Forcing herself to breathe, Natasha rested her head against the metal of the door and tried to clear her mind. The thought that her partner was out there, possibly in need, and that she couldn't get to him was like a knife twisting in her ribs. She listened carefully, hoping that she would hear the sound of his voice as he reassured her in those quiet tones that he was okay, that he was going to find another way into the room and that she should just wait for him, but there was no sound.
After a long moment she turned, putting her back to the door to face the room and the memories of what had happened within its walls once again. It was almost exactly as she remembered it except for the fact that someone had cleaned the blood from the tiles. It didn't make a difference, she could still see it everywhere she looked, Natasha had always had the ability to see blood long after it was cleaned away, the red stains remaining on her vision to remind her of all the blood that she had spilled, of the ledger that she was constantly trying to balance.
She moved slowly, pulling her second gun as she moved further into the room. With a dispassionate eye she took in the ring in the floor to which she had been chained, the surgical tools that had been used on her, still lined up neatly on their racks and table tops. The lingering echoes of memories that had surfaced in the days after she had escaped chewed at her but her guns didn't waver. Her heartbeat slowed, all emotion fading away as she embraced the side of her nature that thrived on bloodshed, the reserves of violent creativity that she almost never tapped for fear of what it would awaken in her, and she opened her senses to the room.
The security monitors flickered, signal lost, making light dance on the walls. With no way to see what waited for her out in the hall, she concentrated on the certainty of what waited for her within. One or both of the men she had come to kill were in this room with her; she knew it with as much certainty as she knew that her partner was the only man she would ever trust with the unedited truth of herself. Something was different about the room, something about the wall behind the 'gaming bed' to which she had been repeatedly tied. She had always assumed that there was a noticeboard on the wall, concealed behind some kind of tapestry or curtain that she had never paid much attention to, but now she could see that behind the cloth there was a mirror that dominated the space. Having been in such rooms more times than she could count, she suspected that any mirror fixed into the wall of a tiled medical room was fitted with two-way glass. All the better to watch a captive squirm. Natasha stared at the darkened glass, watching her muted reflection, allowing her senses free rein to assess her environment.
There... in the deepest shadows of the room. Something moved, a sudden, quick movement as if whomever hid there sensed that they had been caught. She whipped up her gun just as the overhead lights flared to life, blinding her momentarily. A moment was all he needed to close the distance. William Brady slammed into her, forcing her body backward across the open space until he could pin her to the wall. Natasha lost her grip on one of her handguns, hearing it skitter across the floor somewhere to the right; the other wrist was caught in the grip of one of her attackers fists and slammed into the wall until she lost her second firearm too. With his elbow to her windpipe she was going nowhere.
Winded and unable to fight back, Natasha stared him in the face and forced herself to meet his stare without flinching. He was not a large man but he was strong and would have been physically imposing had she not spent most of her time with large and physically imposing men. He had taken particular pleasure in letting Natasha know just how powerless she was when he had visited her here, reminding her in every way possible that he was stronger than her and she was too weak to fight him, even if they had gone to great lengths to keep her drugged and weakened.
His body crowded hers, pinning her against the tile while his free hand moved to close around her throat. Brady liked to feel the power of life and death, to try to squeeze the life out of her, but she had never given him the satisfaction of hearing her beg. Repeatedly, she had given her body over to unconsciousness rather than tell him whatever it was that he wanted to hear. She would never give him the satisfaction of breaking her, no matter how bad things had been she had maintained her power in that regard.
So caught up in the idea of having her exactly where he wanted her, he had overlooked one simple and yet important factor, tonight Natasha was not drugged and she hadn't been starved of food and water. The woman he had tormented, weakened, wasted and fighting for survival, had not been the Black Widow. Tonight he would meet the Widow for the first time and he would be made to understand why she carried the reputation that she had earned.
"We've missed you Natasha," he leered, leaning in close so that he could breathe his words directly into her face. "I knew it was only a matter of time before we met again especially after you paid visits to the others."
Though her lungs screamed for air and her wrist ached where he had slammed it into the wall, she forced her body to relax and stay pliant in his grip, even allowing her eyes to roll back in their sockets. By feigning submission she could conserve her energy, even though it went against her entire nature to let him, even for a second, think that he had won. She focussed on her heart, counting the beats, forcing her panic down into her chest where she could harness it and use the adrenaline to her advantage. A second or two later she felt Brady adjust his grip on her, the press of his body lessening for a second as he moved. Natasha capitalised on his shift in balance, slamming her weight down on the instep of his foot and activating the widows bite bracelet on her injured wrist before pressing it into the exposed skin at the back of his neck. He didn't see the attack coming and his reaction gave her the chance to disengage her body from his hold.
She didn't waste her time on words, she threw herself at him, lashing out with fists and feet, ducking out of his reach and forcing him backwards, keeping him off-balance. In a fist fight she could only hold him off for so long, but she had speed and flexibility on her side and she was nothing if not creative. She had wanted him to suffer, but right now, faced with the reality that she might be alone in the complex without any idea where Sawyer was hiding, she knew that she needed to end things quickly. If Clint was gone then the death of the men they had come to kill was the only poetry that she could give her partner and she intended to make it worthy of him.
Adrenaline burned in her veins, lighting her up from the inside, and her body responded to the call as the fight continued. Taking a blow to the face that spun her around and dropped her to her knee, Natasha reached for the knife strapped to her thigh and drew it effortlessly. The blade snapped open with a well-timed flick of her wrist and she rose quickly, slashing upwards and opening Brady's dominant right arm from elbow to shoulder. Blood gushed, splattering on the tile, and he grabbed for the wound trying to staunch the flow. She pressed the advantage, landing a kick that sent him sprawling across the top of one of the tables of instruments with a pained grunt.
"You'll pay for that bitch!" he growled, rising from the table with a scalpel in his hand. Again she didn't respond, keeping her eyes on the glint of the weapon he now held. For what seemed like an eternity, they traded blows, fast and fluid, a dance of fist and blade, until she lost her grip on her knife and found herself restrained from behind, both of her arms twisted painfully behind her back. Blood seeped down the side of her face and she stiffened as he leaned in close to trace his tongue along the column of her throat. "You taste just like I remember..." he chuckled.
Fury flooded her, turning her blood to gasoline in her veins and she reacted, throwing her head back into Brady's face as violently as she could. Bone crunched beneath the blow and she felt the warm gush of his blood in her hair. When he recoiled, wrenching her arms, she went with him, dropping her body weight onto him and using the momentum to roll over and off him. Reversing his hold, she slammed her body into the back of his own and mashed his shattered nose into the tile wall. "How did that taste?" she asked, spitting her words into his face.
Brady squirmed, unable to get any leverage that would help him to break her hold, she could hear his breath, loud, the exertion had taken a toll on him.
"Tell me where Agent Barton is," she demanded, twisting his injured arm viciously. Brady groaned and spat a mouthful of blood onto the tile. His voice emerged in a wet chuckle, distorted by his nose and the way she had him pressed into the wall. She tried again, raising her voice. "Where is my partner?"
Brady offered her a bloody smile, clearly relishing the moment. "Dead," he spat. He laughed again. "You brought your partner down here and he died because of it; his blood, it's on your hands."
Pain drove the breath from Natasha's body as the words echoed in her ears. For an endless moment she felt only anguish, a bone deep sorrow that tightened her chest, and then that faded leaving only the cold reservoir of anger that her life experiences had given her. Lifting her chin, unaware of the feral glitter in her eyes, she met Brady's expectant gaze. Whatever he saw in her eyes, he recoiled from it.
"If he is dead," she exclaimed flatly, tightening her grip on the handle of her knife, "then so are you."
As if on cue the lights died and the mirror on the wall opposite them exploded, Barton taking out the entire span of the glass with his back, glass shattering and raining down around them as he flew through it as if propelled by tremendous force. He landed hard, head bouncing off the floor as another figure followed him through the newly made opening. He made no sound as he landed, made no attempt to cushion his landing in any way.
Screaming his name, Natasha hauled Brady away from the wall and forced him to the floor with a well placed kick to the back of each knee in time to watch Jack Sawyer rise to his full height. Clint didn't respond and Natasha felt something as cold as the Siberian winter spiralling up from deep within her. "Come any closer and I'll kill him," she threatened, positioning her blade to the right of his throat, directly over the man's carotid, her hand didn't shake despite the emotion that roared through her.
Sawyer looked unaffected by the threat, as if his colleagues demise would mean nothing to him. "I wouldn't recommend that Agent Romanoff," he told her coldly. "It would be better for all concerned if you were to just put down the knife and surrender yourself. I have big plans for our partnership that would be greatly affected by having to spoil that beautiful face of yours."