It had just begun to dawn when the helicopter landed, loud and in a hurry, on the strangest platform Bella had ever seen. Well, perhaps it was not the landing pad that was strange, but the immense structure it was in. In midair, her eyes had almost popped out when, from above, she had seen the monstrous base of operations floating somewhere in the North Atlantic. The base in question was a kind of rectangle that had a covered space at one end, half above the level of the ship and the other half below.
The Helicarrier stretched out for all its meters in length, loaded with aircraft of all types and rife with movement, even in the remnant darkness of dawn.
It was a miracle that Bella's jaw didn't drop in amazement.
George, a young man of twenty-five, tall and dark, with light brown eyes, who had been her chauffeur for the previous months, untied himself first and helped her with her harness, taking her elbow to descend from the helicopter, where a man was waiting for them, an agent Bella had never seen. He wore a dark blue neoprene suit with leather details, the distinctive SHIELD uniform.
"Miss Swan, Agent Grey", he greeted them, shouting a little over the noise of the helicopter.
"Agent?" Bella asked, puzzled. George was very close and he could hear her hoarse voice.
"Did you think I was just your driver, Swan?" He yelled in amusement as they walked away from the helicopter, following the agent who had received them.
Bella shook her head, grinning at him.
"I should have known; you drive far too bad to make a living out of it".
George laughed in a relaxed way, making her do the same on the way in. But that festive atmosphere did not last long, because when they entered the barracks, the air could be cut with a knife. Laughter was caught in her rough throat. There were several corridors to travel on the way to the command bridge, or a really long one. On all sides there were agents coming and going: field officers in their military uniforms heading for training, others unloading boxes from a warehouse whose contents Bella ventured were weapons. A chill ran through her body. She needed to know what was going on. George was told a destination other than her own, so she continued on her way with the unknown agent.
The long and winding gray corridor ended in a tall, double door behind which was the headquarters of operations, a wide space, imitating the command bridge of any ship, whose front was delimited by large windows through which you had access to everything that was happening on the deck. It had several levels, in the lowest there were dozens of agents controlling issues related to the ship that Bella could not understand and in the center of the platform that simulated the place where the helm is normally located, there were two controls similar to consoles but completely touch. Behind that structure, a huge black wooden table, with twenty chairs around it.
Fury was standing in front of the false helm, in his usual clothes, checking that everything was in order with an intercom in his right ear. Bella wanted to laugh at the obviousness in front of her eyes, but something told her that Fury wouldn't admit to pirate jokes that day. The agent who had escorted her took his place at one of the checkpoints.
"Miss Swan", the director greeted her politely.
Bella stopped staring in fascination at the vaulted ceiling and the gallery that surrounded it to look at him.
"Fury", she just said with a nod of her head, afraid that he would ask her if she had already made a decision. Or worse: fearing that the decision was made instead of her and that is the reason why she was floating in an aquatic transformer.
She saw Agent Hill on the lower level, as usual, controlling multiple screens at once.
"What is happening?" she wanted to know, looking around, looking for her faithful friend- "where is Coulson?" she insisted, now anxious.
"Coulson is your favorite, we get it", said a velvety, honeyed voice. Bella turned around recognizing her right away .
"I didn't know you were the jealous type, Romanoff" ,she greeted her with a beaming smile. Natasha was surprised to hear her raspy voice and her expression froze when she saw the little red dots in her eyes. She imagined the state she must have been in a few hours ago, and clenched her hands into fists . She forced a smile and rolled her eyes theatrically so as not to alert her and to examine the rest of her body for other signs of the Beta Test. She was wearing a gray turtleneck sweater, a pastel and gray checked suede jacket that Natasha liked a lot, tight black pants, and black boots that made her look taller. The clothes did not expose any skin to detect more injuries and she had not seen her walk to see if it was difficult for her to move any part of her body. She cursed in her head.
"Sir, they will be landing in five minutes", Agent Hill announced as she approached the platform.
"Then we take off in seven"
"Yes sir" she answered obediently. She didn't deign to greet Bella, who still didn't understand a thing.
"Romanoff", Fury said, giving a silent order, which Natasha was quick to comply with.
"This will be fun", added the red-haired agent, winking at Bella before leaving.
By the time she arrived, the dark jet was already lowering its door, letting out an overwhelmed Steve Rogers and a fascinated Coulson, making her smile.
"Gentlemen" she greeted correctly.
"Ma'am," Rogers replied, nodding his head too solemnly.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Dr. Banner was walking towards them, looking at everything around him, hunched over. She cocked her head, somewhat… touched? She shook off that thought as soon as she noticed it.
Coulson watched him closely .
Rogers and Banner shook hands in a very respectful greeting. They looked towards where the agents were, waiting for an order.
"You should go to the bridge. They began to track the cube. Swan is already there and asks for you", she said, keeping her gaze fixed on him. Coulson reacted immediately and shot inside. Natasha cursed in her mind once more. She needed to know what the hell had been done to her and none of them opened any windows for her. On the bridge, Hill had been very nervous and hadn't dared to look Bella in the eyes bursting with blood.
She glanced resentfully at Coulson's back and motioned for the two supermen to escort her inside before they began to take flight.
Banner walked with his hands in his pockets, hunched over, avoiding everyone's gaze. Rogers, on the other hand, walked with his chest sticking out, very sure of all his surroundings. Natasha rolled her eyes in her mind.
"Is Bella Swan here?" Rogers finally asked. Natasha tilted her head in interest, as she used to sometimes, and bit her lip to keep from grinning. The first super soldier in history wanted to hide his nervousness by putting a false casual tone to a question that couldn't be any less casual. Her brain began to work faster: she knew that Swan and Rogers had never exchanged more words than the apologies she had said when she had fallen on him. In addition to never having spoken, she knew that Coulson had introduced her as Agent Swan (from that anecdote Natasha had obtained two great reasons to annoy them and since then she has been making jokes about the adventures of Agent Swan and her partner Bambi). He couldn't know that she preferred to be called Bella. Unless he's been paying special attention to his neighbor. No that Nat needed that information to know what was happening. She knew damn too well that nervous look on a man's face.
She glanced at Banner, she had gotten into her thoughts a bit with the trifles of Rogers and Swan, but she would never lose sight of him.
"Yes," she simply answered to the Captain.
Rogers nodded with a frown, forcing a relaxed posture that did not convince the Black Widow in the least.
On the contrary, Steve believed that he was handling it well. For the last half year he had only seen Agent Swan training in the gym of the complex they both lived in, and that first time in the hallway, when he had held her in his arms. Watching her progress in her workouts had been a major distraction for Steve, who held back tightly whenever he felt he could better help her with some exercise or when she seemed to hurt herself, usually due to her lack of coordination. But she was very stubborn and would always get up and try again. Steve smiled fondly at the memory. He blinked several times to remove it from his eyelids, uncomfortable with the sensation the young woman generated. He was a mess many years older, there were things that were out of his reach. A feeling he was used to. He sighed without realizing it.
Natasha would have been very amused by a scene in which a nervous Captain America revealed the excessive attention he had paid to a girl of eighteen… no, nineteen! she cursed once more in her head. A nineteen-year-old girl who was not only in a relationship, but suffered from modesty and, as if that were not enough, from the ability to violently blush in a second. Seeing those two interact like this would have made her day. But that day there were more important things to deal with. She thought of Barton, and concern creased her face with lines.
Still, she could give Bella a little birthday present.
"I'll tell you something Cap" Natasha said, speaking a little lower and batting her eyelashes, "currently the ideal is to play hard to get, just a little. So maybe you want to seem ... relaxed".
Rogers pretended not to understand, but after a second he nodded gratefully.
Banner looked up slightly, intrigued by the exchange.
Natasha went through the same double doors again and lost count of the number of times she had done it so far that day.
"You mean the wizard from the other time?" Bella was whispering to her faithful friend, who had calmed her anxiety when he walked through the door and had quickly explained what was happening. Bella had understood the basics: Loki = bad, Tesseract = SHIELD's property. Loki had taken it away, creating an unprecedented crisis.
Coulson nodded, staring at a point behind her.
Bella turned to look at the same thing and immediately found herself in awe. Natasha was entering the command bridge accompanied by two men. One of them was her height, with tanned skin and dark brown hair, nervous eyes and hunched posture, looking suspiciously at everything around him. He was wearing clothes that looked too big for him. The other man could be none other than Steve Rogers, tall, confident and… ancient . Bella couldn't help looking up and down at his outfit, perhaps in a pathetic attempt to not get lost in his face. He wore a shirt that fitted his body, with light blue squares and tucked into pants that were very high, adjusted with a dark brown leather belt. He was wearing a brown leather jacket that screamed World War II. His shiny light hair was combed to one side. Like Bella, Rogers couldn't stop staring at the vaulted ceiling, fascinated. His companion was not in the same conditions: he looked down at the floor, looking up only to observe the door, sighing noticeably every time he met the eyes of a guard.
An agent called Coulson to show him something on one of the screens and before he left he gave Bella a strange look.
The young woman approached Fury's side almost unconsciously, searching for a figure to cling to, not quite sure what to do. She would have preferred a thousand times her attachment figure to be Maria Hill, but she was too busy giving orders to take off. Not counting the fact that Maria was avoiding her gaze since she had stepped foot on the flying boat, completely mystifying her.
"We're level sir", she told Fury from below.
"Good. Let´s vanish",Fury finished ordering, amused.
Agent Hill initiated another round of orders as Fury turned to meet the newcomers, not before giving Bella a glance.
"Gentlemen" he greeted, relaxedly. He took a few steps forward, heading towards Dr. Banner, stopping to look with a little indignation at the old ten dollars that the Captain had put in his hands, still in awe of the facilities.
Bella moved a few steps to the right, to be closer to Coulson and Natasha, who were still staring at a screen.
Bella could hear the name of the man she did not know, a Dr. Banner.
Steve, in his wandering fascinated, had stayed very close to where Bella was, and as soon as he laid eyes on her, he felt anxiety replace any other sensation in his body. Well, not all of them, because one in particular survived the anxiety by seeing her tucked into those tight black pants paired with boots.
Natasha had one hand resting on the surface of the long communal desk where all the computers were located and the other on the corresponding chair, where Coulson sat controlling the facial recognition program, while she watched intently from behind. His stare at Bella did not go unnoticed. They were both very close and very nervous. She rolled her eyes in her mind. She presented them in a jovial and natural tone.
"Hey Cap, this is Miss Isabella Swan. Swan, this is Mr. Captain America" she joked at the end.
Hearing Agent Romanoff's words, Steve felt the freedom to get close enough to Bella to observe her once again just like that first day. But when she looked up, flustered by the unexpected introduction, Steve was able to access her eyes and froze in place. It wasn't the innocent brown orbs that stared back this time, but tired, dull eyes with little veins bursting around the iris. Immediately he ran up and down her, stopping at the marked violet crescents that adorned her face, the opaque, almost translucent skin that covered her beautiful features gave her a look of disease. Something twisted inside the Captain, causing a hideous feeling in his stomach. He noticed her frown and felt uneasy once more. He'd been staring at her too long, he could see out of the corner of his eye the quick gaze Coulson and Romanoff shared. What had she said about men in these times?
"Captain," Bella finally greeted, clearly wanting to end the awkward moment.
Her raspy voice finished confusing him.
"Ma'am, it's a pleasure to meet you", he said without thinking.
As soon as he heard himself, he wished a huge hole would open in the center of the earth so that he could hide in it for the rest of his life.
Bella blinked, bewildered (and hurt) and Steve reacted immediately. He hesitated when he spoke and ran his hand over the back of his neck, noticeably uncomfortable.
Natasha raised an eyebrow and shook her head. Men were hopeless.
"I mean, it's a pleasure to see you… I mean, it's a pleasure to see you again"
Bella's cheekbones and cheeks took on an adorable bright red that Steve didn't deserve to appreciate. But he did.
She made a grimace like a smile and soothed him with her hoarse voice.
"Don't worry, Mr. Rogers"
Natasha caught the conversation Banner and Fury were having and used it as a lifeline.
"Yeah, how are we going with the search for the Tesseract?" He repeated Banner's question aloud, glancing at Coulson beside her, who was happy to get up and go to another computer as he spoke.
Steve was still appalled at her clumsiness as Bella internally thanked Romanoff. He started walking over to where Fury was standing and before the Captain turned to hear what Coulson was beginning to explain, he gave her a desperate look, eager to apologize. Steve couldn't know that his haunted eyes triggered unpleasant memories in Bella, who had to squeeze her eyes shut and lower her head.
"We are accessing all the wireless cameras on the planet, cell phones, computers, whatever is connected to a satellite works like our eyes and ears"
That didn't help Bella's nerves either.
"That won't find it in time" Natasha mused.
"No, we must reduce the field. How many spectrometers do you have?" Said Banner. Suddenly his voice was tinged with assurance.
"How many are there?" Fury replied.
"Call all the labs you know, tell them to put the spectrometers up and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll draw up a basic group recognition algorithm so we can rule out various places. Is there somewhere I can work?"
Fury motioned for Romanoff to show him the corresponding lab and they both left the bridge. Fury went over to say something under his breath to Agent Hill and then went on to check other screens.
As the rest of the agents continued with their duties, Coulson approached Bella, standing at the top of the platform stairs.
Bella looked at him uneasily and spoke in a low voice once she was positioned next to him.
"Phil, I understand you guys have this situation, which by the way I am very sorry for, it sounds like a headache that I do not need. But I'm not really sure what I'm doing here".
Fear crept into her words.
"You promised there would be no more procedures"
"And I am keeping that promise" he said in a calm voice, staring at something behind Bella's head and adopting a forcibly relaxed posture.
"Ma'am?"
Bella looked at Phil with panic in her eyes and the questioner pretended not to see her and smiled cheerfully at the Captain, standing behind Bella.
"Captain," she repeated after clearing her throat.
"I'm very sorry for being so ... distracted" he struggled to find the last word. He gave her a lopsided, embarrassed smile as the blue of his imploring eyes sent a wave of heat to the young woman's chest.
"Don't worry, it's nothing", Bella answered automatically. She kept her chin high and didn't use her hair as a curtain, she should better hide the pain of rejection.
Captain Rogers had both hands clasped behind his back in a firm stance. He shook his head once, no longer so embarrassed but intolerable with his mistake.
"No ma'am, it was very poor behavior for a gentleman", he said, admitting no replies. Bella took a deep breath and glanced at Coulson. The blush covered her cheeks as she spoke.
"I'll tell you something, Captain. If you are so kind as to do me a favor, we will be even" she said. She wanted to raise her voice a little higher but was afraid of hurting herself. Luckily the captain seemed to hear her perfectly.
"Whatever you want, ma'am".
She eliminated the dreamy train of thoughts that was forming in her head. The man literally did not register her existence and yet her knees trembled at the first seductive comment he made.
"My friend, Agent Coulson, has worked hard to put together an old collection of cards from the original Captain America line. If you sign them, then it'll be a pleasure to meet you twice" she finished jokingly, with a half smile. Steve let out a "Yes ma'am" the moment he saw the corners of her mouth lift.
Phil wanted to protest, but excited by the affirmative answer as he was, he decided to give his locker code to an agent who was nearby so that they could approach the bridge immediately.
Steve wasn't even looking at Coulson, his eyes were fixed on Bella in a shameless way. For her part, she was very embarrassed, but it was enough to look at Phil once, the blue of his eyes lit with a spark of emotion made her smile tenderly. Rogers smiled reflexively. Coulson couldn't help but frown at the scene unfolding in front of him. What was going on?
An agent handed the cards and a pen to Coulson, who handed them to the Captain almost ceremonially.
Bella walked over to the huge table located on the one on the bridge platform to make writing easier. Steve gawked after her, almost like Coulson followed him, and sat next to Bella while Phil stood behind her.
When Rogers held up the pen and wanted to start writing, he felt strange. Since he had woken up a few months ago, he hadn't enjoyed that part like he had in the forties. He shook his head and began to write `` Thank you so much for the unconditional support ... He hesitated for a second, was he supposed to write Agent Coulson?
"His name is Phil", Bella said almost in his ear, sending a shiver through his body. The pen shook a little in his hands. He squared his shoulders and wrote the agent's name, signing his name before returning the card that had a very smiling Captain America drawn on it.
"Thank you very much Captain, I'm really sorry for the inconvenience", Coulson said, looking at the signature, still in disbelief.
"A deal is a deal", he said, smiling openly.
"Go put them in a safe place Bambi" her friend whispered, turning in the chair so she could see him.
"Bella!" The experienced SHIELD agent scolded in a low voice, embarrassed.
Bella mouthed "I'm sorry" just before an agent requested Coulson's presence at one of the checkpoints, causing him to slip the cards into his jacket pocket before hurriedly leaving.
Thus, the Captain and Bella were sitting next to each other, with an electricity running between their bodies that excited and disconcerted them at the same time.
"Well, all forgiven. Thank you captain" Bella told him with infinite gratitude, she could only imagine how happy Coulson was in those moments.
"Please" Steve said with his hands outstretched, as if preventing her from thanking him.
"So…" he spoke again "is it Agent Swan, Miss Swan or just Bella?" he asked as he sat in a relaxed way in the chair, turning it a little to be able to face her. He saw her bite her pink, plump lower lip and decided to cross one leg over the other. A wave of shame washed over him.
"Is it crazy if I don't know anymore?" she asked as she placed her hands on the table, stretching them a little on the surface to interlock her pale fingers. Steve could see the marks on her wrists, like burns and a bracelet of bruises, and he clenched his jaw. He was dying to ask what had happened and go looking for the bastard who had left her like this. He thought of her hoarse voice and wondered if the turtleneck was to cover bruises too. He took a deep breath and struggled to keep the conversation going, going over her answer and quickly empathizing.
"Not at all, ma'am" he answered, unable to avoid adding an experienced tone to his voice.
"I like 'ma'am' though", Bella stung. Steve laughed a little embarrassed.
Bella noted his amazing profile, the arch of his perfect eyebrows, the straight line of his nose, the outline of his full lips, his smooth and defined chin. His skin seemed soft and smooth, without a hint of a beard. Her hand burned to touch him.
Rogers leaned back slightly in the chair, crossing his arms across his broad chest. His shirt was rolled up, and his forearm was tight, pale, with a few veins sticking out. The sensation that seized Bella caught her off guard and she secretly placed a cold hand on the back of her neck, trying to ease the heat that overwhelmed her. She managed to raise her voice a little to reply, since the captain seemed to be still waiting for an answer.
"I keep telling everyone to call me Bella, but they don't. So call me whatever you like, Captain".
Bella didn't know where that serious and suggestive whisper had come from (perhaps from so many hours a week with Natasha) but the blood covered her face violently.
The captain shifted uncomfortably in his seat, keeping his leg tightly crossed over his knee and swallowing audibly.
"We have a match!" An agent announced, causing the captain and Bella to step out of that dangerous bubble they had plunged into and immediately stand up. It took the captain a second longer to walk normally. He shook the embarrassment from his body hastily.
Bella looked at the image on the screen. A man in his forties with jet-black shoulder-length hair, chiseled features and cynical expression appeared under an alarm sign indicating a 78% match.
Loki.
"Do we have an address?" Coulson asked.
"Germany, Stuttgart, 28 Königstrasse", answered the same officer.
Fury kept his gaze on the captain before saying
"Captain, you're up".
Rogers' chest puffed out with air and made him look like he was growing a few inches. He nodded once and headed for the door quickly.
Before he could leave the place, he heard Fury give another order.
"Miss Swan, get ready, you will go too. Happy Birthday".