Here's the advent fic for 5th December and it's from Natasha's point of view. This kind of ended up somewhere a lot different and a lot darker than where it started, as well as being 1500 words longer than I thought it was. It's also got some quite violent references in here, just to let you know.
E: Explosions – Ellie Golding
Anyway, I hope you like it. Thanks for continuing to read. As per usual, I own nothing to do with Marvel.
Explosions
She had been made weak.
There was a time when she had been Shield's most effective agent. If a job was too difficult or too dangerous or required someone who would compromise their own morals for the greater good, she was the one they would call in.
It never bothered her. She hadn't been trained to be bothered by the nature of her missions. She got in, got out and didn't ask questions.
Switching sides hadn't changed that. In fact, Fury had relied upon her lack of a conscience more than once.
It wasn't that she didn't care at all. It was more that caring was dangerous – it led to mistakes, sometimes fatal errors – so she left that to other people.
People who were still soft enough to care.
There were exceptions, of course. When she was younger, Yasha had been one of them, and then after she left the Red Room, Clint and Coulson had wormed their way in. Even with them though, she held a little bit back. Neither of them begrudged her that space; they understood why she kept it.
Everything else she blocked out.
Until she was sent to infiltrate Stark Industries and find out what was going on with its out-of-control owner. Until she met Tony, Pepper and Happy – three people who knew what she was and what she did and didn't flinch away from her. Until Clint was compromised and Coulson was stabbed and she was left to rely on a cobbled together band of superheroes to support her and stop her from crumbling. Until she was made to support Captain America in his reintroduction to life and got to see how truly decent people lived and tried and fought for what was right. Until Captain America became Steve and she fell just a little bit, the same way she had promised herself to never fall again. Until Steve and Clint and her reckless band of Avengers were all she had left tying her to this world, keeping her from insanity and loneliness.
These were good people. They tried their hardest. They made her want to try too.
They made her weak.
So she kept her distance, hid behind her spy persona and the mystery she had cultivated all her life. She quipped and boasted and flirted. Steve became Rogers again as she put distance between her and everyone who compromised her. She hid behind the multitude of personas she had carefully created.
"The truth is a matter of circumstances," she told Rogers, "and so am I."
Despite all that though, they had crept under her skin. They cared and made her care in return.
So when they hit up a Hydra strong hold that Yasha – James, he was James now – had told them about, she wasn't expecting what they found there or her reaction to it.
It started out like just any other mission – wait for Tony and Thor to inadvertently give their position away, wait for Cap to sigh heavily signal that they better attack before the enemy could regroup and wait until Hulk and Captain had started punching their way into the building before she could silently slip in after them, covered by Clint, and take out any enemies who hoped to sneak past them and retrieve any information held in the base.
While Cap and Thor were occupied with smashing enemy who streamed out to meet them with shield and hammer respectively, she slipped into the shadows and waited beside a locked door for reinforcements to rush through and allow her access.
Catching the door before it could shut, she sidled through the narrow opening and then paused, slipping her gun loose and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The roar of the Hulk was cut out abruptly as the door sealed shut, but it seemed that all of Hydra's forces were thoroughly occupied and she could seek out the base of their operations unchallenged.
She crept along until she came to another locked door – not a challenge – and then another. Suspicion was now creeping up her spine. It was one thing to find locked doors in a military base like this, but she was now deep into the building and the barricades were still in place.
She wouldn't ask for back up though. It wasn't in her nature.
Her earpiece was transmitting the sounds of distant battle to her in the distance as her team mates became increasingly snarky, trying to outdo each other with innuendo and jokes…although that was mostly just Stark and Clint. It was oddly comforting.
There was another door, but just from looking at it she could tell that it was reinforced. This one was a little trickier to get through, but with a little expert manipulation, she was in the heart of the building.
It was pitch black in here, there was no light and despite her better judgement, she moved to flip a switch and see what she was dealing with.
Flicking the switch, a single bare bulb lit up overhead, illuminating the room starkly.
She didn't know that she had cried out, didn't realise until the clamour of frantic voices over her earpiece let her know that her team had heard her.
"Tasha…we're coming in…"
"Don't!" Her curt rebuttal audibly stopped them. "Just don't. It's nothing. It's nothing. There's no information here. We just need to burn this place to the ground."
There was a pause.
"Natasha," Rogers' voice was stern, warning.
She moved quickly, lining the room with the thin explosives that Stark had designed for her suit. "It's done, Rogers. Just make sure everyone's clear when the explosives go off."
Another pause. Then a shout.
"Clear the building!"
She set a short timer on the farthest explosive from her and then ran, slamming the multitude of doors behind her.
The building was already starting to rock with the impact of the grenades by the time she burst through the doors and she sprinted towards the woods where she knew her team and the quinjet was lurking, not paying any attention to the dead Hydra forces littering the ground.
Just as she reached the tree line, she turned and spat on the ground, an outburst of emotion she had never allowed herself before in the middle of a mission.
A twig snapping nearby had her spinning around, gun raised and she took a second longer than usual to register that it was Clint standing there, hands held up in surrender.
"Tash?"
She blinked. "Fine. I'm fine."
He nodded slowly. "Good. It's good that you're fine."
He eyed her curiously and she gave him her best blank face.
"Okay," he finally said, acknowledging that she wasn't going to talk. "Let's get back to the jet and then get out of here."
She was grateful that he didn't say anything else and even more grateful for the steadying hand he rested on her back.
The journey home was quiet. Everyone knew that something had happened. Something that had caused such an impassioned response from her, but they didn't know what exactly and she wasn't telling. She just sat there, next to Clint, not contributing at all to the actual flying of the jet. Her mind was still trapped there, back in that room.
She stalked out of the jet and past Hill the second it landed, nearly running down to her quarters and stripping off mechanically she walked straight into the shower, turning it on as hot as it would go. It wasn't as scalding as she would have liked – Friday kept the temperature regulated so people would not hurt themselves – but it was do. Grabbing a washcloth, she began to scrub herself clean.
She didn't stop until blood began running down her hands into the base of the shower and down the drain. It was only then she heard the pounding on the door.
"Natasha?"
Steve.
She didn't know what he was doing there or how he got in, but it was sloppy of her not to notice. She supposed that Friday hadn't alerted her seeing as the Captain wasn't a threat. Well, either that or she just hadn't heard the warning. A quick glance at her phone on the side showed her that she had been in the shower for over an hour. She hadn't lost time like that since she had left the Red Room.
"Natasha?"
He was still out there.
She surveyed the room thoughtfully; she could make a break for it through the vents overhead, but no doubt Clint was already lurking in them, winding down, or she could brace herself, go out and talk to the Captain and get rid of him as quickly as possible.
She settled for the second option and swung the door open, uncaring of her nudity. If she made Rogers nervous that was all the better. Maybe then he'd leave faster.
"Do you mind, Rogers." She pushed past him into her bedroom and began rifling through her dresser, pushing around clothes aimlessly. He was still in his uniform, so she figured he had come straight down to her room after the debriefing.
"Natasha…" He began speaking and then paused. "What happened to your arms?"
She glanced down at the raw skin. "Enthusiastic exfoliating," she answered.
"Nat," he tried again.
"What?" She spun around to face him, brazening it out.
To his credit his eyes only dropped for a split second before fixing on her face, but then, she'd never expected leering from Captain America.
"What was in that base?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Nothing."
He crossed his arms and widened his stance. It was the pose he usually adopted when he was disappointed in something that Tony had done, and despite the turmoil in her head, she almost smiled to see it directed towards her.
"You blew it up for no good reason?"
"It was a Hydra base." She raised an eyebrow at him. "You're telling me that there needs to be a reason beyond that? I wonder what Ya- Barnes would say."
She could practically see his brain whirring behind his eyes as he began strategising how to get her to talk. Unfortunately while she was damn good at her job, he was equally as skilled at his.
"Fine. Don't tell me. But Bucky pulled a bunch of files from the computers at the base which Tony is now working on. We're going to find out what was going down there, even if you won't tell us."
"No!" She took a step forward, her arm reaching out, before she caught herself. "You can't…you can't let him see… Shut it down! Don't let Stark see. Or Wanda either…or Thor. Any of them!"
His eyes narrowed. "Give me one good reason."
She turned away from him and squeezed her eyes shut. "Shut it down first," she demanded.
She didn't have to wait long for his decision.
"Friday, hold decoding those files for now. Use advanced protection protocols to keep Stark out of them."
"Yes, Sir," Friday's voice was the sound of calm efficiency.
Rogers' hand landed on her shoulder. "What's going on, Natasha? What was at that base?"
She turned to face him, eyes unseeing. The horror of that room was directly in front of her once more. The hands on her shoulders were the other thing keeping her in the room with him.
"Girls."
"Girls?" The confusion in his voice caught her attention.
"Girls," she repeated. "Like me…before."
She could see that moment it clicked for him. "Like the Widow program? The Red Room?"
She nodded, her mind drifting away again.
"Nat… Natasha!" He shook her lightly to get her attention again. "Did they attack you? Is that what that was? Why didn't you radio for help over the comms?"
"Dead."
She felt him freeze, felt the moment his muscles locked. "Dead? You killed them?"
She shook her head, angry at the prick of tears she felt stinging her eyes. She didn't know what was wrong with her. She didn't cry; she never cried. Crying was weak.
"They were already dead."
Every one of them.
The girls were handcuffed to the beds – something she thought they had stopped doing after the whole debacle with Peggy Carter and Howard Stark in the 40s. There were at least twenty of them. Some were teenagers – the same age she had been when she was sent out on her first missions – and some were younger. She spotted at least three girls there who were under the age of five. Every one had their heads tipped back... and the blood.
So much blood…
It covered everything: the girls, the beds, the floor and the walls where the arterial spray had landed. It was messy and brutal and…recent.
She vaguely recalled pressing her fingers to one girl's arm, feeling the skin cooling beneath her fingers.
Hydra had been recreating the Red Room and when the Avengers had arrived, they had cleaned house.
There was a strange choking noise in the background and it took her a second to realise that it was her. She was making that noise. Her legs felt weak beneath her and she was falling until Rogers…Steve…caught her. One of his hands left her briefly and then she was covered, wrapped up tightly in the cover from her bed, and then pulled into his lap.
And she cried.
She cried for the girls that had died, for the lives they would have been forced to lead beforehand and for the sheer hopelessness she felt when she realised that those girls would never have made it out alive, regardless of whether the Avengers had intervened or not.
She had become the exception for her kin, not the rule.
Those girls were dead the instance Hydra had laid their hands on them. They never stood a chance. It was one of the most heartbreaking things she had ever seen.
And she was unable to distance herself from it all, as she once would have. She was unable to brush it off, to view the situation clinically.
She had seen her fate had circumstance not intervened.
Yasha, who had sowed the first seeds of rebellion in her; Clint, who had spared her life and offered her something more; Coulson and Fury, who had given her a second chance rather than executing her where she stood; the Avengers, who had her back, even when they first met, just because she was on the same side as them.
Steve, who could be something if she let him, who was good and righteous in a way she could never be, who should never have to deal with the aftermath of what she had seen that day, never have to witness the depravity of the people who had made her what she was.
Steve, who held her as she cried and didn't try to quiet her or offer meaningless platitudes, but just rocked her back and forth, one hand running soothingly over her back as she let it all out.
She had been made weak.
They - all of them - had made her weak. He made her weak.
She could only hope that they would reform her so she could be strong again.
For now though, she would have to borrow his strength as he held her and hope that it would be enough.