Must be a Family Curse
By Kelly Riker

Summary: He thought he was married to a simple woman, nothing more, and nothing less. Wanting to keep her safe from his world, He will do anything in his power to keep her safe. Even if it means hanging his loyalties to keep her safe, because if he has to lose anything it won't be her. And she thought that she was married to a simple security guy, but with the destruction of SHIELD, her past will walk straight into their lives. Her family have all disappeared, leaving her to have to make things right again.

~Agents of SHIELD*STRIKE Team Alpha~

Abigail sighed, closing the front door and kicking off her heels as she headed for the fridge. They had a routine, just like every day but most of the time he wasn't home. Always telling her that he got called out on a mission and returning long enough for her to patch him back up and him to finally stop sleeping with one eye open and a combat knife under the pillow.

She knew what she had been getting into when she started to fall for a tactical man of a high-tech security organization, but it seemed like history was bound to repeat itself. Her mother warned her time and time again never to fall for a military man, they'll just leave you behind to pick up the pieces of your devastated life getting themselves killed fighting Nazi or whoever the bad guy was this year.

Hearing the front door slam shut, and familiar footsteps her way, Abigail felt herself beginning to worry. It wasn't the normal laid back tempo he had when everything was fine. This was the 'coming back from a bad mission and I need to see that you're alright' tempo.

Looking up from her cup of warm tea, her smile faltered. Standing up, Abigail moved quickly to her husband's side, worry in everything she did. She grabbed his face between her strong, gentle and calloused hands and she looked at all of the cuts on him. "Brock? What in the world happened to you? You meet the devil or something?"

He laughed, trying to hide a wince, but failing. "Or something." Gently prying her fingers away from his face, his coffee-stained eyes stared down at her. "Abigail, I'm fine. Really. Just had a hard flight getting back into town."

"At least go get changed into something comfortable. I'll make some soup. You look like you might collapse on your feet any minute now." Abigail smiled, knowing she won't get anything out of him right now.

~Agents of SHIELD*STRIKE Team Alpha~

Abigail felt the bed move beside her, groaning she looked at the alarm clock on the table. "Brock, it's 2:05 in the morning. What the heck are you thinking?"

"Go back to sleep, it's nothing." Brock re-assured her as he grabbed his jacket and left the room.

Forest green eyes opened wider as he left the room, sighing Abigail threw back the covers also grabbing her jacket and the hidden weapon that she kept with her. Not that Brock knew or anything. Rubbing her eyes and shaking off sleep, Abigail came instantly awake and she heard footsteps coming from what had been a closed and locked window earlier.

Slipping out of the bedroom, feet ghosting over wooden floors, Abigail saw more shadows thrown against the wall from downstairs. Not knowing who they were, she tried to keep quiet as she moved throughout the house.

She tried to act normal, slowly sliding her hand into her pocket and gripping the smooth grip of her knife. Feeling two large presences just behind her, she threw her elbow backwards, hitting one of them in the nose, feeling it break under the impact. At the same time twisting out of reaching hands from the other guy, all the time moving her arm quickly she pinned a knife to the wall behind the man, missing by millimeters.

Cursing her aim, she launched into a flurry of moves, making the surprised men lose ground as they tried to combat them. Feeling an odd prick to the side of her neck, Abigail pulled out a small dart, looking at it hazily as she felt herself fall to the ground, vision growing black.

"I thought you said she wouldn't be a problem, Rumlow." A voice said just before she felt herself fall completely into the abys of inkiness. The voice sounded civilized and belonged to a government agent rather than someone that broke into her house in the middle of the night. She knew that voice….

~Agents of SHIELD*STRIKE Team Alpha~

She came awake slowly, trying to gauge what kind of predicament she got herself into this time. Her head was killing her, but other than that, she noticed that everything wasn't broken. That was the first good news she had since she found twelve strange men in her house who knows how long ago.

Sensing that she was alone, she slowly opened her eyes, muscles prepared to fight if anybody came in the room. Looking around herself, she noticed the room which she was being held had been SHELD. It was an old contentment style room that they had a couple years before the whole Aliens and gods, and monsters started to appear.

Abigail started to laugh quietly as she noticed that her captors had once again underestimated her. Even her own husband didn't know just how good she was at her job. Hearing the door being opened, Abigail stopped her pacing and looked up warily as Brock entered.

His coffee stained eyes looked at her like she twisted a knife in his gut. And the first words out of his mouth were. "Why did you lie?"

Abigail crossed her arms, her eyebrow lifted as her look said 'really?' Sighing as Brock awaited her answer, she told him seriously. "We both had secrets. Or did you really forget that you worked for HYDRA! You know what they did to my family during the war, how could you not give me a smidgen of doubt and tell me the truth?"

"I was trying to protect you." Brock fired back, eyes hardening with anger. "You're all I care about, Abigail. I was just trying to keep you safe."

"Look around yourself, Brock. Does this look like you're doing a very good job of it?" Abigail to cry a little, but not bothering to acknowledge the tears just yet. If she dealt with them, it would be showing a weakness and she needed to be strong. She didn't get where she was in life being weak. Only the Strong survive in her kind of career.

Brock ran his hands through his hair and down his face as his wife's words started to sink in.

More quietly this time, Abigail continued the argument. "Your side of this war tried to kill my family. I won't stand by and do nothing while they get themselves killed trying to fight for the ones who can't fight for themselves."

Having nothing left to defend himself with, Brock went back to his original question. "Why did you lie?"

Knowing that she had to answer him sometime, Abigail told him. "Because I didn't want you to know about the life I had before. I didn't want you to look at me and only see what I used to be."

So Brock asked, trying to prove that he wouldn't just see someone bad, but actually see the person he married two years ago. "And who were you before I met you?"

Abigail turned her head away, Brock briefly caught a glimpse of pain in her deep expressive forest green eyes. "I was five when my mother was killed before my eyes. I didn't know who did it until three years before I met you. You want to know why they had my mother killed." A broken laugh, half sob escaped from her lips as she remembered.

"It was because she loved the wrong soldier during the war. My father fought during the cold war and the Soviet government didn't want him to have attachments. When they found out about us, they started to hunt us. For three years my mother ran and hid, but in the end it didn't matter. She let in the wrong man to her heart and died because of it."

"You always told me that your mother had been killed in an attack on a Romania Embassy before you were adopted by a family when you were five." Brock asked, settling onto the metal bed as Abigail told her story. "Was that a lie to?"

Closing her eyes, because she couldn't bear to see the pain of betrayal in his eyes, Abigail told him. "The man that destroyed that Embassy was the soldier my mother loved. His handlers ordered him to kill his family to prove where his loyalties lay. He did, but when he tried to kill me, he couldn't. I don't know what they did to him that made him forget about his family but it was something horrible."

Abigail wrapped her arms tighter around herself, remembering. "When he looked at me, his eyes were blank. Like he didn't even know his own daughter. It was unnatural how devoid of everything and anything that made him human. It wasn't until I spoke, asking if he was going to tell me the old bedtime stories that he usually gave that even a brief glimpse of my father returned."

"So you lied about everything that has ever happened to you?" Brock asked, knowing they didn't have much time left in this meeting. "Was I only being used to make you feel better about yourself after a terrible childhood?" Hurt and disgust entered his voice.

Abigail stopped pacing in front of him and stared at Brock in shock. "I thought I had left my old life behind. I wanted to become a normal person, and with you I actually thought that was possible. I guess not." She started to shut herself off from him, withdrawing into herself as Brock watched. "I was a mercenary, Brock Rumlow. I was proud of what I created for myself, becoming the best out of nothing at all. SHIELD had sent several dozen STRIKE teams after me throughout the years, but nobody returned from those missions. Until the night Hawkeye was sent to get me four years ago."

"You're asking me to believe that you're the reason so many of my comrades have died throughout the years was because of you? And that Barton, who I may say is really an ass, walked away still living? He couldn't take on a single woman mind you, without getting nearly stabbed to death." Brock asked in disbelief.

"You asked why I stopped being what I was good at, not if it was plausible." Abigail told him, fed up with the interrogation. To the untrained eye it probably looked like a fight, but in truth Brock was really the one getting what he wanted. "They called me Lady Vixen. Barton tracked me across twenty-nine countries before cornering me in Bubapest. He was upset to say the least when he found out that Lady Vixen was really me…"

"Why was he upset?" Brock asked, getting over his own feelings and trying to get more information for his employers.

"When Barton and his older brother joined the circus, Clint convinced Barney to take me along with them. Barney joined Sword Master, the drug ring leader, selling contraband every stop we made. When they saw how well I fired rifles, Barney convinced him that he would want Clint and me on his side." Abigail told him. "I joined the wrong side that night and have been for years."

With that said, Abigail stopped talking. Knowing that the rest of the story of her life was hers to know, alone.

A/N: Now that was a torture to finish. Reviews are ALWAYS welcome, folks! Give. Oh as a side note, ALmost finished with thenext chapter of MErida and her Brother FRancis, stuck in an alternate universe. Where Clint is stuck raising his two kids alone. Birds of a Feather, to be exact.