There's Worse Ways To Go

Nine

His fist comes across my face and my nose snaps to the side. I hear the crunch and feel stars go to my eyes, my entire face numbing. Blue Suit stands before me, his guard the one throwing punches for him. I must be getting interrogated for at least several hours now. My face shows it.

"What technology were you allowed access to as a marksman of your status?" he repeats, the same question now for the past eight punches.

I suck in air through my mouth, my nose too broken to breathe through. I give him the same answer. Silence.

Another punch flies across my temple, leaving me in a daze. I close my eyes, hoping sleep will come with the pain. Nat's face flits behind my lids and I startle, opening them. She is coming to find me. I have to believe in that. I know she will not rest. And so I force myself to sit up again, straighten myself, and stare at Blue Suit with narrowed eyes, daring him to ask it again.

And he does.

When four days went by, Natasha passed out from exhaustion. Her dreams of the Red Room were replaced with Vic being tortured instead, and her sleep deprivation didn't allow her to pull herself out of them. She was forced to stay, watching from the corner of wherever Vic was being held, paralyzed as they waterboarded her, electrocuted her, cut her. She could do nothing.

When she did manage to wake from the nightmares she stumbled her way to the kitchen, searching for the bottle of whiskey she and Vic had shared that night they had found each other, too scared of their own minds to go back to bed.

She slumps into the chair at the table, sipping from the bottle, a reminder of Vic's lips. She closes her eyes, swallowing and running her fingers over the throat of the glass, wanting so desperately for it to be Vic's skin.

Footsteps pad into the kitchen and a body sits down across from her. They are silent, and from the lack of interaction, she knows it's Steve.

She opens her eyes, meeting his gaze. They stare at each other a moment, Steve's big, sad puppy dog eyes too much to look at right now and she has to turn away.

"We're going to find her," he says softly, looking down at his hands.

"She could already be dead."

That silences him, and they both don't know what to say to the other. She takes another sip.

"I spoke with Tony and Vision. They're trying everything they can-"

"Are they? Because if they were, I have a feeling she'd already be back by now. They have all the tech in the world at their hands, in their brains, and they can't find one person?"

"Vic's tracker is in her Friday glasses. They haven't gotten a ping on it yet so Cuda must've shut them down. When they turn them back on, which they probably will to study the tech, then we'll have her. It's just a waiting game."

Nat stands and hurls the bottle into the wall. The glass explodes and the whiskey paints the concrete a darker gray. She immediately regrets it. That bottle was something they shared, and now it's gone.

She stands next to the table, back facing Steve, huffing. A waiting game. She wants to scream at that. Vic could be dead. She could be dying. She could be wounded. And they have to wait.

Steve knows not to touch Nat in the wrong situations. He knows that a friendly pat on the back is fine, a nudge on the arm in good nature is allowed. She's not a touchy person, but now he feels that she needs someone to hold her. He will not go that far, however, he knows better than that, so instead, he reaches out and takes her hand.

She doesn't even let his fingers touch hers, the moment she feels him trying to hold her she rips away. She storms down the hall, shaking out her hand.

If Vic dies, she wants to be the last thing she touched. She wants Vic's hold to be the only thing to ever hold her.

She had been sleeping in her assigned room for the past four days, not wanting to ruin the space she had created with Vic in hers. But now she doesn't care. She's becoming hopeless. So she barges into the room and the sight and smell of it hit her like a truck.

It's Vic.

Vic's hoodie draped over the back of her desk chair. Her closet open with her several shirts and pants, creased and folded with military precision. A picture of her brothers when there were toddlers on her dresser, next to a picture of her mother in army fatigues, saluting. A third hangs from the mirror, Vic smiling with her squad, all of them making goofy faces and poses. Her cologne, a soft uni-sex scent she told Natasha that she stole from a man in her squad. She said she loved it because it seemed to leave its scent wherever he went, Vic knew he had been there.

And now Nat stands, frozen a few steps from the doorway, in this time capsule of Vic. Tears well in her eyes but she will not let them fall. No. She will not cry over her. Because crying is admitting defeat. Crying is a last resort. A luxury of grief. And she is not grieving. Not yet.

She picks up the hoodie from the desks, raising it to her nose and sucking in the scent. She kisses the fabric, then slides it on over her head.

The bed, always unmade because Vic believed if she just going to get in it that night, what's the point in making it? Natasha smiles at this and stares at the mussed covers and sheets, the tossed pillows, the imprints of their bodies from the last night they spent together. She slips into the bed, folding the covers over her and pulling the hoodie tight around her. Again, she does not cry. She lays. Her eyes close and sleep comes.

Her nightmares never appear.

Loud Metallica music blasts in the room, screeching and banging. It's been going on for hours, and when a guard comes in and marks a sixth tally on the wall, I know it's been running for two days.

They have only fed me broth, a slice of bread sometimes accompanying it. I get my water from the times they waterboard me.

Every day, Blue Suit comes in. He asks about my mother, what she told me about the time she spent in their care, and I doubt care is the right word for it. I'm silent through it all. It doesn't matter. I would just be telling him I didn't know regardless. He asks about my squad, other snipers, our enemies and targets, their tech, our tech. He receives nothing from me.

On the seventh day, they try something new.

I'm starving, my stomach curving in on itself and I can feel my face is narrowed. I sit alone in my music box, mumbling along to the screams of the singer, trying to force myself to follow along. The guards come in, one carrying a car battery, and I know what is coming next.

They turn the music down to a murmur. They cut the zip ties holding me, rip my suit down to my torso, exposing my top to them. They cut my bra off me, then apply shackles to my hands and raise me up to a hook on the ceiling. My toes just graze the ground, and I have been in this hold before. This suspension.

Blue Suit smiles as the guard sets the battery on my chair, applying his wires and volts.

"You are an especially strong soldier, aren't you, Victoria?" he asks.

"The Taliban is more creative than you," I mumble, my mouth dry and split from the previous day's questioning.

This makes his smile drop, and just for that comment the guard stabs me in the back with metal robs, sending electricity coursing through my body. My teeth chatter and my eyes shake, my toes coming off the ground and my shoulders holding all my weight. He stops, and I think this is the time I might not be able to last. If it was my first time, I might have a few months longer in me. But I'm older now, not the young twenty-something I was when I was deployed and captured. My body remembers the pain, it reopens the wounds and receptors and makes it so much more painful. The memory of it.

"Now," Blue suit says, "where were we?"