Home Is Where The Heart Is { Winter Widow }

Chapter One : Somewhere I'm Suppose To Be ?

Life never gives you many options. It has always taken what it wants and never feels the need to repay in any way. It has no word to keep nor honor to lose .

I've learned and accepted that in my extended lifetime and while that is true it doesn't mean I have to like it. Returning to Russia was the smart thing to do, I have people who owe me favors here, my web was set up and it was the last place people would look. Yet my heart is disquiet.

When I turned my back on Tony I half expected him to attempt to arrest me, that's what I've learned in my long lifetime; that no matter who you trust, you can never trust them with your life.

Alright, not true.... I trusted one man with my Life, which I never regretted, but he isn't with me anymore and perhaps that is why I'll never feel at home. My heart is had gone home but I have not. My heart is in a freezer.... Lost to time and lost to me. The world just got a whole lot colder.

You would think that walking through the snow in my hometown would bring back memories, make my mind return to the past. Well it doesn't, the past is not a place I wish to dwell on. I have no fond memories of playing in the snow or baking with my mother, I just remember the ice cold and the clashing of bodies until someone surrendered. I remember a pain in my mind, and the loss of my childhood memories.

Hydra made sure you had no memories of family nor a family to find. Once you were Hydra's that is all you were. Sure, you could change your name, your look, your accent. You could even join another cause, as I have, but one thing was for certain: A hydra agent could always tell their own. It's in the walk, the secret glances, and chosen words. It's our tactics.. How we never run in a straight line, even when training. How we are always ready for a fight.. Always.

That's how I knew that that elderly woman walking by me, carrying her shopping, wasn't someone's grandmother. The fight was over before it could ever begin. My clothes were always carefully chosen to conceal a blade under my fur jacket. The metal, cool against my flesh, slipped easily down into my hand as I turned, my hair whipping out like fire around me, like the spilling blood of a slashed throat.

The old women was fast but her body was a lot weaker than mine and I didn't have to discard a bag. Bags were good to conceal a weapon in but a hindrance when caught off guard. She had her blade up, aimed at my chest, but my blade had already connected with the soft flesh of her neck. The blade slipped from her grasp as she fell back on the snow, staining the White with scarlet. For a few hours, at least, it would hold the memory of the crime that was committed here but like Everything, it would fade. I watched her gasp for only a second before wiping my blade on her clothes and returning it to its hiding place.

Swiftly and without remorse I walked away.. It was clear she wasn't sent for me, she had just been an old agent on the lookout. The base here was still active, a surprise after what I did to it the last time I was here. But it wasn't as strong in power, it couldn't be.. Right?

Minutes in and already I was compromised. Normally I would leave, head back straight away, but not today, I had no other option. I just had to take out the base.. For good this time.

Besides, who said I wouldn't get a 'Welcome Home' party?

Perhaps being home wasn't going to be the most boring trip after all. After all, I had already killed someone. As I walked through the snow, my boots crunching the white powder, with only more snow as far as the eye could see. I recollected, perhaps, a fond memory ... I don't know if you would call it fond, my memories were far too complex for such a simple term, but it's the closest to describing it as I'm going to get.

For a moment my chest seized up and I found it hard to Breathe, a different time replaying in my head.

Standing there, waiting. He should be here by now! Was he compromised? , No impossible! He was good , no he was the best.