“Sorry?”

It’s not quite clear whether the word is intended as an apology, or a question. Natasha doesn’t quite understand the subtleties of American inflections yet, and the tendency, especially by women, to end every sentence with a question mark still baffles her. She looks up from her salad with a frown.

The speaker is a small, attractive South Asian woman, dressed in casual Western style, but with a bindi on her forehead in a nod to tradition.

“Are these seats taken?” the woman asks now. This time, the interrogative is obvious. “I’ll be joined by a friend.”

Natasha scans her repertoire for several answers, all variations on the theme of wanting to be left alone. It’s been a long day - who knew that SHIELD bureaucracy would be even more imaginative than some of the Red Room’s methods for eliciting information?

But despite her initial tentativeness, the woman doesn’t look as if she plans on budging until she gets a positive answer, and is in fact starting to lower her tray hopefully. More steel there than Natasha had suspected; she finds herself deciding in favour of the truth.

“They’re not. Feel free,” she says, albeit stopping short of a welcoming smile. She moves the stack of forms she has yet to fill out under her tray to make space.

The woman breathes a sigh of relief and proceeds to set her tray down with a clang of cheap cutlery. She draws up a chair, wincing slightly at the scraping sound it makes on the tiles, and sits down.

“Thanks,” she says. It sounds surprisingly heartfelt and she immediately leans forward to share the reason in a conspiratorial whisper. “The only other free seats are at Rumlow’s table, and I don’t know about you, but that guy gives me the serious creeps.”

She gives a theatrical shudder, followed by sticking her finger in her throat and simulating a retching sound. She continues before Natasha can respond - assuming she had wanted to.

“Fridays are always like this in the caf, aren’t they? Must be the meatloaf. People just love it. I know I do. But not enough to sit with a bunch of guys who just ooze White Supremacism. Not to mention every other -ism you could possibly think of.”

Natasha had planned to ignore the other side of the table, but something in the woman’s stream-of-consciousness chatter reminds her that cafeteria talk can provide useful intel.The bits about Agent Rumlow she has already filed away, of course, but this latest comment relates to her newly-minted partner.

“Did you say you like the meatloaf? Barton says it’s … how did he put it? ‘A weapons grade hockey puck, with the half-life of Uranium-238.’ So I wonder whether his taste buds are…”

She never gets to finish her sentence, or to explain that Barton’s very definitive pronouncements had been the reason she’d opted for a salad and a plateful of baklava. Her tablemate’s fork stops just short of her mouth and her eyes widen dramatically.

“You know Agent Barton??” she gasps. “Tell me… Oh wait.”

Something else has caught her attention now and she waves wildly across the room with her other hand, sending the piece of meatloaf flying off her fork and onto her tray, where it bounces twice before settling on a ketchup packet. Score one for Barton and his hockey puck analogy.

Bemused, Natasha watches a second woman approaching the table – short, stout and black; her hair is a riot of cornrows.

“She knows Agent Barton, Nora!” the first exclaims excitedly. “And she saved me – us – from having to sit with Rumlow?” Belatedly, she remembers her manners. “I’m Seema, by the way. From Records? And this is Nora.”

Nora plonks down her tray – more meatloaf, Natasha observes.

“From Accounting,” Nora supplements helpfully. “Not sexy, I know, but always necessary and essential. Numbers rule. And you are…?”

“Natasha,” Natasha says. It appears last names aren’t necessary in present company, which is probably just as well.

“So how do you know Agent Barton?” Seema asks, munching on her meatloaf. “I mean, he is so...” She draws a sigh and Nora completes her sentence.“Hot.”

“I would have said dreamy,” Seema says. “But I’ll take hot. So what is he like as a person? Tell us everything.”

Now if they had asked Natasha about Agent Barton’s tactical acumen or facility with projectile weapons, she might have been able to answer. But, ‘Dreamy’? ‘Hot’? They must be looking for something more personal.

“He snores,” she informs the two women, who exchange glances that could be anything from scandalized to titillated and outright jealous. Natasha feels compelled to elaborate. “I know that only because he fell asleep on the plane from Tbilisi.”

“Tbilisi!” Seema breathes. “That was his latest op. I was supposed to write it up for Records, but Deputy Hill took all the files. Apparently it’s a Council matter and I don’t have,” she makes air quotes with her fingers, “’sufficiently high clearance’. Must have been a real shit show.”

‘Shit show’ is one way of describing Natasha’s encounter with Clint Barton, which had begun with staring at his arrow and ended with the Black Widow agreeing to join SHIELD, all apparently in violation of orders, protocol and common sense.

“And you were there?” Nora wants to know, taking a noisy draw of chocolate milk through a plastic straw. “Wow. That’s amazing! I wish could do fieldwork, but I always failed phys ed.”

A quick frown crosses her forehead. “Oh, do me a favour? Tell Agent Barton that Nora in Accounting still needs the receipts from Odessa. He’ll know.” She leans forward and whispers confidentially. “The man has the absolute finest abs and arms in SHIELD, but he is a total nightmare when it comes to substantiating expense claims.”

“Yeah, but those arms,” Seema sighs heavily. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re a total blank cheque. I really wish I was a field agent…”

It’s at that precise moment that a tall, bulked-up man in tac pants and an Under Armour t-shirt that stretches over his pecs strides up to the table, a tray filled with lunch debris balanced in one hand. He is followed at a respectful distance by two similarly dressed guys, whom Natasha immediately recognizes as ‘species men, genus hench’.

infamous Rumlow, Natasha has no doubt.

“You girls shoulda come sat with us,” he drawls. “You have any idea who that is you’re with? There’s a reason she was by herself. That’s the Black Widow and she is bad news.”

He stares at Natasha, after briefly checking that his posse is behind him.

“You got some nerve coming here, Romanoff, after all you did. I read your file. Barton shoulda offed you, like he was s’posed to. You have no place here, Red Room whore.”

He turns back to the two women, who have stopped eating and are staring from him to Natasha.

“And you two girls, scat. That one’s not fitting company for the likes of you.”

Natasha has heard enough. She gives him her toothiest grin.

“They’re women, not girls. Now please leave, before I feed you that tray.”

Seema’s eyes flash at that, all hesitation gone now and replaced by righteous indignation.

“And what are the ‘likes of us’, please? Unimportant, brown little cogs in the Great White Wheel, who aren’t able to decide where we want to sit, and who with?”

Nora in turn draws herself up to her full five feet three in her chair.

“Plus, you are disrupting an important conversation. You scat, or I will audit everyone of your expense claims back to 2007. And report any discrepancies to the Director.”

Faced with a united female front, Rumlow resorts to a disdainful cackle.

“Suit yourself, bitches,” he says, turns and jerks his head to order his goons back by his side. “Don’t know why I even bothered.”

But before he can take more than three steps in the direction of the tray depository, Natasha tosses her last baklavas in her mouth, takes the empty plate and flings it at the back of his head like a ceramic Frisbee. It bounces off and clatters to the floor.

“Oops,’ she says when Rumlow misses his step, stumbles and drops his tray. “It slipped right out of my hand.”

Around them, someone starts a slow clap that gradually picks up speed and volume, with the occasional approving whistle thrown in. Apparently, Agent Rumlow is even less popular than the Black Widow, a fact Natasha files for future consideration.

From the midst of the excitement rises Deputy Director Maria Hill, looking left and right and around the room with a single raised eyebrow. The applause dies down quickly as people await her inevitable verdict.

Hill takes a deep breath.

“You better come back and clean up that mess, Mr. Rumlow,” she says coolly. “Someone might slip on the gravy and sue SHIELD. That would not look good on your record.”

Sending an inscrutable look in the direction of Natasha’s table, she stalks out of the cafeteria without another word.

“You made an enemy today, Widow,” Rumlow snarls as he straightens up and pulls his Under Armour Tee back into place. He has evidently decided that a dignified retreat is the best option and strides off, leaving the remnants of his lunch and the baklava plate – which miraculously is still intact - for one of his men to clean off the floor.

“Yeah, but she also made two friends!” Nora hollers after him. “And that counts for a lot more.”

Seema, meanwhile, looks at Natasha with undisguised admiration.

“So you’re the Black Widow?” she says. “Really? Everybody’s been talking about you like you’re the Loch Ness monster, or something. But you’re so… normal. Just like us, only with much better aim.”

Not really, Natasha wants to say, not like you at all. The monster is not far off.

But then she watches Rumlow’s retreating back, and something causes her to reconsider her words.

“He really is a creep,” she says instead, and means it. “No wonder you didn’t want to sit with him.”

The two clerks nod solemnly in agreement before turning their attention back to their neglected lunch.

“My meatloaf has gotten cold,” Seema sniffs and pokes at it with her fork. “And hard. Maybe Agent Barton has a point? I guess you have to eat it quickly, is the secret? Or else it congeals. Who knew?”

Nora noisily finishes off her chocolate milk.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” she says. “I just can’t stand leaving any in the bottom. Plus after this little episode, I need all the sugar.”

Something catches her eye then and she points at the papers under Natasha’s tray.

“Hey, is that an H-267? They making you fill that out, even though you’re an asset, not just staff?”

Natasha shudders in response.

“I’m not much of an asset when it comes to paperwork, I’m afraid,” she sighs. “Maybe Barton has rubbed off on me already.”

Seema and Nora exchange glances. By tacit agreement it is Seema who speaks for both of them.

“Okay, so. What if you leave those with us until, say, same time tomorrow? It’s the least we can do for you, after what you just did.”

Natasha doesn’t quite know what to say. Tapping Rumlow had been necessary to set down a marker - something Hill had clearly understood - not intended as a favour for her impressionable tablemates. Accepting their help with SHIELD paperwork would thus open a new ledger, and one whose contents she did not have enough information to predict.

On the other hand, those forms… Barton had been right: the crazed appetites of SHIELD’s HR department would turn Count Dracula into a vegan.

Barton. An idea forms in her head. An idea that will keep her ledger clean, and... Yes.

“Ladies,” she says, “Allow me to let you in on a secret.”

Seema has given up on her meatloaf and is nibbling on a crunchy pear now, but is all ears.

“Are we cleared for that?”

Natasha grins.

“Just don’t let on I told you, promise? Barton and I have sparring sessions, at three-thirty every afternoon until our next mission. Gym Number Four. The one with the glass gallery.”

Seema’s eyes widen.

“Please tell me he’ll he be wearing a tank top?”

Natasha’s inner eye recalls her newly minted partner’s glistening shoulders and biceps from yesterday’s session, and she nods slowly.

“I have reason to believe that he will, yes.”

Seema rolls her eyes heavenwards and mutters an inarticulate ‘thank you’.

“Natasha, dear Natasha,” Nora sighs happily, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”