What now? [winterwidow]

16 - Who Are You?

Natasha POV

As I walk to the rendezvous point and on my way back to the Helicarrier, I think about the encounter I just had. I'm free from the automatic trigger meaning I can start piecing my memories together, properly. But, I should probably take it slow...

"Agents," I say, nodding, when I see two people on standby at the end of my landing strip.

"Director Fury requesting to see you ma'am," an agent replies. I nod towards him and head towards Fury's quarters.

I pass the corridors and hallways until I am once again at the Director's door.

"Agent Romanoff, that was fast. What did you find?"

"Nothing sir, it was just someone trying to get my attention, there was no 0-8-4," I say as his stare bores into my eyes, analysing me, although I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work, after all, years, well, decades really, of training does improve your skills quite a bit I'd say.

"You're off now Romanoff, I don't have any running missions I need your help with at the moment but I will contact you when needed, the other stuff I'm sure my S.H.I.E.L.D team can handle."

"Thank you, sir," I respond, walking away from the room towards mine.

I unpack the few things I brought with me on my mission and I placed it around my room. My room was basically just filled with grey walls, grey bed with white sheets, grey table, grey gun rack with black guns and my widow's gadgets, and a hint of red for my symbol. I know, very intriguing. I strip down, take a nice, warm, relaxing shower and change into fresh clothes for bed and head for a good night's rest, with no oncoming migraines, seeing that my 'trigger' is gone.

Red. Gloomy. Dark. Full moon. Slashing. Sisters. Knives. Guns. Blood. James Barnes. Everything is cloudy and blur but somehow, I can tell that it's a full moon. Red is everywhere splashes and blotches, dried and damp. Sounds of slashing and knives slicing through the wind, gunshots firing, kicks and punches resulting in grunts and so, so much blood. Sisters, my red room 'sisters' with a dark mysterious man, face entirely covered.

"James!" I yell. Why did I say his name? What does he have to do with anything? Well, at least my room is soundproof so no one heard that but, why did I say his name? Do I know him, or rather, does he know me? So many questions and I can't seem to freaking answer any of them! I need to get to the bottom of this whole fiasco. I check the time and see that it's 0300. There's no point trying to go back to sleep, it probably won't last long at all, like all my other sleeps ever since all these migraines and seeing Steve's 'Bucky'.

I get dressed and head towards the training room. As the doors slide open, I am greeted by silence and emptiness, perfect. No one to disturb me, peace and quiet so that I can try to piece a few things. I play my classical instrumentals back from my ballet days, if that was even real and start stretching. I then progress throughout the room, cardio to weights to pull-ups to melees to guns and then to punching bags. If I started getting headaches and migraines when thinking about the red room, that must be the only reason I'm seeing James, he must have somehow done something of significance to me in the red room. Maybe he was my favourite coach or something in my youth. Although, that is pretty hard to visualise... But what if he somehow had a bigger role in my pre- "Woah, calm down Romanoff, are you okay?" I hear James say as he enters the room.

Are you kidding me?! Who comes to train this early in the morning and of all people it had to be the guy I was just trying to figure out. And what does he mean by, 'Am I okay,' I'm perfectly fine just working out! I clear my throat and reply with a flat yes, walking towards my stuff and my water bottle. I look up to see that already, 3 hours have shot by. I go to pick up my bottle and notice my split, bruised and bleeding knuckles, that must why he asked me that question...

"You can stop staring Barnes," I say rather coldly. He clears his throat and embarrassingly goes back to whatever he was doing. I move towards the sink on the right corner of the room and clean my subconsciously damaged knuckles seeing that I also forgot to put on hand wraps. I can hardly feel the pain though, I guess it's just a feeling I've lived with so much that it's just become a normality like how agents communicate with just an unmeaning nod of the head. The blood however is a little different because even though it is a normality I never cease to hate it with a passion, unless of course it's the blood of someone despised, like Ivan. Then it's completely fine, beautiful even.

"Who are you?" I question, still tending to my knuckles.

"Umm... James Barnes, Cap's best friend, WWII soldier?" He replies with confusion.

"Cut the crap James, Who Are You?" I say slowly with annoyance in my tone. "You, you have something to do with me, in the red room, how do I know you from there!? I don't remember you." Walking closer and closer towards him with determination, I am now face to face with him. His height doesn't bother me as I continue to look at him, trying to figure how he has anything to do with him. I do notice however, that when I mentioned the red room there was, for a split second, sadness in his eyes.

"I have no idea what you're talking about Romanoff, I've already told you, I was just a trainer there, nothing more. Whatever you're thinking, I'm afraid you'll have to figure it out yourself, I can't help you with that." He slowly backs away and continues beating the life out of the already lifeless heavy bag.

A/N : I'm aliveeee :p