Chapter Text
Natasha doesn’t know when her emotions start to become a problem but she knows that they shouldn't (and that things were starting to spiral out of control). She was better than this, she had been trained to not let her own feelings impede her actions. Yet here she was, sat in a corner of SHIELD and struggling to breathe while the rest of the Avengers were going to the debrief. It was that mission she decides, that mission that threw her off her game. It wasn’t that she had been trying to repress everything for years, or that she had shut herself in. She had people to talk to though, she knew that, but her silence had started out as something protective and now had morphed into something beyond her control. Something that left her unable to reach out until she had hit a breaking point so obvious people were forced to get involved. It was just that mission. Just that mission, not a symptom of a larger problem
It was meant to have been a normal raid, to deal with the remnants of a HYDRA cell and get out. Tony had sent her out to gather intel, find someone JARVIS had tapped as an informant. So that’s what she does, she dresses up and puts her earpiece in. She doesn’t bother to tell Tony that putting on that stupid tight dress made her want to rip her skin off from head to toe because of close it slipped to the scars that littered her body and how she had to keep adjusting it, trying too hard to keep those remnants of her own failures hidden. She doesn’t bother to mention that she's just so tired of all of this, the missions, the constant need to keep parts of herself hidden for the rest of the team and the pressure that comes with it. No, she doesn’t say anything but just gives Stark a nod before walking into the bar, she can hear a crackle in the earpiece before someone speaks
“Alright Romanoff, our guy should be right over in the corner booth. Clint is over on the roof opposite-”
Natasha glances up at that, she can see Clint giving her a thumbs up from the rooftop across. She doesn’t give him one back, but it makes her feel just that little bit better.
“I’ve got Steve and the rest by me here, Wanda and Vision are going to be in one the shops opposite as well. Just in case things go south”
She just takes a breath at that
“Things don’t go south with me Stark, this is my job.”
And then she’s stepping inside and she knows that something is going to go south, call it a sixth sense but after being trained as a spy for her entire life she’s managed to pick up a knack for realising things like that
“Natasha- our guy is just over there. Move.”
She knows at that moment all she wants is for someone to notice something, she doesn’t know how they could, she hadn’t given any indication that things are wrong but still, it’s all she wants. She wants them to get her away from this stupid fucking bar and to someplace else that doesn’t reek of cheap beer and sweat. Except that someone doesn’t exist and she’s walking towards the corner booth before she can realise it.
“-Says that he worked with the KGB at one point, Natasha, so you should be right in your element”
Oh. Then their “informat” is turning his head and Natasha just stops. Everything just seems to halt because it’s one of them, it’s one of them from the Room. She thought she had killed them all, she thought- It seems like her entire world is caving in again because suddenly she's 15 again with a gun in her hand and one of them is behind her, watching her pull the trigger. One of them is watching her train, watching her kill, watching her become a monster. He turns his head to face her, she doesn’t remember his name or she does but she’s shoved so deep down in her subconscious that it seems a distant memory to her, like something from a nightmare. She sits across from him in the booth almost robotically. He smiles. She doesn’t.
“So, they sent the spider into my web?”
“We both know that you have the information I want.”
“Oh poor Natalia, did you go from serving one master to another? So quick to get to demands, Do you not want to catch up?”
His grin stretches further at that, she just feels sick. Bits of memory are rising up faster than she can push them down.
“Shut up.”
“You look nice now, less… scrawny. I suppose all of that training paid off, you always were our best student.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
He has the audacity to laugh at that
“Oh no, of course you won’t. I presume poor little Natalia tried to forget everything about the Red Room. Hm? I suppose you forgot me in all of that but I didn’t forget you, no. Natalia, who killed her first friend for the Red Room, it was so very sad. Wasn’t it?”
“Give me the information, we can keep this civil.”
“I don’t think all of that repression worked though it did, Widow?”
His eyes linger on her wrists and she realises with a sense of abject horror that she hadn’t made sure her sleeves stayed down.
“Tsh, look at you. All of those scars and for what, we made you great Natalia and you can’t even take care of your own body.”
She glances down and she knows that he’s right, her wrists are a mess of scars (She’s just glad he can’t see the rest of her forearms.) and she can barely take care of herself most days. Still, that isn’t the point. She can still do this mission, that’s more important. It always will be
“I wonder what Anya would think of this, the girl who killed her to become a Widow this weak. Bartering with a fragment of her past instead of just, getting rid of it. I suppose going West made you soft. I remember that day though, even if you don’t”
Natasha doesn’t reply, she thinks it's the smartest move. He keeps talking
“How old were you then? You were fourteen no... You had just started to be friends with her, she had helped you what? Reset your shoulder during training or something similar. It was pathetic really. It was Dreykov who suggested it, that we pair you two against each other the next day. Get rid of whichever one of you was weaker. You looked almost hopeful when you walked into the training room then Natalia.”
She wants to leave and never come back
“You two sparred, of course you did, but she hesitated. Then we gave you that order, only one of you could leave that training room alive and what did you do? When she hesitated again you just snapped her neck, didn't you?”
Natasha can remember it now, she had to do it. She had to. She had to survive- it was that sickening crack of Anya's neck. The dead silence that followed after until the dull thud of her body hitting the floor registered, the realisation that she had just crossed a line of no return. That there wasn’t anyone left to ground her, anyone left who considered her anything more than an object. There had been 28 of them at the start. At the end of that day, there was only her left.
“It was fun seeing you again Natalia. Try not to hurt yourself quite too much, although you maybe deserve it. The HYDRA cells are just two blocks down from here. Although, considering those arms I wouldn’t try to fight anyone.”
It’s only as he gets up to leave that he leans right over to her and whisper ever so gently
“Did you remember to turn your earpiece off for this?”
She had avoided all of them, all of the Avengers, after that, because of course she did and had lept straight towards the razor blades she kept tucked in her bathroom cabinet. She knows that it’s wrong, that it isn’t helping her, but she does it anyway. Watches the blood trickle down her arms, then her thighs. It’s reassuring, at least she can control this (Except she can’t because even she knows that the cutting is bordering on life-threatening at this point). She doesn’t remember how she ends up in the corner of a SHIELD corridor though, arms wrapped around herself and tear tracks down her cheeks.
She goes to the debrief a little later, she can almost feel everyone's eyes on her as she walks in. Tony pipes up first
“Are you alright?”
She just wants to scream at that question, because she so clearly isn't and all she wants is for someone to help her. For someone to realise that things are going wrong, but she doesn't let herself get that help, she doesn't deserve it. So she lies.
“I’m fine.”
Except amidst all of that, she doesn’t notice how Hill looks at her for just a little too long with just a little bit too much emotion before turning back at the debrief.