Natasha Makes a Huge Revelation
Once inside the Hydra base, located in an isolated part of Ukraine, Steve Roger's mind acted on autopilot as he kicked and punched his way through the sterile white halls, dodging the stray bullet some security guards managed to fire.
The people attacking him were either lowly trained security guards or just scientists seeing no way out, so Steve fought through the east wing of the base in almost record time.
It had been about 6 months since the disastrous fight in Siberia, where Steve had dropped the weapon he had come to rely on. Fighting without the iconic Shield hadn't been as easy, but with Natasha's training, Steve did a pretty stand up job without it. Of course it didn't hurt that there was a cohesive team to back him up.
While Bucky had stayed in Wakanda, with hopes of fixing his mind, and Scott and Clint had both decided to turn themselves in, wanting to see their families, Steve, Natasha, Sam, and Wanda, tired of not doing anything in the Wakandan palace, took it upon themselves to fight international terrorists that the UN didn't permit the legal Avengers to fight under the accords.
Not that the legal Avengers were active, as far as Steve knew from what his team watched TV when at one of Nat's many safe houses. Tony, like after the Ultron incident, was all but retired from Iron Man unless an emergency popped up.
He instead focused most of his energy on trying to repeal the accords, helping Scott and Clint gain house arrests instead of time in prison.
While Steve disagreed with Tony before, he felt guilty about the whole Bucky situation and harbored no ill feelings to the man who was just trying to do what he thought was right. He hoped that someday Tony and him would regain the friendship that they had before the airport fight.
King T'Challa, another person Steve felt immense gratitude towards, was busy ruling over Wakanda in the wake of his father's death. Vision was, well Steve didn't rightly know what Vision was doing after what the TV dubbed the civil war happened. He assumed the android, who was by far the most intelligent person Steve had ever met, was in the now almost empty Avenger's compound.
Colonel Rhodes, or Rhodey as Tony called the distinguished colonel, surprisingly kept in touch with Sam. Much to Steve's delight and a little embarrassment, the two seemed better at staying friends than Tony and him did.
The one person on Tony's team who seemed to be busier than ever was Queens, or who Steve learned from Natasha was called Spider-Man. Despite the weird name, Steve respected the kid and his obvious desire to do good in the world.
Ever since Spider-Man fought some villain called the vulture, who was dead set on stealing the Avenger’s old tech, the American news that Sam liked to play on his device wouldn't keep quiet about the super hero's antics.
Some were negative towards the kid, but from what Steve gathered, he focused on stopping common muggings, incidents that fell under the Avenger's radar. Steve thought that was a great idea, for even though Spider-Man packed a strong punch, probably even stronger than Steve assuming the kid was holding back, he, like most army recruits in their early 20's, lacked proper experience.
Either way, with all of the bad Steve had experienced in this alien decade, he was glad there were people out there who were trying to bring some good into the world, or at least prevent some of the bad.
Sam's voice pulled Steve out of his thoughts, "You cleared the East Wing Cap?"
"Almost Sam," A guy in a lab coat charged towards Steve. He kicked the scientist just hard enough to knock him out, "Now it's cleared."
"Great, well I've just disabled all of the self destruct bombs attached to this place with red wing," Sam's voice became clearer as he flew towards the building Steve had just cleared.
"Nat, have you and Wanda taken out all hostiles in the West wing?" Steve asked through the comms.
"Sort of in a situation right now," Natasha grunted as if she was carrying something heavy, "A little help here Wanda?" Steve heard the distinctive sound of Wanda's magic as Nat said, "Thanks!"
Wanda connected her comms, "I think there are children here, I can feel their presence," She sounded a little spooked so Steve clenched his jaw and said, "Let's all meet up in the West Wing."
"Copy that Cap!" Sam said before silence reigned on the comms.
Steve hastened towards the stairs leading down to the basements, enabling him to travel to the west wing building. Sometimes he reconsidered allowing Wanda to go on these missions. She was still relatively young and wasn't entirely confident in her powers yet, especially since Lagos.
Nevertheless, she had wanted to join the team and Nat had told Cap that practicing her powers in isolated Hydra bases, the kind they were taking down now that the government breathing down their necks, was the perfect opportunity for her.
Steve noticed Wanda looked a little depressed from time to time. Every time Vision was mentioned within the group, she would look down, obscuring her expression. Steve sometimes thought that it was a mistake for him to ask Clint to break her out of the compound.
Wanda seemed to have a comradery with Nat, but Steve knew that she longed to spend some time with the android who had spent so much time watching old sitcoms with her when she was grieving her brother.
With that thought in mind, Steve walked up the stairs towards the floor where he could hear Wanda, Nat, and Sam's muffled conversation from his super hearing. When he opened the door, three heads turned to him. Natasha spoke up, "Steve, I don't think it's a great idea to retrieve the kids."
Wanda continued, "I don't know where they are, but I know that they are somewhere in this building, and that there are a lot of them."
Steve nodded his head, "Nat, do you still have that protected phone on you?" Nat nodded her head, "Make an anonymous call to the Ukrainian authorities. Make sure they know that there are people in here."
Nat pulled out the phone hidden in her black widow suit and started speaking Ukrainian. Steve turned to Wanda and Sam, "Good job today, both of you. We'll head to the quinjet after Nat makes the call."
"What safe house are we going to next?" Sam suddenly let out a smile, "Are we going to that one in Florida again, next to the resort. Cause it's been cold lately."
"Well it depends on what Hydra base or organization this place built their research off of."
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Two hours later found the group flying over Italy. The quinjet was cloaked using Stark technology and self driving, so none of the four Avengers had their hands full. Sam was playing an online poker game, which he was losing, causing him to mumble curses under his breath which Steve pretended not to hear.
Steve was reading Harry Potter, a modern book that everyone raved about, telling him it was must read. He couldn't really relate to any of the teenage antics, but the book was alright.
Wanda sat on the comfy chair, blaring modern family throughout the quinjet. So far she was on season 5, which wasn't as enjoyable as season 4 because Vision wasn't there to ask her questions and make statements that seemed too human for an android to make. Still, Wanda continued watching in hopes of rekindling the feeling she felt when first viewing the show with the only alive person who understood her.
Natasha, the only person accomplishing something while in the air, was scrolling through all of the photocopies she had made of the files gathered in the base. From years of experience, Natasha knew that most human experimentation rings were based off of another human experimentation ring's research. That's why she found it important to look through all of these files, the rogue Avengers might find another base to take down.
Unfortunately, or actually fortunately, most of the data was from Hydra bases Steve, Sam, Wanda, and her had already taken down and blown up. Still she scrolled through it, not even batting an eyelash at data and details that would make most people feel sick to their stomach.
Having seen and lived through these experiments from a very young age, they didn't have any effect on her, except to make her more determined to beat up the sickos who could live with themselves after committing these horrible atrocities.
She reached a file towards the end of all of the data she had collected from the Ukrainian base. So far, Natasha hadn't found any information on a possible new mission the rogue Avengers and her could complete, so she hoped that this file would at least be interesting. Her wish was granted when she zoomed in on her stark pad screen, credited with blowing up the base, was her sister, Maria Romanov.
Back in 2014, when surveying all of the Hydra files she had dumped on the internet, Natasha had found out the unsurprising fact that she had a sister. Nat knew little about her past, besides the red room of course, so she was happy that she had a living relative out there. Her happiness quickly diminished when it became apparent that her sister and husband, a fellow shield agent, had been murdered by the fist of Hydra.
She hadn't known how to properly grieve someone she never met, so Natasha ended up going to Maria's safe house, which she had found by hacking her old computer. She collected all of Maria's covers, fake identities, and placed them in her own safe house.
After that, life picked up for Natasha, so she didn't have time to dwell on her sister's death. The former assassin turned Avenger never really focused her thoughts on the sister she had never known she had for so long unless she came upon her name on a file, like she did now.
Instead of simply skimming the file for new information, Natasha looked at it in detail. Ends up the base that her sister blew up focused on breeding the perfect human soldier. They focused on making test tube babies through mixing different human DNA together, Ensuring the baby grew up to be as strong and smart as possible in order to replace the Winter Soldier some day.
Natasha almost broke out of the focused expression facade she put on when she realized what, or whose DNA the Hydra scientists were using to breed the babies. If Natasha hadn't been trained to hide her emotions from a young age, she would have glanced at Steve, who was reading Harry Potter and smiling like an idiot, with a horrified and sympathetic expression.
Instead she kept herself neutral. Steve definitely didn't need to know about this, especially with all of the tragedies he had to deal with ever since he got out of the ice. Natasha was even more shocked when she read whose DNA the scientists mixed with Steve's. She almost had to hold in a laugh. Natasha had always thought that Steve and Tony bickered like an old married couple, but this was just... She didn't have words.
Because of her morbid curiosity, Natasha surveyed the details on all of the babies the scientist's had attempted to make mixing her two friend's DNA. From what she read, she learned that only one baby survived, called number 16.
Despite what most people thought, Natasha wasn't a robot and she loved kids, so her heart dropped when she saw the cute little kid on the front page of his sub file, with a cute button nose and Tony's intelligent eyes.
Natasha wondered what Tony and Steve's lives would be like if that kid had somehow survived, fallen into shield hands. Would Hydra whisk him back up again? Natasha wondered if, once Steve was discovered, would he raise the kid with Tony? Would Shield even trust Tony, a playboy back in 2001, to raise his own child? Knowing Nick, probably not.
Before she could go full into what if mode, Natasha stopped herself. She didn't like dwelling on the past, preferring to focus on the present or completing a task at hand. Of course, ever since the Avengers broke up, Natasha imagined a future where she had her family back, but unless Steve and Tony stopped being stubborn idiots, that seemed impossible.
'If the kid was still alive, and Steve and Tony had to raise him like two suburban dad,' Natasha laughed at the thought of Tony telling the son he would never have dad jokes and Steve teaching him how to fight off bullies, 'Would that force them to finally kiss and make up?'
That thought was all it took for Natasha's brain to think of a very unlikely possibility. She closed her Stark Pad, files completely forgotten, and rushed to the hidden closet in the quinjet where she stored all of her important things.
Sam, Steve, and Wanda looked at her curiously as she ran past then went back to what they were doing. Natasha didn't know much about her sister, but she did know that she was a decent person. Natasha knew that any decent person, if they saw a baby in a Hydra base, would make sure they were taken care of.
She grabbed the box filled with Maria's covers hidden on the left corner on the top shelf. Grabbing them, Natasha ran back to where she was seated prior. "What are you doing?" Sam asked, sauntering over to her.
"Just looking over these files," Natasha answered, she didn't want anyone to know of this theory she had in case it was proven false, "We're probably going to take a break from destroying these bases for a while."
"Sounds good to me," Sam continued past her to the mini fridge in order to grab a neapolitan ice cream sandwich.
Natasha's plan was simple. Look up her sister's covers. If one of her covers had a son who matched Steve and Tony's son's description, brown eyed and born in 2001, Natasha would assume that that boy was her friend's son. She knew that Maria couldn't have a biological child, like everyone in the red room, so this was a fair assumption.
Natasha also knew that if she found a kid and connected with said kid, she would probably find a cover and try to raise him. Maria and her husband, Richard Parker, stopped working at Shield shortly after they blew up the base, so Natasha's theory was starting to make more and more sense.
She looked through all of her covers, most iterations of the name Mary, Marta, and Margaret followed by a last name similar to Romanov. One of her cover's last names was Rushman, which Natasha found to be ironic. All of these covers though, were ultimately single and had no kids. There were no family members attached to these covers either.
As Natasha reached the end, finding no kid who could possibly be related to her friend's, Steve walked up to her, "Doing all right Romanoff?"
Natasha sighed, "Yes," She paused for a split second, "You can change the quinjet to go to our safe house in Florida. There aren't any Hydra bases I can find in these files to take down."
Steve nodded, "Can't say I'm not relieved. I think we all need a break." Before he walked away, Steve said, "If you need me I'll be in the cockpit."
Natasha stared at Steve's dorito-like figure as he retreated to the cockpit. She wondered if it would be a good idea to tell him about the son he never had. Considering that that son had died at 9 months old, Natasha figured that the best course of action was not to.
She would purge the file from her hard drive in the next minute anyway. Not that Steve would ever find it, but Tony might and Natasha knew that he was not in the emotional state to learn what was on that file.
Before Natasha could delete the file, a thought suddenly struck her mind. She hadn't looked through all of Maria's covers. She had only looked through the ones that Maria had before she met Richard.
Natasha looked up Richard Parker on the database she had created. Sure enough, his spouse was listed as Mary Parker, which Natasha knew was Maria. To her shock, also listed in Richard Parker's bio was his son, Peter Parker, a brown eyed 15 year old born on August 10th 2001.
Natasha stared at the scrawny kid's freshmen yearbook photo, his hair and eyes from Tony and face shape from Steve, with one question on her mind. How was she going to tell his fathers?