[right] August ████ Madripoor [/right] [i]One[/i]. Legs kick uselessly, hands slicing themselves on the wire turned noose, red arcing across her vision. [i]Two[/i]. Someone screams as the man on their right is whipped out of his seat, as men in suits stagger to their feet, swaying unsteadily. A gun cracks, a bullet screams past, but her body is already moving to the third buyer through the darkened room, working through another length of wire. [i]Three[/i]. She has barely captured the fat man when the door explodes. People start running, her targets are [i]running[/i] and she cannot let them go. Alarms scream in her head—if they don’t die, she fails, if she fails then they will drag her back into the red, into smoke, with needles and knives and she is better than [i]failure[/i]. Kostya is leaving the stage, panicked, and her body moves, leaping off swaying lights. She rolls through the impact, sprints through the panicked crowd, trying to find him— He has a gun when she finds him, but she is faster, deadlier, and his hands are shaking. He fires, she strafes, someone else screams at the bullet in their back. Kostya’s eyes are bulging as she knocks him off balance, swings her body around and snaps the garrote about his throat. He goes down, hard, thrashing desperately as she tightens the weapon. His curses are choked by the blood bubbling in his throat. Her body leans in, close to his ear, lips curving with someone else’s smirk, “[color=#b30000][/color]” means nothing to Natalia, but Kostya thrashes violently, and the message is delivered. Something in her head clicks into place, although she does not comprehend it, and she knows he is dead. Her job is done. Completion allows her to shift her focus to survival. She releases the corpse and rises, blank eyes scanning the room. There is a bottleneck at the destroyed door, terrified guests trampling each other to fit through the wreckage. She slips her switch from a pouch, already running the opposite direction to a small door off the side of the stage. It flips and there is a delightful [i]click[/i] as the lock is disabled. The door opens with a slam of her shoulder and she [i]runs[/i]. [hr][right] S.H.I.E.L.D. Mission Report STRIKE Team Delta DATE REDACTED Galveston, Texas[/right] “You’re telling me you really don’t know who this is?” For a man with only one eye, Fury managed to deliver the single most skeptical expression Natasha had ever seen. A blonde woman stared up at her from a photograph, curls tumbling down her back as she snapped a neck, lips curved into a wicked smile. She’d left the security footage for them to find and disappeared. “[color=#b30000] I am[/color],” Natasha said blandly, arms folded as she looked up to the Director. “[color=#b30000] Perhaps she is new.[/color]” “New,” Fury huffed, leaning back against his desk, looking ten thousand percent Over This Shit. Natasha cocked her head to one side. “You think they kept this shit up after the collapse?” “[color=#b30000] You know they did,[/color]” Natasha pointed out, green eyes searching Fury. He was testing her, she knew, trying to catch her in a lie. “[color=#b30000] If I knew her before, I don’t remember it.[/color]” Fury said nothing for a long moment, before handing her the file and nodding towards the door. “Take Barton with you.” -- They tracked the Widow throughout the US, following bodies without identities, dismembered in a way that made her brain tickle with unexplained familiarity. They found a man with his eyes gouged out, his tongue severed, his ears meticulously carved from his head, all placed neatly on his chest. [i]Snow, breath clouding the air, December—it’s Christmas Eve—the warehouse is freezing and he is screaming as she delicately severs the optic nerve, a man’s voice laughing in her skull.[/i] “[color=#b30000] St. Petersburg,[/color]” She’d murmured. Barton had looked at her curiously. She’d collected the preserved eyes and sent them to S.H.I.E.L.D. S.H.I.E.L.D. named him Николай. That night, Natasha dreamed in red. She woke to her hands strangling the air, pulse screaming through her veins, laughter that wasn’t hers bubbling out of her throat. At least she hadn’t attacked Barton when he’d pulled her back to reality. [i]Progress![/i] He’d informed her, rather cheerily for someone whose neck she had nearly snapped only a month ago. -- It was dark, another hour yet before the sun was due to rise, but it was already uncomfortably humid. The material’s scientists who had made her suit had made it durable, breathable, and surprisingly good at repelling knives, but there was only so much they could do. The harbor warehouse was practically sweating. Red curls stuck to the back of her neck and the air sat heavy in her lungs. She was a shadow, skulking through the warehouse in perfect silence, tracking every corner with sharp eyes. It was a shipping warehouse, which meant numerous containers, and numerous places to hide. Natasha cleared rooms methodically. Two taps on the comm meant she had another pair of eyes. She didn’t relax—she knew better than to let back up make her sloppy—but there was something almost like reassurance in the knowledge. Barton was a special brand of crazy, but he’d never failed to have her back. No workers yet. No signs of life, even, in a building that had been fully staffed only a day ago. Her brows knitted together as she paused, surveying her surroundings. Something was wrong. She wasn’t sure how she knew it—but that was nothing new. Natasha simply accepted that there was knowledge locked inside of her that she’d never know how she learned it. At least it was useful. There was a whisper in the air. Natasha shifted on pure instinct, guns drawn, aimed. Suits, men in suits, faces she knew without knowing, features that she was forgetting, even as she looked at them— [i]Red Room.[/i] “[color=#b30000] Barton. Run.[/color]” [hr][right]Lisbon[/right] Leaning against the front of the car, Natasha was sure to flash Clint her most smug smirk. He’d moved for an arrow on instinct and found only empty air, and she’d won their pointless wager. She took entirely too much delight in her victory, even chuckling as Clint complained. “[color=#b30000] You can’t honestly say you expected me to play fair,[/color]” She drawled, eyes glittering with mirth. He tossed her the case, her hands automatically snapping up to capture it. Clint’s antics made Natasha scoff, although the sound was playful, free of genuine scorn. The case found its home in the back seat, and Natasha withdrew keys from a belt pouch, unlocking the bland sedan, They had [i]borrowed[/i] it from an old S.H.I.E.L.D. cache, one that had been mercifully left alone after the intelligence dump before Sokovia. It [i]looked[/i] unassuming, but S.H.I.E.L.D. engineers had always been good at hiding power in plain sight. “[color=#b30000] That’s quite the injury. You might not make it,[/color]” Natasha quipped, glancing over a shoulder as they whipped out of the space, before turning on a dime and screaming down the memorized route. “[color=#b30000]I’ll be sure to invent something suitably heroic at your funeral.[/color]”