AN: Good news: I am alive and kicking. Bad news: My tablet with all my works in progress is not. I lost 3+ partial chapters/stories. Teach me to save locally instead of to the cloud. Good news: A2 comes out Thursday. Bad news: I have been spoiled about the ships and I'm feeling pouty. Come on, Joss. Would it have killed you to allow me to have this? You took away Buffy and Angel. You destroyed Oz and Willow. Let's not even get started on Mal and Inara. *grumps*
Anyway, I'm trying to work through my bitterness through fanfic. That's healthy, right?
The Black Widow sat alone in her interrogation room, waiting for a SHIELD agent to either get over his fear of her or stop trying to psych her out. She wasn't uneasy with her wait – just bored. Eventually, a strong-jawed man came into the room and sat across from her, watching her silently.
'Amateurs,' she thought, if they thought this kid's stuff would work with her. She just stared back, a pleasantly neutral expression on her face.
The man broke first. "So what do you want to tell us?"
She smirked. "You? Nothing. The man with the eyepatch. That's who I want to talk to." No need to sit there with tweedle-dum for any longer than necessary.
"Too bad. I'm who you get. You are not exactly in a position to be demanding things." Tweedle stared at her with his best menacing glare.
Unfortunately for him, she had experienced much worse. "Fine. Then kill me." In some ways, she had to admit it would be a relief. It's the only retirement she ever expected.
His bluff called, he sat back and clenched his jaw. She saw his eyes deviate slightly, which cued her to the fact he was getting instructions through the earpiece that she was sure was there, even though she couldn't see it.
A few more moment passed and Nick Fury walked in the room. He nodded to Tweedle who promptly left the room. For a moment, Natasha wasn't entirely sure whether this had been an act for her benefit, to make her feel more in control. In the end, it didn't matter. She had come this far, she might as well go the distance.
"Talk." Fury was straight and to the point, she'd give him that.
"I want this to not be recorded or observed," she countered immediately.
"I want you to be in a body bag, so I guess we're both not getting things we wanted today. At least not yet." Fury gave her a friendly, yet menacing smile.
'Please Natasha.' For some reason, she could hear Clint's admonishment to cooperate. It bothered her that he had insinuated himself into her psyche so quickly. "What I will tell you, you can tell who needs to know, you can write out whatever you want, but most of the intel is sensitive. And there is a lot I can't tell without exposing myself."
"And I care about that, why?"
"Because I will be completely open and honest with you, one on one, otherwise I'll edit and you might lose important information." Natasha knew that the more people that knew the details of what happened to her, not only the more damage that could be done to her, but the more pitying looks she would get.
Fury considered her words, in light of what he knew about the program in Russia to begin with; it probably was bad enough that even this killer didn't want everyone to know about it. And if he knew, he would have leverage over her. He understood the offer she was making.
"Would you trust me, even if I said I'd take the deal? That the room was clean and without observers?"
A small smile. "Of course not. But if Barton checked it over and said it was clean, I'd believe him."
Fury's eyes narrowed. "What do you have on Barton? Are you two fucking?"
A small muscle near her ear twitched. "Nothing. He trusted me when he had no good reason to do so. He's never even looked at me in a sexual way." Fury seemed incredulous at that and gave her a questioning look. "I don't know. Maybe I'm not his type. But I would trust him to look for bugs."
"Fine. But I get the final call about what is intelligence and what is just your personal history and what goes in the file."
She hesitated just slightly, but finally nodded. "Agreed."
After Hawkeye cleared a conference room of all monitoring devices, he and Phil went to sit and do their own formal debrief. His eyes cast back toward the room where Natasha and Nick were, the concern evident on his face.
"Nick won't just kill her," Coulson said while sipping his coffee. "Though I still don't understand why you care so much."
"How did you feel when I was being interrogated after you brought me in?" Hawkeye countered.
Phil shook his head. "Touché." He took another long sip from his cup. "Do you really think she wants out? That she'll survive the aftermath?"
The archer watched the cream swirl in his coffee. "I think she could. She got very close to ending it while we were holed up, but I think the person underneath the web is stronger than anyone could imagine."
"Really though, did you sleep with her? You know it will come out and there will be hell to pay."
Clint fairly growled the next sentence. "When you hear even a portion of what she's been through, you'll understand. She tried throwing herself at me, for payment," he said in disgust.
Phil winced. Like Hawkeye, he figured it was probably one of the most used currencies she had in her life, unfortunately. "Alright. So it is purely altruistic."
"Pretty much. I'm a saint." Clint's expression was absolutely deadpan.
Phil sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Start at the top."
Hawkeye's debrief was ended far before Natasha's. He paced impatiently around the corridors around the conference room that the Widow and Fury were holed up in. He was just as curious as the others who tried to find excuses to go by to see if they could eavesdrop, but he respected her desire for privacy in the matter. He had a feeling that there would be some very ugly things she was telling Fury.
Eventually, the door opened. Never before and likely never again had he ever seen Fury look so bleak, so…shaken. Fury rearranged his features into a scowl when he saw Barton, jerking his head back behind him. "Go. She's in. But she's on your watch and your conscience. Don't make me regret this, Hawkeye."
Relief flooded the sniper and he quickly went into the room. Natasha looked wan and exhausted. Telling her story clearly took a toll on her. She didn't even try to hide it – that perhaps showed more than anything that she trusted the man who brought her in. "We'll grab food on our way to quarters and then we can get some decent sleep."
"You and I both know that decent nights sleep are hard to come by." Just a ghost of a smirk.
"Well, we'll have to do the best we can then." He held out a hand to her, which she took. He led her out of the interrogation room and into her new life at SHIELD.