Návojná, Czech Republic, 2015
13th July, 2015
Návojná, Zlín Region, Czech Republic
He tried not to make it too obvious he was staring, but unable to help himself as his partner stretched on the blanket beside him, the pale blue sweater she was wearing riding up and revealing a few inches of her torso.
She met his gaze anyway, and he was too slow to avert his eyes, as she rolled over towards him. She looked soft, pliant, set against the vibrant backdrop of the landscape around, the vivid green of the grass, and the bright blue of the sky, illuminating the pearl to her skin. There was a time where they’d turn away from each other, old conditioning still raising the impulse to sever the connection of even an innocent look. Soviet HYDRA cells had drilled in a distinct rule against sentiment, and whilst their time with the American cells, and indeed their new freedom, had softened the old regime – sometimes he had to remind himself that he could, in fact, look at her and smile, and reach for her without rebuke.
He wondered idly if she felt the same, if that was the reason for her defiant stare back. She was the first to look away, though, as she sat up to reach for the blackberries in the small clay bowl he’d bought especially for her. The tips of her finger and the centre of her lips were already stained a ruddy purple. He wanted to see if she tasted like berries too, but was hesitant to see. They hadn’t moved far past kissing, and he didn’t want to push her. Not during this strange period of flighty secrecy she was going through.
It was frustrating him, her silence. She refused to mention what she spent her time doing, and he’d tried every technique he could think of to make her drop even a hint, but she knew him too well and had been taught just the same tactics.
“Mm,” she hummed, the gentle sound of contentment. “These are good.”
He smiled at her, despite his internal thoughts. “I’m glad. We should go and pick some ourselves.”
Her pale eyebrows jumped, “you can do that?”
“Yeah, the man selling them said if you pick your own fruit, you get a discount.” He said, watching her speculative look down the hill to the valley and village below. “Are you happy?” he asked, blurted, mouth moving faster than his mind.
She frowned, turning to search his face. “Why would I not be?”
“I don’t know.” He said honestly, and she shifted, sliding towards him across the blanket they’d spread out, avoiding the discarded dishes, until she was directly in front of him. Gently, her hands came up to cup his cheeks, and he let her hold him, let her tilt his head up until the sun was on his face and he had to close his eyes to the glare.
“Do you miss him?” she asked suddenly, quietly, and she had moved so close he could feel her cool breath on his lips. He swallowed, throat suddenly tight. He had no ready answer to give her.
Simply, yes. Yes, he missed Steve, he missed the man he had once known, he missed his old friend. But it was more complicated than that. He didn’t have the right to miss him, not really. Not after all he had done. He was changed, and so was Steve. The boys they had been didn’t exist anymore, and whilst he sought to reconnect with the man that meant so much to him, he didn’t see how they could. He was dripping in sin, and Steve would not, and could not forgive him.
“I can’t.” he whispered to her, to the sun. “He can’t… he won’t-”
“But if he did?” She interrupted him, voice like silk, like steel – somehow soft and hard at once. “If he wanted you back, if you could go back, you would?” it sounded like a rhetoric, and he wondered when he’d become so easy to read, or if they had finally reached the point of their partnership where they could sense each other’s thoughts.
He answered her anyway. “Not without you.” He said firmly, and tried to open his eyes to look at her, to reassure her, but she held him steady, and he couldn’t make out her face through the sunlight.
“I know.” She said finally, and he blinked. “I know.” It was almost as if she was talking to herself as she let him go and stood. “Forgiveness.” She murmured, turning to look back at the town again. “Как я могу это заработать?” How can I earn it?
“What?” He frowned at her, and her answering smile was brilliant and entirely false. She still took his breath away.
“Nothing.” She said peacefully. There was something like resolution in her eyes, and he wasn’t sure whether or not to be worried.
31st August 2015
New Avengers Facility, New York.
“Good god, woman – what the hell is all this?”
Natasha turned at Sam’s loud entrance, mustering a smile for him. Her friend was staring, a little bug-eyed, at the vast array of paperwork she’d spread around her room.
“I think better on paper.” She said, quirking a brow. “Don’t make me regret inviting you in, Wilson.”
Sam held up his hands in surrender. “Hell naw, I was beyond honoured to be let into the lair, I won’t mess this up. How can I help, Nat?” At his genuine offer, she let her poise crack a little, and nibbled uncomfortably on her bottom lip as she turned to regard the sprawl herself. Moving into the larger facility had meant more room for her, and she’d kind of gotten carried away with research… but admitting you had a problem was the first step to recovery, and Natasha had a problem.
The mess left in Ultron’s wake had been hard to recover from. Paranoia meant that she’d moved everything she could salvage from her online work to hardcopy, and in the process, she’d bitten off more than she could chew. The current state of her room was a result of her attempt at sorting through everything. “I need a second pair of hands and eyes. I need to reorganize my intel.”
“Hey, my first real job was a filing assistant.” Sam said cheerfully, and Natasha couldn’t help the spike of warmth at his blind optimism. He was a good man. One of the best she knew. “Nothin’ like getting back to my roots. Where do we start?”
“I need to find the latest shit I printed. I’ve been looking into some suspicious activity in the EU, some bodies in Slovakia and Belarus.” She dropped to her knees above a pile of Chinese documents that had turned out to be a bust – it had been old stuff, old mission reports from a few trips Aleksandrina and Barnes had undertaken in the 70s and 80s – nothing relevant to her hunt now. She looked up at Sam’s lack of response.
He was frowning at her. “You’re still looking for them.” it wasn’t a question, but there was a note of curiosity in his voice she hadn’t expected. “Steve said-”
“I know what Steve said. I told him I stopped because it was easier than watching that hopeful look die every single time I came up empty.” Natasha pursed her lips, slamming a pile of manila folders down with a little more force than necessary. “It’s unlikely I will find them, but I didn’t want to keep stringing him along in the meantime.”
Sam was quiet, and when she looked at him again, his eyes were thoughtful. “That’s why you asked me to do this, huh.” He met her gaze steadily, still with that undeniable warmth he emanated. “I get it.”
“I knew you would.” Natasha tried to convey her relief at his acceptance. “I won’t ask you to lie to him, but-”
“I get it.” Sam repeated, nodding to himself, and squinting at an old Russian newspaper. “You’ve really done your digging.”
Natasha wavered for a moment. “Sam?”
“Yeah?” he looked at her again, another friendly smile.
“I know her.” She admitted, a little heady at getting the revelation off her chest.
Sam snorted. “I kinda got that from the whole exchange in DC.” Natasha shook her head impatiently.
“No, I really know her. She taught me everything I know, she made me, and she’s-” She swallowed, brushing her hand over the files in front of her, over the thick redactions, secrets yet to be uncovered, questions yet to be answered. “Sam, she’s my aunt. Great-aunt, technically.”
“Damn.” Sam sounded disappointed, and she looked at him as he shook his head. Old worry, old fears of rejection swirled within her even as she tramped them down. Her family’s discretions were nothing to be ashamed of, Aleksandrina hadn’t even known what she was doing- “I knew she looked familiar.” He narrowed his eyes at her, a smile growing across his face as he rooted around the papers for something. He picked up a small picture, worn and faded – it was a picture of Aleksandrina taken when she had first entered into the Academy, the only record Natasha had found of her actually being there. He held it up to his eyeline, looking between the picture and her. “You look just like her. But like, not half-starved and… weirdly pale.” He said, and cocked his head. “Actually, she has a different nose. That’s about it though. Huh.”
“You’re not…” Natasha couldn’t quite emulate the expression for what she thought Sam would feel, would do. “Angry?” she tried. “I would be. If you kept something like this from me.”
Sam shrugged. “Barnes means everything to Steve. Family means everything to you.” He went back to his sorting. “I get it.”
Natasha hid her smile in a box of old tapes. “Yeah. I should have known you would.”
Sam gave her an easy grin, before they went back to their work in comfortable silence. They worked for a while longer, Natasha getting up briefly to get them both coffee, Sam scolding her for her triple shot latte. She was just about ready to call it quits for the day; she was getting a head ache, and it felt as though all they’d manage to do was move piles around – when Sam let out a cry of triumph.
Natasha headed over to him, and he handed her the paper; it was all in Slovak, though her print date was emboldened on the top. This was it. It was a series of autopsy reports from Slovakia, listing the deaths of a tycoon and some of his body guards. It had caught her eye because the police had not ruled the deaths as suspicious despite the circumstances and the injuries themselves. It appeared that a representative lawyer of the businessman’s company had stepped in and prevented the police from investigating further. Either the company – in ruins, from what her quick background had shown – hadn’t thought the CEO’s death warranted investigation, or they were afraid what the police might find if they dug into victimology.
“What is it?” Sam was scanning the document over her shoulder, eyes narrowed as if squinting might translate the words on the page.
“It’s an autopsy.” She told him, flipping over to the next page. “Some rich guy who does imports and exports in the Balkan States and Visegrád Group. He and a bunch of his guards got shot up by an unknown, a bunch of his assets went missing, and most of his estate went up in smoke. Literally.” She snorted to herself. “I mean he was a scumbag, but I can’t figure out how he made all of his cash with just his semi-shady shipping. He must have been dealing under the table somehow.”
Sam hummed. “And what, you think Barnes and Romanov had something do with it?” A faint thrill went through Natasha at Sam’s casual usage of Aleksandrina’s name. Her name.
She ignored it. “I think so. I mean, I’m unsure about Barnes’ involvement – he tends to prefer a more targeted approach. But I’ve seen Romanov in action – and her M.O. is… different. To have no sightings, no suspects – nothing at all – that’s something only she could do.”
“But where one is, we’ll find the other.” Sam nodded to himself, giving the report one last confused look.
Natasha closed the folder. “That’s what I figured.”
“So, what are you going to do? Are you going to go to Slovakia?” Sam asked, stepping back as she began to shunt everything into the centre of the room, clearing off her bed and floor.
Natasha straightened, reaching to collect their empty mugs. “By the time I got there, they’d be long gone. I’m better off watching patterns. If I can figure out why or who they are- she is killing, then I’m thinking I can cut them off.”
“Smart.” Sam said sagely, accompanying her to door and waiting in the hall as she switched off her lights and locked her door. She threw him a wink over her shoulder.
“I have my moments.”
1st September 2015
Downtown, Washington D.C.
It doesn't hurt me
Do you want to feel how it feels?
Do you want to know, know that it doesn't hurt me?
Do you want to hear about the deal that I'm making?
You, it's you and me…
The small woman shoving her way through the D.C. commuters mouthed the lyrics along with Kate Bush’s warble unashamedly. A passing man in a grey suit gave her an obvious up-and-down, his eyes fixing first on her moving mouth, then going to her shock of green hair, then to the edge of her tattoo showing above the sleeve of her sweater where the material had bunched up. Whatever conclusion he reached was clearly somewhere between disgust and disdain, and he turned his nose up at her obviously. She resisted the urge to flip him off or poke out her tongue.
It wouldn’t really help to act childish. People stared enough as it was.
She ducked down the next side street, taking the short cut she always took to work. Usually she’d be walking a little faster, usually she’d be at work already – but business had been sparce lately. And by lately, she meant every day the windows of her café remained boarded up. She hadn’t been able to repair the damage done to her shop when it had happened, and now, after months and months of declining business she was barely able to afford rent – let alone replace the glass and fill in the bullet holes in her walls.
Daisy-Rae Lebedev could still not bring herself to resent the woman that had brought so much trouble to her doorstep.
When she’d met Lily – Ghost, she had to keep reminding herself – she hadn’t recognised the danger that others had claimed in her. No, Daisy had just seen another lonely face, had seen a very familiar ache for acceptance, and had tried to help as best she could. Honestly, Daisy had been wondering if the other woman had been a runaway mail-order bride. Her grandma had been one. She’d been sent for by her intended husband, travelled all the way from Russia to America by herself, and then had run off – run straight into Daisy’s grandfather’s arms.
Still. She hadn’t seen the danger. Until it was unfolding right in front of her.
And even then, Daisy hadn’t given the other woman and her companion away. Couldn’t bare too. Even after all the stuff on the news, after the countless charges laid against them, Daisy couldn’t bring herself to crush the two people who had looked so broken already. So, she’d let them go. Hadn’t even called the police.
And so what if she’d suffered mild PTSD afterwards. At least she didn’t have a guilty conscience as well.
Daisy unlocked the café door, smiling humourlessly as she flipped the sign to open, despite it being practically invisible from the street. In the dark, she didn’t see the thick envelope sitting just inside the door, and as she made for the lights, she tripped over the corner of it, going sprawling across her hardwood floor.
She huffed, sitting up and gathering up her phone and headphones from where they’d gone flying out of her grip. Kate Bush was still coming tinnily from the little speakers, and she paused it impatiently. The sudden still silence she was plunged into made her hold her breath automatically. Slowly, she brushed herself off, ignoring the faint throb from her knees and elbows as she headed for the light switch.
The envelope was still sitting there, looking entirely innocent.
She bent to pick it up, distantly surprised at how heavy it was. There was no return address, just the café’s address and her first name, written in tidy, cramped handwriting. On the middle of the envelope, there was a US customs stamp, as well as a USPS stamp – but nothing else. She didn’t recognise the handwriting, and for a wild moment her thoughts went ‘A BOMB?’ before she calmed down, reasoning customs and USPS wouldn’t have let a bomb be delivered.
She opened the envelope carefully. Inside was a plastic pocket, marked in foreign writing, but she could recognise the various symbols for currency printed over the blue plastic, and frowned as she pulled it out. Stapled to the front of the plastic packet, the kind of little bag you got at a currency exchange, was a receipt in the same unfamiliar language detailing what seemed to be a transaction turning euros into dollars.
Her heart started to beat a little faster.
With shaking hands, she tore open the thin plastic – and promptly dropped the packet. As the package fell, almost as if in slow motion, the crisp hundred dollar bills spilled into the air, and across the floor, thousands of dollars scattering around her.
Daisy stared with wide eyes.
Slowly, she reached for her phone in her back pocket, and sent a message to a number she hadn’t communicated with in months.
Hey, it’s Daisy – I don’t know if you remember me, but you told me ages ago to let you know if anything suspicious happened to me. I just received a package and it’s definitely suspicious. Sorry if you’re busy or you don’t care. Haha. Sorry.
She sent the message before she could get too self-conscious.
With a faint buzz she only heard because it was so quiet, her phone went off.
Of course, I remember you Daisy. Hang tight. I’ll be with you soon, I’m just in a meeting. – S