The water wasn't just cold, it was the coldest thing Natasha had ever felt. The second she had stepped into the water, dragging a super powerful man with anger issues, she felt her entire body freeze up and fall forward into the water, encasing her and the son of the sea god in blackness.
FLASHBACK
At first it seemed as if the entire world had turned black, but not just the ordinary dark of night, this darkness seamed to suck the life from her. It was absolute, nothing could penetrate it. The only thought that came to mind was that this was oblivion.
Then a feeling of warmth swept through, pushing away the cold, and slowly a smile appeared. Soft and sweet, it spoke of promises of happiness and love. But it was soon gone.
Slowly more images came and went, most of them were of a younger woman in her mid-twenties, the memories of her were filled with love and understanding. At one point she felt a stinging on her hands and knees and the woman was suddenly there, standing above Natasha, and for the first time she spoke, "There there Perseus, you're ok."
The woman hugged them with a smile, and then they were off to the next memory. Most of Perseus' early memories were focused around this woman, who could only be his mom. They were often short and blurry, but Natasha understood his feelings.
As she went through his life, she found herself loving this woman as much as he did. She admired his mom and, at one point, envied him for his luck in being given her. But that envy turned to anger when his new stepdad appeared.
He first was nice, helpful, and always considerate of others, but over time he changed. Soon he started to become mean and angry, he started smoking in the house and the alcohol followed. The house that was once clean and felt like home soon started to feel like hell.
The house became filthy because of that man and his friends, and it stayed that way no matter how hard Perseus' mom tried. This went on for years, until Perseus was in the first grade, and then everything got even worse.
He came home from school one day to find his stepdad, who he had now come to call Smelly Gabe, laying on the couch with one of the bathroom mirrors in his lap and, spread across the smooth reflective surface, were lines of white powder.
Things happened that day, and his mother wasn't able to save him from the humiliation and abuse he was put through, because she had to work overtime since Gabe lost his job at the factory. Soon this happened more and more often, always when Sally was away.
By the time the sexual abuse started, Percy was in the fourth grade and having a hard time with bullying. He was constantly picked on because of his name and learning disabilities, so much so that whenever he was in public, or introducing himself to new people, he only used the name Percy and only talked when asked a direct question.
As Natasha watched his life pass through her mind, she was stunned. With all of the things that had happened in his life so far, he never once showed an ounce of resentment towards anyone. He was angry, that was for sure, but he hid it so well that no one was able to see it festering deep inside of him. Natasha couldn't help but pity whoever made him snap and become the out let for all of this anger.
But then the day came when he was introduced to the world of gods and myth, with the death of one of the most intimidating monsters of all of time. Soon his life was just one battle after another, the people he met were a blur, except for one girl, Annabeth.
Just her name was enough to bring up feelings that no twelve year old should have been able to feel. Throughout their first quest, Percy was confused. Sometimes they could get along just fine, but fights seemed to come out of nowhere There was also a contentment that he had never felt before, he was happy just by being around her, even when they fought.
More soon came, Thalia and Nico, more like siblings then cousins, and for a brief moment, it seemed as if his life was being built back up, and he started to feel real happiness.
It wasn't just memories that Natasha was living through, but pain also. Mostly the pain was minimal, scrapes and bruises were common place in the life of an agent, but there were several events that stood out. The sky was one, holding it up was something no demigod should be able to do, just the exertion of holding it up would have turned a mortal to dust, but not only did he survived, so did Annabeth.
As the memory played though her head, Natasha could feel the strain as if she was doing it herself, she could feel her bones being ground to dust, her tendons snapping, somehow she lived. However the after effects would haunt them for a long time.
The amount of weight they held destroyed their entire bodies, tearing their muscles beyond recognition, and it was only the god of medicine that saved them from being cripples for life. They had to spend weeks on mount Olympus recovering, and it was there that the son of the sea god struck up an uneasy friendship with the goddess Artemis. A friendship that kept him alive throughout the second giant war.
The second major event was Percy's trip into the river Styx. Although worse in the amount of pain he felt, it did not linger. The pain was gone as soon as he was out of the water. The torture of the hell known as Tartarus was bad because it wasn't just physical pain like all of the other events, but mental as well.
The air was filled with a hallucinogen that made people live out there worse nightmares whenever they slept, causing phobias in both Percy and Annabeth. Everything from the fear of heights, day light, and needles, to the fear of open spaces and clowns.
Everything down there was meant to break immortals, and it did on a regular basis. Tartarus tried everything to stop them, even going as far to appear in person, but even that failed and … They escaped only to face the horrors of a new war.
As Natasha looked back at Percy's memories, she saw the driving force behind him. Although it sounded cliché, his friends are what saved him, and in the end he couldn't save them. They all died, one after another, and as the day came to a close, standing on that mountain half way around the world from his home, he watched as the last of them were executed.
As the sun set, the real Perseus died, and all that was left was a monster prepared to kill the world to satisfy its taste for revenge.
It was there that the memories started to fade into a red haze, and suddenly she was there in a white room, the only thing breaking up the flat plains was a single chair with a man seated in it, chained and beaten.
He looked as if he had lost a fight with a wood chipper most of his exposed skin was covered in ragged tears, tears that looked agonizing. Before she could walk closer, the blackness returned, and with it a set of memories that the agent of SHEILD was very familiar with.
Natasha's first memories were of the orphanage where she had spent her youth. She had been dropped off there by her mother, who, after countless hours of pestering, the head mistress had finally described.
"She was a beautiful woman, Nat," said Gwyneth, "A British born citizen who had married her late husband, Nicolai, a man from wealth, some years before. She looked like one of those American movie stars- long blond hair and stunning gray eyes..."
Stopping for a minute, Gwyneth looked like she was in a faraway place, and then continued, "She had a soft spoken voice, but it had an edge to it; one that made people just listen to her… She seemed like a very smart woman."
That was all Natasha ever got out of Gwyneth. For years she lived happily in the orphanage, with all the kids her age, she was never short on friends. Then the day came when she got adopted. It was like any other summer day in Moscow, except that it was unusually warm, so all the kids were out on the ground playing and enjoying the sun. But the laughter was soon broken by the sound of Gwyn yelling out her name.
"I'll be back guys" Natasha yelled to a group of friends playing tag. Running into the main office where the yelling had come from, she came to a halt, out of breath and with a huge smile on her face. Natasha didn't notice the two other people in the room. "You need something?" She finally said, after catching her breath.
"Yes, I would like to introduce you to Mr. and Mrs. Romanova."
Startled, Natasha noticed the man and woman for the first time. Both were tall and dressed in black formal wear, as if they had just come from a high-class party. The woman was very attractive; long brown hair and a slim athletic figure, the woman spoke with an American accent and bright white teeth,
"How are you dear?" spoke, still smiling. Natasha was too afraid to answer. Looking over to the man, she was struck by how intimidating he looked, but it all disappeared the moment he smiled, his face broke out into a wide grin and he spoke in a soft voice,
"You looked pretty happy when you came in here, are you just afraid of my ugly mug?" He joked. She couldn't help but laugh at that. Looking over to the woman, she was met by a smile so kind that she could not help but smile back. Gwyn looked happy,
"The Romanova's would like to adopt you, honey." That day was the best she had ever had; it was the start of a whole new life.
Nick, as he liked to be called, was a politician. High up in the government, he was well-paid, and that showed in their house. Sitting on one hundred acres in the Russian countryside, the land itself was beautiful, covered in a thick forest and surrounded by a tall cement wall.
They never had to worry about privacy; the house was in the center of the property, although it was more of a mansion then a house. As well as the house there was also a barn, and horse pens that connected to an arena that they would spend many warm summer days in.
The house was huge, only a single story; every room had huge skylights letting in natural light. On top of the skylights there were also several terrariums spaced throughout the house; they were open at the top, birds and bats could fly in year round and nest in several bird houses and bat boxes. The rooms were filled with modern furniture; everything being less than two years old.
Nick and Alice, or mom and dad as they insisted on, had some strange hobbies. Alice was into gymnastics and martial arts, while Nick loved guns.
The reason for this being that Alice used to be an Olympic athlete, she had even won a silver medal in gymnastics that was now displayed proudly next to Nick's gold for shooting. They had both met that year at the Olympics, and one thing led to another and they were married less than a year later.
One wing of the house was completely dedicated to this, an entire training room with everything from uneven bars and a compete gym, to a gun vault the size of a small apartment filled with every type of gun imaginable.
If it involved something they loved, well, they didn't do anything by halves and that included Natasha. If she wanted to try something, they did everything to make it happen, whether it was buying a horse or dirt bike, or even just learning to play an instrument.
By the time she was fifteen, she had learned more than half a dozen languages, and knew how to rebuild her parents cars, on top of hundreds of other skills that she had accumulated over the years. But her favorites were the ones she got to do with her adoptive parents. Nat, as her dad would call her, would often be his only competition when it came to shooting; being trained from a young age, Natasha was a natural with all types of weapons and, as her dad said, she could give most of the world's best shooters a run for their money.
Her mother on the other hand, was more of a friend then a rival, and they would spend hours together practicing and just talking, but this life would soon change for the worse.
Late one new year's night, well after all their partying had stopped and everyone was asleep, a crash sounded across the house, jarring Natasha out of her sleep. Startled, the fifteen year old crept out of her room and to the main hall.
Looking over the rail, she let out a small gasp, covering her mouth so as not to be noticed; she looked on in horror as her parents were dragged across the floor by several men carrying various guns. They looked beaten and bloody, and had their hands tied behind their backs.
The men stopped in front of seven men dressed in expensive suits, men that radiated power. Natasha had to strangle another gasp, the men where all members of her dads political party and had often been over to the house to talk.
Talking with a deep voice, one of the men, who happened to be bald and bore a striking resemblance to Gorbachev, explained there being there. "Nicolai, you knew this was coming, what with your refusal to our… proposition. This was the most likely outcome." The man spoke with confidence.
Spitting out his gag, Nick snarled out, "You mean your bribe!"
Looking smug with satisfaction, the bald man continued, "You could have been the perfect person for the post. The new Nazi party needed a strong figure-head, someone with great people skills and a winning smile. Someone like you."
Nick glared at the man and spoke in a calm and deadly voice, "I would never join you, a party based on bribery and lies is no more than an organization of criminals and thieves! I would sooner die then submit to a government based on your ideas!" With a smile that sent shivers down Natasha's back, the man pulled out a gun and fired, killing Alice.
"What do you think we're here for?" With another shot, Nick fell to the ground dead. This time she couldn't keep the cries from escaping. The head of the man who had just killed her family slowly turned to look at her, his face was covered in a sadistic grin and marred by specs of blood from her parents.
Natasha was paralyzed with fear, so much so that she didn't see the man creeping up on her until it was too late. Without warning, the twice orphaned girl was picked up and thrown over the railing to the hard marble floor fifteen feet below, her head cracking hard on the stone surface.
As her vision began to fade she herd the man who took everything from her laugh out "let her burn." She woke, what felt like minutes later, to the heat of the house burning down around her and lying in a pool of her own blood. Siting up she held her head in pain she could fill the blood pouring out of a deep cut one the back of her head.
Natasha slowly turned her head to look at the bodies of her parents just a few yards away, the scent of gasoline and smoke making her eyes water even more. She couldn't do anything but wonder why she was still alive. Why couldn't they let her die?
It took more than an hour for the emergency services from the closest town to arrive, and when they did they were only met by the site of a burnt down house and the unmoving body of a girl on the front lawn.
With the death of her parents, Natasha started to unravel, losing interest in the things she once loved and focusing only on thoughts of revenge. It wasn't until one of the men who killed her parents stumbled past her late one night, drunk, did she act on her feelings.
That morning the police found his body suspended from a power line in a very upscale part of Moscow, mutilated and almost beyond recognition. It was that night that the seventeen year old Natasha decided to act on her revenge, a decision that would consume the next two years of her life.
Two years of killing the men who took everything, and with every man killed, she would sink deeper and deeper in to this revenge. She wouldn't stop until every signal man that was in the house the night her parents died had met the same end.
The police never suspected a thing, because with every death she left incriminating evidence that always pointed towards the wife of the men she killed. This practice would lead governments all around the world to calling her the Black Widow. But she was never convicted; she was too smart to leave any evidence behind.
That is until she found the man who pulled the trigger, the man who was the cause of this. She never bothered to learn his name. She kidnapped him one night in the main room at a gala, right in front of the cameras that dotted the building.
Blinded by rage she tortured him over the span of three days, so that he might have understood the pain his actions had caused her. But those three days where long enough for the organization known as SHEILD to track her down, and capture her. But in the end he died like the rest.
Natasha couldn't stop crying as she looked down at the white floor. Her tears falling steadily. She couldn't believe that her actions still affected her this way. She had spent years crafting barriers around her feelings so that she wouldn't be affected, but they had finally been broken down.
Suddenly she felt herself wrapped in a warm embrace; the hardened SHEILD agent was pulled into the scared chest of a demigod capable of destroying the world, and the only thing she could do was cry, filled with over 40 years of emotions all at the same time.
So new chapter and I know it may not be the best but it isn't six months from the last one. Also if anyone has any advice on how to make my story flow better I would appreciate it. I still need ideas for all of my story. Finally people need to stop putting so many main characters in there story it makes it hard to read and really annoying like in crossovers when you have the seven and then all of your other favorite characters, if rick messed up the lost hero so bad by adding Jason piper and there others what makes you thing you can do the same but with a completely new set of characters. REVIEW. Also it was four in the morning when I wrote the authors note.