AN: Carin: This contains a couple of references to agents of Shield, but it's just like two characters that show up sometimes, it will be Melinda May and Victoria Hand. They're two Shield agents and they're both pretty cool. They're not super important to the plot of this though, if they were I would have put this in the crossover section.

Trigger warnings: Mentioned Abuse, PTSD, Anxiety, Mild tones of depression, Childhood mental illness, mention of car crashes, mentions of guns and occasional use of guns , mild violence, mentions of war and other fighting, occasional fighting,

Other warnings: ocassional mild swearing (Hell, Crap, Freaking, Screw, ect, nothing that would be censored on tv)

Chapter one

Fury had never really planned on having kids. Six months ago that had changed. Now he was a little bit stuck in a twin sized bed, surrounded by stuffed animals with a feverish six year old on his chest. Natasha herself was asleep but her fever was still taunting him. It kept going to right under forty degrees Celsius, which would warrant the ER and probably give him a full on heart attack before dropping back to thirty seven and a half. Now it had restarted it's slow mount up and was currently resting at thirty eight, nearly thirty nine. Natasha let out a small sob as her eyes fluttered opened. She pulled the blanket around herself tighter despite the sweat covering her forehead. She looked up at him before lying back down,

"Does your throat feel any better?" he asked. She shook her head into his chest,

"How about your chest," he was met by another shake of her head. He went to ask another question but realised the girl was already sleeping again. Fury closed his eyes and thought about seven months prior when on a Friday night he would be working. It was a strange concept really, and not really something he thought he could go back to even if he wanted to. He didn't.

Sure in June things had been different, but now they were better.

Six months earlier

Natasha was scared. There were people yelling and running and she was supposed to be running out of the back door, but she didn't want to do that. She was going to run. She was going to run out of a different wall and she was going to get away. The Red Room was going to be behind her, she was leaving, she would figure it out from there. Natasha pulled on her small sneakers and looked down a hallway to see if there was anyone around. Natasha ran down the hall holding her blanket that was holding her things over her shoulder. She took the staircase and ran down the stairs. All the doors but the front one were unlocked for the first time since she had been here because they were trying to get everyone out before the people out front could get in. She was planning to climb out a window once she was down there, or just wait for the shield agents to break down the door. She wasn't sure if she trusted them but the Red Room didn't and that was good enough for now. She reached the front door just as it was knocked down by the agents outside. She screamed, they screamed a bunch of English words she didn't know and someone grabbed onto her. She screamed and kicked at the agent for a minute but the man was saying nice things, even if she didn't understand. She went limp and looked up. A man wearing a business suit was carrying her towards a something else,

"Who?" she asked jabbing a finger at his chest,

"Shield, Coulson," he responded "kto?" he asked pointing at her,

"Tasha," she responded, she wasn't a part of anything so she just stuck with her name, at least the part of it she would trust them with,

"sem'ya?" he asked. Natasha shook her head she had no family, at least not living family. They had all been killed a long time ago. The man locked eyes with her and gave her a look of pity. Usually, she would have been angry but right now she was too scared to care. The man said some more English words Natasha didn't know, but he said them softly and the words themselves sounded soft and quiet and she was very scared so she clung tightly to the man and tried to make out the sounds of what he was saying. She eventually resigned the concept and just tried to look around the area. They were getting pretty far away from the Red Room and Natasha felt safer as they walked away from it. Coulson tried to place her on a bed and she screamed,

"Niet!" she yelled clinging tighter to him. She had decided to trust this man for the time being but that didn't mean she trusted who he worked for, or who he worked with. The man said something to one of his colleagues who then looked at her. Her brown eyes softened as she saw Natasha,

"She's tiny," the woman breathed out a sad tone in her voice. Natasha knew what that meant, it meant she thought she was a baby. She wasn't.

"Yeah," Coulson responded with the same tone that made Natasha consider kicking him. She decided not to just in case that made him decide to leave her here. He said something to the women and she nodded. The woman's Russian was shaky as she looked at Natasha and struggled out a few sentences but Natasha picked up what she was saying. She told her that her name was Melinda May and that Coulson would stay with her but she had to sit on the chair so the medical examiner could look at her. Natasha didn't like medical examiners so she shook her head. She didn't know what they were but they sounded like some sort of doctors and doctors were mean. They stuck things in her arms and legs and they stuck things to her head and they never said sorry and they yelled or laughed at her if she cried. Still, she nodded. She had decided to trust Coulson so if he was right there she would talk to the medical examiners, as long as they didn't poke her. Then she would probably hit them, or maybe not.

She liked to think about hitting or kicking people who were mean, but she was too scared to do it. It was still nice to think about sometimes.

Natasha loosened her grip on Coulson's neck and dropped to the ground. She sat on the table he had tried to place her own. It was set up like a bed, with a blanket for a mattress and a top sheet for the blankets. Suddenly Natasha remembered her own blanket grasped in her hand. She pulled the blanket and the things stuffed inside it close to her chest. All that was in it was a change of clothes, her jacket and a Swiss Army knife she had pickpocketed from some guy who had come into the Red Room about a year ago. No one had ever noticed, so it had stayed hidden in her pillowcase. She had only taken it out on days they made and checked the beds.

The blanket was the most important thing to her, she had had it always. Plus if she lost it she didn't get another one. You didn't get a new blanket until you were twelve, that was still seven years away for Natasha, or maybe it was six now. She didn't remember what day it was but she knew it was June and that was when her birthday was. June 25th, not that six years old meant a lot to her. Five meant she had started training, six just meant the older girls were a tiny bit nicer.

She didn't have to turn six there now, or maybe she already had, she didn't remember.

"kakoy eto den'?" she asked the medic as he moved towards her,

"dvadtsat' 'shest," he responded. She was almost six then six then. Tomorrow. Well sort of tomorrow, it was the middle of the night. Some kids got presents on their birthdays, she felt like this was definitely a present. A really good one. She had been at the Red Room three years now and that was a long time. These shield people were scary but also kind of nice, at least Coulson was, and Melinda was pretty nice too. She bounced up and down on the bed, it was hard but it was nice to remember she was here.

She didn't know where she was going but it would be better than here. Suddenly Natasha felt really tired and wondered if this was adrenaline crash. She stood up from the bed and rushed back over to Coulson who was still the only one here who she trusted. She stood on her tiptoes and managed to barely reach one hand around Coulson. Luckily he took the hint and picked her up. She put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

Natasha woke up in a bed. An actual bed, not a table with a blanket mattress or a red room bed with a tiny blanket. Just a bed, with a big blanket. Her blanket was pulled to her chest by her hands like some sort of teddy bear. She sat up and took in her surroundings. The room was dark blue, there were two beds and she was in one of them. Both had grey comforters and white sheets. There was one night stand with two picture frames on it. Natasha grabbed the picture closest to her and examined it. It was Coulson, Melinda May, and a third woman with brown hair in a tight bun. They were all dressed fairly formally but they had big smiles and all three were laughing. She reached for the second photo as she noticed movement in the other bed. She froze as the figure turned around revealing Melinda's face. She sighed a bit and grabbed the second photo. In that one Melinda was wearing a long white dress, a wedding dress maybe. There were two other women in the picture, one was the brunette from the first picture but her hair was down in this one, the other woman looked quite a bit like Melinda but her hair was shorter. The other two women were wearing grey dresses which made Natasha think it probably was Melinda's wedding photo. There were two parts to this picture frame, but the second one was a bit smaller. That one had a picture of Melinda's and Coulson in it. It looked like the same day but a different place. She wondered if Melinda and Coulson were married. She looked at both of their hands in the photo. Melinda had a ring but Coulson didn't. She noticed that there was another photo underneath it and started to turn the frame over as Melinda woke up. Natasha put the frame right way up and looked at Melinda looked at her.

"Wedding photos," Melinda said with a sad smile. Melinda was saying the words in English but she was hearing the Russian in her ear a minute later. Melinda noticed her confusion,

"It's a translator, It'll let you know what we're saying," she told her, "and, we have some in too so we know what you're saying, " Melinda gestured to her ear. Natasha nodded. It was a bit confusing hearing the words in two languages but she could manage. Melinda grabbed a brown paper bag with little handles from the side of her bed and handed it to Natasha,

"These are for you, " she said. Natasha put the bag next to her on the bed and looked inside. She reached inside the bag and grabbed onto something made of a soft fabric. A shirt probably she guessed, "It's just some clothes, you can use the bathroom if you want," Natasha nodded and slowly walked to the bathroom with the bag.

She pulled the contents out, there was a blue shirt, a yellow sweater with a hood, and a pair of shorts that were made out of stiff but soft blue fabric that Natasha didn't think would be too good to fight in with little yellow flowers on them. There was also some socks and some underwear. Natasha looked into the bag to check if she'd forgotten anything and pulled one last thing from the bottom. A pair of grey sneakers. She hadn't had shoes with laces since she was little but these ones had laces. She didn't know how to tie them. She changed into the new stuff and looked down at her socked feet. The socks were white with grey heels and toes. She probably didn't need shoes inside, she grabbed the shoes and started to carry them back to the big room but then she noticed there was another door in the bathroom. It was a little door probably for maintenance or access to something but she would probably be able to fit through it and figure out where she was and if she could trust these people. She glanced at the big door one more time before opening the small door. It lead to a small passage filled with wires that Natasha followed until she found another little door to open. She had to push on it a bit more than the other one but it opened with a loud pop. The door didn't lead to a bathroom it lead to an empty hallway. Her head turned both ways as she tried to decide where to go. There were voices to the left so she decided not to go that way. She wondered if it was her birthday yet. There were no clocks or calendars around. Natasha decided she was hungry and decided to look for food. She didn't know where to find food here. Suddenly her thoughts were interrupted by bumping into a large man.

Fury was having a normal day. Until he bumped into a small girl in the hallway. He figured she was probably the daughter or niece of some dumb new agent who hadn't read the handbook thought that a shield base was a safe place to let kids roam around. He had nothing against agents bringing kids with them for a visit, but letting them walk around without any supervision was just dangerous. He looked down at the little girl looking up at him with wide eyes,

"Are you lost?" he asked. The girl shook her head, "Are your mom or dad around," she waited a minute then shook her head. "Well do they work here?" he asked,

"No," she said calmly. She seemed to have some sort of accent, maybe this was some European tourist who'd gotten separated from her family and wandered into the first building she saw. Then again she had said she wasn't lost.

"Well where is your family then?" He asked. The girl looked calm as she shrugged. He noticed that she had a shield made translator in her ear which meant some idiot agent had indeed lost a kid on the base.

"Why don't we go find your family?" he asked holding out a hand to the girl. She stared at his hand for a minute before smiling grabbing his hand and following him down the hall.