Glassy Polaroids surrounded by messy handwriting of varying colors glinted dully under the station's old fluorescent lights. She frowned at the whiteboard and leaned against the table behind her, biting her lip pensively. She unfolded her arms and pushed herself away from the table, and began to pull all the pieces of neatly organized paper off the shiny white surface.
"Oh my god, Natasha!" the man behind her said exasperatedly, putting his hand across his eyes and adjusting his feet on the wooden table, "You've re-arranged the board five times; I don't think it'll be speaking to you anytime soon; we need a break."
"Correction: you want a break." She retorted, never letting her eyes leave her work as she gently put them all back up in a different way. She heard him groan behind her but elected to ignore it. After she'd finished, she sighed and turned around, pulling off her gray blazer and rolling up the sleeves of her button down shirt.
She pressed her palms against the faux, wood table and looked over the crime scene photos and partial prints of the purple ink variety. She glanced up at the guy who sat across the table from her, "Tony, wake up."
"Urgh," he groaned as a second man came in the room and slapped one of his feet, which were crossed at the ankles while simultaneously passing Natasha a beer.
"Feet off the table." He said warningly.
"Thanks Steve." She said softly and then took a long sip, still staring at the photos.
"Tash, just admit it, your weird physic, crime-solving voodoo isn't working right now—" Tony said, pulling his feet off the table and trying not to yawn.
"—Do you take anything seriously?" Steve turned to him incredulously, and Tony turned to raise his eyebrows at the other detective.
"Both of you shut up." Natasha said before Tony could reply, "Steve, say it all again—slowly."
As Steve opened his mouth, Tony began to protest, "Natasha you've made him say it twenty-something times now, can't we just call it a night—?"
"You wanna talk, Tony? Then why don't you say it?" She snapped and Tony rolled his eyes, sighed and straightened up. She began pacing back and forth.
"As far as we can tell, the victim, Alexandra Morgenstern, left her apartment at about quarter past ten, and walked half way down the street before being brutally murdered at the hands of an unknown assailant."
"What else?" She said, furrowing her brow and pausing to take another sip of her beer.
Tony sat even farther forward on his chair, becoming more and more into telling the story and trying to fill in the blanks. He may be a snarky asshole, but he was a pretty good detective. "There was also a mysterious withdrawal from her bank account around the time of death, implicating either she was doing something suspicious or someone was doing something suspicious to or with her and/or her money."
"Who are the suspects?"
"Well first off there's her shady ex-boyfriend—" Steve said, beginning to count on his fingers and Tony nodded vigorously.
"—Yeah, yeah, he's super shady." He said, beginning to use his fingers to count as well, "There's also her neighbor, uh, what was his name again?"
"Adam, Adam Schwartz." Steve supplied and Natasha nodded, her brain processing everything at hundreds of miles an hour.
"Right, yeah, and he's got priors—"
"—But nothing that would paint him as a murderer," Natasha said, stopping at the whiteboard and moving his mug shot over from suspects to simply persons of interest, "I don't think it was him."
"Alright well, there's also her father who's mysteriously disappeared." Steve suggested.
"Also, there's that girl Tiffany, uh, Shapiro, right?" he looked to Steve for confirmation, and he nodded, "Yeah, I get a weird feeling off of her.
"You get a feeling off her?" Steve raised an eyebrow at his partner, "What are you, psychic now?"
"No, Natasha's psychic, I'm just good at reading people." Tony said in a very self-assured tone of voice.
"Sure." Natasha said sarcastically, smirking as she took another sip of her beer.
"Hey," Tony said as they both laughed, Steve more obviously than Natasha, "I'll have you two know I'm very good at reading people—"
There then came a sharp knock on the door, followed by the immediate entrance of a dark-haired woman of average-height. "Oh good," she nodded to them and then turned to someone outside the room, "they're in here!"
"What—?" Natasha protested as a couple guys came into the room and began to take away all the information of the case, "what's going on?"
"Maria what are you doing?" Steve said, standing up out of his chair as Tony looked on with mild interest.
"We're bumping this case up to Drew—" She began before Natasha interrupted her.
"—What the hell, Maria? You can't just—" She said angrily, taking a step closer to Maria.
"—Captain's orders, Natt." She said firmly, and Natasha pushed past her and out the door, brushing past the people in the station with ease.
"Natasha!" Steve yelled from behind her, walking awkwardly around people bustling around the station with Tony on his heels and Maria on his. "Natasha stop!" he called just as she burst into the captain's office.
"Sir!" She snapped and he put up a finger to silence her.
"…Yes mister mayor, I'm putting my best people on it." He said calmly into the phone as Natasha stood, fuming, in front of his desk, with her partners and Maria in the doorway behind her. "Thank you." He said, hanging up the phone.
"Sir, we were in the middle of working on that case, you can't just—" Natasha began.
"—Actually," he said loudly, interrupting her, "I can, you know why, Romanoff?" He said, leaning forward and folding his hands on his desk as she sighed angrily and rolled her eyes. "Because I'm the damn captain of this precinct and if you have a problem with that then this city'll be sad your brain's gone, but I sure as hell won't be sad about the departure of your attitude."
She bit back a retort as Tony coughed slightly followed by Steve elbowing him in the ribs. "Do I make myself clear?"
"Crystal." She said.
"Now," He said, standing up from his chair and walking around his desk so he could lean against it, "you know who I just got off the phone with?"
"The Mayor?" She said rhetorically.
"The Mayor." He said pointedly, "Do you know why?"
"No." she said quietly.
"Well it was because I was bumping you jackasses up to the lead case; a top priority in the eyes of Alexander Pierce himself. He called me up and said 'Nick, I need your best detectives on this one' and I said 'Well, Sir I've got just the people for it' but I guess that they'd rather take a normal homicide case over what could be the bust of a lifetime."
"Natasha doesn't speak for all of us, I would actually rather the—" Tony began to speak before Steve elbowed him again.
"Alright what is it?" Natasha sighed.
"Homicide," He said, walking slowly back around his desk and sitting down, "an alley near the corner of west 45th and 11th."
Natasha nodded and left with Steve and Tony right behind her. She drove silently as they talked about this and that, usually arguing, until they reached the crime scene. As they stepped out of the car, she tucked her hair behind her ear, and pulled her coat a little closer to her body. There was always something about crime scenes that made the air feel a little colder; it was probably the whole dead body thing.
"Hey, Thor." Tony said, slapping the cop who held the tape up for them on the shoulder.
"Hey Tony, Steve," He looked to Natasha, nodding slightly in her direction, "Nat."
"So, have you applied yet?" Steve asked kindly.
"No, not yet." Thor shook his head.
"Oh come on, you're smart enough, you just gotta go for it." Tony said as they reached the body. "Oh, well that's disgusting." He said looking at the corpse.
"Hi, Jane," Natasha said as the dark-haired woman walked over to them, followed by her slightly green intern, "you alright there, Darcy?"
"This is one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen," She said blankly, "and that's saying a lot, because I've seen some pretty gross shit in my time. I'm too young for this! I'm only twenty five and I've already seen too many dead bodies!"
"Alright, that's enough just," Jane paused, at a loss for words, "go give these to Selvig." She said, handing Darcy an evidence bag. "Hello," She smiled turning back to the detectives, "Nat, Steve, Tony," she paused slightly as she looked at the beat cop next to Natasha, "Thor."
Natasha smirked, as Thor nodded awkwardly, "Jane."
"Okay, what've we got, Jane?" Natasha said.
Jane walked around the body, "So, so far, we count five puncture wounds, two in the chest cavity, one in the clavicle, one in the humorous, and one that went through the lower abdomen and hit the spinal chord."
"How much force would you need to have that kind of effect?" Steve said, frowning disgustedly at the body.
"Well, I haven't done the exact math but he'd have to be very close to the victim or maybe use a high-powered cross-bow?" She shrugged, "I'm not really sure but in addition to that, he also sustained three broken ribs, four broken fingers, all on his left hand, and a distal radius fracture."
"Huh?" Tony tilted his head slightly.
"A broken wrist," Thor supplied, looking at Tony who nodded, as everyone else stared at him in wonder.
"That's right," Jane said, slightly amazed, "I know you want to be a detective Thor, but maybe you're trying out for the wrong department."
"Okay so," Tony said, changing the subject after a moment of silence, "either our guy has really bad aim, or he was torturing this guy."
"Yeah, but why?" Steve raised an eyebrow and flipped his notebook shut.
"Well Doctor Selvig hasn't done a full autopsy yet, so that might tell us more." Jane said, as a bunch of guys came over and began to put the body into a bag that had holes cut into it for the sake of the arrows.
"Alright, thanks, Jane, tell me as soon as you get an ID on our vic, and get Darcy to send me the photos as fast as you can." Natasha said, using her pen to point at the guy taking the crime scene photos.
"Sure thing." Jane nodded, and turned and went off to help Selvig.
"What kind of crazy bastard uses a bow and arrow to kill someone?" Steve asked as they walked to the car.
"Probably someone who wasn't pre-meditating it, but other than that, I got no clue." Natasha shook her head.
"Crime of passion?" Steve said disbelievingly.
"Yeah right." Tony scoffed as they buckled their seatbelts.
"No," Natasha looked at them and Steve shook his head.
"You can't mean—"
"—Oh shit," Tony said, "you think we've got a vigilante on our hands,"
Natasha just put the car in reverse and pulled out of the alley they'd been parked in. "Tony, it's your turn to buy the coffee tomorrow," he groaned from the backseat and she ignored him, "but right now, we gotta go home and get some rest."
A/N- This will hopefully be an all Avengers fic, but only if I can figure out a way to get them all in, which I pretty much have but still, just in
case. The ships will include Clintasha and Fosterson, and that's about as far as I've planned ship-wise.
