Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Thanks to all of you who have been reading, reviewing, or both! I appreciate it :) This chapter is from the POVs of Reid and Black Widow. Enjoy and please review if you have a moment!
Reid
Spencer woke up after a fitful night of little sleep. He and the rest of the team had been given a series of compartments near Morgan's rooms. However, none of them had awoken from their sleep yet. They were all snoozing soundly, Emily included. She had arrived shortly after they had all been set up and all of them went straight into building a profile. Spencer himself had only seen her later when they got dinner in the commissary where many of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were eating. But even though they were happy to be reunited with Emily, Derek was alive, and he was getting to work with some of the top physicists in the world. Yet he couldn't sleep.
The whole case was confusing the hell out of him. All through the day and into the night he searched for any connections that could help them find the Key of Osiris and each time he did he came up with nothing. There were hardly any references to it in the lore they read, and there were absolutely no clues on where to look for it.
They needed to find someone who might actually know something. And he didn't think they were going to find anything in the history books.
He dressed quickly and began to make his way towards the kitchen to start coffee. The smell of the coffee grounds helped his brain clear up, and slowly his mouth began to water. Yeah. He needed coffee. It was what would get him through the day. And so far he had a long day ahead of him.
Once the pot was full, Spencer poured it into a mug and grabbed the sugar from a cabinet. He opened it and started pouring it into his coffee. As he was pouring the sugar in a steady stream, a voice spoke behind him.
"Would you like some coffee to go along with your sugar?"
Startled, Spencer jumped and turned around, dropping the sugar to the linoleum floor. Heading up to the counter to stand next to him, Agent Natasha Romanoff — the Black Widow — pulled out her own mug and leaned over him to take the coffeepot. He tensed up at the invasion of his personal space. The scent of her — subtle vanilla and jasmine — filled his nose and immediately he felt the urge to back up. He was rooted in place, though, unable to move his feet. Only when she had the coffeepot and moved out of his space did he relax.
They stood in silence, Spencer stirring his spoon through his coffee and trying to focus on the steam even though all he wanted to do was look over at Agent Romanoff. She was pouring the coffee into the mug and brought cup to her lips; she drank her coffee black.
As they were standing in the kitchen, both of them still facing the counter, he decided to try and start a conversation. "So, uh, how do you like working with S.H.I.E.L.D.? Is it a good job?" When she didn't respond, he bit his lip and tried again. "Do you like being an Avenger?"
Turning to look at him finally, she smirked. "Small talk? Really?"
He shrugged. "Uh, I guess so," he said nervously, bringing his mug to his lips and sipping the scalding liquid. His eyes went wide as the coffee burned his tongue.
Natasha looked at him evenly. "You're not very good at it," she said bluntly.
Spencer gulped. "Er, well…" His voice trailed off. How would he explain that he wasn't very good with conversation because he didn't necessarily talk with that many people? Many statistics entered his mind about people with high IQs having difficult times with making conversations with people, but he kept them to himself. He didn't want to dig himself into an even deeper hole. "Do you know what time we'll be heading to Shanghai?" he asked. Better to just talk about something professional instead of personal matters, he figured. "So, what time do we leave for Shanghai?" he asked. "I have a few more things I want to look up before we go."
"We leave at 0800, so I suggest you look up what you need to fast," she advised, starting for the doorway.
He frowned. "Er, that's at least two and a half hours from now," he said, looking at his watch in confusion.
She halted a moment and turned around to face him again. "The briefing we have before this will get you and your team geared up for it," she said.
"Geared up? Geared up for what?"
"For what you're going to see when we get there," she explained. "These aren't your serial killers, Dr. Reid. They may be just as evil, but the only reason we brought you in was because we needed help profiling the telepath. She won't be in Shanghai, but her pals will be. There's nothing you can profile about them. We can only kill them. I hope you're ready for that."
Then she was gone, her fiery red hair the last thing Spencer saw before she disappeared completely.
His brow furrowed in confusion. How does she keep disappearing so quickly? he thought to himself as he put down the spoon he had been overusing just a few moments ago. Shaking his head, he pondered over her words about what they were supposedly about to be introduced to. He could only imagine what it would be. Up until the previous year he had not thought much of the possibility of alien life, but the destruction of Manhattan certainly brought the idea to all their minds.
When he entered the lab, already in there, working hard at a large screen, was Bruce Banner. He looked over his shoulder at Spencer and nodded to him. "Morning, Dr. Reid." He turned back to the screen and added, "Can't sleep either?"
"No, not really." Spencer took a sip of his coffee and put it down on the window ledge. He went to join Banner to stare at the screen along with him. It was hard to believe the man beside him could turn into the giant green monster that was the Hulk. He'd been nothing but the image of calm and collected since Spencer had first met him. "Is there anything here?"
Banner shook his head. "No," he said, glancing over at Reid. He chuckled momentarily. "What? Nothing to ask me?"
Spencer frowned and looked around before returning his gaze to Banner. "Er…no?"
"Usually people like you will ask me about the…the other guy," he elaborated.
"Eh, there's not much I have to say about that," Spencer replied. "I'm just here to work. I find the idea of you turning into…that to be very interesting, I don't really think it's relevant right now." He arched a brow. "Why? Did one of us say something to you?"
Banner's lips turned up just slightly. "Morgan's wife asked me if I was the guy who 'broke Harlem'," he said.
"Ah, well," Spencer said. "That's Garcia for you. Sometimes words just come out of her mouth like that. It's not intentional."
"I knew that. Morgan talked about her enough, so I wasn't too surprised. It was kinda like I already met her. " Looking up at the ceiling, he added, "Well, he didn't exactly tell me about her. It was Stark. Although the two of them decided to do their drinking in here with me. I just ended up hearing the whole of every conversation they had while drunk."
"Ah. Morgan always has started spilling his guts when he gets drunk." Spencer observed the man in front of him. It was easy to understand why he was so docile. With the possibility of him getting angry leading to major destruction and — in some cases — death, it made sense why he would be like that.
Unlike Natasha. She wasn't quite as easy to understand. Then again, she was a spy. Spies had to keep better lids on their personalities, lest their identities be discovered. He shook his head vigorously. He really needed to get his mind back on track. They had a woman to profile and an ancient relic to locate. It required more of his attention than Agent Romanoff. Picking up his coffee again, he sipped it and went to sit back with his mountain of books. He doubted he would find anything, but it was worth a shot. He wanted to make sure he hadn't glazed over any details of the Egyptian history that might match up with the profile.
"I'm just going to get back to searching through these texts," he said to Banner. "I'm looking to see if anything matches the profile."
Banner nodded. "Let me know if you need anything…or if you find some helpful information," he said as Spencer began to open one of the giant dusty texts.
XXXXX
Natasha
"We're landing soon," Barton called to the back from his seat at the front of the jet. "Everyone briefed back there?"
Natasha glanced around at the agents of the BAU who had just been told about all the possible scenarios when they landed. The creatures that most puzzled the FBI profilers most were the leathery, winged-creatures that no one knew the name of yet. With any luck they would find something on them, maybe wrangle one up to study. She studied the reactions of the agents onboard, all of them now dressed in the S.H.I.E.L.D. combat suits. They were intently studying the digital files they had been given.
"These things, the ones with wings, how do we take them down if we come into contact with one of them?" Emily Prentiss asked, glancing up at any member of S.H.I.E.L.D. in front of her. Thor and Stark and chosen to fly ahead of them and would meet them at the landing sight, but Cap had come with both Natasha and Barton, while Banner remained on the Helicarrier.
"If you can, try not to engage with them directly," Cap told them. "You all, Barton, and Romanoff should try staying back and just using your firepower. These things are mean. Those claws they have will rake over someone in a second if you're not careful."
Rossi nodded. "Good to know."
A beeping sounded over the jet's intercom. "We've got an incoming call from the Helicarrier," Barton called. "Patching them through now."
"Hey all my superheroes, known and just-met!" The voice of Morgan's wife filled the jet and no one missed the smile that crossed his face when he heard it.
"What do you have for us, Garcia?" Hotch asked.
A huffed sigh was heard over the intercom. "Okay, so I've been looking into anything and everything about this woman," she said. "Facial-recognition software hasn't been able to find anything about who she is and if her name really is Bellaria, but your intrepid blonde hacker found you something about how she left the country."
Natasha frowned. "That was fast. How did you find it?"
"I ripped through as much air travel records as I could to try and find out how she left and I eventually found something I'm fairly sure is concrete because I looked over the footage from Heathrow, too. I've found out how she got out. I looked strictly at tickets bought within the past week and under tickets purchased at the last minute for women traveling to Shang-hai. I found only one match: two tickets — one for a young woman, another for a middle-aged man — bought at the last minute for them to travel to Shang-hai. The woman's name is Belle Martin, and her older brother, Nigel."
Blake frowned. "So they changed the name of her, but not of her second in command?"
Natasha nodded. "They probably thought they're untouchable," she said. "Anything else? Maybe about who she is?"
"Unfortunately, no," Penelope sighed. "I'm still trying to figure out who she might have been. But now that I have a fake name, maybe I'll have something to work with. Until then, I'm going to let you all do your thing and hit you back if I have anything."
Morgan grinned. "Thanks, Baby Girl," he said.
"My pleasure," she purred before Barton shut the intercom off as they were descending onto a rain-slicked runway.
The jet landed and everyone disembarked to find a suited-up Stark and Thor waiting for them. Stark's helmet moved from his face so they could see him and he waved. "Good to see you all could make it," he said sarcastically.
Ignoring him, Cap looked to Coulson. "Mind if I start the plan?" Coulson nodded and Cap motioned for them all to listen as he gave his plan. "We're splitting up to come at them from all sides," he explained. "The site where the coordinates landed is a factory. It's in the full swing of the work day, so we need to be careful and avoid any civilian casualties."
"And since this woman is all about the casualties, we've got our work cut out for us," Hotch said. He looked at Captain America. "How are we splitting up?"
Cap nodded. "We'll split into pairs: Agent Rossi, I want you with Barton; Onyx, you and Agent Hotchner; Coulson, you go with Agent Blake; Stark, you and Agent Jareau; Romanoff, you and Dr. Reid; and Agent Prentiss, you'll be with me." He looked around the whole group. "Everyone clear?"
Natasha glanced in the direction of the awkward doctor who she hardly knew. As soon as their eyes met, he averted his gaze. She had to resist smirking. When she resumed looking at Cap, she smiled. "We're ready to get going. What direction are we coming from?"
"You and Dr. Reid come up to the factory from the South," Cap said.
"See you all there," she said, motioning for Reid to follow her. "C'mon, Doctor. There's a cycle in one of those garages over there. We'll take it to the factory."
He frowned. "Er, I don't know how to ride a motorcycle," he admitted quietly.
"Well, then you'll just have to hang on to me," she said nonchalantly.
