black widow movie | dear violette romanoff,

chapter seventeen | sick with nostalgia

I shake my head at Alexei's suggestion. "Dad, I think you should... talk to her," I attempt.

Alexei looks disconcerted for a moment as if he doesn't know which thing to react to, my name for him or my suggestion. "Huh. Yeah. Okay. I'll go to talk to her." He gets up and enters the bedroom.

Nat's sitting beside me with her eyes fixed on the floor, her elbows on the table, and her hands cupped together.

Melina's staring into my soul, partly apologetic, mostly reluctant. She wants to say something to me.

I inhale, "I think we should..."

I can't get much out before Nat storms away.

"Hey!" I shout at her, standing up in alert. "I thought we were talking like grown-ups."

"Where are you going?" Melina asks, sounding more beside herself than I had imagined. She stands up, too.

"To do this myself," Nat answers quickly. She's clearly annoyed.

I follow her into the kitchen; she's looking around in Melina's pantry, which also acts as a weaponry room.

"Yeah right," I hiss at her. I don't like that she sounds so sure of herself.

She takes a moment to stare at me thoroughly. "I mean it."

"Don't. You won't survive," Melina calls from the dining room.

"I wish I could believe that you cared," Nat sighs. "But you're not even the first mother that abandoned me."

I want to say something reassuring, or something that might change her mind altogether, but I have nothing to say.

This turns out okay because Melina does have something to share. "No, you weren't abandoned," she starts, walking toward the kitchen. "You were selected by a program that assessed the genetic potential in infants."

This is more shocking than anything else that has happened today. I don't have the time or energy to deal with something as big as this, but Nat clearly does.

Nat freezes and walks out from the pantry, into the light. She waits for a moment, trying to process something. "I was taken?"

"I believe a bargain was struck," Melina explains, glancing at me, too, "your family paid off."

This is just going to make me more confused, so I'd rather try to momentarily reject the information than accept it.

"The program stretched through the decade,"  she continues. "Violette was assessed as you were, six years later. It was pure irony and nothing that I can explain, that you two were not separated in the academy. The Red Room confirmed that after the money had been paid, there were no exceptions, but your mother, she never stopped looking for you." She looks at Natasha. "She was like you in that way. She was... relentless."

Natasha looks behind her, sparing me a quick, semi-thoughtful glance in preparation for the question we both knew she was going to ask.

I shake my head at her. I don't want this next question to break me, or her.

"What happened to her?" Nat asks, inevitably.

Melina lets out a subtle breath. "Dreykov had her killed."

It's such a pity that someone I didn't know could unknowingly hurt me so much. It's not that my biological mother intended to hurt me. In fact, she did her best to prevent it. But it is worse knowing that she did want me, rather than thinking that she didn't. That hurts more.

Nat drops her head. She has her own thoughts screaming at her, too.

"Her existence threatened to uncover the Red Room," Melina goes on. "Normally, the actions of one curious civilian would not warrant an execution, but, as I said, she was relentless."

I walk past Melina and Natasha, sitting down on the coffee table behind them to think.

"I thought about her every day of my life," Nat begins, hiding the puffiness in her eyes. "Whether or not I admitted it to myself, I did. I thought about what it would have been like to live there and be with her. I thought about what it would have been like to not miss my little sister's childhood. To not miss my own childhood."

I look up. I feel for her, I do. But I don't know how to comfort her when I have never been shown that level of comfort myself.

"I've always found it best not to look into the past," Melina says, nodding to herself.

Natasha goes quiet.

Something catches my eye on the bookshelf beside Melina and Nat; a large book with a cover of flowers and grass and sky. I remember it because I had attempted to draw it with Yelena as children when I learned that it was called a landscape.

It was the book of photos that we had kept of evidence supporting that we were a family. The photos were all fake, but I remembered the excitement of taking them. It had been left behind when we were forced to evacuate Ohio.

I stand up, sauntering over slowly, and I reach for the book.

"Why'd you save this, then?" Nat asks, taking it from my hands.

I wait beside her, watching as she opens the front page.

Photo after photo. Yelena with different foods, Natasha with unopened presents, myself with items of clothing, all three of us pulling stupid faces. I cannot seem to concentrate on one photo in particular, as they continue coming.

Fake Easter, Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving.

Natasha's thumb hovers over one photo in particular. It is staged to look like Christmas morning. A fireplace, a rug, pajamas, a decorated tree with empty presents underneath.

"I remember this day," she recalls. "We shot Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and summer vacation all in one day." There is a slight but definite smile on Natasha's face. "Different backdrops."

"Mmm," Melina mumbles.

I feel sick to my stomach withy nostalgia.

"I knew all the presents under the tree were just empty boxes," Nat exhales, "but I didn't care. I wanted to open every single one of them. So just for a second, it would feel real."

Melina tasks the book from her hands. "Let's stop this."

I feel tempted to ask for the book back, but there's no reason to.

"Why are you doing this?" Nat asks.

"Why does a mouse born in a cage run on that little wheel? Do you know I was cycled through the Red Room four times before you were even born? Six before Violette was born. Those walls are all I know," she explains. "I was never given a choice."

"But you're not a mouse, Melina. You were just born in a cage, but that's not your fault."

Melina scoffs.

"You could get out of this," I try to reason. "You could fight back. With us."

"Tell me, how did you girls keep your heart?" she asks with care.

Natasha looks up. "Pain only makes us stronger," she quotes. "Didn't you tell us that? What you taught me kept me alive."

Melina looks at me. There is only apology in her now fear-struck eyes.

"In Ohio, when the plane took off... you told me that everything would be okay as long as the sun came up," I tell her. "I waited for the sunrise every morning in the Red Room. That's how I knew I was going to be okay."

She looks ridden with anxiety and guilt. "I'm sorry, I already alerted the Red Room. They'll be here any minute."