Chapter XII:
"You wanted to talk to me?" Maria asked a restless-looking Nick Fury as he shrugged off his outermost coat.
The director nodded his head once in response before positioning himself over her left shoulder, his one eye flashing over her vast bank of computer screens. Nothing of importance was up on any of them at the current moment; embarrassingly, the only open window was that of a sappy romantic novel she had been binging.
"Your email from earlier, about Natasha." He said, referencing the message she had sent him the day before.
The agent massaged a sore crink in her neck, remembering being slightly annoyed that he had not responded with more urgency. "Right, how is she?"
"The same old, same old…" Fury muttered. "Stubborn to a fault. Completely fine physically, as always."
Maria let out a hearty laugh as her fingers began to fly over her keyboard. "She'll never change. That, I can guarantee you."
"I don't doubt it." Fury snorted in response, his voice graveling with a mixture of admiration and frustration.
Maria then swiveled her seat by a degree. "What about mentally? Was she okay?"
The director's brow creased evermore as he sat down. "I'm not sure any of us will ever know that. But meeting the Barton's did seem to help things a bit."
Maria smiled at the thought of the Barton's. They were as close to a perfect family as one could imagine. A type of family she hoped that she could one day also have.
"The man." Fury then said, rerouting their conversation to the topic of the email. "Show me."
"Right on." Maria answered, commanding surveillance files she had dredged to populate the brightly-lit screens in front of them.
The rolling clips were ones that she had already analyzed many times over; multiple angles of the Long Island Sound at various times of the day. There was nothing blatantly amiss, but what they all had in common however as they played through, was a single man, dressed not out-of-the-ordinary, appearing from seemingly out of nowhere in the water when nobody else was around. The same man that she had personally been tagging for weeks, ever since Natasha had first called her to ask about him.
Both watched in silence as the man walked casually out of the lapping waves, onto the shoreline, before disappearing off screen.
Fury's demeanor and tone dipped as he leaned forward. "Talk to me, what do we know about him?"
"Percy Jackson. Male. Age: twenty-four. Date of birth: August 18th. Employment status: pet store on Fifth Avenue. Went to NYU, and is from Richmond, Virginia." Maria rattled off, repeating the same basic information she had given to Natasha weeks ago.
"That's it?" Fury asked unsurely.
Maria nodded her head once.
"And you came across him… how?" The director continued.
"Natasha called me one night asking for his profile."
"Did she tell you why?"
"No, but I've got material of the two of them with each other."
A couple seconds later, Maria had up pictures and footage of Natasha and the man in question sitting on a park bench. By no means did she feel any good about spying on her former colleague, but it had been completely accidental. She thought she had just been doing her due diligence for Natasha by researching him further. To say the agent was surprised when she found out that they were regularly talking would have been an understatement. The Natasha she knew never let anybody get this close for long, especially not somebody from work.
"So Natasha has been seeing this man?" Fury concluded.
"I wouldn't call it seeing, really, wouldn't that imply a relationship?"
The director gave his agent a long look. "I don't know why you're asking me how a relationship is defined, Agent Hill. You and I both know that I'm the last person on this God-forsaken planet that will ever get into one, let alone understand one."
Maria conceded such as she paused, before zooming in closer on the frame. "I don't know, but from what I've gleaned, the two of them have been meeting at this spot at the park almost every day."
Fury deigned to watch all of the clips over again, before speaking any further.
"There's nothing else we know about him?" He asked her eventually.
"Nothing." Maria answered bluntly. "It's weird, I'm pretty sure that the public records he has are falsified. It's almost… too blank and cookie-cutter."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, his history is just so bland." She explained as she scrolled through his short profile for Fury to see. "What we got is the bare minimum, if that. Even the most innocent and unproblematic of people have more info than him. He's done literally... nothing, from what I've seen. Besides the water stuff, of course. Which is a good sign I guess, he might be and probably is completely harmless. Also, ran his features through facial recognition, and only came back with hits from six years ago until now."
She could feel Fury tense up.
"So what you're saying is that—"
"We can't be sure if he's even from Earth." Maria finished unsurely. "All we know for certain is that he's got some sort of water-type powers, the extent of which is uncertain. How else could he just appear there in the water, right?"
"Right." Fury assured, his concern ever growing. "But in the six years we do have on him, he hasn't done anything criminal?"
"No." Maria answered, once again scrolling through the profile. "Nothing at all."
She watched silently as Fury poured further thought into the matter.
"We still need to make sure he's not a threat. This wouldn't be the first time Hydra or somebody else has tried to infiltrate us intimately." He muttered.
Maria figured if true, it would almost be ironic, as they had used Natasha to vet one Tony Stark in the same manner all those years ago.
Fury stood up abruptly. "Analyze every piece of surveillance we got on him. We need to know what we're getting into."
"Should I increase monitoring?" She asked hesitantly. "I can also talk to Natasha myself. Maybe she can tell us some things we don't know."
"No sense in wasting time, this is a matter of national security." Fury glanced at the computers one more time. "We must identify any unknown supernatural with haste. I'm sorry I didn't respond to you sooner."
Ever since they had come back from Thanos' snap, the director had been even more paranoid than before about things. Maria could not blame him, but damn for all their sakes she hoped this Percy Jackson guy was good. If he was helping Natasha in any way, she did not want to ruin it.
"Do you want me to put together a team?" Maria asked. "The Guardians are here currently. We could use them."
The S.H.I.E.L.D. director pursed his chapped lips. "For now, that won't be necessary. I think it would be best if it was just… the two of us."
Maria gave Fury a confused look.
"Like you've said, he seems to be unproblematic so far. Maybe to a fault." The director said as he opened the door to leave. "And I don't know about you Agent Hill, but if I were to open my door to a talking raccoon and a gray alien, I probably wouldn't be the most gracious of hosts."
Author's Note:
Hope you enjoyed this short chapter, thanks for all the reviews! I'll try my best to start writing more, but no promises :)
Like always, thoughts and critiques are appreciated.