{4}
Natasha experienced life and death. Many times when she was wounded, the world around her had never changed in her absence of thought, and never allowed a new kaleidoscope to shroud over the crimson haze with the brilliance of colors that robbed her from peace. After lifetimes of stitching the gashes and cutting into the bullet holes, she would sometimes get the clarity of a image of her old existence.
The Russian ballerina that shared her mother's grace on the hardwood, and moved with the rhythmic pulse of her heart beat. Then, those images snapped. The lights would bleed out red as the murky darkness consumed everything.
Natalia Alianovna Romanova, the true woman behind the semblance of the Black Widow, the woman who played to the common weakness in men, pulling them on the invisible thread and ensnaring them in her inescapable web her blacken sins weaved, while she waited in the shadows of their dreams, patience was her strength, and seduction her fatal power that she used to strike men with, merciless, and unforgiving, just like the lethal spider. For the reason, she allowed the name Black Widow to etch over her skin, hired a gun-a desensitized weapon by underground organizations, terrorist cells, the Russian Black Market, governments, KBG, and the military. She became infamous through database of in the International agency circle; using her astute methods, ruthlessness and deception to survive the years of being scarred so many times from trusting men.
Powerful men feared her and other revered her. There was only one man who she allowed to enter her territory without her venom coursing in his veins.
Natasha never felt alone in the darkness. She'd been stripped from her humanity with infliction of pain from torture devices. Her ivory skin was blotched with raw scabs, claw marks from rusted instruments of punishment. She was surrounded by coldness and vacant shadows of terror, encroaching, blood churning screams of depravity echoing within the halls, taunting her to the breaking point with insanity penetrating against her soul.
During the months of being imprisoned in the room, Natasha had been given a chance to prove her resistance against the desensitization periods of injections and mind alerting methods if necessary to spear her compliance. Given treatments of experimental toxins, she was condemned. She couldn't run. She couldn't search for escape without having sinister eyes of the guards watching her movements. She was frozen in the red shadow, using her lithe and petite frame as a advantage to lure her captors close to her.
She had to use the tools that the cell provided to fight and kill with not sense of mortality running in her veins. It was pure carnage.
However, her impulses of rage never lasted; not when the silent wraith entered her space, and brought her down to a pitiful level of dissemblance and subornation. He was ruthless, brutal and relentless with attack. His methods were elusive and lethal.
The butchers called him 'Ghost' he adopted that name when he was thawed out from the ice coffin, and placed into isolation chamber until his voice drained out of him. It was a method of torture. He was mute and obedient to every command programmed within the binary codes of his disassembled mind. In other words, he was a hollow semblance of a nameless man. A senseless weapon created for the purpose to destroy and obey.
Within the next months, Ghost had become her mentor and partner on covert missions of infiltration, assassinations and interference with data mining. She had become the efficient spy who killed her prey with rounds of bullets and wire. She became a symbol of death in the hearts and minds of Russia; and her fame granted her power against international threats. And Ghost had develop a new identity after receiving a new weapon-a metallic alloy arm that had replaced his old plastic and steel limb. It forged in the molten heart of HYDRA, and attached to the marred skin of his left shoulder.
It was inorganic, but he learn how to control every movement of contortion, and after a few terminations, a red star was painted on the chrome plating. A symbol of his alliance with his new masters.
He became the 'Winter Soldier' a haunting phantasm of metal and leather. His long dark brown hair gave him the wolfish appearance, and piecing, vacant blue eyes became the cold, unrelenting gaze of death to his targets. He was walking armory for his masters; a nightmare to anyone who crossed his icy path.
He was lost to her.
Her heart had been butchered, and soul ripped out her. She loved him, but the sad conclusion of his life meant that the connection they once shared would become lethal resentment towards each other.
It was hard to allow the walls that she had built around her to crumble back down after she watched the man she loved become shackled to a life of mindless torture and red death.
She knew trust was a weakness, a compromising sense that was veiled betrayal. She concealed all her emotions, standing on her guard, and not giving chance a reason to strike her down. She seemed struck in the dark place, she roamed the world searching for new existence-a new life without her darkest grievances marking her a condemned woman.
'I will find you little spider. Remember that you are mine.'
"No," Natasha straggled, her breaths hitching and catching. She snapped her eyes open, finding herself into the folds of murky darkness, the world was shades of crimson, vision was swimming as she searched for a way out of her torment. The deafening sound of the gun being fired numbed her ears. The eruption of pain ignited in her veins, heart was skipping a beat and when she swallowed back her saliva, the coppery tang of blood dripped into her throat.
She felt frigid hands of a demon choking her, squeezing her pulse and making her voiceless to scream. She gripped the sheets, violently into a tight clutch and thrashed every muscle. "This isn't real.." She objected, screaming at the top of her lungs, her strangled cry echoing through the walls of the guest bedroom.
The familiar of olden pain induced her system. She felt herself collapsing: desperately, spinelessly, uncontrollably into the colds of her captor. She tumbled off the bed, face smacking against the hardwood as the world became shards of dark jet, piercing through her skin. Her heart beat shuddered in her ears. "Somebody help me," she unleashed her frantic cries of desperation, arms thrusted outwards as she reached for something solid to grasp onto while she was being pulled under the red haze blanking over her body.
'You have failed me, Natalia." A cryptic, inhumane voice coercing in the shadows around her; scarred against her ear drums. "You have failed your father.'
Fear launched itself into full assault. Her eyelids clamped shut. Her head impacted the floor. Blood trickled from her lips. Her awareness of the world began to falter, and the faint streaks of light, didn't caress over her skin. Only darkness consumed her.
"Get out of my head," she screeched, clawing at the covers draped over her torso, constricting and tangling her into amass of choking folds. She was melting away-slipping back into fathomless void of her past. Fire ignited in her belly and tears rampaged down her cheeks, slicing into the skin. 'Help me!" she screamed, her voice dimming into low octaves, and breath was beginning to grow thick in her raw lungs.
'You can't escape from me little girl. I will always be inside your dreams. No matter how far you try to bury me.'
"Steve!" Natasha released panic filled cries; beckoning the super-soldier, her guardian angel to rescue her from the hellish delirium. Her ribs hurt, and she wanted to awake. Her sealed lips broke apart, and once more, she called out to him in ablaze of a wailing chorus of jostled nerve endings and throbbing bones. "Steve...Help me!"
"Natasha," his soft and harboring voice cut through the murky shades of crimson filtering behind her closed lids. His arms wrapped around her, cool hands eased the tension in her back, and she was being pull up. "Wake up, Natasha," he tried again, his steady words reached her ears. Blood seeped from her bandaged shoulder wound. She screamed. His hands never let her touch the floor. "Come on, Romanoff. Fight this."
"Steve," she whispered. Slurred. Why was she being effected? Did the bullet have something sprayed over it? A toxin?
"Yeah, I'm right here, Natasha." Steve said, threading his fingers through her disheveled, scarlet locks. He could smell the blood drenching over her bare shoulder. He wasn't to seeing her so vulnerable, scared and wounded, it was a strange feeling, but it still felt impermanent. All he could do was hold her in his arms, and not let her slip way. He embraced his warmth over her shivering body, his jaw rubbed against her head as her hands squeezed into fists into his shoulders. He closed his eyes, listening to the torment emanating from her throat.
He had to resist from crying-she needed his strength as he warred his fight against the torrents of shed tears. His soft breathing resumed, and his lips brushed wet heat over her clammy forehead as her tautness laxed. He laid his firm cheek against her shoulder, tilting his head and covering the tender areas of her neck with a soft kisses.
Natasha fluttered her eyes open, her muscles flexed, and she looked at him with glazed grayish eyes. "Steve," she choked into a long breath of suffering, and then she couldn't speak. Her palm swiped over the chiseled lines of his face. Tears welled in her eyes. She looked at him. Deeply, and intent at him. He was gorgeous in the dim light shining over their locked bodies. His crystal azure eyes glimmer with warmth and undeniable love. His soft, full arched lips held a restoring kiss, and his golden hair was ruffled from distress. He never took his eyes off of her. He was real.
No barriers, threads or lies.
"I owe big time, Rogers." her voice cracked, as she tried to disentangle her body from his muscular arms. She couldn't stop looking into his loving blue eyes that mirrored her own soul. "Can we pretend that pain doesn't exist?"
He nodded, quietly. His eyes fell to her lips. "I cannot lose you, Nat." he confessed, honestly ragged up his throat. "I'm not strong enough..."
He frowned, narrowing his head to his chest. Time seemed to stop. He swallowed sharply, and clenched his eyes shut.
"You mean so much to me...I couldn't face the day if you were taken. I won't be strong enough."
Her guarded eyes glinted. "Enough with the secrets, Rogers. Spill it."
He panted, his heart seized and lips broke apart. His eyes leveled at her, the blue swirled in his irises, and heavy tears of burden fell and sculpted over his indented curves of his strong jaw. The truth ripped out of him the instant he felt her barricaded heart beating against his chest. "I love you, Natasha."
She felt her heart thud to a complete stop.