I feel like there should be a TW for this chapter, but I'm not sure what it would be. HYDRA did something really shitty, Peggy has to deal with it, and Clint talks about his time under Loki's control. It's nothing too explicit, I don't think, just ... maybe take a moment to make sure you're okay beforehand, yeah?
June 2014, Manhattan
It was another week before Peggy and Steve, with Sam in tow, arrived back at the Tower.
Sam let out a low whistle as they entered the executive lobby. "Nice."
Pepper was waiting for them. To anyone else, she probably looked as poised and collected as ever, but the signs of stress were clear in the lines around her eyes. She greeted Steve with a hug first and foremost. "Thank goodness you're okay."
The first time Pepper had hugged Steve, he had almost had a heart attack, until Peggy had explained to him that nowadays it was perfectly normal to hug your friends, even if they were the opposite sex.
Now, he was comfortable enough to hug her back and kiss her cheek. "I'm stronger than that, Pepper; don't worry."
"Still." Pepper hugged Peggy as well, and held out a hand to shake Sam's. "Sergeant Wilson, welcome to the Avengers Initiative. Thank you for joining us."
"Please call me Sam," he said. "Glad to be here. I was told Mr Stark would be happy to look at the wings."
Pepper laughed. "Oh, he's itching to get his hands on them. I'll take you up to the workshop."
Peggy followed her into the elevator. "Is there a reason we have a welcoming committee? Not that I'm not glad to see you, Pepper, but I'm sure you've got other things to do right now."
Pepper sighed. "It's … complicated. Can I ask you to trust my judgement for the next few minutes?"
Peggy and Steve exchanged a concerned glance, but they both nodded.
"Sam, are you alright if I leave you with Tony?" Pepper asked. "I need to speak to these two in private."
Sam looked just as concerned, but he nodded as well. "Yeah, of course."
"Thank you."
Pepper showed Sam to Tony's lab, before taking Steve and Peggy down to their apartment.
It did not surprise Peggy at all when they entered to find that all of her (their) belongings had been relocated.
"Sorry for doing it without asking," Pepper said, following her gaze. "I didn't have the energy to argue with Tony about it."
"It's fine," Peggy said. "I was going to do it anyway. Do you know what happened to the items in the attic?"
"They're stored on one of the empty floors," Pepper answered. "I can't remember which one off-hand."
"55, Miss Potts."
Pepper smiled. "Thank you, JARVIS."
Peggy had known Pepper long enough to know when she was faking a smile. "How are you holding up?"
Pepper's poise waved a little and she sank into one of the armchairs. "It's been … crazy."
"Yeah, I bet," Peggy said. "What did you need to talk to us about?"
"Well, first of all, the Avengers Initiative is in a pretty good position at the moment," Pepper said, "but I would suggest you all go public ASAP. People are scared and confused; they don't know who to trust. The fact that the Avengers saved the world in 2012 is definitely helping, but there's still a bit of … hesitation."
"We did talk about this in the hospital," Peggy said.
Steve sighed. "The last time I did PR, I feel like all I did was lie."
"That's because you did," Pepper said bluntly. "The government used you to convince the public that everything was fine to distract them from the fact that their fathers and brothers and sons and husbands were dying. That's not your fault. This isn't about selling a story; it's about telling the truth."
"Social media?" Peggy asked.
"Darcy Lewis - whose title of assistant does not do her justice, by the way - has already reserved various handles on all of the social media sites," Pepper said. "They're ready when you are."
"You're sure this is a good idea?" Steve asked.
"No, but people fear what they don't understand," Pepper explained. "If you're all holed up in here doing God knows what, it makes it easy for the HYDRA-influenced politicians - or even the normal ones - to convince the public that you're 'Other'. And that's not just a problem for us."
"What do you mean?" Steve asked.
"You're enhanced," Pepper said bluntly. "Artificially enhanced, yes, but enhanced. As far as the public are concerned, you could all be enhanced. The oldest tactic in the book is convincing the public that these people aren't like us, therefore it's okay to treat them badly, it's okay to arrest them, it's okay to throw them in concentration camps. Everyone in this building is safe with JARVIS. But there are a lot of enhanced people out there who aren't."
The school upstate immediately came to Peggy's mind, and looking at Steve's face, it had come to his as well.
"We can't be completely open about everything," he said.
"Of course not," Pepper agreed. "I'm not saying you should all tag yourselves on Facebook and announce a raid on a HYDRA base. I just mean … Look, Captain America is an almost mythical figure. Historians have been arguing for the last fifty years about whether you even really existed and weren't just a story made up to boost morale. All anyone really knows about you is that you suddenly appeared out of nowhere, fought aliens, and then crashed three helicarriers into the Triskelion and the Potomac. That's scary. Steve Rogers is an artist who pretends he doesn't understand modern technology to piss Tony off."
Steve grinned. "Has he figured that out yet?"
Pepper giggled. "Nope. Please don't tell him; Clint and I have money riding on it."
"Pepper," Peggy said, "I agree with everything you've just said. I'm not thrilled about it, but I agree with it. But you didn't need Steve and I in private for that. What was the second thing?"
Pepper sighed heavily, and her humour evaporated in a second. "We got a lot of information on the servers in Natasha's second data leak. We've been trawling through it, but it's a lot."
Peggy nodded. "I'll get a full debrief later; I saw that we got all the undercover agents, one way or another."
"That was Clint," Pepper said. "Once he'd covered the undercover ops, he handed over to Darcy, so he could go back to security for me. Darcy's been doing most of the heavy lifting actually - Tony's looking into politicians and public figures, and Bruce is looking into current R&D, so Darcy's dealing with everything else. She's dividing everything she's deemed 'non-essential' into subcategories so we can go through them later. One of those is serum-related, but there was one file that caught her attention. She got Bruce to read it, who called in Natasha, who flagged it in to me. It's …" she faltered, apparently lost for words - and that, in itself, was unnerving, because Pepper was never lost for words. "JARVIS," she said finally, "can you pull up the file?"
A hologram appeared between them, lines of text scrolling into place in front of their eyes.
Peggy sat forward and began to read. At first, it didn't seem that concerning - HYDRA apparently wanted to recreate the serum but that was hardly a surprise.
"Hadn't they already recreated the serum?" Steve asked, clearly on the same wavelength. "I mean, Bucky …"
Peggy squeezed his hand, her eyes still scanning. "Assuming he got the serum in Azzano, which would explain why he survived the fall, there were others being experimented on out there, and to our knowledge, he's the only one that got it. It also wasn't the same as Erskine's formula, because from what I've seen, it's only the metal arm that has the extra strength. So my guess is that they just got …" she trailed off, reaching the next paragraph.
Certain words jumped out at her - words like 'samples' and 'genetics' and 'surrogate' - and she reached out to stop the screen, rereading it.
The words didn't change; bile rose in her throat and caught there, so she had to clear her throat a few times before she could speak. "Pepper … does this say what I think it says?"
"If you're asking, then yes," Pepper said softly. "That's why Bruce called Natasha in in the first place."
Peggy shook her head, her grip tightening on Steve's hand. "No … they can't have …"
"Can one of you please explain?" Steve asked.
"It reads like … It reads like they were trying to breed a super-solider," Peggy said, feeling sick even as the words left her. "But test-tube babies still need egg and sperm, don't they?"
Pepper grimaced. "As far as the rest of the world is concerned, yes, but it seems like HYDRA has access to some brilliant minds. Minds that could be doing amazing things in the world, but no - they do this. The consensus is that they somehow harvested your eggs during a routine procedure and combined them with the blood samples they had from Steve from the 40s."
Peggy looked at the date. "1982."
The basic technology had existed - the first test-tube baby had been born in the late 70s if she remembered correctly - but had HYDRA really been so far ahead that they could extract DNA from a blood sample and use it in place of a sperm sample?
She considered the Winter Soldier's arm.
Pepper was right. Brilliant minds, terrible souls.
"You weren't with SHIELD then, were you?" Steve asked, his voice unreadable.
"No, but I was still operating as Lady Liberty," Peggy said, her own voice sounding odd to her ears. "I … They'd developed a new contraceptive implant. Not dealing with PMS would help spectacularly, so … They had to do an internal examination first."
Which would have allowed them to harvest without her even knowing.
She kept reading.
The embryos had been implanted into a surrogate mother - no name - and had taken. The pregnancy had been routine, the baby was a girl, but had not shown any sign of the serum at birth.
And then, right at the end: Experiment unsuccessful. Subject abandoned.
"It doesn't looked like they tried again," Pepper said softly. "Darcy's keeping an eye out, but it looks like they just gave up."
Peggy nodded once, then rose to her feet. "Where's the gym again?"
"74," Pepper said automatically. "Are you …?"
"Thank you." Peggy strode out of the apartment and back into the elevator, allowing it to take her down a few floors.
On this floor, there was no corridor, the elevator opening straight on to a fully equipped gym. A quick glance told her that there were changing rooms in the far corner - and showers beyond them - and she had no doubt that there were lockers already stashed with work-out gear, but right now she just wanted to hit something.
Thankfully, Tony - or Pepper - had made sure there was a collection of enforced punching bags, so she headed straight for them.
Even with the extra precautions, by the time Steve came to find her, she had gone through three of them.
"Want something sturdier?"
Peggy laughed bitterly. "Yeah, sparring is not a good idea right now, Steve; I might kill you by accident."
"Peggy."
She hit the bag once more, before turning to face him. "I just … I was frustrated."
"I can see that." Steve took her hands, running his thumbs over the red knuckles. They had been bleeding for a while, but the serum had already healed them. "You're supposed to wrap."
"Couldn't be bothered," Peggy said with a sigh.
"Are you alright?" Steve asked.
Peggy raised an eyebrow. "Are you?"
"With me, they used blood taken from me forty years earlier," Steve said. "You, if feels more … I don't know …"
"I feel violated," Peggy said flatly, but that wasn't what had driven her to the punching bag, not completely. "I feel sick, I feel … They killed her, Steve."
Oh, there it was.
"We don't know that," Steve began, but she was in no mood to be placated.
"You know HYDRA as well as I do," she said sharply, pulling her hands out of his. "She wasn't a child to them, she was a weapon. A weapon that didn't work. If she was lucky, they killed her straight out; if not, they just abandoned the facility and left her to starve." Her voice broke on the last word and she turned back to the bag.
"Peggy … We knew what HYDRA were capable of," Steve said gently. "It's horrific, of course it is, but it's another drop in the ocean. Why is this getting to you so much?"
"You really don't know?" Peggy asked softly.
"I think I do," Steve said. "But I think you need to say it."
Peggy sighed, resting her head against the bag. "It's stupid. I've built a family out of the concept that blood means nothing. I couldn't love Tony more if I'd birthed him myself. Same with Clint. I've never laid eyes on this child, and I didn't carry her, and I didn't give birth to her, so the fact that we share genetics shouldn't change the impact of what they did, but … whether I had any say in it or not, that was my daughter, Steve. And they murdered her."
Steve was quiet for a few minutes, then his hand was on her shoulder, gently coaxing her away from the bag and into his arms. "We'll find her. There'll be a body or remains or … something. We'll find her and we'll give her a proper burial."
Peggy nodded against his chest. "Thank you."
The rest of Pepper's meetings that day were virtual, so Clint left her to it and went to find Steve in the gym, taking some of his frustrations out on a punching bag.
From the look of some of the others, Peggy had already been there - Clint didn't blame her.
Natasha had told him about the serum attempt, and he had lost sleep over it, so he couldn't imagine how Peggy was feeling.
Still, he had sought out Steve for a reason, and it wasn't to talk about that particular violation.
"So," he said casually, "HYDRA."
"Yep." Steve took one last swing at the bag. "Just when we all thought it was over."
Clint snorted. "It's never over, Cap. There are always going to be bigoted assholes in the world. These bigoted assholes are just more organised than usual."
"Maybe," Steve said tiredly. "How are you holding up? Some of those people must have been friends of yours."
Clint shrugged in a way he hoped looked uncaring. "Not that many actually. If this has proved anything, it's that I should trust my gut. Almost everyone so far has been someone I couldn't stand."
"Almost," Steve repeated. "What about the others?"
"I wasn't at SHIELD to make friends," Clint said. "Sitwell was a surprise. The others … we weren't friends, Steve. I didn't dislike them; we'd talk in the canteen, toss a ball around the gym from time to time. And, yeah, that still stings. Nowhere near as badly as some others will be feeling. If Peggy's saying she's fine, she's not."
"She is saying that now," Steve said tiredly. "I know."
"Figured you did," Clint said, leaning against the wall. "Figured I'd make sure." He sighed. "So about the Winter Soldier …"
Steve didn't quite flinch, but he did seem to be readying himself for a fight. "You gonna tell me I can't save him?"
"Nah, I'm not a hypocrite," Clint said. "If it was Nat, I would not be nearly as calm as you. Hell, if it was my brother, I wouldn't be as calm as you, and I haven't seen Barney since I was ten. What I was going to say is: that thing you did on the carrier when you dropped the shield? Don't do that again."
"I can't fight him," Steve whispered, seeming to deflate.
"Then don't," Clint said. "Let us do it. This is not me speaking as a friend," he added, before Steve could argue. "Or as … Peggy's adopted son, whatever that makes me. I am speaking as a man who has had someone take over my head and been forced to try and kill people I love."
Steve faltered. "It's not the same."
"No," Clint agreed. "But let me tell you, Steve, if he kills you, I am not going to be the one to tell him when we get his head back on straight. Nat would have killed me if she had to, and I cannot tell you how much that helped me afterwards. Loki made me think I wanted to kill her. The idea that she would just … stand there and let it happen …" he broke off, the metal image sending a shudder all the way through him. "He's your brother. I understand that. I know you love him. Because you love him, please don't do that to him. If you can't kill him, I get that, I do, but we might not have a choice."
Steve sighed. "I told Peggy that on the carrier," he admitted quietly. "Fury told us that the WSC had given orders to proceed with extreme prejudice in your case, and she blew up at him. I told her that we would do everything we could to get you back, but that if we couldn't, someone would have to make that call."
"And you were right," Clint said. "It's bad enough knowing that Phil's dead. He recruited me. Peggy's my mom, but Phil was the closest thing I had to a father. It wasn't the same, but he saw the potential in me when anyone else would have seen an ex-carnie washout." His voice cracked a little, and he cleared his throat. "Hell, that's all I saw. And I didn't kill him, but I sure as hell made it possible."
"Clint …" Steve began.
"I know," Clint said. "If it hadn't been me, it would've been someone else. Someone else wouldn't have been able to take out the systems the way I did, but that's not the point. That was bad. If I'd woken up and someone had told me that I'd killed Nat? Not my actions, my hands. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself, Steve. I would've helped you take out Loki, because it was his fault, but I wouldn't have bothered with that grappling arrow when I jumped off that roof."
The words echoed between them.
They were true, and he hated himself for that, because he had Kate, and she had needed him far more than he had really understood at the time, but how could he have lived, knowing that Natasha was dead because of him?
"I can't kill him," Steve said softly, his voice pained.
"I get that," Clint said. "If it comes down to it, it's probably going to be me, because no one's going to manage that up close. I just need you to not hate me for it, because that's the kind of thing that makes Thanksgiving awkward."
Despite the subject, Steve managed to crack a smile, which Clint counted as a win. "Deal."
June 2014, Manhattan
Kate had been right about it being Natasha's home too.
Not just because Lucky had laid claim to both territories, but because she had yet to sleep in her 'own' bed.
Tonight was no exception - and Clint wasn't even home.
Pepper had been forced to attend a meeting in person in Tokyo, to soothe the ruffled feathers of a few suppliers she had been forced to blow off during the initial fallout.
Most people would have accepted that as reasonable, but apparently these particular men were still in a snit about Pepper taking over as CEO, so they were kicking up a fuss.
Since no one trusted anyone these days - but Pepper still wanted to maintain some kind of illusion that they did - Clint had gone with her on bodyguard duty.
Of course it helped that there happened to be a suspected HYDRA base nearby that he could get a closer look at.
Normally, Natasha would have gone with them, but she had very publicly told Congress where to shove it, so she wasn't as inconspicuous as she usually was.
That could be fixed, of course - she was a master of infiltration, and had been since she was a child - but it hadn't been deemed necessary in this instance.
So there she was, sleeping - alone - in Clint's bed.
At least, she had been asleep.
For a few minutes, Natasha lay still, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out exactly what had woken her.
A glance at the bedside clock told her that it was the middle of the night, and there was no increased heart rate or shortness of breath she would associate with a nightmare, even one she had forgotten as soon as she woke up.
The room was dark and silent, so JARVIS hadn't woken her with a call or an emergency.
Everything seemed to be fine, but she knew she wouldn't get back to sleep unless she made sure that was the case.
Quietly, she slipped out of bed and padded over to the door, opening it just a crack to see Kate sitting on the couch, her knees hugged to her chest. She was staring out of the huge windows, the lights of the city reflecting off the tear stains on her cheeks.
Lucky was curled up beside her, pressed against her side like his presence might help, but she almost seemed to be ignoring him.
This was certainly a Clint problem - Natasha had no experience in comforting anyone other than Clint, let alone a child - but Clint wasn't here.
She could go back to bed and pretend she hadn't woken at all - Kate didn't seem to have noticed, and she would probably do more harm than good anyway.
But then Kate's breath hitched a little, something unpleasant tugged in her chest, and Natasha was moving before she had really decided to do so.
She sat down on Kate's other side, letting their shoulders bump together the way Clint did with her when he wasn't sure she wanted to talk and he didn't want to push her.
"I'm sorry," Kate whispered. "I was trying not to wake you."
"You didn't," Natasha said, not untruthfully. "I'm not sure what woke me. Maybe it was your dad's gut."
"Dad's not here," Kate said, finally turning to look at her.
"No, but we can read each other's minds," Natasha said, a little flippantly. It got a tiny smile at least. "You want to talk about it?"
"I'm fine," Kate said.
Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Kate, it is …" she checked the clock again "… one-fifteen am, and you are sitting up crying. You're not fine."
"It's silly," Kate said instead.
Natasha had said that to Clint once, when she had broken down over something she couldn't even remember now.
But she had been raised in an environment that punished the slightest hint of emotion.
Kate should have been safe from that.
"Your feelings are valid," Natasha said. "If something upsets you, it's not silly."
"That sounds like something Dad would say," Kate said.
Natasha nudged her. "I told you, I'm reading his mind."
Kate's smile grew. "Seriously."
"Oh, alright, that's something your dad's said to me in the past," Natasha said. "I think he read a lot of psych books when he recruited me. Did you have a nightmare? Because we all get nightmares and they are upsetting." A sudden thought occurred to her. "Your dad did warn you about the nightmares, right?"
"If I think either of you are having a nightmare, I should stand in the doorway and call your name until you wake up, and definitely not touch either of you, Katie, I swear to God," Kate recited.
"Good," Natasha said, relaxing a little. "I tend to come up swinging. What was your nightmare about?"
Kate shrugged. "Nothing real."
"Doesn't make it any less upsetting," Natasha said.
Kate didn't answer, and Natasha didn't press her.
They sat in silence for a while, Kate now rhythmically stroking Lucky's head.
After a while, Natasha noticed that Kate was ever-so-slowly shifting in her direction, as though she was afraid of her welcome.
Clint had talked about that, about how she always seemed half-convinced that he would push her away, and how it reminded him so much of Natasha.
Natasha touched her shoulder gently, feeling her flinch just a little before her muscles relaxed.
"It's okay," she said softly, resting her arm over the girl's shoulders.
Kate almost melted into her, resting her head on her shoulder. "I haven't had that nightmare in ages."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Natasha asked again, automatically stroking her hair.
"When we first moved here, I had these nightmares about them coming to take me back," Kate said softly. "And I can see Dad, and I'm screaming, but he can't hear me or … or doesn't want to hear me, and they're dragging me away, and …"
"And now you're having it again," Natasha finished.
Kate nodded into her shoulder. "It's just because he's not here. I know it's stupid; they don't want me. They never wanted me."
"Even if they did come to take you back," Natasha said softly - because she wasn't touching that one without Clint, "they would need to get past your dad, and me, and Pepper - and Pepper is scarier than both of us, trust me."
Kate gave a little giggle. "I guess."
"Not to mention, they would be legally kidnapping you, so they wouldn't have a leg to stand on," Natasha continued. "Possibly literally, by the time your dad finished with them."
Kate sighed. "I know all of that. That's why it's so annoying that the dreams get to me like this."
"Well, that's what they do," Natasha said fairly. "Dreams are the brain's way of making sense of things. Sometimes they're rational, sometimes they aren't. Don't tell your dad I told you this …"
Kate perked up immediately. "What?"
Natasha chuckled. "Some people have some very strange phobias, but they are genuine phobias, and I wouldn't dream of mocking those people. Your dad does not have this particular phobia, therefore I will mock away."
"What happened?" Kate asked eagerly.
"We were on an op," Natasha said. "We'd just finished and we were leaving the next day, and I woke up in the middle of the night because he was having a nightmare. Pretty bad one by the sounds of it. Anyway, I woke him up, and he finally caught his breath, looked me dead in the eyes and said, "You don't understand, Nat. There were ducks.""
Kate burst out laughing, and needed to attempt her next question several times before she could get it out. "What was he dreaming?"
"No idea," Natasha admitted. "The next day, he swore blind he couldn't remember any of it, including waking me up."
The anecdote seemed to have settled the last of Kate's worries, her giggles drying the rest of her tears.
Natasha squeezed her shoulder. "Feel better?"
Kate nodded. "Yeah, thanks." She stifled a yawn. "I'm gonna try and get back to sleep."
"Alright, good night." Natasha lingered in the kitchen under the pretence of getting a glass of water, waiting until the teenager was back in her room and everything was quiet before heading back to bed herself.
She had almost shut the door before she realised that Lucky had followed her. She gave him a stern look, and he sat down and let out a little whine.
"Shouldn't you be with Kate?"
Lucky didn't respond (obviously) and she sighed. "Oh, alright. Just this once."
As though he understood her, Lucky wagged his tail and jumped up onto the mattress.
Natasha shook her head, wondering when on earth she got so soft, and climbed into bed, feeling the dog worm his way under the covers to lie alongside her, letting out a little huff.
"You're a menace," she informed him a little sleepily.
If Clint arrived home before she woke up, she was never going to hear the end of it - she was usually the one who insisted that Lucky stayed out of the bedroom.
At least she wasn't as bad at the whole parenting thing as she thought she would be.
