Chapter 38 - Mario

Steph's POV

It had taken a good two weeks after my return for the Tower, for Steve to relax enough to happily allow me outside without his presence. Even then, he was most comfortable if I took a guard and had a well-defined itinerary. I was as sure he only went along with it for my mental health as I was that there were extra guards hiding in the background. Whether those extra guards were his, Natasha's, or Ranger's doing, I'd probably never know, especially since I just pretended they didn't exist.

When I felt up to it, my favorite outing was down the street to the branch of Pino's I'd managed to convince Pino to open by way of fully funding the expansion in return for a share of the profits. Second to Pino's, I enjoyed making runs to the corner market down the street for whatever my odd cravings were- as long as I wasn't feeling to sore or hot to bother. I knew either Steve or JARVIS would happily get anything I wanted for me, but the walking was good for me, and it made me feel useful to provide for myself.

I never left at a scheduled or predictable time, just when the whim struck me. Today I had reached 28 weeks, or the start of the third trimester, and I was still feeling good, so I wanted to celebrate with my good friends Ben & Jerry. I'd taken a morning walk already, but still had extra energy, so I went out again, something anyone watching me would know I almost never did. Which is why I found it extra surprising when I felt the blade of a knife in my back in the market.

"Buddy, you really don't know how bad of a day you're having now. I really think you want to just turn around and leave," I warned slowly, knowing that Woody would have hit his panic button and drawn on my would-be captor already.

"Oh, believe me, Bounty Hunter Bitch, I've been waiting for this day for months now. Years even. Ever since I saw you with Benito the first time and found out that he wasn't good enough to keep you for himself. That's when I knew I had to take my time, wait for the right opportunity, and take you for myself. I don't care who you think you are now, or who you're married to. You. Are. Mine."

"Hello, Mario. I was wondering if I would run into you before or after the babies were born. Honestly, I had you pegged for after. Didn't think you'd want to bother with the extra hassle of a pregnant woman. That is, if you could stay out of prison long enough to have a good shot at grabbing me."

"I don't care, Bitch. I can still play with you, and I'll just find a way to get rid of them. I know a guy."

Yeah, I was pretty sure I didn't want to know that guy. I met Woody's eyes and saw him practically pleading with me to play cool.

"You got any backup with you?" I asked Mario perkily. "Because the last time someone tried to kidnap me, there were about ten of them, and none of them lived through that day. And I gotta tell you, that was without me having any backup, which I do here, and I was way less PISSED OFF about that kidnapping at the time than I am with you right now."

"Steph," I heard softly in my head, knowing that JARVIS had decided to just patch the team straight through rather than playing middleman. It was Clint saying, "I've got him in my sights, and Natasha is making sure there aren't any surprises waiting for us. If you could just try not to antagonize the guy, we'll have you out of this shortly. Then you can punch Stark if you still need a punching bag."

"I am really, really angry right now. Who kidnaps a pregnant woman, especially one who is known to have superpowers?!" I asked wildly, knowing it played into both conversations. Mario would assume I was talking to him, while Clint would also hear me.

"Steph," this time it was Steve, "I'm just as angry as you are right now. But please don't use the electricity unless you absolutely have to. Bruce thinks it would be safe, but he isn't sure. That isn't a risk worth taking unless you absolutely have to."

Just as Steve finished talking, Mario said, "I'm not afraid of you, and you're in no position to make any demands of me. Now, come with me without causing a scene and I'll let you keep those precious babies of yours one more day."

Mario started shoving me toward the door, so I played along. As he was talking about the babies, he placed a hand over my belly, and I had to use every calming technique I knew of. Just before we reached the door, he paused. I could see the entire team, other than Bucky and Natasha, who I had no doubt were outside the back door. In addition to the Avengers, in full uniform, were a heavily armed Merry Men presence, as well as what appeared to be at least the NYPD and their SWAT team. There may have been other law enforcement agencies there as well, but I couldn't tell them apart if there were.

"So, what do you want to do, Mario?" I asked. "You've pretty much run out of options. Let me go, get on the ground with your hands behind your head, and you'll probably live to see tomorrow. Almost anything else you do is almost certainly going to end in your death."

I tried to keep my tone bored and as nonthreatening as possible.

"They're not going to kill me," he said, switching his grips so that his arm was around my neck and the knife was now pointing toward the babies inside of me. "To do so, they'd run the risk of killing Captain America's babies, and no one wants that on their conscience."

I could see Steve with a megaphone getting ready to say something as the knife pushed slowly into me more and more. I felt a slight nick start to form, but before I could say anything else, I felt a really weird sensation from my stomach and then Mario was dropping the knife involuntarily. Taking advantage now that I calculated the risk to be basically zero, I grabbed the arm around my neck, put all of my body weight into it, and sent Mario flying over my shoulder and out the storefront window. Steve rushed forward and had him shackled while Bucky and Natasha burst in through the backdoor and somehow beat Woody to me. They eased me onto the floor even as I was reassuring them that I was fine.

Seconds later Steve rushed up and pulled my shirt up over my belly to take a look at the wound. It quickly healed in front of our eyes, and I was just babbling over and over again, "that wasn't me. I swear, Steve, I didn't do it. I wouldn't run that risk; I knew you were there and would get me out."

Without a word, Steve picked me up in his arms and ran out of the store, ignoring the cheers and the cops yelling questions and had me back at the Tower in record time. JARVIS had the elevator waiting for us, and in almost no time, we were in the medical ward with a concerned Bruce hovering over me.

"JARVIS," I got out, "do we have any video of the end of the incident?"

I managed to hold Bruce off while JARVIS played the video. While my electrical powers usually came out of my hands and branched from there, the video clearly showed two bolts of lightning coming out of my stomach and hitting the knife in question. From all appearances, they'd provided quite the shock to Mario, which is what had made him drop the knife.

"I think it was the twins," I whispered out, and noticed with satisfaction that Bruce seemed to agree and his tension level had decreased upon the realization. Even Steve seemed to calm down a little. I still wasn't spared a full work-up from Bruce, followed by Jemma when she made it onsite, followed by Dr. Chen at the end of the day. When I finally had myself and Steve both convinced that there were no ill-effects of the day's events, I was able to go upstairs, via the elevator and with Steve carrying me, of course.

When Steve stepped out of the elevator with me in his arms, we were greeted with Avengers family and Merry Men alike freaking out.

"Steve, put me down," I said slowly. He did ever so gently, and I walked forward slowly saying, "we're fine. All three of us are fine. Bruce, Jemma, and Dr. Chen have all signed off on me being up and about. I don't even have to do a day of bed-rest or anything. My blood pressure is fine, and all of the tests show the babies are just happy as clams in their little waterbeds right now. He barely nicked me with the knife, and that's fully healed. Plus, JARVIS, can you put up the picture."

I think they were all expecting an ultrasound, but what they got was a freeze-frame image of the twin bolts of lightning shooting out of my uterus and into the knife that threatened them.

"That wasn't me," I crowed happily, and I felt Steve's chest rumble with laughter behind me as his big hands moved back protectively over the bump. Most of the Avengers looked like kids in the candy store with that information, and Pepper just looked resigned to her fate. I understood her perspective because there was no doubt in my mind that untrained babies and toddlers with powers were going to play hell on the Tower and its contents.

Finally Pepper sighed and shrugged, "as long as they're healthy, that's all that matters. And they probably still won't do as much damage as Tony himself has done."

As soon as I'd sat down on the couch, Woody was in front of me handing me the pint of "Late Night Snack" that had started the whole ordeal.

"How'd he get me?" I asked finally.

"Dumb luck," Bucky spat out bitterly. "The guy had been walking past the tower periodically trying to figure out his angle and you just happened to wander past him. It was dumb luck on his part, plain and simple. But he's in custody, and we have numerous witnesses."

Tony cleared his throat, "I've already spoken to the DA, and they have so many witnesses that they expect to settle outside of court. Either way, they probably won't need you specifically to testify. And it is unlikely the defense would call you- that won't end well for Mario."

Bruce's POV

In my opinion, Steph was freakishly calm about her impending birth. As for myself, I was a nervous wreck! When Mario had attempted to abduct her from the market, I'd had to lock myself in my reinforced room to meditate for several minutes before I could trust myself to go to the medical floor and standby. I'd called Steph's OB-GYN and had her begin working on clearing her day just in case. Then I'd had to go to prep the surgical ward, just in case. I'd forbidden JARVIS from providing me updates until the situation was resolved one way or another and he'd be able to tell me what to expect was incoming.

The situation had worked out as best as we could have reasonably hoped. But seeing Steve walk in with Steph in his arms had still been stressful until she'd made it clear under no uncertain terms that she was fine. Once she'd shown the video, I had to admit, most of my stress had translated into scientific curiosity.

Awful as it was, I still couldn't really get over the desire to study the twins when they were born. Who would they take after? Would they have just Steph's serum, as it was clear they had that in their systems for sure. Or would they have a mixture of both. And what would that mean developmentally? Tony and I had spoken of it briefly, and we both knew these were going to be babies then children, and not science experiments. But we were still eager to get to watch and see what happened, and assist wherever we were able.

When Steph hit 32 weeks, I managed to convince Coulson and his team to come work from the Tower, leaving Jemma behind and available to Steph and I as much as was possible without hindering their mission. Steph had an OB-GYN, but in extenuating circumstances, she might have to rely on those of us who were inside the Tower to assist her. With that in mind, Jemma had both put ourselves through formal midwife training as well as some more extensive medical courses. Dr. Chen had even let us observe some of her deliveries, and arranged for her colleagues to do so as well.

One by one, I'd taken aside each of the Avengers and coached them through signs of labor, when Steph would need medical assistance, and a whole host of possible scenarios. Steve had been just as nervous, so he'd asked about a million questions with Bucky and Natasha running a close second at half a million each. Still, as each week wore on, Steph slowed down even more and became less inclined to leave their suite. She'd worked with Pepper to create a nursery, and more often than not when one of us was looking for her, JARVIS would inform us that she was sitting in the nursery, reading to the babies or just relaxing. She seemed impressively at peace as the countdown to her due date got closer to zero.

Bucky's POV

When we'd hired on Ranger and his men, Steph had let me in on one of their secrets. Someone who was caught behaving poorly or contrary to Ranger's personal code of ethics would meet Ranger "on the mats". Generally it would be a sparring session, but as Ranger and Tank were the best, if you were put on the mats with one of them, you were going to get beat and it would be seen as some sort of attitude adjustment.

In the aftermath of Mario getting so close to Steph, there had been a rash of people on the Security Team feeling guilty. So I'd worked out a schedule. Everyone sparred with everyone else, so there were multiple opportunities for each man to get his head on straight. And I hadn't fought with any of them because that wouldn't be fair, but I'd made sure they'd seen me spar with Steve and Thor to know that I didn't think I was faultless either.

Then we'd gone through all our security protocols again, collaboratively, with each man and every member of the Avengers team throwing out ideas for how they would try to get around the system to get in or to a member of the team if they wanted to. Thankfully, Steph had agreed that she wouldn't be leaving the Tower again unless there were truly extenuating circumstances until after the birth. Not knowing what would happen with Steph's powers when she went into labor, Tony and Bruce had taken out her standard implant and promised to replace it with one that would be shielded to withstand her EMPs in the future.

JARVIS had agreed to monitor Steph on a higher level than usual and would, of course, alert the team if anything was amiss with her vitals or surroundings at any time. For some reason, being kidnapped seemed to have a weirdly calming effect on Steph. When I asked her, she said it was knowing that Mario was in prison and all of the specific threats against her were currently eliminated since her kidnapping had only gone to enough of a dead end that we assumed she'd killed the entire threat. I didn't know if it was that or some kind of hormone thing, but she wasn't going stir-crazy staying indoors as we'd worried she might. Instead she seemed to accept and even embrace the situation.

Steve, on the other hand, was back to being a nervous wreck. He went to their suite every night, and I was reasonably sure that he held Steph through the night, but I wasn't convinced that he was getting more than a couple hours of sleep at best. Bruce had actually managed to convince Steve to start meditating with him a couple times each day, which was extremely out of character. Not that I could blame him because I was freaked out too. This was, for all intents and purposes, my sister-in-law, and I'd never seen someone close to me go through pregnancy and labor.

Finally when she hit 34 weeks, I gave up and joined Steve and Bruce with the mediating. The next day, Clint, Natasha, and Darcy were there. The following day Sam and Tony joined. Thor never did, and I think it was because he was as freakishly carefree about the situation as Steph. He tried to reassure us that Heimdall was keeping a close eye and would send assistance if it was necessary, but that really didn't help us at all. In fact, if anything I know it made me feel like there was reason to be concerned.

One day when we were waiting outside the studio for Bruce to arrive and the session to start, I finally asked Steve, "what are you so worried about?"

"You saw what the babies did to that knife Mario had on her, right?"

"Yeah, that was pretty cool. I can't wait until they're big enough to train. Those kids are going to be more deadly than Natasha when they grow up." At his pointed look I added, "if they want to be."

"So, what I'm worrying about, especially since it isn't like they can give Steph sedatives, is what happens if something goes wrong and they need to take the babies out through surgery. Those babies might not let the doctors cut her open. I could lose all three of them if that happens."

I'd heard Bruce approach, and figured Steve had as well, so neither of us were surprised when Bruce said, "is that what has you so screwed up, Steve?" Steve just hung his head and nodded, so Bruce got right in his face, "there's some stuff I developed. Now that we're sure the babies have at least Steph's serum, I feel extra confident it would be safe to use. It would slow her heart rate, and the babies', way down. But we'd just give them enough to get in, so it shouldn't provide lasting damage and the serum will filter it out quickly. We have every reason to think that the babies will be just fine and she'll be able to have a non-surgical delivery, but if we do need to intervene, I also feel confident we can do so safely."

So saying, he smacked Steve on the shoulder and guided us into the studio for another meditation session. This time when we were done, Steve seemed to have actually relaxed. When we saw him the next morning, he looked like he had really slept, and seeing him less panicked seemed to have a soothing effect on the rest of the Tower inhabitants. Except for Steph because she'd been blissfully happy the whole time.

A/N: Alright, friends. Just one more chapter and an epilogue. But I've already got something started to follow this (not an actual follow up story, just a next story).