Chapter 3
“She never did say if she was a Widow.” Rogers, awkwardly. Natasha rubs her knuckles over her temples.
“Not how I wanted that one to go.”
“No thanks to me. I’m sorry, Nat.”
Romanoff sounds distant.
“Shes telling the truth. Shes harmless. Shes probably mad at me for not making that clear to you.”
“Harmless? Really?”
“Did she look dangerous to you?”
Theres a noise at the door; Barton and Barnes are back from something. Mission, probably, since their appearance goes beyond a rough night of sleep.
Yeah, mission, Natasha thinks. Its in her mind somewhere, the details aren’t important. She feels like shes aged a decade.
“Boys.”
Barton, very hesitantly:
“Is…Rogers in trouble?”
“Big trouble.”
Rogers sighs. Romanoff moves on.
“Shes not – she wasn’t a Widow.”
The newcomers settle into the back to spectate.
“There were other programs. Similar idea. Human asset production facility.”
“So shes a Widow, just not a Widow.”
“Let me finish. Around my time, there was a program calling their graduates the Sparrows. Didn’t last very long. The Sparrows were for espionage, social engineering, sexual manipulation. Classic honey trap kind of thing.”
Barton: “The Widows were famous for that, no? Why two sets to do the same thing?”
“Widows are…were, a very long term investment. Significant efforts and resources to train. So you want them to have a long service life… long career, if you will.
The Sparrows were trained for obedience, loyalty, pain tolerance…to be sexually talented and manipulative. But also very, very emotionally adaptable. The last one is something the Widows lack.”
“Still good enough for a spy, though.”
Romanoff looks thoughtful.
“Good enough for a spy is very good, but its all mechanical. We can play the game, but it’s just a game to us. I’m very very good at it, sure, but its like chess. You can easily fool the average joe, but someone who knows what they’re doing can sense that a Widow in the bedroom is…what do the Americans say? A wolf in sheeps clothing. They wanted the Sparrows to be the real thing. Its harder than you think when you have your clothes off.
That’s why Sparrows never had combat training. They wanted them perfectly, actually harmless. Also, expendable. Once they’d outlived their usefulness…”
The mood in the room shifts.
Sam:
“That’s messed up.”
Natasha’s posture changes subtly, a certain coldness in her voice –
“– Widows were taught not to see them as equals. In our training, we learned to be merciless. One of our tasks…to put them down the Sparrows that outlived their usefulness. They were defenseless, begged for their lives. They always made us listen to them beg first.”
The flip switches, and its gone.
“The Sparrows are extinct now, anyway. Maybe obsolete. In the age of…supersoldiers, supercomputers… they aren’t needed anymore.”
She glances meaningfully at Rogers and Barnes, basking in their discomfort.
Rogers:
“So…your friend though, hows she still alive?”
Romanoff groans.
“Oh, her. What can I say.
She was good. Cheated the odds. Everyones got an expiry date, not just the sparrows. She outlived hers for a long time because she was just that useful. Higher ups didn’t even like that fact, but it was tactical sense. She knew her time was coming, so she disappeared. It happened a long time before I even met Barton.”
“Why isn’t she Russian?”
Stark interjects:
“Thank you, Captain Obvious. Depending on how you dress her up, she’d probably pass for a local in at least four East-Asian countries. Something Miss
Romanoff here can’t do, with her surname and all.”
Rogers flushes.
“Why didn’t more of them leave?”
“Its not so simple. The girls grow up in the system. We all grow up in the system. What else do you know?”
“So…brainwashing?”
“Something like that. A long time ago, I considered her a friend.”
She sighs again.
“You can’t talk to her like you talk to me, Rogers. Shes not like that. Shes…”
Romanoff gestures helplessly.
“Shes not a supersoldier or a machine.”
Rogers mutters:
“Its like you’re implying we don’t have feelings.”