Red Daughter (Natasha Romanoff)

Seventeen

The cell that Natasha was in was an old friend.

While it was windowless and the door let in no light, even in the pitch darkness she knew it was her cell. The one that she'd been tossed into so many times after so many failed missions and imperfect test scores.

She'd been tossed in after a Widow had treated her wounds. She'd tried to talk to the girl but had gotten a blow to the head that had rendered her unconscious. She'd woken up just before they'd tossed her in and now she lays in the familiar darkness, her wounds and head throbbing.

She'd pace the floor if she could, but there wasn't room. Her cell was little, roughly six feet long and three feet wide. She'd asked Dreykov once why it was so small and he'd grinned as he said it was to prepare his girls for the inevitable blackness of death. That it would make his girls stronger if they knew what awaited them on the other side.

At the time it had made sense to her, but now, she knew what it really was- torture designed by an old psychopath who enjoys hurting girls.

Natasha sighs and wiggles slightly, trying to find a position on the hard floor that wasn't pressing into her gunshot wounds. She still couldn't believe that Elodie had shot her and Yelena. Of course she should have seen it coming, Elodie only calls her Natalia when she's angry or brainwashed.

Slowly, Natasha reaches up to her ear and feels for the nanite graft that Tony had made for the entire team, tapping it gently. Unlike their regular coms, these grafts couldn't be seen by the naked eye or detected by any scans. After several close calls Tony had made them so that the team could always stay in touch even if one got taken.

"Agent Romanoff," JARVIS says in her ear. "It's good to hear from you. The team was worried when they saw the safe house had burned to the ground."

"Can they track us?" Natasha breathed, not daring to move her lips are speak very high just in case they had cameras in her cell.

"There appears to be mass interference with the signal," JARVIS informs her. "As of now communication with Stark Tower and the Avengers is impossible. The only reason I am able to communicate with you is because a tiny part of me is coded into each ear piece. However, I can connect you to Agent Belova since she's within my thirty foot radius."

"She's here?"

"Yes although her vitals are.. odd," JARVIS muses. "While her gunshot wounds are no longer life threatening, her mental health is deteriorating quickly. I would assume that it's due to being back in a place that inflicted such trauma on her as a young child."

"Connect me," Natasha demands as worry for her sister surges through her. While Natasha had it bad, Yelena had it worse in her years here.

"You are now connected to Agent Belova's ear patch," JARVIS says. "Although I must warn you that she is non responsive."

"Yelena?" Natasha whispers. As JARVIS had said, there was no answer except panicked breathing. "Yelena it's Natasha, I'm here little sister. You are not alone, I am here."

Natasha loses track of how many times she says those words, but she knows that hours must have passed when her throat gets sore and she struggles to keep her voice from cracking.

When she finally has to stop talking, there's a long pause and then, "Natasha?"

Her sister's voice fills her head, "hey little sister! I'm here!"

"This is not a dream then?" Yelena asks in a voice that nearly breaks Natasha's heart. She'd never heard her sister sound so defeated before, all the life drained from her.

"I'm afraid not," Natasha tells her gently. "But I'll get us out of here, I promise."

"Not even you can escape twice," Yelena mumbles.

"She is correct," JARVIS interrupts. "The chances of you ever leaving this cell alive is less than 0.0011 percent."

"That's not helpful," Natasha snaps at him.

"However, if you could someone put your graft onto a guard and that guard were to then go near an internet source," JARVIS continues. "I could hack in remotely and send our location to the team."

"Why didn't you lead with that?" Yelena asks him, a slight annoyance in her voice. "Stupid robot."

"I am not a robot," JARVIS scoffs. "I am an artificial-,"

"Robot," Yelena says again. "Let's do this escape plan already. I will draw them into the cell somehow and then when they go to grab me I'll put the ear sticker-."

"Ear graft," JARVIS corrects.

"That's what I said," Yelena continues. "I'll put the ear thing onto one of the guards and then we can go home."

"It's not as simple as that," JARVIS tries to argue. "There would still hours, possibly days before the team could track us and formulate a rescue plan."

"Then you hack in and let us out," Yelena challenges him.

"Shut up," Natasha orders them both. "We aren't leaving."

There's a moment where both of them are silent and then Yelena asks slowly, "what?"

"We can't leave without the others. We don't even know if Wanda is here and if she's not, then if we escape they'll hide her so that we will never find her," Natasha explains. "I can't let her life as a captive again. And Elodie.."

"Sold us out," Yelena says bitterly. "She shot us."

"It wasn't her," Natasha argues. "I could see it in her eyes, it wasn't her. It was something Orlov did to her. He changed her, somehow." Natasha breathes shakily, "we can't leave her behind. I can't leave her behind again. I won't."

"Then we won't," Yelena says easily. "We will wait and come up with a better plan. One where we find Wanda and Elodie and we all go home."

"You make it sound so easy," Natasha muses. Yelena always had a knack for making complicated things sounds easy.

"What's the worst that could happen?"

"We die."

Natasha could hear the grin on Yelena's face, "then we will take as many of them with us. Maybe even the entire Red Room. Now that would be a cool way to die."