The Red Widow Reinstated // avengers · Y/n story by @fanficreaderr

The light in the Avengers common room is a soft, post-mission glow, the kind that makes the steel and glass of the tower feel almost warm. The air hums with the low thrum of the city eighty stories below and the quiet, focused energy of a dozen people trying to solve an impossible problem.

Steve Rogers

We can’t go in loud. They’ll have countermeasures for everything in our playbook. Sonic dampeners for Tony’s repulsors, EMP fields for Sam’s wings, heavy artillery calibrated for Thor’s… everything.

Tony Stark

pacing, a faint scowl on his face So we go in quiet. Subdue the guards, non-lethal takedowns, sneak past the automated systems. It’s a Tuesday.

Sam Wilson

A Tuesday with about two hundred more guards than we have non-lethal options for. One alarm and we’re swarmed. They’re not playing by Queensberry rules in there.

A tense silence settles. Bruce Banner adjusts his glasses, staring at the schematic like it’s a particularly vexing equation. Clint Barton spins an arrow idly between his fingers. Yelena Belova leans against the window, her expression unreadable as she watches the lights of Manhattan.

Nick Fury

stands from his seat at the head of the table, his single eye sweeping the room We’re thinking about this wrong. We’re thinking like Avengers.

His gaze lands, heavy and deliberate, on the two women by the window. On Natasha Romanoff, who has gone very still. On Yelena, whose fingers have stopped tracing patterns on the glass.

Nick Fury

Romanoff. Belova. What about the Red Widow?

A beat of confusion ripples through the room. Peter Parker glances between the adults. Bucky Barnes’s metal arm whirs almost imperceptibly. Wanda Maximoff tilts her head.

Tony Stark

The who-now? Is that a new brand of vodka? Because I could use one.

Nick Fury

ignores him, taps a command into the table’s interface S.H.I.E.L.D. has been maintaining a file. Since the fall of the Red Room.

The Hydra schematic vanishes. In its place, a new image blooms to life—a dossier. At the top, in bold, classified typeface: OPERATIVE: “RED WIDOW”. Below it, a photograph.

Nick Fury

Real name withheld. Biological younger sister to Natasha Romanoff. Considered, for all operational intents and purposes, a sister to Yelena Belova as well. Graduated top of her class from the Red Room’s final cohort. Operational status: Retired. Presumed location: Civilian cover, Oslo.

The file begins to scroll automatically. Text flashes by: psych evaluations, mission summaries redacted to near-incoherence, skill assessments that border on the supernatural. Phrases jump out: “unparalleled close-quarters efficiency”, “high tolerance for physiological trauma”, “target elimination record: 100%”.

Steve Rogers

Fury, she’s a child.

Nick Fury

She’s a weapon they forgot to decommission. And we need a weapon they won’t see coming. Hydra’s prepared for us. For our morals. They are not prepared for her.

Natasha hasn’t moved. Her eyes are fixed on the photograph, on the sister she hasn’t seen since she was a little girl with braids, left behind in a place of shadows and pain. Yelena pushes off the window, her posture rigid.

Yelena Belova

No.

Natasha Romanoff

her voice is low, controlled, but it cuts through the room Absolutely not.