When you go into a war brushing elbows with Captain America, you're going in on top of the god-damned world.

Those were the things people said about him. Well, except for Bucky, but he was always the exception for that kinda stuff. Bucky knew him when he was just a skinny loser, 'course he wouldn't say tired lines like that, no matter how much had changed in just a few months. That was the great thing about having a best friend in a war zone; they would know exactly who you were before you took a bullet.

And Bucky wasn't afraid to rib him about sticking with cheap soda pop like a kid when they stopped at an inn for the night. What was the point of enduring the bitter beer taste if he didn't get a buzz? Still, he knew there wasn't any harm in it when Bucky made snide remarks about Captain America being too wholesome to partake in their heathen ways. "Come on, Buck, leave it be," he laughed. Inns were a rare treat for their neck of the woods, and really it couldn't be legal or registered. Place was full of runaway Jews and Communists staring into their beers with pained looks. The Howling Commandos were a two-day march from camp, with another three ahead for their next lead on HYDRA's location.

"Aw, what's the matter, Cap? Is the scary wind makin' you nervous?" grinned Bucky.

In all actuality, it was making the whole inn a little on-edge. The nights had been mostly fair until tonight; it sounded like there were wolves howling at the stars as the wind whipped around the rickety little building. Sometimes it pitched enough to sound like a girl's scream, and a shudder passed over the room.

"Well, I gotta piss," one of the boys said, stubbing out his cigarette as he reared up to his feet. Out in the middle of nowhere it was hard to find indoor plumbing; there was an outhouse behind the main building, but at least it was covered and mostly dry. "If I'm not back in five, the Big Bad Wolf probably gobbled me up; send a huntsman."

Five minutes went by, then ten, and an anxious laugh skittered across the bar. He was probably winding them up, trying to get a laugh out of spooking them or getting ready to make a show of what lousy friends they all were. He'd make a grand old fuss, alright.

Neither of those things happened. Instead Dum Dum came bursting back inside - they all stood in alarm - bearing two blackened eyes and holding a redhead girl by the wrist as she struggled to pull herself free. "Little monster was waiting in the can and attacked me! Whose is she?!" When no one stood for the child wearing what looked like a stolen Russian uniform, Dum Dum swung her around to face him. "You listen to me, if no one's here to claim you then I'll have to teach you a lesson myself, just like my Daddy taught me when I-"

"Dugan, is that really necessary?" Steve pleaded, stepping around his and Bucky's little table to intercept whatever lesson Dum Dum was about to teach her. "She's a little girl and you probably scared her enough; you're just embarrassed she got the jump on you. Now leave her alone."

The girl turned to look at Steve and her eyes widened with a mix of awe and terror. "Kapitan!" she gasped, yanking her wrists free of Dugan's grip to fling both hands over her head. "Ya sdayus'!"

"Uh," replied Steve, looking around. "Anyone here speak Russian?"

"And English," Bucky added, shooting him a despairing look.

They were in the middle of Poland, so it didn't seem like too unreasonable a request, but only one young guy in the back stood up, hat in one hand and the other timidly raised like a schoolboy. "I a little, sir," he nodded, eyes darting between Steve and the girl. "I come from Moscow. English is not so good, but, ah... She say she surrenders, sir."

"Surrenders?" Steve echoed.

There were a few moments of tense conversation between the boy and girl before he nodded again. "She say is Russian soldier, sir," he reported, looking proud of himself for being so important, all puffed up like a peacock. He and the girl exchanged more words, her becoming more heated and desperate as the boy tried to calm her. "She is called Natalia. I am Nikolai."

"Natalia," Steve said slowly, and she looked at him again, unnaturally green eyes wide. He smiled in an attempt to calm her, palms out, like he might approach a wild animal. "Nikolai, can you tell her I'm not gonna hurt her? Please?"

The boy relayed the message, but the utter mistrust didn't leave Natalia's eyes. Steve didn't blame her, if Dum Dum was the one who startled her out of the outhouse. She said something to Nikolai, and he translated, "She say she is Russian soldier. It very, ah, important you know."

Steve could hear the boys muttering in disbelief over that, and he couldn't help agreeing with them. It didn't have a thing to do with Natalia being a girl, Peggy had been proof enough that women were more than capable of fighting wars; she was just such a little thing. Couldn't have been older than fourteen, but it was kinda hard to tell with that uniform hanging on her so loose. Sure, the Russians were awful, but not as bad to recruit little girls, right?

"Okay, well, we still aren't gonna hurt her," Steve repeated, and when the message was translated for a second time Natalia seemed to loosen up. She let Nikolai coax her into his booth, and after eating some of his food her sallow cheeks bloomed with a little more color. Even if she still sent Steve and the Commandos regular wary glances, it was good. It made her look pretty, the color matching her long red hair peeking out from beneath her cap. Steve wanted to have a word with her about the Russian army's practices soon, so it was good that she was eating and stuff.

Still, when he glanced over an hour later and found Natalia dead asleep against Nikolai's shoulder, a bowl of warm milk and sweet bread abandoned at her elbow, Steve conceded that talking to her could wait until morning. Dark shadows circled the girl's eyes, made even deeper by the brim of her cap. So little and sad. He settled himself beside Nikolai and murmured, "Did she tell you anything about what happened to her?"

Nikolai nodded - carefully, trying not to jostle his new friend. "She is afraid you will arrest her, sir, if you know," he reported. "She still claims is Russian soldier. Very, ah...strong thought?"

Confident, opinionated, strong-willed. Right now all Steve could see in Natalia was bone-deep weariness. A child on the run, and for how long?

The owners of the inn provided Steve and his men with cots so they wouldn't have to set up camp in the cold and wind outside. Other than the howling wind the night was silent, and the boys had had a long day. Their sleep was sound until just a few hours later, when suddenly the rattling of the windows sounded a lot more substantial than when just the wind was blowing. Nikolai and Natalia woke up when the Commandos did, the boy's arm firm around her shoulders until she shook him off and stood.

"Oni nashli menya," Natalia whispered, whatever that meant. Without another moment wasted she pulled one of the men's guns from the back of his trousers - he yelped in alarm. In the same breath the inn's door opened with a bang and she shot the soldier on the other side with pin-point precision. Windows on all walls broke inward with the butts of rifles, and Steve sprang into action to grab his shield from under the table.

"Get her out of here!" he shouted a Nikolai, but before anyone could lay a hand on her Natalia was shooting the soldiers down with the stolen gun. Steve's men positioned themselves in the center of the bar facing the windows, nowhere to run, but that didn't matter because they had no plans of running. They were the Howling Commandos; they didn't turn their backs on folks who needed them.

Bounding across the room, Natasha climbed up a chair, onto a table, right out the window with both legs flung around the nearest soldier's neck. They collapsed in the snow, his neck broken, Natalia gasping when the wind was knocked out of her but leaping to her feet again in a heartbeat.

Steve jumped out to cover her back "Who are these people?" he asked, but of course the girl didn't understand a word of what he said.

She was afraid, Steve could see that plain as day in the lines of her face and the way her hands shook around the gun, but then something really incredible happened: she became the fear. He could see it happening, see her wrapping herself in shadows and blood, thick as the night, as thick as armor, resolving herself against the things all little children were scared of in the dead of night - how old was she? - drawing the stolen pistol and firing as if she'd been doing it it all her life.

When the bullets were gone the girl's body was her weapon, weaving expertly between the rifles turned to clubs while Steve covered her with what little firepower he had. She twisted between the soldiers like a dancer, tangling them, hooking them in her web until their weapons were useless on account of the fact that they were all aiming at each other. It was hypnotizing to see, even while distracted trying to cover her.

Wrapped up safe in her cloak of blood and shadow, Natalia ran to the front of the inn and the men followed like the Pied Piper's rats. It was like Steve didn't even exist, they were so intent on getting the girl, what, back in their clutches? Were these the people she'd been hiding from in an old outhouse? Did they make her fight a war she was supposed to be far away from? Whoever they were, Steve wasn't about to let them have Natalia. He rounded the corner, pistol and shield at the ready-

-and found a ring of carnage lying around Natalia in the snow. Her chest was heaving and arms still extended with the final blows, hair hanging down around her like strands of blood in the light from the inn windows. Some of the soldiers were still alive, moaning and shifting, but most of them were deader than doornails. Natalia began meticulously checking their pockets for anything of value, ripping the dog tags from around their necks and throwing them out into the snow. "Hey!"

She whipped her head around to face his shout, and Steve's blood ran cold at the fury in her face. "Um." He looked to the windows for Nikolai - who waved, stunned by the display. "You-you shouldn't throw their tags. Their families..."

As Nikolai translated this message, Natalia laughed, and the laughter was colder than the winter wind. In four long strides she was right there in Steve's space, rage in her poisonous eyes. "These men do not deserve families. They deserve death with no honor for what they did."

Nikolai asked her something then, to which she bit out a reply while taking a step back from Steve. Despite all his training and his legendary nerve, his heart was racing. Here he was, practically in his underwear out in the snow, well past midnight, being hissed at by a child soldier who had decimated a small platoon almost single-handedly in all of ten minutes. He couldn't imagine what kind of woman she would grow into, but had the feeling she wouldn't be anything like Peggy.

Come morning Natalia and Nikolai had vamoosed, two pairs of bootprints trailing away from the inn's back window, and Steve dismissed the idea of following them before it even fully formed in his mind. He had the feeling Natalia was well used to working on her own, and a bunch of Americans getting on her tail would only ignite her ire again - something Steve would very much like to avoid, thanks. She was a strong girl, and with a friend at her side she could probably do just about anything.

There wasn't much time for Steve to think about Natalia after that, new missions to take down HYDRA coming up almost every day with little to no time for a break to breathe, let alone think. Losing Bucky, falling to the ice, waking up in a new world, the very last thing on his mind was a girl he knew for all of five hours.

And then there was New York, the Helicarrier, and Natasha Romanoff. There was something familiar about the woman Steve just couldn't place, not for the whole time leading up to the battle in Manhattan, not until she stepped away and, when he asked if she really wanted to hop aboard an alien craft straight out of an Asimov novel, said, "Sure, it'll be fun."

He had seen her afraid, heard her shaking voice over the coms Agent Hill hastily provided for them before the explosion, watched it dance in her eyes when she spun to face him with a Chitauri weapon in her hands (how had she learned to operate it so fast?). And then he crouched, shield at the ready, and stood on looking as she took that fear and wrapped it around herself like a blanket, became it, became the smoky scream and used it as her fuel to leap so blindly headfirst into danger. He knew that look.

There wouldn't be a chance to talk to her until later, of course, much later, after Shawarma and about six hours of sound sleep. Assuming everyone else was still knocked out from the fight, Steve wandered the tower in the hopes of finding any of the rooms Stark had hastily showed them through the night before, let alone a kitchen, when he heard, "Over here," and jumped damn near out of his skin.

"Agent Romanoff," he sighed with relief at the sight of her, quickly making his way to the door in which she was leaning. "I didn't think anyone else would be up yet."

She shrugged and replied, "I don't need much sleep," with a mysterious little smile. "And it's Natasha. I'm pretty sure you get first name rights after saving the world together." Despite the fact that her leg had been all but crushed under a support beam the day before, Natasha's steps were steady and sure, just as they were when she hurled herself toward him - a practical stranger - trusting him to hoist her high enough to fly.

"Natasha, then," he nodded, and started rooting around the cupboards for something to eat that wasn't covered in plaster dust. She had unearthed a loaf of bread and was dipping toast in her coffee, skimming the newspaper with a distasteful wrinkle to her nose. Steve sat across from her, suddenly transfixed by her face and all its minute expressions that she didn't let on the day before, when she was nothing more to him than a spy. Now they were teammates and she was an ordinary woman who made faces at the newspaper and did funny things with toast. What a world.

But that wasn't why he was staring, either. Or at least not entirely. There was something familiar to her that seemed to be sitting right in front of him but he couldn't grasp it. It was as fleeting as trying to remember a dream.

Then she ducked her head to brush crumbs off the countertop, her hair fell around her face and shadows cast around her eyes, and it all pulled together. "Say, was-?" he started, but then cut off when Natasha raised her poison-green gaze to look at him.

"Pardon?" she asked.

Steve felt like there was water in his ears, looking at her now, but he didn't wanna make a dummy of himself asking either. "Just..." he trailed off and cleared his throat, starting to sweat when the corner of Natasha's mouth ever-so-slightly curled up. How was he supposed to communicate that she looked exactly like a girl he'd met in 1943 without sounding like a lunatic? "Where are - were? Sorry! - your parents from?"

Strong eyebrows twitched upward in reaction to a question Natasha clearly hadn't been expecting, but that amused curl was still present at the corner of her mouth when she replied, "Russia. I'm from there, too." She crossed her arms and leaned them on the table, her expression open, and it suddenly occurred to Steve that she was in her pajamas. Why that was important, he'd never know.

"Okay, so it wouldn't be too forward to ask if...if maybe your, I dunno, your grandmother's name was, maybe, Natalia?" he sheepishly asked, wishing he had the newspaper just so he could hide his face. "There was just-just this girl I met once who looked an awful lot like you, and I wasn't sure if..."

Within seconds Natasha was grinning, the expression so foreign on her stoic face that Steve felt like he'd been punched in the gut. She was so pretty. "I was wondering if you'd forgotten about me," she sweetly said, and then it felt like he'd been punched in the face.

"Wh-what, now?"

Natasha's grin faded into a smaller, more secretive smile. Her hand twitched as if to cover his, but then thought better of it and fingers curled against her palm. "That was me, Steve. Natalia was my name until the early 60s," she amusedly explained. He was about to catch flies in his mouth when she shook her head at him. "The Russians had their own answer to the super serum. It wasn't perfect, of course; if it were I would never have survived the procedure, or I would have become another Red Skull - which I didn't. You can test for yourself."

Maybe she was tired. Maybe she was more traumatized from the battle than she dared let on, but when Natasha leaned across the table so he could prod the flesh of her cheek and chin, to "test" that it wouldn't fall away, she seemed more childlike in that moment than she had when he met her as a child.

"Prolonged lifespan, enhanced healing capabilities, faster reflexes," she continued, sitting back with her coffee held close. "None of the integrity or bulging muscles."

His eyes skittered over Natasha's face, remembering her thin child's lips curling into a displeased pout as she surrendered, the fear in her expression upon recognizing Captain America in the very place she'd been trying to hide. How she looked fast asleep on Nikolai's shoulder. Then he compared it to the woman she had become: far from Peggy Carter, sure, but just as brave and maybe twice as fierce, loyal to a fault, sagging with exhaustion over shawarma with her partner's leg resting on her chair. Flyaway red hair tangled around her face as she beamed a bloody smile in the battle's aftermath.

The plate of toast was gently nudged halfway across the table by a slim white hand, towards him, and Steve accepted the offering. "I think you already had the integrity," he admitted, and something like genuine confusion rippled over her face. He could see where the cut on her forehead had been the night before, but now it was a pink scar that would fade within a week. "And you don't need bulging muscles to be strong."

Confusion melted into a sad sort of acceptance as Natasha shook her head, clearly thinking long and hard before speaking. "I married that boy, you know. Nikolai."

"Really? Why, that's-!" Steve started to brightly say, but then realization hit him like a brick. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Natasha smiled a little softly and nodded. "I was fifteen. He was killed in a firefight the next year. Don't, um." Her brow furrowed as she set down her mug; the last dregs of coffee had been drained. Their conversation over. "Don't tell anyone. About that, or the serum. I don't mind talking about it with you, since we're both - but it's private. Is that acceptable?"

Acceptable for her to keep silent about their shared struggles while Steve had to continue blundering through, explaining away everyone's questions and concerns about his body, while she pretended to be an ordinary woman with greatness thrust upon her? The longer he thought about it, though, about Natalia and how much she must have seen before she was sixteen years old, living through the decades and watching everything around her decay while she remained the same...in some ways, maybe he had it easier after all.

"'Course, it'll be our secret," he assured her, and she nodded her silent thanks.

Just a note: This is not (technically) affiliated with the Lion-Hearted Girl series, since I originally intended it to be longer and have Steve/Natasha or Natasha/Bucky in it later on, and since in LHG Steve doesn't know about the serum until the rest of the team finds out. However, you could still count it in there if you just imagine Steve was very, very secretive.