withmyshield

 Sharon's unconscious, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. After seven weeks of round the clock stress and almost another full week of adrenaline and ever-present danger, she's just tapped out.  She forces herself out of bed in the morning and does as much as she can, but even breaking for meals and water as often as she needs, it's barely ten hours later that she starts yawning.  Luckily, by then the night owls have turned up, to pick up where others have left off, and it doesn't seem like such a big deal to all it quits. 

She drags herself to the lift to the third floor and leans heavily against the wall. There's so much more she ought to be doing, but she just doesn't have the energy to feel guilty. The classroom is empty when she arrives, and literally falls to the mattress, which is pushed all the way into one corner.  Face first, pulling the blanket half over herself with one hand.  She's out before she has time to consider shutting off the light.

( Sharon finds some things in the vents & decides a new approach is in order.  )

"Sharon?"

Bert's in the kitchen, comm trapped between his head and shoulder while he puts some sandwiches together for the scientists. She starts talking and he waits, listening, butter knife in one hand, a piece of bread in the other, and he wonders if she has any idea just how unwell she sounds.

But it's not a conversation to have over the phone.

"Sure. Sure. Which floor are you on? Okay. Take it easy. Be there in a few minutes."

She hangs up and he looks at his half-assembled sandwich line a little forlornly before getting his ass in gear.

"You're going to kill me," he says as he walks up, supplies bundled under his arm. "But why are we doing this, again?"

“That’s exactly the point, Bert. Why.” She descends the ladder and sits on the lowest rung so they’re eye to eye. Eye to feverishly intent eye, possibly.

“Why haven’t we already done this? We’ve been so focused on keeping ourselves safe day to day that we’ve forgotten that we’re just not. We can’t just sit around and wait for this space station to decide it’s time to wipe us out and start over.”

This conversation is bringing up a lot of points in Cuthbert's mind that are definitely better left unexamined, or at least unsaid. His best guesses concerning the nature of the station and their captors are wildly misfigured, or so it would seem listening to the others talk. But still, what's he going to say to her as she stares him down?

To be honest, Sharon, I'm pretty sure that 'wiping us out and starting over' is just one of many little boxes left on the to-do list of the mad gods that trapped us here, mayhap along with 'deadly frost doxies' and 'innocuous-looking, pickle-flavored beer'.

But it doesn't seem like Sharon's looking for a philosophical debate or palaver and if crawling through a couple of dark tunnels is going to make her feel like she's in control again, she's come to the right idiot.

"I couldn't agree more; I've been wiped out once and I didn't care for it at all." He hands over the supplies, tucked into two nifty little pouches he’s found that strap conveniently about the waist, along with her water pack. He’s got the cable and the metal clips they’ll (hopefully?) use to secure it in a tight loop on his belt.

She doesn’t blink before strapping on the fanny pack, which says a lot about how anxious she is to get a move on: transplant New Yorker she might be, it’s never OK to look like a tourist.

All of that seems slightly less important compared to finally finding a way to break the stranglehold Proserpina’s had on them. If she has anything to say about it, they won’t stop until they find the computer mainframe, a climate control board, or someone stupid enough to admit to being in charge.

The knock doesn't surprise her. How could it at this point? Every time Sharon's come home from watching over Dr Jackman or Mr Hyde, Steve finds an excuse to drop by, just to say hello and surreptitiously count her limbs. She manages to get into a change of clothes after her shift, but that's about the extent of the cleanup [not that Steve notices those things anyway]. She flashes her communicator to open the door, smiling.

"You never use the doorbell. Do you even know how to use the doorbell?"

-"Want to get out of here?"

Steve frowns slightly, as he figures it out, then looks over at where Clint is - being handed a bottle by Thor. That means that he's in good hands as far as the celebration goes.

"Sure," he says, and moves his hand from her hip to take her hand instead, flashing her a smile before he leads them out of the kitchen.

He is definitely drunk, he reflects a little distantly, for accepting this so easily, and so unquestioningly.

---

Sharon's smiling to herself as they leave, consciously ignoring any glances they might get on the way. She's past giving a damn what folks think in general, and somewhat resigned to the fact that there's no such thing as a private life in a space this small with this many other people.

Besides, counting the time she was on assignment [both in New York and after] together with the seven months she's been here... Jesus, she might not remember how to have sex anymore when and if the moment ever arrives. Suffice to say, she's willing to brave a little gossip to catch Steve in a less-than-polite frame of mind -which is much of her motivation in pulling him along to the nearest available door and practically dragging him inside. She can't risk losing her nerve [or him losing his buzz] in order to get to someone's bedroom.

Turns out haste makes for a crappy decisions; the first door is little more than a broom closet with a bit of spare athletic equipment inside, which makes sense, the gym being close by. It's private, though, and the little light that's available if just enough to make out Steve's blithely drunk amusement by.

"What? Like you've got the whole place memorized?" She cuts off any possible response with a kiss, warm and hopefully stupefying.

After waking up at the Thanksgiving party, Sharon had tried like hell to keep it together, be useful, avoid feeling the panic that was probably the natural reaction to seeing the man you...someone you care about get stabbed in the chest and vanish in a cloud of knockout gas. After making sure everyone else in the room was unharmed or being looked after, she'd gone to her room for the guns. Not because she thought there'd be anything to shoot, for better or worse, but because they made her feel more in control. Then she'd started searching.

---

The guns sit untouched in the holster, her hands being full with the map on her communicator and her LED flashlight, held at a cop angle. She hates the dimmer lit places on the station with a passion, ever since the incident with the rats. Which of course makes her think of Steve, pulling her out of the wall even after she'd nearly taken his head off with a baseball bat. Well, he has to be around here somewhere, she reasons, without anything to back it up, really. Except that the station doesn't mind letting people die right in front of them, so whisking injured people away is probably a good sign.

Her search is methodical, but again, a little more based on feeling than logic; if she had been looking for anyone else, she might have started in the morgue rather than choose a path around the ship that avoided it until all other areas had been ruled out. She's spending a lot more time in unfamiliar places, since she's never seen evidence of a surgery or anything like that in her regular wanderings. But as much as she'd love to deny it, it's just something to distract herself with, and the chances of her finding Steve before the station decides to produce him are next to zero.

Part One: Arrival - The Mission

Sharon’s having one of those dreams again, the ones that make her suspect that her subconscious isn’t really on her side. At least this one isn’t about putting Amy Pond in a submarine -Sharon’s had plenty of that dream, and every permutation ends in failure, and blood. This is one of those ‘lost in the jungle’ dreams, where she’s been cut off from her support team and is probably about to get shot by hostiles or eaten by a monster. Giant lizards have been popular with her unconscious mind, lately, and she’s got a feeling that’s what’s chasing her now, as she runs in a panic through the hot tangle of branches. She brushes them away from her face again and again, irritating, itchy wool trees.

Wait, wool?

Sharon opens her eyes, and for a second is grateful to find herself in a pile of woolen clothes instead of in the jungle, but then she remembers she’s supposed to be in her bed on the space station. She jumps up, ignoring the flare of pain in her leg, and has to take a moment of pure ‘what the hell?’ because there are just too many things wrong with this picture.

She hears loud cursing from somewhere just outside the window of the old fashioned stagecoach she’s just apparently been sleeping in, and turns to look, wishing immediately that she hadn’t, because the source of the profanity is a naked man whose height gives him away instantly as Wolverine.

---

Steve's nights haven't been much more restful than Sharon's, but he's plagued by insomnia more than nightmares these days. That means that he's doing push-ups in a pair of sweatpants when the now familiar buzz comes over him, and he sits back on his heels and gets to his feet the moment the teleportation is complete. A desert, it seems, an abandoned stage coach... with Sharon inside? And Zoe getting up from the ground and wearing the shortest silk nightdress he's ever seen, which means he stares for a second and then sharply turns away, fighting a blush even as his eyes settle on a naked Logan.

"It's gotta be a dream," he remarks to himself. It's gotta be.

Zoe is getting to her feet and sighing at the dirt that's now all over her, trying to brush it off her nightie and her skin alike. "What now?" she asks-slash-complains out loud, then spots a glint of sun off of... "Our comm units are here," she adds, moving over to pick hers up.

---

Everyone else can be as useful as they want for a minute -Logan has a different priority. He grabs a saddle blanket off a nearby barrel as he passes and walks about twenty paces into the desert before he starts shouting his head off. He curses the Proserpina and her makers in every way he can think of, and throws in a few choice words about their mothers for good measure.

That he’s in his birthday suit in front of Rogers is bad enough, but the fact that they might very well be in his past about to run into Logan circa 1900 is totally unacceptable. He didn’t like the ‘old’ west back when he belonged here, and he's damn sure not excited to go back to outdoor plumbing and healing messy Colt bullet wounds. There should be some kind of law about how many saddle sores a guy has to endure in a lifetime, too.

When he finally comes back to the group, they’re all gathered outside the stagecoach, looking at their little cell phones. Logan loathes the thing, but he picks his up from the sand where he first showed up, and it’s blinking.

A message, oh swell, can’t wait! It’s a picture of a map, with a little green check mark next to it. Real cute. Guess you want that, right? What happens if I say no? He tunes in to the conversation that’s happening without him.

Sharon’s trying to be cool in spite of the fact that she’s standing in the middle of the desert wearing next to nothing but a hugely oversized Guns N Roses tee shirt, a nostalgic wardrobe choice she’s really regretting about now. Her arms are crossed over her chest mostly from stubbornness, though.

“No. Every time we play these little games, something awful happens. I’m out.”

---

"We don't know what happens if we just refuse to do what we're asked," Zoe points out, and she's wearing even less than Sharon, but she's apparently not even a little self-conscious about it.

"The more we learn about the missions we're given, the more we learn about our captors," Steve answers, and there's that stubborn edge to his voice that Sharon should recognize. It's the one that says he'll do it even if he's the only one, and no one is going to be able to change his mind.

"Whatever we're doing, we should change," Zoe adds, moving towards the abandoned stagecoach. There are piles of clothes, and some of them still in luggage. At least their captors had dumped them somewhere with hopefully appropriate clothing to choose from. "Anybody has any idea when and where we are?" It looks a little like pictures of Canceron she's seen, but that coach? It has to be an antique.

---

Logan growls an answer.

“They stopped using rigs like that around the beginning of the 20th century, on Earth, if we can even be sure that’s where we are.” Logan’s pretty sure about that, actually; it smells like Earth. He gestures to some pretty impressive mountains in the distance. “Those have to be the Rockies, so I’d say we’re somewhere out on the east side of them; Nevada or Arizona, from the look of things. And the heat.” He sweating already, which is a bad sign for how he’s gonna feel with some clothes on.

Sharon’s also thinking about the unpleasant reality of getting dressed. The pile of woolen clothes she’d woken up in is about the only thing available, and even if she isn’t all that keen on playing along, she definitely doesn’t want to do it in her skivvies. She also finds a wooden framework and tosses it to Zoe with a grim little smile.

“That’s a bustle, and if you aren’t wearing one, guys are going to get the wrong idea.” Like that you want to be able to move, run, sit...uppity stuff like that.

---

"Dressing is gonna be interesting," Zoe says, frowning at the... bustle and trying to figure out how to even wear it. But she needs more than just that anyway, and she goes digging through the pile of woolen clothes and the luggage to try and put together a proper outfit. Whatever proper means in this time and place.

"We're in a western," Steve states, because he feels that he has to, just to hear the words out loud rather than just in his mind. But at least they are - very probably - in America, and that, in all honesty, feels good, and explains why his frame relaxed when Logan identified the Rockies. It's home, even if it isn't the right time period.

---

“You’re not kidding.” Sharon helps Zoe figure out which way the bustle goes, and there’s a spare for her. Awesome. In the end they both look as good as could be expected -whoever this stuff belonged to was not strapped for cash, because there are a couple of complete ensembles in the trunks. They’re not really the right size; Zoe’s going to be tripping on hers and Sharon’s not going to be able to move her shoulders much without ripping a seam, but at least they’re covered.

Speaking of shoulders, Logan’s pretty screwed. He isn’t exactly the fit model for the 1880s, and ends up in trousers and pretty hideous poncho.

“Well? We goin’ or not?” Much as he dreads the saddle sores, there’s about nothing Logan likes less than walking in the desert, so he’s already grumpy.

---

Steve turns away while the women dress, and waits until it's alright to look at them again before he tries to find something to fit him. He's not the fit model for any time period, but after Sharon gives him a hand, he's at least in something a little better than a poncho. A shirt that's too narrow across the shoulders, but at the least the trousers fit, even if they're horribly tight, and the jacket is almost comfortable.

"We're going," he confirms as he tugs on the jacket, and winces from the boots. They're a little too small for him, but he'll bear it in silence.

Zoe's putting a cute little hat on her carefully coiffed hair, and she notices a little bump in the lining of the box she just took it from. She rips off the lining, and there are a few banknotes, or so they look like. "We're all set. I just found some money."

Steve nods at her with a small smile, and leads the way towards the road a little way off.

---

  There were many people Steve wanted to check up on, but the first of that list was Sharon, for reasons too complex for him to go through. He couldn't tell how much the desire owed to himself, truly, and how much might be due to what she had told him about her Steve. And when faced with such complex emotional matters, Steve tended to always have the same response: not look too closely at the reasons behind the emotions, and embrace the emotions themselves unquestioningly.

This was why, after Natasha patched him up, and he her, he watched her walk off to find Clint, then put a hand to his injured side and resolutely headed over to Sharon's quarters, where he knocked on the door. "Sharon? It's me, Steve."

---

Sharon very nearly calls out 'Steve who?' because he's too obtuse to live sometimes.  She knows who's at her door as soon as he says her name [before, even, because Doctor Watson is the only other person who'd bother to check on her, and he's just left], and the fact that he goes on just kind of irritates her.  Really, it's the leg that's bugging her, and she's smart enough to know the difference.  For now.

"Yeah Steve.  Come in."  She's sitting on the bed, propped up against the wall, and as much as she'd rather talk to Steve from anywhere else, she's under doctor's orders not to move.

---

The door opens at her invitation, and the not quite formed apprehension in Steve's chest shapes itself into full-fledged worry when he sees her on her bed. He walks in, door closing behind him, and comes close, stops a few feet from the bed.

"How bad is it?" he asks, like he would ask any other soldier - like he cares, because he does.

---

The bandage on her thigh is pretty thick, but at least it's not the bloody mess that John found an hour ago.  Her sweats are cut off just above the bandage [that had been a hoot, for sure], and she winces as she tries to sit up higher.
"Shot by one of those turret things.  Through and through. Not so bad, except I had to walk on it for about an hour afterward."
Her eyes drift down to his side, and the way he's holding himself.  Anyone else would probably not be walking, if Steve is making that face.  
"Bet yours is worse."

---

"Sorry to disappoint," Steve tells her, and grabs a chair, drags it closer to the bed, "but it's just a burn."

He'll be just fine soon enough, and for now he can function through the pain. And, thankfully, walk. He has a feeling being laid up would make Sharon go crazy.

He sits down, with a small wince, then leans his hand on his thigh and looks every bit the usual Steve, apart from the tension in his eyes, his brows, at the corner of his lips, belying the pain he's in. "Who were you paired with?"

---

Sharon has a quiet moment of appreciation for the fact that he's not making a fuss.  It's delightfully familiar, just cataloging the hurts of the day with him, tallying them and just putting them away.  Of course, she's going to have plenty of time to think about her stupid leg, according to John.  

She almost says 'Magneto', but it doesn't feel quite true.  She's having a hard time thinking abut the man who'd carried her through the last of Aperture's horror show as the mutant terrorist from her world.  

"Erik Lensherr.  You know, the guy who manipulates metal."

---

Steve nods, thinking back on the few times they had talked. Erik knows of him, or some version of him, at least, but he's not one of Steve's regular fans. There's something too sharp about the way he talks to Steve, although he can't pinpoint it any better than that. In fact, Steve doesn't have a clue what to make of the man, other than sympathise - the numbers on his arm tell a tale of their own.

"What was he like in action?" he asks, curious and trusting Sharon's opinion. He'll get back to her leg and how long she has to remain laid up eventually, but there's no rush.

---

"I've seen worse.  Disorganized, but fast and pretty level headed, considering.  Didn't freak out when I made him get the bullet out of my leg."  She can't help but wonder how he came by the burn, and what it looks like under there, but the fact that he has it at all tells her something.

"I'm guessing you didn't get teamed up with any of your Avenger pals."  It had to be a civilian, or he wouldn't have ended up doing something stupid like jumping in front of a laser.  

---

Steve sakes his head. "Zoe Graystone. The young girl in high heels, usually?" He stopped thinking of her as a kid after he took that laser beam for her. 'Young girl' is just what she is. Kid is not. "She's surprisingly fast on her feet for someone so young." Which is as much as she's going to get in the way of 'maybe it's my fault I'm in this state'.

---

"Girl" is the only word Sharon needs to know exactly what happened.  Steve is physically incapable of not trying to rescue girls from danger, regardless of their ability to rescue themselves.  He's taken some pretty bone headed risks on her behalf, so she supposes she should be grateful he is who he is.

"I'm really glad you're OK."  It comes out a little weightier than she means it to, but she's never gotten used to seeing him hurt.  It makes her all nurture-y, like she wants to make him soup or something ridiculous like that.

---

It makes Steve smile, and he fishes back for one of the few modern expressions he's learned. "Right back at you." It isn't weighty for him, it is what it is, and he doesn't even question it. "So how long are you laid up for? Who dressed it?" The last is asked with a nod in the direction of her wound, and it clearly has been tended to.

---

Sharon smile goes from autopilot to genuine amusement as she thinks of John Watson dressing her leg.  No funny stuff, obviously, since they're both soldiers and him a doctor to boot.  But there was a lot of 'Bloody hell'-ing and incredulous looks as she chatted quite casually despite the fact that there was a sizeable chunk of her flesh missing.

"Doctor Watson.  We came through quarantine together.  You'd like him, he's a good egg."  His phrase, well, the other him.  

---

"I met him," Steve confirms with a nod. British armed forces through and through, or so it seems to Steve, and coming from him, it's a compliment. "He seems like a good egg."

For once it's a phrase he is familiar with, unlike all the modern ones. It feels at home in his mouth.

---

"Yeah, well, I almost throttled him when he said I couldn't leave this room except in a wheelchair for a week."  

She grimaces more from irritation than pain.  

"I'm not really the 'take it easy' type, you know?"

---

Steve smiles. He doesn't know, but, "I figured as much." He wouldn't expect any different from an agent. "But a week - you have it easy. A bullet wound, it could be worse." A lot worse, but he isn't thinking about that, just about recovery time. He wants to keep it light.

---

Sharon's not convinced by his optimism.  A week in her apartment at home maybe would be ok, but here?  And that's just the bed rest part.  John had said she might be on the crutches for weeks, depending on how it heals.  Which isn't something she can think about right now.

"If you could check back in a few days to make sure I haven't died of boredom, that would be great."

---

"I was planning on checking up on you every day, actually," he says, as naturally as he says anything else. "Was I overestimating your capacity for boredom?" That's Steve's brand of never dry, warmly teasing humor for you.

---

Sharon doesn't like her chances of looking nice every day as she convalesces, but Steve probably won't notice anyway.  

"I might take you up on that, actually.  Maybe wheel me around a little so I don't start thinking the walls are closing in."

Maybe a daily round of sprout beer will be enough to keep her from going totally off her nut.  Not likely, she feels, but Sharon's kind of a pessimist deep down.  

---

"Hmm," Steve thinks it over, "I don't think I've seen a wheeling chair around, but I'll ask people." Or carry her, if she lets him. To the nearest observation deck, probably - or maybe not, on second thought, given the last conversation they had there.

Wherever she wants to go is the best option.

---

Sharon looks a little sheepish.

"Uh, look behind you?"  The wheelchair she's stolen from sick bay sits innocently enough in the corner.  He's been so focused on her that he hasn't noticed it until now.

"I may have gone AWOL in it, after Doctor Watson specifically told me to stay put."  She gives him a raised brow.

"You gonna turn me in?"

---

"I'm just thankful I don't have to offer you piggy back rides," Steve answers, apparently very seriously. And then he smiles, warm and true, with a nod. "Write me down for daily pushing-you-around duty, then."

---

Sharon almost throws a pillow at him for the piggy-back comment.  He really is a goofball, and she's not sure how safe the free world would feel if they knew it.  

"You sure you're up to it?  Don't think I missed the face you made when you sat down.  Any chance you'll show me how bad that burn really is?"

She can't help worrying about him, and has all but stopped trying to rationalize it.  

---

"It's all bandaged up," Steve tells Sharon, which is true, and makes for a perfect excuse not to show her. It's not like she's showing him her bullet wound under her bandages, and it's not as if they were playing I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours even if she were. "But I think I can pull off pushing a wheelchair around."

There is a fine hint of 'really, you know who I am and what I can do' in there, because she does know who he is and what he can do - physically, that is. He figures he's identical to her Steve Rogers, physically.

---

"I never doubted whether you could.  Only whether you should."  Knowing his limits is not something anyone would accuse Steve Rogers of.  

She smiles at him, raking a hand back through her hair.  

"I can't promise I'll be good company after the first day or two, so feel free not to come back if I'm too much to handle."  

---

"I'm sure I'll handle it somehow," Steve assures her with a small, warm smile. If he thought of it in such terms, he would say that he has never found out whether he has emotional limits. Physical limits - he keeps encountering them these days, his new, increased limits, but he doesn't exactly take them into account. "You'll probably find it more frustrating than me."

That much is said with the easy confidence of someone who's frustrated his wounded men often enough, with his good cheer in the face of their crankiness.
---

That's kind of her point. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."  

Her stomach growls audibly, and Sharon laughs, embarrassed.  

"Wow.  I guess I forgot to eat.  But, you know, hospital food."  She crosses her arms and gives him a level stare.  "If you can get a cheeseburger out of that machine, I will really owe you one."

---

"If I can get a cheeseburger out of that machine, you'll promise not to try to walk before Dr Watson says you should," Steve answers pointedly, and already awfully cheerfully, as he stands (tries to hide the wince as the pain suddenly burns higher) and moves over to the replicator to get started on a long series of attempts.

---

Wow.  His ability to see right through her bull-headed intentions is pretty amazing.  And familiar.  She thinks of several smart responses: he's a doctor, not a psychic - I might get a head start and come over there right now to kick your backside - I'll take it easy if you do...  But faced with Steve's earnest concern, all Sharon can do is sigh and nod her head.

"It had better be an amazing cheeseburger, pal."

---

"I'll do my best," Steve assures her earnestly, and just as earnestly turns to the replicator.

It takes him six tries before he gets something that looks and smells like a cheeseburger, and not the simple 'slap a steak and cheese between two buns' kind either. It looks... elaborate, and now Steve wishes he'd ordered two, but he'll make do with his failed attempts at getting a cheeseburger - the edible ones, anyway - after getting her her meal.

"Victory is mine," he announces, walking (slowly) back to the bed to offer her the burger on a plate. "Mind if I join you?" That sandwich he first got actually looks downright tempting, and when you have a metabolism like his, you generally need a lot of food.

---

Sharon laughs as he hands her the plate.  It's like cheeseburger art, complete with a little lettuce fan.  But it smells amazing, and she's not about to second guess a real cheeseburger at last, however much it belonged under glass.

Her lapse in manners is a sure sign that she's hungrier than she thought.  

"I was hoping you would."  

Steve grabs one of his more OK looking rejects and sits back down opposite her.  Not for the first time, she's grateful for his presence; as much weirdness as there's been, she doesn't know what the hell she would do without him here.
---

fin!