A/N: Shoutout to Paxfriday for reviewing!
Is when you leave me alone
Putting James on a plane out of the country felt strange. More so when she went to her own flight, heading the opposite direction. But this was time-sensitive and she couldn't have him around distracting her. Not that she was going to complain about what made him distracting. There were just more important things at stake right now.
When she had been under the ice, she hadn't been afraid. Because she was trained not to panic in dire situations, yes, but also because she wasn't on her own on this mission. It was different, in a good way. But maybe it was making her too soft to deal with Yelena. She had, after all, done better against her before she'd been spending so much time with Barnes, when he was unable to help her. Now, maybe she was counting on him too much.
So she sent him back to Steve. As part of the plan. He hadn't liked the idea of leaving her, which wasn't something she was going to read into, but he'd agreed eventually. And now he was gone and she was going to face her erstwhile replacement on her own. She understood Yelena's point of view to an extent. It had been a great undertaking to break away from the Red Room and her programming in the first place. Yelena hadn't had the chance or the reason to do the same.
There was no need to worry about going at this without backup. She'd taken down whole building's worth of people on her own before. She'd fought aliens and killer robots. She'd been chased by the Hulk. She'd faced the Winter Soldier three times and lived. A less-experienced Black Widow should be nothing.
It was just bad timing that had gotten Yelena this far. If the team were still together – if she weren't in hiding – all this would have been the work of a weekend. Strike Team Delta would have gone in there and taken care of it. But SHIELD was gone (as far as she was concerned, anyway) and she had to gather her own intel, follow her own hunches and try to track down leads. It was a lot more work and she lost precious time doing it. But she wasn't going to fail again.
Questioning the scientists had been somewhat helpful. She gleaned what she could about Yelena's plans and sent that on to Fury. He didn't have the staff or the resources that had once been at his disposal, but they were making headway. And she was comparing it with the intel she had already gathered. A story was forming from the bits and pieces.
Lukin founded Kronas as a front for a rebranding of Department X. Karpov and the rest of the old guard had been phased out when they couldn't keep up with the times. Where ever Madame B had gone after the Red Room ended, she was found and brought in to train another recruit. There hadn't been the budget or the power yet for them to do it the way it had been done before – Yelena was the only one in the new program.
They had hand-picked the new Widow from their pool of elite agents. She had been deemed the best and had undergone rigorous programming and training to compete with Natasha Romanoff. Because Madame B held a grudge – Natasha remembered that. Why Lukin would care, she wasn't sure. She'd met the man only once or twice. It wasn't as though his honor had been betrayed or that she could have personally offended him by defecting. The Winter Soldier project wasn't under his control, so he couldn't have been getting revenge for her brief derailing of that.
In any case, Kronas had sought out the best scientists it could find. Those who were unwilling to join them often found themselves unable to leave. A new material had been discovered and Lukin intended to weaponized it. Yelena was serving him by gathering those scientists that resisted as well as tracking down more of the material.
Most of that Natasha had put together before finally catching up to Yelena. Asking the newly-freed scientists gave her some new insight into the particulars of the weapon being developed. The material, though radioactive, could be reworked into something useful. Something that gave Lukin the power he wanted over others.
Radioactivity had proven itself worth the risk sometimes – it could make a regular person into an enhanced one. Like it had with Banner and Parker. Lukin was always looking for a way to make more Winter Soldiers, more Black Widows. But super spies and serums only went so far. This would be a much bigger experiment. His intention was to test it out on a large civilian population and see what stuck. He was confident that the procedures used to keep the Winter Soldier in line would work again to keep anyone of these newly powered people under his full control.
She expected hubris would have ended that foolishness quickly, but now he was in jail and who knew how much of his plan Yelena was going to complete on her own? She had reason to be wary of being replaced, surely. So Natasha didn't think she would follow through with it. But it was difficult to tell. How far would she go to prove herself?
The fact that she had the book was concerning. There was no way she would expect to find the Winter Soldier himself after her. So she must have retrieved it from Berlin for her own purposes. To find a way to control the monsters she was about to create.
In any case, Natasha knew what she had to do next. Chasing Yelena across the globe (or, at least Europe) wasn't going to get her anywhere. She needed to talk to the people who had put her to work. So she headed to Berlin to see Sharon about a favor.
"You really have to stop showing up like this," Sharon grumbled as she walked through the door of her apartment. She had been startled, reaching for her weapon, but quickly recovered.
"Should I have picked you up from work?" Natasha suggested with a smile.
Sharon rolled her eyes and headed to her kitchen for a glass of water. "What can I do for you this time?"
Getting out of the comfiest chair in the living room, Natasha followed her. "I need to talk to Lukin. Where did you stash him?"
"Talk to him? He's got the best lawyers money can buy. No one talks to him."
"I'm sure I can convince him."
Sharon looked at her sharply. "He made bail. He just has to stay in touch with the prosecution – who may not be able to prove him complicit in any crimes. He was careful enough that there aren't any reliable witnesses."
That was disquieting news. "How are they spinning all those kidnappings?"
"He pinned it all on that woman you know."
"Is she here in custody?" Natasha asked, brightening.
Giving her a dubious look, Sharon nodded. "Yeah. You think you can find a way in?"
"I'm sure I can. Thank you," she added and headed for the door.
"Hey, wait!"
Surprised, she stopped and turned around. "Yes?"
"That's it? You're not going to tell me what this is all about?"
"Kind of in a hurry, Carter."
Sharon looked like she wanted to say something, but she just nodded. "Good luck."
"Thank you," she repeated and left.
Breaking into the holding cells wasn't the easiest task – leaving them would certainly prove a greater challenge – but she managed. Madame B was looking a little the worse for wear, no doubt realizing that she'd been duped.
"Natalia, I wasn't expecting you," she said quietly when Natasha appeared on the other side of the glass.
"No?"
Smiling slightly, the older woman shrugged. "Figured you had better things to do. You found Yelena."
It wasn't a question, so she didn't answer.
"I'm sure that was a big day for her. Was it her last?"
"No," she answered a little sharply and Madame B laughed.
"You may find that you regret that, milii moi."
Natasha set her jaw and didn't let herself be sucked into her former mistress's mind games. The woman had not gotten to where she was without having her own tricks, despite lacking the physical prowess of her students. "Who was she before?"
"Just an agent. We thought she was special enough. Not like you, of course," Madame B added with a fond smile. "We hoped with the right training… Well, I guess we'll see what she does on her own."
"Tell me how to stop her."
"Why would I do that?"
Natasha walked up closer to the glass and looked intently down at the other woman. "Because you owe me, Vera. Because of what you did to me, to Eva, to the American. What I won't let you do to anyone ever again."
"I made you what you are, Natalia. Where would you be without me?"
"Better off. Tell me."
Madame B shook her head in disappointment. "You are the greatest agent Russia has ever seen. If only you had stayed with us… No matter. Yelena will do for now, and soon we will have better assets than either of you could ever be."
"What is the target, Vera?" Natasha asked in a low, deadly tone.
"Oh, child, why would they tell me? Why would I care? You'll have to sneak up on someone else in the middle of the night. Now, if you haven't come here because you have the guts to go through with killing me, get out."
Natasha gave her a thin smile. "Tell me and I'll leave the old lady to her beauty rest." When the other woman refused to respond, Natasha opened the door. She charged her Bites and took a step forward. "Tell me, Vera. Or you're going to know what it's like to be one of your students."
Madame B's resolve lasted a little longer, but gave in before Natasha needed to recharge. Without another word, she left the cell and headed to the airport. She had a long flight ahead of her.
