A child's hands dripped in blood, the viscous substance flowing down her hands and arms, but she paid it no mind. She was used to it, the red liquid flowing off of her body, disappearing down the already clogged-up drain. Anyways, they had a mission. Time for them to send another soul to Helheim into the deathly cold embrace of Hela.

Her code name was well-earned, she was the Black Widow of Joseph Stalin's Russia, the Slavic Shadow, the Red Death, the monster under the bed that parents warned their children about. She became known for being elusive, fast, and deadly. No one knew what she looked like except for her handler and her partner. Some said she was a young woman of 20, chocolate waves falling to her waist, high cheek bones and glittering azure eyes, sylph or siren like, luring her victims to their death, true to her title of master assassin and seductress. Some said she was a child, looking to be about 10, blond hair, green eyes. And even fewer saw her true appearance, a girl-no-woman, no more than 15, bloody red hair and green eyes that should've sparkled like emeralds, instead dull, lifeless, a figure that women would kill for, a lover men would die for.

She was the fire to her partners ice. She was passion, fire, life, a phoenix contained in a human's body until they got to her. He had always, always been ice, ever since he could remember, which wasn't much, but he was made for mother Russia's winters. Perhaps he'd been someone else before them, but now... whoever he had been was dead, dead, dead. The world had their golden boy in the form of Captain America, but Russia only ever had her Winter.

He was with her when Alexi abandoned her and later when he was killed. He was there when she found out what they had done to her baby brother. He was there when everything that felt wrong was right, when they couldn't trust anything, even through the torture and cyro and brainwashing, when they didn't know up from down or where he ended and she began, and medical treatments and missions and blood, so much blood, when it was everywhere, the air tasting like iron, the metallic scent cloying, filling the room. He is there during her first kill, during the nightmares, he was always there, never forgetting despite what they put him through.

Together, they slaughtered their way through a U.S. president, an Australian prime minister, several British lords, Howard and Maria Stark, countless miscellaneous members of drug cartels, police forces worlddwide, hit-men, mobsters, and, finally, their handler, Ivan Petrovitch. Black Widow got out, but Russia captured her Winter, and without the fire contained in a girl's body, he was lost. She continued on, adapting, but she missed her Winter, her Yasha.

Finally, SHIELD sent the Hawk after her, and it was a relief, knowing she wouldn't have to keep living a mockery of life without the ice to her fire, Winter to her Widow.

She and the Hawk were partners, almost as good as she and Winter were, and she made real friends here, not like the girls in the Red Room, who only became friends with her because she was the best. Belladonna and Nightshade and Cavalry and Hawk and Samurai and Widow, the original STRIKE Team: Delta. But even that fell apart, Cavalry disappearing into admin, Nightshade locked in a nursing home, Samurai becoming a handler, and Belladonna rose to second in command, until it was just Hawk and Widow, left in the dust, and she knew it was only a matter of time until Hawk left too. So she waited, and waited, and killed, and more red kept piling up in her ledger and she'd never be free, she was drowning, suffocating on the blood of innocents she'd killed, all the while sleeping less and less and less, the faces and screams of the people she'd killed haunting every hour, asleep or not. And then she started seeing the trademark of Winter's missions popping up all over the globe again. She was scared, really scared for the first time in forty years, because this time, he wouldn't remember her, not after she left him, wounded, dying in the cold, cold, cold country of her birth and his enslavement.

Almost a century later, she confronts him on a bridge in the country they've caused so much pain and damage to, and it is both wonderful and horrible that he doesn't remember her. There are others with her, but he instinctively goes after her, knowing that she is infinitely more dangerous than her companions. So she compartamentalizes, doesn't tell anyone how close she and Winter once were. They wiped him, over and over and over again until he was nobody masquerading as somebody. She'd run into him over the years, but they'd never had to fight.

The time in limbo, where neither of them existed was over in a flash, but at the same time it was like swimming through molasses. He was gone, gone, gone, hidden in a castle protected by a dragon only he could defeat and she was buried in long-forgotten archives, databases, and libraries, recreating what they'd spent so long establishing.

Widow, Captain, and Falcon went after Winter, hunting him, trying to make him someone again, all the while Widow knew that they will never find him until he wanted them to. It takes years, and in that time, she has to deal with her past coming up from long-buried archives and memories, the Captain finding out about her whole, sordid history with his two old friends, known to her as her lover and the one person she couldn't kill.

But one day, he shows up with a spark in his cerulean eyes, hair lank and foul-smelling, beard filthy, like the Orthodox men of her youth, voice hoarse, clothing in tatters, and as the snow whirls around them, whipping the scarce trees into a frenzy, a poor mimicry of when they first met in that frigid KGB facility, not knowing that they would forge a partnership that would last a millennium, he finally came home with a barely-there whisper of "Natalia?"

That night, the faces and screams were less pronounced then they had been for thirty years.

•

AN-

okay so I doubt many people will read this but if you liked it enough to give me a chance I have a poll up and y'all should go vote. I will eventually return to this story but I'm a bit busy now and I wanted to get something out. Also, I wrote this while listening to Loosing My Religion by R.E.M. not that any of you care, but it kinda put their story in perspective for me.