Darkness.
Quiet.
Peace.
Dreams.
...memories?
No.
Nightmares.
A child's birthday party. A depressed clown. Balloon animals. Cake and ice cream. Joy laced with sadness. It would be the last one, but he doesn't know that yet.
A man yelling. A woman cowering in fear. The sound of flesh hitting flesh. The sound of a child's footsteps running away. Hiding. Waiting.
The sad police officer finds him. Asks him questions and leads him out of the house. The child steals a look as they leave and wishes he hadn't. A lump covered by a sheet on a stretcher.
Memories fly by with impossible speed. Years pass in seconds then slow to a crawl only to accelerate again.
A pretty girl with red hair and sparkling green eyes smiles at the young man from behind a restaurant counter. The same girl with him at the park with their hands entwined. She laughs and gives him a playful push.
Date night at a fancy restaurant. A ring and a proposal. Tears of joy for an upcoming wedding. The day will never come, but they are blissfully unaware.
Driving to her parents house to share the news. The beautiful girl's face as she turns to look at him with a smile. The grille of an oncoming truck, visible through the window behind her. Impact and the sound of crumpling metal. Excruciating pain for an instant, followed by darkness.
A whispered voice echoes through his mind, repeating a single word. No...a name.
...Natalie.
Time stops. Rewinds. The cycle repeats. And repeats. And repeats.
The man awakens with a gasp, his eyes shooting open to be greeted with the sight of a plain white ceiling. There's a sharp sting in his arm and he glances down to see a needle stuck in it. He looks around in a panic, noting that he is in a hospital bed in a darkened room. Light streams through the open door.
Hurried footsteps approach accompanied by indistinct voices. Bright light blinds him. People in white coats rush into the room only to stop short and stare at him. The man feels their confusion. This seems unusual to him for some reason but he doesn't question it. Thoughts begin to form in his mind.
'How is he awake? He had no brain activity an hour ago! This is unprecedented! He's kinda cute, I wonder if he's nice?'
The last thought catches him off guard and he glances at a pretty blonde nurse who had come into the room with the doctors. She blushes when he looks at her and he realizes the thoughts are not his. He feels the nurse's emotions shift from mischievous to embarrassed. This still seems unusual. He questions it this time.
He's suddenly overwhelmed by the different emotions radiating from the people in the room. Just when he starts to get a handle on it everything shifts and he has to start over. Along with the emotions he gets fragments of thoughts coming through in intermittent spikes. For a few minutes he has a hard time discerning his own thoughts and feelings from the sea of them churning around him. He feels unmoored from any sense of self and it's disorienting.
Weeks later the man stands before a mirror staring at his reflection. The faded blue, tired eyes look back at him, just as he remembers. The dark brown hair, shoulder-length and hanging loose. Same as before. The angry scar running up the side of his face next to his left eye and disappearing into his hairline. That's new. He stares at the near-stranger in the mirror for a long time thinking about the months he now knows he spent in a coma. He shouldn't be alive and he knows it. He feels a twist in his mind and the mirror spiderwebs. He never moved a muscle. The door slams shut behind him. He never touched that either.
Natasha Romanoff was going insane with aggravation. She had been a full SHIELD agent for a little better than two years now and was finally starting to be trusted enough to be given the occasional solo mission. Previously she had always been paired with Clint and had Coulson in her earpiece. While she was pleased that Fury was showing more trust in her, the aggravation stemmed from the nature of a lot of the missions a young, attractive girl would be sent in alone on.
Anton Federov was a Russian businessman suspected of having ties to a black market arms dealing ring that had somehow acquired Stark weapons. Her assignment was to get hired as his secretary and gather as much intel as she possibly could. The assignment itself was simple, but it was seriously testing her patience. Federov was a misogynistic pig who didn't actually need a secretary, he just wanted a girl to sit on his lap and look pretty during business meetings as a twisted status symbol. He had a habit of saying the most vulgar things to Natasha in Russian because he didn't realize she understood every word. It took every ounce of self control she had to smile and nod instead of crushing his trachea, which she had fantasized about doing many times over the last five days. Federov and his business partners had already given her enough intel to shut down three different operations and had no idea they'd done so. They had no qualms about discussing business openly in front of a young girl they thought couldn't understand them and gave her information that would have otherwise taken months to gather in the span of an afternoon.
The best part of Natasha's day was when she was sent to get coffee from the shop around the corner. It was a blissful twenty-five minutes in which she didn't have a middle-aged Russian sleazeball groping her. She had decided two days ago that when Federov had served his purpose and was heading to prison she was going to beat the shit out of him before he was arrested. Coulson would disapprove, but he'd let it slide. Probably. The only reason she hadn't done it already was because Clint had bet her five hundred dollars she couldn't go a full week without knocking the asshole out.
While Natasha was standing off to the side of the counter in the coffee shop waiting for her order she glanced around out of habit and noticed a man coming through the door. He had shoulder-length brown hair that seemed like it frequently got in his face. Decent enough looking, with pleasant features marred by an ugly scar on one side of his face. He was carrying a brown leather messenger bag slung over one shoulder. He didn't register as a threat and his entire demeanor screamed 'tourist'. He looked around the shop, noticed her paying attention to him and made a show of flicking his gaze down and back up quickly before giving her a cheeky grin and a wink of one pale blue eye. She prepared herself to shoot down yet another idiot's attempt to hit on her, and was mildly surprised when the guy showed no inclination to try and talk to her and simply walked up to the counter to place his drink order.
Maybe it was her irritation with Federov. Maybe it was her disdain for the kind of men who thought with body parts other than their brain most of the time. Maybe she had spent too much time with Clint and his pettiness when people annoyed him was rubbing off on her. Whatever the reason, Natasha decided to mess with him a little bit. She was used to using her sex appeal to her advantage when dealing with men. There was just something about being presented with an attractive woman that made a lot of them act like idiots, which just made her job easier. So she waited until the guy completed his drink order and stood aside. She dropped her phone with a quiet swear, making it look accidental. When she picked it up she made sure to bend over and point her ass directly at him while she slid her gaze over to his reflection in the glass case that held the pastries. The plan was to catch him staring at her ass and give him the kind of glare that had cowed terrorists and criminals the world over. Instead, what she saw when she looked at his reflection was him making eye contact with her in the glass. The guy raised his eyebrows, made a show of blatantly glancing at her ass, and shot her a smirk that turned into a genuine smile.
Since his order was only one drink and hers was a dozen, the guy's order came up first. He didn't even so much as glance at her, but he did murmur a "Well played." as he passed her.
After collecting the drink order Natasha started heading back in the direction of Federov's building. She stopped short a few feet outside the door when she realized that she'd just been outmaneuvered by a random guy at a coffee shop. The only thing she could do was shake her head at herself and chuckle.
'That's what you get for being petty, Nat.' She thought with another shake of her head, 'You had that coming, didn't you?'
Natasha had walked about half a block when the sounds of a scuffle down an alley attracted her attention. She glanced down the alley and rolled her eyes when she realized the same guy from the coffee shop was getting jumped by a group of half a dozen thugs. Because of course he was. She watched for a few moments trying to decide if she should get involved. It would probably blow her cover, but she wasn't willing to let the guy get killed if that looked like the likely result. She decided not to when she saw that the guy was holding his own. More than holding it, actually. He clearly knew how to fight, but didn't look like he had any real training. Instead, he looked more like the kind of guy who learned how to fight by losing a lot of them and learning from his mistakes. She was about to leave him to it and be on her way when her observant eyes spotted something that seemed off. Some of the guys he was hitting were actually flying through the air a little ways, and he didn't look like he should be able to hit them that hard. As she continued to watch the scene shifted from being a little odd to being decidedly not normal. She happened to be at the right angle to see it when the guy threw a punch at one of the thugs and it didn't come anywhere near him, but the guy still flew backwards like he had been hit by a car.
'Shit.' She realized, 'He's an Enhanced.'
Natasha remembered the briefing Fury and Hill had given her and Clint about Enhanced individuals and their orders if they encountered one while they were in the field. Try to get as close to them as you can and make a note of anything you observe them doing, without them realizing they are being analyzed if possible. And try to get a name if they could so SHIELD could follow up later. Natasha thought over her options for this situation briefly and groaned when she realized 'damsel in distress' was the only one that would work here. She hated that play. It was as demeaning as it was irritating, and it often led to the mark asking for her number so he could 'check up on her and make sure she's okay', which was a less than subtle way of saying 'I want gratitude sex'.
Before she could second guess herself and miss her opportunity Natasha started down the alley and adopted her 'stuck up bitch' persona. She pretended not to notice the thug against the wall where he'd been thrown and stepped past him to confront the two thugs still standing with the most self-important tone she could muster up.
"Hey!" she shouted, waving her phone in the air "Leave that guy alone before I call the cops!"
Coffee guy took one look at her and rolled his eyes.
"You've gotta be fucking kidding me." he muttered to himself.
Natasha quickly scanned the alley to get a better read on the situation and swore under her breath when she saw the blonde girl in a coffee shop uniform fearfully crouched next to the dumpster that had been blocking her view until now. That single missed detail changed the situation entirely and she had made it more complicated by getting involved. Now coffee guy thought he had two people to protect instead of the one he had obviously come to the aid of, and she couldn't do much to help without completely blowing her cover. She mentally kicked herself and thought about how Clint would have seen the girl there because he somehow saw everything.
As she was expecting, it didn't take long for the thug she had deliberately stepped past to recover and grab her from behind with a knife blade pressed to her throat. Natasha sighed and resigned herself to the role she had to play here. It was time to turn on the hysterics and make a damn fool out of herself.
"Oh god!' she cried with a 'genuine' look of terror plastered across her face, "Please don't hurt me! I didn't see anything, I swear! My daddy is rich, he can give you all the money you want if you just please don't hurt me!"
She made sure her voice cracked and sounded like it was on the verge of tears, and did every subtly dramatic thing she could think of to distract the thugs away from the girl who was still pressed up against the wall near the dumpster.
'Get the hell up and RUN!' She mentally screamed at the terrified girl, 'Get out of here while they're distracted!'
As if she heard her, the girl got a more determined expression on her face and began creeping along the side of the dumpster that was between her and safety. When she cleared the edge of it she stood up and bolted out of the alley toward the coffee shop she had been taking trash out from. One of the two standing thugs not holding onto Natasha tried to go after her but was stopped by coffee guy doing something unexpected.
"Nuh uh. Not happening." he told the thug as he grabbed a spilled trash can by the rim and flung it at him with enough force that it whistled as it flew through the air. It also curved in the air as it flew and impacted directly on the thug's head, even though the guy had only casually tossed it in his general direction. It was seeing the behavior of the trash can that made it click for Natasha.
'He's telekinetic.' she realized, 'But he's trying to disguise it with movements to make what people are seeing seem more plausible. He wants to help people with what he can do, but he doesn't want them asking questions about how he did it. Interesting.'
Coffee guy took advantage of the other still-standing thug being distracted by his buddy getting taken out and threw a half-assed kick at him. Natasha would be willing to bet his foot never connected and watched as the thug was thrown into the wall anyway. She was fascinated enough watching it that she almost forgot to keep up her panicked breathing and fake trembling convincingly. SHIELD had a handful of Enhanced in their ranks, but she had never had the occasion to see any of them use their powers in the field.
"That just leaves you," coffee guy addressed the man that thought he was holding Natasha hostage. He didn't know how to use a knife properly and she could have gotten out of his grip anytime she wanted to, but changing plays halfway through a situation rarely worked out well. The thug shifted her so she was more in front of him, and she barely restrained herself from shattering his septum with a headbutt when she felt him squeeze her left breast as he repositioned her.
"The way I see it, you have two, maybe three choices." coffee guy continued in a deceptively calm voice "One, you let her go and I knock you out like your buddies. Two, you don't let her go, and I knock you out anyway."
Natasha watched his stance shift to one of subtle menace with a head tilt, and his voice gained a distinctly threatening tone.
"Or three, you can use that knife and your friends get to wonder why you're in pieces when they wake up."
Natasha had to admit to being a little impressed. Grudgingly. As threats went, that was a solid seven or eight on her intimidation meter. Somewhere between knee weakening and peeing yourself on the scale she and Clint had created out of sheer boredom one day on a long surveillance mission. She'd only seen a ten once in her life, that being the only time she'd seen someone hit 'shit your pants' level and then follow through on it. She'd actually caused that one herself. The thug apparently agreed with her assessment because she felt him flinch at the guy's words. He'd put together the fact that the man he was facing didn't have to touch him to hurt him and absolutely believed he could be dismembered.
Coffee guy made eye contact with her and very slightly shifted his gaze to the right once he was sure she was looking. Clearly he was expecting her to help him with her 'rescue' and was giving her a subtle hint as to which direction he wanted her to go. She gave him a very slight nod in return and tensed her legs to be ready to move when he did whatever he was planning.
"I'm running out of patience, pal." he addressed the thug "Either you make a choice in the next couple seconds or I'm making it for you."
"I ain't listening to a mutie freak like you!" the thug spit out, turning Natasha's stomach with his rancid breath in the process, "You try to do anything and I'll kill this bitch!"
"Okay, have it your way." coffee guy replied with a casual shrug. Then he adopted a look of concentration and Natasha felt the thug's knife blade shift away from her throat, probably not voluntarily. Once the metal was no longer pressed against her skin Natasha lifted her leg and stomped down as hard as she could on top of the thug's foot, thankful for once that her cover involved wearing heels. The thug let go of her to instinctively reach for his injured foot and she spun out of his grasp. Coffee guy tilted his head a little and glanced at her as though he was weighing his options. Finally, he nodded to himself and made a gesture with his hand. She heard the unmistakable sound of bones breaking as the thug's knife arm bent the wrong direction at the elbow and snapped. The thug made a high pitched keening sound as his arm was broken, but didn't have a chance to do anything else before he was launched into the nearby wall headfirst and slumped to the ground unconscious.
Coffee guy took a few moments to go around to each thug and check pulses to make certain he hadn't killed any of them before coming to stand in front of her with an expression on his face that was somewhere between annoyed and amused.
"Are you okay, Miss...?" he said before trailing off and waiting expectantly for her to finish his sentence.
"I'm fine" Natasha replied "I'm Natalie."
Coffee guy just tilted his head and raised one eyebrow as he looked at her. Natasha clocked something else on his face, so quick she almost missed it. When she gave him her fake name a brief pained look flashed across his face before he schooled his expression back to the casual confidence he was trying to project. That was odd, and she found herself curious as to why just hearing a name would cause him distress.
"No, you aren't." he told her with absolute certainty, "Dunno why you're lying about your name, but that's none of my business. Want to tell me why you got involved when it was obvious I had things under control?"
Natasha was caught flat-footed and wasn't sure how to respond to the fact that this guy had just clocked her deception with no apparent effort. Even Clint had a hard time spotting her lies, and she didn't know anyone better at reading people than him. Her mind was racing as she tried to figure out how he had known. Then it dawned on her that if he was telekinetic, there was a good chance he had other powers that he was using to get a read on her.
Natasha had heard about the differences between different kinds of Enhanced. Some got their powers through some kind of accident, and their powers often had some kind of drawback to them. Others were born with them and were called mutants when they needed to differentiate between the types. Of the five Enhanced that SHIELD had on their roster, three of them were mutants. Agents Cassidy, Braddock, and Madrox were all Specialists that got assigned missions outside the scope of a STRIKE Team. Cassidy had explained one night that sometimes a mutant whose parents were both mutants got more than one power. Natasha was getting the distinct feeling that was the case here. She really didn't like the idea of a stranger rummaging around in her head and pulling out information against her will. She had experienced far too much of that kind of thing during her time in the Red Room.
"Well," coffee guy continued "You did give me a name, even though it isn't your real one, so the least I can do is give you mine. It's Alex. Alex Meyers."
As he spoke, Alex stepped forward and extended his hand in an offer to shake. There was no tension visible in his stance and his overture seemed genuine, so Natasha returned the gesture and shook his hand. Alex gave her a knowing look and stepped back with the demeanor of someone who was deciding how much they wanted to share. Finally, he shook his head and chuckled softly.
"Okay, so you obviously figured out my secret." he began "In fact, I think you knew something before you got involved. You with one of the alphabet gangs? Undercover?"
"Not exactly," Natasha answered in a cool tone "And I wouldn't be very good at my job if I admitted that, would I?"
Natasha knew she had to walk a fine line with this guy. Withhold information without telling an outright lie. If he was reading her mind it would be useless, but if he was doing it some other way she should be able to navigate this conversation.
"Okay, sounds like we can come to an agreement here then." Alex said with a smirk. For the first time, Natasha fully appreciated how annoying it was to be smirked at by someone who could see right through you. The irony of how many times she'd been on the other side of it was not lost on her. "You keep your mouth shut about what you saw here, and I don't say anything that will blow your cover. I don't want to be someone's lab rat and you clearly have a job to do, so it makes things easier on both of us if we pretend this never happened. Fair enough?"
"Yeah, I can live with that." Natasha replied with an arched eyebrow.
"So we have an accord." Alex concluded with a sharp nod, "I'm pretty sure you can take care of yourself just fine, so I'll be on my way now. Nothing personal, but I hope I never see you again."
Natasha had to agree with that last sentiment. She really didn't like the idea of spending too much time around someone who could see through her carefully constructed masks that easily. It was a little unsettling and she didn't like the feeling at all. She felt exposed with the lies that had saved her life so many times rendered useless. Definitely better for them to go their separate ways.
She let out a sigh when she realized she couldn't let the opportunity pass without at least attempting the recruitment pitch. Someone with his abilities could be a great asset for SHIELD. He'd make an incredible interrogator with how easily he could see through lies. Not to mention how useful telekinesis would be for a field agent.
"Hey." she called out before she could talk herself out of it, "Would you be interested in a job?"
"What kind of job?" Alex inquired in return, "And why do you ask?"
"Because helping that girl means you're a good person." Natasha answered his second question first, "And the same thing I do. We have a few Enhanced working with us. You one of Xavier's kids?"
"No." Alex replied, his smirk making a reappearance, "I have a friend down in New Orleans that works with him sometimes, though. He taught me how to play poker."
"So you already travel a lot then?" Natasha asked him, "You're dressed like a tourist."
"Yeah." he answered, "Last four years or so. Just kinda wandered the country. Stayed down south in the winter, up north in the summer."
"So traveling for the job wouldn't be a problem." she mused, "Any combat experience?"
"Not so much." Alex told her, "What you just saw is about the extent of it. Who are you with anyway? CIA? NSA?"
"SHIELD." Natasha replied, "We deal with the things that are more far reaching than those guys. Terrorists, arms dealers, human traffickers, you get the idea. If they're putting people in danger we stop them."
"I'll think about it." Alex said, "You got a card?"
"Not on me. You got a phone?" Natasha asked. When he pulled his phone out she rattled off a phone number, "771-268-5392."
"Why are you offering me this?" Alex asked with his eyes narrowed suspiciously, "I'll know if you lie to me."
"Just a hunch. I think you'd be a good fit." she answered. When the other reason popped into her head she voiced it as well, "And I'm paying it forward. Someone once gave me the chance to do some good with my skills instead of what I was doing before, and I took it."
He studied her for a moment more before relenting, satisfied that she wasn't trying to deceive him.
When he was silent for a few seconds Natasha couldn't help asking the question that had been bugging her since he clocked her lie about her name, "How do you do it? You read minds?"
"Not exactly." Alex replied evasively. His next statement caught her off guard, "I make you uneasy. In your line of work someone you can't lie to is a problem. I get that. I promise, I'm not reading your mind."
Natasha nervously shuffled a little and inwardly berated herself for giving such an obvious tell. She thought it over and felt a little better about it when she realized that any attempt to deceive this guy would send him running for the hills. If there was any chance of him accepting her invitation he had to see for himself that she wasn't trying to trick him into anything. If he hadn't had his powers that long it was probably a rude awakening when he saw how dishonest people really were. She was comfortable with that, but she knew not everyone was.
"So when I call that number, who should I ask for?" Alex asked her seriously. Natasha noted the use of the word 'when'. She thought about it for a few seconds. The number was for one of her burner phones that only she would ever answer.
"Agent Natasha Romanoff." she said before she could think better of it. Alex gave her a strange look at that. She wasn't lying to him. It was her real, legal name. He couldn't possibly know that it hadn't always been her name, could he?
"Interesting." Alex mused, "That's your name, you aren't lying. But you had to think about it. Either you have so many aliases you forget which one is really you, or it hasn't been your name that long."
That had her feeling distinctly unsettled. He was right on both counts. Natasha had been seeing through people's bullshit for a long time. She'd never really appreciated how uncomfortable it was to be on the receiving end of it until now. Alex had a way of phrasing things that pulled the truth out of you. He'd be the best 'good cop' in an interrogation session SHIELD had ever seen if he accepted her offer.
"Something like that." It seemed like a safe enough answer. The only person who had ever made her feel this transparentwas Clint when she had first met him. He had seen through her halfhearted attempts to kill him, which were actually attempts at provoking him into killing her. Clint had looked past all of it and saw that she was exhausted, scared, and just so done with everything that she wanted to end it. She had thought death was her only way out, but Clint had given her another option she hadn't even known existed and she'd jumped at it even though she didn't trust him. Anything had to be better than going back to the Red Room for another round of conditioning. Even if they ended up using her too. The fact that Clint was willing to spare her life when he'd been ordered to kill her had hinted that things would be different, so she felt it was worth taking a chance on.
Natasha shook herself out of her thoughts to find that Alex was looking at her expectantly.
"I need to get going." she told him, "You were right about me having a job to do and I've already been gone too long. Think about the offer."
On saying that Natasha turned on her heel and strode out of the alley to re-order the coffee that had spilled everywhere when the thug had grabbed her. She really hated this assignment.
When the redhead disappeared around the corner Alex let out a deep breath. That had been a little nerve wracking. Half of what he had said to her had been guesses, and he seemed to have gotten at least most of them right. If his telepathy was more reliable he wouldn't have to guess like that. Reading people with his empathy wasn't as precise. He got their surface feelings and a sense of wrongness when they told a lie, but it didn't actually give him any insight as to what the truth was. If he wanted to get the truth out of them he had to ask questions to narrow down the possibilities when they kept lying or told the truth. He could tell it was difficult for Natasha to be open and honest with him during their conversation. It made sense, really. In a line of work that had her lying to anyone and everyone about who she was, concealing the truth would be second nature to her. And she was good at it, to the point that if he hadn't been able to tell when she was lying he would have believed every word that came out of her mouth.
The woman was a conundrum in another way as well. He could only get brief flares of emotion from her before she reeled it in, completely under her control. The only time he had gotten anything solid from her was when she was being held hostage. That had been wave after wave of pure irritation. He had figured out quickly that the thug only had hold of her because she was allowing it. He didn't get any kind of sense that she felt like she was in any danger whatsoever. Natasha's mention of them having Enhanced that worked for them had definitely set his mind at ease a little. If there were others like him already there it made it less likely that he'd be experimented on.
He had impressed her enough to elicit a job offer, even through he could tell she didn't really want to make it. His ability made her nervous but she put doing her job ahead of her own personal feelings to make the offer. He wasn't necessarily opposed to working for SHIELD, but he wasn't about to accept an offer without knowing more about it. Alex decided to call up Remy and see if he could give him a little more insight on what he might be getting himself into. He started walking out of the alley as the phone rang in his ear. He had to try three more times before he finally got an irritated sounding answer.
"You got Gambit." Remy's distinctive accent finally came through the speaker, "De hell you wan'? It six in de mornin'"
"Hey Remy, it's Alex." he said, "Got a question for you. What do you know about SHIELD?"
"Dat depends on what side of you dey on." the Cajun responded, "Why dey sniffin' roun' you?"
"Got a job offer from one of their agents." Alex told him, "She seemed to think I'd be a good fit. Saw me in a scrap and clocked my powers."
"She?" Remy inquired, "Not a lot o' women at SHIELD in position to be making job offers. You get a name?"
"Yeah." he answered his friend, "Romanoff. Agent Natasha Romanoff."
There was silence on the other end of the line for long enough that Alex started to think Remy had hung up.
"You ran into de Black Widow and impressed 'er enough to get a job offer outta 'er?" Remy spouted incredulously, "Boy, you are just full o' surprises! I tol' Xavier 'e shoulda made you a better offer den dat."
"You know her?"
"Only by reputation, mon ami." came the reply, "She ex-KGB. Defected about t'ree years ago now. Used to be one of de deadliest assassins in de world before dat. Prolly still is, come ta t'ink of it. She don' take no shit from no one, and she ain't easy to impress from what Gambit hear. Put it dis way, Gambit heard her and dat Hawk guy were on security for a job he got offered and Gambit turn it down. Ain't gonna tangle wit' dem if I don't need to."
Alex shook his head with a smile at Remy's habit of referring to himself in the third person by his codename. From anyone else it would come across as arrogant, but with Remy it was just a quirk you quickly got used to.
"So SHIELD interested in Tantrum, eh?" Remy continued, using Alex's own codename because he knew Alex hated it.
"Told you not to call me that, Remy."
"An' Gambit tol' you not to call him Remy." the Cajun shot back, "You earned dat name when you let Logan piss you off and started t'rowin' chairs at 'im wit your mind. 'E said it was like you was t'rowin one big ol' temper tantrum."
"Anyway." Alex said, rolling his eyes at Remy's obvious amusement, "What can you tell me about SHIELD?"
"Dey get shit done." Remy replied, "Dey don' have ta follow de same rules as de others. FBI, CIA, NSA, and de like. Mostly black ops kinda t'ings. Big spy network too. If dey don' know about it, no one does. De STRIKE teams is who do de dirty work. De Widow part o' Delta wit Hawkeye. It just de two o' dem, dey get de missions dat you gotta be crazy to do. De other teams more like SEAL teams. Gambit don' know a whole lot more about dem."
"How do you know so much about it in the first place?" Alex wondered, "I thought you might know something about it, but that's a bit more than I expected."
"In Gambit's line o' work it pays ta know who after you." the Cajun mutanttold him, "So Gambit ask Banshee, 'e works for 'em. Apparently Sean on speaking terms wit' de Widow, an' she tol' him a bit."
"Makes sense why she asked me if I was one of Xavier's kids." Alex mused, "If she knows Sean he probably would have told her a little bit about the school so she'd know where to send any mutants she ran across."
"So you gon' do it?" Remy's voice responded, sounding much more awake now.
"Yeah, I think so." Alex answered him.
There was silence between them until Alex finally blurted out what had been bugging him. Remy knew more of his history than most people, the result of many drunken nights around the poker table.
"The alias she gave me at first was Natalie."
Alex heard the sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. Remy knew all about the car accident that had fully awakened his powers. He also knew that his fiancée had been killed in that accident. And he knew that she had red hair and green eyes, just like Natasha. And that her name had been Natalie.
"Ouch. Sorry, mon ami." Remy said quietly, "She just 'ad to pick dat name."
"Yeah." was all he could muster up, "I think she saw my reaction."
"Sean did say not much get past 'er."
"Yeah." Alex said again, "Thanks for the info, Remy. I'm gonna wait a few days and call Agent Romanoff. She's undercover so she probably won't answer if I try it now."
"You be careful, Alex." Remy said in a more serious tone than you usually got from him. He also actually used Alex's first name, which he rarely did. Another indication that he was being serious right now, "SHIELD get in some nasty shit. Betsy tol' me a few things they asked 'er to do 'ad 'er not sleepin' so good after."
After thanking Remy again Alex hung up the phone and made the twenty minute walk back to his hotel. He had a big decision ahead of him. He was already most of the way to the decision to call Romanoff in a few days, but still had some nagging doubts.
Actually having some kind of purpose again was appealing. He had been dropped from all his college classes during his seven month coma, and hadn't bothered re-enrolling when he woke up with a whole new set of problems. So he had spent the last four years or so wandering around the country more or less at random with half a psychology degree, surviving on poker winnings and the occasional odd job. Alex had met Remy in Louisiana on one of his early trips, earning his lasting respect by winning a poker game against him without cheating. That he knew of. The Cajun was a little pissed when he found out about Alex's empathic ability, but quickly saw the humor in it and they became fast friends. Remy would occasionally travel with him for a while, and had actually just headed home a week prior.
He was well aware that he was bouncing from place to place in an attempt to avoid actually dealing with Natalie's death. As soon as he was released from the hospital he pretty much vanished as far as anyone who knew him could tell. He had pathologically avoided going anywhere near Des Moines since he left, and tried to avoid being in Iowa at all. Alex's coping mechanism had been to run, as far and as fast as he could. He couldn't come to terms with Natalie being gone and had never even visited her grave, much to his shame. The only thing he had to remember her by was a small photo in his wallet. It was a candid photo that caught her in the middle of laughing at something he'd said. He couldn't remember what it was but she'd found it hilarious. Alex never pulled the picture out to look at it, and sometimes forgot it was even there.
Alex had successfully avoided thinking about Natalie for a few months now. Meeting Agent Romanoff earlier and hearing her introduce herself by that name had shaken him badly. It was made worse by the fact that Alex felt the lie that accompanied the name, and that fucked with him on an entirely different level. The startling resemblance between them complicated matters even further. Natasha didn't look exactly like Natalie had, but if someone had told Alex they were long lost sisters he wouldn't have questioned it.
Alex had quickly noticed how uncomfortable his empathy made Agent Romanoff. He could only hope he had done a good enough job concealing how uncomfortable she made him. It was a faint hope, though. In his brief interaction with her Alex had seen how she could see right through people's bullshit and have them completely believe her own. Without his empathic gift he would have stood no chance at coming out ahead in any kind of mind games with her and he knew it. Her terrified act when the thug had ahold of her was so convincing he almost believed it even though he could feel that she was totally calm and maybe a little annoyed.
At some point Alex had decided he was going to make the call, but he wasn't entirely sure when that had happened. Now he just had to find something to do with himself for the next few days.
