16. Papers, Please

. . .

Coulson stuck them on a direct flight into Eastern Europe less than an hour after Natasha confirmed to him that she could map a clean route to the border. A few calls on the way and she had a van waiting for her in the Romanian city of Arad when they landed. Blessedly, Loki hadn't talked at all during the fast flight. He'd been busy preparing notes of his own, working over some sort of intricate diagram that was either magic or doctorate level experimental physics. Maybe there wasn't much difference. He didn't confide – fine with her. And when they retrieved the cheap, bleak looking van, he'd settled himself in the wide back of it without a word. His only request was that the vehicle have that open space if possible. Whatever.

She drove them west into the fringes of a large Romanian state park that would eventually butt up against the border, checking her phone now and then to see if there were any updates on the D.C. side of the situation yet. There weren't. Each time she was done she ended up flinging the phone onto the passenger seat, bopping it against the small carry-all and the smaller cargo it carried: a USB stick not much bigger than a child's pinkie, and a thin pet collar.

She was having a hard time getting over that. No point in asking the other cargo if this was really a thing about to happen. Every once in a while she looked back to see him sitting cross-legged and silent on the floor of the van in an outfit of incongruously ordinary black clothes – Jeans, for God's sake, and a cotton hoodie to boot. And every time, she swore in florid, coarse Russian under her breath. Picturing all the ways she could probably get a whack in on him, while his attention was utterly elsewhere. A demigod, an alien, yes. But they could bleed. She let the thoughts go, prioritizing the job over her idle fantasies. After a while, she stopped seeing him back there. Probably laid out to nap while he could, although she thought she got a whiff of ozone and electrical sparks once. It was likely just the creaky old van, the best her bribe and his request was going to snag on short notice.

The park's trails only went so far into the wilderness, part of whatever border deal Romania made with Latveria back when it was still operated by identifiable people. She pulled the van off-road, rumbling through some rugged terrain before deciding that was as far as the van was going to get. Then she lifted her chin up to pitch her voice into the back. "We've got a couple miles to hike before you'll see what the border looks like. I don't know how far out their observations go, so we need to get stealthy as of right now. You ready?"

She managed to make the question sound only slightly grudging. She felt completely valid in her attitude regarding SHIELD's adoption of the murderous alien, but that was still secondary. The job was always first. Professionalism made the hard core of her being, the ultimate fall-back when things got hot. What she felt wasn't important. What the team needed, that was king.

Natasha's question found no response. With a creak of the van's fake leather seat under her butt, she turned around to peer into the dim back. Her eyes went wide when she realized she couldn't see him. Did he bolt?

No way he could have changed already. There'd been no flashy action from the depths of the van. But then, maybe there wouldn't be. She remembered the smell in the air a little earlier and got out of the vehicle. She always checked her surroundings, but she wasn't hearing any ambitious hikers or park guards in the area. Then she went back to the van and opened the two wide doors. What she saw made her step back once.

It was one of the biggest cats she'd ever seen. The shape of it – of Loki – reminded her of a Maine Coon. No, she corrected herself. Bigger. Forest cat. Her numb, startled mind pulled the breed together as she looked at the way some of his long fur tips ended in almost silvery wisps contrasted against the thicker black that made up the rest of him. He sat primly on the edge of the opened van, regarding her with half-narrowed but striking green eyes in an angular and sleekly sable face. No trace of anything humanoid in them, just the cold, regal stare of an almost feral animal.

Yet it was somehow still clearly him.

It was probably the attitude. And the straggly, wild-looking mane along the animal's neck. She put her shoulders forward, pulling herself back together. Nothing more to this than what the jerk said he was going to do. She put a single finger up in front of the cat's triangular face. "If you show me your ass, we're going to have a problem."

His response was a slow blink, redolent with feline contempt. A thick, brushy tail curled around his front paws.

"Watch the sass." The back of her neck prickled as the cat blinked at her again. She could swear she almost heard a ghostly whisper following it – I'm a cat, what precisely do you expect?

Probably not actually his voice. Just standard cat antics. "Sit. Or whatever. I'm getting the gear bag."

. . .

Trust. Lucia von Bardas smiled at the weighty concept behind the word, a private gleam meant only for herself in the solitude of her hotel room. She spent her entire life stockpiling that commodity, built the first piece of it off the back of her dead father, and now the investment was paying off exactly as she'd hoped. In her hand was the advanced device that would ensure no one could overhear nor trace her conversations. As for the man on the other end of the phone line? He held enough idiotic braggadocio to be ultimately harmless. His mistakes could no longer touch her.

But she could use those mistakes to sacrifice him. Along with the others. She could permit herself a trace of regret that sacrifice was necessary, but the plan prevailed. It was their only chance.

Everything was perfect. From here, all she needed was time. Stir the Americans, and then maybe she'd take a train to New York and visit the UN. He would be forced to deal with the world, and in that might be enough chaos to end his control.

"Agger, you're worrying over precisely nothing." Lucia rolled her dark eyes up to the ceiling as she paced in slow, elegant strides, her voice both comforting and arrogant.

"I'm not worried, Lucia. I'm frickin' pissed off. I got played by some Hollywood bimbo. Do you know how that makes me feel?"

"I'm not sure I care. Latveria's begun to lash out, just as planned. No little uncertain whisper of my voice on your phone is going to stop his fury. He cares too much for what he owns, mechanical or living, to let such an insult stand. No, there are no options left for his prey."

"When this got started, you told me, you promised me none of this was going to come back to Roxxon. And then SHIELD started sniffing around. Look, I know the target's been chosen, but I can still get dragged into this mess. I don't want your boss-"

"His lordship," she corrected him, pride in her words and a lie on her lips.

"Whatever. I don't want that guy's eye turning on me. Not even for the money in play here."

"Not even for a little extra?" She baited the trap, knowing the depths of his greed. It would keep him connected, keep him tractable... usable.

There was a long, chilly pause on the other end. "Do I want to know?"

"I've tricked a few little items your way, enough to make you a kingdom of Wall Street, but how about a larger one?" She smiled, almost hearing the way his mind ticked along. "The next wave will come soon. He gives them a space of time to grow frightened, Dario, but he will send more of his creations to incinerate those he believes to be his enemies. And I know how to shut his machines down. He trusts me with that much. A single misfire, that's all it would appear as." She laughed, the sound bell-like in her smooth, carefully trained American accent. "How would you like to study a fully realized combat drone? An advanced robot designed solely for spreading doom and fear at the behest of a single master? What could you sell the American military once you've torn that apart and made it your own?"

"I want that."

"Of course you do, Agger. You're a businessman." The people of SHIELD were a worthy sacrifice in the name of salvation, she did not put them to the axe for pleasure. She believed in that. But the notion of letting one of the constructs destroy this vulgar Agger in his moment of greed? She turned and beamed out the window, looking across the D.C. sky and the future beyond it. "Let's do business."

. . .

"Well, we can't get audio, but we know she's in there." Skye's little 'ugh' noise filled the comm link. "Trying to get into the hotel system to see if she's got any requests in the morning. Taxis or whatever. Taking me a little bit, though. What the hell does it mean when a hotel has better security protocols on their 'net connection than most places with a top secret clearance?"

"I don't know, Skye. It means they actually did the thing where they scrambled both letters and numbers in the wifi password, and didn't just pick the name of the IT guy's dog?" May allowed a smirk at the second 'ugh.'

"I hate everything. Oh, hold on, I got it. Yay for off the rack encryption. K... yeah, no taxi, but she's got one of those really cool limos coming in the morning. The bullet-resistant ones and all."

"I was kind of thinking of not jumping straight to political assassination. She give any sort of itinerary?" If von Bardas moved through a publicly accessible space, May could get an approach together. But once she got under the umbrella of Capitol Hill, it was probably over. Hell, it might already be over. One wrong phone call, or maybe just a teleconference with the world via Skype, and this angle of attack was hash. She spared a thought for the other plan in action, wondering what exactly the pair was up to in Romania.

"She's playing it close. Breakfast call is at six am, dining area. Must be a morning person. Limo at seven-thirty. Gonna push then?"

"You got anything else?"

"Not yet."

May slumped in the seat of the anonymous-looking black sedan, one of dozens probably just on this block alone in the nation's capital. "Keep me posted. But no, until I get more, I'm just going to send in someone to tag and then track her. Look for a better window before jumping her. "

"No assassination, no interrupting brekkie..." Well, flippancy was one way of dealing with stress. "Oh, Romanoff sent a text message for you just now."

May arched an eyebrow. "What's it say?"

"'Mel, you would not believe the day I'm having.'" She attached a photo. You wanna – oh, hell no, you gotta see this."

She swiped up the incoming message, the other eyebrow lifting to match the first. "It does look like him. Only, you know, small and furry."

"Even as a cat he looks high maintenance."

"And in need of a brush."

They laughed like hell.

. . .

The cat easily kept up with Natasha through the thick brush as the Latverian border approached. He was either showing off or practicing advanced lessons in how-to-cat as he mostly chose to fox-jump from bundles of dead undergrowth to low-hanging branches as they traveled. For her part, she kept low; maintaining full cover and always with at least one eye on the sky.

"Fifty yards and you're across the border from here," she said when they came to the edge of a wide clearing. "This is where I stop, you'll notice there's no cover left. That's on purpose. Either end of the clearing is flanked hard, got a dangerous creek over there on the north end. Doesn't look wide, but it's deep. Lost an agent in there in the eighties, so don't go swimming." Or do, by all means.

She glanced down at the animal as it stared up at her through slit green eyes. Do you actually understand me right now? "Other side is a lot of underbrush and prickly crap. Doable, but I have a sneaking suspicion they've used it for their own transports in the past. But the way you are? Clearing's probably fine. And beyond that? Last report in the early seventies suggested the country's capital is about thirty miles in, straight down one of the few main roads. I got a distance view and I'm pretty sure that's right. You're going to have to wing it, but the road isn't hard to find."

The cat made a soft, fangy meek! noise. He dropped from the low branch at her side down to the ground, stopping for a quick preen of his mane before looking up at her expectantly.

Natasha took the USB out of her pocket first, holding it between two fingers while she dug for the coiled cat collar. She had a sudden, absurd mental image of Director Coulson standing in a PetCo with the unamused looking demigod, asking him if he wanted the one with the sparkly rhinestones, or maybe the more macho spiky number. She kept the laughter from burbling out of her, even as the actual collar she pulled out was a plain black strip of faux leather, with a new magnetic clasp attached by Engineering in place of the standard buckle.

The cat gave her a look like he knew damn well what she was thinking, and didn't find it funny in the least.

That made it funnier. Natasha took a slow, dragging inhale. "I'm not going to apologize, and I'm actually not going to do it on purpose, but I'm probably going to accidentally snag some fur here."

Another fangy mew, this one soundless. He stretched a little, the neck extending out and revealing just how furry the chest under his chin was. The prior amusement tore apart as she felt a sudden, almost physically disgusting reminder that she was about to touch him, Loki of Asgard, the alien freak who'd mind-tortured Barton and tried to cut apart her own psyche. She almost recoiled. All the cat saw was a tiny waver of hesitation.

She took another inhale and draped the collar along the back of the neck, digging her fingers into the soft fur along the chest to try and clasp it shut relatively tightly. Her thumb had to brush a tuft out of the way before the magnets pinched. Another quick move and she had the stick latched on, tugging some fur free above the strip to cover everything.

Her fingers itched from the sheer tickling hairiness of the animal, but she made herself study her handiwork before giving in to the urge to wipe her hands off on something, anything. The collar was all but hidden under the thick coat, camouflaged as a darker shape against the black. She took a slow swallow. "You going to be able to yank that off?"

The cat rose to all fours, stretching and wriggling its head around before sitting back down again. Then green eyes blinked up at her in what she could only assume was assent. Then it bounced smoothly down to the soft loam of the forest and began to bound across the clearing in long, agile leaps.

Then he was gone, the first outsider into Latveria in years. She found it in herself to wish him some fraction of good luck – just enough to get the job done.

Anything else, that's between you and whatever your people have for gods.

Though it certainly seemed like you thought you were more than enough God for yourself back in the day. So, you know, don't break yourself in half there looking for a merciful deity to cover you.

She slunk her way back into deeper cover and the safety of Romania, waiting for the next word to come.