than I am.

"If you're already working in a secret office... Why do you need to hide the elevator?" He pushes the bookshelf aside to reveal said elevator. Something about this whole situation feels wrong, like we shouldn't be here. After a short ride in the elevator, we enter a pitch-black room. Slowly, lights flicker on one by one and illuminate a group of dated computers.

"This can't be the data-point, this technology is ancient," Natasha says, voicing my thoughts, but she still plugs the flash drive in and types something.

"Initiate system?"

"Y-E-S, spells yes." She smiles."Shall we play a game? It's from a movie that-"

"Yeah, she showed it to me," Steve cuts through, giving me a quick smile. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice an old camera moving.

"Steve," I whisper, pointing. An accented voice speaks from nowhere.

"Rogers, Steven. Born, 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born, 1984. Maximoff, Valeria Noelle. Born 1985."

Shock floods through me, and it's not because of his voice. It's what he said.

Valeria Noelle Maximoff.

That's me.

That's my name.

Steve and Natasha both stare at me, reaching the same conclusion I have. Steve's hand tightens around mine, willing me to remain calm, at least for now. And I understand why, so I do. But I might have finally found who I am.

"It's some kind of recording," Natasha whispers.

" I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am." A picture flashes on the screen. I don't recognize him, but I never recognize anyone. Steve does, though.

"You know this thing?"

"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years."

"First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body, my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain."

"How did you get here?" He asks.

"Invited."

"It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value," Natasha says quietly.

"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own."

"HYDRA died with the Red Skull," Steve says.

"Oh, Captain," Zola chuckles. "The woman standing next to you is living proof of how woefully wrong you are." I stiffen as he says this.

"That's not who I am anymore," I say bravely. It's a hologram. He can't hurt me.

"You will never fully escape. Cut off one head, two shall take its place."

"Prove it," Steve says coldly.

"Accessing archive." Videos of the Red Skull and the war play as he talks. "HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed."

"That's impossible. SHIELD would have stopped you," Natasha says, but she sounds unsure.

"Accidents will happen." Deaths begin to flash on the screen. Howard and Marie Stark, Fury. I stiffen when I see myself in a few of the shots, but at least I wasn't there when the Starks were killed. "HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your Life; a zero sum." Steve smashes the screen in anger, but the voice remains. "As I was saying..."

"What's on this drive?" I demand, voice trembling a bit. There's too much information for me to process right now.

"Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm."

"What kind of algorithm?" Natasha asks, stepping forward. "What does it do?"

"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it."

The doors quickly slide to close. Steve hurls his shield, but he's too late.

"Steve, America, we got a bogey. Short-range ballistic. 30 seconds tops." Natasha glances up from the device, terror in her eyes.

"What? Who's firing?" I ask, eyes wide.

"SHIELD."

Steve wrenches open a small opening in the ground as Zola says his last words. "I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain. Admit it, it's better this way. We're both of us...out of time."

We all jump in and Steve holds the shield over us. Explosions fill my ears, something burns my shoulder, and everything goes black.

"Mer. Mer. Mer, come on." My eyes flutter open to see Steve, surrounded by fire and debris, hovering above me. "Oh, thank God. We need to get out of here."

I push myself up. "Where's Nat?" My shoulder throbs, but I ignore it.

"Passed out. I'll carry her." He scoops her up. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" I mumble, sidestepping broken glass and flames.

"I have an idea."

WHAT DO YOU THINK?