It is very difficult to convey a grimace over text. Laura's husband could do it better than anyone else she knew, possibly due to the immense amount of practise foisted on him by virtue of being the member of the Barton duo with a steady enough legal identity to be a government employee. Or maybe it was his secret mutant superpower, doubtful as the idea was. ‘Seriously?’
‘V sorry will make it up 2u’, she got back. Laura didn't consider herself much a stickler for grammar, given that she - like her husband - had never attended an official school, but it was the principle of the thing. Here she was, making two separate family size nutritionally balanced meals (one spiced appropriately, one for those with a more specialised palate), reduced to using ceramic knives, and he couldn't even type full sentences.
She swished the cubes of meat onto the frying pan with one hand, and used the other to scoop Coop out of the cupboard. She hoisted him high until his legs were solid against the counter. “What did I say about copying your Aunt Kitty?”
“Not in the kitchen,” grumbled Cooper, who was still the colour of the backsplash and was half heartedly attempting to melt away from the lecture. She readjusted her clawed grip on the back of his shirt until the adamantium was directly against his skin, which thoroughly stopped any further attempts at that particular brand of mischief.
“Exactly,” said Laura Barton, who had worn the name X-23 with dubious pride until a better alternative had come along. Given that Howlett hadn't even been Wolverine's legal name, it had seemed simpler to take her husbands than her fathers.
“Now, you fetch your sister without waking Rogue, and there might be some dessert in your future.” She released Coop, and sniffed pointedly until she smelt his retreat and could turn her vision back to dinner.
Her phone buzzed one final time, and she regarded it with a bemused smile: ‘Fury says u need 2 be protected. Avenger protocol. Nothing I can do :(‘
Breaking her own rules - as was her perogative - Laura swiped back one final message as the superheroes descended the stairs: ‘l-o-l’
-
Laura and Clint had come together with brutal efficiency. She liked to think, when she was feeling particularly saccharine, that it didn't matter how they came together.
If she had met the circus in her run towards Logan, he would have welcomed her with distrust, then camaraderie, and then a friendship deeper than blood or wedding rings could ever forge.
If he had found his way to Xavier in his teens, lost but with an ability to aim right on the edge of what unaltered humans were capable of, she would have poked and prodded him until deciding that yes, he would do quite nicely. She had been half feral in those days (as opposed to selectively feral now); it would have taken a long time before she trusted him.
Then, as now, though, the trust would have come - some Danger Room session, some low turned very high stakes mission, and that would have been that. Laura and Clint.
In this life, the decision to leave Laura minding the farm while Clint was a superhero was an easy one. It wasn't down to gender; Laura would win any fight held at range, while Clint was unbeatable at preventing them getting that far. It was simple pragmatism: one of them existed, legally, as far back as anyone would bother to go.
The other- well.
Laura wasn't about to advertise her parentage, so she didn't have the shield of Xaviers to hide behind. She existed - there were several large schools in New York state that would find paper records of Laura Kinney for a semester at a time - but an in-depth background check wouldve found her the most boring being on earth. No extra cirriculars, no fond friends, no doctors visits disguising vacations and certainly no pictures of her youth.
SHIELD, like all that came before them, had seen a pretty white-passing girl with no accent, no visible mutation, and a child on each hip, and decided that Laura Barton was the most boring being on earth.
She liked it that way. It made the weirdly high calibre home gym- the hidden bedrooms filled with mementos waiting for the next time her family could drop in- the basement garage with room for two stealth planes to hide end to end- all so much easier to hide when no one was looking.
On paper, Clint Barton had two children, and Laura Barton had two children and a foster license that she regularly used for short-term placements.
In actual fact, Clint Barton had at least two children, probably more, he hadn't asked his wife recently. Laura Barton had struggled viciously with getting used to children, but had decided that being regarded as safe was an honour she wouldn't take lightly. That gave her two children by virtue of her own dubious genetics, and at any given time at least one or ten that were too young for Xaviers, required something a little calmer than the packed school, or simply needed a resting place that would ask no questions.
Paper recorded both of them to have no family. Paper recorded the security of the farm to be minimal at best, with secrecy its number one asset. Paper lied.
-
Laura had no idea who was working her security, but they sucked.
She was pretty sure the report was going to say the Barton farm was haunted, because Coop had a nasty habit of sneaking up on the agents and moving their things. While he had the advantage of his mutation, he was also nine. He had, after some prompting, left Lila back at the house - while her senses tended more towards Laura's than Coop’s did, she was also four. Laura and Clint had, after much research, concluded that dodging lethal weapons should be left until children were at least seven.
Laura was fairly certain the agents didn't know what they were guarding. SHIELD had liked giving agents missions to keep them on their toes - Laura herself had only been assigned to guard empty buildings twice before she had stormed into Fury’s office, a record low only possible due to her mutation giving her complete certainty of the building being empty. With Lila camping downstairs with Kurt and Coop playing chameleon, only Laura was occupying the visible levels of the farmhouse. The walls were impermeable enough to block heat sensors, the windows all one way glass - this building would register as completely empty to any conventional tests.
If it didn't, well. Laura had been missing an real opportunity to put her claws to use.
-
Fury knew the house was occupied.
Fury was the one to turn up himself, after the after.
He very nearly lost his other eye when Laura, like an avenging angel, waved one of Clint's stupid ceramic knives at his face. “Have you contacted Charles?”
“Are you willing explain to the rest of them why an Avenger has an X-Man as an emergency contact?”
Laura thought furiously. There weren't that many mutants in SHIELD. She could count them on the claws of one hand, one foot after her own retirement. Things were still too dicey. Unlike the FBI, they didn't have a wing prosecuting mutant crimes. Unlike the CIA, they didn't have a unit hiring them either. SHIELD just… was, and mutants just were, and never the twain met
Laura had been the closest thing SHIELD had to a visible mutant, and she was long gone - according to Clint, rumour was Fury had her holed up in Tahiti being experimented on. She couldn't just walk into a SHIELD hospital.
“When's he due for transfer?”
“Laura-”
Her patience broke. Nick had known her for a long time, so he dodged her claws aiming for his guts, but they both knew she had allowed it.
“He needs to be here,” she said. “With family. Mine. Ours.”
-
Fury made no promises.
It is Natasha, in the end, that manages to bring Clint home - after three very long days of Morph sitting beside Clint's bed wearing a variety of faces, six aborted attempts to plan a heist from the most surveilled medical unit in the world, and two very long conversations with Gambit about how well her ID would hold up if she barrelled through Stark Tower like a demon possessed.
Clint Barton was small fry, so there weren't any major protests by the staff when he had been signed out AMA, and no one had alerted SHIELD. Clint Barton was her number one priority, ahead of even Coop and Lila - her upbringing did not lend itself to a great deal of attachment to children, though she was deeply fond of them both - so by the time Natasha presented herself at the door of the farmhouse, Laura Kinney is dressed in tactical gear, Coop and Lila are downstairs in the panic room video calling Hank until someone can make their physical way out to the farmhouse.
It is an understatement to say everyone is a little on edge.
She smells Clint's blood from the basement, okay, it is understandable that she is a little off kilter. If a hostile managed to get this location out of him, it was a worthwhile assumption that they already knew everything worth knowing - Clint was hers and she was his, and they both held up entirely too well to divulge this kind of secret without first being put through the wringer.
Laura has a lot of explanations for why she jumped out the upper floor window and stabbed the Black Widow in the kidney, is her point.
When fondly recalling this story, much later, she will admit to being mildly impressed that Natasha's grip of Clint doesn't falter. It's a negative at the time, of course - remains a negative until she and Clint have gone through their code words, one by one, and she is suddenly aware that she just ripped through an ally like tissue paper.
By the time she offers a blood transfusion, Nat has already stopped bleeding all on her own, though, so Laura is content to let the whole thing become moot.
(Clint isn't. It's part of why she loves him.)
-
Then, of course, he brings the rest of the Avengers home.
She stares at the six of them. Natasha's head is cocked, allowing her to decide how they're going to play this. In some ways, they had very different upbringings; in others, one experiment is much like the other. This is Laura's home turf, and Laura's decision-
Until Lila's hearing, exactly as enhanced as Laura's own, picks up her Daddy's heartbeat, and she drags Coop down the stairs. Small mercies, Coop hasn't yet figured out how to drag a passenger through them.
Lila crashes into her father's knees like an earthquake. Coop is a little more sedate, more watchful. Lila has her mothers senses, while Coop has her personality. Laura studies the strange men in her home, and takes a deep breath. Her senses flood with information - they run the gamut of confused and wary, curious and defensive, exhausted physically and mentally. They are familiar scents, for someone who has been the fallback point of the X-Men as long as she's had a life of her own.
Laura finally lets her eyes drink in Clint, her Clint, safe and in her territory. The choice is easy, then. He can read it off her face. “You take the jet?”
“Parked out front,” said Clint, grinning the wary grin of someone who was realising he was not, in fact, in trouble. “Figured the garage was full.”
“It's about to be. I'm calling my brother to watch the kids.”
“Laura-” She kisses him, full mouth, her favourite way of shutting him up.
“You're lucky he's not already here. What were you thinking?”
Clint mumbles something into her neck, and she takes a deep breath. Natasha is deeply amused, though her face betrays little. The others are starting to feel awkward. Laura knows the feeling intimately; it has been a long time since she interacted with anyone that saw her as housewife first or foremost.
“There's food in the kitchen,” she begins, smiling brightly in a way that Kurt tells her fits a mouth with significantly sharper teeth. She hasn't got the hang of non-threatening much, or at all. “Supersoldier portions are in the freezer with the yellow lid, just heat em up.”
She eyes Bruce for a second. He smells uncomfortable. “If your- greener side needs something special, let me know. The garage has supplies for all sorts - and the chairs are reinforced.”
Bruce rubs the back of his neck. “I don't think your children would appreciate what you're implying, ma'am.”
Laura smiled, but didn't say anything more on the subject. What could she? Lila would probably say that green was lamer than blue - Laura was hoping this was entering an oddly protective phase of her two uncles, and had nothing to do with Mystique, but she wasn't about to ask - and Coop was old enough to have some tact, probably.
She resumed drinking in the picture of her husband. “Give me an hour for Akihiro to arrive,” she said into his shoulder, “and we can leave. It'll give everyone enough time to eat.”
Clint groaned, but she was steadfast. “Whatever you're dealing with, it's bad enough you didn't give me time to clear the garage.”
At this point, Tony Stark's irritation finally exclipsed his curiousity. “This is a little bigger than one garage, lady.”
Laura hummed, in the back of her throat, a noise that human throats were not fully equipped to make. “Do you two trust them?”
Natasha's brow creased. “Laura, you don't have to-”
“Yes,” said Clint. They had, years ago, agreed to be one soul, two bodies. She trusted him with her family, her bed, her mind. She trusted her husband with this.
Laura turned to the supersoldier, who reeked of longing, and inclined her head. “Cap. You fought with a man named James Howlett in 1944.”
“I fought with a lot of men in 1944,” said Steve, slowly. He knew who she meant, though - even without her nose, the sudden sharpness to his gaze would have given him away.
Laura watched, for the first time in years, her claws come out, shining adamantium’s dull silver under the soft lights. “I think you'll find my father was quite memorable.”
-
Deleted scene, another version of avengers:
Lila had produced a fully packed travel bag - Laura had a sneaking suspicion she was going to turn out prescient, which was not an ability she was looking forward to parenting - and Coop was, she could smell, hiding under the stairs. “Will security be on site, or are we being relocated?”
Fury blinked. Or winked. Laura didn't think the distinction was important, here. It smelt of surprise, which appeared more in line with a blink, but aside from telepaths and time travellers, you never knew. “You are being awfully calm about this, Mrs Barton.”
“Clint's an Avenger now,” she said. “That means security. I dont have to like it-”
She stopped. The acrid smell of unease was filling the air. Fury's face hadn't moved, but the smell told her something was wrong. “Something has changed?”
“There is- mind control at play. Your husband has been taken.”
“Taken,” says Laura. She holds her hands very still, one wrist gripping the other, as though will alone is all preventing her claws from sliding out and making this mess so much bigger than it has to be.
“Taken,” confirms Fury, “but there are agents en route to free him. I stopped by on my way-”
Laura closed her eyes. “I'm going, if i have to steal a quinjet to do it.”
Fury baulked. “Those are valuable resources-”
“I can't go through airport security.”
“Have something to hide?"
“Metal detectors,” she said simply, rubbing the area over her heart. It was easier to let people make their own assumptions; indeed, Fury did so immediately.
“Lila can't either,” she adds. “Coop is okay, when he's behaving.”
“Genetic thing?”
“My father had the same problem all his life,” she said, neglecting to think about the not inconsiderable portion of Logan's life that had occurred before the invention of the metal detector.
Fury rolled his good eye. "I hope you're prepared to meet the Avengers, Mrs Barton."
Laura smiled, a predatory thing, one designed for a mouth with many more teeth than lived in her face. She didn't resemble her father very much, unless she smiled. "I hope they're ready to meet me, Mister Fury."