Archive of Our Own

“There’s a shop at the twelfth door in the tiniest corner of the smallest street in the town. She can get you anything you want.”

Natasha cursed her bad luck once again, trudging along the small cobbled stone, her tired body aching with dull pain. Her toes had lost all feeling a long time ago and every step was number than the previous one. The wound at her side wouldn’t stop oozing blood either, despite the frigid cold.

Another shiver crawled up her spine and she resisted the urge to cough.

Her eyes had trouble focusing, but her mind was still counting the doors.

‘Pyat’, shest’, syem’... dvenadzat’!’ Her body almost slumped with relief, almost.

She carefully moved her weight from one leg to the other, and with as much force as she could, knocked on the door. Twice.

After almost six minutes, her cold sweat was threatening to freeze her from the inside out.

The door opened the moment her legs couldn’t support her any longer.

Then there was darkness.

What happened to her? She couldn’t remember.

Natasha vaguely remembered falling, pain. Where was she?

She wasn’t in pain, that was for sure. A rapid check of her appendages told her all of her toes and fingers were counted for, which was something.

Her eyes felt heavy, but nothing she couldn’t fight.

When she opened them, though, she was facing an empty, putrescent glass case. The entrails of what was probably a mauled mouse were floating on the surface and little pebbles were at the bottom of what had to be the ugliest aquarium she had ever seen.

She hastily looked the other side and found shelves, so many of them, filled with formaldehyde and body parts she couldn’t identify, not all of them at least.

It was some sort of sick horror basement Red Room talked about during training, she was certain.

A hiss was heard right beside her, and the spy almost started. There was a weight on the bed she was lying on, and it was moving.

Two yellow, slitted eyes glared at her.

Natasha blinked, her body snapping to fully alert in a few seconds.

A huge black snake was on her stomach, its face as grumpy as a snake could be.

Her first instinct was to reach for a knife, but her hand didn’t find any strapped to her thigh. Her naked thigh.

She didn’t bother looking for her gun, she was pretty certain it was gone, too.

“Cosa fai, Pepi?”

The snake froze, and so did she. There was someone else in the room.

“Disgraziato, non disturbare la nostra ospite!” The voice was coming from behind her, but turning would mean taking her eyes off the angry reptile, and that wasn’t a good idea.

The creature took one more look at her, though, and to her relief let itself be coaxed off the bed and onto its owner’s pale waiting arms.

Natasha followed its movements, ready to bolt now that she was probably not dying right away. Not that she had any chance if the snake was somehow venomous (big snakes were usually constrictors, right? Right?), the spy estimated it could probably kill her with a well-placed lunge. And she had no weapons on her.

Of course, all thoughts about the animal flew out of the window as soon as she looked at its Mistress.

Her eyes widened. ‘Blyat’!’

The woman was dwarfed by her pet, but strong enough to hardly feel its weight. The comfortable dress did nothing to hide the patches of scarred skin, though, and while her smile was warm the blue eyes were slitted. Were those fangs?

When the girls had spoken of the woman with magic, she hadn’t really believed them. She had thought they were talking about a charlatan, or at least a good medic. She hadn’t expected… this.

She wasn’t human, but she was dangerous. So very dangerous.

“Oh, tesoro. Pepi non ti ha spaventato, vero? E’ un tenerone in realtà, voleva solo un po’ di calore-” the woman turned towards the walls, where other items were proudly stacked all over the room. Her excited babble filled the basement, but try as she might, the spy couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying. She had got the part where ‘Paypee’ was the snake, since every time the beast was mentioned it would raise it head and coo softly, but not much else. She could barely make out the language, too. Spanish? Italian? Shit, she had barely started French with her trainers!

“Ya ne ponimayu,” she tried, her hands going for the thick cover that was on the bed, in case she needed to run for it.

Her host’s face whipped to her, her shoulders slumping, “Ah… italiano?”

Okay, this she could make out. “Niet. Français?”

Her nose scrunched distastefully. “E’ praticamente italiano, qual è la differenza?”

Not French then. Natasha carefully considered her options. Her best bet was to just leave without saying another word, the language barrier could be helpful in that.

But then the not-human brightened. “English? That’s our bridge language now, right?”

And oh, Natasha could lie. She could. But somehow, her own voice betrayed her. “Yes.”

The woman’s smile turned then, to an alarming one. “How splendid. We have so much to talk about.”

“So, what are you looking for?”

The woman didn’t really play nice.

For one, she had checked Natasha’s naked body with a thoughtful frown, her tongue hissing lightly whenever she prodded at the healed scars. Was there anything wrong there?

Secondly, she had promptly ignored her and set about her chores or whatever as soon as she had gotten as much information as she cared about.

She had been puttering with a black cauldron the whole time, too. The whatever it was in the pot was foul. Natasha Romanoff had seen creepy in her twelve years with Red Room, but the stench made her eyes water and her stomach roil with nausea.

“Natalia?”

The spy gritted her teeth in shame. How she had spilled her real name to a stranger she couldn’t understand. “What?”

The snake woman pinned her with another look. “You want something from me. People don’t go randomly look for ‘the twelfth door in the stupidest tiniest street in the village’ for kicks and giggles. Not anymore,” she shrugged, “so, which is it? Is it love? Money? I admit, I’d almost be disappointed. You can pick anything. Anything you might want. Immortality, perhaps?”

The spy shuddered at the woman’s knowing look.

“Mh, perhaps not.”

The cauldron whistled loudly, the sound vaguely recalling the screams of anguished souls.

Natasha swallowed. Images of her past swam behind her eyes, the memories of the whippings and the other girls and the pain and the graduation and the serum and the deaths and-

“I want revenge,” she said, with the seriousness and bravery a 22 years old girl with twelve years of Special Oops on her back could muster.

The snake woman looked her in the eye and chuckled. “You can hardly pay for revenge, honey. Healing? That is cheap. In fact, your healing is free, I hardly had to dip into my powers. But I see your desire, Natalia Alianovna, and there’s nothing you can offer me to act against Red Room.”

The spy’s eyes widened. She hadn’t mentioned Red Room, had she? But she schooled her features. She had dealt with people who cared little about money, and she knew how those minds worked. The girl slightly lowered the cover to expose her chest. “Nothing?”

What she didn’t expect, were the peals of laughter that followed.

‘The snake sneaked into the bed again!’ Natasha bemoaned, feeling the weight on her back.

It had been the most awkward evening of the year, that was for sure. Her memories of the years before weren’t as accurate as those after the treatment, but she was pretty sure she had never been so humiliated before. She wasn’t willing to bet on it though.

Oh, the snake woman had been very apologetic about the whole ‘it’s cute you’re trying to seduce me’, what with all of those paltry excuses about ‘not meaning anything if she wasn’t giving it up by her own free will’, but the rejection still stung deeply in her bones. She truly had hoped that would be it. After all, nobody had ever rejected her. She couldn’t count on anyone.

However, since her host had explained that Paypee the snake was in fact not venomous for now, she didn’t hesitate one minute to arch her back and kick it out.

“Ow, Cristo, what the fuck!”

Her head snapped up. ‘Blyat’!’

‘You know what, Natalia Alianovna? I like you. This is what I’ll do. I’ll give you Luck, forever and always. Go out there and grow stronger. Make it worth my while, and I’ll give you whatever you want.’

Natasha aimed and shot and she never missed.

Since she’d come back from Fiume, barely 48 hours since her disappearance, she had tried her best not to linger on the snake woman’s words. Oh, but how they had lit a fire under her heart, with her smile and the promise of revenge at her fingertips.

A Luck spell cost a kiss, apparently, and her lips still burned with the sensation. She had expected rough lips since her hands were calloused and her body covered in scars, but she still fought her blush at the memory of their softness, not even the hint of fangs poking through.

Did this count as her first kiss, since it wasn’t a mission? Natasha wasn’t sure, but as she walked across the Red Room facilities once again, she wouldn’t dwell on it any longer.

Her mission had changed, and she was going to see it through.

“Stop! Eto zakaz! Stop, proklyataya shlyukha!”

Her steps didn’t falter, the knife in her hand hitting her mark with the splendid, perfect precision her victims had taught her in these thirty years.

But as the crunch of their broken ribs and the gurgle from their throats reached her ears, she couldn’t help but smile.

The second supervisor went down like a sack of potatoes, his grip fumbling with his gun. How convenient, for her.

Twenty years. It had taken that long to become the strongest, but now, nothing was stopping her.

The yells of the first supervisor alerting the girls were rising in pitch, the clacking of their shoes coming closer and closer. Natasha closed her eyes.

She had foreseen having to kill her Masters, and had counted that the girls would follow orders. She didn’t like it, but she wouldn’t be stopped by this.

They came at her one by one, and it still was disgustingly easy.

It was only one hour later, when the bodies had started to cool and the empty eyes of her Instructor were the only thing left to look at, that the first waves of nausea hit her.

She couldn’t stay here any longer. The stares of her dead comrades blistered her skin, their bodies a mess on the floor. Burying them was out of the question, she didn’t care enough for them to be found out and certainly wasn’t going to offer any kind of mercy to the animals that had enslaved them all.

Cremation would do. Let the fire be the force that cleansed, for once.

She blew the base sky high, and not once turned back.

It wasn’t guilt that made her retrace her steps back to the small town years later, it wasn’t.

The place had changed since the fifties, that much was obvious. Everything changed given thirty years, but there were no italian signs placed anywhere, no insignia and even the town hall was different.

She knew, of course, that Fiume had been annexed into Yugoslavia ages ago, but the differences were striking.

And yet, the twelfth door stood unchanged in the same cobbled alleyway, the flower pots long since dead. The spy wondered if there had ever been flowers in the first place.

The door opened before she could even knock.

The dingy shop that functioned as experimental lab and house altogether in the same room hadn’t changed at all.

The preserved animal parts, the aquarium filled with ugly inhards and the uncomfortable, wool-covered bed in the middle of it all. Natasha idly wondered if it could double down as a table, but the candles weren’t giving enough light to actually test that theory. Certainly it would explain why she’d felt she had slept on wood, that strange evening of thirty years ago.

The snake was still there, feasting on a scrawny chicken and was quite determined to swallow it whole. It said something that she didn’t bat an eye.

“You’ve grown,” said the woman, looking her up and down.

“You’ve changed,” the spy replied in kind, and it was true. Now that she got accustomed to the light and her nostrils were no longer invaded by the stench of decay, she could actually notice differences.

The eyes were the same, and so was the mouth, but the face was certainly healthier looking. The unruly mane of black had been tamed and most of the scars were gone. All in all, she was a completely different woman.

“That I have,” the snake woman showed off more teeth, “famine is the best. People will come from all over, offering anything for my services. Indeed, I have never been more powerful.”

The Russian spy shivered, but agreed with her. In her business, she feasted on war and hate, she wasn’t going to judge for that.

“My spell is still strong, I see,” the woman approved of what she saw, apparently, “and you didn’t even need me for revenge. And yet, you are no older than when I met you,” she laughed, “I wonder, my dear, are you cheating on me with another Anguana? That would disappoint me deeply.”

Natasha’s eyes widened. “Is this what you are?”

The Anguana’s laugh stopped. “Why, didn’t tell you, did they? Of course not. Indeed, I am. The river Ssspirit, I am. Almost forgotten, but never beat. And I sssuspect I’ll keep on winning for a very long time,” she winked, hissing in jest. “Ssssso, is the human staying for dinner? Why, you simply must tell me how you haven’t gotten older. I am quite curious.”

Natasha’s stomach closed right away and she balked, “ah…” Her eyes dropped to the stale organs all around her.

The Anguana followed her gaze and laughed. “Oh, oh no. That crap should have been thrown out ages ago, I’m just not the tidiest creature. It also goes with my persona, doesn’t it?”

The spy sucked in a surprised breath, almost regretting it, before slumping in relief. “I suppose then…”

“How splendid. Pepi, go kill a chicken for us!”

Oh no.

“That is some story, Natalia.”

Natasha agreed.

They were sitting around the bed, that did indeed double down as a table. The Anguana hadn’t commented once throughout the meal, fully focused on her guest as she poured her heart out. If she still had one. It had taken a while for her mind to catch up with the fact that she had killed thousands of innocents, but catch up it had.

She wasn’t used to remorse. She didn’t want to deal with remorse, either. But she didn’t know where to start.

“What are you looking for, Natalia?”

The spy looked up from her plate. The snake woman was chewing thoughtfully, her face alight with concentration. It wasn’t easy to remember just how powerful she was with tomato soup dribbling slightly from the corner of her mouth, but her gaze told another story.

“...I don’t know.” She didn’t.

Freedom? She only had one marketable skill, whatever was she going to do with ‘freedom’.

Redemption, maybe? She probably was beyond redemption.

The Anguana sighed loudly, “why have you come here, if you’re not here to ask?”

Natasha blinked. “I guess… I guess I just wanted to see a familiar face?”

The woman gaped, her mouth opening and the soup dripping out. She coughed, and the strangest green tinge appeared on her cheeks. She snorted. “I knew I liked you for a reason. ‘I wanted to see a familiar face’, she says. Cute.”

Natasha blushed, she wasn’t cute. She was a fifty years old assassin with a kill count in the four digits, going on five.

“Of course we can be friends. I’m Darcy. You can stay, if you want,” the woman continued glibly, “but as you do know, there’s only one bed.”

Darcy was… an excitable creature, once she wasn’t keeping up with her all powerful persona.

A whirlwind of messy was as close as one could get to Darcy. Food was never absent from the table, but Natasha had never seen the woman look for money or accepting currency as payment for her services. She’d seen her accept years off one’s lifespan, strands of hair, sometimes even dead animals, but never money. And yet, never did they want for anything be it food or hot water.

And the snake woman wasn’t lying when she said she had never been that powerful. Each time a client left the building, Darcy became younger, her face healthier and, Natasha realized with no less embarrassment, more attractive.

The bathroom was another dilemma on its own, for there was no way she’d missed it the first time she’d been there and it certainly didn’t fit the house.

Also, when she’d said ‘only one bed’, she had literally meant it. Bed sharing wasn’t something she was used to doing, especially since she wasn’t used to sleep around others period.

But not only the Anguana was almost always in her personal space at night, but she was also cuddly. It had been an awkward first week.

Sometimes she wondered if she should just wish for another room, but then she would dismiss the thought.

Then there was the snake, the ten-feet-long-warmth-searching-snake whose full name was, she learnt, ‘Pepitino’, which meant little pebble. Never in her life had she seen such an inappropriate name, and she’d been a prostitute at a not-so-vanilla establishment once.

She couldn’t bring herself to dislike any of it.

“Have you ever thought of cleaning the place up?” she asked one day, her hands hovering over a glass case filled with reptile legs.

“Not really,” Darcy shrugged. “It’s all part of the scene, right?”

“I thought you were kidding when you said you were playing a part,” she confessed, frowning.

“I’ve been managing my business for over two hundred years, honey,” Darcy explained patiently, “this is how it’s always been. Until I move, at least.”

The spy frowned. The times had changed by now. Sure, when she first found this place she’d been properly cowed and even uneasy, and she agreed that the ‘potion ingredients’ did make an impressive, if disgusting, sight, but how many people still believed in this kind of traditional magic? How long could the Anguana still exploit this kind of popularity?

“Did you say move?” She switched topic, for now. The decor of the Fiume shop could be left behind, if Darcy wanted to move out anyway.

“Oh yes,” the woman nodded, “I must, sooner or later. I moved here sixty years ago or so because of the war, you know? But things are changing and I need to move. Maybe England, ‘t wasn’t much when I was young, but now it’s grown. Sounds much more interesting.”

“Mh.”

The snake woman come closer until they were side by side. “Not now though. Later.”

Natasha nodded and tried not to think too much of the relief she felt at those words.

After five months, Natasha didn’t feel any closer to finding a place in this world.

Oh, she wasn’t unhappy per se. She had grown fond of the shop and had, to her initial horror, begun to pet Pepi the snake whenever he wanted, which was often.

Naturally, Darcy was the main reason she stayed.

Her friend, her best friend. Her only friend.

But the more she thought about it, the more she felt the need to change something.

Her restlessness didn’t go unnoticed.

“What are you looking for, Nat?”

“Nothing,” she grit her teeth at the question.

Darcy sighed, “should I call it a lie, my dear? You’re unhappy.”

“It’s nothing.”

The Anguana frowned. “The most important human in my life is unhappy, I wouldn’t call it ‘nothing’,” she said frostily.

“Well, this human thinks it’s not important,” Natasha spat, irritated.

The other woman drew herself up to her full height, her lips drawn tight. “I see.”

Nothing more was said and that night Darcy didn’t come to bed.

“Are you keeping me like some sort of pet?”

“...What?”

The words were out of her mouth before Natasha could properly censor them.

The last week had been strained, for lack of a better word. Neither woman wanted to acknowledge the little spat, but neither had tried to compensate for it in any way, and the spy had started to have nightmares as a result.

She couldn’t sleep, the souls of her victims coming for her, and there was nobody she could confide in to soothe her pain. Admittedly, she refused to believe it was all due to a single argument, but nothing she did worked. They came back night after night to plague her rest.

Until it was too much.

“Am I a pet to you?” she repeated, “I’ve been living here six months, and not once you asked me to contribute to the house, to help you out, nothing.”

“You’re being ridiculous, you’re not a pet!” Darcy scoffed, “if I wanted a pet I’d get another snake. You’re my friend.”

“Am I?”

Darcy recoiled as if slapped, the cup she was holding shattering to the ground. “What are you talking about? You came to me, you needed a friend. Have I been a bad friend? Have I asked you for anything in exchange? I have taken nothing from you. Not a year, not a hair, no shavings from your skin nor food from your plate. What in the name of the Lord are you going off about, Natalia?!”

“You’ve taken my first kiss,” she hissed quietly.

The Anguana’s eyebrows raised to her hairline. “That was for a Luck spell, and here it is, still working. You are Lucky, Natalia, forever, that’s some powerful stuff. It required a powerful sacrifice. You gave it to me. That has nothing to do with our friendship!”

“Doesn’t it? Then what am I adding into this relationship, huh? Nothing!”

“Are you even listening to yourself here? Oh my God, I can’t believe-”

“Save it!” Natasha spat. She couldn’t believe her friend was finding nothing wrong with her. ‘How could I be so stupid to just let myself become some… pet.’ Her cheeks felt wet. ‘Damn.’ “I’m leaving.”

“What?!”

Now even Pepi had started to shake, moving to reach her Mistress. He was back to glaring at her, today.

“You said I could have anything I wanted,” Natasha stressed. “I want to leave. Don’t follow me.”

She left. Darcy didn’t follow her.

Twenty years later, her Sins caught up with her, at last, in the form of a Government Issued Assassin.

Natasha almost laughed, her body tired after running away for weeks. Oh, how her supposed luck had run out now. It had lasted over fifty years, and all things considered, she was due her end by now. Her body count hadn’t gotten into the five digits, after all.

“You were difficult to chase, Vdova,” the marksman said.

She scoffed, shouldn’t he have stayed away and just shot her already? “Take the shot, marksman.”

The assassin didn’t move. “You… you’re not going to fight?”

“For what?” she asked incredulously, “it was about time my luck ran out already. Gods.”

The marksman didn’t kill her. Her Luck was still there, after all.

That night, sitting on the filthy floor of an abandoned building, aching and tired, her thoughts went to another equally uncomfortable bed that doubled down as a table.

20 years after the fall of Red Room by her own hand Natasha Romanoff was a human being once again.

It seemed stupid, in hindsight, that she would forget about it, but she had.

Reclaiming her humanity had been the hardest thing she had done in her long life. But she had forgotten how nice the sun was, or how satisfying was to learn something new. How had she lived without this?

‘But it wasn’t living,’ she morosely thought, ‘you were surviving.’

And survive she had. She had destroyed her enemies and made friends, albeit not many and one of them was not speaking to her, but she had.

She had proved all of them wrong and she hadn’t even noticed, not even in Fiume where she was free. Darcy hadn’t really pushed her to grow, but once she took off the rose-colored lenses she could see it, the Anguana had been as lost as she was about her future, and with no wish explicitly formulated on her part, had probably found her job as a ‘friend’ more difficult than it had to be.

What a glorious mess, fixed by that stupid, stupid carnie.

Clint Barton, the marksman who had spared her life, was another conundrum, a baffling contradiction to her.

Her only previous experience with ‘friendship’ had been with Darcy, and the snake woman could have snapped her fingers and destroyed her in one split second. It really didn’t involve a lot of trust on their part, since Anguanas didn’t kill unless somebody breached a contract with them.

But Clint, human, weak and fragile Clint, didn’t seem to care that Natasha could just snap her fingers and probably end him. He slept close to her, he took out his hearing aids in her presence, going so far as teaching her basic ALS. She couldn’t really wrap her head around that level of trust, honestly.

It had been a humbling experience.

She didn’t remember doing it, but one day, Clint told her she had started to smile.

SHIELD had officially become her new purpose, even if she had no actual reason to stay.

Oh, she had believed Barton’s words about being worth more, it was what she needed to hear to get out of her funk at last, but she wasn’t really sure SHIELD was actually it. It was probably a result of her training, honed by living with an Anguana who could smell a lie on her tongue (they smelled of death, according to Darcy), but some of her new colleagues were absolutely not in it for the mission or the money. SHIELD was as dirty as some of her old clients had been, and she could probably prove it with time.

But Clint believed in it, believed in Phil and in second chances.

For him, she stayed.

Soon enough, they were sent to missions together, and yeah, that pleased her. There was no one else she would trust with her life.

“Come on, Nat,” he’d say, and the pet name Darcy used to call her didn’t hurt nearly as much as she thought it would, “we’re up.”

Fortunately, her Luck spell hadn’t worn off. It wasn’t supposed to, but she knew that an Anguana could take back whatever she had given whenever she felt like it. Darcy was being very mature about this.

Unfortunately for her, Hawkeye was extremely observant. Too observant, maybe.

It didn’t take him long to notice just how strange things were whenever she was involved. Like how the last mafia boss had misplaced his knife just before interrogating her, or how one of his minions had emptied an entire magazine at her from less than three feet away without hitting her once.

And in such a situation, a magic spell that made you lucky wasn’t exactly the first thing that came to mind.

“What’s the deal with you?” he asked her abruptly, as soon as they were back to a Safe House.

“Excuse me?” she frowned.

“You heard me,” he grabbed her shoulder and she fought the first instinct to send him flying. “That man missed at least five clean shots. You were bound, three feet from him before I pulled you out. What the fuck is going on, Nat? Because I’m seriously grasping at str-”

“I’m not double-crossing you, Clint,” she carefully avoided thinking that she would double-cross SHIELD if need arose.

“How are you going to explain that, then?” his eyes were hard, his arms crossed expectantly.

He was hurt, Natasha realized. Very hurt. She could understand, he’d put his neck on the line for her, and he thought the mob guys were working with her.

“It’s not what you think,” she shook her head. “Stuff like that happens all the time.”

“Six bullets?” he asked, incredulous.

“I’m Lucky.”

“Oh that I can see,” he scoffed, “stupidly lucky. I see. Pull the other one, Na- Romanoff.”

“It’s not like that, you moron!” she hissed, “it’s a Spell, not some sort of favour they owe me.”

That shut him up for three seconds, to let his brain compute.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

Her stomach sank.

Clint didn’t believe a single word of what she’d said. Not one.

The realization was sitting uncomfortably in her stomach. But as much as she wanted to prove him wrong, she also knew that Darcy wouldn’t appreciate being paraded like a show pony for this reason. If she even wanted to see her, that is. They weren’t on the best of terms now, maybe, and she hadn’t tried to keep in touch either these twenty years.

“So, this spell of yours… how does it work?”

She sighed. Had Clint used an ounce more of sarcasm she’d have probably drowned in it. “It’s not my spell. I had it done to me. I needed it.”

“Riiight,” he drawled, “you needed luck.”

“I did,” and now if only her luck would kick in and save her from this discussion. “I was 22, young and scared and wanted to take down Red Room. Unfortunately, nothing I could offer could get me the spell I wanted.”

She watched with mild satisfaction as her snapped words made Clint more uncomfortable the longer she spoke, until all traces of derision and sarcasm were replaced with bewilderment. He didn’t really deserve that, but her hurt feelings had demanded satisfaction.

“Who did you go to, a wizard?”

“No,” she shook her head, “as far as I know humans with magic don’t exist. I went to the Anguana... But I was desperate and alone.”

“...What did you trade?” he asked finally.

She stiffened. It wasn’t a big deal, and undoubtedly she had made it sound a bigger crime that it actually was when she’d argued with Darcy about it, her words only meant to hurt, but…

“You know what?” he interrupted her thoughts, “it’s fine. As crazy as this sounds, I guess I could believe you. For now. Yeah, sure, supernatural being that gives out spells. Where the fuck do you find one, though?”

Oh, if only finding them were the difficult part.

Croatia was beautiful during the summer.

Natasha was partial to colder climates herself, being Russian and proud of it, but she enjoyed the vivacious colours of the hot season on the Mediterranean Sea. It was simply beautiful.

The smell of the wind made her feel good, too.

“Why are we here, Nat?” Of course, some people just weren’t meant to be beauty estimators.

“We’re… searching… for a friend,” she measured her words carefully. ‘Looking for’ and ‘wish for’ were totally words she wouldn’t use in this town, lest an Anguana was actually listening in.

She had no idea how many of them were there, anyway.

The little, dark street in the most remote corner of the town was still there, and Natasha felt her palms go clammy. She didn’t know what to expect.

Would the interior be as awful as she’d left it? That pet of hers had the habit to grow exponentially over time, was he even fitting the tiny room anymore? Had Darcy finally switched the candles out?

Those were all important questions, were they? She chuckled, garnering her friend’s attention.

Was… was Darcy going to be happy to see her?

But to her dismay, there was no twelfth door at the end of the street, and the flower pots were awkwardly placed in front of the eleventh one.

Darcy had moved.

Clint was giving her the sad puppy eyes. Oh no.

“What,” she glared at him, reclining her plane seat. She received a kick from the man behind her. Not being able to travel in first class sucked, but her partner had wanted to ‘play tourist’. She was going to kill him, later.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t find your friend.”

Natasha sucked in a breath, and then released it. “It’s okay.”

She meant it.

The realization startled her. She was taking it… better than she expected, actually.

“It wasn’t destiny, we’ll meet again.”

November 22nd rolled around and Natasha was eighty.

She looked twenty-five. She felt four hundred.

Still, Phil and Clint were determined she have a day off and enjoy herself.

She wasn’t one to say no to a gift, her mama had raised her well, thank you very much, so she had smiled lightly and had left for the day.

And then, after cleaning her mostly unused apartment, buying herself a coffee and a potted plant, she came up empty with ideas. The spy frankly didn’t know what to do with her time. She had considered hobbies, of course, but they didn’t keep her occupied for that long and she barely had time to keep up with regular appointments or, say, yoga classes.

It was the reason she had discarded the idea of a pet. Clint had a dog, but also a farm and somebody trusted to feed him while he was away. As much as she liked Mrs Robinson, the neighbour, she wouldn’t trust her as far as she could throw her.

Besides, pets were high maintenance, excluding magically fed snakes.

She kicked one spare magazine she had gotten out of sheer boredom into the rubbish and sighed. There truly wasn’t much to do at her house. Well, there wasn’t much at all in her house.

One bed, the kitchen and the bathroom, and yet she had three unused rooms.

Even the bedroom didn’t look lived in at all.

‘That’s it!’ Her eyes widened, half a project forming in her mind.

She grabbed her phone and composed the number before she balked and gave up on it.

“Barton.”

“...Do you have plans for today?”

“So, what is this room going to be?”

“...I think I’ll leave it empty, just in case. Maybe a spare table.”

It was spring when Clint approached her again about Fiume.

“So, hey,” he dropped on her new sofa in the middle of the night, unconcerned by the gun thrust in his direction, “I have news for you.”

“News you couldn't share in the morning?!” she huffed, holstering her weapon.

“Well, yeeees, but where’s the fun in that?” He shrugged, and then produced a small slip of paper from his jacket. “So, you know your friend in Fiume? Miss Number 12, via delle Correnti?”

Natasha was suddenly very alert, dropping on the sofa and fully turning to face him.

“Okay, so, I asked Phil to dig around and we think we have her. See, Darcy Louise, she lived in Fiume, French girl by the way, we approve.” He narrowly avoided her hand. “Kidding, kidding. Anyway, according to our data, she changed her surname to Lewis ten years ago and moved to the UK. We don’t have…” he rummaged around, “a clear picture, but we know that there’s a Darcy Lewis in River, Kent, living at 12, Whirpool road. Here’s her number, too. And I gotta commend the woman, because Fiume means River and she basically found the only godawful place called that in the whole country.”

He sobered, “but Nat, I have to tell you this, I don’t know if you noticed but people, well, they get old and yeah I get that you don’t, but she’s probably changed very much since the last time you saw her, you get it, right? I’m just saying-”

“She hasn’t,” she replied right away. “Impossible.”

Clint groaned, “Nat-”

“I’m serious, Clint,” she shrugged, “remember that spell I told you about?”

“Uh, yeah? Like,-” his eyes widened, “Oh. Your friend. The Anguana. Oh.”

He stood silent for a while, but then relaxed. “Okay. You know… I sorta thought you were pulling my leg for a while, there.”

This time, she did hit him.

Despite being touched by the effort Phil and Clint had made to find her friend, Natasha didn’t go looking for her right away.

Missions were always her priority.

But they were getting murkier and grittier by the day.

Clint said that it was because SHIELD finally trusted her to take some serious mission, and that he was used to them, but Natasha doubted it.

The spy could recognize a cleaning op, especially if she and her partner were the designated victims.

Sitwell had sold them the mission as a simple mob bust, your garden variety mission, but then they found the experimental weapons and the children.

It was very. Much. Not. A mission for a single team. Yes, STRIKE Team Delta was excellent, one of the best if not the best SHIELD had, but it still didn’t justify this mess.

She was going to blacklist Budapest for as long as she lived. Along with Sitwell.

“Move your ass, Barton,” she yelled over the gunfire. She was pretty sure Barton was not bulletproof, “you’re not going home in a body bag.”

“Agreed,” he shouted back, “Laura would get mighty pissed.”

Another round of bullets barely missed their sorry hide and the Russian spy cursed. Clint jumped from the roof he was perched on not five minutes earlier, right before another volley. “Yeah, no,” he blinked rapidly, “we’re leaving.”

They ran, as fast as their legs could take them, out of the alley and into the streets, not bothering to check for passersby.

Natasha was definitely faster, but her red hair worked as a beacon under the streetlights, which was really inconvenient.

As luck would have it, though, two miracles happened at the same time.

One, their hunters’ guns stopped firing and two, there was an abandoned car in the middle of the street.

They gaped and looked at each other, incredulous, for a whole five seconds, before the voices of their enemy reached their ears, pissed and threatening.

“You know…” started Clint, pressing on the gas pedal with fervour, “this luck of yours? It’s stupid as fuck.”

He zipped through for blocks without stopping once at the traffic lights. “But I’m sure as fuck not saying anything about it. Ever.”

She didn’t answer until they were out of the city, her mind focused on breathing as evenly as she could. “I should probably call her and say thank you.”

“You should,” he nodded, “hey, do you think I could get one, too?”

“Do you have a first kiss to trade for it?” she snarked, without thinking.

He quieted then, side-eyeing her for the first time since he’d started the car. She shrugged in the seat, looking the other way. She wasn’t going to justify herself.

“Well, I’m sure Laura would let me offer the house… that’s gotta be worth a bit, yeah?”

She smiled slightly. Stupid Clint.

Her hands trembled, and it was ridiculous.

She’d gone to Fiume, ready to see her in person, and she was panicking for a phone call?!

‘Ah, but you knew she’d move’ her brain supplied, ‘she’d told you herself. You were pretty sure she wouldn’t be there.’

She bit her lip. That was true, at least in part. She had half hoped, half dreaded that Darcy would be there. She shook herself. It was just a call, nothing bad could happen with an entire ocean separating the two of them.

The first two beeps almost made her balk. Oh, she should just hang up.

“Hello?” Natasha frowned. This voice wasn't familiar in any way.

“I’m sorry,” she said smoothly, “who is speaking?”

“Marlene Diggers, of course.”

‘Of course’ Natasha repeated in her head. “I’m sorry, I seem to have the wrong number. I was looking for Darcy Lewis?”

“Oh! Well, Darcy moved months ago, dear!”

What? Again?! “I… see…”

“Why yes!” Mrs Diggers was gushing now, “cute kid, that one, a bit weird though. Why, I remember the day she sold me the house, she went and asked ‘what do good people do, Mrs Diggers’? And well,” she sounded embarrassed now, “the… snake… was pretty weird, right? But she was very nice about the sale, poor kid, selling her family house because of her studies!”

‘Oh, bullshit.’ Natasha snorted. “Did she say where she was going, perhaps?”

“Mh? Oh, I didn’t ask dear, she just said she was going to the States. Who knows? You should probably look for her on those… media you young people use nowadays,” and she started to babble again.

Natasha sighed. “I see. Thank you anyways.”

This time, she guessed frustration won out.

“Don’t worry, we’ll bring you back a souvenir.”

Clint groaned and Natasha snickered, unrepentant.

They still had no idea how that happened, actually. One moment he was fine, the next thing Natasha knew, he’d fallen into a dumpster. From the third floor.

Now Agent Barton was going to need weeks to recover, and Phil wasn’t really happy. Indeed, Coulson had to review the entire schedule for New Mexico twice already, going so far as to recall her from Malibu to oversee the mission.

Her partner howled in outrage at the umpteenth crack another of the agents made at his expense and she couldn’t help but chuckle. “Poor you,” she mock-cooed, sending the agents into another fit of giggles.

“I can’t believe I’m stuck in here when a 084 lands in New Mexico!” he glared at his cast, as if his leg had betrayed him. “You were supposed to go on the crappy mission, Nat, you drew Stark! We drew lots!”

She resisted the urge to pat his leg, just because she wasn’t one to pour salt on the wound (who was she kidding, she totally was.) and shrugged, “I’m almost sorry I foisted Stark on Agent 24, she looked ready to cry the last time I saw her.”

She wasn’t. Not one bit. As much as she liked Agent 24, which wasn’t a lot to begin with, the idea of spending more time with Stark left a sour taste in her mouth.

“At least you’ll spend more time with Lucky while I sweat in New Mexico?” she offered.

He scoffed, “as if you felt the heat. What do they even want you to do? Infiltration? Play barista?”

Infiltration didn’t really work out in a town where everybody knew everybody, at least if you wanted to pretend to be a local. Sometimes Natasha wondered just who the fuck was giving out instructions, especially since Coulson was just as unimpressed as she was.

In the end, Natasha was ordered to take a look around Puente Antiguo and report anything unusual, just in case the locals had actually noticed the flying Hammer.

To SHIELD’s horror, they had.

And to their shame, they hadn’t foreseen a very real problem: Scientists.

“And here you are, Natalie, your breakfast.”

Izzy, the barmaid and owner of the diner, smiled at her behind the counter and Natasha smiled back shyly.

Natalie Rushman, the cover she had studied for Stark Industries which she ended up not using at all, was a timid, nice girl who was going on holiday when her car had broken down right before Puente Antiguo. The mechanic assured her that the car would be fine in a week, so, for now, Natalie was staying.

It wasn’t even unusual, what with so many curious that had come to see the Mystery Landing site before SHIELD seized it up.

“Trust the feds to ruin our fun, yeh?” The disgruntled noises of agreement of the men behind her made her smile slightly. Feds, indeed.

Her neck prickled a second later.

It didn’t feel like impending doom, but the sudden shift into her danger radar was more than a bit alarming.

She instinctively straightened, her eyes scanning the incoming crowds faster than she had in the previous three days.

It wasn’t the truck drivers, nor the burly biker to her left. It certainly wasn’t the tiny woman and the fat man coming through the door, either.

Her eyes widened. ‘Blyat’.’

Behind the woman stood a man that hadn’t been there yesterday. He looked as comfortable in his own skin as a snake three months past his shedding time. He was tall, muscular but most of all, trained. It was in the way he moved, completely certain of his power, or how his leg didn’t completely stand under the table, in case he had to stand up quickly, or how he casually tracked the comings and goings of the room without even trying.

That was danger.

She made herself look very small indeed, paid the kind woman with another smile and slinked out of the diner without a second glance. Her neck prickled again, probably because the man had noticed her, but turning and actually checking would be her undoing.

She walked three shops ahead, moved sideways and then passed another crossroad before calling Coulson, just in case.

The next day, the man wasn’t with the tiny woman.

Dr Jane Foster was all by her lonesome, drinking her tea and scarfing down bacon with peculiar focus. That is, whatever focus wasn’t on the conversation she was having with someone on her phone.

Natasha was ever so glad her hearing was excellent, because Dr Foster alternated whispering to shouting without hesitation. Dare she say it, she spotted eavesdroppers twitch once or twice.

Not that the conversation was scintillating, that is. It was mostly about Pop-Tarts and ‘that Donald asshole’. Nothing that could indicate who the man with her was nor what exactly she’d found out in her research… Even SHIELD was grasping at straws with that.

“What- what do you mean she got stuck in a traffic?!” Foster shouted, so loud dogs barked from the pet shop two buildings ahead. “We’re in New Mexico! How the hell- No, no, Erik, she’s bullshitting you, don’t trust her! She had me believe it was three am when it was barely nine once, she’ll- Yes! Go- No, don’t send- Yes, I’m coming. Don’t let him touch anything, Erik or I swear to-” She stood suddenly, the chair scraping loudly on the floor, and left in a hurry, the snickers of the patrons falling on deaf ears. Her food lay forgotten on the table.

If the sighed ‘same old Jane’ was to be believed, this was probably a normal occurrence.

Natalie spent a lot of her free time at the diner.

It was a cozy place to read, and there were no coffee shops around. Natasha used it for people watching, of course.

She strategically placed herself away from prying eyes, back to the wall, so that her eyes could scan the whole place. Of course, she couldn’t do that all the time, she actually had to read sometimes, or look like it.

And in her semi-distracted state, somebody slid right away in the seat opposite to her.

She startled, her senses snapping to alert right away, and then she felt her jaw go slack.

Staring back at her with a curious, yet hesitant smile, was Darcy Louise now Lewis, the snake witch of Fiume.

“You’ve changed.”

Natasha frowned, had she? She didn’t feel her age anymore. “I could say the same about you. You look very different.”

She did. If it weren’t for the eyes, which in hindsight Natasha was seeing probably because Darcy allowed her to, she would have never recognized her. She looked human, she was human for all intents and purposes. Darcy just needed a chewing gum between her teeth and she’d be the perfect 20 years or so old next room girl. Natasha would have never noticed her among the others.

Darcy ran a hand through her hair, “eh, it serves its purpose. I like it much better, anyways. But look at you! You’ve grown so much!” she beamed.

“Have I?”

“Oh, I don’t mean your body, of course,” Darcy made a wide, dismissing gesture, “I’m talking about you. Why, you were a bright thing when I met you, and a shiny one when-” she coughed, “well, you know. Now, though- I always knew you’d be something to be reckoned with, Nat.”

Unexpected, a blush forced its way on Natasha’s cheeks and she fought it ruthlessly. “It has been almost forty years,” she said diplomatically.

Darcy’s smile dimmed a bit, “that it has.”

Natasha shifted, her lips thinning. There was nothing to distract her with, unfortunately. The diner was mostly empty, and there was nothing unusual going on outside.

She tapped her fingers on the table, uneasy.

“So…”

“...So.” It was unbelievable how hard it was. The Black Widow was struggling to find words.

The doorbell jingled as more customers trickled in, and she instinctively followed them with her gaze.

“I feel like I’m doing this backwards, and this is so awkward my Facebook just cried,” said Darcy, at last. “So I’ll just come out and say it: I’m sorry.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t a good friend and an even worse person to live with, I haven’t offered you any kind of support and insight... I’m just so sorry.”

Natasha’s head snapped to her friend’s. “What are you talking about? I’m the one who’s sorry. I was absolutely out of line, I didn’t mean half of that.”

Darcy shook her head. “You weren’t, you were right. I was so used to feeling superior that I never once- well, I was pretty terrible, myself.”

The spy disagreed. She remembered very clearly what she’d say and how she’d wanted it to hurt.

“You were my only friend and I almost threw you away,” complained Natasha.

The Anguana just shook her head, “you were my friend and I drove you away. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.”

There was nothing more to be said. Natasha’s shoulders relaxed for the first time since the start of the conversation, her eyes suspiciously bright.

“Just you wait ‘till I tell Pepi,” Darcy continued, and Natasha latched on the change of topic with both hands.

“How’s he, by the way?”

“Oh, you know,” Darcy shrugged, “bigger and stronger. He’ll grow a bit more, he’s only three hundred or so.”

“Of course,” the Russian spy nodded diplomatically, ignoring the twitch that shook her at ‘only three hundred years’. “Not to pry… but why are you here?” Blunt always seemed to do it when it came to the snake woman.

“Nothing much. I’m here on a job.”

The muscles in her back tensed at her words. “What job?” Oh no.

Darcy scoffed, “don’t be silly, Nat, I’m not here for your men-in-black. I’ve been here for two months now, to watch my handiwork.”

Natasha frowned, “what kind of handiwork?”

“A contract of course.”

At Natasha’s glare, Darcy hastened to add, “it’s all legal, you know me! Janey wanted to prove that her theories about interstellar travel were correct, yeah? And I needed 6 science credits for my college degree, right? So I thought, okay, sure, let’s do it! Are-” she blinked. “Are you okay, Nat?”

She was gaping. She knew she was. But for the life of her, she couldn’t compute the fact that a seemingly magical Hammer that nobody could lift had reached Earth because of six college credits.

It was pouring down when Natasha returned to the base, that night.

She had spent a lot more time than usual at the diner, up until Darcy had paid for Jane’s tab and rushed off to feed her scientists (and snake, maybe. She didn’t remember how much the thing ate, back in the day.)

She didn’t make it three steps into the base when the first alarms went off with a screech, their blasted sounds putting the agents on alert like a hive on fire.

“Intruder, intruder!” was shouted over the comms, and the agents scrambled to intercept the stupid idiot who had tried to penetrate the base.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Natasha’s phone really had the worst timing. If it was Clint, she was going to blame him forevermore.

She frowned, it wasn’t Clint.

It was Darcy.

Another alarm went off, much closer to the 084’s location and Natasha hesitated. Should she pick up? She had just given this number to her friend a couple hours ago, why was she calling now? ‘But why would she even be calling if it weren’t an emergency?’ Her mind supplied.

She sighed, mind made up. “Yes?”

“Fair warning,” Darcy’s voice was casual, too casual. Almost genial, if she could describe it properly. “I’m going to take the Hammer away in the next fifty minutes or so. You might want to step away. Or stand right where you are, that’s fine too. Hopefully, that alien hasn’t reached you, yet.”

“There’s an alien in the base?” she spat, her eyes wide. A couple agents turned her way.

Confused silence was heard on the other side. “Uhm, nooo? Like, maybe not? But don’t worry, everything is going to be just fine.”

“Darcy,” she bit out, “the alarms are blaring, there’s somebody in here and they’re approaching the Hammer fast. So if there’s something you need to tell me-”

There were a curse and an angry hiss. “Don’t waste agents on that, I’ll deal with it. That imbecile.”

Thunder shook the ground without preamble, and some of the agents were sent flying.

“We got him! We got him!” somebody shouted.

Natasha watched, her phone still pressed to her ear, as two burly colleagues lumped the blonde guy she’d seen with Foster into a detention cell.

On the other side of the phone, Darcy sighed. “He owes me sooooo much more, now.”

“Say that again, Romanoff.” Phil’s eyebrow twitched.

“Sir,” she repeated, “it’s best that we let the man go. Swiftly.”

“You’re suggesting we let an unbalanced, trained individual who got past our defences without any kind of questioning and we just forget the whole thing?”

“Yes, sir,” she sighed. Darcy was going to owe her just. so much.

Coulson pursed his lips, “are you-”

“Sir,” one of the unnamed minions she never bothered to talk to interrupted them, walking straight past her as if she didn’t exist. “There’s something wrong with the prisoner.”

Phil’s eyes flitted to her for a second before turning to the agent. “What’s wrong with him?”

“We think he’s hallucinating, sir.”

The guy, the alien, had to be hallucinating.

Natasha watched from the monitor as the man cried and cried, calling out to his father and despairing whatever Asgard was. She felt a shiver along her spine. ‘Oh God, he was hallucinating, right?’

“Raise the sound,” Coulson commanded right away.

They listened as the man talked to himself, answering to questions only he could hear, and the spy had to believe with every fiber of her being that he had to be on drugs or delusional, because the alternative, that he was an alien and maybe displaying weird powers they couldn’t dream of, was much more terrifying.

She wasn’t one to back down from a challenge and she would always fight, if needed. But she was not a soldier. This man, oh, this man was.

‘Can I come home?’ the stranger whispered, pleading to the mirror wall.

After a while he nodded, ‘I understand, brother,’ and there, right there, in the reflection of the mirror, she saw… she didn’t know what she saw, but blood froze in her veins. The man was not alone in the room.

“He’s invisible,” she whispered, “the other alien is invisible.”

Coulson’s head whipped to her. “What are you talking about?”

“Sir, that’s what I was trying to tell you earlier,” she started, her eyes then going to the other agents in the room.

“Leave, all of you!” Coulson barked. “Explain, Romanoff.”

“I received a call from Darcy, almost half an hour ago, telling me literally to ‘step away from the Hammer and the alien’ because she’d deal with it.”

“Darcy Lewis, the witch or Darcy Lewi- of course,” he shook his head, “and you believe that the man is an alien.”

“She’s never lied to me, sir.”

“What about invisibility?” he was losing his patience quicker than usual, but Natasha could relate.

“He could be hallucinating, sir,” she allowed, “but I… I don’t know how to explain it, sir, but that man is not alone in that cell right now.” Yes, she probably sounded pathetic.

Natasha pursed her lips. “She’ll come for him. And the Hammer. If we have a big enough bargaining chip, you’ll get all the information you want.”

Coulson sighed, loudly. “That’s… I don’t even know anymore, Natasha. What do you expect to find out? How do you expect we move, right now? I can’t let him go.”

“Twenty minutes, sir,” she said, “give me twenty minutes.”

He stared at her and she stared back, unblinking.

“Twenty minutes, no more.”

The next minutes ticked down so slowly that Natasha was tempted to just steal a monitor and play something. Anything. Galaga would do.

The stranger in the cell hadn’t stopped discussing with his… brother?... not even for a second, and while they couldn’t make out much of the conversation, the experts had been able to make out words such as ‘Asgard’ and ‘Loki’ and ‘Odin’, which pointed up to a very confused individual or some very pissed Norse Gods.

Natasha didn’t know what to hope for anymore.

She glanced at the clock. ‘Three more minutes,’ she sighed, ‘maybe I was wrong.’

And then, the alarm howled.

“SNAKE! SNAKE!” somebody shouted, and then there was the sound of gunshots and a cry of pure pain.

Natasha’s stomach clenched.

“Agent down, agent down!”

Coulson gave her the Look, scrutinized her some more and then activated the transmitter.

“Cease fire, Agents! The snake is an ally. For now.” He nodded at her, and then wordlessly ordered her to take the lead.

Pepitino, the now basilisk-sized snake, met her with an indignant hiss. He had coiled its body tightly around the Hammer, and his tongue flitted in and out his mouth, tasting and looking for danger. At his feet lay an agent, almost crushed by the weight of the snake’s tail.

The agents were waiting for orders, but even Natasha could smell the fear on them. She’d have to train it out of them next time she had a round at the training facilities.

“This is what your friend meant when she said she’d come and get it? A snake?” Coulson was mirroring her thoughts, truly. Then again, Darcy was such a diva when it came to her job.

“It just… fell from the sky, sir!” whined the downed agent. Natasha’s eyes narrowed, he wasn’t that injured if he could complain like that.

“Well, not really?” said a voice from behind the coils of Pepi. Natasha twitched. Darcy’s shape, scaly and as inhuman as she could possibly make it, appeared from the middle of the room and the snake lowered its head so that she could climb on it. Its body was so big that Darcy was just sitting there, cross-legged, staring down at them all and yet she looked so little compared to the size of her baby. They looked eerily like the monsters parents warned their kids about. “I just wanted to disappear the whole thing, right? Much easier. But then he went and got himself caught and then this other asshole is trying to keep me from my contract, so yeah. Had to establish claim here, you understand.”

Coulson twitched at her side. “I don’t, Miss Lewis.”

“I didn’t keep anyone from any contract,” added Agent Downed unhelpfully.

Darcy inclined her head and looked at the man as if she’d just noticed he was there, “I was talking about the annoyed man trying to remove the Hammer from my Pepi’s grasp. I can’t see him, but I can smell him.” As if on cue, Pepi the snake showed his forked tail again. “You’re not worthy of that thing, Loki.”

Something moved and lo and behold, a man in suit showed up in the midst of the snake’s coils.

Natasha’s hands went to her guns immediately. The agents copied her.

The black haired man looked around, smiling sardonically, his gaze amused despite the fact that he was completely surrounded. “I don’t suppose we’ll just forget this happened and you’ll just let me do what I came to do, do I?” He wasn’t really asking them, his eyes firmly on the snake as he went for his cane. Was that a dagger on him?

Darcy scoffed, “I’ve got a job to do, Asgardian. Besides, you had your chance, and Mewmew said no. Consent and all that. She’s Thor’s.”

He laughed. At her side, Coulson went for his gun, too.

“I suppose so, this time. Have fun playing with the ants,” he nodded in the end, “farewell, snake-woman.”

Darcy frowned.

Pepi lunged, but the man was gone.

They turned to Natasha. “Can we get our stuff and leave?” Darcy asked, as if nothing had happened.

The spy turned to Coulson, who nodded. “We have questions.”

Darcy nodded back. “My things for information, tomorrow. Natasha knows how to find me,” she offered her clawed hand.

Phil took it without hesitation. “Deal.”

They shook on it.

‘Thor’ was freed a few seconds later, his eyes empty

“Come on, big guy, let’s get you home,” Darcy said, smiling.

The snake approached the man very carefully, and the alien didn’t think twice about petting him and joining his friend on its head.

“I’m curious,” Coulson said, staring at the Hammer, “how are you going to remove it, nobody managed to.”

Darcy laughed, and it wasn’t the kind of derisive snicker Natasha had heard lately. It kind of reminded her of the old days.

“I’m not worthy, if that’s what you’re talking about. Tried it, but she said no. Nah, not my stuff,” she snapped her fingers and the Hammer disappeared, along with a very big chunk of the ground it was lying on, “but, you know, Magic. Sorry about the landscape here.”

And with another flick of her wrist, they were gone.

“Show off,” somebody behind her muttered.

She agreed wholeheartedly.

“You look tired.”

Tired? Oh no, she was exhausted.

“Were you present today? Because I think we just fought a murderbot and you confirmed us that Aliens are a thing. Also, your friend is the God of Thunder and your boss is his girlfriend. I’m just peachy.” Natasha was so done with the day.

A warm weight pressed against her shoulder and Natasha stiffened slightly to avoid leaning into it.

“So the universe is a tad bigger than what we thought. Eh, I’ve seen worse,” Darcy shrugged, looping an arm around her shoulders.

The spy did wonder what could be worse, but then again, she didn’t really want to know.

“I’m going back with SHIELD,” she whispered, relaxing into the awkward embrace.

“I know,” Darcy nodded, “Jane’s been invited too, maybe we’ll accept.”

Natasha started, “you’re staying with Foster?”

“She’s a friend,” Darcy said defensively, “she needs me, for now at least. Thor bro will be back soon enough.” “I still find your slang ridiculous,” she chuckled, returning the embrace, “sometimes you’ll use archaic words and then you come and say ‘Thor bro’”

“...Shut up you.”

SHIELD Report #45703

Avengers Initiative Status: Activated, July 11th, 2011.

Confirmed Members: Redacted

Redacted

Redacted

Agent 24 Redacted. Jane Foster Darcy Lewis Redacted

Redacted.

Avengers Initiative sounded more glamorous from the outside, frankly.

It was basically four people running ragged to protect Earth, or whatever SHIELD wanted of them, sometimes. That, and more Scientists that Fury was willing to tolerate.

The fact that Agent 24 had passed Stark, of all people, had baffled her. She would have never passed him.

One year later, though, the more they fought together, the more she could understand him, and also Agent 24’s point of view. Stark could play well with others.

Clint was a no-brainer, still her favourite partner. She would never forget that he’d saved her life in more than one sense, and she owed that little human disaster big time.

Steve Rogers was also still a mystery to her, despite being closer to her age (of course, he was a baby compared to her, 70 years in ice didn’t really count, did they?) and having lived the same difficult life she had back in the day. He was always up for a spar, however, and as the only Super juiced members of the team, she appreciated it something fierce.

Then there was Dr Foster, who was not an Avenger but lived with them, along with her crew. According to Tony, the only one who could really understand her Science!babble, she was a true genius and the true pioneer of her branch.

“Oh come on!” Clint grouched from the breakfast table, “nobody’s going to mention the dead animal on the counter?”

With Jane, also came Darcy.

True to her word, as Anguanas usually were, Darcy had stuck with Jane through thick and thin before being invited to work for the Avengers Initiative as the technical crew. Who knew Darcy’s Poli-Sci degree would come in handy (of course, the fact that she was a powerful being of Magic had probably something more to do with it…)? “If you don’t like it, birdbrain,” Darcy snarked, knife at hand, “you can leave.” She drove mercilessly the weapon across the carcass, ignoring the man’s disgusted face.

“Do you need help with that?” asked Natasha, when it was clear that the thing wasn’t leaving the kitchen’s table until the snake-witch was done.

“Mh?” Darcy looked up, “oh, oh no, dear. I just need to check a thing or two, Steve’s asked me,”

Natasha raised her eyebrows, “Steve?” She didn’t think Rogers had it in him.

“Mh mh, I think he just needs closure, you know? With Bucky and all that.”

“Yeah, I do know.” She did. Back in the day, 'closure' was exactly what she wanted. Of course, she had believed closure and revenge were the same things.

The Anguana cocked her head, “what are you looking for, Natalia?”

This time, she smiled. “Nothing, I have everything I wanted.”

Darcy smiled back.