It would have been easy for the assassin to awaken in the morning with the knowledge of her previous night's encounter being nothing more than a strange and confusing dream. The moment her eyes flicked open and she was met with the sight of her alarm clock flashing in bright LED letters as it buzzed to the most annoying tune. Nothing out of the ordinary with such a morning wake up, the dreaded song of her alarm was a familiar sound and the time was not unusual in itself. Her body felt weakened, drained of energy but in a vastly different way than if she was merely tired.
The scent of blood in the air was the defining factor which drew her attention completely to reality with enough force to project herself into a sitting position, her eyes widening and then narrowing at the amount of blood that she could see down her body. Natasha lifted a hand to wipe the side of her mouth where she could feel dried blood staining her skin, her eyes still tracing the red liquid that had been smeared across her clothes and sheets, staining the top duvet on the bed before drying.
It did not take her long to decide she needed more evidence in order to support the idea that she was not crazy and in fact had been visited by a man who nearly killed her before healing her back into near perfect condition. Her bare feet moved quickly over the thin carpet of her bedroom, the peachy cream color was notably not stained with blood and leading her to assume she had not been able to get to the bed by herself. Seeing the couch had been moved and the kitchen ceiling nearly destroyed was enough proof to corroborate the story her mind had feebly tried to pin on an exhaustion filled dream. She could feel nothing wrong with herself, no broken bones or internal bleeding and yet she so vividly remembered the agony of such injuries.
To have experienced such sharp pain across her body was one thing, but to then have been filled with warming energy was completely different. She had been able to feel her body slowly mending itself, the pain alleviating while the glow of something stronger filled her, something indefinable and inexplicable that shocked her enough to hold a stronger memory than the fierce pain her body had been ruled by.
Even as she stood in the kitchen barely two steps from where she had been lying the night before, she could look down at the small pile of rubble and think of that feeling of restoration pulsing through her body without focusing on the remnant of pain that prickled in the back of her mind.
Intriguing was the best word she could use to describe the entire situation as a whole, the shock or worry about it all was being pushed to the side while she battled with her interest in the subject.
Because she could remember what he told her when she croaked out her desperate question, before her mind had been able to completely process that the man in her apartment had just brought her back from the edge of death through methods that were no doubt miraculous.
"Loki. Of Asgard." She murmured the words aloud, her arms folding across her chest for a moment as she struggled to digest that information. Well now that just couldn't be right.
"Loki…. Of Asgard." Her voice sounded foreign even to her own ears, so wrapped up in the complications of such an admission that she could barely focus on anything else. She had experienced inexplicable events first hand, the drama of her rescue at the race track, the couch moving by itself and the feeling of being thrown into the air with seemingly nothing propelling her to do so. Then of course the wonderful rush of energy that flooded her body while it healed. But Natasha could not fathom that his words were correct. They simply could not be. While she had no explanation for the outrageous events having befallen her, she could not believe this was a God she was dealing with.
A Norse God, one she could recite very little about off the top of her head but one that was hardly in the backstage of the myths spread over the centuries. The God of… Chaos? Mischief? Lies? She tried to think of what she knew, mythology was hardly a subject she had dabbled into extensively, she had too much of her time that was needed for the real world, not for characters of books and stories.
Although, in every culture there were Gods to be worshipped and prayed to, beings descending from heaven or some other world in order to visit at one point or another. Many theories over them all, many different tales that looked into the less literal side of things and into the personification of these beings. Gods were known to all those who dwelt in the world, whether believed or not but merely knowing of something or thinking of something was a term of existence in itself.
I think therefor I am.
I think of this, therefor this exists.
The assassin shook her head and rubbed her forehead with recently chipped manicured nails. "Shower." She muttered out loud and made a straight path through the small apartment to the humble sized bathroom with every intention of washing the blood from her pale skin. Her clothes were stripped and set neatly into the corner of the room, she was going to scrub every inch of the place to ensure no traces of her blood could be found and it made no sense to dump thin garments haphazardly on the tiles in order to create more of a mess.
She took an extended amount of time in the shower than she normally would have, needing to clean herself as thoroughly as humanly possible as she detested the idea of having any single speck of dried blood on her skin. The soaps in her bathroom were just part of the many details that cemented her cover, if for any reason her apartment needed to be searched then anything from toiletries to clothes to choices of beverages and foods in the kitchen would collaborate the backstory she had been given for her role as Tony Stark's personal assistant. Shampoo and conditioner were a reasonably big hint, a duo set of relatively expensive product designed to leave curly hair luscious and shining. Not entirely unlike what she would normally use, they were purchased from a gift shop in her 'home town' supposedly by her 'mother' who was saddened to see her move away to the big city.
The body scrub was something more luxurious and intended to leave skin smooth and shiny, there was a letter in Natasha's desk draw dated a month previously in which her 'mother' raved on about the sales and bargains she had picked up recently at the range of stores in the mall where the gift shop was stationed. She had also gone on to state she hoped the items were adequate as the sales lady didn't seem to know much about them. Details were always the key to cover stories. Pointless details that nobody cared about and were not important unless there were suspiciously few of them.
"Well they weren't meant to remove blood I can explain that much in a product review." Natasha muttered to herself as she thought of the letter while having to wash her hair twice and spend even more time on her body.
Still after scrubbing herself several times she remained under the moderately powered spray of relatively hot water for some time longer, as if the feel of it cascading down could wash the tension from her body. Doubtful, very doubtful. If only she was not a manipulative assassin, if only she did not know how to play everybody in the room and ensure she had control of every situation, then perhaps she could allow for such minor luxuries of thinking running water over tired muscles could be calming.
When Natasha finally exited the shower, the steam had filled the small bathroom with enough density to prevent her perfect vision from being called just that. With steady hands she dried her body as thoroughly as she had washed it, her mind still locked onto that face and those piercing green eyes.
He was so very beautiful, as all the most dangerously poisonous creatures usually were.
Looking through the misted mirror she could have said the same thing about herself and she would not have been wrong. No… Natasha knew she was beautiful. But she did not use this information in a conceited way; she used it as a weapon. Her whole being was a weapon, she was dangerous in every form, while armed or wearing armour and no less so while standing in her bathroom dressed in nothing but a towel, drenched curls hanging down around her shoulders and back to form a flowing illusion of liquid fire.
Unlike many other women who were aware of their remarkable beauty, she spent little time in front of the mirror to view herself before she ran the towel through her hair in a brief fashion just to catch the water that would otherwise be pouring down from the abundance of hair plastered to her skin.
Shortly after she made the call into work, explaining to Miss Potts that she needed a day or two for relaxation after the events of the previous day. Not even sure herself if she was meaning the attack at the track or the attack at her apartment. It was a valid request, though one she knew Stark would have denied if it had been an accident and not the case of a man walking onto the race track. Though she had not been there to witness it in person, she had found many angles of footage that showed Tony Stark being directly attacked by this man and it had been a close call, from what she could gather.
Just before she pulled out her hair dryer to properly maintain the mass of curls she used to attract her prey, she sent a text to the number in her phone under the heading of 'Mom'.
'Yesterday was insane, I don't even know what happened, it was all too fast. Don't worry; I'm okay though I know you will panic anyway. Everything okay with you, is that flu any better yet? It seemed about the same when you last called me. Miss you, Xx.'
-I have no Intel on this situation, update me
-No injuries, no issues, cover not compromised
-Is Stark's poisoning any better or is the gradual acidity increasing at the normal rate?
Coded messages were hardly uncrackable, but sometimes making them a decent level of secrecy meant perhaps it is not a code and a legitimate message. If one was to intercept then there would be a thousand different possibilities for the message and the meanings. Is every word a cipher? Every second word? The letters? A predetermined message? Was the position of the punctuation important or random? Was every sentence a specific message or the first three words?
Natasha was a master sleuth and she knew how to cover her tracks. Well enough so that anyone snooping after her would be over thinking if she wanted them to be.
Once her hair was dry she finally got around to cleaning the apartment and she was extremely methodical about it. No corner was left untouched, even if it was in a different room to where the fighting occurred. She scrubbed the floors and the walls, disposed of the broken glass from the light shade she had kicked and soaked her bloodied clothes in bleach before she bundled them into a small secure safe and lobbed a lit match into the tiny space. The flames caught instantly but she was already closing the door and there was no time for any smoke to reach the detector set into the ceiling above her. The sheets from her bed were too large to dispose of in such a way so she had to tear them down into smaller strips, piling that material into the safe once the previous lot had burned to nothing but ash, the fire inside starved of oxygen rapidly after burning whatever the bleach had touched with its flammable nature.
One could never be too careful about the destruction of evidence; no amount of paranoia was too much. She knew from experience, from slipping up by just a tiny amount and causing pain and terror for herself. But she also knew from the other side of the fence, when she had caught up to a target because of something stupid, a poorly discarded receipt or wrapper, a forgotten item with DNA –toothbrush, hair brush, cotton swab, lip balm, tissue used for a nose bleed or paper cut… the list was extensive.
She had learnt to be careful and there had been many mistakes in her past that caused enough problems to ensure she could never repeat them so long as she was of sound mind. Natasha Romanoff was not a novice, she was not even remotely close to being classed as an amateur. She was of the highest status in her respective circles, she had been trained by many of the best and shaped into one of the most lethal weapons ever to have been created by mankind. Her espionage was linked with such skills and her assassinations could not be traced back to her unless she allowed them to be. She was no longer freelance, she worked within the confines of SHIELD but she was not exactly a part of the team. She was accepted by few and trusted by less people than it would take to count on one hand. But she would have it no other way.
When she was finished cleaning her apartment from top to bottom there was a residual scent of bleach in the air that was wonderfully reassuring. She checked everything again and finally made herself a coffee while putting a medley of food in the oven. She cooked the chips and patties until they were burned, her intention had not been to eat them but rather to overpower the smell of bleach with charred food. A trick she had used many times before.
She did try not to think about the man who had claimed to be a God and she did well to avoid searching for information on him as that would only hold more thought to his words being correct. She could not believe it, there were some things that were simply not possible and such things gave her a headache if she tried to understand them.
But she knew by instinct that she would be seeing him again.