The Villain

party

Ziva would love the reddish brown on grey colour scheme, Tessa thought, when she came stopped in front of Tony's door.

There was still dried blood, her blood, on his doorstep, and for a moment Tessa wanted to turn around, leave, forget and never come back.

But the possibility, no matter how unlikely, to find out how to get Loki back motivated her.

The flashing, colourful lights made it impossible to really see how many people were here, but definitely too many for Tessa's liking. Not interested in fighting her way through the massive crowd to get something to drink, she stood near the entrance for a moment. Unable to hear her own thoughts over the loud music in Tony's house, Tessa flinched, when Natasha greeted her with a hug.

In fact, she was so surprised by that, she froze for a moment, and before she could react in any way, Natasha let go of her.

"I'm glad you made it, Fox."

Wait a moment. Fox? How the hell –

"Come on, let's grab something to drink.", she suggested, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

Natasha took her hand, guiding her to the bar, the mass of people parting in front of her.

"What do you want? Stark has just about anything...", she said, taking out two new glasses from underneath the counter and Tessa shrugged, randomly pointing at one of the bottles, scanning the room for either Steve or Tony, while dropping her bag at the counter.

"Good choice.", Natasha said, throwing Tessa a glance, noticing the tension in her shoulders and her attentive stare, scanning the room as if she searched for someone in particular.

Tessa saw a man with an eyepatch, and for a moment she thought she had seen him before somewhere. Maybe she just met him on the streets, but it seemed as if she knew him, really knew him.

He looked right back at her, his head tilted in curiosity or calculation, Tessa couldn't really tell. When he moved in her direction, energy ran through her fingers and following an irresistible instinct, Tessa turned away from him, trying to find out why it was so hot in here and why her heart beat so fast all of a sudden.

Run. Flee. Get away. Away from them.

"There you go.", Natasha put two glasses of whatever this was on the counter, but Tessa's fingertips still tingled, so she decided to wait before taking that glass into her hands.

Who was this man? Why did... whatever Loki left with her, want to get away from him so badly?

"How are you?", Natasha asked, staring into her eyes, as if to search for something, but they were still too blue and nothing had really changed.

"I'm fine, just a bit tired lately, but that will pass. Helen said, it's because of the wound, so...yeah. How are you?", Tessa cleared her throat, looking over her shoulder, but eyepatch-man was gone, and so was her short panic.

"Fine.", Natasha answered, emptying her drink in an instant.

She smiled at her, always that secretive smile, and moved out behind the counter, standing too close for Tessa's liking. Natasha dropped a finger on her chin and tilted Tessa's face upwards to have a closer look into her eyes.

"What...are you doing?", Tessa awkwardly asked, wondering what the hell was going on.

For a moment she just wanted to flee Natasha's piercing glance, seemingly reaching down to her core by how deep it buried into her eyes and soul.

"Your eyes are still blue.", she said, and Tessa held her gaze.

"Yes, but I am fine. No murderous tendencies, no wish for world domination, I guess it just needs some more time to completely wear off.", she shrugged and Natasha took a couple of steps back.