I smirked and stood up, adjusting my skirt so it was a little shorter than truly necessary and left the room, leaving him groaning and moaning at the wrongs I had done him. Once I was out of the room, I readjusted my skirt to its usual length and walked to the couch. There sat Tony Stark, looking at the screen that displayed my room. I rolled my eyes.

"Are you always this intrusive?"

"No. I just wanted to make sure you didn't kill the poor guy."

"Well the 'poor guy' hurt me."

"He knocked you up."

"Yes, he did, if you want to put it in a vulgar fashion."

"And the fact that he knocked you up is bad how, exactly?"

"I don't want a kid, Stark. I can barely take care of myself and Braydon at once."

"And Braydon is horribly dependent on you?"

"Yes. It found out that he was after her was terribly insistent on the two of us marrying and making a life together. I turned down his proposal 22 times."

"He proposed 23 times." Tony turned to her with an incredulous expression.

"I thought he would just give up after 5." I sat down beside the owner of the building and propped my feet up on the coffee table.

"You know, you could have just told me you were married."

"That's too dangerous in my line of work."

"Yeah, but it would have saved me a lot of pain."

"I'm sure Pepper gave your poor shoulder a nice massage."

"She did, actually."

"You are a ridiculous man, Tony Stark."

"And you are a very mean woman, Anastasia Kirdan."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. Why are you angry with him again?"

"He got me pregnant and left with no warning, making me think I was going to be a single mother for the rest of my life."

"Alright, I am going to speak for the rest of the male sex in saying, that is one guy out of a lot of other guys. His actions do not speak for the rest of the male sex."

"I know. He's just not going to have sex with me. Until I get really hormonal and have to have sex lest I turn into a cranky pregnant woman."

"That's not going to be very long."

"I'm going to prolong his pain for as long as I physically am able, and thus, cause him to become very sexually frustrated."

"I never knew Russians were so devious."

"We hide it very well, just like we hid the fact that building an incredible industry required the deaths of millions of peasants in the time of Stalin. We are good at that sort of thing."

"Interesting."

I hummed my agreement and stretched slightly, settling into the couch cushions and closing my eyes, steadying my breathing and attempting to calm my mind and process what has occurred on that day. I once again felt an urge to murder my husband. I pulled my hair from its ponytail and combed my fingers through it.

"You're still pissed at him?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to see my workshop?"

"Yes." I smiled at him. He stood up, down the rest of his glass, and led me to the elevator.

"Rule one, touch nothing unless instructed to. I can clear you out a workspace, but if you don't use it, I will, understood?"

I almost rolled my eyes. "I understand, Stark."

"Good, now we can be besties."

"Did the word 'besties' just leave the mouth of Tony Stark?"

"Yes. Don't tell anyone."

"I would never."

The elevator came to a stop. I stepped out of the doors, following Tony into the large room. I whistled my appreciation, and intertwined my fingers behind my back. I was fighting the overwhelming urge to touch every object in the room. Tony made a great production of clearing out a small space and gently shoving me over. I thanked him and pulled up a stool, settling upon the surface before looking down at the empty space. I looked through the drawers until I found a roll of newsprint that could fit into the space. Tony was watching me as I once again burrowed through the cubbyholes until I found a lump of charcoal about the size of my hand. I carefully cut it apart using a knife, which Tony protested to , saying that it wasn't meant for that, but I simply pointed it at him in a not entirely threatening (but still slightly, I had a reputation to uphold, after all) and he held up his hands in a form of surrender. I cut off what I needed and returned to the stool. I settled back down and began to sketch. I heard Tony settling into his own project, turning up rock music to the point where it could shatter eardrums. My foot bounced of its own accord as the bass thrummed through my veins. I felt like a different being. A being that did not require all of the horrid memories that I harbored to live. A being that did not require pain to feel alive. A being that simply existed without any strings attached to it. I did not watch my picture as it unfolded. I only saw the strokes of sable charcoal over the paper. I only saw my hands get tinged with grey and gunmetal and smoke. The ebony forced its way until the folds and wrinkles in my hands and the crevices of my callouses. This was a hobby that I had always enjoyed, but I could not do it often. I could not risk leaving behing ashen fingerprints at assassinations. If I did, then my organization would kill me. I had a rather strong sense of self-preservation that I simply could not shake. It must exist in synonymy with being a human.

When I truly looked at what I was drawing, I was surprised. It was a man, hair matted to his forehead and hands covered in something. He was lying in a pool, facedown, with a hole in the back of his head, and his eyes floating nearby, the optic nerves dangling off of the spheres like grotesque ornaments for a Christmas tree. The entire sight was hideous. A beautiful woman stood on the side of the pool, masked in shadows and lacking in light, a knife dangling from one hand like an appendage, and a gun clasped in the other like an awkward prosthetic limb. Her hair flashed white against the darkness. I grabbed a nearby knife and cut the paper with a fluid stroke. I unrolled more of the paper and began to draw again. Before I really recognized the time that had passed, I had depleted the roll of newsprint of enough paper that could probably cover a wall of average size. They were all portraits of killings. Tony Stark walked over, and he laid out the paper. He let out a string of vituperatives that varied in strength as he saw each one of them laid out.

"Did you kill all of these people?"

"Yes."

Author's Note: Thank you so very much, sailorraven34, for informing of the screwed-up-ness of this chapter. That was my bad. I'm very very very sorry. I'm also an idiot for not checking it an fixing it before now. *facepalm*, sorry for taking forever to post, I'm trying to do better, and just a heads up, this is the second to last chapter, I believe. I'm thinking about one-shots. Those don't take as long to write. Maybe. I don't know. I'm working on it. So, in summary, I'm sorry, everything should be good now, thank you for reading and please leave a review in the box directly under this text, or if in mobile mode, press the button directly under this text and exercise your other thumb, please. Thanks, and I love you guys!

rebornwhole