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Natasha first heard about Fury’s friend who left him with a cat from Coulson. She was on a stakeout with Barton, their handler on the other end of their comms, and she didn’t have time to demand details before they had to move.
She’d been at S.H.I.E.L.D. for several years. She was as close to being Fury’s favourite as one could get. And up until then, despite her skills and the relationship she had to her boss, she’d never picked up on him having a cat. He had never struck her as a cat person. To be fair, he hadn’t struck her as an animal person at all. She’d expected his demeanour to animals to be the same as to people – prickly.
For once, she didn’t let curiosity get the better of her.
Several months later, she was passing Coulson and Fury in a hallway at the Triskelion, nodding at them as she did so. They seemed to be having a lighthearted conversation, something rare when it came to the man in charge.
A spy is always a spy, and she couldn’t help herself but to let their words drift to her. She couldn’t discern much, aside from a name. Danvers.
She wondered what to do with that intel. She could scout the database, hack her way through, piss off Fury on the process. She could get Barton in on it, have more fun that way. Or she could drop it. After all, spies had their secrets, and Fury was a spy down to his bones. Her snooping wasn’t worth losing his favour.
Natasha was trying not to pace back and forth in front of Fury’s closed door. After the bad intel they’d gotten for their last mission, one that had put Barton in the med bay for the foreseeable future due to a concussion and a skull fracture, she had some thoughts to give to their Director. Apparently, though, she’d have to wait because he was currently in a meeting.
The Black Widow had received extraordinary training. She’d been taught early on to be patient – one of her first lessons. Regardless, her patience was wearing thinner with each passing minute, slipping between the cracks of her temper.
Just as she was about to barge in, meeting or not, the door slung open and a blonde, average height, fit, non-threatening looking, walked out with a laugh in Fury’s direction. “I’ll come to check in on my cat tonight,” she teased, and the man scoffed. His eye flickered to Natasha and back, and he held the door wider for her.
She passed the woman on her way, green eyes meeting brown, but didn’t say anything. At least now she knew Coulson hadn’t been messing with her. Unless that had been an inside joke, which would be incredibly annoying. She had bigger problems on her mind right then, though.
Natasha and Fury yelled at each other for over half an hour. She wanted him to put his agents in order, and he wanted her to stop telling him how to do his job. Not for a second did she feel like she’d felt every time she’d spoken to one of her superiors at the Red Room. She wasn’t worried about being punished. Because she knew she was right, and he knew she was right too, but let her know she shouldn’t forget herself all the same.
In the end, Fury took out two decanters, one whiskey, the other vodka.
“So what was that I heard about a cat?” she prodded after she’d reassured him that Barton would be fine. Fury tried to wave her off but his heart wasn’t in it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She wasn’t stupid. She knew he was failing at getting her off his back on purpose. Maybe he’d finally seen what she already knew: that she was trustworthy, that she deserved to know at least something about him, considering he knew everything about her.
Surprisingly, he conceded at her raised eyebrow. “Carol saved my life, once upon a time. The least I could do was take care of her cat while she’s away on business.”
Natasha blinked. Once upon a time? The woman seemed to be her age. How old had she been when she’d helped Fury? Ten? And how old was the cat by now? She still managed to compose herself quickly.
“That’s awfully sweet of you,” the redhead teased. The man grumbled and took a sip from his glass.
“She knows my line of work. She knows she can trust me anytime, just like I can trust her. It’s a long story,” he said, taking note of her look, and added in emphasis, “a classified one.”
As a spy, a Black Widow, nonetheless, Natasha tended to not be surprised by much. When she walked into the gym the following morning and saw the blonde, Carol, she took the chance.
Coulson often told her that curiosity killed the cat. Then he joked that they should change it to ‘curiosity killed the spider’. Luckily for that spider, she was a highly trained operative, whose partner’s lack of self-preservation instincts was rubbing off on. Curiosity might try to kill the spider, but this one was poisonous.
Fury wouldn’t divulge the whole truth but that didn’t mean the redheaded spy couldn’t get it elsewhere.
The woman was unleashing herself upon a dummy, and Natasha thought only for a second before approaching her, footsteps loud enough to be heard.
“You want a moving target?” she asked when Fury’s friend stopped to acknowledge her. The blonde grinned and let herself be led to a wider area.
She moved quickly, efficiently, her technique was impeccable, yet unfamiliar, and there was something bothering Natasha. Two things, to be exact.
The first was that the woman was too well trained to be a civilian. She easily kept up with a master assassin. The question was, why hadn’t Fury recruited her if she was his friend and as good as Natasha could see she was. And she was certain the blonde wasn’t an agent. She would have known, would have heard of her at least. S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives loved gossiping in the hallways.
The other was her combat style. It was fair to say that the Black Widow had been trained in almost any known type of martial art. She had favourites, yes, but she was also familiar with the others. She could see their patterns, predict their moves.
She ended up on the ground in the first three minutes. Carol shifted from one stance to the other without so much as blinking. Except all her movements seemed… alien. That’s how different they were from anything else Natasha had seen.
She got up, only to end up in the same position several minutes later.
And again.
And again.
They stopped for water. The redhead had seen her partner make small talk enough times to be able to handle her own. The woman smiled at her brightly, openly. She seemed friendly enough, if not a bit naive. Natasha took advantage of that.
She learned that was in fact the Danvers she’d overheard Coulson and Fury talking about. Interesting. She learned that her cat’s name was Goose, out of anything, and she wasn’t even white. She’d just had a litter of babies, which was exactly why Carol had returned. Natasha didn’t say out loud how odd it was that the blonde had left her cat with Fury but had returned for the kittens. Then again, perhaps that was something normal. She wouldn’t know.
Something wasn’t adding up, though.
The woman might have seemed naive, but Natasha knew for a fact that she wasn’t stupid. She can’t have been, if she was friends with Fury. (That still felt odd to even think, not to mention say out loud. It was no wonder Barton hadn’t believed her and had just laughed. Barton was also heavily concussed.)
So she didn't push for information. She also didn't trust the woman. Not that she’d lied. Natasha just didn't trust her. But there were few people she trusted, anyway. If only she could put her finger on why she felt that way about her…
The conversation took a turn. Natasha wasn’t the one asking the questions anymore. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She hated being on the receiving end of personal questions in general. It was only made worse by the fact that these questions were… uncomfortably perceptive.
She asked about Natasha’s partner, and then rushed to explain that, wasn’t that how they did things there? Luckily, the redhead was a master at avoiding answering directly. But then Carol asked where she was from, and the spy knew what she was doing. Or at least she thought she did.
“Not from around here,” she danced around the truth. Technically, not a lie, but still vague enough to not give away too much.
“Me neither,” the blonde snorted. “It’s so weird, you know,” she continued mindlessly, “Nick thinks I need more friends and he’s taken it upon himself to find them for me. I mean, first Hill, now you. He’s acting like such a dad sometimes.”
Natasha blinked. Slowly. She wondered what kind of relationship Fury had with the woman for her to talk so easily about him like that. She wondered what the hell she meant.
She didn’t have time to ask. Barton banged the door open, wobbly on his feet, bow in hand and quiver slung over his shoulder, demanding for Natasha to go with him to the shooting range. She rolled her eyes and stalked over to him, cursing at him in his head. Only he would think training in his state was a good idea. Well, him and her.
The next day, the woman was gone, but her words were stuck in the agent’s head for weeks after that.
Fury had grounded her and Barton after their most recent explosive fiasco. Grounded them. Ridiculous, as if they were children, or it had been their fault they’d been given faulty information, yet again.
So they were stuck with trainee duty. Worse than even paperwork.
The two of them took turns, Natasha in the mornings and Clint in the afternoons, and shared their impressions and frustrations in the evening over dinner and drinks.
They’d been doing this for half a month, and a half still remained.
Natasha had had a rough start, but her group had learned to respect her after she’s hurdled half of them to the ground. And then there was Monica Rambeau. Bright, fresh, competent. She had all the qualities. Natasha liked her.
And there she was, in the middle of a hallway, talking animatedly to the same woman who’d left the redhead perplexed years ago. The spy walked past them, catching some of their words. She kept telling Barton that if people wanted to have a personal conversation, they really shouldn’t be having it in the middle of S.H.I.E.L.D. common space. In he vicinity of so many spies, any personal conversation immediately stopped being decisively so.
Except what Natasha heard confused her profoundly.
Something about space. And Kree and Talos, whatever those were. It was possible they were talking in code. But she’d also had enough bewilderment from Carol Danvers to last her a lifetime. She wanted the truth, and Fury was going to give it to her this time.
In Natasha's line of work, she dealt with weird a lot. That weird was a whole different kind.
Aliens.
Logically, she was aware there must have been other sentient life in the Universe. Realistically, everything that had come out of Fury's mouth had sounded like complete and utter bullshit. Like he's just made it up.
Except, Natasha was fluent in Fury's lies by now. He hadn't told her a single untruth. And that's what put her most on edge, what unsettled her most. It all sounded like it was taken out of a sci-fi novel. A conspiracy podcast.
It was ridiculous.
And it made perfect sense.
She found the blonde in the gym once more. Natasha cocked her head to the side in interest. She was teaching Rambeau some of her alien moves. Good, that way the girl would have more tricks up her sleeve on her final. The redhead made a note to ask for a training session later on.
She sauntered up to the two, face stern in its seriousness. Carol greeted her with a smile, face lighting up just like when she’d seen her the first time. She didn’t bother with formalities, and faltered only for a second.
"So I heard you can glow."
Carol's grin stretched slowly, blindingly.