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Kate found herself walking into the lab around 9:30pm unable to sleep. She stopped in surprise as she saw Tony sitting at the workbench working on something. "What are you doing here? I thought I saw the suit fly out a little bit ago." She said walking over.
Tony looked up. "Oh, I sent the suit out, but I was here." He said. "Just something in Queens."
Raising an eyebrow, she looked at him. "Queens?" She asked.
"Don't worry about it right now." Tony said setting aside the soldering iron and resting his arms on the table. "What are you doing up?"
Kate wrapped her hands around her necklace. "Clint's still not back." She said quietly.
Tony sighed. "He will be. Don't worry kid, he's not going to disappear." He said.
"I know that." She said. "But he's really mad at me."
"He's not mad Kate, he's scared." Tony said. "He doesn't want anything to happen to you."
Kate shook her head. "I know he doesn't, but he is mad at me." She said. "I should have told him about the call, maybe if I had and we had just left it would have been better."
Tony frowned. "Kate, stop." He said firmly. "It isn't your fault that this is happening. And the one thing you and your birdbrained brother are forgetting is that you aren't alone anymore. Things like this are kind of the point of the whole team thing."
Kate looked at the billionaire with wide eyes. Tony simply smiled back but then his eyes shifted to look at something behind her. Turning, Kate saw Clint leaning against the doorframe of the lab watching them.
…
"When did you get back?" Kate asked as they stepped off the elevator eyeing the blood and scratches on his knuckles. They moved into the living room area and as they sat on the sofa, leaving space between them, Lucky jumped up and curled up between them.
Kate smiled at the dog, scratching his ears. It was like he was trying to bridge the gap between them.
"Stark was right." Clint said ignoring her question. "I'm not mad…at least not at you." He looked at here. "I wish you would have told me, but I understand why you didn't. It's not fair the way I've made you hide and run and fight, but I hope you know that everything I've done has been to make sure you stayed alive."
"I know that." Kate said turning to face him sitting cross legged. "Clint I've loved my life. I've gotten to see things that people older than me wouldn't even know that they missed out on."
"Going before firing squad?" He asked skeptically.
"Okay that was a low point." She conceded with a laugh. "But I knew we'd survive. I knew that because I knew you wouldn't let anything bad happen to me. You've always taken care of me." She shook her head. "And I'm sorry I should have told you, but I thought I could fix it."
"Why did you try to do it yourself?" He asked.
"Because I saw how happy you were to be here." She said. "I knew if I told you that you would think we'd have to leave again and then you would be sad. Nat would be sad. These people, as dysfunctional as they are, they've become family. I didn't want you guys to lose that because of me."
Lucky seemed to know to move because he jumped down as Clint pulled her into a tight embrace.
"I would give up anything to make sure you were happy and safe." Clint said quietly as she wrapped her arms around him in return.
"But we aren't alone this time." She said softly.
She felt Clint nod. "No, we aren't."
…
Clint called Natasha to update her on what happened. She said that she would return immediately but it was unclear if she would make it back in the three-day timeframe given the nature of her mission.
Thor and Loki, who had gone back to Norway for a while were on their way back and Tony called Rhodey as well.
Kate sat in the main living area with the Avengers that were at the Tower. The windows were darkened for the first time since she had been there, or probably ever, but they couldn't risk any kind of sight into the building. She was sitting on the floor in front of Clint's legs while they all discussed a strategy for how they were going to handle this threat.
"You guys know them best." Sam said. "What can we expect?"
"They won't hesitate to take hostages." Clint said.
Steve looked at Tony. "We need to clear the Tower out this weekend." He said.
Kate smirked as she worked on her Starkpad. "We could always call Wade." She said. "He still owes you a couple favors."
"God no. I don't think the benefits would outweigh the destruction he'd cause." Clint looked down at Kate, who tilted her head back to look at him. "We could move this back to the Compound." He suggested. "Out there we have less risk of collateral damage and we might be able to contain the situation."
A horrible thought struck Kate as she heard this. "What about the kids at school?" She asked quietly. "We can't leave them unprotected."
"You aren't going back to school until this is fixed." Clint replied.
"We have to assume she's being watched." Bucky said. "We all probably are. Any alteration to schedules may alert them to a plan."
Kate tilted her head slightly. "Them acting today…Today was the first time in almost a month that my routine changed." She said thoughtfully.
"I'm not sending her back to school unprotected." Clint said, grey eyes like flint.
"She won't be." Steve said firmly, his jaw set. "Because this time we're watching out for her too."
…
Kate was wide awake. With it being nearly 3:00am, she had pretty much given up on the prospect of sleep for tonight. She was too wired thinking about the day, on top of that her shoulder was killing her.
She kept going over the month in her head, needing to find out what she was missing.
Finally, throwing the blankets back in frustration, she got up and got dressed to go down to the gym; she started getting things ready for the day, laying out her outfit, something more functional in case she ran into trouble in the day and packed her backpack. She had her books, but she also packed her bow, which was collapsible and adaptable into a staff for close combat and she had some packs of collapsible arrows.
Kate went to the gym expecting it to be empty but stopped when she saw Steve at the punching bag. It was interesting to watch each of the Avengers fight, they each had something unique in the way that they moved that allowed her to quickly identify them even if she just had to see shadows. Natasha had a grace that none of the others could match, Clint moved with amazing precision, Thor was all power and big movements, but with Steve, he had this tight control that the others just didn't match. It was like every movement he had extreme awareness of how much power he could put forward but never seemed to be go full strength unless he had to.
Now, he was releasing everything he had into every hit of the punching bag. One, two, three, on the fourth hit that she saw the bag went flying across the room with a loud bang.
"I think we need to find a more durable bag." She commented, quiet voice seeming almost a shout in the quiet of the gym.
Steve looked up, surprised at her presence.
"Sorry." She offered for startling him. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Steve said grabbing a towel and wiping the sweat off his face. "How are you holding up?"
Kate shrugged with a faint smile. "I think everyone else is more bothered than I am." She admitted. "For me, I've lived with it so long that I am used to the stress of it, but I guess I was starting to think that it was over considering we hadn't heard anything in so long."
"If you hadn't had the exposer in Germany—"
"Stop right there." Kate said cutting him off. "I'm so tired of hearing apologies. The only ones who had any blame in this are the ones that are actually hunting me. Which does happen to include one of my brothers, but still, they're the ones pursuing this list."
Steve nodded in consent with that statement and they lapsed into an easy silence for a minute as they started to clean up the spilled contents of the broken bag. "Was H.Y.D.R.A. a part of that list?" Steve asked after a minute.
Kate paused a little surprised that Steve was the one to ask her that. "I didn't know it at the time, but yes." She replied. "Rumlow's name was on the list. But then, a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D. or H.Y.D.R.A. people were assassins beforehand, so it wasn't that surprising."
Steve nodded. "We're going to stop them Kate." He said resolutely.
"I know." Kate said with a smile. "Well, at least they are respectful of school night." Despite just joking, Kate froze at her own words as it struck her.
"What is it?" Steve asked noticing the change.
Kate blinked as she counted off the dates. "I know where they were planning on trying to capture me."
I liked throwing in a little moment with Steve. I need to start writing her with more characters because I've had a lot lately of just her and Peter or her and Clint and I feel like I'm writing myself into a hole.