Hey guys. Don't mind me, just posting another chapter trying not to think about the whole end of school/finals/graduation thing. The real world kind of sucks, so guess what? More fanfiction. And poetry.

The Spiders (1903)

My world is like a chamber, narrow, –

It's very low, very small.

In four its corners sit four fellows –

Four spiders, diligent in all.

They are all fat, adroit, and dirty,

And always spin and spin the web…

And it is awful – their portly,

Monotonous and even step.

With four their webs, when they were ready,

They spun the immense one, at last.

I watch their fat backs' movement, steady,

In darkness of the stinking dust.

My eyes – under the webbing's level:

It's gray, and soft, and sticky, yet.

And they are glad with gladness, evil, -

Four spiders, fat.

—Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius

Alisa and Viktoriya sat side by side on a hostel bed. The other girls were already asleep. It was the first time Alisa had seen a bed without a chain attached to it. The mattress was a few centimeters thicker than the one she had before, and it was covered in an ugly yellow covered sheet. She stroked it repeatedly, marveling at the strange turn her life had taken in a matter of a few days. The new trainer Natalia had been strange. Alisa had been terrified the day she and Viktoriya were ordered to spar. Alisa didn't want to kill her friend but she didn't want to die either. In the end, she made the decision. Viktoriya would live and she would die.

Yet the kill order never came.

That was when she knew Natalia was different. She was the only trainer that had been exactly where she was. Alisa looked around at the others. Natalia simply left them at the hostel, entrusting several of the girls, including the older ones, with money. A few of the older ones disappeared entirely that night.

"What do we do now?" Viktoriya whispered.

"We wait for orders."

"Natalia said there aren't any—"

"We wait for orders, Viktoriya." Alisa wanted to snap but she knew she wasn't supposed to.

"What if they aren't coming?"

"She won't just strand us here. It'd be illogical."

"Killing everyone in charge of us was illogical. Letting me live was illogical. Leaving us with money and warm beds was illogical. We can't apply logic." Viktoriya looked at Alisa, "She said the Red Room no longer exists. We—we don't have to do it anymore—there's no point."

"There's only Natalia." Alisa supplied, "We wait. The other girls may go, but we wait."

Viktoriya slid closer to Alisa and wrapped her arms around her. Both eight year olds didn't know what to do in a world without a handler. They knew nothing but how to wait for orders.

Bruce didn't know what it was about Tony's comment, but he found himself walking out in the snow, far away from where he could hurt anyone. The snow crunched once behind him and he turned; he only found Lena. She stood there with her arms crossed, her eyes cold and calculative as they assessed him. Bruce felt like he was dealing with Natasha for the first time. It was a strange, probing feeling that reminded him of why he disliked the woman in the beginning. It's strange how much things changed in a relatively short period of time. Bruce gestured at her questioningly.

"It's dangerous to go out alone." Lena explained her presence.

"I can handle it."

"I don't think you can handle being green again. You feel guilty." Lena crossed the snow, walking straight up to him. "Everything's your fault. That's what you think."

Bruce felt his breath catch in his chest as a little Natasha stared up at him. "I cause a lot of damage."

"But not all of it." Lena replied, "And thinking otherwise is narcissistic and self-centered."

"Well said." Bruce stiffened upon hearing her voice and both turned, to find Natasha, who somehow managed to remain outside of their combined peripheral vision. Immediately, Lena pulled a gun but Bruce instinctively knocked it down. If Natasha died, no matter what she had done or will do, Bruce would rip apart the entire world. There would be no chance of talking him down when he saw it in person and he didn't want to kill a child.

"Natasha." Bruce found his voice, "Natasha—"

"Nope. Natalia." Her accent, he found, had regressed into it's natural Russian, which made her even more ominous and distanced from the woman he knew. "Lena—" She addressed the girl in rapid Russian.

Slowly, Lena nodded and started walking away. Bruce grabbed her arm, "Where are you going?"

"Natalia told me that there are students of the Red Room that I should check on."

"What?"

"She killed them. She killed all the handlers of the Red Room." Lena shook her head, "I must go now."

As soon as the girl was out of sight, Natas—Natalia smiled at Bruce but it wasn't the smile he was used to. It was something completely different, something sinister, "I'm assuming Stark's changed the launch codes by now. Natasha kept those secret long enough for them to be useless. I didn't want to do that anymore, anyway. I decided my focus needed to be more—pointed. There's no need to eradicate everyone, when everyone I need dead are here in Russia or already dead." Her expression twitched, but it passed, going back to her sickening smile. "There's so many memories."

Where was Steve? Clint? He was almost wishing that even Wanda was there, because there was something in Natalia that was scary.

"They're fine, if you want to know. I haven't touched them. They're not my focus." She pulled a gun out and pointed it directly at his chest, "At the moment, you are."

"Natasha, you know bullets don't do anything."

"I'm not Natasha and this isn't a bullet."

For a moment, he only felt a sting. It wasn't enough to transform. It didn't seem all that threatening until whatever it was caused him to double over in pain. He felt himself start to change but something happened—something different and strange took over. In fact, he blacked out. That never happened before.

Clint woke up first. He immediately felt like something was wrong and he turned on the light, stumbling around.

"What's going on?" Steve asked, blinking in the new light.

"Where are Lena and Bruce?"

Wanda sat straight up, "I don't sense them in the area."

"Shit." Clint shook his head, "All this all over again? Seriously?"

"All right, guess we're on the move then."

Bruce woke up, groggily, his face red and raw from rubbing up against the snow on the ground. He rose to a sitting position, only to find Natalia/Natasha still there. He didn't feel like he turned into the Hulk at all, but he felt like weights were tied to all of his limbs.

"I didn't know if you were going to wake up or not." She stared at him in such a calculative and clinical way that it made Bruce feel like he was part of an experiment all over again.

"What—"

"I tranquilized you, apparently." She said it like it was the simplest thing in the world.

"That's not possible, you know that, Nat—" he almost choked on Natasha/Natalia's name. Perhaps it was safest if he referred to her as Nat like Clint did.

"We've been working on this for ages. Well she has, anyway. Ever since she met you, she's been wanting to find a way to control you. It's an inherent part of her, you see. She craves control. While mental manipulation obviously worked well, she still thought it would be good if she could neutralize you quickly if you changing in the first place would be inconvenient. Of course, this was the first test run on you specifically. Who knows. Maybe next I'll find a way to kill you. You wanted relief. A bullet in the head can give you that. You may be the Hulk but I am the best killer there is." She giggled at his twisted expression, "Even my better half has a dark side."

"At least she isn't near so unhinged." Bruce commented dryly.

"She took what isn't hers."

"I don't care if she's the original or not, she was always be better than you. My Natasha is a little twisted but she's a person trying to do the right thing." Bruce hoped that somewhere, Natasha heard him.

Natalia laughed, "You shouldn't defend her. You disgust her."

"I-"

Bruce found that he didn't have a reply for that. He wanted to believe that Natalia was only trying to hurt him, perhaps test him, perhaps try to make him angry, but he only felt a bitter resignation. Natalia realized that she hit a sore point with him. She knelt down and took his chin, "Do you know how many nightmares I had to watch on account of you? I felt her disgust when your little infatuation began, felt it rolling off of her as she encouraged it for the sake of control. It worked though. It worked. All it took was the tiniest act of kindness and you'll do anything for her. So eager to please. So starved for her attention. Pathetic."

Bruce shook his head. It was just exploitation of his insecurities from stores of information Natasha had in her head but it still hurt. It spoke to the voice in his head that constantly questioned Natasha and her intentions. Natalia drew close to him, the next words in a breathy whisper:

"She. Isn't. Real." She pushed him away and sprang back a couple feet as if she had been burned. There it was. The anger. Natalia didn't have the same command over her emotions that Natasha had. Natalia was trembling with anger and a madness that suddenly didn't frighten Bruce anymore.

"That doesn't matter. You have to stop this. Why are you doing this?" There must be some shred of Natasha in her, the part that knew exactly why this was all a bad idea.

"THEY HURT ME! AND NOW I'LL HURT THEM!" She shrieked, pulling a knife from her boot, making her way across the broken snow with it raised high above her head, "And I'll hurt you—everything hurts—I killed them but I haven't killed you—I may not be able to, but I can hurt you right now."

Natalia started to strike, but didn't. The hand holding the knife trembled and lowered. For a moment, she held out her wrist and the knife clumsily made it's way down towards the skin exposed between the glove and the sleeve of her coat.

"Natasha!" Bruce snapped, almost surprised that he could sound so firm. The knife stopped a few centimeters from her wrist, and when the woman looked up, he saw both of them at once for a moment, before Natalia took over again. "Natasha. You said 'wait for me and I'll come back.' I should've said the same to you. I should've at least sent word. I was going to come back. I'm so sorry for that." His eyes widened when he realized exactly why Natalia was saying these things, "I'm sorry I hurt you."

"No one else but you." Natasha whispered. She froze, twitching for a second, the knife dropping with a clatter, "Stop it. Stop it please. I want you to—why can't everything be quiet!" She gripped her head, pacing back and forth, "I need it to be quiet—please go away, please leave me alone—please, please—I they hurt me—they hurt me, he hurt me—I want—please!"

"Natasha."

This time it wasn't Bruce who said it.

And the psychotic meltdown has begun.