Author's Note - Okay, so continuity on this one is a bit whacked, and therefore it's absolutely, totally, and in all other ways AU. In my head, it takes place not long after Cap's jailbreak in Captain America: Civil War and during season two of NCIS: Los Angeles.

As always, all rights in this work are hereby given to the respective copyright owners.

"Mommy, when's Daddy coming home?"

At her daughter Lila's question, Laura Barton looked up from nursing her nine-month-old son Nathaniel. Behind Lila, her older son Cooper, hovered, trying desperately to look like he wasn't listening even though Laura knew he was.

It was a question Laura wished she had the answer to. In the wake of what the news media had taken to calling the Superhero Civil War, her husband - Clint Barton, Hawkeye - had been arrested for resisting arrest and operating as a superhero without authorization. The media had provided no information concerning where Clint was being held, let alone when he might expect to stand trial or be released.

Laura had supported Clint's decision to stand with Captain America against the Sokovia Accords - the Accords would require Clint to disclose not only her name and location but also the names and locations of their children, and that was something they couldn't allow.

Clint could have remained in retirement, and would have if Captain America hadn't called personally to ask for his assistance.

Sometimes, lying alone in the dark, Laura hated Captain America for that call. But Clint had discussed it with her before he agreed, and she knew her husband well enough to know that if he didn't respond, he would hate himself the rest of his life. Eventually, he would come to hate her, too, for keeping him from fighting for what he believed was right.

So she wished him well and let him go, and prayed for his safety.

That prayer, at least, had been answered. The only hero on either side to be badly injured was War Machine - and just what kind of name was that for a supposed superhero, anyway?

Clint was alive, but imprisoned in some unknown place for some unknown time.

So Laura offered her daughter the best smile she could manage, and said, "I don't know, honey."

"I miss him." Lila climbed up on the sofa next to Laura.

"I miss him, too." So much. "But we're together, and we're safe, and he's happy that we are."

Her children's expressions told her the words were cold comfort, but no colder than the bed she should be sharing with Clint. With the arm not supporting her son, Laura pulled Lila close and dropped a kiss on top of her head.

Lila leaned into the hug for a moment before slipping down off the sofa and running past Cooper. Cooper met Laura's eyes for a long moment, then followed his sister.

Laura sighed and held her younger son closer while he fed. When Nathaniel let her nipple slip from his mouth, she shifted him to her shoulder to rock him gently. He was asleep within minutes and Laura rose to take him to his crib.

She'd just settled him in for his nap when the low rumble of an engine filled the valley. Laura rushed to look out a window, careful to stay out of sight like Clint had taught her.

She didn't recognize the silver-colored Mercedes sedan approaching the house.

Normally, she wouldn't blink. But normally, her husband wasn't under arrest.

"Cooper," she called in a normal tone of voice, as if there were nothing wrong, and her son came running.

"What is it, Mom?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "Stay here with Lila and Nate and keep them quiet while I find out."

Cooper nodded, his expression far too serious for a child his age. Laura smiled and rested her hand on his cheek for just a moment before hurrying down the stairs. Through the curtains, she could just make out the sedan coming to a stop a dozen yards or so behind Clint's pickup.

Without hesitating, she grabbed the shotgun from its rack and opened the door to step out onto the porch. She could see only one person in the sedan but, she reminded herself, that didn't mean there weren't more.

The driver's side door opened, and a man climbed out. He was about Clint's height and build, with close-cropped dark hair, and probably as dangerous as her husband despite the easiness of his expression.

"Mrs. Barton?" he asked. He hadn't tried to approach any closer than the front end of his car, keeping his hands where she could see them, and Laura could only hope that he was afraid she'd shoot him. She chose not to respond.

After a moment, his mouth quirked in an aborted smile. "I'm Special Agent Callen with NCIS, and I'm looking for Laura Barton."

"How do I know you're who you say you are?" she asked, then winced internally as she realized she'd confirmed his suspicion as to her identity.

Still, he said only, "My ID's in my back pocket."

"Turn around so I can watch you get it."

His smile this time was more honest, and he turned away, reaching to retrieve a black wallet from his right hip pocket while he kept his left hand held away from his body. Wallet in hand, he turned to face her and flipped it open.

From this distance, all she could make out was the glint of a gold badge.

"I can't read it from here."

"You can step back inside the house, and I'll bring it to the porch," he offered.

It was something she wouldn't have thought of, and she nodded once before doing as he suggested.

"Mom?" Cooper called softly as soon as the door closed.

Without taking her eyes from the self-proclaimed Agent Callen, Laura said, "Still figuring it out. Stay upstairs."

Callen approached slowly, always keeping his hands away from his body, right up to the front door.

She wasn't certain the bolt would hold if he tried to force it, and she knew he could break the window if he chose. She stepped back away from the door, watching as he knelt, then straightened and turned away, offering her his back as he returned to the sedan.

Only when he'd reached the sedan and turned back to face her, still keeping his hands where she could see them, did she open the door, grab his ID, and step back inside.

The badge and identification seemed genuine enough, but there was one glaring omission.

Laura opened the door and called, "What's the G stand for?"

"If I knew, I'd tell you."

She blinked once, twice, a third time. "How do you not know?"

"I was in the foster system from the time I was five," Callen said. "Nobody ever told me what the G stands for."

That decided her. "C'mon in."

That seemed to surprise him. "Just like that?"

"Nobody would make up a story like that if they were trying to dupe me."

Callen chuckled and started toward the door. "I can see why Barton married you."

His words made her spine stiffen. "How do you know Clint?"

He didn't answer until he reached the porch and looked her in the eyes. "I met him in Budapest."

A

Twenty-four hours earlier…

G Callen hated paperwork. Even when that paperwork meant a case had been closed successfully, he hated it. With a hatred that burned like the sun.

He especially hated it on a Monday morning, because starting off the week with paperwork was never a good sign.

Naturally, he did everything he could to avoid it - including checking his personal email while at work.

He didn't get much email as a matter of course so checking it wouldn't provide much of a delay, but at this point, any delay was a good delay.

G knew better than to look around to see if anyone was observing him. That was the surest way to get caught, in his experience.

So he tapped the keys of his laptop as though he were completing the report on the Bortz case and scanned his inbox.

A double handful of marketing emails had arrived - despite the fact that he never signed up for any of them - and those he deleted without blinking.

Which left only a couple of emails that might actually require a response. His breath caught in his chest when he saw an email apparently from his own email address with a subject line that consisted of one word.

Budapest.

There were only two people in the world who would use that as a subject and expect him to understand it. He swallowed nervously, wondering which of the two was calling in a marker and just what it would entail.

Then he opened the email to read two lines.

1

Natalie Rushman

Well, that (probably) told him which of the two had initiated contact. What it didn't tell him was what she wanted.

A glance around the bullpen told him that his partner, Sam Hanna, was apparently engrossed in completing the paperwork G was avoiding. Kensi Blye was away from her desk - and how had he not noticed her leaving, considering that she sat next to him? Still, her absence was good for him in this moment.

Across from him, Marty Deeks was apparently absorbed in whatever he was doing on his computer. G made a bet with himself that Deeks was playing a game of some sort, but whatever Deeks was doing, it meant G had a few moments when none of his teammates were paying attention to him.

He slipped a burn phone from his desk drawer and tapped in the number on his email.

He wasn't expecting the gruff male voice that answered.

"Talk to me."

G recovered quickly. "Natalie Rushman told me to call this number."

There was a long pause, followed by, "How do you know her?"

"Budapest."

Another, shorter, pause. "I'll call you back."

The line went dead.

Charming guy. Kinda reminds me of Jethro. G set the burn phone aside and stared at the screen in front of him.

The email and phone call had resurrected memories of an operation in Budapest gone badly wrong, and the two operatives from a sister agency that he'd met in the middle of that firefight.

Strike Team Delta, they'd called themselves, and offered only the codenames Hawk and Spider - at least until the dust had settled and the three of them were the only ones left standing. More accurately, they were the ones left waiting for an extraction team, and it was during that wait that they'd exchanged names. Callen, Barton, Romanoff.

G suspected those were actually their real names, as he'd offered his, but he'd never gone searching for more information about them. He'd simply accepted them for who and what they were at the time and gone on with his job and his life.

Now, more years later than he cared to think about, Romanoff had gotten in touch with him, and G would be lying if he said he wasn't intrigued. Both she and Barton were capable, lethal agents, so what could she need him for after so long?

He'd find out when - if - the gruff-voiced man on the other end of the line called him back.

In the meantime, G sighed and turned back to his paperwork.

A

Just under an hour later, the burn phone rang. Ignoring the curious looks from the rest of his team, G answered the call.

"Callen." He hesitated only briefly before identifying himself. Romanoff and Barton knew his name, so it was possible that anyone they trusted enough to put him in contact with knew it, too.

"You check out."

"Who's checking me out?" G countered.

"Call me Delta."

"As in Strike Team Delta." G let his tone convey the rest: how very clever of you.

"Better you don't know my name."

"For you or for me?"

"Both." That answer surprised G, but he just waited for the man - Delta - to continue. "Natalie needs a favor."

"I find that hard to believe." That was simply the truth.

"Not for her. For her partner."

G almost laughed aloud. "I find that harder to believe."

"Specifically, for her partner's family."

G straightened in his chair, knowing that he drew the full attention of the rest of his team. "What?"

"Wife and kids," Delta said. "You know what happened recently between the superheroes."

"Yes." Though he'd only seen the newspaper headlines. He hadn't bothered to buy a television to put in the house Hetty acquired for him.

"Then you know Natalie and her partner were on opposite sides, and her partner was on the losing one."

"Yes," G said again. It seemed safest to go along with whatever Delta said now. When the call was over, he could look up articles and footage from the civil war to see what in the hell Delta was talking about.

"Her partner is not in the States now, and it's likely that certain players will attempt to use his family as leverage to bring him back to face unjust charges."

"What does Natalie want me to do?" Better to cut to the heart of the matter than admit his ignorance of what had been, by all reports, a major disruption in the Avengers.

"Get his family to Wakanda."

Wakanda? What the hell's in Wakanda? But all G said was, "It would help if I knew where they are."

"I'll send you the coordinates," Delta said. "And do what I can to give you a head start, but you better move quickly and quietly - I'm hearing rumblings that SECSTATE may be leading the hunt for him."

This could cost me my job and my freedom - maybe my life. But he owed Barton and Romanoff his life and more. There was, really, no choice.

"I'll get them out," he said.

"Thank you, Agent Callen."

G slipped the phone into his pocket. Now all he had to do was clear the time off with Hetty.