Natasha Romanoff was a fierce woman, viciously independent and skilled in such a vast range of talents that anyone who looked at her résumé would shake their head in simple disbelief. She was SHIELD's lead interrogator, their greatest assassin, she could speak every language that mattered and she could kill with any object in any room, including her own body. So it was shock even to her, when she received official orders to infiltrate the office of Tony Stark and portray his assistant. It was essentially a babysitting gig and she was insulted that the paper work had made it to her desk in the first place. Her first thought was to chase up her Director and ask him why she had been stuck with the job, perhaps it was a mistake. Yet she knew as well as anybody that SHILED did not make mistakes.
The rundown of the operation had been gruelling, she was to make herself as alluring as possible, as she was only being placed as an assistant sent from the Legal Department, in order to officiate the handing over of Stark's business to his long time second in command Pepper Potts. The plan was to ensure Ton noticed her and went above Pepper's head to hire her as his own personal assistant. The plan worked out after the very first time she met him and he made the mistake of putting her in the ring with a man charged to protect the billionaire. Natasha had shown immediately that she was not just a pretty face and she had achieved her goal of capturing Tony's attention.
It should have been a simple undercover mission; she had expected it to be achingly boring right from the start and wished many times that another female agent had been slammed with the task. Though it rapidly became apparent that if this was a babysitting scenario, then Tony was a misbehaving toddler. He disappeared constantly, skipping scheduled appointments and showing up at random events. It reminded her that even the simplest seeming missions could turn into something chaotic and fatal.
It quickly became a game, where Pepper and Natasha were the players and Tony was some sort of prize, the object was to keep an eye on him at all times. Except she had a supreme advantage over the famous Pepper Potts, Natasha knew very well that Tony was slowly approaching his demise. And he knew it too, judging by his erratic behaviour, the handing over of his business, selling his private collections, donating millions under anonymous identities.
Her disguise as Natalie Rushman was working well, she was not under suspicion from anybody that met her while portraying Tony's assistant. He unlocked doors for her, slots into A-list events and important parties. Places Natasha did not want to be. There were foreign dignitaries at many of those events and she had screwed over nearly all of them. Both while she was freelance and while she was working under SHIELD.
Tailing Tony was difficult, even while playing his assistant and getting full access to wherever he went. He was still good at giving her the slip though, surprising enough in itself considering she was a highly ranked agent of SHIELD. She was starting to get good at predicting when he was about to take off, at least until the incident in Monaco when she walked away only a couple of minutes to get him a bottle of scotch from the bar.
As she moved back to the table and discovered he was gone, her rage threatened to break through her composure. She soon figured out where he had slipped off to, as full focus of the eyes in the room fell upon the screens.
"No, Stark what are you doing!" She hissed, watching him speaking to driver of one of the race cars –the car Stark was sponsoring. The billionaire had dropped the crisp black suit in favour of the blue racing uniform and it was only the gasps heard around the room that covered the sound of her knuckles cracking, her fists balling tightly. How was she supposed to keep an eye on him and ensure his safety if he decided to risk his life constantly? She had to get to him, had to drag his stubborn ass out of the racing car in a way that didn't blow her cover.
Could she play the damsel in distress? Fall to the ground in front of him and demand his attention. She shuddered at the idea, it went against every aspect of her nature, but she couldn't let him compete in the race. He was a good driver, she knew that for a fact, but she had to stop him. He was weaker than he was admitting even to himself, if he collapsed during the race it could be fatal.
She turned on her heel and smoothly exited the large room full of the upper class people acting as though they were a separate race from anything below them in status. The adjoining restaurant was as busy as it had been when they originally came through, but those gathered for the meal seemed to be transfixed on the latest developments unfolding on the circuit track. Natasha knew time was of the essence, she had to get to the starting line and stop the foolhardy idiot from killing himself.
Instinct made her pause mid-step and she slowly put her foot down, overwhelmed with the feeling that there were eyes on her. Not the usual perverted eyes belonging to the men, their vision ghosting over her figure and seeing her as nothing more than a woman with slender curves in all the right places, wearing a dress that could not have highlighted her body in a more elegant way without being overly revealing. No the eyes locked to her were in focus, they weren't just looking at her, they were watching her and observing her.
She turned and found her target immediately, a tall figure standing between the rows of tables, the only person in the room apart from her that was not watching the raised plasma screens showing the latest exploits of Tony Stark. This man was regarding her as though he could see through her, into her. His expression was completely unreadable and Natasha actually narrowed her eyes at him a little, worried and confused that she could gain nothing about him from his face.
From an incredibly young age Natasha had been trained to read men like open books, to study expression and body language in order to build a profile. She was the best interrogator in her organization because she knew which buttons to press, she knew when someone was lying, even if they had learned to fool a lie detector. She knew when to push forward or hold back, just by looking into her target's eyes.
The only thing she could obtain from her first glimpse of this man was that his eyes seemed impossibly green, too bright to be a natural colour and too full of depth to be read. He was stunning, everything about him was instantly alluring, from his sleek black hair to his high cheekbones, to the way he stood with his shoulders held high with dignity. And those lips, somehow holding a tone of severity and just a hint of playfulness.
Natasha could obtain no definitive detail about this stranger, other than one single point; everything about him screamed danger.
She needed to be cautious of him, he was clearly a threat, though he wasn't even standing in a way that suggested him to be an enemy. But Natasha had been around enough dangerous men to know he was one of them.
It was strange to be torn as she was internally, having one urge to know more about her watcher, to discover why his allure was so strong. But she was duty bound to ensure Stark did not lose his head.
Screams and shocked gasps called her attention to the screens again and she found it a monumental effort to tear her eyes from the emerald eyed man. She swore under her breath as she watched cars crashing through the live feed in the TV, a man was walking onto the track, risking his very life. Natasha forgot about her watchful stranger for a moment and took a step forward to the nearest television, studying this man who was holding whips. They were electrified in some way and there were shocked reactions all around her as the crowd watched him crack one whip down to slice an entire car in half, the shredded vehicle skittering in parts across the track, flaming as it crashed.
There were barriers all around the circuit of course, the track ran through the city so there needed to be a good deal of protection in case of an accident –or a direct attack. What concerned her, was not only the way these cars were being taken down, but the fact that the force of their crashing was projecting the pieces of flaming metal and wreckage high over the edge of the barriers.
The restaurant was close enough to the edge of the track to give those within an excellent view, through a window that covered the whole wall, giving the illusion of being outside and therefor closer to the action itself. She sensed the danger before anyone else in the room did, not the same kind as the dangerously alluring man who caught her attention on moments before, it was an imminent threat that sent chills down her spine and pricked her skin. Time seemed to slow for her, as it always did when there was some kind of hazard that demanded her attention. She whirled around, facing the direction of the window before anyone else around her had even figured out that there was a flaming chuck of car speeding through the air towards them.
She had picked up on it too late, her crimson curls were falling loosely around her shoulders by the time the incoming projectile had breached the wall of glass. In her mind death had already been picked as the only possible outcome, even if she lunged to the side, her legs would not escape and would be crushed. Her battle strategy and predictions were usually correct to the last detail and she knew there was no way she could escape death in that heart stopping moment.
An iron grip secured around her arm as she was yanked to the side so violently she wound have been thrown to the ground if her saviour hadn't blocked her with his body. She both felt and heard the explosion, the force of it whipping her hair around her face and the deafening sound of it popping her eardrums. With that kind of force and volume from the explosion, she knew by instinct that they were in the centre of it yet she could not feel her body being blown into shreds. She looked around, feeling her hair being whipped around, as though in a storm.
Her eyes widened as she saw the flames, not just a little on the floor but swirling all around her. They should have been eating her alive, devouring her body and burning her to ash. But she felt nothing, even though the searing flames were clearly strong and powerful. But she wasn't the only one untouched by the fire's appetite, the tall man who had been eyeing her before was standing beside her, one hand gripping her arm so tightly that it was surprising his nails weren't breaking her skin. His other hand was held out in front of him, his emerald eyes concentrating on the vicious flames as though telling them to stop with his hand.
A comical concept, except she should have been taken by the flames and they were not touching her, bypassing both of them as the explosion continued its course and then faded, revealing the damage to the restaurant. People had been killed and gravely injured, that was immediately apparent and screams of pain and anguish filled the air. The hold released on her arm and her head snapped towards the man who had apparently saved her. His green eyes held a slight amusement at her clear confusion and the corner of his lips twitched into a condescending smirk. He raised a slender finger to his lips as he watched her, his eyes studying her as intently as she was studying him.
She opened her mouth to ask him what the hell had just happened, if she was in some kind of sock, if she just hallucinated him protecting her from the flames in a way that couldn't be possible. He started to move away, still smirking at her as though he enjoyed her state. She tried to protest him leaving, she had to understand what had happened, her mind needed to hear the explanation. But she was being swarmed by other people, reporters trying to get her story, paramedics trying to check her for injuries. She tried to push them away and find the raven haired man, but he was already wandering away, his hands clasped behind his back. Natasha would have had to break her cover and kill all these people in order to chase her savoir down.
Later that evening Natasha sat in the small office of her recently rented apartment, her fingers rapidly moving over the keyboard in front of her and eyes locked onto the screen of her monitor. She was in the process of locating all of the footage from that day, whether it was from a security system of the building or from the cameras of the many reporters and tourists gathered for the race.
She was searching for visual evidence of what had happened to her, the event had not left her mind and while she knew she should have reported it to her organization, she had no idea what to say. They might have thought her crazy, maybe assuming the stress of the job was finally getting to her. There was no room in SHIELD for insane assassins. And there was no such thing as a retired assassin; that was a loose end that nobody wanted hanging around. She wasn't surprised when she discovered that while there was plenty of footage of her miraculous survival, though none of it was whole. Instead there was about five different cameras that managed to record Natasha and her stranger, but at an odd angle.
It took her half an hour to run through a program that could piece the images together, it was sketchy but it would have to do, she just needed to see what had happened. She needed to reassure herself that she had not imagined the strange man and the way he saved her.
She hit play and leaned forward, even though she could have seen the screen perfectly if she was seated normally. Where the images joined there was a fuzzy line to blend the colors, but it was watchable. She watched herself walk through the restaurant, stop suddenly and turn. The man who had flared her instincts was not on the screen and she narrowed her eyes a little as only a second later the image of her turned towards the glass wall of the establishment, sensing the new threat. From what she remembered, her standoff with her observer had been over a minute long, yet apparently transpired over only a couple of seconds.
Without removing her eyes from the screen, she reached for her coffee, fingers curling around the warm mug and bringing it to her lips to take a sip. She immediately coughed and spluttered as she watched the screen, stunned when the man seemed to teleport to her side and grab her arm, yanking her roughly out of dangers way. She set down her coffee and her fingers flew across the keyboard, rewinding the video and zooming in, maybe she had blinked and missed something. But no, one moment she was the only one there and the next, he was beside her, pulling her to safety.
She tapped a few buttons to slow it down frame by frame, hitting the arrow key to select the next still image. There was nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing and then suddenly a bluish haze in the air, lasting for only a single frame, and then he appeared, his hand reaching for her arm.
She shuffled back and rose to her feet, dropping her cup on the desk so suddenly that the liquid sloshed over the edges, running a shaking hand through her curling locks. She was wearing only her training shorts and a black tank top, the night was unusually warm but she found herself shaking and not from the cold. Her hands kept pushing her hair back from her face as she paced a full circle around her desk and leaned back down towards the computer, running through frame by frame again. It couldn't be, it simply couldn't be right. This wasn't possible.
Her head snapped up as she heard a scraping noise, sounding not far from her closed office door. Without even blinking her right hand pulled a gun from the top desk drawer and she made her way through the apartment to the small balcony door which was open just enough for a person to slip through.
Oddly, she knew for absolute certain that she had closed it and made sure it was locked. Natasha was not the type to leave doors or windows open by accident.
Her senses pricked in a way that reminded her directly of when she had sensed someone following and watching her in the restaurant. She spun around so fast that her curls were dislodged and fell loosely around her pale face long after she finished turning.
"Good evening." A self-satisfied voice spoke up from the centre of her lounge and she took a moment to realize the man who had not left her mind all day, was seated on her couch.