A Spider's Web is Tightly Spun
It had started as a deep cover assignment, back when the archer had been a potential asset and she had been an asset in training. She had been sent in a desperate last attempt from the suit wearing Soviets in an office in Moscow; her name the only remaining scribble to survive the ramshackle chaos of a bureaucratic system collapsing as its country did.
RR
The USSR was falling.
Correction: parts were already gone, rubble and dust burying secrets even the KGB couldn't salvage. She had heard murmurs of Warsaw, while she was meant to be practicing arabesques and pirouettes with pressure points and pistols. The people of Poland, heightened in their anger by the second dawn of the political fighting force christened Solidarity, had got a little too close to comfort for the prestigious all girl's ballet School just on the outskirts of the capital. The building had been buried in a gas leak. She hadn't heard what happened to the students.
They certainly hadn't transferred. Her school, her home if the echoing walls could bear that name, was dwindling even while its owners denied it. The grandiose chandeliers, ironic in their positioning at the front of the building made to purge other countries of such bourgeoisie concepts, were dusted and cracked. The plaster was peeling on the walls of the dormitories. The handlers, still as strict and unforgiving as ever, held a semblance of backhanded concern in their otherwise steely expressions.
The number of girls had lessened dramatically. Not counting the ones that hadn't made it as far as she had, there were just 5 of them left on the programme. This was phase 8. The first 7 ultimately successful, or otherwise not spoken of to hide the shame of any operatives who saw differently than their Soviet commanders.
At Warsaw, there had been 9. She knew this not because she had been told- despite their rigorous Schooling they were not told of anything related to the programme if it could be helped- but by the whispering of two guards enjoying what was to be their last lunch break.
She had wanted to hear the end of the conversation; craning her neck in an effort to increase her understanding of what they were saying.
"… The building was destroyed- ashes and dust and mortar…"
"And the pająki?"
This was a word she didn't know. She presumed it was Polish, but her language lessons had been cut down to the bare minimum once the CCCP's foundations had started to shake. Only what was useful. English and Russian and Mandarin and Korean.
Her handlers had seen the fall of Europe before the rest of Russia did. They realised before the suits in their gilded offices, that Communism was ebbing, its influence evaporating in the Eastern European countries once sewn so tightly into its web that any slight struggle would be met with a bite or a sting or a smothering. The tides were flowing on Eastern shores now, and so Slavic dialects were swapped for Asian varieties.
It bothered her that she didn't know the word. It bothered her even more that she was interrupted from her eavesdropping by a harsh shout for her to report to her handler.
She kept that frustration all the way up and down the winding ways of the School until she reached the training rooms her handler haunted.
She quickly bottled up those emotions when she realised how trivial and unresolvable they were- the epiphany of sorts coming to her as she loaded her gun.
The very thought of that word was brushed from her mind when her bullets embedded themselves in each of the guard's temples in turn.
RR
Later, she didn't know how long, she was sitting staring at the whorls of mahogany in a room she had never visited. It was grand and spacious and full of cluttered boxes of soon to be burned files.
She didn't know this, didn't know anything really, beyond the mission being detailed to her and her own growing realisation that this was it. This was her mission, her first, despite her age and the fact that she hadn't graduated. And a small part of her, the real her, was whispering that surely that must be some kind of record, because she'd never heard of this kind of thing happening before, even in all her eavesdropping and air vent investigating. Because she was 17 –too young even by their standards and yet here on the table in front of her was one of their famed KGB briefing packets with a name and a face to target.
Not that any of that mattered. In a matter of hours she was dressed in clothes softer than anything she had ever been given before, with weapons secured in places that still seemed foreign despite the training she'd had wearing them, on a slightly battered cover aeroplane bound for America.
RR
She hadn't gotten used to her name yet. It had been two months- two weird months of looking over her shoulder for the handler that wasn't there and twitching whenever a car horn beeped because she hadn't heard them at the School and the noise the made brought back memories of snapped necks and bullet wounds causing bouts to end.
But she was managing. Though the syllables seemed alien, the accent was refusing to be shaken anytime that she had had less than 5 hours of sleep, she was coping. Her first mission hadn't ended in rack and ruin- though judging by the newspapers and radio broadcasts and the American people's opinions on street corners, the School and the country it belonged too had suffered that fate.
The sickle and hammer of the Soviet Union flag was lowered for the last time on December 25, 1991. While she had been sitting in a room with bare windows, half humming a tune she remembered from beyond the School, those who had acted as teachers fled or burrowed or hastily changed sides.
They didn't contact her. She was, she had mused at the time, free. No obligations, no handler's checking in with her- at least if the news reporters' babble was anything to go by. She could blend in, finally learn her new name by heart, and do…something.
Except freedom, her freedom was foreign on her tongue. Her name, the passport hidden inside a book she had never read, the life history she had rote learnt on the flight that seemed like years ago- all that was the bland nothingness found on her mission file. She was nothing, and there was no place in this land of the free for a nothing.
She had no qualifications and she very much doubted that a potential employer would be interested to know her kill count or her record for disassembling and reloading an MSS 'Vul' Silent Pistol. A detailed account of the first knife fight, first bullet wound during training, first punishment…well, they were hardly polite dinner conversation.
Quite simply, she didn't fit in. Which was why she kept following him, her mission man. Because it seemed from her vantage point, that he neither did he.
RR
She had never been to a circus. Of course she hadn't. Five months ago she hadn't been outside of the School grounds. But still, this new experience didn't feel intimidating. Because she wasn't alone.
She was of course. She had brought her ticket with pretty much the last of the once foreign bank notes sewn into her coat; wandered aimlessly through the helter-skelter crowds of screaming children and already tired parents; reached her seat and sat as a shadow would- barely there but just noticeable not to be trodden on.
She had kept like this, as silent as a curse, up until his act. When he came on, she sat straight in her seat and gazed past the ringmaster's extravagant directions, to him- the scruffy teenager in an adult's clothes. He probably wasn't that much older than her, at least from what she had seen of him. The School didn't list that kind of thing in their mission briefings unless the target was half dead, ancient or still suckling. Ages didn't matter to them. Their students were proof of the dangers or underestimating age groups. So in this respect she was going in blind.
She guessed maybe 20, which wasn't too bad considering that she had turned 18 – at least according to the file the School had on her- just a few days previously. April 22 was the day allocated to her- along with everyone in her phase. It was meant to be easy to remember, and who in Russia wouldn't remember the birthday of the Soviet Unions' creator? Lenin would have been proud hearing a group of 28 6 year olds chanting his birthday until it was seared into their long term memory.
He looked older tonight though. As the spotlight roved the audience she lost track of what was being said (something that would have earned her more than a harsh word back at the School). He was twiddling an arrow between his fingers, not listening to the top-hatted puppet master still prancing around the ring either. His face was a picture of smug nonchalance. She recognised it from every show she had seen him perform in, every wave to a girl he had seduced as she was escorted from his trailer by a lion tamer, a juggler, a clown. She recognised it from the blurred photo on the front of his file, still underneath her pillow where she kept it.
And at that moment the spotlight recognised her, and she was jolted back to the circus ring by a man in a leotard offering her his arm.
" And so the spotlight chooses it's victim…I mean accomplice," the ringmaster leered beneath his smile, eyes glistening under the brim of his hat as she was led, bewildered but obviously not showing it, down past the rows of children's disappointed expressions at having not been picked, and up onto the stage.
"Don't worry, he won't hit you. He is very good," was the whisper of the leotard assistant before she was up, onto the stage and into the spotlight with all its heated brightness.
"Now, what is this fair maiden's name?"
The ringmaster was next to her now, his arm around her shoulder in just the right position for her to pull and snap it out of his socket. A microphone was thrust into her face.
She spluttered and gasped- the bright lights forcing the words out in Russian, with her lips only just being able to catch them before they got out and ruined everything. She hadn't had to keep her cover like this. She had learnt- sort of, but at that moment all the pointers she had probably learnt were absolutely for sure only taught in the vital 18th year that she had so unfortunately missed.
The ringmaster laughed.
"It seems our young volunteer is a little shy. No matter, the stage is not for everyone. Tonight she shall be our star so we shall call her as such."
There was a smattering of applause from the audience.
"Now," he continued, "If our star could just stand here, and we will see how good our archer's aim is."
A larger applause ricocheted around the audience, as she was positioned in front of a purple and white target- the spotlight causing her to squint as it was shone directly at her. From half closed eyes she saw a man, her man, step up to the mark roughly crossed on the floor in chalk.
His outfit was ridiculous. He had donned a mask that made it look like he had ears, and the accompanying tunic was in such a garish shade of purple that if the light wasn't blinding her it surely would be.
She smirked to herself as she watched her ridiculously dressed target notch an arrow, raise his bow and draw back his arm.
The arrow thudded into the outer ring of the target. The applause was awkward this time. She stood, unfazed, as she tried to work out whether he was wearing purple tights or just very tight trousers.
"I am sure the spectacular Hawkeye is just warming up, isn't that right?" The ringmaster sounded tetchy, not that the man in front of her seemed to care. He just readied an arrow, threw a devilish smile towards the audience with practiced ease, and watched as the arrow sailed into the next ring in.
Before the applause could restart, he notched another arrow and made a show of pulling the string of the bow back. His eyes met hers. She stared back. She had no reason to be scared. She knew he was good, or the School wouldn't have wanted him. And besides, arrows were nothing compared to what she had had thrown her way.
The arrow embedded just above her right arm. She hadn't flinched, not even when she had seen the point heading straight between her eyes.
She didn't flinch when she noticed the pain either. She looked down at her arm as the audience let out a breath and cheered as the last four arrows in her target's quiver found their mark by her left arm, right and left leg in turn.
Clapping ensued, while more leotard wearing assistants shuffled her away from the target and off the stage- ripping the hole grazed by the arrow into her jacket just a little more in the process. She went with them, still not quite registering the blood starting to dribble down past her elbow, as they all but frogmarched her out of a side entrance and into the brisk evening air.
A dubiously stained cloth was thrust her way, which she grudgingly accepted to at least stem the red rivulets from dripping off her fingers. Seconds later, a small wad of cash was also in front of her- the original leotard assistant looking grimly at her from beneath a scowl.
"That dumb punk just can't make it easy for me," He said more to himself than to her. "There's $80 here- pretty much his whole pay check for the night. Don't say anything about what happened and we'll call it even."
There was an essence of pleading beneath his grumpy tone, so as she took the money, she offered a small smile and – still not trusting her words to cooperate in the right language – put her finger to her lips.
He looked relived, before turning on his heel, back towards the circus tent.
She bit her lip as she pushed down a little harder on her arm, which stung a little more as the action was accompanied by a barely repressed shiver as the crisp spring air got that bit crisper.
Behind her, the tent burst open in a clatter of swear-words and struggling with the various chairs and other rabble in the way.
"Shit," the archer reached her before she could even fully dart round. On meeting his gaze, she froze again.
He had lost the mask, making his hair stick out at odd angles where some bits had escaped the gel fixing it down. His gaze was sincere, but still a little panicked as he looked her up and down before resting on her rag covered arm.
"Why didn't you flinch," He muttered as he reached out to touch it. She edged away, though he was not dissuaded and grabbed her arm before she could lash out. "They always flinch. That's why I put the arrow there. When they flinch it leaves the gap, so why didn't you, huh?"
She looked at him, one eyebrow raised as he met her gaze.
"They said you were a perfect shot," She shrugged and then winced. His grip on her arm tightened slightly.
"Yeah," He scoffed, "Well in future don't believe what assholes in top hats tell you, OK? He'd say I was the King of Persia if it would bring in the crowds."
She smiled, not only because his exasperated tone was funny when mixed with the fact that absolutely he was wearing tights, but also because she knew he was lying. They wouldn't have sent her if he wasn't the best, and besides she'd read the file, read about his extracurricular activities involving dark alleys and drug dens that mysteriously vanished until their leaders turned up with arrow holes in their eye sockets.
He smiled back at her, finally releasing her arm to instead offer her his hand.
"I'm Clint, just so you know who it was that shot you."
I know, she thought, as she shook his hand.
"Aren't you supposed to be back in the ring?" She asked, already knowing the answer. She'd seen this show run like clockwork for too long to consider any different.
"Yeah, 10 minutes," Clint didn't move aside from shuffling his feet slightly. "I'm not going back though. Chisholm can suck it. He'll find something to appease the crowds, and seeing as you're clutching the majority of my pay," She looked down at the money that had crumpled in her fist, "I may as well stay out here."
As if to prove his point, Clint shrugged the quiver from his shoulder and deposited it under a tarpaulin, while she watched with poorly disguised intrigue.
Clint dusted his hands off as he stood again, giving her another sly grin as he shrugged off the tunic coat and draped it around her shoulders.
"I'm usually not so nice," He joked as he stood next to her again- a good few feet above her even with her heeled boots. "Now you've got my coat and my cash."
"Well you did put an extra arm hole in mine," She quipped.
"It wasn't that bad," He objected, comically aghast. "I'm not that bad."
She raised her eyebrow again.
Clint put his hands up in surrender.
"Fine, fine. Point proven. I shouldn't underestimate small women who smirk at you when you shoot arrows at their face."
She smirked again, thinking how easy it would have been to intercept the arrow and send it back into his own forehead before he had even had a chance to touch his quiver for another shot.
Clint's smile grew bigger, his eyes sparkling with mirth.
"There's something about you. Maybe you're just mad, but I don't know, there's just something…"
He trailed off, while her eyes widened ever so slightly as those three words set off alarm bells in her head. Had she been discovered? Surely not, he didn't recognise her, had absolutely no knowledge of her School or their masters. No, he couldn't have made her. It wasn't-
"Coffee?" She blurted out in a move that surprised even her.
"What?" He looked taken aback momentarily, before the smile returned.
She waved the wad of cash at him. "Since I have your pay check…and your coat, I figured I could get you coffee. To apologise."
"For what?"
"For having too much faith in circus archers."
He laughed, "OK, fine. Coffee. There's nothing happening out here anyway." He gestured around at the now desolate circus camp. Behind them, the tent started to play a ramshackle arrangement that both of them recognised as the clown's grand entrance. The laughter that followed confirmed it.
"Lead the way then," He waved grandly in the direction of the town just a few streets over. She glided as dramatically as she could for a few minutes, before looking over her shoulder and trying not to giggle. She hadn't giggled before; laughing in general was a big no at the School. She liked it. She liked it with him.
Clint caught up with her with a chuckle, till they were walking at the same pace along the path to the main gates.
"So," He said as he held the gate open for her to slip through. "As much as I just love being bribed with my own cash by strange women, I feel being bribed by coffee at least needs a first name, and you already know mine so…have you got one?"
"Yes," she looked up at him as he shut the gate behind him.
"Care to share?" He smiled back at her.
This was it. The moment her cover became her. The time her name became her passport document. The instant in which she stopped being a nothing.
"Laura," She interlinked her arm with his in a moment of bravery her shift from nothing status gave her.
"My name is Laura."
Thoughts? Feelings? Criticisms? I'll take it all. It's been years since I've written fanfic and actually had the guts to post it and keep it posted, so I would love to hear any thoughts on it to see where I can improve or go to next.
Alternatively if you just want to shout at me for the ending that's fine too.
I may continue this with more moments from their lives, as I feel a certain other Black Widow would make an interesting addition.
Thanks for reading!
Oh and pajaki means spiders, just so you know.