∆ {2⁸} {SHIFT THE BLAME} ∆
BLAME WAS A dangerous thing. Roxi tried never to blame people, but it was impossible. Pin the wrong blame on the wrong person, you could end up dead. It was just people not being able to deal with being responsible for causing a bad event, and everyone was one of those people, whether they liked it or not. Regardless, Roxi found the notion stupid, and sticking to that, there was a whole lot of stupid being thrown around the room.
"This man declined a Nobel Peace Prize," Fury started, putting emphasis on the word 'declined' as he held a picture of Alexander Pearce. Natasha was still softly cleaning Roxi's burn, but both women were listening to the room around them.
"He said peace wasn't an achievement; it was a responsibility," he continued, throwing the photo down onto the cheap metal table.
"See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues," Fury finished, leaning forwards in his seat as Roxi clenched her hands, partly due to the stinging of the antiseptic, but also because she knew how that felt. Feeling like you know someone, only for them to turn around and be a completely different person.
"We have to stop the launch," Natasha said as she finished cleaning Roxi's back and picked up a roll of bandages.
"I don't think the council's accepting my calls anymore," Fury told her, opening a briefcase containing three hard drives.
"What's that?" Sam asked as Roxi took the bandages from Natasha and began to wrap the wound herself, though the redhead protested quietly.
"Once the helicarriers reach 3000 feet," Hill began, flipping her laptop around to illustrate her point, "they'll triangulate with Insight satellites, becoming fully weaponised."
"We need to breach those carriers, and replaced their targeting blades, with our own," Fury explained as the diagram on screen showed exactly where they were.
"One or two won't cut it, we need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational, a whole lot of people are gonna die." For some reason, Hill's eyes flickered to Roxi as she said it and Roxi found herself trailing her gaze onto the floor. Maybe if she'd stayed after New York, she could've stopped this. Maybe she'd have noticed the HYDRA agents. Maybe, no-one would've had to die.
"We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA," Fury instructed, as Roxi brought her eyes back to the man. She would deal with her thoughts later. Right now, they had people to save. Hundreds of thousands of them.
"You get past them, insert these server blades, and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's-" Fury was interrupted by Steve as he angrily chimed in on the conversation.
"We're not salvaging anything. We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick, we're taking down S.H.I.E.L.D." With a jolt, Roxi realised he was right, and sat a little straighter in her chair as she tried to involve herself more in the conversation.
"S.H.I.E.L.D had nothing to do with-" Fury began, only to be cut off again.
"You gave me this mission; this is how it ends. S.H.I.E.L.D's been compromised, you said so yourself. HYDRA grew right under your nose and nobody noticed." Steve explained forcefully. His last statement made Roxi's eyes drop again as she sat back in her chair and let her fingers slide onto the cool, reassuring handle of the pistol she'd been given.
"Why do you think we're meeting in this cave? I noticed," Fury replied in a similar tone.
"And how many payed the price before you did?" The question chilled Roxi to the ore, and her mind began to whirl with wild thoughts again, twisting and slithering through her head as she tried to keep a grip on the conversation happening around her. For a few moments, there was silence, where Roxi's mind buzzed with thoughts and considerations, and 'what if's.
"I didn't know about Barnes," Fury said more softly, looking up a little form where his eyes had landed on the table.
"Even if you had, would you have told me?" Steve asked. Roxi knew that Fury wouldn't have, at least not straight away. It might've taken a long time before Fury deemed Steve trustworthy enough to tell him such information, and Roxi knew why the supersoldier wouldn't want that information kept from him.
"Or would you have compartmentalised that, too?" Quietly, she wondered how much Fury actually knew about her. He almost certainly knew her first name, and yet he'd never told anyone, and she pondered how many things about her that Fury knew that others didn't, or maybe, that even she didn't.
"S.H.I.E.L.D, HYDRA. It all goes." Steve finished.
"He's right," Hill said quietly, causing Fury to look over at her quickly, slightly surprised. Hill gave Fury a small nod, who then looked to Natasha, who leaned back in her chair. He then looked to Sam.
"Don't look at me, I do what he does, just slower." The man protested, causing a light smile on Roxi's face. She was the last one Fury looked to, who met his dark gaze with her icy one, and conveyed a message through that. He looked down at the table before speaking.
"Well," He began as he looked up at Steve and leaned back, "It looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain."
{~}
Steve had left about half an hour ago, and was now up on top of the dam, as the rest of them waited inside, and Fury's attention was now focused on Roxi.
"So," he began, drawing it out slightly, "It's been a while, Agent Ryder." She looked up at him, her face still blank as she noticed his eyes spark knowingly.
"I suppose it's just Ryder now," Roxi said quietly, still having trouble believing that S.H.I.E.L.D was over. She'd devoted most of her life to S.H.I.E.L.D, since she was 16 and fresh off the streets. 14 years. She'd been in the organisation for 14 years, and now, it was just gone, ended, just like that. Fury watched her carefully.
"I suppose it is." Sam watched for a moment, before he left, going up to Steve, feeling like he was intruding on quite a personal situation. Roxi could feel Natasha's eyes on her, and Hill was observing the situation, but not too closely. There were a couple of minutes of silence.
"Where were you?" It was Hill that spoke, to Roxi's slight surprise. She looked up, not quite knowing how to answer. After a moment's consideration, she answered.
"I needed some time away." A couple more moments of silence.
"You did remarkably well at keeping off the radar," Fury told her.
"It wasn't so hard. Don't stay on the phone long enough that the call can be traced, keep any purchases private, make a simple disguise, avoid people," she explained. Fury's eyes flicked to Natasha and then back to Roxi, and the beginning of a smirk twisted at the edge of his lips for a moment. Roxi didn't doubt that he'd noticed that Natasha left periodically and drove somewhere, and also that Fury had put some sort of tracker in Natasha's car, but the redhead wasn't an idiot, and Roxi guessed that she got rid of everything like that when she checked her car over. Even so, Fury would've made his own assumptions, and now, like normal, he would act as if he knew he was right, which in this case, he was.
"Well, you certainly had plenty of alone time," he said slyly.
"Yeah," Roxi replied briefly. To distract herself from the conversation, she held the gun in front of her and examined the metal. The pattern on the grip was the standard squares, it was a regulation S.H.I.E.L.D gun, and could hold 10 rounds. She weighed it in her hand for a moment before setting it down again.
"Where's your quarterstaff?" Natasha asked, her voice cutting through the quiet of the room. Roxi slowly met her gaze.
"I lost it on the bridge." She carefully looked away from the redhead and drew the small knife she still had in her shoe out and flipped it casually up through the air before catching it, even though her mind was still racing and if you looked close enough, her hands were trembling.
"Well, we may be able to do something about that," Fury chimed in. Roxi caught the knife again and sat up, putting it down next the pistol, her interest piqued. What would he be able to do? It had been of her own design and was technically still a prototype, and she hadn't given anyone the design. Hill stood up and walked over to a cabinet, and brought over a cold, silver curved cylinder. It was slightly lighter than her original, and when she stood up and clicked the button and the body of the quarterstaff shot out, it felt much more balanced and neat and collected in her hand, and when she spun it around experimentally, it felt right. For a moment longer, she wondered how they'd made it, but then she remembered that Fury was head of a shadow spy organisation who everything (or practically everything, in some cases) about the people who worked for him and mostly people who didn't as well. A soft smile slipped onto Roxi's face, something that didn't happen so often, and she looked up at Fury and Hill.
"Thank you," she said. before she retracted it and hung it off one of her belt hooks. Natasha was worried about Roxi. She knew the woman had a hard time with nightmares and struggled with dealing with hard or shocking situations, and tended to blame them on herself. But seeing her smile like that, a genuine one, even if it was small, made Natasha feel relieved, though there was a slight tinge of jealousy that she hadn't been the one to made the ice-eyed agent smile like that. But she knew that Roxi's work meant a lot to her, and that she'd taken the whole situation hard, and it was such a nice smile that it lit up her whole face, and made Natasha feel warm inside. Steve and Sam came back inside a moment later, and Natasha jerked from her thoughts as the supersoldier spoke.
"I have a plan."
"Does it involve getting suits and more weapons?" Roxi began, her face now blank again and her voice carefully controlled, "because we could do with those."
"Yes. Yes it does," Sam stepped in for Steve, and a smirk grew slowly over Roxi's face. She swept her dark hair over her shoulder and sat down to listen to Steve's plan to save S.H.I.E.L.D - and hundreds of thousands of lives.
{A/N:} This one's really short and I'm sorry about that and in the middle my brain went poof so my writing's not very good there. Have any of you read Throne of Glass, because I just finished the first book and I want to talk to someone about it lol. Also, how are you guys. I need help with coming up with a call sign (basically superhero name) for Roxi because I've been trying to figure one out for ages and I haven't been able to, so I'm open to any suggestions. I love writing these little moments between Natasha and Roxi so much I can't wait to write more of them. I also have ideas for about 3 other Natasha Romanoff fics so I might work on them for a little bit so my chapters will probably be shorter like this one. Thank you so much for 5K views and over 300 votes, it means so much to me to have this support, and with out it, I probably would've given up a while ago, so thank you so much.. See you for next week's update,
JabberJay_011
2000 Words
Written: 03 / 10 / 2020
Published: 03 / 10 / 2020