Natasha had been reduced to thirteen, when her body stopped being reliable for a while in favour of growing and changing and doing new things. And yet, she was still far from vulnerable. It was so much easier to pretend while she was on the Helicarrier gathering information on the people who held her that she was an empty shell of a girl. She knew everything that was going on, of course, the visits to the prisoner, Clint's investigations into what had happened – none of it escaped her, though without someone to report to the accumulating data clogged her head, slowed her down.
That was her excuse, at the time, for her mistake.
Fourth Day Post-Incident
Natasha found Clint struggling with one of the tablets – flat little screens that did various tasks, handy and one more indication that this was truly the future – that they had been given to keep them quiet. Tony had taken to them as though they had been the one thing missing from his life that would ultimately complete it, and Natasha had had the good sense to ask him for lessons in their use. The others, on the other hand, regularly had difficulty and it was hard not to think less of them for failing to think of the same solution.
"You need help," she told Clint as he tried to find something of use.
"Yeah," he said with a snort, unsurprised at her abrupt appearance and carefully placing the tablet on a table, "I have no idea how to work this thing."
"I meant with what Loki asked you to do," she clarified, and was surprised when he went pale and glared at her.
"How do you know about that?" he hissed, as if Natasha would ever have such as sensitive conversation where there was the possibility of being overheard.
"Call it part of my training," she replied. It was as close to the truth as she wanted to get with a near-stranger.
"Right," he said with a sigh. "So you're just going to – what? Be my fairy godmother? Wave a wand and get me what I need?"
"No. I'm going to see if anyone's changed our clearance level," she told him.
"Clearance level?" he asked. "What?"
Natasha shook her head slightly, and resigned herself to explaining the ways of spies and governments to a circus performer.
"Our clearance level defines what we are allowed to know about. If they haven't changed that – and they might not have, depending on how efficient they are – we should be able to see the file on what happened," she told him, clicking and tapping on the touchscreen with ease before passing it back to him a few minutes later with a quiet: "There."
"How did you know your password?" he asked incredulously, as he stared at what she had called up onto the screen. File #11312014-183-REPAI-D2, the mission report document that included the medical reports, mission progress report, and all the other files deemed to be of significance to anyone who read it. "Also, seriously impressive."
"No problem," she said dismissively. She wasn't going to tell him she'd found it the day before. "We can take that to him and show him what he needs to know."
"Right."
Sneaking down to see Loki was as easy as it ever was with the majority of agents being dispatched to crises across the world, and when Clint pressed the tablet to the wall of the cage after a quick introduction it seemed that the prisoner wasn't as hampered by modern technology as he was. Although he periodically asked Clint to change the page, which they interpreted as 'scroll down', and was clearly reading what they put in front of him he still kept up brief, absent-minded conversation.
"I wondered if you would show," he said to Natasha. "There are few I have not seen now, correct?"
"Only Bruce," she said. "That doesn't matter. Can you help us?"
"Patience," he snapped, then closed his eyes as if in pain before continuing more gently, "there is much information and not all of it is what I required, nor is all of what I do need present. It will take time."
"Understood," she said neutrally.
"Why don't you take a seat," he suggested a few minutes later. Natasha thought that it might be because she had been at attention – after all, he had been glancing at her more frequently than would be normal and she had been very still, something she knew unnerved some of the people she met. She didn't much care.
Their session was interrupted by heavy footsteps clanging on the metal stairs down to where the cage was kept.
"What, exactly, are you two doing down here?" Fury asked them, voice quiet, steady, and angry.
"Making use of available resources to solve the current problem facing us, sir," Natasha rattled off, and was a little pleased when he looked at her like he could decide whether to carry on being angry or be creeped out by a thirteen year old girl.
"Paying a social call?" Clint shrugged beside her with a carefully careless smile, tucking the tablet into the back of his trousers. "It seemed pretty depressing down here."
"You two will follow me to my office, now. Is there anyone else who was paying 'social calls'?" he asked. "Be advised that if you lie there will be consequences."
"Nope," Clint said easily.
"Tony and Steve," Natasha corrected, and ignored his glare. "How did you know?"
"You say that like we don't track access to ongoing mission files," he told her, and she winced. Paranoia she understood – paranoia was something she should have predicted in this apparent age of computers and surveillance.
"And you," he said, rounding on Loki who raised his hands in a gesture of mock surrender, "you, I will deal with personally later."
"I'll be waiting," he called softly to Fury's retreating back, the two children following in his wake.
