#thank you ava for your impeccable service

[star-trekkin-across-theuniverse]

Resource Management, pt27

Word Count: 2507 Tags: @supermoonpanda @rayleyanns @sistasarah-sallysaidso @feelmyroarrrr @anyakinamidala @dirajunara @little-study-bug @rampant-salamander @goodnightwife @samaxraph99 @anotherotter  @outside-the-government @kingarthurscat @coyote-in-space @originalpottervengerlock @dolamrothianlady @curiositywillbethedeathofme @superheroesofbothuniverses @mtriestowrite @wanderingkat77

Author’s note: WELCOME TO CANADA!!

“Barbie Broughton? Are you fucking kidding me? Barbie? Really?” I looked at the ID. My face, and the horrible name. Colonel Rhodes had made me a captain though. That wasn’t too bad.

“It was the best I could do on short notice, Annie,” Tony rolled his eyes.

“You named me Barbie, Tony! I hope no one pulls me over,” I muttered. Colonel Rhodes leaned against the counter, watching me serve dinner.

“You’ll have to use it to check into hotels, sign credit card slips. Decide now how you want to be addressed.” He stole a wing from the plate.

“Ugh. I suppose Barbara will have to do,” I sighed.

“Think of this as an adventure, Annie.” Tony traded me a fresh beer for his dinner plate. We settled in for dinner. I steered the conversation away from everything wrong in the world, and instead we talked about the sights I was bound to be able to see on my drive. Despite having grown up in Canada, I’d never strayed too far from home before leaving to work for SHIELD. I was looking forward to seeing so much of country.

Pepper arrived and joined us for dinner. She had left a huge pile of shopping bags in the hallways. I soon learned everything there was intended for me. It was too much, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She wanted my cover so thorough and complete that I wasn’t to touch my own things until I was settled in at Tony’s cabin. She went through each bag with me carefully. The woman had impeccable taste. She’d even bought me a Lulu Lemon sweatshirt, saying she saw a lot more of it when she was in Canada than she did elsewhere. I’d never been able to justify the extravagance of Lulu Lemon before, and pulled the sweatshirt on right away. I tucked the rest of the new clothes into the new bags she had purchased for me, and zipped them closed. Tony met me in the hallway and held out a messenger bag.

“What’s this?”

“You need to leave your laptop behind. This is a new one. I’ve left some notes and directions on it. For checking in with me, and the like. No porn, Annie. Here is your new shiny credit card. There’s $500 in cash in the front pocket of the bag. Have you got a gun?” He held out the credit card. I slipped it into the wallet that Pepper had bought me. Again, the woman had impeccable taste.

“I’m going to Canada, Tony, there’s laws about hand guns,” I argued.

“You need a gun. Don’t tell me you don’t have one.” His tone was sharp.

“Alright, yes. My super gave me his service revolver.” I dug into the shoulder bag and pulled it out.

“Ammo?” He asked. I dug out the two boxes of bullets that Bob had handed me. Tony opened them up to check and started laughing. He shook one of the boxes and a roll of bills slid out. It had to be at least a thousand dollars.

“Oh my god!” I gasped, “That man deserves to be sainted. He couldn’t afford to give me that! Tony, you have to make sure he gets it back.”

“Of course.” He nodded and put aside the one box. “You’re going to need extra ammo. I’ll get someone to meet us at the airport with it.”

“I suppose I need to get comfortable with this, don’t I?” I swallowed back my nerves.

“Time is wasting, Annie. Let’s get going.” He gestured toward the elevator and followed me down the hall, dragging my suitcase behind him.

When I was a kid, my dad had always called Toronto ‘The Big Smoke’. I don’t know where it came from, and I knew about 4 other cities that also boasted the nickname, but whenever anyone said it, I always thought of Toronto. My mum had always called it Hogtown, and I grew up calling it T.O., which, when I googled it as an adult, I learned was a generational thing. Any way you looked at it, Toronto was a big, sprawling metropolitan mess. It was bigger than Vancouver, not as pretty, but definitely more famous. From my view, out the wing window of the Stark Industries jet, it looked like another big city to get lost in. I hoped for a GPS in whatever vehicle Pepper had arranged for me.

“Okay, Annie, it’s showtime. Let’s get the suit on.” Tony gestured to the back of the cabin. I followed him to the open space before the galley. He put down what looked like a red and gold suitcase and tapped it with his toe. I assumed that I should starfish, and I was glad I did. The suit snapped onto me, battering me in the process. It was not built for a woman, let alone a woman with my bust. My chest felt tight, and I immediately had issues breathing.

“Tony, I don’t know if this is going to work. I can hardly breathe. It’s crushing my boobs,” I was a little breathless. He bit back a smirk and tapped at the tablet he was holding. The suit loosened just enough that I didn’t feel like I might collapse from lack of oxygen.

“Let me know where else is bothering you. Still sore from your roll down the freeway?” He watched the suit clicking into place with a critical eye, looking down every few seconds to tap something into the tablet. It always resulted in immediate relief from something pinching me.

“Am I still going to look like Iron Man in this? Because if you keep letting out seams to accommodate my lady parts, I’m going to look like Iron Vixen,” I commented when the chestplate loosened again. Pepper snorted into the back of her hand. Tony pursed his lips and squinted.

“If you jet off as quick as you can, no one will really notice.”

“This assumes I can figure out how to make your damn suit work,” I laughed.

“I’ve got J.A.R.V.I.S. set to autopilot you. You just need to put your hands at your sides, and everything will go to plan. There’s coordinates set for the Stark Industries plant, which is where we will meet you,” he explained.

“And you think the Stark Industries plant is safe?” I asked. I was worried it would be being watched.

“It’s a calculated risk, Annie. We have to hope we’re not being watched,” Pepper offered. The helmet and mask snapped onto my head and I had a moment of panic and claustrophobia before the heads-up display flashed on, and J.A.R.V.I.S. started talking to me. I saw Tony and Pepper sit back down for the landing, and tried to brace myself, thinking I might topple over. But the suit was pretty awesome and the pilot was exceptionally smooth. When the plane taxied to a stop, Pepper signaled to me to follow her to the door. When the door opened, she nodded and J.A.R.V.I.S. took over, flying me out of the airport’s airspace at a low altitude that wouldn’t interfere with the planes. J.A.R.V.I.S. informed me that the pilot had received clearance for us to fly away. The sensation of flying in the Iron Man suit was not what I was expecting at all. I think we all have that dream about the air rushing through your hair, and lightness and freedom. I felt like I was in a steel prison. The only way I knew I was moving was by watching the world pass by below me. It was surreal.

Tony had bought me a Jeep Cherokee. Correction. Tony had bought Barbie Broughton a Jeep Cherokee. Thankfully, it wasn’t a brand new one. It was stocked with a bunch of camping gear, and was in exactly the right condition for a road trip: just a little beat up on the exterior, but tuned impeccably in the engine.

“Annie, promise me you won’t take any stupid risks. I have enough to worry about with him,” Pepper placed a hand on my arm. “And think about dyeing your hair tonight. Just to be safe.”

“Cross my heart, Pepper. Thank you so much,” I threw my arms around her impulsively. She took a short step back before returning the hug. Tony put his arms around both of us and squeezed his way in between us somehow.

“Can you blame me for wanting to be the meat in the sandwich?” He asked when we pushed him away. I shook my head, and pulled him close.

“I can’t even put into words, Tony. I never thought in a million years you would be this good, decent and kind. Thank you so much.”

“Stop, I’ll cry,” he teased. “The GPS in the Jeep will get you where you are going. J.A.R.V.I.S. is linked to it and to your laptop. You have your own encrypted hotspot for internet. Don’t pick up hitchhikers, and don’t linger too long anywhere. You’re on leave after a tour in Iraq, so you aren’t going to waste time getting to your family’s cabin in BC to get away from the world. And Pepper’s right. Think about hair colour. I’m fond of red myself.”

“I got it, Dad.” I winked at Pepper. Tony put the keys in my hand and gave me one last look before sighing and turning back to the building. I climbed into the Jeep, plugged in the iPod he’d handed me with the keys and turned the engine over. AC/DC came blasting through the speakers and I smiled. It was going to be a long drive, but I was finally on my way.

Northern Ontario was the longest, dullest, most horrible stretch of road I’d ever had the bad luck of driving. There was nothing to see, except trees as far as the eye could see. I might have enjoyed it more, but I was trying to cover as much ground as I could before I stopped. In a perfect world, where I wasn’t worried about HYDRA and Garrett, I would have stopped at Sault Ste Marie, but it was just too close to the border. I wound up stopping in Sudbury for some supplies early in the drive, but then I drove until I couldn’t focus on the road anymore, and wound up in a tiny town called Marathon. I found a hotel and crashed for the night. I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. In the morning, after checking in my email with Tony and sending him a photo of the giant nickel in Sudbury, I walked over to the hair salon.

“Good morning!” There was a single woman in the shop. She was probably in her late twenties, and she had a welcoming smile. It was reassuring. “What can I help you with?”

“If you have an appointment available, I’m looking for a new look,” I started.

“I can fit you in right now. What are you thinking?”

“I’d like to try a different colour, go shorter.” I took a deep breath. I was pretty attached to my two-inches-past-regulation hair.

“Bad break up?” She asked, giving me a sympathetic look.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Well, honey, let’s start by washing that man out of your hair,” she pointed at the sink. I followed her over and let her go to work. I was worried that the only hair salon in a town of 3000 people on the Canadian Shield was a tragedy waiting to happen. She cut my hair shorter than I would have liked, but in the end, once I washed all the product out of it, I thought I would be quite happy with the cut. It would still go into a ponytail, and she’d given me flowy layers around my face that softened my cheekbones and jaw. I’d suggested a chestnut brown, and despite my best effort to stick to my guns, she eventually convinced me that going brunette would be too stark against my pale skin. I wound up a strawberry blonde that was eerily reminiscent of Pepper’s hair colour. I wasn’t going to tell Tony.

“I love it,” I admitted with complete honesty.

“A little less Barbie now, wouldn’t you say? You must get that all the time,” the hairdresser laughed.

“I do,” I admitted with a sigh, “maybe I should have gone red a long time ago.”

“Well, you’re red now, and no one is going to call you Barbie for a good long time.” I left a sizeable tip and found the coffee shop before hitting the road again.

It took me two days to drive out of Ontario. I stopped in Kenora overnight, and sent Tony a picture of the giant fish that was the highlight of Kenora’s roadside. I was completely astonished to blow through all of Manitoba the next day, landing for the night in Saskatchewan. It was so incredibly flat, I was reasonably sure I could already see the Rockies. I couldn’t, of course, but I felt like I could. The Timbits in Saskatchewan were significantly better than the ones I’d had in New York, and I felt like I wanted to tell someone, but I stopped myself from sharing with the old guys sitting beside me at the Tim Horton’s in Yorkton. They didn’t look like HYDRA, they looked like old dude farmers, but I didn’t want to risk it.

I sent a quick email to Tony updating him of my location, and let him know I expected to be on the road for another two days at least. If I were lucky, it would only be two more days. I’d had too many close calls to want to stop for longer than a quick stop for a toilet and cup of coffee. It was killing me to stay more than a few hours a night at a hotel, and I found that I was napping in rest stops quite a bit to compensate for my habit of leaving as the sun rose. It would be good to get to my destination. Double-checking the map was a double-edged sword. Tony’s cabin, which I was sure was not so much a cabin as a palace in the woods run on an ARC reactor, was less than two hours from my mother’s house. From my childhood home. In my hometown. That I had to drive through to get to his cabin.

I hadn’t been home in ten years, but my hometown wasn’t a vast sprawling city like Toronto or Vancouver. It was a small city that prided itself on small city culture. If I ran into one person who recognized me, the whole cloak and dagger routine would be blown, and HYDRA would know exactly where I was. With my current luck, there were probably already HYDRA thugs in town waiting for me.

#avengers fanfic #avengers fanfic with OFC #Phil Coulson x OFC