Forgotten Ghost | Natasha Romanoff

Chapter 48: We're Back

*smallest spoiler for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but nothing that spoils the storyline of the show*

Two months. That's how long Katya and Natasha had had time off before they got dragged into another fight. 

With the fall of SHIELD, lots of bases and secret facilities fell victim to robbing and escaped prisoners. Lots of HYDRA agents made off with dangerous weapons and went underground, slithering back to into the shadows like the snakes they were. 

They were hard to trace and there were far too many to take on without a team. And that was the thing Katya was lacking. 

SHIELD agents found jobs everywhere else. Some applied to the CIA or another intelligence organization, some dove into a completely different lifestyle, wanting nothing to do with the intelligence business anymore. Others started working for private contractors, and there were even some who turned on their former employer: selling secrets and the tech they had.

Everything had collapsed, and there was nobody to clean up the mess. Like she had suspected, Katya hadn't heard from Fury after that day in the graveyard, which was the last place she had seen him. 

Someone she did get a call from, was another ghost, although this one was quite literally a ghost. 

Agent Phil Coulson, the man she had seen being stabbed through the heart and definitely dying. He called her while her and Natasha were somewhere between Thailand and Cambodia, driving through no-man's-land in an old jeep. It had taken awhile before she had even registered the sound, since nobody had called her for weeks.

To say that hearing his voice shocked her, was quite an understatement. She had almost cried, missing the man more than she thought. He had always been kind of a rock to her, a place of stability and someone she could just be herself around. Just like Fury, Coulson had the tendency to take people under his wing who could use some stability

After the initial shock had set in, he had told her about everything that had happened to him, how he was resurrected and why almost nobody knew about his existence. Apparently, he had been running his own team of agents and was rebuilding SHIELD on his own, with him as director.

He asked Katya if they needed a place to stay, in the hope they would stick around. But she knew that just being there would bring their undercover operation in danger. It felt good to know that SHIELD wasn't completely gone and that it was now in the hands of someone she trusted completely to build it up again, in the right way, but that part of her life was officially over and she had accepted that.

It had been silent after his phone call, and while they were technically on the run, Katya and Natasha were enjoying their life without a job. At least for a while. All the things they never had time for, they got to do now. Actually see the cities they were going instead of being on mission there, doing things because they wanted to and not because they were ordered to, just enjoy each other's company without always somebody around or someone watching. 

But even that came to an end when one morning (at least it was morning in Mumbai) Katya's phone rang again. She had gotten a new one, but apparently, everybody seemed to know her number. 

The air conditioning hummed softly in the silent room, while outside, the endless honking of traffic had never stopped. She turned around in her bed carefully, trying not to disturb Natasha, who had trapped her in her arms and had never looked more peaceful and calm. 

The bright screen blinded Katya as she looked at the caller ID. With the roll of her eyes and a silent sigh, she pressed answer, knowing he would keep ringing her if she ignored him.