The lost Widow - Natasha Romanoff x Female

Chapter XXVI

Nina had enjoyed silence for some time, almost worryingly so.
At least once, she had toyed with the idea of leaving the room to check that everyone was still alright, but immediately dismissed it. If she had her peace, she wanted to use it. More than once she had been proud of herself when she had seen how well the parts had survived the crash, they had simply been built very sturdily. Somewhat more sensitive parts had suffered damage, but for most of them she had been able to repair it quite quickly.
Now she had two small compartments, the repaired parts ready for use again, cleaned, polished and neatly placed on a shelf, and at first sight irreparably damaged, lying on the large table. She had been standing in front of the pieces for far too long, chewing on her lower lip. The temptation to simply throw the rest away, to declare it unsalvageable and torture Tony a little instead, was great. Yet it was pieces of her sanctuary that were scattered before her. She almost regretted that she really only had the worst left, a "I'll start with the easiest" was now no longer possible.
Finally, she took heart, stepped forward and placed the patient in the middle of the treatment table.

Again, she was glad that she was alone, not everything had gone according to plan and, had there been another person in the room, Nina would not have been able to control her anger for a long time. It was an incredibly delicate job, the screws no bigger than the nail on her little finger and the cables so sensitive that you'd think one evil glance would set them on fire. If that were the case, the laboratory would already be on fire. Outside, opaque blackness had reigned for a long time, but the cold light stole all sense of time from her.
The sudden knock on the closed glass door jolted her out of her trance of work. Nina's grip and the fine screwdriver tightened as she tried to concentrate on her work again. "Nina, can you please open up." Natasha's voice made her pause for a moment. "What do you want, Natasha?" A small blue cable slipped into her view, it had fallen out of its holder. "That you open the door!" resounded Nat's voice again. The small cable was one of the main lines, if it broke she would have to take everything apart again. "Not now, I'm a bit busy at the moment."
"Nina, either you open the door or I'll find my own way!" the Russian woman threatened from outside.

With a tiny chopstick and dexterity, Nina began to gently manoeuvre the cable back into place, skilfully ignoring Natasha's threat. Silence fell over the lab, Nina's hand maintaining a steady calm as the cable was pushed further and further back to its original position.
With a loud clang, the cover of the ventilation shaft landed on the smooth floor and almost made Nina jump out of her skin in fright. Her first reflex made her reach for her knife, which was always lying close by. Quick as a flash, she turned to the source of the noise. "What the fuck, Natasha!" she cursed and took the knife from the Russian's throat. "I'm glad to see you too," she retorted sarcastically. "It's never a good idea to sneak up on people with knives," Nina stated the obvious. "You're supposed to know that." Inwardly, Nina cursed herself for having dramatically neglected the security of this room so far. It was impossible to get to her things via any technical connections and the door had also been given a brand-new lock. The ventilation shaft, on the other hand, she had ignored until now. The reason why she now had company from a red-haired and not entirely harmless Russian woman.

She shone the small lamp inside the component again. A sigh of relief left her lips when she saw that, despite the sudden movement of her hand, the small cable had not snapped off. Natasha had been lucky, if that had been the case, any rescue would have been too late. Nina was just starting to carefully push the cable back again when she felt Natasha's presence beside her. "Don't you dare touch anything!" Her threat sounded muffled around the spanner between her teeth. "What are you even doing?", ignoring her warning, Natasha stepped closer.
"Saving what can be saved. After all, the jet itself, for some mysterious reason, didn't make it over." With minimal pressure, she finally had the cable back in place. Relieved, she stepped back a little and closed the side of the part with the small metal plate. It had been the last part, now everything was back in tact and ready to be reassembled. "Sorry about the jet." Natasha's words were unexpected but sincere. A tiny grin curled on Nina's lips, "What else could I expect from you, nothing entrusted to you survives long." Gingerly, the placed the last item on the shelf before turning to Natasha, her voice soft, "I'm just glad nothing happened to you." A brief pause arose before her right shoulder jerked up slightly, "And neither to Yelena."
A throaty giggle came from Natasha and only now did Nina realise how close she had actually come. "We would have been quite lost without your jet. Why does this base exist, Nina?" Her voice became a little more serious as she asked the question.