Legendary

When I woke up, I was nauseated, which puzzled me because I hadn't been having morning sickness. But then I was slapped into greater awareness and I remembered the brief bit of alley and I was not happy. I looked around; I was in an empty room, there was a slight fuzzing to my vision which, with the nausea, indicated a concussion, and I seemed to be tied to a chair. I focused on the slapper. Nico Constantin, Aslyn's old flame.

"What's going on here, Nico?" I asked in a hard voice

The look he gave me was not friendly, and there was nothing about the gregarious nice guy Aslyn thought she'd dated. "Nothing to do with you," he said shortly. His accent was no longer faintly Turkish, but heavily Russian. Shit.

"So I suppose you're not a bodyguard," I said. He snorted.

"Hardly. No, I have my own interests to look after. Some scores to settle."

"So Aslyn was simply a means to an end."

"She's a nice woman, much more adventurous than I'd thought, so our time together was fun. But she was mainly a source of information." He held up my switchblade. "For example, she mentioned once that you're always armed. It puzzles her why you do this, the great battle is over. She thinks you're paranoid, that perhaps you need more therapy." I rolled my eyes. I was going to have to give Aslyn another talking to about discretion. For heavens' sake, she was a lawyer, she ought to understand the concept.

"So you're after Bucky." His eyes widened for a split second before he got control over his expression. "What did he do to you?"

"In the end, it's less about what the asset did and more about who wants him back." For the first time I felt a cold stab of fear.

"HYDRA's back?" I asked, and he grinned.

"HYDRA never went away," he said dismissively. "They want their assets back, they have better ways of controlling them these days. And the first one one they want is the Winter Soldier." He cursed, briefly but heartfelt. Thanks to the All Speech I'd been granted, I understood the Russian words for bastard. With variations. "His conditioning made him follow orders, which he did, but only as far as the orders specifically stated. 'Take out the target.' The asset would shoot them. There was never any embellishment, a message for others, unless his handlers specifically included that instruction. He never took pride in his work, always fought his conditioning. Because of that he provided a bad example to those of us in allied programs. The women were more compliant, they had been brought up in the system from an early age and their loyalty was easy to secure. They endured everything, even the special training, for what they thought was for the benefit of the fatherland." He growled. "I simply wanted to show that my training was superior, that the same results could be obtained with loyalty rather than brainwashing and control, but they said I couldn't be controlled, that I was unreliable." He started to pace. "I ended up in the gulag, my abilities and drive wasted, until I died. But they've given me a second chance. I just know that if I do things differently, they will see the strength, the truth of my arguments."

"So I'm the bait to bring Bucky to you."

"Of course. It's well known, and confirmed by your friend Aslyn, how close you are to your uncle. The one person he would drop everything for, no risk is too great." I felt frozen with fear. I was pretty sure Bucky didn't know that HYDRA was out again, let alone that they wanted him back, because he would have warned me. I hoped that Nico didn't know I was pregnant; the information might deter others, but Nico would use it. I forced myself to calm down enough to process information as he chatted at me, talking about the new HYDRA. What I could see of the room without being obvious was that it was a large room, empty except for use and the chair. The drywall was up and waiting for coats of primer and paint, so either a new building or one that was in the late stage of a rehab. It wasn't one of Valkyrie's projects, we didn't have anything at this stage of development. Obviously Nico had searched me if he had my switchblade, but I also had a few things, well hidden, that I didn't talk about to anyone, not even Bucky. If I could get out of the restraints, I could access my holdout weapons. And there was my tracker. My response to this nutjob should have set it off by now. He needed to be taken down and the alarm spread. If HYDRA was after its past operatives, it wasn't just my uncle at risk, they'd want to reacquire the Black Widow as well.

"So what now?" I asked. "How are you going to get Bucky here, wherever here is?"

"I'm glad you asked," he said, amused, and activated the camera on his communications device. He spoke in Russian, telling Bucky that he had his niece and that if he wanted to see me alive again, he'd come to this address, blah, blah, standard message. Then he showed me tied to the chair, and gave me a mighty backhand before sending the message. I tasted blood where the blow had cut the inside of my cheek on my teeth and spit. Yuck. He grabbed my hair and brought my head up so we were face to face, almost nose to nose. "HYDRA was curious about you too, but they found signs that that stupid 'documentary' had been manipulated. Their assessment is that your lawsuit was a publicity stunt to drum up interest in the film, and it's so convenient that your wings 'went away' after the battle. You're of no interest to them except as a way to obtain their asset." He grinned, and my nose wrinkled. He'd had something with onions for lunch, apparently. "So that means I can do anything that I want with you. How do you think your dear uncle will react when he sees an example of my creativity? Knowing that but for him, you'd be piddling around with blueprints, trying to make yourself important?" He laughed.

Then he held my knife in front of my eyes before quickly cutting me. He made a random series of small cuts all over my body, none more than a centimeter long. Some were shallow slices, others were punctures. Periodically he'd hit me with a closed fist, for variety, I guess. Where the hell was everybody? I screamed a lot on the off chance that a passer-by would hear, but apparently not. My struggles made it easier to conceal the work I was doing to weaken the plastic restraints, and as soon as I got one hand free, I caught his hand with the knife and drove the tip into him instead. He roared, unprepared for the pain or my resistance, and fell back a couple of paces. I used that moment to lean forward, get my weight on my feet, and fling myself backward with all the force I could generate. Way back when, during my first life, Natasha had told me of a way she'd terminated an interrogation by smashing the chair she'd been tied to. Luck was with me and this was a cheap brittle plastic chair rather than one of those ones for outdoors that lasted for freaking ever. Even so, it didn't break completely, and Nico was on me before I could completely extricate myself. But I did have a foot free, and in the tussle managed to break the rest of the chair when he broke my nose. I slid the push knife out of my fashionable belt buckle and buried it in his gut, aiming for the liver. He was pretty muscular, though, and I doubt that the two-inch blade had hit anything important.

I blinked against the blood running into my eye and Nico fell back. Not from the force of my glare, alas, but because of my mightily pissed-off uncle. His arm isn't strictly metal anymore but an organometallic synthesis, very cool, that still packs one hell of a wallop. Nico slipped, going down, and I whipped off my pretty silk scarf and used it as a garotte as Bucky kept swinging. We only backed off when the room exploded with the arrival of the reinforcements through a wall. Iron Man, who'd made the hole, led in an array of forces that was disproportionate to the pile of meat on the floor. Natasha and Hawkeye, Uncle Steve, Serena, and of course my Damian piled in, looking for a fight and being sadly disappointed in that regard. Natasha joined Bucky, who didn't look like he was ready to quit pummeling Nico yet.

"Is that... that's the Wolf Spider," she said, sounding puzzled. "What's he doing here?" Both my uncle and I gave her 'are you kidding' looks. I let Damian fuss over me a bit, and he held my shoulders as Hawkeye straightened my nose as gently as he could. Uncle Steve looked at me and winced.

"Hey, Buck, that's enough," he said sternly as Bucky kicked Nico one final time. "What happened--no,' he corrected himself. "Why did this happen?" he asked me, absently handing me his handkerchief.

Everybody came close to hear what I had to say. "HYDRA's back and looking to reacquire its assets," I said, frowning. One handkerchief wasn't going to be enough. "In this location, that's you and Bucky, Natasha," I specified. "They apparently have some really effective new methods of brainwashing and controlling people, and evidently they don't want to waste time training new people when there are those with the necessary skillset already out there. You two have got to be careful," I stressed.

"HYDRA," Steve spat. Serena took the bloody handkerchief from me and pressed it against the worst of my head wounds, while Tony swore.

"All right," Steve said. "The first thing we need is more information. We'll take this guy to the tower, get his injuries fixed, then we'll interrogate him." He raised his voice over Bucky's growl. "And if you can control yourself, you can help, Buck, but not if you're just going to pound on him." Bucky shot his best friend an unfriendly look.

"I'll get the information out of him," he said flatly.

Steve looked at him dubiously. "Nat, Clint, we need information from more than one source." They nodded and turned, Natasha giving me a little wave as they left. "Tony. You--"

"Computers," Tony said briskly.

"Serena, do you have time?" Steve asked, and she nodded. "All right, people, let's get to work. Bucky, you report into the clinic, get cleaned up. Stark and I will transport the prisoner. Alex, you need medical attention."

"I'm going home," I said. Alfred would fix me up just fine. "But I expect to be kept fully informed. I'm not a one-trick pony, beating up people is not my only specialty." I held Steve's gaze until he nodded, and I let my husband take me out to the car, where he whisked me home. The first thing Alfred did was confirm that my pregnancy was still fine, then gave me concussion medication, a newer medication to help with bruises, and stuffed me into the accelerator to heal my cuts and skin bruising. Then Damian came with me to shower, making sure that all the cuts were healed up and that all the blood was washed away. We went downstairs, where Alfred was assembling a highly nutritional snack for me and Eira was waiting anxiously. We told him what had happened, and he shook his head.

"By attacking Master Bucky's niece, I feel that HYDRA has stirred up a hornet's nest," he said. "What will happen now, Miss Alex?"

"I'm fairly certain that we've just seen the Avengers recalled to active duty," I said. I'd work with Serena to make sure her work for Valkyrie could go forward when she needed to be absent. "Information first, action later. I won't be doing anything really active while I'm pregnant, and probably not while the kid is young, but after this, I'm going to want my pound of flesh." I looked at Damian; he didn't like it, but he understood. "But I'll have to be smart. Eira, I want you on watchdog status." She woofed enthusiastically, feeling bad about having missed her opportunity for action with Nico. I looked at Damian again. "Maybe you could talk to Daniel about this, see if the batmen can help somehow."

"Beloved, of course we will. We'll gather intelligence," Damian said, nuzzling me.

"I'll speak to the Justice League as well, see what aid we can offer," Bruce said briskly as he came into the kitchen. He gently patted my shoulder and Daniel, right behind him, carefully hugged me.

"Steve's taking charge of the Avengers for this particular op," he told me, taking a seat at the table. "I'll be reaching out to other retired Avengers, seeing if they want in on this too. Since we can't do anything without a plan, and we can't have a plan without intelligence, there's no rush to action here. We need to take enough time to rip the corruption out completely this time, but not take so much time that HYDRA can flourish. The Avengers will take the lead on this matter because they know the organization better than the Justice League and understand the threats and the goals better. I'll be keeping the Senators on the oversight committee in the loop, but vague about the details, just in case they've been corrupted. I don't think that they have, but there's no point in not being prudent."

After everybody had had the opportunity to talk and to calm down, I had Damian take me and Eira back to work. I talked with Serena on the way in; tracking down HYDRA wasn't going to be a full-time job for anybody, but free time was going to be severely curtailed. I could help her outwith existing projects, enough to keep things moving, at least, and Karen could send questions and requests in concentrated bursts rather than one at a time so that we could keep everything in motion and help protect her growing professional reputation. When I got back to the office, I went directly to Aslyn and let her know what had happened. Despite the accelerator, my nose was still tender and I'd have to keep treating the swelling and bruising for a few days. I had to tell her about Nico and find out what else she had told him about me and my uncle. She was devastated that Nico had used her to hurt me and she couldn't recall telling him much. We talked a bit about what kind of things she could say to outsiders, then I changed the topic and asked her about security. She was glad to have something that she could do to help, and we decided to require passcodes to access the top floor and any Valkyrie office. I put her in touch with Bruce for suggestions, then went to Martha to tell her what had happened. Then a Valkyrie team meeting, to let everybody know what had happened and why, explaining why Serena would be out of the office more and that we needed to provide organized questions for issues, and Aslyn talked about the new biometric readers that would be installed on our offices and the elevators. Additionally, she was getting information from a company that specialized in challenges like this and additional safeguards were possible. She'd keep us in the loop.

There was nothing immediate that needed my attention, so I got ready to go. I was running on fumes now. A tap on the door alerted me, and I looked up to see Loki. I smiled, and he came in to say hello to Eira and smooth my hair. "Stark sent a message to be included in the diplomatic pouch to go to my brother," he explained. "Thor is unlikely to be able to respond personally, but he will send down Modi to assist. I also personally requested Torunn, to act as your bodyguard until such a time as this is resolved. Better now than later; this way you can accustom yourself to the bodyguard while you still have mobility." His green eyes twinkled and I smiled at his baiting. He had a point; in the later months of my pregnancy, there was no way I'd be agile and quick, and there was no way of knowing now whether Nico was the only one who had been sent after my uncle. It was publicly known we were close.

"So when will she be arriving?"

"Tomorrow morning," he said promptly. "I will bring her here when Heimdall opens the Bifrost."

"Bring her luggage," I directed. "We've got room in the house for her." Loki smiled.

"Modi will be housed in the embassy or the tower, but I know he will wish to see you. " We chatted a bit until Damian called up. We dropped Loki off at the embassy and he explained to Damian, who thought a bodyguard was a great idea. We also stopped by the tower after dropping off Loki so they could just double-check my pregnancy. I was relieved when they said that the kid and I were ok. When we got home, I took a little pre-dinner nap. Eira curled up with me and Damian went to talk to Alfred.

When I woke up, the room was shadowed with dusk and Damian was tucking hair behind my ear. "Dinner's ready, Petal," he said tenderly, stroking my cheek. I turned my face a little so I could press a kiss to his fingertips and sat up. Eira stretched and yawned, and I took a few moments to de-rumple. My nose still hurt like the dickens and a little residual blood had pooled around my eyes. I'd get another accelerator session after dinner and that should be it for the swelling and bruising. The nose would just have to heal on its own. The meal was delicious as always, and Alfred was interested in my new bodyguard, whom he'd met before but only briefly.

"I am not surprised that you realize the benefit of a bodyguard, Miss Alex," he said as we ate. "I am somewhat surprised that you are willing to house her here, however."

"I might not have done so if it was a stranger," I acknowledged, "but I've known Torunn since her birth and I helped to train her. Her parents are my friends too, so it's the least I can do. She used to be her uncle's bodyguard, so I'm privileged to have such a fine guard." I thought about it. "She doesn't have any food allergies, but as an Asgardian, she does eat more than a human does."

I went on to tell some stories about Torunn, nothing too embarrassing, and her brothers as well. "You definitely had a more interesting afterlife than I did, Sweet pea," Damian said, and Alfred agreed.

"It is interesting to hear of your experiences, Miss Alex," Alfred agreed. "And it is pleasing to see that others have properly valued your skills and loyalty." I flushed; I hadn't been telling the stories to brag.

"I just wanted to kind of introduce her as a person," I protested, and both men smiled.

"And I look forward to getting to know her better," my husband assured me, and Alfred shooed us out to the library where we took to our tete a tete couch and Eira settled onto the rug in front of the fireplace. It was too warm for a fire now, but she thought of that as her spot. Signe flowed down the cat tree and settled into a meatloaf configuration against Eira's back. I felt Eira's contentment before she went to sleep. Alfred brought in chamomile tea for Damian (he was stressed about the afternoon's events and could use the soothing) and decaf for me along with a plate of brown sugar madeleines and strong black tea for himself. It was pleasant to sit and talk with my family, but I made it an early night. I was just sodden with fatigue, despite my nap.

The next morning, we got a slightly late start; it was so pleasant to cuddle with my nice warm husband in our very comfortable bed, and I felt loved and safe. We were just sitting down to a hearty breakfast when the Bifrost slammed into the slate patio in the back. "Damn it, Heimdall," I muttered. The Bifrost would burn a pattern into the stone. But I got up and we went outside to find all three royal siblings and Torunn's luggage. They waited patiently for hugs, then I introduced my husband and Alfred to the boys; they knew Torunn already. Naturally, they were invited to breakfast, and as Alfred displayed his virtuosity in the kitchen, we learned that Magni was just down here to assess the situation and report back to his parents; Modi would be stationed here until the HYDRA threat was dealt with. He was pleased with this; like his father and siblings, he liked Earth. Magni was a little jealous, but Thor was giving his heir real responsibilities and duties and he couldn't be spared. Alfred reappeared and told Torunn that he'd taken her bags up to her room. Then all of them wanted to see the room, which was the one J had stayed in; we were beginning a slow conversion of the other room to the nursery. Damian showed her how to adjust the wall color to her liking, and her brothers looked around enviously.

"Father and Uncle Loki expect you to stay at the embassy," Magni told his brother, squashing, I suspect, a request to stay here. Modi looked downcast and I understood; the embassy was nice but not luxurious, and the cook wasn't as good as Alfred. Torunn smirked, especially when she saw the bathroom. Modi would have to share; only the Ambassador had a private bath. I saw that Torunn had brought her armor, and when we went back downstairs, I quietly asked Alfred to take one of my armor stands up to her room. I'd moved an assortment of small arms up to the nursery in progress; I didn't want Damian to be upset by them, but I was upping my personal defense even though I had Torunn now. Alfred drove us into the city in one of Daniel's big cars and we dropped the boys at the embassy. Loki was waiting at the gate; we'd called him on the way in, and he greeted his niece and nephews affectionately before inviting us to dinner later that week. Torunn and I were let out at the Valkyrie Building, which Torunn regarded in wonder. We poked around a little and I bought us some coffee and a snack. Didn't need the snack, but the pastries were too delicious to pass up, and Torunn had an active metabolism. She looked around in approval.

"The architecture on Asgard is quite grand, but it very different from this," she commented. "This much detail and color should be fussy and oppressive, but it's striking and vibrant." I smiled, pleased. When we got to the office, I offered her one of the unused offices, but they were all on the floor below us, so she elected to stay in my office. When we went inside, she was drawn to the windows and the view of the public garden which was greening up nicely and showing how beautiful it would be when all the plants were mature and had filled in. Aslyn came in, towing in a comfortable desk chair and a small computer desk for Torunn. She plugged the desk in the corner where Torunn could view the garden, and swung the chair in behind. Eira got settled in her dog bed, and I followed Aslyn to her office to thank her for her thoughtfulness.

"I'm really sorry, Alex," she said, not looking at me. "I'm making awful mistakes, telling Martha about how dangerous your pregnancy was, telling Nico things about you. I swear, I had no idea he was just using me." I went over and hugged her.

"I know you didn't," I said affectionately. "He said that the only things that he found out were that I carry a knife with me and a confirmation that my uncle and I are close. One was something that's widely known, the other couldn't have been much of a surprise. And I'm sorry if I came down too hard on you yesterday. I was upset."

"I just thought he wanted to find out about the people who were important to me," she mumbled. I patted he back.

"It's not your fault, but I'd just appreciate it if others don't know about my training or habits," I explained. She nodded. "Hey, did I tell you that they think the documentary was faked and the trials were for publicity?" I asked, and successfully diverted her. She burst out laughing.

"That woman admitted that she'd sharpened the color, omitted some fuzziness, eliminated some of the shakiness, but everybody said it was accurate to the best of their recollection," she said, and I shrugged.

"It's an interpretation I had not considered," I admitted. "But I like it. Never hurts for people to underestimate you." We discussed that and a couple other matters, and I went back to my office, where Torunn was surfing the net.

We had a partners meeting later that afternoon. I introduced everybody to Torunn, and Aslyn told us that the biometric readers--fingerprint scanners that also read information like temperature and blood pressure--would be installed over the weekend and passed around the instructions for adding ours when we came in on Monday. We also had a new cleaning crew, who would sweep the entire building nightly for any unauthorized devices. "It's a reasonable precaution," she said, shrugging. "We've got Alex and Serena, who are what the security firm calls 'higher-risk targets' and we all want to be protected. They're adding a phone to the elevator so that we can let clients into the offices. Let's not forget that there are always anti-mutant factions out there, and they're sporadically violent. We've publicly aligned ourselves as something some might deem unnatural, and the building is pretty well secured after business hours. And surprisingly, they don't cost much more than our old cleaning crew, but then we had a few complaints from our retail tenants that the cleaners cut corners so it's a good time to make a change."

Serena said apologetically that she wasn't sure what her schedule would be, but that she'd let us know about absences in advance if she could. She looked tired and a little worried, so after the meeting, I followed her into her office. They'd been able to do some interrogation of Nico late last night, which was why she was tired, but she was nervous about her ability to juggle the necessary task of going after HYDRA and her business. I sat back and thought. "Well, why not hire yourself a junior architect?" I asked reasonably. "Somebody who could make sure that you're covered during your absences, someone you can trust to execute your designs. You remember Tony Dupree, don't you? He wasn't creative at all, but he knew everything else cold. Somebody like that, who won't be tempted to screw with your designs but has the technical knowledge to be sure that any problems are taken care of." She rubbed her eyes and thought.

"You think it'll work?" she asked, and I nodded.

"I could answer some questions, but not all, and I'm not an architect. We have to consider your business, which is just starting to take off. We don't want anything to interfere with that, and there's also Valkyrie as a whole to consider. If your business is damaged, it would reflect on us all. This way you'd be covered. Plus this way you'd have a strong technician to bounce ideas off and who might have valuable contributions to make. Look at Carol--she has her own shop with journeymen and apprentices and she's interviewing other masters to add someone whose work will compliment her own. Dagny has a foreman for her landscaping crew and she's looking to add a second crew. Karen's got an ad running for a couple of assistants, Margaret is advertising for a part-time assistant, Aslyn has Martha, and they're planning to hire somebody. The two of us are the last holdouts." She laughed.

"When you put it like that..." she said. "What about you?"

"Right now I don't need to," I said. "Once I get the bid and work up my ideas, I mostly hand it over to the architects and interior designers. I answer questions and work around unexpected problems, but I don't have many on-site visits, especially with the residences. Technology has made it easier to identify problem areas in a structure and the solutions Tony's worked up for me help make sure that surprises are few. He's working on a gizmo that will provide scans of the space inside the walls so I'll know if there are insect infestations, problems with the plumbing, unpleasantries like that. I never want to go through an experience like the Carroll residence, where because they thought the plumbing would do, they didn't update and when the pipes burst, it ruined the entire west wall of the house." I shook my head. They'd been warned the pipes were iffy, but they'd preferred to spend the money on the stuff that showed. That much water had ruined the SmartBoard and caused other damages. The repair bills had been huge and we were having trouble getting paid for the work we'd done.

"After the library and the Hall of Justice, you're going to be internationally known," she said confidently. "You're going to get people and organizations requesting that you bid on their projects. Wouldn't hurt for you to get an assistant too. Teach them how to understand and apply the goodies Tony's group comes up with. You could offload some of the more tedious tasks once you get the right person trained. Cover for you during your maternity leave."

"I'm not planning much time off," I said. "My dad is making me a credenza that has a pop-up bassinet and the soundproofing up here is really good." She grinned. "And Damian is making adjustments at his office too. I'll have to share anyway. Plus Alfred really liked babysitting Martha and Xander."

"If you want to work, that's one thing," she said. "But why not make it easier? Get somebody to hold the fort." I thought about it.

"You've got a point," I said grudgingly, but as the day wore on, the idea really started to grow on me. Get somebody who was good with difficult clients, that's the ticket. Maybe with plumbing expertise. I started drafting notices for a couple of historic preservation journals that afternoon.