Chapter 13
2013, date redacted
Natasha glares sleepily as she heads to the communal kitchen for coffee.
Maria's already up and going over some work with Pepper. Each of the Avenges and Maria and Pepper have their own floors.
"Grumpy," Clint says, but hands her some sandwiches.
"Hmph," Natasha manages to say oh so eloquently.
Maria and Natasha had decided to keep their relationship under wraps, not even the Avengers could know besides Clint. Now with HYDRA out there and without the protection of S.H.I.E.L.D., they were more prone to attack than ever.
Of course, they knew that they could take care of themselves, but worry they still did.
James was being kept in Tony's lab which was fortified about thousands more times. Besides Maria, Steve and Clint, no one knew about their complicated relationship with each other as murder assassin buddies.
Yeah, Natasha's life was complicated. She liked it to be structured and ordered, always planned everything out, but sometimes you just have to roll with it and improvise.
Tony had, surprisingly, kept out of the S.H.I.E.L.D. records. Mandarin had really humbled him, she supposed. It was nice to see that Tony was growing up.
Natasha's past is weird and dark and just plain horrendous. There was a reason why she didn't dump her own personal files, but did select a few Red Room intel files. Experiments, kidnappings, profiles, missions accomplished. Most blacked out too, just the general gist.
Natasha preferred to keep her life under wraps, occasionally give those who didn't know about her scraps of information that were either useless of just half truths. The best lies were woven with truths.
Only Clint and Maria knew everything, or most of the things.
Natasha knew Yelena was helping Peggy Carter track down Dottie Underwood. The woman was very slippery, could disappear off the face of the earth for decades and resurface again and hide again.
Melina Vostokoff, or her Madame B, was dead. Red Room girls were being put into re programming, therapy and schools all over the world of their choice. There were still tabs kept on them, of course, but they had freedom. Something they deserved.
Natasha wonders how Evgenia's doing. Last she's heard, she was being sent to contacts of Bruce Banner for Inhuman training. Probably the X-Men, even though they were off world. Carol Danvers had sent some messages to Fury on the X-Men of Earth 327.
Yelena had taken a liking to figure skating. Galina wrote and did whatever she wanted to do because lets be honest, her being contained was like stuffing an eagle into a cage.
Natasha was planning to let Liho into the streets again, because it wasn't actually her cat, but Liho had purred insistently and gave her the sad eyes. Maria had yelled at Natasha to "just take Liho already and stop looking like you're going to cry, will you, we're going to be late for our pick-up".
Natasha had scooped Liho up and she had settled herself into the hood of Natasha's hoodie.
Maria had grinned and snapped pictures, much to Natasha's chagrin.
They would still be keeping the apartment, but as a safe-house. Besides, they really were on great pay-rolls of the government and Maria on Tony's.
Even if Natasha wasn't paid by the government anymore for some reason, she always could fall back on free lancing. Or she could model. Or be an assistant. Really, her job abilities were quite vast, thanks to her years of spy experience.
Natasha finishes the last of her coffee as she heads to the gym.