Hey guys, long time no see. My beta is out living her life, so mistakes were made. Don't worry I won't leave you hanging. Please R&R.

Avenger's Tower - Penthouse

Ever since he was a child, Nick Fury could take the meanest, ugliest, freakiest situations in stride. Everything he did, he did with a clear head and his emotions in a full nelson. If someone drew a knife, he broke their fingers. If a supervillain wanted six billion dollars in exchange for not turning the US Cabinet into cheddar cheese, he stuffed the guy in The Vault. So if his best covert operative announced his own Goddamn godson was her long lost love-child, well, he would handle it.

"Agent Romanoff," the words felt funny even though he'd said them a hundred thousand times.

The redhead cut him off before he had said the third word,

"I don't want the 'What the Mother-Fluffing Hell Were You Thinking' speech right now."

"Mother-Fluffing?" Stark quipped.

She glared at him. Barton hid a smile. His silence said he wasn't taking sides. His position told him that he had his partner's back. He stood behind Romanoff's shoulder like a guardian angel.

"Then what would you like?" Fury ignored his fourth degree migraine as usual. "Maybe the 'You Put the People You're Supposed Love in Danger" speech."

"I did more than you." Stubbornness was oozing from her pores.

Nick bit down on the caustic comment that popped onto his tongue. This was neither the time nor the place to get into an acid spitting contest. There was already deep ache settling across his neck. He sat with a thump and faced the red-head squarely.

"Start at the beginning."

Natasha gave him a lope-sided grin. "The beginning?"

He raised his eyebrows and waited. The grin faded.

"Yasha Blokov."

THE Yasha Blokov.

Romanoff ignored his bewildered expression. "He was my instructor at the Red Room."

Banner spoke up now, "What?"

"The Red Room was the USSR's answer to the SSR and SHIELD." Phil answered prompt as usual. "They were more oriented to wetworks and espionage than superhumans."

"Depends on what you mean by superhuman." Romanoff retorted.

Nick wondered if she was referring to herself or Yasha. Whatever the answer, she didn't look like she wanted to continue.

"You two were a team" Barton prompted, "like us."

She nodded.

"Love on the battlefield." Stark cooed over a triple scotch.

"Will you shut up?" Rogers looked like he wanted to vaporize the billionaire.

"Not in a million years."

Nick resisted the urge to break the mouthy bastard's face. He knew Stark was trying to lighten the mood but this was just ridiculous. He turned back to Romanoff "And things happened?"

"We spent months on the same missions. There was a lot of time to talk."

Romanoff was a subtle person. On mission, she wore armor of dazzling smiles, insipid confusion or juvenile arrogance. Outside them, she never laughed or cried. Her face rarely moved at all. But if you knew her well enough, you could see the lines of a smile or the shadow of her rage. Right now there was a mist of unshed tears in her eyes.

"And you two just decided to have a family in the middle of a nest of superhuman communist assassins."

Nick was going to kill Stark.

Tomorrow.

"And Peter?"

"I didn't want to..." her eyes darted to her stomach.

"Natasha we get that you didn't want to…" Banner waved his hand vaguely.

"Bruce, I know what an abortion is. I had a few before They ripped my womb out."

Banner and Rodgers winced at the plain and bitter truth. Barton moved like he wanted to comfort her but pulled back. Romanoff simply curled around herself; her voice dropped to the barest whisper.

"I couldn't erase Yasha from the world.

Rogers spoke with a careful voice and gentle eyes. "Maybe you should explain that better."

She straightened a little. Her voice was louder but still thick and husky.

"When I first met Yasha, he was the perfect soldier; the Red Room's shining star. Never failed a mission or disobeyed an order. But the more time we spent away, the more he changed." She held herself closer, like she was trying to hold on to those precious memories. "He started letting witnesses go. Giving candy to children. Sometimes he even made me laugh."

There was a hint of years unspoken. It was barely anything. It was more than she had said about her time in the Red Room in all her sixteen years at SHIELD.

"One day I woke up and he was crying. He said he remembered a time he wasn't in a soldier or a puppet. That somewhere he had friends and even a family. There were people he loved. He was going to find them and he wanted me to meet them."

"And you followed him." Banner

Her smile was loud and sarcastic. "Well I didn't have anything else to do."

"But your Superiors found out."

Romanoff's smile crumbled to dust and she drew in a shuttering breath. "But my Superiors found out. We made it a month. They just showed up in our crappy little apartment." Her voice cracked a little,

"They took a beautiful soul, tried to twist him into a weapon. And when he wouldn't let them control him anymore, they made me kill him." Her jaw clenched so hard he could hear her teeth creaking. "And he let them. He went without a fight so I could have a life. Even in his last act, he still protected me."

Her anger faded as quickly as it had flared, leaving only ashen sadness.

"I needed proof that Yasha was real."

Silence reigned and stretched out for long minutes. Nick could see horror, disgust, and shame flash across the Avengers' faces as they processed what Romanoff had told them. Rogers in particular looked ready to grab his shield and skin those little SOBs alive. He won't mind joining him. But that came later. Many things needed to be done later.

He kept his voice soft and even. "That explains half the problem."

Emerald eyes glanced up at him brimming with anger. "You aren't actually suggesting that making sure a minor stays out of an abusive home is a problem."

"I'm suggesting that one of my agents forgetting that we had a golden opportunity to put one of the largest manufactures of illegal gene modifications in jail for life."

"Tvoyú mat, Nick, Peter is not an agent. He's a teenager. There are dozens of other ways to get him without putting a child in danger."

"Peter is a child that would jump at the chance to put Osborn in jail if I had five Freaking minute to explain it to him. There are protocols for these situations. We don't take small steps. We wait until we can take the bastards down for good."

"And if he found out? What would the Protocol do then?"

"Peter is a meta-human. Osborn couldn't hurt him with an assault rifle." The minute he said them, he knew those were exactly the wrong words.

Romanoff stood so fast her chair knocked Barton off his feet. Her voice lilted higher and louder. "That man is not touching Peter. So help me he is not laying one finger on MY SON while I'm Still BREATHING."

Nick leaned back in his chair. He had never her like this. Romanoff wasn't wearing the mask of a spoiled heiress or mistress. This was genuine, visceral rage. A mother's rage. Peter Parker was meta-human who could tie a steel girder into a pretzel. He could and did battle enemies that could flatten half the people in this room. The agent in Romanoff probably knew that too. The mother in her ignored that. He held his tongue for a moment while Romanoff glared. When her breathing had slowed, Nick spoke trying to stay soft and calm.

"We don't know what he's capable of, Nat. Taking Peter away could be worse than letting him stay."

Romanoff rolled her eyes, her porcelain mask sliding back into place. "Even if Norman Osborn finds out, there's nothing he can do. He's business man."

"Hey!" Stark yelled from behind the bar.

She rolled straight over him, "A Corrupt, Abusive, and Sadistic asshole but just a Business man. The only way he knows how to hurt people is if they're half his age or across a desk."

Nick leaned back in his chair and sighed. He thought about the files: the files, lists and reports. Profiles of a madman. Before he could speak a deep urgent buzz filled the room echoing and multiplying by twos and threes. All around the room their phones read the same thing. One of their own had called for help; only one of their own was not in this room.

"I wish I could believe that."

Notes:

No Thor is not in the room or even in the dimension. Fury doesn't count him because he knows where Thor is. Plus there's no cell service in Asgard. He'll fill Thor in when he gets back in a week or two.

No SHIELD is not aware that Norman Osborn is the Green Goblin. Fury assumed that Peter was talking about Norman being a murderer in a mastermind sense, ordering crimes rather than committing them. He knows the man is capable of murder, not that he's already killed people with his own two hands. Peter assumed SHIELD knew everything because it's just that kind of place.