Whew, it's been a while, huh guys? College is rough. I swear it sucks the life out of you. Honestly, I really shouldn't be doing this. I should be studying, not writing. Oh well, I needed to de-stress a bit.
Also, sorry about the short chapter. I don't have much time on my hands at the moment, but I promise to make it up to you guys in later chapters.
I DON'T OWN ANYTHING
When I found you,
you could run so fast.
You were a speed train,
And you were still on the run,
You would just crash right in,
And then you just move along.
Eastern coastline, near New York, United States – 10:37
Two days later, the hover carrier approached Delaware under the cover of night. Fury had already contacted his superiors in DC, arranging for repairs to be ready and waiting once the ship reached the New York base. After the initial damage had been assessed and the repairs ordered, Fury called for his two best agents to meet in his office. Romanov and Barton showed up exactly on time, ill-concealed curiosity on their features.
"Agents." He greeted them with a nod. "I'm sure you two have been wondering what to do with your recent stray."
"I assume you are referring to One-seventeen." Clint drawled.
"Yes…" Fury drawled as he glanced down at the papers on his desk.
The face of the young woman stared up at him, a photograph taken when she was still working for the Soviets, clipped to the sadly thin file that sat open in front of him. SHIELD agents had scoured high and low for information regarding the young Widow, but there was very little to be found. Fury was impressed with the girl – she had managed to stay under the radar for years, working under aliases and avoiding any detection by any government. There were a few reports about her more high profile targets – the president of Ceylon, a few ministers and senators of varying countries – but every time she came out of the shadows to complete a mission, she would disappear right afterwards, eluding all law enforcement. Only half of her kills were even confirmed, the others were mere speculation, with no direct evidence to link her to the crimes.
"I think we are all aware that we cannot just let her go. She is too dangerous, and she knows too much about SHIELD by now." Fury looked up at his agents, noticing Natasha subtly attempting to read the file in front of him, which was upside down from her position. "Not to mention that she is a valuable asset. Fighting skills aside, she also has an in-depth knowledge of crime organization and the black market."
"And how exactly are you going to get her to cooperate?" Natasha asked dubiously. "The moment you let her out of your sight, she will run. And when she does, you won't catch her again."
"I was hoping you could convince her, Romanov."
Natasha looked surprised. "Me? How?" She scoffed, "We might both be Widows, but that is all we have in common."
"You know better than anyone else what it takes to guarantee a Widow's cooperation." Fury pointed out. "I trust you'll figure it out."
"Tash was different." Clint countered. "She wanted out. The girl does not."
"Then find out another way." Fury shrugged. The redhead's mouth thinned in displeasure. "Don't worry, Romanov, you'll have plenty of time to figure it out."
"What do you mean?" Natasha asked cautiously.
Fury stood up with the file in hand, walking around his desk to approach the agents. He handed the file over to Natasha, stating simply, "I'm assigning her to your team."
"What?!" Clint yelped in surprise.
Natasha gave the director a dirty look. "I am NOT training some kid." She stated stubbornly without glancing down at the papers. "Clint and I have a long and established partnership. Any agents that were assigned to our team in the past were either unable to keep up in terms of skill or unable to fall into our team dynamic. Assigning One-seventeen to us would be a disaster."
But Fury was watching agent Barton, who looked less resolute in the decision. The archer was leaning over Natasha's shoulder, eyes flickering over the file. "Tash, when was the last time we even heard rumors about another Widow? Let alone meet one in the flesh?"
The redhead glanced over to her partner.
"Hear me out," Clint held up his hand to forestall her rebuttal. "You and I thought that there were no more survivors of the Red Room, and now we have one two floors down in the med bay. If we don't take her in, then she will find a way to escape, and then we may never have a chance to catch her again. And you and I both know the kind of shit she would get herself into. If I had not convinced you to join SHIELD, where do you think you would be now?"
Natasha's expression became a mix of trepidation and understanding. She would have led the rest of her life as a gun for hire, hands bathed in blood, spending her nights alone and on the run. She could not even imagine her life without Clint at this point.
"Tash... she's one of the last survivors of the Black Widow program." Clint sighed, no doubt aware of the thoughts running through her mind.
Both Clint and Natasha looked down at the photo of the girl, probably taken three or four years prior. She was younger in this image – too young. If they had to guess, One-seventeen was about twelve or thirteen when the picture was taken, all too thin, flat chest, baby fat around her cheeks, with her hair pulled into a low ponytail. She could have passed for a normal teen if not for the look in the girl's eyes, cold and ruthless as she stared up at them, simmering with a rage all too familiar. If she was anything like Natasha had been, she wasn't just lost in the dark - she was drowning in it, her ledger dripping red.
Clint leaned in to whisper in his partner's ear. "I gave you a chance, didn't I? If we don't give her one, who else will?"
"You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved, Clint." Natasha hissed at him.
"Perhaps she doesn't know it yet." Clint replied. "You were the same way, right?"
His partner shook her head with a sigh. She muttered something that sounded like 'fuckin' saint' under her breath as she turned back to Fury.
"And what about out missions?" She questioned. "They are not exactly field trip material."
"From what I've read about the girl, your missions are nothing that she has not dealt with before." Fury told her. "She will accompany you as a normal member of the team on your missions. I don't think she will hold you back in the least."
The woman's shoulders slumped in defeat. Taking as a sign of surrender, Clint nodded to their director.
"We accept."
"Unless, of course, she escapes again."
Clint sighed and massaged his temples while Natasha ran out of the suspiciously empty medical cell and yelled for the guards. The two guards which should have been posted outside of One-seventeen's room had been their first tip that something was off. After that, the two agents were not too surprised to find the empty cell.
Still… Clint thought with increasing frustration, How the hell did she escape those cuffs? The first time I understand, that set may have had an electronic key, but they had a hinge which could have been exploited with the right application of pressure. But the last set of cuffs… Someone must have released her.
Natasha's hurried footsteps drew Clint's attention away from the vacant hospital bed. He turned to look at her, and tensed at the severe expression on her face.
"All of the guards in the medical sector are dead." She said with a flat voice, eyes hard. "Their bodies were piled into one of the cells. No blood trail."
Fuck. Clint growled inwardly as he fell into step next to his partner as they pulled out their respective weapons and armed themselves, all the while walking quickly towards Fury's office.
They encountered no suspicious activity on their way there – in fact, it seemed like the rest of the personnel seemed unaware of the situation. Most likely, Clint and Natasha had been the first on the scene. They quickened their pace; hopefully they could get Fury to apply some damage control before the crew on the ship panicked. The recent surprise attack had already rattled plenty of nerves.
The two agents practically spilled into Fury's room, their director turning to face them with his usual scowl. But before he could open his mouth to berate them, Clint spoke first.
"We have a problem."
"Heh."
One-seventeen chuckled to herself as she calmly walked next to a uniformed guard. She herself had changed into a SHIELD uniform, helmet tipped to cast a shadow over her face, hand casually remaining close to her gun holster, which she had also stolen off of one of the guards they had killed.
I'm impressed. To think he has spies even within SHIELD. Wonder how he did it. She thought as she regarded the stoic man beside her, a rather quiet young man with short brown hair, dull brown eyes, and a plain face overall (all perfect traits for infiltration). Still sucks though. Looks like I'm in his debt again.
Her gaze was drawn back to the scene in front of her. They were now exiting hallway into one of the helicarrier's flight hangars, planes and jets parked just beneath the surface of the ship's deck. However it was not a plane they were looking for.
The man wordlessly led her towards the side hangar. She pauses to shoot a displeased glance at the capsule before her.
Ugh, I hate drop pods. She frowns.
"This ship is currently pulling into SHIELD headquarters in New York City. We're currently somewhere between the lower bay and Sandy Hook Bay." The man explains, speaking to her only the second time since he entered her cell and told her who he worked for. "They'll be entering the upper bay in less than an hour. Which means you'll be landing in coastal waters, just off the coast of Staten Island. I trust you can swim?"
She makes a scoffing sound.
"Thought so." The man agreed. "I've already stuffed supplies for you within this pod. My employer will wait twenty-four hours for you to find him at the designated meeting place. If you do not appear, he will hunt you down and kill you. Do you understand?"
"Yeah, yeah."
One-seventeen nods and holds back a grimace as she ambles towards one of the open pods. It was basically a metal cocoon, equipped with a small parachute and shock absorbers. A special ops carrier for delivering soldiers quickly and stealthily into occupied territory. Hardly comfortable at all, but certainly effective.
"It is our only shot at getting you out of here unnoticed." The man reminds her, noticing her slip of hesitancy. "We must hurry."
With a nod she climbs in, fitting herself into the semi-sitting, semi-standing position that the seat provides. She tightens the straps of her helmet and clenches her jaw as the lid of the pod hisses and lowers down over her head. The infiltrator stands in front of her, still visible through the slit of shatter-proof glass fitted to be at eye-level for the operative inside. One-seventeen buckles herself in and nods at her collaborator. The man lifts the plastic cover over the eject button, and pushes it.
The ejection door beneath the capsule slides open, and metal arms which secure the drop pod begin to lower. And then –
She's falling.
One-seventeen can't help but yelp in a half-scream as her stomach flips, a moment of suspense and weightlessness before gravity takes over, and the weight of metal drags her down to earth from miles above.
Open your eyes. She tells herself, grasping the handles until her knuckles turn white.
Shaking her head, One-seventeen looks out the small window, attempting to get an idea of the environment which she will find herself in.
At first, all she sees is water. But as she falls closer to earth, she can see the shoreline growing larger on the horizon. She must have dropped at an angle then, probably with the help of winds, too. Her gaze glues to the counter to her right, eye-level, the numbers steadily decreasing as it measures her dropping altitude. When the numbers hit the designated altitude, she feels the hull shudder as the metal cap of the pod pops open, and the capsule lurches as the parachute is deployed.
Still coming in fast.
She frowns and her fingers dance across the small keypad placed near her right hand. The capsule shudders again as she activates the mini-thrusters located on the bottom of the drop-pod. The capsule lurches again as it fights against gravity, and she notices with some relief that her momentum has slowed dramatically.
Her gaze flashes back to the countdown.
Brace for impact.
The drop-pod collides with the water, the entire thing shuddering with such intensity that she worries it might actually crack. Somehow, though, it stays intact. One-seventeen grits her teeth and grips the handles with all her might.
For a moment, the world goes black as her pod dives into the water due to the speed of its landing, submerged in the ocean until the waves spit her back out. She must wait another couple minutes before the capsule stops lurching every five seconds, and finally is lulled into the motion of the waves.
When it stabilizes, she quickly types into the keypad once again. The sound of moving metal whirs softly as the thrusters beneath her pod shift. She switches to air thrust, and slowly increases output until she finds a slow but steady pace which won't endanger the pod to tipping over despite the currents.
After landing on the shoreline, she leaps out and somehow finds the strength to drag the capsule into the tree line, hiding it within the foliage by half-burying it and covering it with several 'fallen' trees.
The supplies she had been given contains some food, a change of clothes, a map, and weapons (of course). With her supplies stuffed into a small duffel bag, she slings it over her shoulder and pauses.
Nighttime huh? Her gaze studies the stars, calculating her position and the direction she must go. The clouds in the sky are lightened to the northwest, reflecting light from whatever city sleeps below.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE ESCAPED AGAIN?!"
Both Natasha and Clint must resist the urge to flinch in the wake of Fury's… fury.
Their director roared as he slammed his hands onto his desk, pens rattling, a few papers flying, and one paperweight tipping precariously near the edge of the desk.
"Damn this girl!" Fury growled, although his expression and tone told them that he was grudgingly impressed. "She's making my entire facility of highly-trained secret agents look like a bunch of airheaded dimwits!"
Both Natasha and Clint looked affronted, which would have amused Fury in any other situation.
The director pulled up the security cameras onto the giant screen at the front of his office, which doubled as the window which looked out over the control room of the helicarrier. Scenes from One-seventeen's escape were splayed across it, playing over and over again. Yet none of them revealed the face of her accomplice: he was still on the ship.
When Fury had attempted to zoom in on the man's uniform, he had realized that the identification numbers and tags had been removed. In other words, it had been a blank uniform, rendering the infiltrator untraceable. As if he wasn't already pissed off as it was!
Natasha and Clint focused their gaze on the scene of One-seventeen's exit, the image of her climbing into a drop-pod and disappearing replaying itself like mockery.
"Find her."
They turned to face Fury as he growled.
"Find her, and either bring her back alive... or kill her." He looked over his shoulder to focus his eye upon them. "Either way, she knows too much. She is now a threat to the entire existence of SHIELD."