Chapter Eight: Bonds Broken

"Come all you villains, come one and all. Come all you killers, come join the war." -St. Vincent

1988

Audrey decided, about two weeks and 3500 miles too late, that she did not look good in plaid.

Three months ago, Peggy had given her a choice between staying in New York or accompanying her on a mission in London. New York meant Maria, and Howard, and Tony. But the Starks had been pretty absent recently—with Tony off inventing things in his lab most of the time, and Howard dealing with business. Maria was currently working with charities upstate, hosting galas and banquets that Audrey couldn't attend, for fear of getting caught on camera.

Laura and Martin had both gone off to college, and Daniel was doing some detective work in L.A. He offered Audrey the chance to stay with him while he worked, but that just meant she would be around cops, who would get curious about who she was, which wouldn't end up going well, probably.

As appealing as it was to hide alone in her room in New York until Christmas, she knew that eventually her records would get boring, and she would get lonely, and since Daniel hadn't budged on his anti-dog position in almost forty years, Audrey made the bold move to head over to London for a semester. And while Peggy had her mission to deal with—crazy technological geniuses trying to take over the world, again—Audrey had her own cover: American exchange student.

Which, okay, wasn't that bad. She didn't have to learn Russian to play the part, or fake her death in a fire, or pull out a tooth or something. She just had to go to school.

But Audrey had never actually… done that before. School was as foreign to her as the Soviet tundra, but the bus would arrive in ten minutes, and she still didn't know if her shirt was supposed to look like that, or if she'd just gotten the wrong size. The skirt—that monstrosity of a skirt—seemed to swallow her whole, as if she'd been eaten alive by a Scottish beast and then coughed back up. She should be holding bagpipes.

"Darling, you'll miss your bus if you fuss around any longer," Peggy called from down the hall. "I'm leaving for work, I'll see you at dinner!"

Audrey panicked. She grabbed the schoolbag and slung it over her shoulder. It's just a few months, she reminded herself. By December, she'd see Tony again, she'd be celebrating Christmas and visiting the Captain America memorial statue with Peggy, like they did every year.

And, like, she'd managed to deal with Tony for almost two decades. A few months of school? That should be a piece of cake.

It only took until lunch for Audrey to realize that school was not a piece of cake. The girls in her class took furious notes when they weren't whispering to each other. Everyone in the hallways regarded her as some kind of foreigner, which, excuse you, her mom was British.

She found herself in the lunchroom alone at a table, flipping through a book just to have something to do, when a girl yanked out a chair and plopped down next to her.

"Hullo," she greeted with a grin. "I'm Karen. You're an American?"

Audrey stared at her for a moment, jaw dropped open stupidly. When she finally gathered herself, she answered, "Yes. Yeah. From New York."

Karen nodded slowly, impressed. "That's ace."

"Um, yeah, I guess. It's cool."

Karen began to jabber then, pointing out different people in the lunchroom and describing them vividly. "That's Louisa, she's dating Tom, who actually likes Beth, but Beth is dating his older brother, Harry." She went on introducing Audrey to everyone they could see, and Audrey began to relax in her seat, feeling that the trip wouldn't be as awful as she thought.

It was nice to have a friend.

Audrey kept repeating it to herself, no matter how pathetic it sounded, but she'd never really had friends before. Just Tony. But Karen walked around with her to stores and the cinemas, and generally kept her company whenever they had free time. They studied together, exchanging flash cards and notebooks whenever tests rolled around. They had a good routine, a balance of going out and chattering and sitting in to watch movies.

It wasn't until November that something changed. November eighth. When Audrey's history class began study of World War II. It wasn't immediate. But Audrey could tell it was coming.

"...and to help the troops, a scientist by the name of Dr. Erskine decided to do what? Mary?"

Mary's sleeping body jolted, and she lifted her head from the desk. "I'm sorry, what?"

Audrey felt mildly offended by her indifference, before she remembered that not everyone dealt with issues caused by their war hero father dying before their birth. The war was so long ago. Almost a half century. And she was the only person in the room who had been born directly after its ending.

She winced as Mary struggled to answer. Audrey raised her hand. Mr. Boyce nodded in her direction. "Yes, Audrey?"

"He wanted to, um, build an army of super soldiers."

"Well, I suppose you're half correct. He wanted to build one super soldier, someone to lead the rest."

Audrey opened her mouth to object, because, um, no, he'd wanted to build an entire army. But maybe that was something she'd read in a file, instead of in a textbook.

"Oh," she amended. "Right, of course."

"Right. It's not a problem. Erskine travelled around the Eastern Seaboard in search of one man to do the job. Now, I really hope you'll know this one. What was the name of the man he picked?"

"Steve Rogers," the class answered unanimously. "Captain America!" one guy shouted from the back of the room, followed by guffaws.

"Yes, Leo, that's… correct." Mr. Boyce cleared his throat. "Now, after the serum, what did Rogers end up doing? Did he fight?"

"No," someone called out.

"What did he do?" Mr. Boyce repeated.

"Got laid, probably!" Leo shouted again. Audrey's face formed an unamused scowl as she pivoted in her desk to glare at him. He didn't seem to care.

Class went on for another hour, Mr. Boyce trying to control the students. As the bell rang, he called out, "Don't forget, parent-teacher conferences are coming up. I expect to see all of your mothers and fathers here sometime next week!"

Audrey flinched at the words, an unpleasant feeling she couldn't identify making its way through her veins.

That night, she returned to the flat and finished her homework, feeling numb. When she turned out the light and crawled into bed, Audrey began to feel herself become angry. Why was it that she couldn't have her father? Why did he need to die? Why did she have to lose her dad so that others could keep their own?

The feeling burned in her stomach, and Audrey began to cry, shaking from the unfairness of it all, and then collapsing in repulse at her selfishness. She wished she wouldn't miss him so much, she'd never even met him. Never, because he'd had to crash his plane in the arctic circle three months into Peggy's pregnancy. She sobbed and sobbed, and when Peggy checked on her that night after the daily phone call to Daniel, Audrey was still awake, curled into a ball, trying to stop the tears from washing over her cheeks. The ache in her stomach had only grown as she wept, and her mother sat down on her bed next to her, flicking on the lamp.

"Darling?" Peggy asked quietly.

"I wish I'd known him," Audrey answered quietly. Peggy looked down at the floor for a moment, before reaching out to gather Audrey in her arms.

"I wish that too, darling." The brunette carded a hand through her daughter's hair. "He was such a good man. I can see him in you. All the time." Peggy sighed, recalling the brief time she'd had with Steve. "You look so much like him, and you act like him, too. He was brave."

Audrey snorted. "I'm not brave."

"You're in London with me, because you knew it would be more interesting than New York. That's brave. Don't doubt yourself. You're going to be something one day." Audrey sniffled. "Do still want to stay until December?"

Audrey bit her lip. If she really was like her father, she wouldn't leave now. She owed that much.

Her last day in school, they mentioned her in morning announcements so that all the people on her homeroom turned their eyes on her. Karen cried as they embraced for one last time, exchanging phone numbers with the promise to stay in touch. Audrey was glad she stayed.

2012

"Loki's gonna unleash the Hulk. I'll meet you in the labs."

Audrey had just begun to cry when Natasha's words spilled through her comms piece. Why was she being so stupid about the whole thing? Who cared if Steve thought she wanted to rebuild HYDRA weapons? She'd survived seventy years without him, without thinking she would ever see him again. So why did it matter now?

Her tears were furious and dejected, and she did her best to hide her face from any of the windows that they passed by, so that Steve wouldn't see them.

Every agent that they passed on their march to the lab sent her a funny look, and Audrey wanted to say something, to explain herself, but with what? I can't handle basic rejection and misunderstandings, that's why I'm sobbing. Or, even better, Yes, I do realize that there's a god on board who's planning on enslaving the human race, but all I can focus on are my own problems. Uh, no.

She began to count her steps to distract herself. By twenty, she'd managed to slow her breathing. Forty, and she stopped crying. But even as they arrived at the lab, her eyes were puffy and red, and she wanted nothing more than to go back to her tiny apartment, to swallow back her agreement to come on board.

"What's Phase 2?" Tony wondered aloud as they stepped through the doors.

Steve slammed one of the guns onto a metal table. Audrey jolted, and tears sprung back into her eyes. This time, though, they were from fear. She'd never seen Steve this furious before. She'd never even heard of Steve being this furious. "Phase two," he spat, "is where S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the cube to build weapons." He turned his gaze onto Tony, announcing, "Sorry. Computer was moving a bit too slow for me."

Tony raised an eyebrow at Steve, then turned his gaze onto Audrey. Fury, meanwhile, moved from his spot in the corner towards Steve, raising a hand defensively. "Rogers, we gathered everything we could on the Tesseract," he placated. "This does not mean—"

"I'm sorry, Nick," Tony interrupted. Audrey blanched at the use of the director's first name, waiting for him to punch Tony or something. But the blow never came. "Were you lying?" Tony spun the monitor at his desk around so that everyone in the room could see the screen: blueprints for weapons that looked scarily similar to the HYDRA gun resting on the table.

Audrey wanted to throw up. This wasn't what S.H.I.E.L.D. had been built for. The point was to protect people, not hurt them. Peggy hadn't worked this hard for it to all be tossed away. She was enraged, but also embarrassed at her naïveté. In a secret agency, secrets had to be kept. Nothing could be all good. Nothing with this much power.

"I guess I've been mistaken." Steve glowered at Fury. "The world hasn't changed one bit." He turned to Audrey, eyes still narrowed, but his gaze softened the slightest bit at her expression. Her mouth was open in surprise and fear.

"Is this what our work has been going toward?" Jane demanded. "Weapons? Is that why you're so determined that I find another wormhole? So you can have access to more of these things? Other worlds are dangerous, you can't just… just walk into them because you want better weapons!"

The lab door slid open again, and Natasha stepped inside. Thor was close behind her, and Jane's eyes went from furious to bewildered and then back to angry.

"Thor?" Her gaze roamed the room wildly, looking for someone to blame. "Why didn't anyone tell me he was here?"

Bruce held up a hand. He pointed to Natasha, and then to Audrey. "Did you know about this?" he asked, the volume of his voice louder than usual.

Audrey shook her head insistently. "No. Of course not."

"You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?" Natasha suggested, making a point not to answer his question. Her eyes were cold, terrifying. They held an order in their irises, but Bruce appeared unaffected. Audrey's jaw dropped, nonplussed.

"I was in Calcutta. I was pretty well removed."

The fact that he was even arguing with the Black-frickin-Widow was a sign that the situation had escalated too far.

"Bruce, wait. You don't know what you're saying, Loki's manipulating you," Audrey tried to mollify. "Maybe we should all just—"

"Manipulation. That's funny. What have all of you been doing since this mess got started?"

Natasha's eyes narrowed, a warning. She took a predatory step in the doctor's direction. "You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you," she hissed.

"Yes, and I'm not leaving just because suddenly you get a little twitchy." He removed his glasses and dropped them on the desk, allowing Audrey to see the anger in his face unobstructed. "Now, I want to know why S.H.I.E.L.D. has been building weapons of mass destruction."

The room was silent for a minute, tension thick. Everyone was fuming. There were too many lies circulating for the whole team thing to work. Audrey bit her lip. She didn't know how they would recover from something like this.

It was a rarity, but Fury finally gave them an honest answer. "Because of him," he spat, pointing at Thor.

"Me?" Thor said, just as Jane blurted, "Him?" The god looked genuinely taken aback at the accusation. Audrey realized a beat later that she was surprised, too. Thor had never attacked earth. It had always been other aliens.

Fury dropped his accusing point, and glanced around the room. "Last year, earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that levelled a small town."

Audrey cringed ad the thought of Puente Antiguo. Even though she'd only been working the case for a few days before she was pulled out, she'd seen some of the weird things that had happened. Thor, the Excalibur of hammers. The reports depicted photos of a flaming, alien robot that had been dubbed "The Destroyer." Quite fitting, since it managed to wipe nearly an entire town off the map.

"We learned," Fury continued, "that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned."

Audrey slumped back against the doorway. Fury had… a point. Ish. Yes, it was terrifying that aliens existed. And yes, it was terrifying that some of them were hostile. But was it really the best choice to experiment with an unlimited energy source? Something that potent?

Was there even a correct way to react?

Her head was swimming. Would she have to keep this from Peggy? Her mother was so old now, she didn't need this kind of stress. It was better for her to keep thinking that everything she'd built, all the power she'd centered, wasn't being abused. This was her life's work.

"My people want nothing but peace with your people," Thor insisted.

"But you're not the only people out there, are you?" Fury fired back. Audrey's gaze slid over to Steve, who still looked ready to punch something, but was swinging his head back and forth like he was watching a tennis match. "You're not the only threat. The world is filling up with people who can't be matched. Who can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the Cube?" Steve interjected.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki towards it," Thor informed them. Something akin to defensiveness flashed in his narrowed eyes, and Audrey realized that insulting a kingdom in front of its prince was a terrible idea. "It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war."

"A higher form?" Steve questioned dubiously.

"Wait, so we found this strange blue glowing thing and now we're poking it, so all the aliens suddenly think we're ready to size up?" Darcy called, from the corner of the room. Fury's steel gaze deflated into annoyance, and he shot the assistant a stern look. "I'm just saying, but that's some terrible fucking logic."

"We needed to be ready, in the event that someone else decided to attack."

"Funny how your emergency-preparedness plan landed you in an emergency," Tony scoffed bitterly. "A nuclear deterrent. Because that always calms things down."

"Remind me again how you made your fortune?" Fury asked rhetorically. Tony was unbothered by the jab, ambling his way around the side of the table.

Steve glared at the director. "I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck deep—"

"Wait, hold on," Tony interrupted. "How is this now about me?"

"I'm sorry, isn't everything?" Steve puffed up his chest, taking another step towards Tony.

She could sense that the tension between the two was about to explode. Audrey pushed off the doorway, suddenly, nearly stumbling as she made her way into the middle of the conversation. "That's enough!" Audrey burst out, then slapped a hand over her mouth. When had she made the decision to do that?

It's too late now, Carter, she thought to herself. Just spit it out.

"You're all too old to act like this," she snapped.

"Too old?" Tony snorted humorlessly. "Surprise, Audrey, but this is what it's like to be an adult!" Tony shouted. "Adults get into arguments, they don't just go along with things. They don't just pretend that it's all gonna be great. Just because you look like you're twenty doesn't mean you're excused from growing the hell up!"

Audrey scoffed. "Oh please, Tony. I've been waiting for you to grow up for twenty-five years. You don't even know how to do your own taxes! You don't do anything, because you are the one that still acts like a goddamn child." Audrey clenched her hands into fists. Were she and Tony fighting? It seemed like they were. But the two of them didn't do this. They didn't have world altering arguments. They were supposed to bicker casually and meaninglessly. Not like this, questioning life decisions and yelling.

The room exploded, suddenly, accusations flying left and right.

"Are you all really that naive?" Audrey caught Natasha asking. "S.H.I.E.L.D. monitors potential threat lists."

"And Captain America's on that list?" Bruce laughed humorlessly.

"We all are," the redhead responded, crossing her arms. Tony and Steve were still bickering. Jane was still yelling at Fury as Darcy tried her hardest to keep the scientist from jumping the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. But Natasha's words were like a blow to Audrey's stomach. We all are. We are all on the threat list.

We're all threats. Audrey looked down at her hands, locked together into fists. How much damage could she inflict with her hands alone? She felt ashamed, suddenly, of her DNA. She wished she were a seventy-year-old woman, a normal person. The aging had been something she'd just dealt with, but now she was expected to unearth all the other effects of the serum: the inhuman strength, the way it had made her into a weapon without her consent.

"I thought humans were more evolved than this," Thor laughed, an air of precociousness dominating his tone. "You speak of control, yet you court chaos."

"I mean, it's his M.O., isn't it?" Bruce stepped in. "What are we? A team?" He laughed, as though he'd never heard something so absurd. "No. No, no, we're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're a time bomb."

Fury stepped towards him. "You need to step away, Doctor."

Tony threw an arm around Steve, like they were old pals. "Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?"

"Tony!" Audrey snapped. "What's wrong with you?"

Everyone else in the room grew quiet, watching carefully for Steve's reaction.

"You know damn well why! Back off." He shrugged Tony away, sending the billionaire stumbling back a few inches. Audrey stepped out of the way, toward Jane and Darcy.

"I'm starting to want you to make me," Tony challenged. His eyes narrowed, and Audrey could see the gears spinning in his head, already laying out a plan of attack in case it escalated that far. Please don't, she wanted to say, Please don't try and fight Captain America, Tony.

"Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?"

"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist," he listed easily. Audrey rolled her eyes. Unbelievable. Natasha shrugged and Thor smirked.

Steve did not flinch. "I know some people with none of that who are worth ten of you." Audrey grimaced at the present tense. Would she have to tell Steve that the Commandos were mostly gone? Had he realized it already, and just slipped up? "I've seen the footage. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

Tony shrugged. "I think I'd just cut the wire," he responded simply, unaffected by Steve's speech.

Steve spared a bitter smile. "Always a way out. You know, you might not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."

"A hero? What, like you? You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle."

This time, Steve stumbled back. The anger in his face transformed into hurt. For a second, he looked like the photo Peggy had on the mantle above their fireplace: Steve, before the serum. He didn't look sure of himself. He looked a lot like Audrey.

And then, just as quick as it had come, it dissolved. His eyes hardened. "Put on the suit, let's go a few rounds."

Oh my god. Tony wasn't the one to initiate the dumb fight. It had been Steve. "Guys, let's not fight each other." Audrey interrupted. "There's the whole alien thing that we should deal with first—"

"You people are so petty. And tiny," Thor sniggered helpfully. Audrey's expression dropped, and she turned to him with a glare.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, this is a team," Bruce remarked sarcastically. He laughed bitterly and crossed his arms.

"Agent Romanoff. Would you escort Doctor Banner out of this?" Fury requested, a thin veil of politeness disguising how frustrated he was growing.

"Where? You rented my room." Audrey was confused by Banner's words for a moment, until everything clicked into place. The giant glass cage where Loki was sitting at this very moment had been meant for the Hulk. It was a giant slap in Bruce's face, and she frowned.

Fury tried to calm him down, explaining, "The cell was just in case…"

"In case you needed to kill me. But you can't. I know. I've tried."

The words were like a blow to Audrey's gut. I've tried. I've tried. I've tried. Everyone in the room, including Bruce, froze suddenly. He shrank, regret painted over his face.

Even though he looked uncomfortable, the scientist continued, "I got low. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out. So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good, until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk!"

Oh god. What did we do? Audrey closed her eyes. This was a mistake. When S.H.I.E.L.D. said they were going to bring in Bruce Banner, she assumed it would be his choice.

She really needed to stop assuming things.

"You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff?" he prodded. The redhead slid a hand over to the gun resting at her hip. Audrey frowned, eyes going over to Bruce. She tensed when Bruce reached out, grabbing the edge of the scepter in his fist. "Do you want to know how I stay calm?" he shouted.

Nobody in the room moved for a moment. Then Steve broke the silence. "Doctor Banner..." he began slowly. "Put down the scepter."

The doctor's eyes flicked to his hand. They widened, bewildered, at the weapon he was holding, like someone who'd been possessed.

Nobody moved. Even Darcy, Audrey noticed, had stopped swiveling the lab stool back and forth.

It was only when Tony's monitor beeped again that everyone came back to life. Natasha pulled her hand away from her gun, as did Fury; Audrey unclenched her fist; even Steve went from his well-rehearsed calm to something more honest to how he was feeling: blindsided, angry, and confused.

"We got it," Tony said, tapping on the screen a few times.

Bruce replaced the scepter in its holder, dropping his head in an attempt to avoid eye contact. "Well, kids, looks like you don't get to see my party trick after all." He crossed over to the console, staring at it with more focus than was necessary. Audrey could tell that he was still thinking about his outburst.

"Have you located the Tesseract?" Thor asked.

"I can get there faster—" Tony jumped in.

Steve tried to interrupt, but not before Thor responded. "The Tesseract belongs on Asgard. No human is a match for it."

The three bickered back and forth, but Audrey kept her eyes on Bruce, waiting for him to say something. The purposeful gaze on the screen had become something terrified, and the blonde furrowed her brow. "Oh my god," Banner muttered.

Audrey opened her mouth to ask what happened, but before the could force the words out, an explosion sent her flying. She grabbed the edge of the cape on instinct and yanked it to cover her head and the body of whoever had just toppled onto her. Fragments of glass flew from the shattered windows into her palm. Someone screamed.

And then everything went black.

a/n: Nobody asked for a cliffhanger but you got one anyway. Things were going so well, weren't they? And then I just blew everything up. I'm so sorry about the long wait. In what was a surprise to nobody except me, sophomore year is apparently harder than freshman year? I guess there's more work? So.

And here is the part where I beg for reviews, because they really do mean a lot to me. It can be kind of discouraging to only get a small response, and while I promise I'm not going to hold chapters hostage or anything, your feedback is so so important. s/o again to CatrinaSL for being an excellent beta.

Chapter Nine: Time Runs Out

"Grenade!" Maria shouted. Audrey lunged for the other woman, wrapping the cape around her. Thank you, Tony.