testing for YOU

She understood. He realized it in an instant, at the way her eyes cut towards him. Danny was a weapon, and maybe he wasn’t the only weapon with flesh and blood and sweat and tears. Maybe they lived in a world that made a habit out of forging people into things, a world that saw a human being standing on two legs and wanted to know how many times it could break before there was a polished sword in its place, like freeing a statue from marble. Danny nodded at her words, small and subtle. “Much less drink,” he agreed.

But this man, this man she had met in the same geographical area as the entrance Danny had abandoned, did drink. And if her words were to be believed, he did more than that. He was a thing that should not exist, a person that, by all rights, couldn’t be alive. Every Iron Fist to come before Danny had been buried in K’un Lun, in catacombs he’d always known he’d be a part of sooner rather than later or in canyons designated for traitors and failures because even Iron Fists sometimes fell short. (He was always more likely to end up there, he knew. Davos had told him as much.) No one had ever told Danny about an Iron Fist who left K’un Lun. No one had ever told any of them. And it made him wonder, made him question everything all at once. If Danny wasn’t the first Fist who had ever left his post, did it make his crime more forgivable? Did it mean he wasn’t as irredeemable as he sometimes felt he was? Did it suggest the bodies he’d found at the entrance were not his responsibility alone? 

He wasn’t sure what he’d do if the answer to any of those questions ended up being yes. There were things you held onto for so long that you defined yourself by them, be they good or bad. They became a part of you, a thing etched into your every heartbeat, a thing that flowed through your veins. For years now, Danny had thought of himself as a coward, a traitor, a man who ran when he should have stayed. He had considered every death K’un Lun had suffered in his absence to be a weight on his shoulder, a crime for which he longed to be forgiven. But this… 

If Iron Fists had left their posts before, it meant there would have been a procedure for it. It meant the elders of K’un Lun would have had some knowledge of what to do, of how to defend themselves, even without their greatest weapon. It would mean, perhaps, that their deaths were not only Danny’s fault. It would mean that some of them may have survived.

“No, no. I’m one of a kind,” Danny replied, offering a smile that his heart wasn’t entirely in. His world was spinning on its axis, shaken by the revelation she’d laid in his lap. And the more she spoke, the more it trembled. The man she had met, the Iron Fist who had left his post without leaving K’un Lun in ruin, it was the same man whose name Danny had heard whispered in relation to the Book of the Iron Fist. It was the same man he and Ward had chased around Asia and never caught, the same man who whispers said could channel his chi into anything.

She was sure about the name, and Danny didn’t doubt her because it made sense. Who would know more about the Iron Fist than a man who wielded it himself? Who would know how to channel chi better than someone who had been using it as a weapon since long before Danny’s time. He nodded at her question. “I know of him,” he corrected. “His name’s come up before.”

Of course, knowing that someone had found him once didn’t get Danny any closer to doing the same. And just because she’d contacted him once didn’t mean she could do it again. If the rumors about Orson Randell were true, he could only be found when he wanted to be found. And he’d never seemed too keen on Danny finding him. But… It was worth a shot. If nothing else, he might be able to find some way to track Randell from the cave. 

Glancing up to meet her eye, Danny shook his head and smiled faintly. “Don’t worry about the plane,” he said. “I can get us one faster. And without calling in any favors.” He paused for a moment, hesitant. To use Rand’s planes, he couldn’t be the Iron Fist. Not without giving himself away. So, slowly, he brought a hand up to his face and pulled down the bandanna. “Danny Rand. It’s nice to meet you.”

She wondered if the girls that were still attached to the Red Room, who still served someone like Madame B, if they heard stories of Natalia Romanova and thought that people were mad to believe that she survived, much less got out. The way that this man was looking at her when she told him about Randall was exactly how she imagined it. Natasha fully expected someone to argue that it was impossible, or that no one who aligned themselves (no matter the reason) with the KGB or the Red Room or Hydra would be allowed anything that looked like a second chance, let alone a real one.

"Don't be so sure," she said, noticing the shift when he said that he was one of a kind. Maybe if he compared himself to the people of New York. Against the backdrop of a thousand normal faces, of people who had never had their minds touched by evil, people who had been shaped by world events and not been shaped by people who wanted to shape the events of the world? They had no idea what it was like to be them. And if Natasha was as good as she thought she was with people, she had a feeling that this Iron Fist wouldn't have wished that kind of upbringing on anyone. They were, at their core, good. Something that Natasha could never claim to be.

"I am sure you are quite special," Natasha offered. "But in my line of work? Not sharing is something I encounter often." And something she had never found herself being open to either. There were a few people who knew more than others, but Natasha was firmly planted in her idea that no one else needed to know her past. That was hers — and she didn't have much to claim as her own. (And few people understood that, the need to control even the simplest thing. Natasha was good at rolling with the hits — when things came out, she could find her footing easily — but she never offered anything without reason. Without need.)

Unfortunately, she didn't know him. Not the way she knew the Avengers or other vigilantes. She had no sources that were relevant to him to say that he wasn't alone, no comparisons that would make sense, no platitudes that she thought might touch the point the way she wanted to. "You're not alone," she finally said. A sentiment that had meaning without any outside examples, because where she lacked in those, she made up in personal experience.

When the pieces fell onto the gameboard, when the realities showed the world who she was and what she was capable of — at the end of the day, she understood. Taking off the mask and letting the world see you took a lot. Alexander Pierce had asked her, as she was unlocking SHIELD files and readying them to be put out for public consumption, if she was ready for the word to truly see her. And she had avoided the question and turned it on him — was he ready. (She had come to terms with what people knew about her, but also took comfort in knowing that it would never be the full truth.)

"He didn't mention knowing anyone else had it," Natasha allowed, figuring if she was going to be taking him right to Randall's doorstep, he might as well have all the information he had. (All of it that she deemed relevant, at least. Which wasn't much.)

He said that he didn't need her calling in any favors, that he could get them a plane in a shorter amount of time and she was a breath away from arguing when he pulled down his bandana and properly introduced himself. There was a flicker of surprise across her features, and a half-smile that came with looking at his face. "Danny Rand. You're... cousins with Tony Stark? He was who I was going to call," Natasha said. There were others, she was sure that she could have called to get a plane that would have kept them off Tony's radar, but she hadn't investigated the Iron Fist — Danny Rand — enough to know who to keep this information from.

“They have to an extent, they listen and do what I tell them but it’s clear they aren’t happy about it” Helena doubted they were even trying to hide how they felt about the situation. “Easier said than done” he was different from she’d last seen him, he wasn’t the person she knew anymore. “We knew each other when we were kids and we reconnected for a bit in Sicilly, he wanted me to come back to Gotham with him so we could be together” she’d turned him down because at that point she was still adamant about never returning to Gotham and when she finally did he had married someone else. “He also thinks I killed his father, or rather that Huntress killed him” which meant it wouldn’t bode well if he figured out Helena was Huntress.

/

The resistance wasn’t a surprise. But the fact that none of them had accepted her as their leader was something to be concerned about. Change of hands in regards to power was always a complicated matter. But Natasha had seen this happen a thousand times over her lifetime, and she hadn’t ever seen one be successful that hadn’t broken the ranks of those below them this late into the game. (This wasn’t good. At all.) “Former lovers then? Or almost lovers?” And he had moved on before she had come back around. “Did you? Kill his father?”

(✉️ ➡️ cannibal?): what can i say? scientists are curious assholes. kind of our thing. (✉️ ➡️ cannibal?): [UNSENT] not so much ‘toying with’ as ‘accepting the inevitability of’ (✉️ ➡️ cannibal?): no. death i can handle. it’s the ‘being eaten’ part i’m less sold on. (✉️ ➡️ cannibal?): well, that and my name.

(✉️ ➡️ assassin?): who is she? if my life’s on the line here, i think i deserve a name. (✉️ ➡️ assassin?): i’d also like to know how you know her, but i won’t push. (✉️ ➡️ assassin?): thanks. i’ll be sure to duck his calls.

Usually, Rictor was good at distracting. It was why nobody knew how much trouble he was really in until his toes were hanging off a rooftop, why he was able to convince everyone he was fine for so long even when he was anything but. He could talk himself in circles fast enough to make most people dizzy… but not her. She wasn’t buying a word of his bullshit, and he could tell it by looking at her. He thought of Skids, her hand on her hip and a faint smile on her face when he told her he just happened to be nearby when a pile of snow shook loose off a rooftop and fell on Rusty’s head. You’re not as charming as you think you are, Julio Richter. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“Ah, silver bracelets are no good for me. I can never manage to keep them on. You know how it goes with those things — they slip off so easy.” There was truth to it, of course. He’d been arrested more than once, but the only time it ever came close to sticking was when he wound up in a cell with his father in South America, so small he could almost slip between the bars. He pushed the memory out of his head quickly. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a favorite. 

She told him to stop moving, and Rictor shook his shoulders and shifted his weight just to be contrary. Part of him wanted to just make a break for it… but it actually seemed like she was going to help him here rather than throw him under the bus. “Sink,” he said started, counting off on his fingers, “toilet, nightstand, fridge. Think that’s about it. I haven’t been here long.” Looking down at his feet, he shrugged. “Fine, but I want them back after. I’ve only got two pairs of shoes, and these are the ones with less holes in them.” He slipped the combat boots off, standing in his sock feet and holding them towards her. “Why are you helping me?”

He talked about the handcuffs like it was a funny little joke, that whatever consequences from this room held would be something in passing and would never actually reach him. And maybe he was right, maybe this man was a lot more adept at avoiding the law then he was at investigating a scene, but his attitude stopped her in mid-step. Natasha turned towards him, arching a brow at his joke because that’s what it was meant to be, and blinked. “So, you get caught a lot then?” 

Grabbing her phone, Natasha quickly makes a call, and for the world around her, it sounds like she’s ordering literal room service. Her eyes flickered towards the posts that he had said he had touched and then ultimately decided that there was probably a lot more that he just didn’t realize. "The full spread,” she said, watching as he took off his shoes and demanded them back after she was done. Natasha shook her head before finally saying: “The price is fine.” She hung up her phone and then refocused on him.

In a lot of ways, Natasha reminded Yara of Samanta. Her sister had always been a grounding force, always been more than willing to hold Yara in place when she desperately wanted to throw herself into a fight that was both unnecessary and foolish. It was why Yara had jumped to such a foolish extreme the moment her sister was gone, why she went to the literal ends of the earth just to get Samanta back. Yara did better, she knew, when she had someone to remind her what fights were worth having. And Samanta couldn’t do that anymore, but perhaps Natasha could. (It was probably foolish to cling so certainly to someone she’d only just met, but… Yara liked Natasha. She thought the feeling might be mutual.)

Yara let out a disappointed grunt when Natasha said that the situation likely wouldn’t come to blows, kicking at the dirt as if offended by the development. “Well, that’s dull, isn’t it?” Yara made a face at the instruction, but followed it all the same. And there weren’t many people she’d listen to so easily, but Natasha had quickly secured her place as one of them. “Why do I need to blend in again?”

/

Yara was an interesting girl. Brilliant in her own way and so quick to judge — but Natasha had quickly found that Yara's gut had never led her astray. Her instincts were good — incredible even, but they needed work. Yara couldn't rely on a gut feeling her entire life if she had any intention of being good at reading people. She had an eye that could be trained to have a razer's edge precision of she so desired. But Yara had to want it, and Natasha wasn't sure yet if she really did. "People talk more freely when they don't think they're being watched."

(✉️ ➡️ an avenger (do not drunk dial) ): ooh, was it an assassin? assassins are hilarious. i know, like, 12 ex assassins (✉️ ➡️ an avenger (do not drunk dial) ): ha! rookie mistake. i hang with the wrong crowd all the time and i’ve never been murdered  (✉️ ➡️ an avenger (do not drunk dial) ): well, you’d be wasting your time. all i’ve got to my name is 3 warm beers (✉️ ➡️ an avenger (do not drunk dial) ): wait (✉️ ➡️ an avenger (do not drunk dial) ): two warm beers 

@girlofstature

Dinah shouldn’t have been taken by surprise. This was her home turf and she’d somehow ended up with a knife inches from bleeding her out in the back of her own shop. Her jaw was set as the redhead spoke. Natasha Romanoff. That was a name she recognized. The one known as the Black Widow. She remembered the rumors that surrounded that name. If Lady Shiva was known as the world’s most deadly women, then Natasha Romanoff was certainly near the top of the list. Dinah hadn’t technically met the Widow before, but she’d nearly had a run in during her time with the Birds.

Dinah let go and took a step back, but her eyes didn’t soften. Dinah had learned from the greatest fighters in the world so she’d never be taken by surprise again. And here she was… taken by surprise. “I’ve seen you before, but we’ve never officially met. It was from a distance. You weren’t interfering with my mission, so I didn’t interfere with yours. Germany. A few years back. As long as those flowers aren’t for Stark. Only one person is allowed to give my flowers to him and that’s only because she would turn me into a rabbit if I didn’t help her.”

/

A few years back in Germany. Natasha looked at her more closely, thinking of the people who were active in that area at the time, there were only a handful that had any impact the way that the Avengers did. The good ones, she knew, were like her. The kind that made waves without making sound, where the center of the changes was hard to determine because actions were taken with such precision. “You were there?” Natasha had been so wrapped up in the Avengers and the accords that she hadn’t noticed. “I heard of a few things that had happened while the spotlight was on us, didn’t realize it was you.”

Natasha put her knife away, crossing her arms as she settled more comfortably against the wall. “They are for Stark. He and I have never been like that.” There was a moment where she thought he looked at her like that, but that was when she was Natalie Rushman and that glance only lasted a moment before he caught something — either in her expression or the way she walked, he knew something. The first person to make her that quickly. “You know the wife then?”

Neither of them were here to talk about Barbara, no matter how much of an impact she had on his life or how kind she’d been to Natasha during her time with the Avengers. Stark Industries and the team had been so closely entwined for so long that it was almost impossible to tell them apart until they were ripped into shreds in Berlin. (Maybe that just proved that one couldn’t exist without the other – but instead, Tony saw it as proof that anything he touched would turn to ash eventually.) “I don’t really think that’s something we can choose,” Tony deadpanned, gesturing vaguely to his head. The memory of the dreams Wanda made only clearer in his mind, the fears and nightmares that led to the creation of Ultron, still woke him in a cold sweat more nights in the week than they didn’t.

Thought. Tony huffed a bitter laugh at that one, making his way across the workshop to drop into the sofa, so old that he almost sunk through the cushions all the way to the concrete floor. “Believe me,” Tony said, “all she’s getting is thought.” He pointed back at his temple for a second time. “I come down here, I tinker, I try to reinvent the wheel, and all I can think about is how she–” He cut himself off with another laugh, rough at the edges. “I can’t think of anything but her. You know what that’s like, Romanoff?”

But she did. Against all odds and all expectations, she knew. Tony should’ve guessed there were a thousand unthinkable secrets still lingering about Natasha Romanoff, the most of which he’d never have the privilege of knowing, but he’d never expected this. “They were right.” It was cruel, he knew, but they’d never danced around each other’s feelings before. It was horrific, what they’d done to her, taking something that mattered and turning it to dust – but they were right. Love was a distraction. “If a hole opened in the sky right now,” Tony said, “if the endgame happened, I … I’m so far off my game right now, I can’t even crack a joke about it. That’s how bad it is.”

Siberia. Somehow it always circled back to that. Marriages always led to dissolution, in Tony’s experience. One person was always left behind. “No plan,” Tony said, focusing intently on the cheeseburger in his hands, half eaten and suddenly nausea inducing. “And he got nothing. He got absolutely nothing.” Tony picked at the corner of the packaging. “The spy is from the future,” he continued, “and he’s my grandson.”

Natasha raised her brows and nodded her head, he was right — they never had a choice in the matter. There were things that people couldn't put down. Natasha's entire body was shaped to be a weapon, not a person, and Tony carried the arc in his chest. They couldn't put it down — they didn't get a choice. They couldn't turn their realities into something softer, couldn’t pretend that aliens hadn’t descended from the skies and changed everything — or that they hadn’t been shaped by unspeakable trauma. The world mattered to them, no matter how much or how often it had betrayed them. Their desire to protect it never turned off. And the weapons that were formed with their bodies couldn’t be put down. “A fantasy,” she offered, wondering if she wanted that at all or if she was only thinking about it because she was looking at Tony.

He asked, again, if he knew what that was like, to be consumed by something — Natasha knew he meant by a person, by affection, but Natasha couldn’t remember feeling that way about anyone. Even her late husband. But she knew what it was like to be consumed by something. To have her thoughts completely manipulated in a direction and be unable to pull herself from it — but it was different. Tony was thinking about her because she mattered to him, because in all his confusing life, something about Zatanna both made sense to him and mystified him. And Natasha, for all the time she knew him, knew he needed that. He needed the constant wonder. “I do—“ but her brows furrowed at the confession, like she hadn’t expected herself to say that, to feel something in her chest that knocked to the beat of his words. "Just after we were first married," Natasha said, the words coming naturally than she felt them, like her body was remembering something she wasn't. "It was worse around the last time I spoke to him."

Not that she believed that this would be the last time that Tony ever spoke to Zatanna, but that ache... it was the same when you thought there was no coming back. (And most people didn't realize it was the end until it had already passed. Until a thousand unspoken words turned into nightmares of what could have been.) They were right. Natasha found herself swallowing her thoughts for once, looking away from Tony because— "They were." It was the truth. A relationship like that was only a distraction. It was the same train of thought that lead them to prevent any of their agents from being able to carry a child to term because it would have been a distraction. (Tony knew. Natasha assumed he did, at least, probably knew the second she was scooping up a kid and embracing the name Aunt Nat. Or the way she looked away and pretended not to hear the question when people asked her about family. And if he didn't know for sure, her confession about starting to attempt a family... He knew. There was no iteration that Natasha imagined where Tony didn't miss the hints.)

(✉️ ➡️ Natasha): okay if anyone’s the sidekick here, it’s you (✉️ ➡️ Natasha): I mean techncially you kinda work for me right now (✉️ ➡️ Natasha): also I told you what I was doing before I did and told you to move, so how is it my fault? (✉️ ➡️ Natasha): you misspelled terrible and dangerous (✉️ ➡️ Natasha): I almost did (✉️ ➡️ Natasha): when we got there the door was so dented I had to go out through the window (✉️ ➡️ Natasha): and no one was even chasing us!

“I’ve been told you can’t see it from the bedroom. Window faces a different direction,” Matt quipped back. She might hit him, but she would hardly be surprised at the remark. On the nights that she showed up to sleep in Matt’s apartment here, she didn’t do so in a way that any normal person would be aware of. Matt’s ears could still here the soft click of a lock pick even when her trained footsteps were silent, and she couldn’t avoid the imperceptible creak the couch made when she stretched out on it before pulling one of his impossibly soft blankets over her. He would listen to her heartbeat and the sound of her breathing to check for injuries and sometimes he’d consider coming out to offer her the bed, but in the end he would go back to sleep. Natasha would talk to him if she wanted to and not a moment before. So on those nights, he knew. She knew. And that was enough.

Matt had wondered when she would bring up his most recent potential client. His head tilted as he walked to the kitchen and grabbed his coffee. He took a sip before speaking. “They did,” he said. “I told them I would take their case when their son stopped lying.” The kid hadn’t just been frightened when Matt met him down at the police station. Damion Bell was covering for something or someone.

/

“Would hate for the street to get a highlighted view of your nightly activities.” Natasha rolled her eyes, “You need to work on your lines, Matt. You used to be smooth. What happened?” Life, she knew. But there was no seriousness to her tone or her question, just a gentle poke towards a friend. But she also knew why he was making that remark, even if he never directly confronted her about it, but the nights that she slept on his couch when the heating was out in her building — or when she was too restless to stay in the same spot as the night before — she came here. Rotated between her own place, Matt’s place, the tower, and safe houses. There was something to be said about this being one of her trusted places, but she wouldn’t say it.

“He knows more than he’s saying,” Natasha agreed, following him into the kitchen and helping herself to a cup. “He might stop lying if he knew you were in his corner.” She liked to believe that she didn’t meddle in all of his cases, but if she knew about them, well, she had an opinion. And Matt was going to hear it. “It just takes one extended hand, or so I’ve heard.” 

There had always been a part of Peggy that knew Natasha was more than just an extremely proficient agent, just as there had always been a part that remembered another woman when she looked at her. The first time Natasha showed up on the footage, undercover at a gala with a suspicious looking pin, black dress with red accents, Peggy had to lean closer to ensure it wasn’t Dottie Underwood back from oblivion once again. It had been decades later, the Russian assassin long since wiped from top priority list and presumed killed by one gangster or another, but there had been that lingering thought remained in the back of her mind ever since – the idea that while Dottie may always be in her head, there was more of her out there than that. “I make sure to follow up,” Peggy replied with a tight smile. “One of the many perks of the job.”

The storm they were talking about felt much the same thing. Getting close to people was something that Peggy had to actively learn how to do again, after the war – it was something that Natasha actively avoided. Peggy knew why, couldn’t deny the appeal of a life without connections, but there was always something sad about Romanoff. “I’ll be making friends with none of the sort,” Peggy said, and that tight smile turned into something almost teasing. “The only people I’m interested in spending any time with are mature, interesting applicants. They are to give me a three page cover letter, single spaced, before a very gruelling interview session.”

But the humour disappeared quickly, as did any concept Peggy may have had of this new world. There was a secret that Steve refused to tell her, when he came to visit. There was a reason he didn’t meet her eyes, sometimes, when she talked about SHIELD. There was a reason why Sharon started visiting more and more often, and there was a reason why Natasha was dancing around the sparring mat even more than usual, now.

They were treating her with kid gloves, and she never appreciated that. Natasha, predictably, was the one to break that streak. Peggy appreciated it more than she could put into words, especially when she was left reeling, hands dropping to her sides, mind ticking over every single possibility.

“Operation Paperclip,” Peggy said, steadying herself by spreading weight evenly between her feet. A soldier’s stance, her immediate way of providing even the slightest degree of comfort, of control. “The United States government had a splendid idea of recruiting former Nazi scientists to bolster our defences. Hydra provided the best of the best. Howard took personal responsibility for … For Arnim Zola.” 1945. The wheels on that operation started turning so soon, long before SHIELD even opened its doors. “It was there from the start,” Peggy said, looking down at bleeding knuckles. “We broke from the SSR because of it, promised things would be different. But I always thought…”

Peggy let out a sigh, turning to the wall, then back to Natasha. Turning for answers, from dead men. “I need to see those files,” she said. “I have to know. Every mission I sanctioned, I … I have to go back.”

Perks of their line of work, Natasha wanted to say. Even when she was working on the other side of things (she would say the wrong side — but things changed rapidly and it was hard to claim she was on the right side of anything these days), she had the same thoroughness with her marks. Making sure they understood the message she was supposed to leave them with — or in other cases, make sure they didn’t get up after that last hit. And even in SHIELD, things didn’t change as much as a person might like to think. They were still a government organization who employed people like her.

But Peggy was talking and it was far too easy to listen to what she was saying and feel like it was something Natasha could do to. There was a reason she had been director — a reason that so many people followed her when she was forming SHIELD. And it wasn’t justcharisma — thought she did have that in spades, it was the message she was sending and how she was sending it. Peggy Carter was an easy woman to believe in. “And here I’ve been doing trial by fire and hoping for the best,” Natasha quipped. But Peggy had an idea in her mind, one that wasn’t dismissive of Natasha’s feelings though it could have been. Peggy wanted to hold onto hope that she could merge with the world around her though it had changed so much from her memory.

The smirk on Natasha’s face faded when the humor turned towards cold reality. SHIELD had made a lot of mistakes over the years, and it… stung. It stung to know that the second chances that had been provided had turned into the entire organization nearly going up in flames. (It had gone into the water in reality — but it had survived. At the end of the Hydra reign within SHIELD, it survived. Not without having to fight to exist, but SHIELD was used to having to fight.)

Armin Zola. The name brought a look of confusion to her face, mostly because she had seen him at the end. “Was he responsible for putting him in that super computer?” Everything was connected as it always had been, each new rock they turned over came with a thousand more complications that Natasha had to sort through and determine what was worth sharing, and what has had to privately hold onto. (Tony, as she found, would always find out. But even his frustration and feelings towards her, she had no intention of changing.) “He’s dead, finally. Steve and I were on the run just after we found out that SHIELD was compromised, we found the bunker where Zola’s consciousness was being stored.” And with that came too many things that were revealed. “He’s dead now. Missiles.” For the better, she thought.

He hadn’t been back to the Tower. Not since he went to the lab to collect his things and ran into Tony, not since he spilled the rest of his secrets on the tile floor and made a break for the exit. It spoke to his experience in 2099, he guessed, that he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop even now. He kept waiting for Tiberius to show up at his door the way Tyler had after he refused to come back to work, Rapture in hand and Public Eye goons flanking either side of him. We want you back, Mike. We really do. He kept waiting for Iron Man to blast through his door and give him exactly what he deserved, even though he knew Tony never would. He kept waiting for something to happen.

He just hadn’t expected this, was all.

Like Tania some eighty years from now, this Black Widow had a habit of catching him off guard. She showed up at his door with cryptic conversation starters and a confident stride that told him she’d definitely figured out where he lived from his Stark Industries employee file. (What did that file look like now, he wondered? Had Tony updated it to reflect his change in employment? To say his real name?) 

“Eating me up,” he replied flatly. “Clever.” He was stalling for time, of course, looking for some excuse to keep from spilling the truth. Tony let him off the hook. Black Widow might not. (Tania wouldn’t have. She would have literally eaten him alive.) 

The question was there, was unavoidable, was heavy and tense in the middle of the room. Shrugging, Miguel shifted. It’d be nice, he thought, to go sit on the couch just to give himself something to do. Unfortunately, said couch was in several pieces in the dumpster in the alley. His problem solving skills left some things to be desired. “Just time for us to go our separate ways, I guess. I quit. Stark wasn’t a good fit for me anymore.” He paused, glancing back to her. “Do all of Tony’s ex employees get this kind of interrogation from you?”

She was playing with him, but the way he was acting made her wonder if he knew that or if he really believed that the name Black Widow was something far more literal. She had many names, but Black Widow had always been the first — the original. And given her profession, it wasn't unrealistic that someone might believe that she had earned it in a different way. (And a dead husband didn't help her fight that story.) "I thought you'd like that," she said, a faint smile on her face. At any rate, she was happy to let him continue believing that about her. It kept him on edge, and people who were already off their center were easier to manipulate.

He was plainly stalling. And Natasha wasn't giving him an inch. No polite glances to the side to pretend like she didn't notice him struggling to come up with a reasonable story. But there was nothing he could say that would convince her that there was nothing more to the story than what the surface provided. He said that he was tired of working for Stark — and she could think of only a handful of people who would actually feel that way, who would look at all the opportunities to change the world and the resources that Stark Industries provided and turn their nose up to it. And outside of herself — she couldn't think of many people. (Well, including Maria Hill. And Melinda May.)

"Only the ones that I don't know." Natasha unlocked her phone and then held it up so that he could see the display. It was an obituary for a man named Micheal O’Mara. From about thirty years prior. “And especially the ones that are supposed to be dead.” She gave him a second, a brief one to let his mind catch up to where this was headed. “Every document in the name you’ve chosen only goes back as far as a year. And before that? This is the last thing about any Michael O’Mara in the world. A dead man.” 

Matt could hear her heartbeat that never wavered. The woman who had told more lies than anyone he knew, who made a living telling lies, was the one person he could never tell was lying. It hadn’t always been that way, but then they weren’t the same people they’d once been. He’d spent months listening within – hearing his own body as it knit itself back together – that he almost hadn’t heard her arrive.

“The children,” he said. “They like to talk.” Little Sarah in particular liked to talk to him when none of the little boys were running around. She never spoke when there were others around, but when the other children grew bored of the ‘grumpy old guy in the basement’, she would sit and talk to him while playing with her dolls or combing his hair. As long as Matt didn’t speak to her, Sarah would tell him about what was going on in the city. It was while she was playing a game of solitaire that she started telling him about the ‘Black Widow lady’ that she saw upstairs on her way down and how the boys wouldn’t believe her.

Matt wrapped his hand around the base of a candle that was lit – judging by the warmth spreading down the wax – and lifted it until he felt it bump against another one. A few seconds later and he smelled another wick beginning to burn. For Elektra. “I’m sorry,” he repeated again. How many apologies did he owe before he could atone for all the pain he had caused? Why couldn’t God have just let him die down there? Two questions he didn’t have answers for.

/

"I didn’t think they believed me when I said who I was,” Natasha confessed. The children, they had been hesitant to trust anyone who walked through the doors — they probably sensed a mile away that she had no intentions of adopting herself a family here... and that she had felt no real pull towards religion. (But Matt had. And she had come here in the hopes of honoring his memory. Only to find that he wasn’t just a memory. He was a ghost, with a pulse. And she wondered absently if lighting a candle for him when he was alive would bring him bad luck or not.) 

She watched as Matt light another candle with precision, the new one flickering to life, and she knew who it was for without him saying it. A woman that Natasha was still wary of, but regardless of Natasha’s personal feelings about her, she had been, and still was, important to Matt. “Don’t be,” she interrupted. Natasha had enough secrets of her own, he didn’t owe her any of his. She reached over to help guide his hand with the candle back to an open spot, aware that he’d be able to do it himself if she gave him half a chance, but helped him anyway. 

(✉️ ➡️ Natasha): okay first of all, I’m no ones sidekick (✉️ ➡️ Natasha): second of all, that wasn’t my fault (✉️ ➡️ Natasha): third of all, your vigilante name should be terrible driver (✉️ ➡️ Natasha): I have never been so scared for my life as the other day when you were driving