The Happiest Place on Earth

Ch. 2 – Checking In While Mentally Checked Out

Natasha would never be sure, for the whole rest of her life, how she did it, but she had done it. Somehow, she had totally managed to get Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and Sam Wilson from Washington D.C. to Orlando, Florida without killing anyone. It had almost come to a head when Steve had oh-so-innocently asked if just maybe she'd had enough energy drinks. Only due to his super-soldier abilities had he been able to dodge the seven empty cans launched at his head. He wasn't going to begin to ask how she could aim that well behind her. Bucky grunted in discomfort from his blanket cocoon/straitjacket, still a little green around the face, as the SUV pulled onto the blessed turn road. Every eye in the vehicle lit up at least a little at the sight of the giant yellow arch. Red letters read "Walt Disney World" with white ones underneath saying "Where Dreams Come True." Even Sam had to sit up and lean forward to get a good look at the arch.

The redhead behind the wheel had to smile through her mad case of the shakes, melted eye makeup, and fried hair at the scene in the back seat behind her. Steve had leaned as far to his right as he could, straining hard at his seat belt, and taken Bucky by the arm. With his free hand, he pointed at the arch above them like a little kid, his face all sorts of animated. Bucky, still wrapped in the car blanket, couldn't help but humor his all-of-a-sudden-ten-again best friend.

"Look, Buck!" Steve almost whispered, his voice just this side of reverent. "We're here!"

The sounds of "It's A Small World" still squeaked out of the earbuds that now dangled from Steve's neck, but now everyone could sort of accept it. Bucky wriggled around, attempting to extract himself from the blanket and follow Steve's pointing hand. Every twenty-five yards or so, there stood a giant billboard, some of them featuring moving parts, each with a different Disney attraction on it. Steve absolutely had to comment on every single one of them. The Tower of Terror looked like something they just had to go on! So did Splash Mountain! So did Kali River Rapids! On any other day in the history and future of ever, Natasha would have found this boyish enthusiasm adorable. Now, she had to stop herself from biting right into the steering wheel out of frustration. When she looked in the rear-view mirror, she could see Bucky looking around, looking way more confused than impressed. She had to hand it to them both – this had to be way different than the Disney they would be used to. Sam, for his part, seemed to have lost his mind entirely and had started humming along with "It's A Small World." His magazines lay discarded in the passenger-side floorboard.

Natasha followed the main Disney through-way with the other steady traffic. Directions beyond this point seemed to be pretty self-explanatory. Everything had a sign, and not just with names on the signs – these signs actually had great big arrows on them, explaining where to go! Sam had tuned out Steve's running commentary and begun to look for the sign pointing to the Contemporary Resort. He had at least heard of that one – it was one of the Monorail resorts from the television commercials. Disney had never really been a thing for Sam growing up, and he hated to think what Natasha had been exposed to at the age that most girls were picking a favorite Princess. He stole a look in back at Bucky's first furtive smile of the whole trip. Okay, now he could kind of see what made Fury think this was a good idea.

"I have absolutely no idea what any of these are," Steve kept going on, his hand still gripping Bucky's arm as if it were not made of metal. "But I want to go on every single one of them!"

Bucky stuck his head out the window, grateful that the rain had stopped, and let the still-cool-but-not-for-long breeze do something about his still-sloshing digestive system. He saw around them pine woods, large ponds, small ponds, medium ponds, cars, and more woods. The last time he had seen this many trees… Well, it was best not to think about the last time he saw this many trees. This was supposed to be the happiest place on earth, they told him. His eyes widened as traffic slowed down almost to a complete stop to let a deer trot sedately across the road. He didn't think he'd ever seen a deer in person before! Not a live one, anyway.

"Steve, did you see that?" he whispered, pointing out the front windshield after extricating his right arm from the blanket.

The super-soldier nodded and watched the creature run off into the pine trees. Steve started to scan the road as the vehicle continued down the road. Everything looked so natural, but still so incredibly clean! There was no trash, no roadkill… It all looked just this side of perfect! He looked over at Bucky, still recovering from being various degrees of carsick for twelve-plus hours. His brain had been recalibrated by SHIELD (besides Barton hitting him with a pipe), but he still had recovery to do. It had all been going the way Dr. Banner said it was supposed to. The outbursts of temper, fits of confusion and anger and sadness, plus all his body systems rebelling every once in a while… But all of it had started to diminish to the point that Bucky was usually safe to bring out in public. Steve suspected it may have been Coulson's idea at first, but Fury's directive had been to bring him here.

Natasha just wanted out of this vehicle! She couldn't stand to let any of the guys drive – frankly, she wasn't sure if Bucky should be allowed to drive – and now she just wanted to park it. As soon as Sam indicated to her the mini-exit with "Disney's Contemporary Resort" on it, she almost screamed. Three smaller cars and a Prius had to slam their brakes on to avoid the furious redhead as she calmly righted the wheel and glanced at her driver's side mirror.

"My exit…" she told the reflections of vehicles behind her.

Yes, the SHIELD agent known as Black Widow had some serious vehicular cabin fever. She sped along the small highway, grinding her teeth against Steve's continued exclamations. Upon investigation in the rearview mirror, Bucky had started to look pained again, leaning towards the still-open window. Natasha rotated the wheel quite suddenly and peeled the Suburban, which looked rather tired itself on a look in the reflective windows, into the Contemporary's parking lot. Sam, who of the four of them still had his cranium best attached to his scapulae, felt sorry for the four cars in front of them. A powder-blue Toyota Previa sat at the front of the line, under the covered temp-parking zone. Steve stuck his head out the window to watch in fascination as the family unloaded with the bellhops' help.

A man, a lady, and two teenage girls came part-staggering, part-tumbling, part-climbing out of the van, which seemed to have seen better days. The man folded his arms and looked grouchy, keeping a careful eye on the bellhops and loading things onto the gold dolly. They seemed to have packed half their lives into the mini-van. The lady looked excessively relieved to be back on solid ground – a feeling Sam identified with. One of the teenage girls had a teddy bear in her arms, skinny legs sticking out of jean shorts, and appeared pathologically unable to cease moving for upwards of point-two seconds. The second teenager, in long jeans and a red T-shirt, looked ready to kill the first one. Steve and Bucky, who had put his head back out the window just in case, could hear the girl with the bear singing. Natasha looked ready to ram her way to the front of the line. Damn the Previa, damn the two Hondas behind that, and damn anything else that happened to get between her and her destination today!

Even with the teenage girl zipping around like some sort of magic elf, the family got their belongings loaded in. The next three vehicles were nowhere near as eventful. The first Honda contained a couple who appeared to be honeymooning. After that, both following cars had families with children. Natasha ground her teeth at the representatives from the "stroller brigade." If she so much as heard a peep for the rest of today, she was abandoning Sam with the boys and going for a martini. Soon enough, it came to be their turn and she eased the lurching SUV forward as best she could. The antenna scraped on the clearance sign and twanged loudly.

"Welcome to Disney's Contemporary Resort, ma'am!" a young man bearing the name tag of Dave practically sang. Natasha wanted to punch him right in the face, but refrained. Dave asked her to pull up and then said, "Let me get someone to help you with your luggage!"

Immediately, two young men and a young lady appeared close by and Natasha popped the back hatch. Sam checked the perimeter out of habit and cursed under his breath at the sticky passenger-side door handle before opening it on the second try. Steve clambered out of the back driver's-side seat and twisted round so that his back produced a sickening round of crunching. Bucky looked sick again, just leaning there with his head out the window. The young lady in the Contemporary uniform extended a hand to open the back passenger door, causing the former Winter Soldier to startle slightly. He sat up and put his hand round the door handle. Both of them pulling at once confused the mechanism and the door got stuck.

"You… you really don't have to do that," he told the young lady, wondering if his attempt at smiling at her made him look as frightening as he felt inwardly it did. A quick scan and he found her name tag. "But thank you, Sylvie."

Sylvie blushed to the roots of her prettily-twisted hair and thanked him in return, confusing him briefly, before she skittered away to help Natasha with the luggage in back. Much like the family with the two teenagers, it seemed that this foursome had brought an inordinately large pile with them. When it wasn't a life-or-death situation, the used-to-be-Russian woman lacked the ability to pack light. Steve hadn't been sure what exactly to bring, despite the briefing – he had never been to Florida – so he had just stuck one of everything in a suitcase and hoped that was that. Sam had been once as a kid, so into the bag went every pair of shorts he owned, T-shirts, and six pairs of Nikes. Most of Bucky's gear had medical paraphernalia stuck away in it. Mercifully, Natasha and Pepper had guided him through going jeans shopping. Neither of them could talk him out of that terrible Hawai'ian shirt that lay proudly on top of his T-shirt and button-down collection. With the help of Disney's expert staff, everything found its way onto the dolly.

Natasha excused herself from the boys, praying to any deity that might still listen to her that they couldn't get up to anything in the ten minutes it should take to check in. Steve had gotten into an amiable argument with Dave about carrying his own bags. Sam had gone fishing through the front seat for a magazine he hadn't finished on the ride. Sylvie kept sneaking peeks at Bucky, who just stood there looking very lost. A mental checklist reminded her that all the boys had their park tickets on their persons, all had fully charged cell phones, and Steve wasn't letting Bucky out of his sight. Oh yeah, there was nothing they could damage too badly in the next sixth of an hour.

"Oh terrific…" she groused at the line in front of her.

As sometimes happened, the Contemporary seemed to be having some sort of system-wide computer snafu. Natasha was pretty sure that if she spoke to the right person, she could fix it herself in the better part of fifteen seconds, but Fury had been adamant about two things. One, do NOT leave the boys alone, and two, remain inconspicuous when at all humanly possible. She could hear the unspoken "motherfucker" at the end of that, so she figured she could do half of it. Sam had everything he needed to keep an eye on Bucky and Steve for… what seemed to be turning into twenty minutes. Even so, she kept checking her cell phone and glancing over her shoulder. Sylvie and another bellhop stood beside the three boys with their gigantic dolly full of stuff. Several other families stood about the same way, unable to move forward until everyone had their room keys. Polite smiles begged for forgiveness behind neatly-shined concierge counters as the attendants tried dutifully to sort out each problem. Children had started to whine. Moms and dads looked grumpy. Natasha noticed with combined understanding and annoyance that both sides of the counter seemed to be experiencing minor communication gaps.

It was then that Natasha Romanoff nearly wet herself in panic.

The last thing she saw was her boys' retreating backs and the flashing lights of one of the largest arcades she had ever seen in her life. She swore if this was Sam's idea, she was going to fling him off a building when he didn't have his Falcon wings on. Steve and Bucky wore identical grins – finally, something the both of them recognized. Sure, the games might be a bit updated, but nothing could keep two overgrown boys out of an arcade of any kind. Okay, Natasha thought, prioritize the problem-solving list here… Certainly Sam could take care of the three of them in there. What Fury didn't know couldn't hurt… well, anybody. Mentally, the redhead swore again, remembering that there pretty much wasn't anything Nick Fury didn't know about at least eventually. Still, deal with the angry director five states away later and deal with the computer gaffes/communication challenges now. After what seemed like forever, even to the most patient of secret agents, her turn came.

"Welcome to Disney's Contemporary Resort!" chirped a pretty, tiny young woman wearing a cream-colored hijab with the name tag Priti pinned to her blouse. She had a light British accent and smiled brilliantly. "My name is Priti and I apologize for the delay! May I ask what brings you to Walt Disney World for this visit? We have special occasion pins."

For the first in a very, very long time, Agent Natasha Romanoff's eyes softened and her voice almost shook.

"F- First visit," she told Priti after a rare false start. "Whole family's first visit."

Priti looked positively delighted and stretched out a hand to accept Natasha's ID and the SHIELD credit card – she appeared to find nothing unusual about this.

"And how many are in your party, Ms. Romanoff?" she asked before opening a drawer that featured an assortment of colorful pins.

Natasha had wondered about Fury's decision not to use aliases for this trip, but he just had this secret sort of assurance that nothing could happen to them here.

"Four," she told Priti, accepting the pins and stowing them away in her purse.

Priti typed in a few things, the computer spit up a couple of print-outs, and most everything seemed to be in order. Natasha actually felt a bit like shrinking in the light of the smile Priti seemed ready to gift the whole world with. The young woman handed back the ID and credit card and her face lit up like the Florida sun that had started to show again outside.

"Please call us at the front desk if we can do anything to make your stay at Disney's Contemporary Resort more enjoyable, Ms. Romanoff," she encouraged, still smiling brightly. She handed Natasha an envelope. "These are your room keys – they have been redesigned, so you don't have to worry about having them beside a cell phone or credit card. However, if a key deactivates without warning, call or come down to the front desk and we will issue a new one. There is one spare in the envelope for just in case."

Natasha thanked Priti and felt something quite strange in her chest as she barely heard the young woman wish her a "magical stay at Disney's Contemporary Resort." Never having been one to put much stock in magic or whatnot, the secret agent couldn't help smiling. She shot an apologetic glance over at Sylvie and the other bellhop. However, somehow, now it didn't seem quite so daunting to go in there and wrest the boys out of the arcade. She handed Sylvie the spare room key and slipped each of the hospitality agents a twenty, instructing them to just go up and drop everything off. After Manhattan, Hydra, and beating Clint senseless for hitting Bucky with a pipe, this would be easy. She pulled out her cell phone and half-trotted off to locate Sam. The other two couldn't have gone far.