1990s: Natasha

Much to her surprise, retirement agreed with Peggy. She loved having more time with Angie, their twins, their grandchildren, and now even great grandchildren. She loved the fact that she and Angie got to travel more, and marveled at the fact that she could go to a city she'd been to a dozen times over because of work, Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, even Paris, and experience it as if for the first time because she was there with her love for pleasure and enjoyment. Peggy, as it turns out, loves being in her garden tending to her violets, and roses, and her orchids. But Peggy was also still Peggy and she could not indulge in leisure every moment of every day, so she agreed to work with historians and museum curators to put together an exhibit featuring Captain America and the Howling Commandos. She was also working on her memoirs, which Angie and their children insisted people would be interested in.

Sitting behind her desk in her study at their home in Seneca Falls, Peggy ignores the brand new iBook, a gift from Tony, that sits on her desk, and instead continues to work at her old reliable typewriter. She's currently working on the chapter about her time at Bletchley Park, and is lost a bit in the memories of that young girl who had no idea what lay ahead of her. Peggy is drawn out of her memories by the doorbell. Standing, she takes off her glasses and sets them on her desk before she stretches out with a bit of a goan. Then she makes her way toward the front of the house, with Hazelnut their latest labradoodle and Clove the corgi their first foray into a small dog, at her heels. They aren't expecting anyone so she's curious as to who it could be. "Angie," She calls out to her wife who is probably in the kitchen. "Have you been internet shopping again?" The bell rings again. "I'm coming!" She shouts, and then continues, "I'm not about to open the door to fifteen more parcels of cook books am I?"

There were three parcels of potential cook books and one Nicholas J. Fury Jr. waiting on her doorstep. She smiled warmly at her former protege and successor, but the smile faded when she really took in the look on the current Director of SHIELD's face. "Come in, Nicholas. Tell me what's happened and how I can help."

Angie walked into the living room from the other side just as Peggy and Fury were coming in from the foyer. "Who was at the door, English?" She asks before taking notice of the room. "Oh, Nick, hiya hon."

Fury nods respectfully. "Hiya Mrs. Carter." He holds out the packages he'd intercepted from the delivery man. "These are yours."

Peggy sighs and shakes her head, but she's also smiling at the way Angie's face lights up. "Really darling, we're meant to be down sizing if you're serious about moving into a pensioner's shanty."

"It's a retirement villa, English, a condo." Angie huffs at her wife playful while taking the packages from Fury. "Six decades in the good ol' U. S. of A. and she still uses funny words." She's teasing. Angie wouldn't try the way Peggy spoke for anything. Smiling warmly at their guest she asks, "Coffee, Nicky? I've some coconut cake in there as well."

"Thanks Mrs. Carter but I won't be here long." Fury replies. "I left Hill in the car."

Angie laughs. "You used to hate it when Peg did that to you."

Peggy smirks as she takes her seat in her leather wingback. "That's why he does it to her, and why she'll do it to her right hand some day." Once Angie has left the room and Fury is seated at the end of the sofa closest to her, Peggy says, "Now, my boy, tell me what's happened and what you need from me."

"I need your help, Ma'am." Fury says with annoyance. "One of your stray's came back with a particularly dangerous stray of his own."

"Be more specific, Nicholas." Peggy ordered gently.

"Barton." Fury begins.

Peggy chuckles. "Is he considered one of my strays? I thought Barton was like Coulson and Hill, one of yours."

"You took your grandkids to the circus and came back with a boy who uses a bow and arrows and told me to make an agent out of him." Fury huffed. "He's on you, Ma'am."

"Fair enough." Peggy replies easily. "What did Agent Barton do that I need to correct him for?"

Fury makes a point of making sure they're alone and then looks at Peggy and says, "He brought back a Black Widow."

The girl in the interrogation room is one of the youngest Black Widows Peggy has come across in a very long time. Mid teens, red hair, green eyes, pale skin, thin frame, a dancer's build, but even sitting Peggy could tell she didn't quite have a dancer's height. From what she could see of the girl there was bruising, and some shallow breathing that indicated she'd recently taken a beating that left her with perhaps a broken rib or two. There was also dried blood near her hair line, and bottom lip, and left eyebrow. Turning her head to the left after taking the girl in for a while, Peggy looked at Agent Barton.

"I know I disobeyed orders." Clint says when he feels the former Director's eyes on him. "But I went in thinking I was putting down a high level threat, not an abused kid."

"She is both." Peggy tells him. "The Red Room takes children, girls, between the ages of three and five, and begins training them to be merciless killers and spies, Agent Barton."

"I made a judgment call in the field to help a kid in trouble." Clint defended himself. He wasn't much older than the girl, five to seven years perhaps, and Peggy wasn't sure he should have been the one sent on this mission. "When she was given the choice to kill me or turn on her people, she turned on them and helped get the both of us out of Russia. If I had blindly followed orders in this situation, how am I any different than the bastards we're fighting against?"

Peggy nods at the young man approvingly. Perhaps he had been the right agent for this particular mission after all. She offers Clint a hint of a smile, a small gesture of pride, he had disobey orders after all. "I hope you know what you've taken on Agent Barton, because you're going to be assigned to our young friend for a while."

The girl is being restrained by the best tech SHIELD has, and yet Peggy knew that if she really wanted to get free and make a run for it she could. If the girl is surprised when she walks in and takes a seat across from her she doesn't show it. When Peggy speaks, she speaks in flawless Russian. "Do you know who I am?"

The girl looks Peggy up and down slowly before saying a word in old Russian from the northern dialect, a nickname Peggy had earned ages ago and bore proudly as a testament to life's work. It was a word that was both an insult and an honor meaning she was stubborn, a bother some female out of her place, and yet an enemy to be respected. Hearing it again made Peggy's lip twitch towards a smirk. Then the girl said, "Carter."

Peggy nods. "That's right."

"You are old." The girl says in Russian.

"I am." Peggy agrees. "And you are just a child."

"I am not a child!" The girl barks at her. "I could kill you where you sit if I wanted too."

Peggy nods. "You could try, many have, including several Black Widows, no one has succeeded yet. How do you think I've gotten so old?" The girl sits back, seeing the wisdom in this. People in their line of work didn't often get the chance to grow old, and yet here Peggy sat. "What is your name?" The girl doesn't respond at first but just as she's about to, Peggy adds, "Not your code name or any of your countless aliases. What is the name the Red Room gave you when you were a girl?"

The girl sits there staring at Peggy but Peggy can see the muscles in her neck work as she swallows. After a long moment more the girl finally says, "Romanova, Natalia Romanova."

The former Director of SHIELD smiles warmly. "Thank you, Natalia." She tells the girl, her smile turning into a smirk. "There are now several men standing behind that mirror over there totally gobsmacked because you haven't said a single word to them in four days, and yet you just told me your name."

"You do not look at me the way they look at me." Natalia tells Peggy, they are still speaking in Russian.

"How do they look at you?" Peggy asks, intrigued.

Natalia looks over at the mirror and then back at Peggy. "Some look at me as a threat that needs to be neutralized. Others see me as an asset they hope to use for their own ends."

"And how do I look at you?" Peggy's voice is soft, it has been during this entire exchange. She hasn't once spoken to this girl as an enemy or an asset, but as a child, as a human being.

"Like Barton did." Natalia answers. "Like I am a person."

Peggy reaches out and puts her hand on the girl's. "You are a person, Natalia Romanova."

When Peggy rejoins Fury, Barton, and Maria Hill she tells them that Natalia has agreed to medical treatment, and then orders Barton stay with her. "I'm going to call in an expert to evaluate her as well." There was something in the girl's eyes, something she had seen in Michael's eyes, that had her concerned. "I want to know what they've done to her mentally."

"You think she's brainwashed?" Fury asks.

"Perhaps." Peggy nods. "Not to the extent of some other programs we know the Russians ran, the Red Room seemed to like giving their operatives some level of self control, but I wouldn't be surprised if they implemented some kind of control measures, especially after what happened with Dottie Underwood."

"If she's to be an asset…" Hill begins to say but Peggy cuts her off with a withering look she splits between the young woman and Fury.

"An asset?" Peggy repeats the word with a tint of disbelief. "She is a child, not an asset."

"She's a highly trained assassin and spy." Fury says, looking a little confused. "She's the best the Red Room has ever produced. There's a reason I sent Barton out to terminate her. If we can use her on our side instead, then Barton's mission wasn't a total failure."

"She is a child." Peggy repeats sharply. "We do not use children, Nicholas. We do not lower ourselves to using the tactics of our enemies to fight the evil they try to spread in this world. SHIELD is better than that. And if you believe otherwise or have forgotten this, perhaps I made a mistake leaving you in charge." She glared at him until Fury lowered his head and then she huffed. "Honestly Nicholas, using someone like that, using a child no matter her skill set like that, is something I would expect from Pierce or Ross, not from you."

Natalia is kept in a secure room while she's evaluated. She interacts willingly with Barton and Peggy, and begrudgingly with Fury because she knows he is technically in charge. Though anyone with eyes can see he defers to Peggy when she demands it. Because he was the one who brought her in, Barton is given the task of handling her, but he can't always be around. When agents came to escort her to Peggy who was meeting with the expert she'd asked to evaluate her, Natalia lashed out when one of the men provoked her. The teenager incompastated eleven agents before Peggy's voice bellowed down the hall.

"Natalia!" The command came in Russian. "Stand down this instant!"

The girl stops, letting the agent she had held in her grasp by the front of her uniform drop to the floor. She turns to look at Peggy, barely out of breath while the men and women around her, if conscious, pant for air. The doctor has told Peggy that while the girl has not been brainwashed to the extent that Michael once had been, he is certain there has been some tampering. There was also, he had told her gravely, a lot of emotional and psychological trauma, which Peggy had already known.

"What is the meaning of this?" Peggy demands of the girl gently. She uses the same firm tone of voice she used on her children and grandchildren, rather than the harsher, colder, voice she used on agents.

"I did not leave behind all that I knew, all that I was, all who I…" She stops herself from finishing that thought before continuing, "I did not leave Russia to become a weapon for another." Natalia's green eyes burn bright with emotion and glisten with oncoming tears.

Peggy frowns. "Who told you that's what was going to become of you?" The girl looks around at the mess of bodies she's made and points to the agent who had taunted her about being a weapon to be used at their mercy. Peggy scowls at the man. She will have him dealt with later. "SHIELD Is not in the habit of using children as weapons or soldiers, Natalia. That agent has no idea what he's talking about."

"Then I am to be a prisoner." Natalia's voice is heavy with emotion. "Barton spared my life only for it to be wasted away in a cell."

"No, child." Peggy says softly as she closes the distance between them. She held out her hand tentatively to the young girl who was turned against her will into a weapon. "I am working on a plan to ensure that doesn't happen."

For a long moment Natalia simply stares at the offered hand, weathered and spotted with age, but then after a long moment of uncertainty she reaches out and accepts it.

"Have you gone senile?" Fury roars from behind his desk. "This is some kind of dementia bullshit, it has to be. Because you've lost your fucking mind if you think this is even remotely a good idea."

Maria Hill looks as if she's ready to jump clear of a bomb blast as Peggy walks over to Fury's desk, plants her hands a top it, and leans into the man's face. "I am in perfect health and of sound mind, you on the other hand Nicholas Fury have clearly lost yours, and are three seconds from getting a size eight up your arse."

Fury leans in, his gaze locked with Peggy's. "You're damn near eighty years old, you are not taking a teenage assassin home with you!"

"She deserves a chance at having a childhood with what remains of it." Peggy replies firmly. "She deserves a chance at being a human being and not a weapon used by anyone, including us. If she chooses to be a part of SHIELD someday, when she is of age, it will be a choice she makes for herself. Until then, she will be under my supervision and protection."

"I won't allow it." Fury barks.

"You have no say in the matter." Peggy counters. "It's already been arranged."

"Do you honestly think you can make her a normal kid?" Fury falls back into his chair with a defeated huff.

"With enough patience and the right kind of attention, even the most feral of kittens can be calmed, Nicholas." Peggy replies. "If Natalia didn't want at least a chance at having a better life, she wouldn't be here. Agent Barton and I seem to be the only one's willing to see that and offer our help in achieving it, and I find that very disappointing."

Fury pouted. "You're making me sound like a monster."

"Not a monster." Peggy replied. "Just a royal jackass that I hope isn't losing his way or his heart in the dark corners of the world."

Peggy isn't foolish. She knows what she is getting herself and Angie into, and she takes precautions. Their new housekeeper 'June' is a SHIELD agent, so is 'Charlie' the landscaper. Natalia is suspicious and untrusting, she is skittish and always waiting for the double cross. Margaret Carter is well known by the people Natalia used to work for, there has to be more to her taking responsibility for her, there had to be an angle to this that made sense to her. But there wasn't, it's just that Natalia didn't know any different. She had been used for as long as she could remember. She didn't understand that Peggy wasn't trying to use her. She was simply trying to help her.

Though Angie had given the day to day running of her theater group over to a brilliant young director, she was still very much involved in the theater world. Now that they were back in New York she taught a class once a week, and this semester they were working on a production of The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. One of the characters is named Natasha and after hearing the name said by Angie as she's on the phone with one of her students, it begins to haunt Natalia's dreams. Dreams already full of names and faces that haunted the girl every night.

Peggy hears the soft whimpers as Natalia thrashes in her bed. It isn't the first time she's heard the girl in the midst of a nightmare, but Natalia had normally forced herself awake by the time Peggy reached her. This time when Peggy stepped into the room she had given the girl to call her own, Natalia was still asleep. Peggy knew better than to try and wake the girl from a nightmare while within striking range so she had to do it from afar, and with the hope that Natalia hadn't hidden a knife under her pillow. "Malen'kiy dikiy kotenok," Peggy calls out in a firm but gentle voice that should be more than loud enough to awaken a person trained to sleep lightly and aware. In a rare moment when Natalia wasn't being skittish about Peggy's motives, she daringly argued with Peggy, and Peggy had called her a feral kitten in Russian. The nickname had stuck. "Nat, malen'kiy dikiy kotenok, wake up darling."

Natalia awakens with a start and in a flash is on her feet with a weapon in hand.

"Are those my good sewing shears?" Peggy scolds, showing no fear, only parental annoyance. Taking a few steps closer to the panting girl Peggy holds out her hand. "Those are for decate threads, young lady, not for stabbing."

Peggy's voice grounds the shaken girl. She blinks a few times as she struggles to catch her breath, and then places the scissors into the older woman's outstretched hand. "Scissors just for sewing, you are such an old woman, like a babushka from the movies."

If Natalia were one of her other children Peggy would have reached out to caress her cheek and brush soothingly at her hair, but she wasn't. The girl was still wound too tightly to be touched just yet, if Peggy tried Natalia might strike out at her on instinct. So instead she asks, "Do you want to try to go back to sleep right away?" When Natalia shakes her head she smiles reassuringly and says, "Let's have tea and sit by the fire for a bit, then."

Peppermint tea and a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich was made before the pair settled in front of the fireplace. Peggy sat in a chair, while Natalia settled on the floor. Peggy watched the girl watching the flames as she ate her sandwich, and thought about the mutterings she'd overheard. She'd learned not to ask the girl about the name Yelena, that just shut her down completely for days. But that hadn't been the name she'd heard tonight, so once she was sure her ward was calm she asked, "Who is Natasha?"

Natalia tensed up a bit but not in the way she did just before she shut down and shut them out. It was just an uncomfortable and confused kind of way. "I don't know." She whispers as tears well and begin to fall. "I think," She pauses, unsure, uncertain, and then looks away from the flame and into Peggy's warm and comforting gaze. "I think, maybe, once upon a time, she was me."

Before the harsh cold voices of the Red Room that called her Natalia, there were warm voices that called out joyfully for Natasha. Voices that were always swallowed up by flames in her dreams. Without thinking the girl moves closer to Peggy, sitting near her feet. That's where she begins to sit whenever she tells Peggy things that are hard to speak of. When Barton found her she had just escaped being punished for failing her last mission. She had been ordered to track down and kill her best friend, Marina, who had fallen in love with a boy and a cat, but she couldn't do it. She had watched Marina for days, had seen her enjoying her life, her tiny apartment, her boyfriend, and her cat. Natalia felt something stir in her, and she just couldn't do it, so when she returned to the Red Room, she had been beaten and punished for her failure and weakness. Barton had gotten her out of Russian, but someone else had gotten her out of the Red Room compound, though she did not share that bit of the story with Peggy. Not even when the guilt over what could have become of him, of Alexei, if his betrayal were discovered, washed over her like waves leaving her unable to breathe.

Her new passports, one American and one British, listed her as Natasha Romanoff, and she used them to travel to England with Peggy and Angie. They were going to spend a few months at their country home, which is where Natasha had felt true peace for the first time in her life. She roams the woods, swims in the lake, helps Peggy in the garden and Angie in the kitchen, and she is happy. One warm summer evening Natasha gets lost in her thoughts and remains in the woods long after dark. Peggy and Angie are frightened and concerned, worried she has been hurt, or worse until she comes strolling in all happy as she pleased. Once they're sure she's safe and unharmed they begin to scold her. Natasha begins to argue, in English at first, but then she shifts to Russian and Peggy shifts just as easily.

"I am not a child!" Natasha argues as she stands toe to toe with Peggy. "I survived the wilderness of Siberia before I was ten!"

"Your ability to survive in the woods is not the point here, Natasha!" Peggy scolds. "Angie and I didn't know if you were safe, or if something had happened to you! You were gone for hours without checking in. You missed dinner, and did not answer when we called."

"My phone is dead." Natasha huffed, but the look in Peggy's eyes, and in Angie's when she looked over at the other older woman standing nearby with her arms crossed over her chest, had her deflating quickly. Her annoyance at being treated like a child gave way to surprise and then guilt. She had scared them because they cared about her. It was the first time she released they weren't just compassionate keepers of a living weapon who just happened to be a minor. These two women cared about her. Perhaps even loved her?

"Natasha?" Peggy's voice had softened after watching the emotion shift through the girl's expression.

Natasha drops her gaze for a moment before looking at Peggy and saying, "Prosti, Babushka." And then over at Angie. "Mi dispiace, Nonna." She dropped her gaze again. "I didn't mean to frighten you. I lost track of time and my thoughts."

Angie walks over and places two fingers under Natasha's chin to raise her gaze to meet her own. She is surprised but also filled with joy to hear their new names whispered in cautious but genuine reverence. "Sei perdonato, bambina." She smiles warmly and brushes at Natasha's red hair. "I'll get your dinner, sweetheart, I've kept your plate warm." She taps Natasha's nose before wagging a finger at her. "But no dessert, little girls who make their Nonna's sick with worry don't get chocolate cake."

Natasha goes to whine, she loves chocolate cake, but Peggy tuts at her. "Actions have consequences, my girl." Peggy emphasizes her point with a sharp smack to Natasha's rear end. "Next time make sure your phone is charged before you leave the garden. Don't think that just because I'm an old woman I can't take a naughty child over my knee, Natasha Margaritaovna Romanoff."

Later when everyone is tucked away in their beds and the English countryside sings a lullaby through partially opened windows, Angie sighs softly beside her wife. "You were right, English."

Peggy raises an intrigued eyebrow as she places her book mark in her book and takes her glasses off before setting both book and glasses on the night table beside her water glass. "I have, on occasion, been known to be." Peggy replies as she shifts a bit and then invites her wife to rest her head on her chest. "Dare I ask what exactly i was right about this time?"

Angie settles into Peggy's embrace with a warm contented sigh. "Natty, and her needing us. Though as it turns out, we needed her too. It feels good to be taking care of a child who needs us again."

"It does." Peggy agrees. Just as Elizabeth and Edwin, their grandchild, Sharon and Tony, were their children, so now was Natasha. Peggy's heart was full, and she smiled with contented joy.

When she is of age Natasha makes the choice herself to join SHIELD with Peggy's blessing. Although she is already highly skilled she still has to be trained in the ways of SHIELD, lessons she gets from Fury and Peggy. Not everyone is thrilled to have her around, some still seeing her as nothing more than Russia's Black Widow, but she isn't bothered by that because she has the support from the only people who truly matter. She has Peggy and Angie, Fury, Barton, Sharon, and she even manages to grow on Maria Hill. Natasha Romanoff becomes one of SHIELD's best, and then she becomes an Avenger, a hero, her family grows, and she knows she owes it all to Barton who rescued her and Peggy who saved her.