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Natasha kicked her feet up onto the coffee table, even when Steve sent her a reproachful look (it was a sarcastic look, though, so she hadn’t offended his all-American morals too much) and grabbed a handful of popcorn. It had a bit too much butter, but not so much that it tasted unpleasant.
She let the rest of the team’s discussions of which movie to watch fade into background noise–she was a bit tired tonight, and didn’t feel like getting into yet another debate with Stark about the best movie genres.
She snorted as Clint yanked the remote from Tony's hand, deciding on a movie for everybody. And… It was Brave. Of course it was. She had seen this movie decidedly too many times. Rolling her eyes at her friend’s predictability, she settled back into the couch.
The disney castle logo began to play across the screen.
And then–it flickered. Once, twice.
"Uh… what’s going on?” On any other television, this would be normal. But this was Stark’s. And everybody knew that Stark’s machines didn’t have glitches. This was out of the ordinary, and anything out of the ordinary meant danger.
Natasha leaned forwards slightly, squinting at the large television screen.
An all too familiar shade of red took over the screen, and she tensed. Letters, cyrillic letters, flickered into view one by one, dragging the reveal out longer and longer.
Красная комната.
The Red Room.
She went cold.
"What does that say?” Stark asked, a note of panic in his voice. When nobody replied, he kicked her gently in the leg. "Nat! What does that say?”
She opened her mouth, but found herself at a loss for words for the first time in… A long time. Her mind was moving too quickly for words to make it out of her mouth. What was going on? Was this really the Red Room? it couldn’t be, she and Clint had ended it. But that was unmistakably the Red Room logo. Maybe some other organisation, pretending to be the Red Room? But why? and who? Stark's ego really didn’t need the boost, but even she had to admit that his computer skills went pretty much unparalleled.
So this was somebody who was an incredible hacker, knew about the Red Room, and–
The screen flashed, and a video began to play. She ignored the Avengers’ surprised vocalisations and questioning, ignored Stark beginning to type frantically, barking orders at an unresponsive Jarvis.
She just stared at the screen.
A little redheaded girl stood, back against a wall, clad in only a black leotard. In pudgy fingers, She held a chalkboard slate, and it was trembling slightly in her shaky grip.
She ignored Clint's eyes burning into the side of her head, ignored the way his hands were moving in silent questions.
The girl’s face was soft with baby fat, lips pressed together and quivering slightly. On her face, she wore a teary scowl, visibly trying to stay strong despite her confusion. There was nothing that could mask the fear in her clear green eyes.
"What–what is this?” Steve said slowly, looking around and searching for answers in everybody’s faces. He found nothing, though, and the worried tilt of his jaw didn’t leave.
It seemed pretty obvious to Natasha. However, many things seemed obvious to Natasha–like Stark's desperate attempts to be liked, and Steve's deepset sadness, and Clint's trauma propelling him forwards. Still, this was more obvious than any of that. This was a redhaired, green eyed girl in a ballet uniform, holding a slate that literally read her name. I n Russian, yes, but that was another pretty big clue.
Natasha swallowed, staring into the large eyes of her younger self. She felt weaker than she had in years, staring at this small, frail, helpless girl. It wasn't a very nice feeling.
Then, the video fast-forwarded, flashing and buzzing with static that seemed almost intentional. That made sense though, presentation should never be underestimated–even tiny details can completely change people’s perceptions. Finally, it came to a stop on a dozen girls standing in a row, each with tightly pulled back hair and severe faces that looked out of place on people so young. Natasha instantly picked herself out in the centre of the line–nine or so years old, long braided hair tickling her mid back. Before the Ohio mission, then.
“Oh my God,” Bruce breathed, and turned in his seat to stare at Natasha. She avoided his gaze, but could still sense his shock and horror as clearly as if he was screaming it. And something worse–pity. Her face curled slightly just at the thought of it. Natasha didn’t need pity, and she certainly didn’t deserve it.
On-screen, the girls stood, backs straight, perfect posture in the middle of the gaping Victorian ballroom.
“Tанцевать,” said a cold, clear voice. Natasha's back stiffened automatically at the sound of it, like she was a pathetic brainwashed child again. She didn’t miss the way that Clint glanced at her worriedly, like he had been doing ever since this started, but chose to ignore it. She was compartmentalising.
In perfect unison, the girls moved through the dance with a liquid fluidity and apparent ease, one that only came with hours upon hours upon hours of harsh practice. Just watching it made Natasha's feet ache and twinge with the need to join in, even though she knew she didn’t have to anymore. The Red Room was gone. It didn’t control her anymore.
Still, she pulled her legs up to her chest, tucking herself into a protective, pathetic ball.
“Shit,” Stark breathed out, voice hitching upon layers of pity and shock and horror, the emotions he usually kept tightly packed inside unfurling for the room to see. She was a little tired of those emotions filling the room, to be honest. Shock, pity, horror. The same reaction from person after person after person.
“Is that… Natasha?” Steve asked slowly, as if dragging out the words would make it any less true.
The decades-old recording continued to play. Once again, Natasha considered the point of this all, letting her mind pull away and delve into the possibilities, run through suspects and reasons instead of watching the screen.
Because Natasha remembered this day, this video. She remembered everything, actually. A frequent trauma response was forgetting things, the brain shutting itself down so as not to be faced with the truth. In the Red Room, forgetting things wasn’t an option, not if you wanted to survive. Every single memory was still there in her mind at just the smallest reminder, stored carefully, remembered exactly.
So she knew exactly what happened next.
Ilona–coily black hair and smooth dark skin, excelling in languages and dialects, moderate threat–stumbled on a pirouette. It was such a miniscule mistake, just a slight shaking slide at the first turn, small enough that Natasha was sure it went unnoticed by all the Avengers watching.
Of course, it didn’t go unnoticed in the Red Room.
For the first time, Natasha was seeing all of this from an outside perspective, and she was suddenly struck by how small they were. It wasn’t even the beginning of her time in the Red Room–not even close, but she still looked tiny and frail on the screen. She hadn’t been tiny and frail, obviously, she didn’t think she’d ever been. Appearances could be deceiving.
“Wow,” Steve breathed out quietly, so quietly Natasha didn’t think he realised it, watching the movements of the girls with an enraptured expression, horror still lingering just beyond it. He didn’t see the fear in Ilona’s deep brown eyes.
Through the grainy video, her memories enhanced it to picture-perfect clarity. The terrified, near-silent gasp Ilona had let out as her ankle slipped echoed through her mind. The slight iron in the air from the stitches in Ilona’s abdomen popping, the cause of her stumble.
And on screen, Natalia just rolled her eyes slightly at Ilona’s failure. God, she had been a fucked up kid. (She was a pretty fucked up adult too.)
The grainy recording of the dance continued for nearly a minute, and she took the time to glance around the group. Stark was tapping frantically at one of his holo-screens. His reaction to any issue was always to try and fix it, and if nothing existed to fix it, make something that would. Bruce was looking at her sadly, keeping his focus off of the screen. She could see the tension in his frame that indicated the hulk was rearing his head. He was too empathetic for his own good. Steve kept trying to quietly ask Clint what was going on, how he could help, what he should be doing, what this video was, but Clint shut him down again and again and again.
Then the dance drew to a close, the dozen Widows stopping in perfect unison. They stood in a row, first position, chins up and gazes steely. Madame B paced back and forth in front of them, heels clicking on the ground as she projected intimidation and confidence out onto the girls. Natasha could feel the cool weight of her phantom gaze even now.
Then the woman jerked her chin. “Ilona,” she said coldly. The sound of her voice made everybody watching tense up, Natasha included.
Ilona stepped forwards, shaking slightly with terror, looking more like a fly caught in a web than the fearsome spider all Widows were meant to be. Watching this, instead of any of the revulsion or dismay her teammates felt, all Natasha could manage was a blank judgement. This was just how it worked. If you weren’t strong enough to survive, you didn’t.
“пожал–” Ilona started, high clear voice gone shaky and wet. Her plea was cut off by a quick, uncaring wave of Madame’s hand.
“Natalia,” Madame B said next. Natasha watched herself step forwards, chin held high, eyes cold and merciless. Practical. You couldn’t care in the Red Room, couldn’t be soft. I t never ended well for anybody involved. (A laughing blonde girl. Blood pooling below a small body. Natalia staring down the end of a gun, struggling to feel the urge to survive. You care, you die. Easy as that.)
“Natalia–” Ilona choked out, eyes wide and terrified. “Пожалуйста, нет, не делай этого, пожалуйста–” tears were slipping down her cheeks in earnest. Natalia just stood and stared, head tilted slightly to the right in a way that should have looked childish on a face that young, but instead just appeared judging.
Clint's hand ghosted against her knee, and she jerked away, a movement that surprised even herself with the instinctual quality of it.
"Nem akarok meghalni,” came through dark shaking lips on screen, Ilona slipping back into her native Hungarian for her final words. Please don’t kill me. In a sick sort of way, that really did demonstrate why she couldn’t be a Widow any longer. Widows didn’t beg, didn’t depend on others to get what they needed. They bit and they clawed and they killed.
Ilona's words made Tony flinch, which puzzled her for a fraction of a second before Natasha remembered that Ana Jarvis had been hungarian. She hadn’t known that Tony had picked up any of the language, and added it to her mental file.
“Yбей ее,” Madame B said, voice and demeanour exasperated and annoyed by the young girl’s desperate pleas.
And then, like it was nothing (because it hadn’t been anything. How many people had Natalia already killed at that age? hundreds?) Natalia stepped forwards and snapped Ilona's neck in one fluid movement, like it was just another part of the dance.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Bruce's cursing would have been something to laugh at in any other scenario.
Natasha wished she wasn’t here to bear witness to the Avengers’--her team’s –shock, horror, disgust at her actions. She knew she was awful, and was operating under no delusions thinking otherwise. Still, when Clint's hand came up to touch her shoulder, Natasha pulled away, tucking herself even further into the corner of the couch.
“Jarvis,” Stark said, voice watery. But Jarvis didn’t respond.
A still shot was the next thing played, taken with a nighttime lens in a large dark room. There were five rows of small beds in six evenly spaced lines filling the room–this was before Ohio, before they had taken in hundreds of new girls, and all of the Widows who were under sixteen slept in one large room.
In each bed there was one girl, sleeping calmly and completely flat, one arm out from under the blankets to allow the left wrist to be handcuffed to the bed. She caught sight of herself, a nine year old girl, face soft in sleep, fiery red hair looking dark blood-red in the dark image.
Natasha rubbed at her wrist automatically, running her hand over the thick band of scarring that had built up from over twenty years of metal handcuffs rubbing and tugging at her skin. She usually kept it disguised by a combination of makeup and a well-fitted bracelet, but she saw both Bruce and Stark's eyes dart over to it with a look of open horror. It made her feel strange, having these parts of her past played out for others to see, like she had been flayed open, all of her innards set out on a table and neatly labelled.
Suddenly, the transition played again (it had to be somebody who cared about style making this video), skipping and pausing and finally coming to a stop on her face, taking up half the screen.
Natasha glared at the camera–it was definitely Natasha in this clip, hair going from red at the roots to a bleached blonde to washed-out blue at the tips, arms folded tightly on the desk. Her face was tear spotted and blotchy and young, but still steely and vaguely murderous.
“Where is Yelena?” she asked, voice hoarse as she bit out each word. Natasha remembered this, the memories coming down and flowing around her as it played, adding dimension to the video on screen. She was supposed to be giving a summary of her mission in Ohio and the things she had learned. Instead… well. Instead this happened.
"Mission report,” a staticky male voice replied through some unseen speaker, in English.
“Where is Yelena?” is all that Natasha said in response. There were one, two, three seconds of silence, time dragging on as Natasha stared directly into the camera, eyes burning with fury.
When she looked at the screen, it felt like Natasha was making direct eye contact with her younger self, which was… unnerving, to say the least.
“Natalia,” the voice said dangerously.
“Where is Yelena?” was all she said in reply, hands balling up into fists.
“Who's Yelena?” Steve's voice was soft and kind and definitely Did Not startle her. She glanced over, and he was staring at her with such a soft look. Like she needed pity and to be handled with the delicate touch of kid gloves, which couldn’t be less true.
"Somebody I knew a long time ago,” she said after a pause, making it clear in her voice that she did not want any more questions on the matter. She hadn’t let herself think about Yelena for years, and she didn’t especially want to start now.
On screen, Natasha was growing more and more distressed, and channelling all of that upset into anger. "Where is she?” she yelled, loud and shrill, pretten voice coming out in full force.
"Widow!” was barked through the microphone, but Natasha didn’t listen. Instead she picked up the chair she was sitting on and threw it hard into the wall in a burst of anger. Stupid move, really, just bound to get her sedated and punished.
“WHERE IS YELENA?” she practically screamed. It was strange to look at, herself with her shoulders heaving, tears streaming down, a completely real and genuine demonstration of emotion. She had been weak after the Ohio mission. Soft. It had almost been difficult to claw her way up the rankings through the influx of new girls. (almost)
The door was heard slamming open, and then "Widow!” Madame B shouted.
The video cut out.
Natasha did not think about what had happened next.
The video glitched and fluttered and started to play a new video, a different one. Routine punishment. Natalia laid limp against the purple bruises blossoming on her skin, uncaring.
“Stark,” Natasha said, voice dangerously calm and not at all shaky. "Turn it off.” This had gone on long enough. There were no clear motives for showing them all of this, except perhaps psychological torture. But it had to end. Now. And she needed to find out who leaked all of this–this was Red Room information, but the Red Room was gone. Dreykov was dead, she had killed him, so who sent them this?
“I'm trying,” he said, voice strained with stress, "But Jarvis somehow got shut down!”
“I thought that couldn’t happen!” Steve burst out, glaring like somehow Tony was the cause of this. He did have a bad habit of blaming Stark for things.
“Yeah, you know what? So did i!”
On screen, Natalia lost composure and started to screen, red blood mixing and mingling with the red floors.
"Turn it off!” Natasha shouted. Her voice echoed in the room, the team staring at her in raw shock as her shoulders trembled slightly. She hadn’t lost control like that in… a while.
Slowly, she took a breath, manually untensing each muscle until she could pass for calm. She didn’t apologise, instead just wrapping her arms around her legs and pressing her chin onto her knees.
Clint didn’t touch her this time, something she was grateful for, but he put his hand right next to her leg, a silent invitation. She ignored it for now, staring steadily ahead at the screen as Natalia screamed and screamed and screamed.
Finally, finally, the camera shifted to another scene. This one was clearly taken by a small handheld camera, shot from afar through a window, the video quality glitchy and greenish and slightly shaky. Natalia wove through a crowd at a rich gala, hair falling in loose red waves down her back. She did a little spin, kissing an old man on the cheek, and her team looked disgusted as she pressed herself against him flirtatiously. Natasha didn’t mind it, not really. It wasn’t like the touch meant anything, it was just the easiest way to get a man to stop paying attention to his surroundings.
But as she trailed a hand down his side slowly, hand making its way toward his pocket (to grab his wallet, which contained his id card, which would guarantee access to the highest level of the building without arousing suspicion), somebody spoke up.
“Natasha,” Steve said, and then seemed to not know where to go from there. She rolled her eyes. They were too soft. (maybe that’s what she liked about them.) "I–why are you…”
"Seducing him?” she said plainly, matter-of-fact tone not bothering to wrap the words in sugar. They were big boys, they could use normal words.
"You’re–what, thirteen in that video?” Stark said incredulously.
"Fourteen, actually.” she let her fingers pick at a loose thread in the couch, pulling and twisting it as the rest of her body stayed perfectly still.
“Jesus,” Stark breathed, but they both luckily shut up.
On the television screen, Natalia was pressing her body flush into the man’s, giggling sweetly as he passed her a glass of champagne with an exaggerated wink and ‘shh.’ she didn’t really feel bad for killing him–she would do the same now, with even the barest hint of a reason. People like that–they deserved it.
The man passed Natalia his glass like she was a servant, giving a manly sort of hug to another man. Natalia quickly slipped her hand into her dress, dropping a pinch of some sort of powder into the cup in a sleek and barely noticeable movement. Then the man turned back, grabbing his cup with a nod before downing half of it in one go. Gross.
Bruce glanced back at her, eyebrows slightly raised, though she was sure he wasn’t meaning to paint his thoughts of ‘huh. Poison.’ across his face so clearly.
In the video, Natalia slipped away, weaving and ducking through the crowd with smooth, dance-like movements and pretty porcelain smiles, before disappearing out a door. The video didn’t shut off though, and the sound of light footsteps (intentionally audible) tapped closer to the person recording.
The camera was hurriedly set down landing in such a way that Natalia and the person who had been filming were both clearly visible.
Natasha let out a quiet noise at the sight of the other girl. Sonja. Another person she hadn’t thought about in a long time, the closest thing to a friend she’d had in a Red Room.
“Nice work,” Sonja said as Natalia pulled off her dress, revealing her plain black bodysuit underneath. The red haired girl just raised an eyebrow at the other Widow, a tiny tiny smile tugging at her mouth.
Then Sonja stepped closer, long braid swaying behind her. One of her tanned, freckled hands reached up and ghosted across the curve of Natalia’s cheek.
"You had something just there,” she said, grinning.
Natalia rolled her eyes, cheeks flushed slightly pink. “You need to stop watching American movies,” she replied plainly, but the note of happiness was clear in her voice. It apparently didn’t go unnoticed by Stark, who glanced back at her with two raised eyebrows. She raised her middle finger.
“Never,” Sonja declared, and bounded over to shut off the camera. In the background, Natalia looked the happiest she had looked for the entire video so far.
It made Natasha feel twisted up inside. When Clint's hand opened invitingly, she laced her fingers with his and squeezed.
Natalia sat in a hospital chair, head tilted up and revealing the pale expanse of her neck, a healing scar slashed across it. The walls were a bright, polished white, the lights fluorescent and glaring. Her twin braids stood out like blood in the paper-blank room.
"Test 47, serum 19,” said an unfamiliar man’s voice in heavily accented english. Natalia stayed perfectly still in the chair, though it wasn’t like she had much of a choice otherwise.
"Are your fucking hands tied down?” asked Stark, voice high and choked. He was the only one who was even bothering to still talk at this point, the only one doing anything as he continued to move his fingers across a screen, trying to command this all to stop. Steve had gone silent, Bruce was always quiet, and Clint knew she wouldn’t want him asking things.
Instead of answering the question, she just raised her eyebrows judgingly. It was obvious if you just looked at the screen that thick leather belts were securing her forearms to the armrests, her chest to the back of the chair, another around her ankle and her lap.
Looking at it, she remembered the way it had bitten into her skin whenever she was in the testing room, the red marks it had left, especially if she had moved during the process.
The man walked over to Natalia–close-cropped hair, medium build, slight limp–and drew a needle, sliding it deftly into her arm with a well-practised movement. After that, he fit it into an iv tube, before backing up to the other side of the room, out of sight from the camera.
After a few dozen seconds of silence and a stillness so absolute that one would almost wonder if the video had stopped–Natasha almost wondered it for herself, before she saw the iv bag (filled with a slightly green-hued liquid) slowly but steadily draining into her veins–Natalia twitched. Once, then again a few seconds later, then a tremor started to take over the tenn’s body.
Her muscles jumped and spasmed, head knocking back into the wall with a thick sort of clacking noise. The only reason the iv stayed in her arm was the straps at her wrist and forearm keeping it in position even as it desperately jerked and strained to escape.
Natasha wrinkled her nose slightly as her younger self entered a seizure on the hospital chair.
“Oh my God,” Bruce muttered, and a glance over showed that green was starting to thread through his skin. Hm, strange that this was the thing that affected him so strongly out of everything. She had kind of expected the child murder to bring out the hulk, but he’d been getting better at controlling his emotions lately. Clint had been teaching him to meditate (which in her opinion was absolute bullshit, Clint couldn’t meditate to save his life. She had a few guesses on what they were doing instead).
“Bruce,” Natasha said, and he nodded and hurried out of the room.
On the screen, Natalia's seizure was dragging to a close, vomit (mostly thin bile) training down her chin and soaking into the fabric of her leotard, head lolling to rest, chin against chest. A final spasm rolled through her body, and she went limp.
The video ended.
"They experimented on you?”
Natasha rolled her eyes, not particularly grateful that that monet had been the one chosen to be shown to all of the Avengers. It wasn’t one of her better moments, but then again most of these clips hadn’t been. “I know my life is playing on a screen in front of us, but I don't really want to talk about it.” She bit out in clipped tones, staring hard at Steve, who hunched his shoulders and tilted his head apologetically. There was a reason she never told them this stuff.
She wondered why the selected clips were getting shorter and shorter. Maybe the sender had lost interest, or expected them to have turned it off at this point. Well, Natasha had also expected this to be turned off by this point. But she found herself unpleasantly surprised.
As soon as Natasha saw the date in the corner of the video, her heart seized, throat closing up, making her feel tight and cold all over. No. Not this. She couldn’t watch this again.
It had been a routine mission–or at least it was meant to be. Onscreen, Natalia, Sonja, and another girl–Alara, curly blonde hair, enjoyed violence and had attempted to kill Natalia in her sleep no less that thirty-seven times–made their way through a darkened hallway, clad in their full length bodysuits and each holding a handgun. They came across a security guard, and Alara darted forwards and snapped his neck with a sickening popping noise.
They reached the end of the hallway, turning a corner out of the wall-mounted security camera’s sight, but just as quickly darted back. The sounds of shouts and then a wailing alarm filled the video, a red light flashing and illuminating the three girls on and off in a blood-washed light.
gunshots rang out, and all three of the girls ducked to the ground, Alara returning fire from her place on the ground.
"Oh, shit,” Clint muttered, glancing over at her. The unvoiced question was clear in his eyes, and Natasha nodded once, curtly.
Then the hall filled with men. It had been a set-up. The three teens were good, of course they were, they were Widows, but sixteen armed men were a challenge. Nevertheless, they instantly set to work, hitting and shooting and killing with brutal efficiency. And as Natalia dropped from a man’s shoulders, she turned just in time to see Sonja’s face as a bullet sunk itself into her gut.
Natasha flinched slightly at the sight, Clint's grip tightening around her hand, and Tony and Steve both let out noises of dismay and horror.
"No!” Steve said quietly, the sound pulling from his chest involuntarily. If it was any other situation, she would have made fun of him for feeling so upset about a girl he had only known existed for like ten minutes. But this was not a scenario she would ever joke about.
“Sonja!” Natalia shrieked, dropping the man to the ground instantly, letting him slam into the ground roughly as she sprinted over. The impact of her knees against the tiled ground sent up a splash of blood–Sonja’s blood. Thinking that, Natasha felt sick all over again. It was stupid, the irrational attachment she felt towards a fellow Widow who had died when she wasn’t even sixteen years old. But she couldn’t stop it.
Natasha swallowed heavily, and Clint's arm came up to wrap around her shoulder. She'd told him about Sonja once, years ago, when she was too drunk to control the words flowing from her mouth. She had regretted it then, but now she just relished in his contact.
“Sonja, please!” In the video, Natalia pulled a bleeding Sonja’s head sideways into her lap, shaking her shoulders but stopping immediately when the girl let out a pained sound.
“Natalia…” Sonja wheezed, blood trickling from. The corner of her mouth. Around the two, Alana continued fighting the men, taking them down ruthlessly and bloodily with no care to the other Widows.
"No, no no нет!” Natalia cried out desperately, pressing her hands hard against the bleeding bullet wound. Looking back at it, Natasha wasn’t sure why she bothered–after all, it was clearly a fatal wound, and she had known that. It was just instinct and emotion that had made her try regardless. “Sonja!”
Sonja lifted one brown shaking hand, powering past the pain in a way only Widows could do and laying it gently against Natalia's pale cheek. The other girl grasped it tightly, clutching it to her face like if she held on Sonja wouldn’t be able to go. Still she whispered "No, no, no,” in a confusing amalgamation of languages, as if saying it in a different way would make the universe understand.
A tear slipped down Natasha's cheek, surprising her. It wasn’t like she never cried, no matter how much she had been desensitised she wasn’t actually a robot, but she hadn’t cried in front of anybody except Clint (and that one confusing time with maria hill) since the Red Room.
Steve and Tony didn’t seem to notice, though, too focused on the screen as Natalia felt Sonja's pulse stop.
The rest of the videoclips passed by in a sort of haze, Natasha refusing to give the screen her attention any longer. Natalia stabbed a pregnant woman, watching her bleed out while begging. She almost escaped, but was brought back and not allowed to leave the solitary room for two months. These were all parts of her life, she remembered them all incredibly clearly, there was no need for her to watch them again. E specially not in front of her team, who wouldn’t stop crying and swearing and reacting, reminding her just how awful it all had been. (On screen, Natalia stood, teeth bared and holding a gun to her own head as she stared down Madame B in some stupid hapless failed escape plan.)
Then, suddenly, the screen flashed without the transition, to a video taken through a camera that was clearly new, a cell phone recording that stood out so starkly it startled her into watching again. The camera was pointed down at the floor, only showing tiles (looked like a public bathroom, which, that was a really weird place to record a video for your emotional torture of Avengers). However, the microphone was still clearly working.
"So, sorry about that, but I had to be sure you would listen,” said a woman’s voice, Russian accent, trying to seem uncaring but failing on some deeper level. Just from listening, Natasha could tell that the person recording this hadn’t watched all of the clips. She had just wanted the Avenger’s attention, and she had definitely gotten it.
"The Red Room is not gone,” the familiar voice continued (why was it familiar?) and Natasha froze, heart stopping, face dropping into a raw twisted grief that felt far too open to be wearing. “Yeah, hate to break it to you, but your little bomb? Failed.” Natasha let out a quiet rasping noise, and Clint tensed up so tight it was a wonder he didn’t crack a rib.
There were a few seconds of silence as the recorder took a rough breath. "Um. If you’d like to help me get to work on that–” What? Okay, so this person wasn’t with the Red Room then.
There was another pause, longer, as if there was a silent one-person debate going on on the other side of the screen. Then two whistled notes rang clearly through the video.
And Natasha burst into tears.
(God, she was going to kill Yelena for this)