So, look at me, 2 chapter in 4 days? I think it's 4. But yeah, I'm not too happy with this chapter, it's hard to find that balance between giving enough background for it to make sense and not giving the whole story away. Shout out to , ebarnea25, Alma bipolar, Pandoraandamanda077, The way ward beacon, Macdisney123 and SiriusJohnPotter. Thanks so much for all your lovely follows and favs, they honestly make my day.

I woke up strapped to a bed in what smelt like a medical wing. My arms and legs were all tied down separately, as well as a strap across my middle and my forehead. I couldn't move. That alone was enough to freak me out, whenever the Red Room was going to test us or torture us or whatever they liked to call it, they would strap us down in the exact same way. My throbbing head brought me back down to earth as I realised where I was. I must not have been here too long, I could feel an impressive lump on my head. My healing factor would have sorted out any damage done by the hammer should I have been any longer than about 10 minutes.

I had not opened my eyes yet, ingrained spy tactics for which I was very glad. I could hear quiet mutterings from somewhere in the room. It soon became clear it was the avengers, or at least some of them. "Has Bruce woken up yet?" I couldn't identify who was speaking but Bruce must be the hulk-man, the one who I had knocked out with a stone.

"Nah, still sleeping, I checked in on him a few minutes ago. How's the leg Tash?"

"Sore." A strained sounding voice came from my left. "She should wake up soon, her healing factor will quickly sort out the concussion."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"Tell you what?"

Barton sounded tired when he replied, "You know what. We could have helped you, sorted out the Red Room before it got to this."

"It was my problem, I didn't want to get anyone else involved."

"Bullshit. We've been over this hundreds of times. We're a team, what's your problem is my problem."

"She's awake."

"What? How do you know?"

"Her breathing, it hitched when you said Red Room." I could hear footsteps getting closer before she spoke again, "Come on, we know you're awake."

I opened my eyes, blinking for a moment to get used to the low lighting. I was right, Thor, Barton and Natalia were in the room. "How long has it been?" I asked in English, not bothering to hide my accent. They knew who I was after all and unless I was wrong we were about to be burnt to a crisp anyway.

"About 15 minutes."

"Then we're all dead." I said, closing my eyes again.

"What?"

"It's a defence mechanism put in place after Natalia defected. I've missed a check in, they will think I have either died, got captured or have defected. Especially with you cutting my connection to them."

The 2 assassins looked towards Stark with their eyebrows raised, but he only shook his head before all of them looked back at me, confused.

"That...wasn't you?"

"No." They answered together.

I looked at them, my brain ticking over. "Jarvis was never down, was he?"

"No? He was the one who alerted Natasha to your presence."

"They lied to you? They said he was down?" The Widow had realised what I was talking about.

"Yes. They said he was down and that the other Avengers wouldn't know or get involved. And then when I tried to get a hold of them again, they cut my feed."

"They sent you on a suicide mission."

"No, they didn't. They want something."

"How can you be sure? Unless it's changed, that's definitely the kind of thing they would do."

I ignored her, thinking back to what my handler had said before dropping me off. "I trust you will do well, Tatiana." I knew something had felt off. "This is a test."

"Well then why aren't you trying to complete it?"

"As I said, self destruct button. I failed the test, there's nothing I can do. Once i miss the next check in, everything in a 50 meter radius is toast."

"What if we could get it out?" I flicked my eyes in her direction to see a thoughtful expression upon her deadly face.

"Sorry?"

"I assume it's implanted in you?"

"Well, yes. But why would you help me? Aren't you just going to stick me on a helicopter and hope it gets far enough away before I blow up?"

"Because you're different. You are here speaking to us, not attempting to break the bonds holding you down. You weren't aiming to kill the others in the fight. But most importantly, you flinched when Barton mentioned the Red Room. You don't want to do what you do, but you have no choice. Your human, rather than the usual mindless robot they send after me."

"Don't tell me what I am! You don't know me!" I hissed at her murderously.

"You're right, I don't know. But I know myself. When Barton here offered me a chance to defect, to leave them behind, I wanted it. I took the chance because I was sick of killing and of hurting people, yet couldn't find a way out. I think you're the same."

I was about to reply when I detected a presence in my head. A telepath. Startled, I attempted to jump out of the bed, failing miserably due to the straps I had forgotten about in my panic. My breathing sped up as I made them disappear with my powers, secrecy be damned. My legs felt like jelly and my body felt heavy, I couldn't get enough air into my lungs. I collapsed the second my full weight was on my legs, backing myself into a corner. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. Someone was in my head, they had control. I could feel myself shaking and was desperately trying to heave oxygen into my lungs that were refusing to work. My vision was flickering, I wasn't in the dark room anymore, I was strapped to a chair in a bright operating theater. Aleksandr hovered over me. His mouth was moving but no words could be heard over the rushing in my ears. I gagged on thin air, feeling extremely dizzy whilst my vision darkened, Aleksandr giving way to the darkness. Something touched my arm and I lashed out, desperate to defend myself, desperate to keep him out of my head. Arms restrained me, stopped me from fighting. I was vaguely aware of hot tears streaming down my face as I kicked and pushed, uncoordinated. Voices shouted in my ear but everything was fuzzy, muffled. Memories flew past me, taunting me before flying away. LeBron. Cold metal beds. Hands holding me down as a scream echoed into the distance. A haunting faced pressed against mine. Emma. Emma. Her face, freckled and tanned, even in the Siberian winter. Her love for coffee and pretzels. Her insistence on safe words, holding me tight as I struggled to breathe. Her eyes, once so full of life, empty as she lay there, dead, whilst madame applauded. Dead. I gasped again, my breaths getting more desperate as my lungs screamed for air. I pushed back into the wall, shaking, as Ivan appeared, praising me, rewarding me for a job well done. I couldn't get them out of my head, I couldn't make them leave. "Нет, пожалуйста, нет." I whispered as Madame appeared, holding a file. Dead. Handcuffs. Empty corridors. Dead. Dead. Dead. Above all the screaming and shouting and noise rushing through my ears, I heard a gentle voice, calm and reassuring. "Ты в безопасности, Тэмми". Safe. Tammy. Safe. I repeated the word over and over, finding my breathing come a bit easier. Aleksandr was fading, his hair slowly turning red. Red. That wasn't right. I scrunched my eyes and shook my head, feeling some clarity come back to me. Safe, I'm safe. I opened my eyes again, relieved to see a dim room instead of an operating theater. My hearing cleared up, allowing me to understand what was being said. I slowly looked up and around, noticing 5 avengers looking back at me. Huh, that was new. I cleared my throat and asked, hesitantly, "Who was in my head? Someone was- someone was in my head." All at once, everyone in the room turned to look at Tony.

"Really? Really? Are you honestly that stupid?" Natalia sounded very pissed off.

"I was trying to see if she was secretly planning to murder us all. And anyway, I calmed her down again didn't I?

Calmed her down? Safe. Suddenly everything clicked in my head. "You fucking bastard." Even I was surprised at the amount of malice in the short phrase. "You not only went inside my head, but then you did it again, accessing memories you had no right to access! Using the secrets you came across to control me?" I was growling at him, and would have squared up to him should I have thought my legs would support me.

"Explain." The short but powerful demand came from the Widow, and I did without hesitation. I'd lost any dignity I ever had with my little… Freak Out.

"There is a man. At the Red Room. He's called Aleksandr and he's a mutant. A telepath to be precise. He's from the Ukraine, the Red Room heard about him and persuaded him to join. They use him to...persuade you to do things, when they want you to obey them but not fully conditioned. Or he will be used as a punishment, you misbehave and have your control taken away. He has access to every thought, every secret. He takes you along for a ride in your own head, makes you do things you have no control over and you can do nothing about it. It's horrible, worse than conditioning. He could just sit there in your head all day, watching everything you do and just every so often send a sharp jolting pain through your head just for the fun of it. When I felt a presence in my head, I was back there and he was torturing me, playing with me before taking over. And you will be trapped in a cage, screaming and crying to be let out as he murders tiny babies with your body, your hands. He will leave you to wash the blood off of your hands, the blood you unwillingly spilled. And whenever you complain, or plead, or begg, he just tells you to stop caring. To stop feeling."

Natalia looked unaffected at my story but the other avengers looked vaguely green and nauseous. "And the thing about Stark accessing memories, how he 'calmed you down'?"

I didn't want to tell her, i wanted to run away as far as possible. I wanted to forget, not relive, but that wasn't an option, so I opened my mouth and started to talk. "Emma was my friend. She was the only thing that kept me sane, the reason why I still have my humanity. All the other girls don't know who they are, they have lost their sense of self. But I haven't. I know who I am and what I am doing, and I hate it, but I have no choice. I have tried multiple times to kill myself, to end the suffering of myself and everyone I hurt, but it simply isn't possible. The serum is so effective that the only way I can die is of old age or if I get the serum reverser. I was taken to the red room when I was 4, they took me from my house in Spain when they killed my parents. Emma was taken when she was 6, both her parents had recently died from cancer and she had been taken from the orphanage. I was starting to lose myself then, forget who I was in between all the blood and murder. She helped me regain what I had lost, to find myself again. We were best friends and stuck together, helped each other out. She created a safe word, more of a phrase really, to help ground one of use when we had a panic attack or had been recently conditioned. That safe word was what Stark used against me, helping to ground me."

"She died didn't she?" I pulled my head up to quickly look at Stark, he backed off quickly and I realised I had been glaring at him. "When I went inside your head, I saw a girl, a dead girl, and the overwhelming grief and despair you felt was what made that stick out, what made me dig deeper until i found your 'safe word' as you call it."

"Yes, she is dead."

"How?"

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I couldn't say it. I knew it was weak and pathetic. I knew it was dangerous to have such a weakness, that it would be used against me, but i just could not form the words in my mouth. So I showed them, pushing the memory of that day into their minds.

The sun was warm, beating down on the girls faces as they stood in a circle. There were only 20 of them, the rest had been killed off. It was the annual напоминание, designed to remind them of the power of the institute, to show them they will always be the lesser. Two girls would be picked, at random, to fight to the death. The courtyard was pretty, flowers and trees blooming in the Russian sun. The woman, her mousy hair up in a bun, walked forwards with grace one only gets from being a dancer and picked up an ornate bowl from the ground. The sun glittered on the gold pattern that danced around the edges as she placed her hand inside it and gave the cards inside a quick shuffle. She picked one and read the name out loud. "Tatiana." A girl, Tatiana, stepped forwards into the ring formed by the circle of girls and smirked around at everyone. The woman placed her hand back inside the bowl and removed another card. "Edora." A girl standing on the opposite side of the circle to the first visibly paled before standing forwards, looking the other in the eye. They were friends. A voice sounded in the second girls head, the other girl was speaking to her telepathically. "I'll pretend to trip and you can get me in a headlock. It's the easiest way."

"No! I can't kill you, and anyway, if you pretend to fail she will know, and will kill me anyway. At least you can make it quick."

"Emma, I can't survive here without you. I can't kill you."

"You have to. I will end up dead at the end of this fight one way or another, I would rather it be you than anyone else. I trust you."

The first girl looked the other in the eye, she knew there was no other way. She had to kill her. The woman hit a gong and the two girls began to fight, graceful yet powerful, almost mesmerising to watch. In less than a minute the first girl had the other on the floor, and looking into her eyes, stamped down hard on her neck, instantly breaking it. The girls cheered whilst the woman clapped, but all the girl could see, could think of was her friend. Her normally bright and curious eyes were dull and lifeless as she lay, unmoving, on the floor. A single tear leaked out of the corner of her eye, mixing with the rain on the floor that had just begun to fall.

I could see the moment the avengers snapped back to the real world. Natasha quickly got up and left, in hindsight that was quite dangerous, I could have easily triggered her conditioning. The other avengers looked at each other as the same question raced through all of their minds - What do we do?