We've done it now.
“You want me to do what?” Clint couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, maybe his hearing aid was malfunctioning?
“You heard me.”
“No, no I don’t think I did.”
“I can’t find anything about her, Clint, it’s like she disappeared into thin air the night Lily and James died. There is no internet presents, no school records, no address, they didn’t mention anything in the article about their deaths and I haven’t found any social services reports either. She’s a ghost, and if there is anything shield is good at, it’s finding ghosts.”
“So you want me to scour the paper files…”
“I’ve already gone through the entire digital database but there is no way Fury is going to let me near the paper files.” Tony reasoned, rightfully so. Fury was still pissed that he’d hacked shield’s servers the first time.
“You do know how many of those we have right?”
“There is probably a filing system in place.”
“There is but I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“Clint, you know I wouldn’t ask if I had another option.” Even an idiot could see the truth of that. Tony didn’t like having to rely on others for anything, much less something as important as his daughter.
“You owe me.”
“Whatever you want Clint. Thank you.” The censarity in his voice wouldn’t have been overlooked by someone without a brain. Hence the reason Clint was making his way into one of the many, many, file rooms at Shield headquarters. He hated paperwork with a passion, always had, and the hundred or so five story file cabinets he was looking at weren’t improving his mood any. Stark better be damn grateful when this was all over and done with. He was here, specifically in this file room, because this was the one with the P, Q and R files. If Miss Tony junior had a file about her as a person, it would be with the P as her given birth name was Potter. He’d already visited two others before then, checking Stark’s file to see if Shield knew he had a daughter, searching for Lily Evans which came up completely empty, he’d even checked to see if her death had been flagged as suspicious. Nothing, nada, nope, not a thing.
“P… Pe… Ph… I need Po… There you are.” He found Pot and pulled open a drawer filled with at least fifty files for him to rifle through, there were four more draws after this one.
“You’re not going to find her there Barton.” His head snapped up upon hearing the cold low tones of the director of shield. He turned, hands still between the files.
“So where will I?” The one-eyed man held up a thick file with ‘Potter, H’ written on the front and a ‘confidential’ stamp across it.
“How about we first have a little chat about why you want it.” This was clearly not a good day for the archer.
“Stark, you’ve done it now.” The entire team had been called to a conference room in Shield headquarters and those were the words Fury entered with. He was followed on the heel by Clint who took a quick seat next to Natasha, he had an anxious look, worried, maybe even a little fearful. Tony didn’t like that look, more so because of what he’d asked the archer to do and the look was being directed at him.
“If this is about hacking in again…”
“This is about your daughter, Stark. And the kind of danger you could be putting yourself and her into with your actions.” Tony shot a betrayed look at Clint before looking back at Fury.
“You know where she is?”
“I know a whole lot more than that and for good reason. Stark, I’ve said this to you before and I meant it then, even more so now. You’re about to become part of a bigger universe.”
“Lily wasn’t an alien was she?”
“O she was human alright, as human as you and I at least. She was also part of a secret society of people with power far beyond what we normal people can dream about. Power Hariana Potter inherited and far surpassed the standard for. Your daughter Stark, is the most powerful witch this world has ever seen.” The paper file Clint spent most of his day looking for was put on to a screen on the table and projected on to the wall. The picture included was of a teenager, fifteen, sixteen maybe? She looked far too thin, bruises under her eyes from countless sleepless nights, her lip was split as was her eyebrow and the right half of her face was swollen and bruised. The photo was taken from a distance, without her knowledge and the rest of her rather small frame was covered up with clothes, with the exception of bruised and broken knuckles. Even with all the injuries though, she looked a lot like Tony. Dark messy hair, straightened out a little bit due to the length but still, messy. Same complexion, same nose, if a bit smaller, as the genius and their ears were the same as well, her eyes, while most definitely her mothers emerald green color, had that same intelligent gleam and sadly, the same haunted deep quality to them that Tony had these days.
“This was Potter just after the secret community in the UK finished their war, about three years ago. She was almost single handedly responsible for ending that war, not that she’d agree with anybody who said as much. Intelligence suggests that she is barely aware of her power but just because she doesn’t see it doesn’t mean nobody else does. There have been seven separate attempts on her life before the war, from supposed allies as well as from the clear enemy. Over a dozen attempts after.”
“So where is she now?”
“The last time anybody knew her exact location was two years ago, when she was drawn out of hiding when Barnes was sent after her.”
“What?” Instead of answering, Fury pulled a thumbdrive from his pocket and put it into the table. A holographic screen came to life in the middle of the table, giving everybody a view of the suburban street where the winter soldier and Hariana were fighting. She knew how to handle herself even without magic it seemed, she could keep up with Barnes.
“My contact in the magical world tells me there were people calling for your head, you attacked their equivalent of royalty. She prevented that, two weeks later you were found with your memories intact and the last confirmed sighting we have of her was around that same time, on a flight to south africa. This attack made her aware that it wasn’t only magicals coming after her, she has more enemies than she’s aware of. Since then we’ve only had presumed sightings, hearsay, unclear photos or rumors from the magical community.”
“Not an answer.”
“Stark, I’m trying to help you, more importantly I’m trying to help her. Putting her in the limelight by bringing her here, it’s not going to pack out well for anybody. Not only will it bring enemies from around the world to your doorstep but you will not make her any happier with it.”
“How the hell would you know?”
“My contact knew her personally. She hated the spotlight from the moment she was put into it.”
“Yeah well, forgive me for not taking your word for it Mr. Superspy.”
“Why is it people always hide in these kinds of places?” Sam asked. They were in Madagascar, Taolagnaro to be exact, and they were clearly in the less well off part of the city, if this even still qualified as the city. If it did it was definitely the outskirts of it.
“Spoken like a man who’s never had to hide.” Bucky sounded vaguely amused over the combs. He’d been hiding out in buildings and places such as this back when he had been under hydra’s control and escaped for a while. They always got to him again, until they sent him after Hariana apparently. They had taken up various positions around this part of town, not to surveil Hariana, no, they were surveilling the team that was following Hariana. They’d managed to track the girl down using Shield, satellites, contacts in the wizarding world and even some information from a recently raided Hydra base. It wasn’t easy and it had taken over a month, but they’d tracked her eventually. She seemed to be jumping all over the world, either aware of her tail and trying to shake it, or just paranoid from past experience. They’d first found her in Shanghai where she’d disappeared before they could approach, then they’d followed her to France and then Egypt, it was only in Egypt that they found out about the other group that was following her. From Egypt they went to Romania and that was followed by Indonesia and Japan. They’d made a pitstop in Brazil and stayed a few days in Venezuela before eventually landing them there, on this island off the African coast on the outskirts of the city.
“Boy’s behave.” Natasha’s voice was as much teasing as annoyance. Sam and Bucky were nearly always arguing. They were never serious about it obviously, they liked each other well enough and could get along fairly well but they were just always arguing.
“How’s Harry?” Tony asked, now that Natasha was back on coms, she’d gone off for a while to infiltrate.
“She’s fine Tony, Take a breath. She should go on break soon and then you can come in here if those guys don’t make any sudden movements.” Clint answered for her. The two of them had the better part of this job, they were sitting in a small restaurant where Hariana was currently working under the false name Joelle Summer. Those guys making a sudden move had been the reason they couldn’t approach in Japan and Venezuela, the two other places where they’d been this close.
“Target down.” Came Buckly a moment later, he’d been tasked with knocking out one of the men who were watching her at the restaurant.
“Same here.” Steve sounded over the coms. It took another half an hour for Hariana to go on break, nothing changed with the other group so finally, finally, Tony was trying not to appear like a nervous wreck when he entered the little restaurant. The bell above the door announced his entrance and an older woman smiled his way before she went out to deliver someone’s food. He didn’t see Harry at any of the tables or behind the counter. A look in Clint and Natasha’s direction had them giving a vague gesture towards the backdoor, he tried not to be too obvious in going there. Tony honestly kind of expected her to be sitting there, taking a moment of rest, drinking some coffee and scrolling through her phone line people tended to do on breaks. Instead he stepped out into a dirty alleyway that was absolutely deserted. No sign of her, no sign of anybody having been there in a long time.
“She’s gone.” Tony groaned out, they’d missed her again, no doubt she’d disappear completely, trotting over to another continent and they wouldn’t be able to find her for a week, again.
“Why are you following me?” A different voice sounded over the coms, it was softer, not spoken directly into it but rather nearby. It had them all perking up until they heard Bucky’s voice.
“If you take the knife from my throat, I’ll tell you whatever you want.” Evidently she did so even if it took a moment because a moment later they heard him talk again, his tone remained calm throughout.
Bucky looked at the girl as she came into his field of vision, she’d managed to sneak up on him from behind, something nobody had managed ever since the serum. The knife stayed in her hand, a wand in the other and both were aimed his way. Despite the situation, and despite who he knew she was, a few stray thoughts of his went towards her appearance. Surely he had seen her before without the bruises, he’d faught her after all and she had, presumably, fixed his head, but he didn’t remember either of those times. Seeing her now was like for the first time and he couldn’t help but think she looked really beautiful, she’d looked beautiful in the picture Fury had, but now she was even more so.
“I’m here with some friends of mine, we’ve been looking for you.”
“I noticed that, why do you think I’m here. If I’d wanted to talk to your friends I would have sat down at their table. You’ve been on my tail since Shanghai, why?”
“You don’t say shit Barnes, I’m on my way.” Tony sounded in his ear, he couldn’t exactly stay quiet though, given the serious looking and very much so dangerous woman in front of him.
“We aren’t the only ones.”
“But you’re more capable than the idiots two blocks north from here.”
“They’ve been with you for a while.”
“And guess who led them to me?”
“You think we’re responsible for that?”
“They showed up two city’s after you started trailing me, I know I didn’t make a mistake, so you must have. Now, if you could kindly stop stalling and tell me what it is you want.” He blinked, eyes dropping to the wand aimed at him, he knew he was fast but he couldn’t outmaneuver a curse and he’d been beaten by this woman before.
“A friend wants to talk to you.”
“And if I don’t want to talk to your friend?”
“I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say, but none of us will make you stay, even if we could.” Her eyes were firm and cold, she lowered the knife and put it away but her wand stayed pointed at his chest.
“You were a lot easier to be around when you had no clue what was going on.”
“So you did fix my head.”
“I undid what others of my kind should never have done to you.” She leaned slightly to the left, looking towards the entryway to the alley they were currently in, he could hear hurried footfalls on the road, the others were getting closer. When emerald eyes met icy blue again something had clearly shifted.
“I’m sorry.”
“What…” His sentence was cut off due to his own yelp when some unseen force, magic, flung him backwards and lifted him up by his ankle before he could hit the ground. He ended up hanging upside down in the alleyway and Hariana was moving very quickly towards the other end. Sadly for her, not so much for Bucky, she was cut off before she could make it out, Natasha, Clint and Steve appeared on that side at the same time Tony and Loki got to the other side, the others having been left behind to keep watch over the other group that had been stalking her. At least he could be thankful that Sam wasn’t here, the man would probably have laughed his ass off and taken a picture.
“Nicely done buck.” They weren’t as bad as Sam would have been, but they all had grins or smiles as they saw him hanging upside down like he was.
“What can I say, I’m an overachiever.” He shrugged his shoulders best he could even as Hariane was slowly backing up, away from the group of three she’d been fairly close to.
“We don’t want to harm you miss, just talk.”
“You’ve traveled far for a talk, further than most people would.”
“I’m not most people.” That was Stark, Hariana barely shot a look over her shoulder but focused back on the three in front of her, like she knew them to be the bigger threat in close quarters.
“Most geniuses aren't.” Her tone was steel and in the next second her wand was back in her hand, it slashed through the air and behind it a trail of bright blue flames formed, cutting off the alleyway between herself and the trio as well as cutting off Tony and Loki on the other side.
“If you cross it, and your intentions are anything but pure, you die. If I have anything to fear from you, you die. Don’t test my magic, I haven’t failed a spell since I was eleven.”
“We truly don’t mean you any harm…”
“And there is a way to prove it, risk it on your own life.” Steve got that determined look in his eye, that look Bucky had seen a thousand times before and had never really liked.
“Steve..” Too late, the blond was handing off his shield to Clint and stepped into and then through the blue flames, on her other side, Tony made the exact same move. She looked at both of them with narrowed eyes.
“Twenty minutes, four blocks south of here, there is a park, sit at the most northern bench you can find. Just one of you, if I sense anybody else I'm gone.” Twisting on her heel, she disappeared with a sound that resembled a gunshot, the blue flames completely died out and Bucky was carefully lowered to the ground.