I hope you enjoy this chapter! Muchas gracias to my beta, ElessarII for reviewing this chapter!
I think of young, lost things: of lilacs; tears;
I think of an old neighbor, long since dead.
- A Violin at Dusk, Lizette Woodworth Reese
July 14th, 2024
LOCATION: STARK MANSION - 890, Fifth Avenue
Manhattan
She hasn't been here in more than a decade, which is the only reason why they've decided to keep this as a temporary base. Neither Ross nor S.H.I.E.L.D. would ever think of looking for them in the Mansion.
Since she'd arrived here this morning, she's forced herself to move around only in the public spaces of the house, but she won't deny that it's easier to resist the temptation of opening certain doors - metaphorical and literal - with people around.
Pepper, Rhodey, and May Parker had flown in with Happy once Isabelle had ascertained that the Secretary was holed up in the Lighthouse with Coulson for the foreseeable future, interrogating a very strange man who she isn't entirely sure wouldn't break under pressure.
Ross hasn't come after her or her family. That's the only proof Isabelle has that Enoch hadn't spilled the beans yet, but she has no guarantee he'll last much longer if Coulson isn't able to keep Ross'... tendencies at bay.
"J.O.C.A.S.T.A.? " Pepper had asked quietly as soon as she'd entered.
"What about her? " is all Isabelle had said, prompting a tiny frown.
Most of them are gathered in the dining room - Pepper's whispering to a tension-wracked May and Rhodey is leaning against one of the French windows with his brows furrowed. Happy is somewhere entertaining Morgan, probably showing the child around the Mansion that has mostly housed negative memories for her father and aunt.
Isabelle rubs at her forehead, trying to massage away the migraine that's been present for what seems like days. The lack of sleep is catching up to her, and she's already had to refill the large pool twice.
She's not looking forward to when she finally crashes.
She pours a large amount of golden liquid into a whiskey glass and slides it across the table towards Pepper. "Bottoms up," she mutters, pouring another for Rhodey. He doesn't meet her eyes when their fingers brush.
May dry-swallows, her face streaked with a longing which is immediately recognizable. Isabelle isn't the only one avoiding temptations. "I've been sober for two - no, wait - seven years now. Do the Decimation years count?" she asks with forced humor, even though her gaze hasn't budged from her glass.
"They don't," Isabelle replies, taking a slow, obvious sip. She doesn't have to wait long.
May's expression of desperate longing combined with self-loathing blinks out of existence, replaced by bewilderment as she sniffs. Her hand shoots out to grab the glass and she inhales deeply, then stares at the bottle. "Is that… apple juice in a Walker bottle?"
"Tony quit drinking too," Rhodey murmurs for the first time since he'd entered the Mansion. He keeps staring out the window. "Pepper and Izzy threw out all of the whiskey in the Compound and the Mansion and replaced the bottles with juice."
May arches an eyebrow, sipping hesitantly, as though she isn't entirely sure it's not whiskey. Her sigh sounds like disappointment and relief rolled into one. "Did it work?"
Isabelle finishes the rest of the glass and shakes her head, dropping into a chair. "Tried, tested, and rejected Stark placebo."
"Let's get to work." She taps the StarkPad Pepper had brought. "Beck died in London," she pulls up the doctored footage of Spider-Man ordering drone strikes on London civilians on his tablet, "but he had to have a crew, someone behind him whose strings he's been pulling even from beyond the grave."
May's eyebrows draw together. "He'd have had to pick very carefully," she catches on, "because he was pulling off something big, so he'd have to trust them and they would have to trust him. Someone who would willingly follow him, because they had reasons similar to his own for carrying out his crusade."
Pepper steels herself and opens a folder of personnel files on the StarkPad. "Such as more SI ex-employees. We've narrowed it down to those who were fired for various reasons, had a history of psychological disorders, and were known to vocally declare grudges against their former boss. The list is… big." She rubs her forehead tiredly. "It seems Tony attracted a certain type of employee."
"I don't know… he lucked out with you," Isabelle murmurs. A warm feeling settles in her stomach when she spots Pepper's smile out of the corner of her eye.
May rapidly scrolls down the documents. "I don't recognize any of them."
Isabelle's hand snakes out to halt the scrolling, then her fingers close above the highlighted image of a bald, spectacled man. The image peels off the screen into a hologram, and she tosses it into the air. A full-body projection of a man manifests itself over the dining table, rotating in on itself. "Why does he look familiar?"
"William Ginter Riva," Pepper explains. "Former S.I. scientist and engineer co-responsible for the upkeep of the primary Arc Reactor powering the company, and… who helped reassemble the Mark 1 armor Obadiah Stane recovered from Afghanistan."
Would she never be rid of that name?
"Why's he a prime suspect?"
"Because I've looked through some of his design prototypes that got approved. His name was struck from the records after he got arrested, of course, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. dug deep and found the connections. He was the primary designer of the weaponized drones that are stored in our defense satellites."
Isabelle nods. "That explains how Beck got a hold of some to make his Elementals realistic even before Parker granted him primary user access to E.D.I.T.H. We could contact the Feds, see if they have any leads."
Pepper visibly hesitates, then sighs. "He wasn't in federal custody. He was in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s. Coulson took him in after the Iron Monger went down. Last I heard, they were assigning him to minor designing and construction projects under strict supervision."
Ah.
"Let me guess," Isabelle murmurs, "he escaped during the chaos of the Snap, and they haven't been able to recover him since. F.R.I.D.A.Y.?"
"I've been looking, but so far not a peep, skipper," the AI's voice emerges from the tablet. "Riva seems to have experience hiding from our satellites. "
She rubs her forehead. "What do you know about him?"
"Jersey-born and brought up, though his ancestry is Italian. An only child, graduated from Harvard but didn't have much luck finding employment until Stane found him. Worked on… "
May makes a swift motion with her hand and F.R.I.D.A.Y. falls silent. "Would someone please tell me why we're looking into this guy instead of organizing search parties for my nephew?" she says brusquely.
"If that man Izzy interrogated is to be believed, then Peter is looking for a way to prove his innocence," Pepper explains. "For that, he'll need suspects. Evidence. Peter's smart - he'll use E.D.I.T.H. to get started. We're just trying to figure out his next steps."
"You think wherever this guy Riva is, that's where Peter will be?"
Their voices blur into the background as Isabelle recalls Enoch Coltrane's words.
Visas to where?
Venice; Italy. Prague; the Czech Republic. Berlin; Germany. London, the United Kingdom.
"Italian?" she cuts in.
"Yes, Riva's Venetian," F.R.I.D.A.Y. replies. "He used to visit his grandparents every summer in childhood until they passed. "
The pads of her fingers are white against the table. She can hear Enoch's whisper - monotonous, almost robotic - in her mind. You'll find what you're hunting in your roots, Isabelle Stark.
She has not a shred of evidence, only gut instinct and her belief in the words of a man she doesn't know, and who might be leading her astray.
Roots.
She pushes herself off the dining table. "I think I know where he is." And she tells them.
They look doubtful, but they know just as well as her that it's the best lead they got, thin as it is. "I need to go to S.H.I.E.L.D.," she tells them and they don't look surprised. Rhodey stiffens.
"Ross is out for blood, and you'll be painting a target on your back," Pepper reminds her in a voice that tells her the redhead has been prepared for this eventuality. "And with your - " she struggles to continue that sentence in a way that wouldn't be insulting before shrugging in defeat, " - unscrupulous and publicly derided past, even I can't help you if you're caught aiding and abetting public enemy number one."
May's face twists at the reminder of all the wrongs the world has done to her nephew, but she says nothing.
"Don't worry about me," Isabelle says. "Could you use my influence in the Lighthouse somehow?"
"It's an idea," Rhodey says, finally turns to look at her. His expression is blank - she's never liked when he made that face. "Coulson trusts you. We need to use that to distract them long enough for us to be able to find and get Riva." The words sound like they're being forced out of his mouth.
The last piece of the puzzle, tinged with his bitter unhappiness, slides into place. She looks up at Rhodey, whose desperate expression tells her that he'll get her out of this - she just has to say the word.
Isabelle sighs. She's always been a moth attracted to the flames of his pain. It doesn't matter if she gets burned; she can't stand to see him hurt.
She rises, walks up to him and kisses him softly until he sighs into her mouth. The moth turns to ash. She breaks away, then stares into his eyes. "Better be a big-ass distraction, then," she mutters.
"It's the truth, Izzy. It's the biggest one we got."
Cell Bay
THE LIGHTHOUSE, S.H.I.E.L.D. HEADQUARTERS
LOCATION: CLASSIFIED
"Suspect's poker face rivals your own, May," Phil says as she shuts the door to the observation room. His words are mild, but there's no humor in his voice as he stares through the one-way mirror at the man they'd picked up from an NYC hangar this morning.
"He is not responding to any of my interrogation techniques," Agent Melinda May shrugs. "Unless you want me to try some extreme measures, I don't see what else we can do."
"Has he asked for anything? Any food? Tech? Information?"
"Coconut water."
He blinks at her reflection, but nothing in her expression suggests that she's joking. "Why? "
"Says he likes the taste."
His eyes once again land on the blank-faced bald man sitting almost painfully erect on the uncomfortable bolted-down chairs in the interrogation room. He hadn't blinked when they'd broken into the hangar and shoved a bag over his head - as though he'd been expecting them.
"What do you want to do, Coulson?" May asks softly.
Phil knows exactly the kind of man Ross is. He knows what he would do to someone like Enoch Coltrane, and he's exhausted all of the Secretary's minimal goodwill towards S.H.I.E.L.D. just keeping him at bay until May finished her interrogation. Not that that had yielded anything. The prisoner seems intent on getting on their nerves.
He nods to May. "Call them in." May's mouth twists in disgusted displeasure, but she acquiesces and heads towards the door.
It bursts open before she's even reached out for the handle, and a young agent stumbles in, his eyes wide, brow lined with sweat.
"What is it?"
"Our cameras in the town have picked up on something, Director. And you're not going to like it."
July 15th, 2024
THE LIGHTHOUSE, S.H.I.E.L.D. HEADQUARTERS
LOCATION: CLASSIFIED
The pilot had dropped her off in a clearing in the woods a little ways away from the charming little town of River's End. She hikes back and almost immediately finds herself surrounded by heavily armed men. Again.
She can guess who they answer to.
"I wouldn't do that if you don't want frostbitten fingers," she mutters when the man in charge moves to grab her arm.
"Secretary Ross wants to have a word," he says through gritted teeth.
"I'll come with," she says coolly, " - and unless I'm being arrested - of my own free will."
He nods reluctantly, loathing barely restrained in his eyes, and gestures to the others. They surround her, keeping close, their fingers lingering on their weapons.
A blurry memory whispers at the back of her mind. When she'd been about five, before Terrigenesis or S.H.I.E.L.D - before everything, really - she had overheard a conversation between Howard and Peggy Carter about something called Reclamation. He'd been excitedly telling her how he had ensured tickets for himself and Tony to the Lighthouse should the worst come to pass and the world sinks around them.
Carter, then, had, in a deceptively controlled voice, inquired about the fate of his wife and daughter in such a scenario and had been answered with a deafening silence.
But her father's disregard for her life is not why Isabelle remembers that moment.
It's memorable only because of the immense relief she had felt at the indirect reassurance that, no matter what, Tony would always be safe.
Even then, she had known Howard would never let any harm come to his 'greatest creation' as long as he continued to breathe.
As long as he was alive.
She's never wished for her father more than at this moment. Because if Howard were alive, Tony would be alive… and he wouldn't have let this happen to Parker in the first place.
Isabelle should've kept an eye on him. But if anyone reminded her of Tony more than his daughter, it was his protégé. Happy and Pepper were the only contacts between the Parkers and the Starks, and she'd let that status quo lie.
It isn't long before she's in the familiar monitoring station of the Lighthouse, which is busier than she's ever seen. Screens cover every inch of the far wall, and beeps and alarms from various systems are punctuated by agents whisper-shouting into their headsets and typing hurriedly onto their holographic keyboards. Agent May spares her a single glance, before turning back to the screens.
Coulson doesn't react at her appearance except for the slight tightening of his eyes. Ross, however, turns purple.
His apoplectic expression sends a frisson of satisfaction down her spine, even though it means she's his prime target.
"Where is he?!" He demands, stalking over to her.
"It's what I'm here to find out," she says, slipping past him, and looks over at the screens, her eyes lingering on the footage of Times Square.
As she watches, Spider-Man, perched on a streetlight in Madison Square Garden, is bombarded with catcalls, jeers, and the rapid clicks of smartphone cameras. Even in the footage, it's apparent that his posture is stiff, distressed. After a few seconds, he swings out of sight and doesn't reappear.
"If I find out that you or Potts or even Rhodes is behind Parker's disappearance, the Raft will look like Disneyworld compared to where I'll throw you."
"You're looking for the wrong guy, Thaddeus," she says, tossing out his first name casually, knowing it'll rile him up.
"Peter Parker ordered a strike on innocent civilians using Stark drones and killed an interdimensional soldier, and then disappeared when he was exposed!" he bellows. "There isn't even a word for his unbelievably reprehensible crimes, and you still maintain his innocence?"
Coulson steps in between them, his hands raised. "We are straying from the matter at hand," he tells Ross in a measured tone. "Secretary Ross, you've already sent your soldiers to interrogate all of Mr. Parker's friends and family members. And we're continuing to interrogate our main suspect in this case."
Isabelle's phone pings. Sent you whatever I had, Pepper's text reads. They'll buy you some time.
If Ross wants prey, she's more than happy to hand him some.
She opens her phone, downloads the files, then with a flick of her wrist, she forwards it to the screens of the monitoring station. The footage disappears, replaced by proof incriminating one Quentin Beck. She doesn't need to look at them to know that Pepper and Rhodey would've done a thorough job.
The monitoring station is stunned to silence.
She turns to Ross. "Beck wasn't an interdimensional anything," she says coldly. "He was a disgruntled former Stark Industries employee, intent on possessing advanced holographic technology my brother bequeathed to Peter Parker. Mrs. Potts-Stark has gathered employee records, eyewitness testimonials, footage, psychological evaluations - evidence, for your perusal, Mr. Secretary."
"B.A.R.F.?" Coulson whispers, eyes fixed on the screen. She nods.
"He had tech of his own to instigate the attacks in Prague, Venice, and Mexico. But we think he used B.A.R.F. to create that big-ass monster you saw in London, and probably used it to frame Parker for all the crimes you're so intent on pinning on him."
Ross' brows knot as he scrolls down the data on the screen. "This proves nothing. Those elementals created water damage, explosions - how do you explain that?" he asks finally, scowling at her. She doesn't react - it's not as if she was expecting a positive reaction. "He was from another Earth, he could've been our Earth's counterpart for all we know."
She makes sure to give him a look so full of pity he bristles. "You believe that crap he spun about parallel Earths? C'mon, Ross - you're a man of reason; use your goddamn brain. Sure, this isn't proof, but it's enough for you to start investigating a little deeper instead of wasting your time trying to hunt down a seventeen-year-old."
Beck had run his story on the assumption that the world had gotten so weird that people would be willing to believe anything, and he had been right. It's surprising that Ross hadn't found a way to blame her for the water elemental in Italy.
She's one of the few who knows that alternate universes and parallel timelines are all too real. But Ross didn't need to know that, and if she has her way - he never will.
He glares at her, but before he can find anything to refute her words, there's a muffled bang from somewhere in the lower levels and the Lighthouse plunges into darkness.
For a moment, there's absolute silence, the kind of silence she's never heard descend upon this base before. Suddenly, everyone's breathing seems unusually harsh, and it gives her an inkling of what this might be, but she's all too aware of Ross' presence and pretends ignorance. "What is this?"
"Power's down," Coulson's voice emerges, followed by faint tapping. "Can't access my tablet either. This isn't an ordinary outage."
"EMP," Ross growls, and there's an unmistakable sound of a safety being switched off. "We're being attacked!"
"I wouldn't go so far as that," May says quietly, which is when the lights return, all at once.
Isabelle blinks the bright spots out of her eyes. She doesn't have to wait too long. Her heart skips a beat when May's muffled oath reaches her ears.
"Coulson," the woman says. Isabelle follows her gaze to the screens, to the digital numbers displayed on the taskbar. "We just lost an hour."
"Bring me footage of the Cell Bay," the Director snaps. Isabelle doesn't need to check the videos that spring up to interpret his indrawn breath, but she does so anyway.
The interrogation room is empty.
The room whirs into action. Ross barks orders into his comms, agents, and army grunts rushing around him. Coulson and May pore through every surveillance video on every level and their faces turn grimmer when each one comes up with nothing.
She hasn't been given any orders, so she stays out of the way, making sure to keep her body relaxed. Coulson's stare still burns a hole in the back of her head, though.
It's not long before they finally accept what she's known before even the lights returned - Enoch Coltrane is long gone.
"Was this your plan?" Ross demands, stalking towards her until she has to look up to meet his eyes. "You distract us while our main suspect slips away? I knew you had to be working with Parker, I knew…!"
"What suspect?" she asks, threading her voice with the right amount of indignant confusion. "I came here to give you the only lead I have as a gesture of good faith - something I'm starting to regret!"
He glares, but she doesn't back down. There's a vein throbbing in the Secretary's forehead when he whirls towards Coulson. "I'm going after Coltrane. My men will be posted at every exit. Your job is to keep looking for Parker," he orders grimly, " - and the minute you find him, you tell me, not her," and he points to Isabelle.
"And when I find Parker," his voice pitches until only she can hear him, " - I'm gonna bury him alive and take what Stark left him."
Her eyes flash a brilliant aquamarine.
Ross gives her a look of pure loathing before stalking off, his men falling behind him.
The Director turns to her. "You were supposed to be on vacation," he says, displeasure thick in his voice.
"And Spider-Man's identity was supposed to be a secret. Guess nobody is getting what they want these days," Isabelle retorts.
He sighs, gives her a look. "We can talk in my office, Agent Collins," Coulson says as he turns around and heads towards the door on the far side of the monitoring station.
After a momentary hesitation, she falls in behind him.
The office is more cramped than most of the Director's offices Phil's occupied, but then, this bunker had been created to survive extinction-level events. 'Compact' was more of a priority than 'cozy' when the threat of the Hydrogen Wave Crisis had still loomed large over the world.
Collins makes a show of looking around. Her face tightens when her gaze lands on the miniature model of Lola and Phil remembers with a wince that the red Corvette had been modified based on designs and technologies developed by Howard Stark.
"It's a lot barer than I'd have expected," she mutters. "Where are your toys?"
"Most of my memorabilia got blown up along with the Playground," he says shortly, slipping behind his desk. "Didn't feel like decorating during the Decimation." Reminding himself that they don't do small talk anymore, he pulls up the footage of the empty cell on a tablet. "You seem remarkably incurious about this," he says, turning the tablet towards her. "Tell me this wasn't you."
"It wasn't me," she replies, and Phil's inclined to believe her. Her eyes linger in the shadowed corners of the room. "This room clear?"
His face tightens, but he nods. "S.H.I.E.L.D. 's learned to counter external bugs after repeated attempts to hack our mainframe. Secretary Ross is going to find an unpleasant surprise waiting for him when he tries to access confidential information from our servers."
"Is that why I don't see Johnson here? Risky move, keeping her backstage - Ross isn't known for sticking to due process."
Phil shrugs. "Riskier to have her in his line of sight, especially after what happened with Talbot. It's safer to have her running QB interference when he's on-site."
He nods at all the screens outside exposing Beck's guilt. "I know when I'm being sidetracked, Agent Collins. You wouldn't have given us this if you didn't want something from S.H.I.E.L.D."
He could've always reprimanded her for hiding Beck from S.H.I.E.L.D. for this long, but he knows that Ross' men have been dogging Pepper's and Happy's every move, and the only reason they hadn't found Collins was that she didn't want to be found.
Until now.
"F.R.I.D.A.Y. caught wind of a mysterious event on the Poveglia Island in Venice. I need you to send me in - alone - to investigate it."
Phil blinks. It's not what he'd been expecting. "We're classifying it as an 0-8-4 phenomena, but it's low priority. One of my agents is monitoring the situation. Why?"
She says nothing, but he has learned to read between the lines of her silence. "It's an excuse," he speculates, " - because you're going to use the mission as an excuse to find something to incriminate Beck, or prove Parker innocent. Bit of an ask. Venice is a big city for one agent alone."
"If anyone can do it, it's me."
Phil isn't naive enough to think that this is all there is. She has something, probably many things, that she won't, can't share with him. He nods in acknowledgment, and she breathes a sigh of relief.
"Izzy," he says quietly, and her lips thin for a second at the unwelcome form of address. He barrels on anyway. "I'm not going to stop you from doing what you have to do. But if you're right, and Peter Parker is innocent, then I'll do everything in my power to stonewall the government."
She stills. "You want me to bring him into S.H.I.E.L.D. if I find him."
"We have safe houses where we can keep him until Pepper can prove his innocence," he nods. "No one will find him, and you can stay to keep an eye on him if you want, but I wouldn't advise that because -,"
" - there are eyes on me," she finishes, looking supremely unconcerned by the fact. It troubles him that she's not taking Ross' threats seriously enough, but perhaps she knows enough to maintain wary confidence. He hopes that's true.
She inhales deeply, then meets his eyes. "If I bring him in, I'll need something from you."
Her request isn't what he was expecting, and he'll have to do some digging, but it's nothing that can't be done. "Deal," he says.
A moment of silent understanding passes between them, and for the first time since he'd laid eyes on Isabelle Collins amongst the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, he feels at ease in her presence. She shifts, and he reads the unspoken cue.
He brings up the schematics of the base on the tablet. "Ross wasn't kidding when he said the Lighthouse would be watched. But there are underground tunnels that lead out of this place," he says quietly, pinning her with an intense look. "The Secretary has posted men in all of them, but there are some that they just can't observe because they all have flooded."
Collins draws in a sharp breath. "They open into the Lake."
"Lead the way."
Even with her eyes closed, Isabelle can feel the water on the other side of the force-field. It is barely contained.
"You shouldn't be here," she says, without turning around, her fingers hovering over the screen that would bring down the field. "When this thing blows, it's not gonna be pretty."
"I just…" Daisy Johnson's scrunched-up face clears when she turns around. "I wanted to apologize."
"Didn't find a better time and place to do it?" Her words are cutting.
She runs a hand through her hair. "I... it wasn't right of me - to force you into a position where you had to agree to Gabe's spell." Her apology sounds reluctant, as though it's coming from her mouth, but someone else's words are being forced out.
Isabelle closes her eyes, realizing that there's genuinely no fixing this. Johnson's the face of the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. - none of them trust her; only she's just unbelievably vocal about it. "It was necessary," she offers her a way out, knowing that Johnson wouldn't take it.
"Yeah, but..."
Isabelle realizes that she doesn't want to fix it.
"Listen, Johnson," she interrupts sharply. "I don't want your half-assed apologies. As far as I'm concerned, pragmatism always rules, and you did an excellent job demonstrating it."
Hook.
Her gaze turns hard. "Just remember, someday - I might choose to return the favor." She wets her lips. "And you know what... I think I am looking forward to it."
Line.
Isabelle watches with satisfaction tinged with distant resignation when Johnson's lip curls. "Coulson's just fooling himself about you, isn't he?" the other woman asks bitterly. "You're exactly what S.H.I.E.L.D. described you to be. A cold, sociopathic bitch. You don't care about Parker, you only care about the billion-dollar tech he's carrying. You don't even care that your brother died to bring you back, do you?"
And now for the sinker.
She can almost see the bile rising Johnson's throat when she plasters on the cruelest smile she can muster and says words that burn like blasphemy on her tongue.
"He got the job done."
Johnson recoils, stares at her with flat eyes, then spins on her heels and disappears down the tunnel.
Isabelle exhales only when she hears the distant sound of an elevator riding up. Her body gives itself away to the water that feels more like her true form these days.
With one swift motion, she twists around and slams a hand on the screen.
July 23rd, 2024
LOCATION: Gran Viale Santa Maria Elisabetta
Lido di Venezia
She had forgotten how quiet it could get here at night, even during tourist season. The beach, which had been bustling just a few hours ago, is silent now, with only a few stragglers hurrying home.
She lets her toes sink one last time into the seashell-strewn sands before making her way to the bar at the end of the street. It's a lot more crowded than she expects, but that's good - she hasn't taken off her photostatic veils since she landed in Venice, but she still doesn't want her disguise to be in any way memorable.
There's a part of her that's glad she's here. She can breathe in this city, in Venezia Serenissima. There are no constant reminders here, of her losses, of her failures. She can pretend that she's not Isabelle Collins, or Isabelle Stark, or even Isabelle Rhodes…
Just Izzy.
Venice is, and always has been, hers.
Isabelle snags a seat, catches the attention of the bartender and orders a beer.
She'd spent the entirety of last week canvassing the town of Chioggia. The residents hadn't been forthcoming on details, but she hadn't expected otherwise; Pellestrina is known for closing ranks against strangers, even those who look Venetian. So she'd spent her time eavesdropping, recording voices, and 'borrowing' DNA from a few locals to create new veils.
Her gut tells her that Lido is where she'll find whatever she's looking for.
Or perhaps it's just the mysterious call that her home, her birthplace has always had for her that has brought her here, and she's letting sentimentality drive her mission.
Isabelle suspects it might be both.
The hatted bartender doesn't spare her a second glance before sliding a cold, frothy mug across the bar table. She fights down the urge to grimace and takes a slow sip. She's never taken to alcohol - dehydration is a very real risk for her - but appearances, unfortunately, must be kept.
Her eyes rove over the tourists and the locals alike who'd flooded the beaches this afternoon, armed with parasols, beach towels, and plastic chairs. Anyone could be her target - she does not doubt that if she has S.H.I.E.L.D.- issued photostatic veils to disguise her face and voice, Riva and his cronies will have something a lot more sophisticated.
It's not until the power goes out does she realize that she's been waiting for something to happen.
The silence that falls on the crowd breaks with a gasp, and then everyone is hurriedly paying for their drinks and clogging the entrance in their desperation to escape. She stays seated, sips at her beer, swaying as she's shoved by the rabble. The bartender utters a muffled oath, a stained towel forgotten in his hands as his eyes are arrested by something in the distance.
She follows his gaze, down the sandy beach, beyond the moonlit waves to the silhouette of Poveglia on the horizon.
As she watches, a thick, dark green fog emerges out of the waters surrounding the island and crawls up the western shores to relentlessly envelop the ruins in its unnatural embrace. Even the famed bell tower overshadowing the other buildings doesn't escape the murk.
0-8-4, Coulson had said. The official S.H.I.E.L.D. designation for an 'object of unknown origin'. Or, in this case, a phenomenon.
Poveglia has always been shrouded in mystery and superstition, but she knows for a fact that it's no more haunted than the Mansion. She has snuck off on a gondola enough times in her youth and walked around the ruins of the asylum and the plague pits to personally attest to it.
And yet.
She looks around. The bar is empty except for the owner, wiping down all the glasses with a despondent expression, and a young man in a hoodie occupying the farthest seat.
Her eyes linger on the other patron, who's nursing something that doesn't look alcoholic. His posture is far too stiff, and his eyes keep snapping to the view of the island outside.
She blinks twice. Deliberately.
S.H.I.E.L.D. tech had gone through quite a few upgrades during her involuntary retirement period. The veils are now retrofitted with a specialized contact lens that projects a user interface to scan visual targets.
A facial scan diagnostic appears and F.R.I.D.A.Y. zooms in on the teenager, brings up a photo. The young man is strangely pale for the Italian summer, but his face doesn't match the one she's looking for.
She exhales quietly.
"We thought at first that it was divine retribution," the bartender suddenly says, stopping in the middle of his customary wipe-down. His Italian is choppy and coarse, reminiscent of the beaches he spends most of his day in. "They came from Sicily, said that they were sent by the Mayor to 'restore' Poveglia - make it into hotels with pools, parks. To wipe out our history, our culture."
She arches an eyebrow. Their roles seem to have switched. For the first time, a bartender is the one sharing his woes.
"Real estate brokers," Isabelle murmurs, keeping an eye on the other patron. "They were the first victims?"
He nods. "They went, which is when the fog started. Only one returned, a week later, and I fished him out of the water. Whatever he saw drove him mad. The Polizia - they sent men, loyal Venetians, who disappeared as well. " He sighs heavily, looking increasingly unnerved. "First, that water monster attacks the Grand Canal, and now this. The survivor said Venice was cursed. Maybe he was right."
She straightens in her seat. Now, this is interesting. "Where is the survivor now?"
The bartender shrugs. "They took him to the hospital in town. The doctors - they don't know what's wrong with him, so they're going to send him back to Sicily tomorrow."
She nods and lets her eyes slip to the side, only to find the corner seat empty. She bites back a curse, rises, and slides a few extra euros across the bar and walks out without a backward glance.
He's not at the beach. He's not in the boathouse, nor lurking the alleys in and around Santa Maria Elisabetta.
No one should've been able to disappear so fast - not unless they were enhanced.
"FRI?" She whispers.
"The dearth of public surveillance measures in Lido is making it difficult for me to see much," the AI tells her crossly.
The thought that she has missed out on something huge isn't letting her go. "Execute an anatomical comparison analysis on the suspect."
"Skipper, I don't think…"
"Just do it."
A few seconds pass, before F.R.I.D.A.Y. quietly admits, " - 63% match between the patron and Peter Parker, based on the limited information I could gather."
"I've worked with fewer odds. Expand your search grid, hack into any telecoms you got access to. I need eyes, ears, anything you can get me."
"Would you like me to ping E.D.I.T.H. again? Or Karen?"
"Might as well. I don't expect anything to come of it, though."
"Maybe one of these days we'll get lucky."
The throng has thinned out now, most answering the call of dinner time. But there are enough tourists taking selfies to be useful for F.R.I.D.A.Y. She walks along canals parallel to the main street, eyes lingering on each face, her veil providing yet another layer of investigation.
She's just ducked into a narrow, quieter alley at the other end of the street when F.R.I.D.A.Y. crackles to life in her ear. "I think I got something," she says, quietly bringing up an Instagram post of a blurred figure crouching on one of the nearby rooftops.
Her neck prickles as something lands behind her lightly. She stills.
"Why are you following me?"
The voice is unfamiliar, and the British accent is almost impressively genuine. She starts to turn around, but a lithe yet muscular arm clamps down on her shoulder. "Do not turn around."
Her eyebrow twitches, and she twists, swings her arm sharply, drops her body weight, and disengages. He retreats and blinks, startled. "Hasn't anyone ever taught you not to grab a woman?" she snarls, before breaking into a roundhouse kick.
His arm blocks her, and she ducks under his other fist, aimed at her head, retaliating with a sharp elbow jab to the underside of his ribs. He grunts harshly but recovers swiftly with another punch, but she blocks him and strikes his solar plexus.
His eyes bulge as the breath is driven from his lungs, and she brings his arm around and twists sharply, presses him down. "Ready to give up yet?"
He gasps in pain, then chuckles darkly. "Not likely," he says, fake accent all but forgotten. In a swift move, he shifts his hips backward, breaking her hold, pivots, his right leg hooking behind hers, and jerking sharply. She lands with a thud, and he breaks off, retreating, arms coming up.
She pulls herself up with a smooth motion. He throws the first punch this time, but once again, she blocks, turns and locks his arm around her neck, grabs his hoodie, and uses the momentum to roll forward.
They land hard, but he recovers almost as fast as her, his flat hands coming up to block her kick, and he grabs her calves, twists hard, and they roll on the ground, legs tangled for a brief moment before jerking up again. Her foot glances off his chin and he reverses rolls and pulls himself to his feet just as she aims yet another, more powerful roundhouse kick this time.
Neither of them expected it to connect. His face looks almost comically startled as he goes crashing into a dumpster.
"Yeah, you're done," she says, raising an arm slowly.
He curls his body inward then leaps forward, landing in a familiar crouch in front of her, his eyes narrowed to slits. Then stills.
Thick mist wafts down her fingers, whose tips are coated in ice. With her other hand, she slowly pulls off her veil and drops it. His eyes widen with recognition. "You, Peter Parker, are a royal pain in my ass."
Slowly, he reaches out and pulls off his mask, given to him by Enoch. Parker blinks up at her, slack-jawed.
"Aquamarine?"
MCU Context:
Stark Mansion: In the comics, Stark Mansion eventually became Avengers Mansion. But in the MCU, it''s only ever shown in an unfortunately short-lived tv show called Agent Carter, set in the 1950s, immediately after World War II. None of the movies even hinted towards it. Stark-owned locations were just the Malibu house, the Avengers Tower, and finally the Compound.
I'm using it cuz why waste such a brilliant location.
J.O.C.A.S.T.A.: In the Age of ULTRON, when Tony's trying to find the best one to replace J.A.R.V.I.S. in his suits, he goes through a bunch of A.I. chips, before finally choosing F.R.I.D.A.Y. But there were two other visible chips, J.O.C.A.S.T.A. and T.A.D.A.S.H.I., that I mentioned earlier in my prologue.
In the comics, J.O.C.A.S.T.A. was created to be the 'bride of ULTRON'.
In my fic's canon, there is a connection between J.O.C.A.S.T.A. and ULTRON, but nothing so ick. And T.A.D.A.S.H.I. will play a role as well, much much later.
May Parker's sobriety: This is my own personal canon. I have loved all of the women who have played May Parkers over the years, but all of them seemed a little too perfect. Great, awesome support systems/parent figures to the various Peter Parkers, but without any flaws at all.
So this struck me like a bolt of inspiration from nowhere, really, when I thought - wow, maybe Ben Parker's death hit a lot harder than shown in the movies, and this May turned to drink and only came out of it when she saw how awesomely independent and responsible her (then) fourteen-year-old was behaving. So she attended rehab sessions, got clean, supported her nephew… then got Snapped by a purple alien.
Look up my Instagram the_a_i_1502 for fanart for my fic!