Blurb: In the Red Room, Natalia been on survival mode. Her first few weeks in SHIELD were much the same, not really talking to anyone but Hawkeye, the man she still refused to call Clint. However, everything changed in the darkness that was four am, not just her name. Sorry if this is confusing, but Natalia and Natasha are the same person!
Natalia's eyes opened in the darkness of four am, body coated in sweat from her nightmare. She sat up in the bed that was much too big, compared to the twin bed she'd had in the Red Room. It was a king size, but that was not the weirdest part. The weirdest part was the man called Hawkeye who trusted her, and she knew this because her first night out of the exam room, he'd offered to take her in and had been the first to fall asleep, no weapons under his pillow or the mattress-she'd checked.
It had been almost three weeks now, and still he fell asleep, became vulnerable, with his back to her. Natalia had found it very weird that they slept in the same bed and yet he had made no move on her, not tried to force her into anything like the men she had encountered in the Red Room. Hawkeye was very different. She realized she'd been shaking from the cold of the sweat when Hawkeye sat up and said, "Nat? Are you alright?" and there was that. He called her Nat. Always. Not once had he called her Natalia. And this past week she'd realized maybe she liked being his Nat.
When Nat didn't answer immediately, he sat up to face the Russian.
"Nightmare," she murmured, and he nodded. That was another thing she liked about Hawkeye - he understood her. He knew that what she had come from had been ugly and terrible and something she would probably never tell him about, but he had told her much of his past with the same trust that let him fall asleep.
"Maybe you should change your name," Hawkeye said.
"What?" she asked, not wary, just surprised.
"Not anything drastic, still similar to your name now, but something to help you put the Red Room behind you. Your name is currently Natalia Alianova Romanova, right?" he says, and Nat begins to catch on, she nods wordlessly and he continues. "You could change your middle name altogether if you like, but you could pick Romanoff for your last name."
"Natasha Romanoff," Nat says, wanting Hawkeye to still have the ability to call her Nat.
Hawkeye smiles. "Natasha," he murmurs to himself. "Nat,"
"SHIELD Agent Natasha Romanoff," Natasha says, yawning.
"Good night, Natasha,"
"Good night... Clint," they both smile and lie down, and it is only then that Natasha realizes her hand is intertwined with Clint's. She smiles more, and she falls asleep facing him, their hands laced together in the middle.
Clint can't help but notice that Natasha is asleep long before he even shuts his eyes.
So it's kind of short but I actually wrote this and several others, soon to be uploaded, on the car ride up to my Grandad. It turns out that he died on the way up so I may not be very active, sorry if I let you all down