[ 10 - CHAPTER TEN ]

― take this as your sign ―

Screw Nick Fury.

As Orion sat, his back hunched in an odious imitation of warped lumber, that was the only thought that ran through his head. The apex of his chin rested on the metal table in front of him. His tailbone ached from its prolonged contact with the chair beneath him - which, quite honestly, was no more comfortable than the seating Sarosians utilized to rid of their fecal matter - and his fingernail had splintered from his incessant scratching on the table's surface.

Nick Fury and the red-haired woman had left the room hours ago, leaving Orion subject to his own devices. It was a lamentable mistake on their part. If they wanted him to cooperate, then abandoning him with nothing but intolerable, impoverished furniture and his own thoughts was not the way to do it. Whatever hell they thought they could put him through, the torment that had nestled itself in the crooks of his own mind was much worse.

And so, with each indentation his clawing fingers left on the table, he thought of a new name, and a new harsh adjective to go with it. The first scratch - Nick Fury. Swindling. A disgrace to the weasel species. Another scratch. This time, for the redheaded woman. Gorgeous. Her features were ones that could defy the stars their beauty, but she was shrewish, no doubt. A third scrape on the table. He watched, scrutinizing, as his index finger drew diagonally into the polished medium. This hairline abrasion represented Castor. He was the most crooked being Orion knew, but he knew better than to curse his name aloud. So he was the third name that drifted silently in Orion's head, and the syllables festered on his tongue, left to boil there until the day Orion wished himself slain, and would finally have the courage to do something as suicidal as utter obscenities about the king of Saros.

At least Nick Fury was not Castor Atlas. But Orion doubted he was much better.

Moments prior to his infuriated exit from the interrogation room, right before Orion's refusal to answer his questions turned him into a malicious thunderstorm, Fury had made a statement. One that furthered Orion's demise and culpability far past his errors against his homeplanet. The director of S.H.I.E.L.D. had dared to look Orion in his sunken-in, narrowed eyes, curl his upper lip in a cocky jeer, and avow his reasoning for abducting the Sarosian: Orion's arrival on Earth had turned out to be detrimental to more than one person. His ship's tumbling end-over-end - the front bumper shooting into Earth's fiery atmosphere, with the back margin tail-spinning behind, over and over and over until, finally, it crashed - would be the downfall of Earth.

'Good,' Orion thought. 'If I'm lucky, maybe Earth will take me with it when it burns.'

Orion's nail caught on another scratch that was embedded in the table. The piece of furniture was much like the man he used to be, at first glance. Polished, with a surface so lustrous that it would reflect the intricacies of your being to you, if you asked it. If you asked it, it would show you the subtle way the lines on your lips moved when you smiled. The way your virtue couldn't help but radiate through your rigid grin. If you asked it, it would show you the worst parts of yourself. The parts you took extra care to keep hidden, the parts that remained wrapped in cobwebs in the furthest corner of your soul. Everyone has them, it would say. You are not a god among men, as you claim to be. It was candid. It was unvarnished. It was perfection.

Orion was not.

Look a little deeper, the table hissed - accusing him. I am no longer made of glistening gossamer, I am no longer perfect. Look at the scars on my back, look at what your sullied fingers have done to me.

Look at what you've done to yourself.

You are an erring man, Orion. King Midas, but oh, so much worse. Your greed has turned everything you touch to ash, because you are not the fire that forges gold. You are the fire that forges destruction.

"Mr. Atlas," a voice announced from just behind his left ear, and a tenuous ringing - one that he hadn't noticed was there, but must have been for a while, judging by the throbbing of his eardrum - subsided.

Orion's head swiveled around. At first, he was grateful for an escape from the sinkhole of derogatory thoughts he'd been slipping into. Then, he saw her. The woman from earlier, with the vibrant vermilion hair that tickled her shoulder blades. It looked like she'd gotten in a fight and her weapon's spoils had bloodied her hair. Orion wouldn't have been surprised if she had. Her presence alone stiffened the muscles that were woven together along his back, and every time she spoke, he wanted to fall to his knees and listen fervently, like the syllables that dripped from her tongue held the secrets to the universe. It was a grossly surreptitious notion.

He rose to his feet, his chair skidding behind him, forgotten, just like the thoughts about the woman that he forced to the back of his mind. His jaw clenched when she stepped forward.

"Let's take a walk," she hummed.

The woman gestured to the open doorway. Her arm remained outstretched while she waited for him to make a move, her fingers dangling from her wrist, but Orion's feet remained planted in the concrete he stood upon. She cocked an eyebrow. He cocked one of his own, creating a silent banter between the language of their bodies.

They could not be done questioning him. He hadn't given them so much as a one-word answer to any of their questions, meaning there was no way his release from the shackles of the interrogation room and his release from the chains of S.H.I.E.L.D. were one and the same. He doubted he would be gone from his scarred table for long. Unless, of course, they had developed new, more barbaric forms of questioning for him, in which case he would refuse to follow the woman anywhere.

"First," Orion began, his voice a gravelly whisper. "Tell me your name."

The woman laughed, notes of callous humor wafting from her voice box. "That's classified."

Orion shrugged. He shuffled back to his seat, grabbed the edge of the chair, and fought back a grimace as he eased his aching bones into a sitting position. The brawl in front of his apartment had taken quite a toll on his physique, it seemed.

"You're in no position to be making demands." The woman crossed her arms, her leather jacket squeaking as the material rubbed against itself. She rose a carefully sculpted brow. "But I can't afford to waste time on this. So, if you insist...I can't give you my real name, but I can give you one of them."

A huff of foul breath parted Orion's lips. His eyes ran up the outline of her body, careful not to linger on one portion for too long for fear that she would misinterpret his intentions and make him pay dearly. He was simply studying the connotation of her structure. How she held herself, whatever weapons she was concealing beneath her jacket and inconspicuous blue jeans, the precise amount of information she revealed to him - each piece of information was vital if he wanted to accurately decipher his opponent. It was a practice he acted on in his father's court at each meeting, but for some peculiar reason, his process was not leading him any closer to understanding the woman that stood in front of him. She was an enigma.

"You can call me Natalia," she finished.

His gaze drifted back up to her eyes, and once more, he discovered that she'd elongated her arm in hopes that he would follow her into the hallway. And past that, to whatever corner of hell he was supposed to trek to next.

Natalia. He'd never heard a name like it, but then again, most Earth names sounded foreign to him. Still, there was something about how her name rolled off her lips, like a fragile bell ringing its frail song through a winter's air...

He rolled his shoulders and, just as they grew tight at the peak of his shoulder blades, he reached out to push against the table as leverage to bring him to his feet. There was no use in resisting her orders. He was under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s control until he could find an escape. It would be no easy task, maneuvering out of the clutches of an agency such as this one, but following Natalia to see more of the base might turn out to be helpful.

When he reached the point where Natalia stood, the pacing of his footsteps slowed to a stop. He watched as she pulled a pair of glistening handcuffs out from behind her back and snapped them around his wrists, all in one, fluid movement, like that action was one she'd devoted her entire life to mastering. Orion gulped, and he winced as a lump the size of an apple crawled down his throat.

"Are you sure you shouldn't blindfold me, too? I might be dangerous," Orion quipped. The phrases were sour when they flew from his downturned mouth, meant to be a slap to Natalia's face. But the agent wasn't fazed.

She simply smiled, closed the door with a resounding click behind Orion, and teased, "Maybe I'm the dangerous one you should be worried about."

Maybe she was right. He'd seen her finesse in hand-to-hand combat - it challenged training as thorough as his, ignoring the stigma that was introduced by the fact that her petite figure suggested she should've been as harmless as a fly. She was a deceiver. A chameleon, a woman who prided herself in how quickly she could exchange one mask for the next. Women like that were dangerous. He knew, because Titania had been one of them.

She cocked her head to one side. "This way."

Natalia's heeled boots began to click down the hallway, but Orion hesitated. Too much uncertainty remained in the prospect of following her. He'd tried to convince himself that he had no choice - that she was his personal dictator, whether he liked it or not - but it wasn't enough to set his feet stumbling through the halls of a base he hardly knew. He didn't relish the life he lived. But he valued it enough to grasp it tightly between his fingers and fight, scream, when someone else had their hands on it, too.

He followed her anyway. If, in a few steps down his hastily oncoming path, he found himself in a precarious situation, he would fight his way out. Claw, scratch, bite and tear until they finally gave up on him. He would have to.

The tangles of SHIELD's labyrinth appeared exactly as Orion had expected them to. His head was still a whirling disarray of muddled memories and stinging regrets that had pierced his cerebrum, so he was unable to stare at one item for too long without his vision turning blurry, but he could comprehend enough to know that he recognized the halls he walked through.

They were a significantly more terrifying echo of Saros' defense headquarters. He found himself swirling into oblivion amidst asteroids of whispered secrets and craters of stark white walls, struggling to stay afloat atop the rising waters of his anxieties. Though, he was nearly certain the waters only existed because he was present in SHIELD's company, and not Saros'. If he'd been presented with a choice between the two, he would have chosen the unmapped realm of the Earth inhabitants in a heartbeat. His rising waters would rise no longer in the face of the alternative. Nothing, not even certainty and a long-gone sense of normalcy, was worth returning to the birthplace of his self-wrought downfall.

The halls were broad and airy, meaning Orion and Natalia did not step within a few feet's distance of another person throughout their entire journey. That being said, it came as a shock to Orion when they turned a corner and were met with a hallway no wider than four feet. It made up for its stoutness in its length, however - the tiles that overlapped each other beneath Orion's sandals crawled for thirty feet before they reached a door.

Natalia strode up to the covert door with ease, her shoulders thrown back and her torso swaying, but Orion was not so assured in the safety of what lied on the other side. What could it mean if the door was so secluded, protected with both a keypad and an eye scanner, and welded with titanium bearings?

The redhead extracted an identification card from the depths of her pockets and held it up to the scanner's blinking skin, all while hiding the face of the car from Orion. The screen blinked a bright blue and displayed Natalia's face in pulsing, luminescent shades of a digital blue, but when blocky letters began to string themselves across the pad, she shifted her weight to one leg so that her body shielded it from Orion's view. The eye scanner lit up once and Natalia pried open the door.

What lied on the other side was just as barren as the rest of the base. Void of chairs, tables, people, any remnants that a living being had ever existed between these lackluster walls. Just not void, Orion assumed, of conspiracies and conundrums more head-twirling than Natalia.

The only piece of furniture in the ballroom-sized space were dividers. They stood upright, placed meticulously at regular intervals across the room. Each divider created a line, each pair of lines creating a column, and when fused with the targets that rested on the other side of the room, the columns fabricated a shooting range of sorts. Of sorts, because there were no weapons in sight, save for a single rifle and a compact container that sat at its side.

Orion's gaze was quick to settle on the targets. Each boasted a bold red spot, and he was instantly reminded of another red. The red of blood. His comrades' blood, warm and sticky, as it trickled over his fingers on Cygnus. Orion's line of sight narrowed, and suddenly he couldn't see anything more than what laid between the two sides of his peripheral. For a moment, he thought someone had punched him in the nose, because his eyes welled up like a sprouting geyser of bitter secretion. His throat clenched and unclenched, over and over until it felt like his trachea had been clogged shut - your men no longer have throats, Orion. The Cygnans tore their throats out of their bodies, and fed on them like bloodthirsty animals, deprived of prey to snack on and of-

"Orion?"

Orion's eyes snapped to meet Natalia's own, and his eyes widened when he saw he was no longer on Cygnus. He'd touched down on Earth, floated from the clouds that were now tainted with sins instead of stardust, and had landed in a reality as unsettling as a bucket of ice water in the morning. A rush of oxygen entered his lungs. He gasped for breath, and when the female agent requested that he confirm his well-being, he managed to sputter, "I'm alright."

Natalia opened her mouth, let her bottom mandible dangle for a few seconds, and then snapped it shut again. "I want you to look at this," she ordered, gliding to the rifle like she was sliding on ice.

She picked the rifle up and nestled it in her arms. Orion was hit with a queasy, churning feeling in his gut in that moment. One that whispered in his ear that this woman knew weaponry better than she did herself. Where a man had his dog at his side, a necessary constant through the belligerent trials of life, Natalia had her guns.

She flicked the clips on the container, and the top swung open with a 'hiss'. Inside the striated metal receptacle was an array of discs. They were unlike anything Orion had seen before. Each one was no larger than the palm of his hand, and while there were only eight, it was obvious they had been made in a mass production of sorts. They were identical. Every line, every indentation and curve, every slate black border. Even the violet-tinted glowing center of the discs matched.

"What are these?" Orion breathed, half in awe at their beauty and half in confusion. The substance at the center of the discs was vaguely familiar, and Orion couldn't help but feel like the answer to their identity lay on the tip of his tongue, coated on the points of his tastebuds, even.

Natalia didn't respond. Her mouth remained clamped shut, and she used her free hand to slide open a compartment on the side of the rifle, revealing an inch-deep hole. It was circular, rounded with no residue of sharp edges. It was the perfect size for...the discs? Why would SHIELD, the very company that held him prisoner, be displaying their technology for his gluttonous eyes to devour?

The woman's thin fingers plucked one of the discs from their holder and placed in it the compartment on the rifle, sliding the ebony covering back into place when she was satisfied with the disc's placement.

"If I were you," she warned, the wavelengths of her voice resonating off of her tongue like a cat's purr. "I would step back."

Orion scoffed. "Step back? You've got to be kid-"

With a sudden blast of sweltering heat, Orion was thrown against the wall behind him. He let out a shout of protest and coughed out a moan as he scrunched inwards, massaging the back of his head. While he'd been scorning Natalia for giving a warning, the agent had shot the gun. The moment her finger had squeezed the trigger, it shot a bright laser at its target and a wave of heat had shot into the area surrounding the gun, explaining why Orion only felt patches of hair when he ran his hand along his chin. The feverish gust had been enough to incinerate parts of his beard.

"Wh...what..." Orion sputtered, still attempting to cough the constriction out of his chest. "...was that?"

"That..." Natalia's voice was ringing notes of a melody, her figure unaffected by the shock wave. "Was what happens when very bad people do very bad things with guns and actinium."

Orion's eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me, did you just say actinium?"

The Sarosian's scrutinizing gaze drifted over the targets that were spread out around the room. The gun had overstepped its goal of one target. Most were missing - demolished, resorted to nothing more than a pile of ash and dust. Others were singed at the edges, missing a paper arm or two, and still others had holes blazing in their torsos. The damage matched the phrase that Natalia had just spat. Actinium was one of the most dangerous substances in the universe. Rivaled only by vibranium, it was a medium that had gotten lost in translation, and it was constantly sliding between the liquid form that powered battleships and the solid form that powered nuclear weapons. That was why it was nearly impossible to manipulate. It was temperamental, and never certain of how it wanted to exist. How did Natalia have a manufactured version of it in her hands? And how had it not blown her to pieces?

Not to mention, it belonged solely to Saros. Developed from its accidental birth in a science lab by Sarosians, only the people that dwelled on that world knew of its existence. It made no sense that it would be on Earth.

"I did. And you're the reason it's here," Natalia quipped, her plump lips pursing once she'd completed her sentence. When Orion didn't offer an answer of his own, she continued her scattered explanation, saying, "When your ship crashlanded just outside of the Upper West Side of New York - yes, we know about your ship - it leaked actinium. Evidently, you neglected to clean up your mess. You left your transport out in broad daylight, and we were left with the responsibility of removing it before anyone found it. But we were too late."

Natalia took a few steps toward Orion and crossed her arms over her chest, kicking a hip out to one side. "An organization called H.A.M.M.E.R. found the ship and the actinium first, and now they're making prototypes like the one you just saw. They're a rising institution. New to the game, so we don't know a whole lot about them. Which is why I see it as your responsibility to tell us how you got here and what your intentions are. You know, since we already tried to do our part."

Orion tried to gulp, but his throat yielded nothing. It was dry as the rocks that lined a desert path. That night - the night his ship had crashed on Earth in his escape from Saros - had been fuzzy from the moment Saros lost its greatest treasure. The only thing he could remember was the coolness of the earthen rain as it seeped through his clothes and dribbles down the sides of his face, and even then, he only remembered the weather because he'd spent so long trying to decipher if the wet smears on his face consisted of his tears or the rain. He couldn't remember a thing about leaking actinium.

Yet, he supposed it was a possibility. A tightness began to worm its way into Orion's chest. All this time he'd spent running from his past, running from the harbored caverns of guilt inside him and the fatal mistakes he'd made that deserved no forgiveness, and it was snaking around to ensnare him once more. Natalia's news was like venom in his veins. It weakened his bones, sent him to the verge of a feeling that resembled death. He'd spent the past year stumbling in circles around New York City. And while he'd been tripping over his own feet in the recesses of his mind, wallowing in downpours of sorrow and self-pity, his very presence had brought on the ruin of yet another world. If he was not worthy of repentance before, then he was worthy of little more than death now.

It was only right for him to do whatever he could to help S.H.I.E.L.D. save their world. He was the one who'd ruined it, after all.

Orion cleared his throat and pushed himself to his feet, stumbling a few dizzying steps before he regained his balance. "I understand how it may seem, but I did not come here with the intent of harming your world. It was a mistake. I was heading for another planet when one of my engines blew, and it sent me spiraling all the way down here."

"Why did you want to get away from Saros so badly?" Natalia countered, eliminating any hopes Orion had of leaving out certain details.

Orion clenched his jaw shut. He wanted to help Natalia and the other agents, he really did. But he would not relive his worst nightmares for them. They wanted to transform him into a movie projector, playing the same old, worn-out movie for the world to see, cowering as everyone watched it skip over the goriest parts. He would not let them.

Natalia sighed, a drawn-out, thin breath of air escaping her narrow nostrils. She raised her hand to a miniature black wire that was wrapped around her ear, pressed it firmly, and snapped, "He's refusing. Open communications with Saros."

"No!" Orion shouted, and suddenly, his fingers were clawing at her arm, begging like the shriveled hands of a forlorn derelict. "No, please. Please don't contact them."

Natalia's hand wavered. It hovered, trembling by her ear, caught between giving in to Orion's pleas and following her orders. She was dancing on the center of a scale, tapping her toes on one side and then the other, prancing along the lines of what option she would choose.

At least she had options. Orion had none.

If S.H.I.E.L.D. contacted Saros, Orion was a dead man. It didn't matter how defiling begging was. It didn't matter that participating in it would make him seem weak, would make him seem to be little more than a bumbling drunk, blowing with the wind and following like a servant any way it went. It was something he had to do. If he wanted to live to bask in the balmy sun one last time, he would have to plead for everything he used to be the king of.

So he did. He promised to give Natalia whatever answers she wanted, to spout an eternity of scarred memories from his lips, if only she would bar communications with Saros. He watched eagerly as she evoked her order.

The thought of his predicament made bile rise in his throat. He'd fallen so far, for some who'd been mere years away from holding an entire planet under his thumb. Alas, he'd lost his crown long ago. Now he had nothing but an open bag scrounging for spare gold, made of scraps and tattered fragments of the man he used to be.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hello everyone, and welcome to yet another episode of 'Clair is an idiot and shouldn't be allowed to do, like...anything'. If any of you were wondering why it took me so incredibly long to update this book, I have no excuse. We all know Orion is my hyperfixation. We all know I always have inspo for this story. I am just Stupid.

For some reason, I had this wacky mentality that, once I finished 'Carpe Noctem' I wouldn't be able to write for Natasha and Orion anymore, so I was putting off writing for it as much as possible because I didn't want to say goodbye to it. Am I...stupid??? Yes. Yes, I am. Did I not think of the fact that there were about 5 million AU's I could do? That I literally have an entire SEQUEL planned? ANyway. Don't worry, Orion isn't going anywhere ANYTIME soon.

I hope you guys liked this chapter! I didn't include as much flowery language as I usually do, but it's difficult to do that in a more realistic setting(ie. not space). Also, one of the main plot points for the rest of the story was introduced, so I really hope that was interesting because that's...what the entire story will be about aha.

Q: WHAT IS THE SUPERIOR JUICE BOX BRAND: KOOL-AID JAMMERS, CAPRI SUN, OR ANOTHER BRAND?