Accounts
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AN: Headcanon about Natasha's childhood/life up to and including when she met Clint. Mentions of self-harm. No pairing unless you want to look at it that way, I suppose. Enjoy and tell me what you think.
XOXOXOXOX
When she was very little, Natalia remembered her father saying one thing over and over. 'Можно быть бедным, но мы обязаны другим ничего. Бывает, что свобода это все у нас есть.' We might be poor, but we owe others nothing. Sometimes that freedom is all we have.
It was true. Sometimes they struggled, yes. Sometimes they went hungry, especially during the harsh winters when the snow covered their garden and Mama couldn't pick vegetables for the soup. Most nights they clung to each other in one large heap, with all their blankets piled on top because it was warmer.
Natalia had been dancing with a nearby older lady, who taught her ballet for free as long as she cleaned the studio. Her ratty ballet shoes had been found by the side of the road, filled with holes that Mama had carefully patched over. The pointe shoes she treasured so highly had been the Old Lady's daughter's, before a harsh winter took the little girl away.
The Old Lady had offered to teach her for free, but Natalia had remembered her father's words, and had begged to be allowed to do something in return. If the little girl noticed that the dance space was almost spotless after a day when it shouldn't have been, she didn't say anything. The Old Lady smiled.
Sometimes, during the warmer months, Natalia would help her Mama look for mushrooms, berries and edible roots in the forests, before the animals could get to them. Her mother would rather medicinal herbs to make balms, teas and potions. They'd keep a few, in case they got sick, but they mostly traded them for food and cloth. Sometimes, Natalia helped her father string traps in the dead of night, hoping to catch a small animal so they could have some meat. She owed them the help. They worked so hard to help her, so she paid them back by helping in kind.
Always, Natalia danced. Spinning, leaping, forgetting the harsh world outside the magnificent world the Old Lady crafted for her out of art, music and beauty.
Sometimes jobs were lost.
Her father's was one.
That winter had been one of great pain. Father lost a wife, Natalia had lost her mother. With such meager supplies and no money, they couldn't fight the sickness that sapped her energy and her breath.
Then came the Evil One. Her childish mind couldn't see him as any less. He came in the night and her father said nothing as they took her away. She had screamed and screamed, tears running down her face. Her pointe shoes were ripped from her feet and from that day on she knew nothing but painpainpainpain.
They conditioned her well, the Evil One and his helpers. Her leaps turned into choke holds, her spins into ferocious kicks, her delicate figure into a toned, sleek killing machine. She learnt to handle all types of weapons, how to string traps for humans, instead of animals, how to use the herbs Mama had so coveted to kill slowly, painfully. She learnt how to blend in better than the white rabbits that hid in the snow.
She owed them, they had said. She knew better than to argue. So she did what they told her to. Stole what they wanted, killed those she was pointed at, gathered information people had promised to take to their graves. They said she was paying them back, but she knew her accounts were unbalanced, and with every mother, brother, father and sister she removed from existence, her ledger dripped.
Drip.
She learnt how to speak multiple languages out of need, diligently erasing ever trace of an accent as the foreign words dripped from her lips. That skill got her undercover in a rebel camp. She poisoned them all.
Drip.
A CEO of a company had refused to make a deal with her makers. She had shot him in the forehead after scaling his home to climb in his study window. She had had to kill his wife too, after she saw her. No loose ends.
She left 2 little children as alone as she was.
Dripdrip.
Natalia killed her maker, eventually. The Evil One fell as she choked the life out of him with her bare hands. He had deserved it, he had. But even monsters have families.
Natalia allowed herself to cry a single tear, in acknowledgement for all she had lost. She would never be free. Never, never, nevernevernever. No ballet school would take someone whose steps dripped blood.
Dripdripdripdrip.
She had no skills. Taken before she could learn about most things, she had only learnt what they wanted her to. She didn't know of any jobs that saw Master Assassin as a skillset they required. She freelanced for awhile, killing to keep herself alive. But her ledger didn't accept 'need' as an excuse.
Dripdripdripdripdrip.
'Можно быть бедным, но мы обязаны другим ничего. Бывает, что свобода это все у нас есть, Natalia...' she remembered whispering to herself as she licked her lips. It had been a long time since she had allowed her own language to grace her tongue. She didn't deserve the comfort. The words fell, broken, from her mouth.
They felt hollow and dirty as she held the knife over her our wrist. The slices thin, but deep as blood rushed to meet the ground.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
A way to help balance the ledger, she told herself, hiding the scars under tight leather and brilliant red hair. Imperfections hidden under the perfect face.
Dripdrip.
She didn't know how he tracked her down, but she could see him from the corner of her eye, an arrow at the ready. She knew he knew she had seen him, she could see the puzzled expression on his face.
She had walked to hotel room anyway. If she was to die, at least she would do it where there was no chance of another little girl losing her mother, her father.
A last ditch effort to move her ledger further towards the black, though she knew her death would not delete much red.
Dripdripdripdrip.
He had crawled in through her window at midnight, his body tense as he watched her every movement with guarded eyes.
Natalia knew she would not leave alive, but she refused to go down without fighting for it. Despite the ledger she was only human beneath the machine-like training, and even she couldn't stand still and watch her death approach slowly.
They fought long and hard, knifes slicing, bodies spinning and turning and it was the closest thing to a dance Natalia had had since she was a little girl.
The man ripped her sleeve as he fought to pin her, and his eyes had been drawn to the scars she hid beneath her icy armour.
'Why?' he had asked, even as he aimed an arrow towards her eye.
'Можно быть бедным, но мы обязаны другим ничего. Бывает, что свобода это все у нас есть.' Natalia had whispered, closing her eyes. 'Their blood for mine. I need to balance my ledger.'
The man had reached to his ear and pulled out his comms device, murmuring something into it before crushing it beneath his boot and moving his arm guard out of the way, baring his own scars before offering his hand to her as he observed her with sad eyes.
Natalia had gripped his arm wearily, meeting his eyes with her own blank ones before he pulled her up gently and sat beside her on the bed.
And he talked.
He talked and talked and talked some more, not even looking to acknowledge the other assassin's attention. He traced every scar as he spoke about his own childhood, his own trials. How he was broken and reassembled so differently he had lost himself.
Natalia didn't make a sound as she gripped his hand so tightly she was afraid she would leave bruises, but he didn't seem to mind, gripping her hand just as tightly.
As his own tale tapered off, speaking off a 'Phil' and second chances. Her own began, and she spoke of spins and leaps and turns before they became kicks and chokes and lies. Of homemade remedies before they became poisons and of animals before they became humans. She whispered of Evil Ones and of feeling more machine than human and once again whispered, 'Можно быть бедным, но мы обязаны другим ничего. Бывает, что свобода это все у нас есть.'
He had murmured just as quietly, 'What does that mean? I don't speak Russian.'
She laughed lowly, without much humour, '"We might be poor, but we owe others nothing. Sometimes that freedom is all we have." I owe. My...account is not balanced. My ledger is red...not black.'
He hadn't been looking at her when he spoke it, but it struck her all the same, 'Sometimes, that's because we haven't found the right person to help us get there.'
When she was introduced to 'Phil', he hadn't even given her a second glance, instead fixing her saviour with a look that whispered of 'We'll be talking about this later', and 'It's not just you that fills in paperwork for these things'. She found herself wondering if the mending man that still gripped her hand often found such broken creatures and tried to fixed them.
Natalia didn't know if she would ever be fixed. She thought she might be too broken to fix. But no matter the cracks and the red, she owed this 'Clint' a debt.
This account she would pay in full.
XOXOXOXO
Note: This is also posted on Tumblr on my blog. So, that's mine if you see it, not stolen, promise.