Duty (An Armorer/Paladin Story)

The mission

A few days later we had a meeting to discuss the reliability of intelligence we'd collected and that was unofficially provided to us by the CIA and SHIELD (apparently back in business, who knew?) regarding Smith and the baddies who'd escaped us on the Yucatan mission. As we sifted data  and debated, Marketing tapped on the door and came in. As the words dried up, she smiled at Natasha, Wanda, and me and gushed a bit about the shoot for the Costume Institute and reminded us that we were going down to California next week to do the shoot for the Gemological Institute of America.

"Is this the other thing we agreed to do?" Wanda asked in confusion as Natasha and I looked at each other, puzzled.

"Yes, I wanted to fill in the details a little more," Marketing said cheerfully, avoiding looking at Steve.  "And there's also another inquiry that I wanted to present to you all. Vanity Fair contacted me. They're doing a story on the Avengers, with or without your input."

"So they want us to cooperate,"  Tony guessed, and Marketing nodded.

"It would be beneficial to let them have your side of the story, whatever their angle is," she said. "If you agree, they will also want photos, so please factor this into your deliberations."

So we deliberated. Tony is all about control, so he was in favor of cooperating, and I knew he'd get the lawyers on the contract immediately. Bucky, Wanda and Vision were not all that excited about the prospect, and the rest of us were on the fence. I think some of the guys were a little intrigued by the photo shoot that we ladies had done, and eventually we agreed to do it. It would have to be fit in around the op we were planning, though. Marketing nodded and Tony stepped outside with her to call the lawyers. 

The rest of us called a break and went to the caf for snacks. I was feeling much more cheerful as we returned to divide the tasks for the op. Natasha left on a fact-finding mission and got back just in time for the GIA assignment, again we donated the fee they'd proposed back to the institution, this time for educational purposes.

Once we got down there, we were given simple black dresses to wear, and Costuming had come up with one of the polymer masks that exposed my eyes, so I had to sit for makeup as well as hair. They put us against a black backdrop and the first thing was parures; we wore the tiara, necklace, and earrings from each. Wanda was given a glorious pink topaz set, Natasha the Queen of Sheba set, and I had a peridot set, thrilled to get away from blue sapphires. Then there were  necklaces; Natasha had an unusual Lalique piece, Wanda wore amethysts and turquoise from Cartier, and I was assigned a diamond, sapphire, and pearl necklace from Van Cleef and Arpels. And that was that; it had made me nervous to wear such valuable things. But they were so very beautiful and it had been fun to wear a tiara, if I'm honest. I kept that to myself, though, didn't want any teasing about thinking that I'm royalty. The pictures turned out fantastic; there were some candids as well as the composed shots.  The photographs from the Met shoot appeared on promotional materials for the exhibition and were generating some good buzz. Social media was largely approving.

The op took place in early October near Vienna. This op went a lot more smoothly than the one in Yucatan. No hurricanes, for one thing. The police weren't as nice to work with, though, and we had a jurisdictional wrangle over who got to keep Ballista. We did get to copy the drives of several computers before they arrived, so we had a lot of data to work with. Nobody was seriously hurt, on either side, so we were in a celebratory mood when we walked up the ramp of the quinjet.

We'd alerted Nick about our success right when we took care of the computers, so it was a surprise to find we had a message waiting. Vanity Fair  hoped that we could divert to France  before we left Europe so that we could do the photos  in a different setting. We agreed; we were in good moods from our success and also kind of wanted to get it over with. We had orders, expressly stated by PR and reinforced by Nick, since it was in the contract, that we were to behave ourselves and do everything that the photographer wanted.  We flew to Paris, spent the night at the Georges Cinq, and were picked up bright and early. They drove us out to Versailles.