Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers.
Hi! Okay, so this is my second Avengers fic, though it's much more serious and lengthier than the Thanksgiving Special. I've had this idea in my head since the summer, and I've been playing around with it and rearranging events and words until it's the best I can make it. This will either be a two- or three-parter. As you can see, it's in third person present, which I'm experimenting with but am also a little nervous about. The big story will start after this one is finished, and it won't be in present tense because honestly, I'm way more comfortable with past tense. This piece can be standalone or taken as part of a series. Please leave a review to let me know what you think.
Story Summary: This is the about the reasons and doubts that Black Widow had about her life even before Hawkeye offered her the choice, and why she said yes when he did.
Doubts: Part the First
She was saved as a very young child. She does not remember much about her parents, and she is told she does not need to, but she sees them in her dreams: her mother's graceful body and soft blonde curls and her father's deep laugh, his warm embrace, and his red hair. When she wakes up, she is always ashamed to feel salty tears and she dashes them away before her roommates see them, but the tears will be there the next morning and the next. She does not tell anyone about her parents and no one asks.
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Years pass, and the importance of Mother Russia is seared into her mind. She will die for Russia in a heartbeat, because that is noble and she must protect her country's sacred values.
She never fails, not in anything. By age six, she can shoot a gun, and her accuracy just keeps increasing until she becomes a perfect shot. By eight, she can handle knives the way the girls in the Outside play with dolls. She can speak fluent Arabic, German, English, Polish, and a host of other languages by the time she is eleven. By twelve, her ballet skills rival those of twenty-year-olds. No one can ever exactly match the way she fights, though many of the other girls in the Black Widow Program try. And when they start classes in seduction, she is good - very, very good.
Her instructors and her superiors do not give praise often, but when they do, they praise her, if only sparingly. A few times she has heard them whispering about the redhead, the efficient one, the Romanova. She hides most of her pride, because she has been taught that pride in oneself is wrong; one can only have pride in the country. Most of the other girls ignore her, but she doesn't care because she can tell that they are jealous because she is neither the eldest nor the biggest but she is the best anyway.
At first, her missions were short and simple, and she was always guided step-by-step by one of her superiors through a tiny earpiece. The instructions were always "retrieve this stolen jewel," or "find this information." It was not until she turned twelve that she started assassinations, but once she did, she was the one, out of all the other girls, who got priority on those jobs. Eventually, they used the earpiece less and less, and now they never use it at all, allowing her to decide how she goes about her missions. She never makes mistakes, because mistakes are punishable, but more than that, she is perfect in the name of her country and her teachers are always talking amongst themselves about Natalya, their star, though they don't know that she hears them.
Katya Kiryakova is the only one who sits with her and talks to her, the one who whispers to her that she is a Romanova and that means that she is royalty, but no one else has ever told her that so she doesn't know if it's true. Katya certainly believes it is, though, and she will let her believe it.
She will never tell her, but Katya reminds her of her mother, with her pale hair and blue eyes. And even though it's ridiculous and she's tried telling her to stop being that way, Katya is somehow softer on the edges than any of them. It's not the fact that she's petite and delicate-looking, it's that she never snaps at anyone or says a mean or angry word behind someone's back. Of course, Katya is as hard as steel underneath and she can fight and kill almost as well as Natalya herself, but sometimes that physical strength is easy to overlook because it's buried so deep. She knows in the deepest part of her own being, though, that Katya is weak when she comforts one of the girls who has been punished, when she tells stories about heroes and princesses, quietly so that the instructors don't hear (they don't like anything fanciful), and when she laughs when the two of them are alone together. Natalya doesn't do the first two things, and if she laughs, it is seldom, and then she sounds dry and brittle compared to Katya, who always sounds as if she's singing. Even though she asks her to change for her own good, Natalya knows she never will and she is satisfied with that.
As the years go by, the girls go on missions, and some of them die. They are the ones who don't follow orders as well, the ones who aren't as strong as the rest. The four girls with whom Natalya and Katya share a bedroom are among those who don't make it.
When they are thirteen, Katya tells her that she remembers the day she was taken, and she uses the word "taken" and not "saved," as everyone else does if they must broach the subject. Natalya nods curtly, not wanting her to go on, but she does. She says that her parents were alive when it happened and that she is not an orphan, though she is as good as one because her parents think she is dead. She says that she was older than Natalya when they took her, old enough to remember not just her parents but her brothers and their dog and the apartment they lived in. Natalya cannot decide if the other girl is telling the truth or if this is just another one of her fantasies.
That spring, after a fierce storm, the two girls find a fledgling swallow on the ground just outside the small window of their dormitory. Its left wing is broken. Katya cries silently for it until Natalya can't stand it anymore and she climbs out to pick it up with a gentleness she didn't know she had. She knows she should kill it swiftly to put it out of its misery, but she can't do that in front of the other girl. So, she lifts it up, and before long, Katya has made it a little nest out of some cardboard and cloth scraps, and she ever-so-carefully splints its fragile wing. That evening she brings it breadcrumbs she's saved from dinner. Natalya can hardly believe it, but in a few weeks time, the bird is hopping about and flitting its wings. She and Katya open the window for it on one fine summer day, but it won't leave the sill until Katya flicks it slightly, and then they watch it for a while as it darts about the warm landscape, catching bugs in the tall grass. It joins other swallows and eventually flies away. Katya sighs, though she is still smiling wider than Natalya has ever seen, and she says that she would give anything if she could run in that high grass and soak in the warmth of the sun for just an hour. She asks Natalya if she has ever laid on her back and made shapes out of the clouds, and of course the answer is no, and Natalya wonders why she would ever want to do something so pointless.
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When the other girls finally overcome their caution of her, they come at her full force, like a tidal wave, all of them against her, and they taunt her for sucking up to the teachers and for cheating on her tests, because there isn't any other way that she could do so well, they say. One of the superiors hears, one of the few that doesn't favor Natalya, and the matter is brought to her instructors. Most of them don't like it (they try not to let it show, but she is good at reading people) but they agree that cheating cannot go unpunished. They tell her that even if she didn't cheat, they must quell all doubts, and they must make an example of her. She will sport the five scars from the flogging for the rest of her life after that, but she never cries out once. When she is released, Katya cares for the wounds much more fully and tenderly than the doctors did. More than that, she soothes her anger over the wild injustice (because Natalya would never cheat, never)and stops her from carrying out the stupid plans she's made to get back at the other girls, advising her to wait until she spars with them in practice. When that time comes, and when one by one the other girls try to exploit her still-wounded back, she is vicious in her revenge, and the instructors only stop her when it seems like she will start breaking bones.
One day, Katya comes home from a month-long mission with deep cuts and dark bruises and a sprained wrist, and Natalya is surprised and put on edge when she sees her injuries. While they eat their evening meal apart from the others, Katya tells how she had to let herself be abused by her targets for the sake of the mission. Fury swells in Natalya, burning hot like flames, as she listens, and her fingers itch to tear out the hearts of whoever it was that beat her. Katya shakes her head; it had to be, and the bad ones are already dead.
As their education continues, the girls who remain learn about their country's enemies. The organization SHIELD is a nuisance, the teachers say, which has grown more and more threatening. They learn that SHIELD agents are not trained as fully as they are, and that they are weak if one only knows how to exploit their flaws.
They train to be stronger all the time. Sometimes, in the dead of winter, they spar in the cold and the snow and the ice, and they learn how to survive in the below-freezing temperatures of their country. Sometimes they have to swim in quick-current rivers, learning to avoid the ice floes. Other times, they track each other during blizzards when the whole world turns white.
Most of the other girls are improving, because it is that or die. When they spar in practice, some of them are no longer as easy to beat as they once were. Zoya Ignatova, a powerful girl who has at least thirty pounds on her, is as quick-thinking as she is strong, and Natalya must use all her skills to overcome her. Alisa Harkova is almost as tiny as Katya, but, like her, she is fierce and can be everywhere at once. Tatyana Doletskaya and Irina Patsayeva used to be only mediocre, but they have changed over the years. Tatyana is tall and willowy, and can kick better than she can punch, while Irina has the opposite strengths.
By the time Natalya is fourteen, less than a third of the original girls remain. She is constantly on alert, because the training is getting more and more difficult, and there is something new in the air, something full of excitement and expectation. Katya has theories, and Natalya knows that she should turn the other girl in for questioning their superiors but somehow she just can't. Katya is always on edge, too, now, and this is more alarming than anything else. The two spend most of their time sparring with each other. Katya is good, but she is not as good, and Natalya feels something that must be fear (no, she cannot fear, but her body is telling her otherwise) for her. So, Natalya doesn't just fight with her when it's required in practice, she starts to teach her different techniques, too. At night they stay up after lights out, hiding under the covers of Natalya's bed, reviewing for tests by the light of a pocket flashlight Katya nicked during a mission.
But after they finish their studying, Katya doesn't go directly to sleep. She says things, words Natalya knows the meanings of but doesn't understand, words that scare her almost witless because if Katya was ever caught saying them, she'd be disciplined harshly, and Natalya could never bear that. Natalya knows what religion is, of course, and knows how to exploit it in her targets when applicable. But in the Red Room, religion is scorned. It distracts from the mission. And yet, Katya is talking to God. Natalya doesn't know if there really is a God, but if there is, she doesn't think he's listening because Katya always asks to be allowed to run in the grassland outside their window, and that's never yet happened. Then, she lowers her voice even more (though Natalya can still hear her if she listens very closely) and asks that her family be kept safe.