"Have you taken your medicine today, Natalia?"

It's a man's voice, far away and speaking in her native Russian tongue. She opens her eyes, but sees only darkness.

"Natalia."

The voice is muffled as though she's underwater. She tries to sit up, but an unknown force has her body frozen to the bed. Natasha closes her eyes and tells herself it's all just another nightmare. She will awaken soon, safe and undisturbed in her own bed.

Cold fingers dance across her cheek, sending a shiver up her spine.

Natasha opens her eyes, but everything around her is pitch black. The fingers move to her neck and her throat feels tight. She's not breathing and her brain is screaming at her to wake up. Natasha closes and reopens her eyes, but it's not working. It feels like a weight is pressing against her chest and as much as she tries to flail her limbs, nothing's moving. She hears the painfully real sound of wheels squeaking against a freshly polished floor, followed by something light clacking against a metal surface.

"Hold still, Natalia," the voice urges in stifled Russian.

Her mouth gapes open and closed as she struggles for air. Suddenly, she can see a set of perfect white teeth looming over her with a sinister grin. Then comes a stinging prick against her neck.

Natasha finally finds her voice as she bolts up in her bed. She takes several deep breaths in as she warily looks towards the pale yellow light streaming past her curtains.

A nightmare.

She grabs her phone off the nightstand. 4:48AM. There's no chance in hell she's falling back asleep again, so she decides a hot shower might be a good start to her day. She gets out of bed and despite the chill in the air, her damp cami top clings to her body.

She should probably be concerned, but this isn't the first sleepless night she's suffered.

Natasha shuffles to the bathroom, her brain so focused on her nightmare that she could care less about the icy tile freezing her feet. Of all nights to not get any sleep, it has to be on the day of a job interview. Her prospective boss seems keen on having her at his investigation agency, even though she has no birth certificate, no personal records… Nothing but her name and a brief story of how her entire past was burned up in flames.

She enters the bathroom and lets the shower run near scalding while she begins to undress. What her possible employer doesn't know is that she's the one who started the fire. It would make for an interesting story, though-a sixteen year old mixing up a special Molotov cocktail for the bastards responsible for ruining her life.

But that wasn't the whole story.

She purposely burned down and killed the seven men in charge of a criminal organization out of self defense… but she also killed twenty-seven other women whose lives were just as fucked up as hers.

Natasha Romanoff was- is- a murderer.

And she regrets none of it.

A small smile forms across her full lips as she steps into the steaming shower. She'll have a guaranteed job if she tells Chief Fury that.

"I really should turn you away. I think you know that," Nick Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Behavioral Science unit begins.

Natasha focuses on his good eye, though part of her brain is occupied with just how he got that patch over his left eye… "I know, sir," she answers. There's a thin, jagged line that goes from his left brow and stops at the top of his cheek. The scar is lighter than the rest of his naturally dark skin. It's a knife wound, most likely one that took his entire left eye with it…

"But I make the decisions around here." Nick laces his fingers together as he leans forward. He knows that the redhead's listening, but there's a distant look in her eyes. "And I'd like to have you on my team.

Natasha leans back in her chair and crosses her legs beneath the desk. "Even after I mentioned having no records, no educational background…"

"I know you're an intelligent woman," he states. "Your test scores are the highest I've seen in a long time."

Natasha arches a brow.

"This facility you mentioned growing up in," he continues.

She purses her lips and grips the armrests.

"They seem to have educated you well enough to get you here today…"

Can one man be so trusting? Not that she revealed the full details of her life story, but she knows the world is a cruel place. "And you really believe in my story, Mr. Fury?" Natasha coolly asks. "I mention some organization that I could have made up, but you seem to believe me." She's throwing herself under the bus now, but she's curious to know what's driving this man.

"I know it's real." He looks her dead in the eyes and hears her voice catch in her throat. "Paid a trip over there myself after hearing your story." Nick relaxes in his seat, not once losing Natasha's stare.

Natasha holds her breath and all she can hear is her heart pounding in her ears.

"You were too afraid to tell me what happened to you over there," Nick calmly continues. "By the looks of it, Ms. Romanoff, something has you scared."

"I-it was a school," Natasha chokes out. "They took me in after my parents died."

They were affiliated with the KGB, human experimentation, education… Nick doesn't dare speak a word of what he dug up. The woman sitting before him looks like she's seen a ghost. "You weren't the only survivor in that fire, Ms. Romanoff."

Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

"I asked handfuls of locals if they knew anything." He lowers his gaze. "Then there was a young woman, looked to be your age."

Natasha lurches forward in her chair and presses her hand over her mouth.

Nick watches her, his heart feeling like lead. "She had the same look as you do now after mentioning the place… But she talked." What Nick heard from that woman made him sick to his stomach. Daily medication…

Natasha's stomach churns and she feels her breakfast threatening to come back up.

High test scores to earn dinner…

Her chair screeches against the tile floor as she flees the office.

Rape.

The door shuts with a slam that knocks a frame off the wall.

Lobotomies… Nick wonders how Natasha can find it in herself to live after all she's suffered through. He spins around in his chair to stare out the window. The sky is a dull grey. Maybe the first snow of winter will fall soon.

After several moments, the door creaks open, then closes. "I'm sorry," Natasha breathes. She returns to her seat and focuses on smoothing out her skirt.

"You're sure you can handle field work?" He turns to face her once again. There's still a lack of colour in her cheeks, but at least the fear in her eyes has disappeared.

"I wouldn't have signed up for anything I couldn't handle," she responds in a hollow tone.

"What made you want to work here?" he prods.

Natasha eases back in her seat. It's starting to feel like a proper job interview rather than an interrogation. "I originally came here to dance," she softly admits. "I've been told that I was a beautiful dancer." To this day, Natasha will never know if the doctors from her past really meant what they said. They were most likely indulging her girlish whims, but she's watched herself dance while alone in the ballet studio surrounded by mirrors. She thought she was good, if that mattered at all. "I've always heard that New York is the place to be, but since coming here, I realized I was kidding myself." She pauses and notices that Nick intently listens with a small smile. "I stole some money before leaving my… former residence." She's taking a risk by admitting this to an FBI agent, but she doesn't think he'll tattle on her. "It was enough to get me a flight over here. The rest went to renting an apartment. Then I snagged a part time job at a book shop a few blocks away." She's sure she must be boring the chief, so she decides to make a long story short. "On the way home one night, there was a break in at a drug store nearby. I stopped to watch with the crowd. There was blood and glass on the ground. And I remember a woman's body being carted out. The victim"

Nick knowingly nods as he recalls the incident.

"You were there," Natasha continues, "and the guy with a goatee claimed that the victim was shot through the store window."

"Anthony Stark," Fury states.

"But that wasn't the case…"

"You shouted that the shooter jumped through the window, shot the girl, stole some cash, then fled," Nick recites. "Tony thought you were looking suspicious after that," he chuckles.

Natasha shrugs and stares at his eye patch.

"When I asked you how you knew, you said-"

"'Instinct,'" Natasha interrupts. "I can't quite explain it…" She hesitates. "It's like I can put myself in another person's shoes… I see through their eyes, even if the person's dead."

"You're empathizing with them."

"It all comes naturally to me…"

"Which is why I said I wanted you for my team," Nick recalls with a grin.

"I thought you were joking." Natasha tucks a short curl behind her ear. "But you were genuine about it… And I haven't met any genuine people, Mr. Fury."

"Nick," he corrects.

"I feel like I can trust you."

He continues to smile at her. "I'm glad you feel that way…" Poor girl needs someone to trust… His mind keeps wandering to the darker parts of what this 'Red Room' did to her. How old was she when it all began? Was she abused every single day? Does she still think about it?...

She carefully observes him and shifts in her chair. "You trust in people too much, don't you?"

"I like to think that I keep my friends close and my enemies closer."

"An enemy took your eye out, then?" The room falls silent. Natasha can't even pick up the heater's gentle humming.

"Yes," is all the chief says in reply.

"I really should go." Natasha stands, but this time, she's careful about not letting her chair screech. "You really don't need to hire me," she quickly adds.

"But I do," Nick answers. She stops to stare at him, this time in the eye. "I'd like you to start Tuesday."

Natasha bows her head and manages a shy 'thank you' as she reaches for her purse.

"Her name was Yelena."

Natasha eyes him curiously. She knows that name. The face of a pretty girl with blonde curls comes to mind at the mention of it. "Belova," she adds.

"Would you like to contact her?" he offers.

She purses her lips, then shakes her head. "I've put the past behind me now. But thank you. Nick."

Needless to say, her job on the field lasted only seven cases over the course of two months. She had always been right in the middle of the crime scene action until she began to feel used. Natasha quit her 'special investigator' status once the pressure became too much. They picked up on her special gift and abused it. 'Romanoff, do this,' 'Natasha, I need you on this…' She refused to be the FBI's toy. Let the people use their own brains for once… Nick Fury still wanted her on the team, though, so he offered her a teaching opportunity for an upcoming class in the winter. She accepted, though at the time, she was unsure if she'd go back to a crime scene again…

Slender fingers leaf through a collection of alphabetized business cards. They stop at the letter 'R' and a hand plucks the first one of the bunch. Then comes the exciting part, the recipe book. He feels like having beef tonight…