Author's Note: This story has spoilers, particularly for Captain America: Civil War, but also for Series 3 of Sherlock. As always, this is a fanfiction site, "dont't own, don't sue", and all that jazz.
Natasha wasn't quite sure why she had come to London. She wasn't usually given to sentiment, but she supposed it was fitting that she would return to the last place she had been before everything went sour.
Natasha was disguised as a tourist at the moment. She had spent most of the day looking at the main sights downtown in London and had wandered down Baker Street out of the City. Noticing a café (and that it was getting close to 5:00), she decided to stop in and have an early supper. The place was still largely empty. An elderly couple was having a cup of coffee, a few college students were sharing a pizza, and a young mother was – hang on, why did she look familiar?
The woman in question was fairly tall, even sitting down, and had short blonde hair and orthopaedic shoes. Along with her chapped hands (medical professionals use too much hand sanitizer), Natasha would have pegged her for a nurse. There was something, though, that told Natasha, a professional liar, that the woman was hiding something. Natasha realized she had been standing at the door for too long when the woman looked up from her baby and straight at Natasha. They made eye contact. Then Natasha knew. AGRA.
AGRA, though, smiled and waved Natasha over. Natasha sat down and took the menu, idly noting the name of the café (Speedy's) and ordering a coffee and a panini. Turning to her seatmate, she said, "Thanks so much for letting me sit here. I'm Nat, by the way."
"Mary," AGRA replied. "First time in England, then?"
Natasha smiled the perky smile of a delighted tourist. "Oh, yes," she nearly squealed. "I can't believe everything that I've seen here! I heard that there was a famous detective who lived around here somewhere. And wasn't there an author here, like, a hundred years ago?"
AGRA's smile was the perfect image of a Londoner tolerating an overexcited American tourist. "I believe there was, yes. Dale? Dole? I don't remember the name at the moment, sorry. Wrote loads about fairies or some such."
"I see," Natasha said. The waiter brought her the coffee. Natasha sipped it as he returned to the kitchen. "So, Mary, been living in London long?"
"I got out," AGRA replied calmly. "I'm Mary Watson now. I have a husband and a daughter. I'm not going back, Romanov."
Natasha nodded slowly. That explained a lot. She never had believed that AGRA's death was real. "And that whole business with Magnussen?"
"He knew my real identity. I got…interrupted…and things got a little messy," AGRA replied.
Natasha figured it was a good time to change the subject. "So what's your daughter's name? She's definitely got your hair."
"Oh! It's Bella. She's eighteen months. Her hair is finally coming in. We were all starting to wonder if she'd be bald forever, weren't we, little bunny?" AGRA – Mary Watson – tickled her daughter. The girl giggled and clapped.
"Pretty name – literally," Natasha commented. "You didn't name her for those…vampires, though, did you?"
"Absolutely not! It's short for Belladonna, actually," Mary replied with all the indignation of a maligned mother.
"So she's named after a poisonous plant, is what you're saying."
"It's a family name," Mary replied shortly.
"Yours?"
"My husband John's. His mother's name, actually."
"Your husband…does he know about…AGRA?" Natasha asked. She was quite curious how Mary was managing to make a normal life work. The only agent she actually knew for sure had a family was Clint.
"He does." Mary smiled. "He actually didn't want to know the details. I'm still in mild shock."
The waiter brought Natasha's food. It wasn't half bad. After a while, Mary asked, "Do you have a place to stay?"
Natasha debated how much to tell her. "I do. I'm a tourist at the moment, so I'm staying at a hotel. Is this an invitation?"
Mary smiled sweetly. "It would be, but no. You…wouldn't get along very well with my husband at the moment." Her face fell. "And oh, look. There he is."
Natasha turned around in her seat. She couldn't believe her eyes. There, walking toward her, was Agent Everett K. Ross. The one who had been in charge of the operation in Berlin. "You married Ross?" Natasha hissed.
"No, I married John Watson," Mary replied evenly. "Everett Ross is his cover." She broke off and called out to her husband, "Hi, sweetie, long day?"
"Not bad, Mary. Mrs. Johnson is going to need to have her final appointment before she gets her cast off tomorrow. Who's that you're talking to?" Ross asked.
Mary sighed, almost imperceptibly. This was clearly not the way she had wanted this meeting to go. "Come over here and I'll introduce you."
Ross sat down at their table. "John Watson," he said, giving Natasha his hand to shake. She noticed he was speaking with a British accent now.
"Natalie Rushman," she replied, waiting to see if he would call her on it.
"Pleasure to meet you. What are you doing in London?" Ross – Watson? asked.
"Just seeing the sights and meeting up with some old friends," Natasha said. She wasn't sure if her disguise (a brown wig and slightly scruffy tourist clothes) was really that good, or if Ross was the thickest idiot in the spy business, or if he was just letting her dig her own grave. This was the first time she had really gotten a good look at him. Like his wife, he had chapped hands that spoke of many applications of hand sanitizer and rubber gloves. His medical bag had clearly been in use for several years. Ross/Watson was either a real doctor or had a remarkably good cover.
"Well, then, I guess it's our pleasure to welcome you to England, Miss Rushman…. Aw, shite. Romanov, what are you doing here?" he groaned.
"Would you believe me if I told you it was pure happenstance?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'll bet." Ross/Watson rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Look, Romanov, Mary…Sherlock wanted me to meet him in the flat anyway. We might as well all go and get this sorted out in private, okay?"
Natasha saw no choice but to acquiesce. She payed for her food and followed the Watsons (?) out the door. They walked a door down. Apparently the flat in question was directly above this restaurant. As they entered the building, an older lady came out of the ground floor flat. "Hello, Mrs. Hudson," Watson (?) said. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got Sherlock business and work business at the moment."
"That's quite alright, dear," Mrs. Hudson replied. "You and Mary just be sure you bring yourselves down for a cuppa when Sherlock lets you go, now." Natasha observed that she had a slight American lilt, and clearly enough money that she was only taking boarders because she liked them. She was, however, unlikely to be a trained agent.
"Yes, ma'am," Watson nodded. He led the way up to the flat. Natasha knew where she was as soon as she saw the number. Apparently Everett Ross was the John Watson, the man who had become famous for blogging the ridiculous exploits of that eccentric detective, Sherlock Homes.
The aforementioned detective was sitting on a vintage armchair in front of the fireplace in the extremely eclectic sitting room of the exceedingly messy flat. Seriously, the place looked like the twenty-first century had met the Victorian Era straight on and this disaster was the result. She spotted three surveillance cameras in the clutter without even trying.
Sherlock Holmes looked up at the newcomers. "Ah. I see you've found your missing Russian assassin, John," he drawled.
"I'm aware," Watson said tersely.
"You want me to take your little deadly flower-child while you and Mary and Agent Romanov discuss spy business, I expect?"
"If it wouldn't be too much trouble, Sherlock," Watson replied.
"It wouldn't – but you know that if I leave, you should expect Mycroft to drop in at any moment and make you turn Agent Romanov in to Secretary Ross for questioning about her actions in Leipzig last week," Sherlock informed him.
Watson sighed. "Alright. If you head off Mycroft for me, I'll try to deal with this here with a minimum of discomfort to all parties, okay?"
Seemingly satisfied, Sherlock went back to his smartphone.
"Now then…" said Watson, "Please, sit. Agent Romanov, why are you here?" He sounded truly long-suffering.
Natasha weighed her options. "From here I'd have to be extradited if Thaddeus Ross wants me. He has to at least give a modicum of care to international law, since he's Secretary of State and not on SHIELD's World Security Council." It was true enough, although far from the whole truth.
Watson sighed. "Why London, though? Why not, I don't know, why not Kazakhstan? You're Russian. That's way, way further off the grid than London and you'd be able to blend in just fine."
Natasha raised an eyebrow. "You did hear about the stunt that Steve and Barnes and Stark pulled in Siberia, right? People in that part of the world aren't exactly too happy with the Avengers at the moment, either."
"You literally walked right up to my front door, Romanov! And now I have an obligation to arrest you!" She noted that he didn't have a desire to arrest her.
"Well, in my defense, you were using a pretty convincing American accent, Agent Ross," she snarked.
Watson gave a weird shudder at that name. "Just – John Watson, please. Just call me John Watson, okay? I had no idea I'd be working with the American Secretary of State when I started this whole spy thing. Or that he'd have the same name as my pseudonym. He's only been in office since the Sokovia crisis, you know."
Interesting. It seemed that John Watson was working with the Avengers and the US Government neither entirely willingly nor above-board.
"I see, Dr. Watson. Decided that being a Bosworth wasn't exciting anymore?" Natasha needled.
"No! Actually, the timing really couldn't have been much worse. I'm doing this as a favor to a friend, that's all," he protested.
Sherlock and Mary both snorted. John rounded on them. "He's your brother, Sherlock! I started having lunch with him while you were gone because I thought you were dead!"
"Didn't mean you owed him this ridiculous foray into American espionage. Far more Mycroft's own territory," Sherlock muttered.
"Sherlock, he told me it was you or me or Mary. You're too high-profile and too closely related to Mycroft to be safe. Mary has too many enemies in this whole ruddy business. So that left me!"
If nothing else had existed to convince Natasha that this man was really John Watson and not Everett Ross, this exchange would certainly have.
"Mary, who put all these bugs in here?" Natasha asked as John and Sherlock continued to argue.
"The one in the clock on the mantel is SHIELD, both audio and visual. The three in the bookcases are Mycroft's; the one in the doorframe to the kitchen is MI-6's, just visual to make sure Sherlock doesn't burn down the building will all his controlled chemicals; The one behind that picture is the CIA's, and the ones in the computers are the NSA's, of course," Mary replied, without looking up from little Bella, who was now sucking on a teething ring.
"So, basically the entire intelligence community knows I'm here. You sure you haven't got any Russian and Chinese bugs in here?" Natasha asked sarcastically.
"Yes, actually. Most of the bugs in here are actually because Mycroft is an overbearing older brother. Sherlock hasn't done anything traceable to get the Russians or Chinese interested in him. And besides, Mycroft has a whole system and set of looped images that we can use to keep any information we want from the other spy agencies. Sherlock tolerates the bugs, because if the powers that be believe John is the front man for Sherlock's operation, they bug this place and not our home."
"What about SHIELD? I've worked with a whole lot of spy agencies and I have yet to see any that can beat SHIELD's tech," Natasha asked.
"Ah, well. Even they have trouble keeping up with Sherlock Holmes' ingenuity and sheer stubbornness. Every two weeks – or every week when Mycroft is bothering him – Sherlock goes through and removes all the bugs and uses them in experiments. Apparently the various agencies have standing competitions to figure out who can keep their bugs from being destroyed the longest."
John and Sherlock were still arguing, but had thankfully retreated to the kitchen, so the women didn't have to talk over as much. Natasha figured it was as good a time to ask as any. "So…Mycroft Holmes. He's really Sherlock's brother?"
"Yes, indeed. A literal case of 'Big Brother is Watching' when it comes to Sherlock." Having succeeded in getting Bella to stop dropping the teething ring on the floor, Mary turned her full attention to Natasha. "I wouldn't worry, Romanov. Mycroft will come here and make a fuss, John and Sherlock will yell, Mycroft will leave, John will sigh and invite you to stay at our house, and Mycroft will remove all evidence you were ever here."
"Why is John so willing to help me? I thought he was the quintessential government man." After Coulson, at least.
"John's doing this whole thing as a favor to Mycroft. Sherlock is needed in London at the moment, but Mycroft was already getting suspicious of SHIELD. He wanted someone in there he knew he could trust unreservedly. Which isn't me, by the way. Then you dumped all of SHIELD's files on the Internet, so John had to go and work with the American government. John is also doing this to keep Mycroft from being so hard on Sherlock for killing Magnussen. And finally," Mary looked Natasha straight in the eye, "the Avengers really need a handler. I know Phil Coulson was supposed to take that position. And I realize that reporting directly to Fury worked, at least for a while, but look at where you are now. Fury's 'dead', Colonel Rodes is paralyzed, and the rest of you are in prison or scattered around the globe. You need a handler. Or at least a liaison. John is one of the best people I can think of for the job."
Natasha nodded. It was beginning to all make sense. "How is John able to balance his normal life here if he's working undercover as an American G-man? And can I say that I'm amused that the American assassin is working as a British nurse, and the British army doctor has become involved with an American government agency?"
Mary smirked. "John owns his own practice, you know. I'm taking classes – and having Mycroft forge the paperwork on what I already know – to make me a full-fledged doctor so that John doesn't have to have a partner. Sherlock's not even bothering with the classes. I guess he's cut apart enough corpses in his life that he's become a frighteningly good surgeon. He even has a 'doctor alias' all picked out and everything. Between us, we've got the practice pretty well covered. That way, John can run around with Sherlock when NSY needs him, pretend to be on assignment at the American Embassy, see to his patients, and still have time to take care of his daughter on weekends. Besides, who do you think taught John to speak American?"
Natasha was impressed. Not even Laura Barton was that dedicated to her husband. "You're doing all that for John?" she asked.
Mary shrugged. "John spent the best years of his life doing every insane thing Sherlock asked. And then he had to think that his best friend in the world was dead. To the Holmes brothers, he's shown a dedication like no one else, ever. As for me, John didn't divorce me when he found out I was an assassin. All in all, I'd say this is our way of saying thank you."
And the kind of man who could inspire that sort of loyalty, on his own and without being part of some sort of shady organization, Natasha thought, was the sort of man the Avengers would be proud to work with.
Thanks for reading! This is my first story. I was greatly amused by the inclusion of Martin Freeman in CA:CW, so I figured I had to write a crossover showing how John Watson got into the whole superhero Business. And learned to speak with an American accent.