911 | james barnes

008

7:21am, April 29, 2013

New York City, New York

"Dr Banner. Mr Stark requests your presence in the briefing room, ASAP." J.A.R.V.I.S. stated, waking Bruce from his turbulent slumber.

"Yeah, okay, thanks." Bruce grumbled, turning over to lay on his back. It was his daughter's fifteenth birthday today, and he could think of many great ways to spend it. Seeing Tony in the briefing room at 7am wasn't one of them. Sighing to himself, he stood up and readied himself for whatever hell the billionaire was about to put him through. With a foggy mind and reluctant footsteps, Bruce made his way to the elevator, blindly jabbing at the button for the 76th floor where the Avenger's briefing room was located.

"Green bean!" Tony called excitedly as Bruce walked into the room. Already seated there was Clint, Natasha, Thor and Steve, all of whom looked up at Bruce's arrival with worry.

"What's going on?" Bruce asked warily, slowly sliding into the chair closest to the door, in case he needed to make a hasty exit.

"J.A.R.V.I.S. got a ping from a facial recognition algorithm I created to find this new Black Widow." Tony said, gesturing wildly to the screen behind him which slowly began flashing images of Bruce's daughter on missions in a black catsuit, not unlike Natasha's own.
"You found her?" Bruce whispered, rising from his chair, walking toward the screen, memories of the short time he spent with his baby girl making his eyes water.

"Uh, yes. I think so. But I don't think she's the same kid you remember. She's been credited with some of the biggest assassinations since JFK. Going back almost ten years." Tony told Bruce, restraint tight in his voice.

"My daughter's been assassinating people for ten years, missing for thirteen, and we're only just finding her?!" Bruce roared, anger clear on his face.
"Bruce, just stay calm, okay? We've found her now and Steve and I are planning an extraction mission to bring her home." Natasha soothed, her hand gently reaching out for Bruce's.

"Okay, okay. Extraction mission, yeah that's fine. Tell me what's happening with that." He spewed, sitting down in his chair, fingers trembling with anticipation.

"So, since we don't really know what we're getting into in terms of her, we've planned a mission around that and we'll fill in other details once you give us all the information you have about her. Barton will man the jet for backup and fast extraction. There's a large charity event being held in Milan, talks are that Gian Sergi will be there, a huge mafia boss that basically rules over southern Italy. The KGB are known enemies of the Lombardy Mafia, and they definitely like making statement assassinations. We'll intercept the Black Widow before she's able to make contact with anyone and bring her back here for assessment and reintegration." Steve concluded, pointing to images, maps and profiles as they appeared on the screen. Bruce nodded along, his eyes scrutinizing every pixel that showed up.

"So what can you tell us about her?" Natasha whispered, her eyes comforting as they urged Bruce to open up about his long lost daughter.

"Her birth name is Violetta Tchaikovskaya, I argued with her mother, Irina, for months to let Vi take my last name but she refused, something about how it was bad enough she would share the DNA of an American, let alone the surname. There were complications during her birth. I had to make the choice of who to save, Violetta or Irina. But we had already had the conversation. Violetta had a full life ahead of her, and Irina didn't want her years left to be spent mourning the loss of life she caused. After that, I couldn't change her name, so I always called her Vi. She was a very peaceful baby, rarely cried and slept more than most. As soon as she turned two it was like her entire physiology changed. She was super chatty, barely slept, but was always full of energy. She loved just hanging out in my lab and a lot of the time, just having someone to talk out loud to would make whatever I was working on make sense. My mother convinced me to get a tutor for her, just to occupy her brain so she didn't start acting out. I thought it couldn't be too bad an idea, right? So we did it, and within six months she was speaking Mandarin, English and Spanish like they were her mother tongue. Seeing her progress, I wanted to try more difficult things. I started explaining physics to her and she mastered it. Sometimes I thought she was a better physicist than I was. By her third birthday, she was fluent in seven languages, could recite dissertations like they were nursery rhymes and she was working on theories that my colleagues with multiple doctorates couldn't even fathom. She was an absolute genius. Then one night, a few weeks after her fourth birthday, she came into my lab when I was working late on the super soldier recreation. She stepped up to the table and pieced the whole thing together in a few seconds. It was too heavy for her to hold and she dropped it, so I jumped in front of the blast and tried to protect her, but I woke up a week later in the hospital and there was no trace of her. The police and the FBI were on the case, but it's nearly thirteen years later and they hadn't found any evidence she was ever even in my lab." Bruce sighed, his mouth dry from speaking so long. During his speech, Tony had sat down in a chair, his face pale as he looked around the room.

"So, if the KGB have her, do you think they could be using her for any science stuff?" Clint asked, seeming to be the only person not in a state of shock.

"I doubt it. She wouldn't be in the Black Widow Program if they knew she was smart. There's something else they wanted from her. And by the sounds of it, they got it. Which just means we need to get in there and bring her home now." Natasha stated, standing up from her chair and marching out of the room. Steve and Tony nodded to each other, Clint joining the two as they left the room quickly, each going to different places in the tower.

"Lady Violet will return soon enough, Dr Banner." Thor assured him, following in the others' direction, leaving the man alone in the room, staring at a photo of his daughter on the large screen at the front of the room.

"Happy birthday Princess."