Nat treated herself that night – she got a room in the hotel and spread herself out over the giant double bed, enjoying the space. Natasha Romanov had slept under ledges of stone in the Black Forest, on filthy little cots in the type of hotel room people rented by the hour, and on the floors of jail cells infested with rats and cockroaches. A real bed, and a big one, was still kind of an unthinkable luxury.
Even after all these years, though, a bed she wasn't handcuffed to still didn't feel like one Nat was supposed to be in. It was always a bed she was borrowing, never one she belonged in... it was a bed in a place to which she had no anchor. A bed with no handcuff was one she might have to run away from at a moment's notice.
There was another unpleasant association, too – the only time the girls in the Red Room had been in big beds, with no handcuffs, was when they were suffering too badly to be put anywhere else. On the nights when they'd gotten their medicine.
The treatments had started when the girls were about seven, and each began with a thorough physical to make sure they were strong enough. Natasha remembered it far too clearly, seated on the end of a table having her blood pressure, white cell counts, and reflexes checked. At the other end had been Triinu Kaasik, silently sitting through the same tests. At the next table over was a girl named Sevana Kanantchian, originally from Armenia. She passed the physical, and was told to go ahead to the next room. Her partner on the second table, Ksenia Gretzky from Minsk, was rejected. She left the room in a hurry, clutching her clothes to her chest, and Natalia decided that like others before her, she was unlikely to ever be seen again.
She was right.
The doctor listened to Natalia's chest, and nodded. "You are very healthy, Miss Romanova," he said. "You can go ahead."
Natalia got up and followed Sevana into the next room.
This was similar to the one she'd just left, with a row of metal tables down each side, cracked tiles on the floor, and fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. The lights shed a slightly greenish glow that made Natalia want to squint. Each of the tables here, however, had a big box of a machine behind it, and racks of coiled tubes – and each table had metal cuffs waiting for a girl just her size to climb into them.
A doctor escorted Natalia to a table and told her to undress and lie down. She obeyed, because she knew what happened to the girls who didn't, and they locked the restraints around her wrists, her ankles, and her neck. The metal was icy-cold against her skin, and gave her goosebumps. One by one, more girls entered, and the tables filled. Nobody had told them what was going to happen here today. The doctors had only said that they were healthy enough.
Finally, with only two empty tables left in the room, the doctors stood up respectfully as Madame walked in. She headed to the front and stood up straight, which made all the girls pay especial attention. Madame looked as if she were about to say something of particular importance, and they knew they would be punished if they failed to take it in.
"Good morning, girls," she said. "You're here today because you all show excellent promise as good servants of the state. Today, therefore, we will be giving you some medicine to help you grow big and strong. Right now you're merely flesh and bone, but someday..." she smiled. "Someday you will be made of marble."
On the table next to her was a brick – a fat, rough, red one like in the walls of the State Home for Girls in Volgograd. Madame picked it up, held it at both hands, and snapped it in half like somebody might do with a soup cracker.
"It may sting a little," she said, "but you are strong girls. I know you can handle it. The state loves you, and will not allow you to come to any harm." Madame looked at the row of doctors. "You may begin."
One or two of the people in the white coats – now that she thought of it, nobody had told Natalia if they were doctors or scientists – looked hesitant, but that vanished when they saw Madame's cold face. Nobody wanted to make Madame angry, not even the grownups.
A man inserted a needle into Natalia's right arm, and then another into the left. He was good at it – she felt barely a pinch. A catheter went into the vein in one and the artery in the other, and the machine at the head of the table began to hum. Natalia couldn't see what it was doing, because it was behind her, but she could see her blood creeping, thick and cherry-red, into the right-hand tube. Would they drain her dry, she wondered, like vampires? Maybe that was why Madame looked the way she did. Maybe she was a Morana.
After a minute or so, blood began coming back down the tube on the left, but it looked different now – paler, perhaps, with an odd sheen to it like the surface of a pearl. What would that feel like when it entered her veins again?
She soon had her answer. It felt like fire. It felt as if there were hot lava running into her body, as if every nerve were tying itself in knots and every muscle trying to pull the wrong way. Natalia had been in some terrible pain since coming to the Red Room, but none of it had ever been like this. She opened her mouth to scream.
But then she snapped it shut again. Madame had told the girls they could handle it. Screaming would be a sign of weakness, and the weak were weeded out. The doctor had said that Natalia was very healthy. None of the other girls were screaming, so Natalia couldn't do so, either. She must endure it. She must be a good servant of the state.
She had no idea how long she lay there, suffering. It may have been only a few seconds. It may have been days.
Sevana Kanantchian was on the table across from Natalia. She appeared to be straining against the metal cuffs – her back was arched, her hands balled into fists, her toes curled. Natalia watched her, hoping to distract herself from her own agony, and saw blood well up from the other girl's palms as her fingernails dug into her own flesh. The twisting of Sevana's body became more and more extreme and then, suddenly, she began to scream.
Natalia had felt that she had to scream sooner or later, and hearing it from Sevana was almost a relief, as if the other girl's cries could let out Natalia's own pain as well. But once it had started, it did not stop, even for breath. Sevana screamed on the inhale as well as the exhale, with only the pitch changing, and it just went on and on and on. The cuff holding her left wrist snapped, and Natalia had a horrible premonition that Sevana was about to get up off the table and do... Natalia had no idea what she would do, but it would certainly be awful.
Then as suddenly as it had begun, the screaming stopped. Sevana's naked body dropped back against the metal with a sound flesh should not make, like a frying pan dropped on a tile floor, and she was silent.
Doctors gathered around her. One tried CPR while others tore the catheter out of her right arm and pumped the rest of her blood back into the left. Nothing worked. When they finally gave up, a few minutes later, the body they left behind on the table was chalk-white. Whiter even than the porcelain skin of Madame.
A moment after that, a second girl further up the room began to scream, too.
Over the course of the next hour, four of them died, each in the same way. Natalia concluded that all of them would end up like Sevana, that whatever medicine they were being given had not been tested properly and would poison them all. But she made no effort to escape, or to tear the catheters out. Madame had said this would serve the state, and so it must be done.
The rest of them did not die, though. Instead, after an eternity of torment the catheters were carefully removed, and the restraints unlocked. Natalia tried to sit up, but her body refused to respond. She tried again, and once more nothing happened – it was as if she were trapped in a shell of stone. That was no good – she had to get up. She was the one who kept going, no matter one. Finally, with incredible effort she pushed herself into a sitting position. Her head spun, her lungs burned, and every cell in her body screamed at her to stop, but she made it.
The doctors around her stared. "Miss Romanov," one of them began, reaching to put a hand on her shoulder, "you really mustn't..."
His touch was like a thousand-ton weight, burning white-hot. The only thing Natalia could think to do about it was to hurl him across the room – and she did, though it left her hands stinging and every join that had to move blazed with pain. That was too much for her. She collapsed again, and fell off the table into a heap on the tile floor. It felt like she'd fallen for miles, with and elephant dropped on top of her. Yellow spots danced in front of her eyes, and then everything went black.
A moment later the world faded back in, but only barely. It was just enough for her to see a bleary vision of people in white, gathered around a shape on the floor. For a moment she wondered why it wouldn't focus – then she realized she was seeing a reflection in the side of a metal cabinet. The doctors in their white coats were looking at a girl of around seven, naked on the floor. Her skin was snow-white, like Madame's, and her hair pale ginger. Was that Natalia? She didn't look like herself at all.
Then at last she dropped into merciful unconsciousness.
Natalia didn't know how long she slept, but it was fitful and unpleasant. At times she was almost awake, and then the mattress she was lying on felt like millions of fire ants all biting her at once like they had in the woods near Tbilisi. The tiniest bits of light were migraines unto themselves. Sleeping, however, was worse, as she relived the pain of the table and the doctor's touch over and over again.
Suddenly she sat up in the dark, clutching the covers so hard she heard the sound of them tearing, and sat there panting for breath as tears slid down her cheeks. She could smell the hot water in the darkness, smell her own sweat and the detergent in the sheets and the disinfectant that had been used to clean the floors and walls. Her tears felt burning hot, so she reached up and wiped them away, wincing in expectation of more pain.
It did hurt a bit – her skin felt incredibly soft and very sensitive, like a mass of bruises, and her muscles were sore as if she'd run for miles the previous day. She was no longer on fire, though. Merely moving was no longer unbearable. What did she look like now?
A bit wobbly, she got out of bed. The tile was ice on her bare feet – painful ice. The tutors had made the girls read fairy tales to keep them in practice on foreign languages, and there'd been a Danish one about a mermaid. The mermaid had convinced a sorceress to give her human legs, but every step she'd taken had been like walking on knives. Had it felt like this?
The light came on.
Natalia quickly covered her eyes as the illumination stabbed into them, bringing up more tears. People surrounded her on all sides, which helped by dimming it a little, but then they frog-marched her down the hallway and back into the medical room where she'd received her examination before the medicine. Were they going to give her more? Natalia knew she couldn't handle that. Once had almost killed her. Twice definitely would.
They didn't, though. Instead, they sat her down on the table and examined her, looking into her eyes with a bright light that felt like needles, listening to her heart and lungs with an icy stethoscope, testing her reflexes and taking her blood pressure, all while Madame watched.
Natalia sat and waited, staring down at her hands in her lap. They looked their usual colour... or did they? It was hard to tell. The light in the room was painfully bright... but her skin didn't seem to reflect it the way Madame's did. She reached up and tugged at one of her braids, pretending to play with it nervously. When she glanced at it, it seemed like its original dark red colour. Maybe whatever they'd given her hadn't worked properly. That probably meant she would be discarded, like Ksenia or the twins from Chernobyl, but that was almost a relief.
Madame didn't seem quite human. Whatever she was, Natalia didn't want to become it.
"She's doing very well, considering the shock to her system," one of the doctors said. "In fact, I'd say she's one of the strongest of the lot."
Madame nodded. "And to think, that dried-up old cow in Volgograd said she'd be too sensitive!"
It was another week after that before they were allowed to do anything physical – then, however, the girls were back at their daily exercises. When they were ushered out to the yard for the day's obstacle course, it looked to Natalia as if it would be far more difficult than anything they'd faced before. Walls had been made higher, bridges narrower, drops longer, weights heavier. Natalia gritted her teeth and watched the others' reactions – they, too, were all trying to prepare, thinking they would fail.
Madame, however, was not worried. She nodded, and tent them off as if she fully expected them to excel. Of course she did – they were her good daughters of the state. To fail was simply not permitted.
And they did not fail. It wasn't a huge different, but Natalia soon realized that she could push herself that tiny bit harder, run that little bit faster, lift that few kilograms more. The stuff in the tubes had done something, but it hadn't done very much. She would not be breaking bricks with her bare hands as Madame had done, and in a way that was the scariest thing of all. It meant they would have to take that medicine again someday.
They did. Every year on the same day, and it never got any easier. In fact, as time went on Natalia thought that each dose was actually worse than the last, perhaps because each was successively larger. But after that first terrible day nobody screamed and died again, and every year Madame assured them that they were strong and healthy, and they could take it. It was what would make them worthy of their exalted position as protectors of the state.
Someday they, like she, would be made of marble.
Natasha woke curled into a ball with a pillow clutched against her face and tears in her eyes. Even in her sleep, she was worried about what would happen if somebody saw her weakness. She'd always hated the medicine, hated the way it burned and how it made everything painful for the next couple of days until her body adapted. And what she'd hated most of all was the idea that she would someday become a statue like Madame, a horrible effigy of a human being. When she'd run away, it had been as much to escape that nasty fate as it had been for anything else.
She wondered how many others there were. Of all the black widows who'd ever lived... how many had lasted long enough to become whatever Madame was? Or was she the only one who'd made it that far?
Nat wiped her eyes on her sleeve and got up. Her bare feet made no noise on the floor as she crossed to the bathroom. There was no way she was going to be able to sleep any more for a while, not with her heart pounding and her hands shaking like this. She would wash her face, and then maybe head down to the lobby and have a drink. Something to clear her head before she tried sleeping again.
The lights came on with a click as the motion sensor picked up her entrance, and she glanced in the mirror, wincing in expectation of what she would see – but it was only her. Her hair was rumpled from sleep, and she was dressed in pajama pants, a camisole, and Banner's purple hoodie. With a relieved sigh, Nat turned on the tap. The hotel's soap smelled nice. The wrapper said it was orange mango.
Then she heard the second click, and when she looked up again, there was a gun to her head.
Yelena stepped out from behind the shower curtain, and Nat just stared at her. She smelled of the orange mango soap... she must have washed herself with it, so she would blend in with the scents of the hotel bathroom. And doing so much have been incredibly painful, because after Nat had forced her into the steam escaping from the carrier's catapult, she had no more than two thirds of a face. Half her scalp, her forehead and her nose were a mass of red blisters with the skin peeling in tatters. The lens in that eye had been cooked white, and her hair was falling away as the dead skin sloughed.
She should clearly have been in a hospital, and yet here she was, on her feet and hiding in a hotel bathroom. It would have been deeply impressive if Nat hadn't been about to die.
Then again, she didn't need to be about to die. This was Yelena after all – and Yelena was, and had always been, a gloater.
"The shower?" asked Nat. "Seriously?"
"What better place?" asked Yelena with a smirk – her lips were still intact. "It's the one thing even you can't escape from. You like to hang out with gods and monsters, Natalia. You think you're a superhero, but at the end of the day, you shit sitting down just like the rest of us."
"You should have been a poet," sneered Nat. Get her hackles up. Keep her talking. Yelena liked to have the last word. "What's next for you after you've killed me? An all-lesbian version of Phantom of the Opera?"
"I was thinking plastic surgery," Yelena said lightly. "I've never liked my nose anyway."
"Noses are over-rated," Nat agreed. Now that Yelena came closer, Nat could faintly smell cooked meat. It wouldn't have bothered her normally, but knowing it was human flesh turned her stomach. The orphanage had probably smelled like that when they got the fire put out. "I'm surprised Madame didn't just shoot you for letting me escape."
"It didn't let you!" snapped Yelena. "Kamila and Eglė let you. You want to know what happened to them?" Her lips curled into a snarl. "Madame killed Eglė. She told her she was useless. Eglė is dead and it's your fault."
She was trying to play on Nat's guilt – an emotion she knew Natasha had and she did not. "I didn't force her to help me," Natasha replied. She'd told Eglė, you didn't save me, you covered your ass. Eglė had, perhaps, let her pass because she wanted to make that up to her – or maybe just because she wanted Natasha to owe her a favour. Natasha hadn't killed her, but she'd set in motion the chain of events that led to her death. "You like blaming things on other people, don't you, Yelena?"
That got to her. Yelena bristled. "You're the one who told him we were spies, and then shot him!"
"Oh, I beg your pardon for saving your life," Natasha shot back. "He'd already figured it out – he would have killed us. I salvaged the situation and you tried to throw me under the bus. You've always been a tattle-tale. If we're talking about who we've killed, you killed Irina and Ilona. Did you know them when you lived in Pripyat, Yelena?" she taunted. "Did you grow up together, and then you killed them?"
"They killed themselves when they tried to run away!" Yelena said. "And you know what? If our positions had been reversed, I'd have let him kill you. I've always been sorry I didn't shoot you on the way back to headquarters that day! We're not allies, Natalia. We're not friends. You never figured that out, did you?"
"We aren't allies because they taught us not to be," said Nat. "They didn't want us to ever realize what we could accomplish if we turned on them. For somebody who likes to be in charge of a situation, you really are putty in Madame's hands, Yelena." As hero-villain dialogue went, that was pretty cliché – but Natasha thought maybe she could mix this up a little. After all, in Yelena's mind she was the bad guy here, and what was it bad guys always said to heroes? "Why don't you just walk away. Or better yet, the two of us together could kill her. We were her two favourites," Natasha reminded her. "Think of what we could accomplish together."
What would she do if Yelena said yes? Nat realized she had no idea. She was making this up as she went along.
"As if you're any different!" Yelena said. "You just chose a different master!" She was really angry now. She was hiding it well, but Natasha could see the tells. Her hand on the gun was trembling slightly with suppressed rage, and that was all Natasha needed. She knocked the gun out of Yelena's hand and pushed her back against the shower curtain, meaning to tie her up in it.
Yelena reacted – she grabbed the curtain as she fell, yanking it off the rings and twisting it in her hands so that by the time she was done, she'd made a rope out of it. Nat seized it to pull it out of her hands, but Yelena swung herself up on Natasha's shoulders and wrapped it around her neck to choke her. Nat managed to get her hands under it and used it as a sling to throw Yelena against the mirror, which shattered in a shower of silvered glass.
It was all training. It was all instinct, pounded into both girls from early childhood, drawing on the strength and resilience the medicine had pumped into their veins. That was why it wasn't going to go anywhere, Natasha realized, as Yelena came at her using one of the pieces of glass as a shiv. They were too much alike. They could predict each other's every move. Any fight between two black widows would always end in a stalemate.
Nat couldn't do this as a black widow, but what else could she do? What else was she?
Yelena was trying to get past her. She wanted to move the fight out into the suite, where there'd be more room. That would be helpful for Natasha as well, but not enough so to offset the problems Yelena could cause her there. She dragged the other woman back, throwing her into the bathtub, but Yelena wrapped her legs around Natasha's neck and flipped over her. She grabbed Nat's hair, and began slamming her face against the tiled wall.
What else was Natasha, really? Even when she'd gone to work for SHIELD – for the good guys – Nat had been valuable for what the Red Room had taught her. She knew secrets. She knew technology, knew weaponry, knew how to fight. She knew how to be anybody and blend in anywhere. When she'd been on her own, taking work where she could find it, she'd used the same skills for her employers, and to avoid capture by Interpol or by the Red Room itself. Natasha Romanov had never been a who. She'd always been a what, and what she was, was a black widow.
She jerked her head to the side, pulling out some of her own hair but freeing herself from Yelena's grip. An arm around Yelena's neck, and she slammed the other woman's head against the faucet. It broke off, and cold water came spraying out.
Natasha grabbed a towel to press against her bleeding nose. What should she do now?
What should she not do now? What would a black widow do in this situation? A black widow who knew she was beaten would cut her losses, destroy the evidence, and retreat. That was what she'd done when she'd visited Volgograd. That was what she'd tried to do in Budapest, but Clint had cut her off. If she tried it now, Yelena would follow her.
Good.
She opened the bathroom window and kicked it hard, forcing both the pane and the screen out to create an escape route. Yelena picked herself up and grabbed Nat's ankle, trying to hold her back, So Nat grabbed her by her ear and forced her face into the water spray. It must have been hideously painful on her already burned skin, because Yelena actually cried out. Nat wiggled out the window and swung herself sideways to catch her legs on the railing of the balcony next door. That was exactly where Yelena would expect her to go.
But Yelena, imagining that Nat was trying to run away, would not expect her to immediately swing back and grab her as she followed her out. They grappled in midair for a moment, and then Nat threw her opponent into the swimming pool thirty feet below.
She pulled herself back up onto the balcony and tried to catch her breath. This was somebody else's room, but Nat didn't care – she staggered into the washroom and cleaned the blood off her face and hands. Her nose was still bleeding a little, so she grabbed a bag of ice from the machine to put on it. The thing to do now was call Fury.
One of the people sleeping in the room had left a cell phone charging on a desk. She picked it up and swiped the screen. Luckily there was no password on it – she could have gotten in anyway, but it would have slowed her down. The text in the phone's OS was all in Thai, but Nat could read just enough of that to find her way around. She dialed Fury's number.
It occurred to her that she could call Clint. He was actually in the hotel and would not hesitate to come to her aid, but he and his family had been through enough today. Natasha wouldn't be the one who put them in more danger. The widows had given the impression that they didn't know or care who she'd been communicating with, as long as it was somebody she might show up to save. Nat wouldn't be the one who emphasized the Barton family's importance to her.
The phone rang three times, and a sleepy voice said, "this has to be Romanov. Nobody else calls me from other people's numbers in the middle of the night."
"I just threw a woman with half a face into the swimming pool," said Natasha.
"Yeah, that's Romanov all right," Fury grumbled, but she could hear cloth moving, and he already sounded more awake. "Where are you?"
"In somebody's room." Nat unlocked the door and peeked out. "There's nobody in the hallway. Where are you?"
"On board the Vanguard," replied Fury. "I'll meet you in the hotel lobby. You need to be seen leaving the building." He understood what she wanted – to draw the attention of any additional Red Room agents away from the hotel. If there were any chance of a shootout, she didn't want civilians hurt.
"I'm on my way," Natasha promised. She plugged the phone back in and slipped out.
Elevators were an enclosed space, and too easy to sabotage. Nat took the stairs, flying down two flights – her sleep, uneasy as it had been, had sped up her already accelerated healing. When she reached the bottom she crossed the big lobby, with its high widows and polished wooden floors, with a straight back and long strides, like a woman on a mission. Very few other people were awake at this hour, but one of those who were was Dr. Banner. He was seated by himself at the bar, drinking a glass of soda water.
Nat hesitated a moment, then decided she had to. He would know where the Vanguard was moored, and she could hardly ask for a better bodyguard. "Hey, Doc!" she called out, as if this were a friendly social meeting.
He turned around and looked at her, startled, taking in her askew clothing, wet hair, and bruised face. "What happened to you?"
"I had a little trouble with the shower," said Natasha, as if it were nothing. "Listen." She ame closer. " need a favour."
The design of the hotel lobby was open and curved, with wooden walls in slightly odd places to provide focus points for artwork and furniture as well as disguising the columns that supported the upper storeys. It was as Natasha passed one of these hidden pillars that a woman dressed as a staff member suddenly stepped into her path.
It was not a staff member. It was Madame.
Without any hesitation, she looped her arm through Nat's and began leading her out of the building. Her grip was as firm as steel, her flesh cool and hard. People had, sometimes, likened Madame's touch to that of a statue, but Natasha had always thought of her more like the body of a snake. No warmer than the air, solid but supple, alive and strong and coiled to strike.
"Listen to me," said Madame firmly. "Since you care so deeply about irrelevant people: Yelena and I have spent the evening planting six bombs in this hotel. If you don't come with me now, we will detonate them. The building will burn with guests and staff trapped inside – the stairs will collapse and people on the upper floors will not be able to escape. If you want to save them, you will say goodbye to your friend and do as I say."
Natasha looked over at Dr. Banner. Did Madame know who he was? He'd gotten to his feet, but the expression on his face was one of helplessness. He knew he couldn't help Nat in here, not without destroying the place himself. His hands were tied.
"Say goodbye to Fury for me," Natasha said.
"I will," Banner promised.
Madame dragged Natasha outside. "We can detonate the bombs remotely at any time," she went on. "The local fire department is quite preoccupied with a gas station on fire at the other end of their jurisdiction. They won't make it here in time. The bombs are unlikely to be found until housekeeping makes their rounds in the morning. I can kill everyone in that hotel with a word, at any time between now and then.
Nat thought fast. If that were really the case... then she had to get back inside. Madame didn't want Natasha dead because if she did, she'd already had plenty of opportunities. Yelena had most likely been ordered not to shoot her – she'd been going to do it anyway, and would have come up with a story about how Nat had left her no choice. She wouldn't blow up the hotel if Nat were still in there. For a few steps, she accompanied Madame as if willing, but when they were no more than a dozen feet from the doors she performed a twist maneuver to pull her arm free.
It didn't work. Nat's shoulder wrenched, and she gasped in pain as Madame simply did not let go. Uncounted years of taking the medicine had rendered her entirely immune to such moves, and she knew it.
"Don't insult me," said Madame, dragging Nat along. "Do you really think I don't know your every move? I'm the one who taught it to you!"
Outside, Yelena came jogging up, soaking wet. "Madame!" she called out. "You found..."
Madame reached out and grabbed her by the throat. Nat saw Yelena's eyes widen in terror.
"I thought your hate would make you useful," Madame said. "I was wrong." She lifted Yelena off her feet, and quite casually threw her through the nearest window. The woman's body went sailing through in a shower of safety glass, and Madame turned away again and pushed Nat towards a car.
"It's time," she said, "for our lost baby bird to come home. The nest is waiting."
