A/N: I love y'all, thrown tables and all. To all the new folks who are now along for the ride, as Bette D. says, "Fasten your seatbelts." I'm trying to finish up this one last segment of the megaupdate to keep everyone from hating me. After this, my posting pace will slow back down as life intrudes. On we go. R&R.


You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend

When I was down you just stood there grinnin'

You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend

You just want to be on the side that's winnin'

You say I let you down, ya know it's not like that

If you're so hurt, why then don't you show it?

You say you've lost your faith, but that's not where it's at

You have no faith to lose, and ya know it

~ from "Positively 4th Street" by the exquisite Bob Dylan

I.

Even as hard as she'd hit him, she had no confidence he would be down long, so every second had to count. She flew through the corridor toward the hub where she'd seen her phone. When she reached it, she scooped up the device and looked around. None of her other gear was visible, but what she saw in one of the half-opened drawers of the desk the computer was on made a savage little smile snake across her lips.

Hearing the first sounds of stirring from the room down the hall, she grabbed the two items from the drawer and quickly surveyed her options. Six corridors faced her. She knew which one she'd just come from, and she remembered which one her cell had been down.

So that just leaves those four.

Just then the mangled remains of the metal chair she'd hit him with flew all the way across the hall, smashing into the far wall of the room where he'd set up his interrogation equipment with a sound like a car wreck.

Ah, yeah. So he's up, and the correct answer is as far away from that as I can get, then….

She turned for one and raced down it, not seeing the silver hand that gripped the canteen door facing or the bloody face of the Soldier that emerged right behind it.

II.

He watched her go, swiping blood out of his eye with the back of his hand. Even as fury at her attack rippled through him, something else in him also felt pride.

You underestimated her again, and she handed you your ass.

A voice trickled down to him from memory, "Cause and effect…you left the opening…"

Her voice. Where did that come from?

He staggered a little, shook his head, and headed for the tunnel she'd chosen.

Let's hope you enjoyed your moment of triumph, then, little widow, because now you get to find out what's behind door number three…

III.

The first few rooms along this corridor were larger than her prison cell had been, each containing a metal bed and a tall metal locker, obviously the quarters for the base's staff. She briefly considered hiding in one of the lockers, but she kept going, hoping for a better place of concealment.

The tunnel twisted on, and she passed what appeared to be the commander's office, a large metal tank desk and several obsolete pieces of electronics sitting forlornly inside.

As she ran, a nagging thought kept eating at her.

I don't hear anything behind me. *Why* don't I hear anything behind me?

She'd expected him to chase her and to fight her. Maybe he'd taken the wrong tunnel?

A girl can hope, can't she?

Ahead of her, the corridor ended, dumping into a larger chamber. Hoping for an exit or better cover, she pushed forward. The space she entered was one of the natural cave pockets the KGB had connected its post to at some point. The ceiling curved up into darkness above her, too far away for the lightbulbs strung along the walls to illuminate. Stalactites and stalagmites had met here and there, creating solid columns here and there. Between and around them, crates stenciled with various KGB and military insignia were stacked. To one side, twenty filing cabinets of various colors and heights stood like an uneven staircase. Near them, another large tank desk sat, an old wooden rolling chair behind it. Stacks of papers had been arranged on top of a large table that had been dragged beside the desk, and she knew that had to be the work of the Soldier. It seemed he'd also moved one of the beds from the staff quarters down the hall in. The sleeping bag she'd seen in his apartment earlier was now unrolled on it.

What she didn't see was any exit from this chamber other than the door she'd come through initially, a thought that she processed just as she heard a klaxon blare followed by the sound of badly greased gears turning and a set of hollow metal booms. Then all the lights went out.

IV.

She swore in four languages as she raced for where she remembered the desk to be, using it as a platform to leap up onto the filing cabinets behind. The cave darkness was so completely thick that she could not see anything, and she'd slightly misjudged her distance, her landing making the metal cabinets clang together slightly. Then she made herself perfectly still and worked on bringing her panting breaths under control.

From somewhere back down the tunnel, there was a hum and a click, and a dim, slowly pulsing red illumination filtered in along with his voice, "Now… How does that rhyme go again?"

He's activated some kind of emergency protocol this base must have.

"Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly…" There was the sound of metal against stone, and she could almost see him dragging the tips of his left hand down the walls of the corridor as he came.

She ran everything she could remember about the layout of the cavern through her mind frantically as the voice grew closer, switched into Russian.

"Except it seems we have this situation reversed somehow, no?"

His voice was almost at the door.

"Do you like my parlor, little spider?"

The red light throbbed on, and for a second, she saw his silhouette in the doorway. Then the light cycled off again.

"I hope so because you're going to be here for a long, long time…."

V.

She pressed herself against the walls. The darkness should shield her here while she came up with a plan. Realistically, she wasn't sure exactly what she was going to do. The sounds she'd heard earlier suggested he had somehow closed off this part of the tunnel. If that were true, she had no idea how long it would take her to override the system or find some other way out, especially if he were stalking her at the same time.

She could only see intermittently as the red light gave its dull pulse. She timed it this time, counting silently in her head. On for three seconds….off for five seconds…

Okay. Okay. I need to use every available moment I can to scan for him and figure out some way to set a trap.

She laid her hands gently on the pockets of the black pants she wore, comforted just a little by the feel of the items she had there.

VI.

Of all the places she could have run, this was the best as far as he was concerned. He knew there was no exit except for the main door, and he'd sealed the corridor's access back to the main hub with one of the codes his research had yielded. All he had to do now was go in and get her.

Something about this situation felt eerily familiar to him, this hunting her in the darkness, an instance of that déjà vu that he had long ago learned to be wary of since it usually preceded some kind of incident that would lead to him being strapped into the cold metal chair and wiped.

When the emergency light blinked off, he slid in and took a position behind a crate near the door where he was sure he could not be seen and listened. Was that the slightest brush of skin on metal? Had it come from near the desk? Suddenly, it was like his vision blurred even though darkness surrounded him, and he was in two places at once…

He was stalking her among the boxes and crates. Little did she know he could see everything because of the goggles he'd hidden. Even without them, he already knew where she would go. A smile quirked his lips as he headed up, up, knowing she'd try to get as far away from where she thought he was as she could. He dropped to a crouch and watched her slipping effortlessly up the column, watching her strong arms and legs wrap around it as she pulled herself up. She was moving right toward him, a secret little smile on that mouth he'd started to hunger for. Oh, how he was enjoying this game…

The light flared back into life, and the memory released him, leaving him shaken. He tightened his grip on the corner of the crate slightly. Refocusing, he skimmed the shadows near the desk. Yes. He could see her now, red hair and white skin in stark contrast to the dark stone behind her. She was gathering herself to move when the light cycled off again. Now that he knew where to look, she was easy to find.

When the light was gone, he heard a whisper of noise, and he rose to intercept. Over half a century of specialized combat made him accurate with his lunge. He heard her startled gasp as his hand wrapped around her wrist, and the light flared again, revealing her face, eyes wide with fear.

A little smile of triumph and an echo of that earlier memory curled his lips as he pulled her closer. "Hello, little spider," he murmured. She was shaking as he drew her to him. Then he felt a sharp stabbing in his thigh, and her body steadied, her expression changed as she pushed him away.

"Hello yourself, asshole…."

He grabbed for her again, but suddenly his aim was bad. The ground seemed to buck and roll beneath his feet, and he staggered in the dark. The light pulsed again, just as she connected with a round-house kick to his head and dropped him into a heap on the cold cave floor.

VII.

Even having used the same type of tranquilizer dart on him that he had on her and following it up with a brutal kick, she really had no idea how long it would keep him down, so she started working as soon as she was sure he was really out. She lifted him into a fireman's carry and moved him over to the bed.

She pulled and tugged at his jacket, quickly stripping it and all the weapons it held out of his reach and tossing them behind her. Likewise, she unfastened the long blades and pistols from his powerful legs before pulling his boots and the many, many little toys he had hidden in them away. She pushed him hard enough to roll him over, looking for the sheathed blade she knew he always wore strapped beneath his clothing and added it to the pile. Still worried about how quickly he could shake the damage, she drew the second item out of her pocket, another pair of the same restraints he'd used on her earlier. She'd lifted them from the drawer in the command center along with the dart she'd used to surprise him.

She pulled his hands through the heavy bed frame and added the cuffs. Realistically, she knew his titanium arm could rip through them. She'd seen him use it to tear through items much more solid.

However…. She checked the pistol she'd taken from him, popping out the magazine out of habit to check it before snapping it back in place… This should be a much more useful deterrent.

The red light flared just then, washing over his face, and her heart hurt a little just looking at him, his beloved face still now in unconsciousness, innocent and peaceful as it never was when he was awake.

Speaking of which…

She rose and went to the desk, finding the lamp she'd seen there by touch first, and then rapidly finding the switch as the red emergency light cycled. She pulled the little chain, and to her surprise, warm light spilled from under the round metal shade.

She took the pile of weapons, selected three or four other items from it, and carried the rest to the room just beyond the cave, shoving them in the tall metal locker there. Then she hurried back, grabbed the wooden chair and rolled it toward the bed where she'd bound him.

And now, Yasha, we will indeed have our long-awaited conversation. I just don't think it's going to go exactly like you planned, love…

VIII.

He came awake in stages. His head was pounding.

"Jesus," he whispered. "Feels like I was kicked through a wall by a government mule…"

A small snort came from somewhere near his feet.

"No. Just a government ballerina."

He tried to shift so he could look at her, but nausea rolled through him, forcing him to stop moving, close his eyes, and swallow as the pain clawed at him. After a few moments, it passed and he opened his eyes again.

She had not moved. She was still sitting on that rolling wooden chair, legs loosely crossed, arms folded, looking for all the world as if there were nowhere more comfortable to be. He didn't miss the pistol in her hand though, and he couldn't quite resist the little smile that crept to his lips.

"That," he said, his voice still slightly unsteady, "was a dirty trick."

She shrugged. "You'd know…"

Silence fell between them. The little clicks of the switches in the red lights and the far away sound of dripping water were the only noises now.

His head continued to clear, and he flexed his hands a little, lightly testing the bonds she'd placed him in. He wasn't ready to break them now, but soon….soon…

"So what now? Are your masters on the way to get me again?"

She looked at him for a moment and shook her head. "You really are a stubborn idiot, sometimes, you know?"

He said nothing, and they stared at each other in a small battle of wills. Finally, she sighed.

"Nobody's coming. I haven't even notified my team about this yet although I could have." She waved the phone at him and stuffed it back into her pocket. "We need a little time together, you and I, time where neither of us can run so we can get some things ironed out."

He laughed but stopped abruptly because it hurt. "Still trying to sway me with your stories and charm?"

She rolled her eyes. "Still refusing to listen to the truth?" And she ran her hand through her hair briefly, pushing back the tumbling fall.

Something about the gesture was familiar, so very, very familiar. Where had he seen her like that?

She was standing on a stone patio, the Bosphorus that glorious blue behind her, the afternoon sun setting her hair aflame, and they were listening to someone yelling inside. Just like that, the very same movement, she had run her hand through her hair before turning to him, worry in her eyes. He had reached for her and folded her in his arms because that was the only thing left he could do, the only thing he had left to give that was still his own. He couldn't tell her that...that….

He drew an unsteady breath, and the memory shivered, disappeared.

Real or not real?

She studied him, seemed to be trying to come to some kind of decision.

"Okay. I'm not good at this, so I'm just diving in. I'll figure it out as we go along, maybe."

Still trying to sort through the fragment of his past that had returned to him, he didn't respond.

"I did betray you to the KGB back then, but Yasha, I had no choice. Ivanov and Petrov…they…they did things… I don't remember all of them, but…"

She stopped, and he watched her face turn the color of chalk.

He was dragged into a room with a thick set of bars separating him from the main chamber and dropped like a sack of trash. He was still too weak from their last session with him to do more than slump there, somehow grateful for the smooth cold surface beneath him because it helped to dull some of the worst of the pain from the still-healing breaks in his femurs and the still-knitting slashes that had opened his abdomen so his torturers could dandle their fingers inside him and paint designs on him in his own blood. Part of him was screaming that he had to get up, had to rip through these bars, but his battered body refused to obey. A session in the chair hadn't been enough to completely remove his memories this time, but Petrov had told him it would be different this time, that they would proceed in stages to ensure he could remember nothing that interfered with his mission functionality. Even though the process was not complete, it was at the point that it took a moment before he could understand what was happening next.

Then the door had opened, and they'd dragged her in. She was only half covered in a hospital gown that slipped over one pale shoulder. Bruises covered the skin of her arms and legs, and when the technicians grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back, her face and neck, her shoulder were a multi-colored nightmare, too. She'd tried feebly to push them away, but they'd injected her with something, and she'd only been able to groan as they'd placed her in the chair, fastening the restraints.

Petrov had appeared in his field of vision, bending down and blocking her momentarily. "See? We are taking care of her just as I told you. I promised you we were giving her equal attention. Lest you doubt me, watch!"

And her body had thrashed as the metal hands rotated down and the current hit, both of them screaming.

"What did you drug me with, woman?" he growled, moving in the restraints again.

She narrowed her eyes and her fingers shifted on the pistol's grip.

"The same crap you used on me, Yasha. It was a dart I found in the drawer in the central hub."

He shook his head slightly, wincing as the action brought pain.

"It can't have been. That was just a simple sedative, a knock-out dose."

"And you're saying what I used on you wasn't? Why?"

He stared at her for a moment, and then he looked away from her, refusing to speak further, refusing to admit that whatever she'd given him was affecting his mind this way.

After another pause, she continued her story. "As I was saying, I…I don't remember it all, but sometime during that time, you managed to escape. I read Carter's files later after I came to SHIELD, and she said you refused to leave without me, that you planned a rescue."

He was staring down at a plan of the sublevels of the old bank, and Carter and Stark were at the other side of the table. More men in green uniforms were milling about, but the serious strategy was being developed here.

"Don't you think they know we're coming?" Carter asked.

Stark had snorted, "Probably not, since only a fool would try to go back in there after we barely made it out with our lives the first time…."

The Soldier had not responded, making a notation on the diagram. He wished they would just shut up so he could think. It was hard enough with the unbearable layers of guilt that were wrapped around his mind like lead gauze.

She trusted me. She trusted me and she loved me and I delivered her to their hands….

"Stop," he snarled, unable to keep the slightest note of desperation out of his voice. He pulled hard against the cuffs, and he felt the metal catch, begin to yield…

"Yasha," she said, and he looked at her again. She had the pistol pointed directly at him. "I don't want to hurt you again, but you need to stop trying to get free and listen. You need to know the truth…"

And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free… make you free… But freedom's just another illusion, isn't it? It's just not seeing the leash on your choke chain for a little while…it's pretending you own your body, your mind, your past, your actions…the truth shall make you free…isn't that the prettiest lie?

He let his body go limp as an onslaught of images suddenly tumbled through his head like an upturned box of photographs cascading endlessly over him. He closed his eyes, trying to regain control, trying to make it stop, but that made her voice inescapable.

"They must have known that you were coming back for me, so they…they…conditioned me…so I could be both the bait and the trap." She stood again and walked a couple of steps away as if she could not stand to be so close to him. "I didn't know any of it until Fury and some SHIELD psychologists helped me recover the memories, but…Yasha…they had me fight and kill probably fifteen men dressed up like you. It was an everyday thing. They'd put me in...in the chair. They'd shoot me full of drugs and they'd bring me to a room with him and have me rip him to pieces. Over and over. Over and over."

She turned back to him, and he saw tears in her eyes.

"So when you came into the warehouse, it was already routine. Some part of me was screaming, but I couldn't stop. It's what they wanted me to do."

He was sitting on the soft couch in the room Bradley Moore had made his office. On this day, the day before they were supposed to finally get to something like safety, he'd been restrained by three soldiers while Petrov had muttered the words that controlled him at the core level of his mind, and then he sat as he'd been ordered while Petrov injected him with something, while Moore and Petrov argued.

"It's going to look awfully damned suspicious if they disappear in transit, Petrov. None of this can come back on me. I still have other parts of this mission to clean up, and that won't be possible from Leavenworth."

Petrov had smirked, his hand coming up to stroke the Soldier's short hair like an owner absently patting an obedient dog. "Who would suspect you? After all, you've been housing two of the most treacherous and dangerous KGB operatives ever encountered. Who knows what those wily Russians are capable of, no?"

"You're going to have to drug me, too. There is no help for it. And command will know if you try to pull any fast switches. Make sure you gauge that dose so it's not lethal."

Petrov had looked affronted. "You doubt my skills as a chemist?"

"I doubt your skills as a human being."

Petrov had given that oily smile, the light reflecting off his little round glasses before he'd turned back to the Soldier.

"What about him," Bradley asked. "How closely do we need to be watching him? Are you sure he isn't going to make trouble for us?"

Petrov had smoothed the Soldier's hair one last time. "Him? Oh, no. The Asset is going to do exactly what he's been told…"

The scene shifted, and he watching Natasha drink from the tainted champagne flute, watching her body go limp, watching her eyes fill with fear and accusation, watching himself rise and gather her up, watching himself fasten her bonds, watching himself deliver them both back into the hands of their masters, their creators, their destroyers….

"Stop," he yelled, "Oh God, make it stop!" And his left arm flexed, tearing through the cuff like it was a link in a child's paper chain.

IX.

She scrambled back as he ripped through the restraints and hurled himself out of the bed, falling onto his hands and knees. Instead of attacking her, though, to her surprise, he was violently ill, throwing up again and again.

She kept the pistol pointed at him.

What the hell is this? Is it a ploy? Is he having some kind of reaction to the dart? Was it not really a tranquilizer? It looked just like the one he used on me….

His big body shuddered and he made a wretched sound as he rolled away from the pool of his vomit and into a fetal ball.

"Yasha," she murmured. He made no response. As she watched, a fine tremor started in his muscles increasing until she could hear his teeth chattering.

This is no act.

She tucked the pistol into her pocket and knelt beside him.

"Yasha," she said more loudly. "Tell me what's wrong. Let me help you." She laid her hand on his shoulder.

"No!" he yelled, suddenly dragging himself up and scrambling away from her to lean against one of the crates. "No. Don't…don't touch me… Can't touch me after I…" His face was wet with tears, and she saw him swallow rapidly, trying to keep from being ill again. He continued to shake.

She didn't try to follow him this time.

"It's okay. It's okay, Yasha. I won't touch you. I won't come any nearer than this."

His eyes flicked to hers and then away.

"I'm just going to sit right here with you for a minute. Is this okay?" she murmured.

He didn't reply, but he didn't try to move away from her again, either. His chest heaved like he had just run a marathon.

"Are you in pain?"

He laughed, a horrible broken sound. "Does it look like I'm doing good over here, doll?"

"What hurts?"

He pulled his knees up to his chest, his trembling hands coming up to cover his face.

"Everything. Every damn thing."

She edged closer, and like a flash, his head was up, tension in every line of his body, his gaze pained but steadily focused on her. She stopped, resettled herself. His breathing began to slow, and he settled back against the crate.

She licked her lips, decided to try again. "What happened?"

He closed his eyes, and an expression of pain twisted his face. He shook his head. For a moment, she didn't think he would respond otherwise. Then she heard his voice, only a whisper.

"I remember."

X.

Hope flared in her chest like a sun gone supernova, but she slapped it hard and told it to go sit in the corner and behave.

"What…what do you remember, Yasha? You remember you and me and the warehouse?"

He laughed again, that gallows laugh. "Yeah."

Mentally, she aimed another brutal kick at the hope she'd felt earlier. See? See? This is why we don't get all excited until we know all the details…

But he was continuing. "I remember the warehouse. And the rescue mission. And why it was necessary…"

A chill ran down her spine. Cognitive recalibration...

He looked directly at her. "I remember listening to them plan to drug you, Natasha, and not being able to do a damn thing. I remember lifting your body and carrying to out of that dinner. It was never you who betrayed us, it was me…"

XI.

Fuck it.

She moved to close the distance between them and took his hand, holding it tightly even when he would have pulled away.

"No. You do NOT get to do this," she said fiercely.

"Do what? Acknowledge that I have nobody to blame for myself for what happened to both of us, for the horrors they put us both through?" Although he wasn't aware of it, tears were slipping down his face, slow, steady drops of regret.

She squeezed his hand hard. "You do not get to take the blame for something that was. not. your. fault."

He pulled again on her hand, but she refused to let him go, and he sighed and stopped. "Right. Whose fault was it again? Nobody's? Am I supposed to blame you? I assure you, little spider, while I don't recall everything yet, I remember enough to know what I did, how I let them…" He turned his face away from her as if he couldn't stand to meet her eyes.

"There is plenty of blame, Yasha," she said softly, reaching out as she'd wanted to do since she'd had him unconscious, since she'd seen him in the old chapel, since she'd watched him through her telescope, since she'd seen him stand up in the middle of the busy Washington highway, since he'd risen from behind that boulder after shooting a hole in her side. She slipped her hand against his face and stroked his tear-wet face. "I know what it feels like."

He made a scoffing noise, but he turned his face into her palm as if he craved the comfort waiting for him there. That fine trembling in him seemed to lessen and then still completely at her touch.

"You think you're the only one to go through this? They buried all kinds of things they made me do, just like they did to you. Some of them, I will never get back. I made my peace with that. When I remembered what I was able to recover, I was just as sick as you are now. I could only see two paths."

He leaned away and looked at her with cynical eyes. "And what were they?"

She squeezed his hand gently. "A bullet through the roof of my mouth…" And he nodded. Clearly, that path had already occurred to him. "…or making the bastards pay…."

For a long moment, they stared at each other. Finally, he whispered, "Yes. Make the bastards pay." And he looked toward the table with its heavy load of files. His eyes returned to hers, a slow smile spreading across his lips. "Ivanov."

Her answering smile was equally vicious. "And Petrov."


Thus ends a week of megaupdating. Are we happy, dear ones? One hopes so. See you soon.