Nat POV:

"Conference room now." Captain Rogers turned and walked away from the ICU doors where the team had congregated. Everyone else was sat down next to the doors where they had been waiting for any news. Jane was seated on the edge of a chair, her leg pressed up on the stool in front of her a thick white bandage wrapped around her thigh and an IV of a clear liquid pressed into her arm. Apparently she had been shot with a poisoned bullet but that was a question for another day.

Natasha stared at the doors where they had swung shut. It had been a minute since someone had come out and told them that 'Miss Lewis' was stable and that she was sedated and shouldn't be awake for another 12 hours and then she could have visitors.

Everyone else had started to walk away but Nat stood looking at the door as if she had suddenly developed x-ray vision. 'She's ok. She's going to be ok. I'm going to see her alive.'

"Nat, you coming? They won't start till you get there." Clint stated, her eyes didn't waver from the red emergency sign. 'She was covered in blood. Red. Always red.'

"Nat." She turned slightly and ripped her eyes away from the sign and followed him down the hall and into the elevator.

'She's alive. She's alive. She's alive. She's alive! I've got her back. I'm not alone anymore. I'm not alone. I'm not alone.'

Natasha's eyes blurred as they filled up with water and she nestled herself into the corner of the elevator, not sure that she could hold herself up. Her body shook with sobs that she had suppressed for her whole life. She didn't realise quite how much losing Daria had affected her whole life till now. 'Would I still be killing for them?'

"Hey. Nat, hey, it's ok. You're ok. She's …she'll live." Clint soothed, shutting the elevator off so they wouldn't reach the conference room too soon. He stayed just out of her reach, in case she didn't want to be touched, but his hand rested on the banister next to hers.

"She's alive. Clint she's really here, I thought I'd never see her again. And, and she's been here and under our noses the whole time." Nat trembled and leaned towards Clint, her body subconsciously craving comfort. He smoothed his hand out along her back and let her head rest on his shoulder, not wanting to crowd her too much.

"There are a lot of questions and a lot of things to sort out but you've got her back now and that's all that matters. I'll support you in whatever you say in there, I trust you." Clint said quietly, slowly stroking down her back. 'What will they do to her?'

"What's going to happen to her Clint? She's dangerous." Natasha murmured straightening her shoulders and swiping at her face and schooling her features. Ready for whatever battles she'll have to fight to keep Daria safe with her.

"So are you."

"I know." Natasha smirked showing the points of her teeth.

"I also know you and I know that you won't let them take her away from you."

"I'm worried what I'll do if they try." She replied. 'If they get between us I don't know if I could draw the line between what I'd do to protect her and try and keep them safe, if I hurt any of them I don't know what would happen.' "Is this how Steve feels? With Barnes?"

"I don't know, but I'd say that between the two of you you'll be able to help each other better than anyone else on this earth." Clint stated and turned the elevator on again.

"Maybe. Maybe not, we come from very different worlds." Natasha mused as they reached the conference level. The doors opened and Natasha strode out in front of Clint.

She stopped momentarily in front of the conference room door, hearing the commotion from inside it. Natasha tapped the door handle twice before rocking forward and into the room.

The building noise suddenly disappeared leaving a vacuum of noise.

"You have questions." Natasha cleared her throat and walked to the spare seats on the right hand side of the room, next to Jane and Thor.

"You're god dammed right we do, Romanoff-" Steve interrupted staring her down. Clint collapsed into the chair next to her.

"Let me finish." Natasha glared, she looked from Steve to Stark and then to Maria. "I just need to know that after, that I can see her, be with her. That you won't lock her away somewhere I can't find her."

"You know we can't promise that Romanoff." Maria stated and Thor gave her a look like thunder.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Jane spoke up.

"It's alright Lady Romanoff. Heimdall will know wherever she is." Thor growled but looked to Natasha in solidarity. She frowned and looked back up.

"We'd rather know what she did first." Stark piped up and Natasha nodded and stood straight but focused in on a spot on the holotable.

"It's a long story and there's some of it I don't know but I think Jane might be able to help fill in some of the gaps." She spoke, the words coming out stronger than she thought she could muster at that point.

"We've got time." Steve stated, his voice softer than before. Nat nodded and took in a breath and slowly released it. "How do you know her?" 'Here we go.'

"We were in the red room together." She swallowed. "I'm a lot older than I look. I first met Darcy, well Daria when I was six and a half. At least I think that's how old I was. It was 1945 when she was first brought to the red room." Nat tilted her head to the side as she resurrected the memory. "They left her batch in the sleeping room, they hadn't tested them yet so they were just scared shitless little five year olds. She was in the cot next to me and she was just curled up into this tiny ball of porcelain skin and white blonde hair crying. She had been for hours and I don't know why, but I talked to her. She was too innocent for a place like that."

"You were just kids Nat." Clint interrupted.

"Not by then, I'd been there for a year, they'd already started training me." She released her clenched fist and placed her palm flat on the table. "They took her for testing the next day and I thought that, hoped that she wouldn't come back for her sake. Part of me wanted her to come back, she seemed different from the rest, I don't know why."

"What happened then?" Steve asked quietly.

"We were trained together, tested together, taught together each one of 28 operatives. We killed together, fighting the other girls for who would survive to mission stage. When she was fourteen our programme went through the final test and prep before we were sent on missions." 'It wasn't a test. It was supposed to make us more efficient.' "She was better at distance kills at first. They sent her on assassinations and they sent me, well I got my name for a reason." Nat sighed. "Then when Daria fully uh developed they thought that she could very easily adapt her skills to seductions. When we trained she had, I guess you could call it a gift, for technology and in the sixties it's not as if it was all too complicated. Not like it is now at least." Nat smirked remembering how quickly Daria could shut down security systems with just the slightest information.

"How old?" Jane sniffed quietly. "How old was she when- how old were you when you both-"

"When we first started doing seductions or first started doing missions? I started at fifteen, I think I'm not sure." She swallowed, she could still feel the man's grimy hands touching her and the sweet crack as she snapped his neck. "Darcy started missions at fourteen and moved to seductions at fifteen maybe sixteen, I don't know our birthdays exactly."

"Oh." Jane replied looking down at her hands.

Stark coughed and waited until he had Natasha's eye contact. "Who did you work for?"

"Whoever gave us the orders. I was mostly working with the Red room. I think Darcy was passed between the two of them." Nat leant forward and pressed her hands to the table. "Now for a long time I'd thought that Daria had died, been killed on a mission that I was supposed to take. Obviously she didn't die and it was some plot from the red room to separate us to try and make us more compliant. Mind wipes and brainwashing doesn't have quite the same affect when you've gone through it together, not that they didn't try that."

"And when SHIELD fell and turned out to be HYDRA and I put all those files on the internet I found out that Daria hadn't died, well in a way she did. She'd been given to HYDRA in negotiations as some twisted present." Natasha growled and turned her hand into a fist, knuckles turning white from the strain. "She became one of their assets until she 'died' in two thousand, around the same time that I'd just started working for SHIELD. As part of my job at SHIELD I revealed all the information I could about any Hydra or red room bases, Daria was in one of them when it was attacked and set alight, there was a death report of her burning to death in the building fire." Natasha clenched her fist hard enough that she could hear the bones creak in her wrist.

"They didn't check to make sure it was her body?" Stark questioned, his eyebrow raised.

"They were based at the Russian Kazakhstan border there was nothing but snow ice and deserted land for a hundred mile radius. They didn't think it was necessary." Nat replied and Stark's face fell.

"I don't know what happened to her after that." 'I just hope it was somewhere better than where she came from.'

"I think I might know where she might have been, or at least know a way to find out." Jane added and all the eyes in the room turned to her. "She uh spent some time with a friend who I think might be a mercenary. Her names Isra and I think I can get in contact with her, there's a notebook at her apartment in Brooklyn with information that I think might be useful."

"You knew what she was the whole time?" Stark asked incredulously.

"Of course I did, she's my best friend."

"How did you find out?" Steve asked.

"Well, after Thor landed in New Mexico she told me. I think she realised after that, that she was never going to have a normal life, no matter how hard she tried." Jane smiled sadly. "She told me she was an assassin then and I didn't ask questions, she told me what she wanted me to know."

"So you knew she used to be Hydra and didn't tell any of us?" Bruce asked, his calm voice straining.

"She didn't know herself until a couple of weeks ago." Jane defended. "She talked about remembering some kind of electroshock therapy which took her memories." 'No, please no.' Steve took in a sharp breath. "She knew she was Red Room but not much else from that time, she thought that you were an imposter." Jane added as she looked at Natasha. Natasha dropped her head to avoid the eye contact.

"Why did you shoot her, Nat?" Steve asked looking towards her, his eyes soft.

"When I found her at the compound it was after the explosion. She came round the corner. She recognised me. But then she pulled a gun up level with my head and she pulled the trigger so I reacted and shot her in the stomach." Natasha swallowed the horrible sensation crawling up the back of her throat. "She was aiming at a guard behind me, I'd be dead if she hadn't shot him." At the brief incredulous look that flashed in Steve's eyes she ploughed on.

"She's not like Barnes, Rogers. She's always been dangerous, we didn't have civilian lives before any of this happened, we've never been safe. If she aimed a gun at me and meant to kill me I would be dead. If she meant to kill me then I had to do something so she couldn't hurt any of you. I don't know why I didn't aim for her head, that's what should have happened in that situation." Natasha replied. "We weren't innocent little kids who had normal lives before all of this happened. I know how dangerous she is, I grew up knowing that. We hurt each other when we were on the same side, what would happen if were against each other?"

"She's dangerous." Maria added in.

"We are all dangerous. If she truly meant harm to Jane or any of you, my brethren, Heimdall would have warned me." Thor replied, his voice filling the room.

"We don't know if she's stable." Bruce stated, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

"She may have valuable information. Plus we can't just release her she's a target for Hydra now." Maria argued.

"She can take care of herself."

"Of that I'm sure."

"What about the threat she poses to any of SI's employees?"

"It's not really anymore than the threat we pose to them."

"She could be a sleeper agent, she stayed with Jane through all of this and moved to New York but won't stay in the building."

"Hey! She's my best friend that's why she stayed with me."

"She does not have any ill will towards us."

"Oh sure from that short time she spent with us at that one meal and went home at pretty much the beginning."

"Jane trusts her. No one trusted Nat and I when we got brought into SHIELD."

"We can't just keep her here and we can't release her, what the hell do we do then?"

"Everybody shut up!" Natasha shouted, leaning over the table she swiped some files onto the holotable. "Look at the files, read them. I need some time to think before any decisions are made. We all do. If you have any more questions I'm sure I'll be able to answer them."

Natasha quietly shuffled till she was standing facing the mostly blacked out windows of the conference room. 'What does she remember? She'll hate me when she finds out that I left her.'

"Are you ok?" A quiet voice asked from behind her. Jane. "Come on a walk with me to get some coffee? I don't need to be here for this." Jane asked and the tone in her voice suggested she wouldn't take no for an answer. Natasha followed Jane out of the room, her hand resting on Jane's elbow to help balance her.

As soon as the door shut behind them Jane sighed in relief. Walking down to the end of the corridor they took the lift down to the common room above the infirmary to grab coffee. They were silent the whole way until they both had mugs of coffee in their hands and they sat at the kitchen table.

Nat pressed the cup to her lips but didn't open them, just revelling in the bitter smell of the coffee. Jane tapped her fingers against the table.

"She remembered you." Jane spoke breaking the silence.

"I know."

"I could tell she cared for you, even in the brief conversations about her past we had." Jane stated, looking at Natasha's face. "I think you cared for her too, a lot."

"I did. I still do." Nat replied finally releasing that bit of information.

"She told me about a microchip." Jane swallowed a mouthful of coffee before carrying on. "It's in her wrist, I didn't want to tell the others. I don't know them well enough or trust them."

"So you trust me with this information?" Natasha frowned in question.

Jane laughed sardonically, "I figured you would have had the same operation as Darcy if you weren't you know, dead. She said she put it into her wrist, it has hydra files on it I think. The others might think that she's a sleeper agent if I told them that."

"And you think that I wouldn't?" She asked.

"No. From what I saw in there I think you will protect her with your life." Jane replied. "She blamed herself for your death, you know? She said she wasn't there to protect you and that it was a stupid mistake on a mission."

Natasha laughed wetly. "I blamed myself for her death. I guess the red room really fucked us up."

"She trusted you back then, so I'm trusting you now to help keep her safe. I love her and I want to keep her away from the monsters that hurt her, that hurt you both." Jane spoke, her voice strong and powerful.

"So once we've found somewhere for Darcy and they've decided what to do with her, I'm trusting you to help her use the information on her memory chip to help get rid of the monsters."

"It would be my pleasure." Natasha's lips quirked up a little, her eyes a little glassy. "Tell me about her, please? Your Darcy."

Darcy POV

'Natalia. Is she alive? Where am I?'

Her head ached as all her senses came back into her in a rush. Her flesh felt electric and she could feel the thrumming of liquid in her veins and the metal pinch in the back of her hand. The pain in her head lanced as if someone had set her nerves on fire and cut her down the middle of her skull.

A dull throbbing emanated from her stomach, it was tightly wrapped in bandaging and she could feel the stitches holding her together in various places all over her body. She whimpered. 'Where am I?'

There were tight bands around her legs, waist and shoulders but her hands were still free to move. A set of electrodes were pressed to her chest.'Do they have me back? I need to get out of here.'

Keeping her eyes shut for a moment longer she felt around lightly with both of her fingers to find anything she could use to help break the restraints. 'Use the needle. Get out of here.'

The burning smell of medical disinfectant filled her nose as she yanked the IV out of her hand. She stabbed it into the band around her shoulders and picked at the threading trying to make it easier to rip it open.

Opening her eyes she saw the blank bare walls of the room around her. 'Could be new Hydra, rebuilding from the ashes.'

She pushed her shoulders up and snapped the band and worked quickly on the other bands before anyone could see what she was doing and stop her. She was wearing a thin pale blue gown that was tied at the sides resting just above her knees. 'I can't stay here. I can't be one of their monsters again. I won't kill for them again.'

She slid her legs off of the bed and ripped the electrodes stuck to her chest off, setting off a series of alarms. 'Reckless. You should have turned it off at the wall first.'

A set of footsteps pounded down the corridor and Darcy slid off the bed and stood up. Her knees buckled out from under her at the shockwaves of pain in her stomach, she only managed to right herself by clutching onto the bed railings.

"She's awake." A shout resounded down the corridor and Darcy steeled herself and hid behind the door.

"What? She shouldn't be anywhere near working the sedative off."

As soon as the door opened she slammed it straight into their faces. Pulling it back open she quickly knocked them out and pulled them into the room stripping the female scientist or doctor of her scrubs and placing her in the bed where she was.

She took the clipboard up and stole her glasses and pulled her blonde locks up. Slipping out of the room she made her way down the corridor quickly trying to make her way out of the building.

Nat POV

"Miss Lewis has escaped her room in the infirmary." Natasha's comm crackled to life as JARVIS spoke directly through it. 'Oh God maybe she isn't in control.' Her blood ran cold and she tapped it on as she stalked out of the room.

"I'm going after her." She commanded and slammed the door shut to the common room kitchen and locked it so Jane would be safe.

"Natasha don't-" She ripped her earpiece out and threw it on the floor.

The elevators had gone on lockdown and the warning lights of an intruder had started so she sprinted down the stairs to the infirmary. She leant against the heavy steel door for two breaths before pushing her way through it into the corridor.

It was completely empty; she brought up her gun and slowly walked down it, scanning it as she went.

Turning toward the ICU ward she was bombarded with a barrage of noise as the ward doors swung open and two nurses and a receptionist came running out, their panting intermingled with shouting and the loud beeping of various different machines. "Get out of here, take the stairs down to a panic room." She hissed pushing them down the corridor as she snuck into the ward. Locking the doors behind her and barricading it with a gurney. 'They'll hurt her, they don't know how to get through to her.'

A crash from further in the ward attracted her attention and she bowed down behind the reception desk as she heard flesh hitting flesh. 'Daria, I need to get to her. I won't let her kill anyone.'

Nat sprinted around the corner and threw one of her widow bites at Daria where she was holding a doctor up by her throat against a wall. She had a cold look in her eye and her skin was covered in a layer of sweat. Daria dropped the doctor to avoid the widow bite and spun towards Nat.

"Natalia?" She questioned, her voice the same as when they had first met, frightened but still laced with steel and poison. 'She still knows me.'

"It's me. You're safe here. You can stop." Natasha replied slowly walking towards her. When she noticed she skidded backwards, spooked.

"No. I can't. I won't ever be." Daria whimpered clutching one hand to her head as she slipped backwards in a patch of blood.

Natasha easily changed back into her mother tongue as she lowered her gun to hip level. "Yes you will milaya."

"No no no." She cried and pulled on her red smeared tresses. "They'll find me. I won't go back to them." She snarled.

"I won't let them." Natasha growled. Her eyes diverted from Daria's as she saw Clint hang down from the vent behind her, bow in hand.

"You can't say that. They'll always be out there. They're everywhere." Daria panted and straightened up. A pang of copper hit the air and Daria dropped one hand to rest over her stomach briefly before her head bowed down and she let out a choked off moan of pain. Clutching at her head Daria stumbled to the wall to hold up her weight. "They always take their assets back, you know that."

"We'll fight them together then."Natasha fired back. 'I won't let her go.' She tentatively walked closer to her. Tapping her leg three times she signalled to Clint to hold fire.

"You can't fight them. They always come back, we'll never be safe. You worked for them, killed for them without knowing." Daria groaned and screwed her eyes shut, a thin trial of blood ran from her nose. 'What's happened to her head she hasn't hit her nose?'

"It's not just us anymore. We can fight them this time. I promise you." Natasha put her hands up in a placating gesture, her gun pointing outwards. 'She doesn't trust me.'

Daria's eyes snapped open and she pulled the gun away from Natasha's hands and pointed it towards her and stumbled backwards away from her. Clint tensed behind her but she shook her head minutely to tell him to back off.

"Daria, you don't have to do this, you don't have to leave." Natasha pleaded.

"Yes, I do." She hissed and straightened her back out, readying herself to flee.

"I can't let you go." Natasha stated and sprang into action. Her leg kicking the gun from Daria's hand. She span and slipped her leg out to catch Daria off guard.

Daria hissed and jumped Natasha's leg, spinning round she tried to hook her leg around Natasha's head to pull her to the floor. She missed and kicked her leg out hitting Natasha in the solar plexus sending her sprawling backwards. Scrambling for the gun Natasha landed a hit to Daria's injured leg.

"I don't want to hurt you." She hissed, pulling Daria's leg back and sending her flat onto the floor. Rolling away Daria sprang back up into a fighting position at the same time as Natasha.

"Then let me go." Daria let of a flurry of blows which Natasha blocked most of the time, a few of them landing on the softer parts of her body.

"I can't." Natasha rolled backwards over her shoulders. Daria hissed and tackled her to the ground. She dug her elbow into Natasha's ribs pushing down hard onto her floating rib. Her other hand tangled in her hair holding her head down. Natasha gasped in pain.

"Nat!" Clint shouted from his position.

"I've got this." She growled and twisted her head to bite down hard on Daria's wrist at the same she hooked her legs round Daria's feet. Bucked her hips and punched Daria in the gut. Her hand came back with red.

"I won't be one become one of their monsters again. I'd rather die." Daria growled twisting off of Natasha to reach for the gun.

"I won't let them take you."She hissed. Tackling Daria as her hand clasped around the gun.

"Prove it." Daria whimpered as Natasha settled over her ribs. Daria bucked upwards weakly and back-fisted Natasha to the face as she tried to escape. Natasha's vest pulled out from her catsuit pants and Daria gasped as her hands lighted on the scar above her left hip.

"I- no. How are you alive?" She gasped. 'What? She knows about this?' Her breathing became erratic and laboured and she thrashed about recklessly. "No no no no no NO!"Daria screamed and scratched her hands down Natasha's arm, wrenching the gun from her grip and pushing it under her own chin.

"NO!"Natasha yelled and threw her body down onto Daria, pushing the gun out from under her chin. The crack echoed around the room like a whip. Natasha opened her eyes from her position on top of Daria where she lay prone, her head had smacked against the linoleum on the other side of Daria's head when the gun went off.

Peeling her eyes open she saw a stream of red trickling along in front of her eyes, her eyes barely open through the throbbing in her head. 'Oh god. '

"Natasha? Nat what's happened? Are you ok? Please say you're ok." Clint muttered as he dropped from the ceiling. The doors at the other end of the corridor banged open and a stampede of footsteps followed. 'What happened?' Her head throbbed with pain and she scrunched her eyes shut.

Hands grasped around her shoulders and she bolted backwards. Her hands flying out to lash out. "hey, hey it's just me Nat." 'Clint? What's he doing here?'

"What happ-" Her eyes landed on the girl below her. Her hand slapped over her mouth at what she saw, she scrambled off of her until her back hit the wall. A shocked noise of distraught left her throat.

The memory of the last half an hour flashing in front of her eyes, like strobe lights. Bile rose in her throat. Blonde hair intermingling with hot sticky blood, on the stark white linoleum of the floor. The whole bottom half of Daria's face was covered in a vivid red mask of blood. There was a burn mark scaring the right hand side of her face. 'She tried to kill herself.' There was only a small patch of her face that wasn't covered in blood or raw skin.

The rest of the team was stood a couple of paces away. Jane cried out and Thor restrained her against his chest.

"No. No no no no no." Natasha whimpered to herself as she crawled back to her. Daria's eyes had fallen shut and her chest wasn't moving. 'Please don't be dead. I can't. I can't. I can't.' She leant over her. Red curls falling into her eyes. "Milaya, no. Please don't leave me." She cried and pressed her shaking hand to her pulse point, her breaths wracked through her body as if she had forgotten how to breath.

"Lady Natasha…"

She sobbed as she felt nothing and looked up to Thor and opened her mouth to answer when she felt a brief movement under her fingers and gasped. "She's alive." A collective sigh of relief echoed around the corridor.

"She's alive?" Jane cried and pushed off of Thor's chest as chaos ensued around them to get medical personnel to them.

"What do we do with her? She definitely can't stay here now. It's not safe for her or the med staff." Maria asked the congregation that was stood outside of the hulk proof containment room. Daria-Darcy had been brought there after the doctors had patched her up and assessed her.

The bullet had missed going into her skull but it had forced Darcy's head to hit the linoleum. Mixed with a brain bleed from what they assumed was an overload of past memories and her other injuries had forced her body into a coma. 'But she's alive. She'll make it through and I'll be there to help her.'

Natasha was sat slumped down in a chair, her head pressed to an ice pack from where it had hit the floor earlier. The skin of her face was raw from her sobbing, she was exhausted in every way possible. 'I need to keep her safe. I won't let her get hurt again.'

"She's a danger to herself, she doesn't trust her own brain. Plus we don't know when she'll wake up; her brain's gone through a lot of trauma before the cerebral haemorrhage she just had. It could be a day, or three weeks or three years. There's no way to tell at this point, she needs time to heal." Bruce added. Natasha stood from her position wincing at all of the various injuries.

"It's a small mercy I'd say." Stark grimaced. Rogers scowled at him and rubbed at his temples.

"I have somewhere she can go." Natasha stated, taking a deep breath. "It's a safe house, built like a fortress that no one apart from Clint knows about. I'll take her there. She won't be able to hurt anyone and I can have someone check in on her once a day, make sure she's alright." Natasha swallowed and looked to everyone else.

"I don't see a better option for her or us." Maria replied, voicing the groups opinion.

The group slowly left one by one until she was left alone with just Clint and Steve. Clint stroked her upper arm and pulled her into a brief embrace before leaving the room. It was just Steve now.

"Nat-"

"I think she worked with Barnes. That they were a team, she his shadow. I heard once- just once- that he wasn't working alone. And then today she-she recognised my scar." Natasha subconsciously stroked the scar above her hip. "She knew him, I'm sure now." 'I can save her. He might be able to save him as well. I'll be able to know her, my sestra. We won't have to hurt each other again. '

Steve looked shocked momentarily and walked towards Natasha till they were level in front of the glass looking into the room. "She'll wake up. You won't lose her." He reassured, not looking her in the eye but staring at the blonde comatose girl.

"And he'll come back to you Steve. It may not happen soon but he will." Nat stated.

"Maybe they can help each other. Shared experiences and all." Steve half-smirked.

"We'll have to wait and see. I'm just glad I got to see her again, I can protect her this time. Help her bring down the monsters that did this to us." Natasha pressed her palm against the glass.

"You don't have to do it alone." Steve added before turning to leave the room. Nat smiled predatorily.

"I was hoping you would say that. Once she's settled at mine we can follow the trail of information she left us."

Steve paused in his step. "What information?"

Natasha smirked for the first time in what felt like a lifetime."You'll see… I have a feeling it might lead us to Barnes."