[A/N]: I had, once upon a time, planned on making Gary a mutant. Then I tried to make sense of the X-Men timeline and realised it was impossible.

Happy Monday (note: this is very sarcastic) to all of you around the world. Mine is coming to an end... thank God. And uni has started again (hooray) so expect updates to become sparser as it really starts to whip my procrastinating ass into shape.

Anyway, this was a fun chapter to write. Hope you guys enjoy it!

Jessamine stepped into the room behind Gary. He was pale, jittery and anxious. He turned to shut the door behind him, and his eyes slid past Jessamine as though she was a fly on the wall.

Inside the room, there was a large table. There were thirteen seats, and only one was empty. Gary sat down in it while Jessamine walked around the room. It was not her first time in here—she had, in fact, been in this room at least ten times. Each time yielded no more information than the last, but Jessamine refused to give up.

There were few details in the room. Jessamine could see photos of previous partners, but their faces were blurred and indistinct. There was a window, but nothing could be seen outside. Gary sat in between two people, but their faces, while sharp and crisp like a photo, were faces of famous actors, not lawyers. And a logo, a name, emblazoned on the back wall. The letters liked to move around, shifting and drifting as though they weren't sure where to go.

Everything seemed underwater here. A distorted room, moving constantly, never still, never sure. A heaviness in the air—not from the atmosphere itself, but as though the very memory itself was being weighed down. Dragged down so that another, underneath it, would never rise.

This was a false memory, of that Jessamine was sure. Nor was it one consciously changed—she knew what such memories looked like. Their flaws were obvious, their disguises like ill-fitting suits sagging off the frame. This one was vague enough that it almost felt like a half-forgotten memory, if not for the unnatural heaviness of it.

But what was the false memory hiding? She could not see a crack in the walls, could not see a point where Pansy could penetrate to grasp at what was real.

The Gary of the memory began to speak. There was a sharp clarity around him, something that cut through the fog and centred around him. Here was where the memory was tied to. His speech—his resignation. His words were the only things real in here, and the rest of it was likely conjured by the mind to fill the gaps. A conflicted look rose on his weary face, wrinkled and lined before its years, then it cleared. He relaxed then, looking far more like the Gary that Jessamine knew, and said, "I'm resigning."

Jessamine pondered the words. They were the truth—he had resigned, but it hadn't been from a law firm.

So where?

Jessamine had not stepped foot in the Turnstile Diner since the night she had dropped Gary off there, the man shaken and disturbed by his ordeal. The least she could give him, she felt, was time, even if she could only afford to give him a week to adjust.

That one week had slid past like water on stone. And it was with a plastic smile–as well as a healthy dose of deliberate ignorance when Gary paled at the sight of her face—that Jessamine sat down in the diner and perused the menu. He did not come out to speak to her, the very decision to stay ensconced in his kitchen drawing a raised eyebrow from Olson, who knew that Gary usually made it a habit to take Jessamine's order himself when she was in.

It was unfortunate for Jessamine, however, that in between the chaos of her work and her hurry to bring Gary back into the fold, she had forgotten it was a Friday.

"Hi, how can I—oh, it's you!"

Jessamine stilled.

It was a high-pitched voice that lent itself well to an unholy squeal. The person the voice belonged to bounced on the balls of her feet, a frenzied motion that swayed her frizzy blonde curls from side to side in a way that reminded Jessamine, painfully, of her Hogwarts dormmate, Lavender Brown. But worse than Lavender Brown, this person was—

Cheryl.

Jessamine suppressed her shudder, the only sign of it being a twitching tic at the bottom of her left eye.

"I kinda thought I scared you off for good," said Cheryl with a grin. "But Gary's food is great, isn't it? Bet you couldn't resist it."

"It is good food," agreed Jessamine. "I'm sorry, what was your name again?" No need to encourage her further by revealing she had remembered the girl's name.

"Cheryl. Man, your accent is so cool," she said. "I wish I had a cool accent like that—all I got is classic New Yorker, though. I can't even try for a Texan drawl. You know, those cowboy accents, like 'yee-haw'." She drew out the last word, thickening her voice to badly mimic the Texan accent.

"I see." Jessamine wasn't sure how best to respond—in a way considered polite, that is. She had plenty of ideas about how she would like to respond, but many were generally not fit for public display. Eventually, she decided on ignoring anything that hadn't made sense. "I'll get a chicken and jalapeno burger, please."

"Drinks, Your Highness?"

Jessamine winced, but the teasing note in Cheryl's nicknaming was a far cry from the near-worship she had shown in their first… meeting. It seemed the girl had developed some decency. Even if she still talked too much. "A Coke."

"Coming right up!" Cheryl turned with a skipping leap, wandering off to the kitchens.

Jessamine spied Gary in the back, looking grim and stressed. He kept his eyes firmly on his cooking, not looking up once. She sighed; it would take a while to develop a semblance of trust again—trust which she needed, now rather than later. If she had known beforehand how everything would turn out, perhaps she might have gone for a softer approach. But the knowledge that she was being watched by S.H.I.E.L.D had forced her to power through her schedule, and in the end, they hadn't even managed to uncover the root of Gary's sight. Pansy had described the mental block in Gary's head as a spiderweb—complex, large, and if ripped too hastily, the entire thing would collapse and damage him permanently. So they were still stumbling blind, except now, they were being stonewalled by Gary too.

Too many hurdles, and not enough information. In her haste, she had forgotten patience, and she would pay dearly for that. Now Jessamine had to rebuild her relationship with Gary—what little that she could. That would take more time, and she worried that she wouldn't have enough.

But she still had a few more cards to play before things got truly troublesome.

"Here you go, Highness." Cheryl returned with a glass of Coke. She lingered at the table, a look of hesitance on her freckled face, before finally saying, "Listen. Gary told me off real good about what happened last time—and I'm cool now, I swear. He said I made you uncomfortable, and honestly, I just thought your accent was amazing. I didn't mean to. Honest."

Jessamine tilted her head. The girl hadn't actually apologised in explicit terms, but it was written all over her face. "Very well. I understand."

Cheryl looked like she wanted to say something more, but thought better of it. "I'll be back with your food in a sec."

When she returned next, Jessamine had a note ready for her. "Give this to Gary, won't you?" She got an odd look for the request, but Cheryl acquiesced all the same. She did not worry about the note being read; to all other eyes but hers and Gary's, the note contained a simple praise of the food. "Thank you."

Jessamine watched Gary's reaction when Cheryl handed him the paper. He started, glanced at Jessamine warily. When their eyes met, he looked away, a quick, instinctive movement. His hands shook as they opened the note. After a moment, he folded it back up and tucked it into his back pocket. He did not look at her again.

Satisfied, Jessamine dug into her lunch.

It was Sunday evening when Jessamine heard a voice cursing her name. She had been outside by the pool, and though the voice was coming from inside the house, it was so loud that it reached her easily and cut through her concentration.

She looked up and saw a blonde woman with watery blue eyes and heavily-freckled skin. It was a face she had grown accustomed to, and though it still felt oily on her skin, it no longer gave her a prickling unease whenever she looked at it in the mirror.

Right now, the face was being worn by another, and it was twisted into an expression of utmost disdain. It was almost strange, and Jessamine wondered if that expression always looked so unnatural whenever she wielded it under the guise of Jess Wright.

"Your job is awful," said Pansy. "Ghastly. Absolutely exhausting. And it's too Muggle. I had to write seventy emails today; I expect you'll get some very confused replies."

"For Merlin's sake, Pansy," said Jessamine. "It's a secretary job. It's what you actually do for me now."

"Yes—and I use owls to send mail. It's a perfectly sensible method of communication; all you need is parchment, ink, a quill and a bird. None of this nonsense about 'Inbox' and 'Outbox' and 'Subject's." She started to peel off the glamour spells, and bit by bit, traces of Pansy's true appearance began to fade into existence. When the last spell was stripped off, she sighed, "Much better. I don't know how you do this every day, Jessamine, I really don't. It feels like walking around soaked in Sleakeazy's."

"I use a spell," said Jessamine. She smiled wryly at Pansy's outrage ("You could have told me!"), and continued, "My job's not always so bad. It's because of Stark, really. They've got almost everyone working over the weekends to deal with the fallout from the press conference. Stocks are down twenty points."

"I know. I had to listen to Stane rave about it all day," muttered Pansy. "How are things coming with the shopkeeper?"

"It's coming," said Jessamine, sighing. "I asked him to meet us tonight. We'll see if Lukesworth turns up."

"Do you want me to fetch him if he doesn't?"

"No," said Jessamine. "Let him come on his own. He will… eventually."

Pansy seemed slightly sceptical but nodded.

"Why don't you see if Dennis needs any help?" suggested Jessamine. "I need to concentrate on the wards." Though Dennis would probably despair of Pansy going anywhere near his computers. He still bemoaned the day he tried to teach her how to use one properly, and she had ended up clicking on a shady advertisement and infecting the machine with a virus. "They've been acting up a bit."

Pansy stepped closer in curiosity but thought better of it when she was met with a wall of icy air. Even after years, the feeling of Jessamine's released magic never failed to unsettle her. With a visible shudder and hurried steps back, she said, "Alright. I'll see you inside."

Jessamine turned her attention back to the wards as Pansy disappeared into the house. She had been conducting her monthly check of the wards this morning when she had discovered a curious aberration in them. Jessamine remembered the decision to make them water-based, though she had not understood the full extent of how the decision would influence the protections around her home. It had been an obscure concept, after all, one she had heard of and read of, but one that was never mentioned in detail.

She documented what she observed and noticed, the primary one that drew her attention being several attempted breaches. The wards had not warned her of any attempts, and she had not noticed any until she had checked them, which was a concern. But upon looking into them in more detail, she realised why.

Somehow, the outer wards, mostly perimeter and identification wards, had drawn on the Muggle-Repelling wards she had set up around specific rooms inside the house. Even more fascinatingly, when she had delved into the reason behind this, she had discovered that the wards seemed to have developed a sort of intelligence. They had detected her would-be intruders, and identified them as—she highly suspected—S.H.I.E.L.D agents. They had sensed the agents' motives and her own desire to stay below S.H.I.E.L.D's radar. Thus, instead of allowing them to get caught in the more dangerous wards, they had borrowed from the Muggle-Repelling wards and redirected the intruders to the neighbouring house. And as the threat had been diverted, the wards had deemed it unnecessary to alert her.

It was a truly unexpected—extraordinary, really—development, and Jessamine made sure to take copious notes. Such intuitive behaviour from wards was remarkable, though their intelligence was still limited. For one, the wards hadn't realised that by redirecting her intruders, they had conversely brought even more attention to her. S.H.I.E.L.D was likely scrambling to find out how she had managed to protect her house.

Jessamine was surprised they hadn't confronted her yet. Perhaps they were waiting, calculating their next move. They would close in on her soon, thinking her oblivious and unguarded.

But like S.H.I.E.L.D, she was waiting. Drawing them in, observing, and learning as much about them as she could. This time, she would be patient.

When they came, Jessamine would be ready. She hummed as she sifted through her wards, for all appearances enjoying a meditation session. Her magic coiled around her, searching, seeking, studying.

It felt, it saw and it learned.

Two hundred yards away, three men and two women were settled for the night on the roof. Four sat at a table playing poker, while the fifth was lying belly-down on the flat, concrete rooftop, pretending to stargaze. All seemed relaxed, but every one of them had at least one weapon strapped onto some part of their bodies.

Two of them, Temple and Carlson, had been there longer than the rest. They had drawn this assignment to observe some famous CEO's assistant. It had been a boring assignment—an easy one. He and Carlson had developed a nice rapport, just chatting about unimportant, impersonal things while watching the target go about her day. They had joked about how dull the assignment was.

They had been watching the target for three weeks. In the first week, Temple had learned that she had an interesting, if a little concerning, personality—logical, cold and detached. She didn't show much affection for anyone, aside from to a female, identified as Pansy Silverton. Carlson was the one to look up Silverton, and she had found that Silverton was an old friend of the target's, who worked as a freelance writer. Weird name, but otherwise, she had checked out okay. Temple had put that in his daily reports.

In the second week, they had continued to observe. Jess Wright hadn't really done anything of interest. Temple certainly hadn't caught her doing anything illegal. The target woke up, went to work, and went home straight after. Rinse and repeat. On the weekends, she mostly stayed at home. Once, she had sat outside by the pool and meditated.

Pretty boring stuff.

The third week was where things had really started to get interesting. Another old friend turned up—a kid called Dennis Creevey. They'd looked him up, identified him as a non-threat, and hadn't bothered looking further. Of course, Temple had still put him down in the report. He put everything down in the reports.

Then Stark had turned up from Afghanistan, and on the same day, Coulson himself had come down and joined them on their roof—with a team of ten agents.

Things had gotten weird then.

The team was supposed to infiltrate the target's home and collect information. Pretty straightforward. They had cased the place and gotten the blueprints. Easy job—multiple entry and exit points. The target had been at work, Silverton out for dinner and Creevey taking a nap, according to his heat signature. Nobody would notice them going in or out.

Except the place proved impossible to get into. It didn't even make any sense. The team had somehow ended up in the house next door. Coulson had snapped at them, told them to stop being idiots. They had tried again—and again, they had gotten confused. At some point, they had figured out there was something weird about the house. Suddenly, Jess Wright and her friends weren't so boring anymore.

The next night, Coulson had brought someone else with him. Temple had recognised her instantly—bright red hair, and a lithe, predatory walk, dressed in a skin-tight suit that hugged her swaying hips. He hadn't known her name, but he knew the moniker she had been given—the Black Widow. She was practically a S.H.I.E.L.D legend. If anyone could get in, it was her.

But she hadn't been able to either. Like everyone else, she had ended up in the neighbour's house, disoriented and frustrated.

Now, Temple was reclining in a chair, pretending he wasn't scared shitless as he played a game of poker with the Black Widow. He glanced at Carlson and saw that she was still wearing a vaguely stunned look, darting involuntary looks of awe at the Black Widow, whose name he had learned was Romanoff. Probably. He didn't put it past S.H.I.E.L.D to lie about that.

"Full house," said Romanoff, her voice a husky timbre. Romanoff, Temple had learned, was seduction and danger built into one. Everything she said, every move she made was designed to draw you in. Then she'd slit your throat while you were misty-eyed at her feet.

She was utterly and completely terrifying.

"Aw," said Temple, suppressing the tremor in his voice. He hadn't been quite successful, from the look that Carlson threw him.

"She has to be cheating," said O'Brien. He was a fairly high-ranking agent, and Temple thought he might have worked with Romanoff before. He didn't think anyone could be so relaxed meeting Romanoff for the first time. "No one is that lucky at poker."

Romanoff smiled—it almost seemed genuine. But if Temple looked closely enough, he thought he could see something cold and hard in her eyes. "Rickson," she said, turning around. "How's she doing?"

"Still meditating."

"Christ," said O'Brien. "It's been five hours."

"She only meditated for a couple of hours last time," said Carlson.

"Does anyone else find it weird that she only meditates once a month?" said O'Brien. "Meditation isn't a once-a-month kind of thing, you know."

Rickson snorted. "How would you know, O'Brien?"

"I meditate."

Rickson snorted again.

"No, seriously. It's good for concentration—and you know, concentration is good for the job. Gives me a better understanding of myself too. Self-awareness, you know."

"Self-awareness?" said Rickson incredulously. "You?"

Temple couldn't resist a smile, which promptly withered away when Romanoff rolled her eyes. "Boys," she said, a light warning in her voice. "Play nice."

O'Brien scowled at Rickson, who grinned back without the slightest hint of remorse. "I'll have you know that I believe self-awareness is the key to a happy life."

"Wrong job for self-awareness, don't you think?" said Carlson as Rickson broke down into quiet sniggers.

O'Brien shrugged. "Probably. I'll deal?"

Romanoff passed him the deck, which he shuffled expertly. Temple settled in for a long night of losing. He was fairly sure that Romanoff was counting the cards, but he sure as hell wasn't going to call her out on it.

O'Brien dealt the first card. Temple frowned, shivering as a familiar chill descended over him. It made his insides clench and his lips thin. Gooseflesh crawled across his body.

Romanoff's sharp eyes didn't miss a thing. "Cold?"

"Yeah," admitted Temple. "Aren't you guys?"

"A little bit," said Carlson. She shuddered too. "It gets cold up here sometimes. You get used to it, sort of." There was a dark look on her face, a feeling Temple mirrored. He wasn't sure it was the kind of cold you could get used to.

"It did get colder," agreed Romanoff. "You're shivering though."

Temple shrugged helplessly. The chill came and went. It was a clammy, suffocating feeling, one that filled him with dread. He hated it, and for some reason, it seemed to follow them around rooftops. He hadn't known L.A was so cold up high. But it would pass, sometimes quicker than other times. Luckily, it was 'sometimes' tonight. Even as he picked up his cards and considered his hand, he could feel the terrible feeling begin to fade. He relaxed, warmth tingling back into his cheeks.

"Man," said Rickson. "You're right—it is cold." He got up, pale and unsmiling, to retrieve his jacket. "Jesus."

Romanoff's dark eyes flicked back and forth. "You okay, Rickson?"

"Yeah," he said. "Might be the wind."

"It comes and goes," said Temple.

O'Brien rolled his eyes, impatient. "Look, are we playing, or are we going to keep talking about how Rickson's cock shrivels up from a bit of cold?"

Carlson wrinkled her nose. "No one was talking about that until you said it."

O'Brien grinned and winked.

"Alright then," sighed Temple. He glanced at Rickson. He was already back in position, staring ahead. He seemed fine now, though a grim air had settled over him. "Let's play."

They played. Rickson didn't complain about the cold again, but Temple saw him shiver a few more times. He didn't blame Rickson—the cold was an icy, clawing feeling. The first time he'd felt it, it had felt like a corpse's hand squeezing his organs. It had gotten better over time, its intensity fading, but it was still a horrible sensation.

Unnatural, almost.

But it's just the wind, in the end, thought Temple, and dismissed his paranoia.