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Avengers - Unaccompanied
It's possible I may have fallen down a new rabbit hole. Trying out a new fandom, at least for a little while.
Title: Unaccompanied
Fandom: Avengers, Black Widow
Genre: Gen, hint of Clint/Natasha friendship
Rating: PG
Length: ~3,400 words
Spoilers: Very general for movie
Warnings: Implications of off screen non-con and abuse for an OC
Synopsis: It was hard to be a loner when you were never alone.
Author’s Notes: I kinda sorta fell in love with the Black Widow character and have gobbled up as many comics and references as I can find since first being introduced to her. Hopefully I have done her a bit of justice.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also posted to Archive of Our Own.
Clint was standing at the window, gazing out at the city below when she shouldered her small pack. “Will you be coming back?” he asked. He did not bother to turn around, but tracked her reflection in the glass.
“Of course,” she lied easily enough.
He nodded as though he had expected that answer, probably knew it before it left her lips. She walked over to him and placed a gentle kiss on each cheek and, hesitantly, he did the same. It was a parting, a tradition, and they both knew it.
She headed for a safe house that she was fairly certain SHIELD already knew about. There she topped off her supplies and actually paused to think about what she was doing and where she was going. She could still turn back, take a breather for a week or two and return to the others with no hard feelings, but in her heart she knew she needed far more than a week to sort things out in her mind.
Natasha was a loner, always had been. Sure, she paired up with others as necessary, usually they used each other for mutual benefit and moved on. This team thing was new to her though, different. A constant inundation of people all checking up on her, all relying on her, all crowding her and infecting her space.
It was hard to be a loner when you were never alone.
They did good together, but it was always “they” and never “her” – always the group and never the individual. She was afraid she was losing herself to the team, not sure where she ended and they began.
Well, that was easy enough to find out.
She deactivated the tracker implanted by SHIELD, the pulse hopefully knocking out any others they had placed within her gear, as well as sending her unconscious for a good twenty minutes. She checked the feed to the safe house to verify no one had gotten through the defenses during that time and, satisfied, gathered what she needed to go to someplace a little more private and a little less SHIELD-approved.
She had enough fake passports and cash to travel first class, but knew that was just asking for trouble. It was easy enough to catch a ride on a skiff or a barge, sneak into the baggage area of plane headed her direction. Not that she had a direction per se, but she had a general idea.
Three weeks time found her on the edge of Moscow, and even she had to admit she had probably been headed there all along. She had two squirmishes, an aborted assassination attempt, and a chipped nail to show for her efforts. Now though, she blended in on the snowy streets, slipped in and out of shadows just as she slipped in and out of her mother tongue.
She was tucked away in yet another safe house, indulging with a fair size serving of syrniki, when she decided she was being rather pathetic. She finished up her dessert because, really, SHIELD had a lot of things but no one could make syrniki like this, and decided to check the messages of a handful of aliases that were known to work in the region.
Most were outdated or simply outrageous, even for her, but there were a few odd jobs that would keep her entertained and off the map for a while, so she responded to the ones that were low key and at least not an obvious set up.
She was four weeks and two missions in when she came across a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar in the middle of nowhere. She had wanted a drink, and maybe something to warm her stomach, and had just finished a job that granted her enough funding for a second retirement.
She had just ordered herself what she expected to be some truly awful pelmeny and a shot of something clear and cold when he caught her eye. Big, brutish, and with a death grip on the wrist of a tiny little thing with a forced smile.
It was an easy enough thing to flirt with the guy next to them and to get a hint of the circumstances that had brought the couple this way. Easy enough too to discover the tiny little thing was there against her will, but was too damned scared to do a thing about it, especially in a place like this and so far from home.
She let her would-be suitor down gently enough, rewarding him with another shot for his efforts, and followed the less than happy couple out into the brisk cold.
“What do you want?” the brute demanded when he saw her, several hundred yards away from the bar. His accent was heavy, even for this region, and she quickly reassessed both his origins and his tolerance.
“I just wanted to check on my little sister,” Natasha replied, choosing a dialect similar to what she heard the woman use the one time she dared to speak.
He still had a grip on the tiny thing, her fingers turning blue from both the cold and lack of circulation. “You are no sister of hers,” the man scoffed. He glanced at the prize he held in his grasp and then eyed his new quarry doubtingly.
“Let her go, she is needed at home,” she said quietly. It was a demand, and she knew he took it as such.
This time he laughed outright. “She has no home, I have made certain of that,” he said with the boldness brought of false confidence and drink. “I suggest, unless you wish her to pay for your interference, that you leave us be on this fine night. There is so much still to be done, after all.”
He leered suggestively and Natasha felt soiled just from the proximity.
The little thing whimpered and tugged slightly against the tightened grip on her wrist. Her blue eyes were wide behind the dirty strands of blonde that hung in her face, and her bottom lip bloomed red where she bit down upon it to prevent herself from making any further noise, teeth fit into grooves bruised from long repetition.
It was easy enough to kick the brute away, easier still to dodge his drunken volleys, and satisfyingly simple to smash his head against the brick wall of the alleyway barely lit amongst the gloom.
She offered her hand to the little thing, who did not seem to know what to do with it. When she tightened her gloved fingers around the shivering fragile things, she got the tiniest of squeezes in response.
“Is... is he dead?” the little thing asked.
The brute groaned, but did not open his eyes. “No, he’s still alive,” Natasha reassured her. He wouldn’t be in three days after consuming the cocktail of poisons she had slipped into his drink, but there was no need to share that tidbit now. Three days was a lifetime away, long enough for no one to suspect either one of them.
The little thing nodded and the barest hint of fire lit her eyes and she kicked a toeful of snow in his direction. She nodded again as though that was that, before she turned back to Natasha and said, “Thank you. He... just, thank you.”
Natasha wasn’t used to platitudes, so she shrugged it off and asked instead, “Do you know where you are? Or how to get home?”
The brief bit of fire left her as she shook her head. “He was right about that, actually. I don’t have a home, not anymore,” she admitted. She shivered against a gust of wind and Natasha fought the urge to roll her eyes at the ridiculousness of it all.
“You can stay with me for a day or two while we sort it all out,” she offered.
She found herself with an armful of matted faux fur and greasy hair and knew she was doomed.
Two hours later found them checked into a room for the night. The girl had stopped by a beat up truck and, with the help of Natasha’s lock picking skills, grabbed a suitcase that most definitely had seen better days. There did not seem to be anything else of worth in the truck itself save for a glock and an empty space where likely the only important items had been tucked away, so they locked it back up and headed as far as they could in the opposite direction before giving in and crashing for the remainder of the evening.
“I never asked your name,” the girl said, embarrassed, after steaming up the small bathroom for the better part of an hour. She wore an old t-shirt that was three sizes too big and torn along the seam of one arm, and a pair of sweatpants that did not quite brush her bony ankles.
“Natalia,” she lied, using the alias she had booked the room under to avoid any confusion.
“Ekaterina,” the blonde replied, offering out her hand. Natasha shook it, noticing it was several shades paler than she had originally thought, and that the wrist it was attached to was still ringed with fading bruises. She was willing to bet there were more beneath the loose cloth.
“Do you go by Katia or Rina?” Natasha asked. It was a sad attempt at small talk, but she was never good at the art unless it was for a mission anyway. Besides, she figured it was probably better than calling her little thing for the rest of their hopefully brief acquaintance.
Ekaterina brushed her sopping wet hair out of her eyes and looked a bit unsure when she replied, “He called me Katia, but my brother always called me Rina.”
“I thought you said you had no family,” Natasha pointed out. She reassessed the situation, looked for the set up, looked for the hit that would take her down. Supposedly innocent little things could pack a deadly punch, this she knew for a fact.
Rina shook her head, eyes tearing up far too quickly for Natasha’s liking. “I don’t, not anymore. Iosif was... he died last year. Kazimir, the man from tonight, took me in. Said he was a friend of Iosif’s, but I had never met him or anyone like him before. He kept me safe, I guess, but...”
“But for a price,” she finished for her. She needed one of her computers. She was willing to bet Iosif got in over his head trying to protect his little sister, and Kazimir took advantage of her grief until it was too late for her to realize what had happened.
Rina looked exhausted, the events of the night – if not the past few months – catching up with her. A dosed glass of water later and she was snoring on the bed while Natasha debated just how involved she intended to get in this mess before it was over. She bathed in water gone long cold and plotted out her next move.
They hit the road the next day, and managed to make it to one of “Natalia’s” apartments within another three. Rina kept apologizing for having no way to pay her back, and insisted on at least handling the meals with the meager ingredients Natasha managed to grab from a market.
It turned out the girl could cook, and fairly well at that. She even made a respectable syrniki. She was also decently educated enough to understand some of the books that littered the apartment, and even managed to pick up on the basics of self-defense, which meant Natasha felt more comfortable leaving her alone long enough to hit up her supply caches for goods and her contacts for information.
She managed to flip the television off just as a news report about the body of a known drug runner being found in a southern suburb came on, but Rina had not looked up in time to see the familiar face of Kazimir as she was concentrating on not spilling the two mugs of tea she was attempting to carry.
Natasha took the opportunity to truly size her up beyond instinct and first impressions for the first time since this fiasco began. The shadows under her eyes had lessened, though not fully disappeared, and she was both clean and wearing clothing that actually fit her. She no longer looked like she was starving, but her belly looked like it was rounded with something more than just good food.
“Shit,” Natasha swore. Apparently life had decided the girl would fully embrace cliché: orphan, taken against her will, knocked up and all.
Hot tea sloshed against her hand as Rina jumped back. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked, the boldness that had finally began to emerge burying itself under timidity once more.
“No, not you,” Natasha growled more than soothed. She rather wished her fight against Kazimir had lasted a bit longer, that she had been able to cause more damage or at least give him a concoction more painful than allowing him to drift away in his sleep.
A trip to a clinic confirmed it and Natasha spent the next week trying to figure out how she could leave a pregnant woman to fend for herself so she could run away and find that solitude she was supposedly seeking.
She started with little things. The tiniest of strings pulled got Rina a job at café. A few more got her some decent prenatal care. An account was set up for her pay checks, augmented fifteen percent from Natasha’s own funds to ensure there would be enough for mother and child.
Satisfied that was taken care of, she started looking for an out. She had already stayed at this apartment for far too long. It was a wonder that SHIELD had not tracked her down yet, let alone some of her older and less than savory contacts.
She was returning from the market a few weeks later with a handful of possible jobs rolling through her head when she saw the arrow buried neatly amongst the dead and thawing ivy that lined the brick walls just outside her window. She only wished she was surprised it was there.
It was not a near miss, of that she was certain. Rina had not returned from her shift at the café yet, so she pried open the screen on the window and yanked the bolt free as soon as she got inside. Standard tip, thicker than normal shaft. Her fingers found the little latch easily enough and she pulled out the message to examine it warily.
Clean, crisp writing on non-descript paper told her that the Kazimir’s people were looking for Rina as she was known to be traveling with him and his last shipment. The micro SD card with the Stark logo on it told her just who these people were and where she could find them. The fact that the note was in perfect English told her who sent it.
It took nearly another month for her to build up both defenses and an excuse for a “business trip” that happened to be back to the wayside town where she had first happened across Rina, not that she actually told the girl the location. She called in a favor to have an old ally watch Rina at her job, even though she had a fair idea Luka would not be alone in his endeavors.
The truck was where they had left it, scrubbed clean with even the glock missing. The hotel had a string of visitors since, but none had seemed to know where to look. Twenty minutes and she had the case with the cash. Twenty-five and she had the one with the neat white powder as well.
She was tempted to just dump the one with the drugs, but it made for a better bargaining tool and, besides, it was easy enough to tamper with it and to add a tracker or three so she could determine the source should she ever need to take down the ruling family as well.
A few calls to a few forgotten contacts later, and she had a meeting. The supposed kingpin postured and preened and she took down his security forces easily but with enough show to make her point. Cases tossed at his stunned feet later, and she had a deal: Rina would be safe, as would her child, with any and all hits called off and possibly more than a slight side of protection in the offering.
Satisfied, Natasha returned to her erstwhile home and stayed there long enough to verify the man would keep his word.
Of course, long enough happened to coincide with the approaching date of Rina’s spawning. And, of course, nothing could ever go as planned.
One of her contacts warned of an attack at a research facility only about fifty miles out from her current location. A mad scientist, a megalomaniac, and several lackeys later, and a certain set of super heroes found themselves infiltrating a facility to find their quarry neatly gift wrapped with a bow and everything.
The process of getting to the gift wrapping portion of the proceedings had prompted both a handful of explosions and a blackout of the surrounding regions. The stress and panic of the occupants of said regions had apparently been enough to key off an even more cataclysmic reaction: Rina went into labor.
Natasha got there in time to witness the proud mother holding a tiny and shriveled thing with a decent set of lungs, and to nod her goodbye to Luka as he slunk away.
Apparently Rina had left such an impression on the big guy that the child had care set up for the next several years once Rina returned to work, and his own aunties and cousins were cooing over the shriveled mess from afar.
It seemed like a fine enough time to arrange her escape – everything was taken care of down to feedings and nappie changes – right up until Natasha heard dear sweet misguided Ekatarina name her newly born daughter “Natalia.” A few knocks of her head against the glass and metal wall later, and Natasha was arranging to have the title for her completely paid for apartment changed to a new name, satisfied she was at least giving the new mother something she could truly use, unlike the strange red, gold, and blue balloon arrangement someone else had dropped off during her absence.
She waited until mother and child were settled back in at the apartment to say her goodbyes, making up a story about work demanding she move but that she would visit as often as she could. The strange thing was, she was not even certain the last part was a lie.
Another week found her in a familiar posh apartment in New York, with a familiar brooding face reflected in the window against the night sky before her.
“You came back?” Clint asked, barely a hint of surprise coloring his tone.
“Told you I would,” she replied as she tossed her gear onto the nearest couch.
He nodded. “Thought you meant in a few days, maybe a month, not...”
“Something came up,” she shrugged with forced nonchalance. “There was something I needed to do.”
“And now?” he prompted, still not looking away from the window.
“Now there’s something else,” she replied. She tried to keep her accent crisp and clean and forced and calm, but knew more than a shade of her original Russian came through, wondered why now of all times her emotions wanted to actually fight to break free of her defenses.
Clint said nothing. He simply offered out an arm without even turning to gauge her reaction. She surprised herself by willingly walking over to him, letting that arm settle around her while she stood beside him and joined him in his surveillance of the bustling city below.
“Welcome home,” he whispered.
She allowed herself a small grin, just a quirk of her lips, not finding any other better word for it.
They stood there in silence for a while longer until the very edge of Clint’s lips twitched and he admitted, “Tony will want a party.”
“Tony always wants a party,” Natasha sighed, but found it was not exasperation but fondness that colored her tone.
“True,” Clint agreed with the slightest of shrugs. “But it’s either that, or Fury’s debriefing. Your choice.”
She snorted, light and indelicate. No matter what, she was getting both and they both knew it. The thing was, she was not sure she wanted it any other way.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Title: Unaccompanied
Fandom: Avengers, Black Widow
Genre: Gen, hint of Clint/Natasha friendship
Rating: PG
Length: ~3,400 words
Spoilers: Very general for movie
Warnings: Implications of off screen non-con and abuse for an OC
Synopsis: It was hard to be a loner when you were never alone.
Author’s Notes: I kinda sorta fell in love with the Black Widow character and have gobbled up as many comics and references as I can find since first being introduced to her. Hopefully I have done her a bit of justice.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also posted to Archive of Our Own.
Clint was standing at the window, gazing out at the city below when she shouldered her small pack. “Will you be coming back?” he asked. He did not bother to turn around, but tracked her reflection in the glass.
“Of course,” she lied easily enough.
He nodded as though he had expected that answer, probably knew it before it left her lips. She walked over to him and placed a gentle kiss on each cheek and, hesitantly, he did the same. It was a parting, a tradition, and they both knew it.
She headed for a safe house that she was fairly certain SHIELD already knew about. There she topped off her supplies and actually paused to think about what she was doing and where she was going. She could still turn back, take a breather for a week or two and return to the others with no hard feelings, but in her heart she knew she needed far more than a week to sort things out in her mind.
Natasha was a loner, always had been. Sure, she paired up with others as necessary, usually they used each other for mutual benefit and moved on. This team thing was new to her though, different. A constant inundation of people all checking up on her, all relying on her, all crowding her and infecting her space.
It was hard to be a loner when you were never alone.
They did good together, but it was always “they” and never “her” – always the group and never the individual. She was afraid she was losing herself to the team, not sure where she ended and they began.
Well, that was easy enough to find out.
She deactivated the tracker implanted by SHIELD, the pulse hopefully knocking out any others they had placed within her gear, as well as sending her unconscious for a good twenty minutes. She checked the feed to the safe house to verify no one had gotten through the defenses during that time and, satisfied, gathered what she needed to go to someplace a little more private and a little less SHIELD-approved.
She had enough fake passports and cash to travel first class, but knew that was just asking for trouble. It was easy enough to catch a ride on a skiff or a barge, sneak into the baggage area of plane headed her direction. Not that she had a direction per se, but she had a general idea.
Three weeks time found her on the edge of Moscow, and even she had to admit she had probably been headed there all along. She had two squirmishes, an aborted assassination attempt, and a chipped nail to show for her efforts. Now though, she blended in on the snowy streets, slipped in and out of shadows just as she slipped in and out of her mother tongue.
She was tucked away in yet another safe house, indulging with a fair size serving of syrniki, when she decided she was being rather pathetic. She finished up her dessert because, really, SHIELD had a lot of things but no one could make syrniki like this, and decided to check the messages of a handful of aliases that were known to work in the region.
Most were outdated or simply outrageous, even for her, but there were a few odd jobs that would keep her entertained and off the map for a while, so she responded to the ones that were low key and at least not an obvious set up.
She was four weeks and two missions in when she came across a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar in the middle of nowhere. She had wanted a drink, and maybe something to warm her stomach, and had just finished a job that granted her enough funding for a second retirement.
She had just ordered herself what she expected to be some truly awful pelmeny and a shot of something clear and cold when he caught her eye. Big, brutish, and with a death grip on the wrist of a tiny little thing with a forced smile.
It was an easy enough thing to flirt with the guy next to them and to get a hint of the circumstances that had brought the couple this way. Easy enough too to discover the tiny little thing was there against her will, but was too damned scared to do a thing about it, especially in a place like this and so far from home.
She let her would-be suitor down gently enough, rewarding him with another shot for his efforts, and followed the less than happy couple out into the brisk cold.
“What do you want?” the brute demanded when he saw her, several hundred yards away from the bar. His accent was heavy, even for this region, and she quickly reassessed both his origins and his tolerance.
“I just wanted to check on my little sister,” Natasha replied, choosing a dialect similar to what she heard the woman use the one time she dared to speak.
He still had a grip on the tiny thing, her fingers turning blue from both the cold and lack of circulation. “You are no sister of hers,” the man scoffed. He glanced at the prize he held in his grasp and then eyed his new quarry doubtingly.
“Let her go, she is needed at home,” she said quietly. It was a demand, and she knew he took it as such.
This time he laughed outright. “She has no home, I have made certain of that,” he said with the boldness brought of false confidence and drink. “I suggest, unless you wish her to pay for your interference, that you leave us be on this fine night. There is so much still to be done, after all.”
He leered suggestively and Natasha felt soiled just from the proximity.
The little thing whimpered and tugged slightly against the tightened grip on her wrist. Her blue eyes were wide behind the dirty strands of blonde that hung in her face, and her bottom lip bloomed red where she bit down upon it to prevent herself from making any further noise, teeth fit into grooves bruised from long repetition.
It was easy enough to kick the brute away, easier still to dodge his drunken volleys, and satisfyingly simple to smash his head against the brick wall of the alleyway barely lit amongst the gloom.
She offered her hand to the little thing, who did not seem to know what to do with it. When she tightened her gloved fingers around the shivering fragile things, she got the tiniest of squeezes in response.
“Is... is he dead?” the little thing asked.
The brute groaned, but did not open his eyes. “No, he’s still alive,” Natasha reassured her. He wouldn’t be in three days after consuming the cocktail of poisons she had slipped into his drink, but there was no need to share that tidbit now. Three days was a lifetime away, long enough for no one to suspect either one of them.
The little thing nodded and the barest hint of fire lit her eyes and she kicked a toeful of snow in his direction. She nodded again as though that was that, before she turned back to Natasha and said, “Thank you. He... just, thank you.”
Natasha wasn’t used to platitudes, so she shrugged it off and asked instead, “Do you know where you are? Or how to get home?”
The brief bit of fire left her as she shook her head. “He was right about that, actually. I don’t have a home, not anymore,” she admitted. She shivered against a gust of wind and Natasha fought the urge to roll her eyes at the ridiculousness of it all.
“You can stay with me for a day or two while we sort it all out,” she offered.
She found herself with an armful of matted faux fur and greasy hair and knew she was doomed.
Two hours later found them checked into a room for the night. The girl had stopped by a beat up truck and, with the help of Natasha’s lock picking skills, grabbed a suitcase that most definitely had seen better days. There did not seem to be anything else of worth in the truck itself save for a glock and an empty space where likely the only important items had been tucked away, so they locked it back up and headed as far as they could in the opposite direction before giving in and crashing for the remainder of the evening.
“I never asked your name,” the girl said, embarrassed, after steaming up the small bathroom for the better part of an hour. She wore an old t-shirt that was three sizes too big and torn along the seam of one arm, and a pair of sweatpants that did not quite brush her bony ankles.
“Natalia,” she lied, using the alias she had booked the room under to avoid any confusion.
“Ekaterina,” the blonde replied, offering out her hand. Natasha shook it, noticing it was several shades paler than she had originally thought, and that the wrist it was attached to was still ringed with fading bruises. She was willing to bet there were more beneath the loose cloth.
“Do you go by Katia or Rina?” Natasha asked. It was a sad attempt at small talk, but she was never good at the art unless it was for a mission anyway. Besides, she figured it was probably better than calling her little thing for the rest of their hopefully brief acquaintance.
Ekaterina brushed her sopping wet hair out of her eyes and looked a bit unsure when she replied, “He called me Katia, but my brother always called me Rina.”
“I thought you said you had no family,” Natasha pointed out. She reassessed the situation, looked for the set up, looked for the hit that would take her down. Supposedly innocent little things could pack a deadly punch, this she knew for a fact.
Rina shook her head, eyes tearing up far too quickly for Natasha’s liking. “I don’t, not anymore. Iosif was... he died last year. Kazimir, the man from tonight, took me in. Said he was a friend of Iosif’s, but I had never met him or anyone like him before. He kept me safe, I guess, but...”
“But for a price,” she finished for her. She needed one of her computers. She was willing to bet Iosif got in over his head trying to protect his little sister, and Kazimir took advantage of her grief until it was too late for her to realize what had happened.
Rina looked exhausted, the events of the night – if not the past few months – catching up with her. A dosed glass of water later and she was snoring on the bed while Natasha debated just how involved she intended to get in this mess before it was over. She bathed in water gone long cold and plotted out her next move.
They hit the road the next day, and managed to make it to one of “Natalia’s” apartments within another three. Rina kept apologizing for having no way to pay her back, and insisted on at least handling the meals with the meager ingredients Natasha managed to grab from a market.
It turned out the girl could cook, and fairly well at that. She even made a respectable syrniki. She was also decently educated enough to understand some of the books that littered the apartment, and even managed to pick up on the basics of self-defense, which meant Natasha felt more comfortable leaving her alone long enough to hit up her supply caches for goods and her contacts for information.
She managed to flip the television off just as a news report about the body of a known drug runner being found in a southern suburb came on, but Rina had not looked up in time to see the familiar face of Kazimir as she was concentrating on not spilling the two mugs of tea she was attempting to carry.
Natasha took the opportunity to truly size her up beyond instinct and first impressions for the first time since this fiasco began. The shadows under her eyes had lessened, though not fully disappeared, and she was both clean and wearing clothing that actually fit her. She no longer looked like she was starving, but her belly looked like it was rounded with something more than just good food.
“Shit,” Natasha swore. Apparently life had decided the girl would fully embrace cliché: orphan, taken against her will, knocked up and all.
Hot tea sloshed against her hand as Rina jumped back. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked, the boldness that had finally began to emerge burying itself under timidity once more.
“No, not you,” Natasha growled more than soothed. She rather wished her fight against Kazimir had lasted a bit longer, that she had been able to cause more damage or at least give him a concoction more painful than allowing him to drift away in his sleep.
A trip to a clinic confirmed it and Natasha spent the next week trying to figure out how she could leave a pregnant woman to fend for herself so she could run away and find that solitude she was supposedly seeking.
She started with little things. The tiniest of strings pulled got Rina a job at café. A few more got her some decent prenatal care. An account was set up for her pay checks, augmented fifteen percent from Natasha’s own funds to ensure there would be enough for mother and child.
Satisfied that was taken care of, she started looking for an out. She had already stayed at this apartment for far too long. It was a wonder that SHIELD had not tracked her down yet, let alone some of her older and less than savory contacts.
She was returning from the market a few weeks later with a handful of possible jobs rolling through her head when she saw the arrow buried neatly amongst the dead and thawing ivy that lined the brick walls just outside her window. She only wished she was surprised it was there.
It was not a near miss, of that she was certain. Rina had not returned from her shift at the café yet, so she pried open the screen on the window and yanked the bolt free as soon as she got inside. Standard tip, thicker than normal shaft. Her fingers found the little latch easily enough and she pulled out the message to examine it warily.
Clean, crisp writing on non-descript paper told her that the Kazimir’s people were looking for Rina as she was known to be traveling with him and his last shipment. The micro SD card with the Stark logo on it told her just who these people were and where she could find them. The fact that the note was in perfect English told her who sent it.
It took nearly another month for her to build up both defenses and an excuse for a “business trip” that happened to be back to the wayside town where she had first happened across Rina, not that she actually told the girl the location. She called in a favor to have an old ally watch Rina at her job, even though she had a fair idea Luka would not be alone in his endeavors.
The truck was where they had left it, scrubbed clean with even the glock missing. The hotel had a string of visitors since, but none had seemed to know where to look. Twenty minutes and she had the case with the cash. Twenty-five and she had the one with the neat white powder as well.
She was tempted to just dump the one with the drugs, but it made for a better bargaining tool and, besides, it was easy enough to tamper with it and to add a tracker or three so she could determine the source should she ever need to take down the ruling family as well.
A few calls to a few forgotten contacts later, and she had a meeting. The supposed kingpin postured and preened and she took down his security forces easily but with enough show to make her point. Cases tossed at his stunned feet later, and she had a deal: Rina would be safe, as would her child, with any and all hits called off and possibly more than a slight side of protection in the offering.
Satisfied, Natasha returned to her erstwhile home and stayed there long enough to verify the man would keep his word.
Of course, long enough happened to coincide with the approaching date of Rina’s spawning. And, of course, nothing could ever go as planned.
One of her contacts warned of an attack at a research facility only about fifty miles out from her current location. A mad scientist, a megalomaniac, and several lackeys later, and a certain set of super heroes found themselves infiltrating a facility to find their quarry neatly gift wrapped with a bow and everything.
The process of getting to the gift wrapping portion of the proceedings had prompted both a handful of explosions and a blackout of the surrounding regions. The stress and panic of the occupants of said regions had apparently been enough to key off an even more cataclysmic reaction: Rina went into labor.
Natasha got there in time to witness the proud mother holding a tiny and shriveled thing with a decent set of lungs, and to nod her goodbye to Luka as he slunk away.
Apparently Rina had left such an impression on the big guy that the child had care set up for the next several years once Rina returned to work, and his own aunties and cousins were cooing over the shriveled mess from afar.
It seemed like a fine enough time to arrange her escape – everything was taken care of down to feedings and nappie changes – right up until Natasha heard dear sweet misguided Ekatarina name her newly born daughter “Natalia.” A few knocks of her head against the glass and metal wall later, and Natasha was arranging to have the title for her completely paid for apartment changed to a new name, satisfied she was at least giving the new mother something she could truly use, unlike the strange red, gold, and blue balloon arrangement someone else had dropped off during her absence.
She waited until mother and child were settled back in at the apartment to say her goodbyes, making up a story about work demanding she move but that she would visit as often as she could. The strange thing was, she was not even certain the last part was a lie.
Another week found her in a familiar posh apartment in New York, with a familiar brooding face reflected in the window against the night sky before her.
“You came back?” Clint asked, barely a hint of surprise coloring his tone.
“Told you I would,” she replied as she tossed her gear onto the nearest couch.
He nodded. “Thought you meant in a few days, maybe a month, not...”
“Something came up,” she shrugged with forced nonchalance. “There was something I needed to do.”
“And now?” he prompted, still not looking away from the window.
“Now there’s something else,” she replied. She tried to keep her accent crisp and clean and forced and calm, but knew more than a shade of her original Russian came through, wondered why now of all times her emotions wanted to actually fight to break free of her defenses.
Clint said nothing. He simply offered out an arm without even turning to gauge her reaction. She surprised herself by willingly walking over to him, letting that arm settle around her while she stood beside him and joined him in his surveillance of the bustling city below.
“Welcome home,” he whispered.
She allowed herself a small grin, just a quirk of her lips, not finding any other better word for it.
They stood there in silence for a while longer until the very edge of Clint’s lips twitched and he admitted, “Tony will want a party.”
“Tony always wants a party,” Natasha sighed, but found it was not exasperation but fondness that colored her tone.
“True,” Clint agreed with the slightest of shrugs. “But it’s either that, or Fury’s debriefing. Your choice.”
She snorted, light and indelicate. No matter what, she was getting both and they both knew it. The thing was, she was not sure she wanted it any other way.
End.
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