The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 61

Barton Home, USA

Spring 2016

It was probably pushing it to stay as long as they were, but none of them could quite bring themselves to leave just yet. They all needed the respite—and not just the kind that came from the chance to literally rest—that the Barton household and its occupants so easily offered.

The house was calm as the day began to wind down. Clint and Laura were upstairs, in the process of getting their baby down and the two older children starting to get ready for bed. Despite the fight the excited troops were giving—Lila especially, since her older brother was naturally allowed to stay up a bit longer and she wasn't—it was still plain that the archer was very obviously relieved to be home and able to hold Cooper, Lila and little Nate close.

Beating even the youngest occupants of the house to bed, Nina and the Twins were already lost to the world. Though really, they had been for most of the day, having retreated to the guest room usually set aside for Natasha at Laura's incontestable insistence not long after the lunch she'd fed them. And despite all effectively being adults themselves, Nina and the Twins had all piled into the same bed like a litter of puppies, each curled and cuddled into the other two as though they were children themselves again. Unless Nadine was very much mistaken, which she was sure she was not, the three of them would easily sleep through until the next morning at least, or until roused. Though, it was more likely to be the latter, Nadine ceded privately, if reluctantly.

She didn't want to leave either.

Outside, twilight was beginning to show the first hints of creeping over the view out behind the former summer kitchen-turned-sunroom where Nadine had retreated for some solitude of her own, bathing the fields and woods in a soft, tranquil glow. It wouldn't be long before it was too dark to see the path Sam had disappeared down when he'd slipped out for an evening run to clear his head half an hour before. But the sun had yet to surrender the sky just yet, its dusky light still lingering even as a pleasant coolness began to replace the warmth of the late afternoon. Not long after Laura had insisted they all eat—but before Nina and the Twins had disappeared, Nadine had sought out some time to herself and Clint had kept his word and driven Scott to the closest bus stop so he could make his way home to his own family—the day had turned overcast and a light rain had fallen for just over half and hour. Not that it looked it now. All evidence of the shower was long gone.

It was going to be a beautiful evening.

A peaceful evening.

Unlike the last time Nadine had set up at the same window, her hands didn't fly over the small collection of weapons she'd gathered and arranged neatly on the work counter in front of her. Her pace was far more sedate. More relaxed.

All the tension, all the unease and dread and outright fear she'd been suppressing since London—no, longer, beginning to build since the news of the Accords had broken, or perhaps even since Lagos—was finally properly bleeding away as she finally had the chance to properly process and come to grips with everything that had happened. Because so much had happened.

Everything had changed.

And it had left her feeling completely unsteady. Like the world had tilted beneath her feet and all the shadows of her past that she had forcibly brushed away to the secret, hidden corners of her mind over the years had rushed forward to dig like barbed hooks beneath her skin, festering and dragging at her to a degree she'd never experienced before.

Until Sokovia.

Until the mission became personal.

And everything that had happened in the last few days?