(I think that) I'm still human

You're not going to shoot me.

Bobbi Morse's finger twitches on the trigger of her gun. Sweat beads on her forehead, and her hands feel clammy, chills traced into the lines of her palms. The girl at her feet is wide-eyed; her eyes are a beautiful brown, like clean earth, like lands untouched by the monsters and magic that have invaded both their lives.

The brown-eyed girl laughs hoarsely, blood trickling from her split bottom lip. "You're not going to shoot me," she repeats, and slowly she raises her hands into the air, palms forward, fingers wide open. Her only weapon is the dagger at her waist, and Bobbi will punch her gut full of bullets before she can reach it.

Bobbi Morse takes a sharp breath. "I already broke your leg," she snarls, stunned by the feral savagery in her voice. The gun in her hand is so cold, so very cold: a block of ice welded to her wrist, fixed to the space between her quivering fingers. "What makes you think I won't finish the job?"

"Look at yourself," says the brown-eyed girl, unflinching. "Not a scar on your pretty face. Not a scratch mark on that pistol. Those bloodstains on your jacket are the first, and I know because I've killed my fair share of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and none of them have outfits that shiny. Those agents, they're battered. All but broken. Torn apart from the inside." The brown-eyed girl wipes blood from her face with the back of a hand. "But not you."

"I'll show you broken," Bobbi says, and she steps down on the girl's shattered leg to prove something to herself, but the girl's answering scream is horrible and animal and human, too human. Bobbi flinches and hates herself; first for breaking the girl's leg in the first place, but second for flinching.

If she's going to do this – if she's going to be an irreplaceable S.H.I.E.L.D. asset – she can't keep thinking about everything like this.

"So do it," says the brown-eyed girl. "Shoot me."

There are only two women in this warehouse. No one will witness this; no one can question the validity of the killing, the necessity of the bullet that will finally, finally bring this awful op to an end.

Bobbi swallows, but it does nothing to lessen the lump in her throat, let alone the weight that's pressing on her ribs from the inside. "Listen to me," she says, lowering her pistol just a half-inch, an inch, two inches. "It doesn't have to be like this. You confess what you're involved with. You give us some names, a location, a drop site, anything. And then I take you in to S.H.I.E.L.D., and we talk this out like adults instead of –"

"I'm so sorry, rookie." The brown eyes flash, wicked. "But I don't really want to talk."

In that moment, Bobbi Morse realizes that this girl is very, very good at stalling for time. The warehouse explodes like a firestorm, and they're standing in the center of the hurricane, everything around them fire, fire, fire –

There's ash on Bobbi's jacket, ash on her face, even darker than the blood. It's all reflex now, nothing but her mission directive and the crosshairs inside her eyes – she pulls the trigger, once, twice, again – crack, crack, crack – she hears the bullets before she sees them enter the target's chest – and they do enter the target, one two three, bang bang bang, like training like the movies like shooting herself in the chest, here then there then blood.

Scarlet stains the warehouse floor, drop by drop, as the target's body folds in on itself, like tissue paper. Brown eyes flutter, glaze. And flicker shut.

There is one woman in the warehouse. One woman and a body.

Bobbi Morse collapses to her hands and knees, violently sick, before she's able to radio S.H.I.E.L.D. for extraction.

~x~X~x~

Bobbi Morse hasn't slept through the night in three days. Hunter has taken to calling her "my raccoon lady" thanks to the dark circles under her eyes. Medical says she's healing normally, but they can't speak for the stability of her mind. When they take her in for observation, video shows her screaming her throat raw in her sleep, unresponsive when anyone tries to wake her.

So they order a round of sleeping drugs, but they seem to carry into her days, too. She trails off during conversations at meals. She forgets her ID tag not once, but twice in the morning. She takes such a blow to the face in sparring that it leaves her with a black eye, reinforcing Hunter's "raccoon" nickname.

They order a meeting with her S.O. Bobbi enters the office hesitantly, her pulse pounding, but the news is in equal parts thrilling and terrifying.

"As your S.O., I've seen your potential. I've communicated with the Director, and he agrees with me that you're too valuable a potential asset to quit on us so soon. But the drugs Medical ordered… they're not the solution."

Bobbi blinks. "What are you suggesting?"

"There's a high-level agent passing through who'd like to meet you. You may have heard of her – probably know a binder's worth of valor stories."

"Give me a name."

"She has many names," says the S.O., smiling darkly. "But you know her as Natasha Romanoff."

~x~X~x~

Black Widow's idea of therapeutic recovery from a first close encounter with death involves a lot of sparring, a lot of ragged breathing and aching muscles, and very little discussion of said close encounter with death. By the third day of the planned week of mentorship, Bobbi is about ready to leave S.H.I.E.L.D. behind.

But on the fourth day, Natasha Romanoff takes her to the punching bags. "Start hitting them."

Bobbi almost laughs. This she can do; this is all but automatic. She punches the bag as hard as she can for a minute straight.

Then Natasha catches her wrist. "Look at me."

Bobbi does. There's no compassion, no contemplation in those bright green eyes. Her breath hitches.

"Answer me honestly," Natasha says.

"Is there another way to answer?"

"Are you sorry for what you did in the field?"

Bobbi's throat is dry. "Yes," she says.

Natasha drops her wrist like it's fire-hot. "Keep punching," she says, gesturing to the bag, and she paces in slow circles while Bobbi beats the bag senseless, punching her anxieties into the rough fabric, turning pain into motion into pain again.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Something Bobbi heard the scientists say once. She's always elected for brawn over brains, but now she feels the truth of this in her knuckles, in every bone of her hands.

After two minutes, Natasha says, "Stop."

Bobbi freezes, still poised to strike. Gasping for air.

"Are you still sorry?"

"Yes."

"Keep punching."

Ten minutes of blows, and Bobbi's knuckles are raw, the skin breaking apart. There's blood in her mouth from biting her tongue.

"Are you still sorry?"

"Damn right."

An hour passes; two hours. Every ten minutes, the same question, the same answer. The spaces of silence between punches expand. There's blood on Bobbi's hands, blood on the training mat, and the Widow refuses to retrieve bandages, or even to clean up the mess. Bobbi's breathing is more than ragged; it's in shreds. Her arms won't stop trembling.

"Punch harder," Natasha says, inflectionless.

"I can't –"

"Harder."

Bobbi stands stock-still, her nail curled into her palms. Then Natasha grabs her by the wrist and launches her fist into the bag.

There's a shattering crack.

Bobbi screams. How many bones in her hand are broken? How is this woman possibly that strong? Natasha stands over her like a nightmare, not a trace of compassion on her face, as if she's done this to other agents in the past – no, as if she's broken her own hand like this.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Bobbi screams, clutching her ruined hand. "Who trains an agent like this? Who taught you this was a good idea?"

Natasha tilts her head slightly, like a wildcat. "Are you sorry now, Agent Morse?"

"Like hell," Bobbi spits through gritted teeth.

A split second of silence. Her bones grinding together. Another drop of blood, slipping to the training mat below.

"Good," Natasha says.

Bobbi blinks. "What?"

"Look into my eyes." Natasha lays both leather-gloved hands on her shoulders, so that their gazes are locked "There will be other crossroads. You're going to click the trigger, slash the knife, pull the pin, make the call. Every time." Her nails press into Bobbi's shoulders. "You're going to do it, and it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt like hell," she says. "Every time."

Bobbi's breathing is shallow. "I know," she says, her throat raw from screaming at night, her head ringing with nightmares she never remembers in the morning.

Natasha's gaze is steady, unblinking. "Be grateful for the hurt," she says. "Because that's how you know you're human."

Bobbi looses a breath, the knot in her chest loosening. At last she understands. "So I'm supposed to be sorry?"

"But you're going to keep doing it," Natasha says, taking a step away. "Every time. Every call, you'll make the hard one. Every target, you'll cross it out, no matter how much you dislike it. Be grateful for that, too." A shadow crosses her face, and for the first time, Black Widow, legendary agent, ghost of the Soviet regime, looks haunted. "Every scar, every bloodstain. Every night you don't sleep. Every night you do sleep and wake screaming."

Natasha's jaw tenses. Her eyes shutter, and then she's made of steel – no, vibranium. Untouchable. Unbreakable.

"Be grateful," she says. "Because that's how you know you're a weapon." Then she turns on her heel and moves gracefully to the door. "I'd have Medical take a look at your hand," she says over her shoulder, and then she's gone.

~x~X~x~

A/N: The title of this fic comes from "Human" by Daughter, a song that always reminds me of Black Widow.

The core of Natasha Romanoff, in my mind, can be summarized by a quote from one of her best comics, BLACK WIDOW: THE NAME OF THE ROSE, in which Natasha refers to "all the dark things I do not regret, but will never speak of." Natasha hates herself sometimes. Natasha knows she's a monster. But she does what needs to be done, she owns her mistakes, and she'd do it all again.

So yesterday's season finale of "Agents of Shield," in which Bobbi Morse looked, unbroken, at Grant Ward, and snarled, "I'd do it all again," I thought immediately of Natasha, and I wondered if Black Widow was the one who drilled that ideal into Bobbi Morse for good. This one-shot was the result.

Also, the MCU could always use more interaction between its women. That's the greatest strength of Marvel's television shows so far: an abundance of very different women who have relationships with one another, and who are constantly interesting in their own rights.

Reviews are appreciated! But thank you for reading regardless.