RR Chapter 66

Natasha was in a trance. She watched as the blood slowly dripped from her nose, splattering onto her leg, and then rolling off her sweat covered skin, puddling onto the grimy, dark floor. The door slamming shut had startled her awake, but she couldn't bring herself to remember who had been in here in order to even shut it in the first place. She quickly found that if she didn't move, she didn't hurt, so she tried her hardest to remember what she was doing here to end up in this position. Another drop fell from her nose and onto her leg, repeating the same events as the last time. Drip, splatter, pool, drip, splatter, pool…The red pool collecting and slowly growing at her feet threatened to cover the entire room if it didn't stop soon. Drip, splatter, pool, red, room. Oh yeah, Red Room. If she could have smiled at the realization, she would have, but even the slightest twitch took a toll on her, the simplest thoughts made her exhausted. It was better to just continue what she was doing and watch as the crimson coming from her body added to the pool around her.

Not even a minute after being startled awake, the door opened with such an explosion that she thought she would go deaf. Reflexes made her gaze tear away from her task of watching the drops and she grimaced at the effort. After she realized that the door did not explode, she recalled how her body was bent on betraying her as every nerve in her being was set to high alert. Her eyes met those of an older woman with gray hair as she moved into the room, closing the door behind her in another explosion of sound. Natasha squeezed her eyes closed in response and when she opened them again, the woman was gone. She knew that she was behind her though, circling her like trapped prey while bound to a chair. The slight currents of air that moved with the woman felt as if they were slicing into her skin. It took more effort than she cared to admit to push the feeling away. She had to steel herself for whatever was coming next, although she couldn't imagine it being any worse than what Yuri had just put her through.

"I'm still not giving Yuri a damn thing," she choked out when the woman stopped in front of her and paused. The effort it took to speak had stolen most of the air from her lungs and they screamed at her in response. When the woman didn't respond, Natasha became even more confused. Why was there an old woman here? She didn't look very threatening, although the look in her eyes gave Natasha a very uneasy feeling. Her silver hair caught the dim light in the room that almost caused it to glow, but Natasha tore her eyes away from that and to the ugly scar on her chest. She averted her gaze when the woman's features changed into a grin when she stepped closer to her. She brought her hand up to brush it against her cheek, but Natasha shied away from the hand that would no doubt ignite fire beneath her skin.

"My name is Anacostia," the woman finally said, breaking the silence in the room. "Does that mean anything to you?" When Natasha said nothing in return, the woman shot her hand out more and struck her across the cheek for her defiance. The resulting grunt of pain from Natasha did little to satisfy her revenge.

When Natasha gained some composure back, she responded with a 'no' and then averted her gaze, almost submissively.

Anacostia grinned at the action and then looked at her in disappointment. "Of course, it doesn't, why should it?"

Confusion crossed Natasha's face for only a moment until the door opened once more and Anacostia disappeared behind her. At the same time, flames erupted around the room and surrounded her, igniting a fear that she had fought so hard to keep buried. Due to the effects of the serum, it felt as if the flames were under her skin, blistering her from within. Her heart began to race in panic, and she fought to remain in control. Her mind kept throwing her back to the tortures Ivan had her go through, the tortures she had tried so hard to forget. Across the wall of fire, she could see a small figure, staring through the flames and looking lost.

Ignoring the pain, she struggled to break free of her binds when she realized that it was a young girl, about 12 years old, staring back at her. The binds released her suddenly as if they had been cut, and she fell from the chair, stopping short of the wall of flames as her limbs refused to help her. The agony of hitting the floor caused her to cry out once again, and she recoiled from the flames after realizing how close she was to it. The fear of the inferno as well as her abused form made her want to curl into a ball and forget everything that was going on around her…but the girl. Agonizingly pulling herself to her knees, she looked though the flames and shivered violently when the girl seemed to stare back at her in terror.

"It's okay!" she yelled though the roaring around her as she felt some adrenaline return, "I'm going to get you out of here!"

"No!" the young voice yelled back. "stay away from me!"

Confusion flooded her mind when she realized that the terror in the young girls' eyes were directed to her, and not the fire in front of her. "You don't understand," Natasha tried as she fought not to show how much pain she was in, "I'm one of the good guys, I won't hurt you."

"You're a monster!" the young girl yelled back, just as the flames died down and the roar of the room quieted for a while. The girl stepped over the now tiny ring of flames and then kneeled to Natasha's level.

Remembering that Anacostia was there just as her arms were wrenched behind her back, horror instead of pain rooted her to the floor when the girl mentioned a name that threw her back in time. "Viktor Novikov." She had been dropped somewhere in the Afghan mountains on a mission for the Red Room via Ivan's orders. She was sent to take out Novikov, who was a liaison for Russian and USA communications. She remembered vividly as the man pleaded for his life, having done nothing wrong. She asked no questions about the mission; she just did as she was told.

"You took my dad away," the little girl said as tears sprung in her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

Natasha was at a loss for words, she had made this little girl lose her father, and she didn't even really know why; but wait? That was so many years ago? It would be impossible for this young girl to be here right now.

When the girl produced a tiny dagger, somewhat familiar to her in design and aimed it at her chest, she didn't even fight the outcome. She most definitely deserved it, so she let the blade bite into her chest and remain there as the little girl grinned at her pained cry.

"He used to take me to school, and we would sing along to the radio. I would make him breakfast every Saturday morning, blueberry pancakes, I thought they were his favorite."

The continuous pain in her chest made it so hard to focus, but she couldn't fight the grip Anacostia had on her in this state. The pain from the dagger had her frozen. She wanted to cover her ears; she didn't need to hear how she messed up this little girl's life.

The serum had already started working its changing of her mind's perception of the past and present, and they had barely even begun.

"I stopped making them the day he was murdered, when mom said that he hated blueberries. He just loved seeing the excitement in my eyes every time I made them. He always ate every single one of them. The last thing I saw before he left for work that day was the disappointment in his eyes when there were no pancakes for him that morning."

"Why are you telling me all of this?" She yelled to the little girl as she felt the little girl's pain. Tears fell from her eyes and washed some of the blood from her face as they trailed down her skin, splattering onto the floor. Drip, splatter, pool, just like before, however long ago that was. Time seemed to be working differently for her now.

"You made me an orphan. I'm here because of you, and I was taken just like you. Only this time, you killed my parents instead of him."

The pain of losing her own parents sprang into Natasha's mind for the first time is a very long time. The serum running through her veins made her start to spiral as every emotion from that day forth was brought to the forefront of her memory. It was the beginnings of the Black Widow, and the pain and suffering she caused from that moment on swelled into her heart. She had squashed those feelings down long ago, but now they were crawling their way back and they were suffocating her.

"Don't do this," she all but begged, knowing that she didn't have the strength to fight against her own mind right now. She knew what they wanted from her, and she knew that eventually, they would win. This realization struck her to her core, and she shivered at the thought of what would happen to the world when it did. Yuri had something big planned and flashes of an impending apocalypse because of both him and her flashed into her mind. Burning cities and napalm skies; the world on fire.

"I can't, I'll never be who I was before."

The door opened once more, and the girl in front of her was replaced with another much younger girl, 6 years old this time. I'm a monster, she thought as she could only imagine how she ruined this one's life.

The little girl kneeled down to her level like the last and gripped the hilt of the knife that still sent agony though her being. Just by touching it though sent blackness seeping into her vision, but the pain was so great that it refused to give her any relief by letting her lose consciousness.

"I went to work with mommy the day you killed her," the tiny voice began.

"Stop," Natasha begged, "I don't want to know!"

"I was supposed to go to my nannies, but mommy was paranoid for some reason that day. She thought someone was following her, and that someone was…you. She had me with her because she thought she could defend me if her paranoia was right. I remember a bunch of guards following us around all day, making sure we stayed safe. It was late that night when you destroyed my life. I was asleep on the couch when you came."

She was, Natasha remembered. She had on a cute white sundress. I snuck passed her after taking out the detail charged with protecting them. Natasha was sick to her stomach now. I was going to …kill her… after the mother was taken care of.

"You thought I was asleep, but I heard a noise in the hallway, you, killing my favorite guard Mr. Tommy, and his friends. I wanted to stop you when you came in, but I was so afraid. When you passed me and went into the room mommy was in, I snuck behind the couch and crawled into the vent that mommy had shown me weeks before. She was always paranoid. I watched through the other side as you cut her throat as she begged for you to at least spare me. You said, 'leave no witnesses,' and then the red came out of her throat. I thought you were going to find me when you came back to look, but you never found me.

I was going to kill a kid… Natasha realized in horror, but she wouldn't have been the first. How could I have ever done things like that! She remembered that night now like it was yesterday. She also remembered the punishment she got for allowing the little girl to remain alive, though she tried her hardest to find her that night. She sobbed, not wanting this torture to go on anymore.

"I'm sorry I didn't let you find me. Death would have been so much sweeter than growing up with my abusive foster parents." When the knife twisted in her chest, she felt as if her soul left her body. "You don't have to feel this way, just let go of the pain. You can feel just like you did then, you could feel nothing."

It was so tempting, the guilt was tearing her apart, the pain was becoming entirely too much, but she didn't want to become that monster again. When the knife twisted in her chest, she felt as if her soul left her body as she was now hovering between life and death. When she opened her eyes again, she forced herself to look passed the expression of another tortured little girl, and noticed a tiny, blinking light right above the door frame. She forced herself to focus on it and ignore the new little girl, but it was no use. The pain made her do whatever they wanted just to get it to stop. Her story broke her just the same, and she was about ready to give up when another twist of the knife turned her body into the feeling of broken shards of glass. She had left this 7-year-old orphaned along with her little brother, alone, in the South China Sea. The siblings were separated never seeing each other again.

As this girl left, the light got her attention again, though it was hard to see through the flames now roaring menacingly before her again. It was blinking in a pattern like it was trying to tell her something. Was her mind playing tricks on her? Was the Red Room playing tricks on her? Wait, why was she here again? The tiny blinking continued and then she got the message, it was Morse Code. Ksenia, it was saying, and then the fight came back to her. Someone was sending her a message to fight and hang on. The Red Room wanted her, but she wasn't going to let that happen. She silently thanked whoever it was as certain names escaped her at the moment, but Ksenia's name most certainly did not. She had to stay strong and protect her at all costs.

Two young girls entered the room this time, and the light from the door disrupted her delicate train of thought as the blinking all but disappeared in her confusion. These girls were sisters about 5 and 10 years old. Natasha had been in Greece at the time, and her life had seemed so simple then. She was sent to take out a British Navy commando running weapons and explosives though the Balkan Peninsula. That's when they lost their dad. The final straw was a few years later when they were in the custody of their uncle, who was the complete opposite of their father. He was a British spymaster who organized agent networks and ran safehouses for falsely accused and escaped prisoners of war. Natasha had ruined their lives not once, but twice. An overwhelming sense of guilt clouded her mind and she just almost let go, until she noticed the blinking light. Why was there a blinking light? Why was it blinking so oddly? And then she recalled earlier that it was trying to tell her something, but she couldn't remember what and she had no energy to try and decipher it again.

"Just let go," the girls chanted in unison and reached for the knife in Natasha's chest. When Natasha didn't fight the move, they retracted their hands and left Natasha feeling more defeated than before. She needed to feel the pain, she deserved it and hated herself for it. The years and years of training for situations like this seemed so silly now. Never has she felt this sort of agony, and she wanted it to stop. The physical and mental strain it was putting on her body had far surpassed its limit, and she was ready to let go. She had made up her mind, but then the blinking light seared a name into her heart once again that made her want to hang on a little longer, for whatever reason. Ksenia, it was saying.

The back and forth of wanting to let go and hang on was exhausting. She knew she shouldn't let go, but she wasn't sure entirely sure why she should keep fighting. Her tainted history was playing on repeat and she had only one option to get it to stop.

When the last girl entered the room though, everything changed. It was getting to hard to breathe from the smoke and blood choking her lungs, but she couldn't even begin to guess how she had screwed up the next girl's life. Who knows how many lives she had ruined? "What did I do to you?" she had wanted to say, but her body wouldn't let her. The grip on her arms from Anacostia's hold tightened, increasing the pain she already felt from the knife almost tenfold. The young girl seemed to walk through the flames and knelt at Natasha's level, staring at her calmly. Without warning, Anacostia released her excruciating grip, and allowed Natasha's broken form to lean against her while she grabbed onto the hilt of the knife, igniting a new fire that she didn't even know had kindling. Something else is coming…and I just…can't anymore, she thought. All thoughts of Ksenia, Loki, and Bucky were fading from her mind. They were fading quicker than her previous run-ins with brainwashing. This method was proving far more effective than anything the old Red Room had ever thrown at her. Her friends were fading, her memories, and everything she had ever held dear in this lifetime. Her next words were drowned in a struggling cough as agony took over every other feeling in her body. It was so hard to breathe…

"You took my father's life, and then you almost took mine," the young girl, about 7 or 8 years old said at last, but that wasn't what stopped Natasha dead in her tracks. It was the harsh grip of the knife that slowly began to retract from her chest while Anacostia chanted in unison with the young girl. "You came in through my balcony window and grabbed me while I was playing with my doll. My father had given it to me; he said it used to be his sisters who had died when they were younger."

The slow pull of the knife had her frozen in a pain that human words could not describe, and it wasn't allowing her to faint. It wasn't just the pain of the knife that made her make this decision, it was the realization of what her actions as The Black Widow had set loose in the world. This young girl, the girl right in front of her, was the reason she had gotten her humanity back from Natalia Romanova. And it was all for nothing because it let her right back to where she had started.

"You let me go that night before making your way to daddy's office, but I was scared. I went to find him, but all I found was you standing over his dead body. I didn't even see it coming, but you threw that same dagger straight into my chest and then caught me before I had even hit the ground," the girl and Anacostia chanted together.

An inaudible gasp attempted to cross Natasha's lips when the dagger was finally free from her chest, and she caught sight of it once again. It was her dagger, one that she had owned back in the old Red Room. Anacostia dropped her then and having no more energy to even attempt to support herself, she hit the ground hard, and made up her mind of who she was just as Anacostia planted that same, old dagger into the chest of the little girl. The horror of what she should have felt was nonexistent as the light of the flames seemed to shine on the scarred chest of the old woman. The little girl in that story was her. The little girl that had helped her gain her humanity back had lived and grown to hate her so much, that she had worked for the rest of her life to undo all the good Natasha had done in the world; just for revenge. And Natasha was the cause for all of it. The little girl dropped to the floor and as the life slowly drained from her eyes, Natasha couldn't bring herself to remember why she should care.

As Natasha fought her demons, the fury that everyone was feeling back in the Tower was finally starting to fade as preparations to move had finally begun. Loki and Darcy had no other option than to tell the truth about why Bobbi had isolated herself in the lab's bedroom. Surprisingly enough, Tony was the one who was the most okay with what had just happened. When Loki and Darcy had exited the room together, they told the team that Bobbi had another attack. Everyone was mad that Bobbi had chosen to trust only those two, but Skye, Jemma, and Fitz were furious. Tony was the one who had calmed them down and soon, they understood why Bobbi didn't trust anyone. They finally realized that Bobbi was loyal to Natasha and that her own decisions were being respected by the team. Skye especially felt bad about what she had done earlier when she forced the team's hand to have Jemma give the morphine to Bobbi after she had willingly taken Natasha's blood. She finally understood that Bobbi wanted to do whatever it took to get Natasha back.

"Come on Stark, it's not that hard," Fitz was complaining as the two were hard at work on some kind of communications beacons.

Tony audibly sighed, the two tech minds clashing for the dozenth time in a matter of hours. "I know that, Inspector Gadget, but if they are using my technology, I need to somehow keep them from…"

"Look if you just…"

Ksenia walked away from the two geniuses and joined Loki who was looking as lost as she was. "What are they working on?" Loki asked helplessly.

"Some kind of beacons that we can use to communicate under the layers of rock. We can't get a look into the mountain, so chances are our comms will be nonexistent under there," she guessed.

"That makes sense," Loki said with half a smile. They both didn't really understand the tech part of the plan.

Loki and Ksenia both weren't really sure what to be doing. Everyone seemed to fall into their own thing in preparations, and they felt a little out of place. Tony started to sense it and felt a little bad, so he gave them a task.

"Ksenia," he started, "could you help me with a few things while Fitz finishes up? I don't want Fury to think we are going into this place blind when we show up on his doorstep tomorrow."

"Yeah, sure," she said a little relieved. "And are you sure you just want to drop in unannounced to SHIELD headquarters?"

Tony looked at her a little confused before looking back down at his tablet. "Ummm, yeah. It's kind of hard for Fury to say 'no, I can't send all available resources on a mission just because you guys have a hunch.' Don't you agree? Besides, I know Maria Hill will back us up. Agent May and her team will be with us as well and I know she has some serious influence over SHIELD. And Loki," he continued as he looked up from his tablet, "See if you could join Simmons. She's working that powder stuff again with Skye and wants to test something."

And just like that, plans were underway for the rescue of Natasha and Bucky, as well as the takedown of this new Red Room. The original plan was to load up what they were bringing on one of Tony's jets and meet Agent May's team, docking to the Bus for the remainder of the flight to SHIELD, but Ksenia convinced them otherwise as she went over strategies with Tony. Her thinking, and soon the rest of the Avengers, thought that if they were being watched by Echo agents, then a large jet leaving the tower would be a bad idea. They simply could not risk be tailed, or Echo being tipped off. Their plans changed, and they were forced to move supplies through the emergency tunnels underneath the Tower, and then rendezvous together later wherever May's team on the Bus could pick them up.

The last ones to leave the Tower were Darcy, Bobbi, Ksenia, Loki, Steve, and Clint. The rest of them had left throughout the day and some had already boarded the Bus. Bobbi was feeling weak, but she was pushing through the remnants of what she was calling phantom pains. The mental block Natasha had put up earlier was still there, as was some of the pain, but there was just something else going on. No matter what she did, she just couldn't connect like she had before, and she knew something wasn't right.

"Hey, anything yet?" Darcy asked the blonde as she supported her though the tunnel. The face she was sprouting told her that she knew something but was keeping it from them. "Look, I know trust is a big issue for you right now, but if there is something going on, we need to know about it," she whispered as she tried to get any information from the woman. "You know you can trust me... right?" When Darcy saw her look up ahead to Ksenia and then back to her, she realized that this wasn't something that Ksenia needed to be around to hear. "Oh…anyone else?"

When she looked to Loki up ahead for a moment, she hesitated, but then told her 'no.'

"Hey," Darcy called to the group, "Steve, take Ksenia and scout ahead. We need to make sure no one noticed the teams emerging from the tunnel before getting into the cars. Ksenia, you know what to look for out there."

Both agreed, it was a good idea. Darcy was starting to become a great agent. When they were out of earshot, Darcy told the rest to wait up a minute and give Bobbi a moment to speak. "So, Bob's, what's going on?"

For a second, she didn't speak, but when she did, everyone wished she hadn't said anything. "We need to keep Ksenia away from Natasha when we find her. Something weird is going on and I don't think Nat will be in her right mind."

Everyone stared at her to continue, but Loki tried to remain hopeful. "You think they brought Natalia back? If that's the case, it won't be hard to…"

"No, not Natalia. I don't feel a trace of her in there. It's like I'm connected to some stranger, someone even more dangerous," she admitted.

Clint then said what they were all thinking. "They brainwashed her?"

Unsure of herself, she shrugged her shoulders and winced at the gnawing pain in her chest that just wouldn't go away. "I don't know, at least it wasn't by some machine. I think…no, I know that she was tortured into this new person. And if I'm right, we can't let Ksenia anywhere near her. She could be too easily manipulated, and then the Red Room could use Natasha to get to her."

"And what about Bucky?" Clint asked. "Do we just assume that he's not the same happy go lucky murder soldier?

Understanding how dangerous this information was, they made a pact to keep it to themselves for the time being. There would be no way in hell that Fury would sign off on this mission to bring back two people so deeply compromised.

"If I have to," Clint began with a heavy heart, "I'll make the call to take her out. If this isn't Natasha that we find, we can't let her out into the world. Manipulation is just too high up on her list of assets. I made the call to save her once before bringing her into SHIELD, I'll make the call to end her now."

"Clint, you can't just…" Darcy started almost hysterically before being cut off by Loki.

"No, I'll do it."

Loki was the furthest thought of who would ever be the one to make a call as conflicting as this, but it was also the most right one. "You have never been in her mind to feel and see the things that I have. I took a look once, the night I stole her memory, and I thought that was bad. If it isn't Natasha or Natalia we find, then whoever it is will be the end us all."

While all of this was going on, another attempt at brainwashing had just concluded. The torment had been almost unbearable, but he hung on the best he could after Arina flipped the switch. The only thing that got him through it was the single white feather hidden between the cracked rock above the machine he had willingly subjected himself to. That in combination with the power level flowing into his head was nothing like he was used to. Whoever configured this machine must not have turned it all the way up, because unlike the other times, he didn't smell his skin burning. Bucky had no idea how he had made it through unscathed, or had he? He already didn't trust his mind, could this attempt have later consequences? Yuri's failure to see how strong his mind had become though his numerous brainwashing's would be his downfall as Bucky had complete control of his mind and actions, but there was no way that he would give that information away. He would become his puppet, but only until he saw his chance to get out of there. Pretending to be a blank slate seemed like the smartest move, and he was extremely thankful to Dove for helping him steady his mind and hold on to this world.