Don't You Worry Child

Put Me To Work

Chapter Summary: Samantha gains comfort from her father after Steve's leaving but a visit from Coulson makes her reconsider her entire identity.

Soundtrack: Put Me To Work by PAPA

It had been three days. Three days since she woke up. Three days since they found out about Coulson. Three days since he left. Three days of tears, three days of hurt, three days of anger; anger at herself, anger at him, she wasn't really sure who she was angry at anymore it was all blurred. Three days; 72 hours; 4,320 minutes, 259,200 seconds however you preferred to count it that was the length of time since Steve Rogers had left Samantha Montgomery with the 'it's complicated' style of relationship status.

"Is he ever going to come back?" she asked her father on the afternoon of the third day when both Natasha and Pepper weren't in the room.

"He'd be stupid not to," was his reply accompanied by a kind smile.

"Are you saying that because you'll beat him up if he doesn't?" she asked with a slight giggle.

"No..." he slyly replied.

"Dad..." she said reproachfully, her eyebrows raised and her eyes forming a glare.

"Damn you've got your mom's glare. Fine I won't beat up your not-boyfriend-boyfriend if he doesn't come back," he relented with a sigh.

"I've screwed up haven't I?" she said with a sigh after a few moments' silence.

"No, why do you think that?"

"Because if I hadn't gotten so cocky and started interrogating that woman then she wouldn't have tried to shoot me, I wouldn't have gotten knocked out, Fury probably wouldn't have resigned and Steve wouldn't have left,"

Tony didn't know what to say to that. Clearly, Samantha was hurting to the point where she blamed herself for every single bad thing that had happened during and since the launch party. A part of him thought that Pepper was better equipped to deal with something like this. She was a woman wasn't she? But he soon realised how truly chauvinistic the thought was and he sort of hated that because he wasn't that man anymore, hadn't been since Afghanistan. Okay, maybe more like since he stopped using Palladium in the miniature arc reactor but that wasn't the point.

Seeing Samantha as upset as she was made him hurt to a degree he had never truly known before. He felt like he could kill Steve Rogers for just up and leaving the way he had, in fact, he probably could and he was intelligent enough and powerful enough to make it look like an accident too. But Samantha didn't want that, she was too much like her mother for that. What was it that Samantha wanted then? Comfort was an obvious thing, a distraction another. But how did he give her those things? What was that thing his mother used to say to him when he was upset as a kid? "Samantha, I'm going to tell you something my mom used to tell me when I was upset and I want you to remember it, okay?"

"Okay, she replied, slightly suspicious but still with a wry smile on her face as she agreed.

"You are beautiful, you are smart, you are kind, you are important but most importantly you are loved,"

"Okay,"

"And I also want you to know that none of this was ever truly your fault. That woman was always to launch an attack of sorts at that party anyway, all you did was change the target from Pepper to yourself. And Fury? He's so meticulous that, knowing him, this has been planned for months probably since HYDRA's coup and Steve... well... he was always going to disagree with Project T.A.H.I.T.I. whether or not you were involved," he said before changing his tone to one which seemed to be more upbeat and happy "You know what you need?"