"Ha!" Skye crowed. Harry stirred, turning his head towards the sound.
"Congratulations." Natasha said coyly "You finally won."
"Not my fault that you're freakishly good at Go Fish. Was that one of the training requirements?"
"Red Room had us spend a month in a cabin in Siberia. We had a deck of cards to entertain ourselves. Wanna play spades?"
"I think I'll quit while I'm ahead."
"You're down five to one."
"Why are the two of you playing Go Fish?" Harry announced his wakefulness.
Their game was instantly forgotten as both women went to his bedside. Natasha crouched down to get a look at him, while Skye sat sideways beside him. "The internet's down." Natasha said simply.
"Underselling it… the internet sort of crashed, worldwide. Not enough computers survived Demogorge's EMP." Skye explained while Nat fussed over him.
"Oh." Harry had never been as computer reliant as most of the Avengers as he'd spent most of his formative years living in a castle, but even he could see that this was terrible. The worldwide economy could be crippled. "Are we doing something about it?"
"Stark's working on it." Skye said "Trying to get some sort of mass manufacturing setup working. Thankfully the big militaries, companies, and all of Wakanda were shielded, so… its salvageable." Imagining what this meant for the world was too much right now. He didn't want to think about the suffering Demogorge had caused even in defeat, the people who lost their livelihoods, or the setback it would be for humanity as a whole. It was easier to focus on the more immediate.
"I'm fine." He told Nat softly, at her unspoken worrying.
"Yeah, somehow I don't believe you." Her hand touched his face. He vaguely remembered it being badly burned, but the injury was already far less painful, perhaps his magic had replenished enough to start healing him.
"I mean, I'm still tired, but seriously, I've been way worse."
"You've been literally dead before, so that doesn't mean much." And Natasha nearly pouted. Harry found the expression so adorable that he just had to kiss it. "You're not going to distract me, Potter." She chided, but his persistence won out and she was indeed distracted for a time. The kiss was languid, lazy compared to what they were capable of. When they parted, Skye butted in, giggling, and took Natasha's place. Skye was much more enthusiastic, but the moment her hands started to wander, Nat intervened by grabbing her ear.
"Ah!" Skye squawked "Not cool."
"He's still recovering." Natasha said "And we still have things to talk about."
Harry's brain caught up "Shuri, is she okay?"
"Yes, she's back in Wakanda, a little bruised, but otherwise fine." Natasha explained "And Hela… there's no body, as far as we can tell."
Harry frowned, he was savvy enough to feel suspicious "So either she was vaporized, or…"
"She was very focused on you, so if she is still out there, I suspect we'll be hearing from her soon." Natasha grimaced.
"She's the second villainess who's had an unhealthy obsession with you." Skye smirked "Mr. popular."
"I could do without that kind of popularity." Harry grumbled. He stewed in his thoughts for a moment, before something else occurred to him "Fuck. Loki's running Asgard."
"Yeah." Natasha sighed "Thor and his team are planning something. I don't think they'll be on Earth for much longer." Harry wondered how they were planning on leaving, without the Bifrost. Perhaps Strange could help, though Harry didn't know if the sorcerer's portals worked over such a vast distance, or if Asgard, much like Hogwarts, might have protections against that sort of thing. It was another thing he was too exhausted to think about.
In fact, he was just plain tired. He yawned, and Nat chuckled. "Sleep." She crooned, stroking his hair. Skye settled in beside him, cuddling up to him and luring him back under the covers. Harry felt his eyes droop shut and slipped back into sleep.
-----
The world had descended into chaos. The solar flare the Demogorge had triggered unleashed a massive EMP on the planet. Commerce and communication were stunted, and the result was a worldwide economic collapse and breakdown of order.
The Avengers were needed, but not merely to fight bad guys. This was a far more difficult, less straightforward challenge. Yes, there were no shortage of terrorists to take down, many using alien technology, but the world's problems were far greater than a few rouge organizations. Governments clashed with protesters, governments fell, Iran had fallen into civil war. Famine had broken out throughout much of the world, and with it, disease.
Harry could conjure food and heal the sick until he dropped from exhaustion and not put a dent in the need. Transporting food, medicine, and seeds, and influencing weather patterns were a better use of his magic, but still not sufficient. Despite his newfound power, he felt frustrated that it still wasn't enough. He couldn't just snap his fingers and make the world's problems disappear, give everyone food, shelter, and security. It was a nice fantasy, but reality was often disappointing. It didn't stop him, from all of them, from trying.
It was at this inauspicious time that Thor and his Asgardian friends left. No one blamed him. As unstable as the situation on Earth was, Loki rulership of Asgard was nothing short of an existential threat. Loki had the Space Stone, and Harry didn't want to think what another alien invasion would do to humanity. Nick Fury had come to the rescue, dusting off an old spaceship that they had acquired decades ago during an encounter with a race known as the Kree. They certainly had questions about this, particularly about the why Fury had withheld the existence of Carol Danvers from them for so long, but the ship had been exactly what Thor and his crew had needed.
Natasha herself had been working herself to the bone. There were no shortage of ops- coup attempts to foil, terror cells to break up, technology to recover. It was easy for her, for everyone, to get lost in their work. Sometimes the Avengers felt like a family, and sometimes it felt like a job- right now it most certainly felt like a job.
It was in that haze of overwork and stress that Natasha stumbled across something that shook her to the core.
"What are we looking at here?" Steve asked. She'd assembled a small section of the team for this- just Steve, Harry, and Clint. She didn't think she could stomach airing this out to the entire team, not yet. To their eyes what they were seeing must look like a normal espionage op- infiltrating a military compound and extracting an asset- a programmer who worked for the German government. It wasn't the details of the operation that interested Natasha, it was the personnel.
It was the woman.
It had been years since she'd seen her foster sister, but she wouldn't forget her face. Natasha wasn't surprised that she was still in 'the business', so to speak. She'd assumed that she and the other agents had gotten out of the Red Room after Natasha had assassinated Dreykov, but all of them had the same set of marketable skills and that pointing in a certain career path. Natasha had gone to Shield, but presumably others would wind up in the KGB, or European or American intelligence agencies.
But something didn't seem right. Something about the way she held herself felt… off in a way that Natasha couldn't put her finger on. And the other agents on the op were all women, every single one of them. That was the detail that had originally led Skye to flag the video for review.
The pit in her stomach grew as she searched for any reason to think this was something else, anything other than what it appeared to be. She had thought that the Red Room was dead, that this part of her life had been put behind her for good. But no. It wasn't. Of course it wasn't, her past would always cling to her, spreading to everything she touched. In some ways she envied Harry. As terrible as it had been for him, he had gotten a truly clean break with his past. There was a point in Natasha's life where she would have killed for that opportunity, to be thrown into a different world where she could let her baggage go. She usually felt guilty after thinking this, knowing that Harry would give anything for any connection to the world he had left behind.
Natasha paused the video and zoomed in on Yelena. "Who is she?" That was Harry, sensing that this was someone important to her, even if he didn't know the details.
"This is Yelena Belova. She's…" She almost lost her nerve, if she said it, she would be opening a door she'd never be able to close. If she stopped now, she could keep pretending that her past as past, but if she told him, every dirty, bloody detail would come back. But… "She's my sister."
"Oh." Clint breathed. She could see the pieces coming together in his head. He knew more than any of them about the Red Room, how they operated. "That looks just like the Red Room."
"I think it is." She said quietly.
"I thought we destroyed it."
"Apparently we didn't."
Silently, Harry took her hand. She squeezed it back. He didn't say a word.
"This should be a high priority op." She said, her voice gaining in confidence as she spoke "The Red Room kidnaps young girls and turns them into assassins. They have a variety of physical, medical, and psychological techniques to enhance the abilities and the loyalty of their agents. Whatever the organization is planning… it won't be good."
-----
The Red Room had gone to great pains to avoid being noticed for years, but perhaps the chaos that had been unleashed around the world had given them a sense of security that prompted them to become bolder. That had been their undoing. Taking out the Red turned out to be easy, anticlimactic, even. Once they'd sniffed out the continued existence of the organization, the combined firepower that the Avengers could bring the bear made quick work of it.
Agents had all killed themselves rather than be captured, but that wasn't an insurmountable barrier. Wanda had gleaned enough details from the minds of agents while observing them from a distance to draw some conclusions. The agents weren't acting of their own accord, they were under the influence of brainwashing essentially identical to what had been applied to Bucky Barnes. Not only was the Red Room alive and well, but Dreykov himself was. Natasha had failed to kill him, and worse, she'd also effectively abandoned ever other agent to a regime far worse than the one she escaped.
But Wanda couldn't tell them everything, none of the agents knew where the headquarters was. That information had been purposefully kept from them, so they'd had to find a workaround. They staged a mission gone wrong, allowing her to be 'captured', though in reality, Harry could always apparate to her location in seconds. She knew exactly the kind of boon her capture be for Dreykov, if he could get an Avenger under his thumb, it would grant him incredible influence and power. Not to mention, she was sure it'd be personally satisfying for him to get the woman he tried to kill him back under his thumb. His spite and desire to humiliate her proved to be enough to override any better judgement about taking an Avenger into his secret base. It made her skin crawl, but the knowledge that as soon as they got what they needed they'd be lighting his ass up was more than enough to see her through.
Of course, the moment she was taken up (yes, up) to the base, which seemed to be inspired by Shield's Helicarrier, the big guns came out. It barely deserved to be called a fight. It felt too easy, like Natasha couldn't possibly expect her problems to be solved just like that. In a way, she was right, because while taking out the Red Room had been easy, the aftermath was another matter entirely. Shuri had developed a compound to cleanse Bucky Barnes of his conditioning, and with only some minor tweaking it did the same for the other widows. Suddenly, they had a legion of female assassins who to a woman had no place in the world and had to find their own way in the world.
The Avengers had offered support to all of them, but most had, now freed from their mental imprisonment, were stricken by a desire to be free. Most of the ex-widows did not want to be tied down to an outside organization, even if one that had freed them. Yelena was the exception. Natasha had been there when the antidote had been administered and when she came to. Her eyes fluttered as they darted across the room in confusion, before locking on her as understanding dawned. "Its you." She said, her voice raspy. "You actually did it."
In truth, she'd had less to do with the actual operation than she'd liked. But if not for her the operation never would have happened, and the plan had mostly been hers, even if most of the heavy lifting had been taken by Harry, Shuri, and Tony. "I thought you'd forgotten all about me."
Natasha blinked in surprise "What? No." She shook her head "I just thought you'd gotten out like I did. I didn't know that the Red Room still existed. I had no idea." It chilled her, thinking about how long her willful ignorance might have continued had she not gotten lucky.
Yelena had slotted into the team with a surprising amount of ease, warming up to Natasha's teammates in many cases more quickly than Natasha had- the exception of course being Harry, who Nat had leapt into bed with hours after meeting him. It was clear to her that Yelena, more than anything, wanted a family. Natasha was lucky enough to be counted among Yelena's family, and by extension she was adopting the Avengers as well.
Not that any of them complained. Her teammates had been expecting a dour, damaged assassin with a mountain of baggage, and hadn't been prepared for the reality in the slightest. Yelena had a love for life that was infectious and uplifting. She wanted to try new things- food, clothes, games, watching TV, group outings- all of it she approached with an almost childlike zeal and wonderment. It reminded Natasha so much of the girl she'd grown up with, and the fact that the Red Room had merely suppressed and not destroyed her spirit was more than she could have hoped.
But she paid for her good fortune in some ways. Yelena held a trove of stories- many of which Natasha herself had forgotten, and many of which were quite embarrassing. She also had a tendency to poke fun at her, particularly for her 'posing' during fights, which had sent Tony into fits. She was genuinely indignant over this "You're literally the biggest showboat on the team."
"Ah, but he has an excuse." Yelena had countered. Tony had crowed as she continued "He's an immature, billionaire playboy. Of course, he's going to pose."
"She's right. I just can't help it. I'm a hopeless case."
"I guess you just rubbed off on me." Natasha said, then looking aside to Yelena "He's like that, everything becomes three times less serious when he steps into the room."
"You know, I always wondered what your Avenger friends were like." Yelena told her "I saw the clips and thought that they must be exaggerating, that the Earth's Mightiest Heroes couldn't be so… silly."
"Sorry to burst your bubble."
-----
They were having a girl's night. It had been months of one damn thing after another, and things finally seemed to be settling down. No major crises, life changing revelations, or unexpected new enemies, just the normal level of everyday turmoil. The world had struggled but had found a new equilibrium. Wakanda had stepped onto the world stage in a big way and had become the world's new economic center by providing much of the world's renewed technological base. Humanity limped on, battered and bruised, but alive and rebuilding. It was time, finally, to relax a little.
The idea had been Yelena's suggestion, but Skye had hopped on it right away. Eventually, she had managed to rope Pepper into it and then involvement became essentially mandatory for every heroine affiliated with the team. They'd chosen an out of the way bar, and Wanda had worked her magic to make sure they weren't recognized.
The conversation, pitifully enough, started with work. It was like any other workplace, when they got together outside of work it still became the topic of discussion because it was the one thing they all had in common. That only lasted until they all had a drink in hand, at which point they loosened up.
And inevitably, the conversation turned to Natasha, Skye, and Wanda's relationship with Harry. Yelena knew about it but hadn't been able to pry the details for her adopted sister until now.
"It just happened that way." Natasha shrugged "We all knew what we wanted, and we weren't willing to get in each other's way."
"So do you three…" Hope Van Dyne gestured between them.
"You think I don't make the most of being in bed with these two?" Skye winked saucily.
"Okay, I can see it." Yelena nodded "He is cute. I'd hit that." Wanda tilted her head in interest, and Natasha didn't need to read minds to know what she was thinking. Wanda had made it clear that she was interested in inviting someone else into their sex life, if on a temporary basis. She could see how the thrill of bringing a new person into their bed would be particularly exciting for her, but Natasha had been resistant up to this point. She wasn't opposed in principle- after all she had agreed to this arrangement in the first place- it always felt like too soon. She didn't want an opening of their relationship to be something done on a whim.
"Like, he's a perfect gentleman. And has a great butt. And I bet the magic is great during sex." Like a true Russian, she'd gone hard on the drinks, and the alcohol had clearly loosened her lips. "And there's something attractive about power, too, and since he's the most powerful Avenger…"
"Hoo, those are fighting words." Natasha whistled.
"With modifications the God Buster suit has a chance." Shuri insisted.
Yelena rolled her eyes "You're dreaming. Harry could just… teleport you to space or something."
"It'd be able to fly back!"
"Please." Wanda shook her head "The runes on that thing are good, but we were both able to defeat the Hydra constructs."
"So, are you volunteering yourself?" Hill raised an eyebrow, and Wanda put up her hands in surrender.
"Doctor Strange might be able to beat him." Hope offered.
"Not without the Time Stone." Yelena scoffed "That's cheating."
"Well." Pepper offered "Carol Danvers was apparently able to destroy an entire alien fleet in minutes, so perhaps…"
"Well, if she wants to show up, sometime, anytime, to help us with our problems maybe I'd consider it." Yelena's words slurred slightly, a combination of her passion and her inebriation.
"Harsh, but fair." Shuri nodded.
"But seriously." Yelena segued "If Harry's taking more offers I'd be up for it." Hill choked loudly on her drink.
Okay, how much had she had to drink?
"Get in line." Shuri coughed. Wanda shot Nat a self-satisfied look that screamed 'I told you so'.
Natasha put her head in her hands "Please don't proposition my boyfriend. I know we were both raised by wolves but that's basic etiquette."
"A serious violation of the girl code." Skye nodded sagely. "Besides. Our official charter states that we need a sober, private discussion with unanimous consent before any other sexual partners are invited."
"Is that, like, written down?" Hill asked, to which Skye waved her hand dismissively.
"Alright, new topic of conversation." Natasha announced loudly, and the force of her voice momentarily silenced the rest "What do you think Yelena's call sign should be." It was the best thing she could come up with in the spur of the moment. They were planning on going public with Yelena's addition to the Avengers shortly, so it was an open question. Thankfully, her genuinely drunk companions quickly latched onto it.
"Like… what do you mean?" Yelena asked.
"Well." Natasha placed a hand to her chest "I'm Black Widow. Harry is Magic. Tony is Iron Man. Skye is Quake."
"Hate that name." Skye pouted.
"It's literally what you do." Pepper said.
"Exactly, boring." Skye took a long drink. "I had all these ideas, but nooo."
"We weren't going to let you have profanity in your superhero name."
Yelena ignored the byplay, seeming to be in genuine contemplation. "Okay, I got it." She said, and Natasha raised an eyebrow, sensing mischief "My superhero name will be… Black Widow."
Shuri sniggered, and Natasha sighed "You can't just… take my name."
"Oh, I'm not going to take it from you. We can both be Black Widow."
"There's nothing in the rule book that says you both can't be Black Widow." Hill offered, to Yelena's delight.
"No, I'm going to veto this right now." Pepper interjected "That'd be way too confusing, chose a different name, Yelena, or convince your sister to change hers."
"See, killjoy." Skye said.
"Alright, alright." Yelena conceded "I'll find my own name. Something else spider related." Natasha relaxed, sitting back in her chair and taking a sip from her drink while the conversation moved on.
It was nice, to have a family. Even if they drove you insane.
-----
When Natasha returned to their shared quarters, she was surprised to see Harry still in the living area. "Don't tell me you waited up for us." She teased him. She was feeling tipsy but hadn't let herself become unconsciously drunk- unlike Shuri, Yelena, and Skye. The latter of whom had been right behind her with Wanda, but Natasha wasn't exactly surprised that she'd gotten sidetracked. Perhaps Skye was attempting to make out with her, or perhaps they'd taken a detour to a bathroom to purge themselves.
Harry looked at her, and his expression was altogether more serious than she'd been expecting. "What is it?" She asked, worried.
"Oh, its not bad." Harry rushed to assure her "But its big, and I'm not sure how to bring it up."
"Well." Natasha slunk over to him and wrapped her arm around him "The beginning's usually a good place to start."
"Okay. Um, so I was working in Calcutta today. Hospital work."
"Healing the sick, such a hero." Natasha hummed, placing herself in his lap. She was just the perfect level of intoxicated to be able to fully enjoy that lack of inhibition.
Harry chuckled without humor "Yeah. The hospital had been bombed. Some sort of doomsday cult we should look into. There was a man who was on the table for a heart transplant, but the replacement was destroyed in the bombing."
Natasha tightened her grip around him, thinking he needed comfort, thinking that he'd lost the patient. "I'm sorry."
"No, you don't understand." Harry shook his head "I was able to heal him. I grew him a new heart. I was dead tired afterwards, but I did it."
"Oh." Something was telling her this was important, but her brain was too deep in the pleasant haze to connect the dots.
"Natasha." He said, his voice filled with hope, trepidation, and a dozen other things she couldn't identify "What if I can do the same for you?"