Little Widow | marvel

Part 2 - The Glass Cage

When I come to, I'm in a small room with a mattress, pillow, blanket, and one glass wall. Scratch that, not a room. A cell. I've been captured.

Just feet away from me on the outside of the glass is the woman from Prague, sitting in a chair. She's waiting patiently, probably for me to talk. I humor her.

"You said you know me," I state. She looks at me.
"We all do," she replies.
"Who's we?"
"The Avengers."

Oh. Them. I've heard stories of "Earths mightiest heroes" or whatever, but I never really questioned what they did. I was just told that they were a threat to the red room.

"What do you want from me?" I ask.
"Information," the woman responds. I chuckle and go silent.
"Where's the Red Room?" She asks.
She's not getting anything from me.
"You don't want to talk? That's fine. I'm patient," she tells me. I just look at her.

We sit in silence for an unmeasurable amount of time before she finally leaves me alone. How could I have been so stupid to be caught? I'm better than this. I'll find a way out, return to the place that destroyed me because it's all I know.

I examine the cell I'm in, looking for a weak spot. The glass wall is bullet proof and I don't know what lies behind the other three walls. Think, Katya. There's always a way out.

"No there isn't," I hear a different woman say in an Eastern European accent. I turn around
"What?" I ask her, confused.
"Trust me, there isn't a way out." It's like she can hear my thoughts.
"That's because I can. Hear your thoughts, that is."
I'm flabbergasted. "Get out of my head, witch," I demand, anger in my voice. "What do you want?"
"Natasha sent me. To get you to talk. But if you won't talk, I'll enter your mind," she tells me.

Natasha. That must be the red haired woman who was in here before.
"Who are you?" I ask the new woman.
"Wanda Maximoff."

The woman sits down and opens a file.
"And you are Katya Amalia Trusonova," she reads. "One of Dreykov's Widows. Responsible for countless assassinations. Most recent kill, Elena Bernadotte." She closes the file.

The target. Elena. I never think of the target as their names, because when they have names, they become people. People I've killed.

The young woman looks at me. "I'm not interested in what's in here," she tells me. "I'm interested in who you really are."
"I'm a killer. A trained assassin. And I will kill you," I tell her with snark in my voice.
"Everyone has a story. Do you really want that to be yours?" She asks me.

After a long pause, Wanda tells me she'll be back. She finally leaves me alone.

I think about Elena, what I did to her. How I gutted her and put a bullet in her head ruthlessly. Then all of my other victims start to enter my mind. The quick and clean kills, the ugly and dirty ones. The fear in their faces. The way some of them begged for mercy.

I start punching the wall. Once, twice, three times. I cry out in anger and frustration. I need to get out of here. Four, five, six times. The blood starts trickling down my hand.

Maybe I can punch my way out of here. If not, well, then I deserve the pain for all the people I've killed. For the monster that I am. The pain in my hand reminds me of the gash in my leg. It's been bandaged up, probably when I was knocked out, but it still hurts like a bitch. I keep punching the wall. The wall doesn't dent, but more blood pools on my hand and begins making its way down my forearm. I sink to the ground, exhausted. But the thoughts won't go away. The people I killed, some innocent, some not. I press my thumb into the cut on my thigh and instantly feel pain. I focus on that pain and the thoughts begin to slowly quiet down. The pain is the only thing that helps stop me from spiraling. I continue applying pressure to the wound to keep the pain steady and the thoughts from coming back. I sigh in relief.