A/N: Watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avengers right after each other does no good to me.
This AU will be about Natasha raising Skye as her own child, basically. Later on Avengers, SHIELD and the Coulson team will be mixed in. I don't know how long it's gonna be, but definitely long.
Lights of every color in the visible spectrum flashed across the starry and dark evening sky, every star dancing with the slow movement of the aurora. In the distance the snow-capped peaks of a long mountain range glistened blue, and to the opposite direction the ocean reflected purple. Mixing together with the green summer, the colors made a truly stunning picture. It was natural beauty at an unprecedented level.
The lights were impossible considering China's far away distance to the poles of the earth, and Natalia Alianovna Romanova wondered if it was just her mind that was playing tricks on her. In time it would be revealed that weird nature behavior would be least strange thing in this warm summer evening.
She squinted; in amongst the far trees and bushes, she could see a window emitting light. A little Chinese village of sorts, old wooden houses, small dirt roads, it definitely was not modern in any sense at all.
Natalia moved closer and lay stomach down on a large boulder covered in moss to stay hidden. Through the window she saw two children, a brother and a sister, happily playing together with their father. A bit away, the mother was cooking food, and flashing her family a big smile. A simple and ordinary domestic life, nothing exciting at all, and yet it appealed so much to Natalia, who had never been able to enjoy a quiet life with a loving family.
At a too young age of just a couple of months, she was taken in by the Russian agency KGB; she never knew who her parents were or what happened to them. She was trained to assassinate, lie and cheat; a rotten spy through and through. And here she was, at the tender age of 15, nicknamed the Black Widow due to her extraordinary fighting and killing skills, about to stroll into another mission and do what she did best.
The tiny communication device suddenly buzzed into life. "Natalia, are you at the location?" A thickly Russian accented voice said through the earpiece. "Yes I am. Will you tell me what it was I sent to extract?" She responded. She had been sent to China to retrieve a very important object that was apparently above her clearance level, however she was the agent most fit for the mission.
"You'll know it when you see it." The man finished cryptically as the earpiece turned off.
Natalia set off from her cover and into the small, quaint village. She snuck carefully through, between all the houses, careful to hide herself. Though the night would've been dark, the aurora, stars and moon bathed the village in ice cold blue light, making her visible. Her dark suit helped hiding her a lot, but her very pale complexion and bright red hair made it easy to spot her. She did not wish to disturb the peace of this place.
All the dirt roads lead to the center of the village at the small stone well; from there she found what she was searching for, a medium to large sized house made out of wood planks and oak logs supporting the structure, leaves of green vine and ivy crawling up its side, clutching on as if their life depended on it.
Her small body allowed her fingers and feet into small crevices and holes in and between the planks, so she could easily crawl up the wall like a spider. From one of the open higher windows she slipped into what looked like a nursery. The walls colored a bright and happy sky-blue color, a large carpet depicting beautiful white fractal shapes spread across a deep blue backdrop.
Small miscellaneous toys littered the floor, firetrucks, dolls, everything a child could imagine. Moonlight came in from the window, lighting up the tiny dust motes hovering happily about. A few feet away from Natalia there were a small white crib with a blue bundle, above it a crib mobile that showcased stars, moons, galaxies and other space bodies. She tiptoed across the room to the crib and bent over it. In it was a little baby, in content sleep.
However, it unexplainably woke up, its big brown eyes staring up into Natalia's green ones, and started wailing loudly enough for the whole village to wake up. Natalia's mission orders was to kill anyone who would get in her way, but though she was a seemingly emotionless assassin, something deep inside her told her that she could not just take the life of someone so young.
"Shhh, shhh!" she tried with the baby, but it would not stop. She glanced around the room, scanning for anything that might help to quiet the crying child. On the ground she saw a little green toy dinosaur with a big smile; she picked it up and held it over the baby, playing and acting a bit around with it.
"Rawr! If you don't stay silent, I am gonna eat youuu!" she said for the dinosaur in the warmest voice she could fake. The baby at first flinched, but then she laughed, and Natalia decided that the sound of the baby's bubbling laughter was the cutest thing she had ever heard.
Natalia suddenly remembered an old lullaby her caretaker had sung to her growing up in the KGB. It was the only thing that was able to calm her down and have her fall asleep. The baby had to fall asleep if she was to carry out her mission with minimal impact on the life of these villagers. So she sung.
"Lozhkoj sneg meshaja,
Noch' idjot bol'shaja.
Chto zhe ty, glupyshka,
Ne spish'?
Spjat tvoi sosedi
Belye medvedi,
Spi skorej i ty,
Malysh.
My plyvjom na l'dine,
Kak na brigantine
Po sedym, surovym
Morjam.
I vsju noch' sosedi,
Zvjozdnye medvedi
Svetjat dal'nim
Korabljam."
And it seemed that this time, Natalia's voice carried genuine warmth and caring. The little child cooed, obviously not understanding anything Natalia had sung, but still blubbering excitedly. It reached out with its chubby little hand to touch Natalia's hair, and she could not do anything but flash the child a big smile as it fell into slumber once again.
"Daisy? Are you alright?" a Chinese female voice called from outside. The door to the little nursery opened, and what followed were a loud bang and the thud of a light corpse falling to the ground.
Natalia had acted on instinct, her cover was about to be blown, she had to finish her mission. Of course, her cover now would be blown regardless, considering how everyone within five kilometres radius would've heard that gun shot. The baby had woken up and started wailing again. She turned on her earpiece to make contact.
"Vlad, I've been made, tell me what I need to retrieve so I can get out of here as soon as possible."
She almost didn't finish that sentence since another person stepped into the room, this time an American male, he didn't even have time to react before the deadly Black Widow pulled the trigger once again.
"Vlad!" She practically screamed, guilt had gnawed deep into the usually cold and detached Black Widow, who felt sorry. Not necessarily for the parents, she had loads of adults in her ledger, the guilt was killing her because she knew she was letting this baby live without its parents, something she did not wish on anyone after experiencing it first-hand.
"It's the child." She heard through her earpiece.
…
"What?" She responded, confused.
"It's the child Romanova; your mission is to retrieve that child and bring it back to HQ. Hurry up and get out of that place. Shield is coming." He answered cryptically before the connection cut off.
"What does that even mean?" she spoke to herself quietly. Nevertheless, she made her way towards the crib, uttering a small ow as she felt something under her foot, the little dinosaur toy. She decided to grab the toy and take it with her, as it would most likely prove efficient at quieting the baby.
She climbed out the window and got her feet down on the ground again, this time with the little bundle near her chest, still crying her eyes out at the loss of her parents.
"Shh, shh, little mishka." Natalia hummed the melody from the lullaby she had sung to the child earlier. The child once again cooed at laid itself closer to Natalia's chest. The calming effect was just in time; because as soon as she had reached the outskirts of the village, all hell broke loose.
Villagers had come out to investigate the gunshots, but there was someone else. Men and women in dark combat vests, armed with assault rifles and other heavy weapons. Their flashlights went twirled around each other in what seemed like a ballet dance, going around the whole village. They immediately opened fire on any villagers they saw, no mercy for man, woman or child. Natalia pondered if it was this Shield thing Vlad was talking about.
She snuck away with the child, while the whole village fell victim to these attackers; she made it away in all the confusion. The village was far behind her when her earpiece hissed again.
"Natalia, come back to HQ, you hear me? Go back to your plane and fly back here, you must return quickly." Vlad slurred, apparently quite drunk, through the communication device. Natalia did not dignify him with a response, and the earpiece died once again.
She instead looked down at the bundle in her arms, how the child had fallen asleep was a mystery to her, especially with all the commotion that had been around them. Something from inside Natalia stirred, life, emotion, compassion, all of these things that made a man human was going through the previously blank Black Widow.
She herself knew what it was like to grow up without anyone who loved you, no friends or anything, the only reason she grew up was to become a weapon of the KGB. There was something eerily reminiscent of the events that had befallen her that were now happening to this child. Kidnapped and her parents cold bloodedly murdered.
It was something different; she had murdered many people in her short life, but knowingly taking the life of two loving parents, and deprive this child of anything that may seem like an ordinary upbringing? It brought tears to her eyes.
She sniffled quietly, the train of feelings too overwhelming to keep her composure. Something clicked inside her head; she could not allow the KGB to ruin another life, not when she could stand between them and this child. She grabbed the communication device in her ear, pulled it out and crushed it in her fingers. Her mind was made up now, she was going to make for an escape, and leave the life in the KGB behind.
Natalia continued on, child clutched closer to her chest, keeping a warring eye on the surrounding trees, bushes, rocks, anything that anyone could hide behind and surprise attack her from. She was not going to let slip this chance of granting a child she had crossed a normal life.
She finally reached her plane that had been landed some distance away from the village. The KGB had equipped her with it to reach China fast. It still had a decent amount of fuel left, at least enough to make it far away. She settled down in the pilot's seat and got in front of an in-built computer first. If she was to make it far away from KGB, she would have to first make it far away from her motherland. She erased every trace of her; any files on her were to be deleted. She was a reasonably good hacker, having been taught by computer genius Vladimir Krushniv, one of her mentors in the KGB.
And so she sat back in front of the cockpit, taking the plane into air. She knew exactly where any part of the Russian government could not touch her, the arch-enemy of her country, nicknamed the land of the free. She just hoped life in the United States of America would be easy on her and the child.
Directly in front of her, the sun rose up from the east, the light from the stars and the moon dulled to make way for the strong burst of light that poured into the plane, illuminated the ocean and coloured the sky a beautiful red. In the face of this beauty, the child woke up, and its little hand reached up to touch Natalia's chin.
"Daisy, wasn't it? We should get you and me new names. What do you want to be called?" She asked, jokingly at first, but then the child pointed to the red skies in front of them. It uttered some sounds, although largely unintelligible, it conspicuously sounded like it was trying to say "sky".
"Sky? You like the sky? Sky, sky, sky… What about Skye? Pretty name, isn't it? Yeah, you and me, little mishka. Natasha and Skye against the world."
And the baby giggled at Natasha to show her approval.
A/N: English is not my first language and I am not educated in any kind of story telling (I'm a mathematician at heart, this is just a hobby), I hope I didn't make too many mistakes. Of course there are some in there somewhere, so do feel free to throw a review pointing out my mistakes! In fact any kind of review is very much accepted, they make me happy :)
I may also have made some mistakes in regards to story facts, I don't know everything about Avengers and Agents of SHIELD, only what I've watched and read. Hopefully I did right enough. Again, feel free to call out mistakes, I encourage it.
Also, there aren't any pairings yet, you guys can just throw ideas in the reviews and I'll see what pairings are most popular.
"Mishka" - bear cub
The russian lullaby (sort of) translates to:
Stirring the snow with a spoon,
The great night is coming.
Why aren't you, silly,
Sleeping yet?
Your neighbors are asleep,
The polar bears,
Hurry up and go to sleep,
Baby.
We're swimming on the block of ice,
As though it's a brigantine,
On the grey, harsh
Seas.
And all night, the neighbors,
The star-bears
Are shining to the distant
Ships.
Not 100% sure that's the correct translation, but it's something along those lines. If you want to listen to what the lullaby sounds like, you can search "Колыбельная Медведицы" on youtube.
Until next time.
