Author's Note: Quick fill of Whitetigerwolf's "In Disguise" Challenge. (It should be noted said challenge was written pre-Thor: Ragnarok - bit harder to make it work in view of later canon.) Only place I can really imagine this fitting in the timeline is immediately after Thor: Ragnarok (like, really immediately - during the opening minutes of Infinity War)?

IN DISGUISE

I just read a few stories where Hela, Fenir, and Jormungander were disguised as Darcy, Coulson, and Fury respectively, and I got the idea of, what if Hela was disguised as someone else?

Requirements:

- Hela must be disguised as either Natasha Romanov (Black Widow), Pepper Potts, Jane Foster, Elizabeth Ross, Peggy Carter, or an OC love interest for one of the Avengers [accepted: OC]

- Fenir and Jormungander must also be disguised as 'Midgardians', though who they are is up to you [...outside range of this oneshot]

- Thor CANNOT immediately recognize Hela

Recomended:

- Jormungander as Fury

- Fenir as Coulson

- Hela/Natasha [accepted]

Natasha crept up on the hunched-over form seated in the middle of her safehouse, then let her gun barrel dip slightly as the figure turned, in the middle of bandaging a limb, and she recognized the features.

Then she raised it again. That didn't mean anything nowadays. Stupid, stupid...

"I thought you'd be happier to see me," Morrigan - that wasn't her real name, of course, only the alias under which Natasha knew her - said, voice laced with sardonic sweetness, before grimacing as she applied disinfectant to a wound on her thigh.

"Your trail went cold for years," Natasha said, keeping the gun trained on her. "I thought you were dead."

"I came close." The other assassin grunted, then hissed as she smeared ointment over an unpleasant-looking burn. At least Natasha could count on her to make up for plundering Natasha's personal stocks of medicine later. "Brother set me up. Can you believe I once thought family meant anything in this business?" She laughed dryly.

"I didn't realize you had a brother." Morrigan had spoken of her father before - the man who made her what she was, the man who had rid her of the chance at anything resembling a normal life. The man who had disavowed her when peace came and left her for dead in a hellhole prison, and had no idea she'd managed to escape.

Natasha, of course, had no idea how much, if any, was true. It rang true to her - which only meant it was a tale well-tailored to play to her own weaknesses. She knew the game.

That said, Morrigan had never backstabbed her, never burned her, and never put Natasha in a spot where she was obligated to betray her. In their business, that was as close as one got to being trustworthy.

"I didn't think he was worth mentioning." Morrigan shrugged, grimacing only briefly at the movement. "He still isn't. By himself, that is. I made the mistake of thinking he had dignity." She sighed, and Natasha saw a rare honest emotion cross her face. "So much for Father's grand empire. It's true that people who never had to work for their fortunes are the quickest to throw them away."

"So he sold the whole operation out to kill you?" Morrigan nodded. "Your father's dead, I take it?"

Morrigan gave her a long look. "I wasn't free until he was. Not truly free."

Natasha didn't ask for the details. Red Room conditioning still had hooks into her head, even if she wouldn't admit it to her teammates - and, frankly, she didn't know if she could. If one of her old handlers walked out in front of her and spoke a few words, would she put her own gun in her mouth? Or, in the absence of a weapon, seek out the nearest sharp piece of rubble and beat her own brains out?

Better not to know. "Good riddance."

"Indeed. Senile old man." Morrigan sighed. "He'd grown truly weak, to allow that simpering little boy to be his heir. If I had ever been that soft, he would have beaten it out of me or disposed of me himself."

Natasha nodded. She felt the same way about what passed for black ops agents these days. "Well, there's a bright side," she said after a while of watching Morrigan tend to her wounds. What little she knew of the other assassin's physical abilities included enhanced durability and regeneration: contemplating what she must have survived to still be this injured was unpleasant. "You're free of him now. Completely free." She let the gun fall to her side at last. "Create your own empire. Let your brother rule over ashes."

Morrigan smiled at her. "And here I thought you'd gone straight."

Natasha was silent for a few seconds, then snorted. "The rules haven't changed. People like us still butcher strangers around the world to maintain the empires of the powerful. Just because I run around with a bunch of people with noble aspirations and brightly-colored costumes doesn't mean I'm one of them." Even if, from time to time, she'd thought she had been...

She snapped that thought's neck and threw it down a garbage chute. Predators who forgot they were predators became prey. Sheer luck had prevented her from being devoured, but that didn't mean she hadn't deserved it. "People like us never go straight," she concluded. "You know that."

"True enough." Morrigan shrugged. "Do any of your brightly-colored friends know about this safehouse?"

"I prefer to keep a certain distance."

"And yet you shared it with me..."

"I was young and stupid," Natasha said curtly. Morrigan chuckled.

"No, I think you were wise. Our spheres of action are mercifully disjoint. For the most part." The woman stretched. "If you don't mind, I have a burn on my back I can't quite reach..."

"Do you think I'm your servant?" But Natasha was already approaching, and lifted up the awkwardly-wrapped bandages without flinching. "I thought you regenerated better than this."

"That is after regenerating."

"These burns are third-degree. You'd have to barely have a back left for this to be after regeneration."

Morrigan twisted around and bared her teeth. "When my brother sold us out, he... chose the enemy well." A moment passed. "Not well enough."

"Hm." Natasha carefully cleaned dead flesh from the wound as Morrigan hissed in pain. "How long do you think it will take you to heal fully?"

Morrigan looked contemplative. "I haven't taken injuries this serious since before my imprisonment. It's difficult to recall."

"Then it's best to err on the side of caution. The last thing you need is to find out mid-mission you weren't as healed as you thought you were." Natasha leaned in closer to inspect the wound, keeping a clinical detachment. "It would be a shame to learn of your survival, only for that intelligence to become outdated shortly thereafter."

"Talk like that, and I might think you care."

"In our line of work? That would be idiocy."

Morrigan lifted an eyebrow. "And are you a fool?"

Natasha glared at her. "I don't answer leading questions." She picked up a bottle of disinfectant. "Hold still."

"Terrible disease, foolishness. It's catching."

Natasha went still, then brushed her lips against Morrigan's cheek. The older woman - she didn't know how much older Morrigan was, but with the regeneration, she suspected it was significant - chuckled. "Do any of your friends know what a sentimentalist you are in private?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Natasha said bluntly, and applied the disinfectant.

Author's Note: For the purposes of this fic, Hela managed to secretly break free of her confinement long before Odin's death, but at the expense of almost all of her powers; she roamed the Earth under the identity of "Morrigan", a near-mortal mercenary assassin, to keep her skills sharp until the instant of her father's death, whereupon her powers returned and the events of Thor: Ragnarok came to pass.

"Morrigan" is the name of a Celtic goddess whose portfolio includes death and war. Seemed appropriate.