I'm lying to you // Natasha Romanoff x OC Odindottir

Chapter 8 - The Ass-crack of Butt Knows Where

Cyrus' pov

Watching her smoke-concealed form dash up a metal-framed stairway, Natasha flips and leaps her way out of the Hulk's path. A deafening crash - marred with an outraged roar - suddenly makes me worry. Swing up, over a railing and up onto a higher deck, the hissing of a ruptured pipe spews cloudy gas across the corridor.

Seeing that Natasha is in fact perfectly fine, I let my guard down for no more than a split second.

"ROARRRR!" The man-turned-mutant backhands me out of his path and back over the railing. Landing roughly in a bruised heap, the crashing continues down and into the distance. As the dust and smoke settles, I stagger up.

But, as if by some sort of magic, it all goes silent, apart from the rhythmic thud of the Hulk's footsteps. However, this momentary peace is suddenly shattered by another roar and a gunshot, followed by more hissing gas.

Natasha's pov

Where is she? Perhaps she actually abided by my order and ran, yet I highly doubt it. A sharp pain fires up my leg from the earlier injury, but I have no time to attend to it. In close pursuit by Bruce, I race down the straight corridor, blocking flying shards of wall and glass with my forearm.

However, just when I think he's in arms' reach of me, a muffled roar is followed by the incontinuation of his foot-stomps. Letting myself glance back, the blood splattered form of Cyrus hold a thin, golden rope to his throat, using it to steer him like a wild horse.

Throwing a look over at me, she coughs back, "Run, you fool!"

"No, Cyrus!" I fire back, shooting rapid shots at Bruce, despite having to take extra caution not to hit her. However, even in spite of this caution, I hit her leg.

She muffles it, but due to the pain, she lets out a groan, "Really, Agent Romanoff, he's a big enough target."

She continues to strain, but - most likely due to her new injury - she loses control over Bruce. As the golden rope dissolves into dust, he knocks her back into the rubble and debris of his destructive path. Now focusing on me, I dodge his initial swing, yet the second catches me off guard.

Being thrown back and nearly through the wall itself, I fear he's about to take one final, deadly swing. However, the blurred form of Cyrus' brother flies through, tackling him out of my view and into the distance.

A rattly breath shakes out of me, my own walls building up and steeling myself into an inaccessible ball on the floor, however temporary it is.

"Hey, Lady Natasha?" A calming voice calls from the distance, I feel her presence yet - for no explainable reason - I feel no need to put up a brave facade, "Hey.."

She slides down next to me, leaving a respectable distance between us. A few moments of comfortable silence pass before she finally speaks up.

"You ok?" I silently thank her for not asking what the matter was.

"Yeah," I breath out quietly, feeling my normal self begin to return.

"It's Barton: he's taken out our systems. He's headed for the detention level. Does anybody copy?" I hear Fury's crackly voice ask through my battered com.