Work Text:
Ballet slippers. They're the color of fire and soft as silk. They bend under her feet like the faithful companions they could have been—had hers been a story of beauty and discipline, a story of a dancer striving for perfection.
All the way appearances were never true.
She moves and sways like the ballerina she never was. Her feet fly out, arms spread… Avant! Her footwork is impeccable. The line of her body fits as if to a diagram. She is perfect.
Her arms collapse gracefully as she sweeps down into the bow she was taught so many years ago. She is not a ballerina.
Red hair falls over her shoulders as she rises, voices crowding into her memories. The whispers are Russian, the music classical and equally Russian. She thinks it will take more than dancing it here to reclaim those memories from who she's been.
Gunshots placed even and perfectly across a series of targets, one bullseye after another. She moves next to another, his body falling as hers rises, his rising as her falls. They breathe in, breathe out, blast out another hole in paper over the place a heart would beat were it a body instead.
They do not speak, and she hears whispers in her memory, the voices in Russian, harsh and soft, cold assessment of each girl in the lineup. Gunshot after gunshot.
She thinks it will take more than her partner's masculine form to make her forget the girls bleeding over concrete walls and floors and leaving them red, red, red.
She sweats into her eyes, red hair, and thinks it is like the red blood that would get in her eyes as they pushed on and on and on and on. She thinks her blood has not changed at all.
Natasha Romanoff sits at a table in the SHIELD cafeteria, straight posture, immaculate expression, and eyes taking in everything in the room possible. Her hackles are up, though few would ever know it. There is nothing here but tiny changes to make her believe she can ever change who she is.
She was Natalia Romanova. She is Natasha Romanoff.
She was a Black Widow. She is the Black Widow.
She danced ballet, back arching perfectly over concrete floors. She practices her couru and arabesques on cool padded training mats.
She shot bullets into targets painted on the walls and sparred to kill. She trades bullet holes with arrows in targets and pulls her punches in practice.
It is not enough. It is never quite enough.
"How are you enjoying yourself, Agent Romanoff?" Fury asks. He's comfortable, standing by the window in his office, one eye reading her as well as anyone ever could.
Or so he thinks. She's a tough read. Everyone believes her lying in her sincerity and sincere in her sweetest lies.
"The amenities are lovely," she comments, smile curving slightly. It is a deliberate gesture, one she doubts he'll pick up when she loosens her body language to comfortably spread arms across the broad chair and own it.
He doesn't pick up the lie. He lets it sit and shows her white teeth in his own matching grin. "I'm glad to hear it. And Barton?"
She shrugs, smile fading to even smaller. "He's a good partner." It's yet another lie. He's the best partner. Her heart never pounds that today he will kill her in training. Her heart never pounds that today she will kill him.
"Are you making any friends, Agent Romanoff?"
Friends. She does not know how to be a friend. She only shrugs and says, "It hasn't been among my priorities."
"I see." Fury waves his dismissal. He's pleased with her progress. "Make some friends."
Are those orders?
They must be.
She ponders the problem over toes on pointe and the whisper of silk over training mats as she dances to music only she can hear. She rides the crescendo into the most complex of leaps and bounds she has mastered, and she is still thinking of it.
Barton could be her friend, but he hardly counts. He is her partner.
This, she thinks. This is what makes her someone else.
Natalia Romanova had sisters, killed them one by one under orders. Here, Natasha Romanoff is under orders to make friends.
"A friend is someone you like or enjoy being with," she tells him.
Clint looks up with mild interest from cleaning his gear and packing it in the new quiver he just requisitioned from R&D. Something about the old one disintegrating under the chemicals in one of his standard arrowheads.
"Or someone you choose to be yourself with," she add, then frowns. "Which is it?"
Clint shrugs. "Both. Either."
"Barton." That answer is not helpful, therefore it is not acceptable.
He just shrugs again. "So the first is a friend, and the second is a close friend. Though honestly, I don't think you have much trouble being yourself with anyone, friend or not."
And that is… complicated. Mostly untrue. Natasha has no idea who herself is. Unless you count ballet slippers and gunshots, blood spilling over hands onto concrete, onto training mats and holes in moving targets, and she makes herself stop thinking it and looks at him.
"How do you make friends?"
"We're friends," Clint replies easily. "Or you wouldn't be asking me."
Probably true, she realizes as she stares at him. There aren't many people, not even Nick Fury, that she'd reveal such an educational gap to.
"I'm not going to shoot Agent Hill in the leg, Clint," she settles for saying.
"Hill, huh?" Clint's hands pause on his gear, then he nods. "Yeah, I can see why you'd pick her."
Natasha hasn't picked anyone. It was a random example.
But Clint doesn't leave her time to say as much before adding, "I have excellent taste in friends." He grins at her broadly, eyes twinkling with amusement.
She just stares at him for a long moment, a little despairing that she made her first friend by trying very hard to kill the man. "Dork."
"You love it."
Maria Hill is known for her straitlaced sense of responsibility and her absolute imperviousness from anyone else's opinion or disapproval. And her love of guns and the firing range. She shoots like she's imagining every piece of paperwork or media coverage that ever offended her is sitting on the bullseye of her targets. Natasha can respect that.
"Can I help you?" Maria asks, the first time Natasha appears beside her.
"Can I shoot with you?" Natasha asks simply.
There is a long moment of suspicious silence. Men don't count, Natasha decided earlier. Clint doesn't count. Natalia Romanova never had brothers.
This measuring look is like the look of a sister, a fellow Widow deciding who will die today in training, who will walk away covered in blood, no one dead today. Something inside her sinks into the comfort of it and smiles.
"Very well," Maria says at last, faint puzzlement still hiding behind her eyes, but resignation in her voice and acceptance in her face.
They turn as one. Side by side, they shoot.
Gunshots ring out in perfect time, and it is so close.
Natalia Romanova shot bullets toward targets on blood-stained cement walls. She danced across those same floors. Natasha Romanoff stands beside another woman and shoots at a firing range designed for safety. They do not speak. But neither do they spatter each other with red.
She doesn't ask Maria into her training time. She just shows up in the gym when Maria is venting frustrations into a punching bag. She slides out slippers made of silk the color of fire, the color of blood. She raises her arms to music only she can hear and swings out her leg in a kick that would break her foot in combat. Perfect pointe. Graceful footwork, spinning on ankles strengthened by other work, and leaping like a gazelle.
She does not ask. She does not demand. She offers no ranking, no scores, no challenge as she offered her sisters.
Be more perfect than that. Fight me stronger than that. Or I will kill you.
At some point, there is an odd halt to the comforting rhythm of Maria's fists. There is only music in her memory and the whisper of ballet slippers. She can barely breathe over the pain in her chest. But there are no voices in her head.
"You're quite good at that," Maria says over sandwiches.
Natasha shrugs. She was good at everything. It was that or die. "I try not to remember."
"Oh?" Maria looks interested. She studies Natasha a long moment before asking, "Then why do it?"
They must be friends, or Natasha would never, ever answer such a question. "It is part of me."
It is not the action that slowly wears down the voices of her memories, that drowns out whispers in Russian voices. It is the people she moves beside. It is their voices and even laughter that fills her head with new sounds, with the sounds of her new name.
She danced ballet, back arching perfectly over concrete floors. She practices her couru and arabesques on cool padded training mats.
She fought with sisters. She brought them down beneath her arms and legs and knives. She fights back to back with an archer and side by side with a straight shooting woman she dares to call friend.
She was Natalia Romanova. She is Natasha Romanoff.
She was a Black Widow. She is the Black Widow.
It is enough.