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The man ambled slowly down the sidewalk, seemingly oblivious to the sporadic vehicle traffic and sparse pedestrian turnout for the weekly farmer's market in this town's commercial district. After pausing a few times to browse shop windows and produce stalls, he turned down an alleyway and quickened his pace, heading for a recessed door near the opposite end. Glancing over his shoulder one last time, he turned into the alcove and reached for the keypad mounted by the lock, only to pull up short as a voice spoke up behind him.
“Been a while, Nick. Have you lost weight?”
Fury took a deep breath, making sure his bland neutral mask was in place before turning to greet the speaker. “Glad you could make it, Romanoff,” he replied, carefully concealing exactly how glad. Can’t believe I actually missed an assassin this much, he thought. Without another word he unlocked the door, then gestured for Natasha to precede him.
Fury secured the door, then led the way down a series of short corridors, finally pausing in front of a closed door. “I’m not sure what this meeting is about,” he told her quietly, “so stay alert.”
Natasha refrained from rolling her eyes - barely. “I’m sure it will be fine. He’s not exactly subtle. Most of the time,” she added after a moment’s thoughtful consideration.
Fury only shook his head, then entered the room at full stride, eyes automatically scanning the commercial-grade secure conference room for anything out of the ordinary. The only thing that didn’t match the way he’d last left this room was the man waiting at the table; when the door opened Steve Rogers stood up from his seat, face blank and shoulders tense as he watched Fury.
Before either man could break the silence, a red-haired blur shot past Fury and wrapped Steve in a crushing hug. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said softly as she held him. The tension drained from Rogers’ form and a small smile played at his lips as he returned the hug.
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” he asked absently as he straightened when Natasha finally released him. Not waiting for an answer, Rogers nodded at Fury, greeting him with a terse “Director.”
“Not anymore, Cap.” He pointed at the chair Steve had just vacated. “Why don’t you sit back down and tell me why I’m here.”
Steve nodded again then resumed his seat, while Fury moved around to sit across from him; Natasha settled at the head of the table with her usual dancer’s grace. Nick gave her a bemused glance before turning back to Rogers and lifting an eyebrow.
“Before the two of you get all alpha male,” Natasha interjected, “I’d like to know just what happened in California, Steve.” Both men turned to her and frowned - she simply rolled her eyes and sat back with crossed arms.
Rogers considered her for a moment before replying, “Why do you think I was in California?”
“Please,” Natasha sniffed disdainfully, “I’d been keeping tabs on you - electronically, of course - since you got back from ... wherever you went after Siberia.” The look she gave him told Steve she was well aware ‘wherever’ happened to be Wakanda. “You’d pop up on somebody’s system, then break contact and go dark for a bit - only to show up on the radar of a different agency no more than a few hours later.” She shook her head, eyes dark. “California is different. After you got clear there have been no sightings or reports.” Shrugging slightly, Natasha concluded, “I was afraid you’d been captured ... or worse.”
Steve started to reply flippantly, easily falling back on the playful banter he and Natasha had enjoyed on SHIELD ops - until the look in her eyes registered. He paused to consider just why this almost unbelievably deadly assassin - who had somehow become one of his closest friends - was watching him as if he might attack her. That consideration didn’t last long before he recognized the signs: she’d been watching over him, but found herself out of position to actually help when the Accords team had moved to pick him up. So he saw the worry, but he knew there was guilt there as well, and he knew the latter would compound and multiply the former.
“Natasha,” Steve said quietly, waiting for her to see him instead of whatever nightmare scenario her facile imagination was playing out for her. “I’m here. I’m okay.” He smiled crookedly at her. “To tell the truth, those goons the U.N. sent came pretty close to actually grabbing me, but ... I wasn’t alone.” Romanoff’s brow furrowed in concentration and she cocked her head to one side, silently inviting him to continue. “Shortly before the attempt, an ... individual made contact and warned me about the Accords team. I intended to make a break for it, but they were waiting at my vehicle. In the ensuing ... altercation, the U.N. troopers got the upper hand - until the person who’d warned me jumped in to help.”
He sat back and shook his head, remembering how Skye had dismantled her armored opponents. “Didn’t take much longer to finish the fight, then make a break for it.”
“And then this mystery woman helped you disappear - electronically, at least,” Natasha concluded after a few seconds thought. Her eyes narrowed and she looked sharply at Steve. “Can you trust her?” she asked in a toneless voice.
Steve was still trying to puzzle out how Romanoff had discerned the correct gender from what he’d said. Shaking off that irrelevancy he responded, “Actually, finding that out is why I asked Fury to meet me - she claimed to have been a SHIELD agent.”
Fury had been silently following the conversation, content to let Natasha keep Rogers occupied, when her ‘mystery woman’ comment nearly made him sigh in frustration. He managed not to, though it was so very difficult. Dammit Coulson! he thought, I can’t believe you sent May to make contact with a wanted man. You’re supposed to be getting SHIELD off the world’s shit list, not adding the U.N. to your enemies!
He was still ramping up his mental draft of the monumental ass-chewing Phil was in for next time they met up when he noticed both Rogers and Romanoff looking at him expectantly; after a quick run-back of the conversation he’d only sort of been paying attention to he concluded they were probably waiting for his reaction to Rogers’ SHIELD agent ‘revelation’.
Schooling his features to neutrality and reminding himself to look thoughtful before confirming that yes, May had been an agent, Fury looked at Rogers and asked sarcastically “Did you at least get her name?”
“She wouldn’t tell me what she goes by these days, only that SHIELD knew her as Skye.”
Fury couldn’t help it - the surprise was too great. His eye widened slightly and he responded “The hacker?” in a mildly incredulous voice. He saw Natasha’s eyebrow go up as she caught his reaction, but his mind was busy. I can’t believe Phil sent the girl - he practically dotes on her! Sure, last I heard she was training under May, but putting her near a super soldier’s brawl doesn’t sound like him.
Unaware of the other man’s racing thoughts, Steve simply nodded once. “She is certainly good with computers,” he confirmed in a slightly amused voice.
Natasha spoke up when she recognized Fury’s preoccupation. “Could be someone else, using a name pulled out of the files we dumped after Insight. Maybe a description ... ?” she trailed off, head cocked to one side again as she looked at Steve.
“I think I can do better than a description,” he replied, extracting a folded paper from his pocket. “Thought it might come up, so I drew this up last night,” he explained as unfolded and handed the paper to Fury.
Fury looked at the page, taking in the pair of sketches Rogers had done. One was a simple full-face portrait similar to the type used by police departments; the other image depicted the same woman in profile, looking intently at a computer screen. That’s the girl alright he thought. Now to confirm her SHIELD affiliation without giving away Coulson’s role.
“Yes, that’s the girl who called herself Skye,” Fury nodded. “I met her as a newly recruited consultant; a former Rising Tide hacktivist if I recall correctly.” He ignored the look Natasha was sending him, hoping to avoid explaining why the girl had come to his attention.
“She mentioned something about that,” Steve agreed, watching Fury carefully. “She also said something about a bus - did SHIELD agents catch up to her on the way out of town or something?”
Fury rolled his eye at Rogers’ clumsy probe. “No, ‘the Bus’ is what those juvenile delinquents called the airplane they traveled on.” Seeing the confusion on the other man’s face - and sensing Natasha’s growing impatience - he explained. “Look, after New York I decided SHIELD needed more eyes out looking for ... everything. Not just threats like Project Insight, but potential sources for technology or anything else that could help us next time aliens come calling. A scratch-built team of superheros isn’t always going to be the right tool for the job.”
He sighed wearily and closed his eye, “The council didn’t want to divert funding from Insight, so I was only able to assemble a single team. We overhauled an old Mobile Command Unit, assigned a field agent, two level five scientists with zero field experience, an Admin desk jockey with a pilot’s license, and one specialist to guard-dog the whole lot, then told them to go and look around.”
“Not exactly a crack team, Nick,” Natasha interjected.
“That was the idea, to keep the council from taking any special interest.”
“And where does Skye fit in with all this?” Steve asked, annoyed at Fury’s apparent digression.
“I’ll tell you how she fits in - their very first investigation, not twenty-four hours after launch, my top-secret, under-the-radar team picks up an information-wants-to-be-free hacktivist,” he sighed in exasperation.
“Then, instead of feeding her a line of disinformation and cutting her loose, somebody got the bright idea to hire the hacker, and brought her on as a consultant. Maybe they felt I should have given them a communications tech.” Fury growled the last bit, trying to convince Romanoff to drop the subject. A quick glance at her expression told him he’d failed.
“Only the senior agent could have made that call,” Natasha began musingly, “and I can only think of one agent you might have trusted to bring in an outsider like that - problem is, he’s dead.” Steve looked up sharply at the pained, flat note in her voice.
“You’re right, Natasha,” Fury agreed heavily, “once upon time this is exactly the sort of assignment I’d have handed to Coulson.”
Steve nodded, “After ... on the helicarrier, you said you’d lost your ‘one good eye’. That sort of man would probably be good at finding alternative approaches.” He fixed the former director with a level gaze. “Since Coulson was ... unavailable, who is the agent that decided to bring Skye into SHIELD?”
Fury returned glare for gaze, snapping out “You don’t need to know that, Rogers.” Seeing the soldier’s jaw tighten, Nick held up a hand to forestall the outburst. “Did you really think that all those people who’ve dedicated their lives to protecting others would stop just because Captain America said it was over?” He scoffed, “You of all people should know better, Cap.”
“You’re telling me there’s some organized remnant of SHIELD out there, working from the shadows, and that Skye is part of it?” Steve asked after chewing over Fury’s comments.
“I’m telling you there could be.” He gave both Romanoff and Rogers sharp glances before adding, “And if they are out there, they don’t need super soldiers - or super spies - raising their profile. Leave it alone,” Fury ordered.
“As to Skye, I can confirm she was in fact a level one agent before we wrecked SHIELD along with Project Insight.”
* * *
Since Fury had departed - admonishing them to turn out the lights and lock up when they left - Natasha had been updating Steve on her actions since leaving the Avengers compound after the Berlin ruckus.
Now she sat back with a small smile. “I hope you memorized his face - when you told him her name,” she clarified at his confused frown.
“Why would I want to do that?” he asked curiously.
“Because Nick Fury’s surprised face is a rare sight.” Natasha’s smile had become more in the way of a small grin, now.
“Are you sure?” he asked skeptically. “I didn’t really notice a difference.”
“Positive.” Then, in a thoughtful voice she continued, “Even that much reaction tells me the hacker being there threw him for a loop.” Rogers muttered something in reply that Natasha ignored, instead verbalizing her thoughts. “Makes me wonder who he thought it was that helped you ...”
Steve sent yet another questioning glance her way as Natasha trailed off. After a few seconds he cleared his throat, waiting until she looked at him before asking, “Why does it matter who Fury thought was there?”
“Because it was probably somebody from that Bus team of his,” she answered. “If I can narrow down one member it might be possible to figure out who the rest were.”
“And knowing about Skye doesn’t give you any hints?”
“No. I’ve never met, heard of, or read about an agent by that name,” Natasha admitted.
“Fury just confirmed she was an agent; could she have been one of the number-coded agents, like Sharon Carter?”
“She could have been very low level, or maybe just brand new. I’ll have to check the files I stashed after Insight,” Natasha muttered, adding it to her mental to-do list for later.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Steve disagreed with a head shake. “Skye was far too well trained to be a newbie.”
“How much training does it take to distract a few soldiers long enough for Captain America to take them down?” Natasha teased.
“Is that what you think happened?” he asked carefully.
“Of course. She’s a hacker, not a specialist. Her badge probably said ‘Communications’ on it.” She studied Steve’s expression, noting the twitch at the corners of his lips, and relented. “Okay, I’ll bite. How did it go down?”
He smirked slightly and countered, “Do you want the play-by-play, or just the game summary?”
Ignoring the odd little smirk, Natasha replied. “The second for now, though I get the feeling I’ll want full details after.”
“Probably,” he conceded. “And I’ll admit that Skye did distract them. She hit them so hard, so fast that they all but forgot I was there.”
“That does seem to be a specialist sort of distraction,” Natasha agreed. “I think I’d better hear the play-by-play; if nothing else her technique might help me place her.”
Steve nodded and sat back, dropping into a well-used reporting cadence as he recounted the events from that day in California. From the diner encounter, to the parking lot battle, through the escape and hours-long drive to Skye’s safehouse, he laid it all out and she listened intently.
When he’d finished, she gazed off into the distance for a long moment before speaking. “I want to meet her. First, to thank her for helping you. Second, to find out where she learned to fight like that.” After another few seconds consideration, she added: “Also, it sounds like she could use a bit of polish on the espionage side - wiping out all the video isn’t the most unobtrusive technique.”
“I’ll send her a message after we leave here,” Steve said. “Even though her program is supposed to make this phone untraceable, I don’t see a need to test that by using it in Fury’s secret office.”
“Sounds good,” she said, standing and stretching languidly. She looked down at the still-seated soldier, asking “Are you as hungry as I am? We should go eat.”
“Now that you mention it, I could go for some lunch,” Steve agreed as he joined Natasha, walking out of the conference room. “Do you think there’s a shawarma place near here?”