Welcome back for Chapter 4! This is one of my favorite chapters in this series and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you for the favs and follows you guys are the absolute best! Enjoy and much love. xoxox

The men had quieted down by the time she finally came back to their camp. She had left Haldir with hardly more than a good night before she made for the dark edges of the camp. A thorough perimeter check had given her quiet and required her single-minded focus. It had been enough to settle her.

When she stepped back into the firelight four sets of eyes turned to her. They had already set up their bedrolls equally spaced around the fire. Hers was on the edge nearest the border of the camp. She looked down at its placement, her pack and then at Baldor with a grin.

"You're the fastest and have the superior weapons." Her smile was full wattage. "It was Gramm's suggestion, we agreed that you would also think it best."

Respect and camaraderie, she'd found some in this odd group of battle-hardened men. She looked down at where Gramm sat nearly at her feet on his bedroll, propped up against his pack, his long knife unsheathed and at his side. His handsome face was solemn. Their previous conversation still weighed heavily upon him.

Her smile must have been contagious because soon he grinned right back.

"He's smarter than he looks." She toed his booted foot.

Nat's comment was acknowledged with a series of agreeing grunts and Gramm's open-mouthed huff. He took a halfhearted swipe at her with his leg which she easily sidestepped and seated herself on her own bed for the night. None of them would have to keep watch tonight. There were dozens of soldiers already assigned to the task. They were free to relax their evening away until sleep claimed them; regardless, their combined experience had them prepared for anything.

Their easy conversation continued and not a single one of them pried into what had happened between her and their King.

She liked them all the more for it.

Opening her pack, she pulled out her guns. They were in need of a thorough cleaning. With practiced hands she disassembled them, unscrewing parts with her knife as needed. It was important to take care of them as there would be no fixing them if anything majorly malfunctioned or wore-out. She took great care in cleaning the energy pack and the connectors, checking for any corrosion or debris. The energy packs glowed a faint blue once they were removed from their housing.

Gramm had righted himself from his bed and came to kneel beside her and picked up one of the power packs she'd just set down.

"It's as if you've bottled lightning." He said quietly as he turned it over in his palm. He passed her the half-empty whiskey bottle they had been passing between them. She watched his eyes as he took in the tech she handled. He had never seen anything like it in his life and if he were lucky, he wouldn't come across it from anyone else.

"That's actually a very accurate assessment." She cleaned the power gauge along the barrel and checked for cracks in the tempered covering.

"There's a miniature regenerating power cell inside that. It will never run out of ammo."

He settled beside her and watched her hands as she worked. When she was ready for it, he handed her the power pack. He purposely let their fingers brush and kept a small grip on the item as she eased it out of his hand. Everything about her impressed him. The way she moved when she fought, lethal grace, and she did it with ease. She was beautiful and wickedly tempting. Nat was bold and took what she wanted and by the Gods, he wished she wanted him. Wished that she would look at him with even a fraction of the heat she cast toward the elven commander.

Gramm's blood hummed happily while he watched her work, focused and steady as ever...and completely unaffected by his close proximity. He admired her in the firelight for a moment. The shadows that played across her delicate features and smooth skin. The burning light reflected in the glassy pool of her eyes. Her mouth worked from side to side as she concentrated on the weapon in hand. Her fine-boned hands ran down the length of the barrel. For her it was analytical, checking for cracks or damage but to him, her attentive behavior verged on sensual.

Steadfast, he told himself. From what he knew of her she had never had a constant in her life. He hoped he could prove to her the kind of man he wanted to be. He imagined them fighting side by side, the ragging beat of their hearts, the deep thrill of battle vibrating in their bones. She would make a glorious shieldmaiden of Rohan in more than just name. Gramm knew he couldn't have her yet but maybe, just maybe, he could earn her.

He grinned as he sat back on his haunches, content to get some rest for the night. There was a war on their doorstep. His time for honor was close at hand. He would earn her with the strength of his arm, sweat of his brow, and the loyalty and determination that beat in his heart.

"Rest well Natalie." He whispered quietly. All the other men were in the process of settling in for the night.

She cast a glance his way over her shoulder as she finished snapping her weapons back together. She caught his gaze, surprised to see his features so relaxed and of all things happy. Her surprise made her hesitate but the light in his eyes made hers stay.

"Good night Gramm."

Cold steel pressed down the length of her naked sweat-dampened back.

No, she thought, not this place, not again. She jerked but her limbs were chained and strapped down tightly. The links bit into her skin. Bleach and iodine singed the fine hairs inside her nose. The absence of her normal strength told her exactly where she was before she even opened her eyes. The sterile white lights of the surgical bay blazed down at her. Even without her enhanced sight they burned her retina's and made her squint blindly.

Nat remembered everything about this room with perfect clarity.

She had been stuck in this dream before.

It was one of the worst in her locker. Where seconds felt like hours and her eighteen-year-old self, the girl she had once been, had completely disappeared.

A piercing pain ripped through her abdomen. Her eyes flashed down and even with her head strapped down she could still make out the shapes of the robotic arms inserted into her abdominal cavity. The arms hissed and whirred; steam rose as they cauterized the internal incisions they made as they worked. Pain flooded her senses, making her back bow and her arms pulled tight but there was nowhere to go. She was strapped hard and tight. A scream rose in her throat and what little oxygen she had rushed out with no sound. She gagged on the sterile rubber bit in her mouth that kept her head flush to the table.

No morphine. No sedatives. She couldn't have it in her system...not if she was going to be one of the few that survived.

Sweat pooled beneath the hollow of her back despite the frigid temperature of the room. Her skin pebbled and her hair rose up on its end. Her body convulsed with the overwhelming urge to throw up, but there was nothing in her stomach, there hadn't been for days. Fowl copper-tinged saliva gathered in her mouth. Her gag reflex shuttered.

Pain clouded her mind. Her thoughts scattered to the wind.

She knew what came next and was already clenched tight in preparation. The suction started, deep inside her she could feel the pull on her uterus. Tears rolled down from her eyes, unchecked and unchallenged. A scream garbled past the bit.

Her graduation was fully underway.

The sickening gulp the machine made as her lost organ traveled through it was a sound she would never forget.

Her chance at a future was gone.

Her skin bubbled and hissed as the robotic arms seared her closed. The arms retracted fully, and her surgical table was tilted straight up. She tried to breathe deeply through her nose, but her lungs refused to cooperate.

Her body had been different then. She had not had the control she did now. Here in her dreams, she was stuck in the weak young body of her youth again.

Her short breaths hiccupped out of her in a panicked frenzy. This was it...graduation...do or die. Her own thoughts echoed outside her current ones. This was only the beginning.

One of the nurses came forward, a plastic bucket and sponge in hand, and wiped her down with iodine. She flinched at its chill and caught the nurse's warm brown eyes. Nat had never wanted this day to come and her terror burned deep. She was going to die...she just knew it...the chances of her making it out alive were too slim. Only five percent of graduates made it through the enhancement portion if they were deemed worthy of the procedure. Five percent.

The nurse hesitated, Nat could see it in her eyes, even she knew Nat was as good as dead. The nurse worked from her neck down, coating her shoulders, arms, and legs. Only her back, hands, and feet were untouched by the potent antibacterial. Her recently cauterized incisions flared in pain as the iodine burned across the raw newly connected skin.

When she finished sterilizing her, she gave her a soft pitying look that made Nat flinch.

The nurses and doctors rolled forth four large machines filled with cylindrical vials of metallic serum. Only the best equipment and doctors in the entirety of Russia were recruited for this work and even they were massively challenged by their task. The machines hooked to the table, surrounding her, their needles and tubes clearly visible to her up close. So many, eight on each machine, sporting long hypodermic needles that would pierce into her densest tissues.

Nat closed her eyes trying to keep her muscles from clenching and making the process more painful. She breathed deep. The nurses gave her no warning, they simply began the insertion process.

The first needle went in smooth and deep. She couldn't fight it now. She could only try to survive. Try to breathe. Nat bit down on the rubber bit as needle after needle was inserted to the proper depth. Her jaw ached and her molars ground together roughly.

She was beyond the pain now, nearly out of body as she watched what was happening to her. Just a few more, she thought as the doctors hooked up the last of the tubes.

A loud humming took over the room as the machines were powered up.

Her fingers and toes were then placed in copper clamps. Clamps she knew ran to a device that would send shock waves through her body. Overheating her cells, forcing the chemicals to heal her and bind to her on a molecular level. They would push her body to its furthest limits, to the point of death. Their hope was that her own system would shut down enough to allow the chemicals to take over and fuse into her very DNA.

Forced evolution.

Faster, stronger, smarter.

This was where the real battle would begin for the doctors, gauging the shock waves, her vitals, and the serum's reaction to her cells without overcooking her. When she had initially come to the Red Room the first graduation Nat had witnessed had resulted in a young woman liquifying on the table. Her cells had decomposed rapidly as the injections had started and by the time the fifth wave of shock had been administered her body was collapsing in on itself. Her blood had bubbled on the table, boiled in the brief moments before the doctors had simply hosed down the table and washed her down the drain. Her bones and what was left of her skin and hair had been thrown in the corner biohazard bag. All remnants of her had been gone in minutes. There was no one who would miss her and no family to grieve for her. Her file would be shredded and any record of her would be deleted. It would be as if she had never existed at all.

She glanced at the gallery above the surgery room, knowing that her fellow classmates would all be seated there, watching and waiting. She had done just the same a dozen times before and prayed that what happened down here would not be what happened to all of them. That someway, somehow, these doctors would get it right. They had no choice of course. They were no better than property to the state. Just another number, another asset to be utilized how the government saw fit until such a time as they didn't need said asset anymore.

They had decided Natalia Romanoff was a valuable asset.

Their familiar faces were grim and in the middle of them was Marina. To the right of her Fabian, the left Astrid.

"Ready to proceed Comrade Zola." One of the nurses declared.

Nat sorted through all their names one by one. Desperately tried to focus on the long-lost faces of her classmates. She had committed everyone to memory. Only one in that group had survived and Nat had killed her with her own two hands many years later.

"Let us begin." Zola answered and checked off the procedural elements on his laminated paperwork.

The chemicals injected into her slowly and evenly on all sides. Within seconds the injection sites were burning white-hot. She grit her teeth against the new flare of pain. There was no turning back even if she'd had a choice. She could feel every centimeter of flesh the serum invaded; it's burning fingers extended in long trails through her limbs. Her nerves fired rapidly beneath her skin, singed by the chemical compound that would soon flood her system.

The first shock clenched her teeth tight. Her jaw clamped down hard enough she nearly compressed the entire bit between her teeth. Every muscle in her body clenched in drastic relief against her skin. Her fingers curled in on themselves. The clamps bit deep into her palms. Wave after torturous wave coursed through her. Her eyelids spasmed so rapidly she couldn't keep focus past the length of her nose.

It took her mind several long seconds to realize the electroshock had ceased. The mechanical beeping of the monitors filled the silence in the room only to be broken by the whirring of the dot matrix printer providing a readout of her vitals.

Zola pulled up his wire-framed glasses to read the print outs of her vitals. "Round one, successful." He remarked and gestured casually to the nurse with his pen.

"Again."

Sweat trickled down from her temple and trailed into her mouth. She bit down and they began anew. Serum coursed through her veins like liquid fire. Burned her from the inside out. Her lungs heaved for oxygen and she gulped down whatever precious air she could before they shocked her again. Nat's head slammed back against the table as the second round of electricity hit, harder and more rapidly than the first.

"Round two, successful…. again."

Her body was completely out of her control and practically sizzling from the inside out. She cried out when the electric hit her, but it was cut short by her jaw clamping down on its own against the rubber. She was helpless and alone. They weren't going to stop, not until they had exactly what they came here for or she died.

"Round three, successful…. again."

She laid there and wished for death. If she could have said as much she would have. She watched with dead eyes as the serum bottles were still three-quarters full. The smell in the room bombarded her as her body began to rapidly overheat and every one of her senses began to go on the fritz. The iodine overwhelmed her sense of smell to the extent that she physically gagged on it. Her body sweat came next, salty and sour. Nat could smell the latex from the gloves the doctors wore, the metallic tinge of steel, copper, and her own blood hung in the air.

The change had begun.

A snap of cold water brought her back to reality. A nurse stood before her soaking her with a hose, pumping freezing water over her super-heated skin. She sagged in temporary relief.

"Round four, successful. Oxygen levels are beginning to drop. Bring in an intubation kit. Let us commence. Again."

Her body was steaming. Her super-heated core already drying the cold water they had doused her in. Her nerve endings were firing over every inch of her skin. Locked in place she had nowhere to hide when the next round started, not even in her own dream. There would be no relief from the pain. She would either endure or she would die. The chemical compounds had her system at such highs and lows her brain wouldn't shut down and allow her to pass out. Her eyes flashed to the corner to focus in on the tile pattern. She would count them over and over and over again until it ended and lay trapped in her own body. Her eyes fell and held on the cracked pattern on the lower-left corner but this time her dream was occupied by another.

"Round five, successful. Prepare to intubate."

Her eyes focused and held as the next round started. Don't look away, she begged as she anchored herself to him. Her mind was screaming from the pain, shrinking back into the corners of itself. Her body was molten beneath her skin, burning and twisting in on itself, as more and more serum ransacked her system. Blood...she could feel it running down her injection sights. It dripped from her nose steadily. Its smell turned to an acidic stench in combination with the sterile serum. Was she hemorrhaging somewhere? Had they blown her veins and overloaded her muscle tissues?

She was convulsing against her restraints an instant later. The electricity arcing over her body where moisture remained on her skin. Every point of contact with the table sizzled and burned. Her skin blistered and blackened everywhere it made contact with the equipment, but these injuries were of no concern to the doctors. If they were successful, she would heal from them minutes later. Her body would be fresh and new. Her skin would smooth over as if nothing had occurred. The rapid healing would be painful at first. Her cells would be reproducing at an incredibly alarming rate for the first few days. After that, her body would regulate and she would be young for as long as she could manage to stay alive.

She went slack against the restraints when the session ceased.

"Round six, successful. Clear her airway. I need her fully intubated in two minutes."

Her jaw ached as a nurse pried her mouth open and removed the rubber bit.

"Kill...me...please." She choked out with a small bit of blood. She'd whispered it quietly to the nurse hoping beyond reason that she could grant her this one small gift.

"No more." She garbled out as the nurse began to intubate her. Nat could feel the tube sliding down her airway and suddenly her chest was rising and falling easier. Her airways successfully propped open. From her pocket, the nurse withdrew two rubber blocks that resembled door stops and inserted them between the back rows of her teeth. She looked over their placement and satisfied that Nat wouldn't bite her own intubation tube in half she turned from her and walked straight through Haldir who approached in a rush. The whites of his eyes wide with horror.

Make it stop, she begged in her thoughts as he drew up beside her. Nat knew better; he couldn't do anything of the sort. This wasn't just a dream; it was a very powerful memory. A memory that had stuck with her all the years of her life. She'd lived through it once and woken from this nightmare more times than she could count but it never failed to shake her to the core.

He reached out just as her body was force-fed more serum. Pain, unimaginable, coursed through her. She couldn't think beyond the screaming agony that continuously waylaid her body. Her mind, for once, was empty. Blank of all thoughts. Nat was simply existing, trying to live and command her body's most basic functions. She felt nothing and everything all at once.

Every inch of her skin crawled and rippled with current. She was burning on the outside as well. Her fingers and toes blackened with fourth-degree burns down to the bone.

Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. She chanted to herself repeatedly as the current ebbed out of her body.

"Round seven…" There was a pause as Zola read over her vitals and hesitated for a moment. "Successful." He removed his glasses and finally gazed at her with a small, satisfied smile on his thin lips. "Again."

"No!" Haldir barked. His cool hands fell onto her shoulders, skipping over her flesh as they quaked in unspoken horror. She felt his anger quicken within her when he, with surprising gentleness, cupped her face between his palms.

Their eyes connected and held, make it stop. She pleaded mentally.

And then he exploded.

In a whirl of blinding movement. His hands descended upon the machines that tortured her endlessly, tearing cords and tubes from their holders. He ripped the needles from her arms and legs and threw them with such force at the medical staff that he impaled many of them on their razor-sharp tips. They were screaming as he unleashed himself upon the machinery, kicking and tearing at them with his hands until their mechanical whirring was silenced, and his own hands were bleeding.

He was back to her in an instant. His hands trembled.

"How do I remove this?" He whispered raggedly, his chest heaving. She had no words to tell him.

He slipped his fingers between her teeth and removed the rubber stops. He met her gaze; her once luminous green eyes were hollowed and glassy with pain. The delicate red veins had blown wide turning their whites red. Blood streamed from her nose and ears. Surely, she was dying. He knew it as much as she.

He blinked and the beeping began again.

Haldir stepped back as everything he'd just destroyed fell back into place.

The healers continued on as if he'd done absolutely nothing.

Haldir went mad. A savage growl burst forth from his chest. His violent tirade destroyed everything within his reach. All he could hear was Natalie's desperate plea over and over in his mind. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. He bashed computer screens with the doctor's stools, flipped tables, chairs, battered anything electronic he could find and went so far as to snap Zola's spindly spine. And every time he so much as blinked everything went right back into place.

He screamed in rage and dropped to his knees at her feet. His chest heaving for breath.

It was a dream, he told himself, there was no enemy he could defeat here. It was a dream that felt entirely too real.

"Natasha." He whispered at last. His hands gripped her ankles as more serum began to flow through her. She couldn't see him anymore the pain temporarily blinding her, but she knew he was there. Nat could feel him tugging at her in the manner only he could, sharing himself to ease the pain. She had no control as the well of her torture ruptured from her and flooded his entire body. Wave after wave coursed through her and into him.

"Sweet Eru." There were tears in his eyes as he watched her helplessly. He staggered to his feet beside her and cupped her youthful face. "I'm with you."

"Round nine...begin." Zola commanded. The nurses immediately began.

Haldir gripped her face focusing her bloodied gaze on his.

"I'm with you." His voice trembled but held all the strength he could muster for them both. Her skin steamed beneath his hands. She was almost unbearable to touch.

"I'm with you." He repeated as her body began to thrash beneath her skin, electricity arched over her and bit into him. Her pain, only an echo of what she felt, flared through him and took the breath from his lungs. His knees quaked dangerously.

"I'm with you." He said in desperation as he clung to the sides of the table.

He knew the second her heart gave out and she stopped breathing. He felt it in his chest and an ice-cold freeze stopped his own breath short. Her eyes went blank and he watched in horror as they began to dull. The machines around them beeped wildly. Frantically he shook her limp body as she and their surroundings began to fade. He cried out her name and clutched her body tightly to his chest. Clinging to her in an effort to bring her back to him. Everything went black.