Chapter 26: Onsite

A/N: Poor Natasha, stuck between a rock and a hard coc- err, place. At least the benefits for betraying SHIELD are pretty nice. Meaning the promise of healing of course, definitely not the constant dickings she's getting on the side~

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Leaning against the railing, looking down below, Natasha hears Clint finish up the call he's on behind her. She also hears the heavy sigh he lets out as he puts his phone away and joins her at the railing.

"Coulson and Fury aren't happy, Nat."

Shifting so she can look him in the eye, Natasha arches a single brow at that.

"What, with me? What was I supposed to do? They know as well as I do by this point that the Starks can't be controlled, corralled, or manipulated. They can barely be reasoned with some days."

Agent Clint Barton cracks a grin at that, chuckling softly before shaking his head.

"Pretty sure they're wondering why they weren't at least given a heads up about all of this, Natasha."

'This', of course, being the facility they were currently standing in. Located out in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico, Natasha had arrived here about half a day ago. Clint, meanwhile, had been sent ahead by Coulson to scout out the area, only to run into this prebuilt location and Natasha herself.

Rolling her eyes, Natasha just sighs.

"And when was I supposed to give anyone a heads up? I barely just found out about this, Barton. Tony doesn't tell me anything he doesn't have to. Besides, this whole facility didn't exist a day ago."

That gets a furrowed brow from the other SHIELD Agent, who looks around at their surroundings with no small amount of incredulity.

"Like hell, Natasha."

She gets it. Really she does. SHIELD is no stranger to making pop-up facilities when the situation requires it like this one does now. Temporary things with walls of tarp and a bunch of grated walkways. From the look of things, it's going to be raining in the next couple hours, so making sure they had sure footing amidst the mud that was likely to take over the area would have been crucial.

This, however, is not anything like the pop-up facilities SHIELD had at their disposal. The whole place is clearly built to last if need be, the kind of place that would only need to be reinforced in a couple extra ways to become permanent and sit tight for decades if it proved necessary. It was also the kind of place that would have taken weeks or even months for anyone else to build.

"I'm serious, Clint. You can have Coulson get you access to the satellites over the area later if you don't believe me. Feel free to watch it get built in real time. This whole place wasn't here a day ago, and then Stark and his wife showed up having already bought the land en route to the site, paid the locals to fuck off, and then had this whole thing built in less than ten hours."

For a long moment, the Archer stares at her like he isn't sure whether to believe her or not. But Natasha isn't lying and while Clint can't always tell when she is, she knows he believes her by the way he turns away after a moment and cusses under his breath.

"… Shit."

She felt a flash of pity for him then. If nothing else, the past couple years had… inured Natasha's to Tony and Pepper's particular brand of insanity. First the ten months spent undercover as their Personal Assistant, and then the last thirteen months spent as their 'SHIELD liaison'. Technically, she was supposed to be Fury's eyes on the inside. She was supposed to be reporting on the latest craziness from Stark to keep Fury appraised of what the rich genius was up to. So in a way, she could understand why Fury might be upset with her for 'missing this'.

What Fury, Coulson, and Clint all didn't know was that Tony had already turned her. She was his at this point, through and through. Not just because of his promises to heal what the Red Room had done to her and give her a chance to be a mother at some point down the line, but also because at this point, he was the only one who seemed to actually have his finger on the pulse. Between Pierce being HYDRA and Fury being Pierce's unknowing stooge, Tony pulling the wool over the eyes of both powerful men had fundamentally shaken her confidence in SHIELD.

Of course, she couldn't very well tell Clint that. He still believed in Fury and Coulson and SHIELD. If she'd tried to take him aside and warn him about Pierce and HYDRA, he'd either laugh in her face, have her committed… or worse case scenario, he'd believe her and try to tell Fury and Coulson, which would just have the whole situation blowing up in their faces.

Better for him to stay in the dark. For his own safety if nothing else. As such, Natasha lets out a soft frustrated sigh and lets some manufactured irritation leak into her voice as she makes a show of cutting loose for a moment.

"Look, I get why Fury and Coulson might be questioning my lack of awareness on this particular bullshit, but Stark has his fingers in more fucking pies than I can count. I figured anything really big would be at the Stark Expo so that's where I've been focusing my time."

Natasha huffs, glancing down below them again.

"… I haven't had the time to go through the hundreds of investments Stark has made in different scientific research groups both big and small all over the world these past couple of years. I know I sent all of that information onto SHIELD though, so if anyone is to blame for not catching whatever the fuck this is, blame it on the analysts."

Clint grunts, also looking down below them. There, in the center of the compound that Stark and his AI had created in under half a day, sits the biggest piece of proof that it WAS just recently constructed. In the middle of a freshly churned crater, sitting on a small pile of dirt and rock almost innocuously, is a large hammer right out of some fantasy legend.

When Natasha had first arrived with the Starks, the locals had all been holding a competition trying to move the damn thing. None of them had been able to make it budge, proving that there was more to it than met the eye. To her surprise, Tony hadn't bothered to try to pick it up either. He'd just paid the locals to leave and then had JARVIS start building the facility around the hammer, complete with loads of equipment pointed directed at the damn thing to start taking scans.

She and Clint are standing on the second floor of the facility's inner courtyard now, a big square that wraps all the way around the hammer's impact site. Because that's definitely what it is. The hammer had come from the sky, whatever the hell it was. It'd come flying down from the sky and hit the earth with quite a lot of strength if the crater was anything to go by.

"You're right, Nat. Of course you are. And I'll make sure Coulson knows you're right as well. This isn't on you. Besides, if nothing else, we managed to keep Stark from shutting us out entirely at least."

Glancing back over at Clint, Natasha arches her brow again at him.

"Even if he had, I still would have been here. Representing SHIELD all the same."

He flashes her a weak smile at that.

"… Yeah. Of course."

An awkward silence falls between them for all of a moment before SHIELD trucks finally arrive at the facility, disgorging Pepper, Coulson, and a dozen SHIELD Agents. Without missing a beat, Tony's wife starts giving orders and after sparing a glance to Coulson to make sure they have to obey, the SHIELD Agents are all ears, unloading the trucks and putting everything right where Pepper tells them to.

Natasha suppresses the smile that threatens to spread across her face as she watches Pepper at work. Even Coulson ultimately falls in line, the SHIELD Agent not seeming as put out as Clint had made him sound while letting Pepper lead him around by the proverbial vice grip she has on his balls.

Shortly after that though, things finally get really interesting when Tony Stark himself arrives in his sports car with a clunker following along on the dirt road behind him. Natasha and Clint part ways at that, with Clint going up in order to find a bird's eye view of the whole situation, while Natasha heads downstairs to join Pepper and Coulson on the ground floor.

Tony, meanwhile, is grinning as he brings his hands together to rub them.

"Alright then! Let's get to the bottom of this little mystery, shall we?"

"Stark, we-!"

But before Coulson can finish whatever he was going to say, one of the people who piled out of the other car walks up and gives Tony a hefty smack on the back.

"Tony Stark! You said you would escort us to Mjolnir, no? Is it nearby? Who are these people?"

The blond screams 'meathead' to Natasha, but at the same time, her instincts also scream that he's dangerous… a warrior for sure. Stark barely pays any mind to the back slap however, seemingly taking it in stride.

"Introductions first, Thor. It's only polite. The bland one is Phil Coulson, Agent with SHIELD. The one clad in leather who could snap your neck with her thighs if she wanted to is Natasha Romanoff, also Agent of SHIELD. But don't worry, I'm working on turning her to our cause."

The way Tony exaggeratedly winks in Natasha's direction almost makes her want to strangle him. He has to know that saying shit like that only makes Coulson and Fury more suspicious of her, right? Only… no. Him being so obvious about it will probably have the opposite effect if she really thinks about it. He's made no secret of his attraction to her, and they know that Natasha has continued to warm Tony and Pepper's bed even as their SHIELD liaison.

… Them knowing about that has set them at ease, hasn't it? They think they know Tony is trying to seduce Natasha to the 'dark side' as he likes to call it. They think they know all about his numerous ham-fisted attempts at turning her. And because they think they know all of that, they have no idea that he turned her before she was even assigned as SI's SHIELD liaison. Stark was always three steps ahead, wasn't he?

"And last but not least! This is Pepper Stark, my very own lady wife."

Pepper smiles as she steps forward, the first of Tony's introductions to actually do so, offering her hand to this 'Thor' character. Wait a second… Natasha blinks, her synapses firing as she finally makes the connection between a hammer that fell from the sky and a musclebound blond named Thor. There was no way though, right?

"Ah! Lady Stark, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance! I am Thor Odinsson, Prince of Asgard, God of Thunder!"

Natasha stares as the self-proclaimed Prince brings Pepper's knuckles up to his lips and brushes them with a quick, respectful kiss. From her periphery, she can see Phil doing the same.

To her credit, Pepper doesn't even blink as she gives Thor a welcoming nod before moving to stand at her husband's side. Meanwhile, Tony is all grins as he steps back up to the plate.

"Yeah Agents, you heard that right. According to Thor here, he was exiled by the All-Father to Earth after a bit of an argument they had last night. Hence the atmospheric disturbances… and the big honking hammer in the central courtyard."

"You were truthful then, Stark? You have already located Mjolnir?!"

"I told you, didn't I buddy? Let's get you inside so the two of you can be reunited, yeah?"

At that, the self-proclaimed God, who is vibrating with excitement and barely repressed energy, all but darts forward. Tony moves to follow at a more sedate pace, only for Coulson to stop him with a hand on his arm.

"Stark, are you sure this is a good idea? This isn't exactly protocol."

Tony raises an unimpressed eyebrow at that.

"This isn't a SHIELD operation, Agent. SI protocols are different from SHIELD protocols. We don't tend to shoot first and ask questions later, for one."

Coulson scowls at that, revealing just how much Tony gets under the man's skin at this point. Natasha finds herself suppressing a smile again. Phil seemed more than happy to follow Pepper's lead, but the moment Tony showed up, his general abrasiveness seemed to just… rub the veteran SHIELD Agent the wrong way. Natasha couldn't really blame him… Tony was an acquired taste in more ways than one.

"Besides, when we got here, it was to find the locals already trying and failing to lift the hammer one after another. Which means one of two things is about to happen, Coulson. Either we're about to make friends with one of the aliens that Norse Mythology was based on by reuniting him with his hammer and proving ourselves to be good, upstanding 'Midgardians'… or…"

"NO! HOW CAN THIS BE?!"

Natasha doesn't jump as Thor's anguished cry splits the air, reaching them all the way outside of the facility, though the civilians that Tony has brought with him all do. Tony just gives Coulson a look before pulling himself free of the Agent's grasp.

"Shall we, Agent?"

As it turned out, yes they shall. Following after Stark along with all the others, Natasha lets herself be led to the central courtyard, where they find Thor kneeling on the ground in the last rays of the slowly setting sun, staring at the hammer he'd obviously just failed to lift. He still has one hand on its handle, giving it a tug every once in a while, but to no avail.

"Thor, buddy. Everything alright?"

Natasha can't help but throw Stark a look at that. Why was he still entertaining this guy's delusions, exactly?

"I… I am not worthy. The hammer… my father placed an enchantment on it."

With his free hand, Thor wipes some dirt away, revealing an engraving on the head of the hammer that he brushes with his thumb.

"'Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.' That is what it says."

Silence falls for a moment, split between incredulity and uncertainty. More than a few looks are shared by those watching the seemingly sad scene. But Natasha… Natasha only has eyes for Tony as he walks forward and places a hand on Thor's shoulder. Just what was the crazy man up to now? What was the point of all of this?

"Sounds like you know what you need to do then, Thor."

When the kneeling man glances up at Tony in confusion, he just grins and shrugs.

"Would your father have dropped you and your hammer so close together if he didn't think you could become worthy again? Seems to me he's testing you, Thor."

Those words bring a change over the despondent blond, whose eyes slowly widen as he staggers to his feet.

"You… you are right. I must think on this. It would seem my Father has a lesson for me to learn here. I must figure out what it is!"

Still smiling, Tony nods his head amicably enough.

"Let me get you a room then, Thor. Plenty of those around here for you to do a lot of thinking in."

Behind Thor's back, Tony holds up a finger in Coulson's direction and Natasha realizes that the other Agent has opened his mouth to speak, only to be preempted by Tony's nonverbal shushing. As Phil's mouth shuts with the audible sound of his teeth clicking together, Natasha has to hide another smile at the interaction. Pepper, meanwhile, steps right up to the civilians Tony has brought along.

"Dr. Foster, Dr. Selvig… right this way. I've had Phil and his men setting your equipment up in your new lab for you. Don't worry, they've been very gentle, I've made sure of it."

As the SI CEO leads the dazed and confused scientists and their intern away, Natasha can't exactly blame them for looking so over their heads. Frankly, she herself is barely treading water here right now… and she's supposed to be on the inside. Whatever the fuck Tony is doing here, Natasha doesn't fully get it just yet. She's sure she will eventually though. For now, she just has to have faith that Tony and Pepper have this all under control.

-x-X-x-

A/N: D'aww, Natasha has faith. That's cute. To be fair, out of everyone in the world to have faith in at this point, Tony and Pepper are a pretty safe bet!

Still, what IS Tony up to? Hmmm...

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