A/N: mwahahaahaha!

Steve and Tony searched all of the mouldy, dusty rooms without obstacles. The base was completely abandoned, no living soul present except for the occasional draft or low whistling of wind bouncing off the grey walls. After scanning every inch of their side of the building, they came across the main/control room. They broke down the door; weapons automatically at the ready, but were greeted by ringing silence once again. Steve's hand brushed along the wall to find a power switch of some kind, hitting what seemed to be a button. The room buzzed to life, lights painfully entering their eyes, which widened when they beheld the massive metallic structure before them.

"Stark? What in God's name is that?" Steve asked in a daze.

"That, Capsicle, is Tesla's mainframe," Stark answered with a smirk on his face, "I love that elf."

"She built this? That's…"

"I know."

"Wait, how did you know what it looked like?"

"She described it to me before we left. We couldn't miss that," he pointed to the glowing green rock at the centre of the power hub. They moved forward until they were right in front of it, completely transfixed.

"Why didn't HYDRA take it with them if it was so important?"

"Good question. Tesla probably had a security protocol that they couldn't break through. I guess they had to leave it."

"What do we do with it?"

"Nothing." Steve's head whipped around in alarm as Stark typed something into his cybertronic arm and then into the pad above the glowing rock.

"Thank you…Tony Stark…" Tesla's mixed up voice echoed throughout the room, "perfectly…safe…."

"We can't leave something so dangerous here!" Steve protested.

"Hey, give the elf some more credit. She built it to be impenetrable and that's how it will remain. It's safe here." Steve didn't like it, trying to put the thoughts of another judgement day out of his mind. What if this happened again? What if HYDRA was cooking up another way to recreate their genocidal plan? He stiffly shook his head and sighed.

"Let's just get the remaining files and head back to the tower," he grunted at Tony's laid back attitude and opened up one of the black duffle bags they brought with them.

"Grouch," Tony muttered to himself. The two then proceeded to clean out every inch of the room, every filing cabinet, every drawer and every computer's hard drive. Tony looked curiously at a flash drive and inserted it into one of the compartments of his suit. Friday immediately got to work, scanning it for anything of significance. An alert popped up on the screen, blaring red.

"FILES REGARDING KENNEDY WALSH, SIR, DIFFICULT TO OPEN". Tony made no move telling Steve; better to keep it to himself for a while.

…..

The soldier eventually found a bathroom and furiously washed the blood from his hands, face and combative gear. His chest heaved erratically, as he scraped and scrubbed at skin that was free from blood minutes ago. The now blood-stained file he had acquired was tucked safely in his jacket, taunting him and encouraging him to…NO, he shook his head; and didn't realise that his nails were now clawing at the palm of his hand, turning it red in discomfort and eventually hot pain. No one could know; especially not Kennedy! He didn't want to keep anything from her, but it's for her own good; he had to keep her safe.

What he did to those people….no one could know. He had to do it for Kennedy, he couldn't let them get to her. It was all going to end once and for all. But his excuses were shadowed by his self-loathing, hate and guilt. What would she think of him? Steve? They would think he was a brute and that HYDRA would have won in creating a mindless machine. But they tried to take everything from him; not anymore. He had to do it. He had to. He looked at his reflection, seeing how his eyes were wild and unfocused, his jaw clenched. He breathed deeply, picturing Kennedy breathing with him, the feeling of her soft hand gripping his in comfort... His heaving slowed as he pulled himself together in order to join the others. He stiffened and marched out of the bathroom, ignoring the nagging in his mind as he passed the room in which he left those bodies to rot.

It wasn't long until he met up with the team, who efficiently cleared out the main room. Steve, carrying two duffle bags with ease, looked at him worriedly.

"Buck? You good?" he questioned.

"I'm fine. Let's go," the soldier grunted. He just wanted to go home to her.

…..

"Alright, let's try it; ready old man?" Kennedy called from the other side of the training room. She pointed the medium-sized, charcoal coloured rod at the unfortunate target on the opposite side.

"I'm not that old. Go for it," Bruce's voice chuckled over the intercom. Kennedy twisted the mechanism below and electric sparks danced at the top, ready to be fired. Steadying her excited hands, she let the energy take flight straight into the target. All she saw was a blinding flash of light and the target was smoked with a 'woosh' of power. She threw her hands in the air, laughing like a mad scientist.

"We did it! Woo!" Bruce watched her happy dance on the camera with a fond smile on his face. The past few hours have not only been productive, but…fun. They had no mission or deadline to save the world, but nice scientific fun which was a nice change from Tony drilling him to do upgrades on several things. Everything she said made him laugh, a rare occurrence in recent events. The elevator dinged and she stepped out and held her hands out as if she showed the world her mad skills.

"I own you, old man," she said jokingly. Bruce scoffed.

"Watch and see you're going to get served someday," he replied. Kennedy's palm went to her head.

"No one says that anymore."

"The team is back, Dr. Banner," Friday chirped politely on the intercom. Kennedy took that as a sign that everything was okay. She made her way to the jet's hanger eagerly, with Banner trailing casually behind her with his hands in his pockets.

The team filed in, dropping the duffle bags on the floor. Romanoff felt Bruce's eyes on her the entire time. She stared at him and gave him a cordial nod of the head, both of their hearts sinking that this was the way things had to be. Bruce looked down at his shoes and proceeded to stand next to Kennedy passively.

The soldier's first thought was to have her in his arms when he stepped off of the jet. He rudely nudged through the team, took her face in his hands and crashed his lips against hers. She let out a surprised gasp but melted into the kiss, slowing down his erratic mind. They pulled away and he let his forehead touch hers. Everyone looked away awkwardly, only Steve and Tony looking on in surprise.

"I forgot those two happened," Tony muttered to him. Steve held back a smile; she truly gave his friend refuge, and he would be eternally grateful.

"Grumpy, what happened? Are you okay? You're acting odd," Kennedy whispered to him, stroking his wrinkled, worried forehead. He wanted to tell her, to admit to what he had done and what now lay silently in his jacket. He touched a loose strand of her hair, as if remembering her. Because if she found out, he would never see her again.

"Bad memories," he mumbled instead which didn't lessen the pain of lying to her. Kennedy tiptoed and kissed his forehead; he instantly felt dirty, unworthy of her comfort.

"You're alright, Grumpy. You're home. You're okay," she told him when she embraced him. He buried his face in her shoulder, trying to hide his guilty expression.

"I'm alright," he told himself. Was he?

…..

Tony and Bruce worked silently in their lab, waiting for Kennedy's blood work to finish in the machine. It was taking so long, being as thorough as possible with every test imaginable. Dr. Strange had to step out momentarily so Tony took it over. Right now, they were the only people in the tower looking into it. It was intriguing, something definitely amiss, as if she suddenly existed and had these powers. Bruce monitored while Tony was out, doing everything he could to help. She spent little time with them, but they grew fond of her surprisingly quick. She fit in perfectly with them and suddenly Tony started to refer to her as his and Bruce's love child. Obviously Bruce tried his best to expel Tony's teasing gay undertones but it couldn't be helped. He was relentless.

Getting back from the trip with some souvenirs made Tony eager to go into the lab. He got Friday working on decrypting this supposedly uncrackable file as soon as they left the base. As they worked wordlessly, Tony struck up a conversation on an irrelevant topic.

"Romanoff still not chatty?" Bruce's head shot up at the question but his shoulders sagged in defeat.

"She's done with me and going about her life as usual. I'm an idiot. I shouldn't have left," he replied regretfully, typing on the computer to take his mind off of the Russian assassin.

"Yeah, you're right. You are an idiot. Don't you think that it's weird that the love child has close similarities to Wanda? That's a big coincidence." Bruce pushed up his glasses up in confusion at the random change in conversation.

"Firstly, she's not our love child because Pepper is going to get annoyed one of these days. Secondly, why would it be strange?"

"Think about it. Everyone on the planet has a complete different genetic code and the Baron's experiments on the twins reacted differently in accordance with their structures right? Wanda and Pietro, even though they're twins and have a similar make up, they are different sexes. That's why they have different abilities. The possibility of having the same power as another individual is 1 in a million. Unless…"

"Unless what?" As if on cue, the machine beeped, signalling its completion of its scan of Kennedy's blood work. Tony read through the computer's analysis and his eyebrows shot up.

"Well shit!" he exclaimed.

"I've seen this before with Wanda when we scanned her last month. Check the readings. They're identical." His pocket buzzed as his A.I alerted him of the file download. It took her hours to break through a maximum security firewall; evidence that someone desperately wanted to keep it hidden. Nobody knew that he was acquiring Kennedy's records before her entry into the United Kingdom in 1994, hence her past was literally sitting in the palm of his hand. He opened it and a tiny smirk started to form on his face. He knew he was right.

"What is it, Tony?" Bruce asked cautiously.

"I think it's time for the twins to come home," Tony commented, turning the screen to face his colleague. Bruce stood there stunned as he read the name: DANIA MAXIMOFF.