Being laid up with an injury wasn't something that happened to Natasha. Her enhancements usually made short work of wounds that would take an ordinary human months to repair. If her own biology didn't sort things out quickly, then the medical staff of the Red Room would speed things up. Not this time, though.

"The hell do you mean, I'm off duty for four months?" she growled at one of her handlers, hating that the ankle to hip cast on her leg took the edge off of her ordinary level of menace.

The scientist hiding behind Grigori explained, "The chemicals that you were attacked with are impeding your healing process. Trying to accelerate it how we normally do could catastrophically destabilize your DNA's integrity. It will have to heal on its own."

"But you said that it would only take two months for my bones to mend," she reiterated, voice tight with annoyance.

"The other two are for physical therapy, to help with any muscular atrophy. You have to be in peak condition before we send you back into the field," she gulped. "Otherwise you could just get injured again and spend even more time off duty."

She pursed her lips, but conceded. "Fine. What would you have me do for these four months that I'm not permitted to work?"

Grigori smirked, and she resisted the urge to break his nose for being smug.

"We've acquired a new asset that has been giving us some trouble recently, and the superiors think that sorting it out is a perfect job for you," he began. "A child with great genetic potential recently came into our possession, and has been augmented with superhuman abilities, but he's... reluctant to use them for the Red Room."

Natasha tilted her head, thinking. "I'll need a full background on him if I'm going to find a way to persuade him. What abilities does he have, and what orders has he been resisting?"

He scowled. "All of them. The whelp won't fight, even to protect himself. I'll get you his file, but the good doctor here would be more equipped to explain the nature of his abilities to you. I'll have the information and the brat conveyed to your quarters within the hour."

Grigori stalked off, and the scientist nervously straightened and tried to be brave without her human shield. "Erm, the boy's parents had him tested for the X-gene at a routine doctor's appointment, and we monitor for that kind of thing, to keep an eye on potential enhanced recruits. He's not a mutant, but he is a carrier of the X-gene— someone who would be a likely parent of a mutant child, but who would never mutate on his own. We have discovered through testing that X-gene carriers are more resilient to radical DNA changes, and more likely to survive experimentation."

Natasha tried not to think about how they would have discovered this, and very carefully did not confront her feelings associated with human experimentation— especially on children. Her tone was light as she asked, "How did you enhance him?"

"Oh, that's actually part of the reason that the superiors thought you'd be such a good fit to teach him," she said, brightening slightly in the face of Natasha's apparent calm curiosity. "They applied the Black Widow serum to genetically modified spiders that had been subjected to radiation, and then injected their venom into the asset. He acquired spider-like abilities, such as enhanced strength, better senses, and the ability to adhere to surfaces. He does not appear to have the ability to produce webbing or venom, but he does appear to have a slight precognition regarding immediate danger, which is quite fascinating—"

"They placed him with me because my code name is a spider?" Natasha interrupted, arching a brow skeptically.

"Well, yes— and because he has a variant of your serum," the scientist agreed, blinking. "They want you to bond with him, coax him to work for us and to embrace his latent... aggressive instincts. You've had the capacity to kill since you were a child, and they want you to try to unlock some of that in him. He has the power; it's just something psychological that's stopping him."

Natasha's skin crawled at the idea of turning another child into a weapon like her, but she knew that if he didn't make himself useful, the Red Room would dispose of him— or worse, break him down for parts and try again on another child. She would do this to help him survive, even if it was not an enviable way to live. She also couldn't risk pissing off her superiors until she was back in fighting form. God, she hated feeling weak.

"Why not brainwash him like the Winter Soldier?" she prodded, digging for information rather than actually suggesting they unmake the kid. The "like me" went unspoken, but it made the atmosphere uncomfortable.

"It's harder to make it stick with younger children," she explained, frowning. "Their developing brains are too malleable and they just undo every change. Neuroplasticity doesn't slow down significantly until the early twenties. And... he's incredibly intelligent. I was one of the ones who fought against more invasive mind control attempts in order to avoid brain damage. He could be a valuable intellectual resource to the Red Room someday."

She determinedly ignored the creeping edges of flashbacks to her own time being subjected to 'more invasive' mind control techniques. "How old is he?"

"Ten, but we got him at age eight. The difficulty in getting him to obey orders has been persisting for about nine months, and the superiors are at the end of their ropes with this one. You're his last chance to become a productive member of the organization before they decide he's a waste of resources."

Natasha nodded, pasting on a cocky smirk whose self-assurance she didn't feel. "I'm the Black Widow. I don't fail. If I decide he's going to listen, he will listen."

The scientist nodded, reassured, before excusing herself back to her lab. Natasha hobbled back to her quarters with all the dignity she could muster on crutches. The file she'd requested was on her bed, but the kid wasn't there yet. Good. She had time to do her homework, then. She lowered herself to the mattress, sitting with her legs draped over the edge of the bed and her torso turned towards the foot of it. She spread the papers of the file out in front of her, scanning for important information.

Peter Parker, age ten. Born in Forest Hills, Queens. Parents died in a plane crash two years ago, engineered by the Red Room, of course. Then he entered foster care and promptly vanished, listed as a runaway. He had close relatives in the same city, but the Red Room had ensured that they never got a chance to make a claim on Peter's guardianship. Made it look like a carjacking. The file showed some of his school records. He was a bright child with a particular gift for STEM fields, as evidenced by his grades and his science fair victories.

The file photo from his yearbook was— and Natasha had never, ever said this out loud in her life and likely never would— unbearably adorable. He had brown, slightly curly hair just long enough to touch his eyebrows, big brown bambi eyes behind thick, round glasses, a smattering of freckles across his round cheeks, and a precious smile that had the tiniest gap in the front teeth. He was a cute kid, and it made her stomach twist to think that he'd probably look nothing like that when he got here because of how the Red Room filed the edges of soft things into lethally sharp points. If nothing else changed, there would be no smile on his face. Experience had taught her enough to be sure of that.

She looked over the papers again, not gleaning much else from it other than the impression that he'd been a happy, healthy kid before this. That was too much to dwell on, so she put everything away and decided to read some Anton Chekhov poetry until they brought Peter to her. She only made it through a couple of pages before the sound of boots approaching her door alerted her to her incoming guests. She put the book away and pushed to her feet, standing at attention.

Her handler entered first, without knocking, followed by two guards who were dangling Peter between them. He did indeed look different from the file photo— his hair was chopped to a practical length, his eyes were dull with fear and exhaustion with no glasses in front of them, he was gaunt and pale with none of the freckles from the photo (it was unlikely that he'd seen the sun in months if not two years), and the smile was as absent as predicted.

The two guards dropped Peter on the floor, roughly sending him to his knees at her feet. He winced, but did not cry out. She gave the guards a flat, unimpressed look to avoid staring at the defeated child kneeling before her. He was clearly too weak to put up any resistance, and throwing him at her feet was entirely unnecessary. They had the sense to take a step back and duck their heads slightly. She looked to her handler, raising a questioning brow.

He understood what she wanted from him. "Your mission parameters are fairly loose, Widow. Get him to start listening to orders and put some fight in him. Your methods are up to you, and your resources are unlimited— within reason. Your time is limited to four months. If, by the time you are ready to reenter the field, you have the asset whipped into shape, you will continue to be responsible for his training until the superiors deem him fit for solo missions."

She nodded sharply. "Thank you. I'll take it from here, gentlemen."

They all left her alone with the boy, shutting the door hard behind them. He flinched at the bang and then cowered away from her as if he expected to be struck for flinching. She swallowed a pitying sigh and regarded him calmly. She waited for two minutes, giving him plenty of time to make eye contact on his own if he would. He did not. She'd have to be gentle with this one.

"Look at me, please."

He whipped his head towards her, gazing up at her with wide, wary eyes that lingered on her cast for a moment. Well, that answered the question of whether or not he could understand Russian. He didn't make a sound, though.

"Can you stand, Peter?"

He gaped at the use of his name, but he nodded quickly and scrambled to his feet. When he swayed, she steadied him. He jolted at the contact of her hand on his shoulder and stared at it for a second before remembering that she'd asked for eye contact and shooting his gaze back to her face. He seemed confused and anxious, anticipating some kind of pain. She let go of his shoulder when she was sure that he wouldn't keel over on her and sat down, patting the space beside her on the bed. He didn't move, curling his hands to his chest and tugging at the collar of his plain black shirt uncertainly.

"Will you sit next to me?" When he hesitated, she added, "I only want to talk."

Slowly, cautiously, he sat down on the bed, putting a good two feet of space between them. He didn't take his eyes off her, but she remained perfectly still with her hands folded in her lap.

"I'm going to ask you some questions, and if you don't want to answer them yet, you don't have to. If you want to answer the yes or no questions by shaking your head instead of talking, that's fine. You won't be punished for speaking or choosing not to. Do you understand?"

He nodded, drawing his legs to his chest and watching her with curious eyes.

"Do you know who I am, Peter?"

A head shake.

"My name is Natasha. Around here, I'm called the Black Widow. I'm a spy for a part of the Russian government called the Red Room that protects the interests of the country covertly. I'm the best at what I do, but I got hurt on my last mission, so my job while I get better is to figure out what's going on with you. My job is not to hurt you or scare you, and I don't want to do either of those things. In fact, I promise not to."

He was looking at her with something like wonder, and his shoulders relaxed a little, but he didn't come closer or let go of his knees. She decided to keep going.

"Do you know why you're here?"

His brow furrowed and he made a little so-so gesture with his hand.

"They want you to become a spy like me, and they want me to teach you how. They're upset that you won't do what they ask you, and they want me to find out why you're not listening so I can change your mind. I'm not going to brainwash you. I plan to change your mind just by talking. First, I'd like to figure out why you don't want to obey your handlers. I'm not mad. I just want to understand. Is it because this for Russia, and not America, where you were born?"

He shook his head, hugging his knees tighter.

"Is it because you miss your parents? Do you want to go home?"

Tears welled up in his eyes and he shook his head vigorously as he dashed them away with his sleeve. He buried his face in his arms, wrapping his hands tightly around the ends of his sleeves.

"I'm sorry to bring up painful memories, Peter," she apologized softly. "So you understand that they're gone?"

He nodded against his folded arms and lifted his face to look at her, lower lip wobbling. Telegraphing her movements, she reached out slowly and brushed a lock of hair over his ear. He leaned into the touch slightly, expression crumbling into grief. She held the position until he lifted his head and gazed at her beseechingly, eyes wet and red.

"I'm sorry for that," she told him sincerely. "I lost my parents when I was younger than you. I've been with the Red Room ever since. They trained me and gave me powers, too. I don't always agree with the way they do things, but this has been my home for most of my life. This isn't what you want to hear, but you get used to it."

He was guarded again, but the sympathy and the similarity of their situations had made him start to warm up to her, so he was still listening. She got back on track.

"Are you not listening to orders because you don't like it here?"

He thought for a moment before making the so-so gesture again before rethinking and shaking his head. She did her best to interpret that.

"So you don't like it here, but that's not why you won't follow instructions?" she tried, and she got a nod in return. "Is there something about the instructions themselves that you don't like?"

He nodded emphatically, letting go of his knees and leaning forward. He reached a hand towards her and she took it out of instinct, squeezing it. For someone who'd never had a chance to be much of a child, she was apparently good at comforting them. She tried for a smile and got a very slight one in return. She was making progress.

"Do you think you can explain it to me, Peter? Take all the time you need."

He was quiet for about three minutes, jaw working and expression shifting as though he was having a silent conversation with himself. Eventually, he began in a croak, "I don't want to hurt anybody."

His Russian was decent, though the pronunciation wasn't the best, likely due to the fact he didn't talk much. "Can you elaborate, Peter?"

He spoke haltingly. "After they— after I got these powers, I'm so strong that I can break concrete walls. If I hit a person like that, it could kill them, and I don't want to kill anyone. I'm... afraid. I'm afraid of how strong I am now."

This was an opening she could use. "If I could teach you how to moderate your strength, do you think you'd be more willing to fight? If I could show you how to not hurt your opponent any more than a normal soldier could, would you let me?"

"I— I don't know..." he hesitated. "That would be better, but I don't— I don't want to hurt anyone at all."

She nodded, pursing her lips. She told him what she didn't want to say. "Peter, if I can't convince you to learn how to do what I do, they could kill you. Or worse. I'm not ordinarily a teacher. This is their last resort before they do something drastic. I know you don't want to hurt anyone, but if you want to survive here, you're going to have to."

He whimpered and curled in on himself again, trembling. Her heart clenched to see him so frightened. She shifted closer and put her arm around him. He turned his face toward her and buried it in the crook of her neck. She patted his back consolingly and made soothing noises until his breathing slowed down.

"I wish it didn't have to be like this, but I'm trying to save your life, Peter," she sighed, rubbing his shoulders. "You don't have to decide today, but we don't have much time. For now, how about I get us something to eat and you can try to rest?"

He nodded tiredly against her neck, but didn't let go of her for another few minutes. She got him settled on her bed and made her way to the mess hall. Balancing two trays of food was a challenge, but she used the two cups of water and two cartons of milk as pillars to stack them without crushing the food. She endured the humiliation of struggling with this burden on one crutch as well as she could and managed to get it back to her bunk unscathed. The door was another story, but she only lost a little bit of water in the process. She set the trays on her desk and roused Peter by shaking his shoulder.

He flailed awake, but didn't injure himself or her, so she'd take the win. She was gentle as she told him that she had dinner for them and invited him to use the only chair in the room to eat at the desk. She was fine balancing her tray on her lap while sitting on the trunk at the foot of her bed. Peter was obviously hungry, but she encouraged him to eat slowly so he didn't make himself sick.

"Do they not feed you?" she asked with a touch of anger in her tone.

"Yeah," he mumbled through a mouthful of bread, "but not enough. I'm always hungry now, ever since the spider thing."

"I'll speak to someone about increasing your rations," she hummed, tearing into her own bread. "You'll have to take it slowly at first. Eating too much too quickly after malnutrition can mess you up."

"Yes, ma'am, Ms. Widow."

Natasha stilled and looked at him incredulously. He shifted self-consciously and fiddled with his fork.

"What?"

"Peter, you don't have to use my codename. You can just call me Natasha."

"Oh, okay Ms. Natasha."

She wasn't going to argue the point further, so she shrugged and went back to eating. She stacked both of their trays on the desk when they finished, then sent Peter to shower before bed, giving him her extra pair of pajamas and making a note to ask for some extra clothes for him if he was going to be staying with her. It didn't look like they intended to fetch him back, so it must be part of their plan for Natasha to 'bond' with him. Fine by her.

He came back swimming in her clothes, and she felt a fluttering in her chest at how young and vulnerable he looked. She covered it by instructing him that she didn't care if he didn't stay on his side of the narrow bed (perhaps slightly wider than a twin mattress) but if he kicked her cast in the night, he was getting thrown to the floor. He agreed to it with a comment that at least he would get a mattress and she had to fight down an impulse to chew out Grigori for how Peter had been treated. Of course he wasn't cooperating with the Red Room if they treated him like a prisoner. She'd at least had basic barracks accommodations at his age.

The poor kid was still tired, so he fell asleep before she did. This meant she was awake to feel him curl into her side sleepily, which made her insides go just a bit gooey. She hummed a Russian lullaby to herself and eventually drifted off despite being unused to a pocket of warmth pressed against her. If pushed, she might have even described it as nice.

~0~

In the morning, she rose before Peter and left to get breakfast, speaking to Grigori in the hallway when she ran into him on the way to the mess hall. She asked for the things she needed, hesitating before deciding to skip asking for another cot. She told herself it was because physical affection was important to emotional bonding, especially for kids. This would only speed up the process of getting him to trust her. She did ask for a small table and another chair, though, and managed to only sound slightly scolding when she spoke to Grigori about the dismal nutritional and sleeping arrangements Peter had been enduring.

She put a little extra food on his tray, and began the process of conveying it back to her room once again, this time with a bit more dexterity.

He was awake when she got back, though he still waited for her okay before heading to the desk. They ate in silence other than the 'good mornings' that Natasha had initiated. When they were done, she sat back on her bed, waiting for Peter to join her on his own for about ten minutes before huffing and inviting him directly. He sat cross-legged beside her, attentive. She decided she'd go ahead and try again to get him to train.

"Even if you don't want to fight anyone, I could teach you how to control your strength just for your own sake. It might be nice to know, no matter what you decide."

Peter regarded her thoughtfully before hesitantly agreeing, "Okay. I think I could try it."

She smiled at him. "Thank you, Peter. Let's head down to the training room and work on your restraint, then."

He followed right on her heels down the hall to the gym, and he only tucked himself closer when he saw all of the agents sparring on different mats around the room. He whimpered when one of them drew blood from her opponent with a long knife, and Natasha turned his head away with the free hand that wasn't holding a crutch.

"Don't look at them; look at me. You don't worry about what everyone else is doing. We're not going to be hitting any people today. You're just going to show me what you've got and then we'll walk your intensity back to reasonable levels."

"Yes, Ms. Natasha."

She showed him to the area where enhanced soldiers trained and instructed him to start at the lowest weight available to lift and then work his way up until it hurt to pick it up. He made it to the top weight with no problem, which was at least five tons. Natasha was incredibly impressed, but she kept her features blank.

"Okay, so you're pretty strong, but you managed to eat without snapping the fork in half, and you didn't hurt me when you held my hand. Have you ever broken something you didn't mean to?"

He nodded, looking ashamed. "Yeah, I've broken a few doors... and sinks... and guns."

"I'm not disappointed, Peter. I just need to know how far we have to go. Has it been a problem lately?"

He shook his head. "No, ma'am."

"Okay, then why are you afraid of losing control?"

"Because when I'm scared, it's harder. I'm not as good at it when I'm freaking out."

"Okay, here's what we're going to do, then." Natasha picked up a medicine ball, the heaviest one they had, and placed it on a stack of plyo boxes that was about five feet tall. She stepped back and gestured to it. "This is a person you have to punch to get past him and complete your mission. I want you to hit him in the face hard enough to work, but not hard enough to knock his head off."

Peter stepped up to the makeshift dummy, drew back his arm, and threw his fist forward. It connected with the medicine ball, splitting the vinyl and sending sand spilling everywhere. She had a broom and pan fetched, and Peter cleaned it up. She replaced the medicine ball with the next heaviest one and asked him to try again. He did, and this time he didn't break it, but he did send it flying into the opposite wall with a hard smack. He left to retrieve it, and put it back on the stack himself, looking to her for guidance.

She moved forward and corrected his form, showing him how to throw a good punch without hurting himself, untucking his thumb from the inside of his fist. She demonstrated proper shoulder position, reminding him that his power came from his core and to keep his elbow level with his wrist. He tried again with much better form, but he did break the medicine ball this time. He cleaned it up, and she put another one on there, telling him to do it again. He sent it flying several more times and broke one more medicine ball. By lunch, he had managed not to send the thirty pound one flying anymore, and she told him he'd earned a break.

This time, he went with her to the mess hall to get a tray, but when she made to sit at one of the public tables, he shied away. He wasn't ready to be out here with all these people yet, so she changed directions and led him back to her room, where a table and chair was waiting. She sat in the new chair, and he dragged the one from the desk over. They ate in silence again, but it was a soft silence, not weighted by fear or suspicion from Peter anymore.

When they walked back to the training room, he was still her little shadow. They picked up where they left off, and she kept coaching him about good form, giving him tips about how to control the force behind his punches. By the end of the day, he was managing to only nudge the ten pound medicine ball with decent regularity. She clapped him on the shoulder with a smile.

"Great job, Peter. That medicine ball weighs the same as a human head. Once you manage to teach your muscle memory not to send it flying, you'll have a good handle on not hurting a person you're hitting too badly. After you get so good at this you could do it in your sleep, we'll see if you're brave enough to try it on a human opponent."

He nodded slowly, not as reluctant as before. "You really think I could do it?"

"I know you can," she encouraged warmly. "If you're still not ready to fight someone after you master punching, we can work on kicking, and point you at a real dummy once you get good at not breaking the equipment. We can't work on more sophisticated moves until you have a live opponent, but we have a little time to get you comfortable with the idea of sparring."

"Thanks, Ms. Natasha," he mumbled.

He was a little more comfortable looking around on the way to dinner, though he still wanted to eat in their room. That was okay. Slow progress was still progress, and pushing him early on would only hinder her efforts to get him to relax. She was determined to save this kid, even if that meant turning him into a monster like her. Surviving was surviving, no matter how you got it done.

And she would get it done.