II: Exposed Wires
Present
One of the first things Natasha learns about Clint Barton is that the man can talk. His voice fills the void between them as they walk to the gym. "It'd be good for you to get a handle on using my bow, too," he says, continuing their (his, really) conversation about learning each other's fighting styles so that they can better accommodate each other while in the field. "I've got a couple, but I imagine you'll mostly have to get comfortable with my recurve. I only use the compound for sniping. And I've made a ton of different arrows that you should probably get familiar with too."
"You've made…?" She doesn't quite know why that slipped out, but the image of her Widow's Bites, the plans that she'd tucked under the rug in her room back there, leaps to the forefront of her mind.
He nods. "Well, Sci Ops helps me a bit since I'm not exactly an engineer, but yeah. They can probably make you whatever you want as long as you have some sort of plan. Or if you find one that really likes you, then they'll just make you stuff just because," he finishes with a chuckle.
"Oh," is all she says in reply. She remembers the plans by heart, had traced over the smudged graphite countless times while she laid in bed waiting for her eyes to grow heavy.
"You got anything you want them to make?" he asks, apparently noticing her thoughtfulness.
"I—no. Or..." Just like deciding she wanted to be Natasha Romanoff, she realizes that she can maybe use this freedom too. "I had plans for... for these weaponized, power-chamber gauntlets. When I was younger."
Hawkeye nods, smiling. "Sweet. You should draw up some plans, and then I can introduce you to the Science Squad. They're huge nerds. One of them will want to make it for you just to prove that they can."
Exhilaration is the only word to describe what she's feeling. Exhilaration as pure as running through the woods on her way to Surgut, the rush that came along with being out from under their thumb for the night. She feels a smile cross her face. "I would like that."
He seems pleased by her response. "Great."
They trail off into silence as Barton shows her through a door that leads to a large space that is all too familiar. Dark steel support beams run across a relatively low ceiling. Long fluorescent lights drop from the beams, lighting the rest of the room in a white glow. Closest to the doorway, a black-cushioned section of the concrete floor plays host to two shiai-jo squares, signified by red orange flooring. To the right of the shiai-jo, there is a boxing ring, done in the same black and red orange color scheme. Between the shiai-jo and the boxing ring hang a variety of different punching bags—from heavy and teardrop bags to double-end and body bags. A row of steel support beams separate the shiai-jo and boxing ring from the amenities further back in the gym. Another cushioned section of the floor is ringed by muay thai banana bags, and beyond that are two octagonal mixed martial arts rings.
"This isn't the main gym," he explains. "I just figured this one would be less crowded." And he's apparently made a correct prediction—the gym is empty save for them.
She bristles. "I don't fear their scrutiny."
He jerks his head towards one of the shiai-jo, and doesn't respond to her comment.
They perform a quick warmup, and Natasha begins to slide into something more worn and familiar. She may not have the best interpersonal skills, but she knows how to fight. That is one thing that did not change when she became Natasha Romanoff.
"Shall we begin?" she asks.
"En garde," he says, playful, and that—that catches her off-guard. Is this supposed to be fun? It's always been—
He strikes, quick as a cobra, just a tight right hook that she barely manages to deflect in time because of her distraction. Then she lets muscle memory take over.
She uses his punch's momentum to gain a grip on his elbow and turns so that she can drive her right shoulder into his chest. She pulls his arm over her shoulder, attempting to use his destabilized balance to throw him over her shoulder. He doesn't fight against it as she lowers her center of gravity and pulls until he is flipped over her shoulder and landing with a thud on his back.
She makes a move to end the fight when she finds that she can't move her arm. Barton sweeps her legs out from under her before she can counter and lands with an embarrassingly heavy exhale when she hits the mat. Quicker than she was expecting, Barton moves over her and uses his leg to trap her neck and arms. She's pinned in the space between his knee and his ankle, and while it doesn't cut off her breathing, it's enough to make her grind her teeth.
"So, round one goes to me?" he asks cheekily.
She finds herself responding, just as cheekily, "Not on your life."
His leg provides a convenient counterweight for her to push her hips and legs up into the air. His body is high enough on hers so that she can get almost her whole torso off the ground, just high enough so that she can cross her ankles over his neck. When he sees what she's doing, he says, "You have got to be kidding me—" but before her thoughts catch up with her body, she is already moving on instinct and pulling with her legs so that his back slams to the floor, releasing her neck and arms.
She sits up, not releasing his head from the hold she has on it, and grabs his arm and twists. It's an awkward move from being near his legs to pinning his arm with her torso, but she manages it, making it so her body is perpendicular to his.
That's when she realizes he's laughing.
She barely notices the tap to her leg signifying that he yields.
She briefly worries that she's made him hit his head too hard against the floor and has resulted in a concussion, but he ceases laughing and gets up without issue. "Thought I had you there, but you ninja'd me."
Natasha lets herself relax, just a bit. In the time she's known him, even before they were allies, he's been somewhat teasing. Sarcastic and light-hearted in a way that now pushes her to respond in kind. "You had me under the impression that you were good at hand-to-hand combat for a moment."
Nothing she's seen so far prepares her for the abject delight on his face. "Did you just trash-talk me, Romanoff?"
She doubles down. "Trash-talk would imply an inflation of the truth."
He snorts. "Your English is pretty good, but next time, try to not be so formal about it. Makes it lose it's punch a little."
She pauses, thinking. "So I should've said something more like, 'It's not trash-talk if it's true?'"
Barton chuckles, pointing at her for emphasis. "That's it. Soon you'll be insulting people left and right and it won't sound like Margaret Thatcher is trying to chirp me." He's lost her, and he must see that on her face because he shakes his head. "Forget it. Shall we proceed with our next bout of fisticuffs, Madam Romanoff?"
It takes her a moment. "You're making fun of me."
"Only a little bit."
This, Clint thinks, is a good sign.
As they continue to spar, he starts to loosen up with his barbs a little bit more, and much to his satisfaction, she starts to throw them back at him with more and more gusto. He has never seen her smile so much. She even laughs, working on her trash-talk in more colloquial English and even teasing him when he loses (which is more often than he wins. Which is fair, because he's no slouch at hand-to-hand, but he's no Black Widow. He figures he'll settle the score on the range later on.)
They're in the middle of an intense bout, both drenched in sweat but having a pretty good time. It's been a while since Clint's been able to fight like this. His last mission was almost entirely sniping and then running like hell trying to not get shot or blown up.
They're both competitive people, Clint notes; as their fights progress, and they become more attuned each other's fighting styles, they become more intense and well-matched.
Well, Coulson and Fury were certainly not lying when they said she made them set new grading scales for almost every single one of their aptitude tests.
But in the midst of this fight, he sees the door open, and his stomach drops. Natasha is facing towards him and away from the door and doesn't seem to hear it open for four agents, two men and two women, who are in their formal dress uniforms.
He grits his teeth because he knows why they're here.
Natasha lands a particularly hard blow to his midsection since she was clearly anticipating some evasive action or counter from him. It hurts, a bit, but he's too busy trying to work out a way to defuse the situation to pay much attention to it at the moment.
"You made a mistake," she tells him.
"He's not the mistake here," calls one of the male agents and Natasha whirls to face the intrusion. He notices her tense up again, the easy relaxation that came with letting her guard down gone without a trace. Clint vaguely recognizes the intruders from a class of rookies, but he'd be hard pressed to remember their names. The agent who spoke seems to be their implicitly-agreed upon leader, as the other three seem to flank him as he takes point. Clint spies the name on the tag.
J. Corden.
The name, he knows it. Corden.
Remembers like a bolt of lightning Gail and Wendell talking about a few of their friends. One of them they called Cordy.
Corden turns his attention to Clint. "I never thought I'd see the day the great Hawkeye would turn traitor. Was getting your dick wet worth the lives of two good agents?"
There's no doubt in his mind now that this is the Cordy Gail and Wendell had spoken of. The funny-man of the group, always ready for good pranks, and with a heart of gold. Supposedly. Clint sees no evidence of that heart of gold just now, but it's hard to blame him. Still, he's incensed at the accusation.
"Watch your tone, greenhorn," he snaps, moving to stand beside a stock still Natasha.
Corden doesn't listen. "I honestly don't know what's worse, the fact that she killed them, or you're defending her."
Clint bristles. "It's generally considered bad form to run your mouth about things you don't have any idea about."
They come to a stop just outside of the shiai-jo. "We don't need to know anything else," says one of the women. J. Radford. "Their crest ceremony was today and you weren't even there. What kind of CO doesn't go to the crest ceremony of agents who fell under his command?"
"More like fell because of his command," accuses another. M. Ramón.
Clint's about to respond, but Natasha beats him to it. "If you're going to blame anyone for killing your friends, blame me." Her voice is strong, clear, and crisp, but lacking any of the emotion he'd been able to draw out of her just minutes before.
"That's not a fucking problem, commie whore," says the last one. K. Quinn.
A muscle in Natasha's jaw tics. He wonders if he's going to have to physically intervene. For all he feels that he knows about her because of his years on mission to find and kill her, this is uncharted territory, and she's always had the capacity to surprise him. (An alleyway in KwaDukuza with her knees pulled up to her chest and tears streaming down her face.)
"Hey," Clint snaps. "Watch yourself."
Corden replies, "Go fuck yourself, Hawkeye. Or go fuck your double-agent slut here."
Natasha speaks again. "Did you merely come here to hurl insults, or was there another purpose for your presence here?"
"Why?" snips Quinn. "Afraid we're going to hurt you?"
Clint snorts. "There's not a single camera blindspot on this base. Have fun explaining to your CO why you attacked a higher ranking officer and a high level asset with no provocation."
The reminder of their militaristic hierarchy takes some of the wind out of their sails. Hawkeye isn't a traditionally ranking officer like Fury or Coulson, but his clearance level gives him a higher degree of respect than most other assets. And Natasha—well, her reputation is well earned.
"This isn't over," Corden insists. "You both were responsible for the death of two of our closest friends and you're walking around free. I don't care what you think, but you're going to have to pay for that one way or another." His voice isn't venomous when he finishes. Despite the fire of his earlier insults, this just sounds tired. Tired, but determined.
They turn to leave, and the Quinn woman can't resist throwing one last glare over her shoulder.
The door closes, the click echoing through the now-silent space.
"Sorry about that," Barton says, turning to her.
Her face looks carefully arranged to be blank. He sighs inwardly. So much for all the opening up she did today. "It's not the first time I've had to deal with enemies among allies," she answers. He feels that there's a story there, but he won't press. It won't get him anywhere, particularly not after the interruption. She looks like she wants to say something else, but holds back at the last second. Instead, she says, "Shall we move to the firing range? I feel that I have a good handle on your hand-to-hand style."
He agrees, but it feels like a loss.
Walking back to her quarters at the end of the day, she feels something like accomplishment. She learned much about the man who is supposed to be her partner, had shot a bow for the first time and had a decent handle on it, had watched Hawkeye shoot it and blow all of her scores out of the water with a cocky level of showmanship, but there's also—
double-agent
traitor
commie
Their words shouldn't affect her so much, she thought she was... She thought she was over with this. Being desperate for approval. Willing to do anything to gain it. (Earn it, Widow.) It's been years now since she's been out of there, since she's been on her own completing missions. She'd forgotten what it's like to desperately crave approval.
(But had she forgotten?)
(You are pathetic. You are nothing without us. What would you do without us?)
(I can make up for it. Please, let me fix it!)
She seems to have Agent Barton's. He's been nothing but welcoming. Kind, even. There were a few through her training who showed her courtesy, even something like companionship, but it's still...
She shakes her head as she approaches the turn to get to her room. She shouldn't be worrying herself over such trivial matters. Their approval hardly matters in the least. She's here to clear her ledger. She's here to do something right, regardless of what anyone else thinks of her.
She hears them before she sees them.
Four sets of footsteps, and she knows without looking that it's the four who approached her and Hawkeye while they were sparring earlier. She allows herself a half smile—they had warned her to watch her back. They clearly hadn't anticipated just how good she is at doing so.
Just in front of the door to her quarters, she calls out, "If you want to sneak up on me, you're going to need to do a much better job than that." The footsteps do not cease. She finally turns expecting to see the angry agents led by their leader Corden, but is met by an empty hall. Her brow furrows and her body tenses. Something is amiss.
She hears the door open behind her and she knows then, exactly, what their plan was and her body jolts backwards as she's yanked into her room. She lands on the floor with a pained huff, but she knows she can't stay there for long. She tries to flip herself onto her feet, but a heavy set of hands shoves her torso back to the ground. It's Corden, looking down at her as the other three try to secure her arms and legs, but she can't let that happen.
"No cameras in here, murderer," Corden says, before she growls and lifts her body off the ground. She repeats the move she did with Hawkeye earlier this morning—lift, lift, lift, until she can wrap her thighs around his neck. She quickly catalogues where the others are—one in front of the door, and the two others on her left and right. No one by the window, behind where Corden would've been standing.
She doesn't throw him forwards or backwards like she did with Hawkeye. Instead, she twists to the side, not holding back anything, slamming Corden's head into the floor and using the pull of his weight to vault herself onto her feet.
He groans at the impact, and she backs toward the window. Quinn descends to quickly check on Corden, and Ramón and Radford remain upright and poised for attack. She drops into a fighting stance.
"You're a disgrace," Radford spits. "Pathetic."
The words lance through her heart, other words from long ago echoing through her mind. We must never disappoint— We thought you were special—
"Why don't you come a little closer," she suggests, "find out how pathetic I am?"
Her mind is racing, not about how she's going to manage to fight (that will be the easy part) but after. If they'd planned ahead enough to give her a distraction, then they'd probably prepared an excuse for their actions that would make her look as bad as possible. Perhaps they'd even killed the cameras outside her quarters.
If the sentiments about her remain as widespread as she thinks they do, they aren't going to simply take her word for it that she was attacked.
Quinn stands up, and Corden is rising slowly. "He's probably concussed," Quinn confides quietly. She turns her attention to Natasha. "You bitch."
"Afraid I'm going to come for you next?" she responds, still trying to stall for time.
There is plenty she can use in her room as weaponry (her heart is currently set on the metal bar in the closet her new uniforms are hanging on a few feet to her right), but she needs a plan.
Then she remembers. The SHIELD-issued StarkPhone. It has a camera.
But before she can figure out a way to surreptitiously activate it, they're coming at her.
She turns toward the closet and grabs a hold of the bar. It feels like some sort of burnished metal, and feels sturdy enough in the holders so that she feels at least somewhat confident it can temporarily support her weight. She turns and uses the bar to lift herself up and uses both feet to plant a solid kick square in Ramón's chest. He stumbles backwards, catching Radford and sending them both against the opposite wall.
Natasha drops back to the ground, lifts the rod out of the holders, and dumps her uniforms on the floor as Quinn comes at her.
A sharp jab with the end of the pole into Quinn's solar plexus leaves her gasping, and then Natasha jerks it sharply upwards to crack on the underside of her opponent's chin. She stumbles back slightly, but Natasha is relentless, and narrows her grip to swing more like a baseball bat and lands a punishing blow across Quinn's cheekbone.
She falls just as Ramón and Radford regain their bearings and charge at her once more.
She needs to activate her StarkPhone. It sits on it's charger on her desk, all the way across the room, where a concussed Corden seems to be preparing something. But his back is turned and she cannot see what. Hopefully not a gun.
Using the rod as a clothesline, Natasha rams it into Ramón's and Radford's throats. Ramón stumbles backwards, but Radford recovers quickly and gets a hold of the bar with both hands. Natasha puts all of her weight into pulling, making sure Radford is fully committed to pulling before she simply lets go. Radford flies backwards, stumbling and losing her footing while Natasha makes a mad dash for the desk.
She shoves Corden to the side, praying his concussion will dull whatever reaction time he might have. She grabs the StarkPhone and hits the camera icon.
A pair of arms wrap around her torso and pull her away from the wall, the charger yanking the phone straight out of her hand. Natasha's back hits the ground, and her head snaps back, hitting the floor with more force than she's comfortable with. She's forcefully rolled onto her stomach, and her hands pinned behind her back. She grunts when a knee is shoved between her shoulder blades for good measure.
"Don't you dare call for help," Ramón says from above her.
She looks over at the phone, relieved to see it hanging from the desk but with the camera perfectly positioned to capture at least most of the room.
"Cordy, is it ready?" asks Ramón.
"Not yet. Fitz says that it'll take a few minutes to get hot enough."
"How the hell did you get that guy to make it for you?" Radford asks. She's recovered as well, and Natasha feels the end of the closet rod on the back of her neck.
Corden huffs. "He doesn't know what it's for. Thinks I'm really into designing brands for wood-burning art."
They all laugh at that.
Their words give her something of a hint as to what Corden is preparing. Wood-burning. Brands.
(Still carries the faded marks from the Chief's cigars snubbed out on the tender skin of her inner arms.)
Natasha tries to shift her head to get a bead on where Quinn is located, but is rewarded with a sharp rap across her cheekbone with the rod.
Radford says, "Don't even think about moving."
She inhales, catches the scent of something burning and knows. "It's ready," Corden says. "Get her suit off."
(The marks will fade with time, Natalya.)
(Enough to hurt, never enough to maim.)
"Don't touch me," she hisses through clenched teeth.
They ignore her, and Radford drops the rod a reaches her hand inside the collar of her suit near her right shoulder. She squirms, but her prone position and Ramón's greater weight upon her back leaves her with precious few options.
Radford yanks the shoulder of her uniform down, the zipper in the front grinding and catching her skin.
Corden suddenly slams the brand down on the floor right in front of her eyes, making her whole body jump against Ramón's hold. The smell of singeing carpet assails her nostrils and she coughs. The device is hard to discern with so much of her vision impeded, but Natasha can see enough that she can figure out just what the brand design depicts.
He lifts the brand off the floor and leaves behind the burned impression of the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union.
"Everyone is going to know exactly who and what you are," Corden growls.
Radford drags her suit down further, exposing more of the back of her shoulder to them.
They must've dragged it down far enough that they can see some of the scarring on her back, because she feels Ramón go still on top of her.
She takes the opportunity to try to buck him off her, but his hold quickly becomes uncompromising.
"Don't touch me," she says again, more aggressive this time.
She will not have their symbol on her.
She refuses.
They already took far too much from her.
They already scarred her far too many times.
She will not have their symbol on her.
So she lets out an ear-splitting scream. "Someone help me!" She renews her struggles; if she refuses to remain still, they will be unable to get a clean brand. "Get the fuck off! Help!"
"Mateo, keep her still! Jackie, get something to shut her up."
Ramón leans down, probably to try to hold her shoulders in place, and unwittingly putting himself in range for a headbutt.
"Quarters are practically soundproof," Jackie says, her feet disappearing from Natasha's field of vision, "I don't know why we should both—"
Natasha throws her head backwards and scores a direct hit on his nose. "God, fuck!" he exclaims, rearing backwards and leaving her torso and legs without any restraint. With a groan of effort, she manages to get her knees under her enough so that she can buck him off to the side.
She rolls onto her back, and rotates her hips so to can horizontal cyclone kick Corden in the back on the head. That sends him down to the floor, and she regains her footing in time to take Radford coming at her. She sees that Quinn is still knocked out beneath the window, so one less opponent to worry about.
Radford comes at her with the closet rod, wielding it like a short bo staff. She spins it once and thrusts at Natasha's midsection. She steps to the side, blocking with a shove of her hands. She grabs a hold of the rod in her block, and pulls to propel herself into Radford, driving her knee upwards. Radford manages to block her knee, leaving her wide open for the left hook Natasha follows with. She releases the rod to press her advantage, letting loose a barrage of punches on Radford's unprotected face.
The woman drops the rod and catches one of Natasha's punches, violently twisting her arm so that Natasha has to bend at the waist to keep it from dislocating. Radford's leg flies up, catching her in the face once before Natasha manages to block the next kick with her elbow. Natasha tenses, runs forward, and leaps, back-flipping and untwisting her arm from it's compromised position. It puts her in the perfect position to get a hand behind Radford's head and throw her face at the edge of the desk.
She hits with a crack of skull meeting wood and goes down, trying to get her arms underneath her, but struggling.
Ramón slams into her side, using his size advantage to try to knock her to the ground. She stumbles back a few paces, but retains her footing.
They appear to be one on one.
Her suit is torn and half falling off on her right side. She frees her arm from the damaged confines.
Ramón is in a fighting stance, but his face says that he is anything but ready to face the Black Widow.
So once again, she presses her advantage. "You saw my scars," she says, noting idly that her Russian accent has begun to bleed through. She doesn't care. She holds up her arm, where she can still make out the faint scars from the Chief's cigars. "I already carry their marks. You think you can beat me?" she asks. "You think you can hurt me worse than they already did?" She stalks forward, at a snail's pace, but she notices his feet shift backwards. "Show me."
He doesn't respond; instead, he seems to find his courage and make the first move. A powerful muay thai kick is flying at her, and she ducks, landing a solid punch to his kidney. She quickly withdraws—he outmatches her in size, so she'll have to outmatch him in quickness and make sure he doesn't get a solid hold on her. She'd barely managed to shake him last time, and thanks her dumb luck that it looks like he has a sensitive nose.
So she makes a move to hit his face again, and lands two quick left jabs, but it gives him and opportunity to grab her beneath her arms and throw her to the ground. She grabs his hand before he can pull away, and uses it to pivot her body and wrap her thighs around him—one around his neck, the other just under his left arm.
This could either work out in her favor, or incredibly, incredibly poorly.
He wraps his arms around her legs and straightens, bringing her with him up into the air, clearly preparing to pile-drive her back into the floor and hopefully put her out of commission. She tightens her abs, straightens herself as much as she can, and then throws herself backwards with as much force as she's capable of. It works, and her hands come down to the ground and he's flipping over her, crashing to the floor with a grunt and an awkward roll to try to regain his footing.
He manages it, far more quickly than she'd been anticipating. Then he's coming at her with a flying roundhouse kick. She barely manages to bend backwards enough to avoid a powerful kick right to her skull. Her hands shoot up, grabbing his foot on the down-pass and the fight, she knows, is over. She turns her body as she twists his leg, dropping herself down on one knee. Her interference causes him to fall, and his knee, twisted and extended, lands directly over hers. She hears something in it pop, and he yells in pain.
She's tempted to do more damage, to pull his calf up and twist further, harder, punish him for what he and his friends threatened to do.
But then she hears her door open, hears crashing footsteps and agents yelling Stop! Freeze!
The fire of the fight in her dies, the fear that had kindled her anger and ruthlessness secedes. She'd known it would come to this, that was why she'd taken such a risk in activating the camera. But—
If she's learned anything, it's that video footage can be destroyed when certain people don't want anyone to see.
If this nebulous Council she's heard about or any of SHIELD's leadership wants her gone then... then this is the way they do it. The former Soviet spy and assassin goes rogue and beats up four SHIELD agents. Four SHIELD agents closely affiliated with the ones she'd killed in Milan. It wouldn't be hard to turn the tide against her when it was never for her in the first place.
She can only hope that this isn't her end.
She's cuffed and pulled out of her quarters and down the hall without much fanfare.
The agents drag her through the base, not bothering to avoid heavily populated common areas on their way to Holding. It's hard to pretend the unabashed staring and the quiet whispers of I knew she wouldn't last and fucking traitor, I hope they toss her in the Cube and never let her see daylight again don't stab through her, doesn't hurt somewhere she'd thought had gone numb.
(Stand. Scrutinize her. Gazes like a physical touch. Raw. Humiliated. Exposed. Cadet Salevsky, do I need to write you up for insubordination? The pain—)
She didn't think anything could top the humiliation of that day, when she had to spread her legs and pretend she wanted something that she didn't under the eyes of her trainer, and this isn't that, but it's—
The eyes, the prodding looks and the laughing, the I knew she wouldn't last.
It's not the same, but the hurt still burns behind her eyes and in her gut.
She doesn't resist the agents, doesn't want to give them any more of a reason to lock her up somewhere no one will ever see her again, but they're certainly not gentle with her. The two agents' hands are clasped tightly on her arms and shoulders, and they push her through the halls at a fast clip. Her hands are cuffed behind her back with these strips of something she didn't recognize but had fit to her wrist in a split second and hadn't a single inch of give in them.
Holding is located close to the base's front entry. She remembers the Holding block from the Underground well, considering that's where Hawkeye originally brought her in, but the Camp's block follows the exact same security protocol. The sliding metal door with a small window at eye-level is state of the art, airtight with heavy bolting locks. When they finally—mercifully—arrive, one of the agents in charge of her swipes their ID card and inputs a retinal scan. She hears the bolts give and the hiss of air that indicate the hydraulics are kicking in, and the door slides quickly open.
She is placed in the first cell. The entire front wall is thick glass, but if she gets too close, she can feel some sort of energy field buzzing through it. The amenities are standard for a six by nine foot cell, but she hopes her stay won't be so long that she would have to use any of them. She does take the opportunity to sit on the bed on the back wall which isn't too uncomfortable, all things considered. She's been imprisoned for long periods of time before, and in far less hospitable conditions, so she simply leans her elbows on her knees, clasps her hands, and waits.
She doesn't have to wait long.
Natasha hears the airlock release, hears a deep, stern voice order, "Wait outside."
"But sir—"
"Outside, agent."
A moment's pause, a yes sir, the airlock opening and closing.
She looks up to see Director Nicholas Fury standing before her with his hands behind his back. Natasha hasn't spoken to him in six months; not that their first interaction had been particularly substantive when she was still drugged out of her mind upon being first brought into the base. She'd seen him occasionally during training, observing but nothing else. If she had been a traditional recruit, then she would've graduated with her class and been given her badge by the director. As it is, she is not a traditional recruit. She still hasn't seen a hint of her being given a badge.
He's the one to break the tense silence. "You've caused quite the ruckus on my base, Romanoff." He's impossible to read. Barton hadn't told her much about him, aside from the fact that his name is Nicholas Fury, he is the SHIELD director, he has one eye, and he is "a little bit of a hardass, a lot a bit scary." She imagines that he must have been a field agent at one point. His face is still, his breathing even. His calm, quiet demeanor should remind Natasha of the General, but it doesn't.
"I didn't cause it." She pauses before adding, "Your agents seem to think I'm inviting it."
"My agents?"
"You are SHIELD's director, are you not?"
He nods, still impassive. "Indeed. I have a duty to all my agents, not just the ones we hand-pluck with exemplary records. You're a SHIELD agent now, Romanoff. My duty extends to you as well."
Natasha doesn't say anything, and meets his gaze unflinchingly.
"You don't trust me," he observes.
Natasha answers, "I've found that trust leads to people dying who shouldn't have had to." (I love you. I'm going home today. Shaking hands on a gun. Ma jolie fleur.)
He answers, "Trust in the wrong place certainly can."
"And you're saying you're the right place?" she asks, sitting up enough to put her hands on her knees.
He shrugs. "Right and wrong are a matter of degrees in our line of work. Whether SHIELD or myself are the right place to put your trust... that's not for me to dictate."
She swallows. We must never disappoint our country. Earn it. We have no use of a strong-willed child who cannot follow orders. Earn it. I am theirs before I am mine. Earn it. There's the exhilaration again, that punch of choice right into her gut.
But it's not as simple as she would like. She assaulted four other SHIELD agents. Natasha knows that they must be watching her closely. She's an unknown, an unpredictable variable that they are taking on good faith. If they don't trust her, her ledger will remain full and just as bloody as it was the day in Milan when she killed all those agents after her, including two of Fury's own.
She needs to try. She hopes that perhaps the trust will be returned in kind one day, but perhaps she can start here.
Build something.
Fury waits.
She tries to find the right words. "It is not easy to trust those who do not return it in kind."
"You've given every reason not to," he says. "But that does not mean it cannot be built. It starts here, and it starts with your honesty." He almost completely echoes her own thoughts, unraveling a knot of tension she hadn't realized she was holding.
She nods. "The group that attacked me approached Hawkeye and me while we were in the gym earlier today. They were clearly agitated and were saying very demeaning comments to both of us. There were at least five different cameras that would've captured that exchange as far as I could tell," she says.
He nods. "We're reviewing that now."
"At the time, it seemed Agent Barton had somewhat managed to defuse the tension, but they were clearly unhappy with leaving. I didn't see them for the rest of the day. When I returned to my quarters, they'd set up dummy footsteps to distract me, and then pulled me into my room. They were lying in wait for me. We struggled. They wanted..." She breathes once, licks her dry lips. "They wanted to brand me. They had some sort of hand-held device made by a man named Fitz."
Fury nods again. "We're investigating how they got their hands on it. Mr. Fitz is certainly not one to participate in these kinds of demonstrations."
"While we were fighting, I managed to activate the camera on my SHIELD issued StarkPhone. It should've captured most of the incident if you need corroboration for my statement."
"Yes, we know," Fury said, startling her. "The agents who jumped you forgot to consider the cameras outside of your quarters, and since you managed to turn on the camera, security was able to access it and was alerted to the situation. I saw the footage," Fury says.
Part of her wants to ask what took them so long, but she has a feeling she knows exactly what took them so long. Instead, she says, "Then you know I was justified."
"I never claimed you weren't."
"Had me fooled," she says, gesturing around herself.
Fury chuckles.
Am I funny? she wonders absently.
"You will find, Miss Romanoff, that everything that SHIELD does isn't what I agree with."
Confusion clouds her mind. "You... are the director aren't you?"
He seems amused and replies, "There's a difference between my agreement and my compliance. I have a feeling that's something that you can relate to."
She clenches her fists where they rest on her knees, and breathes in. Out.
Building trust.
"It is," she finally says.
That seems to settle something for him. He steps forward, and places his hand on the keypad. A few key strikes and her door is sliding open. He reaches over to grab something and reveals a black leather jacket. He holds it out to her. She realizes he's giving it to her to cover up the tears in her suit. It's... surprisingly thoughtful; she takes it and slides it over her shoulders. It's not quite a perfect fit, but it could be perfectly tailored for how good it feels.
"Sir?"
"Follow me, agent," he says without explanation, and she's not about to stay in a cell any longer than she has to.
The guards look bug-eyed as Fury leads her out of Holding, but they say nothing. She starts to understand why Fury maintains his "a little bit of a hardass, a lot a bit scary" reputation."
He leads her back the way they came, even through the common areas and this time the attention is different. Then, she understands...
She's walking directly next to SHIELD's director. No handcuffs, no ashamed hiding.
It's a display of trust and something in her rises, warms, steals her breath for a moment. Gratitude, she realizes. It's gratitude. To walk next to the Black Widow unashamed is no small task, particularly in front of all these agents who assumed she was finally caught.
It's subtle but aggressively pointed, and she hides her smile until they're out of the common room and into a deserted hall.
She soon finds that he's leading her to the front entrance of the base. A store of communal jackets hang next to the door, manned by an older woman with light brown skin and raven-colored hair in a small glass security booth. She's reading a book when they enter, (Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood) but she marks her page and puts it down.
"Director Fury," she greets Fury warmly. She turns to Natasha. "Agent Romanoff," she says in the exact same manner. (It's the first time she's heard it said out loud. It's always been just Agent. Or Romanoff. Or Natasha. Or rookie, or recruit, or the myriad of names she was called through training. Never Agent Romanoff. Like she belonged without question.) "What can I do you for?" she continues.
"Miss Crane," he greets, matching her amicability. "I'm taking this rookie out to give her an idea of the lay of the land. Shouldn't be out more than twenty minutes."
She grins. "Not a problem. Let me buzz you out."
Fury jerks his head at the wall of coats. "Suit up, Romanoff."
The both take coats, and then Miss Crane unlocks the door.
They step out to a sharp, cool breeze blowing through the main entryway. It's almost like a small airplane hangar built into a cave, with the foot entrance to the base proper off to the side, and two vehicles ramps leading up and down. The mouth of the entryway is open, but she knows from her training that there are heavy blast doors that can slam closed in less than a second should the need arise.
"Follow me," Fury says and he leads her out into the sunshine. The temperature must be hovering around four or five degrees Celcius, leading to the thin layer of snow on the ground to begin to melt. The coniferous trees around them drip with small icicles, also melting in the warm temperatures.
He leads her in silence for a few minutes until the base entrance disappears behind them. "Just through here," he finally says, holding aside some branches and letting her step through first.
He's led her to an overlook, and what lay below her could certainly qualify as a scenic vista. The sublimity of it takes her breath away for a moment.
Banded brown mountains rise up in the distance, remaining bits of snow marking the age rings of the ancient rock. Thick coniferous forest blankets the landscape, the flowing hills tumbling down to where a pristine lake shines blue. The sun sparkles off the waves with each brisk breeze that blows past, distorting the reflections of the trees and mountains. They're at least a few hundred feet above it, giving them a breathtaking view of the valley.
"What do you see here?" Fury says.
She answers, "It's... it's beautiful."
"That it is. Very few people know this lake exists. It's a bitch for most hikers to reach, and the general public has plenty of scenic fodder in easier to reach places. Perfect place for a secret intelligence network to build a secret base.
"All of this land—the lake, those mountains, the mountain we blasted our base into—once belonged to the Siksika Nation." He looks over at her. "How much did they teach you about Native American history in Russia?"
She shrugs. "Not much. I don't think they thought it was relevant."
Fury smiles at that, but it's tight, sad in a way Natasha doesn't understand. "Who controls the present, controls the past. Who controls the past, controls the future," he says quietly. After a blank look from her, he asks, "Really? You know how to kill a man with a melon baller but you don't know George Orwell?"
"I've heard the name," she says. "What you said. He said that?"
"Wrote it, actually. Now that I think about it, I'm not surprised your handlers kept you away from his writings. He had quite a bit to say about authoritarian government institutions."
A crisp breeze hisses through the branches of the pines around them, causing Natasha to pull her coat that much tighter. She's no stranger to cold winters (White Eagle, frozen fingers and suffocating cold and infinite blue and dead eyes) but she's not about to welcome the brisk wind when she can be warm inside the SHIELD issue jacket.
"Why did you bring me out here?" she finally asks. She wonders idly if it's appropriate to ask her superior such a question—knows it wouldn't have been tolerated back there. She might have even assumed that he wanted something else from her by taking her out of the base, but for some reason she just knows in her bones he's not that sort of man, nor does he seem like the type of superior who would blame her for asking questions. Despite what Barton's told her about him being "a little bit of a hardass, a lot a bit scary," there's something about him that bleeds understanding and maybe something like compassion, little that she knows about either.
"Since you've been here, I haven't had the chance to speak with you. Get a feel for you."
Her brow furrows, struggling with the colloquial English for a moment before she understands. "You doubt me," she observes quietly.
He shakes his head. "Doubt isn't the same as not knowing." He shifts on his feet, pushing his hands into his pockets—settling in, in a way. "Let me tell you something, Natasha. If I didn't know much about history, I wouldn't care who this land once belonged to. I wouldn't care that indigenous peoples' ancestral land was invaded by white Europeans crying manifest destiny. I wouldn't care about the pressure put onto Native leaders to sign Treaty 7 that would essentially release all of this to Great Britain. I would just see a damn good view.
"But the history of this place," he continues, "it changes everything. Maybe it's just my point of view as a black man in a racist world, but it's hard to look past the bloody history. It's hard to look past a government that came to claim the land even though it didn't belong to them. But it was useful, and they wanted it. So they took it."
"Are you... trying to make a metaphor?"
That prompts another tight smile. "Not exactly. Just trying to point out to you that history can't be forgotten, but the past is past. We can only try to move forward." He looks over at her then. "Prove to me that you have a future here. I want to see that future, truly. But that future only happens if what I know about your history doesn't overwhelm your present."
"Who controls the past controls the future," she replies.
He chuckles. "Not quite, but you're getting there."
He then reaches underneath his jacket, into an inner pocket. He pulls out a small leather ID holder and holds it out to her.
She takes it and flips it open.
Romanoff, Natasha.
Specialist.
Beneath that is a bronze SHIELD crest.
"Welcome to SHIELD, Agent Romanoff."
She should've known Barton would find her.
He'd knocked on the door to her quarters not long after she'd returned from the overlook with Director Fury. She sits in her armchair, running her fingers over her new badge and her foot over the brand that had been burned into the floor.
"Hey, I heard what happened. You good?" he asks as soon as she tells him to let himself in.
She nods. "I don't think any of them were well-trained enough in close-quarters combat."
He steps up closer to her so that he can lean on the wall near her. "You sure you're good? It's... it's okay if you're not. Four of our own just attacked you."
She stares harder at the badge, the stylized eagle with its wings spread wide.
"They mentioned... earlier. In the gym. They mentioned a crest ceremony." She looks up at him. "What is that?"
He looks down, contemplative. His tongue pokes at his cheek. "There's this thing called the Wall of Valor. There's one in every SHIELD base. Every agent that falls gets the SHIELD crest with their name imprinted on the wall."
Natasha nods, looks back at her badge. "I'd... I'd very much like to go there, someday."
She hears him sigh. "Me too, Romanoff. Me too."
