real life's been busy as of late, so updates have been slim...my bad.
enjoy!
"View doesn't get old, huh?"
"You tell me. You've got a few decades' more worth of time seeing it," Nick replies as he turns his head to look at Carol before returning to looking at the view of the stars.
"Oh, haha," she replies with a roll of her eyes as she comes to stand beside him.
"You might have a point, though," he admits with a nod. He hadn't been all that excited about returning to space, especially given it was supposed to be for much longer this time. Still, he had to admit that there was no beating the view. "All of this," he says with a gesture to their view of the countless twinkling stars, "it's something special."
"Yeah," she agrees as she leans against the railing that runs just beneath the large window in front of them.
"So, you visiting? Or just passing through?" he asks as he mimics her action and leans his forearms down onto the railing.
"Uh, both?"
He bobs his head in acknowledgement. "How are things out there?"
She blows out a breath, pushes up off the railing, turns around, and leans her back against it. "Oh, you know. Just peachy."
"I'm choosing to take comfort in the fact that it's not just earth that's not handling the post— What is it they're calling it again?"
"Blip, I think," she offers. "At least, that's what Rhodey said they're calling it on earth."
His brow furrows. Stupid ass name, he grumbles silently while holding in a sigh. "Right. Well, I'm choosing to take comfort that it's not just us screwing up the post-Blip reality."
She snorts in amusement. "People like to think other aliens are so much different than humans. They're not. The more I see, the more I'm convinced we're more similar than anyone cares to admit."
"You sound like a fortune cookie."
"Oh man, I haven't had a fortune cookie in forever. Maybe I should drop by—"
"You're here like five minutes, and you're already making plans to leave, huh?"
She rolls her eyes. "So sensitive."
He schools his expression to a more serious one again. "So, how is it out there, really?"
She blows out a heavy sigh. "There were tons of power vacuums that opened up after half of everyone was turned to dust. They had five years to build things up, and then everyone was brought back. So..."
"Shit's hitting the fan."
"Something like that," she agrees.
"Knocking a lot of heads together, huh?"
She smirks again. "Oh yeah, that's the fun part. It's the assistance with the negotiating that's annoying. I don't know why folks think I'm equipped to help navigate political shit storms."
"Well, you do have the whole 'superpowered woman' thing going for you, so...can't say I really blame them."
She rolls her eyes and shoots him a disapproving look before shifting her gaze to look out at the stars again. "You know, it reminds me of fireflies a bit," she says with a gesture to their view. "Used to chase them in the yard in the summers when I was a kid."
Nick turns and follows her gaze. She's not wrong. The twinkling lights combined with the lights from a few ships travelling do look like fireflies floating around.
"Romanoff and I sat and watched the fireflies a couple times during those five years," she adds thoughtfully. "I didn't visit earth too often because there was always some planet that needed help, but the handful of times that I did, she was always at her desk. Always . Well, except that one time I got there and found her desk empty. My mind actually jumped to a hospital or some sort of emergency requiring the Avengers before I considered she might just be elsewhere in the building. Turns out she was just in the gym."
Nick cracks a fleeting smile as he shakes his head slowly, recognizing the pattern. She'd always been one to bury and avoid her emotions with punishing workouts. He'd kicked her out of the SHIELD gym early in the morning on more than one occasion after a particularly bad mission. He knows she took their failure to prevent Thanos' actions onto her own shoulders and that she struggled to come to terms with everything. It's not a surprise to him that she'd reverted back to her old ways in the face of such devastating loss. "Punching bag, target practice, or ballet?"
It's Carol's eyes that widen this time. "Punching bag," she answers. "Those were...very specific guesses."
"Don't forget, she was one of my agents for many years before she was an Avenger. She was already incredibly skilled and an effective agent, but I watched her over the years as she became her own person too. Those three were her go-to coping activities."
"What was she like back then?" Carol asks, clearly curious.
He inhales and blows out a heavy exhale as he pushes up off the railing and mimics her position, turning around and leaning his back against the railing. "Ruthless," he answers, "but not in a violent way. It was just how she was trained. She expected to put the mission above everything else, at any cost. And she was just...better than all our other agents at just about everything. "
Carol winces but nods in understanding.
"Don't get me wrong, she struggled somewhat to adapt to our way of doing things, but mostly she was just ruthlessly efficient. She did everything that was asked of her, never complained, even when we gave her the shit ops."
He smiles then, recalling the time he'd been convinced to bring her along for a series of meetings he had. There'd been some chatter that was worrying enough to warrant bringing someone with him to assess any threats, but he hadn't figured on bringing her.
"What's that?" she interrupts his thoughts with a small smile of her own, nodding to his grin. "Fury actually smiling?"
He gives her a stern look. "Contrary to the rumours, I do know how to smile."
"Uh-huh," she says with a smirk and a nod. "Didn't think you couldn't, but didn't think you actually did it these days. Romanoff always said you were a grumpy old man."
He glares because he knows Carol has taken some liberties with what Natasha may have told her about him.
"So, what's with the smile?" she repeats.
He huffs out a defeated sigh. "Just remembering the time I took Natasha with me for some meetings. It was pretty early in her time as an agent, and I didn't trust her yet. I caught her watching some fireflies at the end of the week."
"Exactly how long ago was this?" Carol asks when he pauses for a moment.
"That's classified."
She rolls her eyes. "Really? That's what you're going with? You trying to deny how old you are, Nick?"
"Hell no," he replies, indignant. "I earned these years," he replies with a frown. "Besides, you're one to talk. Not all of us have the luxury of magical powers to keep us young."
"Aw, did I hit a soft spot, Fury?"
He shoots her a playful look of warning before answering her question. "It was about a year after Barton decided to bring her home with him rather than eliminate her like we'd told him to do," he finishes, tone dry.
"I'm getting the sense he had a tendency to go rogue often."
"Understatement, believe me. Barton's lucky that he was a damn fine agent and that Coulson put up with him. I'd have kicked his ass to the curb way before then otherwise. He saved me the trouble by retiring early."
She chuckles and then gestures with her hand for him to continue.
"I trusted Barton's instincts about her — well, I trusted Coulson more than Barton, truth be told — but I also knew the Red Room was no joke. There was a strong possibility she was working an angle to get her hands on our intelligence. I'd read the files from when the SSR first stumbled onto the Red Room, and it was downright disturbing the things they did to train those girls. We had limited intelligence on them after that but what we did have was…worrying. We knew enough to be wary."
Carol nods. "She mentioned she hadn't had the most pleasant of upbringings."
He laughs bitterly. "That's a fucking understatement if there ever was one," he says. Natasha had overcome a lot while he'd known her, but it still pained him to think of what she'd gone through because SHIELD couldn't bring down the Red Room during all those years. "Anyway," he says, refocusing himself and the discussion, "not long after she'd gotten the all-clear from medical and had passed all her competency tests, she started going on some missions. It was easy stuff that senior agents could do in their sleep, and the rookies could complete with minimal complications."
"Milk runs," Carol summarizes.
"Exactly. But the missions were also opportunities for Natasha to prove her loyalty and justify our decision to allow her to defect."
"So you were testing her."
"Yep. Barton and Coulson were singing her praises, saying they'd never seen someone complete these kinds of missions so cleanly. They said that she was doing everything asked of her and more. I dismissed it at first, but soon other senior agents were making similar comments, so I started reading the reports for her missions."
"And you realized what an idiot you'd been?"
"You know, a little sass is okay. But more than a little is not a road I'd suggest taking," Nick warns.
Carol laughs. "So you read the reports, realized what an asset you had on your hands, and that you couldn't keep her off the important stuff forever?"
He glares, and she grins widely. "Coulson convinced me to take her along for some meetings I had scheduled with some...less than honourable individuals. Necessary, and probably fine, but not without risk."
Carol arches an eyebrow. "So you took a tiny Russian woman as muscle?"
"You worked with Romanoff for those five years. You telling me she was just a small Russian woman?"
Carol nods, conceding his point. "Yeah, okay, fair enough."
"She ended up saving my life a few times over that week. I saw one of the attempts coming. The other ones she handled without me even realizing it was happening."
"So that's what it takes to finally make it into your good books? Saving your life?"
He shakes his head. "No, it was the night before we flew back. After I dismissed her from official duties, I found her sitting outside at a firepit, watching some fireflies with this half-smile on her face."
"I didn't realize her fondness for them went back that far."
"By that point, her record was impeccable. She'd delivered on ops we'd previously never imagined having any degree of success and had kept her head down, avoiding the inevitable politics at SHIELD. After I read those reports and saw her in action first-hand, even I couldn't deny the skill and value to SHIELD. But I still didn't really trust her."
Carol scoffs. "Do you trust anybody ?"
"I trust you. I trust Hill. I trusted Barton. I trusted Coulson. And after that night, I trusted Natasha."
She nods wordlessly, recognizing the seriousness of his answer. "So...fireflies?" she prompts.
"Came outside after finishing up some phone calls. I found her just sitting there staring at these fireflies. Her expression was..." Nick trails off, searching for the right words to describe it. "Peaceful, and yet it seemed almost pained too." He shakes his head as he collects his thoughts. "She looked like a damn kid with how young she was. Hell, she was practically a kid. But I could see it in her eyes that she was trying to move on, that she was invested in becoming better. I could tell that she was someone who would be loyal.
"There were a lot of years in her expression. More than how many she'd lived, I think. Nobody that young should carry that much weight on their shoulders, but she did, and she never complained. She took the opportunity Barton gave her with both hands and never looked back. That was when I trusted her."
Carol is the one who's quiet for a beat this time. "She talked about you in those five years, you know. Told me how much a paranoid pain in the ass you were. But it was clear you were important to her."
He flashes a sad smile. "They don't make 'em like Natasha anymore."
"No," Carol agreed, "they don't."
"Heard she was a hell of an interim leader for what was left of the Avengers," he comments. Banner and Rhodes had filled him in on what had been happening over those five years, and from what he'd heard, she'd been the one holding them all together and keeping them going.
"She was a lot more than an interim leader. Stark and Rogers didn't want anything to do with it all, but she was stubborn as hell and kept at it any way she could. Kept saying we owed it to everyone not there to keep trying. It always seemed like she really believed we'd figure out a way to get everyone back."
"Hill used to say she was the most optimistic realist she'd ever met."
Carol huffs out a laugh. "Yeah, that about sums it up." She pauses. "You ever find out why she liked those fireflies so much?"
He shakes his head. "Another one of her mysteries. Maybe something from her so-called childhood. Maybe something with Barton, I don't know."
Carol is quiet again for a beat, and Nick is struck by how contemplative she looks. She wasn't usually the type to linger on those kinds of emotions. "I'm sorry Nat didn't get to know we won," she says finally. "She deserved that, at least."
"Yeah," he agrees, because she absolutely did deserve to know she'd managed to save half the whole damn universe. "But she also knew that sometimes the people who deserve something the most don't get it. She was a woman working and living in a man's world, so she was used to that." He chuckles as another memory surfaces. "She was pleased as punch when I picked Hill as my deputy. Rumour mill had it going to Coulson, but he was destined for a different path. She dropped by after Hill's name started being whispered around as a possibility. She didn't outright endorse Hill — that wasn't her style — but she came pretty damn close."
"That doesn't surprise me at all."
"Not you, maybe, but most people would have been surprised by her throwing her support behind anyone. She preferred to keep things close to the vest."
"Well, from what Rhodey told me, she damn loyal to those people who'd earned her trust. She kept tabs on Barton over those five years, even after he cut contact with her and devolved into his...vengeance tour."
He'd gotten some details about Barton's trail of blood and violence. He supposes it had hurt Natasha to see her best friend, the man who'd saved her from that very kind of life, lose himself. Fury shakes his head. "Seemed like those two had an unbreakable bond."
"You miss her?" she asks.
Nick nods solemnly. "I do. She was— She was one of the good ones." He pauses again for a moment before he adds, "I'm a better person for having met her."
Carol nods in agreement. "We all are."
I always thought the relationship between Nick and Natasha was one they should have explored more. There was so much foundation laid in CATWS and then...nothing really.
As always, I love to see what you all think. Let me know your thoughts.