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mhalachaiTime for Thor vs. Thor! Kinda.
At AO3
Summary: Four months after New York, the Avengers are asked to take part in a military briefing at Cheyenne Mountain. It’s perfectly understandable if Natasha has a bad feeling about this...
Rating: PG
Characters: Natasha Romanoff, John Sheppard, the Avengers, SG-1.
Warnings: PTSD, past violence, angst
Words: 8,228 this part
Disclaimer: This is fanfic, I own nothing of the characters/worlds/franchises etc. All recognizable characters belong to their creators etc.
Note: In this section, we reference past trauma and abuse, as well reference to a past relationship between two of the characters. Since it's "past" I'm not putting it in tags.
All stories in the Widow's Tales
A few days later, back in New York
"So let me get this straight."
Natasha ducked the blow, slipping around Clint, her hands held up in a defensive position. "What?"
They circled each other on the mat, each trying to find the right angle of attack. "I spend a few days in Chicago, stalking some useless drug lord for shits and giggles, and the bunch of you get to hear about aliens on Earth in the middle of Colorado?"
"Pretty much, yeah." Natasha spotted an opening and darted in, fist striking Clint's ribs with enough force to make him stagger back. He retaliated by ducking low, kicking her feet out from under her and pinning her bodily on the mat.
"That's cool," he said, a grin on his face and his breath hot on her cheek.
She didn't answer, instead arching her back and flipping them around so she was on top. She kneed him in the side and bounced to her feet before he could grab her again. "It was interesting, yes."
Clint got up, favoring his side, but he still had a smile on his face. "I bet that totally pissed Stark off."
"What, that the Air Force knew about aliens, or that they didn't ask Stark Industries to build their spaceships?"
Clint shrugged and made his move. He was a fraction of a second too slow, however, and Natasha caught his wrist and let his momentum carry them around, around, to the ground.
"That makes six for me," Natasha said, breathing heavily at the workout. "You're off your game, Barton."
"All that fancy living in Chicago, ma'am," Clint sassed back. He struggled, but Natasha had him pinned. "How the hell can you even keep me down, I outweigh you by like forty pounds."
"Forty?" Natasha demanded, releasing Clint's wrists and straddling his waist. "Careful how you speak to a lady."
"I'll let you know if I find one," Clint said. He let his head fall to the mat. "Seriously, Nat, what the hell? More aliens?"
"If you acknowledge two alien races, why not more?" Natasha asked. She got to her feet and held out a hand for Clint. He took it and stood.
"And John's been dealing with them for years?"
"Since 2004," Natasha said. "No wonder he couldn't tell me what he was doing while on deployment."
"Damn." Clint went over to the bench to retrieve his water bottle. "That is so many kinds of unfair. Think of all the little green men jokes I could have been making all these years."
Natasha smiled at Clint. They were no longer lovers, hadn't been since before he was assigned to the Tesseract project, but at times such as these, when they sparred, Natasha could spare a few fond thoughts toward him. She'd always been impressed by his physicality.
"Steve will tell you the whole story this afternoon when Thor gets back," Natasha said. "I'm going to shower."
"Have fun," Clint said. "I'm going do a bit of time on the treadmill."
"You hate the treadmill."
"Better than being forced to run with Steve. The man would leave a cheetah in the dust."
"You and your ego."
"In a room full of superheroes, my ego is all I got."
He blew Natasha a kiss and moved deeper into the exercise room. Shaking her head, Natasha left, heading down the corridor to the elevator, and then up to her private floor in Stark Tower, accessibly only by her bioscan.
Tony had made space in his home for all of the Avengers, even her with their history. Not for the first time, Natasha wondered if she would ever be able to figure out what made Tony tick.
"Good afternoon, Jarvis," Natasha called out in the living room. She and the AI had an agreement – in her rooms, when everything was normal, he only spoke to her when called upon. In return, in the event of an emergency, Jarvis would call for her, in which case she would drop everything and respond.
"Good afternoon, ma'am."
At least she had gotten him to stop calling her 'Agent'. "Do you know if there have been any changes to Thor's planned arrival time?"
"Not that I am aware of," Jarvis said. "He should arrive back in New York before dinner."
That was good; the Avengers could fill their wayward team members in on all the details of the Stargate and aliens and intergalactic travels. Not that any of this should surprise Thor too much; but maybe he knew about the Stargates, had information on what was really happening out there in the universe.
"Thank you, Jarvis," Natasha said, and that was the signal that their conversation was over.
Natasha was not totally sure what she thought of Jarvis. True, like Steve, she came from a time before computers existed; she could be excused a bit of uneasiness about an artificial intelligence, but at the same time, she'd spent so long in Department X, being trained in the Red Room...
Being remade, being rewritten.
So sometimes, when Clint teased her about being freaked out by Jarvis, she just glared and let him think that the concept of a someone being created at the hands of a man was too foreign for her to accept.
She would never, could never, let anyone know how much she understood.
She was being maudlin. Stepping across the darkened room, her senses open in case of intruders or attack (there never was, not in this safest of spaces, but Natasha had not survived for so long by assuming anything was safe), she stripped off her exercise clothes as she went.
Natasha looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, grimacing at the darkening bruise on her ribs. Clint had put more force behind one of his blows than she had thought.
He wasn't the only one off his game today.
With a sigh, Natasha stepped into the shower and turned on the water. They had been in New York for days and all that time, Natasha hadn't been able to shake the memory of the bone-deep cold of a Belarus winter.
In spite of the hot water, Natasha started to shiver again, and her body's reaction only made her angry. It was a physiological response to past memories. Steve would call it shell-shock, Tony would label it PTSD, but at the end of the day it meant one thing, and one thing only.
No matter all that she had done, all that she could do, that wasn't good enough. In spite of her training, the experimentation, what the Red Room had made her... some days, it wasn't enough.
Some days, Natasha was weak.
Her hand was already reaching to turn up the water temperature; her body telling her it needed more heat, but the tiny logical voice in her head told her to resist her body's imagined frailties, that turning the water to scalding would only cause injury, not relief.
Instead, Natasha put her hands on the tile wall and let the water wash over her, carry away her sweat and impurities, down the drain, away.
Slowly, her shaking subsided. Her breathing returned to normal, her heart rate slowed, her muscles relaxed. It was just shell-shock, she reminded herself. The memory of the compound in Belarus, and what had happened there, had been triggered by the touch of the naquada under Cheyenne Mountain a few days before.
As Natasha reached for the soap, she made herself think beyond the beating, beyond trying to kill Seth, beyond crawling out of the burning compound into the snow.
A ghost had walked out of the blizzard to save her.
He wasn't her back-up on that particular mission. He had later told her that no one believed Seth was a real threat, so he'd broken protocol and gone after her on his own.
A tall man, a strong man, he'd picked her up and balanced her weight on his metal arm, carried her to a stolen automobile, drove her to a back-water hospital and held her hand while they'd had to fix her injuries without enough anesthetic.
For saving her life, they'd punished him.
And he never blamed her.
A very different grief washed over Natasha at the memory of that man. It had been over thirteen years since she had last seen him, her first (and for a long time, her only) friend. And she never would again.
She didn't cry. The past was in the past, and memories were not worth the tears.
Natasha was just reaching for the shampoo when Jarvis' voice suddenly filled the bathroom, loud enough to be heard over the water. "Agent Romanoff, your presence would not go amiss in the penthouse."
Natasha turned off the water and was out of the shower in a flash. "Threat level?" she demanded. If need be, she could be in the penthouse in under thirty seconds; however, it would take no time at all to see if she could dress and arm herself first.
Jarvis paused for a fraction of a second, then he said, in a voice that sounded oddly abashed for an AI, "It is perhaps less urgent than I originally assumed, Agent Romanoff. If you were to make an appearance in approximately three minutes, I believe the situation will not have escalated beyond repair."
"Explain," Natasha ordered as she raced across her bedroom, toweling her skin dry as she went.
"Colonel Sheppard has arrived, ma'am, and is speaking with Mr. Stark."
Natasha looked at the ceiling, perplexed. "Colonel John Sheppard?"
"Yes, ma'am," Jarvis confirmed. "He has just arrived. If past experiences are to be measured, I expect he and Mr. Stark will be able to avoid a confrontation for approximately three minutes of conversation, before the levels of antagonism reach a tipping point."
Natasha swore under her breath. "Why is John here?" she asked as she pulled on a bra.
A pause, then, "He just told Mr. Stark that he wishes to continue the conversation he had with you, regarding aliens in the Milky Way galaxy." Another pause. "And that there was information that was not shared with you at that time."
"How's Tony taking that?" Natasha asked. She opted for speed in dressing rather than fashion, grabbing the nearest clothes she could lay hands on, but still took the time to slip a knife into the waistband of her jeans. Not that she anticipated using it on either Tony or John, but she felt better knowing she was armed. Just in case.
"Mr. Stark says he expected nothing less," Jarvis reported. "That such behavior is Colonel Sheppard's modus operandi." Another pause. "Perhaps three minutes was an overly generous estimate, Agent Romanoff."
Natasha pulled a shirt over her head, flipped her wet hair out of the collar, and took off at a run.
"You are such a fucking hypocrite!" Tony was shouting, so loudly that Natasha could hear his voice down the stairwell. "You say I'm the one who caused all that?"
"If the arms-dealer shoe fits," John retorted. Natasha rounded the bend in the stairwell and took the remaining flight two stairs at a time.
"I was never the one with my finger on the button, was I?" Natasha came out of the stairwell to see Tony and John facing off in the middle of the penthouse. Tony had his hands flat at his sides; in another person, the gesture would have been non-threatening, but Tony wasn't a normal person, he was Iron Man, and hands flat was how Iron Man attacked.
"You built the button, don't pretend that makes you innocent," John said.
"Tell me something, Sheppard," Tony demanded, stepping into John's personal space. "If I build the weapons and that makes me the Merchant of Death, what the fuck does that make you?"
"Just Death," John shot back, and before anything could happen (Tony's hands flat at his sides, John inches taller and trained in weaponless fighting techniques) Natasha crossed the room on bare feet.
"Boys," she said, her voice pleasant and light. She laid one hand on Tony's forearm and her other on John's chest, stepping in to push them apart. "John, I'm glad you're here."
After a long moment, John broke eye contact with Tony and met Natasha's gaze. "Tony and I were just catching up," he said.
Tony took a few steps back, putting space between him and John before he turned around. "Yeah, just like old times," he muttered.
Natasha slipped her arm through John's and leaned against his side. She could feel the tension in his body from the fight, and she wondered, not for the first time, what exactly had happened between John and Tony for them to treat each other as they did.
"Would you like some tea?" Natasha asked John.
"No, he doesn't," Tony said from behind the bar where he was pouring himself a drink. John narrowed his eyes at Tony, who gave him a fake smile. "We don't have any tea."
"Coffee, then?" Natasha gave John's arm a warning squeeze before going to join Tony behind the bar. "I know we have coffee."
"We've got coffee." Tony leaned against the bar, drink untouched by his hand. He watched Natasha pull the coffee canister out from behind a collection of bottles. "Did Jarvis call you?" he asked in an undertone.
"No idea what you're talking about," Natasha replied, pouring a carafe of water into the machine. "John, come over here," she said, raising her voice. "We can socialize like civilized human beings."
Tony made a derisive sound, but he didn't move as John joined them at the bar, laying a small briefcase on the marble countertop as he did so. "What's in there?" Tony asked.
"Something you've never seen," John said, making it sound like an insult.
"You'd be surprised what I've seen," Tony shot back.
"Fine," John said, and popped the lid on the case. Inside were three devices, of obviously alien design.
The first was the largest, a collection of gold metal pieces and connecting cords with a gleaming red gem set in the center. When Natasha reached for it, John stilled her hand.
"That's Goa'uld tech," he said in warning. "It's got naquada in it."
Natasha looked down at the metal. "Is it dangerous?" she asked, touching the center gem. The sensation of the metal on her skin sent a shiver down her spine, making her stomach churn. But now she knew what the sensation was, and could push both the physical reaction and the memories behind the walls in her mind.
"Only if you're a Goa'uld," John said. He let go of her hand. "It's a kara kesh. We usually just call it a hand device."
He helped Natasha untangle the cords and set the device the right way for her to slide her hand through the wrist brace and into the finger pieces. The red gem lay in the center of her palm as she held up her hand for Tony to see, an echo of the Iron Man gauntlet.
"Patent infringement," Tony grumbled. "It's derivative and unimaginative."
"Iron Man's version is still better," Natasha told him, sliding the metal off her hand and laying it back inside the briefcase. "I doubt you can use this to fly."
The second object in the case was a hand-sized unadorned milky white stone. At first Natasha thought it truly was a stone, but as John's hand passed over it, it glowed with muted greens and reds under the surface.
The third item, which John pulled from the case, looked the most familiar. About the size of a Stark mini-tablet, the screen lit up when John touched it, blinking with characters that Natasha didn't recognize.
John held up the tablet. "Ancient technology," he said. "The Ancients were the builders of the Stargates, and Atlantis, like I said back in Colorado."
"And they built you a gameboy," Tony deadpanned. "How cute. Does it have GPS?"
"No, but it doubles as life-signs detector." The letters on the screen changed, showing a three-dimensional outlay of the top floors of Stark Tower. Tiny blinking lights moved about the screen. John pointed at a cluster of blinking lights at the top of the screen. "That's us."
Natasha leaned in to see the screen more clearly. Three blinking lights in the penthouse, two stationary on two separate floors below, where Natasha knew Clint and Bruce were exercising and working, respectively. One light was moving quickly up in a straight line.
"Jarvis, who's in the elevator?" Tony asked, all animosity gone from his voice.
"Captain Rogers has returned from his run, sir," Jarvis said.
"Are you monitoring any spike in anything? Can you tell we're being scanned?"
"I cannot."
"How the hell does this work?" Tony asked. He took the device from John's hand, and it immediately went black.
"Not sure of the details," John said.
"It needs new batteries." Tony banged the device against the bar's marble top. "You leave your charger at home?"
"It's ATA technology," John said, taking the device back from Tony. "If you've got the Ancient gene, you can activate the tech. It's basically a built-in safe-guard that an alien enemy can't hotwire your car or blow up your city."
Natasha frowned at the device, fully functional again in John's hand. "Why is it working for you?"
John handed the device to Natasha. As soon as it left John's hand, it went dead again. "Like I said the other day, some Ancients left the Pegasus Galaxy and headed back to Earth. Guess they interbred with the local population and the genes trickled down after all these years. I'm a natural carrier, that's what the doctors say."
"Not through Mommy Dearest, it looks like," Tony said. He pulled two mugs from underneath the counter and poured coffee into them. "Looks like you got something of value from your father after all."
The look John gave Tony was distinctly unfriendly, but he didn't reply to the jab.
Natasha handed John back the device, unease pooling in her stomach. "Does the gene mean anything else?"
"Not so far as anyone can tell," John said. He put the device back in the briefcase and closed the lid. "It's just a thing. Don't worry about it."
"Yeah, he's like forty now," Tony pointed out. "If he was going to grow another head or start exhibiting supervillain behavior, he'd have done it by now."
"Supervillain behavior?" John echoed.
"Hey, you're the one with the alien gene that let you use alien technology. That's one hell of a cheat code in the supervillain sweepstakes."
John sighed, accepting the cup of coffee that Tony put in front of him. "Inclinations aside, I don't have the time to be a bad guy, Stark. I work for a living."
"Sounds dreary," Tony said, dismissing John's protestation with the wave of a hand. "What am I drinking, this is horrible."
"You're welcome," Natasha said, but Tony was already moving, dumping the remains of his mug into the sink and pouring himself another cup, this time adding three spoonfuls of sugar.
"Come on," John said. He picked up the case and led Natasha across the penthouse floor to the seating area. "Are you doing better?"
"I am," Natasha lied with a smile. She'd been having flashbacks for days and kept waking up with her heart in her throat, but she would never admit her weaknesses to anyone.
She was Natalia Alianovna Romanova, the Black Widow. She was over seventy years old, had been a killer of men since she was twelve years old. She might not be strong enough to keep from reliving her past, but she could to hide that past in a place no one would ever be able to see.
Especially her son.
"Don't worry about me, John," she added, putting her hand on his arm in reassurance. "Really."
John rubbed the back of his neck absently. "Yeah, we're all just fine here," he muttered.
Natasha looked him over. Dressed in civilian clothes, he seemed frailer than he had in uniform, and younger than she'd thought possible. No longer were there lines in the corners of his eyes; the grey was gone from his hair. He appeared younger than he had on that fateful day in 2002, when Coulson had thrown John into the interrogation room with her after she had turned herself in to SHIELD.
Now, ten years later, the only signs that any time had passed for John was in his eyes, holding the weight of the years he'd seen.
Natasha knew very well what that was like. On some days, she looked in the mirror to find a young girl with ancient eyes staring back at her.
"Tell me something," Natasha asked, suddenly needing to hear John's voice.
"Like what?"
"Anything."
"Huh. Well, Torren's talking, finally," he began. "Just a few words, but it's a start. Rodney keeps saying the kid's been studying at the Ronon Dex School of Elocution."
"How is Teyla?"
"Great. She's a fast healer. Even two bullets to the chest didn't do much to slow her down. She's still on Atlantis." John looked down at his hands. "So that's a thing."
"Are you worried about your people?" Natasha asked.
"Not really," John said. Natasha could hear the bluff in his voice. "I was the only one that got kicked to the curb. The city's still got McKay and the science teams, and Teyla and Ronon to help navigate the galaxy."
"What about the military component?"
John smiled, and there was a hint of real warmth in his expression. "They bumped up my 2IC to Lieutenant Colonel while I was... well, indisposed. Lorne's the best guy for the job. He's been around the galaxy a bit, knows the lay of the land."
"Good."
Across the room, Tony cursed as he emptied another pot of coffee down the sink.
Natasha wanted to ask John what had happened, why he looked so young, what the enemy had done to him. But as secure as Stark Tower was, it was still Tony's home, and Jarvis was everywhere. Natasha would not ask her son to tell his secrets in front of Tony's creation.
Voices drifted up the staircase, and in a few moments, Clint and Bruce came into the penthouse. Clint broke off what he was saying to Bruce when he saw John sitting beside Natasha. "Hey, Sheppard, good to see you again."
"Barton," John replied, standing up to shake Clint's hand. "How are things?"
Clint shrugged. "Can't complain. Hear you got promoted, congrats on that."
"Thanks."
Bruce gave John a nod in greeting, which the man returned. "What's Tony doing?" Bruce asked, glancing at the corner of the penthouse.
"Making coffee," Natasha said. "Again."
"Because something is wrong," Tony yelled from behind the bar. "This isn't even chemistry, Jesus Christ, it's fucking applied physics, any monkey could do it."
"Ten bucks says Thor electrocuted the coffee maker and forgot to tell Tony before he left for Canada," Clint said in an undertone.
"Sucker's bet," Bruce replied. "Colonel Sheppard, are you here for a social visit?"
"Not exactly," John said. "There's some other stuff we need to talk about that we didn't get around to in Colorado."
"More alien stuff, totally called that one!" Tony shouted. He gave the coffee machine one last smack before heading across the penthouse floor. "Which is not a new concept, you know."
"Like, more alien stuff as in numbers, or as in kinds?" Clint asked.
"Both," Tony said before John could speak. "What? Tell me I'm wrong."
Natasha sighed. "Am I going to have to give you boys a time-out?" she asked.
At her words, some of the growing tension left John's shoulders, and he gave her a half-hearted smile. "Aw, Mom...."
The elevator door opened, disgorging Steve Rogers into the penthouse. His hair was still wet from his post-run shower, but he was dressed impeccably. Natasha was reminded that she likely looked a mess, in a pair of faded jeans and a loose t-shirt, wet hair hanging over her shoulders.
She considered, then discarded, the idea of excusing herself to change. Her clothes were perfectly presentable, and her casual appearance had set John at ease.
"Colonel," Steve said in greeting. "Good to see you again, so soon."
"Captain," John replied.
"Doctor," Tony said, turning to Bruce for a moment before glancing at Clint and Natasha. "Agent, Agent." He gave John a wide smile. "Colonel."
"Stop razzing, Tony," Steve warned.
"Yes, do stop razzing Tony," Tony said. The lights in the room flickered, and the distant sound of thunder rolled through the room. "And here comes our resident god of thunder. Jarvis!"
"Initiating power protocol number 43," Jarvis said. The lights in the room dimmed, and the flickering stopped. "Levels are holding steady."
"Tony, what are you doing?" Steve asked.
"Thor's accidental lightning when he lands after a long-distance flight keeps frying the secondary switches, and that drains the arc reactor powering this building," Tony explained, pulling up a holographic read-out. "I'm playing with manipulating the power levels when he comes in so the levels stay steady."
"Why don't you just ask him to stop electrocuting the building?" Clint asked.
The look Tony threw in Clint's direction was pitying. "Where's the fun in that?"
As the thunder grew closer, John slipped across the floor to Tony's side. "What's that?" he asked, pointing at a fluctuating reading.
"That's—" Tony stopped suddenly. "Unless..."
"This?" John poked the screen. Tony batted his hand away and flicked a few holographic switches. The lights grew brighter, and remained steady.
"Huh."
"Power levels are stable," Jarvis said, just as the thunder and lightning crashed in unison, and Thor landed on the helipad on the penthouse level.
Tony turned to glare at John. "What was that?"
John shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. "You're up in a plane, you get hit by lightning frequently," he said. "Same thing here."
"Except in the way that it's not," Tony shot back.
At this point, Thor strode into the penthouse, soaking wet. "Friends!" he exclaimed, holding his arms wide in greeting.
Go to Chapter 2, Part 2
At AO3
Summary: Four months after New York, the Avengers are asked to take part in a military briefing at Cheyenne Mountain. It’s perfectly understandable if Natasha has a bad feeling about this...
Rating: PG
Characters: Natasha Romanoff, John Sheppard, the Avengers, SG-1.
Warnings: PTSD, past violence, angst
Words: 8,228 this part
Disclaimer: This is fanfic, I own nothing of the characters/worlds/franchises etc. All recognizable characters belong to their creators etc.
Note: In this section, we reference past trauma and abuse, as well reference to a past relationship between two of the characters. Since it's "past" I'm not putting it in tags.
All stories in the Widow's Tales
A few days later, back in New York
"So let me get this straight."
Natasha ducked the blow, slipping around Clint, her hands held up in a defensive position. "What?"
They circled each other on the mat, each trying to find the right angle of attack. "I spend a few days in Chicago, stalking some useless drug lord for shits and giggles, and the bunch of you get to hear about aliens on Earth in the middle of Colorado?"
"Pretty much, yeah." Natasha spotted an opening and darted in, fist striking Clint's ribs with enough force to make him stagger back. He retaliated by ducking low, kicking her feet out from under her and pinning her bodily on the mat.
"That's cool," he said, a grin on his face and his breath hot on her cheek.
She didn't answer, instead arching her back and flipping them around so she was on top. She kneed him in the side and bounced to her feet before he could grab her again. "It was interesting, yes."
Clint got up, favoring his side, but he still had a smile on his face. "I bet that totally pissed Stark off."
"What, that the Air Force knew about aliens, or that they didn't ask Stark Industries to build their spaceships?"
Clint shrugged and made his move. He was a fraction of a second too slow, however, and Natasha caught his wrist and let his momentum carry them around, around, to the ground.
"That makes six for me," Natasha said, breathing heavily at the workout. "You're off your game, Barton."
"All that fancy living in Chicago, ma'am," Clint sassed back. He struggled, but Natasha had him pinned. "How the hell can you even keep me down, I outweigh you by like forty pounds."
"Forty?" Natasha demanded, releasing Clint's wrists and straddling his waist. "Careful how you speak to a lady."
"I'll let you know if I find one," Clint said. He let his head fall to the mat. "Seriously, Nat, what the hell? More aliens?"
"If you acknowledge two alien races, why not more?" Natasha asked. She got to her feet and held out a hand for Clint. He took it and stood.
"And John's been dealing with them for years?"
"Since 2004," Natasha said. "No wonder he couldn't tell me what he was doing while on deployment."
"Damn." Clint went over to the bench to retrieve his water bottle. "That is so many kinds of unfair. Think of all the little green men jokes I could have been making all these years."
Natasha smiled at Clint. They were no longer lovers, hadn't been since before he was assigned to the Tesseract project, but at times such as these, when they sparred, Natasha could spare a few fond thoughts toward him. She'd always been impressed by his physicality.
"Steve will tell you the whole story this afternoon when Thor gets back," Natasha said. "I'm going to shower."
"Have fun," Clint said. "I'm going do a bit of time on the treadmill."
"You hate the treadmill."
"Better than being forced to run with Steve. The man would leave a cheetah in the dust."
"You and your ego."
"In a room full of superheroes, my ego is all I got."
He blew Natasha a kiss and moved deeper into the exercise room. Shaking her head, Natasha left, heading down the corridor to the elevator, and then up to her private floor in Stark Tower, accessibly only by her bioscan.
Tony had made space in his home for all of the Avengers, even her with their history. Not for the first time, Natasha wondered if she would ever be able to figure out what made Tony tick.
"Good afternoon, Jarvis," Natasha called out in the living room. She and the AI had an agreement – in her rooms, when everything was normal, he only spoke to her when called upon. In return, in the event of an emergency, Jarvis would call for her, in which case she would drop everything and respond.
"Good afternoon, ma'am."
At least she had gotten him to stop calling her 'Agent'. "Do you know if there have been any changes to Thor's planned arrival time?"
"Not that I am aware of," Jarvis said. "He should arrive back in New York before dinner."
That was good; the Avengers could fill their wayward team members in on all the details of the Stargate and aliens and intergalactic travels. Not that any of this should surprise Thor too much; but maybe he knew about the Stargates, had information on what was really happening out there in the universe.
"Thank you, Jarvis," Natasha said, and that was the signal that their conversation was over.
Natasha was not totally sure what she thought of Jarvis. True, like Steve, she came from a time before computers existed; she could be excused a bit of uneasiness about an artificial intelligence, but at the same time, she'd spent so long in Department X, being trained in the Red Room...
Being remade, being rewritten.
So sometimes, when Clint teased her about being freaked out by Jarvis, she just glared and let him think that the concept of a someone being created at the hands of a man was too foreign for her to accept.
She would never, could never, let anyone know how much she understood.
She was being maudlin. Stepping across the darkened room, her senses open in case of intruders or attack (there never was, not in this safest of spaces, but Natasha had not survived for so long by assuming anything was safe), she stripped off her exercise clothes as she went.
Natasha looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, grimacing at the darkening bruise on her ribs. Clint had put more force behind one of his blows than she had thought.
He wasn't the only one off his game today.
With a sigh, Natasha stepped into the shower and turned on the water. They had been in New York for days and all that time, Natasha hadn't been able to shake the memory of the bone-deep cold of a Belarus winter.
In spite of the hot water, Natasha started to shiver again, and her body's reaction only made her angry. It was a physiological response to past memories. Steve would call it shell-shock, Tony would label it PTSD, but at the end of the day it meant one thing, and one thing only.
No matter all that she had done, all that she could do, that wasn't good enough. In spite of her training, the experimentation, what the Red Room had made her... some days, it wasn't enough.
Some days, Natasha was weak.
Her hand was already reaching to turn up the water temperature; her body telling her it needed more heat, but the tiny logical voice in her head told her to resist her body's imagined frailties, that turning the water to scalding would only cause injury, not relief.
Instead, Natasha put her hands on the tile wall and let the water wash over her, carry away her sweat and impurities, down the drain, away.
Slowly, her shaking subsided. Her breathing returned to normal, her heart rate slowed, her muscles relaxed. It was just shell-shock, she reminded herself. The memory of the compound in Belarus, and what had happened there, had been triggered by the touch of the naquada under Cheyenne Mountain a few days before.
As Natasha reached for the soap, she made herself think beyond the beating, beyond trying to kill Seth, beyond crawling out of the burning compound into the snow.
A ghost had walked out of the blizzard to save her.
He wasn't her back-up on that particular mission. He had later told her that no one believed Seth was a real threat, so he'd broken protocol and gone after her on his own.
A tall man, a strong man, he'd picked her up and balanced her weight on his metal arm, carried her to a stolen automobile, drove her to a back-water hospital and held her hand while they'd had to fix her injuries without enough anesthetic.
For saving her life, they'd punished him.
And he never blamed her.
A very different grief washed over Natasha at the memory of that man. It had been over thirteen years since she had last seen him, her first (and for a long time, her only) friend. And she never would again.
She didn't cry. The past was in the past, and memories were not worth the tears.
Natasha was just reaching for the shampoo when Jarvis' voice suddenly filled the bathroom, loud enough to be heard over the water. "Agent Romanoff, your presence would not go amiss in the penthouse."
Natasha turned off the water and was out of the shower in a flash. "Threat level?" she demanded. If need be, she could be in the penthouse in under thirty seconds; however, it would take no time at all to see if she could dress and arm herself first.
Jarvis paused for a fraction of a second, then he said, in a voice that sounded oddly abashed for an AI, "It is perhaps less urgent than I originally assumed, Agent Romanoff. If you were to make an appearance in approximately three minutes, I believe the situation will not have escalated beyond repair."
"Explain," Natasha ordered as she raced across her bedroom, toweling her skin dry as she went.
"Colonel Sheppard has arrived, ma'am, and is speaking with Mr. Stark."
Natasha looked at the ceiling, perplexed. "Colonel John Sheppard?"
"Yes, ma'am," Jarvis confirmed. "He has just arrived. If past experiences are to be measured, I expect he and Mr. Stark will be able to avoid a confrontation for approximately three minutes of conversation, before the levels of antagonism reach a tipping point."
Natasha swore under her breath. "Why is John here?" she asked as she pulled on a bra.
A pause, then, "He just told Mr. Stark that he wishes to continue the conversation he had with you, regarding aliens in the Milky Way galaxy." Another pause. "And that there was information that was not shared with you at that time."
"How's Tony taking that?" Natasha asked. She opted for speed in dressing rather than fashion, grabbing the nearest clothes she could lay hands on, but still took the time to slip a knife into the waistband of her jeans. Not that she anticipated using it on either Tony or John, but she felt better knowing she was armed. Just in case.
"Mr. Stark says he expected nothing less," Jarvis reported. "That such behavior is Colonel Sheppard's modus operandi." Another pause. "Perhaps three minutes was an overly generous estimate, Agent Romanoff."
Natasha pulled a shirt over her head, flipped her wet hair out of the collar, and took off at a run.
"You are such a fucking hypocrite!" Tony was shouting, so loudly that Natasha could hear his voice down the stairwell. "You say I'm the one who caused all that?"
"If the arms-dealer shoe fits," John retorted. Natasha rounded the bend in the stairwell and took the remaining flight two stairs at a time.
"I was never the one with my finger on the button, was I?" Natasha came out of the stairwell to see Tony and John facing off in the middle of the penthouse. Tony had his hands flat at his sides; in another person, the gesture would have been non-threatening, but Tony wasn't a normal person, he was Iron Man, and hands flat was how Iron Man attacked.
"You built the button, don't pretend that makes you innocent," John said.
"Tell me something, Sheppard," Tony demanded, stepping into John's personal space. "If I build the weapons and that makes me the Merchant of Death, what the fuck does that make you?"
"Just Death," John shot back, and before anything could happen (Tony's hands flat at his sides, John inches taller and trained in weaponless fighting techniques) Natasha crossed the room on bare feet.
"Boys," she said, her voice pleasant and light. She laid one hand on Tony's forearm and her other on John's chest, stepping in to push them apart. "John, I'm glad you're here."
After a long moment, John broke eye contact with Tony and met Natasha's gaze. "Tony and I were just catching up," he said.
Tony took a few steps back, putting space between him and John before he turned around. "Yeah, just like old times," he muttered.
Natasha slipped her arm through John's and leaned against his side. She could feel the tension in his body from the fight, and she wondered, not for the first time, what exactly had happened between John and Tony for them to treat each other as they did.
"Would you like some tea?" Natasha asked John.
"No, he doesn't," Tony said from behind the bar where he was pouring himself a drink. John narrowed his eyes at Tony, who gave him a fake smile. "We don't have any tea."
"Coffee, then?" Natasha gave John's arm a warning squeeze before going to join Tony behind the bar. "I know we have coffee."
"We've got coffee." Tony leaned against the bar, drink untouched by his hand. He watched Natasha pull the coffee canister out from behind a collection of bottles. "Did Jarvis call you?" he asked in an undertone.
"No idea what you're talking about," Natasha replied, pouring a carafe of water into the machine. "John, come over here," she said, raising her voice. "We can socialize like civilized human beings."
Tony made a derisive sound, but he didn't move as John joined them at the bar, laying a small briefcase on the marble countertop as he did so. "What's in there?" Tony asked.
"Something you've never seen," John said, making it sound like an insult.
"You'd be surprised what I've seen," Tony shot back.
"Fine," John said, and popped the lid on the case. Inside were three devices, of obviously alien design.
The first was the largest, a collection of gold metal pieces and connecting cords with a gleaming red gem set in the center. When Natasha reached for it, John stilled her hand.
"That's Goa'uld tech," he said in warning. "It's got naquada in it."
Natasha looked down at the metal. "Is it dangerous?" she asked, touching the center gem. The sensation of the metal on her skin sent a shiver down her spine, making her stomach churn. But now she knew what the sensation was, and could push both the physical reaction and the memories behind the walls in her mind.
"Only if you're a Goa'uld," John said. He let go of her hand. "It's a kara kesh. We usually just call it a hand device."
He helped Natasha untangle the cords and set the device the right way for her to slide her hand through the wrist brace and into the finger pieces. The red gem lay in the center of her palm as she held up her hand for Tony to see, an echo of the Iron Man gauntlet.
"Patent infringement," Tony grumbled. "It's derivative and unimaginative."
"Iron Man's version is still better," Natasha told him, sliding the metal off her hand and laying it back inside the briefcase. "I doubt you can use this to fly."
The second object in the case was a hand-sized unadorned milky white stone. At first Natasha thought it truly was a stone, but as John's hand passed over it, it glowed with muted greens and reds under the surface.
The third item, which John pulled from the case, looked the most familiar. About the size of a Stark mini-tablet, the screen lit up when John touched it, blinking with characters that Natasha didn't recognize.
John held up the tablet. "Ancient technology," he said. "The Ancients were the builders of the Stargates, and Atlantis, like I said back in Colorado."
"And they built you a gameboy," Tony deadpanned. "How cute. Does it have GPS?"
"No, but it doubles as life-signs detector." The letters on the screen changed, showing a three-dimensional outlay of the top floors of Stark Tower. Tiny blinking lights moved about the screen. John pointed at a cluster of blinking lights at the top of the screen. "That's us."
Natasha leaned in to see the screen more clearly. Three blinking lights in the penthouse, two stationary on two separate floors below, where Natasha knew Clint and Bruce were exercising and working, respectively. One light was moving quickly up in a straight line.
"Jarvis, who's in the elevator?" Tony asked, all animosity gone from his voice.
"Captain Rogers has returned from his run, sir," Jarvis said.
"Are you monitoring any spike in anything? Can you tell we're being scanned?"
"I cannot."
"How the hell does this work?" Tony asked. He took the device from John's hand, and it immediately went black.
"Not sure of the details," John said.
"It needs new batteries." Tony banged the device against the bar's marble top. "You leave your charger at home?"
"It's ATA technology," John said, taking the device back from Tony. "If you've got the Ancient gene, you can activate the tech. It's basically a built-in safe-guard that an alien enemy can't hotwire your car or blow up your city."
Natasha frowned at the device, fully functional again in John's hand. "Why is it working for you?"
John handed the device to Natasha. As soon as it left John's hand, it went dead again. "Like I said the other day, some Ancients left the Pegasus Galaxy and headed back to Earth. Guess they interbred with the local population and the genes trickled down after all these years. I'm a natural carrier, that's what the doctors say."
"Not through Mommy Dearest, it looks like," Tony said. He pulled two mugs from underneath the counter and poured coffee into them. "Looks like you got something of value from your father after all."
The look John gave Tony was distinctly unfriendly, but he didn't reply to the jab.
Natasha handed John back the device, unease pooling in her stomach. "Does the gene mean anything else?"
"Not so far as anyone can tell," John said. He put the device back in the briefcase and closed the lid. "It's just a thing. Don't worry about it."
"Yeah, he's like forty now," Tony pointed out. "If he was going to grow another head or start exhibiting supervillain behavior, he'd have done it by now."
"Supervillain behavior?" John echoed.
"Hey, you're the one with the alien gene that let you use alien technology. That's one hell of a cheat code in the supervillain sweepstakes."
John sighed, accepting the cup of coffee that Tony put in front of him. "Inclinations aside, I don't have the time to be a bad guy, Stark. I work for a living."
"Sounds dreary," Tony said, dismissing John's protestation with the wave of a hand. "What am I drinking, this is horrible."
"You're welcome," Natasha said, but Tony was already moving, dumping the remains of his mug into the sink and pouring himself another cup, this time adding three spoonfuls of sugar.
"Come on," John said. He picked up the case and led Natasha across the penthouse floor to the seating area. "Are you doing better?"
"I am," Natasha lied with a smile. She'd been having flashbacks for days and kept waking up with her heart in her throat, but she would never admit her weaknesses to anyone.
She was Natalia Alianovna Romanova, the Black Widow. She was over seventy years old, had been a killer of men since she was twelve years old. She might not be strong enough to keep from reliving her past, but she could to hide that past in a place no one would ever be able to see.
Especially her son.
"Don't worry about me, John," she added, putting her hand on his arm in reassurance. "Really."
John rubbed the back of his neck absently. "Yeah, we're all just fine here," he muttered.
Natasha looked him over. Dressed in civilian clothes, he seemed frailer than he had in uniform, and younger than she'd thought possible. No longer were there lines in the corners of his eyes; the grey was gone from his hair. He appeared younger than he had on that fateful day in 2002, when Coulson had thrown John into the interrogation room with her after she had turned herself in to SHIELD.
Now, ten years later, the only signs that any time had passed for John was in his eyes, holding the weight of the years he'd seen.
Natasha knew very well what that was like. On some days, she looked in the mirror to find a young girl with ancient eyes staring back at her.
"Tell me something," Natasha asked, suddenly needing to hear John's voice.
"Like what?"
"Anything."
"Huh. Well, Torren's talking, finally," he began. "Just a few words, but it's a start. Rodney keeps saying the kid's been studying at the Ronon Dex School of Elocution."
"How is Teyla?"
"Great. She's a fast healer. Even two bullets to the chest didn't do much to slow her down. She's still on Atlantis." John looked down at his hands. "So that's a thing."
"Are you worried about your people?" Natasha asked.
"Not really," John said. Natasha could hear the bluff in his voice. "I was the only one that got kicked to the curb. The city's still got McKay and the science teams, and Teyla and Ronon to help navigate the galaxy."
"What about the military component?"
John smiled, and there was a hint of real warmth in his expression. "They bumped up my 2IC to Lieutenant Colonel while I was... well, indisposed. Lorne's the best guy for the job. He's been around the galaxy a bit, knows the lay of the land."
"Good."
Across the room, Tony cursed as he emptied another pot of coffee down the sink.
Natasha wanted to ask John what had happened, why he looked so young, what the enemy had done to him. But as secure as Stark Tower was, it was still Tony's home, and Jarvis was everywhere. Natasha would not ask her son to tell his secrets in front of Tony's creation.
Voices drifted up the staircase, and in a few moments, Clint and Bruce came into the penthouse. Clint broke off what he was saying to Bruce when he saw John sitting beside Natasha. "Hey, Sheppard, good to see you again."
"Barton," John replied, standing up to shake Clint's hand. "How are things?"
Clint shrugged. "Can't complain. Hear you got promoted, congrats on that."
"Thanks."
Bruce gave John a nod in greeting, which the man returned. "What's Tony doing?" Bruce asked, glancing at the corner of the penthouse.
"Making coffee," Natasha said. "Again."
"Because something is wrong," Tony yelled from behind the bar. "This isn't even chemistry, Jesus Christ, it's fucking applied physics, any monkey could do it."
"Ten bucks says Thor electrocuted the coffee maker and forgot to tell Tony before he left for Canada," Clint said in an undertone.
"Sucker's bet," Bruce replied. "Colonel Sheppard, are you here for a social visit?"
"Not exactly," John said. "There's some other stuff we need to talk about that we didn't get around to in Colorado."
"More alien stuff, totally called that one!" Tony shouted. He gave the coffee machine one last smack before heading across the penthouse floor. "Which is not a new concept, you know."
"Like, more alien stuff as in numbers, or as in kinds?" Clint asked.
"Both," Tony said before John could speak. "What? Tell me I'm wrong."
Natasha sighed. "Am I going to have to give you boys a time-out?" she asked.
At her words, some of the growing tension left John's shoulders, and he gave her a half-hearted smile. "Aw, Mom...."
The elevator door opened, disgorging Steve Rogers into the penthouse. His hair was still wet from his post-run shower, but he was dressed impeccably. Natasha was reminded that she likely looked a mess, in a pair of faded jeans and a loose t-shirt, wet hair hanging over her shoulders.
She considered, then discarded, the idea of excusing herself to change. Her clothes were perfectly presentable, and her casual appearance had set John at ease.
"Colonel," Steve said in greeting. "Good to see you again, so soon."
"Captain," John replied.
"Doctor," Tony said, turning to Bruce for a moment before glancing at Clint and Natasha. "Agent, Agent." He gave John a wide smile. "Colonel."
"Stop razzing, Tony," Steve warned.
"Yes, do stop razzing Tony," Tony said. The lights in the room flickered, and the distant sound of thunder rolled through the room. "And here comes our resident god of thunder. Jarvis!"
"Initiating power protocol number 43," Jarvis said. The lights in the room dimmed, and the flickering stopped. "Levels are holding steady."
"Tony, what are you doing?" Steve asked.
"Thor's accidental lightning when he lands after a long-distance flight keeps frying the secondary switches, and that drains the arc reactor powering this building," Tony explained, pulling up a holographic read-out. "I'm playing with manipulating the power levels when he comes in so the levels stay steady."
"Why don't you just ask him to stop electrocuting the building?" Clint asked.
The look Tony threw in Clint's direction was pitying. "Where's the fun in that?"
As the thunder grew closer, John slipped across the floor to Tony's side. "What's that?" he asked, pointing at a fluctuating reading.
"That's—" Tony stopped suddenly. "Unless..."
"This?" John poked the screen. Tony batted his hand away and flicked a few holographic switches. The lights grew brighter, and remained steady.
"Huh."
"Power levels are stable," Jarvis said, just as the thunder and lightning crashed in unison, and Thor landed on the helipad on the penthouse level.
Tony turned to glare at John. "What was that?"
John shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. "You're up in a plane, you get hit by lightning frequently," he said. "Same thing here."
"Except in the way that it's not," Tony shot back.
At this point, Thor strode into the penthouse, soaking wet. "Friends!" he exclaimed, holding his arms wide in greeting.
Go to Chapter 2, Part 2