So, I've been working on this for a while, and I finally decided to just post it. Age of Ultron completely destroyed my shipper heart, but Clintasha will always be my otp! This is my first story. Sorry if I missed any grammar mistakes. Reviews and suggestions for new chapters are welcome! I have many more already in the works. Thank you for reading!
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Chapter one: 9/9/2002
Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow. My partner. She looks tough, sure, and she is, believe me, but she's a lot more than that. She's had a tough life, and it shows. Nightmares every night, hardly ever smiles, very few friends, and LOTS of enemies. However, in spite of all this, she's still the best partner I've ever had. She's incomparable in the field, in every area. She speaks seven languages fluently, and dabbles in dozens more. She had a hard past. No childhood to speak of, raised to be a killer, and she fills the role well, but it still takes it's toll. The Hawk and the Spider, an unlikely pair, but combined we're a deadly force that can accomplish anything. This is our story….
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I remember it like it was yesterday. The Black Widow was at the very top of SHIELD's Most Wanted list. I was chosen to take her out. She wasn't easy to track, boy, let me tell you! It took me five months to pick up a location, and three more to get close enough to take a shot. But when the time came…..I couldn't do it. In the beginning it had all felt so right. She was a wanted criminal, an assassin working for the KGB who left a trail of death and destruction wherever she went. But as I was tracking her, I did a lot of digging into her background. I never expected to find what I did. From the time she was four, she was raised in a place called The Red Room, after she was stolen from her home, and her family was slaughtered. Taught to fight and kill, she, and 30 other girls, competed for the title of Black Widow. By the time she was 16 the number was down to 12. I wasn't able to fill in all the gaps. Specific training procedures of the Red Room, what they were taught, expected to do, and how Natasha ultimately won the title of Black Widow were big blanks in my mind, but I learned enough to know that what was done to those girls was beyond inhumane or even remotely overlook-able. They were experimented on, brainwashed, and turned into super soldiers to be used by the KGB for unspeakable ends. Other agents would look at that information and take it as even more good reason to eliminate one of the greatest threats on SHIELD's radar, but as the months passed and I started observing her, watching her, all I could see was a young girl who had been manipulated, tortured, and lied to. I watched her through the window of her hiding place one night, and I didn't see a killer. I saw a young girl who was tired of running. I was growing less and less willing to carry out this mission, but I had been given a direct order, so I kept following. I was getting closer, and closer, and she knew it. I finally cornered her in Paris. I had her. I pulled back the bow string. She was in my sights. She wouldn't have even known what hit her….and I let my weapon drop. I just couldn't do it. All I could think about was that it wasn't her fault, that underneath the steely eyed killer could be a good person. So I made a decision that I knew would get me in a lot of trouble. I brought her in. She didn't want that life anymore. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life as a Soviet puppet, I could see it in her eyes. So I offered her a chance to turn around, to make a choice of her own for once in her life, and she took it.
When I walked through those doors with her, I thought for sure that Fury was going to literally explode! It was a tense few days. I got yelled at more in that week than I had in my entire life, but my handler, Phil Coulson saw the same thing in her that I did, a young girl that, if given the chance, could become a good agent. So, Fury relented. They debriefed her, assigned Coulson and Hill as her handlers…and our adventure began.