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“Not that I’m not grateful to you for saving my life,” Sharon says, tying her hair upwards into a ponytail. She’s sitting on the edge of the queen-sized bed, facing the window. “But it doesn’t change anything. I’m still not telling you what’s on the hard drive.”
Natasha doesn’t seem to be in the slightest bit concerned or annoyed. Her eyes are only on the barrel of her dissembled pistol as she wipes the entrance with the cleaning rod. She’s on the other side of the Budapest hotel room, sitting by the table. “We’ve been over this, Agent. I’m not here to obstruct your mission.”
Sharon exhales sharply and carefully slips into her blouse. Most of her ribs are still sensitive to the lightest touch, and her left wrist is still throbbing from being dislocated and reattached repeatedly. She can’t afford to use painkillers, not while she has to complete her mission. “That’s not good enough,” she argues. “My S.O.- and my team- they all died for it. And in all those months I was trying to stay alive out there-”
A sharp headache cuts her off mid sentence and Sharon is forced to hold her forehead with her only good hand.
“SHIELD never contacted me,” she finishes, turning to face Natasha. “No matter how many times I called for an extraction. So you can’t blame me if I’m having a hard time believing that they sent you to get me.”
Natasha switches to the bore brush and continues to scrub the inner barrel. “My orders can wait. What’s important is that—”
“I want the truth, Widow.”
This is enough to make Natasha pause. Sharon studies her carefully, checking for any signs of hostility while calculating her chances of winning in a potential fight— which is laughably low. Maybe she’s not being fair, or smart really, but it’s been a long fucking week and Sharon is sick of the mind games.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Natasha says and her lips almost curl, as if she found humor in her own words. Her voice is soft enough to ease the tension in the room. “Whether you give me the drive or not is your choice.”
“Right,” Sharon admits after a moment, with caution still in her voice. “So are you extracting me or the hard drive?”
“Who knows?” Natasha replies as she puts the barrel and brush down. “Maybe it’s both or maybe it’s none.”
She then stands up and faces Sharon. “I guess you’ll have to trust that I won’t leave Budapest without you, Agent Thirteen.”
Sharon’s look remains unflinching but she doesn’t comment. Natasha did have a number of opportunities to search for the hard drive instead of taking care of her. Sharon may not be willing to trust anyone, not anytime soon, but there’s something about her words that makes it worth believing. “That’s not how Black Widow works,” she says in a neutral tone.
“No,” Natasha agrees. “It’s how I work.”