A/N – There's so much excellent BlackHawk stuff out there, this won't even make a little dent. (See, for example, Ennui-EAF's story Dresser Drawers) But it wanted to be written, so I wrote it. If I can think of the right way to do it, I may add a second part. I've skimmed over the 'true' backstory of Black Widow, which I know is out there, but I don't feel comfortable enough to write yet, and used the major themes. I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: None of the awesome belongs to me. It's all Marvel's and Joss Whedon's.
She'd been no more than 17 when he made that call and brought her in. Young, volatile, desperate for another path. She hadn't known her age, or much else about herself, but SHIELD had done tests and told her that based on bone density and the number of eggs she had left, she wasn't yet an adult. She had replied that she felt like one.
They'd kept her in a cell for a year, mostly because she kept inadvertently trying to kill the agents they sent to talk to her. The subconscious orders, the commands and triggers layered deep in her psyche took a long time to find and destroy. She still wasn't sure they'd gotten them all. Clint wasn't either. Sometimes he'd turn to her in the heat of battle and it would take a minute for Nat to push through in her eyes. For all that, though, she'd never tried to kill him when he'd visited. She said he didn't pose enough of a threat, but the smile in her eyes didn't quite hide the shadow. She didn't know why he was different, and it scared her.
Once SHIELD was confident that she was in control, her prison expanded to the base. She could go anywhere, talk to anyone, practice, spar, fight… she just couldn't leave. For two years. It was a test of will, Fury told her. He needed to know she wanted to be here. It was excruciating. She got better – at everything – and ran out of partners to spar with. Clint would come back from missions and find her huddled in his Hawk's Nest, a special room on top of one of the flight control towers that Fury had added for him, gazing longingly at the horizon. So he started a post-mission ritual of sparring with the Widow, as soon as he'd reported to Fury. He always lost – even at his best, she usually beat him, and he was generally injured or exhausted – and she always went easy. They never talked about why.
She only tried to leave once in those two years.
He'd had to pull the story together from rumors and hearsay. She never talked about it. What he knew was this: A hotshot new recruit had come to base toward the end of one of Clint's long-term missions. The kid was smart, good-looking, and somehow still popular among the other recruits. Fury had him pegged for a spot on the bridge. One of the kids he interrogated said that after Natasha flattened the guy for a third day in a row, he asked her to dinner. Her hesitation gave him the window he needed to flip her, and while she was pinned, he asked again. For about a week, they had danced around each other, flirting and laughing, until one Saturday night, the hotshot had told his roommates to get lost for the evening. They found him, mangled and stone-cold dead, early Sunday morning.
Natasha they found sitting in Fury's office, covered in blood, her eyes blank and a handwritten letter of resignation on her lap. Maria Hill stumbled onto her before Fury, since he'd been called to the scene, and that was the only reason Clint knew any of this. Maria asked her what the hell happened, and Natasha had answered, "SHIELD didn't clean me up as well as they thought." Her codename was, after all, the Black Widow. Apparently her makers had intended for it to be literal. She hadn't had sex since coming to SHIELD – most people assumed she and Clint were a thing, and the rest were too scared of Fury – so her reaction to it had never been tested. Fury refused to accept her resignation, and the fight that followed took hours. Finally, having shot down the idea of giving her prison time, Fury agreed to allow her self-imposed isolation in the Hawk's Nest.
When Clint got back, a month later, she was still there. Maria had been bringing food up, but Fury wouldn't talk to her until she "gave up on this nonsense" and everyone else didn't know what to think. He'd unloaded onto Fury, once he'd gotten most of the story, for not having considered this, for not having tried to find those subconscious triggers two years ago. The director had looked at him with his unreadable eye and said, "Oh, we tried. But there was only ever one way to test it." Then he'd dismissed his star agent, and told him to go and "get her down from there."
The Hawk's Nest locked from the inside, but he knew the override. He waited until it was time for dinner, and took up a tray. When he knocked, she just said, "Go away, Maria." He assumed she'd been living off his candy bar stash for the last month. To test the waters he said, "This might be the one time I beat you post-mission." There was a long silence, and then he got tired of waiting and opened the door. She stood with her back to him, red hair scraped up into a hasty ponytail and arms crossed defensively as she stared out the window, watching his reflection as he closed the door and walked toward her. He set the tray down on the desk and saw her shudder briefly as the smell of the roasted chicken hit the air. Definitely candy bars.
"This is not your fault, Nat." He wanted to say it was the recruit, the cocky kid who'd thought he was above the rules and could handle it, could handle her. But that wasn't what she needed to hear right now. "No one but you thinks this is your fault."
He took her silence for what it was – not agreement, but permission. Because of their friendship, he could talk, and she would not try to kill him. It was further than anyone else had gotten.
"So it's one more thing the bastards left you with," he continued. "One more way they thought they owned you, that you could be brought to heel, unmade. They want you useless and afraid of your own mind. Why are you giving that to them?"
She didn't react. Time to try another tack. This one worried him a bit.
"Or is it SHIELD? You're the master interrogator, are you telling me you didn't get out of Fury that he knew this was a possibility?"
She stiffened then, and he knew he'd found one source of her doubt.
"He had a week to tell you, a week to warn you off. Why didn't he? You want to know why he didn't save you from yourself, Nat?"
She turned then, and her eyes were flat and bleak. He winced to see how thin she'd gotten.
"I didn't need saving," was her response, bit out in a rough voice that hadn't said much for a month.
"Listen to me," he said, taking another step toward her, his voice rising in urgency. "THINK. Why are you here? Why haven't you been sent away or locked in a real cell? Fury knows this is his fault. This is not on you. He made a call – to trust the psych reports and the evals and the doctors who've been working with you for three years – and tried to let you have something normal. Something where you didn't have to be afraid."
He reached out and lightly touched his hand to the side of her face. She shuddered again, just slightly, the only sign that he was getting through to her. Why not really push his luck?
"One more thing," he said. "I know you. This would have been fun, short-lived, and unemotional for you. And that's killing you, isn't it? That you didn't have enough emotion to pull on in the moment to override the instinct?"
She broke eye contact, as good an answer as any "yes" would have been. He finally closed the distance and pulled her in for a hug. She didn't hug him back, but her head relaxed onto his chest.
"It isn't right. It shouldn't have happened. But it's still not your fault."
They stood there for a few minutes, his cheek on the top of her head as she relaxed in infinitesimal degrees in his arms, until he said, "If you don't want that chicken I think I'm going to have it. It smells amazing."
She snorted and broke the embrace. When she looked up at him, it was with eyes that no longer showed only emptiness and self-hatred. They were still there, but there was a spark again. And that was a start.
"I believe that's my dinner," she answered. "But how about this – winner gets drumstick?"
"I thought you'd never ask," he grinned. And just like that, the old routine saved them.
He got the drumstick that night, but he could tell she'd held back more than usual. He considered it a thank you.
That class of recruits was shipped off to other bases, and Clint suspected it was Fury's way of apologizing to Natasha. The psych sessions increased in frequency, and Nat never flirted with anyone outside of missions. Except for him. And sometimes, when he'd wink back at her, he'd see that shadow in her eyes again. She still didn't know why he was different, but he was.