When 'Team' Means A Safe Space
by JalendaviLady
Characters: Phil Coulson, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Jarvis, Pepper Potts, Nick Fury
Summary: Natasha gets reassigned while recovering from a mission and the reason why shocks the rest of the Avengers. And that's only the start. Sequel to "Returning The Favor".
WARNINGS: Rape/Non-con References, Childhood Sexual Abuse References, Rape Aftermath, Underage Prostitution References
Chapter 4
JARVIS only dimmed the lights slightly when the movie was over, and Phil could see by the looks on people's faces that no one but he and Natasha had been aware of what had happened during the final approach to the Emerald City.
Steve had fallen asleep using Phil as a support to stay upright.
"Oh, now that's priceless," Clint joked.
"When did he drop off?" Pepper asked.
"Sometime soon after Bruce started singing "It's Not Easy being Green". Which needs to happen at the next Division talent show."
"They wouldn't think it was funny, Natasha."
"So?" Tony laughed. "We would."
"And you know what also wouldn't be funny?" Bruce continued.
Tony turned towards him. "What?"
"The looks on their faces when the other guy reacts to the booing."
No one could dispute that.
Phil moved the shoulder Steve was leaning on. "You fell asleep during the movie," he told Steve as he blinked sleepily. "The credits ended a few minutes ago."
"Thanks," he yawned as he sat up.
Everyone headed toward the elevator, cleaning up after themselves as they went.
Everyone but Phil and Tony and Steve, that was.
"So," Tony asked, leaning forward, "since we've established what Phil's thoughts on the subject are..."
"What do I think of what happened to me?"
A quick nod.
"I hate bullies, as much as I hate anything. They were just a different kind of bully with a different idea of how to demean people weaker than they were. It's just another way of making someone scream in terror. It was different, but..." He seemed to be searching for words.
"It's a matter of scale? Larger moral failing, bigger scars on the victim, but the blame falls the same way?" Tony offered.
"Different moral failing, different scars," Steve quickly amended. "I also count HYDRA and the Nazis as bullies."
Tony gave a quick nod. "Right. Suppose that's where Dad got that from, too."
"So, why are you two doing this?"
"Steve, whatever support structure you may have pieced together back then is gone now. Which means you need a new one, now," Phil explained. "We're just making sure you never bought into the more damaging ways of mentally explaining..."
"We're making sure you don't think any of it was your fault. Which, technically, you told us before the movie. But you never told us what you think, only what you don't agree with."
"I was a... a victim because I was small and slow and easy to catch even if I'd run instead of standing and fighting. None of which was my fault. And standing and fighting is not a bad thing."
The multiple attempts at enlisting, even when he'd been stamped as 4F over and over again.
It wasn't just a matter of trying to get into the Army, of being told he was better suited to filling a job someone built for the military needed to leave behind.
It was personal. He thinks it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been a 4F.
But Phil didn't say anything about that.
"You're right," is what he did say. "None of it was your fault."
Tony must have picked up on it too, because he added, "And it wouldn't have been even if they'd picked you for any other reason. Even if you'd been strong back then. Even if you'd been strong and them weak but extremely lucky. Got that, Capsicle?"
Phil felt his jaw flexing. "What did you just call him?" he managed to demand in a wavering voice.
Steve smiled a bit uncertainly, as if he didn't quite believe. "Right... Tin Man."
Tony smirked at him before holding up a finger. "Only in private. And I'd advise all of us against any impulse to call the other guy The Jolly Green Giant."
"You... you... you..."
"Relax, Phil,"" Steve told him. "Why do you think he's keeping the hole Loki left behind?"
"I thought it was a war trophy."
"That too. And I'm hoping Hulk will see it as that. A memento of the day we all smashed together for the first time." Tony sniffed theatrically.
"Here's hoping it's a long wait for the second time." Steve yawned.
Phil took the glass and plate from him. "We'll clean up."
When Steve was gone and the room cleaned up as well as it needed to be for the moment, they turned to each other and asked, "You saw it too?"
"He's young enough, isn't he?" Tony said after they shared a very nervous laugh.
"To have been one of ours, you mean?"
"Or Bruce's - he's older than he seems, I've noticed the fact he took so long to enter the research community covers it up for a lot of people. And not by a teenage error, either. I've got prep school classmates with children that old. They're mostly trophy wives, but still."
"And yet we're the generation raised on 'Eat up, Captain America would always finish his peas'."
A grin. A rather predatory grin. "Has anyone bothered telling him about that yet, I wonder?"
"I don't think so."
Tony was silent for a long time. "Damn. That young and alone... I had people around who I knew when my parents were killed."
"Steve's got us."
"And only us."
"Natasha's in the same boat."
"Yeah, but she's used to it. She used to it just being you and Clint she could depend on, and now she's got all of us, including Steve's psychological urges to protect bullied kids. He's the guy everyone here except Natasha was raised to see in a protective role. And yes, she's the one with the psychology training that might help him, but..."
"He's not going to ask."
"Exactly. And he's still not telling us everything."
Phil nodded. "I see you picked up on the stress of how weak he was before the serum."
"Yeah. But there's something else. Did anything change in his life when he turned 18 beyond becoming an adult?"
"Graduation from high school, I'd imagine."
"But he didn't say it was classmates, only people around his own age. There isn't a reason for it to have stopped until Erskine stuck the serum in him, and that was in his mid-twenties. Three years ago or less, by his own experience of time. It didn't stop."
Phil tried to get his mind around the idea of Captain America willfully lying by omission.
"He told us what he needed to in order to explain what he asked JARVIS to do and for us to understand that he's not in a toxic headspace about it. And to keep us from triggering him without realizing it. But the idea that this doesn't happen to men, just women and boys? He's less than a year removed from living in the middle of 1940s gender framing, and no one realized he needed that training in how laws and societal views have changed, only 'here's how not to get sued for harassment or gender discrimination'. Because Captain America would never do that." Tony stretched. "I'll have to slip him some books, find something that points that out without making the fact we know blatantly apparent."
Phil yawned.
"I'll be glad if we have a month when nothing more happens."
"Me too."
"Thor has got to be having a better time than this."
"We don't know how the Asgardian justice system works. He didn't give us any idea of when Loki might be sentenced."
"At least that's something he's anticipating. I don't like all these surprises out of nowhere."
As if the universe had heard Tony's statement, a helicopter appeared in the distance and drew nearer, the SHIELD logo clearly visible.
Phil stared at him. "Do we need to have a hardwood table up here just for superstitious knocking?"
"I'll have Pepper start looking through furniture catalogs tomorrow."
It came to a hover on the balcony outside.
Nick Fury stepped out of the door and ran over. "Get Steve."
"What's..." Phil started to ask.
"Peggy's alive. Get Steve up here. Faster the better. We're got a plane standing by."
Tony sprinted for the elevator. "Get my briefcase! It's under the bar!" he called over his shoulder.
Phil dashed over and pulled the briefcase suit out and over to the helicopter.
"I guess Stark's inviting himself along, sir," he reported to Fury as he passed it over.
"Good."
The rotors were not slowing down and Fury was already stepping back onto the helicopter before Steve and Tony had even made it out of the elevator, Steve still in the Army shirt and black drawstring pants he slept in.
The pieces fit into places as they left, what it all must mean, what no one was saying because it was too horrible to admit just what was waiting at the end of the midnight flight.
Because Margaret Carter was pushing 100 or already past it, and who but Fury knew just what had brought her continued existence into SHIELD's awareness so suddenly.
"God."
Author's Note: There will be a sequel. It just may take me a little while because I'm working on a book proposal at the moment.