Natasha Romanoff is not a good person. She never has been and doesn't think she ever will be. She's seen too much and killed too many to be good.
Good means safe and happy, two things she can't afford to be. Somewhere along the line in Natasha's fucked up life she gave up on good.
Maybe it was the night the Red Room took her. Maybe it was the night she realised her parents were never coming home. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the night Clint Barton was sent to kill her and didn't.
She had known he was coming. She welcomed him. She stood in that town square with her eyes closed, saffron coloured dress swirling in time with the wind, and waited to die. But nothing happened.
There was no distant ringing of a shot in the air as she fell to the pavement. There was no blinding pain, no rouge stains of blood spattered across the cobblestones. No thoughts of goodbyes she'd never get to say to people she'd never meet.
Shouts echoed off the walls surrounding her, and she turned to see three gargantuan men smashing through tables to reach her. And then she watched as those same three men suddenly collided with the ground, blood spluttering from the backs of their heads. Barton. He was…protecting her.
This, this was a bad time to go into shock. With a start she took off in search of somewhere to hide, pieces of crimson hair whipping at her frozen cheeks. She ran for what felt like hours through deserted back streets, her eyes scanning every alleyway and every shadowy crack in the faded pavement, searching for a place to hide.
Finally she found a grey, washed out shack with half a roof and a few broken windows slouching miserably between two abandoned warehouses.
She flung open the door and crawled inside, hiding amongst the mounds of ashen dust that coated the hardwood. There was half a table and the remains of a wooden chair along with some partially shattered panes of glass strewn on the floor, the misshapen chips sparkling as moonlight washed over them. Not the most suitable hideout, but Natasha could care less. She curled up on the grimy ground, not concerned in the least that there were shards of glass and wood chips digging into her skin. More than anything, she was just waiting for death to inevitably stumble upon her.
Curled up in a tight ball, she came to the realisation that she was in the middle of Budapest in the dead of winter, and that the whole town was probably looking for her. She would either freeze to death in the constant, bitter cold, or she would die at the hands of the townspeople. But for the moment she tried not to think about that, and just concentrated on the fact that she had found somewhere safe for the night.
At least she was safe until Clint Barton flung open the door to her hiding place and knocked her over the head with the butt of his gun.