Avengers (2012): "Waking Up (2/6)" (Gen, Pre-Clint/Natasha)
Title: Waking Up (2/6)
Author/Artist: Koren M. (cybermathwitch)
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, there'd already be a Black Widow/Hawkeye movie.
Pairing: Gen (pre-Clint/Natasha)
Rating: R
Warnings: adult themes, violence, language, very vague, brief mentions (non-graphic) of harm to children and Natasha's early training and being drugged
Spoilers: none
Type: Completed
Word Count: 952
Summary: Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone has a beginning. Everyone is made up of their experiences. Everyone wakes up. Part of "The Weight of Us": the moments leading up to "Shot in the Dark".
Author's Notes:
Many many thanks to kadollan for the beta on the final version of this thing, and thanks to lar_laughs, SidheRa, and anuna_81 for looking over earlier versions of this material.
This is complete, I'm posting two chapters a day.
RE: WARNINGS - PLEASE READ: These are moments from Clint and Natasha's past, the early memories (or lack there-of) that lead up to Shot in the Dark. As you can imagine, bad things happened. Nothing is terribly graphic (no more graphic than things that happened in Shot in the Dark, anyway, I don't think) - but please use your best judgement when reading. If you have any questions about the warnings, please leave me a comment or shoot me an email (I'm cybermathwitch(at)gmail(dot)com) and I'll do my best to answer them.
Warnings are specific to the chapter they're listed on, and while each chapter is a piece of the puzzle, there's not a linear narrative, so each chapter makes sense on it's own if you feel you need or want to skip one.
Chapter 1
She knows her name was Natalia Alianova Romanova, but that no one had bothered to record the day she was born. She supposes her parents must have known, but they died in a fire when she was four years old. She was found among the wreckage and taken to an orphanage. A man came and chose her, out of all the little girls, because even at age four, she'd already had dead eyes.
Years later, when she's taught what to look for in future recruits, she's told that the eyes are the most important, that there's an emptiness to them in someone who would be suitable for the life. That you could see it, even if you didn't know the cause. Sometimes it was from trauma or abuse. Sometimes, it was just how they were born. They can't tell her which one she was, and she doesn't know if she had ever had anything good within her. She wonders sometimes if she had been a monster even in her nursery. She might even have been the cause of the fire that killed her family, but there's no one left alive who knows.
There were only a handful of people left alive who knew anything at all about any of her childhood.
She remembers thin mattresses on metal frames. There were no sheets, just ratty blankets in the winter and institutional grade fans in the summer. Pillows came and went, but they were never substantial. She remembers hearing some of the other girls crying, particularly after they’d just arrived.
She doesn’t remember when she arrived or if she cried.
The first thing the Red Room did, besides instilling obedience, was try to eradicate whatever personality a child might have had. There were no "I likes" or "I don't likes" allowed. There were no favorite things, and because they recruited intelligent children, most caught on quickly. If they didn't, well. They didn't last long. It is a common misconception that they were taught not to have emotions. In order to do the kind of deep cover work that the Red Room usually utilized them for, a good understanding of human emotions was essential. They were just taught not to have any of their own. Any hint of individual personality was dealt with swiftly.
She remembers screaming, but can’t always remember if she’s the one screaming or if it’s someone else.
Things become clearer as she gets older - she has snapshots in her mind of being taught how to dress, to dance, to eat, as well as being taught how to fight and how to kill easily without caring about it. She remembers when he arrived, she doesn't know from where, and took over their martial training. She remembers that he trained her in other important skills, too. A Red Room operative can't do her job if she doesn't know how to seduce her mark. He was surprisingly patient and gentle, at least compared to most of the other instructors they had, and that made her more uncomfortable than the ones who were brutal to them.
She can recall missions, her earliest ones, a few from before he came along, then later being sent out with him to do simple jobs within the country. She remembers two parties, one with a yellow party dress, and later, when she's older, one that he takes her to. She knows there was an overwhelming press of people at some sort of government function, a celebration of a local politician's birthday, and that her job was to seduce his oldest son, get him to take her into the private side of the residence, and then kidnap the youngest daughter and bring her back to the Red Room for leverage. She didn't need to know why they needed leverage with the man, and she didn't have any desire to ask. The little girl cried for her mother, and Natalia just looked past her out the window at the city streets of Cherkessk. He sat across from her in the limo with a blank, disinterested look on his face, but when they reached their drop off point and the girl was handed over, she felt His hand on her shoulder for just a moment and knew she'd done well.
She knows there were more missions. Some of them she remembers quite well, others are more of a blank space in her mind that she knows ought to have memories in it but just... doesn't.
Then there are straps and gurneys and too many exam rooms to count, with blurry faces that fade in and out with the sedation, fire burning in her veins and her mind from whatever they’re doing to her, and always the bitter, metallic taste of the special cocktail they use to keep them unconscious while they work. That taste is probably the first thing she remembers having a distinct like or dislike for.
Every time she wakes up with that taste in her mouth, she can feel the holes in her mind. She can tell that there are things missing, just not what they are. There’s no sense of how long it’s been or how much is gone, just this great yawning emptiness that she doesn’t have the first clue how to fill.
She knows her name is Natalia Alianova Romanova. She was born in the Red Room. She was taken, broken, then put back together in their image - the image of the Black Widow - and trained to be a killer. They were very good at what they did, and made sure that she was equally good at what she does. She is their greatest success, but she is also their biggest mistake.
Author/Artist: Koren M. (cybermathwitch)
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, there'd already be a Black Widow/Hawkeye movie.
Pairing: Gen (pre-Clint/Natasha)
Rating: R
Warnings: adult themes, violence, language, very vague, brief mentions (non-graphic) of harm to children and Natasha's early training and being drugged
Spoilers: none
Type: Completed
Word Count: 952
Summary: Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone has a beginning. Everyone is made up of their experiences. Everyone wakes up. Part of "The Weight of Us": the moments leading up to "Shot in the Dark".
Author's Notes:
Many many thanks to kadollan for the beta on the final version of this thing, and thanks to lar_laughs, SidheRa, and anuna_81 for looking over earlier versions of this material.
This is complete, I'm posting two chapters a day.
RE: WARNINGS - PLEASE READ: These are moments from Clint and Natasha's past, the early memories (or lack there-of) that lead up to Shot in the Dark. As you can imagine, bad things happened. Nothing is terribly graphic (no more graphic than things that happened in Shot in the Dark, anyway, I don't think) - but please use your best judgement when reading. If you have any questions about the warnings, please leave me a comment or shoot me an email (I'm cybermathwitch(at)gmail(dot)com) and I'll do my best to answer them.
Warnings are specific to the chapter they're listed on, and while each chapter is a piece of the puzzle, there's not a linear narrative, so each chapter makes sense on it's own if you feel you need or want to skip one.
Chapter 1
She knows her name was Natalia Alianova Romanova, but that no one had bothered to record the day she was born. She supposes her parents must have known, but they died in a fire when she was four years old. She was found among the wreckage and taken to an orphanage. A man came and chose her, out of all the little girls, because even at age four, she'd already had dead eyes.
Years later, when she's taught what to look for in future recruits, she's told that the eyes are the most important, that there's an emptiness to them in someone who would be suitable for the life. That you could see it, even if you didn't know the cause. Sometimes it was from trauma or abuse. Sometimes, it was just how they were born. They can't tell her which one she was, and she doesn't know if she had ever had anything good within her. She wonders sometimes if she had been a monster even in her nursery. She might even have been the cause of the fire that killed her family, but there's no one left alive who knows.
There were only a handful of people left alive who knew anything at all about any of her childhood.
She remembers thin mattresses on metal frames. There were no sheets, just ratty blankets in the winter and institutional grade fans in the summer. Pillows came and went, but they were never substantial. She remembers hearing some of the other girls crying, particularly after they’d just arrived.
She doesn’t remember when she arrived or if she cried.
The first thing the Red Room did, besides instilling obedience, was try to eradicate whatever personality a child might have had. There were no "I likes" or "I don't likes" allowed. There were no favorite things, and because they recruited intelligent children, most caught on quickly. If they didn't, well. They didn't last long. It is a common misconception that they were taught not to have emotions. In order to do the kind of deep cover work that the Red Room usually utilized them for, a good understanding of human emotions was essential. They were just taught not to have any of their own. Any hint of individual personality was dealt with swiftly.
She remembers screaming, but can’t always remember if she’s the one screaming or if it’s someone else.
Things become clearer as she gets older - she has snapshots in her mind of being taught how to dress, to dance, to eat, as well as being taught how to fight and how to kill easily without caring about it. She remembers when he arrived, she doesn't know from where, and took over their martial training. She remembers that he trained her in other important skills, too. A Red Room operative can't do her job if she doesn't know how to seduce her mark. He was surprisingly patient and gentle, at least compared to most of the other instructors they had, and that made her more uncomfortable than the ones who were brutal to them.
She can recall missions, her earliest ones, a few from before he came along, then later being sent out with him to do simple jobs within the country. She remembers two parties, one with a yellow party dress, and later, when she's older, one that he takes her to. She knows there was an overwhelming press of people at some sort of government function, a celebration of a local politician's birthday, and that her job was to seduce his oldest son, get him to take her into the private side of the residence, and then kidnap the youngest daughter and bring her back to the Red Room for leverage. She didn't need to know why they needed leverage with the man, and she didn't have any desire to ask. The little girl cried for her mother, and Natalia just looked past her out the window at the city streets of Cherkessk. He sat across from her in the limo with a blank, disinterested look on his face, but when they reached their drop off point and the girl was handed over, she felt His hand on her shoulder for just a moment and knew she'd done well.
She knows there were more missions. Some of them she remembers quite well, others are more of a blank space in her mind that she knows ought to have memories in it but just... doesn't.
Then there are straps and gurneys and too many exam rooms to count, with blurry faces that fade in and out with the sedation, fire burning in her veins and her mind from whatever they’re doing to her, and always the bitter, metallic taste of the special cocktail they use to keep them unconscious while they work. That taste is probably the first thing she remembers having a distinct like or dislike for.
Every time she wakes up with that taste in her mouth, she can feel the holes in her mind. She can tell that there are things missing, just not what they are. There’s no sense of how long it’s been or how much is gone, just this great yawning emptiness that she doesn’t have the first clue how to fill.
She knows her name is Natalia Alianova Romanova. She was born in the Red Room. She was taken, broken, then put back together in their image - the image of the Black Widow - and trained to be a killer. They were very good at what they did, and made sure that she was equally good at what she does. She is their greatest success, but she is also their biggest mistake.