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THE NEXT MORNING, TRAINING WAS CANCELED.

So, naturally, the first thing Joey did was sleep in. The second she was awake, though, she was down the elevators and headed for her mom.

She knocked on the door, just in case, but a wave and smile through the window from Dr. Cho encouraged Joey to step inside.

"Good morning, Miss Stark," Dr. Cho said.

"Good morning," Joey greeted similarly, going to take a seat on the edge of her mom's exam bed. "Morning," she told her mother quietly, offering her a smile. Heidi smiled back, but her heart wasn't in it— or maybe her head wasn't in it. Either way, Joey had to try really hard to not think too much of it.

"Your mom should be good to get out of here in time for the meeting tonight," Dr. Cho explained from across the room. "We're just keeping an eye on her vitals for the time being, since her elbow, bruises, and other topical things are healing normally."

"OK," Joey said, nodding. "Thank you."

"Of course," the doctor replied. She grabbed a clipboard off one of the rolling trays in the middle of the room and tucked it under her arm. "I'm going to check in with some of our other doctors, but I'll be back. If you're gone by that time, it was nice seeing you, Miss Stark."

"You too, Dr. Cho."

With that, the doctor stepped out of the room, and it was finally just Joey and Heidi. Daughter, and mother.

"How did you sleep?" Joey asked, fiddling with the cuffs of her sweater.

"Fine," Heidi said, forcing another smile. Joey's eyebrows pulled together.

"Mom," she said lightly, tilting her head and taking her mom's hand. "You don't have to pretend like everything... I know things are—"

"J," Heidi cut off softly. "I slept fine, honey. I am OK, I just... what they did to me..." She shook her head. "I'm exhausted, honey. But I'm trying to get better, and pretending like everything is OK is the easiest thing for me to do right now." She covered Joey's hand with the one she wasn't holding. "Do you understand?"

Do you understand?

It wasn't said in a motherly way, it wasn't said harshly. It was said pleadingly. Like, please, tell me you understand.

"Yes," Joey told her after a beat. She swallowed.

She wished she didn't understand. Despite every argument she'd had with her parents over the years about it, Joey wished at this moment that she wasn't so grown up. She wished she was still the little girl that Heidi never would have been this transparent with.

The voices of Dr. Cho and someone else started to float up the hallway outside, and Joey snapped out of her thoughts when she heard them. She was suddenly overwhelmed by a multitude of scary thoughts and sad feelings, and she needed to get out of this room— she needed air.

"I'd better go," she whispered to her mom as the door clicked open. "Love you, Mommy."

"I love you," Heidi replied. With that, Joey was out of the infirmary, and on her way outside.

As soon as her shoes hit the grass, Joey took a seat on it, lifting her face up slightly, taking in the sunshine and air.

Joey felt defeated, in a way. All she had wanted these last five weeks was to talk to her mom, and now that she was here, it felt like a completely impossible thing. She had half a mind to talk to her dad about it all, but she decided against it— how could she complain about feeling like she couldn't talk to her mom, when she should be grateful that her dad and the other Avengers managed to get her back safely at all?

The selfishness of it all started to hit Joey, now. She wanted her mom back, and she got her, and now she was—

"Joey!"

Joey turned to the voice that pulled her out of her short spiral— or rather, she tried to. She didn't see anyone.

"Up here, genius."

She raised a hand over her brow to shield her eyes from the sun as she looked up, and sure enough, Pietro was leaning over the railing on their balcony. "What are you doing?" He asked.

She didn't shout back. Instead, she used her powers to fly up the five floors, though she stumbled slightly when she swung her legs over the railing. When she did find her footing, she almost fell backward over the rail, but Pietro caught her easily and helped her find her balance.

"You did not answer my question," he noted, letting go of her waist and taking a seat on the bench behind him. "Outside the walls are still off-limits, I thought. Except for missions?"

"They are," Joey hedged. "I just... I needed to break that rule for a second."

"OK," he responded, shrugging.

The two of them fell into silence, and Joey pushed off of the railing and took a seat on the bench next to him. In the quiet, she couldn't help but zone back into her thoughts from before.

Her dad was up, night and day, working at cracking codes and mainframes and security systems with Anslie and Dr. Banner. Joey had barely spent time with him in the six weeks she'd been there, which was the whole point of her trip out here this summer. And now, after everything he'd done to find Heidi, how could Joey be scared of how things had turned out?

Grow up, she told herself. Heidi was still her mom, no matter how she was going to come out of this mess. But Joey was 19, she was an adult, and it wasn't Heidi's responsibility anymore to be the magical mother she needed to be when Joey was young. She was lucky that that version of her mom existed at all, especially when some people didn't have moms, period.

She thought of Peter, she thought of Natasha, and her eyes found Pietro on her right. That feeling of selfishness came flooding back.

"What are you thinking about?" Pietro asked, when he met her eyes and saw the expression on her face.

And just like that, it was all coming out.

Joey told him how her mom wasn't the same, and even though it had barely been two days since they rescued her, it was scary. And she wanted to talk to her dad about it, because she talked to her dad about a lot of things, but she didn't want to upset him or make him feel like he wasn't doing enough, because he was doing more than enough. He found her mom in a HYDRA bunker that had been off the grid for decades, for god's sake!

She told him how she had stupidly thought that this HYDRA thing would be over once her mom got back, and things would go back to normal, but now it didn't seem like anything remotely like what she knew as normal would ever exist again. And not just in terms of her mom— everything. Even her dad.

She told him how this visit was her first time spending time with this side of her family since she was almost 17 years old. And she'd been here for over a month now, and both she and her father had been busy trying to do what it took to keep Heidi safe and alive. And of course that was more important than having stupid little dinner dates with her dad and stepmom, but a part of her wished it wasn't. Because even though he'd been here this whole time, she missed her dad. He'd always been a worrier, that's where she got it from, but she had never seen him like this, and she didn't know if he would ever be the way he was before, either.

She told her that she originally agreed to run missions for Fury and Carrelli in a moment of desperation for her mom and anger with her dad, and though she didn't regret anything, she did feel a twinge of guilt for blatantly going against him. Plus, Nat caught her coming in the other morning. She knew that Nat wasn't a narc, but it put into perspective for her that she could get caught any time by the wrong person.

Finally, she told him that she knew it would be OK eventually, but it was scary as hell when it still wasn't. All she wanted was for the not-knowing to be over, but it was impossible to know when that would be.

When she was done talking, Pietro was quiet. As she started to wonder if she had said too much, or if she freaked Pietro out, she blurted, "That was a lot. Sorry."

"No, no," Pietro dismissed. "It is OK." He took a breath. "I just... I am not really sure what to say. I lost my parents when I was very young, so I don't know what you are going through. As for the HYDRA thing... I doubt they will ever really go away. For either of us. For any of us. HYDRA followed me and Wanda for nearly three years before they took us. And now, almost two years out of their hands, they are still close. It is scary," he admitted, "but we have not yet lost to them, even after all this time. So if they never go away, we just have to keep beating them."

Joey appreciated his words, more than either of them realized. She took a deep breath.

"Thanks," she said.

"For what?"

"For listening. And for saying that. And for going to help save my mom, and for agreeing to be my mission partner, and... yeah."

"You are sure you don't want to go on? I am also strong, and good looking, and funny—"

"Shut up!" Joey laughed, smacking Pietro on the arm. When both of their laughter faded, Joey was still smiling. "What's been happening on the inside? My dad is barely telling me anything. Not that I've seen him much since everyone's gotten back, but." She shrugged.

"Whew," Pietro began, piquing Joey's interest. "Well, to keep things short. Banner has a daughter."

Joey's brows furled. "I know," she said. "Anslie. She's been here this whole time."

"Uhh, no," Pietro went on. "He has another."

Joey blinked once, twice, before her jaw dropped open.

"Dr. Banner has another daughter?!" She sputtered out. "Damn! You went straight in."

"Well, that is the biggest news I have," he defended with a shrug. "He thought she was dead, but it turned out HYDRA had her. She's the Parkers' age."

"That's awful," Joey lamented. "I mean, thank god you guys found her."

"Yeah," Pietro agreed, simply. "Agent Hill identified her yesterday through questioning, so I guess Banner's been down there all night. HYDRA did some... shit to her. That's what Wilson and Barnes were saying before they knew who she was."

Joey didn't know what to say. "Wow," she settled on, shaking her head.

"Wow is right," Pietro said with a sigh.

Joey opened her mouth to say something else, but an orange light broke through the air in front of the two of them. Confused, and semi-involuntarily, Joey brought a force-field around herself and Pietro. The light grew before a tall man in a red cape stepped through it and onto the surface of the terrace, just in front of the two on the bench.

Pietro bent toward her ear slightly. "It's OK," he muttered, before sitting back up. "Hey, Strange."

Still slightly on guard, Joey took a breath and allowed the force-field to fall.

"Hi," the man told Pietro, before looking right at Joey. "My bad. I'm actually looking for your father."

She looked sideways at Pietro, who nodded. "Um, yeah, he's— follow me," she said, standing and waving goodbye to Pietro before stepping inside with 'Strange' right behind her.

She pulled out her phone and shot her dad a 'where are you' text, which he replied to immediately. The two got into an elevator and took it to the basement, and when they stepped out, Tony was standing in the corridor looking at his phone. The sound of the elevator pinging drew his attention up.

"Oh! J, I see you've met Doctor Strange."

"Sure," Joey told her father offhandedly.

"Good to see you, Stark," Doctor Strange told Tony, shaking his hand. "What's going on?"

Joey watched her father and Doctor Strange walk down the hall and into one of the infirmary rooms; one that wasn't her mom's and she assumed, then, that it must be the room where they were treating Dr. Banner's daughter. She thought of the orange light— portal, she realized— and wondered to what extent Doctor Strange's abilities went. She couldn't help but wonder, now, just how badly HYDRA messed up that poor girl.

*

"Good afternoon, Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D. Joey, Heidi."

It was about five hours later, and Director Fury was standing at one end of the table in the big conference room, preparing for a facility meeting. Joey had her mom seated on her right, and Pietro on her left— he chose to sit beside her, not the other way around. Around them, the rest of the team and agents were seated and standing.

"First and foremost, I'd like to give an update on the two people removed from the HYDRA facility. Miss Alameda, we're glad to see that you're doing better today and that all of your tests are coming back normal," Fury began.

"As for the second hostage; you'll notice that Dr. Banner and his daughter, Anslie, aren't present. I've gone over everything with them separately, so they can handle all the... familiar matters that go with finding his not-dead-daughter. Ramona Banner was assumed dead in April of 2020— it turns out she was taken by HYDRA. It just so happens that they were keeping her in the same place they were keeping Heidi, for those two and a half years. Some of you may know that Doctor Strange was here earlier. He has since returned to the Sanctum Sanctorum, but while he was here, he worked with some of our medics on attempting to reverse the damage that HYDRA implemented on Ramona over the years. She's on the last legs of her testing and observation, and soon enough she'll be integrated into the living situation here. So, I ask that you treat her cautiously and openly.

"Ramona will be staying here for a while. We aren't sure how long, but there isn't a choice in the matter, considering the circumstances. She's only 16, her mother passed away... you get the gist," Fury continued. "As for you, Miss Alameda, I'd like to invite you to speak on what the best course of action for you would be, at this moment. You can stay here at the compound for as long as you need, healthwise, but unfortunately due to S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol, we have to ask that you find a different living accommodation for the long run— which we will be happy to help with and provide."

Heidi nodded.

"Thank you, I understand. Um..." She adjusted the sling around her shoulder and she cleared her throat before she went on. "I can't go back to Queens, sir. Not alone, at least. I don't know that I'll ever feel safe living on my own, no matter the location. But I don't want to bring Joey with me." She placed a hand on her daughter's knee. "Now that I know how easy it is to– to get on a radar like HYDRA's, and despite what I've thought in the past, I think Joey is safest when she can be with her father. He can protect her better than I can, and she can protect herself. That also takes away the... confounder of my association with all this, in the case that I do cross paths with something like HYDRA again.

"I don't have any preference regarding where I live. I'll live anywhere, so long as it's safe... but I just want to ask, in the chance that it's a possibility: is there any way that I can live..." she trailed off before looking over at Joey. "¿Fuera de la red?"

A glimmer of hope sparked in Joey's chest, seeing a little bit of her mom's old self. It was just like her to use words like 'confounder,' but then not remember the term 'off the grid.' She swallowed.

"Off the grid," Joey corrected her, nodding and turning to Fury. "Off the files."

"I was told that HYDRA got to Queens because they followed Happy's car, and that they took me because of information they had when they breached your security a few years ago," Heidi explained. "I understand why having information like that stored is necessary for a setting like this, I do, but... would it hurt to keep one piece off?"

Fury pursed his lips slightly before he responded.

"I understand your concern, Miss Alameda. We've reinforced and doubled down on firewall security since the event you're referring to, but even so, I do understand your desire to keep everything off of it, just in case. As much as I would love to find you a place and keep it off the records, it just isn't good form to keep several people off of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database. I can see if there's any kind—"

"She can stay at the house in Missouri," Clint interrupted. It surprised Joey how comfortable Clint and Natasha could be with Fury, but she didn't dwell. She looked over at him down the table. "We have a bunch of spare rooms. I'll have to call Laura, but I'll doubt she'll have a problem with it, especially where it concerns Joey's safety. The property isn't on the system, and we wouldn't be taking anything off the system. At least for now, it could be a solution."

"Clint, I wouldn't want to—"

"You're not," he told Heidi. "I'm happy to help. Our home... this is what it's for." He turned back to Fury. "Director?"

Fury eyed Clint, the intention behind it indecipherable. He flipped through a file folder, typed a couple of things into his open laptop, and then he shook his head and shrugged. "I can't find a reason that wouldn't be OK." He looked at Joey's mom expectantly.

"That... that would be incredible," she said breathlessly. "Thank you so much, Clint. And thank you, Mr. Fury."

"Alright," Fury said, his tone brightening as he typed a couple more things into his computer. "That's settled then. Barton, Miss Alameda, we'll discuss further details later.

"Next order of business, compound security. For the past several weeks, you've all been asked to stay inside the building, save for mission assignments. At this point, we don't have any reason to believe that HYDRA will be a current threat for the foreseeable future. So, we've deemed it safe to lift the lockdown. Security has been reinforced again..." Fury trailed off, and he stroked his chin a couple of times as he thought back on anything else he would need to cover. "That just about covers it. Training will resume tomorrow morning. You're all dismissed."

*

A few hours after the meeting, a family dinner between Joey, Tony, Heidi, Pepper, April, Rhodey, and Happy ensued in one of the smaller conference rooms. Occasions like this had always been rare— given, this was the first time Joey had sat down and had dinner with April, but everyone else? She couldn't remember the last time it had been all of them together, just her family.

Tony had Greek food ordered for the family, and as they talked over the food, it reminded Joey of what it was like when she was younger— really younger. Before the move to New York, before the Avengers, before Iron Man even. Back when the world cared more about Stark Industries than they cared about Tony himself. She'd been down this road before, though, so Joey didn't dwell on the nostalgia of it all. Instead, she dwelled on the fact that, at least they were together again, and this time with her 'new' cousin.

They talked about Missouri, and how often they'd visit each other. And yes, maybe promising to visit every single month was an exaggeration, or maybe an empty promise completely, but it didn't matter. It was the principle of it that mattered now, the having something to look forward to, despite the fact that everything was changing.

Tony and Happy brought up the Parker twins, and that brought Heidi and Joey to talk about May. Tony told them that it wouldn't be a problem to arrange for May to visit before they headed off to Missouri, and also how she'd already come to visit the compound in the midst of the lockdown. Heidi asked Joey about that, and she told her mother that contrary to what she may believe, she and the Parkers were closer than ever now. Heidi was thrilled to hear that. Happy, on the other hand, couldn't help but air out on how Joey's newfound closeness with the Parkers was not a good thing, but an annoying thing that made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Queens to Saratoga Springs excruciating.

"Oh, Happy," Pepper sighed. "Always living up to your name."

Following dinner, Joey went up to her room. It was nearly 9:00, which wasn't surprising; her family was notorious for late dinners, and late nights in general. So, she was changing into her PJs for the night: a gray, long-sleeved, cropped sweater, and some blue joggers with bright yellow lines on either side— her old PE sweats from high school.

She didn't bother with her slippers— she wasn't going far. Instead, she slid on a pair of fuzzy socks, before stepping into the hallway and walking a few short feet to the door to the right of the one just across from hers: room 18.

She did a double glance at the doors that mattered: Bucky's, Steve's, Eris', and Natasha's. When there was no sign of anyone coming or going to any of them, (AKA, no light was coming from under either of the doors), Joey knocked on the door before her.

Almost immediately, the door cracked open.

"Hi," Pietro said quietly, before opening the door wide enough for Joey to step inside.

"Hi," she replied back with a small smile.

He shut the door behind her, and she took in his room. She knew that most of the rooms on the floor had the same layout, but somehow, his looked so different from hers.

The first thing she noticed was the fluorescent lighting. In her room, and Natasha's, and Eris', and every other room she'd been in here, the lighting was warm white. But Pietro's was a sharp, bare white color.

Where Joey kept her desk, Pietro's room had a shoe organizer filled with different pairs of sneakers, and on the wall above it was a map of Sokovia. Just next to that was his bed, and across the room, a TV in the corner was placed opposite the chair and bean bag beside the closet. To Joey's left was his dresser, with some picture frames on it and a giant— turtle tank?

Joey looked from the tank to Pietro.

"That is Mr. Dibbles," he told her.

Joey swallowed a laugh as she got closer to Mr. Dibbles, crouching down to see him in his tank. He was a very cute turtle.

"Where have you been?" Pietro asked, leaning against his door. She looked over at him then, standing up.

"Dinner with the family," she said with a sigh. "We tend to go pretty late." She smiled and made her way to his bed, taking a seat.

"Dinner with the children," he said dramatically, taking a seat himself on the chair in the corner after pulling it out slightly. "Flores, the Parkers, and— there are four, now that Banner's kid is here. She..." he trailed off, the humor in his tone dying off. He shook his head. "I don't even want to know what they did to her. Her eyes... they are black. So are her veins. They make her skin gray."

Joey's eyes widened. "Oh my god," she said. "That's horrible."

"HYDRA always is," he sighed, before shaking his head. "Enough about that. There has been enough HYDRA talk today to last a lifetime."

Joey laughed quietly, tucking her legs up and sitting criss-cross. "You've got that right."

A short peaceful silence followed as Joey got distracted by Mr. Dibbles jumping into the water in his cage, only broken when Pietro said, "Your mom is going to live with the Bartons."

Joey's eyebrows raised slightly. "Yeah... I don't know what I expected to happen after all this, but I... I definitely didn't expect it to end with her so far away."

"Eh, it will be alright," Pietro encouraged. "Barton sees his kids often enough. You will just get to come with, on visits."

"I guess so," Joey agreed. "It'll just be... something else to get used to." She sighed, and her tongue clicked before her next words. "You see seem to know Clint well."

"He took us in, after Ultron," Pietro explained. "Before S.H.I.E.L.D. would let— would consider me and Wanda for the initiative, he let us stay in his home. It was a big mess, on the contract front. HYDRA had forced Wanda and I to call ourselves 'volunteers' for their experiments. It was not a good look, and S.H.I.E.L.D. did not believe where our loyalties lied for a while— I did not blame them, but Barton did."

"Sounds right," Joey said lightly. "Clint's always a hero first, isn't he?" She shook her head lovingly. "What about the kids? Cooper, Lila..."

"Cooper is a little older than us," Pietro said. "I think that is one of the reasons Clint saw through the HYDRA in Wanda and me. Because we were still children. Both he and Lila were very nice to both of us while we were staying there, even though neither of us was very open at first. Nathaniel wasn't born yet, though."

"Nate," Joey cooed, smiling. "I saw him for the first time, the other day. I wish I could squish his little cheeks through the phone," she laughed.

"I know," Pietro agreed, before taking a breath. "He is, uh. He is actually named after me."

Joey's smile fell slightly, and her brows pulled together. "What?"

Pietro looked to his right before standing and grabbing a picture frame off of his dresser and handing it to Joey before sitting back down. It was a picture of him— he was smiling, and his hair was shorter, more freshly cut, but the photo couldn't be older than a year or so; about how old the baby he was holding in the picture, Nate, was now.

"Nathaniel Pietro," Pietro went on. "I guess he is named after Romanoff, too."

"Yes, I— I knew that," Joey told him, still inspecting the picture in her hands. She ran her thumb over the glass before looking up at him. She didn't say anything— the question was all in her eyes.

"You asked me what the worst thing after Ultron was, and I told you it was the gunshot wounds, remember?" Joey nodded. "We were getting ready to... to destroy Sokovia," he continued. "We had just gotten everyone off— at least, we thought we did. A little boy was crying out. And Barton... ah, always a hero first, you said. He runs back for the kid. And right as he picks up the kids, Ultron starts shooting at him. A lot. I had to do something. So I run in front of Clint, and I... I take the bullets for him, and for the boy. And after that, I do not remember anything except for waking up here, in the medical wing. No one could believe the shots hadn't killed me. I never heard the end of Clint's apologies, and Laura's blessings, no matter how much I told them it was OK. And then, S.H.I.E.L.D. asked us to leave the compound once I was stable. And, like I told you, the Bartons let us stay at their home.

"A year or so after that, Nate was born. And Clint and Laura, they told me what he was named, and that was that. They finally stopped with all the thanks and blessings and everything after that, I think, because they felt that they had– had honored me. It feels funny to say, though. Like I did something worth honoring."

"You took nine bullets for him, Pietro. I'd say that's honorable."

He shrugged, and though she wanted to press the topic further, wanted to, for some reason, make him take pride in what he did, Joey could tell now that he wanted to let it go. So, she let him.

She stood now and placed the picture back on Pietro's dresser where he had taken it from, and looked shortly at the other two frames next to it; a photo of Pietro, Wanda, and all of the Bartons; and an image that Joey could only assume was he and his sister and their parents, a long time ago.

Pietro stood now, and he placed a hand on Joey's shoulder as he passed behind her. "Do you want to watch a movie?" he asked.

Joey turned over her left shoulder, and she smiled. "Yeah."

He grabbed the remote off of his nightstand, and he moved over to the right side of his bed so Joey could take a seat next to him. When she did so, he handed her the remote.

"Are you letting me pick?"

"You probably know more movies than I do," he told her.

She scrolled through several movies before landing on one of her favorites— after the conversation and the day they just had, she didn't want anything too sad. She looked over at him. "Have you ever seen this one?"

He squinted at the title and shook his head.

"You're about to be enlightened," Joey said matter-of-factly, clicking play. "Tangled is a classic. Do you know the tale of Rapunzel?"

"Of course I do," he scoffed. "I was taken by HYDRA at 12, not two."

Joey's jaw dropped open. "That is not funny!"

"Yes it is," he responded, and he didn't bother trying to cover the smirk on his face. Joey rolled her eyes before turning back to the movie, but she couldn't help the smile creeping onto her face, either.

"You're such a jerk," she told him, shaking her head. As the music faded in, so did a picture of a poorly drawn Flynn Rider on a wanted poster.

"Who is that?" Pietro asked.

"That's Flynn Rider," Joey answered without looking away from the screen.

Pietro raised an eyebrow. "He is not very good-looking."

"Yes he is!" Joey defended. "That's supposed to be a bad drawing, genius. He'd probably look a lot like you, if he got his hands on some Clorox shampoo."

Pietro's eyes lingered on Joey for a second, who had still not looked away from the TV. He laughed. "Well, that was creative."

Then, after a beat, he added. "So, he is good-looking, and I look like him. What are you saying, Jocelyn?"

Joey dodged the question. "I don't know who Jocelyn is."

Pietro was grinning, and finally, she looked over at him and tossed the pillow behind her at him. "I hate you," she laughed.

He shook his head, laughing too. "I am sure."

***

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