Hey Kid? Wrong Number.

cheering up nat

Natasha's POV

My breath came out in short, sharp bursts, and my ears were ringing so much it sounded like an anvil chorus in my head. I leant over the balcony of the Avengers Tower, feeling like somebody had dropped a pound of lead into my stomach. I felt sick; wrong, somehow, like I was about to throw up. Gasping for air, I clutched the balcony banister so hard my knuckles turned white, the world spinning below me.

Tony couldn't have known. Nobody knew - nobody except for Bruce and Clint, anyway, the people I trusted most in my life. I couldn't get my head around the fact that Tony Stark, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist - knew the secret I'd been keeping hidden under tight lock and key for my entire life.

It had happened at a graduation ceremony - all of the girls who'd survived the Red Room's training had to attend. I'd been so relieved when I passed - the training was over, but the ordeal had just begun, and I had hoped that the rest of my life wouldn't be as bad as what I'd endured as a child and teenager. After we'd gotten our certificates, we'd been drugged - something slipped into our drink. Then, we'd been carried off on stretchers and put under surgery, waking up after a horrific and painful operation to discover that we could never have children.

I hadn't been so devastated when I'd realised that at first - I was only nineteen, of course, and had no plans of starting a family. To be honest, I'd been relieved. I'd never wanted kids, they freaked me out, and plus, I could never be a role model for a child to look up to. For ten painful years living as an assassin, I'd never truly thought about it, at least, not until I'd joined S.H.I.E.L.D, and met Clint's kids.

How Clint could pull off being an assassin, a husband and a father astounded me. He must be so scared every time he left - to leave his kids with the knowledge that he might never come back? I couldn't wrap my head around it. I began to play with them, befriend them, and after about a year knowing Clint and his children, I began to feel a loss so painful it made me collapse - literally.

I was on a mission in Budapest with Clint. I can't provide the exact details, but it had something to do with tracking down a notorious mafia boss who enslaved children, and we had to get them all out of a building before it exploded. After a whole lot of strange things such as dance-battling, drinking potato vodka, flirting with obnoxious guards and knocking out a gang of drug dealers with a bit of uncooked spaghetti, I had the boss cornered. I was about to kill him and he was surrounded, he had nothing else to do except wait for when I pulled the trigger. I was about to do it when a little girl ran into the circle of agents and screamed, "Don't hurt my daddy!"

I looked at the girl. She looked at me. Maybe it was her appearance that made me collapse - she had curly red hair bouncing on her shoulders and big green eyes that had seen more than any child should have seen. She had a petit nose and bow-like crimson lips, and her face was shaped like a heart. She stared me down, not balking in the face of danger, and whispered, "I have nobody else."

I remember gasping and dropping the gun, then collapsing to the ground. I remember not being able to breath, and clutching my stomach as I vomited. I remember Clint taking me in his arms and asking if I was okay, burying my head in his shoulder. The loss I felt was so raw that I couldn't say anything, couldn't even breathe.

After Budapest, I couldn't look at families without feeling sick. I started to distance myself even more, especially from Clint's kids. They were sad that I never visited, asking when "Auntie Nat" was coming back, like little annoying baby birds. I ignored them and watched them grow up from a distance.

Now I was feeling that loss again. I'd kept it bottled up for so long, but I couldn't ignore it any more. It all poured out of me, and once again, I couldn't breathe. I leant over the balcony, my stomach hurting with the faint ghost of the operation all those years ago. It was weird this time, though: it wasn't only my loss. I was feeling Ellie's, too, the hurt she must have felt about losing her parents and what would have been her baby sister. I wasn't crying, but my sadness was so much more than that.