The next morning Aria awoke to the sound of a British voice coming from somewhere she couldn't see. "Excuse me, miss, but you'd best be getting up. It's 4:45 am." Jumping up, Aria immediately got into a defensive stance and surveyed the room, but saw no one. "Forgive me, I am JARVIS. I am programmed into the tower. You can ask me anything you need to, as well as set alarms and contact people."
Staring up at the ceiling with narrowed eyes for a few minutes, Aria decided that JARVIS likely couldn't harm her, so she set about getting ready for breakfast. Usually she just has a mug of hot chocolate before working out, so being late to breakfast shouldn't be too much of a problem. Undoing her hair from her messy braid, she opened her closet and grabbed a pair of black athletic leggings along with an Avengers tank top. Tossing these things in, she went into the bathroom and braided her hair into a long french braid down her back. On her way out, she grabbed a zip up sweatshirt before turning off her lights and heading to breakfast.
As she was waiting for the elevator, a pair of footsteps came towards her. Tensing her body out of habit, she looked to the newcomer. She recognized the newcomer as Wanda from when she was first recruited for the Avengers. Nodding to her, she stepped forward as the elevator doors opened.
Stepping out of the elevator into the big communal kitchen, Aria was greeted by the sight of a few people sitting around a table and a few people at the counter in the middle of making breakfast. Sitting at the table was Steve, Wilson, and Vision. At the counter seemingly waiting for their toast to be done was Natasha and across from the counter was Tony with his head dramatically plopped on the counter. "I really don't see how you all choose to get up this early. It's not like training will take all day." The same dramatic man said with a very whiney voice for someone in his late forties.
Walking over to where Natasha and Tony were, Aria grabbed herself a mug and some hot chocolate mix from the cupboard. Placing these on the counter, she glanced at Natasha who seemed to be scrutinizing her. "Hot chocolate?" she asked incredulously with one eyebrow raised. Only slightly nodding her head, Aria went to the refrigerator to pour herself some milk to heat up.
After it was hot, Aria poured the milk into her mug and grabbed a spoon to start stirring. As she was doing this, Natasha left the room and sat in the room adjacent to the kitchen. Taking her mug, Aria went to sit next to Steve. "How'd you sleep?" He asked. "The usual, you?" "The usual." "What are we doing today?' "Well, I was thinking test out what you can do, a bit of light training and sparring. We'll start off easy." After saying this Steve winks and goes to the kitchen to clean his dishes.
Following him, Natasha gets up from the couch in the living room next to the kitchen and stands next to him. "Do you really think we should let her train so early? How do we know she isn't going to stab us in the back? Literally." As she was saying this, she ran the water so Aria couldn't hear her them talking about her. "We don't but we have to start somewhere. She seems genuine to me." Turning off the water, he turns to Aria and calls to her, "Meet in the training room in ten! Don't be late."
Deciding to get a head start so she doesn't get lost, Aria takes her mug and places it in the sink next to some of the other dishes and heads to the elevator. Stepping inside, she scanned the panel of buttons searching for any indication of where the training room might be. When she was halfway down the panel, Natasha walked into the elevator. Wordlessly, she points to the button right under the one Aria was looking at. Standing up, she nonchalantly presses the button as if she hadn't just been scanning it to find the correct one.
Stepping out into the training level, Aria looked around and was amazed by what she saw. The gym was massive; with multiple racks of weights and different ellipticals as well as punching bags to the right of the elevator. Along the right wall were bleachers and a few vending machines and water fountains. The area to the left of the door had mats along the floor for sparring. In the back left of the room was multiple shooting ranges surrounded by glass. Covering almost the entire left wall were loads of weapons consisting of guns, knives, swords, bows, and everything else you could imagine.
Walking to the sparring mat, Natasha jogged a bit in place and stretched to warm up and Aria followed suit. Five minutes in, the elevator doors opened revealing the entire team minus Thor and Banner. Thor was off doing alien Asgard things and Bruce was in the lab not wanting to partake in training.
"Alright, people! Let's see what the newbie can do." Glaring at Tony, Aria stepped up to him and although he was a good 4 inches taller than him, he still looked quite intimidated by her. "Right, ummmm well.... Natasha help me out here!" Sighing at him, Natasha gestured for Aria to come to the mat. "Alright, we'll start with some light sparring. Aria, remember, this isn't a fight to the death, we're not aiming to injure people here."
Squaring their shoulders and getting into position the two women started to circle each other. After a bit of this, Natasha struck first only to be immediately blocked by Aria. This went on for a good 45 minutes, neither of them backing down from the other. It was only when Steve decided to call it that they stopped. Both breathing heavily, Aria held Natasha's gaze which seemed to have mistrust and a small level of hatred in them.
"Aria, let's see how you do with weapon accuracy. Barton will show you." Leading the group to the weapon racks, Barton gestured to Aria to pick a weapon. Scanning over the array of weapons, Aria settled on a set of simple throwing knives. Experimentally flipping the blade in her hand, she nodded and walked over to the target. Smoothly and gracefully, all five of the knives landed in a straight line, one in each ring.
Stepping back, she turned to the group and looked at them with no emotion on her face. Tony looked terrified and took this as his queue to leave. "Yeah, looks like you don't need help here. I'm gonna go..." With that he almost ran to the elevator and out of the room. Looking around everyone's faces, Aria noticed that almost everybody had either fear, appreciation, or a mix on their faces. Everybody except Natasha that is. "Ok, I think that's it for today," Steve said as he stepped forward. "Tomorrow we'll do a practice mission to see how you work with a team."
After that, everybody dispersed to go do their own thing. Aria grabbed the knives and carefully placed them back in their correct spot before analyzing the rest of them. One at the far left caught her eye. It was a simple black skinny blade that could fit in a boot or sleeve. Taking a few, she walked back to the target and threw them. Gliding through the air, they silently stuck themselves into the target and waited to be taken out.
After a few rounds of this, Aria felt a presence behind her. Without turning around, she said, "Would you like something, or do you just wanna stand there?" "Just so you know, I was against letting you use weapons today. Don't feel too safe here. One slip up and you'll be out." Not responding, Aria placed all the knives on the rack. Waiting until she heard the elevator close, she blew out the breath that she didn't know she'd been holding.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a knife with a dark grey blade and simple ghost wood handle. Picking it up carefully, she gave it a few experimental swings with both hands and loved the way the weight was balanced. Not too much to be too heavy, but enough to do a good amount of damage. Almost like she fell in love, she knew that she wasn't going to separate from this blade. Slipping it into her sleeve, she headed back to her room to rest a bit before the rest of the day.
You can see the blade above
xxxxx
A/N: I'm going to try to get more interactions between Nat and Aria next chapter. Don't worry, they'll get together, but I kinda want Nat to take a long time to trust her. ;) Also, I wouldn't mind the knife that she has, I quite like it. As always, give feedback :)
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The Road to Redemption | Natasha Romanoff x fem!OC
FanfictionAria was only 5 years old when she was taken by Hydra and 19 when she got away. She was on the run from Hydra and never staying in the same place for longer than a year. Will that all change when she is discovered by SHIELD only 5 years later? Will...
