Bird Set Free | Natasha Romanoff ✓

Chapter Eighteen

Natasha Romanoff sat on the couch in the newly formed Avengers Tower. The remaining Avengers had all converged in the tower and were in the middle of the often failed search for Loki's scepter. 

Many countries had been visited, yet many were a dead end. Since the fall of S. H. I. E. L. D. a little over a year ago, chaos had started but the Avengers still stayed together despite all the odds against them. 

"What's the matter, missing your favorite person?" Clint teased Natasha as he walked in. 

Natasha looked up giving Clint a small smile in return. "Sure, if that's what you want to call it."

It was true, Aquila was gone. No one had seen her in nearly a year. Natasha did know roughly what Aquila was doing, thanks to her own knowledge of the file Fury had given her but had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the contact details or what lead Aquila would have tried to follow.  

The team dynamic wasn't exactly the same minus Aquila but they had managed to work around it. 

She did know that Aquila would show up again eventually but  Natasha knew that it was important for her to take some time off from the Avengers and do something for herself for once. 

Especially with the newfound knowledge, she had found out last year about HYDRA being responsible for the attack on her tribe. The search she was currently on was almost vital to Aquila's mentality.

Because Natasha knew just as well as Aquila did, the setbacks that happened if you ran away from your past too long. 

Aquila Cadman cursed slightly under her breath as she dropped the keys to her still new apartment, the paint on the walls still smelled fresh, the bitter smell whirling around inside her nostrils. 

The apartment was an impulsive buy from the young owner who had just built it but was forced to run across the country to look after his dying mother, Aquila had found herself the new owner. 

Of course, it would be just as easy to spend her time in a motel room but with her stay a little under a year already, it was a lot less suspicious this way. 

Aquila had tried to stay behind, after the fall of S. H. I. E. L. D. everything was in chaos, but with the file Fury had given her, staring her down when she came home every day, it hadn't taken long for her to finally give in. 

She had felt bad at first, especially with the hunt for Loki's scepter already under way and it hadn't been exactly in her plan to leave behind Natasha Romanoff but it had just happened that way. 

The mere thoughts of survivors, people she used to know, sent shivers down her spine. But she had forced herself to thoroughly do her research before rushing into any rash decisions as she often had the tendency to do. 

Besides the file, Fury had given her wasn't exactly easy to follow, most of the information was jumbled up and hard to understand. If there were survivors, it was certainly likely that the Uzumati tribe would be doing everything in their power to stay hidden. 

Even what Aquila playfully referred to as her 'murder board' which stood proudly in the center of the room, boasting all of her research in the last year or so. Complete with pictures and string connecting the dots with thumb tacks holding them in place, it looked exactly like anything you would find on television and Aquila being a huge nerd herself and had often loved reading about true crime cases was quite proud of it. 

A stack of library books stood tall not too far away either. Even more, books eventually making their way out of Aquila's bag adding themselves onto the pile. 

There were definitely benefits after charming the librarian, the limit of books on her account didn't matter as long as they were returned in crisp condition. 

The sky outside had already begun to darken, sending shadows across the room, the days seemed to go so quickly nowadays. 

The evening wouldn't be vastly different from most of the other nights she had spent in the apartment. It was routine now, turning the kettle on and preparing a cup of noodles, seemingly the only thing she was surviving on before sitting down on the couch, reading through her research notes again and adding to them before eventually falling asleep on the couch with a book in her hand even though her bed was just down the hall. 

It wasn't the most conventional way to live but it suited Aquila's current lifestyle perfectly. 

However, despite her previous thoughts, the evening was different, she finally had answers. Throughout her research, she had been searching for a connection to the vague contact details that Fury had given her between her tribe's history and sightings of what appeared to the tribe in the past few years. 

She finally had the answer, a warehouse down the street, one that she had passed millions of times on her way further into town, the door held a distinct mark, one that matched one of the files. 

How had she not seen it before?

Aquila knew that it was one of the most advanced leads she had had in a while and it needed to be followed, but as the clock nearby signaling that it was near midnight, tonight was not going to be the night to follow it up. 

Tomorrow morning would have to do, but as the excitement shook her bones, Aquila wondered if she really would make it to morning.