fic: Revenant (15/16)

[domarzione]

Revenant: Chapter Fifteen
PG-13-ish ; Black Widow | The Avengers/Captain America

summary: Six months after being freed from the Winter Soldier conditioning, James Barnes has been presumed dead until a series of fatal accidents and outright murders makes it clear how he's been planning on spending his time. Natasha understands why she's been sent to track him down, even if she's not sure how she'll feel once he's found. Unfortunately, he's not the only one with revenge in mind.


Part of the Freezer Burn series. Prior reading not required.

---

"What the fuck, Tony?"

Natasha did not drop what she was carrying, a near thing and entirely creditable to her training, which had prepared her to face almost anything, and life as an Avenger, which had prepared her to face the rest. Which now, apparently, included a giant koala in the chair where Steve had been when she'd gone upstairs to get his lunch.

Getting Steve and Peggy to Stark Tower had been simple and there'd been no delay; Tony and Pepper had already renovated a floor of the Tower for their use, complete with a gym for physical therapy and quarters for the nursing staff and the small guard detail that was still attached. Natasha had entirely missed the arguments that had resulted in Fury agreeing to the move, but from what she'd gotten from Peggy, it had been extremely ugly and essentially over before it started. "He's a sore loser," Peggy had explained with a shrug. "He knows how to pick his battles and he would have never chosen this one, but he resents that he didn't get a chance to vote."

"Thank you," the koala said in Steve's voice as she put the tray down on the table that had been cleared for his use.

Tony had been working on the image inducer for longer than the two weeks that Steve had been back in New York, although this was the first time Natasha had seen it in action. It was a holographic projector, one that allowed the wearer's actual expressions and gestures to be copied immediately, like motion-capture for the movies. Which meant that the unhappy look on the koala's face was Steve's own.

"Tony, turn it off," Steve said, gesturing with one koala paw -- Natasha idly noticed that koalas had really long claws -- toward the workbench.

"Why?" Tony asked cheerfully. "I think you'll look adorable eating your celery sticks or whatever Marcel's got for you."

Steve reached for his cane, leaning on the back of his chair, and ended up knocking it to the floor with a clatter. "Because I need to see my hands to be able to use them," he said, the frustration and embarrassment giving his voice an edge.

Tony, chastened for having forced Steve to confess his limitations yet again, turned the device off without comment as Steve held on to the workbench with one paw-turned-hand and reached down to pick up the cane with the other. He struggled with it -- keeping his balance, picking up the cane with a hand that, even when he could see it, did not always do what he wanted -- but Natasha made no move to help and hoped Tony knew enough to do the same. He did, waiting for Steve to right himself and then use the cane and the workbench to push himself to standing before standing himself and offering his arm as a second support so Steve could shuffle-step over to the table. Steve had a walker that he used to get around his own apartment and the penthouse, but Tony's workspace was often too cluttered for it and, besides, Dummy kept knocking into it and/or taking it away.

"Where's my lunch?" Tony asked with easy insouciance as they got to the table.

Natasha shot him a dirty look. "Get it yourself," she retorted. "Do I look like your PA?"

"You used to," Tony chirped but, once Steve was holding on to the chair instead of his arm, he went toward the door, ostentatiously staying out of her range even though they both knew that there was nowhere he could get to fast enough to be truly out of her range.

Steve positioned himself and sat down heavily and without much grace. He'd made good progress since his arrival at Stark Tower, but there was still so much to be done before he could live any kind of an independent life. Feeding himself was still a chore, even with silverware with fat rubber grips and foods selected for ease of transport from plate to mouth; getting Steve to eat with other people was still not a sure thing. Tony had more or less browbeat him into sharing meals if they were together, but the rest of them couldn't pull off Tony's particular brand of 'anything to get you to stop' persistence. And Steve, either from his injuries or the months of being stripped bare of his dignity, was a far less patient and easy-going man than he had been. Especially if he were tired, which he was often because he was pushing himself so hard.

"You eat?" Steve asked as he took the cover off of his plate. It was awkward for him to do and Natasha regretted not doing it for him before he'd gotten up, but she let him struggle with it until it came free, only reaching out to make sure he didn't knock the mug of soup over. It was a spill-proof mug, ostensibly to keep it warm but really because Steve wasn't quite ready for regular mugs and glasses yet. His milk had come in in another lidded mug; Steve deeply hated this particular concession and had had more than one accident with both hot and cold liquids trying to prove that it wasn't still necessary.

"I'm meeting James," she told him, although that did not stop her from reaching over to pick a carrot off of his plate, sucking on her thumb to get the last of the orange glaze off of it. "He's at 44th Street letting them go through his head again. I think my purpose will be to make sure his lunch isn't entirely liquid and 80-proof."

Fury had pissed off Hill and a few of his other deputies by not suspending James (at the least) after his 'Sputnik moment,' but Fury had held fast and Natasha was grateful for it. Keeping James from anything -- the hunt for Lukin, access to Steve -- would have been disastrous, which was why Fury had refused to do it. It had been a one-time trigger -- Natasha had tested it before they'd turned the ambulance's ignition -- but while James was now free to discuss the Soviet space program, they didn't know what else was hiding in his head and that, Fury agreed, could not be left unexamined. James was more than willing to go along with whatever Fury suggested; he was insistent that anything that could be done to find any other conditioning triggers be tried. Which was why he was now enjoying his fourth session with the deprogrammers; SHIELD had people who were experts in brainwashing and they'd even found one who'd written his dissertation on Soviet methods, so between all of them, hopefully they would give James (and SHIELD) some assurance that this couldn't be done again. Natasha thought it possible that there might be other triggers, but she didn't think any of them would be worse than what had already happened. If there were a way to reactivate the Winter Soldier's personality with a single word, Lukin would have found a way to do it already or he would have sent that word with Belova and her people. That he hadn't meant, to Natasha, that he couldn't. James wanted to believe it, too, but he'd been deeply frightened by what had happened -- he'd barely slept the first week because of the nightmares -- and simple logic, even sound tactical logic, could not ease him.

"How bad is he?" Steve asked, pushing the plate to the side of the tray so he could pull the mug closer. He held it tightly in both hands, looping his left inside the handle, as if he were warming himself, and focused his attention on it as he brought it unsteadily to his lips. "When he's not fronting me."

Natasha smiled at the phrasing -- something Steve had picked up from Tony or Clint, assuredly -- before sobering.

"This week is better than last week," she answered honestly. James saw Steve almost daily, sometimes helping out during PT -- James laughed at how nasty Steve could get in his frustration -- and sometimes visiting in the evening when the two of them would watch a hockey game or a movie together. They were perhaps at the point where they were starting to learn to be around each other as they were now and not as they had been, but that was Peggy's interpretation and nobody else, certainly not Natasha, had the necessary knowledge to agree or contradict. "He's sleeping at least. At night, as opposed to passing out in the second period here."

She wasn't going to tell Steve that James had admitted more than once to finding comfort in knowing that she would do what needed to be done if it should ever come to that, if there were some other trigger that activated the monsters inside of him. James wasn't going to say anything to Steve, either, if not for the reasons he would have had a month ago. James had, she thought, finally gotten used to the idea that Steve was never going to turn away from him because of what he'd done as the Winter Soldier. But with everyone else save Natasha and maybe Clint, he was far less certain and still seemed to be waiting for the inevitable spurning. It was a work in progress, she'd been told, because James's guilt wasn't something that would go away in six months or even six years. Natasha had been surprised but not shocked to find out that Doctor Soo, James's (and Steve's) shrink, wanted to talk to her, too. "You're gonna hitch your wagon to a crazy horse, they're gonna want to know why," had been James's explanation for the appointment request. Natasha rather suspected that instead of wondering about her sanity, the appointment was to help her help James keep his. Which was why she was going to agree.

"Have you made up your shopping list for the art supply place?" Natasha asked, not thinking that Steve would miss the intentionality of the change of subject or that he'd appreciate it because it was not one of his favorites right now. "And more importantly, have you decided what you need from the apartment?"

Steve's occupational therapist was trying to push him into reinvesting himself in his old interests, namely art and food, to improve his manual dexterity and stimulate his mind in new ways. Steve wasn't ready to hold a pencil or a knife, but there were other things he could do -- baking, stirring, reading and following recipes with assistance, sculpting, pottery, drawing with the fat crayons and markers he'd already been given and thus far refused to touch. He'd been willing to go along with almost everything early on, just happy to be able to do anything again, but his standards had risen at a rate incommensurate with his progress and his failures to live up to those too-lofty expectations made him surly and sullen. Now, if he couldn't do it well or without aid, he didn't want to do it at all and, as they all knew, Steve Rogers was stubbornness personified. Which was why everyone had decided to work around him and give him no choice. The immovable object was going to meet the irresistible force of the combined might of Peggy Carter and Pepper Potts (aided and abetted by the others, especially James, the agreed expert at playing dirty pool with Steve). Steve was going to use his art supplies, he was going to get kitchen time, and if he wanted to sit there like a giant recalcitrant toddler and say no all of the time, well, they were prepared to outlast him. Peggy had already spoken to Fury about who to enlist to get Steve into the kitchen and if Natasha hadn't already learned to appreciate the woman's deviousness, she'd have started then and there. But that wasn't Natasha's department yet; the art supplies, however, were.

"I don't want anything," Steve said, a touch of what might have been anger in his voice. Natasha ignored it. "Can't use any of it anyway."

Natasha raised an eyebrow at that because yes, while most of Steve's supplies at the loft were currently beyond his skill set, there were still things he could use and, point of fact, she and James had already gone through everything and packed it. The larger sketchpads, the rolls of butcher paper, the fat pastel sticks, the blocks of modeling clay still in their wrappers, the overshirt Steve wore to work in so that he didn't cover himself in paint or charcoal, the modeling figures that could be posed (invariably obscenely whenever they'd been out when Tony or Clint had been over), cleaning solutions. James knew more about what everything was and how it was used than she did and had made most of the not-obvious calls about whether to put it in the box, but if there was something Steve wanted, he could ask for it. He wouldn't, though.

"I think Marcel is trying to tell me something by giving me the same lunch you got," Tony announced as he approached the table with his own tray. He'd have seen Steve's stormy expression as soon as the elevator doors had opened. "I'm just not sure what it is."

Lunch, according to what Marcel had announced when she'd gone to retrieve Steve's tray, was cream of celeriac soup, a selection of semi-hard cheeses with tarragon crackers, a sandwich of marinated grilled vegetables with fresh mozzarella and aioli on whole grain bread, carrot salad, bakewell tartlets, and a glass of milk. She thought he'd been a little put out that she'd declined her own -- Marcel was probably right in assuming that whatever she ate elsewhere wouldn't be as good (or as healthy), but for today, at least, that was not the point.

"I could come up with some suggestions if you'd like," Natasha offered, since she didn't want to put Steve in a bad mood and then leave him for Tony to deal with.

Tony made an obscene gesture, then dipped a cracker in his soup, which was his way of telling her not to worry about it.

She left them then, apologizing again to Marcel on the way out, There was no point in stopping downstairs as Peggy was out for the day, having fought Fury to a draw about how much protection she needed against another attempt by Lukin to capture her. (Answer: she would not stay sequestered in the Tower, but would accept a detail of Fury's choosing when she did leave.)

"Are there pictures of the koala?" James asked, amused, as they waited for their lunch in Koreatown. He poked dubiously at the contents of one of the banchan bowls with his chopsticks.

"I'm sure there are," Natasha promised, since this was Tony and of course there would be photos, as embarrassing as possible. "And you can eat that, it's not very spicy."

James poked at the cabbage slice again. "It has red on it."

"It's not very red," she pointed out. James wasn't against spicy food on principle, but he'd gotten a few rude surprises the first time she'd taken him out for Korean food and he was reluctant to look before he leaped since then. "It's unfermented kimchi."

He took a piece, was not horrified it, and went back to the octopus pancake.

"They want to drug me," James said once their food had been delivered. He shook the excess thousand island dressing off each piece of iceberg lettuce before eating it. "Some cocktail that will make me... high, I guess. Fluid. They can't hypnotize me, but they want me to be loose enough to 'see the eddies of the current of my flow of thoughts.' See if there are any word groupings or whatever that I don't want to go near."

Natasha had been arranging her bibimbap to her satisfaction, but paused. "Did you explain to them why that might not be a good idea?"

James had spent months being a lab rat for Zola, had been shot up with God knew how many drugs that had had any number of effects on him, including making him high as a kite. Which was how Steve had found him, strapped to a table in Italy long ago. He still got nightmares from his time as Zola's and Schmidt's prisoner, more so than from anything he'd done as the Winter Soldier, at least before Wyoming, which had shifted the balance somewhat in favor of waking up after dreaming that he'd killed Steve.

"I told them I wasn't keen on the idea," he said, moving on to the bulgogi portion of his bento box. "But if this is what they need to do to say that I'm clear...."

"They can find something else," Natasha told him firmly. "Seriously, James. They're already pretty sure that you've got no other major triggers. Why put yourself through that? It's not worth the cost for whatever little bit extra assurance it might grant you."

James looked like he was about to laugh it off -- a chance to get high on the job! -- but stopped when he saw her scowl. They both knew he didn't want to get high at all -- he hated losing control -- and he wasn't going to be able to pretend that she didn't know exactly what kind of second-order effects there would be from this experiment.

"I'll tell them I don't want to if there's another option," he said, which Natasha nodded at, but privately made a note to herself to tell Fury because James hadn't said he would tell them 'no' and he was desperate enough for assurance that he could be trusted (because he didn't trust himself) that he'd agree anyway.

They had finished lunch and were lingering over barley tea and orange slices when both of their phones started going off at the same moment. "This is going to be really bad or really awesome," James announced as he fished his phone out of his coat pocket.

Natasha agreed with a grunt as she saw the text message from Hill. "Lukin's broken his house arrest," she read out, mostly to herself because James would have the same thing. She looked up at him. "Fight or flight?"

James took a moment to consider. "Flight," he answered, drinking the last of his barley tea and pulling out his wallet and signaling for the check. "There's nothing to be gained by him fighting Doom, certainly not in Latveria, where Doom's got an army and Lukin's got no stake."

They went back up to 44th Street, as summoned. Neither Fury nor Hill were in residence, but there was a VTC being set up in a conference room as section heads from the relevant analyst desks -- Latveria, HYDRA, Russia -- poured in.

The news was oblique, for the most part. Doom hadn't made any kind of public statement, but SHIELD and other agencies' spies inside Latveria were reporting that there had been a shelter in place order given for the suburb of Doomstadt in which Lukin resided -- which in a place like Latveria meant that everyone was inside and the army and police were out in the streets in force. And a 'trusted foreign security agent' had seen helicopters swarming over the area and the SKL's SWAT teams were all over the estate.

"Where's he going to go?" Hill asked James, the most important man in the room because of his knowledge of both Latveria and Lukin. "He's not exactly going to queue up at a border crossing or go to the airport and there are only so many places to hide in-country."

"He has people in the border guards," James said with a shrug. "But the border'll be shut down tighter than a nun's asshole. He'll go to ground. He's got places to hide and Doom can't keep the country closed forever."

"Actually...." one of the analysts began, but it was mostly in jest. Doom could, but it would cost too much long-term to do so. He would not harm Latveria to get his revenge on Lukin.

James got into a detailed discussion with the analysts and Hill about where in Latveria Lukin could be hiding -- James knew addresses of his bolt-holes -- and whether Doom's people could find him. James thought probably not, especially if he still had people inside the SKL, which he probably did despite Doom having rounded up everyone Lukin had brought in. Fury left the call to attend to other business and Natasha moved to the rear of the room and texted Sonia, who had not yet heard the news and was appreciative of the scoop, promising to pass on anything she heard should Lukin successfully flee the country. Which almost everyone agreed was possible. Doom had created an excellent surveillance state, but its reputation, as Natasha had found out, was greater than its actual capabilities and Lukin had clearly not gotten soft in his retirement.

She repeated the news-sharing with other contacts she thought might be of use and then texted Clint, who was in Yemen (she thought, he hadn't said and she hadn't asked) but due back the day after tomorrow after more than a month out of the country.

He'd better not to come to my AO, Clint texted back. I am getting on that plane even if I have to quit my job to do it.

They finished up at 44th Street an hour-plus later and Natasha tagged along with James to Stark Tower. Steve and Tony were still in Tony's workroom when they arrived, although when they walked in, it was Tony and Smurfette. Smurfette looked even more put-upon than the koala had.

"What the hell are you supposed to be?" James asked, gawping.

Smurfette shrugged. "Something from the '80s," Steve's voice sounded so wrong coming out of a female body. Even a blue one.

"JARVIS, queue up an episode of The Smurfs for our time-tossed twins," Tony called out, not looking away from where he was typing furiously, text appearing on three different screens in patterns that Natasha couldn't follow.

"Any preferences, sir?" JARVIS asked.

"Early seasons, make sure there is at least one singing scene beyond the opening credits. Bonus points for most uses of 'smurf' as a verb."

"Understood, sir."

This time, Tony turned off the inducer with only Steve holding out a blue hand as a prompt.

"Are you forgetting that the primary purpose is to allow him to get around unnoticed?" Natasha asked as James guided Steve toward the couch at the far end of the workroom, where the television was mounted on the wall. Tony was entirely capable of such, especially because Steve wasn't ready to go anywhere and the inducer was essentially a wacky house toy until then.

"What the fuck, Stark?!" James shouted and Natasha turned back toward James and Steve, who was now an ordinary black man (of Steve's proportions), at least from the rear. James was glaring at Tony. "Could you not have waited until he was sitting down so nothing happened when I jumped out of my skin?"

Tony, who knew as well as Natasha did that James's instincts would never have let him startle so violently as to unbalance Steve, grinned unrepentantly.

"You know what he asked for?" Tony asked in a low voice after James returned his attention to settling a once-again-caucasian Steve on the couch. "He wanted to be aged up to what he'd look like if he had lived his normal lifespan."

Natasha followed Tony's pointed finger to the screen -- not visible from the couch -- that indeed showed a picture of Steve as a very old man.

"It's a fair choice considering his handicaps right now, which would be more noticeable in a younger man. He'll pass as a friend of Peggy's if they go out," Natasha offered, although it sounded weak to her own ears. They both knew that that hadn't been Steve's reasoning.

"He doesn't think he's going to get better," Tony said flatly.

"He's frustrated," Natasha agreed. In the background, the theme song for The Smurfs started playing. Natasha had seen it years ago, some arcane and arbitrary rite of passage insisted upon by Clint and agreed with by Coulson, whom she hadn't known well enough at the time to realize he had been pulling her leg.

"He's less than a year from his head nearly exploding like a watermelon," Tony retorted. "He was effectively an infant less than four months ago. He's been one miracle after another since 1943, so why has he decided that the magic box is empty now? He got to be Captain America in the first place because he never gave up and now he's doing just that."

Natasha exhaled loudly. "We were warned that there might be personality changes," she reminded him. "And maybe we got lulled into a false sense of security because so much of what did come back is the man we knew. But he still has profound brain damage and maybe this is part of it. Maybe it goes away if he gets another leap forward, maybe it doesn't. Either way..."

Either way, they had to respect it as part of what and who Steve was now. Which did not mean that they had to accept how it manifested.

"Pepper's almost done pushing through the factory proposal for Xi'an," Tony said, which was not a complete change of topic. "It's hard coming up with something that's not obviously awful but won't require Agent Tung to work too hard on it."

Pepper and Peggy's strategy to get Steve prodded into action was to involve Miranda Tung as his occupational therapy buddy. They all thought Steve could do with a new person in his life, especially someone whose continued goodwill he couldn't take for granted. Whatever else had or hadn't been preserved despite his injuries, Steve was still a man of great dignity and courteousness and kindness. He would not, they all presumed, be as sullen and stubborn around Miranda as he was around the rest of them. He might get angry at them when she wasn't around and accuse them of showing off his incapacity, but he would not take it out on her. Natasha thought it a brilliant piece of maneuvering, worthy of two women who were masters of the art.

But while everyone agreed that Miranda was perfect for the job, the fact remained that they had to provide a workable cover story for why a young SHIELD agent would suddenly be spending so much time at Stark Tower. There'd been thought of just pretending she'd quit her job to work for Stark Industries, but that had been dismissed as too disruptive to Miranda's life; this wasn't a full-time or long-term job and it would be unfair to her. The obvious (to Pepper) solution had been to request a SHIELD consultant for a project for which Miranda would be the most obvious candidate to be assigned; SHIELD offered up the service to companies or individuals that dealt with anything that could be considered security risks or otherwise sensitive -- intelligence, technology, any innovation that put them at risk of falling prey to hostile state or non-state actors. Stark Industries used them all of the time, so it was just a matter of coming up with a project that fit Miranda's expertise. Hence starting a production line in Shaanxi province, which would require a security and efficiency survey from SHIELD.

"It'll be worth it," Natasha said, since there wasn't much else to say. She hadn't been involved in the project save for a quick security assessment of Miranda, which just confirmed that she was still living a very careful life more than three years after her time as a HYDRA mole had ended. Natasha had been a little disappointed at how little security SHIELD was still providing for the former Operative Baker, especially now with HYDRA becoming more of a threat with Lukin's takeover. Miranda had a SHIELD-provided home security system for her apartment and an emergency beacon she was supposed to keep on her person at all times, but after that, she was on her own. Fury admitted that there had been talk of supplementing protective efforts for all three surviving former HYDRA moles, but thus far it was all talk. If Miranda was going to be let in to the secret about Steve, however, there would have to be additional steps taken and Fury had agreed. "Is there a timetable?"

At the other end of the workroom, Dummy had rolled over to the couch and James was shooing him away. Dummy loved James, as much as he was capable of such a thing, because of all of the time James had spent in the workroom back when Tony had been playing with his old arm and designing him a new one. Tony would joke that Dummy saw him as a long-lost cousin because of the metal arm, which might not have been that far off the mark, apparently, but James was often frustrated by the attention because Dummy did not have the processing power to be low-key or subtle in his affection. Steve thought it absolutely hilarious, though, and would encourage it, especially if it meant that Dummy would leave his cane alone.

"Inside a month, probably," Tony replied, typing away again. "It's got to work itself through our system and then through SHIELD's bureaucracy. No expediting or arm-twisting allowed."

Natasha ended up leaving James with Steve so she could go home and start replying to all of the emails and texts from contacts eager to know what was going on in Latveria. Which for the next week was essentially "nothing." Lukin was at large, his family was still in their home and his children still going to school -- Doom was true to his word and did not use them against Lukin -- and Latveria was once again open for business. SHIELD wasn't the only agency watching everything closely, nor were the security services the only entities, since Lukin's disappearance had sparked rumors of what would become of Kronas and the stock markets were impacted by every guess.

SHIELD, of course, was monitoring HYDRA both in connection to Lukin and on its own, hoping to get an inkling of what might happen that way. Natasha paid attention as best she could, but she was periodically distracted by work -- HYDRA was not the only terrorist fish in the sea -- and occasionally by her personal life, which was a novelty as far as that went and not entirely a pleasant one. She and James had a fight after she found out that he hadn't told the deprogrammers no and had allowed them to drug him, something she only discovered after being woken up in the middle of the night by James screaming and then running to the bathroom to throw up. Once he'd confessed, she'd gotten dressed and left him right then and there, refusing to take his calls or reply to his texts. She was angry at herself for not getting around to telling Fury when she'd first found out about the idea, but she was more angry at James because her care of him as friend and lover should not need to extend to such obvious and unnecessary attempts at self-sabotage. (Or maybe it did; she'd find out when she finally got around to making that appointment with Soo.) She did tell Fury then, however, and he shut down the assessment right away, proclaiming James free of triggers and officially reprimanding the team for even considering pharmaceutical aids for a subject with a documented history of medical torture and a probably impaired ability to consent.

They couldn't help but run into each other -- not with Lukin still on the loose and neither of them would put Steve between them -- and they were civil but cool and distant. Steve understood why she was furious -- he was furious -- but tried to play peacemaker nonetheless. Natasha told him he didn't have a leg to stand on here because everything he was making allowances for for James was something he was expecting all of them to make for him. "Of course you're going to say him pushing too hard is natural," she told him. "He's being an idiot in all of the ways you are being an idiot."

In the end, Clint was the one to put a stop to everything by forcing Natasha to make the appointment with Soo and then, unbeknownst to her, giving James his copy of Natasha's keys, which meant she came home from Stockholm to find James sitting on the couch wearing an actual dunce cap ("Steve and I made it during his OT session") with a bouquet of calla lilies in a vase and takeout from her favorite Thai place in the kitchen.

"Only because of the cap," Natasha told him.

Three days later, Sonia texted her with a tip that had her kicking James out of bed for a better reason than his idiocy. "Lukin's in Zagreb," she said, wriggling free of an embrace that had only just turned amorous. James still had his water bottle in his hand, which was why she had even looked at her phone. "I have to call it in."

Lukin was doing something in town, although nobody could figure out what or where. He kept a low profile for the next four days, low enough that Fury kept asking if they were sure he hadn't snuck out of town. They were, but that was about all they were sure of.

"Isn't that a little risky?" Hill asked James during a brief meeting that had mostly been about other things, including Miranda Tung's upcoming secondment to Stark Industries. "I know you told us that the Latverians watch Belgrade, but Zagreb's got to be one of the next most logical places and Lukin's got to know that Doom will have people there and in Romania and Hungary. If you can get to Croatia, why not go to Austria or somewhere else? Disappear for real?"

"The Croatians aren't going to let Doom do anything," James countered. "He can arm-twist the Serbians because they don't have a lot of friends, but the Croats do, at least comparatively. Nobody's really going to turn him in to the Latverians, not in that part of the world and not if he's running HYDRA for most of Europe. It's as good a place as any to do business."

On the fifth day, however, Lukin was on the move. He'd been seen boarding a private jet with an entourage and SHIELD had the photos. James could identify all but two of the entourage as key members of Lukin's inner circle, men who had the power to give orders to people like the Winter Soldier. SHIELD was working on facial rec for the other two and sending the pictures to other agencies hoping for a lead. They didn't have live footage, just the photographs taken from a distance. They had a tail number, however, and the flight plan had been entered into the logs with the air traffic controllers with a destination of Alexandria.

Clint was off in the next room having loud conversations in Arabic with his contacts there, asking around about Lukin's past visits and trying to get someone to wait for the plane and follow Lukin when he disembarked. ("There's a CIA station, make them work for a change." "My guys are better and cost less. These guys work for cash; the CIA's gonna want shit we actually care about.") But Natasha didn't have much to do but watch and wait and pass on tidbits to Sonia; Egypt was out of her AO and her contacts in the former Yugoslav republics were mostly arms dealers, nobody who could give her anything right now. Sonia would get back to her, Natasha was sure, but right now, there was nothing.

"The plane might not even be going to Egypt," one of the analysts pointed out.

"I sure as fuck hope it is," Clint said, coming back into the room. "I just promised ten thousand dollars to people to watch him."

The flight from Zagreb to Alexandria would be short enough for them to wait around, although not all in the same place. Fury went to his office, Hill (still aboard the Helicarrier) terminated the VTC, and the analysts went back to their departments to work with what they had and try to come up with more for when they reconvened. Natasha and James followed Clint down to the commissary for coffee.

They were still working on their snacks -- Clint and James were arguing about M&M colors -- when one of the probationary agents assigned to Fury's office came tearing in, nearly causing a major accident when she ducked under someone's full tray as she ran by.

"Director Fury says to get your asses back to the conference room now," Probationary Agent Gonzales announced. "I was instructed to quote him directly."

Gonzales sprinted off after being assured that agents off probation didn't actually have to run to meetings, even with Fury.

"You're not going to make fun of me if I say she makes me feel old, right?" James asked as he crumpled up his napkin.

"She makes me feel old and I'm sixty years younger than you," Clint assured.

The conference room was crowded and noisy when they arrived, but Fury was not there.

"Lukin's plane went down in Macedonia," Richman, one of the HYDRA task force people told them. "Fireball and everything."

Natasha stopped walking in shock, causing Clint to stumble into her.

"Bomb or accident?" she asked, but Richman shrugged and Natasha looked around to see if any of the screens were showing footage or stills or news reports. There didn't seem to be.

"Bomb," James decided as they moved toward the table so that they could claim seats. "The question is who put it there."

Which was the subject of a general debate -- there were powerful arguments for both Putin and Doom -- until Fury swept into the room and took his seat at the head of the table.

"The Macedonians have agreed to accept a team of American specialists to assist with the crash investigation," he announced as his aide produced a tablet and put it down in front of him. "And by 'assist' I mean 'run.' They want less than nothing to do with Lukin, Doom, Putin, or any possible HYDRA connection. SHIELD will be present officially in a secondary capacity in support of the NTSB, but we are going to be doing more than helping look for the black box. In the meanwhile, I want workups on how this changes everything and anything."

James raised his hand. "Are we including the option that Lukin did this himself?"

That caused a reaction around the table, mostly disbelief.

"Suicided?" Warren, one of the Latveria hands asked skeptically. "That seem at all like the guy you worked for?"

James frowned at her. "The guy I worked for is perfectly capable of faking his own death to get out of sight and set himself up as the Supreme HYDRA where nobody can find him. So, yeah, it does seem like him."

There was a murmur around the table as everyone considered the implications of what James had said. Natasha hid her surprise, but she could admit to herself that she hadn't considered 'ruse' to be a likely option. Although on second thought, none of their evidence thus far ruled it out. "Where did we get the pictures of Lukin getting on the plane from?" she asked loudly enough to be heard.

"Local agent, unaffiliated," was the answer after some checking.

"So they could have been staged," Fury agreed grimly. "The plane went down over land, so there will be human remains to recover. If none of them are Lukin's, then we'll have an answer. And if some of them are, then I want to know who splattered him all over the ground."

There was more discussion, but when the analysts left, James, Clint, and Natasha stayed behind.

"Are we going to Macedonia?" Natasha asked.

"Not unless you want to take vacation," Fury replied. "There's nothing you can do there. Once we get some forensic evidence that points us in any direction, I'll turn you loose."

"It's going to take a while," Clint pointed out.

Natasha hadn't caught any details, but a plane exploding at cruising altitude would have a debris radius measured in kilometers and it could be weeks before they were able to prove that Lukin was aboard or get any evidence that indicated either the Russians or Latverians had planted a bomb.

Fury raised his eyebrow. "You getting itchy to travel, Barton? It can be arranged."

Clint, who'd been out of the country a lot more than he'd been in over the past year and usually to unpleasant places, frowned. "Don't you joke about that."

There was a note of... not desperation, but an edge that Natasha was sure Fury had caught. Clint was really starting to get worn down by his mission workload, something he'd only admit under pressure, and even then he'd mostly joke about forgetting that he wasn't twenty-five anymore. He would fight any official plan to lighten his schedule, however, and Natasha didn't know Zolghadr, Clint's current handler, well enough to know if he realized how worn Clint was. Natasha's own handler, a deceptively mousy-looking man named Klein who'd once gotten himself demoted for telling Fury to go fuck himself in front of a crowd, generally let her decide how burned out she was, although he also was better about managing the part of her schedule that he controlled better than Clint's handlers did, which was why she was still with the guy Coulson had (unbeknownst to her) chosen for her while Clint had gone through a half-dozen since then.

"Get out of here," Fury said with a sigh. "See if one of you can't get Peggy Carter to cancel her trip down to Philadelphia."

James turned toward the door, entirely to hide his inability to keep the smirk off his face. He had volunteered to drive Peggy himself and there'd been talk of possibly bringing Steve along to test the inducer, although that hadn't gotten very far and didn't seem very likely.

"Go," Fury ordered, displeased at the lack of willingness to help. "Before I start throwing darts at the world map and issuing plane tickets."

The global reaction to Lukin's death was varied. Nobody else was really considering that it might have been faked, which meant nothing in terms of SHIELD's investigation. Both Putin and Doom were forced to put out statements proclaiming their nation's innocence, which not everyone believed because if there were a more perfect method of ridding themselves of the Lukin problem, nobody could come up with it. The stock markets hiccuped for a couple of days until Latveria made a statement about what would become of Kronas Industries now that their case against Lukin was mooted. (Answer: it would be forfeited to the Latverian state as the sole punitive measure in light of the overwhelming evidence of Lukin's betrayal. All of Lukin's other assets would be restored to his widow and children.) Natasha was able to follow the progress of the investigation in Macedonia, supplemented by what she was getting from Sonia, but about all anyone knew at this point was that it had indeed been a bomb and not any kind of accident. The debris radius was large and much of what had been found had been burned beyond recognition by the massive fireball that had engulfed the plane; not all of the human remains contained enough viable material to sample for DNA testing.

More locally, Peggy went to Philadelphia without Steve, who had started walking around with just a quad-footed cane except when he was really tired, and brought back a James newly enthralled by Tastykakes. The inducer was in its final testing phase according to Tony, which involved taking it into the shower, although Natasha wanted absolutely no details from that because Pepper had been the guinea pig and the testing notes were probably highly redacted. And SHIELD had finally gotten around to assigning Stark Industries' request for a consultant to Agent Tung of the China Desk, so the next phase of that operation could proceed as well, which meant that they had to decide whether or not to tell Steve in advance. James and Tony were for springing it on him as a surprise, Peggy and Pepper were for giving him time to prepare, Natasha had no opinion, and Clint's only comment had been to crack that Steve couldn't move fast enough to make storming off in protest a viable option, so it probably didn't matter. They ended up telling him because Pepper and Peggy were supposed to be the emotionally mature ones and they'd decided that one surprise -- Miranda's -- would be enough. Steve took the news badly and got yelled at by several people including Natasha, whose new insights courtesy of a surprisingly productive discussion with Doctor Soo allowed her to keep her arguments constructive. Mostly. By the time the day came, Steve had at least stopped being pissy about it. He might have even started to look forward to it, but nobody was going to press him on it because that would have been gloating.

The big meeting was a lunch at the penthouse, with Pepper bringing Miranda as a presumed working meal for the two of them to discuss the project in Xi'an. Natasha and James were nearly late because they'd spent the night in Brooklyn and a signal problem at the Atlantic Avenue subway station had had cascading effects that had left them wondering if it would be faster to walk. Clint was fiddling with the Starkphone Tony was giving Miranda when they arrived, looking worryingly pleased with himself. Peggy was looking more straightforwardly pleased with herself when Natasha joined her on the couch.

"You look like you're girding for battle before a dance at St. Anne's," James teased Steve, who was not so much waiting by the entry foyer as interrupted en route back from the bathroom. "Are you sure you don't want to go stand near a wall so you can pretend you're invisible?"

Steve paused to stabilize his footing so he could properly glare at James, who'd moved quickly to get out of range, which was why he was still there when the elevator doors chimed. The foyer wasn't completely visible from the couches, certainly not with everyone seated, so Natasha could only hear Pepper and Miranda making small talk until she stood up, helping Peggy to stand, too.

Miranda's reaction to seeing Steve was to freeze and stare.

"Hi," Steve said softly. "I'm sorry."

Miranda shook herself out of her spell with a jolt, then couldn't decide whether to curse or cry, so she did both, although it was an assumption on Natasha's part for the former because she had no Mandarin.

"JARVIS, is Miss Tung being as foul-mouthed as I think she is?" Tony asked, emerging from the kitchen area from where he'd been bothering Marcel.

"Indeed, sir," Jarvis confirmed as Steve took a careful step toward Miranda and she moved into his outstretched arms with a sob. Pepper gracefully edged around them and came into the living room with very bright eyes but an even more satisfied expression. Tony put his arm around her and kissed her forehead.

It was only after Miranda collected herself and started reaching into her purse for tissues that she even noticed that the living room was full of people and she smiled in embarrassment.

"Don't worry," Steve told her before she could say anything. "They've all done worse."

They made their way to the couches and Peggy went over to Miranda as Steve got himself settled. "I'm very glad to finally meet you," she told Miranda, holding out her hand to shake. "I have heard a lot about you."

Miranda, still clearly overwhelmed, could only smile tightly as she accepted Peggy's hand.

"Okay, now that we've gotten the drama out of the way," Tony began loudly, drawing everyone's attention to him as he gently disengaged from Pepper, who, Natasha suspected, went off to go dry her tears in private. "Let's get to the comedy."

Miranda sat down between Clint and Steve as Tony gave an intentionally lighthearted overview of the true story of what had happened since last Memorial Day before explaining why Miranda was here and what they hoped she could accomplish as Steve's occupational therapy partner. "This is, by the way, a mission that you are free to turn down," he warned. "God knows, we've all wanted to at some point."

Miranda looked over at Steve, who shrugged, not denying anything. "I'm difficult."

Pepper had returned by the time Tony got a good laugh out of the group by pointing out that the Avengers were a team of many abilities, but cooking was not really one of them and frustrating Steve with their ineptness would be counterproductive. "He gets frustrated enough as it is," Tony said, giving Steve a knowing look before returning his attention to Miranda. "Which means that you really don't have to put up with him when he does. Those muscles are very well exercised."

Steve frowned.

"I appreciate the effort being made to scare me," Miranda said. "But I am pretty sure that no matter what y'all have to say here, he--" she pointed to Steve on her right with her thumb, "--will be a lot less terrifying than the last time SHIELD asked me to play secret squirrel."

The last time, Natasha had been the one giving Miranda the recruitment talk and it had been for a very different sort of mission. But also a very different Miranda. Back then she'd been something of an innocent, largely oblivious to HYDRA's existence and focused, as might be expected for someone of her age and circumstance, on her own life. She'd been a fairly recent college graduate with loans to her name and enough trouble trying to find a job that would let her pay them off that she'd started to apply for ones in China despite being thoroughly Americanized after being raised in North Carolina from childhood. She'd come to SHIELD's attention that way and it had largely been an accident that Natasha had been the one sent to ask her if she'd be willing to risk her life for her adopted country. More than risk her life, although downplaying that had been part of the sell -- although not so much as to pretend that there weren't many possible and even probable ways that things could go catastrophically, which Clint had accused Natasha of doing after the fact. They'd fought about the recruitment after Clint and Steve had rescued Miranda; Natasha hadn't gone on that mission and Clint had gotten pissed at her for that, too, despite them both knowing that that wasn't really her forte the way it was his and Steve's. In Clint's mind, Natasha had gotten Miranda into that mess and she should have made herself available to get her out of it regardless of how valuable an asset she'd turned out to be. And Miranda had been a brilliant asset, getting in deeper and staying longer than any of the other moles SHIELD had sent in and producing the most useful and actionable intelligence both while she was under and with what she'd had the presence of mind to take with her when she'd fled. Natasha had gotten reflected glory from that, too, which had only angered Clint more.

"It may not be less scary by much," Clint warned her, all seriousness. "We are not, by and large, the safest people to be around and that includes Peggy over there."

Miranda gave him a rueful smile. "I am not the safest person to be around," she reminded him. "HYDRA, whoever's in charge, still has a bounty on my head. I got the counter-surveillance lessons when they first let me move into my own place, but they've also been scaling back my protection with every year I go undetected. Or as my usefulness as a HYDRA expert gets less and less, I'm not sure. But the point is, I'm probably more of a risk to Steve than he is to me."

Next to Natasha, James shifted uncomfortably. Not because he thought Miranda was a risk -- he'd been very impressed with her once he'd found out she was more than just a random junior agent Steve had befriended -- but because the words struck home, especially after how Wyoming had ended.

"You'll be getting some of that protection back," Natasha assured. "And we're all in agreement that the reward outweighs any risk."

Miranda looked both embarrassed and relieved and embarrassed for being relieved. During that long-ago recruitment, Natasha and Miranda had never discussed the 'after' part, what would become of her if she survived the mission. Not because the odds were so low, but because the odds existed and bringing it up would have been putting the cart before the horse -- they had no idea what would be good or necessary after the mission was completed, what the world would look like, what Miranda would want. But they'd spoken during Miranda's debriefing period when she'd been living in protective custody aboard the Helicarrier while they waited to see how hard HYDRA was going to try to find her and punish her for her betrayal. Miranda admitted to having been naive about how this would change her and Natasha, as a kind of apology, had admitted that she'd intentionally not brought it up. "I wouldn't have believed you if you had," Miranda had replied. "And you wouldn't have been able to predict what was going to happen anyway." It was a gracious thing to say and Natasha took it as a sign of maturity, and it had been, but it was only much later on, from Steve, that Natasha had learned how much fear Miranda had been living with long after she'd returned. "She didn't want to ask you how to handle it," Steve had told her. "She doesn't think you are capable of being scared." Natasha didn't know if Miranda was less scared now or more able to handle it or neither.

"The reward, of course, is that it means Steve will have to be on his best behavior when you're here and did we mention that he's occasionally not fun to be around?" Tony asked with the sort of timing that Natasha never quite got over being surprised that he possessed. "You're going to be our grenade blanket."

Miranda, grateful for the emotional reprieve, made a show of turning to Steve. "Now what exactly are you getting up to these days that the Avengers are all so eager to dump you on a junior analyst?"

"Just wait until he starts throwing things," James offered, his first words since Miranda had arrived; he'd greeted her with an awkward nod. "Thankfully, his aim's still crap and he's not coordinated enough to get the shield off the wall."

"Also, he pouts," Peggy added gleefully.

"Guys, please?" Steve asked plaintively, rubbing at his face with one hand. "A fig leaf of dignity, maybe?"

"You've dug your own hole there," Peggy told him without pity.

"Speaking of the junior analyst part," Pepper began over the laughter that resulted. "Your actual reason for daily arrivals at Stark Industries..."

Miranda suddenly looked worried. "That was a pretext, right? Please tell me that was a pretext, Ms. Potts, because it's a terrible idea and everyone at the China Desk knew it was a terrible idea. We were all wondering who was going to draw the short straw to have to tell you. I got sympathy cookies when it turned out to be me."

Everyone laughed. "It's a pretext," Pepper assured. "You'll still need to generate the survey to explain why, but my official obduracy will be for show to extend your stay."

"Oh, thank goodness," Miranda exhaled.

Marcel announced lunch was ready.

"Don't you dare decide that you're not hungry," Peggy warned Steve before he could even consider trying to get out of eating in front of Miranda. He was doing better there, but more in the sense that he was getting things to his mouth on the first try more often -- he still needed his special flatware and mugs.

James offered a hand to Peggy before Natasha could, smoothly looping their arms once she was up so that they looked like they were strolling in a park instead of going to the dining table. "Showoff," Natasha told him and he smiled at her.

Miranda helped Steve stand, although the two nearly toppled back on to the couch because of the mass disparity and Steve's failure to plant his feet well. They both started laughing about it, which was already a change because Steve had been thrown into a sulk by lesser mistakes on his part.

"Oh!" Clint exclaimed, digging in to his back pocket and coming up with the Starkphone he'd been fooling with earlier. "Forgot about this."

He held it out to Miranda, who took it warily. "Yes, your phone is very warm?"

Tony dashed back into the living room -- Pepper calling after him from the table -- and made a grab for it. "Gimme," he instructed and Miranda did. "And your old phone."

"Old phone?" Miranda was now thoroughly confused.

Natasha rolled her eyes. "What they are trying to tell you is that you are being given a new, more secure phone," she explained. "Tony would like to transfer your contacts and data, but he's not very good at using his words."

"And he's not the one with brain damage," Steve added, having gotten himself ready to walk. "So he says."

Tony flipped Steve the bird with the hand he wasn't using to scroll through the screens on the Starkphone. Clint had been entering their numbers into the phone so Miranda would have emergency contacts, not just for when she was with Steve, but for her own use in the future. "Bunsen Honeydew, Crazy Harry, Gonzo, Miss Piggy... You are either clever or suicidal, depending on what kind of a mood Barnes is in."

James was most of the way out of the room, but turned his head to look back. Natasha waved him on with an 'I'll explain later' gesture.

"Natasha is obviously Piggy," Tony said and Natasha shot Clint a dirty look, but he held up his hands.

"Hey, you saw The Great Muppet Caper," he protested. "Don't tell me you don't think Miss Piggy is awesome."

Miranda nodded agreement. "Miss Piggy is awesome."

"I'm going to guess that I'm Honeydew," Tony continued, finally looking up from the phone. "Although I think I'm going to change that to Doctor Strangepork because he's not only less accident-prone, but also an engineer. Gonzo is probably you, which is actually not a bad choice. And Barnes totally is Crazy Harry, isn't he, although he's been remarkably restrained with the pyrotechnics since he's been back."

Natasha didn't know which one Crazy Harry was, so she wasn't sure how offended on James's behalf she should be, if at all.

"Is there a cheat sheet for this or is it just 'if in trouble, call a Muppet?'" Miranda asked, smiling.

Lunch was a surprisingly lighthearted affair with most of the discussion about what Steve and Miranda could get up to in Steve's kitchen and, more importantly, when everyone could come over to try the results. There was a probably too-involved discussion about knives and Pepper had to get Tony to repeat out loud, in front of witnesses, that there would be no spit-roasting of whole pigs on any levels of the balcony deck after Miranda had pointed out that while yes, she prepared a lot of Chinese food, she was also a Southern girl and thought things like grits or pimiento cheese would be easy for Steve to make, which in turn had sparked a discussion of North Carolina's competing barbecue traditions. Which had necessitated Pepper's probably valid concerns about Tony.

There was also a bit of shop talk, especially because Miranda admitted to keeping up with all of the HYDRA files her clearance allowed her access to -- and her SCI clearance for HYDRA files was very high because Operative Baker still needed it, even if the rest of Agent Tung's clearances were more in line with a junior member of the China Desk. "The more I know, the more they need me, the less likely they ask for the emergency beacon back," she'd explained with a casual shrug that fooled no one. "Also, I sleep better when I know how close they are to coming to get me."

Whatever her motives, Miranda was a sharp reader and a shrewd analyst -- she'd gotten glowing evaluations at the China Desk despite not even wanting the job when she'd first been brought back -- and she could contribute to the discussion without feeling too embarrassed about debating HYDRA with most of the Avengers.

"I like her," James said on the way down in the elevator after lunch. Both of them had appointments elsewhere in the afternoon. "But SHIELD didn't do much for her with the shell shock, did they?"

Natasha gave him a look that clearly communicated just how much the pot was calling the kettle black on that score. James had the decency to acknowledge it. "I know, it's just... her not-broken moments seem a lot longer and a lot stronger than mine."

Natasha sighed and kissed him on the cheek. "Let's see where you are at the three year mark, okay?"

Life and work settled down a bit for the next few weeks. Clint went off to Nebraska on leave, Steve picked up both wooden spoons and crayons (Peggy appointed herself both official taster and official photographer), and Natasha spent a week on Ibiza helping crack a designer drug ring. She came home sunburned and James utterly refused to show the slightest sympathy because New York had gotten a late and heavy snowstorm while she'd been away.

The news from Macedonia remained ambiguous because they'd found a gold icon pendant that James had positively identified as Lukin's, but the bones it had been found with had been too badly destroyed to get a sufficient sample. The remains thus far had all been of males and the tests that could be performed had all pointed to them being Eastern Europeans who'd spent significant time inside the Soviet Union, but while they would be able to say if any of them were Lukin (thus far, they weren't), they did not have anything to use as comparisons for the other men in his entourage. It was starting to look like they might never know whether Lukin and his people had died on the plane or the passengers had just been decoys, which frustrated them all.

As spring made its first concerted efforts to stick around and SHIELD fielded its first inquiries about what it was going to do to mark the anniversary of Captain America's death, Fury started making noises about shifting resources away from that project and on to other things. Especially because HYDRA hadn't exactly flourished as if they still had a steady hand on their tiller, which spoke against Lukin still being alive and in charge. They weren't doing much of anything these days, or at least no more than they had done, which still left plenty of places to raid for the Direct Action Service and the odd political tract and more frequent Youtube and social media polemicizing. They were still recruiting, especially among the third world, but they weren't blowing anything to strike a blow against the old world order or whatever their language was this month.

Which was why Natasha was surprised and confused to be called at four in the morning to come in to 44th Street to watch a new HYDRA video, albeit one not meant for public consumption. "An internal memo, more or less," had been the explanation for the summons.

When she arrived, Hill was making coffee from Fury's private stash and James was sitting at the table with the kind of bleary alertness that made her think he hadn't gotten any sleep before his phone had rung. Clint, on the other hand, had very clearly been woken up because his hair was sticking out at all angles and he was close to going back to sleep in his chair. A couple of the HYDRA task force leaders were there, all with the same 'I'm not sure if I'm even wearing matching socks' look that Natasha probably wore.

Fury was the last to show, dressed casually in jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt. "Play the video," he told the probie waiting at the laptop.

It took exactly three seconds -- the length of time for the HYDRA splash screen to display and then disappear -- before it became obvious why they'd been called in.

"Jesus fucking Christ," James spluttered, nearly knocking over his chair as he stood up. Natasha, sitting next to him, was too stunned to get out of the way.

James looked at Fury, pointing angrily at the screen. "What the hell is that?"

On the screen, the Red Skull calmly continued speaking to the camera.