foreigner god
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They're both a little damaged.
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DC/Marvel AU where Natasha is maybe 18 and Bruce stumbles upon the recent escapee from the asylum. Somewhere along the line they fix themselves.
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Gotham was a large city filled with shadows and rust. Buildings were hazed in the age of the city, gradually creeping along the dance of time. Bruce grimaced at the night as it lowered down around the high towers, darkness stained by the bright lights of everywhere. He gazed around from his perch, feeling uneasy and filled with restlessness. The night was young, but it felt like it was pushing down around him and slowly crowding him into a small corner.
"Batman," came the calm and controlled voice from the ear piece. Alfred spoke very carefully, altering his usual speech and inserting codenames out of respect for Bruce's growing paranoia. "I hope that you are alright."
The wind was cold and the sky in the horizon look blotted and deformed with heavy purple clouds that rolled closer. "I might have to set up camp somewhere if the weather gets bad." Bruce replied softly as he watched the horizon, not even bothering to use his distorted voice. "Is everything alright there?"
"I believe so. I just thought I would check in with you before tending to some last minute preparations."
"Goodnight," Bruce said.
A red blur from the ground below his perch caught his eye. A small figure was being chased through the alley ways, looping through passages in a way that seemed far too skilled from his view. He slunk down the fire escape from the top of the building, leaping from escape to escape as she pushed further into the bowels of the city.
Her face was pale in the darkness and the white uniform made her look sickly and washed out. Several men pushed her further against a wall but she didn't look necessarily nerved. Bruce was intrigued as he watched he ball up her fists and slip into a proper fighting stance. "Who's first?" She called out in a quiet voice, watching the seven with hard eyes.
"C'mon, sugar. You're an escapee, we'll keep you safe and sound." One gruff voice said as he cracked his knuckles. "Just want a little compensation."
She rolled her eyes. "There are plenty of you to go around. Just get creative."
One sprang forward wielding a bat and he would have likely cracked her skull if she hadn't dodged and spun behind him to smack him hard with what looked to be a large rock found from the ground. The man dropped the ground within an instant, lips parted and blood trickling down his neck. Bruce jumped from to the ground as she ducked another blow, only to take a hit to this stomach. The entire group swarmed her and took her down, her calculated hits transformed into feeble attempts to push them off her.
Within moments he had them unconscious and bleeding, the woman on her knees and gasping. She looked up at him in a skittish way, flinching back when the armoured man knelt down close to her. "They hurt you?" He asked curtly as he took in the medical bracelet that hung on her to thin wrist and the bagginess of the white uniform.
She shrugged. "This a costume party?"
"You escaped from Arkham," he informed her. "You were there for a reason." There's something so incredibly wrong with the image of her glaring at him with diamond like eyes and her back ramrod straight. She doesn't look crazy, or sound it. She sounds angry and hard and defensive, and he doesn't quite know what to think of her.
"I'm there because I'm a danger to society," she said blandly. "May I go?"
"Who are you?"
She blinked at him before slowly saying, "Natasha." Her name sounds hesitant, and he understands. The hospital band around her wrist has a string of numbers that are stamped in slightly smudged black ink against the white material and she's only part of a system dominated by a number controlled structure. "My name is Natasha."
Natasha tried to stand, her swollen ankle trembling beneath her weight as she limped a few feet back, standing with her back plastered to a wall. Bruce watched her carefully, allowing her to drift further away. "You need to get off the streets."
"Where am I? Who are you?"
"This is Gotham."
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Her fingertips don't actually reveal any prints, he realized, but scars. The delicate lines that make up an individual were burned away into pale splotchy scars. Her arms are covered in the constellations of marks from needles, making her tremble and flinch when Alfred attempted to hook her up to an IV. For the first time all night she looks completely terrified and unbalanced, sitting hunched over with her hands clamped down to the arm rests.
"Bringing home strays, Master Bruce?" Alfred asked as he poured her a cup of hot tea. The fragrance of lemon and honey filled the Bat Cave and made Bruce wrinkle his nose in disgust. He'd taken off his armour while Alfred had patched the girl up. She'd been easy to take back to the Bat Cave, all it had taken was slinging her over his shoulder before tossing her relatively softly in the backseat of the car.
He shrugged. "How did you escape Arkham?" Bruce asked Natasha very carefully. She looks tired and worn out, covered in bandages and bruises. "Who were those men?"
"How am I supposed to know who they were? I don't even understand where I am at." She said harshly. "Arkham is nothing, you know. I've seen much worse things."
Arkham was a building that existed upon the foundation of misery. People who went in damaged came out more warped, directed by the need to cause destruction and damage. The asylum changed people and it had never been for the better.
Bruce leaned back in his chair. "What have you been through?"
"The Red Room." Natasha told him sharply.
His heart stopped.
He'd seen various articles on the government approved facility and experiment. It had been revealed far to deadly and the children removed from the program were damaged beyond all belief. He'd read documented research done of the after effects, such as the one little girl who cried unless her hand was cuffed to the bed and the other girl who beat another child to death because she presumed it had been expected of her. The woman who sat across from him looked young and small, sharp elbows and tiny ankles. He'd seen her take down one man within seconds before being swarmed by the rest.
"How did you get from Russia to here?"
"It is a long story, one that I am unwilling to speak of." She shrugged. "Does it matter, even?"
"Are you a danger?"
Natasha cocked her head. "Depends who you ask."
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"I left the Red Room," she told him very quietly as she sat down on the bed and fiddled with the sleeves of the dark sweater Alfred had found for her. Her wrists revealed scars that looked red and angry, reminders of time spent in restraints. "I didn't want to be responsible for death anymore."
"How did you get here?" Bruce asked her quietly.
She looked down. "I thought I could trust someone, but then he lied."
Natasha was trembling from the detox, he realized. She'd grown paler and more withdrawn, fingers unsteady and lips chapped. The medicine that she'd been on in the asylum had been intensive, and it was slowly leaving her system. He sighed as he understood fully what the night would consist of.
Except it hadn't.
She had lain rigidly in the bed with her eyes glued to the door. He'd sat close to the bedside watching as she gritted her teeth and trembled. Not once, however, did she make one sound.
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"Why exactly do you go around dressed like a medieval bat?" She asked in a thin voice as he placed a damp rag on her forehead. The five days and six nights had gone by slowly, her form rigidly tolerating the shuddering shakes and gasping breathes as she fought her way through the withdrawals of drugs. "As far as I'm aware, you Americans reserve a single night a year for costumed activities."
He settled down on the side of the bed and watched her with tired eyes. "This city is filled with terrible things."
"Why does that concern you?"
"My parents were shot in front of me in an alleyway in this city when I was younger," he said bluntly. "I made a vow to protect the innocent."
"Do you consider myself as what you consider innocent?"
He noticed the phrasing of her words, words made heavy by a Russian accent that had appeared in her exhaustion. "Do you?"
"I don't really know," she whispered. "I never really had the chance."
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The Red Room created assassins that had no fear and could feel nothing.
Eventually it was shut down and the children were given a death that was not merciful. The Red Room was built away from civilization and was built essentially as a large prison. Bruce had studied it intently, diving into the files of the S.S.R to read the reports of the first assassin sent to America. The files onward were sparse and hollow, little more than mentions of strange women who were unable to follow through on their training.
Natasha revealed to be perhaps twenty years old, the youngest that he'd known to exist. She was small enough she could pass for a child and her time spent in Arkham had done her no favours. He'd looked into the documents within her lengthy file to understand exactly who he was dealing with and found reports of suspected child abuse and the inability to function properly. During the beginning of her stay she had grown violent with other patients, even one report revealing that she had nearly beaten the Joker to death before being drugged into submission. Medicine was used as a weapon to keep her in a dazed state of mind.
Bruce kept an eye on her, waiting for her to break. The detox had been a violently painful experience that had pushed her closer to the edge but she fought against it. "I think she wants to be cleared from her past history," Bruce told Alfred as the man placed a mug of coffee on his desk. "S.H.I.E.L.D kept excellent research on her, tracing each one of her kills that they found."
"And what of them strikes you of importance?" Alfred asked as he adjusted his jacket.
"At first she was working for the Red Room and killed various people in high positions who complicated the group's goal. Some point, however, it looked like Natasha veered off on her own. She started to take out dealers and people connected with human trafficking. The Irish Mafia she took down alone after they blew a school bus of children up." Bruce noted. "She took down villains, but S.H.I.E.L.D only saw numbers."
Alfred grimaced. "So they sent an agent of their own to eliminate her."
"An agent who must have had a softer heart than they realized. Whether her age, attraction or even understanding what she was accomplishing." Bruce said as he began to flip through papers. "He apparently promised her safety."
"And this government organization tortured her before locking her away."
"Arkham is a terrible place."
He sighed as he turned to leave the study. "No one ever really escapes, do they?"
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Bruce had been expecting her to snap, but hadn't been able to prepare for the sheer violence of the breaking point. All it had taken was for a glass to shatter and she was lurching forward on shaking legs and striking out at him. "Natasha!" He shouted as he tried to restrain her, "calm down, you're safe!"
"Let go off me," she seethed as she struggled. "I will not let you hurt me!"
Natasha cried out as her injuries protested; broken ribs and a still delicate ankle resisting her actions. Bruce tried to push her backwards and pin her against the oversized desk. "You are at Wayne Manor. Do you understand me?"
"I will not go back!" She screamed at him. "I refuse; you will not make me, you idiotic swine!" Natasha managed to grab hold of the vase sitting harmlessly on the desk before throwing the ugly vase at his face that he thankfully managed to avoid before taking several pens to the torso as she flung them wildly.
He lifted his hands to try to appease her. "No one is sending you back there, Natasha. You need to calm down."
She spat something at him in Russian before turning around to gaze at the corners of the room. She slid out of his grip and crouched down low and lifted her arms over her head. "I won't let them hurt me, I can't. You don't understand."
Bruce kneeled down beside her. He listened carefully to her terrified whispering before pressing closer. "Who hurt you?" This is foreign to him, crawling on his knees to put the stranger back together again. He'd seen plenty of terrible things, women raped in dark parking lots or children molested against a wall. He had saved them then but left them for the police, left the crawling in a pit of horrors that he couldn't completely understand. Natasha was watching him with wide eyes and flinched at every movement. "Who hurt you before?"
"The doctors, the agents. Uncle Ivan," she trembled. The destructive display of rage had melted away and left him with a buildup of anxiety and desperation over taking her. Soon enough exhaustion would make her melt, emotions slipping away before she would fully understand them. "The agent said I would be safe, but the rest said I was dangerous." Natasha yanked the sleeve of her left arm up to reveal the angry look scars on her upper arms. "They kept burning me with the metal rod until they believed me."
"Why did the agent say you were safe?"
She bit her lip and looked around her desperately. "I'd left the Red Room. Unhinged, a risk. He was meant to kill me but he didn't. He told me they would take me in but they didn't. They locked me away so I wouldn't be there." She sobbed. "I just wanted to be left alone."
"How old are you?" he asked her because she looked simply so young in the shadows of the room, eyes glassy and bright with years spent in pain.
"I don't know."
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She liked to dance.
He found her the morning after in the ballroom with her feet bare against the cool marble and slipping into proper ballet stances as she watched herself carefully in the large full length mirrors. The image of her standing in the morning light looks oddly familiar and he can almost believe for a second it is his mother humming as she twists into each correct form. "Good morning," she greets him with a tired voice.
He nods to her as he takes a set in one of the chairs pushed up against the wall of the room. "I didn't know you danced."
Natasha gave a slight smile, brittle and small in the bright morning light. "I used to think I would be a ballerina when I was younger." She spun around very carefully, one leg awkwardly positioned up. The white bandaged ankle still looked swollen.
"Now what do you think you'll be?"
Her pose faltered and soon enough she was standing with her feet apart and hands slipping into defensive fists. "I'll be whatever I can be, I suppose. If I'm not dead."
"Fair enough." He says quietly before standing up and informing her she was going for a tour of the house before breakfast. The moment she tries to argue that she has no need for breakfast he gives her a long look before informing her otherwise.
She followed him carefully, always five steps away from him. "This is the library." Bruce opened to the door and revealed the large shelves that dominated the room and were filled with books. "The room next to it is my study."
Natasha watched carefully as he revealed each room to her. She was free to come and go as she liked, and to please make use of whatever she wanted-the library, the pool and whatever else she found. "You are very open to a stranger." She commented with some wariness as she followed him down the long hallways. "Are you always so friendly?"
"I know enough about you."
"What is that?"
He stopped walking and looked at her. "You like to dance, you're a victim and you need someone to trust."
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"Good morning," Alfred greeted from the kitchen as she walked in. "I hope you slept pleasantly."
She blinked in surprised. She had gotten lost within the mansion trying to find the library and entered Alfred's domain by mistake. "It was a very good sleep. Did you find yourself well rested?" "
"Yes I did. I hope you are hungry."
"I'm afraid that I'm not."
Alfred shut the fridge door and placed the carton of eggs on the countertop. "May I be frank with you?"
She slid into one of the two chairs that sat in front of a window with a table and nodded, "feel free."
"You have not been able to properly take care of yourself and that will come to an end. For as long as you remain under this roof I will ensure that you are well rested and nourished. To not do so would be a terrible thing that I should be punished for." Alfred informed her sharply. "You look like you are made up of sticks and stones."
Natasha gave a slight shrug. "Arkham hadn't fully believed in proper diet."
"May I ask what they did there?"
She watched him for a few moments as he poured water into a kettle. "They did many things. They used to force us to bath in water either to cold or too hot. Food was a luxury, and the men were cruel." Natasha spoke harshly. "I don't know how to begin to say exactly what they did, but what they did was not right."
"What did the men do?"
"What all men do."
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Bruce limped through the shadows of the mansion. The darkness spread inwards from the night and it took him a moment to catch sight of the muted red hair. Natasha stood in the darkness and watched him, her eyes glinting in the dimness. "You're hurt," she informed him.
"I'm very aware."
"Do you need any help fixing up?"
He glanced down at himself. At the moment his rushed first aid job had held up, no blood staining the white bandages. "Not tonight."
"I never said I was sorry about your loss," she crept closer but kept out of reach. "Losing your parents at a young age, to say it simply, sucks."
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Natasha remained in their care for nearly three months before S.H.I.E.L.D arrived in a flurry of black cars and blacker suits. "You are unable to handle Miss Romanoff," informed the one man with dark tinted glasses. "She's a danger to us all."
The woman in question had been shoved behind Alfred who had a riffle cocked and ready as he watched the agents surround the house. "Forgive me for cutting in, but that's absolute rubbish. The most difficulty this woman has caused is refusing to eat the crust off her bread."
Natasha was crouched down low watching the group with hard eyes while Bruce stood with his arms outstretched. He felt ridiculous without his armour but at the same time the need to keep Natasha safe from those before him overpowered him.
"She was locked away for a reason." Bruce said sharply before glowering at the one agent creeping forward. "You can stop moving right now."
"My name is Clint Barton. I met Natasha once," he spoke firmly. "I've been against this, all of this."
"Nice for you to come to me aid," she said dryly. "Not once had you even attempted to send word to me in Arkham."
He looked almost guilty for a moment. Bruce glowered at him before moving closer to Natasha an Alfred. "All of you are ignorant!" He spat at the agents. "All of your bloody research I've seen. You think you're capable of fully understanding her when all you look at have been statistics and statements. She was killing off the bad people! Hell, she must have made your job easier."
"You are not part of this." The older man snapped.
"Actually, I would like to say that I am very much part of this. After all, I was the one who saved her and have been keeping her safe for months now. All you people want to do is keep your grey reputation clean."
"We'll take her by force if we have to."
Natasha spoke up from behind Alfred and Bruce, smile wide and cold. "No force is needed. I'll go willingly back to Arkham."
Bruce tried to grab her but she gave him a sad smirk before stepping closer to him. "I'm not letting you go." He told her crossly as he spun her behind him firmly again and kept a hold of her hands. Alfred kept the riffle aimed and ready to fire, his finger itching to pull the trigger. "I'm not going to let you get hurt again!"
She looked up at him with a pale face and pressed her lips to his for just a second. "Do you believe I am innocent?" Natasha asked very quietly in the stillness of everyone around her. Alfred was glaring daggers at Clint and the surrounding agents held guns ready.
"Of course," he whispered and suddenly she was gone, hands cuffed and eyes hard as she was forced into one of the black vehicles.
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Arkham was burned down.
Inmates died within the flames that devoured the rotting building. Survivors were found mutilated by burns, coughing and choking on ashes. Bruce watched from the distance as Batman, listening to police reports and watching the sky turn red from the fire.
"It's going down," he whispered into the earpiece. "All they're finding is the dead."
Alfred's reply was too soft for the mic to catch but he understood the same. The Joker, the Riddler-all of them were most likely dead. Relief of this swept through the pair of them but the fact still remained. S.H.I.E.L.D had deposited Natasha back within the realm of drugs and abuse, forcing her into a numbed state of mind. Bruce was barred entry from the asylum, and Alfred was refused as well. Batman couldn't find her within Arkham, reports saying she was buried in secure lodgings with the like of Joker.
It'd been weeks since she was taken and for weeks he had kept wandering the mansion hoping she would reappear to dance in the ballroom or to burrow herself into the library for hours.
Bruce frowned as he imagined what the flames must have been like for the woman who feared fire. The rare nights when the electricity had been shorted out due to the common spring storms, Alfred had to limit the use of candles. The first time she panicked at the sight of controlled fire and thus prevented the further use.
"I'm heading home." Bruce said as he turned from the blazing wreckage.
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He had halted at the same ledge of the towering building when he saw the glimpse of red beneath him in the darkness. Instead of a woman running through the darkness he saw what looked to be a woman standing still, her long hair blowing in the wind. Bruce crept down the fire escapes, slowly making his way to the woman with his heart in his throat.
Natasha greeted him with a brittle smile. "I had stolen a lighter the first night."
"Alfred had wondered where it had gone missing to," he replied in a strangled voice, remembering the silver lighter with an engraved lion on the surface. Alfred had searched the mansion consistently for the small little lighter that he kept in his pocket.
"I hope neither of you wish for it back. I lost it during the escape." She shrugged. "I thought first night I'd need a weapon. I'm very much relieved I hadn't."
"How did you escape?"
She stepped into the dim light of the alley, revealing burned arms and a tired face. "I wanted to go home."
"You've always had the key, you know."
"Have I?"
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The world presumes that Natasha Romanoff is dead and no one really puts two-and-two together when Bruce Wayne marries Natalie Rushman. They eventually leave Gotham and settle down in New York City where there isn't a need for a hero to stop wrong, and there isn't a need for atonement. Eventually burns fade and they can stop looking over their shoulders long enough to move forward.
"Have you always brought home strange women?" Natasha asked with a warm smile.
He gave her a grin, "only the strays."