The fall of Moscow and the KGB is on the horizon. The USA - with Captain America as their noble leader - steps in to aid Russia in halting the uprising. However, Steve Rogers realizes that not everything is as it seems, and the red-headed and red-bl...
Natasha couldn't muster a response as she struggled to draw in desperate breaths, her lungs burning for air.
Pain twisted down her leg where a man gripped her thigh. He had one hand on her injured leg and the other fisted in her hair, keeping her head pressed against the wall as he endlessly tortured her for betraying the Red Room while Madame B. watched in satisfaction. Natasha wanted to cry, to scream, but she couldn't draw in the breath to do so. Blood dripped from her nose and her leg, pooling around her on the cement and soaking into her shirt and leggings that were torn from being viciously whipped with a leather belt. She silently pleaded for death to come, to steal her away from the pain. She wouldn't win this time, and she couldn't save Maria locked in the other chamber when Natasha couldn't even save herself.
She'd lost everything, and she hadn't even told Steve how much she loved him.
"Вы действительно думали, что сможете победить нас ... перехитрить нас? Напомню, мы создали вас и можем уничтожим." [You really thought you could defeat us... outsmart us? Let me remind you, we made you, and we will destroy you.]
• • •
It had been almost two weeks since Natasha and Maria had been kidnapped.
The hours had turned into days, the days turning into weeks. Steve could feel desperation setting in, the panic and longing that Sam felt as well. Their entire team had searched endlessly, tracking down every lead and trail, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Every dead-end pushed them closer to the edge of grief. They had gathered little intel about the agent from the Red Room that had purposely crashed their car into them, and they knew Madame B. had been the one who intercepted the ambulance, murdered the paramedics, and captured Maria and Natasha. She wasn't working alone, and Steve's team was facing the greatest agent and master manipulator who had just as many contacts as S.H.I.E.L.D.. Madame B. had stolen the love of his life away all in the blink of an eye, but he would never stop searching for Natasha. He couldn't lose her, and he knew that he had to save her before it was too late.
He only knew half the horrors the Red Room had inflicted upon her when she was working for them, but he couldn't envisage the torture she was enduring after destroying the reign of the KGB in Moscow. She'd told him she wouldn't survive if Madame B. captured her again but every night when he laid down in her bed, clutching her pillow and urging himself not to cry, he pleaded to God and prayed that wherever she was, she heard him, that she wouldn't stop fighting. He begged her to fight this battle one more time, even though he had failed her because he'd promised she'd never fight alone. Now, both her and Maria were somewhere out there alone, fighting for their lives.
