Disclaimer: I do not own Iron Man 2, Thor, the Black Widow Strikes comics, or the Avengers, along with the characters, the quotes, and everything else associated with Marvel.
A/N: Originally a big chapter but I chopped a chunk off last minute. All the POVs were getting out of hand D:
Apologizing for any spelling/grammar mistakes beforehand.
"I'm jumping out of your crashing plane
I wanna fall straight through your name
In every turn of my twisting veins
you're in everything, everything."
- Rabbit Holes, Paper Route.
Chapter 25
As soon as they returned to the P.E.G.A.S.U.S facility, Natasha headed to the room she had before she left, feeling for some sense of security in the dark space and cool air. She sat on the bed and closed her eyes. Her clock ticked its rhythm, and in the background, on the other side of her door, hummed a murmuring of voices and machinery that never ceased in S.H.I.E.L.D. They might be a quiet agency, but that quietness vanished once they were among themselves.
Coulson might try to keep her low, but ears and voices ran finer than sand here and pushed their way into the slightest crevice for secrets.
Natasha could never stand on a foundation of lies with S.H.I.E.L.D.
She opened her eyes. The room brightened as her eyes adjusted, and now she could make out masses of shadows under the tables and chairs and drawers, the threads of highlights draped on top. The voices outside dimmed. She stood and paced; focused on blocking out the noise and rationed how much time Coulson could bargain for her.
A slant of light spilled onto the floor as the door opened.
No one entered, but the eyes peering in from the ajar door searched her out in the dark. Natasha halted her pacing and turned her body away to avoid the sliver of light. She shivered. The door creaked wider. A muffled click of combat boots on tiles.
Warm hands folded over the slopes of Natasha's shoulders from behind her back. A second later they rose and sank into her hair; fingers scored her scalp from the top to the back of her neck, lifting to nip out tangles and knots; and she sighed to the mix of lulling pressure and faint pinpricks that flowed and shimmered over her head. Natasha leaned backward, trusting Clint's hands to slip down and support her back. He did. For a moment she closed her eyes and allowed herself to slacken, and after a few heartbeats a surge of sluggish, cool lead spread beneath her skull and muffled the anxiety there. She imagined herself suspended in a river, swaying to the currents, buoyed up to break the water's surface and draw in a long breath that stretched her lungs. But as soon as she surfaced the water began to tug her down, its claws of river weeds and mossy boulders around her waist hooking and prodding until she submerged. Natasha's mouth snapped open in silent gasp. The water receded like a beckoned wave and she unlidded her eyes to the dark wash of her room. It was as if a layer of water had stifled her hearing so that but a blur of Clint's murmuring passed through her ears. A damp film clung to her hands and forehead; not river water, but sweat. Clint's arms, not the weeds, had wrapped around her, pulling her backward.
He brought her down with him on the fall to her bed, his arms still tight across her stomach, and Natasha let herself drop onto his lap. The rhythmic rise and fall of his chest pressed into her back. His head butted with the back of hers until he pushed her hair aside and tucked his chin into where her neck met her shoulder, and from then on it was all quiescence.
The flat grayscale of the room and the gentle warmth that swaddled her lured Natasha to sleep, deprived of it as she was, but she fought to keep her eyes open. Words and sentences were pushing pass her tongue but Clint silenced her before she got past "I-". He kissed her jaw lightly where muscles had tensed in anticipation of the syllables that hung suspended, unspoken, coaxed back behind her throat. A certain degree of understanding rested in the gesture for what she had not yet said, or perhaps her reasons for wanting to say them. She didn't know. He kept silent, and made it clear that he wanted silence from her, too.
One kiss on her jaw became two, three; slow and steady, climbing high to her cheek and dropping low to her collarbone. Again one hand pushed into her hair, twirling the strands around his fingers and tugging gently at the roots, while his other left Natasha's waist for her own clammy hand, darted over her wrist and massaged up her forearm. Under his encouragement the limb began to warm and tingle, and if they had turned on the lights then a wash of pink would tint where his fingers had caressed her skin. Faint sparks and jolts suffused across her shoulders and folded over her chest, plunged low beneath her abdomen like hot coal, where the heat decided to settle until it had gathered a small flame before burning down the backs of her thighs, giddy at the knees and ankles. Natasha lurched around in his lap to face him. She couldn't make out much in the dark, but his eyes needed no light to glow as they did then.
Natasha put a hand to his cheek, then the other, tucking her elbows in-between their bodies. A definite difference had crept into his features since she last saw him but a few days ago and she couldn't put a name to it. She'd think on it later. Right now his scent and fervor wrapped around her like a soft blanket and put to bed her restless thoughts. To tear it from herself was impossible. Fatigue had driven too deep into the bone for her to do so.
Clint, she mouthed. If not for the foreignness under his skin the urge brimming in her would have been enough for her to kiss him long and hard. Natasha studied the mountains and valleys and plains of his face, the cliff of his nose diving down to the hollow above his lips. His eyebrows pulled thick arches toward the bridge of his nose; either he was studying her the same way, or something had tainted his mood; and in the dark she couldn't tell which it was. She brushed a finger over his frown and wished it away.
The door slammed open, its metal frame hummed at the impact with the wall like a held music note, waiting, scattering the suspense they had gathered. Natasha dropped her hands to her lap. Clint's hands ceased their roaming on her body to drape over her hips.
Coulson heaved, a silhouette to the sharp light behind him. "Romanoff, we need to talk. This is urgent."
"Then talk," Natasha said.
Coulson's balled fist raised a jagged mass in his pants' pocket. He walked into the room, turned on the lights and loomed over them, his face approaching florid. "Carranza's busted her mission."
She shrugged. "Already? I thought we already discussed this. You didn't call to reassign an agent?"
'No time. She had already infiltrated by the time I notified her handler. They should have never sent the assignment to Maddox's faction. The guy's got no brains for the field."
Natasha placed her hand over the tense arm barred across her stomach and stroked it. Clint had been squeezing her hard since Coulson intruded, his muscles contracting and stiffening like a snake's coils, and she was feeling out of breath. His arm slackened when she touched it, but no sooner did the pressure return; a metal rod restraining her from an escape not on her mind.
"I don't see how this concerns me," Natasha said, though she knew exactly how.
"We need you." Coulson took a step closer.
"No. I already said no."
"Luchkov's got his eyes up even higher now for S.H.I.E.L.D. He's gotten access to our complete list of operatives. Can basically sniff us out like rabbits with whatever device he's using, so until we figure out how to override it, we can't send in normal agents."
"And my records aren't with S.H.I.E.L.D."
"Yours, Barton's, and a handful of other special cases. Your records are logged outside of S.H.I.E.L.D's registry. Why do you think it's so hard to mess with your files when you went off-grid? A smaller pool of people meant a higher chance of getting caught, and the eyes on you are many to begin with."
Natasha nodded. So she was invisible to Luchkov. Did that mean she was invisible to the rest of Russia, too? That apart from the Red Room, who could track her by her Collar, and S.H.I.E.L.D, no other parties were aware that the Black Widow had defected? It was a careful, clever game for both sides, flawless as if they had conspired together. If she paid further thought to the matter Clint wouldn't be leaving her side any time soon.
"When do I go?" She relented.
Clint squeezed her harder.
"Now. As in half an hour," Coulson said.
"And did you speak with Director Fury about my...?"
He looked at the ceiling. "I implied your participation, but no specifics."
"Then get that sorted." Natasha stared at him. "I'll definitely need his pardon on this one."
"I can do that. But you. Need to leave. Now."
"Coulson-"
"Barton, get back to work. Selvig's in the rec room."
Loud hot breaths collided against the rim of her ear, and Clint shifted behind her. Natasha stiffened. Should she leave first, or wait for him to move? Her shoulders tightened in anticipation of what he might do. Not wanting to risk anything, she pushed off his lap and off the bed. Her head reeled as she stood, her eyes flashed black and white, and half her body seemed to have left her so that she swayed on her feet enough to be noticeable. Not a very convincing show of her health, but Coulson let it slip. Maybe Clint thought the opposite, but she wouldn't let him stick around long enough to disapprove. The numbing rush in her head had left in perfect sync with her removal from him, and she would be better off missing it later than now.
Clint sat unmoving, glaring at her now, the intensity in his look deforming and harshening. The gentle fire beneath his arms, which in her mind had glowed so brightly in the pitch black, had frosted to but heavy iron. Something jumped inside Natasha and she sucked her stomach in.
When she touched his shoulder with a self-conscious hand he stiffened to stone. "Go on." Her tongue felt like stone, too. The tone gritty and jagged and left score-marks in the space between them.
Clint whipped out the door and disappeared in the fastest motion he had done in her presence that day.
Natasha swallowed. "Something I should know, Coulson?" She asked.
"Yes. Yes there is. I had to kick Barton out, he doesn't need to know." Coulson turned to fiddle with the door knob like he was checking for damage. "Stark knows about this."
"That his missile got reproduced into a bomb by his archenemy Justin Hammer, or about me and my identity crisis?"
"I don't know about that last bit, but yes. He knows his old weapons are being shipped around outside the law."
"Does that change anything?"
"Speed. It changes speed. With Carranza's failure he's going to want to take things into his own hands."
"He can't. Stark Industries has just began to recover from Monaco. He can't stir up mud with the press."
"Exactly. Alright, let's get you going." Coulson ushered her out. "I've already packed your things, they're on the jet with your brief."
Fury was waiting for Coulson after he saw Romanoff to her flight.
Coulson had expected Fury to search him out, that part was unavoidable. But not like this. He had imagined Fury sending him a warning call, or even a video conference. Certainly not in person, his stare piercing from behind the window of a car parked on the edge of the runway. Fury beckoned with a finger and sent Coulson flitting toward him.
"Director Fury."
"Get in the car."
Coulson got in the car.
"How does it feel to be in control? Throwing jobs around and playing Super Agent?" Fury asked.
"Unpleasant." Coulson sighed. "It won't happen again, Director."
"Let's review your stunts from the past two days, shall we?"
Fury pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his coat pocket and unraveled it. Saliva began collecting at the back of Coulson's throat. He swallowed and directed his gaze elsewhere. Since when did Fury write something out?
"You wiped all security footage in Moscow off the planet. The hell was that supposed to do? Call more attention to yourself? To S.H.I.E.L.D?
"No, sir."
Fury smacked his paper on the steering wheel for emphasis and continued. "Then you did the exact same thing in Sochi the next day. And what, got Sitwell on your side too? Who else? Should I squeeze names out of you?"
"No, sir."
"Hacked into Romanoff's files and slapped 'extracted' on her mission status. Roughed your way into the surveillance rooms. You know tranquilizers are not to be used on your fellow S.H.I.E.L.D members, yes?"
"That's why I only used it once."
"Don't try to sass me."
Coulson bowed his head.
"I thought you'd stop after getting Romanoff back here. Why you sending her out again?"
"I... I had her continue Carranza's mission."
Fury took out a pen and scribbled violently on his paper.
"Director Fury, she'll do fine. She'll-"
"Tell that to the World Security Council. Not me."
Thanks for reading!