Disclaimer: I don't own them….just borrowing for a bit. Enjoy!
A special thanks to XPoppyX who has let me bounce several ideas off her!
Chapter 22:
"Nothing, absolutely nothing has been gotten from this so called Winter Solider," Fury said as he paced back and forth in front of the Avengers. "He refuses to talk, eat and even sleep. He's been in our custody a little over 24 hours and it seems like Widow and Emma had better luck with him."
"Did you try speaking in Russian?" Tony asked. "That's what they did."
Fury glared at him with his only eye.
"So where's Lukin now?" Widow asked.
"He's state side."
"So let's go get him and bring him in." Clint said.
"As easy as that sounds, we can't. And killing him is too suspicious since he is such a huge public figure." Fury said.
"HE TRIED TO HAVE ME AND WIDOW KILLED!" Emma yelled standing up. Her hands were balled into fists as her hands and lower arms burned yellow and red. "LOOK AT WHAT HIS SON DID TO ME!"
"Emma calm down," Fury said putting a hand on her shoulder before she hit anything, which she was known to do. He motioned for Clint to get up and help calm her down. He could tell that most of the others did not know about Emma's end result of the run in with Lukin's son. Clint took her off to the side and whispered something to her. Slowly her arms began to turn back to normal skin tones.
Once Emma was calmed back down, Fury turned his attention back to everyone else. "So until we get this situation figured out, keep working on that A.I.M. assignment I gave you last week. If anything else pans out with Winter Solider, I will let you know."
Everyone sat in silence for a moment after Fury left. "Umm care to explain what the hell that was?" Tony asked after a few seconds of silence as he stood up and moved towards his sister who was still standing. He picked up her hands and looked them over. He was amazed that there was no scarring from whatever had been done to them.
"Gene manipulation thanks to this drug that Lukin's son over injected me with about nine years ago." Emma said, watching her brother look at her hands. "Emotions, mainly intense anger, cause it to surface."
"Incredible," Bruce said, joining Tony. "Can you manipulate it in any way?"
Emma was beginning to get a little uncomfortable in talking about her 'fiery' problem. She hated to talk about it. Clint took notice of Emma's change in mood.
"Yeah she can. But it's not much. Just gives her a fiery punch." Clint said as he physically moved Emma back towards the couch so that the team could finish talking about their current mission – figuring out what A.I.M. was up to.
"Moving on," Steve said. "Did we uncover anything this weekend about A.I.M.?"
Natasha went first, describing the various scientists that she talked with on Saturday night about their jobs. She got little to nothing from them, except that they were working on a major energy project that would reshape the world, as everyone knew it. Emma agreed with her, saying that was about what she got as well.
"The Tesseract has the ability to reshape worlds in someone's image." Thor said. "The user has to understand how to control, but they could."
"But this isn't the Tesseract." Tony said. "That is back in Asgard."
"Correct."
"I'll work out some tracking programs to see if we can get a track on that signature that S.H.E.I.L.D. had last week to see if it's the same as the Tesseract." Banner said.
"Sounds good," Steve said.
Bruce and Tony retreated to the lab to begin working on a program for the tracking system, while Steve and Natasha headed down to the gym to work out along with Thor. Natasha was working with both of them to help them adjust to either living in the 21st century or living on Earth in general. Emma and Clint were going to join them in a few minutes, but they had some family matters to take care of first.
Heading back down to their assigned floor, they could hear Audrey reading a book aloud. Emma opened the door a crack so that she and Clint could listen better.
"I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-am." Audrey slowly read from the Dr. Seuss book that she held on her lap as she sat on her parent's bed with teddy on her lap. They stood there for a few more minutes, listening as Audrey slowly finished reading the book. She stumbled over a few words, but for the most part she managed to get most of the words on her own.
"That was a good job!" Emma said opening the door.
Audrey quickly hid her face behind the book and giggled. "What's so funny munchkin?" Clint said kneeling on the bed and tickling his daughter.
"Nothing daddy!" she said squealing with laughter.
"No I think there is," he said still tickling her. "You're embarrassed because we caught you reading and you were doing a good job!"
Audrey kept laughing and squealing as her father kept tickling her. After a minute or so longer, Clint stopped tickling his daughter and pulled her into his lap as he leaned back against the pillows on the bed. He picked up the Dr. Seuss book that she had been reading. "So would you eat green eggs and ham?" he asked flipping through the book as Audrey sat next to him on the bed.
"Yucky!" she said sticking her tongue out.
Next to them, Emma sat down as well. "What about purple eggs and ham?" she asked.
Audrey shook her head no again.
"So what would you eat?" Clint finally asked.
"Scrambled!" the four-year-old happily said.
"Scrambled eggs are good," Clint said. "Especially if mommy cooks them."
Audrey nodded in agreement. "Mommy's cooking is better than grandma's!" Audrey said beginning to list off the things that Emma makes for her that she likes. "Mommy makes me kitty pancakes with scrambled eggs. And cuts the crusts off my sandwiches. And makes faces on my apples. And makes me chocolate chip cookies!"
"Well what if you could see mommy and I both almost every day?"
The little girl's face lit up in a huge smile. "Really daddy?"
Clint nodded yes as Audrey launched herself at him. She wrapped her tiny arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. She then moved and hugged her mother.
"Now there will be rules because our friends will be living here too," Emma said. "And there will be times you won't see us. But it won't be like last week."
Audrey nodded and hugged her mother again. Clint watched from the side as Emma held Audrey in her arms and he smiled. Deep in his heart, he hoped that with this entire Lukin ordeal going on that having Audrey around would keep her emotions in check.
After making sure that Audrey had a movie playing in the common area and was being monitored by JARVIS, Emma and Clint made their way down to the gym for a training session with Steve, Natasha and Thor.
While Clint went off to shoot some arrow, Emma helped Natasha show Steve some other hand-to-hand combat techniques. Thor simply stood off to the side and watched. One problem that Steve was having a hard time adjusting to was that fact that he shouldn't hit a girl. That was until Emma put on these odd looking gauntlets – a lot like Natasha's spider bites.
"What are those?" Steve asked.
"For my fiery problem," Emma said with a smile as the gauntlets began to glow softly.
She and Steve got back into sparring position. Within seconds, Emma sent a roundhouse kick towards him, but he dodged it only to receive a flaming right hook to his face. Steve hit the mat and grabbed for his face where it felt like it was burning. He had no idea where that had come from or what exactly had hit him.
"It will go away in a few minutes," Emma said helping him back up.
"Again," Steve said.
Emma got back in position, but never once landed another punch or kick against Steve. Even Natasha had a hard time taking down Steve. "At least he's a fast learner," Emma said once they were finished.
"Now if only we could get him to use a cell phone," Natasha replied. The two women laughed.
"What's so funny?" Clint asked walking towards them from the shooting range.
"Just talking about Steve and his lack of using technology." Emma said. "You know, you should help him out! You were teaching him about video games at one time, so why not help him out with every thing else."
"That's actually a good idea!" Natasha said.
Clint wasn't so sure. It could be more trouble then it seemed.
"So any luck yet boys?" Emma asked walking into the lab. She had quickly showered and changed after her workout and was now going to bother her brother some. Besides she needed to talk to him about Audrey.
Bruce and Tony both looked up from their computers at her. Bruce just shook his head in disbelief and went back to work, while Emma walked over to tony to see what he was doing. "So any decision made about Audrey?" Tony asked, quickly typing out a long sequence of computer code.
"Yeah, that's what I came to talk to you about. But if you're busy I can leave."
"Nope," he said. "I'm done for now. Let's go upstairs and talk."
Tony led her out of the lab and upstairs to his and Pepper's apartment. "So what's the decision?" he asked, pouring himself a drink then taking a sip.
"I thought you said you were working on the drinking issue."
He glanced over the rim of the half tipped glass at his sister then set the glass back down before any of the liquor had touched his lips. "A work in progress."
"Anyways, Clint and I agree that you are right. Audrey would probably be the safest here at the tower."
"Good choice! I'll have the crews start the remodeling tomorrow."
"Wait, I wasn't done. There are just a few things that I'm requesting. First, our apartment needs to be like a complete apartment – it needs a living room, kitchen, and a room for Audrey along with her own bathroom. The works. Also it needs an extra room or two for guests and a nanny for Audrey. A study would be nice too but not a necessity. Oh and there needs to be a way for her to escape the building if there is an attack on it."
"Your ideas are going to take up two floors."
"We'll pay for it. Oh and if possible only have the elevator connecting on the main part of the apartment with the bedrooms isolated on the second floor."
"Demandy aren't we?"
"If we're going to let her stay, then we want her to have as close to a normal life as possible. Yes we will both still be apart of this team, but we want to be able to live with her as well."
"Understandable."
"So you think that you can do this?"
"Of course! It might take a few weeks, but we can get it done. We'll just move you to the floor below the gym and expand the gym and the common area, which I was wanting to do anyways."
"That sounds good. See it works out for everyone!"
The next few days were busy for all the Avengers. Between remodeling work on Clint and Emma's new apartment and tracking the movements of A.I.M., it always seemed that there was something going on at Stark Tower.
During one afternoon, Clint and Emma met up with his mother to discuss what was going. While Edith Barton agreed that it was best that her granddaughter be with her parents, she was a little hesitant about her living in a tower full of heroes.
"If you're that worried mom, then stay and live in the townhouse. If things get too bad at the tower, then we will send Audrey back to live with you," Clint finally said trying to appease his mother. "Then you can still run the book shops as well."
"That in all honesty would be a great help!" Emma said almost pleading with her mother in law.
"I'll stay," Edith Barton said with a smile. "It's hard enough to raise a child. But raising a child and protecting the world – I don't know how you two do it!"
"Sometimes, neither do I." Emma said smiling.
That afternoon when they got back to the tower, they were greeted by an unexpected surprise. Audrey sat in front of the elevators, laughing her head off as a black ball of fur was licking her face. "Look what Uncle Tony got me!" she squealed in delight when she saw her parents. The little girl held up the chubby black Labrador puppy the best that she could. "Can I keep it daddy?"
Clint was about to say no since he had so adamantly told her no to a puppy about a week ago. But when he saw Audrey's blue eyes looking up at him, he melted to a big puddle of daddy goo. Dammit, Emma was right. She had his eyes.
He knelt down and petted the puppy behind the ears. "Sure. But you are going to have to learn to take care of him because he isn't always going to be small."
Emma shook her head in disbelief. Clint had fallen for the Barton begging eyes. It was about time he got a taste of his own medicine. Besides they had agreed a long time ago, that when it came to pets those would be Clint's decisions.
"So what are you going to name him?" Emma asked, joining her husband and daughter on the floor.
Audrey put her finger under her chin like she was thinking. "Hmmm," she said. "Elvis!"
"Elvis?" Clint asked.
"Yup! I heard you and Uncle Thor talking about a guy named Elvis the other day and I thought it funny name."
"Ok Elvis it is then!"
"Really a puppy? You couldn't of gotten her like a gold fish or something smaller at first?" Emma said bitching at her brother as they sat in a near by park later that afternoon, watching Audrey and Elvis run around for a bit.
"She just seemed so hung up on wanting a puppy the other day. And I had to make up for missed birthdays." Tony said with a smile.
"You missed four. She has her fifth next month."
"Well then better get planning!"
"I can't wait for you and Pepper to have kids!" Emma said with an evil grin. "I have lots of time to prepare."
"Honestly, I don't like the sound of that."
"You shouldn't. But there is one thing that I give you credit for."
"What's that?"
"You did manage to buy everything that Elvis needs. Except it would be great if we didn't have to come all the way to the ground floor every time he had to go to the bathroom."
"Thought of that too. I'm installing a balcony to your apartment and putting in a small patch of grass that Elvis can use."
Emma leaned over and kissed her brother's cheek. "Whenever you and Pepper do have kids, you'll make a good dad."
"Mind telling her that?"
She laughed.
"Kitty pancakes for you," Emma said placing two kitty pancakes on Audrey's plate then turning back to the stove and make a huge stack for the rest of the Avengers who were just beginning to trickle into the kitchen the next morning.
At her feet, Elvis barked. "You'll get fed in a minute," she told the puppy.
"See daddy! Mommy doesn't burn them!" Audrey said pointing to her pancakes when Clint sat down next to her. He looked up at Emma and waited for an answer as to how she made kitty pancakes. She held up a kitty shaped cookie cutter.
"Cheater," he said with a smile.
She shrugged her shoulders and smiled as she handed him pancakes.
Within 15 minutes, everyone was down eating breakfast when the elevator doors opened and out stepped Phil Coulson.
"Coulson! What are you doing back so early?" Natasha asked.
"Making sure that you lot stay in check and out of trouble," he said handing Emma a copy of the Daily Bugle. The front page headline was a picture of her and Tony from the park the previous day with the headline: 'NEW GIRL FOR STARK? WHAT HAPPENED TO PEPPER POTTS?'
"What the hell is this garbage?" Emma asked throwing the paper on the table.
Everyone glanced at the headline. "Well I guess that settles it. I need to call a press conference," Tony said standing up.
"And what are you going to say, Mr. Stark?" Coulson asked.
"The truth. That the woman in this picture is my sister."
AN: I know that I didn't kill off Edith Barton like in the comic books, but I have something planned for her in a bit. Just a little tid bit for ya'll. So I hope that you enjoyed this chapter and please leave me feedback!
