Chapter 18: Realization

Tom felt as if he just received a blow to the head with a blunt object.

He had enough on his plate worrying about the DxD plot and now Marvel or MCU was added into the mix?

Fuck that shit sideways with a golden crooked spoon!

His thoughts were a disorienting jumbled mess as he tried to figure out the heads and tails of this new discovery.

Why was Black Widow at this party? No, why did she approach him? No, no, no, was SHIELD onto him? How!? Or rather, why? This was like... the first time he left his lab in months and the only thing of any impact on the mundane world he did was creating better food!

They couldn't think he made it so tasty with the help of some unidentified drug, could they?

No way they were so damn stupid... right?

Or were the members of the World Security Council foodies?

The hell if Tom knew!

Wait! Is she even here because of the food? As far as Tom was aware, nobody except the Magician Families was supposed to know who was the inventor of their products. Did somebody betray him?

No. Not possible. The Magician Families were nasty pieces of shit but siccing SHIELD onto him would have been beneath them. Plus, they would have never risked revealing the magical world to mundane people, much less to an international secret organization.

Then...

But...

What if...

For a few seconds, Tom agonized over trying to find out a good explanation for the situation he found himself in, inwardly panicking.

'Wait. Calm down, Tommy.' Tom patronizingly thought to himself, 'Deep breaths. That's it. You don't have time for this right now.' He added, chiding himself.

The woman... Natasha was still in front of him and seemingly indecisive about what to do about his grip on her wrist.

Tom understood he had only seconds to...

'Oh...' Tom suddenly gained an obvious realization and got a massive urge to slap himself as he inwardly cracked a self-deprecating grin. 'The answers are in front of you, you idiot.'

He was still holding Natasha's wrist. That meant he could simply use his Sacred Gear to dig through her past and look for clues there!

Inwardly sighing in relief, Tom barely managed to hold onto his outward calm facade, 'Damn, I almost freaked out...'

This was a too sudden revelation for his fragile heart and he didn't like it at all. But there was nothing else he could do than to adapt. Complaining wouldn't help and that's why he got to work, channeling mana into his Sacred Gear and sifting through fragments of Natasha's past.

Despite her being a mundane woman, she was still a person, which meant Tom should not have been capable of doing this for any length of time. People were much harder to look through than objects but Tom found a loophole in that during all his tinkering with his Sacred Gear.

Browsing through her entire past would have been exhausting as heck but getting only fragments, parts he was interested in, was entirely possible. He wouldn't have a full picture but this way, Tom could get only what he intended to get.

This method saved a lot of his mana and therefore did not put so much strain on his body despite the risk of missing context or something important.

It took barely three seconds in real-time for Tom to get all the answers Natasha could unknowingly provide him and as he idly watched the small frown on her clueless face full of discomfort, he couldn't help but feel bad after finding out her motivations.

Tom had found out this was closer to MCU than Marvel and that gave him a lot of relief. He didn't know to what degree this held true since he only had Natasha's point of view but at the very least, mutants existed. She had a briefing about them and she felt as flabbergasted as Tom when she found out they were real.

But purely judging by Natasha's past, this was closer to the MCU. She was twenty years old right now and SHIELD 'recruited' her only around a half-year ago.

And that's where Tom's initial assumptions went wrong, much to his relief and awkward realization.

This Natasha Romanoff was no longer just a character in a story. She was a person and that came with everything a person has. Feelings, doubts, hopes, desires, dreams, problems... everything.

This girl in front of him was only twenty and... she approached Tom on a whim.

There was no nefarious plot boiling under the surface concerning him. She was simply bored at the party since her job was done, deadly poison already coursing through the veins of her date who would not survive past tonight, and when she saw Tom leaning on the railings, she liked his looks and decided to have a small talk.

Like a normal girl would.

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If anything, Natasha longed for freedom and normalcy more than anyone Tom had ever known. Approaching him was dumb and she clearly knew it. It went against every regulation of her job and broke several rules but Natasha couldn't care less. She was fed up with SHIELD. Exhausted and angry. Yet, hopeless and resigned with no way out.

That's why for this brief moment of reprieve, she did it anyway. If only to enjoy a few seconds of lying to herself and just enjoy being a girl at a party.

But it got out of control. From what Tom saw, her desires and dreams overwhelmed her for a moment and she kissed him. It was a shock to her too but... It only snowballed from there.

Somehow, Tom felt smug that he managed to draw out feelings like these from the woman in front of him. The very same woman who was taught to kill every emotion in her.

Only now, however, did Tom realize that seeing somebody's past could be a double-edged sword. Her most recent moments showed him that she developed a small crush on him. She was reluctant to leave but knew she had to.

If not for herself then for him. As a SHIELD agent on the strictest probation possible, she was not allowed to interact with people outside her missions. She really had no idea how SHIELD would react if they found out about her feelings, about this vulnerability.

Natasha was scared out of her mind of that happening and while she couldn't say she loved Tom, not after one evening together, she felt something... new. Something she had never felt towards another person. And these feelings were very dear to her heart. Dear enough that she wanted to run away from here as fast as possible while at the same time, she wanted this moment to last forever.

Seeing this conflict in her, and that on some level, she really cared for his well-being... It hit Tom like a proverbial truck, his grip on her wrist tightening a bit.

He... didn't want to let her go.

"Hey? Are you alright?" Natalia's worried voice pulled Tom out of his reverie, causing him to realize in embarrassment she was waving her hand in front of his face, a small longing yet desperate frown stretched on her lips.

Tom warred with himself. He knew he should not get involved.

Doing that would bring problems to him.

It would possibly mean making an enemy out of SHIELD.

It would also screw the MCU plot somewhat fiercely.

But...

As he gazed at her face, Tom got very conscious of the small finished chess piece in his pocket. A piece he was so giddy about that he refused to let it out of his reach like a kid who got a new toy. His very first success.

A piece that would be a massive shame and waste to use on someone mundane.

Yet...

The frantic redhead in front of him... Tom wanted her.

It was as simple as that and yeah, he was a bastard for thinking about it like that but if he denied the fact, he would have just been lying to himself. He'd rather be a bastard but true to his own feelings.

His decision was made before he even realized it. At this moment at the very least, he was set to follow his heart rather than logic.

He... was about to offer her a spot in his 'pseudo-peerage'.

In reality, only five seconds passed since he grabbed her wrist but Natasha finally recollected her bearings and calmed her emotions. She gave Tom a disapproving look and tried to weakly yank her wrist out of his hold to show him he was acting over the top.

"Look, I had an incredible evening but now I really have to g-" She spoke when...

Her body suddenly froze.

Not in the scared kind of way but in a literal way. She couldn't move. At all. Her eyes gained a scared glint as she realized the man in front of her was most likely a mutant. And she was at his mercy.

Tom gave her an apologetic smile, feeling a small sting in his chest at the frightened glint deep in her gaze, "I am sorry, Natalia."

If anything, saying her name just made Natasha freak out even more. She tried to desperately will herself to move. To surpass whatever was binding her. But it was in naught and with every second she failed to move, her inner despair rose.

"Don't be scared." Tom gently caressed her cheek, making her heart involuntarily skip a beat... and at that moment, Natasha both hated and loved that gesture.

"I am only going to give you an offer. You are free to refuse and nothing will happen to you even if you do that." Tom said. As much as his heart bled due to her feelings about her current situation in life, he wasn't some good samaritan. For him, there was a limit even to following his heart.

"But... I doubt you will get a better chance than this to improve your life."

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