He finds her in the ballet studio.

She's in black leggings and a long, loose knit sweater that's halfway to her knees. It's utterly massive, probably something she picked up in her endless travels.

Her hair is down.

Her…her hair is down.

She never does ballet with her hair down. Instead of the barre, she's in the center of the floor, doing plies and adages with supple arm movements and absolutely no eye contact with any mirrors.

This would be the perfect time for a motivational speech. Maybe he can give her the right pep talk to both comfort and encourage her as they move forward with Bruce's 'PVS, or, err…Peter's version of it' diagnosis. He thinks of what Coulson said to him, the first time he lost a colleague.

What comes out of Clint's mouth after all that thinking is, "There's no music in here."

Profound, Clint. Spot on.

Natasha stops and turns to her partner. Her face is smooth and free of any worry creases. No bit lip or make up running from tears. She's the eye of a devastating storm.

And Clint can see straight through her.

For Natasha, it is always her jaw that gives her away. Her eyes are not the window into her soul, perfectly serene and stony.

No…it is the fine tremors and pulses around her throat and ears that make Clint's face fall.

"Tasha…"

She turns back around, going into an arabesque. Clint dares to step a few feet further into her aura's sanctum of pain and fury.

He pulls a battered, older model iPod from his pocket. There's a chip on one side from a stray bullet. It only takes a few seconds to queue his favourite, a song that baffles everyone in his love for it.

Natasha's eyes flick to his in the mirror, watching how he unravels an equally battered pair of blue ear buds. She twitches at the sound of strings and a trumpet filtering through the haze.

"I can't do ballet." Clint shuffles even closer, holding his arms up in a frame. "But would you care for a lousy waltz partner?"

He waits for an elbow in his ribs or the wrinkled nose of rejection.

Instead, Nat's eyes hood even farther, just a slit of poison green shining through. She swivels fully to face him head on. Her point shoes fall back off their block and flat onto the floor.

And she leans into his embrace. Takes his hand, lets him wrap a warm arm around her back. She's lithe and sturdy in his arms.

They've only danced like this once before and this is so different from undercover ops in Switzerland that Clint feels like he's on a first date with all the tension in the air.

Nat slips one bud into Clint's ear and the other in hers.

"It was fascination, I know, seeing you alone with the moonlight above…"

There's no conversation, no whispered words.

Clint and Natasha just sway around the studio. Their breaths mingle in the space between their bodies in an act of intimacy beyond anything physicality can possibly capture. If hers is a little short, unsteady, he says nothing about it.

The Nat King Cole song ends and a Stevie Nicks one begins.

Clint knows what Nat would say anyway, for he understands why Peter's diagnosis—permanent diagnosis—hits her so hard. He knows about the sterilization and that she never expected to have a child, that she was worried about being a mother because she didn't know how but Peter made her one of the best Clint's ever met.

At some point in the fifth song, some thirties ballad he can't remember the name of, Tash's head tips to the side. Clint forces himself not to react when her hair makes contact with his left shoulder, resting there at an angle so she can keep looking into his eyes.

Neither of them cry, like Tony and Steve have already done, but Clint does feel his throat close, thick, and Nat's lips quiver for a fraction of a second.

He remembers the early days after he recruited Nat to SHIELD, how she slept handcuffed to the bed and tried to kill herself with a razor blade.

How he'd held a bandage to her wrist while she screamed "WHY?" in every language she knew.

Clint juxtaposes the two images, this calm and fiercely loving woman with the wild animal of a killer in his mind. It's surreal.

He hums out a sound of awe, both kinds: the awe of devastation over this blow and the awe of wonder at how far they've come.

Nat closes her eyes.

Clint rests his cheek on her head and squeezes her hand. A minute passes…

Natasha squeezes back.


Steve might think he's the best at faking sleep but the truth is he's the absolute worst. It's better now that he doesn't wheeze in the night, breathing silent, but Bucky knows better.

Still, he gently untangles himself from Steve's octopus arms and slips off the hospital bed without calling him out on it.

A full, harvest moon shines orange through the slanted blinds. Bucky's watched Peter for over an hour, how his eyes slide shut and then pop back open.

Now they're fixed on the moon outside. He seems to enjoy moving his eyes from the window to the rusty tint across the blanket around his legs.

Bucky replays Cho's words in his head and struggles to match them with Peter—"Because of the oxygen deprivation to his frontal cortex and how his enhanced healing tried to take care of it, he's an odd case. All his sensory functions are in tact. It's just understanding. Think of him like a baby for now, just…without the reactionary effects or noise making apparatus."

The words might not make sense to Bucky but seeing Peter completely unresponsive to their questions and faces sure does.

You're free to go, Bucky reminds himself, like Tony had. His wounds are all mostly healed and he's really just sleeping here to be close to Peter at this point. You can leave at any time. You're not a prisoner here.

But Bucky knows he's just like the rest of them. Peter's wrapped around his heart for good too. He wishes the boy wasn't mentally checked out so he can tell him that.

"Hey," Bucky whispers, soft and coated with warmth. "What's shakin', Pete? Can't sleep?"

Peter follows the sound after a moment. He watches Bucky slide carefully onto his bed, mindful of the monitors.

They lay side by side, staring at each other. Peter's face still caries that blissfully neutral expression.

For some reason, it breaks Bucky's heart. He nudges Peter with his stump of a shoulder. "I never got a chance to apologize, Peter. I know Zemo did it, but I still feel like this is my fault."

Peter blinks at him, long lashes brushing his cheeks.

Bucky's lips go all wobbly for a second. "You know, I did some reading. That maniac was wrong, Peter. He got the story wrong."

Peter's eyes are at least staying open. His gaze switches from Bucky's eyes to his lips and back again.

Bucky twists forward so he can kiss Peter's forehead, knowing this is a risk with how startled he's been by touch since he woke up yesterday.

Peter, to his shock, doesn't even flinch. His limbs stay immobile, as usual, but he blinks openly at Bucky when he pulls away.

Bucky captures the boy's face with his hand. "God apparently didn't actually want Abraham to kill his son or whatever. There was a ram caught in a bush when they got to the top of the mountain. Can you believe it?" Bucky breathes out a laugh and isn't sure why. "Evil psychopath and he couldn't even get the moral of that story right!"

Peter is observing Bucky's chest now, how it rises and falls. Bucky's jaw drops.

He's mimicking my breathing.

They're perfectly matched now, synchronized breaths flawless in their timing.

"Come on, Peter." Bucky nuzzles Peter's cheek with his knuckles. "I know you're in there. We're all waiting. It's okay now. Zemo's gone."

But Peter doesn't move and his eyes grow heavier.

"That's alright," Bucky says and knows the tears are evident in his voice. "You just go to sleep, Pete. We'll be right here when you wake up. I promise."

Peter takes one last lingering look at Bucky's face, as if he's confused by it. He nods off wearing that bemused expression.

Bucky wipes his eyes. "Steve?"

"Yeah," he whispers back, not even pretending now.

"He's still your kid."

A loaded silence follows that.

"Of course he is!" Steve sounds scandalized through his own sniffles. "What makes you say that? You know we wouldn't abandon him just because he's like this now! We'll take care of him for life."

"I know, but…what if Peter doesn't know that?"

"Bucky." There's a shuffle and then a large hand is on Bucky's shoulder, Steve leaning over him to look into his face. "I don't think Peter knows much of anything right now."

Bucky doesn't know how to respond to that without embarrassing himself so he keeps his mouth shut. His lips shake in the dark.

Steve's face does a funny crinkle and then smooths.

Bucky frowns. "What?"

"Just…we went to Sunday school and I don't remember that story. Did Zemo tell you this stuff? What a creep."

Bucky nods. "He threatened Peter because his own son died. I think…I think he wanted to even the scales."

Steve's face is a blizzard. Icy and murderous. "That's not even justice or vengeance. Killing Peter was just straight murder. There's no penance in slaughtering a child."

Bucky agrees and for a long moment his world comes down to the pulse points of both bodies against him. Their three chests synchronize in perfect harmony.

"That was the moral, I guess."

"Huh?" Steve perks up from whatever thoughts he's wandered off in. "There's a moral to a sheep caught in a bush?"

Bucky nods, suddenly and weirdly sure of this. "Zemo missed the point. God sent a sheep because he was showing that he would never ask Abraham to do something like that, human sacrifice as revenge, which a lot of cultures in that time period did. He'd always provide a better way out. It was his promise to Abraham and whoever read that story."

"That's…insightful of you. You always were better in English class than me."

"Zemo expected it to end in bloodshed, in a brutal sacrifice, because he couldn't see any other way to make things right."

Bucky rests his hand over top of his friend's. They're both trembling.

"Steve, there's always another way."


It's a long sigh, dragged straight from the depths of his soul, and it fills the kitchen.

Pepper hears it and kisses him. Tony savours for a moment. Just because he can and he has nothing else to do today. Pepper has explained everything to the SI board; for once, they are understanding.

Vegetable. Persistent Vegetative State.

The words roll around Tony's head as he leans back from the embrace. Pepper's nose is red, proving she's more affected by all this than she's let on.

Peter will never 'wake' up. Peter will grow into a man without speaking or understanding another word again. Tony's knees threaten to give out and he leans heavily on the counter.

His coffee dinged ages ago but he suddenly doesn't care.

"Loving someone is dangerous," he says again. Pepper, leaning against his hip, startles. "It is," he insists, when he sees her upset scowl.

Pepper's brow irons out. She runs delicate finger tips down Tony's back and up again to his neck. "Yes, Tony. It really is."

Tony blinks. "You agree with me? No defense or The Notebook quotes?"

"Of course it's dangerous." Pepper walks around to frame both of Tony's cheeks between her hands. "But let me ask you this—would you, if you could, go back in time and change it so you never met Peter, knowing what would happen?"

Tony answers before the next heartbeat, for he knows it just as well: "No. Not a chance."

Pepper nods. Tony's sick of crying, being that it's all he's done since Bruce and Helen gave their pronouncement three days ago.

But here he goes again, blubbering into Pepper's palms. They're silent tears but they too are scraped from the bottom of Tony's soul.

He wants to yell, to scream his white hot frustration from the rooftop of this compound. To buy out all the newspapers just so the world will stop caring about stock figures and movies long enough to be upset with him because my son is gone! My son will never remember who I am!

Even the sun is shining and though a small thing, it hits like a slap to Tony's heart.

Has it really only been a month and a half since they swam in the Mediterranean? That the world was their oyster and all was at peace?

Not even Mars feels so far away.

Tony exhales a cosmos of suffering. "I wouldn't change it because Peter is my son."

"He is." Pepper nods again and she's bright eyed too. "Even if we'd only known him for this short time…"

"It's worth it. I'd choose Peter and this pain together than no Peter at all. Every time."

Pepper opens her mouth, nose really red by now, when Bruce pads into the room. "We're, uh, going to start…he's ready."

Tony sniffs, wiping at his eyes with his sleeve. "So soon?"

Bruce nods, both in greeting to Pepper and at Tony's question. "I think it's better so he doesn't lose muscle mass. Just a short walk to the garden and back."

Pepper steals another kiss. "I'll see you later tonight."

To everyone's surprise, for Tony so rarely does it, he plants a tender kiss on Pepper's cheek. "I'm holding you to that."

His gut churns with fear over how this test will go.

When he follows Bruce down to the medbay, it's clear there's already a problem. Steve hovers by Peter's seated profile, slung to the side of the bed, legs not even touching the floor. Steve's face is a flurry of panic and unease.

He looks up at Tony with eyes too young for his face. "He can't walk!"


(The waves are a storm now. They froth like a spitting cat, throwing dirty foam all over Peter's purple lips and matted hair.

"Please! Help! Hel—"

Another wave bobs him down, just for a split second.

It's enough to send Peter into a frenzy.

Gotta find my parents. Gotta get to the yacht!

"Go rag doll on me, Pete. Just trust me."

"I can't! I'll sink!"

"I promise, Pete. Listen to the sound of my voice. Go boneless for me, bud."

"Clint, help!"

"I am. Just trust me, Peter…")