The water pressure was nearly nonexistent, and the water was cold and hard. The provided shampoo was very cheap, and hardly lathered, and she didn't have a razor, something she knew she would regret when (if) she found him. Albany was the closest airport that was open, and people either doing exactly what she was, or fleeing, meant that the rental car she had ended up with was a couple of years older than her. The all-around panic had meant a several hour, totally sleepless layover in the middle of God-only-knows Iowa, and she wanted sleep before she stormed through state police barriers.
The sheets were scratchy, the mattress lumpy, and the pillow smelled of cigarettes, whiskey, and cheap perfume. She tossed and turned for an hour before she gave up, and turned on the light. She rummaged in her back, finding her music notebook and flipping through. Each piece was a memory, funny enough. She had debuted a new piece in a concert, and friends had taken her out. Bars, though, were not really a place she felt comfortable, and as they had all sought to warm their beds, she had sat at the bar, nursing whiskey.
"A cellist?" he hypothesized, and winced as she looked. "Sorry." —black slacks, white dress shirt open at the collar, and well-worn dress shoes—"a bad habit of mine."
"Yes, I am." She turned up her hands, displaying callouses. "Supposed to be celebrating, too."
He sipped his drink (bourbon, maybe) before answering. "A concert?" she nodded. "You compose, then?" Nodded again. "What?"
"It's called Black Widow." Everyone always ever nodded, who writes about a spider, but he had looked at her, really looked.
"The spider?" As if he knew it was not.
"Oh, no," she explained. "My grandpa (dedushka) is Russian, and there is a legend, or maybe a true story, of one so beautiful, and so deadly that he has told the story for years. She was a woman trained to spy and bait and kill, made to, maybe, and she was worshipped and terrified. I loved the story." she trailed away.
He flicked buttons on his phone, and the opening chords spun through the speakers, and she blushed, and ducked her head. He listened in silence until it died away.
"She doesn't sound like a killer." he observed.
"She was a woman." she countered. "Made, trained, formed, forced, who can say? A strong woman."
He hummed in his throat, then they talked.
They swapped cards at the end of the night, his white with black printing, and her's cream with brown and silver. He scrawled a number, "my personal phone" he explained, and they parted.
He was busy, she didn't know, (didn't want to?) what exactly he did. Intelligence, he said, and that was enough. She was busy too, composing, practicing, and touring. They met up in odd places. She would perform in Utah, they would meet up in Arizona. They had Chicago pizza, Louisiana jumbalaya, and Midwest carnival food. Once, something that would never happen again, they were in London, and they sipped tea, visited pubs, and wandered the city at night.
Their letters (written letters, his precise handwriting, and her scrawl) and phone calls had started in vague acquaintance territory. Now, only so much later, he knew of the phoenix streaming across her back, she knew where his parents were buried, he knew, she knew.
She wrote more than ever. "A muse!" the first violinist squealed, then begged her to tell. She wrote a full orchestral suite called Jewels. The finale was a passage she had called Fire Opal. Hence the stone. He had not proposed, per se, but they had shopped for a ring, and he had told her to keep it. She had put it on a long chain, and worn it around her neck. The chain slithered down her front and she could feel the stone lying between her breasts.
He had come to the orchestra's performance of Zeus, another of hers, in Boston. She had been shimmering in triumph and he had appeared, tired and worn, with a cut on his lip, and his eye swelling shut. They had not said much about that. She had laid careful kisses to each scratch and bruise, then they had dinner.
"I showed your Black Widow piece to a friend. She used to dance, and she said she wished she still did, so she could dance to it."
Her bare feet had been in his lap, and he had run his fingers along them as he spoke. It was highly distracting, but she managed to answer.
"Tell her to dance anyway. The Black Widow won, I think."
His finger ran up the sole of her foot, and she squealed, and his face broke into a smile, and he snatched at her foot as she pulled it away.
They met in California. She had a concert in Los Angeles the next night, and he had business, he explained. They spent the day scouring antique shops; her for old music, and he for collectible trading cards, and arguing about Norse mythology over meals. She had written Thor (all full of brass and cymbals) that night, and he had heard a recording of their first practice, and the letter he sent her was long, and careful, and full of beautiful soul. She kept the letter in her cello case.
She didn't sleep that night, and wrote until the sun crept toward the sky. She had waited on this piece until she felt it. It was strings and woodwinds, and so achingly sad she could barely bring pen to page. She hardly ever wrote it in, but this one had a cello solo. She might do it, might make a friend, but there it was.
She was prepared to do whatever it took, and dressed in the slacks, top and blazer she had for performances. If she looked vaguely official, she might make it past a few unwary officials in the chaos.
She watched the news apprehensively. Aliens, was what it said. Not much else, Captain America, perhaps, and goodness knew who else, bright and dark were flashing in bits and pieces. Iron Man, most obvious, and a red-haired woman, tiny among men and armored aliens weaved, kicking, flying and dancing. SHIELD, was mentioned, not well, and not much, but she knew who he worked for, was sure that was it.
The drive was not so much long as it was interminable. But eventually, she hit a barrier. She closed her eyes, grabbed her purse, and strode confidently to the officer who watched her skeptically.
"I'm looking for Phil Coulson?" Confidence won, or maybe the suit, and he waved her through. Two barriers later, she was on foot, and could smell corpses, and see bits of alien littering sidewalks. She slid the ring off the chain and onto her ring finger. The light caught it and it flared, and flamed, like a phoenix from ashes, and she pulled her head up and strode on.
"…looking for…looking for…" every time she was redirected, until she stood in the center of it all, at the base of Stark Tower. Base of recovery options, they had said, and she opened the door. Shards of glass had been swept into corners, and all available floor space had been taken over with tables and chairs. She had to step over knots of cables that linked computers. The far edge seemed to have become a first-aid station, and nearly twenty-four hours later they were still treating injuries, which said so much about how bad the damage was.
She tapped the first available person on the shoulder. Civilian, her brain supplied, but they should know.
"I'm looking for Phil Coulson." she answered, when the woman turned. Her lips pursed, and she pointed toward a clump of tables with several people grouped around them. "Living/Missing/Wounded/Dead" was on a small handwritten sign taped to the table.
"I'm looking for Phil Coulson." she stated, again, almost a litany by now, a song that became more tuneless the more destruction she recognized.
The man at the computer began typing, but a shorter man, all in black stopped him. "I've got this."
The shorter man turned to face her, and they assessed each other. He was blond and muscular, his hands were calloused oddly, archer, she realized, connecting his appearance to the quiver and bow across the table. He was scarred, too, SHIELD, certainly, and as he stepped toward her, her brain registered the hurt in the way he walked. His eyes were almost mesmerizing, swimming with so much hurt and anger and confusion, and around the pupils was a ring of bright, nearly unnatural blue that seemed to be fading.
"You're looking for Agent Coulson?" He asked, his voice sharp with something she did not want to identify.
"Phil, yes." she stammered, pushing her hair out of her face. His eyes followed her hand—he had noticed the ring, she realized, and he hardly moved, nothing in his stance could have given him away, but she knew.
"Oh. Oh!" she gasped. "I'm sorry." She turned blindly, and stumbled. Huge hands held her elbows, and picked her up.
"You are his intended?" a deep voice questioned.
"Were, yes." she answered, not looking up from the floor.
One of the hands lifted her chin so she was looking up (and up) into storm blue eyes. "I cannot atone for his death." he told her gravely, "But you must know that I shall repay you in whatever way I can. I am Thor of Asgard, and I shall be you protector. He was my brother-in-arms, and you, then, are my sister."
She blinked, and a tear wound its way down her face. None of this could possibly be real, her mind screamed. Her dreams had background music, and she listened, and heard stone grinding on stone, and shouts and sobs, but not a note of song.
Her breath caught in her throat, and the room swam. She had not slept in forty-eight hours, or eaten in a while either.
She woke in a different room, on a couch, with an IV presumably re-hydrating her. The short blond man was on the end of the couch, and a dark-haired man was maneuvering the IV.
"…engaged…" she heard the blond man say, and the darker one sagged ever so slightly (more). He held his head in his hands, scrubbing his eyes. The blond one gazed unseeingly off, flexing his hands, moving them in a motion she did not see, but fighting in some way that he knew well. She pinched her eyes against the pain that swelled through the room, and heard familiar chords.
"Yes, Tash." the blond one said. "In the back room. He told you correctly."
The phone conversation continued, but she did not hear a word. This had been Phil's friend, it was her song she had heard—Black Widow, the ending, the triumphant death, or new life. Thor, who Phil had opinions on, who Phil argued with her about, would protect her, for Phil. Thor had told someone, something, about her, because in moments, there was a solemn delegation around her.
The red-head introduced herself first, not that she needed to, "Virgina Potts." no skirt or heels, but jeans and a sweater, and a tablet, a laptop, and red-rimmed eyes.
Tony Stark (Iron Man—Phil had known him, had to, she realized, because he had much to say on the topic, all more complimentary or less complimentary than the tabloids). He introduced the rest.
Captain America, in the flesh, no trading cards. Hawkeye, the blond, Clint, please, in an oh-so-tired voice. Dr. Banner, please-just-Bruce, who was the Hulk, and a hand on his arm kept him from more panic. The Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff.
"Natalia Romanova." she corrected, not thinking, but dedushka would never let her say less. (And it was new life, not death, and how she stood so young and strong and sad, she never wanted to know.)
They were given food and drink, and Tony Stark was rude, and loved Virginia—Pepper— very much. Captain (Steve) was polite, and handed her cards, blood-stained, and signed, and that one they had found in San Francisco, and that one in Boston, and how could they be hers? Clint said nothing, but hurt bled from him, and the doctor said little more, but the brown-green that his eyes were said enough. And she spoke enough Russian to keep up, even if all Natalia asked was why it was phoenix, when it could be anything else.
"Beauty from ashes." she explained. "And something always comes from ashes, and made in oh-so-painful fire."
They planned a memorial, and she would play? Something? She tried the solo in what she had written, and it fit. Pepper, as she practiced, asked, through tears what it was.
"To Valhalla, from a piece called Balder." and Thor standing in the doorway, turned away, and it rained.
She heard the whole story, every bit of it, even if the man with eye-patch insisted she not. She had two of the brothers written, and maybe the third never would be. (Thor was loud and beautiful, Balder was sad and beautiful, but what would Loki be?) She saw him, too, from a distance, and he was white and defiant (and had killed Phil, carefully and personally), and if she wrote him, he would be dark and cruel, and would burn, but what would rise from the ashes? She could, and couldn't pray nothing.
It rained the whole service, and Thor apologized, but it hid tears, and his arm was strong, and, no, she whispered, she didn't mind.
She watched both brothers go home, and his friends drift to theirs, and she went to, and went to an orchestra practice the next day. She wore the ring, still, on the chain, and the cards, bloody as they were, joined his letter in her cello case.
But suddenly, Captain America "stopped by" for coffee, and there was a note in Russian in her mailbox, and when the orchestra played Asgard (Thor, Balder, Frigga, and more, but no Loki, and a section, Jane, that everyone questioned) for the first time, Anthony Stark and Pepper Potts were in the front row, and if the legends of Heimdall were so very true, then the thunderstorm was maybe not coincidence.