June 2014, Manhattan
Natasha managed to calm Jemma down with the promise of Stark Industries R&D and a visit to Fitz, lending her some of her clothes for the time being.
JARVIS took them to the 83rd floor, so Tony had apparently chosen the lowest lab to turn into an infirmary.
He'd done a pretty good job from the look of things, considering she had only been up here a few days earlier, and none of that equipment was there.
Bruce and Tony were near one of the hospital beds, talking in low voices over what had to be the most sophisticated ventilator Natasha had ever seen.
Jemma sucked in a breath, hesitating in the doorway, and Natasha wrapped a hand around her elbow and guided her over to them.
"How is he?"
"He's in a coma," Bruce answered, giving Jemma a comforting smile. "That's actually a good thing."
Jemma nodded automatically. "Right. He was without oxygen and this gives his body time to reboot. He will wake up though?"
Bruce grimaced. "I'm afraid I'm not the best person to ask, doctor. You're more qualified than I am in that respect."
Jemma took a deep breath. "Okay then. I can do that. I'll need his readings."
"Right here," Tony said. "Sorry about your partner, Dr Simmons, but it's a pleasure to meet you. I've been trying to poach Leo here from SHIELD for ages, but I didn't realise you were his partner. I read a lot of your work when I was working on the interface for the new Iron Man suit."
Jemma turned a little pink, taking the tablet. "Thank you, Mr Stark; I'm flattered. This is … quite something."
"Ah, let me give you the tour," Tony said. "I'm hoping I can convince you to stay with us; Dr Fitz as well, of course, when he's recovered …"
"Tony, maybe just hold off the hiring talk for now please," Natasha said. "I need to talk to Peggy, and then there's …"
"Logistics," Tony said, waving her off. "I don't deal with those."
"Don't I know it," Natasha muttered.
"I'll keep an eye on him," Bruce said, reading her expression.
Natasha gave him a smile; it was nice to have another adult around. "My talk with Jemma this morning led to some … interesting revelations that are going to upset people. You want the short version or do you want to listen to it? JARVIS recorded it."
"I'll listen, if that's alright," Bruce said, his eyes darting towards the stairs up to his lab, where she knew there was a special 'Hulk-Out' room.
Natasha wasn't worried about him hulking out over it; Bruce hadn't known Coulson, and he hadn't been on the carrier when Fury used his death to try and manipulate them (although at least he had been dead when that happened).
He wasn't going to be happy about the medical ethics (or lack thereof) deployed, but out of everyone, he was going to be the easiest.
Steve and Tony were both going to be furious.
Peggy …
Well, Peggy was going to be furious as well, but there was far more to it than that.
Natasha was not looking forward to this.
She wasn't sure if she was relieved or disappointed when she found Peggy in her apartment - but without Steve.
She'd been hoping Steve would be the buffer.
"He's out running with Sam," Peggy said, by way of explanation.
Natasha managed a smile. "Actually running with Sam, or running laps around Sam?"
Peggy sniggered. "Probably the latter, but I did ask him to be nice. What's up? Should I put the kettle on?"
"I need something stronger than that," Natasha said. "You … may want to sit down."
Peggy raised an eyebrow and stayed where she was. "What's happened?"
"I debriefed Jemma this morning," Natasha said. "We started talking and it kind of happened, so I went with it, since you were talking logistics. Peggy … Phil's alive."
Peggy stared at her. "Nat, that's not funny."
"Damn right it's not funny, but he is," Natasha said. "JARVIS, play the discussion please?" She turned away when it started, wandering over to the window to gaze out at the skyline.
Without looking, she could hear the pain in Clint's voice, however hard he had tried to hide it. She would need to find him next.
When it finished, there was a deafening silence, and she finally turned around.
Peggy wasn't crying - and Natasha hadn't expected her to be - but her eyes were very damp. "He's alive. How did we not …?"
"Clint was focusing on undercover ops," Natasha said. "Once they were passed over to your friend in MI5, Darcy took over. And she does have a lot of files to go through."
"I never asked Ward who his new CO was," Peggy said flatly. "He probably assumed I knew once I told him who I was. And SHIELD … What the hell is Fury playing at?!"
Natasha shook her head. "No idea. What did the UN say this morning?"
"They are officially declaring SHIELD a terrorist organisation," Peggy said. "We assumed that anyone currently acting as 'SHIELD' would actually be HYDRA."
"So we need to track down the Bus," Natasha concluded, "even though they will have increased the security after Ward. What do you think caused Garrett to pull him out?"
"If I had to guess," Peggy said, "given the timing of Garrett suddenly putting Ward on a team, and now pulling him out again … maybe HYDRA wanted to know what brought Phil back as well."
Natasha nodded - that had been her thinking too. "And once they realised he didn't know, there was no point in having a spy on Phil's team. FitzSimmons just got caught in the crossfire."
Peggy sighed, rubbing her temples. "I need a vacation. I'm not surprised Fury didn't say anything, but why didn't Phil?"
"Well, I've been thinking about it," Natasha said slowly, "and … he clearly thought he'd been in Tahiti recovering for six months or so, which he obviously hadn't been, so clearly his memory of the resurrection has been messed around with."
Peggy raised an eyebrow. "You think someone changed more than just those memories?"
"It might be wishful thinking," Natasha conceded. "But he would never have agreed to whatever it was they did, and if he contacted us, we might make him question what he knew, especially since we went to the funeral. And that might explain why we never found his personnel file; Fury could have kept it on another system so you didn't come across it by mistake."
Peggy looked thoughtful. "You might be on to something there. I looked at Ward's file after he joined Phil's team, and Garrett was still listed as his CO. Of course Garrett's always been possessive, so that might be nothing to do with it."
Natasha sighed. "Maybe I just want to think he wouldn't just … forget about us. Obviously they didn't do too much, or HYDRA wanting eyes in his team wouldn't make sense, but … HYDRA has form with that kind of thing. At least the Red Room does."
Peggy stepped forward and hugged her. Usually Natasha would humour her for a second or two and then let go, but she had a feeling that this hug wasn't for her, so she held on.
Finally Peggy let go with a suspicious sniffle. "Where's Clint? Obviously not with Pepper, since she was with me."
"He's my next stop," Natasha said. "He's either on the roof or in the archery range. JARVIS?"
"Clint is on the roof, Ms Romanov," JARVIS answered. "Outside my sensors, I'm afraid."
Natasha nodded. "Sounds about right. You'll handle Stark and Steve?"
Peggy looked a little torn, but nodded. "Alright. Then we'll see if we can get FitzSimmons into the Initiative. We could use a doctor."
"Fitz is in a coma," Natasha said. "But Tony's been trying to poach him for ages, and he's read Jemma's work, so he's on a full charm offensive. He'll have wooed her by lunchtime."
The last time Natasha had been on the Tower roof, she had been closing a portal into space, and it had changed a lot since then.
The Tower tapered out at the top because of the size of the top lab floor, so the roof was larger than someone might think from the ground.
One corner had been sectioned off - probably by Jane, given the strange markings on the floor - to act as Thor's landing point once the bifrost had been figured out.
Another corner had raised beds and had become a kind of garden. Green roofs were starting to become very popular, and Pepper loved plants.
The roof was, more or less, flat, however; the only real structure was the stairwell itself.
Clint was on top of that, perched on the highest point (of course) , and Natasha had to shield her eyes from the midday sun to peer up at him.
"Come down."
"I'm good here," Clint said.
Natasha rolled her eyes. "That was not a request."
Clint didn't move.
"I am not climbing up there, Barton, so you're climbing down, or I will go and get your mother and get her to drag you down."
For a second, she thought he was going to continue to ignore her, but then his whole body sagged, and he swung down to land beside her.
"Thank you. It looks like Fury pulled some kind of unknown trick that resurrected him eight months after he died, and messed with his memory to make him think he was recovering in Tahiti."
Clint's brow furrowed. "Are you fucking with me?"
"Nope."
"So he might not have intentionally blanked us?"
"Yep."
Clint sighed, dropping to sit on the ground, leaning back against the door. "I quit."
Natasha huffed out a laugh, sitting down beside him. "Yeah, I know."
He put an arm around her and tugged her closer, and she rested her head on his shoulder. "Is this okay?"
Natasha frowned. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"Just aware that our relationship has changed," Clint said. "Making sure you're okay with it."
Her frown smoothed over at that, and she lifted her head to kiss the corner of his mouth. "If I'm ever not okay, you'll know."
"Promise you'll tell me," Clint said, lacing their fingers together. "Promise if I ever do something wrong, that you won't just … stew and vanish."
Ah, so that was what it was.
"It's not you, Clint," Natasha said gently. "Whatever Coulson's reasons are for not contacting us, it's not something you've done."
"It might be."
Natasha shook her head. "No. Phil didn't - doesn't - suffer fools, Clint. If you'd done something, he would have told you; you know that."
"I got him killed," Clint whispered.
Natasha bit back her sigh, because she wasn't frustrated with him at all. It had taken a long time to get Clint out of the self-recrimination mindset (or at least to get him to consider things logically), and it looked like this had put him straight back into it. "Loki killed him."
"I …"
"Loki," Natasha repeated firmly. "Not you. Phil would not have blamed you at all, Clint. Trust me on that, even if you don't trust yourself."
"I trust you," Clint murmured, pressing his forehead to hers. "It's just … Why didn't he come home?"
"I don't know, yastreb," Natasha whispered. "I really don't know."
It would be easier to talk to Steve and Tony together.
At least, that was Peggy's story and she was sticking to it - it was definitely not her attempt to put off the discussion for as long as possible.
Steve wouldn't be back for a while anyway - he and Sam tended to get brunch after they finished their run.
Peggy was loathed to interrupt that - Steve still wasn't very good at eating the quantity his body needed, and anything that got extra food into him was a good thing.
So instead, Peggy went down to Clint and Natasha's floor to loiter outside, trusting that they would return from the roof when Clint was feeling better.
To her surprise, however, he returned on his own.
"Where's Natasha?" She asked.
"Gym," Clint answered. "I think she's hoping if she hits something hard enough, she can undo what happened. I went to find you, but JARVIS said you were here. Did you need Nat?"
Peggy shook her head. "I came to find you actually. Didn't want to just overwhelm you on the roof."
"I'm fine," Clint said automatically, opening the door to Natasha's apartment. "Kate's working on a summer project," he added, seeing her confusion. "Don't want to disturb her."
"Are you fine?" Peggy asked. "Because I'm not."
Clint faltered, clearly weighing up whether she'd believe a further protest, then sank down onto the couch. "It feels like the hits just keep coming. And this one hurts more because … well, friendly fire is never friendly, you know?"
Peggy sat next to him, lifting her arm to wrap around his shoulders when he slumped against her. "Yeah, I know."
"I need to keep her safe," Clint whispered. "I don't know how to keep her safe."
"Well, keeping her in the Tower is working for now," Peggy said, "but you can't do it forever." She squeezed his shoulder. "You don't have to do it alone, you know."
"She's just a kid," Clint said heavily. "And HYDRA wants her dead."
"She's not the only one," Peggy said gently. "And she's strong. She's almost eighteen. And that was the age you joined SHIELD."
"And you said I was just a kid," Clint reminded her.
"Fair," Peggy conceded.
Clint was quiet for a moment. "Did I do the right thing? Taking her?"
Peggy raised an eyebrow. "Of course you did. You love her, Clint, and that's all that matters to her, I promise you. Honestly, I don't know why you didn't just go the whole way and adopt her."
"I was advised to wait until she turned eighteen," Clint said, "otherwise it has to go through the courts."
"I didn't know you could adopt someone as an adult," Peggy said.
"No," Clint agreed. "It surprised me as well."
"I'd have adopted you twenty years ago, if I'd known," Peggy said. "I suppose there's still time."
She felt him smile. "You might want to run that one past Steve."
"Probably," Peggy agreed.
That wasn't a no.
Clint heaved a sigh. "How are you holding up? Nat told me about the baby."
"Daisy," Peggy said automatically. "Her name's Daisy."
Like Steve, Clint didn't even flinch. "Daisy, of course. How are you?"
Peggy grimaced, knowing he couldn't see her. "Is it weird that I'm angrier about them killing her than I am about the fact that they violated my agency to create her?"
Clint was quiet for a second. "I mean, you once told me that all emotions are valid and that no one else could tell you how you should feel."
Peggy smiled sadly. "Oh good, you do listen to me."
Clint chuckled. "I try." He sighed. "I don't think it's weird. You're an adult. She was a baby. Your baby, whether you knew about her or not." He was quiet for a second. "You don't … Why do you think they didn't just put her in the Red Room?"
Peggy sighed. "She was born 1982. From what I can tell, HYDRA got mixed up with the Red Room after Nat defected. That was 1991." She hesitated. "You know her existence doesn't change anything, right?"
"You're my mom," Clint said. "I know that."
"I feel like I've been a bit distant since I got back from DC," Peggy continued. "I don't ever want you to feel … I don't know."
"I don't," Clint said. "I have always known I can come to you. It took me a long time to get my head around the fact that you love me. But once I did, I have never once doubted it."
Peggy planted a kiss on his cheek. "Good."
"I mean, you were just talking about adopting me, Mom," Clint said, grinning. "How could I ever doubt it?"
