Giving me to you

June

Natasha never thought reunion would come like this. 

A pale, familiar face. 

Blood, trickling, being slowly sapped away, collected into containers like collecting rainwater.

Aria's blood also has healing powers. They couldn't use her, so they decided that they would use her blood.

After years of speculations with Clint and Fury, they figured out that the Red Room was successful in whatever experiment they conducted on Aria. 

Natasha always wondered the pointlessness of the Widow program. Compared to the Winter Soldiers, to Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers, the Widows struggled to pass into the superhuman category. They were elite spies with long life and a refrigerated face, that seemed to be it. Aria was different. If the Widows were made to stand on the top tiers of the mortal spectrum, then like Bruce and Steve and even maybe Bucky, Aria had been pushed to a superhuman level. 

Or, one can argue, because the Widows were only mortals and stretched to the limits of their potential, the Red Room decided to create Aria, a fuelling station for the Widows, someone who can heal them both mentally and physically. Someone who can push them further.

But now, their most prized experiment sat with her arms hugging her knees, rocking backwards and forwards in a cage in a Hydra base, her eyes downcasted. 

Steve broke open the cage and Bruce knelt to tend to Aria, who looked on silent, as if they didn't exist.

Tony tinkered on a computer next to the machine, the whirring stopped. 

Silence fell, and no one was willing to break it, until the girl stopped rocking, her eyes staring at Natasha. She pursed her lips, and spoke. "Natalia."

"You know her?" Tony asked. "Care for some introductions?"

"I... Only passed her a few times in the Red Room." Natasha lied. "I don't know her well."

Aria's head bowed, her eyes casting to the floor.

Natasha pretended not to see.

It was better for the both of them if the other didn't exist, surely. Aria would not want to see someone that made her end up like this. Aria would not want to see the traitor, the backstabber, the person who brought her so much pain. Aria would not want the person who nearly killed her to call her a friend, would she? 

It resulted in a couple of sleepless nights, endless meetings, even more time in the archives, digging up a past that had been sealed off deliberately. That was when Natasha realised how little she knew of the whole thing, about the Red Room, about Dreykov and Madam B. She knew only pieces, which didn't help much when digging up Aria's past.  

Aria didn't help either. She didn't speak much, didn't remember much and didn't seem to care about much.

"I sometimes would regret my choice." Clint confessed during one of the sleepless nights that he and Natasha shared, enveloped in guilt. "You told me what kind of a person she is, but I couldn't trust her. 

Natasha couldn't blame him at all. 

She also couldn't tell him that Aria's situation was a punishment, a result to letting Natasha go with Clint so freely. 

Even if they did kill Dreykov, Aria and Dreykov's daughter Antonia had taken the brunt of the sacrifice. 

Yet Aria's trusting gaze, which followed Natasha and Natasha only, added to the guilt that clotted at her chest. 

Natasha avoided Aria with all the skills she could, until Tony and Steve came knocking at her door.

"We've had a breakthrough, finally, with all my genius and some help from Banner." Tony announced with his arms outstretched, then pointed a finger at Natasha. "You, lady, you are the key to all this trouble."

"What he means, Nat," Steve shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "Is that we think she trusts you a lot, and she might be able to open up to you, maybe find a bit of her former self."

"What he says," Tony nodded. "And also because she treats the rest of us like we don't exist."

"Look guys," Natasha swallowed the sour taste in her mouth. "I really don't think she wants to see me."

"I never took you as someone who lie to yourself, Romanoff." Tony raised an eyebrow, looking her up and down. "Either that or you are trying to make a joke." 

"What Tony means...." 

"She knows what I mean, Captain Icicle." Tony waved his hand, slightly annoyed. "No point to gloss it over. I've read the files already, you did something bad? Well, now's the time you can make it up to her."

"It's a lot more complicated than that Tony...." Make things up to Aria? If only the things that she did could be forgiven, reversed, but it was impossible. 

"Tony, please excuse us for a moment." Steve gently pushed Tony out of the room, ignoring the man's grumbling and protest. After the door closed with a slight 'click', Steve turned to Natasha.

"Would you like to tell me what's troubling you? I mean, sometimes it helps, talking to a friend."

Natasha didn't tell him the whole story. 

She didn't tell anyone the whole story. 

She told him how when she and Clint planned to kill Dreykov and escape from the Red Room, they could have taken her with them. 

She told him about her own betrayal, how she caught Aria on unawares the day of their escape, how Aria fell limp in her arms with no resistance, only a glint of surprise in her eyes, Natasha's widow bite pressed against her back.

She told him about S.H.I.E.L.D's evacuation helicopter, how Aria was waiting for them on the grey, hard concrete rooftop, how her hand trembled and how Aria's face was deadly pale. 

Aria knew that she killed Antonia, Dreykov's innocent daughter.

Aria's last orders were to terminate her, on the spot. Madam B seems to think that Aria could eliminate her and Barton both. 

Perhaps she could have, but Natasha would never know.

Because Aria lowered her pistol, letting it drop with a clear clatter, Aria didn't even touch her poison, which she could use as well as her healing powers. 

Aria stepped back, her eyes glued to the floor. 

As Clint and Natasha hurried past her, the wind carried Aria's voice to her ears. "Be happy, Natalia."

Natasha abandoned Aria to die, but Aria lead her to a new life, a new beginning. 

Natalia, the name that had followed Natasha for so long, became a thorn in her side. But she was unwilling to abandon it completely, just like she couldn't ever forget Aria after that night.

"Call me Natasha." She said to Fury. Call me Natasha, because Natalia died on the roof that day. She died in Aria's arms, she died with Aria's voice in her ears.

Be happy Natalia....

How could I? How could I be happy when I sacrificed the only warmth that I received in all those dark years? 

How could I be happy, knowing that I brought so much darkness to the person that brought me life? 

How could I face her, pretend that everything is going to be alright, pretend that I have came back for her, after all that I have done?

And why, Aria? Why were you so kind to me? Why are you willing to sacrifice so much for me? Why....

Her memories drifted back to when Barton pulled her up into the Helicopter, her back to Aria, but him facing her, looking at both she and Aria with pity in his eyes.

"Hey, um... I think she's crying." Barton looked slightly uncomfortable.

What had she said back then, to cover up her guilt, to pretend nothing happened?

"That's impossible, you must be mistaken." That's what she had said. It was so cold, so distant, so like the place where she came from. "They don't allow tears in the Red Room."