Chapter Text
The cuffs around her wrists were tight, unforgiving, cold. Achingly familiar. Every inch of her body ached. Natasha Romanoff was no stranger to mind games, but SHIELD had been putting her through the wringer since Clint Barton had brought her in almost a month ago. She'd expected to go through some form of retraining, or reprogramming. What she hadn't expected was the barrage of psychological sessions in which it felt like the doctors in deceivingly calming offices took her apart and pieced her back together again. She hadn't expected them to poke, and prod, and push, until she inevitably spun, and snapped, and gnashed her teeth in response. She hadn't expected the sessions to be so brutal that when she got back to her cell, she'd force herself through exercises she'd learnt long ago, if only to stop herself from spiralling.
They said they were trying to help. This didn't feel like help. This felt like she was back in the Red Room, being made into the perfect model of what others wanted her to be. But no, she knew better than that. She knew enough to note the differences - their requests were questions, not demands. Their touches were hesitant, not cruel. She saw it in their eyes every time they asked something that made her flinch, or tense, or throw up a hasty defence to hide her expression behind. They weren't any more comfortable doing it than she was. Like it or not though, they needed assurances of their safety, and if this was what it took to get her out of the Red Room... Well, her brain being minced was a mercy compared to what Dreykov would do to her if she returned.
She sat in the corner of her cell, trying to push away the weakness in her trembling muscles. Imprisonment never fared well with anyone. She hadn't seen the sun in months, and she poked at her food at best. Save for forcing the food down her throat, there was nothing they could save or do to make her eat. And Natasha knew that they were smart enough to not dare get close enough to even think about force-feeding her. Well trained or not, she didn't miss how their hands flinched towards their weapons if she moved too quickly, or stared too long. She made them afraid. Good.
The metal holding her wrists felt more like manacles than handcuffs. She didn't know how they were made, nor what they were made of. All she knew was that they needed no change. One press of a remote button and her wrist would snap together against her will. She'd learnt the hard way to make sure she always kept her hands in positions were they could snap together. As unexpectedly strong as she was, the magnets were stronger. She'd seen that much when she'd been midway through braiding her hand only for the metal to click with a telltale warning seconds before connecting, with her hair trapped in the middle. Her guards had had no sympathy for her, and had half-dragged her scowling self down the corridor with her head awkwardly ticked to the side to stop the insistent tugging on her hair.
It was perhaps for that reason that when she heard the metal door of her cell begin to click and whir that she shot to her feet in expectation, her hands only just in front of her torso. She expected SHIELD agents to step inside in their usual formation of four. Four, for a single handcuffed and half-starved prisoner. Pathetic. The individual who stepped inside instead had Natasha slipping a mask over her face. Without it, she knew her brows would've raised in surprise, her eyes would've widened slightly. With it, she didn't shift an inch.
“I've either done something right, or very wrong to have his highness in my cell.”
Her mocking tone was not lost on the dark-skinned man. His lip quirked up at the corner in the beginning of a smirk. Her gaze settled on his eye - the one not covered by an eye patch. “If you'd done something very wrong, you wouldn't be here at all.”
No, he didn't mean that she'd be in a black site, and they both very well knew it. Nicholas J. Fury did not shy away from death. Natasha was not so naive as to think that he wouldn't kill her if he deemed it necessary. The man had entered her cell with no guards, a power play if Natasha had ever seen one. She could attack him, but they both knew she wouldn't. He was smart enough to not underestimate her intelligence, nor overestimate her confidence.
“So what have I done right?”
He waited for a long moment. Either he was trying to think about how much he should reveal to her or he was just enforcing that he was the one with power in the room. “It seems you've convinced a host of professionals that you've been honest about your intentions.”
Now she allowed her brow to quirk up and a smirk to slide onto her features. “It took you a month to figure that out?”
Her guess was an estimate at best. She had no access to a watch or the date. When she was taken from point A to point B, she was blindfolded and taken in enough circles that she'd given up on trying to gain her bearings long ago.
“It took us a month to confirm with our sources. It seems you've made yourself quite a few enemies in light of your defection.”
Additional motivation, not that she needed it, to not cross SHIELD. Natasha had no intention of doing so, of course. That said, even she had to admit that she was less than eager to avoid the KGB, the Red Room, and Hydra on top of SHIELD, the CIA, FBI, and possibly any of their allies that would be interested in her.
“I had plenty of enemies before,” she retorted, shrugging off the thinly veiled threat. “A few more won't kill me yet.”
Something in her response seemed to please the Director, because he replied more quickly this time. “I'm glad to see imprisonment hasn't made you a doormat.”
It would take a lot more than a few shrinks to break Natasha Romanoff, but Fury didn't need to know that. “Are you going to tell me what you're actually here for, or did you come purely for all the stimulating conversation I can provide?”
“You'll be relocating to the SHIELD Academy of Operations later today to complete a training course.”
“Where?”
Nick Fury raised a brow, and Natasha bit back a scowl of irritation. As it was, she had no clue where she was, and it seemed they intended to keep it that way. Natasha didn't argue with it. She'd do the exact same thing if she was in their position. They had no reason to trust her and every reason to mistrust her. She was patient. She could wait a little longer for answers. Besides, Fury had said she'd be completing a training course. Her training meant that others would also be training, and surely SHIELD's recruits would be dull enough to let something slip. Yes, she could wait a little longer.
Maria stood stiffly, shoulders back, eyes forward, chin up. It was a familiar scene. As she glanced around at the other recruits without moving her head, it hit her that what was familiar to her certainly wasn't familiar to them. She'd walked into this expecting their arrival at SHIELD to be militant. They, clearly, had not. Three years in the Marines had prepared her well. Unlike her new peers, she didn't pause in shock when the yelling had begun. She'd followed orders that were barely audible - not for lack of volume, of course, but for lack of pronunciation. That was the issue with yelling. Far too often, people forwent one value for the sake of the other, but what was the point of yelling if no one could understand a word of it?
They were lined up in messy ranks and files. Ones that would've made Maria wince if they were in the army and she'd had to present the sorry lot to a higher ranking officer. She shoved the thought from her mind. She wasn't an officer here. She was a boot, cannon fodder, the lowest of the low. No longer would she have seniority over anyone. Her role was to follow instructions.
Her eyes barely flicked at the sound of car wheels on gravel. It rolled into view, stopping in front of the group. Maria's brow furrowed as the door opened.
She'd expected someone of senior rank coming to inspect the new group. Perhaps some of their trainers to witness the sorry lot they'd have to whip into shape. She surely hadn't expected a woman who looked just a bit younger than her to step out of the vehicle. Her hair was a mess. At some point, she'd pulled it back, but wisps and flyaways stuck out everywhere. Her eyes swept across the group, narrowing at whatever it was she saw. The person who got out behind her was unremarkable and looked less than excited to be here. He seemed to be an agent, dressed in SHIELD's black tactical uniform. All his attention was on the redhead. He shoved a bag at her. A muscle ticked in her jaw, but she took it without complaint.
One of the instructors that had been yelling moments earlier walked over to the pair, speaking too quietly to be heard. Maria hadn't known that the man could speak quietly. After a long moment, he stepped away, and the redhead fell into formation. Maria's mind buzzed with a dozen questions. She was surprised she hadn't been smoked, as late as she was. A special case, perhaps.
The tour of the campus they got mere minutes later was admittedly impressive. The facilities for both practical and physical classes were exquisite. A pool with a whole obstacle course about it, an assault course that looped through trees and behind a shooting range, and according to the instructors, there was a whole tactical village down the hill. The theory classrooms were equally as well-equipped, from cavernous lecture halls to science labs with equipment for bomb disposal. Maria couldn't help but wonder what SHIELD's budget looked like next to the armed forces. Ah, all the funding probably went to the bloody chair force and their shiny computers and warm showers anyway.
The barracks were the last on their tour, and decidedly were the least aesthetic part of the campus. Ahead of them lay a long, thin room with harsh fluorescent lights that bathed the room in an uncomfortable glow. The pale yellow walls and the army green bunk beds and lockers gave the room and overall sickly look. As they stepped in, Maria had a feeling she wasn't the only one who found the room off-putting and mildly claustrophobia-inducing.
“You will be paired up for the remainder of training,” the woman in charge of their group said. “When I call out your names, you will pair up. The first pair will take the bunks closest to the door, and from then, you will move towards the back of the room.”
Her eyes swept over the group briefly, assessing. Maria realised after a long moment that she had no list - she was going to be pairing them based on their files and what she'd seen so far. She pointed at two recruits.
“Morse, Carter, bunk one.” Her eyes skipped over Natasha to a lanky man who looked like he belonged in communications rather than operations. “Woods, you're with Isabelle Hartley. Greyson, Jane Hartley. ” Natasha raised a brow. Two Hartleys. Sisters perhaps. “Mercer, Callaghan. Hawks, Vaugn. Smith, Wilson. Hill, Romanova.”
“Romanoff,” a voice barked in response.
Maria turned with a raised brow to see the redhead push herself off the wall, arms crossed. She couldn't help the small grin on her face. The other recruit had a bite. That cunning edge in her eye wasn't all for looks.
“What was that, boot?” the instructor asked, meeting the redhead's stare.
“It's Romanoff.”
“Your file says otherwise.”
She set her jaw, refusing to break eye contact. “My file says a lot of things about me.”
There was a tense silence. People edged away from the instructor slightly as her eyes narrowed. Half of Maria expected her to smoke Romanova- Romanoff. But just like earlier, Maria was yet again proven wrong when the woman simply gritted her teeth and nodded.
“You lot are free for the rest of the day.” Her gaze swept over the group before landing on Romanoff again. There was something akin to amusement in the recruit’s green eyes - a joke that only Romanoff was privy to. It seemed to only irk the instructor, very possibly a joke that she knew about but found less than amusing.
When the instructor left, everyone shifted, most moving towards their new partners.
“So I guess it's you and I,” Maria said by way of greeting as she reached the back of the room, where Romanoff had opened a locker, and her bag had already claimed the top bunk. Maria didn't mind all that much - she was overly familiar with sleeping in bunks from her marine days and knew well enough that Romanoff would be regretting the decision when they returned from a nasty training session at the end of the day with their legs burning.
“Me.” The woman didn't even look at her, nor seem surprised by her approach.
“What?”
“'You and me' is grammatically correct.”
How polite. They’d hardly met and Romanoff was already correcting her over something as unimportant as grammar. “Are you always this much of a know-it-all?”
Finally, the woman closed the locker door. The number seven was painted on the door in chipping white paint, matching the paint on the locker beside it. Pair seven. Maria returned her attention to the redhead as she turned around, crossing her arms. Maria copied the movement, raising a brow expectantly and she awaited an answer. The woman was very classically pretty. She wasn't sure whether it was a trick of the light and shadows that made her piercing green eyes look like they held a dozen untold stories. She'd undone her braid, allowing waves of fiery red hair to cascade down past her shoulder. Her facial features themselves held the severity of someone who's learnt to hide themselves - Maria knew the look well.
She was staring, but to look away now would be to back down.
“Take a picture. It'll last longer.” Romanoff’s tone was sharp, her accent not quite American.
“Here I was thinking I was simply waiting for an answer to my question,” Maria retorted.
When Romanoff said nothing, Maria felt urged to say something more. “So why were you late to line-up?” she forced herself to turn away and lean against the wall. Less confrontational.
Her movement seemed to coax some of the tension out of Romanoff, who uncrossed her arms and moved towards the bunk ladder. Before Maria could blink, the woman was sitting on the bed, peering down at her as she leant to the side, propped up by her arm. “I was being transported.”
Maria blinked at the odd wording. “Being transported?” she echoed.
Cold amusement glittered in her green gaze. Maria may not have minded the expression if it weren't for the condescending edge of it. Romanoff knew something she didn't, and it was in Maria's nature to want to find out exactly what that was. Asking outright would just be lazy. If Romanoff wanted to play this game, she'd play.
“So where'd you come from?” Romanoff asked, her eyes raking up and down Maria's frame. “You're no civilian, so what, army? No, marines.”
A ripple of surprise followed by an itch of unease circulated through Maria's body. She didn't show it, instead leaning back into the wall behind her and asking, “What gave it away?”
The corner of Romanoff's mouth ticked up into a smirk, and Maria knew at that moment that the woman wasn't going to answer the question. She was only speaking to Maria for her benefit. She wouldn’t give Maria the opportunity to gain anything. Not now, at least. The redhead tilted her head to the side as she analysed Maria for a long, uncomfortable moment. Maria decided she'd do the same. Closer to the light, Maria noted that Romanoff's pale skin was not unblemished. Her face, yes, but there was a thin line of a white scar along the base of her throat, another that subtly curled from the bottom of her ear to her jaw. Injuries that Maria knew all-too-well weren't your average ‘I’m just clumsy’ stories. Her eyes trailed along the woman's arms, down to her wrists. Down to the bracelets of metal circling them. They weren't aesthetic. They lacked any design, and were an inch in width. They weren't flat, giving Maria the impression that they were far from comfortable. Scratches and small dents marred the otherwise pristine steel surfaces.
Suddenly, the hands were out of view. Maria's eyes flickered back to Romanoff's. She opened her mouth to ask what they were, but the glare she received before she could even draw a breath to speak had her cutting herself off and snapping her mouth shut. The guarded look on the redhead's face didn't shift as another recruit called out her name. She turned to its source, a tall woman with blonde hair. Maria had spoken to the woman briefly when they first arrived. She was decent. Bold, that was for sure, but decent. It seemed that she knew what to expect from SHIELD, or had at least been around the block before.
The other woman started speaking to Romanoff, “I heard you'd caused an uproar in SHIELD, but I didn't think they'd send you here.” Most of the recruits were staring at the conversation now, their conversations quieting as their attention shifted. Romanoff leapt off the bed, landing on the floor with surprising grace and silent feet. She lifted her chin, meeting Morse's stare as the woman continued. “I'm surprised you're allowed in with us alone.”
Maria shifted slightly so she could see the redhead's expression. Her lips were twisted into a small, self-satisfied grin. “Morse, right?”
They’d been in here all of five seconds, but Romanoff had already put faces to names? Even Maria had to admit that that was an impressive skill. Morse, however, didn’t seem at all impressed.
“The Black Widow knows my name. I'm honoured.”
The wry reply had a selection reactions sounding from around the room, from quick intakes of air to quiet whispers. Maria half expected Romanoff's grin to grow, but if anything, she squared her shoulders and shifted her weight as if to prepare for an attack. It was a subtle movement - barely noticeable to those who hadn't been trained, but Maria knew what it looked like when someone was steeling themselves for a fight. Said fight never came. There were too many wide eyes and a few fearful expressions. Maria knew why, even if she didn't feel so empathetic to their fears.
Maria knew nothing about the name, or the person that held it, but the others’ reactions told her enough. She was clearly infamous, likely dangerous. Suddenly Maria had all the dozen questions she had about the woman answered. Her bracelets weren't bracelets, but handcuffs. Her confidence wasn't cockiness, it was justified comfort in her ability. Those cunning green eyes that knew too much did in fact know too much. An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of Maria's stomach. Not because she feared for her safety, but because no one's inner thoughts were safe with a snake in their midst. And despite her namesake, Maria had the distinct impression that Romanoff - Natalia Romanova - would and could strike and kill like the deadliest of reptiles.
Green eyes flicked to Maria's blue. She raised herself taller, narrowing her eyes. She would not be cowed by a woman whose reputations preceded her. If anything, Romanoff would provide competition. The redhead held her gaze for a long time. Challenging her. Maria could almost scoff. Fuck this, she didn't back down for anyone. Romanoff looked away when it was clear Maria wouldn't, her lips twisting into a scowl that darkened her features in the harsh white light.
Fine. Challenge accepted.