Steve sits down hard, almost accidentally, very nearly missing the couch.
"Our what?" he asks. He can hear the shaking in his own voice.
"Our son," Toni repeats. "Grant. He's not even a year old, Steve, and he's all alone. They left a fucking note! A note, can you believe that?"
"Wait," Steve says, brain not quite able to keep up. He reaches out a hand to pull her down beside him, needing to get a few questions answered before she starts back up again. "We have a son? But how? We, we only just-"
"From before," Toni says. "During the war, when Natasha and I came to your camp outside of Paris."
"Annie?" Steve says, putting the pieces together. "No, that can't be right. She was shot!"
"Keep up, Steve!" Toni all but shouts at him, standing up and pacing a few steps away. "Do you need me to fucking prove it?" Her hands fly to her shirt and she starts unbuttoning it.
"What the hell is going on here?" Bucky asks, standing in the doorway of his room, looking confused.
"Great!" Toni says pissily. "Just what we need, more gawkers." She gets her shirt undone and lets it fall open, revealing a white satin brassiere covering the breasts Steve hadn't been allowed to touch earlier and underneath that, along the right side of her ribs, what looks startlingly like a healed-over gunshot wound.
"Are you satisfied, now?" she asks. "Do I have to prove myself to the Pope, too, or can we get back to the fact that our son has been kidnapped?"
"Right," Steve says, snapping into commando mode. In the back of his mind, he's thinking, my son, I have a son, Toni is Annie, she's not dead and we have a son, but the front of his mind has been completely given over to the problem at hand. "Tell me what happened exactly."
"You know what happened," she says angrily. "We went out for dinner, I let you fuck me and when I got home, Grant was gone and Natasha was unconscious."
"Natasha is Nell?" Steve cuts in. Toni nods.
"Is she okay?" Bucky asks.
"She's fine," Toni insists. "She probably won't be able to talk for a while, but it's not like her voice could get any rougher anyway."
"You mentioned a note," Steve says, bringing her attention back to him. "Do you have it with you?"
Toni nods and fishes in the pocket of her slacks for it. She hands it over and Steve carefully unfolds it. It's not much, just a piece of paper with the words, "Will return baby for $500,000. Will telephone."
"Why would they call?" Toni asks desperately. "The telephone network isn't secure. They're- they're idiots. Oh, God, our baby has been kidnapped by idiots."
"Focus, Toni," Steve says, standing and putting a hand on her shoulder. "Do you know anyone who would want to hurt the baby?"
"No one even knows about him," Toni says. "He's been under wraps his whole life. I never even take him outside; Natasha does and no one knows who she is either."
"Okay," Steve says, considering this. "Who all knows about him besides you and Natasha?"
"Pepper, Happy, my butler Jarvis and a few Swiss nuns from the convent where he was born. Oh, and Fury."
"Fury knows?" Steve asks, amazed at how many people in his life were keeping this secret from him. "How do you know Fury?"
"I worked for him in the war," Toni says dismissively. "Can we get back on task here? Our son is missing!"
"I know," Steve says. "I know. Just calm down. We're going to make a plan and we're going to get him back, I promise you. Bucky," here he turns to his friend. "Go across the street and see if the baker will let you in. Pay him whatever he asks. We need to tell Fury about this, try to get his help. Toni, do you know the number?"
Toni recites it to Bucky, who nods and goes into his room to throw on pants and grab his jacket. Then he's out the door, leaving Steve alone in the apartment with Toni, who's shaking slightly.
"Hey," Steve says, pulling her close. "It's going to be okay. We're going to get ahold of Fury and he's going to help us."
"He hates me, Steve," Toni says miserably, burying her face in his chest. "God, I never should have been so annoying to him. I just thought, it was funny, because he gets so mad and then the veins in his forehead just throb, you know? But what if he won't help us now?"
"He'll help us," Steve says, sure of it. "He owes me after that Ladies Aid dinner."
Toni snorts out a laugh that might be actually be a sob and Steve kisses her head. As he's holding her, waiting for Bucky to come back with news, he tries to think of a plan. He's never dealt with a situation like this, never had to plan something this close to home. He's still having a hard time believing he's got a son somewhere out there and that his son is in danger. He puts it to the back of his mind, though, can't afford to think of it. He's got a plan to make.
"Is someone at your house?" Steve asks. "If the kidnapper is going to call, someone is going to need to be there to answer."
"Jarvis and Pepper are," Toni says. "They're looking after Natasha."
"How did they attack Natasha?" Steve asks, momentarily distracted.
"We think they strangled her with some kind of garrote, judging from the marks on her neck, but until she wakes up, we won't know for sure what happened. She was barely breathing when I found her."
Steve files this information away for later. "Is there a way to track a telephone call?" he asks. He's not very familiar with the telephone network, but Toni had said earlier that it's not secure. "Could we tell where the call is being made from?"
"Fury could," Toni says with certainty. "I don't have the resources, but Fury does that all the time. Hell, I know for a fact he's been tapping my phone since before the war, the paranoid bastard."
"Good," Steve says. "Perfect. In that case, we'll just wait for the call and then try to track it."
"But it doesn't make sense," Toni protests. "If they're good enough to get past Natasha, they wouldn't be stupid enough to use an insecure method of communication. They could just use letters, like in the Lindbergh kidnapping."
"That's why it might be a trap," Steve warns. "But we can't risk it; we have to try to get them that way first, before we do anything else."
The door slams open to reveal Bucky, out of breath from the dash up the stairs. Panting, he says, "Fury said to go back to the manor. He's sending the plane."
"The plane?" Steve asks. "He's got an airplane? Where's he going to land it?"
"The manor has a landing strip on the roof," Toni says quickly. "Come on!" She grabs Steve's hand and practically drags him over to the door.
"Wait!" Steve says, resisting. "I have to get dressed first."
"You have two minutes," Toni says impatiently. "Then I'm leaving without you."
Steve's never dressed quicker in his life. He also grabs his gun from the bedside table and tucks it into the back of his pants, just in case.
Toni's fancy car is idling on the street outside of the apartment building. Bucky takes the front seat so Toni and Steve can sit together in the back. Steve wants to be near her now more than ever.
"Let's go, Happy," Toni says as soon as the doors are shut. "Floor it."
"Happy?" Bucky asks from the front. "You're Happy Hogan? Aren't you the CEO of Stark Industries? What are you doing driving Toni around?"
"He's not really the CEO," Toni says absently.
"It's a long story," Steve adds.
Toni frets the entire way to the manor. She's losing her cool, Steve can tell, and he really needs her to be level-headed right now, for Grant's sake. She definitely has the ability to be graceful under pressure, as Steve saw in the Battle for Paris. If only he had a way to distract her now, keep her from working herself up too much to be any use.
"Tell me about Grant," Steve says softly, aware that Bucky and Happy are in the front.
The look she gives him is incredulous. "Is now really the time for that?" she asks. "That can wait, Steve. We should be, I don't know, going over our strategy again or something."
"No," Steve shakes his head. He takes her hand in his. "Trust me, you need to be distracted right now. This kind of operation is all hurry up and wait and it's only going to mess with your head if you overanalyze the plan."
"I know that," she hisses. "I was undercover for four years during the war, you think I don't know how it goes?"
She tries to jerk her hand away, but Steve doesn't let go. "Then you should know to trust the man with a plan," he tells her. "I'm the Captain for a reason, Toni. Trust me."
"I do," she says, voice breaking on the words. "It's just, this is different, you know? This is our son."
"Tell me about him," Steve repeats. "How old is he?"
"He'll be a year on May 8," Toni tells him.
Steve smiles at the thought. "Born on VE day, huh? Well, how about that. And you named him Grant? I didn't think I told her, uh, you, what my middle initial stands for, but surely that wasn't a coincidence."
"I know everything about you, Steve," she whispers. "You were my mark."
"What?" Steve asks, confused.
"I was a spy," Toni explains, sounding half guilty, half impatient. "You do know what that means, right? I wasn't in the forest outside of Paris by accident. Natasha and I were assigned to find your camp and get in with you guys, get to know all your secrets."
"No, but, wait," Steve says, trying to comprehend this. He's only known Toni was Annie for less than half an hour now and he's been so busy this whole time focusing on Grant that he hasn't even given any thought to what that meant. Toni was a spy. She lied to him the whole time they were in France together. She could still be lying to him. "How much was real? Was any of it? Was the whole time we were together just one big lie to get me into bed?"
"No!" Toni insists. "It's not like that. I wasn't supposed to seduce you- that just happened. Only little things were lies. Almost everything I told you about myself was the truth, even my name! My mother used to call me Annie, before she died."
"But you were still there on a mission." Steve knows it's a stupid thing to be hurt about, especially because he believes her about everything else. He doesn't doubt her feelings toward him. If they'd only been together those few weeks in France, it would be different now, but they've had months to get to know each other, months to fall in love again.
"So were you," Toni points out. "You're making it sound like it was something terrible, like I was working for the Krauts or something. It wasn't like that. I was working for Fury, same as you, just with a different skill set."
"And what would that skill set be?" Steve asks, warily.
"I was a distraction," Toni says, smiling wryly. "You know how distracting I can be, once I get going. Natasha was doing all the important work all over Europe, I was just there to keep people from looking too closely at her. We reported back to Fury, probably more directly than you did. Who do you think told him you were ready for your captain's bars?"
"Oh," Steve says, mulling this all over. "That's, uh, that's not what I thought you were going to say. What about after Paris? Where did you go then?"
"Switzerland," Toni says, wrinkling her nose at the thought. "I couldn't come back stateside with a bullet wound, not with how the tabloids follow me around. So I went and stayed in the mountains and when I found out I was pregnant I decided to just stay there until I had the baby, then I'd rejoin the fight. But by the time Grant was born, the war was over."
"But why didn't you tell me?" Steve asks. It's the question he most wants to know: why the lies? During the war, sure, it was all hush-hush, but why hadn't she told him any of this in the last few months they've been seeing each other.
"I was, uh, kinda scared, you know?" Toni admits. "Most guys, they say, 'What happens in Europe stays in Europe,' even if what happened was some French slut had your bastard child. But then we got to know each other again and I've been trying to work myself up to telling you for a while now. I tried at the zoo, remember?"
"Right," Steve says, remembering the incident. "As soon as we get Grant back, let's get married, okay? He needs a father." He doesn't say, 'He needs to be legitimized,' but he figures that goes unspoken. No son of his is going to grow up with the stigma of being born out of wedlock. Also, you know, Steve sort of really loves his son's mother.
They arrive at the manor then and Toni gets antsy again. Steve's never been here before and is awed and dismayed at how big the place is. They have to wait for Happy to go open the big iron gates, with Toni tapping her fingers impatiently on her thighs the entire time. They're barely parked before she throws the door open and bolts for the front door. Steve follows after her, Bucky right on his tail and Happy behind that, going a bit slower thanks to his war wound.
The inside of the manor is just as impressive as the outside, but Steve's distracted by the group gathered in the parlor just off the main hall. There's a redhead and an older man standing worriedly over another redhead on the sofa. The girl on the couch is presumably Nell, or rather Natasha, with makeshift bandages all around her neck and ice held over that. She's gives Toni an awkward one-armed hug with the hand that's not holding the ice and Toni whispers something to her that Steve can't hear.
Toni straightens up after a minute. "Steve, Bucky, this is Pepper, Jarvis, and Natasha, you know her as Nell."
"I'm glad you're okay, miss," Steve says to Natasha and Bucky nods frantically from his spot behind him.
She nods stiffly at them.
"Right, enough of that crap," Toni says, rushing back over to Steve and starting to pull him from the room. "Fury's sending the plane," she says to the room at large. "Steve and I are going to the roof to wait. Listen for the phone. If it rings, I'd better be the first person to know, got it?"
"We'll come get you," Pepper assures her. "Just go clear the landing strip."
They run together up the main stairs in the entrance hall, Toni leading the way. Once they're on the second level, she turns left and leads him down a hallway to another set of stairs, which they climb. They're on the third and final floor, then, and Steve's just wondering how they're going to get to the roof from here when Toni pulls him over to a large window and throws it open.
"Come on," she says, climbing out the window. "It's this way."
"This seems unsafe," Steve says, climbing after her. The window opens onto a tiny ledge with an even tinier ladder leading up to the roof.
"Suck it up," Toni tells him. She takes the little steps two at a time, which makes Steve clench his teeth with anxiety, but she apparently knows what she's doing because she makes it up just fine. Steve climbs at a more careful pace, aware that his feet are much larger than hers and that much more likely to slip off the steps.
When Steve emerges over the top of the roof, he sees the problem, the reason they need to clear the space: it's covered from end to end with marbles. There are thousands of them. No plane would be able to land on this mess.
"What were you doing up here?" Steve asks, confused and incredulous. "Where did you even get this many marbles?"
"Grant likes them," Toni says defensively. "I might have gotten a bit carried away."
"You bring our son up here?" Steve asks, trying not to think about how high they are off the ground, how far it would be for a little boy to fall.
"It's fine," Toni says, waving his concern away. "I just put him in a harness and leash him to a pole. Now help me!" She indicates a couple of brooms and a large bucket near the edge of the roof. As quick as he can manage without slipping on any marbles, Steve grabs a broom and starts to sweep. They work well together, him and her, and with both of them it takes less than ten minutes to get the mess swept up. And just in time, too, because they've barely gotten all the marbles back into the bucket when Steve hears the rough noise of an engine and looks up.
It's the sleekest plane Steve's ever seen, gunmetal grey with smooth curves and a shiny finish.
"My God," Steve says, looking at the beautiful thing.
"I designed that," Toni says over the noise. "Fastest plane in existence."
Steve looks back at her, shocked. "You did?" he asks. "But you're-" He cuts himself off just in time.
Toni knows, though, she always knows. "A woman?" she asks, laughing a bit. "Yeah, I am. I'm also one of the best mechanical engineers in the country, modestly speaking. Why do you think Fury puts up with me?"
It makes sense, Steve supposes. He's heard rumors of her genius, but he hadn't thought, hadn't believed… Well, he's certainly a believer now. But if Toni could do something like that, why on earth was she spending her days welding? "Why were you even at the factory?" Steve asks.
"I was taking a vacation," Toni says. "Then I met a guy and decided to stay for a while."
The plane comes in for a landing, forcing them to the very edge of the roof. It makes a quick, controlled stop, barely needing any space at all to decelerate, which is good, because the roof is large but it's not that large. The propeller at the front is still spinning when the cockpit door opens and Fury himself steps out.
"Stark," he says, sounding annoyed but looking sympathetic as the man ever does. "Captain."
"Colonel," Steve says. "We've got a situation."
"So I've been told. Let's get this clear: I don't want to be here any more than you want me here, but I'm going to get this baby back if it's the last goddamn thing I do. And when I do, you're going to owe me, Stark, and owe me big. I've got lists upon lists of things you're going to make me and I want them all on time and without your fucking attitude. And you, Captain, you're going to be fundraising for years to come. Everyone understand?"
"Understood, sir," Steve says at once. He'll do anything, anything at all to get their son back.
Toni just nods.
"Right," Fury says, fixing his coat collar dramatically. "Lead the way inside. We've got a baby to find."