Nicole Skylar flipped the page of the Sherlock Holmes book she was reading and leaned against the counter. Her eyes roved across the page, soaking the words in slowly and trying to ignore the various construction-related particles floating through the air.

The whole 82nd floor was being redone, and she was sitting at the bar, seeing as it was the only spot on the whole floor that wasn't being used to hold something or another. Sure, she could've just moved to a different floor, because they were only redoing that one at the time. But to leave the room would have involved several rather complicated routes to find an exit from the floor that didn't involve getting in the builders' way or calling one of the flight-enabled Avengers to pick her and her book up from a trip off the balcony.

Various building tools and materials littered the floor and counters. If there was any rhyme or rhythm to how everything was placed, she couldn't see it. The chairs and couches had been removed or covered with thick plastic. There was only one spot in the room – aside from just sitting on a bare patch of floor – and she was in it.

A clatter from the vents got her attention. She looked up, listened for a moment, and then sniffled as refocused on the sentence she had been reading. A random clatter could've been anything from the building settling to Clint being overly loud with his vent travel. A minute later, she heard more clattering. It only caught her attention once she remembered the vents had all been closed off to inter-floor travel while the reconstruction was going on. Granted, Clint was likely to ignore the order, but he usually made no noise.

On the off chance it was an intruder, she put the book down and picked up a spare pipe lying of the ground near her.

No sooner had she done so, a metallic bird burst out of the vents. He was Cybertronian, silver with red eyes, and completely vulnerable to attack. "I am Laserbeak, the mighty saboteur who will take Avengers Tower and claim it for the Decepti-" Bam! His tirade was stopped by Nikki lashing out with the pipe. Her first blow connected with the side of his face.

"Ow! That's my optic, you stupid human!" he shouted irately. Clearly, the first blow didn't do the job, so she had to whack him over the back of the head a second time. That finally knocked him out. After quickly getting over her initial shock at the 'OMG; actual Cybertronian!', she calmly set down the pipe, cuffed the bird to the barstool she'd been sitting on, and called Fury. Her lips twisted up in an amused smile; she was looking forward to this call.

"Hey Fury, I think one of your boys lost his birdie."

"What do you mean you can't hold him?!" Nikki shouted, putting her hands on her hips. Fury looked at her like she was throwing a tantrum. Which she was, but she was totally justified, because of course they could hold him. She knew it, he knew it, anyone within earshot knew it; there was no use lying. Not that that ever stopped him.

"The cells wouldn't be able to effectively restrain him. He'd just end up escaping, and maybe take some classified information with him," Fury calmly defended his position. She had to credit him the absolutely straight face he wore while saying that. "Let it never be said he's not a good liar," she thought.

"That's a total lie," Nikki scoffed in response. "Those cells could hold me, and I'm the most notorious escape artist on the planet. I helped you design them!" She pointed to herself earnestly while saying the last sentence.

"Be that as it may, I just don't think they'd be able to hold him. He might be able to hack his way out or climb out through the vents. Maybe drill a hole in the walls, ceiling, or floor, or pry the door open," he explained, again calmly. How he managed it, she could never tell.

"That's the weakest list of excuses I've ever heard you make," she snapped back. "So, what are you planning on doing with him, genius?"

"There's an opening at the Triskellion in a couple weeks. I'm intending on shipping him there when they're ready. In the meantime, I think the safest place for him to be is under house arrest at the Tower."

That took a minute to register. "The Tower?" she asked. "You want him to stay at the Tower? Are you nuts?! That means I have to watch him! I'm an Avenger, not some-some bad guy babysitter!" She was secretly proud of that one. "What makes you think I'm more equipped to handle keeping him under guard better than a Helicarrier full of trained SHIELD agents can?"

"I trust you," he replied simply. That ended the conversation.

Things did not go smoothly at the Tower for the next week. Neither Nikki nor Laserbeak were happy about having to be stuck with each other. They bickered and argued all day, every day, for a whole week. He'd make a snide remark, she'd snap back, and they would begin screaming at each other. Needless to say, everyone was sick of them, so Jan finally put a stop to it by saying she'd call Fury and arrange to have Laserbeak stay an extra week for every argument the two had. So they went from never stopping shouting at each other to never exchanging a word.

The silence was deafening, and honestly, Nikki didn't like it at all. She rather enjoyed having someone she could use as a verbal punching bag, no matter how terrible that was. She could never put the whole 'He is a Decepticon, after all' into words, because that would make her a hypocrite of the highest order, and she enjoyed the moral high ground (even if said high ground was, like, an inch high) on that particular issue.

It was very much a coincidence, or a twist of fate, that saw him on the balcony on the newly refinished 82nd floor.

It was late, and most of the Tower occupants were asleep or getting there. All except Nikki, who wanted to stay up as late as possible in order to have a good excuse for not going to the World Security Meeting on Friday, two days away. She always hated those things. She already got enough nitpicking from the usual morons on the street or judgmental SHIELD agents. Not to mention the politicians. If she couldn't haul her butt out of bed early enough tomorrow, she couldn't go. She also 'forgot' to pack, but that was beside the point.

She'd gone up to get a drink of water when she saw him out there, staring at the ground 82 stories below him. She silently approached. Hank was supposed to be watching him to make sure he didn't escape, but despite the lack of a monitor, Laserbeak was making no moves to do so. She walked out to the balcony next to him and spoke to him for the first time in 5 days.

"You okay?" It came out far softer than she thought she could manage when concerning him. He clearly didn't hear her coming, because he jumped a foot, his gaze and attention going to her. He looked miserable for a half a second, but this was quickly replaced by his usual 'Don't care' attitude.

"Why do you care?" he asked harshly. "Don't you have important Avenger stuff to be doing?" And suddenly, his anger over the past almost two weeks was understandable, because the memory of someone else asking her that exact question jumped to the forefront of her mind.

"You okay?" The Doctor asked. The strange man had been bothering her, but not intentionally. He was being too nice, but he wasn't looking for anything she had. He seemed genuinely concerned about the 13-year-old bounty hunter, and that made her uneasy. She was already having doubts about her line of work and didn't need this guy adding to that.

"Why do you care? Don't you have something better to do than ask about me?" she snapped back. He didn't even look surprised. His answer almost knocked her clean off her feet.

"No, not really. Besides, I care about how you're feeling," he replied. He, a strange nobody whom she'd been nothing but mean and nasty to, cared about her? How? Why?

A little voice, not her own, whispered quietly in her ear, 'Some people are just wired to care. You used to be one of them.'

"Y'know, you could really help people with those powers," he remarked, drawing her from her thoughts. "There's more to life than your agenda. So..." he walked up to his blue box. "Wanna come with?" She didn't even think about the answer. She just walked right onboard and never looked back.

"No, not really. Listen..." she sighed. "I'm sorry."

"You...what?" he asked, unsure of how to handle this.

"I've been absolutely terrible to you for the past two weeks, and for no good reason at all." She walked up beside him and leaned on the rail of the balcony, looking out over the city. "I should've tried to figure out why you were snapping at me rather than just shout back at you," she apologized. He looked at the railing for a minute, trying to come up with the right response.

"Well...for starters, you did hit me with a pipe," he finally said. She chuckled. "I guess...I'm just...scared."

"You? Scared? Of what?" she asked, tilting her head.

"I'm not...not really...a Decepticon anymore. They kicked me out," he replied, his voice sort of dull. "I kinda got offlined three weeks ago. Then, 8 days later, I wake up somewhere. I find my way back to the warship, only for Megatron to tell me I must've betrayed the cause and lock me up. So, I escaped and looked for a way to prove my loyalty to him," he explained.

"And you saw the Tower," Nikki finished, nodding. "If you could take it, you could get a lot of classified info and turn it over to him, thus proving your loyalty. Makes sense. You still planning on that? You know, your two-week sentence is almost up."

"I'm not so sure," he admitted. That was the last thing he said all night.

Friday night rolled around, and Nikki narrowly managed to avoid going to the meeting. She was gearing up to watch Bourne Ultimatum for the millionth time. Laserbeak obviously couldn't go with the others, so he stayed with her. She'd just put the movie in when – he must've heard something she didn't – he shouted, "Get down!"

She dived behind the couch without a second thought as the bullets ripped through where she had been sitting mere seconds ago. She didn't even hear anyone come in. She poked her head around the couch to get a quick glance at her attackers. It was a HYDRA commando squad. Highly trained, they were the only attack-oriented aspect of HYDRA that wasn't completely moronic. It was a lucky thing he heard them when he did; she would have been dead without even seeing who had killed her.

Of course, that's when it clicked.

"Did you just save me?" she asked Laserbeak. Another round of bullets filled the air and prompted his reply.

"Can we talk about this sometime later when we're – oh, I don't know – not getting shot at?" His voice dripped sarcasm, but she hadn't expected any less. "Now, who are we dealing with?"

"HYDRA commando unit. Six guys, well-armed, well-trained. We can take 'em," she informed, not realizing her unconscious use of 'we.' Laserbeak, who still had his guns for some strange reason, opened fire on them. They retreated, and Nikki got the gun Widow stashed under the table. "Never before have I been so happy for Natasha's compulsive weapons-stashing habit." The look she received from the bird was well worth it.

Floor by floor, room by room, they cleared the Tower. She didn't fail to note how well they seemed to work together. Yes, she was impulsive, and he had a concerning lack of qualms about killing every single one of the invaders, but her style of fast attack blended well with his style of attacking from the sides and shadows. That didn't mean it was easy to take them down, only that it wasn't as difficult as it could've been.

They caught the final guy attempting to sneak away via the staircase, like an intelligent coward. Nikki, true to style, attacked him straight on, but without Laserbeak to act as unspoken back-up, and the fatigue of late night and a long chasing battle already under her belt, he had an advantage over her. It took a couple minutes, but she did slip up, and when she did, the HYDRA assassin pounced on the opportunity, pinning her to the wall and lifting a frighteningly long knife to her throat. She struggled, but his iron grip kept her secure in her spot

A gunshot echoed through the stairwell.

The last HYDRA commando fell to the ground, dead, with a single hole in the front of his skull. The bullet, so carefully aimed, embedded in the wall only millimeters from her ear. Nikki looked in shock to the top of the stairs, where Laserbeak was hovering. She breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing and peeling herself off the wall, stepping over the body as she climbed the stairs.

In some back part of her mind, she wondered if her casualness around dead bodies was a bad thing.

"Good job on almost getting killed again. Tell me, do the other Avengers have to rescue you frequently?" Laserbeak snarked. She smiled, though it wasn't apologetic in the slightest.

"No, I don't usually do so terribly, though I have had a long couple of weeks." She hesitated. "Speaking of rescues…why'd you save me?"

"Because it would look really bad if you got killed and I didn't at least try to help," he replied with a half smirk. The smile changed to something…happy, knowing what he meant. When Fury called the next day, telling her that arrangements had been made, she said she didn't mind having to watch him all that much. Fury didn't take much persuading, which told her one thing:

He'd finally managed to get her to take a partner.