NOTES: In which some things fall apart, and some things come together, and some things go unsaid, and some things are understood...
And Baby Makes Eight
- Part III -
Steve doesn't even realise where he's headed until he's in the room, looking at the monitor.
Some wit has stuck a label across the top of the screen since the last time Steve was here. It reads 'THE BABY CHANNEL'.
Another time, he might smile at it.
Not today.
"A word, Captain." At least she waited until they were out of earshot of the rest of the troops. "You do not challenge my authority on my turf among my people."
"Then don't blow up my friends!"
Her lips thinned. "Your friend survived a bullet in his mouth and a fall from the helicarrier at thirty thousand feet. He is classified as a walking natural disaster. So far as we can tell, the Hulk is indestructible, and because his existence relies on Dr. Banner, so, too, is Dr. Banner."
"And the men and women who were still in that facility when it was blown?" Steve demanded, his gut churning as he glanced back at the smoking ruin of what had been a research facility. "What about them?"
"They knew the risks working in the facility." Her expression was grim. "They played Russian roulette with alien space bugs and they lost."
Behind Steve, the door opens. "I thought I'd find you here."
Bruce comes to stand alongside Steve, his eyes also on the security feed.
"You okay?"
"Mostly singed and angry."
Steve gives him a look over. "You're holding it well."
Banner's smile is thin. "I'm still angry. The other guy isn't." Before Steve can questions such an extraordinary statement, he asks, "You?"
"I'm dealing."
They watch as Pippa toddles over and tries to climb into her mother's lap, turning to put her hands on the Lieutenant's cheeks so she can chirp something in the baby language she's developed in the last two months. A faint smile touches Maria's lips as she says something back to Pippa.
There's no sound on the video feed, but Steve can almost hear her voice - soft with a tenderness that defies all expectations of Lieutenant Hill and goes straight to the heart of a mother.
"She let those people die." Steve lets the words hang in the air. He needs to say it to someone and Bruce saw what happened. "She gave the order to detonate the facility. There were agents in there. People she knew. People who had kids like Pippa."
The agent in charge of the facility - Jerry Stone, a good man - had a daughter just about Pippa's age. Pippa gets Maria home safe and sound tonight; Stone's daughter will never see her father again.
"You're wondering how could she do that?"
"Yeah." In the daycare, the toddler tucks her head into her mom's neck, still chattering with the syllables that mean nothing in adult-speak. Something about the smile turns bitter, and then the Lieutenant closes her eyes and her lips move, sharp and crisp – an order.
The Baby Channel blanks out.
"What-?!"
"I'd say the Lieutenant wants privacy," Bruce says, but he doesn't move away from the now-blank feed. "As to what she did... She did it because someone had to make the hard call and she had lives depending on her. Expediency isn't heroic, Steve."
"Is that why the other guy isn't angry?"
"We're the Avengers, Steve. We're supposed to be heroes – we make the play and save the day. And spout bad poetry on the way." Bruce's smile is sardonic at the whimsical tail-end of his comment. "But someone has to make the choices and be damned for it."
"And it has to be her?"
"That's what her position entails."
Steve understands in his head. But it feels like she gutted him, and he doesn't know why. No, actually, he does. He thought she was different to Fury – that people weren't just numbers to be subtracted from the account, weren't just pieces to be bloodlessly played.
He should have known better.
They played Russian roulette with alien space bugs and lost.
How could he be so wrong?
"She turned off the video feed," Bruce says after a moment, stepping over to the next terminal. "She hasn't cut the recording. The carrier systems are set up so you can't eliminate any of the recordings without the appropriate authorisations. Which she certainly has, but which she can't initiate until she's at a secure terminal..."
A few taps of the keyboard, and the visual on the next screen over switches from a barely-populated corridor to the scene that vanished from the Baby Channel screen a minute ago.
Nothing much has changed. Lieutenant's eyes are still closed and her expression is still bleak and bitter. But something about the look on her face... Pippa's head snuggles into her mom's neck and a tiny hand comes up to pat her mom's jaw, unaware of the burdens adults must carry, only knowing that her mom needs comfort.
Steve looks away. It's not right to watch this. Agree or disagree with her actions, she deserves the privacy of her choices. "Turn it off."
Another keystroke and the screen goes back to a corridor. And Bruce tilts his head at Steve. "I wouldn't have done it. And neither would you. Maybe that's why we're Avengers and she's not."
He still feels eviscerated.
–
Clint looks up a little guiltily as the door opens, but it's just Thor, looking grim, although his expression softens when he sees Pippa.
"Lady Pippa."
"Dor!" She waves a block at him.
Clint waits until the door closes behind Thor. "How's Stark?"
"He is well in body. His spirit... That will take longer to heal." Thor sets Mjolnir down by the door and sits down on the carpet, having learned not to stand on dignity when it comes to Pippa's play spaces. "Rogers and Banner and Lieutenant Hill are with him now."
"Competition, comfort, and conflict." Clint watches Pippa bang coloured wooden blocks together and figures he's on babysitting duty a little longer. It could be worse. At least she's an actual baby. "I guess that's one way to do it."
"Will he recover?"
Clint hesitates before answering. It's private, but they're team, and Thor has a right to know the weaknesses in Stark. "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s initial psychological assessment of Tony Stark as a possible operative was that his emotional stability relied on three things: the Iron Man suit, Colonel Rhodes, and Pepper. Without them he crashes and burns. Fairly spectacularly."
"Not an encouraging assessment."
"No." Clint doesn't sugar coat it. Still... "Things have changed though. He has the Avengers now. And Pippa. That might make the difference."
As though sensing she's being spoken of, Pippa looks up, and throws her block. Hurls it, actually, overarm - just as Clint's been teaching her to do. It goes down rather than up, but it still goes pretty far. For a one year old.
"An excellent throw, Lady Pippa," Thor says approvingly. "Has Clint been teaching you?"
Clint shrugs as Pippa beams. "It's never too young to start working on the hand-eye co-ordination." He glances around, as though expecting to find Maria standing there. "Just don't tell Maria I said that."
–
When Maria walks out into the flight deck and finds the Avengers' Quinjet waiting, she's tempted to turn on her heel and walk right back into the helicarrier.
What stops her is the person waiting for her inside.
"Lieutenant Hill."
"Ms. Potts." Of all the people Maria expected to see at this moment, Pepper Potts is very far down on the list. "You're here to escort me to the Tower?"
"I'm not back with Tony, if that's what you're asking."
"I never thought you were." Maria doesn't know the reasons behind Pepper's decision to break up with Tony Stark, and doesn't care. She's sorry for Stark, but she thinks that Pepper was wise to get out, too.
Pippa is set down so Maria can pull out the baby chair that's stored in the locker under 'Pippa's seat'. Meanwhile, her daughter toddles over to Pepper and chatters a greeting at her in the language she's developed that occasionally bears a passing resemblance to English.
It takes them a few minutes to strap Pippa in the baby chair. She's done this flight enough that she knows what's coming - the pressure changes in her ears, the discomfort. She doesn't like it at all, but she's learned that there's something at the end - home and dinner and toys to play with.
Tonight, there's going to be dinner and toys - both the plastic and the living kind - but no home. Their home - such as it was - is now a pile of rubble in the neighbourhood, thanks to the latest attack on the city.
Maria's plan was to be dropped off upstate at her stepmom's. It was out of her way, and would have turned her stomach to stay under that roof again - even if the cause of those memories was dead these last two years - but she would have done it for Pippa. To have somewhere to call home, even if it was only temporary.
She should have expected Stark's interference.
But Pepper Potts? That portends something more than merely a trip to Avengers Tower.
Maria waits to ask until they're up in the air and Pippa's whimpers have changed to talking to herself as she munches on the small apple Maria's given her. Maria doesn't cut up the apple for her daughter. Eating it whole requires more chewing, yes, but it's also good fibre. "Why are you here?"
Pepper folds her hands in her lap and looks her in the eye. "Because Tony's made Pippa his legal heir."
The words don't register for a second. When they do, Maria isn't sure she's heard right. "What?"
"In the event of death or mental incapacity, Anthony Stark's share of interest in Stark Industries, Stark Technologies - including the Iron Man suit, and any technology related to the Avengers Initiative, as well as the bulk of his personal estate, falls to one Philippa Carmelita Hill, to be administered jointly by Pepper Potts, Maria Hill, James Rhodes, and the founding members of the Avengers until she comes of age."
She hears the words but they mean...things that Maria can't encompass in her present state of mind or body. Anger and disbelief buzz in her chest. Is this a hoax? A joke? Why would Pepper put this on her now when everything else is in flux? What possessed Stark do such a thing?
"Why?"
"I gave up asking 'why' when it came to Tony many years ago."
"You know him better than anyone on or off the planet. Make an educated guess."
The answer is a while in coming, as Pepper seems to fight an internal war with herself. Now that she's had a minute to process the news, Maria has her own suspicions as to why Stark has done this. Working with the Avengers has given her new perspective on Stark's mindset and motivations, but she wants to hear Pepper's opinion. And she's not above collecting whatever information Pepper betrays during the explanation.
"Materially, Tony has nearly everything a person can want in this world. Physically, his life is dependent on the ARC reactor and the range of his skills are dependent on the Iron Man prosthetic. Emotionally..." Pepper meets Maria's gaze straight on, cool and composed. "Psychologically and emotionally, Tony struggles. He anchors himself with his work and with the people closest to him - initially Rhodey, myself, and Happy, but now the Avengers, too - particularly Bruce and Steve."
"And my daughter."
"And Pippa." Pepper smiles briefly over at Pippa, who has viciously ringbarked the peel off the apple and is now gnawing at the softer flesh inside. "Tony likes giving things to the people he cares about."
Stark Industries to Pepper. Stark Tower to the Avengers.
And now every pie he has a finger in to Pippa.
"The short of the matter is that your daughter is one of the people he cares about, and he wants to leave her something."
"And he couldn't just go for a college education fund?"
But Maria understands. Loki was right: the Avengers are lost creatures - all of them. They're good people, but they've all been broken and remade - from Tony Stark to Steve Rogers. And Stark is more broken than most. He's known for his philanthropy, charm, and intelligence, but beneath that lies a need to give to people who will accept it - not as charity, just as a gift. The best that Stark has to give of himself - the only thing that he feels he's truly worthy of giving.
"This is not the life I want for her," she says, looking down at the dark little head and the intent little face. "I don't want her thinking this is normal."
"Her mom goes to work on a flying warship," Pepper points out, rather more gently than Maria expects coming from the woman who was, for a while, Tony Stark's fiancée. "She gets sung lullabies by the Hulk, and does crayon drawings with Captain America. Exactly which part of her life is normal?"
Maria doesn't answer, because the answer she can feel bubbling inside her is not one she's going to say to Pepper Potts.
She knows the psychology of Tony Stark. What disturbs her is the psychology of her own head.
The truth is that Maria has always anticipated rejection.
Accustoming herself to being the unwanted one has been a lifelong effort; the lingering belief that no matter who takes her on, ultimately she'll only ever be cast off again.
She petitioned for the daycare on the helicarrier because she knew what happened to the women who left S.H.I.E.L.D. to have babies. The only way to work it, she saw, was to integrate her daughter into the helicarrier from day one. To put it right there in everyone's faces; to draw people into the idea that a mother could also be a fighter, a warrior, ruthless, cold if she had to be, tender when her child needed her.
To some degree, it's worked. But Maria knows the gossip, knows the murmurs and the rumours. She knows what's expected of her as a mother and what's expected of her as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and since she's perfect at neither, there are some who would say she's failed at both.
Do you even have a heart?
Maria shuts those words away; their poison has seeped in over months, but she can forget about it most of the time.
She's always made choices she would rather not have made. She knows that a woman in her position is easily dismissed or disdained. She knows that her daughter is cute and adorable now but won't always be.
When the Avengers first started taking an interest in Pippa, Maria made herself think of it as a phase. Someday, she imagined, the Avengers would get tired of her daughter. Perhaps when Pippa started to make her own decisions and go her own way, no longer cute and adorable. When Pippa became an individual and not merely a little live doll.
Maria has always known the truth of the world: that a woman is only considered 'good' or 'worthy' as long as she lets herself be what others expect her to be. Break out of that role and the world judges a woman half as soon and twice as harshly while rejecting her as 'worthy'.
The world giveth and the world taketh away. As it has been, so it shall be.
It's less about the definition of 'normal' and more about Maria protecting her daughter from that pain and disappointment of rejection as long as possible and teaching her to rely on herself - and Maria when she needs to.
She could hate Stark for doing this to her - to her daughter, to the independence she's trying to teach Pippa: trust yourself, don't rely on others, don't lean on others because they won't be there for you when you need them. Stark is nothing if not capricious. What happens when he decides he doesn't want Pippa to be his heir anymore? What if he fathers a child on some woman and then wants to change his will?
Oh, God, what kind of shitstorm is Maria going to have to ride out when it comes out that Stark's willed his estate to her daughter? She and Pippa have stayed well out of the gossip mags that have sprung up about the Avengers - nobody's interested in a military liaison - but this will propel them firmly into the limelight.
"I think," Pepper says quietly, "that you might have to accept that Pippa's life is not going to be normal any more than yours is."
Maria lets the issue stand at the definition of 'normal'. Explaining otherwise would take too much time.
There's no getting around it, and trying to argue with Stark is like trying to make the sun come up in the west. But if Stark is going to change Pippa's life, Maria's going to take out insurance against the day he changes his mind.
"I want a trust fund for Pippa," she says bluntly. "Separate to whatever she gets from the will. In her name, administered by myself or my executors, to be hers when she's eighteen. Five million dollars."
"Only five?
"I wouldn't want to be greedy, even on Pippa's behalf."
"He won't change his mind, you know. Or, if he does, there'll be a provision for her."
"Maybe." Maria would rather not take that risk, and Pepper sighs.
"Very well. I'll send you the paperwork for the account, and have the lawyers send you the details of the will. Have your lawyers read it through and get back to me on any points they have. It's made and witnessed and fairly straightforward, but you might want some explanation on some of the clauses."
They're coming up to Avengers Tower now, and Pippa's nearly finished her apple. Maria takes the core away from her, shushes the tears, and waits for landing.
Tonight she and Pippa will stay in the nursery at Avengers Tower. Pippa will bask in the attention from the guys - Natasha is off working a S.H.I.E.L.D. operation down in New Zealand - leaving Maria the time to take stock and work out what they have now and what they need to go forward.
And just what this bequest from Stark really means for them.
And later tonight, after the Avengers have fussed, and JARVIS has sung Pippa to sleep, when her daughter's in her cot, dreaming the dreams of the young and oblivious, Maria will stand by the cot and let the tenderness and terror take her.
Because the truth is that Maria wanted the daycare for herself - for the convenience of her life and her work. But today, that daycare saved her daughter's life.
–
Upon her return from the Bay of Islands, Natasha opens the door to Maria and Pippa's suite and finds the Hulk playing horsie while a little girl giggles madly atop his neck, her fingers clenched in his hair.
That evening on her way up to Clint's quarters, she finds Bruce already in the elevator. "Pippa's newest game?"
"Uh, yes." He goes bright pink, which is somewhat better than green. "She's been watching the My Little Pony cartoons and figured that I would oblige her."
"Hulk Pony?"
"Mention it to Stark and I will have to kill you."
–
The wind off the city streets portends the rain that will fall later tonight. Thor can smell it on the air.
He glances back as the door of the balcony opens and Stark emerges with a glass in one hand and a tankard in the other. "I'm exhausted. I don't know how Hill does it every night."
"With a will of iron and a mother's love," Thor says, accepting the tankard. Good strong mead - the best of Earth's brewings, although lacking the kick of the Asgardian meads. "She is busy tonight?"
"Checking out apartments. I told her she didn't need to, but she insisted..."
"She is still looking for somewhere else to live?"
"There's a big shortage of good housing in New York right now."
Thor regards his friend. "And you would have nothing to do with that?"
"It's not my fault her apartment building was one of the ones that got levelled in the attack."
"But you are not making it easier for her to find an alternative." Thor knows Tony Stark - understands his cunning and his cleverness. In many things, Stark is much like Loki and yet, at the same time, so unlike in Stark's acceptance and acknowledgement of his weaknesses, in his faults and failings, in the need that drives him to give to those he sees as his to protect and love. A complicated man, but a good one.
In Tony Stark, Thor sees what his brother might have been.
"She's got a perfectly good set of apartments in the Tower. Everything Pippa could want or need. Babysitters on call. People who care about Pippa."
"People who try to manage her life?"
"She needs managing." Stark sounds almost savage in his statement. "Her family's upstate, and a day care centre on the helicarrier isn't any place for a child to grow up!"
"And the Tower is?" Thor holds up his hand as Stark frowns. "I understand your reasons, my brother, but Lieutenant Hill is not one who will submit to being meekly herded."
"I'm not herding her," Stark insists. "I'm just...stacking the deck."
"I doubt Maria appreciates the difference."
Thor looks inside to where Steve lies on the couch, Pippa lying on top of him, clutching a worn and shabby velveteen giraffe in her sleep. As they watch, his hand rises to brush at the tuft of hair at the back of her head that refuses to sit flat.
"Steve is good with her."
A harsh bark of something that mixes laughter and bitterness together. "Sometimes I wonder if there's anything he isn't good at. Fighting. Leading. Parenting. Did you know that he broke up with the Carter agent - the sexy blonde one - and apparently they're not only still civil, but friendly. I can't even get Pepper to talk to me on email anymore."
Thor thinks it wisest not to say anything regarding Stark's failed relationship with Lady Pepper. There are places that even Asgardian gods should fear to tread.
As he stares out into the street and the night and the wind, he thinks of the other bits and pieces he has observed of Steve Rogers, of the conversation he had with Bruce when he last visited the good doctor in Mumbai. And he remains silent on that front, too. It's not that he doesn't trust Tony; there are things which are private and should remain so.
I'm not even sure; Bruce admitted over a pot of tea. It's just a suspicion I have. And I shouldn't be gossiping.
Sometimes it helps to have a listening ear.
"Lucy, I'm home!"
Thor turns at Stark's extraordinary pronouncement in time to see Lieutenant Hill pause at the top of the stairs down to the sunken lounge area where toys and books are scattered all around the room, left where they were tired of by Pippa and not tidied up.
Inside, Steve looks up and his lips move in a question that causes Lieutenant Hill to frown and stiffen.
"Well, well, well," murmurs Stark after a moment. "Here's something interesting. JARVIS, pipe the conversation out here, please."
"You would eavesdrop-?"
Stark lifts a finger to indicate silence, and Thor, his curiosity piqued, falls quiet in time to hear the Lieutenant speak.
"-have my daughter get used to this life."
"She's Stark's legal heir," Steve replies, his hand hovering over the still-sleeping Pippa's head. "Better to get her used to this life now. And you're running yourself ragged trying to find somewhere to live when you've got an apartment right here."
"Your consideration for my state of mind is touching, Rogers, particularly in light of your belief that I lack a heart."
"It was wrong of me to say that." The words are bleak and full of regret. "I shouldn't have let a professional disagreement become personal."
"And yet, strangely, you did." The lieutenant doesn't pull her punches, and Thor sees this one strike at the heart of Rogers and who he is - that he is a good man and does the right thing. It is a bold, painful attack, and he admires it, even as it angers him that she would lash out at Steve thus. But Maria is not finished. "I do my job, Captain. I don't need your judgement on the decisions I make in my line of work. Especially when you have no idea of the cost of those choices."
"I'm sorry. I was wrong."
"Yes." The word hangs in the air, stark and plain. "May I have my daughter back so I can get her to bed?"
It's a delicate transfer, the sleeping body of a child from the arms of one adult to another, made more difficult by the awkwardness between the two. But Steve doesn't step away once Pippa is in her mother's arms, her head pillowed on Maria's shoulder. Her eyes lift to his, her expression wary. "What?"
"I don't understand you. If you think that's what I think of you, why do you even let me near your daughter?"
Something twitches across the Lieutenant's face as she looks up at Steve. "Because I trust that the man who looks after my daughter knows better than to bitch about her mom in her hearing."
"And when I'm not in her hearing?"
"It's a free world. You're allowed your own opinion."
"Is that why you won't live here in the Tower?"
She hesitates. It's a tiny moment of uncertainty, but Thor sees it before her mouth draws down at the corners. "Don't flatter yourself, Rogers."
"I may not have Barton's sight, but I can see what's right in front of me," Steve retorts. "And I may not be as clever as Banner, but I can work things out when they're shoved in my face."
There's a moment when something cold passes across her face, like a veil drawn down, leaving her remote and distant. She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and turns her cheek so it's resting against Pippa's head.
"When I was sixteen," she says in a distant, remote voice, "I walked out of my father's house. I swore I would never again sleep under a roof where someone hated me."
"I don't hate you." The words are torn from Steve, like a confession. "I think that's the problem."
"Then you need to deal with it, Captain."
"I have," Steve blurts. Then, quieter, his eyes fixed on her face, "I am."
The silence stretches, and after a moment, Lieutenant Hill nods.
"I don't plan to take Pippa away - not completely. But I don't want her to grow up like this - thinking this is going to be her life forever. Thinking this is normal."
Steve manages a faint smile. "Normal is overrated."
"Yes, but you would say that, wouldn't you?" Maria sighs and steps away. "Good-night, Captain."
"Good night, Lieutenant."
He watches her go, but she doesn't look back.
"Well, well, well," murmurs Stark, still watching, his expression faintly arrested. He makes for the door and Thor starts to intercept him, reluctant to reveal they overheard the conversation, only the doors have already slid back and Steve has turned.
He flushes bright as he realises he had an audience. "Trust you to eavesdrop, Stark!"
"Oh, you knew we were there," Tony retorts. "Even if you forgot it in the rush of your little moment with Hill. Trust you to fall for a woman who doesn't even like what you are!"
Steve's expression goes stiff. "Better one who doesn't like what I am, than one who doesn't like who I am!"
"Don't you dare bring Pepper into this-"
"That is enough!" Thor intervenes before the two men can launch into full argument. They know each other too well, the dark mirror and the bright, and at this moment - wounded and at bay - their barbs would rend too-tender hearts beyond repairing. They cannot afford this - not as men, not as friends, not as colleagues. Not all cruelties can be forgiven and this slices too close to the heart to be easily mended.
"We did not mean to intrude," Thor tells Steve and that is honest enough. "But what concerns you and Lieutenant Hill concerns us all as Avengers - and as people who are concerned for Lady Pippa's wellbeing."
"And let's translate that from long-winded Asgardian," says Tony, brusque and brisk. "Is this going to complicate things?"
"No," Steve says, almost contemptuous as he walks to the fire stairs. "It won't."
This time, at least, Stark waits until the door swings shut. Then he turns to Thor. "You know, we've really got to ease back on the denial around here."
–
Nick looks up as Maria walks into his office and only indicates with a tap of his finger that she should clean the mashed banana off her uniform. With a wince, she pulls a handkerchief from her pocket and removes the food.
He turns the tablet so she can see the form. "Change of address notification?"
"That would be correct, sir."
"You're sure about this?"
"If you're asking if I like it, the answer's no. If you're asking if I get a choice about it..." Her expression says quite plainly that she resents Stark's interference in her daughter's life.
"There are other options." He wasn't going to suggest them, because they're S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouses, for personnel and agents who need somewhere quiet. But if Stark is pressuring her...
"I've had time to think about it, sir. If Stark is serious, then she'll have to learn to deal with him, the Avengers, and everything that comes with it. If things turn out otherwise... I've got insurance in place."
There's more. There's always more with a woman like Hill. Nick waits, wondering if she's willing to trust him with it. He wouldn't blame her if she didn't. If he's allowed his secrets, so is Hill.
"And," she says after a moment, "I may have to learn to trust that they're not as emotionally flaky as I like to think they are."
tbc