Hey there again! This chapter is ridiculously short but hey, quantity doesn't mean quality! Not much to say here. :p Just to read on and enjoy! Leave me a note!

Thanks again to flyingblackhawk on tumblr for editing!


I – CLINT

Her daemon never does settle, changing as needed for missions. She wonders if that's a consequence of the separation, or something additional the Red Room did to her. Eventually, Vasili does tend to have a preferred form, even if he can still change. It's the small form of a red poison dart frog; fitting, she thinks, with an appearance exotic enough to attract its prey, in order to more easily infect the prey with poison. Even when Natalia becomes Natasha, and leaves the Red Room, she doesn't quite realize the grave atrocity that's been committed against her. Clint Barton is the first person outside the Red Room to find out that she and Vasili are separated.

"Let's go," he says, when she finally lowers her gun with trembling hands, his own archaic weapon having stopped pointing at her several minutes back.

"Wait," she blurts out as he turns away. Despite the moment of disconnect nearly nine years ago, she's still weak, still has that attachment to her daemon, and can't leave him behind. "We have to go back to my safehouse."

The SHIELD agent frowns. "We don't have time. Your people could be looking for you there. Besides, SHIELD can replace anything you left behind there."

The girl who used to be Natalia Romanova shakes her head. "We have to go back. My- Vasi . . . my daemon. I have to get my daemon-"

Barton stares at her in shock, doesn't understand. "Your . . . I don't understand. Isn't he here with you? How . . ."

She gives him a strange look in return, because she doesn't yet understand how abnormal she is. "No. I just told you. He's at my safehouse. We have to go get him." His own daemon, some kind of mixed-breed dog, hides behind his leg and whimpers. The look he's giving her now is one she doesn't understand (pity, she later knows, or sympathy, as he always insists), but he almost looks sad. She doesn't like it. She sighs. "Let's go. Like you said, my people could come after me at any time."

He's stuck in place for a minute, that look on his face, but then he's following behind her, and Natasha can go back to pretending everything's fine.