Natasha's Secret

Chapter 21 - Exactly the Person They Need

Annabeth knew that this was coming, but it didn't make it any less difficult.

"Luke, you have to stay here with Ms. Pepper, alright," she said, running her fingers through Luke's soft black hair. The child just gave her a tearful glance, hugging his Nemo plushie tighter and whimpering.

"Why are you going away, Mommy?" He asked snuggling closer to Annabeth's side and making her heart shatter with his baby seal eyes.

She sighed and kissed his cheek, "Some bad people hurt Mommy's friends, so now I need to stop them. Mommy is going to be a hero, like Nemo's mommy, but I'll come back to you, my little clownfish,"

Annabeth would be lying if she didn't feel tears welling up in her eyes.

Luke let go of his pillow before throwing his arms around Annabeth's neck, burying his face in her shoulder.

"You'll be back, Mommy," he said through a few tears, the exhaustion of the day catching up with him.

"Of course, I'll always come back to you, my little clownfish," she whispered, rubbing his back and feeling his shoulders relax beneath her hands.

Ten minutes later, Luke was sleeping peacefully, and Annabeth ripped herself from that perfect world with her child to join reality again.

The other Avengers were sitting in the lounge area, not caring about the fact that there was a completely demolished kitchen just a few feet away from them.

"Thank you so much for agreeing to do this," Annabeth said, catching sight of Pepper Potts who was sitting next to Tony.

Pepper put down her wine glass and stood up, wrapping Annabeth in an unexpected hug.

"It's no problem, I'm just sorry you have to leave at all," she said, pulling back to face Annabeth properly.

"It really does make us feel better knowing that you'll be here and that we're not entrusting our son to a complete stranger," Percy said, walking up behind them.

"Yes, I suppose this is better than nothing," Pepper said with a smile, "I do have a lot of CEO duties, so Happy will have to look after Luke when I'm not able to. But don't worry, Tony has been trusting Happy to look after him for years, so a four-year-old shouldn't be that different-"

"Hey!" Tony sounded mildly offended, glaring at Pepper who just laughed.

"Yes, I suppose they are quite similar," Annabeth mused, making everyone laugh.

"Alright, where do we think the HYDRA base is?" Will asked, leaning forward to look at the scattered papers on the coffee table. The team had been gathering anything and everything they could about HYDRA, including all of their experiments from the World War Two days.

Annabeth had to admit, they were pretty gruesome.

"Looks like they mostly operated out of different places in Europe, it seems as though they migrated to the Soviet Union after the war, which would explain why it looked like they had disappeared," Bruce theorized.

"I thought the Russians were our allies," Steve said, looking confused,

"They were, during the war at least, but there was this winter war or something, I can't remember, and Russian and the USA have had a rocky relationship since," Nico tried to explain, making Jason laugh at him.

"It's called the cold war, it didn't have anything to do with winter, it just meant that nobody was actually doing anything. The US threatened Russia with bombs, but then Russian threatened the US with bombs, so neither really wanted to strike first," Jason summarized quickly,

"The world really has done some stupid things while I was in the casino," Nico mumbled,

"Tell me about it, I came out of the ice and people expected me to be some racist, sexist, true catholic boy," Steve snorted, "Couldn't be farther from the truth," he mumbled.

"Ok, so they relocated to the Soviet Union after the war, but that doesn't explain why they attacked the demigod camps, how did they even know about demigods in the first place?" Piper sounded frustrated, taking a long sip from her coffee mug.

Tony and Bruce exchanged a look before Tony spoke, "We don't want this to sound rude, but are there any demigods who would give out information for, I don't know, money? Other information? A job?"

The demigods considered this for a moment, "Maybe. We had a war with Kronos a while back, a lot of demigods joined his side and we had to fight our own brothers and sisters. I know that at least a few of them decided to live on their own instead of joining camp again," Will offered his theory, meeting Percy's eyes.

"It's possible, but that was mostly Greek demigods, and it's very well known that Greek demigods don't live to see their 20th birthday in most cases," Percy ran his fingers through his messy black hair that he had never learned to tame, something Annabeth loved about his appearance.

"Still, I don't think that any demigods would offer up that kind of information to a 'government' organization, they wanted to control with Kronos, this would have the exact opposite effect," Annabeth said.

The other demigods nodded in agreement.

"Not to mention, if they were a Greek demigod, they wouldn't have known about the Roman camp and visa versa," Nico spoke up.

"Ok, so, rouge demigod: possible theory, but unlikely. Any more ideas?" Clint asked, leaning back against the couch.

"Maybe they just figured it out," Steve said, drawing stares from around the room, "I mean, HYDRA is terrible, but they're not dumb, at least, not intelligence wise. Morally? That's another question-"

"Get to the point, stars 'n strips," Nico cut him off, glaring at the man.

"I mean, you say that there are certain people who can see through the- what's it called?"

"The Mist," Piper said, helpfully,

"Yeah, the Mist. If they could see through it, and they worked for HYDRA, they would have reported their sights to HYDRA which would have been able to put two and two together," Steve finished, earning some nods of speculation around the room.

"Ok, that is a much more plausible theory, but how could they have found the demigod camps?" Bruce asked, writing down illegible things in his notebook.

"If HYDRA did put the pieces together, they must have collected everyone they could find who could see through the Mist, they probably sent them out to scout for anything Greek or Roman mythology related. The Greek camp was hidden purely by the Mist, while the Roman one had less obvious signs,"

Annabeth ran her fingers through her hair, pacing the floor.

"So how does that help us? We still don't know where they are or how big their forces are-"

"I do," a voice said behind them making the group turn to find exactly the person they needed at this very moment.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare.