Chapter Twenty: Guilty of Love
"You sleep with one eye open / but that's the price you pay." -Florence + the Machine
January 21, 2013 - Avengers Tower Common Floor - Manhattan, NY
"So, Oksana. Do you have any hobbies?"
Bruce, Tony, and Oksana were gathered around the dining room on the common floor, a box of pizza between them. The girl had peeled off the ham and pineapple, leaving them in a sad pile next to the side of her chewed-down pizza crusts. Something about her was still so sharply meek, like she was more outline than mass. Bruce felt bad for her—he did—but being tasked with babysitting Audrey and Natasha's witness did little but remind him of New Year's Eve, and Audrey's subsequent ignoring him. What had he expected?
"Ballet," Oksana said quietly after a moment.
Tony nodded. "Makes sense. With the whole…" Gesturing vaguely, he finished, "Red Room."
"Tony," Bruce warned.
"Sorry," he said to Oksana. "You know, I was kidnapped once. Terrible."
Oksana nodded in agreement, although the tentativeness of her motion made clear that she had little choice otherwise.
"Want dessert?" Tony offered. "I've got drumsticks in the freezer."
Her nose wrinkled. "Like chicken?"
"No. I have taste, thanks." He stood and beelined towards the fridge, where he dug out the box of ice cream cones and shook it in the air victoriously. "They're chocolate and peanuts. You want some?"
"Sure," Oksana said, perking up. Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. How much longer would he have to play along with this before he could go back to his lab? Logically and ethically speaking, he knew it would be until Tony and Oksana also went to sleep, because Tony had a habit of getting stuck in cycles of enabling: he would behave chaotically, inspiring others to do the same, validating his own chaos, so on and so forth. It was why having him work in a lab adjacent to Jane's was a complete recipe for disaster.
"Brucie?" Tony offered. He held the box of ice cream about an inch away from Bruce's face, wiggling his eyebrows playfully. "Cookies and cream?"
"No, thanks," he said.
"Oh, come on, Doc. It's a cheat day. One ice cream won't turn you green."
At the mention of the Hulk, Bruce soured, shooting Tony a pointed glare and dropping his arm back limply on the table. "I said no, Tony."
"Alright," he surrendered, passing the box to Oksana. "Relax." As she accepted the ice cream, she looked at him with some degree of fear or worry or both, and Bruce grimaced. To Tony's credit, he was quick to jump in, though his explanation was less than helpful. "Ignore Bruce. He's just heartbroken."
"I am not—" he protested.
Tony lifted a hand to shield his mouth, and then stage-whispered to Oksana, "One of the agents on your case actually."
Oksana sat up higher. "The blonde?"
Bruce's mouth flattened into a line as Tony nodded. "You have no idea how much drama they get into. Us Weekly is obsessed with Jane and Thor–and me, duh—and meanwhile, Audball and the Doctor are hiding in plain sight."
"What happened?" Oksana asked Bruce.
He blinked dumbly. Her guess, at this point, was as good as his. "Nothing," he insisted. "We're just friends. Tony likes to stir the pot."
"I do no such thing," Tony objected, taking a bite into his ice cream like it was an apple. "I'm really their leader," he told Oksana, mouth full. "Without me, they'd be wandering around S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ with no clue how to get out."
At that, Bruce just rolled his eyes. "I was hardly helpless without you," he reminded Tony. "Things were a lot simpler before."
"Maybe so," Tony said, taking another bite from the ice cream. "But that doesn't mean they were better."
Bruce frowned. He would never admit it, but Tony might be right.
January 21, 2013 - The Tenderloin - San Francisco, CA
It wasn't that Audrey had expected the scene of the crime to be pleasant, but she also hadn't expected it to be this bloody.
Red Room murders were always clean. Always untraceable. Snapped necks. Poisoned meals. Gunshot wounds to the head. The facts of the case almost pointed towards Briony's murder being motivated by something entirely separate from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s investigation, but Audrey's gut told her, despite everything, that the two incidents were related.
That being said, this was all really, really gross. She ducked gingerly below the yellow tape and stepped around a large ketchup-colored puddle on the carpet to meet Claudia on the opposite corner of the living room.
"So, she was stabbed in her carotid artery, and she died pretty soon after. There were definite signs of struggle, though," Claudia rattled off, looking down at a clipboard of notes. "Picture frames knocked over, a bunch of shattered dishes in her kitchen, back window forced open."
Audrey rubbed her temples. "Okay."
"She had a suitcase packed. No fingerprints on the window, no prints on the needle." Claudia sighed. "Someone was tying up a loose end. They needed to get to her before we could."
Loose ends. "Natasha said something about loose ends," Audrey mumbled. "The Red Room has someone. The Executioner." She dug into her pocket for her cell phone and pulled up Natasha's contact.
The line buzzed for a moment before the call picked up. "You've got Romanoff," came Natasha's smooth, even greeting.
"Tatiana," Audrey said. "How would you describe her...style?" She winced. "Of killing. Not. Fashion."
"I figured. She's standard Red Room. Had an affinity for guns. Point-blank fanatic but not bad as a sniper, either."
Things weren't adding up. Audrey chanced another look at Briony's body, and the puddle of dried blood around her, before quickly looking away. Her eyes found a postcard on the wall to focus on instead. If she wanted someone dead, and she was trained as a sniper, she wouldn't choose a knitting needle as a weapon.
Audrey stepped around the puddle again, turning to the nearest window. Briony's apartment was in a neighborhood full of mid-rise buildings, and she lived on the third floor—relatively low. Outside, Audrey could find at least vantage points for a sniper, and anyone better trained in marksmanship would be able to find more.
She lifted the phone back up to her ear. "So, if I told you that Briony was stabbed through the neck with a knitting needle, in an apartment that was vulnerable to sniper attacks from a handful of angles, would you think Tatiana?"
Natasha was quiet for a long moment. Then, with definitive certainty, she said, "Absolutely not."
This was bad, bad news. There was a Red Room agent known as a goddamn Executioner on their tails, and now, someone else had just murdered their next source. So they were hunting down two killers in addition to trying to protect Oksana. "Somebody else killed Briony, then. We've got two loose assassins running around."
"Another long day at work," Natasha drawled. "I've gotta make a detour. There's a lead I'm chasing in Canada."
"Canada?" Audrey asked. "Please tell me we don't have to get the RCMP involved."
"No, she's not Canadian," Natasha replied. "We're just meeting in neutral territory."
She was being evasive, and Audrey knew it, but she trusted Natasha's methods enough to assume she was keeping things secret for a reason. It was classic S.H.I.E.L.D. to divide intel up among groups, and Audrey knew it was sort of necessary, but that didn't make it any less of a pain when she was trying to put the pieces together.
"Sounds good," Audrey said. "Let me know when you know something."
"Copy that," said Natasha, before hanging up.
Audrey pocketed her phone and then grabbed a pair of rubber gloves from her purse. As she inspected the apartment, she found that Briony had settled into her home a lot more than Audrey usually saw when it came to cases like these. Briony had framed photos of family members, painted walls. Floral curtains, even. They were ugly, but they belonged to someone.
The apartment was confident, if Audrey had to describe it in a word. Not in its style, exactly, but in the fact that it had any style at all. Most criminals—especially human traffickers—tended not to get too comfortable as they moved from place to place, but Briony's house was filled to the brim with contacts, evidence, and information.
"Did she have family?" Audrey asked Claudia. "Locally."
"Nope," the other woman replied. "Parents and siblings in Australia, but she was kind of an outcast. All the photos with them are from pre-2000."
"Huh," Audrey remarked, approaching a wall covered in framed photos. One of them showed Briony with two smiling teenage girls. "What about these? Do you know who they are?"
Claudia met her at the wall and leaned in. "Oh, those are two of her students."
Right. She was a ballet teacher, too. Which meant—
"Where was her studio?"
"Uh...Presidio Heights, I think."
"Great. How fast can we get there?"
January 21, 2013 - Watson Lake - Yukon, Canada
Natasha didn't feel at home much of anywhere, but being out in the cold always felt close. The bitter winters she grew up in didn't fade easily from memory, and as she trudged through the backwoods of some tiny town in Northern Canada, she almost found herself enjoying the sub-zero temperatures and Arctic Chill.
Watson Lake was a card she'd been saving a very long time to pull, and if she got screwed over, she was going to swim to Russia to make her dissatisfaction known. There was a reason she never chose to go back to the same place twice, but that was just the first in a very long list of ways this detour was an exception.
"Natalia."
This wasn't the first time they'd made contact in the last few years, but Natasha was still surprised at how much the other woman had grown. Yelena was taller than her now, and her hair had darkened to a honey blonde that was pulled back in a sleek ponytail. Her chin had sharpened, and her cheekbones had grown defined. They'd been only girls before, and Yelena had a gap in her teeth that had since been tightened. Nothing ever stayed the same, even the people who did.
"Nice to see you," Natasha greeted, forcing her voice to stay even. Love is for children. It wasn't even a conscious reminder at this point, just something she'd gotten used to force-feeding herself whenever she got close to cracking. Love is for children.
"Yeah, whatever," Yelena replied, turning and starting to walk towards the nearest road. "You always come calling when you need something. Next time you need to use me for intelligence, can you pick somewhere a little more tropical? You know, I've always wanted to go to Cuba."
"I'll keep it in mind," Natasha responded, jogging to catch up with her. "But you do know why we're here, right?"
"I do," Yelena said. "I hope you're not trying to make me nostalgic."
Natasha laughed at that, but judging from the glare Yelena sent her, she didn't find it as funny. "I wouldn't dream of it," she swore, lying through her teeth. "But I needed to talk to you about something."
Yelena skidded to a stop in the snow and turned to face her. "Are you finally going to apologize for leaving without me?"
"Depends. Are you going to apologize for all the times you tried to kill me?" Natasha asked, smirking the slightest bit.
"Сука," Yelena hissed, swinging a hand up towards Natasha. She caught it and twisted, flipping Yelena to the ground. The blonde kicked out Natasha's legs, and the slick ice beneath her feet sent her tumbling. Before she knew it, the two were wrestling around in the snow like they had as children, when they would fistfight during playtime.
Natasha was the best, but Yelena was close; they'd been trained by the same people, which was why they were in this situation in the first place. Black Widows didn't apologize, and they certainly didn't yield in fights. If it weren't for the snow, one of them may have ended up killed, but every punch was softened by the cushion of mittens and the ice through her jeans hurt more than any kick Yelena hit her with.
After a moment, she gained control, pushing her forearm into Yelena's neck. "How about neither of us apologize," she offered, "and instead I buy you a drink. Deal?"
Yelena's response was to brandish a knife, and Natasha had to physically push her own arm down into the snow to overcome the instinct to break Yelena's hand. Despite the weapon, her sister shrugged. "Fine." She stood and brushed the snow from her shirt, and Natasha followed, keeping her eyes trained steadily on Yelena as they crossed the highway towards town.
Natasha picked Watson Lake because she knew it would upset Yelena, considering the things that had happened the last time they were in this town together, but she needed to press on that bruise to get what she needed. It was cruel, but that was life. And after all—Natasha was a killer at her core. She could shed her skin all she wanted, but the fact remained.
It was only four in the afternoon now, but the sun had begun to set. The golden light gave off an impression of warmth that was far from honest, but Natasha liked it. The bitter cold and the bright light. Things felt sharp here. They felt like her.
"Where are we going?" Yelena grumbled, her coat making swishing sounds as she trudged along.
"There's only one bar," Natasha reminded her, pointing ahead at the stretch of buildings lining the town's main street. They had been brighter in color the last time they walked down this segment of the road, but the paint looked nice even despite the way it faded.
The one bar, on the ground floor of an inn, was half-full of truckers and townies in flannel and denim. Low country-rock hummed in the background from a radio. They stuck out like a pair of sore thumbs, but Natasha had survived enough interrogations to deal with nosey hicks looking to get some. As she and Yelena settled at the bar, she wondered where the two of them would've ended up, had she kept her promise.
Love is for children. It wasn't worth dwelling on.
"Ladies?" the bartender asked.
"Two beers, please," Natasha ordered. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Yelena gagging. "What are you doing?" she demanded, once the bartender was out of earshot.
"Beer. You're a true-blue American now, huh?"
Natasha rolled her eyes. "As much as I'd love to get into a drinking contest with you, I have to get back to work after this."
"So professional," Yelena muttered. When the bartender reappeared with two bottles, she plastered on a fake smile and nodded at him respectfully. "Thank you so much," she chirped, taking on a British inflection.
"My pleasure," he returned, winking at her.
Natasha kicked her under the table.
"Ow," Yelena grumbled. "What?"
"Stop flirting. This is an emergency."
"Big fancy job," Yelena scoffed. "Everything's an emergency to you. You know, Ivan says—"
"I don't care what Ivan says," Natasha interrupted. The force of her voice surprised her, and she knew that they both heard the lie. "I don't work for him anymore," she added, just for good measure.
"He wasn't your manager. We were a family," Yelena snapped.
"We were dolls," Natasha corrected. "We were nothing. We had no control. At least now, it's my choice."
Yelena shook her head and leaned back in her chair. "You traded in one agency for another. You think they care about you?"
It wasn't easy to catch Natasha Romanoff off guard, but she found herself at a loss for words. In the nine months since she'd moved into the Tower, she'd found herself playing a domestic role she hadn't thought she was capable of. Natasha had come to think of her body as a broken bone that had healed wrong, and aspirational normalcy felt like putting pressure on it even as the injury remained.
Before the Avengers, back when it was just her and Clint and Coulson, she hadn't had much of a personal life to care about. There was work, and then there was recovering, and then there was going back to work the next morning. After Strike Team Delta missions, she and Clint had a ritual of getting blackout drunk and passing out in whoever's apartment was closest, and when he woke up, he'd make her eggs and bacon and ask her questions about her childhood that she'd dodge. That had felt like caring. And what she had now, was that so different?
Some moments, she let herself believe she could have it. When Tony revealed that he'd built a ballet studio on her floor of the Tower, and when he'd kept his promise not to tell anyone else about it. When Steve started buying her strawberries from the farmer's market because she mentioned that she liked them better than the ones from the store. When Bruce started cutting the crosswords out of the newspaper so that she could read the rest of it over her lunch break. Natasha didn't know enough about family to recognize it when she saw it, but she thought she might have grabbed onto something close.
"I care about them," she told Yelena.
The blonde eyed her wearily, and then took another sip of her beer. "What did you need?"
"Information. We picked up an escaped widow."
"Bullshit," Yelena said. "I would've heard something by now."
Natasha arched an eyebrow. "You haven't heard anything?"
Yelena shook her head. "What's her name?"
"Oksana Godunova." Natasha pulled out her phone and opened Oksana's file. The picture of her from earlier that day was dull and grainy even on her high-tech screen, but Oksana's face was still striking. "She got trafficked out of Russia by an Australian woman named Briony. There was an attempted assassination in San Francisco."
After eying the screen for a moment, Yelena nodded slowly. "Huh," she mused. "Well, what did you expect from Tatiana?"
"Not a bombing and a knitting-needle murder," Natasha replied, swiping to the next photo that Audrey had sent her from Briony's house.
"Gross," Yelena said simply. She sipped her beer. "That's not Tatiana, but I can ask around. Looks inexperienced, though. Like whoever got her hadn't wanted to kill her." After a moment, she added, "Or, they really wanted her to suffer. That one's less likely, though."
Natasha wasn't so sure. "Do you know about her? Oksana?"
"Everyone does, back home. She was from Sochi. Started off with gymnastics before she got pushed into ballet." Yelena pursed her lips. "I never expected her to run. I never expected you to run either, though."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you promised me you—"
"Not me," Natasha interrupted. "Her."
Yelena shrugged. "She never showed any doubt. Her parents came looking for her and she didn't want to leave. They started trusting her with more and more missions. The Madame used to meet with her personally."
The Madame. Natasha grew nauseous even at the mention of her. She tried to set it aside for now. If Oksana had never shown any signs of disobedience, if she hadn't taken the opportunity to get out before, why would she now? Unless she'd been loyal to her handler, and not the Red Room. But earning meetings with the Madame didn't come easily, and Oksana would've had to be very convincing if she didn't actually stand on the same side of the line as the rest of the Widows.
"She was a machine," Yelena added. "Most kills since you. She's like us. Beautiful monster."
Natasha pushed her chair back and stood up, gathering her things into her bag. "I wouldn't call it beautiful."
January 21, 2013 - Presidio Heights - San Francisco, CA
Audrey couldn't quite put her finger on why, but something about Briony's ballet studio made it look so obviously like it was a front for something worse. Nothing in particular stood out as fraudulent—the windows were clean, the sign was clear and pretty, and inside, the dance floor was immaculate. Classes had been canceled—obviously—so it was deserted when she and Claudia arrived. Maybe that was it? She tried to envision people dancing inside, but couldn't.
Claudia held the door open. "After you?"
As soon as she stepped inside, Audrey was met with the chalky smell of rosin and biter, sweaty humidity. She grimaced, wanting nothing more than to go back outside into the cool, windy afternoon. But as Claudia headed towards the back of the building, the thick, heavy soles of her boots clomping against the wood floor, Audrey remembered what they were doing.
Which was—raiding a dead woman's office.
She sighed.
Briony's office was decorated in the same style as her apartment. Frilly and pastel. Her desk was messy and cluttered with collectibles. A massive bulletin board hung on the wall, covered in photos of her students. She seemed quite dedicated; Audrey wondered how she had managed to run a business, teach ballet, and lead a serial human trafficking scheme all at once.
"I'll take her laptop and you take her files?" Claudia asked.
"Sounds good," Audrey replied, crossing to the massive filing cabinets in the corner. No amount of pink magnets would have made them look less industrial, but that clearly hadn't stopped Briony from trying. "Wow," she muttered under her breath, surveying the magnets. This was dedication to the aesthetic.
She pulled the drawer open and grabbed onto a bundle of files, dropping them on the floor and then kicking off her heels and sitting down with her back to the wall.
Billing. Class applications. Costume orders. Cleaning services. Rent payments. Hours passed, and Audrey read over through every sheet of paper looking for evidence of anything. Any sort of lead, any unsettled debt, any details of other trafficking instances, or Oksana's case, or things she'd done to make someone want to stab her in the neck with a needle.
In that windowless office, it was hard to track how much time was passing. Claudia sat at the desk, typing away, as Audey combed through page after page of records, post-it notes, invoices, and letters. Nothing pointed to any bad business practice.
"Wait," said Claudia from the desk. "I'm looking at her email, look at this."
Audrey pulled herself off of the floor, grunting as her spine cracked and popped from the movement. On the screen, Claudia had opened up a video of someone dancing.
Of Oksana dancing.
She was extraordinarily elegant, balanced precariously on satin pointe shoes and twisting her body in circles to the rhythm of a dramatic piano melody. Nobody else was in the video, and the camera was too even to have been held by another person. No zooming in or out, no adjustments. Just Oksana, floating, the waves of her tutu bouncing delicately around her.
"Who is this from?"
"A fake Russian account," Claudia replied, exiting out of the video. "My best guess is that Oksana posed as someone else to get Briony to take her, but I'd have to get someone from cyber to help trace IP addresses to confirm anything."
"What else was sent from that email address?" Audrey asked, forward against the table and squinting at the screen.
Claudia exited out of the message. "Let's see," she said, typing the email address into Briony's search bar. There were only two threads, both from October. Audrey frowned.
The first thread was the one with the video. Neither she nor Claudia read Russian, so, like the talented secret agents they were, Claudia copied and pasted the message into google translate.
from: brionybyrne
to: luckyruple688
Subject: Do you like her?
She is beautiful and charming. Excellent dancer, on pointe, lyrical, jazz, etc. If you meet her you will understand what I mean. Will take $ 100 000 please let me know if you are interested.
from: luckyruple688
to: brionybyrne
Subject: re: Do you like her?
Yes. Tell me where to send.
"Do we have bank records?"
"They're all for the studio," Audrey replied, pointing back to the massive pile of papers on the floor. "Where did she say to send it?"
Claudia scrolled down. "There's an account number here, hold on." She pulled her own computer out of her bag and set it on the table, typing in a password and opening up the S.H.I.E.L.D. database. Audrey rocked back on her heels as she waited. After Claudia had typed in the routing number, Audrey clicked on the second email chain, which began two weeks after the first.
from: luckyruple688
to: brionybyrne
Subject: Gotcha
I hope you are pleased with what you have received. You will be held in high regard. Please check your account for payment.
Wait. If Briony had been paying for Oksana, why would she be the one receiving money? Or being held in high regard? And why was this email in English when all of the messages on the last thread from Lucky Ruple 688 had been in Russian?
"Do you see any deposits from that account being sent to Briony?" Audrey asked Claudia. "The second email chain says that they paid her."
"Give me a second," Claudia mumbled, switching rapidly between windows.
In her pocket, Audrey's phone began buzzing. She pulled it out—Lindsey. Leaving Claudia to focus in the office, Audrey headed out into the hallway to pick up the call. "Hello?" she answered.
"Pin grenade!" Lindsey exclaimed, with such force that Audrey almost ducked and took cover.
"What?"
"It's a pin grenade," Lindsey repeated. "The bomb. Pin grenade. I realized that it wasn't making sense, and then we got another box of shrapnel from the sight of the explosion, so I started over. It's a Soviet-made pin-grenade."
If it was a pin grenade, that meant—
"Whoever set it off was onstage?" Audrey asked, her voice uneven. She turned back into the office, where Cluadia was running the bank records. Her stomach churned as the pieces began to fit together. Briony had been paid for helping a Russian account out, and then she'd been killed with a knitting needle. More importantly—Oksana was in the Tower, now, with Bruce and Tony and—
Oh god. Bruce.
She needed to warn him. Before it was too late.
January 21, 2013 - Avengers Tower Residential Units - Manhattan, NY
Bruce didn't like JARVIS, because he didn't like the idea of a robot surveilling him 24 hours a day and storing that data and learning. It was impressive, absolutely, and useful to saving the world, no doubt. But neither of those things brought Bruce any comfort when it meant that JARVIS was watching him as he slept.
Or when it meant that JARVIS was waking him up.
"Doctor Banner, motion activity from an unknown source has been sensed outside your door."
Bruce squeezed his eyes shut tighter against the sudden light that the AI had sent spilling through his room. Who the hell cared if there was motion activity outside his door? As long as it didn't come inside, whatever it was could move as much as it damn well pleased.
"Doctor Banner, motion activity from an unknown source has been sensed outside your door."
"Be quiet," he ordered.
"Doctor Banner, I highly recommend that you investigate the source of the motion activity."
He balled up his hands in fists. "Why can't you do that? Isn't that your whole thing?" He huffed. "Don't answer that—I don't want to legitimize your existence by arguing with you." Throwing off the blankets, Bruce reached over to his nightstand for his glasses and ignored the stabbing pain in his head as he stood up too quickly.
When he looked through the peephole in the door, he didn't see anything. Just the shadowy dark hallway. Bruce sighed and rubbed his eyes, and then pulled the door open. He stuck his head out.
As he expected, the hallway was empty. "Dammit, JARVIS," he swore.
"Yes, Doctor Banner?"
Bruce glowered at the ceiling, and then leaned back into his apartment. He shut the door and locked it, and then stumbled back over to his bed. JARVIS was on the fritz, and he was going to have to talk to Tony about it tomorrow, and then Tony was going to accuse him of being jealous of his advancements in Artificial Intelligence, when really, it was a completely normal request to not be watched while sleeping. As he collapsed back into his bed and pulled the covers over his body, Bruce pushed away his annoyance at Tony and JARVIS, and the weird, unnamable feeling he had about Audrey asking to kiss him and then ignoring him for three weeks, and his frustration at the apparatus from earlier in the morning. He was angry at a lot of things, yeah, but he was more tired than anything.
On the kitchen counter, all the way across the apartment, his phone lit up with a message.
[12:14 am] Audrey Carter-Rogers: Bruce, I know we're not really talking, and you can be mad at me for that but please don't ignore this.
[12:14 am] Audrey Carter-Rogers: You cannot trust Oksana. You need to get out of there.
But Bruce was already asleep.
A/N: hello! sorry for the delay i was in a bad place because a friend of mine passed away last week and then i got into a weird headspace because i'm kind of worried nobody actually reads this lol ? anyway if you do still read this can you like let me know . you don't have to say anything else i'm just kind of in my feelings recently and could use some affirmation.
otherwise though please let me know what you thought of this chapter! what did you think of natasha and yelena? or the oksana reveal? i will be back soon with more! i hope you are all taking care and staying safe. thank you for reading!
Chapter Twenty-One: Double Crossed
"Bruce," Audrey said, her voice shaking. "I know you're in there somewhere."