Chapter Twenty-One: Double Crossed
"No one but me, and my hands like fire." -Mary Oliver
I AM ONE OF TWENTY-EIGHT BALLERINAS WITH THE BOLSHOI. TRAINING IS HARD, BUT THE GLORY OF THE SOVIET CULTURE AND THE WARMTH OF MY PARENTS...OF MY PARENTS...MAKES UP FOR…
No. That is not right.
I AM ONE OF THE TWENTY-EIGHT BLACK WIDOW AGENTS WITH THE RED ROOM. TRAINING IS HARD, BUT THE GLORY OF THE SOVIET SUPREMACY, AND THE WARMTH OF MY PARENTS….ALL MY PARENTS...MAKES UP FOR…
You'll have to excuse me.
January 22, 2013 - LOCATION UNKNOWN
Natasha was having a dream about a time long-since passed where she stamped out rosin chalk beneath the toe of her pink, satin, pointe shoes and began her chaînés. The Bolshoi Theater had meant something to her, a very long time ago. Natasha was spinning on its stage, as the Madame stood in the first row, eyeing her carefully.
"Быстрее!" the Madame ordered. "Faster!"
Natasha was spinning, and above her, in the theater's wings, a bad man watched her red hair turn—nothing but the bullseye of a target made full by the white tulle of her tutu. Natasha was spinning, and then she was aiming a gun, and her eyes were aching, and it smelled like gasoline. Natasha was having a dream about the hospital—no, the opera house—no, Rio. What difference did it make? Things always went the same. Natasha was dreaming about everything at once, and then she was waking up to a world where she only knew one thing to be true:
Natasha couldn't move her legs.
And frankly, that wasn't even all that accurate. There was a bit of give in the ropes that allowed her to wiggle her ankle around, but it wasn't much. Certainly not enough to give her a way out, unless she figured out how to leverage her foot enough to dislocate it, but she hated that trick almost as much as she hated jogging—a pretty weighty indication. In the sea of darkness, she tried to make out any sort of sign as to where she was. The ground was rumbling. She felt like she was moving—maybe in a truck? Natasha held her breath for a moment, waiting for changes in speed or direction, but they didn't come. A train, then. She tried to recall how she'd ended up here.
Red pickup truck on a back road. A face full of unforgiving snow. She thought Yelena may have tried to warn her, but things got foggy after she left the bar. Dizzy, almost.
Her drink. Fucking of course it had been her drink.
This was why Natasha never chose to go back to the same place twice. Things always got complicated, like this, where she was strapped to a folding chair by a set of ropes that were going to give her serious burns if she tried to yank her way out of them. She could, if she wanted to—she was the Black Widow, there was very little she couldn't do—but whoever had her, had taken her for a reason. She might as well stick around for a bit to find out what it was.
"Hello?" she drawled. "It's rude to keep a lady waiting."
Her voice didn't echo far, but she felt the carriage tilt with a turn. So it was a train, after all.
Sweeping her foot out, she caught her ankle on a large stack of boxes.
Interesting.
Natasha rocked back and kicked, toppling the pile and sending something that sounded an awful lot like marbles rolling across the floor. As expected, the door to the carriage opened, and she craned her neck around to see who had come to visit her.
Situations like these tended to be a toss-up. Sometimes, the people who held her hostage were strangers with a bone to pick with one of her distant associates. Sometimes, they were people she expected. And sometimes, they were the woman she'd beaten out for the role of Clara in the Nutcracker, several years in a row.
"Tatiana," she greeted, making no effort to mask her displeasure. What use would it be? They'd learned how to lie from the same people.
Silhouetted by the light of the next train car, Natasha strained to make out the other Widow's face. Her wide eyes had narrowed into something sharper; her cheekbones poked out of her face like two swollen eggs; she was strikingly beautiful in a way that always made Natasha uncomfortable.
"Natalia," said Tatiana.
"It's Natasha now, actually," Natasha corrected.
Tatiana's hand went to her waist, where Natasha knew her gun waited. "It won't matter for much longer," she promised. "Little Swan."
Little Swan. Had the voicemail been meant for her? And—if so—what did that make of Oksana?
She wasn't an escaped Widow. She was just their pawn. Of course. This had never been about her—it had been about Natasha. New York and the tabloid sensationalism that followed had made it very difficult for her to play dead; it only made sense that the Red Room was taking this as an opportunity to scratch her off their kill list.
Tatiana smiled, her face glowing blue in the dusk outside as she crossed in front of Natasha. As she went, she kicked the marbles out of the way, and Natasha took some pleasure in Tatiana's inconvenience. She didn't know where they were or when they were, but the cold air blowing into the carriage pointed towards North, which meant they hadn't had her for long enough to take her anywhere else. As Tatiana inched forward, tsking, she made a fist around the handle of her gun.
Natasha knew that if she didn't want to die, she had to move fast, but she was at a severe disadvantage. Her odds of winning with both arms and both legs out of operation were slim. So she readied her ankle to yank her foot out of its socket.
"I've been waiting for this a long time," Tatiana gushed.
Natasha pursed her lips. She didn't share the same enthusiasm. "It has been a while," she agreed.
So fast Natasha almost missed it, Tatiana extended her arm—but not the one holding the gun. Instead, she reached for the ropes and began unknotting them, before unraveling them from Natasha's body. This gesture of goodwill only made her jaw tighten more. The Red Room was not kind. This was only a promise of something worse.
Tatiana took Natasha's hand in her own and helped her stand up. "Let's take a walk, Natalia."
January 22, 2013 - North American Airspace
"You've got Romanoff. Leave a message."
Voicemail. Again. Same as the last seventeen times Audrey called Natasha.
To put it mildly, Audrey had no plan. Ever since she'd jumped back on the Quinjet, she'd been pacing, making calls, and panicking. She'd ruled out S.H.I.E.L.D. backup, because the risk of a Code Green was too high. And anyway, Bruce sent her straight to voicemail, several times. Clint was on a mission with Kate, and even if he hadn't been, he missed phone calls about 90% of the time unless JARVIS announced them. Steve was doing an interview for Time in DC, and she wasn't about to drag him into danger. She didn't know if she should call Tony, because she didn't know how he would handle it. There was no way he was going to do anything rash or dangerous to a kid, but Audrey didn't want him to make the same mistake that she had when it came to Oksana by underestimating her.
What was she going to do? No part of her wanted to injure a child, even knowing the threat Oksana posed. But she couldn't just let her do whatever it was she was planning to do
They didn't even know what she wanted yet. How was Audrey supposed to respond to an attack if she didn't know where it was aiming?
She knew that Oksana had set off the bomb herself. She knew that a Russian account, presumably the Red Room, had paid Briony to bring her into the country. She knew that Briony had been killed right as S.H.I.E.L.D. was getting close to uncover her.
And then there was the voicemail. That Little Swan better be careful before somebody wrings her neck. If the swan wasn't Oksana, it had to be another Red Room ballerina.
Natasha's words as they'd headed to San Francisco. I did Swan Lake. Several times. I was the best Black Swan the Bolshoi Theater ever had.
Tatiana was still out there somewhere, and now, Natasha wasn't picking up her phone. Audrey had been in this business long enough to know that there were rarely any real coincidences. So much was calculated, connected, knotted together and impossible to unspool. She had been in this business long enough to know how these problems looked from the outside, but not nearly long enough to know how to fix them from within. So Audrey pulled her phone from her pocket, opened up her contacts, and went to make another call.
This time, thank god, it went through. Kids and their phones, indeed.
"Hello?" came Kate's voice through the noise of a crowd.
"Hi, this is Audrey. Can you put Clint on?"
"Oh, okay. Sure." There was a click and a muffled, "Clint! Phone!" followed by a clattering sound and more yelling. Audrey chewed on her thumbnail, trying to calm her pulse enough to stop shaking.
"Audrey!" Clint greeted. "You're from LA, right? Do you know any good Mexican places in Venice Beach? I want tacos and I don't trust Yelp."
There was too much there to even begin addressing, so Audrey ignored all of it. "I think the Red Room has Natasha."
The other end of the line made a sharp buzzing sound, and then she heard a slam and a click. Dead serious, Clint ordered, "Start from the beginning."
Audrey sighed. Where even was the beginning? "We were investigating a bombing in San Francisco. There had already been an investigation into a human trafficking incident there by my old team, but now they—well, okay, that doesn't matter. Fury sent Natasha and I to look into the bombing on Sunday night, and the two girls who were injured were this, like, this rich girl from Manhattan and this other girl, Oksana, who's now at the Tower, by the way—who broke down crying and telling us she escaped the Red Room. There was this phone voicemail threatening a Swan, and we thought it was about Oksana, but now we know she's been working with the Red Room all along, so I think it may have all been a trap."
A pause. Then: "What did the voicemail say?"
Audrey winced, squeezing her eyes shut. "That little swan better watch out before somebody wrings her neck. But Natasha used to do bal—"
"I know."
"Right." Of course he knew. They were partners. "I'm headed back to the Tower now, but I don't know what to do about Natasha, because she left to chase a lead in Canada."
"Canada?"
"She called it neutral territory. Do you have any idea what that means?"
Clint sighed. "Ah, shit, she's gonna kill me for telling you this, but what the hell. She has a sister. I never really got a clear answer on whether or not they were related, but she's also former Red Room. Does freelance now, but she's still got ties to them. It's who she went to meet in Bratsk last fall."
Natasha had a sister? No part of S.H.I.E.L.D. intel had mentioned that, and Natasha certainly hadn't—not that Audrey expected her to. She wasn't even sure if they were friends, yet. Or if they ever would be.
"Okay." Audrey swallowed, and scrubbed at her eyes. "Do you–do we have any way of getting in touch with this sister?"
Clint made a high pitched, reluctant noise. "Well, uh, she hates me, personally. Definitely would not talk to me."
"What if Natasha's life was in danger?" Audrey demanded.
"Well, she and Natasha had a bit of a...rough past. I'm not entirely sure she's not in on this whole thing."
Oh, great. That was completely useless. Audrey wanted to scream and punch a wall, but she settled for balling her hands into fists and digging her nails into her palms. Focus. She needed to get to the Tower to stop Oksana, and she needed to find Natasha. And right now, she wasn't entirely sure if she could make either of those things happen.
"What am I supposed to do?" Audrey asked aloud, even though she knew that there was nobody handing down orders anymore. It was up to her to sort out this mess.
"Call HQ," Clint said. "Get the records of her travel and figure out where in Canada she went. You have enough pull with Fury to get that process expedited."
"Um." Audrey blew out a breath. She'd been hoping to get through this conversation without explaining this particular bit, but it didn't seem like she had the option of ignoring it anymore. "This—might be unrelated, but all the S.H.I.E.L.D. files of the women who left the voicemails have been deleted. Um, recently. And allegedly by my mother, who is currently living in a senior home in London. So. I think there may be a mole."
"Aw, fuck," Clint cursed. "Motherfucking hell. Shit. Okay. You know what? I'm gonna have Kate cover for me here, for, uh...a bit. And then I'm gonna reach out to some of my contacts and see if we can find her the rogue way."
Audrey nodded, even though he couldn't see her. "I'm gonna try to get to Oksana before she can do anything."
"Call for backup if you need it," Clint ordered.
Backup would only make things worse, but she didn't tell him that. "Got it. Thank you. I'm sorry about your LA mission."
"Don't," he said, and though he wasn't loud, the force of it still reached her. "This is more important."
December 26, 1991 - Moscow, Russia
On Natalia Romanova's seventh birthday, the world ended. Gorbachev was gone. The flag had fallen. The Kremlin was emptied. The Madame wept, the Master wept, the girls remained stone-faced.
The night before, she had recited her words.
I am one of twenty-eight Black Widow agents with the Red Room. Training is hard, but the glory of the Soviet Supremacy, and the warmth of my parents makes up for the blood and the pain that is reaped. I serve for the sake of paradise.
The world had ended on Natalia's seventh birthday, but she had survived, and now lived in the ruins. She was still one of twenty-eight. Training was still hard. But there was no glory of the Soviet state to make it all worth it. And, as she was reminded when Yelena broke her finger during a sparring session that day, there was no warmth, from parents or otherwise. As for paradise—that had always been a myth. Life was just hard, but her body hurt for a good cause, and she bled and made bleed for a reason, until suddenly, she didn't.
But as the Master always said, when one sun sets, another rises. The KGB abandoned them, so the Red Room privatized. The Madame did not weep after that; she just gave Natalia new words to recite.
I am Natalia Alianovna Romanova. I am one of twenty-eight. I have no place in this world. I serve none but the Master, and I will one day take my place as a Widow by his side.
For every day that passed, Natalia lived two. Or three, or four. She was a ballerina with the Bolshoi. She was a Widow with the Red Room. She was the Slavic Shadow, the Red Death. She was nothing. She was a child. She was a descendant of the last Tsar. She was a ghost. She was immortal. She had been dead a very long time. Natalia was a miracle of a soldier; nothing, and so everything.
January 22, 2013 - LOCATION UNKNOWN
Tatiana's idea of a talk meant more marching Natasha through empty train cars with a gun to her back. It fascinated her more than it should've; Tatiana knew she was deadly. They both were, and yet they were holding back. Natasha, like any spy, wanted to find out why.
"Let's take a seat," Tatiana suggested, while shoving Natasha's head down into a chair. As soon as she'd unwrapped the ropes, she'd put Natasha's hands back in cuffs, but at least now she didn't need to dislocate her ankle.
"You're being awfully hospitable," Natasha remarked. "Where are we?"
"Prince George," Tatiana said. "And I have manners, unlike you."
Natasha made a face. "I have manners."
Tatiana clicked her tongue at her threateningly. "The Madame is dead because of your new friends."
This, Natasha already knew. When Clint and Kate had blown up the base in Siberia to rescue Audrey, they had crushed The Madame in the rubble. It was a shame, sort of. She had intel, most certainly, but the world was also a definitively better place with her dead.
"That's not why we're here," Natasha said. She leaned forward on her knees. "What do you want?"
"Silly girl," Tatiana laughed. "What makes you think I want anything from you?"
Natasha shrugged. "The fact that my brains aren't currently splashed across those crates in the freight car."
Tatiana gave her a look of disgust. "Ugh. Must you be so graphic?"
"What are you going to do about it?"
By way of an answer, Tatiana moved her gun so the barrel wasn't pointing at Natasha's stomach, it was pointing directly at her head. Tatiana liked to go back to the same tricks. Natasha liked a challenge. She held very still, but Tatiana didn't drop her gun. She also didn't shoot.
"I am going to keep you alive so you can watch," said Tatiana.
Natasha arched an eyebrow.
"Usually, when an escaped Widow is found, we just tie up that loose end." Tatiana pressed the barrel of the gun into Natasha's forehead, hard. "But not you. We have something very, very special for you."
"Which is?" Natasha asked, forcing her tone to stay casual.
"Icepick Protocol," Tatiana replied, a wicked grin splitting her face. "We watched you. We've been watching you for months. Tracking down the people you love. Monitoring them. The blonde bitch who likes to play hero. The Iron Prince of Destruction. The monster. They're all in one place, now, and little Oksana's going to snap their necks, one by one."
She seized Natasha's jaw tight in her hand.
"Your archer boyfriend just couldn't stay away. He's looking for you right now. It's such a shame that we'll find him before he finds you." Tatiana released her mouth, tucking a loose strand of hair behind Natasha's ear. "I was going to shoot him in the neck with an arrow, for irony's sake, but now, I think I'm going to slit his throat." Leaning in close, she whispered, "To finish the job you left incomplete."
"Stop," Natasha demanded. Clint was off-limits, and plenty capable of taking care of himself, but off-limits nonetheless. People were always trying to kill Natasha, and she mostly didn't mind because she deserved it. But Clint—he was good. He had always been good. A not small part of her was always waiting for a bony reaper's hand to lace itself around her neck and squeeze any last rotten bit of her soul out of her body. If she got scratched off the map, it would be for the greater good. The world would be a much worse place without Clint, though, and if Natasha lived for one thing, it was atonement. Which meant she was going to keep him—and Bruce, and Audrey, and even Tony—alive. No matter the cost.
"All those years of training, and you never learned anything, did you?" Tatiana asked. "Love is for children. You should've known better."
"No," she protested. Tatiana laughed, and Natasha narrowed her eyes. "No, Tatiana. I think you should've known better."
Tatiana pushed the gun further into Natasha's forehead. "Tell me, Natasha," she mocked. "What should I have known?"
Natasha's answer came through gritted teeth: "You should never fuck with an agent who's willing to die for the mission." And then, with all the force she could muster, Natasha slammed her foot into Tatiana's knee. She delighted in the crack! that accompanied Tatiana's howls, and dove over her back into the aisle of the empty train car. She rolled before she found her footing, and then took off running.
If she could get far enough, she might hit a car with passengers, and maybe then, Tatiana wouldn't be so eager to shoot her in the head. With her hands still bound behind her back, she struggled to wedge the door open.
"Come on!" she growled, before finally conceding and turning around to twist the knob.
It worked, but she was presented with a whole new set of challenges. Between this car and the next was a nine-foot-long junction completely exposed to the icy winds outside. Her heart thudded, but Natasha resolved to remain calm. Walking across it wasn't an option, not really. That was more Clint's area of expertise, with all that training in the circus. She could try and hop off the train, but then she'd have to hike...maybe ten miles? In the snow, with an injured knee, and her hands cuffed behind her back. Also not an option.
So she had to cross.
It wasn't elegant, or badass, or even all that much better, but Natasha lowered her body and squatted over the metal joint, using her hands to brace herself against the freezing cold metal, and scoot herself across the junction. The train was approaching a slight bend, and if she didn't want her fingers to get crushed, she needed to make it across before they reached it.
Tatiana was going to reach her, soon. Even a broken kneecap wasn't going to stop her for long. Pain, like any emotion, could be silenced with the right amount of control. Natasha kept pushing, and the train kept racing, and the junction burned the pads of her fingers, and she grunted as she went, and then finally–
Finally.
Natasha threw her body towards the next door, managing to grab onto the handle with her hands and push it open. Inside, low music played and travelers in sweaters and coats mumbled to each other, though the car went quiet when she entered. Passengers eyed her bound arms and red hair. She caught more than one–is that her? It's definitely her.
It was warm—too warm. The sharp transition indoors made Natasha want to shrug her coat off, but of course she couldn't; she was handcuffed.
Fucking figures.
At least she was inside. With sixty civilians around her, at least, it was unlikely that Tatiana was going to keep shooting.
Two rounds flew through the window, only narrowly missing Natasha's head.
Unlikely, she supposed, but not quite impossible.
Several passengers screamed when the bullets hit, and Natasha didn't exactly blame them. She turned to see Tatiana charging through the car, still shooting, and knew that staying here for much longer wasn't an option if she didn't want civilians to get hurt. In an impulse decision, she yanked her arms over her head. Her shoulder made a deeply unpleasant pop, but she muscled through it. Even if her hands were still cuffed, they were useful like this.
Now, there was the ordeal of Tatiana and her gun. Natasha thought about Steve, and his bulletproof shield. She reached for the nearest bag—a bright green backpack, filled with books, that had been on the floor in front of a young girl.
"Sorry!" she called, charging Tatiana. It was no vibranium shield; it wasn't a shield at all, but it protected her well enough as she approached. The bullets lodged themselves in whatever books were being held in the bag, and when she was close enough, Natasha reeled back with a grunt and hurled the bag at Tatiana as hard as she could.
The other woman screamed in frustration as the backpack collided with her chest, and Natasha watched as about a dozen hardcover Diary of a Wimpy Kid books spilled out onto the floor. She reached up for the railing running along the luggage baskets and pulled herself up, swinging forward and kicking Tatiana into the back door. The heel of Natasha's boot left a red square on Tatiana's forehead, but it didn't deter her for long. She just seemed to get angrier.
That was fine. Natasha could work with that. She just needed to get her and that gun away from the innocent people on this train.
Which, unfortunately, seemed to mean going back outside.
Tatiana lunged and Natasha skidded back, stumbling over her legs and attempting to grab onto something to steady herself, only to remember that her hands were still cuffed. Her back thudded into the train's carpeted floor. Gross. Above her, Tatiana aimed her gun at Natasha's face.
"You have no place in this world, Natalia," said Tatiana.
Instead of answering, Natasha kicked Tatiana as hard as she could in the ankle and scrambled to her feet, sprinting towards the door and yanking it open. Her shoulder throbbed, but the sharp wind outside soon called her attention to the more pressing issues at hand. Launching herself off the edge of the car, Natasha reached out for the railing of the next passenger car, and grabbed onto it barely. Another bullet flew out of Tatiana's gun, and Natasha realized that this car was full of passengers too.
Without thinking too hard, she began scaling the ladder to the train's sloped roof. It would make for a disaster of a fight, but Natasha had meant it when she said she was willing to die for the mission. And if she did, maybe Clint, and Audrey, and even Tony could have a chance of making it out of this alive.
Her legs were raw with pins and needles as she stood on the edge of the roof, waiting for Tatiana to join her. As expected, the brunette burst through the door of the train car, looking beaten and haggard, and immediately began aiming at Natasha. Perfect.
She couldn't run across the roof of the car, but she could take long, measured strides, which was good enough. The icy wind swept her red hair around her face, and Natasha couldn't help but remember the Siberian winters of her youth. She always remembered seeing her hair, her hair against the pale blue sky and the bright white snow, like a bloodstain. Even before she knew what she was, she had known.
" Come here, Natalia!" Tatiana cooed, slipping back into Russian as she reached the top of the ladder and began pulling herself onto the roof. "Let's play a game."
Natasha slipped, and felt a stinging in her fingertips as she struggled to regain her balance.
"Oh, now. Don't be like that," said Tatiana. "I'll do it in English, to honor your soon-to-be dead American friends." The corner of her mouth turned up, malicious, cruel, eager. "The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout…"
Like that was original. Natasha took three swift steps towards Tatiana and swung for her face, but the other woman grabbed onto the chain of the cuffs and slammed her down. Her nose collided with the metal roof of the traincar; she didn't need to see the puddle of blood forming to know that it was broken.
"Down came the rain," Tatiana croned, off-key and somehow, deeply offensive. "And washed the spider out."
Natasha rolled up her legs and sent both feet into Tatiana's stomach. She groaned and bowled over, and Natasha rolled to her side, swinging her leg out and slamming the top of her boot into Tatiana's hand. The gun went flying, landing somewhere in the banks of snow, already melting into the distant landscape.
Tatiana belly-flopped onto Natasha, wrapping both hands around her neck and squeezing.
"You are an embarrassment to the Master and the Madame," she hissed. "You were weak!"
"I was freed," Natasha forced out. Black and blue blobs were edging her peripheral, and if she didn't get Tatiana's hands off of her neck soon, she was going to pass out. "I had strings. Now I'm free."
Natasha swung her knee into Tatiana's groin and pushed her away. Both women scrambled to their feet, hands up, ready to spar like they had as children. Maybe things really did come full circle.
"What will you do with your freedom?" Tatiana taunted. "Get married?" She took a step closer to Natasha. "Have children? Oh, wait."
The jab hit her harder than she would've cared to admit. Love is for children. Maybe it was. Maybe, despite that, Natasha found herself wanting it.
"Get a job? Save the world?" Tatiana continued, taking another step and pushing her face forward, so there was only a few inches of space between them. "Admit it, Natalia. You're just not cut out for that sort of thing."
It was a good thing the Red Room had picked someone so dramatic for this generation's Executioner. If not for Tatiana's insistence on antics, Natasha would certainly be dead by now. Seizing the opportunity, she lifted both hands to Tatiana's neck and squeezed, ignoring the ache in her hands and the burning in her wrists. She marched her towards the back of the car, ignoring the way the slick ice sent her careening forward at the end of every step. I am one of twenty eight. Training is hard.
"I guess you'll never know, now, will you?" Natasha remarked. "Bye, Tatiana."
Even with Natasha's hands around her neck, Tatiana laughed. She howled with joy, screaming out with it. Natasha's eyebrows knitted together. "I serve one Master," Tatiana squeaked out. Last rites.
Natasha narrowed her eyes and nodded slowly. Leaning in close, she mumbled, "Fuck your Master."
And then, with all the strength she could muster, Natasha hurled Tatiana down into the gap between the cars, sending her down to the tracks before the cold, heavy train car swallowed her underneath. Natasha wanted to believe that the crunch that followed was something in the train's engine, but she was familiar enough with death to know the truth. It just came with the territory.
January 22, 2013 - Avengers Tower - Manhattan, NY
When Audrey stepped into the Tower, she knew that something was off, but she couldn't identify what, exactly, that was. The common floor, eerily empty. The cold box of pizza on the table. Music, from somewhere in the labs. None of these things were necessarily out of the ordinary, or unexplainable. Maybe she was just on edge. Maybe things were fine, and Tony and Bruce and Oksana were playing board games.
Her hand shook as she pressed the elevator's call button. Even with a gun on her hip, she knew that she was way out of her depth. Audrey tried not to think about the last time she'd been on the wrong side of a Red Room negotiation—the place it had landed her—the Madame, the Doctor—
Stop it. If she thought about it too much, it would paralyze her.
The elevator ride down felt warped; the space between the common floor and the labs stretched out and also too compressed for Audrey to make any improvements on her plan so far—which was no plan. She tugged the ends of her jacket down to conceal the gun as best she could, and then shifted her bag over to cover it. If only she had time to run upstairs for her batons; then, she might feel better, because Audrey knew well enough that she wasn't capable of firing a gun on a child—even if that child was Oksana.
When the doors slid open, Audrey stepped out cautiously, hovering her hand over her gun and bracing for any sign of life.
The music was getting louder, now. Almost unbearably so.
My honey I know
With the dark that you will be gone
But tonight
You belong to me
Oh, god. Audrey tensed. This wasn't music that Bruce would choose, but more importantly, it was music that Tony wouldn't listen to unless a gun was at his head. She reached the door to Bruce's lab, where Tony and Bruce were sitting, bound, with their backs to the wall. Sitting on the lab table was Oksana—not holding a gun, but a bottle of tequila, from which she took large, long swigs.
For a moment, Audrey thought that Oksana may have enacted the daylight adjustments in the labs, and that they couldn't see her.
Then Oksana turned, the movement sharp and sudden, and her eyes found Audrey's. An unsettling grin split her face, and she beckoned Audrey in.
"Oh, good," she greeted. "You're here. We can get started with the party."
"Party?" Audrey asked, her voice about an octave higher than usual.
Oksana shrugged. "Party. Yeah."
"You know," Audrey said. "I'm very tired. I might just—go upstairs."
Oksana hurled the bottle of tequila at Audrey's head, only narrowly missing her. It shattered against the wall, bits of glass ricocheting off and sticking in her hair, and Audrey did her best not to scream. "Stay," Oksana insisted.
That didn't seem like a suggestion, so Audrey put her hands up and started walking towards where Bruce and Tony were sitting against the wall.
"Oh, wait," Oksana interrupted. "Give me the gun."
Dammit. That wasn't good. While Audrey certainly had her reservations about shooting Oksana, she doubted those feelings were mutual. With her left hand in the air, she carefully peeled back the hem of her jacket and grabbed her gun. She made a show of flipping it so she was holding it by the barrel as she handed it to Oksana.
"Thanks, doll," Oksana said sweetly. Audrey smiled thinly, and then sat down in the space between Bruce and Tony. "We were just about to get started on our first game of the night. Truth or dare. American game, yes?"
All three of them nodded slowly.
Oksana switched off the safety on her gun. "We'll play it with a twist. Since I've been here, I've read up on all of your personnel files. So if you lie, I'll know. And…" She aimed the gun straight at Audrey. "You'll receive a deduction."
"Can I ask what the deduction will be of?" Tony asked. "Is it money, or health points, or—"
Oksana turned her gun to point it at Tony, and Audrey elbowed him.
"Nevermind," he said. "I'll just tell the truth."
"Wonderful," said Oksana. "Let's start with you, Beast." She nodded at Bruce. "Truth or dare?"
"Um," said Bruce. "Truth…? I guess?"
The song switched, and Audrey grimaced. "Tip Toe Thru' the Tulips" was somehow even more menacing for the situation than "Tonight You Belong to Me." Oksana closed her eyes and began shimmying her shoulders to the tune.
"How was your relationship with your father?" she asked Bruce, winking one eye open and extending her arm so the gun was pointed in his direction.
Audrey's heart raced, and she was filled with the overwhelming instinct to jump in front of Bruce. Sudden movements in the face of an armed hostile were generally discouraged, though, so she pressed her back firmly against the wall to restrain herself.
Next to her, Bruce swallowed.
"Not good," he answered.
"And why was that?" Oksana asked.
Audrey turned to face him. The line of his shoulders tightened, and he made a point of avoiding her eyes. It stung, but she knew she deserved it. That almost made it worse.
"He was a violent man," Bruce explained, and left it at that.
"Example?" Oksana prompted.
She could feel him holding back his anger, and she hoped to god he would be able to keep his cool. Until she could figure out a way to get them out of there and restrain Oksana.
"Uh," he said. "I guess when he tried to kill my mother in front of me. Is that good enough?"
Audrey froze. When Bruce had called his dad a bastard, she didn't think he'd meant that. Bastard was a severe understatement. She wanted to reach out for him, but she didn't know if he would recoil, or if Oksana would shoot. It was just too big of a risk—but still, she ached to hold him, somehow. To protect him.
"Tin Man," Oksana addressed Tony, looking extremely pleased with herself. "Truth or dare?"
He sent her a sideways glance and Audrey winced. After a moment, he said, "Truth."
"Did you know about Audrey's kidnapping before she did?"
Audrey's eyes flew over to him—too quickly, too sharply. He looked guilty, and avoided looking at her. "Yes," he admitted after a moment.
"You what?" Audrey demanded.
"My dad," Tony said. "He told me. But I didn't—I didn't know the details. Just that it had been longer than you thought."
Audrey scowled, before realizing that this was all feeding into Oksana's plan. She was just trying to drive them to turn on each other. And if she was being honest, it made enough sense that Tony wouldn't tell her if he knew that she wouldn't remember it. The betrayal bruised, but he wasn't the enemy. Oksana wasn't even the enemy—she was just brainwashed. All that mattered right now was getting out of here alive. So she nodded at Tony. "Okay," she said. "Thank you for explaining."
"Ugh," Oksana groaned. "You guys are boring." She settled her gaze on Audrey. "Truth or dare? Pick dare, or I blow your brains out."
"Um, okay," Audrey said. "Dare."
"I dare you to play darts with me."
Oh, Jesus. Audrey wasn't good at darts, or at anything involving a target, really. Clint liked to call her his biggest disappointment in the range, which hadn't exactly been helped by her only competition being another Hawkeye.
She stood up slowly, ignoring the quaking of her arms and the unsteady brace of her knees. Stay alive. Stay alive. All she needed to do right now was stay alive.
"I don't have darts," Oksana said. She reached into her pocket and grabbed a ring dagger. "But I have this."
"What's the target?" Audrey asked, and regretted it immediately.
Oksana pointed to the white board hanging on the wall. "Throw it at the carbon molecule."
"Okay."
"Beast, stand up."
Audrey knit her eyebrows together.
"Stand in front of the carbon molecule," Oksana ordered.
"No," Audrey said, before she could stop herself. "What are you doing? No."
"Relax, brat," Oksana said. "Throw it above his head. I want to be the one who gets to kill him."
Audrey gripped the dagger's handle in her hand. She wasn't good enough at throwing knives to hit Oksana, and she definitely wasn't fast enough to hit her before Oksana fired off her gun.
"Isn't this embarrassing?" Oksana asked Bruce. She lifted the gun and pressed the barrel to Audrey's temple. "The woman who broke your heart. She'd risk your life to save herself."
Bruce remained completely, totally still, eyes glued to some spot on the wall behind Audrey.
"You didn't really think anyone could love you, did you?" Oksana asked. Bruce's body grew tenser. "Wait." She burst out laughing, sharp and loud, and Audrey sucked in a breath, hyper aware of the way the barrel of the gun shifted to press harder into her head. "Don't tell me you thought you ever had a chance?"
"That's enough," Audrey said, and Oksana reached over to fist a hand in her hair, pushing her down to her knees by her head. Her knees collided hard against the tile floor, and she knew it was going to bruise for a few hours.
"Tell him he's nothing," Oksana ordered.
"No."
"Tell him, or I'm going to put a bullet in your head."
Audrey gritted her teeth together. She still had the knife in her hand, the wooden handle heavy against her palm. If she could pivot fast enough, she could get Oksana before she—before she shot. She could still survive this.
Oksana dragged the gun down Audrey's face, pushing it beneath her jaw. "Tell him."
She peered down at the gun. "You're nothing," she said, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "I'm sorry."
"That's not what I said to say," Oksana said. She retracted her arm and pointed the gun at Bruce, firing a round into his stomach before Audrey could even move. "You're bad at taking orders."
Audrey could barely hear Oksana anymore. She was too focused on Bruce—Bruce, god—falling to the floor in front of her, bleeding out, and the memory of what he'd said on the helicarrier.
"You can't kill me. I've tried."
If he didn't die, he was going to turn.
"Ooh, this has been fun," Oksana remarked. "But I've gotta go. Have a good evening." She ejected the magazine from the gun and pocketed it, before tossing the hollow pistol in Audrey's direction. "Good luck!" she sang, dancing out the door. "JARVIS, privacy and do not disturb," she ordered.
The door slammed shut, locking. Oksana kept dancing outside the door, hopping around awkwardly and waving her arms about to the music. She winked at them before jumping into the elevator.
"Oh my god," Audrey said, dropping the knife and ignoring the way it clattered against the floor to throw herself at the door. It wouldn't budge. "JARVIS, open the door."
"Administrator override required," he replied.
"JARVIS, the door!" Tony shouted.
"Administrator override required," JARVIS replied.
"Oh my god," Audrey repeated. Bruce was on the floor, seizing and twitching, his eyes squeezed shut. She fell to the floor next to him, reaching over to press down against the gunshot. She didn't know enough about medicine to help him, but the round had landed solidly in his stomach, and it was going to take a surgery or two to actually help him.
She pressed down on the wound, hoping the pressure would at least stop the bleeding, but the sudden weight sent his eyes flying open. Green. Bright green.
"Bruce," Audrey said, her voice shaking. "I know you're in there somewhere."
An inhuman noise ripped itself from Bruce's throat, and Tony was still running through override codes with JARVIS, and Audrey just needed to stop the bleeding, but her hands were already bathed in red, Bruce's blood, god, they were trapped here.
"Bruce, please," Audrey begged. She was crying now, biting back sobs, blinking away the tears to keep her vision from blurring. "Bruce. Can you hear me?"
His skin started to take on a greenish tint, and his muscles began to stretch and pulsate, and Audrey jerked back on instinct. Bruce was fading now, and the Hulk was taking his place, and she was stuck to her spot on the floor, left to watch as he grew taller and angrier.
Before her, where Bruce had been, now stood a twelve-foot-tall giant, roaring out furiously. The music was picking up, louder and louder. Audrey braced as the Hulk lifted his fist in the air above her, and waited for the impact to knock her out cold.
A/N: The opening paragraphs are from the comic Black Widow: Deadly Origin #2 which is one of my favorites! Highly recommend if you're looking for Natasha material. Thank you so much for reading this chapter, and I specifically wanted to thank Emilia Christine, Shar82204, im-okay-mj, Daddy's LiL HeartBreaker, and EleanorJames for reviewing! I appreciate it so much, and I'm so glad to know that people are enjoying this because it's so much fun for me to write. If you liked this chapter, let me know !
Chapter Twenty-Two: 404
"I think you may been right," Fury said, tossing the file down in front of Audrey.
"About?" she asked.
"The mole."