this is the last chapter, guys! i really, really hope that you've enjoyed this story, and thank you to everyone who's been reading from the beginning! this is my first really long multichapter fic, ever, and it was really hard and i'm surprised that i didn't abandon it. i know this chapter is a bit shorter than the others, but now that all the action is tied up there really isn't anything else to say. also i'm still too weak to write smut. maybe one day

"All my stars are leading me to you."

-Andrew Belle, Oh My Stars

Waking up the next morning isn't a pleasant experience. Sharon's sore everywhere. Just when she had thought that the bruises on her neck were slightly waning in their pain, Rumlow had to go and fuck everything up again. She has no idea how she'd even managed to get up and walk yesterday, let alone take him down.

Sharon blinks a few times, letting her eyes adjust to the light, and looks around the room. The first thing that hits her once she's finally awake is the empty side of her bed where Steve had slept last night. She rubs at her eyes, hoping that it's a hallucination. Where could he have gone? Not back to New York, surely. He had no ride.

To Sam's? He would've at least left a note, wouldn't he?

Groaning, Sharon reaches for her cellphone on the bedside table, squinting when the fluorescence hits her eyes. It's still early in the morning, not even eight yet, and Sharon's curtains are closed. She unlocks the phone.

Five missed calls, two from Nat, two from Tony, and one from Sam. Thirteen missed text messages. She opens the ones from Tony first, scanning them over and focusing on the last one.

Tony, 6:45 AM, Coulson has Rumlow. Sam's okay, I'm fine. Get some rest. Sharon lets out a sigh of relief. At least everything's covered on that end. She throws her phone on the mattress, lacking the energy to comb through everything else.

She jumps when her bedroom door opens and Steve pokes his head through the crack, easing himself in so as to not scare her. The relaxation she feels is immediate. It's like all of the tense muscles in her body loosen the second she sees him. A smile spreads over her face before she can think about or stop it.

"Hey," he says in greeting, "I didn't mean to wake you." He's clean, hair wet, and he's wearing new clothes. "Hope you don't mind that I used your shower," he adds, making his way over and sitting down on a not too dirty part of her bed. She feels self conscious for a second, mulling over the damage that the past two days has probably done to her hair and the rest of her body. She reaches up to pat the top of her head, wincing when she feels the knots and as she pulls away to find her fingers covered in blood and dirt. She smiles at Steve anyway.

"Hope you don't mind that I'm picturing you using it," she grins, waggling her eyebrows at him. He laughs, leaning in to kiss her, and Sharon sighs into it. She wraps her arms around his neck, noting too late that she's probably getting him dirty all over again. Steve lets out an appreciative sound against her mouth and that just spurs her on further. She shoves the covers aside, crawling clumsily into his lap. "Is this okay?" she gasps, tugging at his t-shirt. He nods, eyes wide and pupils dilated as he takes her in.

Sharon has no idea where he got the shirt, anyway, but she doesn't care, just slides her hands over his skin in amazement, looking back up at him. "Do you want—" He nods, cutting her off with a rough kiss, tangling his fingers in her dirty hair.

He pulls himself back abruptly, just as she's starting to reach for the hem of her own shirt. "We don't have to," he gasps, out of breath. She's never seen him out of breath before. It makes her feel powerful, that she can do what miles and miles of running can't. "You're still hurt." Sharon tries to steady her own breathing, distracted by his arms. She's never seen him without a shirt on before, and it's just… a sight. A sight that she wonders how she ever went without before.

"You're right." Sharon swallows, wincing as she tries to shift in Steve's lap. "I think I need a shower, too." She slowly slides out of his arms and onto her bedroom floor, hating how… weirdly empty her skin feels without him touching it. "You should come," she says, voice oddly high pitched and hopeful. Her skin flushes slightly, embarrassed that she's being so blunt, but she's said it and now she can't take it back. His eyes go wide again.

"Yeah?" he asks, surprised, and Sharon presses her lips together to hide her smile in case he thinks she's laughing at him. She holds out a hand, grinning when he takes it.

"Yeah."

When they make it out of the shower, clean and content and happy, Sharon pulls on and old t-shirt of hers and follows Steve into her living room. Her clean living room. She whirls around on him, grateful and amazed and three quarters of the way in love with him already.

"Steve," she whispers in disbelief. It's been a long time since someone has done something this nice for her. She thinks about the time that Tony had tried to bake her a cake for her tenth birthday and almost exploded Angie's kitchen; the day after she had graduated from the Academy and Peggy and Ang had taken her furniture shopping. Somehow, this was just so much better than all of her old memories put together.

"I made breakfast, too," he grins, and Sharon shakes her head at him, attacking him with a hug. He laughs, kissing the top of her head, and leads her to her kitchen. She watches him from a stool as he heats up everything that he's cooked for her. He'd even made one of his famous green smoothies.

She chugs it despite her endless previous comments and teasing, too blissed out to care about how awful healthy food is, and he smiles when she wrinkles her nose slightly at the taste. "You don't have to drink it if you don't like it," he says, as if that'll stop her.

"I like you," she says, and that shuts him up.

They watch each other in silence as Sharon eats, smiling and laughing at random moments, unable to stop. Sharon wants to freeze time right here, with him, and she never wants to leave. They hadn't even had sex in her shower. She was too tired, too sore, but Steve didn't mind. He'd just helped her shampoo her disgusting hair in silence and they held each other in a while, but it was still the most intimate thing that she had ever done in her life. It was the most vulnerable that she had ever been with someone. The entire world went away and Sharon wanted it go away forever.

But the thing was, even if it didn't, she'd still be happy. Because now that she and Steve had each other, everything suddenly seemed so possible. It didn't matter what the entire world thought of them anymore. It mattered what she thought, and it mattered what Steve though. And they had both made it extremely clear how they felt about each other. It was liberating, in a way. It was also just… nice.

Right in a way that her past relationships never had been. Sharon leans over the island to kiss him again, unable to get enough of him. His hands reach up to stroke her face and she smiles against his lips. She can't stop smiling.

"Do you want to go back to bed?" she asks him. "I'm still super tired."

"There's nothing else that I could possibly want right now."

2 Months Later

"When are you going to let this go and move in to Avengers Tower with me?" Steve murmurs against the shell of her ear, slowly turning them in a circle so that they can both survey the area around them. Sharon counts the exits, the men and women dressed up that are so clearly not guards or guests, steadies her breath in time with Steve's heartbeat against her chest.

She lets out a laugh, exaggerated for the sake of the mission but still real, pulling back from leaning her chin on his shoulder to look directly at him. "When pigs fly," she teases, and he snorts, shaking his head in mock annoyance at her.

"That's funny," he grins, "but I thought that Tony built his Iron Man suit way back in 2010." Sharon gasps delightedly, bursting into laughter and losing her footing slightly, slapping Steve on the arm in reproach. His eyes crinkle at the sides as he smiles at her.

"I heard that," Tony snaps into their comms units, glaring at the couple from his seat over at the bar while Steve helps Sharon regain her footing.

"You were meant to," Steve says, still laughing, spinning Sharon and dipping her afterwards. Her blue dress spins around her legs pleasantly before she's in his arms looking up at him. She doesn't think she's ever, ever been this happy, especially not while at work.

The music slows and Steve pulls Sharon close. His hand is resting respectfully at the top of her back and she looks up at him, eyebrows raised in a challenge. "Are we dating or are you my chaperone?" she asks him, and he tilts his head slightly in confusion. She grins at him, amused, nodding her head towards the arm that's reaching around her back. "Come on, soldier, you can do better than that. Lower." Steve slips his hand down to the middle of her back and she bites her lip, loving that she can tease him like this, even now that they're dating. "Lower," she instructs.

His hand finally reaches the base of her spine where her dress dips low. His thumb traces a patch of bare skin that's exposed there. His cheeks are slightly red, and she loves it.

"You're incorrigible," he whispers, and Sharon scrunches her nose at him, unable to contain her smile.

"You're cute."

"You two are disgusting," Tony comments in their ears. Sharon rolls her eyes.

"Why don't you do something besides criticize us?" she asks him, and can see the annoyed face that he makes at his drink without actually needing to see him. "Have you found our mark yet?"

"He's three couples behind you. Blue suit, ugly glasses." Steve moves Sharon in time with the music, turning her towards he back doors to give her a perfect vantage point to see the mark. Some jewelry thief or other with ties to Hydra; Sharon hadn't cared to learn more than necessary. Tony was their eyes, Steve was the muscle, and Sharon was the brains, put simply. Natasha was waiting in their getaway car. They all pulled their own weight in other areas, of course, but tonight they were all doing what they knew best.

It was amazing how quickly Sharon became accustomed to working with them. She wasn't an official Avenger, of course, but it was nice feeling like part of the family all the same. It had been an inconvenience trying to explain to Stan why she had missed all those days of work, especially when she had come back as battered and bruised as she did, but one call from Maria had put things back in order, and the CIA was as oblivious as ever.

Strangely, Sharon sort of liked it that way. It no longer felt like she was leading a double life. Sharon knew that SHIELD needed her at the CIA, and she didn't really care about her clearance and treatment there anymore, now that she could see the bigger picture. It felt like she finally knew her role in all of this, as simplistic as that might sound.

Steve squeezes her arm slightly in reassurance, both for her and for him. She squeezes back, scanning his face. He was so beautiful it hurt to look at sometimes. "I love you," she whispers, and he presses a warm kiss to her forehead.

"I love you too. You ready, partner?" he asks, and Sharon nods.

"Let's get the son of a bitch."

please tell me what you thought of this! i'm planning on writing another sharon focused fic, more about her past, after i see civil war, so hopefully you guys will want to read that. it's been a wild ride