Chapter Text
Stephanie was reading upstairs when she heard the sound of a quinjet land. Immediately, she closed the book. Something was wrong. Clint and Mama and Papa shouldn’t be back yet. Papa said the op was unlikely to be quick and Mama or Clint always call ahead to say they’re safe and done and returning. Which meant something was wrong. Something even more wrong than had already gone wrong.
It hadn’t been that long since Stephanie had woken up in the evening at the sounds of fighting above her. She’d been staying at Avengers tower with Mama and Papa because Tony was having a party and it was expected to finish late. She’d snapped instantly to awareness when she heard an explosion and, for a few moments, she’d been Young Asset again. It was only a few moments, but when she returned to Stephanie she let her body continue changing and putting on weapons. Familiar fear ran down her back and she didn’t want to fight, but she wanted even less to be unarmed when the fight reached her.
Papa reached her before the fight though, sprinting into the room and picking her up and running out without even sparing a second to say they were running. Stephanie was fast, but Papa was taller and so faster. He didn’t put her down until they were three blocks from Avengers tower. They jogged the rest of the way to the evacuation point together, trying to avoid attention. They stayed there for an hour before Mama came to get them and explained what had happened in concise and professional words. Mama explained it like a mission briefing, but Stephanie saw the anger in her eyes, and felt how Mama hugged her a little tighter than normal, betraying that she’d been afraid.
Tony Stark had used the alien weapon, the one retrieved from Hydra only days before, to make an AI he’d lost control of. The AI had taken control of the Iron Legion. The Iron Legion had attacked the party. The AI had escaped, leaving behind untold damage, and was likely to do even more. All their digital information had been thoroughly compromised. They were returning to Avengers tower to take the quinjet to the Bartons, and then Mama and Papa were going to join the Avengers in clean-up.
They didn’t pause to even pack in Avengers Tower, Mama hurrying her through the destruction as though worried another attack might come at any moment. Stephanie didn’t argue, an attack could come at any moment. But she was there long enough to hear Steve shouting at Tony. “Are you seriously trying to defend this, Steffie was in the building!”
Mama dropped her off at the Barton farm and told her they may not make contact for a while. Stephanie hadn’t expected to hear from her parents for days. That a quinjet was landing now meant either the Barton farm was compromised or the op had gone terribly wrong. Neither option was good, and Stephanie felt fear crawl up her spine again as she checked on the weapons she carried (she hadn’t stopped carrying them since Mama dropped her off) and left the room quickly. Laura was pregnant with little-Natasha-who-was-really-Nathaniel and Cooper and Lila were both too weak to protect themselves. She closed the door to Mama’s room, shutting River in, and crept down the stairs on silent feet, trying not to think of Greta, but fear still gripped her. She breathed in deep and even, forcing it away. Fear was not relevant here, only survival.
She tucked herself into the gap underneath the stairs on the ground floor as multiple footsteps approached the house. It sounded like multiple pairs of boots and she clicked the safety off her gun. It could be the Avengers, but the Avengers had never come to the farm before. The door opened, and Stephanie took a deep breath, filling her lungs in preparation, but before she could choose whether to move now or wait for a stealth attack, she heard Clint call out “Honey, I’m home.”
Stephanie hesitated. It could be someone with a voice modifier, but if it was, someone had broken Clint enough to know the exact words he usually called when returning from an op. And Stephanie hadn’t yet heard a voice modifier that could communicate the same nuance of exhaustion but genuine pleasure to be home that the human voice could. She clicked the safety back on and holstered the gun, knowing that whatever was wrong, it at least wasn’t intruders. But fear still lingered in her body, and she hesitated to leave her hiding place, just in case. She peered out at the Avengers as they came in, watching them pass the bottom of the stairs to go into the living room, and feeling fear deepen to almost painful tension in her body.
It wasn’t that Clint had brought the Avengers here, which he’d never done before. It wasn’t that they were all still suited up and dirty either. It was the look on Mama’s face, pale and haunted. It was the way she was shaking, trembling as hard as she’d been when she ran onto the plane the day the Red Room fell. It was the way her shoulders were curled in, and her head hung low, like she was trying to hide from the world. Stephanie had never seen her Mama look so small or shaken.
She slipped out of her hiding place and peered around the door into the living room, feeling bad inside. She watched Laura come into the room from the opposite direction and embrace Clint as he apologised for not calling ahead. Lila and Cooper ran past her to hug Clint, but Stephanie watched her Mama. She watched as Mama pulled a mask over her face and shifted her body language when Lila asked about her. Mama was one of the best Widows Stephanie had met. Usually, when Mama had a gap between her face and her feelings, Stephanie could see the gap but not behind it.
She could see behind it today.
That was almost as scary as what was behind it.
She could see terror behind the gap, and hollow despair like something had been wrenched violently out of Mama. She could see the way her eyes jumped around the room frantically, searching and searching even though she knew this space. She could see the way Mama was heading for the door even as she pretended to be focused on Lila. Stephanie had never seen her like this, not even the day the Red Room fell.
Stephanie moved out of the doorway and into the room, not wanting to block Mama from escaping through it and up the stairs to her room. But the instant Mama’s searching eyes found her a look of terrified, pleading relief washed over her face. She put Lila down, even though Lila clearly wasn’t nearly done with the hug, stumbled across to Stephanie, and nearly crumpled to her knees as she pulled Stephanie into a hug, her entire body trembling violently.
“You’re here. You’re real. Please, please let this be real. That was the nightmare. This is real. It is. It is.” Mama said, her words rushed, Russian syllables running into each other, pleading. Mama held onto her like a life-line, far beyond being compromised, shaken to her core and breaking apart.
“I’m real Mama. I’m here. You’re safe Mama.” Stephanie said, hugging Mama tightly, as if she could hold her together by force of will. Kneeling on the wooden floor, Mama was shorter than her, and always when she’d done this before, it had been to give Stephanie the height advantage. To make Stephanie feel safe. It wasn’t for that now. Mama clung tightly, body curled into Stephanie’s as if Mama was a child, small in a way Stephanie had never, ever, seen her. What happened?! What did Mama mean by ‘please let this be real’? Why didn’t she know? What nightmare did she have? Why couldn’t she tell what was real?
Papa came over, pushing Clint, who was also trying to come over, aside. His face was also pale and lined with worry, and he gently eased Mama away from Stephanie, helping her to her feet and gesturing for Stephanie to lead the way upstairs. Stephanie ran several steps up and heard a sharp gasp from behind her, as if Mama was being physically hurt “Steffie!”
“She’s here, right here.” Papa assured her in Russian. “She’s real, she’s here. It’s okay.”
Stephanie turned around, going up the stairs slowly and backwards, so that Mama could see her face and stay close. The desperate fear on her face made Stephanie feel wrong and scared and twisted inside. Mama shouldn’t look like that. What happened to Mama? What happened on the op?
They made it to Mama’s room – Papa and Stephanie’s room now too – and Papa sat Mama on the side of the bed, and efficiently helped her out of her tac-suit, leaving her in a tank-top and boxers. Undressed, her violent shaking was even more apparent, and Stephanie quickly got warm clothes out of the drawers for her. Papa helped Mama into them, slowed down by the fact that Mama seemed able to do nothing but stare at Stephanie with desperate need.
Papa propped Mama up against the headboard of the bed when she was dressed, gesturing to Stephanie. “Mama needs a hug. A really long one.”
Stephanie could see that for herself, but she didn’t say that. She took the gun out of her waistband and placed it on the desk before getting on the bed to sit beside Mama, tucked as close as she could possibly get into her side. She called to River, releasing her from the sit-stay she’d commanded earlier, and River joined them on the bed. Natasha clung to her, body curled towards Stephanie, and tears started running down her face, silent but wrenching. Even with River and Stephanie practically surgically attached to Mama, and Papa sitting right beside her talking soothingly, it took almost an hour for Mama to stop crying and shaking, and another two for the fear to fully leave her face.
Mama, when she’d completely calmed down, said she was sorry for scaring her, but shuddered and said nothing when Stephanie asked what happened. It was Papa who answered, who told her about the enhanced twins at the Hydra base who had allied with Ultron. Papa who told her one of the twins could make people see things, could go into their minds and find their worst nightmares and most terrible memories, and make it all feel real. Clint stopped her, but not before she got to everyone but him and Papa. She’d made Mama see her graduation ceremony, when she’d thought Stephanie had been killed. She’d made Mama think it was true, and the last six months had been the dream.
It wasn’t until later, when the Avengers sat around the table and discussed what to do next, that Stephanie learned the twins’ names. Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Wanda Maximoff was the one responsible for hurting her Mama. Wanda Maximoff was responsible for making Mama small and shaken and terrified. Wanda Maximoff.
Stephanie heard the name and repeated it to herself so she would never, ever, forget it. Wanda Maximoff. Affiliation: Hydra (former), Ultron. As soon as she could, Stephanie would find a photo of her, and she would remember that too. She would remember and, if Wanda Maximoff ever so much as walked past her on the street, she would know her. Even fifty years from now, Stephanie would recognise her.
And she would make her pay.