Seven Devils // Natasha Romanoff

Part 4 - Wrong Side

Having spent all of last night and this morning with my mind racing over last night's interaction with Natasha, I begin to feel extremely anxious in the afternoon.  There's something about Natasha that is pulling me in.  My mind is on her constantly, and my thoughts are no longer centered around killing her, but more around just trying to see her again.  Long story short, I'm most certainly getting my feelings involved in this one.

If I were wise, I would call Dreykov to tell him that I've been compromised.  However... I don't want to.  Truthfully, I'm entirely enjoying myself with whatever the hell it is that's been going on between me and Natasha.  That inexplicable feeling where I want to kill her and make her suffer yet also don't want to at all fascinates me, and I intend to find out what is causing that.

Additionally, I've realized one thing since our conversation yesterday: she doesn't know what I'm trying to kill her for.  I gave her a hint, but that doesn't even begin to show her the half of it. 

So, that's what's driving my current visit to Natasha: letting her know just what it is that I'm revenging.  When I see Natasha leave her trailer to go to her car, I know that now's my time.  I step out from my hiding spot behind my tree and pull a knife from my pocket.  I swiftly take aim and throw it towards Natasha's car, and it embeds itself in her car door just as she's reaching for it.

She freezes, her hand mere inches from where my knife landed.  By the time she turns to me, I'm feet away from her, so I swiftly land a punch on her left jawline.  "Shit!" she gasps, stepping back away from me.  "Do I really not get a break?"

I swing my leg into her hip, slamming her into the side of her car.  "No," I shrug nonchalantly.

I reel back to kick her again, but she lands a punch in the center of my chest before I can react.  I dramatically take a step back as she steps toward me, and we soon find ourselves in another one of our equal-footing face-offs.  I land a punch, she lands a punch.  I block a kick, she blocks a kick.

We go on like this for minutes until I finally realize that we're getting nowhere.  Deciding to switch it up, I drop to the ground and roll past Natasha, grabbing a decent-sized rock as I do so.  As I stick my landing, I slam the rock into the back of her knee, effectively knocking her off-balance.

I kip-up off of the ground while wrapping my legs around her hips, twisting her around to be under me.  We slam into the ground, her back taking the entirety of the impact for us.  She arches her back slightly as she gasps in pain, and I waste no time in delivering an impromptu punch to her face.

Her head slams into the ground as she inhales sharply.

"Yesterday, you asked me why I was trying to kill you," I state, waiting for her to recover.  Once her pain seems to be wearing off, I land an even harder punch, earning another pained gasp from her.  "I've decided that I didn't make myself clear enough."

I wrap a hand around her neck, squeezing lightly.  "Budapest, 2008.  You attempted to kill me, and you killed everyone else in the building.  I nearly died, and it took me months to recover."

She gracefully bends her leg at an unreal angle and wraps it around my arm holding her neck, rolling us over and forcing me to release her.  I kick her away from me before she can try to get on top of me, resulting in both of us landing a few feet apart.

As we're both beginning to stand, Natasha speaks up, slightly out of breath, "I swear on my life, you weren't in Budapest."

I scoff lightly, sending her a disbelieving look.  "Well, I'm glad you swore on your life, because I'm going to kill you."

I kick her chest, slamming her back towards the car.  She winces as her back collides with the car and I hold my shin tight against her front, keeping her pinned to the car.  "I'm not lying," she insists.

"You're a liar," I accuse.  "And a traitor.  You defected from Dreykov after he did everything for you.  He made you.  And you killed him."

"Dreykov was a horrible person.  If you want to talk about liars, let's talk about him, because that man has told the truth just about twice in his life-"

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

A smirk slowly crawls onto her face as she watches the anger growing in mine.  Without warning, she grabs my leg pressed against her chest and forces it off to the side, wrapping it around her hip as she turns us around and slams me against the car.  I inhale sharply, my stomach doing a flip at the position she's got me in.

Her smirk only grows at my reaction, and she digs for more as she presses her hips against mine even tighter.  "How well do you really know Dreykov?  Because right now it seems like you're more focused on avenging him than yourself."

"You're absolutely-"

She presses a hand to my mouth to silence me, muffling my protests.  "I can tell that you and I are very similar, from the personalities to the fighting; however, we have one large difference.  I was able to take a step back and reevaluate Dreykov; it seems that you are not."

I raise an arm in warning, but she only tightens her grip on my mouth as she leans closer.  Her lips practically graze my ear.  "Have you ever stopped to consider that you're fighting on the wrong side?"

With that, she releases me and steps back.  My leg unwraps from around her waist, my body immediately missing our contact.  I remain leaning against the car, regaining my bearings as she strides away.

......

When I resume my position in the woods after making sure that there was no way for Natasha to follow my movements, I settle in to watch Natasha.  I can see that Natasha is scrutinizing something at her kitchen counter. I slip the binoculars out of my bag of supplies, trying to see what it is that she's looking at. When the binoculars focus in on it, my heart drops: it's my knife that I threw at her car.

Dreykov marks every Widow's knives with a special code that reveals her name so that he will be able to tell what Widow was killed and/or was messy in the aftermath of a mission. Only Dreykov and a few select Widows know how to decrypt this code; Natasha was one of those. If she decrypts the code, she'll know my name. God, I'll just have to pray that I've stayed off the internet's radar so she won't be able to find anything from a single Google search.

I consider telling Dreykov, but I decide against it; he told me I only had one more chance to kill her, so I'm not going to tell him about any of my attempts except the one where I actually kill her. Besides, it's only a minor mistake; if she finds out my name, it's not a huge deal.

It looks like I'm just going to be working under Dreykov's radar a bit on this one.