Chapter 2: More Important Things

(Revised)

Natasha tossed the file containing her report onto Fury's desk. The Director looked up from another file he had been reading and she sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. She sat so her back was straight and tried not to blink too much or yawn, but found it difficult so late into the night. Fury waited a moment before he opened the file and skimmed through it without truly paying attention to what it said. When he finished he gave a small nod of approval and folded his hands on top of the file. Natasha looked up to meet his piercing gaze without flinching.

"The reason I have called you back so early, Agent Romanoff," he began, "is that I have another mission for you to carry out. I only received wind of the issue about an hour and a half ago, but it isn't something that can wait. I'm going to need my best agents on the case."

Natasha raised an eyebrow. Just what was so important that both she and Clint had to be recalled early from the missions they had already embarked on?

"The mission I have for you isn't exactly in the range of your preferred skill sets, but I can assure you that there is not going to be another person who will be able to handle the job."

Now Natasha was downright curious. It wasn't very often that Fury justified his reasons for assigning someone a mission. He just told them to do it, and they did it. What was it about this mission that put the Director so much on edge?

She held his gaze for a few long moments before he finally looked down and grabbed the file he had first been reading and handed it to her. She took it and looked at him questioningly before she opened it. There was a picture attached to the top left corner of the papers. It was of a young girl, maybe in junior high. Her hair went down just past her shoulders in tiny ringlets, and was colored either black or dark brown. It was hard to tell from the picture. Natasha hadn't ever seen the girl before, but there was something in her brown eyes that seemed familiar in some way. Perhaps it was the flame of rebellion.

Natasha moved the picture so she could see the papers behind it. The first page seemed to be information on the girl. Her name as well as a few – actually very few – pieces of information. But Natasha didn't get much farther than the girl's name.

"Tyler Stark," she said very slowly. She looked at Fury for answers, but he gave none. So she just finished reading what little was left on the page. Tyler was Tony Stark's adopted daughter, apparently, and there wasn't much known about her except for a few facts from before she was adopted by him at age eleven. The facts were unimportant, however, and Natasha got the feeling that it was meant to be that way. Tony was apparently hiding her from the rest of the world.

When Natasha was done reading the file she looked up at Fury with expectance. "So why do I need to see this?"

Fury had spent the past few hours thinking just how he was going to tell Natasha. He came up with many things to say, and also how the agent would react to them. In the end, it was better for him to just come right out and say it without any deception.

"That girl is a new recruit, and you're going to train her."

Natasha was silent for a long time.

"You want me to train an agent. That's what was so important that you had to call both Clint and I off of our missions?"

"Yes."

When Natasha simply stared at him in wait for a better answer, he explained.

"She is Tony's daughter, for one. That automatically means that she will be hard to deal with."

"Then why bother?"

Fury fixed her with a glare. "I'm getting to that, agent. At first I felt the same way when Tony asked me to consider her for a recruit. She has no obvious talents and hasn't been able to hold a job. She's nineteen and in her freshman year of college, but has no interest in what she is doing. Like you I saw no potential in her, until Tony showed me something that he had been keeping a secret. Now you're just going to have to trust me when I tell you that it is worth it, and that she needs people like you to train her."

"Fury, with all due respect, there are other agents in SHIELD that are better suited for training this girl. Wouldn't it make more sense for me to be working on something that requires my expertise?"

"This does require your expertise, Romanoff. Clint's, too. That's why I called you both in. And Steve will be assisting as well."

Natasha just stared at him. "Fury, if she requires three agents to be looking out for her, don't you think some explanation is required? What is so suddenly special about this girl?"

Fury contemplated this. He knew Natasha would be suspicious and would demand to know answers, but he was not at liberty to divulge the secrets. Tony hadn't sent him the video so he couldn't show it to her, but also the information could be potentially dangerous. He trusted Natasha with it, but not the girl. Tyler didn't even know about her own abilities.

"It is nothing to concern yourself with; Tyler has lived her whole life without knowing about it. When the time comes I will tell you, but that time is not now."

Natasha did not want to accept that answer. If she was going to be training this girl then she needed to know everything she could about her. But she had a feeling that no matter how much she protested or questioned, Fury would not tell her until he thought it was time.

"Alright," she finally said. "But only if you give me something else to do, I don't want to waste all of this time doing nothing."

The Director smiled. "I had a feeling you'd say that, so I saved this one for you."

He pulled out yet another file and handed it to her.

"It's a case of recent murders," he explained. "All the victims are connected with SHIELD. The murderer is not known, I'll leave that up to you."

Natasha nodded. "Will that be all?"

"Dismissed."

She nodded again and stood to leave.

"Oh, one last thing," Fury said quickly. Natasha turned to him and raised an eyebrow. "I'll be leaving before Clint arrives, so I'll need you to brief him. Also, Dr. Banner is here to help with the murder case. If you need to clarify anything, it'd be best if you talked to him."

Another nod, and then she left. She walked down the metal hallways of the HQ quickly, but without rushing too much. Though she was trained in silence, her shoes clicked lightly as she walked. Due to the emptiness of the base, the sound echoed. Natasha ignored it as best as she could, and instead her mind roared with questions.

First, about Banner. Why did he need to be on the case? Did that mean that it dealt with some form of gamma radiation? Second, why were all of the Avengers somehow linked to the new events as of late? Except for Thor, four of the Avengers would be in one place, and the other happened to be the adoptive father of the reason for their gathering. Something didn't seem right about that. Third, when did Tony get a daughter? And why? He was not the father type, and it was a miracle he was still with Pepper in what seemed to be a stable relationship. Fourth, and most important, what did Tony show Fury that made him change his mind so suddenly? If this Tyler girl had no potential before, how could she now? Unless Tony was blackmailing Fury. But even he didn't seem capable of that level of extortion, and why would he waste his blackmailing chip on something so unimportant? Nothing added up. And each question she asked herself only brought up more questions. She figured that if she wanted them to be answered, she'd have to answer them herself.

When she reached her room she tossed the file on her bed and went straight to the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face. This helped her to calm down a bit so she could more clearly think through what she just heard. She dried her face on a hand towel as she replayed her conversation with Fury to every detail she could remember. He said that Tyler didn't show any potential, so either she was hiding something or Tony did something drastic. Also, Natasha had never heard of the girl before. But Fury said she was nineteen, so Tony had adopted her eight years ago. How had Natasha not seen her when she was working for him? Or at least heard of her.

She took a deep breath and looked at the clock. It was only 3:40, so she had approximately fifty minutes until she had to be on the helicopter platform and waiting for Clint.

Without another moment's hesitation, she walked over to the small desk placed against the back wall of her room. On it was an expensive Stark Tech computer that Tony had insisted she keep. At first she was sure he had bugged it, but in the end he actually hadn't (she checked it herself), and she needed a good computer for her work. She booted up the computer and clicked open the internet. Though she guessed she probably wouldn't find anything, it was better than sitting around and doing nothing.

When she first typed in "Tyler Stark" all of the sites that were pulled up were only about Tony. Instead, she typed in "Tony Stark's daughter," but that didn't help either. She typed in any key words she could think of and looked on at least fifteen different sites, but all of them came up empty. She was right when she guessed that Tony had kept her hidden well. Halfway through scanning one of the sites she glanced at the clock and sighed; five minutes until Clint was supposed to arrive. She closed the tabs and turned her computer off before she stretched and stood to exit the room.

The steel halls remained empty, save for the one or two guards patrolling, so Natasha arrived at the helipad a little early. She stood off to the side of the large clearing, feet shoulder width apart and hands clasped firmly behind her back. While she waited, she thought of how to tell Clint the news. She knew his past mission was hard and there was no doubt he'd be just as tired as her, if not then even more so. She'd have to be able to get around his extremely possible grumpiness.

There was also the matter of things that annoy him. They normally got shot by arrows. Teenagers annoyed him; training recruits annoyed him. Natasha would be in no way surprised if Tyler was threatened by an arrow within the first ten minutes of meeting Clint. He would not be happy, no matter how talented the recruit seemed, to be training someone instead of working on some other mission. Or training himself for that matter. He had very little tolerance for teaching and answering questions because he often felt that everyone should know the answer. In the end, it didn't really matter how she told Clint the news, he would be angry no matter what. It seemed to her that Fury being gone when Clint arrived wasn't a coincidence, he probably didn't want to deal with an exhausted, ranting Hawkeye. Fury had far more important things to worry about than the irritation of his agents.

After what seemed to be ages Natasha glanced at her watch with impatience. Clint was ten minutes later than he should have been. While he wasn't technically late, since the time was approximate, she was getting tired of standing around in the cold air and waiting for him.

As if on cue, the distant sound of helicopter wings broke the silence of the early morning. She looked up at the far away sky to see a few red and white lights that marked the location of the copter. It took a mere two more minutes for it to reach the pad and lower itself onto the solid ground. Natasha had to brace herself against the wind so as not to be knocked off balance, and she had to squint as millions of dust particles whipped through the air around her. The blades of the propeller finally slowed and the door slid open to reveal a worn and grim Clint Barton. Natasha wasted no time to walk forward and meet him.

"Welcome back," she said with a small half-smile.

Clint nodded and slung a black bag over his shoulder.

"Didn't expect you to be here."

Natasha shrugged. "I was called back early, same as you."

The two walked toward the entrance of the HQ.

"Any idea why?"

"Yes, I just finished talking with Fury. He told me to brief you on our next mission."

Clint held the door open for her and frowned as she walked through. "He couldn't wait until I returned to brief both of us?"

"No," Natasha said, her strides slow but deliberate. "He had to leave for something."

Clint didn't bother to ask what it was; if Natasha didn't say it, then either he didn't need to know, or she herself didn't know.

"Well, then, take it away," he said.

Natasha didn't explain right away. She still wasn't entirely sure how Clint would take the news, and she didn't want it to be too sudden. Especially because Clint and Tony had grown close after the attack on New York. He probably wouldn't be happy to find out that Tony adopted a daughter. Unless he had already found out, which was quite possible.

She remained silent until they reached an elevator and Clint pushed the button for descent.

"We are going to be training a recruit until told otherwise," she said finally.

This, as expected, made Clint's calm demeanor turn into one of anger. The doors of the elevator slid open just then and Natasha took a step forward to avoid the onslaught of her partner's petulance, but Clint was still right behind.

"That's why Fury called us back so soon?" the agent raved. "To train a cocky, blundering idiot?"

Natasha held back her true emotions on the matter, since it would only make it worse. She looked right into Clint's eyes. "Last I checked, both you and I started off as cocky, blundering idiots. Look where we are now, all because we were trained how to do things."

Clint scowled. "Yes, but we were trained by people who were trained to train people. We aren't trained for that. We're trained as assassins and spies, not mentors."

Natasha shrugged. "Every agent has to do it at some time, it was inevitable. Although I would rather have waited for a different blundering idiot to come along…"

The door opened again and Natasha exited the elevator with Clint right on her heels.

"Speaking of, who exactly is this recruit?"

Natasha figured that the truth would be painful no matter what, but she might as well smile to take the edge off of her words. "Tyler Stark, Tony's adopted daughter."

That statement caused the effect she had been sure it would. Clint stopped dead in his tracks and stared after Natasha as he tried desperately to process this information.

"Tony's…" he shook his head and jogged to catch up to his partner. "When the hell did Tony get a daughter?!"

"He adopted her at age eleven eight years ago," Natasha replied. She stopped in front of the door of her room and turned to face Clint. "Tony did his best to keep her existence unknown and he did a real good job, there wasn't much information in her file. Tyler seems like an average kid with nothing special about her, except the fact that she's the daughter of a billionaire super hero."

Clint scowled. "If she has no distinct difference from an average person then why the hell does Fury want us to train her?"

"Apparently Tony told Fury something that gave him reason to recruit her."

"Which was…?" Clint searched Natasha's eyes for any clues that she might be making this whole thing up to mess with him. He found no such thing.

"I have no idea," she replied honestly.

"Fury didn't tell you?"

Natasha shook her head. Clint took a moment to look up at the ceiling and run a hand through his hair. He looked down again with his frown gone but his irritation still written on his features.

"So basically," he conjectured, "all we know is that her name is Tyler, she's nineteen, and she has something special about her that Tony has kept hidden for eight whole years?"

"Pretty much," Natasha agreed. Clint sighed and pinched his eyes to try to get rid of his weariness.

"Why is it that whenever I think this job couldn't get any harder Fury decides to throw a curveball at me that strikes me out?"

Natasha gave him a smug look and replied, "What's the matter? The legendary Hawkeye who never misses a target can't do the simple task of training a new recruit?"

Clint glared down at her with ice in his eyes.

"This recruit," he replied, "was raised by Tony. Tony. The arrogant, egotistical billionaire who thinks he's better than everyone else. Not only that, she's a teenager. They're bad enough when they're on their own but when they were raised by Tony?"

Natasha couldn't help but smile.

"Ironically," she said as she turned to open the door to her room, "I think that if someone was raised by you, and Tony had to look after them, he might respond in the same way." She entered her room and was about to close the door but Clint raised his hand and blocked it from sealing shut.

"What are you saying?" he inquired.

"You're smart, you can figure it out," she responded with a glint of laughter in her eyes. Clint raised an eyebrow but let his hand fall from the door. Natasha gave him a rare, small smile that she only ever let him get a glimpse of.

"Get some sleep," she ordered quietly, "Tony's supposed to drop off Tyler at eleven thirty tomorrow morning."

The irritation immediately entered Clint's eyes again. "Eleven? Tomorrow?!" he paused and counted quickly in his head. "That only gives me seven hours to both sleep and prepare myself to deal with a mini Tony!"

Natasha shrugged. "That's when Tony said he'd be here and you just can't tell him any different when he sets his mind to something."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'll bet you ten to one that this Tyler kid will set her mind on something dangerous and ignore us no matter what we try to do to stop her." He sighed and lifted his head with a weak smile. "I don't think it matters how much time we're given, I am never going to be ready for something like that."

Natasha sniffed with a short laugh and replied, "Well, I don't think I can argue with you on that, but she did have ten years of her life without Tony, did she not? I don't think she'll be exactly like him."

"Let's hope not," he mumbled. "Either way I'm taking you up on that bet. How about twenty?"

Natasha gave him an indignant look and rolled her eyes. "Fine. Twenty it is. Now go to bed." She gave Clint no more room for arguments as she shut the door quickly. Clint waited a few seconds with a smile on his face before he turned and proceeded to his own room, all the while mulling things over in his head.

He and Tony had become good friends after Loki's attack last spring. They often got together at Tony's flat to have a drink, but he had never seen this daughter of his, not once. Tony had never even made the slightest mention of her. So why was he now bringing her into the light of day and insisting that she became a SHIELD agent, of all things? If anyone had a grudge against the agency, it was most definitely Tony. Something about this whole situation did not sit right with him. He was going to find out what made Fury take a sudden interest in Tyler, even if he had to hack into the SHIELD mainframe himself.

He sighed once he was in his room, and changed as quickly as he could into a loose T-shirt and shorts. He moaned as he sank down into his soft bed and closed his eyes. He had no idea where Tony was going with this, but tomorrow would undoubtedly be a long, long day.

Another failed experiment. That made ten. Or was it twenty? He hadn't bothered to count after the first five failed. For all he knew that could have been number forty-two. Not that it mattered; none of the experiments were working. He was sure that he had perfected the spell. He checked, double checked, triple checked. There was no way that it should have continued to fail. Or, at least not in the logical sense. This spell seemed to ignore all properties of magic that he had seen. Then again, mortal bodies were so weak, they simply couldn't handle the stress that the curse put on them. It shouldn't have taken him so many times to figure that out, but he refused to let such an opportunity go.

Currently he stood over a young woman's body. Just like all of the others, this one rejected the spell completely. And like all the others, this time was worse than the last. The woman hadn't even lasted an hour before she fell into ruin. He was beginning to think that perhaps the spell was useless. After all, the book he found it in wasn't the most acclaimed. But, there had to be some truth in it. Perhaps he could perfect the spell, change it to match his own way. It didn't seem to him that there was any other way, with how the mortals kept breaking like twigs.

The first one wasn't too bad, the girl he had cast the spell on simply keeled over when the stress became too much. The Midgardian doctors called it a heart attack. Since the physical strain was too much, all he needed was to find someone who was stronger physically, right? Wrong. The person he chose for that apparently had no will power for their own. He became a lunatic in less than two days. He spared the mortal the trouble of killing himself by blasting him with a deadly amount of magic.

He continued to try out many different targets, but all of them kept ending up in unpleasant deaths, this last one being the worst. It didn't take very long for her to realize that something was wrong, but by then it was much too late. Her body froze from the inside out.

Now he was looking down at her body in the morgue with a scowl. It occurred to him after the first few bodies that he should get rid of the evidence and destroy the bodies before anyone could get to them, but he let himself slip. He was beat to the scene, and the body was already on its way here. He didn't want to hassle with moving it to destroy it himself. This one he would have to leave for the Midgardians to deal with.

With a disdainful sniff, he turned around and disappeared as though he was never there. For all intents and purposes, he wasn't. As he traveled to his current hideout he decided that he would need to lay low for a while so that he could come up with a new spell that hopefully didn't cause so many side effects. After all, he had time. His incompetent brother still thought that the clone he sent to be captured was the real him. They were all of them fools.

He was a god; he couldn't be captured so easily. Especially by the petty "Avengers" as they called themselves. Earth's mightiest heroes, indeed. Where were they now as he killed innocent men and women left and right without interference? With those fools off doing whatever they were doing, he was safe enough to remain on Midgard for a while as he planned for the second attack. The real attack. But he couldn't do it alone. That's what his spell was for.

He arrived with a scowl at the abandoned warehouse he had made his for the time being. He hated the thought that he had to use a Midgardian with another spell. It didn't work out so well when he tried that the last time. It was safe to say that it nearly ruined his plan completely, considering how easily the spell wore off. But, this spell… it was made to be full proof. His lips twitched upward as he thought about what would happen if he could spread the curse like a disease; everyone would be defenseless under his control. There would be true order. And the order would be his to command, as a god and king should. He would not fail a second time.