Natasha's story began as a depiction, which was as fitting of a beginning as any. Fake family, sleeper town, stolen childhood.
Her and Yelena were separated as Natasha's training was refined and Yelena's mind-moulding began. The children never crossed paths again.
As the years passed, countless bodies fell from Natasha's nimble fingers, gallons of blood were spilt in the name of Natalia Romanova. Days came and went, slipping from her long-term memory like butter as she got reset after every mission. Natalia never failed. She was a good girl. She always came home.
That was until she was intercepted by Clint Barton.
Clint was sent to intercept her mission and kill her. He made a different call.
...
Natalia shifted in her spot in the rafters. Her target, a military consultant with enough military codes to blow up Russia paced below, gesticulating wildly as he talked into his cell phone. Natalia watched as the gun in his waistband shifted in his jeans. She waited for the man to sit back in his office chair, not wanting to risk missing her shot and compromising the mission. She waited patiently, ready to strike. She blinked. The man below her slumped to the floor, an arrow in his temple.
Natalia cursed in Russia, hands curled around her glock as she twisted to find her enemy. An arm curled around her neck from behind, cutting off her air. She jerked harshly, shifting her gun to her right hand and throwing her shoulder back to whip the butt of the gun into her assailant's face. The grip loosened but didn't release. Instead, a body rolled heavily into the back of her, pushing them both through the gap in the rafters. Natalia's arm smacked loudly against the metal rafter pole, and she lost her grip on the gun, which fell to the floor and let off a round as the two assassins crashed through her target's wooden desk. The desk splintered beneath them, knocking the air out of Natalia. Breathing quickly and cursing colourfully, she quickly rolled away from the remains. She pushed herself into a crouch. Blood dripped from the new cuts littering her hands and face. Her hand was at her belt and had retrieved two knives in less than 5 seconds. From the opposite side of the room, a man stood, an arrow knocked for her forehead. She didn't recognize him but was familiar with the bird-like symbol on his shoulder. SHIELD.
"I promise I can release this arrow before you can throw those knives," said the American, stone-faced.
Adrenaline rolled in Natalia's stomach, but she knew he was right. She was bested.
"So do it," she spat, Russian accent thick.
The man considered her coldly. Then, quick as a flash, he pointed the arrow down, shooting the arrow through the fleshy part of her leg. Momentarily shocked by the flash of pain, she instinctively reached to curl over the injured leg. As she did, a prick stuck her neck. She whipped her head back up, staring up at her assailant. She could already feel her limbs weakening. Sedative.
"You were sent to kill me," she stated, confused at the turn of events.
"Yeah, I was," he replied.
Her mind was slipping, muscles as strong as noodle strings. She slumped to the floor. She didn't have the energy to ask any more questions. As her eyes fluttered, the man spoke again, voice calm.
"Hello Natalia, my name's Clint. I think we'll meet again. "
Blackout.
…
Clint was sent with her to Budapest to take out Dreykov. Fury said it was because they made a good team, but Natasha knew it was that so Clint could take her out if she became a threat to SHIELD or if her loyalties wavered.
Clint and her got their chance after a few weeks dodging the Hungarian government. A clear shot, but Dreykov's daughter would be collateral damage.
"Natasha?" questioned Clint from the com line.
She made the call and the red soaked her ledger.
...
Saving James Barnes was a favour to Steve and painful to be a part of. Natasha saw herself in the blank stare, the tense obedience, and the painful confusion at being treated as a human rather than a weapon. Watching him navigate life outside Hydra reminded her of her own life outside of the red room. Clint used to sit on her bed and pry her hands off of her skull as she tried to think around the gaps in her memory. Steve did the same to James now. " Natalia", James called her.
It was nice, in a way, to have someone understand so intimately what it was like to be taken apart and sewn together again in a deeply unfamiliar way. Moulded, changed, unrecognizable.
What kept her up on long nights, what she couldn't ever tell him, was that her skin recognized his touch and her mind burned in his presence in a way it only did when she was on the cusp of something she wasn't supposed to access. She had known James once, loved him, perhaps. Hell, maybe she still did.
She never told him.
….
Twenty-one years later she goes back to Russia, to face her demons and to stop the creation of more widows.
Yelena is there. дорогая сестра. Natasha can't help but see the smiling, sweet six-year-old she once knew as she looks into the war-hardened eyes in front of her now. Her heartaches, but she doesn't say a word. Yelena cocks her head at her, considering.
"I didn't expect to see you back here."
"I'm finished running."
Yelena's jaw set, muscle ticking.
"Funny, how you come back when we've already lost. There's nothing left, Наталья. Dreykov is impossible to find and impossible to kill. Go back to America " She spat the last word out, lip curling into a snarl.
"Елена-"
Yelena interrupts by whipping out a small knife from her utility belt and throwing it against the wall, a few inches away from Natasha's right eye. Natasha doesn't move, watching as hurt ripples across Yelena's face before she regains control.
"Traitor to the red room, traitor to your family, traitor to Russia. Is there no part of you that's real, 'Natasha'?" She mocked, finger quoting Natalia's American name.
"It's real that I want Dreykov dead," Natasha stated, levelly. Her expression doesn't twitch.
"Fine," Yelena snarls. "Let's go. I hope your new Avengers family created some useful tracking gadgets because I have no бля idea where to start. Lead the way, сестра".
Later, as the SHIELD cars race across the dirt to meet her, in the wake of leftover redroom rubble, Yelena folds Natasha's hands over her jacket.
"It has a lot of pockets," she smiles.
...
She was never a match for Thanos. She was no supersoldier, no alien, no titan.
Little Natalia, frail and desperately human.
She watches as the people she had lent her heart to crumble to ashes.
Sam. Wanda. James.
She watches as Steve's knees give out over Vision's corpse. Her fingers lifted to brush the buckles of Yelena's jacket. Was Yelena gone too?
The deafening silence provided no answers.
...
Five years passed, some people managed to move on as Steve told them to in his publicity announcements. Natasha didn't. Half of her American family was dead and her best friend was missing and wanted by the very organization they had fought so hard to survive for. She still didn't know if anyone from her Russian family had made it, and had no idea if Yelena had made it out of Natasha's mess. There seemed to be no hope, no way to fix their cataclysmic mistakes.
Until Scott Lang showed up alive on their front step.
Steve, Scott, and herself drove to Tony's cabin home where they were greeted by the man himself, worn, tired and markedly warmer holding his four-year-old daughter. They made their case but were denied with a pinched look and a protective curl of his shoulders over Morgan. Natasha clenched her jaw and turned away, feeling sick and guilty as the overwhelming jealousy took her breath away. Tony had a family now, people to come home to at the end of the day to love and care for. Natasha didn't even know if her family was alive. She understood his fear, Tony was often overwhelmed by his anxiety and now was no different. She could see the war behind his eyes, could see how he longed for the boy he had mentored but didn't dare hope. She just had to hope that the seed they planted would be enough.
…
Lord have mercy on Tony Stark's guilt complex.
It did work, and Tony solved time travel within a few hours. He arrived on the scene a few days later, scared shitless but desperately hopeful. Natasha had never been so happy to see the bedraggled genius. Half of her chosen family was under the same roof again, now she had managed to track down and convince a half-crazed Clint to join back. She could see how close to the edge Clint really was, how desperation and misery crawled underneath his veins, making him antsy and restless. It was only a matter of time before Clint really did become compromised to the point of danger to the mission.
Time to get to work.
...
Unsurprisingly, it was the two master assassins who were sent to the dominion of death, Vomir.
" A soul for the stone."
Natasha, being a master of manipulation herself, could see in Red Skull's face it wasn't a bluff. To get the soul stone, one of them would have to die. She knew what she had to do. She was alone while Clint had a family to return to. "I have no place in the world."
Clint touched her forehead with his own. Her heart ached but her determination didn't waver.
They tussled, each unwilling to let the other get to the edge. Clint was a great assassin, but he wasn't a match for her, not when she was focused like this. She was trained in Soviet Russia and had risen to the top of her class. She was the most ruthless assassin Russia had ever manufactured. When Clint threw himself off the cliff, Natasha dove after him, tackling him midair and dislocating her shoulder as Clint managed to grab her wrist on her way down.
Clint grunted as her rope tugged harshly on his hip. He held her wrist so tightly it hurt, but she could feel his grip slipping as their combined weight and awkward angle took their toll. She looked down to jagged grey stone and up to the purple skies and black clouds. It was nice up here, she thought absently. Quiet.
"Where else am I going to get a view like this?"
She looked back up to the face of one of the people she loved most in the world. The man who had given her hope and a second chance. He was crying, hot tears sliding down his battle-worn face. She quirked her mouth at him, one last goodbye.
"Let me go. It's okay."
Getting everyone back. That was the mission. Natalia never failed.
"Tell Yelena, Clint. Tell her I Iove her."
She kicked herself off of the wall.
They say you are more than what the world makes of you. They say that as long as you know who you are, that's all that matters. Natasha knew better.
The crimson blood spilling from her skull cleared the last of the red from her ledger.
