For happilydancing's prompt: "Sometimes Natasha thinks Clint Barton is the very antithesis of the Red Room." Thanks to shenshen77 for being a first reader.
The Red Room is the sound of a gun's retort, the chill of a winter morning in Volgograd, and the scent of ash, explosive compounds, and blood. The Red Room is the moans and whimpers of pain when another Black Widow candidate falls. The Red Room is ruthlessness and brutality, the lack of mercy in another's eyes.
The Red Room is knives and survival. The Red Room is ballet and violence, the grace of a woman's ideal body, and the pain of a warrior's ideal grace. The Red Room is masks and lies layered over layers of untruths, is the cold of the cryogenic cells, the sting of needles, the memories vanishing into smoke as unreality hardens into memory.
The Red Room is no room to make mistakes, no room for failure, only kill or be killed, succeed or lose the right to life.
This is the fire that birthed Natalia. This is the way she sees the world when Hawkeye holds out his hand and promises gently, I can show you there's another way.
Natasha wanders slowly through his apartment, wondering at each new window into the man's personality—the scattered books, the brightly colored paintings, the creak of the wooden floor beneath even her quiet tread, the broken arrowheads and collapsing heaps of piled up mail.
Clint sips his coffee, holds her tea in his other hand, and watches her, letting her make what judgments she chooses.
"It's loud in here," she says at last, turning to look at him with puzzlement in her eyes. She knows he does not like the sound of guns. He told her once, mixed in with all the rambling stream of trivial nothings he spilled to her for trust when he brought her in. She knows he likes his secrets, surprised herself at how much work it took to ferret out something significant from anything he said.
Now he looks at her intently and says something that means something, something that feels real. "I know where all the silences are."
Clint is the stillness of waiting. Clint is patience and high places, the listening ear, the silent shadow of death. Clint is the strength of hard labor, the low rumble of laughter, the unwillingness to waste a scrap.
Clint is lazy early mornings, the strong smell of coffee overlaying bowstring wax and gunpowder, is squeaky doorhinges, is callouses and workworn hands. Clint is the fathomless gaze that sees her every fault and failing and forgives them. Clint is the stubborn choices made, is identity indisputable, is free will and long roads and cold, hard truths layered over sincerity layered over a heart that never learned not to care.
Clint is deaf and human and breakable. Clint is survival and protection and unstoppable.
This is the man who saw Natasha but told her she'd have to save herself.
She slides out of warm blankets in the mornings, woken by the light of too much sun, and wonders if Clint will ever fix that broken slat in the blinds. She hears him in the kitchen and hears the sizzle of pancakes on the griddle, smells the scent of honey dancing with too much caffeine.
"You want orange juice or tea?" he asks, looking up when she pokes her head out of the bedroom.
Natasha knows his hearing aids are on the table beside the bed, but he's always known when she's up and about. She sighs and comes out to curl up at a dining room chair. "They told me to like oranges. Good nutrition."
Clint looks taken aback, and she can almost see him thinking through all her healthy food habits and her taste for spicy foods that could cover up the flavors of poisons or sedatives.
"Clint, I like orange juice," she insists before he can quite respond.
But he shakes his head, disgusted if not at her. "You have no idea if you like it or not." He yanks the griddle off the burner and wipes his hands on a towel. "I'll make you a smoothie."
The Red Room made all of her choices. Clint finds new ones to give her.
Natalia Romanova was born in the fire, of Russia's snows, of human sacrifice as a mother tossed her from the flames in the hopes that someone would catch her. Natalia Romanova was sharp bones and survival and hunger and pain. Natalia Romanova was a little girl once upon a time.
The Black Widow was knives and gunpowder, was a construct designed by digits and wires, was dance and splendor and blood and glamor, was the hand of death in beauty you could not turn away. The Black Widow was Red Room once upon a time.
Natasha is not Red Room or a little girl. Natasha is a person spun from small decisions, hopes and dreams slowly clutched at, red in a ledger, following orders, fighting the good fight. Natasha is a rust-singed black cat curled up on her pillow and a silver arrow around her neck, is late nights and early mornings, is the springing steps of ballet revisited.
She says she owes him a debt. She says he had a hand in making her.
Natasha is made from the unmade. She is utterly her own. Natasha is blood and fire. Sometimes when Clint stares at her, he feels his bones begin to burn.
"Antithesis." Clint raises his eyebrows at Natasha's secret-keeping smirk.
"Guess," she says. "Guess what the antithesis of the Red Room is."
"SHIELD," he answers promptly.
Natasha stares at him, nose wrinkled up in a puzzled and disgusted frown. "No," she says with that faint hint of incredulity that tells him it should be obvious, that he should know. "SHIELD didn't give me anything."
That draws out his own incredulity. "You're kidding me, right? Nat, SHIELD has done a lot for you."
She mutters in Russian about the thick density of his skull—unfavorably.
He rolls his eyes. "Fine then. Clue me in."
She throws that look at him.
"C'mon, Tasha." He says it softly, draws one knuckle down her chin.
"You, Clint." She shakes her head and says it again. "You."
For once, he doesn't quite know what to say.