Six words that can ruin your…
Maria scooped a handful of Goldfish out of the bowl as she highlighted the exits to Vers’ apartment, “Pass the work schedule, Nat?”
“Here. I’d suggest Friday. There’s trivia night, and her shift ends right before it. It’s a highly social event. Her bestie said that she always sticks around and mingles with the regulars. We’d have an in.”
Maria chewed her Goldfish thoughtfully. “Wait, hold on, where’d Clint leave the blueprints for Pancho’s?”
“Under the salsa bowl.”
“Dammit, Clint.” She grabbed the papers and sighed at the ring on it. “It’s a highly uncontrolled environment. We’d be surrounded by civilians. You talked to her coworkers?”
“Yeah. She’s put down roots. Everyone loves her, she has lots of friends. She won’t cause a scene while in public.”
“So she might be resistant to us messing that up.”
Nat shrugged. “All we want is the Tesseract out of commission. She hands it over, we leave her alone and maybe owe her a favor. She wants protective custody, we can do that. No charges for anything she might’ve done while being held by the Blue Angels. Pretty standard deal.”
“Is that the one you got?”
“Nope. My contract was ‘you make my work legit and I stop leaving the bodies of corrupt billionaires on your doorstep.’”
“Is that what you did before you came to SHIELD?”
“Sort of. After I took out the Red Room, I spent a few years getting all of the brainwashing out of my head. Then, I started working as a mercenary and made a mint doing whatever anyone hired me to do. Then someone wanted me to kill a kid, and I just couldn’t do it. I’ve killed a lot of people, but just looking at her, I freaked out and shot my employer. Got into doing good. Worked as a hacker for the Rising Tide, except I didn’t just leak stuff, I also stabbed oil execs and took out SHIELD’s worst baddies for them behind the scenes. Finally, Clint hunted me down and recruited me.”
Before Maria could answer, the oven timer went off. “Clint! Your brownies,” she yelled. “Clint?” Nat looked at her funny. “It’s been a long day. Laugh it up all you want, I forgot he was deaf. I’ve known him for a year and a half and I forgot he was fucking deaf. I’ll go get him. Can you get the brownies out before they burn?”
Nat smirked at her. “Sure.”
Maria hopped off her chair and left the living room to her bedroom. Clint was sitting on the fire escape, aiming his bow at something. He fired. Maria waited until he noticed her and waved her over. He pointed at the Target billboard a few blocks away, now shot full of arrows.
“You’re gonna get me put on a list,” she said, making sure he could read her lips. “Your brownies are done. Come on over, the spies have it all plotted out.”
He held up one finger and aimed his bow again, this time at a teenager with a giant poster board display. His arrow, a suction cup, hit the kid on the side of the head. Clint immediately ducked and motioned Maria to do the same. The kid squeaked and dropped her project. She unstuck the arrow in confusion, then started jumping up and down, squealing.
“Hawkeye?!” She yelled. Maria rolled her eyes.
“He’s over here!” She called and pulled him up.
She gasped. I’m K-A-M-A-L-A she signed. I’m learning ASL.
Clint grinned and gave her a thumbs up. Always nice to meet a fan. I’m doing spy stuff! Gonna take out a bad guy. Keep the arrow.
She nodded, grabbed it and her poster on the water cycle and ran off.
Maria smiled at him. “That was adorable.” He scoffed and followed her back into the kitchen, where Nat was pulling dessert out of the oven with pink flowery oven mitts. “Where’d you get those? They aren’t mine.”
“I brought them from home.”
“You brought oven mitts to a planning session?”
“We always end up baking and braiding hair. It’s like a secret spy sleepover!”
“Oh, it is not!”
Nat pointed to where Clint was arranging the nail polish by color.
“Huh”
Nat set the brownies down to cool.
“Clint, can you look over our plans? I sketched up a diagram. You’re sitting on it.”
Sorry. Clint grabbed her map from under him and cross-checked it with Pancho’s blueprints and a wrinkled piece of paper he pulled out of his back pocket. Meanwhile, Nat grabbed the black nail polish and handed it to Maria. Maria started with Nat’s index finger. “Wanna play truth or truth,” she asked.
“Sure,” Nat said, careful not to move. “You wanna ask first?”
“Definitely. Got any tattoos?”
“One. I’ll show you both when Clint’s done.”
“Really?”
“Yep. You?”
“Nah. Scared of needles.”
“No way. You took out a goon with a toothbrush you forced into a pencil sharpener. How the hell are you scared of needles?”
“I don’t like being stabbed with a tiny melee weapon.”
Nat shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Maria finished Nat’s left hand and got on with her right. Nat frowned as she thought about her question. “What’d you do before you joined SHIELD?”
“Do you want the official answer or the juicy answer?”
“I live for the juice.” She cringed. “That sounds so gross.”
“Well, I was born in Louisiana. I graduated from college back before the wheel was invented, according to the interns on base. It took me a year at the telecommunications place to get bored, and bored hands are easily recruited. Bored hands also release eighteen years of falsified tax information. I spent a while doing investigations at Nelson & Murdock’s Law Office—”
“You worked with Murdock? As in, Matt Murdock?”
“...yeah?”
“Were you aware of his, erm, nighttime activities?”
Maria grimaced. “Yeah, he and Foggy kept sneaking out during late work nights. It was an inside joke what lengths they’d go to disappear together. We called them Daredevils because they didn’t know when to quit. I tried not to think about it.”
Nat blinked. Maria bit her lip trying not to laugh.
“You’re messing with me.”
“Oh, big time. Your face, man. Everyone knew he was a spandex-clad vigilante. We just had too much casework to deal with to care.”
“I can see why you’re such a good spy. You had me going there.”
“And… you’re done. Can you do red for mine?”
Clint strutted by, waving the red nail polish.
“Guess not. He’s gonna use it all up painting his arrow tips to look bloody.”
You snooze, you lose
“How about purple?” Nat grabbed the purple paint and two brownies. Clint, how’s our plan look?
Great. I made some notes, look them over.
Sure. Nat got to work on Maria’s nails with one hand and got to work on the blueprints as Maria watched and took a bite out of her brownie. She immediately gagged.
Clint, what did you put in these things? Maria grabbed a napkin and spat it out.
Clint frowned. I wanted to shake it up. Left side weed, right side walnuts.
Nat almost dropped the nail polish on her sketches. You put walnuts in our brownies? What the hell?
An hour later, once Clint and Maria finally finished hashing out why the Spartacus Scramble was a bad idea in a crowded bar, Nat’s eyes lit up and she snapped her fingers. “I almost forgot to show you guys.” She rolled up her jeans expectantly.
Clint, not privy to the previous conversation, looked confused. We already knew you’re bi though?
Nat sighed. “Maria wanted to see my tattoo.”
You have a tattoo? How have I not seen it?
She shrugged. “Bottom of the foot is hardly an erogenous—”
“Gross, guys. Let’s get to the ink.” Maria said, resolving to purchase some brain bleach.
Nat yanked off her sock and twisted her leg so the heel faced up. What looked like some sort of tiny red hourglass blazed on the pad of her big toe.
“Does it have any meaning to it?”
“Kind of. In the Red Room, we weren’t allowed to have any originality, any mistakes, any humanity. I modeled it after the red mark on the black widow spider’s back. I had it done intentionally where it wouldn’t be easily seen because I am a spy after all, but at least I know of one little thing that follows me everywhere, no matter what identity I take on.”
It looks sick. Don’t eat me.
“No promises.”
“This is getting mushy. Let’s go eat Clint’s disgusting walnut brownies.”
They aren’t disgusting!
“Clint, I love you more than anything, but those walnut brownies are inedible. Dibs on the weed.”