Chapter Text
Steve found Clint on the roof late that evening. The archer was sitting cross-legged, staring over the city.
“It’s about time we had a mission in the desert again,” he said. “I want to see the stars without light pollution again.”
Steve smiled, settling next to him.
“Maybe we can manage a visit without the prospect of punching people even.”
“Aaand you immediately ruined the trip for Hulk and Thor.”
They chuckled.
“How’s Natasha?” Steve asked.
“Quiet so far. I told J.A.R.V.I.S to alert me if need be.”
“I hope she’ll cope well with it all being stirred up again,” Steve said with a grimace.
“Yeah, man, so do I.” Clint sighed. “I’ve never heard it that way before, either. Having the puzzle complete like that is… something.”
“Yeah, I’m still in shock how much there was. You’d never guess something quite that bad.”
Clint nodded.
“Yeah, that’s true. I always knew she hadn’t been treated well and that she had been isolated and all, but seeing all the girls that didn’t make it, and knowing she feels guilty about all of them even though she was as good as she can afford, that hits a bit different. And the video… she doesn’t do it as much anymore, but she used to protect her chest when she was scared I or someone else was mad at her. Knowing that monster enjoyed himself doing that, it makes me want to throw up.”
“Yeah. That someone could look at a 13-year-old and even pick up that whip is insane.”
Clint scoffed.
“Oh, that guy had no regard for age in any way. I think Nat sent him off way too lightly for what he did to her. I wouldn’t have killed him peacefully in his sleep. He didn’t deserve that mercy.”
“Which is probably why she granted it to him,” Steve argued. “But I get you. Some people should go with a beating. Mercy be damned.”
Clint smiled at him.
“Wow, and that from Captain America himself.”
“I doubt anyone could see that video and not think that way.”
Clint nodded, gaze wandering over the town.
“Still wild to think I went on that mission with intent to kill,” he said thoughtfully. “Instead I got myself the best friend anyone could have.”
“It’s crazy that you saw through her as quickly as you did.” Steve said. “It took an alien invasion for the rest of us.”
Clint shrugged and smiled.
“That’s why they call me Hawkeye.”
Tony looked up when the door of his lab was opened.
Natasha smiled a bit and assumed her usual spot on a table on the side.
She was looking much better than a few days earlier, and her chest was basically healed. Tony was quite happy with the work his machine had done, but he was much happier to see her up on her feet and well.
“Don’t let me disturb you,” she said.
He obediently went back to tinkering, albeit half-heartedly.
He didn’t mind her watching, in fact, he found their companionable silence quite inspiring… when he didn’t have something on his mind like right now.
When he fried the circuit he was working on, he capitulated.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
She looked at him expectantly.
“I’m sorry I pestered you about your past before, Natasha. I… If I’d known…”
She shook her head.
“Don’t worry about it. Feels kinda good to have it out, you know? I’m glad I don’t feel anxious about how vulnerable it makes me. Cos I trust you guys, and that means a lot to me.”
Tony cleared his throat awkwardly.
“To us, too,” he croaked almost inaudibly, and very much appreciated that she didn’t ask him to repeat it.
Stark, you are such a zero with feelings, it’s embarrassing.
“Come on,” she said teasingly. “There’s no way Tony Stark is satisfied with just listening to my autobiography. Get it off your chest.”
He threw her a look, and then busied himself with throwing away the busted circuit plate. Dummy looked at its work being done with an air of sadness.
“Did you mind being paired with Barton?” he asked. “You were always a team player as long as I’ve known you, but you weren’t raised that way.”
She shook her head thoughtfully.
“No, that’s true. It was a job for me in the beginning, now it was my task to keep him alive before completing the mission. I was scared of doing things wrong, and he wasn’t too keen on working with me either, so it wasn’t easy, but I started liking it very quickly.”
“He really didn’t want to work with you?” Tony asked. “After he got you out of there?”
“He had bad experiences with work relationships,” Natasha said. “It had nothing to do with me. When he’d worked through that, things started to work smoothly. Fury and Coulson did good forcing us into it.” She smiled. “I wonder sometimes if they had a feeling it would be more than just work.”
“Fury would’ve never,” Tony said with a laugh.
“Oh, you’re wrong about that,” Natasha contradicted. “Romance between agents isn’t appreciated much at S.H.I.E.L.D, it’s too unpredictable, but friendship is different. Knowing I was unlikely to make friends in the real world, I suspect at least Coulson wanted to look out for me. S.H.I.E.L.D is many things, but it’s not heartless.”
Her voice was full of earnest, and Tony found he believed her judgement. He understood better than ever what a safe haven S.H.I.E.L.D had been for her, and Clint as well.
I never had that until now.
He startled when he found her right next to him.
“You WILL give me a heart attack one day.”
“Nothing your genius couldn’t fix.” She boxed his arm playfully.
A moment of silence passed between them.
“Thank you,” Natasha said softly, with no elaboration, but he didn’t need one.
“Thank you, too,” he replied, encompassing more than he could grasp consciously.
She leaned her head against his arm for a moment, and he knew that one of these days they’d hug, and it would be just what they’d need that moment, and even though the moment wasn’t there yet, he could feel that some part of the wound that a loveless childhood had left within him, and that he knew she understood better than anyone else, was starting to heal.
Ten days after the incident, Natasha’s chest was perfectly healed, the nightmares began.
It was as if her body had looked at the healing time and thought ‘well, that doesn’t seem right’ and moved the problems to her brain.
She always woke up in Clint’s arms, which was good, but after three straight days of undead girls staring at her reproachfully, she took a night off, reading.
At least there was no need to bother with a full face of makeup before she went to breakfast, and that was really nice.
On the second morning, Steve simply offered her a hug. He didn’t ask her to talk, but he did whisper “I’m there if you need me,” and that almost made her tear up.
That evening, she found a box of chocolates in her room with a card, saying:
“No matter what, if you want to talk, I am there, no explanations needed.”
It wasn’t signed, but written in green ink, and that made her smile as she pressed the piece of paper to her chest to absorb its slightly clumsy friendliness.
Her friends protested, but after three weeks Natasha put her foot down.
“There’s nothing wrong with me physically and I’m getting stir-crazy in here, it’s about time that I got back in the field.”
So she was sitting in Fury’s office for a mission brief, which was familiar and thereby quite comforting, going over a cover identity she’d used before in every way but by name, a directive that she classed as relaxed (though there were admittedly not a lot of people who would have), and yes, the environment of the Triskelion which, even after all these years, still felt like what she thought a childhood home might feel like.
“All clear?” Fury asked.
She nodded.
“Consider it done.”
He gave her a tight-lipped Fury-smile and she got up.
“One second, Romanoff.”
She halted obediently.
He hesitated for a moment.
“So, how did it go?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your video, did you show them?”
She nodded.
“They took it well, I think. They’ve been so sweet, too.”
“Good on them,” Fury said gruffly. He hesitated again. “I saw it, too, while picking it out. I thought you should know that.”
Natasha looked at him in mild surprise.
“Yes, of course, I figured that. You have full clearing to watch whatever you want from the recordings.”
“I know. Regardless.”
Again a pause.
“It’s a tough watch,” Fury said then. “I realize that’s a bit lukewarm to say to the person who was there, and had to experience it, but still. I’m glad they got the bare minimum of what was coming for them, death.”
“Clint thinks I should’ve been more cruel to them. Make ‘em suffer. Do you think so, too?”
“There’s few people who wouldn’t have. But no. If you feel good about this, it was the right thing to do. You were justified to do whatever you wanted to do to them, that includes showing them mercy.”
He put a hand on her shoulder and she looked away, unsure how to react but similarly feeling the moment last like an imprint even after he took his hand away.
“Sometimes I get scared I didn’t kill them,” she admitted softly. “That I imagined it somehow and they’re still around and they’ll come for me.”
He nodded.
“I understand. If it makes any difference, I made sure to have the corpses burned. No coming back from that.”
“You haven’t seen the A-Team then, have you?”
“I have, and trust me, that option is accounted for.”
She smiled at his earnestness.
“Thank you.” She gestured toward the door. “I’ll go now and do what I do best.”
“Second-best,” he corrected, and this time his smile was different from usual, almost, well, normal. “I am told you hold the Avengers record in karaoke battle wins.”
Natasha laughed.
“But only because Hulk smashed the machine after the last one.”
“A win’s a win.”
“How about a Midgardian feast tonight?,” Natasha asked when she said down next to Thor in the living room. “We want your Earth food bingo card to fill up, after all?”
He grinned at her.
“That’s a great idea, Lady Natasha.”
“How come Asgard doesn’t call men Lord,” she asked. “as the equivalent for Lady?”
Thor was silent for a moment, then frowned.
“I never thought about that before. I was taught it was a sign of respect for female warriors, but now you say it… it is quite odd.”
Natasha shrugged.
“Don’t worry about it, I don’t mind, I just wondered.”
“No, you are right,” he persisted. “We shouldn’t be making that difference if we see our male and female warriors as equal.” He thought for a few seconds. “Would you mind if I called you “friend”, like the others?”
She smiled, boxing his shoulder.
“Of course not, Thor. You can call me however you want, I know you respect me regardless.”
He smiled gratefully, and they sat in companionable silence for a bit.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about your story,” Thor said then. “I never doubted you were one of Midgard’s greatest, but what you experienced makes me think about how we define heroes. No monster we’ve faced together comes close to the people of your younger years.”
Natasha nodded thoughtfully.
“Remember the interview we had a couple months ago? I was asked whether I was afraid out in the field.”
“You said no.”
“Yes. They made the Headline “Woman without fear” or something like that. They couldn’t be more wrong, of course. But it makes for a good story.”
“Asgard is similar to that,” Thor said. “Our great hero tales are about battles in the field, too. It seems like it’s easy to forget the paths one took to become a warrior, the personal wars one has to wage. I believe that no-one in this tower was made by their first sword-strike.
I made an effort to find out the true first strike of all of you in the last weeks, you know? I used to think that we chose the warrior-path, but in truth, none of us did. You were all fighting long before you first picked up a weapon. I think that should be a part of the hero songs. That Friend
Steve was protecting people when he himself still needed protection. Tony was fighting for something nobody should need to fight for, his father’s love. Bruce had to fight a part of himself. Clint was left all on his own way before his time, and so were you. So many people in all realms fight battles unarmed when they are not ready. We shouldn’t commend only those who lift up armor and chose to fight.”
Natasha nodded, tears blurring her vision.
“That’s well said, Thor. We never have to be as strong as in the battles we never meant to fight.”
“Exactly, that’s what I think, too.” Thor agreed. “Even myself, I wasn’t made by my battle against the destroyer. I was made by my father’s banishment and meeting Jane. I suppose both me and my brother were made who we were by how our father treated us. I often think that maybe if he had told Loki who he was sooner, and showed that he still loved him, maybe he wouldn’t have felt the need to be bigger than everyone else. Of course,” he added. “I am happy I got to see Midgard, because I got to meet all of you.”
“I get that,” Natasha replied. “My childhood was horrible, but if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have met any of you. I can’t really say I’m glad it happened this way, it was too awful for that, but I would not go back and change it so I wouldn’t have been a part of the program, you know?
I’m not happy about my way, but I’m glad where it led me.”