Hidden Self
Summary: One of the Avengers isn't who they claim to be and Dr Doom is going to prove it.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Castle Doomstadt, Latveria...
The day had started with a surprise and unprovoked attack on the Avengers Mansion by Doombots, the robotic footsoldiers of Dr Victor Von Doom, ruler of Latveria, foe of the Fantastic Four and would be world conqueror.
At first surviving the assault had been the main concern, especially when it turned out the robots were essentially walking bombs with enough explosive force to level a quarter of New York.
The Avengers managed to avert that but it was only then they realised the main point of the attack. It had been to capture one of their own. The Black Widow, Natasha Romanova.
In the end that made more sense than some attack that looked like an act of desperation. Doom was many things but prone to acts of desperation he was not. No. There was a reason behind the kidnapping. What that was truly baffled the Avengers but for the moment they stowed it for the more pressing need of getting Black Widow back.
As for Natasha herself, she awoke to find herself sealed inside some kind of transparent sphere. Her gaze soon fixated on the metal covered ruler of Latveria who appeared to be watching her, studying her.
"Ms Romanova," Doom greets her in his cold metallic voice.
"Doom. What do you want?"
"Ah yes, never one for the niceties are we," Doom comments at how she is cutting right to it.
"You want to see how nice I am, release me and I'll show you," Widow threatens, her voice, in its own way, as cold and chilling as Doom's can be.
"I think not," Doom refuses. "And as for what I want. It is simple. An answer."
"A what?" Widow blinks.
"To a question," Doom elaborates.
"What question?"
"Who are you?"
Widow is a little, no scratch that, very confused. "You know."
"No," Doom contradicts her. "You see Doom always studies his enemies and I have studied every single one of the Avengers. In time Doom understands all. Where you come from, what motivates you except in your case Ms Romanova. You are an anomaly. You do not make sense. You should not exist."
"You're babbling Doom. I think your mask is on too tight," Widow insults him.
"Don't waste mine or your time on childish insults," Doom warns her. "We are both above such things. Leave them to that pathetic fool of that partner of yours, Mr Barton."
"I have no idea what you are on about," Natasha gives the truly honest answer because she's completely baffled by Doom's train of thought.
"Then Doom will explain it to you," he offers. Holographic images pop up all showing Black Widow at varying stages of her life. "This is your entire life," he explains to her. "Now tell me what is missing."
Natasha's eyes take the images in and like the good spy she is she notices the pattern. "That's not my whole life. There are no images of me before I was 20."
"Excellent," Doom praises her. "Now tell me why there aren't."
"You tell me. It's your slide show."
"Because there aren't any. You don't exist before then. You simply appear as if from nowhere," Doom gets to what it is that caught his attention so. That anomalous fact that she just appears in the world as a 20 year old. "Now explain that," he challenges her to do so.
"I've erased my early life," she gives her explanation. She had to. To become who she is she had to cut any ties to her past.
"No erasure is so complete that you can hide from Doom," he boasts. "Can you even remember your childhood?"
"How is that relevant?"
"Your parents? The school you attended? Your childhood friends?"
"My parents are...dead," she says with a strange momentary pause. Her eyes blink. Memories strain just beyond her ability to comprehend them.
Doom continues as if she didn't say anything. "When you were a child where did you play? Did you climb trees? Run through the grass?"
A pain lances through Natasha's head as she sees a brunette girl dancing through the knee high red grass with a forest nearby with trees whose silver leaves glisten in the sun as if on fire and as the wind blows through them they sound like the most beautiful song. Her hand goes to her head.
"What was your best friend's name?"
A name, no but images of several men flash across her mind. Most prominent are of a man with curly hair and bright teeth and this ridiculously long scarf and another in Edwardian like dress and another, a battle-hardened face with large ears, a leather jacket and a bandoleer.
"Answer me!" Doom demands.
"Shut up!" Widow screams. "Just...just shut up!"
Doom cups his hands behind his back. "Good," he seems strangely satisfied with that. "We're getting closer."
Natasha now has both hands pressed to her skull as her brain feels like it wants to explode. "I...I don't know what you want," she says.
"The truth. The one Doom believes you have hidden even from yourself. You really don't remember your childhood because you didn't have one."
"No. I did. I..." she trails off struggling with herself. "I had parents. I was born in Stalingrad. They died when I was young."
"Convenient," Doom remarks, showing how that only fits in with his accusation that she didn't have a childhood like she claims.
Widow glares at him. "I can list where I lived. The school I attended."
"Dry facts pasted into your mind to give just enough of a back story to help you pass into society. Lesser men wouldn't notice but I am Doom."
Doom turns and walks away from her and sits on his throne at the other side of the room. "Lets us start again. Who are you?"
"Go to hell Doom," Widow spits as her hand goes to her chest and she can feel the locket she wears underneath. She's always had that locket. Can't remember where she got it. Can't even remember exactly what it looks like. Only that she has always worn it and always will.
"This is Hell...as far as you're concerned Ms Romanova. Again. Who are you?"
"Natalia Alianovna Romanova," she gives what it says on her birth certificate. She's changed her name slightly over the years.
"Incorrect," Doom states. "And you will stay here until you give Doom the correct one."
"Or what? You going to torture me?"
"Ms Romanova I am above such crude methods. I leave them to the so called Land of the Free," he says, mocking the United States and the accusations of the way it treats terrorist suspects.
Doom presses a button on the arm of his throne and around Natasha curved metal tube, matching the curve of the sphere pops up from the floor. It emits a light and starts moving around her like it is...
"Huh. A bimolecular scanner," she remarks. "Capable of analysing me down to my atomic structure I assume."
"Subatomic level," Doom corrects her.
"Doubtful," she remarks, sounding suddenly very arrogant almost. "You can't have possibly compensated for the uncertainty principle of the position and energy of subatomic particles. That's way beyond you."
"But not you?"
"I graduated from the Academy with some of the highest marks ever recorded. A triple first."
"In what?"
"Everything."
"And what Academy would this be?"
"The one on Gall..." Natasha stops as if she suddenly realises what she is saying. Her hand lifts away from her chest.
"Closer to the truth," Doom comments.
"I...what? What was I saying?" Widow asks, very confused, as if she can't remember what she was saying or where any of that came from and her head just feels worse and worse. It's pounding.
"Again," Doom states. "Your childhood. Where were you born? Where did you grow up?" he starts over again with the questions.
"I told you! Arcadia!" she yells out in frustration, her control being pushed to the limits.
"Arcadia?" Doom questions her answer.
"I...what have you done to me?" Natasha wants to know. She usually isn't that forthcoming with her life. "You've...you've used a spell on me," she realises. "Truth spell?"
"Nothing so mundane. What Doom seeks is the truth you've hidden from yourself, Ms Romanova. The spell needs to go deeper than simply preventing you from lying. Now describe this Arcadia to me? Where is it? What does it look like? How many people live there?"
"No-one. No-one lives there. Everyone's dead," she says, her voice pain-filled. Images flash before her eyes of some terrible battle, thousands of people dying, flying-saucer like ships in the sky firing down and these...things. There machines, pepper-pot shaped things. She's had a lot of dreams about them over the years. Lots of dreams of battles, terrible battles filled with horrors that make any war on this planet look like a playground shoving match. Dreams that make her hate with a passion she didn't know possible.
Doom brings his hands together so the tips of his fingers are touching in front of him. They were making progress.
"My Lord," a robotic female voice speaks belonging to Doom's cybernetic servant Lucia Von Bardas. "My apologies for the interruption but the Avengers jet has been detected approaching Latverian airspace."
"Destroy it," Doom commands. He can't be interrupted now. Not when he is getting closer to the truth.
"Yes, Lord Doom," Von Bardas obeys.
Natasha snaps out of her thoughts. A smile almost tugs at her lips at hearing that the Avengers are coming. She'll be out of here soon now. She just has to resist answering more questions for a short time longer.
When she hears the fact the jet is shot down. She doesn't worry. Why? Because they're not that foolish to try a frontal assault. Must be a diversion.
When Doom rises to his feet and shoots an energy bolt from his right index finger she knows it is. The blast hit an invisible Iron Man, shorting out the stealth mode and shocking him enough to drop him to the ground.
Von Bardas' arms transform into weapons which she begins firing at Iron Man. She is set upon by the Black Panther.
"So much for avoiding an international incident," Iron Man grumbles. They were trying to do this the sneaky way. "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!" he calls out.
Outside the castle another Avengers Quinjet also appears from behind an invisibility cloak and leaping from it come the rest of the team. Captain America, Hulk, Hawkeye, Wasp, Ant-Man and Spider-Man. Really they should have brought Thor but he was in Asgard and all they could find who hadn't been hurt in Doom's initial attack was Spider-Man. Hawkeye had been making a joke about that all the way from the States to here.
Doom stands dismissively calm. He presses a switch on his armour and 4 large sections of the floor open up and giant sized Doombots rise out of them. He then turns his back and walks over to the wall where the results of his scans on Black Widow should be coming up. He leaves his servants to deal with the trash.
Natasha is hating this. Doom stripped her of her weapons and there is literally nothing in here that can assist her to escape this and help her teammates. She bangs on the sphere futilely.
While the Avengers fight the robots Spider-Man swings over to try and get Widow loose. "Hey there my similarly spider-themed comrade," he greets her in his usual joky manner, putting on the worse Russian accent ever. "Don't you worry, ol' Spidey will get you of this Gulag!"
Widow pinches her nose. As if her head wasn't sore enough she's got to listen to this idiot...though she knows deep down he's actually not a bad kid. His never ending talk kinda reminds her of the Doctor.
Widow frowns. Doctor? Doctor who? Why did she think that?
As Spider-Man tries to figure out the controls to pop the sphere open Widow watches the fight against Doom and winces slightly when Doom delivers a punch that knocks the Hulk, yes the actual Hulk, through the wall and out the building.
The Avengers take care of the Doombots and Doom's little cybernetic bitch easily enough but Doom, as always, is going to be much harder to take down.
Hawkeye's latest arrow misses as Doom swiftly swings out of the way and the Avengers advance on the armour wearing tyrant.
"Doom!" Iron Man commands. "You can't win this. Surrender!"
"Doom does not surrender," is the ominous reply.
"Take him down!" Iron Man orders and fires a blast which is absorbed by an energy shield. Doom retaliates with a blast of his own which levels Iron Man.
"Today would be good Spider-Man," Widow mutters as the fight does not go well with Doom felling the Avengers one by one.
"But no pressure right," he quips, although under his mask his face is one of deep focus. Doom was really smart and he was having a hard time trying to break the access code. Just then his spider-sense goes off and he is forced to leap out of the way of a blast from Doom. He leaps at the armoured despot only to bounce off Doom's shield so he fires a webline and swings away while he rethinks. "Hey Doomsy! How's it going?" he asks.
"Irritating arachnid," Doom mutters.
"Hey you know I always have to give you credit for getting it right," he says in reference to Doom calling him an arachnid and not bug or insect as so many others call him wrongly. "So tell me Doc, what is it with kidnapping the sexy redhead? I mean, sure, I totally get having a soft spot for them but you do realise she knows a hundred ways to kill you, right?"
"148," Widow gives the precise number of ways she can currently think of to kill Doom. Give her a few minutes and she'll raise that number over 200.
"Are you lonely? Is that it? That iron clad teddy bear not doing it for you any more!"
"Why do you waste time with your prattle?" Doom asks. "Doom cannot be angered by mere words."
"Who wants to anger you? I'm just making small-talk!"
Doom fires off some more blasts at Spider-Man, not expecting to hit him but merely drive him back...and it works. He then, surprisingly, opens the sphere containing Widow and grabs her in a mystical field. "You will stand down Avengers!" he orders. "Or Doom will kill her."
The Avengers pause. Doom doesn't make idol threats.
"That's beneath you, Doom," Captain America argues.
"Doom does whatever he feels is necessary."
"What is this about, Doom?" Iron Man asks, his voice a little raspy from the pain of Doom's attacks. "What do you even want?"
"None of you have any idea what is going on. Black Widow is not what you think she is and Doom, out of the generosity of his heart, will now enlighten you," he informs them because he has gotten the information he wants from his scans. He brings Widow in front of him and reaches for her neck, grabbing the chain of her locket and snapping it as he pulls it free. He dangles it in front of Widow's eyes.
Natasha blinks...as if she doesn't want to look at it.
Doom notices. "Look at it, Ms Romanova," he demands.
The rest of the Avengers look on in confusion but stay their hand until they can be certain of rescuing Natasha without hurting her. Even Hawkeye is puzzled by the interest in the locket. Natasha's had that locket for as long as he can remember. She never talked much about it. He asked once and she snapped it was just an old family heirloom in a tone that indicated she never wanted to talk about it again and they never have.
Natasha blinks again and looks at the locket. It's a circular design, covered in swirling circular glyphs.
"No!" a voice, her voice, screeches in her mind. "You must not look at me! Don't notice me! Look away! Look away!"
Is the locket talking to her? Now Natasha can't help but look at it, be drawn to it, yet also part of her wants to run far, far away from it.
"Doom, what..." Iron Man begins.
"This is not a locket. It's technology. Alien technology. My scanners detected an unknown energy signature within. This is the truth of Ms Romanova who will now open it and show you all that Doom is always correct."
"No! Don't listen! Don't open me! Forget me! That was the plan! Open me and it will all be ruined! Don't open me! You can't! You mustn't!" the voice pleads.
Natasha's trembling hand reaches for the locket. The pleas doing nothing to stop her. She has to know. She doesn't know why except Doom's questioning has made her think, think about her life. He's right. Her memories are like someone pasted them. They lack detail and quality and depth. She's been manipulated too often before. If someone has messed her mind...she has to know.
She takes the locket and flicks the clasp open. With a burst of golden energy the locket opens. The energy slams into Natasha so hard it sends her flying from Doom's grasp and across the room.
The Avengers don't waste a moment and slam into Doom. All except Hawkeye who rushes over to where Natasha landed.
"Tash?" he queries, his voice showing clear concern for someone he is as close to as can be...or at least as close as Natasha ever allows anyone.
Widow groans and then mutters angrily...at herself apparently. "Stupid little ape. Never listen. That's your species' problem. You never listen."
"Tash?" Hawkeye repeats.
Her head snaps up and Hawkeye is physically taken aback by the look in her green eyes. Natasha has always had eyes that look much older than the face they belong to but now they look like eyes weighed down by the passage of centuries.
Widow snaps to her feet and storms off and Clink knows something is wrong instantly. In their job you are trained to notice everything and what Clint notices is that Natasha isn't moving like Natasha any more. The stride, the gate, the whole way she holds her body. It's wrong. He chases after her and reaches her as she starts to tear apart Doom's scanner and begins to rewire it by hand, her hands moving so fast they're almost a blur.
"What I wouldn't give for a sonic screwdriver," she mumbles under her breath. She pauses momentarily. "Oh I seem to talk to myself," she says, sounding surprised. "That's new," she remarks before getting back to work.
"Uh, Tash? What are you doing?"
"As if I could explain it to you," she answers in a very dismissive tone. "Lets just say that it was very effective against the Daleks and Doom is no Dalek."
Dalek? Hawkeye's heard that word before. Natasha would sometimes mutter it in her sleep when she was having a nightmare. He never did get around to asking her about it.
"It will have a limited range. I need Doom within 10 feet of the device," she informs Hawkeye.
"Right. I'll see what we can do," he says, worried about her, but if she has a plan then...well whatever is wrong with her can wait until they're back home.
As Hawkeye leaves her Natasha doesn't even spare him a glance as she works on though she does just keep the battle in the corner of her eye to judge where Doom is.
With their combined efforts the Avengers manage to manoeuvre Doom to within the range Natasha wanted. She connects together the last two circuits and the device fires up. The scanner beam latches onto Doom's armour which glows brightly bright before exploding.
When the dust settles an obviously badly hurt Doom lies on the ground amongst the ruins of his armour. Natasha moves to stand over him, her eyes fixated with a cold, dark rage beating deep within.
"How did you do that?" the peppiest of the Avengers, Wasp, asks.
"I altered the wavelength of the scanner so it would directly interface with the armour. I then sent a command which caused the power systems to backfire and overload." Her lips then quirk into an almost smile. "Basically I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow."
"That's impossible," Ant-Man comments. "Neutrons don't have a polarity."
"Really?" Natasha says sceptically. "And who told you that?"
"It's a basic scientific fact," Hank argues.
Natasha snorts. "Only by your limited science."
"You see," Doom croaks, trying to show he was right.
"Oh do shut up you wearisome...ape," Natasha dismisses him. "Or I'll end you right here and now."
"Uh, Widow, I know he's an egotistical jerk but we don't end people," Spider-Man points out.
Her eyes snap to Spider-Man. "I helped end my own people. What is he, what are any of you primitive little apes compared to them?" she almost snarls, full of anger and bitter self-recrimination.
"Okaayyy," Spider-Man drawls, scratching his head in confusion. "Anyone else got questions?"
"I do," Iron Man states. "Who are you and where is the Black Widow?" he demands to know.
Natasha turns to face him.
"Iron Man?" Captain America queries.
"My scanners," he starts to explain. "She's no longer reading human. I'm picking up a binary vascular system."
"Huh?" Wasp asks.
"She has two hearts," Black Panther explains, now completely on edge and ready to strike in case...whatever this woman is tries something.
"I told her not to open the locket and wake me up. This is not what I wanted," 'Natasha' states.
"Where's Natasha?!" Hawkeye demands to know, aiming an arrow at her.
"Gone," is the simple answer. "Assuming you could say she was ever really here in the first place."
"What does that mean lady?" Cap wants to know.
"Natasha was simply someone I became so I could forget."
"Forget what?"
"Everything," she says with a complete, all encompassing sadness, her hand going to her eyes to wipe away a stray tear.
"Bring her back!" Hawkeye demands.
"I can't."
"Can't or won't?"
"Can't. The device I used is long destroyed. Believe me if I could bring her back I would. I don't wish to be here."
"Why would you wish that?" Spider-Man asks, his tone more serious than normal. Sure he's felt crap at time but he's never wished he wasn't here.
"If you had seen what I have seen you wouldn't want to remember either."
"You fought in a war," Cap realises. It's the look in her eyes. That far off stare he's seen before of someone who has seen terrible things.
"I fought in THE war. The war to end all wars."
Captain America walks up to her and looks, really looks into her eyes.
"Uh, Cap?" Spider-Man queries. "Is that wise?" he wonders about the 1st Avenger getting that close to someone who they don't even know who or what she is any more.
"Are you a threat to us?" Cap asks her.
"No," she offers in return.
"Stand down," Cap orders.
"What?" Iron Man asks.
"She's not going to hurt us. I can see it in her eyes. Now we should go retrieve Hulk and get out of here," he decides. "We can sort this out at home."
"Best idea I've heard all day," Wasp comments.
"You're sure?" Iron Man wants to know.
"Yes," Cap says, still looking into her eyes...and what eyes they were. They were so old, so tried, so...defeated. The eyes of someone who had given up. Who didn't really have any reason to keep going. They're the eyes of a soldier who had fought long and hard...and lost. That's why she's not a threat. She just doesn't have the care enough to be one.
Cap's word is good enough for Iron Man. "Alright people. Lets move out!" he orders. As for Doom...well he'll probably survive. He usually does. Spider-Man's right in that they don't end people but they don't have to help him either.
Clint is the most distressed of all by this situation as they walk back to the jet considering how close he and Natasha are...were? He walks beside her keeping his eyes on her. "You're not Natasha," he states.
"No," she answers. "But I remember everything she did. I know everything she knows...knew," she corrects herself. "If it means anything to you at all I'm sorry. This is was not how I wanted her to end. I wanted her to live out a nice, long, normal life. The one thing my kind can never have."
"Who are you? What are you?" Clint wants to know. Iron Man said not human and it's not unlike they haven't met aliens before
"Those are both long stories," 'Natasha' relays, not really wanting to get into it.
"What about your name?" Wasp jumps in with. She was really curious after Iron Man said Natasha wasn't reading as human any more. "I mean you do have one right?"
'Natasha' sighs and rubs her head. "Yes. I have a name."
"And?" Wasp pushes for.
"My name is Romanadvoratrelundar but you can call me Romana..." she then can't quite help herself and tags on, "or Fred."
The End.
Author's Note: Romana/Romanova. Come on. You can't tell me no-one spotted Romana's name can be picked up inside Black Widow's. Well anyway there's my explanation for where Romana went after the Time War. My idea being she made herself human to try and simply forget the horrors of the war which is why she's so cold and harsh but also sad and defeated. Who wouldn't be when you're all but the last of your kind. This was partially inspired by the Avengers EMH episode 'The Private War of Dr Doom'. Thanks to everyone who has previously written reviews.