[A/N] Another MOSAICS Monday! I realize now that my note on the last chapter implied that this would be the last one. It doesn't end here, folks!

Originally, MOSAICS was set to be fourteen chapters, but has now been extended to fifteen! Basically Chapter 14 is massive (but necessarily so) and I felt poorly about the prospect of eventually unleashing a mammoth onto everyone. So I broke it up :)

Anyway, this chapter was immensely fun to write and has some of my personal favorite moments. I hope people enjoy!


In what seems like an act of sheer will, Lena's strength returns when she wakes, which means she and Natasha are in the training facilities at 0430. When weighed against yesterday's events, it seems Lena's hatred of mornings dissipates into newfound determination. Today, she is a growling, grunting volcano, telling Natasha to go hard, push her further and further. Just for now, in this sphere that will burst with the dawn, Natasha's more than happy to return to something known — the one constant in her life.

As a knee shoots up at her, Natasha drops to the mat. A leg swings out, sweeps the teenager off balance, sends her tumbling onto her back. Originally, this was a move that ended their first session with breathless tears streaming out of Lena's eyes, mouth gaping like a hapless fish.

Her opponent doesn't stay prone this time. The body contracts, rolls back along the spine, and springs up in a fluid flash, just like Nat taught her. A wild arm swings for Natasha's head — something typically off-limits between them. This Lena knows, and throws out anyway.

Aside from her grimace, fogginess swirls in Lena's narrowed eyes. Her head tilts off axis just before thrashing forward, slamming into Natasha's exposed forehead. Except Natasha thrusts her partner back with her free hand — the one that hadn't caught Lena's swing. An uncoordinated palm flails for something to seize, pull, claw.

As the other woman regains herself, Natasha tries to push past the adrenaline. "Lenora—"

"Don't." The teen's height transforms into a javelin that shoots toward Nat in a full tackle.

It's easy enough to evade. Lena's prepared for the miss, collapsing into a roll that gives her enough momentum to get back up.

"I'm not done," she pants, on the verge of something desperate. Strands of hair falling from her ponytail, Lena charges, yelling, "Come on!"

They clash, forearm to fist. There's a swift kick to Natasha's right shin.

She shuts down the instinct to jump and grapple with her legs, instead opting to duck and deliver her other arm into the girl's gut. Four fingers jabbed into Lena's ribs. Nat folds at the hips, launches left, and hooks her opponent's leg. A quick yank topples the younger woman. Nat releases her hold and rolls.

She finds her footing with feline ability. Lena commits to rolling and springing forth once more. This time, a square kick to her chest sends her flying back to the floor again.

"Fuck," Lena bites. Sans coordination, she scrambles up. The red in her face rivals her hair.

Natasha won't ask if she's finished now. She waits for that decision with action.

Panting, practically steaming, her trainee turns away from her, walks toward the padded wall, where weightlifting equipment and racks of medicine balls rest. Her shoulders hunch, the adrenaline high seemingly cracking. The teen deposits her skull into her palms. Nonetheless, Natasha keeps her distance.

A wise choice, as a ten pound weight soars toward her a moment later.

The distance is impressive, but it's an easy enough projectile to dodge. And she's meant to, for Lena follows after it, wielding a massage stick.

To others, the makeshift weapon may put them at a disadvantage. For Natasha, this levels the field. She lets Lena come to her this time, fake her out with a sucker swing.

The rod doesn't smack, but stabs into the flesh of Natasha's elbow — her nondominant one. A spike of pain shoots through her shoulder, not quite potent enough to deter her from punching then grabbing Lena's wielding arm. It becomes her leverage as she propels herself into a swing that captures her opponent between her thighs. Her body whirls, bringing Lena down.

Natasha grunts atop her pinned target. "Lenora."

"I know," the girl wheezes, furious. A palm slaps Natasha's knee, signalling the end. While Lena evens her breathing, Nat unwinds them. Unlike all other fights, she looms over the novice and extends an amicable hand. Instead of taking it, the first reaction is, "I'm so fucking weak."

Natasha corrects her. "You're getting stronger. You lasted a lot longer today."

"And I still got my ass kicked." At last, she takes what is offered and gets to her feet.

"I've been in this game a lot longer. It's gonna take a little time."

Lenora flinches. Hurt, anger, and lament eclipse her. "I don't have time."

"You're going to get treatment." She doesn't just assure the other woman, she makes it a promise.

Disbelief defeats her faster than Natasha did while sparring. "Yeah. Sure."

Nothing further exchanges between them. Lena walks off. She keeps quiet on the way out, despite breezing past Bruce, who stands near the entry.

"Morning," Natasha calls over the teenager's departure.

"Hi." A small show of happiness also comes with sheepishness. With him, it's as though the sheer concept of enjoying something is a guilty pleasure. A secondary thought slips under the analysis, and it messes with her calibration. He's glad to see me. Then, to immediately tamper that, her brain snaps, Don't be ridiculous.

But does he realize this? Does he realize what he's showing? Can he see that she knows? As a cover up, she asks, "How long have you been standing there?"

"Not long. I wasn't spying or — not spying — eavesdropping. With my eyes." He cringes at himself. "I just—"

"Bruce. Breathe." She strolls across the room over to him.

As instructed, he inhaled, peers through his eyelashes at her, chin tucked into his chest. Once composed, he says, "I was thinking about the incident. And your mission today. Usually I'd stay behind no question, but I don't know if Lena and Berhanu are going. Not that you need the help," he hastens to add. "But if you...wanted some backup you could count on — I think the other guy could oblige."

Doubtless there'll be other agents out there in case things go south. Maybe Marquez or Barbara, who still shoot her the occasional dirty look over dinner. Even still, they would also shoot something try to harm her. Probably.

There's a reason she relies on herself first and foremost, but that's beside the point — beside the sentiment in Bruce's nervous statement.

"In case of a code green?" She teases lightly.

That gets a chuckle, which feels like the first beams of dawn washing over her. "Yeah. In case of a code green." He affirms.

She pretends to mull it over, pretend like some odd, unexplored place in her gut doesn't immediately jump to yes. "If you think you can keep up." She tells him after her pause.

"You're a pretty hard act to follow." He gives her a half grin, uncertainty eating the rest.

"I won't end the show without you." With that, she breezes by him, lets the doors slide open for her and walks off.

In her dust, Bruce calls, serious again, "So that's a yes?"


It's not the amplified tremors Berhanu summons that attract their target, but their aircraft itself. This they learn via a transmission to Jones, who accompanies her, Bruce, and Berhanu.

Their trio leaves the agent in an alley of the village they're investigating. The only real loss is when Bruce falls behind after about six minutes of running, but they can't stop. Not when they have two mutated kids on board, one prisoner and the other exhausted from the morning exertion.

In less than ten minutes, Natasha and Berhanu land at the maw of their vessel, where he stumbles over Agent Barbara's outstretched, limp arm. They could check the damage after. Right now, they need to deal with the girl currently fighting Lenora.

Her foe is not someone Lena has met previously, but of whom she was informed. That much is evident from the lab coat wrapped around her limbs and the kitchen pan she uses to ward off Alma, their runaway target from Greenland who harmed through touch.

Since their last encounter, Alma has exchanged her wooden club for one of metal. Every collision resounds with a dense clang, interspersed with grunts from both parties. Whenever an opening appears, Alma jabs at Lenora's body, then recoils from the pan, unsuccessful. Despite the earlier exhaustion, Lena holds her own, and does so without going into hyena mode. Pride, however, will have to wait until later.

Natasha storms into the encounter with a kick straight to their adversary's spine. Forward Alma falls onto Lena, who doesn't dash out of the way, but lowers her haphazard weapon in misplaced relief.

Berhanu shouts from behind. "Lena, no!"

Too late the warning comes, for the two young women topple, weapons clattering out of their grips. Natasha lunges for the scruff of the Greenlander's shirt and struggles with the weight of both bodies. Somewhere during their fall, Alma's grasp finds Lena's exposed neck and latches on.

A gurgling hum rips from the younger redhead, throat caught by a leech. Strained veins dissect her flesh into canyons. A jungle tangle of contorted agony constricts her expression.

Berhanu sprints around to grab his friend by the armpits and tug, uttering, "Let go. Let go."

Natasha makes an executive decision. In this moment, Alma is not a victim of misfortune, but a threat. And she will be treated as such.

Natasha whips out her pistol, cocks it, and presses the barrel to the top of the attacker's spine. "Let go." She orders.

Already, however, Alma has released. Her hands hover, empty, on either side. Beneath her, hyperventilation begins as Berhanu pulls and pulls his ally out from under. Alma's chin smacks dirt as they weight below slides out, but she remains frozen. The pace of her breathing is stagnant, though her inhales start to shudder.

With the threat neutralized, the girl on the ground transforms again. Natasha slips her finger behind, not in front of, the trigger.

"Don't do anything stupid." Natasha instructs. She eases her gun off her target's back. "Get up."

Ever so slow, Alma obeys. Berhanu envelops Lena's weight into himself, protecting the girls from each other.

Through a jaw that quivers like moth wings, Lena seethes. "Lock her up."

Natasha pays no heed to the impassioned demand. "What are you doing here?" She demands of their adversary.

"I came for Akira." Alma answers, too curt.

"And?"

Hesitation gives her away. "And nothing."

The gun's mouth kisses the nape of her neck. It persuades on Natasha's behalf.

"To see if what he said was true. And it is. You're all monsters."

Natasha resists the urge to push the gun further into the girl's skin. Lena doesn't exercise such restraint. "You attacked us, you bitch." Her voice scrapes along gravel, low and visceral.

"We're trying to fix this," Berhanu says.

Alma hisses, "They're tricking you. They use you."

"Who do you work for?" Natasha cuts in, knowingly abrupt. At the first sign of reluctance, she presses, "Who?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D."

Berhanu shoots skepticism at Alma. Lena snaps, "We work for S.H.I.E.L.D."

"No," Alma refutes. "This is HYDRA."

Was it possible? The insinuation gives Natasha pause.

No, they had stabbed HYDRA in the heart, terminated the parasite, strangled every head. There are no more seeds, and this task force and the Avengers are all that remain — S.H.I.E.L.D's corpse. None of this, however, she says aloud.

"Agent Romanoff?" Berhanu consults her. Alma holds a breath.

On her left flank, a familiar presence, panting, approaches. Her gun doesn't waver, nor does her resolve. "Go."

"What?" Alma exhales.

At the same time, Lena snarls, "No!"

But she retracts her gun and repeats, "Go."

"What is this trick?"

"Go before the others get up."

The reminder spurs Alma on, side stepping away from them and embarking into a run that takes her toward the stretching slopes of the moor's vacancy.

Lena says nothing, but the betrayal etched deep around her eyes, in her forehead, asks, Why?

Bruce sees this and answers. "It was the right move."


It was the right move, but for who? For hours, this question has plagued her.

The other agents gradually came to under Bruce's supervision, and each experienced the same confusion, wanting to know where their assailant went. Neither Lena nor Berhanu would say, and nor would Lena talk to anyone. She locked herself in her room and let the outside consider her asleep.

Berhanu understands, Bruce does and would defend Natasha's choice, but that's everyone she has in her field. Having the masses against her is nothing new, but she's unaccustomed to self doubt in this arena.

She'd missed the flash drive, relinquished a chance to interrogate, had missed HYDRA's heads swirling under her nose for so many years.

"Nat — I got it."

Bruce's exclamation snaps her out of the downward mental drain. She switches her attention to him without a word.

"Sorry. That just...slipped." A blush rises from behind the monitor at which he's stationed.

"What?"

"The, um…'Nat.' Natasha," he corrects. "Sorry—"

"Nat's fine." She assures, not smiling, though nonetheless sincere.

"You found it?" Berhanu says underneath the ultrasound's probe, clutched firmly in her grasp. She tamps down the urge to yank it away.

"In your right lung, attached to an alveolus terminus." Bruce confirms.

This inspires amused confusion. "In my lung? On a what?" His palms hover around the transducer, one of many devices subject to his abilities with frequencies. "How did it get there?"

"Those assistants didn't stab you with a needle, did they?" Natasha says. It's half a joke, referring to the so-called researchers who inflicted this upon the young man. She won't make the mistake of underestimating their morbid fascination.

"They gave me one shot that was not in my lung," Berhanu replies, light as though a foreign device in his body doesn't freak him out. "Could it have gotten there that way?"

Bruce answers, studying the monitor. "It's unlikely."

As his mind shifts the pieces of possibilities around in a sort of intellectual Tetris, his lips pucker into a small, contemplative pout. She averts her glance before it can evolve into a stare. Her palm readjusts on the slick probe.

"Did they have you ingest anything?" Brue asks.

"Before the tests. They said we had to be well hydrated for the best results." Berhanu recalls. "They gave us some strange flavored water. I thought it was American." When she and Bruce exchange concern, his hand comes to rest over his pec. "Should I destroy it?"

With her free arm, she plucks his palm away from himself. "Don't go setting off a bomb inside you."

"She's right. We don't know what it could do, or how it could damage your body." Bruce concurs. He looks to her again, his moment of hesitation apparent through his gaping mouth. "Um...Nat — you can put that down. I have a picture. Thank you."

The probe slides out of her fingers easily as she latches it back into its designated hold on the larger machine. There, at the computer, she joins Bruce in scrutinizing the image composed of black and white grain. A minute pill of white pixels cannot hide in the void of the surrounding sac. Bruce's gaze is unwavering, even as he fumbles with his lab jacket and fails to shed it.

Something completely outside the realm of her training overtakes her. It compels her forward, "Bruce. Hold on." She slips in around him, shooing his hands away, and pops the battered buttons apart, slides them out of their cloth latches. "Don't ruin your coat over this."

The transparent door obscures the first froth of Berhanu's laughter. Heavy boots announce two S.H.I. agents. Jung identifies himself with his stifling, masculine domineering. "Looks like you're making progress, doctor."

A mental fatigue and apprehension divulges itself to her in a clandestine look. Bruce and Nat put a foot of distance between them. He turns to face Jung and Marquez, their uninvited guests, and Natasha's strange fingers return to her sides.

"Marginally." Bruce responds, too curt for impassivity or nonchalance.

"It seems to me that you're ready for your next patient," Jung concludes, resisting a Cheshire Cat grin.

She says something before Bruce lets the exasperation interfere. "I believe you're mistaking this for a clinic, Asher."

Quiet venom sprays from Marquez to her. It is Jung, however, who speaks, "Not at all. This is a research facility, and there's a new subject for the doctor."

The "new subject" is without guardians, without an interpreter — though he doesn't seem to truly need one — and locked inside a high security cell. Surely Jung is full of shit, and Bruce seems to agree. "I'm not getting anywhere near Akira. Berhanu and Lenora have more than enough information."

"I disagree, doctor." Jung sneers. "Akira could be a crucial link between us and the people who did this."

"Assuming he'd talk at all." She throws in.

"His data would talk for him."

"I think you're a little confused on how the body works," she refutes.

Jung wastes no time in honing in on her. "And I think you're forgetting your purpose here, Miss Romanoff."

"On the contrary," she counters. "I'm right where I need to be."

"We'll reevaluate that." Jung ensures. To Bruce, on her right side, he demands, "And you will test on Akira as instructed."

He bristles, but remains firm beside her. "No. I won't."

Berhanu sits up, adding another to their side. This encounter is reminiscent of fire tendrils hissing and spitting as it tries to cross a canyon.

Jung drips poison from the fangs poking through his stately front. "Do we need to revisit our agreement?"

Bruce has his reply ready. "I agreed to help with Lenora and Berhanu. Not anyone else."

"You agreed to help with mutants. Akira is a mutant."

"And he is entirely different from Lenora, and Lenora is entirely different from me." Berhanu enters the showdown with his steady river — flexible, smooth, yet steadfast. His water does not extinguish, but guards Bruce and Natasha from flame. He flows on without apology or hesitation. "Our connection is this affliction. It connects us, but it does not make us clones."

Marquez seeks an end to his intervention. "Quiet."

Jung tacks on, ignoring the mutant, "This is not a request, doctor. It's an order."

"I'm refusing it." Bruce says once and for all.

"So you think." Jung ensures that is the final word, turning to leave with Marquez on his tail. He leaves ashes in his wake and no clue as to what has been burned.


The devastation remains unclear until the next morning, until Natasha's solo session in the training room.

Though she claimed exhaustion, Natasha suspects Lenora skipped their training out of residual frustration over the incident two days prior now. Hence, Nat trains in isolation. No part of her anticipates the doors opening, the boots clomping, aggravated exclamations from her previously absent apprentice.

"Leave me alone!" Lena shouts, thrashing against Agent Barbara's hold. "It's too damn early for this kak!" As soon as she gets one arm free, Barbara seizes it again, and bends her wrist into a position of forced submission. A yelp bounces off the surrounding walls.

Natasha had taught Lena how to break out of a few holds, but it seems these operatives have dragged her from sleep and subdued her on the spot.

Wielding two bags — one from Natasha's locker and the other unfamiliar — Marquez approaches, smug and triumphant.

"What is this?" Natasha demands, facing them full on to avoid any surprise maneuvers.

"You've been assigned to a new mission." Marquez informs. "The council figured you could use a little extra firepower."

This is obviously the first Lena is hearing of this. Her squirming lapses before resuming with renewed fervor. "What about Berhanu and Bruce?"

"They have a different task." Marquez sneers. When her contempt returns to Natasha, she throws one of the bags as well. "You'll be debriefed at your new station. Your plane is waiting."

Numbness claims Natasha. It flares in her heart's valves, pumps out through her veins. It's a different sensation from that which overcomes her when pulling the trigger. This feels like being thrown into a frigid desert night, where she can only wait for chill to take her or a harsh future to scorch her. That doesn't mean she'll go limp and let this inevitable outcome take her by the throat.

"I want to see Berhanu." Lena pleads, kicking still. "I want to see Berhanu."

Whatever Barbara says, Natasha blocks out. She marches forward, scoops up her disregarded bag, and walks out on her own two legs. Frostbite crystallizes her heart's cage, where the lock had just become undone.