A/N: I've always admired how Marvel manages to kill its characters and bring them back to life again and again. My personal fave is the Secret wars' "KILL ALL THE SUPERHUMANS" scene where everyone dies. To me killing a character is one of the biggest clichés there is so in a way I just wanted to go overboard with that.
Sorry for all of my huge spelling and grammar problems, 99% of the time I write in Finnish and my English has gotten a bit rusty...
Disclaimer: The Avengers belong to Marvel which belongs to Disney.
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In the early hours of March 26th Natasha Romanoff takes three bullets into her back.
They are hollow-pointed; the first tears a hole into her right lung and the second snaps her spine. The third one goes missing but then manages to make her heart as its home. They would take any man down in a blink of an eye but Natasha is no man and she's still alive when the headshot comes.
The shooter doesn't even bother to cover up his tracks and they find him before they find Natasha. Clean hits but he should have missed because this was the Black Widow who had survived worse. Doctors ask why and Fury says she just got too tired. They think he talks about sleeping and director won't correct.
She was the best, so they cover it up. Fury tells no one, it's better that way. They finaly have the opportunity to see Project Life in action. In their secret chambers they call it – her – The Second Natasha.
When the first clone arrives, they say she got caught and it took weeks for her to escape and find a safehouse. She was tortured yet she's still strong and standing and all the agents want to know what her secret is. The only one who doesn't is Barton who laughs at her face and asks what took her so long, he would have been out in a day. She hits him on the back of his head and Barton remembers why he likes her so much.
She's perfect in every way Natasha was and no one can tell the difference. Neither does she and the fewer than few who know never tell her what she really is. She gets better mission after mission, she owns Berlin and Caracas, Hiroshima and Budapest. She remembers everything but she's not tired. She befriends with a few fellow agents, gets drunk and plays russian roulette with Barton and learns to live like Natasha never did.
The twitches start a year later. At first it's an unintended wink, a flirt with an oil tycoon. It makes the job done faster so she lets it go. She tells herself she's the best spy in the world and that she didn't even have to think to make the right calls. But when a twitch makes her rather pull than squeeze the trigger and she misses the target, she knows something is wrong.
The doctors give her a month. An aggressive tumour they say. She wants to die with her boots on but SHIELD won't let her. Too many would be compromised they say. She lies on the hospitalbed alone, tied down in three ways. Every time she tries to run, Fury is there to catch her. At the end she's too tired to escape and screams the pain out because none of the pills can erase it. When the tumour takes even that away from her, the second clone is already in a photo shoot, getting ready to go undercover within Stark Industries.
With the second clone, The Third Natasha, they study her. They are trying to figure out if the tumour came to be because of them or if it was something she was going to have anyway. The answer is somewhere in the middle and the cell changes can be seen shortly after she has taken down half the staff in Hammer Tech and returned to base. Fury has to talk her over three times but eventually she agrees to have surgery. One of the doctors cuts too deep and she dies on the table.
The third and fourth clone won't survive the procedure either but the fifth – the last one they say – starts to breathe on her own. The surgery has left her nearly bald but she adjusts, "I'm Russian", and wears wigs and scarfs and looks so sick no one takes her as a threat. She likes it that way and takes them down like she always has. When the hair grows back it's short but it's hers and she's as good as new.
They suspect removing the tumour's hot spots may have damaged a part of her memorycore but she works and is just like Natasha, so they think it doesn't matter. The Sixth Natasha is perfection they say to Fury, who allows them to go study the sleeping remains of Captain America.
There is a glitch, there always is, and it's the surgery scar on the back of her head. It's so small that no one notices. Barton does. When he pulls her hair, eyes still blue because of Loki's mindgames, his fingers run across her head and he feels it. He doesn't understad why it is there and it and the biting make his concentration go off for a heartbeat. She hits his head, hard, and when he wakes up, he's forgotten all about the scar.
The feel comes back to him when she mentions Budapest. He tries to think fast; double agent, brainwashed, maybe a doppelganger; but his mind is still slow after Loki and he has no choice but to trust her until the mission is over. When it is, she makes a joke about wanting to see Loki drop the soap in where ever he's going. He wants to think it's just another trick, that this still is his friend Natasha.
She sees the change in him and thinks almost alike; double agent, brainwashed, loki'd. They drive until the skyscrapers can't be seen anymore and pull over holding guns half an inch away from each other's face. He askes about the scar and she lies to him because she doesn't know the truth.
They did something to her, that Barton knows, for SHIELD never cuts one open without a reason. He asks her things, the little ones, and most of them she remembers. She could have just forgotten about them but Barton doesn't think so and neither does she. That night they hack into SHIELD's database and find nothing. It's 3 AM when they let themselves in the Stark tower, or whatever is left of it, and decrypt the files Tony stole less than a week ago. It takes some time but by morning they stare at her data and the name Sixth and she leaves before he can say "Natasha, wait."
Barton finds her sitting on the edge of the building, not falling nor staying put as she tries to figure out what she is or if she even exists. She hates of not knowing where Third Natasha's memories end and hers begin or if she still is the same person. It's a blessing she doesn't believe in God because she's sure she would go mad in less than a minute wondering if she has a soul or not. She looks at Barton for answers and it is new even for him. But if it matters he says, she is the one who saved him.
It matters. At least enough to keep her safe and still while Barton is torn apart inside. He looks at her and tries to comprehend the girl he once saved is gone; shot four times, hollow-pointed bullets, brains all over the floor. He made a different call and it was all for nothing. He takes a deep breath, knows that his one true partner from Tijuana, Cairo and Budapest, the one they called The Second Natasha, laid in SHIELD headquaters for weeks dying in the most inhumane way he can think of.
Barton asks if she thinks they'll do the same to Coulson. She shakes her head, "everyone knows Coulson died", and she leaves out the part about herself – is it herself, is it really, or is it just The First Natasha and Second and Third – being forgotten. No one knows they've passed away though there are hardly any who would even miss her or them. He would.
The Second Coulson is being introduced to the higher authorities twelve days after The First Coulson's death. He is an android they say. Stark knows better and doesn't approve. Rogers wonders if he too is a Second One. Banner shakes his head and is terrified of the possibility that SHIELD might bring The Other Guy back even if he could get himself killed somehow, someway, someday.
It takes two hours for her to disappear. She hates the tropical weather so she heads up north and starts to call herself Natalia like Natasha used to, and Tšestaja like the number she was given.
Barton lasts two days. He knows it's his fault there are Second Ones so he takes his guilt with him and heads north. He's not sure if he'll ever find Sixth but he'll try. After all; he owes her a dept.
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Thank you for reading!