Thank you very much for all the favourites, follows and reviews! I'm glad you like it. I'm yet to finish the third chapter, so it might be a longer wait for an update, I'm sorry. Enjoy this chapter, though! X
Disclaimer: I don't own this. I only own the plot, and characters you don't recognise.
Natasha gasped, huffing air in and out of her lungs in total blackness. The sound of her rasping breath bounced back to her from solid masses somewhere in the dark. She tried to steady herself; calm herself. Her hands were bound above her head and her toes didn't touch the floor. She was overcome with the sensation of falling. Icy cold air brushed over the bare skin of her neck and her thighs, and she shivered. She hadn't expected pitch black. Her unconscious had probed the idea of imprisonment and pain and hunger, but not pitch black.
She had never like the dark, believe it or not.
"Hello? A-anyone there?"
She could hear a quiet dripping of water; drip, drip. And a low rumbling passing overhead.
"Hello?"
Something rattled to her left and Natasha turned towards it to see a thin sliver of light illuminating what looked like a stone wall. The sliver widened, accompanied by another rattle of a chain.
Great, she was a prisoner.
"H-hello?"
A small girl crept out of the dark. The light caught the left side of her face and Natasha could clearly make out a jagged scar running over her cheek bone and closing the corner of her mouth. Natasha pulled against her binds and backed away as the girl inched closer. She looked about nine years old, her long, greyish-brown hair plaited in two braids. Natasha couldn't quite see what the little girl was wearing, but the sound of fabric dragging on the floor made her think a long dress. The girl made no sound, just shuffled closer. She ran a hand over Natasha's cotton shirt, smiling as her fingers touched the fabric.
"Please." Natasha whispered. "Let me free."
The girl flinched at her voice and stumbled backwards.
"No! No, please." Natasha pleaded.
The girl tiptoed forward again, her hand instantly going to the hem of her shirt.
"Do you want it? D-do you want my shirt?"
The girl peered up at Natasha in the dim illumination from the ever growing sliver of light. She smiled again, shyly this time, and gave a tiny nod.
"You can have it. Just let me down." Natasha urged softly, rattling the chains binding her hands to show the girl.
She seemed to ponder for a second, whether or not this redheaded woman before her was safe, and if she would really give her her clean, warm shirt. She must have decided in Natasha's favour, because she leapt forward and attacked the lock with her nails. Minutes later and Natasha collapsed to the floor, welcoming the cold, hardness of it. She rubbed the back of her head to feel dried blood stuck to her hair.
"What happened…?" She softly moaned to herself.
"They hit you."
It took Natasha a few moments to realise it was the little girl who had spoken.
"As far as I know, they hit you." Her voice was scratchy and high, and she spoke in broken sentences- long pauses between words. She wasn't English, or American. Her words had a very prominent accent. Russian, maybe?
"Ok… Where's my friend?" She asked slowly.
The girl stared at her, pursing her lips.
"They took him."
"What? Who took him?!" Natasha's voice rose and the girl looked terrified. Natasha took a chance. "I'm sorry. извините. Who took him, возлюбленный?"
The girl glanced up, surprised at Natasha's perfect Russian tongue. She laughed silently, her mouth moving gracefully as she chuckled. She seemed more at ease knowing that the woman could speak her first language.
"привет." She greeted. "They took the friend of yours to-" Her voice dropped to a whisper, "- Strafe."
"That means…" Natasha racked her brain until she found the time two years ago when Clint attempted to teach her German. "'Punishment'." Natasha breathed, her eyes wide. "But why?"
The girl suddenly backed away, slamming into what sounded like a wall, and whimpering.
"I cannot tell you."
"Why not?"
"Because I do not know. I only know what my family pass on to me, and they tell me nothing else."
Natasha sighed. "Who are your family?"
"They are the servants who run after the bosses. They take care of business. They hear things."
"And who are the bosses?"
The girl didn't say anything. In the light, Natasha saw her bow her head into the wall.
"Kreiptkof?" Natasha suggested and the girl flung herself across the room. She landed on Natasha's chest and crushed her into the floor, lowering her face to the woman's.
"Do not say his name!" The girl hissed. "Say his name and they will come. They will come and they will kill us both!"
Natasha raised her hands to surrender beside her head and repeatedly whispered a Russian apology. The girl slid off her and crouched a metre away, her head in her hands. Natasha sat up cross-legged.
"Why will they kill you too?" She whispered after a moment.
"I steal from the bosses." The girl looked up. "I was hungry! My family too! My baby brother needed food!"
"I understand, I understand."
Natasha raised her hands again and this time she noticed the way the girls eyes moved to her shirt every time it fluttered.
"Oh! You wanted my shirt. OK."
Natasha pulled her light blue shirt up and over her head, handing it out to the girl. "And what's your name, возлюбленный?"
The girl looked from Natasha's face to her shirt and back again, taking in how the woman was now just in shorts and a vest and must have been freezing. She hesitantly reached out and clasped the shirt.
"Kattar. My mama used to call me Kat."
"Used to?"
The girl looked solemn. "Mama died trying to get food for my brothers and sister."
"I'm sorry. My mother died too, you know."
The girl met Natasha's eyes and frowned sadly. Natasha cleared her throat, holding back the tears from her eyes.
"Well, hello, Kat. I'm Natasha."
"I know. Your friend was shouting for you when they put you in here."
Natasha's smile sunk and she stared at the floor. "Will… will he be okay?"
She heard Kat sigh as she snuggled into the shirt. "I am afraid I do not know. In Strafe, some survive, some don't. Is he a strong man?"
"The strongest."
"Then he will be OK, Natasha." Kat smiled widely and Natasha smirked. The girl watched her for a few minutes, trailing her eyes up and down her body. She knew barely anything about the redheaded woman and had been scared at first, but she could already tell that she had heart. She cared for the man who was brought here with her, and he cared for her. Kat had been awake when they bound the unconcious Natasha, she was crouched low in a dark corner. A rusty chandellier of candles had lit up her friend's face- he was covered in blood and a bruise was forming on his cheek. He was shouting one name over and over: Natasha! Then they'd knocked him out and dragged him away. That's what her grandfather had done to her father when her mother's body had been found. He had struggled and cried out and screamed, until she handed her grandfather a wooden pan. Natasha's friend had acted the same way.
Maybe he loved Natasha the way her father had loved her mother… she hoped so. Kat smiled.
"Now!" Kat shouted all of a sudden, jumping up and scaring the life out of Natasha. "Let's get you out of here."
"What? You can you that?"
"Of course I can! I have seen so many people escape these chambers, I can surely do it too!" Kat laughed.
"So you've never actually escaped, then?"
"No… but it's easy! You just have to think about it! So many people have escaped!"
"Yes, you said. And what happened to them afterwards?"
Kat groaned softly and turned to look at the wall Natasha had been hung from. A box had been carved into the stone and clumps of straight lines were scratched in it, separated into their own little boxes. With shock, Natasha realised what it was. It was a tally chart.
"They are chased… and they are hunted. The bosses make a game out of it." Kat said quietly.
Natasha mused this over in her head.
She could run and she could fight, kill; she could get out. But could the little girl? She was so thin, her arms and legs were bony and gangly and looked so weak. She couldn't be responsible for the death of a girl so young.
Not again.
But the girl was fast. She had shot across the room so quickly even Natasha's assassin eyes had almost missed her, and she could hide well too. Natasha sighed in frustration.
"Kat. We won't go right now."
Kat shot around from where she was inspecting what looked like metal bars.
"What?! Why not?" She screeched and Natasha put her finger on her lips.
"We have to make them think we have no plans on escaping. We have to let them think we're gonna buck up and sit tight. They'll come for me soon, but its unlikely that they'll kill be if I don't talk. Then I can look for a way out. Right now, we need to work out a plan."
Over the next six hours, Natasha and little Kattar scribbled away on the dusty floor. Natasha inspected the iron gate and rusted locks until she found a way to crack the locks off. Kat squeezed her arm through the bars to reach a discarded candle the other side. Natasha found a hairpin tucked away in the corner of the cell, bent and covered in copper. Kat lifted her long skirt and let fall a bent tin cup and a half-empty box of old matches. Natasha ripped off the end of the candle and rolled it in her palm until it was soft, flattening it like a pancake and squashing it along the concrete the opposite side of the bars. A plan appeared detail by detail in the dust, and Kat stored the collected items in a petticoat pouch under her dress.
The girl babbled on about how she had seen her brothers scale the wall and leap to another, without making so much as a scuffle.
Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear: dead on eight 'o' clock, as the bells began to chime, a boy of about fourteen crept up to the cell. He had greyish-blonde, shoulder-length hair and the same dark eyes as Kat.
"Kat! Kat, are you there?!" He whispered into the pitch black of the room.
"Cato?"
Kat ran from where she was slumped against Natasha's shoulder, reading, to grab her brother's shirt.
"Cato!"
He pulled her up to him and they hugged through the metal bars.
"How are you, Kattar?" Her brother grinned, his voice quiet. He didn't seem too interested in his answer; kept looking around the stone hallways anxiously.
"I am coping, Cato. How is papa? And Grandpa? And Tia, and Christian?"
"They are well, they are well. Kat, I brought you bread."
Cato produced a loaf of bread from underneath his coat and the warm, luscious smell reached Natasha's nose instantly. Her mouth watered.
"Cato! You shouldn't have, thank you."
Kat stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. At the bottom of a shutter door at the top of a flight of stairs across the corridor, a light flickered and hushed voices echoed.
"Cato, go! They'll catch you!" Kat cried, releasing his shirt.
The boy thrust the loaf into her hands and to Natasha's surprise, looked into the darkness straight at her.
"привет, whoever you are. And they'll never catch me, Kitty Kat. до свидания, sister."
He ran off the way he came, his bouncing shadow retreating to nothing. Kat placed the bread beside Natasha.
"Cato, my oldest brother." She mumbled.
"He seems lovely."
Kat shrugged and broke off a corner of crust.
"Treasure him, Kat." Natasha said. "You don't know when you could lose him."
Kat nodded, fire in her eyes.
Then, suddenly, two men were stood outside the cell. The dancing shadows from the candles cast shadows over their dark faces, and Kat sunk into Natasha, pushing the bread behind her. The one on the left was a Corporal, by the medals and badges on his chest. They were both clad in army uniforms, not a single imperfection. The man on the right was rolling a knot of rope around his fingers.
"Romanoff." The German Corporal said. "How did you get out of your chains..?"
His eyes moved to Kat. "Was it you?"
"I got myself out." Natasha said, standing and nudging Kat, still curled on the floor, back with her foot.
"Hmm." The Corporal stepped forward so his nose was almost touching the bars. "Better come with me then, Romanoff."
Natasha swallowed and glanced down at Kat.
She whispered, "Hide the bread."