Natalia longed to pace the interior of the cell, but suppressed the impulse in favor of remaining still and silent. Easier to hear if anyone approached the door. She hadn't decided what would happen if someone besides Barton entered.
Her thoughts refused to fall into order. One moment she was convinced Barton had lured her into the cell with no intention of returning, then she found herself concerned about his safety and what the absence implied.
She felt a brief stab of remorse as she recalled the injuries she'd given him. He was already hurt, and if they chose to punish him for helping her... She chewed her lip and tasted blood. What was the S.H.I.E.L.D. penalty for deviating from mission parameters?
It was near midnight by her best estimate, and she was grateful Barton had let her sleep on the plane. If she continued to trust him, if she decided his kindness was authentic, a rescue attempt should happen sooner rather than later.
It had taken her a grand total of fifteen minutes to plan an escape. The cot wasn't bolted to the floor, another instance of S.H.I.E.L.D. being sloppy, and it would be simple enough to flip it on end in the corner and climb up to disable the security camera. Despite the pitch blackness of the cell, the camera had to be sending a video feed somewhere, probably in night vision hues of green and black. Guards would be sent in, either to repair the camera or move her to a cell with one that functioned. The door would be opened. She could make the corridor outside.
Success depended on which of the agents waited in the hallway.
Rumlow seemed the type to let aggression dictate his combat choices. He would be easy to outsmart and outmaneuver. The kid, Benson, she could probably make him shit his pants just by spitting a little Russian at him. The other two men hadn't made much of an impression, ex-military maybe. Their fighting styles would be predictable, an annoyance rather than a challenge. Carter was the wildcard.
Carter was appraising and sharp, more spy than soldier if she had to take a guess. Carter would be expecting her to make a play. Carter could be dealt with, but there was no way to gauge the woman's combat skills and know how much time she could expect to waste in a fight.
She hadn't noticed if the agents carried I.D. badges like Coulson's. She felt certain she would have to find one if she wanted to leave the Containment level. Did every elevator ride require a badge swipe, or just trips to secure floors? She remembered the code Coulson used to make the elevator drop. Security protocol 6-3-8-6-Alpha. She wasn't sure how effective it would be in moving the elevator the opposite direction. There was also the possibility that the I.D. badges were linked with a voice recognition program.
Variables, but knives and guns had a way of negating them. The agents outside would cooperate and lead her to Barton. Always assuming Barton wasn't one of the guards posted in the corridor, of course. Best not to think about that.
She let another hour pass, gave the guards an opportunity to grow tired and complacent as the night stretched. With luck, most of the base would be shut down, offices and labs empty, the agents living in the on-base apartments Barton had mentioned too deeply asleep to assemble quickly and provide backup.
She stood at last and stretched, faked a yawn, put on a believable show for the camera as she bent to the end of the cot where the pillow rested. She gripped the cool metal frame under the corner of the thin mattress, ready to dump the bedding and drag the frame into the corner.
The lights blazed on.
She spun to face the door, blinking hard against the glare as the keypad outside beeped and the lock scraped back.
Coulson stalked into the cell, dragging an aluminum chair, a leather messenger bag slung over one shoulder. A hand and arm appeared to pull the door closed after him, but the tactical gear was too uniform to give her a hint about which guard waited in the corridor.
Coulson's suit jacket was unbuttoned, tie hanging loose and the white dress shirt underneath rumpled. She wondered briefly what had happened to the crisply-pressed, pristine Agent Coulson she had come to expect.
"Barton's confined to quarters," Coulson announced, and slammed the chair down on four legs. His jacket swung open a bit more with the movement and she caught sight of the gun holstered at his hip. Her pulse quickened. No Barton around to mediate this time. "He's my agent. He's my priority. I'm not going to let him throw away the past twelve years on a whim and a pretty face."
She had a comeback for that one, but kept her mouth shut. The explanation of Barton's absence was too neat, just dire enough without inspiring retaliation on his behalf. No, Barton was either half-dead or conspiring against her. S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't simply send him to his room for naughty behavior.
"I don't think I believe you," she replied.
"I don't care if you believe me or not. You're going to give me information I can use," Coulson ordered. "Right now. Sit."
He motioned to the bed, but she remained stubbornly on her feet, sizing him up. If Katya, at fourteen, had 'put Coulson on his ass', she shouldn't have a problem taking the gun and holding him hostage. Fast ticket out of the cell.
She moved forward, just one step, and Coulson played right into her new plan. He drew the gun and held it out in front, arms extended. Easier to disarm that way.
Kill, Natalia.
"Sit, Natalia," Coulson barked harshly. He pulled the slide to chamber a round.
Disappointment and frustration vied for precedence. S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't even get a hostage situation right.
"That isn't loaded," she told Coulson with a slow, sly grin, because she knew that would infuriate him more than expressing her exasperation. Coulson looked from her to the gun and back again, then huffed and let his arms drop to his sides.
"Of course it isn't loaded," he scoffed. "I'm not giving you access to functioning weapons. Thought it might help you cooperate, though."
"You really thought I couldn't hear the difference between loaded and not?"
"Desperate times," Coulson replied wryly. "Please sit?"
"Where's Barton?"
"Locked in his quarters," Coulson repeated, impatience creeping into his tone. He dropped his bag to the floor and sat on the aluminum chair, motioned to the bed again.
"Prove it," she challenged.
"The two of you aren't allowed contact. No phone calls, no visits. You'll just have to trust me."
"About as far as I can throw you," she muttered.
"Clint trusts me," Coulson said, lips quirking into a smile. "That was supposed to be a good enough reason for me to bring you in. I can't play the same card?"
She really, really disliked Coulson.
"What kind of information?" she asked grudgingly, and sat as Coulson had requested. His expression softened, the wrinkles in his forehead and hard lines around his eyes relaxing. He produced a bottle of water from his bag and tossed it the short distance between them. She twisted the cap off and drank, but was careful to ration most of the bottle for later, in case it was a one-time gesture of goodwill.
"Something we can act on. A base we can raid, a name for an arrest, anything. We need to show the Council you can be cooperative. We need to make it look like Clint brought you in to benefit S.H.I.E.L.D., for the intel you can provide, not because he wanted to play humanitarian."
"They don't believe in second chances?"
"The Council likes order. You have to prove you're more beneficial to them alive than dead, before they start handing out free passes."
She couldn't dredge up much concern for her own standing with the Council. Instead, she found herself obnoxiously worried about Barton's situation. There had to be a reason they weren't allowed to see each other, and she suspected it was because Barton was busy being waterboarded or electrocuted or beaten. Leaving him to the Council seemed like a shitty way to repay him for his kindness.
How much would it take to pull Barton out of interrogation? She needed something big, something better than the KGB roster or a list of potential assassination targets.
"There's a defunct field office in Moldova-"
"That's not good enough," Coulson cut in sharply, the first hint of real anger coloring his words.
"Let me finish," she replied coolly. She stared him down until he sat back in his chair and waved a hand impatiently for her to continue. "In the second level sub-basement you'll find a bank of servers. Cold War era, mostly. There's one still functioning that might interest S.H.I.E.L.D."
"What's on this server?"
"The SPARTA protocol," she said, and watched Coulson's eyes go wide. Satisfying. She liked that expression. She wondered if she could make his jaw actually drop. "Secure Pecuniary Assurance Referendum and Tribulation Analysis. NATO's failsafe protocol in the event of a global economic collapse."
"How much does your government know?"
It didn't sting as much when it was Coulson rather than Barton implying she was still loyal to Russia, but she scowled anyway.
"Everything. Treaty agreements, the timeline for activating the protocol, which delegates get evac to the nice bunker and access to supplies, which countries get nuked once the rioting starts. I assume your Council has an interest."
He openly gaped at her and she felt a brief surge of triumph. She caught herself imagining Barton's reaction to the exchange, wondered briefly if he would scold her or find it amusing that she'd made a game out of shocking Agent Coulson.
"Who's the mole?" Coulson asked. He plunged a hand into the bag at his feet, retrieved a tablet, and began tapping the screen furiously.
"There isn't a spy," she scoffed, "there's a hole in the system. NATO's closed communication channels aren't so isolated."
"Do you know how to get in?"
"Considering I'm the one who stole the information in the first place, yes."
"Good," Coulson said. He retrieved a pen and legal pad from the bag, then passed them to her. "You're going to write down how you did it. List the vulnerabilities. It needs to be detailed enough for the tech team to go in and make the system secure, so this doesn't happen again."
This was the deal she had made, give up all her secrets. A stupid deal. Losing a large portion of her leverage made her feel vulnerable in a way she wasn't accustomed to.
She started writing, however, because she undeniably owed Barton.
"What do they plan to do with the information?" Coulson asked.
"Leak it, if any of NATO's member countries step too far out of line. Don't think the general population would be happy to learn their leaders planned an every-man-for-himself approach."
"Widespread panic never ends well," Coulson agreed.
She returned the pad and pen. Coulson tore off the page she'd written on and folded it into his pocket.
"So, this field office. How many agents should I send?"
"How many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents does it take to unplug a server?" she retorted. Coulson pinned her with an annoyed expression.
"Straight answer, please."
"If you're sending someone with Barton's skills, one should be enough. The building isn't guarded or under surveillance. There's a rudimentary alarm system to disable, but that's it. I could probably do it remotely."
"Won't be necessary," Coulson said in clipped tones. He stood and moved to stand beside the bed, then held out the tablet. The screen displayed a map of Moldova. "Just mark the coordinates of the building and the best route to approach."
He watched intently as she took the tablet and zoomed in on a city to the east. Probably making sure she didn't pull any tricks while she had her hands on S.H.I.E.L.D. tech.
"Tiraspol?" he muttered. She hummed her assent and tapped the square outline of a building on the edge of the city. It lit up red, latitude and longitude appearing across the top of the screen. "What's in Tiraspol?"
"Nothing," Natalia said. She traced her finger along a series of side streets, foregoing the larger highways. The route highlighted in red, too. "Nothing that would draw much interest, anyway. Good place to keep things hidden."
She passed the tablet back to Coulson.
"Good," he said again, studying the screen. "This is good intel. Useable. I'll put a team together and see what we find."
That was it? Coulson's initial concern had all but vanished. He visibly relaxed as he went back to his chair.
She wanted to ask how long the mission would take, if he intended to put agents on a plane tonight or use operatives already stationed in Europe. How would they handle Barton's punishment? Would he actually be taken to his quarters now, or would S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Council keep going at him until the mission proved successful?
She was still trying to think of an appropriate question to ask, one that would get her the information she wanted without giving away her concern for Barton, when Coulson said her name to draw her attention.
This time he held out a clear plastic bag with a sandwich chain logo printed in block letters. Inside was a wrapped sandwich and a small bag of chips.
"Peace offering? Heard your dinner plans got canceled."
Barton would call the gesture kindness. She categorized it as bribery. The Black Widow didn't prostrate herself in front of superiors, playing nice for handouts and pats on the head. She would cooperate until it no longer benefited her (or Barton), then go back to keeping her mouth shut.
"Not hungry," she told Coulson petulantly.
Perhaps she had grown accustomed to the no-nonsense way Barton dealt with her, because she half expected him to insist and leave the food despite her stubbornness. He shrugged instead, packed up the tablet and sandwich, then stood and carried the chair from the cell without another word.
Reckless, she chastised herself, and juvenile. Turning down food while being held captive was the dumbest move she could recall making, ever.
The lights went out again. She allowed herself to walk the length of the cell twice to burn off a little of the nervous energy Coulson had supplied her with, then went back to sit on the cot.
She could still attempt escape, but it was possible she'd end up doing more harm than good. Did she trust Coulson enough to stay put and let him handle the situation? Barton trusted him, and she trusted Barton, so by that logic she should wait and see what came of Coulson's recon mission. Don't freak out, Barton had said. Instigating a one-woman assault on an astonishingly large S.H.I.E.L.D. base definitely constituted freaking out, no matter how calculated the plan. Wait and see, then.
The cell lit up once more, hours later, but when nobody entered she assumed it just meant morning, 0500. She began to count the minutes very precisely, a frustrating exercise, but one that eventually gave her a piece of information she wasn't sure what to make of. The agents in the hallway didn't change shifts at 0630 as Barton had told her they would.
She gave up estimating the time. It became an effort to remain vigilant, resisting the urge to sleep and simultaneously ignoring the dull, hungry ache in her gut. The headache came back slowly, prodding her temples and the space between her eyes.
She heard a murmur of voices in the corridor, the beep of the keypad.
A rush of white noise. Muffled, unintelligible shouting.
She blinked and found herself on her feet, halfway across the cell, fingernails digging into her palms at the hard clench of her fists. The door slammed, a jarring sound that made the breath catch in her chest.
"Shit," she whispered, icy dread pooling in the pit of her stomach. She paced back to the cot, spun and drew a shaky breath, raked a hand through her hair. Too late she remembered the security camera in the corner.
Two quick raps on the door.
"Natalia?"
Coulson.
She swallowed hard against the sick feeling rising in her throat.
"You surprised me," she called lamely, a hitch to the words. She let the back of her knees bump against the cot and sat, slid back to lean against the wall. She wanted to hide trembling fingers in the pocket of her pullover, but judged it best to keep her hands where Coulson and the security camera could see them.
The door opened a crack, and Coulson stuck his head in.
"Don't move, Natalia," he warned.
She nodded to show she understood, even held her hands up in surrender. An unfamiliar agent stepped up behind Coulson, a man with dark short-cropped hair and an unkind smirk. Rumlow, by process of elimination. He kept his rifle trained on her chest as Coulson entered the cell.
She turned a critical eye on Coulson, relieved to find she hadn't actually injured him. He shut the door and crossed the room cautiously, telegraphing each motion with slow, deliberate movements. He set up his chair closer than before, directly in front of her, close enough to touch if she reached out.
Close enough to kill.
She avoided his gaze and crossed her arms protectively across her chest. Why couldn't it have been Barton?
"You don't look well," Coulson said gently. He leaned forward ever so slightly, tried to catch her eye. "Would you like to go to Medical?"
S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors? Her breath came a little quicker at the thought.
She shook her head, but didn't trust herself to speak, not when Coulson was close enough to hear the tremor in her voice.
There hadn't been an order to ignore, a whispered suggestion to suppress. An incident like that one hadn't happened in months.
"Carter was watching the security feed last night. She said you didn't sleep," Coulson pressed.
"Jet lag," she lied.
Carter's words echoed in the back of her mind.
Unstable. Prone to unprovoked violence.
"Where's Barton?"
The question slipped out before she realized, a shaky little whisper that made Coulson frown.
"He's with Director Fury. We're getting ready to present our case to the Council."
All she had to do was hold it together until Barton was cleared of suspicion. Coulson wasn't an idiot. He would keep the incident to himself, keep the agent monitoring the security feed quiet, at least until the meeting was over.
"You won't have an interview today," he added. "Fury's buried in paperwork. Easier to keep things straight if we handle them one at a time."
She caught the unspoken implication; she wouldn't be leaving the cell today. Possibly for the reason Coulson had just stated, but more likely because she'd attempted to attack him. That was okay. It was safer, for everyone involved, if she stayed confined.
The keypad chirped again and Coulson was on his feet, striding quickly back across the cell. He slammed his palm against the door to stop the person outside opening it.
"Not a good idea," Coulson called. He cut his eyes to her, gave her a warning look, then opened the door enough to speak with whoever waited outside. He was careful to block her view of the corridor. "Tell Hill to go ahead and start the briefing. I need ten minutes here, but I'll be up before we're due with the Council."
"I'm your partner, not your secretary."
A woman's voice, the words deadpan.
"Give Andrew a call, too," Coulson quipped, and smiled a little, although the humor left his tone almost immediately. "See if he can clear his schedule for the next couple days. I'm going to ask Fury to pull him in."
"You think Clint was wrong about her?"
"I think everyone's under a lot of stress," Coulson said fairly. The woman in the corridor passed him a water bottle, a cup of coffee, and a styrofoam container. "We're fine," he added, and shut the door. Natalia wondered briefly who he was trying to convince, because things were most certainly not fine.
Coulson came back and offered the coffee first, then placed the rest of her breakfast on the cot beside her. She stared down at the Starbucks logo rather than look at him. If she made eye contact, she might do something she'd regret.
Coulson stood, watching expectantly. She spun the coffee cup slowly between her fingers. Clint was spelled out in black Sharpie on the opposite side. It made the heat seeping from the cup somehow more comforting.
"You have a partner?" she asked, the question posed with just the right balance of curiosity and polite interest. It was the Black Widow who wanted to know, Natalia realized that. Ordinarily she wouldn't think twice about Coulson's interpersonal relationships.
"Yes," Coulson confirmed shortly, but didn't volunteer any more information. Didn't matter. The cadence of the woman's voice echoed in her head, and she felt sure she would recognize Coulson's partner if their paths happened to cross. Partners were better leverage than vintage cars.
"You need to leave," Natalia told him.
"You're not getting rid of me until I see you eat something," Coulson replied, and resumed his seat.
She had spent their entire acquaintance being abrasive and taciturn. It was no wonder Coulson didn't take the warning seriously.
She tried the coffee, hoping that would placate him, but he only frowned. She relented and pulled the styrofoam container into her lap.
There was a message scrawled on the lid - Eat the damn pancakes, Red - and underneath a crudely drawn stick figure with angry eyes and a scowl, holding a bow and arrow. The corner of her mouth twitched, but she didn't feel much like smiling, not when she'd just lost it and attacked Coulson.
Still, Barton had obviously been allowed to go to the cafeteria for breakfast. That seemed promising.
She flipped the container open and found a stack of chocolate chip pancakes, a plastic fork, and two little cups full of syrup. Her stomach turned at the sickly-sweet smell, she was too keyed up and anxious for food, but she doused the pancakes in syrup and forced down a forkful anyway. Coulson blew out a relieved sigh and pulled a phone from his pocket.
She ate with tiny, quick bites while he was distracted, sure he would only pay attention to the motion in his peripheral vision rather than how many pancakes disappeared. When he sat straighter and locked the phone, she tossed the fork back into the styrofoam container and closed the lid.
"Now leave," she repeated. Coulson scowled and shook his head, but stood and collected the takeout box.
"I'll let you know how things go with the Council," he said, and this time she could hear the strained effort as he put on a nice tone. She couldn't bring herself to care. She needed Coulson out of the cell before her programming got the best of her again.
Coulson disappeared into the corridor outside and she finished her coffee. The caffeine and sugar didn't give her a burst of energy or make her feel more alert, and after a while she gave in and stretched across the bed, back to the door. She wondered if Barton was having any luck arguing his case. Coulson hadn't mentioned if her intel had been helpful.
The odd rushing noise was in her ears again, and even though she knew what was coming, she couldn't fight it.
She was losing time, large stretches of it. As a naive child she had expected that to wake from being controlled would be like waking from a dream, pleasant and slow. It was nothing like that. Wresting control from the Black Widow was disorienting and jarring.
She was lying on the cot, back facing the room, then flash leaning against the wall by the door. Blink, perched on the edge of the cot, muscles drawn taut. Next moment, standing near the corner of the cell, staring up at the security camera.
She turned away and shook her head, and lost herself again.
It was pain that brought her back, a dull throbbing in one shoulder and a sharper sensation in the crook of the elbow of her other arm. She found it difficult to draw breath, a solid weight against her back pinning her to the floor, forcing the air from her lungs.
"Hurry up, Doc. You've got about ten seconds before you get to see her kick my ass again."
The archer.
Barton, she corrected herself. Clint.
She shifted beneath him, tried to turn her head and catch his eye, but the heel of his hand jammed into the side of her throat and callused fingers pressed her cheek into the cold concrete floor.
Her field of vision was restricted to her outstretched arm, where a pair of big hands in latex gloves were taking a blood sample with a syringe.
Fear licked at her heart, and this time it wasn't the concern of how she could unwittingly hurt Barton or Coulson, but trepidation as she realized S.H.I.E.L.D. had no better intentions than the Red Room.
"Hit her," Latex Gloves ordered, and pulled the needle free of her arm.
She braced for a punch, tried to counter Barton's hold, but there was no way out when his technique was flattening her with the hundred or so pounds he outweighed her.
Cool metal pressed against her neck, and for one wild moment she thought he meant to shoot her. She realized almost immediately how stupid the idea was. There were more efficient places to aim a gun, if he wanted her dead. It was something else, a medical tool of some kind.
Barton held her a little more firmly. A whoosh of compressed air, and the skin beneath the instrument began to sting. An injection.
"Easy, sweetheart," he whispered. Her vision began to go black around the edges. "We're trying to help. I know it doesn't seem that way."
Barton backed off. She didn't bother going after him. She closed her eyes and curled in on herself instead, waiting to pass out.
She knew what this was. The Black Widow was an asset. Why would S.H.I.E.L.D. bother to fix her programming when they could turn it to their advantage? This was only the beginning of needle sticks and drugs.
The keypad beeped, the door opened and closed. Her panting eased into slow controlled breaths, and she didn't pass out. Her head cleared.
Really cleared.
She opened her eyes and stared at the blank stretch of floor and wall, thoroughly unnerved. She felt light, untethered. A sensation she associated with a handful of happy memories and later, her early years in the Red Room's training regime. Programming had left a faint, lingering pressure at the base of her skull, a constant physical reminder that her handlers were breathing down the back of her neck, that she was being monitored, that borrowed time was the only thing standing between her and the Black Widow. When she resisted, the pressure grew worse, transitioned into pain and spread to her temples and the space behind her eyes.
That was gone now. She felt like Natalia. There was the possibility that Barton was on her side after all, a cautious hope. She waited, shivering a bit with nerves and anticipation, but nobody instructed her to kill.
She pressed one hand flat against the floor to push herself up and found her fingernails stained with blood.
...get to see her kick my ass again...
Barton's blood.
The tiny flicker of optimism faded. She couldn't ever go back to being just Natalia.