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Something is wrong with Natasha Romanoff.
The first person on the team to notice, who doesn’t already know, is Steve. He’s been asleep for the past seventy years, so he’s not completely caught up on everything modern, but he knows how to work a smartphone and use the internet, and he basically knows what’s ‘up’ (as said by Stark) and what’s ‘not up’.
Something is wrong with Natasha Romanoff.
She doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t know this for fact, but whenever he comes into the kitchen after a nightmare she’s there, almost like she sensed that something was wrong with him. He’s never seen the inside of her bedroom, but she doesn’t seem to use it much. Maybe, if she never sleeps, she doesn’t use it at all.
He knows how he sounds. Captain America, finally going over the edge after seventy years stuck in a block of ice. But seriously, he’s suspicious.
He’s not going to say anything, for now. But he’s going to watch her more closely, for now.
She knows that he could figure it out, if he was different. But he’s too kind, too good to do anything but trust her. His mistake.
Many people think Thor stupid. Midgardians think him foolish, because of his confusion at their different cultures, and Asgardians think him dumb because of his admittedly foolhardy, younger days. However, he is smarter than most give him credit for.
On Asgard, there are many creatures not found in other realms such as Earth. As the Crown Prince, he was often encouraged to practice his skills as a warrior by hunting such monsters. There are some that were found on earth, back when he was a babe, like Hafgufa (simplified to Midgardian terms, a large sea monster) or Lindworms’ (when explained to Clint, Clint called them “dragons!”), but they were all hunted to extinction.
Natasha Romanoff seems too smart to be hunted. She is similar to a Draugr in some aspects - superhuman strength, undefeated by most weapons, and a tendency to leave corpses in their wake. He’s not one for betting, but if he was, he would bet that the Avengers Team are the only people on Earth who could possibly stop her. And not even all of them could do so.
He could beat her, if he wanted to. After all, he’s been trained as a warrior for thousands of years. She’ll have to be careful around this one.
Spending time in various regions, places, and countries has led Bruce to meet many people. Some he helped, some he needed to stop. But in those hundreds, he’s never met a person quite like Natasha Romanoff. No, it’s not her beauty, as pretty as she is. Nor is it her cunning, because you can find that anywhere, from New York City to Calcutta.
It’s her.. well, eeriness.
He’s never seen her eat, although logically he knows she must do. She smiles when offered alcohol or water, and says “No thank you,” in a way that garners no protest. She smiles daintily as she slits men’s throats, and frowns when offered a seat at the table.
She’s pale, in a way that, as a Doctor, strikes him as worrying. But when asked about it, she just smiles, and doesn’t say anything at all.
He knows, down inside. She knows he’s heard enough legends about her, in the many places he’s travelled to. He just doesn’t want to believe it.
As a Stark, it is Tony’s duty to uphold their number one most important tradition - to be a sleaze. Like his father, and probably the father before him, he flirts and charms his way across the world.
When Natalie Rushman is working for him, he tries it on with her once. He’s drunk, and slings an arm around her shoulder, propositioning her. He’s not really being that serious, because she’s a good P.A. and he probably couldn’t get it up with the amount of alcohol he’s drunk, but she smiles like she’s proud of herself, and without a word, wrenches the arm resting on her shoulder behind his back and something sharp and little digs into the bottom of his spine. Vaguely, he wonders how she got it past security.
With hot breath on the back of his neck, she whispers “Don’t ever touch me again.”. He lets out a tiny groan, because the position she’s holding him in really hurts, and she thankfully releases him without another word.
They never speak of it again, but when he finds out that she’s a SHIELD agent, he hopes that’s all there was to it. One human against another.
He’s the smartest, and also the most foolish. He wants to believe she’s human, and so he does.
He knows what’s wrong with her. Well, he doesn’t consider anything to be wrong with her, but he knows she does. To him, he doesn’t find it that repulsive - it’s not like she chose to be this way.
He finds out on a mission, back in their early days. It takes longer than expected, and in the middle of a shootout her reflexes are worse than normal, and she’s getting paler every second.
“I’ll be right back!” She shouts into his ear, the sound echoing on his comm. They’re hiding behind a car as the Czech mob unloads more than a couple of rounds on them, so he doesn’t know where the hell she’s gonna go, or why the hell she has to be-right-back now, in the middle of a shootout. Maybe she’s got an energy bar tucked into one of her pockets or something.
She rolls out from behind the car, unloading a clip into one of the main shooters. As she does, at least a third of the many bullets striking the car stops - she’s good, he thinks. She runs down an alleyway to their left, and he has no idea what for. It’s early days, and he still doesn’t trust her enough to not have that niggling fear of she’s running away, she’s leaving you. He wants to trust her though, so he lets her do her own thing while he tries to take out the other two shooters.
One of them wises up to the fact that he’s running out of bullets, and comes at him from the right. He thinks “shit” and has to scramble down the alleyway Natasha went down. It’s been about ten minutes, and as he rounds a corner (a dead-end corner, dammit), his mind passes directly over the couple kissing against the wall. Until he realises that the one on top of the other is Natasha, and that they’re not kissing. She’s drinking his blood. He recognises the guy as one of the Czech mob’s highest - really, he’s surprised he wasn’t one of the ones shooting at them. His eyes, alert and squinting in his file, are glassy, focused on a spot on the wall. He’s obviously pretty out of it, considering he’s letting her drink his blood.
Natasha’s obviously aware he’s there - her reflexes are too good not to notice -, but she continues sucking at his neck like it’s the only thing keeping her from death. Which hey, maybe it is.
“Really, ‘Tasha?” The nickname just slips out. “You choose now to reveal that your deep, dark, emo secret is that you’re a vampire?! So not the time!”
She turns back from the guys neck, wiping the blood smeared around her mouth with her wrist. “You can have this revelation later, Clint. We have the mob after us.” And with that, she jumps over the brick wall of the alleyway. Peering down at him, she tries to smile, and says “Need a hand, mortal?”
He grumbles something about how she has to tell him everything later, and lets her give him the hand up.
She might just have a friend in this one.