Chapter Text
“Alright, we are locked and loaded here,” Brock Rumlow rumbles from somewhere in the Quinjet’s hold. The resulting jet creak lends a certain dishonesty to his words, but Elektra supposes that's what they get for making due with repurposed SHIELD tech from the pre-Blip times.
It's the best they can get. To hear them tell it, the military and intelligence work globally were setback decades in an instant and haven't yet regained any ground.
Elektra can't bring herself to mourn. She is Black Sky, born for chaos, molded for violence, raised from death. This is exactly the kind of environment in which she thrives.
But Valentina abhors a power vacuum. It's why she's slowly building up her stealth-in-name-only strike force of reformed felons and discarded patriots: to fill the void and reshape the world in her image in the process. Elektra has found herself among them, a weapon to be wielded in a fight that stretches beyond her means. It’s an uncomfortable if not unfamiliar feeling for the Black Sky, one which she had hoped to leave behind with her last life. One day Elektra will ensure Valentina pays for it in blood and devastation, but that day is not today.
“Well then, why don't you give me the grand tour?” The woman of the hour, CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine herself, appears as if summoned by Elektra’s unspoken threats.
“You run pre-flight, I’ll do the honors, Mel will roll the tapes,” she continues, gesturing back at her now-ubiquitous new assistant, who gives a five-fingered wave.
“Is all this really necessary?” Black Widow Yelena Belova grouses. She's leaning against the creaking jet, head and arms slumped in a performance of disinterest. Elektra isn't fooled by it, but her estimation of the Widow goes up. “I still say this is so overblown, these dramatics – you give me a name, I get the target, none of this needless fanfare.”
“What, don’t you want to be in the next CIA recruitment vid?” John Walker snorts. Elektra’s hair prickles. Walker's better without Tony Masters goading him into his worst impulses. The betrayal seems to have shaken some sense back into him – enough so he's now trying to do right by this team and his estranged wife. He’s also awkwardly ducking Aurora and Elektra’s eye contact, focusing on keeping himself to the letter of his assignments, and staying busy wherever he can. But Elektra has not forgotten, she does not forgive so easily, and her sai still call for his blood.
Elektra’s fingers twitch with the thought of it. Her partner Jeanne-Marie Beaubier makes silent eye contact with her. Her mouth moves in a near-inaudible: “D’accord?”
Electra nods. Jeanne-Marie’s expression turns skeptical, but she doesn’t draw attention to Elektra’s nerves. They’re used to each other’s pre-mission restlessness by now. It’s part of what they are becoming to each other — partners, lovers, team.
“Come on” Walker continues. He intones in a perfect Captain America PSA voice. “Be a part of the Avengers legacy. Be a part of something bigger. Consider a career in intelligence.”
Belova flips him off with both hands and goes back to her phone. She's trying very hard to make it look as if she's playing a phone game, but the way her hands move on the screen looks more to Elektra like she's sending a message.
“There is nothing intelligent about this mission,” Ava Starr observes. Elektra has been thinking of her as Tony Master's replacement – both of them masked assassins with an allergy to colors. Elektra is inclined to like her on principle alone. She's also inclined to agree.
“It's all flash and heroic shots, very little of actual worth it accomplishment,” Starr continues.
“I would say nothing of value,” Belova agrees.
“It’s Thunderbolt Ross for you,” Bucky Barnes grunts as he barrels down the Quinjet ramp, having clearly not trusted Rumlow’s assessment and needed to do his own. He’s in full Winter Soldier gear, a visible mark on the jacket where his Avengers patch usually goes. “The president wants us to make it a statement, not keep a secret. There’s not much else to it.”
“Which doesn’t explain why you are even here, Barnes?” calls Starr. “I heard you got out. Aren't you a legitimate Avenger now, no more slumming it with us dime store heroes?”
Bucky flashes him a grin and a two finger salute. “US government disagreed. Apparently I’ve still got some old crimes to work off.”
Electra quietly suspects that Barnes used his own dubious legal status as a bargaining chip to acquire Sharon Carter’s pardon, which means he’s either braver or dumber than she’d expected based on his reputation. He must know that neither Valentina nor Thunderbolt Ross will be inclined to let him bloodlessly return to his teammates now that they have leverage they can hold over him, but he carries the risk with practiced, easy self-assuredness.
“Seriously?” Walker frowns. Elektra, tenses, prepared for a blowout, but all he says is. “That sucks, man. I'd offer to help you get out of here but I, well…”
“Wait a second,” Starr picks up on the implication with a precise disregard for tact. “I'd decisively heard you quit.”
“We should be so lucky,” says Jeanne-Marie with a sniff. She approaches Elektra with quick deliberation, leaning up to brush her lips across her partner's cheeks in a movement too fast for most human eyes to detect.
By the way both supersoldiers (and Belova's) eyes narrow, they definitely picked up on it, but no one comments. Elektra isn't sure what to make of that. Perhaps the team truly is better now. She is not so sure. This mission will determine how long Elektra is willing to stomach working alongside the rest of these so-called Thunderbolts.
“Oh, John’s not so bad when he remembers he's got a brain under that cowl,” Starr laughs. Walker flips her off heatlessly. She returns the gesture with a fanged grin.
“You Americans are so very unprofessional, it would be funny if it weren't so sad,” Baron Helmut Zemo murmurs almost to himself, from his observatory position away from the rest of the group. Elektra’s eyes narrow. She trusts him least of anyone on this new version of the team. For his part, he seems to find her amusing, which is infuriating.
“I believe the Americans are outnumbered here,” says Belova. “The only ones I mark are Rumlow and Walker – Barnes does not count, that man is as Russian as they come.”
“Compliment received as intended,” grunts Bucky Barnes, to Belova’s smug smile. He leans over to ruffle her hair, and she grunts, the perfect image of someone's irritable kid sister.
Rumlow comes down the ramp and stops short when he spots Barnes waiting. Barnes blows a piece of hair out of his face and gives the man a look as if to say ‘your move.’ Rumlow extends a hand for a combination of a handshake and a clasp of Barnes’s shoulder. Barnes leans over to whisper something into the other man's ear. Rumlow goes a little white around the eyes. Then Barnes claps him on the shoulder one last time for good measure and steps away, back to his easy confidence and unaffected grins.
He's very good, Elektra realizes, with more than a hint of unease. It appears the Winter Soldier’s reputation was not overstated. She'd thought of him solely as a blunt weapon of assassination, but he's clearly more than well-versed in the nuances of intelligence work.
“J’approve,” the words are Jeanne-Marie’s French, but the tone is all Aurora.
“Of course you do,” Elektra sighs. Her own approval is not so easily won, but she likes Sharon Carter, and if Barnes is here on her behalf, she will endeavor not to dislike him until he earns it.
Aurora laughs at her expression. Elektra studies Barnes again. She wonders if his easy confidence is simply the fact that he has people who will search for him if he disappears.
It’s not a security she's ever had. She suspects if she asked now the Defenders might come for her, which is why she hasn't asked. That's not a question she needs answered right now. Matthew Murdock and his ragtag band of heroes turned family will simply have to wait on her timing.
Still, when the grey spider Cindy Moon appeared on her hotel balcony again as they were packing up with a burner phone and a single orchid, Elektra accepted the gifts. She took them for what they were and kept both – the apology and the promise of an escape if she so chooses.
She has no real intention of taking them up on it.
Elektra Natchios has two reasons for staying with the Thunderbolts despite the misgivings their recent mission left unresolved. The first is standing next to her, rapidly fidgeting with her tightly braided hair. Jeanne-Marie did it before the mission, sitting on Elektra's bed all the while, and now Aurora is left to complain of the resulting headache in sharp, Québécoise asides.
Elektra stifles an open smile, but she hopes Aurora picks up on it just the same.
As if summoned by Elektra's thought, Aurora leans into the curve of her neck, pulling Elektra from her reverie. She presses her lips to Elektra's skin and tears at it with lightning speed.
Elektra flushes. She pats her girlfriend's head. “Later, mon cherie.”
“I'm going to hold you to that,” Aurora whispers into her ear, nestling up against her. Elektra pulls her close and teases a strand of hair from the too-tight braid. Aurora makes a relieved noise, and Elektra releases another strand.
This is the easy explanation for Elektra's presence here – the woman she loves is locked into a shadowy inescapable contract with the Canadian government which allows the CIA to use her as an asset, and Elektra will not leave her behind.
But there's also a second reason, one she carries with her wherever she goes, leaving only destruction in her wake; the Black Sky that flows through Elektra's veins, so mingled with her blood that she cannot tell where she ends and the Hand's dragon substance begins. She could spend hours trying to parse it out and never find an answer. It's the great mystery that keeps her breathing, that makes her the Black Sky made flesh so that she might live to fight anew. Leviathan seeks to grasp the solution, but for now its secrets are Elektra's alone. She would prefer it stayed that way but she doesn't always get what she wants.
Case in point: this mission. Elektra had asked Valentina for permission to go after Masters – and by extension, Leviathan and the dragon substance – immediately. To her faint surprise, the CIA director had something else in mind.
They're cleaning up one of President Ross’s more complex foreign policy messes in the Persian Gulf nation of Aqiria, where a Keraadistani scientist who claimed to have replicated the original supersoldier serum was the target of a botched drone strike that left the disputed territory reeling. Valentina would prefer that the US acquired the serum, and she's deploying the Thunderbolts to ensure that it and the scientist are either recovered or destroyed. Elektra can't bring herself to care, but she supposes she'll keep doing the CIA’s dirty work for now. So long as she has her Aurora at her side, Elektra will keep up the fight until she finds the chance to strike. One day, she'll take her love and disappear into the smoke in a streak of blood, never to be held back, but that is not today.
Today, she will hold Aurora with one hand and her sai with the other, the implied threat only somewhat for show. She does not trust this shadowy strike force. She trusts only herself, her Aurora, and her sai. Nothing else. No one else, she amends, looking around at the gathered strike force.
The irrelevant mission, the dubious team, the Aqirian government’s ire, and the president’s fury: Taken together they spell out a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe text written in blood, but then again, most things are.
“What is it you people say?” Belova grouses. “Thunderbolts, roll?”
“Thunderbolts, roll indeed,” Walker holds out a fist and Barnes presses his knuckles to it. “Let's go get this son of a bitch and be home in time for breakfast!”
“Now you're just asking for it to go badly,” Starr points out.
“He is not the one asking,” says Zemo, with an ominous nod at Valentina.
“Less chatting, more boarding,” calls Valentina. “We’re not made of time.”
“She means it's time to get going,” says Mel Gold unnecessarily.
To Elektra’s surprise, the mild-mannered assistant follows the rest of them into the jet. Walker gives Gold a welcoming nod as she makes her way to the front of the jet and takes up the controls.
“Did you know she was coming?” Aurora whispers.
“No,” Elektra draws out the word. “I don't think anyone did.”
“Valentina knows,” says Jeanne-Marie sharply. “Je me demande…”
Elektra wonders too. Perhaps there's more to this mission than they've been told. Either way, she's sure they're about to find out.