Chapter Text
Coulson and May would later conclude that everything was so quiet that something had to have been brewing. To be perfectly honest, the two seasoned agents had enough instinct even before it happened to know that something was about to go down. To know to make sure the base had some extra supplies, and everyone got just that bit more sleep that would extend how long they could last in a crisis. When the something happened however, it was so beyond anything that either agents could have begun to predict that they may as well have seen nothing at all coming.
It started mid-afternoon, when the Playground perimeter alarms sounded, alerting the base to an intruder. Or more accurately, to the disabling of a sensor at the perimeter. By the time they actually found the two intruders, they were inside the base. It was also unfortunately Coulson and May who found them, leading to May biting off a Chinese curse word and Coulson letting several fly. The Black Widow and Hawkeye just glared at the pair.
“It’s true then.” Natasha Romanoff said bluntly, while her partner just glared.
“I’ll tell Daisy to switch off the alarms.” May said, and walked off, shooting a look at Coulson as she passed.
Coulson sighed, he knew May more than well enough to translate that non-expression as ‘You should have listened to me’. At least it wasn’t ‘I told you so.’
“Why don’t you come to my office” He offered the spies.
Clint gave him a glare that couldn’t quite hide the hurt on his face, and Natasha just inclined her head, face blanker than May’s. Coulson resisted the urge to sigh. This was going to be interesting.
The Playground was eerily empty as he led the way to his office, most of the agents all still involved in the search. Bobbi and Hunter gave them startled expressions as they passed, but must have seen May already because they didn’t stop. All too soon the door was closing with a sharp click behind the trio, and Phil turned to face the two agents he had once almost been a father-figure to. Neither spoke. Coulson hadn’t seen Natasha this blank since they brought her in, over twenty years ago now.
“There was good reason not to tell you.” He said. Natasha snorted scornfully but didn’t speak. Clint’s glare tried to burn a hole through a spot in the wall about two inches left of Phil’s face.
“You let us believe you died” Clint snarled.
“I did die.” Coulson said.
Natasha’s eyes flashed. “You’re looking very healthy for a dead man”
“Fury sent me to a project called T.A.H.I.T.I. They brought me back to life.”
“When?” Clint asked, and Coulson could hear the plea in the archer’s voice. The plea to say it was only a couple of weeks ago, that they had been about to read Strike Team Delta in.
“Two years ago.” Phil said.
“Then WHY” Clint exploded, the sudden shout echoing around Coulson’s office.
“Because we weren’t sure he would stay alive.” May’s cool voice stated from behind him, and Coulson tried not to jump, tried not to let on that he’d had no idea his second was back.
The anger drained from Clint’s face, and his panicked eyes swept Coulson up and down. “Are you saying you could still die?”
Coulson shook his head hastily, and with a sigh, began to read the spies in on T.A.H.I.T.I. and the effects it had had on those who had previously been put through it, and how they had dealt with that by finding the hidden city. He skimmed through the details on Daisy, saying only that one of their agents had their genetics changed down in the city, and explaining even more briefly about the inhumans and the fight their leaders had started and lost.
“So you could have told us two months ago” Natasha stated when he was done, her voice biting.
“I was waiting for a good time” Coulson said weakly.
Natasha opened her mouth to say what would doubtlessly have been something bitingly sarcastic when the assassin froze, every muscle in her body stilling in a split-second even as the colour drained like water from her face. Coulson was spinning, adrenaline shooting through his body before he could even properly process that if the Black Widow was that scared of a threat, there was nothing he was going to be able to do about it.
Except there was no threat behind him, only Daisy, who offered him a cheerful grin and “Fitz, Mack and I have fixed the perimeter alarms, and rigged them to be a decent bit harder to take down next time. Oh, and I’ve delayed Koenig from insisting on lanyards...” her voice trailed off as she felt the atmosphere in the room. “Is everything ok? May said to report once we’d secured the base?” She looked round the room again, taking in the way Coulson, May and Hawkeye (and Daisy was so proud of her self control not to be squealing just then) were looking at the red-haired woman in confusion, and then her gaze froze on the red-head herself, caught in the way the woman was looking at her as though she’d seen a ghost.
“Pauchok?” Natasha choked, the word barely a whisper as her body moved forwards without her conscious direction, reaching for the brown-haired agent.
Daisy took a rapid step back, eyes flickering confusedly over the woman “Uh, I don’t think we’ve met” she said.
“My Pauchok?” Natasha repeated, disbelief pouring through the woman’s voice as she reached for the retreating agent.
“I’m not, whoever you think you’re recognizing right now, I’m not them” Daisy said nervously, retreating towards the door. “Look, can you stop looking at me like that, you’re creeping me out. Black Widow? Widow?”
Her foot hit something solid behind her, and she knew she’d reached the wall, and groped for the door handle, eyes looking to her SO for instruction. May’s face was blank, but her eyes were confused, and she jerked her chin towards the door in silent command. Daisy yanked it open and ran.
Behind her, Natasha’s slow moving limbs suddenly remembered they belonged to a highly trained spy, and she lunged forwards, “ Pauchok, no !”
She lunged towards the door, forgetting everything but the girl, the girl who looked unbelievably like, like...hands closed sudden and hard around her arms, arresting her flight, and she spun, already lashing out at her attacker, but Clint just ducked under the blow and swept her feet from under her.
The blow would never have worked on any other day, but the sight of those brown eyes had almost undone Natasha and she hit the floor hard. Behind her, May shut the door and Coulson hit a switch to lock down the office. “No” Natasha protested, jumping up and reaching for the door as metal walls started coming down from the ceiling, only to find Melinda May with a gun pointed unerringly between her eyes. Natasha’s eyes narrowed.
“Get out of my way” she said, voice low and full of violent promise.
“You need to calm down” May said.
“Nat?” questioned Clint behind her, and in the shortened name the spy heard the promise, I have your back, and the question, what the hell? Natasha ignored both.
“Where did she come from?” she asked, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t hide the tremor in her voice.
“Downstairs” Coulson said, his voice urging her to calm down “she’s an agent. She’s not a threat.”
“I know that!” Natasha snapped, her thin hold on control cracking again “Where did she come from??”
And somehow, mercifully, Coulson seemed to understand, because he said, voice careful “An orphanage in the US, St Agnes.”
“And before that?”
“Somewhere else” Coulson said, voice guarded, and Natasha turned away from the door to face him, meeting her former handler’s eyes, seeing the protectiveness there. Natasha swallowed, her mouth too-dry, and let Coulson see the storm that had exploded in her head the instant she’d seen that face.
“Please Coulson. Please” and Natasha would never admit that her voice had cracked on the last word.
Coulson looked at her for what felt like an eternity, before he nodded, just slightly. “China, a village in Hunan province.” he said, and Natasha’s legs turned to water.
Clint’s eyes flew wide, head snapping around to look at hers in sudden realisation. “That’s the village isn’t it? From all those years ago? Wait, shit, that was the girl? The girl from the photograph?”
Natasha tried to speak, tried to say yes but her throat felt unbelievably tight, Coulson’s words echoing in her head. The implication, the meaning... Her Pauchok...
“Nat? Clint? Is one of you going to explain this? Coulson asked, his voice tense, and May only lowered the gun slightly, her eyes trained on both highly trained agents. Nat tried to speak again, but only a strangled sound came out of her mouth, and then Clint was in front of her, guiding her into a seat, murmuring about shock and fussing and she was taking shaky, gasping breaths, only then realising that she’d stopped taking them.
The room came back into focus slowly, and Natasha forced her limbs to stop shaking. Forced her hand to reach out and take the cup of coffee May handed her as a new reality settled in her mind. A new truth. Not absorbed yet, not anything like absorbed yet, but settled in some way.
“Clint?” May demanded, and the archer shrugged.
“I don’t really know. We took a quinjet to a village in Hunan once, within a couple of months of Nat finally being allowed off on her own. We found it completely destroyed, later found that a Shield team went after an 084 there. But the whole place was deserted. Everyone dead. Nat went running into this house, and when she came out she was, well, I’ve never seen her like that. She had a photo from inside the house, and she put in in her purse. That’s it.”
That wasn’t it, and she felt a rush of gratitude to her partner for skipping out the part where she’d screamed inside the house. For skipping the part where she’d drunk so much neat vodka she’d puked three times and kept drinking until Clint had handcuffed her to the bed, and the parts where he’d kept recuffing her until she stopped escaping and just sobbed and sobbed.
“Are you saying Natasha knew Skye, Daisy I mean?”
Clint shrugged.
“Could she have been to the village before? As far as I know Daisy never left the village before Hydra. She wasn’t even born in a hospital.”
“No” Natasha said, her voice quiet but there, “she was born in the back room of a safe-house in Italy. There was a dead body in the next room and I cut the cord with a dagger and there was so much blood but she was ok. She was healthy and she was so beautiful and I swore I’d protect her, my little Pauchok.”
“Pauchok?” Coulson asked.
“Little spider” May translated, eyeing her, and then, “What happened to the mother Nat?”
Nat gave a slightly hysterical sounding laugh, and Clint reeled back in shock, putting the pieces together in an instant. Clint always had been able to read her better than anyone else.
“She’s yours.” He said, and it wasn’t a question but Nat nodded anyway. Coulson and May gaped at her, but it was Clint whose hand tightened on her shoulder “And you thought she was dead when we went to the village.” Natasha nodded again.
“I don’t understand” she whispered “The shield report said no-one survived”
“That’s because the second shield team made sure she disappeared, so that whoever was after her wouldn’t find her. They took her to America, and left her at an orphanage, they kept her safe.” Coulson said, his voice betraying his own shock.
Natasha nodded, but it didn’t really matter. She was alive. Her Pauchok was alive, did it matter how it had happened? She was alive ! “I want to see her.” she said.
May and Coulson visibly hesitated, and Clint bristled in her defence. “She’s her mother!”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea” Coulson said “You freaked her out a little earlier.”
May was blunter “You can’t just go up to her and say you’re her mother. You can’t just drop that on her.”
“You can’t keep her from...” Clint started, but Nat interrupted.
“They’re right, I can’t just, just. It’s not fair to her. I, I’ll wait. You can go talk to her first. I need to calm down properly first anyway.”
May looked at her, and nodded once before turning to head to the door. She keyed in the code that undid the lock-down, and went to find her rookie.
---------------
Daisy stared at the door of her bunk, unsure if she wanted to cry, puke, laugh or run. Fuck. May had left mere seconds before, gone to tell the redhead who had been gawping at her earlier that she’d (albeit shakily) agreed to see her. The redhead who was Black Widow. And her Mother.
Six months ago, before the obelisk and the city and powers, before meeting her insane step-mother and psychopath father, she would have been delighted by the news. Before her step-mother turned out to be an unstable lunatic with the propensity to go on sudden killing sprees. Before her father tried to drain her life because she wouldn’t support his plan of world domination.
Two years ago, when she’d been living out of a van, always searching for opportunities to shower and watching over her meagre store of money, she’d have been over the moon. Before SHIELD, before Coulson and May and Fitzsimmons. Before the bus had become some strange sort of home, before DC and her SO had become something to her. Something that made this more than a job, something that was never said, never specified, but always secure.
Two years ago she’d have clung to the idea of having found her mother, her blood, like the only lifeline in the universe.
Two years ago she hadn’t met her blood father or adoptive mother and felt the ice of betrayal tear through her heart, deeper and worse even than what Ward had done.
Now, now she didn’t know. How many families had she been through? How many ‘parents’ had screwed her over? Even her own parents, those who’d professed to love her had let her down, and torn her heart out as they did so. What was to say her blood mother would be any better than her blood father? Daisy wasn’t sure she wanted another parent. She’d tried to let go of the idea over the last two months, since the Ilyad. To accept that her lifelong search had led to a step-mother too unstable to really care for her, and a father who didn’t really care at all. To start allowing herself to be happy about, to trust in, the something that Coulson and May were to her. She didn’t know what this new development meant for that something. And the fact that her birth mother was an Avenger? Was the Black Widow? Daisy didn’t even know where to start with that.
A knock on the door snapped her out of her thinking, and her stomach knotted up with the thought of who it had to be.
“C-come in”
The door opened slowly, and then Natasha Romanoff slipped into her bunk, her face blank but her eyes lost and shaky.
“Hi” the Black Widow said.
“H-Hi” Daisy replied, and silence fell, awkward and frightened.
“I’m sorry I scared you upstairs.” Natasha said, trying to pretend she wasn’t still floundering, pretend she didn't have no idea what to say to the daughter she’d thought dead for almost twenty years.
“I wasn’t scared” Daisy said automatically, bristling, and Natasha felt her lips twitch a little at the gesture.
“Well, I’m sorry anyway, I shouldn’t have reacted like that.”
Daisy shrugged awkwardly “Yeah, well, I’m guessing you thought I was dead. Probably a bit of a shock. I look a lot like my Dad.” She couldn’t stop her voice twisting in bitterness at the last word. Natasha’s eyes flicked up in silent question, but Daisy didn’t reply and silence fell again.
“So umm,” Daisy said, just as Natasha blurted “I’m sorry”.
“What?” they both said, then froze, as if the situation could have gotten awkwarder.
“You first” Daisy said, and Natasha reached up a hand to run her fingers helplessly through her red curls.
“I’m sorry I’m not the Mom you wanted. I’m sorry I don’t know what I’m doing. I thought I could do anything, be anything, but you’re not, you’re not a mark, and I don’t know what to do”
Daisy blinked, and then somehow, miraculously, seemed to relax a little, her rigid posture slackening as she slouched a little on the bed. “Good to know I’m not your target.” she joked “I’m pretty sure I can’t take the Black Widow.”
“You might be surprised” Natasha said “It turns out a big enough shock and a basic leg sweep will land me on my ass.”
Daisy’s face broke into a laugh, and Natasha for a moment felt like her chest would cave in. That was her Pauchok sitting on the bed. Laughing. Alive.
“You’re not doing that badly you know.”
“What?” Nat asked
“At the Mom thing. I mean, my Dad tried to kill me so in comparison...” Daisy trailed off, her tone heavy with implication, but the redhead seemed to miss it completely as she zoned in the first part of that sentence.
“He tried to what????”
“Uhhhhh” Daisy said, realising properly - as the woman in front of her transformed from nervously leaning against the door to balanced on the balls of her feet looking ready to kill someone with her bare hands – just who it was standing in her bunk and the implication of this.
“Where is he?” Natasha demanded, a super-agent demanding intel.
“He’s dead.” Daisy said hastily. “My step-mom killed him.”
Natasha blinked, very slowly relaxing her posture from fight-ready to something vaguely calmer. Her voice sounded more controlled than it felt as she asked “What happened?”
“Didn’t, didn’t Coulson or someone tell you about Afterlife?”
“The inhuman’s place?”
“Yeah”
“I think he left a few bits out”
“oh, what did he say about it?”
“One of your agents got taken down to this weird city, got powers, and got taken to Afterlife, and the inhuman leader used it as a spark to try to start a war with SHIELD, ending in a fight on an old SHIELD boat, the Ilyiad?”
Daisy paused “I think he left more than a few bits out” she said.
Natasha narrowed her eyes, sensing that those bits had to do with her Pauchok. “What’s the whole story?”
Daisy looked at Natasha for a moment, trying to work out where to start, remembering the whole miserable story all over again. Eventually her shoulders slumped “I don’t really want to talk about it. Maybe another time?”
“Of course” Natasha said, aching to reach for the woman on the bed, to pull her into a hug. “Whenever you’re ready. Or never, if you like.” It wasn’t like Natasha couldn’t find out what happened on her own. She was an international super-spy for goodness sake. Not to mention an Avenger.
Her Pauchok gave a wan little smile that made her heart twist in aching pain. “Thanks” Then she shifted slightly, moving up on the bed to make more space, the invitation clear.
Natasha moved closer, feeling a smile tug at the corners of her mouth, and sank onto the bed next to her daughter, turned slightly so she could still face her, some instinct in her gut unwilling to let the girl out of her sight, terrified that she would vanish into nothing.
“Can I ask you something?” Daisy asked.
“Of course, anything” Natasha replied, before immediately regretting it, there were many, many things she didn’t want to talk about with her daughter. The vast majority of her past for instance.
“Umm, how did, how did this happen? I mean, Dad, before he turned out to be nuts, said he only met you twice? How was I, well, ummm how did I end up in Hunan?”
Natasha took a shaky breath. She should have expected Daisy to ask about that. It wasn’t a nice story though, and her gut twisted at the thought of telling her Pauchok how she’d come to be. But the question was fair, and Nat knew she owed Daisy at least an honest answer, no matter how bad it made her look.
“Jia Ying and I, we were never, ummm, we were never in love.” She admitted awkwardly “I never even liked your Dad. The KGB had intel, rumours mostly, about people with strange abilities. I was sent to investigate.”
“He was a mark” Daisy said bluntly, and Natasha nodded, trying desperately to pretend this was just some sort of debrief.
“I did as I was trained, seduced him, slept with him, tried to get him to reveal his secrets, but I couldn’t get anything from him. After a couple of days I was pulled out for another mission. I didn’t realise I was pregnant until three months later. It, it wasn’t supposed to be possible. I was, the red-room, that’s where I was trained, they uhhh, they” Natasha felt like something was blurring her head, messing up her usually confident words. Like a rug had been yanked from under her the moment Daisy walked into the office, and she was still reeling.
“I know” Daisy interrupted, “the red-room sterilise their graduates.”
“Right” Nat said, pushing the question of how Daisy knew from her mind for the moment “and I had graduated, so it wasn’t supposed to be possible, I still don’t know how”
“I think I might” Daisy said an edge of bitterness to her voice “Dad’s power drains life from others. It probably did some weird reverse thing when he had, uhh, actually, I don’t want to think about that.”
Nat chuckled, the rich sound filling the room before she sobered “Jia Ying was inhuman? I guess the rumours were true.” she wondered nervously if it could be passed down, if her Pauchok would develop powers.
“Yeah. Anyway, you were talking about realising you were pregnant?” Daisy said, deflecting the conversation quickly away from her father and the inhumans. The spy had to have noticed the deflection, but she nodded and continued the story anyway.
“When I realised I was pregnant I freaked. I was, I wasn’t in a good place then. I was only a year out of the red-room, and my ledger was already dripping red, but the brainwashing was still strong. And a kid, I knew what they’d do with a kid of mine. I-I panicked, manipulated myself into the longest running mission I could find, taking down an international ring of people buying and selling intel. They’d sold intel from the KGB, and higher-ups wanted them gone. I was given ten months to track down and kill them all. Ten months on my own. I made sure no-one followed me when I left, went from country to country gathering intel to make sure of it. By the time I was showing, I was as much in the wind as I could be while still fulfilling my mission.”
“Why fulfil the mission?” Daisy asked, and Nat wanted to snap at her, to lash out at the question, but instead she forced herself to answer.
“Because I was weak, and I was brainwashed to serve my country, the thought of leaving didn’t enter my mind, the brainwashing was too recent, too strong. All I wanted was something different for my kid. Anyway, if I’d run they’d have hunted me down to the end of the earth. It wasn’t like when Clint turned me, there wasn’t anywhere to go, no other organisation to join, no other options.”
“Oh” said Daisy “I’m sorry.”
Natasha wasn’t sure whether she was apologising for asking, or that it happened or for something else entirely, but she didn’t ask. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
“You were born six months into the mission. I’d stolen and read a book for trainee-midwives. I didn’t dare go to a hospital. You were born in the back room of a safe house. One of the ring tracked me there when labour was just starting, so there was a dead body in the other room when you were born. I cut the cord with a knife and there was blood everywhere. Looking back it’s a miracle you were born alive, never mind healthy. But you were. All wrinkly skin and baby-blue eyes and you were beautiful. It was the first time in my life I realised I could still love someone.” Natasha’s voice shook with emotion as she remembered. Remembered those precious few months she’d had with her baby-girl. But then she remembered what else happened during those months and anger tinged her voice.
“I took you on missions with me. Left you at nurseries or even empty rooms when I went to deal with a mark. I was so weak. So lost in my head, in the red-room’s orders. You could have died so many times. But I couldn’t bear to leave you behind. You were everything light to me. Everything good. I was compromised beyond anything I’d ever known and I knew it, but I didn’t care. I was selfish and compromised and it almost killed you. I was careless one night, found a place to sleep for the night and didn’t bother scouting around. Some scout told my latest mark a strange woman matching the Black Widow’s description had come into town. He came after me with a three mates and enough guns to equip six. You were strapped to my front when they attacked, and a bullet grazed my upper arm. An inch to the right and it would have gone through her head. I killed every last member of the ring in that town and left before the sun rose. Took her to Hunan, told her father and his new wife she was his, and left in the night. It, it was the hardest thing I ever did, but she, she was meant to be safe, I thought she was safe. I-I failed. I failed her, I failed you. I-I”
“Hey, I’m right here” Daisy interjected, “I’m fine. I’m safe.”
Natasha looked up from the floor to find her daughter's blurry face looking straight at her. Startled, she reached a hand up to swipe at her eyes, humiliated to realise she was crying. Daisy was still speaking, her voice soothing.
“It’s ok, I’m ok. It wasn’t your fault. They loved me, I know they did. If it wasn’t for Hydra I’d have grown up adored and totally safe. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Hydra?” Natasha questioned sharply and Daisy froze like a deer in headlights.
“Umm, another day?” she said.
Nat desperately wanted to push it, wanted to know, but she nodded, unwilling to push the shaky trust that was building. However she was absolutely grabbing Phil later and demanding the full story of what the hell had happened.
“Ok” she agreed and then “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have protected you, I should have, I, there must have been a better way, I should never have left you. I love you Pauchok. Please believe me, I never wanted to leave you, I-I” Her words were cut off by sudden warmth as arms wrapped around her, and she almost flipped Daisy before she realised she was being hugged. Without thought she wrapped her arms around her daughter, pulling her close and cradling her, holding her tight in her arms, breathing in the scent of her, the solid, real, living weight of her daughter.
Daisy for her part was reeling, reeling somehow even more than when her SO had told her in blunt words that Natasha Romanoff was her mother. Reeling from the story she’d been told, and reeling more from the way it had been told; wracked with grief and pain and regret. Reeling from three little words spoken with a depth of sincerity her dad hadn’t even touched. And maybe, maybe this was going to be ok. Maybe this could be a good thing after-all. She registered dimly that Natasha had pulled her into her lap and was holding her as if she might never let go. She wondered for an instant how strong the woman was, to have lifted her so easily, then she forgot it in favour of trying to somehow snuggle deeper into the hug.
A knock at the door made her leap a mile, and Bobbi’s voice filtered through “Supper’s in five Daisy, we’re still having a team meal tonight, although May said our guests are coming too if you want to squeal over the Avengers like Fitzsimmons are looking like they might.”
Daisy swallowed hard, then called out in a voice that she hoped sounded normal “Got it, I’ll be out in three.”
Bobbi’s steps moved away from the door, and Daisy slowly, reluctantly pulled out of the embrace, scrubbing a sleeve across her face to clear the dampness from her eyes.
“I guess the rest of your team don’t know then” Natasha said, her voice unreadable.
“May wouldn’t say anything” Daisy said confidently “she’d leave the decision to me. Coulson too.”
Natasha nodded “Then I will too, it’s your choice when or if to tell your team.” Goodness knows she has no idea how or if she’s going to tell the rest of the Avengers.
Daisy nodded “Thanks.” she turned to the door, but then hesitated and turned back “If, uh, if you still want me, maybe, maybe we could get to know each other?”
Natasha felt like her throat was clogged with cement. She wanted to burst out that of course she wanted her, how could she ever think anybody wouldn’t, but all she could choke out was “Thank you”.
By the look on Daisy’s face she got the message. She nodded shakily and left the room quickly, and Natasha forcibly gathered herself and went after her, pulling up a blank mask as she did.