Peggy huffed as her doorbell rang. She opened the door to find her boy standing there with another man. She narrowed her eyes at what looked like a dead man. "Jonathan?"
Jack smiled and hugged her. "Hi, Mom." He backed off and gestured to the younger man with him. "This is my friend, Dr. Daniel Jackson."
She raised her eyebrows. "The Dr. Jackson that's dead? With, what is it now, three or four obituaries?"
Jack grimaced as he came in as she moved aside to give them room. Dr. Jackson looked sheepish.
"Yeah, uhm. Mom..."
Peggy followed them into the kitchen and watched as Jack laid out papers all over her nice clean table. "Don't 'Mom' me, Jonathan. What is going on?"
Jack held a pen out to her. "You need to sign the non-disclosure forms first."
She took the pen and looked down at the nearest form. Then she barely kept herself from throwing the pen at her son's head. "No."
"Mom."
"No. Jonathan, I have told you before I'm never speaking to Director Fury again. Unless it involves shooting him, I have no interest." She'd seen the news where they'd gotten someone to take up Steve's role. They'd even replicated his shield. And she wasn't going to get anywhere near any of it. The rat bastards.
"Uhm, Mom...I can't tell you until you sign, but you really, really want to sign."
Peggy could see Dr. Jackson cross and uncross his arms from the corner of her eye. She sat down and sorted through the piles of forms. Several from the Army, loads of Air Force, an international one, SHIELD, the DOD, two from Russia...She looked up at her boy standing there, earnestly looking back at her.
"Really, Mom. I promise there is no talking to Fury involved."
She poked a pile with her fingertip. "Well, if I don't have to speak to that rat bastard...I suppose..." She worked her way through the various forms. Carefully reading everything before signing her name to each one. She sat back and pushed the last form away from herself. "Well?"
Jack smiled his pretty smile and tugged on her arm like he used to do when he got really excited. "You'll love it. It's a surprise. Oh, and I've saved the world with Daniel more times than I remembered to count."
Dr. Jackson smacked Jack in the shoulder. "Jack."
Jack smiled. "Daniel."
"Jack."
She stood up and gathered the forms up into a single pile. She could torture them for stories later. "Where exactly are we going, Jonathan?"
Her boy smiled wide. "New York City." He pulled her in to stand between him and Dr. Jackson. "We're taking the express route."
Jarod sat down across from Bruce. "You have a nice workspace."
Bruce glanced up and then back down to his screen. "Ah, thanks, Tony can be very generous."
With a nod, Jarod pulled a screen Bruce wasn't using closer to himself. "How much gamma radiation were you exposed to?"
"What?" Bruce's head snapped up and he stared at Jarod.
"Hanna showed me footage of what she call the neat thing you can do." Jarod sketched several equations onto the screen.
Bruce closed his eyes. "She did."
Jarod smiled. "It is very neat. The ability to grow in mass and then shrink back down without affecting your equilibrium to the point you would be unable to stand up is astounding."
Bruce rubbed the bridge of his nose and opened his eyes. "Seriously?" He blinked. "You are...Neat?"
Jarod nodded and his smile became more confused looking. "Of course. Should I have not said anything?"
"No." Bruce rubbed his hand through his hair. "Uh, no, no. I'm just not exactly used to anyone starting a conversation about the other guy like that."
"It is quite interesting."
"Uh, yeah." Bruce sat back and just marveled as Jarod went into how the transformation affected, well, everything.
Peggy let go of her son's arm as they materialized in what looked like Tony Stark's living room. She tried not to think about whether the transporter worked like those in Star Trek or not. "Jonathan."
"You okay, Mom?"
She stepped towards the windows showing her the skyline of New York. "Of course, Jonathan." She turned as an elevator across from the windows opened up. From it came several people, Stark, who she recognized, strode right over to Jack and got in his face.
"You can't call? Knock? Something? JARVIS about had a heart attack."
Jack rolled his eyes. "JARVIS can't have a heart attack, Stark."
Stark shrugged and turned towards her. "Wow, you look great, Auntie."
"You look good. All grown up." Peggy smiled at him and then tried not to act too surprised when he hugged her. She held the side of his face for a moment before she let him back away. She'd not seen Tony in so very long. "Jonathan seems to think I needed to be here for some reason."
Tony looked at Jack like he'd never seen him before. "You haven't told her?"
Jack shrugged. "Haven't gotten around to mentioning my clone yet either."
She turned and glared at her boy. "Your what?"
Jack made a face and waved a hand in a what-can-you-do motion. "I, uh, might have gotten kidnapped by an alien and he made a clone to replace me, but it didn't age right and the clone is about the age Charlie would have been if he'd lived."
She closed her eyes, took a breath, and opened them to a Steve look-alike standing in the doorway of the elevator staring at her. "And I suppose the alien managed to clone him, too?"
The look-alike grinned. "No, ma'am. I just got frozen in the Arctic and missed a date to go dancing with my girl."
She blinked, looked at Jack, who was grinning, then at Tony, who was just starting to smile, and then back to...Steve. Actually, Steve. Standing right there, alive...Alive! Peggy moved over to stand in front of him and put her hands on her hips. "And who said I was your girl?"
He was tearing up. "Uhm...Well..."
She smacked him on the arm. "You still don't know how to talk to a girl." She wrapped him in a hug as he started to laugh. He picked her clear up off her feet, which wasn't going to make her back happy, but she didn't care. Not in the least. "Have you learned how to dance?"
Steve huffed a laugh into her hair. "No. I was waiting for the right partner."
Hanna climbed up beside the nice lady that was Jon's Mom, who was reading reports on a tablet Tony had given her. "Hi."
She smiled prettily. "Hello, I'm Peggy."
Hanna gestured at Francis standing in front of them. "That's Francis. I'm Hanna."
Peggy glanced at Francis and then back at her. "And, Francis is a clone of Agent Barton, is that correct?"
Francis smiled. "Yes, but I don't like heights and Clint does."
Hanna nodded. "You're Jon's Mom."
Peggy cocked her head. "Well, yes, I suppose I am."
Francis crawled up onto the couch with them. "General Jack said Jon's almost Charlie's age. Who's Charlie?"
With a sad smile, Peggy told them about her wonderful grandson and how he died accidentally when he was ten. Peggy then asked them about Steve and Hanna got to tell her about trying to make Steve and Tony be friends.
"Maybe you could help."
Peggy smiled. "Yes, I think I can help with that."
Darcy flopped down next to the young hunk with the arms. "Hi. I'm Darcy."
The guy stared at her for a moment before jerking his chin at the screen on the wall. "You like the Simpsons?"
She shrugged. "They're okay."
He smiled. "I'm Jon."
"You a friend of Thor's?"
Jon poked at her ipod. "Sort of. What do you listen to?"
She grinned and started rattling off all the music she had loaded up after Tony gave her iTunes gift cards to quit singing in his kitchen.
Clint watched Jarod charm Bruce into not being nervous for a while before crawling down the ducts until he could drop down into Betty's lab. "Ma'am."
She smiled at him. "Agent Barton."
He hoisted himself up onto a countertop that looked non-dangerous at the moment. "What are you working on?"
She smiled and turned the screen in front of her more towards him. "Just eavesdropping, actually."
He watched as Cap hugged the crap out of an older lady. Pretty gray hair with a commanding air about her. "Wow, nice."
Betty nodded and shifted so they could watch together. "I think she's like I am for Bruce only she's for Steve." Betty leaned against his shoulder for a moment. "Thank you for accepting Bruce and not handing him over to my father."
Clint looked over the top of Betty's head to the plush Hulk toy on her desk. "No problem." He motioned towards the toy. "Has he seen it yet?"
Betty giggled. "It was great." She split the screen and pulled up a video file. "JARVIS recorded it for me." She hit play.
Clint laughed as Bruce stared and then looked at Betty. Then, Bruce shook his head and started to smile. "I like it when he really smiles."
Betty flicked the file closed. "I miss his smile so much. He hardly smiles in a true way anymore. I've seen him happier here than I have since it happened."
Clint nodded. He knew what she meant. "He has been nice to me. And I want you to know if anyone ever manages to hold him against his will, it'll only be because I'm already dead."
Betty ducked her head a little and then she smiled at him. "Thank you." She pulled him into a hug for a moment. "Let's go get him and see if we can convince Tony to buy out a nice place to go dancing."
Clint hopped down off his counter. "For Steve, of course."
Betty laughed. "Sure. We'll go with that. I'm certain it'll convince Tony."
Clint followed her. "Well, we could just make it Hanna's idea. Tony's just as wrapped around her little finger as the rest of us."
Betty giggled as they left her lab.
