Moscow, Russia - 12 hours later
There could not have been a more startling juxtaposition than the sight of a beautiful woman chained to her chair in the centre of an abandoned old warehouse. Natalia Alianovna Romanova, with choppy, flame-red hair like a bleeding wound, with a little black dress that might as well have been bulletproof for the confidence with which she wore it. Her hands were bound with thick rope, her mouth dripping blood from where one of the thugs had backhanded her, and yet she was right where she intended to be.
In charge.
Of course, General Luchkov, whose men had so recently tried to beat the truth out of her, was not aware of this. He addressed her in Russian charmingly, as though he could convince her he was a gentleman. "This is not how I wanted the evening to go."
She rolled her neck, meeting his gaze with a sly smile. "I know how you wanted this evening to go. Believe me, this is better."
"Who are you working for?" he demanded. "Lermentov, yes? Does he think we have to go through him to move our cargo?"
Her brow furrowed slightly, deliberately. "I thought General Solohob was in charge of the export business?"
"Solohob?" Luchkov gave a hearty, dismissive laugh. "A bagman, a front. Your outdated information betrays you. The famous Black Widow..." He grabbed her chair, tilting it back over the edge of an elevator shaft. "And she turns out to be simply another pretty face."
Natasha gave him a small, coquettish smile. "You really think I'm pretty?"
"Tell Lermentov we don't need him to move the tanks," Luchkov ordered. "Tell him he is out..." Suddenly, he smiled cruelly. "Well, you may have to write it down."
Suddenly, a ringtone cut through the silence like a bullet. They all turned to see one of Luchkov's thugs pulling out his phone. He answered the call. "Да?" A few moments passed and his brow furrowed in confusion. He looked at his boss. "... It's for her."
Narrowing his eyes, Luchkov snatched the phone away from his underling, raising it to his ear. "You listen carefully—"
The calm, measured voice of Phil Coulson cut him off. "You're at 114 Solenski Plaza, third floor. We have an F22 exactly eight miles out. Put the woman on the phone or I'll blow up the block before you can make the lobby."
Luchkov's eyes widened, stunned. For a moment, he considered ignoring the threat. Who was this stranger to threaten him, anyway?
And then he met the gaze of Natasha Romanoff, who raised an eyebrow. Swallowing, Luchkov stepped forward, putting the phone to her ear for her. She held it there with her chin.
"We need you to come in," Coulson told her, without preamble.
"Are you kidding?" she demanded, in American-accented English. "I'm working!"
Coulson wasn't deterred. "This takes precedence."
Natasha scoffed. "I'm in the middle of an interrogation and this moron is giving me everything."
Above her, Luchkov blinked, sharing a look with his, for want of a better word, colleagues. "I don't... give everything."
She rolled her eyes at him and returned to the call. "Look, you can't pull me out of this right now."
"Natasha," Coulson said hesitantly. '... Barton's been compromised."
Immediately, her eyes narrowed, her expression turning to stone. "Let me put you on hold."
A moment later, her eyes flashed up to meet Luchkov's; she nodded to him. As he reached down to retrieve the phone from her shoulder, she drove her heel hard into his gut and slammed her head into his, sending him staggering back. She stood, still tied to the chair, and as the two thugs rushed her, she swept their feet out from underneath them.
One of them tried to grab her ankle, so she slammed one of the chair legs down on his foot, making him howl in pain, and headbutted him, knocking him out cold. The other one scrambled to his feet and she leapt at him, smashing the chair underneath herself as the two of them rolled across the floor. He threw her off him and she landed in a roll, then sprinted at him, leaping into the air to wrap her legs around his neck and slam him to the ground with the momentum. Then she stalked towards the groaning General Luchkov, slammed his head into a metal railing, lashed a chain around his ankle, and kicked him over the edge of the elevator shaft.
Ignoring the groans of her victims, she picked her way through the debris of the broken chair and picked up her stiletto heels and the thug's phone, then continued on out of the warehouse in her tights. "Where's Barton now?" she asked Coulson, still on the other end of the line.
"We don't know," Coulson admitted.
"But he's alive," she assumed.
"We think so. I'll brief you on everything when you get back. But first, we need you to talk to the big guy."
Natasha rolled her eyes. "Coulson, you know that Stark only trusts me about as far as he can throw me."
"Oh, I've got Stark," he assured her. "You get the big guy." He hung up, and Natasha sighed, her eyes wide.
"Боже мой..."
***
Calcutta, India
A young girl hurried into the midst of a makeshift hospital in the slums of Calcutta, her eyes wide and desperate. A woman turned to her, speaking in Hindi. "What are you doing here?! Get out! You shouldn't be here—there is sickness here!"
"I have to see the doctor," the child begged. "It's my father. My father won't wake up, his eyes won't open!"
The only doctor in the house, the gentle giant that was Bruce Banner, came over to talk to her. "Calm down," he urged. "What's wrong?"
"My father," she told him, then looked over at the moaning sick.
"Is he like them?" Bruce asked, pointing.
The little girl nodded, then held out a handful of grubby, crumpled money. "Please."
***
Five minutes later, Bruce was following the girl to her house at the edge of town. She moved fast, desperate, and once she'd led him into the house, disappeared off through the window. He looked out, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Bruce sighed to himself. "Should have gotten paid upfront, Banner."
"You know, for a man who's supposed to be avoiding stress, you picked a hell of a place to settle."
He turned to see a redhead in a deep purple dress. A spy, clearly, and a good one. "Avoiding stress isn't the secret," he admitted.
She raised an eyebrow, tilting her head ever-so-slightly. "Then what is it? Yoga?"
"You brought me to the edge of the city, smart," he said, looking around. "I, uh... assume the whole place is surrounded?"
"Just you and me," Natasha told him, shrugging.
He nodded. "And your actress buddy, is she a spy too? Do they start that young?"
She tilted her head. "I did."
"Who are you?"
"Natasha Romanoff."
"Are you here to kill me, Ms Romanoff?" Bruce asked patiently. "'Cause that's not gonna work out for everyone."
"No, no, of course not," she assured him, taking a seat at a small table. "I'm here on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D."
"S.H.I.E.L.D.," he repeated. "How did they find me?"
She smiled. "We never lost you, doctor. We've kept our distance, even helped keep some other interested parties off your scent."
Bruce shook his head, confused. "Why?"
"Nick Fury seems to trust you," Natasha said, seeming doubtful about it herself. "But now I need you to come in."
"What if I said no?" he asked.
A flicker of a smirk danced across her lips. "I'll persuade you."
"And what if the, uh... other guy says no?"
"You've been more than a year without an incident," she pointed out. "I don't think you wanna break that streak."
"I don't every time get what I want."
"Doctor, we're facing a potential global catastrophe."
Bruce laughed out loud at that. "Oh, now, those I actively try to avoid."
"This is the Tesseract," Natasha explained, showing him an image of the blue, glowing cube on her cell phone. "It has the potential energy to wipe out the planet."
"And what does Fury want me to do?" Bruce asked, taking a closer look. Interested, despite himself. "Swallow it?"
"He wants you to find it," she corrected. "It's been taken. It emits a gamma signature that's too weak for us to trace. There's no one that knows gamma radiation like you do." She shrugged. "If there was, that's where I'd be."
He hesitated, uncertain. "So Fury isn't after the monster?"
"Not that he's told me."
"And he tells you everything?"
Natasha tilted her head, acknowledging his point. "Talk to Fury," she advised. "He needs you on this."
Bruce raised an eyebrow. "He needs me in a cage?"
"No one's gonna put you in a—"
He slammed his fists down onto the table between them. "Stop lying to me!" Between one heartbeat and the next, Natasha had grabbed a gun from the underside of the table and aimed it at the dead centre of his forehead. Bruce chuckled, shaking his head as he backed off. "I'm sorry, that was mean. I just wanted to see what you'd do." Natasha held her aim, her eyes wide, and he held up placatory hands. "Why don't we do this the easy way, where you don't use that, and the other guy doesn't make a mess? Okay? Natasha?"
After a long, wary moment, Natasha lowered her gun slowly. She raised a hand to her earpiece. "Stand down. We're good here."
Bruce raised an eyebrow, lips twitching. "Just you and me, huh?"
~~~