Avenger or Assassin? (UNDERGOING HEAVY EDITING)

Alive But Dead

{Natasha}

I awoke in Cap's arms. He was asleep, but I was in my room. He'd pulled the comforters up over us. His hand was in my hair, fingers intertwined with the red locks. I sat up stiffly, stretching. It was around ten o'clock in the morning. Ten o'clock. I shouldn't be in bed. I threw the comforters off myself and swung my legs over the side of the bed, wobbling as I stood. I'd gained some of my weight back but I was still twenty five pounds underweight for my age and I wasn't gaining any quickly.

I leaned on the bed, then on the shelf, then on the bathroom counter as I made my way to the shower. I decided against the shower, and ran a bath. I stripped down and set myself into the water, gasping as the cuts on my back entered the water. I counted my ribs. It was the first time I could see them through my skin since I was six.

I got out of the shower. How had Bucky managed to make me look human while I looked like this? "Damn it," I whispered. I'd forgotten a shirt. I could've bear to get back into my tactical suit, which they'd confiscated anyway until they fixed the patches on the shoulders. I slipped into a sports bra and loose pants and tiptoed back into my room, praying that Cap was asleep. I shuffled to my side of the bed and dug through my dresser. My foot caught on the end of the bed and I tripped, but strong arms wrapped around me, breaking my fall.

"I got you," Cap said from behind me. He turned me around to face him. "Don't put a shirt on yet. We have to get something on those cuts." He disappeared into the bathroom and came out with some sort of salve. He started applying it, but stopped, letting his fingers trace the welts across my back.

"What did they do to you in there?"

"You don't want to know, Rogers. It's worse than death, worse than hell. If they hadn't brainwashed me to Natalia, I would have killed myself."

He let his hands touch the bruises gently. "Are you putting on salve or feeling the new geographic mess my back is?" I asked.

"Nat, there's scars here that obviously weren't here from your months of torture. What are they from?"

I tensed up, and saw a flashback.

I was in a room, as the head mistress watched my ten year old self take on several men at once. I'd taken down six, which was incredible seeing as they were all at least six foot, and all weighing more than two hundred pounds. But the last four had over powered me and I tapped out, my throat burning, my head pulsating.

The headmistress shook her head. "Sloppy. Take her to the room, twenty lashes." I screamed as men in white suits took me away. "No, please don't do this to me, no, no, no!" I shrieked.

"Nat!" Cap yelled. "You there?"

"What? Yeah, yeah, sorry," I said.

"You were just staring off into space, like you were in deep thought."

"Yeah, I kinda was."

"What was it you saw?" This is the thing about Cap. He knows when I have a flashback. It's kinda scary sometimes. I'm a closed, locked book, with the key thrown down a well, but somehow Cap got the key back and is working on opening me up.

"Just old Red Room scenes. Where they trained me to be Natalia. It's a recurring dream. Over and over again, I watch myself get hurt, and broken, and turned into a burning killer. Someone I don't want to be, ever again," I shivered. He put his arm around my shoulders. "Let's go down and see the others. Fury has a mission briefing."

"He's not gonna let me go, so why even bother?"

"Because you should socialize. You've hidden in your room for the last week. Doing what?"