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Dani sighed deeply as she burrowed more deeply into the thick blanket Eliot had wrapped around her the moment he saw her.
She wasn’t cold, necessarily, but she had a feeling that the moment she closed her eyes, the cold of that hospital room would seep back in. And she desperately wanted to sleep. The 72 hours she had snoozed doped up on painkillers and trauma had not been restful, and the seven hours of torture and bidding wars before Eliot and Tony and the others got to her had not helped her.
She was pretty beaten up, all things considered, from the black eye to the bruised cheekbones and cracked ribs. Somehow, she had lost weight in the hospital, one of the many strange drugs they pumped into her most likely. But she had two legs and a full belly, and that was enough for now.
The plane jerked with turbulence, and Dani unconsciously tightened her grip on the arm rests. She’d never really liked planes.
But she kept her eyes serenely closed, trying to convey that she was definitely asleep. She was totally definitely not awake. She could feel them watching her, waiting for a breakdown or for her to lash out again.
The time spent planning with Bucky had given her far too much space for thinking, and she had long since realized she had fucked it all up just as much as the others had. She had let her trauma and fear guide her. It was cowardly and selfish. If she had paused, been logical, she would have seen how Tony was hurting. She would have known he would never side with the government, that he has a hidden agenda to change things that way.
But she hadn’t.
She had panicked and let all the pain she felt blast out of her. Now everyone would pay the price.
Why must she always destroy?
Sometimes we forget that we have to choose to be different from what they made us.
Leo’s words echoed inside her.
It had been far too long since she had thought of him, her long lost fiance. He had died in the same IED that had taken her leg.
The familiar ache settled in her bones, her new leg throbbing with the memories of charred flesh and smoke. She shifted carefully in the plane seat, trying to pull more of the blanket over her somehow. Soft footsteps approached, and another heavy blanket was draped over her.
She caught a latent whiff of her uncle’s scent and smiled.
For the first time in a very long time, Dani felt safe enough to think about Leo, and to begin to heal.
~~~
The doctors had told her to remain on bed rest until her blood results came back. They wanted to know what had caused her leg to grow back.
Dani, her hands shaking and her knees weak after about five minutes of their discussion and needle prods, was deciding to steadfastly ignore them. It was remarkably easy to evade most of the Avengers in the Tower, and her uncle and his Pack were rather okay with her bending the rules.
Her desire to escape had led her to Central Park, dressed in one of Natasha’s jogging ensembles. She couldn’t help but admire the way her new leg filled out the spandex.
And so she ran. And ran. And ran.
And she couldn’t help but think.
Leo had died before they could have married, adopted kids, done all the things they claimed they would. She had moved on, gone down a dark road, and then tried to redeem herself. Everything she had done, she had done trying to make herself better, to make herself the 19 year old kid that Leo had fallen in love with.
It was undeniably foolish and selfish.
Seven years of fighting and falling and hurting, and here she was, only one new leg closer. She would never be that girl again. But was that a bad thing?
She ducked under a low branch, her strides lengthening to push her faster and harder.
She was stronger than she used to be, tougher. She had more friends, if she hadn’t alienated them all in the last few months. She had what she considered family.
But one thing was still the same: she had never truly let them in.
Every ounce of personal information had been carved from her like a gyro. She had never willingly shared beyond the necessary. Hells, she had never given them the chance to pry it out. It was carve or nothing with her. Leo would have said that she was forgetting who the enemy was. Leo also would have probably left her to drool after Natasha for a while. She couldn’t blame him; she had definitely been drooling over Bucky.
She snorted, imagining the absolute affront on Leo’s face. He would be appalled that she had a thing for a pretty boy.
But what would Leo say about her friends and family?
Probably something awkward and vaguely inappropriate.
She missed him so much.
She hadn’t been aware of her surroundings. Two burly men jogged on either side of her. Her base instinct was to trip one and evade the other. Of course, before she could stick her foot out, one of the men flashed her a grin.
Bucky and Steve. The idiots.
Well, she was more of an idiot than they were. She had not only forgotten where she was and how many enemies she had made, but she had also not snuck out properly. Uncle Eliot would have made her run drills just for that.
Dani promptly decided to pretend she had known they were there all along and picked up the pace.
~~~
Over the course of the next week, Dani spent her time apologizing.
Some went well. Steve was very forgiving. He had to be, as often as they fought for no good reason. Natasha was understanding as well, something about trauma responses.
Some went in strange directions. She and Clint had ended up clubbing all night after she apologized, which made no sense to either of them, especially since they spent most of the time pretending to be bartenders. Thor decided they should go on a hunt, and Dani never wanted to try to kill a giant buffalo-esque creature again.
She wouldn’t say it went badly with Bruce, but there was obviously some trust that needed to be rebuilt. He had abandonment issues, and she had issues with people always expecting her to come back. It led to tension, but Hulk didn’t appear, and they seemed to find a way to work it out. Until then, she was taking time to meditate with him daily.
All that was left at the end of it was Tony.
Which was why, instead of going to talk to him, she was hiding in the weird water pod therapy room.
Dani took a deep breath, squelching the panic bubbling up inside her as the pod closed and she was left floating in water. She closed her eyes, trying to focus on all the meditation principles that Bruce had been explaining to her recently. She felt herself slipping deeper into the soft spaces of her mind.
She’s thirteen, with a split lip and bruises on her wrists and legs. Every step hurts. She reeks of her stepfather’s scent, masking her own Omega one. She had barely had a chance to get used to it before he…
She puts the lighter fluid on the cashier’s counter. She stares into the man’s eyes, begs him to see what is happening to her.
He only asks, “Do your parents’ know you’re buying lighter fluid?”
“They sent me for it,” she responds, not even feeling disgust anymore.
She’s fifteen, sitting in an abandoned warehouse. After a year on her own, she realizes that they attract the homeless, but it’s winter, and no one wants to freeze to death here. She flips the pages of the anatomy book she had stolen from a hapless college student and lands on page 251. The page is stained and a bit tattered. She had been reading it over and over for a month now.
She empties the bag of supplies she’s carefully acquired. Razor blades. Alcohol. Spoon. Gauze. Bandages.
The trash can she lit on fire reminds her of her stepfather. Her scent reminds her of her stepfather.
She wipes alcohol on the razor blade and on her wrist and then her neck.
She’s twenty, taking notes at a press conference. Her Mossad contact, Eyal Lavin, is standing dutifully by the ambassador. She couldn’t help the slight blush on her cheeks; she passed it off as heat, not the hours they had spent tangled in sheets the night before. They may have both gotten what they needed, an exchange of information, but both knew that they had needed release above all after she had killed that man.
It had been adrenaline and lust, nothing more.
She had a new contact, a man they sent to help her. Leo Valdez. It doesn’t take her long to spot him at the airport. He’s short, taller than her, but still short, with an elfish face and wicked brown eyes. He jokes that fire can’t touch him. She never stood a chance.
She’s twenty-two, blinking fog out of her eyes. Something’s happened. People are standing over her, arguing.
“The Dopler says she has blood flow. We should try to save the leg!”
“Schedule the amputation tomorrow.”
“Major,” another voice draws her attention. A nurse. She’s young, but her eyes are jaded.
“Major, do you know where you are?”
“No,” she croaks out.
“Jackson Military Hospital, in Switzerland,” the nurse responds, “You’ve been out for a while.”
She’s still twenty-two. She calls her uncle on a payphone, tottering on her weakened leg and prosthetic. She doesn’t even have to beg to get him to come for her. She knows they’re looking for her. They want her back. They found out that she was Scentless. At least they can’t trace her that way.
It takes Eliot twelve hours to reach Zurich and find her. She’s hiding in an abandoned warehouse. It brings back bad memories. But hospitals are on the lookout for an emaciated one-legged woman. She has no plans of being taken back.
She’s twenty-three, firing an automatic rifle at civilians. She knows it’s wrong. But the money is nice and she never goes home feeling anything but adrenaline. She doesn’t see Leo’s screaming face as he is blown apart. She feels the holes in her heart though.
She’s twenty-five, and she’s just graduated. The VA had helped her get interviews. She walks into Stark Tower, worry dogging her steps. People who worked for the Starks had advanced degrees. They weren’t washed up former covert ops with one leg and a history of trauma so extensive she had driven at least one VA counselor to quit.
Dani sat up with a gasp. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe.
~~~
Dani had to talk to Tony.
She had to.
There was no alternative, no place to run and hide.
This was her family.
The thought slammed into her.
She had lived so long feeling alone. After her rape, after Leo, after Eliot found his family, after after after. She had lived in the After for so long.
He pulled a screwdriver out of his pocket and began to make adjustments. “All you would have to do is ask, you know. They ask why I haven’t courted you. I’m pretty sure Natasha is squirreling away little courting gifts.”
Dani winced, “You know why I can’t do that.”
Tony dropped a handful of screws on the table and turned the prosthetic. “That’s a dumb reason.”
“Oh really?”
Tony didn’t look at her as he began to remove a particularly finicky strip of metal, “Maybe you’ve let him control your life for too long.”
She had. She’d let it all control the Now.
It was with this thought that she forced herself to hit the button for the lab on the elevator.
She had been staying in the Tower since she had gotten back from Europe, with frequent visits from her uncle and his team. It had been comforting, to be back in the place that had felt more like home than her apartment did.
The elevator dinged.
The lab was loud, blasting rock music. It clicked off as she went in.
“Thanks Jarvis,” she muttered, knowing his audio sensors definitely picked it up.
Tony didn’t look up as she walked in, his hair and hands covered in grease. She knew why.
“Tony.”
He still didn’t look up. Dani sighed, and reached for the blowtorch she saw on the workbench.
Tony stepped back as she approached, and she flamed the hell out of a metal pipe he was adjusting. He finished bending it, nodding his appreciation.
They stared at each other.
“I’m sorry,” Dani blurted out, losing her cool just a little bit.
Tony kept staring, “Um.”
“I fucked up. I got lost in the trauma and I made everything worse. I pushed you away. I’m so sorry.”
Tony nodded, still looking baffled. Dani continued, rambling, “I just, I realized you were family, and I got scared. I’ve never really had anyone beyond Uncle El and Gramps before, and even they weren’t always that great. And when you thought you could change the bill from the inside, I thought, I panicked, I--”
“You thought I had turned out just like them,” Tony finished the statement.
“I shouldn’t have. I should have trusted you.”
Tony stared at her for a long moment. He swallowed, “You had no reason to, after I told the others.”
Dani gave him a watery smile, “Call it even?”
Tony barked out a surprised laugh, “Only if you be my assistant again.”
Dani scowled, “What happened to the pile of replacements I left you.”
Tony shrugged, “They all quit. I don’t know why.”
“You never hired anyone, did you?”
Tony tossed her a pair of gloves, “Hold that molten hot metal, would you?”
Dani laughed.
~~~
Three days later, when Dani closed the door to her room in the Tower (Tony promised that she would have a floor apartment, but it never seemed to be done. Maybe because he was worried she would slip out again; she would, but not in fear), that a small box appeared, sitting on her bedside table.
Dani frowned, all her suspicions aroused, but surely, she would have been alerted if there was an intruder in the Tower. She opened the small box, undoing the red bow and peeling back the crinkly white tissue paper.
Nestled inside were two objects. The first was a beautiful karambit, with an obsidian blade and a smooth wooden handle that fit in her palm like it was made for it. She gave a few slashes with it, admiring how it smoothly flowed with her movements.
Underneath it, there was a silver chain, with a tiny bar holding three charms: a small shield, a little hand, and a tiny hammer. The three Alphas of the Pack. It was eerily reminiscent of the chain Natasha wore, with her arrow pendant.
Dani stared at it for a long time.
~~~
“Dani, would you switch my meeting to two o’clock and tell Steve that he needs to come as well?” Tony looked up from the engine he was working on.
Dani smiled at him, “Already done. Steve said he’d have your briefcase too.”
“He’s such a mother hen,” Tony groused, forcing himself not to grin as he glanced up.
A silver necklace with three charms glinted where they hung from Dani’s neck.