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The warehouse is not an ideal place for a stakeout, Natasha has to admit. After all, there’s only so long you can remain absolutely motionless on rafters.
She glances over at her partner for this job. Frank Castle glares back, daring her to say anything. The former Marine is handling it okay for now, but she will bet he is counting seconds already.
“Won’t be long now” she signs.
It had been a pleasant surprise to find out Castle knew ASL – stakeouts are ninety nine percent of boredom followed by one percent mortal peril, and conversation is welcome.
One of the many reasons Clint is her preferred mission partner. Tonight, though, he and Kate are on another mission. Frank will have to do.
“Missing Bird Boy?” Frank signs.
Natasha shrugs “I wouldn’t have to worry about him falling off the rafters”
Frank rolls his eyes “I’ve watched the fight videos, Widow. Falling off tall places is like half of what Barton does.”
Well…to be fair, that is kind of evidence she can’t really argue with, since she doesn’t fully disagree. Not that she is going to concede that easily, though
“Only when there’s a flier around to catch him.”
Actually, Steve now arranges their positions so that Tony, Sam, Thor or whoever is the fastest flier they have is positioned close enough to catch Clint in case his grappling arrows fail.
Despite herself, a slight smile rises to her lips. Frank, of course, doesn’t fail to notice – nor to press the advantage.
“You envy them, don’t you?” he signs, not bothering to disguise the smirk “The ones you run with now”
Natasha raises an eyebrow, but sends no other reply. It doesn’t deter Castle from continuing.
“The Good Guys. The ones who can still trick themselves into thinking things are gonna end well.”
He pauses for a moment, probably to see whether she is taking the bait. Natasha doesn’t really mind. This is the game Castle likes to play every time he teams up with one of the less murderous heroes.
The goading usually works great against Steve and Matt – especially the latter, since unlike everyone else Daredevil is still convinced he can get Frank to come over to their side. Might be a catholic thing. Or more likely, just the regular stubborn-as-hell Matt Murdock thing.
Against Natasha, it is far less effective. She has no delusions about being one of the so-called ‘Good Guys’. She’s no hero.
“You wish you could be like them, don’t you?” Castle fumbles a little on the signing, but the meaning is clear enough. “You’re like me. You know how it works. But you still want to be one of them. You envy them.”
Natasha hesitates a little. Only a little. This is a game two can play, and stakeouts are boring.
“I wish I could be like you” she signs, doing it slowly so that there’s no chance of Frank failing to translate it correctly. It has the desired effect.
Frank pauses, clearly trying to re-translate it to make sure he got the meaning right. “Come again?”
“I wish I could be like you” she signs again, with deliberate slowness “I envy you.”
If Castle’s eyebrows go any higher, they’ll disappear into his hairline. It is all she can do not to laugh at his expression of utter bafflement. Not often someone gets the Punisher to wear that look.
“Any…reason?”
Frank may have messed up the ASL there, she isn’t sure that is what he meant to ask. She decides to go ahead anyway. She trusts her team, but there are things she can’t talk about to them.
Mostly because she has no intention of sending them into another mass freakout like the time she let slip some of the Red Room training methods. Partly because they won’t get it, not really. Frank Castle, now…he has enough of the monster within him to understand.
“I do not wish for the impossible” she clarifies “It is impossible for me to ever be like Captain America, Daredevil, even Clint. But you… that is low enough a goal to be somewhat feasible.”
“I don’t know whether to be insulted or flattered.”
“Be neither” she answers.
“You envy me” Frank isn’t good enough at ASL for her to be able to tell whether it’s a question or a statement. Doesn’t matter. She gives him the answer anyway.
“I envy people that know love.”
It is easier to be honest when her fingers do the talking. Of course, talking to Frank is far from the same as talking to Clint – but the method is close enough.
Love. Love is for children, she will say with her words, has said it often enough with the trademark Black Widow smirk.
Love… It is something she will never fully feel. What she feels towards Clint, and to a lesser degree towards the rest of the team, that is the closest she will ever come to love. But not close enough.
She has long ago come to terms with that. She is Black Widow. The girl from the Red Room. KGB’s best assassin in the Cold War.
She has changed since then, since the Budapest mission that took the lives of both herself and her then opponent, CIA assassin Clint Barton – took their lives, and catapulted them into the current semi immortal life instead.
Yes, she has changed, proved herself useful enough that Nicholas Fury granted her permission to remain with the American branch of SHIELD than return to the Russian wing as was protocol. Remain with the clearly insane American fool who was the first to arouse her interest.
She has changed.
Maybe it was the whole dying-and-coming-back-to-life part. Maybe it was Clint, her brother-in-arms. More likely, it might have simply been being away from the Red Room, from the handlers.
But you never leave the Red Room. Not fully. Part of yourself is always locked behind those doors. Or has long since been consumed. The part of Natalia Romanaova that felt love, that is gone.
It has been torn away long before she progressed past being the little red ballerina taken from the Stalingrad orphanage. (Taken, along with three others…three others who proved more breakable than she was. Three others she never saw after that ‘filtering’)
She cannot love. That is something she mourns, but not something she truly wishes for anymore. As said, she doesn’t wish for impossibilities. The facsimile she feels for Clint will do. But that doesn’t mean she is not curious.
Black Widows are trained to be expert manipulators. Capable of reading emotions of any, no matter how stoic.
She knows fully well what love does to people. She knows fully well why the Red Room took care to burn out that weakness from their weapons.
All the same…it is curious. What must it feel like, to burn that way? To make yourself so completely vulnerable to another, bind yourself to something so frail as another human life?
She envies them that fire, even when her logical mind tells her that it will burn too deep, too deep to let her be the weapon that she is and has to be. Love is not for the Widows. Has never been.
Still, she envies them. Envies them that fire far more than all their smiles, their easy trust, their impossible belief in happy endings.
“You envy me” Frank echoes again “You envy those who know love”
She nods. This is not something she will ever tell one of the team. Not even Clint.
His response would be swift and predictable, the reassurance that she is no monster, that she is not locked away from them as she thinks she is.
She knows he means the words. But she also knows he doesn’t fully understand what the words mean.
Clint Barton thinks he knows darkness – he was a CIA assassin, after all. But he has never gone as deep as she did. He is no monster – not even close enough to understand what being a monster truly means.
“Knew love” Frank signs.
“Knew?”
“When I was alive.”
Most of them do not remember their own deaths, some aren’t even aware that death happened. Frank is one of the minority that does. And one of the even smaller minority that makes a complete distinction between their past life and this one – or, as Castle prefers to put it, life and undeath.
“Never felt it since… Well, since Central Park.”
She doesn’t believe, but she doesn’t contradict either. Not at this point. Frank shrugs, continuing. Maybe he finds it easier too, to talk without words.
“I don’t really miss it. Kinda wish I could remember, sometimes, when I’m visiting them at the cemetery. But only sometimes.”
Natasha hides a soft, secret smile. Alright, enough of heart baring for the night.
“The targets will be here soon” She glances down at the meeting room that has been carefully vetted by their current prey. Carefully. But not carefully enough.
“You going to stick with rubber bullets, right?”
Frank nods, teeth gritted.
“I know the agreement. No killing tonight.” Going by his expression, that practically hurt to admit. “I never said anything about not putting a couple of those rubber bullets through eyes, though.”
Natasha smirks. She doesn’t really disagree with the latter sentiment. Especially after meeting first hand with some of the ‘merchandise’ their targets trafficked. “Why did you agree, anyway?”
Frank’s teeth are gritted so close together she almost fancies she can hear them grinding against each other. “Because your choir boy buddy refused to tell me the location till I promised to play the game his way.”
She tries valiantly not to let the amusement show in her eyes. “I knew Daredevil had first scouted out the place. But why make the deal?”
“What d’you mean?”
She shrugs “You know what I mean. DD is admittedly way better at detective work than you, but you could have figured out the location by yourself within a few days’ time. So why play along and promise him? Why not wait till you could have had a free hand?”
She doesn’t ask why he doesn’t simply break the promise. Castle has his own code.
“Why agree to his rules?”
Frank glares, but Natasha has long since been immune to glares of all kinds. She doesn’t look away. Finally, he gives in. “’Cause he was planning to take them out himself tonight.”
“…He just got out of hospital yesterday – and it’s been only three days since he got shot.”
Frank nods. “Sometimes I swear that idiot’s got a death wish.”
“He isn’t usually that dumb.”
“He knew I was going after them. Figured he should get there first so that they’d be taken alive for the ‘due process of law’ or whatever damned thing he’s obsessed with. He’d have gotten himself killed, trying to play Daredevil with a gunshot wound.”
“So you promised you wouldn’t kill anyone.”
Aka, ditched your code, she thinks but does not say. Ditched your code because you were afraid it would mean Matt Murdock getting hurt. She knows better than to say it aloud right now. Both of them know what has been left unsaid, though.
Frank glares harder. “Couldn’t let him get his idiot self killed on my watch.”
Natasha hides the smirk rising to the surface. Just “knew” love, Frank? Sure that past tense is the right grammar here?
Before either can say anything more, a slight noise from outside the warehouse alerts them.
Slowly, the expected number of footsteps approach. Frank and Natasha glance at each other, smiling, their expressions something neither would wear where another could see them.
This is the hunt. No more doubts, no more soul searching. Clear, cold, efficient. Here, it is their turf, where the monsters can come out to play.
Love, envy, confusion, all can be despatched with. For now. For a little while. Till they have to finish the hunt and turn back to the gentler world of their comrades.