A Family of Flaws

Chapter Twenty-Five; The Worried Thoughts Of An Ex-Spy

Clint flinched back slightly, but he pressed forward. "No, you need to listen. Just because you don't want to hear it—" This time, instead of giving him a menacing look, she clamped a hand over his mouth. He licked her hand, admittedly it was a little childish, but she had that coming!

"You idiot— shut up for two seconds!" Natasha exclaimed in a whisper-shout, rubbing her slobbery hand on his chest— he chose to ignore that for now. "You can give me your little wholesome speech later, now look." She pointed to the other side of the rooftop, where a familiar hero was laying on the ground, his masked face was pushed up against the ground while his hands sat fisted together, covering his ears.

"Oh..." Clint mumbled under his breathe while Natasha crept closer to the fallen hero, who sat in the same position that they had found him in, unmoving other than the slight rise and fall of his shoulders as he brought in shallow breathes.

Clint followed after her as quietly as he could and crouched down beside Spider-Man, who was strangely unresponsive. He seemed fully conscious based on his current position, but not a single thing about him changed even when Natasha called out to him softly. "Spidey? Are you... alright?" Natasha hesitated on the last word, almost like she didn't want to admit that she was worried, but she dropped all her emotional defenses for a moment as Spider-Man didn't respond. "Spider-Man, answer me." She said in a more stern voice, but Clint could hear the thick worry that got stuck at the back of her throat.

  Clint reached a hand forward and gently placed it on Spider-Man's shoulder, nearly falling back as the younger hero shouted out in pain and curled further in on himself, his body shook slightly as he went back to sitting in an unmoving position.

  The duo exchanged concerned looks as they sat above the masked hero, unsure of what to do. He wouldn't respond to either of them when they tried to talk to him, but he sounded like he was hurt after Clint touched him. Was he injured? But his suit looked fine, maybe a little dusty from the roof, but completely fine other than that.

"Spidey, are you hurt from a mission or something?" Clint asked in a louder tone than Natasha, trying to get some reaction from the arachnid. Instead of responding, Spider-Man made a noise similar to a cry and his arms tensed as he pushed his hands harder over his ears.

Beside Clint, Natasha let out a string of curses in Russian, a look of understanding on her face as he turned to look at her. "I think I know what this is." Natasha told Clint, but she wasn't speaking. She was using sign language, which they both had learned because he was deaf.

He raised an eyebrow at the odd choice of communication, but he went along with it instead of questioning her. "Mind explaining then?" He signed back while glancing at the younger hero.

"I believe this is a sensory overload." Natasha replied simply before standing up. "Stay with him. Do not touch him or make any noises. I will be back soon." Natasha added before she took off in the direction of the tower.

Clint sat where he was for a moment before he sat down in a better position and turned to the arachnid, watching over him with worried eyes as he waited for Natasha to come back.

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*Natasha's POV*

  Natasha kept her face neutral as she ran along the tops of buildings, twisting and maneuvering as much as she needed to so that she never lost her momentum. Spider-Man was a new hero who she hardly knew, but she still felt compelled to help him. Something about him was so strangely young and it almost scared her.

  She truly hoped that she was wrong, but she was starting to think that Spider-Man wasn't as old as the team had originally thought. They had assumed he was in his early twenties, maybe nineteen, but they never would have guessed that he was under the age of eighteen.

  They had seen his smaller stature and assumed he was just short. That wasn't a crazy thought, right? What was crazy was the possibility of a teenager running around a dangerous city fighting thugs and villains.

  But Natasha had been looking into Spider-Man a lot, especially as of recently. And it wasn't that outrageous of a thought. He only went out a night or on the weekends, running on the average school schedule. He was a very sloppy fighter, with clearly no experience or training. His body language showed that his body was still changing, slightly too long arms and an awkward stance that he constantly held. And his speech— he spoke loosely, but there was an almost childish nervousness present when he spoke to the team. He used language that definitely fit that of a younger person.

  Everything about him screamed young. But it felt wrong. A teenager should not be fighting thugs and villains, and a teenager should definitely not be helping the Avengers on missions.

  As Natasha neared the tower, she desperately tried to push the nervous thoughts away. She shouldn't even care. She didn't know this man (a scared, nervous voice corrected her and whispered the word kid) so she shouldn't want to help him, take him under her wing so that he could learn from someone experienced. That was Clint or Steve or someone else on the team— they were all so much more suited for that. She was selfish to want to help him, she could tell Tony that she thinks that Spider-Man is a teenager and he could handle the rest.

  But she knew she wouldn't. She wanted to be selfish this once. She didn't want to involve the rest of the team. She could help Spidey behind the scenes and keep his secret. The team could figure this out on their own, or Spidey would tell them himself.

  Natasha dropped between two buildings and slipped out, having gotten as close as she could to the tower, and headed towards the back entrance reserved solely for those Tony trusted the most.

  She could keep this secret. She was an ex-spy, so this was hardly a hard thing for her to do. And the fact that she would be helping a teenager who was a hero by keeping this secret, well, that only made this easier to do. The guilt of keeping this from the team, from Clint— that was manageable if it helped this teenage hero.

  Natasha took the elevator up, standing in the corner as she always did. Another habit she hadn't been able to break.

  The numbers that sat above the door flashed by as she was brought to the Avengers floor. She got off the elevator and snuck past the living room, slipping down the hallway that leads to the rooms. She easily entered her room without making a sound and grabbed the items that she had come for, soundproof headphones and a thick pair of sunglasses.

  She had suffered through the occasional sensory overload, but it was never too bad for her. Tony had made a set of these for everyone on the team because most of them were either enhanced or fucked up on some level from all the shit they had gone through because of their career choice.

  Natasha had thought that it was stupid to give her this set, because of her lack of sensory overloads, but she had never been so thankful for them. They were lightly covered in dust because of all the time that they had been kept at the back of her closest, but she easily cleaned them off and rushed back out of her room. She needed to remember to tell Tony to make another set specifically for Spider-Man, but first she needed to see if these were strong enough for him, or if he would need a better set.

  Slipping into the elevator undetected, Natasha snuck back to the corner and stood there, clutching the headphones and sunglasses close to her. She took in a deep breathe and plastered the neutral expression back onto her face. What was one more secret? Especially one that was helping a teenager who was in desperate need of some support.