Chapter Text
Natasha didn’t get caught off guard easily, she literally trained her whole life to be the one who snuck up on someone. Not many people had the privilege to know the details of her personal life. Those who did knew she like to keep her free time to herself. So the fact that one of her safe houses, the closest to SHIELD headquarters no less, was compromised, put her on edge.
Clint was on leave, and she hated to disturb his time with his family for this. So she called up her current mission partner Steve, aka Captain America. She knew that between the two of them, whoever thought they could pull one over on Black Widow would be regretting it.
Once Steve and her met up, they began to investigate her place. Whoever was staying here was smart, they clearly made use of her medical supplies but, made sure to get rid of anything that might contain their DNA. The most concerning thing found were piles of phones and computers taken apart.
Natasha narrowed her eyes at that, it seems her intruder was using parts of different technology to make a phone or computer that wouldn’t be easy to track. She really didn’t want to call this in for SHIELD to investigate, Nick wouldn’t let her live if he found out some one pulled one over on her.
She was surprised to see that her food was mostly untouched. It looked like they only opened a couple of her canned goods. Maybe they were too injured to hold food down or they only stay a couple days. Steve and her spent hours looking for any signs that would lead them to where her visitor might have went but, the person was good. If she hadn’t noticed the missing supplies, she wouldn’t have known some stayed here.
She was going to call it a night and ask Steve if he wanted to grab dinner when she heard the window of her bedroom door open. Looks like she gave her intruder too much credit, they were dumb enough to comeback. She met eyes with Steve as he came closer to her, he already had his gun out and aimed at the door. She pulled out her own gun and took a breath before kicking the door open.
The room was empty.
“Wow, is this how SHIELD agents greet their guests? That’s not very welcoming.”
Natasha and Steve whipped around, surprised to hear a voice behind them. Steve lowered his gun once he realized it was pointed to what seemed to be a masked young boy. Natasha kept her gun up, she knew just how dangerous a child could be, especially one who could get the drop on Black Widow.
“I think after breaking and entering into someone’s safe house, me choosing not to shoot you on site is a pretty nice gesture.” Natasha said, wanting to know how’d he react to danger. She ignored Steve’s slight gasp, he had a weakness for kids, always giving them the benefit of the doubt. But, this kid had to be trained young like her and she didn’t doubt for a second that he could probably take Steve down, serum or not.
She took in what he was wearing, trying to find a marker to connect him to an organization. He was wearing a black and red uniform, with a bird symbol in the middle of his chest. She didn’t recognize the symbol, maybe a new program, taking after the Black Widow project. He was also wearing a belt with many pouches, though he didn’t make a move to open any of them.
He seemed pretty calm even though he still had a gun trained on him and didn’t react the way she thought. Instead of fighting or fleeing, he chose to sit cross-legged on the floor.
“I guess that’s fair, but out of all the agents you seemed the most likely to have your safe house fully stocked. Sorry, I had to hack SHIELD’s files, it’s better to get information from the biggest spy agency when you get stuck on a different world. I guess universe in this case, since I couldn’t find any signs of my world here.”
Steve glanced at her after the boy finished talking, deciding she should take the lead. He clearly didn’t see the boy as a threat putting his gun back in its holster. Natasha narrowed her eyes at the kid’s behavior not trusting him for a minute.
“What do you mean different universe?”
The kid just sighed, like she wasting his time after he dropped a bomb like that.
“I mean this is a different universe than the one I’m from.” His voice was laced in sarcasm, and she was surprise he didn’t add a “duh” at the end of his sentence. His attitude screamed teenager. “You guys don’t even have established superheros yet, well besides Mr. Red, White, Blue over there.” Steve blushed at the nickname, and the kid just snorted at his response.
“I’m assuming you are a hero on your Earth then?” Steve said, and the idiot decided to join the boy on the floor, like this was story time. She noticed while he engaged with Steve, acting as if completely relaxed and open, the kid still had his head angled towards her.
Steve glanced at her scooting until he was between her gun and the kid. She just sighed at her soft partner and joined them on the floor, finally putting the gun away. If this kid ended up killing her, she would haunt him for the rest of his life.
“So kiddo, you let us know your opinion on my name, what do they call you on your Earth?” Steve asked, like having a conversation with a child with SHIELD level training was normal.
“Red Robin.” Natasha didn’t try to hide her laugh, and she though Captain America was stupid.
Red Robin pouted, and crossed his arms, “Like Black Widow is so much better. I happen to be one of best detectives on my Earth, most villains would be shaking in their boots hearing my name.”
“Hey, I’m the last person to be judging names, kid. So do you need help getting back your world?” Steve asked with honest concern.
Natasha could feel a headache forming. He was about five seconds from offering to adopt the kid wasn’t he? Steve was super annoying, with that bleeding heart of his. She did not have time to fill out all the paperwork Nick would require; it was bad enough he was from another world. Nick would be beside himself to get another teen spy in their ranks.
Tim studied their faces for a second. Natasha wished there weren’t white lenses on his mask blocking his eyes. She hated not being able to get a good read on him.
“I’m actually about to be out of your hands soon. I was able to fix my tracking device, it got broken when I got dumped here. My ride should be here any second, it’s kinda regular thing on my Earth to get sucked into different universes.”
Natasha didn’t know how to take this news. She hoped that the whole tesseract thing a few months ago didn’t start bring in these kind of complications. She did not want to start traveling to different universes.
A beeping noise startled her from her thoughts and she saw a gauntlet on Red Robin’s wrist light up. His face broke out in grin at what ever he read on the text and jumped up to his feet. Natasha and Steve stood up too, Natasha was still wary about the kid’s intentions.
“Well, thanks for keeping me entertained but my ride is here.” Tim opened up one of his pouches, and it was full of cash. He walked up to Natasha and handed her a pile of bills. “Here, this should cover what I borrowed from your supplies. I checked your currency and it’s the same as mine so it’s good to use.”
Red Robin gave them a salute and he jumped out the window, of her two-story building. Steve yelped in surprise and they both rushed to look where he went. The boy yelled out “Superboy” and another kid showed up out of nowhere catching Red Robin midair. This Superboy seemed to be able to fly since they ended up hovered in the air.
Red Robin was waving at them and laughing at their shocked faces. Superboy rolled his eyes and threw a disk in the air. The disc exploded and created a portal, the boys flying into it. The portal closed after they disappeared, and if it weren’t for the wad of cash she was clutching, she would think this was all a bizarre dream.
She felt her phone buzz in her pocket and groaned at the name on the screen. There was no way Nick wouldn’t notice a portal appearing this close to SHIELD’s headquarters. There goes her hope from keeping this off of SHIELD’s radar. She looked at Steve’s pained face and knew he wasn’t looking forward to writing the report this either. At least the kid gave them cash for dinner and drinks, they would need it.