Arrows and Vodka
Afterwards I go and find Clint. I don’t know why I do; I just feel it is necessary for some reason. He is staring out at the skyline on the landing a bottle of vodka in one hand and is fiddling with half of an arrow in the other.
‘hey’ I all I say as I sit down gently next to him
‘hey’ he repeats, still staring out into the distance, eyes clouded with something-regret, jealousy, dreams, happiness?
‘you okay’ I ask gently, tilting my head slightly at the archer, he sighs before replying slowly.
‘Nat could always drink us under the table’ I’m confused why I need to know this, but he carries on, still clutching the bottle and arrow, staring at the point where the building hit the sky
‘She always used to tell us it was because she was Russian, but I knew it was something else, she would have to drink 4 entire bottles to get tipsy. It was a running joke with the HIT team. One day I asked her about it. She just stayed silent for a real long time’
-flash back-
There are only two people left in the bar.
An archer and a spy. The spy is on her fourth bottle of vodka and hasn’t said a word, the archer is studying her face, looking for any sign of drunkenness, or weakness. Finally the redhead decides to speak up. Her eyes unfocused but not by alcohol, by memories
‘You asked me how come I didn’t get drunk…and I told you it was because I’m Russian’ Yeah, she had. She had always been able to drink him under the table
‘It’s because of what they did to you, isn’t it?’ He questions, Clint doesn’t know a lot about the Red Room, but what he does haunts him.
A single nod. Clint swears under his breath
‘And you don’t know all the details?’
Another nod.
‘And no one else at SHIELD knows?’
How the hell had they missed it? Hadn’t physicals been required? Hadn’t she submitted to numerous tests during the six months she’d been on probation and going through deprogramming after he’s brought her in.
Natasha looks down at her feet
‘You lied to them’
She bit her lip. It was the first tell he’d ever seen her let slip. ‘I didn’t want them to experiment on me, too’
Then…the idea seemed anathema to Clint. He understood the fear logically, but he trusted SHIELD.
‘Please don’t tell them.’ She whispers
Please.
Nat hadn’t said please to him once. Not once since he’d made the call to bring her in.
How could he tell her no?
‘Is there anything else I need to know?’
It was the safest question. Give her back the control that she so needed, control they’d taken from her time and again in the years before—God how many decades had they controlled her?
“Is there anything else you want me to know?”
The second question was far more provocative than the first. As sick as he’d been the first time, she described being programmed with new memories for a deep cover sleeper assignment or the worse memories, she could recall the fragments of running away from her handlers, escaping, and a magical week in Paris. Then it was all pain, shocks, and darkness, he hung onto every bit of memory she shared with him. Her trust in him was precious, and he wouldn’t betray it.
Never
‘you always treat yourself, don’t you?’ he asks again and she nods, he’d heard report about her, how she vanished halfway through her treatment for getting shot or stabbed even if the bullet went straight through her, how she threatened the nurses that got too close or how she refused to go in certain parts of a hospital.
‘When they…they experimented on all of us it was in a hospital, or in that part of The Red Room, it was the only time we were allowed a day without training, a single day. We would be injected with serums that light you up from inside out, that tore you open and burned you like a tinder box but all they did was tighten he handcuffs that kept you still and laugh’ a gentle tear rolled down her face and her index finger twitched.
It had taken a year after he had brought her in for her to let him touch her, even a pat on the arm or ruffle of the hair would bring back that haunted gaze and fast punches.
It had taken her months to trust him enough, and that told him more than anything how unfamiliar she was with kindness or touch that asked for nothing in return.
Despite all of it, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against him carefully. He decided in that moment that no one would hurt his baby-spider, that no one would pry he secrets from him again, but even as he expected her to push him away, but Nat let him and she leaned into him.
She terrified him. She’d nearly died multiple times at the hands of needles and collars. But she opened up about a deeply buried secret and she’d cried. Then she’d let him hug her.
There were few facts he knew about the mysterious woman but he stored them like bars of gold.
Natalia Alianova Romanova wasn’t twenty-five years old. She hadn’t been born in 1984. She didn’t actually know what her birthdate was. She hated hospitals and medical wards because when she ended up in them, they experimented on her. They injected her with chemicals that turned her inside out. They burned her up like tinder. A lot of times when she came out, she didn’t remember who she was anymore and sometimes it took years to put the pieces back together.
Most of the pieces didn’t fit. Not anymore.
***
When he finished his story there are tears in both our eyes, he looks at me sadly. As he studies me, I notice a fine gold chain slip out from under his top, it is obviously a woman’s; a tiny arrow is embedded in it. He notices he is looking and turn around as he prepares to leave
‘She always used to wear it on missions or at home, Laura and I gave it to her the first Christmas she came to our farm, the first time her eyes it up when Cooper called her Auntie Tasha. When we were fighting’ his eyes cloud over again with sadness. I had forgotten it was him who he had to let go, him who fought to the death to save millions of people, him who his best friend had begged to fall to her death
‘I didn’t even see her take it off, she was their hanging off the cliff, saving my life as she fell. I heard her recite something before she hit the ground
"I have no place in this world"
Even at the end she was thinking of the place that tore her up, that made her a weapon. She I opened by hand I was in a water, a lake at the bottom of Vormir, a golden glow came from one of my hands. But I couldn’t open it. I didn’t need proof she was gone so I opened the other hand. Her necklace was bundled inside my palm, when she let go she replaced her life with a gold chain. I have worn it ever since.’
And the Archer walks out, leaving me staring transfixed my my hand, my dawn twisting and turning in my open palm the thing that saved her life, that saved both of our lives, that lives in me like a curse, or like a charm meaning I can never be normal, I can never go into school again without someone noticing me or asking me a question. I chose to live a life with this crazy adopted family-just the same as Nat. But I had a choice. Did she?