Chapter Text
Natasha couldn't remember what happened before the explosion.
She actually couldn't remember the explosion, either, except suddenly she was picking herself off the ground in a jumpsuit that didn't fit, and there was blood and smoke. Her skin stung and there'd been an American voice saying, “Romanova?”
Then she'd woken up, again, tied to a hospital bed. She was wearing a hospital gown, and her hands were bandaged. There was a patch over her cheekbone, and she didn't recognise all of the equipment in the room.
Her first impulse was to cry, and her eyes were burning by the time she drew a breath and repeated in her head the words Ivan Petrovich said when he was pissed off. If she could say them like he would, then everything was still under control.
Everything was still under control. She was alive, she was only superficially injured, she could get out of this.
There was a doctor (Southeast Asian, average height and build, knew how to carry himself, no visible weapons) walking through the door and she looked up, let her eyes burn with tears.
“Romanoff, you're awake,” he said (Australian accent) and she felt herself frowning.
“Romanoff?”
“Natasha Romanoff – you don't remember?”
“Um, that's not my name,” Natasha said, hesitant and uncertain. It's more honest than she'd like.
The man frowned at her. “What's your name, then?”
“Natalia Romano.” She can play Italian (born in Rome, mother American, middle-class with a hunger for better), and someone had said her name before. Romanova. Pick a name that's close and lie, lie, lie with her eyes open and full of tears.
“I want to go home,” she added as the doctor stared at her, and kept her eyes wide when all she wanted to do was narrow them in suspicion.
“Well,” he said with a smile he really needed to work on, “I'm just going to talk to my superior first.”
It was only after he left Natasha realised that she should have made a bigger fuss over the restraints. Blame it on the drugs in her system, but the mistake constricted around her lungs and her bottom lip trembled without any acting at all.
– –
“So, explain to me again,” Stark said, oh-so-carefully, “why you put a twelve year old girl in restraints?”
“Because she could kill you,” and it wasn't the first time Clint had said it.
“Could,” Rogers started before Fury interrupted.
“It's procedure to restrain agents who've been altered by strange technology.” Fury had an edge to his otherwise steady voice. “Romanoff knows this.”
Banner, who had been trying not to twist the glasses in his hands, looked at Fury sharply. “And what if it's permanent?”
“Then we get her to some damn good therapists,” Fury said, still with that edge of worry and anger. Clint was pretty sure you had to know him to read anything other than strain, though. “And find a good home, like we'll find the others good homes. But for now, we treat Romanoff like-”
“Like she's a threat?” Banner's voice was still scathing.
“She is a threat,” Clint snapped. “She's Red Room.”
“Her mind's back in the Cold War,” added Fury, who had far more patience dealing with civilians than Clint. “She thinks we're the enemy, it's safer for everyone if she stays where she is.”
“Ah, so now you're in the business of locking up children.”
Like Stark knew anything. Fortunately, before Clint could open his mouth, Rogers spoke up.
“What do you mean, she's Red Room?”
“It's basically a cult,” explained Fury. “Used to be part of the KGB. A few years after the USSR collapsed, they went rogue. Before that, they trained female spies and assassins. Get 'em when they're kids, brainwash 'em, train 'em up. Romanoff was one of their best, but the others sure as hell aren't what you'd call lacking in skill.”
“How young?” Banner asked, and his tone was actually curious. Angry, but curious.
“Four to seven. They got Romanoff when she was six. So, gentlemen,” Fury was smiling faintly now, “the girl we've got handcuffed to her bed has had six years of training at how to lie and kill people. Do you really think that Romanoff suddenly got dangerous when she turned eighteen?”
“But she got out,” Rogers said.
“When she was twenty-one.” Clint was getting really fucking sick of this conversation.
“Clint,” Banner said in that overly patient way of his, where he used first names and the weight of his education behind them, “how can you be so wary of her?”
“In case you've forgotten, I'm married to the grown-up version. I probably have good reason.”
Stark held up his hand, drawing attention. “The others aren't still tied up.”
The others were scientists caught in the blast who survived; the others were now normal – if damn smart – kids.
“The others haven't been trained to go for your femoral artery,” Clint snapped. “And trust me, Stark, she gets spooked, she will.”
It took another ten minutes before Clint was able to extract himself, mostly because then the meeting was called to an official close. While Stark and Banner were arguing for truth, freedom, and the American way, Clint headed down to where Romanova was being held.
(She was Romanova; not Romanoff, not Natasha, not his best friend and wife, but a girl who was a threat that his team refused to see.)
He didn't go into the solitary room (read: cell) at the end of the infirmary straight away, but first observed. Romanova was looking better than when he pulled her from the wreckage; conscious, not covered in ash and bleeding cuts. She'd already reached her adult height, but it was recent, he thought; she was still all thin limbs like a spider. She was wearing a hospital gown that dwarfed her, and someone had given her a brown headband to help keep her chin-length curls out of her face. It made her look impish; cute, even, if you ignored the restraints.
Clint was certain she could get out of the restraints, and that it was going to be a question of when rather than if.
She had also caught sight of him, and was staring at him with red-rimmed eyes, so he tipped his head slightly in acknowledgement and walked in with a, “Hey.”
“Hello.” Her American accent was already like Natasha's, metropolitan and unplaceable. “Are you going to let me go?”
“Ah, no,” he said, giving her a small smile as he moved over to the chair in the corner. Less threatening than standing, and it's not as if this is the first time he's talked to someone dangerous, or even the first time he's talked to Natasha when one of them was tied up.
Her restraints were more secure the first time that he talked to her, though.
“Why not? I just...I want to go home.” Romanova's green eyes were over-bright, and he was pretty sure that the shake in her voice was genuine. Home was familiar, home had her sisters; she was twelve, of course she fucking wanted to go home. But if her aim was to make him believe the innocent appearance, it didn't work.
“We can't do that, Romanova.” Clint pitched his voice to friendly, just enough to not be threatening without also appearing like a target.
She glared at him. “My name is Natalia Romano.”
“We both know that's not true, but-” he said, holding up his hand to forestall her protest, “I know you can't acknowledge that without breaking your cover. So, Miss Romano it is.”
Her jaw clenched. Then she took a deep breath, and her face settled into a wary curiosity. “They told me I'm in the future.”
“Yeah, but we don't have flying cars. It's kind of a rip-off.”
He got a faint curl of a smile in return. “Jet-packs?”
“Nope. Well,” he amended, “only for multi-billionaires.” Stark's suit was more complicated than that, but still.
“That's not very nice of them,” she offered. “They should share.”
“Yeah, but they're not going to. Not for a while.”
Romanova fell silent at that, her body going far too still, like all of her natural urges to fidget had been trained out of her. Which they had. “Time-travel is impossible.”
“I try not to rule things like that out.”
“How did I get here?”
“What did they tell you?”
“There was an explosion. The other children and I used to be...grown-ups. And now we're not.” Her eyes were narrowed as she studied him.
“Sounds about right,” is all he said, meeting her gaze easily.
“That's stupid.”
He shrugged, keeping the gesture casual. “Reality didn't ask me first,” he said.
Romanova kept frowning at him, but the tension had gone down a few notches. “You know my name.”
“Yes?”
“What's yours?”
“Known as Barton around here,” Clint said.
“Barton,” Romanova repeated, faintly suspicious at his wording. Clint cracked a smile at her expression, because god he had to.
“You know, my name doesn't get less obnoxiously American with repetition,” he said, and now her expression changed to disdain. It hurt. She was Natasha, all stillness with emotions and expression spilling out around the edges if only you knew where to look. She was Natasha, but young, and if she hadn't yet hit the worst of what the Red Room would do to her, she'd already-
But she wasn't that kid. She was thirty-five, just her body and mind didn't know it. Abruptly, Clint got to his feet and, fuck, she flinched.
“Just... Speaking of obnoxious Americanisms? The people who've got you, they kind of have a thing against killing children who aren't a threat.” So try not to be an active threat when you break out.
Which she was going to do. She might have been twelve, but she was Natalia Romanova, and people weren't taking her seriously – of course she was going to damn well break out. And while he couldn't kill her – she was Natasha – other people on-board didn't have his attachment.
Romanova was watching him in the silence, her face as expressionless as a doll, although her eyes were wider, and far brighter than any glass. Her eyebrows were arching, and it was such a Natasha expression when she was playing innocent that he huffed a laugh.
“Just...keep it in mind,” he said, and then he fled. He had paperwork to do, and there was nothing useful in the conversation, and he wasn't even going to bullshit about it being a strategic retreat so he could be practical elsewhere, because it wasn't.
– –
There was no clock, but sometime after Barton left, the lights went dim. Natasha counted out what she thought was seven minutes, then slipped her right hand free of the padded cuff. Her hands were still stiff under the bandages, but she was able to untie her left wrist, and then her feet. After a pause, and making sure she couldn't hear any movement outside, she stretched out her feet to ease the ache before slipping lightly to the floor.
Barton had slipped when he ran away and she'd seen most of the code he'd punched into the electric lock. She peered out through the window in the door, hand hovering over the lock. There were other beds, with the other children, and one nurse on duty. Quickly, Natasha punched in the code (guessing at two of the numbers), and when the door slid open, she crept out.
The nurse (strong hands around a hardback book, necklace, Caucasian) didn't look up from her reading. Carefully, Natasha eased herself along the room, trying to make sure her bare feet didn't stick to the floor and make too much noise.
The nurse was stocky, but not tall; hard to tell from being seated, but nothing more than utter basic training, Natasha thought. That was doable. The nurse's necklace could be a garrotte. But there was the other lock she didn't know the code for.
She'd work it out.
The male child in the bed she just passed whimpered, then made the sound again, but higher pitched and starting to panic. The nurse looked up, getting to her feet without thinking about it, and didn't even pause at the sight of Natasha.
“You shouldn't be up,” said the nurse (American, Midwestern), calm, absent, like Natasha wasn't her concern. Natasha didn't mind not being her concern.
The male child whimpered again, and the nurse only hesitated for a fraction of a second before she was by his bed, doing...whatever nurses did. Natasha eased her way around the bed and headed straight for the door.
Another electric lock. She figured. She knew it'd be electric. She could work it out.
“Now,” said the nurse, “why don't you get away from the door and back to your bed?”
“It's a cell,” Natasha said, glancing back at her. “I don't want a cell, I want to go home.” Maybe she could pull the wires? She didn't know which wires, but she'd need to dismantle the lock to get to them anyway.
“Sweetie, they're working on it.”
Natasha glared at her. “I'm not sweet,” she snapped, which was against the guidelines, she should be sweet and nice and biddable and lure them into a false sense of security, but they-
The nurse's expression frowned around the edges, and that was more than enough warning for the hand that reached towards her.
Natasha darted in, grabbed the nurse by the wrist and twisted sharply, then used the momentum to jump up and scissor-kick, hooking her legs around the nurse's neck and flipping her to the floor. She kept her calves around the nurse's throat, and ignored the cries of confusion from the beds.
“Tell me the code to get out,” Natasha said, and briefly pressed down with her leg. “Lie, and I'll hurt them.”
“Three, four, eight, one, six,” the nurse gasped out, and Natasha scrambled to her feet and backed away towards the door. The nurse slowly sat up, one hand on her throat and the other up in surrender. Natasha hit the code into the lock, and the door slid open.
“Thank you!” she told the nurse with a bright smile before exiting. It was a hallway, empty and bland. Left or right, right or left.
There were agents approaching on the right, which meant the nurse had hit an alarm and she didn't see it, stupid Natashka-
Natasha chose left, and ran.
– –
What was left of the (for want of a better name) age-regression machine was spread over one of the Helicarrier's labs, and for the time being, Tony and Bruce had it to themselves. Bruce wasn't entirely sure it was working. Part of it was that he hadn't had a chance to sleep, to properly sleep, since the Avengers and SHIELD went knocking on A.O.'s front door. There had been the labs, after the Other Guy had finished making a mess, and then there had been the explosion.
He was tired, and he was angry. More than normal; it was a loud beat, beat, beat under everything, which made him conscious of things like the panel in his hands. It was a solid piece of metal: he could do damage with it
Bruce ran his thumb over A.O.'s symbol, an α within a Ω, and slowly let out his breath.
He didn't like cages. He'd spent six years running from one. He didn't like cages, and he didn't like people in them; that this time it was a child was frankly obscene.
Tony was being Tony in the background, which meant talking to himself and JARVIS and anyone else in the room, breaking off mid-sentence to start a new one, or dart off entirely into his own head and whatever was in front of him. Bruce didn't mind. Normally, Bruce didn’t mind, but right now instead of their partnership being conducive to productivity and ideas, Tony was annoying the crap out of him.
Bruce needed sleep. He needed to calm down and clear his mind. He needed to solve whatever A.O.'s machine had done to the scientists and Natasha, and he really needed some coffee.
He wasn't allowed to have coffee.
He needed-
“I'm going for a walk,” he said, and Tony waved at him absently.
“Sure thing, Big Guy, I hear the deck is quite nice this time of night. Bracing, you might say.”
“Right,” Bruce said, but even he could hear the fondness around the dry in his voice.
He made it three steps down the hallway before he looked up, and came to an immediate stop. There was a short, red-haired, pre-adolescent girl at the other end of the corridor, a SHIELD jacket hanging too big over a hospital gown. She had bandaged hands, a patch over her cheek, and she was, despite the injuries, completely adorable.
She was also pointing a handgun at him like she knew exactly how to use it.
Slowly, Bruce put up his hands. “Natasha,” he said, very carefully. The girl glared at him.
“I'm not your friend,” she said, voice young and somewhat indignant. American accent, where Bruce expected Russian, which just added to the surreality of the situation.
“No, friends don't usually point guns at each other,” he said, not quite managing to restrain the dry chuckle after his words. Her expression went flat. “Miss....Romanoff, why don't you put the gun down?”
“Go back into the lab,” she said, with all of the faintly irritated, neutral tones of Agent Romanoff.
Bruce hesitated. Guns and the Other Guy didn't mix, but for all he didn't want Romanoff in a cage, he wasn't keen on the idea of her child-self running around armed, either.
“Now,” Natasha said, taking a careful step closer. She had her body angled to present a smaller target, her balance and posture like that of any soldier walking through a danger zone or a movie set.
“Whoa, okay,” Tony said, and Natasha pointed the gun at him instead. Given the way her expression had turned alarmed at the sound of Tony's voice, and that she had her finger resting next to the trigger, the situation had not exactly improved.
“You, too. Back in,” Natasha said, her face neutral as a mannequin’s and voice flat.
“Listen, kiddo,” Tony said, voice even. “Nobody's going to hurt you. And I'd really appreciate it if nobody hurt me or Big Green over here-” As Tony talked, he walked down the hallway, movements smooth and quiet. “-I don't know if you remember, but he's not the most attractive guy when he gets upset, and let's face it, that face is just too pretty. So we don't want to do that, right?”
Natasha kept the gun trained on Tony, and Bruce eased himself backwards, towards the lab door. He didn't go in, he couldn't go in while Tony was in danger, but he could get out of the way should she pull the trigger.
“Now,” Tony was saying, “why don't we go back to your nice safe room where we can talk this out, okay?” His hand closed around the gun, and then Natasha moved.
She twisted and seemed to spin vertically like the hands of a clock, somehow hooking her knees around Tony's neck before flipping him over to the ground in a move that was more violent than the threat of the gun.
The thud of Tony's body hitting the tiles caused a spike of adrenaline in Bruce's chest, one he caught before it could spread and do any damage. He stepped out from the door just as Natasha flowed back to her feet.
She paused, all wary lines like a cat as she looked at Bruce with faintly arched eyebrows. Behind her, Tony recovered enough to roll out of the way.
Bruce went still and slowly put up his hands again. Natasha nodded slightly in acknowledgment, and then ran past him just as two agents rounded the corner.
The female agent took in the scene and, hesitating for a moment, Bruce jerked his head in Natasha's direction. “We're fine,” he added.
“Got it,” the woman said, and her and her partner kept going. Bruce rushed in, crouching down and helping Tony sit up.
“You okay?”
“That, that went well,” Tony said, sounding winded as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“At least she didn't shoot you.” Bruce reached over and picked up the gun. It was lighter than he was expecting, and with a frown he slid the magazine out. “Empty.”
“...ah,” said Tony. “Judging by stance and Agent Romanoff's...normal competence, the odds are in favour of her knowing that.”
“I think the point was you not knowing,” Bruce said wryly. “You right to stand?”
“Born ready,” Tony said, but his movements were a little ginger as Bruce helped him to his feet. “Well, that was all terribly illuminating, I think-” Tony frowned, walked quickly over to the lab's intercom. “Agent Barton, the tiny Romanoff has escaped.”
“What's your status?” Clint asked with barely a moment's pause. His voice was clipped, short.
“A tad bruised, but more in pride,” Tony admitted, tapping the table in a Fibonacci sequence. “Nothing permanent.”
“I'm on it. Just...hold your position.”
Bruce blinked. In the man's voice was a distinct element of frustrated pleading, and Bruce was willing to wager that it wasn't for Tony and Bruce's sake.
Tony just breathed for a moment, eyes distant. “We'll keep working on the machine,” he said at last.
“Thanks. Out.”
“Staying out of the way? Not, uh, your style,” Bruce observed, and Tony shrugged impatiently.
“I have moments where I can share the limelight,” he said, dismissing it. “JARVIS, bring up page twelve of the schematic.”
– –
“Cap, I know where Romanova's headed,” Barton said in Steve's earpiece. Steve paused to hear him better.
“Where?”
“Deck-level, towards the doors.”
“Roger,” and Steve quickly changed direction. “You got a plan?”
“You hold her until she gets sedated. If she gets out, I'll be there to tranq her. She's dangerous. Not as experienced as Nat, but way more scared.”
“Got it.”
“She gets tranqed, you've got five minutes before she needs the antidote.”
“What happens after the five?”
“Higher risk of respiratory issues,” Barton replied. “Get her to a holding cell first.”
“Roger.”
Given the Helicarrier was flying, a little girl (Natasha) out in that...
Steve used the emergency stairwell after considering it for a fraction of a second. At the bottom he found a female agent sitting on the ground, one bloody hand pressed to her nose and the other cradling the back of her head.
“Ma'am?”
“She's outside,” the agent managed to get out, and Steve nodded before opening the door. It swung inwards, and even though he'd been expecting the wind to shove it against him, it was still an effort.
The cold was a shock, as were the lights against the black of the sky, and the thinness of the air. He kept close to the wall and scanned the area before spotting her. Not that she was hard to find: the deck lights turned all of Romanoff's colours stark; too-white skin and too-red curls that looked alive in the wind.
The girl had pressed herself against the wall, mouth open in fear, but when she noticed Steve her mouth snapped shut and she moved farther away. She was still pressing herself against the wall, but he had images of the wind tearing her away.
“Romanoff!” he shouted, and held out his hand to her.
She shook her head.
Wrong name.
“Romanova!” Try again, and how much time did Barton need to move into position?
“No!”
He kept close to the wall and walked closer as she stood her ground and bared her teeth. The way her eyes moved, though, spoke of training rather than animal fear. It was a look he'd seen before, on battlefields and in forests, in Hydra factories and in the eyes of a dying assassin in Brooklyn.
She'd kill him, Steve realised abruptly. If she had to, if she thought she had to, she'd kill him and keep running.
“Come inside!” he said, and again, he held out his hand.
Natalia Romanova's body went loose in preparation for movement, and then she yelped as a dart appeared in her side. She grabbed it and threw it away, but she hadn't been fast enough; her hand scrambled at the wall and she stumbled to her knees.
Carefully, Steve advanced, and knelt down as she fell back against the wall. She still managed to land a punch, but then her eyes rolled shut and she went limp.
“Target down,” Barton said in Steve's earpiece, and a woman – Barton's spotter – answered him with, “Roger.”
Five minutes, Barton had said, so Steve picked her up. She wasn't the first teammate he'd ever hauled to safety, but as Steve carried her through the Helicarrier, he tried not to notice how light her body was.
Barton arrived barely a minute after one of the medics administered the tranq's antidote, and Steve really didn't like the wear the man was showing underneath his shutdown soldier's expression.
“She's okay?” Barton asked, glancing at the girl on the holding cell's bunk. Steve hadn't been able to leave her without pulling the blanket up over her bare legs, and she was lying on her side with her chest clearly rising and falling. She managed, somehow, to look even younger like this, and innocent. As if she never looked at a man and visibly calculated how to dispatch him.
“So they tell me. Yeah,” he added, aiming for confidence and hitting it.
“Good,” Barton said, pulling over the nearest chair. “I'm taking first watch, Cap.”
Steve took one look at the man's carefully neutral expression, and didn't bother asking who Barton was planning on protecting. He knew the answer would be everyone.
– –
She felt heavy.
Heavy-confused-vertigo-
Natasha opened her eyes and then immediately shut them. The wall, and the bed, and everything, were moving in ways they just weren't, and watching wasn't helping.
She remembered the tall blond agent dressed like the American flag and there had been a dart in her arm and now she was on a bed. A bunk. Thin mattress, and a blanket over her legs.
The bed wasn't really moving, except there was that wind outside. Natasha decided to dismiss the wind for the time being, and forced her eyes open.
“Hello, Romanova,” a male voice said. Slowly, she sat up, and there was the agent who called himself Barton sitting on a chair outside her cell. It was a glass wall instead of bars, but it was a cell.
“Hello.”
“You've only been out fifteen minutes,” he said, like it was important for her to know it.
“Oh.” And then, two seconds too long for politeness, she said, “Thank you.”
Barton nodded, and then....nothing. He just watched her from his chair, an arm crossed over his knee. He reminded her of some of her teachers. He was the first agent to call her by her real name, and he was watching her so she glared back, which was probably stupid, but she felt awful.
“How do you feel?” he asked finally.
“I'm okay.” He kind of arched his eyebrows at her, and she pulled the blanket up defiantly. Blankets could be taken away, her teachers had said, in an attempt to break her down. “Am I allowed to go to sleep?”
She might not be allowed to. Or she might not be allowed to later. And she really couldn't read his face at all now, but then he nodded.
“Yeah. You can.”
“Thank you,” Natasha said, not meaning it. But if she could sleep, that would mean she could sleep off the drugs and get some rest and maybe things would be better when she woke up. She could think up a better plan for escape once she had some sleep.
And then she could go home.