A Lofty Choice

Epilogue

There is a line that needs to be drawn in red sharpie.   Red has always been a line in Natasha's book.   Red like the blood dripping from the victims in her wake.   Red like the blood that dripped in her son's veins.   Red like the fire that she wanted to rain down on the red room.   Maybe she was made for this purpose.   To cause destruction in her wake.   She didn't know and she didn't care. 

Right now all she could see was the son she left behind again.   He would be fine.   He would be better without her.  She knew this, but she held on tight to him nonetheless, until she lost him again to circumstances.

When did her grip begin to loosen?  Maybe it was when she realized that he was grown up and mature.  The closer he was to her the more danger he was in.  She wanted to nurture him, but every time she looked back, he was always surprising her.   All she could do was be there.  She hoped that was enough for him, because all she could offer were some assassin skills.

She played the part acting as Melina.   Of course, that didn't stop him from figuring out who she was but hadn't that been a part of the plan.  

"Is this your plan?"  Draykov asked, leaning into Natasha's personal space.

Natasha remained with the same emotionless face.  "My plan is to kill you."  She was an assassin.  This is what she was made to be like, and it was all coming down in vengeance for Draykov.  

"I'm alive."  He should have died years ago.  He was trying to mock Natasha at her failure to kill him.  She had thought that she ended it years ago, yet here she was again.  At the exact the same spot.  "So what do we do now?"  There is was more of the mocking, yet she was unbothered by this.  It was all part of the mind games.  The mind games she was trained in. 

"What was my mother's name?"  Natasha would never get to uncover this information right now before she kill him.  You cannot extract information from a corpse.

"Ah...Where we buried her..." he stared into her eyes and paused again, "there was a tree.  A pink blossom. Beautiful.  There was a tombstone with a name engraved on it.  Unknown." 

He broke off the conversation again like his mind was foggy.  "What was her name?"  He chuckles to himself.  "Unknown."  

Natasha shakes her head again.  This conversation was going nowhere.  "You don't feel anything.  Did you feel anything when I killed your daughter?"  

"Is this your haunted past? Really?"  He chuckles before laughing again.  "You gave me my greatest weapon."  

Draykov walks over to person in the armored suit.  The suit that she had been fighting constantly.  He gets behind the person in the suit and mutters behind the armored person's ears as if to whisper something endearing.  "Say hello."

The person in the suit presses a button on her arm releasing a mechanism that allows her to take off her helmet revealing Drakov's daughter.  The one she murdered.  She supposed that this was nature's way of evening it out.  Natasha got her son back, but Draykov got his daughter back.  

"When your bomb exploded, it nearly killed my Antonia."

There was a moment of Antonia and Natasha just looking at each other.  

Draykov kept talking.  He motioned to the back of his collar.  "I had to put a chip in the back of her neck."  He motioned to the back of his own neck to emphasize it more.  "In the back of her neck."  He started walking around and motioned to Antonia.  "Look at her.  You find it difficult to look at her?"  

His voice carried his accent across to her.  His voice was gentle, but there was a harshness to it.  "I do."  

He kept on walking and pointed at Natasha again.  "She watches everything."  He motions up at Atonia.  "And she can do everything.  She is the perfect mimic."