Title: Father of the Year
Author: Vashti
Fandom: Captain America / Marvel Cinematic Universe
Characters: Steve Rogers, Original Characters
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It was a normal day for Kayla, until Tall Fair & Handsome on his motorcycle thrust his baby into her arms. What kind of dad drives around New York City with a baby in a onesie strapped to their chest?!
Length: ~4,100 words
Disclaimer: Only the words are mine, and that's probably up for philosophical debate.
Author's Note: This is set in an AU pre-Winter Soldier universe, where HYDRA is nothing more than some random, and randomly powerful, cells but not a known organization.
Please note trigger warnings for references to mental health issues, and HYDRA's tender loving care. Also, relatively explicit description of a panic attack. Protect your mental health.
"Um, hi. I know this is awkward, but would you mind holding my son for me?"
Kayla took the half-naked, dusky brown little boy from his, very not-brown, father's hands mostly because the man all but thrust the child at her. If she hadn't taken him, he would have fallen onto the concrete sidewalk between her and his self-absorbed father. The baby was old enough to hold up his head full of glossy black baby-curls, the better to stare at her, but otherwise he was all infant chub. Kayla would have eaten her own cloud of springy dark coils if he was a day over 6 months old.
She looked up from the kid (staring up at her with the most soulful brown eyes she ever did see, oh dear heaven, her ovaries!) to his father, a fiery dressing down on her lips. These were the cruel, cruel streets of New York City, not whatever podunk town he'd come from! You couldn't just hand random women your child, the better to check something on your phone. Especially not when you pulled the kid from a motorcycle of all things!
The fire in Kayla's mouth caught somewhere in her throat when she really took the man in. Generally speaking, Tall Fair and Handsome wasn't usually Kayla's type. And aviator glasses were a weird turn-off for her. She'd never been picky about who she dated, and now that her life was… Well, she couldn't afford to be picky. But Tall Fair and Handsome was doing things to her insides that Kayla was deciding to chalk up to holding a really cute baby! instead of his unfortunately gorgeous, and even more unfortunately self-absorbed, father. Aviators and all.
"Don't grow up to be this guy, okay little man? I may be a total stranger who you'll never see again, but this is not a way to live," she cooed as she bounced Tiny Brown and Cute! in her arms. "What's your name, sweetness? And where's your mama so I can tattle on your daddy to her?" she added in singsong. The baby liked it so much he made a grab for her full lips.
"Uh...that...that won't be necessary."
Kayla quailed inside. Even TFH's voice was gorgeously deep and smooth! Luckily his little minion had gotten a grip on her lower lip while she was distracted, and his undoubtedly adorable, but in desperate need of a trim, baby fingernails were digging into the sensitive flesh.
Upside? Not only did she not have to look at the little cinnamon drop's distractingly handsome father, but there was plenty of heat in her voice when she muttered, "Please say your momma didn't pat you and Daddy on the head as you headed off to the big city on a motorcycle."
No help from the adorably dangerous baby was needed to imbue the last word with everything she thought about that idea. But just in case he hadn't gotten it, Kayla cut her eyes in TFH's direction, leveling a death glare that had been known to make rowdy middle schoolers rethink their life choices - a feat worthy of ballad and song - before turning back to the baby in her arms.
"You won't make it to your first birthday at this rate!" she cooed and sang to him, rushing forwards and back much to the baby's curious delight. "No, you won't! No, you won't! You won't make it to 1 at this rate!" The baby wasn't sure what to do with all Kayla's actions and silly baby voice, but he seemed to enjoy it. So much so that he grabbed her nose next.
"Ow, TBC! I'm also gonna ask your mom to clip your little nails, 'kay. Save us all from permanent scarring. Okay? Okay!" Apparently it was impossible for her to not play with the cute and curious kid in her arms.
"Uh, I guess you can if you want."
"You're too young to know this," Kayla said to the baby in arms in the same singsongy voice, "but your father is a total weirdo! Yes, he is! Yes, he is! Your momma is the brains of the family isn't she? Isn't she? I bet she is! Oh yes, oh yes!
After everything that had happened to her, Kayla was out of the habit of giving her opinions to strangers, even obliquely via baby, but this guy was too much. Handsome or not, he was putting his child's life at risk with his recklessness (who rode around with an infant on a motorcycle?!) and naivety. Even now, knowing that her indignation was righteous, Kayla could feel sweat beginning to form on her upper lip and along her hairline as her heart tripped on her chest. Telling the truth as she saw it had ruined her life for almost two years. And maybe saved her life, but it had been the painful kind of rescue. Opinions were definitely safer locked behind her teeth. But this guy! And his son...
"I'm not-!" From the corner of her eye, Kayla saw TFH draw the hand not holding his phone down over his face
"Sir," she said addressing him directly for the first time despite nervousness making her mouth dry, "I can't tell you how to raise your child, but your actions aren't safe, starting with you taking him around on your motorcycle and ending with handing him to a perfect stranger. I mean, sure it's a nice spring day, but a short-sleeved onesie isn't enough for a baby this little."
TBC chose that moment to try lunging sideways, so her voice was somewhat strangled when she added, "I really do hope this is just extreme dad-behavior and his mom is the levelheaded, practical one."
"You tell me," he said, sounding exasperated himself.
"Okay, so maybe I've been beating this horse a bit much - little man, stop with the trying to reach the ground the hard way, 'kay?! - but what are you talking about?"
"Miss…"
And he sounded so much not like an irresponsible parent that Kayla's eyes met his, or tried to through the aviator glasses he was wearing.
"…you're his mother."
"What?" The word, and whole world, felt like it came from down a deep tunnel even though it was Kayla's mouth that said it. A wave of cold so strong hit her that she was momentarily limp. And almost dropped the baby.
Only TFH's quick reflexes saved the kid, which was great because Kayla suspected that babies did not, in fact, bounce. "Are you okay, Miss?"
Kayla blinked owlishly up at him, until a surge of fiery anger rolled up through her in a wave. "Me?! Me, okay? Look out for yourself, man! I'm pretty sure you need to get your head checked!"
"I know it's a lot to take in—"
"A lot to take in?!" she all but shouted. Kayla shoved the cute, but unfortunately parented, kid more securely into his father's arms, then turned on heel to stomp away.
She probably should have taken the kid to the police the minute TFH thrust him at her, but it was too late now. After holding him so long she could describe the kid pretty well. The father, though… What kind of description was "Caucasian male, tall, broad shouldered, fit like woah, blond-brown hair, wearing a cheap baseball cap and even cheaper aviator sunglasses"? That was every Northern European tourist and West Coast transplant. Heck, except for the really fit (and handsome) part, that was an almost spot-on description of her old piano teacher and he'd originally been from Idaho.
Kayla had gone maybe five sidewalk-eating steps when unfortunately familiar hands wrapped around one of her swinging arms. "Miss—"
"Take your delusional hands off me, dude."
Instead he used his really fit self to arrest her forward motion and turn her towards him. He even tugged her out of the path of foot traffic - which she actually kind of appreciated, but that wasn't the point!
"Miss, I know this is a lot to take in—" he said, trying that line again. Because it had really gone over the last time.
"We had this conversation. It wasn't a winner."
"—but you are the baby's mother."
"Not. Possible! Not that it's any of your business or anything, but I'm celibate, downright virginal," she hissed. "And before you go making some misguided Mary Mother of Jesus statement, I think I would have noticed if I had been pregnant!"
The color drained out of his face for a moment, before he flushed again. For the first time lines of anger pulled at what Kayla could see of his face, but before she could get scared, he turned away as if to spit or swear. Instead, he took a deep breath to steady himself before turning to face her again.
"About a year ago, maybe a year and a half, do you remember being…taken? Mysteriously? Perhaps by…by aliens? You weren't gone for long, but-"
The anger left Kayla so quickly she was dizzy from it. Her muscles turned to water. Her knees wouldn't hold her up anymore. If not for TFH's strong arms she would have hit pavement.
"No, no, no, no, no…" She couldn't breathe. There wasn't enough air and it felt like someone had put her head in a vice.
TFH guided her towards the curb and sat her down. Murmuring something she couldn't hear over the roaring in her ears, he gently guided her head down between her knees and talked her into normal a breathing pattern. His hand, large and warm on her back, was the only thing that felt real for long long minutes as everything within her rebelled.
As her breathing regulated, she began to mentally catalogue the familiar symptoms of panic attack: shivery cold (due in part to the fine sheen of sweat that had broken out all over her body), rolling nausea, her still elevated heart rate, the building headache that was probably mostly from hyperventilating, and the way she still felt disconnected from the world outside her body - except where Tall Fair and Handsome's hand connected her to it in a visceral way.
"Feeling better?" he asked near her ear without changing their one point of contact.
"I will," Kayla said more faintly than she would have liked. She had thought the days of panic attacks from the mere mention of her mental break were over.
"So you do know what I'm talking about."
If she'd been fully recovered she would have shot him a dirty look. As it was, just the thought of whipping her head around that fast made her dizzy. Before she could think of an appropriate, but still indignant, alternative, he said, "For what it's worth, I'm sorry about what they did to you."
That sent her surging to her feet, even though her rational mind knew that she was nowhere near ready. Fresh panic attack symptoms definitely weren't helping.
TFH drew her back down to the sidewalk before Kayla could crack her skull on it. "Hey...hey..."
"Not- Nothing was...was done to me!" Hyperventilating again, Kayla could barely catch enough air to argue with TFH like she wanted, like he deserved. And as much as she wanted to clock him in his chiseled jaw, she was glad and grateful when he once again guided her head between her knees. Slightly less surprised by return of her panic attack, she was also somewhat better able to get her breathing back on track.
"I wasn't abducted," she snarled the moment she could draw a full breath. "I had a mental break." Part of her mused that she'd probably wasn't having the effect she wanted, what with her head still between her knees, but that the overall look probably backed her words better. Kayla straightened slowly, noting with somewhat perverse delight that TFH hadn't removed his large, warm hand.
"I have no idea how you know anything about me, but at least get the facts straight. In my delusion, I believed I had been abducted by aliens for a month of oh so fun experiments. I woke up one morning in my bed and ran out of my room and woke up my entire family with my crazy story. My parents were so traumatized they could hardly look at me. I went to them first and I don't... I don't even know, I..."
Kayla swallowed, feeling the movement of her throat with painful clarity. She should stop. This man was a stranger. A worst-dad-ever (where was the kid?!), panic inducing, stalkery stranger - who still had his hand comfortingly on her back as he quietly listened to her story.
She had to tell him. Only her shrink and her sisters knew everything.
"My parents were so disturbed by the severity of my mental break, they left everything to my sisters. I'm... I'm in the middle of five, but they all did what they could. They found me doctors. They found me an in-patient facility. They set up my out-patient appointments. They take me or pick me up so I'm not alone in my head. They-They check in with me every day." Inexplicable emotion tightened her throat. She thought, she knew, it should be gratefulness but it felt more like fear. Of her sisters?
Not fear of my sister; fear that my sisters might leave, a voice hovering in the corner of her mind whispered. It was hers, but not. Her shrink would probably say it was the anxiety talking. Her sisters would never leave.
"They-they picked up for what my parents couldn't, can't, do. So, you see, I wasn't abducted by aliens," Kayla said with a shaky laugh, "I was crazy. Like, on-your-permanent-record, do-I-have-to-put-this-on-my-next-resume, when-should-I-tell-the-guy-I'm-dating, could-I-pass-this-onto-my-kids crazy."
"You're not crazy," TFH said with quiet authority as the hand on her back slowly made its way to her nearer hand.
"Says the triggery man who gave his baby to a stranger on the streets of New York City!"
Somehow without her realizing it, TFH had engulfed both her hands of his larger ones. It was as comfortingly distracting as his one hand on her back had been. At least until his grip tightened and he said, "Kayla Emmanuelle Tate-"
Kayla stiffened, shocked. "How do you-"
"You are not crazy," he said again, possibly more firmly. "You were abducted. But not by aliens. By HYDRA."
The "What?" that came out of her was faint even to Kayla's ears. "Why…why would a Nazi-era terrorist organization want me?"
"For your genetics. Both of your parents were acclaimed athletes in their youth, while also being leaders in their chosen fields of math and the sciences. Your mother, Evangeline Tate, further obtained a law degree while your father, Kevin, was actively pursuing a doctorate in his field when he—"
Kayla jumped on TFH's pause, it was so sharp and laden with things unsaid. "What? When Daddy what?"
TFH looked away again as if he wanted to swear but couldn't. "I'm so sorry Kayla—"
"And how do you know my name?!"
"—I don't know how to say this, but the women who you think are your sisters are not your sisters."
"What?"
"You're an only child."
"What?!" For the first time—second time?—Kala actively tried to get away from him. Anger and fear ran hot and cold through her as she tried to yank herself out of the grip that had been comforting just a moment before. "I have four sisters. Four, you whack job! Now let me go!"
"Kayla! You have a HYDRA handler and four HYDRA bodyguards. You're an only child!" TFH insisted.
"You don't know anything about me!" she shouted in his face. She shouted in his face to cover the cold dread and bile that had just backwashed through her.
"Those women…my sisters…they have seen me through the worst time of my life. They have here for me when our parents couldn't. They've protected me from everyone, including myself."
"They have been manipulating you and testing you and helping to cultivate the delusion that HYDRA's scientists implanted in your mind when they first abducted you almost two years ago."
"No…no, you're lying! Why are you lying? My sisters have been good to me and you are lying!" She had started near tears but now she was yelling.
But inside, inside she was coming to pieces. It was like the early days after her mental break, when she couldn't tell reality from dreams. Part of her was clawing at TFH's hands not just to get away, but because those big warm hands were starting to feel like the only thing that was real.
TFH's grip, though firm, never wavered even as Kayla continued to tug and make sounds of fury. "I wish I was lying. I really do. You asked why would HYDRA want you."
"My genetics," Kayla growled.
"And because there's no one left to be concerned about you."
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't know—"
"Just spit it out!"
"Your parents are dead. They died in the Battle of New York."
The cold dread that had been washing over her froze Kayla mid-tug. Gooseflesh erupted all over her body until she shuddered from it. Her eyes were hot and her sinuses were closing up, and there was a roaring in her head that had nothing to do with the incessant New York traffic rolling along just beyond them. The bile that had been threatening to come up churned in her stomach, but couldn't get past her closed throat.
"You're an only child, Kayla. You have no siblings and your parents had no other children. Your mother had a hysterectomy seven years ago."
"No…" she keened softly. "No, please..." Inside her memories were fracturing. She saw her parent the day she woke up, convinced that she had been stolen away in the night and experimented on. But instead of seeing her parents backs as they retreated from her madness, she saw four women, four strangers standing and sitting around her living room with determined calculation in their eyes. The room that had been her parents was ajar, and she glanced into it.
"None of that," one of the women said, standing and going to close the door. "No need to test things so soon."
Instead of her father's worn loafers by the door or the trailing edge of a family quilt passed down through three generations of her mother's family, she had glimpsed the spindly pale wood of her work desk, trailing computer wires and the steady green lights of her internet router. In her parents bedroom.
But…but that was where…that was her parents room! It was where they had retreated when they hadn't been able to convince Kayla that she had been dreaming. Wasn't it?
"When is your next youngest sister's birthday?" TFH asked suddenly.
"May 3rd," Kayla answered without hesitation. It was right around the corner.
"And what did you do for her last birthday?"
"We saw big movie that was out and went to dinner at a Moroccan place she wanted to try."
"And the year before that?"
"We…we… It was two years ago. I don't remember!" She'd meant to it to come out as a snarl but even to her ears it sounded more like a plea.
"What about your other sisters' birthdays? What did you do for them? Any memorable outings? Gifts? The sisters who are so precious to you, can't you remember anything that happened with them before two years ago?"
Kayla shook her head. She couldn't answer and she couldn't remember.
"Because two full years ago was before you were taken, before you ever met these women."
The tears slipping down her face burned, she was so cold. Her head was pounding. She couldn't think straight. Her mind kept trying to go back those two years…three years...
As if he could read her mind, TFH said, "What about the milestones. You should remember those. What about Sweet 16s? Your 18th birthday? Your 21st birthday? Your oldest sister is in her thirties. What did she do for her 30th? What about your parents wedding anniversary?"
He kept talking, but Kayla couldn't hear him. Her mind had latched onto wedding anniversaries.
Wedding anniversaries…
Wedding anniversaries…
Wedding anniversaries that, until only a few years ago, had always been spent together. Kevin Joseph Tate, his wife Evangeline Joan Labee-Tate, and their daughter Kayla Emmanuelle Tate had gone to movies, dinners, amusement parks, symphonies, week-long road-trips…whatever struck their fancy, fit their budget, and could be squeezed into three busy schedules. When people asked Kevin and Eva why they didn't leave their daughter behind, they were told that the three of them were the only family they had, and they didn't want to miss their time together while they still had it. Everyone had assumed they meant before Kayla grew too old for such things and wanted to have a life of her own. No one saw the Battle of Manhattan coming. Certainly not Kayla.
She didn't know how or when, but Kayla came out of the swirl of repressed and false memories keening against the solid strength of TFH's chest, his arms a warm barrier against her shattered world. "Come on," he murmured near her ear. "We've gotta get you out of here. You should have been back at your place a long time ago. They're gonna come looking for you."
"Who?" she managed as TFH got them both on their feet without releasing his comforting hold. The world beyond his arms was an icy wasteland of confusion and terrible, terrible loneliness.
"Your handler. The Sisters."
"That's their real name?"
She'd whispered it to herself, but somehow TFH heard her anyway. "That's what we're calling them."
"We?" she asked, glancing up at him.
TFH gently directed her not onto the sidewalk proper, but further into the street where a black SUV was waiting on the other side of the parked cars.
"The Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division, Miss."
"Huh?" But then she saw the stylized eagle emblazoned in a dull gray on the SUV's door.
"SHIELD, for short."
"Oh. You're the good guys, right?" She stopped short and looked at TFH, really looked at him, for the first time since he'd ripped her carefully stitched world to shreds. He'd done it for her own good, she was pretty sure, but… "I'm not crazy, right?"
TFH smiled sadly and shook his head. "You're not crazy. I promise. The Sisters wouldn't need to keep taking you in memory adjustment if your mind was anything less than strong and resilient."
Sagging back into TFH's grip, Kayla said, "I don't feel strong or resilient."
"I know."
The door to the SUV opened. A black-suited male agent stepped out to help hand Kayla into the car. Despite the dark tinted windows, the interior was well lit by the early afternoon sun so that she could see how the backseats had been rearranged to face each other, like in a limo. There was another agent, a woman sat holding TFH's forgotten son.
"TBC!"
"To be continued?" from the woman.
Kayla flushed. "Tiny Brown and Cute!"
"What happened to Coulson holding him," TFH asked as he climbed in behind Kayla. The agent who had helped her closed the door behind him.
The woman smirked. "Even Coulson couldn't win after a taste of mama."
Kayla froze again. TFH had said he was her son. Her son?
Her eyes darted between the child and TFH. "My son? But I haven't—"
TFH turned a bright red. "Neither have I, actually. But, as I said, HYDRA stole you for your genetics and your lack of family. We presume they had someone on the inside of SHIELD who stole my genetic, uh, information, to produce the child."
The woman huffed and smiled at TFH's awkwardness, as if they were old friends and this was an equally old conversation.
"So they wanted me for my good genes and because no one would miss me. But you, you work for SHIELD. How could they- Who are you?"
The male agent who had helped her into the SUV opened the door long enough to remind them to get the baby strapped into the car seat next to the woman agent before taking his own seat in the front. Once the door was closed and he had given the all clear, TFH turned in his seat to face Kayla. He pulled the cheap baseball cap from blond hair and the even cheaper aviator glasses from blue eyes.
"Steven Grant Rogers, Miss Kayla. At your service."
[in]Fin[ite]