Work Text:
Option 1 (yelena / born in 1984):
While invading a Hydra base Natasha comes across a machine that turns her into an 8 year old. Avengers now have to deal with child Natasha. Natasha asks for Yelena, everyone is confused. Nat’s like is this a new mission? What happened to being in Ohio? Clint tries to explain that the red room is gone and that they were now taking care of her. Little Natasha doesnt believe anything that Clint and the others are saying as the red room will always find Nat no matter where she goes. Natasha then gets her phone (from when she was grown) and sees Yelena as one of her contacts. She calls her, they convo (Nat realizes she was supposed to be an adult) and Yelena comes to the tower. The avengers react to Yelena being Nat’s sister and how open Nat is with her. Then the avengers and Yelena take care of little Nat for a little while and some of Nat’s secrets (ohio family, mostly red room stuff like sleeping w handcuffs and bad habits trained into widows like not knowing how to make a choice or just eating in general) get revealed to the avengers. Eventually Peter comes to the tower. After the Avengers explain the situation to Peter, he’s like why not just take her to Dr Strange. Everyone is like damn why didn’t we think of that. But the problem is that Nat doesnt want to become a grown up again bc then she will remember every bad thing (eg getting taken away from yelena/ohio, the red room, her graduation (she makes a big deal out of not wanting to graduate)). Eventually Yelena (maybe with some help from the avengers, maybe) gets Nat to calm down and convinces her to allow strange to fix her and make her a grown up again.
Option 2 (no yelena / born in 1928):
While invading a Hydra base Natasha comes across a machine that turns her into an 8 year old. Avengers now have to deal with a child Natasha. Nat is like where am i? Who u? The avengers are like you our friend, you were hit with a machine that turned u into a child. They then show her a photo of them all together as Natasha as an adult. Nat believes them bc everything is high tech and thinks shes now in the future. The avengers are a bit confused as they thought it wld take a solid second to convince Nat but they go with it. The go back to the tower and Tony and Bruce are like, we need to do a med scan to make sure her brain all there and nothing wrong with Nat. Natasha agrees but asks constantly what everything is. The avengers all confused bc Nat didnt recogize the quinjet as a plane and didnt even know what the tv or a phone is. One of the avengers ask her why she didnt even know what a phone was. Natasha responds with something like i have seen a phone b4 but they are connected to the wall and besides im in the future, no? The avengers get even more confused and are like connected to the wall? Wait how old r u? Nat looks at them like they’re stupid, how wld i know? I wasnt told what age i was turned to when turned into a child. The avengers then rephrase the question and ask when she was born. Natasha replies w 1928, i dont know the exact date bc i was nvr told tho. The avengers do a double take and like whaatttt??? They like how bc then u wldve been 86. Nats like yes that is correct. The avengers like how u get to that age, were u put in a cryo pod? Nat responds saying i age slow and am enhanced ever since i was given that serum. Steve starts to get hot and like what serum? Natashas like idk what it was called. Nat then starts to get nervous bc she thinks these guys are mad at her and starts to shut down refusing to answer anymore questions. Clint notices and gets everyone to back off to which they start discussing amongst themselves. They ask if Clint knew and hes like no, Nat has secrets buried upon secrets like even more then fury and i dont know nearly as much as i thought. Steve is like is it possible it was a version of the super soldier serum. Clints like its possible bc hydra and the red room were very close working together. Tony then jokes saying at least Steve isnt alone being an old person then says something abt going to look at that hydra machine some more, then he walks off. Clint then notices Nat like completely shut down and now feels bad so he tries to tell her its fine and they not mad. Nat’s like stop lying u r mad, even if ur not mad at me ur at least mad at adult me. Clints sighs and is like in his mind that thats true. Eventually next day comes and Peter shows up. After the Avengers explain the situation to Peter, he’s like why not just take her to Dr Strange. Everyone is like damn why didn’t we think of that. They then get Strange to the tower and he turns her back into normal self. Natasha’s like i dont remember a damn thing, y every1 looking at me like that? They tell her what happened and Natasha is forced to explain that as a child she was given a version of the super soldier serum and ages slowly bc of it. Someone is like was any1 else given it. Nat shakes her head saying no as they only had one and chose to give it to her bc she was the best. They all like why didnt u tell us and Nat is like y wld i tell u i age slow so that when u all become old im still fighting for my life and for the avengers. They all share a wholesome moment and ends