Chapter 9 parts 1 & 2 of at least 4 i think yes I know this is out of order again it's okay (unedited)
chapter 8 part ? (tumblr)
chapter 7 part 2 (tumblr) (NEW)
chapter 7 part 1 (tumblr)
previous chapters (ao3)
As much fun as watching the dynamic between her old friend and Nightwing is, Natasha is stressed out enough without seeing the what-ifs front and center. She could have gone the rest of her long life without ever wanting to know that Clint came within inches of being another non-consensual super soldier. Again.
Comparatively, stalking a kingpin is downright relaxing.
She lounges on an old brickwork building probably older than she is. It's four stories and, for Crime Alley, in relatively good condition. She can see patchwork repairs on the decorative concrete pieces and new construction on the inside, indicating that it recently underwent repairs with funding from somewhere. Natasha has only one guess where that funding came from, and she's looking at him.
Armed with her Brownings and a parabolic, Natasha shamelessly eavesdrops on her will-be protege three stories above street level.
"—a robbery on second, the pawn shop that's paying for protection," a brisk female voice is saying.
"A pawn shop near Burnley is paying us protection?" Hood says, sounding bemused.
"Apparently, when they've had issues in the past, GCPD has functionally said, 'that's what you get for setting up shop in Crime Alley,'" she says.
"Fuckin' pigs," Hood says. Natasha would bet money that he's rolling his eyes. "Alright. Send someone to go get footage of the incident. Come back tomorrow with an update. Next?"
"Twenty-first, thirty-first, and thirty-eighth are all ordering trucks tomorrow. Forty-ninth got their truck today and are reporting they'll need another by Friday since it's exam season."
"Thirty-first and thirty-eighth are nearer to the school, why aren't they doing the same kind of business?" Hood asks.
A third voice cuts in. Dryly, they say, "Forty-ninth has caffeine readily available."
"Forty-ninth has the go-ahead for a second truck. Tell them to order a triple batch of Monsters and Redbull as well and I'll send someone over to run the excess over to thirty-first and thirty-eighth. Tell thirty-first and thirty-eighth that they're expected to post fliers by the school advertising the new stock."
"You want to put them in competition with each other?" the third voice asks.
"Forty-ninth is a small cafe. Thirty-first is a pizza parlor. Thirty-eighth is a diner. Thirty-first and thirty-eighth have sodas as their only option for caffeine, which evidently isn't enough for the teenagers walking an extra block and a half for the coffee and energy drinks that forty-ninth has." There's a sound of paper tearing along a perforation. "Any real objections?"
"Forty-ninth brings in more money, why are we diverting clientele?"
Hood huffs. "Forty-ninth brings in more money but is also more expensive to stock. Do you know how much a five pound bag of espresso beans are? It's eighty fuckin dollars. I've bought actual guns for less."
Someone whistles. A door slams.
"Hood," a fourth voice growls, a rumbly baritone.
There's static for a moment, and then the mic comes back. "-oh. She's fine. She could not rely on electronics and just come in and supervise if she wants."
Natasha thinks for a moment and then rolls over on the ledge and peers down. Hood is standing at the window with a wry look on his face, looking directly at her. She digs her phone out and calls him. His burner phone vibrates on his desk.
"Answer it," he instructs someone.
There's a shuffle on the mic, and then, in her ear: "Hood's office speaking."
"Put me on speaker, please," she says politely.
"You're on speaker," Hood says, doubled in the parabolic mic and her phone.
"I am not a part of your organization," Natasha says. "I am here to snoop since Hawkeye and Nightwing are giving me nightmares in my own apartment. Call me if you need a third party ruling or to scare the shit out of someone."
Someone snorts quietly on the mic.
"If you fall asleep to me catching up on paperwork, Hawkeye will never let you hear the end of it."
"Who do you think I am?" Natasha says wryly.
Hood's mouth twists a little. "Someone running on even less sleep than I am? And in a supine position?"
"I'll be okay, Hood," she says, amused, and hangs up the phone.
"Well alright then," he mutters over the mic. She grins to herself. "How is construction going on tenth? They're projected to be done in May last I checked."
Paper rustles. "They're surprisingly on target, even with the storms and attacks. I think the construction company pads out the time taken to not disappoint customers when they have setbacks like that."
"It's Gotham," the third voice says dryly. "Only the richie rich folk expect it done with a snap of their fingers and no setbacks or delays."
There's a hum of disagreement. "The Waynes are good about keeping it reasonable, mostly."
"The Waynes commission repairs after hurricanes and rogue attacks when the feds didn't want to cough up the money it takes to rebuild after major disasters," Hood says dryly. "They're too busy shaming the state and federal government for their inaction to breathe down the necks of construction workers."
"Fuck, man," the third voice says. "Better them than me. I'd just get myself arrested for treason."
"You mean you'd get yourself arrested for being a public nuisance," the first voice says.
"Same thing, innit?"
"No," Hood says, audibly rolling his eyes. Someone knocks on the door. "Come in."
"Delivery," someone wheezes.
"Well, fuck," the first voice says. "JJ, what the hell?"
Someone, probably JJ, inhales deeply and coughs. "Sorry boss, it's just a cold."
"Who the fuck do you think I am?" Hood says, audibly annoyed. "A legitimate small business owner? No, dipshit, you've got insurance, go to the fucking clinic on seventeenth."
Natasha chokes on a laugh.
"They're just gonna tell me to drink a fuckton of water and rest," JJ says irritably.
"And what are you doing?" Hood demands.
"I have Gatorade in the truck!"
"Oh for the love— Get out. Take this, remind me to kick your ass in a week and go to the fucking clinic because that's not a cold, that's fuckin walkin pneumonia."
"There's still—"
"Mikey."
"I'm going! I'm going! I-I'm going to the clinic and I'll get diagnosed with a cold and—"
"And I'll be so happy for you," the third voice says. "And in the meantime, Hood said to git."
Cloth rustles, and then there's a gentle thump, someone stumbles heavily. Natasha thinks someone bodily picked up JJ and set him firmly outside. Faintly, "it's not a big deal—"
"GIT!" Mikey thunders, and slams the door shut.
"Kids," the first voice says. Sighs, really.
"Don't," Hood says. "You're just as bad."
"You say that like you aren't," she says.
"Notice me not saying anything about the hypocrisy," Hood says dryly. Something shuffles almost inaudibly. "Yeah?"
"Boss I got bad news," a new voice says.
Something creaks. "Go on."
"I just spotted Calvin selling on thirty-second."
There's a beat of silence. "Please tell me he's not stupid enough to sell to the high schoolers."
Mikey growls, "He's stupid enough to sell to high schoolers."
The new voice is audibly cringing, "They're freshies at best."
"Fuck," Hood says. "Taneesha, get the businesses ironed out. JJ delivered the first batch of stock for the construction on tenth when they open next month, organize a new runner to set it in storage at the warehouse on seventeenth, that'll be close enough."
"On it," says the first voice.
"Mikey, Chuong, you're with me. Honey, go back to what you were doing but avoid thirty-second for a few hours."
"Alright, Hood," Honey says.
"You coming, Widow?" Hood says.
Natasha stands up. Hood is at the window, looking up at her. She packs away the parabolic and bounces across the alleyway to the fire escape on Hood's building, clambering down the stairs quietly.
Hood nods at her and opens the window to let her in. "Widow, this is Mikey," he says, pointing to a middle aged man with tanned, wrinkled skin and almost entirely gray hair. He's wearing a dirty black tank top and black cargo pants tucked into army issued combat boots at least twenty years old. Brown eyes squint at her suspiciously. Natasha inclines her head at him.
Hood points at the other man in the room, saying, "That's Chuong." He's tall and skinny, with cropped short black hair and tan skin that was probably more genetics than sun exposure. Dark eyes with an almond shape to them watch her. He was young, probably younger than Hood, wearing a hoodie and jeans with bright red Converse that were, somehow, minimally dirty.
"Hi," he says.
Hood points to the last occupant of the room. "That's Taneesha." A short, pale woman with dark curly hair nods at her. She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but they were clean. Sensible non-slip shoes disguised any dirt or grime.
"Hood, what the fuck have you been doing to get on the Avengers' radar?" she asks, exasperated.
Hood shrugs.
"I came here for vacation and I almost tripped over him," Natasha says. "And I don't like organizations who make child assassins."
Chuong inhales and chokes on nothing.
"They didn't know about that part," Hood says unnecessarily, pounding Chuong on the back.
Natasha smirks. "They do now."
Taneesha eyes her. "I almost want to know your opinion on Robin now."
"Batman's on thin ice," Natasha says promptly. "Which is why I vacation here specifically to annoy him."
Hood barks a laugh. "That's why you were here in the first place?"
"I was bored," Natasha says, smiling a little.
Mikey snorts. "Well, Gotham's for sure not boring."
"Speaking of," Natasha says. "Calvin."
Hood gestures to the door, following her, Mikey, and Chuong out.
~
The Bats tend to only operate at night, barring rogue breakouts that extend past sunrise. Hood does not seem to hold to that. It's long past sunrise, at half past seven. Hood's bike—with both Hood and herself on it—sidles quietly up an alleyway while the main streets are packed with people dropping their kids off.
At the end of the alleyway, a black van slows to a stop. Mikey jumps out the side and starts walking up the alleyway from the opposite end. Hood kicks down the stand to the bike and gets off, also starting to walk. Natasha sits on the bike, more than willing to just watch from a distance.
The kids in the alleyway look up when the already scant light in the alleyway darkens even further and immediately flee the opposite direction—directly into Hood. One girl bumps directly into him and bounces off. Her friends get clotheslined by his arm.
He holds out his hand. "Give," he bites out, like they're so much as dogs with something they shouldn't have.
One of them tries to book it past him and comes across the bike. The bike with Natasha sitting on it. He stutters to a stop. She gives him a cheeky wave from atop the bike.
He does a textbook perfect aboutface and sprints back to Hood. "WHAT THE FUCK IS A FUCKING AVENGER DOING HERE?" he shrieks and all but hides behind Hood.
"Preventing you from buying from fucking idiots," Hood says snippily. "Now give me the fuckin coke and if you have any balls and can ask nicely, she might give you an autograph."
Natasha blinks.
"From the fuckin Avenger?" another kid hisses, eyeing Natasha as one might a snake.
"Fuckit, I'm okay with being murdered by a badass who takes on aliens with a damn taser," the girl who ran into Hood says. She shoves the little baggie into his hands and fumbles for her backpack.
Natasha suddenly has a lot of sympathy for Clint. But I’m being called stupid and badass in the same breath and then there’s the word ‘hero’ and I’m busy looking around for Captain America.
"Could ya sign my notebook?" she asks, as bold as you please.
Natasha looks at Hood. Hood is busy dealing with the other kids and is no help. Mikey is smoking a cig while fisting some young white guy's collar—probably Calvin. "That was all the coke?"
"Yes ma'am," she says.
"You know Hood'll come down like a ton of bricks on you if he finds out otherwise," she says casually.
"Yes ma'am," she says ruefully.
"Alright then," Natasha says, reaching for the pen. It's a red pen, she notices. "Just a signature, or to someone specific?"
She stammers for a moment. "T-to, uhm, no, ah, nobody, just."
"Just a signature," Natasha confirms, very determinedly not laughing. Girl had two lines rehearsed and anything else failed miserably.
"Yeah," she says helplessly.
Oh dear.
She signs a spiky Black Widow with a little hourglass symbol and hands it back to the girl, who grabs it with both hands and sprints away. She stops about forty paces away and shouts back, "Thank you Mz. Widow!"
She gives a wave and turns back to see Hood dragging the two boys over by their backpacks.
"Tell these two idiots you won't eat them alive," Hood growls at her.
"They're too young for me, thanks," Natasha says snippily.
The helmet makes a staticky noise that she thinks is a long suffering sigh. Oh well.
They gibber for a moment.
"D'ya want the autograph or not?" Hood growls at them.
One nods.
"I haven't bitten anyone in weeks," she says, not at all reassuringly.
The helmet slowly turns to look at her. Somehow the emotionless helmet communicates a deadpan look without anything moving at all.
"You're screwing with him," the one who didn't nod says suddenly.
Natasha smirks. "Screwing with people is one of my favorite hobbies."
Natasha awakens on the couch to the sound of something shattering and Clint saying, “aw, coffee, no.”
"Clint," she groans.
She rises from the couch like the dead, fumbling a hand rest and brushing her hair out of her eyes. Drakov has bolted into a standing position from where he was sleeping in the armchair. Clint stands in the kitchen like a dejected rock, staring down at the puddle of scorching hot coffee and glass.
Jason comes charging out of the bedroom at the sound of shattering glass and comes to a stop when he sees the casualty: a coffeepot.
"We're not under attack," Natasha assures him, scrubbing at her face to wake up a bit faster. "Clint's just a klutz."
Drakov just stares silently, looking like so much the Winter Soldier on a bad day that her hackles can't help but rise. Then he turns and flops back down into the armchair and, by all appearances, seems to go back to sleep.
"Nat, my feet hurt," Clint says.
"I can't imagine why," she says dryly, grabbing shoes.
Hood makes an aborted lunge for her as she crunches through glass and plastic. What he thought he was doing, Natasha doesn't know, but she picks Clint up from the middle of the mess and brings him over to where she'd just been sleeping, bodily tossing him none-too-gently onto the couch.
"Go get the first aid kit," she tells Hood. "Treat the moron, I'll clean up the mess and go get coffee not encased in glass."
Damian comes out of the room next, sees the general chaos, and goes back to the room. She wishes that was her. Instead she grabs the broom and dustpan and starts sweeping up the coffeepot pieces and then goes to hunt down a mop.
Kitchen cleaned, she ducks into the room to grab clothes. A change and a quick scrub of her face to get the last of the sleep out of her system, she grabs her wallet and keys to run down to the nearest coffee shop.
"Drakov," she says quietly. One eye opens. "I'm running down to get coffee, I'll be gone for like fifteen minutes."
She glances at Hood, who seems to be much more awake than she expected for a largely nocturnal vigilante-kingpin. "Sit on Clint if necessary."
The eye closes. She assumes that's that, and goes to grab coffee before something else dire happens.
~
Later, after both coffee and a new pot have been acquired, Natasha stands with Drakov and Damian in the living room with a tablet running through some of the moves Damian might have seen while she laid a one woman siege against the League of Shadows. She starts with her most famous one, since Damian already attempted it once and nearly got it.
She sits with him with a video of a similar move first. "This is a marriage between acrobatics and traditional martial arts, which requires you to walk a figurative tightrope. You are applying so much force to a person, but you sacrifice your adaptability with this. A lot of grappling allows you to change your mind as the fight progresses—because this happens in the air, there cannot be any hesitation whatsoever, and you have to be quick about it, and attempting to back out midway will probably result in major bruising at best.
"There are a few schools of martial arts that teach this, like Taekwondo and Vovinam. I was taught this in the Red Room—we were composed of women, and we started when we were younger than you are now. Attempting a traditional scissor kick to our targets would not have ended well for us, so we were taught to use our bodyweight."
Damian nods. "This is something to use specifically as a smaller person against a larger enemy?"
"No," she says honestly. "I use it on people my size now as well. It's just a move that will work regardless of how big you are, if you're trained enough to execute it properly."
"Most things don't like it when you try to break their necks," Drakov says dryly.
"No," Damian agrees.
Natasha hums. "There are variations that I do. Some I just do the scissor kick to the neck. Grappling someone around the neck doesn't necessarily come with their neck breaking, but if you grip their jaw and then force them down with your bodyweight—if you're not landing on your back, you've probably killed them, or you disengaged with your target halfway down. If you've done the latter, most untrained people will have their breath knocked out of them, but trained people can recover within a second or two. Depending on your opponent and your goals, that could be a very bad thing."
"It doesn't work as intended on me," Drakov says. "I'm both trained and also serumed."
Flipping Legacies, middle/end part of Chapter 8, yes this is out of order shush
Snacks are churros grabbed from a street vendor, mostly because they smelled divine while passing by. Natasha grabs enough for six, plus a few extra. Between the super soldiers, the immortals, and the growing children, someone will eat them, she’s sure.
Arms full of churros, she lets herself into the apartment and holds the door open for Nightwing. Drakov’s head pops up from the breakfast nook at the second set of footsteps.
“Drakov, Nightwing,” Natasha introduces shortly. “Nightwing, one of my first trainers and the only one left alive, Drakov, also known as the Winter Soldier or Bucky Barnes.”
Nightwing slows for a second and visibly winces. “...how is Captain America taking that?”
“Mm,” Natasha hums with a mouthful of churro, passing a bag to Drakov.
“Badly,” Drakov says dryly.
“He doesn’t know Drakov is here right now,” Natasha says.
Clint exits the bathroom and works his way down the hall. About halfway down the hall, he registers the vigilante that doesn’t live there and starts grinning.
Natasha raises an eyebrow.
Nightwing catches the look and turns around. Natasha edges her way around because she desperately wants to catch this entire interaction.
Sue her. She’s a spy. Nosy is literally her job description.
Nightwing beams. It’s the only proper word for it.
Clint launches himself at the vigilante, and what follows can only be described as a casual roughhouse. It’d be deadly for most anyone else facing either of them. It’s fast, full strength, and utterly silent.
They break apart as fast as they started, grinning, neither out of breath. They’re both grinning like loons.
“Churro?” Nightwing offers.
“Fuck yes,” Clint says.
This is a normal interaction. Alright. Natasha is not asking.
“I gotta know,” Drakov says, amused. “How long have you two known each other?”
Clint smirks, a bit. Oh. Oh no. Bozhe moy.
“Your call, my dude,” Clint says. “I’m not the one with a secret identity.”
Natasha honestly forgot that no one but her and JARVIS had put everything together to then threaten Batman in the daytime.
“I’ve known him,” Nightwing says, with a deliberateness that speaks volumes, “for longer than Batman’s had Robin.”
Natasha very carefully does not choke. Clint does.
She pounds him on the back while watching Drakov, whose eyebrows have nearly hit his hairline.
“You do realize that you can’t be saying that to just anyone, right?” Drakov says.
“He was trained by Batman,” Natasha says dryly. “I’m pretty sure that’s a challenge to say, come discover my secret identity, I dare you.”
Nightwing laughs. “If Clint reported my involvement with his mission, I’ll eat Batman’s cowl after a bad night.”
“Of course I fucking didn’t,” Clint coughed out. “I would have been laughed right back into jail if I reported a fucking nine year old doing anything but flips on a trampoline.”
Natasha exchanges a look of resigned horror with Drakov. Her own words from the previous morning haunt her: Imagine if Clint couldn’t turn off the assassin like us. So lethal, so graceful, so talented, so obvious. So ripe for HYDRA’s picking, way back in 1996. Imagine if Clint didn’t have Coulson as a handler, who was notorious for going back for his agents no matter what and had the Director of SHIELD’s ear.
Coulson would have believed Clint. Which meant Coulson was not his handler.
Oops. Agent Barton had a tragic accident on a mission. We have to bury an empty casket, her own words echo back at her again.
“Where was your handler.” The words basically fall out of her mouth without permission.
Clint does a double take at her. She doesn’t know what she looks like, but based on the fact that she’s swiftly relieved of everything she might drop, she must look like she’s about to pass out.
“I ditched him,” Clint admits, grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her into a chair. “Considering I later wound up killing the guy they sent me to protect, I’m okay with that mark on my record. Unfortunate failure is better than intentional sabotage.”
That old Winter Soldier has had his fun, but he’s a little too feisty.
Nightwing quirks a smile at her. It looks rueful. “However bad you think it is, I can guarantee it was worse.”
“Dick,” Clint hisses. Natasha knows it’s his name. It’s said as an insult.
Natasha buries her head in her arms. “How close did you come to being serumed up and brainwashed into doing some shadowy underground totalitarian government’s bidding?”
Nightwing rocks back on his heels. “Actually, you’re right on the money. How did you do that?”
Natasha pops her head up so fast her eyesight can’t compensate. “You. Don’t talk.”
She grabs Clint. “Where the fuck was Coulson, and why didn’t you refuse a handler that would deliberately fail to catch you?”
Clint looks like he’s doing complicated math in his head and he’s losing track of the numbers. “I’m definitely missing something,” he finally says.
“She’s talking about the fact that if the Black Widow was willing to run with a normal human, and have the normal human not be dead weight, then the normal human would be utterly spectacular as a super soldier,” Drakov says levelly.
He’s just. Like. Us. But he’d be better if he was serumed up and had all five senses fully working.
Clint and Nightwing exchange a glance. She knows that glance. That’s a, wow, shit was even more fucked than I originally thought it was glance.
“Oh my god,” she says faintly.
“It’s a long story,” Clint admits. “And not one we really have time for, or, uh. Patience. On the plus side, we killed them, their undead serumed monsters, their bosses, and like ninety-five percent of the underlings, too, so unless they reinvent the wheel--”
“They did,” Nightwing says.
“—we’ll be—I’m sorry, what was that?”
“They did.”
“What?”
“They revived the Court of Owls,” Nightwing says patiently. “And Batman and I took care of them. Again.”
“Oh, well--”
“And so did Robin, again.”
Natasha looks at Drakov despairingly.
Clint opens his mouth and shuts it. He looks at the ceiling and mutters something Natasha doesn’t quite catch, but makes Drakov snort.
Nightwing has a smile on his face that’s a threat. It lingers in the corners of his mouth, around the edges of his domino. It’s a smile that Coulson would be envious of. “Gotham’s a little...much for the Mainlanders. But Clint’s welcome to run with the Bats anytime. Birds of a feather flock together, right? Especially the ones that get stalked to be brainwashed assassins.”
Natasha puts her head back onto the table and gives quiet thanks that even Hydra wasn’t willing to fuck around with Gotham’s brand of crazy.
She pushes back from the table and stands up. “You crazy kids have fun. Drakov, don’t enable them. I’m going for a run.”
“Bye!” Nightwing calls after her. “Don’t forget a rebreather!”
She shakes one as she escapes out the door in response. Get her out of here. Now.
Natasha arrives back at the safehouse with Jason and fast food in hand. She hands out the variety pack of burgers and fries, plows through two burgers in under ten minutes, and makes her escape to change.
It has been a long day.
She changes back into the sweats, tank top, and silk robe that she’d been in last night and takes a moment to just breathe. Confronting Batman and Agent A, corralling the kid, running after Jason—it’s been a long day.
She stands in her doorway and listens to Drakov extolling the virtues of one of his knives to Damian, who she can’t see, but the fact that he’s being quiet means that he’s probably engaged. And Clint, very quietly: “I was never supposed to be a hero.”
Jason says nothing, but the air is charged.
“I’m a carnie, or an assassin, or a mercenary, or a government drone—not a hero. Was never supposed to be a hero. And then a portal opened up and Loki turned my heart to ice and my will to his, and Nat had to break me out again. And then another portal opened up over Manhattan and I said I could fly a plane, for some fucking reason, when Captain America shows up and says we need to go. And he just looked at Nat and she did her little chin lift that means so much and yet so little, you know the one?”
Jason croaks a laugh. Natasha smiles to herself a little. Nice to know she can still befuddle Clint sometimes.
“Yeah, and then Captain Fucking America nods and says let’s go. Like he just needs the word of a former KGB assassin to trust the word of the freshly un-brainwashed assassin. Like, what the fuck?”
“What the fuck,” Jason agrees, sounding like he’s sitting on a laugh.
“And then there was an alien invasion,” Clint says. “And I thought, ‘you know, I don’t think this week could get any weirder,’ and then I’m being called everything from stupid for being the only baseline human on a team of enhanced people—from technologically enhanced, to genetically enhanced, to being a fucking alien—thanks, Thor—and like. Fair. I also think I’m stupid for, uh, accidentally signing onto this circus—shut it—“
Jason’s laughing.
“I’m a carnie, I know exactly what a circus is like, and the Avengers have it all!” Clint sounds indignant. “But I’m being called stupid and badass in the same breath and then there’s the word ‘hero’ and I’m busy looking around for Captain America. I can’t say a damn thing, because it’s ‘bad for image’ and ‘we have enough issues, Hawkass, stop making my job harder’ and—well, you get the picture. So I kept my opinions to myself and thought that those people calling me a hero were stupid. And then I met Kate.”
Kate, Natasha knows, is a damn good hero. If a little rough around the edges. Which is why the callsign Hawkeye suits her down to the ground. She also takes great glee in yanking on Clint’s worldview, which is always hilarious to watch.
“And I realized that you can’t call yourself a hero. Maybe you can’t see it. Apparently I saved someone and did something badass during the Battle of Manhattan and Kate idolized me. She’d already been in archery and martial arts and after the Battle, she took it up to ten, and then I found this idiot teenage girl with a bow and arrow and a thousand dollar jacket wandering around Bronx and doing a good job almost getting herself killed. And of course I pulled her ass out of the fire, and told her to stop being stupid, and this girl had so many stars in her eyes she might as well have had a couple of galaxies hanging out in there, but she tried so hard to play it cool.”
Kate did not play it cool. Natasha remembers meeting Kate the day after. Kate was cool like a raging bonfire. Kate was not cool. Funny as hell, but not cool.
“And she followed me home and showed up on my doorstep and demanded training because she was going right back out there whether I trained her or not,” Clint says.
And now she’s the most dangerous seventeen year old girl on the eastern seaboard, Natasha thinks, grinning.
“And she knows me now. She knows that I’m not a hero, I’m just a guy that’s going to sit there and say, ‘I have this skillset. This is what needs to be done. I’m the guy that can do it. No one else around can, so let’s do it.’ And apparently that’s how that works.”
There’s a long silence, and Jason finally asks, “Was there a point to this, or is today Therapy Day and I’m the mannequin everyone’s talking to?”
“I knew I was forgetting something,” Clint says to himself, and Natasha giggles quietly. Jason snorts. “The point is that there’s a shitton of fuckups like me that get seen as heroes for some fucking reason. You have a special skillset, you see a need, you’re going to do it, damn the consequences. That’s why heroes are so controversial, because we’re needed, but we don’t work within limits as defined by laws or morals or whatever. I work with the Hulk, I’ve been brainwashed, I’ve been every bad guy in the books. Natasha’s KGB, her job was seduction and assassination and gathering information and toppling regimes, and she’s damn good at that. Tony was called the Merchant of Death. He’s a damn good weapons inventor. Batman might not call you a hero, but Crime Alley does. Natasha sees an Avenger in you. We all did, frankly, when she showed us the baby she tripped over.”
“Hey,” Jason says mildly.
“Nat’s a hundred and three, you’re a baby,” Clint says blithely.
Jason chokes. “A hundred—“
“And three,” she agrees, stepping back into the dining nook. “Can’t wait to be a hundred and thirteen, I’m going to start claiming I’m a teenager and watch all the double takes go in the opposite direction.”
Clint guffaws.
“Did you think I was joking about immortal assassins?” Natasha asks, curious.
Jason shakes his head. “I mean—Bucky Barnes. That was proof enough. I thought, maybe you were in your fifties and got recruited in the 70s. Twenty years is plenty for needing the kind of bloody revenge you talked about, not—“
“Almost eighty,” Natasha says, not unkindly. She grabs her tea and some blackberry jam and starts preparing it. “Did you want some?”
“I—yes, please.”
Drakov, in the living room, also requests tea. Natasha goes through the motions of making tea for three fairly quickly, snagging a jar of honey and some milk and bringing it all back to the table. “In the nook, Drakov,” she says. Clint gives her a puzzled look, and then realizes as Drakov comes back into the nook, Damian in tow.
“Your sneaky Russian brainwaves,” he accuses cheerfully, passing the honey.
“Clint,” Natasha says, very fondly, “you’re deaf.”
Alrighty. I have a little over a thousand words of chapter 7 i forgot i wrote, and a little over a thousand words i got slammed with a brick of inspiration for for chapter 8. My internet is hot garbage but Ill post them when I can convince my internet to load tumblr
