Natasha Romanov folded her arms across her chest. "We should have been there." She didn't look at the man she addressed, just continued to stare through the one-way glass at the large room full of dangerous, frustrated, incarcerated men below.

The man she addressed didn't answer, watching the large room and the nonthreatening, desperate man in the corner of the room below. The man who smiled maniacally and told rapid stories with dramatic gestures to a small group of men who were temporarily distracted by a new arrival with an unfamiliar, entertaining-for-now skillset.

"Why weren't we there?" the Black Widow asked.

"You weren't needed," Nick Fury answered.

"We nearly lost Stark."

"Stark finds himself. He's unnervingly good at that."

"We nearly lost Pepper. And if we lose her . . ."

Fury twitched. For the loss of a Pepper, Stark Industries would be lost. For the loss of a Pepper and Stark Industries, a Tony Stark would be lost. For the loss of a Tony Stark, Iron Man and all his resources would be set loose to wreak havoc and vengeance.

"SHIELD works in the dark," he said, granting a grudging explanation. "Stark is a bright, noisy meteor, and he casts a big, dark shadow. With Killian and Stark working out their high opera vendetta on each other, we had room to maneuver."

Natasha humphed, appeased but by no means reassured. Fury made a note to let the Avengers go to each others' aid a little more often in solo situations. She nodded at the room below. "He's supposed to be in a super max."

"He wouldn't have made it through the Intake process alive."

She shrugged.

The world had reacted with understandable bloodlust when The Mandarin had been captured. Every jurisdiction wanted a piece of him, conflicting demands to take custody of him were still being fought out in the world courts. Calls for summary execution-and foiled attempts to carry out those sentences-were not uncommon.

It still wasn't clear just how much Trevor Slattery understood about the amount of shit he found himself in. Drugs and drink addled? Just not very bright? Or playing the multi-masked role of his lifetime? He was currently in quasi-military custody, and a terrorist of the Mandarin's calibre should have been in the most maximum of super max security facilities. An actor who was apparently the dupe of a crazed, self-mutated, genius villain, however, could make the argument for minimum security, citing his cooperation with the plot as being born out of fear and self-defense. So for now, a standard security military prison would do, putting Slattery in a population quite terrifying enough for even his ping-pong-ball brain to keep his back to a wall and look for ways to be an asset rather than a commodity.

The group listening to Slattery's stories burst out in laughter, and one of the bruisers leaned over to pat Slattery's shoulder in brutal approval. Slattery smiled nervously

Fury nodded to himself.

Natasha slowly turned her head to look at him. "You're not."

Fury smiled. "You don't think he might not want an alternative to this place?"

"He seems to be carving himself a nice niche as some ganglord's court jest-"

Sirens wailed as armored men crashed in through the windows. Inmates jumped up yelling, guards ran from their positions yelling. Natasha yanked her pistol out of its holster and spun for the door.

"Don't," Fury ordered.

She stared at him in disbelief.

The armored men swept the room with their weapons. Two of them also had scanners of some sort, and they zeroed in on Slattery, who was hiding under a table. The inmates fell back from the point of attention, leaving Slattery to his fate, though some were obviously calculating their odds of grabbing the weapons. Half the guards were focused on the inmates, while the rest continued to order the attackers to surrender.

Suddenly several inmates jumped on the invaders, pulling small stunners out of pockets and disarming the men they'd jumped. The rest of the inmates started yelling encouragement, until they realized the prison guards were leaving the invaders to the "inmates" with stunners and turning their attention to containing the real prisoners.

"Oh," Natasha said, and she holstered her pistol. "That's why you insisted we come today. " Down below, the "inmates" were zip-tying the invaders' wrists and ankles together while the guards hustled the prisoners out of the room and back to their cells. "You knew they were coming."

Fury bounced on his toes, his satisfied grin his answer.

"Who are they?"

"AIM splinter group, very sloppy about disseminating their plans."

"Not very original, either."

"Eh, sometimes it's good to revisit the classics." Fury scanned the room. "That's curtain down on Act One. Act Two opens in another location. With me, Agent."

Through the glass of the interview room door, Trevor Slattery looked even rougher than when he'd been pulled out of that Miami mansion. He had backed himself into a corner in the room, sliding back and forth along the walls and trying to watch all directions at once. He'd been given a haircut and lost the Mandarin's facial hair and now just looked like a hapless, aging man. He was even whispering to himself, but all his attention focused when Fury opened the interview room door.

"Good afternoon, Trevor," Fury said cheerfully as he strode in. Natasha silently followed him in and shut the door. Fury helped himself to the chair at the near side of the interview table and gestured to the chair on the other side. "Sit down." His smile dropped without a trace. "Please."

Slattery took one cautious step forward, then paused. He studied Fury minutely, before scanning Natasha just as closely. The way he stood shifted slightly, losing a few degrees of obsequiousness. "Who are you?"

"Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD."

Slattery frowned. "SHIELD. Is that why they let her keep her gun?"

Fury leaned back in his chair. "You can call her Black Widow. She's an Avenger."

Slattery blinked and paled. Perhaps it was the way Natasha smiled. "I'm also one of the few people who don't think Tony Stark is a complete waste of space," she said.

"Sit," Fury repeated.

Interestingly, Slattery took a moment before sitting in the chair. He didn't drop into the seat in cowed terror, either, but moved with cautious deliberation, like someone used to dealing with the dangerous and unpredictable.

Fury studied him back for a moment, adjusting some preconceptions. Slattery had an unsurprisingly mediocre history: average performance in an Oxbridge drama department, near-acceptance into the major theatre companies, bit parts in bit movies and TV shows, and the ability to be a big frog in the small ponds of provincial touring companies. Apparently Croyden actually did remember his King Lear fondly.

It all boiled down to a man who had been professionally pretending to be someone else for his entire life and who knew how to bend to a director's desire.

Fury supposed it came down to what director Slattery chose to work with. He smiled again and was pleased to see Slattery flinch just a little.

"So, those men who came crashing through the windows. They seemed to be looking for you. Friends of yours?"

"Oh, no, no, never saw them before in my life." The swishy posturing Stark had described came out to play, dismissive hands waving in the air. "A place like this, people like that, they could have been looking for anyone."

"They had scanners. They were pointing at you. When everyone else backed off, their attention stayed on you. Looked pretty clear to me." He reached back, and Natasha handed him a file folder. He didn't open it. "Was it Killian who put that tracking chip in your left shoulder?"

Posturing disappeared. "What?" Slattery reached towards his left arm, then dropped his hand into his lap. "Chip?"

Fury dropped the folder onto his side of the table. "Tiny thing, fairly short range. Stark asked if he could market it to parents to keep track of their kids in crowded places. Funny, though, how so many people object to having electronic tracking beacons implanted into their flesh." He shrugged. "But I guess Killian wanted to be able to find you when he wanted to."

Slattery's fingers trembled. "Why didn't you take it out?"

"Oh, I'm not allowed to order unauthorized medical procedures on federal prisoners."

"I'll authorize it."

"Why bother? We took down Killian and AIM. Is there someone else out there you're worried about?"

"I want it out." A commanding tone-King Lear? The Mandarin himself?-came into his voice. "You can't want me to be tracked like this, not by-"

Fury's smile gained teeth. "By every AIM leftover who's looking to free the Master and pick up where Killian left off?"

Slattery blinked but didn't answer.

"Unless, of course, you miss the luxurious lifestyle of minions and decaying mansions and multiple girls in your bed-"

"And football on a big screen TV," Slattery muttered wistfully.

Fury went still. Slattery's eyes widened, and he squeezed his lips together very tightly. Fury rested his hands on the table and leaned forward slowly.

"You are not going to be allowed to fall into AIM's hands again," he said softly. "There are severals ways that can happen. Several votes have come in suggesting summary execution. We have volunteers to carry that out. But SHIELD is not yet an organization that condones the removal of people whose primary crime is simply being pathetic. On the other hand, that option is not off the table."

His whole body trembling now, Slattery swallowed. His eyes flickered towards Natasha.

"Another favored option is to move you to a much higher security facility. Today's events have swayed a lot of people towards that point of view. And by much higher security facility, I mean someplace where you don't sit around telling stories to an appreciative audience or where you can even sit in a room with other people. It's a place where you probably don't get a window, and you may see the sky once a week. You most definitely won't get soccer on a big screen TV." He leaned back again. "Personally, I think summary execution is more humane."

He let silence fall.

Gradually Slattery stopped trembling. He stared back at Fury. The amiable buffoon was long gone. "And what is it you want to do with me, Director Fury?"

Fury didn't quite smile. "I want to hire you."

"Hm." Slattery kept staring. "I insist on union scale. And I require a private dressing room."

"SHIELD doesn't have a union. And it won't be your name on any door."

A bit of outraged diva showed up. "I do not accept billing below the title."

Fury tilted his head. "Trevor Slattery isn't going to get any billing. *He's* destined for a messy death in a prison riot. You might want to consider a new stage name. Lionel Barrymore is right out."

Slattery waved a hand. "Barrymore, pfft. I've always preferred Burbage or Kempe."

Natasha shifted enough to draw attention to herself. "You seem to be far more interested in your billing than in the script."

He looked at her with an attempt at aplomb that failed pretty miserably. "I didn't think I was going to get much say in that. But even if the script is balls, you can at least get star credit for it."

Fury shook his head. "I really don't think you want to be attracting any attention to your performances in the future. Because we will have a giant hook to yank you off stage if we have to. And you don't want to see our version of summer stock."

Slattery was clinging to his composure by his fingernails. "Much like touring the provinces?"

"Very much like. The very far distance provinces." Fury stood up. "So will you be joining our little improv company? Or throwing yourself on the mercy of the covert federal penal system?"

Slattery glanced at Natasha. "Was your audition as reassuring as this one?"

She smiled faintly. "You have no idea."

Fury checked his watch. "Yes or no, Trevor?"

"When the hurlyburly's done," Slattery said quietly, "when the battle's lost and won. Yes," he added, seeing Fury's mounting impatience. "When shall we three meet again?"

"Not long. There will be an extraction team. Try not to get killed during the riot that covers our tracks. Romanov will be there, do what she tells you."

"Password Graymalkn," Natasha said. Slattery snorted.

Fury flickered a very brief glance at Natasha. She was setting herself up as Slattery's touchstone, a point he could attach himself to as SHIELD pulled him in. He didn't think she was doing it out of any kind of sympathy for the man who had played the Mandarin. She was well versed in pragmatism and was actually a good choice to redirect an amoral actor's inclinations into a path SHIELD would approve of. And if said amoral actor kicked over the traces and decided treachery was more appealing, the Black Widow would be in position to deal with that.

He headed for the door, Romanov dropping into position at his side without hesitation. "I'll be seeing you soon, Trevor." He paused with his hand on the door knob and turned back to look at Slattery. "Don't make me regret this."

The man was slumped in his chair. "Do I get the same request?"

Fury snorted. "Do you think you're likely to?"

"No. Especially since it's already too late for that."

"Just roll with it. It's all any of us do." He turned and walked out the door.