WARNING: discussion of death, drinking, mild cursing

Chapter Twenty-One

Lian was reminded why her little sister was her favorite when she reacted perfectly to every part of the story. From outrage and death threats to cradling Lian against her breast, Giselle never disappointed. Lian and Pietro switched on and off in the retelling, her grandparents and father jumping in when the telltale crease of confusion between Giselle's eyebrows started to appear. Lian would have been amazed at how in sync she and Pietro remained, even outside the chamber, if she wasn't internally screaming.

G called him my boyfriend and no one denied it.

It didn't feel…wrong. If anything, it felt inadequate. Her relationship with Pietro couldn't be summed up with a term so simple and plain and temporary as "boyfriend".

Soulmate.

Lian shoved away the loaded word and tuned back into the conversation. It seemed they'd finally caught G up, who was scrubbing at her cheeks to erase any traces of her tears. Lian envied her. Giselle had always been a pretty crier when she did have cause for tears, which thankfully had not been often.

"So you were never dead," Giselle said at last.

Lian couldn't stop herself. "No, but he was."

Giselle's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. Lian bit her lip to restrain the smile tugging at it. Relief washed through her in a steady wave, soothing the tension still coiled in her muscles. With it traveled a faint sense of triumph, another small victory in a subtle battle she was only barely aware was being fought. It was a battle to reclaim herself, to prove she was not so greatly changed. To prove it was Lian, and not the demon, looking out at the world. And it was definitely Lian with the big mouth and the tongue too quick for her to catch.

At her side, Pietro huffed. She turned to look at him, unashamed in her study, as he braced himself for yet another story, mouth grumbling but eyes fond.

"I almost missed that mouth of yours," he said. "Almost."

Lian knew what he meant, knew he meant the suffocating silence of the chamber, the horrors too great for words. Her family knew nothing but that she'd been going in and out of a coma, and that Giselle called Pietro Lian's boyfriend and no one denied it. Her sister's eyes bugged out, and her father cleared his throat.

"Not like that!" Lian shrieked. "He means I don't shut up!"

Pietro startled. "What―oh. No, not that!"

Gran leaned in close to Grandad's ear, but Lian could still hear her loud and clear when she said, "It's cute how they panic as if he didn't run all the way here for her on blind faith."

"It's not—" Pietro tried to protest before Dad interrupted.

"Giselle, did you get in touch with your sister?"

She blinked at him, then reached across the table and laid a hand on Lian's arm.

Dad pinched the bridge of his nose. "Your other sister. The one you pretend doesn't exist."

"I wish I could pretend Jackie doesn't exist," grumbled Giselle. "No matter how many times I reject her calls, she just keeps calling."

"At least she calls you, dear," Gran said, spooning more sugar into her tea. "We haven't spoken to her since the funeral."

"Funeral?" Lian felt the panic of lost time creeping up on her again. "Who died?"

Gran's spoon trembled in her hand. "We thought you did." Grandad took her hand as she blinked back tears behind her glasses. "It's quite a bit to adjust to, Ana. It may take me a little time to come to grips."

The panic receded, leaving a cold numbness in its wake. She felt it in her freezing hands, her feet, her spine. Everywhere except where her knee bumped against Pietro's, and his body heat blazed through the sweatpants he wore. His heat reminded her of her own: the raw power that still crawled like static over the hair on her arms, the rush of the fire in her veins right before she teleported. Using her power was the only time she felt warm.

"We don't want Jackie here anyway," Giselle said, folding her arms. "She's farther up Mom's ass than she's ever been, and if Mom's really an evil scientist—"

"How can you be sure?" interrupted Gran.

Dad leaned forward. "Mum, you've never liked Mila. Why are you defending her now?"

Gran scoffed. "I would not defend that woman. I am making sure I am killing the right person for the right crime."

Giselle choked on her tea. "Killing?" she sputtered. "We're going to kill Mom?"

"No!" Dad cried, rocking onto the back legs of his chair. "We're not killing anyone!"

Lian couldn't help speaking up here. "But Mom did kill people when her lab exploded, right? That wasn't something S.H.I.E.L.D. made up?"

That shut everyone up. Dad was the one to nod silently.

Lian hated the relief she felt. It was a horrible truth, but it was not another lie.

"So it sounds like there are two possible explanations here," Lian continued when no one else spoke. "Mom is just a normal scientist who screws up. Her screw up attracts the attention of HYDRA, and they show up and find me. Or Mom's really working for HYDRA, and when she screws up they decide to put someone else in charge of the project and its new guinea pig."

The table burst into argument and debate. Lian soaked it in, not their words but just the sound of so many voices at once. She knew she should intervene, should stop all of this. They didn't know enough to be throwing around suspicion and accusations. She needed to see them like this though, full of life and nothing like the image of their corpses still stamped behind her eyes.

Pietro cleared his throat, drawing the table's attention. He'd stayed out of the family's speculation on Mila's guilt, but now he offered input. "I remember some of the doctors. The Baron's associates. I could tell you if I recognize any as HYDRA if you knew who all worked with Mila."

Dad shot up from the table. "I can get you a list. G, come with me."

The two grabbed their coats and left the room, the slam of the front door announcing their departure from the house too.

Gran stood. "Would you like another sandwich?"

Pietro hesitated, then shook his head. His lips parted, but Grandad beat him to it.

"Go out on the porch. You can talk privately there."

Talk to who? Lian wondered. Then Pietro turned to her, holding out his hand. Oh. She took it, half-expecting him to speed them out the door. He didn't, and they walked outside hand in hand. The noon sun beamed down overhead, but the brisk November day swallowed any warmth from its rays. Pietro sat down on the old porch swing, its peeling paint flaking off onto his clothes as he shifted to make room for her. She tucked herself against his side, purely for warmth.

"You were right," she said.

"About what?"

"I wasn't dying. I was just…adapting."

He rubbed a strand of her hair in between his fingers. "Maybe next time don't prove me right in such a dramatic way, yes?"

She laughed, but he didn't. Lian supposed to him her disappearance would be anything but funny.

"Why did you look for me when everyone else wrote me off as dead?" she asked.

Pietro looked away from her, out over the yard, though there was a much greater distance in his eyes when he said, "I promised I wouldn't leave you."

Lian squeezed his hand. They'd come outside to talk, but there was both nothing and too many things to say, so they just sat together in the quiet stillness as they had so many times before in a different place.

Pietro didn't recognize anyone until Ewan started showing him pictures too. The last two on the list, a man and a woman, he remembered clearly, faces branded into his mind through pain.

"This one." He pointed at the man's photo. "He was always there with Dr. List. Wanda told me he's in prison now. They arrested him during one of the raids on the last HYDRA bases."

Ewan circled his name on the sheet of paper, then scrolled to the next photo on the tablet. "And this woman?"

Pietro nodded. "She did the speed drills."

"That's Rose's mom."

Pietro lifted his head. Lian stood on the other side of the table from them clutching a ceramic pitcher, liquid sloshing over the brim as her white-knuckled grip shook.

"Rose?" Ewan questioned. The nib of his pen dug into the sheet of paper beside the woman's name until it ripped through and scratched across the tabletop underneath. He dropped the pen only to wrap his hand around the edge of the table with the same intensity as his daughter.

Lian's eyes fixed on the tablet screen. "My friend from college, Rose Lemeul. That's her mom."

Pietro frowned. "Why does Lemeul sound familiar?"

Lian shrugged. Her fingers around the pitcher's handle were starch white, knuckles straining against skin. "This guy at S.H.I.E.L.D. told me the Lemeul family worked as consultants for them. Another one of my friends was really a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent too."

Pietro glanced down at the tablet. "Your Rose and her mother must be plants then. This woman was with the Baron."

"Jesus," muttered Ewan, letting go of the table to cover his face with his hands.

Lian slammed the pitcher down on the table. "That confirms it then." She splayed her hands on its wooden surface. "Mom was working for HYDRA."

"And you have no real friends," Giselle added, sweeping into the room, phone pressed to her shoulder. Lian shot her a glare, but Giselle moved past her, stopping in front of Pietro. She held out the phone. "It's your sister. She wants to speak to you."

Clint knocked on the doorframe. There was no actual door to Tony's lab—everyone but Bruce knew better than to enter, and Bruce was…gone. Still, Clint didn't want to just barge in. Mainly because he was fond of his body now and didn't want to lose anything important courtesy of an intruder laser or something. He wouldn't put it past Tony.

Normal Tony, anyway. This Tony, slumped over a worktop littered with empty bottles and a suspiciously used-looking blowtorch, mumbling, didn't look capable of much.

How did I get stuck with this job?

Clint stepped inside when he received no response, prepared to duck out of the way of a projectile. Nothing launched at him; he wasn't set on fire; it was as if he wasn't even in the room. He cautiously approached Tony until he saw the phone docked nearby and realized Tony wasn't drunkenly mumbling to himself after all.

"Steve said it looked like she just vaporized," Tony was saying. Clint winced. He had no idea Tony cared about Lian, but she must have been important if she had triggered him binge drinking and forgoing the use of any obnoxious nicknames.

"Are you drunk right now?"

Clint recognized that feminine demanding tone. He'd heard its like enough from Laura. Are you getting shot at right now? Did you really use a towel for a diaper?

Pepper Potts was on the phone.

"Of course I'm drunk! You think I could have run those tests sober?"

"I'm coming out there," said Pepper. Tony levered himself up with a flathead screwdriver, his lips parting presumably to protest. Pepper spoke before he could, her voice stuttering, "I want–I want to see the body."

Tony slammed the screwdriver into the worktop, driving it into the surface. "There is no body to see, Pepper!"

"Then I don't believe she's dead!" came the scream over the line. A scream followed by sobbing and Tony's head sinking into his arms.

Oh, shit.

Pepper took a deep breath then said, "The last time we believed Lian was dead without seeing her body for ourselves, she was being held prisoner and experimented on."

Clint wanted to scream himself, but not out of grief. All that tablet smashing and all those tears and all that running around like headless chickens trying to puzzle out HYDRA's involvement, and Tony knew all along. Pepper knew. This was why Clint retired.

But enough games and secrets and lies. Espionage was for spies, and Clint was not a spy anymore.

He was a tired old man who just wanted to bring everyone home.

He cleared his throat. "Tony."

Pepper responded first. "Is that Clint?"

Tony turned his head. "Get out of here, Barton."

Clint would need another gallon of coffee before he had the energy to deal with Tony's dramatics, so he cut right to the chase, speaking over Tony and Pepper as they bickered. "Lian is alive, and if you want to see her you need to go with Wanda to meet Pietro in Scotland."

A beat of silence followed his announcement, broken by Pepper announcing, "I'll take the company jet," then hanging up.

Clint turned on his heel. He walked out of the lab without waiting for Tony to follow.

Tony's personal plane, an energy-efficient Stark prototype, was full. Not of people—of tension.

Clint shifted in his seat and wished he was back aboard the Quinjet. The flight to New York as they prepared to fight for the fate of the world wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as this.

"You lied to her," Wanda said. She was sitting across from Clint, but she glared diagonally across the aisle at where Tony nursed a water bottle and an ice pack. A splotchy bruise bloomed on his jawline where Wanda had punched him as he boarded the plane.

"They lied to me," said Tony. Wanda scoffed. "They said it was better for her health if she didn't know she'd been experimented on for months. At least until she was stable, in the clear. Considering she'd been in a coma and was in even worse shape when we found her, I was inclined to believe them."

Wanda's hands fisted. "Her mental health couldn't have gotten much worse by the time I knew her."

"She has a history of depression. I didn't know the real state she was in. I believed them. I made a mistake," Tony gritted out.

"None of the doctors knew she came from HYDRA." Wanda's gaze slid away from Tony, landing on the wall somewhere to the left of Clint's head. "Her files were high clearance. Unhackable. But Lian was working on hacking them anyway. Do you know why?"

Tony rolled the ice pack across his forehead, sighing. "She was working on hacking a number of files for me. Not specifically her file, but it was included in the mix. I knew Hill and Fury were keeping things from me."

Wanda pressed forward, both words and body, almost out of her seat. "Why would they go to such lengths to keep this a secret? Even from those treating her?"

"I don't know," he snapped. Wanda sat back, as if propelled away by the force of his tone. "Are you happy now? I admit it. I don't know everything."

She pulled a knee up to her chest. She rested her chin on top of it, considering him for a moment. "What do you know?"

"I know we were clearing out one of the last HYDRA bases around July. After Ultron killed Strucker, they fell like toy blocks. She was there. Nearly dead. The medical squad rushed in, took her away. The next time I saw her, she was in the coma." Tony scrubbed a hand across his eyes. "I had to ID her. At first I hadn't recognized her. When I saw her cleaned up in that bed…I could hardly believe it. She was supposed to be dead."

"After her mother's lab blew up in London," Wanda stated.

Tony made a face. "It didn't blow up. The containment unit malfunctioned and the energy they were dealing with fried everyone not wearing a radiation suit. Even then, only those on the ground floor in the control room survived." Tony laughed, a bitter humorless laugh. "I told Lian not to go. I told her it was no use trying to mend a relationship with her mother. I knew from experience. And I knew she was better off without Mila in her life."

"Why?" Clint asked. He coughed. His voice was hoarse from not speaking since he'd got on the plane. He'd been content to sit out of the interrogation, but something was itching at him. Some instinct to dig deeper about Tony's negative opinion on Lian's mother.

"Mila used methods that weren't always safe. Or entirely legal. Obadiah wanted to invest in her research when she first came to the US, but I thought she was a loose cannon, so I pulled out," explained Tony. "She was also a piece of work, let me tell you."

"Pre-Iron Man you? Thinking someone is a loose cannon?" Clint shook his head. "She must have been dangerous for you to think that."

"She was a talented scientist but a shitty person. And an even shittier mother," Tony summed up.

Wanda had remained silent during the discussion of Mila and her morals, but she spoke now, slow and hesitant. "You said everyone was fried without a radiation suit?"

Tony removed the ice pack from his face. He straightened up from his slouch. "Yeah. There wasn't much left to identify remains, but there were certain markers and fragments matching the people known to be in the blast radius. What are you thinking, Hocus Pocus?"

Wanda ignored the nickname. "And Lian wasn't wearing a suit?"

"No, she wasn't." Tony and Wanda exchanged a look, connecting dots Clint couldn't even see. Tony started jabbering to the AI through his phone, pulling up a dozen screens full of holographic lists and scrolling code.

"What's going on?" Clint asked Wanda.

"If Lian survived, who says she was the only one?" Wanda grabbed Clint's hand. "Who says there weren't more survivors? More like us?"

More like us. Understanding hit Clint like a freight train (and he knew how that felt). Wanda didn't just mean more survivors of Mila's lab. Lian had survived not only the lab but whatever HYDRA did to her afterward. She'd gained a superpower—apparently, teleportation—just like Pietro and Wanda. If Lian hadn't been the only one to live to be snatched up by HYDRA, there was a chance there were more people with enhancements out there.

Clint spun in his seat. "Tony, how many?"

"Twenty-five," Tony said. He cleared his throat. "Twenty-five."

"If they're all as strong as you," Clint said to Wanda, "that's enough for an army." His eyes skimmed over the mess of data floating in the air before Tony. "Do you think S.H.I.E.L.D. got them?"

Tony got back to work. "I think if they did, a secret super-powered army is a hell of a reason to keep Lian's mess of an origin story quiet."