Fanfic: Avengers / Leverage Crossover (Part Three)
Thieves, Spies, and Accidental Allies Masterpost
Pepper watched the struggle between Tony and Natasha with both exasperation and amusement. She knew she probably should have told Tony that she called Natasha when he went back to look at the hacker's program after he couldn't sleep... but he was in one of his weird head spaces, and quite frankly, this was more fun.
"Pepper, what?" he asked her, when the three of them exited the room and closed the door. "You had to get SHIELD involved? He hasn't done anything yet, and this is definitely not SHIELD's type of problem -"
"I called her only to see if she knew anything about -"
"And out of all the SHIELD people, you called in Agent Romanov -"
"I just called for an opinion -"
"Aren't her qualifications a bit high for a hacker -"
"HEY!" Natasha shouted out, and the other two fell silent. "Pepper asked for my opinion and I gave it to her, and then decided to come and check it out for myself. Now, how well do you know them?"
Pepper answered. "We just met Mason yesterday, but we've worked with Cassandra off and on for years. She's got a great reputation, and comes very highly recommended." She paused, and felt almost like she had to defend the people she’d invited into the tower. "Cassandra and I have become friends. I had no reason to distrust her, and she may not even know what Mason has -"
"She knows." Pepper felt shock at Natasha's proclamation, and Natasha continued. "But she's good. Very good. Definitely a pro, but a professional what I'm not sure."
Tony had been silent for a while, and she turned to him for support. "Tony -"
"It's true. I can't believe I didn't put it together before. Of course..." and in typical Tony fashion, he started walking away, his mind moving a million miles a minute, and he didn't stop to let anyone else in.
Pepper and Natasha share a single look before chasing after him. "Tony, what are you talking about?"
"Before I switched to Paladium. I wanted to give away all my art, and I did, I gave away most of it."
"I know, Tony, I handled the charities, I even sold some of them through Cassandra."
"Yes, but not all of them, and I became CEO again before you finished." They rounded another corner and went into his office, where there were still a number of very beautiful, very expensive paintings still lining the room. "A bunch of the paintings came back. They were forgeries."
Natasha for once looked surprised, but Pepper was not. "Tony, back when you were still making weapons you had a bunch of con artists come through here, and you let them. You enjoyed it."
Tony shrugged. "It was fun. I usually threw them out before they could steal anything valuable."
"Look around, Tony! You don't think these are valuable?"
"Well, I'm sure they were valuable..."
Natasha finally joined back in, shutting down their argument. "If she's an art thief, then she already knows that you've given away all the valuable pieces. She's after something else, and she's had to get outside help. If she hired a hacker, then she wants something that's on the network. If she's as good as I think she is, she may have been hired by a third party, for a very large payout. She may not even know what she's been hired to steal, or its worth."
Pepper's head swivelled to Tony, who was now absently scratching his temple. "Tony, please tell me that -"
"No. All of the arc reactor and weapons technology is partitioned from the labs and business side of Stark Industries."
"That's not what she's worried about and you know it," Natasha said, and even Pepper was unnerved by the unnamed threat her in tone.
"Iron Man and all the Avengers Initiative information - it's all inaccessible. The servers aren't connected to each other, and the superhero data is all on an internal network, only accessible through certain very controlled workstations. They'll have no access to it."
Natasha opened her mouth and closed it again, but Pepper wouldn't let her get away with it. Besides, this was Natasha. She didn't let a vulnerability show unless she wanted it to.
"Natasha..." Pepper prompted.
She sighed. "It might be SHIELD. They might have hired a third party to do surveillance."
Tony smirked. "Oh, like you surveilled me?" And despite the seriousness of the situation, he got sidetracked. "Surveilled? Surveyed? Seriously, what's the past tense of that word?"
Natasha didn't look amused. "I only had you under surveillance -"
"Ah."
"-because we were afraid what you might do with your technology when you thought you were dying. Turns out, it was the right decision. And this is far more likely to be someone who is just after the Iron Man technology again, which you opened yourself up to."
Natasha and Tony glared at each other in a contest of wills, but Pepper was still concerned about the subject at hand and ignored their posturing. "So what do we do about them? Whether it's SHIELD or an art thief, their intentions are less than genuine. Should we kick them out?"
For once Tony looked at her like he didn't know, and they both swivelled back to Natasha. "Let them keep going. If your files are secure, then that's enough for now. Let them continue. Keep Bruce and Jarvis on them, and we will just have to be ready when they make their move."
Pepper was still concerned. "But what if they find what they're looking for?"
Natasha's voice was cold and calculating. "Then we'll catch them stealing it. And then we'll go after or confront the person or group that hired them to get it." She paused, and Pepper saw her lips turn a little, and she almost missed the ghost of smile. "We'll figure it out, Pepper."
"We?" she repeated, and this time Natasha's smile wasn't so much of a ghost.
"Don't let them know we're onto them. Cassandra is already suspicious of me so I'll be discreet, but I'll send in reinforcements." And with a quick nod at each of them, she moved out of the office faster than either could have matched, and she was gone.
Pepper and Tony exchanged looks, somewhat stunned by the turn of events, but also strangely excited. "So, Ms. Potts. Are you interested in spying on our new guests?"
She just shook her head.
***
Cassandra and Mason had been on site for a week now, though Natasha hadn't been able to check in with anyone since that first day. All reports from Banner said that they were smart, conscientious people that took pride in their work.
Mason was very smart and knew a lot about what he was talking about, even being boastful - if a little surprised - about some their accomplishments in the lab, and Cassandra managed him. She kept him and Bruce on task and relevant to the overall goal when they started to spiral into the more... well, the stuff that she didn't quite understand, nor did she have any desire to.
She was staring at the laptop screen, scanning through some security feeds of the two when she felt a brief breeze and heard a soft foot fall from behind her. Seeing the room's only door in front of her and the knowing the pattern of the steps, she wasn't at all surprised when Clint's soft breath went by her cheek as he stuck his head over her shoulder. "They still bugging you?"
She shifted away from him, shutting the computer as she went, and turning to face him. "You look tired."
"It was a rough mission," he said briefly as they stared at each other in their constant game of wills. "I like when you're dressed as the lawyer." She raised an eyebrow and he turned a corner of his mouth into a smile, content to lose that game, before sliding over to where she was sitting and reopening the laptop, Cassandra, Mason, and Bruce's images coming back up on the screen. "So, what's happening?"
She sat back next to him and gave him a rundown of what they knew so far, which wasn't much. There were the art thefts and the unauthorized software, but that was all they had. It didn't help that Pepper and Tony had been working on the rebuilding efforts all week and didn't have much time to devote to the mystery. That was why she had come back to it.
Clint was still as he watched the three of them move around the lab. "Do you think they have any idea who they're working with?"
"I don't know. But the woman is good at reading people. I saw her warning bells go off as soon as she met me."
Clint looked impressed, but then turned back to the screen. "Well, they're packing up for the day. Want to see where they go?"
Natasha gave him the once over. He was still dressed in his SHIELD uniform, complete with armguard and soft boots. His empty quiver and a duffle lay by his feet, and she picked up his duffle and threw it at him. "You have two minutes to change. Don’t stand out."
When he caught the bag he let out an oomph, but she knew he was just doing it for show. She cracked a smile but raised her eyebrow again all the same, and broke into a full smile when he retreated to the washroom to clean up, looking slightly abashed.
***
Five minutes later he was dressed business casual to match the lawyer persona, and they each had matching messenger bags full of whatever spy equipment Natasha had managed to get over the past few minutes. However, it was her, so he wouldn't have been surprised if they could live on the run with the bags for months. He briefly peered into his, and was slapped on the hand for his curiosity. It was probably for the best, knowing the kinds of dangerous equipment that Nat regularly brought with her. Still, he liked the way her brow furrowed just the tiniest bit when he was annoying her.
They arrived in the lobby just in time to see Cassandra and Mason leave by the front doors, and they easily followed, staying back quite a distance and not drawing any attention to themselves. They hung back when the others slowed down; they ducked into a coffee shop when Mason pulled out a phone and they turned to face each other. They stuck to the other side of the street when it suited them better.
"Anything?" Clint finally mumbled to Nat, not wanting to distract her before then, but still not knowing what he was looking for.
He felt Natasha shrug beside him. "Cassandra touches the hair on her right side a lot, by her ear, but..."
When she trailed off he followed her gaze to the new person in their little party: a skinny blond girl that looked about Mason's age. "Girlfriend?" Clint said, and sure enough Mason tucked his arm around her before they ducked into a usually very busy and high end hotel that had been seriously degraded after the attacks.
They both immediately stopped and while Clint immediately turned his gaze skyward, Natasha pulled out a small laptop computer. "They didn't hide where they were staying. I got the blue prints to the hotel this morning in case we needed them, and I found out from a staff member that they've got a block of rooms booked on the east side..." and then she gazed upwards too.
"There," he pointed to the building with the best shot. "You got a floor number?"
He let Natasha take the lead and soon they were inside an office building and peering over the street and into the window of a hotel room that looked... well, not very much like a hotel room anymore. As she assembled something from her bag, he pulled out the scope he had tucked into a holster on his belt. The room had been done up like a war room, with large white boards and he could just see the edge of what he believed to be an array of TVs against the perpendicular wall.
He heard the very faint whirring sound of something electrical being started up and was only slightly surprised to Natasha assembling a parabolic microphone and cables that hooked back into the small laptop. He turned back to the room while she continued to assemble her equipment. From what he could see, Cassandra, Mason, and the new blonde girl met a fourth man in the room. He looked bit older than Cassandra and was tall and lanky, but Clint had never seen him before.
The man started talking once the four of them got in the room and settled, all facing the screens that were just out of view. He swore under his breath. If only he could get a better angle...
Just then the microphone started working and the unknown man's voice came out clearly from the laptop speakers. "So we're nowhere?"
"Well," Mason said, holding a small keyboard. "We do know quite a bit about the material properties of the alien skeletons, but..."
"I thought you had connections, Sophie. That once you were in this would be easy."
Clint's focus in the binoculars followed the question to the blonde, but he was startled to hear Cassandra answer. "Nate," she whined, and managed to make his name into two syllables. "We've been stuck in the lab the entire week. And other than Dr. Banner and the security people that escort us to and from the lab, we haven't interacted with anyone else since the first day."
"And you haven't seen the lawyer again? The one that you -"
"The one that I said was not a lawyer? No. We haven't seen her again, and quite frankly I'm okay with that."
The man that they now knew was named Nate turned to Mason. "Hardison, still nothing?"
"Nah, man. I mean, I got a map of where the drives are located, but there is no sensitive data on that network. If we want to get what we need, we need to hard wire in from somewhere that we don't have access to. And the Doc's with us all the time. I think it's time for Parker."
Nate nodded and the blonde girl looked gleeful, and Clint turned to Natasha. "Sophie? Hardison? Who are these people?"
Natasha shrugged and then tuned back into the room as Hardison / Mason started talking again. "What about you, Nate? You and El find anything in Harlem?"
For the first time he and Nat realized there was a fifth person in the room as the other four turned and glanced the person that would have been the against the wall, beside the window. The microphone barely picked up the soft voice, but he and Natasha froze.
It was almost like the feeling that he associated with the moment right before Thor swung his hammer where the air felt charged and you knew something big was coming. Half the words were indistinguishable but the voice and cadence were unmistakable - and when the long haired man came into view, there was no doubt that whatever these people were up to was not going to be good.
He couldn't tear his eyes away from the man that was saying something about a university, and he couldn't even concentrate on the words. Instead, his entire focus was set on the man that should have been dead, or in jail, or been paying in some other way for his many sins. It was finally Natasha that spoke and broke him from his spell, with the simple admission that she had seen the same thing he did. "Eliot Spencer. Well I'll be damned."
***
( Part Four. )
Pepper watched the struggle between Tony and Natasha with both exasperation and amusement. She knew she probably should have told Tony that she called Natasha when he went back to look at the hacker's program after he couldn't sleep... but he was in one of his weird head spaces, and quite frankly, this was more fun.
"Pepper, what?" he asked her, when the three of them exited the room and closed the door. "You had to get SHIELD involved? He hasn't done anything yet, and this is definitely not SHIELD's type of problem -"
"I called her only to see if she knew anything about -"
"And out of all the SHIELD people, you called in Agent Romanov -"
"I just called for an opinion -"
"Aren't her qualifications a bit high for a hacker -"
"HEY!" Natasha shouted out, and the other two fell silent. "Pepper asked for my opinion and I gave it to her, and then decided to come and check it out for myself. Now, how well do you know them?"
Pepper answered. "We just met Mason yesterday, but we've worked with Cassandra off and on for years. She's got a great reputation, and comes very highly recommended." She paused, and felt almost like she had to defend the people she’d invited into the tower. "Cassandra and I have become friends. I had no reason to distrust her, and she may not even know what Mason has -"
"She knows." Pepper felt shock at Natasha's proclamation, and Natasha continued. "But she's good. Very good. Definitely a pro, but a professional what I'm not sure."
Tony had been silent for a while, and she turned to him for support. "Tony -"
"It's true. I can't believe I didn't put it together before. Of course..." and in typical Tony fashion, he started walking away, his mind moving a million miles a minute, and he didn't stop to let anyone else in.
Pepper and Natasha share a single look before chasing after him. "Tony, what are you talking about?"
"Before I switched to Paladium. I wanted to give away all my art, and I did, I gave away most of it."
"I know, Tony, I handled the charities, I even sold some of them through Cassandra."
"Yes, but not all of them, and I became CEO again before you finished." They rounded another corner and went into his office, where there were still a number of very beautiful, very expensive paintings still lining the room. "A bunch of the paintings came back. They were forgeries."
Natasha for once looked surprised, but Pepper was not. "Tony, back when you were still making weapons you had a bunch of con artists come through here, and you let them. You enjoyed it."
Tony shrugged. "It was fun. I usually threw them out before they could steal anything valuable."
"Look around, Tony! You don't think these are valuable?"
"Well, I'm sure they were valuable..."
Natasha finally joined back in, shutting down their argument. "If she's an art thief, then she already knows that you've given away all the valuable pieces. She's after something else, and she's had to get outside help. If she hired a hacker, then she wants something that's on the network. If she's as good as I think she is, she may have been hired by a third party, for a very large payout. She may not even know what she's been hired to steal, or its worth."
Pepper's head swivelled to Tony, who was now absently scratching his temple. "Tony, please tell me that -"
"No. All of the arc reactor and weapons technology is partitioned from the labs and business side of Stark Industries."
"That's not what she's worried about and you know it," Natasha said, and even Pepper was unnerved by the unnamed threat her in tone.
"Iron Man and all the Avengers Initiative information - it's all inaccessible. The servers aren't connected to each other, and the superhero data is all on an internal network, only accessible through certain very controlled workstations. They'll have no access to it."
Natasha opened her mouth and closed it again, but Pepper wouldn't let her get away with it. Besides, this was Natasha. She didn't let a vulnerability show unless she wanted it to.
"Natasha..." Pepper prompted.
She sighed. "It might be SHIELD. They might have hired a third party to do surveillance."
Tony smirked. "Oh, like you surveilled me?" And despite the seriousness of the situation, he got sidetracked. "Surveilled? Surveyed? Seriously, what's the past tense of that word?"
Natasha didn't look amused. "I only had you under surveillance -"
"Ah."
"-because we were afraid what you might do with your technology when you thought you were dying. Turns out, it was the right decision. And this is far more likely to be someone who is just after the Iron Man technology again, which you opened yourself up to."
Natasha and Tony glared at each other in a contest of wills, but Pepper was still concerned about the subject at hand and ignored their posturing. "So what do we do about them? Whether it's SHIELD or an art thief, their intentions are less than genuine. Should we kick them out?"
For once Tony looked at her like he didn't know, and they both swivelled back to Natasha. "Let them keep going. If your files are secure, then that's enough for now. Let them continue. Keep Bruce and Jarvis on them, and we will just have to be ready when they make their move."
Pepper was still concerned. "But what if they find what they're looking for?"
Natasha's voice was cold and calculating. "Then we'll catch them stealing it. And then we'll go after or confront the person or group that hired them to get it." She paused, and Pepper saw her lips turn a little, and she almost missed the ghost of smile. "We'll figure it out, Pepper."
"We?" she repeated, and this time Natasha's smile wasn't so much of a ghost.
"Don't let them know we're onto them. Cassandra is already suspicious of me so I'll be discreet, but I'll send in reinforcements." And with a quick nod at each of them, she moved out of the office faster than either could have matched, and she was gone.
Pepper and Tony exchanged looks, somewhat stunned by the turn of events, but also strangely excited. "So, Ms. Potts. Are you interested in spying on our new guests?"
She just shook her head.
***
Cassandra and Mason had been on site for a week now, though Natasha hadn't been able to check in with anyone since that first day. All reports from Banner said that they were smart, conscientious people that took pride in their work.
Mason was very smart and knew a lot about what he was talking about, even being boastful - if a little surprised - about some their accomplishments in the lab, and Cassandra managed him. She kept him and Bruce on task and relevant to the overall goal when they started to spiral into the more... well, the stuff that she didn't quite understand, nor did she have any desire to.
She was staring at the laptop screen, scanning through some security feeds of the two when she felt a brief breeze and heard a soft foot fall from behind her. Seeing the room's only door in front of her and the knowing the pattern of the steps, she wasn't at all surprised when Clint's soft breath went by her cheek as he stuck his head over her shoulder. "They still bugging you?"
She shifted away from him, shutting the computer as she went, and turning to face him. "You look tired."
"It was a rough mission," he said briefly as they stared at each other in their constant game of wills. "I like when you're dressed as the lawyer." She raised an eyebrow and he turned a corner of his mouth into a smile, content to lose that game, before sliding over to where she was sitting and reopening the laptop, Cassandra, Mason, and Bruce's images coming back up on the screen. "So, what's happening?"
She sat back next to him and gave him a rundown of what they knew so far, which wasn't much. There were the art thefts and the unauthorized software, but that was all they had. It didn't help that Pepper and Tony had been working on the rebuilding efforts all week and didn't have much time to devote to the mystery. That was why she had come back to it.
Clint was still as he watched the three of them move around the lab. "Do you think they have any idea who they're working with?"
"I don't know. But the woman is good at reading people. I saw her warning bells go off as soon as she met me."
Clint looked impressed, but then turned back to the screen. "Well, they're packing up for the day. Want to see where they go?"
Natasha gave him the once over. He was still dressed in his SHIELD uniform, complete with armguard and soft boots. His empty quiver and a duffle lay by his feet, and she picked up his duffle and threw it at him. "You have two minutes to change. Don’t stand out."
When he caught the bag he let out an oomph, but she knew he was just doing it for show. She cracked a smile but raised her eyebrow again all the same, and broke into a full smile when he retreated to the washroom to clean up, looking slightly abashed.
***
Five minutes later he was dressed business casual to match the lawyer persona, and they each had matching messenger bags full of whatever spy equipment Natasha had managed to get over the past few minutes. However, it was her, so he wouldn't have been surprised if they could live on the run with the bags for months. He briefly peered into his, and was slapped on the hand for his curiosity. It was probably for the best, knowing the kinds of dangerous equipment that Nat regularly brought with her. Still, he liked the way her brow furrowed just the tiniest bit when he was annoying her.
They arrived in the lobby just in time to see Cassandra and Mason leave by the front doors, and they easily followed, staying back quite a distance and not drawing any attention to themselves. They hung back when the others slowed down; they ducked into a coffee shop when Mason pulled out a phone and they turned to face each other. They stuck to the other side of the street when it suited them better.
"Anything?" Clint finally mumbled to Nat, not wanting to distract her before then, but still not knowing what he was looking for.
He felt Natasha shrug beside him. "Cassandra touches the hair on her right side a lot, by her ear, but..."
When she trailed off he followed her gaze to the new person in their little party: a skinny blond girl that looked about Mason's age. "Girlfriend?" Clint said, and sure enough Mason tucked his arm around her before they ducked into a usually very busy and high end hotel that had been seriously degraded after the attacks.
They both immediately stopped and while Clint immediately turned his gaze skyward, Natasha pulled out a small laptop computer. "They didn't hide where they were staying. I got the blue prints to the hotel this morning in case we needed them, and I found out from a staff member that they've got a block of rooms booked on the east side..." and then she gazed upwards too.
"There," he pointed to the building with the best shot. "You got a floor number?"
He let Natasha take the lead and soon they were inside an office building and peering over the street and into the window of a hotel room that looked... well, not very much like a hotel room anymore. As she assembled something from her bag, he pulled out the scope he had tucked into a holster on his belt. The room had been done up like a war room, with large white boards and he could just see the edge of what he believed to be an array of TVs against the perpendicular wall.
He heard the very faint whirring sound of something electrical being started up and was only slightly surprised to Natasha assembling a parabolic microphone and cables that hooked back into the small laptop. He turned back to the room while she continued to assemble her equipment. From what he could see, Cassandra, Mason, and the new blonde girl met a fourth man in the room. He looked bit older than Cassandra and was tall and lanky, but Clint had never seen him before.
The man started talking once the four of them got in the room and settled, all facing the screens that were just out of view. He swore under his breath. If only he could get a better angle...
Just then the microphone started working and the unknown man's voice came out clearly from the laptop speakers. "So we're nowhere?"
"Well," Mason said, holding a small keyboard. "We do know quite a bit about the material properties of the alien skeletons, but..."
"I thought you had connections, Sophie. That once you were in this would be easy."
Clint's focus in the binoculars followed the question to the blonde, but he was startled to hear Cassandra answer. "Nate," she whined, and managed to make his name into two syllables. "We've been stuck in the lab the entire week. And other than Dr. Banner and the security people that escort us to and from the lab, we haven't interacted with anyone else since the first day."
"And you haven't seen the lawyer again? The one that you -"
"The one that I said was not a lawyer? No. We haven't seen her again, and quite frankly I'm okay with that."
The man that they now knew was named Nate turned to Mason. "Hardison, still nothing?"
"Nah, man. I mean, I got a map of where the drives are located, but there is no sensitive data on that network. If we want to get what we need, we need to hard wire in from somewhere that we don't have access to. And the Doc's with us all the time. I think it's time for Parker."
Nate nodded and the blonde girl looked gleeful, and Clint turned to Natasha. "Sophie? Hardison? Who are these people?"
Natasha shrugged and then tuned back into the room as Hardison / Mason started talking again. "What about you, Nate? You and El find anything in Harlem?"
For the first time he and Nat realized there was a fifth person in the room as the other four turned and glanced the person that would have been the against the wall, beside the window. The microphone barely picked up the soft voice, but he and Natasha froze.
It was almost like the feeling that he associated with the moment right before Thor swung his hammer where the air felt charged and you knew something big was coming. Half the words were indistinguishable but the voice and cadence were unmistakable - and when the long haired man came into view, there was no doubt that whatever these people were up to was not going to be good.
He couldn't tear his eyes away from the man that was saying something about a university, and he couldn't even concentrate on the words. Instead, his entire focus was set on the man that should have been dead, or in jail, or been paying in some other way for his many sins. It was finally Natasha that spoke and broke him from his spell, with the simple admission that she had seen the same thing he did. "Eliot Spencer. Well I'll be damned."
***
( Part Four. )