Devil's Promise
Chapter 9: Evasive Maneuvers
In light of her recent misadventures with Tony and her first fail-this-on-purpose mission, Callie decides that a little bit of optimism is in order.
("Hey Pete? Have you noticed anything... off about Callie tonight?"
Peter looks up from the plate of spaghetti his Aunt May set in front of him a few minutes ago to stare at Harry, pasta sauce painting his chin red. "No. Why?"
Harry shrugs, eyes following the red-haired girl around the room as she helps May and Gwen clean the kitchen, a smile on her face. "I don't know," he says. "She's acting different. All happy and peppy. It's weird."
Eyes narrowed at his newfound best friend, Peter considers the girl and then decides that whatever's going on with her is her own business and she'll tell him when she's ready. "If she's happy then she's happy, Harry," he says simply. "It's better than her acting like a grump all the time.")
Erica Watson used to say that if you pretend to be something for long enough, you'll become it. This concept seems to work for Callie, if only a little bit. October finds her a little better than she was when she first came to Tony, and a little better than she's been after his love and care and fathering bullshit.
God she loves that asshole.
She's found another person who fits that description (the lovable asshole one), she finds soon enough.
Peter Parker.
He's her best friend now, she guesses. The only one she's ever had, except for her mom and Tony and JARVIS and Pepper, but they're all parental figures so they don't count.
Peter is... weird, but she's known that for a few months now, so no surprise there. But he's weird in a way that no one she's known has been weird before. He's all calm and quiet and small and then out of nowhere he comes out with all this insanely smart stuff about animals and anatomy and how flamboyant cuttlefish (they're studying those right now) change colors to hypnotize their prey and does Callie know she looks kind of like a red-haired Blake Lively? Because she does.
That little tidbit of information leads to Callie dyeing her hair beach blonde. It looks good and Peter tells her as much.
Once again, weird guy.
He shows up to class and to the lab with bruises almost every other day. If Callie didn't know and love Aunt May so much, she'd worry he was being abused. As it is, Peter just blames them on being clumsy whenever she asks him, and based on the amount of spills he's had in the lab, she believes him.
Callie has bruises too, though, and hers are a bit harder to explain away considering she has a gymnast's reflexes and hasn't tripped over thin air since she was first learning how to walk.
Natasha is working her hard, harder than she's ever been worked in her life. But she's changing, and that's good. Callie is changing.
There's the physical stuff, of course. She's lost the thirteen pounds she gained from the Stark-family diet (takeout and shit tons of omelettes), and her legs and arms are noticeably toned. She's also sporting the beginnings of a rather nice-looking set of abs, and she's lost all the baby fat she used to have around her cheeks and chin.
Callie can do some pretty fucking awesome things now- like dodge bullets with back flips and handsprings, and flip herself around on bars and rafters and window ledges and shit like that. Also, she's a black belt in Judo now, apparently. That was a weird day.
(The immense satisfaction Callie feels when she finally manages to smash Natasha's face into the sparing matt should scare Callie- if it didn't feel so amazing. She's been trying to do this for months now, and this is the first spar that doesn't end with Callie's nose getting broken for the umpteenth time or her ribs cracked or her ankle twisted or-
Well, you get the idea.
Callie lets out a breathy, panting whoop, springing to her feet and then leaning down to help Natasha up. The Russian woman bats her hand away and leaps up herself, throwing her legs up first and then letting their momentum launch the rest of her into a stand.
Natasha smiles at her.
"Congrats," she says simply, and then throws a strip of black fabric in Callie's face. "You've earned this, love.")
It's not just the physical stuff, though. It's a mental thing, too.
Callie carries herself different now. Shoulders straighter, chin lifted higher. She stops critiquing things about her body that she doesn't like (freckles on her shoulders, stretch marks on her thighs, scars on her hands and ridiculously crooked nose), and starts focusing on the amazing things she's being trained to do.
Maybe this is why, the next time she and Peter and the Suttwells are working late at the lab and she hears glass shattering, she feels confident enough in her abilities to run headfirst into danger without any hesitation whatsoever.
Really, a dumb move on her part.
When she makes it to the lobby, Polly is being choked by something that looks like a man crossed with a floppy-eared, translucent-skinned elephant.
"Well shit," is all Callie says, too stunned to do much else. Because, really, she was expecting the mafia or a stalker or something, not... Whatever this is...
Her exclamation has attracted the attention of the others, and they turn to her. The... thing surveys her with strange eyes; wide and empty and black, with lids that swoop down across the pupils in a w-shape.
"Callie!" Polly chokes out around the hand on her throat. "Go! Get out of here!"
But Callie is being trained by S.H.I.E.L.D for situations exactly like this one, and she's not going anywhere. So she backs up a pace before flinging herself into the air and round house kicking the thing in the face.
It's so surprised that it drops Polly, the woman heaving for breath, Doc rushing over to her. Callie's landing is a smooth one, despite the fact that she's wearing relatively high shoes, and she's a bit proud of herself in that moment.
And then she looks at the thing again.
The area of impact is pulsing, an indent of her foot glaring out from the head in a pink shape, blues and purple light coursing around it. As she watches, the foot-shaped print balloons itself back into place and turns back to its normal color. The monster flares its nostrils at her menacingly before... flicking something at her. It's almost like a tentacle, except the only feeler is on the very tip of it, and Callie only flips out of its way in enough time to miss being speared on the edge of it. It hits the door and shatters it under its weight.
Her brush with death is enough to rattle Callie momentarily, and she freezes until the Doc screams at her. "Run!"
She wants to take him up on that offer, but she also wants to stay and she doesn't know what to do. Before she can decide, however, a figure dressed in red swings through the shattered doors and kicks the creature in the face.
Spiderman.
The creature's head snaps back at an impossible angle before ricocheting back into place. Its mouth smirks at all of them.
"Things seem to be getting a bit crowded at the moment," it says, before turning to look back at a red-faced Doc who is helping his wife back to her feet. "I'll be back, Alexander."
A noxious, sulfur-smelling gas fills the air, making Callie's eyes water, and just like that, the creature- and Spiderman- are gone.
Callie gets sent to Florida.
There are bullshit excuses, of course, but they're just that: bullshit. "Dive training", "scuba certification", "extra credit hours", "interaction with marine animals". But Callie knows the real reason. She's seen too much, and Doc doesn't want her involved in whatever's going on with him and Spiderman and that... thing.
("Why isn't Peter going?"
"I already certified him over the summer."
"Then why am I going to Florida? Why can't we just do it at the docks? You could do it. You're a certified dive instructor."
"The experience, Callie-"
"This isn't about the experience!" she blurts out, knowing she's walking on thin ice but too frustrated to care. She deflates then, like she always does, and pulls unhappily at her newly-blonde hair. "This is about what I saw last night, isn't it?" she asks quietly. "You don't want me to be involved."
Doc's jaw clenches and he gets to his feet, not looking at her, pushing the sleeves of his sweater up his hairy forearms. "No more questions," he tells her. "You're going. And that's final.")
So she goes to Florida.
Callie is angry- understandably angry. This creature shows up at her lab, and threatens her boss, and then she's not allowed to figure out what the hell is going on?
Peter and Natasha and Coulson are angry, too. Mostly because Callie won't tell them why she's so upset, because it's kind of obvious the Suttwells don't want any one to know what's going on (except Spiderman, of all people, fucking annoying ass jerk wad), and as frustrating as that is, she doesn't think they'd appreciate S.H.I.E.L.D. breathing down their necks. Also she doesn't know how Peter would react to the whole "probably-a-super-hero trying to kill our boss" thing this early in their friendship.
Tony is the only one she tells. He's all for her getting as far away from this mind fuck as she can (and Florida is on the other side of the country, after all), but he understands this need she has to throw herself into danger (because he has the exact same one), so he doesn't directly tell her his opinion and instead tries to cheer her up about the fact that she's getting a free vacation and earning credit hours for it at the same time.
So Callie packs up her old cheer bag with swimsuits, shorts, t-shirts and hoodies, grumpily accepts her plane ticket from Doc, says good bye to Scarlet, Natasha, Peter, and her weird, Gothic room mate, Lola, and boards her flight to Tampa, Florida, and the Georgia Aquarium Institute of Marine Animal Rehabilitation.
Callie has to admit. It's gorgeous here.
The Atlantic Ocean here is crystal clear in a way that it isn't in New York, and the way the Pacific Ocean isn't back in Malibu. The beaches are, ironically enough, sandy and white- not pebbly or yellow, like she's used to- and it's humid, too. Really, really humid. It doesn't do good things for Callie's hair. Neither does the salt, or the constant dampness of it.
There are dolphins at this facility, it turns out. It's where the Georgia Aquarium trains them and raises them before taking them to Atlanta. It's also where they find injured dolphins and sea lions and such in the wild and heals them before releasing them back. Callie finds she quite likes the otters. They're the cuddliest and the most fun to swim with. The sea lions are cool, too, even if they don't do much more than sleep and fight with each other for the best spots to sleep in. But the dolphins... They're something else.
They're smart. Like, scarily smart. Kind of like the whole thing with her first meeting JARVIS, Callie isn't quite sure how to deal with something more intelligent than her not being human.
Because they are. More intelligent than her, that is.
(She's coming up the steps from the beach after her second day of dive training when It happens.
It being the incident later referred to as "that one time Callie got her ass handed to her on a silver platter by a fucking dolphin".
Or at least that's what Peter calls it when she tells him about it later. She's not very fond of the title.
But anyway.
Callie's just spent almost an entire day in the ocean, learning how to operate scuba gear and get certified as a lifeguard and all that great bullshittery. And she's been in a wet suit the entire time, too, and those things are fucking hot as hell, and her hair is a mess and she really needs to stop cursing so damn much.
So yeah. She's tired and thirsty and so, so hungry, and she can't wait to get inside and grab the Panera the other marine biologists picked up for her, and get out of this damn wet suit-!
"Fuck it," she says, and peels the damn thing off right in front of the cuttlefish tank.
It's liberating, and if any of the marine biologists have a problem with Callie walking around their living room in a bikini, they don't mention it. In fact, one of them, Robert, the cute brown-haired one, seems to be staring at her legs an awful lot. She's caught him glancing at them a few times. Score one for Callie.
Hot marine biologists/ animal trainers aside, Callie decides she wants to eat dinner on the animal deck that night because hey, why not? She can see the beach and the sunset from there, and there are dolphins and shit and how many people can say they've eaten dinner with a dolphin?
So she plops down right next to their tank and unboxes her tuna and kale salad, when something bumps her leg. She looks down to see Merlin, one of the older dolphins, nosing her bare thigh, and she'd swear the thing was grinning at her. So she waves at it, a little confused, and looks down at the plate on her lap.
Only to find that it isn't there.
It's been stolen by Merlin's friend, Napoleon, while she wasn't looking.)
The rest of the citizens of the center think the incident is hilarious, even though Merlin and Napoleon's caretaker, Crystal, isn't thrilled they've disrupted their diet, and Callie quickly finds herself becoming accepted into their tight-knit circle of friends.
She's enjoying Florida, and she's enjoying her new friends, and she's enjoying the beaches and the dive training and the otters and all of those other things... But she still can't get Spiderman out of her head, and she still can't get fighting out of her body.
She spends her days learning to dive and her nights running through flips and tricks and kicks in her bedroom. When she's glancing over shoulders at the marine lab, she's thinking of what that thing in New York is and how it can be killed.
Callie is restless. Really, really restless.
And the night before she's set to return to NYC, Robert, cute, looks-at-her-legs-all-the-time Robert, notices that restlessness.
"So you finally lost your virginity?"
Callie's been back in New York for a week now, and in lieu of having only one female friend her own age (aka Gwen, who squealed when she was told over the phone the day after), she's telling Natasha at their first practice since Florida.
Callie nods even as she dodges a punch and rolls out of the way of a searching foot.
"Was it good?" Natasha adds. She's grinning in that God-you're-such-a-child way she has sometimes.
Callie resists the urge to smile back at her and flips back to her feet. "Not really," she admits. "It was kind of awkward after, to be honest."
Natasha shrugs a lithely muscled shoulder. "The first time always is. You'll be seducing and assassinating tyrants in no time."
I hope not, Callie wants to say, but she doesn't. Mostly because she thinks Natasha is just joking but she's not completely sure.
"Getting 'em while they're young, huh, Nat?"
A man has just walked into the gym. He's on the shorter side (shorter than Callie, really, which isn't that hard to do), with wiry, muscled arms, revealed by the workout t-shirt he's wearing. His hair is honeyed brown and cropped close on the sides, and there are smile lines around his eyes.
He grins at Callie and sticks his hand out for her to shake. "Clint Barton, alias Hawkeye. You're Callie Watson?"
"Um, yes?" Callie doesn't mean for that to come out as a question. She shakes his hand, a little timid.
"This is my partner," Natasha says. She looks like she's enjoying Callie's awkwardness more than she should be. "He'll be supervising your weapons training."
"Weapons training," Callie repeats. "What weapons training?"
Weapons training, it turns out, is a good deal harder than Callie thought it would be. Not that she thought she'd be doing any weapons training, but still.
She's an okay shot. I mean, it's not like she's made any kill shots yet, but she'd have incapacitated the target, according to Clint. Callie's better with assault rifles than with pistols or machine guns- a problem if she ever wants to do spy work with S.H.I.E.L.D. She'll get better with practice, though, Clint says.
He's a good teacher. Quiet, observant, poking good-natured fun at her ineptness once in a while, but Callie doesn't mind. She likes Clint. He's fun, especially coupled with Natasha's dry humor and Callie's dirty mouth.
She'll be working with Clint a lot more, apparently. Callie doesn't mind. Neither does Clint. He likes her, too. So does Natasha, although she won't show it.
But as good as things are going with S.H.I.E.L.D., that doesn't change the fact that Spiderman is still very much at large in New York, and Callie still has no idea about what is going on with him and the Suttwells.
She gets another opportunity to find out soon enough, though.
Halloween finds her, Peter, Gwen, and Harry bar-hopping in the Meat Packing District using fake IDs procured from various sources. (Callie's is her S.H.I.E.L.D. one. Coulson will, most assuredly, murder her if he ever finds out what she's been using it for.) Callie is dressed as, ironically enough, a secret agent, Gwen a somewhat-sexy nurse, Peter a jock (it's a football jersey and jeans. Callie groans audibly when she sees him), and Harry a ninja.
Things are going reasonably well until around midnight, when a bomb goes off a block away from them and everyone panics.
A crowd starts rushing toward Callie and her friends, desperate to get away from the fire and the carnage, and she's separated from the others. She's swept toward the disaster area, and she doesn't really mind because she was planning on doing that anyway, but she can hear a terrified and slightly drunk Gwen screaming her name, with Harry throwing a few in there for good measure.
"I'm here!" Callie tries to yell back, but it's swallowed in other desperate cries of fear and pain.
And then suddenly, she can see him.
Well, them, really, because there are two important people that are now visible to her.
The first is the apparent perpetrator of the bomb blast, a lithe woman in a black outfit with long, silvery hair and a mask over her thin features.
The second is Spiderman.
Callie takes off running just as he secures the villainess in a gigantic spiderweb and the police arrive on the scene.
"Hey!" Callie shouts at the wannabe superhero, forcing herself to get past the screaming, crying civilians. Don't look, don't look, don't look. "Hey!"
Spiderman glances over his shoulder at her, then speeds up, springing from rooftop to rooftop at an almost impossible rate. But Callie hasn't been training with Natasha and Happy for months on end for nothing. She's an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., damn it! She runs faster.
Because she needs to find out who Spiderman is. Needs to find out what his connection is with Suttwells so she can keep them safe. Needs to find out if he is all good or only a little good and mostly bad so she can keep the rest of the city safe, because she's not going to let another Ivan Vanko or James Hammer or Obadiah Stane or Joker come to life right under her nose. She won't. She won't do it.
Callie skids to a stop in an alleyway. It's dark and smells weird and looks exactly like an alleyway from a horror movie or a bad detective show looks like. Her hand instinctively goes to the gun at her side that she's only newly licensed to carry.
And then Spiderman swings down in front of her face, clinging to a web like it's a bungee chord, and she almost screams.
Almost being the key word.
"Why?" Spiderman says, and he's not using that pseudo-macho voice he's been trying to pull off on her for the past few weeks. She thinks he sounds vaguely familiar. "Why do you keep trying to find me?"
Callie's breathless from the chase, but she pants out, "I need to know."
"Why?" Spiderman insists again. "Why do you want to be involved in this? It's dangerous and you're not-"
But Callie doesn't listen to what Spiderman thinks she is or isn't, because Callie is too busy reaching for his face while he's too busy talking to notice. She rips his mask off.
A/N: So, no Tony in this chapter. Or rather, only mentions of him, no screen time. Sorry for that, but everything in here really needed to get out before I could keep going with his story line. He probably won't be in the next chapter much, either, but you'll be seeing a lot of him very, very soon. Sorry for the delay in this chapter, I was a little busy, you know, graduating from high school and everything. But I really hope you enjoyed this, and if you did, don't be scared to drop a review down below! Thanks for reading!