Chapter 8: Where there's a will, there's a way
They'd given me a few hours to get myself together before my second trip to the tower. It provided a good opportunity to contemplate the situation I had found myself in. I knew that this was it, the last chance I would ever get. If I screwed this up I knew that eventually SHIELD would kill me, unless I was killed by another person first.
The problem was that I just couldn't see anyone else as my mother; in my mind, I only had one not two and that person was now dead. My 'mom' may have given birth to me, but she wasn't the one that taught me to read or stopped me from crying after a nightmare. In my mind, the only thing she gave me was life, my mother gave me everything else. I didn't have this same problem with my dad, I was pretty willing to give him the chance at being my new male parent, that other bastard could rot in hell for I care. As the SHIELD agents came to my cell to take me to the car, I knew I needed to come up with a solution fast – this just wasn't gonna work if I had to go around calling her 'mom'.
As we approached the tower I couldn't help but feel a stab of guilt going through my chest. Coulson was right, these people had wanted to help me and I'd just gone and thrown it in their faces. I could only hope that they would take me back again.
Mercifully, the tower was empty of Stark staff – this would be a bad time for me to run into strangers. I kept my head down when we arrived at the floor which turned out to be largely empty except for 2 people. One of them I was OK with calling Dad, the other? Well I was pretty sure I'd be sticking to Natasha for some time. I kept my head down as they came over to say hi, with my dad adding 'It's good to have you back'. I felt that stab of guilt in my chest again.
I was glad when they left me alone in my room and I realised that this was a good opportunity to get a good look at it. It had changed since I was last in here. Before, the walls were covered in pictures and photos that were all taken before I was kidnapped, a constant reminder of my unnatural upbringing. Before, they hadn't bothered with books or a TV or computer – it was a cruel way of trying to encourage me to leave my room. This time however, my shelves were full of books and they had even provided me with a laptop. Nearly all the pictures were gone except one of the 4 of us together playing at the beach. But they'd added another and to this day I have no idea of how they got it. Taking centre place on my bedside table was a picture of my mother, the woman that I missed with all of my heart.
They were keeping people away from our floor. It was the next morning and I was yet to leave my room but our floor was blissfully quiet. I knew the others were still in the tower and even Philip was here somewhere but he was being kept away too. For now it really was just the three of us.
I heard them leave the floor at some point during midmorning, so I decided that his was a good opportunity to take a look around. I didn't get very far in my quest, I saw the big ass TV on the wall and made a bee-line for it. I'd missed crappy daytime TV.
I was still there when my parents came back up-stairs. I really had to fight the urge to run back to safety, but I held my ground and gave them a small smile instead. They beamed back smiles in return but we didn't exchange any words – I liked that. It was pretty clear that they were taking my lead on this.
I felt confident enough to have dinner with them that evening; it was an odd experience as no words were exchanged at all, by anyone. Again, I felt more comfortable with the quiet. On the 4th day we were watching a film, it was 9pm. I turned to Dad and asked, 'Can I have a hot chocolate?'. I knew that I didn't need to ask permission to have one, it was just that I finally felt ready to talk to them.
Over the next few days, conversations between the 3 of us slowly began to grow. Although we would always avoid certain topics, I don't think any of us were ready to discuss those yet. After another week I was re-introduced to Phillip. It turned out that he loved, and I mean loved, to spar. Our bond was formed not through words, but through the never ending challenge of trying to beat each other up.
And this is how I was introduced to everyone else in the family; one at a time and only when I was ready despite the fact that this took 3 months to do! I would love to be able to say that the next 2 years flew by and was over before I knew it. But boredom is a terrible thing and over the next 2 years I lost count of the number of times I stood at the front doors of the Avengers tower, wanting nothing more than to take one more step forward, to the outside. I always ended up taking a step backwards instead.