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"I want to speak to Director Keller."
Melina said it to the mirror on the wall because she knew it was a mirror, knew what was behind it, knew that whoever was watching her had been watching her for the better part of two hours while she sat perfectly still in the gray metal chair and folded her hands on the gray metal table and waited patiently, the way the Red Room had spent years drilling into her bones. She was not fidgeting, she was not sweating. Her heartbeat was probably somewhere around sixty-two beats per minute, and the hand she'd used to kill Alexei Shostakov this morning was resting comfortably against the back of her other hand, perfectly composed.
She looked at her reflection in the two-way glass and did not blink.
"I know you're in there," she said. "I know you've been running voice analysis for the last forty minutes and you've been cross-referencing my face against every database you have access to, and I know that you've come up with very little because the KGB was thorough. I also know that you're trying to decide whether or not I'm a threat, and whether the two children I brought in with me are assets or liabilities, and whether this entire situation is some kind of elaborate honey trap." She tilted her head slightly. "It's not. I killed my handler this morning. I surrendered my sidearm, both of my secondary blades, the tertiary blade in my boot, and the compressed gas canister in my belt buckle at the front desk. I sat down. I have been sitting down for two hours. I am not a threat at this moment. I am a defector, and I have information that your agency needs very badly, and I would like to speak to someone who has the authority to make decisions, because I'm running out of time and so are you."
She stopped talking, looked at the mirror, and waited.
On the other side of the mirror, Nick Fury pressed two fingers against his temple and looked at the woman on the other side of the glass.
"She's been sitting like that for two hours," said the agent beside him named Ramirez, young, earnest, holding a clipboard like it was a life preserver. "She hasn't asked for water. Not even a bathroom break."
"I can see that," Fury said.
"The two girls, though—"
"I know about the girls."
"The little one keeps trying to get out of the room. She's not… she's not hostile, she just keeps asking where the bathroom is and whether there are snacks, and the agents in there with her don't really know what to do because—"
"Because she's six years old and they're SHIELD agents and none of them have ever had to babysit before," Fury said. "I'm aware." He looked at the woman through the glass again. She had not moved. "What did voice analysis come back with?"
"Russian accent, suppressed. English is native-level fluent. No tremor. No elevated stress markers. She's either telling the truth or she's the best liar we've ever put in that room."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive," Fury said.
"No, sir."
Fury was quiet for a moment. He thought about Former Director Carter, who was down the hall dealing with the debrief paperwork from the Ohio extraction, which had not gone cleanly, it had not gone cleanly because the house they'd had under surveillance for three weeks had turned out to be occupied by a KGB sleeper unit of considerably more sophistication than their intelligence had suggested, and the operative who'd called it in had come in voluntarily, with two children, after apparently eliminating her own handler, and the whole thing had the shape of something much larger than what it appeared to be, and Nick Fury had not survived fifteen years in intelligence by ignoring things that had the shape of something much larger than what they appeared to be.
"Get me Coulson," he said.
"Agent Coulson is currently with the—"
"I know where Coulson is. Get him."
Agent Phil Coulson was, at that moment, in room 7-C, which was not an interrogation room but had been hastily converted into something resembling a waiting room, two cots, a folding table, a plastic plant in the corner that nobody had watered since 1987, and he was sitting on one of the cots and looking at the two girls who were sitting on the other cot and trying very hard to look like he was not uncertain about the situation, because Phil Coulson was twenty-nine years old and had been with SHIELD for a year and was considered to have excellent instincts and considerable potential, and he was absolutely certain that none of his training had covered this.
The little one —Yelena, he had it written on his notepad, Yelena Belova, approximate age six, dark blonde hair, gray eyes, no visible injuries— was sitting with her legs dangling off the edge of the cot because her feet didn't reach the floor, and she was looking at everything in the room with the alert, rotating curiosity of a small animal encountering a new environment. She had already examined the plastic plant, poked the folding table to see if it would fold, looked behind the mirror curiously like a child who'd noticed a shiny surface, and was now looking at Phil with the open, unguarded attention.
The older one —Natasha, Natasha Romanoff, approximate age eleven, red hair, green eyes, no visible injuries but bearing consistent with extensive physical training— was sitting at the very far end of the same cot from Yelena, as close to the wall as she could get, and she was not looking at Phil. She was looking at the door. She had been looking at the door since they'd sat down. Her face was arranged into an expression that Phil, was deeply unsettled to observe from an eleven-year-old.
She had not said a single word since they'd come into the room.
Yelena had said approximately four hundred words, most of them questions.
"Is this a jail?" Yelena asked.
"No," Phil said.
"It looks like a jail."
"It's a— it's an office. A government office."
Yelena considered this with appropriate gravity. "Why does the… govnerment have beds?"
"Government. Sometimes people work very long hours."
"Do you sleep here?"
"Sometimes."
Yelena looked at the cot she was sitting on with new interest, as if reassessing its significance. "Where's mommy?" she asked.
"She's talking to some other people," Phil said. "She'll be done soon."
"Is she in trouble?"
Phil looked at Natasha, because it seemed like the kind of question an older sister might answer, but Natasha continued to look at the door with absolute fidelity, as if it might do something unexpected if she looked away.
"No," Phil said, which was not entirely accurate but was accurate enough for a six-year-old.
"Daddy didn’t come," Yelena said, with the matter-of-fact directness of a child who had not yet learned that there were things you were supposed to be upset about in ways you couldn't say plainly. "Mommy said he had an accident."
Phil kept his face very neutral. The debrief notes said that the handler, Alexei Shostakov, KGB operative, designation Red Guardian, had been found in the Ohio house with multiple stab wounds consistent with a high-skill close-quarters attack. He had been dead when the first SHIELD team arrived. The woman in the interrogation room had surrendered immediately after, with both children, and had asked for the most senior decision-maker available.
"Okay," Phil said.
"He didn't fall," Natasha said.
It was the first thing she'd said. Her voice was flat and certain, and she was still looking at the door.
Phil looked at her carefully. "Natasha—"
"Don’t tell him things," Natasha said, to Yelena, still not looking at Phil.
Yelena looked at her sister. There was a particular quality to that look. Not hurt, not really, but something more like an alert, gentle attention. "Okay," Yelena said, quietly.
Silence.
Phil reached into his jacket pocket and produced a granola bar, which he had taken from the break room upstairs before coming down here, because he'd thought (and he'd been right, he reflected, in a way that gave him no particular comfort) that he might need something to offer.
"Either of you hungry?" he asked.
Yelena brightened immediately. She reached out her hand. “Me!”
Natasha's hand shot across the cot in a movement that was faster than Phil had expected from an eleven-year-old and she knocked the granola bar out of his hand before Yelena could take it. It hit the floor and slid under the folding table.
Yelena blinked at the space where the granola bar had been.
"Natasha—" Phil started.
"Don't," Natasha said. It was not loud. It was the opposite of loud. "Don't give her anything."
"It's just a granola bar," Phil said. "From the break room upstairs."
"I don't know that."
"You can watch me eat one first if—"
"I don't know that," Natasha said again firmly, and this time she looked at him, and Phil Coulson, who had been in fieldwork and had met some genuinely frightening people, found the experience of being looked at by an eleven-year-old with green eyes that held no trust at all to be one of the more uncomfortable things that had happened to him this week, and it had been a fairly uncomfortable day. "I don't know where it came from. I don't know if you have something on your hands or in the wrapper. I don't know who you are or what you want or why you're being nice, and I know that when people who work for governments are nice it's because they need something, so stop being nice and tell me what you need, and stop trying to give my sister things."
Phil was quiet for a moment.
"She's hungry," he said. He said it gently.
"She'll be fine."
"Natasha," he said again, and he made his voice as careful as he could make it, "I understand that you don't trust me. You don't have to trust me. You can think I'm lying about everything I say, and that's okay, that's a reasonable response to your situation. But I need you to understand that this bar has not been tampered with in any way, and that I'm not going to force either of you to eat or drink anything, but your sister is six years old and she's been in a car for three hours and she's hungry, and I'd like to give her something, if that's okay."
Natasha looked at him for a very long moment. Her face did not change. Then she looked at Yelena.
Yelena was looking back at her with those same gray eyes, patient and trusting and completely ready to take Natasha's word for whatever Natasha said.
Something moved in Natasha's face. It was very small and it was gone quickly.
"Fine," she said. She looked back at the door.
Phil retrieved the granola bar from under the table and handed it to Yelena, who took it with both hands and turned it over several times examining the wrapper before tearing into it with the focused enthusiasm of a child who had earned a snack.
"What kind is it?" Yelena asked.
"Oats and honey."
"I like honey," Yelena said, as if this were important information he should have. She took a large bite and chewed thoughtfully. "We have bees," she added, with her mouth still partially full. "In the backyard around the flowers. Mommy says they make honey."
"That's cool," Phil said.
"She talks to them," Yelena said. "The bees. She says they understand her." A pause for more chewing. "Nattie thinks she's being silly."
"I don't think it's silly to talk to bees," Phil said.
Natasha said nothing.
"Do you have pets?" Yelena asked Phil.
"No," Phil said. "I travel too much."
"I want a dog," Yelena said. "And a cat." She frowned, processing this. "And a fish, and a rabbit, and a guinea pig, and a turtle because they’re slow like Daddy said."
Phil looked at his notepad. He did not write anything.
"Okay," he said.
"Daddy’s gone," Yelena said, returning to this plainly, the way children return to facts that have not yet finished sinking in. "Isn't he."
It wasn't really a question. Phil didn't answer it.
Yelena finished the granola bar in silence, folding the wrapper into a neat small square the way someone had clearly taught her to do. She set it on the cot beside her. Then she looked around the room again, doing her full rotation of observation, and her eyes settled on the corner behind the door.
"Is that a cat?" she said.
Phil turned around.
It was, in fact, a cat.
The cat was orange and large and was sitting in the corner behind the door. It was watching them with large yellow eyes. Phil had absolutely no idea where it had come from. He had not seen it come in. The door had not been opened since they'd sat down. He did not know how a large orange cat had appeared in a secured SHIELD facility room without anyone noticing, and he filed this under things to deal with later and focused on the immediate situation, which was Yelena sliding off the cot toward the cat with the immediate, tottering urgency of a six-year-old who has spotted an animal.
"Hey—" Phil said.
"Kitty," Yelena said, with reverence.
The cat did not run. It sat very still and allowed Yelena to crouch in front of it and reach out her hand, palm up, the way you're supposed to approach an unfamiliar animal (and Phil wasn't sure who had taught her that but someone had, clearly) and the cat leaned its large head forward and sniffed her fingers. Then it bumped its forehead against her palm. Yelena made a sound of pure delight, the uncomplicated physical joy of a child making contact with something soft.
"It likes me," Yelena said, breathlessly.
"Don't—" Phil started, and stopped, because the cat was already purring, a sound loud enough to be audible across the room, and Yelena had buried both hands in the fur at its neck and the cat was tolerating this with what appeared to be actual pleasure.
Phil looked at Natasha.
Natasha had turned slightly to look at her sister and the cat. Her face was still careful, still closed, but there was something happening in it, around the eyes especially, something small and involuntary, like a window that had been shut for a long time and shifted slightly on its hinges without opening.
"Don't let her eat it," Natasha said.
"I'm not gonna eat it," Yelena said, indignantly, still buried in cat fur.
"I meant the cat eating her."
"Don’t be silly, Nattie. Cats don't eat people."
"Big cats do."
"This isn't a big cat, it's a small cat, look." She picked the cat up. The cat was very large and Yelena was very small and the resulting image was mostly cat, with Yelena's arms and face visible at the edges, and the cat continued to purr, apparently unbothered by being picked up by a six-year-old.
Phil looked at the cat and then at the door and then at his notepad and thought about the fact that this cat was definitely not a SHIELD asset and definitely not supposed to be in a secured facility and was possibly the most inexplicable thing in the room, which was saying something given the overall inexplicability of the morning.
The door opened. Fury leaned in.
He took in the scene: Phil sitting on the cot, Natasha at the far end of it looking at the door like it had personally offended her, and Yelena standing in the corner holding a large orange cat like a stuffed animal.
"Coulson," Fury said.
"Sir," Phil said.
"I need you outside."
Phil stood up. He looked at the girls. "I'll be right back," he said.
Natasha looked at him with the patient, measuring look of someone who did not believe this.
Yelena waved, using the cat's paw. "Bye," she said.
In the hallway, Fury closed the door and looked at Phil with the expression of someone dealing with several things simultaneously and not enjoying any of them.
"Where did that cat come from?" Fury said.
"I genuinely don't know, sir."
"It's Goose," Fury said. "Danvers's cat. It's been showing up in random rooms since she left. We've stopped trying to figure out how. Don't let the little one put her fingers in its mouth."
Phil processed this. "Why not?"
"Because it's not a regular cat," Fury said. "It's a— it's complicated. The point is don't let it eat anyone." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "The woman in interrogation. Melina. She's been in there for two hours and she's not going to talk until she's convinced we have decision-making authority in the room, and Director is—"
"Still in D.C.," Phil said.
"Correct. Which leaves me, which leaves Former Director Carter, and which leaves you."
"I'm twenty-nine," Phil said.
"I'm aware."
"I've been an agent for a year."
"I'm aware of that too," Fury said. "Carter’s going to take point on the interrogation. I need you to stay with the girls. Can you do that?"
Phil looked back at the closed door. "The older one doesn't trust me," he said.
"The older one doesn't trust anyone. That's not a you problem." Fury looked at the door too. "Her mother left them with us voluntarily. She knows where they are. The little one seems fine. Just— don't let the cat eat anyone, don't let them wander, and if Natasha Romanoff asks you anything, answer it honestly."
"Why honestly?"
"Because she'll know if you don't," Fury said. He sounded like he'd already reached this conclusion himself and hadn't fully made peace with it. "She's eleven years old and she will know, so don't waste your time." He turned to go. "And Coulson."
"Sir?"
"Call me if anything comes up."
"Anything specific?"
Fury paused. "Anything. With this situation, I'll take anything."
He went down the hallway. Phil listened to the sound of his footsteps until they turned the corner, and then he turned back to the door and looked at it for a moment, and thought about what was on the other side of it, a six-year-old with a possibly dangerous alien cat and an eleven-year-old who had the eyes of someone twice her age and none of the belief that the world was safe, and took a breath, and opened the door.
Yelena was on the floor. She had constructed a nest of sorts from her own jacket and the extra blanket that had been folded at the foot of the cot, and she was sitting in it with the cat, which appeared to have adopted the nest as its own territory and was arranged across Yelena's lap with territorial confidence. Yelena was petting it with long strokes from ear to tail, and talking to it in a low, confidential voice.
"—and the bees make the honey," she was telling it, "and Mama says they have their own language but I can't hear it, I've tried. Natasha can't hear it either. Maybe you can. You have good ears, cats have good ears, right?" She paused to look at the cat's ears. The cat blinked slowly. "Yeah," Yelena said, satisfied. "Good ears."
Natasha was still on the cot. She had shifted position slightly while Phil was outside, he could tell because her weight was distributed differently, but she was looking at the door again. At Phil, now that he'd come through it.
"Everything okay?" Phil said.
"Fine," Natasha said. This word, in Natasha's mouth, communicated roughly zero information about the actual state of things, but Phil accepted it.
He sat back down on his cot. He pulled out his notepad, not because he intended to write anything in particular but because having something to hold made the dynamic slightly less purely awkward, and looked at the page where he'd written their names.
"Your mother's talking to my colleagues," he said. "She's fine. She's answering questions."
Natasha said nothing.
"Do you know—" Phil stopped. Reconsidered. Started again. "Do you know why she came here? To us?"
A long silence. Then, without looking at him: "Yes."
"Okay," Phil said. He did not push it. He'd been told to answer honestly, not to ask anything he didn't want a complicated answer to. He sat for a moment.
"What's your cat's name?" Yelena asked Phil.
"It's not my cat," Phil said. "It belongs to... it belongs to a friend of the people here."
"Where's the friend?"
"She left."
"Why?"
"She had other things to do."
Yelena considered this. "Can I keep the cat?"
"It's not mine to give away," Phil said.
"But if it were?"
Phil looked at the cat, which was purring so loudly it was almost comical. "Sure," he said.
Yelena beamed at the cat. "You hear that?" she told it. "He said sure."
"He said if it were," Natasha said, and looked at her sister with an expression that was, Phil thought, the closest thing to exasperation he'd seen from her, and exasperation was such a human, ordinary emotion that it changed the quality of the room slightly, let a little air in.
"Can I ask you something?" Phil said to Natasha.
She looked back at the door. "Depends."
"On what?"
"On what you're asking."
Phil considered. "When did you learn English?"
A pause. She seemed to be deciding whether this was a trap. "Before I can remember," she said.
"Both of you?"
"Yelena was raised in the house. In Ohio. She only—" A flicker of something. "She only knows English."
Phil looked at Yelena, who was examining one of the cat's paws with scientific interest. "She's never been to Russia?"
"She was brought from Kyiv when she was young," Natasha said, very carefully, in the way of someone giving technically accurate information while withholding adjacent information.
Phil nodded. He wrote nothing. "And you?"
"What about me."
"You speak Russian."
"Yes."
"Where did you learn it?"
Natasha looked at him. The look was flat and measuring and communicated, without words, that she understood exactly what he was really asking and was not going to answer the really asking part. "Russia," she said.
Phil nodded. "Fair enough," he said.
He put the notepad away. He leaned his elbows on his knees and thought about the fact that Fury wanted him in this room for what could be several hours, and that he was not doing well at reaching Natasha, and that Yelena seemed fine but was also six years old with a possible alien cat on her lap, and that somewhere down the hall Peggy Carter was sitting across from a woman who had killed her handler and brought her children to a SHIELD facility and offered them everything she knew.
"Do you like baseball?" he tried.
Natasha stared at the door.
"No," she said.
"Football?"
"No."
"Any sport?"
She didn't answer. Phil took this as the answer.
"Do you—" He stopped. Started again. "Is there anything you need right now? Besides—" He gestured at the obvious fact of the situation, the room, the circumstance, all of it.
Natasha was quiet for a moment. Then she said, very quietly, directed at the door, not at him: "I need to know she's actually talking to them voluntarily. That no one’s hurting her."
Phil straightened slightly. "She is. She walked in here on her own and she's been talking since we put her in a room. Nobody is—nobody is hurting her. We don't do that."
Natasha's eyes cut sideways to him for just a moment. "Governments do that."
"SHIELD doesn't."
She looked away again. "How do I know that."
Phil thought about the answer to this. He had several options: he could cite policy, he could appeal to authority, he could give her a platitude. All three of those would be wrong.
"You don't," he said. "Not yet."
She looked at him again. Slightly longer this time.
"But I'm telling you anyway," he said. "She's okay. She's in a room down the hall. She asked for water and someone got her water."
Something moved in Natasha's face. It was not relief, exactly.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay," Phil said.
Yelena had assembled the cat's paw into a sort of wave and was waving it at the plastic plant across the room. "Say hi," she was telling the cat. "It's a plant. Plants like to be talked to. Say hi."
Phil Coulson, SHIELD agent, twenty-nine years old, decorated for two field operations and commended three times for analytical work, sat in room 7-C and watched a six-year-old girl make a possibly alien cat wave at a plastic plant, and felt, not for the first time today, that his training had been deeply insufficient.