Hunting Spider

...2...

"Nat, you almost out of there?" Clint's voice whispered in her ear, jolting Natasha to action. His voice echoed strangely, meaning he was still in the vents and they hadn't started attacking yet. She still had some time, but not much. 

"Almost," she hissed back, crouching to make eye-contact with the hunched form under the bed in the corner. They had gotten little to no intel due to the urgency of the mission, but no one would be prepared for this. 

"Hello," Natasha inched forward, but was met by another whimper. "Please, I'm sorry please-please just... please just leave me... leave me alone." A strangled voice begged in between tears. It made everything in Natasha bristle, she just wanted to take this sorry lump of a human somewhere safe and dry their tears. She had been this pathetic once; it hurt to remember. 

"I'm not going to hurt you," she reassured, inching forward again. "I know," came the response, and a sucked in breath. Natasha stopped again. She couldn't forget that this person was - apparently - Project 001_15, a dangerous bio-weapon, one of the most successful Hydra experiments to date. 

"Are you going to hurt me?" She asked softly. Another shift, and she could see the person's eyes. They were chestnut in color, large and imploring, but bloodshot. "I... I really don't want to." They sniffled. "If you leave me alone, I definitely won't." 

Natasha let herself smile comfortingly, taking another step forward. A crash sounded not far from the hallway, she could hear the guard checking in with his fellow agents. She was running out of time. "I can't do that," she explained softly, "I have to get you out of here." They seemed to sit up straighter at that, enough for Natasha to identify four limbs and shaggy brown hair. 

"You're not... you're not here to take me for more..." they trailed off, Natasha used their distraction to close the distance. The figure was a young man, horribly bruised and malnourished, with the biggest eyes and sweetest face she'd ever seen. He looked like he couldn't have been over sixteen, all gangly limbs and youthful innocence. 

Well, Natasha doubted this boy had any innocence left. 

"Come on, it's alright," she reached out painfully slowly, even as the sounds of struggles grew. If the man outside realized she was part of all the crashing, he could lock them in and it would be over. 

"Fjerda," the guard called, making Natasha freeze, "you look after the freak, I'm going to the bridge - there's been a breach!" He ran off, the tension in Natasha's shoulders leaving with him. She turned back to the boy. 

"We have to go. My friends are tearing this facility apart. They can't hurt you anymore." He gripped his knees tighter in response, shaking his head. "No, this is a test, if I go with you, they'll make me..." he looked at her hopefully, "are you, by chance, a bad person?" 

Question catching her completely off-guard, Natasha just stared at him. He took it as an opportunity to explain. "I know you're not Fjerda, even though he thought you were. I know what she looks like," An involuntary shudder shook his frame, "but if you're a bad person anyways, it'll make me feel better when... in the end." He looked back at her with those doe eyes. 

Natasha looked away, trying not to imagine all the times she stained her ledger, all the things she'd done. "Yes," she muttered, "I'm a bad person." 

The boy uncurled, crawling out from under the 'bed' and getting his shaky feet under him. He was shorter than Natasha, and she suspected that he still would be even when she took off her heels. She grabbed his arm, trying not to notice how frail it was, decorated with rounded bruises from injections. 

Knowing his black tank top and cargo pants wouldn't protect him from the winter they were about to lunge into, Natasha took off her suit coat and wrapped him in it. Despite his height, his shoulders were broad; it barely fit him.