Chapter Two

"Nice hair," – was the first thing that came out of Nick Fury's mouth when Natasha finally tracked him down.

It did not take her that long. She did not fool herself into believing that the ease with which she had managed to find Fury was solely down to her tracking skills. Not to say that she wasn't the best, which in all honesty she was. But this was Nick Fury. If he puts himself to it, no one could find him. After all, Hydra couldn't, with all their deep pockets. That she was able to a mere two weeks after she stepped from that motel room in Amsterdam, clearly indicated that the ex-director wanted to be found.

Natasha ignored his comment and plopped herself down to the empty chair opposite the one occupied by Fury. She looked around her and would have laughed out loud had she been in a better mood. What better place for Hydra's Enemy Number One to hide than in a hipster café in the middle of Paris.

"Should I bother asking what the hell you lot were thinking acting like a bunch of kindergarten children the minute their teacher turn her head? I mean, a goddamn battle at the airport? I thought I trained you better, Agent Romanoff," Fury barked out.

Natasha could have argued that in fact, Fury had not trained her. But that was beside the point. She was not here to discuss the airport disaster. Not when she agreed completely with the man. They were acting like children. They had been trained better. It was no use trying to explain to Fury that Tony and Natasha had only set out to stop Steve out of fear for him. If the UN were to order a NATO troop force, would they have refrained from shooting first and asking later. Just as everything the Avengers had ever done, the disaster at the airport started out with good intentions escalating to utter madness.

Instead she simply said, "It could have been a lot worst."

Fury snorted but did not deny the truth of her words. "Hard to imagine how, but I suppose the Captain is one stubborn son-of-a-bitch."

"Look, I got your note. I know you wanted us all to sign the Accords. But we need to respect the Captain's position. He just lost Margaret Carter. Bucky's his last link to 1945." She stated this matter-of-factly but felt her insides twist in another wave of guilt. The one time Steve needed her most, and she wasn't, couldn't, be there for him.

Silence followed her words and Natasha looked up, at once distracted from her thoughts. Now Nick Fury has one of the best poker faces Natasha has ever seen. And that's saying a lot considering all her life, she has been surrounded by people who lie and kill for a living. But reading people was what she does best. And she could tell that her words had caused a tiny frisson in the man's normally tough-as-nails exterior.

"Agent Romanoff, the last communication we had was at Agent Barton's farmhouse," he said quietly. "I sent you no note," he confirmed, in case she failed to understand what he was trying to communicate to her.

Natasha felt as if the ground was taken away from her and that she was suspended in mid air, with only gravity and her own will to prop herself up.

Her mind had been made up the day General Ross showed the clips of the devastations they had caused. When he recited the figures of the number of deaths in New York, Washington, Sokovia. It was sealed at the sight of the young man whose life ended much too early when he decided to spend his break helping the destitute Sokovians to have better homes.

But this does not mean that she never faltered in her decision. The look of hurt in the pair of blue eyes, that extra bite in Wanda's voice as she forced Natasha off of Clint at the airport, the way Sam avoided her eyes as they all marched towards each other, ready to cause hurt to the people they had spent years fighting alongside. All that and more had never failed to cause a tiny misgiving. An 'is this worth breaking the family for?' question she never manage to completely squash even with her own strong convictions that she was standing where she needed to be.

But always at the back of her head, additional justification for her actions came from that note she had mistakenly assumed to have come from Fury. It had given her confidence to stay strong. That if Nick Fury endorsed this course of plan, that she must be doing something right. Her life during and after the Red Room had not given her much room for choosing her own actions. She was not used to the idea of a self-motivated course of action that deep inside, she needed some kind of sign that she was doing the right thing. And the note had done that for her.

But Nick Fury did not send the note.

Cold, green eyes met with hooded brown ones. "Tony?" Fury enquired. "As a way to get you to sign?"

Natasha shook her head. "Stark's ego doesn't allow for him to even entertain the possibility that he could be wrong. He doesn't believe that anyone could have had a different point of view. He would not even have felt the need to stoop to manipulations," she stated quietly. In a much quieter voice, she added, "Especially not his friends."

Fury was quiet for a moment, appearing to be processing her words. Finally, after what felt like a long time, he looked up and met her eyes head on. "If it wasn't Stark or anyone else in the building, then we must assume that someone broke into the facility to plant that note. Someone who really wants the Avengers to sign the Accords."

She felt cold fear shaking through her body. And before she could put thoughts into words, Fury beat her to it. "The one million dollar question now is, what the fuck for?"