𝐏𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 (marvel fanfic)

Chapter 19

The wind whipped past her cheek as she bent away from the attack. Sarah threw a punch to Natasha's stomach, her knuckles were met with soft flesh, and a constricting grip, Natasha caught her hand. As close as they were, Sarah could smell the faint perfume Natasha wore, it was an alluring scent- a kick colluded with her ribs making her slide to the side. Sarah's breath hitched for a second before she stabilized and brought her arms back up again.

It wasn't a good time to be admiring her opponent.

Natasha taunted her with a beckoning hand and a smile. Sarah obliged with a sigh, rushing over, her eyes darting to Natasha's raised leg. Sarah swiftly blocked it with her hand, not minding the sting that followed, and kept her hold on the leg instead. With her other hand, she punched her unguarded side, making Natasha stumble back awkwardly, her leg still caught.

"Do you like my leg that much?" Natasha smirked, leaning closer to Sarah, before chopping down her arm, thus freeing her leg. She followed the attack with a downward kick that Sarah easily avoided. Natasha's attacks weren't anything Sarah couldn't avoid; both knew the aim of the fight wasn't to injure or kill but to simply gauge her skills.

"Ouch," Clint emphasized with an obvious smile as Natasha came crashing against the strings of the ring in front of him.

The red-head glared at him, her head leaning back against the edge before going back to her opponent.

Steve simply contemplated the fight, arms crossed, having long discarded his own training. The clock was ticking by as sounds of grunts and thuds echoed in the room. He could see the honed training in Sarah erupting in random bursts, it was engrained into her very bones. It wasn't easy to fake foolishness and though she tried to make purposeful mistakes, her body kept her from any grave injuries. She tried to stop herself from avoiding some blows, but he could see her hand twitching minutely, her eyes darting and keeping up with ease with Natasha's attacks.

It was evident as time passed that Sarah wasn't any worse than Natasha, no it was an understatement—he concluded as Sarah once again slipped past Natasha's defenses and brought her down with a sound thud—she was better.

Sarah broke out of her fighting trance in cold sweat, eyes widening slightly when she saw Natasha panting below her, glaring at her. Her pain receptors finally decided to unlock and a wave of pain hit her—she felt a deep ache in her arms and legs, there would be bruises for the following week. But that wasn't the most important thing, no. She had let herself go. Her reflexes were stronger than her reason.

She abruptly got up, her body stiff and uneasy, her mind running through her options. Should she run away? The idea seemed deliciously tempting as she gazed at the disheveled Natasha approaching her. Despite every cell in her body yearning for an escape, she kept herself firm.

"Ms Cano, I believe we have a lot to talk about," Natasha smilingly said, her voice low and raspy, still a bit out of breath.

"That's-" Sarah finally looked around, to glance at Steve who raised a brow at her—seemingly asking what kind of excuse she would come up with this time—before settling on Clint who calmly put away his phone. He was filming. Blackmail on his coworker probably. If she wasn't on the edge of losing her peaceful life, she would have chuckled.

A yawn cut through the tension as a man walked into the room, "I see you've been making good use of my gym."

"Tony," Steve acknowledged the man, while Natasha rolled her eyes and Clint nodded in greeting.

Sarah felt the tip of her soul threaten to escape from her body as the consequences of her slip up emerged like the tip of an iceberg. She sighed heavily before plopping down on the floor, resting against the post. The fatigue she had been pushing away all came rushing back to her and she felt her eyelids threatening to drop close. Maybe sleeping a few hours per nights wasn't a good idea in retrospect.

"Water," she extended a hand through the ring to Steve who kindly obeyed and handed her a water bottle. She gulped it down, ignoring the silence and the gazes, only relishing on the cooling stream running through her throat. When she finished the bottle, she gazed with anguish at the last drops collecting at the bottom.

Seeing her take her sweet time, Tony coughed forcibly, in an attempt to attract her attention.

"Should probably see a doctor for your dry throat, Mr Stark." Sarah remarked kindly, before pushing herself up. A glance at the clock told her there was no need to worry about showing her coworkers her bruises since she wasn't going to be able to attend anyway.

"So Ms. Cano-"

They put her back in her interrogation room.

Sarah looked around, feeling the room was smaller with the four adults looming over her on the other side of the table. She stretched her knuckles, leaning back into the painful metal chair that dig into her back. She hadn't missed that feeling.

"I see you've redecorated!" She commented, referring to the added cameras and microphones in the plain white room.

"Listen here," Natasha begrudgingly started, "let's not start this whole ordeal again."

Tony's disappointment was clear as day.

Clint took over feeling the mood worsen by the second, "We've been investigating you, Sarah Cano."

"That sounds reassuring," she chuckled stiffly, straightening in her chair.

Steve noticed the raise in awareness from the woman, the way her shoulders squared up and her eyes became firm with a trace of coldness. Definitely not the reaction of an unaware citizen.

Clint continued seeing the lack of reaction from the woman, "Your resume has been tampered with, a woman named Sarah Cano didn't exist ten years ago."

Sarah remained still as water, she expected the truth to come out sooner or later. There was only so much she could do to escape the eyes of a genius who managed to outwit gods and an organization who gathered so much power in the shadows it stood head-to-head with the world's leading nations. She expected it, she prepared for it, but that didn't mean she was looking forward to it.

"In your situation, deceiving the government is liable to 50 years of firm imprisonment, adding to that your attempts to gain information on the leading technology firm-" the spy listed on and on as Sarah felt the blood boil in her veins.

She knew any reaction from her would seal her fate, but hearing him babble on about extrapolated crimes they took the leisure of adding onto her head, she felt the urge to punch him square in the face.

"And might I add," Stark interrupted with a side-smirk, fully knowing the implications of his words, "your relationship with one of your students being quite susp-"

A string snapped in her mind, and before he could finish his sentence, he received a heavy punch to the face. He fell on his butt with a bewildered face and the beginning of a nosebleed.

Steve quickly went to stand in front of Sarah, not knowing what to expect from the sudden burst of violence. He prepared for the worse. But she didn't move forward and calmly settled back into her chair. A tense silence settled in.

"We should settle this quickly-" Tony mumbled, a hand on his nose to block the bleeding, "otherwise we'll have to cancel tonight's party..."

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