Disclaimer: The Avengers, its characters and The Marvel Cinematic Universe belong to Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. Marvel's Agents of SHIELD and its characters belong to ABC Studios, Marvel Television, Mutant Enemy Productions, among many others. What If…? belongs to Marvel Studies and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. I'm only a fan, writing this for my love of this film/television franchise.
A.N.: Just FYI, I added a little scene to Chapter 2 to address a continuity error ─ mainly Fitz-Simmons knowing who the Cavalry was and a little humor between Fury, Carol and Coulson.
Avengers Initiative: Reset
05. Records
"Wait, am I hearing this right?" Skye said, shaking her head as her frown became even more pronounced, if possible. "You want to recruit me?"
"I do." He nodded back. "Why don't you think about it for a moment and I'll be right back."
And just like that, Coulson got up from the table and let the news sink in, gesturing with his head to Agent May and the two of them headed outside. Locking the door and knowing their guest would be quite secure in there, they started walking down the hallway together.
"I realize you didn't ask for my opinion," May said with a sideways glance at her team leader, "but I really don't like this."
Coulson set his lips in a thin line, as he had felt the disapproving wave lines coming off of her back in the interrogation room. "I know you got your reservations and Director Fury actually agrees with you, May. But we need all the help we can get."
"I know that, but she is a risk." She replied, shaking her head. "You're inviting someone who was working against us to be part of the team."
"Her methods may have been misguided, but I think her motivation and overall nature are good." Coulson countered, then caught the look she was giving him. "C'mon, it's not like she's a sociopath sowing chaos just for kicks. She's young and idealistic, got mixed with this crowd─"
"The Rising Tide are very organized for a pseudo-anarchist group," she interrupted before he could get further on with his speech about bad seeds versus bad influences.
"We could actually do some good here, Melinda." He said, turning to look at her as they continued walking down the hall. "Besides, we've turned a few crooks into good assets in the past, Barton and Romanoff included. You forget not everyone working for SHIELD went to the Academy and that's a good thing. We need people from all walks of life and other points of view."
"I still don't know why you'd put your trust into someone you don't even know." May countered, frowning in confusion at him. "That's not like you."
"You're right." He said with a nod as they walked into the lab and stopped by the corner at the medical bay. "But I trust her." He gestured with his head at the other specialist sitting up in bed.
May raised her eyebrows a little as she took this in, then she turned to face the other woman. "So what's the story here, Natasha?"
"I've been trying to hack my way into U-GIN Genetic Research Facility in Seoul, as they're working on something that I think will help Fitz-Simmons construct the LMD for Stark," Natasha explained as she started typing up in the laptop and pulling up some data to show them. "But I've hit a wall as they got some intricate security system that's preventing me from doing so from here."
"So you would need to be on-site to hack in." May said, following her thought trail.
"Or I need someone else who could do it remotely." Natasha countered, raising an eyebrow. "This girl can do it." She said, pulling up the feed that was monitoring Skye in the interrogation room.
"I could go in and do it." May said, setting her jaw.
"No offense May, but your hacking skills are no match to mine." Natasha said, the corners of her mouth just barely turning up. "And neither of us are a match to her when it comes to hacking."
"This is dangerous." May insisted. "We could be giving her a way in to carry out the Rising Tide agenda and break the agency from within. What makes you think she would want to help us in the first place?"
"I've seen a pattern in what she's trying to get from SHIELD." Natasha said, once again going into SHIELD's servers and pulling up some files to show them. "The leaks seem almost incidental to what she comes across, but she's looking for a very specific section in redacted files. My hunch is this is personal for her."
"May I offer a suggestion here?" Billy Koenig said, as he'd been following the group's discussion from inside the lab where he'd been setting down some boxes of materials for Fitz-Simmons that had just come in.
"What do you got, Agent Koenig?" May asked, turning to him.
"Oh please, call me Billy." He said with a waving hand. "Agent Koenig was my father. And my grandfather."
"Ok, what do you got, Billy?" Coulson asked.
"We could put her through orientation before deciding anything." Billy offered, making a wide gesture with his hands.
"Orientation?" Coulson repeated the term, frowning a little.
"We got here at the base a machine that measures a total of 96 variables, like galvanic skin response, oxygen consumption, micro expressions, biofeedback brain waves, pupil dilation, voice biometrics─"
"A lie detector?" May interrupted him, arching an eyebrow.
"The lie detector." Billy emphasised. "Fury himself designed it. He wanted a lie detector Agent Romanoff couldn't beat." He gestured with his head at the redhead.
"Did you?" Coulson asked, turning to her with curiosity.
"I helped him build it." Natasha simply said, with a look in her eyes that could be described as the cat who ate the canary. "What do you think?"
Coulson almost rolled his eyes to himself and felt the smile tugging at his lips. "You're not gonna confirm either way, are you?" She merely continued looking back at him with a placid smile.
"Okay, so how do we do this?" May asked, crossing her arms and looking around at the group, seemingly mollified by the idea of putting Skye through a lie detector test first.
"Let me go in and talk to her," Natasha said. "I think I know a way to get to her."
"Ah no, no," Jemma Simmons said from across the lab where she and Fitz were surveying and separating the boxes of new materials that had just come in. "I thought we had a deal and you wouldn't leave this bed until I said so." She said, walking up to the medical bay.
"Simmons, I promise I feel fine," Natasha insisted with a small eyeroll. "I'm not gonna do any crunches or any sort of strenuous activity. I'll just sit in a chair and talk."
The young scientist surveyed her with a critical eye for a moment, biting on her lower lip. "You would need to go down to the interrogation room in a wheelchair."
"I will hit you in the head if you so much as bring a wheelchair near me." Natasha replied in all seriousness.
"I'll walk her up there," Coulson said in a reassuring manner when he saw Jemma flush in response to her words. "She'll be fine."
"Actually, sir," Jemma interrupted him when he motioned for Natasha to move to the edge of the bed, ready to assist her up to her feet. "That wasn't merely a suggestion." They all stopped and stared back at her and in the background they could hear the clatter of metal as Fitz dropped some instrument, apparently also in shock. Instead of blushing further, Jemma stood her ground and stared firmly back at the leader of their team. "You put me in charge of medical decisions as the team's medic. This is my decision."
Coulson raised his eyebrows before this, then turned his head to look down at Natasha. "She's right. I did put her in charge."
The redhead narrowed her eyes for a moment, but then a smile tugged at her lips. "Alright. I guess I'll have to follow her orders, then."
Everyone else seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief and Jemma turned with a bright smile to fetch the wheelchair and bring it into the medical bay. Jemma then helped Natasha change into some actual clothes instead of the medical gown she'd been wearing so far and helped her into the chair, which Coulson pushed down the hallways until they reached the interrogation room. Only then did Natasha get up to her feet and walk into the room holding Skye as if it were just another day for her and she hadn't had surgery just two days before.
"Skye, this is Agent Natasha Romanoff," Coulson said with a hand gesture then stood by the door, letting Natasha take point.
"So, Skye," Natasha said, sitting down at the table before her. "You now know we want something from you. Your skills." She said, making a hand gesture. "Now what is it you want from SHIELD?"
The brunette just eyed her for a moment, arching an eyebrow. "I told you. I'm looking for the truth."
"The truth about Tony Stark and Loki." Natasha repeated with a nod, staring intently at the younger woman. "Freedom of information is a wonderful ideal, I'll give you that. But no one in their right mind would risk facing prison time by leaking classified data just for that. People are usually motivated by something much more… personal."
Skye's face flushed a light pink, as her words seemed to have touched a nerve. "You don't know anything about me."
Natasha narrowed her eyes. "I know that it wasn't luck that I was able to find your location through your cryptographic signature in the access point you made in that cafe in Atlanta and link that to the data leaks coming from the Rising Tide. You wanted us to find you. Now all I'm asking you is why."
Skye's jaw clenched tightly as she took that in, trying to hide her surprise and irritation that Natasha had seen through her actions so easily.
"If you want us to help you, now is the time to talk," Coulson said softly from his stance by the door. "Otherwise we take you in for processing and you get to spend the next few years at the Fridge."
Skye glanced at him then she looked back at Natasha. "You really need my skills? You want to recruit me for real?"
"I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't," the redhead said. "But we're not inviting you in until you tell us why you were luring us out."
Skye nodded back in reply, then took a deep breath in before she spoke again. "I am looking for the truth. But not about Stark or Loki. I mean, yeah, if I could find out about that and help out somehow it would be an added bonus. But I was actually looking for the truth about me."
"What does SHIELD have to do with you?" Coulson asked with a frown.
"Everything." Skye said, turning her eyes to him then she reached in and removed a microchip from the pocket of her jeans, laying it down on the table and pushing it towards Natasha. "Or at least this is everything I could find. I have no idea who I am or who my family is, if they're alive, if... All my research led to this one document from the day I was dropped at the orphanage. Redacted by SHIELD."
Natasha pulled the microchip towards her on the table and traced a finger delicately over it, feeling a lump forming in her throat. She knew exactly what it was like to search the past for roots or answers or anything, really. And being unable to find it.
"If we help you," she said in a soft voice, "you may not like what you end up finding."
Skye's eyes were shining with unshed tears as she looked back at her. "It can't be worse than anything I've imagined."
Ah to be that young and naive, Natasha thought as her lips curled upwards. "Yes, it can," she said in the same soft tone and watched the surprise wash over Skye's face. "But I'll help you find it, if I have anything to do with it."
With that said, she took the microchip and got up from the table, going towards the door. Natasha had never been that young, naive and idealistic in her entire life. The Red Room had taken that from her from as early as she could remember. But she would be damned if SHIELD would continue to take the past from that girl, just as the KGB had done to her. Coulson could handle her registration process and the lie detector with Billy Koenig. Right now she had another investigation to start.
A.N.: I feel like Natasha and Skye/Daisy would have so much in common while being polar opposites at the same time, but their shared history of not knowing their past is something that could easily bond them at the start.