Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They belong to Stan Lee! I am simply borrowing them for my non-profit story.

17:20 24-AUG-09, SHIELD HELICARRIER

Director Nick Fury had never been the one to show much emotion. Whenever he was happy, sad, or scared, he tended to keep a straight face. He was known SHIELD-wide as the 'Deadpan Pirate'. His eye patch called for many jokes to be made behind his back, which, despite his loss of sight in one eye, he were still able to hear.

The paper that they gave him had caused Director Fury to lose his straight-face for the first time in front of his two best assassins. Clint almost got up to follow their boss, but Natasha pulled him back down shaking her head.

"If he left us," Natasha said, "then he wouldn't want to tell us about whatever was on that note... straight to our faces, at least."

Clint grinned. "Well, we'll have to find out ourselves."

"Damn it, Birdbrain," Natasha hissed, rubbing her forehead, "watch where you put your boot."

"Sorry, Nat."

The two assassins were crawling through the narrow air vents of the SHIELD helicarrier. Starting in the one in Clint's room, they made their way to find Fury. They'd been crawling for a few minutes now, careful not to make any noises that might alert whoever was in the room they were passing.

Finally, they heard the familiar voice of their boss: "It's just the safety of my best female assassin that I'm worried about!"

Natasha and Clint looked at each other in the dim glow from the room below. Her forehead creasing, Natasha leaned closer to the vent's window, seeing Fury with his arms crossed, facing the large screens on the walls. There were four people on screen, their faces slightly shadowed by the lack of light on their side. They were staring down at Fury, their expressions unconcerned.

"As one of the best assassins known to us, I'm sure Miss Romanoff is able to take care of herself," one of the people on screen said.

"The threat that they are posing doesn't seem to be something that the army in Kuwait could deal with, much less herself," Fury shot back, his voice rising slightly.

"What do you want us to do?"

"I could assemble-"

"No," another shadowed person snapped. "We are not going to start the Avengers initiative."

"The Avengers?" Clint whispered, his forehead creasing. "Have you heard of that?"

"Yeah," she said. "He mentioned it to me. Remember last year when Tony Stark revealed that he was Iron Man?"

"The one who had that party we almost had to infiltrate because SHIELD suspected there was a planned terrorist attack? And it turned out it was just a giant cake."

"That's the asshat. And you've heard of Bruce Banner, a.k.a. the Hulk. They are superheroes that Fury's considering to start the Avengers with."

"Superheroes," Clint muttered.

They turned their attention back to Fury who was now pacing agitatedly back and forth in front of the monitors. He seemed to be thinking hard, not listening to what the people on screen were telling him.

"Director Fury," a man said. "There is nothing that we can do."

"Are you shitting with me?" Fury exclaimed. "As the World Security Council, I'd expect that you would take in consideration a threat such as this one. According to this paper," Fury waved the folded up sheet that Natasha had given him, "The Red Room is planning to send him to us. And they plan on sending more like him who are going to target the best of our agents, starting with Miss Romanoff."

A silence was met with Fury's words. The council seemed to be contemplating whether or not to help the Director.

"I'm sorry, Director Fury," a woman said. "But since there isn't any other proof that such threat is hanging over us, other than a piece of paper that says so, there is nothing we can do."

"Which my agents were captured and tortured about! So don't say that it's just 'a piece of paper' because that's bullshit." Fury glared at each screen one last time before pressing the off button. Sighing, he leaned against the wall, rubbing his face. At last, he strode out of the room, the automatic door closing behind him.

23:46 24-AUG-09, SHIELD HELICARRIER

Natasha couldn't sleep. As she stared out the small bulletproof window in her room, she knew that it was futile to think about what she had overheard that evening. She kept thinking of who the him Fury was talking about.

Tossing and turning in bed, Natasha had been awake for an hour, thinking about the threat. She was wondering if Tony Stark could help her. After all, he had an Iron Man suit that had the ability to shoot and kill just about anything. But she knew that he barely knew about SHIELD and therefore, would probably be unwilling to help her.

When she began to feel uncomfortably warm she peeled off her blankets. Dressed in only a dark thin camisole and matching silk shorts, she slipped on a pair of flip flops and set off down the empty hallway. The SHIELD Helicarrier was generally quiet every night, with only a few guards dressed in black present, patrolling the halls. Natasha knew that they recognized her, but kept her identification in her hand just in case.

Once at her destination, she knocked on the door quietly, hoping that the person wasn't asleep yet. Just as she hoped, Clint appeared at the door, still fully dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He rubbed his eyes and looked blearily at Natasha.

"Hey, Nat," he said, not looking surprised. "Can't sleep?"

Natasha shrugged and Clint took that as a yes. He opened the door a bit wider to let his partner in. Having visited his room many times in the past year to talk to him on nights like this, she smiled slightly at the mess. On the floor were pairs of shoes and a few t-shirts. His desk was littered with papers and a couple books. The only things that were in place were the suit he wore on missions- an extra bow and arrows included- and his beloved sunglasses. They were neatly folded and piled on a shelf right outside his small closet.

Sighing, Natasha sat on his still-made bed. Clint took a seat across from her on his desk chair, waiting for her to start talking.

"Did I wake you?" she asked.

"Sort of," he said. "I fell asleep at writing the mission report for Fury."

"Since when did we have to write reports?"

Clint's cheeks turned slightly pink. "Since the new agent… paid me," he said sheepishly.

Rolling her eyes, Natasha said, "God, Clint. Is it Agent Bitch?"

The newly accepted agent named Lana Birch had caught the attention of many men at SHIELD. She was tall, blonde and skinny with a big chest. Her standard issue SHIELD uniform of a skirt was worn a bit shorter than it was supposed to be. Natasha had overheard a couple of other female agents muttering darkly about Agent Birch, calling her Agent Bitch behind her back.

"Agent Birch, Nat," Clint corrected her. "She's really nice."

Shaking her head, she said, "Anyways, I just came to talk to you about something."

"It's what we heard this afternoon," Clint stated, rather than asked. He knew her too well.

She nodded. "I don't even know why I'm taking it so harshly. There is no proof whatsoever about this threat."

"Well, considering that he said something about the Kuwait mission Agent Emerson was killed in," Clint said, "I think that there's something up."

That was what she had been thinking, but she had hoped that someone else would say something else. She didn't want it to be true.

Natasha put her head in her hands. "I'm just being a baby, aren't I, Clint?"

Instead of answering, Clint reached over and put a hand on Natasha's shoulder.

"You're only human, Tasha."

"I know," she said. Then under her breath, she whispered to herself, "Barely."

As suddenly as it had happened in Switzerland, her vision darkened, and she blacked out.

"You!"

A young woman was roughly grabbed and shoved against a wall alongside a few others. The line that she was just pulled from consisted of twenty women who were just as young as she was. Clad in clothes that ranged from rags to velvet dresses, the women stood, shivering, in the cold Russian air.

"Your name!" a man dressed in a thick fur coat barked to the young woman.

The woman, whose face was shadowed by her hood, acted as if she didn't hear the man. Her hair was also tucked into the hood, and the jacket she donned was long and covered most of her body. On her feet were worn boots.

The man once again grabbed the woman, shaking her.

"What's your name?" he hissed menacingly. "Tell me your full name."

"Natalia," the woman quietly answered. "Natalia Alianovna Romanova."

Sneering, the man shoved Natalia back into the line. He went along the wall, picking out women in no particular order. When there were only five women left in that line, the man turned his back to them and gestured to the guards who were watching them. The guards retrieved their guns and cocked them. Natalia knew what was coming, but still looked on.

With five loud pops, the women fell, dead, blood trickling out of the hole in their forehead. Their dead eyes were wide open, staring blankly into the distance. Natalia felt slightly sickened at the indifference of the guards. She was lucky that she was not one of the five unlucky souls. Most of the women around Natalia seemed to be just as aghast, one of them vomiting into the white snow.

The man in the coat smiled. "Welcome to the Red Room Academy."

Natalia awoke to find herself in great pain. Her body was small, so the number of tubes that were linked to her was shocking. There were at least three in each of her limbs. When she tried to move her hands, she found that she could not, as she was tied down with thick cords. Turning her head as much as she could, she surveyed the room.

It was a large, brightly-lit room which smelled sterile. No windows were present and the only door was shut tightly. Natalia was situated on a hospital bed, surrounded by a few machines. The tubes that were in her were connected to a piece of equipment that held some light red liquid, far too light to be blood. Panicking, Natalia shouted out, hearing her voice echo throughout the room.

Footsteps approached the door outside, and with a creak a woman dressed in white poked her head in.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked her voice void of emotion.

"Where am I?" Natalia croaked.

The woman frowned and shut the door, not answering any of Natalia's questions. A minute later, a young man came in. He looked young, with dark hair and a shadow of a beard.

He sighed. "Romanova, you are here because of the Red Room. We are just... enhancing your body."

Suddenly, images of her life came flooding to her. She had been a ballerina, a good one at that. There was nothing about her life as a child, only a few from the training with the Soviet state. Strangely, there were some pieces missing from her memory. It was as if her mind were a patchwork quilt, and somene had unwoven a few pieces of cloth, sewed a few new ones in, but left some holes.

Glaring at the old man, Natalia said, "The Soviet intelligence. What do they know about the Red Room Academy?"

"Everything," the man said. "They were the ones who introduced us to you, Romanova. They told us about your superior skills, even without this enhancement."

Thinking back at her time with the Soviet intelligence, Natalia remembered the other trainees being jealous of her. A couple of the kinder instructors would praise her for her good work during their training sessions.

"So I am truly here for the Black Widow program, yes?" Natalia said.

The man nodded. "I will be one of your instructors." Holding out his hand for Natalia to shake, he said, "My name is James Barnes, the Winter Soldier."

A/N: Please read and review! But please, please, pleaseee, no flames :)

Till next time, JM