Chapter 37
Emotionally Compromised
"Romanoff?" Coulson's voice questioned her decision.
She tore her attention from the painting to meet his eye. "I'm sure."
May's displeasure was nearly palpable as she scowled at her. "You're kidding, right? This," she gestured at the obscure art, the transcripts of Oscar's mad babbling, "Doesn't give anything conclusive. You're grasping at straws."
Natasha's eye returned to the painting. The shadows and angles of it. She was sure. It brought up all the same dread that her nightmares did. Petrovich had taken Emily to where the Black Widow was created, where the graduation ceremony had occurred, where her options were taken away and she was sterilized. It was a few hundred kilometers northwest from the Red Room's husk. She'd considered that Petrovich would go back to his favorite place and had sent not only a drone and an agent to recon the burned-out husk of the compound, but she'd had Skye commandeer satellite time, had studied the images thoroughly.
There was no sign of use. Wolves didn't even stick around the place long. It was a dead place. She would have had the former military base examined as well, if she could have remembered its name or location or anything about it except the stark, horrible insides.
Oscar had said its nickname, what the mine workers had called it, and that had awoken her buried memory, brought it to the fore of her mind where she could access it. It'd taken no more than a simple Google search to bring up the location. Deep in the heart of Siberia, a base established to protect and police a profitable coal mine that had been worked by Soviet prisoners. Over time, those same prisoners had become test subjects for military experiments. They were said to have died in the mines, and no one had bothered to think it was a lie. Or cared. It was supposedly decommissioned twenty years ago. Satellite imagery said otherwise.
"Fine." May snarled. "But I'm taking lead."
Natasha opened her mouth.
"No. You. All of you are too emotionally compromised for this. I've heard about Ivan Petrovich. He's the type to burn his tools rather than let someone else have them. We do this wrong, and your girlfriend is dead, Widow."
It was a struggle, but Natasha brought her teeth together. May was right. Breathing through her teeth, she nodded.
May watched her for a minute before nodding. Her frame relaxed, and compassion swept into her gaze. "Good." Then the soft emotion was gone, and she was planning their next move, never once bothering to ask Coulson for permission. The man simply watched her take charge with his usual pleasant smile.
Petrovich would be on the lookout for anyone who'd been a SHIELD agent before Natasha had dumped SHIELD's secrets. Well, most. Obviously not all of the spy organization's secrets had been kept in the Triskelion's data banks. Thankfully. Like whatever Fury had passed on to Coulson when he'd handed over the reigns as director. Still too much though. Like Emily's identity.
Natasha wasn't sure she'd ever fully forgive herself for that. Especially now. And if Em d-
Focus.
May had laid out a plan. A good one.
May sent Bucky and Hunter in to scout while she piloted their quinjet. No one else breached Russia's borders for fear of Petrovich's contacts tipping him off. She sent Steve and Natasha to make appearances in Ukraine following one of Petrovich's false trails while Tony continued letting himself be seen searching Kazahstan with Bobbi and Mack.
"We'll find her, Nat." Steve laid a comforting palm on her shoulder as they paused in a shadowy section of a pro-Russian neighborhood.
She whipped her head to snarl up at him, yet the expression she saw there stopped her cold. He was as worried as herself for Emily's safety. His words and touch were as much for his comfort as hers. "We'll find her," she repeated, reaching up to lay her hand on his and squeeze.
Together, silently, they stood in the darkness.
A fly had appeared in the little goddess' room yesterday. It'd traveled down with Yakov, the man who escorted her around the facility and delivered her meals. He was a quiet man. Never spoke. Naturally. He didn't have a fully-functional tongue. According to Petrovich, it had been cut out years ago. On Petrovich's orders. Yakov had betrayed him by telling someone a secret that he shouldn't have.
Yakov was terrified of Petrovich. The little goddess felt decidedly uncomfortable around Petrovich, but she wasn't quite afraid of him. He was old and sick and wanted to teach the little goddess how to be useful. That didn't sound so bad.
It was good to be useful, wasn't it?
Flies were useful. They were part of the carbon cycle, their larvae helped break down dead flesh that eventually returned to dirt and helped support plant life. Without plant life, there could not be animal life.
The little goddess wondered how it was that she knew about the carbon cycle. She knew so many things, but there seemed to be gaps in her knowledge. Especially around things that involved humans. Petrovich often talked about people he knew or had known or killed or had killed. Sometimes, she heard others talk too. They talked about lovers and families and people they hated.
Was it normal to know other people? Did she have people who she loved or hated?
The fly buzzed closer to her and landed on her hand. Its tiny front legs rubbed together. It took a male and a female to make little flies. For humans, it was the same. And unlike flies, humans cared for their offspring for many years. Should she not know the male and female humans who had created her? A father and a mother. And if not them, whoever had raised her. Had she ever created another human? She had starting bleeding from her vagina the other day, and it had frightened her until Petrovich reassured her that it was a normal function of the female body as it went through fertility cycles.
After much difficult thought, she had found that she already knew that. The uncomfortable swelling and cramping seemed familiar. She wasn't young, seemed to have many adult years under her skin. She must have experienced this menstrual cycle many times in her life.
Why didn't she remember them?
Why didn't Petrovich want her to ask about her past?
Why was he afraid of that?
There came two sharp raps on the door before Yakov entered and set her meal tray and water down along with a magazine that Petrovich probably didn't want her reading. Yakov snuck her things to read and help pass the hours that Petrovich didn't take up.
"Thank you, Yakov."
His pale blue eyes blinked at her, and he nodded. He picked up her midday tray, looked at her again, and left, the fly buzzing at his shoulder.
"Goodbye, fly."
She wasn't very hungry, and the food's scent didn't make her stomach rumble. Reading wasn't particularly appetizing either. She decided to exercise. It made her body feel nice. When she pushed her muscles to the point of uncomfortable burning, she felt something else, something she didn't tell Petrovich about because it seemed like a memory. It had to be a memory. Or a collection of them.
The type of movements that she was doing, she knew they were martial in nature. If there was a person in front of her, and she moved with her hips this way, thrust her arm that way, she would dodge a frontal attack and push the attacker off balance. She went through different motions, ones that could severely injure another person.
The little goddess paused with her left foot on the ground, body leaning down toward it, and her right foot in the air. Slowly, she lowered it. Had someone taught her this? Why would she learn it? To hurt people? To protect herself? From who?
Why?
What kind of person was she?
It was the end of June. Back in New York, the heat was oven-like within the confines of the concrete jungle. In Atlanta, with its heavy, thick humidity, the heat was murderous. Here, in central Siberia, it was barely warm enough not to wear a jacket. Natasha squatted in the shadows of the coniferous forest and stared at the old base.
Her body twitched with the overload of emotions flooding her.
No. She didn't have time for emotions. This was a mission. A high-risk, high-reward mission that she was going to succeed at. She retook control of her breathing, her heart rate, her body.
This was a mission.
She was the best, and she would not fail.
The little red fox could work with the Black Widow on this. One wanted to retrieve a treasured, loved person, and the other wanted to retrieve a highly valuable resource. Calm settled in her core.
Not a minute later, Clint whispered from where he waited beside her. "Mind if I borrow a little of that calm you suddenly found?"
"We're bringing Em home tonight," was her response. She felt the full intensity of his hawk eye and turned to meet it.
"I haven't seen you this focused since before New York."
"You weren't there to see me prepping to retrieve you from Loki."
Dark shadows clouded his face. "I hope you don't have to hit Em that hard."
Laura had given Natasha a thorough tongue-lashing for the massive bruise she'd turned Clint into during their fight while he was under Loki's mind-control. After properly gushing her thanks, of course. Even across a video chat Laura's tongue was sharp and dangerous. It would have been far worse in person, yet Clint hadn't felt safe going home for weeks, not until he was sure his mind was completely his own again. If Petrovich had succeeded in brainwashing Emily, what would she have to do to get Em back?
"Me too." That was a bridge to cross when they came to it. Worrying about it now wouldn't do any of them any good. "But I will if I have to."
Some of the shadows dissipated, and his sunny grin came out. "We're not too far from Cho's cradle on this side of the world, so you can hit her a lot harder than you usually would."
This morning had been filled with another lesson from Petrovich about how Mother Russia needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. He was teaching the little goddess how to help him do that by showing her the limits of her gift and pushing her past them. Yakov had been her teaching dummy for several hours. He was usually her teaching dummy.
She decided that she didn't like learning this way.
"I'm sorry, Yakov," she whispered to him when they were down several levels and alone.
Red lined his blue eyes as he looked to her. He came to a stop and studied her for several breaths. A low sound slid out of his mouth as he lifted a hand slowly to touch her cheek with his knuckles.
"You're angry with me."
He shook his head.
But her gift told her that he was angry. If not her then, "Are you angry with someone else?"
Yes. He mouthed.
"Him?" Petrovich.
Yes.
"I think I am too. It makes my stomach unhappy when he has Sergei hit you or cut you or burn you. More when I have to heal you and watch it happen again." As she spoke, her stomach twisted in agreement.
Emotion that she wasn't sure how to read crossed his face and swept through his veins. His hand shifted, and he pat her cheek gently. She thought that he was trying to be comforting. A breath later, he started walking again.
Gun loaded with dendrotoxin instead of standard bullets in case they needed to interrogate anyone later, Natasha slunk down another stairwell. She'd been inside the base for almost ten minutes and hadn't found sign of Emily's location. No one else had either. The soldiers they paused to question wouldn't, or couldn't, talk. How far down did these stairs go? Had Petrovich been digging since its original creation? Or had she never seen the entirety of it?
Above her, a cry went up. Below her, Bobbi glanced back to meet her gaze. The base knew it'd been breached. As one, they abandoned stealth to run, to hunt as fast as possible before Emily could be moved or worse.
Soldiers poured into the stairwell two floors down. Hot rounds whizzed through the air, gouged Natasha's trigger hand, and drove her gun from her grasp. Cursing, she flipped backwards up the stairs, found Bobbi retreating with her, and cursed the overly-staffed base. Where did the funds come from to pay these men? How d-
Soldiers started dropping, their backs plugged from behind. Metal rounds. Blood was spraying everywhere. Bobbi wasted no time dropping the rest in the confusion. In the following quiet, a white piece of paper waved in the doorway kept open by a dead man. A second hand joined the one holding the paper. Empty. Slowly, a body followed. Another soldier. Male like the rest, maybe in his late thirties. Scarred, freckled skin and bright orange hair. He had his gun slung peacefully over his shoulder.
The paper was flipped.
маленькая богиняwas written on it.
little goddess
He was looking at Natasha, his pale blue eyes expressive and open. His thumb was pointed behind him. Clearly, he wanted to lead them down the hall that stank of rotten potatoes.
"Who are you?" She demanded in Russian.
He opened his mouth. Wide. Inside of it, the scarred root of a tongue wagged.
"You know who I am?"
He nodded, rubbed the black fabric of his pants, then curled his thumbs into his palms, pressed the thumb knuckles together and wiggled his eight fingers.
Bobbi snorted.
"Take us to her," was Natasha's short demand before bending to retrieve her gun.
The man nodded and turned, striding purposefully down the hall lit by bare lightbulbs hanging from exposed wiring, passing shadowed rooms that had wood doors in various stages of decay. He stopped in front of one with a solid, almost medieval door with aged -but solid- wood and iron reinforcement that was totally free of rust. It was new. He rapped stiffly on the door before lifting a heavy bar that served as the door's lock and swung the door inward.
"Yakov?" A soft voice came from within. "What's all the noise about?"
Natasha's boots glued themselves to the stone floor. The guard was holding up a hand and curling it in a "come here" gesture. There came a rustling of fabric, wool or heavy cotton. Blankets.
A lean woman came to the doorway. She wore simple clothes, similar to doctor scrubs, but warmer looking and rumpled. Her short, cocoa hair was greasy and unkempt. Dark eyes, curious and intelligent, swept over Natasha and Bobbi.
"Who are they, Yakov?" was asked.
That simple statement, delivered innocently by a guileless Emily, hit harder than Hulk. "You don't know me?" rasped from a throat gone dry.
Black eyes blinked at her. "Should I?" her head shifted thoughtfully.
The soldier, Yakov, nodded.
Emily frowned at him, and his shoulders slumped.
"We're friends, Emily." Bobbi interjected. "We've come to take you home."
"Emily?" She seemed to taste her own name. "Is that my name? Petrovich only calls me 'little goddess'."
Natasha's legs lost the ability to hold her up. They buckled, and she fell to her knees. She was too late. Her Emilishka was gone.
"Are you okay?" Emily gasped and knelt, touching fingers to skin. "You're hurt."
Pain rippled in her hand, and she watched with numbed thoughts as the gouge knit itself together. Bruises from sparring with her teammates buzzed painfully before vanishing.
"And you're tired, but not enough to make you weak. You have a powerful body." Emily's forehead wrinkled at her. "Why are you upset?"
Echoing gunfire drifted from the stairwell, and Bobbi cursed. "We need to get out of here."
Yakov tugged Emily. There was sympathy in his eyes. Shame. Molten anger flared, and Natasha rose, pointed her gun at his face. He met it calmly.
But Emily did not. "What are you doing?"
"Hey, cool it. He's helping."
"He helped put her here," was her cold retort. He didn't deserve her trust or his freedom.
Black eyes flashed between Natasha and the soldier. Emily touched her again. Against her will, her eyelids closed and body crumpled, darkness washing over her.
A/N – I'd say that I can't believe it's been almost three weeks since my last update, but I totally believe it. I agonized over this fucking chapter – this scenario – for too long. Three totally different scenarios got written for this. There are entire plot lines that had to be abandoned or reworked because of Petrovich. Asshole. Maybe I'll post some as one-shots if there's interest in them.
Next chapter will come much faster. Promise.