Flashback 6: The Fairy Glen

And now for the flashback! To be honest this is a filler, so you can skim if you want, but if you like Hunter then I advise against that.

Enjoy!

LittlePond

Flashback 6: The Fairy Glen

Summer's warm clutches had finally arrived in Sokovia, and Aurelia Tempest rejoiced that Doctor List told her that the next few months were going to be 'doused in sunlight.'

His words, not hers.

"Have you thought about taking the twins for outdoor sessions?" he asked. The assassin had found that his German accent wasn't as endearing as the Maximoffs'. Maybe it was because those she had met with the accent weren't the best. Except for Whitehall; he was an exception.

"I've had that idea since I first landed here," she sighed, rolling up the right sleeve of her leather jacket. In spirit of the warming weather, Aurelia had chosen a light brown shade. Either way, the scientist had called her to one of his laboratories to tell her about the change in the weather, and had spent 5 minutes monologging about Brownian motion.

Which was interesting, but a waste of time.

"Of course, the assassin S.H.A.D.O is always a step ahead," List grinned, turning back to his trustworthy microscope, which despite it's constant use was sprinkled with dust.

She lifted herself off the desk where she had been sitting, no doubt deleting the wrinkles in a scientist's notes about the chemical properties of Loki's sceptre. "S.H.A.D.O also knows millions of ways to end a man's life."

Thankfully Doctor List asked her only one more question before leaving, "I assume you will be taking Agent Appleshade when you go outside?"

Clutching the doorframe with knuckles as white as pearls, Aurelia turned to the silver haired man. She had no idea how the man knew that she was friends with Hunter, but, according to Hunter's stories, he knew the forest surrounding them like the back of his hand.

If anyone could, Hunter would be the one to help her find a suitable clearing for combat training. "Of course, S.H.A.D.O always knows ahead of time," she answered, blonde hair already behind her, a golden ocean.

Not that she wasn't expecting it, but Hunter was more then happy to accompany her to the forest.

The HYDRA agent had actually started to jump around his room, which was much smaller the hers, she noted. At least Von Strucker had given her special treatment, as hate filled as he was, he knew how to treat blood soaked assassins.

"Well?" she asked after he proceeded to jump for 5 minutes straight, "Aren't you going to get ready? The twins' sessions are straight after lunch. It's 10 o'clock right now."

Hunter stopped immediately, and like a robot began to grab supplies he knew that they'd need. Though she'd never admit it, Aurelia didn't recognise most of the apparatus that he pulled out. "You're going to love it there, Aurelia," he chimed, a sparkle coming across his brown eyes she hadn't seen before, "It's beautiful this time of year."

Beautiful. A word otherwise non-existent in the vocabulary of a HYDRA agent.

"Well, this meets my expectations," Aurelia stated minutes later, staring wide eyed across the glen.

The forest, indeed, was beautiful.

Underneath the emerald roofing, the sun dappled the ground, appearing on the undergrowth like splatters of paint. The trees grew tall, not as tall as the redwoods, but tall enough to deduce that the forest was old. The bark was rough as she passed by, and the dead leaves crunched underneath her combat boots like bones. No birds chirped, no animals rushed by, the only living thing she knew of in the area was her and Hunter, though she didn't doubt that there was a country full of ants and insects in just one tree alone.

"How do you know this place so well?" she asked, placing hair behind her ears. Hunter shrugged, pulling out one of the weirder pieces of equipment he had brought, and squinted at one of the odd dials. "I told you I was raised in Romania. The place is practically covered in forest, navigating these woods is child's play," he scoffed, putting the odd object away.

Aurelia could relate to that, nowadays, Hunter was the only agent that could put up a fair fight against her. Well, the only agent that wasn't Enhanced. Pietro could easily get her down with super speed and whenever it came down to it, Wanda's trick with the fears could take down the most fearsome of people.

"So, would you know anywhere where I can train the Maximoffs?" she asked, going on her tip toes to peer behind him and his tracking equipment. Hunter yanked himself away, "No, looking at my secret weapons!" he childishly scolded.

But his expression softened and laughed softly, "Of course I know a place. But it's a while north east, if we keep up our pace, we can get there, spend a few minutes and get back to the base in time for lunch."

Keep up the pace? Hunter did realise just who he was talking to?

Aurelia nodded as if taking orders from Whitehall- or worse, Von Strucker -and the two HYDRA agents began their walk, the ground dissolving beneath their shoes.

The walk started horribly.

Hunter lead her through a region where the trees grew closer together, so close that the assassin had to duck, jump and squeeze through the minuscule gaps, sucking in the stomach she'd acquired from too many fries, Doritos and burgers.

"'It's beautiful this time of year,' he said," she mocked, poorly imitating a Romanian accent, though she'd never heard one before, "'I know this forest like the back of my hand,' he said. 'You'll love it there, Aurelia,' he said."

Brushing off leaves from his sweater from his roll under a log, Hunter scoffed, this time talking with his Romanian accent, "I don't sound like that." Aurelia sighed, rolling under the same log that Appleshade had rolled under.

To her disappointment, the bark scratched into her back, digging in like a knife. A simile she knew all too well. The scar on her collarbone rang out with pain.

"I'm sorry, but the Romanian accent is rare and extremely hard to imitate. Even for those who've heard it." Hunter laughed, grabbing a tree for support from the guffaws that rattled him. "So you're saying that the S.H.A.D.O doesn't know how to imitate Romanian accents? That's a first."

Aurelia was on him faster than she could have anticipated.

The assassin jumped over a log, and as she landed, pressed him against the tree had had been previously holding for support, her forearm across his throat and remaining first ready before she could count to 10.

"How do you know I'm S.H.A.D.O?" she asked, her voice quiet and blue eyes steely. Despite her deadliness and reputation, the HYDRA agent placed a hand on the arm across his throat. "Relax, Tempest. I'm an experienced agent. When Strucker realised that we were becoming friends, he told me just what I was in for."

Von Strucker, that pain in the ass.

Releasing her grip on Hunter, she stood away, stretching her arms from their sudden burst of energy. "Of course Strucker told you," Aurelia sighed, exhaling the adrenaline from her system. Hunter snickered, "Von Strucker's one for things like that. He's perhaps one of the worst people I've come across."

So they weren't alone with their opinions of Strucker, which she hoped was a common opinion across HYDRA.

"You're not alone on that," she agreed, smiling at the sound of a bird leaving a branch. Appleshade, however, suddenly looked around the scenery, his head flicking left and right like a meerkat in the African savannah.

"Hunter?" she asked tentatively. He turned to her, somewhat calmer, "It's nothing. Come to think of it, I have something else to show you. We should hurry up." Aurelia would've asked what this other place was, but the agent held a finger to lips, signalling her silence.

The two walked on in silence for at least 10 minutes when Hunter finally spoke, "You know, I had my suspicions about you. They don't let just anyone train the Maximoffs." The assassin had expected as much, here she was, an otherwise unknown HYDRA agent, pulled in to train perhaps the two best weapons that they had against S.H.I.E.L.D, expect for her at least.

They entered silence again, and Hunter restarted the conversation once again. Aurelia decided she'd have to improve her skills with small talk. "It must be really nice, being Whitehall's star student," he sighed, almost wistfully.

Clearly, he must have heard about all that the man who had raised her had down for their organisation. "I suppose. It does have it's perks," she grinned, thinking of her rooms that were slightly bigger than the others, and her power of Von Strucker's control of the twins.

"But how does it feel?" Hunter blurted, the words so close together Aurelia had to pause to fully decipher them. Hunter closed his eyes, opened them and rephrased his question. "How does it feel to have killed so many? Most assassins don't surpass 50 kills, but 100? That's insane."

She had asked herself that question many times while she lay in bed at 3 in the morning, when sleep was an unfathomable concept.

No matter which way you looked at it, she found she always came to the same conclusion- she was a killer.

But it didn't bother Aurelia as much as it should have.

Why would she be afraid of what she was, when she was doing good for the world?

Aurelia was killing those who withheld information, who committed crimes against humanity, she didn't kill those who looked at her wrong.

Though when she was in a particularly bad mood once a month, Aurelia definitely considered it.

"Surprisingly, peaceful," Aurelia finally answered, staring into the leaves and shrubs around them. So rarely was she given the chance to just walk through forests without pursuing a victim.

Hunter looked stunned at her answer, so they just continued to walk, the silence between them charged, but still comfortable.

Finally, the trees parted ways, and what could have passed as a fairy glen seemingly appeared out of nowhere. "Huh," Aurelia stated as she entered the circular clearing.

Slender trees lined the area, bare of any low lying branches, outside of them, nothing else grew besides the thick undergrowth, which was much deeper than anywhere else in the forest. Surprisingly, the dead leaves seemed to bounce underneath her.

Through the trunks around her, the sunlight that filtered through had an insane golden quality, as if it had come from a bank's secret vault.

"Why do I have the insane feeling that fairies are going to invite me to fairyland forever and ever?" Aurelia asked.

"Maybe it's the trees?" Hunter asked back as he too, entered the clearing, "Maybe it's the sunlight?" The assassin jumped slightly on the dead shrubbery, testing the bounciness' limits. Hunter had really outdone himself, or at least the forest had unknowingly.

"So I'm assuming this is the place that you found for training?" she questioned again. The HYDRA agent walked around, trailing his hand on the auburn bark, "Yeah, this is the place. You like it?" Aurelia scoffed, "Like it? This place is out of a freaking fairytale!"

Hunter checked his watch, and then the sun's position, "We should get going, I've something else to show you." She turned back to him from where she stood, observing the sun's embellished descent. "And what can top the Fairy Glen?" she asked. Hunter gave her a look worthy of any successful business man, "You'd be surprised."

Hunter however, did not surprise her.

That 'something else' he had made them leave the Fairy Glen early was another long trek that was entirely so that they could disable cameras Hunter had found.

"You've got to be kidding," Aurelia scoffed as he bent down to disable the first camera, "Why are you even doing that?"

Hunter shook his head, annoyance radiating off him like gamma rays, the assassin took a minuscule step back, though made sure to make it as silent as she could. "In case you ever want to talk to the twins without HYDRA listening in."

Aurelia crossed her arms, the leather rustling against each other. "And why would I ever want that?" The assassin couldn't think of a conversation that she wouldn't like HYDRA listening in on.

She wasn't discussing ways to break out of the base, either way, there was no point. The Sokovian base as too well guarded- such an attempt would be suicide.

"Do you really want Von Strucker snooping in on you?" the agent asked, ripping a red wire from the camera's lens. "No," she answered, of course she wouldn't enjoy that viper stalking her, but she had come to accept it.

That was the way of HYDRA.

"Well, be happy that I'm giving you an extra pathway back to the base," he moved over to another camera, and ripped the wires out of it, "One that's free of any potential eavesdropping." Hunter disabled another, throwing it onto the ground, where he was beginning to make a pile. "You and the twins can talk freely," Hunter remarked, standing up after disabling the final camera and threw it down on his pile.

"You know, the twins have names; Wanda and Pietro Maximoff."

He shrugged, "It's just easier to say that. Makes it simpler." Aurelia looked up from staring at the small mountain of technology, and perked an eyebrow. "Simpler, why?"

The agent ran a hand throw his hair. "Before you came, it killed me to walk past their cells. I don't have a sibling, but I had someone as close as one. If I was in that situation...it doesn't matter. Me saying 'the twins' doesn't cause heartache."

The assassin looked away, she felt rude intruding like that.

Of course, Aurelia didn't want to say that she hadn't been as close to someone to consider them like a sibling, with the exception of Whitehall, who was a father to her.

But, that didn't stop Aurelia from blurting out, "Sorry if this is too much but, who was this person you considered a sibling?"

Hunter looked at her astounded, either at her utter lack of people skills or her foolishness. Perhaps a mixture of both. After a long pause of silence, the agent answered, "It doesn't matter. All you need to know is that S.H.I.E.L.D took her a long time ago."

So this person was a girl. There was always a girl when it came to boys who swung that way.

Sighing, Aurelia put a supportive hand on his shoulder, "S.H.I.E.L.D takes everyone, one way or another."

He looked down at her, as if expecting her to elaborate, "They killed my entire village, including my mother who died before she could name me." Despite the bleakness of their stories, which everyone she had met at the base seemed to have, Hunter grinned timidly, "So that's why you're name is so epic. No one has names that cool naturally."

The assassin laughed, and it echoed through out the otherwise dead and empty forest. "You know it's Latin? Golden storm." Hunter looked extremely not amused at that comment, shaking his head and biting his lip, "Come on Tempest. Let's go home."

Despite the epic changes between them, Aurelia felt weirdly comfortable with Hunter on their way back to the Sokovian base. It was silent, but the kind of silence that was more like a tightly knotted thread than a magnet that repulsed.

"So, that happened," she stated when the entered the base, the metal door closing behind them with a final clarity. Aurelia shivered as she took more steps into the base, the air conditioning must have been turned on whilst they had been in the forest.

Not that there had been much need; outside was warm, but definitely not hot enough to further turn the base into Antarctica.

"Well, thanks for the trek, Agent Tempest," Hunter comically bowed, any sign of the seriousness and rebellion he'd displayed out in the forest had disappeared. Much like the time she had to eat lunch and get ready for Wanda and Pietro's first outdoor training session.

"Damn!" she exclaimed when Aurelia realised the time.

Hunter stood up from his bow, clearly upset he hadn't been able to make S.H.A.D.O curtsy, "What is it?" The assassin was already on her way to her room, "Wanda's session is in 10 minutes!" she yelled back, blond hair already flying behind her as she ran to the cafeteria.