Author's Note: Just to give you readers some warning, this is my first fan fiction ever, let alone on this site. I sincerely hope you like it, however, and reviews are appreciated, as are private messages and constructive criticism. I'll try to post as often as I can. Read, and please, enjoy! This story takes place after the first Avengers but before Avengers: Age of Ultron, and is an AU. Please note: Pepper Potts is no longer with Tony Stark but is still working for him, Phil Coulson did not die, and Loki wasn't a villain in the first movie (more on this in the next chapter). Please don't hate me!

Chapter 1

Hope Ashton was strolling around the street, minding her own business and lost in her own little world when she felt it. It was a peculiar sensation, like pin pricks on the back of her neck. Her hair stood on end, and she almost paused in her walking, but carried on so as not to look suspicious to those around her. She'd experienced this sensation before, in another time, another place, another way. Her feelings for it, however, remained the same.

She hated being watched.

It was irritating, knowing someone was following your every move yet knowing you can't let the person watching you know that you know you're being watched. If they find out you know, they'll go from just watching you to going on the offensive, and Hope didn't have time for that right now.

She had her daughters to think of, after all. True, they weren't biologically related to her, and never mind the fact that most of them where only a few years younger than herself; Hope couldn't even begin think of them as anything like friends or sisters-they were her daughters, through and through.

And though Hope knew she needed to get back to them soon, she also knew that leading the people watching her to her daughters was a very foolish move.

The thought that they might already know where she lived plagued her, but Hope brushed it aside. She had security so tight in her home and so many safety measures put in place that whoever was watching her probably didn't know her daughters existed.

Hope had been so lost in her musings that she had completely forgetting her surroundings. More importantly, she'd forgotten she was in a crowded street, in a popular city.

The thing that made her remember where she was, however, was the fact that she had just bumped into someone.

To her further embarrassment, she had knocked into them so hard that they had actually fallen down. She studied his features quickly-curly, dark brown hair, brown eyes, a height that was much taller than her short 4' 11' stature, a slightly tanned skin tone-before a extending a hand to help him up.

Blushing furiously, she said, "I'm so sorry, sir. Are you alright?"

The man nodded, and Hope breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness. Sometimes I get so lost in my thinking that I fail to pay attention to what's going on around me."

Hope had originally intended to be gruff with him, a quick apology said before hurrying on her way, but that just wasn't her way, and besides, it would only hurt her to be rude. Maybe being kind to the person she'd bumped into would give her the distraction she needed. In any case, she had to try.

She needed to be sincere and heartfelt, chat with him for a moment or two before going on her merry way.

Thankfully, the man was kind, and he smiled, nodding at her excuse.

"That happens to me too, from time to time," he told her, and Hope returned the smile he had given her.

There was something...off about this, however; what she had been taught in the past told her that maybe this had been planned, and that the nice man whose back had been on the sidewalk only moments before was with the people who were watching her.

So Hope decided to be "subtly wary," a trick Selene had taught her. The key to it was to be wary and suspicious without anyone catching on to it-facial expressions, tone of voice, and questions and responses had to be just so, or else they would catch on.

Still smiling, she asked, "Where are you headed off to?"

Surprise and worry flashed simultaneously in his eyes, but other than that, nothing was off about him or his reaction.

"Just headed to a really good bookstore-slash-coffee shop I know. What about you?"

Hope could tell his response was a choreographed lie, but she said nothing of it.

Deciding to lie in turn, she replied, "I just got off work, but today I had planned to go to the grocery store...which is why I crashed into you. I was thinking so hard about the things I needed that..."

Here, she gestured to him and then the sidewalk, smiling sheepishly.

The man chuckled, and it was at that moment that Hope's phone rang. Though she was grateful for the distraction, she shot an apologetic towards the stranger before taking out her phone-by society's standards, a very old flip-phone-before answering.

"Hello?" she said, and there was a sigh of relief on the other line.

"We were worried when you didn't come home on time. Rose said she saw you being kidnapped, so...we feared the worst," one of her daughters, Haley, said.

Hope bite her lip. Rose's visions were rarely wrong.

Not sure how to reply with a stranger right next to her, she took in a breath and told Haley, "Sorry, but the subway was late."

To the average stranger, there would be nothing alarming about this statement. However, to her girls, this was a code. It meant that Hope was or suspected she was being followed and that the girls should take prepare to run.

She heard Haley let out a hiss.

"Okay. Selene's been blocking the phone call's transmission since the start, but now she's upped her game. What should we do?"

This was said so quietly that Hope almost had a hard time hearing her. The man whom she had bumped into earlier was shifting nervously, as if waiting for something to happen. Figuring that Rose's vision was about to come true and that she didn't have much time left, she told her daughter, "You know what to do."

There was a pause, then the line went dead. Hope nearly smiled-that was exactly what she wanted her to do. Now, Haley would alert the other girls, and they'd most likely have left the state by the time night fell. After quickly glancing up at the sky, she deduced that it was probably around six or so, which meant her girls would soon be safe. Maybe not her so much as them, but Hope's live meant little compared to the life of her daughters.

With this thought in mind, she gave herself courage and asked the man, "Where you planning on chloroforming me?"

The look of surprise and shock on the man's face was priceless.

Smiling with her eyes, she continued, "I've known that I was being watched for at least an hour. You're most likely a diversion set to catch me unawares before someone, or multiple people, come in and subdue me. Did I guess right?"

The man stilled, clearly unsure of how to proceed.

"You're just as good as the director told us you would be," a voice said from behind her, and Hope whirled.

The person whom the voice belonged to was a very beautiful woman, with short, fiery red hair that reminded her of Erica, though the woman's hair was much shorter. She wasn't sure of the woman's eye color, but she was taller than Hope. The tension in the woman's shoulders and the wary, guarded look in her eyes told Hope that she was a woman ready for anything.

Unsmiling, she shrugged and informed the new stranger, "I've been running for a long time."

The man gave a jolt at this, and she glanced over at him. Clearly whatever it was she had said had struck a nerve, or reminded him of something.

Suddenly it clicked in her mind. The red-headed woman with the mindset of Athena, and the man who looked like your average day guy but seemed nervous and jumpy.

They were part of the Avengers.

The woman was, obviously, the Black Widow, real name being Natasha Romanoff. Tales of what she had done in the battle, as well as in her spy life awed Hope and her girls, especially the fact that she was one woman among many men. The man who looked quite common was hard to pace-he obviously wasn't the arrogant billionaire Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man, nor was he the man out of time, Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America.

That left only two people-Clint Barton, or Hawkeye, or Bruce Banner, alias being the Hulk.

However, given the way he had reacted to what she had told the spy, Hope deduced that the man was Bruce.

Hope was so caught up in her thoughts that, unbeknownst to her, the infamous spy, Natasha, known to many by her codename the Black Widow, had been studying the woman Director Fury had ordered them to track intently.

Though she didn't look like much-long, light brown hair, hazel eyes, lean and thin, with a very small height-she had been running from both SHIELD as well as Hydra for years. Such a feat should be impossible, yet here she was, after ten years of both agencies looking for her.

Her only mistake was making New York her home.

In any case, the way she held herself and the way her eyes were glancing everywhere, most likely looking for an escape, reminded Natasha very much of a SHIELD agent.

Through the comm, the Black Widow knew that her remaining teammates-minus Barton, who was on the roof should anything go wrong-were quickly approaching to their location. The spy knew that Hope didn't have much time left before she was captured, and for some unexplainable reason that pained her. Maybe it was because this woman reminded her so much of herself.

Hope finally realized that the Black Widow was studying her, sizing her up, so she bit her lip and shifted on her feet.

The tension-filled silence was cut through when Hope's phone rang. She let it ring a few times, glancing between Bruce and Natasha before she finally asked them, "Is it okay if I take this?" Both Avengers seemed surprised by this question before Natasha shrugged.

"Sure."

Hope inclined her head to the Black Widow in thanks before she answered her phone. Though the caller was still one of her girls, this time, rather than Haley, it was Athena.

"We're monitoring the situation now. Would you like us to stage a rescue?"

Hope shook her head before replying, "No. Leave me and go."

Again, the Avengers seemed surprised. The surprise, however, quickly turned into concern. Hope flinched, ashamed that she had revealed that the girls existed. But there were no code words to tell them to continue with the plan.

There was a pause before Athena sighed. Then, with great reluctance in her voice, said, "If you will it to be so, then I suppose we have no choice but to depart."

Hope flinched at the loudness of the sounds of uproar at Athena's decision. Her girls were angry-they wanted to rescue her. Gritting her teeth, Hope hissed, "Athena, would you put the phone on speaker phone for me, please?"

Another pause.

"How...how is exactly is that done, mother?"

Hope would've laughed had the situation not been so dire.

There was an impatient sigh in the background that was not Athena's before came the sound of the phone being exchanged to another person. There was a click of a button, and a pause.

Then another one of her daughters, Selene, said, "It's on speaker phone now. We can all hear you, so watch what you say."

This time, Hope couldn't stifle her laugh, and she snickered. Bruce and Natasha shot her a questioning look, but she ignored them.

"Am I correct to assume that you're blocking this call for being traced?"

There was a snort, then,

"You wound me, mother. Of course I'm stopping them from finding out where we are-I'm not five."

Rolling her eyes at her daughter's behavior, Hope said, "Leave the city. Protect each other. If these people mean no harm to me, as they seem to claim, then they should let me go once I've given them what they want. Once that happens, I'll find you girls again. This may be goodbye, but it won't be for forever."

There was silence on the other line, then the sound of laughter.

"Trust you to say something so poetic and beautiful. But yeah, this isn't goodbye. We will find you again."

The dial tone sounded then, and Hope stared at the phone for a long time afterwards before sighing and looking up at the heroes.

"So what now?

I apologize for any errors, spelling or other.