Chapter Text
No one even knows what life was like
Now I'm in LA and it's paradise
I've finally found you
Coulson had, justifiably, been a bit wary of her plan, but after repeatedly citing the newly acquired proof of her sanity, he finally gave in.
“You have ten minutes,” he informed her as he slid to a stop in front of the brightly lit doors of the Institute; it was almost 4 a.m. in New York, but the building was still buzzing with the ever-present turmoil of hospital life.
Natasha wasn’t even sure Greene would be awake, but the helpful receptionist – helpful once Natasha had used Coulson’s high-level passcode – informed her that the good doctor was in the second floor cafeteria.
She found him hunched over a cup of coffee, yesterday’s paper spread wide in front of him. He barely acknowledged her as she dropped into the seat across the table.
“You have those charts for me, yes, Eileen?” he mumbled tiredly, eyes still scanning the paper. The Business section, she noted idly.
“Can’t say that I do, Yuliy.”
His reaction was almost comical, or would have been, if she hadn’t spent eight months receiving much of the same from the other SHIELD agents. His coffee tumbled over, dark black liquid oozing through the paper and blurring the words.
“Natalia – ” he began, his face paling rapidly.
“It’s Natasha now. Or rather, to you, it’s Agent Romanoff. Formalities aside, calm yourself, doctor. I’m not going to hurt you. Too many witnesses,” she added, a joke that, in retrospect, was probably of poor taste.
“Why you have come back here?” he asked, and she was surprised to hear his accent still heavy on his tongue, awkwardly fumbling over the words. She supposed he had never had much use for language, in performing his duties for the Red Room.
“I came back to talk to you, and I’d appreciate if you’d take a moment to just listen.” He didn’t say a word, his face still devoid of blood, and it looked like maybe he was holding his breath. It occurred to her suddenly how intimidated by her he was – how much nerve it must have taken for him to help with her therapy.
“I just came to say thanks. Not for your methods, because they were kind of bullshit and we both know it, and definitely not for lying and drugging me and experimenting on me without my consent. You’ve done plenty of that in the past, and I don’t forgive you for it; I probably never will. But then, I can never forgive myself for what I did back then, either. It’s the choices that we make now that matter, and you chose to help me. Thank you. I didn’t come looking for an apology, because nothing can ever make up for what you were – what we both were. You, working here for SHIELD, you’ve made your life into an apology, into an atonement for your sins, and that’s what I want to do. I want to live as though someday, my past could be forgiven. So thank you for showing me that path, as well.”
Greene swallowed, looking suspicious, as though trying to find her angle.
“You decided I wasn’t psychotic,” she reminded him.
He laughed weakly at that, wiping a hand across his clammy forehead. “I will say sorry anyway, because you deserve apology. I never knew until my Irina died – ”
Natasha really hadn’t wanted this to turn into some weird hair-braiding, heart-to-heart bonding moment, so she cut him off abruptly. “No worries, Yuliy. We’re good here.”
She turned to leave, knowing her time was running out and that Coulson was probably driving in aimless circles in the car equivalent of pacing, not really wanting to keep him waiting. A thought struck her before she could walk away.
“Actually, if I could just ask you one question…”
She had to go back to base that night, essentially to prostrate herself to Fury and ask for forgiveness, which came surprisingly easy. She suspected Coulson had something to do with that. She would have left immediately after being reinstated for Clint’s crappy apartment, but Coulson vaguely mentioned something about the rudeness of banging someone’s door down at this hour, so she reluctantly hunkered down in a spare bunk for the night.
Upon waking the next morning, she took the subway to Bed-Stuy – actually, a ferry and two taxis and the subway, but who was counting? – and found herself hesitating outside his building, a bag of doughnuts in hand. It was entirely plausible that he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. But she was Natasha Romanoff, dammit, and she didn’t scare easily, especially when it came to Clint Barton, so she swallowed her fear and braced herself and marched straight to his door. It swung open on the first knock.
Clint stared at her for second, not looking any worse for wear save for the slightly too-black circles under his eyes. He stared at her impassively while she awkwardly and pathetically explained her abrupt departure – she’d already had plenty of practice with Fury anyway – and when she was done, he spent a good couple of minutes just staring at her.
“So uh, even though I kind of threw the hospitality back in your face last time, can I...you know, maybe stay here again, for awhile?”
“No,” Clint said simply, and it wasn’t until that moment that Natasha realized how she had been depending on him to forgive her. His refusal was like a punch to the face, a kick in the gut, like a hundred other inane clichés, and fuck, she’d just lost her only in friend in, well, ever.
Head down, she turned to go, but then Clint, that good, merciful, jackass Clint grinned widely and said, “Because I already moved the things you’ve left behind to your new place.”
“You found me a house?” Natasha blinked, weirdly touched, although she still wasn’t sure if maybe he just wanted to get rid of her.
“Apartment, actually. I had my eye on it for a while, had an appointment with the realtor last week and everything. I had planned on bringing you, but since you were MIA and the place just sold itself, I took the liberty of buying it using your allotted housing fund. Come on, you’re gonna love it.”
The apartment turned out to be in Astoria, in Queens, not too far from Clint’s place, but far enough that she felt she had her own space. The apartment itself was nice enough, all clean, modern lines and metal and glass, but it was the little touches that made it actually seem like home. There was a little Greek restaurant just down the street that served homemade baklava on the weekends. A block away, a little old Hungarian lady ran a bookstore, with novels in native Russian and Ukrainian and Polish. Clint sheepishly admitting, ducking his head as he did so, that he wanted her to have a little piece of her Eastern Europe with her here in the States. But the most impressive part had to be…
“Barton – are these my clothes?” The closet was fully stocked already – not with Clint’s best guess of what she would like, not with SHIELD’s standard sweatpants and t-shirts, but with her clothing from her freelance days.
“Yeah. Well, SHIELD had me collect all the things you left behind when I was tracking you. Said they needed it for evidence or something. Once you joined up, I figured they didn’t need the evidence anymore, and I had a feeling they hadn’t gotten rid of everything so...”
Among the scraps of silk and lace she had worn for the more unsavory parts of her job, she found her favorite worn-out jeans, her oversized touristy t-shirt she’d bought as a joke in Kazakhstan, her best pair of Manolo Blahniks.
“I managed to find some of your ridiculous German shampoo, I think. I couldn’t actually read the label. It’s in the bathroom, if you want to check it out.”
But Natasha’s attention was focused on something else entirely. Hanging in the back of the closet was a faded red hoodie with the word IOWA proudly proclaimed in gold across the chest – Clint’s old college hoodie, the one she had constantly stolen on the Helicarrier. For a moment, her throat was too swollen to speak (from surprise, mind you, because the Black Widow certainly doesn’t get emotional about silly things like outerwear, thank you very much).
“So what do you think?”
Natasha swiped at the oddly damp skin under her eyes before turning around.
“You’ve done all right, Barton.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Clint, his voice almost neutral but for the slight hint of concern buried underneath. She’d been back for almost a month, but still he was treating her like a spooked horse, as though she could bolt at any minute.
And she could, but she wouldn’t. She needed to do this.
She consulted the slip of paper in her – written in the brusque script of one Dr. Julius Greene – and compared the address to the building in front of her. “This is the place.”
The place was pretty enough, surrounded as it was by the New Hampshire fields with rolling hills and all that jazz, but building itself was small and dark and a little foreboding. The nurse that met them at the front was frazzled, old but still vibrant in her eyes, and fiercely protective of her wards. Natasha liked her right away.
“It’s so good of you to come visit poor little Nina! She is the sweetest girl we’ve ever had, so young when she got here, poor thing, and never has a bad word to say about anyone. Not that she talks at all, most days. But she hasn’t had a visitor since that nice old doctor fellow when to work in New York, and I bet she’s just terribly lonely. Not that I can tell sometimes, with her. How did you say you knew her, dear?”
Natasha bit her lip before replying, accepting the comforting squeeze to the arm Barton offered. “We went to school together. When we were younger.”
“This is her room,” said the nurse, thankfully not asking anymore questions. “I’ll just wait out here with your boyfriend while you visit, and while I hate to rush you, dinner is in just a few minutes, so you won’t have long.” Natasha had planned it that way, giving herself a built-in escape plan. Without correcting her in regards to Clint – because what did it matter, anyway? – Natasha pushed into the room.
Nina looked wholly unchanged from the last time Natasha had seen her. Her corn-silk hair was longer, grown out past her waist, and her skin was sallower than the pure snowy color it had been before, but otherwise she was the same twelve-year-old girl from Natasha’s memory. She was staring out the window, hands twisting helplessly in her hair, ignoring the sound of the door opening.
“Nina?” called Natasha softly, not wanting to startle her.
The girl turned around, her blue eyes wide and surprisingly lucid. “Natalia? О, Боже, ты тоже! Я не хочу, чтобы он вас тоже!”
“Slow down,” said Natasha, slightly alarmed at the panic in her voice, her eyes darting to the door and the attentive nurse that waited just beyond it. “What are you talking about?”
Nina rushed forward and grabbed her hand. “You have to leave now. The longer you stay, the less chance you have of getting out. I didn’t know what to do in the beginning, so I stayed, and now no one will believe me when I say I’m not crazy. Some days I don’t even believe it myself.”
“What do you mean, Nina?”
Nina’s grip tightened sporadically as she spoke. “He told them I was crazy, but I wasn’t, and he told me if I didn’t stay here I wouldn’t be safe, and he said if I tried to leave he’d tell SHIELD I was still a threat and I’ve been losing my mind here anyway, Natashenka, just like he wanted. And now he’s gotten to you, too!”
“Nina, I’m just here to visit you.” Natasha’s head was spinning. Dr. Greene had put her here, knowing she wasn’t crazy, and threatened her if she tried to leave? Why? And why tell Natasha how to find Nina, knowing there was a possibility Nina would tell her everything? Nothing made sense.
“Promise me, дорогой. Promise me you won’t trust a thing that man says. Don’t let him do this to you too. You were always the strongest – you always had the best chance of escaping. You have to get away from him!”
“Dinner time!” sang the nurse gaily, pushing into the room. Nina fell silent instantly, hand dropping from Natasha’s arm, fingers again twisting into her matted blonde hair. Clint slid into the room as the nurse led Nina away, calling over her shoulder, “Feel free to come back real soon, sugar!”
“Hey,” he said, reading her face in that uncanny way of his, “you okay?”
And maybe it was a dumb question, and maybe she was learning that it would never really be okay – not for her, not with her past always finding its way back to her. But right now, she has a home to go back to and a friend to split the cab cost with, and the sun is shining and she hasn’t had to kill or seduce anyone in almost a year, and she’s starting to realize that this new freedom really does exist and isn’t going to vanish the next time she blinks. For once in her life, the ground underneath her feet feels level.
And sure, she’ll have to figure out this Dr. Greene stuff soon, but she’ll have Clint to help her, and she knows he won’t let her down.
So she gives him a small smile and touches his arm, just to remind herself that he’s there, and she answers truthfully.
“With you here, I’m always good.”