mission reports| S.H.I.E.L.D. Records

origins pt. 1

...

IN HINDSIGHT, Irina Barton Romanova should have realized she'd made for some pretty easy petty thief bait the second she had entered into the notorious petty-thief territory that was Hell's Kitchen.

Let her explain that like a reckless idiot, she—

1. Had worn both earbuds in Manhattan of all places—blasting, ironically enough, AC/DC's "Highway To Hell". A coincidence she'd blame on her brother's curating of her already perfect playlist.

2. Walked down a crammed alley, all by herself just after the five o'clock sun became nonexistent and the bright autumn sky had faded into the darker blue of the later evening just before the streetlights and honestly all the damn smoke in the city turned it into a horrible brown-orange.

3. Wore a bone-white ribbed knitted dress with a long, tawny suede peacoat and black velvet thigh-high heeled boots that amounted to more than eight hundred dollars. Never mind the expensive perfume too, for what other fragrance could make her more than a walking billboard saying "I have money in my purse!" than fucking Chanel No. 5.

    Hell, she would have tried to rob herself if she wasn't already draining out six-months worth of S.H.I.E.L.D. 's budgetary reserves after one of their black cards miraculously found its way inside her hand one random afternoon some weeks ago.

It served Fury right, honestly—wasting her talents on a simple stakeout mission against AIM of all organizations. She'd spend most of her two weeks in New York frozen half to death on a roof taking account of their standard patterns and schedules before her ten hour shift was up and Agent Howell took over with his binoculars, toothy grin, and access to a comfortable, warm apartment just within sight of the warehouse.

Coulson had explained it had just hit the market, but she knew that was code for: Fury still needed to punish her for letting her brother nearly kill William Kane Jr. in the middle of the training room. Irina would have been more offended if she hadn't narrowly avoided getting desk duty (unlike her brother and their newest partner-in-crime, the ever-elusive Anastasia Baitscheva, who her little brother spent half of the day mooning over, and the other half pinning after) thanks to Coulson's need for a spotter in the "newest" mission that had apparently been lost in the nonexistent mess of his desk. The job was easy, incredibly, mind-numbing, she-would-rather-attend-a-seminar-on-how-violence-in-the-workplace-was-inexcusable type of easy—clock in at the early morning, take notes, stay out of sight, clock out just before 4, report to HQ. No fighting, no shooting, no interactions with anyone but the few pigeons that had gotten used to her presence on the cold roofs.

It was a punishment, there was absolutely no way it wasn't some sort of punishment for immediately claiming ignorance in her brother's—what was the word HR had used? Altercation? Ridiculous—and getting away with it in the end. It wasn't her fault that technically, and fortunately for Billy's remaining teeth, she had been on the other side of the open training gym kicking Agent Rocio's ass. It had happened too quickly for her to get there in time (and assist her brother, a fact she pointedly avoided bringing up when HR drilled them hours later), but she had heard the punch, hell she was sure Fury heard it from upstairs and that's how he tracked them down so fast. It wasn't necessary out of the ordinary for Matty to lose his temper, though for others she knew it would certainly look out of the ordinary—he was colder, more controlled and still than she ever was in the public eye, every action thought out, every thought led by reason and cut-throat logic.

But she knew her little brother, she knew him as well as she knew her shadow, and while the blank-faced expression hid it well, there wasn't much of a glacier beneath his skin. Just a good, old-fashioned forest fire he kept under wraps—it made it easier to hide his actions under acts of thoughtless passions, made it easier to brush it aside as something rare that would surely not happen again and not the deliberate move it truly was. Billy might as well have lost his tooth the second he started speaking, but speaking about the absent Widow around Mat just after he had come back from a fight with his (not) a girlfriend and he was beating the shit out of everyone with his batons? It didn't just take balls, that would mean he had laid a hit on her brother—but it certainly took a stupid idiot.