[right]December ████
Moscow

 [color=#b30000][i] Вти́хом о́муте че́рти во́дятся.[/i][/color][/right]

Tonight, she was a swan.


All long lines and dark magic, she moved through lights and shadows, a flurry of black and glittering crystal. She was treachery [i]en pointe[/i] in endless, perfect pirouettes, capturing a prince’s heart and tempting him ever forward with brightness and a laugh. He fell into her orbit, golden, shining eyes, hands on her waist, spinning, kneeling to press his lips to her hand.

Tonight, she was a spider.

She slipped through dark halls, only a sliver of a shadow darting past windows, fluttering past men with guns and eyes meant to find her. She was treachery in silent footfalls, less than a whisper as she stole through the nameless mansion, her blood singing with the ecstasy of fire. She stole into a room, to a man whose face she knew in a memory she could not find, and shot gold into his veins. Her thighs kept him from thrashing for several minutes until he stilled, his lips parting on a dying breath beneath her glove.


Tonight she was in love.
	
She was trapped in his orbit, emerald eyes tracing his jaw, fingers trailing down his chest and voice pitched low. She was wrapped in furs and jewels, laughing at the world, light and free, hands pulling at a crimson necktie, mouth angling under his, tongue stroking deeper with love and hope and [i]love[/i]—


Tonight, she was nothing. 

There was red and smoke and thoughts chased away by blood screaming through her veins. She was staring at things without faces, a father-not-father whispering praise into her ear, learning things only to forget ever having learned them at all, locked deep in hollow bones that she did not own.

[hr]
[right]Post-Sokovia
Lisbon, Portugal[/right]

Clint filled the silence with familiar complaints. He’d said the same thing in Madripoor, once, wondering aloud why anyone ever wasted their money on useless fodder. She had looked at him curiously, still adjusting to life with S.H.I.E.L.D., and wondered if her handler was mad.

She knew better now; Clint Barton was absolutely certifiable. Her lips twitched into a smirk, eyes locked on their recon. 

[color=#cc0000] “Ask Pepper instead,”[/color] she remarked simply, [color=#cc0000] “She’s got better taste; Stark would just send you whatever is most expensive. She could even keep it secret.”[/color]

Unless Stark went looking for that secret, of course. Which he might do soon, if this mission took them much longer, if he heard that she’d been absent at the new facility. Natasha had left Maria with the simple assurance that she would return. Maria had simply nodded, placing herself like a wall between Natasha and the others. They’d ask questions, perhaps they’d think that she’d abandoned them, and there were few people Natasha would rather have running interference.

[color=#cc0000] “You’ve gone soft,”[/color] Natasha scoffed, although there was only humor in her voice. Acid green eyes flicked over to her grumbling companion, [color=#cc0000] “We’ve only been here a day. We’ve spent much longer, holed up in much worse places, on recon before.”[/color]

He wasn’t soft, though. Not in the way he should be. He should be home, reflexes transforming from combat to simple fatherhood. Beneath his complaints, she knew he could fly into combat at the drop of a pin, track targets with unerring aim. She knew his instincts almost better than her own, and knew exactly where she fit into the battlefield beside him. It was one of the things she [i]knew[/i] in her bones, a fundamental truth in her universe. 

[color=#cc0000] “Souvenirs,”[/color] Natasha deadpanned. Clint’s words weren’t lost on her, and she wasn’t sure what it made her feel. She was happy to be Aunt Nat, even if she didn’t deserve it, but there were more now, weren’t there? He and Stark and Thor had passed on their torches, made room for new blood. It was just her and Steve now, trying to build a team together. But they weren’t her…it wasn’t a maternal thing. It was a responsibility. But not as a mother; mothers didn’t raise children for war. Her calloused hands could not build.

[color=#cc0000] “We could bring them t-shirts,”[/color] she said with a wry smirk, [color=#cc0000] “I heart shady, Portuguese motels. I’m sure they’d be a hit.”[/color]