Hello dear bar! Today's theme is something I actually often wonder about. If you take a look at the post title - money (and other things) - it might not seem very interesting. I think it is, and lately I find myself thinking about it often, so here we go. What are your thoughts and headcanons about our favorite couple and money, earning, finances, owning things. Do you think they're poor, rich, well off, "in the middle" ...? How do you see their growing up, beginning of their "careers" and their work for SHIELD, when it comes to finances?

I don't have a complete and solid headcanon about this, but the more I think, the more it's shaping out. Both have grown up poor (but I can imagine Natasha's real family doing okay, before whatever accident that befell them had happened). Neither had much in their younger days, and I think both have learned to be careful with their possessions, because whatever they owned, it had to be hard earned. I imagine Red Room liked having control over everything, including the number shoes their girls owned (it's practical and it's also psychological pressure, clearly sending the message of "you're owned/you do not exist"); and on the Clint's side of things, most foster families probably weren't too generous, and I imagine him growing up wearing second hand clothes and shoes until he ran away. Living in circus was, I suppose, just as difficult, only in a different way, and I can see Clint slowly finding his feet after joining military. As a SHIELD agent he has regular income, but we'll come back to that later.

Back to Nat, I suppose defecting was a hard thing to do; not only because it takes courage, but because it takes resources to run away and successfully hide from an organization that's as dangerous, ruthless and controlling as RR is. I imagine she gathered things she'd need over a longer period of time, until she was read to go - but even after running away from them, I think she had hard time. Natasha's "job" requires resources - having a successful cover means many things you have to pay for, then plane tickets or other ways of escaping, they all cost money. There's a WIP story that i'm working on currently and financial trouble is one of the things I see as Natasha's reason to join SHIELD. Working for SHIELD, which I imagine isn't an illegal dark organization like RR is (at least in my headcanon) means... regular income, an apartment, health insurance, belongings like normal clothes, TV, DVDs, a car; lots of things most people consider mundane and everyday but for both Clint and Nat they have a different value because it took long time and hard struggle to get there and have that.

What are your thoughts? As I said, this is something I'm still figuring out, and it's not mentioned in fic very often I think - so, what does the bar say and think?

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