Smoke clouded the room in a milky haze. The gentleman's club was one of the oldest in Germany. A historical landmark any well-to-do, worth his salt, was a member of. The dark wood wall paneling was carved in elegant ornamental lines with equally dark wooden furniture, richly polished and upholstered in expensive jewel-tone fabrics.

The doorman followed her in, snapping his fingers at the few wait staff still in the establishment. In a hurried frenzy, they ushered out the customers in the main room as she passed through it.

They'd been expecting her; their regular customer, in his private back lounge, wasn't. But appearances had to be maintained.

Nat glided to the end of the narrow back hall on silent feet. The rhythmic music sounding out beneath the door told her its occupants were well distracted.

"Lock it behind me and get out." An order he would be wise to follow.

She drew her weapon from her thigh holster and cocked it back. With a deep breath, she pictured the first crucial moments in her mind. She could see the deep leather couches surrounding the small center stage, could picture each chair, cushion, and pillow in its exact place and detail. Just as she knew his companion would be in the midst of her choreographed routine she knew he was tall and well-armed, even here he would have a clutch piece. His aim would be instinctively high but with his training, he would adjust in an instant. She was banking on him being rusty.

He'd been away too long.

He ran a closed and well-organized network but it wasn't closed enough to stop her or the Redroom from coming for him. The powers that be had let him roam, let him operate when and how it suited them. They had watched, learned, and let go of all those who'd chosen to follow him. Now began the fallout. The clean-up. She was on termination duty and her first assignment on a long list of names was a man she'd once called brother. A man who had endured the torture of the Redroom a full decade before her. Alexei Romanov, the heir apparent to the throne of the Russian Empire, whose death had been faked some sixty years prior, was about to meet his maker.

She went in low and ready to fire. The door snapped against the opposite wall loud enough to draw his attention over the music. She sent a round into the back of the prostitute's head. Brain matter and blood splattered over Alexei from above. He was fast and already reaching for his clutch piece as she came tumbling down on top of him. But Natasha was faster. She managed to clear another shot into the back of his gun hand and render his weapon capabilities useless.

The door slammed closed behind her. Its locks clicked into place. Alexei cursed as she dove behind the raised platform to cover.

"Is that you little fox?" Nat heard the thud of a body hitting the floor and knew he'd pushed the prostitute's limp form away from him. Alexei hissed in a breath as he examined his hand. She'd blown right through it. His first three fingers were uselessly severed from the connective tissue just above his palm. An excellent shot on her part.

"When the time came, I knew they'd send you." There was no one better at the job and no better way to mentally fuck them both than by orchestrating this moment. With his off-hand, he reached for his ankle holster and withdrew his weapon. He tossed it over the couch in her direction. There would be no use in fighting her. "You always were the best of us."

He removed the silk pocket square from his suit coat and wiped the blood splatter from his face.

"Let me see you, darling. It's been too long."

She hadn't wanted this. It should never have come to this. Once he'd been everything to her.

Nat stood and locked eyes with her brother, her friend, and for a short while, a lifetime ago, her lover.

"Natalia."

"Alexei." He was just as she remembered. A tall man with a rangy build, lean, fast, and all muscle. His dark hair was cropped close and tight with just a hint of a shadow on a jaw sharp enough to cut glass. Eyes the color of dark walnut stared back at her.

"I know why you've come." There was no anger in his voice. No resentment, only cool acceptance.

"Don't make this harder than it needs to be."

He grinned, charmingly and with a flare of danger that only a man who could handle himself would show. The years hadn't changed him, they'd passed him by just as they did her.

"Forgive me if in my last moments I try to appeal to you. We have a formidable history, you and I." Wincing, he held up his wounded hand. "Impeccable aim by the way." He didn't have a chance, not with her, not anymore.

"Where are the others?"

"Always business first with you."

"Alexei."

He closed his eyes at the sound. He had always loved the way she said it, had begged her to utter it before.

"I always wanted you to come with me." They were one and the same. Cut from the same cloth, sewn into the same shape, and had been utilized in the same methods. There was no one who had a better understanding of her than him. Even now, after all this time, he could see the loneliness in her. After him, she'd never let anyone else close enough. He'd done that to her. He had put that sadness in her eyes.

"Where are the others?"

"We could have made it together."

"It would have ended this way. One way or another."

"It didn't have to. We..."

"There was never a we!" She snapped "You made sure of that."

He'd drugged her, from his own lips he'd poured poison into her body and left her tied to the bed they'd shared on a mission in Singapore. Not just tied, strapped down, and gagged, she'd been trapped for four days. Their extraction team had finally freed her when she'd failed to follow check-in protocol. She'd been dangerously dehydrated and disgustingly dirty in her own filth. She'd cursed him every minute of every hour she'd been trapped there. Cursed herself for trusting him and being vulnerable. Blinded by her attraction, she'd let him use her.

"I couldn't convince you." He reflected, "Even then your loyalty was absolute." When he shifted forward her gun aimed between his eyes. The weight of their past held the space between them, absolute and wholly dividing.

"Why did you come back to Russia?" This wasn't why she'd come here. She didn't need this from him. She'd closed that part of her life off years ago.

"What do they have on you, Natalia? Let me help you." And now began the silver-tongued tricks. He'd fooled her once into believing but not again. She was all that mattered to her, the job was all that mattered.

"We could end this, take them down together. You're the key, the most informed on the latest security protocols. They've only made you think you belong to them. They separated us, made us into individuals too strong to play well together. They've used you! Used us! And for what?" He was growing more agitated by the moment. Desperate to make his point in the face of his own death.

"Where are the others?"

He'd come back to destroy their makers. Take them one piece, one pawn, at a time.

"There is no greater good to service! No great vision! No powerful league of nations! We are the things that go bump in the night, Natalia. We are the great equalizers of the world. In their arrogance, they've underestimated us. Take your life back, Natalia! Take it and don't let it go!"

"It will always be this way." If she didn't kill him, they would kill her. They both knew it. "Cut off one head and two more grow in its place. Eventually, someone would come for us too. What kind of life would that be? What kind of life is there for people like us?" The old wounds in her heart stirred for the man he used to be, for who they used to be.

"People like us?" He asked with a snort of angry disbelief. "There's any kind of life we want." He laughed. "Don't you see it? We can go anywhere...be anyone."

He'd done just that for decades before he'd finally come back. He had risked it all for her and for anyone that had stayed behind, that had been trapped when they'd made their first run for freedom. They were trained, experts in espionage, if anyone was going to survive it would be them.

There was bitter darkness in her eyes but she wanted his words to be true. Wanted to believe he could be right even when she knew better. She had done what she could through the years to defy her handlers when she felt it was necessary. She'd been a double agent, a triple agent, her secrets had secrets. But she knew that direct defiance led to death in the most brutal and unkind way. She'd been the executioner. She was being one now. Torturing them both with the waiting. She was here because they had history. This was a message to them both.

They didn't deserve a life. They had taken too many lives to deserve ones of their own. She had been made in the dark and the dark was where she would stay until she crossed some imaginary line and she too was terminated. There would never be enough to tip the scales in her favor. She would never be able to do enough good to wipe clean the tally marks of murder on her slate.

"Where is Marina?" Nat asked again. She wouldn't let him get to her. There was no room for more doubt in her life.

There was only her, only the mission.

"She got married." He replied. "On a beach, in a white dress. There were orchids and it was beautiful...Marina was beautiful." By some miracle, she'd put it behind her. All the cruelty and pain she'd been subjected to had no place in her new life. "She cried during the ceremony. I've known that woman for forty years and she'd only ever cried once...on the day we left you behind." Nat swallowed back the dryness in her throat. "She loved you. It killed her to do it."

"Stop it." Nat cocked back her gun. Skull throbbing with her raging blood. "You mean nothing to me. She means nothing to me." They'd abandoned her and she'd taken the brunt of the punishment. The torture for their crimes; because wouldn't she of all people know something about where her team had escaped to? Wouldn't she have realized their plan? She was the best after all but she'd never suspected them. She had never thought betrayal would surface from their inner circle. She'd been little more than a scapegoat to them.

Lies. Lies. Lies. She told herself gripping her hair with her offhand. Her temples pounded.

"Keep telling yourself that. You'll need to believe it if you're going to finish this." His end was in sight. If he didn't die they'd kill her for it and he refused to have more of her blood on his hands. She would see...one day...she would see.

"We talked about you...wondered...if when the time came you would come to us on your own or...like this."

She knew then. Her beating skull slowed her brain but she had studied his movements enough to know the answers. Orchids. Beaches. Marina, the others, were in Costa Rica.

"Don't." His eyes flashed with heat and in an instant, he lunged. It was death, intentional, and he was beckoning for it. She dropped him in a millisecond. Straight through the heart.

Her knees buckled with his as he fell to the floor. The neon lights burned in the dark reflection of his eyes. There was no terror in them. No fear.

"We are nothing." She leaned forward. Her hand trembled over his skull-trimmed hair as he struggled through his last moments. "We are no one."

He fell forward into her and dropped into her lap face up. His grip was fierce and the last of his dying strength. Neon glowed in his eyes as the music thumped rhythmically. "You're wrong….you...could be...everything."

A sob welled into her throat so hard she choked. Choked on the grief she wasn't allowed to feel. Choked on the bitter regret. She cupped his face, held it in her mind's eye. She would take him with her forever. Carry his image through the ages with all the other faces of the dead. His skin was hot beneath her palms and his eyes burned with the unnatural light.

"Hush...little fox." And his smile was back but over rotted teeth that weren't his. Cruel and twisted. The lush deep earth of his eyes went dull and flat as they flashed to bottomless black in a blink.

"Alexei?" Her hands fell away, his ageless face contorted in a slow spread of fury.

"No!" She barked even as he surged up from her lap. She planted a kick into the rapidly decaying face as it blackened and unfurled into a shapeless humanoid. Her gun was in her hand. In an instant, she was upright and unloaded six rounds into the blackening void.

"I...seee….you." Hissed a mouthless voice that rang endlessly through her head. Dread dropped heavily in her gut like a leaden weight. Pain blurred her vision but didn't stop her from pulling the trigger again. Over and over. Laughter, if that's what one would call the gurgling hiss that emerged from the darkness echoed in the room turned to a sweltering stone-carved dungeon.

A phantom limb separated from the black mass, reaching toward her, summoning her. Her feet shifted on their own and pain seared through her head.

"No!" She cursed breathlessly as her feet dragged her closer. "No!"

She dropped to her knees to keep her legs from carrying her further.

"You can't have him." She crawled now, forced onward one aching inch at a time. "You can't! Have him!" Because he'd been right and he'd tried to take her with him. Because he'd tried to bring her into the light. Because he'd tried to save her and he'd given his life to prove it to her.

"You can't have me!"

The shadow dropped down over her, darkness enveloped and blinded her. It bore down over her back, pushing and pressing around her. The heat was suffocating as the magic bubbled inside her. White hot and near bursting. Her arms shook to support her, buckled as Galadriel's magic boiled over inside her.

"You're mine!"

Her arms gave way even as her body arched up as if on its own; no longer able to contain her counterpart's power. Light, pure and powerful pushed through her skin.

"I'm…mine."

Blinded, power coursed through her and enveloped them both in its searing agony.

Haldir did as he'd promised. He watched over her diligently and with great attention as she changed from one moment to the next. Noted when her breathing changed from its steady rhythm to labored, when her skin already slicked with sweat lost all color and went pale, white as bed linen. Yet she remained silent. Her hands clutched in a vice grip to Galadriel's. The fine lines of the tendons below the skin popped to the surface such was the tension in them. Their connection, muted by Galadriel's invasion, still provided him with a small indication of what was happening inside her. The echoes of the pain both emotional and physical churned in his stomach. This was for the best, but the thought of her suffering any more than she already did, already had, made him wildly uncomfortable. His instincts were screaming at him, barking and howling for him to end her discomfort.

Haldir paced around the intertwined pair. They were two very distinct, very different forces of female power. Galadriel was refined and revered for her beauty. Her powers, wholly unlike and unparalleled by any terrified the outside world. By definition, she was beauty and grace. Stately in all matters of governance. Reserved in temper. Thousands of years had given her patience and wisdom. She was as close to the Gods as any living creature who could trace back their genealogy. Her strength was her light, bright as the stars; it burned back darkness and shadow with its intensity. Pale and golden she shown with the brilliance of all the ages of the elves.

And she sat fearlessly, hand in hand, with a hardened assassin.

Natasha was a series of contradicting anomalies that kept him endlessly fascinated. Everything about her left him curious and wanting for more. She was unusual looking for a human with her flaming red hair and smooth porcelain skin that was as thick and tough as dragonhide. Fine lined brows and a petite slightly turned-up nose, both of which would wrinkle in frustration when she thought. Her eyes were the greenest he'd ever seen and riveting to watch when they flared hot in battle, went flat with brutal intent, sparked with intellect, gleamed with flirtatious humor or soft and full with memory in a dream. He'd bore witness to all those sides of her and looked forward to meeting all the others.

At the heart of her, she was a warrior steadfast, strong, and loyal when it counted. But there was also darkness in her. A hollow place inside her person that separated her from emotion, a place that swallowed the feelings that might compel her to follow them. Where the horrors of war lived. Where tucked behind the walls she'd built, she could separate herself from the past. He could understand that, even sympathize with it. When you lived forever and made your living at war, you learned to do much the same. To him, warfare had always been an art form. A combination of mediums that he as March Warden he used to paint the canvas of the battlefield. His soldiers were his brushes; their weaponry the paint. A good battle plan, well-executed, was as beautiful as any painting. And she was an art form he could thoroughly appreciate. Natasha with a blade in her hand was a vicious and deadly adversary. She was breathtaking to watch as strategy and instinct from years of brutal training took over. A mortal as skilled as she was unfathomable, and he knew that her mastery had come at a brutally steep price. For all she had endured, for all she had made herself into, for everything she had overcome, and more so for the life she didn't think she deserved...He admired her.

He crouched down just outside the circle Galadriel had drawn on the floor and studied Natasha. Rarely did he have the chance to examine her so thoroughly. She was so often in motion from one thing to the next. Her expression now was tense, pulled tight in strain. Worry filled when his stomach dropped with hers. What was going on behind her closed eyes? Was she alone? Trapped in some misery of her past.

He pushed the limits of their bond to send her his supporting confidence. A gentle nudging reminder that he was beside her, watching, waiting. Indulgently, his gaze wandered over her features. He wanted to touch her but worried it would pull her from whatever magics were hard at work.

"I'm with you." he spoke softly and only for her.

Everything he felt growing between them seemed to slowly click into place as he observed. It was widely known that his people grew to attraction slowly, this was apparently not the case for him and this mortal woman. But recognizing the condition of his heart and actively pursuing her were two entirely different matters. Even if she accepted him, took him as her lover and their relationship grew to love; would she have him when it meant she would age and he would not? Would she allow him the chance knowing it would end with his death?

Galadriel's power pulsed and shimmered in the air. He could feel it pushing against him from their protective circle. A groan parted Natasha's mouth and her head fell back. Her eyelids spasmed but remained closed.

His lord hovered at his back. "They suffer but they do so together. We can do naught else but wait for them to win the war that wages in their minds."

It was a difficult role, being the husband of such a powerful creature. Celeborn's instincts were that of any mated male, to protect and guard the other half of his fea with his life but this was a battle of magic and there was no one more skilled than the Lady Galadriel.

"In time you will become more accustomed to the feeling. Not a single day shall pass that you will have to spend alone."

Haldir stood to explain himself. "My lord."

There was nothing Galadriel knew, that Celeborn did not. They were as one, a pair well suited and bound as intimately as a couple could be.

"Peace, Haldir. You will find no judgment here for the path your heart has taken and you have chosen to follow. It is rather apparent that what began as an accident has quickly evolved into more...a great deal more."

There was a great deal of affection between them, a palpable attraction neither of them could deny, and mutual respect but there was also rocky ground to navigate between them. Questions that needed to be answered, information brought to light. He knew her heart, could feel it in his own, but her mind was another matter. He would have to convince that part of her just as much, if not more.

"No." Natasha groaned in a low desperate whisper. "I don't want this."

Despair, ripe and violent prodded him.

"Copy." She choked out and tears careened down her pale cheeks as a small gasp parted her lips. Her breathing hitched as if her throat was constricting. Her body vibrated against its own skin as she fought a battle only she and Galadriel could see. Galadriel's power surged, He could feel it pulling from the air around them, gathering its strength. She too was shaking with the effort. Her brow was heavily coated in sweat and her lips moved in the rapid formation of words.

"Marina!" Natasha choked on a desperate trembling breath of oxygen.

Celeborn swayed at Haldir's side. "My lord!" He caught himself on Haldir's arm.

"She's drawing too much power." Celeborn's knees quaked. He lowered himself to the floor. Astounded, Haldir could only watch as his lord's flesh went bloodless and drawn.

"What's happening?" Worry rose to burn his throat as his lord trembled in tiredness.

Celeborn's brows drew heavily together as he focused on his mate. What he wouldn't give to crawl inside that circle and pull his female from the magic she manipulated.

"It is more difficult than she thought." He closed his eyes. "More death, more violence. She's frightened but fighting still. Sauron is strong and holding on desperately to Natasha. She does what she can to block us from the torment."

Celeborn reached out through the unbreakable bond he had with his life's heart. "She is drawing from me the strength she needs but she must drop the shields she has erected to protect us both."

Haldir sat humbly beside his lord and gathered himself physically and mentally. "Tell her to focus solely on Natasha. She burdens me with nothing that I would not willingly do." He found his center and latched on to the invisible cord that tethered him to Natasha. She felt faint and far away but knew this was Galadriel's doing to spare him. "Do it."

On a sharp inhale his lord completed his task and Galadriel dropped the protective spells that muted their bonds. Simultaneously they were flooded with darkness potent with crippling despair.

It crawled up his throat with razor-sharp claws, sank deep into his stomach, bottomless and empty. He clung to the delicate bond between them and weathered the turbulent chaos that threatened to consume them. He found her, found them in the infinite void, a single strand of brilliant light that illuminated the dark.

They were dead.

All of them lay broken in a bloodied heap of tangled limbs with the flat milky film of death covering their eyes.

They were dead.

Clint, face toward the black hole of the sun. His throat had been cut to the bone; bled out over his wife's pregnant belly. Even in death, he'd wanted to protect, to shield what he loved. His children bent in death at his feet, still bleeding from single gunshot wounds to the head.

The children. Anything but the children.

"No." She dropped like a stone to her knees in the river of their blood at her feet. Her hands shook violently as she reached out to touch the cold lifeless flesh of Cooper's youthful cheek. The freckles across his nose and cheeks streaked red with his blood. She sobbed his name and pulled his small body into her lap. His gangly limbs, just this side of the awkward teen years he'd never see, were stiff and rigid with death. Cold, he was so cold already.

She rocked his body, wild-eyed in grief she examined the rest of the tangle of flesh and bone.

The cadre was beside her, dismembered and strewn in pieces across the ground. Dissected flesh and muscle littered the ground, cut with surgical precision. Arms, legs, and torsos all stripped and cleaned to the bone. Gramm's golden-haired head matted over a face frozen in horror.

"No!" The horrified whisper of disbelief echoed in the silence as she recognized the method and the madness behind their dismantled bodies.

They'd been slaughtered, painfully and with an obvious cruelty. Their deaths had been torturously painful.

What was left of Berta lay entangled with parts she knew to be Dr. Selvig's.

Her heart stopped. Her breath froze as her brain wouldn't believe what her gut was telling her.

She knew because she'd done it. Clean cruel precision.

Tony and Steve gutted.

Thor and Wulfric beheaded.

Banner

Eowyn

Alexie

Gimli

Marina

One after the other. So much blood. So much death.

They were all dead.

Her head spun, dizzy and drunk with anguish. Why? Why? How had this happened?

Haldir

"No!" She couldn't think, couldn't move. "Haldir!"

His body topped the heaping pile of destruction she'd wrought. The uniform he wore with honor was torn and soaked with his blood. The wild blue of his eyes, which were so often vibrant and deep with knowledge, were nothing more than bloodied holes in his ruined face.

A voice that sounded terribly like hers whispered clearly in her mind. "It was you. Look at what you've done."

Gently, she laid Cooper's body aside. Numb and unable to stand she crawled through the blood. On hands and knees, she navigated the loose pile of limbs.

"I'm sorry." She pleaded as she crawled over the remains of everyone she'd known. "I didn't…." Nat couldn't finish the words, couldn't find them in her jumbled mind.

Tony and Steve gutted.

Thor and Wulfric beheaded.

Banner

Eowyn

Alexie

Gimli

Marina

But she could...she had.

Exhausted. Shattered. She latched onto Haldir's body and held the lifeless, soulless husk of the elf she'd wanted for her own. Pain, unbearable and full tore at her body, her heart, her very soul.

He was gone.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She pulled him close and buried her face in his hair. His scent lingered there. Cedar. Earth. Spice. Warmth. "I'm sorry."

"This is your future." The voice hissed inside her pounding mind, distorted and raw. "See me. Come to me and they will be spared."

Her fingers wrapped around his silken hair. "Stay with me." She pleaded, holding him impossibly closer. "You said...you said you'd stay."

"You did this." Nat's gaze shot up in alarm at the nearness of the voice. She looked into the blackened soulless eyes of herself. "They are dead because of you."

Her gun was in her off-hand even as she cradled Haldir's mangled body to her with the other. Tears, angry and tormented cascaded down her cheeks.

"No." She wouldn't do this to them, not to her friends, her family, her loved ones. She was capable, physically of the act, but she would never. She would kill herself first. "No."

"This is your future. Come to me. Bring me the ring. Bring me the stone and all of them will be spared."

Cedar. Earth. Spice. Warmth.

Her eyes fell to Haldir's bruised eyeless face, the broken slash of his harsh cheekbones, full lips dried and split.

"No." She whispered. "I won't."

She met the black, met the darkness without fear and powered her weapon to full. "I won't."

Nat lifted her gun to her chin and pulled the trigger.

"Breathe Natasha! Breathe!"

She struck out violently. Her fist swung out with vicious intent fending off an invisible enemy. Haldir barely avoided the fist that skimmed his cheek. Her scream, broken and feral, gutted him, made him pause. The nasty hard edge of her knee shot out and landed solidly in his gut but he took it, took the pain and everything that came with it.

"Breathe damn it!" He fought her to the floor in a wild tumble before he finally pinned her arms. It took every ounce of his strength to hold onto her. She was weak, there was no other explanation as to how he managed to hold on to her. She was so pale, white as a sheet, and icy cold. Her tear-stained face undid him. He slammed into her through their uninhibited bond.

Come back. Come back.

Breath came to her in a chest-heaving gasp. Eyes wide and impossibly green her violent hands turned desperate, desperate to cling, desperate to hold.

Cedar. Earth. Spice. Warmth.

He released her hands as her eyes cleared. "There you are."

She said his name on a pleading sob and launched herself into him.

"You're alive. You're alive." Her hands were everywhere on his body, checking him over. He was living, breathing, and those piercing eyes were staring at her so intensely, so intimately from his gloriously healthy face that she couldn't stop the tears or the relief that overcame her.

"I'm alright." Haldir whispered as her fingers ghosted over his cheek in a feather-light touch. He hadn't been, where ever she had been, whatever she'd seen, he hadn't been alright. Her hand warmed against the heated temperature of his skin. Her thumb brushed over his lower lip. Plump, full, alive.

"I'm not." She met the brilliant gaze she'd burned into her memory and brought his face down to hers.

"I'm not." And took his mouth tenderly with her own seeking the warmth and solidity of him. He opened to her completely both physically and emotionally, molded his lips to hers as she claimed him, found him, found them beneath the layers of worry and fear. Their bond flowed between them, deep and unhindered, more than he thought, more than he could have possibly known. With the darkness inside her lifted she flowed into him and he to her with every breath. He gave her exactly what she sought. Exactly what they both needed; the comfort and assurance that there was life between them. She leaned into him, whispered his name reverently against his mouth, over and over again as she learned his taste, memorized it. There was passion beneath the softness, tenderness beneath the desperation. Never had another touched him with such possession. Never had he felt more needed, more wanted than he did now.

Her hands roamed across his face, tears leaked from her eyes.

"You stayed." She buried her face in his neck, into cedar, earth, spice, and comforting warmth. "You're alive."

His arms came around her, pulled them both backward until she was sprawled in his lap and wrapped in his arms. He held on just as intensely, just as desperately, amazed that he could comfort her, that she would want him to. It humbled him and made his heart soar.

"I just need a minute." She tucked closer and breathed deep, felt the calm of their bond lap soothingly against her frayed nerves.

"Take all the time you need." He closed his eyes, swallowed back the joy and the fear and simply held on.