Chapter Text
Natasha is on week two of her forced leave of absence and she’s losing her mind with boredom. Due to a minor injury, she’s been banned from active duty and training for the next two months, which is absurd because she’s completely fine. Everyone is overreacting.
“You have three broken ribs and a severely injured knee!” Clint says when he catches running on the treadmill.
“It barely hurts,” she lies, ignoring the stabbing pain in her chest and continuing to run. “Americans are just pussies.”
Clint hauls her off the treadmill without warning, dragging her straight to the MedBay. Helen Cho lets out an extremely long sigh when Clint tells her that she’s been running, checking over her injuries with far more pressure than necessary.
“I am begging you to relax, Natasha,” Dr. Cho pleads. “Your injuries are going to heal slower or improperly because you are incapable of taking a break. Frankly, it shows an unhealthy codependency between you and your work.”
“She’s got a point,” Clint murmurs from beside her. Without looking in his direction, Natasha elbows him in the stomach.
“Ugh, you dick,” he wheezes, doubled over.
Natasha will never admit it, but she can see where they're coming from. Since joining SHIELD, she’s never taken a vacation day (excluding the time she took off to track down and torture Red Room executives. Clint is adamant that it doesn't count as a vacation if there’s felonies being committed, but she disagrees.)
“Use this time off as a well-deserved break,” Dr. Cho says brightly, ignoring Natasha’s scowl. “Go read a book, try some new hobbies.”
“Sure,” Natasha says easily, knowing she won’t last two days before trying to train again.
After leaving the MedBay, she googles “hobbies,” praying FRIDAY doesn’t report her search history, because she’ll never hear the end of that from Tony. Then again, his hobbies are spending days at a time alone in a workshop talking to robots, so he’s really not in a place to judge. The internet advises her to spend time outdoors, so she takes a walk to a downtown marketplace.
The city’s too loud and it smells like shit, but she knows Bruce would encourage her to find beauty in any environment and romanticize the mundane. She thinks it’s hippie bullshit, but he is doing pretty well in life other than occasionally turning into a big green monster. She amends her internal commentary to try and appreciate the hustle of the city, the people passing by on the crowded streets. Natasha isn’t disguised but none of them notice her walk by, too absorbed in their own lives.
She picks up bits and pieces of their conversations, complaints about jobs, relationship problems, parents. It feels a little like a punch in the gut, the realization that her life looks so different from a normal person’s. She’s not jealous, but sometimes she wonders what might have happened if she had never been taken to the Red Room. She could’ve been just another person on the street in New York, with a normal job, a dating life, a family. For a moment, in a crowd where nobody recognizes her, she can pretend that she is.
A loud thud sounds from an alleyway beside her. She pauses for a moment, straining her ears, only barely hearing someone shout “Get away from her!” Any notion that she could have had a regular life is shattered as she sprints down the alleyway, chasing the action.
There’s a young woman clinging to a brick wall, eyes wide and terrified as a figure clad in red and blue spandex punches a man holding a knife. Natasha would intervene, but by the time she gets close, the thief is already stuck to the wall with white ropelike material. Since the threat seems to be neutralized, she stays hidden instead, watching the scene unfold before her.
She recognizes the masked figure, of course; Spider-Girl is all anyone is talking about these days. Queens’ newest vigilante’s heroism is all over the news, whether she’s saving cats in trees or saving the city from a giant lizard man.
Spider-Girl turns to the frightened woman, asking if she’s alright or if she needs to be walked home, but she declines and leaves. Natasha emerges from her spot in the shadows.
“I already notified the police,” Natasha says. Spider-Girl doesn’t flinch at her sudden appearance, despite the fact that Natasha’s sure that she hadn’t seen her before.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Spider-Girl says, turning to face her. It’s then that the vigilante seems to recognize her, her masked eyes somehow widening in surprise.
“Holy shit,” she says, sounding awed. She sounds young, her voice rich with the cadence of innocence and excitement that most lose in adulthood.
“Are you hurt?” Natasha already knows the answer. Her spandex suit is sliced at the thigh, a thin wound dripping with blood.
“You’re Natasha Romanov,” the girl says in disbelief, avoiding the question.
“You’re hurt. I know first-aid, let me help you.”
That snaps the younger woman out of her daze. Her body language becomes closed off, she shifts her weight on each leg like she’s preparing to run.
“No. I’m fine,” she says curtly.
SHIELD’s mission to uncover Spider-Girl’s identity has been fruitless so far. Before today, Natasha hadn’t been involved with the mission, but she can imagine their methods weren’t exactly friendly. It’s no wonder the kid’s wary of her.
“Who are you under there?” Natasha asks. She doesn’t expect an answer, but the way a person avoids a question can tell a lot.
“Geez, take me out to dinner first,” Spider-Girl says. “I’m winking under the mask. Can you tell?”
“No.”
“In a weird way, I’m kind of flattered that I’m important enough to be stalked by The Natasha Romanov. Even if you’re only here cause SHIELD wants to arrest me.”
“You can’t run from them forever, you know,” Natasha warns.
“Sure I can. I’m fast.” And with that, Spider-Girl casts a web towards the top of a building, catapulting herself into the air. She fires web after web, pulling herself further into the heart of the city and away from Natasha. Within a few moments, she’s a blur in the sky.
Natasha watches her go before heading back to the Tower. Her trip to the marketplace abandoned, she spends the afternoon researching everything the internet has to offer on Spider-Girl. The perfect hobby has fallen right into her lap.
“Stalking is not a hobby,” Bruce corrects when she announces this at the dinner table, patting her shoulder gently.
“And stalking is your job, it can’t also be your hobby,” Steve says, pointing his beer at her.
“Whatever,” Natasha says, sinking lower in her chair, feeling uncomfortably similar to a rebellious teenager talking back to her parents.
“You should at least try out some normal hobbies before jumping right to espionage,” Clint advises, passing her the salad bowl.
“Why don’t you try crocheting?” Steve suggests.
“Because I’m not seventy fucking years old,” Natasha says.
“I crochet,” Steve counters.
“Case in point.”
“Natasha, don’t make me tell Dr. Cho on you,” Bruce threatens, pointing salad tongs at her. “You need to be resting up.” It’s such a mother hen thing to say that Natasha almost expects to hear a “young lady” at the end of his sentence.
It’s clear she’s not going to find encouragement for her decisions here. So she goes to see the one Avenger who’s more self-destructive than she is.
Tony’s in his lab when Natasha finds him. He’s been there for too many hours already and has nothing left to work on, but he can’t bring himself to leave. If Pepper was here, she’d say he’s “wallowing.” But she’s not here, so no one says it.
“Tony,” Natasha says from above him.
“Natasha,” he mimics, not glancing up from where he’s laying across his desk.
“I need you to find someone for me.”
Tony sits up immediately, swinging his legs over the side of the table and giving her an incredulous look.
“Since when does Russian James Bond need help finding someone?”
She rolls her eyes.
“Well I can’t exactly tail her,” she gestures to her wrapped knee. “Plus, she can sort of fly. Try not to be so annoying about it.”
“I’m never annoying,” he retorts automatically. “Wait, who can fly?”
She gives him a basic rundown on Spider-Girl: her enhancements, the whispers on the street about who she might really be under the mask. Tony’s typing on his computer through all of it but she knows he’s listening.
The thing about Tony Stark is, he’s both a resource and a nuisance. There would be no Avengers without him, no Tower, no funding, no team bonding nights that Steve forces them into on the common floor Tony built. He’s an asset. But he’s also withdrawn, prickly, and temperamental. He and Pepper are on another break for some asinine reason and he’s been holed up in his workshop for days, only leaving to sleep or get food if at all. Part of the reason Natasha’s here is to see if he’s still alive.
“I’ll have FRIDAY compile all the internet footage of her and analyze her patterns. You can use that to try and figure out where her home base is,” he says, spinning in circles in his wheely chair. She puts a hand on the back to stop it.
“Thank you,” she tells him, looking him in the eye. He averts her gaze like he does to everyone. “Why have you been down here for days?”
“Very busy, lots of work,” he says absentmindedly, already turned back around to his computer.
Natasha picks up a file from his desk that clearly hasn’t been opened and thumbs through the papers inside.
“You’re launching a green initiative for the StarkPhone manufacturing process? Shouldn’t you be reading these proposals?” She asked.
“The underlings are on it,” he replies.
“Tony, you’ve got to stop calling your employees that.”
He hums noncommittally in response and at some point she leaves. Tony stays. He’s got no place else to be.
Natasha’s visit is the only thing that’s broken up the days he’s spent in isolation succeeding his and Pepper’s breakup. He’s set to stay in his lab for the rest of his life. There’s a fridge, a couch, a really old toothbrush and some mouthwash he found under a cabinet. There are no photos of his ex-girlfriend. His plan to live out the rest of his days there is only foiled when he loses his 10 millimeter gauge wrench. His mother used to say he’d lose his own head if it weren’t attached. He turns his lab inside out looking for it, emptying every desk drawer and cupboard. Only after his workspace is thoroughly a mess does it occur to him that there are twenty floors of well-equipped labs in this building and he owns all of them.
It’s dark and quiet when he leaves his lab, which means it’s late enough that most people are asleep by now. He steps off the elevator onto the fifth floor, expecting to find the lights to be off and the lab empty. To his surprise, there’s a small child at one of the workstations. She has brown hair, tan skin, and she’s dressed in jeans and a hoodie. She has headphones in, which is probably why she didn’t hear him coming, and she’s pouring chemicals into a beaker.
“What are you doing?” He asks. The girl freezes, head shooting up to look at him, brown eyes wide. Her jaw drops when she sees who he is. He crosses the room and picks up her experiment to inspect it.
“It’s nothing, really,” the girl dismisses, trying to reach for it back but he swivels, holding the beaker away from her grasp.
“Is this a replication of a spider’s webbing?” He’s staring at her in disbelief. “Creating it synthetically is almost impossible. How did you manage this?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I just…did it,” she finishes lamely.
“Who are you?”
“Penny Parker,” she says nervously.
Tony looks at the webbing appraisingly once more and makes an extremely impulsive decision, one that could change the course of both their lives.
“Would you like a job here, Penny Parker?”
Instead of jumping in joy or thanking him profusely like most people do when he offers them a job, Penny just looks confused.
“I already work here,” she says.
Tony stares at her blankly.
“What did you think I was doing with access to your labs?” She speaks slowly, in the tone of voice people only use when they’re speaking to misbehaved children and idiots.
“Since when do I have 10-year-olds working for me?”
“I’m 15,” she protests. “I got hired through the September Foundation.”
The September Foundation hosts an internship program composed of outstanding college students and graduate students in the STEM field. About six months ago, they expanded their application cycle to high schoolers.
“I was in college at 15, I’m sure there are some baby geniuses we could put on our staff,” he recalls telling the Head of Interns, who very reluctantly complied with his request, complaining the whole time that everyone under 20 is still an infant.
The Stark Industry hiring managers (the underlings) reluctantly sifted through the thousands of high school applicants, most of them ridiculously unqualified. Some kid named Flash Thompson legitimately submitted his resume along with a check from his father for 50,000 dollars. Tony hadn’t thought that the Foundation had actually hired one of the high school applicants, but clearly he was wrong.
Back to the issue at hand: the abandoned minor tinkering away in his building in the middle of the night.
“Where do your parents think you are right now?” He asks.
“Well they’re dead so,” she shrugs, unbothered. “And the handbook said that interns are allowed to make their own hours.”
Tony vaguely remembers writing that rule. Some of his best inventions have been created at random odd hours of the night, so he wanted his employees to have 24 hour access to the labs in case their brains worked like his. Apparently, this mysterious orphan kid has what it takes to keep up with him.
“What are you even making this for?” He asks, looking at the webbing. It looked exactly like the photos of Spider-Girl’s webs he’d seen on the news. Penny hesitates.
“It’s just for fun,” she averts her eyes. It sounds like an incomplete truth, but Tony won’t push her on it, not for now at least. He slides the webbing back across the table.
“Next time you’re working, come up to floor 25.”
Penny recognizes that floor as his personal lab, her jaw dropping slightly.
“How will I know if you’re working that day?” She asks.
“I’m always working,” he responds. “Go home, kid. Be safe.” He grabs the wrench he needed from a drawer and leaves.
“What the fuck,” he hears her whisper as he rounds the corner, heading back to his own lab.
Natasha’s next encounter with Spider-Girl is about as fruitless as the first one in terms of finding out her identity. As soon as the map of Spider-Girl’s activity is finished rendering, Natasha heads out to trek through the sketchiest back alleys and deserted districts in Queens. It’s almost 1 in the morning and she’s been tracing the different patrol paths for three hours now, and although she’ll never admit it to Clint, her knee is in agonizing pain. She’s about to call it a night when she hears the vigilante’s voice.
“Here, kitty kitty. Come here you adorable little baby,” Spider-Girl coos. Natasha follows the voice to find Spider-Girl, wrapped around a branch of a tree, trying to rescue a cat. The cat is huge and fluffy, lounging lazily in the tree 15 feet in the air, looking very unbothered.
“What are you doing?” Natasha asks. Again, she expects Spider-Girl to whip around in surprise as most people do when she sneaks up on them, but the vigilante barely spares her a glance before turning back to the cat.
“I’m saving this cat,” she climbs higher, pawing uselessly at where the cat lies out of reach. If she climbed any closer, the branch would snap and they’d both fall.
“Are you sure? Because it sort of looks like you need saving,” Natasha hoists herself up into the tree. She clicks her tongue against her teeth a few times and the cat meows back. Slowly, it moves towards her until it’s close enough for Spider-Girl to grab it.
“How did you know how to do that?” Spider-Girl asks when they’re both back on the ground, the cat bundled in her arms. The cat blinks lazily, indifferent to being pulled out of the tree.
“I had a cat once,” Natasha says.
“Aw, what was its name?”
Natasha falters. “I don’t know.”
It was almost a decade ago, she was holed up in an apartment in Romania because mission extraction went sideways and she couldn’t get a passport. Her place was on the third floor, but there was a cat that would sit on her balcony, meowing anxiously until she cracked her window to let it in. She’d set a bowl of milk and some of her canned meat rations every night, but never thought about naming it. After three weeks, her money and passport came through. She flew to another country for a new mission and never saw the cat again.
“I’m going to name her Beyoncé,” Spider-Girl announces, snuggling the cat up to her face.
“That’s a male cat.”
“Still works. Hey, do you pay taxes?”
“What?” Natasha bristles at the randomness of the question.
“I just wondered if you had to fill out income taxes. Taking out deductibles. I can’t picture superheroes doing stuff like that,” Spider-Girl says.
It’s immediately obvious that this kid has never paid taxes. Puts her around college age, possibly younger.
“No, I don't pay taxes. I don’t think I exist in most government records,” Natasha says casually.
“Cool. Cool cool cool.”
Natasha returns to the Tower to find Clint half-asleep on her couch with the Great British Bake-Off playing softly in the background. He stirs when she steps off the elevator, squinting blearily in her direction.
“Hey, where were you?” He asks, accusation and sleep heavy in his voice.
“Yoga.” It’s 2 AM. Clint narrows his eyes but doesn’t comment. “What are you watching?”
“The best baking show to ever exist, duh,” he replies. “Come watch.”
She does, waiting for Clint to call her bullshit and lecture her, but he just sits beside her until the episode is over.
“Goodnight, Nat,” he yawns, patting her shoulder on his way out.
She stares at the wall for an indecipherable amount of time before turning on the next episode. These people seem normal. Well adjusted. They’re always bringing spices in from their gardens, testing their home bakes with their families or neighbors.
The next morning, Clint finds her in the kitchen, where every surface is covered in dirty dishes and stickiness. At the center of it all, a pan of… Clint actually can’t tell what it is.
“What were they supposed to be?” He reaches for the tray and breaks off a piece.
“Scones,” Natasha mumbles, defeated. She stares at the scones that she spent the last four hours making. Instead of rising in the oven, they spread out, morphing together into a giant doughy mess.
“I’ve carried out twenty covert assassinations. Why can’t I make fucking scones?” She complains.
“And now you’ve assassinated my tastebuds,” he says through a mouthful of scone, his nose crinkled in disgust.
She wordlessly scoops up some of the flour sitting on the counter and throws it in his face, leaving him sputtering. He throws one of the scones at her shoulder in retaliation, which is somehow rock hard despite being raw in the middle.
Ten minutes later, Bruce goes to investigate the sound of loud Russian swearing in the kitchen and finds flour covering the counter and walls, Clint and Natasha hiding behind pans as they chuck scones at each other. When he enters, they freeze like two kids caught misbehaving.
“What’s going on here?” Bruce asks.
“I’m trying hobbies,” Natasha says defiantly, throwing one last scone at Clint.
“What about Spider-Girl?” Bruce asks. “I thought that was your hobby.”
“It was, before Natasha couldn’t figure out her identity,” Clint taunts.
“I’m playing it strategically, gaining her trust.”
“Well I think it’s great that you’re making friends,” Bruce says, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“You say that like I don’t have friends. I have so many friends. Oodles of friends,” Natasha says. “I’m just not finding out her identity right away because I don’t want to make an enemy out of her for no reason.”
“I think you don’t want to find out her identity because then you’re still stuck on probation–”
“Leave of absence,” she corrects.
“And you’ll be bored out of your mind,” Clint finishes.
Natasha can’t think of a response other than “nuh uh” and she’s out of scones to throw, so she says nothing.
“Clint,” Bruce mutters under his breath. “We’ve got to get to that meeting for that thing,” he looks nervously at Natasha, like it’s some secret she can’t know about. He is not subtle about it in the slightest.
“What meeting?” She asks.
“It’s for non-benched Avengers,” Clint says, wiping flour off his face with a hand towel. Her hand towel, and she already knows the asshole isn’t going to wash it.
“I am not benched! I’m slightly, barely injured and I am perfectly capable of attending meetings.”
Bruce and Clint exchange a look over her head.
“What?” She asks through clenched teeth.
“You are very…passionate about your job,” Bruce says carefully. “And I think if you knew the details of this mission, it would be difficult for you to focus on your recovery.”
Natasha narrows her eyes at him. Everyone is acting like she’s a kid who has to be tricked into eating her vegetables. She’s rational. She’s responsible. She’s in her thirties with an extensive knowledge on wine flavor profiles and a kickass career that her happiness is not dependent on. She can know what the mission is without needing to go on it.
It’s not hard to find out what the meeting is about. She climbs into the network of tunnels that Clint created in the ventilation system, listening from above as Coulson briefs her teammates on how stolen Chitauri technology is loose in the streets, being dealt illegally and used in gangs, blah blah blah. It’s boring as fuck and she isn’t at all interested. If Clint heard her say that, he would know she was lying, but he didn’t, so she can tell herself it’s true.
The Avengers suit up to leave for a mission investigating the source of the weapons and Natasha is alone at the Tower, restlessly pacing her bedroom and waiting for absolutely nothing to happen. Without quite consciously deciding to, she leaves to find Spider-Girl.
Local news reported Spider-Girl busting a trafficking ring two days ago, racking up 20 arrests. It’s impressive for a lone vigilante, almost on par with Daredevil. But Natasha saw how Spider-Girl held herself in the news footage, hands slightly trembling as she walked, not swung, away. The kid is obviously injured. But Natasha is not checking on her because they’re friends. She’s checking on her as a SHIELD agent and concerned citizen of New York.
She finds the vigilante sitting on a rooftop, staring out at the city, head tilted to the left like she was listening to Natasha sneak up on her.
“Hi, Ms. Romanov.”
“Hey,” Natasha lowers down beside her, swinging her legs carefully over the roof’s edge.“I saw your fight on the news, you doing all right?”
“I heal fast,” she says by way of answer, eyes still fixed on the landscape.
“Give me your hand,” Natasha instructs.
“Am I getting arrested?” Spider-Girl asks, only half-joking. She tentatively places her hand in Natasha’s, who pulls off her glove in a swift motion.
“Ow,” she hisses. Natasha turns the hand over carefully, examining the bruising and inflammation.
“Your index finger is dislocated. It looks like it healed with the bone out of place,” she comments. “Want me to reset it?”
“You’d do that?”
Natasha snaps it back into place without warning, earning another hiss of pain out of her. “I know it hurts, I’m sorry. Tape it to your middle finger when you get home,” she rubs her back consolingly, a long buried instinct resurfacing.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice sounding a little watery. There's a tight feeling in Natasha’s chest. This innocent child soldier is an uncomfortable echo from her past.
“You’re out here night after night, saving people out of the kindness of your heart. Why?” Natasha asks. To her credit, Spider-Girl isn’t caught off-guard by the question.
“It’s selfish really. I couldn’t sleep if I didn’t do this,” the girl admits, staring out at the city. It’s quieter up here, far enough away to muffle the sirens and cars honking. And despite never having seen her face, Natasha understands her like she’s known her for years.
“You know, you’re not a bad fighter, but you get overwhelmed when there’s too many opponents at once. You forget to protect yourself,” Natasha advises.
“How do I fix that?”
It’s a miracle this kid hasn’t died yet, running around in her pajamas fighting armed criminals with spiderwebs as her weapon. The kid needs a mentor. Natasha isn’t sure what compels her to do so, but she finds herself volunteering.
“Let me train you.”
The eyes in Spider-Girl’s mask somehow seem to widen.
“Really?” She practically shouts, her voice several octaves higher than it was a moment ago. She seems to realize this, coughing and adjusting her voice to a forced casual tone. “I mean, do you have time to do that with all your avenging stuff?”
“I’m on a bit of leave right now,” Natasha admits.
“Cause of your leg injury?” The girl asks, and Natasha is a little surprised that she picked up on that. The kid could make a good spy.
“Why are you working on your time off?” Spider-Girl continues. “I’m sure an Avengers salary can afford a vacation. Go to Aruba or something.”
“I’ve been.” Natasha had once assassinated a Belgian senator who was on vacation in Aruba in 1999. The closest she got to laying on the beach was hiding from law enforcement in a cabinet under a beachfront bar for seven hours. “It wasn’t that great.”
“How about Hawaii?” She suggests.
“That could be fun.” Natasha has always liked the idea of living near an ocean and being really good at surfing, but she doesn’t want to learn. She hates awkward stages where she’s not good at something yet. “But do you want me to train you or not?”
“Like an internship?” Spider-Girl asks. There’s a hint of laughter in her voice, like it’s an inside joke.
“More like a mentorship but sure. Meet me by the East Bay docks on Monday at 8. For now, go home and wrap your fingers,” Natasha says, walking back towards the roof access door.
“Thank you, Ms. Romanov!” Spider-Girl shouts.
“Call me Natasha. And don’t let me catch you trying to patrol injured!”
“Aren’t you currently injured?” Spider-Girl asks. Natasha frowns at the reminder. Why does everyone insist on continually bringing that up?
“My injuries aren’t serious, just serious enough to keep me out of training for a few weeks,” Natasha says easily.
“I can hear your ribs grinding together. They sound broken,” Spider-Girl says.
“Cracked,” Natasha argues, even though the kid is right. Then she goes back to the tower and thinks up training exercises instead of sleeping.