bride of all unquiet things
bride of quiet, bride of all unquiet things
bride of quiet, bride of hell
come the archers, come the infantry
come the archers of hell
this is why, why we fight, why we lie awake
this is why, this is why we fight
and when we die, we will die with our arms unbound
this is why, this is why we fight, come hell
- "This Is Why We Fight," the Decemberists
Natasha does nothing to Drakov's daughter. In this way, the girl is blessed, by whatever god she might pray to. Any man might have raped her, or sold her, or broken her in so many other ways. Anyone at all might have given her to the Red Room to be remade. Natasha has other plans. Simpler plans.
She sits in the corner, unbound, ungagged. She does nothing to try to escape. Natasha warned her against it, in direct enough words. The girl knows she's going to die, either in an attempt to escape or once Natasha's mission is over. It's merely a question of when.
"Your father isn't answering," Natasha says, in clipped Russian. "The next time he does, you answer. You say the wrong thing, I'll kill you now. Do you understand?"
The girl nods mutely.
She has a name. But it's easier to think of her as just a girl, a casualty, like her. Natasha had a name, and dolls, and soft blankets at a home, once. But that world is meant for children, for the winners, not for the losers. Drakov is a loser, and that's inherited.
The phone dials, there's a click, and Drakov answers. "Let me speak to my daughter," he says, gruffly, clearly masking fear.
Natasha catches the girl's gaze and nods. "Papa," the girl says, cautiously. "I'm here."
"My sweetheart." Drakov falls silent, for just an instant; Natasha's mouth quirks upward. Sentiment. Weakness. "I'll be there soon."
"Please, Papa," the girl pleads. "I want to go home."
"I will bring you home, my sweetheart," Drakov swears.
Natasha lifts the phone to her ear. "Maidan. The fountain. 4 PM. Try anything and you'll both die."
"Yes," Drakov says, simply, and hangs up. She puts the phone down, and turns to the girl.
"Tell me something," Natasha says, steadily meeting the girl's frightened gaze. "What do you want to be when you're grown up?"
It's a conceit. It might be cruel. It's something she'll understand, though. "A ballerina," the girl says. "I'm in classes."
"Of course." Natasha knows this; it was easiest to kidnap the girl on her way home from the dance classes. "Do you have a favorite?"
"Swan Lake," she says. She's watching Natasha as though afraid the next second will be it, that Natasha's gun will fly out of her holster without a moment's hesitation and bang, she's dead. She's not wrong, for the most part.
But her job is all about timing. Can't fire too early, or too late. There's that perfect moment right before you pull the trigger, when you know you've sealed the deal, and it's the best feeling Natasha can remember.
Natasha smiles. "Mine, too," she says.
Drakov appears in the square just as agreed, apparently alone, except that Natasha can see the security officers in would-be hidden places. It's almost insulting, but she can't bring herself to care. It'll be easy to deal with. There's no reason to fret about it.
Natasha draws the scarf over her head, glances back at the girl, who is clinging to the backpack that had come with her when she'd been brought to Natasha. "Put that on," she says, not unkindly, and straightens the scarf to hide her face.
It's a surprise when she speaks next, before Natasha can direct her to the door.
"Am I going to see my Papa?"
It's not a lie. "Yes."
There's a moment of silence, whilst Natasha checks her weapons, and then Drakov's daughter begins to cry. It's disconcerting, mostly because it's a waste of time. Natasha turns to her, but a sharp look isn't enough to end the tears. It's a full breakdown. She's actually fairly impressed that the girl stayed as strong as she did for so long, but it's still inconvenient.
"Stop," Natasha says, in her iciest tone.
The girl chokes back tears in a desperate effort to calm herself down, but she just ends up coughing, and hugs her backpack close to her chest. Natasha watches her, and then finally, she says, "Are you finished?"
The girl nods, and sniffs. Natasha reaches into her purse and wraps a scarf around the girl's head. "There," she says, and straightens. She holds out her hand for the girl to take. "It's time to go."
The girl takes her hand, still cautious, and they leave.
There's a rush of people in the square. This could be a problem for most people with Natasha's job, but it's a non-issue for her. She knows what she's doing. The girl is squeezing her hand tightly; Natasha ignores it.
Drakov is standing about one hundred feet away. She lifts the gun with its silencer and fires at Drakov's head. He falls dead. She walks past him abruptly, takes the duffel bag of money left beside his body, and grips the girl's hand as she tries to bolt away. "Ekaterina," she says, icily, and briskly leads her away, far from the startled crowd.
Once they're alone, the girl looks up at her, already in silent tears, and Natasha raises the gun again. "Goodbye," she says, simply, and pulls the trigger.
She pulls the scarf over the girl's face before she goes.
There are worse places to end up, Natasha thinks.
Natasha is being tracked. She knows this. She knows that they want her dead. It's not a question. It's not an issue. They won't kill her. They aren't nearly good enough, and she has powerful friends.
"I need to speak to Turgenov," she says urgently over the phone. "Please."
"I'm sorry, there's no one here by that name," the secretary says blandly. "Thank you for calling - "
Natasha curses and hangs up.
She had powerful friends.
She isn't expecting it, and that's the most surprising part. The door to her hotel room opens, and before even she can react there's a hand over her mouth and a man dragging her back. She elbows him in the solarplexus, sweeps his leg, but he blocks and evades and he's possibly the best match she's had in some time. She remembers sparring at home, she remembers rehearsing at ballet, she remembers winning, and losing, and when he blocks her punch and holds her tightly, she remembers someone laughing in her face.
She lashes out with a kick at his knee and he hisses, "Natasha! Natasha Romanov!"
"Yes," she answers him in English, neutrally, and punches him in the face.
He reaches back to go for a weapon and she fights him back against the wall, close combat to give her a chance to land a killing blow. "I'm here," he starts, but halts as she fiercely attacks, pulls a knife, goes in for the kill. "Romanov - stop - "
She laughs at him, not particularly amused. "You expect me to let you kill me?"
"I have a deal for you," he says, breathlessly. She looks into his dark eyes, and he at least knows how to act genuine. It doesn't mean it's true. She punches him again.
"I don't," she says, and goes to slit his throat.
But the tip of an arrow is very near her chin. She stops.
"I want you to listen," the man says, steadily. "You're amazing, Romanov. I think you could be doing better things than this. Than murders and kidnappings and theft for the highest bidder. I think, with your skills - your talents - you could help people."
Natasha snorts. "Which people?" she asks rhetorically.
The man is unmoved. "Good people," he says, utterly certain.
"There are no good people. Only bystanders."
He cracks a smile. "I can prove it to you."
"How?"
"You have a choice," he says. "You can leave, now, and keep working for whoever pays enough. Or you can come with me."
This doesn't make any sense. "You were sent to kill me," Natasha says coldly. "I doubt your employers will be pleased if you let me go."
"I'm hoping I won't have to," he says, and releases some tension from his bow arm, vaguely uncomfortable. "May I stand, Miss Romanov?"
She raises her knife, away from the American, and he lowers his bow. "Agent Clint Barton, of S.H.I.E.L.D.," he says. "I've seen your resume. It's impressive."
"Is this a job interview, Agent Barton?"
He gives a short laugh. "Could be," he says, still at the ready in case she attacks; she can see it in his posture. "So, what do you say?"
"You say there are good people," Natasha says, slowly, considering. "Do you think you're a good person?"
"I'm not a good person," Barton says. "But I'm on their side."
That she can believe.
"Take me to your leader," she says, dryly, and sheathes her knife.
S.H.I.E.L.D. is a new experience. These are people like her, but they employ their skills in a very different way. They admit to what they are, but they also have a code. There are civilians. There are lines in the sand. There are things you don't do.
It takes some getting used to.
"What the hell was that?" Clint whispers urgently, as he hauls her out of the bloodshed at the hookah bar. "Why would you - "
"He was a liability," Natasha says neutrally, walking beside him, casual, as though nothing has happened. Nothing really has, after all. "He was nobody. A lifetime criminal. You know that."
"He was our source of information, and he was going to turn - "
He doesn't get it. "Nobody like that turns, Clint."
"You did," he snaps off.
Natasha doesn't let it show, but it gets to her. It gets under her skin. She hates that, this new feeling of vulnerability, of culpability. In a world where morality is decided by the victors, she's always been free of guilt. It was never her decision to become a weapon. Now she's in the hands of the good guys, and there are too many rules. Too many problems. Less freedom than the free world might suggest there is.
"I'm sorry," she says to Clint. It's quiet, and a bit angry, but it's there. And she is sorry.
Sometimes it feels like Clint's arrow is still pointed at her neck, or as if they're all waiting for Natasha to turn around and give them all up. They aren't wrong. Sometimes it's tempting. But then she sees the ending of the story when S.H.I.E.L.D. is involved.
There's still the aftermath. There are still women crying and men grieving; there are still children dead and homes destroyed. But there's hope. There's a brief shining light in the most broken-down places in the world, that the worst won't inherit the earth, when S.H.I.E.L.D. steps in.
Generally, of course. They're hardly angels sent down by a merciful God. But they do what they can.
When she lies awake at night, on the month anniversary of her inauguration into S.H.I.E.L.D., she thinks about Natasha Romanov. Where she came from. She thinks about the fast death at Clint's hands that she might have had. She thinks about the hospital fire, the patients jumping from the top floors and hitting the pavement with the sickening crack of bone and pools of gushing dark arterial blood, the stench of burning flesh and hair as she drove away with her quarry bound in her car's backseat. She thinks about this person or that she's picked off as though they were simple birds in the sky. She thinks of Drakov's daughter.
She tries to count them, but there are too many to count. She loses count at fifty-five in the last year, because though she tries to estimate how many died in Sao Paolo, at the hotel bombing, it doesn't seem to matter.
To keep herself alive - to keep herself safe, and working, and an active threat - how many had to die? How many will die because of people like her, or if she fails to stop them? The night advances hour by hour, but each death is marked in deep scratches into her mind, drawing red, and there's nothing she can do to take it back.
Clint answers his phone on the second ring. "Yeah."
"Tell me," Natasha says. She feels hollow. She feels terrible. She feels the weight of a thousand souls on her shoulders. "You should have killed me. Why didn't you?"
"Because it's never too late to change," he says.
"I don't know if change is enough, Clint."
He's silent for a moment. "It's all we have to give."
She pauses, recognizing the hesitation in his voice. "Did you...?"
"One day you'll know how to make it right," Clint says, quietly. "Do you trust me, Natasha?"
"Yes," Natasha says, simply.
"I'll see you tomorrow."
She hangs up. She opens her laptop. She begins to type. She starts at the beginning, with every final breath she can remember.
This is what I owe, Natasha decides. This is why I'm here.
There's a girl in the corner of the apartment building in New York City. She's thirteen. She's Ukrainian. She dreamed of being a ballerina, took classes, but worked towards the more workable dream of being a model instead, and now she's housed with twenty other girls who had similar American dreams. And she has no idea what these scientists mean to do with them.
Inside Natasha there was once ice, unyielding. It didn't matter who paid her, or with what. Now she doesn't work to collect or to prosper. She's bound to this path by her past. She owes more to the world than she can ever give, but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying.
There's a flame inside of her. There's anger. There's righteousness.
When she's good… it feels good.
She narrows her eyes, lowers the binoculars, and speaks offhand to Clint. "Are you ready, Barton?"
"Mad scientists? I eat them for breakfast," Clint says idly, and flashes her a half-smile. "Are you ready?"
"You know it."
There's no such thing as a fair exchange, a life for a life, an eye for an eye. There's no repentance that can bring the people she's killed or hurt back from where she sent them. There's just the path ahead, there's just the chance to spark a flame of hope for others like her, and that could just be enough.