Where Have All The Criminals Gone? (1/?)

(Natasha Romanoff/OC, Clint Barton, Rated M)

"She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon."

- Strange Little Girls, Neil Gaiman

Day One (Tuesday)

"Well?" Natasha asked, performing a perfect soutenu in her Perspex heels. Clint cocked his head to one side and took her in with a professional appreciation.

"Like white trash," he concluded after a moment, and Nat popped her gum with a grin.

"That's what I was going for," she replied, pulling the hem of her skirt back down for the millionth time that day. She was used to living in either combat gear or workout stuff, and marvelled at women who could wear stuff like this – the clingy dresses, the suspenders, the borderline-asphyxiating push-up bra – all the time. And Barton got away with nothing more than a damn lab coat. "Kinda. First impressions, and all that."

"Well," said Clint, flipping over a page of doctor's notes on his clipboard and peering at the hidden screen beneath it, "Fury's got good news and bad news for ya."

"Oh?"

"Your cellmate's the resident dealer at this prison, so if you can get in her good books then half the inmates'll probably be on your side. The bad news is that she's supposedly difficult to work with."

"I've worked with difficult people before," Nat said, now scraping her hair back into a ponytail with the aid of a liberal amount of gel. "Does it say what kind of difficult?"

"What do you think?" Clint asked, tucking the clipboard under his arm. "Of course it doesn't. Okay. Parrot the brief back at me, Talia Romanez."

"Somewhere in San Helios Women's Correctional Facility is the person who knows the identity and location of the Blue Moon assassin," Natasha relayed back to her partner. "I have two weeks to discover which inmate has that information and get it out of them. Upon gaining that information, I need to break out and meet you at the rendezvous point. The only people who know I'm here are you, me, Coulson and Fury. My name is Talia Romanez, I'm twenty-four, half-Hispanic, and I'm supposed to be serving five years for manslaughter after I ran a guy down with my Toyota. I come from a broken home, I'm a biter, and under no circumstances am I to kill anybody because that'll be way too much paperwork for the cover-up guys back at base."

"You don't look half-Hispanic," Clint protested, "but apart from that, top marks."

"Well, my mom told me my daddy was Mexican," Nat retorted, "and I'm sure she couldn't be mistaken, right?"

"Ha ha. Don't forget about your blood disorder," Clint added, "you have an appointment with me every Wednesday and Saturday, so's we can check up on you. And you know I'm not actually an undercover agent, right?"

"Who else would you want me to go with? Miller? He's an asshole, Clint. I'm not working with a partner who thinks it's okay to not clean up the coffee machine after he's used it."

Clint laughed. "In that case," he said, "it's time for Talia to go to prison."

Clint left her at the check-in station with a pile of false medical records and a whispered reminder about not killing anyone, and Natasha was escorted into a room where she was stripped of her tacky clothes and hosed down by a woman with a slight wispy moustache on her upper lip. The water rinsed the gel out of her hair and turned the red the dark color of a closing wound, and Nat clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering as she pulled on the neon yellow scrubs the guard gave her.

"End of the week you switch to beige," the woman told her, "until then, we gotta keep an eye on the fresh meat."

Make me a target, more like, Natasha thought gloomily, taking the meagre pile of towels and toiletries the guard handed her. Talia Romanez looked set to be eaten alive in clothes like these, and as she was escorted into the main wing of the prison the whoops and jeers of the other inmates confirmed it. Natasha walked with a slight sway to her hips and stared straight ahead, letting the insults slide off her. Talia had been to prison before. She took no shit from people like this, and for that matter Natasha didn't either.

"This is you," said the moustachio'd guard, unlocking a twin cell and resting a hand on her cudgel as a gentle hint to Nat that she should start moving unless she wanted to get the laziness knocked out of her on her first day. "Hey, Chavez! You got company, ya hear me?"

A pile of blankets on the bottom bunk stirred, and a brownish hand emerged from it and waved lazily. That's the hand of one of the most powerful women in here, Natasha thought. Great.

The cell door slammed behind her. "Dinner's at six," the guard told her. "Word of advice? Don't get the soup." And with that ominous comment, she left.

Natasha suppressed a sigh and turned around, depositing her worldly belongings on the top bunk and climbing up to sit beside them. Below her, Chavez started to snore.

What would Talia do? Nat questioned. Within a few days the actions of the persona would come as naturally as if she was being herself, but currently she was still struggling to break this particular identity in. Should she wake the dealer up? Should she wait until dinner? Or should she just make a lot of noise as she settled into the cell, thus establishing that she had no fear of pissing people off?

That last one seemed like fun. Natasha unearthed a second set of scrubs and underwear from her pile – she hopped off of the bunk and pulled open the drawer of the small cabinet beneath the smaller window, dropped them inside along with the towels and slammed the drawer shut again with enough noise to wake the dead. As Chavez continued to snore, Nat pursed her lips and arranged her toiletries – shower gel, toothbrush, toothpaste and a sanitary pad so big it was almost a diaper – along the dusty windowsill, then knocked them off. She swore loudly as they clattered onto the floor, glanced behind her and felt a slight trace of disappointment when she realized that this show was having precisely no effect on her new cellmate.

She had ran out of stuff to do to settle in, as well. She stood in the middle of the cell, more than a little ashamed of herself for this small failure, and peered out through the bars at the mess hall below. The prison was a small one, three storeys high with the cells all on galleries around the walls and a net between each level to stop people throwing themselves or others to their deaths over the edge. At the bottom were a few long tables, currently empty, which at one end had doors which opened up onto a courtyard and at the other led into the heart of the prison, from which the hospital ward, offices, storage and workshop could be reached. It all lined up perfectly with the blueprints she had memorised, and yet after all these years of infiltration Natasha was still surprised by just how many dimensions places had when experienced first-hand.

There were so many smells in here. Dope was the strongest one, underlaced by bootleg beer and unclean bathrooms, but there were also slightly sweeter scents of contraband cosmetics and that distinctly female aroma that Nat hadn't smelled in such intensity since she was a teenager. God, that was nearly a decade ago, now. The prison reminded her a little of it. Here it was infinitely more chaotic, but there was something about the barrenness, the sensation that there was no world worth considering beyond these walls…

"She was right about the soup, you know. You don't wanna know what's in it for the newbies."

Natasha turned and saw, in a tangle of dark hair, the most beautiful eyes that there had ever been. They blinked at her, and somewhere beneath them a smile emerged.

"Maybe I do," Natasha replied, finding her voice. She didn't bother with an accent, though. "Why you telling me?"

The corners of those shocking eyes crinkled as the smile grew wider. "Karma?" said the smile, and its owner stood up, the blankets falling from her shoulders. They revealed a woman, surely no older than Natasha and smaller in height and width (and Nat was not large by any measure), a woman with a great deal of dark hair, a pierced lower lip and eyes the color of midnight. "What's your name, newbie?"

"Romanez. Talia Romanez."

"Pretty name, Romanez-Talia-Romanez. Chicks round here call me Melanie, seeing as it's the word on my birth certificate and that," said Chavez, still with the grin on her face. Nat had seen blue eyes before, but none so dark as this; the almost-indigo shade seemed to melt into the black of her pupils like two little black holes. "See they gave you the full welcome package, then."

Natasha turned and followed Melanie's gaze to her fresh new belongings. "Yeah."

Melanie clucked her tongue against the roof of the mouth and strolled over to the windowsill, giving the overlarge sanitary pad a disdainful look. "Lucky for you this is the El Dorado of San Helios, Talia."

"What?" Nat asked, as Melanie crossed to her bed and lifted up the edge of the mattress closest to the wall. When the woman bent over Nat could see a glimpse of tattoo at the base of her back: butterflies, badly done and faded but still pretty.

Melanie dropped the mattress and held out a pack of tampons. "I got gold dust under my pillow," she said, "here. Consider it a housewarming gift."

Natasha stared at the packet. "I… don't need 'em," she said.

"Oh. You got an implant?"

"Something like that."

Melanie had perfect cupid's-bow lips; they puckered in sympathy as Nat said that. "Yeah," she said, "we got a lot of 'something like that's in here. But take 'em anyway. Like I said, they're gold dust. Better currency than cigarettes. I got those too, if you want some."

Nat laughed. "I'm fine, thanks."

Melanie sat down on her bunk, crossed her legs like a princess and rested her chin on the back of her hand as she scrutinised Natasha. "You're a pretty girl, Talia," she said. "You been inside before?"

She almost said 'none of your business', as Talia probably should have, but Natasha – paranoid, ex-KGB Natasha Romanoff – found herself trusting her cellmate. "Yeah," she said, "couple times, a few years ago. I know how to fight."

"Good," said Melanie, "that'll help." She twisted her wrist and used her delicate hand to cover her mouth as she yawned. "Well, Romanez-Talia-Romanez, it was nice talking to you. Stick the tampons in your bra to keep 'em safe, sit on your own at dinner and remember what the guard said about the soup." She flopped down onto her side and pulled the covers up over her head. "And next time you think about trying to wake me up," she added in a muffled voice, "don't."

Natasha stared at the pile of blankets, turning the tampons over and over in her hand. So she's my guide for this hole, she thought, assuming she ever wakes up. I wonder if this is what was meant by 'difficult'. At least she's cute.

Natasha pulled herself up onto her bunk, laid down and decided to take a nap before dinner. But try as she could to get to sleep, she kept coming back to thinking about midnight blue eyes and badly-tattooed butterflies.

%

The cell doors unlocked automatically. Natasha wondered if she should leave Melanie behind, but then remembered her warning about waking the girl up and went down to dinner without her. She was almost at the end of the line for food, behind a large black woman with a shaven head and a scar down the back of her neck, and she ignored the jostling of the people behind her.

"You want sausages or soup?" the server asked her when she finally reached the food, another inmate with a face like a bulldog and her hair tucked beneath a net.

"Sausages," Natasha replied, eyeing the pile of slightly burnt meat with a hungry expression. Although she herself only felt peckish, Talia Romanez would be famished by now.

The woman serving the food grinned nastily. One of her bottom front teeth were missing, and she took Natasha's tray out of her hands. "We're all out," she said, clearly daring Nat to point out that there was a tray full of the things right between them. "Soup for you, then."

The woman behind Nat sniggered as a bowl of colorless liquid was dropped onto her tray, sloshing some of its contents over the side. She got a bruised apple, too. "Thanks," said Nat, taking her tray back and walking away, grabbing a spoon as she went. She headed for the last empty table and sat down on the end of it, half-listening to the whispers that followed.

"Does she know about the soup?"

"Of course she knows about the damn soup!"

"Oh, are we in for a show tonight, ladies!"

Natasha picked up her spoon, wiped it clean with the hem of her shirt, and dipped it into the broth. The woman who had served her it was watching her from the counter, that horrible little smile still twisting her face. Natasha kept her eyes fixed on the other woman as she took a mouthful of the liquid, almost scalding her mouth in the process. Around her, the mess hall filled with giggling. God, it was foul.

Don't think about it.

Calmly, she swallowed the mouthful without batting an eyelid and dipped her spoon into the bowl, taking another, larger amount and choking it down without a trace of her disgust showing on her face.

One by one, spoonful by spoonful, the other inmates stopped giggling as Natasha leisurely worked her way through the bowl, very determinedly not imagining what the secret ingredient was. As she drank, she thought longingly of Laura Barton's cooking, and decided that, when she was done, she was going to eat the entire tube of toothpaste she had been given.

When her spoon knocked against the bottom of the bowl, Natasha set it aside, picked up the crockery itself and drained it, pressing her lips to the rim. The prison was silent. Even the guards were watching in horror. Melanie was still nowhere to be seen.

She put down the empty bowl, ate the apple and carried her tray back up to the food counter, where she handed it back to the woman to shelve. "Could do with a little more salt," she said with a smile.

The woman snarled and extended a hand, whether to claw or grab or punch Nat didn't know, but she raised a fist to defend herself –

"Careful, Dolly," said a languid voice at Natasha's shoulder, and slender brownish fingers wrapped around the server's wrist. "This one's mine. Try not to break her pretty face, okay?"

"She –"

"She what?" Melanie asked, as though she were talking about the weather and not diffusing a cat fight. "Liked your soup? Gave you some pointers on how to make it better? Because that's what I saw. You saying I'm wrong, Dolly? You saying you wanna argue with me?"

Dolly yanked her fat wrist out of Melanie's grip. "Go to hell, Chavez," she snapped.

"That's the spirit. Come on, Romanez-Talia-Romanez. I ain't feeling the atmosphere tonight. This place, it's got no ambience."

Melanie led her back up the stairs and towards their cell. As they left the mess hall, the whispers started again.

"Did you see that? She et the whole friggin' thing!"

"Chavez said newbie's her bitch. I ain't surprised after a show like that."

"She's got a nice ass."

"It's Chavez' ass, now. You wanna ask her for it? Thought not."

Melanie closed their cell door behind them. It didn't lock, since this was still communal time, and it swung open again an inch or two. "Toilet's through there," she told Natasha, pointing to a shabby door on the other side of the cell. "Go on. I won't tell anyone."

Natasha nodded, ran into the little toilet room, stuck her fingers down her throat and vomited until the only thing left coming up was bile. And then, making true to her promise to herself, she ate her toothpaste.

"That was a smart move, Talia," Melanie said, leaning in the doorway. "They won't fuck with you now."

"They won't fuck with me because you stuck up for me," Natasha corrected her, wiping her mouth with a shudder. "Thanks."

Melanie shrugged. "My last roomie got targeted 'cuz of me," she said, "got the seven bells kicked outta her for not nicking anything from my little El Dorado. Still got the cow on my conscience, and I ain't having you on it as well. Don't think they'll try that again, not after how the last time ended up, but still. Better to be safe than sorry, huh? I'll look out for you when you need it, Romanez. Don't worry."

"How did last time end up?" Natasha asked.

Melanie ran her thumbnail along the doorframe, dislodging brown-black dirt as she did. "I ain't a fighter," she said, "but a load of people in here owe me favors."

"You got a monopoly on this place," Natasha said, "huh?"

"Little bit," Melanie smiled. "Aren't you lucky you got stuck with me?"

Luck, and Barton hacking the system to change my allocation twenty minutes before I arrived, Natasha thought, but obviously didn't say it out loud. "Yeah," she said instead, leaving the bathroom.

Melanie tapped her lightly on the ass as she passed. "Once more with feeling, girl!"

Natasha looked over her shoulder and grinned. "Aren't I lucky?" she asked in a syrup-sweet voice, and Melanie raised an eyebrow.

"Flirting already," she said, "hell, aren't you just a little firecracker?"

A/N this short fic will not have weekly updates because I actually only have two chapters written, and have no idea where I'm going with it. Oh well. We'll soon find out.