Chapter 21

I awoke with no idea how long I slept— all I knew was that Steve was wrapped protectively around me, and I actually felt well rested. I was laying on my left side with Steve spooning me from behind— and I could feel his impressive morning wood firmly at my back.

I unconsciously rolled my hips back into him, and he groaned in response. His right hand that had been up by my chest, hugging me back into him loosened and slid down to my right hip.

"You weren't scared I was going to burn your dick off?" I asked before my brain filter came online.

I could feel as much as hear the laugh rumble out of his chest in response before Steve responded with a question of his own, "during the sex or while sleeping?"

His wandering hands were slowly shifting my position, making it clear what his intention was and giving me plenty of time to object. When I did no such thing, Steve dropped a kiss to my shoulder as he pushed into me from behind.

"Either," I sighed out, barely managing to keep a grasp on the conversation as my body started slowly reacting and buzzing at the feel of his slow, steady movements.

"Nah," he answered, voice low as his mouth slowly drifted up to play with my neck. "You seemed to like it too much for that."

I couldn't formulate a response to that in part because it was true and in part because my mind was turning to mush again. Instead I just let myself feel.

It was more making love than having sex for probably the first time in my life, and left me feeling not just physically satisfied but emotionally as well. We floated along in contentment for a good long while after our heart rates had settled before my stomach let itself be known.

I let out a nervous snort, but Steve just poked me until I got moving as he said, "thank goodness, I'm starving too."

"Bored with me already?" I teased with a playful pout.

Steve let out an incredulous bark of laughter and waved his hand at the bed. He told me, "obviously not, but I'll be more than happy to prove it to you again if you let me fuel up a little."

I giggled and at Steve's questioning look, I pointed to myself and said, "adding fuel to the fire."

Steve smiled at that, clearly amused, then pointed to the dresser where another of those special outfits was sitting out for me. I sighed, resigning myself to the scratchiness factor. When I noticed the nice lingerie on top, I raised a brow in question.

Steve shrugged and said, "that stuff doesn't feel the most comfortable, so I figured you could use a little something soft to go under it."

The underwear and bra were a matching set of some of the softest silk I'd ever touched. Still, I eyed it nervously and asked, "the underwear I was wearing last night?"

Steve's expression turned puzzled as he said, "you weren't wearing any when I undressed you."

"I wasn't?" I asked. "Because I was wearing some when I went to sleep. I don't go commando and definitely wouldn't have in those pants!"

"I'll have JARVIS make sure there's plenty around just in case," Steve told me, then he paused. "Would you like to pick it out yourself."

"Whoever picked this out can definitely pick for me," I reassured him as I slid into the soft set. Plus then I could live in denial a little longer about how much of a bill I must be building up. I was going to need to catch a lot of skips in order to be able to pay for everything I'd been provided and then burned up.

A couple minutes of wrestling with my hair, a comb, and a hair tie later, I was walking out of Steve's bedroom hand in hand with him.

This time as we made our way into the living room, I came across the scene I'd feared upon waking from my nap the day before. The common spaces were a buzz of activity from the entire Avengers team, minus Thor and plus Darcy and Pepper.

Conversation stopped when we walked in, and I steeled myself for whatever their reaction was going to be to Steve and I coming out of his bedroom together first thing in the morning. Tony opened his mouth, then glanced at Natasha and Bucky each in turn before shutting his mouth and taking a sip from his coffee cup instead. Gradually conversation picked back up, and Steve nodded in satisfaction before using a hand on the small of my back to guide me over to the breakfast bar.

A full buffet of breakfast food had been set up, and Steve murmured about in-house chefs being available around the clock. So I supposed that answered the question of where all the food had come from. I fixed myself a generous plate at Steve's insistence then went and found a seat- two had been left open side-by-side for us.

Steve set his plate down in the empty space to my right then wandered off, returning with orange juice and coffee for us both. He was frighteningly coordinated.

Everyone let us eat in peace for several minutes before Darcy was the one to finally break the silence with, "so I stopped by your room earlier, Steph."

I groaned and started to apologize, looking at Tony and Pepper with wide eyes.

Tony just waved it off wordlessly, and Pepper chose to quickly reassure me with, "we knew it was a possibility, And really this was the safest place to have an episode like that happen. The Avengers quarters have extra reinforcements and security measures built into them given the propensity for these types of things to happen in them." After a pause she added, "not to mention Tony's tendency for making people really mad at him. Did you know he once taunted a terrorist known for blowing things up then gave him our address in Malibu? On national TV?"

"Not this again," Tony whined. "It was one time."

"And it was just one example," Pepper insisted. "And I don't think it's going to stop being relevant any time soon."

Tony muttered to himself but shut his mouth once more with what could only be described as a pout.

"The damage isn't actually that bad," Darcy insisted. "JARVIS was on it quickly, and it's really just damage on the surface level. We'll pull up the carpet and replace it, buy new furniture, slap on some new paint, and that'll be it. Should be better in one or two days tops. Assuming you don't go all firebomb on it again."

Clint got up and walked around the table to deliver a solid punch on Steve's shoulder. Steve didn't even flinch just asked, "what was that for?"

"She saw your little mirror art," Clint told Steve with a scowl. "You're setting the bar way too high for the rest of us!"

"Don't blame Steve for his emotional maturity and ability to express himself," Darcy protested. "Just because you're more man child than anything else-"

She was cut off by everyone asking what she was talking about, which caused her to go into a full blown explanation with gushing color commentary that had Steve and I both blushing and Tony saying, "yeah, I'm going to have to side with Clint on this one. Plus, you've got to think ahead, Cap. If you start this high, how are you going to keep it up? Let alone top it?"

"I think I'll manage," Steve replied dryly.

"I'm sure you will," I happily agreed, dropping my right hand down to pat his thigh under the table.

Bruce clapped his hands and said, "ANYWAY, I think we have more important matters at hand."

Suddenly my mouth felt dry, and I lost all of my appetite. Steve dropped his left hand under the table and used it to pick my hand up off his leg and hold it, gently stroking it to soothe me.

"What did you find?" Steve asked calmly.

"We're going to need to run a lot more tests," Tony started. "But what we've managed to piece together so far is utterly fascinating."

"Do you know why they had to experiment on her twice?" Natasha asked urgently. "We need to know how likely they are to come after her for more experiments."

Bruce nodded his head and said, "That's actually one of the more interesting parts. See, we were able to get our hands on some blood samples that the hospital took while Steph was unconscious after the first kidnapping. From what we can tell, they actually injected her with a series of serums, for lack of a better term, that were priming her for future experimentation. Without their research notes, I can't tell if they chose Steph specifically for some genetic reason or if it was just convenient in some other way, but they started basically getting her cells ready for change during that first abduction."

"Is that why the first time didn't really hurt that much," I asked curiously.

Tony nodded in agreement, "yes, exactly. And we believe it's also why they kept you drugged. Part of that would have been to make you easier to deal with, but we believe that having your body closer to a coma-like state actually lowered your immune response and made it easier for them to begin altering you."

"Now the second time you were kidnapped," Bruce told me. "That's when they took advantage of the groundwork they had laid and injected you with the serum that would cause genetic and structural changes. You mentioned that it burned."

I nodded my head emphatically, "yes. It felt like I was on fire from the inside out, which I guess makes sense since I'm clearly able to catch things on fire now."

"Not necessarily," Bruce told me. "In all likelihood, they didn't know exactly how your DNA would morph. That is to say I don't believe they knew that it would be fire specifically. I think that the burning sensation you felt was actually just a result of your DNA being fundamentally altered. That means every cell in your body changed, including your nerves, for instance. THAT is likely what caused the burning sensation, and is probably also the cause for your prolonged exhaustion at this point."

Tony faked a cough that sounded a lot like, "that and boning Cap," but everyone just ignored it.

"Can you fix it?" I asked eagerly.

Bruce paused and rubbed his hands wearily over his face.

"We're going to run more tests and help you control it," Tony finally said into the profound silence.

"But…" I prompted, pit of dread taking over the place my stomach used to be.

"If we found the exact formulations they used and could exactly replicate the conditions and timing, we might be able to reverse the changes," Bruce finally admitted, "but I don't think it would work, and I think the odds of it killing you are better than the odds of it changing things back the way you were before. It's really a miracle you survived the first time. I wouldn't count on those odds happening twice."

"But since I survived the first time, wouldn't that make it more likely?" I pleaded.

"No," Tony said calmly. "We'll keep working on it Steph. And maybe we're wrong. But I really don't think so."

"There's nothing wrong with you," Steve reassured me. "You aren't broken. You don't need to be fixed."

"Steve, I almost burned down this tower and everyone in it."

"Pssshhh," Darcy protested. "Not hardly. JARVIS had the situation handled! And these guys are going to help you learn how to control it."

Conversation lapsed into silence for a few moments before I ventured a soft, "what exactly is it? What am I now?"

"Well, you're a mutate," Bruce explained. "That would be a human who wasn't born a mutant, but made one through synthetic alteration."

"In terms of what you can do," Tony rubbed his hands together eagerly, "we're not sure yet. Something involving heat or fire though, it seems."

"That's too much of a coincidence," Natasha added slowly, chewing on her thumbnail as she did. "She's the Bombshell Bounty Hunter of Trenton. Her exploits have been covered extensively in the local media, and they frequently involve fires or bombs. No way these people grab her, prime her, mutate her, and she just happens to get fire powers."

"There was that guy," Clint interjected. "On SHIELD's gifted registry. Chan Ho Yin. Developed pyrokinesis but nobody knew why. He was assigned a caseworker with SHIELD who recommended that he not use his powers in public, but he still used it to perform street magic on occasion last I heard before SHIELD fell. I think I remembered seeing him in your file dump, but I don't remember why—"

Clint was interrupted by Tony who snapped his fingers and said, "HYDRA had him. They experimented with him on one of their attempts with Extremis, as part of their Centipede Program to try to make more super soldiers. Almost all of their participants exploded and died eventually, but he lived. We looked into him after Pepper's run in with Extremis."

"He's the one whose blood they were taking to try to improve upon Extremis and stabilize it," Bruce murmured. "Were the Stern Brothers HYDRA?"

"Not from what I found while investigating Sojourn Enterprises," Bucky said. "Information on them seemed to indicate they were freelance. If they were already aware of and working on something similar when the HYDRA files came out though, they could have accessed the relevant information."

"Well it's not Extremis," Tony mused. "That is something we know for sure."

"And it appears to operate very differently," Bruce input. "On a cellular level alone, the evolution we're seeing is not at all similar."

"But they could have read about Cho, looked for someone who seemed to have a similar affinity for fire," Natasha thought out loud. "Read in that context, some of the articles could make it seem like Steph was controlling the fires somehow."

"I didn't burn down the funeral home!" I cried out, throwing my hands up in the air.

Steve put a soothing hand on my arm and murmured, "it's going to be okay, Steph. Nobody here thinks you did anything wrong."

"I was actually thinking the opposite," Natasha explained. "Some of those stories it seems like there's no way you should have made it out, but you did. Someone might think it was because you had some sort of enhancement."

"Well I don't!" I argued. Then I paused and conceded, "didn't. I guess I do now. But honestly most of those stories were exaggerations!"

"Maybe yes, maybe no," Clint moved his hands as though they were opposite sides of a scale. "I got sent to investigate a number of suspected enhanced when I was with SHIELD. Some were just ever so slight differences that the people themselves didn't even notice. Hell, at one point I'm pretty sure there was a debate about whether or not I should have been registered because of my eyesight. All that really matters in this case is perception. Nat's right. If they thought there was a chance you were gifted in some way involving fire, they could have chosen you specifically trying to replicate HYDRA's apparent success with Chan Ho Yin in you with their own serum. Doesn't matter if they were right or wrong to think that. It just helps us understand that it might be a specific interest in you rather than you being a target of convenience."

That might have been the most I'd heard Clint speak, so I boggled at that fact just long enough for Darcy to cut in.

"Does it even matter? If she's a successful experiment, they're going to want her back. Bottom line," Darcy said. When Natasha looked at her with a raised brow, Darcy insisted, "I hang around you guys enough, something was bound to rub off on me. Other than Clint."

The last was said with a wicked grin, and I couldn't help but let out a short bark of laughter at that.

"Then we have to identify and eliminate the threat," Steve said resolutely, looking around the group as though he expected protest. When he got none, he continued, "this complicates things though. We want Steph to get back to Trenton to figure out the other, unrelated security concerns, but we have to assume that the Stern Brothers don't know we interceded to get her back. She can't just show back up in Trenton tomorrow or the next day if we want our involvement to go unnoticed."

"I could get back from Russia on my own in a day," Natasha insisted. Then she looked over at Darcy and asked, "how about you?"

"Fuck if I know," Darcy responded. "You had a car, right Steph?"

I nodded my head, and I said, "I was hoping to find a highway and to follow it to the nearest city."

"I'd do the same, then try to call Clint at the first opportunity I got."

Everyone knew I'd called Ranger, and I could practically see wheels turning over in Steve's mind when I glanced at him. He was clearly planning something.

"Ranger went back to Trenton this morning. We need to have him put on a show. He needs to go to where Steph was as fast as he can then travel back by means he would have used to get Steph home— particularly if he was trying to avoid her being sighted."

"I'll call," Natasha stood and left the room with nothing more.

"So what now?" I asked finally, staring at my plate forlornly.

"Everything is up to you," Steve insisted quietly. "We don't have to do it this way if you don't want to. We could have you back at your apartment in Trenton within the hour if you're not willing to stay."

I searched his eyes for any sign of what he was thinking, and I thought what I found was hope and a little bit of desperation.

"But you think this is safest?" I clarified.

"Yes," Steve insisted fervently. "It gives us time to make sure everything is under control with your powers, and it offers you a layer of protection of having us on your side with the element of surprise."

I mulled it over for a bit, but who was I kidding? I was pretty sure that if I went home, my apartment complex would be nothing more than a pile of ashes after my first nightmare. And that would be the first time I slept.

Plus I wasn't going to say no to more time with Steve.

"Okay," I agreed. "I'll stay."

Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement, everyone. Baby has been here for a few weeks now, so hopefully I'll be able to get back into the habit of writing sometime soon. Not sure if I'll be able to catch up to old comments, or if I'll just need to go from here forward, but know that even if I didn't manage to respond, I very much appreciated them!