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Natasha’s schedule is fiendishly busy: as one of SHIELD’s top operatives (not to mention one of the most versatile) she’s in frequent demand, constantly flitting around the globe on one mission or another. Besides her own considerable talents in combat, she’s also called for as a consultant and teacher. She writes psychological profiles. She designs cover IDs. Fury himself asks for her advice, it is said.
And yet, she finds time to spar with Steve. The irregular training sessions take place wherever they find themselves: at the Hub, the Triskelion, the Spindle. She enjoys showing him that he can be outwitted, in a twist, in a turn. She teaches him fancy spinning kicks and flip combinations; but also spare, vicious strikes to the kidneys, solar plexus, and major nerve centers.
But despite this investiture of time, despite the certain amount of trust this naturally generates, they don’t know each other well. They’ve only been in the field together the once.
Steve looks at her in a quiet, assessing way; still unsure what to make of her. Natasha neglects to put on a simple show, one of those easy personas she's made so familiar: Natasha the unfeeling, Natasha the flirtatious, Natasha the friendly professional. She borrows from all three; she adds a touch of the soldier. She every once in a while shows him a glimpse of something real, and she finds herself hoping he will recognize it. She wants—she isn't sure what she wants.
She likes that he doesn't quite trust her.
She likes Steve. She works well with him. He doesn't trust her, but she doesn't need trust. He doesn't love her, and she gets tired of that, too.
He’s one of the single most deadly individuals she’s ever had the privilege of working with, and that’s an attraction, too. Steve is more than just startlingly fast and impossibly strong; he learns quickly. In a few years he'll outpace her: the only advantages she has are her superior training and greater experience. Eventually, these won't be able to stand against his strength, his endurance, how difficult he is to injure. The thought makes her smile. How long has it been since she was outmatched?
Clint cannot count on two hands the number of times Olga has personally saved his life. The two of them have taken down gunrunners and professional assassins and mobbed-up politicians. They’ve rescued kidnap victims and solved murders and recovered stolen artifacts. He’s been on the outside when she was undercover, he stopped her from bleeding out in a Paris sewer, he held her when she was sent the plastic-wrapped hands of an old friend. When Clint was snatched by Chechen boyeviki and SHIELD wrote him off, Olga came for him all on her own. When she wasn’t at his side her voice was in his ear, and he barely remembers what he was before SHIELD, but he does know what he is without her, and it’s not a lot.
She has been his friend for ten years, and she’s dying.
Natasha is a young freelance thief, freelance spy, freelance assassin. “I have a diverse skill set,” she says, and considering the circumstances, considering his distraction, considering that he is just waiting for a call to tell him that Olga died all alone, he should have no room for mercy. But then Natasha says, “I was born in a place called the Red Room.”
Olga is the fifth Black Widow. Natasha will be the sixth.
“And who's this?” Steve asks, smiling. He crouches down to her eye level, but the girl hides behind Natasha's legs. He's expecting that she's the daughter of a SHIELD agent—someone high-ranking, to be let into the Triskelion. Maybe Hill, maybe Hand.
“The next Black Widow,” Natasha says, lifting the girl up. She curls her face onto Natasha's neck, and Natasha absently strokes her hair. Natasha lifts her chin, steadfastly returning Steve’s stare. Expressionless, she watches Steve’s face flicker between dismay and anger. He doesn't approve of child soldiers.
He’s not entirely wrong in his assumptions. Monica Chang does foster with the family of Agent Andrew Han. She is being prepped for eventual field deployment—but at this age her training consists mostly of language immersion. Although you couldn’t call it normal, it’s a far cry from Natasha’s own upbringing.
“What if she doesn't want to be?” Steve asks, face stony.
In the long history of the program, no subject has ever refused. Even Natasha jumped at the chance. “It’s a gift,” she says. “Ask very nicely and maybe someday I'll explain it to you.”
Clint never intended to stick around. He had his own ops, his own people. Someone else would get saddled with Romanova: someone experienced at turning enemy operatives, because Clint sure doesn’t know how to control a girl that vicious. Clint just caught her; that doesn’t make him responsible.
But Olga changed his mind.
“One last favor,” she said, in her cracked, old-woman voice. He leaned forward so she didn’t have to raise her voice, but leans back in startlement once she’s spoken. “Take care of Romanova,” she asked.
“That one doesn’t need taking care of,” he said.
“Promise me,” she insisted.
And even though he didn’t understand, even though he disagreed, he promised. That’s what you do for your SO.
“You shouldn't have told him so much,” Clint says, sprawling sideways on her armchair. Natasha pushes his legs off the armrest, and he reluctantly sits normally. “You know what he's like,” he continues, “he won't stop asking questions. Pretty soon he won't just be asking.”
Natasha says, “Did those test results come back yet?”
He nods. “You were right. How'd you know?”
“Lucky guess,” she says.
Clint huffs his disbelief.
Natasha says, “I'll meet him again. He should know who I am.”
“What if he doesn't forgive you?” Clint asks.
Natasha fixes him with her clear blue gaze. She remembers him so young. “You did,” she says.
She wakes up in a hospital bed, and everything hurts, and she can't remember her name, can't remember where she was born, and she gravitates towards the only familiar thing in the room. She says his name before she realizes that she knows it: ”Clint,” the sound grating on her ears but coming easily to her tongue.
There’s a hardness around his eyes, and his stillness? His watchfulness? It would be off-putting if everything about him weren’t gnawingly familiar. She’s touched with concern about the lines in his face, inexplicably worried about the bags under his eyes. Her eyes set on the bandage on his hand, and she thinks, I gave him that, but she can't remember how. She can't remember when.
She asks for water—it takes her three tries before she remembers to use English. When he hands her the glass, he keeps his eyes on her hands, and doesn’t step any closer than necessary. She sips slowly, her throat raw from the intubation. She wants to ask him a question, but isn’t sure where to start. His identity or hers?
Eventually, Clint's eyes soften. He hadn't expected her to be so helpless. He hadn't expected it to affect him so much.
Later, Natasha will remember that Clint never wears suits. It was the day of Olga's funeral, and she'd been in her coma for days. Two hours ago, Clint had, for the first time, been given the truth about what it is that makes a Black Widow.
SHIELD stumbled onto Monica Chang during a raid on an Russian black site. They’d gone in for a captured agent (long dead), but hadn’t been able to ignore the fact that she was a perfect bio-match. Maybe the last living Red Room girl on the planet.
When Natasha sees her now, she thinks about immortality.
The Black Widow is not a person. The Black Widow is not a legacy: it is an object. The Black Widow prototype (project number X-17-42) is a cybernetic neural implant, a large capacity computer installed in the brain, neck, and torso of biocompatible subjects. It was designed for high-fidelity recording and long-term storage of lived memories. After transplantation, it allows the recipient to draw on the donor’s knowledge and develop the her skills almost instantaneously.
But the Black Widow worked differently than expected. The subject retained memories of the donor's entire life, not merely her missions, and her behavior was altered by the incursion of the older personality. The result was not an enhanced agent so much as a fusion: a woman young and strong but with decades of experience.
Hugely expensive, and limited always to a single product, the Black Widow program was nonetheless considered a great success. The Black Widow had accrued more skills and spoke more languages than could be learned in any one lifetime. As a fighter, she was unparalleled. Never before had a single operative been so capable, or valuable.
The first was Irina Bogdanov, the soldier. Then Svetlana Vinogradova, the dancer. The third was Ekaterina Lagunova, the first raised for the purpose. Fourth was Alisa Vorobyova, who turned the Black Widow from a whisper to a legend. And the Red Room’s last was Olga Kuznetzova.
With the technological improvements, and increasingly compatible subjects, integration was far more advanced than with any of the previous subjects. She remembered far more of her prior lives than the previous operatives: for the first time, she’d remembered her deaths. She fully understood what her loyalty would cost. And the tides of the world were changing--raised from infancy to sense weakness, they couldn’t hide their imminent fall from her. So when she saw her chance, she ran.
It was the late eighties when she defected to SHIELD. She’d brought a hard drive full of secrets, a book of codes, and two technicians to ensure her glad welcome, but she hadn’t been able to get any of the girls out.
By the time Clint met her, the only trace remaining of her scandalous history was her level 4 clearance level—an agent of her skills and seniority should be a 6, at least. But despite the arrest in her promotion history, she’s a respected figure: well-liked, well-trusted. Smoothly integrated into the SHIELD hierarchy, her status as a defector is so rarely mentioned that most of the younger agents don’t know that she’s not American-born.
The transition period is almost impossibly hard. The aphasia and amnesia aren’t the only symptoms--the subject has to reorient herself to a new body. The addition of a new personality and set of memories leaves her prone to erratic behavior and bouts of confusion. In short, for a few weeks per lifetime, the most dangerous spy on Earth is painfully vulnerable. She needs assistance and protection, and the only thing that can make it possibly better is having someone known and trusted to shepherd her through the process. Natasha had Clint.
In the time since Captain America was retrieved from the Arctic, he’s been the object of ceaseless study by SHIELD’s best scientists. The tests Natasha had ordered, had, in fact, already been run, but their results were classified. Natasha started at SHIELD with level 5 clearance--by now, she has access to almost everything.
Steve’s cellular growth rates are sub-normal in vivo, but off the chart in vitro. Telomere regeneration is at 100%. All of his cell lines are continuous.
What this means, the scientists say, what it suggests is that Steve Rogers will live a long, long time. He’s not aging now, and they don’t know that he ever will.
Natasha had Clint. Olga had her Red Room handler. Monica will have Steve.