She could feel it. As soon as they sat at the small table in the dodgy-looking fast food place, she could feel it. And she had known she was going to.
It hadn't caught up to her for a long time, but then she had never been in a position for the so-called Christmas disease to get at her. She was too fast, too quick and light on her feet for anyone to grab her normally. She was too competent at her job for anyone to bring her down. Just as Ivan had taught her.
She felt light-headed and as though she may vomit. She prayed that it wasn't a bad one, that she would only bring up breakfast and not blood from an internal bruise.
Natasha didn't know much about blood, nor did she know much about the disease she carried which made her this way. She preferred that trusting the knowledge was in the minds of SHIELD medics who would try and patch her up when they got back to base. She hoped, by any margin, that Fury was happy.
She could see Clint eyeing her up, he knew she wasn't right. He knew she had a 'thing' but didn't know what it was. Again, Natasha preferred this. Not all Americans would put two and two together but she knew (or at least hoped) a fellow member of the intelligence community would.
She glanced at the clock, breath in for six, out for eight. It was meant to prevent her vomiting everywhere. That would not be a good start but then, she wasn't one for good starts.
She would always remember the day it all started when she was almost thirteen- a late bloomer by comparison to the others, poor Ivan must have worried she'd have the moves but not the boobs for the job. She'd gone to the bathroom feeling faint, dizzy and with a pain in her stomach, Anya had whispered that the pain was how it started, the blood that made you a woman. Natasha hadn't made it into the stall. She woke up in the little hospital, she had a glass bottle of cool water being dropped down into her vein.
Ivan had been speaking to the Doctor at the foot of the bed. They had been speaking in rushed whispers but yet she heard the word. Гемофилия.
So her name, everything, it was all real. She was a true Romanov. A true Romanov who vowed never to tell another soul.
They started the injections only months later, in the spring. Each month or so she was invited to the doctor, she was given the injection of a thick liquid into her arm from a cold, sharp hypodermic needle. Then she had to run a lap. They timed her, waiting for the day she would get faster.
Natasha bit once more into the greasy food. She didn't want it but knew she had to feed her muscles after all of that. There was a cut on her forehead, it wasn't a big deal but she could feel the blood dripping down. It hadn't stopped yet. It had been an hour. She subtly reached round to the back of her belt, feeling for the ammo pouch she knew contained a hypodermic, the meds which would clot her wound.
It wasn't safe to carry, course it wasn't, but Fury shadow-ok'd it, knowing the drug could save Natasha's life in a compromised situation.
Natasha quickly excused herself, heading to the bathroom, she knew the guy at the desk was watching her- or rather her ass- the whole time. She hoped he didn't get the wrong idea. As soon as she'd locked herself in the gross communal bathroom Natasha pulled the shot from her back pouch, lifting the plastic needle guard and pushed the needle into her arm through the thick weave of her suit. She counted to ten, removed the needle and sighed.
When she had first joined SHIELD they had confirmed what she had overheard as a child. She hadn't been sure she wanted to know, she knew that being a carrier of that disease, well it sealed her history. Haemophilia wasn't hugely rare but in a world where the sister of the most famous carrier had never been found, there was little doubt. The youngest Grand Duchess has also been a redhead- so that explained the hair.
Knowing your existence could, in theory, change the world. Knowing your existence meant another hundred or so Russian assassins pointing weapons at your head. Knowing you were the missing Tsarevna, the unknown Tsarevna, it was something she didn't need in her life.
That had been her decision, she has trained as a sleeper and she was putting all of her princess-sly life to sleep.
Now, she thought, glancing towards the sound of people laughing in the main restaurant, she was something else, something more. An avenger, just newly minted, and she had a feeling this mismatch would work out.
Just like the old fairy tales, the type that children were told by their Baba, this princess was going to sleep for a hundred years, and no kiss from a mystery prince was waking her up.