Chapter 85: Black Widow Interlude

Chapter 85: Black Widow Interlude

Natasha Romanoff was used to having time alone with her thoughts. Stakeouts, waiting for a target to arrive in her sights, information gathering, protection missions, and surveillance details, all of them usually included a whole lot of quiet sitting and waiting.

Though she had to admit it wasn't usually such a unique view.

The forward view screen of the Void Skipper was a wash with thousands of stars. She had even dimmed the interior lights to get a better view. It was incredible.

Here she was, a spy, raised from childhood to kill, lie, murder, and cheat, to do horrible things at the command of her superiors, sitting on the bridge of a spaceship, flying through space. A ship built a man who, without a second thought, trusted her alone on the bridge of his ship, with full control over it.

The fact that he trusted her wasn't the insane part either. Plenty of people had trusted her throughout her life, usually right before she stole something from them, killed them, or extracted information from them. They had no idea what she was capable of when they gave her their trust. Not Carson though.

Carson knew exactly what she was capable of, knew she was a spy, knew the kind of shit she had to do, even if he didn't know everything. She could tell by the way he looked at her, that he knew what she was capable of. And he still just handed her the proverbial keys to his ship. Like it was no big deal. Like he trusted her.

Natasha shook her head and looked down at the control panel in front of her, still enthralled by the fact that she knew what almost every single button did. She turned her chair slightly and reached along the side of the control panel, finding a button she somehow knew would be there. After a single press, the floor next to her chair shifted, flowing like sand into a small table. She knew that if she pressed the button again it would disappear. She focused on the screen set into the console, tapping a few prompts before dragging a gauge up, the lights slowly returning to full brightness.

Still shaking her head she clicked her fingers against the almost invisible buttons on her rings, both of them shifting into her personalized pistols. She took one and pressed it into the top corner of the table, holding it for a second to engage the safer grip function of the table's surface. She would have to physically pull it away from the table to release it.

She repeated the process with the second pistol, before pulling an emergency gun cleaning kit from her belt and locking that to the table as well. She took a long deep breath, holding it for a moment before releasing it.

Slowly, meticulously she disassembled the first pistol, making sure to secure each piece to the table in an organized fashion before starting to inspect and clean each piece.

It was a ritual that had started as a way to compile her thoughts and go over mission results but had shifted into a meditative process when she stopped having to worry that poor mission results would end with her being killed to tie up loose ends.

As she slowly cleaned the carbon buildup on one of the internal pieces of her first pistol, her mind wandered a bit. It had only been four or five months since Carson had appeared on Shields radar, and since then her entire world had been shifted. At first, he had been nothing but a footnote, something she should keep her eye on, that she should be read up on in case her mission changed, but not her own personal problem.

Now, as she was essentially lost in space with him, he was most definitely her problem.

One worth the trouble he caused though. The idea that Hydra had existed inside Shield for so long, that they had sent her on missions that benefited their twisted views was more than they had benefited Shield or anyone She had killed for them. And even for the missions that hadn't been Hydra plots in disguise, how different would her orders have been if they weren't being influenced by a parasitic Nazi organization? How many assassinations would have been blackmail, how many acceptable casualties would have been-

Natasha took another long breath, picked up the barrel of her first pistol, and slowly cleaned any build-up, focusing on the cleaning for a while. Eventually, she rebuilt her pistol and checked the slide and trigger before setting it on the table, letting the surface hold it as she grabbed the magazine, turning it over in her hand. Eventually, she decided that it wasn't worth pulling out every bullet just to know how many were left, it would be much easier to get a few boxes of ammo from Carson and find out how many were missing assuming he had any.

She pulled back the pistol's slide and pulled the trigger for the second pistol, checking the smoothness of the trigger pull and slide. Satisfied that everything was in order she slid the magazine back into place before turning both pistols back into their ring form, studying the simple gold bands. After a moment she turned back to her console, and checked the scanners again before activating her bracelet and looking over her P90. This had seen the most action during the battle on the Helicarriers flight deck, enough that she had been forced to switch to her pistols at the end when it ran out of ammo.

That was something she would need to work at. Somehow having such deep reserves for ammo made it easier to waste.

Natasha started disassembling her submachine gun, the larger weapon surprisingly much easier to clean. It broke up into chunks, but the trigger pack wasn't something you took apart in the field, and everything was big parts that were easy to clean. Unlike her Glock 34s, which had quite a few smaller parts that she needed to take out and inspect. She finished disassembling the submachine gun, laying out the parts, and starting to clean them, wiping down the trigger pack first.

For all her instincts telling her to be wary, to watch out for him taking advantage, she wanted to fight it. Carson hadn't tried to hold anything over her head and did not deserve her suspicion or distrust. The fact that he had revealed his real name, as well as what he looked like was proof enough that he really did trust her. Not to mention the controls of the ship she was sitting next to. He clearly trusted her, and she wanted to return that trust.

Not that she thought he was above suspicion of course. She may want to change but she refused to be willfully blind. While Carson's inexperience often shone through, usually when he failed to understand an aspect of her work, or why something was such a big deal, he clearly knew things, things he really probably shouldn't.

She had noticed almost immediately after meeting him. He had reacted to her as if he knew she was dangerous as if he knew what she was capable of, despite the fact that recognizing her on sight like that was something very few people could do. She had intended to gauge what he was like, taking advantage of her being an anonymous agent. Instead, he was wary, doubling down when she had said her name.

Moments like that popped up a few more times when she was around. One of the more recent ones had been when he was re-introduced to Betsy and Bruce Banner. She wasn't sure what his reaction meant, but something was there.

And that was ignoring the obvious one. Carson was clearly terrified of the Infinity Stones. He also knew a lot about them, going as far as knowing that the Mind Stone was supposed to be yellow. Sure he had scanners and things to help him eke out some extra information but his fear showed he had knowledge that was much deeper than a short description.

Natasha wasn't sure what these little reactions were, but she was going to find out. And for once, she wasn't going to trick, torture, blackmail, bribe, or falsely seduce the secrets from him. She was going to do it the old-fashioned way, by earning his trust properly.

She clicked the last part of her P90 into place, double-checking that everything worked before storing it back into her bracelet. She considered cleaning her AWM as well, but since she hadn't used it in the last fight there wasn't really a point beyond unnecessary thoroughness.

Carson was an interesting person, one she could rely on and trust. He was attractive, kind, and clearly even more powerful than Shield had originally thought, which in and of itself was shocking. He didn't fuck around, wasn't disgusted by what was necessary, and didn't look at her like a cut of beef or a potential asset.

Perhaps the most shocking part was how easily he could make her smile. Not her usual teasing smile either, which was carefully learned and improved to show she was just a pretty face, or her saucy smirk, which she knew could make someone's knees weak, but her actual, genuine smile. It was refreshing, being around him, in a way she had never really felt before. The man was full of surprises.

And apparently, she was as well, even to herself. When she had asked what his relationship with Ema was like, she had not anticipated her own reaction. She was already pretty sure what his answer was before she asked, but getting confirmation She hadn't expected to be that happy that they weren't together. It caught her off guard.

The spy leaned over and pressed the same button she had earlier, the small table flowing down back into the floor. She turned her chair back until she was facing forward again, doing a quick check of the sensors before leaning back in her chair. Carson would probably be a while, but she was confident he would figure it out and get them home.

She couldn't help but wonder what would happen next.

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