So it goes with saying that only things I own with any connection to MARVEL I bought on Ebay or Etsy. MARVEL COMICS & MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE are their own creatures and I have nothing to do with either of them aside from the fact I enjoy reading or watching them, and am grateful for the ability to play in their world. I claim nothing, and I receive nothing for this, expect the pleasure of putting something out into the world.
You can also find this story on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN under the same title and pen name along with a place to post suggestions.
Don't forget to check out the Photobucket album listed on my profile page too.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2ND 2012
0900 HOURS
KHURBA AIRPORT
KHABAROVSK KRAI, RUSSIA
NATASHA ROMANOFF
S.H.I.E.L.D ESPIONAGE AGENT, LEVEL SIX
Nadine Roman was the name I turned my attention too when I heard it called. I've had a lifetime of training to ingrain that skill into me, I can hear an alias once, less than once even, and still respond to it like it's really my name. Though this time I'm curious why I even am being called by it.
That alias, and the mission it was used for both died in tandem with a phone call and a mans dislocated hip so there is no purpose behind the S.H.I.E.L.D agent sent to rendezvous with me using it.
We both know he knows who I am, just like we both know I know who he is even is he goes through the motions of an introduction. Agent Felix Blake, a level six of the administrative variety.
That fact makes his presence out here in the field a little strange to me, but if the details I wasn't given in that short phone call with Agent Coulson are any indication, the entirety of S.H.I.E.L.D, not just myself, are caught up in a very strange situation right now.
We may have plans, protocols, and preventive measures in place for all sorts of situations, but even careful planning can't really prepare anyone for an end of the world scenario. Not even S.H.I.E.L.D. The best we can do is try to reach the top of the wave so we can see what's coming next.
My desire to reach the top of that wave is what keeps my feet going, right to the point that I don't bother pausing in front of him for some manner of unnecessary greeting but keep marching right past him knowing damn well he will follow once he reclaims the briefcase he made the mistake of setting down.
I have a 'big' problem in my immediate future, and I want to make it part of my past is soon is possible, so hollow pleasantry are not part of my social repertoire right now.
I have a 'smaller' problem that needs addressing to. I haven't heard our little birds voice yet. I know Nora well enough to know if it was a possibility for her, that she would right there at Coulson's shoulder, her voice asking in the background if I was okay, and if she could talk to me.
Even if Coulson has been deliberately vague on the details, he can't hide the absence of a detail like that. He also didn't try either, he wasn't making the call from a private area, which would make it impossible for her to insert herself into the conversation, instead he let himself have the background noise of other people around to clue me in.
He can't talk about it so he is telling me with subtlety. Something has happened to my 'little sister'.
We always knew she was different, the problem was we didn't know what exactly the difference was.
We knew that her muscular and cellular density, if allowed to reach peak conditions seemed capable of being three times our own, just like we knew that might have been a factor of her native environment. Her digestive system is much more efficient than ours, with a double duodenum and compartmentalized stomach connecting to her intestines lets it extract every ounce of organic material, leaving only the synthetic additions of modernism to turn into waste and that seems to be the reason for her high metabolism. Our food doesn't seem to be dense enough for her body.
The theory is that her digestive efficiency is a result of her 'native' environmentally based evolution, and if left up to the ways of nature her body would unable to sustain its required intake in 'our' environment. By our environment I mean the whole planet. We've looked, both in curiosity and caution for some pocket civilization of human evolution like her, hoping to find a terrestrial point of origin for her, or we had been until another one with a body like hers fell out of a wormhole in New Mexico!
And what I just mentioned are some the simpler differences. She has a slightly larger frontal lobe then we do despite no visual difference in the shape of her skull, is well is an extra lobe that we don't have at all cradling her pituitary gland that seems to be connected to her nerve-vessels.
That's the best description we have for them, they have hollow compartments and valves like one but their outer wall is wrapped in complex nerve tissue, with filaments inserted into the vessel themselves. They seem to transport some manner of liquid which we despite being able to see with a microscope can't seem to identify any cellular activity within, and if weren't for the fact that these veins run parallel to her real blood-vessels we might have assumed that was their purpose.
Anatomically her body has other 'redundancies' on top of those that seem to only exist to increase the durability of the species, the most notable are the twin sets of additional atriums and ventricles in her myocardial muscle that seem to only exist for the purpose of diverting circulation in the event damage to the heart.
She hasn't received any injury on that level under our care, and we lack the opportunity to compare her anatomy to any other member of her race, we only got lucky with some blood samples confiscated from a local hospital but we have to assume that given what we know of her would apply to the rest of her species and what we know is that her body literally seems to be able to reroute and compensate for what should be fatal wounds which makes her a very valuable, and very dangerous asset to us.
It's why she scares the World Council so much. Fury has managed to talk them into acknowledging and accepting her usefulness time and time again since she is the only specimen we know of that we have access to. Studying Thor, even 'if' he agreed to it, would probably cause an interdimensional war. Which is why we took advantage of her to let us evaluate the abilities and limitations of these so-called Gods in the event they do someday present a threat.
Though the 'God' part is a recent addition to us, because despite the mountain of yellowing files decorated in the uniform spacing typeface from an old IBM and the faded or water damaged horrors captured on a stack of Polaroids and 35mm film reels, we didn't believe 'their' assertion that she was a being originating beyond our solar-system.
Is far is we were concerned that conclusion was a result of their off-kilter fanaticism and religious zeal. Turns out those bastards were right about her, and that makes what they did to her that much worse. How do you Deify someone like that thenturn around and do those things to them?
That alone would have been enough to make me volunteer my expertise, if I wasn't already desperate for an assignment do to my forced medical leave. Clint had been assigned to her for a month at that point, interacting with her on a one on one basis to help her get used to the idea of human presence again. she was so terrified of people she couldn't even stand being in the same room with another human being back then, but already in that short period of time they were concerned Clint might have become emotionally compromised given the case involved work outside his field.
They were pushing Fury to put her back into a coma, and this time making it more of the permanent variety. That desire has never actually left them, despite their reluctant tolerance of her, but if she is missing like I'm worried she might be, that desire is going to rise back up so quickly it would but an addict to shame.
And the Council wasn't the only one to share that opinion about what to do with her. I know there were agents that ranked high enough to know about her uniqueness, and believed in that course of action. I always hated those people a little for that, I hated them for her sake.
She didn't know why they didn't like her, she couldn't know why! So instead, she just grinned and bared that pain is she tried to figure out what she did to offend them, and do things differently. I had to silently watch her suffer through every failed attempt to please them, and the part that always hurt the most was watching her finally give up in the face of their unrelenting prejudice and accept that they would always treat her is if she was something distasteful in their way.
She was told, and she believed that they disliked her because they viewed her is a burden on S.H.I.E.L.D! She no longer had the skills of the agent 'she was before', or the ability to relearn them, and had no knowledge left that would lead to the capture and sentencing of the people who killed her parents.
You can't teach combat to someone who is terrified of a handshake, even if they wish they could learn.
They made her feel guilty about the death of her 'parents', is if because she couldn't remember anything her mother and fathers souls were suffering in some sort of purgatory, waiting to avenged but it was her own inabilities that prevented that. I can't think of anything more cruel to do to a person then that!
This agent, jogging to catch up with me is one of those people. I have a memory of him looking down at her on multiple occasions is if she was gum on his shoe, and he really just wanted her to leave his sight.
I try to stay objective about things, but I still recall the sight of her bottling that heartache behind her pretty smile. She always tried so hard to please people, she didn't deserve what we put her through.
Which is why when he speaks to me like he is 'my' superior, uttering the full title of my alias "Deputy Consul-General Nadine Roman" like a reproachful parent and telling me to "wait, please" I turn on him abruptly.
I hadn't really looked at him until now, but his appearance just like his failed attempt to hide his flinch behind a façade of bored indifference is pathetic.
I will grant this prematurely gray specimen of a man, that we are in Russia. But this is the far eastern area of Russia, and its May. I'm in a cocktail dress with nylon stockings since they were torn in the fight. He is in, well, the best description I can come up with is an insulated cocoon.
I hate my skill set sometimes.
Stepping into his space easily I don't even pay attention to the way his steps falter backwards a little before he catches himself and adjusts his posture, effectively bringing himself closer whether he meant it or not.
Goose down I muse is my fingers deftly find and conquer the double snaps on his tall collar, feeling the light prickle of tiny feather quills piercing through the weaving is I apply a bit of pressure against the material. I like him even less with this observation, it speaks of his softness is a field agent, and his sense of entitlement as a person. There are much more effective synthetic materials today to keep one warm.
The first button is conquered politely, with my fingers dancing to guide it through the hole. The second button though skitters of under someone's shoe is I lose my patience for a moment and simple yank the two sections apart, meeting his smirk with a darker and more dangerous one of my own.
I got what I wanted after all, so I see no more use in playing coy. With his phone in my hand I watch is his eyes widen then narrow at the observation is he watches me tuck it away down my bra. He can try to take it, if he wants to lose the use of his arms for a few months.
This man was an absolute fool if he thought I wouldn't know he planned to give me a device with limited clearance to keep me from getting the whole story. The possibility of believing in that success is so stupid I almost wonder if that was the point. I wouldn't put it beyond Coulson sending me someone who needed to be put in their place.
Which is also why I scoop up his briefcase, and drop it into the fountain, only to see his eyes widen once again, now with decided concern is it explodes into a small show of sparks is I play yet another part.
The technology in the briefcase was of course grounded and waterproof, but the tiny taserdisk I stuck to the handle of it wasn't, and that lit up and crackled like a firework on the fourth of July when the first drop of water hit it, drawing the attention of everyone to in the airport to the frightened looking woman calling for help and saying she thinks he has a bomb!
It's not helping him that his accent and overall grasp of the language is a terrible imitation of what a Russian one should be.
But 'Deputy Consul-General Nadine Roman' has a very good Russian accent for a French woman according to the nice men in airport security when they question her about the incident.
She was simply finishing up her work here and was on her way back to France, when her embassy called and said she was needed in India, Kolkata specifically, and yes she had the paperwork to verify that. It's why she was talking to that man in fact.
The embassy said they were sending a translator to aid her over in India, since she unfortunately doesn't speak that language is well, and no she had never seen this man before. But while they were talking she noticed a strange almost ticking sound that seemed to be coming from his briefcase so she pretended to hit on him to get the briefcase away from him and that's why she threw it in the fountain and immediately called for help.
They said she was very brave for doing that, and fetched her some vatrushka and keemun tea to eat while she calmed down. They also asked if she needed to reschedule her flight, or if there was anyone she wanted to call to go with her so she wouldn't be so scarred, and of course they would be happy to escort her the rest of the way through security to her flight.
They also promised to check out that name she gave them, because she was sure this man looked like someone on the international wanted list, a Robert Fisher she thinks the name was, and if he was they deserved the reward for being so nice and helpful.
They also appreciate how cooperative she was in providing her paperwork and couldn't help but admire the garter-esque wallet she pulled them from, and asked where she got it so they could get ones for their girlfriends.
I love my skill set sometimes. Those two men walked Nadine all the way through the rest of security, continuing to praise the beauty and bravery of french woman, all the while strategically mentioning the girlfriends I knew they didn't have so is to not seem to eager.
I was very nice, and gave them each a kiss on the cheek before I boarded the small private plane. But once that hatch was behind closed me Nadine went away, and Natasha came right back out in less time than it took me to pull out agent Blake's former phone, and dial Coulson.
There is no greeting, nor is there any confusion about whose voice would be attached to this number, which is why I have always liked agent Coulson so much. He simply asks "What did you pin him for?"
"Murder, arson, and $100,000 I think." I offer back is I try to recall what exactly Robert W. Fisher is wanted for while I pull the Ipad out of its recessed spot in the wall next to me before I sit down and buckle in, giving the pilot a nod to tell him I'm ready for him to start the take off procedures.
"He is practicing his diplomatic immunity with airport security, if he can't handle this then you should fire him." I have no problem with the fact I just abandoned an agent on Russian soil, because someone will have to come get him eventually, since I stole and destroyed his secure device and he will have a hell of a time reaching S.H.I.E.L.D without them.
"I'll consider it." I can hear the curve of mouth in those three words, before it shifts into a neutral line that I can't see. "You'll be in the air for 6 hours, I recommend getting in some reading, there's a fascinating article about eagles you might like. Your team will be waiting for you when you touch down in Kolkata. Agent Romanov."
I offering back the same parting, then hear the sound of him hanging up. He didn't wish me good luck in my future encounter with the man who houses the monster, and I appreciate that. I'm not terribly superstitious, but I would feel like that would jinx the meeting.
I've seen the Hulk up close at Culver University, I know very well what sort of damage he can do, both to a building and a body. I'll accept any assistance from the universe to make sure I never see that part of that man again!
But I'm not going to focus on that. Coulson gave me something better than good luck, he gave me the password I need to let look up what I really want to know about. Our little bird is a divine eagle, and I have some studying to do on the Accipitridae family.
NOTES FOR THE READERS:
Nadine Roman is one of the alias that the Black Widow used in the comics, so I pulled it for creative purposes.
Despite my best effort to find the Silinksy Plaza mentioned in the Avengers movie, I have come to the surrendering conclusion it does not exist, however I did find a Silinsky Park in KHABAROVSK KRAI, RUSSIA, which is why I placed Natasha there.
Robert W. Fisher was (and may still be) wanted for arson and murder in 2012, and was chosen do to his resemblance to the actor playing agent Blake.
The anatomy references I pulled from Star Trek if anyone reads the file names at the Photobucket.