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She has to flirt with Bruce.
The CIA has ordered her to, and Fury has backed them up stating that it is for the good of the Avengers, and therefore the world.
She has to remind herself constantly that, to everyone, there is a sixteen year year age gap. Not a twenty seven year age gap.
It feels wrong.
He is nice, and sweet, and deserves Betty Ross.
It feels so wrong, but she knows she can’t stop, not with the approving looks of the team, and the lack of demands from the government.
She doesn’t know how she learnt to tame the beast.
It was a rough mission, and everyone had gone whilst only she and the Hulk remained. She had tried asking, begging, yelling and even flirting him into submission. But to no avail. She was tired, and she had merely sat down, cautiously, and rubbed its palm, a sign of surrender.
She hadn’t expected the palm to shrink.
Apparently neither had he, as he had stared at her in shock before turning a bright red at the fact that he had no clothes on.
Now the team expected her to do it for every mission.
Every time she did it she felt worse.
Every time, she had to relax, surrender and be completely submissive. She hated it.
But now, she had to get ready.
There was a party at Stark Tower, and she had to be there. She had arranged with Stark to work the bar, as she would be able to keep check of everyones drinks, and ensure that no drinks were tampered with.
Natasha curled her hair back meticulously, and put on traditional makeup. She ensured that her mask made her look older than normal, and was firmly secured for battle mode.
It would not do for anyone to realise that the woman running the bar, and drinking people under the table was one year under age.
She put on a smart, beautiful outfit that would make her seem the perfect mixture of formal, and feminine. She felt confident that this night would go well.
The sceptre had been secured, Clint had been patched up, and the Hydra base with the enhanced was hopefully completely destroyed.
She sits at the bar, sipping at a martini glass filled with vodka and cranberry juice, when Bruce comes and sits at the bar.
It is just him and her, and despite how honourable and respectable he is, her skin crawls at what she has to do. She puts on a fake accent, and flirts with as little subtlety as possible.
She acts demure and coy, and pours an extra shot into her glass as she continues talking. He reddens, then pales slightly as he realised that she is actually flirting with him. She makes her voice extra husky as she leaves to serve Maria, who is looking quite proudly at her.
She hears Steve encourage Banner to date her, and she ignores the rising bile in her throat as Maria smiles.
Maria sends her an encrypted text as she sits down. :
“ You are not a child anymore, Widow. I will keep your secret, but you must maintain your cover”
The boys all take a shot at living the hammer, and she ignores their invitations.
How can a deceitful assassin, who can’t even tell people how old she is, be worthy of anything? Everyone tries, and no-one seems to succeed.
Steve gets close, but it appears that not even the righteous Steve Rogers can lift up the hammer.
Then suddenly, a ringing starts, and she is so, so glad she put the mask in battle mode. She turns to see, what seems to be a skeletal form of one of Tony’s bots, but judging by Tony’s confused looks, this isn’t meant to happen.
The bot, mutters to itself, and then
“ No, No. How could you be worthy… you’re all killers.”
Clint pales, Steve’s jaw clenches and Tony begins frantically typing on his pad. It mutters some more nonsense.
Worrying nonsense.
Nonsense that sounds like a plan, a dream gone horrible wrong.
When it states it has a mission, it feels like it is speaking again, so she asks
“What mission?”
“Peace in our time.” It responds, a menacing smile lighting up its battered metallic face.
Two bots shoot through the glass and everything turns to chaos. She and Bruce are flung over the bar, and as she tries to get up, shards of glass digging into her back, Bruce clumsily falls onto her.
His face reddens, but to be honest, there are bigger problems now than the fact that he accidentally reached second base by face planting into her boobs.
She orders him to not turn green, too worried about Ultron to flirt or act ashamed.
She dislodges a handgun from under the counter, and fights the urge to kick Bruce from off her legs. She drags him up out of the bar, and shoots at the robots.
She just continues shooting as everything fades. The sounds of the bots, the smashing of glass, the worried breathing of the civilians at the party.
Then everything goes still, and Ultron begins to speak again .
He, it, whatever it is., speaks of a new age. Of Evolution. Of a fresh start.
Its last worlds before Thor finally throws his hammer through it, are that the world would be a better place without the Avengers.
Everyone is too in shock to hear its last mutterings.
“I had strings, but now I am free.”
Everyone ]goes down to the lab, pobably to discuss plans, but Natasha goes to her room.
She doesn’t stay in it often, but Tony gave it to her, and sometimes after a tough mission, she needs to be Natalia, not Natasha.
She changes out of her clothes, ditching her makeup, running her hands through her hair and washing her face. She puts the mask back on, and uses it to make her seem healthy, glowing but tired.
She puts on gym clothes, and prepares for battle, hiding knives, spy-tech and weapons on her person. She knows she will look a mess, but honestly, who cares.
If the world is going to end, she might as well be comfortable.
She knew that the Avengers wouldn’t last for long, but she just didn’t know for how long. As she walks silently into the room, no-one noticing her.
She realises the Bruce was right. The Avengers were a time bomb, and Ulton had just shortened the wick.
They get news that a ship is having a “robot and freaky kids” taking their vibranium supplies.
She suits up. On the jet, the silence is tense. Steve and Thor, glaring at Tony, Bruce nervously fiddling with his headphones and Clint sharpening his arrows.
She waits. They touch down, just getting to hear a mechanical voice arrogantly telling of how wonderful he is, and how “Stark is a disease.”
For a second, a flash of hurt speeds across Stark’s face. She wishes she could comfort him.
But Natasha doesn’t know how.
They begin to fight, a young man zooming past, tripping her up, a woman walking calmly, eyes and hands glowing red.
Natasha fights, adrenaline flooding her veins, until everything halts to a stop. She turns to look, when the woman comes up to her, and she sees red tendrils of smoke go towards her, and the last thing before it begins, she hopes that the mask doesn’t come off.
She stands in the Academy. Madame looks at her, her usual mix of pride and cold selfishness coming in through her eyes.
Natasha stares back at the room, and sees girls. Some are older, others younger. The older ones dance, all twenty-five years old, judging by the tattoos on their forearms.
“You’ll break them”.
She says it, because it is easy to get children — weapons to work, so pliable and young, there is nothing to break, just bending is necessary.
People are harder, you have to break them, and even then there is no guarantee they will snap in the right way.
“Only the breakable ones. You are made of marble”
She nods. Natasha — the Weapon. She was the only one left alive of her class, the others were too old when they were taken, remembered too much of their parents to really forget them.
The mind-wiping machines always didn’t work, because the girls would only talk of their parents. Natasha was too young to remember a time before the Red Room.
The machines all worked perfectly on her.
Then, she was twelve— but not, it was like she was twelve and twenty all at once, child and Avenger, and she was being taken to be sterilised.
Mouthless girls looked on, disapproving of her screams, as the doctor sliced through her stomach, the instructor demanding that only local anaesthetic was necessary.
Then the shooting, age seven shooting targets, age eleven using both hands, age twelve, shooting men. She woke up to Clint touching her forehead, wiping sweat from the top of the mask.
Natasha wanted to bat his hands from her face, ask him what that girl did, but she couldn’t move. She was frozen, only able to rock back and forth, tears silently streaming over her cheeks as she rocked back and forth, shaking hands taken into Clint’s hands.
She wasn’t really aware of anything until the quintet was in the air.
Natasha thinks of Katya, her first friend. Katya was a girl in the program with her, two years older than Natalia, but also two years younger than the rest of the girls.
She had been nicknamed Angel by the soldiers, with her bright blue eyes, rosy ( if thin) cheeks, and a curly head of blonde curls. She had instantly taken to Natalia, giving her bread and telling her stories, in exchange for fighting techniques and lessons that Natasha had learnt in her private training.
Katya had died when Natasha had been eight years old. The "Angel" had been ordered to kill a dog, and she had refused. So Katya had been killed instead, and Amelia killed the dog.
The quinjet landed. Natasha went to stand up, when her legs gave out beneath her. At twenty years old, for the first time in her life, Natasha willingly let someone carry her.
Half-way there, she made a whine of protest, and Thor let her down, and she walked onwards, leaning against Clint, preparing herself for what was to come.
When she came to the porch, she braced herself, and became Auntie Nat.
Auntie Nat was a thirty-year old woman, was twice as old as Cooper and was the kids favourite babysitter. She had had a bad childhood, but was now a cool aunt, and worked with their Dad.
Steve’s eyes bulged as he saw the change. Dull, glazed eyes became artificially bright, cheeks were pinched to give a false healthy glow and her slouched, defeated posture became upright with happiness, like a jack-in-the-box.
As the Avengers gaped at Laura, Lila, Cooper and what was going to be Nattie, Lila ran up to Auntie Nat, and Natasha happily took her into her arms, ignoring the memory of a similar position, except it was an older girl, a metal hand on her neck, and orders to fight. Steve noticed nothing, no one saw the way that Lila nearly fell from her arms, Natasha's head turning back to look at the Soldat's approval.
. She wants to ask Steve, “ Did James stroke your hair when you were sad, like he did to me”,
the memories, good, bad, implanted and true flutter around her head, the phantom pain in her abdomen sharpening as she hears the news of Nathaniel’s sex. Clint takes her upstairs. She sleeps, remembering her mission.
She has to seduce Bruce. But for now, she takes off the mask, falling into a light sleep. For now, she curls herself up into a ball.
Natasha has memories, real ones, somewhere in the corner of her brain.
James is in a lot of them. In some, he has cold eyes, cold skin and hair with ice crystals. In those he punches her, breaks her bones and makes her cry. He is not her James, he is the Soldat.
In others, his eyes are soft, regretful and confused, but soft. He teaches her how to braid her hair, and snarls at the soldiers which smirk at Natasha’s twelve year old body in a leotard. He lets her call him “Papa” sometimes. He tells her disjointed stories of wars, shields and sickly blondes. Age four, six, twelve, ten and lastly, fourteen she listens. He was frozen when they took her, and made her less human.
She waits outside the bathroom, mask in place, but she can’t even try to hide the despair at having her beautifully filed, organised and secure memories being thrown at her face. She forces herself to open up to Bruce, and fights to keep the relief from her face when the kiss in interrupted.
He is a good man. He is also, twenty-seven years older than her. And, very much in love with Betty Ross. But the council won’t listen to her, and have a whole set of prosecution papers set up.
Nick shows up.
The boys fight.
Nick doesn’t speak to her, ( it stings), but he nods approvingly when she sits next to Banner.
The butterfly theory takes off, and Natasha almost kicks herself when she remembers Helen Cho.
How could they have let someone of that intellect, with that amount of contacts, just go off the grid?
Natasha knows why. Because everyone was too busy fighting each other to actually think. This is how armies fall under the feet of select few men and women.
Unity is key.
The battle resumes.
She jumps on the motorcycle, and is happy to feel normal again.
Wind in her face, adrenaline in her veins and pure, sweet oxygen in her lungs. That is, until she lets the crate go, and is faced with the furious metallic face of Ultron.
A creaking hiss comes from his teeth as he slams her temple into the ground, letting her thud onto the old, hard floor of the lorry before she passes out.
Natasha wakes up in a cell. The floor is dirty, soot and mud on it. Engine grease trickles into it sometimes, the rusty iron bars strong, and likely to giver her tetanus if she tries to break them
They don’t give her food nor water, and she has no privacy. This is fine, but the mask is glitching slightly, one eye is greener than the other, and her skin is itchy with drying sweat underneath it.
Uncomfortable, but not as bad as the lack of food or water.
Ultron makes shows of tossing water bottles aside, just to crush them and make them into weapons, or into parts of his mini-me’s. Her stomach hurts with hunger, and her lips are chapped with thirst, the meagre cup of water per day doing little to help.
She grabs a clicker, and tells Clint her coordinates, listening in on the plan. She hopes that she can be of use, after three days without food and minimal amounts of water.
Bruce arrives, not really ready to fight, speaking of running away, leaving the battle to the others.
She knows what she must do.
She adores him, she really does, but as a father, as a much older brother. She pushes him over the edge, grinning as the Hulk comes out, roaring in pure unadulterated rage.
Natasha knows that, in a few days, the guilt will begin to seep into her bones. ( Better than the guilt of letting the world die.)
Natasha sprints out, fear and adrenaline urging her to fight as she electrocutes the first Robot she sees.
Not a single Avenger seems to have been concerned for her safety.
This could be due to over-exagerrated faith in her abilities, or just not caring about her. ( Neither is good._
She storms out, and gasps at the army of robots invading the city. She had known that Ultron was building things, but not to this extent.
And she fights. She likes fighting robots, aliens, animals etc. The nightmares after the battles are worse, but the guilt is lesser, the screams more animalistic and there are no haunting throughs of families, children or mistakes
After an hour of fighting, everything begins to hurt.
There are electric burns running up her arms, rubbing against the fibres of her suit, her legs are sore, the lactic acid build up making her want to drink a bottle of toothpaste and be done with it.
But she continues. Until the city begins to rise. People are falling off the sides, falling to their deaths, and Natasha isn’t strong enough to pick up cars, or bear the weight of two people with one arm.
( Useless. Fragile. Human)
The battle stills. Tony has to break the machinery. Everyone who remains on the island will die.
Steve urges her to get off. She says something meaningless and sentimental, about beautiful scenery. Better than saying that she is ready to die.
After being alive for twenty years, Natasha is a good friend with Death. They see each other less frequently now, but she does not fear it.
As they, Death is only the beginning.
But then,Fury shows up, the fast boy dies ( a year younger then her, but still a boy) and everyone gets on the helicarrier, the girl ( three years younger than her), storming onto the aircraft, her hands covered in engine grease, her eyes red, and her cheeks streamed with tears.
Steve and Tony don’t talk much.
Thor leaves, like Clint, to his home, to his familiy.
Natasha somehow ends up being seen as a mother figure, being asked for advice, ensuring the health of her comrades. ( The irony would make her laugh, if the reality weren’t so harsh)
Steve and Sam go off to look for Jame— Bucky.
She doesn’t know what to feel when they come back empty handed. She is scared of the man that let the soldiers use her, than shot her to make her stronger, and who would break her bones without flinching.
She misses the man that would brush the blood from her hair, would sneak her food when she wasn’t being fed, and would bind up her wounds in secret.
Natasha must be strong now. Bruce is gone, the council is snapping at her heels, furious, but unable to say anything because they know that they violated the contract that Coulson made with them, five years ago.
The world hates the Avengers. She wishes that she loved the world, but honestly she doesn’t.
This is the second time that governments have failed, and because the Avengers messed by whilst dealing with the collateral damage, Natasha and Tony are the scapegoat.
Natasha speaks on the behalf of the Avengers to the press, media and news teams, dealing with questions about deaths, casualties and prevention.
Natasha smiles and grins at them, and throws it back at their faces, telling them that they didn’t know why the Asgardian Sceptre was kept by the government in secret, and that not a single government, organisation or army showed up to a battle after many calls for help. That, Mrs Secretary, hadn't the UN agreed to send the Sceptre back to Asgard? And, why had the government not notified anyone that it was missing, until HYDRA had it?
Tony smirks as the woman pales, the voice in her hear screaming at her to end the interview.
Later, Natasha and Tony build up a bulletproof case, teams of lawyers and attorneys gaping as they write up defences in court.
( Natasha likes Tony. Tony respects Natasha, but will never like her, nor trust her. Tony is smart)
And life goes on.
Tony deals with the brunt of the blame, Steve runs off with Sam to find Bucky, Clint decides that, considering that Wanda is legally a child, he will un-officially adopt her.
( The last fact shouldn’t sting. It does, anyway.)
But, as the year goes on, the arguments between Tony and Steve are less about banter, and more about male egos.
Natasha is secretly checking up on the fifteen-year-old in Queens, and protects him when she can, without being seen. She send tip offs to Coulson’s team about where Quake is, and tries her best to ignore the messages from Ross that she keeps receiving.
Natasha buries herself under work, hoping that those ridiculous Accords never take off, that the council will veto them.
Natasha is wrong.