So, this is kind of another girl bonding moment, digging a little deeper into Natasha's past. I'm going to try to go pretty MCU with it, but I'm adding some of the features of comic!Nat to the mix. Mostly that she was in the Red Room and KGB. Some of it's a little AU, but most of the character pasts are just slightly AU. Usually you can find a bit of truth from some of the comics and stuff, but I kind of just threw everything I knew about them together and mixed it in a blender. Lol. Anyway, let me know what you think.
Steve's POV is next chapter and we'll get a peek into what he's thinking as well as a tiny bit of alone time between him and Eve. As for this chapter, enjoy!
"I know it's not ideal, but we're basically sharing clothes, so I was hoping you wouldn't mind sharing a room." Natasha offered Eve as she sat on the bed. The Captain had carried her up to the attic bedroom after the boys and Natasha had lugged everything up, setting her down with specific instructions to stay until someone came to get her. Considering the Sergeant's aversion to people touching his metal arm and Sam's status as a regular human, Eve was pretty sure she was just waiting for the Captain to come and move her.
"Natasha, of course I don't mind sharing a room with you. Where did you get us clothes from?" Eve hadn't had time to steal any clothes from the apartment she shared with Nova and Natasha had stayed at the Avengers Training Center with her in medical for the most part, so neither of them had the chance to grab their own belongings.
"I kind of raided the other women's closets. There are a few women who stay in the ATC on a regular enough basis to have rooms. You met Wanda and I'm sure Barton told you about Katie-Kate. There are a few more. Hope Pym, Bobbi Morse when she's not out on assignment with Hunter, Dr. Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, Pepper Potts… Wanda was more than willing to help me round up a few things and the other women didn't mind. Some of the stuff will be a little too long, but we can always go out when the hype has died down and go shopping." Natasha explained, naming off a few familiar names. Even if Eve hadn't met them all, she had heard of them. The women of the Avengers were kind of iconic.
Wanda Maximoff had come in to check on Eve with her brother, Pietro, after she'd been allowed to have a few visitors. She was a sweetheart, if a little quiet. Pietro hadn't had that problem and zoomed around the room the entire time, obviously bored out of his mind. If it wasn't so funny, it would have been annoying, but Eve appreciated that they'd come to check on her even though they didn't know her at all. Eve had never had the pleasure of having the twins on the coms, though she had heard of them multiple times. Wanda had gotten her some flowers, scrawling her own name as well as Pietro's on the card.
Kate Bishop, well, Clint had mentioned her more than once. Not just on coms, but while he visited her in medical too. Kate hadn't shown up, but she had sent over a card that thanked her for putting up with Clint. It was probably the funniest thing she'd received, including the stuffed dog that Clint had given her as soon as she was allowed visitors. He'd been one of the first ones in when she'd woken up. After a few jokes, he'd pulled her into a gentle hug and given her the stuffed dog he'd named 'Lucky 2.0', telling her that it was going to be her good luck charm. If Eve didn't know any better, she'd have said that Clint was the teenager, not Kate. But Kate was only around sixteen and her parents were involved in HYDRA, something she'd found out after the Triskellion. After finding out that her parents basically let her run around unsupervised fighting crime, Clint had basically moved her into his apartment, apparently. Eve didn't know much about the history of their relationship, but she'd heard more than one exasperated phone call on Clint's end.
The rest of the women, aside from Pepper, who was technically Eve's boss, Eve had only heard of in passing. Dr. Foster had won a Nobel Prize the year before and was the leading expert on Astrophysics in the world, which was completely amazing and Eve would probably squeak embarrassingly if she actually got to meet Dr. Foster after all of her scientific advances for the modern world. She was also supposed to be Thor's girlfriend, though the term seemed kind of awkward to use for a god. It was also kind of an awkward word to use for a world renowned astrophysicist…
Darcy was Dr. Foster's assistant. She hadn't won any awards that Eve knew of, but she had tasered a god, so that was kind of the same thing.
Hope Pym was the daughter of the man who had built Pym Technologies and creator of the Pym Particle. She was also the acting CEO of Pym Tech and working on a suit similar to the Ant Man suit that would allow her the same powers. Not only a badass CEO, but a first class martial artist, Hope Pym was trained from a young age to become the Wasp, the counterpart to Ant Man. The Wasp suit was originally warn by her mother, Maria, before she'd died and Hope wanted to take up the helm as soon as she could get the suit to work.
Pepper Potts was someone who Eve had met more than a few times. Pepper was CEO of Stark Industries as well as the only person in the world that Tony Stark would answer to. She was one of Natasha's friends as well as one of Maria's and Eve had gone out to lunch with her and Maria before whenever Pepper was free. They hadn't been particularly close, but Eve was fond of the woman who employed her. Especially considering Pepper had hired the lawyers that had represented Eve in her trial after the SHIELD files were dumped.
"It was really nice of them to let us borrow some clothes…" Eve murmured as Natasha started unpacking, obviously not bothered that Eve couldn't help her.
"They know what you've done for the rest of us and they wanted to help. Besides, Wanda took a liking to you almost immediately. And everyone loves Wanda, so you got lucky." Natasha informed her with a laugh. Eve smiled back, glad that the younger woman approved of her. Of course, Wanda wasn't that old. Maybe twenty or twenty one. It was kind of sad that the twins had gone through so much in their young lives, but Eve was about her age when she started working with the Captain.
"Wanda seems really great. I wish I'd had enough time to get to know her a little better." Eve sighed, running her hands over the bedspread. The bedspread on the king sized bed was a grey feather down, soft as a cloud. The bed took up the majority of the floor space, though the room was actually quite large when looking at it from an objective view point. Almost three times her room at the Tower, but her room was more of a glorified closet.
The room had original wood floors and the ceiling was sloped, the walls painted slightly off-white. There was a bathroom attached to the room, thank god, with a shower and everything. Eve hadn't shared a bathroom with a man since she'd moved her and her sister into the dorms at the Sci-Ops Academy when she was sixteen. Ending that streak sharing a bathroom with Captain America and his BFF wasn't exactly on her list of things that would be awesome.
The rest of the room wasn't all that spectacular. There was a fairly large window with a window seat facing the backyard, which gave them a great tactical view of the neighborhood below. Not that Eve could actually get to the window seat without either pissing the Captain off by walking or just crawling over. Then again, she wasn't sure the window would be left alone for long. Tactical viewpoints were helpful and Eve wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the Sergeant or Natasha took up perch there for the next few days, at least until they were settled in a little more.
The walls by the window held built-in bookshelves stuffed with reading material, which was always good. There was a dresser on the wall opposite the bed that was fairly large and a small closet on the other side of it, otherwise the room was basically empty. It was obvious that it was more for show than for actual visitors, which was kind of sad, but honestly better than what Eve had expected. Safe houses tended to be used fairly often by a lot of different agents and she had assumed that they would go to one of the SHIELD-approved safe houses. Obviously, the Captain hadn't thought that was secure enough for their purposes.
"Don't worry, you're not going anywhere anytime soon. Besides, Clint loves those twins. If he didn't already have Kate, there's a very good chance he'd have moved the twins into his apartment building already." Natasha informed her, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. Eve smiled at that. Clint was kind of a mother hen. He'd been to see her every day, always with something new to give her. The stuffed animal, then a blanket, then a bunch of different candy bars because he knew how much medical food sucked. While Clint was great company (he never force fed her her pain meds) he was always watchful, making sure that she was comfortable and watching for any signs of fatigue or pain. It was like having an older brother, though Eve did technically have one of those. He just wasn't exactly exemplary.
"You think he'd have learned his lesson about adopting teenagers after you and Kate." Eve offered, watching as Natasha folded clothes quickly and efficiently before sliding them into various drawers. She seemed to have a system going, but Eve wasn't paying good enough attention to figure out what the system actually was. Her hands slowed for just a moment after her comment and Eve fought the urge to frown, realizing she'd kind of mentioned that she knew, generally, when Natasha had come into SHIELD. Most people didn't have access to that file.
"How much did you read?" Natasha asked slowly, as if the answer would somehow pain her. Eve nibbled at the inside of her lip, ultimately deciding that lying wouldn't get her any favors.
"I got the cliff notes version of the file. Detailed combat records as well as general health information as well as lists of your abilities and any other allergies or medical conditions that could possibly hinder you on a mission. I know about the Red Room and the KGB, but only the need-to-know information." Eve explained softly, knowing that it was a delicate topic. Natasha had been through a lot. The abuse and despicable means the Red Room used to 'train' their agents was a form of psychological torture. If Natasha had anything in common with anyone, it was the Sergeant. The processes they went through were similar and probably just as painful. Eve didn't blame Natasha for the things she'd done when she'd been on her own. She'd survived because that was what she was meant to do. That was what she had been trained to do. It didn't take an expert to realize that scars like that didn't just disappear. Eve wore her scars on her skin and Natasha wore them buried deep, under her training.
"You never mentioned it." Natasha reminded her, as if that was an oversight.
"It didn't need mentioning. You're still Natasha Romanoff, one of the best SHIELD agents I ever had the pleasure to work with, not to mention an Avengers who's helped save the entire world more than once. That was all I needed to know." Honestly, Eve had only seen someone who wasn't much older than her who'd gone through a lot of suffering. SHIELD agents weren't usually from cookie cutter backgrounds. SHIELD recruited the people they did because they were strong and had strong ideals. Because they honestly believed that they could make a difference in the world. And, now that SHIELD was gone and she'd learned not to trust their opinion, Eve still trusted Natasha. Because Clint did. Because Maria did. Because she'd worked with her long enough to know that she was a good woman, no matter what red marred her ledger.
"You know, sometimes I think you're bat shit crazy." Natasha offered with a soft smile. It was the same smile she'd had on when she'd first seen Eve's scars and told her that she was beautiful anyway. It was a surprisingly real emotion.
"Yeah, well, sometimes, I would agree with you." Eve informed her, dropping back onto the bed to stare at the ceiling. "Did you know we were coming to Sam's house?"
"Nope. He told me we were going to the middle of nowhere. I don't know what the middle of nowhere is to him, but this is Virginia, not the Arctic Circle. Then again, he did grow up in Brooklyn…" Natasha offered, moving so that she could drop onto the bed next to Eve. Eve just laughed a little, wondering what the Captain would do if she took him to her hometown. Maybe he would like the small town feel. Or maybe he'd run as fast as possible in the other direction. "I guess you can't have everything in a man, hm?"
"What, you scoping him out now?" Eve asked curiously. If there was anyone on the team that Eve would match Natasha to, it would be Clint. They worked like a well-oiled unit, always reading one another's minds and finishing each other's sentences. It was actually kind of freaky at this point, not that Eve really minded. It made missions easier. That, and Eve knew that Clint cared about Natasha far more than he would ever admit. Natasha had a tendency to run away from commitment whenever she thought things were getting to deep and Clint was one of those that wanted to be in for life. Maybe that was why he kept adopting strays.
Either way, Eve hadn't ever thought about how Natasha and Steve would work as a couple. Given her small, unhealthy obsession with Dr. Banner for a while, contemplating the Black Widow's romantic involvements hadn't been worth the time. Thinking about it, Eve had to admit that Captain Rogers would probably be good for her. He was the wholesome, all-American type. All apple pies and baseball. Other than that, Steve was also one of the few people who hadn't run as soon as he found out about Natasha's past. He trusted her and cared for her as more than just a teammate. His teammates were the only family the Captain had left after the Sergeant. They would honestly probably be good together, which sent an uncomfortable ache through Eve's chest. One she ignored completely.
"Ew, definitely not. I appreciate a good set of abs as much as the next girl, but Cap isn't my type. I like my men like I like my weapons." A smirk darkened Natasha's lips and Eve waited, knowing a pun was coming. "Razor sharp and deadly."
Of course she did.