Chapter Text
She remembers very little. Her memory is, all things considered, piss poor.
There’s the tip-tap of ballet shoes. Her classmates as they ate together and tried to kill each other. Long lectures about form, about shooting bullets and handling knives.
Everything else is sea-buried. There are fragments of names, identities she’s taken and then discarded. People, most of whom she’s probably killed.
One memory has resurfaced above all others.
“Natasha,” someone says behind her. Her fingers still on the keys of the laptop she stole.
“Clint.”
There’s a long moment of silence. Clint looks at her impassively.
“This is getting ridiculous,” he finally sighs and walks into the room. He shivers from the change in temperature as he comes over to sit beside her, trying to peek at the screen. She grabs his ear and pulls his face harshly away.
“Ow, ow, ow–mercy!”
She resists the urge to roll her eyes. Standing, Natasha goes to put the computer on the shelf. She’ll canvass the room for bugs and cover the cameras when he’s finally gone.
Fury is used to it. All she’ll get is a knowing, disappointed look during her next briefing.
“How was your trip?” Clint says. He can never let things go.
“Fine.”
“Fury told me to come and tell you you’re running out of vacation days.”
“Hm.”
She just won't ask for permission next time.
“He also wants a report.”
“I’ll submit it tomorrow.”
“Need someone to look it over?”
She flicks a crumb of debris from her shirt, eyes fixed on her screen.
“I know the English language, Barton.”
“Sure, sure,” he says, suspicion still lacing his face. “I heard you went to California. Did you get me a magnet, or…”
“No,” she tells him, sighing as she gets her work laptop. “They didn’t have any.”
“You didn’t stop for souvenirs?”
Natasha frowns.
“All action, no fun, huh? HYDRA? AIM? The KGB again? If it’s the damn Russians, Natasha, then you really shouldn’t have gone by yourself.”
“It wasn’t the Russians,” she deadpans, creating a blank window and starting to write. Clint tries to peer at the screen again, and Natasha, annoyed, pulls out a lightning bead and electrocutes him. Lightly.
Clint startles and falls flat on his ass, screeching.
“Why are you so loud?” she grouses.
“Romanoff!” he yells, her words going in one ear and out the other.
She hums.
Clint gets up and grumbles under his breath, rubbing at where he’d gotten the worst of the shock.
“You always get like this when you’re keeping secrets,” he gripes, irritated but noticeably calmer. He knows when to get serious.
“I have a lot of secrets,” Natasha mutters, looking back at her screen, shoulders stiff. She needs to see what she’ll omit from her report, and Clint is being an unwelcome distraction.
“Yeah, well, you don’t actively pursue most of them.”
Natasha starts typing, paying him no mind.
“Won’t you tell me what’s going on?”
Silence.
“Natasha.”
Natasha blinks. “You’re imagining things.”
“You sound like the chicks when they try to lie.”
Her eye twitches a little bit, insulted at the comparison. Barton’s clearly trying to get under her skin.
“Please? Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t,” Natasha mutters. “It’s something I have to do myself. I’m not selling SHIELD secrets, if that’s what you’re so concerned about.”
“I’m not. I trust you.”
“The world's greatest mystery.”
“Fine,” Clint acquiesces, clearly unhappy. He gets up. “Just… I don’t know. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Natasha leans back on her chair, lips thin.
“I won’t,” she says, relaxing when he leaves the room.
She looks around in a cursory sweep of the room. She’s in SHIELD's barracks, where they’ve assigned her a permanent room. There’s no family to go back to, no roots established. Fury probably knows she’s been stashing things and is being lenient with her.
Making another exception.
She rubs her eyes, brushing off the melancholy that sweeps over her. It’s been happening ever since she joined this damned organization, like now that she has all this time on her hands…
The Winter Soldier.
She remembers glimpses of a stern, cold man, with a gleaming arm and frigid eyes. She remembers (distantly, jaggedly) that he hadn't been able to muster even a simple smile.
She remembers a crying, squealing thing.
She shakes her head harshly. She has a headache. Thinking back to her list of bunkers, she eyes the stolen laptop. Her guns are packed. Her knives are clean. Her murder run was very informative.
There's a bunker in Qom, Iran, with her name on it.
—
“Have a nice trip?” Clint asks when she comes back four weeks later, worse for wear.
It was a failure. They always are.
Natasha throws her duffel bag onto her bed.
“It was fine.”
Clint looks to it, then to the trail of bloody footprints she’s been leaving ever since getting back on base.
“Huh.”
She hands him a package–a data drive with more names to add to their “wanted” list of Red Room operatives and locations. It’s wrapped in paper, like a pastry. A different chip has been hidden safely in her breast pocket.
Clint takes it–it’s stark white against the various stains all over Natasha’s body. She took care to keep it clean. He blinks down at it, then goes over to her desk and pulls out her work laptop. Opening it, he types in the password, making her stiffen. Her face darkens.
Since when does he know how to get into her computer?
Clint whistles as he looks over the data. He peers at Natasha briefly, eyes calculating.
“You’ve been busy.”
The second flash drive is burning a hole in her chest. She breathes slowly.
“Give it to Fury,” she tells him curtly, resolving to hide her tech better in the future. Nosey fucker.
“I will.” Clint closes the laptop with a loud thump. “When’s the last time you slept?”
She rolls her eyes, going to unpack her duffel bag.
“Don’t start.”
“Two days ago at least, got it,” he replies cheekily. It makes her want to wring his neck.
“I don’t need to sleep,” she says quietly.
Clint knows her well enough to recognize it’s not demure. Natasha going soft doesn’t ever mean she’s less dangerous.
“How about food? D’you have a nice breakfast?”
“I was busy.”
“Kicking ass and taking names?” The joke lacks mirth. She doesn’t deign it with a response.
Clint says nothing for a while.
“Thank you,” Clint says after a long pause. “I’ll hand this over to Fury. You should write your report and talk to him–he has something for you.”
Natasha nods.
“And take a shower, god,” Clint gripes, sounding disgusted if not for the subtle upturn of his lips. “You reek of violence.”
He runs out of the room, fleeing retaliation. Natasha lets her hand fall, a knife held tight in her grip. She doesn’t remember grabbing it. Figures that Clint would invoke blackouts from annoyance.
The doors to the barracks room automatically close. Her nostrils flare.
She turns back to her dirty, soppy weapons, trying to get her heavy limbs to cooperate. It’s an agent's job to sanitize their own equipment. When she goes to start, a blood-soaked pistol with electric bullets zaps her.
It doesn’t even hurt, not really. It still makes her still and glower, resisting the urge to fling it away.
It’s unfair–she knows about Laura. About the kids. She should tell him.
She won’t.
She pulls out the flash drive in her shirt pocket and tucks it away where no one will find it.
—
“You’re going to infiltrate Stark Industries,” Fury says when they speak, cutting straight to the chase. They’re in his office, glass windows letting in the blinding sunlight from outside. She can hear the engines whirr, the waves splash.
Natasha gives a slow, long blink.
She’s clean, now, with her hair down. Her clothes are neat. Her disappointment has been put carefully in its place.
“Stark Industries.”
“Yep,” Fury says, handing her a folder from behind his desk. She flips through it half-heartedly.
An undercover mission. Great.
“Why?” Mission debriefs are always vague, so it’s good to ask. Paper is impersonal, but Fury is somewhat expressive, which gives her something to work with.
Fury crosses his arms. “I need information on the company. Tony Stark, too, if you can get that far. Climb as high as you can.”
“Iron Man,” Natasha says, as if tasting the name on her tongue.
“Iron Man.”
She catches sight of an enlarged A on one of the folders on his desk. Fury’s been talking about that particular project for years.
“You want him for the Avengers Initiative.”
A bad idea, just from a surface analysis. He loves women, he loves drinking, and he loves drugs. Ever since his return from his desert vacation, he’s calmed down and stopped making bombs, according to various gossip rags and Vanity articles. Good for him. He’s still not what she’d choose for the Avengers.
Fury sighs heavily. He should know better than to leave files lying on his desk. She doesn’t know what it means–that Fury trusts her enough to slip up, or that he wanted her to figure it out.
“I need to know what flaws to circumvent.”
“Hmm,” Natasha hums. “Why me?”
She’s been trained to be a woman with no attachments, who just fucks and kills and follows orders. It's a stupid question. She knows why.
Fury gives her a look.
“Are you really asking me that, Romanoff?”
She glares. She can’t refuse. Maybe the distraction will be good for her.
She’ll adjust.
Fury moves some papers to the side, then looks up, considering her carefully. She should give her verbal assent, but doesn’t. Fury has never demanded it. He’s probably staring because of something else.
“I got your list. Very comprehensive.”
Natasha nods.
“Qom, Iran? A strange location, don’t you think?”
She tilts her head, saying nothing.
“Doesn’t seem like a nice, domestic vacation,” he continues, probing.
“I have no obligation to disclose.”
Fury pinches the bridge of his nose.
A lick of dark amusement goes up her spine. He knew what he was getting into when he let her live.
“As long as you’re not helping ol’ handlers,” he says, and now he just sounds tired.
“Of course not,” Natasha says. “I’ll keep giving you anything useful I find.”
“Good. Any more questions?”
The redhead looks back at her debriefing file, twisting her mouth.
“Sure. I’m joining the legal department? I don’t remember going to law school.”
Fury looks at her with a long-suffering expression.
—
“Hey, Nat,” Clint says gleefully over the phone three days into Natasha’
s new mission.
“Hey, Barton,” she replies, saccharine.
“How are you liking the new job?”
She peers into the backseat of the rental she’s driving. It holds ten different coffee orders. Of course, Fury would have her start as a paralegal.
“Just wonderful.”