The Widow Spins Her Web
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Jane didn’t know where she was going.
She’d gotten sidetracked calculating the energy requirements of an Einstein-Rosen bridge, and how they might change based on the destination, and how exactly it could be aimed at a location as specific as a balcony, and had it dropped Thor off midair above the Quinjet, in which case, could it just stop and leave someone in empty space? And the questions and formulae spinning through her head so thoroughly distracted her that she looked up and realized she had no idea where Stark and Dr. Banner had gone, or exactly where she was. The corridor was empty and narrow.
Jane bit her lip, looked back the way she’d come, and kept walking. She needed to find someone down here - she vaguely remembered descending a set of stairs, although she couldn’t have said how far down she’d come - who could guide her to a cafeteria or the labs. Or did they call it a mess hall here? SHIELD was technically a military program; the agents were, practically speaking, soldiers.
A door flew open just as Jane reached for it and hit her in the face.
“Ow!” She staggered backward, one hand to her nose.
“Apologies,” said a female voice. Jane knew from Darcy exactly what an insincere apology sounded like, and this was a gold-medal example.
“Watch where you’re going,” she snapped, and blinked tears away, and realized she’d just scolded the Black Widow.
Natasha Romanoff stood there and raised an eyebrow at Jane.
Jane glared back.
“I apologized,” Romanoff said at last.
“Insincerely.”
Impossibly, Romanoff’s lips twitched, and she inclined her head. “This is somewhat serendipitous, actually. I was looking for you.”
“Can you show me the way to the labs?” Jane asked instantly.
Romanoff snorted and started walking. “This way. You scientists, all obsessed.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Jane said. “And you do realize that obsessed scientists are the reasons you have all those fancy weapons?” She gestured to the concealed weapons lining Romanoff’s calves, hips, wrists, and collar. They were cleverly built into the suit, but not enough to fool Jane, at least not when she was looking.
Romanoff shot her an appraising look as they boarded an elevator, but said nothing.
Jane wondered whether the other woman’s silence would be unsettling to other people. Possibly. Probably. It should probably unnerve her as well, but then, she never did well with should, and she didn’t really care what other people were doing anyway. If Romanoff was just going to stand there and imitate a statue, then Jane would happily go back to hypothesizing about the dispersal of energy when an Einstein-Rosen bridge ended in midair. There would possibly be a sound wave beyond the roaring of the Bifrost that she had heard on several occasions, and likely some sort of kinetic energy transferred to surrounding air molecules. In fact, just the passage of an Einstein-Rosen bridge would probably increase kinetic energy of the air. She’d never had a chance before, but she resolved to set up something to measure the impact of Thor’s departure on surrounding meteorological systems. If the Bifrost changed the weather, it was possible that some of the weather systems that more primitive civilizations had attributed to deities were actually caused by the arrival of an Asgardian, or even a member of another nonhuman species-
“Jane.”
“What?” She snapped out of her thoughts and focused on Romanoff, who was staring at her.
“I said your name four times.”
“Oh. Sorry. I was thinking about midair Einstein-Rosen bridges and weather systems. Do you think-”
Romanoff held up a hand. “I don’t understand the science very well. Save the hypotheses for Stark and Banner.”
“Okay,” Jane agreed. Hm. Maybe other people might have been hurt by that dismissal. She couldn’t be. She didn’t really care.
Wait.
“Didn’t you want to say something?”
Romanoff smiled. “I was wondering when you’d remember. Yes. You were… involved romantically with Thor, correct?”
“Was being the operative word,” Jane said sourly, all thoughts of the Einstein-Rosen bridge chased from her head.
“Good,” Romanoff said, to Jane’s surprise. “I don’t think many members of this team are going to get along well with him.”
“And you care so much about this team?” Jane said. “I thought you worked alone.”
“Yes. Normally. But I also work for Director Fury, and he’s assigned me to this team, which means I will not do anything to jeopardize its integrity.”
“So… why did you ask about Thor and me?” Jane asked. This was so not her sphere of expertise: social maneuvering, shifting alliances… She wrinkled her nose. This was exactly the sort of thing she let Darcy handle.
Romanoff led Jane into a corridor that Jane suspected wasn’t a normal route. She memorized its location. “I just like to know where all of you stand with one another.”
“Knowledge is power,” Jane said, remembering something Darcy liked to say.
“Exactly.”
Jane examined the other women for a moment. She supposed she should be afraid of the deadly Black Widow, but then again, she should have gone to nursing school, should be married by now, should care more about other people. But being a nurse would be boring, she’d yet to meet a man who could keep up with her, and what had other people ever done for her? Jane couldn’t bring herself to fear Natasha Romanoff.
“People underestimate you, don’t they?” she asked.
Romanoff’s eyes snapped to Jane’s so quickly that she could tell the other woman was surprised. “Yes,” the agent admitted after a second. “You as well?”
“Mostly they just think I’m a useless spacey scientist,” Jane said. She was beyond getting offended by it. Narrow-minded people were not her problem.
Romanoff smiled. “And they think I’m just another pretty face.” There was recent bitterness in her tone, but Jane didn’t ask. “Your friend, too. Darcy.”
Jane tensed slightly. Darcy had once described what she called her “vapid face,” a persona designed to make people overlook the mind underneath. Jane knew her friend was extremely intelligent, just in a very different way, but Darcy seemed to enjoy being underestimated. Jane couldn’t admit that to Romanoff.
“Often,” she said cautiously.
“I’m not asking you to betray your friend’s confidence,” Romanoff said. “Just stating a fact.”
A true one. Jane liked facts.
“Here you are,” Romanoff said abruptly, and gestured to a small door. Jane looked at it and then back at the agent.
“That doesn’t look like a lab.”
“It’s a back door,” Romanoff said, smiling faintly. “I do have other things to take care of, Miss Foster, and this was faster than going around to the main doors.”
“Jane,” Jane said immediately. “Call me Jane.”
Romanoff looked at her for a moment. “If you call me Natasha. We ought to stick together. Now that we have a common enemy. Enjoy your science.”
She turned and strode away.
Jane stared after her long after Natasha’s red hair and black tactical suit had vanished. The entire encounter had been odd, from the question about Thor to that weird parting sentence. Was Thor the common enemy, or Loki?
Jane couldn’t shake the feeling that something important had just happened, but she couldn’t for the life of her work out what. There was some subtext, some multilayered game of behavioral economics being played here, and Jane was missing it.
She’d have to run it by Darcy later.
But for now… Jane turned, shoved open the door, and found herself in the back corner of a large and well-lit lab packed with cutting-edge equipment. Thoughts of social games fading from her mind, she smiled and set off to track down the data they’d called her in for.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Clint found her where he expected to, in the bowels of the ship by the clear bay windows.
“Stewing?” he asked, because he knew her.
“Pissed?” she asked, because she knew him.
Clint snorted. “If this team manages to work together long enough to find the cube, it’ll be a miracle, much less fight off a horde of aliens.”
Natasha nodded and went back to staring out the window. Clint stood beside her in silence, watching farms and forests pass beneath the cloaked helicarrier.
“Do you ever wish for that?” he said after a minute, gesturing at a swath of tilled fields. “A normal life, I mean. A home. Kids.”
Natasha turned her gaze on him, and Clint was reminded suddenly and forcefully that this woman was decades older than him, that she was in some ways something not human. He instinctively tensed when he saw the old and predatory darkness looking out of her eyes. It was something Natasha normally kept well hidden.
“A normal life isn’t an option for people like me,” she said softly, and turned back to the window.
Clint forcefully reminded himself that she was his friend. “That’s not an answer.”
Natasha was silent for long enough that Clint began to think she wouldn’t answer. Then she sighed and at last turned away, dark side tucked away once more. “No.”
“And you think you should.”
“At the end of the day, I like this life,” she said softly. “I’m psychologically and genetically wired for one thing, Clint, and that one thing does not involve children, or soccer balls, or minivans.”
“Well,” Clint said, “good thing there’s SHIELD, then. So you can keep on doing this and you’re on the side of the good guys.” He grinned at her.
“You know I’m just waiting until… until I find my Soldier,” she said softly.
Clint felt a shiver go down his spine, and concealed it. Never once in the years he’d known her had Natasha shown interest in anyone, man or woman. He’d never been interested in her, either, and good thing, because she’d finally told him five years ago about the man she’d once loved. Clint had his doubts that the Winter Soldier was who Natasha remembered. Rumor in the intelligence community was that the Winter Soldier was a ghost, a legend, someone larger than life. And still operating. If he’d never so much as contacted Natasha, it was doubtful that he still cared for her. Or remembered her at all.
But his Tasha wouldn’t hear it when Clint raised those concerns, so he did what a good friend would do and helped her on her so-far-fruitless search.
“And how’s that coming?” he asked, flippantly but softly. This was the loading bay, and the cameras didn’t have audio, but you could never be too careful. Fury overcompensated for his one missing eye with thousands of the electronic kind all over SHIELD facilities.
Natasha raised an eyebrow. “You going to tattle to Fury?”
“You know I wouldn’t.”
“I do,” she said. “Which is why I am going to tell you truthfully that I have a lead.”
“Really.”
“Yes. Old KGB contact.” Natasha’s smile was nothing short of feral.
Clint turned to her fully. “Yet you’re still here.” He knew how much this meant to her.
“My contact is meeting me in a month,” Natasha said quietly. “He says he can tell me where I can find the Soldier.”
“Need backup?” Clint asked.
Natasha squinted at him. “I wasn’t going to ask.”
“But you’re not going to say no, either, because we’re friends,” Clint said, and smiled.
Natasha considered him for a long moment, then nodded sharply.
Clint watched her walk away, and wondered where exactly this was going. Chaos, probably.
He couldn’t wait.