She shoved her red hair out of her face with one hand and tossed back another shot of vodka. It had been a long time since she'd gotten really drunk. She had a very high tolerance for alcohol and she knew her limits. Tonight, though, she was hoping for mind-numbing inebriation. Chekov was dead. She should be pleased about that. The last piece in a revenge she'd been chasing for a decade. She swallowed another shot, welcoming the pain as it burned its way down her throat.
She should've known. Guessed, at least. She knew better than to trust people, didn't she? That had been the overarching moral of her entire life. Trust left people dead. Defenseless and vulnerable and very dead. If anyone should know that, it was Natasha Romanoff. The Black Widow. She'd been making a name for herself almost as long as she could remember. They'd given her the name, yes, but she'd taken it as a personal challenge to live up to it. She should've remembered that, given it a second thought when a certain blue-eyed archer and come on the scene – but hell, he was entertaining. Talented. Damn stubborn. And, of course, just a little bit gorgeous. And more of a threat out of sight than he was close up.
"Everyone dies in the end," she muttered. Her motor skills were still intact, she could still see straight, and she sure as hell wasn't having any trouble thinking. Long habit forced her to glance around the dim room before she reached for the bottle again. It had been in a room like this – small, bare, the Russian snow outside turned into grey slush by the traffic and pedestrians. So many years ago.
She shifted her grip on the knife's handle and took a deep breath, leaning farther back into the shadows of the hotel room. Decent hotel, really – much nicer than some places they'd stayed in. Discreet, out of the way, convenient… exactly the kind of place to hole up in for a while between jobs. Exactly the kind of place to kill a partner in. On second thought, maybe she didn't need to be the one thinking twice. Maybe Clint should've been giving it all some serious consideration – hell, what kind of man willingly joined up with a woman with widow in her name? A crazy one. Crazy didn't work well in this line of work. Crazy and trust – neither of them. They both got you killed. Same as talking to a guy like Chekov in public. She didn't know what the archer was thinking, associating with a guy like that where she could see, but it was a fatal mistake. She didn't like being sold out and she hated Chekov, and the two weren't a nice combination.
It had been years of waiting before she'd had this chance to get at Chekov. She'd been trying since the day he'd left her nearly dead on the rooftop of his casino. Just another man who'd used her and didn't want to pay for the skills he could never acquire himself in a million years. She'd sworn she'd take him down, make him pay up.
"You're lucky I'm not finishing you off here, Widow," he'd said before walking away. "That's all the payment you'll get from me. I'd say thank you if I were you." She'd tried to leap at him then, but her body couldn't move. He'd laughed at her brokenness.
"I'll be back for my pay, Chekov," she'd hissed at his retreating form. "And I'm charging interest." And she had, too. A decade later, yes, but oh, revenge had been sweet. Until that end, until he'd suddenly twisted his mouth into some semblance of a smile despite the agony through which she was systematically putting him.
"When are you collecting the interest you talked about, Widow?" She could've sworn he was trying to laugh. "Or did you already get that from your partner?" The Black Widow had no partner. She was independent, self-sufficient. She didn't have time to wait for someone to tag along and hell if she needed someone to cover her back. She could do that well enough. She was alive still, wasn't she? "Oh yes. I was watching you. Your archer friend – did you enjoy watching him die?"
The doorknob turned, and she tensed, poised, one last quick glance around the room before her green eyes locked on the crack between the door and the frame where Clint's head would appear. The door swung open and she didn't wait to see the target enter. She knew exactly the height of his head, and she'd seen him walk into so many rooms over the past year – she didn't have to wait. She flung the knife at the growing space between door and frame. Goodbye, Hawkeye. You betrayed the wrong woman…
She held the glass up and stared at the vodka for a few moments before putting it to her mouth. With Chekov dead she was supposed to feel better. The man had been a nightmare. She was supposed to feel victorious and satisfied. She was not supposed to be sitting cross-legged on an old bed in a rundown Moscow apartment with an entire arsenal of vodka and full intentions of drinking all of it.
"Did you ask him what he said to me?" Chekov asked before she finished killing him. "Did you give him time to swear he was innocent?" She slammed her boot into his face and didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer. His gasps of pain were mixed with a sound that might have been mocking laughter. "Did you ask what he told me?" She didn't speak. Didn't even look at him. "He asked me for directions." The gasping was unmistakably laughter now – a dying wheeze she'd heard hundreds of times. Now it seemed to be attacking her personally, sneering at her for even caring that she could remember the archer and the days she'd killed him.
There was no familiar sound of knife hitting its fleshy target, the familiar gasping gurgle of a man's life rapidly trickling out. The door flew open and Clint stormed in. Typical Clint, of course – no sign of the sane caution anyone else would exercise when entering a room outside of which their life could've ended only moments before. That was Clint – always leaping into the fray without really looking. Those blue eyes darted around the room just long enough to realize she was the only one there, and she could see, almost in slow motion, the process of recognition as he placed her, placed the knife, put two and two together and came up with the certainty that she'd been aiming for him. He leapt across the room. He was quick – she'd give him that much. Fine. If he wanted to fight it out, she'd go his way. She'd had him in kill position so many times – this time she'd follow through.
"Damn you, what did you think, that I wouldn't see you? That I trusted you?" He had no chance against her and they both knew it. It was only a matter of moments before she killed him. The hardest thing? Getting rid of the body. And even at that she had years of practice. "To play this game you gotta be ruthless, Clint. You're getting there, but if you think you've learnt that lesson, let me show you how much further you have to go."
She'd beaten the hell out of him before finishing him off. He'd sworn he was innocent. Sworn he didn't know who Chekov was. Sworn he loved her. That faerie-tale myth seemed to be his favourite defense. As if she believed it. As if him being some kind of crazy idealist meant he couldn't possibly betray her. Chekov seemed to know that, too, letting out cries of pain, gasps, groans, all intermingled with that pained laughter.
"He thought I was a pedestrian. Asked for directions." She broke his foot, slowly, deliberately, listening to each tiny bone crack as his face contorted with pain. "He never betrayed you once. Did he ever know why he died? Did killing him make you feel safer, Widow?" She kicked him backwards, crushed his trachea, and walked away while the he was still letting out the sickening sounds of death.
The vodka wasn't helping. She hadn't thought about Clint Barton in years, but suddenly she couldn't stop the memories. Clint humming as he held her in his arms in the darkness. Clint's smirk when he made a shot she hadn't believed he could. Clint's eyes, that pain and…pity? Was that what it had been? Damn the man, he'd pitied her as she'd killed him. He'd been stupid, yes. Chased her down. Never seemed to actually fear her. Believed in insane things like love and loyalty and people having some kind of potential for goodness. But for all that he'd been a damn good partner. Damn good partners don't betray each other. She swallowed another shot of vodka, licked the drops off the mouth of the empty bottle, and reached for the next one. Blue eyes she'd closed forever danced in front of her in the shadows and Chekov's mockery echoed in her mind. Who betrayed who, Romanoff?