Silhouette in the Dark

VI.

                                                                  [2015]

"Sorry again about your head," Natasha remarked, handing Steve a fresh ice pack. He switched it with the one he was holding to the knot on his head and winced when the cold touched his bruised skin.

"It's fine. Besides, it's this or getting stabbed, so I'd go for this anytime." Steve sighed. "I just don't understand what I saw. I know I saw a wolf coming at me, but when I looked it again, it looked just like her."

"Maybe you imagined that you saw her," Sam suggested.

"No, he didn't." The two men looked over at Natasha, surprised by her quiet comment. "I saw Steve going into the forest with his shield up, so I knew he saw something. I started heading that way and got there in time to see the wolf charge at him. He was right. She was a wolf then she was a human. The exact human we've been looking for."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "So what made you throw Steve into a tree?"

Steve laid the ice pack on the table. "Technically, she didn't throw me. She just pulled me backward with enough force that I hit the tree pretty hard." Steve lightly ran his fingers over the sore spot on his head. "Really hard."

Sam put his feet up on the chair next to him and crossed his arms over his chest. "So... she's a werewolf?"

Natasha nodded. "The technical term would be something like 'she's suffering from lycanthropy,' but basically, yeah. She's a werewolf of sorts." Natasha stared at the table for a minute, clearly deep in thought. Suddenly, her eyes lit up and she slapped a hand on the table. "That's what Zola did to her!"

"Who?"

Steve glanced at Sam. "The Red Skull's lead scientist. Just before Nat and I showed up at your house in D.C., we blew up his recorded brain." Sam just stared at Steve in obvious confusion, trying to figure out what he just said. "He's also the one who experimented on Bucky and turned him into the Winter Soldier. If Silhouette was captured and worked on by HYDRA, it would have been by Zola."

Natasha nodded. "Whatever he did to Bucky helped him survive the fall off the train and later become the Soldier. Whatever he did to Silhouette either caused her to start turning into a wolf, or it's something she could always do and he wanted to figure out how. Either way, it's a sure bet he had her in his custody at one point or another." Natasha stood now, getting animated. "I want to find out who she really is. None of the S.H.I.E.L.D. files have her real name, but there's got to be a way to find out."

Steve reapplied the ice pack to his head and looked up at Natasha, who was pacing and muttering to herself. "What do you have in mind?"

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"Too bad Sam couldn't come with us," Steve remarked as Natasha parked the car.

"I don't think he minds not having to drive from D.C. to upstate New York," Natasha replied. "Besides, he's busy looking for Barnes. He's got plenty to do."

"Fair." Steve handed over the briefcase in his lap to Natasha. "You think this is going to work?"

"We'll make it work. We know now that she will attack us, so we just need to provoke her into doing that."

"You mean, you need me to act as bait to draw her out so you can use that thingy to get a biometric scan?"

"If you want to word it that way, yes." Steve frowned as he pulled his helmet on. "Steve, this might be the only way to learn her real identity."