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Bruce Banner. Perhaps the most brilliant minded person S.H.I.E.L.D. has access to, one who was only matched by Tony Stark. But Bruce different from Stark, he was compassionate. Benevolence seemed to overflow from him and Natasha felt pity for him for that, because with that kindness came naivety. He was weak but simultaneously so fucking lucky. He got to keep his sensitivity, while hers was beaten out of her.
At least with that naivety he would be easier to deceive.
However, that was only one half of what was Bruce Banner, because within him rested the Hulk. And you just wouldn't know when he was going to snap. S.H.I.E.L.D. was on the brink of extinction, with HQ nearly decimated and they wanted to bring in a damn indestructible bulldozer with no conscious? Natasha smirked, he could destroy them with one little outburst, one streak of anger, of lost control. Or wasn't that true for all of them? She knew who they all were, she read their files. And she knew her own, she knew her own too well. She tracked of all her kills better than a trophy keeping serial killer, unable to erase them even if she was willing.
Natasha rubbed the sleep from her eyes and felt the blanket of humidity wrap itself tighter around her body. She despised humid weather, her Russian blood was boiling under her skin. Hot air made her tired, her eyes became heavy and her limbs made lazy. She was feeling especially groggy in the dimly lit cottage where she patiently awaited for Bruce Banner to step within her trap.
Even if he was her ally, she couldn't help but treat him like a target.
She was awakened from her daze by the pitter-patter of small, bare feet. The girl. Natasha moved into a shadowy part of the room until she spotted Banner enter through the hanging cloth. He let out a, surpirsed-but-shouldn't-be, sigh.
"You should've got paid up front Banner." He said to himself.
"You know," Natasha started, "for a man supposed to be avoiding stress, you picked one hell of a place to settle."
Bruce matched the voice to her face, she a stunning woman, but something flickered in the back of his mind. There was something off about her calm demeanor. "Avoiding stress isn't the secret." He replied.
"Then what is it? Yoga?" She faulted a cocky grin.
Bruce smiled, he understood. It was put on, an act, probably like everything else about her. She was putting on some side-street theatre show because she didn't want to make him angry.
Bruce's lips twitched up into a telling smile.
"You brought me to the edge of the city, smart."
Natasha scoffed inwardly, she didn't need his approval, she didn't need him to point out something so blatantly obvious.
"I assume the whole place is surrounded." Bruce said, peering out the window.
"Just you and me." Natasha said, lying seamlessly. And as long as she kept them identically flawless, he would trust her, as he was already inclined to do.
"And your little actress buddy?" He started, with his still leveled voice, "Is she a spy too? They start that young?"
Natasha gaped at him, he had no damn idea. How ignorant, he was accusing her, trying to provoke some guilt within her, when there was none. Especially for that reason.
"I did." Natasha said coldly.
"Who are you?" He asked.
"Natasha Romanoff."
"Are you here to kill me Ms. Romanoff? Because that's not going to work out for everyone..." Bruce said politely.
"No, of course not. I'm here on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D." Natasha said this so reassuringly, when she was a assassin, she was rarely sent to pretend to be a suburban soccer mom and just pick someone up.
"How did they find me?"
"We never lost you, doctor. We've kept our distance, even kept some other unwanted parties off your scent over the years." She explained.
"Why?" He asked.
Natasha looked at his eyes. They were kind. Having such contrast to hers, and it made her insides twist into gnarls.
It made her feel disgusting.
"Nick Fury seems to trust you. But now we need you to come in."
"And what if I say no?"
"Then someone with damn bullets will be dragged out of here, and I'm not going to play house maid and clean up the fucking thick trail of blood."
She bit down on the side of her cheek in efforts to keep her real self from shinning through the clouds that she'd cast out.
"Then I'll persuade you." She smiled at the remark that was drawn out in the back of her mind, still, she could taste the blood that trickled onto her tongue.
"And what if the other guy says no?" He spoke low, as if the other guy was listening to him speak.
"You've been more than a year without an incident. I don't think you want to break that streak..." Natasha reasoned.
"I don't always get what I want." Bruce shrugged.
"Doctor, we're facing a potential global catastrophe."
"Well, I try to actively avoid those." He replied smartly.
Natasha felt her skin crawl. It was the way he spoke. So calm, so collected, when he knew he could break at any second. His sweet eyes weren't supposed to put her on edge, but they just did. Maybe she had been out in the field too long, no, that wasn't it. She knew what it was that made her react to kindness so toxically. It clung to her like dirt, leaving her filthy. God damn, why was that always the end game? Every single time. Any move she made, any thought she produced seemed to be conditioned by those people. She gulped. Not now. She could not think about it now.
"This is the Tesseract." She said and handed her phone to Bruce Banner.
"It has potential energy to wipe out the entire planet..."
"What does Fury want me to do? Swallow it?" Bruce replied after taking a good look at the box.
"He wants you to find it, no one knows gamma radiation like you do."
"So he isn't after the monster?" He asked, again, calmly.
"You aren't a monster." She disagreed with his accusation against himself. Besides, he hadn't even hear any rumor on her, because then he would realize who in the room was the true monster.
"And you aren't compassionate, Natasha Romanoff." He said becoming more tense, "he wants to put me in a cage?"
"No one's going to put you in a..."
"STOP LYING TO ME!" Bruce screamed and slammed both hands on the table.
Natasha swiftly pulled the gun from her skirt and aimed it at Bruce, ready to squeeze the trigger three times. Then three more. She was breathing heavily, but her arms were steady and her feet grounded. Fear was fabricated in her eyes, everything was staged to make her seem scared. Inside, Natasha could not have been made more comfortable.
"I'm sorry. That was mean." He said with a apologetic grin.
Natasha did not put down her gun.
Her grip around the gun was tighter than before.
"I just wanted to see what you'd do. How about you don't use that, and we don't make a mess of things, okay?" He said, put his hands out in surrender.
"Natasha..." Bruce said, but there was something about the way he said her name.
Natasha's eyes widened, Clint. That was exactly something he would do. And Bruce had just replicated that feeling of relief that would encase her, by just saying her same, giving her the only amount of warmth her Russian blood could bear.
Natasha abruptly put down her gun. She let out a breath, then blinked long and heavily. Reality came back into focus, she wasn't at target practice, hell, he wasn't even a target, and she had a task to complete.
"Stand down. It's all good here."
Bruce chuckled at her in amusement. "Just you and me, huh?"
She smirked at him, "I lied."
Natasha suddenly felt a build up of strain in her stomach, she began to feel nausea grasp onto her. Her stomach felt like it had flipped upside down. She gripped onto the doctor's shoulder as she tightened an arm around her stomach.
"What, what's wrong?" He said urgently, then supported her from falling.
Natasha ripped out her ear wig and muffled it with her hand.
"I have no idea..." She whispered, with worry in her eyes.
Then Natasha pushed Bruce away as she puked onto the floor, then did the deed once more. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and used her shirt to blot the sweat accumulating on her forehead.
"Do you have the flu? Were you exposed to something here?" Bruce questioned and moved towards her, desensitized to vomiting.
"Stop it." She said forcefully when he attempted to check her temperature."I'm fine."
"Okay." He said finally and chewed on his lip because he knew something was wrong with her.
Natasha took a seat across from Bruce in the helicopter and called in with her handler, Phil Coulson. She made her voice steady, despite the uneasiness she was still feeling from vomiting so excessively.
"Coulson. It's Romanoff."
"Natasha. How'd things go with the big guy?"
"Everything as planned. What about you, how did that bastard handle it all?" She said referring to Tony Stark.
"As expected. And as cocky as ever."
"This is going to be fun."
"The Avengers Initiative is beginning to stabilize."
"Are you saying things are going to play out well?" Natasha chuckled at his optimism.
"No guarantees."
"Ooh," Natasha winced, "Satisfaction not guaranteed you say? Not promising. Can I speak to your manager?"
She heard silence over the line.
"I'm just messing with you Coulson, just because the world might end doesn't mean I can't tell a shit joke every now and then."
"Get to work Agent Romanoff."
"Of course, sir." Natasha mocked him and hung up the phone.
.
Bruce raised an eyebrow at Natasha, as if to say, bad mouthing authority?
Natasha rolled her eyes and they quickly became very icy, she felt a bead of brutality fall down the back of her neck.
"There are 27, no, 28 different ways I'm able to kill you in this small compartment."
"Silently." She added and crossed her arms.
"You can't kill me, the other guy is there too, remember?" He said, pointing to his chest.
"Do you know my name?" Natasha asked, out of curiosity.
"Natasha Romanoff." He replied, unsure of where she was going with this.
"And Natalia Romanova."
"And The Black Widow."
"So you're her?" He gaped at her.
"Gamma radiation, super serum, or mechanical suit. I'm designed to kill them all." She said apathetically.
"How?" He shook his head, not certain if she was telling the truth or if he was just buying into another of her lies.
She shrugged, even though she knew the answers, she could write a novel to simply answer that question. But bringing up the past was dangerous for her. By spending one minute day-dreaming of who she was, she became that person. And that frightened her. Because who she was now is held together by a string, and if that string broke she knew that nothing would stop her from working for a man who senselessly gave her kill order after kill order. Because Natalia Romanova enjoyed the craft of the kill. How to draw it out, how to sustain the pain, she knew it all. However, the string kept her together to be who she is now, and as long as Clint was there to tie it back up if it ever snapped she would continue to live as Natasha Romanoff.
But now, Clint was compromised.
"Why?" Bruce leaned closer, resting his elbows on his thighs.
"Isn't that the question." Natasha said resentfully, digging her nails into her palm.
"Romanoff."
"Fury." Natasha answered her secured line and recognized the voice on the spot.
"You're going to introduce Banner to ol' red, white, and blue."
"Where?" She glanced up at the snoozing doctor, she wondered how he managed to fall asleep even on the bumpy helicopter ride.
"Later, just know it's your responsibility."
"And Natasha, be careful about what you reveal around Rogers. He won't approve of what you do."
"You know I can't promise anything."
"Agent Romanoff! You better listen to me damn it! We are in the midst of a crisis and you will play nice as long as I fucking command it. Understood?"
His voice boomed through the phone as she gritted her teeth, "Understood."
"Understood, what?"
"Sir." Natasha snarled.
"Romanoff, you watch yourself out there, you're fighting towards a certain goal. The balance of things are resting on you guys, and I hope you'll do what's right."
She took a deep gulp of air, "Barton." she said, gripping her knee, "What's the status on him? I'm in the dark here, and on my own damn partner."
"Nothing's known yet, though the bastard did put a bullet in me."
"This is bullshit and you know it! Where is he? Tell me!" Natasha yelled, she knew he had more information than he was giving.
Then she heard the dial tone.
"Fury! God damn it!"
Natasha growled and tossed her phone to the ground. She clenched her jaw anxiously, information was being held from her and Fury still expected her to be his loyal fucking dog. But she didn't have a choice, it was orders or roam the streets with hundreds of enemies on her heel and zero aliases. Every single time her and Clint were apart she was the one left behind with no answers. And there was always the searing urge she had to hold a gun to Fury's head and force it all out of him, every speck of dust hidden in every dirty secret he had would be blown out.
Those kind of guiltless thoughts were actively playing on her mind.
Something burned deep in the pit of her stomach when she thought of Clint's situation, Natasha was angry. She needed to know about her partner. But she also had something that trumped her own needs, larger, more overpowering orders.
Natasha gazed up to Bruce, who was just now rising from his innocent slumber. He smiled at her warmly, that warmth reaching his gentle eyes. Natasha turned away quickly, feeling strained by the doctor's genuine kindness.
"They attempted to shut the Avengers Initiative down." Fury said, blankly staring out the window in his office. He swung his chair around to face Maria Hill, his most trusted and obedient agent; a quality that seemed long forgotten by Barton and Romanoff.
"Sir, with all respect, do you think that the idea of putting them into a team is a good one?" Maria said and crossed her arms.
"They're they best we've got, just because the shirts a little wrinkled doesn't mean it can't be worn." He said, using one of his many analogies.
"And how do you intend to iron those out?" She questioned.
"I don't intend to."
"Agent Romanoff," The pilot of their helicopter called back to her, "I just got a message from Director Fury, he needs you off this thing."
"When?" She furrowed her brows, another back to back mission, huh?
"Now. I'm taking you there, there will be an military level air craft waiting for you."
"What about Dr. Banner?" Natasha said, briefly capturing Bruce in her stare.
"He's going back to HQ." The man replied. "Get ready, gear's in the duffle bag, we'll land in thirty."
Natasha quickly ripped into the bag containing her usual clothes and weapons, she yanked them out, placing them onto the cramped seat next to her. Bruce eyed her, completely ignorant of what she was going to do. Then, Natasha began to strip down to her underwear. Bruce immediately looked away and began to tap his fingers on his knees, unsure how to handle such an uncomfortable moment. Natasha smirked, how adorable, getting all embarrassed by a nearly-naked woman. She slid on her suit with only some difficulty and placed the assortment of weapons around her body. Lastly, she placed in the earwig, then activated it, "Coulson?" She said to check who was on the other side, for a split second she was tempted to say Barton.
"Natasha," Phil said, communicating from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s base.
"Who's down there waiting for me?" She said as she analyzed Bruce's curious expression.
"Stark and Rogers. You're their back-up and their ride the hell out of there if anything serious happens."
"Great, you know Stark only trusts me as far as he can fucking throw me."
Bruce popped up at the mention of Stark's name, he knew it, that genius philanthropies in New York.
"Good luck, I don't exactly know what's there waiting for you, but you might be seeing Clint." Phil said to her, and he could practically hear her rolling her eyes.
"What? Why?" She questioned, looking out the window of the helicopter to see the gleam of city lights.
"Don't let that distract you from your purpose."
"I asked why Coulson. You're going to tell me why." Her voice was smooth, but her tone displayed her rage.
"He may or may not be currently affiliated with the enemy. Certainty is unknown."
Natasha clawed the ear piece out. She tossed it to the ground and stomped on it, hearing an electric sting.
"I'm going in alone."
"Isn't that dangerous?" Bruce queued in.
"If you're concerned about me being in a potentially life threatening situation, then you may be confused about what I do as a job." She replied arrantly.
"Don't fuss. I'm a big girl, shoot my own semi-automatics and everything."
"Look, you weren't feeling well earlier, symptoms could flare up again." He said running his fingers through his hair.
"What are you talking about? Nothing happened earlier." Natasha emitted a piercing glare through him, then hovered a nonchalant hand over her gun as a limpid warning.
"You're on edge, Ms. Romanoff."
She twisted the latch to the door, seeing that they were landing.
"I'm not."
Natasha stepped out of the helicopter, then gave the pilot a signal to depart. She was on edge because the stability of S.H.I.E.L.D. was on edge. And aside from that her idiot, class-A bastard of a partner was possibly under the influence of the enemy. She was annoyed. Now she had to go into the fire-zone and save his ass, damn it. And she was angry, it was his fault for getting then torn and tangled up in a battle for what's right because they didn't do "what's right", they were assassins. They weren't democracy advocates or morality spreaders, they were killers, they were what lied within the wake of a righteous man's nightmares. She was no soldier, no leader, and neither was Clint. But if she was dragged into this, then hell, he would be too.
Natasha buckled her seatbelt in the air craft then took it to the night's air.
"Watch out boys, I'm in this game too."
A/N:
Some of you are on as guest which prevents me from replying to any comments (which I always do when I can), so to my guests:
(even if it was early on) Thank you so much for your reviews and encouraging comments, it means a lot!
to the guest who said something about my use of profanities, I apologize if it offended you in anyway, however my interpretation and use of language is my artistic choice. It may be viewed as a somewhat classless choice, but how I'm shaping these characters involves the use of vulgar language, especially from Natasha (who the pov is from mostly). I will, however, try to decrease it; or perhaps change the rating to M? (But, that usually implies graphic sex) Also keep in mind that the Natasha that I'm creating has a lot more raw emotions, especially anger, than the more subdued one depicted in movies. I hope you understand, and I'm sorry I included this as an author's note, I just couldn't reply as a pm.