Kay, guys, I told you this all would be weird. Hopefully, things will unravel the way I want them to. Thank you all for the reviews! They're much appreciated.

Natasha threw up again. She thought that the poison would work, but Natalia never made it that easy for her.

"Why did you do this?" Natalia demanded. She always had something to fight for. It was why she pushed Bruce.

"Why? Why not?" Natasha replied mockingly. She always had something to protect. It was why she pushed Bruce.

The Red Room is calling.

Before

Alexei Shostakov was a simple man of simple means. He was young and beautiful and knew it. Women liked his blond hair, his bright blue eyes, his sturdy and tall build but he had no intention of marrying any of them. In fact, by all accounts, he was a total narcissist that failed to see beauty in the ugly. His vanity was what drew Natalia to him originally.

Her handler suggested that she let him court her for the sake of appearances. It made sense for a ballerina to be attracted to a vain pilot like Alexei. He was acceptable but a little on the dumb side of things, which made Natalia think that it would be easy to control him. It would be easy to slip away and do her job the way she was supposed to. She made it difficult for him. She knew when to tease and when to withdraw. What was shocking was the fact that he actually did love her. He loved her so much that he proposed to her two years after they met, and two months before she received her first leading role in a ballet. It was perfection, but perfection was an illusion stained by bloody slippers and aching muscles. Perfection was the way she could slip into diplomat's hotels and strangle them wordlessly. Perfection was his hand on her waist when they kissed—no.

Alexei called her Natasha when he loved her.

He called her witch when he thought she was sleeping with other men.

He called her his darling when he realized his mistake.

Natasha felt her heart thaw at such words.

Natalia felt hers ice over.

Before

Bruce found himself lying on the ground shivering. It happened again. He hated it when it happened. He rose up on shaking hands. He waited for Natasha to show disgust. Of course, it never came. Instead, she knelt by his side and wrapped a thick gray blanket around him.

"You did good. It was easy. You—he practically walked up to me and waited to sleep."

She gave him a gentle, affectionate squeeze, and continued to ride with him all the way back to Stark's tower with her arm wrapped around his shoulders.

Bruce wanted to knock himself upside the head.

Love doesn't work. He almost tore Betty apart and they loved each other dearly. He checked up on her recently. She's living the life she dreamed of without him and she deserved every bit of happiness she could find. That involved Bruce never talking to her again. He couldn't mistake Natasha's conditioning, her scientific and psychological fascination with his polarizing mental states, and her desire to minimize risk and damage for affection. He couldn't mistake her efforts to help and understand him as anything other than what it was. He doesn't know why the Other Guy listens to Natasha but he's almost sure that it's not love. His life wasn't in a fairytale. In a fairytale, the curse is broken. In reality, it is a condition poorly managed by a fellow murderer.

"So it's a far different scenario." Natasha spoke as she was perched on his workbench. He was very aware of the fact that everyone knew she was the only one allowed to do that. "But I wonder about installing a failsafe in a normal mind. Wake up call, lullabies, whatever, a word or phrase connected with an idea could help with stuff like mind control." Immediately, Bruce's mind went to Clint Barton. It made sense that Natasha would worry about it, from what he knew about them, "Maybe it could help, better than a sharp knock to the head. It's just a theory of course."

Natasha was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. He had always known it, but he hadn't really acknowledged it before then. He was the scientist and she was the spy. They were opposites but her mind worked in ways that intersected with that of his, even if it was on a completely different subject. Although, another brilliant part of Natasha was that she realized that all subjects were interconnected in the world.

That was the first time he wanted to kiss her.

Instead he said this: "In another life, you would have made an excellent psychiatrist or neurologist."

"Thank you." She seemed genuinely pleased by the compliment, "I'm not just a pretty face, you know." She tapped her nose, "I've got two."

Bruce's mind stuttered for a moment and then he decided that the best thing to do was to tease her, "Well uh, should I just start dropping random words and phrases around you?"

"No one else but you." Natasha touched his knee with her foot before sliding down, "I'm getting tea. Wait for me and I'll come back."

Bruce frowned. She could be so bossy.

Before

Natalia wasn't thinking of Alexei or ballet as she lay on a cold metal table, staring up at the ceiling above her and the concrete of the walls of the side. Dr. Yenin wore a mask as if she had the possibility of carrying a dangerous contagion. In reality, it was quite possible, "Your blood levels seem normal. You are in top physical shape. You are a perfect subject in all respects." He waited for a reply that wouldn't come, "This will—I'm afraid this will hurt a lot."

"I'm used to pain, doctor."

"Yes—yes I bet you are." He pierced her neck with the needle, and stepped back, staring at her objectively as she convulsed, "Don't worry. If you die, your husband will mourn your young and tragic death, which will immortalize you far better than anything I can provide." There. Was. So. Much. Blinding. Pain. The doctor chuckled, carrying on with his one sided conversation, "This will take a few hours. I have some poetry I read sometimes. It's amazing what a woman will do to remain young forever, don't you think? There are many who would die for it."

"How—ah—many?" Natalia asked through gritted teeth.

"Well if you don't make the night, you'll be number one hundred and twenty. How about some Konstantin Simonov. You must have been a little girl when he wrote this one-1942, now how old were you?"

Natalia didn't reply. She was six and her parents were killed in a bombing of Stalingrad. Those were not things to linger on.

The pain wasn't unbearable. Natalia just made a room in her mind where she put the pain. It was a royal blue room with white trimmings. Natasha liked the color; she found it soothing. That was part of the problem. It was easy for the part of her that loved Alexei to crawl to a place where she couldn't feel it. The only thing left was Natalia the next day. Dr. Yenin was excitedly babbling, something silly about money, when Natalia picked up pipe knocked him over the head with it. She cleaned up everything relating to this discovery and took it to the Red Room. She dumped her own file in the fire and waited until nothing remained.

Nothing of her should exist.

Yet, for some reason, she couldn't destroy the picture lovingly kept by Alexei. She left the night three ballerinas were found splayed on the stage next to each other. Her handler told her that she was extremely volatile in her current state, being prone to unnecessary violence. Natalia didn't see the difference between the violence her handler told her to partake in and the violence that she participated in anyway. Why did she let Alexei live, let alone keep the photograph when he was no longer useful? It was easier to explain her reasoning behind killing the ballerinas, after first putting glass in everyone else's toe shoes the day of the dress rehearsals.

Why?

Why not?

They had just gotten off the train when Natasha realized how truly close they were. Without even thinking about it, she drew Yelena away from the station. Yelena followed close behind her on the boardwalk as they walked by the river. Natasha turned and pulled a knife. For a moment she imagined Yelena with her throat cut. The image trembled and disappeared. Yelena's eyes were wide with horror as Natasha put the knife in her little hands, "Kill me. That is an order."

"Tattie—"

"Now."

Yelena drove the knife through and under the ribcage just the way she was taught. She stepped away before blood could stain her clothing. Natasha thought she was a good girl before the instinct to survive took over. Natalia never made it that easy for her. She was running, stumbling, throwing ice over her wound to keep it numbed as she ran away. She would kill the damn brat later—

Natasha woke up gasping. Only, she wasn't waking up, she was already awake and hiding—hiding from—oh right—. She had been so close to reaching them. Extracting the information from Yelena had been so stupidly easy. If she had been promised a better life when she was eleven, Natasha would have taken it just as seriously as Yelena did. Natasha wasn't lying though. She wanted Yelena to have the life she never had a chance of getting. She wanted her to grow old, surrounded by a family that Clint and Laura could provide her. Only, Natalia didn't want any of that. She wanted to get to the Red Room like a sick horse trying to limp home at any cost.

Including Yelena.

Yelena heaved open the door and found Natasha crouching in the corner, barely able to move. "Tattie, what should I do?"

"Be a dear and shoot me in the head." She had to stop her.

The gun clicked. "It's jammed, Tattie—what's—"

"Toss me in the river." She didn't know which one of her was speaking anymore. "You know where to go—Clint—right?"

Yelena nodded sullenly. Natasha didn't fight or help when Yelena lifted her and dragged her out of the fisherman's shed and towards the rail. A little burst of energy went through her, along with the panic, but she used it to help Yelena as she hauled her over the bridge.

Natasha hit the frozen water and it felt like a million little knives puncturing her skin. It didn't take long for her to fall asleep. She was in her blue room, where nothing could touch her.

Then Natalia's eyes sprung open and the banks of the river didn't seem so far after all. Did Natasha really think it would be that easy to get rid of her?

Natalia had to find the Red Room. They were the only ones that could save her.

"After I go in, find Clint Barton, he's Hawkeye. He's associated with the Avengers. He's your new handler, Lena. Give him the papers."

Also the poet the scientist mentioned is a real Russian poet. The chapter title comes from one of his poems. I did my homework-well not my actual homework, but still. I love you all! (Don't throw too many rocks at me).