Collateral Damage

Three passports, a spare handgun, a box of hair dye and an emergency go-bag sat collecting dust beneath her bed, but that wasn't an option. She'd have to go back to the apartment, and she couldn't take the chance that Clint might be there.

Stacks of shoe boxes containing completely fresh identities on discs and flash drives practically lined the walls of S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, but Fury would know if she snaked one. That wasn't an option, either.

Given the growing conflict between Russia and the United States, she knew her home country probably wouldn't extradite one of its own to the Americans. That might have helped, if she weren't wanted for even more treasonous activity in Russia than practically anywhere else on the planet.

Natasha Romanoff was, for perhaps the first time ever, completely out of options.

There was no protocol, no back-up plan for this situation. Cheating on an Avenger with the god of mischief, who just happened to be considered a war criminal in your corner of the galaxy, and then having that affair exposed simultaneously by another meddling Avenger and the aforementioned war criminal wasn't exactly something they went over on the first day at base camp.

She wished they would have. Maybe then she could have found a solution before she reached the glossy black doors of Fury's office, her pale hand poised to open the gates of Hell.

Low voices murmured on the other side of the door. One was unmistakeably Fury's; the identities of the others she could guess readily enough. Still, she couldn't bring herself to move forward quite yet.

"Romanoff! Ass in here, now," came her commander's order.

Natasha flinched. The low voices on the other side of the door extinguished themselves. For the space of a heartbeat, the whole world seemed to have fallen silent.

She swept quickly and quietly into the office.

Fury stood behind his shiny black desk, his arms crossed over his chest. His leather coat, which he wore for roughly ninety-eight percent of his waking life, was discarded across his chair; a bad sign. His eye was already staring at her when she entered the room, and it didn't waver as she came to a stop a couple of feet behind the two occupied chairs opposite the desk.

She laced her fingers together behind her back.

One of the heads visible above the low-backed chairs turned and tilted upward to regard her. Tony's smug face split into a smile that suggested what he was seeing was clearly better than television. "Welcome to the party, Romanoff," he said easily.

Natasha didn't move a muscle in response, nor did she break Fury's stare.

Tony, undaunted, happily continued, "As I was just explaining to dear old Nick, here, we're all real interested to hear what you've been up to—"

"That's enough," Fury cut him off. Tony made a dissatisfied noise and mumbled something about manners but fell silent all the same. Without taking his eye off of Natasha, the director continued, "Agent Romanoff, I've just received reports from two separate sources, of varying reliability, that you have been abusing the privileges accorded to you as they pertain to our captive guest. Have you anything to say on this matter?"

As carefully as if she were diffusing a live bomb, Natasha answered, "Which privileges are you referring to?"

"Are you, or are you not, having sex with Loki?"

Evidently Fury didn't have the patience for the game anymore. Natasha wondered just what sort of shitstorm Tony and Clint had created before she came in to wear him down that quickly.

The thought was brief, however, and immediately driven away by her heart thundering against the inside of her chest. Invisible fingers twisted her guts, and she could feel a light layer of sweat beginning to erupt beneath the collar of her catsuit.

Apparently this was the moment of truth, literally. Now she had two options, and exactly one of them carried a chance for her to come out of this mostly on top. She saw that chance, and without bothering to think it all the way through, she seized it.

"Yes."

The word was blunt, dispassionate, and it carried the weight of a nuclear warhead.

Clint was on his feet in the blink of an eye. Without looking back at Natasha, he shoved the heavy, black leather armchair in which he'd been sitting away from him with such force that it skidded several feet across the gleaming floor and toppled to its side with a clatter. He stalked away from everyone, toward one of the high floor-to-ceiling tinted windows. Natasha still couldn't see his face, but she could tell from the way he ran a hand through his hair and the way the muscles in his neck strained that he would detonate at the slightest provocation.

The agent's display briefly captured Fury's attention. His eye bored into the back of Clint's head with sharp disapproval, but he chose not to address the commotion.

Tony simply stated, with renewed self-righteousness, "Knew it."

Panic flashed through Natasha then, not because of what Tony had said, but because the truth was finally being revealed. Well, the part she could no longer cover up. Truth, any portion of it, wasn't exactly an old friend to her; all of her basic instincts were telling her that she'd made the wrong choice, that she could have navigated this as successfully as she might any delicate undercover operation with a few carefully placed half-truths, but rationally she knew that wasn't the case. There was a reason why she'd made so many mistakes, enough to get herself caught. The act she may not be able to keep quiet anymore, but her motivations would remain her own.

Still, Fury asked her, "And what exactly gave you the impression that this even remotely resembled a good idea?" His tone was reminiscent of an exasperated parent admonishing an unruly teenager, dropped off on the doorstep by a police officer in the middle of the night.

Regardless of delivery, the question left Natasha on much firmer ground. Without hesitation, she answered, "It was the only way to make him talk."

A heavy, sharp sigh, tinged with the ghost of a manic chuckle, escaped Clint, but he said nothing.

She continued, "Men like Loki don't respond to threats, and even if he did, we have nothing to threaten him with. We can't torture him without losing what little rapport we have as well as Thor's trust which, now we're going intergalactic, we need. We can't appeal to his sympathies or better nature because he has none, and we have nothing to bargain with."

"But we have you," Fury finished with a nod, a tired edge creeping into his voice.

"Wouldn't be the first time," Natasha was quick to point out. Miraculously she was keeping her composure in place. Lies and justifications, now they were necessary, she could handle just fine.

"No, but this isn't the usual type of scumbag we're dealing with. This is a godly scumbag with a vendetta," Fury said. From his relaxing posture and his lack of screaming and or cursing, Natasha could see that he accepted her tactics as valid. With S.H.I.E.L.D. repercussions no longer forthcoming, she allowed herself to relax a little as well, not that the change was outwardly visible.

"And daddy issues. Daddy issues are right up my alley," she added.

"You have been getting results, that's true. I gotta ask, though. If you really been sneakin' down there as much as Barton says you are, how come we don't have any footage of the two of you..." Fury trailed off and rolled his eye in his head, the final portion of his sentence explained via a sharp wave of his hand.

Natasha shrugged. "Without the Asgardian handcuffs, Loki can still use magic. I assume the cameras show you whatever he wants you to see."

"Then what the hell's the point of the damn things, we can't see if he's up to anything? Ah, fuck it. Alright, I want you to start keepin' a log when you come and go. Least we'll know where he is some of the time," Fury said, irritated.

Natasha gave a curt nod and opened her mouth to ask whether he needed anything else from her; however, the voice that snaked out into the room wasn't her own.

Clint had turned to face the small assembly, his rage shining through around the edges of the precarious professional mask he'd strapped to his face, like sunlight framing drawn curtains. "Sir?" he began, a barely perceptible tremor underlying his strained voice. "Is it really a good idea to allow Agent Romanoff continued access to Loki?"

Natasha bit the inside of her cheek. She knew she and Clint were done. He wasn't asking out of concern now, he was asking out of spite.

Fury probably knew it, too; there was a reason Clint wasn't sent on delicate missions. Thankfully, he was having none of it. "You got a better idea?" he challenged.

Clint ran away with the question immediately. "I just don't see why it's necessary. He's already talking, he's giving us things we can use. There's just no point to—"

"To keep collecting information we can use, you mean?" Fury interrupted. "So, you can't see the point in gathering any more intelligence about the untold alien powers which could descend upon the Earth at any moment? You can't see the point in understanding what's out there before it shows up, politely knocks on our door, and shoves a boot up our ass? You can't see the point in discovering a way to protect ourselves while we still have the chance? Is that what you're tellin' me?"

Natasha's gaze shifted to Clint. His mask was crumbling, and he was beginning to turn an unflattering shade of tomato red. His jaw worked around for something to say, but nothing was forthcoming.

"I'll take that as a 'No, I'm sorry, sir,'" Fury said as he reached to move his coat from his chair to the desk. Seating himself, he added, "My number one priority, Agent Barton, is the safety of this planet. Used to be the safety of the U.S., but I like to think big. If Agent Romanoff is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that safety, I expect nothing less from you. You got a problem, file a complaint with H.R."

Clint was still for another moment before he turned on his heel and stalked from the room, yanking the black door violently behind him. Natasha prepared herself for the crash of shattering glass; however, the door stopped short and closed with a gentle hiss. A thick blanket of silence settled briefly over the office.

"Sick burn, Nick," Tony piped up, the first time he had spoken since being silenced several minutes beforehand.

Fury raised an eyebrow at the billionaire but otherwise didn't respond. After a few moments, his gaze flicked back up to Natasha and he told her, "That'll be all, Agent."

Natasha gave a curt nod and fled the room, her every muscle straining for the doors although her movements were easy and controlled. She indulged only a brief hesitation before pulling the glass barrier inward, hoping that enough time had passed for Clint to have moved somewhere else, if not left the building entirely.

He was gone, and once the door swung shut behind her, she breathed a deep sigh of relief.

Her next destination was the roof, the one place in the world that was guaranteed to be empty almost all the time. Thankfully that fact held true when she stepped out onto the moonlit concrete, a light gust of wind throwing her red curls across her face. She walked straight ahead, across to the farthest section of the low wall that encircled the top of the building, and sat with one foot hanging over the edge. The other she pulled in close, one arm hugging her knee to her chest.

The assassin was still trying to decide whether the move she had made in Fury's office, admitting the truth, was the right one. In the end, she had come out mostly on top. Her job was intact, she was allowed to continue seeing Loki, and most suspicion as to her motives she could deflect by citing the necessity of her actions. What did it matter why she'd started crawling into bed with the maniac? It was a matter of global security. She was saving lives. Possibly everybody's life.

Compared to what she was doing with Loki, her life, her reputation, Clint...those things were just collateral damage...weren't they?