Okay, so I don't own the Avengers and I am not making money off of this.
Note: gratuitous use of Russian stereotypes, most of which are false, but sometimes not as false as we Russians would have you believe.
"…I went with nothing/ But the thought you'd be there too/ Looking for you…"
...
"… search of experience/ To taste and to touch/ And too feel as much…"
Sound flitted at the edge of his consciousness, lapping and searching to wake him slowly. It seemed all a loud rush as first, but as the spinning in his head slowed he could pick out the lyrics and the old familiar melody, though it took him a few seconds to determine the whimpering noise was coming from his own mouth. A mouth that felt eerily like plasticine and didn't taste all that much better.
"… he repents/ I went out searching…"
He sucked a deep breath and shoved a hand over his greasy face. The hand smelled faintly of vanilla and he gagged. It seemed to open an olfactory flood gate and suddenly he could smell the lingering alcohol on his own breath and in his clothes, the cigarette smoke, hooker sweat and faint tinge of desperation which had become his eau de Cologne in the past weeks. Distantly, too, he could smell frying eggs, but he wasn't sure if his stomach liked the idea or if it was marshalling for a revolt. He pressed his lips together and rolled onto his side. When the mattress beneath him screeched in protest he was abruptly aware that he was not at his hotel.
"… sit at his father's right hand/I went out walking/With a Bible and a gun…"
Okay, he pushed breath through his chapped lips in a desperate bid to calm himself, just who the fuck did he go home with?
He needed to move, he need to find his phone, call his driver and—
Was that a baby?
The squalling came again, pitched higher and louder than the soft strains of Johnny Cash and threatening split his skull.
"Tishe, tikhaya Nastyushka, tishe moi kukly. Vy prosnetes nashego gostya."
Tony cracked his eyes. Anaemic light oozed through the window above him to cast the room in a hazy yellow-grey, staining the landlord-beige walls an off-bile. Across from him, the baby was cradled in arms a young woman. Light from the window above his mattress glinted off her hair and cast a duplicate shadow on the wall behind her, which was decorated with a tiny laminated ikons and a delicate wooden cross.
Russian Orthodox, he thought. And then, he remembered, remembered the woman, the night before and he was never getting drunk in public again.
"Heh," he wheezed and pushed himself up on the bed.
"Oh!" The woman jumped, "Oh, good morning Mr. Stark."
Her accent was heavy, especially on the vowels, but she pronounced each sound crisply.
"Mariya Denisov," she smiled over the baby's head at him, "is my name, if you have forgotten. Call me Masha."
"Masha," he parroted, "where's my phone."
"I have no idea, but your wallet is still in your pocket," she paused, "and the bathroom is down the hall to your left."
He grunted and tried to stand, but the treacherous floor was having none of it, and spun when he levered himself up.
"Damn," he muttered and sat back heavily. "What the fuck did I drink last night?"
"What didn't you drink," Masha chuckled, shaking her head. "Do you need a moment, Mr. Stark?"
"Call me Tony," he moaned, "Mr. Stark is my…" he exhaled sharply and jolted himself up from the bed in one jerky motion, ignoring the rolling in the pit of his stomach.
Masha was considerably shorter than him, he noticed belatedly, shorter and heroin thin.
"Come on, Tony," she shepherded down the hall, cooing at the baby in Russian while they walked. "Try to vomit, I'll make coffee."
"My hero," he grunted, then paused with his hand on the bathroom door. "Seriously, thanks for last night. You're a life saver. Literally."
"I know," she said, "I'll see if I can locate your phone, yes?"
He shrugged and shoved open the bathroom door.
He didn't puke, which meant he probably had last night. Multiple times, if the current state of his mouth was any indication. The mirror was cracked a bit, and in it his face was reflected twice, so three swollen, red eyes glared hazily back at him and two mouths curled in a grimace of distaste at the state of his hair.
His wallet was, as Masha had promised, in his pocket, but alas, no phone. That had been a prototype. Christ, his body guards were probably pulling it out of a dumpster and diving back in to search for his corpse. Well, perhaps that was better than breaking down Masha's front door, guns a'blazing. Was it? Masha might enjoy it, from what he remembered of the night before, she might fucking love the excitement.
Well, not with the baby. It looked like it was hers, too and he really hadn't seen that coming. Made him hope like hell he hadn't done anything with her the night before.
Tony slunk out of the bathroom, feeling slightly less like a zombie and lurched into the kitchen.
Masha had her back to him, baby in one hand, spatula in the other and her feet bare. He launched himself toward the table and the lonely white mug of what he was feverently hoped was coffee. He chugged half the cup back and slammed it down on the table with an exaggerated lip smack.
"Excellent," he said, as if he could actually taste it.
"Thank you," she said and stirred her pan of frying potatoes, "I'm making you a hangover breakfast."
"I really can't stay," he began, but she waved the spatula without turning and said:
"You have too, for a little longer, they own this whole building and I'd rather not explain how you got here," she said seriously. "Anyway, what the hell were you doing there last night? Shouldn't you be in a real casino?"
"My driver recommended it."
"Ah," Masha nodded knowingly, "he knew you would bring a high ransom."
"Excuse me? The Russian Mob has a fucking limo service!"
"Of course they don't. There is no such thing as the Mafia," she smiled benignly.
"Why did you help me?" he asked. Well, he had an idea, especially after seeing the baby; she looked like the kind of the women the girl from Taken would have become if she'd had Ryan Seacrest for a father instead of Liam Neeson.
"I am something of a disgruntled employee," she paused, looking between the frying pan and Tony, "hold this," she said and shoved the baby into his arms.
"Uh, no!" he squawked.
"Oh, don't be such a child," she rolled her eyes as he floundered awkwardly. "Hold her against your chest, yes, that's better."
Tony glowered at the baby, who screwed up her face to scowl back at him, "I don't like being handed things."
"Nastya is not a thing," she chuckled, turning back to the stove.
"I think Nastia wants her Mommy," he winced at the disgruntled noises the baby was making. He shifted her up more so that her face was flush with his collar bone.
The baby grunted and promptly shoved her fingers in his face, tracing it with a grudging curiosity, scowl undiminished. He couldn't tell her age, but she seemed too tiny to have such motor control. She was larvae-y and had her mother's green eyes, massive and staring unblinkingly up at him from above her pout. Her cheeks stuck out so prominently her other features seemed lost and tiny on her face.
Finished with his face, she began patting down his chest.
"You're gonna have to buy me dinner pretty soon," he told the baby, "and I'm not a cheap date, sister."
"Her name is Anastasia, uh-ne-STA-sia, to honour my sister," Masha said, without turning, "it means 'the resurrected one', but mostly it's a joke about dead princesses."
"How very Russian," Tony grinned.
"Spasiba."
Her scowl lifted a bit when her fingers brushed the arc reactor, and she poked it insistently, pursing her lips when it did not give like the rest of him.
"Expensive taste," Masha made a face at her daughter as she turned and set a plate down in front of Tony. "She likes shiny things. Took an earring right out of my ear and tried to eat it, once."
The woman sat in the chair across from him and plucked the baby up from his grasp, settling her easily against her chest with one hand, the other wielding a fork.
"It's beautiful," she jerked her chin at the arc reactor, "A marvel of engineering—the future of energy technology and eventually the ruination of the oil industry. And well—you may as well have hung a bar of gold from your neck."
"This was lighter," he said cautiously, and sucked back a bit more coffee.
"It's such a symbol of wealth and, the genius that wealth can buy when it wants to. So much is spent on curing baldness, but so many people die of malaria … it's opulent, to keep just one man alive," her tone was considering and measured when she said the next words, "it's a symbol for how good your life is."
"It keeps the shrapnel from entering my heart, and the powers the suit, so, yah it works pretty good."
"I remember the news, thinking… the Merchant of Death had finally tasted his own wares," she coloured slightly, "I'm sorry, I've wanted to apologize to you a thousand times for thinking that. Did you know your stock actually went up when you died?" She asked, shaking her fork at him, "you've shown them, anyway."
"Well, that's depressing," he grimaced and sipped his coffee, "seriously, let me finish this before you start going all doom and gloom on me."
"I'm Russian. The three words that describe my country best are doom, gloom and alcoholism."
That, Tony could not dispute. His only time in Russia had been a few Tech conferences, usually in Moscow, city of billionaires and hateful strangers. All the scientists he'd met who were not from Moscow had taken him individually aside and begged that they not judge the whole of Mother Russia on the vile Muscovites, while the Muscovites themselves had claimed the rest of the country to be back water, and that he was much better off in their lovely city. In any event, they mostly dour and stiff until the vodka got flowing, and their eyes grew luminous and they began to debate philosophy and literature with increasing ferocity.
Tony shook his head to banish the images of the only men he'd ever met who could drink him under the table and still critique pure reason before they put on their furs, got into their Lada's and drove home to wives who had been beautiful in youth, but over time and many a harsh winter had slowly evolved into a fleshy boulder.
Anyway.
"I guess it was sort of poetic—ya, lets go with poetic justice. But not really, since I didn't know they bought my weapons and technically I was betrayed… well, kind of, since I should have known who my company was supplying weapons too…"
"So the arc reactor is a symbol of that," she cut across him, "I mean, you built it to escape a cave right? Plato says the cave is ignorance, childhood even, so the suit made you into an adult, took you out of ignorance. It took you out of your comfort, and into reality. You see, it's all very poetic."
"Okay, so this conversation got serious quickly," he leaned back in his chair, looking for words. Maybe it was the hangover, or maybe it was the two pairs of green eyes watching him from across the table, but he couldn't think what Tony Stark might say to that.
"Sorry," she said, rolling her shoulders and shifting a protesting Nastya onto her lap. The baby was still giving him the stink eye, but her attention was being rapidly diverted with the contents of her mother's palet. "But I am sorry, for thinking such horrible things about you."
"I'm kind of a horrible guy."
"Not so bad," Masha smiled at him, "I gave birth to Nastya during the Battle of New York. I saw what you did on the TV while I was still in the hospital. Well, what you all did. Tell me, is he really Captain America?"
"In the obscenely muscled flesh," he smiled, but there a bitterness in the back of his throat that was not from the coffee. Steve was… well, he wasn't. Tony hadn't seen him in about a month, and while his stunt with the black hole seemed to have scored him a few points, they weren't exactly friends. Because… well, Tony was horrible guy who did horrible guy stuff.
"Yes, well, I'd definitely cap that," she said, trying at stoicism but watching his reaction from under her lashes. He grinned, glad for the comic relief, strange and stilted as it might be.
"You're terrible…Is that why you saved me last night? I mean, anyway, I owe you one, seriously."
"Yes," she said solemnly, "I believe you do. And, much as I wish to let what happened last night rest as good deed and possible ticket to whatever paradise exists, I'm afraid I must claim my 'one'."
"Well, I imagine you'll want to get out of this shit hole," Tony said, looking the apartment up and down, taking in the broken ceiling fan and crumbling kitchen tiles.
"Not quite," she smiled, "I'm part of the Family that tried to abduct you last night and—"
"So, you want an out?" he asked. "Fine, I've got billions, let me call my actual driver, hell you can live at the fucking Tower, since Pepper's gone—"
"You misunderstand," she said, "I can't get out."
"Sure you can, witness protection, I'll send you up to Canada," Tony shrugged. Or you can stay in the Tower. In one of it's many rooms. You could make me breakfast and I could complain about how it was over salted and-
"Thank you, but no," she said.
"Why? You're a prostitute, probably came here in a shipping container or something, you saved my life, I owe you. And I hate owing people."
"I can't get out because I'm not finished," she said quietly. She looked stern all of sudden, too stern to be called Masha, and very old, like Steve sometimes looked when he went all Captain on their asses.
"What are you, undercover or something? FBI? CIA? KGB?" He forced out a chuckle and curved his lips like they were meant to be.
"No," she said wryly, "I want revenge first. You're an Avenger, you understand."
"Name them, I know some top quality assassins," he said casually, Natasha was comrade, she probably wouldn't even charge him.
"If it was so simple, I would have killed them myself," she said. It should have been ridiculous, with her arms so thin they looked like they could hardly hold up her fork, let alone a gun. But, he knew, deep in his hindbrain, that she was a killer. It was a fervour, like nirvana in the eyes of a Bodhisattva, or a predator pulled from the edge of starvation with successful hunt. "You have to pull the weed out at its roots. I am not so naïve to think I can destroy the organization, or that others will not crop up if I do, but I'm middle management now, I have access to information… I have their trust, and I cannot allow this opportunity to pass."
"You know," he said, slanting his eyes at her, "you're insane."
"Maybe," She nodded, smiling a little. It was odd, to see her teeth and her eyes looking so sharp, with one hand holding the fat baby to her chest and the other smoothing through her curls to soothe her. "But my boss, he trusts me now because he believes I have a mutation to listen—no, sorry to read people's emotions."
"And you don't?"
"No," she chuckled, "No, when I was a little girl, my sister—well, she was not my sister by blood, but she looked after me. She was older than me, and she taught me to watch people. She was an orphan, like me and she knew I would need to know. So I tell them it's a mutation, because it is less of a threat, because it makes it easier to pretend to be an idiot."
He leaned back in his chair and whistled, "I compromised you, didn't I?"
"You did indeed," she nodded, "but even if I was found out, and they did kill me, I had too because you have the potential to do so much more good than I ever can."
"You're okay with dying for me, you don't even know me," Tony rolled the coffee mug between his hands, thinking he'd never felt like less of a man. She was wrong, a few hours in her company and he could tell she was worth ten of him, money, genius, charisma and whatever else you might attribute to him thrown in on top.
"Doesn't matter. You are worth more than me. I know I am going to die anyway," she said fiercely, "to accomplish my own goals."
"Why? Why are you doing this?" Tony snapped, "Are you insane? You don't have to, you could—"
"I could take Nastya and run away to Utah and become a sister wife, I could run to Canada and marry a lumberjack, yes, I know," she said. Masha paused and looked at him in such a way that Tony felt her eyes were boring through his torso, cutting and burning through the wires of the arc reactor. "But… they raped me, Tony. And they would have killed me. They take so many girls, girls and foolish boys and children... I can do something, so I must do it. They took my sister, the one I told you about. I—I must keep them from doing this to other girls. You cannot understand, if you have not been raped, have not been... enslaved."
He said nothing because Tony Stark had been helpless, but he had never—never been like this. And there was nothing Tony Stark could say to that, no platitudes or… or whatever else someone is supposed to be said to a slave.
She sighed, "The first time, is awful… but eventually, eventually it is not rape anymore, it just is. I have HIV, Nastya, because God is kind, does not. Five of the other girls got it too, because they used to share needles, and they killed them, but they let me live, because I am still useful, but I am not a prostitute anymore."
"And Nastya's father?" He glanced at the child, and how her nose was smooth and round while her mother's was hard and arched like a hawk's. "He raped you?"
"Yes," she said, without inflection. She did not look defiant or angry or defeated or damaged in the way most TV women seemed to be when they described these types of things. Perhaps it was because it was not a memory for her, it was not something that had happened, not something she was recovering from, but it was her reality, something she was still living. "Anyway, you must think it was irresponsible of me to have child with HIV, even more because I am in such a delicate position… but I have had three abortions, and this time I could not do it. But I cannot look after her. So, this brings me to the favour I must ask of you. I want you to take Nastya, I will leave her on her your door step and trust you can hack a few DNA results, and I want you to pretend she is half yours."
"I—what?" He gaped like a fish, and all the solemnity, all the eminence that this conversation had had was abruptly swept from his mind, and he was left with incomprehension so strong it was probably denial.
"I want you to adopt my daughter," Masha said, clearly.
"Okay, okay no—when I said I 'owe you one', I meant money. I hate children, I walk past a kindergarten and all the crayons melt into the carpet—the goldfish turn over in their tanks, all the hair falls out of the dolls! I'd be a horrible parent!"
"Do you think I'm any better!" She said, allowing her fork to clatter down onto her forgotten breakfast, "a mother must give her body to the child, but I have no body to give, no love or guidance… Could I run away and take her to California, to Utah, to Ontario, sure and perhaps this would be the best thing for her, it would be the best thing for me, but I cannot sacrifice the cause. I would die for the cause, I would give my daughters life for the cause, and that is why I cannot keep her. Because the good that I can do is worth more than her life to me."
"So leave her at a church or something—I'm sure some suburban types would scoop her up and off to soccer practice, she could have a real childhood—a normal one," Tony said earnestly, because she was desperate, and he got that, but—well… his entire life was a study in why certain people should remain childless.
"People are always going on about childhood… Childhood is a modern invention, and besides childhood is what, fifteen years, maybe eighteen in America? And you won't remember most of it … and after that, she will have the best education money can buy, she will have every opportunity. She will not starve; she will not die of a curable disease or fall to the streets. It's the best life any of us can hope for; the rest is just, as you say, gravy. You are not a cruel man, Mr. Stark. I do not believe you can cause her as much damage as you seem to think you can."
"I'm a fucking alcoholic super hero—it's not exactly a stable home environment."
"So make it stable," she snapped at him, "poor little rich boy whose father didn't love him—get over it, for god's sake. Look up at your tower and your suit and that thing in your chest, those millions of dollars pumping the poison out of your veins. So much money, to keep just one selfish man alive. What ever the cliché you're going to choose—money can buy a great deal, do you think that if you were born to my mother, that you would have been able to build the arc reactor?"
"I think I wouldn't have been kidnapped in the first place!" He snarled back, irrationally hurt.
Her expression hardened, mouth pinched, hands curled in front of her, and when she spoke it was with the intensity and fury of a monsoon. "Yes, that's because you'd be fixing cars or radios and making pirated DVDs. Your money gave you the power to—to build what you wanted, to make full use of your intelligence. All the education, all the parts—everything you could ever need, I cannot let this opportunity walk past me. They have taken my youth, and now I will give them the rest of my life, but I want her to be looked after. I don't want her to be afraid. I want compassion, not empathy, for her. You owe me, Tony Stark. A life, for a life."
He looked at her, and he did not know what to say. But he was thinking that Masha Stark would have been twice the CEO he ever was, and that the shaky woman before him must once have been a studious little girl who dreamed of university, and who would have handed her papers in on time, and been happy to join clubs and meet her professors and discuss the required readings in seminar.