FILE n°888 | SUBJECT RED
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star city mall
washington DC
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march 16th 2014
the same day, an hour later

The two adults and Sashka left the hospital shortly after. Natasha led them to the Star City Mall located at the center of the city so they could get new less suspicious clothes. Avoiding attention and security cameras, they decided to get new clothes in the clothes bins that were located in the warehouse under the mall. A lot of mall had these, Natasha had told Steve, much to his born-and-raised-in-the-1930s surprise, when clothes weren't in season anymore or had just stopped selling, some brands would dump these clothes in giant blue bins that would at the end of the year, towards Christmas, be donated to orphanages around the city.

Was it wrong to steal clothes destined to orphans? Definitely. Would Steve explain this to Natasha and Sashka? Absolutely not. Why? There's an easy question, how do you tell two ex assassins that stealing is bad? You don't.

"Men's section is over there." Natasha pointed to the bins near the parking entrance. "I'll take Sashka to the kids section and we'll circle back in ten."

Steve didn't have the choice to protest because he had so much as blinked and Sashka was being whisked off by Natasha.

"Okay, nice talk."

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Natasha felt like she was walking on eggshells around Sashka. For the first time in thirty years of knowing exactly what to say and how to say it, the woman didn't know how to start speaking to the baby that was torn from her arms almost twelve years ago. It felt like HYDRA was dangling Sashka in her grasp like a puppet only to rip her away as soon as they desired. She'd had many nightmare which started like this, she wasn't sure she was willing to endure another one. 

For the past twelve years, whenever she had dreamt ㅡ or had nightmare ㅡ about the little baby she had never pictured her looking so much like her. When she was pregnant, she dreamed of a little brown haired baby boy running wild in a prairie, laughing and smiling like he'd never been touched by the horrors the Red Room had to offer, with beautiful morning blue eyes and rosy cheeks. After her baby had been born and died the same day, the dreams turned to nightmares ㅡ nightmares of a little girl with long red hair covered in blood chasing her down one of the Red Room's many hallways crying and screaming at Natasha to come back and save her. A great deal of mandatory SHIELD therapy had helped her picture an entirely new face when thinking of her daughter ㅡ auburn ringlets, a cherub's face, prominent freckles along her nose and cheeks with big brown eyes James had mentioned were his sister Becca's.

In twelve years, she had never once pictured the girl that was in front of her. Yet it had taken all but one look for the part of her that was still a mother, buried and silenced, to know.

Meanwhile, just a few feet from her, Sashka didn't seem to be walking on eggshells around Natasha. Her sage green zip up hoodie had been zipped up all the way by Natasha and she had just grabbed a leather newsboy cap out of one of the bins and was now walking as normally as she could despite the slight ache in her step. If anyone were to come across the two of them they would think Sashka was a normal twelve year old who had maybe been pulled out of school early by her mother for some shopping. Minus the digging through donation bins perhaps. 

"Alright let's get you some pants." Natasha tried to lay a hand on Sashka's shoulder to get steer her towards the pants bin but the girl flinched at the sudden movement and the woman was quick to understand.

It hurt her that Sashka had dealt with the same things she had dealt with. If Natasha had had one hope when finding out she was pregnant was that her child would never have to know the horrors of the Red Room or HYDRA. And yet, here that little girl was walking besides her after dealing with years of abuse from both sides. Natasha hated to think that her own child had graduated the Red Room. It made her sick to her stomach to know that Sashka would never be able to have children of her own. Every year, Natasha dealt with a few young girls around the age of seventeen ㅡ the age she had been when she had had her baby and gone through the graduation process a month later ㅡ all of them looking way to young to deal with a fraction of what Natasha had been through at seventeen. The idea that Sashka was five years younger than she had been when going through the graduation ceremony made bile rise up in her throat.

"Hey, I know you've only known me for a day, but here at SHIELD we have one rule." She knew she had the girl's attention when she saw those big brilliant eyes looking right at her. She briefly wondered if that was a thing she had picked up from her father. It was this thing James used to do, he could never break eye contact when someone was talking to him. Especially Natasha.

She continued. "We don't hurt the people we save." She could feel the gears turning in that curious mind of hers as she look pensively at Natasha. Not expecting too much of it, Natasha turned around and started making her way to the bins where the pants were. It was only when she was halfway there that she felt the slight tug at her sleeve and realized that Sashka was holding on to her jacket sleeve.

She didn't say anything. Neither did Sashka. She stayed walking alongside the thirty year old with that small pale hand of hers holding the loose sleeve before they arrive at their destination. There Sashka's grip on Natasha loosened and she started digging through the bin. The mother suspected that that sudden burst of affection was due to her instable upbringing, if you could even call it that. When she had first arrived at SHIELD, Nick made her see a psychiatrist to evaluate if she was stable enough to work on the field. While she had never mentioned Sashka to said therapist, the doctor had told her that random bursts of affection were normal for someone that had been taught to forget how to feel their whole life. She had denied it at first, but started noticing small things. The way she would constantly feel the need to make Fury proud of her in every way, the cold stares towards Barton one minute and leaning her head on his shoulder the next. She highly suspected Sashka was prone to the same behaviour she displayed.

"Do you like this one?" She heard the small Russian voice of Sashka and turned around to see her holding a pair of black pants.

The woman let a small smile grace the corners of her mouth. "It looks nice. Here," She gave the twelve year old a white undershirt, making sure to be nice and slow so Sashka could still see her hands were empty of any threat. "Put this on with it."

The girl nodded and started unzipping her suit. Natasha was quick to jump in. "You don't change in front of people. You don't need to." Sashka seemed perplexed at the statement and Natasha swore in that moment that she wanted nothing more than to fly an aircraft to HYDRA and the Red Room and blow both places to smithereens.

"Why?" Her red brows furrowed in confusion. She looked like she was having trouble grasping the fact that a guard shouldn't be making her undress in front of him. A normal thing, given that that is all she was taught.

"Because you're the only one that can make decisions over your body." Natasha wanted nothing more than to erase all that training and everything Sashka had learnt in that horrible place. "No one else can decide for you."

This time, the twelve year old didn't flinch when Natasha put her palm flat between her shoulder blades and steered her to a the women's rest room.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

"First rule of going on the run is run, don't walk." Natasha muttered to Steve and Sashka. It had taken them fifteen minutes to change into new, normal clothes and five to get from the parking garage to the first floor of the mall.

Steve was wearing a grey shirt with a brown vest and a dark blue sports cap to hide his buzzcut. Natasha had Sashka pick out glasses for him to wear, making him look like a really big Star Wars fan on opening night at the movie theatre. Natasha hadn't taken much, only a grey stripped hoodie to hide her bright red hair from the back. Sashka looked so different, it was actually making Steve's head spin. Her bright red hair had been braided and tucked into her newsboy cap by Natasha, she had ditched the suit and was now wearing black pants that looked too wide on the bottom and the sage green hoodie that had been zipped up all the way.

"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off." Steve mimicked Natasha's tone and she thought he saw Sashka smile out of the corner of his eye but brushed it off.

They had to walk up three floor to reach the Apple Store where they had easy access to a computer, the only problem was that they had to take the emergency staircase and back entrance to avoid cameras. Now, the three of them were sandwiched together, hovering over a computer, Natasha typing away as fast as she could to make their time here as short as could possibly be made.

"The drive has a level Six homing program so as soon as we boot up, SHIELD will know exactly where we are." She explained to Steve and Sashka who both nodded.

Sashka leaned forwards to see the screen better and then bluntly asked. "What is Among Us?"

Natasha smirked but didn't answer.

"It's a game you play on your phone with you friends." Steve explained. Both women turned to look at him. Natasha looked pleasantly surprised, as if she only ever expected him to talk about what it felt like to be a frozen grandpa from the forties. "Impressive." She acknowledged.

"What?" Steve's tone was slightly defensive. "Piper showed me and forced me to play with her, Stark and Barton when it came out a few months ago."

"Did you win at least?" Natasha didn't even bother hiding the fact that she was openly making fun of him as she typed away on the computer.

"No," Steve avoided Sashka's surprised stare. "Stark voted me out."

"How much time do we have?" Sashka asked Natasha, seemingly now uninterested about Steve's loss in Among Us.

Natasha hummed for a second. "About nine minutes from," She took the disk out of her pocket and plugged it in. "Now."

Steve kept guard, looking anxiously around them for any customer that looked like a SHIELD agent in disguise. "Fury was right about that ship." The ex-assassin mused. "Somebody is trying to hide something."

Sashka slightly leaned forward so her elbows were against the table. Three filed opened up at once and her mouth dropped in awe, fascinated by what Natasha was doing. It only just occurred to Steve that Sashka had never seen computers like this in her life. He felt like he could sympathise with her on that one. Except he was a old army volunteer from the nineteen forties and Sashka was a child likely bread for combat in the early two thousands.

"It keeps re-writing itself to counter my commands." Steve leaned in behind their protégée to see what Natasha was talking about.

"Can you override it?" Steve asked.

Natasha looked frustrated for a second. "The person that developed this is slightly smarter than me." She paused and then repeated. "Slightly."

This time Sashka laughed.

"I'm gonna try running a tracer." By now, Sashka had joined Steve in looking for any hidden threats around the room, all while still keeping their cover. "This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we find out where it comes from."

Sashenka's head was spinning at all the funny new words she was learning. She wished her father had taught her more English at the facility.

"...dlya otslezhivaniya vredonosnykh programm." Natasha saw Sashka's confused face and translated in Russian. To track hostile malware.

Sashka's head sharply turned to the side where she heard approaching footsteps of someone. She reached for her gun, but Steve was quick to react and wrapped an arm around her bringing her against his chest and grabbing the gun out of Sashka's pocket and placing it in his. "Confiscated." He whispered.

"Can I help you guys with anything?" A man with long blond hair and a thick beard, wearing a blue employee store shirt and a badge asked.

It took less than a second for Natasha to turn around and flash a big toothy smile to the employee. "Oh no," She chuckled. "My fiancé was just helping me with my honeymoon destinations and my daughter is tagging along for fun." She brought a hand to rest on Steve's shoulder and the other on Sashka's and squeezed both of them affectionately. It took everything in the twelve year old not to melt into the woman's touch.

"Right," Steve seemed slightly off guard. "We're getting married."

The man smiled, clearly making himself comfortable. "Congratulations. Where are you thinking about going?"

Steve's mind seemed to go blank for a second as he leaned over and subtly glanced at the computer. "New Jersey." He said finally. He nodded twice as if confirming his alibi to himself.

The employee's mouth suddenly fell open slightly and Sashka started to reach for the gun in Steve's pocket. Steve noticed and intercepted Sashka's hand giving it a squeeze. "Confiscated." He repeated.

"What's confiscated?" The man asked smiling at Sashka's brooding face.

"Phone.", "Toy." The two answered at the same time. The man looked perplexed.

"Toy Phone." Steve elaborated. Sashka nodded.

"Stepdads," The employee gave Sashka a smile and a shrug. "Am I right?" He looked at Steve apologetically. "No offense to you of course."

"None taken." The blond replied.

"Oh right! That's what I wanted to say!" The man slapped his forehead with a laugh. "I have the exact same glasses as you." Steve looked shock.

"Wow, you two are practically twins." Natasha drawled out sarcastically from where she was typing away.

"Yeah," The employee chuckled. "I wish."

After calling Steve a specimen, which sent Sashka into a small fit of giggles, the man they learned was named Aaron left them.

"You said nine minutes. Come on." Steve started putting more pressure on Natasha to get them out of here on time.

"Relax." Nat's voice was as calm as she'd ever sounded. "Take example on Sashka." He turned to the computer next to him, where Sashka was playing Among Us with a Japanese little boy. The boy must have been maybe eleven and he thought he heard him tell Sashka his name was Akito. He wasn't going to lie to himself, watching a young boy teach a child assassin how to play a video game was perhaps the most endearing thing Steve had seen all week.

"Got it." Natasha's triumphant voice made him turn away from the scene. Seeing the location on the map did something to Steve. He leaned forwards to take a closer look. "You know it?" Nat asked.

"I used to. Let's go."

Sashka made her goodbyes to her new, and probably first friend who's mother kissed her on the head and told her she could come by their house to play with her new friend if she was ever in town.

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"Standard Tac team." Steve whispered to Natasha.

"Two behind, two across." Sashka filled in, readjusting the bracelet her Japanese friend had given her on her wrist. It was quite simple, brown with small beads. "Two coming for us."

Steve turned around one last time. "If they make us, I'll engage. You and Sashka hit the south escalator to the metro."

"Shut up and put your arm around me." Natasha ordered. "Laugh at something Sashka said."

"What?" Steve questioned.

"Do it." He obliged and when the two SHIELD operators crossed their way, they ducked their heads slightly and Steve and Natasha laughed discretely at something Sashka supposedly said.

They fast-walked to the south elevator and Natasha went first, Sashka second, and Steve closed the mark. They didn't make it far, because Sashka suddenly turned towards Nat and whispered. "Rumlow." The man was currently going up on the escalator right besides theirs.

"I know." She turned towards Steve. "Kiss me."

The man looked at her like she had just lost her mind. She elaborated quickly. "Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable."

Steve agreed. "Yes, they do." Natasha wasted no time, and standing on the tip of her toes, she pressed her lips against Steve's, catching him mid sentence and causing Sashka to be caught in the middle of their exchange.

The girl looked away in embarrassment. What were they doing? Such things had never occurred at the Red Room or in Siberia, only a few times she had seen people doing that and every time it was on missions with her Papa. She always looked away, but her Papa usually found himself looking longer than he probably wanted, looking envious, which in turn made Sashka wonder if he was imagining himself kissing whoever was her Mama one last time.

Natasha pulled away from Steve and Sashka coughed a few times. "You still uncomfortable?" The thirty year old redhead asked the super soldier as she walked down the escalator stairs.

"That's not exactly the word I would use."

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

"Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?" Natasha asked the super soldier who was currently driving their stolen vehicle.

After the whole mall fiasco, Steve had lead the girls into stealing a car at the nearest parking lot so they could get safe transport to New Jersey. And while Natasha had been sitting in the front seat next to him for the whole of the trip, talking and quizzing him, Sashka had been gone the second her head touched the seat. The twelve year old was sprawled out in the backseat, her red hair splayed out on the seat around her head and she was finally snoring away and catching up on some much needed rest after being on the run for the past twenty four hours. Occasionally, Natasha made sure to check on Sashka, making Steve stop the car so she could make sure the teen wasn't about to fall off the seats mid-drive. So far, she showed no sign of waking up. That kid was surely out for the entire drive.

"Nazi Germany." Steve answered Natasha's question. "And we're borrowing, take your feet off the dash."

Natasha gave him a pointed look, but relaxed slightly, the corners of her mouth lifting as she took her feet off the dashboard.

"Alright, I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer," She prefaced. "I feel like if you don't answer it though, you're kinda answering it, you know,"

"What?" Steve interrupted, impatient for the spy to just spit it out.

"Was that your first kiss since 1945?" She turned towards him with a teasing grin.

"That bad, huh?"

"I didn't say that!" Natasha sounded like a child trying to put the blame on another sibling so she didn't get punished.

"Well it kind of sounded like that's what you were saying-" Steve continued.

Nat interrupted him. "No I didn't. I just wondered how much...practice you've had."

"I don't need practice."

"Everybody needs practice!" By that time, the smirk on Natasha's face was so big that it was impossible not to feel he had to defend himself against her claims.

"It was not my first kiss since 1945." Steve was kind of lying to himself there. "I'm ninety five, not dead."

"Nobody special though?" She teased.

"What, like you and the Winter Soldier?" It came out of his mouth before he had time to think it through.

Natasha's entire body went rigid the second she heard that name. That code name she absolutely despised. "What makes you think that?" She snapped.

Steve was in too deep, he couldn't back out. "I can't believe it took me that long to figure it out!" He raised his voice slightly, more at himself than Natasha. "The way you talked about him when we were in the hospital and the way you look at Sashka made all the sense in the world when you told me he was her father."

When Natasha didn't jump in, he continued. "I should have realized she was yours the first night I saw her on the ship. It's so painfully obvious that she's your daughter because she looks exactly like you minus one or two detail." He was blurting out all the evidence that was just now making sense in his eyes. "The way she talks, the way she laughs, that vaguely irritating sarcasm of hers that she clearly got from you."

He continued, on a roll, and afraid to stop or miss something. "The way you look at her, like she's the one thing you wish you could change. The way you looked like you'd seen a ghost when you saw her in the hospital and the way you have absolutely not a single problem finding her in a crowd of millions because you know she's your daughter. How she naturally drifts closer to you when she walks and how you act when you talk to her, like every time she opens her mouth she's bringing you back to memories of the Winter Soldier, her father." He finished.

He expected Natasha to lash out at him or ask him to get out of the car. Instead she opened her mouth to speak.

"I met the Winter Soldier when I was sixteen, when he first arrived at the Red Room. Immediately there was something between us. He was only a few years older than me, maybe nineteen or so, and it didn't take long for something to happen between us. He was the first and only man I've ever loved and while we had to keep everything a carefully wrapped secret so no one ever found out, it didn't stop us from getting married. When I was seventeen we planned to escape before my graduation ceremony and run away from everything we knew just so we could be free together."

"Obviously, that never happened." Her voice was laced with bitterness. "They found us and immediately understood what was going on. So, they took him away and I stayed alone." Natasha took a small breath and steadied her voice. "I found out I was pregnant two weeks later, the day they had planned on taking him back to Siberia and wipe his memory again." Her voice hitched on the last words and Steve was afraid that she'd start crying.

"You don't have to keep going if you don't want to." He told her.

"No, I want to. Even though you don't deserve to know this." So, she continued. "I tried to tell him that he had a child, but it was futile, all of it. They took him away and six months later a gave birth to my dead daughter." She looked at Sashka's sleeping form, as if the guilt for leaving her baby behind weighed a thousand pounds.

"They let me hold her," She suddenly turned to look at Steve, her green eyes brimming with unshed tears. "I swear on everything I know, Steve, I thought she was dead. I felt a lifeless, cold baby in my arms that wasn't alive."

"I believe you." Steve placed his hand over hers. "And plus, you have her back now. You get a second chance at life with her. Make the most of it."

Natasha nodded.

"Are you going to tell her?" He asked. Natasha shrugged.

"I don't want to give her futile promises and hope of a mother that she might get taken away from too quick." She looked down, ashamed.

"Hey," Steve said. "We're not going to let her go back to HYDRA. I promise."

Natasha nodded. "I just wish I could have them both back."

"I know."

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Now, I know I said I would update sunday, but I didn't go to school today and I had this unfinished chapter sitting in my drafts so I decided to finish and publish it!

There still will be a new chapter sunday, so please stop asking me when and if i'm going to update when I've said it multiple times :) I update on sundays and occasionally on wednesdays if I don't have too much work.

Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter of Steve finding out Sash is Nat's daughter and I hope you liked that little Nat / Sashenka conversation about consent. Consent is very important to teach to young girls and boys and I wish my mother had had that exact conversation with me. No is no, and if someone says no then no way on earth does it mean yes.

Until Sunday for the next chapter!

edit 01/01/2022 : steve was so confused this entire chapter i love it

edit 2/10/2024 : i know among us was created in 2018 but somehow the me of 2020 who was writing this chapter was convinced it was created in 2014 so apologies for the inaccuracies however i love this scene too much to rectify it.