Title: Hydra lullaby: Origin Story

Summary: Everyone has an origin story. You may think you know what it is, but you don't. For some of our heroes (and anti-villains), Hydra played a bigger role than anyone imagined. So how exactly do top-secret infertility and genetic research programs, illegally procured 'gifted' DNA, and Diviners figure in their master plan? Hydra is not just evil, it is opportunistic.

This is part four of the series In a World Like This and a direct follow-up to Tony Stark Is Not a Relationship Expert.

Canon compliancy: The story is about 90% cannon compliant for the MCU up to episode 22 of AOS (including Winter Soldier), then tracks close to the MCU up to episode 32 of AOS except certain events have been changed to prevent certain other actions from happening like a Civil War, the complete implosion of Fitzsimmons (but they will have some rough patches in this story), and a certain specialist's death.

There will be other differences such as the timing of Iron Man 3, the identity of Melinda May's ex-husband, and the identity of the people who contributed to Trip's DNA. If 'Skye' can have a completely different mom in the MCU than in 616 for plot reasons, then I can give Trip different DNA contributors in my universe for my own plot reasons. Also in grand MCU tradition, I am giving Maria Stark a better or at least expanded back story. Seriously, I found only three lines on her in the Marvel wiki. That's not right.

Spoiler warning: This story will contain spoilers for Agent Carter and future episodes of AOS and may contain Avengers 2 spoilers, but those will be mixed with other ideas from my imagination. There could also be accidental spoilers for Phase 3 in here because I'm trying to avoid Civil War, which ironically was my plan even before they announced the movie. Whether I'm successful, we will have to see. I'm willing to use anything that will help me better develop the characters in the story.

Relationships: Tony/Steve, May/Coulson, Tony & Pepper, Fitzsimmons (I'm leaning towards heterosexual life partners), Fitz/Mack (maybe more than platonic), Tony & Coulson, Steve/May (their relationship is mostly platonic now, but they slept together previously and Tony is trying really hard to arrange a birthday four-way), Trip & Skye (this relationship is complicated) and various background relationships past and present such as Howard & Peggy, Trip/Mack, Coulson/Hawkeye, Huntingbird, Hand/Isabel, and one-sided SkyeWard along with tons of other relationships.

A lot of these relationships will be straddling the fence between platonic and non-platonic.

Rated M for language, Tony being Tony, Hydra being evil, Ward having issues, sexual content, and violence.

There will also be discussions of extreme infertility issues including miscarriages and the death of a newborn.

Other warnings: This story is written by a dyslexic person using voice recognition software. Prone to crazy voice recognition errors and changing tenses without even realizing it. My beta tries her best, so proceed with compassion.

Disclaimer: Disney owns everything including ABC and Marvel. This is just a therapy exercise for entertainment purposes and reviews.

Proofread by Grayson Steele

Previously on In a World Like This:

Nick Fury being the chess grandmaster that he is realized that the Avengers Initiative would completely fall apart if Tony and Steve did not get over themselves and learn to work through their issues. To keep May from swallowing her gun (she didn't know that Coulson was in TAHITI yet), Fury assigned her to keep those two idiots from killing each other and bringing the rest of the Avengers down with them, off the books of course.

She does such a good job that Tony and Steve ended up sleeping together, before Tony and Pepper officially decided to just be friends again. To complicate it even further, they end up sleeping together the week SHIELD falls apart.

Instead of relying on her mother's contacts, May goes to Stark directly to find Maria Hill to get Phil the help that he needs and ends up telling Stark that Coulson is alive. A side benefit of this process is that May gets Steve and Tony back together. She is also manipulated by Tony into admitting that she is in love with Phil and eventually about the writing on the wall, the literal writing on the wall. Tony crashes the Playground and brings Steve along with a totally rebuilt Lola, a trunk full of spy gear, and much-needed funding.

While at the Playground certain secrets are uncovered including the fact that Tony slept with Fitz's mom about nine months before he was born and the fact that Trip was conceived when his mother was kidnapped by Hydra, not that anybody knew it was Hydra at the time. The entire incident may have been used to place Alexander Pierce in charge of SHIELD. They are still not sure about that yet. During his visit to the Playground, Tony also convinces Coulson to give a relationship with May a chance as well as poaches Simmons for his new lab. And then Fitz wakes up.

If you would like to know more, check out the three stories that precede this. However, the information above should keep you from getting lost in this story.

Prologue: The Road to Hell

January 1970

The smell of expensive alcohol permeates the space. That seems logical considering the several empty bottles that surround Howard. She should be thankful he's in his office down here instead of his lab. She should also be thankful that he's drinking alone and didn't invite any of his special friends that everyone including Maria knew about. (Maria actually joined Howard most of the time. Peggy was in no place to judge considering she and her husband had a mutual ex-boyfriend, a dead mutual ex-boyfriend that they cared about so much that they are planning to name their unborn child after him.)

Peggy wondered if Jarvis or anyone else bothered to clean in here. Jarvis was the best person to deal with Howard when he was like this. Actually, he was the only one who was willing to which might explain the generous salary that Stark paid him. Right now though, Jarvis was at the Long Island house with Maria. She couldn't be left alone since her baby girl, Natasha, did not survive being born two months prematurely. The situation was tragic.

Howard should be with her. They should be mourning their daughter together. Instead he's not even in New York but in Arlington in his office buried under bottles, (but thankfully not women). She was hoping to find him buried in his work, that would've been preferable, not this. She hated Howard when he was drunk. He was a dreadful human being when intoxicated. With each miscarriage and failed search in the Arctic, a drunk Howard appeared and for increasing periods of time. All semblance of happiness drained out of him completely when alcohol entered his system.

The SHIELD Deputy Director's mission was simple: nurse Howard out of his drunken stupor and drag him back to Long Island to deal with his life, in particular his wife. Peggy chose this particular mission because she felt uncomfortable being around Maria. The two women were supposed to give birth within days of each other. Now, however, Maria's baby was buried in the Rose Garden of the Long Island estate while she was still heavily pregnant with her third child.

Life wasn't fair. She is well acquainted with this reality. The latest insight to this truth is that no matter how much she wanted to be there for Maria, Jarvis was better suited to console right now and she was better suited to kick Howard's arse back to Long Island.

Peggy was no stranger to survivor's guilt, but this situation hit her hard. Of the two, Peggy should've been the one to lose her baby. She was a 50-year-old woman with a high stress career who somehow managed to get pregnant without actually trying. Between her and Gabe, they already have four children. Sure, they would have loved to have had a child together, but it seemed too late by the time they got married. Then their miracle happened.

In contrast, Maria was nearly a decade and a half younger and had been actively trying to get pregnant since she married Howard. Peggy knew they had visited every fertility specialist on the East Coast, a few of whom are now employed by SHIELD in the 'genetic research' department.

Sometimes Peggy thinks the whole purpose of that marriage was to produce an heir to the Stark Empire and for Maria to get more money for her various charitable endeavors. Not many people including Peggy understood why the notorious Playboy married a New York social worker and civil rights activist, at least not at first. She prudently bit her tongue because she was well aware that Howard had hidden depths and so did Maria. There was a type of love between the two, maybe not a conventional love, but it was there. Besides Peggy wasn't sure if any other woman could deal with Howard on a regular basis. They were old friends and some days Peggy wanted to strangle the man.

In the span of their seven year marriage, the Starks had three miscarriages before the loss of Natasha. This time they concealed Maria's pregnancy from the press. It wasn't that hard to do when you're the head of a secret spy organization. It was amazing what the lab could come up with to make a woman not look pregnant. Peggy had been making very good use of a particular coat around Maria in the last few days. She did not want to flaunt her pregnancy around her grieving friend.

Thankfully, Jarvis suggested that she procure Mr. Stark and she jumped at the chance to get out of there. Despite the camouflage offered by the special coat, they both knew she was still pregnant. Maria wasn't as resilient as Peggy. The younger woman wasn't able to deal with loss the way Peggy could. Peggy felt Maria's anger and resentment every time they were together.

This is why she was the one to come down to DC to drag Howard back. Maria needed her husband and Peggy Carter-Jones would not let him run away this time especially when he was hiding inside a bottle.

She struggles with her temper as she approaches the unconscious man. How dare he be drinking himself into a stupor when Maria had been crying for days? However, her anger dissipates when she notices the blanket in his hands. The name Natasha delicately embroidered on the front with teddy bears surrounding it. The image is heartbreaking.

"What am I going to do with you Howard?" She mumbles out loud as she removes the half-empty glass from his fingers. If he doesn't rouse at that movement, she would check his pulse to see if he had succumbed to alcohol poisoning. She'd heard there was a betting pool amongst the agents on when their leader would finally drink himself to death.

"Jarvis, I told you I wasn't to be disturbed." Peggy was sure that was the case considering the door was bolted. However, simple locks like that were no deterrent for his Deputy Director.

"Jarvis is still on Long Island. It's Peggy." She said gently.

"Did you bring Marcy and Jamie?" Of course, Howard would ask about her daughters. Howard adored her kids. She wasn't exactly happy about him teaching both girls how to shoot, however. Although, she decided a long time ago that the people in her life would need to know who she really was in order to protect themselves.

"Jamie and Marcy are still in school right now, in New York." And I wouldn't let them anywhere near their Uncle Howard when he's this drunk.

"Would you like a drink?" Howard asked only slightly slurring his words as he got up to go the bar which he somehow managed to do without tripping.

"Unless you have water, no." She placed her hand subconsciously on her stomach, but Howard noticed. She caught the look of anguish in his eyes even though it only lasted for a second. She felt guilty again.

"Right, you can't. Research says alcohol is not good for the baby." He said as he poured himself a rather healthy portion of scotch.

"That's the last thing you need right now Howard." She walks over and takes the glass from him. "Alcohol doesn't help with something like this. Talk to me. We've known each other for nearly 30 years."

"Maybe it doesn't help, but it makes everything else hurt less." He responds by reclaiming the glass and proceeds to drain its' entire contents in one swallow.

'That's one of your biggest problems Howard.' She doesn't say that out loud. She could. They've been friends that long, but she doesn't. Not when he's like this. She just lets him drink because he's never going to tell her what's really going on. Instead she walks over to the chair he just vacated and grabs the still open notebook now laying on top of Natasha's blanket. She hopes there will be some clue as to what's going on in his head in his journal.

"What are you working on Howard?" It seemed like a neutral question. It isn't. It never is.

"I'm going to build a bigger, better baby." For one wild moment, she wonders if he's talking about an actual baby. He uses the term baby to refer to a lot of his inventions including the bad ones. "He's going to be my greatest creation. This one's not -cannot die on me." A single tear rolls down her cheek despite her best efforts not to break down at that moment.

Through blurry eyes she looks over his notes only to realize he is actually trying to create a better baby - a real flesh and blood child. It should not surprise Peggy at all that he is approaching this the same way he does any other invention or failed project. It is heartbreaking though to see page after page of analysis as to why Maria went into labor early and why Natasha did not survive followed by even more detailed notes on how to keep it from happening again.

For the first time, she notices the books piled on the desk. None of them are about weapons engineering or cloaking technology which is something he's been personally working on for the last year to perfect. Instead, Howard was surrounded by books and classified SHIELD research papers on genetics and reproduction. Was his notebook more than just a means for him to deal with his daughter's death? Was he planning to take this beyond the hypothetical? It was Howard after all. The fact that there were budgetary numbers in these plans made that seem highly probable in her mind.

"Howard, I know you're upset, but you can't use SHIELD resources to create babies in a test tube or whatever you're planning. A baby is not another thing for you to invent. You can't treat this like another experiment." She said in a gentle, but stern way.

"That's where you're wrong. And you only say that because you have four healthy children with one more on the way." He spat out bitterly.

"Two of which are not even mine biologically, but I love Jamie and Desiree as if they were. You could adopt. Maria works with so many children who could use a good home." Despite being married to one of the richest individuals in the country, Maria kept working. She just had more resources now. The Maria Stark Foundation supplemented several group homes for displaced children in the New York area.

"The board wouldn't like it. They want another 'golden goose' to follow me." He actually made finger quotes when saying the word 'golden goose'. Peggy wondered which one of his business partners would actually refer to a child as a 'golden goose'. "Besides Maria wants a baby. I promised her a baby. I owe her that much for putting up with me. I've created so much death I need to create a life." And there it was. The real reason why Howard drank so much - guilt.

"I'm surrounded by the most brilliant scientists in the world. We could do this. We could help people, help Maria. That's what we are supposed to do. Will you help me?"

"Of course, Howard." Because what else could she say.

"Gabe is outside." She placed an arm around him. "You don't need to stay here. We can go back to New York." And hopefully you'll be sober enough to deal with Maria by the time we get there and not give her false hope by mentioning making her a baby in your lab.

"Can I see Marcy?"

"Not like this Howard. Things will be better once you're sobered up." She just wasn't sure when that would actually happen.

"I doubt that."

She should know by this point in their relationship that when Howard Stark gets an idea in his head he doesn't give up. It's why he still searches the Arctic every summer for Steve's plane; he's convinced that Steve's still alive. It only stands to reason that he would do everything in his power to get Maria the baby that she wants. She wonders exactly how much of his own money he allocated to SHIELD's fertility research and how much government funding they got by passing it off as the next Super Soldier project.

But his plan worked. It only took 2 ½ years for Anthony Stark to come into the world via a surrogate and a process Howard referred to as in vitro fertilization. It became one of the duties of the new director of SHIELD, Margaret Carter-Jones, to cover it up. As far as the rest of the world knows, Anthony Stark was born to Howard and Maria Stark at 3:45 AM on May 29, 1972*. Maybe using SHIELD resources so that the couple could have a biological child was inappropriate, but the first time she saw Maria hold her son Peggy knew it was the right thing to do.

The details of Howard's latest 'project' had the highest clearance within SHIELD. Only a select few would ever know how special Anthony really is.

To be continued.

I'm literally working on the next chapter right now. Remember, your reviews help me write faster. Also those of you reading this on what category should I put the story under? I don't want to put it in the crossover category because a lot of people don't look there. So Avengers or Agents of SHIELD? I'm going with AOS right now but I'm not sure.

I found conflicting dates for Tony's year of birth online. I swore I saw 1972 when I looked this up last June but several of those places are now saying 1970 and a few can't even agree on the date. However, since I've already set up the timeline with 1972 in mind that's the year I'm staying with. Besides, Natasha Stark's existence in my universe may explain this discrepancy.