Step 2: Take one sleeve and fold it inward along the shoulder line.
She learns quickly at SHIELD. He watches her take to the rules, take to the "status quo" of the people who claim they're above it. She trains by herself, eats lunch alone, and walks with her head down. She can clear a room simply by entering, and everyone whispers to her back: she pretends she can't hear them, but she can; she always can.
It makes him want to tear his hair out, maybe blow something up, and he doesn't understand how she can live it when he can't even stand on the sidelines and watch. This young woman, this child, deserves the respect of every operative ten times over, for what she spent her life going through.
He figures it out after a while, the key piece of the puzzle he's over looked, and it's the fear that flickers through the eyes of the agents the moment they're in her presence. It's the fear that forces her to the shadows, the fear that keeps her silent. Where he sees everything she is, the others see only the Black Widow: an unstable assassin with a questionable past. She is an enigma they can't understand because they are blinded.
The first time someone speaks to her (he's watching from across the mess hall, just as he always is), Phil Coulson sits down opposite her and asks how she's been. He calls her Agent Romanoff, and she almost smiles.
The Black Widow is who she was, but Agent Romanoff is who she is now.
Step 2: Fold the past behind you.
