Same disclaimers from chapter 1.
AN: Sorry for the enormous wait! Feel free to beat me with soap bars for torturing you so. Again, many thank yous for the support and reviews.
I want to remind you guys again I am operating in the movie!verse of The Avengers now that we are entering the timeline within the movie. Please excuse my errors or inconsistencies.
Also, there's a small bit of Italian in this chapter. I'm only a Spanish speaker, so I put what Google Translate told me and seemed to make sense, lol. If I have any Italian readers, I am so sorry if I butchered your gorgeous language!
Without further ado, enjoy!
I had to force myself to remember not to be mad at Clint for packing up with such ease and leaving so quickly. It wasn't his fault. It was the job. We are all trained to be able to disappear in an instant. And we were the best at what we did, after all.
Even so, the sight of Clint rushing in front of me through a busy airport with nothing but a small backpack slung on his strong shoulders made me want to scream. I wanted to scream, to call him back, to force him to walk slower. I wanted to go backwards, in fact. All the way to the end of his call, and make him take his time with every move thereafter. Cleaning up. Packing. Getting his affairs in order. I wanted to pull him away. Force him to be late. Force him to stay with me. Kiss him and make him forget he had anywhere to go in the first place. But I didn't. I'd stayed out of the way, watching him broodingly from afar while he completed his tasks with annoying efficiency. And now here we were, hurrying through a congested airport to a rushed goodbye.
Clint stopped suddenly just outside the security gate into his terminal in front of several sets of escalators. He turned and opened his arms just in time to catch me as I skidded into him. He hugged me to him, cocooning me against his chest. I didn't say a word, not in admission nor complaint. I just held on.
He pulled me away by the shoulders suddenly, making me look at him. His face was bright, excited with the idea of a new mission, and his eyes searched my face with a peculiar mix of sternness over his unmasked energy. I only stared back. I was not in danger of tears or sentimentality. I had accepted this was reality, these were the lives we had chosen to lead, and I knew he had to go. It was time I grew up and stopped breaking apart like a marionette any time he wasn't there to hold the strings. My resolve was strengthened by the acceptance of the knowledge that no mileage in between could tear me from him again.
"Tasha."
"Clint."
He dug in his small backpack suddenly and withdrew a small cell phone, the ones commonly commissioned to agents, and stuffed it in my hand, both of his hands closing my small pale one around it.
"This phone has one number programmed in it, one number that no one else has, for a phone in my bag. This one's yours, and you will be the only one able to reach mine with it. Okay?"
I stared from the phone to his eyes, his hands still clamped around mine. I remained silent, stunned at his preparations. The realization that he must have had this line ready since he came looking for me tied my throat. I looked down at my hand in his and swallowed.
"Whenever you need me, you'll call, okay? Anytime, anywhere. I'll answer. Okay?" he shook me impatiently. I looked up at him, nodding.
"Yes—yes, okay, I will."
He dropped my hand, seemingly satisfied and resting his chin on my head gently.
"You'll be brave while I'm away, won't you?" he whispered into my hair. His innocent tone made me positive he'd only meant the question as a joke, but the words dug into me like accusing daggers, reminding me painfully of the last time I hadn't been brave for him. We pulled apart slowly, Clint's eyes roving over me as if bent on memorizing me. I set my jaw and squared my shoulders. This time would be different.
"Of course I will," I said, trying for an airy tone to match his. Behind him, an announcement over the PA announced the last call for his flight and the urgency seemed to return to him suddenly. He held my face with both his hands, his eyes drilling mine.
"I'll come back, okay? For you. I swear!" he said fervently. I struggled to maintain a firm hold on my composure as I offered him a steady smile.
"Even if you don't, I will," I answered, and the acute honesty of my statement made me feel suddenly light and free.
"Tasha, look, I—" he swallowed, his eyes frenzied and blinking fast. My composure shook suddenly. He seemed to wrestle with himself as I stared, wide-eyed.
"Tasha, I lo—" he began in a hurry. As if by instinct, I slammed my lips to his suddenly, swallowing the rest of his words, letting what I know he would have said light me from the inside out like a fire.
"I know," I said with finality as I pulled away. I shoved him away from me. "Go, you'll be late. Go!"
I pushed him twice more into the surge of the crowd. His eyes still showed confusion as he let the current of people sweep him away. I watched him, hugging my arms around me as something seemed to tighten in my chest. I imagined a string, pulling at my ribs as it tautened with every passing second that Clint moved away from me. It strained insistently in his direction, demanding to close the widening gap.
I pulled my sweater tightly around myself, taking a resolute step backwards. I paused for only a moment as Clint's sandy hair disappeared at the top of the escalators before turning on my heel and disappearing myself. I wandered aimlessly around the city for most of the day. Not because I was lost, but because my motivation was. Only when the sky had turned a deep shade of purple did I return at last to the dark, lonely, wine cellar. Everything had been put back in place, the way Clint and I had found it weeks ago. The only telltale sign of our visit was a backpack in the corner that held my things, but that would be gone when I left as well. Maria had already made arrangements for me. I wasn't entirely sure where I was going. I didn't particularly care. It was just another job and that was that.
Base was much as I remembered it, except for various new faces I'd never seen before. New recruits, I realized. Many stopped to stare at me before scurrying away when I turned.
I made my way to my little apartment. The hallway leading to it, at least, still housed people I knew. Most even greeted me warmly. I had been so accustomed to their disdain for years that sometimes their friendliness still caught me off guard. I opened the door to my small apartment softly. Without even noticing, the apartment had slowly begun to show signs of my inhabitation over time. Letters addressed to me on the desk. Lotions and even a few perfume bottles on the shelf above the sink. A book I'd never finished on the bedside table. Personal clothing apart from agent gear hung in the closet. All the things that had been so conspicuously missing when I'd moved in eight years ago. I'd only just set down my bag when the door burst open behind me.
"You're home!" Maria yelled out, flinging herself on me. I staggered, surprised, before hugging her back. She pulled away to look at me, holding me by the shoulders. "And you're blonde. Oh, God, I've been waiting so long to actually see it in person. I was in the conference room and only just heard you'd arrived and well, of course, I ran over here as soon as I could and—" she gasped for breath. "I missed you."
I stared at her, flabbergasted, trying to catch up with her flood of words. A smile broke over me. "I missed you, too." The notion of "missing" and "home" was rather foreign to me, even now, but I realized I had missed her, and this really was as close to a home as I'd ever had.
"Please tell me you'll be here for a bit. A few nights? Just one? Please? You know… you work too much. Agents actually do take vacations sometimes. Do you know what a vacation is?"
I smiled. I actually hadn't planned to stay. I never did, usually. But I was in no rush to go anywhere, really, so it made no difference. "I didn't know, actually, that vacations were in the job description. What with the whole 'crime-never-sleeps' thing and all."
"Oh, don't be such a hero. They're rare, I'll give you that, but agents have been known to take a day or two off once in a while."
"Not me."
"Obviously." She looked over me again, taking a lock of my loose hair in between her fingers. "Looks good, you know. The hair, I mean."
I looked down bashfully. "Thanks." I often forgot my hair was blonde, actually, and was only reminded when I saw my reflection. In truth, I quite missed my red curls. The blonde reminded me too much of my moment of weakness. A very conspicuous reminder of something shameful.
"Stay the night, won't you? We can go out for drinks," she said, wiggling her eyebrows at me. I laughed.
"Fine, alright. Will you let me shower now?" She smiled and finally let go of me.
"I'll be back to go to lunch," she called as she began retreating for the door. I began unpacking my bag onto my bed.
"See you then," I said, watching until the door clicked behind her. When it did, I fell back onto the bed, my arms spread wide, feeling more exhausted than I had in a long time. The bed felt strange and foreign to me. I realized with a pang I'd become accustomed to the sheets smelling like Clint, who took most of them in the middle of the night more often than not. I got up at once, flinching away from memories of him that made my stomach knot instantly. I ducked into the bathroom to shower, trying to simply focus on the getting clean part and not the idea that Clint and I had never had sex in a shower and definitely should have.
I stayed in the room to sleep away most of the morning until Maria's knock came at the door. I got up groggily to answer it and actually put something above the undergarments I'd spent all morning in while Maria swept in and chatted away about her morning. It stunned me just how different our lives really were. I was used to danger and delivering death. On a day to day basis, however, Maria was more used to emails and delivering memos than anything else. The guns at her hip and calf seemed comically ornamental despite the fact I knew them to be loaded at all times.
We did head out for lunch and Maria even managed to drag me out for drinks that night, mostly because she told me she wouldn't give me my mission file if I didn't. Being out for casual affairs was almost too normal for comfort, and it didn't help that we seemed to garner a healthy amount of curious glances and whispers from younger Apprentice agents wherever we went.
"You're something of a legend around here," Maria said with a calm smile as we passed yet another pair of young giggling girls who immediately stopped dead to stare at me with the expression of deer in the headlights. They seemed so young, much younger than I could ever remember being. I tried to imagine Maria and I at that age, but I couldn't. I wasn't even sure if I had ever had the ability to giggle.
"Legend?" I repeated with a disbelieving laugh.
"Oh, don't give me that. Senior agents are always admired by the hatchlings, but even among our Senior ranks you have a track record for being one of the best," Maria said matter-of-factly, rolling her eyes. My brows furrowed. I wasn't around base much obviously, but I would have never dreamed I'd suddenly gathered such respect in my absence. The admiration of Seniors I could faintly relate with, though when I was an Apprentice, I'd only ever cared about one.
"Here's your file," Maria said as we stopped outside my apartment door, handing me a fat manila envelope. I took it without comment. I was neither glad nor upset at the new mission. It was just work. Just something to do. "I know I won't see you again for a while, so… take care of yourself, Nat," Maria said, her head cocked to the side and smiling such that she looked seventeen again, like I'd only just met her. She hugged me and I patted her back awkwardly. I couldn't hug her back the way I might hug Clint, but neither could I refuse her these small symbols of friendship. She'd been my first, after all. Before I knew I'd had one all along.
Watching Maria walk around the hallway corner with her steady and firm gait was indeed the last time I saw her "for a while." Six months later, I'd only heard her voice through my agent cell a total of three times. And I'd lost track of the time somewhere in the midst of throwing myself back into the job. I'd sunk silently into the middle of the Italian countryside, taking up dwelling in the small Tuscan town of Castelnuovo Berardenga. I'd quietly taken residence in a small villa on the outskirts of town that had been turned into something of a family-run bed and breakfast. The family was often too occupied maintaining their small vineyard to pay me much attention, however, and that suited me just fine. Castelnuovo was the closest town to the Tuscan summer villa a few miles out belonging to a drug lord who was Irish, of all things. Killing him when he came out to lounge by his enormous pool—which he did often—would have been easy. Getting the list of his extensive business partners was a bit trickier. Half of it I'd made up from the people who visited him to finalize transactions. The other half I'd have to work my way up to stealing. It wasn't the fastest process, but at least the scenery wasn't bad. Or at least, that's what I told myself on particularly frustrating days, after endless hours of surveying his house to see not much more than the guard dogs pissing on the lawn.
I returned back to the inn quite late, usually, after a long walk back, but after about two months, the young daughter of the innkeepers had taken to staying up to offer me dinner. I could only understand bits and pieces of what she said, but I soon learned it was easier to placate her than to try to convince her to stop. She was always pleased when I did sit down to eat in the small downstairs kitchen. She couldn't be more than fourteen or fifteen years old, with large dark eyes that always seemed insatiably eager.
One night that her mother had come storming down, rushing her off to bed with embarrassed apologies in my direction, I'd learned the girl's name was Caterina. Obviously not I nor her mother had any effect on her, however, because the glow from the small gas lamp hanging in the kitchen window signaling her wakefulness welcomed me home the next night as well.
After "dinner," the process to fall asleep was always a long one. The nightmares hadn't stopped so much as I had gained a new tolerance for them. Still, sleep wasn't the most appealing thing on my to-do list. A small orange tabby cat, obviously a stray given its thinness, which I saw often around the town had taken to slipping into my room at night when I arrived and meowing moodily at my heels as I undressed. I couldn't find it in me to shoo him away, especially at night, the loneliest time for me as well. So I'd lay in bed and watch the moon over the vineyards while the cat purred itself to sleep in the window's empty planter until sleep also claimed me.
One ring. Two rings. "Tasha?"
His steady voice instantly soothed me, always to be expected after the second ring. I only called him after the worst of nightmares, or particularly sleepless nights. I tried desperately not to be needy, but I still found myself calling him at least every three weeks. Sometimes it was quiet on his end, sometimes I literally heard him say "Sorry, I gotta take this," and remove himself from the hubbub around him. Sometimes it was obvious I'd woken him from sleep, other times it almost seemed he'd been expecting my call, as if he'd been just about ready to call me if I hadn't. He couldn't disclose much of what he was doing, so I never asked what he was up to. Mostly, I'd just listen to him talk about inconsequential things, like the weather or the state of his hair. I would tell him about Caterina's eyes, and the stray cat I had taken to simply calling Kitten in Russian, and the people in the village and what they sold. He'd listen silently, of course, but even through the phone I could almost feel the physicality of the intentness with which he listened. Maybe it was simply because I was sure it reflected the total captivation with which I hung onto his every syllable. We always signed off with simple, if somewhat doleful, good-byes. Never, under any circumstances, did I tell him I missed him. The first time I had tried, I'd almost choked on the words and literally thrown up, suddenly dizzied by the physical ache of the insurmountable miles between my voice and his. He'd only said "I know," into the sudden silence, and neither of us had tried again since.
One day I'd returned to my room from the market to find Caterina, who surely thought I wouldn't return until late in the night again, standing in the middle of my room with one of my daggers in her thin hands. I'd let no one into my room for the express reason that my work lay everywhere, from paperwork to maps to pictures. I did my best to hide the weapons when I went out, though I couldn't always help forgetting and leaving one lying around. Evidently, that day had been one of the times I'd forgotten. The blade had clattered out of Caterina's hands when I entered, her eyes wide like saucers. I rushed in, and slammed the door behind me, picking up the blade and stuffing it under my pillow along with as many papers as I could get off the small desk.
"Scusa! Scusa!" she kept repeating frantically, fumbling with her thin hands. Sorry! Sorry! Even having been caught in the wrong however, her eyes could not contain their faint glimmer of usual eagerness, of curiosity despite her bashfulness. I grasped her hands and drilled into her eyes with mine, trying to keep myself from seeming frantic.
"Segreto! Segreto!" I told her as best I could. Secret! Secret! I gestured to the papers still lying around the room. "Segreto!" I held a finger to my lips.
She seemed to understand, nodding importantly as if honored at having been included in the charade. "Segreto," she agreed. I ran my hands through my hair, which tickled my shoulders by then. If she said anything, I could always disappear, but it would be horribly inconvenient now that my plans were drawing to a close. If she kept her mouth shut for just a few more weeks, I'd disappear before anyone even remembered I'd been there at all.
Caterina was obviously trying not to anger me further, but she couldn't stop her curious eyes from glancing at the maps that still hung on one wall. I noticed and immediately tried to usher her out. She didn't object, but at the door she suddenly turned to me, her eyes as wide and eager as ever, and whispered excitedly "Sei un supereroe?"
I vaguely understood her rapid words. Are you a superhero?
I blinked at her and slowly shook my head. She looked disappointed. "Sono un fantasma. Un segreto." I am a ghost. A secret. That seemed mysterious enough to placate her and she grinned again, full of curiosity and energy.
"Certo. Un segreto," she nodded again. Right. A secret. She gave me a meaningful look as if to reassure me my secret was safe with her before skittering away, her dark hair swinging behind her. I sighed, leaning against the door. I would be reassured the sooner I finished this mission.
All my belongings were packed neatly back into the smallest amount of luggage possible on the eve of my planned break in into the summer villa of Geremy MacAuley. I left my packed duffel hidden neatly under my bunk and readied myself for one last day of surveillance. I'd been creeping closer and closer over time. Blueprints were memorized clearly in my head. Every move was planned precisely. It was past the time for mistakes.
I lay most of the day in the thick foliage of a tree on the outskirts of the property, taking notes in a thin black book on the routines of the guards and security. I'd already copied the notes a thousand times before, but precision was my key. The day seemed as uneventful as any when night began to fall and I used the cover of darkness to sneak closer to the house. I stayed later than usual, and sometime near dawn, I started the trek back home. I was just nearing the town when I heard the faintest crunch behind me. I ducked into an alley, my heart jumping into my throat in my surprise. When I was this close to arriving, I tended to relax a bit and I reprimanded myself for the lapse in judgment. I jumped silently onto a low roof by climbing a stack of wine crates and lay on my belly, surveying the street. But it was silent and still as ever, the faint stirrings of early rising villagers not even heard yet. I lay my forehead on the concrete of the ceiling and took a deep breath. Leave it up to my paranoia to try to get the best of me now when the end was so close. Even so, I took the long way through the village back to my clean little room to catch as many hours of sleep as I could until the afternoon.
I awoke in the early evening to the sound of the vineyard down the hill being tilled and Kitten meowing at the closed door. I let him in as I gazed out the window. Even from here, I could see the familiar dark head of hair that was Caterina, seeming to bounce with her bubbly prance. It'd been little over a month since I'd found her in my room, and to her credit, it seemed she'd kept her oath of silence. She still waited up for me with food as long as she could. When I began coming later, I'd find the kitchen empty and dark, but the plate still set for me. She later dejectedly explained to me her mother had begun enforcing a curfew. As I watched, she set off at a run down the row suddenly and jumped lithely onto a young man's shoulders, who I'd come to learn was her eldest brother. He twirled her around with a laugh I couldn't hear. I turned away from the window and began getting ready, dressing in my familiar agent regalia. I was fully geared and ready when I finally clipped on my Widow belt. I touched the red symbol lightly, my eyes closing and my breath deepening. My body adjusted to mission mode faster than my mind did. Muscle memory, I guess.
I left money on the small kitchen table, gave Kitten a final scratch behind the ears, and set off into the rapidly darkening evening with my duffel slung over my back. I heard Kitten's meows behind me long after I'd vanished from sight.
With my electrostatic bracelets charged, a gun with a silencer at my hip, and the cover of nightfall, I crawled closer to the house and climbed heavy vines around the chimney to the roof. I crawled through the precise path avoiding the angle of the various cameras to the nearest air vent, probably the most convenient mode of entry. I crawled toward the kitchen, the room nearest the library where MacAuley's files would be kept. I set my duffel down in the vent and peeked into the kitchen. Empty, according to plan. Distant creaks, however, informed me that the hallway outside was not.
I dropped soundlessly onto the island and crept to the door. With a quick flick of my hand, several pellets that immediately emitted an aerosol spray with a muted hiss rolled down the hall. Within moments, several thuds told me it had been effective. I peeked and saw four guards lying at the end of the hall, completely knocked out. I smiled proudly. I'd been working on perfecting an instant knock-out gas. I wasn't really a science prodigy, but lack of sleep certainly gave one time enough to tinker. I liked to call the gas Widow's Kiss.
I dragged the four men to a small linen closet down the hall and continued around the corner. With a well-aimed hit at the camera focused on the library door, I knew I only had about four and a half minutes before the cycle of camera feeds gave me away and called the hoards down on me. A guard came ambling around the corner and another well-aimed hit at him got rid of that problem. I dashed into the library, immediately sitting and connecting my SHIELD server to the computer. I glanced anxiously from the screen to my watch as the server first unlocked the computer security system and then saved the files. Two minutes left and only 37% done. I bit my lip.
I left the server to work and exited the library, locking it behind me. So much for planning every move. I couldn't lose my chance at MacAuley. His routine told me he'd be in the drawing room at the other side of the house, taking his tea before bed. I ran the other way down the hall towards the left wing of the house, coming across another guard. I swung my legs around his neck and brought him to the floor under me, jabbing my hands at his head and discharging the bracelets. With a blue glow, his body fell slack below me. I didn't know if he was unconscious or dead. It was the same to me anyway.
I opened the door to the drawing room and saw MacAuley's gray head over a wide-backed chair, a newspaper open in his hands and a cup of tea on the small table beside him. He groaned. "This better be fookin' important to disturb me during me tea," he growled, turning a page of the newspaper. I had snuck to the back of his chair when he finally turned after a moment of silence and said angrily, "Well!?"
He laid eyes on me and there was the briefest flash of shock before he opened his mouth, breathing in to yell. I swung my fist over the chair reflexively, hitting him hard on the mouth, his teeth cutting my knuckles. I swung over the chair as he stumbled to the floor, momentarily stunned with pain. I landed on his chest, my knees pinning his arms, and my hands holding either side of his head. The blue lightning shot from my wrists again and his eyes were blank and staring before he had time to even register he'd fallen. I swung on my heel, shaking my smarting hand and exiting out into the hall. I could hear the creak of running boots nearby. My heart pounded with adrenaline. I needed to make a speedy exit and soon.
I ran with abandon down the hall, my gun swinging from one target to the next without hesitation. I reached the library door and kicked it down; I was beyond the element of surprise now anyway. Yells were echoing in the floor below. For once, I was glad MacAuley had bought himself such a ridiculously large house. I rounded on the computer and the screen told me the download was complete. I gasped with relief and yanked it off just as another guard appeared at the doorway. In the second he yelled "Here! Over here!" instead of shot me, my bullet found his skull. But by the commotion in the hall, I knew his comrades were close behind. I turned behind the desk and struggled with one of the large windows. I pried it open just as bullets rang out behind me, splintering the wooden desk. Beyond the point of caution, I dropped gracelessly out the window the two stories to the ground below. A sudden shocking stab of pain in my right ankle told me it was fractured. But the pain was dulled quickly by my sudden adrenaline and the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I ran crookedly towards the hedge, my hands fumbling at a small button at my belt. I pressed it just as I ducked into the heavy shrubbery, and behind me, the duffel I'd left in the air vent above the kitchen suddenly exploded, enveloping the right side of the house in flames and sending the roof sky high. Debris fell everywhere with loud thuds. A heavy piece of the home's ceramic shingles caught me just over the eyebrow as I ducked out of the garden. Blood ran into my eye but I had no time to stop. The bullets behind me had stopped for the moment, but there were still yells, and the fire could give away my position. I ran without stopping, crossing gardens and vineyards. I just had to get over the hill to a small car I'd had parked waiting for me in a small alley near the inn I'd been staying at. I'd had it available for months, but as I never had much need for it, I'd kept it hidden and at the ready. I reached the inn none too soon, my ankle threatening to give out on me despite my stamina now that the first wave of adrenaline had begun to ebb.
I was halfway across the lot to the alley, limping frantically in the darkness, when I heard a loud crash behind me and I immediately dived sideways behind a large wagon, my energy again spiking up with my incessant need to survive. Out of nowhere, Kitten seemed to appear out of the darkness, meowing mournfully at me.
"Hush, Kitten," I whispered in Russian. I'd taken to talking to the cat and myself in Russian. I thought it had something to do with being in a country with an almost entirely foreign language. Kitten meowed again, a low dreadful howl. I was about to shoo him away when there was another loud crash, coming from the inn. I looked around the wagon, my chest pounding painfully. I was readying myself for a mad dash the rest of the way to the alley when a scream pierced the air, loud, frantic, and distinctly female, followed by an echoing gunshot. My heart stopped.
Faintly, in the back of my head, I recalled taking an oath to protect innocent people when I was 20 years old. I thought vaguely of this as I ran blindly toward the inn, precisely the opposite way of my waiting car, ignoring the throbbing complaints of my ankle. I crashed into the kitchen with my shoulder and vaguely registered the splatter of blood on one wall and the feet peeking around the table, before a body crashed into me from the other side, slamming me into the wall painfully.
"I was wondering when you'd make an appearance, Black Widow," came a female voice in English, with the slightest twang of Irish accent. I balanced on my good leg and brought my knee up into her groin, taking the opportunity to slam my elbow into the side of her head when she staggered back. She was dressed exactly like MacAuley's guards, in a sharp suit with his family crest on the breast pocket. The only difference being the fact she actually had breasts. She caught herself on the wall and wiped blood from her mouth with her sleeve, her silvery blonde hair falling over her face. In that instant, I recognized her.
"Alana MacAuley," I whispered unconsciously and she grinned, her teeth bloody. She was one of Geremy MacAuley's two children, a pair of fraternal twins. Geremy had always had extremely traditional ideals and had always favored the male twin, Emmet MacAuley, as his favorite child and heir. Eager to earn her father's approval, Alana had thrown herself into the "family business," seizing exceedingly male roles—such as, it seemed, security—to prove herself.
"So you know who I am… Well, I know who you are too, Widow. Your pretty face is famous in the underworld," she said nastily, circling around the kitchen table. "I saw you at the villa yesterday. I followed you. You managed to lose me last night, but I found your little hide-out in the end, didn't I?" she grinned maliciously. I remembered suddenly the faint noises I'd heard behind me the night before and my stomach rolled.
"Hoping to take my pretty head to daddy? Think it might make him like you?" I baited, sliding the other way on the wall. She growled, continuing to move closer to me. I tried to move without putting too much pressure on my ankle and without calling attention to the injury.
"It might," she spat, rounding around the table so she was ahead of me again. All of a sudden, she lunged forward, and I half-jumped, half-threw myself out of the way, clutching at a dining chair for support. She swiveled and immediately her arms jabbed out like angry snakes towards me, punching me squarely on one side of the ribs. Blocking her punches, I suddenly swung my head forward, crunching my forehead into hers. For a moment, the world spun and I only vaguely registered the fact she'd let go of me as she teetered backwards. My hands grasped desperately at the chair behind me and with a final spurt of energy, I brought it around me, crunching it over Alana's head. She fell onto the floor, her eyes swimming and blood gushing from a gash on the underside of her jaw. I pulled my gun, my arm swinging like a noodle as I aimed. For a moment, her roving eyes focused on the barrel of the gun, then on me.
"Is he dead? Is my father dead, did you kill him?" she gasped in between her heaving pants.
"Yes."
She turned her head and spat a huge wad of spit and blood to the side of her. "Good," she said, barely a whisper, before turning to face me with a disturbingly calm finality. It was a clean hit. Right between the eyes.
I fell to my knees beside her, my head bowed with exhaustion. Only then did I notice again the small feet around the table. I dragged myself up and limped around the table, but only got halfway before I clutched again at a chair for support, bending over myself with nausea as bile rose in my throat. There on the floor, looking particularly small and broken, was Caterina, one side of her head blown open, her long hair splayed out over the floor like a black fan, and a huge pool of blood painting her thin neck bright red.
"Oh, God. Oh, God, Caterina. Oh, God," I kept repeating as I sunk to my knees beside her. I held her head delicately in my lap, uselessly patting at the wound on her left side. Her eyes were left wide like saucers, but as glassy as empty windows, like a house without a tenant. The curiosity and excitement that had always lit them like candles was now startlingly absent, leaving them looking like dark pools of ink. My head swam, my eyes seeing nothing but the encroaching darkness of hers, seeming to grow bigger and bigger the longer I looked. I swallowed my bile and ran out to the alley, this time not stopping until the car's engine revved and Castelnuovo was shrinking into the distance in the rear view mirror. Somewhere, I heard Kitten give one more anguished meow to bid me goodbye. Or maybe it was good riddance.
"Can you tell me again what you saw?"
"No."
"Natasha…" A reprimand.
"A girl with her brains blown out, God damn it, what more is there to it?"
"Well, there must be something if it made you start having such severe nightmares…"
I snorted, looking up from my folded hands in my lap to the hunched man in front of me. He was skinny, with glasses several times too big for his face. And he really thought my latest episode of nightmares was my first. How endearing. He was the fifth psychiatrist I'd seen in the past two weeks, since revealing to Maria my lackluster sleeping schedule. She swore she was "just worried," and "it couldn't hurt," and I'd "feel better." My ass.
"Have you ever seen a girl with her brains blown out?" I asked casually, as if asking if he had seen last night's ball game. He pushed up his glasses.
"No, I c—"
"You talk pretty casually about death for someone who has never had to see it, doctor. I mean really see it. To look death in the eye, have you ever done that?" I asked, twiddling my thumbs. The psychiatrist cleared his throat and pulled off his glasses to clean with the corner of his shirt.
"Natasha—"
"Agent Romanoff, if you please."
He sighed. "Agent Romanoff, you are a hero." Again, I couldn't suppress a sarcastic snort. "Oh, give yourself some credit, Agent. Not everyone can do what you do. You face evil. You save lives—"
"I end lives, doctor."
"Every work for good has a price, Agent Romanoff." I closed my eyes and bent my head to rub my temples. It was the third time I'd heard this whole spiel and the pattern was beginning to show.
"We're ticking time bombs, doctor, every single one of us. And you can sit every fucked up agent that ambles through that door in this nice, comfortable office and tell us we're heroes but that doesn't change the fact that we're time bombs and we will continue to go off. Again and again and again."
"Death is a natural part of life, as integral to life as life itself. It happens every day, Agent. We can't stop everyone from dying."
I closed my eyes, frustrated. "It's. Not. The. Same," I ground out for what felt like the millionth time. "An Italian girl of fifteen wasn't meant to die. I could've been anywhere else, I could've stayed anywhere else. I could have stayed in a damn horse stable instead of that inn and she would have lived."
"But she didn't. Now what?"
"Now nothing. She's dead. The last incurable illness of humankind, I'm afraid, doctor."
"So why fret over something you cannot change? You did not kill her Natasha. She was just there. Wrong place, wrong time."
I frowned at that. "How many people have to die because they were just there?" I whispered as I looked out the window, not really asking for an answer. I knew there wasn't one. I looked back into the eyes of the doctor; they were a watery blue, and they looked at me with the same certainty I'd seen in the previous four psychiatrists. And I knew then he'd never understand, just like they hadn't. They, who had never dealt death, would never know the significance of an innocent life. They would never understand the unbearable weight of the lives I stole that hung on my shoulders. And I could try to explain it a thousand times, but they'd never feel it like I did. They could sympathize with the loss, but really, they only saw occupational hazards. And I could only see the stolen infinities of someone's existence.
I had accepted this after the third psychiatrist. I was only here at further insistence from the mental health department after showing "unresponsiveness" to the previous doctors. I wasn't unresponsive; I just knew it was futile. It was my burden to bear and it would evidently stay that way. I couldn't blame them really. But it was easier than pitying myself.
"You do understand how you're helping the world by doing what you do, don't you?" the doctor asked, bringing my attention back to him.
I blinked, trying hard to concentrate on the big picture and not Caterina's empty eyes. I nodded like I knew I should.
"You can't choose who gets hurt. But every day, your actions choose who you save. You're taking care of people, Agent."
I could tell the session was over when he leaned back to scribble notes onto his pad. He didn't hear me when I, thinking of the suffocating weight on my chest, sighed "Who takes care of us?"
It had been a gray and stormy month at base, dragging myself through my days between therapy appointments and guest visits in Apprentice classes. Somewhere in between, I'd found the time to cut my hair now that my roots were growing out. I cut my curls to my chin and colored it back to its usual red while my natural color grew out. It was comforting to see the crimson curls again. It felt like a tiny piece of me I'd fought my way to regain and had finally earned. The piece I'd lost at my weakest.
Maria had been in and out of base as much as the rain outside, her level of stress seeming to slowly increase, worry lines beginning to crease the skin where her eyebrows crinkled together. When asked what she was up to, she only shook her head mournfully, telling me she couldn't tell and reminding me of the first time I'd asked her about Clint from my cell when I was seventeen. She'd only told me with a very tired smile she'd been promoted to Fury's lieutenant and accepted my congratulations with a modest and somewhat weary "thank you." Whatever the job entailed, it certainly seemed to weigh on her, and I appreciated her effort to check on me. Tailing Fury couldn't be easy, after all.
"How's your… sleep?" Maria asked some weeks later. I knew she was trying to avoid saying the word "nightmares," and I wish I could tell her not to worry so much. Instead, I just shrugged.
"Uh… I think the pills are really helping," I said smoothly to soothe her. After more of the same sessions with various doctors and repeating several times the things I knew they wanted to hear, they could find nothing else to hold me for and declared me "fit for duty." All I had to do was take some anxiety pills, which didn't seem like such a bad thing until they started making me feel sluggish and stupid. I'd begun systematically flushing them down the toilet.
"Well, here's your next mission. Careful out there," she said with a meaningful look, handing me the envelope before rushing away to her next engagement. She seemed to do that a lot these days.
I bounced from mission to mission for a while, pretending not to notice I kept getting assigned "strictly reconnaissance." I knew the health department was still keeping an eye on me and this was like something of a parole. I felt like a new agent again. But I didn't complain. I did my work cleanly and efficiently, knowing that was the fastest way to get them off my back. And I hardly cared anyway what the job was anymore. I was beyond the age of yearning for action missions for glory. Reconnaissance was almost a relief. I considered it a small way of keeping my death count down, though I'd admit it to nobody.
When my first action mission assigned to me turned out to be in Russia, I couldn't tell if this was some weak attempt to put me at ease or a way to further test me. As always, Clint told me with a laugh to "just relax" when I called to tell him. His laugh made my stomach clench painfully. That was the last time I called him. And it was that laugh that stroked my nightmares after he was taken.
I studiously began the process of attaining information on my target, a Russian smuggler. The fastest way came to me in the form of his idiot second-in-command, Akim Delov. I could have been a bad liar and still witted him out of his entire family's secrets. I could tell he was extremely proud of the thought of having captured the Black Widow when I let his cronies abduct me outside a dinner event I'd let myself be seen watching him. I had barely put up any fight when they pushed me into a van and the bastards had still ripped my tights.
They took me to a ridiculously predictable location, a warehouse in the slums of the city they were known for keeping goods in. Tonight it was empty except for a few stolen paintings, rifles, and the happy little party that was Delov, two of his minions, and I.
"Well, Akim, now isn't this cozy?" I groned in Russian when they finally pulled the sack off my head. I was tied to a chair on the third floor and Akim was a ways away, looking over a table of tools. He grunted and one of his men brought his hand down across my face. "Thanks, I think my blush was fading on that side," I said as I felt heat rush to the left side of my stinging face. The interrogation began with laughable scare tactics, but Akim told me just about everything I needed through the questions he claimed to be asking me. He told me his routes, his partners, his superiors, and I was fairly sure somewhere he'd even let slip something about his affair, though I wasn't sure how that had happened.
One of his leather clad henchmen was holding my mouth open while Delov was advancing upon me with pliers when the third man's phone rang. I thought that a good place to put in a choice whimper. Delov turned to the man, confused, as he answered the phone, and after a moment of silence, said "It's for her." Delov threw down the pliers and took the phone, the other man also releasing me, seemingly interested in the sudden call. Idiots. I glanced around, noting methods of escape.
Delov opened his mouth, seemingly prepared to issue a threat but never said anything, his mouth hanging open as he listened. He looked around for a moment, confused, before handing the phone to me with a bewildered expression. I blinked at him as I adjusted the phone between my chin and shoulder, my hands still tied. I wasn't sure what I expected, but it certainly wasn't Coulson's voice, speaking hurriedly on the other line.
"We need you to come in."
"Are you kidding? I'm working," I said. As if I needed another reason for medical to think I was "unfit for work" or "shirking my responsibilities." If they thought I'd cut off my first action mission because I was stressed or something, they would never leave me alone.
"This takes precedence," Coulson replied seriously. I fought to stop my eyes from rolling before realizing he wouldn't actually see it. Old habits.
"I'm in the middle of an interrogation," I tried to say reasonably. "This moron is giving me everything."
Delov, who seemed to have a vague understanding of English, looked insecurely from me to his assistants. "I… don't… give everything?" he said, more to convince himself, it seemed, than any of the rest of us. I raised an eyebrow. Idiot.
I turned my attention back to the phone, impatient to end the call and finish my job. "Look, you can't pull me out of this right now," I said, repressing a groan. I was almost done with the mission and I didn't need distractions now.
"Tasha," Coulson interrupted, and I quieted, shocked by his sudden use of my nickname rather than official title. There was a pause before he said, with the air of someone getting the worst over with, "Barton's been compromised."
Barton's been compromised.
Barton's been compromised.
Barton's.
Been.
Compromised.
The words echoed in my head, disjointed and meaningless. Barton? Compromised? Clint? My Clint? In the space of a single moment, I saw all the images I had ever associated with Clint: introducing himself with an annoying bow; offering me hot chocolate on a plane; sitting beside me on a roof for hours; polishing his bow with gentleness strange for his strong hands; throwing peanuts at me from the rafters of a cabin; raising his glass to me in the middle of a crowded bar; dressed in a tuxedo and twirling me around in a ballroom; kissing me in a dark hotel room; striding toward me in a crowded restaurant; breathing deeply atop me, skin to skin; balancing a sniper in the dark beside me; shoving me behind him in a lonely alley; tending my injuries while he was sweaty with strain; sleeping wrapped entirely in the blankets we were supposed to share; pacing in the middle of a wine cellar with a phone pressed to his ear; swearing to me in a congested airport he'd come back to me before getting lost in the crowd. Strong and loving and endlessly forgiving. My savior from a million different foes. That was my Clint. And nowhere, under any embodiment of him, did the word "compromised" fit into the profile my mind had constructed for him. Complete incongruity.
The weight of the world seemed to crash upon me that same second.
"Let me put you on hold."