Ch. 4: it begins

Natasha Romanoff is no stranger to going undercover.

She's done it plenty of times before, both with the KGB and SHIELD, and she's become good at it. Slipping into a separate personality, a new character, has become almost second nature for her. The people she'd worked with had never quite been able to conceal their real identities like she could; her undercover personas completely and utterly obscured her real one. She had become so accustomed to fake identities that she kept the real one very, very close to her heart. On an undercover mission, discovery of her true identity meant pain and death, and she (perhaps unwillingly) had brought that philosophy into her non-undercover life. For decades, no one except Natasha Romanoff knew who Natasha Romanoff really was.

Enter: Steve Rogers.

It's not that he was the first to truly know her; that title belongs to Clint, who will always be her best and oldest friend. But opening up to Clint had been a conscious, deliberate, decision; he had saved her, both literally and spiritually, when nobody else would have, and she figured that it was the least she could do.

Steve, on the other hand, had slowly pried away the walls she had spent her entire life building without her even noticing. With every battle, every car chase, he'd gotten closer and closer to her until suddenly she'd realized that he knew more about her than anyone else, that he'd somehow broken through her defenses without triggering a single alarm. Maybe, subconsciously, she had let him in.

At first, she'd been turned off by his red, white, and blue suit and his glaring shield. How could someone with an outfit and weapon of choice that screamed, "Here I come now! Everyone hide!" work covert missions at all? She'd hated the brashness of it all, and the way his physical and spiritual prominence announced his presence whenever he walked into a meeting (or a dark engine room that they were supposed to sneak into, damn it) had caused her to grind her teeth so much that she'd had to start wearing a mouth guard.

After a while, though, she'd come to discover that there was a method to his madness. She'd seen his strength in action, seen the shield defeat more enemies than she could count. His presence commanded a certain respect that nobody else could earn quite as quickly, and his outfit had quickly become a rallying point, a symbol of unification that people took to immediately. He inspired a sort of hope in people, a sort of pride. She supposes there was some benefit to his bold demeanor, even though she still rolls her eyes thinking about the time he allowed a puny human man to bait him into a five-minute fistfight that could have been ended with one swipe of a shield. And he had the nerve to tell her she was wasting time transferring data onto a hard drive. Men. And their damn egos.

In most ways, however, he'd ended up becoming the perfect partner. His work style became the perfect counterbalance to hers: his strength paired well with her agility, his bold leadership with her stealth and quiet dexterity, his straightforward combat style with her strategic craftiness. They elevated each other's strengths and covered each other's weaknesses with an ease that she had yet to find with anyone else.

It's a shame, she thinks, that they hadn't had time to explore that partnership on a more personal level.

Nat sinks down into her couch with a sigh, staring at the wall across from her. She knows it's shared with her neighbor, a low-level drug dealer by the name of Matthew Murdock. Or, if she plays her cards right, her ticket in.

When there's no movement after a few minutes, she allows her gaze to wander around the rest of the apartment. It's sparsely furnished; she's supposed to be a nomadic criminal who can't afford to "settle down" anywhere, after all. The parallels to her own early spy life were not lost on her; they'd made her scoff derisively when Fury had given her the assignment a few days before.

"I have a mission for you," he'd said, without preamble, as she'd closed the door behind her.

"Oh, okay. Let me get Steve, he's just right out there—"How naïve she'd been, how hopeful.

"No," he'd interrupted, "Just you. It's an undercover mission, and Rogers is far too recognizable. His face is plastered all over every television in the country. Besides, it needs to only be one person."

"Okay," she'd said slowly, "What is it?"

"There's an ex-military, Vietnam veteran who's taking over the streets. Calls himself Ammo. He's going from borough to borough, completely overturning governments, taking control of New York without any consideration for whom he kills."

"Wouldn't we have seen that on the news, or heard it from the Council, or something?"

"Everyone's scared. They don't know how he does it. It starts with low-level drug deals, and then it goes to weapons deals, and suddenly he's in charge of the whole place. Besides, no one wants to admit that their precious security mechanisms and systems have failed so quickly and so drastically. Admitting that means you have to fight this guy, and no one wants to be an enemy to Ammo. It's suicide. The only way to take him down is from the inside, and that's where you come in."

Nat wanted to say that trying to take down this operation from the inside also sounded a lot like suicide. Instead, she asked, "How long?"

"However long it takes their empire to fall," he'd said simply. "Anywhere from months to years."

A drum line started to make its way through Nat's head.

Nick held her gaze for an uncomfortably long time, giving Nat the impression that he was reading her mind. "The FBI has already sent someone to try infiltrating their gang, as have three other private espionage agencies, but they've all been caught and their agents slaughtered. I wouldn't be asking you to do this if I didn't have to, Agent Romanoff. But you're the best in the world at what you do. If anyone can do this, you can."

Nat had given him a single nod. Then, feeling like he was expecting more, she'd forced herself to say, "Yes, sir. I can do it. I'll do it."

"Thank you, Agent. You're going to save a lot of lives."

"Yep," she'd said, mind and body numb. "That's the job. So what do I need to know? Hit me."

And hit her he had. The rest of the meeting passed in a haze of shock and fear and then panic. Her brain must've recognized her body shutting down and gone into KGB-mode, because she somehow knows all the important mission-related facts Fury told her, but she can't remember actually standing there and listening to them. All Nat remembers is running out of that office to Steve's room, just to find it empty, and then she was in Tony's car and rattling off a memorized address that he must have recognized, but he'd taken one look at her face and started driving without saying a word.

She doesn't know why her brain, on autopilot, had taken her to Steve's, but her theory is that it was so desperate for a last-ditch attempt at what might have been that it took her there. An end-of-the-world type of thing, so to speak.

Ha, she thinks. Maybe Steve was right after all. The thought brings her little comfort.

She'd shown up at his doorstep with a pack of pink bubble gum and some Chinese food that she doesn't remember buying and a hastily scribbled note in her hand that she'd written on the way there.

It had taken some thought, since emotional soliloquies and long love letters were not exactly her thing, but she'd settled on something she thought communicated her feelings in a distinctly Nat way, and in a way that only he would understand. Expressions of gratitude were not her forte, but she thinks she did okay here. Referencing their very first real, substantial conversation and leaving a token of the first time they'd found that the other was the only person they could trust? Some might say she was downright romantic. She'd left it on the kitchen counter, along with the pink bubblegum, and he hadn't even noticed. Subtlety had always been her thing, after all.

The old Natasha might have insisted that it was a debt repayment for what he had done for her, that it was just to wipe out some red on her ledger. Current, slightly-more-in-touch-with-her-emotions Natasha, though, knows that she left it as a reminder of how far they'd come as a duo and maybe a reminder of the potential that had yet to be fulfilled, too, but mostly to thank him for what he'd done for her.

Thanks for knowing who I really am, and for being my "all people."

Natasha is no stranger to going undercover—but this time, it seems harder.

It gets even harder when Agent Hill calls her to check in.

"No, Maria, I haven't been able to do anything. Nothing's happened yet, and I can't exactly force myself onto people," she whispers, exasperated, "These things take time. Tell Nick to be patient."

"He usually would be, but everyone here is clamoring for us to speed this up as much as possible. Word on the street is that you'll die." Maria sounds tired.

Nat rolls her eyes. "I'm not gonna die. They know I'm not gonna die."

"Yes, well, people seem to think that you might, because Cap was ready to come fight the entire gang for you yesterday, and everyone else seemed fairly keen on the idea."

Nat ignores the little skip her heart takes. "Of course he was."

"But he's not, because Nick told him that if anybody does, Cap gets kicked out of the Avengers."

"What?" She yells, forgoing all sense of subtlety. "He threatened to fire him? He can't do that, Steve's his best guy! And the team is all he has, he doesn't even—he doesn't even have me anymore. Where would he go? What would he do? He doesn't have any other options! And he's my—my friend, I'm literally only here because Nick ordered me to be, he owes me this, that is so ridiculously unfair, let me talk to Nick, I need to beat some sense into him—"

"Relax," Maria says, and if Nat didn't know better she'd think she hears a slight smile in Maria's voice, "We've got it all under control here. And you know you can't talk to Nick, it'd violate our safety protocol."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

"Okay," and Maria's definitely smiling this time, "talk to you soon. Stay safe, agent."

"Yep." Nat ends the call and slides her SHIELD-issued burner phone back into her pocket, wondering if she should maybe order some food. Chinese food, maybe. Just for irony's sake. She's picked up the menu on her coffee table and is scanning their seafood options when there's a knock on the door.

Suddenly alert, Nat sits up and stares at the door for a second before grabbing her gun from underneath the couch and walking towards it. She cracks it open a few inches and finds herself looking at an unfamiliar man timidly shifting from foot to foot.

"Hi," he says, "Um, I'm your neighbor, room 305." Nat registers this as Murdock's apartment and quickly rearranges her expression into one of interest. "I heard you talking on the phone, and, uh, just wanted to say that I'm sorry your friend got fired. It sounded pretty serious, and I know you just moved in, so this must be really rough for you. I just wanted to see if I could help, you know, build some furniture or something. Moving is a pain, and having friend issues probably doesn't help."

Nat snorts internally and thinks, you have no idea. After searching his eyes for any sign of deceit, she decides that he really is just being nice. The file did say he was a decent person, just caught up with the wrong crowd, after all. Besides, she thinks, sizing him up, if it turns out that he has bad intentions, she'd definitely be able to take him. A little action could be just what she needs to snap out of this emotional funk she's been in the past two days.

So she opens the door a little wider and says "Thanks, but I've already built all my furniture. If you want to come in, though, I was just about to order dinner and would love some company. It gets a little lonely, you know, in a new place surrounded by new people."

"Yeah! Absolutely. I remember what it was like, just getting started around here." He extends his hand toward her. "I'm Matthew. Matthew Murdock."

She takes it. "Anna. Nice to meet you."

"You have a last name?"

Natasha inhales deeply, steels herself, and then says, "Yeah. Vanko."

Shock and awe flash through his eyes. "Vanko? Like, the infamous Vanko family?"

She smiles thinly. "The very one."

He nods, face filled with a new respect, and as she ushers him through the door Nat feels her heart pounding in her chest.

Here we go, she thinks. No turning back now.

Notes:

hi everyone from now on i'm only gonna update this on sundays, every week! these few chapters have come out really fast bc i've been banging them out, but giving myself more time will let me flesh out chapters and write longer chapters. also, you guys get more structure and will actually know when things are coming. if you hate this lmk, but otherwise i'm gonna stick to it!

if i end up doing one-shots, i might post them in between. you can send me prompts if u want on tumblr stolethekey