FIC: Rascals, Scoundrels, Villains, and Knaves (1/5) (for icecream_junkie) - PG-13
Title: Rascals, Scoundrels, Villains, and Knaves
Author: frea_o
A Gift For: icecream_junkie
Rating: PG-13/T
Warnings: Blood, prostitution, mind control, violent imagery, kidnapping, ableism, sexism (to qualify this list: they’re 18th century pirates. Being PC is not a priority, but I tried to keep it toned down), language, death (highlight to see how serious: minor character death, background character death), superstitions, drunken clergymen, reanimated corpses, supernatural elements.
Pairings: Miss Natasha Romanova/Seaman Clint Barton, Lady Pepper Potts/Sir Anthony Stark, Captain Steven Rogers/Miss Peggy Carter, Duke Thor of Asgard/Miss Jane Foster
Summary/Prompt Used: Tortuga, 1745. It’s been three years since they last sailed together, but when an old enemy resurfaces and takes one of their own, it’s up to the crew of the Avenging Angel to assemble and take to the high seas once more. Or: the one where everybody is a pirate except the two canonical characters with eyepatches. Drink up me ’earties, yo-ho.
Author’s Notes: To preface this entire story, I am not in any way history-oriented (I fell asleep during history classes), so there are probably a lot of anachronisms in this story. I tried to research as best I could and chose to keep dialogue closer to the twenty-first century for reading purposes. That is not to say Clint’s going to greet Natasha with "’Sup?" or anything. I would beg you to take this story in the light-hearted spirit it’s meant to be rather than a proper historical documentation of the times. Also, the title comes from a little known verse of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song, but it is not a crossover. More notes under the cut.
Part: I | IIa | IIb | III | IV | V
Banner by frea_o
Author’s Notes, Cont’d: Some deliberate anachronisms, though, just to give you a head’s up: by the mid-18th century, though there was an influx of piracy in the Caribbean that was short-lived earlier in the century, Tortuga was pretty much defunct, but I’m choosing to ignore that fact. The Navy, by this point, basically had the pirates on the run. Also, the HMS Ferrous is based entirely off of the HMS Victory, which was originally built about twenty years after the Ferrous would have been, but Tony Stark’s always going to be more advanced than everybody else.
Also, I’m certain Clint would be “Clinton,” Tony would be “Anthony,” and Steve would be “Stephen” (I know his name is Steven, but I don’t think the v spelling came until later; I could be wrong), buuuuut it was just weird to write it that way, so they’re Clint, Steve, and Tony.
Helpful Nautical Terms: boatswain/bosun-crewmember in charge of equipment and maintenance; bowsprit-spar that extends at bows of a ship (ie the unicorn horn spike on the front of a ship); blunderbuss-a muzzle-loading predecessor to the shotgun with a flared barrel; forecastle/fo’c’sle-short raised deck at fore end of ship; gunwale-upper edge of the side of a ship; mizzen-three-masted vessel; aft sail of such a vessel; quarterdeck-part of ship’s deck set aside by captain for ceremonial functions, and where the tiller is located upon the Angel; scuttlebutt-cask of drinking water aboard a ship; rumour, idle gossip; yard-tapering spar attached to ship’s mast to spread the head of a square sail.
And finally, thanks to my wonderful, awesome, splendid beta reader, whose name shall remain anonymous until January 7th.
1. The Violet Herald
It was impossible to destroy a place so covered in scum and debauchery as Tortuga, but, Natasha Romanova thought as she stood on the cliff overlooking the city, somebody had certainly done his best to try.
Next to her, Doctor Bruce Banner made a noise in the back of his throat. “That explains the smoke,” he said, rather needlessly. They’d been tracking it through the jungle since dawn.
Tortuga lay nestled in the harbor below them, thick smoke rising in columns from its jailhouse, its major public houses, and several other buildings. Some of the jungle surrounding the city had burned; she could see scorch marks on the cliffs and new pockmarks from cannon-fire. She scanned the skies, searching for an upside down flag. The smoke made it difficult to see, but the flag did not seem to be flying yet. It didn’t soothe her at all: Fury or any of his lieutenants could have simply been unable to reach the pole and fly the warning.
“They’ll have need of a surgeon,” she said.
“Yes.” Bruce was sure-footed as they climbed from the cliff. It had been a strenuous journey from his hideout, but the doctor, soaked in sweat and swatting at flies, hadn’t complained. Two years in the jungle had left their mark. Though he’d pointed out time and again that he was only coming along to confer with one of Fury’s doctors in Tortuga about a sickness facing some of the children, he had dropped his protests at the sight of smoke that morning. Natasha knew he had already arrived at that conclusion. This was no longer a favor for Fury. “Any thought as to who might have done this?”
“Fury has enemies a-plenty,” Natasha said, which she figured Bruce would know was not an answer. The surgeon did not deal well with manipulation, and Natasha did not deal well with the truth. They were safest if they kept to that middle ground.
As they jogged, she categorized what she had seen. She’d noticed the pattern of damage on the buildings she could make out in the distance, but she hadn’t brought a spyglass with her and she had nothing in the way of Clint’s eyesight, so she couldn’t be sure that the attack had originated in the harbor. It certainly seemed to have done so, though. If the attack had come from the harbor, she was willing to bet her gold that it had been a heavy ship with long-range cannons. The pattern of destruction simply fit.
“It’s a pity,” Bruce said, panting a bit, “that they waited until you were not in town to attack. I imagine it might not have gone so well for them if you had been on hand.”
Since Bruce had been one of the few that had survived the night she’d earned her nickname, Natasha inclined her head at the compliment. “The same could be said of you, Doctor.”
“There would be more damage for everyone if I had. He does not choose sides.”
The good doctor had a point.
Perhaps Tortuga of 1745 was not as prosperous as the Tortuga of yore, in the golden age when any ship who fancied a life of buccaneering could sail the sea free from persecution. Times had grown tough with the Royal Navy tightening its stranglehold on the Caribbean waters, and Tortuga definitely showed the wear. When Natasha had left, though, it had at least been a bustling city where pirates and citizens moved about as they liked. Now, it felt eerily empty, not a blessed soul in sight. Shop windows were shattered, the precious glass glittering in the stone-paved streets. Buildings, saved from ruin only by the previous night’s rain, still smoked, bringing the scent of char to the air. Natasha looked about, expecting to see town-folk beginning to rebuild already. She saw no one.
The back door to the Violet Herald-it had been the Violent Herald once, but Clint had had an “accident” with a sling-shot that resulted in the “N” going missing-stood open, and there was smoke, but Natasha could smell meat cooking. She entered and neatly side-stepped the cleaver Volstagg the Cook threw. “Only me,” she said, holding her hands up.
The ex-viking lowered a second cleaver. “Beg pardon, Mistress Natasha.”
“Your aim is improving,” she said, and the viking snickered. “Doctor Banner is with me. Perhaps you could skip the greeting?”
“It would be much appreciated.” Bruce edged inside and smiled at the cook, hesitantly. This man was a far cry from the arrogant surgeon Natasha had met on the decks of the HMS Ferrous, but Bruce had cause for hesitance these days. “Greetings, Volstagg. Are you well?”
“As can be, Doctor. Mistress Natasha, you’ll want to go inside, they’re a-meetin’.”
Natasha didn’t bother to ask who was there, she’d find out soon enough. “Make sure the doctor gets something to eat.”
“I’m fine,” Bruce said, but Natasha was already heading into the main room of the pub.
Fury’s establishment was one of the many public houses offered in Tortuga, but it lacked the atmosphere that most irates wanted. Prostitutes flocked toward Calico Lensherr’s pub or No Legs Charlie’s Academy o’ Rum for that sort of entertainment, which suited Governor Nicholas Fury just fine. The ex-privateer was too busy seeing to Tortuga’s rather dubious government to run a successful pub, which meant that more often than not, the main room served as a meeting place for his most trusted cadre of lieutenants.
Natasha was not surprised to find Maria Hill inside, arms folded across her chest and a stormy look on her face. There was a still-healing wound on the woman’s temple, and her dress looked rumpled and torn from battle, but her eyes were bright and angry as she greeted Natasha with a nod.
Fury stood not far from Hill, hands on his hips. As ever, he wore all black, his boots polished to a high mirror shine. There was not a single smudge on his black overcoat, which he wore despite Tortuga’s sweltering climate. “’Bout time you showed your face, Romanova,” he said, glaring at her with his good eye.
Natasha had made good time, and she knew it. “Mayhap don’t send me away before the next big attack,” she said, and took her normal seat. The one next to it was empty, but she didn’t worry. Not yet, at least. “I found Banner.”
“He come back with you this time?”
“Aye, I did,” Bruce said, finally coming into the pub. He had his hands clasped together, another sign of nerves. “Though I’m not sure it was the wisest thing to do. Do you have wounded?”
“No,” Fury said, looking distinctly disgusted.
Bruce looked about in confusion, as it was obvious from the overturned tables that the battle had extended into Fury’s pub. “No?”
“He took ’em,” Maria said, her scowl deepening.
“I beg your pardon? He?”
“That would be the Count of Jotunheim, an old friend of yours, I believe.”
Natasha and Bruce exchanged a look, and Bruce removed his spectacles. “That’s impossible, Governor,” he said. “The last we saw Loki, he…”
“Had a little trouble picking up a cutlass, much less using one,” Natasha said.
“He seems to have gotten past that little inhibition, given that he showed up in our harbor last night and opened fire.” Fury sat down at the table, and like magic, Volstagg appeared from the kitchen with a pint of rum, “He opened fire and his men came ashore. They fought like…”
“They fought like they were cursed,” said a new voice, and Phillip Coulson stepped inside, wiping his hands clean on a handkerchief. He was, as always, dressed impeccably in a frock coat of the latest fashion. And he was also alone, Natasha saw with narrowed eyes. “They could not be killed. You cut a man down, a fatal blow, and he climbed to his feet even while he bled.”
“Cursed?” Bruce asked, looking alarmed.
“None shared your curse, Doctor,” Fury said.
“Otherwise this whole town would not be still standing,” Maria said, and as unnecessary as the comment was, Natasha felt the other woman had a point.
“How is it possible?” Natasha asked, leaning forward on her elbows, her arms crossed on the table. It wasn’t ladylike, which was precisely why she did it. “Last I saw Loki, he was a shade.”
“And he still is. Barton’s arrow flew clean through him.”
“Where is Clint?” Bruce asked, and Natasha nearly spared him a grateful look for saving her from having to be the one to ask.
She forgot all about that, though, for Coulson’s face immediately took on a set expression, the one he used when he was forced to tell somebody something unpleasant. Her heart began to pound, but she struggled to find her balance-something that had never caused her difficulty on deck or on dry land. She managed to keep her voice even as she asked, “Killed?”
Coulson shook his head. “Taken.”
“Taken?”
“Turned into one of the cursed, more like.” Maria accepted her own glass from Volstagg, and the bottom of Natasha’s stomach dropped out. She did not look at Bruce, could sense Bruce deliberately not looking at her. They knew what it was to live with a curse. “Loki attacked with a crew of forty men, some familiar to us. You remember Parker the Spider and The Lady Watson.”
Natasha knew them, but not very well. Clint had been fond of the young privateer and his mistress. The two men had bonded over their time climbing about as topmen in the Navy. “What of them?”
“They were turned into nothing but mindless beasts. Tell me, how does a man who can’t even pick up a cutlass without concentrating turn some of the smartest people I know into empty vessels?” Fury asked.
“Draugr, sir.”
As one, all five of the people in the room turned to look at Volstagg, who stood in the doorway to the kitchen with his arms loaded down with plates. He gave a mighty shrug. “They’re Draugr. Well, of a sort, sir, they are,” he said. “The dead ones are full Draugr. The live ones, not so much, but given enough time, they will be-full Draugr, that is.”
“And what,” Fury said, his voice crisp, “the devil is a Draugr?”
“I thought everybody knew what Draugr was,” Volstagg said, forehead gaining large furrows.
“You’ll have to forgive me if my knowledge of magic is a little limited, considering I didn’t believe it existed until I saw Banner here grow more than thrice his size and turn greener than a cabin boy in a hurricane!”
Coulson had pulled a small booklet from his pocket. “I know this one,” he said, flicking through the pages. “The Norse believe that the dead can walk again, sir.”
“Aye, and they’re vicious, too,” Volstagg said. “Big, hulking, nasty creatures that haunt the graves of good, honest folk. I’ve seen my countrymen avoid many a grave, sir.”
Fury gave the ex-viking a long look before he turned to Coulson. “You mean to tell me that Loki has turned my people into Norse ghosts?”
“Not ghosts. As far as we can tell, they’re not dead,” Coulson said. “And they’re quite solid.”
Natasha sucked in a slow breath and looked down at the table for a minute. Beside her, she felt Bruce do the same, which helped somewhat.
“They’re merely…not themselves,” Coulson said. “We recovered one of Loki’s original slaves that came back to his senses during the fight. He told us everything he knew.”
So the curse could be overcome, Natasha thought, and stored that information away.
“And when were you planning on sharing this with the rest of us?” Fury asked.
“Doing it now, sir.” Coulson, flicking through the pages, began to list details, and Natasha finally got the full story she had been trying to piece together. Tortuga had been attacked under the cover of darkness. Forty some-odd Draugr had scaled the harbor walls and had opened fire upon the guards patrolling there, taking them by such force that the city of Tortuga had been unable to rally. Following them had been the shade of Loki Laufeyson carrying a short staff that glowed blue on the end.
Bruce and Natasha exchanged a look.
“Loki moved through the men,” Maria said, speaking up for the first time in awhile. “That staff-he used it on the men. Everyone he touched turned and immediately fought his comrades as though he didn’t recognize them at all. Barton tried to stop it. He tried to put one of those salt arrows he’s been crafting through Loki’s eye socket.”
“And did it work?” Natasha asked.
“Went right through the bastard.”
There went that theory of Clint’s, Natasha thought, but she remained silent.
Coulson’s notes moved onto the interrogation of the ex-Draugr, who had been a fisherman in Kingston. Loki had recruited about thirty of them from a pub for what was supposed to be honest work, but outside the pub, he’d touched them with that staff and suddenly, the man had cared nothing about a wage, or his family. The man had been aware of losing sleep, and letting his body dwindle to nothingness from a lack of food and attention, but he simply hadn’t cared.
“He didn’t know if the orb on the staff had a name,” Coulson said, closing the notebook with a snap. He put it into an inner pocket of his frock coat, which had been specially tailored for him on a trip to the Colonies.
Bruce finally cleared his throat. “It does.”
“Pray, enlighten us,” Fury said.
“It’s called the Lyskilden, and it’s impossible that Loki could have found it because the last time we saw it, it was sinking to the depths of Davy Jones’ locker in the arms of Captain Obadiah Stane,” Natasha said.
“And it might just be the thing that cursed me.” Bruce paused. “And some others.”
As Natasha was one of those cursed, she appreciated being included.
Governor Nicholas Fury stared at the two of them for a long moment of silence. “I do believe,” he said in a tone that was so dry, it had no business being anywhere near the Caribbean, “the pair of you and Mr. Barton left out a few details about what really happened that night on the Ferrous.”
2. Memory Most Clear
The nights where the moon waxed in the sky were his favorites.
Others that sat in the crow’s nest, watching for squalls and pirates and privateers alike, might like the full moon best, the way moonlight silvered the crests of the swells below and provided as clear a view as noontime to the trained eye. Clint, however, preferred the night where there was just a little darkness, just a hint of mystery and chance in the waters.
The other topmen wasted absolutely no breath in informing him that he was daft, but Clint didn’t mind. It was a well-known fact, even among such a new and untested crew.
The Ferrous was so new that her gunwales gleamed even in the light of the half-moon. She was the pride of the Royal Navy, a ship so advanced and so brutal in power that no other ship on the planet could hope to match hers for strength and speed. As well it should be, Clint thought as he turned, scanning the waters by habit. The Navy had paid Sir Anthony Stark a pretty penny for her. And since the shipwright seemed to view the ship as his own personal vessel, he’d no doubt added as many modifications to it as he could.
Tony Stark was said to be a man ahead of his time. From the glimpses Clint had caught of the man-and the woman that accompanied him (who was not his wife, nor did she seem to be his mistress)-he could certainly believe it.
There was nothing in the water, no ships in view. Clint was tempted to lash himself to the nest and doze, but if he was caught at that again, it would be a whipping and he knew what would happen if a whipping was to be administered. The passengers had nosed up, curious, when the lieutenant had whipped Ryerson, their eyes wide and startled as they viewed the ship’s justice. And Clint very much did not want to be whipped in front of ladies. It was bad enough facing his fellow seamen, but there were three very fine ladies on board the Ferrous for this maiden voyage. Sure, he hadn’t a shot with any of them, but it was a matter of pride. Also, he thought with a wry twist of his lips, in the end he’d rather keep his skin whole and unmarked.
When the watch captain signaled for the men to trim the topsail, he ignored the man beside him, the man who should not be there, and moved over the rigging, more comfortable in the lines than he was on the ground. He kept his tunic bulky and loose to hide the short bow he carried with him always, the string coiled in an oiled pouch that hung from his neck. He suspected that at least the watch captain knew about it, but Clint Barton wasn’t the sort to cause trouble, so the man let it pass.
Besides, what use was a bow without a quiver and the arrows? They had no way of knowing about the quiver he’d smuggled into a compartment built into the crow’s nest. He sharpened the arrows regularly on these long night watches, which they also had no way of knowing.
Movement on the deck below made him glance down. Well, no, it wasn’t the movement, he admitted. Even in the dead of night, a ship in His Majesty’s service bustled with activity. It was the color that drew his eye. Red wasn’t a color regularly worn by sailors in His Majesty’s Navy. The purser usually handed out bolts of blue and tan cloth, and occasionally a bright green. There were red bandannas, brought from home and ports afar where dyed clothing was more commonplace, but even on the Ferrous, they were few and far between.
Besides, none of them could be that impossibly beautiful shade of red.
“She was fetching, no?” said a voice to his left.
Clint didn’t look at the man as he tracked the progress of the woman in the red dress across the deck. Of the civilians, this woman had been the first to get her sea legs. “Still is,” he said.
“This was the first time you see her fully, yes?”
“No, she had been a presence on deck before. I suspected she walked the deck at night more than I thought.” Clint continued to track Natasha’s progress across the deck, appreciating the sure-footed grace. Scuttlebutt said she’d come onto the ship as Lady Virginia Potts’s lady’s maid. Any excitement that the men might have felt at that had dwindled upon realizing that the woman was sweet on Sir Stark’s valet, who might have seemed genial, but the man had a look in his eye that any sailor recognized. Given that scuttlebutt also said the man was a close, personal friend of Lieutenant Rogers, everybody understood: Miss Romanova was just as off-limits as the rest of the civilians.
A man had eyes, though. He could look.
“She’s beautiful,” he finally said, answering the man’s question. “And you knew her better than I did at this point. YOu were downstairs in the wardroom with your brother, dining in the captain’s quarters every night. She told me all about those dinners.”
Loki, Count of Jotunheim, smiled. There were no friendly overtures in that smile. It was the grin of a madman, of a man who no longer had a firm grip on sanity or conscience. Clint wasn’t sure Loki had had much of either to begin with, but now that he was a shade and not a man, the grin had become something more sinister and frightening.
In Clint’s memories, though, Loki could not hurt him, so Clint turned back once more to watch the woman on the deck below. Because his memory dictated it, he saw to a loose sheet before the watch captain could spot it and scold him, and returned to his lookout duties. When the end of shift was called, he stretched out a sore shoulder and clambered to the rigging to head back to the deck. False dawn was hours off; he’d get about four hours of sleep if he hurried before the men on the first shift became too loud and woke him.
Loki drifted along after him, taking in Clint’s environment with a sharp eye. “Life on a ship is ever so dull,” he said. “How can you cope that this is your existence?”
“It puts food in the belly,” Clint said. On the way below-decks, he spotted another loose sheet and broke out of the line to head below to square it off. The watch captain gave him an approving nod as he passed. “Dignity’s well and good and all until you’re starving. A man with an empty belly might just discover he has different morals ’n a man what’s been fed regular. Besides, ’tis honest work, which is more than I can say for some.”
“You’re quite judgmental for a sailor.”
Clint tied off the sheet. By that time, the rest of the topmen on his shift had shuffled below, off to their hammocks. He followed, swinging down easily to avoid the stairs. He could make the walk back to the mens’ quarters with his eyes closed, should he need to. Now, walking through his memory with Loki trailing in his wake, he didn’t dare close his eyes. He was about to reach his favorite part of the memory.
Indeed, in the memory, he heard the telltale creak of a floorboard, followed by a muffled curse in Russian. His eyes searched the torch-lit dark of the hold, unerringly finding the only splash of color in the ship. He could make out the pinpricks of torchlight gleaming in eyes that he knew now were green and only sparingly amused.
He reached under his shirt for his bow. “Who’s there?” he asked, though he’d known the answer, even then.
Another curse followed, this time more resigned than muffled, and Natasha Romanova stepped from the shadows. Behind him, Clint heard Loki let out a delighted hiss like a man at the theater who liked the turn the play had taken. The redhead couldn’t see him; this was Clint’s memory, after all, not hers. “I apologize,” she said. She still had traces of her native accent in her words, Clint thought. He’d forgotten how melodic it could be. “I do seem to have gotten lost.”
In his memory, Clint raised an eyebrow. There was absolutely no way she could have wandered into the main hold from where the civilians were quartered. The marines would have seen to that. “Apparently,” he said, releasing his bow and crossing his arms over his chest. “Aught I can help you with?”
“No, no, not at all. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She looked almost ethereal. He wasn’t sure if it was his memory enhancing things or not, but if he had to lay a wager on it, he’d bet against it. Natasha had always found a way to shine. As Pepper’s lady’s maid, she’d cut a swath on the ship in the highest fashion. After, aboard the Angel and in service of Fury, she’d taken to simpler garb as befit working life on a ship, but she had always been beautiful, no matter what she wore.
“Wasn’t startled,” he said.
For a split second, amusement showed on Natasha’s face, betraying the high-born veneer she had been playing at the time. “Then why did you jump so high, sailor?”
“Barton,” Clint said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you call me sailor,” Clint said, shrugging, “you might get four or five men come running, Miss. There’s a lot of us. My name is Barton. Clint Barton, at your service.” It had felt silly and odd, but he’d made the short bow he’d seen many of the officers make to the ladies of their acquaintance.
Judging from the look Natasha gave him, he looked just as silly as he felt. “I see,” she said. She extended a hand to him, and Clint eyed it. What was he supposed to do with that? He’d already made his bow. “Miss Natalia Petrovna, also at your service.”
“You’re supposed to take her hand, paper skull,” Loki said. Clint didn’t look at him, but he could hear a smirk in the shade’s voice. “Oh, this is too precious.”
Hesitantly, he took the hand. At the time, the thought had occurred to him that she had a remarkable number of calluses on her hand. Since he wasn’t quite sure what to do, he made another short bow and dropped the hand as though she had burned him. “You might want not to be down here, Miss Romanova,” he said. “Some of the men, they…”
“Haven’t seen a woman in weeks?” Natasha gave him a deceptively sweet smile. “I hold my own, Barton.”
“You really are quite smitten, aren’t you?” Loki’s voice was delighted as it rang in Clint’s ears.
“Is there a problem?”
All three of them-well, the two humans and the shade-looked over. Lieutenant Steve Rogers, who was known about the ship as the most level-headed and kindly of the officers, even if he was also strict as the day was long, was standing on the stairs to below-decks, squinting at them in the darkness. Clint immediately straightened and took a step back away from Natasha. Though he technically hadn’t done anything wrong, such interaction could end with a whipping or half-rations.
“None at all, Lieutenant.” Natasha gave Steve a smooth smile. “I got a little lost. Mr. Barton was offering his assistance.”
Steve-Lieutenant Rogers, as he’d been then-looked suspiciously at Clint for a moment, but being an officer, doubting a woman’s word was against the rules. “I see,” he said. “Perhaps I could escort you back to the civilian quarters?”
“I assure you, there’s no need. I can see to it myself. Farewell, gentlemen.” With one final quietly entertained look, Natasha slipped past Steve and up the stairs. Clint watched her go-and unfortunately didn’t look away in time, judging from the way Steve eyed him suspiciously.
“Hardly seems like the woman that’s going to slaughter forty men in a few days’ time,” Loki said, leaning back against a post and crossing his arms over his chest. “And here he is, our stalwart captain. Hell’s bells, I’d forgotten how bracket-faced he was before the Lyskilden cursed him.”
Clint felt a curl of disgust at the words, but it was fleeting. Trapped in the confines of the memory, he stood at attention, waiting for Steve to scold him. “I would expect you to be abed at this hour, Seaman Barton,” Steve said, frowning at him.
“Was on my way, sir. Came across Miss Romanova by accident.”
Steve paused for a long time, and Clint knew he was evaluating the story, trying to figure out if the seaman was telling the truth. Evidently, he must have decided that Clint was, for he relented, his stance going from the forbidding lieutenant to that of just another sea salt below-decks. “Did you? I know what some of the men have been saying about her and Miss Carter.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I take no part in it.”
“Good.” Steve glanced toward the hold where most of the crew was abed in their swaying hammocks. “Not that any of ’em had a fig of luck anyway. Miss Romanova’s quite taken with Mr. Barnes.”
Bucky, Clint knew him to be. Natasha had told him all about the man in their long hours together aboard the Angel. Bucky, Steve’s closest friend in childhood.
Loki, no doubt sensing Clint’s thoughts, let out a cackle. “Jealous of a dead man, Barton? I like this. I like this, very much.”
“Yes, sir,” Clint said to Steve.
“Best to keep your distance, lad,” Steve said, though Clint was several years his senior. “Get some sleep.”
The lieutenant headed back toward the deck without another word. Clint, grateful that he hadn’t even had his rations taken away, turned and moved toward the crew quarters. He made it three steps before something behind his stomach jerked, hauling him up and out of his own mind and back into reality.
He opened his eyes to find himself on the deck of the Trickster, surrounded by workers racing about and trimming sails. The buffet of the wind against the mast rang in his ears like a familiar tune. For a split-second, there was a ball of fury, ill-contained and uncontrollable, that grew in his chest, making him want to lash out, to fight, to run and pillage and burn. But he blinked and the same blank loss of feeling slid over his mind. The thing that made him Clint was still in there somewhere, but it was quiet and subdued. All he wanted to do was whatever the man kneeling over him said.
The Count of Jotunheim, seeing that Clint had awoken to broad daylight, tossed his scepter from hand to hand, raising the tip from Clint’s forehead. It glowed blue: a shard of the Lyskilden, craftily forged into the tip, Clint knew. Clint’s entire existence had finally begun to make sense when Loki, who was somehow corporeal whenever he held the scepter, placed the Lyskilden shard against Clint’s chest and informed the ex-seaman that he had heart.
Now Clint existed only to do Loki’s bidding, whatever it might be.
“That was quite enlightening,” Loki said as Clint calmly rose to his feet. “I had suspected some attachment on your part, but-why, I do believe, Mr. Barton, that you’re a fool in love.”
“I am only here to carry out your orders,” Clint said, though that rage flickered up in the back of his mind for a split-second. It was quashed just as quickly. “My feelings matter little.”
“Good. We’ll examine the actions of Miss Romanova in more detail later. We can relive the night Stane caught us all by surprise, perhaps.” Loki smiled. His years as a shade, a man caught between two realities so that he was never fully present in either, had not done him any favors. There were dark circles under his eyes, his mostly-translucent skin sallow and sagging. “In the meantime, why don’t you make yourself useful about the ship?”
“Yes, sir,” Clint said, and headed for the rigging.
For a trace of a second, he missed the feel of his old bow under his tunic. But that moment, like everything else, was fleeting. He had a new master to serve now.
3. With the Tide
Natasha and Bruce exchanged a long look at Fury’s words; Bruce tilted his head slightly, the meaning very clear: Fury is your master, not mine. When the crew of the Angel had disbanded, she and Clint had drifted naturally to Tortuga, though none of the rest of the Angel’s crew trusted Nicholas Fury. Word of their deeds that night on the Ferrous had spread far and wide that there could be nowhere as safe for them as under the flag of an enforcer like Fury.
That, however, did not mean she precisely liked jumping at his every beck and call.
She was rescued from having to answer, however, by Coulson clearing his throat. “I would hold off, sir,” he said. Every muscle in Natasha’s body tensed; she recognized his body language as signaling approaching trouble. Indeed, he was peering out the window. “Talk of the devil,” Coulson said.
Natasha looked toward the window and agreed. She needed only a single look at the mast of the approaching ship to rise to her feet. It had been three years since she had laid eyes on it, but she knew that ship like she knew her bones.
Beside her, Bruce’s fist tightened around the fork. “Stark or Rogers?” he asked Natasha in an undertone.
Natasha wished she had Clint’s eyes. After a second of squinting, though, she could make out the red and gold flag flying from the ship’s topmast. “Stark,” she said. Steve’s flag was red, white, and blue. Stark preferred the blazing yellow and red. “Could he have heard?”
“This soon?”
“Hm,” Natasha said, and without waiting to be dismissed, strode out of the Violet Herald. It would take the Angel a good while to arrive at the dock, so she didn’t bother to take the faster route through Tortuga. Walking through a deserted landscape when there should have been bustling crowds about made her shoulder blades prickle.
Bruce followed, once more not saying a word. Two days in each other’s company had brought on the same comfortable silence from serving aboard the ship together. From the way he was looking about the abandoned shop and home windows, though, she could tell he was just as unnerved by everything as she was.
She hoped he kept calm.
By the time they reached the dock, the Angel was close enough that the stevedores left had gathered about, ready to grab the lines. From this distance, she could see the bright red coat of the man standing at the rudder-which complemented the pale gold dress of the woman standing beside him. Had they planned it?
Natasha wouldn’t put it beyond Sir Anthony Stark.
He swept off his cap-a trifle awkwardly, as he was using his left hand-as the ship nudged up to the dock. “Ho, there, my fellow Avengers!”
“Tony,” Banner said, sounding both amused and exasperated in a way that only Tony Stark could produce. “There’s trouble, so of course you would show your face. Lady Potts.” He made a short bow to the red-headed woman Stark helped up the gangplank.
She curtsied back. “Please, Bruce, you know it’s Pepper. And Natasha. You look well.”
“Thank you, Lady Potts.”
No correction of the name there, Natasha thought when Pepper gave her a reserved smile. There wouldn’t be. Even serving alongside each other on the Angel for two years couldn’t quite clear the deception from their history. Natasha almost preferred it that way. It was simply better to be an unquantifiable notion.
Stark looked her up and down, suspiciously. It seemed their time apart had aged him slightly-there was gray flecking at his temples and lines on his face that could be sun or age-but it had also made him more comfortable with his arm and leg. He’d obviously had his jacket tailored to hide the iron arm brace that extended from his right shoulder and supported the useless limb. The iron calf and foot he’d built in captivity were well hidden by a boot that shone like a mirror.
“Romanova,” he said after a minute. “Taken out any armies lately?”
“Stark. Sunk any ships lately?” Natasha said.
Stark turned to look at the burning ruins of Tortuga. “Your work, I assume?”
“You flatter me.”
“It’s Loki’s handiwork,” Banner said, and Pepper and Stark looked at him, sharply. “Natasha and I only just arrived. We’ve been tracking smoke since dawn.”
“That certainly explains your garb,” Stark said, his eyes lingering on Natasha’s trousers. “What do you mean, Loki did this?”
“Ah, Stark.” Coulson had approached silently; though Natasha had spotted him coming, Stark still jumped and gave the man a peevish look. “Should have known that if there was trouble, you wouldn’t be far behind.”
Natasha cleared her throat. “Phillip can inform you of the day’s happening far better than we can, considering that he was present for them. Is your business here urgent?”
“Nothing that won’t keep for a few hours.” Stark waved an absent hand.
That was enough for Natasha. She turned to Coulson. “Phillip-”
“He’s being held at the Academy,” Coulson said, jerking his head.
Natasha slipped away.
Lady Grey, posted at the door of the Academy O’ Rum with a blunderbuss, let her pass with a nod. She ignored the inordinately hairy man drinking at the bar and slipped straight into the back rooms. They were usually used for pleasure, but today, Red-Eye Summers and Drake the Iceman were standing guard at one of the doors. Summers gave her a frown.
“I’m here at Fury’s behest,” Natasha lied.
“Fury’s already sent somebody to talk to him.”
“And now he’s sent me, too.”
With a sigh, Summers opened the door and gestured as sarcastically as it was possible to do. Natasha gave him an equally sarcastic curtsy in reply and made her way inside. It was dark, as was always the case with No Legs Charlie’s back rooms, but it was also lush enough for how most people used the room. The dark-skinned man sitting-cowering, more like-in the corner, however, had no business being in a room like that.
Perhaps he’d heard tell of a red-headed woman that wore trousers in the service of Nicholas Fury, for he took one look at her and scrambled backward on the cot until his back was flush against the wall. Prayers and curses tumbled from his lips so rapidly that it took her a moment to understand that he was speaking in French.
Since that language was easier than English, she didn’t mind. “Calm yourself,” she told him, taking in the sodden bandage on his shoulder. “I am here to cause you no harm.”
“They told me you are-you are witch!” Though she’d spoken French, the man’s voice came out in broken English. “You are Fury’s witch!”
“My reputation precedes me, I see,” Natasha said, mostly under her breath. She made a point of sitting down in the room’s only chair, attempting to look as unassuming and harmless as possible. Given her diminutive height, it wasn’t difficult. “I only want information on the man they call Loki. No harm will befall you.”
“Witch!” The man kept praying. “Widow Witch.”
Natasha sighed. Sometimes, her rather remarkable hair color worked against her. Red hair wasn’t too commonly seen around these parts, even with the henna dyes that had been brought into the islands in the cargo holds of enterprising profiteers. Word of what had happened that night on the Ferrous, of what she in particular had done, had spread so far and wide that even this man had heard tell of her.
So she dropped the appearance of seeming harmless, shedding it like a cloak she had tired of. “Yes,” she said in French. “Witch. Scary witch. I shall curse your entire family unless you tell me everything I want to know.”
The man looked at her with terrified eyes. “Please-please-my family, they have done nothing-”
“Then you had best tell me everything you know about the man they call Loki.”
“If-if I tell you, my family-”
“Will live to fish another day,” Natasha said, giving him a scowl that had once made a ship captain wet himself and jump overboard. “Provided I find what stories you have to tell me good enough to ensure their safety.”
Stories began to pour from the man, almost too fast for her to comprehend. He had been a fisherman on an island not far from Jamaica. He had been recruited from a pub to work aboard a cargo ship. At first, it had been voluntary, but the dark haired stranger with an odd accent and a glowing blue scepter had touched his shoulder, and the man had lost all cares about his family, his health, and even his safety. He had cared only about the work. There had been others like him, others that served the strange man called Loki. It had been freeing in its own way, but he had lost more and more time, the man said, until he woke up in Tortuga with no memory of how he had come to be there.
“How many days hence is your last memory?”
“I know not, Widow Witch.”
That was worrying, Natasha thought. By prodding him with questions, she was able to figure out how long it had taken for the memories to become slippery. They really did not have long, Natasha thought, to retrieve Clint.
“Your shoulder,” she said, once she’d extracted as much information as she was going to get. “Let me see it.”
“Touch me not!”
“You have a daughter, do you not?” Natasha asked.
The man’s eyes widened. He crossed himself and spit on the floor.
“Surely you wouldn’t like any harm to befall her,” Natasha said once that little display had finished. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that it had been nothing but a calculated guess: the man’s desperation spoke of sons that were either too young to provide for the family, or daughters.
“You are evil.”
“Yes,” Natasha said, and she meant it. “I am aware.”
The man glared at her, body angled antagonistically toward her as he reached up with a shaking hand and pulled the bandages away from his shoulder. Natasha didn’t react to the state of the wound that lay beneath. She’d treated far more serious wounds than this on her own person, and had certainly caused much worse with one of her throwing knives alone. So she rose to her feet to get a better look at the wound, giving him an unimpressed look when he flinched away.
The faint tattoo she saw inked on his skin was not one she had ever seen before. The man had been cut with something dull enough to rip the skin rather than slicing sharply. The cut sliced the tattoo in two. The fact that the ink was a bright, unmistakable blue did not pass her notice.
“I shall send somebody in here with fresh bandages,” Natasha said, turning toward the door.
“My daughter?” the man asked.
“I was never any harm to her. You might want to study your witches in greater detail, fisherman. There are fewer of them than you think.” Natasha banged twice on the door to be let out. She left word with Iceman that the man needed medical care.
The tattoo was an interesting development. Had Coulson noted its importance?
She didn’t get a chance to ask, for she found Stark waiting for her outside. “Nice day,” he said, “if you can ignore the smoke. And the quiet.”
“What do you want, Stark?”
“I used to wonder what this place would be like when quiet, but I just find it spooky. Where’s your partner?”
“Phillip told you what happened to Tortuga. Make your own assumption.”
“I have, which explains the sourpuss look on one la Romanova when I arrived. I assume you’ll be going after your other half the minute you can get your hands on a seaworthy ship?”
Natasha eyed him. “And just how seaworthy is the Angel these days? I see the new masts. Your work, I assume.”
“Some of my finest work, if you must know.” Tony’s mechanical hand whirred as he brushed a mote of dust on the shoulder of his coat. “As it happens, Fury’s already asked us to go track down the villain now known as Loki, Count of Jotunheim, and retrieve his men as safely as we can.”
“And you said?”
“I would be glad to.” Stark’s teeth flashed when he smiled. There was nothing humorous about the look, however. “But I need a favor first. That was actually why the Lady Potts and myself were traveling to Tortuga. Our arrival here today was merely a coincidence.”
Natasha eyed him warily. “And what favor is this that you need, Stark?”
“See those two women?” Stark pointed toward the dock, where some of the dockhands were gathered around two women in fine dresses. The dresses at least looked to be the latest fashions to have arrived from Paris to Natasha’s discerning eye. Both of the women were Anglican but dark-haired. She recognized neither. “The one in the green dress has hired the services of yours truly. She required somebody to find her erstwhile fiance.”
Natasha frowned, tilting her head to the side. “You never struck me as a bounty hunter.”
“I am a man of many talents, Red. Perhaps I should explain further, though. The woman in the green dress is one Miss Jane Foster.”
It clicked into place. “Thor’s missing?” Natasha asked. “Loki-”
“As far as I know, our Norwegian duke isn’t suffering from the same malady as your-what are you and Barton, anyway? Lovers? Imitable partners that glare at everything and pretend to be superior? I can never tell.” Stark glanced at her deadpan expression and shrugged to himself. “We can revisit this subject later. At any rate, I suspect that if Thor had been mentally enslaved by his brother, a wayward Tortugan or two last night would have noticed a giant blond behemoth among the attackers, armed with a giant hammer. Besides…”
He pulled a scroll from inside the jacket, the gears in his iron brace clicking and whirring together. Natasha kept her revulsion with the technology contained as she took the scroll from him.
She forgot all about it the minute she slipped the ribbon from the scroll and unrolled it. It wasn’t much inside: a simple drawing, done with a deft hand on parchment. There was no mistaking the features of the two men on its surface. They appeared to be asleep in separate glass boxes.
“That is Thor, yes. Nobody’s seen him over a year. And St-Rogers?” she asked. “What is this? Who drew it?”
“An actual bounty hunter, as you’re correct in assuming I’ve not had a change in occupation. He says the island where he saw the men encased in strange, cold, clear coffins is not far from here. He also claimed that he barely escaped with his life.” Stark sobered for a minute. “I think there’s trouble afoot. Are you in?”
“Yes,” Natasha said without needing to think about it.
“Good. We sail with the tide.”
Author: frea_o
A Gift For: icecream_junkie
Rating: PG-13/T
Warnings: Blood, prostitution, mind control, violent imagery, kidnapping, ableism, sexism (to qualify this list: they’re 18th century pirates. Being PC is not a priority, but I tried to keep it toned down), language, death (highlight to see how serious: minor character death, background character death), superstitions, drunken clergymen, reanimated corpses, supernatural elements.
Pairings: Miss Natasha Romanova/Seaman Clint Barton, Lady Pepper Potts/Sir Anthony Stark, Captain Steven Rogers/Miss Peggy Carter, Duke Thor of Asgard/Miss Jane Foster
Summary/Prompt Used: Tortuga, 1745. It’s been three years since they last sailed together, but when an old enemy resurfaces and takes one of their own, it’s up to the crew of the Avenging Angel to assemble and take to the high seas once more. Or: the one where everybody is a pirate except the two canonical characters with eyepatches. Drink up me ’earties, yo-ho.
Author’s Notes: To preface this entire story, I am not in any way history-oriented (I fell asleep during history classes), so there are probably a lot of anachronisms in this story. I tried to research as best I could and chose to keep dialogue closer to the twenty-first century for reading purposes. That is not to say Clint’s going to greet Natasha with "’Sup?" or anything. I would beg you to take this story in the light-hearted spirit it’s meant to be rather than a proper historical documentation of the times. Also, the title comes from a little known verse of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song, but it is not a crossover. More notes under the cut.
Part: I | IIa | IIb | III | IV | V
Banner by frea_o
Author’s Notes, Cont’d: Some deliberate anachronisms, though, just to give you a head’s up: by the mid-18th century, though there was an influx of piracy in the Caribbean that was short-lived earlier in the century, Tortuga was pretty much defunct, but I’m choosing to ignore that fact. The Navy, by this point, basically had the pirates on the run. Also, the HMS Ferrous is based entirely off of the HMS Victory, which was originally built about twenty years after the Ferrous would have been, but Tony Stark’s always going to be more advanced than everybody else.
Also, I’m certain Clint would be “Clinton,” Tony would be “Anthony,” and Steve would be “Stephen” (I know his name is Steven, but I don’t think the v spelling came until later; I could be wrong), buuuuut it was just weird to write it that way, so they’re Clint, Steve, and Tony.
Helpful Nautical Terms: boatswain/bosun-crewmember in charge of equipment and maintenance; bowsprit-spar that extends at bows of a ship (ie the unicorn horn spike on the front of a ship); blunderbuss-a muzzle-loading predecessor to the shotgun with a flared barrel; forecastle/fo’c’sle-short raised deck at fore end of ship; gunwale-upper edge of the side of a ship; mizzen-three-masted vessel; aft sail of such a vessel; quarterdeck-part of ship’s deck set aside by captain for ceremonial functions, and where the tiller is located upon the Angel; scuttlebutt-cask of drinking water aboard a ship; rumour, idle gossip; yard-tapering spar attached to ship’s mast to spread the head of a square sail.
And finally, thanks to my wonderful, awesome, splendid beta reader, whose name shall remain anonymous until January 7th.
1. The Violet Herald
It was impossible to destroy a place so covered in scum and debauchery as Tortuga, but, Natasha Romanova thought as she stood on the cliff overlooking the city, somebody had certainly done his best to try.
Next to her, Doctor Bruce Banner made a noise in the back of his throat. “That explains the smoke,” he said, rather needlessly. They’d been tracking it through the jungle since dawn.
Tortuga lay nestled in the harbor below them, thick smoke rising in columns from its jailhouse, its major public houses, and several other buildings. Some of the jungle surrounding the city had burned; she could see scorch marks on the cliffs and new pockmarks from cannon-fire. She scanned the skies, searching for an upside down flag. The smoke made it difficult to see, but the flag did not seem to be flying yet. It didn’t soothe her at all: Fury or any of his lieutenants could have simply been unable to reach the pole and fly the warning.
“They’ll have need of a surgeon,” she said.
“Yes.” Bruce was sure-footed as they climbed from the cliff. It had been a strenuous journey from his hideout, but the doctor, soaked in sweat and swatting at flies, hadn’t complained. Two years in the jungle had left their mark. Though he’d pointed out time and again that he was only coming along to confer with one of Fury’s doctors in Tortuga about a sickness facing some of the children, he had dropped his protests at the sight of smoke that morning. Natasha knew he had already arrived at that conclusion. This was no longer a favor for Fury. “Any thought as to who might have done this?”
“Fury has enemies a-plenty,” Natasha said, which she figured Bruce would know was not an answer. The surgeon did not deal well with manipulation, and Natasha did not deal well with the truth. They were safest if they kept to that middle ground.
As they jogged, she categorized what she had seen. She’d noticed the pattern of damage on the buildings she could make out in the distance, but she hadn’t brought a spyglass with her and she had nothing in the way of Clint’s eyesight, so she couldn’t be sure that the attack had originated in the harbor. It certainly seemed to have done so, though. If the attack had come from the harbor, she was willing to bet her gold that it had been a heavy ship with long-range cannons. The pattern of destruction simply fit.
“It’s a pity,” Bruce said, panting a bit, “that they waited until you were not in town to attack. I imagine it might not have gone so well for them if you had been on hand.”
Since Bruce had been one of the few that had survived the night she’d earned her nickname, Natasha inclined her head at the compliment. “The same could be said of you, Doctor.”
“There would be more damage for everyone if I had. He does not choose sides.”
The good doctor had a point.
Perhaps Tortuga of 1745 was not as prosperous as the Tortuga of yore, in the golden age when any ship who fancied a life of buccaneering could sail the sea free from persecution. Times had grown tough with the Royal Navy tightening its stranglehold on the Caribbean waters, and Tortuga definitely showed the wear. When Natasha had left, though, it had at least been a bustling city where pirates and citizens moved about as they liked. Now, it felt eerily empty, not a blessed soul in sight. Shop windows were shattered, the precious glass glittering in the stone-paved streets. Buildings, saved from ruin only by the previous night’s rain, still smoked, bringing the scent of char to the air. Natasha looked about, expecting to see town-folk beginning to rebuild already. She saw no one.
The back door to the Violet Herald-it had been the Violent Herald once, but Clint had had an “accident” with a sling-shot that resulted in the “N” going missing-stood open, and there was smoke, but Natasha could smell meat cooking. She entered and neatly side-stepped the cleaver Volstagg the Cook threw. “Only me,” she said, holding her hands up.
The ex-viking lowered a second cleaver. “Beg pardon, Mistress Natasha.”
“Your aim is improving,” she said, and the viking snickered. “Doctor Banner is with me. Perhaps you could skip the greeting?”
“It would be much appreciated.” Bruce edged inside and smiled at the cook, hesitantly. This man was a far cry from the arrogant surgeon Natasha had met on the decks of the HMS Ferrous, but Bruce had cause for hesitance these days. “Greetings, Volstagg. Are you well?”
“As can be, Doctor. Mistress Natasha, you’ll want to go inside, they’re a-meetin’.”
Natasha didn’t bother to ask who was there, she’d find out soon enough. “Make sure the doctor gets something to eat.”
“I’m fine,” Bruce said, but Natasha was already heading into the main room of the pub.
Fury’s establishment was one of the many public houses offered in Tortuga, but it lacked the atmosphere that most irates wanted. Prostitutes flocked toward Calico Lensherr’s pub or No Legs Charlie’s Academy o’ Rum for that sort of entertainment, which suited Governor Nicholas Fury just fine. The ex-privateer was too busy seeing to Tortuga’s rather dubious government to run a successful pub, which meant that more often than not, the main room served as a meeting place for his most trusted cadre of lieutenants.
Natasha was not surprised to find Maria Hill inside, arms folded across her chest and a stormy look on her face. There was a still-healing wound on the woman’s temple, and her dress looked rumpled and torn from battle, but her eyes were bright and angry as she greeted Natasha with a nod.
Fury stood not far from Hill, hands on his hips. As ever, he wore all black, his boots polished to a high mirror shine. There was not a single smudge on his black overcoat, which he wore despite Tortuga’s sweltering climate. “’Bout time you showed your face, Romanova,” he said, glaring at her with his good eye.
Natasha had made good time, and she knew it. “Mayhap don’t send me away before the next big attack,” she said, and took her normal seat. The one next to it was empty, but she didn’t worry. Not yet, at least. “I found Banner.”
“He come back with you this time?”
“Aye, I did,” Bruce said, finally coming into the pub. He had his hands clasped together, another sign of nerves. “Though I’m not sure it was the wisest thing to do. Do you have wounded?”
“No,” Fury said, looking distinctly disgusted.
Bruce looked about in confusion, as it was obvious from the overturned tables that the battle had extended into Fury’s pub. “No?”
“He took ’em,” Maria said, her scowl deepening.
“I beg your pardon? He?”
“That would be the Count of Jotunheim, an old friend of yours, I believe.”
Natasha and Bruce exchanged a look, and Bruce removed his spectacles. “That’s impossible, Governor,” he said. “The last we saw Loki, he…”
“Had a little trouble picking up a cutlass, much less using one,” Natasha said.
“He seems to have gotten past that little inhibition, given that he showed up in our harbor last night and opened fire.” Fury sat down at the table, and like magic, Volstagg appeared from the kitchen with a pint of rum, “He opened fire and his men came ashore. They fought like…”
“They fought like they were cursed,” said a new voice, and Phillip Coulson stepped inside, wiping his hands clean on a handkerchief. He was, as always, dressed impeccably in a frock coat of the latest fashion. And he was also alone, Natasha saw with narrowed eyes. “They could not be killed. You cut a man down, a fatal blow, and he climbed to his feet even while he bled.”
“Cursed?” Bruce asked, looking alarmed.
“None shared your curse, Doctor,” Fury said.
“Otherwise this whole town would not be still standing,” Maria said, and as unnecessary as the comment was, Natasha felt the other woman had a point.
“How is it possible?” Natasha asked, leaning forward on her elbows, her arms crossed on the table. It wasn’t ladylike, which was precisely why she did it. “Last I saw Loki, he was a shade.”
“And he still is. Barton’s arrow flew clean through him.”
“Where is Clint?” Bruce asked, and Natasha nearly spared him a grateful look for saving her from having to be the one to ask.
She forgot all about that, though, for Coulson’s face immediately took on a set expression, the one he used when he was forced to tell somebody something unpleasant. Her heart began to pound, but she struggled to find her balance-something that had never caused her difficulty on deck or on dry land. She managed to keep her voice even as she asked, “Killed?”
Coulson shook his head. “Taken.”
“Taken?”
“Turned into one of the cursed, more like.” Maria accepted her own glass from Volstagg, and the bottom of Natasha’s stomach dropped out. She did not look at Bruce, could sense Bruce deliberately not looking at her. They knew what it was to live with a curse. “Loki attacked with a crew of forty men, some familiar to us. You remember Parker the Spider and The Lady Watson.”
Natasha knew them, but not very well. Clint had been fond of the young privateer and his mistress. The two men had bonded over their time climbing about as topmen in the Navy. “What of them?”
“They were turned into nothing but mindless beasts. Tell me, how does a man who can’t even pick up a cutlass without concentrating turn some of the smartest people I know into empty vessels?” Fury asked.
“Draugr, sir.”
As one, all five of the people in the room turned to look at Volstagg, who stood in the doorway to the kitchen with his arms loaded down with plates. He gave a mighty shrug. “They’re Draugr. Well, of a sort, sir, they are,” he said. “The dead ones are full Draugr. The live ones, not so much, but given enough time, they will be-full Draugr, that is.”
“And what,” Fury said, his voice crisp, “the devil is a Draugr?”
“I thought everybody knew what Draugr was,” Volstagg said, forehead gaining large furrows.
“You’ll have to forgive me if my knowledge of magic is a little limited, considering I didn’t believe it existed until I saw Banner here grow more than thrice his size and turn greener than a cabin boy in a hurricane!”
Coulson had pulled a small booklet from his pocket. “I know this one,” he said, flicking through the pages. “The Norse believe that the dead can walk again, sir.”
“Aye, and they’re vicious, too,” Volstagg said. “Big, hulking, nasty creatures that haunt the graves of good, honest folk. I’ve seen my countrymen avoid many a grave, sir.”
Fury gave the ex-viking a long look before he turned to Coulson. “You mean to tell me that Loki has turned my people into Norse ghosts?”
“Not ghosts. As far as we can tell, they’re not dead,” Coulson said. “And they’re quite solid.”
Natasha sucked in a slow breath and looked down at the table for a minute. Beside her, she felt Bruce do the same, which helped somewhat.
“They’re merely…not themselves,” Coulson said. “We recovered one of Loki’s original slaves that came back to his senses during the fight. He told us everything he knew.”
So the curse could be overcome, Natasha thought, and stored that information away.
“And when were you planning on sharing this with the rest of us?” Fury asked.
“Doing it now, sir.” Coulson, flicking through the pages, began to list details, and Natasha finally got the full story she had been trying to piece together. Tortuga had been attacked under the cover of darkness. Forty some-odd Draugr had scaled the harbor walls and had opened fire upon the guards patrolling there, taking them by such force that the city of Tortuga had been unable to rally. Following them had been the shade of Loki Laufeyson carrying a short staff that glowed blue on the end.
Bruce and Natasha exchanged a look.
“Loki moved through the men,” Maria said, speaking up for the first time in awhile. “That staff-he used it on the men. Everyone he touched turned and immediately fought his comrades as though he didn’t recognize them at all. Barton tried to stop it. He tried to put one of those salt arrows he’s been crafting through Loki’s eye socket.”
“And did it work?” Natasha asked.
“Went right through the bastard.”
There went that theory of Clint’s, Natasha thought, but she remained silent.
Coulson’s notes moved onto the interrogation of the ex-Draugr, who had been a fisherman in Kingston. Loki had recruited about thirty of them from a pub for what was supposed to be honest work, but outside the pub, he’d touched them with that staff and suddenly, the man had cared nothing about a wage, or his family. The man had been aware of losing sleep, and letting his body dwindle to nothingness from a lack of food and attention, but he simply hadn’t cared.
“He didn’t know if the orb on the staff had a name,” Coulson said, closing the notebook with a snap. He put it into an inner pocket of his frock coat, which had been specially tailored for him on a trip to the Colonies.
Bruce finally cleared his throat. “It does.”
“Pray, enlighten us,” Fury said.
“It’s called the Lyskilden, and it’s impossible that Loki could have found it because the last time we saw it, it was sinking to the depths of Davy Jones’ locker in the arms of Captain Obadiah Stane,” Natasha said.
“And it might just be the thing that cursed me.” Bruce paused. “And some others.”
As Natasha was one of those cursed, she appreciated being included.
Governor Nicholas Fury stared at the two of them for a long moment of silence. “I do believe,” he said in a tone that was so dry, it had no business being anywhere near the Caribbean, “the pair of you and Mr. Barton left out a few details about what really happened that night on the Ferrous.”
2. Memory Most Clear
The nights where the moon waxed in the sky were his favorites.
Others that sat in the crow’s nest, watching for squalls and pirates and privateers alike, might like the full moon best, the way moonlight silvered the crests of the swells below and provided as clear a view as noontime to the trained eye. Clint, however, preferred the night where there was just a little darkness, just a hint of mystery and chance in the waters.
The other topmen wasted absolutely no breath in informing him that he was daft, but Clint didn’t mind. It was a well-known fact, even among such a new and untested crew.
The Ferrous was so new that her gunwales gleamed even in the light of the half-moon. She was the pride of the Royal Navy, a ship so advanced and so brutal in power that no other ship on the planet could hope to match hers for strength and speed. As well it should be, Clint thought as he turned, scanning the waters by habit. The Navy had paid Sir Anthony Stark a pretty penny for her. And since the shipwright seemed to view the ship as his own personal vessel, he’d no doubt added as many modifications to it as he could.
Tony Stark was said to be a man ahead of his time. From the glimpses Clint had caught of the man-and the woman that accompanied him (who was not his wife, nor did she seem to be his mistress)-he could certainly believe it.
There was nothing in the water, no ships in view. Clint was tempted to lash himself to the nest and doze, but if he was caught at that again, it would be a whipping and he knew what would happen if a whipping was to be administered. The passengers had nosed up, curious, when the lieutenant had whipped Ryerson, their eyes wide and startled as they viewed the ship’s justice. And Clint very much did not want to be whipped in front of ladies. It was bad enough facing his fellow seamen, but there were three very fine ladies on board the Ferrous for this maiden voyage. Sure, he hadn’t a shot with any of them, but it was a matter of pride. Also, he thought with a wry twist of his lips, in the end he’d rather keep his skin whole and unmarked.
When the watch captain signaled for the men to trim the topsail, he ignored the man beside him, the man who should not be there, and moved over the rigging, more comfortable in the lines than he was on the ground. He kept his tunic bulky and loose to hide the short bow he carried with him always, the string coiled in an oiled pouch that hung from his neck. He suspected that at least the watch captain knew about it, but Clint Barton wasn’t the sort to cause trouble, so the man let it pass.
Besides, what use was a bow without a quiver and the arrows? They had no way of knowing about the quiver he’d smuggled into a compartment built into the crow’s nest. He sharpened the arrows regularly on these long night watches, which they also had no way of knowing.
Movement on the deck below made him glance down. Well, no, it wasn’t the movement, he admitted. Even in the dead of night, a ship in His Majesty’s service bustled with activity. It was the color that drew his eye. Red wasn’t a color regularly worn by sailors in His Majesty’s Navy. The purser usually handed out bolts of blue and tan cloth, and occasionally a bright green. There were red bandannas, brought from home and ports afar where dyed clothing was more commonplace, but even on the Ferrous, they were few and far between.
Besides, none of them could be that impossibly beautiful shade of red.
“She was fetching, no?” said a voice to his left.
Clint didn’t look at the man as he tracked the progress of the woman in the red dress across the deck. Of the civilians, this woman had been the first to get her sea legs. “Still is,” he said.
“This was the first time you see her fully, yes?”
“No, she had been a presence on deck before. I suspected she walked the deck at night more than I thought.” Clint continued to track Natasha’s progress across the deck, appreciating the sure-footed grace. Scuttlebutt said she’d come onto the ship as Lady Virginia Potts’s lady’s maid. Any excitement that the men might have felt at that had dwindled upon realizing that the woman was sweet on Sir Stark’s valet, who might have seemed genial, but the man had a look in his eye that any sailor recognized. Given that scuttlebutt also said the man was a close, personal friend of Lieutenant Rogers, everybody understood: Miss Romanova was just as off-limits as the rest of the civilians.
A man had eyes, though. He could look.
“She’s beautiful,” he finally said, answering the man’s question. “And you knew her better than I did at this point. YOu were downstairs in the wardroom with your brother, dining in the captain’s quarters every night. She told me all about those dinners.”
Loki, Count of Jotunheim, smiled. There were no friendly overtures in that smile. It was the grin of a madman, of a man who no longer had a firm grip on sanity or conscience. Clint wasn’t sure Loki had had much of either to begin with, but now that he was a shade and not a man, the grin had become something more sinister and frightening.
In Clint’s memories, though, Loki could not hurt him, so Clint turned back once more to watch the woman on the deck below. Because his memory dictated it, he saw to a loose sheet before the watch captain could spot it and scold him, and returned to his lookout duties. When the end of shift was called, he stretched out a sore shoulder and clambered to the rigging to head back to the deck. False dawn was hours off; he’d get about four hours of sleep if he hurried before the men on the first shift became too loud and woke him.
Loki drifted along after him, taking in Clint’s environment with a sharp eye. “Life on a ship is ever so dull,” he said. “How can you cope that this is your existence?”
“It puts food in the belly,” Clint said. On the way below-decks, he spotted another loose sheet and broke out of the line to head below to square it off. The watch captain gave him an approving nod as he passed. “Dignity’s well and good and all until you’re starving. A man with an empty belly might just discover he has different morals ’n a man what’s been fed regular. Besides, ’tis honest work, which is more than I can say for some.”
“You’re quite judgmental for a sailor.”
Clint tied off the sheet. By that time, the rest of the topmen on his shift had shuffled below, off to their hammocks. He followed, swinging down easily to avoid the stairs. He could make the walk back to the mens’ quarters with his eyes closed, should he need to. Now, walking through his memory with Loki trailing in his wake, he didn’t dare close his eyes. He was about to reach his favorite part of the memory.
Indeed, in the memory, he heard the telltale creak of a floorboard, followed by a muffled curse in Russian. His eyes searched the torch-lit dark of the hold, unerringly finding the only splash of color in the ship. He could make out the pinpricks of torchlight gleaming in eyes that he knew now were green and only sparingly amused.
He reached under his shirt for his bow. “Who’s there?” he asked, though he’d known the answer, even then.
Another curse followed, this time more resigned than muffled, and Natasha Romanova stepped from the shadows. Behind him, Clint heard Loki let out a delighted hiss like a man at the theater who liked the turn the play had taken. The redhead couldn’t see him; this was Clint’s memory, after all, not hers. “I apologize,” she said. She still had traces of her native accent in her words, Clint thought. He’d forgotten how melodic it could be. “I do seem to have gotten lost.”
In his memory, Clint raised an eyebrow. There was absolutely no way she could have wandered into the main hold from where the civilians were quartered. The marines would have seen to that. “Apparently,” he said, releasing his bow and crossing his arms over his chest. “Aught I can help you with?”
“No, no, not at all. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She looked almost ethereal. He wasn’t sure if it was his memory enhancing things or not, but if he had to lay a wager on it, he’d bet against it. Natasha had always found a way to shine. As Pepper’s lady’s maid, she’d cut a swath on the ship in the highest fashion. After, aboard the Angel and in service of Fury, she’d taken to simpler garb as befit working life on a ship, but she had always been beautiful, no matter what she wore.
“Wasn’t startled,” he said.
For a split second, amusement showed on Natasha’s face, betraying the high-born veneer she had been playing at the time. “Then why did you jump so high, sailor?”
“Barton,” Clint said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you call me sailor,” Clint said, shrugging, “you might get four or five men come running, Miss. There’s a lot of us. My name is Barton. Clint Barton, at your service.” It had felt silly and odd, but he’d made the short bow he’d seen many of the officers make to the ladies of their acquaintance.
Judging from the look Natasha gave him, he looked just as silly as he felt. “I see,” she said. She extended a hand to him, and Clint eyed it. What was he supposed to do with that? He’d already made his bow. “Miss Natalia Petrovna, also at your service.”
“You’re supposed to take her hand, paper skull,” Loki said. Clint didn’t look at him, but he could hear a smirk in the shade’s voice. “Oh, this is too precious.”
Hesitantly, he took the hand. At the time, the thought had occurred to him that she had a remarkable number of calluses on her hand. Since he wasn’t quite sure what to do, he made another short bow and dropped the hand as though she had burned him. “You might want not to be down here, Miss Romanova,” he said. “Some of the men, they…”
“Haven’t seen a woman in weeks?” Natasha gave him a deceptively sweet smile. “I hold my own, Barton.”
“You really are quite smitten, aren’t you?” Loki’s voice was delighted as it rang in Clint’s ears.
“Is there a problem?”
All three of them-well, the two humans and the shade-looked over. Lieutenant Steve Rogers, who was known about the ship as the most level-headed and kindly of the officers, even if he was also strict as the day was long, was standing on the stairs to below-decks, squinting at them in the darkness. Clint immediately straightened and took a step back away from Natasha. Though he technically hadn’t done anything wrong, such interaction could end with a whipping or half-rations.
“None at all, Lieutenant.” Natasha gave Steve a smooth smile. “I got a little lost. Mr. Barton was offering his assistance.”
Steve-Lieutenant Rogers, as he’d been then-looked suspiciously at Clint for a moment, but being an officer, doubting a woman’s word was against the rules. “I see,” he said. “Perhaps I could escort you back to the civilian quarters?”
“I assure you, there’s no need. I can see to it myself. Farewell, gentlemen.” With one final quietly entertained look, Natasha slipped past Steve and up the stairs. Clint watched her go-and unfortunately didn’t look away in time, judging from the way Steve eyed him suspiciously.
“Hardly seems like the woman that’s going to slaughter forty men in a few days’ time,” Loki said, leaning back against a post and crossing his arms over his chest. “And here he is, our stalwart captain. Hell’s bells, I’d forgotten how bracket-faced he was before the Lyskilden cursed him.”
Clint felt a curl of disgust at the words, but it was fleeting. Trapped in the confines of the memory, he stood at attention, waiting for Steve to scold him. “I would expect you to be abed at this hour, Seaman Barton,” Steve said, frowning at him.
“Was on my way, sir. Came across Miss Romanova by accident.”
Steve paused for a long time, and Clint knew he was evaluating the story, trying to figure out if the seaman was telling the truth. Evidently, he must have decided that Clint was, for he relented, his stance going from the forbidding lieutenant to that of just another sea salt below-decks. “Did you? I know what some of the men have been saying about her and Miss Carter.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I take no part in it.”
“Good.” Steve glanced toward the hold where most of the crew was abed in their swaying hammocks. “Not that any of ’em had a fig of luck anyway. Miss Romanova’s quite taken with Mr. Barnes.”
Bucky, Clint knew him to be. Natasha had told him all about the man in their long hours together aboard the Angel. Bucky, Steve’s closest friend in childhood.
Loki, no doubt sensing Clint’s thoughts, let out a cackle. “Jealous of a dead man, Barton? I like this. I like this, very much.”
“Yes, sir,” Clint said to Steve.
“Best to keep your distance, lad,” Steve said, though Clint was several years his senior. “Get some sleep.”
The lieutenant headed back toward the deck without another word. Clint, grateful that he hadn’t even had his rations taken away, turned and moved toward the crew quarters. He made it three steps before something behind his stomach jerked, hauling him up and out of his own mind and back into reality.
He opened his eyes to find himself on the deck of the Trickster, surrounded by workers racing about and trimming sails. The buffet of the wind against the mast rang in his ears like a familiar tune. For a split-second, there was a ball of fury, ill-contained and uncontrollable, that grew in his chest, making him want to lash out, to fight, to run and pillage and burn. But he blinked and the same blank loss of feeling slid over his mind. The thing that made him Clint was still in there somewhere, but it was quiet and subdued. All he wanted to do was whatever the man kneeling over him said.
The Count of Jotunheim, seeing that Clint had awoken to broad daylight, tossed his scepter from hand to hand, raising the tip from Clint’s forehead. It glowed blue: a shard of the Lyskilden, craftily forged into the tip, Clint knew. Clint’s entire existence had finally begun to make sense when Loki, who was somehow corporeal whenever he held the scepter, placed the Lyskilden shard against Clint’s chest and informed the ex-seaman that he had heart.
Now Clint existed only to do Loki’s bidding, whatever it might be.
“That was quite enlightening,” Loki said as Clint calmly rose to his feet. “I had suspected some attachment on your part, but-why, I do believe, Mr. Barton, that you’re a fool in love.”
“I am only here to carry out your orders,” Clint said, though that rage flickered up in the back of his mind for a split-second. It was quashed just as quickly. “My feelings matter little.”
“Good. We’ll examine the actions of Miss Romanova in more detail later. We can relive the night Stane caught us all by surprise, perhaps.” Loki smiled. His years as a shade, a man caught between two realities so that he was never fully present in either, had not done him any favors. There were dark circles under his eyes, his mostly-translucent skin sallow and sagging. “In the meantime, why don’t you make yourself useful about the ship?”
“Yes, sir,” Clint said, and headed for the rigging.
For a trace of a second, he missed the feel of his old bow under his tunic. But that moment, like everything else, was fleeting. He had a new master to serve now.
3. With the Tide
Natasha and Bruce exchanged a long look at Fury’s words; Bruce tilted his head slightly, the meaning very clear: Fury is your master, not mine. When the crew of the Angel had disbanded, she and Clint had drifted naturally to Tortuga, though none of the rest of the Angel’s crew trusted Nicholas Fury. Word of their deeds that night on the Ferrous had spread far and wide that there could be nowhere as safe for them as under the flag of an enforcer like Fury.
That, however, did not mean she precisely liked jumping at his every beck and call.
She was rescued from having to answer, however, by Coulson clearing his throat. “I would hold off, sir,” he said. Every muscle in Natasha’s body tensed; she recognized his body language as signaling approaching trouble. Indeed, he was peering out the window. “Talk of the devil,” Coulson said.
Natasha looked toward the window and agreed. She needed only a single look at the mast of the approaching ship to rise to her feet. It had been three years since she had laid eyes on it, but she knew that ship like she knew her bones.
Beside her, Bruce’s fist tightened around the fork. “Stark or Rogers?” he asked Natasha in an undertone.
Natasha wished she had Clint’s eyes. After a second of squinting, though, she could make out the red and gold flag flying from the ship’s topmast. “Stark,” she said. Steve’s flag was red, white, and blue. Stark preferred the blazing yellow and red. “Could he have heard?”
“This soon?”
“Hm,” Natasha said, and without waiting to be dismissed, strode out of the Violet Herald. It would take the Angel a good while to arrive at the dock, so she didn’t bother to take the faster route through Tortuga. Walking through a deserted landscape when there should have been bustling crowds about made her shoulder blades prickle.
Bruce followed, once more not saying a word. Two days in each other’s company had brought on the same comfortable silence from serving aboard the ship together. From the way he was looking about the abandoned shop and home windows, though, she could tell he was just as unnerved by everything as she was.
She hoped he kept calm.
By the time they reached the dock, the Angel was close enough that the stevedores left had gathered about, ready to grab the lines. From this distance, she could see the bright red coat of the man standing at the rudder-which complemented the pale gold dress of the woman standing beside him. Had they planned it?
Natasha wouldn’t put it beyond Sir Anthony Stark.
He swept off his cap-a trifle awkwardly, as he was using his left hand-as the ship nudged up to the dock. “Ho, there, my fellow Avengers!”
“Tony,” Banner said, sounding both amused and exasperated in a way that only Tony Stark could produce. “There’s trouble, so of course you would show your face. Lady Potts.” He made a short bow to the red-headed woman Stark helped up the gangplank.
She curtsied back. “Please, Bruce, you know it’s Pepper. And Natasha. You look well.”
“Thank you, Lady Potts.”
No correction of the name there, Natasha thought when Pepper gave her a reserved smile. There wouldn’t be. Even serving alongside each other on the Angel for two years couldn’t quite clear the deception from their history. Natasha almost preferred it that way. It was simply better to be an unquantifiable notion.
Stark looked her up and down, suspiciously. It seemed their time apart had aged him slightly-there was gray flecking at his temples and lines on his face that could be sun or age-but it had also made him more comfortable with his arm and leg. He’d obviously had his jacket tailored to hide the iron arm brace that extended from his right shoulder and supported the useless limb. The iron calf and foot he’d built in captivity were well hidden by a boot that shone like a mirror.
“Romanova,” he said after a minute. “Taken out any armies lately?”
“Stark. Sunk any ships lately?” Natasha said.
Stark turned to look at the burning ruins of Tortuga. “Your work, I assume?”
“You flatter me.”
“It’s Loki’s handiwork,” Banner said, and Pepper and Stark looked at him, sharply. “Natasha and I only just arrived. We’ve been tracking smoke since dawn.”
“That certainly explains your garb,” Stark said, his eyes lingering on Natasha’s trousers. “What do you mean, Loki did this?”
“Ah, Stark.” Coulson had approached silently; though Natasha had spotted him coming, Stark still jumped and gave the man a peevish look. “Should have known that if there was trouble, you wouldn’t be far behind.”
Natasha cleared her throat. “Phillip can inform you of the day’s happening far better than we can, considering that he was present for them. Is your business here urgent?”
“Nothing that won’t keep for a few hours.” Stark waved an absent hand.
That was enough for Natasha. She turned to Coulson. “Phillip-”
“He’s being held at the Academy,” Coulson said, jerking his head.
Natasha slipped away.
Lady Grey, posted at the door of the Academy O’ Rum with a blunderbuss, let her pass with a nod. She ignored the inordinately hairy man drinking at the bar and slipped straight into the back rooms. They were usually used for pleasure, but today, Red-Eye Summers and Drake the Iceman were standing guard at one of the doors. Summers gave her a frown.
“I’m here at Fury’s behest,” Natasha lied.
“Fury’s already sent somebody to talk to him.”
“And now he’s sent me, too.”
With a sigh, Summers opened the door and gestured as sarcastically as it was possible to do. Natasha gave him an equally sarcastic curtsy in reply and made her way inside. It was dark, as was always the case with No Legs Charlie’s back rooms, but it was also lush enough for how most people used the room. The dark-skinned man sitting-cowering, more like-in the corner, however, had no business being in a room like that.
Perhaps he’d heard tell of a red-headed woman that wore trousers in the service of Nicholas Fury, for he took one look at her and scrambled backward on the cot until his back was flush against the wall. Prayers and curses tumbled from his lips so rapidly that it took her a moment to understand that he was speaking in French.
Since that language was easier than English, she didn’t mind. “Calm yourself,” she told him, taking in the sodden bandage on his shoulder. “I am here to cause you no harm.”
“They told me you are-you are witch!” Though she’d spoken French, the man’s voice came out in broken English. “You are Fury’s witch!”
“My reputation precedes me, I see,” Natasha said, mostly under her breath. She made a point of sitting down in the room’s only chair, attempting to look as unassuming and harmless as possible. Given her diminutive height, it wasn’t difficult. “I only want information on the man they call Loki. No harm will befall you.”
“Witch!” The man kept praying. “Widow Witch.”
Natasha sighed. Sometimes, her rather remarkable hair color worked against her. Red hair wasn’t too commonly seen around these parts, even with the henna dyes that had been brought into the islands in the cargo holds of enterprising profiteers. Word of what had happened that night on the Ferrous, of what she in particular had done, had spread so far and wide that even this man had heard tell of her.
So she dropped the appearance of seeming harmless, shedding it like a cloak she had tired of. “Yes,” she said in French. “Witch. Scary witch. I shall curse your entire family unless you tell me everything I want to know.”
The man looked at her with terrified eyes. “Please-please-my family, they have done nothing-”
“Then you had best tell me everything you know about the man they call Loki.”
“If-if I tell you, my family-”
“Will live to fish another day,” Natasha said, giving him a scowl that had once made a ship captain wet himself and jump overboard. “Provided I find what stories you have to tell me good enough to ensure their safety.”
Stories began to pour from the man, almost too fast for her to comprehend. He had been a fisherman on an island not far from Jamaica. He had been recruited from a pub to work aboard a cargo ship. At first, it had been voluntary, but the dark haired stranger with an odd accent and a glowing blue scepter had touched his shoulder, and the man had lost all cares about his family, his health, and even his safety. He had cared only about the work. There had been others like him, others that served the strange man called Loki. It had been freeing in its own way, but he had lost more and more time, the man said, until he woke up in Tortuga with no memory of how he had come to be there.
“How many days hence is your last memory?”
“I know not, Widow Witch.”
That was worrying, Natasha thought. By prodding him with questions, she was able to figure out how long it had taken for the memories to become slippery. They really did not have long, Natasha thought, to retrieve Clint.
“Your shoulder,” she said, once she’d extracted as much information as she was going to get. “Let me see it.”
“Touch me not!”
“You have a daughter, do you not?” Natasha asked.
The man’s eyes widened. He crossed himself and spit on the floor.
“Surely you wouldn’t like any harm to befall her,” Natasha said once that little display had finished. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that it had been nothing but a calculated guess: the man’s desperation spoke of sons that were either too young to provide for the family, or daughters.
“You are evil.”
“Yes,” Natasha said, and she meant it. “I am aware.”
The man glared at her, body angled antagonistically toward her as he reached up with a shaking hand and pulled the bandages away from his shoulder. Natasha didn’t react to the state of the wound that lay beneath. She’d treated far more serious wounds than this on her own person, and had certainly caused much worse with one of her throwing knives alone. So she rose to her feet to get a better look at the wound, giving him an unimpressed look when he flinched away.
The faint tattoo she saw inked on his skin was not one she had ever seen before. The man had been cut with something dull enough to rip the skin rather than slicing sharply. The cut sliced the tattoo in two. The fact that the ink was a bright, unmistakable blue did not pass her notice.
“I shall send somebody in here with fresh bandages,” Natasha said, turning toward the door.
“My daughter?” the man asked.
“I was never any harm to her. You might want to study your witches in greater detail, fisherman. There are fewer of them than you think.” Natasha banged twice on the door to be let out. She left word with Iceman that the man needed medical care.
The tattoo was an interesting development. Had Coulson noted its importance?
She didn’t get a chance to ask, for she found Stark waiting for her outside. “Nice day,” he said, “if you can ignore the smoke. And the quiet.”
“What do you want, Stark?”
“I used to wonder what this place would be like when quiet, but I just find it spooky. Where’s your partner?”
“Phillip told you what happened to Tortuga. Make your own assumption.”
“I have, which explains the sourpuss look on one la Romanova when I arrived. I assume you’ll be going after your other half the minute you can get your hands on a seaworthy ship?”
Natasha eyed him. “And just how seaworthy is the Angel these days? I see the new masts. Your work, I assume.”
“Some of my finest work, if you must know.” Tony’s mechanical hand whirred as he brushed a mote of dust on the shoulder of his coat. “As it happens, Fury’s already asked us to go track down the villain now known as Loki, Count of Jotunheim, and retrieve his men as safely as we can.”
“And you said?”
“I would be glad to.” Stark’s teeth flashed when he smiled. There was nothing humorous about the look, however. “But I need a favor first. That was actually why the Lady Potts and myself were traveling to Tortuga. Our arrival here today was merely a coincidence.”
Natasha eyed him warily. “And what favor is this that you need, Stark?”
“See those two women?” Stark pointed toward the dock, where some of the dockhands were gathered around two women in fine dresses. The dresses at least looked to be the latest fashions to have arrived from Paris to Natasha’s discerning eye. Both of the women were Anglican but dark-haired. She recognized neither. “The one in the green dress has hired the services of yours truly. She required somebody to find her erstwhile fiance.”
Natasha frowned, tilting her head to the side. “You never struck me as a bounty hunter.”
“I am a man of many talents, Red. Perhaps I should explain further, though. The woman in the green dress is one Miss Jane Foster.”
It clicked into place. “Thor’s missing?” Natasha asked. “Loki-”
“As far as I know, our Norwegian duke isn’t suffering from the same malady as your-what are you and Barton, anyway? Lovers? Imitable partners that glare at everything and pretend to be superior? I can never tell.” Stark glanced at her deadpan expression and shrugged to himself. “We can revisit this subject later. At any rate, I suspect that if Thor had been mentally enslaved by his brother, a wayward Tortugan or two last night would have noticed a giant blond behemoth among the attackers, armed with a giant hammer. Besides…”
He pulled a scroll from inside the jacket, the gears in his iron brace clicking and whirring together. Natasha kept her revulsion with the technology contained as she took the scroll from him.
She forgot all about it the minute she slipped the ribbon from the scroll and unrolled it. It wasn’t much inside: a simple drawing, done with a deft hand on parchment. There was no mistaking the features of the two men on its surface. They appeared to be asleep in separate glass boxes.
“That is Thor, yes. Nobody’s seen him over a year. And St-Rogers?” she asked. “What is this? Who drew it?”
“An actual bounty hunter, as you’re correct in assuming I’ve not had a change in occupation. He says the island where he saw the men encased in strange, cold, clear coffins is not far from here. He also claimed that he barely escaped with his life.” Stark sobered for a minute. “I think there’s trouble afoot. Are you in?”
“Yes,” Natasha said without needing to think about it.
“Good. We sail with the tide.”