VENUS VADYAEVA. RED Room trained assassin, graduate of the Black Widow program. She'd nearly always been at the top of the class. Cold; smart; ruthless. The qualities that they were looking for. It'd taken a little while, but eventually, she'd gotte...
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∆ {1⁸} {FAMOUS LAST WORDS} ∆
"NATASHA?" CLINT'S VOICE rang through the corridor that the woman in question marched down with purpose, the agents parting to give her space.
"Natasha, what happened?" He asked, slightly out of breath as he managed to catch up to her.
"I need to check something," Her voice was firm, as if she knew she was going to do it, and she was going to do it alone, "I'll come and find you in a minute."
"Are you sure?" It was a pointless question, but Clint knew he should ask, just in case.
"Yes, I'm sure." So, Natasha left him behind in the middle of the corridor and continued towards SHIELD's computer room. No-one got in her way; they'd all heard of what she could do. If the woman in that interrogation cell was who Natasha thought she was, the whole situation could change. She found a computer in the corner, her mind too caught up in the situation to notice any of the confused glances she got. As she typed, the scars on Natasha's own wrists caught her eye, her fingers faltering for a moment as she fixed her green eyes on them. She remembered the cold bite of the handcuffs that cut into the flesh of her wrists as she lay on the small, hard bed. She remembered the smell of blood and the pain of the exercises, of the training. But now she also remembered words whispered into the night, thrown away by the wind as if they meant nothing. But they had meant something, at least to her. Natasha sucked in a harsh breath when she found the file she was looking for, finding the freshly familiar name in bold at the top.
She stared at it for a good few minutes, trying to process what she was seeing. But then Natasha set off back towards the interrogation cell, to tell the quiet woman sitting in there, that she remembered.
{~}
AFTER NATASHA HAD left, looking rattled and slightly shaky, Clint Barton had gone after her to check up on her, to see if she was alright. When she'd waved him off, he'd turned around and marched right back to the interrogation room, where he'd barged in on Venus, who still sat in her silence, barely concealed concern flitting across his features.
Venus had simply looked at him again, with her blank, golden eyes. Clint tried to ignore it, and how it made his skin crawl; he wanted to know what she'd done to Natasha.
"What did you say to her?" He quickly realised how worried he sounded, quickly calming himself down, expecting to see some of satisfaction, only to be greeted by the same as any other time. This woman was very good at what she did.
"Right, you didn't say anything. What did you show her?" Venus found the whole situation a little amusing. All she'd done was sit in this room, and she'd managed to wind up this Agent Barton, and apparently Nick Fury, the Director of SHIELD, because he stormed into the room a second later, his black trench coat billowing dramatically. He glared at her, and she could almost feel it through his eyepatch, but she kept her impassive face. She'd been up against worse than the one-eyed SHIELD spy with a flair for being melodramatic.
"I realise that you don't want to tell me anything," he started, his deep voice dominating the room and making Clint flinch in surprise, "but I need to know what you did to my agent." Venus turned her gaze to him. It had been an instinct, to change her eyeline to the newest person in the room, to evaluate them for threats. But somehow, in that moment, she'd forgotten about the mirror behind him, and she hadn't caught herself quickly enough to stop her eyes travelling to it.
She couldn't bring herself to take her eyes off of it, instead raising her head slightly as she paid attention to her reflection, to see what it would do. Fury and Barton were still talking, but what they were saying didn't matter. Venus didn't see her face. At least, the one that matched her age. She did see herself, but it was a younger version of her. Gold met gold as she stared into her own eyes, though the ones from the other her weren't blank. They were cold, terrified, isolated. This was what she had looked like when she'd stared back at herself in a mirror, just as she did now, when the Red Room had conditioned her.
Venus felt her breath catch in her throat, though she tried to disguise it, and the world seemed to dissolve around her. Almost literally, as if it had been dipped in acid, and her mind faded to black, worn down by the sheer strength of the memories she fought so hard against. But, however hard she battled, they wouldn't go away, and she losing to them now. These were the ones that haunted her, during the night and the day. They were relentless, and they were finally winning. However hard she tried, Venus knew she couldn't fight back forever. But she wanted to, and she acted like she could, if only to protect herself.
They were taking a toll on her. So, she set her jaw and, however reluctantly, let those memories flood back into her mind. As she watched her life play out through her head, her unblinking gaze on the mirror continued, and all Venus saw was who she was trained to be. The cold, heartless assassin that they had trained her to be, and that she always would be. She had killed a lot of people. Some of them deserved it, some of them hadn't, but her opinion on the matter (though she barely had one) hadn't mattered. She simply did what she was told. She was simply a tool, a weapon for them to use.
At one point, when she was slightly younger than the version of herself in the mirror, she'd known that. But they'd forced that idea out of her head with their careful words, the threat of death, and a single, dirty, chipped mirror. Every time she looked at a mirror, a cold fear would rush through her bones, as if she was back there, waiting knowingly for what would come. Whenever she saw her reflection, that was the only time that her flight instinct was strong enough that sometimes, she would leave. Other things unnerved her, but mirrors sent pure fear through her body, one that she could feel chill her bones, one that made her want to cower in a dark corner until the terror left her system. All she remembered from her youth was pain, blood, and fear. Then the blankness had started, her only need was to complete whatever mission she was set; no wanting, no wishing, simply cold, plain, blankness.
Fury and Barton had stopped talking at her, at some point that she hadn't processed, realising that she wasn't paying them the slightest amount of attention, the mirror seeming to lose its shine with the intensity of her gaze. That only worsened the illusion, the dark fantasy in her mind that she wasn't in SHIELD's interrogation room; she was in that dark room, a woman with a gun ready to fire directly behind her, staring herself in the eye.
Someone else had walked into the room, though Venus was too controlled by her dread to move her eyes even a centimetre in the mirror to see who it was. They undoubtedly had another gun. It was only when they spoke a word that she realised that they had walked into the SHIELD room. It was the word she'd whispered countless times on cold Russian nights, trying to ignore the ache all over her body as she payed attention to something, or someone, else.
"Звездa." Venus felt crippling familiarity ripple through her body, her eyes snapping to the face of the person that was now in the room, finding red hair and beautiful green eyes. She nodded slowly at the woman.
"да." For the first time in years, Venus Vadyaeva and Natasha Romanoff looked each other in the eyes, green into gold, and they both remembered.
{A/N:} I quite like this chapter. So, Natasha finally remembered, eight chapters in, and they've had the start of their little reunion. I wrote this chapter today, wasn't planning to publish it until Friday.You have SimpforNatand seeyainaminuteto thank for this early chapter. I hope you enjoyed it, vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc. My wifi's being really spotty so it took a moment (15 minutes) to get this up.
Also I was gonna use a random word for their little word thingy but I don't think biscuit fitted. Enjoy your tea. See you next update,
