A Gift From: geckoholic
Title: All Around There's Brains In Jars
A Gift For: inkvoices
Rating: Teen
Warnings/Choose Not To Warn: references to child trafficking
Summary/Prompt Used: He stares at the screen on his tour through the guts of the old building, for lack of anything better to do before the timer runs down, and doesn't quite expect the red dot in the back of the facility that signals a human being – or a heat source that emits a similar signature, at least.
Author's Note: You encouraged finishing a work in progress for one of your requests, and I picked one from the pile that sat around in a drawer unfinished for literal years. I always felt like the idea was too big for me, and maybe it is, but I kept thinking about it time and time again and I'm guessing now felt like the right time to blow the dust off and finish.


All Around There's Brains In Jars

Turing test: a test of a machine's ability
to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to,
or indistinguishable from, that of a human.



The mission is simple: an abandoned KGB research facility, where he's here to retrieve technology and level the facility to the ground after it’s done. Because the contents are too dangerous to let into anyone else's hands, the mission statement says, they can't be allowed to circulate. The retrieval is easy enough, in and out in less than the given time. That means it’s time for the destruction part of the mission, and Clint decides to do a final sweep of the facility. No one should be here, according to the file, but when it comes to blowing shit up, Clint likes to be sure.

It's easy enough to ping a satellite for thermographic imaging while he's setting up the explosives. He stares at the screen on his tour through the guts of the old building, for lack of anything better to do before the timer runs down, and doesn't quite expect the red dot in the back of the facility that signals a human being – or a heat source that emits a similar signature, at least; lots of things could, but yes, being sure. According to the blueprints, it's a vault, all the way on the other end of the building, and Clint curses, starts running so he'll make it in time before the bombs go off.


***


SHIELD intel is usually better than this. Sure, his instructions were a bit unclear, but if anything, he expected to find nothing other than outdated machinery, dead and cold, metal and strings. Machines and weapons. But what he does find behind the heavy doors of the vault isn't that.

She's tied to a chair, wearing nothing but a hospital gown, red hair falling down her face in greasy curls. There are tears brimming in her red-rimmed eyes, goosebumps all over her skin. He can feel her warm breath on his cheek when he cuts her loose. Her hands hold onto his tac suit with all their might when he carries her out of the room, face pressed into the crook of his neck, murmuring to herself in a language he doesn't entirely understand.

He's never seen anything more alive.


***


It's not the kind of mission that comes with backup and immediate extraction, so they spend the next twelve hours in a barn a few miles off the facility, waiting to be picked up. She's got a blanket wrapped around herself and she's shivering; they only found the one, but he's never been very sensitive to the cold and she's only wearing a thin sheet of clothing. The right thing to do, right?

“What's your name?” he asks, and she stares at him. Maybe she didn't understand him; he's halfway through piecing together the same question in broken Russian when she snorts and turns her head to glance out of the lone dirty window.

“Natalia. I think.”

Normally, he'd ask how she can't be sure what her own name is. But he found her tied to a chair in a vault deep in the guts of a HYDRA facility, so he decides to let this one go. “I'm Clint,” he says instead, and grins. “Nice to meet you.”

Natalia inclines her head. “You're joking.”

An observation; she doesn't laugh, doesn't even smile or roll her eyes.

“Yes,” he confirms. “I'm pretty funny, ask anyone. Gonna blame the language barrier for this one falling flat.”

That's the extent of their conversations for the first five hours. Night falls and Clint arms the traps and signals he riddled the barn with, tries to go to sleep or at least drift off for a little while. His attempts are rudely interrupted by a cold, clammy hand stuck down the front of his pants, and when he opens his eyes he stares right at Natalia's face. He should probably be concerned with how easily she crept up on him, but right now he's too shocked.

Clint grabs her wrist and yanks it away from his privates none too gently. “What the fuck?”

“You didn't like that,” she observes instead of explaining herself, sitting back on her heels, blanket still slung around her shoulders, eyes pinned to his crotch.

“No,” he says, crawling back, away from her, looking around for something to busy his hands with.

Natalia frowns. “Men usually like that.”

He resists the urge to reach down and right himself; what he feels is the exact opposite of arousal, freaked out and disgusted to the point that can't be overridden by physical manipulation. “Not like this. Fuck. Definitely not like this.”

She retreats further, and for the rest of the wait until extraction arrives she looks at him quizzically, gaze wandering down his body ever so often. But she stays in her corner of the barn, and he stays in his, and he's glad when the comm finally pings, signaling the approaching SHIELD team that's come to bring them home.


***


Clint gets debriefed, and Natalia gets situated in an interrogation room. There's quite a bit to discuss; he kind of, sort of filled his mission directive – the facility has been blown up good and proper – but instead of only utilizable tech, he also came back with a human being.

“Why did you send me in to destroy a building that had a live prisoner in it?” Clint starts, because that's a question he needs answered.

“Latest intel confirmed it was empty. Someone must have put her there recently. Honest mistake.” Fury glares at him like an exasperated teacher, and Clint sits up straighter. “You had clear instructions.”

“I did,” he confirms. “But they didn't account for finding a prisoner in that vault. What was I supposed to do, leave her there and blow her up along with everything else, just so I can snatch a few more files and gimmicks instead?”

“No,” says Fury. He levels Clint with a gaze that's part pride, part astonishment. “Of course not. You made the right decision.” There's more he wants to say, Clint can tell, but a light on the Director's comm display blinks and he sighs. “Alright, consider yourself dismissed. We're done here for now, Agent Barton.”

And so Clint leaves his office and strolls a few floors down, to where they're holding Natalia. He could leave, let her be someone else's problem, go home, have a shower and a meal that wasn’t heated up by the night staff in the cafeteria, catch up on sleep – Fury won't tell him what to do either way; he wouldn't send him away, wouldn't tell him to stay – but he's curious, an itching sensation just underneath his skin that makes it impossible to stay away. He watches Hill interrogate the girl – he doesn't know how old she is, but she can't be more than twenty – from the room behind the two-way-mirror. The questions are standard, and don't yield anything useful. Natalia doesn't remember much beyond the vault, she says, only fragments that don't come together into a coherent whole. Medical goes in and comes out. She's given new clothes. Hill comes back, looks at him down her nose.

“If you insist on staying up and gaping at her,” she says, shoving a bag of juice and a wrapped sandwich at him, “then make yourself useful. Bring her this. Talk to her. Keep her company.”

Hill never liked him. Clint knows this, and doesn't mind. He takes the food and pushes past her to enter the interrogation room.

“Hey,” he says, setting down both the juice and the sandwich in front of Natalia. “You hungry?”

She looks up at him and cocks her head. “You again.”

“Yes, me again,” he replies. There's no inflection to her speech, and he can't tell whether she's approving of his presence or not, which makes it harder to come up with a reply.

Natalia beats him to the punch. “Don't you have anywhere else to be?”

“Not for the next little while.” He leans back in his chair, puts his feet up on the edge of the table. He doesn't know how long they sit in silence, minding their own business while occasionally shooting the other wary glances. They don't talk. When she's taken away to a more permanent cell and he leaves to finally, finally get some shut eye, the food is still untouched.


***


They put him on leave. It's not a punishment, Fury assures him, even though that's exactly what it feels like to Clint while spends the next four weeks or so on his sofa, bored out of his fucking skull in front of the huge-ass TV he got tired of roundabout five minutes after he bought it. He sleeps a lot. He watches tons of TV, after all, because there’s nothing else to do.

He comes back to a Natalia that's out of holding and newly enrolled in field training, and the command from Fury to coach her through it.

The girl he approaches in the gym doesn't have too much in common with the one he left in that interrogation cell. She's all single-minded focus, deadly elegance, and she greets him with a bright smile. It's like someone pulled a switch, reached into her head and changed the programming.

“So you're working for us now,” he says, a statement rather than a question. Failing any big fuckups during training, the decisions were made, and he didn't have anything to do with that. He's kinda glad; he doesn't know what he'd voted for if he had.

She straightens up, puts a hand on each side of the punching bag she was attacking to make it go still and inclines her head, in that otherworldly way he remembers from their other encounters. “You don't sound very excited.”

“I'm too old to get excited.” He shrugs, wonders what Fury might have told her about him. “Takes a bit more to get my heart rate to spike. Let's go to work.”


***


At lunch that day, he figures out why Fury assigned him to be Natalia's coach. It wasn't so obvious in the gym or on the range, but everyone else gives her a wide berth. They stare at her like she's an alien, got three heads or a tail, but they don't come near her. He does have his reservations still, but at least he won't quiver away from sitting next to her while she's holding a fork and a knife. And considering that he's been here five years and people still look at him down their nose sometimes, he really couldn't care less what anyone else might have to say about that.

“So, Natalia,” he says while he watches her eat, conversationally, “how's the assimilation process coming? Made any friends yet?”

“It's Natasha now,” she says, holding a piece of pastry out to him. “Want some?”

He shakes his head, allows her to change the topic; the jab was kinda low in the first place, he'll admit that. “Thanks, but I'm not hungry.”

“Suit yourself.” She puts the pastry into her own mouth. “Natalia was a scared little girl who didn't know who or what she was. That's not me anymore.”

Clint raises his eyebrows. “And who are you, now?”

Natasha-not-Natalia eyes him, as if she's trying to determine whether he means that or is making fun of her. “I'm an agent. I'm going to work with you. I'm going to try and put right some of the things the people who made me have done wrong.”

Over the years, he's heard a lot of reasons to be in this line of work. Most of them are far less noble; hell, his own basically boil down to it's either this or a nice little stint in prison, Barton, what do you say.

“Well then, partner.” He shoots her a crooked smile and holds out a hand; she hesitantly takes it, and they shake. “Here's to a good run.”


***


Their first mission out of training leads them to Brussels for a charity auction that acts as cover for some much shadier business. It’s suit and tie and that’s not Clint’s favorite, but he’s man enough to admit that seeing Natasha in a dark emerald dress, skin-tight, a high slit and a low neckline, is a treat.

They mingle and they dance and there’s expensive champagne, laughter and flirting and the lines blur as to how much of it is a con and how much is real. She’s in his arms, warm body pressed to his own, her smile real and honest, pure temptation. But he’s a professional. The mission comes first. Sidling up to the right people, they manage to score an invitation to the real event the following night.

It’s only once they’re back to their exclusive hotel room that Clint really lets himself entertain the thought of squirreling away a little private time for themselves.

“You won’t push me away this time,” Natasha says, voice low and secretive, like she’s not entirely sure there won’t be anyone listening in on them. “Will you?”

Clint smiles, runs his fingers through her hair. “Not a chance.”

She leans in to kiss him. He puts his hands on her hips and pulls her closer, and they lose themselves in each other for the rest of the night.


***


The hotel lobby looks the same as the previous night, except less crowded. A man in his fifties, graying hair at his temples, pleasant smile, the very picture of trustworthiness, greets them
and ushers them past the kitchen and down a flight of stairs to the basement.

At the end of a short hallway there’s a room that mirrors the auction hall upstairs, a stage and rows of chairs, but it’s far less glamorous. Here, they won’t sell art and antiques. Clint and Natasha pick a chair with a clear, perfect view of the stage and Natasha activates a tiny camera in a brooch on her dress, black with long gloves, to film the proceedings on the stage and the customers in the audience.

The first item presented on stage is a pre-teen boy, blonde and lanky with fear in his eyes. Clint bristles with the need to run up to the stage and carry him to safety, but he knows their location and the camera feed are broadcasted to a strike team nearby. Whoever wins the boy’s auction won’t get away with him. None of the children for sale here tonight will be left to suffer.

The bid is accepted, the gavel comes down. The two of them clap along with the rest of the audience. Natasha turns around to give the high bidder a congratulatory smile, neatly capturing his face on camera.

Rinse and repeat, they watch the rest of the auction. Fifteen children of varying ages, the last one an older girl with carrot-red hair and striking light-blue eyes. Clint hears Natasha suck in a breath beside him, and yeah, the similarities are obvious. He takes Natasha’s hand, thumb brushing the back of her hand until the auctioneer announces the final winning bid. Another wave of applause, all eyes on the winning bidder, and it’s over.

Gunfire echoes from the hallway only moments later. In the ensuing chaos, Clint and Natasha sneak out of the basement, through the lobby and into a waiting extraction car disguised as a private taxi.


***


They’re on a plane back to the US half an hour later. Natasha looks shaken, a glass of water with ice cubes in her hand, condensation dripping onto her hand, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

Clint takes the glass from her and places it on the table between them. He says her name. Her head whips around to look into his eyes.

“I feel all wrong,” she says, “I don't feel real,” and suddenly he’s back in that vault with her. A weapon. Machinery. No mention of a human being in the mission files.

And there’s more. The oddities in her behavior. How she changed like she was reprogrammed when Natalia became Natasha. He wouldn’t put it past HYDRA, nor SHIELD, to dabble with humanoid technology. It’s not that far-fetched.

Clint takes her into his arms and strokes her head. He kisses her temple. He listens to her quiet sobs, and decides it doesn’t matter. He loves her. He’ll find the truth, to be sure, to quell his doubts, but it won’t change how he feels about her.


***


Security measures in an organization full of secret agents is tight, but Clint’s not only an agent, he’s also a former thief and con man so it takes him two weeks and precisely three attempts to get into the storage room for SHIELD’s secret, secret personnel accounts. Records of everyone’s past and present and the organization’s plans for their future, their medical history, psychological evaluations.

Everything is coded rather than sorted by name, but it doesn’t take him long to find Natasha’s file. He holds his breath as he flicks through the pages and basically shudders in relief when he finds blood test results and x-ray-pictures and reports from Natasha’s initial psychiatric assessment. She’s fucked up, of course, and her bones carry scars that make his heart ache, but she’s human. Nothing in here hints otherwise.

He’s about to put the file away when an internal memo catches his eye. It talks about her involvement in a secret project, how much of a perfect fit she is for this assignment.

The project matches his name.

Frantic, he searches for his own file, but he comes up empty. His name is not on the register. There doesn't seem to be an employee named Clint Barton in all of SHIELD.

He hears clothes rustling behind him, someone clearing their throat. He shoots to his feet, whirls around to see Natasha in the doorway, extending her hand. She’s holding another file out to him and, feeling numb, blood rushing in his ears, Clint takes it from her.

Project CLINT 4.0 it says. Cybernetic Lifeform: Internal Test Run No. 4.

Clint can’t breathe. He reads the first page, the second, the blueprints. His whole world collapses in on itself a little but more with each word, each sentence, each technical drawing of what makes up his body. There are protocols of nightly maintenance when he thought he went home to sleep. Printouts from the time he was sent home after he brought her in, techno babble and essays about his concept of ethics and morals. Neither of which is real. All his choices are based on fucking algorithms.

He stares at Natasha. “Did you…” he starts, but he can’t bring himself to finish the question.

Natasha steps closer. She looks at him and smiles gently. “I know what you are,” she says. Her eyes are understanding and kind, kinder than he’s ever seen her look at anyone else. “And I don’t care.”

“How can you not care?” he asks, discarding the fact that he didn’t care when he thought it was her. He knows he’s being irrational, and wonders how a machine can be capable of that, if it’s part of his programming to weave in a few misfires in his brain. “I’m... I’m…”

“You’re more human than I am,” she says. “No matter what you’re made of.”


***


He’s alive. He’s metal and strings. He’s both. He’s a weapon. He’s alive.