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Coulson gets to her first. Barton, evidently perfectly willing to ignore orders when he thinks he has a better idea, has shot her with a tranq arrow, damn it. She's supposed to be dead, but instead she is mutely staring up at him as he searches her for weapons, her eyes full of terror. Her body twitches its way out of her control, giving in to the paralytic.
"Thought it'd be interesting to talk to her, sir," Barton comes up behind Coulson. Romanov's eyes flick to him, then back to Coulson, and just like that she seems to compose herself, nothing but blank disinterest in her eyes.
Coulson is glad. It makes him uneasy when somebody like her looks at him like that.
***
Days later he's not so glad anymore. She still hasn't said a word, Fury is on his case about wasting resources, and he's running out of ideas. He's been in the room with her yesterday and all morning, trying to provoke her out of silence. He's decided on a break, because he's starting to lose his temper and that will just not do. He rests his forehead against the observation side of the one-way mirror.
On the other side Natasha Romanov sits quiet and still in the interrogation room.
"Still silent?" Barton asks, coming in with his bow in hand. He's been on the range.
"I almost wish she was scared again," Coulson sighs.
"She was scared?"
"When I first got to her."
And it - or at least the expression of it - had gone away the moment Barton had arrived. Because she knew him? No. Because two were less frightening than one? Unlikely. Because he had spoken?
Because Barton's words had identified them as American?
Because being captured by them had not been not her worst case scenario?
He wordlessly claps Barton on the shoulder as he goes out into the hallway and then into the interrogation room.
"Who else was after you when we got to you? Would you be more talkative with them?"
A flicker of... something, in her eyes.
"Red Room," she says finally, so soft he mostly reads it on her lips. "They would have no need for me to speak."
He tamps down any hint of triumph at finally getting her to interact with him.
"Why is that?"
She shrugs, impossibly fluid for somebody who has been sitting with her hands cuffed behind her for the past three hours.
"They made me. They can unmake me."
He later learns it's the last bit of truth he'll hear from her for the next few days - she lies fluently and without apparent effort. Half a department of data analysts works in real time to verify and decode the conversations Coulson has with her.
He thought she'd be more interested in making herself useful. Barton had thought she'd be interested in the job offer, but she seems to enjoy antagonising him. He's pretty sure she switches from her sultry seductress voice straight to her broken little girl persona - and back, and God that is so fucked up - just to rattle him.
***
He's in the gym with Barton two days later, lifting weights, when they go over the whole thing again. What the sniper had seen as he followed her. What had given him the idea she could be brought in and turned.
"She just... stopped," Barton grunts, slowly working the weights back up. "After all that running. Slowed down and walked right in the open. Like she wanted to be taken."
"Hmm," Coulson says, picking up a barbell. She certainly wasn't behaving as if she was where she wanted to be.
"Unless she was--" Barton clunks the weights into the holder. "--fuck. Unless she was suicidal."
"Suicide by sniper?"
Barton shrugs.
"Would explain why she seems to be pushing you in the direction of deciding she won't be of use to us."
"And why she went straight for the jugular with Fury," he nods.
That morning, annoyed with the lack of progress, Nick Fury had walked into the interrogation room, hoping to get the ball rolling. Romanov had gotten him gritting his teeth in frustration, fingers twitching for his sidearm, in 20 seconds flat. She'd smirked with satisfaction, and that suddenly makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, if she was disgruntled about being captured instead of killed, she really didn't have any reason to be cooperative. Instead of waving the prospect of working for SHIELD as an incentive, he'd have to provide her with motivation to keep on living in the first place.
An hour later, hair still wet from the shower, he sits down to review her files again. You didn't know anything about Natasha Romanov that she didn't want you to know, but after two days of listening to her sweet-voiced double talk he's beginning to see some patterns.
***
"SHIELD is interested in taking the Red Room down once and for all," he says the next morning. "Somebody with your skills and knowledge could make the difference."
Her expression doesn't change, but it's the first time he sees a spark of interest in her eyes.
***
"Who would I be working with?" She asks later, when she's no longer handcuffed. He thinks this might be her normal speaking voice, low and a little husky.
"Myself, and Agent Barton."
"Don't trust me with anybody else, do you?" There's something of a taunt in her voice.
"Just so," he agrees placidly.
What he doesn't tell her, and never will in all the years that come after, is that she's so beautiful and so broken that he doesn't trust any of his fellow agents with her.