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maggicktouched · 2 years

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I was in a drabble mood tonight and I’ve been wanting to write about Beck interacting with SHIELD agents for a while now. So I chose to write this with @knowseverythingaboutyou in our verse with @bokketo‘s Natasha. So thanks for letting me steal your muse for a while, I hope I did her justice buuut there’s a reason I don’t write a lot of canons so I’m sorry if not lol.

Nat you gotta quit putting Maria on witch sitting duty. I might do a second part where they do something about this but tbh dealing with fae in my lore is such a shit show idk if I wanna subject anyone to that lmao.

Also apologies for any kind of mishaps or mistakes, my glasses broke and I’m using an old pair and can’t see for shit. Fun times.

Beck peered over the front seat at the agent driving the vehicle. Maria wasn’t dressed for this. Or at least Beck assumed she wasn’t. To be fair she couldn’t be sure exactly what SHIELD agents wore on missions, but she doubted it was jeans and an old t-shirt. The fact that they had been on their way to a flea market in the middle of nowhere twenty minutes ago and not a Super Secrete Secure Site also confirmed her suspicions that they were under dressed.

“Do you have to wear a uniform?” The fox asked curiously, hopping over the back seat of the SUV and sniffing around in the rear of the vehicle. A second later, she hopped back over, dipped into the floorboard, and somehow managed to wedge her way under the front seat and popped out on the passenger side floorboard, shaking herself until her fur fluffed up again.

“Ok you don’t have to be human but you do have to pick a seat.” Maria said, not peeling her eyes away from the road. Beck stayed where she was, looking up at her with her head tilted to the side. Maria looked stressed, and Beck didn’t want to admit it was probably her fault. Both Natasha and Maria had been adamant in keeping her as far away from SHIELD and its work as possible, but in one split second of universally terrible timing, she’d received a call that forced her to whip the car around.

She hadn’t caught all of the conversation, despite her extraordinary hearing in this form. The wheels on the gravel road below were roaring in her ears, the vehicle humming, wind whistling past them, Maria’s fingers drumming irritably on the wheel. Something about a complication. Agents were hurt. It wasn’t a good time, Maria told them, and Beck knew that it was because of her. This was different, he’d said. Something they hadn’t seen before. The man had then used a phrase Beck was intimately familiar with as a witch: he needed a favor. And then the car had turned on a dime.

Maria hadn’t explained herself when she got off the phone. Probably figuring she’d heard anyway.

Beck hopped up into the passenger seat, propping her front paws up on the dash and watching out the windows. Maria’s indecipherable expression broke momentarily in favor of a glare, but after looking over at her properly, Beck almost thought she saw a hint of an amused smile on her face.

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes what?” Beck had already forgotten her earlier question, and was inching her way up onto the dashboard. Cars made her antsy when she wasn’t driving. And when they were going 90 down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere to a destination she couldn’t be sure of to explore an unidentified and potentially deadly threat. It made her antsy. She didn’t want to sit still.

Maria made a noise—something between a frustrated sigh and a laugh—and gently reached over to push her back into the seat.

“I’ve got to get Stark to put some automatic seatbelts in this thing or something.” She muttered to herself, then, raising her voice to a level that Beck was actually meant to hear, she continued. “Sometimes we wear uniforms. Depends on the situation.”

Maria’s hand retreated as soon as Beck was sitting in the seat, but before she could, the glint of her watch drew the fox’s eye. Instinctively, before she could think to stop herself, she had the watchface clasped gingerly in her front teeth, and was trying to pull it away with insistent little tugs. It was gentle, and Maria easily shook her off despite the little squeak of protest from the witch.

“What is the situation?” She asked, not really expecting an answer.

Maria snorted, shaking her head ever so slightly, and shot her a playful look. “We don’t enforce dress codes on people who aren’t our agents—or animals, since you seem so worried about it.”

“Not worried.” Not about that at least. Beck shook her head and started to fidget in her seat again. “Curious. And if you can find a little fox-sized uniform I will totally put it on.”

Maria didn’t laugh, and she didn’t ask any more questions, but she looked a little less stressed. Her knuckles weren’t so white where they gripped the wheel. But that was all she could tell. Maria, like Nat, had a poker face that even Beck couldn’t read. And that was saying something.

She liked Maria. Maybe she would have even called them friends if they were able to actually talk to one another without someone else there to pad the space between them. When Maria came around the Tower for dinner or one of Stark’s occasional parties, they held conversations easily. Maria was quick witted and relaxed, never easily shaken or startled, and she was one of the only people in the world Beck could confidently say Natasha liked to be around. At first that had riled her. Now, she was actually grateful for it.

It was when they were alone that things got weird. Maybe it was because Nat often asked Maria or Clint to hang around her in times like this, when she was off god-knows-where and just the thought of it made Beck crazed with anxiety. Maybe. But she had a feeling it had more to do with her fear of SHIELD in general. When no one was around to draw Maria the person to the forefront of Beck’s attention, she had a hard time seeing anything but Maria the Deputy Director of SHIELD.

And that terrified her.

Especially now when they were speeding down the road headed right toward a team of agents and an undisclosed location. Beck was almost tempted to ask Maria to drop her off. She wasn’t afraid of the countryside or being lost. She wasn’t even afraid of death. It was only the thought of a cage that frightened her. And while she wanted to believe that Maria would never do that, a lifetime of pain had taught her that everyone was nice enough until the trap door slammed shut behind her.

But Maria wouldn’t have dropped her in the middle of nowhere. Natasha would have been furious.

Beck fidgeted and circled, pawing at the leather seat, and jumped when Maria’s hand passed her periphery. It wasn’t coming for her. Just the radio, which crackled to life. The station was playing old songs, the kind of music that Harper had always laughed and called cheesy shit before singing along. She looked up at Maria, wondering if she liked this music too, or if she had turned it on to be nice. Whatever the reason, and despite the fact that Beck had certainly never told her what her taste in music was, the music settled her. After circling a few more times, she curled into a ball and watched out the window.

They didn’t talk for the next fifteen minutes of the car ride. Occasionally she would thump her tail when a song she particularly enjoyed played on the radio, and once she thought she saw Maria cover up a smirk when she looked over to see if she liked it too. Finally they pulled off the noisy dirt road and onto a worn path. There were fresh tire tracks that bent the grass in two, and some of the branches of the overgrown bushes had been snapped away. Signs of other vehicles, but recent. Not enough to be continual use.

That made her feel a little less woozy.

Seven dark SUVs were parked on the open field where they stopped. There were little temporary shade tents set up and some foldable tables filled with gadgets she didn’t trust. Nearly two dozen people were scurrying around the makeshift work space; they paused to look up as Maria put the vehicle in park, but then they jerked right back into action.

Beck shook her head, blaming their gadgets for the strange buzzing in her ears and the way her fur was standing on edge.

“I don’t guess you’d stay in the car if I asked.” Maria sighed, already unbuckling.

The fox let out a low, irritable whine, her ear twitching, then shaking her head. The buzzing got even louder when she opened the door, and there was a sick feeling in her stomach, like someone had unzipped her from the side, pulled the skin apart like they were yanking open a purse, and plopped a fat, heavy stone into the roiling acid of her gut.

“Hey!” She kept her voice in Maria’s head only, and scrambled across the seat, pawing at her hip as she slid out of the car. It made the agent pause, and Beck took the chance to take the hem of her shirt in her mouth and try to pull her back. “No. No, I don't like this. We need to leave.”

“Beck.” Maria didn’t sound as annoyed as Beck had expected, and rather than shoving her back into the car and locking the doors like the witch expected, Maria scooped her up and shut the door behind them with her hip. The witch didn’t let go, and wriggled relentlessly as her friend squatted down and set her on the ground. “My agents are not going to hurt you. Relax.”

It was a fair assumption. Her fear of SHIELD wasn’t exactly a secret. But it was wrong. This wasn’t about them. It was something deep and instinctual that told her to run.

There was a tingling feeling in her toes, like little microscopic needles prickling into her paw pads and up past her claws. Plop. Another stone dropped into the pit of her stomach, and she stumbled a little, feeling nauseous. Beck searched the crowd of people, eyed the gadgets skeptically, and it only made her more certain that for once, SHIELD wasn’t the problem.

“Director Hill.” Beck recognized the man who approached them, but he didn’t immediately recognize her. He looked confused as his gaze settled on her, and then it dawned on him, and the friendly smile returned. He nodded down at her, their eyes locking. “Ms. Tandy.”

Before she could flash her teeth at him for calling her that, Maria had stepped between them. Probably afraid she’d bite him for the unknown offense. The fear wasn’t unfounded.

Maria chuckled. “Coulson. Nice to see your team is back stateside, but if you wanted to catch up I would have suggested a coffee shop, not a cow field.”

“It’s goats.” Beck said in her head, anxious and irritable. She pawed at Maria’s shoes and weaved in front of her every time she tried to step forward. Maria gave her a little look that said ‘not now’ that Beck ignored.

How could she not feel it?

“At eleven thirty on a Saturday? Think of the crowds.” Coulson shot back. He looked from Maria down to her, and Beck let out a shrill sound of protest, stepping in his way now as he attempted to lead them forward.

“We need to leave.” She said, this time to both of them, accompanying her statement with a loud yowl. “Something is wrong.”

The man’s brow furrowed, and she watched him get tense. Maybe he’d never been spoken to telepathically. Maybe he was confused. Maybe she’d stepped on his ego. Fuck him then. Fuck all of them. She was getting Maria out of here before this ended just as badly as the last trip they’d taken together.

“Give me just a second, Phil.” Maria said, motioning him on. Beck was propped with her paws planted firmly against Maria’s shins, as if she might be able to shove her back to the car. The agent didn’t budge, only squatted down again to look her in the eye. She looked calm—too calm, and that only upset the witch more. “What’s got you freaked out?”

Beck shook her head. Maria wouldn’t like her answers. They were vague and ominous in a cheesy way. She’d think that she was overreacting, likely. But Beck couldn’t always put words to feelings with ease. Especially not in animal forms.

“Ok. Look. Take these.” Maria fished her keys back out of her pocket, and offered them to the fox. “I’ll reroute the GPS. You can go to the flea market, and I’ll get a ride with Coulson when we wrap up here.”

“No! We’re leaving. We’re going back to the Tower. Right now.” The witch took the keys anyway, her ears pinned back to her skull, and tried again to shove her weight against Maria’s knees. It couldn’t do anything in this form.

Her frustration was rising, but she kept a level voice. “What if I call Clint? Maybe he can meet you out there.”

“Maria! Listen to me!” She wasn’t sure how else she could get her point across, and the panic was starting to overtake the stubbornness in her tone.

“ Beck, I know something is off. That’s why we’re here checking it out. That’s what SHIELD does.” The agent explained evenly. “So unless you can give me answers, I have to go look for them. And you need to stay well out of the way.”

Beck still didn’t have any answers for her. Not that didn’t have to do with prickling feelings and strange smells and tingles up her spine. She only knew that magic thrived off of instinct, and when something felt off like this, you were supposed to run.

The agent sighed and stood back up to step around her. If Beck were in her human form, she might have started to cry from the distress of it all. For a moment she was frozen there, trying to think. Maybe Maria was right. Maybe she should go back to the car and get a grip on herself. She could call someone. Not Clint, she wasn’t bringing any more humans out here. Someone that might have had the power to do something. Maybe Harper.

Yes. That was a good idea. Harper was good at handling dangerous magic, and technically this was her territory. It was her responsibility. Not SHIELD’s.

“Fitz says the energy readings coming from this area are off the charts but can’t explain what kind.” Coulson explained to Maria in the distance as she caught up. “To be fair he tried. Gave me a headache.”

“What’s he thinking? Asgardian? Kree?” Maria asked.

Coulson shook his head. “That’s just the thing. Nothing extraterrestrial has shown up on any of the initial testing. LiDAR imaging shows no indication of structures beneath the stone or anywhere on the property. All samples have come back consistent with the same ecological profile as the rest of the area.”

Their voices were fading off, and Beck could hear something in the distance. It was the bleating of goats and the cawing of crows crescendoing over the din of the work area.

She didn’t have time to call Harper.

Beck bolted forward, slipping through the little crowd and up the hill toward Maria and Coulson. When she crested the hill, she saw that her worst fears had come to life.

“Maria!” This time it was so loud—so frantic—that the mental intrusion must have actually hurt, because Maria winced as she turned around. Beck would feel bad about it all later, but none of that mattered now. She cut them off. “Maria, Maria! Do you remember how, a few months ago, we were stranded in the middle of nowhere and I told you that werewolves weren’t that bad, vampires were worse, and trolls were the ones you needed to watch out for the most?”

Maria held out a hand to Coulson, her eyes fixated on the scene in front of her. “You’re saying that’s a troll?”

At the bottom of the hill was a large pasture, and within it, a herd of about fifty goats were standing perfectly spaced apart in rows, forming a nearly complete circle around a singular boulder in the middle of the field. The only significant gap in them was an aisle way that led up to the rock, which was smeared with bits of crusted flesh and blood. Below the crimson streaks on the stone, the real carnage laid twitching and half alive. At least ten goats and five humans. Beck assumed they were agents. Anything that was still drawing ragged breaths and could so much as twitch, was writhing and twisting, trying to lap at the blood in the dirt and streaked on the flesh of one another: goat and human alike.

“No!” Beck shrieked, the impossibly loud and ear splitting yowl of an angry vixen accompanied the word. Maria had taken an unconscious step forward, her calm facade wavering as she watched the morbid scene across the field. Beck darted forward and sank her teeth into the agent’s leg as hard as she could. She could taste copper on her tongue and knew that she drew blood.

Blessedly, it was enough to force Maria back, cursing and clutching at the wound.

Along the wooden fence, dozens of crows were perched, and they began to caw loudly. A goat left its spot in the rows, and an agent, one standing guard at least twenty paces from the herd, dropped their weapon and stepped beside the animal in the aisle. The cawing grew louder, and the crows began to flap their wings.

“We need to go! We need to go now! Everyone!” She insisted. This time she bit the man beside Maria, then went for her hand where it was clutching her ankle. Maria saw it coming and dodged her, but Beck was frantic. She was screaming and making a horrible racket—almost blind with panic.

But the humans—Maria, Coulson, even the agents on guard, could only seem to tear their eyes away from the scene in front of them to look at her for seconds.

Both goat and man took off at a mad run down the aisle. Their heads were pointed down, and when the man made impact, he made no attempt to put his hands up to cushion his head. Louder and louder the crows cawed, louder she screeched, louder the droning buzz of a billion insects shook her down to her very being. People started screaming too. The people standing on the perimeter, other agents drawing closer to save their friend and in doing so, repeating his fatal mistake.

Beck kept nipping at the agents in front of her, trying to force them back as best she could. “This is worse than a troll. Much much much worse than a troll!”

Four more times the duo backed up and ran at the rock. The last time they were both broken and limping too hard to run properly, and to make up for the lack of impact they slammed their faces on the rocks.

The crows cawing drew out longer, less like frantic cheering as it turned to a breathy laughter. A laughter that sounded horrifyingly human as the crumpled bodies writhed and mindlessly mouthed at each other.

“Pull back!” Maria demanded, calling to the agents who had already gotten too close. She looked at Beck, her hand on her gun. “What the fuck is going on Beck?”

“Leave them. Or shoot them. It’d be a mercy.” She demanded. This time she let Maria and the other agents near them hear her.

“The hell I will. Those are my agents.” Coulson said, stepping around the witch.

Maria might have listened to her if he hadn't kept pressing on.

“What is this thing?” She asked, not looking back at Beck.

“It’s a rock. It’s what you can’t see that you need to be afraid of.” She insisted, this time when she rounded Maria, the agent stopped stiff. Not because of what she said, but because of what she was.

Her fox form was small, harmless, even when she was angry. The nip to Maria’s ankle would scab up in a day. A bite from the cougar crouched in front of her now would take a lot longer to heal.

She didn’t want to hurt anyone, especially not Maria, but they were running out of time for talking. One of the injured goats screamed as one of the humans took a bite out of its side while it still breathed. The violence was escalating. If all she could do was make herself the bigger threat, if she had to force them to obey her, then so be it. She could apologize later, when they were still alive to hear it.

Maria’s hand drifted away from the gun, raising slowly as if to keep from spooking her, even as a dozen other men leveled their weapons at her.

“We can’t just leave our men out there.” She tried to reason with the beast in front of her.

Beck only bristled further, a low, feline growl filling the air. It had fallen silent around them. No more laughter, no more screaming goats or men. But the buzzing was still strong in her head. Beck pulled back her lips to show off her canines. “I told you. They’re dead. So’s anyone that’s gotten close, and so will you too if you take another dozen steps.”

Maria shook her head to the armed men around her, and Beck was banking on her not letting them shoot her---banking on the fact that she wouldn’t do that to Natasha. It was a risky gamble, but Maria wasn’t prone to trigger-happy panic. The stakes were high. If she was wrong, it would cost her her life. But she’d have preferred a bullet to getting any closer to that stone. At least that was a quick death.

Slowly, their weapons lowered, and Maria reluctantly stepped back.

Laughter again. This time it was soft, but still collectively coming from the beaks of the crows. Bells chimed and sent a shiver down her spine.

“Little wiiitch.” The birds sang—breathless and unnerving. “Little wiiiiiiitch. Don’t you want your pets back? Come come, pretty kitty. Come close, little witch. Come and play a while.”

Everyone could hear that. And finally, blessedly, Maria made a gesture, calling the men back. Only about half of them listened. The others were too close. Now they were standing among the goats, swaying. She could smell their fear–their tears in the air.

“What is that?” This time the question was quiet, barely a whisper from Maria’s mouth.

“Gentry. Good neighbors. The fair folk.” The witch responded, following Maria with each step she took back, and showing her teeth any time the agent hesitated. When none of those names seemed to ring a bell, Beck said. “Faeries.”

“Fairies.” She parroted. Beck wasn’t sure if Maria looked pale or if it was just the light. Everything warped around a faerie stone. “Good. Great. There are fairies. That’s a thing.”

“I warned you before! You didn’t listen.” She hissed. Maria would have to let this all sink in later. When they were far away.

There was a dark shadow that passed over them, too thick and fast to be a cloud, and the murder of crows descended on them, flapping as they went round and round. The flutter of wings distorted the pace just enough that she could see the creatures shimmering in the distance. Tall and lithe, their skin a pale, iridescent purple, their hair a stark white encrusted with jewelry made of bones. But that was the only clothes they wore.

The creature reached up to stroke its twisted horn with a bloodied hand, then extended the hand to her. Its mouth moved, but the sound came from the crows around them. “Here kitty kitty. Come close. Don’t run, little witch.”

But she kept driving Maria and Coulson back. Once Phil even reached for his gun like he might shoot her and make a break for it, and Beck drew her claws across his extended hand. The gun misfired as he dropped it, and one of the crows dropped dead. But she didn’t think the other agents outside the living cloud of birds could properly see what was going on. A few opened fire, but their friends must have stopped them. Birds dropped dead out of the sky, but it had no impact on the flock.

“Can’t you talk to them?” Maria asked her, and the way she was still trying to look past her to the agents they were leaving behind suggested she couldn’t see the beings that Beck could. If she had, she wouldn’t have thought there was any chance of reasoning with them. She had a feeling Maria knew that wasn’t possible anyway, but was just desperately searching for a solution in her shock. “They want to talk to you.”

“Keep walking!” She snarled, this time her growl turned into a warning hiss as she rushed forward. “Stop looking at them! They’re getting off on it.”

“Where is your iron, little witch?” The crows sang.

The flock was thinning the further they got away. As the distance increased, her magic was able to overtake that of the fair folk, and she could release them from the oppressive hold they were under. They flew hard and fast in the opposite direction. At least animals had sense. But it was slow work; she couldn’t do it all at once, especially when her focus had to stay on the humans.

There was a spike of fear in the team of agents working at the makeshift camp where they’d pulled in. It got stronger the closer they got, and even at a distance she felt the fae delight in it.

The last few crows spoke, but it was strangled now as they were torn between the magic of the witch and the fairies. “We’ll keep them warm for you. Nice and warm like a bowl of milk, little kitty. Until you come back to play with us.”

She turned on the rest of the birds now, magically and physically, swiping out her claws and snarling at them to drive them away. The cry of alarm they let out was much more animalistic as they flew up into the sky and off into the distance.

When she turned back to Maria, the shock had left the agent’s face. She looked stern—calculating. Her arms were crossed defensively. Beck guessed that the fairies had been influencing her and the rest of the humans minds more than they’d even realized. Now with space, clarity could return and the reality of the situation could set in.

They probably thought they were safe here. But they weren’t. She could still feel the needles in her paws, her stomach still rolled. They needed miles between them, not meters.

“I want this place locked down. No one in, no one out, no one within a hundred yards of---whatever the hell that was.” She ordered, glaring sharply at the agents around her. Their eyes met for a second, Maria sizing her up, trying to guess her next move as Beck tried to come up with it herself.

The witch stepped back and shifted, standing up onto two feet instead of four. It pained her to let the rest of the agents see her for what she was, see her face and glimpse at her power, but she wanted to prove she wasn’t trying to threaten anyone.

“We still need to go, Maria.”

Ever stubborn, the agent shook her head, “That thing has to be dealt with. And until we can figure out how, we’re keeping our eye on it.”

Maria stepped away from her after that, calling orders and frantically dialing on her phone. Beck watched helplessly for a minute, then went back to the car and found her own phone in the bag she’d left on the seat. Along with her iron wand and several pieces of iron jewelry that she usually kept on her for good measure.

She found Clint’s name first, and tapped the little microphone that took her voice and sent it to people. Natasha had shown her that when she couldn’t get the hang of texting.

“If Maria calls you, don’t come.” She said into the phone speaker. “And don’t call Nat.”

There was little chance he or the other people she sent it to would listen: Stark, Rogers, Wilson, Rhodes. Anyone Beck thought SHIELD might call in. For the first time she understood why Nat had insisted she put them all in her phone with little pictures to show who they were. Not that they would listen to her over SHIELD.

She turned the phone over in her hand, shooting a look toward Maria and Coulson in the distance, talking to the agents that had clustered around them. Finally she found Harper’s picture and pressed the little phone beside it.

Harper answered in her practiced professional tone, “Hey I’m in a meeting can I call-”

“I’m in trouble.” She knew that would make Harper grind everything to a halt. In the background she heard the necromancer’s voice immediately sharpen. There was nothing gentle or apologetic in her tone when she told them to get out.

“What’s going on?” Harper demanded. Just as sharp, but farther away. She put her on the speaker talker. “Where are you? I’m texting my guys now.”

“Bring Arlatarii. We’ve got a problem. A big one. And SHIELD’s already tangled up in it.” She said, knowing even as the words came out of her mouth it would make Harper panic.

“Fuck.” She breathed, and then again. “Fuck!”

Beck heard something shatter and she wasn’t sure if Harper had thrown something or blasted the window out in her office. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Ok. Fuck my guys. Here’s what you're gonna do. You turn your phone location on, and get to the nearest body of water now. You and whatever humans are smart enough to listen to you. And you stay fucking there with Gráðr until I get to you. Understood?”

Beck wouldn’t dare argue with her. Not now. She nodded, even though Harper couldn’t see.

“Understood.”

#this started out so happy and got real fucked up lmao #at least on my scale of real fucked up #tw animal gore #tw gore #;;my drabbles #i write so many drabbles like this that just dangle #and don't end up with any decent conclusion #and it feels wrong to post them because they feel so self serving lmao #but my drafts are empty and i was in a mood so #writing is writing ig

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