Chapter 1

Although the weather outside was bright and sunny, the atmosphere within the Avengers compound was far less welcoming. The communal areas shared by the heroes that lived there were quiet, and an air of grief and sadness hung heavy in the air.

It was Mother's Day, and while it was usually a cause of celebration for most people, none of the earthbound Avengers had a living mother (or father, for that matter) and there was an unspoken agreement between the Avengers that Mother's Day was one of those occasions when, unless they were needed for a mission, then they would respect one another's privacy and do their own thing.

Many of the team...Sam, Bruce and Rhodey had headed for their respective hometowns for the day to pay their respects at their mother's graves. Steve and Bucky had gone a day early to do the same thing. Tony, not one for outwards displays of emotion or sentimentalism like putting flowers on his mother's grave, had locked himself in the lab for the day. Thor was on Asgard and Vision was keeping Pietro and Wanda company.

Steve knew that Natasha was in her room, although what the infamous Black Widow was doing, exactly, Steve wasn't sure...nor did he have any plans to find out.

It had been six years since he, Tony, Bruce and Thor had found Natasha, unconscious, naked, and cradling the dead body of a newborn baby girl in a cell within an abandoned Hydra base, after she'd been missing for thirteen months. Steve would never forget the sight of Natasha sprawled on the cold concrete floor of the cell, her lower body drenched in drying blood, her arm reached out towards the cell door, the other arm hugging the body of the baby close to her chest. Even with Steve's very limited knowledge about how childbirth worked it had been obvious that Natasha had been the one who had given birth to the baby girl.

It was only later, after they'd rushed Natasha to SHIELD medical, and a team of Agents, accompanied by Tony and Thor, had returned to the base, that the full truth about what had happened had become apparent.

Steve still felt sick, even now, when he remembered reading through the reports Tony and Thor had found, regarding what Hydra had done to Natasha, about how they'd drugged Natasha and put her through a process known as IVF (Bruce had explained the procedure to Steve), using the samples from two separate males...both of whom were not named in the file, to fertilise two of Natasha's eggs, which had been harvested from her body. They had then reintroduced the fertilized eggs into Natasha's body. A few weeks later they'd found that the procedure had been successful, and that Natasha was pregnant with twins.

They'd kept copious notes during the pregnancy, something which Bruce, being a scientist, and SHIELD had been grateful for, but Steve had felt like it was intruding on something private, so he had stopped reading not far into the documentation. As far as he knew Tony, Bruce, and Natasha herself where the only members of the Avengers who had read the reports in their entirety, but there were other sources of information regarding what had happened, and Tony had provided a shortened, less graphic version of events for Steve.

Just over two weeks before the Avengers had found Natasha, an ultrasound scan had revealed that one of the babies that Natasha was carrying...her baby girl, had died within Natasha's womb. The doctors had decided to take the risk and not take action, concerned that it was too early for Natasha's other baby, a boy, to be born. Three days later the base had been evacuated and abandoned, leaving Natasha, their equipment...everything behind. At the time it was unclear why they'd suddenly evacuated, but once Hydra's presence within SHIELD had been discovered, a year later, it was obvious that they'd decided that SHIELD and the Avengers were getting too close to finding Natasha's location, and it was too risky to move Natasha so far into the pregnancy.

Instead they'd watched and waited until Natasha had given birth, alone and unaided, to the twins using security cameras before they took action, returning to the base and going into the cell where they'd held Natasha and taking her newborn baby boy from her...the surviving twin, leaving Natasha for dead, holding her stillborn daughter.

Steve still felt ill when he remembered how Natasha had woken up, asking for her babies...the way she'd shattered and fallen apart when Nick Fury, being far gentler than Steve had ever seen him be before, told her that there was nothing even SHIELD's top of the line medicine could do to bring her daughter back, and that her son had been long gone before the Avengers had arrived at the base, taken away and hidden somewhere by the Hydra agents who had taken him from Natasha's arms. Natasha had healed and recovered quickly following her ordeal during her time in captivity, physically at least.

Natasha's daughter, named posthumously Elena Romanoff, had been buried in a small, private, ceremony a few days after Natasha regained consciousness. Steve and Tony had carried the tiny white coffin between them, while Bruce, Thor, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Pepper, and various other friends of the Avengers, as well as other agents that Natasha had formed alliances and friendships with over her years with, helped support Natasha.

Once baby Elena's funeral had taken place the search for her brother had started, only to be ended, abruptly, with the complete collapse of SHIELD from within and the reappearance of Hydra...along with Bucky Barnes.

Steve never allowed himself to forget Natasha's children though...none of the Avengers did...even those who hadn't been members of the team when Natasha had been initially taken, or when she'd been found. To varying degrees they all knew the story...and they knew why Natasha, of all the team, found Mother's Day the hardest of all of them. Not only had she lost her mother at a young age, although Steve didn't know exactly how young Natasha had been, nor the circumstances of her separation from her mother, but also the children she should be celebrating with...the ones who by now would be old enough to help prepare her breakfast and shower her with gifts and love and toothy smiles, were gone too.

In between missions they all searched for signs of the baby boy...Natasha more than anyone else, although they all threw themselves into the search whenever they got the chance. So far, however, they had found nothing.

May was always going to be a difficult month for the Avengers, and Natasha in particular, as far as the twins were concerned. Not only did Mother's Day fall at the start of the month, the twin's birthday was the 28th of May, marking another occasion that should have been happy, and yet was filled with sadness. The 28th of May also marked the official anniversary of baby Elena's death, although the evidence Tony and Thor had found at the base indicated that Elena had been dead within her mother for some time before she'd actually been born.

The birthday was also another painful reminder regarding Natasha's son. Another year had passed without any sign of the boy, his location and his state of wellbeing completely unknown to the team. He could be dead, like his sister, for all the team knew.

At least there had been some hope for Natasha's son to be had over the last six years. Natasha had been the one to tell Wanda and Pietro about what happened, leaving out some of the more personal details after they'd joined the team in Sokovia. Unlike when Sam, Rhodey or Bucky had been told, the twins hadn't reacted with horror or shock. Instead, they'd sent each other looks of dawning comprehension, followed by a frantic, mostly silent, conversation between the pair that Tony had snorted and rolled his eyes at.

All humour had gone when the twins revealed that they'd seen a child, about the same age as Natasha's son, when they were at Strucker's lab. Wanda had done the majority of the talking, describing a small boy, maybe two years old at the time, with blonde hair, blue eyes and a serious expression on his young face, trailing around after a cluster of Hydra officials as they inspected the facility. The boy hadn't obviously been injured, nor was he being restrained in any way that the twins saw. He wasn't a permanent resident at the base, but they saw him every couple of weeks, obviously under the supervision of the Hydra officials that toured the base.

Sometimes the boy would look up at the cells where Pietro and Wanda were contained, and depending on how in control of their powers they were, the twins would sometimes interact with him. It began with the time the Pietro waved at the boy when none of the officials were looking. The boy had looked hesitantly over his shoulder, checking that no-one was watching, before shyly waving back, a small smile on his face. Another time Wanda had shown the little boy her powers, levitating some building blocks in front of the boy's face, much to his wide-eyed amazement.

The last time they saw the boy they'd both interacted with him, as much as they could from within their cells. The boy had seemed much more confident then, not hesitating as he approached their cells, his small hands resting on the glass as both of the twins had waved at him. The three of them had been so caught up in one another that they didn't realise that they were being watched by Strucker and the official looking men who brought the boy with them.

The twins had admitted that they'd seen the little boy being beaten that day, and that they hadn't seen him since. Wanda had later asked Strucker what had happened to the boy, both of the twins blaming themselves for the way the little boy had been treated. Strucker had simply shrugged and said that the boy was too important to kill or do too much damage to.

It hadn't been the most reassuring piece of news, but it was more than they'd ever had before about Natasha's son...although admittedly they didn't know for sure that it was Natasha's son that the twins had seen.

It seemed likely though, in Steve's opinion. Besides, like Tony said...a Secret Hydra base wasn't exactly the best location for 'take your kid to work day'.

AVENGERS

Six Months later...

Natasha slid to a stop on her knees beside Steve, rising gracefully to her feet as she calmly shot the Hydra soldier that had approached the Captain's exposed back. Not far away Bucky was fighting three Hydra soldiers, although Natasha knew that the former Winter Soldier could take them out without breaking a sweat.

The whole team were at the base. A few days earlier they'd had to deal with an incident in Atlanta, where people with special powers that were revealed to be mind-controlled by a special device that Hydra had created had attacked the city, robbing banks and assaulting civilians. Once the mind control over them had been stopped the attackers had surrendered, many of them horrified by what they'd done.

By Avengers standards it hadn't been too exciting, nothing compared to New York, Washington D.C., or Sokovia, and there had been relatively little damage done to private or public property, and the loss of life had fortunately been low, with only 6 causalities, none of whom died because of the actions of the Avengers, and indeed most of them had been declared dead before the Avengers had even gotten there...although the team still, as a whole, blamed themselves for not getting there earlier.

The initial threat dealt with, the Avengers had started backtracking, searching for the source of the mind control device. They had found it at a remote Hydra base located in the mountains of Russia, long unnoticed by anyone who had vowed to stop the spread of the evil organisation. The Avengers had attacked the base the moment they'd learned of its existence.

The base, instead of being abandoned, as Natasha had feared, had been fully occupied, and the agents of Hydra were defending it as well as they could, but so far they were no match for the combined force of the Avengers.

Natasha watched as Bucky finally tired of the fight and quickly knocked out the three Hydra agents he'd been fighting. Both he and Natasha whipped around, however, when they heard Steve let out a shout of pain.

Captain America was almost doubled over, an arrow protruding from his shoulder, embedded deep. Natasha moved to support Steve, while Bucky, his eyes narrowing dangerously, scanned the area around them, searching for the attacker. His eyes fell and lingered on an air vent, the cover missing.

"Everything ok?" Tony asked through the comms, being on the other side of the base with Vision, Rhodey, Thor and the Hulk.

"Is Cap hurt?" Sam asked, as he and twins were working the perimeter, dealing with anyone who tried to escape. Natasha inspected the wound carefully, keeping close watch of Steve's face as she checked the injury carefully.

"He should be fine," she finally decided, "We'll need to wait till we get to medical help before we treat it though."

"What happened?"

"Someone shot Steve with a bow. Bucky's looking into it."

As Natasha spoke Bucky jumped up, latching onto the roof with both hands, before he pulled himself up into the ventilation shaft. Within a few seconds Natasha heard his quiet voice in her ear.

"The shooters on the move, heading west through the air vent system. I'm going in pursuit.

"Copy that," Natasha replied, moving to Steve's uninjured side and sliding his arm around her shoulders so she could better support his weight.

"Be careful Buck," Steve warned, "whoever it is up there, they're dangerous."

Natasha and Steve heard the distinctive sound of Bucky moving through the air vent in pursuit if the soldier who had injured Steve, before Natasha began to gently guide Steve back out of the base. Tony, Rhodey, Hulk and Vision could finish off the few remaining Hydra agents that were skittering around the base, forming little pockets of resistance. With Steve injured, his shield arm practically hanging limp, the Captain needed to be moved away from any potential danger...and although Natasha was probably more suited size wise for crawling through ventilation shafts, she was also better at providing medical treatment in the field than Bucky was, so it was better this way for Steve…and Bucky's years as the Winter Soldier had given him a certain…creativity for chasing down and subduing targets, and it was widely known that Bucky's protectiveness over Steve had not changed much since they were children. Steve's attacker, whoever they were, would quickly regret their actions.

AVENGERS

Bucky swore when he spotted the opened air vent grate ahead, although he was grateful that he would soon be out of the ventilation system of the Hydra base. He was too big to be able to manoeuvre easily in the confined space, a trait he didn't seem to share with the one he was pursuing. Bucky had only caught the occasional glimpse of the one who had attacked Steve with the arrow, but he'd seen enough to know that whoever they were, they weren't nearly as big as him.

In fact, Bucky was reasonably sure he was chasing a child.

To many the thought alone would seem stupid, but Bucky had seen for himself how children could be used as soldiers...Natasha and her experiences with the Red Room were testament to the fact. Bucky himself had spent time with the Red Room, instructed to train the girls and women within the program. It had been back then when he and Natasha first met.

Still, those particular memories weren't relevant for the moment, and Bucky focused on getting to the opened air vent ahead, moving as quickly as the confined space would allow, something that was easier said than done. He wouldn't allow himself to give up, and be outwitted by a pint-sized assassin. Especially when the assassin in question had tried to kill Steve.

Eventually Bucky reached the opening in the vent and peered down, taking in what appeared to be an office of some kind. He dropped down through the ceiling vent, landing in a crouch on the desk. His instincts cried out to him in warning, and he ducked, rolling off the desk as an arrow flew dangerously close to his face. He peered out from behind the desk, immediately spotting the archer. Bucky had been right, it definitely a child, a young boy, Bucky guessed, his eyes wide and fearful. Their gaze met and the boy only lasted a few brief seconds into the eye contact before he turned and bolted from the room, Bucky on his heels within a few seconds. The child sprinted down a corridor as fast as his short legs could carry him, and Bucky ran after him, knowing that the tables had turned against the boy. There was no way the little boy would be able to out run a healthy grown man, let alone a super soldier like Bucky.

It very quickly became apparent, however, that the boy still had a trick or two up his sleeve, as he raced down the corridor, which ended in a window looking out at the mountains that surrounded the base. Bucky slowed down, thinking the boy would be trapped, but could only watch as the boy leapt through the window instead, the child's arms lifted to protect his face from the glass as the window shattered and the boy dropped out of sight. Bucky skidded to a halt at the window, looking down. He guessed that the drop down to the snow-covered ground was fourteen feet, but then the mountainside sloped away rapidly. At the bottom of the slope there was a cliff, with a drop beyond the cliff far greater than how far Bucky fell that day on the train.

The boy was skidding and rolling down the steep descent, and Bucky, not wanting to lose sight of Steve's attacker, leapt out of the window, landing in the snow with a roll and then letting himself slide down the hill, although he managed to control his descent much better than the boy was doing

As he descended, Bucky noticed patches of red appearing on the snow disturbed by the boy as he tumbled and rolled down the steep mountainside. Blood, although Bucky wasn't sure of the source. It could have been from a shard of glass from the window, although from the way the boy was rolling, his body limp and making no attempt to control his own movement, Bucky guessed that the boy had hit his head on one of the rocks that protruded from the snow and had knocked himself out.

Either way, the boy was rolling closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, and since he'd realised that the person who had hurt Steve was so young, Bucky had no intention of letting them get hurt, or worse. Bucky manoeuvred himself so that he was sliding a little faster, reaching towards the boy with his flesh hand, willing himself to slide a bit faster…just a little further.

The cliff was looming before them when Bucky's fingers finally grabbed onto the sleeve of the boy's tactical suit, but not before the rest of the boy had slid off the edge. Bucky dug into the snow with his metal arm, gripping onto the rock and soil beneath, trying to slow himself down, too late to stop himself form tipping over the edge of the cliff himself, although his metal arm was firmly gripped onto the mountainside, leaving Bucky hanging from it, his other hand holding securely onto the boy, saving him from plummeting to a certain death. Bucky looked down, avoiding looking at the drop beneath him, instead taking in the boy as he dangled. He'd let go of his bow during his descent, Bucky remembered sliding past it in is pursuit of the boy, but the boy's quiver was still attached, although most of the arrows had fallen out during the tumble down the mountainside. Bucky adjusted his grip on the boy, frowning as he noticed the blood on the boy's arm, making Bucky's grip slippery and treacherous.

Gritting his teeth and ignoring the pain in his shoulder, and where his prosthetic was connected to his flesh, Bucky pulled them both back up onto more solid land, dropping the boy as soon as they were a safe distance from the cliff. The boy's quiver, and the few remaining arrows it still contained, Bucky threw over the edge off the cliff, although he didn't watch them plummet to the ground. Bucky pointedly ignored how close he and the boy had both come to plummeting off the edge and falling (again) themselves, instead focusing on the figure in the snow in front of him.

The boy's head had lolled limply to the side; his blonde hair matted with blood, backing up bucky's theory about the boy accidently hitting his head on a rock. The boy's arms were also cut up from the glass of the window he'd smashed through, the source of the blood that had made Bucky's grip on the boy so precarious, although the thick pants the boy was wearing didn't seem to have been damaged or cut, so it looked like the boy's legs hadn't been injured during the chase.

"Who are you, Kid?" Bucky asked as he felt at the boy's throat for signs of a pulse with his flesh hand. The chilled mountain air had made it obvious that the boy was still breathing, the gentle puffs of mist that emerged from the boys' mouth with each exhalation were all the proof that Bucky needed. Beneath the skin of his fingertips Bucky quickly found a steady pulse, and he let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding.

It would have been bad if, while escaping from the Avengers, the kid had killed himself. Steve would never forgive himself for it, and Bucky knew that, deep down, he would regret it and blame himself too, despite what the kid had tried to do to Steve. Now that he was getting a good look at the boy's face it was painfully obvious how young the kid was. He looked barely old enough to go to school, let alone already be a trained agent for Hydra. The tactical gear that the boy was wearing, complete with a red Hydra logo on sleeve, however, told Bucky that the boy was indeed involved with Hydra in some way

Bucky carefully gathered the kid up in his arms, preparing to carry him back to the quinjet they had arrived at the base in. The boy was light in his arms, the weight of the boy's limp, unconscious body barely registering to Bucky as he began walking back. He'd barely taken a few steps when a distinctive shadow passed overhead, and Bucky looked up, spotting Sam as the Falcon swooped down towards him.

"That's the guy who shot Steve? A kid?" he asked in shock. Bucky nodded wordlessly in reply, knowing that it was hard to believe.

"Where's his bow?" Sam asked. Buck pointed to where he'd thrown it, the weapon sticking upright in the snow, a few arrows that had escaped the boy's quiver lying in the snow around it.

"I'll grab those if you're ok to carry the kid back?" Sam offered.

Bucky nodded again, "he's very light, I'll be fine. I'll meet you back at the Quinjet."

"No problem," Sam replied, grabbing the boy's weaponry before he took off again. Bucky continued on, wondering privately how the rest of the team were going to react to knowing that Steve had been attacked and nearly killed by a small child.

Bucky had only taken a few more short steps before he remembered the story he'd been told about the year following the Chitauri invasion of New York, when Natasha had been abducted during a mission had had been missing for 13 months, only to be found unconscious, having given birth to twins. Steve had been the one to tell Bucky the story, although Bucky himself had talked about it with Natasha when they were alone.

Natasha had confirmed the story had been true, and they'd spoken about how Hydra obviously had found a way around the Red Room's method of sterilizing its agents.

At the time Natasha had spoken about her concern that her son would be brought up as a weapon, just like she had. Her biggest fear was that, one day, she would be forced to fight her son. It was a fight, Natasha had confessed, she wasn't sure she could force herself to win.

Swallowing thickly, Bucky looked down at the unconscious boy in his arms, studying the boy's face for any features that could have been inherited from Natasha. He was probably around the right age, although Bucky didn't spend a lot of time with children, so he didn't really know what to look for. He would have guessed a six-and-a-half-year-old would be a little bigger, both taller and heavier but, he was no expert on the matter.

Taking in the boy's features, Bucky frowned. He certainly fit the description of the boy that the twins had described encountering at Strucker's lab, and if he concentrated there was definitively something about the boy's nose and chin that reminded him of Natasha. Of course, there couldn't be that many young children running around Hydra bases, especially not ones with military training, so the odds were in their favour.

The boy that Bucky was carrying was most probably Natasha's son, and if he was than the lives of all of the Avengers just got a whole lot more interesting.