Because she had weapons in their home, Peggy Carter made sure her daughter understood gun safety and the rules around the weapons she kept because of her work. She started by showing a very young Natasha pictures and explaining what guns were and that she was never, ever to touch one. She was told repeatedly, as you had to do with young children, that if she ever saw one she was to leave the area and tell an adult right away. She explained that guns could hurt people, even take them away forever. It was something she reminded Natasha of a lot, just like not talking to strangers and if anyone ever touched Natasha in a bad way she needed to tell her or mama right away no matter what that person said. When Natasha was a little older, Peggy showed her an actual unloaded handgun in an attempt to demystify firearms. As Natasha got older still Peggy talked about the difference in how guns are portrayed in the movies, on tv, and in video games and the reality of gun violence. She'd even taken Natasha to the firing range to show her what a gun could do, which Angie hadn't approved of because she'd felt Natasha was too young, but Peggy wasn't going to take any chances. She needed her daughter to understand the dangers.
Natasha was twelve the first time Peggy took her to the range to teach her how to handle a gun. It was a continuation of teaching her daughter about firearm safety because she had guns in the house, but it was also a matter of making sure her daughter knew how to protect herself. Her work and her fears of it crossing paths with her wife and daughter was never far from Peggy's mind, so Natasha knew how to use the handguns in the lock boxes hidden in the upstairs and downstairs hall closets. Peggy explained in great detail how the weapon worked as she cleaned it while Natasha watched. Then once she'd loaded it, she stood behind Natasha and showed her how to hold it. "Adjust your grip, poppet. If the slide catches the webbing between your thumb and forefinger it's going to bloody hurt. That's it, Natasha, good girl."
Every so often instead of going to the Bradleys' gym for boxing lessons, Natasha and Peggy went to the firing range. Natasha wasn't very good at it for a long time. Unlike dancing, gymnastics, or martial arts, which came naturally to Natasha, marksmanship was a skill she really had to work at. And since she didn't get to go to a firing range often, and never without her Mum, she had to find other ways to practice. She took up darts, which became a nice way of spending time with some of her Martinelli cousins. Her Uncle Tommy had moved to Maryland when his wife had gotten a job at Walter Reed as a therapist. He co-owned a contracting business with his brother-in-law until he got hurt on the job, then he sold his half to his brother-in-law and bought a bar and grill. Natasha would spend afternoons there eating pasta, drinking Italian sodas, and playing darts with her uncle and his kids. Angie was the only Martinelli with a single child, giving Natasha lots of cousins, most of whom she actually liked. Though she would never have the same kind of close relationship she had with them that she had with Tony and Sharon.
In high school Natasha took archery as a P.E. elective. She also took fencing because she was secretly a nerd who liked to play rogues and warriors. It really wouldn't be until she was training with Melinda May and Maria Hill that Natasha's marksmanship really began to become exceptional. Before S.H.I.E.L.D Maria Hill had been a Marine sharpshooter, and Melinda May, well, May was just a general badass at everything. Natasha learned a lot from them, but there were just some aspects of the job that May and Hill couldn't teach her, things that not even her mother could prepare her for. Because of her training during university before officially entering S.H.I.E.L.D's academy, Natasha started her career as a Level 4 field agent. Agent Romanoff had been partnered up with a Level 2 analyst to track down a threat that turned into a firefight between Natasha and their target. In protecting her mission partner and the women the target had used as human shields, Agent Romanoff made the call to go for a kill shot. It was the first time she'd killed someone, and as she pressed her fingers to target's neck to check for a pulse that wasn't there, her stomach did backflips before tightening up into a heavy stone as she broke out into a cold sweat.
She managed to get through what happened next by fully going into what she would later call her Black Widow mode. Natasha became hyper focused on the mission, on being Agent Romanoff. If she hadn't turned herself over to being Agent Romanoff, all the congratulations she got upon returning to the Triskelion would have made her sick, and she couldn't give into the nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach or the tears wanting to burst forth. She had taken a life to save the lives of innocents and a fellow S.H.I.E.L.D agent, but that didn't stop her from feeling the way she did, she had still taken a life. Natasha manages to make it through several debriefs and inquiries, one of which had been attended by the Director who Natasha couldn't bring herself to look at. It wasn't until Natasha was finally left alone in the locker room that she simply couldn't handle it anymore. As soon as the door closed behind Hill following her, "Job well done, Agent Romanoff, you'll earn your first commendation for this. I'm proud of you. Try to use your time off to decompress, and don't put off meeting with Dr. Garner. Call me if you need to talk. Nat." Natasha was rushing into a stall to throw up. She heaved for a few minutes and then tugged and pulled at her uniform which suddenly felt as if it were constricting around her like a boa or a python. She couldn't breathe as the tears came.
When she was fairly sure she was done throwing up, Natasha stepped over to the sink to wash her face. She was going to shower and change into civvies but she didn't want to risk anyone seeing her looking like shit as she stopped at her locker before hitting the showers on the other side of the women's locker room. When she stepped back from the sink, Natasha was startled by an offered clean towel. When she turned to look to see who was holding it out to her, Natasha wasn't sure how to feel. "Director Carter."
"Agent Romanoff." Peggy replies, a slight crinkle to her eyes that said using that name was distasteful to her.
"Thank you." Natasha says, accepting the towel to dry her face.
"It's never easy," Peggy says as she moves to the sink to wash her hands. "No matter the circumstances, even when it was the right call, the right thing to do, taking a life is the hardest part of the job." Turning off the tap and grabbing a paper towel, Peggy turns to look at Natasha. "What you're feeling, how you're reacting to what happened, is normal. Not having a reaction isn't, those are the agents that concern me." Peggy tells her, her tone professional but her eyes betray her. She was concerned about her daughter and wanted to be there for her. "I was a woman in a man's war the first time I had to take someone's life. I couldn't react in the moment. I had to put it off until I was alone. I was sick, trembling, drank until the trembling stopped, and then got sick again. I didn't have anyone at the time to talk it out with, I couldn't let the men I was serving with know how it had affected me, I wouldn't find someone to confide in until much later, not until Captain Rogers. I hope you have someone you can lean on, Agent Romanoff, and if so, go home to them. Let them help you through this, even if it's just by being close."
Natasha nods. Her mother is telling her to go home, to let her and her mama fuss over her, and listen if that's what she needs. "Thank you, Director. I appreciate your concern, and I do have people I can talk to if I need to."
Peggy watches Natasha walk off towards her locker to gather her things and sighs softly, while thinking, 'Oh my poor poppet I never wanted this for you my darling.'
While she would end up going home to her mothers, Natasha couldn't handle that just yet, so she jumped on her bike and drove around the city for a few hours. When she finally roared into the driveway of the Carters' Maryland home, Peggy was on the porch waiting for her. She didn't say anything, she simply handed Natasha a glass of scotch which the younger woman took and then sat beside her mother on the swing. At first Natasha just leaned into Peggy's side, her Mum putting her arm around her shoulders to gently hold her close. Peggy pressed a kiss to her daughter's temple as she slowly began moving the swings back and forth and she spoke.
"Before the S.S.R. I ran missions for the S.O.E." Peggy began while Natasha sipped her drink. "I was mostly sent to France in the early days, picking up intel and or making supply drops, eventually I was sent to help out an operative in trouble or to work with Resistance cells." She took a drink from her own glass. Knowing she would be dredging up wartime memories, Peggy had busted out the really good fifty year old scotch to help them through the evening. "On one of my earliest missions I was to do an exchange with one of our operatives working within the Resistance. She was to give me the bundle of intel she'd gathered, and I was to give her the forged papers and cash to help move people in, out, and through Europe. Everything had gone to plan with the exchange, all I had to do then was wait for my extraction. We always crossed the channel at night, and preferably during the new moon when it was utterly dark, or during bad weather to conceal our movements." She took another drink. "It was a huge risk every time we did it. The Germans had posts on the channel islands, and subs patrolling the depths. But before I had to worry about any of that, I had to get to the shore, and that held its own risks."
Peggy couldn't risk making her way to the channel coast close to the village the Resistance cell was working out of. If by some chance she was caught, it wouldn't take much for the enemy to work out where she had been. So she had to put some distance between where she'd just been and where she would be picked up. With more and more French men being sent to work camps, a woman driving alone wasn't as uncommon a sight these days, but a car could still draw unwanted attention. So Peggy, like so many other French girls, rode a bike with a small parcel of rations in the basket to make it look as if she'd just picked up her allotment of 250grams of wholemeal bread, 8grams of butter, 6grams of cheese, 25grams of meat, and a tiny pot of jam. Peggy felt bad because she knew there was someone who actually needed this parcel of food to survive, not just as a cover for why she was out and about alone biking down the dusty backroads of France.
She had listened carefully to the French BBC broadcast for days, waiting for the hidden message in the static at the end that would confirm her pick up. Once she'd had that, she knew to make her way out of the village the following morning. Peggy's stomach cramped from the ground chicory and acorn used as a coffee and tea substitute, but she pushed on, just a few more miles and she could ditch the bicycle in the tall grass and start making her way through the woods to her rendezvous point. The first thing Peggy was going to do when she got back to Baker Street was have a cup of tea. And, with any luck, there would be letters from her mother and aunt to read while in the bath once she returned to her tiny shared flat just down the street from headquarters. Those small luxuries, tea and letters from home, gave Peggy enough incentive to keep pushing through. After leaving the bike behind, her calves and thighs burning from peddling such a long distance, her ass sore as hell from the uncomfortable seat, Peggy began her trek through the woods towards the shoreline.
Unaware of the young German officer who'd dismounted from his motorbike to take a piss in the woods, Peggy weaved her way through the trees wishing she had on a pair of boots like the fellas wear and not the oxford heels she had on. Despite the type of shoes she was wearing, Peggy didn't make a sound as she walked, which meant when she heard the rustle of footsteps in the tree litter on the forest floor and the snap of a twig, she knew she wasn't alone. Ducking behind the large trunk of a tree, she crouched down with her back and the palms of her hands pressing hard into the rough bark. Peggy held her breath. She prayed that the German soldier would just keep moving on without seeing her, but he stopped so close to where she was hiding she could smell the cheap German aftershave he was wearing. A single German soldier wandering the woods made no sense until Peggy spotted him taking a flask and compass out of his pockets. The satchel he wore marked him as a currier of some kind, the flask told her he was drunk, and the way he looked at his compass as he took off his cap to run his hand through his short blonde hair told her he was lost. Peggy rolled her eyes.
If only he had kept going the way he had been going, but he'd changed his mind on his direction, and while Peggy did her best to remain hidden, he spotted her. He yelled at her in German as he drew his sidearm. Peggy had no time to think, only to react while looking down the barrel of a German Walther P-38. She was a young woman alone in the woods, if he didn't kill her, she knew without doubt he would try to do worse to her. Plus, if it were discovered she was a spy, it would risk the men waiting on her by the shore and compromise the area. So Peggy drew her own pistol and fired. She watched as blood bloomed on the left side pocket of the soldier's tan uniform shirt. Her shot had hit him right through the heart. Her own heart, which had been racing with adrenaline just a second ago, stopped cold as she watched his body fall. She held her breath again as she watched to see if the soldier would get back up, and after a few minutes of couching behind the tree, she stood and began to slowly inch towards him. Both hands gripped her weapon as she walked towards the enemy soldier, kicking his fallen weapon out of reach. She looked down at him, there was no movement in his chest, and his blood continued to engulf the front of his shirt. He wasn't much older than she was, and she was barely an adult herself. While her hands were wrapped around her pistol they were steady and strong, but as she reached out to check for a pulse her hand shook so badly she couldn't tell if she even felt one.
She'd taken another human being's life, an enemy who would have killed her first if he'd had the chance, but still another human being. This; this was nothing like the sick to her stomach feeling she'd gotten the first time she'd shot an animal while hunting with her father. This felt like her heart and soul felt sick. But the feeling only lasted a moment until her training kicked in and she gave herself over to it. She took the satchel he had with him, checked his pockets for anything useful, and then dragged his body over to a fallen tree, covering it with tree litter and branches. Then she made sure to cover any signs of movement in the area and continued on her way to the banks of the channel.
One of the men rowing her back across the channel to England handed her a flask and Peggy drank the cheap gin greedily. Baker Street was impressed because the satchel had classified intel they never would have been able to get if not for Peggy's encounter in the woods. Her male colleagues congratulated her on killing her first kraut, passing her a coffee cup with the good whiskey in it. It didn't taste any better to her than the cheap gin she'd had in the boat or the cheaper sherry she had alone in her flat when she finally managed to make it home. She held the bottle over the side of the tub as she sank down until the water touched her chin and just let the tears come.
"Despite being pissed off my arse, I managed to haul myself out of the tub and into a night shirt." Peggy continues, still gently guiding the swing back and forth while playing with her daughter's hair. "I managed some sleep and then in the morning drank some bromo-seltzer and strong tea, and then carried on because I didn't have a choice. The few hours I did get to try and process what happened was a luxury. In the heat of battle during a war that lasts for years, more often than not the processing of one's actions and emotions comes later, comes after, when you're home in your bed beside the person you love, and you wake up screaming in the night covered in cold sweat and a ten ton weight on your chest."
Angie knew better than to reach out for Peggy until she was sure the other woman was fully aware of her surroundings. When the ghosts of war haunted Peggy's dreams, Angie would wait until those big brown eyes she loved so much turned towards her to see if she'd be awakened. "It's alright, English." Angie said softly as those doe eyes filled with guilt upon seeing her blue-green gaze looking back. "It's ok. Do you wanna talk about it?"
Normally Peggy would shake her head, apologize to Angie for waking her, and then retreat to the bathroom to wash her face and collect herself. But there were times when she would let Angie pull her close and hold her before her retreat, and sometimes she would even take Angie up on the offer of listening. "Everything in the heat of battle happens so fast it's impossible to take it all in, even for someone trained to notice every single little detail." She says softly, her body trembling a bit as she tries to shake off the ghosts of war. "They all look like him, whether I was directly involved in their deaths or not, they all look like that boy in the woods."
There was nothing Angie could say to fix things for Peggy, she had lived through hell and those scars would always be a part of her, but Angie could offer comfort and support until the ghosts of Peggy's past once again faded into the depths of her memory. Gently reaching out she pulls Peggy into her arms and holds her tight.
"Mum?" Natasha's voice is soft and low, They'd fallen into a comforting silence as they listened to the chirps of crickets, the songs of nocturnal song birds, and the hoot of a distant owl. Angie had checked on them a few times, bringing out ice water and snacks to counter the effects the whiskey will have on them in the morning. But Angie didn't linger, while not knowing the details, she knew that what was upsetting her daughter was work related, and that she had to leave up to Peggy's tender care.
"Hmm?" Peggy replies. Natasha was curled into her side, head on her shoulder, and Peggy had been resting her cheek on the crown of her daughter's head.
"Is this part of the reason you didn't want me to join Shield?" Natasha asks.
Peggy nods. "I knew the dangers you were getting yourself into, Nattie, and I wanted to protect you, mind, body, and soul." Peggy pauses a moment to think something through and then gently pushes Natasha into a sitting position so they can look each other in the eyes. "Despite what Nicholas may be teaching you, Natasha, you can not survive this job on your own. This part of the job, what you had to do on this mission, it will stick with you, Natasha. It will fade, but the specter of it will come and go, and you are going to need someone who will be there with you while you're going through it." She reaches out to caress her daughter's cheek and kiss her forehead. "You of course will always have me and your mama, but it never hurts to have others you love and trust as back ups."
Natasha understands and nods her acknowledgement of that before chucking and saying, "Nick says you worry to fucking much about his love life."
The Carter matriarch laughs. "If that damn fool boy had a love life I wouldn't worry so much."