storytime
2038
“Grandma?” A tiny voice squeaks out from behind her.
“Yes, Olivia?” She replies, while trying to keep focus on putting the same amount of batter into each section of the cupcake tray.
“Why do you have that big thing on your leg?” Her granddaughter quizzes.
“What, lovebug? What thing?” She abandons the measuring cup for a moment so she can turn her leg and look clearly at what Olivia seems to be enamoured by now.
Shit.
Curse family pictures for making her wear a dress. Curse the family dinners that follow that everyone stays looking nice for. Curse grandkids and their adorable, prying minds.
Of course, Olivia was pointing to the large, rugged scar spanning almost the entire back of her leg; mid-thigh all the way to the ankle.
Shit.
It’s not that she’d managed to keep this particular scar hidden- with it being so prominent and all- from the rest of her grandkids or even her kids, per se, she’d just managed to avoid the discussion about this one. Olivia just happened to be the most inquisitive of any of them, always poking and prodding and then asking about the multitude of scars that covered the majority of her grandma’s body- wanting to hear the stories of how her grandparents used to be heroes. Ha.
… she had gotten out of telling the story to everyone else who asked, mayb-
“Yeah, you never told us about that one? What’s up with that! You love telling your stories from back in the day. Spill, ma.” Reagan, her youngest (and nosiest) daughter chimes in, with a tone just as curious.
She lets out a sigh as she turns back to fill the last two empty spaces in the tin, “Girls, it’s a long story. Maybe another time. Everyone will be here soon and we still have to finish up.” A little voice in her head starts praying to anyone and anything out there that may be listening that maybe, just maybe, she’d get lucky and these two would let it go.
Reagan cut in before she could finish her wishing, “Ha! Please mom, you know Thea will inevitably drag her family in about an hour late because they always end up forgetting at least one kid whenever they try to go anywhere. We’ve got at least two hours and you’ve already stress-cooked and stress-cleaned all morning, so the food is taken care of. We have time.”
“Sweetheart, you know I love telling you about our little adventures,” She didn’t. She hated having to lie about the past, especially to her own family. Hated the guilty look in her husband’s eyes every time she had to make up something fake about a mark on her skin that never healed properly. “But, when I say long story, I mean long. Maybe another time.” She closes the oven door with finality- the tin and batter safely tucked away in the warmth before setting her timer to twenty minutes. When she turns to face the girls at the table, she’s greeted with two pairs of the biggest puppy-dog eyes that she swears would make even the Grinch’s heart melt. There is zero way she’s getting out of this.
“Fine! Fine. Just, stop looking at me like that. Please.” The faces watching her so intently changed from pleading to glowing with delight in a split second. She throws her hands up in defeat, quickly untying her apron and placing it on the hook tucked away next to the stove, then crosses the short distance to sit in front of the interrogators at the kitchen table.
Storytime. Okay. She can do this, right?
Storytime, but her husband wasn’t here for support, great. Of course he had to run out and grab more charcoal for the grill at what now seems to be the most inopportune moment. In all fairness, he probably wouldn’t want to be here when she told the real story anyway. Wouldn’t want to see the shocked eyes shifting between the two of them when things they had both worked so hard to get through together were brought back up. Because Reagan and Thea knew, but they didn’t know about their dad. Nobody did unless they’d been there to witness it. Witness him. The pair didn’t want their daughters finding out in any way that wasn’t directly from them, so they’d kept the girls sheltered; used their government resources to filter the media or news to hide everything with either of their names, watched choices of words when taking work phone calls, lied about photos on the mantle, avoided conversations with the girls about how they’d met Auntie Nat and Uncle Steve, made up stories about how scars came to be.
What about Thea, though? Should she wait until they all get here? No, no, that’s too many expectant eyes. One at a time. Was Olivia even old enough to be hearing about this kind of stuff? Eight is old enough, right? Maybe she should just lie. She hasn’t started saying anything yet, so it’s not too late to come up with something. What if she jus-
“Mom? Where’d you go? Story?”
Story, okay.
She took a deep breath, because holy shit she’s really gonna do this right now, and took the step off the deep end. “Sorry, got a little lost there for a second. Well, girls. Your dad- your grandpa- and I, were never exactly in the military like we’ve always said. We did work for a couple government agencies, though.”
Pausing, she fished something out of one of her pockets, a small ID card that she still carried on her every day, even though she doesn’t really have any use for it now. The ink has rubbed off in a few places, and there’s a tiny crack in the upper corner, but she still likes to keep it close.
“SHIELD” is written at the top in bold lettering. Below that is her clearance level, then office number. Next is her photo. Followed by;
LOUISE BARNES
SPECIAL OPERATIONS
LEAD, HYDRA TASK FORCE
Louise passes the card to her daughter to look over, and watches the wheels begin to turn in Reagan’s mind. She looks between the card and her mom what seems like a million times before sputtering out, “Wait. Wait, SHIELD? As in, the government agency that works with the superheroes. The one that Uncle Steve used to work with? That SHIELD? And HYDRA as in, the crazy organization that… the Avengers took down when Thea and I were kids?”
“Those are the ones, honey.”
“I’m sorry, mom, what?”
“Yep, that’s them.”