THINKING OUT LOUD || Avengers

-)Thirty Six: Excepting the Inevitable(-

The feelings elicited when you have a top secret mission to save a fifteen year old, but also secret orders to assassinate her, and then she starts crying with relief as soon as you turn up are a very personal and private set of affairs.

Fortunately, Natasha Romanoff was a very private person. Which is why she completely refused to become invested in the continued existence of Daniella Atteberry any more than was absolutely required. And that meant no asking questions not strictly related to getting out of here, no worrying about whether killing that guy passed out on the floor would scar her emotionally and no finding out who had given her that black eye and doing a hell of a lot worse to that unlucky bastard.

"Hey," Nat closed the door behind her, and marched over, "You okay? What happened?"

So that was rule one out the window.

"Well, this is Ian." Dan indicated the mess of a blond haired HYDRA guard on the floor, "He was having some trouble at home but his husband agreed to go to couple's therapy so I think it will work itself out."

Nat blinked, "What?"

"Oh, I was injected with lethal serum and probably have about six hours left to live. That's what you meant, isn't it?"

Something froze in Nat. Something sudden and abhorrent. 

"Lethal serum." She repeated slowly, "What are you talking about?"

Dani seemed to be taking the whole thing in her stride, "You have to account for body mass and things and really, I'm way smaller than the people they'd usually use that stuff on, but Krill took a degree in chemistry so his maths probably checks out. So. Thirteen hours."

For once, Natasha Romanoff was speechless.

"What's wrong?" Dani asked, remembering the expression flash cards she worked on with Wanda, "I thought you'd be happy."

Nat almost choked on the word, "Happy?"

"Yeah. Now you won't get in trouble for killing me." Dani said, with a smile that begged for approval, or an explanation. Everything in Dan's eyes said she was confused.

"Your definition of 'happy' needs work, kid." Natasha managed, focusing instead on taking the keys from Goddamn Ian's belt and undoing the chains that held Dan's legs to the hospital bed.

Dani hopped down, one arm still attached to the railing, "Maybe I got my words wrong. I do that sometimes."

"I know." Nat hated that she did, "You don't look like your body's going into shutdown."

"The druggy thing has to be slow acting so they can get all the thoughts out of my head." Dani answered, "It's a failsafe. For if you came for me. Which you did."

She was still beaming over this last thing. Like the correlation between that and the fact that Nat had been sent by Director Fury to kill her was completely coincidental, a separate issue. For the first time, Nat wished for just a moment that she could see herself through the eyes of Daniella Atteberry.

"You wanna help me kid?" Nat chucked Dan a skeleton key and gestured to her chains, "Get yourself out of there."

And so Nat waited until Dan was distracted trying to find the non-existent lock on her chains to raise a pistol and shoot the man on the floor, the one Dani had been talking about in such friendly terms only a minute ago.

Bang!

Dani flinched. She looked up to see what Nat had done, and her eyes found the scarlet blood leaking out of Goddamn Ian's head.

"Oh."

Nat didn't have time to deal with Dan's sensitivities. She stalked over and shoved her knife through one of the chainlinks, breaking it clean off.