It didn't take Maeve long to drift off to sleep again. She still needed a lot of rest to heal up.

A little over six months later, Julie had finally found homes for all the wayward pokemon she'd been taking care of, and Maeve was back on active duty. Which meant that Julie had time to think about things like a personal life again.

Tony was very, very grateful that Maeve was back on active duty, because that meant that she was well enough to be on active duty according to SHIELD doctors, and those doctors were freakin' particular about what constituted "well enough".

Maeve was more than pleased to be going back to work. Even around Tony Stark, she was getting bored more often than not, so work was definitely a welcome thing.

Steve, on the other hand, had noticed when Julie's time was suddenly more open. She was back to only looking after her own pokemon, and things were settling back into a routine now that Maeve was well enough to work again. So when he saw the chance present itself to him one afternoon, he took it.

"Julie? Do you have a minute?"

Tony was back to working in his lab at his normal hours more productively than he had been for a while. Which was a good thing in general.

"Yeah, sure," Julie said, looking over at him. Vulpix yawned at the two from her place sprawled across Julie's shoulders. "What's up?"

Maeve spent a while on the Helicarrier, getting herself back up to speed on her briefings. When she got back, though, she was quiet and looked slightly worried.

"Do you have any plans for his weekend?" Steve asked, a bit carefully.

Tony was the first to notice, oddly enough, because he had Jarvis alert him when Maeve got back and, funny enough, he was just heading up to get himself a cup of coffee.

"What's up?" he asked Maeve carefully.

Julie blinked at the question before she shook her head. "No, not unless an op comes up," she said, still looking at him. "Why?"

Maeve took a couple of seconds to really think out her answer.

"You haven't been doing anything more dangerous than normal lately, have you?" she asked him, watching him refill his mug.

"I was thinking," Steve said, "do you want to go out for the day? Saturday maybe?"

"No," Tony said, frowning. "My normal tinkering and upgrading things for the team, but that's it. Why?"

"As long as I don't get called in," Julie said, watching him. "Otherwise, okay." And she was a bit surprised he was even asking, because she hadn't been very good recently about keeping up with him.

"Promise you're not downplaying any of it?" Maeve pressed.

"Great." Steve grinned. "There's a carnival set up down by the shore, if you want to go there?"

"I'm not, there's nothing I can think of that I'm doing that counts." Tony's eyes narrowed a bit at that.

"A carnival, huh?" Julie smiled a bit. "I haven't been to one of those in a long time."

"Okay." Maeve pressed her lips together, going over her orders in her head. Because something wasn't quite making sense. "I'm supposed to keep an eye on you. Closer than usual. They implied that you might be up to something."

"Then it's a date?" Steve asked hopefully, even as he turned a bit pink.

Tony went very still for a moment. "Oh?" he asked, his voice quiet. He watched her over his coffee cup as he took another sip. "They didn't give you anything more specific?"

"Yeah," Julie agreed, going a bit pink herself.

"Just said to keep an eye on you," Maeve said. "It's not my place to question orders."

Steve grinned.

"Great. Saturday it is."

"It is when they give you shit orders," Tony said, his voice still quiet and mild.

Julie nodded. "Ten o'clock sound good to you?" That would give her time to do everything she needed to do in the morning.

"Shit orders?" Maeve looked at him. "Tony, why do you think I asked to make sure you weren't doing anything more dangerous than normal? The orders are strange, but I can't just contradict direct orders from higher up."

"Sounds great," Steve said, nodding.

"Yes you can," Tony said, his eyes narrowing. "It's very easy. You either don't do what they say, or you at least question why. I haven't done anything suspicious for a while, it's not bad to ask Fury why he suddenly wants to keep an eye on me. Besides, that's not disobeying orders, that's asking for justification why. You can do that. It's very easy."

Julie nodded and let Vulpix hop down to go play with someone else for a while. "I heard that things have been pretty quiet around here recently."

"Tony, for all I know it's just a test," Maeve said. "I've been out of commission for six months. I figured I'd see if there was anything going on, and if there wasn't, ask what the fuss was about."

"Nothing really out of the ordinary," Steve agreed as he watched Eevee follow Vulpix.

Tony smiled, but it didn't touch his eyes. "Well, then, since apparently all the time you've spent here hasn't been enough for Fury, feel free to poke away at whatever you feel necessary." He turned and headed back down to his lab.

Julie nodded. "Well, that's good, I think."

"Tony..." Maeve sighed. "It's orders, that's all."

"Pretty good," Steve said, nodding. He grinned a bit. "It means the world isn't trying to end again, at least."

"It's crap orders from a paranoid bastard who's after my tech again," Tony said as the elevator slid open. "Besides, it's not hard to disobey orders. I do it all the time." The elevator doors shut again, leaving Maeve alone in the kitchen.

"Fortunately." Julie shook her head a bit. "The world trying to end is not fun."

"Better me than someone else!" Maeve yelled after him. With a frustrated sigh, she sat down at the table. Ditto promptly scrambled into her lap and settled in right there.

"No kidding," Steve said. "It happens entirely too often as it is."

Tony ignored that, just holing himself up in his lab for the foreseeable future.

"No kidding." Julie shook her head. "Fortunately the world isn't exactly defenseless."

Steve just grinned at that.

A few hours later, Maeve found herself heading down to the workshop with a plate of food. Ditto was draped across her shoulders, and Gardevoir was next to her. She had no idea where Chandelure was; likely off somewhere with Rotom. Opening the door to the workshop, Maeve went inside.

"Brought you some dinner," she said to Tony.

"In the middle of something," Tony said, bent over a project. "I'll eat later." Jarvis would remind him; the AI didn't let him get away with missing meals often, after all. Not since he had backup like Steve who could and would drag him upstairs.

"You skipped your last three meals," Maeve pointed out. "Eat something."