Double-Edged Sword ─ age of ultron ✓

eight

"THE Avengers really brought a kid along to this?" one of Ulysses' men said, sharing a look with the others. They stared at Sasha, who stood calmly with her swords drawn.

"Yep." She grinned. "So are we gonna fight or what? Because I've got places to be."

"You want to fight?" The same man scoffed. Sasha slid her swords back into their sheaths and took him down without a single weapon, slamming him face-first against the floor.

"Do you?" she asked. The other three men, two of whom were armed, dove right for her. She pulled her swords back out. "Okay. If you insist."

Sasha slashed the man directly in front of her with both swords, slamming one of the other guys in the chest with a sword handle on the way back. The third guy tried to wrap his arm around his neck, but she grabbed his hand and twisted it behind his back. She shoved him into the other two still standing and made a run for it. Her goal wasn't to beat these guys. It was to stop the Maximoffs and Ultron.

On her way down the hall, she dodged men left and right. Sasha took a turn, hoping she was moving in the right direction. She jogged out into the heart of the ship and the chaos, where half the team was brawling with Ultron. Before she even had a chance to think, Pietro slammed into her at full speed, knocking her right over the ledge. She landed on her side across the room, in between several crates and right on top of some shards of glass, one of which dug right into her side.

"Fuck," Sasha swore, watching blood dribble across the floor. Trying not to make a sound, she ripped the glass out, gritting her teeth. She couldn't escape in the middle of this, so she had to hide out and hope she could apply enough pressure to stop the bleeding, yanking off her sweatshirt to hold against the wound. Already, her white shirt beneath it was dyed a red that would never come out.

Across the ship, without warning, the world around Natasha disintegrated, a room she knew all too well taking its place. The Red Room that raised her had to have been demolished or abandoned years ago. This couldn't be real, could it? But it felt pretty fucking real.

She went down the stairs she'd gone up and down thousands of times, passing a few girls in ballet garb as she headed for the studio. About six more girls danced en pointe, their movements as precise as a protractor. Most of their faces were only vaguely familiar, having never been more than just classmates to Natasha, but one stuck out to her immediately.

Sasha. And not Sasha back then, when she was first rescued from the Red Room at age ten. This was unmistakably almost-fifteen-year-old Sasha, dyed brown hair and all. Natasha's throat tightened.

"Again," the teacher ordered, and they did as told. For a brief second, Natasha caught Sasha's eyes, if they could even be called that. Those eyes had no life behind them, none of the fire or the mischievousness or even the sadness Natasha had seen on Sasha's face in their time together. They didn't even look blue anymore. They looked as gray and gloomy as the rest of this hellhole. This girl may be Sasha, but she wasn't Nat's Sasha.

"What did you do to her?" Natasha asked. Her old instructor joined her by the window. "You broke her, and you'll break them all."

"Only the breakable ones will break," the instructor replied. "Anya is not broken. Like you, she is made of marble."

"Marble breaks too, if you hit it the right way," Natasha muttered, and clearly, they had. They killed Sasha, the only reason she was still alive, repeating a difficult routine like it was nothing. You had to die to live in the Red Room, forfeiting your soul to survive. Maybe, once upon a time, you dreamed of escaping, the way Sasha did, but the longer you lasted in the Red Room, the more of that dream you lost. Even Sasha, who used to have that fire, would have succumbed to the Red Room if it was the only way to keep her heart beating. Natasha thought she saved her, pulled her out before she lost herself, but apparently not, because here Sasha was, spiritless, hopeless, obedient without any sign of defiance.