For a moment, all the world was just darkness, and the only sensation to be felt was falling.
Natasha forced her eyes open and found herself plummeting into a deep pit. It became apparent that she had blacked out closer to the top, and her vision was still clouded slightly, in the form of a blackened, grid like mesh. She could make out a pattern on the wall - stone, perhaps, built up like bricks - and it occurred to her that perhaps this was a well of sorts.
She had stepped into the other world.
And then she was falling.
And now she landed.
Her body hit the bottom of the pit and bounced off the floor slightly. Sand flew up in a cloud around her legs and torso, accompanied with the sound of groaning as the shock had chance to course fully her veins. The grains of sand at the very base of the structure were midnight black.
"Don't touch her!" Clint snarled at the man who had strode into the centre of the circle that had formed. Slowly, watched intently by Clint, he retracted the hand that was making its way towards the spy, who lay curled up on the floor.
"Tell me what's wrong with her." the man demanded, adding another gun to the many that were trained on him.
"It's not that easy to explain, sweetheart." grumbled Clint. "We can be useful to you, okay? I'll come with you, just let me take her."
Muttering started at the back of the troops, but the man shushed them. "You've stormed in here and shot half of my men. Why the hell would you be useful to us?"
"Well you might not be aware that S.H.I.E.L.D. is tracking Sophia Melanthios' ass, but she probably is. I'm an agent of theirs. Either detain me, or let me go."
The man cocked his gun and pushed the gun closer to Clint, who raised his eyebrows expectantly.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. means jack shit to me. I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but my payroll is plenty high enough to cover collateral damage."
"So what are you going to do - shoot me?" asked Clint. His voice was angry now, defensive; he was secure in the knowledge that Natasha would not wake for several hours, and that if he left her here, she wouldn't be able to wrestle her way out of it for some time. His hand slipped down to her wrist and felt for a pulse. There was nothing. "Just get us a room or something. Quickly! And tell your god-damn billionaire her guests have arrived."
Reluctantly, the man signalled with his gun for the people behind him to move. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents or not, the sudden demise of the woman would be of interest to his boss.
"Get up."
Clint got to his feet.
A woman stepped from the crowd, holstered her gun and reached out to pick up Natasha. Her ponytail swung behind her as she slowly squatted down. Clint pushed the woman back to the floor and locked eye contact with her.
"I said I'd take her." he warned, to the sound of a few dozen clicking guns.
The woman raised her eyebrows, returned to her feet and tried again, to which Clint threw a punch that landed on her nose. She did not spend long down, and pounded up to hit him in return. The woman, though fairly small in stature, had plenty skill in fighting, and Clint reeled backwards with pain shooting outwards from his blackening eye. Not willing to risk being shot as punishment for his actions, he kept his fists by his side and did his fighting via a cold stare. Then, scowling, he dropped down and slipped his hands under Natasha's motionless figure. The woman looked to her colleague, rolled her eyes and muttered something as she fell back into line.
The pain around Clint's eye was not an unknown one, although the frustration of not being able to fight back was a relatively recent thing. Well, perhaps excluding New York. As he was pushed towards down a corridor, his friend heavy in his arms, he could hear the lights around the bunkers spark to life. He could fight those around him relatively easily, he thought, but it was safer to wait until Natasha was awake, so that they could move out together. Besides, while they were down, they would be secure enough to be protected from the others that were searching for Melanthios.
It was far from ideal. But there was not much he could do.
The party came to a small room and stopped. There was no sign of their hidden billionaire, but the guards seemed confident enough in their instructions as they ushered Clint inside, paying little attention to the woman who lay, virtually dead, in his hands. A metal grate that served as a door was slammed shut and padlocked, and eventually, the two of them were left on their own.
Clint held Natasha for a moment or two longer, listening to the footsteps disappear into the hallway, then carefully settled her on the floor. She could have likely passed for sleeping, had her chest been rising and falling.
"Wake up soon, Nat." he said. "Okay?"
"THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING AT THE BOTTOM OF A WELL."
When Natasha's eyes opened, they were met with the sharp outlines of sand. It was odd to see the grains in the foreground be so well rendered, so bright and clear, and then regard the background not even seconds after to find it blurred and unfocussed. In time, as her eyes trained to see the brick a little better, the resolution got higher - indeed, so was the nature of the eye in focussing - but there was something about it, the entire process, that made it seem superficial, unnatural so to speak.
Pushing herself up from the ground, Natasha felt an odd texture warp around her fingers. There was no water, she recalled. What had been left behind was a series of ghosts; memories and ideas had woven together to form a fabric, one that lingered where the life giver had given up, and one that remained now, at the bottom of the well, where even the last slosh of water had dissipated. It felt like cotton wool but was heavy like lead, and it flowed too, the feeling of the stream running through her bruised fingers. Of course, she'd seen it before: at the foot of the beach, where the waves pushed it along the shoreline and onto her toes.
And now, as she fought the pain to come to a standing position, Natasha remembered all the times before where she had slipped into this reality. The wave of memories was strong enough to shock her into freezing where she was.
She did not want to explore this wasteland now.
She just wanted to leave.
The rising panic that would have sent her home before was quickly extinguished by Natasha's practical mind, which refused her access to her fears and focussed on getting out of the well. Daylight filtered in through the disc that marked the top of the structure, bounding off the stones that surrounded her for a good couple of metres from her head height.
She swallowed, knowing it would be difficult to try and clamber up the wide diameter of the container she found herself in. The light in the chamber was slowly fading, or so it seemed, and thus it was better to start moving as soon as possible. Her hand reached out to touch the stone walling, the coolness of it bleeding into her fingertips. It had an odd calming effect, as if the cold was relatable somehow.
And then, the texture and the temperature fizzled out of existence, and was replaced with a plain that consisted of the sand that had lain at her feet. In front of her stretched a vast horizon, no landmarks, no edge, no well; her confusion caused her to stumble around for a few moments, to survey what she could while she could do so. A sudden flash of black now, and the plainness was quickly replaced by a dance hall.
Natasha knew exactly what it was, and she felt angry at what she stared into. The floor was as cold as the stone before, the tiles cracked and the coolness again familiar.
"Stop it." she spoke to the dancers in front of her. They looked at her expectantly as her eyes scanned the room for a familiar face.
"Stop it!"
It was happening again. When the weeks had past and the team had recovered, she thought she had buried the memories deep enough to keep them hidden. But perhaps it was never enough. She had spent so much time whittling away the thoughts, until they did not dare to resurface, had spent so much time learning to free herself from their control, until reality's grip was finally tighter - it seemed ridiculous for the Red Room to return. When Ultron was gone and she and Wanda had made amends, she thought that she would be safe from the memories.
Perhaps not.
It was happening again.
The dancers spun around to answer their tutor's call and began again at the start of the music. Blood stained the hands of the ones who could not scrub the marks on their skin hard enough, and scuff marks that could not be hidden under the wax lined the floor on which they danced. As they gracefully raised their arms, some of the hands fell into position of holding a gun instead of a pose. They were scolded once, clearly, and then left to move on.
"Stop it." Natasha said under her breath. She knew that, within a week, the number of dancers here would be reduced. Tints of nervousness ate away at the corners of some of the girls' faked smiles; they would fail first. In a way, upon looking closely, it was clear that they knew.
"MARBLE."
Surprised to hear the Question, Natasha jolted. The scene blipped out of existence, and upon turning, she found herself in the plains again, the sand embedding into her feet.
Her eyebrows curled in frustrated confusion.
The dance hall, in all its bitter glory, had gone.
A slight wind swept the grains up from the surface, brushing against Natasha's legs. Her mouth was slightly open as her hair curled around the gentle fingers of the breeze, and she very almost dismissed the episode as a daydream. A flicker of darkness persuaded her otherwise, and she was quickly launched again into a scene of her past.
Darting across her vision, S.H.I.E.L.D. insurgents rushed to take their positions. They were holding a perimeter, it was clear - though the details of the scenery did not quite make themselves evident.
Clint, agent Barton, nocked an arrow, and stomped with heavy boots on a darkened floor.
For a brief second, Natasha registered it as the events on the Helicarrier, where Loki's grip had still extended unto Clint. And then she could see the youth that was plastered onto his face, and the determination there, that very much belonged to him, not a power-hungry Asgardian god - no, she assured herself, this wasn't the lead up to New York at all. It was the failed assassination - she could see it now - that led to her recruitment to S.H.I.E.L.D.
A rather different setting to a Hellicarier, it took place at a KGB safe-house - a snow crusted apartment block that had been bought out by a Russian agent in the 1960's. The younger Black Widow inside, realising the oncoming storm, would be hidden at one of the windows. She was wounded, Natasha remembered - a fight the day before had resulted in 3 deep cuts in her leg - but her adrenaline was still running at the kill she had made. The S.H.I.E.L.D. presence was there in revenge for the death of one of their own - many in fact, yesterday's being the most recent.
Clint was sent to kill her.
Natasha stood and watched, helplessly, as the events started replay according to her memory. The battle would see many of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on the perimeter fall prey to the Black Widow, until eventually Hawkeye would catch up to her, fight her and hold an arrow to her eye... and then, after some consideration, lower it.
But, very soon, the timeline seemed to change. Natasha realised that her past self had moved to another position, where she could scope the archer out.
"What are you doing?" she whispered.
The agent poked her head above the window of a much higher floor. The room was in a corner of the block, hidden just well enough from a ground-floor perspective.
"Please don't." Natasha warned, head shaking very slightly.
A sniper rifle settled on the window and the younger Natasha lined up a shot on Clint, who searched for her face in every window. The first shot called on Hawkeye's instincts and he quickly ducked away, Natasha following his movements around with her scope. Another shot now, and she cursed in Russian as she missed again. Below her, the supporting S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were closing in.
"Stop it!" Natasha tried to shout, totally captivated by the scene before her. In her own eyes, she saw a predatory glaze settle, and she knew what was coming next. "Stop!" she cried, and fought her disgust at the weakness in her voice. "They'll make you better!"
The rifle propelled a bullet through the air and directly into Clint's head.
"He'll make you better."
It seemed odd that Clint did nothing to fight against the bullet, as if the very notion of him was untouchable, and an unspoken barrier had been breached. But it did touch him, and the blood oozed from the hole in his forehead as his body sank, lifeless, into the floor.
And that was that. Clint was dead.
The memory - or what had started out as one - faded away. Natasha glared at the empty space ahead of her, her body unmoving, her mind numbed.
What was this place? What was it for?
"Why?" she asked the wind and the sand, finally feeling justified in asking the question. Her voice was timid, made almost silent by the shock.
When the air around her had lingered for a sufficient amount of time, the sandy plain melted away into the dinginess of the well. Natasha felt fatigue creep into her veins, the scenery changes leaving residual marks in her head, like jetlag after travel.
"I remembered." she said out loud again, her audience this time just the cold stone. "Is that it? I remembered, and I wasn't supposed to?"
"THE BLACK WIDOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL IS LEFT TO DROWN."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, frustrated.
"THE FEELING OF ENTRAPMENT CAN BE SYMBOLISED WITH THE INSIDE OF A WATER WELL, WHERE THE WATER INSIDE NO LONGER REPRESENTS LIFE, BUT INSTEAD, A SLOW DEATH. THE WELL CAN REPRESENT ISOLATION, STRUGGLE, AND, MORE LIBERALLY, ACCESS TO THE INNER CONSCIOUS."
Rage started to climb inside Natasha, though the exact premise of the feeling was unknown.
"THE SPIDER WITHIN THE WELL IS UNLIKELY TO ACCEPT ITS FATE, BUT WILL INEVITABLY DIE. DESPITE ITS ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE ITS PRISON, THE STUPIDITY OF THE SPIDER IN ITS LONGING TO EXPLORE WILL RESULT IN THE ARACHNID BECOMING DISORIENTED. THE ONLY WAY OUT WOULD BE TO USE ITS IMAGINATION, A MATTER WHICH-"
"I get it!" she shouted to the voice, angered. "It's me at the bottom of the well. It's me, it's me who fell, it's me who failed, it's me who killed him, it's me! Now why? What do you want?"
"TO BE A REMINDER, TO-"
"What did you do?"
The anger that had swollen up inside of Natasha quickly dissipated and gave way to sudden alertness. The voice was not that of the Question, or even that of her own, but instead of a serpent, and it slithered into her ears with sinister purpose. The feeling made her shudder, though she suppressed the urge to gasp.
"Oh," it continued, letting the knowledge of itself seep into Natasha's brain. "I see."
As the scene changed once again, the level of tiredness rushing along the course of the spy's body was again raised. She stumbled but caught herself, and stood to attention.
"Aren't you clever? You escaped me there, for a moment."
A figure appeared, radiating darkness from its centre. It was hooded - dressed a little, Natasha supposed, like death - and from within the hood gleamed a Cheshire-cat style grin. The lips surrounding the shining teeth were painted red, and seemed somewhat familiar.
"It's such a shame I have to take control."