Chapter Text
She knows about Sharon long before she ever meets her. All the lower levels are talking about it, eagerly whispering about Peggy Carter’s niece joining the ranks. Top of her class in Ops school, smart enough to have been one of the science types, skilled enough to have gone coms, able to subdue a half dozen men half her size with her bare hands while diffusing a bomb at the same time; it was the usual talk.
Natasha was curious but not curious enough to seek her out. Besides she and Clint are busy in South America when Sharon makes her ‘debut’ and by the time they get back the talk is different. Sharon Carter is a cold hard woman, nothing like the plucky sassy aunt that people in Shield practically worshiped at the alter of. She was efficient, yes, but the word ‘bitch’ seemed to pop up a lot in conversations about her along with whispers of nepotism.
Natasha knows all about what bitch means when it comes on the heels of ‘efficient’ and cold. She’s heard it about Melinda May and about Maria Hill and even about herself before people realize she’s present and descend into awkward silence.
Natasha thinks it’s good company to be in.
—
Natasha is assigned as backup for Sharon on a honey pot mission. Natasha doesn’t do lead on honey pots and hasn’t since Clint and Fury brought her own; her body is a road map of raised twisted flesh and the kind of men who fall for a pretty face and big green eyes balk at the sight of healed over bullet and stab wounds, surgery scars, and places where the bone is knobby and not quite right under her skin from healing strangely.
She doesn’t mind her body and certainly doesn’t mind being backup, though sometimes she thinks its less about the way she looks and more about how careful Fury is with her. He’ll send her to kill and watch and steal without skipping a beat but softer missions…she sees him hesitate.
She doesn’t mind that either.
Sharon, unlike her, is all pale smooth skin over lean flexing muscle, long blond hair, eyes lined to look bigger and softer, and full lips that shine once she applies gloss. They’re in a hotel room getting ready and Natasha is watching as Sharon paces the room in nothing but a bra and panties, checking the wiring on her communication device. There’s something unassuming and lovely, almost delicate, about her on the surface but Natasha is trained to look deeper and so she sees the tightness in her shoulders and back, the rough patches on her palm from frequent gun handling, sharp and attentive eyes.
Sharon catches her looking, not that Natasha had been trying to hide it, and frowns. “Something wrong Agent Romanoff?”
It was the first time she’d spoken to Natasha since going over the basics of the mission and there was something defensive in her tone. Natasha cocked her head to the side, wondering how many of the other agents had given Sharon crap. Did they make snide comments about how unmarked she was compared to the rest of them, imply it was because she was Legacy and hadn’t earned her spot?
Natasha knew there were a lot of people who thought she was fucking Clint. Or Coulson. Or Fury or perhaps all 3. That, in spite of the reputation of the Widows, that she got special privileges and special missions and had risen through the ranks so fast on her back.
One day she would have liked to tell them that Clint was happily married and that Fury and Coulson might as well have been married just to drink in the shock.
“No.” She pauses before adding: “Agent Carter.”
She pushes a little hint of laughter into the last word and is rewarded with a soft snort. Sharon’s attention returns to the necklace in her hand and, once she deems it ready, she holds it out to Natasha.
Natasha slipped off of the bed and, once Sharon was facing away from her with her hair carefully pulled up to expose the elegant curve of her neck, reached around. The other woman smelled faintly of lavender and was warm and soft where she was pressed against Natasha, body shifting slightly with every breath she took.
Her skin was as soft as it looked.
Once the chain was fastened she stepped back and spun on her heel to grab her own dress. Their target would hit the hotel bar around nine, as he always did, and they had to be there first.
“You’re shorter than I expected. The way people talk about you you’d think you were ten feet tall and made of ice.”
Natasha stopped and glanced at Sharon over her shoulder. She was running her fingers over the small teardrop crystal on the necklace, eyes downcast. It would have looked vulnerable to most people but Natasha doubted Sharon would ever let someone see her that way if she could help it.
They couldn’t afford to be vulnerable in front of their peers.
Natasha smiled. “I’m not ten feet tall no.”
“But you are made of ice?” Sharon’s lips twitched up.
“Aren’t we all?”
“I suppose.” She didn’t sound sad exactly, more…wistful?
—
Sharon believed in goodness and duty and doing the right thing in a way that would be naive if it was anyone else. In Sharon however it was just…right. She’d grown up with stories of not just Captain America but the Howling Commandos, Howard Stark, Edwin Jarvis, and a woman named Angie that wasn’t in any records Natasha could get a hold of.
Amazing people who’d done amazing things just because it was right, but who’d also done many ugly things in the process. That was what kept Sharon from seeing childish or foolish; she knew that the right thing was often disgusting and hard and left you covered in blood and full of regret.
She wasn’t under any illusions but she believed anyway.
Falling for her was distressingly easy.