There Was A Little Girl, Chapter 5- Sin Morality, Morality Sin (Hospital Fire)
And if I had a dollar for every time
I repented the sin
And commit the same crime
I'd be sitting on top of the world
- God Help Me, Emilie Autumn
She remembers the first time she made a mistake.
The Red Room hadn't been too concerned about it. As long as she'd met the mission objectives successfully without revealing her identity or that of the Red Room's, anything else would pretty much be brushed off as collateral damage.
That wasn't what it felt like to her, however.
To her, it would always be among the top few items of the never-ending list of mistakes she would never stop regretting, even back then, when the Red Room had marked that mistake as yet another mission accomplished.
It was during yet another one of the missions the Red Room had assigned to her.
She was to infiltrate a hospital disguised as a nurse on duty. The reason for that was the temporary greatly heightened security due to the hospitalization of her high-profile target. Her job was to then administer a highly lethal dosage of poison to her target and to get herself out of the room and preferably the building before her target even takes his last breathe.
Things had gone exactly to plan, at first at least.
She'd managed to acquire a nurse's uniform, and even a fake identity card and hospital staff pass for herself. After a few days' worth of surveillance and observation from the tacky hotel opposite the hospital, she'd managed to note down the exact timings when the nurses would enter the heavily guarded deluxe hospital ward to check on her target.
Finally, she'd decided that the amount of intelligence she had would be sufficient and walked into the hospital at the break of dawn and slipped into the deserted staff changing room. She slipped on the drab uniform she'd previously obtained and pulled her hair into a tight bun, putting on a pair of old-fashioned spectacles for good measure before moving into the hospital hallways and making her way to the deluxe hospital ward located on the topmost level. Not long after, she had managed to enter the ward, guarded by a few dozen guards on the outside along the hallways of the entire level, and another half a dozen on the inside.
Everything was going according to plan, and before she knew it, she was already preparing the syringe full of deadly liquid as a nurse would a syringe full of medicine that would bring life to a patient. However, what she hadn't expected was the weakened man that was her target bringing a shaky hand towards her arm and placing it there, seemingly to stop her actions.
Family, he had breathed out in a raspy voice low enough for only her ears. My family, my children, they need me.
Her breath had caught in her throat, her mind racing and trying to come up with a reasonable explanation that would bring on the unexpected statement from the sick man.
That, his eyes momentarily flickering to the syringe filled with clear blue liquid in her hands, I've seen that before and I'd be damned if I didn't recognize it again. His voice was barely a whisper then. It was what killed my father when I was just a helpless kid. I watched him die.
She was frozen in her actions then, her eyes held by the sadness in her target's eyes.
You are here to kill me. It wasn't a question, and she could almost see the resignation crawl into his eyes as he made his one final plead for his life.
Go, leave now and the guards won't bother you. She noted the guards from the corner of her eyes. They were viewing the pair with suspicious looks, aware of their exchange but unable to hear the words of the sick man.
I have a family, I have children. I am their father. They need me. His voice had risen a few notches, tightening his grip on her arm and pushing it away with the new found strength from his will to live.
The guards were more alert now, catching wind that something was amiss.
Sensing the tension that now filled the air, she quickly averted her eyes from the wide and pleading sad eyes of her target and cleared her throat, assuming the role of a nurse once again. With one quick motion, she inserted the syringe into her target's arm and emptied its contents, keeping her face emotionless throughout.
It had been a little more than two years since she became the Black Widow, and she found it had been getting quicker and easier for her to put her targets down. However, there was not once when she had been able to look them in the eye and watch them draw their very last breath.
This time felt different. She had removed the syringe by now, ready to make her exit before the guards noticed anything was wrong when she caught sight of the silver of moisture at the corners of the eyes of the bedridden man. She had held the eyes full of sorrow then, watching the man mouth his very last words.
Leave my family alone.
It was too late.
The machine in the room had started to ping out of control, sounding much too loud in the silent room. The guards immediately looked at her with accusing faces.
I will get help. She turned on her heels, and took off from the room, putting on a flustered appearance when actually thinking of the quickest escape route from the building: the roof top.
She had just reached the stairwell at the end of the hallway after passing the curious and suspicious stares of the other guards when she heard the guards in the ward finally putting two and two together.
Get her!
She flew up the stairs, gaining a head start just as the army of guards made to move towards the stairwell after her.
Throwing the door open, the fresh air hit her face and cleared her lungs of the hospital air in which illness and death hung.
Completely acting on the survival instincts the Red Room had endowed her with, she immediately slammed the door shut and latched it before swiveling her head around, looking for anything that could come in useful in either her escape from or her attack against that many trained guards.
That was when she caught sight of the countless rows of overheated air-conditioning units, along with a few bottles of alcohol abandoned by the hospital. Before she could even register her own actions, she doused the units with the highly flammable liquid and reached for her widow's bites from under the nurse's uniform, activating them before aiming them at select units.
Running to take cover, she felt the heat of the enormous spontaneous combustion of the units at the very moment the guards succeeded in busting the door open.
Shouts were suddenly ringing from the hoard whose primary focus had now shifted to getting the occupants of the hospital out of the building before the huge fire threatened to spread.
She saw her chance and she took it.
As the guards retreated back into the building, she grabbed the few other bottles of alcohol and strategically poured a trail towards the stairwell and down the stairs. When it was enough to ensure that the fire would surely spread as much as possible downwards toward the lower floors, she fled, knowing that the fire would engulf her as quickly as it would the guards and the building.
However, as she perched on the roof of the hotel and watched the burning building now glowing with flames, the previous trance she was in finally wore off. She was finally looking at the damage she had caused from just her survival instincts alone.
What have I done?
Her heart beat wildly.
I had to do it to live; the guards were in my way. I had to do it.
She tried to calm herself down, but unlike previous times when she could easily brush off the guilt by telling herself that she simply had to do it, her heart continued to pound against her chest.
This time it was different.
Her other targets had pleaded for their own lives, when she was in the mood to let them speak before she ended their lives. This target, however, the sickly man lying in a bed in a hospital, had pleaded for his family and his children.
He had pleaded for the ones he loved.
What have I done?
Her eyes shifted into focus again, taking in the sight before her.
The hospital building was now fully ablaze, the trail of alcohol clearly working as the fire worked its way down the stairs and finally took over the lobby too.
Screams filled her ears.
The arid smell of smoke filled her lungs.
Heat ate at her skin even though she was on the other side of the street.
And most of all, there was one thing that filled the air.
It was death.
What have I done?
The air of death that had filled the hospital within had now made its way out, escaping the building while making it obvious that the sickly patients in the building had been unable to accomplish the same feat.
A crowd had started to arrive at the scene, some crying out for their loved ones still in the fire.
Once again, she was reminded of the man in the ward at the topmost level, probably not only dead, but also burnt and charred beyond recognition by now.
He had loved ones too.
What have I done?
The fire.
The people left behind.
The love that was lost.
Wasn't this how I once killed Papa and Mama?
What have I done?
Collateral damage, the Red Room had called it, when she returned and reported how the events had played out.
But collateral damage was not what she would call the look in the man's eyes as he pleaded for a life that was not his own. It was not what she would call the thick smell of death that still haunted her that night. It was not what she would call the cries of the people as they prayed for their loved ones.
The Red Room had only told her that she had made a mistake of not leaving once the job was done. All they said about it was for her to be more careful in future, to do a more thorough job.
She lay awake that night, trying to shut out the raspy whisper of her target.
My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova, and I am the Black Widow. I don't make mistakes, but I think I've made one today.
I didn't leave the room fast enough. I hadn't been careful enough. I needed to be more thorough on my job.
Utter rubbish.
I killed a man today. He didn't seem to deserve it.
I killed an entire hospital of people today. They didn't seem to deserve it.
Perhaps not as much as I do.