The Avengers were in an IKEA.
Now, this wouldn’t be all that strange, but this particular IKEA?
It’s in Russia. In Moscow, to be precise.
Natasha Romanoff stands in the Children’s section, surrounded by pale pink and blue bedding and cushions and white cribs with every safety feature imaginable. She looks different today - she’s wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a white shirt with a soft green cardigan, not her usual fare. Pretending to examine the cot next to her, she whispers into her comms:
“All clear in Workspaces. Moving on to Children’s. Thor, what’s your status?”
“Nothing suspicious amongst these most noble of bedchamber decorations,” he booms, making Natasha wince. “Stark, what about you?”
“Nothing to report in Dining or Garden. By the way, Nat, were these digital masks as itchy when you wore them? Or is your poker face just that good?” Natasha raises an eyebrow and smiles just the tiniest bit. “Steve, anything?”
“No, nothing here. Are we sure the tip-off said IKEA?’
“Well, unless Nat and Google Translate are pranking us together, I should think so,” says Clint. “And no, nothing in Seating, but I do spy a comfy recliner with my name on it.”
The tip they had received had been what was supposedly a note from one HYDRA agent to another, confirming a drop-off (of what?) at this location. The message had been in Russian, and it seemed like an obvious ploy to get the Avengers all in one location. But HYDRA had been radio silent after the Sokovia incident, and well, as Tony put it, if this turned out to be an ambush, they’d still run into HYDRA operatives they could take in for questioning. It was a win-win either way.
Natasha stands there, surveying the area. Her position in the bend of the path allowed her to see the comings and goings of both directions - there was a couple standing a little ahead of her looking at a white-and-grey crib, and a child behind her tying paper measuring tapes together to make a sort of skipping rope. Figuring that the child wasn’t a threat, Natasha watched the couple examine the crib from behind several racks of baby toys, watching as the pregnant woman waddled over into the aisle to see something that made her beckon her husband over. The blond man stood there, still looking at the price tag of the crib thoughtfully, pushing his glasses up his nose.
In that instant, she got bored. Natasha looked around once more and then walked over to cross the couple when the man had the misfortune of walking into her path as he stepped back to view the crib from a different angle.
“Oh-Ana, are you alright? I’m so sorry, my lo-ve?”
The blond man’s face squints in confusion, and he seems taken aback. Natasha is too, but it shows less.
“Ana? Why aren’t you... Ana? You’re not my wife, are you?” He asks, more and more confused. “Ana? Anastasia? Where did you go?”
The man’s wife, Ana, pops her head back up in annoyance.
“Really, Dmitri - can you not wait even just a second? I’m so sorry for my husband, by the way,” she says, looking at Natasha.
Natasha doesn’t respond. She’s gone wide-eyed at the sight of the woman before her.
“Dmitri? What was is it that you were yelling at me for?”
“Ana, this woman; she looks JUST like you!“
Anastasia walks out of the aisle, her face full of concern for Natasha.
Nat can’t believe what she’s seeing. Same blue-green eyes. same red hair. Same nose and same pointed chin, same full lips like hers. Anastasia is an exact copy of her, down to the shape of her eyes and the size of her ears.
The only difference is that Anastasia’s face is that of a woman who has lived her life smiling. A long life of smiling. There are crinkles around her eyes where they scrunch up. The skin around her mouth is deeply indented with laugh lines - her mouth tipped, even in concern, to smile kindly at a stranger.
The marks of a woman who has lived a happy life.
Natasha doesn’t have those lines. She doesn’t smile enough.
After the initial shock fades, Natasha backs away from the scene and mumbles something about having to be somewhere, someplace, unspecified. She turns and runs, ducking into an entrance leading into Kitchens, leaving Anastasia and Dmitri looking on in confusion.
Anastasia and Dmitri. Sounds oddly...familiar. She can’t place it, but she knows she’s heard that pair of names before.
As she leans against the white wall, she hears their voices, resuming their conversation in Russian.
“Dmitri, who was that woman?”
“I genuinely have no idea, love. She bumped into me when I was looking at the crib -she looked like you! Almost exactly the same, Ana! How is that even possible?”
“On average, there are seven people in the world who look like you. Maybe she was one of them?”
“Are you sure she’s not family of some kind? A cousin, or a long-lost twin sister? Maybe she and you were separated at birth, or-”
“Dmitri, I didn’t have any family besides my grandparents, God bless their souls. My parents died in a fight, and neither side had any siblings. And even if I did have family, my grandmother never told me about them. Every time I asked for a sister, she would get really quiet and not talk at all. I gave up asking, eventually.”
Dmitri goes silent.
Natasha swears her heartbeat is the loudest thing in the universe at that moment.
“You ever consider that maybe you did have a sister? Maybe she was lost and your grandmother just regretted not being able to find her?” he says softly.
“Even if that were the case, and it is probably not, - why are you so invested in this? What does it matter if I have a sister or not?”
Dmitri sighs. “You remember two Christmases ago? My family was over at the house and after the kids went to bed we all got ridiculously drunk?”
Anastasia laughs. “Was that so long ago? I remember your sister throwing up on the carpet like it was yesterday,” she says.
“Haha, Ana. But do you remember after everyone had gone to bed and it was just you and me; do you remember what you said?”
“No..?”
“You told me that as a child, the one thing you wished for more than anything was a sister. A twin, like in your favorite story. You told me that you’d been so lonely all your life, and that watching me help my sister up, watching our children play together - you told me that some days when you saw a shooting star, you wished that a sister would show up at our doorstep. You still did. I guess...that just stuck with me. I’ll drop it if you want, my love, but that is the reason.”
Natasha’s breath hitches. Remember your training. Could it be? A long-lost sister? A woman with her face and last name, living her happiest life? Remember your training. The Red Room would have never told her this information, and maybe, just maybe, she had a sister who didn’t get swept into the clutches of the USSR, a normal woman with a husband and children and everything Natasha would never have.
Screw my training.
Taking a deep breath, she heads back towards Children’s.
At the sound of her footsteps entering the section, the couple looks immediately towards her.
“Look! She looks just like you!”
Anastasia takes a step towards Nat and asks.
“What’s your name?”
Natasha hesitates. “Natalia. Natalia Romanova.”
Dmitri looks at his wife, eyes wide behind his glasses, just as Tony speaks into her ear.
“Nat? Did you just give your name away to someone? Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, Stark. Carry on with the search. I have something to attend to.”
“Nat? Natash-” Tony’s cut off as she yanks the earpiece out of her ear.
“I don’t mean to alarm you, Natalia, but my maiden name was also Romanova...do you, by any chance, know your parents’ names? If-if that’s alright to ask I mean I'd understand-if-”
There was something off about the way she said it, but that didn’t occur to Natasha at the time.
“I don’t. I was...found alone, and taken... to an orphanage.” A training facility, she wants to say, and she hopes that Anastasia will not see through her slight lie.
Anastasia’s eyes widen, one hand resting on her baby bump, and the other on the side of her face as she regards Natasha sadly.
“You never knew your parents? I’m so, so sorry, my dear. I’m the same way - I was raised by my grandparents.”
Natasha bites her lip at this-if she had grandparents, should this woman actually be her twin, wouldn’t they have come looking for her? Natasha wasn’t lying when she said she was found alone as a child - after her parents had died on the street, in some sort of fight, she remembers a kindly man taking her to the nearest government-run orphanage. A few days later, a man and a woman had come and taken her to the Red Room to make something out of her, a monster, and that was that.
If she had had grandparents, and if Anastasia was with them while she was with her parents, they clearly must’ve known where their parents were going, meaning they could’ve found her there. Unless, says a little voice inside her, unless, they came after. After them. If you had joined the Bolshoi before your grandparents made it to Volgograd, they would’ve been told that you perished, says the little voice, desperate for a family. For a sister. Someone to call her own.
Natasha listens.
“Oh,” she says, and then she says it. “Oh. Is it possible that you and I are related?” She regrets it, for just a millisecond, as Anastasia’s eyes flick from her to Dmitri, and then back to her. She realizes, a second later, that Dmitri’s not looking at his wife. He’s still staring at her - like Coulson did with Cap after he came out of the ice. She supposes he can’t help it; if you found your wife had a twin that was a secret even to her, you’d be lost for words too.
In the pause between the two women, Dmitri interjects. Running a hand through his hair making, making it stick up.
“Related? Related? Anastasia Alianovna Ivanov please, PLEASE, my love, please do not say that you have lost your eyesight because standing before you- right before your very eyes-YOUR VERY EYES- is a woman who is the exact same as you, down to the way she blinks. HOW SHE BLINKS, ANA! How-how could she be anything but related to you? Are we related, my ass...” he mutters, throwing his hands up and stalking off in the opposite direction.
Anastasia laughs, a small laugh punctuated by a smile at the end.
“He’s not wrong. In any event, would you like to come back with us? Join us for some tea, meet my children?” She says, taking Natasha’s hands in her own. “Please? It would mean so much to me,” as Natasha opens her mouth to say no. The sound never comes out, though.
Anastasia smiles at her, a warm sunny smile, and Natasha is just a little bit jealous of this woman with her face who has lived a happy life - but in the end, she says yes.
-
Anastasia is surprisingly good at making tea. It’s just the right amount of sweet, something that even she gets wrong somedays.
“Have some,” says Anastasia, pushing a plate of biscuits across the coffee table. "I made them myself - a new recipe! This batch has an extra touch of cinnamon-I adore cinnamon! It adds such a lovely sharpness to everything, you know? Unless you don’t like it, and if you don’t, don’t worry, I have another batch in the kitchen with almonds instead! And-”
“I love cinnamon, actually. I put some of it in everything - cookies and coffee especially.” Anastasia lights up at this, seeming to glow even more after hearing that her (maybe?) twin sister loves cinnamon too. Natasha can’t help but smile back. It’s impossible not to because Anastasia’s smile is like the sun on a cloudy day; brilliant and beautiful.
“So, tell me a little bit about yourself! You’ve been so silent, I hope I haven’t talked your voice away! Grandmamma always used to say I could talk anyone’s ears off, and I guess she wasn’t wrong,” she says. “Oh! But first, I want you to meet my children.”
Natasha is a little taken aback at this - how will the children react? She’s not the friendliest person, and she’s sitting there wearing their mother’s face. As she hears their thumping footsteps come down the stairs, her fingers tap more and more on her little china teacup. She is Natasha Romanoff, for hell’s sake. She is not going to be nervous about some CHILDREN.
And then they’re looking at her with their curious little faces, and she’s nervous again.
“Anya, Viktor, meet my friend Natalia! You must call her Aunt Natalia, and she was very excited to meet you!”
“Hello Anya, hello Viktor - It’s lovely to meet you.” She says softly. Indeed it is. Anya’s hair is more strawberry-blonde than her mother’s, but she has her father’s grey eyes and she stands hands behind her back, face full of laughter. Viktor’s face is more guarded, and he’s younger - possibly four or five? And he looks at her carefully as he’s not sure what to think.
“It’s very nice to meet you too! Did you like the cookies? I helped make them!”
Natasha almost laughs. Of course, it stands to reason that Anastasia’s daughter would be just as cheery as Anastasia herself. “Yes, they were delicious.”
Anya takes this an invitation to bounce onto the sofa and start asking questions.
“When did you meet my mama?” “Uh, recently?” “Where in Russia are you from? Mama’s from Volgograd, but Papa’s from Yekaterinburg.” “I, uh, I actually moved to the US, but I was originally also from Volgograd.”
“Why do you look like our mama?”
The question comes from behind Natasha, and it’s the little boy, Viktor.
“Viktor! That’s not polite!” says his sister, glaring at him. Then she puts her hand up next to her mouth and whispers furiously “I was going to get to that!”
Natasha pauses. “I think I’ll let your mother explain that, yeah? I’m not very good at explaining, always get things muddled up,” she says, hoping that she won’t have to explain this mess to them.
As if on cue, Anastasia appears behind them, ushering them away.
“Kids, you know. So questioning. Have any of your own?” She asks, when she returns.
This is your sister, says the voice. You can trust her.
“No,” says Natasha. “I can’t. Have kids, that is.”
Steeling herself, she goes for it. If they really are sisters, she’ll understand.
“You’ve seen the Avengers on TV, right? In New York, in Sokovia. I’m- well, I’m the Black Widow. I used to be an assassin, but then I turned my life around, and I’ve been trying to do good since.”
“You’re her! Oh my God, you’re her!” Anastasia exclaims, a look of joy on her face, hands coming together. “You’re my hero! But... wait..” The look on her face drops and her hands settle back into her lap. “You not being able to have children... I’m so sorry, Natalia. Was that because of an accident with the Avengers...or...?”
The look on Anastasia ’s face is so heartbroken, Natasha just tells her.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I went to an orphanage as a child. But then they took me to a place called the Red Room - a... training facility, for young girls. They turned me into a spy, and to make sure I would never leave behind a trace, they stopped- they stopped me from being able-able to have children.”
The last part comes out in a rush, and Natasha’s surprised to find tears running down her face. Her hands are clenched, nails digging into her palms, she feels a hand on her face, wiping away her tears. She looks up, blinking through the tears, and she sees Anastasia standing there with a sad smile on her face.
So she’s all the more surprised when she hears the safety of the gun click off.
Anastasia’s hand has moved from wiping Natasha’s face to lightly holding her chin, tilting it upwards so Natasha can see her.
“If you move,” she says, her voice almost inaudible, “if you move, I will not hesitate to shoot you.” She’s still smiling, but it is no longer sad.
“DMITRI!” yells Anastasia. “GET THE ROPE!”
Still pointing the gun at her, Anastasia steps back and yanks off her wig. And her digitized face mask. And her fake pregnancy belly. And suddenly Natasha is facing down a blonde woman younger than her, her eyes hazel and her nose slightly upturned.
“Please to make your acquaintance, Natalia. I’m Yelena. Yelena Belova.”
The look of horror on Natasha’s face must have been clear as day, because Yelena’s smirking, her eyebrows raised.
“DMITRI, HURRY UP WITH THAT ROPE! You know,” she says, cocking her head, “I’d heard such wonderful things about you. Weren’t you the best of the best?” Dmitri appears, carrying a coil of rope. He’s ditched the glasses and kind, confused expression for a taunting look in his eyes and a half-smirk.
“Right.” says Yelena. “Dmitri, get a chair. Natalia, sweetheart, sit your pretty ass on it. They’ll be here soon, and I can’t have you running away. It would really undo all the effort I went to, to find you.”
As Yelena continues talking, Natasha realizes that this is the HYDRA agent who the team was looking for. Of course.
Dmitri brings the chair over. Natasha sits in it, still very aware of the revolver in front of her face, following her as she shifted from the sofa to the chair. Dmitri proceeds to tie her up. The rope around her waist and the chair, looped back and forth a few times, knotted in front. Then her hands were bound, facing away from each other, with almost enough force to break them, but not quite. Weights on her ankles and then her ankles bound to the legs of the chair. She suspected there were weights on the back legs of the chair as well, and she knew this because she had interrogated prisoners herself this way. Which meant that Yelena was Red Room. She was a Black Widow.
-
A few hours later, Yelena sits down on the sofa across from Natasha, casually examining her nails. “Tell me,” she says, looking at Natasha, “tell me- were you really as good as they said? Don’t be modest.”
Natasha grits her teeth and says nothing.
“Oh come on now, Romanova. You were so talkative a second ago - boo hoo, can’t have kids, Red Room monsters - blah blah. You could at least try to make conversation. No? Hmmm. Sad.”
Natasha doesn’t see the slap coming. Yelena slaps her hard, right across the face. It makes Natasha’s teeth rattle and her cheek sting. She feels a single tear roll down her face.
Yelena brings her face down right in front of Natasha’s.
“You really thought that you had a family?” she hisses. “That we wouldn’t have killed them all, every person with a drop of your blood? Your cousins, your aunts and uncles, your grandparents? Each of them got a bullet in the back of their heads, and may the Romanoffs rest in pieces.”
She backs up, stands tall. “Oh, Natalia. Naive, stupid, Natalia. All those years among those Americans has made you soft. Madame was right. I’m much better as a Black Widow than you. Fun fact,” she says, sitting back onto the sofa. The names I chose for our aliases? They’re from the childrens’ version of the story of our Duchess Anastasia before the Romanovs fell. You went right along with the fairytale, so desperate for something to call your own.”
That’s why they sounded familiar.
Natasha can’t help it.
Tears run down her face.
“And your precious Avengers will never look for you. You willingly vanished, and they’ll replace you. You’re worth nothing to them. They’ll replace you like the Red Room did. They’ll find someone better because there is always someone better, someone more deserving of their love, of their attention, of their time. You’re a worthless, useless, broken excuse for a human being and they’ll all be happy to see you go.”
Don’t believe it. Don’t believe it. Don’t believe it.
Yelena smiles. She leans forward, and she whispers:
“You have no place in the world.”
-
A few hours, the door is kicked in and the Avengers burst in, only to find an empty house and one very bedraggled Black Widow sitting tied to a chair. Steve and Tony look at each other worriedly, while Clint rushes ahead to cut her loose.
“Nat? Nat, wake up! It’s us, are you okay?”
Her hair is a mess, and her arms and legs hurt. There are tear tracks from her mascara, and she gets up on shaky legs.
“I’m fine.” She moves to take a step but nearly falls. Clint catches her and helps her back up.
Steve isn’t convinced. “Thor, get Natasha into the Quinjet immediately.”
She can’t show weakness. She did that, and look where it got her. “Really. Steve. I’m fine.”
Tony notices the plate of cookies lying on the coffee table. “FRIDAY, run scans on those cookies, please.”
“They appear to have high amounts of coumarin, Boss. If Ms. Romanoff has ingested any, she will be experiencing liver failure and may die if the effects are not reversed.”
Tony looks up at Natasha. “Nat,” he says softly. “You’ve been missing for two and a half days. You haven’t had anything to eat or drink and you need medical attention, ASAP. Let’s go. Now.”
Thor picks her up and takes her into the Quinjet. Natasha can feel a lump rising in her throat, but she’s too dehydrated to cry.
Once they’re in the air, Steve starts off.
“We were worried about you, Natasha. You took off the earpiece and literally vanished. What happened?”
“We tried to find you using said earpiece, but there’s jammers in the walls of that place. FRIDAY couldn’t read your signal even though it was just ten minutes away from the IKEA,” said Tony. “Whoever got you knew what they were doing.”
Clint puts a hand on her shoulder.
“Nat?”
Natasha doesn't respond.
-
Everyone’s silent for the rest of the trip. She sees Steve and Tony shoot each other worried glances and she sees Clint cleaning his arrowheads, glancing back at her in concern. She sees Thor, sitting silent as the grave, hands interlocked as his gaze wanders.
How did she not see it coming?
By any chance do you know your parents’ names? What kind of person wouldn’t know their parents’ names if they had them? And Yelena had never actually told her anything about her ‘family’ directly - Natasha had heard the entire conversation from behind a wall. She had revealed her real name and her past, all on the basis of an illogical lie. It could’ve cost her her life. It was statistically impossible, too. Meeting a twin sister? In a city she would’ve had a one in fifteen hundred chance of living in, should she ever have existed in the first place. And the names. Stolen from the fairytale version of the princess whose life ended in an unmarked grave, at ten years old. A story for children. And yet, she had been so desperate for a fairytale ending, for some happy accident that she had walked right into Yelena’s trap.
Yelena was right. She was getting soft.
But Yelena was also wrong. Because her family wasn’t her flesh and blood, but it was hers. The Avengers were her family. This was her second chance, to make it up, to fix her mistakes. She wasn’t going to let them go, ever. No matter what. They were her family. She was better because of them.
And she had to be better than that broken, worthless, useless excuse of a human being.
She had to.