Who couldn't help herself and started a story, not even a day after writing Wanting To Forget? Yep, this girl right here. Enjoy.
TOW the garbage cat
Natasha Romanoff was never a cat person. She was barely a person, to begin with. She's always been ice-cold, levelheaded, collected. Oh boy, you should see her now.
"Here, kitty!" She whispered gently, crouching down to look as non-threatening as possible. The blond kitten with the blue eyes (she has already decided that she wanted to call it Clint) just looked at her with its huge eyes, blinked twice, and did not move.
It looked like it was sizing her up, and Natasha was starting to get antsy. Her knees were killing her because she's been in the same position for too long, and she was freezing.
And, just like the world wanted to fuck with her, it started snowing.
She looked up at the sky, feeling the snowflakes gather in her hair, with unusual disdain. People who look up to the sky normally do so in pure admiration, worship, prayer.
But no, Natasha Romanoff decided that if the sky was a person, she would punch their lights out.
She sighed, propped up her hood over hair, and got a millimeter closer to the kitten, which jumped a foot back.
"A step forward, ten back, aren't we," Natasha grumbled, then looked around her, trying to think of a way to get the kitten to trust her.
To say Natasha wanted the kitten badly was an understatement. Natasha needed the kitten. And she needed it now.
So she had to think. She had to use her super-spy brain –as Clint liked to call it– to find a way to make the kitten like her. She couldn't even make her teammates like her. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
She sighed, and plopped down on the ground, putting her head in her hands. It was an awful day. An honest-to-god awful day.
It had started with her favorite gym machine at the Stark Tower broken. She had merely been annoyed by the inconvenience, thinking that it was probably Thor and his oh-so-graceful self who broke it.
Then, when she got down to the garage, to go to S.H.I.E.L.D, she found, instead of her beautiful Black Porsche, a pink sticky note stating the obvious– that Clint went ahead and took it for a ride of his own volition, probably to impress women.
She had shaken her head and decided to hail a cab. She stood outside the Stark Tower for 15 minutes before a cab finally stopped in front of her. She arrived 30 minutes late and got an earful from Fury, who had decided as if just to fuck with her, that he had time to deal with meaningless shit (like her tardiness) instead of being busy with his usual top-secret shit.
That was about when she started to think that this day was cursed.
When she got to the training yard, where she was supposed to train the new recruits, she found them laughing and talking, but that quickly changed as soon as they saw her. They fell silent immediately, and she thought that maybe this day was starting to get better. She was wrong.
After a successful training session with the little shits, she felt her stomach grumble, so she went to the cafeteria for a quick snack before heading to her office, to complete some paperwork.
The little shits apparently decided to pull a prank on her, and she was so focused on the fries she was going to eat –with some cheesy sauce and a Caesar salad, yum– that she didn't notice the oil all over the stairs leading to the cafeteria.
She slipped and broke her wrist. Oh, joy. She didn't get her fries and salad. She got a splint and another earful instead. The culprit wasn't even caught.
Now here she was, on her way back home from S.H.I.E.L.D, car-less, sitting in the dirt, and hoping to be approached by a kitten. It really was a shitty day.
The kitten meowed as if to ask what was wrong with her, and Natasha sighed.
Her wrist hurt, her butt hurt, she was freezing, hungry, and–she looked at her watch, late to pick Peter up from school. The Avengers had decided to adopt him as one of their own after he proved himself a valuable asset. He now lived in the Stark Tower, along with his aunt, who cooks them dinner every night. She was nice.
She pulled up her phone and dialed Clint, who answered after a few seconds.
"Yeah?"
"You son of a bitch," she grumbled, her hood falling from her head as she slumped against a wall in the alley where she decided to have her mental breakdown.
"Sorry, Tasha. I just wanted to-"
"Save it, asshole. Just go pick up Peter from school. I was supposed to, but some jerk took my car joyriding."
"Hey! I drive very safely-"
She just sighed and hung up.
The kitten was eying her, its head tilted sideways. She rolled her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "If you hate me too, I get it, I do." She winced involuntarily- she was talking to a cat. A cat. "I'm just gonna go. Maybe I can pick up a sandwich on the way home," she murmured to herself, rubbing her eyes tiredly. She started to get up, with some difficulty (she fell on her hip too- if she had to walk like an old lady, she was going to fucking scream), but the cat meowed loudly.
She raised an eyebrow, looking at it expectantly. "What?"
It meowed loudly, again. It looked like it could pound its foot on the ground in a temper tantrum if it were a toddler.
She sat down slowly, almost disbelievingly, and looked at the cat, waiting for it to make the move she knew it was gonna make.
It started stalking towards her slowly, eying her warily. When it finally got to her, it didn't waste a second, immediately hopping into her lap. It padded around for a few seconds, leaving dirty paw prints on her jeans, before settling into a tiny blond ball, purring in content.
Natasha looked at it in surprise, before smiling, scratching the cat slowly behind the ear. A low chuckle escaped her throat, as she threw her head back, looking at the sky.
She didn't know if she was capable of this kind of pure love one holds for its pet. She has been taught long ago that love was a weakness, that love was compromising. Clint was probably the only exception. The young Parker was starting to slowly worm his way into her heart. As were her teammates- albeit slower, she must admit. Her Red Room ways were starting to fade, finally, after decades of working for S.H.I.E.L.D
Looking down at the golden kitten between her hands, she smiled softly and thought that maybe, maybe, she could try.
She picked it up, struggling to her feet, using the wall for support, and walked slowly under the snow towards the Stark Tower.
Some people legit thought that she was a homeless person wandering around, and offered to find her something to eat, and a place to sleep for the night. She glared at them with all her might, promptly scaring them away.
When she got to the Tower, with her wrist in a splint, a limp, dirt all over her clothes and face, and a small kitten in her arms, everyone thought that she got into a street fight. She rolled her eyes and made her way towards Stark, standing in front of him, clearly uncomfortable.
She shifted from foot to foot, looking anywhere but at the man, who raised an eyebrow in curiosity.
"Can I… Can I keep it- him? Clint. His name is Clint," she asked with uncertainty in her voice.
Tony felt his heart slightly break for Natasha, though he didn't exactly know what warranted this reaction. She just looked so scared, as if she expected him to say no. She looked attached to the kitten already, and by the looks of it, it was attached to her too.
"Yeah. Yeah, of course, Jesus, Natasha. You can do whatever you want. It's your home." He sat up straighter and smiled at her as convincingly as he could. As if he didn't just see a part of her ugly past reflect in her green eyes.
She smiled shakily at him, before looking at the cat, cooing at it softly, and made her way to the elevator, disappearing to her floor.
The Avengers stayed silent for a few seconds after that, before Peter slowly whispered a "What's wrong with Tasha?"
Clint smiled sadly, before ruffling the kid's hair. "She's still not used to having a family."
Hope you liked this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Expect more humor, fluff, and family time with Earth's Mightiest Heroes in the next installment!
Reviews warm my heart :3