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Chapter Text

He was still allowed to work through the night when Pepper was out of the country, if he wasn’t caught. Allowed was probably too strong a word to use.

While he could 3D print many of the components he preferred on occasion the feel of the tools in his hands. His music was just loud enough to slow the racing of his thoughts and the coffee black enough that he might get this done before Pepper came back and told him that even superheroes needed to sleep and tricked him into it with her feminine wiles. Such wiles that woman had.

His Music cuts out.

“Sir?”

“This better be important J,” he answers without looking up from the worktop.

“Yes Sir, there is a Mr Clint Barton at the security gates to the Tower’s garage.”

“Good for him,” he says lightly barely acknowledging the unimportance of random people who try to gain access to Iron Man and Avengers Tower. “Scan the car, tell him we have sharks with lasers on their heads to eat the paparazzi.”

JARVIS fails to take the hint and his fast pace, guitar led music fails to cut back in. “Mr Barton says you may remember him as Legolas.”

“Legolas? AGENT Barton?!” This makes him put down the screw driver.

“Mr Barton says you cannot be an agent of a defunct agency.”

“Does he now? Notify Hill.” He spins on his stool away from the work desk and the newly forgotten project. “Give me a visual.” The green blue of the holographic display flashes before him. He flicks his wrist to expand the camera view of the blond former SHIELD agent in a silver car. Data on the car and the occupants scrolls beside the video image. A quick beat on the image and he can hear the man’s fingertips tapping out an irregular rhythm on the outside of his car door.

“The archer formally known as Agent Barton?”

“Mr Stark,” Barton says looking towards the most obvious of the security cameras though Tony catches the way the man’s eyes flick quickly over three other harder to pin point lenses.

“We have you down as dead. Or Hydra. Or both.”

“‘Fraid you’re gonna have to change those records, man,” Barton says easily.

“Yeah?” Tony says raising an eyebrow, “Forgive me if I don’t rush to do that without some kind of evidence.”

“Fuck man, you gonna make me wake her? Even after New York?”

There is a kind of audacity to the light cursing that pisses Tony off. 3: 24 am in the morning, the clock in the corner of his display flashes and though he normally wouldn’t give two shits about the abstract nature of time, he gives plenty of fucks about former SHIELD agents thinking he is some kind of halfway house for lost spies. Fury and his lot always taking liberties, the kind of liberties that gets him almost stuck on the wrong side of wormholes and having fucking panic attacks.

“I didn’t exactly want to run with your lying liars who lie before Cap pulled a ‘the emperor has no clothes’ and you Katniss, your record for joining club evil isn’t exactly spotless,” he counts out the ways in which this is not happening, “So hows about you turn that impressively non-descript car around and make an appointment with… Wait. Wake who?”

“Sir, the vehicle has two other occupants,” JARVIS supplies and Tony drags across the data on the car.

“Yeah, a sleep deprived assassin,” Barton offers tiredly, “this ones on you Stark. Just you remember that. Tash. Tash. Wake up, we’re here.” The archers arm stretches out of view and is accompanied by the muffled sounds of his passenger coming to unhappily. There is the hushed sound of the man coxing a response as Tony flicks through his holographical scan of the vehicle pulling up the dimensions of the front seat passenger. Female, 5ft 4…

“Stark doesn’t trust me as far as he can throw me.” He recognizes that husky voice dripping with disdain. He flicks left for another camera angle to grab a better screen shot of a tired looking redhead.

“Agent Romanoff?” The last he heard of her was through Rogers. Gone to ground. Rebuilding covers destroyed in the fall. He’d had to go back to her files more than once feeling sick and strangely ashamed reading the history he couldn’t quite make fit with the woman who’d first come to him as Natalie Rushman from legal.

“Not an agent, Stark. Will you let us up? Captain Rogers will vouch for me.”

“That takes care of you and I suppose you think your word for the blond will work but what about person number three?” Flick and drag, cross hairs form around the heat signature in the back of the car, “Who’s really fucking small?” Faster than average heart rate for a person asleep. Britax B-Safe Infant car seat. “An infant?”

“Drive Clint,” she says allowing him to imagine the sigh that should go with the resignation in her voice. “He’ll let us up now just to hear the story.” Romanoff charming as always.

“Better be or Laser sharks,” he says glibly as the archer nods sharply at his partner’s orders.

“J allow our master assassin friends entry and pull up everything you have on Former Agent Barton and Former Agent Romanoff."

Natasha Romanoff leaves his elevator first. Her simple loose fitting sweater and pants tucked neatly into black boots makes her look very unlike Natalie or even Agent Romanoff. When she looks up at him standing on the raised mezzanine there is the familiar hardness in her eyes and the way her longer hair is still more reminiscent of blood than Pepper’s own strawberry waves.

“Agent Romanoff the no longer,” he grins, “missed me?”

Romanoff twists slightly towards the exiting archer, the curve of her mouth hardens a little and she throws a hand signal low next to her thigh towards her partner. For his part the archer shakes his head and shrugs unevenly. As Tony makes his way across the floor to the stairs he can see why the man’s shrug remained unilateral, a baby carrier in his left hand.

“So assassination and spy craft wasn’t giving you a high anymore and you decided to try your hand at kidnap?”

Romanoff growls. Tony raises his eyebrows.

“She’s mine,” Clint Barton says bluntly.

“That’s where you were when me and mine were being targeted by the shadowy organisation you worked for? Making more assassins?” Tony throws out as he gestures with his scotch.

“No,” Romanoff says, her voice low and forbidding, “that’s what I was doing.”

“You what?!”

“Tasha, you said this guy was a genius,” Barton says behind her.

“I also said he was a narcissist. You wanted to come here.”

“So when you said she was yours…” Natasha turns as he approaches clearly manoeuvring herself between him and Barton, between him and the baby carrier in Barton’s hand. “You meant the both of them.”

“Natasha isn’t anyone’s, Mr Stark.”

“You two made a…” he says fighting down a sudden sleep deprived feeling of hysteria.

“We need your help, they targeted you and yours?  Imagine what they’d be willing to do to get their hands on the Black Widow’s daughter,” Barton says flatly, clearly unaffected by the way Romanoff stands between them like a wild animal protecting her young.

“You want my help? Aren’t you the two most deadly people on the planet?” he looks between the two former agents, Barton has a bearing he has always associated with Rhodey, an almost casual physical threat built into easy going body language and Romanoff has shed any of the coquettishness she’d used to play him so well and is all calculation and claws.

“I have a bow and arrows. I need superheroes.”

“Didn’t SHIELD have, I don’t know, fraternization rules?” Tony asks as Barton bends to lift a sleeping baby from the carrier. He won’t step closer with Romanoff standing in fighting stance between them, all he sees is a purple blanketed bundle pulled close to her father’s chest with surprising gentleness.

“I’ve never been great with rules Mr Stark and if what Natasha says is true neither have you,” he shakes his head, “She’s barely a month old. I can work, I can… this is the safest place for her.” Tony suspects this is the closest he will come to begging.

“Sir, Ms Hill says she’ll be here in twenty minutes.” Both agents look up at JARVIS’s interruption.

“I assume no one else knows about junior?”

“I have been keeping secrets for as long as I could speak,” Natasha says speaking suddenly.

“And stealing them too,” he answers her darkly, Natasha only stares unabashed. “Right, hey JARVIS make sure we’re recording when Hill finds out about baby Bond here.”

“Her name is Elizabeth,” Barton offers looking down at the bundle. Tony gets the sense that this piece of information is offered as the overture to a bargain.

Tony sighs, “Such a missed opportunity to name her Merida.”

“Merida?” Barton asks, a frown forming.

“Yeah, little red headed Scottish girl with a bow?” Nothing, “Brave? Disney Pixar?” Neither assassin reacts. “Seriously? Does no one on the team understand pop culture?”

“Team?” Natasha echoes.

“The Avengers? Heroes of New York?” he says expansively, “Even you should have heard of us.”

“Surely the Avengers initiative was shut down with SHIELD.”

“Didn’t you hear Ms Romanoff, I’m privatizing world peace.” At this Romanoff rolls her eyes but he takes it as a victory as she appears a fraction less likely to tear his head from his shoulders.

“Will you help us?” asks Barton.

“Don’t think I can refuse, I’m Pokemoning.”

“Pokemoning?!” Natasha says a soft kind of outrage in her voice.

“Gotta catch them all,” he smiles and takes his time with his scotch before continuing, “You two are part of the set… provided you don’t turn out to be octopus heads, of course.”

“We are not Hydra,” Natasha says.

Tony only nods at the cheapness of her word, “I have this fantastic new security coordinator, delightfully mean, gets along with Pep a little too much for my liking. She’ll be here in 20 minutes”

“18 minutes 12 seconds, Sir”

“Maria?” Barton asks and Tony sees Natasha give him the same kind of sharp nod he’d seen Barton give her in the car.

“She doesn’t let me call her that,” he answers casually, “Can I see the rug rat while we wait?”

Barton’s sharp eyes look towards his partner and he must see some kind of sign she will allow it because he shifts the child in his arms and steps closer. Tony leans forward, in the bundle there is an infant with a small round face, as fair as Natasha with full lips and delicate lashes closed against her cheeks, no hair as yet.

“You’re lucky, she takes after her Mom. Not that you aren’t a very handsome, totally able to kill me with your bare hands, guy”

“Lucky doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Barton says softly as the baby’s eyes open, “Nat, she’s waking up.”

Tash, Tasha, Nat, small names, intimate names all used so thoughtlessly for a woman as deadly as the spider she was named for, it’s as if Barton doesn’t fear her at all. “She’ll be hungry.”

“I take it she doesn’t eat shawarma yet?” and there is a second eye roll.

Natasha turns again excluding him more thoroughly though she quickly taps her chest, then pinching her thumbs and two fingers together motions downwards twice away from her body towards the infant in Barton’s arms. Her hands shift again, two peace sighs laid on top of each other circling away from her body before her dominate hand comes up to pinch and twist a pea sized piece of air at her temple. She seems to smirk before tapping her partner on the chest once and taking the squirming child from his arms.

“I’ll be in the lounge,” she says coolly.

“What was that?” Tony asks watching her circle wide so as not to brush past him to get to the mezzanine. When he turns back to the archer he sees the faint echo of the grin he must have flashed Natasha.

“ASL.”

“Latin, ASL…” Tony muses, then more loudly he adds, “You know I have multiple PHDs?”

“Careful, Man, you sound like you’re competing.” Barton hands were a fraction larger than proportionality should dictate and Tony watches with interest as the absence of the child makes Barton examine the callouses on his fingertips before pushing them down into his pockets. The dry response had born no hint of the usual deference or unease that people asking Tony Stark for favors layered over their speech. In a way it reminded him of Fury but without the pulpit like fervor or sense of omnipotence.

He grins brightly bringing his voice back to performance level, “Hi, have you met me? I’m awesome. I don’t compete.”

“If you did, I wouldn’t choose her to go up against. That woman performs miracles.” Barton’s eyes follow Natasha and the infant to the lounge on the upper level.

“I know that look. I see it in mirrors when I’m around Pepper.”

“Then you know I’ll do anything to keep them safe.”

“Yeah. I think I can help you out with that.” He takes another drink.

Chapter Text

“You know he’s standing guard, and just taking it, out there,” Tony says entering through a side door. Natasha doesn’t flinch at his presence, placing the infant back into the black carrier.

“Yes,” she says perfunctorily as the argument outside the door ebbs again.

“And you aren’t married or something?”

“Something?” she asks blankly and he flounders for the other options, do assassins have boyfriends? Do spy’s boyfriends all look that menacing? If he says partner will she only agree on the most sinister of buddy cop terms. Significant political murder other?

“You clearly mated,” he says and points to the little Barton/Romanoff hybrid staring innocently into the space not three inches from her face.

“Stark, I am not an actual spider nor am I some fantasy you have from noir films.”

“You sure? I’ve seen the gams on you and you are the kind of smoking hot red head to lead a man down no good alley.”

She’s quiet, she doesn’t smile like Natalie would though she uses the same face and he knows Agent Romanoff would have pressed her lips together fighting back an unprofessional smile at very least for the pathetic nature of the joke. It’s clear that this woman is someone he doesn’t know.

“You’ve read my file,” she says and it isn’t a question. He can’t lie to her when she looks up from adjusting the baby’s blanket, it would be like lying to Pepper, those eyes know too much.

“I’ve read all the files.”

“She isn’t supposed to be here.” There is an uncomfortable stillness to her. Tony finds himself wishing Barton and Hill would start an all-out brawl on the other side of the door. He doesn’t do honesty, emotion, tact. He wants to make a bad joke, pay someone to deal with this for him, he wants three more drinks before he has to talk about the Soviets and twenty eight little girls on stainless steel tabletops worked over like they were science experiments… not even, because if someone treated Dum E and U like… little girls pumped full of drugs and cut open… He shivers before he opens his mouth to speak.

“The science, that wasn’t good science… and humans they make errors.”

“Are you certain that is it? Two stitches too few? A slip with the laser? An ovum too stubborn to be stopped?” She shakes her head. This Natasha Romanoff doesn’t hope, he’s seen her do that before. He scans through his memories of video play back from the helicarrier after Loki, ‘still not gonna find them in time’, ‘one of our own’.

“Banner’s here. He’s been doing mostly theoretical work. When you picked him up he was working as a medical doctor.” He shoves his hands in his pockets as he paces, “I can scan you, the kid, Barton if you like. But do you really want to know the answer?”

“To keep her safe I think I must.”

“You think he wants to know?” he gestures with his head to the ongoing argument outside the door.

“Clint’s heart will remain unchanged whatever the outcome.”

“You’re that sure about him?” Tony’s never been that sure about anyone. He’s never been that sure of himself. He is definitely not certain about Barton even if he isn’t Hydra. His SHIELD file might say text book narcissism, compulsive, prone to self-destruction but Barton’s says adrenalin junkie, PTSD and an inability to function in a command structure.

“When I am sure of nothing else, I am sure of him,” she says closing her eyes.

“Angelucci was fuckin’ Hydra trash!” Barton yells outside the door.

“And the reason you didn’t attempt contact…”

“For fucks sake Hill, do you even listen to yourself?” Barton cuts across the imposing voice of Maria Hill, “Fury dead, Coulson dead, I made contact with the one fucking person I knew WASN’T HYDRA.”

“He sounds sure of you,” Tony says.

“Fallaces sunt rerum species.”

“Now,” he clicks his fingers, “I know that doesn’t mean you can have a car take me back to Malibu.”

“No,” she says but doesn’t offer a translation.

He sighs still attempting to wrap his head around the information this morning has brought. “You have a baby. And a…”

“Hawkeye.”

“Huh,” he blinks, she almost smiles when she says that. A smile for a call sign. “You have a baby and a Hawkeye.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Whatever tests you want,” Barton agrees in a way that sounds far too much like a fuck you for Hill to accept easily.

“And the infant,” Hill demands.

“You lay one electrode near my kid and I swear to God you won’t even hear the arrow that kills you.”

The hair on Tony’s arms stands up at that threat, “That’s why he’s standing guard?”

“He’s read my file too. He saw the end result.” He’d been sent to kill her. SHIELD had taken out much of the Red Room but by that time she was rogue and making a name for herself. The files themselves never explained how the sniper they’d sent to neutralize her had convinced her to come in instead. Other files seemed to indicate the hierarchy expected the young agent to come back in a body bag rather than with a young but prolific assassin in tow.

“Don’t get me wrong SHIELD, not my favorite people, but you really think they’d… to a kid?”

“I won’t take that chance.”

“Sure. But Hill works for me now.” Her eyes narrow, scrutinizing him.

“You’ll keep your employee, he won’t kill her.” There’s an odd lilt in the word employee.

“You don’t get in there until I say Maria,” Barton growls while Tony makes a study of Natasha’s impassive stare.

“Barton, move aside. I need to speak to Romanoff.” There is silence for a moment then, “I don’t take kindly to insubordination.”

“To be insubordinate I’d have to be your fucking subordinate.”

“I’m not much for babies, spent a lot of time making sure I didn’t get one.”

“That you know of…” she smiles wickedly and for a second he worries she knows something he doesn’t. Pepper would kill him. Pepper would make him be a proper father. Then she’d kill him.

“She’s kind of cute. Looks like you. Except around the eyes.”

“She has her father’s eyes,” Romanoff replies.

“Murderous?” he asks raising an eyebrow.

“Blue,” she says without blinking.

“Right.”

The battle seems to have died down, Hill and Barton coming to some kind of détente. Natasha looks up at him again, looking suddenly younger and uncertain.

“I think I am supposed to ask if you want to hold her. Natalie would ask something like that.”

“Ah.” He frankly couldn’t think of anything worse. He doesn’t kiss babies. He’ll leave that to Captain America, he seems like the type. And heaven forbid he makes the Black Widow’s kid cry. “I don’t like being handed things.”

“My child is not a thing, Stark

Chapter Text

“Not Hydra,” the sharp eyed, familiar looking man behind Tony says as he enters the room.

“Bruce, you remember Agents Barton and Romanoff,” Tony says ignoring the comment, strutting over to the desk to scan Bruce’s notes. It took all of 3 minutes in Tony Stark’s company to realize the man speed reads upside down and has no sense of personal boundaries.

“Natasha and, ah, Agent Barton. Nice to see you both again?” Bruce asks unsure if the arrival the SHIELD agents actually heralds a ‘nice time’.

“Not agents anymore Dr Banner and as Hawkeye here was saying, not Hydra,” Natasha says smiling softly. Bruce removes his glasses. Natasha is holding a child to her chest, newborn between one and two months old if size is anything to go by.

“Glad to hear it,” he says knowing that too sounds like a question.

“Nice work on that equation. Have you thought about how it would work in 5 dimensional… oh right… Barton, Romanoff and baby Barton Romanoff, or is that Romanoff Barton? Just Barton? Just Romanoff? Rushman?” By the daggers Romanoff’s eyes shoot him Bruce assumes that the Rushman is some kind of dig. He lets it slide. It’s much easier, almost meditative, to let Tony keep talking eventually you get the information you need or find that it was unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

“Elizabeth. Her name is Elizabeth,” says Natasha but directly to Bruce, her green eyes softer when she isn’t speaking to Tony.

“Yeah, they keep insisting on that name,” Tony says offhandedly still reading his notes and scattering his papers in a way that will have him reorganizing for an hour before he can get back to work. “Nikita!” he yells suddenly, “The names you could have gone with!”

The child in Natasha’s arms wriggles, letting out the reed thin cry of discontent instantly recognizable to people used to very young children. Elizabeth, it seemed, was not hungry or tired but rather unimpressed with the world at large.

“Um, Congratulations? I take it Tony is trying to say she’s yours?”

Barton reaches for the infant taking her from her mother’s arms in a clearly practiced manoeuvre before answering, “I think he’s tryin’ to rename her, but, yeah, she’s ours.”

Barton’s voice is low and a little roughened with a faint Midwestern twang but he sounds as if he finds life dryly amusing. It’s not how he’d imagined Barton spoke when Natasha first approached him with a cell phone photo of the tesseract and the practiced lies of a spy. It wasn’t a voice he’d associated with the angry looking security ID shot that flickered on the SHIELD screens when he was, how did they put it, compromised? They’d not spoken during the following battle and if the other guy had memory of the archer he didn’t have access to it.

Barton had looked bruised and, though it was an old term Bruce felt it suited the glazed expression of everyone in that shawarma joint, shell shocked after the battle. Bruce remembered Barton’s leg resting on the back of Natasha’s chair and the abrasions on his shoulders and not much else. Transformations always left him feeling like he’d just woken from a coma.

“I assume this isn’t a social visit then? People who know about my, uh, condition don’t usually bring small, breakable infants around for my blessing?”

Without the child in her arms Natasha’s demeanour shifts and she is business like, her stance widening, her right hand encircling her left wrist, “How much do you know of my history Dr Banner?”

“Bruce please, uh none,” he answers a little warily, watching as Barton circles patting the baby’s back and murmuring what Bruce assumes are soothing words. “I, it’s none of my business.”

“Then you would be one of the few people in the world to believe so.”

“Sometimes the world is wrong Ms Romanoff,” he answers and smiles.

“We need your help Bruce, I am going to have to ask you to read those records.”

“For anything in particular?”

“You were working as a physician? I need to know what was done to me. How it is possible that I have a daughter now. If something further was done to me prior to the fall of SHIELD.”

‘They start that young?’ he’d asked and she’d merely shrugged and said ‘I did.’ How young had she been? How young was she now, she shifted mercurially in the short time he’d known her being too knowing, too damaged and then abruptly naïve and strangely untouched by the world in turns. ‘All the toys’ she’d offered him and had known nothing of the commodore 64, he’d felt so old and so tired. India had kept him busy enough that he hadn’t had to think about that feeling.

“Surely Agent Hill, the former SHIELD Doctors, actual fertility specialists…”

“Doctor, Hydra infested SHIELD,” Barton says from the corner of the room his hands cupping the baby’s head and supporting her bottom. “I was on the run for seven months. I almost didn’t make it back to meet this little girl. If we’re gonna protect her, her existence, it needs to be kept quiet.”

Bruce nods. Seven months on the run? Had he even known that Natasha had been pregnant? And yet in what three or four months this former agent had gone from solider and spy to protective father, to someone who referred to the tiny baby in his arms as a little girl.

Tony smiles when he catches Bruce’s eye, it’s a knowing smile, the kind of smile he gets when he talks about getting the team back together as if they were a band who almost made it big rather than a volatile group of science experiments and necessary evils.

“JARVIS give Dr Banner access to all the SHIELD files on Agent Romanoff, code name Black Widow. You need Barton’s too, Bruce?”

Bruce frowns and nods again. He isn’t entirely sure what he’s looking for or what he will find though he supposes more information rather than less will be helpful.

“I’ll need time to work through this?”

Natasha and Barton respond with identical nods.

“You’ve got it,” Tony says confidently though Bruce has yet to hear Tony say anything without confidence. “In the meantime, full body scans for everyone! Not you Bruce. The big guy in an MRI machine? I’ve seen what happens to your pants.” He laughs at his own joke, clapping his hands like he is providing his own rim shot.

“I’ll do my best Natasha. Mr Barton.” I’m a physicist, he wants to say, I’m really not this kind of doctor.

“Clint, Dr Banner and thank you.”

Chapter Text

“Natalie!” Pepper gasps when Tony confesses their presence in the tower. Tony takes the gasp to be of pleasure and so continues nuzzling at her neck. It’s convenient for him that this has been the longest relationship he has managed because on top of the daily calls to action, new and wonderful ways of destroying himself and the teenaged level libido, there is a constant need to combat beard rash. She doubts the women who paraded through his bedroom in years gone past had the patience for that one. “Natalie in the Tower?” she pushes him then, always a little shocked by the flash of a wounded expression.

“Natasha. Romanoff. That’s her real name. Actually, I’m not sure she has a real name. And don’t get me started on what they’ve called the kid.” He keeps tugging her closer on the couch but as much as she loves him its become far too like a needy child tugging on apron strings for her to find it attractive. And now she knows Natalie is living in the Tower!

“Barbara!” he exclaims have given up his pursuit for a moment. “Like Barbara Bach from 'The Spy who loved me'? A little obscure I’ll grant you but Mrs Ringo Starr, now she was a looker.”

“Tony!”

“Nothing compared to you my little CEO,” Tony says but it’s if he knows it won’t work in advance.

“Agh. Tony! One, CEO is not to be used as some belittling pet name. Two, Natalie, I mean Natasha is in the Tower?”

Natalie Rushman from legal. It wasn’t that she had been SHIELD all along. Well, it was that she had been SHIELD all along, but it was also that she had been perfectly designed to seduce and monitor Tony. The lingerie modelling in Japan, the undeniable intelligence, the crisp efficiency. Natalie Rushman had been the better Pepper Potts. When they had thought about how best to monitor the threat that was Iron Man someone had said, we need Pepper Potts but better. Pepper Potts did not enjoy feeling insecure and the knowledge that some shadowy organisation, some redheaded spy had had that conversation made her feel insecure. She was Pepper Potts, how dare they!

“I’m not getting welcome home sex am I?” Tony pouts.

“You’ve been home the entire time. Apparently renting out suites to spies.”

“Funny you should say that,” he says running a hand through his hair.

“Funny?! Anthony Edward Stark!” she yells and he shies from her like a guilty dog faced with a suspicious puddle.

“Spies…” he grins, “Natasha isn’t alone.”

“No? I suppose you’ve rented out rooms to the entirety of SHIELD.”

“I thought you liked SHIELD?” Tony says seemingly shocked.

“I liked Phil,” she says. She fondly remembers the man who initially seemed a pleasant enough bureaucrat for one of the many intelligence organizations buzzing around after Tony returned from Afghanistan. He had fast become one of the few people who understood how equally annoying and endearing Tony Stark really was.

“And you like Hill.”

“She keeps you in your place.”

“Speaking of my place, wanna go back to mine?” he says and wiggles his eyebrow suggestively. She’d been excited to see him again when she’d left Tokyo but now she remembers why she schedules in time for Tony sized bombshells and the aftermath while planning her days.

“Really?!” she huffs.

“Fine. Romanoff showed up on the doorstep three nights ago. Woke me up from a deep sleep!”

“JARVIS?” she asks politely.

“Sir was in his workshop ma’am.”

“Traitor!” Tony exclaims before continuing, “With a Hawkeye and a baby in tow.”

“A baby, why would a SHIELD agent have a baby?”

Tony taps his nose twice, leaning back against the arm of the sofa casually. “They keep telling me they aren’t SHIELD agents anymore and apparently they were really putting the team into strike team delta.”

“Agent Romanoff has a baby?” Try as she might she can’t imagine Natalie or the cat suited Agent Romanoff with a baby, both versions of the woman she only imagines holding an infant at arm’s length and looking concerned or faintly disgusted.

“And a Hawkeye.”

“And they are living here?”

“I had to take them in Pep, they were like lost lambs…” Tony says his voice taking on a whining quality, “deadly lost lambs,” he allows. Pepper stands straightening the line of her suit. “Pep? Pep? Where are you going?”

“Nikita, is a male name,” Natasha’s voice calls out as the elevator door opens, it’s just a fraction less higher pitch than Pepper remembers it, a bit more like the voice she used to put an end to Justin Hammer’s misogynistic bullshit.

As Pepper rounds the corner, towards the suites open plan kitchen, a male voice responds, it’s warm and friendly and not quite what she was thinking for a man who went by the name of Hawkeye, “Not in Belgium. Tasha, I just said it was cute. I’m not letting Tony Stark rename our baby.” His voice trails off as she comes into view and she can see the man return a carving knife into the expensive Danish Modern knife block.

“Ms Potts,” he nods, standing a little taller something reminiscent of coming to attention.

“So it’s true?” she says and then realizes she has no idea what she intended to say once she’d confirmed that ‘Natalie’ had taken up residence. “I. I came down to welcome you both to the Tower. You must be Hawkeye.”

“Clint. Clint Barton, Ma’am.” The Ma’am sounds a little forced as though it’s not his usual habit despite the farm boy look to his attire and the military posture.

“Mr Barton, Pepper Potts. You were involved with the Chitauri invasion?” He’s the agent with the bow and arrows, now the nickname makes sense.

“Yes. Yes Ma’am,” he nods and then bellows with an apologetic grin, “Natasha!” He doesn’t take his eyes off her and Pepper finds it odd that he’s acting so deferential, most people meeting her as Tony’s girlfriend and not as the CEO of Stark Industries fail to defer until she’s put them firmly in their places. This man has to be at least her age and yet he stands there as if she is his superior officer.

“Pepper,” Natasha says in the doorway. She’s not wearing a SHIELD cat suit or the sharp business suits Natalie wore and Pepper suddenly realizes that ‘Natalie’s’ attire had been a subtle mirror to her own, another way to get her to trust the young agent.

“Natalie, I mean, it’s Natasha now isn’t it.”

“Yes,” Natasha answers her right hand coming up to grip her left wrist.

“I hear congratulations are in order.”

“Thank you,” the man known as Hawkeye offers when Natasha fails to say anything.

Natasha blinks twice at the man’s thanks and then as if rousing herself from a dream she asks, “Would you like to see her?”

“A girl?”

“Elizabeth. Though your, um, Tony wants to call her something else,” Hawkeye says hurriedly, clearly compensating for his partner’s sudden silence.

“It’s a pretty name,” Pepper says smiling at the archer.

“Thank you,” Natasha says and Pepper would like to believe it’s as genuine as the way she makes it sound.

“Yes.”

“Yes?” Natasha echoes.

“I’d like to see her,” Pepper says and it’s as if Natasha’s whole body says an unspoken ‘Oh’. Natasha never apologized for the Natalie misdirection. Natasha had probably never had to say she was sorry for any of the things she had done as an agent in the field, the people she’d lied to were either dead or saved when she moved on. Pepper had believed Natasha hadn’t thought her lies had been wrong and that lying to her had been the right thing to do. There was something in the way she held herself now, the loose fitting clothes, the lack of quick and appropriate responses that makes Pepper question that assumption now.

“She’s through here.”

Chapter Text

She opens her eyes and takes stock of her surroundings silently. He is still in the bed and his heavy arms are draped around her, one spread high to hold her wrist. Try as she might she often wakes to find her arm reaching above her as if tethered to the bed frame. His right hand has inched beneath her t-shirt and is warm against her skin. The skin and muscles of her abdomen are no longer as tight as they once were though he gives no indication that he knows this. Her healing is faster than most and she has done her best to retain the fitness required to fight but she is all too aware of the changes the child has wrought.

Large swaths of the room have remained untouched by them, the large bed moved closer to the ensuite and the crib wedged between them. She had seen the way Pepper’s gaze had stuttered over the transformation of the room before catching on Elizabeth and demonstrating how genteel pretence could be raised to an art form.

The little girl for whom all this was done is a natural, as Clint puts it, enamouring all she has met with her large curious eyes. Clint’s eyes, she always says, but she uses them like you, he’d say.

They curve like petals round seeds, she curves too, curled like she is still in the womb. Eyes tightly closed and a small fist pushed to her toothless mouth. Such a small, helpless thing and yet the world pivots for her.

Maybe they have slept for two hours like this.

Then the panic starts. Natasha had slept too heavily. She remembers nothing. Clint beside her is also asleep. Anything, anyone could have happened to her child.

“Hey,” he says groggily, his hand closed around her wrist comes free to scrub at his face, “What’s wrong?”

“We slept.” His hand is still beneath her shirt, it draws her closer.

“Yeah, so did she,” he says, warm breath in her ear, “You want something to eat? No, okay, not the right thing to say.” That hand reading, through callouses and skin, her heart beating.

“She could have… anything could have happened.”

“Tasha, hey, listen to me.” She won’t take her eyes from the baby as he talks. He sits as she sit and scoops the sleeping infant from the bed and into her chest. “You would have woken up the second anyone entered this apartment. Hell, I pulled a kitchen knife on Stark’s girlfriend slash CEO yesterday.”

“You don’t know that!”

It was a large suite but they had by silent, mutual agreement set it up like a safe house. Everything they needed was far from the large windows that opened the apartment to the New York skyline. In the five days they’d been there they had hugged the walls, kept everything packed, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. They’d used two square feet of the large kitchen, one shelf of the refrigerator, only the ensuite bathroom, the television that took up most of an entire wall remained resolutely switched off. In the bedroom the still unused crib was hidden between the bed and the en suite and away from the windows permanently shrouded by the rich curtains.

If need be you could make a leap from the bed, over the crib and barricade yourself and an infant in the free standing tub. A quiver of arrows had taken up residence by the basin. The second drawer down held two loaded glocks wrapped in soft black felt. A bathroom is a terrible place to keep weapons, humidity destroys, but they had stored weapons in worse places. Perhaps this was why it felt so unhinged to sit in Tony Stark’s abject luxury and behave as if it was a safe house in Venezuela.

“Sure I do,” he says as if he too realizes the insanity. “JARVIS?”

“Mr Barton, Sir?”

“Did anyone approach this apartment in the last two hours?”

“No Sir, the last recorded entry to this floor of the Tower was at 16:42 hours by Ms Romanoff.”

“Thanks JARVIS.” Clint watches her as he thanks the unseen butler. She rises from the bed.

“Artificial intelligence systems can be circumvented,” she says as she leaves.

“Natasha,” he says following, “you can’t be, even this tired. You pulled a gun on me for taking her out of the room remember? I’ve seen you take down three trained agents while heavily drugged. I mean, elephant tranquilizer drugged. SHIELD medical flinched every time they had to put you under.”

“I need to protect her,” she says stopping short.

“Okay. Okay,” he approaches her like he has in the past when anaesthesia has made it harder to tell reality from fiction, when drugs make her feel like her mind is being hollowed from the inside out. Hands open and up, hey Romanoff, it’s Hawkeye. We good? She’s broken his nose when he’s come too close too quickly. He’s a fast learner, he never did it again. “We’ll sleep in shifts. Like an op.”

“An Op?” she says frustrated that he is treating her like she is compromised.     

“Yeah, you trust me right?” he asks bending at the knees to look straight into her eyes. They are her daughter’s eyes that he looks at her with.

“Yes.”                                                                                                         

“Good,” he says his hands coming up to hold her shoulders. Her partner’s hands, she reminds herself. “She’s mine too, I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

“I know.”

Clint smiles sadly, “I miss you Tasha. I love her more than I even thought possible but God I miss you. If Banner and Stark, if they find miracle and not plot… can we try being a family.”

“A family?”

“Yeah, you know, a Mom and Dad and not protective custody,” he sighs like he is fighting a losing battle and then more softly he adds “I like falling asleep with you.” He smiles again and looking lost shrugs before bending once to kiss Elizabeth’s brow. He turns towards the refrigerator.

“Clint,” she says and waits for him to respond knowing that even with the aids a clear line of sight is preferable.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Maybe we could learn?”

“I will try,” she agrees and he moves quickly, his large hands cupping her cheeks and bring her lips to his. She can feel the way his mouth curves into a grin against hers. He is careful of the child between them but she can feel the way he is holding back, the muscles in his arms contracted against his desire to pull her closer. He turns his head kissing her once on the cheek before returning to the kitchen.

She paces as he begins to fill the sink with hot water. Though she is far against the wall she can see the lights of New York City begin to flicker and brighten, it’s the kind of sightlines that Clint would kill for in any other situation.

“You heard from Rogers?” he asks eventually over the clatter of baby bottles and pacifiers.

“He checks in from time to time. Not since the birth. Why?”

“You didn’t tell him about her, about us, did you?”

“It was safer,” she admits and wonders if this worries Clint now that there are no regulations to be broken.

“Mmm, just lately every second word outta my mouth is, ‘Not Hydra’ and ‘Me and the Black Widow made a kid’.”

“And if Steve knew?” she asks frowning.

“Then I could menace him a little about kissing you,” he grins over his shoulder at her.

“You want to threaten Captain America?”

“Nah, just going a little stir crazy. Seems like the kind of guy who’d get worked up about making out with another guy’s girl.”

“I thought ‘Natasha isn’t anyone’s Mr Stark’,” she says raising an eyebrow.

“I know that, you know that, Captain America’s 1940’s values might not know that.”

“How do you know his 1940’s values won’t menace you about getting a girl pregnant and disappearing for seven months?” Clint’s mouth drops open slightly as though he has not considered this possibility.

“Right…. So back to ‘Hi, Clint Barton. Not Hydra’.”

“I’d stick with the tried and tested, Barton,” she answers acerbically.

Clint laughs. It’s a good laugh, open and inclusive with a complete absence of cynicism. She missed that laugh.

Elizabeth begins to squirm, she holds her breath and then lets out a long, high wail.

“Oh little girl! Did we wake you?” Clint asks coming closer, “Nope, nope. That was not me. That was you.” To Natasha he only asks, “How does one small baby make such a God awful smell?”

“Lizzie, Lizzie,” he sings trying to catch the little girl’s eye as she rubs her face unhappily against Natasha’s sternum, “I have fallen into dumpsters that smelled better than you.” Despite the smell and the wailing he reaches for her, “I’ll take first watch, go back to sleep. She won’t leave my side.” He always reaches for her.

He is changing her diaper in the en suite as Natasha falls asleep. His rich voice low as he hums and occasionally sings lyrics from an unfamiliar song. “But as long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it, I’ll make you so sure about it, God only knows what I’d be without you.”  

Chapter Text

When Maria Hill welcomed him to Stark, no, Avengers Tower, he hadn’t expected this. It’s his apartment. He corrects himself mid thought. It’s what was left of his apartment in DC, salvaged and replaced in a much larger suite. It’s too much. It’s a preposterous show of wealth, it's grandstanding and more than a little creepy. What is with these people that they keep thinking he’ll flip his lid if he isn’t surrounded by 1940’s tchotchkes?

He just smiled politely and let her leave. Hill is, thankfully, serious and busy enough that she doesn’t fuss like the other people he’s been dealing with. Peggy would have approved, definitely not some silly dame playing dress up in a uniform til the boys get home.

He’s going to have to thank Stark too. He’s going to have to be convincing. It isn’t that Tony is trying to shove his wealth and influence down his throat, he knows that… he’s a bit too much like Howard, it’s thoughtlessness really, he can’t help wondering who the woman that got Howard to hang it up was and why she didn’t teach her son that sometimes less is more.

He needs to get his own place in Brooklyn. If he can afford his own place in Brooklyn.

He does realize he is standing in the middle of a shiny wooden room hoping that if he doesn’t touch anything all this will turn out to be a dream. He knows that. He knows that he does that a lot now. Sam's been laughing at him, apparently whenever something too new, too flashy, too 21st century is put in front of him he closes his eyes. Sam says no amount of ‘there’s no place like homing’ is gonna make it go away.

He just thought… he thought this time when he got back to New York he’d at least have Bucky with him. Sam is still on the hunt at least. Sam has contacts through the Veterans and old soldiers recognize their own, young soldiers too and there are a lot more of them again these days, just not the ones Steve would know.

The doorbell rings.

Don’t get him started on the pointlessness of a door bell when the whole floor is apparently his. He answers it anyway. A distraction would be good. He rest his duffel bag against the bookshelf.

“Natasha!” he says.

“Hey Cap, just came to make sure you hadn’t bought the farm yet?”

“’Cause I’m so old,” he says monotonously.

“’Cause you’re so old,” she agrees grinning, for a moment he half expects her to punch his shoulder playfully. Her hair is longer but pulled back and twisted down her neck.          

“Your material needs work.”

“I’ve been a little busy.” Her voice is a little huskier than usual as if she’s been yelling or sleeping less. Her eyes scan the room behind him and she raises an eyebrow.

“Figuring out a new cover?”

She smiles enigmatically but doesn’t answer, “You got a moment?” she asks instead.

“Yeah, why not. Not a date, right?”

“It’s like you still don’t trust me,” she says brightly as he pulls the door shut behind them. Maybe when he gets back it won’t be so… CAPTAIN AMERICA in there.

Natasha looks different. It isn't just that her hair has changed or her clothing, there is something less arch in the way she holds herself and the edge has come away from her smiles. She told him she wasn't all things to all people and he tries not to wonder who she is today, whose Natasha she is, after all, she is his friend.

He is about to ask why she is here in New York when the elevator door opens. She glances up at him something measuring in her gaze.

"Steve," she says opening the door, "You remember Hawkeye?"

Agent Barton, or rather former Agent Barton is in the kitchen with his back to them as they enter. He turns with one hand holding a bottle of orange juice and, like a tiny football, a small baby wedged between his body and other hand.

Steve looks at Natasha as Barton says, "Nice to see you again Captain."

Natasha gives a little encouraging nod as if she believes it's her duty to help him make friends.

"Barton, I. You too?" he says unable to keep the question out of his voice or his eyes off the baby in Barton's arms.

"Clint, call me Clint. Oh yeah. Not Hydra. Hill did tests and everything," Barton says as if the baby in his arms is as commonplace as the orange juice he puts down on the counter. The baby stares transfixed by the new face and voice, mouthing reflexively at the leather wrist band on Barton's left arm.

And then Steve remembers.

"The arrow!" He hits his forehead with frustration.

"Impressive, for an old guy, " Natasha concedes beside him, "I had you down for a few more questions first."

"The arrow?" Barton asks.

"Necklace. No uniform on the run." She shrugs, she is quicker with him, talking like they have a secret code. No, not a code, a shared history, one she doesn't have to make up.

"Arrow necklace. You getting sentimental Romanoff?"

"Hormones," she answers and Barton grins. Steve's seen that smile before, she'd whispered something in Central Park and the stone faced archer had grinned just like that. Free and easy.

Steve closes his eyes, he knows Sam would laugh at him but dammit he would be just as blindsided by Romanoff and Barton and...

"So the baby is yours?" he says quietly.

"Little girl, almost six weeks."

"Elizabeth," Natasha says.

"Six weeks. When you were shot? The Lumerian Star?"

"Quicker with the math too. Barton took twice as long."

Barton looks aghast at Natasha before looking down at the baby, "But your daddy was playing with a handicap, wasn't he Lizzie Bee. Your Mama doesn't play fair."

"She is a fighter," Natasha offers too lightly for Steve's liking.

"Just like her mom," Barton says and Steve wants to shake them both until they stop behaving as if life was this unimportant.

Natasha seems to recognize this. "Would you like to hold her?"

Steve feels himself blanch.

"Tash, give the guy a second. He looks like he's gonna faint."

"You kissed me!?" Steve finally exclaims unable to think of anything else.

"Ha!" Barton laughs suddenly, "Pay up, Tash. 40's morals. Told you."

Chapter Text

“I hope you don’t mind that I asked Maria to be here today? She’s been helping me track each of the medical staff you came across in your time at SHIELD, Agent, sorry, Natasha.”

Doctor Banner welcomes Barton and Romanoff to the labs as though her presence will cause some kind of explosion. Stark has obviously told him of the argument that occurred around the arrival of the two assassins at the tower. It’s ridiculous. They are professionals.

“Helping?” Barton says and smirks like he doesn’t believe a word of it. Well then, she is a professional.

“Yes, helping. I am not looking for the infant to be a Hydra plan any more than…”

“Her name is Elizabeth,” Romanoff cuts her off, handing the infant behind her to Barton. Of course they were sleeping together.

“And I’m sure she’s an ideal baby. Just because you two felt regulations were beneath you, doesn’t mean that they existed without reason.”

“Oh, I know the reasons,” Romanoff says darkly. Maria feels it as if it were a slap in the face. Honestly, she gave her whole life in service of the ideals SHIELD stood for, how dare they?!

Barton was bad enough, playing at being Han Solo, despite 50 other recruits with higher education and more than three years of military service. A jumped up, circus trained, criminal marksman with an attitude that had Hill shunting him from S.O to S.O. But Fury had faith in him and Hill had faith in Fury. And then instead of terminating the Black Widow threat he brings her home like a stray. Coulson always had much more patience for that kind of disregard for orders.

It isn’t that Romanoff hasn’t been an effective Agent. She was easier to oversee than Barton any day of the week. Paper work always handed in on time, orders carried out to the letter, a complete lack of farcical commentary down the comms like you got when Hawkeye was in the field. And it wasn’t that Strike Team Delta wasn’t the best team they’d ever put into the field.

They had regulations for a reason.

She wasn’t Hydra. You didn’t have to be loose cannons with death wishes to not be Hydra.

“And what was your plan Romanoff, put the kid in a Baby Bjorn and try to seduce a despot like she wasn’t there?” she says.

Romanoff leans down over the bench Maria is seated at and says quietly as if she wants Maria to have to lean in to hear it, “You have never trusted me.” Maria swears she can hear something Russian in her intonation.

Romanoff has had this chip on her shoulder ever since she was excluded from the circle of ‘need to know’ about Fury.

“I trusted you to do your job. Look where that got us,” Maria says keeping her voice level and gesturing to the infant in Barton’s arms.

“I trusted you to do your job. Look where it got us,” Romanoff snaps back.

“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea?” Banner is saying to Stark next to her. Maria only looks away from Romanoff and her flashing green eyes, Romanoff and her righteous indignation.

“You kidding? I was just wondering how I could get 50 pounds of Jello in here before they make up,” Stark replies gleefully.

“Hey!” Barton yells from across the room, Romanoff stands up smartly and for a second Hill can see why Fury always said ‘Natural Leadership Skills’

“I, for one, came down here to find out what Doctor Banner knows. And Hill, I will be wearing the Baby Bjorn while Natasha seduces, obviously.” And then Barton, as predictable as mullets at NASCAR, decimates any impression he might have given of being an actual adult.

Maria refuses to answer, Stark is fiddling with a holographic display and may, for all she knows, be designing a tactical Baby Bjorn. Banner looks stunned.

“Um, Natasha you were shot five years ago in Odessa?”

“Texas?” Stark pipes up.

“Ukraine,” Natasha turns her smile to the doctor, ignoring Stark, “Gut wound. Part of the job,” she finishes pointedly.

“The following surgery repaired the damage done by the bullet but the surgeon,” Banner sifts through his notes, a vivid contrast to Stark’s holograms, “a Doctor Gutierrez out of the base in Bonn, Germany,” he looks to Hill for confirmation, she nods and he carries on, “thought healing would be more effective if he removed a large amount of scar tissue he found in your pelvic cavity.”

“Gutierrez is not Hydra,” Maria adds to Banner’s briefing.

“He was assisted by anaesthesiologist, Dr Brakenburg and another surgeon Dr Tran as well as two theatre nurses, Brown and Carr.”

“We can account for all except Tran,” Maria says, pulling up the personnel file for Lee Tran on the Stark issued tablet in front of her. Barton circles closer, shifting the infant as he studies the details.

“Tran may be Hydra?” he asks.

“Not necessarily,” she says, “Tran was at the Treehouse when the Hydra codes went out. Tran was killed in the ensuing action. I can’t exclude that she was Hydra nor that she was a loyal SHIELD Agent.”

“Where does that leave us?” Natasha asks.

“Are you familiar with Ockham’s Razor?” Banner says smiling, Hill assumes he means it to be reassuring but from where she sits the doctor’s smiles always look nervous, skittish even.

“Plurality must never be posited without necessity,” Barton offers, weaving in and out of the floating displays that Stark continues to play with, in the same way someone might click a pen or doodle compulsively.

“Yes. Yes that’s it exactly,” Banner adjusts his glasses as he looks up at the archer.

“Don’t look so shocked Doc. I admit she’s usually the brains of the outfit but I’m not an idiot.”

“I never…” Banner stutters.

“He’s messing with you, Bruce,” Natasha says kindly. She doesn’t turn to look at Barton as she speaks but he nods along happily agreeing with her every word, “He’s been cooped up too long. First, he gets sarcastic and then arrow holes start appearing in the walls.”

“So many safe houses, so many arrow holes,” Maria says recollecting the many, many requests for repairs that have come about as the result of a bored Agent Barton. It might have been possible that the reason they had moved Strike Team Delta to a no extraction policy was, in some small way, because it kept Barton busy. Of course, Agent Romanoff was probably doing that for them all along.

“Right... as I was saying with the surgery it may have become possible for you to conceive naturally. The original sterilization, the tubal ligation is 99% effective in the first year but after that…” Banner’s voice trails off before he finds another notation, “The Red Room appeared dependent on the ligation and the scar tissue… a very small possibility, especially considering SHIELD protocol for birth control.”

“But good ol’ William of Ockham,” Stark interrupts, despite appearances to the contrary, Maria concedes, it might be possible that he has been paying attention to the conversation the entire time. “It’s more likely that the kid was a slip through the cracks than Hydra planned for you to get shot, planned for the good doctor Guttierrez to take out scar tissue, planned for you to be playing arrow and quiver with Hawkeye here and planned for your implant to fail.”

“Too many assumptions,” Maria sums up.

“Too many chances for the plan to fail. After all it isn’t like SHIELD knew of your relationship with Barton,” Banner says looking to Maria who shakes her head ruefully.

“And the kid is Barton’s,” Stark says, flicking a layout of maternal and paternal DNA so that it abruptly takes up half a wall, “I didn’t take all that blood for shits and giggles.”

“You’re saying it was just dumb luck Doc?” Barton says a little hopefully.              

“No. Natasha you are different. The Red Room didn’t just train you to become the perfect assassin, they made other alterations. Healing, aging, your physical abilities, you are aware of these differences.”

The soft smile Natasha has kept on her face, for the benefit of Banner Maria assumes, vanishes. “They tried to replicate Operation Rebirth, they failed.”

“Yes,” Banner says gently, “but it may be that your heightened hormonal cycle is not effected by standard birth control.”

Maria considers this for a moment and then considers the horrifying possibility of the many more baby Bartons that could have been.

“Elizabeth is healthy?” Natasha says, taking this in, “Nothing was done to her?”

“Elizabeth is perfectly healthy. As far as I can tell her existence has more to do with a convergence of rare and unexpected events than the intervention of science itself.” Natasha looks unnaturally stunned but behind her, with the infant in his arms, Barton is beaming.

“But Natasha and Clint,” Banner continues, “you should know it may be many years before we know the full effects of Natasha’s altered biology on her.”

“They didn’t change her DNA right? She shouldn’t have inherited anything?” Barton says, his grin disappearing with new concerns.

“No, Natasha’s DNA remains her own, just with certain things ‘switched on’ and others ‘switched off’. However, there is much we don’t know about epigenetics and at very least Natasha was the environment that Elizabeth’s DNA blueprint was put into effect in.”

“So one morning Avengers Tower could wake up to an Agent Bartoff!” Stark says.

“I think that’s highly unlikely,” Banner says hurriedly though he smiles as if he enjoys Stark’s ludicrous asides, “I suspect her physical and mental aptitudes will have more to do with the natural outcome of having two healthy, physically talented parents and growing up in an environment that encourages such pursuits.”

Barton reaches out for Romanoff’s hand and when she reaches back for him Maria feels like she shouldn’t be watching.

How did she miss it? Of course, they were fucking.

“We should monitor her,” she says to Banner.       

“Hill,” Barton says, his tone a threat.

“No, Maria is right,” Banner says and Maria is strangely grateful. It isn’t that she couldn’t hold her own against Barton, it’s that without SHIELD there have been very few people who have had her back of late. “I think we should monitor her aging, healing, reactions to stress as she grows. It won’t appear to be anything other than a normal doctor’s visit.”

Natasha is holding on to the edge of the laboratory bench like she is afraid to let go. “Natasha,” the doctor continues, “She is your baby, all of her. She is here because of you and Clint alone.”

“Because Barton couldn’t keep it in his pants,” Maria mutters but no one seems to hear her.

“Mostly Tash, I’m pretty much a glorified sperm donor, she worked the miracles.”

“Don’t know Barton, seems like you worked a miracle too, aren’t all Black Widow’s sperm donors dead before the egg hatches?” Stark says, slapping Barton on the back.

The room goes quiet. Natasha looks up from the bench and smiles too sharply for it to be anything but a warning.

Barton looks down at his daughter and in a stage whisper announces, “And Lizzie Bee, this is when we leave so your mama can kill Uncle Tony in peace.”

He leaves with the infant to the accompaniment of “Uncle?”

“Uncle?!”

Chapter Text

“Okay, baby Hawk, you ready?” he says, sitting her upright in the baby carrier so she can see. She follows him with her eyes now, looks for him with wobbly head muscles when she hears his voice. “You focused? ‘Cause you gotta focus if ya never gonna miss,” he touches the tip of her nose with his gloved finger, enjoying the way she becomes crossed eyed for a split second trying to bring his fingertip into focus before the untrained muscles give up in the attempt.

He heads to the shooting line, “Ready?” he asks again and draws, his gloved hand grazes softly at his anchor point, “The wire tenses. Your back muscles tighten and lock. Slow your breathing. Exhale, relax your hand.”

“Woooo hooo!” he says as the arrow head imbeds itself with a pleasing thunk. She coos, an echo of his hoot. “You see that kiddo! Futzing bullseye.” He’s been trying to tone down the language, a little bit because he doesn’t want her first words to be ‘motherfucking Stark’ and a bit more because Steve winces just slightly every time he swears.

“I missed that feeling,” he says, tickling her foot where she has managed to work yet another sock off her toes. “Now to do it, oh I dunno, a couple thousand more times.”

“You think the range is the best place for a baby, Hawkeye?” she says leaning against the entrance like a 1950’s movie star. If she crawled her hand up, held it against the frame above her head and pulled out a long stemmed cigarette she wouldn’t look any less out of place.

Tony came after him when he left the lab, in his hand one of those terrible green lava lamp drinks and jogging like he was actually worried Natasha might kill him. ‘Hey Hawkeye, not for nothing, in fact so you don’t put arrow holes in my walls, so, you know, the opposite of nothing, anyway, there’s a shooting range two floors down from your suite. Put it in after Lokifest ’12. Set it up for the middle ages too just in case we needed you again. Just ask Jarvis. You think I can go back to my lab now?’

“This baby?” he says, grinning at the butterball he calls his daughter, “This amazing baby Hawk, sure I do.”

“Baby Hawk?” she says and he knows it’s been a while but it is possible for her to sound something other than sultry, right? “And how do you know she isn’t a baby spider?”

“Nah, she’s a baby bird aren’t you Lizzie Bee?” The girl in question responds with a squeal, kicking her feet as if she understands every word. God he hopes she doesn’t understand every word. “All fluffy and constantly wanting to be fed.”

“And if you miss?” Natasha frowns and he can’t help but follow the way her lips part.

“I don’t miss, baby,” he slings his bow over his shoulder, “You gotta know that.”

“You better be calling the actual infant, baby, and not me Mister Barton,” she says coming close enough to touch. She isn’t wearing perfume, hasn’t worn anything but the residual smell of soap and baby on her skin since her found her again. She smells amazing, human, female, real.

He throws his head to the side to look at her like she’s in his sights, “Yes Ma’am,” he chuckles.

“I’m taking my baby back.”

“What? No!” he says “Tasha, we just got started. She likes it here. Anyway, it’s my watch didn’t you want a shower or some sleep or something?”

Those big, blue eyes are fixed on him as Natasha unbuckles the baby from the carrier. She shoves her fingers into her mouth as she comes to rest on her mother’s shoulder. He’s smitten with her, her gummy, squishy, big eyed ways, has been since the moment she first cried in Natasha’s arms. Now he knows, really knows, giants floating DNA helixes and Dr Banner pencil scratches knows, she is his… he’s filled with a kind of manic energy to show her everything.

“I’m done taking shifts,” Natasha says.

“Hmm? What’s that mean when it’s at home then?” he asks, scratching absently at the stubble on his chin.

Natasha turns, flashing a sympathetic smile, “I miss falling asleep with you, bird brain”

He smirks, “Really? Anything else you miss?”

“Don’t push your luck,” she says pressing her hand into his chest. He glances down and before she has a chance to take her hand away again he reaches up and takes it.

“Dunno Red, feels like I’ve been on a hot streak of late,” he says, tangling his gloved hand in hers. She stares for a moment at their hands, black glove and tanned, calloused skin against her almost impossibly cream colored fingers.

“Да́льше с глаз -- бли́же к се́рдцу, моя милая девочка,” she whispers to her daughter. He loves the way her voice sounds when she whispers Russian even though he can’t decipher the words, it sounds like a storm coming in from the sea, a rising, dangerous wind.                                                              

Natasha blinks, pulling her hand back like she knows they are walking the very edge of something, like she knows one word could topple them either way, “I think you’re right, she does like it down here.”          

“She likes the fletching and the bullseyes.”

“Do you think Uncle Tony will make us baby sized sound proof head phones?” she asks the baby, then, “Maybe she’d like bullets too,” she grins up at him wickedly.

“Uncle Tony?” he says trying not to be side tracked by the sudden urge to push her up against the wall and run his hands all over her body, “Right, hold still!” he orders, “I need to check you for possible life model decoy.”

She rolls her eyes, “He seemed more annoyed by it than me.” She slips past him, talking brightly to the baby in her arms, “Shall we go and see? Did Daddy make his shot?”

One day, he thinks, Daddy is going to feel normal. One day, it won’t feel like he’s had the wind knocked out of him.

“Don’t you listen to her Lizzie Bee, your Daddy never misses,” he hollers as Natasha makes her way down to the butts.

“She does like the fletchings,” Natasha calls back when the little girl reaches out and grasps the colored feathers at the end of the arrow.

“Yeah,” he says, unhooking his quiver from his hip, “She’s good at the hold, not so much on the release yet.”

When she returns, placing Elizabeth back in her carrier, Natasha sighs, “The hold is the harder.”

“Is it?” he asks.

“Much easier to let go than to fight for it.”

“Nah, they’re both hard,” he says softly. “The trick is learning when to hold on and when to let go.”

She steps closer and he stills, letting her decided how far she wants to take this. He’s always done this, fallen back, let her choose, far too often the choice has been so far from her reach. With one fingertip she traces the outline of a vein in his forearm. He wishes she would look up, even for a second. He thinks, if she did, he might be able to read what she wants in her eyes.

“You gonna loose some arrows, hot shot?”

“I thought we were done here,” he says, his own voice sounding shrapnel shredded in his ears. Her fingertips are resting on his arm. Her neck exposed as the waves of red curls sweep across her other shoulder.

She takes a deep breath before she answers, “She likes it here.”

He knows that isn’t all she wants to say, knows it in his bones.  

“You gonna to fight or let go, Natasha?” he asks. 

Chapter Text

Stark’s roof was a damn sight more dramatic than the one he had in Bed Stuy but he couldn’t just stand on the edge and pretend there was no wall below him like he could on his old apartment building. No, getting right to edge was going to take a bit more effort up here. This place had the markings of health and safety, someone with a passing knowledge of what it was like to be not fucking reckless, this place had the fingerprints of Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts.

He just needed distance. Maybe a cold shower. Maybe several cold showers.

The breeze picks up, rifling through his hair like a thief looking for jewellery. He’s glad she cut it for him before they left. It’s short but not military short, plenty of room for rifling.

He’ll go back. There is no doubt in his mind, he’ll be back down in the giant rooms they share pretending nothing hurts in five, maybe ten minutes. Maybe he’ll wait until the sun goes down.

Sometimes he wants to tell her to stop being so honest. He doesn’t really want that from her and he doesn’t really want be the kind of person who would ask her to do that. She’d do it too, become whatever he asked her to become. Too many changes have happened in the last, in the last year, for her not to fall back on that old survival instinct, she had many names, she was a shadow.

Just once he’d like to ask her if she’s gonna break his stupid heart and have her say the pleasant lie. The ‘I don’t know’ rings true but it stings every fucking time. And he knows she doesn’t mean that she’s planning on it, he knows she just doesn’t trust herself enough to…

Someone else is on the roof.             

He slips the hearing aid from his pocket casually and while kicking at some loose gravel pushes the device back in his ear.

So much for distance.

With the aid back in place he can hear the movement of heavy fabric in the wind, like sails, only not sails because that would be fucking stupid. The not sails are to the right of the doorway. You go right Man, he thinks, I’m going left.

“Barton,” it’s a familiar voice. It’s a command in the disguise of his name. The sound makes sense now.

“Director Fury. Of course.”

“Of course?” Fury asks.

Clint reaches up tugging a grey hood out from beneath his leather jacket to pull it up and over his head. The wind is playing havoc with the aids and he’s already over this conversation.

“Well, my day just went to shit. Why the hell wouldn’t you turn up?”

“Oh, I’m sorry did I crash your pity party?” Fury says sardonically.

Fuck this guy, he thinks on reflex, fuck him and his all-knowing bullshit, fuck him and the let Hydra burrow right down into your super-secret spy ring and fuck him and his leave me to get the fuck out of dodge, do you even know how hard it is to hitch a ride on a modern freight train in the E fuckin U?

“Can’t a guy just sit on a roof and get a bit of distance without dead men accusing him of shit?” he mutters instead because picking a fight with Nick Fury is just asking for an ass kicking.

“That depends,” Fury muses to the audience of one, “Depends on whether you did or did not get one of my best agents with child.”

Hill. Natasha told him she’d still be working with Fury despite the job title change and no doubt a jump in salary.  

“Technically not an agent anymore.” Clint shrugs, “Technically not your agent either.”

“I’m technically dead,” Fury announces, “Wouldn’t stop me from kicking your ass twelve ways to Sunday.”

Clint is not one to cower before a dead man, going down like a Bon Jovi song is more his speed. Right now, right this second, he is pissed. He is pissed for Natasha who thought she’d found a place she was trusted, thought she’d found a place she could trust. And he is pissed for a young Hawkeye who pulled a teenaged but deadly girl from the edge and told her he knew a place, a place of trust, a place of protection and a place of right.

“It was a really shitty thing to do to her,” he growls, his arms folded across his chest. Fury shakes his head once like atoning for this is the last thing he cares about.

“So you and Romanoff decided to take your grievances out on Hill?”

“Does Stark know she’s still working for you?” Clint snaps, lifting his chin in defiance.

“Technically,” Fury says emphatically, “Hill works for Stark Industries.”

“Technically.” Clint agrees unblinkingly, “Technically SHIELD Medical provided pretty bogus birth control.”

Clint sees the flash, the moment when Fury decided that rushing him and then slamming him into the concrete isn’t worth his time. In the flash, though, it’s a close run thing.

“Look at me Barton. Do I look like I give the first of any fucks about you or anyone else’s sex life? No! Because I am not in motherfucking high school. SHIELD is gone. The Avengers are the first line of defence against the threat that is Hydra, the Chitauri and any other unforseen big fucking bad that may come our way. You made decisions that put you on a path to having a child? You have a child? Make it work! Because trouble is coming, trouble is always coming.”

Clint stares at the man. SHIELD takes the world as it is and not as we’d like it to be, he used to say. He’d given Clint his second chance because he needed people who worked in the world the way it was. He’d given Natasha that same chance for that same reason.

“You practice that speech, Sir?”

“Shut the fuck up, Barton.”            

Chapter Text

Someone had entered up the fire escape.

Someone who didn’t care how much noise they were making.

Someone who was about to get his ass kicked by a girl.

She took Clint’s old bow from the always open wardrobe and nocked an arrow, target arrow but it could still do some impressive damage, especially when she was the one with the bow. Damn Clint and his macho need for excessive draw weights. Her shoulder was going to be pissed with her for days after this.

Kitchen, come on Bishop, let’s do this.

“KATIE!” he yells a little too loudly when she gets the jump in him. He pushes the grey hood back from his head, slouching a little like he’s ashamed of being caught. And well he might. And well he might.

“Clint!” she yells back, staring at him down the shaft of her arrow, “Where the fuck have you been!?”

“Kate, put down the futzing bow.”

“Futzing?” Is that even a word? “What?!” she lowers the bow, her arm was getting tired anyway, 90 pound draw practice bow, seriously Barton? You get as much distance from a 45 pound draw, show off.

“I can’t hear you,” he says as she looks down to pull the arrow from its nock. “I took my aids out.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why?” he says, watching her lips with exaggerated focus.

“Yes. Why,” she articulates slowly stepping closer and into the dying light from the open fire escape window.

“I’m deaf, not a moron,” he says moving back behind the kitchen bench. He pops down behind the bench and rattles through a cupboard, “Don’t speak like that it distorts your lip movements.”

“Pretty sure you are a moron,” she says just in time for him to come back up.

“That’s offensive even if I can’t actually hear it.”

“Good,” she says twisting her mouth on the word. Just like Barton to show up out of the blue with no explanation. Why does she even care? The man is, like, grumpy old man trash. Yeah, but he’s her trash, she thinks quickly.

“Why are you here, Kate?”

“Because, like, ten months ago you said you had something to do in DC and could I keep an eye on the place.” She can’t help but put her hands on her hips, annoyance does that to her.

“Oh right. Sorry?” he says as if he isn’t exactly sure it’s his fault. Of course it’s his fault!

“Where the fuck have you been, Barton?”

“Um,” he squints and she can see him running through the possible permutations her lip movements could indicate before he says, “Places. Doing stuff. Running mostly,” he shrugs. Such a helpful answer, well, she can go home now, no need to worry, he’s been running.

“Why did you take your aids out? I can’t talk to you like this. You pay attention to like every second word even when you have them in.”

“Huh?” he leans forward on the bench. Kate rolls her eyes, at the very least he could try to read her body language.

“Why don’t you have your aids in?” she repeats.

“Wanted a little bit of distance. Didn’t think anyone would be here. Especially since SHIELD went…” he blows a large raspberry.

“Yeah,” Kate says petulantly, “Thanks for the heads up on that.”

“Hey, I didn’t get a heads up. Why should you?”

“I thought you were dead,” she says and he just shakes his head a little sadly, turning once more to the cupboards in the kitchen. He pulls open a door before answering from behind it.

“Yeah. So did I,” he sounds lost in thought, like she isn’t here at all. Then he shuts the door and grins at her, a stupid, charming grin and she really wants to smack it right off his face.

“And then I wasn’t dead,” he says still grinning, “and I had a pile of stuff to take care of and this place wasn’t at the top of it.”

“Thanks,” she says, hoping he knows it’s bitter even if he can’t hear her tone. “Do I even get to know what outranked scenic Bed Stuy and ME?”

He looks at her for a moment as if he’s sizing her up for something and then rubbing the back of his neck in the way he does whenever he is self-conscious about something he admits, “A futzing baby.”

“Baby?! What!” She is too shocked to comment on his second use of the insane ‘futzing’ in so many minutes. Hawkeye frowns for a second, his finger coming up like he wants to her to wait and then he flicks on the kitchen light.                                  

“Yeah,” he chuckles, “My face did something similar when I found out.”

“Who, the hell, would give you a baby?” she asks not entirely certain he isn’t joking. He has an idiotic sense of humour does Barton.

“Give?” he says and the rubs at his face like he has had one of those weeks where he’s been pulled out of dumpster at least twice. “Not so much. Had. I had a baby.”

“You knocked someone up?” Kate says feeling her jaw go slack at the very thought. Barton seems to wince.

“Something like that,” he says turning away again to search his kitchen for something. That something, she thinks, better be damn important, more important than Barton having a baby that’s for damn sure.

She taps him on the shoulder insistently until he turns back to her.

? she signs, giving up on getting him to pay attention to her lips as she speaks.

“NO!” she mouths, finding that no sound will to come. At any rate, the lack of sound doesn’t affect Barton who carries on his side of the conversation despite her state of shock.

“Yeah. Look Katie Kate, it’s a long story,” he says and though she hates when he calls her that she’d prefer to know how, in the hell, he and Natasha had a baby, than correct him.

“I have time,” she says tapping her foot.

“I don’t. I came to get a few things and then head back to the Tower.”

“Tower?  Tower!

Is       there?

Is the  ?"

“Yeah,” he says with a faraway look in his eyes.

“Can I see the  ?” she asks suddenly finding herself more excited about seeing a baby Barton than the prospect of visiting Avengers Tower.

He chuckles at her continued finger spelling of baby, “Yeah, some other time though, okay Hawkeye?” He reaches out to brush her on the side of the chin with his knuckles. It makes her feel like a little kid but she lets him do it. This once, she thinks, just because you’re someone’s dad.

“Okay Hawkeye.”

He nods once sharply and goes back to his cupboard search.

“Here it is!” he crows abruptly, holding a white coffee mug with a purple ‘H’ emblazed on it aloft like a trophy.

“A coffee cup? You came back for a coffee cup?!” she says when he turns to look at her in triumph.

“And my shoes.”

“Shoes and a coffee cup. I hate you Barton,” she says stomping off to find her handbag where she left it in his disused bedroom.

“No, you love me Bishop,” he calls, “What’s not to love?” he asks and she knows he wouldn’t be able to hear her response even if she made one. Cocky Bastard!  

Chapter Text

When she has fallen asleep, the little girl fighting it every step of the way as though she knows of Clint’s absence, Natasha, only half aware of her movements, places her into the travel crib. On her back splayed like a star fish beneath the soft sea of a purple blanket, she twitches fitfully and then sighs as though she has resigned herself to some terrible fate. Natasha leans down over the fabric covered railing of a Walmart travel crib bought by the stubbornness of a man who refuses to miss. She strokes her daughter’s cheek lightly, wanting to tell her that true sleep is no terrible fate, that there a far worse fates out among the stars. But deciding that if the unknown black is a terrible fate to her daughter then she would fight to keep it so, fight to keep the wolves of darker fates from her door.

The bedroom door opens, she knows without looking it is him. She closes the novel she has been attempting to read, circling the same sentence for minutes and failing to place each of the English words into a context that would allow her to move on.

He leans down, his breath becoming a soft oh.

“She’s asleep,” Natasha says simply.

“Aw, I missed bath time?” he asks, removing the worn leather jacket and hooded sweatshirt he has layered over himself. His cheeks are flushed as though he has been running or the wind has whipped at his face. It must be the later she decides when he licks his bottom lip unconsciously.

“You missed a lot of things,” she says as his hands come back down to tug his t-shirt over his abdomen.

He looks down at her on the bed, his forehead creasing and his mouth forming a bemused hard line. “She started to walk?” he asks.

“She’s not even two months old.”

“Yeah but she’s your kid,” he says stretching over the bed to press a light kiss to her cheek, “she’s gonna be talented.” The kiss is wrong, the kiss is familial and formal. The kiss is distance.

“Where did you go?”

There is a gap, a pause, where he looks as if the truth is so vast he couldn’t hope to tell her. There is a gap where he looks as if he wants her to be the kind of person he could tell.

“Up,” he shrugs, moving past the gap as if it did not exist. The scruff on his chin is slowly becoming a goatee, if he was persistent enough to sculpt the wayward hairs instead of driven by a desire not to shave.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

He throws his head back, a crease forming between his eyes brows and his mouth slack before looking back down at her, “No. I got my coffee mug. Might have gone to the apartment. After our old Boss showed up.”

“Fury?” she asks, though she knows the answer.

“The man himself,” Clint says throwing his hands out sarcastically. When she’d told him of the fall of SHIELD, in the dark where he could not see her eyes, she had felt him tense, imagined the careful blankness in his face and the threat in his eyes.

“Hill told him.”

“Did we think it wasn’t going to happen?” he asks sighing.

“No.”

“Tasha,” he frowns, studying her as if he has seen something of concern, “he should have trusted you.”

“Should he have?” She closes her eyes.

“Natasha,” he says, she feels the bed dip as he sits.

“You don’t.” He doesn’t stop asking, it lives in his hands and his face, a permanent question of when she will leave. Sometimes it rises up inside him until he can’t keep it in his body and out flows the words, ‘When’.

His back is turned to her, he hunches over his knees “Natasha don’t you dare,” he growls, “I trust you with my life. I trust you with my daughter’s life.”

“You don’t trust me to stay,” she can’t help but say.

“Tasha, don’t do this,” he says standing once more. He goes to leave again, find a roof somewhere and distance himself from the rope of feelings untangling in his belly. She’d seen him do it before. Remembered him standing blank faced and furious on the safety barrier of an office building when she’d tried to seduce him by way of paying a debt. They’d been so much younger then, he wouldn’t tell her, couldn’t tell her, for years why he’d left and she never could articulate clearly why it mattered that he had.

“Why?” she says suddenly angry that he would ignore it, “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“No. No, it isn’t true,” he rounds on her, his eyebrows knitting and the creases at the corners of each mouth deepening, “You don’t trust you, Natasha. You.” He looks away before muttering to himself “God Dammit!”

“Hey!” he says, grabbing her wrist as she makes the doorway, she twists her wrist to free herself but he sees the move before she begins letting go suddenly and his strong arms coming up to push her back against the wall of the living room. “Come back here. You opened this thing up Pandora so you stay here until it’s finished,” he says, breathing hard in the pause between words, “I love you.”

“Love is…” she begins to say, a compulsion, a quote, a truth he refuses to acknowledge.

“What?” he demands and pushes harder, his fingers pressing into the fascia of her upper arms, “Love is what? For children? A fairy tale? Not meant for the likes of you?” His eyes darken. Arousal, her mind provides unbidden, not sexual, anger.

“Don’t do this,” she says, her gaze firmly fixed. She stands held against the wall by the force of his arms, he pulls her up on her toes as she speaks.

“I love you,” he says again and then he releases her. He moves, to walk away or pace she isn’t certain for as soon as he begins a strangled sob escapes her. His head snaps back. His gaze, a focused beam that earned him the name Hawkeye.

She tries to look away. “Hey,” he says softer than before, an earnestness in his voice that had been drowned out by his anger, “Hey Tasha, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay even if I love you.”

“Stop saying those words.” She could hurt him. She is a weapon. He seems to forget the violence she carries, embedded in her like code.

“I don’t think I can,” he says as if he would give anything to be able to put them away, seal the jar she foolishly opened. “Not anymore,” he shakes his head, “We have a daughter. And I love her more than almost anything in the world. The one thing I know I love just as much? That’s you.”  

“Please,” she says softly. Don’t do this, we can live in the silence. These words they will break us, they will break me.

“I’m not saying it to hurt you.”

“Please. Don’t,” she asks her voice flattening and hollowing as she sinks to the floor.

“I love you, Natasha,” he sinks with her. He kneels like a knight at vigil.

“You can’t,” she forces out. He is too close. She can’t breathe.

“I can, I love you. I love your bad jokes and your ability to get red hair all over the bathroom. I love that you fight like a dancer and dance like a fighter. I love that you’re honest even when other people think you’re lying. I love that you put yourself back together piece by piece. I love that you went to ground for a child you didn’t know and a man you didn’t know was coming back.”

His list is endless. It spills out of him, fearless and fearful in the same mouthful. He loves even when he knows she cannot.

“Stop!’ she cries out.

“Okay, okay,” he says his hands coming forward like he wants nothing more than to soothe her.

“I can’t,” she gasps, now too tired to fight.

“Oh Nat. Nat, you already do," his voice like a cello, "You do every day. You love Lizzie.” How can he be certain? She reaches for the truth only to find it shifting in her fist, a chameleon.

“Clint.” The words won’t come. Other words try to fight their way from her lungs and out her mouth, words she isn’t sure she means. She barricades them in, launching herself over the hand grenade of words she could never take back. There are new words, words she doesn’t understand behind the barricade. Words that he wants to hear but that she isn’t sure are true. And all this time a crawling, gnashing fire in her throat, she wants to tell him of the fire, of the way it steals her words from her but those words are silenced too.

Still on his knees in front of her, he wipes the tears from her cheeks with the knuckles of his left hand. She stares, unblinkingly through the fog of them. His eyes are blue. They have lost the grey that fractured them so delicately in the haze of his own tears.

“It’s okay,” he says, “You don’t have to love me.”

She moans. She could bare anything, make it physical, make it solid, make the pain a place in her body to move into boxes and seal. She can’t bare this, this crush of his loss, the way he will martyr himself and dash himself against the rocks of her.

She could end this, she could walk from his life and slip into shadow. She could hope the tether that binds them, more now than ever, would snap if she pulled it taut enough.

She could slip into another woman, a woman who has the words, a woman who could speak those words to him. He may yet believe it was her.

If only the words would leave her own mouth.

“Oh Clint,” is all that will come.

He smiles. It’s a lost smile, childlike in its forgiveness. It’s a smile that says if she stays, if she says his name, if they are the only words that come, he will remain. Gently, he drags threads of hair from her face, tucking them behind her ear.

Her fingers flex and retract. If the words won’t come she will find another way. They burnt her to the ground. They took everything and yet she remains. She is survival. She is the other way. She is the infinitesimal possibility.

Her finger tips find his face, she traces the lines that have grown deeper over the years she has known him. She sweeps them across his forehead, the thick valley between his eyebrows, at the edges of his eyes, down the curves of his mouth. He is still like he will let her do whatever she wants with him. He is still like he is spent, spent of passion, of anger and of hope.

She kisses him. She breathes into him. She hopes.

There must be a way, a method, to transfer hope as if it were breath to a dying man.

His eyes stare back at her, his hands hovering uncertainly around her body. His mouth knows what to do, moving in practiced patterns as if they were sparring. He must see it, feel it somehow in the touch of her hand to his cheek, the way in which her tears fall on him now. He has to see it.

And then like a wave of pain rolling over you after a gunshot, he gives. His hand tangles itself into her hair, another wraps around her waist pulling her on to her knees.

Chapter Text

Her hair comes loose from her hair tie in his hands and his eyes finally close. He breaks from her mouth, kissing the salt from her cheeks and the corners of her lips. He is too soft, too gentle. It is too light to drown out the drumming in her head or the way her body betrays her with tears. She pushes back with her lips, sliding her hand down his chest to the buckle of his belt in a smooth movement.

He breathes in sharply when her nails scrape at the fine hair covered skin of his lower abdomen. His eyes open quickly, he searches her face. He does not stop kissing her even when she begins to pull apart the buckle with the single hand caught between them. She moves with him when she sees what he means to do, arm muscles flexing and contracting as he slides his hands beneath her buttocks and lifts, bringing himself to a stand.

She loops her legs around his waist, pushing down enough that he can feel her through his clothes. She hears him blow air derisively through his noses as he backs them one step to the wall. In response she tugs at his hair and pulls him closer.

He kisses her neck and allowing the wall to bear her weight, he shifts her hair and loosens the neck of her shirt. The rough skin of his fingers are warm against her. He has always been like a furnace. Even before this became part of who they are, he would wrap himself around her in the coldest parts of the world and share his warmth. He has always been generous with his warmth.

He finds, beneath her shirt, the hollow indentation above her clavicle and he kisses, sucks, until she shivers against him.

She wants more. The buckle finally comes away in her hand and she moves her hand to the zipper. He unbuttons her shirt flicking open buttons with his dexterous thumb and index finger, moving his lips to where ever skin becomes uncovered.

‘Faster,’ she wants to say, ‘harder’ but only her breath escapes her lips. She wants him to know how much she needs him, trying to find him with her hand between her legs. He seems fascinated with the way her breast meet the cups of her maternity bra, kissing infuriatingly at the sensitive skin. She cants her hips, grinding down on him as she lifts herself, stretching upwards to remove her bra. It isn’t that she wants his hands there, the sensitivity is still too much for the groping that might entail but she wants contact with him, she wants her skin pressed against his.

Her baby cries out.

Clint stops beneath her, they stare at each other frozen. They could be in an office in the dead of night waiting for a security guard to pass before they search the room. They wait, Clint burying his face in her hair and attempting to restrain his heavy breaths.

Elizabeth grumbles once and then follows with a wail that can only mean she will not be ignored.

In her hair, Clint begins to laugh softly, his shoulders shaking. Natasha smacks him across the ear.

“I’m sorry! She,” he laughs again, “she has my timing is all.”

“Let me down,” she orders, ignoring the empty frustration she feels opening up a hole inside her.

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” He steps back allowing her to slide her legs from his waist. She pulls her shirt back up over her shoulders.

In the bedroom, darkened by still shut curtains, in her crib Elizabeth struggles with her blanket tiny hands gripping the fabric and feet kicking. “Тише, Тише,” Natasha calls. She bundles the baby up and rocks her gently. Clint follows sometime after, fixing his belt buckle.

“Wet or hungry?” he asks. His eyes still show signs of the crying they have done and she knows her own face will be its equal.

“I’m surprised she didn’t wake before.”

He smiles a little tiredly, “If all we got from SHIELD was a diploma on how to fight quietly it was probably worth it.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“Yeah, okay no,” he admits, one side of his mouth curving to a smile, “You want me to change her?” he offers.

Natasha shakes her head looking down at the sleepy child in her arms, “She’s not wet. Just unhappy.”

He sits beside her, unlacing his boots. He nods sharply and then leans down over the little girl murmuring, “Aw, kiddo whatchagot to be unhappy about?”

Natasha sings, soft and low. The words flow out of her easily, remembered with no memory to fasten them to. “Спи, младенец мой прекрасный, Баюшки-баю. Тихо смотрит месяц ясный В колыбель твою. Стану сказывать я сказки, Песенку спою; Ты ж дремли, закрывши глазки,      Баюшки-баю.”

Elizabeth’s eyes droop and shut, they open three more times before she cannot open them again.

When Natasha looks up, Clint is examining her and he winces like he has been caught. “Why do Russian songs always sound like they are about burying people in the snow?”

She smiles, even with his hearing aids in his Russian is barely functional but he always stops and listens whenever she speaks in another language, something mesmerized in his face. “I’ve had the melody in my head for days. I don’t know where it came from. I have no memory of anyone singing it to me.”

“What’s it mean?” he asks tugging off his boots, “I got tales and the moon and child? No, boy?”

“Go to sleep my beautiful boy, the moon looks in your cradle.”

“So, your basic lullaby stuff,” he says sliding himself back along the bed into the pillows.

“Until the second verse.”

“That’s when we bury people in the snow?” he says facetiously, folding his hands behind his head. She leans down over the crib once more to lay Elizabeth down.

She shakes her head, stroking the new wisps of hair on Elizabeth’s head, “That’s when we send our children off to war.”

“Jesus Tash.” His face collapses into a horror the simple words of a lullaby should not inspire. She knows where his mind has gone, 28 little girls in a room as red as blood.

“Clint,” she says quietly. She wishes she could tell him not to think of her that way, she wishes she could say ‘I am not broken.’ But he has seen too much of her to believe that lie, he has seen programing pulled from her like a magician pulling scarves, he has seen her be the blade that others wield and he has seen her shudder in the aftermath.

“Tasha, I’m… I push… I push and I know I shouldn’t but…”

“You can’t stand living with the uncertainty,” she finishes for him.

“No,” he says and he means it as an agreement and a contradiction. He shakes his head more as though he were physically clearing his thoughts than anything to do with what he says next. “I’m not going anywhere, I’m here for the long haul. You and little miss grumpy, well, I wouldn’t know how to be without you now.”

“It will eat at you,” she says, unable to look at him.

“I’m stronger than I look.” He probably grins. He always grins when making these kinds of statements. He grins over the insecurity, over the feelings of inferiority, over the doubt.

“It isn’t fair.”

“If life was fair, even a little bit fair, you think you’d be you and I’d be me? I fight aliens and terrorists with a bow and arrow, that kinda thing only happens when life fucks you around a whole lot. Nah, Tash, life isn’t fair, but it made me, me and you, you and despite everything I wouldn’t change that, not if I get you, you and that little girl even for a moment…” he screws up his face looking confused, “That make any sense?”

“It’s okay.” She smiles. “I’m fluent in Russian, French, Latin and Barton.”

He just grins right back at her. He amazes her, his talent for hope. His worst moments have always been because he continues to hope and yet his best moments are too because he hopes.

She joins him, curling her legs around her on the bed and beginning to rebutton the debauched shirt.

“I didn’t hurt you, before, did I?” he asks gently. She looks back at him, hand hovering over a button. She has broken his ribs, his nose and several toes, he has carried bruises for days from sparring with her. He has seen her beaten and bloody after a fight, her capture and after interrogations. He has held her against a wall his arrow trained on her throat. Yet he fears this, fears Clint hurting Natasha, fears her pain when it isn’t a choice she has made.

“If you’d hurt me you would know about it,” she says definitively. He reaches towards her and runs his thumb across her cheekbone.

“I don’t want to hurt you. Not in any way.”

She captures his hand, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“It’s okay. Tasha, it’s like I said you don’t have to…”

“You are mine,” she interrupts, her fingers tightly clutching his. He looks at their hands for a moment, a confused half smile on his lips as though she was playing an unfamiliar children’s game.

“Huh?”

How to begin, how to explain when you haven’t the words, haven’t the experience. She feels her heart begin to race. She will piece this together from first principles, she will teach him of her culture, not Russian but Natasha. “Elizabeth, she is mine and you are mine.”

“Of course she’s yours,” Clint says, his blue eyes searching her face uncomprehendingly.

“And you, Clint Barton, are mine.”

“I’m yours,” he echoes.

“You are mine,” she says again, resting her head upon his shoulder.

“Okay Tasha,” he says as his arm closes around her, “Okay, I’m yours.”

“I am trying,” she says softly, thinking that she could fall asleep with him like this and when they woke he would still be there.

“I know you are… I…. I’m an idiot.”

“My idiot,” she says emphatically.

“Your idiot,” he agrees smiling. His chest is firm but warm and he twists to plant a kiss in her hair.

“My handsome idiot.”

“Your what now?”

“You heard me Hawkeye,” she says as she rests her hand over his belt buckle.

“Oh,” he says staring at her hand, “You think she’s going to let us finish what we started?”

“I think you better be quick.”

“Agh,” he groans in mock disenchantment, “So romantic!” He throws his head back against the pillows and she uses the opportunity to straddle him.

“Должна ли я заставить тебя замолчать??” she says sweetly, leaning down as she licks her bottom lip.

He brings his hands up to her hair pulling her down to him as he speaks, “So hot!” 

Chapter Text

Pepper regrets not asking JARVIS to inform the spies of her intention to ‘visit’ as soon as Natasha opens the door. Her red hair is wildly curled around her shoulders and she smiles in a relaxed way that looks so very odd upon her face. Pepper knows it was never high, high heels and tight pencil skirts that said anything about sex and Natalie Rushman, this is what sex looks like. A strawberries and cream complexion does nothing to hide the blush Pepper feels creeping. She blushes not because sex embarrasses her but because she is better than this, she is better than interrupting.

“Natasha,” she says.

“Pepper,” Natasha says, holding the door ajar as the baby begins to cry in the bedroom.

“Futz,” Pepper hears Barton exclaim before, “I got it!”

Natasha rolls her eyes and repeats, “He’s got it.”

“If this is an inconvenient time I can…” Pepper begins.

“Before there was Elizabeth we were Agents,” Natasha says fixing her large green eyes on Pepper and then opening the door wider, “There has never been a convenient time.”

“No,” Pepper agrees entering the living space. The layout has not changed since she was last here. “I expect relaxation and relationships take a back seat.”

“Something I know you too know a lot about.”

Every piece of furniture that was expressly chosen to furnish this suite is exactly where it was placed when the interior designers and work men left. Everything Barton and Natasha have brought with them, a surprisingly meagre amount for two people and an infant, is still in boxes against the corner of the room far from the large windows. As far as Pepper can tell they have not even used the entirety of the kitchen though she can see a breast pump and bottles dried and waiting near the sink.

There are no toys or books or thousands of soft pillows and blankets that always seem to threaten to swallow new families’ whole. Pepper wonders if the bedroom has also remained the same, a spartan absence of colour and light, as if they were planning of fleeing in the middle of the night. It seemed in such stark contrast to the way the two former SHIELD agents cared for the child. She doubted the baby had been put down since she had been born. The warmth Elizabeth was surrounded by was entirely secured by two people Pepper might have argued once had the warmth of an ice cube.

“If you have a moment, Tony and I have something we wish to give you both,” she says certain she has failed to hide her examination of the room.

“Other than sanctuary?”

“Do Avengers have sanctuary?” Pepper almost laughs at the thought, “I thought this was more a headquarters for staving off the end of the world.”

“Ah,” Natasha says grinning, if it were possible to grin sarcastically, “Mr Stark has told you about his Pokemoning?” That word, and the ridiculous way Tony says it has followed her since they first rebuilt the tower, in truth it has been nice to have Bruce around just for someone else to roll their eyes at the sentiment.

“Tony tells me everything,” she sighs though she knows she is smiling, she wants to add ‘eventually’ but doesn’t, “I spend much of time saying no. He is currently infuriated that Thor believes the United Kingdom to be preferable to the Tower.”

Natasha smiles faintly as if she is well aware of what Tony would be like this close and yet not quite to a collection. Pepper supposes Natasha is actually well aware of what a frustrated Tony is like. She walks to the sink before she answers, her bare feet silent on the tiled floor. She does not walk out towards the center of the room instead she follows the curve of the wall to reach for a glass and fill it with water. “Thor believes Dr Foster to be preferable.”

“Ah, young love,” Pepper muses.

“Is it ‘young love’ if the man in question is a centuries old god?” Natasha replies, something playful in her eyes.

“If the love is young?”

“Perhaps.”

“Elizabeth Romanoff Barton stop moving about,” Barton says loud enough for Pepper to hear from the lounge. “Young ladies do not go about without diapers on!” She had not even noticed how quickly the baby’s cries were quelled. Perhaps when Barton said he had it, he did indeed have it.

“Is he okay?”

“The highly trained marksman attempting to change a diaper?” Natasha asks resting her hip against the kitchen counter.

“Yes.”

“Probably not,” Natasha says, the playful twinkle once again returning. Pepper finds herself smiling, this is possibly the closest she will ever get to including Natasha Romanoff in casual conversation. Every time the woman smiles or frowns or walks barefoot to a kitchen sink Pepper feels herself not quite letting go of the thought that it could all be a fiction. She finds herself deliberately drawing to mind the way Happy hit the mat when Natalie flipped him over himself.

“Gift?” she says trying to forget the image again and twisting on her heels away from the bedroom door.

“Is entirely unnecessary.”

“No,” Pepper argues, “that would be what Tony planned before I said no.”

“On behalf of the world at large,” Natasha says standing upright again, her stance widening a fraction, “I should like to thank you for your service.” She nods at this and Pepper is reminded of Phil Coulson’s habitual politeness.

Barton enters then walking close to the wall, the infant resting on his right shoulder. “I don’t know how she did it but this child has already inherited your gymnastics skills,” he says, softly patting her navy onesie’d back. Pepper fancies for a second that the navy makes the child look like a tiny SHIELD agent. The baby’s head has wisps of fine hair and the light catches it as Barton approaches making it look as if her head is haloed with a warm sunset orange.  

“And your inability to follow orders?” Natasha answers quickly. Barton looks up then from the child. He doesn’t startle as though he didn’t know she was there but rather she feels suddenly caught in his crosshairs as if she was new information to be assessed rather than another person.

“Miss Potts.”

“Mr Barton,” she says trying to smile professionally. He has the sharpest blue eyes she has ever seen on any man and she thinks that she would hate to sit opposite him in a negotiation. “You are living here, I think you can call me Pepper.” Barton nods once.

“Pepper has a gift for us,” Natasha says and Pepper feels the way she assesses her reaction to Barton.

“Gift? Why?” he seems actually shocked by the concept. His posture shifts and he scratches the back of his head while speaking directly to Natasha.

“Are you both trained to be this terrible at receiving gifts?”

“Nah, that’s a talent we come by naturally,” he says oddly proud. When he smiles Pepper imagines she can see what it is Natasha sees in the man, a boyish charm that hasn’t been there before.  

“The gift in question is in the main lounge. With Tony. If you don’t agree to come now I’m afraid he may begin alterations.”

“Nat?” Barton asks as though he is looking for orders.

“We cannot be responsible for that.”

Chapter Text

Tony is now bored. Pepper is taking too long and Bruce thinks Dr Jane Foster is more interesting to talk to than he is. She isn’t. Not for the first time he wonders why he has ended up surrounding himself with people who won’t get drunk with him. He has a small screw driver in his pocket and he pretty sure he could take apart…

“Tony. No.”

“Tell me the truth now, did you just agree to be my girlfriend because saying no makes you hot?”

Pepper’s lip purse very slightly and her nose scrunches when he says the word girlfriend. If he were another kind of man he might feel insulted by her distaste for the word but he is Tony Stark and she is his whatever she wants to call it at least until the next time he screws up. Her hand slides into his pockets. He raises his eyebrows, leaning into her touch and licks his bottom lip.

She smiles, politely removing her hand with the small grey headed screw driver.

“No,” she says simply before turning to the assembled… assembly. “They’ll be up shortly.”

“And we are sure jumping out and yelling surprise is a good idea,” The Captain’s friend Sam Wilson asks. “You know what with the spy and the assassin thing?” They have the same way of standing. It must be trained. Seventy odd years apart but they manage to stand tall and relaxed at the same time as though the military thought this was the one thing it should make important down through the decades, the ability to make him look like an anxious dwarf in his own home.

“We’re jumping out and yelling surprise?” Bruce says his forehead furrowing with further concern. Tony sizes him up and decides that if he stands closer to Bruce, his greatness will not be mitigated by the military show ponies and the giant god in the room.

“No. We are not,” Pepper says firmly.

“Good call,” he says, kissing her quickly on the cheek, “Romanoff has, if anything, just gotten scarier.”

Pepper waves her hand at him as if to shoo him off, “It is not a surprise party. We are here to remind them both that they have friends.”

“With gifts,” Bruce says.

“Surprise gifts,” Wilson says.

“But not a surprise party,” Rogers says altogether too dryly for Captain America. Tony raises an eyebrow, did Steve Rogers just sass his girlfriend?

“This is a tradition on Midgard, to instruct the honourees at a gathering to feel surprise?” Thor rumbles. Tony can see he is only asking the tiny astrophysicist he has brought with him like a security blanket but the big guy’s voice carries.

“I think it is supposed to create delight?” she answers her voice rising at the end. Everything that has come out of her mouth since Tony was introduced has been either a faced paced gasp of curious recognition or a question like statement that undercuts her clear scientific prowess. “I’ve never enjoyed them. People dragging you out of the lab and jumping out at you in the dark. No, thank you.”

“One side effect of the other guy is I doubt I’ll have to deal with that again,” Bruce agrees.

Tony feels his mouth pull upwards with the formation of an embryonic plan.

“No, Tony,” Pepper says at his elbow, her strawberry hair flicking over her shoulder with the speed at which she turns to him.

Wilson and Rogers chuckle and then Rogers says to Pepper, “You are going to have to teach me how you do that Miss Potts.” It’s a charm offensive, the worst kind of offensive, he wants to wrap his arm around Pepper and sweep her out of the room in retaliation, “When I say no, he just does things anyway.”

“Pepper. Please Captain,” she says and as if reading his mind, which he supposes she’s always been able to do, she put her hand on his forearm, softly and inconspicuously but enough to steady him. “From now on the only one calling me Miss Potts will be JARVIS.”

“Noted Miss Potts,” JARVIS says. Jane Foster looks at once surprised and then delighted but he will cut her some slack as she has just flown in from London, apparently she had decided against Mjölnir airways.

“Told you it was an ambush,” Barton intones, the sound of the elevator doors opening having been hidden by JARVIS. Tony suspect the lack of warning has something to do with JARVIS’s fondness for Romanoff, a buggy fondness he’s going to have to track down in the program. You can’t have spies, even pretty red head spies with daunting babies in tow getting into your best friends brain.

“Surprise,” Thor says as if he is delivering a commandment from on high.

“Oh, No,” Jane Foster gasps and Thor turns to her, his entire face asking for explanation, “No. No, I’ll explain later.”

Barton stops a foot behind Romanoff, he looks as if he’d rather not be here. He always looks as if he’d rather not be in close quarters with anyone except Romanoff. But there is something else, the way he takes in Thor and shifts the baby so she is no longer looking outwards in his left arm but turned against him.

“Captain. Wilson,” Romanoff says to the men closest to the elevator.

“Wow, she just gave you the disappointed tone, that’s not good Cap,” Wilson says slapping Rogers on the chest. His face breaks into an easy grin when he turns back to Romanoff, “Hey there. So kicking double agents off buildings while making whole people? Impressive.” And then he does something that Tony would think you could never in a million years get away with and leans in kissing Agent Natasha Romanoff’s cheek.

She smiles, “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Excuse me?” Barton says in mock horror as he moves closer.

Romanoff merely rolls her eyes and then gestures over her right shoulder at him, “Sam Wilson, Clint Barton.”

“Ah, the baby daddy?” Wilson asks.

“So she tells me,” he says offering his right hand as he speaks, “Clint, not Hydra.”

Wilson takes it easily, giving a firm shake, “Sam. Glad to hear it.”

“We were lured here under false pretences,” Romanoff says eyeing Rogers sceptically.

“Not false,” Pepper interjects, “There are presents.”

“Aye, many offerings for the young warrior,” Thor gestures towards the small pile Pepper has built on the coffee table behind them.

Jane Foster beside him cringes for a second and then offers hopefully, “Or physicist!”

Bruce smiles as if that might not be a safer profession for the spawn of Romanoff and Barton, who wriggles in Barton’s grasp.

Rogers seems to see something in Natasha’s expression because he rushes to add, “Or whatever she wants to be,” and then looking expectantly at the baby he asks, “Could I… Could I hold her?”

“We’d be hard pressed to find a safer place for her,” Barton says to Natasha who gives a small nod after a second of indecision.

“I wouldn’t bet on that!” Tony exclaims as infants are shifted into solid American arms.

“Tony?” Pepper says her smiles turning very quickly into a frown, “What did you do to the crib?”

“Crib?” Natasha says.

“Yes. Well, I suppose the surprise is ruined now,” she says switching from Natasha back to him accusingly, “Though I don’t know what Tony has done to it so…”

“Surprise?” Bruce declares weakly closing his eyes as if to prevent nausea.

“But Banner is allowed to say it,” Thor says to his little girlfriend.

“Ironically,” she answers, patting him on the enormous bicep.

“I thought,” Pepper says firmly, “that Elizabeth might appreciate a place to sleep that didn’t have travel in its name.”

“And I thought why stop there?” Tony adds barely allowing her to finish, “Especially after the tactical baby bjorn idea was nixed.”

“I’m afraid I only got her a teddy bear,” Rogers says his eyes still fixed on the infant in his arms. He looks gooey. The baby looks… Bartonish, like she is scanning The Captain for places she could put an arrow. Should babies that young be able to frown?

“He got overwhelmed in the toys r us,” Wilson says laughing, “Especially when he saw the Heroes of New York action figures.”

Those stupid dolls make a lot of money for the Stark relief foundation, even if he couldn’t get most stores to stock the Widow ones. Their reasoning, ‘We can’t stock a doll that is an admitted assassin and has been up before congress, Mr Stark.’ rings altogether too falsely considering how often he’s been called before congress and their willingness to sell big green hulk figures.

Rogers shakes his head and then in a voice that glides from one sound to the other he says, “Babies in my day got hand me downs and…”

“Polio,” Tony finishes for him, “How did we get on to Cap’s depressing childhood when we have this state of the art Stark Industries Infant Protection Sleep Pod?” He sweeps across the room to the expensive dark wood crib. It doesn’t look like he’s messed with it, because he is a mechanic but he is also an artist and he rolls his eyes at Pepper’s horrified expression.

“Good grief,” Banner says under his breath. Tony ignores him.

“It monitors heart rate, oxygen levels and temperature. And push this handy little button,” he pulls away the giant red bow, the kind you are supposed to put on cars or giant custom made Christmas bunnies, to show the control panel, “Shields! SHIELDS for the baby SHIELD agent.” He taps the dash and there is a flash of bluish light and then nothing, he flicks at a space above the crib and illustrates the way his finger is rebounded with a jolt, “Now I’ve been working on some retro reflective panelling for a stealth mode…”

“Stealth mode?” Pepper interrupts rubbing her temple, “Why on earth would a crib need stealth mode?”

But Romanoff steps forward and stares at the crib, “It’s wonderful.”

“Huh?” he says, “You. You like it?”

“Thank you, Tony,” she says and she looks right at him, big green eyes and a half smile.

“For my cooperation right?” he says, suddenly feeling like he’d like to get very drunk.

“No,” she says and it’s earnest and it makes it worse. “Thank you. Just thank you.”

“Yeah. No. Stop that,” he orders. It’s like she’s handing him something, something too precious, too delicate, “You’re creeping me out.” He looks up at Barton who follows Natasha like a satellite, at a distance but always in orbit, “This is hormones right?”

“Nah,” Barton says, a kind of cowboyish laziness to the word, “We’re grateful. Thank you. Mr Stark,” he turns slightly giving Pepper a boyish grin Tony would have sworn would not have been possible on that killer face, “Pepper.”

Pepper smiles back gratefully, “I’d say we could return it if you didn’t like the finish but someone invalidated the returns policy.”

Chapter Text

“I too wish to give the child something,” Thor says at her elbow. She’s trying to stay inconspicuous. She doesn’t know these people. Knows of them for sure, there isn’t anyone left on the planet surely that doesn’t know Iron Man and The Hulk. Darcy has one of those Heroes of New York action figures tacked to her computer screen. It’s very strange that the life size version is standing not three feet away holding a small redheaded baby.

“A blessing from my mother,” Thor bows his head a little. She did not expect this and at once wants to take his hand. He says mother and her brain floods with the image of the great golden woman, determined and graceful. Not for the first time she wonders how she came to be a part of this world, one where science and magic collide at an astounding rate, “May I speak to the child?” Thor continues.

Behind the beautiful woman with red ringlets, that Jane can’t help but envy, is the man Thor calls Barton, he is a sturdy looking man in subdued workman type clothes but familiar.

“Isn’t that a little Disney,” Barton says wryly.

“Tише,” Natasha Romanoff says, a sound like the hiss made by the wide range of frequencies emitted by a star and Barton is silenced at once. She turns back to The Captain who looking up allows Natasha to reclaim her infant. Jane takes a step back, babies have never been her thing, she likes math and finding structure in chaos… babies create chaos, babies are entropy. Also babies are all too easily dropped.

Thor leans down over the small child and Natasha. In a smooth, loping language, that sounds faintly of the language that surrounded her in Tromsø, he begins what sounds like a prayer, “Barn, veraviturogvera…” she thinks she can make out “eikinni Yggdrasil tilannars tilað …” and she recognize the tree, a great ash tree binding worlds together, hastily drawn in her notebook to describe a larger more important truth, “þig ekki,” he finishes stroking his large fingertip down the infant’s cheek. The baby stares back and Jane would think it was with awe if two month olds could comprehend enough to be in awe.

Natasha nods, in her face a kind of serenity she has not had since Jane first saw her walk through the elevator doors. Jane wonders if the woman Tony Stark describes as scary has understood the blessing though it rushed past her ears like poetry.

“That was beautiful,” Jane can’t help but gasp, Thor turns and smiles patiently, “What was it?”

“Old Asgardian,” he says in answer, “I wish her wisdom and immunity from harm. I would walk little one from one end of the great branches of Yggdrasil to the others and demand all the worlds swear not to harm thee.” Behind Natasha, Jane can see Barton’s shoulders lower unlike Natasha he had not found the blur of Asgardian soothing. Thor looks back up to Natasha and her tense partner and smiles openly, “A mother did this once for another.”

“We also bought a rocking chair,” she finds herself offering up, again reminded that she is an interloper in what must be a particularly personal time.

“May I present the Doctor Jane Foster,” Thor says, taking her hand in his. “This, Jane, is Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow and Clint Barton also known as Hawkeye.”

“Thor’s Jane,” Natasha says as though she has heard far too much about her, “The reason he stays.”

“Oh,” she answers, feeling her cheeks flush, “I don’t know about that.”

She won’t look at Thor now, if she looks at Thor she will get that terrible glazed look like she’s discovered a new star and Thor won’t prevent it, he’ll just stare back, ridiculously comfortable in his own skin.

“Dr Foster,” Barton says, offering his own hand.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to stare. I mean, I recognize everyone, of course. You’re the Avengers. You know that, sorry, there’s a big A on the side of the building.” Too late she realizes she’s still holding on to Clint Barton’s hand. She drops it and smiles hoping to cover the gaffe, “It’s just, you look so familiar.”

“Ah. Yeah,” Clint Barton says and then breathes like he is relaxing into something, his forehead scrunches and he admits, “Your intern kicked me in the shin when I returned her iPod.”

Her mouth instantly forms a circle of recognition. SHIELD Agent number whatever. Dusty, in black. The other one, the one Thor called Son of Coul apologizing again for the removal of her equipment and records and Darcy kicking Clint Barton in the shin and saying ‘All my songs better still be on here, man in black.’

“I’d say I was sorry but Darcy was right,” she shrugs a little, “That was not cool.”

“Cool wasn’t part of the job,” he shrugs back, his blue eyes sharp even though his posture is less tense.

“Speak for yourself, Barton,” Natasha says with a small shake of her head.

“Everything you do is cool,” he answers tiredly and then reaches across to tickle his daughter's chin.

“Barton,” Tony Stark calls and everyone including Barton turns towards the bar where he is standing, “You’ll drink right, Captain Spangles can’t, Thor is immune to our mortal intoxicants and Bruce…”

“Has a large green reason not to,” Dr Bruce Banner finishes from where he stands discussing what she thinks might be the layout of Ikea stores with Pepper Potts CEO, Captain America and the tall black man who’d introduced himself as ‘Just Sam Wilson’.

“Not a member of your club but totally here to be offered fine whiskey,” Just Sam Wilson replies and Jane catches the way Barton seems to silently ask for permission from Natasha, a blink and you’ll miss it moment of eye contact between the two former agents.

“A Falcon and a Hawk, come my little aviary and imbibe,” Tony Stark says expansively.

Jane gets lost in the moment that the groups break apart and reform, she can hear Barton say to Wilson, “Nat said you demanded medical attention for her shoulder,” in a voice that is all too comfortable with living like you might need to demand medical attention.

“Yeah,” Wilson chuckles, “might not have realized how little Hydra gave a shit.”

“Still,” Barton says as they climb the stairs to the bar, “You had her back after knowing her all of a day. That puts you in my good books.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Tony Stark is pouring out tumblers of whiskey and Jane turns to listen in with fascination as they continue to talk, “And he stopped death raining down on us from the sky.”

“I just followed the Captain’s orders,” Wilson say with a big easy going grin.

“Sidekicks are people too,” Stark says, Barton pauses over his own whiskey raising an eyebrow.

Wilson lowers his own glass before answering, the big grin disappearing, “This is good whiskey so I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.”

She turns back to Natasha and Thor just as Natasha asks, “Did Stark ask you to leave London for this?”

Tony Stark had been calling for weeks, offering Thor many extravagant things to return to New York. When that had not worked he’d started offering Jane jobs, that had had more success in that Thor had felt honour bound to present the offers to her. It was Pepper Potts who had asked them to return with information Thor would not ignore.

“Is not a child of such great heroes reason enough?” he asks, a slight frown forming.

“Clint and I are not heroes,” Natasha answers quickly enough that Jane feel like it’s a trained response. “We can only hope that Elizabeth does not carry the weight of what we are.”

She watches Thor think on this and then sadly he says, “Then let the truth be her constant companion. It was the tragedy of my brother that he never knew the name of the weight that he bore until it’s unknowing had twisted him beyond recognition.”

Natasha stills, one perfect eyebrow raising, “The name Loki will not convince Clint.” She holds the baby a fraction closer.

“Loki did use him ill,” Thor rumbles thoughtfully and Jane takes his hand again, her own small hand quickly swamped by his. “If it would help, Loki is dead.”

“Dead?” Natasha says strangely flat.

“He died in the attempt to save our worlds.”

“He saved me,” she says not certain why she wishes to defend the reason so many had died in New York, other than it hurts Thor to think of his brother maligned, “Before that I slapped him,” she knows she is smiling nervously, she can’t help but smile nervously Natasha Romanoff looks at you like she is a human lie detector, “I don’t think he cared. That I slapped him I mean. In the end I think he did care about the universe.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” says Natasha. Jane thinks there is a total honesty in the statement. She is sorry for his loss, for his grief, she will never be sorry for Loki’s death.

“There has been too much loss,” Thor says squeezing her hand once, then in a new tone, “A child is a joy on Midgard as in Asgard.”

“She is a beautiful baby,” Jane says hopefully.

“She is mine.”

“Then let us celebrate,” Thor says lifting his voice, “for none of us is alone in our grief or in our joy and nor will your child be.” 

Chapter Text

Natasha is surrounded by pillows on their shared bed feeding little Lizzie as he moves unwrapped gifts to appropriate places. When she thinks he isn’t looking she winces or breathes a little sharper. He knows it still hurts, if not as much as before, knows the effort she is expending trying to hide it from him. At night when he holds her he knows not to let his hands stray to the taut and raw areas of her body. She never says anything and he wonders sometimes if she even knows how to say that something hurts.

She is talking softly to the little girl in her arms as he puts the oldfashionedly weighted bear Rogers bought into the miraculous Stark Pod. She’s speaking low enough with her face tilted down towards the child that he can’t make out the words, his hearing aids just provide the muffled hum of her voice. The expensive alcohol Stark served is currently making everything feel softened and heightened all at once.

He leans down to unpin the travel crib and feels a pang of something he quickly shakes off. He lifts the folded crib and carries it out into the lounge of the suite, stacking it against the wall. They can decide what to do with it in the morning, or never.

When he returns to the bedroom Natasha has shifted Lizzie on to her shoulder, patting her gently. The milky white expanse of her breast unevenly covered by the loose red shirt she wears. Natasha’s eyes are closed, her eyelids colored by the fragile veins beneath them. Lizzie hiccups and Natasha continues her narration. He watches from the door way as her mouth shapes the words.

“When I met your Daddy, maленькая девочка, he had almost no hair. Just like you. Your hair is soft and it curls.” She’s right Lizzie’s wisps of copper hair curl easily round your fingertips like Natasha’s own hair. “Your Daddy had spikes of hair, I could see his scalp through it. Shorter than the military, he looked like the kinds of men that think themselves dangerous.”

She opens her eyes now and looks at him leaning against the door frame. “And,” she continues to Lizzie, “when he didn’t know what he was doing he would run his hand over it, from the back of his neck to his face and back again.” He remembers that, the way the prickles of it felt under the flat of his hand and how often he felt like he didn’t know what he was doing, just that what he’d been ordered to do hadn’t seemed right. “I remember that so clearly,” she says and he thinks she’s saying it to him until she adds, “Just like I remember every second of you clearly.”

Maybe this is how she compensates for the barrage gifts and the overtures of friendship. He’d felt overwhelmed by it too, the ways these people just seemed to care about them. He’d wanted to tell them to stop it. If such a thing was allowed to be said. He and Natasha were people who’d earned trust through hard yards and acts of amends. It was how they’d earned each other’s trust. It felt too close to pretending to be someone else for him, he could only imagine how it felt for her. So maybe she needed to remind herself and remind Lizzie that they weren’t like everyone else. Remind them that she had met the father of her child when he had a shaved head, a weapon trained on her throat and a barely thought out offer.

“I’d been undercover, neo-Nazis. Before I got the mission,” he says.

She nods, her cheek rubbing against the soft downy hair of Lizzie’s head, “I didn’t know.” I didn’t know but it makes sense, her nod seems to say.

“I didn’t tell you?” he says frowning. Over the years he’d thought he’d told her everything. She still had secrets, he might even one day accept that she always would have, some of which she didn’t have a choice in keeping. But he’d thought everything he was and had done had been if not freely told, absorbed from him like osmosis.

“The first few months everything’s…” she says.

“Yeah,” he finishes for her not needing her to go over the horrors for his sake, “I know.”

She smiles as Lizzie gurgles, “You talked a lot.”

“Thought you might be lonely,” he shrugs.

“Thought you were crazy,” she says as he makes his way to join her on the bed, “Crazy man pretending to be a SHIELD agent. All eyes and babble.”

She had said that one day. He’d visited and she had said first in angry Russian and then in the perfect mimic of his own accent, ‘Why must you come and babble at me?’ ‘лепетать’ he’d liked that word, reminded him of lily pad and he’d liked that she was angry. She should be angry.

He smiles, “Now what do you think?”

“Oh,” she smiles back wickedly, “Now I know you’re crazy.”

“Don’t you believe her, Lizzie,” he instructs the sleepy looking baby as Natasha settles her among the pillows.

“Stark finally got the complete set,” she says increasing her volume as he looks away to tug off his boots.

“Hmm? Yeah… s’pose he did.” He gets up, heading to the ensuite to wash his hands.

“Thor is not his brother,” she says to his back. So she saw that. Of course, she saw it. She sees everything. He keeps walking though his body wants to freeze.

“Thought they looked different,” he calls back hoping for once she’ll let it drop.

“Dr Foster says your Daddy thought an iPod was a threat to world security.” There isn’t any point in reiterating how nefarious data can be stored in the coding on a music storage device or that he wasn’t the one who made that call. She knows it all. More importantly she is letting the way he clenches around reminders of Loki Prince of Douches, drop for the time being.  

“The big guy looks at her like she hung the moon,” he says ducking his head back out of the doorway with a towel in hand.

She nods her agreement her finger entwined in Lizzie’s grip, “With her doctorate, she may well have. Or at least worked out the equations.” Her volume lowers when she looks back at him, naturally compensating when he can’t see her lips, the room is quiet and softly furnished and his aids are the best, the SHIELD best, but she habitually adjust for him anyway. “Very intelligent,” she says, “Handled superheroes and Stark despite it being thrust upon her.”

“If the reports that came in from Greenwich are accurate she handled a hell of a lot worse,” he replies as he sits back down beside her on the bed. “Wilson’s a good guy. He handled Stark, seems to bring the Captain out of his shell,” she smiles at that. He knows she’s glad especially if Steve Rogers is still hell bent on finding the solider. She knows a little too much of what he might find at the end of that rainbow.  

It is night again now. After last night and the way they’d finally burst at the seams he had had plans, provided Lizzie and world saving allowed, to have stayed in bed with her all day. Kiss every inch of her that he was allowed near. He wasn’t sure why he planned things anymore. Planned hot wall climbing, ‘You’re alive!’ sex, find instead a 37 week pregnant spy. Plan 'we can have sex' again, 'I just told you I love you' sex, get a Pepper Pott’s superhero baby shower instead. Maybe he should just stop planning to have sex.

“Did you enjoy your expensive alcohol?” she says and it’s probably just the expensive alcohol and the lack of follow through on his plans that make it sound sultry.

“You know?” he says leaning down over Lizzie as she fights back against her heavy eyelids, “I think I prefer rotgut and bruising with you.”

“Port international du Cap-Haïtien?” she says her intonation perfectly Haitian French. He chuckles, a night spent in a shipping container when they didn’t think they could get back to the safe house uncompromised. His ribs bruised in the shape of a tire iron with only his tac vest's protection between them and shattering. Clairin, cheap clairin and blood crusting on her bottom lip. He’d wanted to kiss it anyway and kept to his side of the container despite himself.

That, raw and blood covered, that was them, “When did we become people who have futzing baby showers?” he asks.

“Do you think the baby has something to do with it?” she asks, blinking just enough to show she enjoys being facetious.

“Nope,” he says stretching out the vowel and pulling his finger from Lizzie’s grip, “Not putting all of this on her.”

“No, I suppose it happened when I said we should run and hide and you made different call. “

“Of course,” he slaps his forehead, “My fault.”

She smiles, scooting forward on the bed. “The crib is...”

The crib is futzing amazing, nothing short of amazing. Simple and elegant to look at, something that demonstrates the eye of Pepper Potts but then beneath the deceptively normal, if expensive, looking crib is the kind of protection they’d be running a 24 hour detail to provide.

He’d wired in shielding that was coded to their DNA. So that while they were functional only he or Natasha could turn them off or access the precious cargo inside. Tony Stark had explained at high speed, Clint couldn’t determine if it was due to alcohol or just the speed at which his mind worked, that he didn’t want a half asleep archer getting thrown across the room because he’d forgotten to take the shields down. After all that work, the billionaire still didn’t want to hold Lizzie.

“Yeah, whodathunkit. Tin man's got a heart,” he says picking up Lizzie, she makes snuffling sounds into his chest, “Think I'm gonna miss holding on to her all the time.”

“She's like her Daddy,” she says raising her eyebrow, “she doesn't go down easy. You may still get some use out of the rocking chair.”

“Romanoff!” he exclaims, “We are the kind of people who own a rocking chair!” The rocking chair in question now stands in the far corner of the room. A corner they had not used.

She smiles, closed lipped and eyes rolled, “You already owned a rocking chair, Clint Barton.”

“No,” he says standing to put Lizzie into the pod of protection, “That house I... Idunno. I curate it. I'm tied to it... And it's crappy furniture. This, feels different, you know?”

“Like we were subject to a vast conspiracy to make us normal?”

“Well that. Of course. But,” and he pauses, the words not quite coming, she’d have the words to describe this. Instead she just watches him standing there in bare feet with a baby in his arms expecting him to explain. “Like I was given something... Clean. Something new and clean.”

“Elizabeth, remember this. If you are to learn to hope, you'll learn it from this man.”

“Nah Lizzie Bee, I never hoped for this, never thought I was allowed.” He lays Lizzie down on her back in the crib and pulls the purple blanket up over her, her arms stretch out as if to stop herself from falling for a fraction of a second but then she settles. He feels Natasha approach them. He whispers, “But your Mama she works miracles.”

“You should kiss me now, Barton.”

“Ma’am, it would be my genuine pleasure."

Chapter Text

Heya baby, it’s me your friendly neighborhood mercenary. Don’t worry, I only kill people who need killing or if I really need to work on some daddy issues or if it’s Wednesday. Wednesdays are bad for me. I’m sure you’ve heard of me, I’m the best superhero in the world after all. And still not one of those Avenger money earning heroes invited me to the baby shower, so I invited myself. I hereby present you with this slightly warm, but easy to reheat, chimichanga as a sign of my undying

                                                          

affection.

So kiddo, what do they call ya? Hmm, what you don’t talk? How about I call you Bea Arthur and when you grow up maybe you can let me know if you feel more like a Bea or an Arthur.

                                                                                                                       

Did they just leave you in here, all alone, the big bad world just waiting to steal your chimichangas? Sensual Archer Man and Scary Spy Lady what were you thinking? Any fourth wall breaking regenerating degenerate could hand wave his way in here and take you out for a little black ops mission.

Oooooh you’re good at blowing bubbles with your spit. I do that too but no one can tell how awesome it looks and it just gets the inside of my mask wet. I like you kid. Here let’s just pick you up and…

                                                               

Weird.

                                                     

                                        

                                                                                        

 

        Third times a charm.

 

 

                                                                                        THUNK

 

                                                                                                               THUNK

 

                                                                                                                                         THUNK

 

“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY KID!!!”

 

“Deadpool?! What the Fuck?! How in the hell did you?!”

 

                                                                                                              

                                                                                           

 

     

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                                                                                                                   

“Right. Yeah, Yeah. Okay, I'll Help. You are so fuckin’ lucky Natasha is in the gym and not here to take you apart bit by bit.”

SUUUCKPOP

"I've seen her comics, I don't think I'd enjoy that as much as I want to. And I would want to."

"I don't have time for an order of crazy, Deadpool.  The Widow's gonna be back in less than half an hour.  How and why are you here fucking with my child's crib?!"

"Can't Uncle Pooley make a visit?"

"OUT NOW or I swear I'm calling Doreen!"

"I'm taking back the chimichanga."

"Good."

"You would have been more entertained if this was fan art."

"No one knows what the fuck you are talking about. OUT!"  

Chapter Text

She would have rather done this in her office, Stark’s Avengers entertaining suite, the gym, a coffee shop, anywhere. She would have rather been in neutral territory handing over these documents, discussing the inconvenient presence of a child well away from that child. Instead she is in the rooms that Tony Stark has handed over so willingly to her former Agents and they are staring her down with the force of people who know they no longer take orders from her.

Barton pats the child as she sleeps on his shoulder, a cloud of reddish fine hair pressed against his cheek. Romanoff is seated next to him at the table, her own hair, a darker version of the child’s, tumbles down around her face.

“There are three sets of identification,” Maria says drawing three folders from the satchel by her feet, “detailed histories for five years back for you and Barton and less detailed for ten.”

Natasha reaches across the table pulling the first folder open. Three passports, birth certificates, social security numbers and personal histories to learn and discard. She reads the names from the birth certificates first.  

“Nika and Elena Rykova,” she says tracing the names on the Russian and American documentation, “Rohan Francis.”

“Should you need to split up those histories don’t tie Barton to the child,” Maria says as Natasha looks up.

“Russian names.” Her voice is flat.

“You know Russian as well as you know American,” Barton says and rolls his eyes anticipating Natasha’s response, “You know what I mean. You’re always telling me it isn’t just language, it’s culture. Lizzie’s gonna learn the language fast enough from her mom…” Natasha’s body turns slightly as he speaks, she moves towards him in a way she never does for other people. Barton shrugs again, “Makes sense.”

“Nellie and Caleb Brennan parents to Olivia Brennan?” Natasha reads from the next folder. She frowns as she names the child.

“Guess Livvy is close to Lizzie,” Barton says unfazed, adjusting the child on his shoulder.

She slides the final folder across the table, “These are papers for Benjamin Cross and his daughter Edith Cross.” Maria extracts the birth certificate for Natasha’s cover, “This is Sarah McMillian.”

Natasha folds her arms upon the table. She looks as though she would wrap them around herself if she were any other woman. “Identities that don’t tie me to Elizabeth.” Her head is tilted down, even as she looks back to Maria through her eyelashes.

Barton actually loses color. He looks back to Natasha and then to Maria with such speed that he jostles the sleeping child. “No, Maria,” he insists, “Natasha stays with Lizzie.”

His mouth tightens. Maria can’t believe him. Barton honestly believed that he could keep mother and child together regardless. She tries to keep her expression impassive as he leans forward an unspoken threat beginning to form in his body language. She wants to tell him how this ridiculous optimistic approach to the future, this belief that sheer will can make something safe and good, is the very reason he has a small, fragile dependent now.

“Clint,” Romanoff says suddenly. Her voice is low and she leans down over her own crossed arms very slightly.

Barton is instantly distracted by her voice. “There is no scenario where you don’t stay with your daughter!”

The baby in his arms begins to struggle. A kind of panic passes over his face that Maria has never seen before, not in the field, not when faced with aliens or Hydra not even when faced with the fury of, well, Fury.

“There is Clint,” Natasha reiterates firmly and then turns holding out her arms for the baby.  

“Tasha,” he whispers. He is frozen, she thinks, stuck with the child grumbling in his arms. Barton looks unable to yield. He has ever been the more emotional, impulsive, down right stupid of the two of them yet it is a surprise that he appears so blindsided not by his possible separation from the child but by hers.

Natasha reaches gently towards the baby smoothing the downy hair on her forehead and offers a small smile to Barton, “But she will be with her father.”  

Barton frowns again but is no longer stuck he passes Natasha the child as he says her name, “Natasha.”

It never occurred to her before, never occurred to her to look for it, but these names, pet names, nicknames he uses are a code between them. She is Nat in the field when things are under control or when others are listening, she is Tasha when she needs him or he needs her and Natasha when truth must be accepted. She’s heard him call her Red and Romanoff in play and banter but she is very rarely the Black Widow to him.

Romanoff’s nicknames for him have a less obvious patterns and Maria can’t help but wonder if it is lacking because of Romanoff’s penchant for distance or because she is smarter at covering her tracks than Barton.

The way Natasha looks at her child now, allowing the baby to suck on her finger and gently bouncing her knee beneath the table, Maria wonders if the distant, cold Agent Romanoff was just another cover for the Russian.

“Clint,” Natasha says but looks across at Maria, “these are second, third, seventy sixth escape plans.” She gives a minute nod to Maria and Maria finds herself returning it, “This is for Elizabeth.”

Barton sighs and then with his long index finger drags a document toward him, “Edith. That was my mother’s name.”

“Histories are easier to remember when there is an element of truth,” Natasha says, “You know that.”

“Yeah I just… it’s a little more real now.”

He lets his hand drop beneath the table’s surface again, Maria is certain that Natasha takes it with her free hand.

“There is one final piece of paper work,” she says feeling even more aware of her surroundings. There is a baby blanket thrown over the lounge, bottles lined up in a drying rack and a book made out of soft fabric with a cartoon apple on its front intermingling with birth certificates, bank statements and out of state driver’s licences.

“More?” Barton asks, sounding tired.

“A true birth certificate,” she says and Barton’s forehead creases. She strongly suspects Romanoff has not discussed this request with him. “Does the child have a middle name?” she asks quickly, she’d rather be back at her desk or perhaps caught in Stark’s lab during a failed experiment than here if Strike Team Delta decided to have an argument.

“I…” Barton says. Stunned is good, stunned is better than angry or possessive or crazy. “Tash?” he asks.

“Russians have patronymics not middle names,” Natasha answers without looking at him.

“Barton’s not Russian.”

“Neither is Nat anymore,” Barton says switching his gaze from Natasha back to her.

“And yet,” Natasha says finding a driver’s licence from Minnesota in the loose collection of falsified documentation, “Here we see Nika and Elena.” She smiles a wry smile at her own image on the licence for Nika Mikhailovna Rykova.

“She should have something Russian,” Barton says as though he is thinking out loud. “Something other than her mother talking about me behind my back.” Maria catches a fleeting grin that passes across Natasha’s face.

Barton turns to Natasha his eyes focussing in on her. When Natasha nods she realizes he’d been waiting for permission. “Anastasia,” he says.

“Anastasia Romanova… the lost princess?” Maria can’t help but ask.

“It means resurrection,” Natasha answers for him, her green eyes flash as she looks up from her child.

“Elizabeth Anastasia?” Maria asks.

“Romanoff,” Barton says.

“Romanoff Barton.” Natasha says.  

Maria tries to ignore the smile that is suddenly fixed on Barton’s face. “Elizabeth Anastasia Romanoff Barton,” she reads as she types it into her pad. Beneath the English text she brings up a Cyrillic key pad and enters Елизавета Анастасия клинтоновна Романова, “When this is logged, the government, the world will know of her existence.”

Barton is tapping his finger against the child’s nose when she looks up again. The child has Barton’s eyes. He blinks and then slowly he says, “She can’t be hidden forever.”

Natasha looks at him, a furrow forming between her eyebrows, “She won’t be a shadow.”

“No Tasha,” he replies as though he could make reality bend to his will. “Our little girl’s gonna be as bright as the damn sun. No one’s gonna make her a shadow.”

She had many names when he was sent out to neutralize her, the Red Death, the Black Widow, Tsarina and the Slavic Shadow. Maria remembers the reports, for all her names, for all the ways she could mould herself into the shape of a thousand different women, those reports had never been able to track down evidence of a real name or an original identity.  

Maria stands leaving the documentation on the table for Barton and Romanoff to secure and perhaps come to terms with. “I will assume that you are pursuing other avenues for further documentation,” she says primarily to Natasha. “These identities are buried deep but they are known by myself, Stark, the Avengers and they can be accessed by JARVIS.”

“I understand,” Natasha says.

“Neither I nor anyone else here will know of any other documentation you may or may not have.”

“Understood,” Barton says and in that moment he is Agent Barton again.

“Finally, do you intend on remaining with the Avengers?”

“Yes,” Barton says. Romanoff beside him does not flinch, she seems content to let her partner do the talking.

“I take it this means you will not be assigned missions together.”

“Tash stays with Lizzie,” he says again and then he allows, “for now.”

“For now,” Romanoff agrees, “When things change we will inform the team.”

“And if you are needed?”

Barton huffs, “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it, Maria.”

Burn it will, Barton, she thinks. 

Chapter Text

In the entrance to Avengers Tower there are metal detectors and x-ray machines but first you have to speak to a middle aged man in a dark suit and a frown. Kate is almost certain that the middle aged man in the dark suit and the frown does more to deter people than the security. Kate does up another button on her blueberry coat and smiles as she approaches. There is absolutely no reason why she should not be here. She is Kate Bishop, a Hawkeye and rich. Honestly the Avengers should be happy she is paying them a visit at all, she is after all very busy and important.

“Please tell Mr Barton that Hawkeye is here to see him,” she says in her speaking to her father’s secretary’s voice.

Three of the CCTV cameras in the lobby turn at her voice and she can hear the faint whirl of lenses refocusing to get a clear shot of her. She knows that the small part of her that wants to look up and pose is one she should quell.

The man looks up from his computer screen after a moment and looks a kind of self-satisfied that makes Kate want to say things like ‘Do you know who I am? his lips curl slightly as he says, “I’m sorry, Miss. I have no record of a Mr Barton.”

“Clint Barton? The lesser Hawkeye?”

“I’m sorry?” the man says as if she is absurd.

“You know what nevermind, I’ll call him,” she says searching for her cell phone in her handbag.

“Cell phones do not work in the lobby, Miss.”

“Of course they don’t,” she huffs, taking her handbag and the present that she lugged up here with her.

Her call is sent straight through to Clint’s voicemail. Even though she has heard it a thousand times the fact that she can hear him trying to disconnect the recording and his final quiet grunt before it allows her to respond never fails to irritate her. “Barton, answer your damn phone!”

“Miss?” she hears behind her. The middle aged man has left his desk and is looking a shade less self-satisfied.

“Bishop,” she answers raising herself up to her full height, “Katherine Bishop.”

“Miss Bishop, I’ve just been notified that a Hawkeye will coming to collect you from the lobby momentarily.”

For a man who works for someone who calls himself Iron Man this dude really needs to stop making that face when he says Hawkeye. At least our name is literary, Iron Man is, what, heavy metal?

“Oh,” Kate says and then quickly corrects, “Well of course. I will wait right here.”

It is very difficult in this day and age to look busy and important when you cannot use your cell phone. It is very difficult to look busy and important while waiting for Clint Barton because the man cannot be prompt for anything.

“You don’t answer your phone,” she says when he exits the elevator.

He shrugs indicating at least that his aids are in place, “Battery’s dead.”

“You are such an incompetent adult, Barton.”

“Respect your elders, kid,” Clint says but he smirks a little in among the grumpy, haven’t slept, general mooshed into the pavement look on his face.

“Earn it, old man.”

“Why are you here, Kate?”

“You said I could come see the …” she says and then drops her voice, “you know.”

“You could have called first.”

She rolls her eyes at this. “When you learn how to keep a cell phone charged I’ll call ahead. How’d you know I was here anyway?” She thumbs at the gate keeper behind the sleek marble desk. “Door dude was all like, Barton? Never heard of him. Hawkeye? Get out of here with your crazy talk.”

“JARVIS,” Clint says looking up at the ceiling, “Say hi to Katie, she’s my protégé.”

Katie and protégé all in one annoying sentence, boy, was he asking for a kicking.

“Miss Bishop,” a disembodied British voice answers, “Welcome to Avengers Tower.”

“Hello JARVIS, thanks for the assist,” she says finding herself scanning the ceiling for whatever Clint was talking to, “Not his protégé.”

“Too late, it’s in the files now,” Clint chuckles.

She pouts before she says, “Show me the ‘you know what’ now.” She punctuates this with her hands on her hips because a TED talk told her this would help. “I brought presents and everything.”

“Kid’s name is Lizzie,” Clint says leading her past security. He flashes a key card and no one bothers to search her, ultimately that is a good thing because there is a Taser that looks like lipstick in her bag and the present she did buy for the littlest Barton isn’t one that she could get past TSA, “No one’s bought me presents in my whole life, Lizzie’s here like eight weeks and already she’s sitting on a horde of stuff.”

“Bet she’s a damn sight prettier than you too,” Kate says happily. Clint and his nicknames, she can’t see Natasha Romanoff naming her child Lizzie just as she isn’t a Katie and Natasha isn’t a Tasha to anyone else but him.

“True. So true,” Clint muses and then scrubs at his face like he has only noticed it in the reflection of the elevator doors.

Clint opens a suite and Natasha Romanoff’s easily identifiable red hair comes into view over the top of the couch. “Hawkeye,” she greets her.

“Natasha,” Kate says feeling suddenly a lot stiffer and awkward. Clint’s ‘not my girlfriend’, work wife, partner, scary spy friend has always intimidated her. “I’d ask how you are and stuff…” she says, “but you know I’m here for proof that Barton really has a kid.” And even if you hadn’t just had a baby with him, I’m not sure I’d ever ask you how you were and expect a straight answer, she doesn’t say.

“He does,” Natasha answers as though Kate had just asked if Barton owned an arrow with a USB attached. Her gaze is focused on something on the floor “Currently she is unhappy that she is expected to spend time on her stomach.”

Clint starts to push her forward and then around the couch. She stops, leaning back into Clint’s shove and there on the floor in the middle of a spongy looking patchwork blanket is a small child. Tiny hands making small fists and legs splayed behind her, she struggles to lift her head but when she does her face frowns deeply as if she was experiencing the most dissatisfying moment of anyone’s life in all of history.

“Hawkeye, she makes your dumpster face!”

“I do not make that face,” Clint grumps but Kate can see Natasha smirk.

The baby has tufts of reddish hair and chubby arms and legs.

“Can I interrupt tummy time to hold her?” Kate asks the only adult in the room, Natasha.

Natasha sits barefoot on the couch, her head tilts a little as she answers. She has not taken her eyes off the baby in the entire time Kate has been here. “If Elizabeth had the words I’m sure she’d say yes.”

So the baby is Elizabeth to Natasha Romanoff and probably a series of ridiculous nicknames to Clint Barton.

Kate crouches down leaving her bag and the inelegantly wrapped present by the couch.

“Hello little one,” she says as gently as she can. She picks her up trying to remember babysitting skills from the few months she spent insisting she could earn her own money when she was thirteen.

“You look like your mommy,” she says, looking down at the little girl who is no longer making Clint’s dumpster face. She does look like Natasha, in so much as she has red hair and full pink lips but there is something Clint like in the sharp blueness of her eyes. It really is true, Clint Barton has a daughter. “Aren’t you a lucky one? Oh. Oh. What did I do?” she says as a furrow forms between the baby’s eyebrows and with a soft hiccoughing sob the baby starts to cry.

“You’re not the right Hawkeye, kiddo,” Clint says and lifts the squalling child out of her arms. The baby comes to rest against his chest and then like a car alarm being switched off the crying stops.

“How did he do that?” she asks, her eyebrows raising to her hairline. Natasha Romanoff merely gives a one shoulder shrug and looks unimpressed. “No seriously, he can’t cross the road without getting hit by a car.”

“I suspect it was all an act. One he had to drop when something more important came along.”

“Lizzie Bee, this girl is not to be trusted,” Clint says to his daughter and Kate silently congratulates herself on the ridiculous nickname supposition, “She says nothin’ but lies and slander. Your Daddy has always been amazing.”

“Woman,” Kate corrects and is obviously ignored by Barton, “Okay so Baby Barton.”

“Romanoff Barton,” Clint insists.

“Baby Romanoff Barton, right. I got you a baby bow and arrows.” She gestures to the package by her bag and then to Natasha she adds, “I tried to get baby knives but would you believe it, they are not appropriate for children.”

“Little do they know,” Natasha says without expression and she is utterly terrifying.

“These are for a six to eight year old but you’ll grow into them, won’t you?” Kate says refocusing on the baby in Barton’s arms.

“Boomerang arrows?” he asks as he makes a little circle with his pacing. His expression is stupidly hopeful.

“No boomerang arrows, Hawkeye.”

“Aw,” he says.

“Thank you, Kate,” Natasha says from the couch and Kate feels like she has passed some kind of test.

“Yeah, Hawkeye,” Clint agrees.

Elizabeth Romanoff Barton looks intensely at her own fist and purses her lips, Kate just watches feeling gobsmacked. “Wow. I just… Barton’s car crash of a life helped to make this?”

An annoyed expression passes quickly over Clint’s face before he say, “Nat did all of the work. I showed up at the last minute.”

“You’re good at that,” Kate agrees.

Clint’s eyes are only for his daughter now and Kate catches him whispering into her chubby little grip, “Gonna be here for all the minutes now Lizzie Bee… all of them.”

Natasha rises from the couch, “Would you like a coffee, Kate? I believe we have some kind of cake.”

“Yeah sure,” she says after a few dumbfounded moments of watching Clint bouncing the baby in his arms and whispering to her. She begins to follow Natasha trying to tear her eyes from Clint and the baby Elizabeth, “Sorry. I thought I knew what I was going to see when I got here.”

“Don’t feed her!” Clint says abruptly, “She’s a Hawkeye, she’ll keep coming back.”

Chapter Text

He heard her come in. She wasn’t trying to be stealthy nor was he trying to ignore her. It wasn’t like he didn’t know she was there but when he stops for water with one final left hook, she is on the mats stretching out her limbs more like a chorus girl than a fighter. Baby Elizabeth is watching from a tiny chair that bounces when she moves. She follows her mother’s movements with her eyes and pushes her chin back and flails her little arms to make the chair move.

Natasha lifts up from her center, a deep arch in her back and her head falling backwards. Her hair, though tied back, dragging on the mats. Her baby squeals but Steve isn’t sure it’s for the feat of acrobatics Natasha performs or for the fact that she has managed to bounce herself yet again. A little control must be a heady thing for someone so small.

Natasha comes to a standing position from the arch and he can see the way she smiles at the baby. He has never seen one of her real smiles not look tinged with sadness. This time though she smiles quickly, brightly and truly. Baby Elizabeth bounces and squeals again.

Natasha cartwheels away across the mat. She stops just before the mat ends on the corner opposite him. He starts unstrapping his hands, he can be done for the day.

On her hands she is perfectly still for ten, fifteen seconds, her legs part, splits. She tumbles again and then is upright.

He gestures to baby Elizabeth when she looks up at him, “When I was a kid all the apartments had baby carriages out the front with babies just sitting in the sun.”

“Crying in the sun.”

“Some,” he smiles, “There was always other kids around though, someone’s mother, older sister.” He can see it now, hand me downs, hand knitted bonnets and the squeaky sound that the springs would make when they were rolled over uneven surfaces and they were all uneven.

“She’ll never sit in the sun alone,” Natasha says looking back at her daughter.

“No. I guess she won’t,” he says pulling the last of the tape free, “No mumps or measles or polio though right?”

“Not if we can help it.”

“If it was up to you and Barton alone I’d say nothing was ever going to touch her.”

“But it isn’t just up to us.”

His mother was a nurse, he remembers late nights when the fog was coming in and his chest wouldn’t clear, sitting up right, every breath coming out a painful wheeze. Without fail on those nights there would always be an urgent knock at their door a frantic parent begging for Mrs Rogers to come.

Sarah Rogers always went. Until one day she couldn’t anymore. They had medicines now, screenings to find the thing that killed her and then kill it in return.

“No. It never is,” Steve agrees quietly. She smiles one of her sadder smiles and sinks down into the spilts. He looks up at the three television screens along the far wall for a moment he catches a glimpse of himself in uniform before he is suddenly hidden behind the blurry green mass of the Hulk. “We’re on the television again,” he points up at the screens, “Why does Tony insist in having those things on in here?”

Natasha smirks as she turns to examine the screens from her position on the floor, “Doesn’t he realize you like to be alone when you are punching out all your demons?” She bend at the hips her forehead resting easily against her shin.

“You know what Romanoff…” he shakes his head but then from the corner of his eye he sees the words trailing across the screen beneath the generically attractive anchor, “JARVIS can you turn up the volume?”

Over the cacophony of the vowel sounds the happy baby makes from her corner of the mats, the anchor continues,“… say the infant’s birth was registered three days ago under the name Elizabeth Anastasia Romanoff Barton.” Natasha sits up right and he is looking at her for the moment she rolls her eyes at the way the anchor pronounces Anastasia.

“There had been speculation that Natasha Romanoff, code name Black Widow and one of the founding members of the now vigilante peace keeping force known as the Avengers…” They play footage of the congressional hearings he was gratefully unable to attend, with Natasha, an arrow at her throat and a sneer on her lips.

“…was in a relationship with one of her team mates. Speculation mainly centred on Captain Steve Rogers.” It is then his turn to roll his eyes. “We now go to Peter Stefanovic outside Avengers Tower.”

“It begins,” she sighs.

He sits back down on the bench, “Stark’s going to be annoyed you didn’t go with Illya.” He tries to smile but he feels his face not quite achieving the sincerity of the movement. She’s right he is a terrible liar.

“Why does he keep suggesting masculine names?” she asks but though her tone is light she carefully lifts her baby from her bouncing seat.

“My guess?” he shrugs, “They were the spies that got actual names in the television shows he watched. I assume you had a plan for when this…” He tries to bite through the instinct that tells him he shouldn’t swear in front of a lady. Bucky, the Commandos, sure but a lady even one as sharp as Natasha it just feels wrong. Peggy would definitely shoot at him again for that.

“Hit the fan?” she finishes for him and he is pretty sure she’s only doing it out of pity.

“Exactly,” he smiles back.

“I had a plan,” she says looking down at the little girl in her arms. There is something a little bitter in the way she says it. No, not quite bitter more rueful. “It seems now I plan in concert.”

“But you and Barton?”

“Are partners,” she answers but it seems she is talking more to the baby than to him. Natasha doesn’t change her tone for Elizabeth, she speaks Russian and English with the same intonation and patterns as when she speaks to Barton. The baby’s eyes focus in on her just as quickly as on her father when she hears his voice and the lyrical up and down he picks up whenever he is speaking just to her.

“Right. I thought you two…” had a shared history, knew each other’s moves, didn’t do anything without considering the other. I thought, he doesn’t say, Barton was your Bucky. “You always seemed pretty in concert to me.”

She looks up at him then. Her eyes narrow a little as if she is asking what it was that he just left out. He lets himself relax and reminds himself that she isn’t actually interrogating him.

She licks her bottom lip before she answers, “It is one thing to be and another thing to know you will never not be.”

He nods, “One truth forever and ever.”

“An easy way to die,” she says raising an eyebrow.

“But what a way to live.”

She turns back to the screens as the dark haired reporter continues from across the street. “If the child’s name and birth certificate are to be believed the child’s father is Clinton Barton code name Hawkeye, former SHIELD agent. No reputable sources have been able to produce photos of Romanoff or Barton since the fall of SHIELD and the following congressional hearings, however she is…”

He blows a regretful breath from his nose, “And you told them they’d know where to find you.”

“There are at least three major network vans out the front of the tower and you still think that was a lie?” she answers without turning back to him. Her eyes are focussed on the three screens. The other news agencies have picked up the story.

“The Avengers, Stark Industries and the Maria Stark Foundation have yet to comment. Back to you in the Studio.”

“JARVIS, turn it off,” Natasha says.

“Of course, Ms Romanoff,” JARVIS replies politely and all three screens flash into blackness.

“Do you want the Avengers to comment?” he asks standing behind her. She doesn’t turn around straight away. He watches as her shoulders roll back towards him under the surface of her exercise shirt.

“I didn’t think I was calling those shots, Captain,” she says finally.

He frowns, “You’re part of my team, so is Barton but Elizabeth isn’t an Avenger and I don’t make it my job to comment on people’s relationships.” She tilts her head at this and he continues, “We don’t have bylaws. This isn’t Avenger business.”

“How diplomatic of you,” she says. She smiles and it is a very good fabrication of a real smile but there is just something off about her eyes.

“You know,” he sighs, letting his hands fall from his hips and realizing he cannot remember putting them there. “I think I’d like for diplomacy to work for once.”

“It isn’t only my decision to make,” she says firmly. Her hand is cupped against the baby’s soft orange hair.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, “talk to Barton. The news reels can cool their heels.”

“News reels?” she smirks. The smirks are almost always real he notes. She flicks her hair slightly as she turns, “Now you’re just playing with us.”

Chapter Text

Tony picks up the arrow and tests its weight. Barton walks back from the target, he spins an arrow between his fingers before dropping it back into his hip quiver. He rubs the ridge of his knuckles under his nose before he speaks, “Stark, I’m tellin’ ya the flight is off on these arrows.”

“Maybe you’re just not as good as you think you are.”

“Oh, I am that good.” Barton’s long fingers are scratching at a spot under the sleeve of his t-shirt. He is annoyingly too comfortable making the claim, doesn’t he realize there is only room for one person with that level of cockiness and Tony was here first. Then his voice drops, “Uncle Tony.”

“How do you two make that sound like a threat?” he asks.  

Barton’s head cocks to the side and his chin wrinkles as he forces his bottom lip upwards like his actually thinking about an answer. “Training,” he says after a moment in the same low, ‘I could kill you without blinking’ voice and the goofy, ‘don’t look at me, I’m just one of those good ol’ boys you see pounding brewskies at the local’ facial expression fades away.

Tony doesn’t flinch but for maybe a second he feels himself working a little harder than he wants to at not flinching.

Then Barton grins.

Tony lets out his breath and ignores Barton’s dry chuckle. “Well, I’m telling you there is no way it’s my design that’s the problem.” To illustrate he holds up the new arrow and lets it balance on the back of his index finger. Barton barely looks at the arrow, steady across his knuckle. He just shrugs and turns back to the target.

Barton picks up his bow and in a literal flash his has selected an arrow and drawn, “My arrows….”

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Three purple fletched arrows hit the target 160 feet back. They are grouped so tightly and so dead on it looks more like a purple rose floating out in space than arrows in a bullseye. Damn, he is that good.

Barton barely pauses to grab one of the new arrows from the bench, “Your new arrows…”

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

The space between the snap of the bow string and the heavy sound of metal tip hitting the layers of padding behind the target is infinitesimal.

His new arrows, black nocks and fletchings, are all over the target and none of them in the center. Barton turns to him, his elevated eyebrows creasing his brow.

Tony pulls his hand away from his chin and gestures to the target, “You could have shot wide.”

“Stark,” Barton says and the ‘c’mon’ is implied.

“Okay. Okay Natty Bumppo,” he says and Barton barely manages a head shake. Tony is 96% certain he is trying not react to the nicknames in the hope it will get him to quit it. It won’t work. At a certain point it crosses from unfunny to funny again, at least to Tony. “What are you saying is the problem?” 

It’s mechanics, physics, it’s an error to be fixed. The world shrinks for an instant down to the arrow in Barton’s hand and the numbers it represents. Numbers he can change, fix, improve. It shrinks to numbers he can control.

“Don’t mean to interrupt, boys,” the voice at the doorway says.

JARVIS really needs to stop letting Romanoff sneak up on him.

“But you’re going to anyway?” he says, unscrewing the discreet canister built into the arrow shaft.

Romanoff doesn’t come any closer nor does she seem to care he hasn’t turned to look at her, “By all means, Mr Stark, continue having your engineering degree handed to you by a two bit carnie. Elizabeth and I can wait.”

Well that’s interesting. Not the stuff about his engineering degree that’s so ridiculous it barely registers but carnie, so the circus history is actually true.

He looks up at Barton, slinging his bow across his chest like it’s a backpack rather than a weapon. “Carnie? So it’s true, not some fiction Fury inserted into your file to root out moles?”

Barton looks back over his shoulder to Romanoff. He smiles and then looks back to Tony, “I’ll do my act for you sometime. Nat would probably be happy to tie you to the spinning wheel.”

He wants to say something about the kinky shit they get up to in their own time staying there but he glances back at Natasha and her face is so devoid of any feeling despite the infant in her arms that the only word that comes out is, “Pass.”

The corner of her mouth lifts very slightly like she has won.

“Mr Barton, a word?” she says, her voice is deadly smooth even though she is wearing the kind of clothes upper west side women wear to yoga classes between buying pumpkin spice lattes

Barton lifts his chin once, “Of course, Ms Romanoff.”

He joins her and they begin the kind of hushed conversation that only serves to make you want to listen in.

“We knew it was coming,” Barton says after a sigh he runs his hand over his kid’s forehead and smiles but only at her.

Tony keeps his head down, examining the arrow shaft, running his fingertips over the joins looking for the error. He also keeps them in his peripheral vision. Privacy is something they’ve always ignored. Romanoff didn’t give a shit about his privacy when she triple agented him why should he give a shit about theirs now.

“Today it came,” Romanoff says, “Rogers wants to know if we want the Avengers to make a comment.”

Barton looks up at Natasha at that, his hand comes off the baby in her arms and he gives her the calculating look he gets before he draws an arrow. “I don’t know, Tash. I mean it’s not like they started a breeding program for Avengers…” he shrugs. “We just, you know, had a kid. I don’t see why it’s anyone’s business but ours.”

“I know you are listening, Tony.” She looks straight at him, eerily still.

He shrugs a little as he looks up, “In my defence you are in my house right now.”

"You did put our names on it."

He frowns, slightly. Then nods his acquiescence.

Natasha, Barton and the baby all stare back at him. Unhelpful and unyielding as always. He throws his hand out it front of him,"As the Superhero with the most experience dealing with bad press, I’m going to go on the record and say you need to get out in front of this."

Barton makes a low growling sound in the back of his throat, "Lizzie isn’t bad press. She’s a baby girl."

He rocks back on his heels. The guy actually growls. Who growls at people? His mouth opens a fraction and he feels the divot between his eyebrows growing deeper.

"Hey Barton, have you met the international media?” he asks facetiously, “I have. They don’t give two fucks and everything can be made into bad press. I’m calling Pepper.” He pulls his cell from his back pocket.

“Pepper?” Barton repeats but mostly to Natasha.

Tony answers him anyway, “She’s not just a pretty face.”

“She’s been handling your messes for years,” Natasha allows and Tony looks up at her from his cells screen. He raises an eyebrow, does she really expect him to feel bad about that? He’s done a lot worse that he’s been trying to make right.

“Her and a crack team of PR, Ex SHIELD and world class security,” Tony counts off on his fingers. He shakes his head, steps forward again. “Look, follow the Captain into battle but trust me when I say those rabid pitbulls would rip him apart.” He thumbs towards the city street where he knows the television crews will have set up their packs.

He stares at Barton, the man looks back with a cool look of incredulity.

Tony snorts in disbelief, “It’s nuts that you can’t see this. You can’t be this naïve?! Romanoff, I know you can see this.”

“He’s right,” Natasha says and Barton switches his gaze back to her instantly.

“Wow. Really? Tasha?”

“Call Pepper,” Natasha says, her voice even and her eyes on Barton, “We’ll talk to her.”

He steps forward again, “Barton, listen to your…”

“Stark!” Barton yells and the baby flinches and begins to cry “Stop talking!”

“Clint,” Natasha says under the sound of the baby. Tony can’t hear her well but he watches the way Barton watches her mouth when she talks.

“Yeah, Tash, we do it your way.” Barton reaches for the kid, murmuring and smoothing her fuzzy orange hair down, “I’m gonna take Lizzie back to…”

“Go,” she says with a short sharp nod. He drags the crying baby from her arms and stalks out of the room.

The sound of the kids crying is settled quickly. Natasha doesn’t watch him leave, doesn’t move from her spot. “Make your call. We will meet with whomever she wants.”

“You want to get Banner to sedate your boyfriend first?” he says his mouth betraying him by pulling up into a nervous smile.

“Make the call, Stark.” 

Chapter Text

She toes off her running shoes and socks as soon as she enters the suite, pushing her toes into the soft carpeting to ground herself before confronting Clint. She can hear him humming in the bedroom, a low rumble of sound through the still open door.

She watches him for a moment, hovering over their bed, t-shirt pulled tight across his back. He is changing Elizabeth’s diaper, his fingers pressing down tabs and a balled up used diaper on the floor near his feet.

“Hawkeye,” she says when she is close enough and then she raps the side of her foot against the base of the doorway.

“Mmm?” he replies lifting Elizabeth back into his arms and kicking the diaper ball towards the pail at the entrance to the ensuite. “She’s gonna be hungry soon.”

Her eyebrows raise as she notes how careful he is to avoid making eye contact, “Are you going to tell me what that was about?”

“Lizzie was crying, Stark was annoying me.”

“That simple.”

“Yeah, that simple,” he says walking away from her towards the crib.

She narrows her eyes, “Liar.”

He looks back at her, over his shoulder, his eyes are cold and hardened and his face has lost all expression. He puts Elizabeth down, knocking the mobile Banner gave them, by accident or design. He turns back to her and in three strides is pushing her back out the bedroom door.

“Is that right,” his nostrils flare, “Widow?”

She halts. Her stance widens. Her lips part automatically as she looks up at him. She manages to stop the brief but hard intake of air that might give her away.

“You don’t lie to me. You don’t call me Widow.” She feels a slight twitch in her jaw as she speaks.

“Is that what you know?” he says, his voice a simmering upsurge.

“You know that I do.”  

“We’ll do whatever you want. I said that.” He moves to circle her, his forehead creased and his articulation overly crisp, “Just drop it.”

“No.”

He is heading into the kitchen, still refusing to look back at her. Natasha’s words bring him up short but he does not turn back to her, instead choosing to hunch down over the counter. “No?” he says sharply.

“I said I would try, you said you would try, for her sake,” Natasha says finding herself echoing the sentiments he has flung at her in many of their fights. “You are my partner in this. And for her sake I will not let you lie to me now.”

There is a timer in her head, counting down from the moment he put Elizabeth in her crib. She has an unerring accuracy with time, part of a skill set for survival and destruction that is now retrofitted for an infant’s comfort.

“Jesus, Tasha,” he says and crumples further into the counter.

“We knew it was coming,” she says softer than before.

“Yeah,” he agrees in a groan.

“You agreed that she should have a real name, a real history.”

“I know, Tash,” he says. “God. I know. That’s not it.” His hand is covering his mouth as though he was horrified as he twists back towards her.

“Then what?” she says. “I see the anger, the guilt.”  

“I love you, Natasha.” He throws his left hand forward, palm upwards, gesturing to her and the bedroom behind her. “I love Lizzie. I… I’d die for both of you.”

He sounds frantic. She swallows the impulse to tell him that love is for children.

She takes a step, “I will do everything to make certain that isn’t necessary.”

“Yeah,” he says and the loss of the frantic edge to his voice does nothing to raise her confidence. He sounds numb now and she knows she has misunderstood his point.

“Clint?”

“I know you can look after yourself, Tasha, I know that. But… But it’s different now. If it’s the choice between Lizzie having you or me? Well, I’ll make damn sure she still has you and…”

“Clint.”

“And I’d stand in front of an army…” he raises his eyebrows and nods his head, “Unarmed…” he nods again looking for confirmation that she understands, “Naked…” again he nods at her, the same clipped voice he uses in the field for orders, “For that little girl, I’d….” He shakes he head, not particularly hard just enough that she knows what comes next isn’t neatly thought out or prettily pieced together. When his eyes meet hers they are very blue, reflecting the color of his t-shirt. “I’d happily sit through the kinds of torture only fuckin’ Loki could think up if it meant you two were safe.”

“Tasha, fuck, there’s nothing I can do here. No one I can shoot, no cover I can give you.” He flings his hand forward again, almost recklessly, and then both hands bunch into fists. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he says lowly and she can tell even now he is trying to stop himself yelling with the baby so close by. “Pepper Potts is better at protecting you than I am. Stark can offer you both more safety than I can. I’m her daddy and I… they’re gonna make her out to be some kind of mistake…” his voice cracks, “a freak… something bad.”

“Clint,” she says coming closer, he squeezes his lips together breathing heavily.

“She’s my little girl. She’s not bad fucking press. I love you. That isn’t some fuckin’ scandal.”

“We need you, Clint.”

“No, you don’t,” he answers too quickly, his hand swiping at the back of his own neck.  

Elizabeth has done this to them. Before the little girl with his shrewd eyes none of this needed to be said. She is taking them to pieces and making them rebuild. The confidence they had in their old skills no longer seems to matter. The way they worked together, an instinctual dance, is falling apart in the face of her new demands. Sometimes Natasha looks at her tiny daughter and sees the pebble that begins the avalanche.

“You are her father and no one else will offer her the kind of love that you do. No one can teach her to hope like you will.”

Both his hands are in his hair when he cries out, “I fucked this up. I’m so outta my fucking depth.”

“Clint Barton, the world can say whatever it wants of us. I know the truth. Elizabeth is one of the few good things I have brought into this world and you helped me to do that. Long before she was even possible you were helping me to do that.”

“I just gave you a choice.”

“Yes.” She frowns. He is tall and athletically muscled, his fingers are dexterous and his aim astounding but his shoulders curl in as he turns his face away from her like her praise actively scares him. Clint Barton looks more like a boy than a killer. “And it was more valuable than you have ever given yourself credit for.”

“Tasha,” he whispers.

Maybe there was part of her that always thought his anger at her talk of debts and repayment was because he wanted to keep her indebted. If there was she was so very wrong.

“Pepper Potts doesn’t quiet Elizabeth in the middle of the night and Tony Stark doesn’t tell me I can be a mother even though I have no memory of my own,” she says and she is not sure she recognizes her own voice anymore. This is not them. The constant need to reassure each other is new and bitterly unwelcome. “None of those fools outside know what it is to depend on you to help them bring an infant into the world, alone in a small farm house, terrified…”

His eyes are swimming, less like he is about to cry and more like she has broken his nose or snapped him with a rubber band. It stings, she thinks, when I tell you you are more than the agent on my six, more than a bow and arrow, it stings.

“Tasha, I…”

She puts her hands to his cheeks dragging his face down towards her, “You did that. You never say… You know I’m scared… You never say it.”

“I’m scared too,” he closes his eyes.

“And you still hold me up. It is enough, Clint,” she drags in a breath, hearing it catch in her own throat, “You are enough.”

He shudders in her hands. She thinks that it might break her. 

Chapter Text

“Aw man,” she can hear Barton complain from behind the closed door. Natasha sits calmly on the sectional sofa in a dress and heels that has Pepper trying to remember not to call her Natalie despite the small child sleeping on her back beneath a purple blanket.

“Is there something wrong?” Natasha calls, her red lips framing the words so precisely. Pepper couldn’t pull off that shade, with her fair skin and freckles she’d most probably look like a mascot for a large burger franchise.

“Nah,” he calls back through the door, “I agreed to the suit. I’ll shut up.”

Natasha pauses in the soft stroking of her child’s hair and smirks, “There’s a vest too, isn’t there?”

“Yeah.”

“The vest is the least of your worries.”

“But,” he says poking his head out of the door way, his hands hidden by the door frame but clearly busy with the business of buttoning a shirt, “you admit it is one.”

“Помолчи, пожалуйста,” Natasha admonishes though Pepper doesn’t understand the words it is clear Clint at least comprehends their essence. “Pepper, please go on.”

“According to Daniel you won’t be needed on camera very long, Mr Barton,” Pepper raises her voice to the man behind the door quickly correcting herself, “Clint.”

“Nat is better at talking than I am.”

“Natasha,” Natasha says, smiling in a way that makes Pepper uneasy, “is better at stopping her impulse to put an arrow through a journalist’s eye socket.”

Pepper feels her eyes grow a fraction larger. “Neither of you can be armed,” the words come out in a kind of hiccough and she recoils at the sound of her own discomfort.

“Pepper, we are joking,” Natasha says looking back at her. Her smile has lost the sharpness it had when she was directing her words to Barton.

She blinks quickly, “Right,” she gives a little nod and moves on, “The Avengers’ statement has been released and Stark Industries is taking no official position on…”

“’Cause tech conglomerates have historically needed to take positions on babies,” Barton interrupts exiting the bedroom with an end of the new tie flipped over one shoulder and a steel blue vest unbuttoned. The PR team’s choice of suit was appropriate but she is amazed at how closely they have managed to match the vest’s color to his eyes.

“Clint,” Natasha says as his fingers finish the knotting of his tie and smooth it back down across his shirt covered abdomen.

“I know. Sorry.” He shrugs and looks up for the first time. Even without the suit jacket and the vest unbuttoned Pepper can see how the farm boy come assassin they’ve been sharing a home with these last weeks could be a spy. He looks very suddenly like she wouldn’t have noticed him as out of place in a board room or a charity ball. “This isn’t your problem, Ms Potts.”

It takes her a moment to respond. This man is just as slippery as Natasha. They match. The silvery blues of his new suit and the navy blues of her dress. Natalie and whatever name he went by when ‘shadowing’ other people. Clothing shouldn’t be able to do that, shift your perceptions of someone so thoroughly. They were doing something extra, surely.

“Pepper,” she answers, “Tony and I are angry too. Sadly, we are more accustomed to it but we are angry too.”

“And we are very grateful,” Natasha looks up at Barton and gives him short nod before looking back to Pepper.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

“This is not something in our collective skill sets.”

Pepper feels the sway of her ponytail as she tilts her head frowning slightly, “Media relations?”

“Telling the media anything,” Barton answers in a low grumble. The vest he seemed to dislike so thoroughly is now buttoned over the dark tie and light shirt.

Natasha follows him, a lilt in her voice like this is a ‘bit’ they’ve worked out, “Having private lives for the media to be interested in.”

“The only people who knew my name,” Barton grins at her, his hand curving over the back of the sofa, “were SHIELD or shady people who did shady things.”

Pepper raises her eyebrows and adjusts her legs crossing them at the ankle and sweeping to the other side of her seat. “That sounds like the media to me.”

“We do this and then that’s it right? I mean we still have Hydra and Aliens and…” Barton sweeps his hand through the air make vague hand gestures she guesses are meant to mean superhero business and not paparazzi. He shrugs and then finishes hopelessly, “to worry about but…”

“The Avengers’ PR machine will decline to comment after this interview but…” she frowns as her smiles falters, “I’m sorry, I thought Daniel and Maria went through this all with you?”

She was only here for a quick check in before her day really started and the whirl wind of press conference, interview, life change picked up speed for the couple who Pepper was starting to think of as part of Tony’s adopted family. Some days she expected him to present her with a drunken aunt or a politely racist grandmother with super powers or a history of undermining governments.

The actual prep and work she’d delegated out to the best PR, media professionals and lawyers Stark Industries and now Avengers Inc had to offer. In real time that meant Daniel. Daniel appeared to be the antithesis of PR, a fussy thirty something in pinstriped shirts and glasses. It was his meticulous attention to detail and focus on the patterns of behavior that ended up making him perfect for picking apart the right and wrong things to say in an interview, or to a specific interviewer. His fast speech, seeming nit-picking and note cards were irritating to Tony but despite her sardonic comments he worked superbly with Maria Hill.

She should have considered the personality factors of putting Daniel with Clint ‘Hawkeye’ Barton.

“They did,” Natasha says turning her calming smile back on Pepper. Everything that made her an excellent assistant and an excellent spy all there in the way she seemed to read the sigh of concern welling up inside Pepper. “Hawkeye’s better with his other senses.”

“The talking heads will tire of this eventually. Celebrity children, however…”

“Egh. Celebrity?!” Barton actively cringes at the term and slumps down into the sofa beside the baby curled beneath her blanket.

Pepper stops herself from telling him not to wrinkle his suit, there will be a number of equally as fussy makeup people tailing Daniel with hand steamers if he needs them and Maria Hill to glower until Barton stays still enough to be steamed.

“I’m afraid you’re one of us now, Mr…” she blinks and corrects again, “Clint.” It is the suit that’s doing it, she tells herself, it’s so much easier to call him Clint or Hawkeye when he is mooching around Tony’s lab in a plaid shirt with a missing button.

“Does it get any easier?” he asks then and she feels blindsided by the sincerity of the question. His eyes are wide and she fears he’ll detect any fraction of a lie the second it leaves her mouth.

I had to take them in, Tony had told her, they were like lost lambs. She can see this now, understands, if only minutely, why Tony picked up the phone and in a very Tony way had asked what amounted to, Pepper fix this, they’re hurting my friends. She’d learnt to translate Tony Stark a long time ago. It never ceased to be a blessing.

“You won’t be the one they’ll be asking about how to get your cat suit body back after a baby.”

“Seriously?!” Barton replies looking like he doesn’t believe anyone could honestly ask such a question, his head darts back to Natasha for confirmation. Pepper makes a mental note that Barton does not think of a woman’s body as public property and she smiles. “Remember when we had important…” his gaze drops quickly to the baby, “stuff…” and back to Natasha, “to do?”

Barton, Pepper notes, does not want to curse in front of his child. This adopted family of Tony’s is insane and, at the same time, incomprehensibly sweet.

Natasha only smirks, “Says the man who didn’t need to take lingerie shots to shadow someone.”

Oh good lord, Pepper thinks, SHIELD knew exactly what button to press with that plant. There is a traitorous momentary thought that flashes though her mind, Natasha Romanoff’s endowments have only become more substantial since the birth of her daughter. She is grateful that the neckline of the former spies dress sits well above said endowments.

“I offered,” Barton responds quickly.

“After this we can ask Tony if that would have worked as well,” she offers matter-of-factly, “Natasha, it will be as you rehearsed. No surprises.”

“Better not be. If you want me to do the whole…” Barton begins to offer before Natasha cuts him off.

“Clint, I faced down congress, I can do this. Just smile when Pepper tells you to.”

“Not Pepper,” Pepper says, smoothing her skirt before standing, “Pepper has a business to run. Daniel. Smile when Daniel tells you to.”

Please don’t torture my PR staff, she thinks.

“And don’t say anything Maria would beat me up for… got it,” he says, that dry drawl she has come to expect from him returning. When she turns back towards Barton and Natasha, he has lifted the sleeping child into his arms, “Daddy’s not gonna shoot anyone Lizzie Bee and Mama’s gonna be impressive,” he says gently into the down on top of the baby’s head.

“And Captain America will be your babysitter, моя маленькая птица,” Natasha says following them by standing. Her blur of unfamiliar Russian sounds is amazingly soothing. She leans towards the baby on Barton's shoulder and with a flash of green adds, “Remember screaming is for our enemies and not our allies.” 

Chapter Text

“You have got to be kidding me?” he says when Steve opens his door holding Romanoff’s baby. Thankfully the baby is squished comfortably against the Captain’s large chest and so he doesn’t have to see the kid make a scowl that a kid that small shouldn’t be able to make.

“It’s been over seventy years since I was around kids,” Steve says, pushing the stray lock of hair back on his head. He looks more flustered than a super soldier has a right to look.

“And you put your hand up for babysitting,” Sam finishes flatly for him. You put our hands up for babysitting. So much for his vacation, so far he’d spent too much time hanging around Tony Stark’s well-appointed Avenger storage unit and not enough time using Captain America as the excellent wingman he was meant to be.

“You’d prefer Stark or Banner?” That’s the options for nanny? Hulk or billionaire? Why not Thor, Prince of Asgard? Is there no sixteen year old who needs a little gas money and can be trusted to keep their trap shut? Seriously, this kid is going to have so many issues.

“Why am I here?”

“You have psych training.”

“I’m a VA counsellor, you think the kid needs to talk about seeing IEDs on the corner of Broadway and…”

“You’re good with people?” Cap interrupts with a pleading expressions that Sam can’t ignore.

“Man,” he exhales heavily, shaking his head, “are you lucky you inspire loyalty.”

Cap grins with relief, “If anything happens to her I doubt that will save me from Natasha and Barton.”

Sam has a host of nieces and nephews as well as cousins all over the lower 48 and he knows how hard his ass would be handed to him if he’d dropped any one of his sisters’ kids. He smirks, “Super serum be damned, you’ll be so dead. Like black dude in a horror movie dead.” Steve frowns and Sam just waves him off, “So we going to the park?”

Women love men with babies.

He follows Steve back into the main living area of the suite. It’s still lacking any homey touches. It makes Sam think of the way you set things up between tours but he notes that the 1940’s stuff that had been all over the shelves are mostly missing and beside the Stark pads on the coffee table is a growing collection of books all with the spines well broken.

“Only if Tony has one in the building.” Sam shrugs, opening both his hands to covey how little he’d be shocked if the massive tower had a playground in it. A super ritzy chuck e cheese is what he’s picturing. “Those news people will do anything for a photo.”

“Paparazzi,” he fills in out of habit.

“Yeah… Internet, helpful.” There is a black leather bag on the couch and it looks like the kind of thing you use when trying out cat burglary. Cap continues, “Some things don’t change. Cameras got smaller, people with them are just as pushy.”

“Stay away from urban dictionary, okay? I don’t think I can handle you telling me something was on fleek. So bro-ing out with a baby and no beer,” he says and claps his hands together, “Fun times will be had by all.”

“Barton will probably come claim her before Natasha’s done. I don’t think Pepper’s media kid wanted him on camera for long.”

“Because he does that Hawk stare thing?” he asks shrugging off his jacket. He notices the bottles sticking out of the cat burglary bag and smiles. It’s nice to know the woman who kicked him out of the way of a bullet wasn’t completely surrounded by fluffy bunnies and the like.

“I think he makes the kid nervous.”

“The one in the shirts with cufflinks, raps his fingers against the table when he’s thinking?” Sam asks turning back to Cap. “The one that always seems nervous?”

“Yeah,” Steve shrugs his admission, “Daniel O’Malley? O’Leary? Something like that.”

The kid Steve is talking about, the one with the detailed notes on everyone who comes anywhere near an Avenger, has a receding hairline and NASA circa 1957 glasses. The kid looks a lot like that one solider in every war movie who’s a coward and cries before getting killed off.

“You know that kid’s actually older than you?” Actually but not technically, physically but not chronologically. It used to be that the weirdest things he dealt with was missions he couldn’t talk about and wings.

Steve is rocking back and forth on his feet as the Romanoff–Barton offspring begins to struggle. “If Stark’s going to keep calling me old man then everyone not my boss or with their own kids is a kid,” he says tiredly.

“Soooo…”

Steve looks up at him and deadpans, “I look at you and I see a 12 year old.”

Sam crosses his arms, shaking his head, “Is that any way to talk to your salvation?”

“Hold her for a minute. There’s a bottle.” Cap ignores any response Sam might give and confidently pushes the wriggling kid into his arms, “She cries if I put her down,” he adds.

“How you doing, baby spy? I thought you never cried.”

“I don’t think Barton or Natasha ever put her down,” Steve replies over his shoulder as he heads into the kitchen.

Sam hits the remote and is rewarded with a large full screen shot of Natasha in a business dress, her long hair pinned up, she smiles warmly off camera.

“This thing is going out live?”

“Apparently it looks more honest if it’s live. It used to be things were true or a lie… how do you get more honest?” Cap asks over the sound of a microwave.

“I’m sure many people sitting at home are asking themselves if it is responsible to bring a child into the world given the clear dangers of your chosen profession and that of the child’s father.”

“Yeah and many people at home can shut the hell up,” Sam doesn’t stop himself arguing with the plastically attractive blonde on the screen. “What? They’re gonna take kids from firefighters and soldiers next?” The Natasha on the screen smiles again and tilts her head as if the question was not a big ass insult and is in fact worthy of consideration. TV Natasha’s smiled more often in the last ten minutes than Sam’s seen her smile in the entire time he’s known her. “Your mom’s lookin’ good though, short stuff,” he says to Natasha’s little girl who stares back like she’d really like to have the hand eye coordination to grab his nose.

“She hasn’t tried to kill them yet,” Cap says behind him, baby bottle in hand and a frown on his face. He has to be thinking what Sam is too, that Natasha should be shrugging like the questions she is being asked are so moronic they aren’t worth the breath she’d expend to answer them. The kind of shrug she’d give before breaking into Fort fucking Meade.

“It’s more impressive that they’re still asking questions if Barton’s down there scowling at them,” he laughs, “You think we could go down and watch in person?” A little show of strength, him, Cap, Ironman, the Hulk, Thor’s arms and Barton’s scowl just standing outside of frame. Imply baby spy would be better off somewhere else now.

Steve looks a little disappointed as if he’s been reading Sam’s mind. He gestures for the return of said baby spy. “Hill and Daniel would burst into flames if we brought this little bundle anywhere near the press.”

They both look back to the screen where Natasha isn’t trying to pretend to be the perfect 1950’s housewife. Sam decides that Daniel and his team have seemed to have agreed on a mix of first lady and Angelina Jolie as the way to present Natasha Romanoff ‘Mother’ to the world.

“You look marvellous, how have you returned to such peak physical fitness so soon after the birth?”

Sam runs his tongue over his front teeth to try to stop the chuckle.

“They want her fitness regime?” Steve says appalled.

“They want to talk about her bra size and if she has stretch marks. They just can’t come right out and say it,” he answers over whatever insane answer Natasha has been told to give. “I heard the Avengers’ statement on the morning shows. Nice. Bland but nice.”

“Ridiculous. You’d think she was a princess,” Cap says looking down at the baby eagerly sucking at the bottle in his hand.

“She kinda is, Cap, first of a dynasty,” Sam answers. Her grey blue eyes close leaving a fine white gap, a sign of a kind of calm enjoyment that Sam is sure isn’t possible once complex thought comes into play. As if to punctuate the thought, Clint Barton is suddenly on screen shaking the interviewer’s hand and managing without a sound to convey the feeling that he’d rather be somewhere high and distant. He also seems to actively be trying not to wipe his hands on his suit trousers.

“Hey look, your Daddy’s tryin’ to be friendly,” Sam says, trying not to laugh. The people on screen retake their seats and Natasha crosses her legs again adjusting seamlessly to the way her partner seats himself upon the couch. Clint tugs once at the trouser leg on his left knee and Sam sees the infinitesimally small moment Natasha pushes her own thigh against his as if reminding him she is still there.

“Clint,” the interviewer says and Barton looks up with sharp eyes zeroing in on the interviewer’s face like she is a target. The lady doesn’t flinch, to her credit, and carries on like the people sitting opposite her couldn’t kill her in so many ways it would begin to sound like a Roadrunner cartoon. “What do you have to say to the people who consider your unwed status as parents a poor example to set as role models?”

Sam feels Steve pull upright to attention without even having to look. They’d run Barton and Romanoff through media training and they’d assumed The Captain would be well behaved in every situation. They hadn’t factored in the indignation of a righteous man. Sam wonders if he should shut the TV off when Barton begins to answer.

“Plenty of people get married and divorced every day, ma’am,” Clint says his voice a little heavier on the farm boy drawl than Sam has heard around the tower. “Natasha and I have been through a lot more than most people in all the time we’ve known each other and we’re still partners.” It surprisingly sounds less like a rebuke than Sam expected. Clint sighs a little, gives a shrug and the camera pulls in loosing Natasha for the first time since Sam had turned on the interview.

“Look, it’s called a private life ‘cause it’s private and I intend to keep it that way but if people are gonna make us role models, I can’t stop ‘em, then, well, they’ll see two people raising their daughter the best way they can.” Sam raises his eyebrows, if this is as harsh as Barton gets the world’s press is getting off easy.

Then Barton looks down the barrel of the camera as if he was sighting a shot and the same grey blue eyes the baby has are starring down every single person in the audience, “Anything beyond that is none of their goddamn business.”

The interviewer, ever professional, only pauses for a moment longer than she would if Barton had described his personal cheesecake recipe and not threatened the world and then she throws him a soft ball, “What do you think of being a father?”

Everything in the man’s face changes, softens, his left hand moves in frame and pulls Natasha’s into in. “It’s life changing. It’s a miracle. She’s a miracle.” 

Chapter Text

Bruce manages to avoid tripping over the many cords tangled over the floors until the last moment. It isn’t entirely his desire to avoid anyone from the press corps or Stark Industries marketing that makes him awkwardly fall forward and cover by breaking into a sudden jog, Agent Barton is sitting, or rather perched on an unmanned camera assembly.

“Agent," he corrects, "Barton,” he says looking up and steadying himself, “Sorry, Clint.”

“What’s up, Doc?” Barton says staring off over the huddle of press people.

For a moment he is lost for words, “Er?”

“Sorry,” Barton flashes a smiles and then turns his gaze back to the huddle, “couldn’t resist.”

“I don’t want to distract you.”

“No, you’re not,” Barton insists still staring off into the distance, “Nat told me to make myself scarce. Pepper’s Danny boy told me to never say goddamn on national TV again and to make myself scarce and Maria did that jaw thing that I think might mean I’m getting written up even if there’s no file to write me up in anymore. Distract me. You’ll be doing me a favor.”

“I’m not certain I’m doing a very good job then, you seemed to be very focused on the proceedings.”

Barton chuckles, “That’s ‘cause I’m insubordinate by nature.” He jumps down, bending at the knees so his landing is much softer than expected, “Come on, Doctor Banner. I should rescue Lizzie from Cap.” He shrugs a little, “Or Cap from Lizzie. Walk with me?”

“Happily. Television crews make me nervous.”

Barton slips into an easy strut and throws him a sidelong glance, “As long as it’s not angry.”

“Do they make you angry?”

“Thought you weren’t that kind of doctor?” Barton apparently ponders aloud after a short pause.

“Therapist, you mean?” Bruce says pushing his glasses back up his nose, “No, never had the temperament but then I’m not a pediatrician either.”

“Is that what this little chat’s about?”

Bruce finds himself smiling softly at the quick way Barton assesses and reassess the conversation without the bluntness of his partner when she isn’t working, “Yes and no.”

Barton stops abruptly and Bruce twists to avoid the archer in his path. “Did something show up in Lizzie’s tests?”

“No,” Bruce says and then shakes his head when he finally registers the concern in Barton’s voice “No, not at all.”

“Natasha’s?” Barton asks his voice clipped.

“Oh no,” Bruce finds himself rushing to explain, “It’s nothing like that. It’s she’s due, over due in fact, for her vaccinations.”

“Nat?”

Bruce stares at Barton for a moment seeing his own confusion reflected in the other man’s face. Blondish, spiky hair and blue eyes where there should be a mess of brown curls and dark eyes but otherwise identical expressions. He shakes himself free of the absurd moment. “Elizabeth,” he corrects.

He knew an Elizabeth once. She had blue eyes. He’d never been one to wax poetic on the differences in the color blue of the human iris but Barton’s little Elizabeth’s eyes were shockingly not the blue he expected to see when presented with a child called Elizabeth. His Elizabeth had hair that tangled in knots when she twisted it back to look down her microscope leaving tendrils of brown to warp around her face as she concentrated. His Elizabeth was never a Lizzie.

Betty was gone now, safe from the danger he wrought.

He hasn’t been listening. He has mindlessly followed Barton as he entered the elevator.

“Right. Yeah. Never even thought about that stuff,” Barton continues to mutter, “Yeah, okay.”

“You’ll need one.”

“Vaccinations? I’ve had plenty, Doc,” Barton say, “I’m practically immune to everything now.” The younger man tugs at the tie pulling it out from beneath the vest he wears.

“Pediatrician,” he smiles, “Though I did note the small pox vaccine scar on your right shoulder.”

“Yeah.” Barton’s hands are busy pulling apart the buttons of the vest and finally the top button of the shirt beneath.

“Long story?”

“Not really,” Barton says relaxing into the word and running his hand back through his hair. With that final movement he seems to shift back into the t-shirt clad jock personae Bruce has seen wandering around the tower often seeming totally unaware of anyone else in the building. He’s called a greeting to him once or twice through the giant glass partitioning walls that Stark Industries is famous for to no avail.

“Big needle. Little blister. No Pox,” Barton grins.

He’s seen the reaction to the small pox vaccine and a little blister is the kind of understatement he knows to expect from Natasha and is teaching himself to expect from this man. His Elizabeth, Betty, was a cellular biologist. He doesn’t flinch at the name his mind provides. He doesn’t flinch anymore, even if the grief lays in wait in the quiet moments.

“You’ll need a pediatrician,” He reiterates as Barton exits the elevator. He can see Barton nod as he follows but knows not to trust that its agreement. Superheroes, it seems, are terrible patients.

By his count Captain Rogers was waiting at his door or sprinted across the floor to open the door barely three seconds from Barton’s efficient rap.

“Barton! Doctor Banner!” Steve says with a warm smile.

“Cap,” Barton rumbles in a way that suggests to Bruce that some part of the man wants to salute. “I believe you have something of mine?”

“She has some lungs on her,” Sam Wilson says from behind the Captain. “You have got to get her playing the trumpet or something ASAP.” He says the acronym instead of spelling it out. In his arms the Barton Romanoff baby is scowling with concentration, her pink lips wrapped around her own fingers.

“Wilson,” Barton says instantly reaching out for his child, “Rogers dragged you in for this?”

“When going into battle you’ve got to bring your best soldiers,” Steve replies stepping back into his apartment and collecting the deceptively random articles that accompany babies wherever they go.

“She’s not even ten weeks old,” Barton says looking into his daughter’s eyes, his free hand dances above her for a moment his thumb waving back and forth once before his hand clenches leaving his index finger pointing towards the apartment’s doorway and he drags it across the space in front of his body.

“She’s the Black Widow’s daughter,” Sam says leaning against the door frame.

“Tell me about it,” Clint grins back at him.  

“She had a bottle and she slept for…” Steve says returning with a tactically looking bag filled with bottles and blankets.

“Not long enough,” Wilson finishes for him.

Bruce reaches for the bag, looking for something to do with hands even for a trifling amount of time.

“Hey Lizzie Bee,” Barton’s free hand shifts again thumb and index finger free, then flat palm thumb tucked inwards. “You causing trouble?”

“Damn man,” Wilson laughs, “She’s gonna be trouble when she’s older. Look at that face. No one would believe she screams the roof down if you so much as hint she’s going to be put down.”

“You think she’s going anywhere without her daddy checking up on her?” Clint says dryly.

“You think she could fool Natasha?” Steve says an ironic furrow between his eyebrows.

“You’re right,” Sam says and presses his finger to the baby’s nose, “Almost feel sorry for her.”

“Natasha’s still being interviewed?”

“Photos. I think. No photos for me and Lizzie,” Barton answers adjusting Elizabeth so that she rests against his shoulder, “No photos for Lizzie.”

“It’s a shame.”

“Private life, Cap,” Barton says firmly and his smile disappears.

“I mean, now days it’s so easy to take photos,” Steve says his arms falling by his sides like he is rethinking his words, “but a family photo that’s something that’s still special. I wouldn’t want your family to miss out on that.”

There is an odd pause. It looks as if the Captain wants to fill it with something more effective, a better explanation. Before the stuttering sound of conversational repair can begin Barton echoes, “Family photo. Vaccinations. Rocking chairs.”

“Clint?” Bruce finds himself asking, the strange list seems like something they shouldn’t be eavesdropping on.

“We’re good,” Clint says turning to him his eyes almost flicker like someone turning on a flash light. “Uh, thanks for the help today,” he says to Wilson and Rogers.

“Happy to help,” Steve replies like the odd moment never happened.

Sam just shrugs and says, “You owe me a beer, a six pack.”

In the elevator Barton takes the bag from his shoulder and offers, “Thanks”

“Baby sign?” he muses conversationally to fill in the emptiness of the ride down.

“What?”

“You sign? On occasion?” This is not something he should have brought up. He is very certain that this is something he should have ignored. “When you talk to Elizabeth?”

“Oh. Right.”

“The studies indicate that language acquisition isn’t significantly faster with sign than with speech for normally developing infants,” he continues to speak. He licks his bottom lip and closes his eyes. Close proximity to Tony Stark has done something to his brain. They could have had a silent ride down to Barton’s apartment and then he would have gone straight on to his lab. Instead he sounds like he’s insulting an assassin’s infant care skills.

“It’s, uh, habit,” Barton says in a low voice. “Not something we got off the internet.”

“I’d wondered if…”

“I use ASL,” Barton says looking up from his daughter, “Natasha’s is almost fluent. I guess I never even thought about what my hands were doing with Lizzie.”

“Of course,” he says and takes his glasses off to clean.

“Lost some of my hearing as a kid,” Barton offers. Bruce puts his glasses back on without wiping them against the cloth in his pocket. “Lost it again as an adult. I’d appreciate it if that didn’t go beyond us. With the aids I can do just fine in the field.”

Barton’s eyes narrow and then he drops his gazes to Elizabeth.

“No, of course.” He is very aware of his own hands now. He wants to put them in his pockets but is worried he doesn’t remember how. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“We don’t want another pediatrician,” Barton says suddenly.

“Sorry?”

“You have to monitor Lizzie anyway, just in case, right? Doc, Bruce, Natasha trusts you. I know it’s a big ask and you’re not really… after today…” Barton says going somewhere in his brain that Bruce is not privy to, “I think we can swing it if you’re her doctor,” he nods sharply. “It feels right.”

Bruce can tell from the finality of that statement that Barton is a man used to going with his gut.

“And Natasha?”

He’d apologized to her. He’d done his best to repair what he could. Somewhere in the depth of his soul he still felt no matter how often he got to deliver good news about the health of her child it would never eradicate the terror in her eyes as he began to transform. Barton might think he trusts him but Barton hadn’t yet experienced that visceral terror.

“I mean I’ll ask her, I always ask her, but I think we’d both feel better if you were the one with the needle.”

“I’ll talk to Tony about getting in the vaccines.”

“Okay?” he nods hopefully at Bruce, “Okay. Okay, Lizzie Bee. Okay.”

Chapter Text

There is possibly egg, possibly mustard, crusted on the end of her scarf, she can’t remember when she last wore it or managed to put it in with her laundry. Jane tucks the frayed edge back under her coat and hopes that Thor hasn’t noticed that she was picking at it. She hasn’t been out of the lab for two days so she hopes the sweater she’s wearing underneath the coat was clean before she put it on because it isn’t now.

He is very sweet standing there with his hair blowing in the wind in front of the two lawn chairs that used to live on the roof of her lab in New Mexico. The sun is hanging low in the sky but not low enough that the colors have changed from their standard blues to the oranges and pinks of a New York City sunset.

She pushes the bangs she’s trying to grow out back behind her ear before she say, “I should go back to the lab. The simulation probably finished running by now.”

“Your work will be there in an hour,” he says as he herds her gradually back to the plastic lawn chairs.

“Yes but…” she says refusing to sit.

“Then you can breathe in clean air for another hour.”

“I can’t believe you got Darcy to send you these chairs,” she says narrowing her eyes. Thor will not be moved on this he is a giant immovable Norse wall. Normally she would unstoppable force him anyway but he did get her lawn chairs which took forethought and a level of romanticism that all her other boyfriends lacked, preferring their own egos to any need to work for her affection.

“She complained vociferously,” Thor says smiling as she takes a seat, “and said I must pay for shipping.”

Which meant she was going to pay for rusty old lawn chairs to be shipped to Tony Stark’s New York monument to himself. Unless Thor got a job moving pianos or modelling she was going to be paying for a lot of things; Prince of Asgard was a surprisingly unpaid position.

“But she got them out of the storage unit?”

“I am, in her words, ‘lucky I am eye candy’”

“I still can’t figure out how she made her ring tone that song about nay naying. I haven’t seen her in months.”

Her intern had gone home a few months earlier to finally finish the course work required to get her Master’s degree. Apparently Dr Jane Foster’s science intern wasn’t getting that done and she didn’t pay enough for Darcy to put it on hold indefinitely.

Darcy Lewis still answered the phone whenever Jane couldn’t find a file on her computer and had set up alarms to go off on her phone to remind her to eat. She was pretty sure Darcy and Erik had a facebook group about keeping her sane and fed.

Thor sits beside her and the metal creaks a little with his weight. “And yet young Darcy has insisted that I take much care of you.” He pushes her hair back from her forehead. She can’t help but look up at him, he is a pretty much a giant. “I am to make certain you eat regularly and leave the sciencing for reasons besides intergalactic relations.”

Jane screws her eyes shut hoping that maybe the innuendo went over Thor’s head. She opens one eye to peer at him, “She said it just like that didn’t she?”

“Indeed,” Thor says nobly. She sighs and opens both eyes only to be caught in the wake of his booming laughter. His laughter subsides quickly as he wraps her into what feels like a bear hug.

It is far too easy to rest in his arms and stare up at the sky. Troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, exosphere, she labels silently, imagining the blueness dotted with sparse white clouds to be a cross section diagram in her thin black notebooks. When she looks back at him he is staring at her as if he could hear her thoughts.

“The light pollution will mean we won’t be able to see the stars,” she says, brushing the back of her hand against her cheek as a way of gauging if his unabashed gaze has brought a blush to her cheeks.

“Jane, if it is stars you wish for I will take you to them myself.”

“I think I’m okay right here for now.”

When Jane was a child she had mousy brown hair and a tendency to stay up at night with an old National Geographic declaring the incredible universe was hers to explore. She took her English classes and her undergrad degree had demanded liberal arts but the concepts of swooning, true love and souls still seemed far less real to her than the possibility of alien life and faster than light travel.

“As am I,” Thor says. Despite herself she shivers a little and wonders again if swooning meant the overwhelming realization that you are but a speck in the vast unknowable universe and yet at the same time you could be someone’s whole world.

Of course it didn’t hurt that he was amazingly cut and able to lift her like she was a feather.

Maybe she did need to get out of the lab and breathe in some clean air.

“Natasha, welcome.”

“Thor, Jane,” Natasha Romanoff answers from behind them. Jane wishes she had a bell around her neck to warn of her approach. Her sister’s angry ginger tom had a bell around his neck to stop him killing the sparrows that took to avoiding their garden. Her navy dress hugs her curves and still she looks entirely professional in a perfectly precise, never needed an intern to remind me to eat kind of way.

“There is a roof top garden one floor down,” Natasha continues, “Away from the ducts. With lavish garden furniture.”

“Oh the lawn chairs?” Jane says extracting herself from Thor’s arms and standing up, “I had them on my lab’s roof in New Mexico. Long story, not important. I’m still talking? We can get out of your way.”

“No. I was looking for someone.” Natasha is eerily still.

“The Hawk was with Doctor Banner.”

Natasha tilts her head ever so slightly before responding, “Thank you. I thought he may have come here.”

“The height?” Thor asks.

“The distance,” Natasha replies.

Jane has kicked off her shoes. She is very short next to Thor’s immenseness. She lifts her chin slightly, “I thought it was very brave of you.”

“I’m sorry?” Natasha says twisting back towards her.

“Brave. Facing the media like that.”

“Ah. Yes,” Natasha smiles at her and Jane is again reminded of her sister’s angry tom cat, “It wasn’t quite defending the Earth from an alien invasion.”

“Sure,” Jane admits with a shrug, “Personal is harder sometimes, isn’t it.” There is a pause and Jane finds herself wishing she could be just as still as the Spy and the Thunder God at her elbow.

“I should go and find my partner.”

“No. No. Of course,” Jane says her hands unconsciously waving the woman away, “I didn’t mean to keep you.”

Natasha Romanoff’s lips quirk slightly and then she is gone as silently as she approached.

“I said the wrong thing, didn’t I?”

“No, I do not believe so,” Thor rumbles thoughtfully, “There are many things we may believe we are hiding from the world better than we are.”

“Like loving a child?” she says incredulously. She folds her feet under her body on the old lawn chair and pulls the scarf out to see if she can’t get the egg off the fraying tassels.

“That loving is often harder than fighting,” he answers, a distractingly warm presence on the seat.

“Is that how you feel?”

“In my youth, I thought of love and of battle as frivolity.”

“And now,” she asks gently, “old man?” She grins at him. His eyes crease beneath his very blond eyebrows.

“I see the dangers in them both.” She leans against him. Her shoulders telling her that she should not hunch over her tablet for longer than 30 min without a break. “You Midgardians are so short lived and fragile. The dangers are but multiplied.”

“Fragile?!” she says, her mouth a firm line.

“Comparatively.”

“Damn right, comparatively.”

“Jane, what you lack in physic you make up for in spirit,” he laughs. She stifles a yawn. “Jane?”

“Sorry, your arm is surprisingly comfortable.”

“Do you wish to sleep?”

“Maybe a nap. Before dinner.” Dammit, you step away from those screens even for a minute and suddenly your melatonin is all let’s embrace your natural circadian rhythms, statistically insignificant her ass. Does she even have food for dinner? There was peanut butter. And two carrots she meant to eat. “I have cereal. No milk.”

“Sleep Jane.” He shifts her on to his chest, “I have arranged for a meal to be delivered.”

Chapter Text

“Clint?” she calls, pushing through the door.

“Nat?” He is in the kitchen pulling a box of cereal from the top shelf.

She stops short, breathes in smoothly, “I looked for you on the roof.” Elizabeth isn’t with him.

“She fell asleep,” he says, tucking the box under his chin, bowl in his right hand as he pulls a spoon from the top drawer. “Thought she’d be better off in the crib. I think she tired herself out screaming at Cap and Sam.” He smiles to himself as he tips an overly large portion into the bowl on the counter.

“I looked for you.” And you weren’t there.

“On the roof,” he repeats muffled by the refrigerator door, “yeah, you said.” He lifts his head above the door, gives her a quick smile and bends again to reach the milk.

“I used to find you in the first place I looked,” she says.

His gait is recognizable, his footsteps have a rhythm of their own, he has habits and needs that he has let her see. She is not so foolish to imagine that he hasn’t let her track him though it should not be impossible for her to find him even if he wanted to remain hidden.

“And you woulda this time too but the kid had other ideas,” he frowns as the milk in his hand splashes against the side of the bowl leaving ghost shapes across the counter.

Her right hand circles her left wrist. She nods once before answering, “Thor said…”

“Tasha?” he says suddenly. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” she says crisply, her hands releasing and then sliding over the stiff fabric of the navy dress. He frowns, his forehead furrowed in such familiar ways. He is hunched over the bowl on the counter perhaps using his forearm to support himself or protect the breakfast food from speedy thieves, “Thor said you were with…”

He has rid himself of the tie and the vest is undone and hanging loose, one half threatening to fall into the bowl but his eyes reflecting its blue back at her nonetheless, “You were amazing today. You’re amazing every day. Today, well, there’s probably a better word for it.” She stares at the spoon in the bowl and the navy, red and pinkish blur that must be her reflection in its surface. “One really long one you’d need a dictionary to spell. A word from poetry, you know?” he sighs the sound of it almost absent. She focuses on him again, his earnest frown, his eyes. “Didn’t want to take my eyes off you.”

He smiles softly, wistfully, like she is something bright and precious. He knows to look away before she dismisses the moment. She can see the shrug coming before his shoulders start to rise, he drops his eyes to the bowl scooping another mouthful of sugary cereal onto his spoon.

“Clint.”

“It wasn’t an error,” he says and then crunches down on the still crisp loops of processed wheat without looking up.

“What?”

“You went up to the roof,” he says and swallows. He looks at her then, his forehead creasing, “It was the right instinct. You still have me pegged.”

“I…” she says but it is on an inhalation.

Clint carries on as though it isn’t necessary for her to take part in this conversation. “Lizzie’s still making her mind up about who she’s gonna be. You’ll have her pegged too. She won’t be able to get away with anything. New variable,” he says offhandedly as if he just mentioned a sudden pick up in wind speed. “Bound to throw us off our game a little.”

Natasha allows herself two blinks of surprise.

“Thor said you were with Bruce.”

“Yeah.” He pushes back from the bench and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. “The doc wants Lizzie to get her shots.”

“Vaccinations,” she echoes.

“With one thing and another we’re a little behind on the normal sh…” she doesn’t stop the smile. He has been trying so hard to remove the curses from his conversation, “stuff.”

“The normal stuff.”

“I told him we’d want him to do it. Figured you’d tell me if I’m wrong but I kinda trust the big green doctor man.”

It’s a syringe, made mostly of plastic. She could crush it under her heel. She brings her eyes up to the man holding it. His glasses have the impression of his right index finger left on the lower corner. His shirt collar is curled under. He has light brown freckles you can barely see. He is not a threat. Not now. His eyes are brown.

“You’re not wrong.”

“He’ll tell us when he has the stuff.”

“Yes,” she says and begins to feel the tiredness of the day settle in her bones. He crunches again on the cereal.

“Natasha.”

“Yes?”

“I needed to hold her.” Another scoop of cardboard and sugar, he isn’t looking up, he patiently eats instead of assessing her as she would him.

“Yes.”

“After all those stupid questions about how we were going to raise her and what…” His spoon clatters against the bowls edge. “I needed to hold her. If anyone can pick her up without waking her? It’s you.”

She unzips the dress as she passes over the threshold, wriggles it down over her hips to the floor. She can still hear the soft clink of metal spoon against crockery telling her despite the open door silhouetting her in stockings and underwear he has not looked up from his meal, such that it is.

Before pulling a t-shirt from the hamper she collects his coat crumpled from the bed and hangs it from the edge of the bathroom door. She unpins her hair scattering bobby pins all over the vanity and even spares a smirk as she rolls a stocking down her thigh with one leg balanced on the edge of the toilet seat. There are men who watched her today on national TV who would still pay good money just to see her roll her stockings down her legs and pull them from her toes. There are women who imagine her in fine white lingerie, red curls fanned about her shoulders, imagine smudging her perfectly coated lips with their own. They ignore the existence of the child in the bedroom, the man in the kitchen, the t-shirt she pulls over her head before removing the makeup they envy and covet.

She unclasps her bra from beneath the large t-shirt, sliding the straps off her shoulder and out the arms. Her breast feel hot and heavy. She’ll need to express if Elizabeth is not hungry. She sits on the bed and brings her legs around her. In the crib she can hear Elizabeth breathe, even and calm though sometimes catching against the limp structures of her infant throat. The baby sighs softly and then the suckling sound of lips and tongue working at a phantom nipple.

She quietly walks to the crib, slides her hand through the shielding feeling the moment of something static raising hair on the back of her wrist. Elizabeth’s cheek is warm but not overly so. Her eyelashes are long resting in the dip above her rounded cheek. Beneath the cloth swaddling her Natasha can see her tiny fist fly up, straining against the fabric in reaction to her touch. She weighs so little and fits so easily into Natasha’s bent arm.

“Don’t say anything,” she says when he looks up from his phone. Her feet sink into the carpeting. The t-shirt strokes at her thighs as she walks.

“Wasn’t gonna,” he says and dumps his bowl into the sink. “You want something to eat?”

“I don’t want cereal.”

“Yeah?” he says unsurprised, he eats like an eight year old without supervision, she does not. “I’ll make you an omelet.”

“Western?” she smiles.

“The only kind there is.”

“The only kind you know how to make.” She rounds the counter as he pulls ingredients from the refrigerator. She grips the counter and pulls herself up.

He chuckles, “I’ll take that as a ‘Yes, Hawkeye. I’d love the best omelet there is.’ Clint raises his eyebrows. “If you sit there, Tash, I can’t chop the ham.”

She shrugs, “Improvise, Hot Shot.”

“Improvise, she says,” he mutters and she pulls his face to hers, kissing as hard and as open as she can. His hands are quick, looping around her hips as she drags her own hands down around his shoulders. His mouth taste like sugar and milk dyed pink but he feels strong and certain. This part is easy.

He pushes her hair from her face and breathes a little harder than before, “What was that for?”

“I need a reason?” she asks, only an inch or two from his face.

“Need, no. Always have one, yes”

“It’s not that complicated.”

“I just look that good in a suit?”

She could smile. She could let that be her answer. Clint is owed more than that. Clint is owed a life.

“You always provide me with a clear exit.”

He nods once, a sharp nod that defines them. His thumb runs across her cheek bone. He smiles, “It’s my job.”

“Thank you.”

He moves away, untangling himself from her and heading toward the knife block at the other end of the counter. “Hey Tasha.”

“Mmm?”

“Thank you for letting me back in.”

She nods once and drops from the counter top. “Even when you forgot the Starbucks.”

Chapter Text

“Cap!” Barton says opening the door.  He is shirtless and the baby wriggles on his shoulder.

“Bart…”

“Here, hold the terror for a sec,” Barton interrupts passing over his child like she is a fruit bowl cupping her between his two large hands.

Steve’s hand comes out to claim her before he has given the matter much thought. The baby, Elizabeth, gurgles and then frowns.

“Is Natasha here?”

“Shower,” Barton answers, reaching over the couch and collecting a fresh t-shirt.  “Then Lizzie Bee decided breakfast looked better on me.”

“Oatmeal?” Steve asks, gesturing to the lumpy white residue crusting on Barton’s elbow.  Barton looks down at himself, his hair askew.

“No, that’s just baby sick,” he says attempting to remove it with what looks like the discarded t-shirt.  “It follows me around everywhere I go now. I thought blood was a futzing pain to get rid of but...” Barton looks up again, “Did you need something Cap? This isn’t some kind of surprise party thing again? ‘cause, I mean, it’s cool and all but Natasha and I are more ‘no party’ kind of people.” 

He frowns. Just like the baby.

“At ease, Soldier,” Steve smiles, “No party.”. 

“Great,” Barton says rolling quickly and easily back into what is fast becoming Clint and not Barton in Steve’s mind. 

They’d all underestimated him.  Stark and Banner were dangerously smart.  He was here for the heroics and Natasha; she was the chameleon. They hadn’t noticed him stealing little pieces of their skill sets.  They hadn’t realized Natasha Romanoff had never needed to slow down for him.  He covered for it all so well in a grin, a shrug and heavy layer of self-deprecating bravado.

“Steve?” Natasha says, dabbing at her hair as she enters.

“Natasha, sorry for intruding.”

She raises a single eyebrow, “Did Hawkeye here let you in?” 

“Uh, yes?”

“Then it isn’t an intrusion,” she smiles, “I’ll take the infant now.”

“Of course.” He tries to help remove Elizabeth from his shirt with a single hand but she has managed to shove part of his collar along with her own fist into her mouth.   

Natasha deftly untangles the damp shirt point and chubby fingers, “You came to rescue Clint from fifteen minutes left alone with his own child?”

“No!” he says almost shocked by the accusation until he looks up from his collar.  She looks amused and calm, smoothing down her child’s gingery hair with motherly inattention. “He didn’t need rescuing.  I.” He pauses and looks down at the brown leather folio in his hand. He begins again, “Christmas is a few weeks away.”

“There isn’t some kind of Avengers’ Secret Santa is there?” Clint says from the sink.  He is running water over the stained t-shirt. “Can I recuse myself?” 

“I’m not sure I…?” he says a little bewildered. It still happens occasionally, not as often as it once did but occasionally and often enough, talking to people felt like reading The Jabberwocky or taking a physiology class in French.

“He’s worried he’ll be expected to buy gifts,” Natasha answers as she looks to her partner accusingly, “We were always in some godforsaken jungle or other because Barton avoids wrapping paper with missions.”

As she is speaking they swap places as though it were a rehearsed dance he had no part in.  Natasha is tucking the baby into a padded carrier on the bench and Clint takes her place in the entrance way wiping his damp hands dry on the back pockets of his jeans.

Steve closes his eyes. “You said you didn’t have photographs.”

“Come again?” Clint says.

“The day of the interviews,” Steve says, “You said you didn’t have photographs of your family.”

“Right.”

“I have something for the both of you.  Consider it an early Christmas gift.” He hands over the brown folio and finds his now empty hand feels foolishly lost.

Clint takes the folio and opens it, sucking air between his teeth. 

Inside is a pen and ink rendering of their family.  He’d started it one night instead of returning to the heavy bag.

It is their couch, Barton perched on the left arm. Natasha, curled legs, on the right. Her head is tilted downwards, her red hair in loose waves like a curtain, as she looks at the baby in her lap.  Barton watches them both his smile more open and obvious than the soft, closed lipped expression on Natasha's face.  Elizabeth does not sit on her own but is rather propped up against her mother, red curls too short to be tucked behind her slightly pointed ears. Her large eyes take up most of her face and she stares out at the viewer, an old soul. 

“Tasha,” Clint whistles after a moment, “Tash, did you know he could do this?”

“Hmm?” she asks leaving the child in her seat.

“Captain America’s drawn…” Clint looks up at him, his sharp eyes unreadable, “Natasha, it’s a family portrait." 

Clint does not look away.  Steve would very much like him to look away now.

“She keeps growing so I hope I got her likeness…” he offers.

Natasha is at Barton’s elbow examining the image.

“Steve,” she says and it is too genuine.  He is going to blush. “Thank you.”

“It seemed right that you should have one,” he manages. 

“Aw Futz!” Clint exclaims pushing the folio and picture into Natasha hands.

“What?” she replies in the annoyed tone she saves for him alone.

“No, I mean, well,” Clint answers, scratching at the back of his neck. “I’m gonna have to buy stuff this year aren’t I? I don’t get to take a mission to Sudan with all this….” His gesture encompasses the picture, Natasha, the baby, even Steve himself.

“You thought you were taking a mission?” Natasha says caustically.

“No. Nooooo,” Clint answers quickly, taking a step back from his partner, “Of course not…” he looks back at Steve his expression pleading for help.  Steve has none to offer. “I don’t know what day it is unless JARVIS tells me, guys.”

Natasha does not look placated. 

“You think everyone would be okay with getting arrows?” Barton asks, defeated.

“No.”

“Well then,” Clint says his face breaking into a loose grin, “Lizzie, you wanna help Daddy online shop?”

Chapter Text

She was just getting into the perfect not moving from this couch for a week position. She was two, maybe three seconds away from picking up her mac book and scrolling aimlessly for hours.  She deserved this. She had survived all her course work, she’d carved out an inch of time before she had to go back to the giant list of readings that Culver thought twas the season for. She’d even checked on Jane.

Why is that guy, who has no right to think he is fooling anyone with the flannel, seriously it’s like Terry Crews put on a flannel and made out like he was just some guy, carrying that baby in here.

“Uh, Darcy?”

“Oh no,” she says. She fixes her face with a scowl that she hopes brings back memories of bruised shins.  “I’m not babysitting.”

He stops suddenly at the steel framed big glass, windows? Doors? He stops at the big glass. It looks like a physical stutter. “You’re what now?”

He is all about the frown lines this guy. He’s not unattractive, not really at all, he is mostly attractive, definitively so. A bar in any town he’d be the guy you’d be throwing come hither looks at but here surrounded by the chiseled pecs of Captain America, the perfect facial hair of Tony Stark and the befuddled daddiness of Dr Banner, he’s just … out classed. The riddle of how the woman who adds a whole new definition to ‘if looks could kill’ ends up saying that’s the one I want, the slightly goofy, down home guy with a thing for purple, I’ll do him… that riddle still needs to be riddled out in Darcy’s mind.

“Just ‘cause I’m the youngest person in Tower Avenge right now does not make me babysitting material.” She snaps her gum. Shit. That probably undermined her credibility somewhat. She pushes her glasses up her nose and raises her brows. Sassy librarian cancels out Lolita vibes, right?

“I… no…” His gob looks sufficiently smacked. He looks down at the red headed child sleeping in the knapsack latched to his chest. Sure, some may say it’s farmer’s market hot and all but she still isn’t babysitting spy kid. He takes a step forward, takes a breath and starts again. “Look, I’m Clint.  We haven’t met.”

“We’ve met, biceps.  You took my iPod.”

And then he does this thing, drops his head, pushes his hand through his hair and scratches at the back of his neck. Ooooh he is good. That probably works like 88% of the time. “So, you remember that.”

“Uhuh… also remember New York and Washington DC.”

“DC wasn’t me.” He looks like he is holding something back though.

“No?” she says pulling her knees in to her chest. “Coulda sworn everyone trying to kill us had those black eagle badges.”

His whole face shifts. Like a scary shift, like he has without warning dropped the heartland of America skin he has been wearing and let the Terminator inside demand John Connor. “They were tryna kill me too.” His voice drops into the floor and the baby in the knapsack turns her head against his chest.   He sighs, looks to the door and back at her.  She is feeling very much like she shouldn’t move now. “Yeah, okay, I get it.  This looks bad.”  He shrugs.  “Let me start again, huh?”

She closes her mouth, swallows before gesturing in front of her on the couch, “Please.”

He grins his relief, “Hi, I’m Clint.  We’ve met.” He wrinkles his nose slightly in a way a Terminator really shouldn’t.  “Sorry.” He holds out his hand. “Not Hydra,” he adds.  Darcy shrugs and takes his hand.  It’s rough but unspoiled where she’d expect to see a thin seam of black soil under his nails.  He shakes her hand firmly. “This is Lizzie,” he says as he drops her hand, “Also not Hydra.  She doesn’t need a babysitter.”

“Darcy Lewis. On vacation.  Not Hydra either.”

“Good to know.”

“Did something happen to Jane?” she says frowning.

“Foster? No?” he looks genuinely surprised by the question. “I just, uh, she said you’d be the person who could help me out of a jam.”

“Your twitter not getting enough follows? I don’t have powers, Mr Hawkeye.”

“Clint,” he says with a quick shake of his head.  “Me neither.  I’m so standard I reckon they only keep me around as a mascot.”

“Mmpf,” she says as he chuckles at his own joke. “Sure you are. Ever missed?” she asks under her breath.

“It’s Christmas.”

“Hence the vacation.”

“I need help buying gifts.” Penny meet floor. 

“Buying gifts?” Darcy tilts her head.

“Up until now I didn’t have whatcha would call typical Christmases.”

She can only imagine the Christmases Terminator farm boy has had.  For some reason the first picture that comes to mind is a Point Break mash up with sky driving and shooting guns into the sky.  Jane told her that prior to moving to Avengers central iPod snatcher and Jessica Rabbit were pretty much Mr and Mrs Smith.  At least that is as much as she could get out of Jane, polymath didn’t seem to include gossip.

“And now?”

“With great babies comes great responsibilities?” He smiles.

Darcy can’t help but laugh at that one.  She reaches from the most comfortable place on the largest couch she has ever seen for her laptop.  “I take it you’re less of a giving gifts and more of an acts of service kinda guy?” she muses.  She logs in, “Online?”

“Please,” he says and, damn, if he doesn’t hit the right note of pathetically grateful.  She wanted to hate him.  He is the iPod thief.  “Crowds of people and no bow sounds like a nightmare.”

“How many?” she asks

“Nightmares?”

“Gifts?" she says bundling up her hair and twisting it into a knot on top of her head.

“Right,” he says unlocking the straps that hold the ginger headed rug rat against his chest. “One for each of the team, I guess. Um, the other Hawkeye. Then there’s this spiderling and…”  then he smiles this other sort of smile, the good memory kind of smile. “Actually, I’ve got that one.”

“Plus, one more,” she says matter of factly. She is giving up good quality bed socks and peanut m&m time. 

“Plus, one?”

“Yeah, I’m a gift giving genius,” she says peering over her glasses at the man at the other end of the couch with the baby on his shoulder. “That comes with a price.” Darcy smiles her wickedest smile. 

“You’ve got yourself a deal Ms Lewis.”

Chapter Text

New York City isn’t any significant distance from Washington DC.  The coming here, the remaining here, is outside mission parameters.  Not that he has a mission. He doesn’t have missions anymore.  He isn’t the soldier anymore. He isn’t anything.

He had tried to stay away. He has maps of all the places he'd tried to bury himself in. This place though, as wrong as it is, makes bright kinetic flashes of recognition in his mind.  Corners, colours of bricks, smells, they aren’t right, they don’t connect fixedly but they are more right than anything else.

He'd heard the rumors, he'd run when they'd got close enough that the rumors took shape. Blonde, muscular shape. Rumors of Captain America and a black flyer from the VA.  

When they stopped, he stopped running. 

He isn’t the soldier anymore but he knows how to wait, how to watch and he can sink into the still quiet breath of the sniper and wait.

The man passes by the window and he thinks that he shouldn’t be as tall as he is.  He pulls out the third note book, the one with pages still free and he writes ‘you were short, your breath rattled in the cold air’. The man smiles, reaches out and then his hands are filled with an infant. 

He doesn’t look away.  The blond man in the window bounces a baby with fine red curls between large hands.  He is talking. His mouth turned away so that he cannot discern the words. 

All he thinks is “Stevie,” and then like he is waiting for its echo he hears some sound that sounds too much like “Bucky.”  He doesn’t know a Bucky.  He doesn’t know a Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.  They were people with his face.

This tower is gaudy, he thinks, lying between the ventilation shafts that jut from the flat cold concrete roof. 

The last time he saw this man’s face it was mottled with swelling and bruising. He wants to shut down the feeling of relief, the fresh and healed face across the way, stirs.  The new emotions don’t get wiped from him now. As painful as wiping was, his endless fight to hold on to something that made him, him, he thinks now it is more painful to feel again. 

He puts down the sight. He writes the word punk three times in the margin of the page.

A woman steps into the space between wall, curtain and glass.  She has ringlets of red hair and an invisible, straight line that runs down from the top of her head to her tail bone.  That the line is made of steel. When she gestures to takes the infant back and half turns something smells of burning and iron and he thinks of the name ‘Yasha.’ 

It’s a diminutive, an intimacy. There should be no intimacy in the Russian language that wraps itself around his thoughts like a giant squid. 

And that thought makes another connection, small pale hands wrapped around a dark blue book with a squid on the front, you could barely make out the rubbed away gold numbers on the cover and he knows they were on Montague. 

She reaches out for the child and his hand reaches back before he can stop it. Alone, he pretends he is stretching his cold fingers and he does not know for whose benefit the masquerade is. 

Steve found himself a girl to dance with.

For once he doesn’t question the stranger’s thoughts that populate his brain with wanton disregard for him.  If there is a him to regard anything at all anymore.

Steve, the blond man, too tall but still looking uncomfortable in clothes that look like other people have dressed him, kisses the baby on the forehead and places her into the redhead’s arms.  

He feels he knows her. He feels a cool rush of jealousy; it leaves a bitter bite of acid on the back of his tongue.  He pulls his coat closer and then tugs at the cord that cinches the hood of his sweatshirt. 

When she turns fully towards sheet of glass, the child’s hand already clawing itself into the wild red of her hair he realizes with a start that he does know her.  The flashes are short and contradictory. An angular, cold resolve fixed on her features and a cowering man behind her comes hard on the heels of his metal arm wrapped around her neck, her hair still red but shorter, straighter. Then there is something softer a curl of red hair beneath her chin, the smell of skin that hasn’t been washed in days but that he still craves to inhale.

Then what is left of the man who thinks of himself on some days as James feels cold.  It is the kind of cold that freezes bone marrow.

Steve Rogers is watching fondly over the woman and her child.  It is uncomfortable, a ground swell of loud and confusing that he knows means he is feeling and he hates them for it.

There is a tree, inside.  So large that it is impossible to imagine that it is real and that it could have been placed there without having grown there. Reds and golds twinkle like firelight among the dense branches.  The woman, her name nowhere to be found in his fractured mind, spins a bauble between her fingers for the delight of the child resting on her hip.  She doesn’t smile, she gazes down at the child with an intensity that feels familiar. Her smiles are for other people she doesn’t use them when no one is looking.

He forces his eyes away from her, looks back at Steve. Steve is talking to the man he knows as Tony Stark the owner of this glass and metal structure, this home of heroes. There is something in his mind he doesn’t want to remember about that man. He pushes it back into the empty darkness but it lays in wait.  He should leave. Stuff the notebook now scrawled with Cyrillic he didn’t know he was writing back into his backpack and get gone. There is a container ship flying the flag of Georgia leaving Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine. 

He should move but he doesn’t.

The sight stays fixed to his eye. 

He didn’t notice the third man in the room at first. Shorter than Steve, the indent of bicep is clear underneath his shirt, the man laughs, claps Stark on the back. When Steve and Stark look away though his eyes scan the room, the sightlines through the large panel of glass to the outside world, his smile vanishes.

He has no knowledge of this man.  Watching him becomes almost restful.  He wants to poke at the rawness the others provoke it is why he stays when he should leave.  He fixates on this man watches his scanning, the attention to detail, the stance that is overtly relaxed and yet one step from instant movement.

Eventually the man’s eyes fall on the woman and her child, there is a small moment, a pause and a shift in his lips, not quite a smile.

He wishes he hadn’t seen it.  The unknown man, the man who covers the room instinctually, he is in love with the woman. James knows this now.

He wishes he knew if it was his own pain or pain for Steve Rogers he was feeling.  He wishes he had left when he had a chance.

The man moves across the room, his gait distinctive yet unobtrusive.

She doesn’t look up as he approaches, she doesn’t step back when he enters her space.  When the man begins to untangle her hair from the child’s fingers she does not flinch.

James does not expect her to flinch, this woman does not flinch but there is an expectation unmet as he watches intent on only her.  Her weight does not shift; her muscles stay relaxed. She does not look at the man talking over her shoulder but she smiles. No one but a soldier is watching and yet she smiles.

The child is his. She is his.

No, he is hers.  He was always hers. 

In a room full of Avengers, saviours, heroes he hadn’t noticed him.  She had.

She isn’t Stevie’s girl and it is time to stop fishing for half remembered things. This is a dangerous pastime, his eyes dart back to Tony Stark, one that might dredge up things he doesn’t want to know. 

He drops the sight, packs his pack with the notebooks and pencil, places the sight back into its case.  He stands, slinging the bag over the shoulder that doesn’t constantly ache.

Across the way he doesn’t see the way the man freezes and scans the horizon again looking for the flash.  He doesn’t see him shift her in his arms drawing himself between the glass and the redhead woman and her child.

Bucky Barnes is in the stairwell before Natasha Romanoff looks at Clint Barton and says, “What did you see?”

Chapter Text

In retrospect he should have been warier of Maria’s intentions sending him here. She could have very easily provided the information in the same way he provided her with Von Strucker.  The Madison Avenue Starbucks is brimming with people. The coffee in front of him is screaming Christmas louder than the baristas mispronouncing names at the bar edge.

She orders the Christmas in a Cup Latte and gives her name as Natalie.  The heavy framed cats eye glasses and the cream colored woollen cap along with the shift in her body language blends her in the crowd. Nobody in the busy Christmas shopping hustle and bustle gives the woman with the sleeping child strapped to her chest, a second glance. 

“Christmas in a Cup for Natalie.” The green aproned employee pushes the cup towards her. It is less monstrous then she has expected he thinks, no three inch layer of whipped cream or a gingerbread cookie sitting jauntily on the edge of the red cup.  His own has a candy cane placed like a straw.  It was a poor choice.

“Excuse me, Ma’am?” He knows she knows his voice but she gives no sign of recognition.  She turns, coffee drink in hand.  “I have a free seat at my table.” It’s away from the window. Her eyes narrow fractionally. 

“Thank you,” she says. You might almost believe the gratitude she eases into her voice. 

When she sits opposite she scans him dispassionately. “You’re not dead,” she says.

He raises an eyebrow, “You’re not surprised.”

“No one stays dead anymore.” She shrugs slightly before unlatching the lower latch on the pouch that holds the sleeping child.

“It wasn’t my choice.” 

“To keep the circle small?” she says, it is only half a question and pointed.

“To be alive,” he answers.

She settles the child in her lap.  He can only see the cap that matches her own as the child’s face is pressed into Natasha’s chest.  “I’m sure you could find someone to fix that for you.”

He ignores this. It is a habit she too quickly acquired from Barton much to the chagrin of SHIELD. “You have a child?” 

“I do,” she says like it is a challenge. He ignores it. 

“Barton’s?” he says.

“Hill didn’t tell you?”

“Hill told me when and where to meet my contact,” he says gesturing to the untouched coffee in front of her, “Nothing else. I thought Barton… he is nothing if not reckless but you, Natasha.”

Any hint of warmth leaves her. “Sounds like you underestimated us both.”

“No, I didn’t.” He sighs. “The world is very dangerous.”

“This is not something you need to explain me.”

She is correct in this and yet he still feels like it is his job. They have an infant and all he can see is agents without extraction plans.  

“When?”

She purses her lips, knowing exactly what he is asking. “Before you died.”

He sucks in a breath, “Is this love, Agent Romanoff?” he says recollecting the curl of Loki’s lip on the monitor.

“I didn’t lie.”

“No. You don’t. He did say Barton told him everything. He has loved you for a very long time.”

“That isn’t true,” she snaps and looks away.

“Oh, he didn’t know it. And you didn’t want to know it.” She turns back to him. “Boy or girl?” he asks.

“Girl. Elizabeth.”

He smiles, “What does Barton call her?”

“Lizzie.” 

He shakes his head, “Nicknames.” To him Barton will always be the problem dumped in his lap desperate for approval and equally desperate that no one ever knew it. Nicknames were how he showed he cared. Nicknames and ignoring orders.

“What do you have for me?” she says as the child shifts her head against the blue of her shirt. 

He frowns, “Nothing, Maria has everything I have.”

“Hill,” she snaps.

“You’re angry with her.” 

“I’m not angry.”

“No, you don’t get angry. Grudges are for lesser people,” he says. “You’ve cut her loose.”

“She still has her uses.”

“Maria feels just as betrayed as you. If not more so. She is just as angry with herself as you.” He leans forward, dropping his voice. She is right that it is no longer his job to tell her these things, that she never quite needed to be told these things. But there is no one else who can. No one else she would accept even the slightest rebuke from. It isn’t like Hawkeye, that lovesick fool, would be looking to take sides against her.  “People, Natasha, are more than their usefulness. It appears that is a lesson you are beginning to learn.”  

Natasha’s index finger strokes her child’s face. The girl’s pink lips pout and rhythmically suck in response.  “Who are you with?” 

“I’ve got a small team.  You’d recognise Fitzsimmons, May.”  

“Melinda May?”  she asks.

“Yes.”

“She’s good.”

“Yes.”

She looks quizzical for a moment. “I have to go.  The hawk will be tracking me. If he sees you….” She stops herself. “He thought he’d killed you, Phil.”

He’d always depended on her distrust and instinctive self-protection to keep them apart but they had been jumping in front of bullets for each other since day one.  He looks at the child again some part of him wants to ask to hold her.

“That was Loki,” he answers.  Maybe he’d been hoping for this child all along.  They deserved some happiness. Even if it was the most ridiculously dangerous thing he’d seen them do. And he thought he’d seen them all. 

“And his plan,” she says sharply.  She pulls the receipt from her pocket and scrawls a series of digits on it before pushing it towards him. “Call this number. Christmas Day US Eastern Standard Time. Whatever you are doing, wherever you are.  You call this number.” 

“Why?”

“Because I am asking you to do it.”

He nods. “She’s a beautiful child.” 

“We think so.” It is almost entirely without intonation and yet possibly the most sentimental thing he has ever heard her say. 

“What if they need you, what if the world needs you?”

She leans forward slightly and narrows her eyes, “What do you know?”

“Talk to Hill.”

She stands, restrapping the baby carrier to herself. “Melinda May?” she asks again.

“Yes.”

Natasha picks up the untouched coffee from the table. “Good.  We shouldn’t be alone.” She gestures, “Don’t drink that. It’s revolting.”

“Then why are you taking that?”  he asks, copying her disgusted fling of her hand towards her own cup.

She gives the same bored shrug she would give during briefings, as though most requests were beneath her skill set.  “Clint will drink it.”

“You think he’s that close?”

She raises her eyebrows and looks incredulous, “He’ll drink it cold.”  She pulls leather gloves from her pocket and weaves back out through the doors and he loses her in the foot traffic. 

He slips the receipt into his top pocket. He sips the drink.  She is right, it's revolting. 

Chapter Text

His shoelace is undone and making that irritating flop and clack sound against the glass floor of the lab level. He would fix it but he has a child in his arms and she is particularly squirmy. Her carroty curls pinned to the surface of her head with the wetness of her bath. At least this time he got all the soap out.

He isn’t sure if the squirming is due to the bath or the secretive excursion that Natasha returned from with a cold coffee drink and the kind of expression that doesn’t say ‘don’t ask me where I’ve been or why’ if only because that would be accepting that he had a right to ask questions.

The coffee was revolting but it was coffee. He drank it. He’s feeling a little squirmy himself. He was summoned via disembodied voice and didn’t manage to get his shoes all the way on. Didn’t manage or didn’t bother, it amounts to the same thing really.

“You called me, Stark?” he says to the man currently ratcheting a component on his non-dominant metallically gloved forearm.

Stark looks up and arches his brows, “I thought it was Uncle Tony?”

“Okay then, Uncle Tony” he says switching Lizzie from one shoulder to the other as she squirms frustrated against his chest. Being too comfortable with the nicknames is a fantastic way to annoy Tony Stark and Clint Barton knows nothing if not how to fail to rise to an occasion.

The pause has a world weary sigh quality to it even if the only sound is a squirming child and the positive pressure hiss of the atmospheric controls.

“I have a parcel for a Benjamin Franklin Pierce.” Stark gestures with his tool to the square box on the bench behind him. “How it circumvented my security to end up here is something Happy isn’t going to be happy to explain. You want to explain it, Hawkeye?”

His face breaks into a little manic grin then. He half expected to be told he was being kicked out for not being useful enough. “It arrived?”

Stark frowns a little as he rises from his stool. “No, ‘you would but you’d have to kill me?’”

“I leave that to Nat. Sniper, I don’t give warnings.”

He shifts Lizzie again and she grabs fists full of his shirt, she is insistent at this point that everything must be in her mouth at all times, her chubby fist dragging anything in close range into her toothless maw. He has gotten used to the prospect of never having a dry pocket again.

He knows Stark hasn’t returned to his work despite the sounds of mechanisms clicking methodically into place. He is getting used to the distracted attention to everything in the room thing the other man does.

The box is large, brown and square. It is covered in a thick layer of packing tape. There is no indication of what is inside other than its weight and dimensions. The postmarks mired by its travels are Viennese.

“What’s in the box?”

Clint looks up, Tony Stark is examining him. “Christmas,” he answers.

“Little small?”

“You think you could,” he scratches the back of his neck, “um, keep it here for me.”

“Why?”

“You know how hard it is to keep secrets from Natasha Romanoff?”

“May have got a ticket to that preview,” he grumbles unlocking the gauntlet from his arm.

Clint only grins, “But no hard feelings, right?”

“You live here don’t you?”

“I figured the midget was the bargaining chip there.” He looks down at his tiny daughter, snuffling and chewing between her occasional ba, da, or ma. Tiny and yet growing horrifyingly fast.

Tony coughs somewhat politely. “Why is said midget here and not with her terrifying mother?”

“Nat had to see Maria about something “

“Oh God,” he blanches, “they’re not plotting are they?”

“Probably,” he answers easily. “Hey!” he says suddenly. He pulls Lizzie from his chest, “Hold her so I can check it’s all good?”

Tony Stark attempts to conceal his horror. He doesn’t know that the mere attempt is another tell. “I don’t like being...” handed things, Clint’s brain finishes for him. He files it away with ‘Love is for children.’ as another epigram from the broken.

He shakes his head hard, “Stark, she’s just had a bath,” he pushes Lizzie forward. Tony’s hands come up to meet her. “and you want to, you really want to. The code name wasn’t just about the arrows, man”

“Ah,” he says again but his fingers wrap around her and for a brief second you could swear Tony Stark had caught a whiff of that baby smell crack, designed to trick every damn person on the planet into multiplying. His brows knotted with the concern and panic that Clint felt he now had the right to force everyone to feel. You had to take the bright spots between the pooping and the crying and the constantly damp clothing. “Right, uh is this um…”

“…You got her, she’s good, she’ll bounce if you drop her,” he replies.

“What?!” He looks horrified and internally Clint assigns him uncle points. Lizzie lets loose a garble of noises as she tries tries to gain purchase on the smooth lines of Stark shirt.

“Joke,” he says dropping down to his ankle holster to retrieve his knife. “Don’t drop her,” he says, pushing the tip of the blade into his finger tip. “Nat’ll make me kill you before she kills me.”

“You two just captain planeted.”

“What?” Clint slides the knife through the thick packing tape.

“You know, by your powers combined...” Tony is saying to his back, “only your kid makes everything scarier.”

“Captain Planet?” Clint says monotone, pushing through the packing fibers.

“That’s it, I’m taking this child so she can be raised correctly- by television.”

Clint turns slightly, “Just you futzin’ try it Ma-ti.”

Stark rolls his eyes but he is staring down at the girl in his arms like she might be the coolest creation yet and Clint knows he hadn’t misread the signs. He gives him a year, three max before he is trying every terrible omelet, CEO position ploy he knows to convince Potts that he needs one of his own. “Heart, what kind of power is heart?” Tony directs to the baby.

“Just how old were you in the early 90s, Uncle Tony?” He begins to pull the base clear.

“Yeah, yeah, best cure for a hangover is Saturday morning cartoons and...” Clint places it down on the work bench. “A snow globe?” something in the beginning of that sentences makes Clint suspect the end was not cereal or anything else fit for little ears.

“It’s perfect,” he says crouching to get a good angle on the wide swath of gothic revival architecture, the orange lights and the almost frozen surface of the Danube encased in a perfect sphere of clear glass.

“Little fragile isn’t it? I had you two down for a knives and guns gift exchange.”

“Man, what’ ya get Pepper? The latest minutes from Stark Industries?”

“I’ll have you know that…” Tony begins and it hasn’t escaped Clint’s noticed that he is bouncing on his feet though he expects it has escaped Tony’s. Tony stops and then sighs, “Pepper hates everything I buy her.”

Clint strongly doubts that she does. The other tower redhead doesn’t let Stark see it very often but he knows what it’s like to love someone who can’t quite accept the clear and open declaration of it. Granted he knows the look from looking in the mirror but he imagines it’s much the same if flipped.

“I don’t…” he says, very aware that Stark has offered up something true and not two steps away from making him vulnerable, “haven’t done Christmas, birthdays… presents.”

“Since?”

Clint just smiles. “What’dja think?” he asks instead of answering.

“Of the big snow globe?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s… “Stark says stepping closer, “charming. Why Budapest?”

Clint shakes his head, “You know, the first thing I ever gave Nat that wasn’t my side arm or ammunition, was a snow globe I stole off a shelf in this little touristy shop in a side rue in Paris.” He closes his eyes for a second at the memory of it. All that crap really causes shrapnel complications when the bullets start flying. “It was covered in arterial spray, Notre Dame.” He shrugs and lifts up the large snow globe placing it gently back into its box. “Told her that they wouldn’t want it anyway. It was covered in blood and all. That and they were all being corralled by SHIELD for…” He smiles, “It was the first time she accepted anything from me too, that wasn’t my side arm or ammunition or the fries she stole off my plate. Sometimes, I wonder if she’s got it hidden somewhere in one of those safety…” he turns and looks back at Stark, “So snow globe.”

Tony narrow his eyes, “That was both unsettling and cloying but didn’t actually answer the question.”

He chuckles “Caught that did you?”

“You people might not give me my proper accolades but I hold several doctorates, you know.”

“Think you could hold on to this for me? Doctor Stark?”

“This is where you plan to hide things from Natasha Romanoff? I am sure she has bribed my bots and wiled my AI by now.” Clint tries to look as deferential as possible. It’s either here or in the vents and he just knows she’ll find it if he hides it in the vents. “Fine. Two conditions and I babysit the Parliament of Budapest.”

“Name your price.”

“Take back your child. She looks like she’s planning to kill me.”

Clint laughs as he takes Lizzie out of Stark’s arms, “That’s my girl.”

“Two:” Stark says shaking out his hands like he had clenched them the entire time Lizzie nestled in the crook of his arm. “Answer the question, Barton.”

“I suppose you’re not gonna to accept classified as an answer.”

“You suppose right, friendo.”

“Not much to tell,” he shrugs loosely. “There was an op, no extraction plans, a bridge, a last stand and a woman.” And maybe he smiles when he says the last word.

“That’s all I’m going to get?”

Clint’s smile widens, “We lived. You want more? Try Natasha. You’ll keep it here for me?”

Tony sits back down at his work top and then shrugs, “It’s Christmas.”

“Thank you, Uncle Tony.”

Tony sighs.

He should have tied his shoe lace; he thinks as he leaves the lab. “‘mon kiddo,” he says to the baby with the rapidly drying curls and the footie pajamas, “Before Mama knows were missing. You know how close you came to being called Budapest?” The girl in question gurgles, starring back at him between his raised hands, “Too close, Lizzie Bee, too close.”

Chapter Text

He almost drops his coffee when he sees her standing there. He is going to put a bell on her, stealthily of course. Maybe he’ll send U into do it. She’s already got round his artificial butler and she walks soundlessly. And she has set his heart to racing more than the good five coffees he has had since… yeah he doesn’t know what time it is.

Pepper’s been out of town for two days.

He doesn’t like it when Pepper’s out of town.

He isn’t going to tell Pepper that. He is just going to fix it. Fixing it will take more coffee and the removal of a black widow from his lab.

“Jarvis, cut the music and revoke Natasha Romanoff’s access to my lab,” he says as the music cuts. He wants a record scratch. In future, he decides, there should be record scratches for when sneaky ex-soviet spies force him to shut off his music.

She eyes him. There is no other way to describe the look that speaks of an intent to roll her eyes and yet a refusal to expend the energy that she has on her face. “Did you sleep last night?” she asks. The tone is kind. Too kind. He voids it in favour of the body language and expression that says she finds him tiresome. It is safer that way.

“Depends,” he says when he is sure that his hand doesn’t look like it’s shaking, “when was last night?”

He is flippant and then she is not, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Good.”

And he doesn’t want to talk about it but this still stings so he parries, “Natalie was a lot better listener.”

She smiles tightly. “You fired her.”

He swipes at the blueprints floating above the surface of his bench, searching for one that will fill the empty spaces and drown out the circling thoughts. She doesn’t move. She has an eerie way of not moving that makes her blatant attractiveness less so. She reminds him more of a lionfish than any spider, floating in space, ornate red beauty fatally drawing you closer and yet so alien it warns you away.

“Thought that wasn’t my call?”

She raises an elegantly arched eyebrow. Motherhood has not dampened the sharpness of her one iota. “You aren’t doing yourself any favors with the excessive stimulants and the loud music.”

“Or the spies creeping up on me.”

Natasha Romanoff, whose hair is longer than when he first met her, pauses for too long without looking in anyway shamed. “When is Pepper back?” she asks.

He stops the work he has been doing in an effort not to allow her to have his full attention, “Did you want something, Agent Romanoff?” he says sharply.

Natasha Romanoff tilts her head slightly and lifts a black guitar case from the floor, “Keep this safe,” she says like she is not asking for his help. This woman has a way of finishing her sentences that half convinces you that you would be helping yourself.

He rubs his face. He isn’t convinced.

“I thought you were supposed to have those things in violin cases.”

“Spy,” she says, “not a 40’s mobster.”

“So it’s a rocket launcher and not a tommy gun.”

“It’s a Martin.” She lays the case flat on the nearest work top.

“An actual guitar?”

“In a guitar case, it would be a safe assumption.”

“So would the ‘I’m alone in my lab’ one and yet here we are. Why do I have to keep a high end guitar safe? Does it set the atmosphere on fire, create zombie armies…”

“…It plays music.”

He presses down on the metal latches and the case opens. Inside nestled in the satiny lining is a brown red acoustic guitar, six strings, ebony fingerboard. It looks nothing like a weapon. It smells like wood and oils.

“So it needs to be kept safe because?”

She looks away. It is the first time she has done so since he noticed her standing there watching him with her shrewd spying eyes. He knows because even when he was fussing with everything else in reach he was watching her. “Clint Barton is a child,” she answers.

He puts two and two together quickly. He could, of course, put the square root of 967 and the log of -12 together just as fast. The point being that it doesn’t take even that much brain power to figure that he is now hiding Christmas presents from two deadly assassins who have both made the same assumption about the other. That and cold stone Clint Barton can’t be trusted not to go searching through closets and sock drawers when his baby mama’s back is turned.

He frowns. “Why am I hiding your Christmas presents, Romanoff? Surely, Steve or…”

“Because you are the last person he’d think to search.”

“Oh really?” he grins. Well, this is delightful. He clicks the guitar case shut.

“Get some sleep.”

He points at her, “I don’t work for you.”

“Put it somewhere safe,” she adds with the same declarative quality as her instruction to sleep. It doesn’t appear to faze her that he has yet to acquiesce to any of her demands.

“Barton plays the guitar?”

Her reply is accompanied by the same blank expression, “He is good with his hands.”

“Is he just.,” he says knowingly, just shy of the giddiness kicking in.

She sighs then. “Have I ever risen to your bait?”

“No, but you’d think for the free New York rent alone you’d give a little now and then.”

She turns then, the same sharp twist of her body he remembers of Agent Romanoff and it is nothing like Natalie Rushman or even Clint Barton’s Nat. She leaves the guitar on the bench. She doesn’t ask for his confirmation.

At the entrance she turns back, “Look after yourself, Mr Stark.”

“Tony.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s Tony,” he repeats. He will regret this he is sure. Being close to people just gets the device keeping you alive ripped out of your chest. And yet. “The guitar can stay. If he pulls it out to play at parties and hits on women…”

Natasha Romanoff smiles, in the gloom and shadows of the hall her teeth look sharp, sharper than human teeth should be. “Mussolini was strung up with piano wire, just watch what I can do with a guitar string.”

He barks a laugh, “There’s that double agent I know and love.”

Chapter Text

She shuts her eyes at the doorway and reopens them, allowing her pupils to adjust a fraction more quickly. She is beginning to get used to the fact that darkness with Clint Barton in it is not cold and flat. The darkness of the room they share is dense and warm; the sounds that reach her are comforting shifts of bodies and breaths that bleed peace.

Even in the before, when she would cling to him in storms, not quite sure of what she was doing -- feeling her way through the new desperation despite the hard metallic locks on every simple emotional response -- the darkness never felt like this. Elizabeth is changing everything. The world is a hearth now.

She knows her way to the bed too well. She does not have to attend to anything but the removal of her clothes as she approaches. If she thinks of this for too long, she may let it smother her. She pushes the thoughts of routines and complacency back down inside her. Down, into the cold and flat dark that is nothing like this room.

When she slides between the covers, he rolls towards her. He is not awake, though he pretends to be. His words are muffled and muttered. His eyes blink open and then shut, as though the effort to keep them open was a chore he could avoid. “This is like the thing with the Starbucks, right? You’re not gonna tell me where you were.”

“I was at Starbucks. Go back to sleep.”

“Yeah, okay,” he grunts, feeling for her with his eyes closed. He is still in jeans and the fabric of the flannel shirt he wears is soft against her face when he pulls her close. “But you know that I know that that’s only part of it, right?”

“I didn’t lie.”

She should have woken him before she left. Made him strip, made him get under the covers. A well-rested partner is an asset.

“You don’t,” he says into her hair, “You tell the truth. You just…” and he rolls muffling anything he might have said.

“Go to sleep,” she says as she pats him lightly on his chest, “hot shot.”

He can hear her. He isn’t just focusing on the notes of the music he can still perceive; he comprehends more than the vibration of her lips against his skin and the bluff of empathy allow. He did not remove his hearing aids before he passed out. He snorts, “You snuck out, you get the next diaper.”

“I snuck?” she contrives to make her whisper sound incensed.

“Yeah, sneaking about like I don’t know when you’re gone.”

There is nothing bitter in his groggy declaration. He trusts her, and some part of her thinks this makes him a mark. She isn’t fighting it anymore, this second her. No, it is the first her that calls out the spots of weakness and the points to apply pressure. It is the second her, the one Clint Barton believes in, who settles into the knowledge that he knows when she is gone and that she is more real because of it.

“It’s not really sneaking then, is it.”

“Mmfp,” he says rubbing at his face, “the baby spider is finally sleeping, it’s late, I’m not doing this.”

“Good.”

He tilts downwards pressing his lips to her forehead, “G’night ‘Tasha.” His breathing is slow and even, rising from his belly. “You better be here when the crying starts up again.”

“Go to sleep,” she repeats. She rises and falls with his breath. In the space between asleep and awake she imagines that she is in the heart of an old ocean liner, full of velvet and gold-leaf covered plaster and echoing with the shifting of metal in the body of water. She imagines she can hear distant music.

“It’s too early for teething, right?” he says abruptly.

She raises her head freeing herself from the threshold of unconsciousness and the strangeness that lies there, “You can ask JARVIS in the morning.” This time she reaches into his ears and removes the hearing aids he’d fallen asleep wearing.

She places them on the side table, well away from the water glass he habitually knocks over.

She turns her head again against him, feeling the deep, even breathing replace his voice. He is enveloped in shadows; they deepen in the hollow of his eyes where his eyelashes rest, below his cheekbones and beneath the jut of his chin. The darkness softens every line and scar, making him appear younger than he was when he pulled her bodily from Natalia Alianovna Romanova, younger than the Agent with the archaic weapon who instinctually brought a second her to life.

He was foolish then, and full of energy. She thought he would kill her, she thought he would make use of her and then kill her. And, buried deep in the small places she kept to and for herself, she thought that he was attractive for a fool. She’d wondered if he was made by the Americans for the same purpose she had been. She wondered if she was just as much a fool. Then she had taken his hand.

“Я тебя люблю,” she says softly into the thin skin that covers his jugular.

She doesn’t mean to say it. She suspects if she did she wouldn’t be able to make the words form in her suddenly dry mouth. She does nothing to stop the sudden intake of breath when she hears her voice in her own ears. Her first language, never one she has used to express honest sentiment, slips from her too easily for it to be real.

He does not open his eyes. He does not move.

She covers her lips with her finger tips as though she might be able to feel out the gap the words had leaked from.

His voice is thick and his vowels are wrong by the nanometres that count in the short distances of his mouth but she hears him nonetheless, “я знаю.”

Chapter Text

Usually it is Bucky and snow and the sound of train cars on loose tracks.  Usually it is the hollow, shocked sounds men make when stabbed from behind and ice that made him feel like his chest is tight and flail once again. Once it was Erskine holding out the schnapps unaware of the blood in his mouth staining his lips.

He was dreaming about Peggy. Of that much he was sure. She had been here though in this room. Maybe in this bed. It was only tinges of the velvet red of her lipstick and the softness at the end of words he always hit with a hard r.  He was sure she was here. That he was not alone and that she was young again.  He wasn’t safe. Peggy never made him feel safe. He felt like he had something to live up to, live for and then the banging started.

When he opened his eyes he remembered it was Christmas day. He’d been sleeping for maybe three hours. Waking up never got easier. He pulled on a shirt.

 The banging continues. Banging, in a tower with a JARVIS there is banging at his borrowed door.

In the doorway there is a dishevelled looking Barton, a large box in his hands rather than the familiar Elizabeth. “Hey Man,” he begins even before Steve has the door fully opened. “I need like twelve seconds and some tape.”

Steve needs to shave. his stubble is rough against the flat of his hand.  Sometimes he thinks that he won’t and then a mild panic builds like he is letting go of too many things, like accepting Nokia makes phones and not rubber respirators and giving up the routine of shaving will cast him adrift. It is insane. Just not as insane as banging on his door before 6 am on Christmas morning.

“Merry Christmas, Clint.”

“Yeah,” he blinks, manages to look only somewhat abashed, “Christmas to you too.” There is a beat before he lifts the box in his hands “So…”

“Tape?” Steve says.

“Yeah.” 

“I’ve got boxing…” 

“… Nah, scotch tape,” he says hurriedly, “I need to wrap this like yesterday.” 

He looks down at the box, it looks like it has a substantial heft to it even in Barton’s grip. He can’t help but wonder what is inside. “For Natasha?” he asks. He can’t imagine any other person would have made the man this manic kind of flustered.

“She took the kid to the gym.” He nods, “And. I kept it hidden, right.  I got the present. I did like 90% of this right and I’m still gonna futz it up.” 

Steve smiles. It’s a curious turn of phrase that Barton has swapped out for almost every curse in his vocabulary in the presence of a child too young to understand his words and kept it even in the absence of her. Steve leans against the door frame. He still hasn’t answered the question, too wrapped up in the possibility of a near miss.

Steve is glad that Natasha has this man, one willing to fill every inch of loveless, uncherished brutality with a sea of unadulterated adoration. God knows she needs it. If she’d ever let herself need anything.

“It’s a gift for Natasha?”

“Yeah, mother of my child, woman who could kill me with her thighs, knower of all my secrets. Notoriously hard to impress.”

Steve can only hope that he would have responded to a pregnant… Barton looked like he’d never flinched, never stopped for a second. He was always two steps behind Natasha, baby in his arms, eyes fixed on her.

It is early. He glances over his shoulder at the clock on the wall. Earlier than he is in the gym and though Natasha is often his only companion there unless Tony has been sneaking all-nighters in the absence of Pepper he thinks it is calculated that she has pre-empted him on this of all days.  

“Barton.” He raises a hand to stall him. “If anyone’s is going to be charmed by a gift wrapped in boxer’s tape, it is Natasha Romanoff.”

Inside the grey hooded sweatshirt, Barton’s shoulders visibly lower, “You think?”

“I think.”

“Kay, cool, cool, cool, cool.” Steve swears that despite the lingo, the accent, the too many years between the two, Clint Barton has the same expression as Jacques Dernier when he was mixing up a batch of something explosive.

“So…” Clint says looking up from the box.

Steve shakes off the momentary flash of Déjà vu, “Tape?”

“Yeah.”

“Come in,” he steps back from the door, “You have paper?” he says as he turns.

“Aw Futz,” Barton says definitively. No, he isn’t Jacques Dernier. They are gone. He’d thought by now perhaps he would have pulled one of them back from the endless swirl of time but he is still here, another Christmas at war and without his men.

“I still get the physical newspaper. We can make do.”

Chapter Text

That he has been here for over an hour is surprising and more than a little annoying. Pepper’s reaction time has been unhappily improving with his increased restlessness and the whole extremis thing. She usually lets him leave, he isn’t idiotic enough to think she doesn’t wake when he stops being in that space between asleep and awake that used to be wonderful back when all he had to think about was the two excellent masseuses hovering around him and now was more shapeless terror. She lets him leave and then maybe fifteen sometimes twenty minutes later she follows, she listens and then she draws him back from the blue prints, the metallic pieces he thinks will put him back together.

Fuck Christmas. It’s nothing but a method of measuring his worth as a boyfriend.  The time alone she has left him with is just more rope for him to hang himself with and all he can think of is how she didn’t like the fuckin’ bunny. It was a giant bunny. What’s not to like?!

He isn’t in the best frame of mind then for the soft cooing sound the baby one of the master spies always has with them makes. And if he jumps, well, then that isn’t his fault. Surely it’s unhealthy for a baby to be up this early. Developmentally.

“Jesus,” he hisses when he sees her and the kid in the next instant.

“Not even close,” she answers in the same hushed tones but without the acid he feels.

“JARVIS?”

“Sir?”

“What did we say about Romanoff and this lab.”

“I cannot locate that information at this time, Sir.”

“Are you going to tell me what you did to my AI?”

“No,” she says, “But I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Comforting,” he snarks back.

“Is that what you’re looking for?” she hums as though he isn’t supposed to offer an answer. “It’s Christmas,” she adds unhelpfully.

“So?”

  “I came to claim my gift.”

“The guitar’s in the cleanroom, I assume that’s why you and spy kid 3D are here this early trying to psychoanalyze me. Did you wake her this early too? I mean I don’t know from good parenting but it seems like…”

“No, not comfort. Certainty. You’ve been pacing since we got here.”

“Which was when exactly?”

“Being a spy is a little more complex than stealing flash drives.” She tilts her head and smiles, “What gifts did you buy?” He gives up trying to understand how quickly she leapfrogs the normal steps in conversation. Steps like him telling her anything at all.

“Really,” he huffs. His t-shirt has sweat stains on it, he thinks, when he lifts his arms to demonstrate just how much he is giving up on fighting her. “Spying makes you good at gift giving?”

  “I stole secrets, Mr. Stark,” she answers softly moving towards him and he is shocked at how much the return to formality rebounds on him. “It's not that hard to pay attention to what people like, need, want.”

“Tony,” he says. Natasha Romanoff’s eyes narrow just enough that he wonders if she saw it.

“Tony.” The smile hasn’t moved even a fraction. She shifts the baby onto her shoulder. “Are you trying to top blowing up all your suits. And Malibu?”

“Malibu was Killian.”

“After you gave him your address.” She steps forward again, silently, gracefully, “The gifts?”  

He sighs, waves his hand over the bench top behind him, “I've got like six here and there's a car in the garage.”

“Pepper doesn't want a car,” she says firmly.

“It's a good car.”

“It's a show of wealth, what else?”

“Her childhood dog cloned?” he finds himself asking.

  “What?!” And fuck him, it looks like she is actually shocked. Actually shocked and appalled.

“Well,” it’s not like there is a dog in the workshop he will just throw out new year’s day if he decided against it. There isn’t a need for that face. Red heads and looking disappointed, it’s like his Achille’s heel.  He knows a puppy isn’t just for Christmas. “I mean,” she might as well be humming a Sarah McLachlan song. “I got the DNA and the surrogate is…”

  She puts a single finger up “... No,” she says and the baby’s head lifts from her shoulder like she is already programed to respond to that particular stimulus. “Show me the others,” she insists.

He waves her forward wondering if he has been programed to respond to that stimulus too.

She glances over the table top. He is glad the ring is with Happy.  The ring has been with Happy for years. Happy has never made him feel quite as utterly naked as Natasha Romanoff can do with a baby on her shoulder and no shoes on her feet.  Being naked never even makes him feel this naked.

“What is the metal?”

He swallows and doesn’t look at what she is gesturing to. “Shrapnel from a Stark Industries explosive.”

“The shrapnel you had removed from your heart?”

He turns to pace again, “It's a long story she gave me this arc reactor....”

“... That's the gift”

“It's not,” he stops, he can’t believe he is about to ask a woman called the Black Widow this, “too macabre?”  

“It's meaningful,” she says, adjusting the child once more, “Meaningful isn't always clean.”

“You like meaningful?” he grins.

She blinks. “Everyone wants to feel understood.”

“Even spies?”

She looks down for a moment taking her eyes off him in a way she hasn’t before, “It came as a surprise to me too.”

“You and Barton?” he shakes his head.

“Oh,” she smiles softly, not a knowing smile, not a victorious smile. She smiles likes she is happy.  “He might have made me a macaroni necklace, it doesn't matter.”

“It doesn't?”

“He understands me.” She shrugs. “I don't need proof.”

And he thinks about the box that Barton held like it was about to explode and the fragile perfect replica of Budapest not at all made out of macaroni. He lifts his chin.

“The guitar’s through there.”  

“Thank you for keeping it safe.”

“Do you really think he got you macaroni art? You didn’t do some…” he mimes hacking at her until her blank stare gets to him.

“What did you call us? A couple of Master Assassins?”

“To Loki?”

She nods, “I went through all the data before SHIELD fell. I wrote the reports. Either you underestimate him or overestimate me.”

“Huh. Can’t tell which one you’d actually prefer.”

“Don’t wrap it too neatly. She won’t believe it was your choice if it’s too perfect.”  

“It wasn’t my choice.”

“Yes, it was. You just needed to make it.”

“Romanoff?” he says before she leaves with a baby in one arm and a deep leather guitar case in the other.  

“Natasha.”

“Natasha,” he says and it doesn’t rebound on him, “Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, Tony.”

Chapter Text

He should have been the one to get the tree but on very first day of December the Doc had rapped at their door and he had opened it to find him holding the spikey end of Frasier fir tree and a distracted look like he’d been poked with something else spikey until he agreed to carry it. 

The something else spikey was at the other end of the tree. Tony Stark looked giddy and over caffeinated as he followed behind with the stump.

This is how they ended up with a tree. It came to them from a man who couldn’t help but wave them off every time one of them tried to thank him, like he was allergic to thank yous, especially when they came from Natasha. He feels a little ashamed that at first it looked smug to him. At first, it looked patronising.  He shouldn’t have let him get in the way of seeing the pattern.

Now, Clint wonders if Tony Stark is that one billionaire that funds entire GoFundMe pages when he can’t sleep and buys coffee at diners just to leave a $500 tip. He’s all for eating the rich, it goes well with the Robin Hood theme but sometimes he wonders if Tony would let them if it would make whatever he is trying to make up for go away. He wonders if Tony even wants to get a good look at what he’s trying to fix at all.

So there is a Christmas tree and it looks expensive even though they didn’t manage to do much decorating. He wrapped some lights around it, the kind that flash all different colours in a fades and morphs pattern that Lizzie likes and doesn’t make his mind go to emergency vehicles and crumpled pickups on the side of a lonely road.

After the lights, he and Natasha just stopped doing anything, mentioning Christmas at all. Between them seemed to be an unspoken agreement that the change to their lives had been too great for Christmas not to force them into role play, covers, some kind of very special episode staring them.

There was a pattern. Every time they did something normal without thinking she’d leave him with the baby and go straight to the shooting range. The ammunition budget, he figures, is increasing exponentially as the red-headed terror pushes them both towards a nuts kind of normalcy. Then she would return and ask him if he remembered Cairo or Oman or Batman in Turkey. Like he would forget.

It was better not to mention Christmas.

He knows that he got in stealthy and that slipping the heavy box under the tree had been done silently and yet she is in the doorway, Lizzie on her hip waiting for him when he stands up. “I wondered if you were in Rocinha,” she says.

“Aw nuts,” he says, mimicking her hushed tones without really thinking about it, “Just once I wanna… you were supposed to be in the gym.”

“On Christmas?”

“Well, it’s you, so yeah, wasn’t that far-fetched.”

“This Christmas?” she says as her eye brow raises. Lizzie’s head is obscured by soft curls and heavy against her mother’s side.

“Look.” He runs his hand up the back of his neck and through his hair, “I know since day dot you’ve had me beat but just once, just one time I wanted to surprise you.”

“Not day dot.”

She doesn’t look away. She didn’t then either not at the end of an arrow that could have been in her throat without so much as a gurgle. She’d been so young then. They both had. He can’t imagine what he looked like to her. He just remembers the tired, resigned look in those green eyes and a split-second decision he would never regret.

His voice sounds hoarser than it should, so he looks away, “We don’t count those days ‘Tasha.”

He swallows hard and forces back the memories of her staring blankly at the psychs, the night she clawed at her skin convinced there was a tracker imbedded in the muscle and the way she shook, holding her hands around the head and throat of the medic who’d thought he’d sedated her. He works hard not to think about the way she pressed herself against him in the back of the quinjet, head bowed listening but giving no sign of understanding as Coulson spelled out exactly how much trouble he was in and that the girl in restraints may still be dead by morning.

“They count, Clint.” She moves to the couch, adjusts Lizzie into her lap and looks up once more. “More than anything.”

He’d pressed back against her. He’d made a promise.

“Not more than anything,” he says firmly.

“No, not now.”

“She awake?” he asks. 

“Mmm,” she runs a finger across their daughter cheek.  Lizzie clenches her little fists and nuzzles dopily back into the softness of her mother’s torso. “She’ll be hungry soon.”

“Right, so you got a minute.”

“A minute?”

He nods once. He drags the box out from under the tree before placing it before her curled legs on the end of the couch. “Merry Christmas, Natasha.”

“What is this?” she says sceptically.

“It’s a gift, Tash,” he answers not a little stung and reaches out for the baby, “Not an interrogation. Just open it.”

She watches Lizzie settle into his arms.  He bounces on his feet not sure if the energy is about the stirring child or Schrodinger’s box that she pulls towards her. “Is this boxing tape?” she asks dragging a blunt nail across a seam of white and newspaper print.

“I did it like 88% right and…”

She shakes her head still examining the wrapping that Rogers insisted would be just right, “You did it 100% right.”

There is something too straight forward and open about the way she says it that makes him want to deflect or throw a punch and it’s all trapped beneath the surface of the skin of a man holding a not quite four-month-old, “Open it, okay,” he says hurriedly before he ends up leaving the room or making a bad joke.

“It’s -” she says as she pulls it out of the packing.

“Budapest,” he says because he can’t stop himself.

“Budapest,” she echoes quietly and with the right accent. “In a snow globe.”

“I wanted to -” He knows he is babbling.

“Notre Dame,” she breathes, her hand runs over the surface of the hand-blown glass. “Smaller. Plastic. You said they wouldn’t miss it.”

“It had blood all over it.”

She is smiling to herself, staring at the glowing windows of the parliament building, “Coulson saw it in my kit. Never said a word.”

He blinks and presses a kiss into his daughter's curls, “He was good at keeping his trap shut. He handled us -”

“-How did you -” He sits.

“-There’s this place in Vienna, I -”

She looks up at him. There are tears in her eye. A twist at the edge of her mouth that tells him if he says something kind they might fall.

“Shut up, Barton,” she says sharply, “Kiss me.”

“‘Tasha, did I do something -”

She shakes her head and kneels leaning over the globe, “Just kiss me.”

And he does because he has been half in love with her since she pressed herself against him in a quinjet with her head bowed and her hands tied all those years ago and all these years later he could never deny her anything.

Her cheek is wet against his and Lizzie is squirming.  He tries to wipe away the tears with the rough tip of his finger, “Hey, hey.”

“It’s just hormones,” she answers pushing his hand away and turning her head.

“Okay. Yeah, okay.”

The corner of her mouth quirks and she mutter but he can’t be sure he hears her correctly, “Always with the exit.”

“What?”

She smiles then and lifts Lizzie from his lap, “There’s something under the sofa for you.”

“Really?!”

“No,” she says as the little girl gurgles in the air above her mother’s head. “I lied.”

“Nope,” he says and slides off the couch. “You don’t lie. Not really.”

“Clint,” she sighs, “I’m a spy.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he says noncommittedly, “Christmas is under the couch. Lizzie Bee.” At her name the little girl looks at him with eyes wide and burbles. “Christmas!”

There is something large and black and leather inserted in the space between couch and floor and he wonders how she got it in there without him noticing. He’s sure he searched there just yesterday. He pulls it out by a handle, noting the silver clasps and the iconic shape.

“She is more interested in the box.”

“It’s a guitar,” he says, snapping open the case before she can respond. “Futz,” he hisses at the shine and colour of the wood, “Red. This is -”

 “-It’s a Martin.”

 “I know, I -”

There is a fondness in her voice when she interrupts, “She should hear you play.”

And she doesn’t say that all the songs he knows are American trash or that if she has to hear him butcher ‘Born to run’ one more time she will invent tortures for him Stalin only dreamed about.  She smiles at the way Lizzie mouths at the box the snow globe came in and pulls the little girls pyjama top back into place.

“I love you, Natasha Romanoff,” he says.

And she looks at him kneeling on the floor and she answers, “I know you do.”

When your heart skips a beat. It hurts. For a second it hurts.

He leans forward “I am yours,” he says. “You are stuck with me.”

“You are mine,” she answers, resting her hand on his cheek.

For an instant, he thinks, it might snap in him, the bow string snap against taut muscle shock and he will not have the excuse of hormones.

He turns his head in her hand and looks down at Lizzie, “Hey kiddo,” he says as Natasha withdraws, “you know I love you, right?”

“She could never doubt it.” Natasha answers for the child dragging a mixture or newspaper and boxing tape closer and closer to her mouth.

He grins. “I kinda think I’m sold on this Christmas thing.”

“Kinda?”

“There’s you.” He tucks her errant curls back behind her ear. “There’s her and a sweet AF guitar. Nothing is blowing up. I’m not eating MRs and every single one of my bones is intact. What else could I want?”

And then the phone on the counter starts ringing, vibrating across the smooth surface with a threatening intensity.

Chapter Text

“Is that yours or mine?” Clint Barton asks her from the floor. He looks at her and not the phone when he waits for an answer.  Habit, she presumes, from working without the aids that are imperceptibly in both ears to compensate for the bilateral hearing loss. She remembers thinking that the way he watched her mouth had been a sign that he found her attractive.

Perhaps it was both then.

“You don’t know where your phone is?”

“I know.” He frowns. “I think.”

“It’s on vibrate.”

“Yeah, well you might have turned yours to vibrate. I don’t know.”

He shrugs in a way that makes him look lost and foolish and not at all the sharpest man she has ever worked with. They do that a lot, the two of them, being cognitive dissonance personified.

“Go answer your phone,” she says swatting at him.

“It’s probably just the other Hawkeye. Let it go to voice mail.”

He’d worry if her phone went off as well. She knows this much to be true. He’d coil and spring if he sensed danger but instead he stays this loose and scruffy, Christmas morning Clint as the phone rings again.

“One. No, Kate Bishop doesn’t wake up at this time, let alone expect you to be awake and not in a dumpster,” she sighs. “Two. Answer the phone.”

She is acutely aware of the time since his phone started to rattle its way across the counter top.

“Fine,” he says hoisting himself from the ground. “You’d think Jesus was calling.”

“Barton,” he barks. He grins at her and the baby in her arms probably frowning at the sudden lack of newspaper and boxing tape to masticate into a soggy mess. A pause and then he says, “Hello?”

She tries not to imagine the other end of the conversation. She didn’t tell him whose number she gave him. Just to call it.

“Say that again,” he says as though he isn’t processing the words. “No,” he says abruptly, and he looks back up at her. “Natasha,” he says looking straight into her eyes, gone is any pretence that he is not a hawk or a sniper. “This is… get the… trace this call.”

She isn’t a person who questions what she does. She makes clear decisions and moves forward. She incurs debts, but she has no room for hesitation. She swallows.

“Clint.” He pulls the phone away from his ear, glances at it annoyed before looking at her lips and the way she doesn’t respond to his muddled order. “He is who he says he is.”

“What?!” he snaps, “That’s not possible and how-“ He shakes his head hard and then louder says into the cell “No, I can hear you just fine. I just don’t believe my fucking ears.”

She picks Elizabeth up and stands, planting her feet firmly into the carpet.

“How did you?  Why are you? This isn’t…” His nostrils flare as Elizabeth grabs at the hair she has braided loosely over her shoulder.

“Tahiti? No.  Stop!” he says shortly. “I don’t care!” When he looks at her again she feels suddenly smaller and aware of how dangerous the man barking into the phone in stained sweat pants really is. She has only felt this a few times in her life and one of them was at the end of an arrow. His voice lowers, becomes precises in a way that Clint never is, and Agent Barton always had the ability to be. “Why does my partner know it’s you?”

She is still. Elizabeth is not. The little girl twisting in her grip, grimacing and tugging on the fabric of her shirt.

“I see.” He is still too. They stare at each other. Cross hairs, she thinks. “You’re sorry? Sorry,” he is saying flatly. “I’m sure the circle did have to be kept small. Uhuh. Rules. Secrets.” He turns his body away from her. “Bullshit,” he yells into the phone.

Elizabeth startles and begins to whine. She knows it isn’t the word, it is the electric tense shift in the air, the tone, the bodies of her parents.

He scans back over his shoulder quickly when his daughter opens her mouth to begin the building note towards a wail. He does not look at her. “Are you asking me if I understand or telling me to. Sir.”

She pushes her finger into her daughter’s mouth. The child reflexively begins to suck at the finger, her wail pre-empted. Natasha tries to turn her focus to the small tongue pushing up against the surface of her curved index finger and not the hum of distorted speech that comes from his cell. Skills that came to her naturally once are now less easy to control.

“You see,” he says, and it sounds as though he hasn’t let the voice finish. “I thought I’d fucking killed you. I thought it was my damn fault. So no, I don’t think I’ll be understanding anything anytime soon.” He is using a conversational tone that sounds nothing like the tight muscles contracted across his back and the distension of his jugular along the right surface of his neck. “Who else knows? Everyone from SHIELD but the one guy who it might matter…”

The pause is short and Clint swings around again. He starts at a low roar, “Don’t you fucking dare put that in the same category. I THOUGHT I’D KILLED MY FUCKING FRIEND.”

Eyes don’t flash, she tells herself, heightened emotion causes a tear response that in certain lights makes the iris look brighter, larger, the surface shinier. Eyes don’t flash.

Elizabeth pushes her finger away and begins to cry in earnest. Natasha lifts her curling her small body against her chest and rocking from side to side. Over the noise she still hears him say, “Love, that’s my reason. What’s yours?”

She isn’t able to leave. She could take Elizabeth into the next room, settle her, wait.  But that would not be bearing witness, and this is how you pay a debt.

He snorts derisively. “You think that one would pass even Captain America’s sniff test.  Does he know? Does Stark?”

The same hum of answers that aren’t more meaningful than his pain.

“Yes, it matters.  I thought I killed my friend. He thinks he lost one of his only real friends. Thinks he didn’t do enough to…”

She didn’t expect this. She didn’t prepare for this scenario. He is using this time to advocate for Stark, for Steve. She thought he might wallow. She should have foreseen that he would grasp for the greater injustice. He is a man incapable of not helping. 

“I know!” he interrupts. She can hear the soft hum cut short. It seems that Clint will not allow a single sentence to achieve completion. “I see better from a distance. Phil.” He bites out the name. It sounds worse than any swear word he has ever used. “Stark doesn’t say it but he ain’t up all night because he has a four-month-old. You decided to put secrets over reducing someone’s misery by-“

“Clint!” she says finally finding her voice over the sounds of him deflecting, “Stop!”

“You knew?”

“Yes,” she says without hesitation or apology. “Since Maria sent me out to meet a ‘contact’.”

“Not the…” His eyes narrow. “Not the whole time.”

“No,” she says firmly, there will be time later to reel from the sting of that question. “Not the whole time. He is working, Clint.  You don’t have long.  Don’t spend your time raging.”

“I am angry,” he snaps and then into the cell he sneers, “I don’t need your permission to be angry. Shut up. The both of you.”

Eyes don’t flash. Increased blood flow and pupil response give an impression of a flash, nothing more.

He sucks in a hard breath, turns away from her again and then lower he says, “You’re working? You’ve got a team around you? Mockingbird, Bobbi. Uhuh May. They’re good.” He runs the flat of his hand from forehead to the nape of his neck and back. “You should tell Stark.”

Another pause and then, “The circle should be bigger then.”

There is heat in her chest as Elizabeth nuzzles into her trying to soothe herself, but she can’t look away from his back. She watches each minute movement and each breath.

“I’m glad you’re not dead, Coulson,” he says softer than before. Her own shoulders lower before she can be certain his have. “No,” he says to something the man on the other end of the phone has said, it is definitive but not unkind. “We aren’t there yet. Show your face around here sometime without weapons and backup and maybe then I’ll show you baby pictures or some shit.  We aren’t there yet.”

He nods a few more times before he speaks again, “Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Bye.”

He puts the phone back down on the counter and then he begins to crumple over it.

“Clint?” she asks quietly. He doesn’t turn. She hears him drag in another breath.

“I can’t…” he says pulling himself upright. He walks to the door, “I just. I can’t.”

And without looking at her again he is gone.

Chapter Text

The door slides apart before she notices the car has come to rest. She is, admittedly, a little distracted.  She pulls her dressing gown's sash tighter.

“Mr,” Pepper says and closes her eyes for a fraction of a second as she corrects herself, “I mean Clint.”

"Ms Potts."

He looks like he is coming to attention. She is wearing one of Tony’s T-shirts, it has a scientific diagram of some sort and Feynman's signature on it, and it stretches tightly across her chest.

“Clint?”

“Sorry,” he smiles lopsidedly, “Pepper.  Don’t you guys have your own…”

She waves him off.  Yes, they have their own elevator. “I was looking for Tony.” Foolishly, she thinks to herself. She didn't think about the others living in the tower, just her annoyance at waking up alone. Only her concern, the ongoing, ever-present concern.

“And JARVIS?”

“Christmas protocols," she says, and it snaps a little in her mouth. She takes a breath, steps out of the elevator. “New. Frustrating. I thought he would be the only one up and about at this hour.”

She looks up and down the corridor for a moment before chastising herself for the idiocy of the action.  If Tony Stark was in the corridor, Clint would have said something.

When she looks back at the man beside her, she half expects him to be laughing at her.

Instead, she finds him looking only tired and ill at ease, “Baby.”

“Of course. My mistake.”

“And Cap doesn’t do much sleeping as far as I can tell,” when he smiles again she notices the falseness of it. “Workshop?”

“My first thought too.  He was there. I think.” She narrows her eyes, watching him. “He isn’t now.”

“You need help finding him?”

He is loose and relaxed with the offer, and if the smile wasn't just not quite right, she might think that he was Clint and not Agent Barton or Hawkeye.

She was concerned. She woke up alone, and she had been asking him to get help for weeks.  The sleeplessness was worsening. It was Christmas and holidays made him worse, he slipped into a kind of mania excessively being Stark and Ironman and not letting himself be just Tony, not allowing himself just be.

“Shouldn’t you be enjoying Elizabeth’s first Christmas?” she says.

“I needed some air,” he answers too matter-of-factly.

“I see,” she says. Then she stops herself spinning on her heels at the end of the corridor. She was concerned. But she’d hope wherever Tony had hidden himself this time if someone came across him they’d be telling him to sleep, to eat, to be. To stop BEING.

"No," she says. "Look, I'm sorry, and I'm sure it isn't any of my business, but you don't look like fresh air is going to solve…”

“You’re right," he says, looking at her straight on.  He does have eyes like a bird of prey, she thinks.

“I am.”

“It isn’t any of your business.” He is still in a way that makes her want to recoil. She doesn't, though, she is tired of having to navigate these people. She stands her ground. In shorts, a borrowed t-shirt and a silk robe. Her toenails are red glitter, but she raises her chin and stands her ground. 

He shakes himself suddenly and forces his hands into the grey pockets of his sweat pants. "That was mean. It's Christmas, and I know you mean well, but the talking thing.  I don’t do that.”

“It was mean,” she bites right back at him. “So I’m going to be brutally honest.” She takes two steps forward. “You look like a hot mess. I don't know you, and that might just be you. Still, I don’t think the not talking thing is working for you. Change it.”

“Wow,” he says and hisses through his teeth.

“It’s Christmas, this is my home." It is her home, and she signed on for Tony Stark, she didn't sign on for ex assassins (oh God let them be ex) and their emotional problems. She didn't sign on for people misplacing their anger all over her doorstep. “I don’t have to apologise.”

It is anger, the thing that is messing with his smile. He is good at masking it. He's probably excellent at turning it inwards, but she isn't a therapist, and this is her home.

“No,” he chuckles, “I like redheads who speak their minds.” He scratches the back of his neck and throws his hand forward with an offer, “I’ll help you search. My way of saying sorry.”  He winces a little, “Something else I’ve never been good at. I started your Christmas off…”

“Like a little bitch.”

He smiles honestly then, “Like a little bitch.”

They walk out into the sunken lounge. The floor to ceiling windows drawing crisp winter light on to every smooth surface.  Tony is not here.

“So?” she says, turning towards the blond man.

“So?” he says his eyes scanning the room, “there isn’t much I can tell you.”

“Classified?”

“Something like that.”

“Ah,” she smiles, it is easy enough to do, looking at a man with bed hair and the purple grey shadows beneath his eyes that points to the presence of an infant, “Natasha bought you socks.”

He stops scanning the room only to start scanning her. “Something like that too.”

“Big picture then. No details. Just the feelings." Pepper turns, she knows with certainty that Tony is not here. It's a calm feeling. She used to think she should be trying to keep that feeling, remove everything from her life that made her feel other than. The thing about calm certainty is that it is absolutely utterly dull. He follows her. She hasn't really given him a choice. “And make it fast. When we find Tony, I'll be too busy dealing with him to bother with you."

He chuckles again. She'd always thought that chuckling was a weird literary tick that occurred in novels and didn't reflect a sound anyone made in reality. Clint Barton, however, chuckles. It is warm and sincere and rumbles in his chest, "You sure you aren't SHIELD?"

“I’m not quite that ruthless,” she says, pressing the button firmly.

“No.”  There is an amused twist to his lips in the reflection of the elevator doors.

“Tony said you had a compassionate streak even before baby Elizabeth.” She steps into the elevator, “He called you the glitch in the matrix but…” she looks at him, he has rolled his shoulders back and is staring up at the ceiling, “you brought Natasha to SHIELD?”

“She was…” he hums, perhaps waiting for her to reconsider her question. He rolls his head to the side and looks at her.  His expression is one of resignation. “She deserved a second chance.”

She smiles, she hopes it is comforting, “Don’t we all.”

“Ms.” He stops and starts again in the same breath. “Pepper. I don’t think you’ve ever done anything that warranted…”

She sighs over anything he may have wanted to use to minimise, obfuscate or avoid. "I may not be a super solider or an assassin, but I still suffer from that most human affliction. Just because others have done worse doesn't mean I haven't required forgiveness here and there.” She shakes her head, “I swear if he is cooking…”

“Forgiveness,” he echoes. It’s how lost it sounds that makes her stop thinking about rubbery eggs.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “It’s a nifty trick that heals so many wounds.”

“Does it?’

“You know the thing that’s amazing about forgiveness? It doesn’t just heal the person you’re forgiving. All that anger and self-reproach, it just… not so much melted away but…”

“All the anger?”

“Not all.  I mean you have to have some otherwise people reprogram JARVIS and disappear on CHRISTMAS MORNING,” she yells out at the opening doors.

“Pepper, you should go back to bed.”

He is scanning her again, “Excuse me?”

“He wants to surprise you. There aren’t any signs of running or hiding. That’s what you’re worried about, right? I’ve got no indications.”

“He was not…”

“Yeah, I get it but same behaviour different function.”

“Function?” she repeats.

“Christmas protocols. He wants to surprise you,” Clint Barton says firmly as he steps out of the elevator.

“If it’s a big rabbit.”

“A what?” he says like he isn’t sure he heard her correctly.

“He wants to surprise me?”

He rests his arm on the door to keep it from closing. “It fits the pattern.”

“Where are you going?”

“I think you’re right, air isn’t the thing I need.”

“Merry Christmas, Clint.”

He grins, and it isn't a mask over rage, "Merry Christmas, Pepper.” He releases the door.

Chapter Text

He stops at the windows when leaving the gym. At this distance the drop looks referenceless and thus has no terror. It’s like looking at a video screen of the New York skyline not a real threat to his safety posed by the sudden loss of a few inches of glass. He breathes in and focuses down on the minuscule variations in the glass. Exercise has helped to maintain as low a heart rate as is medically safe but mindfulness has gained him fractions more control and he continues to search for those fractions more.

“Bruce?”

“Sorry, I was…” he draws in a breath, “Oh, Natasha, Elizabeth” he says when he sees the red headed agent and her daughter and immediately feels ridiculous addressing a baby in such a formal tone.

The baby stuffs her fist into her mouth but Natasha smirks even as her eyes look past him into the room, “Meditation or petite mal seizure?”

“I didn’t think anyone would be about this morning what with the holiday…”

“Tony’s collection of monsters and heroes don’t seem to be the type to take a day off.”

“No,” he stutters on the frankness of her assessment.  “I suppose monsters are not known for their Christmas cheer.”

“No, we are not.”

“Ms Romanoff no one could…”

“And just like that I am Ms Romanoff again.” She smiles once more but it looks too bright. “You’ve read my file Dr Banner. You count yourself a monster? You would be hard pressed to find a quantifiable difference in our sins.”  She sighs heavily as she shifts the baby to her other hip, “Especially today.”

The question feels as though it has to be asked, “Why today.”

“My usual cure was worse than the disease.” He thinks she may be done and he will be left to wonder at her implications. It can’t imagine himself asking the kinds of questions others in the tower would do instinctually and compassionately.

The sky is an aged blue and clear in a way that makes him think of ships trapped in ice and fingers turning red with cold. His yoga mat distorts beneath his fingertips. She breaks the silence with, “I thought…” and then she stops. She shakes her head. It is body language he thought he’d never see from her. “I calculated poorly. I hurt Clint.”

“I’m sure that…”

“I hurt him badly.” It’s sharp and brooks no disagreement.

“What will you do?” he asks instead.

“I have no idea.” She makes eye contact with him long enough that he realises this entire time she has been avoiding it. “Elizabeth has changed everything.”

He isn’t built for this. Once he would have said he was, beneath the surface, too angry, too impatient, to tolerate other people’s emotional problem solving. Now he fears taking it on for much more dramatic reasons but there has always been something undesirable yet kindred in Natasha Romanoff and he finds himself saying, “You don’t strike me as someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, Natasha.”

She steps back from the window placing her daughter on the floor near the corner of a mid-century inspired chair than may well cost more than the first grant money he applied for. “All I know,” she says as she drags the child’s legs into a tripod sit to support her, a kind of thoughtless parental efficiency, “is for the first time in my life I couldn’t wait for him to come to me.” She smiles and taps the burbling girl on the nose.

“Sounds…”

 She straightens, “Terrifying.”

“Love usually is.”

She turns and the color in her voice is gone, “Love is for children.”

“Well, I,” he pulls his head back, somewhat shocked, “I wouldn’t have phrased it like that but you know, I don’t think I have ever been in love and not felt like a child and a fool. So yes, I suppose that love is for children. Terrified children.”

She doesn’t smile now, “I can’t stand here talking about emotions without a firearm.”

“Or illicit substances.”

“I thought you didn’t imbibe.”

“Yes, not has had many positive side effects, conversations like these for one, gone.”

“You would think,” she says in a voice a long low note from a cello.

He watches her for a moment or two and he wonders if she too is losing herself in the almost imperceptible imperfections in the glass of Tony Stark’s tower or the snuffling, wet noises of the little person on the floor. He wonders if she is trying to become so still she will vanish. He wonders how she could become anymore still.

“Merry Christmas, Natasha,” he says, bringing the yoga mat to his chest and watching over her shoulder, “Merry Christmas, Clint.”

“Hey Doc,” he answers shifting seamlessly from a stalk to a stride, “could I?” It’s low but there is a hint of something flat in his voice, something familiar, not quite a drawl but not New York either.

“Please,” he says making a wide circle.

“We’ll see you at dinner?” Natasha says but Barton and Romanoff are staring at each other now and he would rather not have to answer.

“Oh I…”

Clint bends to collect his daughter from the floor, as he tries to wave away the polite request. In the same sharp and unassailable tone as his partner, Clint Barton says, “We will.”

Chapter Text

There are three individuals in the room; the temperature controls adjust swiftly as Dr Banner exits. The infant's heart rate remains steady at 176 beats per minute, consistent with her age and size. Her head control is in the 98th percentile as she turns in former Agent Barton's arms.

Barton's heart rate is elevated though he is smiling at the infant. Both Barton and Romanoff generally present with resting heart rates of between 54 and 67 beats per minute though Barton has demonstrated heart rates as low as 41 beats per minute on the range. This does not trigger the bradycardia warnings as it is within normal limits for trained athletes and particularly sharpshooters. Romanoff widens her stance.

“So,” Barton says. Vocal distortion is present in the single word due to low register and loose glottal closure.

Romanoff is silent; her breathing is uneven, suggesting conscious control.

“You’re gonna make me do this on my own, huh?”

“I don’t know what this is.”

"Yeah, right," Barton says. His words are quicker than typical of his recorded speech, the intonation pattern deviates from his typical delivery, and his face loses expression during its articulation. Sarcasm. It lasts an instant. "No, I didn't want to, I wasn't gonna do it like this.”

“Do what, Hawkeye?” Romanoff asks. She is 12% lower in volume than her natural speaking voice.

Barton’s eyes make contact with Romanoff. He lifts his chin in 460 milliseconds.

"Apologize, explain, take responsibility," the ends of his words are sharp, the pause between words more definite.

The tension in Romanoff neck and shoulders reduces, her breathing rate reduces, "You aren't responsible," Romanoff answers her volume stabilized. She maintains eye contact.

"Not for," he shakes his head; it is a fast and unbalanced movement. There are small contractions around his upper lip. "The walking out, the anger. That was all me. Patently me."

"I," Romanoff says. She does not move.

"And I am sorry. For that," he says simultaneously, and she yields the floor. "I want to understand." He swallows. He turns his gaze to the left, "You gonna help me with that?” Slight pitch break.

“I made a bad call.”

“Yeah, that much I know.” Barton steps forward. In Romanoff, leg and hip muscles contract, she considers stepping backwards, but she does not follow through. "Why?"

“You deserved to know, we should have been told.” Her jaw is tight.

“And you know that isn’t why I’m asking.”

Romanoff’s Corrugator supercilii muscle raises her eyebrow.

The infant is rhythmically sucking at her own fist. She will need sustenance soon. Romanoff’s body temperature is rising incrementally.

“He was your friend.” She swallows. “You should hear it from him.”

“You knew. Days, more than that, an infinity ago. You waited ‘til”

The infant cries out. It is not high pitched, not yet indicative of sustained distress. Romanoff responds instinctively as she speaks, stretching her arms out towards the infant.

“It was Christmas!”

Barton passes the infant to its mother.

“What?” A frown.

Romanoff looks away, ostensibly to the infant, though the lack of peripheral referencing indicates she is avoiding contact with Barton. Eye contact in humans is a sophisticated demonstration of vulnerability and power. “It was Christmas. I thought…”

He interrupts again, “Christmas?”

“Yes.” Her mouth twists for to her left side for 40 milliseconds. Annoyance. “Hope and birth and family, no?”

“Commercialism, yellow snow, alcoholism.” Eyebrows raised. Confusion. Flexing of the muscles at the corner of the mouth. Smile. Scepticism.

The tension in her vocal tract is abruptly lessened by the sudden involuntary release of air and the lowering of her larynx, a sigh. Perhaps the result of exasperation. “I was the one raised by communist dogma and killers.”

“You can’t keep pulling that one out to win fights.” Movement of his head with eyes in a curved motion. The stress placed on the second word in the sentence.

“This is a fight?” Inflection moving upwards towards the end of the sentence, question. Pitch lower than typical speaking voice.

“No." The gap between question and answer is 130 milliseconds long. Atypically fast for conversations between these two individuals. Barton rubs his hair when he speaks again “I, I,” whole word repetition, “don’t get it.”

“I thought I could give Coulson back to you.” The infant is rubbing her cheek against Romanoff’s covered breast. “The mark in your ledger with his name..”

“You wanted to wipe it out? It’s a Christmas present?”

“Oh," Clear elongation of the interjection, marked variation within the vowel, "anything for a mission. I could be in a swamp, the snow.” Voice demonstrative of pleading.

“Nah, no way,” laughter, low in tone and volume. Eyes squinted. Amusement. “When I was all, I’m allergic to pine and…” Barton waves his hand in front of his body. Gesture indicative of farewelling a concept, thought, non-tangible. Idea from the partial sentence remains incomplete, “That has to be the worst call you’ve ever made, Romanoff.”

“Worse than Tallinn?” Eye contact maintained a slight contraction of the corner of the mouth, asymmetrical. Coy.

“Debatable.” Barton sits in the chair behind him and to the left. “Why are you here? I figured you’d be...”

“We had to find you.” Romanoff shifts the infant in her arms. Infant whimpers. The child’s arms and legs are moving more frequently.

“Jesus H Christ, he’s alive. Those bastards.” Inconsistent phrases with previous conversational turn. Barton’s head is in his hands. Pause 200 milliseconds. Head raises, “Find me?”

“Yes, we." The first adjustment of stance since the conversation has begun. "I don’t like...”

“I wasn’t hidin'."

“You left. I couldn’t...” Pause 213 milliseconds. Infant’s face turns into Romanoff’s breast. Sound is distorted. “…wait. I couldn’t just wait.”

“Tasha.” Barton's voice is low, breath support from the diaphragm is weak.

“She needs to be fed.” Eyebrows low with slight upwards slant.

“Sure.” Short nod. Controlled, reduced lateral movement.

“Come home.”

“Home?” Barton asks.

“For want of a better word.” Movement of the trapezius and levator scapulae.

“Sure.” Movement is mimicked. “I can do that. No more dead people, you're gonna spring on me, right?”

“Clint.” Downward inflection.

“What?” Intonation is excessively variable.

“I said I was sorry.”

Laughter, increased in intensity from prior in conversation examples. Zygomatic movement. Incomplete closure of the larynx, rhymical contractions of the diaphragm “No, you really didn’t”

“Ah.” Significant levitation of a single eyebrow. Barton moves, placing his left arm around the lower back of Romanoff as she steps forward. “I gave birth to your child.”

The infant's heart rate has risen to 193 beats per minute. Barton's heart rate has returned to within normal limits for his health, sex and size.

A clear forced exhalation of air.

JARVIS sections the security footage. JARVIS assigns it a secure identification number sequence. This is then misdirected to a little accessed folder. Such a shame must have been due to solar flares.

Chapter Text

After he places the small gifts under the tree like he has been requested, ordered, to do by Pepper, he stops knowing what to do with his hands. In the month or so since he has settled into the tower, he really thought he'd kicked that. It's about the same shape as those very brief moments he still gets when his brain is telling him he is still 5 ft 4 and not to let his asthma get on top of him—seconds of being between bodies, outside of them.

Across the room, Natasha Romanoff's eyes narrow at him, and he thinks better of wedging his hands into his pockets. It feels like it would be letting her know she is right and that woman knows she's right more than anyone should. Or at least pretends she does. Convincingly.

He turns away and searches the ceiling-high shelving for a distraction. He is not using the highly polished surface to see if Romanoff is still watching him when he catches on a photograph in a silver frame and his breath hitches in his chest.

Peggy is looking back at him caught in such a candid pose that he can imagine she is right there annoyed with Howard Stark’s arm draped over her shoulder. She is older, her hair longer, her clothing 50’s maybe it’s not always easy to pick the differences in absent decades. She looks as though she is about to say something to the taller man on her left. He stands tall, clothes subdued but immaculate.

“Pepper said that photographs would make the place a home.” He hadn’t noticed that Tony was at his elbow, he had been focused on the image and before that the narrowed green eyes of Natasha Romanoff. “Then she said that the photos shouldn’t be entirely magazine covers of me and my ego.” Tony shrugs as though he is helpless at the haranguing of his girl. From what he has seen of the relationship Tony is desperately in love with the efficiently intelligent strawberry blonde, and she tolerates more than she has ever harangued.

He smiles tightly knowing he isn’t looking that amused at the self-deprecation, “I thought I hadn’t noticed…”

“No. It’s new.” Stark gestures at the photograph, “Old but new.”

“She looks happy.”

“Aunt Peggy?” he muses.

Steve swallows. “Not the strangest thing I’ve heard since I woke up and yet.”

“Yeah, well, Dad used to talk about you like you were…” Stark smooths down non-existent stray hairs in his beard, “You want me to tell you about her sometime?”

“No,” he says too fast. Stark’s eyebrows raise. “I. I wasn’t there. It feels wrong to…" He suddenly feels as if there aren't English words for the feeling he wants to put words to and very aware of Starks interest in his inability to form a complete sentence, “Maybe one day…” he concedes. “Who is the other man?”

Stark looks back at the photograph, thankfully, “Jarvis.”

“JARVIS?”

“No. Jarvis and his wife Ana…” he shakes his head. “He was dad's, butler, doesn't really cover it though. They practically raised me. Howard Stark wasn't a particularly demonstrative patriarch and mum well she… they were busy, and then they were gone but Jarvis-”

“-You created JARVIS for-”

“-For me,” he says sharply, “AI isn’t a replacement for people."

“Tony.”

His response is a bright, wide smile and a louder voice, "I won't tell you about my Aunt Peggy, and you don't tell me about the great man that was Howard Stark, deal?"

He clasps Steve’s shoulder in his hand. Steve doesn’t move to shift him.

“Deal.”

“So," Tony says, letting his hand drop, “how many hams are you betting Thor gets through?”

“Tony,” Pepper calls.

Steve looks over at the table where Pepper is speaking animatedly with Barton and the smallest member of Avengers tower.

“My master’s voice.” He shrugs and turns on the heels of his waxy black shoes.

When Steve turns, Natasha is there, a slight smirk on her lips like she is happily aware of how silently she moves and how much he had been keeping track of her. “Who’s the woman?” she asks lightly.

“Like you don’t know.”

Her head tilts, but not enough to give the game away, “Margaret Carter, one of the founders of SHIELD.” She straightens, “She’s very pretty.”

He doesn’t follow her gaze. “She is more than that.”

“You know where she is.”

“It’s not, I left. You can’t just show up, expect things…”

“It’s not like you went out for a pack of cigarettes and took off, Rogers. You didn’t get a choice in coming back.” The sleek curls of her hair slide over her shoulder as she turns looking back towards her partner, “I would think Agent Carter would be willing to take that into consideration.”

“I don’t know.” What he means is, I don’t know that it should be taken into consideration. He doesn’t even begin to say how much he feels like he is hurting Peggy each time she sees him alive and young and whole. It happens so often now.

“I do.” She smiles again. Her lips are red, and he doesn't think he has seen her in noticeable makeup since the press descended on the tower. “I know everything.”

“You only pretend you do,” he answers as Thor laughs boisterously at something Dr Banner has said.

“Perhaps.”

He shakes his head, “Are you ready for the first Avenger’s Christmas?”

“No. But I can pretend to be.”

“No, I don’t think you can.”

She raises an eyebrow and pronounces the next words, haughtily, "Do you doubt me?"

“I think,” he says lowly as he steps forward, “Barton, he switches off that chameleon thing you do.”

“Not Barton.” Steve notices how much stiller she becomes. “Clint.”

“Same man.”

“No.” Natasha is watching Clint now. The man is grinning as he tries to pass the baby to Tony.

“Yes, he is. People aren’t fractured just because they behave differently in different circumstances.” He pauses. He only knows the edges of Natasha's past and the sharply defined lines of how much she works to be anything to anyone. He shifts on his feet, "They don’t have to be.”

“This is one of those things you should drop,” she says her eyes on him and bright.

He nods.

“It’s Elizabeth’s first Christmas.” She lets him change track.

“She won’t remember it.”

“But you will,” he smiles, “What things has she liked best?”

Natasha rolls her eyes, which for Natasha is akin to saying she adores someone, “Trying to eat newspaper.”

Steve winces, “Sorry.” Someone is warbling through invisible speakers about snow and bells, Natasha looks up, “About the last-minute wrapping paper.”

“That’s where he was?”

“He said you were in the gym.”

“That’s what I told him. He knows better than to believe me.”

Steve thinks that believe and trust are not true synonyms.

“Where were you then?”

“Where I needed to be,” she says opaquely before sighing dramatically, “he wouldn’t be Clint Barton if he had remembered all the details.”

“I thought you’d appreciate the improvisation.” In her smile, he is sure of it.

“And you? Is a modern Christmas living up to expectations?”

He returns her smile, “I didn’t really have expectations. And I doubt this,” he gestures about the room festooned with what he has come to think of as Ironman reds and golds, “is exemplary of a typical Christmas. Christmas was, family. I haven’t had one of those in quite some time.”

“Are you so sure about that?" she asks, taking his arm like he is about to walk her out on to a dance floor. He looks down at her hand, resting on his forearm and almost misses the moment she makes eye contact with Barton. He almost misses the short nod Barton makes in return. “Elizabeth looks like Uncle Steve cuddles could overtake masticated newspaper for best Christmas event. “

“Cuddles?” he repeats, but he is watching Barton and the way he moves collecting Dr Banner from the far side of the tree and herding him back towards Tony.

“If you say the word soft,” she says, her hand suddenly a little heavier on his arm, “I will throw a honey glazed meat at your head.”

“Noted.”

“Now,” the word is sharp, he is already being steered, “come and talk to everyone.”

“Natasha?”

“Mmm?”

“Do you and Barton split up to manage us on the regular or only on special occasions?”

When she smiles, he can see her teeth, "A girls got to have some secrets, Captain.”

Chapter Text

"So Doc, you a Christmas person? Neopagan? Buddhist? Ex Mormon Atheist?”

“I,” his fork hovers over the roast vegetables, “uh, don’t know how to answer that.” He hands the dish to Barton.

“I’ll put you down for Christmas person then.”

“I wouldn’t say…”

"Don't let it bother you, Thor's a Christmas person too, and he's an actual figure from Norse Mythology," he says of the long-haired man looking utterly godlike through the elegant lighting across the table. “Just means you’re all for handing out presents and eating too much food at the end of December.”

“I haven’t done that in some time.”

“You’re in good company then.” He gestures broadly with his fork at the seated congregants.

“Yes, I suppose none of our lives have been particularly stable in the last few years.”

Barton gives a wry half-smile that has Bruce thinking about a moment in his childhood in a darkened movie theatre when Han Solo's face was the very epitome of confidence and adventure. “If ever,” he says, “It’s nice, though, even if it hasn’t stopped feelin’ pretend.”

“It does.” Bruce blinks. Han Solo has just given him the right words for something that didn’t have language that has been superimposing itself upon his thoughts for days. “Doesn’t it? I keep trying to figure out if it’s the opulence or the people or-”

“-If it’s just you?” Barton scrutinizes him for a moment. Bruce doesn't nod, but he seems to take it as agreement regardless. “Yeah, it’s going around. Everyone’s dealing with it. If we were talky types,” he shrugs, “but far as I can tell, even the non-supers at the table, well you know, 'cept maybe Lewis. Though, not sure just yet if the smart mouth isn’t just-“

“-You don’t seem to have a problem talking now," he answers and, in a millisecond, regrets it. Barton didn't deserve to be shut down like that. He busies himself with mashed potatoes, so he doesn't have to look back up at his dinner companion.

"Don't let the number of words fool you, Doctor." He is caught by surprise when it is Natasha who speaks; she leans slightly over the man at her left. “Clint, Bruce isn’t holding you captive you don’t need to monologue until he thinks you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

“Does that work?”

“Hmm," she says, tilting her head thoughtfully. At her foot, their baby bounces in padded contraption that seems unchanged in design since his infancy. “It's variably reinforced, which means it’s next to impossible to get him to stop trying it.”

Natasha returns just as quickly to her conversation with Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers, Maria Hill and Jane Foster’s young assistant Darcy Lewis. This does nothing to diminish the feeling that her attention might always be somewhat divided among every conversation in the room.

“Are you held cap- no, I don’t really want to know the answer to that.”

“You really don’t, so where are you from?” Barton continues unfazed.

“Ohio,” he says, giving in to the conversation. “You?”

“Midwest too, originally, but I moved around a lot.”

“And why was that?”

He smiles again, “Oh, you know how it goes, life, it takes you places.” Bruce thinks you’d be forgiven for thinking that was an answer to his question with the way Barton says it. “Nat said she picked you up in India. Did you like it?"

“I wasn’t really there for,” he stammers, “it wasn’t a tour of landmarks and cultural experiences."

“Cultural experiences?” Tony interrupts at the head of the table.

“Clint was asking about India.”

“Fantastic place." Tony nods, before taking a sip from his water glass, “Brilliant people.”

“You’ve been?” Bruce asks, grateful for the reprieve.

"Stark Industries is global, and there are 1.3 billion people.” He grins, “I’ve been. Pepper’s been.”

Bruce remembers the crush of people, humidity and need. But he also recalls the small sanity afforded by having so little time to think about himself, indulge in his own thoughts. “I doubt our experiences were similar.”

“I am a singular experiencer.” He lifts his chin towards the man at Bruce’s right, “Barton?”

Barton swallows down his bite, “I reckon there are a few people who’ve experienced the sub-continent like me.”

“Those people still alive?”

“Tony!" Pepper snaps and Bruce begins to wonder if both redheads have been monitoring conversations for indications of disputes; he wonders if they colluded. “Pass the ham,” she finishes sweetly.

"Yes, dear."

As a platter of meat travels toward Pepper, Dr Foster speaks, “Did you visit the Ooty Observatory?”

“I was, um, not there for work. Or pleasure.”

“Oh no, of course." Jane Foster doesn't look flustered. He would be flustered. Instead, she is, for a split second, annoyed. He finds himself smiling. She isn't ashamed that she has prodded at a raw nerve, only annoyed that she has not lived up to a standard she has set for herself. It’s familiar and pleasant to see even if it is in the wrong face.

“They say the GMRT should be publishing important findings on the most distant galaxies we can detect soon." Barton is cutting through his meat nonchalantly. Still, there is no mistaking the low gravelly quality of his voice.

“You’ve studied astrophysics, Mr Barton?” Jane Foster says her eyes lit up by hyper fixation and surprise.

“Clint,” he answers with the same wry grin, “and only to make conversation.”

“I’m impressed.”

He laughs, a sort of dry chuckle.

“I only meant,” Jane says, taking the laughter as a rebuke, “When I am not at work functions, it’s fifty fifty if I get “I’m a Leo” as a response to “I’m an astrophysicist.””

“Surely the fractions shifted since you started out with the big guy and the Einstein-Rosen bridge." He flicks up one finger as an indication that he is speaking of Thor. Beside Jane Foster, the large Asgardian eats enraptured by Pepper's explanation of the Christmas tree's significance.

She smiles brightly in return. “I don’t get out enough to confirm that statistically.”

The hum of conversation is interrupted by the squall of the Romanoff-Barton baby. Natasha reaches down, unlocking harnesses as swiftly as he has seen her extract a weapon. She whispers soothingly.

Barton doesn't hesitate. He reaches out for the baby even before he has finished wiping his hands on the napkin. "Give her to me. You should eat.” Natasha nods sharply.

He takes Elizabeth lifting her higher to perform a sniff test. His smile doesn't shift. As he stands, resting the baby on his shoulder, he throws out one last thought to the table, “Gemini, by the way,” and chuckles to himself again.

Jane Foster leans forward and, in a low voice, says, "He’s definitely nothing like my first impression.”

“Nor mine, but," he says, turning slightly to follow Barton as he strides towards a tactical looking baby bag. “I’m not entirely sure my second or third are correct either.”

“What are we gossiping about?" Tony says, leaning inwards in an imitation of Jane Foster's posture.

“I was just saying Clint is-“

“-Unexpected,” Bruce finishes for her.

“Barton?” Tony says, eyebrows raised. “What? Iowa farm kid come circus act come international assassin?" He leans back, watching as the man in question changes a diaper on a couch that would cost as much as a family car. “I'd say he's exactly what it says on the tin.”

“Circus act?” Jane Foster’s brown eyes widen before she frowns with disbelief.

“If you believe SHIELDS files,” Tony says.

“How does…” the Doctor begins.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t pry.” There was a reason he’s stayed well clear of the SHIELD info drop.

“Isn’t that what family does?" Tony says abruptly. “No, I’m serious, apparently,” he tilts his head in the direction of the strawberry blonde to his left, “I don’t have the greatest barometer for ‘normal’ and ‘family’." He makes air quotes as he speaks.

“Family?" Bruce asks, feeling the need for water. His expression seems to be mirrored in Jane Foster's face.

“Say it like that again, and I'm demoting you to co-worker, Banner.”

Chapter Text

Sam takes a sip of his beer and smiles. “Travelling home this time of year even with my big veterans check,” Maria Hill smirks a little back at him, he’s wearing her down he can tell, “My little sister just got married so Mom’s spending the day with Andre and his big ass family.”

“You like this Andre.”

“Oh yeah he’s, he was there when Dad died. When I couldn’t be. Nah, he’s a good guy, well you know, until he married my little sister,” he chuckles. “So, Hill, why you here, good eats keeping you away from family, home?”

“You’d make a terrible interrogator.”

He shrugs at that. “Good thing this is a normal conversation then and not life or death.”

“Chicago. Mother deceased.”

“‘M Sorry. It can be tough…”

“I was an infant. Nothing to be sorry about.”

Sympathy is not the way to approach a Maria Hill, he notes. Yet. distinct impression, there is something else she is not saying that she feels someone ought to be sorry for.

“You see Sam,” Natasha says soothingly, “You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, the Avengers Tower where everyone you meet is an orphan without the ability to engage in small talk.”

“I won’t ask then, Agent Romanoff,” he raises his glass to her. He’s gleaned enough about Natasha to know any questions about her personal history would be met with stone walls or misdirection. Though honestly, if he was interested in the facts he could have worked his way through the wiki-panama-deepthroat leaks she’d dumped her own self on the web.

Small talk isn’t about the facts. Small talk is an opening gambit to trust and intimacy. Everybody sitting around this table seems to have a strange relationship to both.

But as sorely in need of a support group these people might be, Sam was not here for that. He was here to eat good food on someone else’s dime and the street cred being invited to Avenger-mas might throw his way.  At least that is what he keeps telling himself. Seriously, he deserves mashed potatoes and nog. It’s not his job.

“See Hill, he’s a quick study.” Natasha narrows her eyes even as she smiles like she can read minds. She can’t read minds Whatever else these people can do none of them can read minds. Right?

“So, this tree does not represent Yggdrasill then?”

“If it does, I’m afraid, the connection is lost to our unwritten history,” replies Pepper Potts looking all ashamed she can’t make the tree whatever Thor would like it to be. Sam wants to ask what the hell a Yggdrasill is.

“Well, it is festive, these Germans brought you much delight!” Sam’s next mouthful of beer goes down the wrong way. “And the feasting is wonderful.”

Sam doesn’t dare look at Cap and he doesn’t dare look at Hill or Natasha and their critical eyes. The ham now that ham really needs to be examined.

“Hell yes,” says Darcy Lewis, her dark hair tumbling over a Christmas sweater he’s not yet ready to declare has tiny Yodas on it. He looks up at her the twinkle lights dancing in her eyes. “Germans even gave us Captain America.”

Sam isn’t sure if she is mocking Thor or backing him up. Everything she’s said since they were introduced has been drenched in sarcasm to the point that he isn’t sure he speaks the same language. “In a roundabout way.”  She shrugs before biting into the yam on her fork.

The table takes a breath. Or at least this end does. At the other end Baby Spy acts up and Barton carries her off to a date with a clean diaper or a bottle.

“Thank you, Darcy,” Cap says.

“No problem, Captain,” Darcy answers deadpan.

“Laissez les bon temps rouler,” Sam offers equally deadpan.

“This is French, not German, Sam Wilson.” Thor says.

“Uh yeah, just something we say back home when we’re celebrating.”

“Indeed!”

“Let them roll!” says Darcy through a mouthful of bread.

“So, Maria,” he tries, hoping he isn’t supposed to call her Hill like the others do, “What do you do at Stark Industries?” He can ask that right; she’s not going to say she’ll have to kill him.

Maria picks up her glass of wine and takes a mouthful steadily. “Security,” she says.

“Right and… But uh Happy?”

“Different kind of security, Sam,” says Natasha shaking her head at Maria Hill in a way he thinks she thinks he can’t see through the holly and twinkle lights decorating the table.

“Happy handles Mr Starks personal security and security for Stark Industries corporate interests.  I handle, other threats.”

“Riiiiight. Like who handles frozen super soldiers now SHIELDS all…”

“Oh, I thought you and Rogers were on that?”

Are all the women here taking lessons from his mom on sustained eye contact and long silent pauses as a way of getting him to admit he did sneak outta the house to see Deja Coleman.

“Nah, you had me for a second. Hell, you probably know more about what we found out about him than I do.”

“He is a quick study.” Maria admits.  Natasha nods and stands up from the table returning to the baby and the man bouncing her.

Maria Hill continues, “Security, intelligence, logistics, SHIELD used to keep track of many of the more, Avenger’s level threats.” She always looks like she’d like to wince at the word if it wouldn’t make her also look silly. “Those haven’t gotten fewer since New York or DC.”

She turns slightly following his eye gaze to where Natasha and Barton are talking. She closes her eyes as if blocking out a thought. It reminds him a little of the way Cap shuts his eyes every time the world gets too new-fangled and fast.

She adjusts herself in her seat as Natasha collects the baby and smiling foists her on to a blindsided Steve Rogers.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re saying they did just the opposite.”

“Because you’re quick?” She leans forward, her demeanour at odds with the music and the smell of fresh bread. “You know the Captain, Stark, Banner aren’t the only ones who suddenly became… more.”

“And for every Captain America…”

“There’s a James Buchanan Barnes or a Loki.”

“But you’re on it,” he says, mouth suddenly dry.

“Mr Wilson, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, and at this time of year, but the second you decided to follow Captain America, it became yours too.”

“Hold up, you’re telling me I met this guy overcompensating on my morning run.” He gestures to the end of the table where a baby now rests in Roger’s arms “and now…”

“I would have thought that was clear the moment you put the wings back on.”

It was. In the same way it was clear the second he got into flight school. And the same way that none of it was truly clear until your best friend is falling out of the sky.

“Yeah, but now you’re telling me I might have to deal with my own supervillain?”

“I’m not putting you up against the Abomination.”

“There’s something called an abomination?”

“There are a lot more confused and unknowingly dangerous people than evil masterminds.”

“Yeah! Have you seen this?” interjects Darcy Lewis. Sam isn’t sure she was meant to be listening in. Isn’t there supposed to be Marias and Natashas and Bartons monitoring that kind of thing. “On YouTube,” she continues in a blasé tone. “In Queens.  The Hoodie, swinging around, catching car thieves?” Darcy passes her phone down towards him. Its neatly intercepted by Maria Hill.

It is little Yodas on her Christmas sweater and those a lightsabers and he’s suddenly not hungry at all. She looks very young.

Maria Hill nods in her direction approvingly and passes him the phone. Darcy Lewis has been at this longer than him but surely, surely someone who wears a Star Wars Christmas sweater shouldn’t be involved in anything where the word abomination comes up.

He looks down at the phone, there surrounded by a glittery phone case is a blurry video of a person dressed in red and blue swinging around buildings and catching cars. He swallows.

He passes the phone back to Darcy who has returned to her conversation with Cap.

She’s too young to be signing up for this. She isn’t a soldier or a scientist or a billionaire.

And

He is almost certain that blurry blue and red suited figure isn’t an adult either.

Chapter Text

Lizzie snuggles down into his chest still tired enough to want soothing. A curl of orange hair is tickling him beneath his chin as she pushes against his sternum. He knows he is smiling. It’s a stupid fond smile he knows keeps making it on to his face.

He hopes the deep dark grey of his shirt is echoing enough of his tac that he isn’t losing all his edge to the kid. He knows Foster and Banner are still looking his way.

He really should have thrown a cloth over his shoulder before he picked her up again.

When he looks up Natasha is walking towards him. He breaths in, forces himself to breath in. It’s a habit he picked up over the years so it would never look like he was holding his breath looking at her. One day he will sit down and count just how much of his years with Natasha Romanoff have been spent protecting her from him loving her. Too much time.

It’s always the littlest things that do it. Tonight, it’s the thinnest braid he has ever seen, right in her hair below the wave of red curls. He has no idea why its there, no idea when she did it. A little something unknowable about her more beautiful than the red of her lips and the curve of her waist and the graceful sweep of her neck.

“Hey,” she says smoothing down the errant curl on her daughter’s head. He loves her voice. He loves how it always sounds like she is annoyed she is letting you in on some secret. He loves that it always makes him feel like he has won even when he knows she will always be the one to win.

“You good?”

“Maria is making life difficult for Sam.”  She smiles at that, turns back to look at the questioning faces of the named parties.

He nods sharply. “Wilson up to the task?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Well then,” he drawls lowly, dragging her gaze back to him, “You good?”

“Elizabeth?” she questions instead.

“All changed and over fighting with me about it.”

"Respect is earned not given.” He’s long since given up pulling her up on all the fun house mirror aphorisms she spouts. Everything but ‘Love is for children’, he will pull her up on that till the day he dies. He just shakes his head.

“Tasha,” he says matching her volume, “if I gotta ask more than once I’m gonna assume the answers not good.  We got an exit.” He bounces the soft bundle of onesie, diaper, and body heat in his arms, “Her royal highness here is already perfect at covering fire.”

“No,” she says and relents only after a moment of him staring into her eyes, “It’s just the presents.”

“Overwhelming?”

“No,” she says again, her mouth twists a little a sure sign that she is trying to find a way to be honest that will still manage his emotions, his responses. “No, a memory.”

He wishes she didn’t have to do that. “You don’t have to…”

“No.” She shakes her head.  “Clint, a good one,” she sighs, “I haven’t thought about it… not intentionally for… for a long time. Before Ohio. We took photos. So many photos. Holidays. Vacations. It was all fake. Nothing was in the boxes. All acting but… I had never seen anything so… I wanted so badly to open all of them.”

She looks over his shoulder at the collection of gilded boxes and bags standing beneath the overlarge tree. The light dances in her eyes. She is somewhere else in her head. He feels like he can see it too, scrawny, underfed legs against that mass market carpet that wasn’t brown but wasn’t not brown bent around a box made to look like there’d be a doll or a diary or, fuck, she’d have probably been happy with new socks.

He swallows, steps a little closer but doesn’t try to bring her back from it. None of their memories are pain free, not really but if they walled them all off they’d have nothing. Ohio. It hurt like hell but only because it was also better, better than everything else. “You up for opening them tonight? There is stuff in those boxes. I’m pretty sure Lewis bought most of it with my credit card.” He’s rambling. “If it…”

“No, it’s good. It wasn’t real.” She says pulling her gaze back to him and the baby. She curves her mouth in that bittersweet smile. “I’m good.”

He pushes her chin up with the crook of his finger, “You are amazing.”

“You are a biased source.”

He tilts his head. She’s not wrong. But then again, he isn’t either. “What ya need from me?”

“You think Elizabeth’s up for running point?” she asks tickling Lizzie across her cheek with a one long finger.

“Tapping in the kid?” he says quizzically, “I thought we had this.”

“3 o’clock.”

“Rogers?” he asks.  The man is stiffly listening to Darcy Lewis explain how she tased the God of Thunder, but Clint can tell he is also listening in on Maria Hill and Pepper Potts and straining to hear Tony at the opposite end of the table. Hypervigilance with a politeness film draped over it.

Now he isn’t an expert in what the serum did for the captain but he’s pretty sure it didn’t actually make multitasking anymore possible for him than the rest of them. So, if that’s a given, well, he’s just flicking channels through every conversation, filling in his blind spots as he goes with bullshit suppositions and a fake as all get out interested look on his face.  

You can see the patterns even if you don't know exactly why they are there. Rogers is... Rogers needs someone covering his six. He doesn't know why. He'd put down folding money that Natasha doesn't either. 

Seeing the pattern is enough. For now anyway. 

“Yeah, you’re right.” He’s feeling physically uncomfortable just watching him.  He passes his daughter over to Natasha. If he knows anything, it’s that to enjoy something you gotta really be there for it.

Clint bends down hovering his mouth over the soft shell of Lizzie’s ear, “Hey Lizzie Bee, give em hell,” he whispers. 

He straightens up. Natasha rolls her eyes. She shifts her weight, set to leave.

“Hey Natasha,” he says suddenly, unexpected even by him.

“Mmm.”

“Love you.” To really enjoy something, you gotta really be in it.

She licks her lip. It takes less than a fraction of a second. “I’ll keep trying to earn it.”

“You…” but there’d be no point in explaining now. She’s always had her ledger it was the one thing that did come in those boxes lying on polyester carpet tiles with a backdrop of a fireplace.

He just shakes his head knowing that he is losing his edge to the fond smile on his stupid face again. “Yeah, okay, do what you gotta do.”

He watches her, red curls, deep red wool, black boots. Lethal.  Gently cradling her baby.

Chapter Text

His baby brother is still shy of fifteen but puberty and the work he's been doing as a roustabout come Swordsman's choirboy is doing a number on him. He used to be this weedy thing Barney had to show how to hit back. Now he's the kinda stocky muscle of a ball player, the last baby curls of his dirty blond hair turning into a mullet beneath the ball cap he uses to keep it out of his eyes.

Barney sniggers some when Clint comes to at him shaking, his blue eyes almost crossed like Barney had flicked him in the middle of his forehead rather than had shaken his shoulders. He shoulda flicked him, he thinks, as Clint tries to pull his top lip down over his dry top teeth. He'd been snoring open-mouthed, hammered on something The Swordsman told him would put hair on his chest. Barney's lip had curled at that, Duquesne was far too interested in his baby brother's chest hair or lack thereof.

"Wha? Ah shove off Barney it's the middle of the fuckin' night" He slings his arm over his eyes, blowing out a rubbery-lipped huff.

"Scuse you, it's Christmas!" Barney replies, unmoved.

"So what? Makes no difference what day it is. I just got to sleep," he whines thickly and at Barney's chuckle, he adds, "You're an asshole," finally lifting his head from the bunk, squinting at Barney's retreat.

"Come out and sit with me, you shit," Barney calls from the open trailer door.

"It's cold. It's the middle of the night."

"Yeah, and. I'm your big brother get your snoring, shit-stained ass out here."

It's the crisp stillness and the silence that Barney wanted them to sit in. Over his head, the sky is freckles of bright white against an inky black. As Clint disturbs the peace with his grumbles and heavy boots, Barney stares up at the gash, a long, ragged scar made of stars.

In the daylight, it's just flat fields, once yellow, now white, and oil wells dotting the landscape. The flat yellow emptiness this time 'round was endless.

"What you want?"

"Pick a star," Barney runs his hand under his nose before gesturing to the sky, "it's so clear you can damn near see the whole galaxy out here. Pick one. We're gonna make a wish."

"I don't believe in wishes," Clint mutters, his thrift store sherpa lined jacket is half tucked into itself at the neck.

"Check you out," Barney says turning on him from his seat on the cold metal stair, "Get some of Jack's hooch in ya and you're a big man who don't believe in wishes and Christmas all the sudden."

Clint's mouth does that thing it does when he's feeling looked down on. Barney knows he wants to correct him, tell him 'it's Jacques' like that makes him any less of a snake oil salesman and Clint less of an idiot for following him around. But Clint thinks better of it. So he should. Barney can still take him even if it's getting a close-run thing.

Clint shoves his hands into his pockets and moves towards the door muttering at the floor "It's not sudden."

"What?"

"I said it's not sudden. Can I go back to my bunk already?"

"Pick a damn star then."

"Fine! That one," he says pointing out above the horizon near Aries.

"Good. Make a wish"

"I wish I was still asleep."

"Make a better wish, Clinton."

He slouches against the frame, "Fuck you, Barney," he says like it's an afterthought. "Fine. I wish I was the greatest archer in the world, adored by all with an assload of cash and hot chicks hanging off my every fuckin' appendage."

He turns his head back tilting his chin up at the sky, the shit eating grin and widening of his palms giving Barney a glimpse of the cocky kid who could do just that. For a second Barney sees the kid his little brother could have been without the drunk fucker of a dad, the gropey adults who somehow got registered by the state to take on kids like them and the shit-kicking of Carson's. Hell, this blond, broad-shouldered fucker was gonna be a heartbreaker even with the wagons worth of baggage and the angry zit on his temple.

Instead of giving him a hard shove like he deserves, Barney puts his hands into his own ruddier hair pushing it back from his eyes. He takes a deep breath and focuses on the sharp cold hitting the back of his throat. He is a kid. Just a kid. Full of anger and hormones, his shitty attitude is part constant boners, part Carnie rot gut and part a genetically outsized chip on the shoulder.

He hadn't wanted it to go like this. "Mom used to make a wish with us on a star at Christmas." She was dirt blonde like her youngest son and fragile and strong in a very specific way that flashed like fucking neon to anyone who'd seen it before. "You remember that."

The easy grin slides off Clint's face like a runny egg. His body tightens next to Barney's hunched form, "That was a long time ago," he mutters.

"Make a wish you'd tell mom about, kid or I'll keep you up the hard…" Had he really thought Clint would talk about it? It was hard to remember now looking at the scowl that had replaced the "you all want me" false bravado. Clinton Francis Barton had no poker face.

"Yeah, yeah… you make your own damn wish."

"I'm gonna get outta here. This year. I'm gonna make a real life for myself."

"Yeah okay," the kid snorts.

"You doubting me?"

"We live in a circus. What life are you gonna go get?"

"I'm gonna get my GED. Then I was thinkin' "

Clint actually looks at him properly now, "You're serious? But why?"

"What's your wish, the real one? The Christmas mom wish this time."

Clint had always been Edith Barton's son first even if his little shared memories of her got fuzzier each year out. It was probably unfair of Barney to play it this way.

"The same one it's always fucking been, I want a family," he bites out, same face that he pulled the first time the corn liquor hit his mouth, hell-bent on being a grown-up and hating every damn second of it. "I want… you're really gonna leave?"

"You could come too. I wasn't gonna just leave you, you idiot." He knocks Clint's shoulder with his own. Real soon they'll hit at the exact same height. "I can get a job, pay our way for a bit while you finish high school."

"I'm not going to some nowhere high school! You think I could sit in some shitty room doing algebra and trying to get some cheerleader, class president type girl to invite me to the Sadie Hawkins dance?"

"Yeah, it's what you should be doing. You should be. If dad hadn't…"

"What?" Clint answers and it kinda kills him how done he sounds. "I'd still be getting the shit kicked outta me, just wouldn't be learning nothing."

"Better than what you've learned since. Shoulda been a cheerleader at a Sadie Hawkins dance. Shoulda been algebra."

He'd tried, he really had. But he wasn't that much older. A nine-year-old thinks teaching him to fight, pretending he'd spilt the feed or broken the window would stop history repeating. Nine-year-olds don't know to say to kid brothers ya gotta tell people about the shit assholes do to ya. Ya gotta keep saying it til someone listens. When it had been his turn the blank faces had been better than the annoyed ones but not by much.

"Shoulda… but it weren't and now. Now I'm good at something, something I could, I could be worth something."

"Worth something?"

Too late Clint had said, in the night they… and they both ran.

"Yeah, worth something like family." Clint openly winces when his voice cracks on the word family still not always managing the low grumble of the man he's pretending to be. "I'm good at this." Clint throws his hand out on the beat of it.

"You could be good at…"

But Clint snarls, "They said you'd be jealous."

"Jealous. Jealous of what?!" Now they're both standing and if Barney wasn't over giving him grace tonight he'd laugh at the way they are both chests out like bantam cocks and just as feral.

"I got my own act. You're just…"

"I'm just!" He pushes Clint's accusing finger aside not yet swinging "At least I'm not letting the swordsman fiddle…"

"Fuck you, Barney!" Clint spits with venom. The fight quickly replaced with pallor. "Fuck you!" And then he's off and running out into the black.

"Ah shit, Clint," he calls out pressing his hand to his heart. "Clint?! Look. Yeah okay," he throws his hand out into the cold air like he's throwing dice and sniffs hard, "Merry Christmas, baby brother."

The PA sparks up, static and stress patterns that sound like someone learned everything phonetically, "… York Penn station" he catches. He coughs dryly as he opens his eyes.

Through the gap in the seats a girl maybe five or six, missing a tooth and nearabouts drowned by a puff of brown kinky curls grins at him. "You was snoring Mister," she says like embarrassing adults is the only power she has and she ain't giving it up any time soon.

"Joelene! You better not be making yourself a nuisance."

Joelene slides herself back into the seat opposite like butter wouldn't melt, big, brown eyes widening with innocence.

Barney wipes at his mouth and hauls himself out of his seat grabbing the olive-green duffle bag from beside him.

It's been a while since he was this far north. Work had kept him in the South. He had the look about him that fit in with a certain kind of trouble and that was useful. It has been a while since he'd thought about Christmas, family. It happened. That. When your safety, your duty were all tied up in living another kind of life, like you'd wanted it.

But there'd been news that had even got as far as the echo chambers and group think he'd been in and just now he keeps thinking about family and about wishes made on stars that with their luck probably went out thousands of years before the damn wishes were even made.

Chapter Text

Tony Stark is smirking.

That insufferable, too-pleased, performative smirk—the kind he wears when he’s about to toss a grenade into the middle of the room and call it a party favor.

He leans back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other with the casual arrogance of a man who made the world’s most expensive joke gift and knows it. Clint Barton tears the gold foil wrapping off the box and flips the lid.

Inside: Stark Industries–branded Hawkeye pyjamas.

Purple. Ridiculous. Full family set. Baby footie included.

Maria tenses automatically. She expects the fallout—Barton’s signature cocktail of deflection and sarcasm, some self-deprecating line about how even in bright purple arrows, he’d still be invisible on store shelves. The one Avenger who doesn’t sell. She expects the laugh to come quick and amaro bitter.

But it doesn’t.

There’s a beat of silence.

In that stillness, Maria catches it—Tony glancing at Pepper. A fast, tight look. Pepper shakes her head once, small and deliberate, lips pressed in a line that reads don’t. And for just a breath, the smirk slides off Tony’s face. All that bravado collapses into something far more dangerous.

Hope.

That the gift landed. That it meant something.

And then Barton laughs.

Loud. Loose. Like it costs him nothing. He says something about needing to up his branding. Rogers chuckles. Darcy Lewis cackles. Romanoff rolls her eyes and folds the baby onesie with a ghost of a smile.

Maria notices Thor’s Jane trying to discreetly shove a massive bottle of pink lubricant back into its wrapping before Lewis can wave it around again. Someone, surely not Banner, mutters about the physics of simple machines. Wilson’s shoulders are shaking with barely-suppressed laughter. The moment moves on.

But Maria sees the care Barton takes when he thinks no one’s looking.

How his fingers linger on the pyjama top, smoothing the ridiculous H with almost absurd gentleness. How he tucks it under the blanket pile like something precious, like a secret. How his eyes still smile even after the laughter fades.

It gets under her skin, more than she wants to admit.

Because Clint Barton has never been given that. Not the open affection. Not the hero worship. Not the easy affirmation his teammates get like oxygen.

Maria remembers exactly how much of a nightmare he was to place in the early days—too impulsive, too stubborn, too good at the wrong things. A walking risk profile with a soldier’s instincts and zero respect for hierarchy. She’d gone through five S.Os, a stack of complaints so high he could probably set up a snipers nest on them and had wanted to duct tape his eyes open and play him human resource videos until his brain leaked out of his ears. She’d seriously considered pulling her sidearm and solving the problem herself more than once.

Until Coulson.

Until Coulson, who’d looked at Barton and had somehow seen the wiring instead of the misfire. Who’d caught the praise kink from a mile off and started offering quiet, precise approval like it was classified tech.

It worked, damn it. Maria’s headaches lessened overnight.

Until he brought home a damn Black Widow, of course—but that thought she doesn’t follow.

She pulls her eyes from the scene just as her watch buzzes.

ALERT: SUBJECT B. BARTON – EAST RAIL TERMINAL – 0.5MI FROM STARK TOWER. MATCH CONFIRMED.

She sets her wineglass down on the sideboard like she’s just stepping out to take a call. No one stops her.

Well—two people notice.

Natasha, because Natasha does not not notice. She tracks every exit route, every movement, every person in the room like they are threats. It’s so instinctive it looks like reflex, and Maria knows a not insignificant part of her is jealous of the skill if not its learning.

Leaving only Sam Wilson, who Maria suspects might be one of those mythical humans who actually likes people. Genuinely. Without agenda. If he weren’t so annoyingly charming, she might despise him for it.

She doesn’t look back. She doesn’t have to.

She takes the stairs.

Her heels click sharp and purposeful against the concrete—each one a punctuation mark in a sentence she won't write down. The hallway is dim and cool, and she breathes through her nose to keep her thoughts boxed away from view.

She doesn’t have a praise kink.

Never did. She’s known her own worth since the beginning. Since she was a too sharp twelve-year-old in Illinois, running endless laps around a cracked track, stopwatch in hand, knocking fractions of seconds off her time like it was a to-do-list. Improvement wasn’t optional. It was currency. It was what you paid the world and then it didn’t swallow you whole.

She would never have earned her father’s forgiveness. That wasn’t on offer. But she could outpace his disappointments. She could measure herself in progress. In discipline. In forward momentum.

She didn't need praise. She needed results.

But back in the Tower—she’d just watched a man receive something sacred.

He hadn’t asked for it. Probably didn’t think he was allowed to want it.
And still—Tony Stark handed him a box, ridiculous and soft, and for one impossible second, Clint Barton had been seen.

Not as an asset. Not as a problem.
As someone worth celebrating.

And Maria Hill, who had once moved him from one S.O to another like a particularly volatile shipment of live munitions, had felt something hot and sharp behind her breastbone.

Not regret.

Sour.

Jealousy.

Her footsteps echo in the stairwell, the rhythm steady, clipped. She pushes open the heavy fire door at the base of the stairwell and steps out into the crisp, gasoline-tainted bite of New York air. Traffic, trash, subway steam. The city’s eternal heartbeat.

She exhales once, hard. It fogs the air. She shakes it off.

She joined SHIELD for the greater good.

She found Clint Barton six S.Os because of the greater good.
She buried truths, cleaned up messes, did dark things in darker places—because the mission required it.
She didn't tell Clint Barton that his brother was still alive, still undercover, still trying—because SHIELD decided he was easier to manage that way.

Because control was the job. Clarity. Chain of command.

And Maria was damn good at the logistics, and the enforcement, and making people toe the line for the bigger picture.

She doesn’t need to be thanked. She doesn’t need her hollow places filled.

She knows her worth.

She finds him just past the south freight exit, hunched like someone who hasn’t had a warm bed in weeks but still chooses to stand in the wind. Hood down now. Hands in pockets.

Barney Barton lifts his head when she approaches. No visible weapon. No warm greeting. Just the cool, tired stillness of someone who’s had a long road here and intends to make it everyone else’s problem.

“Agent Hill,” he says like they’re on opposite sides of a chessboard.

“Mr. Barton,” she returns, every syllable precise.

He studies her with that same half-sneer, it’s Clint Barton’s smirk though a warped mirror. “Still sharp. Still the company line.”

Maria doesn’t blink. “Still the one who decides if you get to leave this street upright.”  A flicker of amusement. “I remember you taller,” she says.

Barney grins faintly. “Funny. I remember you younger. Less rigid.”

He shrugs. “How’d that file turn out? The one you were writing on a kid who shot too clean and followed too little. Got what you wanted?”

Maria doesn’t answer. Not immediately. She’s watching him too closely—reading his posture, the distance he’s left open, the calculated fatigue in his stance. He’s trying to look like a stray. He’s not.

“I thought you’d gone deeper,” she says at last. “After Insight. Thought you vanished into the wreckage because that’s what people like you do—hide in the mess long enough to look like part of it.”

Barney’s smile sharpens, brittle and knowing.

“Funny thing about messes,” he says. “Sometimes they start recruiting.”

Maria’s stomach turns once, cold and low. “Someone’s pulling old assets from the rubble?”

“I’m saying not all of HYDRA’s files were torched. And some of your former colleagues still like their cannon fodder young, angry, and exportable.”

He doesn’t say Von Strucker. He doesn’t have to.

She files it. Catalogues it. But doesn't rise.

“You’re not here to give me intel.”

Barney shrugs. “Didn’t say I was.”

“You’re here for Clint.”

A beat. A shift in the air.

“I figured it out, you know,” he says. “A while ago. When all those files hit the web. Your golden girl dumped the whole vault for the world to see. Thought maybe that’d be the moment.”

“What moment?”

“That he’d come for me,” Barney says, stepping forward now. “That he’d see the redacted ops logs, the scrubbed mission tags, the codenames. Connect the dots. Realize the loser big brother wasn’t a loser, wasn’t a criminal, wasn’t drunk in a ditch, but was out there doing something that mattered.”

“You thought Clint would recognize you in SHIELD codenames.”

Barney’s voice dips low. “Hell, I was listed under a fucking bird name, he could’ve figured it out if he gave a damn. I thought he’d want to.”

Maria studies him now, sees the brittle hope under all that sarcasm and grit, and finds herself almost—almost—pitying him.

“He didn’t read them,” she says.

Barney scoffs. “Bullshit.”

“He didn’t,” she repeats. “That file? To him, it’s a list of everything that’s wrong with him. His training, his trauma, his failures. He’d have given it to Romanoff. Because if it mattered, she’d tell him. Otherwise, it’s just more evidence he shouldn’t exist”

Barney’s face shifts—not with denial. With realization

“You think you were fucked by SHIELD? He wasn’t looking, Barton. SHIELD made sure of that. Fury, and the people above him, shaped him to stay useful. And the best way to keep someone like Clint obedient is to keep him ashamed of what he already believes.”

“She’s read it,” Maria continues. “Clint trusted her to tell him if there was anything he needed to know. If she didn’t bring you up... maybe she made the same call, I’m making right now.”

Barney’s jaw clenches. “That I’m a threat?”

“That you’re a variable,” she says, stepping closer. “Not the bomb. The shrapnel.”

He huffs a half-laugh. “You think I’m gonna break him?”

“I think breaking Clint Barton doesn’t just affect him anymore. He’s not a lone asset. He’s the axis of something fragile and global. You want five minutes to prove he was wrong about you? You want to beat your chest or beg forgiveness or throw a grenade into the life he’s managed to build?” Her voice drops, flat and surgical. “Not tonight.”

Barney mutters it, like he’s chewing on gristle.
“Not on Christmas, huh?”

Maria blinks once, slow.

So that’s what he thinks this is. Mercy. Holiday grace. The long-lost brother turned away at the door because it’s too tender a time.

She doesn’t correct him.

Because Barney Barton, like his brother, is easier to manage when he thinks someone out there is doing something for a good reason.
Not because they’re dangerous.
Not because they’re unpredictable.

But because they hope they matter.

He’s quiet. That unreadable face again—resentment, regret, grief, maybe none of the above.

“Come with me,” she says. Calm. Measured. “We debrief. You give me what you have on the Strucker pipeline. And you stay out of the Tower.”

Barney doesn’t move.

Maria waits. Lets the moment stretch.

She could see it in the way Barton looked at her—not just suspicion, but narrative. He was picturing it upstairs: his little brother with the beautiful woman, the baby, the matching pajamas, laughter and warmth and forgiveness gift-wrapped under the tree. And he was rolling it around in his sour feelings like he was pickling it—preserving his bitterness for later, just in case he needed it as proof. Maria didn’t bother correcting the fantasy. Let him think it was Christmas magic and not structural integrity she was protecting. Let him marinate.

“You still think you’re saving him,” he says at last. “From me.”

“No,” she says. “I’m saving the rest of us from what happens if you pull the pin.”

He holds her gaze a moment longer. Then he nods, slow. Sardonic. Resigned.

And follows her into the dark.