"How did you get them?" Natasha asked, her fingers gliding over the sill of the one-way glass. On the other side was a line-up, but not just any line-up. They were Red Room personnel, all of them; four were guards, two were medical officers.
"We picked them up of the raid when we recovered you." Coulson watched Natasha very closely, he wasn't sure she was ready for this, but she was the best agent for the job, so he let her in on it anyway. "We've been holding them until you were field tested again."
"You've had them in holding for over a year? Why?" Natasha set her eyes on the two other agents in the room, Greene and Konrad. They were both working the monitors on the desk in front of the glass.
"Interrogation." Coulson replied. The whole tone of their conversation was tense and apprehensive, but calm. Natasha found that being calm was easy, screwing a lid tightly over any rising emotions before she even had a chance to feel them.
"You need me to interrogate them." It wasn't a question, Coulson knew, but he nodded.
"Fear is an integral part of interrogations, as you know. But, they don't fear us, Natasha, they fear..."
"Me." Natasha's lifeless voice sent a palpable chill throughout the room. Greene and Konrad both looked down at their feet but Coulson did not, his steady gaze was, to Natasha, almost a dare, almost a challenge.
"Best way to crack a Russian..." He started.
"Is with a Russian." Natasha finished with a small nod of her head, turning back to face the glass wall. "I only need number four."
"What about the rest?" Coulson was still unsure, but she was still calm, not showing any signs of instability.
"I only need number four." She repeated in monotone.
"Why?" He needed information, he needed assurance that she was okay to do this if he was going to set her loose.
"He's the only one I have leverage on."
"Hello Jora." She greeted in Russian, the same unnerving flat, dead tone in her voice as she sauntered into the room. Her confidence and coldness would have made any SHIELD shy away from her, but not this man, he didn't even seem phased by her presence.
The room they were in she modified herself specifically for this interrogation. Interrogation rooms were all the same at SHIELD; a plain metal table with two chairs on either side in the center of the room. Natasha dragged the table out leaving the two chairs, and brought in a rolling cart of supplies she'd picked up from home. She'd covered the tray with a towel to keep people, namely Coulson from seeing what she'd brought. If they knew they might try and stop her from entering that room. She'd made a deal with Coulson that nobody would be allowed in the room with her and nobody, not even Fury, was to interrupt her, so once she was in she would be free and clear to work. Her last step of prep was gearing up in full tactical while an armed escort secured number four in the chair she'd left in the center of the room.
"You look good, Widow. Or should I say better?" He smiled, she did not. "I've got to say, girl, this is entirely predictable. Sending you to deal with us, not entirely original." This man was a guard, the guards were the dull ones, the one's not clever enough to see the big picture, to see beyond what was right in front of them.
"How are you going to hurt me today little spider?" He was loving this. "Will it be with a gun, or a knife? Or how about those soft hands of yours, red does look good on you." Natasha waited until he was uncomfortable with her silence to answer.
"No Jora, you won't be bleeding, not yet anyways. I just want to talk." He laughed at her, an ugly sound.
"You won't get anything from me, Widow, you know that." It was a wonder he'd survived this long in the Red Room.
"You don't even know what I want to talk about." Her feigned hurt made him laugh again.
"I'll humor you, girl. What do you want to talk about?" Girl, he called her. He would pay for that.
"Evgenia Yakovna." That wiped the smug smile right off his twisted, scarred face. She'd given him a few of those scars herself.
"Jenya?" He whispered in shock and it was Natasha's turn to smile, though it was a sick and spiteful smile, as twisted as his face.
"Jenya, yes, that's what you called her." She mused, taking a seat in the chair opposite him. "She'd be what, 19? 20?"
"23." He spat.
"I know." She gave him a mocking wink. "We're all the same, us spiders."
"She was not like you!" He was beginning to crack, this was easier than she thought it would be.
"You're right, she's wasn't. I succeeded where she'd failed. I'm better." She was loving this, how easy it was to incite rage in him.
"Bitch!" He shouted, pulling at his restraints.
"How predictable." She drawled, twirling her hair boredly. "Is that really the best insult you could come up with?"
Jora pulled at his restraints again, and Natasha rolled her eyes.
"Pretty thing, if my memory serves. Lean and willowy strawberry blonde, right? Really deep brown eyes too? Sorry, it's a bit hard to remember what she looked like before she died. The end result was a little, how should we say, messy." His anger mixed with curiosity now.
"Did you ever wonder how she got caught, Jora? Well, it's simple really. Someone told, someone always tells. But the interesting part is what happened after." She stood up excitedly, and began to walk in circles around him like a predatory animal. It felt good to be in control again.
"Well, as it happens, they gave her to me." She whispered gleefully in his ear.
"No." He breathed, fear now ruling him.
"Oh yes, Jora. They took that sweet girl who would rather starve than kill, who would rather suffer beating than give them out, who wanted nothing more desperately than to escape that life, and they gave her to me. I hadn't quite finished my training in interrogation and torture so they tied her up and said 'go nuts'. See, they didn't really care about getting information, it was just for fun."
"Stop." He asked her, begged her.
"Sweetheart, I'm just getting started. But, I thought." she wheeled the cart around in front of him, shoving the chair along the ground. "I thought you might like to get the play-by-play." She yanked the towel off, revealing neat lines and rows of delicate and indelicate instruments of pain.
Countless knives of varying sizes, brass knuckles, bottles of acids and bases, a box of salt, several pairs of pliers, again of varying sizes, a power drill with an array of bits, she'd been thorough in her preparation. The sight of it all made Jora's blood run cold, his heart hammering so fast in his chest he thought it might burst; the Black Widow could be counted on to make it hurt. Natasha ran her fingers lightly over several tools thoughtfully, debating on the best one. She selected a medium-sized hunting knife, sharpened specially for this.
"I started with her vanity." She told him, the clinical edge slipping back into her voice as she walked behind him and he stiffened. This was the first interrogation tactic she'd learned, to stand behind them. Cut off their vision you cut off their control; they can feel your presence ominously behind you but they have no idea what's really going on. It was the wait again, except she was on the other end of the pain this time.
She reached out and closed her fist tightly around his greasy, black ponytail, yanking his head back, smiling when he cried out. She sawed through the thin fibers of his hair until the clump of hair until the pressure on the back of his head was gone and the hair tumbled to the ground.
"She was always too prideful of her beauty." Natasha said offhandedly as she walked back to the instruments, placing the knife delicately back in it's spot. "So then I moved to her face." She slid the brass knuckles over he fingers before delivering a few hard punches across his face. It was only moments later that the swelling and bruising appeared and he was spitting blood.
She switched back to another knife, a smaller one this time. She took her time here, went slowly, slicing through the soft tissue of his ear at an agonizing pace, relishing in the way he screamed as the hot blood sprouted from his head and began to flow in earnest down his neck.
"Guards." She remarked with disgust when she was done, tossing his severed ear into his lap. "Just a bunch of pathetic screamers. You all thought you were so great because you got to fuck the girls, but you were the weak ones, not us. Well, not me anyways. Jenya was a screamer too, and a crier. She even begged." Grief, pain, disgust, she could see it all in Jora. She loved it.
"Listen here you sick whore..." He growled, spitting another mouthful of blood.
"You're only a whore if you get paid, which if you recall, I never did. You listen to me, I will take you apart bit by bit by bit with a smile on my face. And with every hit, with every slice of your flesh I will remind you that I did the same thing to your lady love. You will know the pain she felt and the depth of her suffering at my hands, and I'll enjoy it. Unless, of course, you tell me exactly what I want to know." She began to assemble the drill, sliding each piece into place carefully, slowly.
"So, Jora, what's your choice?"