January 27th 2004

Maria and Natasha

Maria was sprawled across Natasha's large bed, exhausted but was resting her head on the women's chest as Natasha softly ran her hand through Maria's hair, almost lulling her to sleep, but she needed to stay awake. The two of them were lying in silence as they read over files for work; Maria reading over mission plans and after action reports and Natasha proof reading her own mission reports. Maria sighed and sat up, ignoring the nausea she was experiencing and started frowning at the mission report in her hand, it was terrible. Bloody Barton, never did his reports correctly, she was convinced it was just to fuck with her. Fury put her on 'Barton Mission Report Duty' and Coulson was on 'Barton Mission Handler Duty.' Of course Barton was on his best behaviour for Coulson but would go to the ends of the Earth to piss her off and make her spend more time on his shit than doing anything else.

It was irritating.

She grumbled and tilted her head up at Natasha and glared at her, because who else was she supposed to be angry at? Barton was not around and Natasha was his partner in crime, she was the closest she could get to yelling and almost killing Barton.

"Barton is doing my head in. Make him stop fucking up his reports." She said angrily, her tone verging on whining.

Natasha raised an eyebrow at the women lying next to her, so much angry over a mission report. "What do you expect me to do about it? I'm only his partner, not his handler. Ask Coulson or Fury to sort of him out." She replied in amusement, only slightly concerned about Maria's mood. It wasn't anything new, she's been moody and irritable over the past two days and in all honestly she probably could get Barton to lay of Maria but she wanted to see how far the women would go to stop Barton from being a shit.

"He listens to you more than he does me or Coulson. Plus Fury says now that I'm deputy director I have to find a way to deal with problematic agents on my own without his help, which is bullshit, this is Clint fucking Barton we are talking about, the dickhead doesn't listen to anyone." Maria complained, sitting up and flinging his report at Natasha like a petulant child.

"God you're a grumpy bitch when you're tired." Natasha grumbled, picking up Clint's report to see what exactly was wrong with it.

'Mission #666

Agent: Clint Barton

Mission Overview: Badass man with badass arrows kills some mean old man that were involved in human trafficking. The End.'

Natasha frowned, there was taking the piss and there was taking the piss. This was ridiculous, it held essentially no details on the mission, or what happened. She knew that Barton took his mission reports seriously and would sometimes spend hours on them with Coulson to make sure that they held all the details that he might have missed whilst he was in the mission mind space. So why was he doing this?

She sighed and flung the report onto a nearby chair and opened her arms for Maria. The brunette slipped easily in, pressing herself close against Natasha and clung tightly to her as she rested her head on Natasha's shoulder and blinked slowly, her eyes beginning to lose focus as her body relaxed slightly. Strange. Natasha frowned at that and tilted her head slightly to get a better look at the women lying against her. Her breath was slowly losing its gentle rhythm the more she stared and blinked at nothing.

PTSD.

How could she have missed it? She should have been able to spot that from a mile away, but instead she just passed it off as a side effect of the serum. None of them really considered if Maria would experience any PTSD or traumatised by what happened to her. They stupid believed that the women would be able to just shrug it off. it was clear that Maria was very good at hiding the symptoms and the effect it was having on it.

She gently placed her hand on Maria's shoulder, squeezing tightly to give her something to anchor onto, to pull her out of whatever she was seeing. She slowly moved her hand down to Maria's back, slowly rubbing circles on it, hoping to help pull her out of what she was seeing.

It took a good five minutes before Maria took a shuddering breath as she pulled back into focus and looked up at Natasha, blinking blearily.

"Sorry," she mumbled, her head falling back against Natasha shoulder. All of the remaining energy she had left to keep herself awake to go over the mission reports had left her, but she was too fearful to go to sleep, too scared of the endless nightmares of being torn apart into oblivion.

"No, I'm sorry, I should have notice, if not, Peggy should have noticed. One of us should have realised that you would experience some sort of trauma from almost dying and being forced to under go an experimental genetic alteration. Guess we got too caught up in the idea of you being the cold, deputy director, where everything just bounced off you." Natasha explained, holding the women tightly, slowly rocking them.

"You're rocking us. It's weird." Maria mumbled, but did not deny the comfort that Natasha was giving her.

The two of them sat in silence for a long time, simply holding each other as they processed their own emotions to the situation.

"I can't sleep." Maria confessed quietly, " I can't rest. I can't close my eyes. I can't go into the hallway by myself without freaking out and I haven't been down to the labs since the incident happened. I'm scared."

Natasha continued to sit silently, letting Maria talk aloud and explain the situation to her and to herself. It was good that she was talking, but Natasha suspected that was the bond pushing for her to talk. It's been three weeks since this happened, three weeks of Maria being exhausted, of pushing herself day in and day out to get the job done. Three weeks of dealing with petty agents, wolves, emotions that aren't her own, her own confusing emotions and weariness. It was a never ending cycle that was finally taking it's toll on her.

"It's okay Maria," Natasha cooed gently, "we can work on those things, we can fix that no problem. It may take awhile, but that's okay because we will still reach our goal of making things normal for you again."

Maria sat up and looked at her, her eyes wide, vulnerable and trusting. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. First thing's first, get changed, it's late and we have a mission in the morning. You're sleeping with me tonight." Natasha said firmly, adding a slight alpha edge to it to allow minimal complaining from Maria. The women was exhausted and it would not help her to fight Natasha on this, not tonight at least, she can fight Natasha on using her advantage once she gets a proper nights sleep.

It only took a couple of minutes of shifting and grumbling before the two women found a comfortable position to sleep in. Maria had entwined herself with Natasha, resting her head on Natasha's chin and clung tightly to Natasha's waist. It took even less time for Maria to fall asleep.

Natasha stayed wake for a bit longer, contemplating tomorrow's mission and how to deal with Maria. She would have to consult with Peggy on this, she was slowly starting to feel out of her depths with the beta. Natasha just sighed softly, it was a problem that she would deal with tomorrow, right now, she just felt like following Maria's example and sleeping, extremely grateful that it came easily for once.

February 3rd 2004

Maria and Natasha

Maria sighed as she made her way back down to the wolves floor after a meeting with Fury. Fury was adamant that they move forward with the project and get the third batch of agents ready and prepped to go in no longer than three weeks. They have went from one year between wolves to roughly one month, according to Fury's proposed start date of the 24th February.

The beta's, including herself, only just finished the course of injections a few days ago and were due to shift for the first time tonight. They have spent days watching the videos of the alpha's first few times of shifting and watching the way Peggy help coax them to change. It was a way to mentally prepare themselves for the pain of the first change, after the initial change, the rest of the shifts should come with relative ease.

Then again, who knows. Maria was unsure if this was going to be different or the same as the alpha's. The betas were only slightly different than the alpha's in the fact that they did not hold as much sway as they did and that the alphas were generally stronger than they were. If it was going to be different for the alpha's then there would be a high chance that it would be different for the omega's and that it might be more painful for them.

Only time would tell.

Maria sent a quick text to Natasha to tell her that she was in the lift and to come meet her. Maria was grateful that Natasha made good on her promise to help her out. The alpha had been walking with the hallways with her, always meeting her at the lift no matter what the time was and if she could not make it, Peggy or one of the other alphas' would came and walk with her till she got to her destination.

It was helping, that along with her weekly therapy chats with Peggy, which was helping her to process the traumatic event that she had went through. There was still some hiccups of course, even with one of the alpha's being with her, her mind would play tricks and would convince herself that there was someone there, ready to pounce and tear into her. It would set her off, her anxiety sky rocketing into a panic attack and a sleepless night.

She was managing though, that was the main thing. She was slowly finding her groove again, in where she lay in the hierarchy of things. It may have stupidly been messing with her mind, but she was in charge of these agents, yet four of them could easily out do her now due to being Alpha's and her being a Beta. It had taken some time and consideration on how to proceed with the situation that they were in but they finally decided to make sure nothing would cause a conflict for Maria between Fury and the wolves, but if she was to conveniently look away for five minutes, it wouldn't hurt either.

Maria smiled at Natasha as she exited the lift.

"Hey." she greeted warmly, falling in line with the alpha.

"Hey, how was your meeting with Fury?" Natasha asked casually.

Maria scoffed "It was fantastic. We've to get the next batch of agents ready to receive their first injection on the 24th of this month. He also wants me back at work tomorrow, say's I have to deal with the World Security Council and keeping their noses out of certain places."

"So soon? We haven't even had time to document how the change will effect the beta's. There could be an unforeseen difference that might effect the next batch. Are you able to go back to work tomorrow?" Natasha asked.

Maria shrugged "I don't really have a choice, I guess he is having a hard time covering up my leave. I was not away on any field mission nor had I filed for annual leave, so it will seem very suspicious to other agents if they decided to get nosy. Besides, I have to get back to work at some point, might as well just rip off the bandaid the now. Also, I tried telling Fury that to no avail, the only person who he might listen to in that regards would be Peggy. I understand his hurry, he has put a lot of money and staff time into this to have such little results on the paper."

"Little results? Maria there are four successful wolves with another four on their way, how is that not successful? How many agencies can say they have managed to alter their agent's DNA to create a pack with functioning hierarchy and mental links? You could just file for personal leave for another few weeks, pretty sure you've racked up a few good months of leave." Natasha responded, frowning a little.

Maria sighed "The longer I'm away, the harder it will be for me to go back. I don't understand Fury's thought process, he been acting a little bit weird lately, I think he's slowly starting to get a lot of big projects of the ground after getting permission."

"I thought Operation: Shadows was not on file? Nor were the WSC or Pierce were aware of it?" Natasha questioned as they reached the communal area.

"It's not. I think it's more for a personal goal of knowing that if he can turn agents into super being wolves, he can do anything."

"Makes sense, I guess." Natasha said.

"That's literally what my job is, say it make sense and then actually try and make sense of everything and make it work." Maria grumbled, waving lazily at the others in the room.

"Sounds like you had an interesting meeting. I'll have a talk with him again about this. See if I can stretch it to two months, that at least would give you a full month of getting used to the new bodies. It would not do us any good to have eight wolves who are unsure of themselves and their bodies." Peggy said from where sat on the couch, a book lying to her left, forgotten.

"Good luck with getting Fury to change anything, he's so stubborn sometimes." Victoria complained, clearly remembering a previous time where she tried to change Fury's mind.

"But you're forgetting Vic, you're not Peggy. Fury has a soft spot for good old Peg's here." Tobias said, throwing a wink at Peggy (who rolled her eyes in response)

"I still think Fury's making a mistake. I still don't understand why he is rushing all of this." Jayden responded, "especially with the situation with Maria."

"Or maybe the situation with Maria is the reason he is speeding this all up." Natasha offered up from her spot on the couch with Maria. Everyone turned to look at her to explain further.

"Think about it. Those wolves got in and out of here without any of us knowing. They attack Maria and it's clear revenge in on their minds. Fury will be wanting to speed up the process so that we can hunt these wolves down. No doubt at some point in the future he's just going to terminate the failed test subjects and will make us do it, he just needs enough of us due to the varying strengths and weakness of the other wolves, but in short, we have a leak and no one knows who it is." Natasha explained.

They all sat back in silence as they took in this suggestion.

"..It would make sense." Maria said slowly, mainly focusing on keep her heart and breaths steady. "You never told me they got away." she accused.

Everyone in the room flinched.

"We figured it would be better to tell you once things had settled down and when you were starting to get better." Peggy informed her calmly, setting the tone for the conversation.

"So you got to chose what you thought was best for me?" Maria snapped.

"Maria, focus on what is actually the issue at hand. If you honestly think we acted on what we thought would be best for you, you are wrong. You're seemingly forgetting that we can get into your head and our weekly chats have been very insightful and you would have been able to deal with this better once you were more sure of everything." Peggy replied firmly, fixing Maria with a stare that left no room for arguing.

Maria back down, sulking and glaring lightly at them. "Whatever. Who do you suggest would have leaked information to them? Or helped them get in here."

"If we knew that then we wouldn't be having this discussion, Hill." Tobias sneered.

"Oh gee, Tobias! Silly me! I thought I said suggest, not do you know who did this?" Maria said sarcastically, sneering right back at the alpha.

"Might want to control the mouth on your bitch, Romanoff, or one day she might find herself without one." Tobias threatened.

"Want to try that again, Tobias?" Natasha said quietly, standing up to stare down the man. The room was silent as they watched the two alpha's go head to head as Tobias walked right up into Natasha's personal space.

"Yeah, your fucking mutt has a big mouth on her. It's going to end badly for her one day." He replied, equally as quiet.

Natasha moved swiftly, easily climbing up the man and using her signature thigh move and had him on the ground within seconds, slowly chocking the air out of his lungs. Tobias struggled under the women, doing everything possible to try and throw her off.

"Natasha that's enough." Peggy commanded, watching the scene with a sharp eye.

Natasha easily bounded to her feet and dragged Tobias to his knees.

"Threaten Maria again and do something much worse that you don't even want to think about. You've seen my files, you know what I can do and Peggy wont be there to stop me." She threatened him quietly, letting him go and moving over to Maria, quickly pulling the women close in a protective embrace.

"Tobias, you're comments are uncalled for. Apologise when you actually mean it. If not, face the repercussions of your actions. You've failed to see how the situations affects Maria, you only saw a way to ridicule her. It is unacceptable." Peggy said with authority, indicating the end of the discussion as they all sat down, sighs escaping their lips.

Natasha refused to let Maria go for the rest of the night, nor would she let her or Tobias out of her sight. Carefully watching him in case he tries something stupid.

"So our next plan of actions is find the leak and get the new wolves ready?" Jayden said, breaking the silence.

"Has anyone actually approached them yet?" Victoria asked, seeming amused by the idea of no one actually talking to the agents yet.

"Nope." Natasha simply said. "I've been a preoccupied with my current wolf."

Jayden and Tobias just shrugged in their response. They have been busy setting things up and running missions to talk to the new wolves.

"Fury or myself will be talking to them this week and then we will bring them down to meet all of you afterwards and prepare them for what is about to happen. I will need all of you working together for this, we are expanding our numbers and I can not have any of you being hostile to each other, you need to be setting an example for the new ones." Peggy supplied.

They all nodded their understanding of the situation. A ping on Maria tablet caused them all to turn to see the deputy director with a deep frown on her face.

"What's wrong, Maria?" Victoria asked.

"There's been an anthrax attack. Fury wants us on it."