Fandom: MCU
Disclaimer: Not mine, all Marvel's. No money is being made from this.
Characters: Natasha Romanoff
Rating: PG
Prompt: MCU, Natasha/Black Widow, building a new cover
Notes: Set after Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and contains general spoilers for it.
After her testimony in Congress, the Black Widow was going to have to take a hopefully brief retirement. But not Natasha. Fury was going to need her if he wanted to rebuild SHIELD, build it back up, better than it ever had been before. Both of them, her and Clint, they were Fury's weapons as much as they were anything else, so she was going to be ready to answer his call when it came.
Most of her trainers and handlers had complained about how distinctive her look was, only one of them ever appreciated the reason why. Because if the Black Widow had red hair and wore black, then how could this woman, who didn't quite fit that profile, be the famous assassin. It had saved her life more than once.
The image of the Black Widow was something greater than herself, something she could use. One target had had a heart attack at the sight of her, the dreaded Black Widow, she hadn't needed to do anything to fulfill that particular contract.
And it was so easy to fool people with the slightest change in her appearance. She thought she'd be blonde this time. She hadn't been blonde in a while. A nice all-American girl from Minnesota. The accent was tricky though, so, before she finished making up the ID she changed it to Wisconsin. She'd made IDs in more difficult circumstances before and, while it wasn't as good as some of the fake IDs SHIELD had provided her with, it wasn't bad, and people didn't look too closely at the IDs of pretty country girls looking for bar work in the city.
She'd be another face in the crowd, waiting to be re-activated.
