I have been wanting to write a fanfiction in which I can use both Nat and Clint POVs for ages! I decided to make Nat's language more flowery than Clint's to emphasise how different she sees the world. Clint sees the world as it is, wheras Nat sees all its complications. The rating is entirely due to Clint's language. Also, for Nat I have focused more on touch and sound. For Clint, his excellently clear sight. Reviews mean the world to me, and I would love to hear any opinions/constructive criticism. The lines in italic are from Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray. Happy reading!
Russia, 1997.
The masquerade bled polyphonic sound. Jargon rich in politics and arrogance and pride dribbled through the bricks into the harsh Russian winter, only to falter at the wall of heavy snow. Inside, socialites floated from guest to guest, gracious and giggling. Whimsical philanthropists spewed self-congratulatory lies to the naïve, and the naïve, in turn, admired their so-called generosity.
The ball seemed to be sound itself; a conglomeration of voices, melody, and activity. They met in a sonorous, ugly mess that seemed deemed to linger like bloodstains on a threadbare carpet.
Natalia Romonova hated it. The noise was alien to her.
Natalia Romonova loved it. Her first adult mission was exhilarating.
She danced through the socialites, the philanthropists and the aristocracy as if she belonged to the automagical ballet of rich, glorious sin. Eyes followed her behind feather-lined masks, and yet she paid them no heed. One man had the audacity to ask for a dance. She smiled just as she was taught: her cheeks stained with rose and glance adverted bashfully. A cog in an intricate social machine and no more.
Her mark – her first real mark – was swathed by half a dozen Russian models. They chattered like monstrous hawks, screeching for attention. Their high-heels clicked on the wooden floor in a simple tune. They were gracefully desperate.
Natalia knew that she was much younger than her adversaries, but had been reassured that this would present no problem. She wasn't told why. She never was. Steal this. Kill that. Orders were orders. All of her actions were for the greater good of the motherland.
She sauntered to him, swayed sensually. Bending low, Natalia whispered sweet nothings into his ear, climaxed by elliptical suggestions. She was a temptress, a spider spinning a beautiful, infrangible web. The other women grew angry. Their advances withered and died; they took to throwing her dirty glares and muttering in the seclusion of dark corners. They were not the only stares she received – she felt someone's eyes on her back so that her attentions were divided. The bold man from before seemed to seethe with some delicious emotion she couldn't quite place – jealousy, perhaps? It was all quite telling.
She removed herself from her mark's lap and tenderly pulled his hand. His fingers were staunch and hard. Hers were svelte and soft, not unlike the arms of a willow tree.
Natalia knew what had been asked of her. She knew the how and the when and the where. She just never knew why. Her trust, however, remained with her handlers and the glory they had promised Mother Russia.
Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
The party was an explosion of colour. Politicians preached their bullshit and the over-the-top women bounced around the place. Ugly dickheads pounced on anything that moved, as if they had a blind chance in hell.
The ball was a sight for sore eyes, that's for sure. There were dirty ass corners with a shitty cover-up job and a royal clusterfuck of stained walls.
Clint Barton hated it. He had to hold back a little bit of vomit at his get-up.
Clint Barton loved it. He was promised a free buffet.
He launched through the crowd straight towards the food. Clint first attacked the pancakes, pouting at the lack of chocolate sauce. Definite bummer. He set his eyes on the dumplings and on their trajectory as he launched them at the nearest toff. This was a very low-risk mission, after all - punishment for an incident involving Coulson's computer, Photoshop, and Steve Roger's shapely ass. Oh, it was definitely worth it. Even if he had to wear a stupid purple mask.
Chewing on a pickled cucumber, Clint studied the company he was in. It was frilly dresses and fat, bearded men. He watched a red-headed kid as she did the rounds. She was probably royalty or something – the long-lost descendent of the Romonovs! He reminded himself to force Anastasia onto Coulson's watch-list.
It was only when she lowered her hand and held the mask by her side that he became more than vaguely interested. She was young, younger than he had assumed from her actions. He decided to ask her for a dance. Only he didn't dance. Not well, at least. And he would never hear the end of it if Coulson found out…
…Hell, she was intriguing and he was very, very, very bored.
He awkwardly sidled up to the girl, gauged what to say. Clint blurted out his offer in god-awful Russian. Damn, this undercover shit was tough. And yet she smiled, bowed her head, and politely gave him the elbow. Something was off about that. And it wasn't the fact that she had rejected his irresistible good-looks.
After that encounter he watched her like a hawk, and followed her line of sight to the slimy millionaire lounging at the far back of the hall. The brute was surrounded by women. They were all legs, and twig-thin. Mostly blondes, with a scattering of brunettes. Nothing that interested Clint, certainly, but the guy looked more than entertained.
And then he realised what exactly the girl was doing. He stared in disgust, fists screwed up and teeth gritted. She was all over him like a bloody rash. And the bastard loved it. What a fucked up world he lived in. He found himself resisting the urge to beat the living shit out of the man. A wave of protectiveness hit, an almost primal instinct, and soon became an instant bond with the mystery girl. Perhaps he saw himself in her. Perhaps it was the way her eyes screamed for help.
When his strong hand clasped around her arm, he didn't regret it one bit. Even when she turned her one-more-move-and-I-will-kill-you glare up to maximum. It looked a tad odd on the face of a thirteen year old.
She moved like a creature from a finer world.
Excuses fell from her lips like the petals of a rose, soft and crimson. Hard in manner, her mark, solemn, and beset with unfulfilled promises, attacked the incorrigible man with empty threats. He struck her face for her betrayal and stained her skin red. Blood dribbled from her pink lips, and yet all she could pull into her face was sweet boredom. Her incorrigible man grunted in amusement. Still, he led her away to the intimacy of some vacant room.
Natalia wondered many things during the time she spent studying him as they stood across from each other in the small space. His intentions confused her; desire was the fruit on which humanity fed, and he seemed devoid of want in all its most carnal forms. All the men in her life had asked something of her, whether that be her body or her soul. This man was like no other. That was the most frightening of it all.
They exchanged meaningless words, hers uninflected and evasive, his in broken Russian. His accent screamed American and so she swore to end his life. The death of this spy could spare her punishment at the hands of her superiors.
He handed her a small, circular object, and her eyebrows melted to show confusion. The man gently touched his lip and then motioned to the peculiar thing. Natalia raised the mirror in glorious temptation.
Wan and twitching, the curious face of a young girl appeared in the glass. Her plump lips were the colour of rose, swollen in pain. Vulgar daemons born of memory and malady scratched at her virescent eyes, which burned with young fire. Tresses of glorious red hair curled by her shoulders in twisting rivulets of spilled blood. Natalia was mesmerised.
This was her. Wholly and utterly.
Denied mirrors in the Red Room, the handlers had stripped away her identity, and, with it, her humanity. They had bathed her, and dressed her, and fixed her. All to eradicate this odd awareness of self, lest she realise what she had become. Natalia found it difficult to identify with the innocent girl in the reflection, the girl without the masks, the falsehoods, and the history. And, yet, this was her.
Natalia grew sober as she memorised every feature. Her beauty was telling. She now knew why these men asked so much of her. A brilliantly sad tear met the glass and splattered its double.
Then she loathed her own beauty, and, flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath her heel.
Clint didn't need to be a genius to know that he fucked up. The Fred Flinstone lookalike turned a damning shade of beetroot and he was pretty sure the crazy Russian flipped him off right at the end of their little dispute. It was the man's attack on the girl that really tested his constraint. He grunted in controlled fury, and swallowed away his retort. Can't make a scene in a room full of psychos. This wasn't a suicide mission. And so he practically dragged the teenager away from the purple danger.
As she hit him with a death-glare – and we're talking a Fury-level death-glare – he began to doubt whether this was actually a good idea. An indifferent shrug later, Clint spent an awkward two minutes just staring at her. And Clint-esque staring meant analyzing every twitch of movement he noticed. He prided himself on being an excellent judge of emotions, but Clint had a funny feeling the expression he saw on her face was a mask in itself. Her confusion was evident, though. Sure, he'd be confused if a twenty-something man had just towed her into an empty room, but this seemed more than that.
And then he realized he was a twenty-something man that had just pulled a vulnerable kid into an empty room. Fuck.
Inquiring in perfect Russian, Clint learned her name, age and business at the event. At his words she visibly tensed, and he could have sworn the girl stared directly at his pulsing carotid artery.
Before she could act on her intentions, he dug into his pocket and removed a glinting mirror. It was a present from Coulson after Clint had stabbed himself in the eye while stitching up a head wound in the middle of the Amazonian jungle. He cautiously handed it to the girl, and she, with eyebrows furrowed, examined the mirror. Touching his lip, Clint indicated the state of hers.
The girl's eyes locked onto her face, staunch and unyielding. She seemed to be just stuck there like that time Clint had super-glued Coulson to his office chair. It was kind of unnerving – the girl, not Coulson – and Clint wished he could see into her thoughts. Her spookily neutral expression now flickered with every emotion Clint could register, and something else entirely. Fascination. It was as if she had no idea what she looked like. This girl, with her confidence and breeding, now subtly melted before him. In what kind of world would a teenager have to dance, lie and seduce? In what kind of world would she be denied a mirror to see, accept and appreciate?
Clint Barton's sight was flawless, and hers had just been born.
He flinched when she smashed his favourite, his only, mirror with her heel. Coulson would not be happy at all. Clint decided it was time to recover his bottle of superglue. After that thought, he caught the girl looking up at him in quiet fury.
Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire.
Her fattened mark tumbled into the room and wove his trunk-arms around the other man's slim neck. For a moment she contemplated the incorrigible man's death and all that it meant. The next she was pitching a glass shard at the fat ape's head. It struck directly between the eyes, marking him as hers. He fell ungracefully, slinking to the floor, arms slackened and face blotted with blood like ink on sallow parchment.
Time seemed to crawl on feet of lead. Natalia studied the grotesque thing sprawled on the floor and its rich mess of limbs and fat. She felt nothing. Her reflection, however, must have.
She looked at the other man, doubting his ability to keep this quiet. However, they shared a mutual nod of understanding, assassin to assassin. She decided to let him live. Out of mercy or fondness, she did not know.
With that, she recovered her mask, crimson feathers askew, and held it to her face. She slipped through the door and faded, like a ghost, into the throng.
Because beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.
It happened in an instant. The bastard had his arms wrenched around Clint's neck and was squeezing, hard. He gasped for air, clawing at the man's skin. Airways cut off, Clint lined up a swift kick in the balls in an effort to release himself. He then saw the kid watching him peculiarly, and could almost hear the cog's whirring around in her head. Clint hesitated, curiosity getting the better of him. In a whirl of movement, she gathered up a shard of glass and launched it into the guy's head. His grip on Clint slackened and the body fell to the floor.
The kid looked at the dead man blankly, as if she had dissociated herself from the situation. Clint marvelled at her composure, and her aim, of course. It wasn't as good as his, obviously, but she was definitely the kind of sharpshooter Coulson scoured the world for. But he reckoned she took to the shadows. Clint respected that. When she threw him a silent question, he nodded his understanding and vowed to keep his mouth shut.
She seemed satisfied with his answer, glancing at him with a mischievous glint in her eye. He decided to let her live. It wasn't as if she had snagged a good look at his face. He supposed the purple monstrosity had its advantages after all. Not that he'd ever tell Coulson that.
Without another word, she was through the door and gone forever, back to her handlers.
Because beautiful things, like beautiful sins, are the privilege of the rich.