Sadly, I still don't own Marvel.
"That was a hard punch," the arrow man said. He was putting some kind of cream on his cheek, where a dark color was forming from when it met her fist just ten minutes before.
"Sorry," she said unapologetically as she downed a whole bottle of water.
The two were still in the training room, not noticing the two men talking from inside the glass partition. They had agreed to a fifteen minute break after the thirty-minute sparring session.
"Look," Clint was the first to notice. He wrapped a towel around his neck and set on a bench, gesturing his head for Natasha to look at Fury and the soldier next to him.
"He's looking better," the agent said as she unwrapped the tape she had put on her hands for the session.
"Do you think he's gonna work here?" Barton downed a bottle of water just as she had.
She shrugged her shoulders, looking at the two men's body language. "From the legend that we all know, he probably would," she responded. There was a Captain America exhibit, just downtown, painting a clear picture of who and how he was. Howard Stark had insisted on it, and Margaret Carter spearheaded the production, to make sure that everything was correct. It outlined every part of the soldier's life, how driven and motivated he was. It talked about his insurmountable willpower, which is difficult to believe for anyone who didn't know him. Natasha was skeptical of that, considering that she's never met anyone like how Agent Carter paints him to be; not in her six years at S.H.I. . and not ever before that. She's met selfless people, sure. She knows Clint would die for her in a heartbeat, but they were only selfless for causes that only concerned them. Soldiers will die for their people, but not really anyone else. He was just a typical American soldier to the agent, but Carter explains how freakishly different he was from the rest.
Natasha felt that the woman's biases clouded the way she saw the Man out of Time. Special people exist, but not in the way the legend of Captain America exists.
Then the men left the viewing room and appeared in the same place they were in. She had just finished unwrapping her hands when Clint spoke. She was facing her back to them. "Fury," Barton said. Natasha turned, drinking more water.
"Agent Barton," the man with the eyepatch said. He turned to the woman. "Romanoff." She responded accordingly with a nod. "I want you to meet Steve Rogers."
Natasha knew that the little kid jumped out of Hawkeye, but he wouldn't admit it. He was no more of a fanboy than Agent Coulson, but he definitely could be. "Clint Barton," he said as he walked over to shake the soldiers hand. "Nice to meet ya, Cap—can I call you that?" The agent stammered and Rogers laughed. The woman couldn't help but roll her eyes as she approached right behind him.
"Agent Natasha Romanoff," she said, not letting a hand out because that's not how she is. She nods and…that's about it, just nods.
"Nice to meet you, ma'am," he said, smiling at her and keeping his distance.
"Just Agent Romanoff is fine," she said, her inner-self wincing at the "ma'am".
"Steve," he said. He noticed the other agent keep composure, but his energy tells him that he's extremely excited to see the man. It made the captain smile a little bit. The woman, however, was stoic in nature. Not emotionless, but very affectless. She was all business, it seems.
"He'll be joining us for a few training sessions, the way we handle recruits," said Fury, "just so he can get a sense of what it's like before making up his mind."
Steve and the director had come to an agreement that he would feel out how it is to be a part of the organization before completely making up his mind on if he wanted to join or not. Steve knew that it was definitely a special case, because Fury had said that the interest to join the group is incredibly high. Anyone would give a limb to be here. The director knew that he was deserving of this special case anyway, because he isn't like everyone else and any other government organization would try to recruit him in a heartbeat. The director was going with his needs in order to acquaint him into S.H.I.E.L.D. as best as he could. He was an asset that he needed. The Captain's lack of ego, however, prevents him from seeing this circumstance that way. He just wanted to see what kind of life he would be living if he did take this. It's more about feeling out how Peggy and Howie's organization was doing and how he can accustom himself to this without jumping in too quickly. It's not like he was looking at other opportunities, because his naïveté and his humility prevents him from thinking about this in that way. He's looking at what this place is supposed to be doing for the world, not what it's going to do for him.
"It's just going to be for a few weeks," the soldier said. He's sure that the two highest-skilled agents wouldn't be the ones babysitting for him, but to his surprise, he finds that Barton will be the one showing him the reigns.
"I might be stepping down because of my family," said the archer. "Maybe get a desk job, or one that provides more safety."
It was something the soldier understood. He had seen that in his future with Peggy, the only kind of selfishness anyone could picture him undertaking. It wasn't in the books now, though. With his past week of pondering and thinking about his new life, he had come to a conclusion that this was a second chance of him being a soldier. He had considered his first life to be where, teleologically, it would have ended with a family, maybe a couple of sons and daughters. He felt that this time was supposed to be lived completely in duty. He was prepared to give his life to defeat world threats the first time, with the expectation that he gets a dance afterwards. This time it would be different. This time would be for the people.
Training happened three times a day, except he wasn't with everyone. Apparently his enhancements would make it unfair, which he understood. Clint Barton told him everything that would happen in that training, though, and they both replicated it in their own way. Cap would spar with Clint two of those three times a day and he's won every single time. It's been a week now and Natasha has never seen her partner so frustrated. The other time of training, he would be by himself killing some punching bags that Clint is forced to write off for the budget to Fury. "You're costing us money, you know," the agent said through the microphone inside the glass partition as Steve tears open a third bag. He laughed slightly and mouthed "sorry".
The captain was very amused at the kind of strength Clint Barton held. He was extremely well-versed in his fighting, it was almost insane. The only way Steve ever beats him is through his strength and agility. He was also a little bit smarter than the archer, so he trumps him in combat. His aim though, Steve marvels at.
"Why don't you use guns?" The soldier yells as he loads a Glock.
"I guess I'm just more primitive," the other laughs, tearing an arrow in half for the fourth bullseye in a row.
"You're costing us money, you know," Steve echoes. The archer smiles at the humor, the only one he's exhibited in the two weeks he's been alive.
Natasha watched the two from afar. Barton had expressed to her how he wanted to retire from the field and, despite her disappointment, saw just how happy he was working with the soldier. He grabs her guns and takes an open space, firing one shot into the chest of the target silhouette. She fires the remaining rounds all in the same hole. Steve was astonished. The pair were incredible marksmen.
"It's nice to know we trump the super soldier at something," said Barton as he took his headphones off.
The soldier laughed. With humility, he refrains from saying how good he was at throwing things. The accuracy is unmatched, on par with their shooting skills. "That's nice to know, too," he replied. "She doesn't talk much, huh?"
They walked out of the shooting range and back into the building. The captain had clearance to go literally anywhere now, but he was still a little bit overwhelmed at leaving the compound. Clint nods at his statement. "Nat is…Nat."
The soldier didn't really understand what that meant.
"It means," the other started as if reading his mind, "she's very much kept to herself. I know as much about her as you do."
"But I heard you all have been working for six years," the soldier explained, recalling to their banter when the were sparring.
"Exactly." They reached the line for food at the cafeteria. "The only things I know about her are the things that happen when we're on missions together. I've never gotten a glimpse of what her past looks like. I mean I know what it may have looked like, but eh's never told me how it felt."
"Not even where she's from?"
"I don't wanna speak for her, but everyone here knows she's from Russia," said Barton as he set his food down and the other sat across from him. "She's probably the greatest assassin this world's ever seen." And Clint continues to explain how he was sent in to terminate her. That was all that he and everyone else in the compound knew.
To summarize: She was an assassin for the KGB, so good that she was labeled a threat to world order and someone had to be sent to eliminate her. The archer saw something in her that forced him to send her back alive. S.H.I.E.L.D. had to isolate her for a few months, almost a year, to really conceptualize what she was. No one knew what happened behind the scenes. All that Clint knew was that she came back to headquarters and was sequestered here for awhile, just like Steve, and he was put on the look out for her. They worked so well together that Fury gave her his stamp of approval and him, a new partner.
"I was known for working alone," Barton said as he devoured a burger. "I was kind of upset when he said I needed to tail her for this amount of time." He paused. "And then we were sent to Budapest, my first time working with an actual partner. It went so well, I had never seen Eyepatch so excited during our briefing." Steve laughed at the moniker. "Then someone called us STRIKE Team: Delta, and then six years later, Maria Hill says we're probably the greatest agents Shield's ever seen behind Fury. Not to brag, though," Clint said with a laugh.
"Fury's really that good?"
Clint lit up. "Oh, yeah," he said with his eyes lighting up. "There are so many stories around him." And he left it at that.
Natasha was back on the training floor. She hasn't trained with Clint much because of his babysitting responsibilities, so she's put herself on the simulator. The setting was at its max, where the computer wins practically at anything. She's yet to tally a win against it and with the history of its installment, no one actually has. There hasn't been many fights in her life that she's lost, other than when she fell against Barton, which is a loss she's happy about because it led her here.
The simulator went on. The reason why it was so difficult is because it was personal. Every single agent or person in the building has their dossier in the system, allowing the computer to adapt to the most physically demanding of characters. It's also geared to fight with psychological tactics, being able to access the mind of its user, and it creates infinite scenarios that make it impossible to face the same thing and situation more than once. That's why no one's been able to beat it. It's everyone's worst nightmare come to life.
She enters the training room, aware of the false reality. The hard part is the fact that everything looks so real. Someone jumps from beneath her, strangling her but she was able to get through that quickly. A few more people get in her way which she was able to get by harmless.
And then she enters a place she's never been to before. It looks familiar, though. Rooms of glass windows. She was walking on a hallway with no end. Every time she looked inside the window, it was a girl shooting a man in the head. And it happened over and over. The same girl and the same man. He was tied to a chair, sack over his head, beaten up. The woman pulls the trigger, emotionless, and the bullet enters his forehead through the impeding fabric. Bullseye. Natasha didn't know what she was supposed to do until someone comes out and punches her. And then she brought a full-on fight with someone she didn't know. He had a mask on and so she punched it off, revealing a man she never knew but looked eerily familiar. The fight continued, and the hallway was moving as if she were on a travelator (like the ones in airports). The scenery passes by her, but the clips were the same. A girl shooting, and now voices echoed as a woman comes to collect the girl. People were removing the body in order to put another one on the chair. A living one. "You know what to do, Natasha." The woman said, and now the spy was distracted. The girl walked in front of the man, opens his mouth and places the barrel in it. He pleads and cries. And then there was a shot. Emotionless. Blood splatters on the girl, but she doesn't even blink.
Natasha gets punched again, by the same man. "You don't remember me?" Said the man with a distinct Russian accent, laughing through his teeth with a smug grin. Natasha continues to fight him, but it seemed that she was losing despite her being the only one to land punches. He was laughing through it all. It was a nightmare. And the scene of the little girl, named after her, putting the gun in a man's mouth, shooting him dead, played in the background.
Natasha gets knead in the stomach and she has to grab onto her abdomen despite it not hurting that bad. She gets hit in the face three times. The man is on top of her, laughing and launching throws as if she were a punching bag. The simulation hurts her, though it won't leave any bruises. She tries to get out, but the scene before her, the girl shooting someone in the mouth continues, and she kept her full attention on the distraction despite the man landing blows. All she has to say is "withdraw" and everything around her disappears. And so she does. She tries to get up, but falls to her knees. A tear falls, one she didn't even know was there.
She stood after a minute of sulking. A tear shed is an exertion of energy that could be used toward something else. She thought. It came from the Red Room as a way for their masters to control their crying. She didn't cry once in the many years she was there. She doesn't really remember how many years.
The simulation opened thoughts that she didn't even know were there. She couldn't remember any of them, even her younger self. She doesn't know the man she fought, even though in the back of her mind she does, considering that the simulation gathers from the user. It was vexing. She had been through the simulation before, uprooting people from her past, different ones every time. The hard truth is that she was never able to recover them. She sees them once in the simulation, is perplexed with their existence, and once it ends, there's always an itch in her mind. She cannot ever pinpoint it, to the point that after her fifth time undergoing the training, she just surrenders the fact that she will never know. She's let it go.
This one hit hard, though. She left the facility on her motorcycle and can't help but wonder about her past, the first time she's ever sulked her lost former life in years.
Steve watched the fallen spy. He doesn't know what happened. Spectators can't see what the user is fighting unless it's activated. He remembered when Peggy told him that he didn't know women. It's been seventy years and he's aware that he's still not, given that those seventy years were spent with no social interaction. He looked on with agony and decided to leave before she stood up, knowing that the woman probably wouldn't have been okay with him seeing her vulnerable.
He went back to his room and pondered the woman, how similar they were. He thinks of the fact that there is no one for either of them in this age. Clint says that she was looking for a purpose and hopes that she found it here. Steve isn't sure if he's found it here.
She wonders if she'll be okay. But, like any strong woman he knew, from his mother to Peggy Carter, he understands that they're always okay.