Thank you to nightmarehunter676 for reviewing my last chapter! :) All right, so this goes back to just Sera, though there is another canon person, if you remember her from that one episode in AoS. So here goes! :D
And then, for all I can tell, there's an explosion. There's the sound of breaking glass shattering on the ground. A gunshot goes off, and then many more. I fall to the floor, wondering if I'm dead or alive but not really caring. Gloved hands grab me under the arms and drag me off, through the broken glass and out the window. There's another shot, a grunt, and one of them falters and falls. I'm grabbed by another. I hardly know whether to struggle or not, so I just lay limp, gritting my teeth at the pain in my leg. As I feel myself thrown into a heap on the carpeted floor of what I can only assume is some kind of vehicle, there's a jolt of agony through it, and I sink into the darkness that is more mental than anything else.
: :
"You cost me eight men yesterday." Ovechkin's voice draws me from sleep. I can tell he's furious with me. His words come out sounding strained.
And that means I'm in for it.
"Eight of my men that I don't have the resources to spend died getting you out of there." He continues. Then his face is very near mine. I can feel his warm breath on my face. "Because you failed." He turns away from me again. "You failed to defeat the Black Widow." There is a special hatred in his voice as he spits out her name. Then he seems to compose himself, however slightly. "If you fail me again, your friends will die." And he's gone. Just like that.
Another part of what's left of me drifts to the floor. I can't even be human anymore. Not that I was. But now he won't even allow me room to make mistakes. A chill strikes my heart as I realize I'm not sure I can be as perfect as he wants me to be. What if my failings kill Wanda and Pietro?
With a scowl at my own weakness and uncertainty, I crush that thought. It won't happen. It can't.
: :
I lace my trembling fingers together tightly as the jet takes off. No matter how hard I try, I can't stop replaying my battle with the Widow over and over again. Her voice, warm and amused turned cold and pitiless, weaves through my thoughts. She won't leave me alone. She taunts me, telling me I can't do this, that I'll fail and then Wanda and Pietro will die.
Love is weakness, she says. Never forget that.
Tears start in my eyes, and I close them tight. I can't let the men see me this shaken. That would be a sure sign of weakness. So I clench my jaw and force a fierceness into my expression that I don't feel. They can't know how terrified I am.
I can't know how terrified I am.
When the jet finally bumps to a landing, I feel a wave of nausea, but I don't let it show. I march past the booted feet who are under my command proudly, my back straight and my head high. They follow almost silently, which is a little disorienting for me since I can't see them, but I know they won't leave me. Ovechkin needs them to stay by my side and complete the mission if I fail.
But they won't need to, I tell myself. I can do this.
I'm so busy saying this in my head over and over again that I completely miss our first obstacle and almost get my head taken off by a bullet at point-blank range. One of my booted feet shoves me out of the way and takes the guy out, but as I rise to my feet, I'm shaking much harder than I was before. I can still hear the echo of the gunshot in the air, and all I can think about is how close I came to dying. Just like with the Widow. It doesn't bode well for the rest of the mission.
But I know that giving up would be even worse than not trying, so I regain my erect posture and continue much more carefully towards the compound we were assigned to infiltrate. There will be more men to deal with, I know. I have to get it together. And hopefully focusing on the task at hand will get the Widow's voice out of my head.
"You can do this." A voice whispers at my ear. I jump, a surge of electricity jolting through me at the unexpected sound. I almost take him out, but then I realize that he's one of my booted feet. What is he doing? They've never so much as spoken to me unless Ovechkin ordered it, much less said something like that.
I shake the surprise off and move forward, wondering if I'm going crazy. There's no way…
I'm ready for the next man to come at me, dispatching him with ease. I can do this. We burst through the doors, my hand raised, electricity surging. But there's no one. It shouldn't be this easy… At this point, I know it's a trap. There's no other explanation for the lack of resistance. But still, I can't go back. So I go forward, hoping this won't be the death of me.
Then feet thud down all around us and guns cock. We're going to die. Pietro and Wanda are going to die. But they don't open fire. A woman's voice echoes down the hallway to us. She speaks in accented but intelligible Russian, and her voice is smooth. I dimly sense her standing on the other side of the wall of men that surrounds us.
"Welcome, удар молнии." How can she know? "It has been many years since Ovechkin has tried to kill me." Her voice is darkly amused, and I know this is my target. Baroness Krizia Caito. The only female leader of HYDRA. "Come with me." She says, turning and striding away from us, her heels clicking on the concrete floor. I hesitantly move forward, and the wall of men opens up to let me through. I follow her at a distance, just close enough to not lose her. She leads me into a small room. I sense a small table in the center and a couple of chairs, but can't tell much else about the room.
"Sit." She says, and I do, mildly surprised at how cushioned the chair is. It has been a long, long time since I've sat on anything this nice. I sit up straight, folding my still-shaking hands together in my lap. I wonder what she wants with me. Since my left hand is resting in my lap, I'm taken completely by surprise when she grabs my hair with her hand and wrenches it to the side. Her other hand scratches at my ear and digs my earpiece out. I hear it clatter to the floor, and then a heavy door slams.
"There." She says, her voice sounding much more relaxed, though not friendly by any stretch. "Now we can have a real conversation." She sits in the chair opposite me. "Ovechkin asked me to test you. He said he would send you on a mission to kill me and I was supposed to trap you. He wanted to see how you would handle that. I agreed, but only in order to question you where he is not present." She pauses. "I believe Kazimir Ovechkin is a traitor to HYDRA." She lets that hang in the air for a moment. "You are here to help me determine his true loyalties."
I had not expected that. And I wasn't sure if this was part of the test. What if he had told her to do this, too? What if I betrayed him and he killed Wanda or Pietro because I had failed? So I just sit there, waiting for her to say something else.
"I can see you're still not certain about what to tell me." She says after a minute or two. "So I will sweeten the deal." Immediately, alarm bells went off in my head. That was exactly what Ovechkin had said to me that night so many months ago. "If Ovechkin is a traitor, I will have plenty of reason to remove him from the ranks of HYDRA, imprison him, and eventually execute him. I imagine that you hate the man, after what he's forced you to do." My jaw clenches. That is more true than she can know.
"What…" I want to ask her what will become of Wanda and Pietro should I accept, but I stop myself. I can't reveal my weakness this early in the game. So I ask another question instead. "What happens to me?"
"You would go free."
That rings more false than any lie I've ever been told. A sneer curls my lips. "I doubt that." I reply. "I hate HYDRA almost as much as Ovechkin. Letting me go would only be a danger to you." Then I curse myself. With that attitude, I'll just get myself killed instead!
I can hear a small smile in her next words. "I didn't think you would believe that. You seem cleverer than most of my soldiers." She pauses before continuing. "You would be much more valuable to us on our side."
"No." I say flatly. It's nice to be a defiant as I choose. She doesn't know my weakness like Ovechkin does. She might kill every single one of my booted feet, she might torture me, she might even kill me, but none of that matters if Pietro and Wanda are safe. And I suspect that she won't harm me. She'd have to return me to Ovechkin relatively unhurt if she doesn't want him to know she's on to him.
"Oh, we have our ways of persuading even the most resilient of people." She replies. "You would soon see reason. Especially if we used your dear friends to get to you."
That stops me cold. No.
"Oh yes, Ovechkin told me everything. In fact, I have suspicions that he was the one who ensured the survival of the Maximoff twins so that he could blackmail you. Why would they survive while everyone else died?" She pauses again to let that sink in. "And you, Miss Korzhakov. We have you on record as dead."
Ovechkin is a fool, I think bitterly. How could she not suspect anything after everything he's told her?
"There is little doubt in my mind that Ovechkin is a traitor." She continued. "However, the heads of HYDRA want proof, which I will get from you."
I know I can't refuse. She's threatened Wanda and Pietro. The only way to protect them is to betray Ovechkin. I hate myself for giving in to her so easily. I hate myself for caring about them. They've weakened me to the point that I have no control over my own choices anymore.
So, the anger in my voice barely contained, I say, "Ovechkin is a traitor to HYDRA."
She rises. "Thank you for being so cooperative."
I hear her giving orders to her men, telling them to let us go. But all I can do is sit there numbly. I have no particular desire to protect Ovechkin—in fact, I'd rather see him dead—but my stubborn streak hates that I gave in so easily to her. I hate not being able to protect myself and my friends. The only way I can keep them alive is to blacken my soul with murdering and lying.
I hope you appreciate all I go through for you, I think as I rise to my feet and follow my booted feet out of the compound.
A/N: So the Baroness is one of the heads of HYDRA. She's in "Aftershocks," during the conversation they have over who will replace Whitehall and she dies later in the episode. This is before that, which is why she's not dead and why I didn't kill her. Anyway, I love reviews, so please leave one (or two)! The next two chapters are the ones I took down, so I'll just have to make some minor adjustments and then they'll be up!