AN: Revised 3/22/20

AN: Again, wrote it today, double checked it myself during lunch break while choking down a sandwich so if you see anything that makes your inner grammar/spelling Nazi act up, please let me know. Reviews are appreciated, it's nice to know what people think about what I'm putting out there.

It had been almost twenty minutes since the Russian born spy first sat down at the bar. She picked a corner where she could surreptitiously watch the front door while pretending to be engrossed by the football game being shown on the muted television. In that short time, she had no less than six men come up to proposition her. If her veiled observations of the occupants of the bar were on piont, there were at least two more still trying to work up the courage to come make a fool of themselves.

The Black Widow fought back an eye roll as she spotted one man down his third glass of beer. He stood up to loosen his collar but sat back down once more after glancing at her again and losing his nerve. Patches of sweat were slowly making itself visible underneath his armpits, the stains gradually darkening his navy blue dress shirt. Sometimes it sucked to be a beautiful woman.

Natasha had to hide a laugh behind her hand every time Angelina would make some particularly cutting comment about one of the men trying to pick her up. The ghost always had a dry wit and razor-sharp tongue when she was alive; death had done little to dull that edge. It was a bit unfair to make assumptions about the size of the men's packages based on their lack of personality or clumsy attempts at trying to get lucky with the undercover agent. Funny, but unfair.

At precisely 2030, her target appeared at the entrance with a soft jingle of the doorway bell. Still dressed in his work attire, Ichigo carried his customary trio of newspapers underneath his left arm. He approached the barkeep and was handed a pint of ale wordlessly, nodding his thanks at the man operating the booze station and headed over to his corner booth. A few heads dipped in his direction in greeting as he passed, and he returned the friendly gestures brusquely.

The SHIELD agent stayed put at her location in the bar, carefully watching the orange-haired man as he sat down and began paging through the daily reports. Jumping down his throat the minute he showed up would have been an amateur's mistake, and the Black Widow was an old hand at running a honeypot trap. Once Ichigo was nice and comfortable in his chosen environment, she would pounce.

Spotting that moment of relaxation was the key.

Romanoff gave it another five minutes during which she had to smile indulgently at Mr. Sweaty's haltering pickup lines before shooting him down as kindly as she could. The disguised woman ambled up to ask the barkeep for two rounds of what Ichigo had ordered, getting a speculative glance from the balding barman. Deciding it was none of his damn business, he filled two glasses with her request and handed them over with a low mutter of, "Good luck with that one."

The minute Natasha sat down across from Ichigo's chosen booth with the back facing a wall and an easy view of the entire room, she knew he was the real deal. Perhaps it was the way his eyes flickered towards Angelina, who had seated herself next to her, or maybe it was the odd vibe she was getting off the man now that she was closer.

Something deep in her gut screamed at her that Ichigo was different from everyone else in the room. It was the same odd feeling that alerted her to when she was dealing with a spirit rather than a living individual. That feeling was never wrong.

Putting her own tribulations aside, the spy pushed on with her self-appointed mission.

"Hey there, handsome," she said with a sultry smile. "You looked so lonely sitting here I thought you could use some company."

Natasha slid one of the ales over to Ichigo with a wink, watching the doctor frown at her over his newspaper. He seemed to be evaluating her somehow, his dark gold speckled eyes looking at her in a slightly unfocused manner.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she felt something brush over her. Like a gust of warm air that ballooned around her before retreating away to nothing. A hot flush swept her body, and she fought down a shiver as Ichigo's eyes finally seemed to come back into focus.

"You bring a lot of unwanted company with you woman," he said after a long hard look, carefully folding up the news article he had been reading. "I wonder, just how many people have you killed?"

The spy was thrown slightly off by the unexpected accusation. She had had her cover blown before, but never before she got past her first sentence. That had to be a record.

"I'm sorry?" she asked, feigning confusion.

The redhead injected just a tiny amount of fear into her eyes, pulling back slightly to show uncertainty. It wasn't entirely an act.

"Don't play with me," snorted Ichigo disdainfully. "No way someone like you can't see the ghosts following you around."

"He can see me?" exclaimed Angelina in shock.

The orange-haired clinician spared the girl ghost a dark glower. "Yes, I can see you quite clearly missy, and I can also see how damn short your soul chain is too. What the hell have they been doing, letting you run around for that long? You're probably days if not hours away from turning."

Both Natasha and Angelina shared an excited look. This was the first time someone besides Natasha had acknowledged Angelina's existence. It seems Ichigo might have the answers they were looking for.

"What happens when her chain disappears?" the spy asked, all pretense of her cover forgotten.

Her mission was to evaluate whether Kurosaki warranted recruitment into the Avenger's initiative. Training dictated she approach the situation clandestinely, but Natasha could get answers just as quickly if he willingly showed her what he was capable of. Loose mission parameters had its perks.

And if those answers happened to help Angelina out? Well, she certainly wasn't going to complain.

Ichigo eyed her curiously as if weighing his words before speaking.

"You really don't know?" he said slowly, the suspicion clear in his tone.

The Black Widow allowed the silence to answer for her, meeting his eyes unflinchingly. The silence carried on as Ichigo's gaze turned more evaluative. Finally, he relented with a sigh.

"Then perhaps it's better that you remain ignorant of the dangers you surround yourself with," the man said shortly. "Honestly, with this many ghosts following you around, I'm surprised none have turned on you yet. We'll need to perform a soul burial for them before things get ugly."

"A soul burial?" Angelina asked, curiosity piqued. "That sounds awfully permanent."

Again, Ichigo seemed to scrutinize Natasha carefully before answering.

"Sometimes, souls cannot accept their death and cling to the living realm instead of moving on to the afterlife. A soul burial must be performed to send these restless deceased into the next realm. Otherwise, they end up hanging around tied down to the cause of their deaths, unable to move on."

Angelina and Natasha shared a surprised look. That certainly matched their experience with the dead. But the answer they received opened avenues to so many more questions.

"Who performs these soul burials?" the spy asked skeptically. "Millions die unexpectedly every day around the world, you can't have me believe there are actually that many soul janitors running around cleaning up after the dead."

Ichigo's frown deepened. "If you don't know the answer to that, then it's best I don't enlighten you. They tend to keep themselves out of the business of the living, and I prefer it that way. Still, when they do poke their nose in our affairs, it's usually a mess for everyone involved."

The young doctor took the offered pint and drained it in one long pull, carelessly tossing the empty glass down when he was finished. The empty glass wobbled a few times before stilling between them.

"Come on," Ichigo said as he stood while pulling his coat on. "I better send these ghosts of yours packing before trouble finds you."

Natasha numbly got to her feet, mind racing. She followed the enigmatic man, her SHIELD mission temporarily put on hold as she tried to process what she had heard. The spy had spent years wondering how long the ghosts of those she killed would haunt her, resigning herself to the answer of probably until she finally joined them.

Some days she had wondered if she was crazy, that the ghosts were all just hallucinations created by a guilt-ridden mind. No one else had ever been able to confirm their existence. The information she learned from the dead could have been attained by other means that her subconscious was suppressing to help her guilty psyche cope. But now suddenly, Natasha had confirmation at last to the existence of ghosts. She was not imagining them, and frankly, she wasn't sure how she felt about that.

There was a small chance that she was sharing a crazy fantasy with an equally insane stranger as well. Sometimes the most straightforward explanations were closest to the truth.

Out of the corner of her eye, the spy spotted the pensive look on Angelina's face, shaking her out of her unnerved stupor. The ghost looked thoughtful, mixed in with a hint of anxiety if one knew where to look.

There was also unmistakable relief in her brown eyes.

Natasha couldn't imagine what it must have been like. To be stuck in limbo after dying and tied to the world of the living while slowly losing parts of yourself day by day. An eternity seemed awfully lonely when madness was all you had to look forward to.

"Where are we going?" the faux blonde asked as she followed Ichigo out the door.

"Back to my place," grunted the Japanese immigrant. "I need to get some tools before we go about trying to rid you of your little ghost problem."

AN: Plot moving along. I'm basing the avengers off the movies, so very little input from the comic book universe. Both Avengers and Bleach universe facts are a bastardized collection of hazy recollection plus personal theories and thoughts, so forgive me if it deviates somewhat. We will be moving along with the plot of the first movie once we get the back story out of the way a little, and we might even see some familiar faces along the way.