The Seventh Circle
Dante was right, Natasha believes, but only partially.
She's not religious. She doesn't believe in God, Christian or otherwise. She believes in Hell, sometimes. It only seems logical to her that there would be somewhere to shove her rotted soul after death.
The Seventh Circle of Hell. The circle for the violent, for those damned by their own bloodlust. For the murderers. Natasha figures she had a spot reserved for her before what would have been her tenth birthday, had she lived somewhere that allowed you to know when your birthday was.
It was a fitting punishment, Natasha believes. To spend eternity boiling in blood, to reap the consequences of your actions. Dante was right about that part, she thinks. He was so right, in fact, that sometimes she wonders if he knew from experience. If he knew exactly what it meant to be covered in blood that didn't belong to you.
He was wrong about needing to die before the punishment began, however.
"I have red in my ledger," she would say sometimes. "I'd like to wipe it out."
This is both a lie and the truth.
In words only, it is true. She's drowning in red, and she would give anything, do anything, to wipe it out.
In what it implies, it is a lie. You can't wipe out red with more red, Natasha knows this. No matter how many disasters she stops, no matter how many people she saves, the red will only get darker and bloodier. Because sometimes to stop death, you need to kill. Sometimes to stop the nuke, or the biological weapon, or whatever tool whatever depraved mind of the week is wielding, you have to kill said depraved mind.
Save the world. Etch your ledger with red.
"I have red in my ledger," she repeats. "I'd like to wipe it out."
Natasha doesn't know why she keeps saying this, not really. She knows that she can scrub at the red until her hands bleed, and it will never come out. She knows it's pointless to wish it would.
(She does anyway.)
Perhaps it's a way to justify what she is. Perhaps it's a convenient way to explain to people why she keeps fighting the way she does, even when she doesn't really want to. Perhaps she does want to, for the simple reason that she doesn't know how to do anything else.
Perhaps she has become such a good liar that a part of her is taken in by the lie also.
"I have red in my ledger," she says for the thousandth time. "I'd like to wipe it out."
And so she fights for the thousandth time, and a part of her is always, always surprised when the red only gets darker.
When she finds out about Hydra, Natasha laughs.
It's long after the Helicarriers have gone down, long after she has spoken to Congress. It's when she is finally alone, and she allows herself a single, rare moment to relax.
Natasha Romanoff laughs until she cries.
Because Oh God, it finally makes sense.
Redemption is not for the damned. The accursed don't get a second chance. They don't get a chance to be a hero, to be an Avenger. They get rivers of blood searing their skin and the screams of their victims in their ears, but they never, ever get redemption.
And she wonders how many of the spots on her ledger were actually hits for Hydra, how much more innocent blood she was covered in.
That night, Natasha dreams of drowning in boiling blood and the clip clop clip clop of the Centaurs manning the Seventh Circle.
She wakes up and goes out to fight Hydra, because it's all she really knows how to do anymore, and the red gets darker.
She fights with her teammates, and the red gets darker.
And, somehow, she falls in love.
The rest of the Avengers were fools, Natasha privately thought. They never realized how thick the blood had become, on their hands and on hers.
Bruce had been the only one that realized it, and Natasha loved him for it. She loved him for being like her, for being scrubbing just as hard as her at the red covering his green skin, and for always being just as surprised as her when it sunk in deeper. She loved him for belonging in the Seventh Circle even when he didn't, even when he was so kind and righteous that he deserved Paradise.
And, for a moment, she forgot that she was one of the damned. She forgot that she didn't get second chances, that she would never get love.
(That was a lie too. She remembered that redemption wasn't hers to take; she heard every whisper in her mind telling her stop, no, this can't end well.
She had merely ignored them.)
Bruce leaves, and Natasha laughs again.
(She cries again, too, but tells no one.)
In the aftermath of Sokovia, Natasha realizes that the blood is so deep that she's completely submerged, and she can't remember how to swim.
A part of her doesn't want to.
But she still grabs onto the Accords like a life raft.
On a level, she recognizes the flaws in the system; she realizes all the ways it could go wrong. But a larger part of her can feel the blood boiling against her skin, and she thinks maybe it could still work. Maybe if she was bogged down in bureaucracy, the flow of red would slow.
(She was wrong about that too. The blood never slows down, the river just gets deeper and the blood only boils hotter, and she will never, ever escape this cycle of red.)
Dante was only partially right, Natasha believes.
Because she had been living in the Seventh Circle of Hell for years, but she wasn't dead yet.
"But fix thine eyes below; for draweth near
The river of blood, within which boiling is
Whoe'er by violence doth injure others."
-Dante's Inferno