AN: Revised 5/1/20
AN: Wrote and edited myself again, so let me know what you think and if there are any mistakes. I've appreciated the reviews (most of them anyway, to the a-hole who responded, you know who you are, I am in fact the bread earner in my family with two jobs that add up to more than 40 hours a week along with being a part-time student in a master's program, what dear sir or madam are you doing with your life? Using the same judgment, you cast so thoughtlessly on me, probably nothing, and doubtless you never will, so good day.)
Natasha sighed softly as she swirled the saucer of clear liquor in her hand. The shadowed reflection within the cup's liquid showed a haggard-looking woman who had seen and done a bit too much for the night. And really was that such a surprise? She had just received an answer to life's greatest mystery, a question that philosophers and theologians had wrestled with since the dawn of mankind and come away empty-handed. Somehow knowing the truth didn't make her feel any better. In fact, the knowledge that death would not be the end of the guilt that tormented her was a bit unnerving.
Scowling, the Russian born spy knocked back the sake that Ichigo had handed her. A trembling hand reached out to refill her cup from the bottle he had warmed up for her before disappearing upstairs. She was currently sitting on one of the four-legged stools kept by the kitchen counter space that had been set aside for dining. The polished marble finish of the countertop was a solid black speckled with grays and greens. The rest of the kitchen was almost too neat and clean; it looked like one of the models you would find on display out at an Ikea, lovely but not truly lived in. No doubt, Ichigo knew precisely where everything was down to the number of forks he had in the drawers.
He just seemed like that kind of guy.
The soft echoing thump of footfalls announced Kurosaki's return from the second floor of his home. He had changed out of his semi-casual work clothes, now clad in a simple dark brown sweater that clashed horribly with his hair along with gray unmarked sweatpants. Fabric strained against smooth rippling muscle as he moved, the constant training of his body apparent with each step he made.
Natasha had her back to the man as he approached, giving her time to carefully school her expression into a more neutral appearance. Whatever personal turmoil she was going through, the spymaster still had a job to do, and that job was to get answers.
Ichigo pulled up a chair and sat across from her, face stony. It didn't take a trained eye to see the telltale signs of stress in his features despite his stoic appearance, but Natasha could also pick up the much more dangerous underlying aggression hidden in his closed expression. He certainly wasn't going to make her it easy on her.
"So," she said slowly, making sure to purposefully keep her eyes slightly unfocused and words slurring a little. "What are we going to talk about?"
The orange-haired doctor reached beneath the counter and brought up another cup for himself, filling the saucer from the bottle without answering. He raised the liquor in a silent toast to her, gaze flinty with unspoken purpose.
"I ask you a few questions," Ichigo grunted. He took an experimental sip and frowned down at the cooled sake. "If you answer me honestly, we both move on with our lives and forget we ever met each other."
"And if I don't answer you honestly?" Natasha daringly asked as she rested her head one hand with an uncaring countenance.
The clinician tossed back his drink with a sudden jerk of his head, slamming the cup down with enough force to crack the ceramic bottom. The spy had to fight back a reflexive flinch at the cold, unyielding eyes that stared her down. They say that eyes were the window to the soul, it was nearly impossible to meet another human's gaze without sharing some understanding through empathy.
The golden eyes streaked with pitch blackness were inhuman, not a hint of compassion to be found within. They were not the eyes of a fellow human, but those of a predator assessing how best to catch and eat prey.
She did not like having those eyes staring so intently at her.
"Then I kill you, send you on to the next world and move on with my life and forget that I ever met you," he bit out with a low growl. "It's up to you how you want this story to end, either way, it's not going to my problem for much longer."
It wasn't the first time someone had threatened her life, and probably wouldn't be the last considering her line of work. That said, something about the certainty in Ichigo's voice made her pause. He wasn't a man prone to making idle threats, she could sense it. He really would attempt to kill her if she proved to be uncooperative. Given what Natasha had seen him do tonight, she wasn't all that certain she could take him if it came down to it.
Who knows what else Ichigo has hidden up his sleeves?
The spy's hands itched for the pistol in the hidden holster in her jacket. It was a reflexive urge to draw a weapon when confronted with a threat, but her gut told her it wouldn't do her any good. Years of surviving by heeding that sixth sense stayed her hand. Diplomacy was the only way she was walking out of this conversation alive.
"The people I work for know I'm here," she responded flatly, testing the boundaries of how far she could push in this negotiation. "I don't check-in, and they'll have you locked up so fast you won't even have time to wonder where they came from."
Ichigo barked a laugh, leaning forward on the counter, palms face down in a rather aggressive stance that raised the hair on the back of her neck. "Lady, whatever organization you work for, let me assure you that the one I can call on is bigger and better. You think death is some peaceful transition between here and the afterlife? You'd be surprised how ugly it can get when a ghost decides it doesn't want to be docile. They clean up messes all around the world so that the living can remain blissfully ignorant."
He reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out an odd, cheap-looking duck headed candy dispenser. Natasha felt her left eyebrow climb at the strange blue device.
The orange-haired man chuckled at her skeptical expression. "Yeah, it doesn't look like much, but this here's the secret to how the world remains happily unaware of the spirits that hang out all around them. I click this once, and you won't remember a damn thing about what happened tonight. Your brain will simply fill it in with some made-up nonsense. Hell, if I want to, I could erase weeks, months, even years of memory if necessary."
The faux blonde's mouth felt dry at the implication of what he was capable of if what he was claiming was true. It was a scary thought, Ichigo wouldn't even have to kill her. He could just erase who Natasha Romanoff was with a press of a button.
Briefly, a small part of her wondered for a moment if that would be such a bad thing. A hard reset to her life, to forget who she was and start over anew. How many people actually ever got to have a blank slate like that?
Tempting, but most people weren't the Black Widow. She had killed too many people, knew too many secrets. They would never let her disappear, she was in the game until someone finally managed to put a bullet in the back of her head.
While she had been distracted by her thoughts, Ichigo had watched her with a sharp, knowing look. A brief moment of unspoken acknowledgment passed between them in the pause, a silent understanding of two people with a past they'd rather bury if they could.
"Whatever the people you're working for is capable of, I can wipe out in a matter of seconds," he quietly said. "I could hunt them down, erase their memories of you so thoroughly that they have no clue who you even are. I could even turn them against you, it wouldn't be that hard."
His thumb circled the head of the duck that suddenly looked a lot more ominous to Natasha than it had before. Verbally he may be giving her a chance to explain herself, but she could see in his eyes he was tempted to simply press the button and be done with it.
"So work with me here," Ichigo implored softly. "I'm not an evil man, but I'll do what's necessary to keep the peace, even if that means I have to metaphorically kill a woman I don't know."
Romanoff sighed, too tired to continue the ruse. Ichigo was meant to be a possible recruit for the Avenger's initiative, there was no reason she couldn't offer an olive branch. She had been given authority to reveal as much of SHIELD as she thought was necessary for the process of recruiting him should all things go well. Natasha would just have to take a gamble on her judgment of his character.
Natasha blew a gold bang out of her eyes. "Alright, I'll play ball. What do you want to know?"
Ichigo put down the memory altering device, keeping the device on the counter between them, but pulling back from where he had been towering over her. It was a psychological tactic she was familiar with, ease up on the threat but keep it in sight as a reminder of where things can go if he didn't like what she had to say. Brutish, but not bad for an amateur's attempt at interrogation.
"Let's start with your name and who you're working for," he said, crossing his arms.
"Natasha Romanoff. I work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division."
His eyebrow shot up. "That's a mouthful. What do you guys do?"
Natasha rolled her eyes at the expected response at SHIELD's full name. Personally, she thought the guy who came up with that acronym ought to be slapped. "We're an internationally funded group tasked with monitoring unnatural catastrophic events around the world. Prevention is the key goal of my organization, failing that, containment to minimize casualties and prevent the spread of panic."
Ichigo chuckled. "Not doing a very good job, are you? There was that green radioactive monster down in Chicago a few years back. Then Tony Stark was just tearing up his city as the Iron Man a couple of weeks ago. God knows what else that didn't make the front page."
Natasha frowned at the doctor's crack at events that had cost thousands of civilian lives.
"Those are exactly the reason why SHIELD exists. More and more, we see situations arise that conventional weapons and personal simply cannot deal with. The world is moving in a direction that may very well soon be outside the control of mankind. Speaking of which, if the people you work with are omnipotent enough to chaperone the souls of the dead, why haven't they helped?"
The cynical scowl returned to Ichigo's face, but it wasn't exactly directed at her. "One, they're not my people, I just happened to work with them once upon a time. Two, they deal with only the dead and spiritual side of things, so as far as they're concerned, it was the business of the living when a green rage monster goes rampaging through a city. Three, they did happen to do something about it, just nothing the living could appreciate."
Sensing the tenseness in the man across from her, the spy eased up on her accusations. No point angering the man that could possibly erase her existence from memory. She refilled her saucer, taking another sip from it, waiting for the man to continue.
Ichigo pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. No doubt, the thought of an organization like SHIELD knowing about him irked the man something fierce.
"Alright, so let's talk about you then," he said when he opened his eyes again.
"Me?" Natasha asked with a quirk of her lips, lowering the cup of liquor. "You're not curious at all why SHIELD had me investigating you?"
"I don't give a rat's ass one way or another. When you get back to your boss, tell them I'm not interested in what they're trying to sell me, and that they better leave me alone if they want to keep the memories in their head intact. It's you I'm more concerned about right now."
The spy shrugged, willing to accept the man's answer. "Shoot."
"How long have you been able to see ghosts?"
"As long as I could remember," Natasha replied slowly, her face scrunched up as she thought about it. "When I was a child, I had trouble distinguishing the living from the dead, but as I got older, I learned to sense the difference."
Ichigo frowned. "So it's a natural ability then? Not something that was created through experimentation?"
The spy shook her head with a frown. "As far as I know, no. Very few people believed me, and not until I could pull information out of thin air that I shouldn't have had access to. Of course, once they realized what I could do…"
The doctor pinched the bridge of his nose again, the exasperation evident in his face. "How many people know about your spiritual gift?"
Natasha shrugged. "Only two left in the world, everyone else is dead, I made sure of it."
Ichigo sighed heavily, massaging his temples. "And these two people, can they be trusted to keep their mouths shut?"
"They have so far," she replied evenly. "They're good people; they won't oust me, and even if they did, it's not like anyone can really prove it."
The doctor rubbed his chin, lips pressed into a thin line. "I'll take your word for it. One more question before I let you go. Have you ever seen anything besides human ghosts?"
Natasha blinked at the strange question. "Not that I know of. Is there something I should be aware of?"
Ichigo gave her a thoughtful look.
"I don't think it's something that you need to be bothered with," he finally said. "If you haven't run into them by now, then something must be protecting you from them, so best not to worry too much about it."
The spy frowned at the cryptic reply. "I'll let that slide even if the logic doesn't fly with me too well. Now it's my turn for questions."
Ichigo scowled but didn't say anything to stop her, so she plowed on.
"What exactly are we? Why can we see ghosts while other people can't?"
"All living things contain spiritual energy or reiatsu as we call it in Japanese," Ichigo explained. "When they die, all that remains is their reiatsu. In fact, most spiritual beings are made up entirely of spirit energy. People like you or I have a higher amount of it than most regular folks. As such, we are more capable of perceiving beings made of reiatsu."
"You did something to that one ghost," Natasha said slowly. "When it tried to run away, you somehow trapped it."
Ichigo nodded. "If you have enough reiatsu, there are ways to apply it."
"Can I learn to do that?" she asked carefully. "Would it affect the living?"
He no doubt had more tricks up his sleeve regarding reiatsu manipulation. Luckily, Natasha had listened to her instincts earlier. If his skills were capable of affecting the living, then it certainly might give her an edge in her work if she could learn them.
"If you have enough reiatsu, you might be capable of using the Demon Arts," Ichigo replied with another frown, dodging her question. "Don't look at me though, I'm not going to teach you anything."
"And why not?" Natasha asked with a cute pout, making sure to expose her cleavage as much as possible.
The doctor rolled his eyes. "Put them away, I've seen plenty bigger and better."
The Russian glowered testily but backed off on the seduction act. "Seriously, though, why not?"
"I'm hardly what you would call a master at it. Sure I've picked up one or two of the more useful spells, but I never had any official training. There are a form and flow to the Demon Arts, but I just brute force my way through them. My methods wouldn't work for someone like you."
"Well, is there anything I can do?" Natasha demanded in frustration.
"You no doubt already passively use your abilities without knowing so," Ichigo answered with a shrug. "I don't think I'd be wrong in assuming that you have an almost superhuman ability at detecting the presence of other people?"
Natasha nodded thoughtfully. There were very few people who could sneak up on her, something that Clint had always joked was her superpowers, which was why she was one point higher than him on SHIELD's threat assessment scale. The Russian had never given it much thought. She'd simply assumed, like everyone else, that it was a side effect of having been raised in a paranoid environment that had punished inattentiveness.
"Like I told you earlier, all living things have spiritual energy. You're no doubt subconsciously picking up on them whenever people near you."
The spy frowned. "So it's just something I naturally do? Because I sure as hell don't ever try to do it."
Ichigo huffed in irritation, uncrossing his arms. "I suppose a demonstration wouldn't hurt."
He reached a hand out in front of him as if fishing for something. For a moment, Natasha couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Focusing her senses as she did when trying to see a ghost more clearly, she noticed an odd white cloth fluttering in his hand. She narrowed her eyes at the almost invisible fabric.
"What-?"
Suddenly as if in response to her unspoken question, hundreds of the ghostly strips of fabric seemed to flutter into existence, flooding the room with pieces of white translucent cloth. Natasha almost fell out of her seat in shock, her eyes darting rapidly about trying to track them all.
"What are they?" she whispered after realizing they weren't a threat.
"They're the spiritual reiatsu of the people around us," Ichigo replied calmly. "I pulled them towards me so it would be easier for you to see. They might all look the same at first, but they're actually unique to each individual."
He thrust the ribbon he held in his hand towards her, and she hesitantly took it. Immediately the image of an elderly Chinese woman popped into her mind, as clear as if it had been a photograph from one of Fury's dossiers. As Natasha held onto the strip of cloth, she got a sudden sense of tiredness and worry. The unfamiliar emotions were joined by dozens of other impressions, forming a crystallized image of who the older woman was despite not actual knowledge being passed.
Dropping the cloth, she couldn't help but notice that the one she had been touching now felt different from the other strips floating about in the room. Natasha couldn't explain exactly what it was, because it sure looked the same to her eyes. Still, she was able to identify that single ribbon of the Chinese woman no matter where it was.
"Once you've touched someone's reiatsu, you will always be able to recognize it," Ichigo explained. "You don't normally see all this, but you're probably unconsciously picking up on them when they're near you."
He reached out and snatched a ribbon out of the air, and Natasha felt a jolt down her spine. Tracing the path of the cloth, Natasha noted with some surprise that it was attached to herself. A frown marred her face when she realized what he had just done. Now Ichigo would be able to track her if she was near him.
"I don't see a ribbon coming from you," Natasha observed shrewdly.
"You can learn to suppress your reiatsu so others can't sense you."
Dropping her strand of ribbon, Ichigo waved his hand once as if clearing the air, and the other reiatsu strips vanished, leaving the room empty once more.
"No doubt there's still more to you, but if you're not aware of what you're capable of, then that's something you'll have to try to discover on your own time," he said. "Finish your drink."
"But I'm not done with my questions!" she protested.
"Too bad," snorted the orange-haired doctor. "I'm done answering them."
"Are you going to erase my memories?" Natasha asked brazenly as she downed the last of the sake.
She knew that if he was, there probably wasn't much she could do to stop him, superspy training or not. But she wasn't going to go down quietly if things were about to get messy.
"Not tonight," Ichigo said as he walked her to the door. "You give me a reason to believe I need to… well, it's not like you would know if I did. So stay out of trouble. If you see something unusual from the spirit side of things, do yourself a favor and steer clear of it."
"Just like that?" Natasha asked as she stood at the steps of his doorway, arms crossed.
"Just like that," Ichigo said firmly.
The spy watched in bemusement as he shut the door in her face. Ichigo Kurosaki was an interesting man, and she'd learned a bit about herself tonight because of him. He might think it was over, but it most certainly was not.
AN: Chugging along…chugging along…help me keep chugging by sharing your thoughts on my writing…