CADENCE
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"And how did this 'Cho' take it all?" Savannah asked Sadie, as they caught up over a coffee- a strategically placed date.

Their therapist had suggested they place it in a half hour slot and never exceed that time, even if they felt completely comfortable staying longer. It was rocky territory, so Sadie and Savannah decided they would meet before she had to leave for training that evening, a way to make sure they stuck to the rules.

They had also agreed that safe topics of talk were school, work, life in London- or Cambridge now, Sadie supposed- life in New York, relationships, friendships, music, and the like. Unsafe topics were anything to do with the accident, their father, or their estrangement.

Simultaneously, Sadie was conveniently given the responsibility of watching Jacob Valentina whilst his parents worked late, and his sister slept over at a friend's. She only realised today what a great icebreaker children were, as Jacob had taken to carrying a pocket set of Lego with him everywhere, and the pieces covered the entire table, and he'd brought enough for the three of them to share. Sadie was building a house.

"Cho took it exactly how would I would take it if one of my colleagues decided to completely ignore my instructions," Sadie sighed.

"Okay, but you are trying to save lives with all of this medicine," Savannah said, her quick witted lawyer's brain immediately offering a defense. "So what does it matter what your boss-slash-not-boss has to say? Your other boss-not-boss seems to be one hundred percent on board. And I think Tony Stark trumps Helen Cho-"

"Hey!"

"Yeah, I know, she's a well renowned geneticist," Savannah chuckled. "But she's giving my sister a hard time, whereas Stark is a rock star who is, like I said, on board."

"A little too on board," Sadie laughed. "I feel like I've kinda gotten over the hype of it all, now I'm just barely trying to keep my head over the water. But Tony... it seems he has unlimited energy."

"Well, he is an engineer," Savannah said, and Sadie barked out a laugh.

"You should be proud of that one," she said, trying to make a window out of clear Lego blocks.

"You ever thought of slowing down?" Savannah asked, suddenly, her eyes full of concern. "I haven't seen you stop since I arrived. You're working what, seventy, eighty hours a week?"

"Sixty," Sadie corrected, fully aware that that was no better.

"Except that would be the case if you weren't also caring for Mom with me," she answered, mixing her latte. "And training. And if you hadn't also taken on your project to make Captain America cultured, which is both extremely sweet, and equally ironic by the way. Overall, I'd say eighty hours is about right."

Sadie didn't know what to say to that, so she turned to the five year old sat beside them. "Wow, Jake this looks amazing! You could be an architect when you're older."

"It's Avengers Tower, but I'm not finished yet," Jacob answered, his voice its usual quiet tone. He turned back to the building blocks. "Aunt Sadie, don't ignore Aunt Sav."

"Oh, I get it, an artist can't be distracted from his work," Sadie laughed, ruffling his hair.

Savannah still stared at her in concern, the law student holding steady on saying nothing. Sadie knew it was a tactic, one doctors used, too. Stay silent and the patient, or client, will give you more information to fill the silence, and then you have more evidence to work with. That didn't stop Sadie from falling for it, and spilling her guts.

"Look, Mom isn't labour, and even if she were, the hospital supports us. And Steve isn't labour either, he's just a guy I-" she tripped over her words a little. "Spend time with. But I'm fine," Sadie laughed again, but her sister still looked unconvinced. "Sav, I don't want you to worry. I got this."

"Labour isn't just your work, Shell. It can be emotional too. Maybe the inventions can wait 'till things slow down a bit?" Savannah said, and Sadie was stunned. The twenty year old laughed uncomfortably. "I'm pushing it. We should save it for therapy, huh?"

"No, it's okay," Sadie said, forcing a chuckle. "I appreciate the thought. But this work is too cool to leave it alone! Guess what? We're also building an injectable organic compound that fights off infectious diseases with a hundred percent rate- we'll never need antibiotics again!"

"Shell, that sounds great."

"And that's only some of the big stuff," she continued. "We could cure the common cold!"

"So many people would want to sue you," Sav laughed. "You'd kill the whole cold and flu industry with one drug."

"But improve quality of life for everyone else," Sadie said. "That's more important than greedy pharma companies."

"You're stubborn, it suits you," Savannah said, with a smile. Sadie noticed Savannah had dropped the 'r' how a Brit would. Stubborn. Perhaps she'd said it that way because she was a Brit, now. "Driven like Mom."

Sadie was impossibly moved by that. She knew Savannah could see it, so she thanked her, and flashed her a smile, then reminded Jacob it was time to pack away his Lego- preserving the tower of course.

"I never used to be stubborn at all, you know. Used to be spineless," Sadie said. "Did I ever tell you how Adrianne had to teach me how to tell someone- no, I will not write your research paper, jackbutt!"

"Jackbutt?" Savannah laughed loudly- a loud laugh Sadie hadn't heard in years. She only wished it wasn't almost time to go, so she could hear more of it. Sadie just cocked her head in Jacob's direction, an excuse for her censorship. Savannah didn't stop her teasing as she stood. "Was it the 'no' you struggled with, or the word 'jackbutt'?"

"Both," she shrugged, picking up her duffel bag. She checked her watch. "Poop, I'm late."

"Poop," Savannah repeated with a raised eyebrow. Sadie rolled her eyes. "Do you want me to drop Jake off, make it easier on you? 'Cause I can do that now," she added smugly. "'Cause I'm the fanciest girl on the block and I got a hire car."

"That would be perfect, angel," Sadie grinned, turning to the boy beside them. "Jake, how about an adventure with Aunt Sav in her hella cool hire car?"

"Hell yes," Jacob replied, sounding exactly like his father. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to training, and guess what?" Sadie grinned, with a sideways glance at Savannah. "I'm gonna go right back to researching after, because I'm relentless, and coffee exists. But I'll see you next week, cutie."

"Please excuse me while I wipe out all existing coffee trees," Sav said, as Sadie pressed a kiss to Jacob's forehead.

"We need those to save the planet," she said, hugging her sister goodbye before leaving the coffee shop.

The drive to the upstate facility was long, as usual, but Sadie mixed it up with some familiar tunes- her girl power playlist from when she was eighteen years old. It still held the test of time.

She couldn't help but wonder about Savannah's advice, no matter how much they'd both laughed it off. But she pushed it out of her mind, reminding herself that she had worked twenty four hours a day for a year in Afghanistan, and again in Libya. Except maybe Savannah was right. Maybe she was labouring emotionally too.

When she arrived at the Avengers Facility, a stern faced Natasha Romanoff waiting at the entrance, tapping her foot impatiently as the sky dimmed.

"Aceso," Natasha said, with a hint of annoyance. "You're late."

"Sorry," Sadie said, falling into step with her. "I had to build lego and get a reality check."

"About what?" Natasha asked.

The list was too long to get into, and if she was honest, Sadie simply didn't want to think about it all. So instead, she shrugged, and casually said: "Being a hard worker."

"I'll be the judge of that," Natasha said, with a smile. "You got two minutes to change- meet me in the training room."

~

Sadie would have expected to be the first person who'd clocked in for work that morning, partially because she hadn't clocked out that night. Sadie had fallen asleep at her desk in the lab at around twenty-past three, and spent her first, and hopefully last night, overnight at the Avengers compound.

Despite the early hours, she was unsurprised to find Steve Rogers already awake and prepped for the day as she walked into the training room, her hair still wet from her morning shower. He didn't look like he'd just arrived.

"Natasha actually asked me to pick between two shades of magnolia for her room," she said, and he turned to face her. "Please tell me you're not all living here."

"I mean, not all of us, and not technically or permanently, but practically," Steve shrugged undoing his gauze hand wraps.

"Oh my god," Sadie said, shaking her head as she dropped her training bag, and kicked off her shoes.

"It's not all bad," he shrugged. "It's like summer camp."

"You went to summer camp?"

"No," he admitted, as she walked over to him. "It wasn't really a thing for me growing up."

"Then how's it like summer camp?" Sadie frowned.

Steve looked genuinely baffled as he said, "It's... not?"

"This isn't a life, Steve," she reminded him. As she said it, she realised that she sounded almost exactly like Savannah had the previous evening. Sombre and pitiful. "Sorry, I just... it doesn't sit well."

There was a time, not long ago, when Sadie looked upon the lives of the Avengers with a definitive detachment. Then, there was a time when she worried for the heroes she had befriended, and the extent of their working. Now, she realised that perhaps her lifestyle, and Steve's, were no longer all that different.

"It's the cards we've been dealt," Steve said, truthfully. "How's Nat's training been?"

"Alright," Sadie said, with a shrug. "I feel like I'm learning loa- whoa!"

Steve's leg had swept under her own as he attempted to trip her- she stumbled, but ultimately managed to maintain her balance as she spun away from him, into a defensive position. 

"Is this an assessment?" she asked, as he grinned mischievously at her.

"No. Natasha said you're improving and I'm curious to see it," Steve replied. "But if you impress me, you get top marks."

Sadie had never gotten anything less than top marks in her life, so she launched into action, the moves Nat had taught her over the past month almost second nature to her now. Steve blocked and deflected her fairly well, always following up with light jabs and kicks. Sadie clutched his fist, twisting his arm harshly and- to her satisfaction- he lost his footing as she forced him to his knees.

"Why are you going easy on me?" Sadie asked, with her eyebrow raised.

"It's called being polite," Steve said, through gritted teeth as she kept his arm locked.

"Don't," she ordered, and within milliseconds he was moving again, and she was pinned beneath him. Sadie squirmed and twisted to no avail, she even tried the classic knee to the groin technique she'd seen in so many movies. Real life wasn't like the movies though, it seemed.

Steve sat back on his heels, his weight still holding her down as he formed a pretend gun with his hands. His voice was suddenly serious as he warned, "All it takes is one shot, and you're down for the count, Aceso."

It only spurred her on further. Keeping her movements rapid, Sadie slammed her arm against his wrist, weakening his mock gunpoint- she wouldn't be able to shift Steve's strength physically, so Sadie forced her body upwards, sending a gust of bright light from her hands. Her power pushed him off her, and she didn't waste a moment before launching herself onto him, grinning proudly as she leaned in close, formed her own mock gun with her hands.

"Bang," Sadie commented, lowly, resting her fingers against his temple. "And you're down for the count, Cap."

Steve said nothing for a moment, only their shallow breaths between them. His gaze wandered down, reminding Sadie of their precarious position, but it wasn't long before his eyes locked onto hers once more.

"You're a cheat," Steve commented. She could smell the mint on his breath. "I've been swindled."

His pupils were dilated. Sadie held back her smile by biting her lip, and sat back, freeing him. He shifted, pulled his knees up to his chest. She ignored the strange movement.

"What was it you said to me that one time?" she asked, tightening her satin scrunchie. "If you can't outfight 'em..."

"Outsmart them," Steve said, with a smile, and she nodded.

Sadie held her hand out to him, and he took it to shake. "Fair play?"

"Fair play," he agreed, letting go. "I think I gotta agree with Nat. You might be ready for a mission or two. There's been too many times you would've been handy to have around."

"I'm always handy to have around," Sadie said, holding back her excited grin.

There was a thundering of footsteps, and Sadie glanced out of the large widow to see a large group of young cadets performing drills. They ran in perfect synchronisation, and all sang the same forceful army song in booming voices despite their fast jog.

"Why are they-"

"The cadence," Steve answered, reading her mind. "Singing in a cadence helps them keep their heads up, breathe stronger while they run."

She listened closer to the words as the sound faded, but managed only to catch a single line: "Proud of all that we have done, fighting strong 'til the battle's won..."

"It's pretty intense for their age," Sadie said. "What are they- eighteen?"

"There were kids younger than that in my unit," he said. "Youngest were maybe fifteen, sixteen? They cheated their way in like I tried to, wanted to serve their country."

"That's..." horrific, she wanted to say, but didn't. She was sure Steve knew it.

"Kids then didn't have what they have now," he reminded her. "It's easy to volunteer when life isn't all that comfortable to begin with. But we embraced the little things."

"Like what?"

"I don't know- playing games with coke bottles- glass ones, not plastic. Sounded musical on the gravel," Steve said, a soft smile on his face. "Holding onto the back of a bus when you didn't have a ticket, stealing cigars the older men left behind-"

"You stole cigars? That's gross."

"People used to say they cured asthma," Steve said, defensively.

"Right. And you believed them," Sadie teased.

"I was reading about how tobacco can be good for you," he commented, matter-of-factly. "What do you think Doctor Moore?"

"The evidence is weak, but there's some to suggest that it prevents Parkinson's Disease, and it can boost the effect of some cardiac drugs, but the cons far outweigh the pros," Sadie said. She thought for a moment. "Nicotine is also an appetite suppressant so I suppose you could argue it prevents obesity, but I've never once had a patient who went off their favourite foods because they started chain smoking. Those guys always turn up with scarred lungs and bronchitis and um, cancer."

A reminder, once more, of what her mother was facing, that very moment. The cancer of the brain. Sadie glanced at her watch- they'd be administering Shan's first round of chemo any time now. And to think that there were companies, profiting off people's sickness and addiction, causing them the same pain her mother had, with their only thought being to add the words 'smoking kills' to packaging-

She quickly disguised her wandering thoughts and it seemed to work since Steve's lips were still turned up in a smile.

"How'd you get so clever?" He asked her, making her heart race.

"I studied," Sadie grinned. "Enough about me, back to teenage-Steve, already. You really had fun with whatever you could find huh?"

"Yeah. Me and Buck," he said. "And his sisters would chase us down the street telling us to get home, but we never went until it got dark."

There it was- that fond expression. Bucky Barnes meant so much to Steve, it made Sadie want to pray the soldier could be found soon enough. So she did, in her own head.

"I hope I never have a son like the two of you," she said, sternly.

"And were you so good your whole life, doll?" Steve asked, sending heat rushing to her face. She wished he would stop calling her that when she least expected it, it made her short circuit.

"Yes, actually, I was," Sadie said. "I think I listened to the lyrics of Waterfalls a little too closely." He only looked at her, puzzled, so she added: "Right. Another one on the list. Essentially, I was a little too scared to act crazy. Plus, I was busy- I decided on medical school at age twelve."

"Of course you did," he smiled, and even as they sat quietly, she could tell he was still feeling nostalgic. "And look at us now. Alien invasions, machines coming to life, so-called gods and monsters and the rest of it," Steve sighed, looking genuinely baffled. "If you'd asked me what I thought about that when I was twenty, I would've said you were crazy."

"Do you miss it?" Sadie asked him, tentatively. "The old days?"

"Do I miss it?" He repeated, and the look on his face made Sadie wonder if the question was appropriate. Nothing she had ever said to him had made him look so... insulted. Especially when only a moment ago he had been so content.

"I just mean... would you go back if you could?" She asked again, trying to save it but it didn't seem to change anything. His face was hard, as he looked out of the window at the green trees.

It was a while before he spoke.

"I miss the people. I miss the naivety I had, and sometimes- very rarely- I miss that despite it all, the world seemed to be mine for the taking. That old American Dream, whatever I wanted could be mine, if I worked for it," he said, but his tone was bitter.

He shook his head, before looking at her. "But it was only ever at other people's expense. I don't miss the world I lived in. I don't miss that women were treated like dirt, or that working men were dying of preventable diseases while the rich got fat."

"Of course you don't," Sadie said, feeling slightly stupid. It was her own fault.

"I certainly don't miss the fact that you and I would probably never have been in the same room, and if we were, there'd be almost no 'acceptable' interaction. You would've had to give up your seat for me, and we'd drink from different fountains. So no, Sadie. I wouldn't go back. Even if it meant I could have everything I ever wanted, I would never contribute to that again."

Sadie was stunned by that. Of course, she knew all of this, in the back of her mind. She knew of poverty and sexism, and above all she knew of segregation. She remembered learning about the Civil Rights movement in school, hearing the experiences of the elders in her neighbourhood, and how her own parents had met throughout the rioting and speeches, when they had both come here for work.

And all of that was still twenty years after Steve had gone into the ice. She was painfully aware of exactly how it would've been for people like her who lived in his generation.

For any black child growing up in the US, seeing the remnants of the old American attitudes wasn't hard to do when they were still so blazingly relevant. But Sadie had never connected those dots to Steve, and his life before she knew him. Had never thought about how he may have benefited from it all. Maybe because she'd never let herself think it, afraid of whatever it might reveal.

It was terrible, but she was glad to see the guilt in his eyes- a healthy guilt, one that meant that he truly understood things differently now. She decided to attempt to thin the tension in the air, so she pulled her lips into a grin, nudged his side playfully.

"Explains why when you woke up from the ice, you were totally scared of me," Isadora chuckled and Steve smiled, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

"Hey, I was confused," Steve laughed. "I was scared of everyone! You try waking up after that long and the whole world's changed."

"Bet you thought I was a maid," Sadie teased, playfully.

"I did not think you were a maid!"

"Yeah, like what's this lady doing in a white coat and why's this guy calling himself a director?" Sadie added, in her best (and worst) impression of him. "Wait, am I supposed to take orders from these people?"

"Stop!" At least Steve was laughing at himself, she supposed. He added sarcastically: "God, you must've thought the world of me, coming out of that time."

"Actually I did. I knew what you'd fought for, why you were here," Sadie shrugged. "But regardless, I was treating you. You were my patient, and it wasn't my business what your beliefs and opinions were. 'Cause at the end of the day, I just thought, this is the world he's stuck with, so he better get used to it."

"Well, I'm glad I am stuck with this," he said, and she looked at him to see that his expression was genuine. "And I'm certainly getting used to it."

"Anyway, I doubt things were all that easy for you back then anyway," Sadie shrugged. "Am I making this up, or did you have polio?"

"Wow, Sadie, way to bring up childhood trauma," Steve said, in mock offence and she nudged him as she laughed. "Yeah, I did. God, I was the sickest kid in the world, and you know the symptoms- I thought I was going to die."

"I'm glad you didn't," Sadie said. "I really am glad you're here. I know it must be hard for you."

"You know, it's really not, anymore," he answered, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. "I've found people, like you. Good people. I'm not alone like I used to be."

It was silly, and childish, but Sadie pulled him forward, insisted on a great big hug that probably lasted a little longer than it should have. Not that she was complaining. At all.

...
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Hi all!! I'm going to be honest, I'm real happy with how this turned out- this chapter is dedicated to BEKAH for helping me figure out the opening, you're the greatest!!!

So. This chapter was a sticky one towards the end. But this kinda thing has to be addressed when you're pairing someone Steve Rogers (a character who was literally designed to be ironically the perfect white man) with someone like Sadie Moore who, you guessed it, isn't in fact white.

I decided to have them laugh it off at the end, but acknowledge the brutal fact that, yeah Steve's upbringing and the world he grew up in meant he directly benefited from racism, but there's no hard feelings because like Sadie noticed, he genuinely feels guilty for it and sees why it was so wrong- unlike some people *cough endgame Steve cough* who would happily go back to that :/

Also hope you guys are enjoying seeing a little more of Savannah's character, and the slow repair of hers and Sadie's relationship, that was a lot of fun to write (again, thanks to Bekah for the prompt!)

Quick update for you btw: this time next week I will be officially moved in to university- and school begins. Like I said, I will try to write beforehand  but please bear with me through this busy period!

Let me know what you thought and also please update me on how you're all doing!!

-Amber.