They needed a safe house. One that hadn't been a proper safe house when S.H.I.E.L.D. fell last year. It needed to be off the grid. So off the grid that Ultron, who gained intelligence through Tony Stark's files, would not find where the Avengers were hiding.
So that's what brought them to the farm. Steve learned from Natasha that Clint was in possession of it sometime before the Hydra attack. He knew that there was a farm, he knew it was in the middle of nowhere, and he knew he probably was not even supposed to know that.
The Avengers were piled into a yellow school bus that they had found in their hasty escape from Ultron's attack on Avengers' Tower. Tony was less than thrilled when Bruce told him that taking one of his Audis would not be very covert.
The team got its first look at their safe house as the bus – driven by Clint – neared the end of an old dirt road that had seem to have gone on for hours. The farm was a decent size for anyone looking to get into the business. There was room for a lot of wheat, cows, and chickens evidentially. The barn was, in fact, big and red, though a little worn, and located to the left. To the right was a rundown house. The house was pretty big. Steve knew that there would be no trouble fitting all six of the members while maintaining their own personal space. The house seemed to be two stories high, with a wraparound porch.
"Mi casa... you know, whatever." Clint's way of announcing their arrival, apparently.
No one had brought much luggage. On the way out of the city, Bruce thought it would be a good idea to stop at a store to grab necessities and comfortable clothes, considering everyone was still in their party attire from the night before. Thor and Bruce grabbed most of the bags, while Natasha headed up to the front of the bus to exit with Clint.
Steve received a nudge in the back. "I think the Hawk said more when he was knocked out before the Battle of New York than he said this whole trip." It was Tony.
Rogers shrugged. The entire ride from New York to the shabby back road had been practically silent. Thor and Bruce mumbled once every now and again to each other, and there was the odd shuffling around in a Wal-Mart bag when someone felt the need to change, and Steve would've been more shocked when Tony made his comment if it had come from anyone other than Tony Stark himself.
Once off the bus, Steve could see his surrounding more clearly. Everything on the farm seemed to be kept up with though the barn and house could've used a fresh coat of paint. There was farming equipment lying out by the barn, which must've meant Clint had farm hands considering he was constantly on missions from S.H.I.E.L.D.
Behind the house, Steve could see a lone Oak tree with a tire swing hanging off of the longest branch. Sure, Clint Barton was a little unorthodox and child-like, but a tire swing? The rope looked strong, as if it has never had to hold up any weight, but was filthy.
Steve was right. There were two floors in the house. The inside was also much nicer than the outside. The paint was not faded and there were even fresh flowers on the dining room table. The bedrooms were large, comforting and filled with the necessary furniture pieces. The super soldier was in the middle of hanging up his blue dress shirt and his pants, when a red-headed woman slipped into his room.
"Hiya, Rogers." Natasha Romanoff was ex-KGB, pre-collapse S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and Avenger. She usually dawned a skin tight black fight suit, but tonight she wore green, plaid pajama pants and a blue long sleeve shirt. Steve nodded his head in response, not knowing what to say. He was still feeling down about the attack, and now he had no really idea where he was. When he finished hanging his clothes, he turned around to see that the Black Widow, one of the most dangerous people he's met, was curled up on his bed under the covers patting the spot next to her. "C'mon, Rogers."
"Nat, what are you doing?"
"I am lying down. I would go lay down in my room, but I don't feel like falling asleep and Clint is preoccupied, so I thought we could talk." She ended her explanation with a warm smile and one last pat on the bed before Steve finally sat down.
"What would you like to talk about?" Steve doubted she would actually answer his question with a topic, and he was right.
"Oh... I don't know. What about you? Any questions? Wonders? I didn't get to ask before... the party ended. Did you ever call Sharon?" Nat was propped up on her elbow now.
"Yeah, she's working for the CIA now. Got in immediately after the fall."
"That's great. Anything else?"
"Like?"
"Nothin'." The Widow had raised an eyebrow at the soldier trying to send him a hint.
Steve either didn't get the hint or wanted to move on. If I were you, I'd put my money on the latter.
"What is this place, Nat?"
"It's Barton's." She said it as though it was the key to every other question Steve may have.
"Okay, but what else? It can't be his summer home because normally people are excited to see their summer homes. Barton was acting odd. Almost stiff." Steve wanted to press on further with what he had gathered on the ride up about Clint Barton's behaviour, but taking a hint from Natasha's rapid change in behaviour, he didn't.
"Steve, this is not Barton's summer home. The guy doesn't even have time for an all-year home. That's just how the agent-life is. You told me once that you trust me, and I believe you, so you're going to have to trust me and put your assumptions to rest. We're safe here, that's all I can tell you." She sat up, gave Steve a tight hug, and then headed for the door. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a big day." The door was almost closed when Natasha popped her head back inside. "Just don't sleep for seventy years, again. Okay, grandpa?" The door shut just as the pillow Steve through hit it. Soft giggles could be heard heading down the hall.
Meeting the Maximoff twins was not fun. Not fun. At. All. Not only did the team lose the battle, they lost their first fight since the Ultron-Avengers' Tower disaster. That would've been bad enough. The Maximoff kids had abilities. The boy was fast. Faster than a rocket, lightening, practically everything. Part of Steve was intrigued, the other part was terrified. The girl had this power that Steve could only classify as magic, sorcery, unbelievable. She could control things and change them. Not only that, but she could and did get into the minds of some of the bravest and strongest people Steve knew and turned them into child-like versions of themselves. The girl was able to show memories – create memories, or images, Steve wasn't sure, he just wished he could undo it. He saw Peggy and Buck: things that didn't seem bad at all at first. But then they changed. Horrific, gut-wrenching, blood...
Steve didn't know what the rest of the team saw, but going off personal experience, it couldn't have been good. Thor didn't return to the farm, Natasha locked herself in her room with handcuffs, Bruce was trying – unsuccessfully – to sleep, Clint vanished, and Tony was in the yard chopping wood for a fire. He couldn't keep sitting in his room. Every time he almost dozed off, flash blacks to the real or made up SSR party come back. Steve bolted up out of bed and headed to the door. There had to be something to take his mind off what he had seen.
He took a right out of his room and headed down the hall. Steve hadn't explored this area of the house yet, and now was the perfect time to test if curiosity was really all that powerful. Every night when the team goes to bed, Steve watches Nat walk this way to her room, or at least that's what he always presumed, but it was a dead end. There was a bathroom, a closet, and some trinkets on the walls, but no beds in sight. Great, Steve thought. The one time he needs someone on the team to be there to talk nonsense, there's no one. Sighing, Steve closed his eyes and rested his shoulders against the wall, accidentally hitting a picture frame.
Apparently, once a spy, always a spy. The picture frame Steve bumped triggered a hidden door; the kind that people think are only in movies, like when a certain book opens a secret passageway behind the bookshelf. The door opened to right where Steve was leaning, causing him to fall backwards onto stairs. This hidden staircase was not old, rickety, or covered in cobwebs. It looked just like the one by the main entrance to the house, wooden with a dark finish. Sure, Steve paused. It wasn't his house after all, and a hidden staircase usually was meant as secretive, but he thought screw it. If there was any day that exploring private parts of someone's house may be reasonable, that was today.
A single light hung from the low ceiling, so low Steve had to duck to avoid it. Clearly, he had been wrong about the house only having two stories, but as Rogers approached the top to the staircase, the area he was entering was looking more like an attic than another hallway.
The closer the super soldier got to the end of the staircase, the more he noticed the quiet murmurs coming from somewhere to his left. Slowing down and coming to a stop on the final step, Steve peeked around the wall that lead to the room. What he saw was slightly shocking. There were dressers and cupboards and shelves all throughout the room. Though some had arrows and weapons and one had makeup, most of the dresser tops and shelves were covered in picture frames. When he squinted, Steve could make out that one of the pictures seemed to be of a family of four. There was one window in the entire room. It was a semi circle located in the center of the wall facing the staircase. Below the window was a bed, and on the bed was Clint Barton sitting next to Natasha Romanoff, who was handcuffed to the bed post. Steve quickly pulled back around the corner, thinking he walked in on something... private. But, before descending – sprinting down – the stairs, he paused. The noises coming from the two assassins were not those of which matched what he thought was happening. A couple more seconds of debating and Steve's curiosity won out and peeked around the corner once more. They were just talking. Or were they? Though, Nat's left arm was stretched out and cuffed to the bed, her right hand was drawing circles on Clint's leg. Clint himself was sitting cross-legged, clutching a picture frame, shaking.
"-how did she know, though, Tasha? It was years ago... Before S.H.I.E.L.D., before you, before..."
"Clint, it's mind games. That's all. She went into the deepest, darkest depths of our minds and just pulled and pulled. She was trying to scare us, tear us apart from the inside..." Steve could see Natasha trying to get closer to Barton, but her restraints were preventing it.
"I guess..." There was a long pause, during which Steve debated leaving his teammates to their own business, but part of Steve wanted to know more about the archer. Thor had left, and Bruce and Tony were distancing themselves. Steve had to know that the team – his team – was ok. He had to. And that is what made him stay to hear the rest.
"Being back here is hard. Just seeing their... You saw the Red Room, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"How are you okay with this?" Clint sounded really frustrated. He looked up from the photo and looked like he wanted to continue, possibly yell, before noticing Natasha's raised eyebrows and that she was shaking her left wrist, and mumbling something along the lines of sorry.
"Clint, in case no one has ever told you... handcuffing yourself to a bed is not normal."
"I know... But, I lost them, Nat." And with that, Clint slumped over onto Natasha's midsection. As she began rubbing his back, Steve took the muffled sobs as his cue to return to venture elsewhere.
After joining Tony to chop wood, Steve returned to his room feeling exhausted, praying for a dreamless sleep, only to find his bed occupied once again by the red-headed assassin.
"You're not as quiet as you think, Steve. I know you were there." She didn't look mad, not even irritated. Natasha looked intrigued. Steve froze. He wasn't sure if he should apologize, deny it, or try to disappear. So, he just stared at her.
"Really? You don't have any questions? I mean you walked in – or snuck in... whatever... on me, cuffed to a bed, and Clint crying, so yeah... I do give you props. I didn't think you had spying on your list of capabilities." She honestly looked impressed.
"I didn't mean to. Well, I did. But, I didn't!" He was rambling. Shit. "I wanted to make sure you guys were ok, well I mean after I accidentally found the ... secret... room..." Staring at the floor was the best option he had. Natasha's eyes were huge and it scared Steve. She had never been more interested in anything Steve said, except when he was talking about a possible girlfriend. What he had overheard was not any of his business, but he had to know. Steve had just spent the last half hour arguing with Tony about how sometimes his teammates don't tell him things, and it was starting to drive him mad, he even ripped apart a log.
"Look, Rogers. It's just me and you. Barton is outside with some of the farm help-people. Let's talk. It'll be DC in Wilson's guest room all over again." That was enough to get a small chuckle out of Steve before he joined Natasha on the bed, where she wrapped the comforter around him. "There ya go, Captain Stevie! All cozied up. Now," she looked him dead in the eye, "what do you need to know." It wasn't a question, he realized. Tony may joke about Steve being the boss, but the boss was actually Natasha.
"Why were you handcuffed? At first, I thought I walked in on... private affairs, but I didn't... Did I?" The red-head actually burst out laughing at that.
"No, Steve! We were not getting it on right after that fantastic run-in with the wonder twins!" Steve joined in, laughing, earning him a playful shove. When Nat calmed down a bit, she continued. "No. Before S.H.I.E.L.D., you know that I was in the KBG." Steve nodded. "Well, before that, I was in a facility where the training was terrible and I was shaped into the Black Widow. Killing the young girls in the training with me, learning to torture, being tortured... All of that fun stuff. Anyways, every night when the lights went out, every girl in the compound was required to cuff herself to her cot. I think about it all of the time. They never gave us a reason – our controls, that is – we were just told to do it. Sometimes I think that it was to prove that we were no longer in control, or that waking up with bloody wrists would get us immune to pain and blood, or maybe it was because they didn't want us sleep walking and killing everyone, including them, in our sleep, because that is what some of us wanted to do..." The way she trailed off told Steve that those 'some' people were her and that she was reimagining it now.
After a couple minutes, Romanoff came back to reality and continued, "So, now every time I feel like losing control or that I've lost it, I give Clint the key and attach myself. Usually I wake up and find that he has let me free probably moments after I dozed off, but it helps." She shrugged, suggesting the end.
"And you're okay?" was all Steve could manage to say. He had never heard Natasha speak about her time pre-S.H.I.E.L.D. and he cannot believe how she has made it here today. Steve knows Natasha Romanoff as strong and thick-skinned. He knows her as the one never backing down from a challenge and never following an order she didn't believe in. It was hard for him to imagine a young Natasha that was vulnerable and manipulated...
"Steve?" Natasha was waving a hand in front of his face. "You still here?"
"Yeah, yeah... Just digesting." There needed to be a change of subject. Steve did not want to have to have Natasha watch him think about her past. "So, um, are you and Clint... do you and Clint-"
"Fondue? Yes." Nat was grinning like crazy. Steve's face switched between confusion, embarrassment, and shock extremely fast. The Widow shrugged, "When I joined S.H.I.E.L.D. I was allowed to go through all of their files, once I proved I was trustworthy, and I found some old SSR security tapes. Why did Peggy Carter shoot you?" Steve was even more shocked at Nat about the final comment than the first, because following the question she repositioned herself as if she was ten years old at a sleepover.
"I was kissing someone... and, she saw me..." Just like Nat looked like a ten year old, Steve felt like a seven year old confessing he had a crush to his older sister.
"For shame, Steve! For shame." Giggling, Natasha looked to the clock on Steve's bedside table, and began to untangle herself from the sheets. "Alright," she said, "I will see you tomorrow."
Right before she reached the hallway, Steve called her back. "Who did Clint lose?"
That question made Natasha sober up fast. "He had a wife."
"Oh."
Nodding, the Black Widow turned to leave, but not before adding, "And his two kids."