Widow's Walk (PG) Avengers/Stargate (1b/2)

[mhalachaiswords]

Widow's Walk (1/2)
An Avengers/Stargate story
by mhalachaiswords

Read Chapter 1, Part 1



Bruce put his free hand on the back of Natasha's hand, squeezing gently, and she realized she'd dug her nails into his skin. She let go, pressing her hand flat against her leg.

The blonde woman didn't seem irritated or angered; rather, she looked at Natasha with a frank curiosity. "How did you know?" she asked.

Natasha breathed in and out, her limbs aching with the unused adrenaline.

"Yes, Agent Romanoff, how did you know?" Jack interjected, his voice laced with just enough sarcasm to set Natasha's teeth on edge. "You've been holding out on us."

"Don't I always?" Natasha shot back at him. "It's complicated."

Jack spread his hands wide as he leaned back in his chair. "Feel free to enlighten us, the room is booked ‘til five."

Natasha glared at Jack out of habit, then glanced at her teammates. Steve was full of upright resolve, Bruce was no longer clenching his fist, and Tony was too quiet for her taste.

Taking a deep breath, Natasha directed her story at John, even though she kept her eyes on the woman. "Several years ago, I was assigned a mission to infiltrate the compound of a man, one who my superiors suspected of kidnapping civilians."

Her mind was speaking to her in Russian, and it was an effort to translate the words for the American audience.

"Human trafficking?" John asked.

"We initially thought so, only on closer examination, we discovered that all the missing people were in the compound in Belarus, and they appeared to have been brainwashed."

"How many people were in the compound?" Steve asked.

"I only ever saw about a hundred, but I suspected that there may have been more underground in the areas I couldn't gain access to."

"What happened?" Jack asked.

"My cover was broken," Natasha explained. "Before I could get out, the leader captured me and attempted to get me to talk. When he was alone with me, his eyes were gold and his voice changed."

She kept her gaze level with Jack, not curling in on herself no matter how much the memories of the torture fell upon her. She was Natalia Romanova, the Black Widow, and her memories did not control her.

Dr. Jackson cleared his throat. "When did this happen?"

Natasha let out a breath. This was exactly what she had wanted to avoid. Jack knew she was older than she appeared, as did John and Steve. Maria had to know, given her access to Natasha's file. But that left a handful of these strangers who had no right to know such things about Natasha.

But there was no walking away from it now.

"It was 1976," she said. "In the winter."

Winter in Belarus, miles outside of Minsk, and she had crawled out of that burning compound covered in blood not her own. She had nearly died before a ghost walked out of a blizzard and carried her to safety.

"Did he have a name?" Teal'c asked suddenly. "This man of whom you speak."

"He called himself Seth."

The room lit up with an electric charge. Jack's eyes flashed with anger. But John.... was nodding?

"What?" Natasha asked.

"We got him," John said. "Well, not me, but these guys."

Natasha frowned. "No, I killed him in 1976." Her hand ached with the memory of gripping the man's knife, stabbing him in the gut, in the face, anywhere she could reach.

She'd crawled out of the burning compound covered in the blood of a psychopath, and had never once in thirty-six years thought she needed to look over her shoulder.

"Was this him?" John asked, poking at the tablet. A photograph appeared projected on the far wall, of a man with dark hair.

Natasha shook her head. "No, that wasn't..." She looked again, digging into her memories, past the haze of the pain and the beating, the helplessness of knowing that she was going to die. "That wasn't Seth, that was Viktor, one of his confidants."

Dr. Jackson tapped his fingers against his coffee cup, his brow furrowed in thought. "If Seth was close enough to death in 1976, he would have jumped to a new host," he said slowly. "How badly injured was he?"

Natasha let out a breath over the remembered stench of blood and viscera. "He wasn't going anywhere when I left. I was certain he was dead."

His eyes had been open wide and glassy as Natasha dragged herself from the room and out into the cold, one arm broken, ribs smashed in, a weight in her gut as blood pooled inside her skin. She had seen so many men in death, and it had never occurred to her for an instant that Seth was anything but.

Natasha's skin crawled at the idea that such a monster had walked upon the earth and she had not known.

"What does this have to do with how you knew Sam used to be a host?" John asked, bringing the question back around.

Natasha settled back in her chair, crossing her hands across her stomach to keep them from trembling. "I could feel it."

"Like some alien parasite vibe?" Tony asked, unable to keep silent any longer. "What's that like, does it taste like cinnamon?"

"It's just a feeling," Natasha said, loath to describe the metallic shiver down her spine, the worms crawling in her belly.

The woman stood up. "Are you getting that feeling from anyone else at the table?" she asked, walking around to the far wall and picking up a small case from the tabletop.

Natasha shook her head. "Should I be?" she asked, voice tight. If there was another Goa'uld in this room and John hadn't said anything, she was going to have to have a serious talk with the man.

"No," the woman said. She returned to her seat and opened the case. Inside lay a solid cylinder of metal, shining dully in the light. "How about now?"

Tony reached for the cylinder. "What is this?" he demanded, turning it over.

"It's naquada," John said, yanking it out of Tony's grasp. He rolled it across the table to Natasha.

The moment she touched the metal, the memories of 1976 hit her again, only harder this time. She breathed around the remembrance of blood in her mouth as she tightened her grip on the metal.

Naquada.

"Why?" she asked, something thick in her mouth. It took her a moment to realize the blood in her mouth wasn't a memory; she'd bitten through her lip when the naquada had touched her skin.

Someone was taking the metal bar from her. Teal'c had gently removed the cylinder from her hand and was passing it to Dr. Jackson; the woman appeared stricken, and John....

John was looking at her with no expression on his face, but a cold anger burning in his eyes.

"We need to take a break," Steve said abruptly, standing up. "Is there a room we can use?"

Natasha stood under her own power, conscious that Bruce had his hand on her lower back as he guided her out of the room, behind Steve.

They ended up in a small suite down the hall, just the five of them from SHIELD. Tony closed the door behind Maria and said, "Okay, what the fucking hell was that?"

Natasha made it to the nearby sink before she threw up.

Someone was holding her hair, a hand on her hip keeping her upright. Someone was speaking in her ear. Bruce, from the timbre of the voice. Her stomach heaved again, and she spat bile into the sink.

"Come on," Bruce said gently, guiding her upright. "Let's wash your hands first."

He turned the taps on hot and gave her the soap from the small dish, letting her scrub at the palm of her hand where she had held the bar of naquada.

The sensation of the metal wasn't coming off with soap alone. Natasha dropped the soap into the sink and scrubbed at her palm with her fingernails.

"Natasha, you've got it," Bruce said in that same wounded-animal voice, pulling her hands out from the water stream. "Drink this."

Natasha took the glass from Bruce, rinsed her mouth out, feeling the sting of the cold water against the bite on her lip. She spat a mouthful of blood and bile into the sink, and took another drink.

Slowly, the reaction faded.

Natasha wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I apologize for the outburst," she said after a moment, still hunched over the sink.

"Don't worry about it," Steve said. "Take a minute, okay?"

But Natasha didn't want to take a minute, didn't want to admit weakness in front of these men. She straightened up, swallowed around the blood in her mouth, and wiped her hands on her jeans. "I'm fine," she lied.

Bruce handed her another glass of water. "Have you ever reacted to a metal like that?" he asked. Natasha shook her head. "Not even vibranium? Because there's not a lot of unknown metal elements lying around the planet."

"No, not vibranium," Natasha said. "Steve's shield doesn't do anything to me."

"Ouch, that has to hurt the ego," Tony said in Steve's direction. "Sort of like thinking you'd killed the big bad wolf and then finding out he was just some sort of meat puppet for an alien worm?" he directed at Natasha.

"Tony," Bruce said warningly. "I'll see if I can get a sample of the metal to test back at the Tower, if that's okay with Natasha."

Maria, who had been standing at the side of the room with her arms crossed over her chest, said, "Agent Romanoff, status?"

"I'm fine," Natasha said again, and this time it didn't feel like such a lie. "This afternoon has been... unexpected."

"Well, aliens," Tony said. "No one expects aliens in the U.S. Air Force."

Natasha ran her hand through her hair, breathing out. Steve reached out to touch her arm. His skin on hers was warm and comforting. "Are you able to continue?" he asked, voice all business.

Natasha nodded. "Just what every agent wants, to freak out in a room of Air Force generals," she said. "And John."

Tony made a curious noise. "Wait, John? Since when are you and Sheppard on a first-name basis?"

Natasha looked at Tony, annoyed, because what did he know about John Sheppard? But before she could say anything, Tony's eyes went wide and he made a flapping motion with his hands.

"You, oh god you, that's why he called you Nat," Tony said, covering his mouth with one hand. "You're Natalie Sheppard?"

Natasha shoved the glass of water at Steve. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. She'd never expected to hear that name again, and to have it thrown at her by Tony Stark of all people made her skin crawl.

Tony backed away from Natasha's approach. "John had a picture of his dead mother in his dorm room in college, and it's you," he said accusingly. "With the hair and the face and the..." He made a hand motion, sketching the general outline of a woman's torso. "...eyes, it's totally you!"

"When were you in John's dorm room?" Natasha asked heatedly.

"Like, 1989? I have like six PhDs, you think I could pull all that off at MIT?" Tony asked, backing into a wall.

"You met John at Stanford?" Natasha demanded, coming to a stop within striking distance of Tony. He looked down at her, eyes wide.

"If by John you mean your son, then yes," Tony said. He looked over Natasha's head at the rest of the room. "Why do the rest of all you look like that?"

"Like what?" Bruce asked.

Tony made another flailing gesture at Natasha. "She pretty much admitted that she has a forty-two-year-old son, and none of you have so much as an expression!"

Steve shrugged. "It doesn't seem the sort of thing that's all that surprising, is all," he said awkwardly.

Natasha wanted to sigh at Steve's attempt to keep a confidence. "I told Steve about John last month," she told Tony. "Let it go."

"Let it go?" Tony repeated. He looked over at Bruce and Maria. "What about you two? You're good with the tiniest member of the team suddenly being someone's babymama?"

"Don't you ever listen to Natasha talk?" Bruce asked. "Her speech patterns only make sense if she was born before 1960." He gave her an apologetic glance. "Sorry."

Natasha blinked at Bruce. "I could just have Russian as my primary language," she said, a little unnerved that he had been making deductions about her.

"That would result in a whole different linguistic pattern," Bruce said.

Maria smirked. Of course, Maria had read Natasha's file, had been a junior agent when Barton and Coulson threw Natasha into SHIELD ten years previous. If she hadn't known about John before, it was only a matter of time before Fury would read her into Natasha's entire file.

Tony threw his hands into the air. "What about Barton, does he know about little Johnny Boo Boo too?"

"What do you think?" Natasha asked. "And why are you so fixated on this? Why aren't you more interested on the concept of space travel and aliens by the U.S. military?"

"Please, aliens are so last month," Tony scoffed. He shoved his hands into his suit pockets and stared at Natasha, his expression changing to one of mischief. "So. Just to be clear."

Natasha waited for it.

"How are you likely to react to any MILF jokes?"

"With your immediate defenestration," Natasha snapped, advancing on Tony again. He ducked around Steve.

"Really?" Tony asked. "Because I've got a great one with a rabbi and a goat."

"MILF?" Steve said to Bruce.

Bruce hunched his shoulders awkwardly. "I'll explain on the plane," he said.

"No, Tony's going to explain that one to Steve," Natasha said, getting around Steve. "And I'm going to be there to watch."

"Come on, not even once?" Tony teased. "Just for old time's sake?" Natasha nearly had him, when the door to the room opened and John Sheppard stepped inside. Quick as a flash, Tony ducked behind John, hauling the man bodily between him and Natasha. "Think fast, Sheppard."

"Why, what did you do?" John asked Tony over his shoulder.

Natasha watched Tony's expression change as he worked through the possible scenarios of explanation. "Um, nothing." He let go of John's jacket and stepped back.

John turned to Natasha. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked.

Natasha nodded.

Not satisfied, John looked around the rest of the room, taking in the occupants. He let out a sigh. "The generals broke for a discussion, mostly about Russia and Seth and things, but they're back in an hour if you want to keep going."

"Of course," Natasha said immediately. "We need to conclude the briefing."

"Are you going to be alright with that?" Tony asked. Natasha turned to glare at him. "I mean, of course you're going to be alright with that, Agent Romanoff."

"I'm curious about how Natasha knew about Colonel Carter's situation," Bruce said, leaning against the wall. "And how it's connected to her reaction to the metal bar."

"The naquada," John said. He smoothed out the wrinkles Tony had left in his jacket. "The Goa'uld we've encountered had small traces of naquada in their systems. If they're in a host long enough, or the parasite dies in the host, the naquada in their systems is enough to be sensed by another host."

Tony raised his eyebrows. "Are you trying to say that Mommy's an alien?" he asked.

John shot him an annoyed glance. "No, Stark. Maybe she's a little more perceptive than you."

"That's not hard," Maria said under her breath, barely loud enough for Natasha to hear.

Bruce turned to Natasha. "Are you able to sense different types of metals?" he asked.

Natasha held in the urge to glare at her son. She wasn't exactly thrilled that her secrets were being thrown out into the open in front of other people, even her teammates. "In the past, with certain metals, yes," she said cautiously.

"Like with Seth?" John asked.

"Like with Seth," Natasha agreed. There was something else, something hovering on the edge of her consciousness, something that had been there since the bar of naquada metal had hit her hand. Something that made her wonder if she had sensed a Goa'uld before Seth, something buried in her memory beyond where she could reach it.

Or some memory stripped away from her, in all the years of being unmade in the Red Room.

Taking a breath, Natasha pushed down her uncertainty. The question had nothing to do with the immediate situation, and she could revisit it later, when she wasn't balancing on a blade's edge between her teammates and her son.

"So when you came into contact with Sam, you sensed the remnants of naquada in her system, thought she was a Goa'uld, and reacted accordingly," John summarized. He shrugged. "There you go. It's not that hard to understand."

Steve was watching Natasha closely. "You said you thought you killed Seth," he said.

"So?"

"Why did you try to kill him?"

Natasha rubbed her palm against her jeans. The remembered feel of the naquada burned like acid against her skin. She wanted to be elsewhere, anywhere else, not having her memories flayed open in front of the others. "It was him or me," she said shortly, looking at Steve with a warning in her eyes.

Steve nodded. "So we have an hour," he said, changing the topic. "Perhaps Colonel Sheppard would care to explain why we're really here?"

Bruce frowned, puzzled, but he was the only one who apparently wasn't expecting the question. John rubbed the back of his neck and went to sit in one of the chairs by the door, slouching a little. At his apparent casualness, Tony relaxed, and even Maria softened a bit from her extreme alertness.

Only Natasha knew it was an act, one her son had perfected over forty years, and her heart ached a little.

"The Goa'uld aren't the only aliens we've encountered," John said. "Just the first. But in all the regions of space we've been to, we've never experienced the Chitauri, not anything like them. Same thing with the Tesseract. Given all that we have seen across the universe over the past eighteen years, it's a little alarming that all this stuff suddenly pops up on our radar."

"So you wanted to compare notes?" Maria asked.

"Sort of," John said, smiling faintly. "But not specifically with you guys."

"Then who?" Tony asked, but Bruce had already moved ahead of him.

"You wanted to talk to Thor," Bruce said. He straightened his glasses. "He's not human, and the Tesseract is Asgardian in origin. You wanted him to come with us today."

"The invitation was extended to you all," John said cautiously. "But yes, we were hoping he'd be able to join you."

"Yeah, well, he got a better offer," Tony said. "Weekend in Canada with the girlfriend. Skiing, hot tubs, you know the drill."

"Maybe another time," John said, and there was that cautious tone of voice again, one that Natasha knew meant he was hiding something. But she wouldn't press, not right now in front of everyone. There was time later to find out why the people involved in the Stargate program were so interested in Thor.

"What about now?" Tony asked. "What's a pilot like you doing in a place like this?"

John smiled, for real this time. "I guess you all have clearance for this," he said. "Anyone heard of Atlantis?"

The name fell like an electric charge into the room. "The lost city of Atlantis, Atlantis?" Steve said. Bruce pulled off his glasses to stare at John. Tony gaped. "That's real?"

"It's real," John said, his smile bittersweet. "We found it in 2004."

"How?" Tony demanded. "Where is it?"

John pulled a small black device from his pocket and held it out on his palm. The device glowed briefly, then a three-dimensional star map filled the room. John pointed with his free hand. "This is us," he said, indicating the familiar Milky Way. He moved his finger a few inches in the hologram, pointing at another cluster of stars indicating a galaxy. "This is the Pegasus Galaxy. This is where we found Atlantis."

He waved his hand, and the hologram changed. A shimmering city appeared, buildings of alien design, floating on an alien sea.

Atlantis.

Natasha clenched her hands to contain her reaction. This was John's city, the mission he'd had for so many years. She'd been trying to learn more about John's project for years, and every time she thought she had something, the details were snatched away. She hadn't thought it possible to keep something like that from her, for so long, but now she knew and it was too late for John; it had been taken away from him.

"Another... galaxy," Steve said. "Where you found the lost city of Atlantis."

"Yup," John said.

"Did you get there by Stargate, or do you have other methods of intergalactic travel?" Bruce asked, putting his glasses back on to examine the hologram.

"We got there by Stargate, originally," John said. "We have ships that can do intergalactic runs now."

"Ships," Steve repeated weakly.

"Spaceships?" Tony exclaimed. "How the hell did the U.S. Military build spaceships and not use any Stark tech?" Before John could answer, Tony's jaw dropped. "Oh god please tell me you didn't use any Hammer tech!"

While the boys bickered about technology, Natasha exchanged a glance with Maria. This was above their pay grade, way above. If the U.S. military had singlehandedly created an interstellar program, there was no telling what sort of Earth-bound political power imbalance would result if the program came to light.

It would make the Cold War seem like a playground tussle in comparison.

Natasha steeled herself. "John?" she asked delicately, cutting into the verbal sparring match between her son and Tony Stark. "Your friend, Rodney McKay? Is he on the Atlantis project as well?"

"Yeah, he's still there," John said, too evenly. "Why?"

"He's Canadian," Natasha observed. She wasn't sure how to ask her question without starting an international incident, but John just blinked at her.

"Yeah, so?" Slowly, comprehension dawned. "The Atlantis project is under the supervision of an international oversight committee. It's not just General O'Neill and Homeworld Security running the show."

Natasha's tension eased slightly. "I'm sure Director Fury will be glad to hear that," she said to Maria.

"I'm not," Tony interjected. "They've got Hammer tech embedded on intergalactic star destroyers, how long do you think they have before everything just blows up? Stark Industries can retrofit them so they actually work-- "

"Because giving Iron Man access to alien technology is right at the top of everyone's to-do list?" John interrupted.

"Hey, of the people in this room, I'm the only one who's flown into space so don't give me that bullshit," Tony snapped, all hints of joking gone from his voice.

"You think I'm joking?" John retorted. "Stargate Command didn't approach Stark Industries for tech development on this because there were people who didn't want to hand you the technology to take over the world, okay?"

"You thought I'd take over the world?" Tony asked. He'd gone pale, too pale, and Natasha had known him long enough to know what dangerous sign that was. "I'm sorry, do I look like a supervillian to you, Sheppard?"

"You used to sell weapons," John said evenly, never taking his eyes from Tony's. "And there was a time you weren't all that careful about who you sold them to."

Tony didn't move, didn't react, just stared back at John. Natasha could nearly taste the tension in the air, hovering on a knife's point. Before either one of them could speak, could push the tension over into disaster, Natasha leaned forward, putting her hands out, palms up.

"A lot's changed for Tony since 2004," she said, voice calm, quiet, soothing. "And it's Generals and committees who make the decisions on military contracts." Neither man moved, but a bit of the tension drained from the air. "John, can you show us more about what has been happening here for the past eighteen years? All your alien worlds?"

John let out a breath, before deliberately taking his eyes off Tony to look at Natasha. "Sure," he said. "I can read you in a bit on the Ancients, the aliens who built the Stargates and Atlantis. And the Ori, one of the more recent problems we've had to face. They were a real bitch."

From his careful phrasing, Natasha knew John was hiding something, keeping something up his sleeve. But she'd wait, and listen, and maybe be able to tease hidden meaning from John's words without him realizing.

She'd never thought that she'd be in the unenviable position of having to decipher her own son's secrets.

After the briefing was over, Natasha's head was aching from all the complications of Stargate travel and the intergalactic politics at play. Who would have thought that the Chitauri would have been one of the lesser threats faced by Earth?

And that didn't even begin to take into account the implications of the Stargate would have on Earth. The world was still coming to terms with the existence of aliens after the Chitauri invasion. When the population found out about more aliens, some peaceful and some not...

Natasha had been alive for very long time, and even she couldn't begin to imagine how the world would react.

Maria and Steve were talking with Dr. Jackson and John about next steps, while Bruce had Tony pinned in a corner and was visibly trying to talk him down from some sort of manic science experiment plan.

That left Natasha standing alone by the open glass bay windows, staring down into the large room that housed the Stargate.

The air moved, and without turning her head, Natasha knew who was at her side. "It's hard to think that something so beautiful could cause so much trouble," she said.

"Tell me about it," Jack replied. He rested his hands on the window's edge. "You didn't seem all that surprised about the Stargate. Were you in on any of the intel back in the early days?

Natasha shook her head. "After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, I turned my attention to more.... domestic matters."

"That's one way to put it," Jack said.

Natasha pursed her lips. He was baiting her about her past, but her head hurt to much for her to care. "What do you want, Jack?"

He tapped his fingers against the glass. "I was going to say that this whole thing has been unexpected, but really, I'm not surprised that you‘ve crossed paths with a Goa'uld before."

Natasha turned her head to look at him. "Why is that?"

"History," Jack told her. "You've got a habit of being in interesting places at interesting times."

Unwillingly, Natasha's mind threw her back to Belarus, crawling out of the burning compound into the freezing cold. She dug her fingers into her to keep her hands from shaking.

She was not going to lose control again, especially around Jack O'Neill.

"I'm lucky, I guess," Natasha finally said.

"Yeah, luck," Jack echoed. He leaned against the window to watch Natasha. "I've had that same kind of luck myself."

Across the room, John broke off talking with Steve and Maria, and headed over to where Bruce and Tony were huddled. Tony reached for John, hauling him in to look at something on the tablet computer. Their heads bent together, it was difficult for Natasha to reconcile their previous antagonism in the break-out room.

"What about John?" Natasha asked Jack.

"What about him?"

"You promoted him to full Colonel," Natasha reminded Jack. "What's going on there?"

Jack leveled a steady gaze at Natasha. "How much did Sheppard tell you about what happened to him?"

"That you pulled him off his posting and gave him a promotion at the same time," Natasha said. "Although he wasn't exactly forthcoming about being held by the enemy."

"Yeah," Jack said. "I guess he wouldn't be."

"Jack," Natasha said. "Tell me what happened to my son."

Jack glanced down at his hands. "Sheppard was captured and it took us a while to get him back."

Natasha's insides twisted up. "What did they do to him?"

"It wasn't exactly a botox treatment," Jack said. "He was in bad shape when his team finally found him."

Natasha tried to breathe around the rising bile in her throat. Her son had been taken, he had been tortured, and Natasha hadn't even known he was missing.

"Some folks were saying he'd been compromised, being in enemy hands for so long," Jack went on, his voice nearly inaudible. "Which is complete bullshit, but a component of the International Oversight Committee used that as an excuse to push Sheppard out of Atlantis. They'd been trying for years, basically since we started the Atlantis project, but this time we couldn't stop them."

"You could have tried harder--"

"Not this time," Jack interrupted her. "Before, Sheppard was field-ready whenever anything came down, and he could always prove himself when it mattered." Jack stared down at the Stargate. "The situation's different this time."

This time, echoed in Natasha's head.

Over the years, she herself had been inured many times in the line of duty; she knew how long it could take to resume top fighting form, depending on the severity of the injury. She'd been beaten, shot, starved, whipped, stabbed. But no matter how long it took, she always pulled herself together and went back for more.

But this was different. This was John.
"Hey," Jack said. "He's going to be all right."

Natasha swallowed hard, pushing away the panic attack trembling on the edges of her vision. "You know this how?"

"'Cause that's the way he is," Jack pointed out. "You know that as well as I do. He just needs something to focus on in the meantime."

"Is that why you promoted him?"

Jack frowned. "No, that paperwork went through a few months before we got him back."

"What about his special projects?" Natasha asked. "What do you have him doing?"

"Call it a hunch," Jack said after a minute. "I've got this feeling that something's coming at us, something bigger than we've seen in a while, and we're going to need everyone on deck when it hits."

"Is that why you pulled the Avengers in on the Stargate project now?" Natasha asked, finally turning away from the Stargate. Her team was scattered throughout the room, and with a sudden ache, Natasha wished Coulson had been there instead of Maria. He was so much better at the big picture stuff than any of them.

"All hands on deck," Jack said again.

The door to the room opened, and Colonel Samantha Carter entered. The woman scanned the group, eyes passing Jack, and a brief smile crossed the woman's face before she moved over to Dr. Jackson's side.

Ah, so it was like that, then. Natasha smiled up at Jack. "You and your blondes," she murmured, sliding away as Jack glared at her.

Just like old times.

Natasha moved on quiet feet to where Tony, Bruce and John were in the middle of a discussion. "Are ladies allowed in this little club?" Natasha asked, edging in between John and Tony.

"Ew, no, cooties," Tony said distractedly.

"Anytime," John retorted, moving over to let Natasha see what they were working on. "Mr. Stark was just expressing his displeasure with some of the more venerable equipment in the Gateroom."

"I'd be able to help if you guys actually let me see the Stargate activate," Tony said. "Come on. You don't just bring a guy down here and get him hot and bothered about interstellar wormhole physics and leave him hanging."

"Do you have any idea how much power it takes to open a stable wormhole?" John asked.

"How much?" Tony's hand was poised over the tablet, gaze steady and bright on John's face. It was his Science! expression, and Natasha had never been so thankful for Tony's rapid mood swings when it came to learning about new things.

"No idea, that's Carter's thing," John said.

Tony's eyes narrowed. "Tease."

Suddenly, a claxon sounded and warning lights began to whirl in the Gateroom below. "Off world activation," came a voice over the loudspeaker, echoing throughout the complex. "General Landry to the Control Room."

"Looks like you get to see some action after all," John said.

"Even with the Stargate to stabilize the wormhole, it must take an immense amount of power to keep the wormhole active," Bruce said, pulling off his glasses as the Stargate's chevrons began to glow.

"The dampener coils are pretty outdated to keep the place from shaking apart," Tony said, pointing down into the room. "Original install from the nineties?"

"Probably," John said with a shrug. "I wasn't around then."

Without any further warning, the air in the center of the Stargate exploded in a whirl of quicksilver and light, blossoming out to fill the entire circle before flattening into a shimmer of light.

"Oh," Tony said, his voice free of sarcasm. Natasha understood; she'd heard about the Stargate during the day, but to actually see it, to realize what it meant as a gateway to other worlds, other civilizations, to places that offered home and dreams instead of just nightmares....

It took her breath away.

"Closing the iris," came the disembodied voice, as a lens of metal swirled shut over the Stargate's surface.

"Keeps out the riff-raff," John said. "You know. Bothersome aliens and gate-to-gate salesmen." He leaned against Natasha's side. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"It is," Natasha said. This was what her son had been doing for so many years - going out into the galaxy, encountering friends and enemies. There was so much beyond the small planet of Earth, and John had lived it.

Then, the metal iris swirled open, and people walked out of the wormhole's shimmering surface. Walked, as if it was normal to travel across the galaxy through a wormhole.

Tony turned to Bruce. "I want one."

"Tony..."

"We can make one in the spare R&D lab. Come on, it'll be fun!"

Natasha slipped her hand around John's arm, giving him a squeeze as the wormhole dissipated into nothingness. "This is what you do?" she asked quietly.

John let out a breath. "Used to do," he told her, and she could hear the pain in his voice. "Not anymore."

"I'm sorry," Natasha said, and almost meant it.

After all, it had been a wormhole like this one that had taken her son to the hands of the enemy.

to be continued