She would always remember when he was first brought into her home. She was adopted less than a year before and it was different to see another kid get adopted into a place she'd come to consider hers, more so after the trouble she caused. She didn't remember anything really, she knew she was Russian and was sent over to America to be adopted by the Drake family. Other than her name and where she came from she had no clue really who she was. When she first showed up, she had no memory of Russia or what she had been through just a feeling of aggression inside her and quick reflexes. Still over the last few years, this place had become hers. Now there was this new kid, a boy.
She knew the Drakes were kind people but this was different. This was their nephew being brought into her home after something happened to his family. She didn't know what, she heard only whispers about the boy when no one thought she could hear or understand them but she would never mistake words like abuse, alcohol, death and murder. Still when Natasha first met the boy, she didn't like him. There was something unsettling about him that told her to stay away at first.
Bruce was a scrawny, brown haired, glasses wearing, quiet mess of a boy. He didn't smile when she saw him, didn't wave when she did, didn't even speak to her. Maybe that was just from what had happened to him but he didn't interact with anyone. He stared at the floor and if someone asked him a question he took a while to respond even then the only response that came was a shake of his head. Bruce had just gone to his room and sat on the edge of the bed, his face was completely emotionless as he stared at the floor.
Natasha had at that point mistakenly decided that he probably didn't want to be friends with anyone, just wanted to shut them out. She stubbornly decided that was fine with her, that if the boy didn't want to be friends with her and didn't want anything to do with her that's how it would be. He could stay in his room and she would act like he wasn't there. This was still her home after all and this boy wasn't going to change that.
It remained that way through the day, Bruce didn't really respond to anything. When he was called by his new guardians he came without question but still didn't speak much. Natasha figured that he probably didn't know his aunt that well all things considered. She had been the one to step forward to take guardianship of Bruce, willing to adopt him fully into the family and stand in for his absent parents. It had almost surprised Natasha when she heard Bruce speak; almost thinking the boy was a mute up until they were eating dinner with the family. At that point they were able to coax a "yes" and a very quiet "I'll be good" out of him. Though the second statement seemed very off to Natasha, almost mechanical in how he said it like it was just his go-to thing to say. After that Bruce stared at his plate and each time a question was asked after that he would just nod or shrug. Eventually everyone gave up trying to get him to talk and the room settled into an uncomfortable silence.
Natasha spent the rest of the night playing on her own. She paid no mind to Bruce who was still silent and constantly went off to find a place of his own, out of the way of everyone. He mostly spent time in his room which was across the hall from Natasha's. This went on for a few days, Natasha just became more and more aware of Bruce and left him be, really they only saw each other when Bruce's Aunt convinced him to come join the family for a meal.
Things changed one night though, Bruce had been with them for barely a week when it started to happen. Natasha was trying to fall asleep when she heard something coming from Bruce's room. There was a whimper and a soft cry coming from Bruce and she could hear him shuffle in his bed uncomfortably. She knew those sounds; they were the sounds of a nightmare that had taken hold on Bruce.
She waited patiently for a bit, hoping they would stop soon but they didn't. She then waited expecting the guardians to come and comfort the boy; they had always done so for her during her first few weeks. She would cry out in the night from a nightmare, that didn't make sense to her, and one of them would show up. Sometimes both would come and they would just calmly tell her it was alright, they'd stay with her until she fell back asleep. However the soft cries and whimpers continued and no one came. She cried out in her head wondering how they couldn't hear the boy when she could hear him so clearly. She tried to wish them awake with her mind, begging them to stop the whimpers and cries. Still no one came.
The sounds got worse until finally she sat up in her bed and slid out. She made her way over to Bruce's room, not bothering to knock before entering. She stood in the doorway looking at the boy in the bed. He was tossing and turning and had kicked the blankets of to one side. He scratched at the air trying to get some invisible thing away from himself but had no luck. He whimpered and cried, completely trapped in his own mind, he was sweating and his breathing was quick. Natasha recalled her own nightmare filled nights. She'd be the same way though instead of the soft cries and whimpers she'd scream for help.
Natasha walked over to Bruce's bed remembering everything her new family had done to calm her down. Sometimes she'd be allowed to sleep in the bed of her guardians and just having the presence of someone else there seemed to help. Having someone whisper about how it would be okay always seemed to be what she needed or the sound of someone's heart with their calm breathing. She still wondered where they were now though, why weren't they providing the same help to this boy?
Natasha reached over and shook Bruce gently, but he didn't wake. She frowned and stood there for a while as he didn't calm down. Bruce stopped thrashing though and curled into a ball as if he was giving up fighting and just accepting whatever was going on his mind. He was still whimpering, still crying but it was softer than before as he stayed curled up there
At that point Natasha climbed into his bed and laid down. She wrapped an arm around him and hugged him. "It's okay, you're safe," She whispered, reminding him that she was real and what was in his head wasn't. She kept repeating it for maybe a minute and as she did so the whimpering slowly stopped.
A short while after the whimpers stopped. Figuring Bruce was calming down Natasha reached over to grab the blankets that had been kicked away and pull it over Bruce. She was considering leaving when a hand caught her arm. She could see the outline of Bruce's face just barely, the large scared eyes staring at her. She settled back down beside him and hugged him again as he whispered to her, "Don't leave me."
"Never," Natasha promised in a slight whisper, tightening her grip on the boy to emphasize that she meant it. Natasha felt Bruce pull the blanket over her as well to help keep her warm and a slight smile crossed her face when she felt the boy hug her back. It didn't matter if Natasha didn't like him before, she knew that right now they were the same and they needed each other.
In the morning the Drake's found them together, hugging each other for comfort in Bruce's bed. Natasha was lectured about how she shouldn't sleep in the same bed as her new brother, but she stood strong and argued back about how she was there for him when he needed her and always would be. It was after that when Natasha realized that Bruce was her brother now, really he should have been counted as a cousin but no, he was more than that. The Drakes were not just his uncle and aunt now they were his parents and Natasha was his sister and Natasha understood that even if no one else realized it.
The lecture changed nothing, each time either of them had a nightmare they'd be in the other's bed. Bruce would softly knock on Natasha's door, too nervous to just barge in as she did. Sometimes he wouldn't actually go because he felt bad for getting her in trouble or couldn't wake up but when he started to cry out at night, she'd show up every single time. Natasha would barge into Bruce's room if he needed help or if she needed his comfort in return, she actually spent more night in Bruce's room than her own.
At one point the Drake's tried to convince them not to do it by putting locks on the door, but that didn't stop Natasha. Turns out she could pick locks, no one was really sure how she knew what to do but it fell under the weird reflexes she had. Something about her past never added up to anyone. Also the Drake's did seem to admit that it was a bit extreme to use locks like that not to mention dangerous so they were removed within a few days of being installed.
Through those nights Natasha and Bruce had become best friends and swore to stick together through thick and thin. Natasha could get Bruce to open up more and talk when she wanted to; for the most part she let him have his silent comfort zone around others. They did talk and play together when they were alone though.
Natasha only asked about what happened to Bruce only once. He told her that his father used to call him a monster and say that something was wrong with him, some nonsense about his genetics being faulty from radiation or something. Bruce had been beaten in every sense of the word and his father had become an alcoholic. His mother still cared though, Bruce spoke fondly of her though it sounded like his father rarely let her be with Bruce. Bruce had been left in the care of a nanny who hated him and wanted nothing to do with him, she just wanted the money. Then one day when his mother tried to leave with Bruce his father caught them. In a fit of rage Bruce's father had killed his mother right in front of him. Bruce had been threatened into silence during the trial but even without him saying anything his father had been found guilty and insane. His father was now in an insane asylum. Bruce had decided that emotions were bad, that emotions were what killed his mother.
Natasha had hugged Bruce after he gave her the answer and swore not to bring it up again. When asked about her own past she couldn't tell Bruce anything, no matter how hard she tried to remember. Bruce asked her once about the nightmares she had and the only thing she could tell him was she was in a room, tied down in a chair and there were men around her. She wasn't sure what they were doing but she knew it was something bad. Bruce asked her how she knew both English and Russian so well since Natasha carried almost no accent and the only response was a shrug, and a response that came down to the fact that she just knew it. It was like lock picking and the reflexes she had in a fight, the odd sense of balance she had it was just part of her.
Neither dived into the other's past more than that but were always aware. Something bad happened to both of them, they both had nightmares but they had each other. Nothing was going to change any of that. They lived together for nearly a year as brother and sister when they finally met Clint.
((So first off I don't own the characters.
Second if I continue this on (I don't know if I will) it will be a weird sort of fanfic. There's a lot of humor later on I have planed with just how the group dynamics will work but there's still some serious stuff that needs to be set up first. The plan was to have the majority of this fanfic take place in high school after setting up how they get along which would involve high school shenanigans. As I said, I don't know. I might just return my focus to My Own Enemy and finish this but this chapter has been sitting on my computer doing nothing so I figured, why not see what happens. As I said if this went on it would strong go towards humor for a while after setting up the characters.))
