Welcome to the part where I make Tony Stark and his juice habit a running joke. Seriously he had juice in like three/four movies.
.l.l.
Natasha Romanoff was starting to feel like she was being had.
She remembered scouting the lonely house perched in the backwood slopes of Maine. Gravel crackling underneath the chunky Stark-issue snow tires, easing down the long, skinny driveway. Two months ago Nastasha leaned into the rearview mirror exactly as she did now. The Acura RDX supplied to her was a reliable car, but cheap; the Milano leather groaned against her weight. Normally, cars like this would be lined with leatherette or polyurethane, Stark's habit of vanities eked out in small ways like authentic leather or custom tires, even when he was trying to be subtle. Maybe she was just accustomed to nitpicking. Her job was funny like that.
In the past, she examined the lace on her wig, patting the glue, ensuring its blend into her scalp was perfect before exiting the car and shrinking her gate into the timid two-step of a census taker. Blonde was her least favorite color for herself, she was glad to be free of it this time around. Her red hair stood out in the snow like a firebrand.
She surveyed dozens of houses that trip, and the one she was at now certainly hadn't stood out. The file in her hand flipped open, the owner: Simone Kadam, a short, brown-skinned woman with shoulder length black hair and wide, dark eyes, looked frazzled back up at her. Natasha had a good memory. The Spider recalls being sat on her couch, sipping water as she skimmed over the contents of Simone's bookshelves while sharing an unremarkable conversation. She'd written it off as the hospitality of a woman who cherished her privacy. No different than the dozens of other interviews she conducted that day.
The little picture burned back up at her.
"What were you hiding?" Natasha mumbled.
Last time, she had trotted up to the house mildly annoyed her shoes would be wet since Simone didn't bother to shovel, either not caring or not expecting guests; she'd rung the doorbell and plastered on a sucrose smile.
Now there wasn't even a doorbell to ring.
Simone Kadam's house was... missing. Right down to the foundation.
It was uncanny, no dirt tainted the heavy snow around the property. There was only a deep, black absence in the outline of a one bedroom, single-story complex. The pipes were broken, sticking out of the dirt like sapling trees, either frozen or wheezing against their inevitable frost. The death-song of metal and water let her know whatever happened here was recent, that the bills had been paid. Natasha has a realization: It was possible Simone Kadam wasn't expecting to leave.
Or maybe she was already gone, and this was all another misdirection. A stratagem she was too close to see.
She felt a twang of deep, cloying frustration. This was the second person to slip between her fingers without warning. Bruce Banner's sanctimonious 'retirement' chewed at the back of her conscience. How much longer would she be chasing shadows?
Natasha stands on the edge of the pit, and drops. The landing rattles off her ankles as she tries to reimagine the floor plan before it was reduced to a hole in the ground. A pipe hissed, stuck up from the earth cartoonishly like a gnarled zombie claw. Reaching.
Nothing about what she was seeing made sense. There were a few distinct tire prints in the snow but not enough to possibly, a truck, she figured, by the fat diagonal cuts of ten radial ply tires, but a semi wasn't enough to move an entire building; not in one piece, not without at least getting the snow dirty. It was like the house decided to get up and fly away with Simone Kadam inside it.
"Ms. Romanoff!"
She looked up, a portly agent with a loose tie tugged at his coat and waved down at her, "Ms. Romanoff we've got to go, there's been an incident!"
Natasha squints, reluctant to be pulled away from her work, "Did one of the boys break something again?"
"No ma'am, there was a bomb."
"Oh."
"Yes, ma'am," The suit agrees remorsefully, he reaches down to offer her a hand, "The Quinjet is on its way."
Natasha sighed, and reached up to meet his grasp when she saw it, a shiny little bauble among the frozen dirt:
A lone silver finger.
"Today is not my day."
"No ma'am, I don't believe it is."
.l.l.
By the time Natasha made it back to New York, Tony had worked himself into a frenzy. The sound of his hell-raising slipped under the milky glass of the Avengers' new, unofficial office. They had had an official one, but apparently it'd been blown up in the five hours that Natasha's been away. None of the Avengers were home at the time of detonation. Seven agents, five scientists, and one secretary died in their place. Swept up in their lapse. The youngest was 18, Eva Silberman, a brilliant local girl who joined their team after Loki. They gave her a scholarship to be there. Natasha imagines all 13 of them sitting in the bottom of a sink and turning on the tap, they swirl down the hole without a peep, washed away forever.
The door stops her, hand hovering over the keypad. She didn't want to see anyone. Tony should've told the staff to go home. Maybe he had but they, spurned by the death of their colleagues, decided to stay. Maybe they were just doing their job, like her, maybe she was projecting her desire to have something, anything done, onto them. Staying was the professional thing to do. It's what Natasha would do. Seeing herself in others had always made her uncomfortable.
Natasha hits the button, the door slides open with a hiss.
"Nat!" Steve greets, visibly relieved to see her. He got up and walked over to clap her on the back, pulling her close. He forced as much of a grin as he could. It wasn't much, "Thank god you're here, I'm at the end of my line."
"Sorry pal, I'm not here to take over Stark-sitting," She returns his look, they're exhaustion matched.
Tony flipped them off.
'Cranky,' Steve mouthed to her. He shrugged and retreated back to his seat at the head of the 'd undoubtedly been working double time to direct agents while backtracking on Tony's snippy, turbid storm. Meanwhile the former spun around the room kicking his feet up on any surface at his disposal, pointing pens like a Yad for this or that. Highlighting a specific moment in the security footage, or tapping incessantly on a line of text until he got the response he needed.
"You two are so adorable when you play together," Natasha teased, after she'd settled on one of the sleek, black office chairs along the table. She ran her thumb over the material; real leather.
"How're you guys holding up?" She turned to Tony for the sake of pestering him, and asked, "There's a startling lack of green slime out here, have you had your juice yet?"
"No, I haven't had my juice, Natasha." He replied in his best are-you-seriously-doing-this-now-I voice, "But hey, we're alive, at least."
'Cranky,' Steve mouthed to her, again.
Tony flapped his hand, done with them, shunting the catch-up chat to Steve. He went back to picking through a stack of manilla folders on the cluttered table. Natasha paused, realizing the fern from the old conference room was sat in the chair next to him, somehow it survived the blast a few floors above.
Of course it was okay, she'd only been trying to kill the damn thing for months.
"We got most of the rubbled cleared, but as far as we can tell whoever did this either died in the explosion or hightailed it back to hell.."
"It's the later," Tony chimed in, pointedly ignoring Steve, "FRIDAY's missing 20 minutes of data, completely scrubbed."
"Enough time to get in and take something," Natasha surmised, "You think someone had a case of sticky fingers?"
"Yes, exactly, and Jesse James or not there's no denying they're camera shy. You don't go to all that trouble incapacitating FRIDAY unless you're worried about showing up on a shit list for breaking my stuff. I mean our stuff. I mean our stuff that I made and paid for."
"Thank you, Tony. Alright, so they get the Iron Legion, FRIDAY, and wait till we leave house to take… what, exactly?"
Tony sighed and threw his pen across the room. It bounces off the glass with a sad plink, "Ladies, and gentlemen, the billion dollar question."
Steve raised an eyebrow at her, silently saying, watch this.
"Isn't it a 'million dollar' question?"
"Steve, be nice, he's thirsty."
Rogers held up both hands innocently. Absolving himself.
Tony paused, and whipped up from his ipad before snatching off the crimson Tom Ford sunglasses he insisted on wearing everywhere he went, irregardless of setting. They made him look ridiculous and perpetually hungover. It's the fluorescents, he justified to her once, makes me feel like a gerbil, you know? The Tony in her memory sucked his teeth, approximating a gerbil sound. "You enable each other too much, it's despicable. Especially you, Patriot Act."
He sighed, tragically, "I try and introduce you ungrateful bastards to something healthy on on a lark-"
"FRIDAY, could you please send someone up with juice for Mr. Stark?" She pouted at him in mock sympathy, "Poor thing hasn't had any all day." Steve snorted into his water bottle.
"Yes, Ma'am!" The program lilted.
"FRIDAY, belay that." He waved his hand around, scrubbing her words away. "You won't think you're so funny when I'm pushing 90 and still maintaining homeostasis."
"I'm doing all right," Steve said.
Tony frowns in displeasure, his most reliable dig against the Captain turned against him, "It's not funny when you do it."
They let the room fall silent, only the sound of Tony aggressively flicking through papers, manifests, inventory lists, Stark Tech pads with project files running diagnostics for potential stolen tech, and the dull steps of agents thudding beyond the walls. He was being thorough, feverishly so. Natasha's mood darkens, the implications of someone stealing his tech were vast and numerously terrifying. Tony was trying to keep his cool but moved like a man possessed when left alone. He looked wane. They both did.
Steve clears his throat, sensing the shift. He meant well but she wanted to punch him for breaking the silence, "So, how was Maine?"
"Mixed. Do you want the weird news or the bad news, first?"
"Bad." Tony said immediately, "And don't give me that look, Rogers, it's band-aid praxis."
She sighed, setting her briefcase on the table, rhythmically sliding the combination in its steel lock, it opened with a click, clean and mechanical, "Deep breaths for this one, boys." She flips the case and slides it to Stark. Rogers wheeled around the table to peer over his shoulder. The both of them stared, dumbstruck by the dangerous implication of a single, robotic finger.
It was Steve who spoke first, "Fuck... is that?"
"I think it wants to be."
Tony jumps, "Aha! Admit it, you don't think it's him."
"I don't know what I think, but I know Ultron wouldn't just forget a body part... unless Tony has another side project he failed to enlighten us on." Natasha paused, "Someone's working very hard to point fingers."
"That doesn't mean we can ignore this."
She nodded to Steve, trying not to show insult that he assumed she would. Natasha covered all of her bases. She was a professional-something they repeatedly found issue with, yet habitually managed to forget while on the clock. A good agent was a good multitasker, Natasha kept her voice neutral, "Good thing I've got two hands, then."
"I'm not saying we ignore it, but we're being cattled," She said. "That finger was at one of the houses Stark told me to check up on. With the way I found it, it may as well have been gift wrapped."
Steve nods, appeased, she smiled.
"Anyone else getting sick of being led around like dogs?" Tony grumbled, throwing down the folder, "I've got this running hypothesis connecting all our recent spats, something about.. 'Workplace Drama'-"
"We are historically easy to manipulate." Steve said, running interference.
She clicked her tongue, "You said it, not me."
He frowned, Steve often looked like he was chewing on something sour when he thought. It tended to rub people the wrong way, made them think he was judging over deliberating, "Whatever the game is, I'm not so sure this and the explosion aren't mutually exclusive. What about the owner-" He paused to find the name, "Simone Kadam?"
"Now for the weird-" Natasha got up and moved to stand behind the two, shuffling through the documents herself.
She extracted a smaller parcel and laid her prize across the tempered glass, all photos of where Simone Kadam's house should have been. The material slapped against the table, a metronome of crater after crater after crater, "-Suffice to say, no one was home. I knocked."
"27, unwed, expired passport, oh, work history says she never worked for me, thank God...," Tony rattled on, he stopped reading to let out a deep sound of disgust in the middle of Simone's dossier, "A liberal arts student."
"She's the only lead we have. Everything beyond that I'm drawing blanks," But why? The reason was blurry, amorphous, Natasha read everything in that file a dozen times over. What was the connection between Simone Kadam and Ultron's shrike? The details flitted around in her skull like gnats, but never connected to anything, never striking a thread in her web. All they had were 13 dead agents and a name.
"This could be our golden ticket." Steve says. The bags under his eyes looked heavy, sunken, "Right now, I don't care about the house, we need her here. Yesterday."
"Well, it's settled." Tony announced, rising to his feet. The roller chair went careening out behind him. She recognized the new fire in his eyes. They needed this: the next mission.
"Let the hunt for Simone Kadam, begin!"
Natasha grinned, come out, come out, wherever you are.
.l.l.
Uh oh, things are gearing up. Glad to be sticking in more of the cast, despite how bugged out writing them makes me(queue the constant terror of making them OOC VS personal headcannons.)
Thanks for reading! I hope you all are well.
Writing as I worked really hard on this chapter, leave a review and say hi! It'd mean a lot!