Aaaaand we're back! No action in this chapter, unfortunately, but definitely some plot encouragement.
I don't own any Marvel material.
Scars are souvenirs you never lose
The past is never far
Did you lose yourself somewhere out there?
Did you get to be a star?
We grew up way too fast
And now there's nothing to believe
After arriving at the helicarrier and an unconscious Francois was dropped off in the holding deck, Natasha and Clint escorted One-seventeen to Fury's office. The girl had been unnervingly silent for the entire helicopter ride, ignoring Clint's pestering attempts to socialize and appearing clueless of how tense Natasha was in her presence.
"Director." Natasha and Clint greeted Fury simultaneously, saluting him as the three spies entered the director's office. One-seventeen merely dipped her head, still being an outsider to their ranks.
"Romanov, Barton…" He glanced at the girl. "One-seventeen. Good job today."
They all shrugged at that.
Fury couldn't help but notice the slight tension that strange look on Agent Romanov's face as she stood beside the younger Widow. Upon further inspection, Fury was highly amused to note that the two woman were standing in the same position: legs braced apart, standing straight, shoulders back, with their hands always hovering close to the weapons sheathed at their hips in faux casualty.
Soldiers through and through. He noted, wondering if the position was standard for the Black Widow ranks.
"SHIELD will commence the interrogation of Devereux momentarily. But that is no longer of any concern to you." Fury began as he took a seat at his desk, eyeing One-seventeen for any sign of empathy towards her old contact. Her face remained completely uncaring, however, and Fury wondered if she even felt an ounce of remorse for turning an old comrade in. Probably not.
"Now our main concern is you, girl." Fury made eye contact with the younger woman in the room.
She looked him straight in the eye without hesitation, her face remaining still save for blinking and breathing. "We made a deal, no?"
"Yes, we did, and I do intend to fulfill it." Fury nodded, noting that both Natasha and Clint were eyeing them both with great interest. "However there are some ground rules we must establish."
One-seventeen nodded for him to go on.
"You do realize that by agreeing to work for SHIELD, you are renouncing any former loyalties, including to the Soviet Union and their successors, as well as any criminal or other organization you have former ties to?" Fury asked her.
She nodded. "I am aware."
"And you realize that by renouncing all previous loyalties that you will become an agent of SHIELD, a full member of the United States military? And that you agree to heed the chain of command within this organization, to adhere to your officers and obey their orders?"
Again, the woman nodded.
"Good." Fury nodded. "However, there is one problem with accepting you into SHIELD – your identity."
The two SHIELD agents across from him looked equal parts worried and confused, while One-seventeen tilted her head to give him a rather cat-like look.
"What identity?" She asked.
Fury nodded. "Exactly."
A look of understanding dawned on Natasha's face, and she nodded along in agreement with the director.
"Huh?" Clint glanced between them, looking very lost, the poor man.
"I'm gonna have to file a lot of paperwork to make you a SHIELD agent. Name, background, you get the gist. The thing is – and I had this same problem with Natasha – you Widows don't have an identity. The Soviets scrubbed all evidence of your existence from this earth from the moment you were taken into the Red Room. No birth certificates, no parental forms, nada." Fury pulled open one of his desk drawers and pulled out the file that he had for One-seventeen, flipping it open and sighing at the sight of how thin and blank the papers were.
"So what do you want us to do about it?" Natasha finally spoke up. "You had enough on me to bring a case to the Council, but we don't have nearly enough on One-seventeen to make a case for her."
Fury nodded. "Which is why we need to create an identity for her."
"And by that you mean…?" Clint trailed off.
"I don't want rumors spreading that SHIELD has another Widow under its command." Fury explained to them. "As far as the rest of this organization knows, One-seventeen is just another asset you two happened to pick up during an op."
"You're not even going to tell the Council?" Natasha exclaimed, looking uncomfortable with the decision.
Fury shook his head. "No. They know that you follow my orders out of personal respect for me, but One-seventeen is a blank slate –" They all glanced at the unconcerned girl still standing casually off to the side – "And I am not taking any chances that they might reassign her to become their personal assassin."
"It would probably pay better…" One-seventeen murmured to herself, and actually looked like she was considering the offer.
Fury gave his agents a pointed look. "See what I mean? The girl is not humanized enough to know right from wrong."
"She's a Widow." Clint deadpanned. "She only knows to follow orders, not morals – no offence, Tash." He gave his partner an apologetic look, but Natasha only shrugged in agreement.
(One-seventeen huffed. "I'm right here, y'know.")
"Which is why I wanted her assigned to your team. However we need to make a new identity for her." Fury told them, ignoring the girl and pulling out another stack of papers. "You all are dismissed for now. I have shit to do. Go and brainstorm about One-seventeen's new backstory, will ya?"
Natasha and Clint exchanged exasperated glances, and then nodded and saluted at their director. With a muttered 'come on' to One-seventeen, they dragged the girl out of Fury's office and began walking back to the living quarters.
Walking through the halls of SHIELD, whispers followed them as they passed by other soldiers and agents. It was not unusual whenever Clint and Natasha returned from a mission, as they were infamous as SHIELD's top agents, however this time the gossip was inspired by an entirely different subject. Even Agent Hill gave the young Black Widow a wary look as they passed her desk after exiting Fury's office.
Entering the barracks, Natasha and Clint automatically began dressing down from their mission, stripping off their armor, unsheathing (most) of their weapons and putting them back in the metal weapon lockers which lined one side of the room.
The barracks were a strange mix of a futuristic college dorm and military barracks. The walls were not white-washed like how One-seventeen usually pictured military living quarters, but made of the same metal as the helicarrier, a bluish-grey metal that had a dull sheen similar to platinum (although the walls were probably made with a stronger metal than that). The floor was also metal, covered with a thin black carpet in a pathetic attempt to break the monotony of the room, but which did not reach all four corners of the room. The room was lit by those awful florescent lights that always gave her a headache, running in horizontal lines across the ceiling and caged by thin metal wires.
They were standing in what seemed to be a common room of some sort, with several hallways branching off from the room through which One-seventeen could see individual rooms for the soldiers. The room itself doubled as a living space and an equipment room – obviously not an armory where all the heavy weapons and armor were stored, but there were still weapons lockers along the wall and a few Kevlar vests hanging off to the side. Judging from how Natasha and Clint were putting their things away there, it would seem this was some sort of personal armory.
On the opposite side of the room was a small, flat-screen television set, with a worn out sofa sitting in front of it, and a kitchenette tucked into the corner of the room, complete with a microwave, a stovetop, a few cabinets, and a large fridge that seemed to loom over the rest of the kitchen area.
One-seventeen wondered if any of the soldiers actually cooked instead of going to the ship's cafeteria. She imagined that the soldiers were usually too busy to cook their own meals.
It didn't take the two agents very long to notice that One-seventeen had remained standing still by the entrance of the room, studying her surroundings with object interest and clearly hesitant about further intruding into the room. And then Natasha realized, with a jolt, that the girl had never been to the living quarters before. Her previous time in the helicarrier was spent either in the holding cells or the hospital ward. Fury probably had yet to assign her a room, too.
"Clint," The redhead turned to her partner, who was currently re-stocking the arrows in his quiver.
"M-hm?" Clint hummed absently, still distracted.
"Find an empty room for One-seventeen. Preferably one near us."
"M-hm… Wait, what?" Clint's head snapped up and away from his gear.
Natasha jerked her head in the direction of One-seventeen, whose eyes were currently studying the kitchen with a strange intensity. What an odd girl.
"Oh, right." Clint sighed, putting his stuff down and walking down one of the hallways, scratching the back of his head as he tried to remember which rooms were empty.
At the same time, Natasha turned to the younger Widow and motioned for her to come further into the room. Motioning towards the weapons lockers, Natasha began explaining a few things to the young woman.
"It's no armory, but this is where we store our regular and some emergency equipment. That way, if the ship is taken over and we are cut off from the armory, we aren't left completely defenseless." Natasha then motioned towards the kitchenette. "The fridge is the most used section of the kitchen, and the microwave is usually reserved for instant ramen or frozen meals. If someone is feeling adventurous, they might even use the stove to make pasta."
The young brunette blinked at her with a bored expression. Natasha inwardly sighed, knowing the girl was probably ignoring her and filtering out all of the useless information. Natasha hated small talk, but the complete silence that stood between her and the other Widow was unnerving to say the least.
Glancing over the girl's ragged clothing – she had yet to change out of the civilian clothing she had worn when they had apprehended Francois – Natasha motioned for her to follow as she walked in the direction Clint had gone, saying, "We'll have to take you to the labs to get you a proper SHIELD suit and assign a couple firearms to you."
That seemed to catch the girl's attention as she finally made eye contact with the redhead and nodded. The doors to the individual rooms had no doorknobs, instead there was an electronic sensor placed on the wall next to them, which Natasha swiped her palm over. The sensor picked up on the chip that was contained within her SHIELD ID card hanging from her belt, and the door slid open to reveal Natasha's personal room.
It was rather plain and Spartan, grey metal walls and floor, a single bed with grey bedsheets, immaculately folded with crisp corners and a single pillow. The nightstand beside the bed was also made of metal, three drawers with a lamp sitting on top of it and a single book beside it, whose title One-seventeen did not care to make out.
"You can't keep walking around the ship wearing civilian clothes, however." Natasha said as she led the brunette into her room. "Especially looking like we just picked you up off the streets."
"It wouldn't be far from the truth." One-seventeen finally spoke, thinking back on the night she had been apprehended in Buenos Aires.
"It's just a saying." Natasha shrugged, unapologetic. The redhead walked over to her rather small closet, which held maybe two or three civilian outfits, and the rest were identical SHIELD uniforms. Pulling out one of the aforementioned uniforms, Natasha tossed it at One-seventeen, who caught it easily and stared at it in confusion.
"Until then, you can wear one of mine." Natasha told her, amazed when One-seventeen looked up at her with a completely shocked expression.
"Why?" The girl asked, immediately suspicious.
"Do I need a reason?" Natasha raised a brow at the girl. "I'm not giving it away, just loaning it to you until we can get you your own."
It appeared that One-seventeen did not understand the concept of charity, as the girl's face twitched as if it couldn't decide what expression to show. Almond eyes flickered down to the uniform in her hands, holding the uniform up to stare at it with narrowed eyes.
"I… see." One-seventeen finally replied.
No you don't. Natasha thought sadly, watching as the girl hesitantly began to pull off her clothing and dropped them to the floor.
Unsurprisingly, the One-seventeen was covered in scars. They were hard to see usually, as the Red Room had treatments to minimize scar tissue in order to keep their agents as civilian-looking as possible. The result was a network of crisscrossing silvery lines so faint that they were only visible if the light hit them just right, shimmering like a spider's web across her skin. Natasha recognized a few marks as the result of Black Widow training, but there were others that seemed highly unusual, even for a professional assassin.
Natasha's eyes narrowed at the sight of a single, half-centimeter wide line running down the center of One-seventeen's torso, the side of her arms and – if she squinted – even the girl's legs. It was pale, barely noticeable if one did not know what to look for.
One-seventeen began to step into the one-piece SHIELD suit, but Natasha stopped her before she began to pull up the zipper.
"What is this?" The older Widow asked the brunette, tapping the faint vertical scar on the girl's sternum.
The girl stepped back from Natasha, pushing her hand away.
"You know the Red Room liked to experiment." One-seventeen replied stiffly, but would say no more on the matter.
Natasha's frown deepened, but she knew better than to pry further. Still, white-hot anger flashed through her chest, as she was well aware of the Red Room's inhumane practices. But when a Widow refused to talk, there was nothing left to be done about the matter.
A knock sounded on the door; Clint no doubt. One-seventeen finished zipping up the SHIELD uniform, surprised that it fit quite well, if a little big around the hips. Nodding at the redhead, Natasha turned to the door and called, "Come in."
The door automatically slid open, allowing her partner into the room. Clint paused at the sight of One-seventeen in Natasha's uniform, his eyes flickering to the redhead in question before clearing his throat.
"My room is across from Natasha's. In fact, this whole end of the hallway belongs to the two of us." He led the girl back into the hallway which she had noticed earlier did not have as many rooms as the other hallways. Was this the hall reserved for SHIELD's top agents?
"Anyway," Clint motioned to the next door down from Natasha's room, "I called up Fury and had him assign you this room. I already grabbed some necessary supplies for you – sheets, towels and such."
The girl just nodded.
Clint stared at her for a moment, as if expecting her to say something else, but she remained quiet, face blank of emotion. A 'thank you' would be nice… He thought moodily as he handed her a temporary SHIELD access card that would open the room for her.
One-seventeen accepted the carded wordlessly and held it up to the sensor. The door slid open and she stepped warily into the room, eyes flickering around as she studied her surroundings, shoulders slightly tense as if anticipating this to be a trap.
When nothing immediately jumped out at her, she took a few more steps forward until she was staring down at the bed, folded grey sheets sitting on top of it next to a pile of plain white towels.
"We'll be in the common room while you settle in." Natasha's voice floated over her shoulder, and with a muffled protest from Clint, dragged him away.
Back in the common room, Natasha let go of Clint and walked over to the kitchenette to begin making herself a cup of coffee. Clint sighed as he threw himself onto the couch, watching Natasha bustle around the kitchen with tired eyes.
"She's a weird one, isn't she?" He drawled with a heavy sigh.
"I don't think there is such thing as a 'normal' Black Widow." Natasha replied as she began to pour the coffee grounds into the machine.
"But you weren't nearly as bad as her." Clint told her in a whiny voice. "She's just so…ugh. Sometimes she gives me the heebie-jeebies."
Natasha gave him a confused look.
"It's an American term for the chills or goosebumps." Clint explained, and the Russian nodded in understanding.
"Black Widows are supposed to hide their emotions." Natasha shrugged as she poured water into the coffee machine and pressed 'start'. She walked over to Clint and gracefully folded herself onto the couch next to him.
"She's not just hiding her emotions, Tash." Clint said, turning to face her, the foil to his partner with his limbs spread out lazily while she sat poised and elegant. "She is completely devoid of emotions whatsoever. Have you looked into her eyes? They're just a void of black. Even when she scowls or laughs, her eyes remained the same. It's like each of her expressions is just another mask, and she's just pretending to have emotions."
Natasha sighed but nodded at his words. She had noticed as well. When One-seventeen interacted with people, her expressions were lacking any sincerity. "The emotional conditioning certainly worked much better on One-seventeen than it did on me."
"That's another thing," Clint said as he pulled out a granola bar from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. "Why is her name a fucking number? Are you Russians that unimaginative?"
"Seriously?" Natasha deadpanned at the sight of the snack bar.
Clint shrugged. "No offense Natasha; I just don't understand how you and your kind got names, but she didn't."
"I'm talking about the fact that you store snacks in your jacket."
"What?" Clint asked defensively. "I'm a growing boy!"
She snorted at that. "You wish."
"That better not be a jab at my height." Clint growled, sensitive to the fact that he was the shortest man on the Avengers team – save for Dr. Banner, but that guy didn't count with the Hulk on his side.
Natasha rolled her eyes. Men.
"Here's a radical idea," Clint piped up with his usual sass as he took a bite from his snack. "Why don't we start with giving the girl an actual human name? Constantly calling her a number is… uncomfortable."
"Giving the agents numbers is a strategy to dehumanize us and prevent the agents from forming intimate or familial bonds." One-seventeen suddenly recited to them as she entered the common room. "It is a strategy that has proven effective in preventing unnecessary emotional ties and trauma."
Clint blinked in surprise at that, while Natasha's expression fell into a frown.
"My point." Barton turned back to the redhead, pointing at the girl's glassy eyes.
"So name her." Natasha sighed, acceding to her partner. "Then we need to come up with a believable back story."
One-seventeen actually rolled her eyes. "I'm not a dog."
"Then name yourself." Clint drawled.
"My current designation works just fine." She sniffed at them.
"News flash, kid." The archer pointed his granola bar at her, "Normal people aren't named with numbers."
The girl crossed her arms and cracked her neck with a sigh. "Fine, name me whatever you wish. Just keep it Russian."
"How about Manya?" Natasha suggested, interrupting the strange argument between the young Widow and her partner.
"Rebellious woman?" The girl snorted. "Po'shyol 'na hui."* She accompanied the statement by holding her middle finger up at the redhead.
"Watch your tongue." Natasha chided the girl at the curse, but her eyes held amusement. "What about Polina?"
The younger Widow scowled, and Natasha noticed what Clint had been talking about as the girl's eyes remained flat and dull despite her change in expression. "No."
"Then pick a name." Clint snapped with a short tone.
Humming, the girl shrugged and told them, "In the barracks I was sometimes called Varya."
Natasha's frowned and then scowled darkly at that, shaking her head and muttering a curse.
Clint leaned in and asked her under his breath, "What does that mean?"
"They called her 'foreigner'." Natasha replied with a scathing tone. Obviously it was 'foreigner' with a bad connotation.
"Well I don't exactly look like your typical Russian, do I?" The girl said, gesturing at her tan skin, wavy hair, and almond eyes. "Too much Siberian, or one of those eastern tribes anyway."
"Well we can't call you that." Natasha shook her head. "It's insulting."
The younger Widow shrugged. "Never mattered to me."
"Then how about Vera?" Natasha suggested. "Sounds like Varya, without the derogatory context."
The girl shrugged. "Sure, whatever."
"Vera it is then." Natasha smiled at the girl with what might have been a genuine smile. "Vera Petrovik."
"Petrovik?" Clint asked, doing a double-take.
"It's a common surname in Russia." Natasha explained. "It will make it harder for anyone to dispute her background."
The younger Widow nodded in approval.
"Speaking of her background," Clint said, "How are we going to explain her sudden employment with SHIELD? There are plenty of agents that will remember that she was our prisoner at one point."
"We keep the story short and simple." Natasha replied. "She was an asset who we captured and convinced to work for us. We can't deny the fact that she's Russian, but we'll leave out her involvement with the Red Room."
"So she's just a regular Russian spy?" Clint asked with a doubtful tone.
"No, that's still too close to home." Natasha shook her head and studied the girl – now named Vera – closely. "Maybe we can say she's a Russian mercenary? That way she has no obvious connections to the Russian government."
"Well there's only so many options when trying to explain why SHIELD suddenly has another Russian assassin." Clint drawled as he stood up just in time for the coffee machine to ding, pouring two mugs of caffeine and handing one to the redhead as he returned to the couch. "But we still have to come up with a reason of why she would be assigned to SHIELD's top team."
"Just say I have skills that qualify me for the team." The younger Widow shrugged.
Clint eyed her and smirked, "It doesn't work like that."
"I'll just say I'm taking her under my wing." Natasha said thoughtfully. "As my protégé."
"I think the other agents would just find that more suspicious." Clint laughed. "You're not known for charity, Tash."
The redhead smacked his arm.
"Are we finished here, then?" The girl asked.
The two agents nodded.
"Yeah, I'll contact Fury after this." Clint held up his coffee before taking sip.
Natasha gave the younger Widow a strangely optimistic look. "Welcome to SHIELD, Vera."
* Po'shyol 'na hui – fuck off, fuck you
SHE FINALLY HAS A REAL NAME!
Stay tuned, cause next chapter we get to see the two Widows fight for the first time!