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She’s born in Russia, 1985. She never knows her real parents, only that, as she was handed from the wreckage of a building, they told Ivan that her name was Natalia Romanov. Ivan, kind old Ivan, raised her after this, keeping her name with her, even with the possible dangers it could present. Just after the Berlin Wall came down, Ivan gets her into a school to train her to serve Mother Russia - the Red Room.
The training is hard, but she excels above even her fellow Widows. She’s sent on missions on her own more and more often, even operating away from the now-underground KGB. She’s especially valued for the fact that she has no defining marks - her soulmate marks haven’t come in by age 18, and she begins to wonder if they ever will.
They finally come in at age 21, and she has to ask one of the few remaining other Widows how to cover them.
Eventually, however, she realizes something - she doesn’t like what they’re having her do. They don’t give her enough information, never explain why , only who and when . She feels more and more like a weapon, fired and then put away without any care. She starts thinking more and more on what they’ve done to her - the fact that she only remembers about half of it makes her more and more suspicious.
So she makes a break for it, managing to get to the US and to SHIELD chock full of important and fascinating intel.
They don’t trust her, of course - she’s known as one of the KGB’s best agents, and now she’s on the run? It’s suspicious, and she knows it. But the information she brings, and her willingness to tear down her previous allies, earns her a nice spot at SHIELD soon enough.
Eventually, they’re even trusting her with solo work; and then, she gets called by Nick Fury.
She likes Nick - he’s generally honest, and he’s blunt, which is refreshing. He took a big chance on her, and she appreciates that. She’s perplexed as to why he’s calling her himself, and even more so when he asks her to come to a SHIELD facility’s hospital wing for her next assignment.
“Natasha. How was the trip?” he says in greeting when her helicopter lands.
“Late. Tiring. Why am I here?” Her speech is clipped; she knows she wouldn’t get away with this with any of the other supervisors. Nick, however, smiles.
“Well, you’ve been doing a bit too much solo work, I think. So I’m assigning you a partner. Got a couple missions coming up that will fit you two’s skills nicely.”
She gives him a curious look, with a little bit of a glare in it, but he starts leading her into the hospital. They walk in silence, and eventually come to a room, door shut, with an agent in front of it. The agent salutes, then moves aside, and Nick opens the door.
The man in the hospital bed looks significantly worse-for-wear. He’s got a bandage around his head, an arm and a leg in a cast, and several smaller bandages scattered about. Mostly, however, he looks annoyed to be here.
“Fury. What’s up?” the man in the hospital bed says, seemingly happy for the distraction.
“Natasha, meet Clint Barton - you might know him better as Hawkeye. Best archer around. Clint, meet Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow. I’m gonna be assigning you two together a lot coming up, so I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” With that, he’s out the door and down the hall before either can really react.
Nat blinks a moment, then walks closer to the bed. “So, what’re you in for?”
To her surprise, Barton starts laughing. It surprises him too, a bit - but that was exactly how he was feeling. Trapped, imprisoned. He hated hospitals.
“Oh, ow. Ow ow ow. Don’t make me do that, it hurts,” he says, stopping laughing just as quick. He takes a moment to breathe, then responds to her question. “Fell a couple’a stories onto a car. Happens to me with surprising frequency, actually…” he says, trailing off with a pained expression as he tries to re-settle himself in the bed.
He looks up at Romanoff, and the expression there tells him a world of things.
“I’m not making a great impression, am I.”
The smirk she gives him says just the opposite.
***
They're on a pretty normal mission (for them, anyways) - taking down a rather minor villain's lair. SHIELD has been watching this guy for months, and he shouldn't be a problem for either of them to take out.
And hey, the plan did go off without a hitch....til Hawkeye nearly drowned.
They've got nearly all of this guy's base destroyed, intel stolen, and generally given him a very, very bad day. But he surprises them with one last bot, just as they're leaving. Clint hit it with an explosive arrow, but it was carrying something flammable apparently, as it created a far bigger blast than it should have. Natasha grabbed him and pulled him into the pool (because for some reason pools come with supervillainy) to avoid the explosion, but he whacked his head on the bottom.
She comes up, still surprised by the blast, and finds that Clint's out cold on the bottom. She gets him out as fast as possible, but they're both waterlogged and he is purely dead weight. When she does get him out of the water, he's not breathing. Her brain switches off, and she goes straight into procedure, trying to get the water out of his lungs. This is, after all, one of the reasons she was chosen for the Widow program in the first place - she's usually very good in any crisis. She turns his head to the side, but no water is spit out.She gets his head in position and starts mouth-to-mouth. But as she goes to start the chest presses,a finger slips through a hole in the fabric, and a strange but pleasant jolt goes through her.
And she loses her cool like she hasn't done since she was 7.
She keeps to the procedure exactly as it is taught, but tears are streaming down her face, and she doesn't know what she'll do if her soul mate dies just as she's found him.
Finally, finally , he spits out some water and breathes on his own. She sits back, calms down somewhat, and gets him into a fireman's carry. His ribs will hate him when he regains consciousness, but they sure as hell can't stay here.
This lair was unfortunately well chosen, she thinks, tired and slogging through New Mexico desert. Finally a gas station's lights come into view.
She walks in, gently sets Clint against the counter, and looks at the cashier. She's 18 at best, Hispanic, and looks...surprisingly unshocked, despite the fact that two bleeding Avengers just came into the store at 4 AM. Her nametag says Gabriela and her uniform reveals a pink t-shirt below it.
"Hey. Can I borrow your phone?"
"Sorry, not allowed to have it on during work. There's a payphone outside though," she says, then peeks over the counter at Clint.
"I don't really have quarters right now," Natasha says. She knows it comes out snappish, and she doesn't mean it to, but she's tired and hurt and still stressed.
Gabriela digs in her pocket, and hands her 5 quarters. "I get the feeling that call's gonna be long. Want me to watch him while you make it? I can bandage him up a bit too."
Natasha nods, beginning to detach while she thinks of the report she's about to make. She blinks, shakes her head, and thanks the cashier better. Gabriela just smiles and shoos her off to make her call.
When she returns, Clint is far less soggy and his various wounds are cleaned up. She tiredly thanks Gabriela again, and sinks to the floor next to Clint.
She apparently falls asleep, as she awakens to the sound of a chopper landing on the deserted road outside. She finds herself and Clint are wrapped in jackets, and Gabriela is sitting calmly behind the counter, watching the door.
Nat stands up with the help of the counter and thanks Gabriela again. She's headed out to meet the chopper, but before she gets to the door she asks "wait, what's your full name?"
"Gabriela Rodriguez," she responds with a smile.
Nat smiles back. "I'll remember that."
***
Two weeks later, Gabriela receives a generous employment offer from SHIELD. It’s a receptionist position at the local branch, but towards the end the letter mentions that she is more than welcome at any branch, especially the New York one, though they understand if she does not wish to move.
***
Clint had been out for about a day. SHIELD doctors assured her that it wasn’t a bad kind of “out”; he’d been through a lot, and his body and brain just needed rest. Nevertheless, she slept in the chair next to his bed - partially out of worry, partially out of exhaustion, partially out of… something else.
He coughs himself awake, moans a bit from his ribs, and blinks. He’s bleary-eyed, and not looking good, but he’s finally awake, and seems to be alert as well.
“Hi…” he croaks, and she grabs him the glass of water next to his bed. He sips gratefully, and then hands it back to her to put down. “What am I in for?” he says at last.
She chuckles a bit at the mutual joke, then goes into the litany. “Concussion and near-drowning, mostly. You’ve also got a mild case of pneumonia and some cracked-to-broken ribs. And some minor scratches here and there, but you had those before a swimming pool nearly took you out.”
He tries to chuckle back at the last bit, but stops and winces. “Right. The ribs.”
“Yea… sorry about those. CPR will do that.”
“You slightly broke me while saving my life. Oh no.”
“Well, good to see your sarcasm is at least intact. Anyways, I’m gonna go tell someone that you’re up - they’ve probably got more tests they want to run on you.”
“Oh joy,” he says, but lets her head out and find a nurse.
***
After a couple of days, he’s able (and allowed) to walk again. Not much, but some, mostly up and down the hallway outside his room. Natasha walks and talks with him, allowing him to lean on her if he needs and stopping when he needs to catch his breath.
He finishes a coughing fit as he’s sitting on one of the many benches in the several semi-private alcoves along the hallway. All of them are slightly darker than the hallway, and all of them have long, padded benches - Nat realizes that essentially this entire place was designed for sleeping.
“I can’t figure out which is truly the cherry on top, the ribs or the pneumonia,” Clint says at the end of his coughing fit, leaning back against the wall.
Nat sits next to him, knowing it’ll be a bit before they get moving again. “Personally, I would say the pneumonia is it. Aggravates the ribs, saps your energy, and can give you some headaches to go with your concussion.”
“Glad to hear your opinion,” he says with false annoyance.
They sit in companionable silence for a while, before Nat speaks up. “So… there’s something I need to tell you.”
Clint just turns towards her a bit, and raises an eyebrow.
“I think - I know - I’m your soulmate.”
She lets it hang in the air for a moment, expecting something , but finally Clint just says “.... Go on.”
She sighs, and the whole situation just seems to spill out of her, something that hasn’t happened to her for years, maybe even decades. “I was giving you CPR and you had this hole in your suit and I was doing the chest presses and my finger must have hit one of your marks because I felt something that must have been that pleasant buzz everyone describes and…. our marks match, too - mine are over my heart and so are yours.”
He sits back, processing the information she’s just dumped on him. Mostly, his face is kind of vacant, save for the micro-expressions she’s trained most her life to look for.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, a small smile crosses his face. “May I?” he asks, motioning to where she knows his own marks are. She moves her shirt collar over and down enough that one mark is revealed - the pointer finger mark from a right hand, next to her sternum. His hand moves slowly towards it, asking her permission, before she nods and he touches it. The jolt goes through both of them this time, and Clint sits back, not quite drawing his hand fully back. He gives her a genuine, warm smile, and just says “Well damn. You’re right.”