To Go Unseen (A Natasha Romanoff Story)

51 [a cell in the Red Room years ago]

Natalia thought that it would be impossible to cry more than she already had. She must have run out of tears. She must be a well gone dry. Even if a hundred more tragic things were to happen to her, she would have nothing to draw on and her tears had all been used up.

She sat now with a shackle attached to her wrist and behind bars, her eyes red, but dry. She stared at the ground and all she could hear anymore was the way James screamed and the blankness in his eyes when he looked at her. After they’d scrubbed her out of his mind.

She’d been dragged out as soon as they began to wipe him for the second time in a row, kicking and screaming, and they’d thrown her into a cell to be dealt with later and Natalia had curled up there, devastated. She stayed there alone for nearly a day.

“Ah, Natty…,” she heard a familiar disappointed voice and she looked up to see Ivan Petrovitch standing outside the bars of the cell, his hands in his pockets, looking in. He was frowning at her.

Oh, Natalia realized when a flood of emotion swept her up. She’d been wrong. It was certainly possible to cry again, and she looked down quickly, trying to blink away the stinging in her eyes. Under Ivan’s eyes, she felt like she was five years old again, sitting in a corner for misbehaving. No one could make her feel so ashamed as Ivan could. It was as though, Natalia realized later, her love for him had been weaponized against her.

“What have you gotten yourself into, child?” Ivan said.

“You haven’t called me Natty in years,” Natalia said. She hadn’t heard that childish nickname since she was sixteen, maybe younger, and now she was twenty-one and feeling particularly traumatized. She heard clinking of keys and the cell door open and close again and then Ivan was sitting next to her.

“Give me your wrist,” he said and she offered it to him shamefully. He took her hand and unlocked the shackle and tossed it to the ground and Natalia used her now free hand to wipe hot tears off her cheeks. They sat there for a while in silence.

“I don’t understand,” Ivan said. “The Winter Soldier? Of all the men to kiss and all the monsters to tangle with, you choose him??” Natalia glared at the ground and took a deep breath and at first, she didn’t know how to respond because Ivan’s comment had made her so angry, and suddenly, she was just angry with everything. It was that sudden falling fast moment where pain and sorrow warp into rage and she felt herself bottled up with it.

“I wanted him,” Natalia said through gritted teeth. “They took him from me and killed him because I wanted him.”

“Oh, Natalia,” Ivan said and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “That’s not true.”

“Then why couldn’t I…,” Natalia trailed off and she remembered him in her arms, blood everywhere, pressing her forehead to his and crying. She pressed her mouth together in a line and told herself, no more tears.

Ivan sighed and shifted.

“He’s not exactly a man, Natalia,” Ivan said. “He’s not a person. He’s more of a, well…” Ivan thought for a minute. “A tool, I suppose. And he’s dangerous. He may have seemed innocent enough to you-how, I can’t imagine-but he is not innocent. We separated you for your own safety, child.” Ivan squeezed Natalia gently, but she swallowed hard and looked away from him angrily. “And besides, he’s not even dead.”

Natalia looked up now, stunned. What?

“He’s alive, but he’s somewhere you’ll never find him again, alright?” Ivan continued sternly. “He is not yours. He belongs to the Red Room.” Natalia scooted herself out of Ivan’s hug and pressed herself against the wall. She felt anger she couldn’t put a name on. Ivan kept talking now, as though he were pleading with her. “Natalia…,” he said quietly. “He was barely even human-”

“He was completely human and I wanted him,” she spat, cutting into Ivan’s words, irate.

“You have to sacrifice things, Natalia,” Ivan said.

“His name was James!” Natalia cried and looked over at Ivan and furious tears began to spill down her cheeks. “He had a name! He wasn’t a thing!”

Ivan’s face hardened and Natalia watched his jaw tick as he ground his teeth in frustration. When he spoke again, it was in a growl.

“If you let anyone know that you know more about that man than that,” Ivan said. “You will be killed.” He jumped to his feet. “I’m trying to protect you!”

Natalia stared at him and suddenly, something clicked. She stared.

“You,” she said slowly. “You told them to take him. It was you.”

“Now don’t you do anything irrational, Natalia,” Ivan said threateningly, but that was all the confirmation Natalia needed.

“You made me watch,” she breathed. “You made me watch them torture him.”

“You were becoming distracted,” Ivan said. “That Winter Soldier wasn’t good for you.”

Here, Natalia realized she had a choice. Her first instinct was to stand as well, to argue with him, to shout, to demand that James be brought to her and his mind restored to him, but her self control told her to wait. The second choice seemed smarter. She needn’t yell, she needn’t let on how much Ivan had crushed her. She let the weight of his betrayal sit instead, and she was silent for a long time before Ivan spoke again.

“You don’t need boyfriends, Natalia,” he told her.

“He made me happy,” she whispered. “He made me happy.” She looked up at him, and half of her felt weak, afraid, heartbroken, and the other half of her was all rage that wanted to cut him to the bone with her words. “You should have seen his face, Ivan. The way he looked at me. No one’s…” She stopped herself and then finished slowly. “No one’s ever looked at me the way he did…”

This was the exact moment, down to the second, that Natalia realized Ivan did not love her.

“And no one will again, child, and for that you should be grateful,” Ivan said, talking over Natalia’s inner, heartbroken epiphany. “You don’t need the Winter Soldier of all things to make you happy. You are going to be the Black Widow! You are on the top of the charts, and the time to bestow the title is soon. Then, you will be happy and you will forget all about that monster of a man.”

You’re right, Ivan, Natalia thought, and a bitter hatred grew in her heart. There’s a monster here I ought to forget. But it isn’t James.