AN: Sooooo been a while huh? I know most people probably don't bother with the author's note, so I'll add most of it to the end. Just wanted to wish everyone Happy Holidays and I hope that they've been doing well since I've last done anything with this story.
Natasha stared down thoughtfully at her phone. If anyone else had made such a mysterious comment, she would have assumed they were trying to impress her. Knowing what she knew about Ichigo, it was hard to tell if the man was joking or not.
"Ma'am, Dr. Banner appears to be waking," reported the medic of the strike team. "Should I sedate him?"
The operative shot the young soldier an amused glance. "You didn't read through the entire dossier."
Called out on the spot, the special forces soldier gulped and glanced over at his teammates for help. They all averted their gaze.
SHIELD recruited only the best. These were all hard men who had seen action and spent their careers in various fields of combat all over the world. But agents like Natasha were a different breed altogether. She may as well be a walking rumor amongst the rank and file. Regular personnel spoke of agents in hushed whispers like urban legends, and everyone had heard stories about the many deeds of Black Widow.
Most of it was wild conjecture of course. The few accessible mission reports she had on file had more black ink than actual words. Most of her orders were given orally and the report after their execution received in the same manner. No records outside those who needed to know, and rarely did anyone besides Fury need to know.
Her alluring looks just added to that out-of-reach mystique.
"It was 672 pages long," the medic replied weakly.
The spy sighed. Maria Hill had pointedly told her on more than one occasion that she needed to work on her reputation with the grunts. No point making the men more scared of her than necessary.
"Sedatives don't work on Dr. Banner, neither does poison," Natasha responded as she glanced at the monitor reporting out the man's vitals. "Or any known substance that has been introduced to his system. His physiology is simply too robust for anything to affect him for more than a moment."
The forty-eight seconds per beat of his heart was steadily climbing to a more normal sixty range. He would be awake soon enough.
"ETA to the Helicarrier?" she asked into her mike.
"Approximately ten minutes ma'am," responded the pilot after a brief pause.
Bruce groaned and pushed himself up by his elbow. Almost all the men tensed and involuntarily reached for their weapons. They were well trained enough to not actually put their finger on the triggers or God forbid point their gun at the disoriented man.
Natasha put on a practiced smile. After the experience she had been witness to in his head, Banner could probably use a friendly face. Time to work those feminine charms.
"How are you feeling Dr. Banner?" she asked conversationally, busying herself with removing some of the sensors they had placed on his body as he came to.
The man sat up fully after shaking the cobwebs from his head and eyed his surrounding with more curiosity than suspicion.
"Like the Hulk sat on my head," he replied candidly. "And like I've been sucking on a cotton ball."
The redhead offered the downed man a hand and easily pulled him up while passing him an unopened bottle of water.
"You're stronger than you look," Dr. Banner commented as he let go of her hand. "That part of being a super spy or something?"
"Or something," Natasha replied with an enigmatic wink. "We'll be reaching our destination soon. You'll want to take a seat for landing."
There was another tense moment as Bruce glanced around. Nobody made a move to open space for the afflicted man to sit down next to them.
Bruce gave a self-deprecating chuckle in the awkward silence. "I'll stand if it's all the same to you."
"Suit yourself," Natasha said with a gesture at the handles along the top of the seats.
"What happened to the freaky Asian Lady?" Dr. Banner asked quietly as he drank his water, ignoring the other soldiers and focusing his attention on Natasha. "I'm fairly certain I didn't dream that all up."
The Russian spy frowned. "She left. And before you ask, no, I don't know where."
Natasha hesitated for a moment, unsure if she should tell Dr. Banner about Inoue's chilling parting words. But he was going to have enough to deal with on his plate soon enough, no need to burden the man more. She'd tell him after they dealt with this mess, assuming the world was still standing.
"And I take it all that freaky supernatural stuff you pulled off is a need to know kind of thing?" he asked even more quietly.
Loud enough for Natasha's sharp ears to pick up, but the other men wouldn't be able to discern his words over the din of the engines. Surprisingly thoughtful of Banner.
She met his eyes with amusement. "Did you really just ask that?"
He raised his hands up in a placating gesture. "Hey, keep your secrets. Not like I don't have a few of my own. Just thought it wouldn't hurt to ask."
The redhead allowed a laugh to escape her. "A word of warning Dr. Banner. Where we're going, it might actually hurt to ask. I'd think real hard about any questions you have before letting them past your lips."
Banner gave her advice a nod of acknowledgement. "Fair enough."
Natasha wanted to ask Banner about some of the things she had seen while in his head but thought better of it. Instead she reached below her seat and pulled out a handheld tablet. The flexible screen was lightweight and compact. It was rated to take a beating and function in all sorts of nasty environments that would normally short-circuit even the most expensive idiot proof devices currently available on the market. The SHIELD PDA could operate 10,000 feet under water, remain functional in temperatures upwards of 100 degrees Celsius and could supposedly survive reentry from space if you believed the nerds in R&D.
Sooner or later someone was going to figure out a way to test that last claim.
"This is for you Dr. Banner," she said handing it over. "We'll be arriving in a few minutes; I'd suggest taking some time to go over the material on that device. It will catch you up to speed on recently transpired events that necessitated your presence in SHIELD operations."
The man took the device and put on a pair of reading glasses he pulled from his pocket. He began paging through the files on the screen with a practiced hand. After a few fruitless minutes of skimming and speed reading, he sighed and gave up.
"That's a lot of reading," he commented, looking up at her over the rim of his glasses. "Any chance you have an executive summary for me?"
"A little under 72 hours ago, Loki, an extradimensional being from Asgard decided to hop over into our world and steal the Tesseract artifact SHIELD had in its custody," Natasha recited without missing a beat. "Agent Barton and several operatives were mentally compromised through some unknown means and compelled to help Loki escape. We are in the process of recruiting a team of exceptional individuals who can help track down and apprehend Loki before anything unfortunate happens."
Banner stared at her like she had grown a second head.
"Loki of Asgard," he said slowly. "As in Loki, God of Mischief and Chaos from Norse mythology?"
Natasha smiled tightly. "Turns out our ancestors might have known more about the way the universe worked than we thought."
The scientist shook his head in disbelief. "You know what, I'm not even going to go there. You told me you need me to track this Tesseract thing down. Fine, I can do that, but you'll have to find someone else for the apprehending half of your objectives. Trust me on this, it's better for everyone that way. Who do you have signed up to bring this wacko in once we nail down where he's at?"
"Two individuals have been identified for this task so far," she replied immediately. "Iron Man and Captain America."
Again, Banner stared at her like he had misheard. "Ok, I get Tony Stark. With the weapon capabilities on the Iron Man suit I can see why you'd want that guy on the team. But you're pulling my leg on Captain America right? That guy is as dead as dead gets. He went down in the sea to prevent disaster during WWII almost 70 years ago. Even if he's somehow not dead and been in hiding all these years, he's got to be at least 90!"
Natasha nodded. "That's what we thought too. Turns out Steve Rogers is not very good at staying dead. He went down with the bomber he hijacked to prevent the Nazis from getting their hand on the Tesseract during one of the final operations of WWII. Incidentally, when we fished the Tesseract out of the Atlantic, we found the Captain in a natural cryogenically preserved state. SHIELD was able to resuscitate him, and he's agreed to join the team."
Bruce ran a hand through his hair. "I take it you're on the team as well?"
"I go where I'm ordered," Natasha stated flatly. "But rest assured, you'll be in safe hands regardless of my presence."
"They wouldn't be anywhere near as charming," Dr. Banner muttered sarcastically as he took off his glasses and returned them to his shirt pocket.
The Quinjet began to slow, and the passengers felt the queasy sensation of rapid descent in their stomachs. They were closing in on their destination. The soldiers began to busy themselves with last minute checks on their supplies and packing up loose equipment.
Dr. Banner grabbed onto an overhead handle, one in each hand.
"So where exactly am I going to be?" he asked to fill the silence. "It'd be nice to know which side of the planet I'm on."
"New York," Natasha replied. "We'll be boarding the-"
The rest of her response was cut off by the loud rattle of her phone. She picked it up and glanced at the screen, straightening when she saw that it was from Fury. Calls from the boss while out in the field were rarely good.
"Rogers is on board," Fury began without preamble. "Have him meet Banner and bring them onto the bridge. Tell Coulson he's needed in operations the minute you see him; they're been getting nowhere on the facial scans. I need someone to light a fire up here and if Coulson doesn't get me an answer I like within the hour, I'm going to break my foot up someone's ass."
The dial tone sounded before she could respond. Natasha didn't take any offense, that was just how Nick was when he was stressed. Terse and to the point, with a few threats thrown in between sharply barked orders.
Just another Tuesday for the Black Widow. Although come to think of it, had she ever seen the man not stressed?
The thump of wheels on tarmac rattled the entire plane in a jarring manner before it finally settled. The pilots were in a hurry if they couldn't bother to do a graceful landing. It seems things were finally moving along at a pace that matched the severity of the situation.
"Time to go meet the team Dr. Banner!" she shouted over the sound of the dying twin turbine engines.
The backdoor lowered onto the floor to serve as a ramp to allow the passengers off. The soldiers grabbed their equipment and immediately headed off to their next assigned posts, orders no doubt already relayed while they were inflight.
"Wait here," Natasha ordered when she spotted Coulson leading a tall blonde athletic man around the fighter jets parked on top of the carrier.
She pushed out with her gifts, willing the shadows to make her less noticeable. The world seemed to lose a bit of color as reality bent to her will.
Silently she crept up on the duo and studied the man next to Coulson with a critical eye. He was handsome, in the classic boyishly charming kind of way that was rare by today's standards. The man who helped end WWII had an air of naiveite about him that seemed oddly out of place on one of the most decorated soldiers of the greatest war the world had ever known.
Blonde haired combed in an old-fashioned style combined with gleaming baby blue eyes, Steve Rogers had all the telltale looks of a man out of time on his face. He was listening intently to Coulson who was apparently trying to catch the super soldier up on some of the improvement made by the military since WWII.
As the spy stepped out from behind the supply crates, Roger's head snapped towards her location. His gaze remained unable to focus on the redhead before finally settling on her form with visible effort. The youthful wonder in his eyes dimmed into the flinty hardness of a veteran assessing danger. His eyes traced rapidly between a dozen points on her body.
Natasha managed to keep the surprise off her face, but it was a close thing. Not only had the super soldier somehow seen through her passive mental coercion, he had also accurately picked out every hidden weapon on her person. No one had ever pulled that off before. Even some of the best agents in the business would inevitably overlook one or two hidden blades.
There was defiantly something special about Steve Rogers, super soldier serum aside.
Coulson noticed Steve's averted attention. He squinted at where the Captain was staring, his eyes unable to track what he was looking for before Natasha dropped the subtle mental suggestion she had been putting out. Roger's eyes flickered to the sides as if he was trying to track a fast moving fly that was just outside his peripheral vision.
Coulson greeted Natasha with a warm smile. It seemed the normally flat expressionless agent was in a good mood despite their dire circumstances.
"Agent Romanoff," he called out cheerfully. "Good to see you in one piece. This is Captain Steve Rogers."
"Ma'am." Rogers was polite and charming, but the spy could see past his kind eyes to spot the tinge of wariness.
He had good senses, she had to give him that.
"Hi," she greeted flatly before glancing at Coulson. "They need you on the bridge, they've already started the face trace. Fury's already throwing around the foot up the ass threats, so I think it's already past the hitting the fan stage up there."
Coulson nodded, patting Steve on the shoulder. "I'll see you guys there."
Natasha turned her attention back to Steve, noting that the man was observing her just as coolly. Any other woman would have been flattered by the attention from such a handsome man, but the experienced operative could see that his keen eyes were narrowed in professional interest. It was the kind of look a boxer gave another fighter from across the ring right before the bell. A careful once over with thoughts of how to take the other person down running through the mind in hypothetical scenarios.
Natasha approved. Maybe this whole half assed superhero team thing wasn't going to be as painful as she feared.
"It was quite the buzz around here finding you on the ice," she said, walking towards where she had left Banner, watching Rogers out of the corner of her eye as he followed. "Thought Coulson was going to swoon."
She hid a smirk as she spotted the slight lifting of the corner of the man's mouth. So, there was a hidden sense of humor under all that duty and patriotism.
Deciding to probe further, she continued. "Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"
That caught the man's attention. He turned a bewildered wide eyed gaze towards her.
"Trading cards?" he asked in bemusement.
"They're vintage, he's very proud."
She spotted Dr. Banner standing by an F17, watching the fuel crew top off the jet's tanks.
"Dr. Banner," Steve called out, surprising Natasha.
Looks like somebody had gone through the intel briefing. She'd have to be careful around this one, brains and brawn were not mutually exclusive in the case of Steve Rogers.
Banner turned around in confusion at the sound of his name, almost running into a pair of soldiers hurrying by. He spotted Natasha and Steve and approached nervously, his hands wringing together.
"Oh yeah, hi," Banner said as he reached out to awkwardly shake the hand offered by Rogers. "They told me you'd be coming."
Steve smiled kindly in response, as genuine an expression as any Natasha had seen. That or he was the world's greatest actor.
"Word is you can find the cube."
Bruce glanced around with a sardonic smile of his own. "Is that the uh, only word on me?"
"Only word I care about," Rogers replied firmly.
Natasha felt her eyebrow crawls upwards. The man was being sincere. Even after having seen footage of what the Hulk was capable of. Maybe Captain America really was as brave and gallant as the stories.
A beep on her wireless bioreceiver alerted her to an incoming message. She pressed against the small hard spot underneath her ear to receive it.
"Helicarrier will be taking off in five minutes. All personnel are to return inside and report to action stations."
Bruce didn't seem to know how to handle someone not freaking out over his presence. He did what any man did when confronted with a possible emotional topic; he changed the subject.
"Must be strange for you," he said, gesturing at the things around them. "All of this."
Rogers laughed as he turned to watch a group of soldiers jogging past in formation towards the hanger doors.
"Well, this is actually kind of familiar." The nostalgia in his tone was palpable, as was the undertone of slight longing.
"Gentleman," Natasha interrupted. "You might want to step inside in a minute."
They both turned to look at her with unspoken questions in their eyes.
"It's going to get a little hard to breathe out here," she elaborated with a smirk.
An air siren went off, the high pitched whine blaring it's warning to all the people still on deck.
"All flight deck personnel secure the deck," ordered a faceless female officer through the loudspeakers, the message being repeated over the wailing sirens.
The two men looked around in bafflement as people rushed about to finish their tasks. The jogging soldiers broke formation and began to head in; other personnel ran about securing supplies and clearing off debris.
"Is this a submarine?" Steve asked in surprise.
"Really?" chuckled Bruce. "They want me in a submerged pressurized container?"
The two men wandered over towards the edge of the ship. Natasha followed, allowing them to discover for themselves what the Helicarrier was actually capable of.
The noise continued and even from where she was standing, she could make out one of the four massive turbines locking into place for the flight position.
"Oh no, this is much worse," laughed Banner ominously when he finally realized what he was looking at. "Much worse."
She let the two men gape in wonder for a few more moments before insisting they head inside.
Natasha led her charges through the winding corridors, specifically designed to be unintuitive and difficult to memorize in case it was ever boarded by enemies.
"So, I take it you're pretty high up the food chain here," Rogers commented as he followed behind her.
The spy shot the man an amused look, swiping her keycard to get them past a set of security doors.
"You haven't read up on my file yet?" she asked sweetly, batting her eyelashes playfully at him.
"Can't say I remember receiving them," he responded evenly. "I have a pretty good memory."
That was a bit of an understatement. Besides enhancing his strength and reflexes to superhuman extremes, a little discussed side effect of the super soldier serum was the enhancement to Steve's brain. The man gained an eidetic memory and became ambidextrous to boot.
"Don't mess with her Rogers," Banner warned with a wry grin. "I've seen her pull off some weird voodoo stuff. She might just finish what the Nazi's couldn't if you get on her bad side."
The hard look was back in Steve's eyes. "Duly noted."
Natasha let the Major who stopped to salute her do the speaking on the topic of her position in SHIELD's hierarchy.
So, the poster boy for America didn't trust her. By extension that meant he didn't trust SHIELD. She upped her internal assessment on the man. That made him smarter than the average soldier for sure.
"I'm not officially a part of the military chain of command in SHIELD. I'm a field agent working under the direct supervision of Nick Fury who leads our organization," Natasha clarified. "Intelligence is more my field. Usually the actionable sorts."
A Colonel paused in his hurried step to throw a smart salute to Natasha and stood to the side to let the group pass.
Steve Rogers shot the Colonel a perplexed look. "Intelligence huh? There was a joke in my battalion about those who joined intelligence, although I won't say it in a lady's presence. Especially a lady that works for intelligence."
"How thoughtful of you," Natasha replied dryly.
They entered the command center of the Helicarrier after passing another security check point, this one manned by grimed face operatives armed to the gills with guns. The entire operation center was a bustling hive of activity. Natasha left the two men to mill by the entrance to move towards Fury who was conferring with Maria Hill, the overseer of the command center.
The no nonsense agent who played the role of second to Nick Fury would have made an excellent field agent, but her ability to organize large amounts of people and extract useful details from overwhelming volumes of information made her an irreplaceable asset behind the scenes.
"All engines operating. SHIELD emergency protocol one nine thee point six in effect," Maria announced crisply as she finally looked up from the screen displaying output reports. "We're at level, sir."
Fury clasped his hands behind his back, an expression of grim satisfaction on his face. "Good, let's vanish."
"Engage retro reflection panels," ordered the command center overseer.
The buzz of activity increased. They couldn't see it from the inside, but Natasha knew that all the underside panels of the Helicarrier were now a mirror image of the clouds and sky around them, making them invisible to the naked eye from the ground. Highly advanced radar deflection and various other state of the art cloaking technologies made long range means of observation near impossible.
If asked, the engineers on board would say that it was in fact impossible to detect the Helicarrier once it entered stealth mode. But Natasha had been in the game too long to think anything was outside the realm of possibility.
She personally knew of at least one supernatural means for tracking the Helicarrier thanks to Ichigo. Well, as long someone she knew was on board. And that someone wasn't Nick Fury. She still hadn't confronted her boss on his ability to hide his reiatsu yet. Privately she wondered if his paranoia had simply manifested in an unconscious suppression of his aura.
Fury finally turned his attention to the two outside visitors in the command center, acknowledging Natasha with a miniscule nod.
"Gentleman," he greeted.
Steve stepped closer to the command post; his mouth somewhat ajar as he looked at the hundreds of monitors showing the countless cameras being hacked from around the world. He pulled out a leather wallet from his leather jacket and handing over a ten dollar bill to the Director.
Natasha raised an eyebrow as she watched the one eyed man smirk in a satisfied manner before pocketing the cash. There was a definitely a story there.
Fury turned his good eye on Banner. "Doctor, thank you for coming."
Banner shook the hand offered by the dark-skinned Director. "Thanks for asking nicely. So, how long am I staying?"
"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the wind."
Natasha highly doubted that, and from the wary look on Banner's face, he shared her thoughts on the matter.
"Well where are you on that?" the scientist asked, ignoring his own concerns for now.
Coulson stepped away from his conversation with a technician to answer. "We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops, you name it. If it's connected to the satellite, it's eyes and ears for us."
"We're not going to find him in time this way," Natasha interjected with a shake of her head. "I know of a dozen ways to stay out of range of that kind of sweep. If I can think of it, Barton will have certainly thought of it."
Silently she cursed herself for never having tried to sense out Clint's spiritual signature. In her defense, she hadn't had the chance to cross paths with her best friend in a while due to the different missions they had been assigned to carry out.
Banner frowned, tapping his chin thoughtfully as he applied his mind to the complex problem before him. "You have to narrow your field. How many Spectrometers do you have access to?"
Fury smiled grimly. "How many are there?"
The scientist didn't even blink at that little tidbit about SHIELD's ability to commandeer access to priceless state of the art scientific equipment. "Call every lab you know. Tell them to put the Spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for Gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm, basic cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"
Fury nodded and glanced at Maria who was already relaying orders to the technicians. "Agent Romanoff, would you show Doctor Banner to his laboratory, please?"
Natasha heard her cue and tapped the doctor on his shoulder, jerking her head towards the doorway. "You're going to love it Doc. We have all the expensive toys."
As she led the man away, she took a moment to concentrate her senses. The spirit ribbons came to her much quicker than before now that she had more practice calling on her reiatsu. She casually grasped the glowing light blue tinted ribbon emanating from the good Captain to memorize it. It seems the super soldier serum had tainted Roger's spiritual aura like how Banner's was fundamentally altered by his accident.
Natasha wondered if the abilities the Captain was known for resulted from unconsciously accessing his reiatsu or if the taint to his spiritual ribbon was a side effect of the serum. She would have to keep an eye on him when she finally got to see the man in action.
Courage, duty and a rigid sense of moral conscience filled her mind's eye, followed by confusion and a sense of great yearning tinged with weary sadness. The man who had helped end WWII exhibited a great sense of internal conflict from what she could tell.
Natasha filed away all that she could glean from that quick reading for examination later. She had a feeling that things were about to get heated very quickly. Being able to predict how certain players may react in any given situation would be an advantage. She didn't doubt there were going to be upcoming conflicts she would be dragged into.
Loki had Clint under his thumbs, but that wasn't going to stay that way if she had anything to say about it. Fury wouldn't be able to keep her out of this upcoming conflict even if he directly ordered her to stay out of it.
God or not, nobody crossed her and got away with it.
Nobody.
AN: It's been two and a half years since I've worked on this story and about four and a half years since I first put this idea down on paper. A lot has changed for me since, I've managed to move up in my career path a lot faster than I expected and I've managed to become a homeowner in the Bay Area which I was certain was never going to happen.
I was so focused on being an adult that I didn't realize that perhaps I was losing the part of myself that made life worth living. The drive to become financially stable is all well and good, but unless you're very money inclined I think most people can agree it's not the most exciting part of life. Now closing in on 30, I've been reflecting on what the hell I'm doing and trying to plan out what I'm going to be doing going forward. Perhaps I'm this is an early midlife crisis and I'm chasing the ghost of my younger self. The youthful person with passion and wild ideas has been replaced by a dull sensibility that might explain why I'm still single as fuck lol
I've made quite a few vows that I'm hoping to carry through before I hit the big 3-0 and one of them is finishing a story I've started. Avengers has completed its trilogy in the timespan since I've last put pen to paper, and boy what a journey it was. People can shit on superheroes all they like, but Avengers is going to be our generations Star Wars. And hopefully no one will try to reboot -.-
We all know how Natasha's story ends now and quite frankly I'm very excited about some of these places I can go with what we know now. Soul stone anyone? While I'm not sure I'll ever get to Age of Ultron, Infinity Wars and End Game parts of the story, the details we now have has fueled my imagination and given me plenty to work with.
And for the record, best scene from all the Avengers movies? When Captain America caught Thor's hammer after throwing it at Thanos. Hands down, try to argue with me. Please. I dare you.