I've Got Red In My Ledger

Chapter Seventeen

Wanda, Yelena, Melina and Alexei get carried off of the jet unconscious, and it takes everything in me not to look back at them. I have to do this. I have to get to Dreykov, and I have to act like Melina. Once I'm inside, I know my way around like the back of my hand. Of course I do, I spent most of my life confined within these walls.
Just being in here makes my heart beat faster. It smells the same. My footsteps sound the same. It's all the same. A huge wave of disappointment flood over me when I remember that I thought I'd taken this whole thing down. Clint and I both did. He'd be just as disappointed as I was to find out that no, we hadn't actually gotten rid of it. Instead, we'd made the whole thing worse to the point where no one is even looking for him. But I will destroy it. I will fix our earlier mistakes.
I will destroy him.
The hallways are so distant, yet so familiar. I know them so well, yet I am a completely different person now. It's darker than I remember, more... empty. I know the way to Dreykov's quarters. I spent a great deal of time here, in this room.

I was his favourite. His best girl. The one he knew he could count on, the one he knew would never let him down. Until the day I escaped. He didn't see that coming. He'd often have me sitting in here. Whether it was showing him a ballet routine that I'd perfected, or the fact I could shoot and never miss... he wanted to see it all. I was his best girl and he loved me for that.
I stand outside, and the door buzzes before it opens. Not once, did I ever think I'd be walking through these doors again. Not once.
"My God." Dreykov's voice immediately sends panic through my body. He sounds the same. He looks the same. The room is the exact same. It's all the same. "Look at you." He chuckles.
I have to remind myself once again that I'm still Melina. I'm not Natasha. I am Melina.
"So, uh, how was the family reunion?" Dreykov asks.
I smile. "Oh, it was awful. They were clingy and too emotional, too needy."
Dreykov chuckles. "It was just like old times, then?"
"Hmmm." I reply, focusing on my breathing. I have to remain calm. Can't let the fear creep into my eyes, not for a moment.
"Yelena Belova." Hearing her name come out of his mouth disgusts me. "Wanda Maximoff." I never wanted to hear her name spoken by Dreykov. I clench my teeth. "What's the deal with them? Yelena was the only one affected, hmm? Why is Maximoff here?"
"As far as I know, yes." I pause. "Natalia didn't give me any details about her Avenger friend."
"These gasses... these antidotes and western superheroes... it's all a pain in my ass." Dreykov tells me. This is the face of the man who stole my childhood, stole all of these girls and turned them into killers. "It's a problem." He tells me. "You need to sort it."
I sigh. "Hmm, well, I have nine pigs that will require attending to in my absence."
"I don't give a shit about your pigs." He tells me, taking my shoulder and forcing me to sit down in the chair across from him. I spent a lot of time sitting here, in this chair. It all feels the same. The only difference being that this time, I know that I can get out of here.
"What about Natasha?" I ask, staring Dreykov down. He leans against the desk, his hands sitting on the arms of the chair.
"She's a traitor." He tells me bluntly. "She turned her back on her people. Her blood."
His words make me mad, but I just clench my teeth together even tighter. He doesn't know it at all.
"She had nothing. I gave her home. I gave her love. Put that thing in her you do. You know, the uh, chemicals. Turn her into one of your pigs." My fists are clenched into fists on my things. He thinks that this is home? He thinks that all of that pain was love? He thinks that training me to become one of the biggest, one of the best killers in the world was home? He thinks that forcing me to have my reproductive organs removed was love? He thinks that- I'm cut off by his next words.
"Can you imagine what I am going to be able to do with not just one, but two Avengers under my control?"
His mention of Wanda makes my body go cold. It makes me turn to ice. He's not getting his hands on her. I will not let him. He will not touch her.
"Well, wouldn't you like to speak to Natasha first?"
"When you look into the eyes of a child you have raised, no mask in the world can hide that." He knows. He reaches up to my temple, but I grab his wrist before he can touch me. I can't hide how fast my heart is beating. I can't hide that being here with him does actually scare me a little, and he knows that. He reaches forwards and pulls off the veil.
He chuckles. "Welcome home, Natalia."
Dreykov's special project pulls out a weapon, but Dreykov stops it from doing anything. Instead, he smiles.
"Now now. Don't go breaking one of my new toys." He chuckles.
I stand up.
"So this was your big plan, hm?" Dreykov shakes his head, finding this all incredibly amusing.
"My plan is to kill you." I tell him, and as soon as I say those words, I feel myself beginning to come into my element. Clint would have wanted this. He would have wanted Dreykov gone as soon as he'd found out that he was alive. He would stop at nothing.
"And yet here I am... alive." Dreykov laughs. "So, what do we do now?"
"What was my mothers name?" I ask him. I've only ever wanted to know that. I don't raise my voice, don't add emotion. I stand perfectly still.
"Ah." He nods. "Where we buried her, there was a tree... um, a pink blossom. It was beautiful. And there was a tombstone with her name engraved on it."
"What was her name?" I ask him coldly. For a moment I think he might tell me.
"Ah." He chuckles, not breaking eye contact with me once. "Un... known."
His words try to cut me deep, but they ricochet off of me. Luckily I'm used to hurt and disappointment. My heart sinks but I don't show it on my face.
"You don't feel anything?" I remark. "Did you feel anything when I killed your daughter?"
"Is this your haunted past? Really?" Dreykov laughs, finally breaking eye contact with me. He shakes his head. "Thank you, Natalia. You gave me my greatest weapon. Say hello."
He motions to his special project, heading over to it. 
His weapon takes off the helmet and I see her. Her face haunted and scarred. I take a couple steps towards her, unable to believe my eyes. "When your bomb exploded, it almost killed my Antonia. I had to put a chip in the back of her neck." He tells me, moving to behind his desk. I'm grateful for the distance between us. "In the back of her neck. Look at her." He tells me. "Do you find it difficult to look at her? Hmm? Do you?"
I glance over at her, but look back at Dreykov. My past is threatening to destroy me today, it seems.
"I do." He tells me, and I look at him with disgust. How can he say that about his own daughter? How can he do that to her?
"She... she watches anything and everything... and she can do it. She's the perfect mimic." He is proud of the monster he has turned her into. "She fights just like all of your friends." But he's wrong. Surely she can't fight like Wanda.
"Can she hear me?" I ask him, biting my cheek. I can't help but flinch when he leans into me. I can't stop looking at her, thinking of what I did to her.
"What? You want to make her feel better? You want to tell her that you're sorry?" He shakes his head, sighing. "Well, I guess you should have thought of that before you blew her face off." He grunts. "But enough of this bullshit."
Of course I didn't want to have to blow her face off. Of course I didn't want to have to hurt her. But Dreykov had to be killed, and I didn't have another choice.
"Go to work. There's a rat in the basement that needs to be sorted. Go." He tells his daughter, Antonia. She leaves, her helmet covering her face once more.
"Well, that was a mistake." I tell him. He doesn't know that I know I can't hurt him. As soon as Antonia is gone, I get out my gun, holding it towards him. I always thought my hands would shake, but they are perfectly still.
"Was it?" He gives me one of his sadistic smiles.
"You just sent away the one thing that could stop me from killing you." This act is easy. He's so calm, so nonchalant.
"Try then. Do it." He encourages me.
I have to make out that I don't know what's wrong with me. That I don't know why it's not working. So I grunt, struggle a little bit and make sure my hands tremble with the pressure.
He just looks at me, his face expressionless.
"Is the safety on?" He says, entertained by it. "No." I struggle as he takes my gun from my hand a proceeds to shoot it at the roof. It fires without hesitation.
"Oh, well, try your knife." He tells me and I pull out my knife, leaning into it this time. But still, I cannot touch him. I turn on the emotions then.
"Ah." Dreykov shrugs, taking the knife from my hand and letting it clatter to the ground. "I guess you're in trouble." He leans into me, and I don't need to act panicked. I feel it with every part of myself. It all just takes me back. I remember how he smelt. I remember it all. All of it.
"How are you controlling me?" I make out that I'm exhausted, that I was trying so hard that it's left me tired.
"I am not controlling you, Natalia." I hate that he continues to call me that. My name is Natasha now. I am not the girl, the Natalia that I was when I was here. "Well... not yet. But there is a pheromonal lock. Smelling my pheromones prevents you from committing any violence against me." He sighs, and I watch as he fidgets with his screen. He turns away for a moment, before he quickly lifts up his hand. I flinch backwards. He's hit me before. I am breathing deeply now, staring at the ground. He used to hit me. He used to do so many things. I have to focus on what I have to do, not the fear coursing through my veins. So, I focus on the screen he's working on. It's similar to the one Melina was using with her pigs. "I'm very upset with Melina. It's a shame that I'll have to kill her." He knows what Melina is doing. I can't hide the disappointment from my face. Does that mean he knows about Wanda? Is Yelena okay?
"So this was the plan, hm?" Dreykov sighs, unimpressed. "Melina was going to land the Red Room and hand me over to the authorities."
An alarm starts blaring in another room. Dreykov is distracted by the door.
"So, what now, you're going to fold me into your pathetic little puppeteer act?" I start walking towards his desk slowly.
"Pathetic, huh?" He turns from the door and faces me, still sitting down.
"Yeah, what would you call it?" I ask him.
"I would call it-" He starts, but I cut him off before he can continue.
"When was the last time that you had a conversation with somebody that wasn't forced to talk to you?"
"You ran away to fight in the wrong war. The real war was fought here, in the shadows." He tries telling me, as if that will make me switch back to his side.
"You didn't fight in the shadows." I tell him. "You hid in the dark."
I can tell that me questioning him is getting on his nerves. "Real power comes from undetectable influence."
"If no one's noticed, then why even do it? You're nothing." I lean across his desk. I have the power now.
"Hmm." He doesn't react.
"You have nothing." I hiss at him.
"There are fifty people on this planet-" He tries telling me, but I don't let him finish.
"Oh, stop it." I scoff, laughing a little.
He explodes, standing up and slamming his hands down on the table. "Don't tell me to stop!" He yells at me.
"If I don't tell you when to stop, then how will you know when to shut up?" His fist connects with my face in a matter of moments, but I am too angry to feel it. I take a couple of steps backwards, waiting for my vision to return. "Come on, do you think I can't take a punch?" I ask him, not being able to help myself. I chuckle and he reaches out and hits me again. "God damn it, you're weak." I laugh at him.
"Weak?" He retorts, and I grin.
"I bet it's easier for you to be tough in front of defenceless little girls, huh?" This has cracked him. He hits me with enough force that I'm knocked to the ground, my vision going dark for a matter of seconds. I don't give him the satisfaction though, and I turn to face him immediately. He kicks me, and I fall again. But I'm too mad to feel a thing. I've felt pain worse than this.
Still, I get back up.
"You wouldn't be so glib if you had any notion of the scope of what I've built. I own this world. Me."
"You seem desperate to impress me," I tell him.
"I don't need to impress you. I don't need to impress anyone. These world leaders... these... great men... they answer to me and my Widows."
He goes to his desk and opens the draw, dragging his ring across a screen.
A red wall appears, and I move over to it. Photos of girls no older than Yelena and I were when we were taken, cover it from top to bottom.
"These girls were trash. They are thrown out into the street. I recycle the trash. I give them purpose. I give them life." He told that to me, before. On one of my first nights here. He sat me down and told me about the life he was going to give me. "You know, it's my network of widows that help me control the scales of power. One command, the oil and stock markets crumble. One command, and a quarter of the planet will starve. My widows can start and end wars. They can make and break kings." He's told me all of this before. He's said it so many times that it's ingrained in my mind. He starts playing video footage of all the things he's achieved. Destruction and death plays out in front of me, and I know he's proud.
"And you control all of that from here?" I ask him.
"And with you, with Maximoff, under my control... two Avengers... I can finally come out of the shadows using the only natural resource that the world has too much of." He pauses, and I feel my heart stop when he mentions Wanda. But photos of little girls start flickering in front of me, and that makes my heart shatter even more. To think that I thought the Red Room was gone. That I'd saved them from having to go through what I did. "Girls."
I have to stay focused. If I let my mind get stuck on worrying about Wanda, I'll never get out.
"All from that little console?" I turn to face him. I smile.
"Yeah," Dreykov tells me, and I can't help but grin, because he's just made a mistake. "Oh, you find this amusing? Why are you smiling?" I walk back over to his desk.
"Don't take it personal... but uh, thank you for your cooperation." I tell him, and he just leans back in his chair, laughing. "You weren't quite strong enough, so... I'll have to finish it myself."
He just laughs. "Oh? Sit back down, Natasha." It's the first time he's called me that. "You're going to want to see this." The door buzzes open, and there's Antonia. Wanda is in her arms.
I immediately pull away from Dreykov, move away from his desk.
"What did you do to her?" I ask, and Antonia drops her on the floor. Wanda's unconscious, but Dreykov doesn't let me get close enough to her to make sure she's not actually dead.
"Sit down, Natasha. Antonia, take Miss Maximoff to the bench." Dreykov tells her, and I feel the world spinning. When I don't move, when I can't stop looking at Wanda, Dreykov slams a hand down on the desk. "Sit down."
I have no choice but to sit. He's going to threaten me with her. If I don't get her out, there's no way.
Antonia leaves her on the bench, and heads back out of the room.