Work Text:
Mel always woke up early. This was the lot of the P. A. to a workaholic boss, who filled the unforgiving minute with seconds the way terrorists filled briefcases with Semtex. In the winter, she rose before dawn.
It was not winter now. When Mel glanced out of the hotel bedroom window, she saw a slice of sidewalk bright below. Nobody in sight. Mel stood still, her toothbrush spearing the inside of her cheek. A jogger slipped across the sunlit stage. Mel set the toothbrush down, and wiped her mouth.
The bed had been decent. Firm, but not hard; enough room to spread yourself, though not enough to do the Da Vinci Man. Better than Cairo, and a whole lot better than Dublin. Mel’s contact in the State Department said that the best ones, by a long way, were in Wakanda. The personal assistant of Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine was unlikely to discover whether that was so.
Mel’s things were laid out on the bed. The power suit; the laptop; the smartphone. Her arms; her armour. The day’s security passes, in a wad like a deck of playing cards.
Mel dressed, and faced the day.
***
Valentina’s correspondence ate up most of the morning. It had always been considerable. After the press conference with the Thun… with the New Avengers, the floodgates, such as they were, had burst.
One e-mail was signed by everyone at the CIA of Assistant Director rank, or slightly below. The e-mail acknowledged all the work that the Director had been putting in recently, and expressed the hope that the Contessa would, in a day not far removed from this, receive a reward commensurate with what she had done. Mel could only begin to guess how much Everett Ross had enjoyed dictating that.
The other stand-out was from the White House. Ruth Bat-Seraph noted that one Enhanced individual trashing a major East Coast City until made to desist by Steve Rogers-adjacent personnel might be regarded as a misfortune; two doing that within a hundred days of each other looked like carelessness; and, as the Secret Service was fully and frankly owning its failure to anticipate the first one, it would be polite for the CIA to follow suit with regard to the second, since the Company’s chronic inability to leave crises on American soil in the hands of the FBI, S.H.I.E.L.D., S.W.O.R.D., or any of the other fourteen or so acronyms whose actual fucking job that was, undoubtedly explained the latter shitshow.
The e-mail was, in fact, more polite than this. Bat-Seraph, like most government functionaries, was blunter in person than on paper. All the same, the tenor was clear. Mel marked it out, along with the internal one, for the Contessa’s attention.
By the time the more quotidian correspondence had been handled, it was almost eleven. Mel snapped her laptop shut, and hurried out on to the street. It would not do to be late for the Director’s noon meeting with the Mayor of New York.
***
Mel wasn’t sure, yet, exactly how much Bat-Seraph and Ross knew about what had gone down with the Sentry, or how they knew it. Several explanations were possible. Either might have sources close to the event (Mel could think of an obvious one). Bat-Seraph was Secret Service (more or less) and a Black Widow; Ross was a Company man, and tight with the smartest woman on the planet. The Director’s current strategy was predicated on the idea that accurate knowledge about New York’s latest Incident was otherwise stringently contained. You tended not to win many medals for stopping the apocalypse you just caused.
By about five minutes into the Contessa’s briefing of the Mayor, Mel was certain of two things, meeting them with a calm she had asked of herself a lot, lately. One: Wilson Fisk knew, somehow, exactly what had happened. Two: this wasn’t a briefing; this was a shakedown.
The Contessa spoke on, and on. She rolled out the jibes, the wrong-footing remarks, that had been wont to leave committees and boardrooms and Senate hearings bamboozled and at a loss. This routine, Mel was coming to realize, only worked on people who were already scared of Val. Mel didn’t know whether Mayor Fisk had ever feared her boss; she was disposed to doubt it. He certainly didn’t now.
Fisk sat through the folksy digressions, the arch allusions to his weight, his wife, his route to office, with the expression of someone waiting for a YouTube ad to end. Silence fell, for almost a minute. At last, he spoke.
“Thank you, Contessa. That was quite… the vaudeville performance.” Mel was familiar with the Mayor’s halting style of speech; everyone was. During his election campaign, it had been a mainstay for lazy satire webcasts. To Mel, it had always suggested the juddering climb of a guillotine blade, carrying aloft the certainty of a soon and sleek descent. “Now, let us discuss reparations.”
Val stared. “Reparations?”
“What the City of New York is owed,” Fisk leaned forward, “in light of O.X.E.’s transgressions.”
Mel listened. It was hard to keep track of how many people owned Val, now. Mel was struck by the different ways in which the several proprietors handled that. Belova, the main shareholder, just wanted the Director to sparkle on command, like her Widow’s Bite. Mayor Fisk, with longer experience of such leverage, was more pragmatic.
The slow, intermitted drawl set out the terms. A very large volume of Company slush would have to dry into a damp spot on the ground, if the discretion of the Mayor’s Office was to be assured. Fisk reeled off the numbers of the relevant accounts, for the transfer of funds.
It wasn’t even as though the Mayor needed the money. Mel had an accurate idea of what was going on with Red Hook Port; she had done due diligence on Fisk, as she did on everyone. The Mayor might or might not be keeping folks in literal cages; this exercise was all about putting Val in one. The expression on his face was different, now. Fisk was looking at the lame duck like she was about to become caneton à la presse.
Mel sought respite from that face by glancing around the room. The Mayor’s assistant, Daniel Blake, was by Fisk’s side. He was watching his boss do what the Kingpin did. The lips, a little parted, said that he liked it.
Blake’s expression was harder for Mel to look at than Fisk’s. She trained her gaze firmly on her laptop screen.
***
“Thank you for the summary of the damage to Avengers Tower and the environs, Ms. Gold,” the Mayor said, unexpectedly, as the meeting broke up. The Director had already swept out, saying that she needed a breath of fresh air, if one was available for purchase in this town. “My team found it both accurate and useful.”
“Glad to be of help, sir.”
“I understand that you yourself were in the thick of… of what happened.”
Mel stiffened. “Yes. I was.”
“Those who emerged from that strange darkness say that what they saw there… shook them. You have my sympathy.”
Mel lifted her head, willing herself to look him in the eyes. Mel had been in the same room as the Sentry. It made no sense at all that she had been less scared of a god on earth than she was of Wilson Fisk. The Mayor of New York was just a man.
Perhaps that was the explanation. Perhaps she feared Fisk because he was a man – as aboriginal to the city that he ruled as the brownstones and the projects and the subway yammering beneath, as the parks where a girl could get stoned or the alleys where a girl could get raped. A world that gods only grazed in passing.
Or perhaps the Sentry just paled in memory beside what the Void had shown her.
Fisk’s eyes looked kindly, and concerned. Mel swallowed. “I… thank you, sir. Were… were you in the affected area when… when…?”
“I was not.” Fisk inclined his head. “But I underwent an epiphany myself, some months back.” His lips creased into something like a smile. “I have an old protégée to thank for that.”
Protégée? The brain that the Contessa had hired Mel for did its thing, and offered up the file: Lopez, Maya. The Director had once tagged her as a prospect. Val bought martial artist babes with fucked-up childhoods like she was trying to corner the market: Belova, Dreykov, Starr. But Lopez had found mysticism, a motorbike, and morals. She had been surprised by virtue – the one thing that reliably ruined all Val’s calculations.
“I learnt from what I saw.” The Mayor was still talking. “It strengthened my resolve.” He paused, as though embarrassed. “I hope… that what you witnessed, Ms. Gold, may do the same for you.”
“Thank you, sir.” Mel bobbed her head; gathered up her laptop; and slipped out. She found the nearest restroom. Only when she was in a cubicle did she let the shaking take her.
Five minutes, or more, before she composed herself enough to leave the cubicle and splash water on her face. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass of a mirror. How can he do that? How can he have seen, and still be what he is? Mel opened her eyes, and saw her own face. She shut her eyes again.
The ’phone buzzed in her pocket. Mel fished it out, and read a new text.
***
Congressman Barnes stood behind Mel’s chair, and pulled it out for her to sit down. There were advantages to hitting the Press Lounge with a guy who was taught manners before the Wall Street Crash.
“Glad you could join me at such short notice,” he said, settling into his own chair.
“Your text was a relief. It’s been a day.”
“Uh-huh.” The Congressman sipped his Pellegrino. “Mel…”
“I’m sorry.”
Barnes looked puzzled. “Sorry for what?”
“For letting you and the rest of your team down. For leading you all into a trap.”
“You didn’t know your boss had made you.”
“I should have done. A P.A.’s not much, if she isn’t smarter than her boss. That’s… that’s not the worst of it.” Mel took a long pull from her martini; closed her eyes. “After Valentina made me, I… I fell in line. Without question; without complaint. I even asked her for a raise. And then…” She trailed off.
“The Void?” Barnes’ voice was gentle.
Mel gave a tight nod.
“My gut tells me you want to talk about it. But no judgment, if you don’t.”
“I do.” Mel looked down into her drink.
“We all ended up in our own shame-rooms first,” Barnes said, “before we found each other, and rescued Bob. Mine was more like a shame-mansion. I don’t know where the Void sent you…”
“It didn’t.”
“Huh?”
“The Void didn’t send me anywhere.” Mel went on gazing into her martini. “The darkness brushed my face, and then… I was still there, standing on a street of startled shadow, all alone, gaming out how to spin the apocalypse for the boss I unsuccessfully betrayed less than three hours before, because she had given me a raise. The Void had no need to put me in a shame-room. My shame-room was where I already was.” Mel lifted her glass, and counted it a small victory that her hand didn’t shake. “Still sure you want to share a drink with me, Congressman?”
“Of course I do.” The second time, today, that Mel read only sympathy in the eyes of a dangerous man. “You don’t have to work for her.”
“I know. My résumé is primed and ready. But daring to leave her now doesn’t make me a good person. We both know Valentina’s a busted flush. It’s easy to be brave, after the war has ended.”
“Harder than you might think. Take it from me.” Barnes slid a document across the table. “Come work for us.”
“The Thun… The New Avengers?” Mel stared at the paper. “After what I did?”
“I’ve lived for more than a hundred years. The only times in all that century when I had clarity of purpose were when I was a programmed killbot. Clarity of purpose is overrated.” Barnes sighed. “Work for us, Mel. A bunch of assholes in rehab could use a liaison who faces down her inner bitch in the bathroom mirror every morning. There’s a salary; medical insurance; your own suite in Avengers Tower. And more martinis.”
Mel sat for a moment, very still. Barnes tried to catch the waiter’s eye. Mel pulled over the document. She began to read.
FINIS