Chapter Text
The remainder of the building from the missile caused explosion hits them like a tidal wave, and he’s never been so happy for his shield.
“Vibranium,” he remembers Howard saying when he’d first picked it up, unaware of its future significance, “Stronger than steel, and a third of the weight. It’s completely vibration absorbant.”
“How come it’s not standard issue?”
“That’s the rarest metal on Earth. What you’re holding there - it’s all we’ve got.”
“Natasha,” he whispers, when he stops feeling additional weight pile against the shield on his arm. He calls her name a second time, but still garners no response - the area around them is pitch black, but he can feel her breath light against his shoulder, so for now, he’ll assume unconsciousness, and move onto clearing the rubble enough to escape.
The main piece blocking him falls away after about a dozen hits with his shield, and he is greeted with an inferno in the path above him, bits of fire interspersed between gigantic shards of rock. The destruction - especially of this place, and to think he once lived and breathed on the ground above it, met Peggy here - the destruction of it sickens him, even more so given the betrayal it was apart of - and to think, he was supposed to end it, die with the last head of Hydra.
The red light also illuminates his compatriot, utterly limp and still, proving his previous assumption correct. His ears pick up something whirring in the distance, and he scoops her up in a fireman carry - they can’t afford to waste any time.
The flashing lights of hovercrafts as he navigates their way out is evidence enough, and he ducks and dodges between anything available until the boundary of the base has been cleared. He debates going back for the car, but figures given Fury’s apparent cause of injuries, as well as the missile, the Hydra agents will long since found it, and decides against it.
With Natasha still unconscious and the two of them making the top of S.H.E.I.L.D.’s most wanted list, he knows they’ll need to be out of Wheaton before the next hour, out of New Jersey before dawn, and more than that - they need help. With all S.H.I.E.L.D personnel assumed Hydra, at least for the moment, the list is rather regrettably short. Barton has been MIA since the chitauri and New York, Banner is out of country, Thor is presumably on Asgard, and Fury is dead. All that’s left is Tony and Pepper, and New York is by far the closest, but it’s also by far the most obvious place to go as well. And nothing screams “look at me” like Stark Tower - the Hydra agents will be on their tail within minutes, and probably take Tony too… he can’t in good conscience drag Tony and Pepper down with them, not when there’s still a chance they can remain uninvolved.
If New York is the most likely place for them to go, then he supposes Natasha will want to circle back to the last place they should want to be.
Washington D.C., and borrowing the first car he finds it is.
And he’ll rack his brains for anyone left he can trust along the way.
---
His partner in crime wakes up just as they’re crossing over the Potomac, nearing five in the morning according to the dashboard of their current stolen vehicle.
He puts the breaks on the car when he catches sight of a familiar church, Natasha following him as he gets out.
“Your fossil friend?” she asks, except her voice is inexplicably hoarse and devoid of humor. He steals a quick look at her, standing rigid like the dawning sunlight will burn her, gives a quick nod, starts walking, figures she’ll follow.
She does, albeit almost hesitantly. (Shell-shock, he figures, as she fails to start her usual banter. Shell-shock, and it’s bad, but he thinks he’ll be better off trying to wait until later to draw her out.)
The building is empty, and all it takes is rifling through a few drawers before he has the address.
Sam Wilson.
And God, his luck better not fail him again now.
--
Standing in front of the door after walking up the back lawn, is terrifying.
Natasha looks like a ghost, has all the way through their trek through town, following in his footsteps as if she were lost and he was her guide home. She looks too pale now, too, standing half a step behind him, swaying with the push of the wind like she’s nothing more than featherweight, eyes flitting back and forth from space to space.
Steve’s had doors slammed in his face before, had, “Get off my lawn!” followed by obscenities screamed at his retreating back, slept with nothing but the stars at his back, woken up to rain pelting down on him.
He’s terrified Sam will do the same, terrified he’ll be left on the run with a barely conscious assassin to take care of, alone. Terrified the world will burn a smolder like it almost did last time, terrified Hydra will succeed in its rise from the ashes. Terrified that this time, he won’t be enough. (Because after all, Captain America has always had his friends to help him.)
It’s almost anticlimactic, in the end. The blinds being pulled up, the door sliding open. Sam’s confused greeting.
They must look like hell, still covered in soot and ash.
“I’m sorry about this,” he starts, because he is, and if more desperation sinks through his tone than he means too, well, Steve’s nothing if not desperate. “We need a place to lay low.”
Natasha joins in, voice slightly closer to normal. Humor is still absent in her tone, but given the statement is true… “Everyone we know is trying to kill us.”
Sam takes a step back to let them pass through, and maybe Steve’s shoulders fall an inch in relief.
“Not everyone.”