AN: I'm slowly moving things over to ao3, but while I was reading through stuff, this extra interlude came to me of what Natasha's childhood might have been like. Warnings for abuse of children, including sexual, and generally disturbing content. My mind is a little dark I guess because I was thinking about her past and thinking of the best ways to create sociopathic girls.
Natalia Romanova and Nick Fury sat down at a conference room table, sizing the other up. Natasha noted that she had been given a comfortable chair by Clint when he cleared the room. He wasn't setting up any of the stupid interrogation tactics like giving her a smaller, uncomfortable chair. First, she knew he was better than that, and second, she suspected he actually wanted her to have a comfortable chair for this discussion. A little flame of warmth in her chest flared, but she didn't give any outward signs, of course.
"Alright, if you're going to talk in private, I'm listening." Fury went straight to the point and definitely was not enamored with just hearing himself talk. He wanted to hear Natalia's story.
"I have some memories of my parents. Or I think I do. Honestly, at this point, some of my background is a mystery to me too, and has been heavily manipulated. But I think I remember them." She paused for a moment while she tried to conjure an image or feeling in her mind to try and be sure of something true, then pushed it aside, because it really didn't matter for this story.
"My parents died when I was three. Or they were killed. Or they sold me. Or I was kidnapped." A shrug of her shoulders. "I came into the possession of the Russian government, though I didn't know it at that time." Her face darkens just slightly in foreshadowing. "I was one of many girls. We were kept in cages, like dogs." Her lips raised in a smirk. "English could be counted as a native language for me. We had a TV that was always on, showing us different movies, TV shows, things that I later learned would be important for me to know to be able to blend better."
"We would be taken out of the cages to fuck different men. That probably started when I was five or six? We never kept great track of our ages. You really started to look forward to it, because you also usually got better food and the more they liked you, the better you were treated. All things considered, it is a pretty small price to pay for good food and a night in a comfortable bed. We also would get taken out for fighting."
"When we were little, the fights were just playground fighting, and there would be no consequences for winning or losing, we would be taken back to our cages after. Maybe an extra piece of fruit if they like watching you." A happy smile crosses her face momentarily as she remembers. "I got a lot of fruit."
"Anyway, I don't know how many girls they started with, but eventually, some of the girls, their minds would break too much. I was seven I think when it first happened, a girl attacked a man while he was trying to fuck her and couldn't seem to stop screaming." Natasha gave a wry, bitter smile. "I guess it is impressive, it took that long to fully drive her to madness. Or perhaps there were others they quietly put down? Possibly. Anyway this time, they told both of the girls that were fighting that only one of them could leave the fight.
"It was surprisingly difficult to do, to kill other girls you had seen before and knew had no other choice." Natasha frowned at the memory; to her current self, it would be easy. At the same time, Nick Fury flinched when she seemed to be chiding herself for having difficulty killing other children who shared the same fate and the fact that she thought it should have been easy in the first place spoke a volume of information about her emotional capabilities.
"At first they didn't. But eventually, with enough enticement, they did." Natasha didn't elaborate on what "enticement" used, and for that, Fury was immeasurably grateful. "And when Lila eventually won, she was given extra food and time out of the cage. Only one "fight" was truly terrible. Both girls were stubborn and wouldn't fight. They eventually collapsed from dehydration, and all of the girls were made to watch as they waited to see who would die first. They never killed a girl that I saw: they always made us kill each other."
Fury noted that she narrated it like she wasn't present or participatory. He wondered how many girls she killed, and whether she was a spectator or the participant in the failed hunger strike. He doubted he would ever believe her, no matter what her answer was.
"When there were about 15 of us left, we were 'rescued'. Of course, it was just part of the psychological conditioning, in actuality. They said they were with the government, they were saving us from being kidnapped, took us to an isolated campus with a beautiful old house that was large enough for all the girls. We were told we had to be kept from people until we were evaluated and treated for our time in captivity because we were too dangerous and broken to be with normal people, and the government had dedicated a beautiful farm campus for our healing.
Natasha laughed and looked directly at Nick. "Our healing! God, we were stupid little girls." He visibly recoiled, both at her disgust at herself for thinking rescue was possible and the new layer in psychological torture she had undergone. She returned to her eyes not quite meeting his, going back into her memory.
"After a period of evaluation, we were each brought into an office told that they were very sorry, but we were too violent and sexualized to be allowed out into the general population ever, and that no one from our families wanted to see us ever again, because they were too ashamed of what we had done and had done to us, so custody was given to the state. And they would play that they were sorry for all this, but they were left with no choice but execution. Or…well, they could try and turn the horrible things done to us into something good for the Motherland.
"That's when training really began, when we purposefully started learning spycraft, better fighting techniques, arms, interrogation and torture. It started with ballet, as part of physical therapy from living in cages. Additionally, ballet ensures that all the muscle you build is long, not compact. They didn't want their girls being visibly strong.
"We were trained as the ultimate kompromats. Elegant killers, no sexual or moral inhibitions about any task. I performed my first honeypot mission when I was eleven. Successful, of course." Nick definitely heard pride in her voice with that pronouncement.
"Of course." He had stopped hiding his expressions not long after the story began. He felt that she had designed the interaction as a sort of test, she wanted to see his real reaction to what she was saying was. "And you haven't ever left the Red Room before."
"No. They really were ingenious in the methods of indoctrination. We were convinced that we were beyond broken, beyond all hope and that this was the only way to find any sort of life. We were worth nothing except as tools of the state." Nick's throat dried a bit as she spoke, thinking of the other girls still there and the ones that SHIELD had captured who had committed suicide. It made more sense suddenly. "When you officially 'graduate' from the program, they would strap us down, burn away our uterine lining so we would never have to deal with periods or worse, pregnancy. Obviously, none of us could ever be fit to raise a child.
"After graduation, you were given a bit more freedom for missions. Five girls from my group made it to the end alive. I was the favored one for wet work. They liked my style, and men like my body, which made my job easier, even fun at times."
"What changed?" Fury steepled his fingers. This was the crucial part. He needed to believe why and how she came to be in this office.
A twitch of her eyebrow. "Barton. It was over a year ago now I think? I was working a long term target. He didn't know who I was. He eventually realized I was intelligence as well." She rolled her eyes in fond annoyance. "A little slowly, in my opinion. But he… he helped me." She didn't struggle or stumble in telling the horrific details of her childhood, but she had difficulty with the kindness he showed her. "It was just that, we were caught in a storm and ended up in the same shelter." Her fingers fidgeted a little.
"Yes, I read the report."
"He didn't act like…like he was supposed to. He trusted me! He didn't even…" Now she looked angry and frustrated and unsettled. "He wasn't right and that made me question things and look into others…" She closed her eyes tightly. "But, it didn't even matter, because they still made us into monsters. No matter who did it." Her eyes opened again. "He didn't act like a monster, and he doesn't treat me as one either."
Natasha met Fury's eyes. "He just has this annoying way of wearing you down!" Fury resisted chuckling, but did smile at the angry pronouncement from the woman in front of him. Her voiced dropped its anger, now more in defeat. "He understands." Finally, a shrug of her shoulders. "It is better than the Red Room." And that was the truth at the bottom of it all. Barton opened her eyes to just how terrible the Red Room was, so anything would be better.
Nick Fury didn't say anything for a few beats, waiting for her to look back up at him. "It is, I swear to you." He wanted to touch her hand, but also recognized that it would not be appropriate or might be taken the wrong way, so held back. He meant the words too. His devotion to SHIELD and its principles gave him security in knowing that they were better than that, and maybe there was a chance for this woman.
The most important part of the debriefing was over – they had established a trust. They continued over her history in excruciating detail until the bleak nature and exhaustion over her past caused Fury to call it to a close.
"I'm not going to mandate therapy or psychological treatment." They had used such fronts to manipulate her as a child. "But if you want it, SHIELD will pay for it, wherever you want to go, whoever you want to see." Maybe she would trust enough eventually to use the SHIELD psych team, which was probably the best equipped, but he felt he needed to firmly establish the differences between SHIELD and the Red Room for her.
"And…Barton is going to be your shadow." A time frame wasn't mentioned but Natasha was sure it was open-ended, that he would be her handler until they trusted her enough to hand to someone else's care. "Don't let him down." With that, he stood and motioned for her to follow him out of the room. He needed to drink if he was going to be able to write a report on this, and possibly even to be able to sleep that night.