Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Okay after this the story will be picking up, I promise! Just got to get this last bit through.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~hometown glory~

~chapter 4~

"Thank you all for being willing to put up with my latest bout of insanity at eight in the morning," Tony said.

Steve's eyes were soft. "You're not insane, Tony."

"The jury is still out on that one," Natasha deadpanned, but it was a joke. She interlocked her fingers. "What do you got for us?"

They and Maria were sitting in one of the conference rooms at the Tower. None of the other Avengers were present. Tony had thought about involving Sam and Rhodey, but he wanted to play things close to the chest right now.

And of course, he didn't want to involve Wanda or Vision in this when he didn't exactly have a clear picture of what was going on yet.

He thought they would probably let Clint in on the loop when he came back from Iowa, but for now he was being left out as well. They would see how much they found out between now and then if he was the only one who would be told when he came back, or if they were going to make it an affair for all of the (remaining) Avengers.

Anyways.

"I agree with Nat; you might not be so sure by the time I get through with this," Tony warned his fiancé. "It all started at that lecture I gave for Scott Varela yesterday."

Steve already knew this, but Natasha and Maria didn't. Maria's eyebrows furrowed. "How so?"

"There was this kid in the back," he admitted. "An actual kid, no older than fourteen. 'Tried to leave even before I'd started giving the lecture."

"And your ego couldn't take this, a kid as brilliant as you were not wanting to listen to you."

"Shut up," Tony ribbed at Natasha's teasing. "But you're right about one thing: she's smart. Way smarter than any of the other students in the room. I asked Scott afterwards who she was, but he couldn't find her in his roster. Turns out, she's not a student of Columbia."

Both Maria and Natasha sat up a little straighter, though the latter could never really sit in a chair like a normal person: her heels were resting on the tabletop. They could already tell where this was going.

"I asked FRIDAY to do some more research. Not exactly ethical, I know," Tony acknowledged. He glanced over at Steve and saw that the super soldier was equal parts mortified and surprised. He knew better than to expect Tony to do anything less. "But she found out that the girl is homeless, and not only that, but there's absolutely nothing on her. It's like she doesn't exist."

He opened the folder that he had in front of him, taking out the photographs so that they all could look at them. Maria frowned as she pulled one of the pictures towards herself; obviously, she didn't like how young the girl was.

But:

"There's reasons why both of those things could be the case," she said.

"Right," he acknowledged. "But there's one more thing. FRI, will you do the honors?"

Wordlessly, his AI activated the holo-screen in the room and started playing the video. It had been recorded on one of the many surveillance cameras in the city and depicted an alleyway with a dumpster. They watched as the girl walked into it, a bag slung over her shoulders and her entire form practically shaking, tears trailing down her cheeks, and then –

BAM!

"She's enhanced," Steve whispered, horrified.

Indeed, she was, given the hole that she'd punched into the metal of the dumpster with a scream of rage. The girl paused as soon as she realized what she'd done. Her eyes widened, her face became pale. Her left hand was bleeding from where the metal had cut into it.

Stepping back, she turned around and fled.

The date on the video was from ten months ago.

It'd been late at night, too, to make things worse.

"Is there any other video footage of her using her powers?" Maria asked.

Tony shook his head. "No, at least none that's still out there. The only reason why this was saved was because of the automated feature of saving the footage within ten blocks of a murder of interest until the case is closed." Such a feature wasn't typical for most murders, he wanted to be clear on that. Even in a post-Chitauri Invasion and Accords world, civil liberties had to be maintained.

"Which murder?" Natasha questioned.

"One of the Punisher ones."

"Ah." She pretended to inspect her nails. "I wish them luck in closing that case, then."

"Interestingly enough, though, there was another murder in that vicinity that night," Tony said. "The victim was a fifty-four-year-old man named Ben Parker. He was a journalist. 'Died from a bullet to the heart. They haven't found his murderer, either."

None of them really knew what to make of that information – for all they knew, it wasn't even relevant – so they stuck to what was definitively at hand. "Is she a mutant?" Maria asked.

It wasn't an unfair question to make. While the general public was not aware of the existence of mutants yet, Nick Fury, Maria, and the Avengers were, and thank God they'd made sure not to put evidence of their existence in the SHIELD files. Tony could only imagine what people would've done if they'd found out that some people had powers from birth because of a special gene.

Things were already bad enough for Wanda because of her telepathy; people didn't like others having such an advantage over them.

"I don't think so," he replied. "If she was, wouldn't Professor Xavier have already taken her in?"

Maria didn't have a good answer to that.

"What do you want us to do, Tony?" Natasha piped up. Always thinking two steps ahead, that one. It was why she'd been such a good personal assistant, back when she'd been undercover to spy on him. Her eyes were sharp. "You're planning something."

"I am, but I don't exactly know what the plan is," he admitted, running a hand over his face. "We can't just keep on letting her fend for herself."

"Obviously not," Natasha agreed. "But we can't just place her in foster care once we get her off the streets. And we don't know what all she's been through."

Steve shifted in his seat. "What are you suggesting, Nat?"

"Nothing that your fiancé hasn't already thought about."

Sometimes he hated how good she was at calling him out on his bullshit.

"For now, I just want to get a sense of what to do next," Tony said placatingly. "Baby steps, you know. But in order to do that, we need to get a better sense of what she's up to than just what surveillance camera footage offers."

"You want us to spy on her."

Tony winced. "Yes."

The mortification returned to Steve's face.

Natasha crossed her arms. "I'll do it," she said, jutting her chin forwards. "Where does she usually go on days like today?"

He blinked. "You're going to go out and spy on her today?"

She shrugged. "I've got nothing better to do today than to train with Sam, and I can tell that this is important to you. Besides, I don't like the idea of an enhanced, teenaged girl living on the streets any more than you do."

...Point.

"FRIDAY was able to pick up a pattern. At least once a week or every week and a half, she goes to this bodega shop in Forest Hills, Queens," he said. "Delmar's Deli and Grocery. Usually she goes there in the late afternoon. And it has been about a week since her last visit."

Natasha nodded. "If not today, she'll probably be there within the next few days, then."

"I'll do some research myself," Maria said. "See if there's any chatter about her or something that FRIDAY didn't pick up on."

While it was unlikely, he knew that his AI wasn't perfect.

"Thank you," Tony responded.

Since they didn't really have much more to talk about after that, the meeting was swiftly called to an end.

...Which brought him to the next difficult part he knew he'd have to face.

"What was that about, Tony?" Steve asked him after Maria and Natasha had left.

Tony didn't look at him. "As we already went over, dear, an enhanced girl shouldn't have to be living on the – "

"Not that," Steve cut over him. "I very much agree with that. I was referring to what Natasha said about what you've already thought of and your reaction to it."

The super soldier's arms wrapped around him from behind, pulling him into an embrace. His skin was warm, and comforting; Tony would swear sometimes the other man was a bona fide space heater, just what he'd needed after Afghanistan had wrecked his circulation. And of course, he was so many other things, too.

Observant was one of them, even though he wasn't nearly as trained at it as the spies were and as Tony had been forced to from a young age.

He exhaled loudly. "I mean, she hit the nail on the head, didn't she? The kid's going to need a place to stay 'cause foster care isn't going to cover it. I thought about asking Clint and Laura if they would be willing to take her in – "

"And I'm sure they would be," Steve agreed.

"But that might not be fair to her. Depending on how long she's been on her own, and what's happened to her while she's been on her own, a typical family setting might not be conducive to her needs."

He'd thought about it a lot last night, going over all the pros and cons of each route in his head.

"And there's her health to consider, too," he pressed on. "Poor girl in the recent footage looks like she'd weigh less than a paper bag sopping wet. She's definitely not getting enough to eat, probably because of an increased metabolism."

Steve was silent for a few moments.

Then:

"Are you suggesting that we take her in?" Steve asked softly.

"I've thought about it," Tony hedged.

They'd talked about kids before. Both of them liked kids, their mutual choice to not have any didn't stem from that. It was because the life of superheroes wasn't a good environment to raise children in, when there would always be a concern that one or both of them wouldn't be coming home. And it wasn't like any adoption agency would be approving of them, anyways, because biological children were out of the picture.

Tony didn't want to pass on the genes for addiction and mental illness that he'd inherited. Nor did Steve want to pass on any of the genetics that had contributed to his life before the serum. True, the serum had probably fixed everything. He still didn't want to take that risk.

But it was different with this kid. She didn't really have another good place to go, and she was enhanced.

"Are you sure staying here would be fair to her, though?" his fiancé returned. "Living here in the Tower...people are going to want to know who she is. She'll be like Wanda, getting the publicity even though she doesn't want it."

"I know, that's why I'm not set on it." He groaned, frustrated. "I just want her to have a better hand than what she's been dealt, is that such a bad thing?"

"No," Steve said. He let go of Tony enough that he could turn him around, so they were face-to-face. There was so much love in his blue eyes, Tony almost couldn't take it. What had he ever done to deserve the super soldier? "I think she does remind you of yourself – " here, Tony scoffed, but he wouldn't deny it " – but that's not such a bad thing. None of this is. You're right; she does deserve better."

Tony sighed with relief. His lips twitched. "And if we do decide to keep her?"

"We'll figure it out," Steve replied optimistically. "We always have."

(Tony wasn't sure if everything with Ultron could be classified as "figuring it out," but he wasn't going to press it. There was no point in beating that dead horse again.)

He spent the rest of the day waiting for Natasha to go out on her reconnaissance mission for the kid, and then for her to come back. Some of it was spent checking in on the R&D Department, making sure that no disasters were happening. Some of it was spent in his own lab. Some of it was also spent training with Sam in the gym, because as he put it, "I don't know what Nat's doing for you and I don't really care, but since you made her otherwise occupied today, you owe me."

Sparring without the suit on was a necessity for him, because as much as he hated to admit it, the suit couldn't always protect him. Somebody could kidnap him (again) when he wasn't wearing it or his repulsers or take him out of it after they'd knocked him out on the field. He was no Cap or Sam, but he wasn't bad at it, either, if he did say so himself.

The training/sparring was nice. It was a decent distraction.

But yeah, his thoughts never strayed far from what Natasha was doing and what the kid might have been doing.

Natasha hadn't come back by the time that they had dinner around six, nor had she sent him any updates, but that wasn't so unusual. Neither she nor Clint were exactly good with updates, too used to not being asked questions by their former handler (Fury).

The remainder of them got takeout again, as they always did. It was Japanese this time, with a mixture of hot and cold dishes. Wanda made a face when she sat down at the table at Natasha's absence, but she didn't comment where she was. They set aside her usual order, which was a spicy beef teriyaki so hot that even Sam had whistled at, a spicy tuna roll, and an order of steamed shrimp dumplings. Tony would have said it was a "just her" thing, except from the way she'd spoken about her time in Ohio with her somewhat-adoptive family, it seemed to be a trait common to those who were raised in the Red Room. He didn't know why.

That digression aside, it wasn't until Sam, Wanda, Maria, and Rhodey had left the communal floor that the Black Widow returned. She sauntered out of the elevator, looking tired but otherwise no worse for wear.

Still, Tony did not like the expression on her face.

He really, really did not like it.

"How did it go?" he asked, concern rising up within him.

"Let me eat first," Natasha deflected. "I'm starving."

...Shit.

That did not sound like good news.

But if she was wanting to eat first, it couldn't be that bad.

...Right?

Steve wordlessly worked on heating up her teriyaki and dumplings for her while she got started on the sushi. She ate the sushi with her fingers rather than with chopsticks, which was unusual for her, but.

Tony wasn't going to question it.

Once Natasha was halfway through her teriyaki, she seemingly decided that now was the time to talk. She looked at him and Steve, her jaw locking. "This is going to be harder than we first thought," she said.

Fear went down Tony's spine. "Nat, what do you – ?"

"I found her," she deflected for now. "She did go to Delmar's today. From what I could tell, she seems friendly enough with the owner. But she figured out that I was watching her."

Steve stiffened. "What?"

It shouldn't need to be said how surprising that was, that a teenaged girl was able to detect a Black Widow spying on her from the get-go. Natasha hadn't even made contact with her. Even Tony had had to be told that she was a spy when she'd been undercover as his personal assistant, though he'd realized that something had been up with her from the start.

...Okay, so maybe he and the girl had more in common than he'd thought.

Still, she was a teenaged girl. Not an almost forty-year-old man who had been raised to trust no one except those closest to him.

"I think it's part of her abilities," Natasha said. She paused to take a bite of her food, chew it, and swallow it. Then she went back to speaking. "That, or she was raised like me, but I don't think that's likely. Her body language is all off for that, and she almost had a panic attack in trying to get away from me."

"Nat," Steve chided.

She was unrepentant. "It wasn't like I was intending to give her a panic attack, Steve." I hadn't expected her to notice me at all.

"Did you find out where she's...living?" Tony prodded gently. He hesitated to use that latter word. It didn't seem right.

"No, she got away. And I let her," Natasha admitted. "I didn't want to freak her out anymore."

That was...fair.

Steve also agreed, but an interesting expression came over his face.

Tony knew what it meant. He nudged his shoulder. "What are you thinking, Cap?"

"Well...if she's this enhanced, and she's not a mutant," Steve stated slowly. "How are we so sure that she didn't grow up in...less than ideal circumstances?"

Tony stilled.

His fiancé just kept on going. "I'm not saying that she grew up like you, Nat. I'm just saying – "

"Maybe she's a victim of human experimentation?" she suggested with faux-lightness. She didn't even blink. "It's a possibility."

God, Tony hated the sound of that.

He really, really hated the sound of that.

(Kids weren't supposed to grow up being treated as weapons and/or experiments. They were supposed to grow up loved and cared for, with food in their bellies and clothes that fit them at the very minimum. Yes, he knew that not all – if not most – kids got those kinds of opportunities. It was why there were multiple charities in his name specifically to work on achieving the goal of all of them getting it.)

"Maybe I should have FRIDAY go on another hacking crusade," he muttered, even though he knew how even more illegal that would be in comparison to what he had done for the girl already. "See if there's any evidence for it."

Natasha scowled. "That sounds like it would be more of a witch hunt than it would anything productive. We don't know all of the abilities that she has and you don't even know which company to begin to look at."

"I have my suspicions," he mumbled.

"Based off of your years-old hatred of Norman Osborn?"

He didn't deign her with a response.

"I'm not busting you out of the Raft just because you got caught hacking into other companies."

"I wouldn't get caught," he returned.

"Alright, alright," Steve said. "What are you suggesting we do?"

Natasha put down her chopsticks. "I said this was going to be harder than we thought, not impossible," she reminded them. "For now...I think we should wait."

"But – " Tony interrupted.

"We don't want to spook her any more than I already have today," she cut over him. "That'll just set us back more. We need to give her time to get over it."

"But she's just a kid!"

"And she's been living on her own on the streets for at least a year," Natasha retorted. "She knows how to take care of herself."

Tony opened his mouth, ready to clap back –

"I think it's the best solution for right now," Steve said before he could. His eyes were as pained as Tony's probably were. "That doesn't mean it's a good solution, it's just the best one that we have right now. We want to earn her trust, don't we? We don't want to scare her off or drag her back here kicking and screaming."

"...Alright, fine," he finally relented after a moment. He wasn't happy about it. "Whatever."

Word Count: 3,379