She opened her eyes and stared up at the white ceiling of her cell. She was drenched in sweat and had to wipe away tears from her face. Another day in paradise. She thought to herself sarcastically. Another night full of nightmares, or memories, or both, she couldn't tell. She'd learned to control her reactions to the night terrors the last few months, not wanting more punishment from Madam, but here in her cell in the deepest parts of SHIELD, she allowed herself to relax a bit more, because no matter what they ended up deciding as her fate, she'd done the right thing. Her internal clock told her it was only around 2am. She sighed and closed her eyes again. She wasn't going to fall asleep again, she was shivering and not from cold, but because she could still feel the electricity rushing through her veins, and could still hear screams echoing in her ears. She stopped herself from letting out a sob.
43 days and she had to remind herself to be patient. Clint Barton had brought her in and Fury blew his top, throwing her in a cell and almost biting Barton's head off. Have you lost your goddam mind?! Do I need to tell you how fucking insane this sounds? Best case scenario my ass Agent Barton, best case scenario she doesn't turn you into minced meat for sheer entertainment!
He wasn't wrong. Her reputation proceeded her. Specially in the last few months where she was trying to get their attention. It worked, she was here, and although her current predicament wasn't exactly how she'd envisioned her plans taking her, she couldn't say she was surprised.
And he'd been watching her like a Hawk, pun intended, not just because Fury said he'd have his head if it turned out he was wrong, but because he himself was making sure he hadn't misjudged the situation entirely. He hadn't. But a month and a half wasn't enough time to convince these people. She hadn't expected it to be. She needed them though. Not just for their resources, but because she needed, needed to be better, someone worthy. It was difficult to remember why, most of the time, but it was a driving force in her veins. She just knew she couldn't be that person anymore. She tried to think and it was always the same thing: 1018465195. She hadn't figured out what it meant yet. As soon as they gave her access to a computer, she would.
In her dreams, she could sometimes remember a time when she was different, when she smiled at someone a lot. She couldn't really see him, but in her dreams, she could feel him. He was strong, warm, although he had a cooler touch, sometimes. They were faint wisps of memory, hard to grasp once she'd woken up. She wanted to remember, so badly. There was something else, something very important, but she didn't like to think about that. She suspected it was part of the obscure feeling in her chest. 1018465195
She knew they'd messed with her head, knew the empty spaces and their dates, had worked up a system when she was 15 with scraps of paper and pencils hidden inside her mattress, checking off every day on makeshift calendars and learning how many days they'd taken from her. The longest had been when she'd been 17. Six months. Until recently.
That last time had been different, she'd woken up and she'd immediately realized something was wrong. She'd acted as normal as possible, as if she'd woken up from any other mission, but she could feel it, something in herself had changed monumentally. For one, she'd wanted to cry.
She could feel in her muscles that she'd been beaten, feel in her lungs that they'd used the water mask, feel in her veins that they'd electrocuted her. They knew she could, it was the point. She hadn't understood why they made her forget her crime, it seemed counterproductive. She'd wake up desperate in the night, feeling shocks in her blood that she knew were not real anymore, and wondered how many times they had electrocuted her that she could still feel it. She'd try to go back to sleep, but she was shivering and unusually afraid, and realized they must have kept her locked up in one of the freezing cells, waiting for punishment, again and again. And she'd fall asleep and wake up sweating and jump out of bed and run around the room looking for something, someone, her body telling her she was supposed to be doing something. She'd choke on her tears and calm herself down, head between her legs and trying to breathe, but the weight in her chest wouldn't let her inhale properly. I need to be somewhere. She'd get her breathing under control and force herself to lay back down, only to wake up with a scream lodged in her throat moments later because she'd seen someone being tortured in front of her, and in her dream, she'd screamed for them to stop. What is happening! She'd wanted to scream, her emotions were uncharacteristically out of control, and she'd just wanted to cry. She'd curl up and swallow down everything.
And now she did, she allowed herself to sob and full out cry into the darkness, because she could feel it, could feel in her heart that something was missing, and she knew it wasn't just him, it was something bigger and her heart ached with hollowness and in a place like this where she could relax a bit and let her guard down and her body mellow, she found her arms feeling an empty weight and she'd feel like the ground was shifting underneath her because something is missing...
She'd made it here and the goal was to turn her life around, but her reasons for doing so were so far away from her reach and she let herself cry like she had never been allowed to do so. There were cameras and most likely mics, but that was ok, because there would be no punishment in the morning. Here, she was allowed to be human.
44 days and she'd barely slept all night, as had been the case for the last couple of months, since she woke up from her 'mission'. She now doubted it had been a mission, she wondered, sometimes, in her rare foolish moments, if she'd tried to escape. That would explain a lot. But she couldn't have been that stupid! Could she?
Footsteps outside and she sat up, swinging her legs off of the cot and sitting up straight, head held high but she remained seated. She didn't want to look menacing, just respectful, and knew that in this place, that would be enough to receive respect from them. They were the good guys. She would fight to be one of them, somehow.
It was Nicholas Fury, not Barton today. She'd studied as many of them as she could while mapping out her plan, and all she had of him was his name and position, a couple of mission reports, impressive records. Couldn't find anything personal on him though. He was the director of SHIELD, the one with all the guns and tricks up his sleeve, tricks he used very well on her for the first week, so well in fact she was almost afraid that she'd made a big mistake.
But he was just testing her, and she must have passed his one-eye scrutiny, because he'd put his gun away, and told her that she answered only to him and Barton, and the moment he smelled something fishy, he´d execute her on the spot.
He was standing in front of her cell now, steel walls behind her and to her right and left, and lasers and metal bars in front of her. He deactivated the laser and the humming stopped. He punched in a code and swiped his card and the bars disappeared into the ceiling. He was alone and he left the bars up, the whole front of the cell wide open. Either he knew he was strong enough to take her down if she tried anything, or he trusted her enough not to try anything. She suspected it was the former.
"The intel you've been giving us has worked out so far." Straight to the point, and she only continued to study him, from the wrinkles of the frown on his forehead to the mild discoloring visible around the eyepatch.
"I believe you when you tell me the reason you defected is because you were done with working for the Red Room. And I get it, we have information and reports from the Red Room and it ain't a pretty place." He was so nonchalant while speaking to her, like a principal speaking to a recurring misconduct student. It for some reason, made her feel at ease. "All the info you've given us has helped us skip at least 7 years of reconnaissance work, and we'll be able to bring them down much sooner than we ever dreamed of. And I just know you'll be itching to be front row when that happens." He still stood in front of her in the same posture as when he came in, feet shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind his back, poker face so strong he wasn't giving anything away. "But my concern is, when we're done with them, then what? You get our help to bring down your tormentors, then what? You gonna go back to twisting men around your fingers? Killing them in their sleep 'cause they pissed off your employer? Running in the shadows and scaring little kids?"
She thought maybe he didn't mean it the way she took it, but it hit home in a way she didn't know could hurt so much. She wasn't sure she managed to control her reaction in time, flinching. Did they know of the princess, Dreykov's firstborn killed in her sleep as punishment for betraying the Red Room? 12 years old. For all her kills and notches under her belt, successful infiltrations, tortures and interrogations, this one was like a constant twisting knife in her gut. She knew it didn't need any reasoning to see why it was the worst, but even so, it always hit something inside her deeper than she could comprehend. She found herself unable to call forth her impeccable mask, instead clenching her teeth. Could she ever wipe off enough blood to be able to look down at her hands and not see red?
Fury noticed of course, eye narrowing and face creasing. "Tell me, Widow, what is your angle, really."
She had to calm herself down then, told herself over and over again that if she was going to do this, it had to be real, it couldn't be a job, no masks, she had walked in here with every intention of changing, for the better, and becoming someone she could stand to look in the mirror. She couldn't be fake.
"I want to be my own person."
The resolve in her eyes convinced him.
