Chapter Text
There is always one nutcase in the crowd. Be it at Avengers press conferences, tech exhibition, or simply the day-to-day herd that converges around Stark Tower in hopes of catching a glimpse of their favourite hero on downtime, you can bet your last dime some mad man or madam was lurking somewhere in the throng to get a jump on their crazy theory of the week.
Typically, Tony Stark does not engage. That’s why he pays so much for his security enterage, after all. You listen to one ‘lizard people are taking over our governments’ rant, you’ve listened to them all. So he nods to his body-guard of the day, if one zealous entrepreneur manages to slip through the screening, and away they’re taken right back out the front door, gate, or whatever hell-hole they’ve come stumbling from. Then he carries on his merry way, Pepper on arm, shades perched on nose, million dollar smile on his face forgetting about the whole exchange by the time he reaches wherever it is Pepper has scheduled for him to be.
There was something different about that Tuesday morning, however. Something different about the girl. Tony couldn’t put his finger on it, couldn’t even tell you if it really was a feeling at all or whether the Arc reactor in his chest needed another tune up, but there was something… different, familiar, that catches onto him and doesn’t let go even when she does.
For starters, she comes out of left field. Quite literally. Tony was making his way up the steps of Stark Tower, waving politely to the crowd kept at bay by the security below, Pepper on one side and a to-go cup of black coffee in the other hand, and suddenly… suddenly she’s there. Right in front of him, in front of the door he was seconds from taking.
“Shit kid!”
He curses, startling, nearly dropping his precious coffee in between them both.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
She’s small, is his first thought. Young too. She couldn’t be older than… what? Fifteen? It was hard to tell with the thick knitted sweater and torn jeans, but the tiny tennis shoes that peep out the rolled-up cuffs says high-schooler.
His second thought is she wasn’t looking too hot. Her blond hair looked frazzled, curls frizzed by fingers running through them too often before the lot was bunged up into a bun that sat wonky on her crown with a peculiar twig skewered through it. She’s pale too, making the freckles on her cheeks look darker, makes her astonishing green eyes look wide and watery, pillowed by bruises that screams energy drink binge instead of sleep marathon.
Tony is intimately aware of how those nights take a toll.
And that’s when the feeling comes. The hairs on the back of his neck prickling, raising, because there’s something familiar hiding in the face of a complete stranger. A reflection he can’t quite grasp. A riddle he can’t solve.
Tony hates nothing more than a question without an answer.
“Are you Anthony Stark?”
She’s a Brit, that much is clear by her croaking voice, and the way her eyes abruptly dart around herself reeks of paranoia.
Riiiiiiight, Tony thinks. She’s one of those.
Teen girls are on a whole other level when it came to celebrity crushes. You want to see real crazy? Look through a teen girls twitter account.
Tony was already turning his head towards his body-guard for the customary signal of ‘come save me’ by the time the girl takes his silence as an answer.
“There’s some sort of… Muggle Nazis after me. Real life Nazis hell bent on world domination. They call themselves Aqua… or is it Hydroponics? Uh, something like that, but I really need your help. We’re all in grave danger if they get a hold of me so I really have to find my father. My mother left me a letter here saying a Stark could help me so-“
She’s fishing in her back pocket, plucking out a crumpled ball of a letter, yellow with age, fumbling with her fingers as she tries to straighten out the creases. Louis, Tony’s guard for the morning until Happy comes in on noon break, was swiftly marching over.
“Do you know my father? His name is Ste-… hey!”
She chirps affronted as Louis grabs her arm in a tight, unforgiving fist.
“Let go of me!”
Tony nods to Louis, who begins dragging the girl away, down the steps, back to the streets she’d obviously came from.
“Mr Stark? Mr Stark, please! I really do need your help! We’re all going to die if you don’t help me!”
She’s shouting now, the girl. Kicking up a storm, as much of one as a five-foot, hundred pound soaking wet girl could, as she’s towed down the stairs. A slight tug on his arm has him meeting Pepper’s worried gaze.
“Tony,”
Pepper beseeches softly, calmly.
“Come on. She sounds really upset. At least bring her in to sit down and have a warm drink.”
But Tony does what Tony Stark does. He doesn’t listen. Instead, he shrugs, urging Pepper in through the swinging Stark Tower doors as the girls voice drifts into the distance.
“You say that now, but have I ever told you about that girl from the expo in Ohio a few years ago?”
The security on the other side of the door smile a greeting their way as they slip past.
“Couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Bright young thing… said she only wanted an autograph for her dying brother. Next thing I know she’s snuck into my hotel room, hid under my bed with a bottle of chloroform, who knows where she got that from, and when she was inevitably found there by Happy six hours later, she swore black and blue that she knew I had alien nano-bots in my blood and she was only going to try and save me. She had three steak knives with her, Pepper. Three.”
Pepper doesn’t seem convinced, but she is, at least, convinced enough to let it go, casting one last concerned glance over her shoulder. Back to the swinging doors, back to the stairs a young, begging girl was hauled down.
Tony smiles, ditching his coffee on the nearest table they past to, instead, take hold of the hand on his bicep, interlocking their fingers.
“Don’t worry.”
He soothes, running his thumb over her knuckles placatingly.
“If the girl really was in danger, no doubt there are plenty of people out there who could help her. I mean, look around you. There’s a hero on every street corner now.”
Pepper blinks once, twice, sighs and smiles, tension leeching out her shoulders like the steam from Tony’s to-go cup.
“You’re right.”
She chuckles.
“Of course I’m right.”
Tony Stark readily agrees with a grin and a wink.
Tony Stark, nevertheless, was completely, utterly wrong.
The sun is shining. There’s not a cloud in the sky. Bruce Banner is blissfully pink and not green. The croissant he had for lunch had been both flaky and buttery. He was coming along pretty well in his latest research project. And, AND, he had not had an ‘episode’ for at least two weeks.
All that is to say Bruce Banner was having a rather, uncharacteristically, good afternoon that Wednesday. So good, in fact, that when he steps outside to collect his post from the mailbox on the street corner, he’s humming along to Sweet Caroline from kitchen to curb.
A good Wednesday afternoon-
Right up until the moment he slaps the door shut on his mailbox and a voice pipes up behind him.
“Mr. Bruce Banner?”
He turns on instinct, and mentally curses himself for it it. For giving himself away so easily. What he finds behind him isn’t exactly what he expects, however. There’s no Shield Agents in pressed slacks, no Fury underlings with ear-pieces and black Kevlar, not even one of Starks employees in a lab coat.
It’s a girl.
A very young girl.
A very young and skittish girl.
Yet, not as skittish as Bruce became at the use of his name.
“I’m sorry,”
He barks out with a stumble, snatching his mail close and heading up the side-walk back to his house. The house Tony had given him. The house Tony had sworn no one would know about. The house Tony had promised he could try and live a normal life in between missions. Where he’s Robert Aldrich, boring but never green Robert, like the name printed on his letters, and decidedly not national security risk Bruce Banner.
“You must be mistaking me for someone else.”
His strides on the pavement strike fast and hard, a thud that matches his heartbeat, but Bruce doesn’t miss the pitter-patter pair coming up hot behind him.
“Please, if you just give me a moment to explain you’ll understand why I’ve cornered you like this. You see, I really need to find my father. He’s name is Ste-“
“I told you-“
Bruce repeats himself, stomping down on the flare of annoyance that bubbles like sick in the back of his throat.
Not today, big-man. Please, not today. We were doing so well.
“You have the wrong person.”
He’s at his driveway now, making his way quickly to his porch, but the girl is hard to shake.
“If you need to find your father, I advice you to contact social services. I’m sure they will have some resources to give you.”
His feet fall heavy on the wooden stairs of his decking. The mail shakes in his hand. Sweat blooms on his brow.
Not today. Not today. Not today.
“You don’t understand.”
The girl implores feverishly, with the tiny flip-flap of a dragonflies wings.
“If the Muggle Nazi people get me before I can find my father, we’re all going to be in grave danger. My blood is the key, you see. They get my blood and they‘’ll start making super soldiers that are super-powered by bloody magic and immortal. Immortal, Mr Banner. As in can’t die. As in we are all royally fucked.”
It’s like he’s hearing her from under water as he fishes for the door handle, like there’s pressure in his ears, in his throat, in his chest. Balloons getting ready to pop. Steam in the engine about to blow.
One slight annoyance, that’s all it ever takes. A stubbed toe, being interrupted, finding his coffee cold on his desk, and out comes Mr big, mean and green.
Bruce can’t afford that, not here in a crowded civilian street, not with a young girl so close.
He doesn’t know what ‘Muggle’ is, knows what Nazi is but can’t fathom why they’d come for little miss Americana dream here, and as for super soldiers?
Yeah, sure.
Poor thing had been watching too much Fox News.
“Excuse me.”
Bruce gives in way of a goodbye, finally shouldering open his front door.
“The police station is just down fifth avenue if you need immediate help. I’m sorry, but I really have to go. I left the kettle on the stove.”
He rudely slams the door shut, propping himself against it, forehead lolling on cool, sharp wood as the mail in his hands falls to the cheery welcome mat Natasha had gotten him as a gag house warming gift.
The green giant holding a cop of sweetcorn grins back as his fingers curl in on themselves, nails scoring grooves against the grain.
Not today. Not today. Not today. Breath. In. Out. In. Out.
All is silent from the other side of the door for a beat, for two, before there’s a shuffle and the sound of retreating footsteps.
Breath. In. Out. In. Out.
Bruce has got this.
Bruce has not got this.
Was there a better Thursday Evening past-time then being off the clock sitting on the bleachers watching your kids play a game of baseball? Clint Barton didn’t think so. He’s got a soda to go, his fingers were salt free from the pretzel he’d just chowed down on, and the crowds of little league parents were being good sports, cheering, razing, over all hurrah’ing their respective teams.
Clint was having a grand ol’ time-
Until there’s an impatient tapping on his shoulder from behind.
“Excuse me?”
Clint turns around, just as the crack of a ball striking bat rings out loud and clear across the field.
Great. He’s just gone and missed his youngest sons first home run. And for what? Who knows. Clint doesn’t recognise the girl behind him, young, blond, tired looking, but there is a sort of… nag at the back of his mind. A tickle of something familiar in a jaw slope and a brow slant.
She must have come to watch one of her brothers on the field before. Cooper hadn’t mentioned any new kids in school lately, let alone some expats from Britain, but Clint was lucky to get a good morning from his oldest son before he was out the door for the school bus these days.
“I’m so sorry for disturbing you here but I have no where else to turn to. None of you were answering my emails or letters or returning my calls that those… Webby-thingies said I could contact you through. Are you Mr Clint Barton?”
Immediately, Clint’s hackles rise, as does his hand, lifting up to wiggle and straighten the nose of his cap on his head to cowl his face further in unobtrusive shade.
The baseball cap, hoody and sunglasses had never failed to disguise him before, but there was always a first.
It was just a shame it was at his youngest sons first big game.
“Sorry, no idea who you’re on about.”
Clint smiles, swivelling back in his seat, settling in for the game-
Tap, tap, tap.
Clint huffs, shooting a sharp look over his shoulder. The girl either can’t see it through his thick shades, or she’s unperturbed by it all together. Clint doesn’t know which one is worse.
“You’re who they call Hawk-eye, aren’t you? Look, I need to find a Mister Steve Rogers. I hear you know him? It’s paramount that I find him very quickly. I need to tell him-“
“Listen, kid,”
Clint cuts in as softly as he can, sure to sling his voice low and long, careful of the hundred ears around them that would suddenly cause bedlam in the bleachers if they found out Hawk-eye the Avenger was at their children’s match.
“I’m not this Clint Barton, alright? But even if I was, trying to get Captain American’s autograph or whatever else it is you want while he’s trying to watch his child’s little league game isn’t a great way to go about it.”
The muscle in her jaw jumps, tensing, locking in a thin lipped frown.
“You’re just like Stark and Banner.”
She hisses between her teeth, and Clint isn’t all too surprised as it all clicks into place. She likely looked so familiar because he’d seen her before. Maybe hanging out outside Stark Tower, maybe on one of those blogs his wife shows him with giggles and glee. Fan clubs, they’re called.
Insanity, Clint believes them to be.
Like every other type of celebrity or person on the news, the Avengers, as odd as Clint found it, had earned their own groupies. Some of those more… enthusiastic groupies tended to circle around, hopping from one to the other in hopes of garnering someone’s, anyone’s, attention.
“You don’t listen. You don’t care unless it’s an explosion on prime-time TV. You’ve all forgotten how to see the little guy.”
It hurts more than it should, the accusation. Perhaps because she says it so candidly, not angrily but disappointed, maybe, just maybe, because she’s a little bit correct. Or, more likely Clint thinks, he’s just pissed that he’s being heckled at his sons game when it should be his down time.
Don’t these people understand privacy?
The girl, nevertheless, says no more, already rising from her seat to shuffle out the bleachers much to the annoyance of the fellow parents who huff and puff at being distracted from the game. Clint watches her go with something that feels a little like a hot coal in his throat.
He forgets all about it, however, by the time his son next bats, hitting another home run. Clint stands and cheers, strange young girl long forgotten.
It’s okay. It’s not like whatever she wanted was life or death, was it? Clint had heard Steve’s autograph was going for fifty bucks on Ebay, anyway.
It was, indeed, life and death.
Natasha Romanoff has been to better bars. Bars where there’s champagne fountains, delectable Hors d'oeuvre on real silver platters, and the whiskey on barrel is at least a century old. She misses those bars. Misses the low lights and the softer music, rather than the DJ’s and the strobe lights and the cocaine bathroom queues this club was going for.
Still, there was worse ways to spend a Friday night. Particularly when, from across the bar she sat at perched on their tacky too-high stools, Natasha spots her target. Mr Ludwig, fifty-eight, over-weight and with the onset of type two diabetes, head of a German gang that was selling scavenged alien tech on the black market. He was in America on a business trip, hoping to seal the deal on the next shipment of prohibited merchandise.
He’s expecting an associate to come through the door any moment now, another middle-aged man with a god-complex and a hand full of cheap gold rings that scream insecurity better than the fast cars in his garage did.
He is not expecting the Black Widow to be pulling strings on her web.
Natasha pops the olive from her martini into her mouth, popping it between her teeth like the mans neck would break by the nights end. Or, strictly speaking, that would be the case if she was still in the assassination business. Now she finds, restrains, and arrests these people for Fury. It’s less thrilling, undoubtedly, but it’s less nightmare inducing and guilt feeding, and the pay check is good too.
One more martini before getting the show on the road, then, just to oil up the old machine and loosen the joints. Turning back towards the bar, Natasha doesn’t find the bartender, no man-bun and tattooed armed Brad Pitt wannabe who thinks if he gives her free drinks she’ll be his bed-warmer tonight (he’d be hers, but that’s beside the point).
She finds a young girl instead, standing right there, right in front of her, knuckles white as she holds onto the bar seemingly for dear life.
“Miss Romanoff?”
Natasha gives no sign of surprise, no sign of apprehension either. She’s better than that, even though the use of her real name in a place like this by a girl like her, a girl who looks like butter wouldn’t melt, who would have no business of knowing about anyone like her, gives her a swift kick of surprise right to the sternum.
“Speaking?”
The girls shoulders ease, what looks like a years worth of traction and stress running away like water down a drain. She doesn’t see Natasha slyly slip her hand underneath the bar, to her hip, to where she has a gun hidden.
Natasha is no idiot. The girl was young, a teen, but Natasha had been killing men thrice her size and experience long before this girls age.
Pretty packages often have the foulest of poisons inside.
“Please, you have to help me.”
She presses over the bar, pitching forward, and Natasha doesn’t think it’s just the strobe lights that make the girls eyes look impossibly green. There’s something there, though Natasha cannot name it. A glint, the twist of her lips, the wheat shade of her hair that screams I know this. I’ve seen this before.
Natasha’s own grip tightens on her gun, finger slotting into place over the trigger.
One wrong move.
“Everyone is in danger. I need to find a Mister Steve Rogers. Do you know him?”
Natasha’s grip slackens.
“Captain America?”
The girl shakes her head.
“No, a Steve Rogers? I heard you know him.”
Yeah, Natasha knows him. Knows him quite well, actually. Knows him enough that she classes him as a friend, as stingy and tight fisted as she is with that honour. Clearly, this girl didn’t know him at all, given how she didn’t know Steve Rogers and Captain America were one and the same.
“Please, I really, really have to find him. He’s my-“
Whatever she was going to say would be forever lost as suddenly the girl stiffens, straightening out like a meerkat on the prairie. She glances through the dancing lights, face dropping, shattering like glass.
Natasha lets go of her gun. The girl is afraid. Very, very afraid very, very suddenly. She’s not the threat.
But something is.
“I’m too late. They’re here.”
Natasha frowns.
“Who’s here? What-“
But the girl is lurching back over the bar, snatching Natasha’s arm, tugging her hand up and over, the same hand that had been holding hair-trigger on a gun. Unceremoniously, something is pressed into her palm, something flimsy and thin and old. The girl doesn’t give Natasha a chance to see what it is before she’s forcefully closing her hand around it, her grip contrarily strong.
Very strong.
Too strong for someone her size and age.
She was faking her hold on that bar.
“Give this to Steve Rogers. No one else. No one. Only Steve. Do you hear me? Only Steve. He’ll know what it is and he’ll know I’m telling the truth. Tell him… tell him to find me. Please, get him to find me before they do. I can’t keep running like this. They’re going to catch me and… Just tell Steve to come and find me. Tell him…”
The girl hesitates, a peculiar smile rising at the corners of her mouth, mischievous and a little melancholy and an inch off from reminiscent.
“Tell him my name is Heather. Like the flowers in the bouquet he gave my mother on their first date.”
The girl draws away fast and hard, just as a bang rings out from the front of the bar by the door. Natasha whirls around, re-reaching for her gun though she can’t see what’s made the noise through the crowd. It appears to be nothing, however, as the dancing continues, as the music pounds, as drunk men and women find themselves tangled up in shaded corners.
By the time she turns back, the girl is long gone.
Natasha looks down to her lap, to her clasped hand and unfurls her fingers.
An old tatty piece of paper rests on her palm, sandwiched between chipped cardboard.
A draft card. An old draft card. A draft card from World War II by the date embossed on the front.
Natasha’s eyebrows shoot up as she spots the name printed on the back.
Steve Rogers.
Well, would you look at that.
Then, of course, as if the night couldn’t get any weirder, Natasha’s phone rang. With Fury’s personal number flashing on front, a man who knew better than to interrupt her during a mission unless it was life and death, she pockets the draft card and picks up the line.
“Fury.”
She greets, and the man jumps right to it. That is one of the man reasons Natasha likes him so much. Or, more aptly, puts up with him.
“Get back to HQ. I’m calling your current mission off for now. We have bigger fish to fry. My office is filled with Wizarding representatives who are saying their chosen one has gone off radar. Worse yet, she’s gone dark while in our neck of the woods. She’s a big name, Nat. Really big. She’s faster and stronger than humanly possible, even for their kind, and a tough nut to kill by the sounds of it, so whatever has got the jump on her is serious. I’m calling you all in, so be here in an hour.”
Did he say Wizarding? As in Wizards?
Natasha shouldn’t be surprised by now. You live through an alien invasion, you should expect Gandalf next.
The draft card in the back pocket feels contrarily heavy, oddly catching her attention.
“Steve going to be there?”
There’s a tut from over the line, as if Fury expect Natasha to know better.
“He’s already here along with Stark, Bucky and Banner. Clint’s coming in hot too and should be here soon. Just get your ass here. We have work to do.”
You know what they say. No rest for the wicked.
Natasha stalks out the bar, slipping like an eel through the crowd, Mr Ludwig blissfuly unaware of how close to the end game he had come tonight. He will know soon though. They all do.
Natasha thinks back on the girl. On the sun-streaked hair, that dimple on the left side of her mouth, the mole on her cheek Natasha was sure, so very sure, she had seen somewhere before.