Disclaimer: None of the characters or organizations from the Marvelverse are mine.
A/N: Not a ton of action in this one, but lots of Natasha sads. Enjoy!
Natasha spent the remainder of the day wandering through New York without an agenda. She visited her favorite stores, stopped for lunch at an Asian restaurant, browsed over the city without truly taking any of it in. She was walking through a torrential rain with her thought process as an all-encompassing umbrella. Sights and sounds bounced off of her like light off a mirror, yet behind the reflective surface was a chaotic whirl of thought.
Natasha was about to make a big change, a huge change, and she needed to prepare herself. She had always been good at compartmentalizing, a definite asset in her line of work. So now, as she sat on a bench in Central Park holding a magazine she didn't recall purchasing, she closed her eyes and began a mental cleanup of the past several months.
She began with the battle with Loki's innumerable forces and moved backwards through her career at SHIELD, calling up her most vivid memories, fingering and remolding them before dropping them back down. She separated events from emotion, like cutting out letters from a newspaper, and pasted in a whole new message.
Yes, these things happened, in the past. The past has no bearing on the present, but the present holds all hope of the future. So for her own sake, for her own safety, she would let go of the past. She would adapt. And she would focus on the present for the good of the future.
The moments in battle when Rogers had saved her life and the moments out of battle when he had opened doors for her. Gone. Those rare occasions when Director Fury made her laugh, and the late nights spent watching Banner sneak around on candid camera. Gone. The countless times when she had restrained herself from decking Stark in the face and the much rarer instances when she had admired his innovation. Gone.
These things happened, in the past. But Natasha Romanoff lived in the present.
She soon came to the time she had spent at SHIELD before the Avengers, back when life was a series of covert operations and long plane rides. Here she encountered a problem, a strong, witty problem with a killer smile.
For some reason, there was an abundance of memories involving Agent Barton. The operations where he was her wingman and his stupid tradition of a post-mission snack. The time when he caught her gaze from across the medical center and made faces while she got twenty-six stitches across her abdomen. His smart remarks during debriefings, his uncanny ability to barge in on an intense situation at the last possible second. The time they had both been sent back to basic training for causing a slight international incident. The way he cared for his equipment. The way he liked to climb things—trees, buildings, staircases, structural supports. The expression on his face when he coaxed a smile from her. Budapest. Tokyo. Cairo. Rome. Kiev. Johannesburg.
Gone. Gone. Gone.
Natasha Romanoff lived in the present.
She had gone through this process before, this mental cleansing. Her tendency to come across as detached and unemotional in person was due, in part, to this severance of emotional connection. According to her memory, she had been nothing more than an audience member to the events that played out during the running time of her life. The emotion had come, had been vivid in the moment, but now it was gone. Completely. Because she couldn't afford otherwise.
Natasha took a deep breath in through her nose and released it softly from her mouth. She closed her magazine and rose from the park bench, tossed the latest summer fashions and twenty tips to a better relationship in a nearby garbage can, and strode down the path toward the street. She would never be able to sit at that bench again, she knew, but that was okay, because with any luck, she would be out of the country inside of a week.
Her apartment no longer smelled familiar when she walked in. The furnishings were sparse, little more than a few items of furniture and the necessary appliances, almost all of which had come with the apartment. Natasha was accustomed to spartan conditions and in truth, an excess of furniture made her uneasy. When the time came to leave, there would be little to pack.
She made herself a small evening meal and curled up on the couch to channel surf until bedtime. Typically she avoided TV, but she badly needed an escape from her own problems and the romance novel she was almost finished with lacked a certain appeal tonight. So she switched on some late night sitcom, laid her curly crimson head on a throw pillow, and was asleep by eleven o'clock.
Necessity and a few bad experiences had made her a light sleeper. So when there was a soft rap at her door followed by the slither of paper, her eyes snapped open and her hand moved immediately from her side to the .22 she kept between the couch cushions. She turned her gaze on the dark corner where her door was while her eyes adjusted to the blackness; she drew the gun and aimed blind, waiting for another noise. The seconds crept by and none came. Natasha remained motionless for two, almost three minutes, before determining that her apartment was empty and there was no one coming in.
She kept her thin finger on the trigger as she slowly sat up and felt for the nearby lamp. She clicked it on and squinted in the sudden light, gave the room a quick visual search just to be sure, and let her gun fall to her side as she stood up. There was a kink in her neck from the stupid throw pillow and Natasha rubbed it as she approached the door. Her gaze fell on the unassuming manila envelope lying on the floor. There was a small, angular lump at the bottom, and as a result it had just barely fit through the space beneath the door. It lacked any sort of address or postmark, she saw as she picked it up, but there was no question in her mind who it was from or what it was for. Natasha set her gun on the counter and turned it over in her hands, eyeing it with some apprehension. But it was just an envelope. An envelope with the terms of her latest assignment, nothing more. And because it was just an envelope, she stopped staring at it like it might explode in her face and tore it open.
She pulled out the single sheet of paper and read it quickly. The words were in Russian—Cyrillic characters were an acceptable encryption for communications with little chance of interception—but the message was simple.
We have taken your terms into consideration. Fatalities will be minimal, but do not forget we are aiming to destroy this organization. You will follow orders with perfect accuracy from this point forward.
At the completion of all tasks, as compensation for your services, you will be provided with $2 million and an airline ticket to the destination of your choice. All record of your involvement will be terminated, all obligations annulled. In the event of your capture, we expect discretion, and we will deny any and all accusations made as to our involvement in the situation. If necessary, we will take defensive action.
At the phrase "defensive action", Natasha furrowed her brow. Voron'ye Krylo's definition of "defensive action" was a bullet in through the front of your skull and out the back. The warning was obvious: if she gambled on this with any sort of double-cross, she would lose. But then again, the stakes were never low for her, and she had expected as much from Voron'ye Krylo.
As she read on, the details of her first "task" became clear, and she pursed her lips tighter with every line. When she had finished, Natasha set the paper aside and tipped the envelope. Out slid a nano flash drive little bigger than her thumbnail. She held it in her palm, regarding it thoughtfully. The contents of that drive would take down one of the biggest assets of both the Avengers and SHIELD in the bargain. All she had to do was plug it in.
Natasha closed her palm around it and looked up at the ceiling, feeling lightheaded. She was really on board with this. She was going to take down the Avengers.
And Stark was her first target.
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