"Black Widow? Really?"
Rosen stared at the holographic mission file hovering over the coffee table, a look of genuine surprise on his face. The universe, it seemed, had a sense of humor.
Just a few months ago, he had watched Natasha Romanoff get thrown around an alleyway by T'Challa in London. He had considered recruiting her then, but Kilgrave's attack on Jessica had forced him to abandon the plan. By the time he looked back, the spy had vanished into the wind, slipping past his mechanical surveillance net.
Now, S.H.I.E.L.D. was handing her to him on a silver platter.
"You know her?" Jessica asked, noticing the smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. She was polishing her new gauntlets, looking every bit the seasoned hero.
"Know her? I know more about her than Nick Fury does," Rosen laughed.
He tapped the file. The S.H.I.E.L.D. briefing was dangerously thin. It listed "Black Widow" as a high-value assassin operating out of Eastern Europe—a ghost responsible for political hits, data theft, and chaos. It said nothing about the Red Room. It said nothing about General Dreykov.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. thinks she's a rogue operator," Rosen explained. "But she's not. She's a graduate of a program that makes the CIA's black sites look like summer camp. The Red Room."
He told her everything. The kidnapping of little girls. The psychological conditioning. The involuntary hysterectomies. The way Dreykov turned children into weapons and then discarded them when they broke.
By the time he finished, Jessica's face was hard. The playful excitement about her first "official" mission was gone, replaced by a cold, simmering rage.
"Dreykov deserves to die," she said, her voice low. "And this Red Room shouldn't exist."
"I agree," Rosen said. "But here's the thing: you're going to fail this mission."
Jessica blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Okay, 'fail' is the wrong word," Rosen corrected himself. "Let's say... re-interpret. I'm going to help you burn the Red Room to the ground and kill Dreykov. But the Widows? Natasha? You can't hand them over to S.H.I.E.L.D."
Jessica raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess. You want them for yourself?"
"I want to offer them a choice," Rosen countered smoothly. "Think about it. These women have been brainwashed tools their entire lives. If S.H.I.E.L.D. takes them, what happens? Do you think Fury is going to set them up with a nice condo and a therapy dog? No. He's going to debrief them, classify them as assets, and put them right back into the field. They'll just be trading one handler for another."
Jessica opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. She knew he was right. She had joined S.H.I.E.L.D. for protection and money, but she wasn't blind to their nature. They were spies. They used people.
"And you?" Jessica asked, giving him a pointed look. "Are you any different? Am I not just a tool in your hands right now?"
Rosen's smile faded slightly. "You're smart, Jessica. I won't lie to you—having a team of elite assassins would be useful. But I never forced you. You chose this. You chose the suit, the money, the fame. I just gave you the option."
He leaned forward. "That's all I want for the Widows. If they want to work for me? Great. If they want to disappear and open a bakery in Italy? I'll buy them the flour. But S.H.I.E.L.D. won't give them that option."
Jessica sighed, knowing she had already lost the argument. "Fine. What do you need me to do?"
Rosen reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, metallic object. It looked like a high-tech toy.
"Just keep this in your pocket," he said, handing her the Mechanical Frog. "And when you find her... make sure she stays found."
One Week Later: Budapest
The city was beautiful, even in the grim grey of winter. But Jessica didn't have time for sightseeing.
She wasn't alone. S.H.I.E.L.D. had sent a support team—a squad of tactical agents led by a man with a bow and a cynicism that rivaled her own. Clint Barton, codename Hawkeye.
"Intel puts her in that safehouse," Barton said, pointing to a weathered apartment building across the square. He checked his quiver. "She's good, Homelander. Don't underestimate her. She's slippery."
"I can fly, Barton," Jessica said, adjusting her cape. "Slippery doesn't work on gravity."
The ambush was textbook. Barton took the high ground, his arrows pinning down the exits, while Jessica breached the front door. Or rather, she removed the front wall.
Inside, Natasha Romanoff was waiting.
She moved like water, dodging debris and firing her dual Glocks with pinpoint accuracy. The bullets sparked against Jessica's Homelander suit and the invisible barrier of the Amulet of Spell Shield.
Natasha realized instantly that she was outgunned. She tried to flank, to use her Widow's Bite, to find a weakness. But Jessica just floated there, hovering a few feet off the ground, bulletproof and annoyed.
"Seriously?" Natasha panted, backed into a corner, her guns clicking empty. "First the cat-guy in London, now a flying tank? What is happening to the world?"
She looked at the woman draped in the American flag, floating in her living room. Despair washed over her. She was the best spy in the world, but the world was changing into something she couldn't fight with pistols and karate.
"Black Widow," Jessica said, her voice amplified by the suit's comms. "We need to talk. And trust me... you're going to want to hear this."
In Jessica's pocket, the mechanical frog blinked once, its tiny camera lens transmitting a live feed directly to a penthouse in New York.
"Gotcha," Rosen whispered.