A/N. Hiiii! I'm baaaack! And guess what I brought with me? The first chapter. But you knew that. Updates will not be structured, but hopefully they won't take as long as last time. With that said, enjoy :)

Disclaimer - I don't own the Avengers or Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Chapter One

Snip. Snip-snip.

Strands of hair fell away, pillowing on the floor and in her lap. She idly played with the ones in her lap before tossing it onto the floor with the others.

She was afraid to look. Natasha had been playing with her curls a lot recently, twirling them, biting them, tugging on them. She'd stated one day that she felt she'd had the same look for far too long. She found it disturbing to look the same all the time. Tania supposed that being a super spy where no one used to recognize you required a lot of disguises.

So Natasha had announced that she was going to get a haircut when they were skyping all of the other Avengers. Then she had turned to Tania and said, "You should come with me."

Tania had been confused and a little bit offended. "Is there something wrong with my hair?" She'd asked, parting her bangs self-consciously.

Natasha had shaken her head. "No. But you could do with a new look."

Still a bit offended, Tania had looked over at Pepper, who had seemed to be staring at Tania's hair and mulling the idea over. "You look beautiful, Tania," Pepper had said. "But maybe a new look would be interesting."

Interesting.

Later that day, Tania had stared at herself in the mirror for at least half an hour. She had had the same hairstyle since graduation. Maybe it was time for a change. A good change.

When she and Natasha got to the salon, the hairstylist had fussed over her hair (as hairstylists do) and immediately declared that she was getting rid of the bangs. Tania's hand had flown to her forehead. "But-!" She protested. "My forehead-!"

The hairstylist, Taylor, had pushed Tania's bangs away from her face. "Is fine," she had finished. "Now we can see more of your face."

But she had argued that it was too big, so the hairstylist said that she would fix it but wouldn't reveal how.

So off came the hair and the bangs. Tania mourned them, but there was an excited buzz in the pit of her stomach as she twisted her engagement ring around and around her finger. She wondered what she would look like. She had agreed to be surprised by the new style.

Natasha sat to her right, casually flipping through a fashion magazine. She was probably researching for future disguises should she ever have to pretend to be a fashionista or a famous person or just a rich person. She was flipping a bit too fast to do more than just look at pictures.

"All done!" Taylor announced, stepping back.

Tania looked up into the mirror. There were worry lines between her eyebrows, but those smoothed out as soon as she saw her hair. It was only about an inch or two shorter, but it felt a thousand pounds lighter. She shook her head from side to side. Taylor had layered her hair, which was why it felt so light. There were side bangs. The perfect compromise. Tania had to admit that her old bangs kind of made her look younger, but not in a good way. These ones had a more mature look about them. She brushed them a little further to the side and they fell back into place.

"I love it," she declared. Relief washed over her at the same time that the buzz of excitement grew into a vibration of anticipation of showing it off. Taylor beamed at her and held up a mirror to show her the back. "Still love it."

Taylor removed the cloak or whatever it was called from around Tania's shoulders and swept away, presumably to get a broom – and the bill.

Tania looked over at Natasha, who was waiting for her dye to dry. There was what looked like aluminum foil plastered all over her head like paper maché. All of a sudden, Natasha's stylist returned from the back of the salon and began working on her again. It was obvious that Natasha would take longer.

Tania was willing to wait. She flipped her hair over shoulders and smiled at Natasha. "What do you think?"

Nat glanced up and then looked her up and down. "It's a good look," she commented. "Text Steve a picture. I'm sure he'll want to see."

"Nah," Tania said, fluffing her hair. "I think I'll make him wait for it."

Natasha chuckled, fingering the necklace around her neck. It was shaped like an arrow – a gift from Clint on their last anniversary. They had refused to delve the date, but Tony was pretty close to figuring it out via trial and error.

Tania was content to let the couple have their privacy.

A vision of lines and circles assaulted her and then disappeared. It was the same pattern she had drawn before and even painted, but she always felt compelled to put it to paper. She needed to write it down; to see it. She figured it was some subconscious impulse. Her therapist had suggested that it was a coping mechanism. Tania didn't like to think about it too much. She liked the feeling of drawing. Whenever she drew this abstract piece, she always got lost in time and space.

She removed a sketchpad from the purse sitting on the counter in front of her and rummaged around for her pencil. She couldn't find it. She searched more frantically. She still couldn't find it. "Where is it?" She mumbled, her movements getting jerkier.

Oh. There it was. At the very bottom. Muscles she hadn't known were tense uncoiled and relaxed. She immediately set to work, her hand dancing across the page like a person possessed.

"Are you feeling okay?" Tania registered somewhere in the back of her mind that someone (Natasha) was talking to her.

"Yeah fine," she replied automatically.

"Are you nervous about something?"

"No."

"What are you drawing?"

"I don't know."

"Why are you drawing now?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want to get lunch after?"

"Sure."

"Ready to go?"

"What?" Tania looked up. Natasha was standing next to her, bright orange hair curving around her pretty face in rounded but straight lines. Tania looked down at the page she had been colouring in. It was completely charcoal except for bold lines and circles of white she left untouched. She had been drawing for longer than she thought. "Right. Yeah. Let's go." She snapped the sketchbook shut and slipped it into her bag, shrugging it over her shoulder. "Where are we going?"

"Lunch," Nat answered as she gave her stylist a hundred dollars. "Keep the change," she said in a tone that left no room for argument. Tania paid for hers with her bank card and the two of them left the salon with fantastic hair.

It was cloudy in New York City that day. It looked like it was going to rain. There was a sort of pulse to the air that announced its arrival to. Barely a few moments after they stepped out the door it started to drizzle. Tania reached into her purse for her umbrella and popped it open. She held it over them as the clacked down the sidewalk, trying not to hit the dozens of other umbrellas suddenly snapping into appearance.

The steady thrum of rain would be soothing if it weren't for the traffic and the car horns and the loud chatter of people that never slept. There were other sounds too. There was the tapping of a cane on the ground and the barks of dogs and ringing of phones, but the rain drowned them out fairly well.

"Think we'll get called on a mission today?" Tania asked conversationally. The rain was good enough cover to talk about this sort of thing (in vague terms, of course, because you could never be too careful).

Natasha hummed. "Probably not. It's too soon after the last one."

Tania and Natasha had gone on a mission together for the first time the week before. They'd been instructed to go to a dance school undercover as dance students and prevent the assassination of one of the rich businessman's daughters who attended the school. The mission had been a complete success. No casualties.

"Do you think we'll get partnered up again?"

"Probably. I don't work well with a lot of people, so those I do work well with, they tend to partner me with whenever I go on a mission that needs one." That was why Natasha and Steve went on so many missions together. That wasn't even counting Strike Team Delta.

"How's Clint?" Tania asked, turning a corner to follow Natasha's lead. She hurried a bit to catch up and keep her friend under the umbrella.

"He says the mission's slow going, but so far so good. He and Stevenson have managed to successfully 'prove' their covers are 'real'. That's all he can say."

Tania nodded. "How often does he make contact?"

Natasha shook her head. "Not often." That was cryptic.

"Did he say anything else?"

"Nothing important."

Tania wanted to know about the unimportant things too, but she figured that if it were meant for her ears, Clint would have radioed her instead. "And his hearing? It's not affecting the mission, is it?"

"No. The hearing aids S.H.I.E.L.D. whipped up for him are serving him well. Practically invisible."

Tania hadn't liked the design because it had reminded her of the comms she'd had to have ripped out of her ear with pliers by un-gentle Hydra followers. She had been comforted some by the fact that the Avengers had blown up their major facility and that she'd killed the head at the time, but it was totally possible that Hydra still existed. She was just thankful that they didn't have any power. If they did, she would have heard of it by now.

"That's good," she murmured.

"How have your solo missions been going?"

"Good, good," she said again. "I always have an extraction team ready, which is nice. Didn't have that at S.I."

Nat's lips twitched in an almost laugh. "Though I think S.I. has better benefits."

Tania chuckled. "They do. I looked into it. Maybe I should've stayed."

"You weren't happy there."

Tania stared at her shoes. "I was for a while."

"But then shit happened," Nat finished for her. "I get it."

"I feel totally cut off from them. I worry, sometimes. Peter took over after I left."

"Parker?"

"No. Peter Wood. He works in the department with me. He was one of my friends at work. I hope he's doing okay without me. We parted on good terms."

"That's good to hear. What about the Bitch?"

Tania may have gossiped about Mindy somewhat. "Still a bitch last I checked. And I lost Drew's number. I feel bad."

"Don't feel bad. There's nothing you can do. She can call you."

"Yeah." But she wasn't going to. "So where are we going?"

"A hole in the wall."

"Sounds great."

Natasha, who had been to Washington before on a mission with Clint that was classified, had taken to showing Tania and Steve the best places to eat around town. So far, so amazing. Clint apparently had a knack for finding the best places to find food. Tania suspected outside help (namely an app).

Lunch turned out to be Belgian waffles. It was delicious. Unfortunately, she couldn't enjoy all of it because her phone buzzed in her purse, reminding her that she had an appointment with Dr. Nabila Diallo. She apologized profusely to Natasha, stuffed the rest of her waffles into her mouth, and promised to pay Nat back for the bill. She heard Natasha tell her not to worry about it before she was off.

Tania liked Dr. Diallo. She was much kinder than three out of five of Tania's previous therapists. Diallo had dark skin and short, black hair with chocolate eyes to make you melt. She also had the smoothest complexion of anyone Tania had ever met and she was incredibly jealous. Diallo was also soft-spoken, but firm when need be and absolutely refused to divulge anything about her other patients. Natasha had tested her and approved.

So Diallo became Tania's therapist. They had one appointment every week scheduled the morning of because of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s not exactly structured schedule. Tania was on-call twenty-four/seven and at the Triskelion from seven to three Monday to Friday.

Being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent wasn't all about the missions. It was about debriefings and case reports and interrogations of criminals and gadget inventions and tracking enemies and dealing with the World Security Council and testing alien technology and exploring the unknown. There was never a dull moment (okay that was a lie). Tania was mainly in charge of marketing and advertising (as that was her specialty). However, it was a pretty boring job because S.H.I.E.L.D. was doing its best to remain secretive.

Whenever something big happened, like the Chitauri incident or the Extremis incident or the Dark Elves incident, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s marketing department would cover it up as best they could and try to keep the public calm. Tania wasn't a big fan of this job because she believed that the people should know exactly what was happening so that they could be prepared for similar things to happen again, but Fury was adamant that it wouldn't happen again.

Tania had been working on the fall-out of the Master of Evil incident ever since that video Stane had published gone viral. Spider-Man had helped somewhat, but S.H.I.E.L.D. had been frantically picking up the pieces of a continually disapproving public opinion.

Now that the hubbub with Loki's return was over, Tania's department was mainly used to make sure agents kept a low profile; particularly agents undercover. Tania had wanted to watch over Clint, but that was for his handler Jasper Sitwell. Sitwell had parted on a mission a few days prior, though, so Tania had been able to radio Viola a few times and make sure things were going smoothly.

Dr. Diallo sat through Tania's complaints about her job without complaint. One thing that Tania really liked about Dr. Diallo was that she always looked like she was listening intently and that she cared. And she never asked, "How does that make you feel?" Most of the time, she was the one who told Tania exactly what she was feeling with the deadly accuracy of Hawkeye. Another check in her corner was that she wasn't associated with the S.H.I.E.L.D. like Tania's first two therapists. They were ass-hats. Dr. Diallo was from Wakanda, Africa, where they made vibranium. She told Tania once that she had seen things that made the Chitauri look like mice.

Today, Dr. Diallo told Tania that it was a good day. Despite the ominous weather, Tania felt much better than she had last June. While sparing Loki had done wonders for Tania's self-deprecating nature about her conscience, PTSD didn't just magically go away. But today… it felt like it had.

Dr. Diallo closed her notebook and uncrossed her legs. "Well, I think we're done here."

Tania sat up in surprise. "Really? I've been here for like thirty minutes."

Dr. Diallo smiled knowingly. "You don't need to be here. Go have fun."

Tania stared for a few seconds before grinning. "Thanks, Doc Di. See you next week?"

"Different time, same place?"

Tania laughed. "Of course!"

A/N. I felt like starting off on a calm, sort of domestic note because you all know the plot and the action that's coming. I figured I'd start somewhere you guys aren't familiar with. Hope you liked the chapter and feel free to let me know in a review :)