Authors note/summary: I have not been on this account for several years, but I've recently been finally getting back into writing and wanted to get back on the site! I hope the Marvel fandom is still out there, feel free to send prompts or requests :)
No Such Thing as Easy Missions
1433 Words
...
Steve should know by now that there’s no such thing as an easy mission. Even though Fury swears this one should be simple, just an in-and-out hostage rescue situation, he should have known that there was a catch. There always seems to be. And right now, the catch is a room full of young girls handcuffed to their bedframes, and the stone-faced, silent redhead assassin to his right.
“Are these the hostages?” Tony asks, rather unhelpfully. The girls are silent, watching, waiting. They don’t seem to be able to understand them, but they don’t look afraid, even though four of the six avengers just burst through the locked door to their – what is this, a bedroom? There are probably thirty girls, the oldest no older than twelve or thirteen, each sitting up in their beds and watching the group attentively.
“теперь ты в безопасности.” You’re safe now. The girls all snap to attention at Natasha’s words, who has snapped out of barely hidden shock and starts to unhook the chains of the girl nearest her.
“Right, Russian. That makes sense.” Tony goes for the next row of beds, and Clint and Steve quickly follow suit.
Steve kneels next to the bed, where a little girl in ragged clothes watches him with eyes that seem much too old for her face. When he glances over his shoulder, Natasha is still working on the chains of the girls in the first row of beds. She’s always been hard to read, but Steve has tried his best over the years to learn her tells as well as her triggers, and right now they’re in a remote Red Room facility with no warning. She doesn’t look shaken, but he knows she must be, and as the group continues to release the girls from their beds, he keeps an eye on her. Clint follows her closely, putting a hand on her shoulder that she shrugs off, eyes dark and dull. They exchange a few words in low voices that Steve can’t make out, but he doesn’t try to eaves drop. Tony is also uncharacteristically quiet – something about the gravity of the situation seems to register with him, and Steve is grateful that Tony was able to pull himself together and stay on track.
After Natasha’s words in Russian, the girls all seem to flock to her with much more comfort than with her teammates – though Steve can’t say he’s surprised about it, seeing as Natasha is also the only woman in a room full of tall, foreign men. Natasha keeps reassuring the girls in soft Russian as they walk through the maze of hallways, destroyed by hammer blows and the footprints of a monster much bigger than a man (the wielders of both weapons who currently wait in the jet half a mile away).
“I called extraction, Hill’s got a jet for the hostages out front,” Tony supplies helpfully, and all Natasha does is give him a nod, her eyes not leaving the faces of the girls. She’s pale, and Steve notices her tighten her hands into fists to hide her shaking. Clint walks alongside her, keeping a subtle eye on her that doesn’t go unnoticed by Steve and Tony, who exchange a cautious glance.
The hostages load into the sleek black jet Hill has parked outside of the facility, marching diligently into the hanger. As Natasha turns away with the rest of the group, one of the girls tugs on her hand gently, and Natasha whirls around, kneeling to reach the girl’s level. She can’t be more than eight years old, and her hair is in dark knotted braids, her lips chapped. Steve watches Natasha whisper quietly to the girl, who gives Natasha a shy hug before following the rest of the group to the jet. Natasha stands there for a moment, watching the girl go, and the group stops with her, waiting.
“We good to go?” Tony asks carefully.
“Yep.” Natasha turns suddenly and brushes past them, heading for their jet. She’s walking so fast they can barely keep up with her.
“Clint --” Steve starts, but the archer cuts him off.
“I know. She’s…I know.”
When they reach the jet, Natasha’s already gone into the back compartment to change. Banner and Thor sit in the main bay, looking confused as the rest walk in.
“What happened?” Banner asks quietly, glancing behind him where Natasha disappeared to.
“Red Room,” Steve doesn’t need to elaborate. Banner winces.
“Ah. Fuck.”
“What do we do?” Tony, surprisingly thoughtful, turns to Clint for help.
“I’ll handle it. I’ll – she’ll be fine. Let’s fly.”
“Roger that,” Tony shrugs, offering a half-assed salute.
The jet takes off smoothly, the team waiting apprehensively for Natasha. She comes out a good ten minutes after takeoff, having changed into more comfortable clothes. She doesn’t look at the group, instead opting to pull a book out of her mission duffle and curl up in the corner away from them. There’s a heavy silence in the room, broken only by the crisp turning of pages as Natasha pointedly ignores the group. Her hands are shaking.
“Nat?” Tony asks, softly, tentatively. She doesn’t look up.
“What?”
“That was…was that the Red Room?” he tries. Her shoulders tense, the only sign that she’s even listening.
“Part of it,” is the only response she gives.
“Do you want –”
“This isn’t a press conference, Stark,” she snaps sharply, finally looking up and closing her book swiftly. “Yes, that’s how I was raised. Is that what you want to know?”
“No, I—”
“It’s no one’s business what my childhood was like. I’ve done my best to keep it under wraps, so of fucking course that’s where we get sent for extraction,” she swears, and alarmingly to both her and the team, her eyes burn with unshed tears. She stands on shaking legs, and Steve reaches out a hand and grabs her elbow to steady her. She wrenches out of his grasp, taking a few steps back.
“No one’s judging you,” Steve offers quietly, and she scoffs, but it’s much less controlled than her demeanor a few moments ago.
“Of course not, Super Soldier,” she laughs. It’s a barked, panicked sort of sound, and Clint turns around from the controls to see what’s happening. Thor’s on his feet now, looking uneasy, and Bruce has shrunk into a corner, trying to remain as out of the line of verbal fire as possible.
“Natasha, we –”
“Save it, Stark,” she barks. “You and your fancy supercomputer already know everything, or close enough.” Her voice is higher, and it cracks at the top, and Clint quickly flips the jet to autopilot to join them all in the back.
“Nat.” He’s firm, and she turns to face him. It’s then that he sees how truly rattled she was by the sight of all those little girls chained to their beds.
He knew, of course he knew – the nights that he caught her chaining herself to the bedframe so she could sleep, the times he held her as she screamed and writhed from nightmares, the tears he wiped off her face in the rarest moments of vulnerability. She’s panicking now, her pupils are pinpricks, her hands trembling, her face pale. She’s staring into his eyes and even though her demeanor is threatening rather than threatened, he knows how to read her better than anyone.
“Copilot with me,” he offers. She holds his gaze for a moment. Tony and Steve exchange a look, Thor shifting uneasily on his feet. There’s a moment where Clint thinks she might refuse him, throw her book at his head and run to the back of the jet, or pull one of her many knives out of the hidden pockets in her clothes, but she doesn’t. She just nods, once, and follows him up to the front of the plane. She could sit in the copilot’s chair, but of course she doesn’t. She squeezes in with him into the main chair, sitting half on the chair, half on his lap, leaning subtly against his chest. He puts a hand on the back of her neck gently, offering a small squeeze of reassurance. He doesn’t say anything – he doesn’t have to. They listen to the sounds of Steve, Tony, and Thor settling into their seats again, and Clint ventures a careful look at the spy once more. Her eyes look straight ahead, blank and tired. She’ll be sleeping with the handcuffs again tonight, he knows it already, but they’ll work it out. They’ve figured it out before, they can do it again.