Natasha Romanoff found it ironic that in the span of her life and all the dangerous situations she'd been involved in she had only been shot twice and both times it had been by the same person. She'd been rescued by Maria, and taken to an underground compound somewhere in D.C. A medic hovered above her, pressing her wound with probing fingers and although she was grateful for his help, it still hurt.

"Ow."
"Sorry-"

"Don't keep apologizing. Just ignore me."

Natasha sighed, and felt a deep cloud of pain muddle her senses and swim her thoughts in her mind.

"There we go." The medic announced and Natasha looked up at him, blinking hard. "Fury wants to see you."

Fury. That bastard had her convinced he was dead for almost a week. Although Clint was on assignment and he'd arrive too late to be of any use, she had to talk herself out of calling him up and telling him everything that had happened this week. The supposed death of the Director had wounded her deeply. It seemed odd, to consider Fury a mortal man. He was untouchable, a statue of marble. Nat guessed he'd been a few sticky situations in his life but he had always slipped free, using his wits or his brawn. Fury felt omnipresent like God himself and to equate God with death felt wrong. He had made her cry. Seeing the dead body on the slab was unbelievable, the father of S.H.I.E.L.D, dead like the average man. It reminded Nat of her own mortality, and the loss of Fury had hit her harder than she'd expected it too.

"Thanks." She said, hopping down from the examination table and exiting the room with a certain swagger to her steps. She rolled her shoulder this way and that; pain shot through her but the medic had doped her up enough so that it felt like being nipped by a small child. Natasha swung her hips and pulled her shoulders back and listened to the clack of her block heels against the stone floors of the hideout. Water dripped from the roof above and pooled on the floors, and with each step she could hear the splashes of water as her heels made contact with the floor.

Nervousness pooled in her stomach like it always did on the impending doom missions. Sure, she put on a brave face but any S.H.I.E.L.D agent knew that even the smartest, most well thought out missions with the bravest of people could go haywire in seconds. A lucky shot from a rookie agent could drop her at any time. A civilian could distract her and make her get shot. Her stomach could decide to rumble at the wrong moment, giving away her position and opening up her team to fire. No amount of planning could account for random variables. It was an unwritten rule of being a spy; anything can go wrong. The Red Room had taught her she was indestructible, that she was untouchable but S.H.I.E.L.D reminded her she was all too mortal. And now it's gone. Lost in thought, she rounded the corner and entered the room where Fury sat at a table on his own.

"Where is everybody?" She said, her voice harsher then she'd intended.

Fury was playing with the latch on the briefcase in front of him before he answered. "Around. Are you mad at me, Agent Romanoff? I feel like you are."

Natasha took a seat and tilted her head to the side. "I'm always mad at you. Constant fury." Her eyes lit up at her pun and the Director sighed.

"Bad puns aside, what is the matter?"

Natasha sighed and stared at the table. "Something's bothering me. There was a girl-"

Images conjured of the doctor Natasha had befriended the other day who had also been on the highway with HYDRA. Of course as they'd had their conversation, Natasha had only been listening with polite interest to her chatter but when the girl had mentioned that she had been assigned by Pierce it had perked her interest. She hadn't set out to semi-interrogate her, it had just happened. Natasha admitted she liked the girl. She seemed sweet, trusting but ultimately naive. An utter opposite of what she assumed HYDRA would want.

And then of course Natasha had trusted her gut and warned her over the phone to get out. The girl seemed to take their advice and Natasha had been fine until she'd seen her on the battlefield. And she'd even had the nerve to try and treat her... HYDRA didn't seem like the glove Mallory Smith would wear but it seemed Natasha had been wrong about someone. It was odd. She was never wrong. She knew everything.

Even her skill set was odd; she was a doctor. Mallory had checked her file; there was no history of military service. She wasn't even a military doctor. So what was a civilian doctor doing working for HYDRA? Why would HYDRA hire someone who seemed, and to no offense to her, a little useless?

"- who I met the other day. She said she worked for S.H.I.E.L.D but she was there on the highway with Barnes." Natasha recalled Mallory's expression; utter bemusement. If she was there with HYDRA, why would she try and hide it? Natasha's head ached with trying to work it out. Maybe she was getting too old to be an agent; she was only thirty but she had belonged to a spy organization since she was a child.

"What's the problem then?"

"There's something… off about it. Like when I asked, she had no idea what I was talking about."

Fury's interest was perked as he pushed the briefcase away and leaned in, winding his long fingers around each other. "What's her name? I might know her."

"Mallory Smith. I checked her on the database when I got back from the Batroc mission." Natasha waved her hand. "Nothing interesting about her on there. Doctor, level 4. Her dad works near Pierce though, a big fish. Probably a HYDRA agent as well. I guess that's how she got the job with HYDRA."

She would've never guessed a girl like Mallory to join HYDRA. Or that HYDRA would even accept her.

Fury frowned then nodded. "Sampson Smith. That's his daughter, Mal?"

Natasha was surprised. "You know her?"

"Vaguely. He spoke about her sometimes. Proud of her. We all signed the kids birthday card every year. I know her dad better, though." Fury sat back and stroked his chin, elongating Mallory's dad's name. "Sampson. Eager to please Pierce. A suck up, I never really liked him. He was just a normal agent until one day Pierce promoted him and he was sent to work in some department somewhere."

"HYDRA?"

"Most likely." Fury seemed less interested now. "So what are you thinking?"

"I don't know. But… my gut tells me she didn't have a clue what I was talking about." Uneasiness stirred in Natasha and before she knew it, her phone was out. She found Mallory's number, the unknown which she had inexplicably saved, labelling her as Mallory. Her finger hovered as she unable to decide whether or not they could risk a phone call.

"Look, Romanoff… I try not to trust anybody." Natasha quirked an eyebrow at him and he laughed, then hissed with pain. "But I know you should trust your instincts. If you think this girl knows something or doesn't know something and you think calling her will help, then you do that. We're underground, so they can't track the call if you turn out to be wrong. You don't have anything to lose."

Natasha sighed and stared at the ceiling, hoping that God would grant her some patience to deal with this. "Do you think I'm wrong?"

"My opinion doesn't matter."

"So, yes you do." Natasha made the decision and pressed the screen mainly in her desire to prove Fury wrong. She placed the phone on the table and pressed speakerphone, allowing Fury to hear the conversation. She didn't wait long before she heard an answer.

"Hello?" A gruff voice answered, a man. Natasha recoiled from the phone and glanced at Fury who was looking interested once again. "Who is this?"

On the spot, she couldn't think of a name but she did recall one of her known alias; Laura Matthers, 28, a happy-go-lucky waitress with aspirations to be a writer.

"Hi, this is Laura? Is Mallory there?"

Natasha's ears pricked and she could hear another voice in the background; a female, a cracked voice yelling. "I'm not a child! You can't just take my phone off me."

"Mallory isn't here right now." The voice who she presumed to be Sampson Smith barked down the phone.

Natasha and Fury exchanged bemused glances, Fury mouthing is he joking? Natasha smiled and waved him off.

"I can hear kinda hear her, man." Natasha hid a worried smile. "Just put her on the phone."

Steve decided to make his entrance, his hands rubbing together from his transition from the cold outside to the warmth of the underground base. "Who are-"

Both Natasha and Fury shushed him. Confused, Steve gripped the back of a chair and frowned a she listened.

The phone suddenly crackled and the sounds of a scuffle blared down the speaker. As the phone seemingly switched hands, Mallory's voice took over.

"Seriously, Dad go downstairs before I do something violent." A pause then, "I said go. Hello, who this is?"

The man on the other end denied her request. She had been crying. Natasha could tell straight away. And she knew that she had been right; Mallory had really no clue what she had been talking about on the bridge. What did that mean? It wouldn't surprise her if HYDRA had been lying to its own employees.

"Mallory. It's me Nat. Before you say anything I want you to say, 'hi Laura'."

Mallory sniffed. "N- what?"

The girl was far too slow to be a HYDRA agent. Fury's frown deepened.

Natasha slipped into her low Black Widow growl. "Mallory, Laura's calling you to ask if you wanted that book back."

The girl over the phone sniffed again but seemed to click. "Oh. Yeah. Hi Laura. Uh, have you finished the books?"

Her acting was surprisingly competent. Natasha quirked an eyebrow at Fury. "I've finished one, but not the other."

Natasha wondered how she could relay her questions in three minutes before Sampson caught wind of her ploy, however Mallory interrupted.

"He's gone. Too goddamn mad at me to stay." The girl sniffed again. "Did you need something?"

Natasha exchanged a glance with Steve who was looking completely bemused and she clasped her hands together. "Have they explained? About HYDRA."

Mallory let out a half-sob half-laugh and seemed to be beginning to cry. "Yeah. They told me. They told me everything. Project INSIGHT... the Soldier... they won't let me leave!" Her voice cracked and Mallory began to sob over the phone. Natasha could almost smell Steve's urgency to get to the girl and make her stop crying – nothing appealed to his patriotic nature more then a crying girl. He was so '40s.

"Did you know?"
"No. I know it sounds fucking ridiculous but I really didn't know." And then crazily, she began to try and justify herself. "Whatever I've done, I didn't mean it, I didn't know. They said he was doing it for the good of the world. I just wanted to take care of him. If only I'd known..."

It seemed strange that Mallory was asking forgiveness from the queen of sinners. Flashes of her own life and all of her own emotional strife and the crimes she had been committed ran through her head. As she had told the trickster god in a way to mask her true intent in the battle of New York in '12, her ledger was red. It was gushing red and it seemed silly this girl this innocent and sweet girl who had a doctorate and seemingly, not much else was worrying about her involvement in these missions. Natasha felt, and it was strange to think it, a motherly instinct towards this girl.

"You couldn't of known."

Mallory laughed, harshly. "I could've! The evidence was there! I was so fucking stupid." She sobbed again. "They won't let me go home."

"Where are you? We can come and get you."

Both Fury and Steve started forwards. "What-" The explosion was in unison and Natasha waved her hands to stop them from talking.

"You can?" The hope in her voice was so alive that Natasha stood, switched the phone off speaker and left the room, pushing past Steve who tried to block her way. She went down the hall, readying herself to get into a car and visit the place the young girl was in.

"Yes. I can come right now, if you can get away. Can you do that?"

Steve had followed her down the hall, his voice echoing down the stones. "Natasha you're risking everything just-"

Natasha was focused on Mallory. "Yes I think I can. Just park down the street-"

Steve continued, "-to save some girl who's an admitted HYDRA agent-"

"-and wait there until I can-"

"- and despite what she says is-"

"-climb out of a window and-"

"- probably still working for HYDRA-"

"-come join you."
"-and will compromise our mission""

The pair spoke over each other and it felt like Natasha was being attacked by bees, frantic buzzing all around her. Natasha grew annoyed at the constant disappointment in Steve's voice that she put the phone to her chest and turned to face him.

"Don't do this." His blue eyes were alight with emotion and for a moment Natasha was prepared to bend under the weight of the Captain's command like it had in the Chitauri invasion. He did outrank her after all. But then the Black Widow within span its web and Natasha became the ocean, an unrelenting tempest of fury and strength.

"You told me that you'd trust me to save your life. That you finally trusted me. Did you mean it?"

"Natasha-"

"Did you mean it? Or did you just say it to shut me up?"

The Captain shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and pressed his lips together, nodding at her. Natasha softened and raised her hurt arm to grasp his, ignoring the swell of pain.

"My gut tells me to trust her. Just like how you trust me." She swallowed. "She's an innocent and even in the tiniest chance I'm wrong, she might have information on Project INSIGHT we could use. Will you come with me?"

He nodded, his face too composed for their former argument. She guessed that he would silently brew until Natasha was proven wrong or right about Mallory.

"We'll take the car." He announced, before moving past her. "I'm driving."

Natasha Romanoff smiled.

A/N: School has finally finished, so no more excuses!