A.N.: Thanks so much for the reviews! I find them very motivational. Sorry it took me so long to continue this story; I had a lot going on. Hope this chapter was worth waiting for :)
Breaking (Free?)
Her name was Natalya Shostakova. She was a widowed ballerina. She was young and beautiful and very, very Russian.
And killing came too easily.
Her late husband's name was- his name was...
Yasha?
No. No, it was Alexei. How could she forget her Alexei? Her beautiful pilot, who had died for the cause.
He was everything to her, so after his death, when the Widow-makers came to call, she'd gladly accepted the opportunity to carry on his legacy in the Motherland's service.
She wondered, sometimes, why everything came so easily to her, the tools of her new trade feeling more familiar than foreign, but her handlers always brushed it off, telling her that, to her already well-trained muscles, it felt similar to the ballet she'd danced for years.
She could think of no other explanation, so she never questioned them...until she met the Winter Soldier.
Years had passed, and she had served her country well - better, in fact; she was the best. When she reported to receive her orders that day, a hushed argument was leaking out the slightly ajar door outside of which she waited, pretending not to listen. Most agents wouldn't listen, but, well - she was the Black Widow; information was her business, after all.
[-a terrible idea! You know what happened last time!]
[What other choice do we have? Without this mission, we've lost. Do you know of anyone else who can pull it off?]
A pause was answer enough before the eventual response, [I don't like it.]
[It will be fine. We were remiss last time, but we know better now. They will complete this one mission, and then it will be 'out of sight, out of mind' again.]
[Fine. But, on your head be it if you're wrong.]
And then, she'd been introduced to her partner for the mission of a lifetime. They were both cold and professional, but that didn't stop her from feeling the ghost of warm familiarity. They worked together seamlessly in a way that sang of right, but every time she met those dead brown eyes with her own, something buried deep within her screamed wrong.
As that piece of her steadily clawed its way to the surface, she caught glimpses of another life - all of which came in the form of that face, those same eyes sparkling with life.
I've got an idea, he said.
What do you need?
A grenade, and there was that grin, wild and deadly and...
Stay warm, Natalya...
Love is for children, she said.
You're the one always calling me a child...
Don't scare me like that again, she snapped, glaring down at him with weapons in her hands, blood on her skin, smoke wrapped around her like a shroud.
Yes, Ma'am, he said, smirking through the pain...
Sometimes, there were no words, only a flurry of blows, beside him or at his back or, sometimes, even opposing.
Never enough to make any sense.
They returned from their mission, covered in blood and bruises and triumph, after a little over a week. She'd lived her entire life without him, so she didn't understand why she felt the loss so keenly upon their immediate separation.
I do! cried the hidden part inside her, I know why!
And Natalya remembered. Not her other life, or the Soldier she'd lived it for, but she remembered that there was another life. That nothing was worth losing it. That no one had the right to take it away.
So, she ran - ran far away from the people who had taken it, taken her, taken him. She ran before they could realize it was coming back and steal it all away again.
And, slowly, it came back. All of it. The blood and pain and fear and loss of then joined that of now, the bitter reality of her past somehow sweeter than the hollow, honeyed lies, and Natalya Romanova knew herself once more.
And, then, the Soviet Union fell. And the Black Widow hunted in its ruins, burning the Blood Red Room to the ground and scattering its ashes in the wind, searching, always, for the one she'd lost.
James.
Years passed, the Black Widow selling her skills to the highest bidder - after what they'd done to her, to him, she no longer believed in fighting for a cause; no cause was worth it; there was no goodness in humanity - always, endlessly, seeking the man who'd made her as close to whole as she'd ever been.
And, then, a hawk was sent to kill her. But, he didn't.
She didn't trust this S.H.I.E.L.D. It was an organization of liars and killers, who had no qualms about using any means necessary to bring about their vision of "the greater good." Ideology didn't matter; they were the same as those she'd left, and they'd use and abuse her just the same.
But, their agent had something she'd never had - the freedom to make his "different call," the one that saved her, in more ways than one. She didn't care, at first, what these people professed to stand for. She only cared about surviving to find her Soldier and being in a position to save him when she did. So, she took the chance of her too-long lifetime.
And got so much more than she'd bargained for.
