Same disclaimers as chapter 1.
AN: Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter and favorited and followed and all that good stuff. Means a ton. I've actually had this chapter written for quite a few days but my computer decided to be a douchebag at that precise moment in time and I had to wait to publish until now. Anyway, this is a bit of a longer chapter, getting ready to really start the ball rolling. Clint isn't the star in this chapter, but I promise he'll be making a comeback very soon. Enjoy!
The first thing I learned about this Clint fellow—whose last name was still a mystery to me—was that he was a liar. And I wasn't sure how I felt about that given what he'd lied about was giving me hot chocolate. Sure, he kept true on his promise not to hold my hand and cuddle with me, but once he'd settled me in a luxurious seat in some private jet his agency had provided, the first thing he'd done was offer me a large mug of hot chocolate with a toothy grin.
Poison, was the first thought that popped into my mind when he shoved the warm mug into my manacled hands. Clint seemed to read my mind immediately.
"For the last time, I'm not trying to kill you. See?" he insisted, taking a sip from the mug himself and smacking his lips with the thick chocolate. Nonetheless, I put the mug on a small side table grudgingly, refusing to accept any offers from him in a manner not unlike that of a child throwing a tantrum. Even taking the hot chocolate felt like a showing of weakness, like submitting myself to a debt in his name.
He took a seat across from me, watching me with annoying attentiveness over his own mug of hot chocolate. I refused to rise to his bait. I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't want to see him. I didn't want his stupid chocolate even if my stomach had grumbled yearningly at the sweet smell. So I tucked my feet under me on the seat and glared out the window resolutely, simply ignoring his presence. He obviously got the hint.
"Fine, whatever," he said with a huff, taking his mug and moving towards the back of the plane where I suspected there to be a bedroom. Despite my better judgment, I couldn't help looking up as he departed, watching him furtively. And though I hated to admit it to myself, he was a fine specimen, and my hungry seventeen-year-old hormones pined appreciatively for him. He was taller than me by a good bit but I could tell that was as tall as he'd get. He had a full crop of thick sandy hair though it was cut short. He was an elegant work of smooth, swooping lines; the curve of his shoulders, the definition of his back, the shading of his arms. And I actually forced myself to look away when my eyes slowly drifted down to rest on his delicious butt and heat rushed up to my pale cheeks. I stared angrily at my hands, annoyed at my own reaction. So I decided to overlook my chagrin and simply hate him for it. That was a lot easier. My eyes roved over to the chocolate and I decided to hate that, too. Damn all of him to hell.
I looked out the small plane window at a fluffy sea of rolling clouds, shining silver in the moonlight and only then noticed how tired I was. My eyelids drooped, but falling asleep on a plane with people I didn't know—or people period, really—felt like offering myself up on a silver platter.
Stop it, Nat. He could've killed you ten times over already, a more logical part of my mind told me soothingly. But another, seemingly larger and stronger part of me told me that was just the sleep talking and I scolded myself for my own weakness. So I leaned my forehead against the cold glass of the window and kept my eyelids resolutely up. And I never realized I fell asleep until I woke up suddenly some time later, confused, disoriented, and with a nasty crick in my neck to show for my pitiful sleeping position. But I still wasn't dead, much to my continuous surprise.
I went through this pattern of uneasy sleep and sudden awakening various times throughout what remained of the flight. At one point I woke up to find the hot chocolate reheated and now accompanied by cookies, which I could no longer help to devour, because even my pride was stumped when my primal needs took hold of me. But even more surprising was realizing my wrists were no longer cuffed when I reached for the chocolate with both hands only to find they were no longer bound. I rubbed my wrists wondrously as I glanced toward the silent bedroom I'd last seen Clint disappear to. The plane was still as quiet as if I'd been the only one on it—which suddenly made me think I probably was the only one on it and Clint had abandoned the plane and left it to crash with me in it and make it look like an accident and I had to stop it or I'd be doomed and I was surely already seconds away from plummeting into the ocean or into a mountain or into a volcano—until I told myself to shut the fuck up and eat my damn cookies because I was just paranoid again and determined to find death traps for myself in everything. So I did stop, finished all the food that had been laid out for me, and had to admit that if it was poisoned, they did a very good job of hiding the taste, because everything was delicious. With another wary glance around me—and a cautious look out the window to make sure the plane wasn't taking me into sure death—I fell back asleep right after, my freshly fed stomach keeping me so for a few good hours until—
"Fuck!"
I awoke with a start, a thick knitted blanket suddenly falling off my shoulders as I sat up suddenly. I looked at it, confused, until I realized Clint must have put it on me at some point. I pushed it off hastily, wanting to retch because I still wasn't ready to be grateful for anything to him. Much less cute stuff like hot chocolate and blankets.
The door to the small bedroom at the back of the plane flew open with a loud bang and Clint came striding out looking particularly incensed, seeming to end a call he'd just been having on a small cell phone with a few furious jabs of his fingers.
"Oh, you're up," he said, his face softening slightly, though his voice remained distant. "We're landing soon."
"Where?" I asked, my voice still rough with sleep and disuse.
"SHIELD. The agency I work for. Sorry, I have to put these back on you," he said warily as he pulled the cuffs out again. I bit back the snarl that had initially threatened to rip out of me. "My boss isn't particularly thrilled that you aren't dead—no offense—much less that I brought you back with me," he said quietly, actually managing a small apologetic smile as he held up the cuffs between us, as if for my inspection. If I'd been any sort of normal person, this probably would have been the part where I smiled at him to tell him it was okay or something, but I wasn't, so I did nothing and said nothing, trying to decide how to react to knowing he'd broken rules and disobeyed orders to keep me alive. Because those weren't the things you did lightly as a hired assassin, no matter who you worked for. And it seemed enticingly easy to just hate him for that too, because the other option was being grateful and digging myself deeper and deeper in his debt. But maybe it was the assassin in myself that knew he deserved the latter because I understood the gravity of what he'd done for me. So I offered my wrists for him to cuff silently, hoping he understood without words because saying it would surely kill me. But I knew he did understand, from one assassin to another, when my green eyes met his brown ones and he gently locked the chains back on without breaking my gaze.
He ushered me off the plane and into an elevator that seemed to dip light years below the earth's surface before it slowed and expelled us into what seemed to be an enormous bustling atrium, filled with hundreds of people clad either in smart-looking suits or mission gear. And much to my relief, no one stopped to stare at us.
"Follow me," Clint said quietly, taking the lead, and again I couldn't help feeling grateful he'd at least allowed me the small decency of walking without him holding my hands behind my back like a criminal. We came into what looked like a large control room, people sitting at computers everywhere and several large screens at the front of the room showing maps and coordinates and live feeds I didn't care to understand at the moment because I was too intent on staying close to Clint. I had the feeling the moment he disappeared, these people wouldn't offer me the same mercy he had.
"I'm here, Phil," he called out, his voice calm and measured. A man in one of those sharp suits turned, clicking at an earpiece he had on. He was older than Clint, maybe double his age, carrying himself with the authority his obvious seniority gave him. And though his expression was detached and somber, there was something almost comfortingly kind about his disposition. His eyes skipped immediately over Clint and found their way to me as if he'd been expecting me—which I guessed he probably had, as nothing seemed to get by them—and gave me a calculating look.
"What have you done now, Clint?" he said, his eyes finally meeting Clint and looking almost sorry for him. I stood awkwardly aside, feeling increasingly tiny and vulnerable in a room filled with armed agents I'm sure could kill me before I had the chance to blink one more time. One-on-one, my ego liked to think I could take any of them, but at the moment, I was standing in the middle of their beehive, cuffed and defenseless. The feeling was foreign to me and I did not enjoy it. As if they could suddenly sense the foreign intrusion in their midst, several agents began to turn and cast me furtive glances, some cold, some only curious, but some completely unforgiving.
"Well, whatever it is, you've said it: it's done. I'm prepared to take responsibility for it," Clint responded in a measured voice.
"BARTON!" a voice boomed behind us just as Clint finished his statement. Phil raised an eyebrow.
"Well, here's your chance," he muttered to Clint. We both turned to face a tall dark man in a long black coat and eye patch, something in my mind casually taking note of Clint's last name and feeling a vindictive pleasure at now being even on the basis of names despite the circumstances. The man's one eye roved over me quickly before turning to glare murderously at Clint.
"My office. Now," he said dangerously. "Phil, handle her," he added almost as an afterthought with a vague gesture in my direction before turning without another word. I swallowed. So, this was the end, then. I'd flown all this way with a stranger just to get "handled" by Phil. I wondered idly if there was a room specifically for "handling." Would it be fast? Would they torture me for information? Would Phil shoot me? Decapitate me? What would happen to my body? Would I get a last meal? Because I hadn't eaten anything except cookies for more than a day and frankly wouldn't turn down a nice plate of potato pancakes just then.
Control yourself, Natalia. Remember who you are, a voice in my head said warningly, centering my focus. Right. I wasn't some weak-kneed teenage girl who fled at the first sight of danger. I lived in danger—I was danger. I was a killer, and I was good at it. I calmed my thoughts, returning to my level head. If I was going to die, the last these agents would see of me would be my nose in the air, if not a pair of middle fingers to match. Fuck them all! I again assumed the air I'd taken when I'd been prepared for Clint to shoot me, like I feared nothing in that room except their stupid taste in suits.
"That's it, Romanoff, head up. I'll see you in a bit," Clint leaned over to whisper to me, almost in a conspiratorial fashion, and giving my cheek a quick tweak before I had the chance to react, though he effectively shattered my focus and I was back to being nothing more than a simple-minded girl fighting hard against nothing other than a rising blush. I didn't even have time to fume at him—or break his fingers or something—before I realized he was already walking away well beyond my reach and I was falling farther and farther behind the safety of his.
I didn't "see him in a bit." That bastard, Clint Barton, was definitely a liar. First it'd been the hot chocolate, now this. I didn't see hide nor hair of him in the three long weeks that followed while I was kept in custody for questioning and surveillance. After Clint had departed, Phil had called another agent, a young Maria Hill that didn't appear any older than me, to escort me to a holding chamber. I'd regarded her with contempt as she'd approached, my mind already thinking I could snap her neck easily and maybe have a chance to sneak out of this God-forsaken place. And I noticed with immense satisfaction that she approached me with caution and the most subtle nervous glint in her eyes. I remembered then I had a rep with these people and held my chin just a little bit higher.
But I noted with disappointment as she drew up to me that though her face conveyed youth and her body was slim, she was taller than me and no less stronger. She took the time to put my hands behind my back the way I'm sure they thought I belonged and did walk behind me while restraining my arms with a firm grip. She walked me around a good deal and took me through several elevators before she finally deposited me into a simple holding cell with only one door and a small cot.
I expected to be visited by Clint to be informed on what was going on outside of my cell where I saw no one except the million and one interrogators that kept asking me all the same questions again and again, but I waited in vain. I tried to be as cooperative as possible in the beginning, hoping to make a good impression and let them know I'd come with honest intentions, until their repetitive questions and refusal to answer any questions of mine reduced me to snapping out sarcastic answers or simply telling them to fuck themselves. Apart from the questioners, the only other person I saw was Maria Hill who came in to give me my meals and sat outside my door all hours of the day and night with her clipboard clutched to her chest, bending down every so often to scribble something down.
I tried to ask her for Clint once when she'd been in to deliver my breakfast, but she'd only shaken her head, signaling she wasn't allowed to speak to me. I'd groaned and turned away from her on my cot, my sight blurring with frustration. I was going to die in this stupid cell, I was sure of it. And I began to resent them for not simply killing me off in the first place. I was tired of their stupid games.
Three weeks later, I'd just been putting the finishing touches on my mental escape plan, prepared to get out of here or finally die trying, when Phil finally came in to see me, entering my cell with Maria on his heel.
"Miss Romanoff, I'm Agent Phil Coulson, and I'm here to offer you a deal," he'd said, capturing enough of my attention to get me to roll over on my cot and look at him. I gave him a shrewd look as I sat up, beyond the point of any more mind games.
"What kind of deal?" I asked, my voice betraying more of the fatigue I felt than I liked.
"If you're willing, SHIELD would like to offer you a position within our ranks. With some negotiations, of course... We've been informed you might be interested in what is in this file," he said slowly, taking a large manila folder from Maria and holding it up for me to see my own name printed on it as clear as day. "If whatever you want to know isn't in here, it isn't anywhere," he said with the slightest hint of pride. I rolled my eyes.
"What kind of negotiations?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady because this was more than I had even bothered to hope for anymore. I hadn't been planning to leave this room with my life, much less my past. We talked for hours while Coulson named all their conditions and I scoffed indignantly at the vast majority of them, especially the one about attending agent training. Perhaps it was the fact that the thick manila folder lay on his lap the entire time, however, that made me more willing to reason. Finally, after I'd agreed to swear my new loyalty, attend training, and submit to surveillance during a certain period of time, I walked out of the cell without handcuffs, with my life, and with the folder clutched to my chest.
And the moment I stepped out, Maria actually shot a small smile in my direction which I returned with a blank look, sure she'd meant it for someone behind me. I didn't want to check. She escorted me to my new room in the agent dorm quarters, and this time, I received more than a few curious glances. People actually stopped what they were doing to watch my progression and whisper to each other. I could only imagine the rumors that had been flying around during my captivity.
Maria showed me into a small room with blank walls that was supposed to be my new "home." It wasn't anything special, with only a bed, a dresser, a bathroom, and a small television, but when I'd caught glimpses through the doors other agents had swung open eagerly to catch a look at me on my way here, I'd seen many had taken the liberty of customizing their rooms with posters, pictures, and their possessions, making each room look like an individual apartment. But I had nothing to my name except my name, so my room remained empty.
"I'm Maria Hill, by the way," she'd said to me with her hand outstretched when I'd slumped down on the edge of the bed and looked down at my shoes. I'd stared from her hand to her eyes until she slowly let it drop. I had half a mind to take the gun strapped to her thigh and make a run for it, but I suddenly found myself too unbearably tired to even stand up. "You know, if this is gonna work—this whole you joining us and us not killing you thing—you're gonna have to try. We're supposed to be like a family. Agents are supposed watch out for one another," she said quietly, almost sadly, before leaving and closing the door behind her. I found the strength to get up and lock the door before falling back onto the bed, holding the manila folder gingerly in front of me.
I stayed up all hours of the night reading the file. About my parents' death. My being kidnapped as child to be turned into a Black Widow. Being brainwashed. I read the word over and over, to the point where it hardly made sense anymore. Sudden memories of dark rooms and strange voices in my ears came back to me. Memories I had previously regarded as nothing more than bad dreams suddenly made sense. Bad dreams turned startling reality. Flickering lights and haunting chants, reality dumped out and violent ideas of life and pride and responsibility and duty pushed in. A child being untied at the seams, a killer being born from the rags. A person unmade and recreated by design.
I suddenly felt tainted, like a stranger in my own body, like I had no idea who I was. I had no idea what was me and what had been twisted and warped into my brain until I believed it was me. I put the folder away gingerly, no longer wanting to touch or even look at it. I curled up on the bed and for the first time in years, I cried. The tears seemed to burn their way out of me, tying my throat and stinging my eyes, and refused to stop streaming because I was really only a girl who'd had her life turned upside down in a very short amount of time and no matter what I told anyone, I was terrified. I was a ghost. An empty shell filled with someone else's ideals.
But it had to stop. I felt a burning hatred for my previous leaders, a fiery need to avenge the little girl Natalia Romanova could have been. Because she had been killed, and they were to blame. Her murderers would fall to their knees if it was the last thing I ever did. So that night, as the uneasy hiccups bounced me into a fretful sleep, I reinvented myself. That night, I chose my own path. That night, I belonged to no one besides myself. That night, I was reborn.
Nick Fury wasted no time in waking me up early the next morning to introduce himself as the director of SHIELD and to tell me my lessons started immediately. He pushed the standard gear for apprentice agents, identical to the ones Maria wore, into my arms and told me to watch where I stepped because I was on very thin ice. I couldn't muster the energy to complain or make a biting remark, instead taking the suit silently and resigning myself to hell.
I hated "school" most of all. The idea of studying and learning things I already considered myself an expert in was infuriating. And I hated having to do it with the mass of other apprentice agents that all followed my progress either with looks of apprehension, contempt, or a mixture of both. I got Coulson to drop some years from my sentence when I proved my aptitude in a variety of fields, like combat and weaponry, but I wasn't free from it completely, and had to settle with being bumped up into Maria Hill's class, students my age who hated me all the more for it because they'd been studying for an additional four years before I arrived. I couldn't bring myself to care, deciding if they hated me, I hated them too. I spent my first couple of months alone and being anti-social, deciding I needed to time with myself anyway. To figure out who I was and who I wanted to be. But Maria and I ended up gravitating towards each other, after all. Her intelligence and prodigious skill in organizing and managing had gained her some favor with her superiors and made her something like an assistant to Coulson, though other envious agents in our class labeled her his "pet." She was shunned by other students, scorned for her good standing, and we found ourselves spending more and more time together: partnered for exercises when we were left unchosen, helping each other when everyone else ignored us, sitting at opposite ends of the same empty lunch table until we slowly began scooting toward each other, meeting in the middle and finally allowing each other shy smiles.
I found her to actually be quite interesting, bursting with information no one else wanted to hear from her. She was thoughtful and good-natured, with a kind face only made stern by her intense focus. She knew a good bit of gossip about ongoings in the higher rungs of SHIELD that she learned from trailing Coulson, and when I finally permitted myself to ask her about Clint Barton, she eagerly revealed all the information she told me she'd been aching to tell me the time I'd asked for him while I'd been in captivity but she'd been sworn to silence.
"Got hell for it, I heard," Maria said quietly to me over lunch a few months after my arrival. Something about mentioning him made me feel guilty for acknowledging I cared at all about someone who hadn't bothered so much as to ask me if I was okay once since I'd been taken on as an apprentice agent. "I overheard some older agents talking about him when I was running some errands for Coulson. They said Fury nearly broke his neck right there in his office when you guys arrived. But apparently he said he didn't regret it, and you shouldn't be killed because you were young and obviously didn't know who you were working for."
I listened thoughtfully, confused by the sudden tightening in my chest.
"Fury practically banished him to some mission in the middle of nowhere," Maria finished, idly pushing around her broccoli with her fork.
"Is he still there?" I tried to ask in an offhanded manner. Maria's eyebrows furrowed slightly in thought.
"No, I heard he came back rather quickly, actually, much to Fury's annoyance who'd been hoping to keep him away for months. I haven't seen him around, though," Maria answered. I only nodded, deciding there really wasn't any excuse for him refusing to find me and resolving not to ask for him again.
I found myself much comforted by Maria, however, who kept me quite focused and even entertained. We'd taken to calling each other the nicknames the rest of our class had given us—"Pet" for her and "KGB" for me—comforted by our acknowledgment of their ridiculousness simply by accepting them, and annoying everyone else when they realized our own amusement at them. She almost made life feel normal, despite the fact we were studying together for a secret agency to be assassins. She snuck choice food into our rooms late at night, offered gossip and advice, and even backed me up in a fight one time when I'd defended her from a snooty agent in our class that had never liked us and had let slip one too many snide remarks. I'd been cleaning up her busted lip in Coulson's office, laughing even as we sat there waiting for Phil to arrive and announce our punishment, when I idly thought that this must be what it was like to have a friend.
My vivid red curls had grown long enough to reach the middle of my back three years later as Maria and I stood side by side at our class's "graduation." There were no caps or gowns; instead, we were all dressed in full gear, and of course, carrying our weapons of choice. Even though that was something we did every day no matter where we went around the facility. Except for me, as I was still on "parole." But they had allowed me to carry my choice weapon—tiny missile-like energy blasters carried on the wrists like bracelets that I had grown quite fond of during training—even if the cartridges were empty of power. It was the principle of the thing.
The class stood in a line facing a small stage, our instructors, superiors, and SHIELD officials seated behind us as we watched one apprentice after another go up to take their oaths before Fury and Coulson, have themselves pronounced Agents, and return to their place in line.
"Maybe we'll get lucky and Demetra won't come back from her first mission," Maria whispered to me out of the corner of her mouth as the girl we'd fought three years ago raised her hand and began chanting the oath we'd all been memorizing for years. I snorted, elbowing Maria to be quiet. Older agents were able to offer graduating apprentice agents to accompany them for their first field missions. If you had no offers, you simply had to wait until you were assigned one, because you needed to be mentored on a certain number of missions before going out on your own. Demetra had gotten an offer and had proceeded to gloat loudly about it for months before the graduation, particularly around Maria and I. Maria was being kept on the facility to be trained as a junior director under Coulson's tutelage, which I thought would benefit her in the end when she got to order everyone else around, but was still looked down upon by young agents who only wanted to go out and get in the thick of things. And I, of course, hadn't been offered a single thing, not for lack of talent, but because I was still widely considered the KGB girl that shouldn't be here and couldn't be trusted. So I was being given more reconnaissance work and practice missions like everyone else who wasn't being mentored. Our instructors who had stressed the importance of every job had always told us that there was always reconnaissance work to be done. But all the students always joked that that didn't mean anyone wanted to do it.
"Natasha Romanoff," Coulson finally called my name. I took a breath and walked around and up onto the stage, meeting Coulson's eyes. Today, he had the air of a father watching all his babies graduating. He looked at me kindly. He was one of the few people that hadn't treated me differently because of how I got here, though that could partially be attributed to how much he favored Maria and how often he saw us together. And Fury, he was the same detached but fair person to everyone, and he didn't withhold that from me either.
I recited the oath flawlessly, feeling liberated by the honesty with which I said it. Because though my seventeen-year-old self couldn't have understood it, it was different here. I had the same job, but I felt the weight and responsibility of fighting for something worthwhile. And I didn't feel like a shell anymore. I was filled with a purpose. I turned to face the crowd as was custom when coming to the end of the oath, a symbolic way of saying this promise was not only for SHIELD, but for everyone, for anyone that needed us.
"Welcome to SHIELD, Agent Natasha Romanoff."