It took a further three hours to get back to D.C. Steve drove the entire way again, mostly because the two women in the back were in no fit state to drive. They had quickly fallen asleep whilst in the backseat, so Steve drove extra carefully to try and make sure that they stayed asleep, it was a good opportunity to rest, and like always they weren't sure when the next time that they'd be able to sleep would be.

They had fallen asleep in the comfort of being squished against each other, Nat was leaning completely over Eleanor, her head was laying on the younger woman's chest and she had an arm and a leg draped over her too. Eleanor was being kept in a stable position by her face being pushed against the window. Steve wasn't quite sure how she hadn't slipped at least slightly with Nat being completely draped over her, but he didn't question it too much.

He did eventually need to wake them up though when he had arrived outside of a friend's house. Getting out of the car, he gently closed the door so that it wouldn't scare them awake, and walked around to the back door that Eleanor and Natasha's weights weren't being held up by. He didn't really fancy being the cause of them toppling out of the car and into the road.

"Nat. El", he said with a soothing voice whilst leaning over to reach them. He gently rubbed Nat's shoulder and then Eleanor's knee. Natasha woke up gently and carefully sat up to stretch. It took a few more shakes of Eleanor by Nat to get her to wake, but her eyes did open, begrudgingly.

"Where are we?", Nat asked as she lightly rubbed Eleanor's back whilst she stretched herself awake.

"A friend's place". Nat quirked a brow, that simply wasn't enough information for her liking. "Sam Wilson".

"And you're sure he won't try and blow us up?", Eleanor groggily chimed in. It was a joke, but she also a genuine question.

Steve chuckled slightly but his smile didn't reach his eyes, the gravity of the situation that they were in was just too huge to feel completely lighthearted about this. "No, no he won't".

They reluctantly followed Steve, looking around to see if anyone was watching them as they neared the house. It was quaint, it looked homely. Most importantly, it looked peaceful, and Eleanor felt guilty that they were about to punt that peacefulness into a fiery inferno.

Steve knocked on the door as Nat and Eleanor focused on holding each other up, still feeling pretty fragile. Natasha had an iron grip on Eleanor's waist to try and keep her girlfriend upright, the younger woman would have complained if it were not for the fact that she would like to be standing and not stumbling around on the front porch.

When Sam opened the door he looked confused, and so looked to Steve for answers, "Hey, man".

"I'm sorry about this, we need a place to lay low".

"Everyone we know is trying to kill us", Nat added on to make sure he knew just how desperate they were. It was a harsh reality hearing Nat say that out loud, they really weren't safe. But Eleanor hoped that it wasn't everyone they knew that would attempt to end their lives, hopefully, Maria was still batting on their team. That would be a stab to the heart if she wasn't.

Sam looked between the three of them and saw just how beat up they looked, then briefly looked past them to see if anyone nearby was watching as well. They were all rightfully paranoid. "Not everyone", he reassured as he opened the door more to let them in. Eleanor shot a small smile at him, but it went unnoticed as he was still looking outside before closing the door and the blinds.

They immediately took the painkillers that Sam had offered them and then decided that they should probably get washed up, they were all covered in ash and Nat and Eleanor's hair had certainly seen better days. Eleanor's hair had been in that same braid that Nat did for her before the mission on the boat, she slept in it as she didn't feel the need to do her hair until the next morning, but they were woken up due to Fury's death, and then immediately got thrown into the hell that they were in now. But half of it wasn't in the braid anymore, and Natasha's hair had gone into frizzball mode.

The two women flipped a coin to see who would shower first after Sam told them that they could use his facilities. Eleanor ended up going first and went as fast as she could so that Natasha wasn't having to wait for too long. She had taken four minutes, which surprised Natasha, but she was too tired to say anything and just went in herself, desperate to get the sweat and ash off of herself.

Steve and Sam spent the time talking, and Eleanor sat on the sofa drying her hair with a towel, and then putting it into a single Dutch braid, she didn't want to intrude on their conversation but also wanted to make sure that her hair was kept out of the way for whatever was heading their way. But then she was left alone whilst Natasha got ready in the bedroom and Steve went to wash up.

Eleanor was still feeling a bit fatigued, but her mood perked up considerably after taking a shower. Not only did the sweat, dirt, blood, and ash wash away and into the drain, she felt some of her tension and exhaustion get washed away as well. She still had a rather macabre energy around her, there had been a great loss in her life very recently, but she was doing as best as she could do right now.

"So...", Sam began, clearly feeling as awkward as Eleanor did, "Tough day, huh?". He grimaced a bit at being so casual about the ordeal that she had been through over the last day, but Eleanor didn't seem to mind.

She let out a dry chuckle as she recalled the events of the last few hours, "Yeah, you could say that. Thank you for letting us stay", she sent a warm smile his way.

"Nah, don't worry about it. Any friend of Steve's is a friend of mine". Eleanor felt like she could cry then and there, her whole life had crumbled mere hours ago, and the organisation that she had called home was now hunting and trying to kill her and her girlfriend down along with Steve, so knowing that they still had another ally into the world was good to know. Instead of crying, she let out a shaky breath of relief.

Sam immediately felt a pang of sympathy. The woman that was sitting on his sofa looked kind of broken, "You look like you could use a distraction, wanna help me make breakfast?". Eleanor was glad that Sam wasn't prying, or questioning whether they were in the right, he just wanted to make sure that they were all okay. He was a nice breath of fresh air.

Eleanor nodded and stood, "This better not be a way of getting me to make your breakfast, Wilson", she smirked.

Sam placed his hand on his chest in fake offence and gasped, "I would never!".

It took fifteen minutes to make breakfast, and every minute was spent with Sam and Eleanor teasing each other about how they were doing a shit job, or tossing a utensil at the other one's face, they seemed to click. It was a nice change of pace.

"Alright, I'm gonna go see if the others want anything", Sam announced after the laughter had died down from when he launched a spoon at Eleanor's face.

He came back with just Natasha, Steve had said that he would be out in a minute apparently.

"You don't happen to have any straighteners, Sam?". Eleanor gave Nat a 'Really? Right now?", look, to which Nat just shrugged. Surprisingly, Sam did have some straighteners in his spare room, apparently for when his sister stayed, so Natasha immediately went to do her hair.

Eleanor sat down to eat her bacon and eggs along with Sam, with Steve and Nat's going cold beside them. She finished her food quickly, so laid out some glasses of orange juice for the four of them as well.

It was another ten minutes before Steve came out to eat, and Nat came out of the spare room a few minutes after that. "Took your time. Breakfast's gone cold", Eleanor spoke whilst cleaning the finished dishes.

"I'll eat it cold", Nat shrugged again as she sat. The room was silent aside from the occasional scrape of a fork. Nat wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone, for now, she needed some time to process now that they weren't on the move. Eleanor knew the signs of this, so she left her alone for a little while, but made a point to keep an eye on her.

Eleanor could almost see all of the thoughts swirling around in her eyes as they darted around the room. Eleanor's heart broke, the Nat in front of her looked like the one she had first met at SHIELD, and she knew that the only way to get today's Natasha back would be to let her mull everything over now that she's in a safe space. Pushing her or intruding on her space would do no good.

Once the other two had also finished their food, Eleanor was about to ask the room a question about what their next move was, "So-", she started as she walked back to the table, but she stopped due to tripping on something. "Your fucking spoon is on the floor, Samuel", she laughed and picked it up to go and wash it. Sam laughed as well but stopped when he saw the confused faces of Nat and Steve.

"Don't worry about it", he dismissed them.

---

Breakfast went by fast, they were all now comfortable and washed up, with food-filled stomachs. But now it was back to business.

"So, the question is, who at SHIELD could launch a domestic missile strike?", Nat asked from beside Eleanor on a kitchen chair.

"Pierce", Steve realised from the other side of the room, sitting at the kitchen table. Of course, Pierce was the guy that stood at the top of everything, if he wanted the attacks on them to stop he would have been able to do so with the click of his fingers. Clearly, he wanted them to continue.

Nat stood to move over to Steve so that the conversation wasn't being had from two sides of the room, "Who happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world".

"But he's not working alone, Zola's algorithm was on the Lemurian Star".

Now it was time for Eleanor to speak, she also stood and moved over to the other side of the room, "There was one operative on board, Sitwell".

Nat and Steve's faces flashed with realisation before Steve spoke again, "So, the real question is, how do the three most wanted people in Washington kidnap a SHIELD officer in broad daylight?". They were already thought of as criminals, so it wasn't like an extra kidnapping charge would do much more harm Eleanor thought to herself and held back a chuckle at how ridiculous her inner monologue sounded.

"The answer is, you don't", Sam threw a file with an image of him and another guy on the front down onto the table.

"What's this?".

"Call it a resume".

Nat picked up the photo that was resting on the file, Eleanor didn't recognise the scene at all, nothing came to mind as she looked at it, but Nat seemed to know it. "Is the Bakhlama? The Khalid Khandil mission. That was you? You didn't say he was a Pararescue".

"Is this Riley?", Steve asked him, ignoring Nat's pararescue comment. Once again Eleanor had no clue what they were talking about when it came to this file.

"Yeah". Sam looked solemn, which meant that the likely scenario was that he lost Riley somehow.

"I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs", Nat spoke, clearly knowing a lot about this mission. They tended to keep on top of what was going on in the world in terms of military operations, but some slipped off of their radar, this being one of those for Eleanor. "What did you use, a stealth chute?".

"No, these", Sam handed the file to Steve. It had the title EXO-7 FALCON. Eleanor tilted her head when reading it.

Steve opened it and had a slight look of disbelief on his face before looking back to Sam, "I thought you said you were a pilot?".

"I never said pilot", he chuckled. Nat and Eleanor leaned over to look at the file, and they were not expecting to see what they saw. Sketches of a giant pair of powered wings that attached to a person. It looked impressive.

"I can't ask you to do this Sam. You got out for a good reason". Aaand there it was, the disturbance of peace by launching it into a fiery inferno.

"Dude, Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in".

Steve gave up arguing, Sam was clearly not backing down. "Where can we get our hands on one of these things?".

"The last one is at Fort Meade. Behind three guarded gates and a 12-inch steel wall".

Steve looked to Natasha who just shrugged as if to say 'That's easy'. Eleanor looked at her and mimicked her expression immediately afterwards, she definitely did not think that it would be the easiest task at hand, but she didn't want to look like the only one who thought that.

"Shouldn't be a problem", Steve echoed Nat's thoughts. Once again, Eleanor didn't voice her thoughts, but she definitely thought that this was going to be a problem.