“So what have we learned so far?” Director Fury quizzed.
“Not much,” Clint admitted dryly.
“According to Denny, she killed Gorman because ‘he needed to go’. Other than that, she’s given yes or no answers with little detail, if any,” Coulson recapped.
Fury held up his hands. “That’s it?”
“We press her for questions and she shuts us out,” Natasha explained. “Coulson is the only one who’s been able to get any information from her at this point, and the more answers she gives us the more we have to ask.”
“We don’t have time to sit around and cater to her preferences. Coulson, we need answers. Who is she working for, if anyone? What does she know about this…energy cloud, anything. If more extreme measures are necessary, take them. If you won’t I’ll send in someone who will.”
“With all due respect, Boss, I don’t think forcing her is going to help,” Coulson said.
“And what makes you think that?”
“She’ll talk to the questions she wants to answer, and she gives answers, albeit confusing ones. I don’t think she is being difficult in the way we as SHIELD agents are used to. It’s like talking to a child in an adult body with some adult understandings,” Coulson explained. “I don’t think we need to treat her like a criminal, but rather play along, if you get my meaning. Like playing make-believe with a little kid.”
Fury looked entirely unconvinced.
“Maybe if we get her out in a situation where she can see what we’re working on, and what information we’ve gathered already, it would encourage her to tell us more,” Natasha suggested.
“Or maybe if she was in a more casual environment,” Clint said off-handed. “She acts like a caged animal here, always on the defensive. If she was in a different setting, she might bother talking to more than just Coulson.”
Fury laced his fingers and leaned back in the overlarge office chair.

---

Eden had adjusted herself in the chair so that her feet were in the seat and her knees became a chin rest. She picked at the fabric of her jeans and looked around the room as she had done for many hours now, though she did not seem bored in the slightest. It had taken her this long to appear comfortable— or less intimidated by— her environment. Sometimes she would take her finger and trace in the air the honey-comb pattern of the walls. And when the door of the room opened she no longer lowered her head to avoid eye contact. In fact, when Agent Romanoff opened the door this time, Eden looked apprehensively relieved.
“Hold out your hand,” Natasha instructed. Eden did so slowly, thinking she might pull her hand back if something would threaten her well-being, but Natasha was faster. Eden found herself shackled by a bangle-like device on the same hand as her charm bracelet. She immediately started to fiddle with the foreign device.
“That will monitor your movements, and if you try anything offhanded you’ll get an unpleasant shock— and I mean that quite literally,” she explained. “Are you hungry?”
Eden stopped fidgeting long enough to ponder the question.
“Yes.”
Eden had assumed that food would be brought to her in the interrogation room. But Agent Romanoff led her out of her confinement and down cold barren halls, where around every few corners there were men and women dressed in very formal business wear, looking very serious and, to Eden, very unfriendly. Natasha saw her reverting to an agitated state. In the Dining Hall it was worse. Eden was visibly distressed by the continuous noise and bustle. Natasha had to guide her though the steps and stations for food and when both had trays of precisely portioned food rations Natasha selected a table where they could sit across from each other but that it would be easy for Natasha to get on Eden’s side if something should go awry.
Eden ate the bread and potatoes readily, but the steak-like patty she picked at and inspected with suspicion.
“They insist that nothing they serve us is classified as ‘mystery meat’,” Natasha said, catching Eden off guard.
“Ground meat is always sketchy,” Eden said quietly with a wrinkled nose. “I don’t like finding pieces of cartilage in my food.”
But as she continued picking she organized parts of the steak into what she thought was edible and wasn’t and continued with the meal.
“I guess years of espionage and diplomatic warfare has made me less aware of the standard of my food,” Natasha said, looking at the food on her fork before consuming it.
“I’ve been in plenty of situations where there was shitty food or no food at all, and when I’m in first world situations where there are no food shortages, I damn well expect the food to be of a reasonably edible quality,” Eden said pointedly.
Natasha let Eden eat a few more bites and asked, “So… if you’re the one who killed Gorman, I assume you were the driver that night?”
Eden’s expression contained an unexpressed sigh and she put her fork down.
“Yes.”
“How did you get out of the car?” Natasha asked. She looked so interested, like she had asked out of her own curiosity, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. It was like she wasn’t trying to. They were running out of time and there was no longer room to sneak answers out of anyone at this point, and Eden had to take a pause to decide how she would answer, if she would.
“I,” she slowly stated, “displaced myself.”
“What does that mean?” Natasha asked.
“What do you think it means?” Eden returned. When Natasha did not answer, Eden continued. “The definition of displace is to ‘cause (something) to move from its proper or usual place’. Some synonyms relevant to the displacing I am referring to would be ‘move’, ‘shift’, or ‘reposition’. If you were in a burning car, where would you want to be, in it or outside of it?”
“Outside would be nice,” Natasha humored.
“So, let us imagine that you are inside of a burning car. Due to the nature of the crash, and the heat of the fire, the door won’t open. Even if it would, it is too hot to the touch. The person beside you has already caught fire themself. You can’t break out of the windows beside or in front of you because that is where you ran into to the power box. The car is too small to climb out the back, if you could unfasten your seatbelt. But the flames have made that impossible as well— if you want to get out now, you’ll have to wait for the seatbelt itself to burn away, but by then you’d have asphyxiated or burned to death yourself.”
“Then I would probably wish I had some kind of teleportation ability,” Natasha joked.
“What if you could? Or could have some ability similar to teleportation?” Eden said. She held her hands palm-up. “What if you could, just by imagining it, willing it, remove yourself from the car? Of course, there would have to be a little more to it than that. You would need to envision the path from your current position, to where ever else you wanted to go. And as you mentally took that path, your body would follow.”
“Is that not teleportation?”
“Teleportation is more of an apparition than a displacement,” Eden dismissed. “I’m talking about something more like… lucid dreaming.”
Natasha looked blank, like the information did not quite register.
“Have you ever experienced lucid dreaming?” Eden inquired.
“On occasion.”
“Do you remember then the feeling of a lucid dream? There is a sort of detached attachment to a place that feels real but has malleable aspects that you can control. The key is to remember that feeling. It becomes a sort of meditative state at some point when you do it enough,” Eden said.
“So you treat everything like a dream?” Natasha asked.
“Why not?” A sideways grin appeared on Eden’s face. “I mean, who’s not to say this all isn’t a dream?”
“I am pretty certain this is real,” Natasha said, glancing around.
“What makes you so sure?” Eden asked. “Who decides what is and isn’t real? Who says this isn’t all a dream? Maybe you are dreaming right now. Maybe the people you know by name are other dreamers, and together you’ve all constructed a collaborative dream.
“It is true, people can invade other’s dreams while sleeping, and sometimes dreams overlap,” Eden interjected informatively before continuing her thought.
“Or maybe none of you exists except to fill the twisted dreams and fantasies of someone in some other realm.
“Maybe,” Eden proposed, her eyes lit up excitedly as she leaned in and glanced briefly around them, “none of these people exist until you are aware of their presence.”
“Is that how you get around unnoticed?” Natasha asked levelly.
“Is it?” Eden’s grinned wider. She sat back. “Or did I just invent all that?”
“Did you?” Natasha probed. Eden shrugged.
“Do you have a better explanation to how I got out of the car? Then, I guess you’ll have to go with that for now.”
She folded her hands and looked at her mostly empty plate. It looked like she was contemplating something profound, when she said—
“Does this place serve smoothies?”

---

Natasha found a vending machine that offered fruit juice in lei of a smoothie and got a bottle for Eden and a water for herself. That’s when Captain America approached them. Natasha was unaware that he had been informed of Eden, or the entire Gorman case, but he clearly knew enough to take Eden’s presence as a breach of security. He was suited up, and clearly had some vital information to share, but chose to confront Natasha about the girl instead.
“What’s she doing out?”
“She was hungry.” Natasha said plainly.
“And I’m sure food would have been brought to her.”
“But then I wouldn’t have had the chance to engage in such imaginative conversation,” Natasha said with a shadow of a grin, and took a sip of her water.
“Do you have lucid dreams?” Eden asked Steve innocently. Steve shot Natasha a quizzical glance, his heroic brow deeply furrowed.
“I’ll explain later,” Natasha said. “What’s up?”
“Loki’s missing,” Steve straightened.
Natasha froze with the water bottle mid-air and her mouth slack.
“Stark said he slipped out while he and Banner were using Jarvis’ system for some experiment, or something. Loki was out of sight by the time Jarvis registered his absence. Stark still doesn’t know how Loki cracked the security codes to get out, but that’s not the first problem we need to take care of. Fury’s asked us all to be on standby while we search for him. And I think she needs to go back to the interrogation room.”
Natasha looked at Eden, who shrugged away as if she’d been accused of something.
“I think she should come along.”
“Are you crazy? Even if she doesn’t try to escape, she’ll just be in the way!”
“She’s got a tracking device on. Besides, Fury asked us to do anything to break her in so she’s more comfortable around SHIELD and SHIELD operatives.”
“I’m not sure he intended to put her into harms way either,” Steve argued.
“She mysteriously avoided burning to death in a sealed vehicle,” Natasha returned. “I think she might be a little more prepared than you’re giving her credit for.”
“Last I heard that was an assumption, not facts. And the longer we stand here and argue over where she needs to be, the longer Loki is out unaccounted for among civilians,” Steve finalized in frustration. “Just put her back and we all can discuss this later when we have time to clarify.”
Natasha relented, for now. She stopped a passing agent and asked them to return Eden to the interrogation room. It was time to suit up.

Notes