Bad Bitch ⋙ N.Romanoff

e i g h t

BAD BITCH
❝these were the women who knitted pain into glory❞

08. Meeting the Avengers

January 2017

The resounding echo of skin meeting skin made everyone in the room cringe except for Tony Stark. Tony Stark, as it usually played out, was instead left with a large handprint on his left cheek. His hand didn't even bother to touch his cheek in shock, face already knowing that the damage was done, but Svetlana seemed to only increase in anger until she was basically vibrating.
❝You dare touch my skin without consent.❞
They'd been in a room together for less than two minutes and the woman had already accosted one of the Avengers, Fury thought with disdain as he began to question his choice of help, but Tony hadn't seemed to take it personally. He usually didn't, he'd been hit multiple times before, but Svetlana's slap had been the highest on his pain thresh hold. The woman seemed to know exactly where on her hand to focus all of her anger and the billionaire didn't dare to imagine what it would have felt like if the woman had decided to throw a punch instead. As well as the overall power of her hit, the extreme speed in which she'd thrown it was frankly disturbing. The human body shouldn't be able to move like that, shouldn't have reaction speeds as quick as those, and yet Svetlana had managed to smack his cheek in under two seconds and regain her composure as well as that.
Natasha knew it would be a disaster.
She'd seen how Svetlana had reacted to Steve, seeming to mother him in some aspects, so she hadn't been too worried about the super soldier's health. Even if everyone believed the man to be invincible, Svetlana would have found a way to hurt him if she'd found him dislikable to be around. It was a slight relief to not have to break up a fight as explosive as one between Steve and Svetlana; something that could only be fatal. Yet, Natasha hadn't known how Svetlana would react to any of the others.

Upon walking in, Natasha had kept a close eye on the woman. She noticed the smaller aspects that most didn't. She noticed that the woman had put on a few pounds, a sign that she was in safer conditions than she was the last time they'd met, and seemed to be looking healthier. She noticed that the woman had come wearing large sunglasses, objects she only ever wore when she was nervous about an event, and that she had been crying a few minutes previous of walking in. Natasha didn't ask questions, it wasn't her place, but the old part of her ached to be able to smile and make everything in Svetlana's life better.
The woman didn't seem too hostile. Sure, she'd glared at everyone in room individually, completely missing Steve to her amusement and annoyance, and spoken nothing since she'd walked in but Natasha was glad that she hadn't needed to attempt to pull a murderous Svetlana off of one of her colleagues.
That was, until, Stark had opened his mouth and, once he'd gotten no response from the woman, tried to grab her attention by touching her waist.

Natasha knew Svetlana had issues. So did she. Yet the only issues they didn't share was Svetlana's inescapable fear of not having control of her body. Since her induction into Hydra, on her fifteenth birthday, she'd sworn to never let a man touch her without her consent and she'd been successful up until that moment.
The redhead couldn't help but feel slightly proud that Svetlana had only slapped Tony. The woman was capable of far more and was obviously being easy on him to escape his death on her hands. Perhaps it was that Svetlana knew Tony hadn't meant to trigger a tsunami of flashbacks and certainly hadn't meant the touch to be anything but a show of his annoyance,