Chapter Text
Clint dumped the file unceremoniously on Natasha’s lap as he dragged himself through the living room on the way to the couch. She raised an eyebrow at him as he flopped onto the couch face first, ignoring the careful stack of papers, photos, and maps Steve had arranged. Steve’s mouth opened and shut like a fish, and then he slumped a little, looking at Natasha for help. Everyone always looked to Natasha for help when it came to Clint these days. They used to go to Clint for help with Natasha, but since they became the Avengers, not just two highly trained specialists in a sea of overly intense talented people with a penchant for the dirty work not even the United States government would take on, she solved the puzzle that was Clint Barton. She solved this puzzle every day, again, and again, and again. Some days, pieces were missing, but she made do. She was Russian, after all.
“Steve was using that couch, you know,” she said lightly, opening the file he dumped on her lap.
“I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered again the throw pillows Pepper so carefully chose, not knowing that they’d be subjected blood and saliva, at the least, on a nearly daily basis. “When did I last sleep?”
Natasha checked her watch. “Two nights ago. But that’s not our fault.”
“Tash,” Clint said, cracking open one eye. “If you got a call that your—if you got a call that I was alive when you thought I was dead, wouldn’t you also go halfway around the world to see me? If the answer is no, please lie to me.”
The corner of her mouth lifted just slightly. “Yes.”
“Now I can’t tell if you’re lying or not,” he groaned. He pulled a now bent photo out from under his elbow and tossed it onto the floor. “That’s yours, Rogers?”
“All of it,” Steve said calmly. “Everything on that couch.”
Clint rolled sideways, and Steve reluctantly tugged each pile free and back onto the floor. Natasha stopped watching the lines of Clint’s face relax into slumber and went back to the file he gave her. The front of the file had OPS: AJ-17-1904 TOP SECRET stamped in the top right hand corner, as did every paper inside. The first page was a picture of a gorgeous young woman with dark wavy hair, a firm set mouth, olive skin, and eyes that had seen far too much in a world that hates for women to see and understand.
Sarah Manning DOB: March 15, 1984 ASSOCIATION: LEDA
“She your new partner?” Natasha asked, glancing up but Clint was fast asleep and snoring, his drool leaving a darkening spot on the pillows. Pepper was going to kill them.
“What is it?” Steve said, still sorting through files. It drove Tony nuts that Steve still liked physical copies of everything, but Natasha understood. Some things were better understood when held in your own two hands.
“Not sure yet,” Natasha said, and flipped to the next page. At the top of the page was the picture of another young woman, who looked identical to the woman on the first page, but this one had a different name, look in her eyes, hair style, and birth date. Natasha slowly pulled the two papers apart and held them side by side. She stared at them for ten seconds then said, softly, “Well.”
Steve didn’t look up but said, “Now you sound like you know.”
Slowly, Natasha slid off her chair and sat next to Steve on the floor. He stopped rearranging his own pictures and notes to look at the file in her hand. Quietly, Natasha laid out the women’s files side by side, and added the six other identified women on the rug next to them. Silently, she and Steve stared at the identical women with different birth dates, birth locations, hair styles, and faces, but yet, the same face. Repeated over and over again. Natasha touched her own face with light fingers, wondering what it was like to know someone else shared the same reflection as you.
“A really good con artist,” Steve said at last. “The most reasonable argument is the simplest.”
“Two weeks ago, SHIELD was destroyed from the inside by Hydra, Coulson’s alive, Fury’s alive, we work with the Hulk and Ironman, you’re Captain America, and you want to go with the simplest rationale here?”
Steve’s mouth twitched into a smile. He glanced sideways and shrugged a little bit. “Okay. Fair enough. Theory?”
“Clones,” Natasha said softly. “They’re clones.”
“I thought we couldn’t clone humans,” Steve began to say, and then shook his head once and hard. “Of course we can. Don’t listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” Natasha said. “But why does Clint have this file?”
“Ask?” Steve suggested, reaching over to pick up Cosima’s file. He pointed to a line at the bottom. “Health: unstable, critical. Think it’s a Hydra project?”
“Not sure. I’m going to read. Let Clint sleep a little,” Natasha says, sinking back against the chair and pulling the rest of the file onto her lap. There were hundreds of papers not including the women’s pictures and information in front of her. “No sense in waking him up until I know what I’m asking.”
“He’s alright?” Steve asked, returning to his own project. Hydra killing SHIELD from the inside out was keeping him up at night. Natasha had grown used to sitting there with him in the evenings, helping him piece together the deception and the traitors’ recruitment methodology. He’d spent a few weeks with Sam, but returned without his sidekick and no explanations. Natasha wasn’t one to pry. Steve would talk when he wanted to talk.
Natasha glanced at her partner passed out on the couch. “For a given definition of alright.”
Steve glanced at her. “And you?”
She wasn’t alright, but Steve didn’t need that on his plate. She gave him a small smile. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
She meant that she hadn’t fled when she testified, undermined all of her covers, put herself—and the rest of the team—in imminent danger. She meant that she had chosen to stay and face the aftermath, even when it went against all of her instincts. She meant that she recognized there had been a choice at all.
Steve studied her for a long minute, and then turned back to his own puzzle. “You are.”