Cut It Out and Restart *Daredevil*Damned*Agents of SHIELD*

12) The Mistress (of Two Angy Fellows)

WARNINGS!!! This chapter has some dark themes – usually brief and not always explicit, but dark; dub-con, memory of a non-con from Damned if I Don't (even if Vera had been saved a minute to midnight), near-panic attacks and obviously mentions Matt's and Jackie's death.

Mind the warnings. I will bold the sentence that marks the beginning of it and the end. You won't miss much, I promise.... then again, the whole chapter is rather dark, so... you can skip to the end to see the most important fact we learn in this chapter.

...

Living at the mansion was a dream to Vera.

A surreal, entirely fucked-up dream of which she couldn't decide whether was a nightmare or not.

Under different circumstances – very different ones – she might enjoy certain aspects of the luxury provided, of the free vacation with unlimited supply of food, access to Wi-Fi, a TV, a swimming pool, various sources of entertainment and everything she could even think of. Hell, even a presence of a man wasn't too bad – and he was nothing but generous and surprisingly patient... she supposed.

But she wasn't a complete idiot and her naïve years were long gone. Yes, she idled; she did some brief research – or pretended to do so – on Kuznetsov and the area he worked in as if searching for matters to talk about with him; she read few fanfiction stories to TV shows she used to watch; she called Skye and later also to Coulson and May.

All of that too well-aware of the fact that the room was probably bugged, her internet history monitored, just as her calls and texts. Which was why she called her friend Sunny – which was a rather cheeky nickname, but Nica couldn't resist and knew that Skye would appreciate it and would quickly understand why she called her that - and her benefactors Parkers, so they wouldn't worry about her safety.

So Kuznetsov didn't worry about her safety – or whatever made him feel better, Vera guessed – he also booked her a private self-defence teacher in reaction to Ward's unwanted advances, supposedly to improve her technique, because he could tell from her lovely figure that she had been through some training before.

Vera would have never guessed how hard it would be to hold back and pretend she had barely any clue what she was doing. Clearly, she sucked at it, because Nikolay smirked and whispered something to the trainer's ear – next thing she knew, she was blocking a brutal unexpected attack, instinctively responding in kind and pining Gerard the trainer to the mat of a private gym at the mansion. While she panted for air, her heart hammering in her ribcage in horror, Kuznetsov smiled widely, slowly clapping his hands.

A brief spark of suspicion flashed in his eye, but Vera's brain, flooded with adrenalin, fortunately came up with the same tactics as always – to tell partial truth to cover the whole conspiracy.

"Didn't want you to think of me like of some brawler. But I spent a lot of time in New York," she responded to his unspoken suspicion with a shrug, taking a generous gulp of water. "Dangerous place. Spent over a year teaching too, even was lucky enough to meet interesting people."

"...like?"

Vera wasn't too afraid to share – she trusted Sunny to make her alias fool-proof, creating her persona in a way that would match as much as possible, but wouldn't giveaway too much when Kuznetsov's people had done a background check on her – and Vera had no doubt that they had. Fortunately, New York was a big crowded place and so was Manhattan alone.

"A radio host here, a lawyer there."

"Useful," Nikolay smirked, gaze trailing over Vera's sweaty body and it took her a lot of willpower not to flinch or to snap at him a the wordless implication.