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Natasha Romanoff always travels light, no matter the name on her passport, the color of her hair, or the truth she tells to those who bother to ask. It’s a remnant of her childhood, and of years of training.
Growing up in Soviet Russia, you develop a disregard for material possessions, an understanding of the danger in setting too much store in mere things. Learning to spy only solidifies that belief. Objects weigh you down, slow your advance, complicate your retreat. Anything left behind serves to betray you, a potential clue in the hands of those in pursuit. Better to eschew frivolity, to maintain a minimal profile. Better still to shed your skin, your mannerisms, your current persona. Less chance of ending up dead.
She knows she’s uncommon in her adherence to the protocol. Other Russian transplants embrace the American lifestyle, indulging themselves with spacious homes, lavish wardrobes, expensive electronics. By comparison her apartments have always resembled hotel suites – or safe houses – in their bare-bones anonymity. Her clothes are tools, costumes chosen strictly for the impression she wishes to make, the identities she dons as easily as a pair of pumps. And if her cache of weapons and Stark-designed electronics might strike some as uncomfortably well stocked, they, too, are necessities of her trade.
Tonight a patchwork of carefully chosen items covers her bed, tidy piles surrounding an unzipped suitcase. The desk holds her laptop, two new burner phones, three SHIELD comms, and a set of deadly knives. A small tote bag rests on the desk chair, gaping open, revealing where she has pried up the false bottom to conceal her gun and spare clips.
When the lock on the front door disengages, she palms a knife. Only two people know about her Bethesda safe house, and since Barton is too smart to set foot back on U.S. soil after the recent cluster fuck – even to connect with her – she can be fairly certain of the identify of her visitor. But she has not lived this long by making assumptions, so she stands in the bedroom doorway, gaze pinned to the entry as the retinal scanner beeps and the front door swings partially open. A dark figure slips through the scant two feet of space, pressing the door home with a decisive click.
“I thought we already said our goodbyes,” she tells him, returning the knife to its position on her desk.
Nick Fury moves through the dark living room and into the pale shadow thrown across the generic grey carpet from her bedside lamp. She hasn’t quite adjusted to this new look of his; he’s worn the eye patch as long as she’s known him. But even behind the sunglasses, his assessing gaze is obvious as he takes in her preparations.
“Heading out?” he asks, ignoring her own question.
“You know I am. And no, I haven’t changed my mind about joining you on your little hunting party,” she adds, turning toward the bed and starting to place the neat stacks of clothes into the empty suitcase.
“Fair enough,” he agrees.
From the corner of her eye she sees him reach into his pocket, but before she can decide if she’s been wrong, before she can assess a potential threat from this least suspected of quarters, he tosses something lightly onto the bed. The tension flows out of her as she reaches for the small envelope and slits it open. Two passports – one French, one Russian – fall into her palm, along with an unmarked jump drive. She glances back.
Nick shrugs. “I know you burned your covers, but you didn’t imagine I left everything on SHIELD servers, did you?”
Her fingers clench as she stares at him. “When we were in that bunker in New Jersey, Steve and I,” she begins quietly, “Zola said I was born in 1984.”
A slow nod. “Because according to SHIELD’s files, that was when Natalia Alianovna Romanova was born,” he replies smoothly.
“Hydra had access to Russian files. To Soviet files.”
“Funny thing about the Russians. Didn’t trust their darkest secrets to a bunch of circuits and tech. Liked hard copy a whole lot. Pretty inconvenient if you ask me. Except when it’s not.”
She looks down at the passports in her hand. “I still need time, Nick.”
“This wasn’t meant as some quid pro quo, Natasha. I owe you,” he stresses.
“No,” she says quickly, looking back up. “You really don’t.”
He holds her gaze for another moment, neither arguing nor agreeing. “I should get going,” he says finally.
“If anything happens, if you need me…”
“I know.” He tips his head in acknowledgement, turns and vanishes back into the darkened living room. A moment later, the door clicks quietly behind him.
Natasha lets out a long, near-silent breath, and flips open the French passport. It’s a fairly recent photo of her, with dark hair and brown-tinted lenses in her eyes, one of more than a dozen shots of varying looks that were taken as prep for building her new cover identities following the battle in New York. In the Russian passport, she’s a blond. She slips both passports into the concealed compartment of her bag, next to the two she retrieved earlier from her box at the bank. After a pause, she adds the jump drive as well. She’s not quite ready to find out what’s on it, but she knows she eventually will be.
~*~
It’s barely light out when she enters Union Station in the wee hours of the morning, rolling a medium-sized red suitcase and carrying a matching tote over her shoulder. She makes her way to the ladies room, slipping into the handicapped-access stall. Listening as a few early travelers enter and exit, she waits until she’s alone, then begins to make the necessary changes. Ten minutes later, a dark-eyed brunette with unremarkable black luggage makes her way across the concourse toward the ticket counter, stopping at the first available window.
“How can I help you?” asks the woman through the plexi-glass barrier.
“A ticket to Penn Station, please,” the brunette says, her English marred by just the slightest French accent. “On the 7 a.m. Acela express.”
She pays cash for the ticket, and then again for a cup of overpriced coffee and a bottle of water at one of the nondescript food stalls on the way to her track. The platform fills quickly with the typical array of business travelers and the odd tourist, and when the doors open for boarding, she disappears into the car, just another face in the crowd.