Breathe Today, 4/4.
Title: Breathe Today
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG-13
Author Notes: Not mine! Characters you recognize belong to Marvel, and anyone else is someone I blended into the story. The original idea for this started over a year ago, when Jessy and I heard about 1872 but Natasha wasn't mentioned at all. Of course, she has since made her appearance, and reblogged panels I've seen are fantastic. This story has nothing to do with the 1872 series at all, and would be better considered a MCU AU or a little side story that could slot into canon, starting with the Red Room days. I borrowed heavily from historical events as much as I could dig up, but let's just assume that none of this actually happened. ;) Title and summary from Flyleaf's "Breathe Today."
Summary: You try your hardest to perfect your explanations
You lie until they've run out of questions
You can only move as fast as those in front of you
And if you assume just like them, what good will it do?
So find out for yourself, so your ignorance will stop bleeding through
Prior chapters:
One - Back To The Past
Two - Getting Acquainted
Three - Decisions To Make
Four - Stop Bleeding
Natasha stared at the Winter Soldier, knowing that he had wanted her to find him. There was no other reason for it to be so easy to track him down. If he didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be found; he was a ghost in the intelligence community for just that reason. As big as he was, he could move silently and be unseen if that was his mission. Usually, however, he wasn't meant to blend in and hide. He was meant to menace and threaten, to shoot and kill with impunity, to send the message that the Red Room and Department X were the ones in control.
She was only too aware of it, and knew that there would be no saving herself. Sometimes, there had to be a sacrifice. Sometimes, the hard call had to be made.
This was one of those times.
"Comrade," she said quietly, inclining her head respectfully. The carpet bag with her belongings had a strap sewn onto it that was long enough she could wear it as a cross body bag, leaving her hands free. Still, she hoped it wouldn't come down to a fight between the two of them. She could probably fight dirty enough to defeat him, but she didn't delude herself into thinking she could keep him down permanently. "I suppose I should be flattered. I had not thought I was important enough to warrant you coming to retrieve me."
"Had you defected?" he asked, voice even. "Seven girls sent in after you, and none of them returned, either."
Blinking at him in genuine confusion, Natasha's lips parted. "What?"
"Had you defected?" he repeated, insistent.
"No," she replied, shaking her head. And that was sort of true, given that she hadn't planned on it when Dr. Strange had found her. "There was a man in the mountains-"
"I'm aware," the Asset said, his voice harsh and pitiless. "Apparently, he sent all of the girls away from the mountains and didn't want to be found. But setting fire to a few villages drew him out. He was willing to talk then."
Her gut tightened when she thought of the grandmother and the boy that was her guide. Had they survived the fires? Was their village even one of the ones torched? And why should she care about strangers whose names she hadn't even bothered to learn?
But it mattered. It always mattered. She had learned that here.
"So you found the old man," Natasha said without inflection.
"Not so old," he corrected, "but yes, I did. He sent me here with some convincing."
"And a way back?" she asked in arch tones.
Now the Winter Soldier faltered. "When I complete my mission-"
"You didn't make sure," she countered, feeling something almost like hope flare in her gut. It was nonsensical, but if the Winter Soldier couldn't return and she convinced him of Anna's death, then she could leave him trapped in the past. She wouldn't have to worry about him reprimanding or killing her. She'd seen how devastating the bodies in his wake could be.
The flash of confusion in his eyes made him seem human after all, and that made her doubt leaving him behind. If he was human enough for emotions, then he could possibly trick the stupid people of the city into leading him to Anna and the Grimes family. They wouldn't be safe, not if his programming was still intact.
Hands loose and open to view, Natasha took a step forward. "Anya is dead," she said. "I haven't seen any of the other girls sent after me. I thought I was stuck here, and I don't belong in this place and time. I don't fit."
"You have no place in the world," the Winter Soldier replied, sounding as though he was merely echoing what he had heard others say. It still pained her to hear it.
"I know," she said quietly. "The item that the Red Room wanted is gone. Maybe it never existed in the first place," she lied. "Maybe it was all stories and the old man simply didn't want us bothering him anymore. I couldn't resist his magic. I have no training for that."
"It's not believed to be real." There was that confusion in his eyes again, that flicker of humanity that made him seem less robotic.
"We know better now, don't we?"
His head snapped up. "I have orders," he said, voice sharp. It was a command, likely a response to a set of trigger words.
"So do I," she told him quietly, not moving.
The harsh stance softened a bit. "They did not plan for this."
"They likely didn't know this was coming." She chanced a step forward. "We've trained together, you and I. You taught me hand to hand and weapons." In light of the uncertainty in his gaze, she stayed still and kept her hands empty and loose. "I refuse to believe they thought us disposable, when you are one of their greatest weapons. Maybe I am, but you certainly are not."
"You're not disposable," he ground out, the anger in his eyes now clearly not at her. "People matter. They have to."
She had just started to believe that herself. What kind of man had he been before he had become the Asset? Likely a very good one.
"Do you know what they wanted?" she asked quietly after the moment stretched out, long and uncomfortable even for her.
"The return of their agents and the gem."
"I haven't seen any others, and Anya is dead."
"How?" he demanded, looking at her curiously.
"The trip. It changed her somehow, made it so she couldn't survive," Natasha explained. Her voice rang with the certainty of truth. The words were vague but absolutely true, after all. What better way to lie than to twist the truth? "Anya was dead before I even got here. She can't come back, no matter how much they would wish it."
There was a slump in his shoulders, slight but still present. Oh, yes, he had been a good man once, before Department X got hold of him. He might not remember his past, he might be wiped clean by his handlers, but the body remembered. The Winter Soldier was ignorant of his own origins, but it still bled through. It was probably why he had to be wiped at all. He still had a soul, just as Natasha had discovered she had one as well. She wasn't made of marble as Madame Bolishinko liked to say, wasn't as callous as she wanted to think herself.
That was a truth that had to remain hidden if she wanted to stay alive and breathing.
"So we're trapped."
Natasha carefully stepped closer. "There was no way out given to you? No return path?" As he shook his head, she continued her approach. "Unless it was only to be triggered once you found one of us. You can't return alone."
"The old man would have said something about that, surely."
She could hear the thread of doubt in his voice, the flicker of uncertainty in his otherwise dead gaze. Something in her was thrilled that she was this close to the Winter Soldier outside of a training session. He was magnificent, well honed and obviously skilled and brilliant. For a moment, just a moment, she wondered what he would feel like under her hands, if the metal arm would be cold to her touch.
Without realizing it, she reached out and grasped his hands, both flesh and metal. It startled them both, and she could feel the chill of the metal. It warmed under her touch, and she found herself smiling up into his wary expression. "I believe we have a purpose, Comrade," she said, voice soft and sure. "We have a mission to complete."
He made an uncertain noise in his throat; he hadn't been given other orders, wasn't used to thinking outside the parameters of the explicit instructions. He was a soldier, not a spy, not the assassin trained to be anyone and anything.
A Black Widow could be anyone she wanted, but the Winter Soldier was only a soldier.
Natasha tightened her grip on his hands fractionally. "We work better together. I think this is the way we get to go home." She thought of the spell that Dr. Strange had placed inside her body, just behind her collarbone. It would bring her back to her present, to the time he had found her and paused everything to send her back to find Anya. Closing her eyes, she thought about the searing pain that the spell had caused, trying to feel for its presence.
There. Like a scar, a tightness in her muscles.
As she opened her eyes, the tightness eased and she could feel a wind begin to pick up around the two of them. She smiled at his surprised expression. "Don't let go, Comrade. I don't want to be left behind."
A lie, but a necessary one.
The Winter Soldier absolutely believed it, because he loosened his flesh hand from hers and then wrapped that arm around her, pulling her close before she could even protest his letting go. She could feel every weapon he had strapped to his body, as well as the boning in her corset and the strap of her carpet bag.
Wind spun around them, howling as if angry, and she could feel the sharp chill around them change. The scent in the air was subtly different, less damp and muddy, more like packed dirt and scrub plants. The Winter Soldier's head jerked, and Natasha guessed that he picked up the change in the scent as well. She tightened her grip on his metal hand and hooked her other arm through one of the loops holding his semiautomatic rifle in place. It was a move that shocked him, almost as much as when she buried her face against his chest, shielding her eyes from the wind as it whirled ever faster. After the initial shock, his arm tightened around her torso. His metal hand twisted loose from hers, but he didn't push her away. Instead, he curled that arm around her as well, the metal hand cradling the base of her skull in a protective fashion.
Breathing in the scent of him, Natasha thought of Anna and the girls, of Gretchen and Michael, the innocent people of St. Louis. She couldn't breathe, couldn't make her chest move. It felt as if she had stabbed herself in the chest, as if she was bleeding out.
Natasha was sacrificing herself for them all, and it hurt.
Once the wind died down and the Winter Soldier loosened his grip on her, Natasha raised her head and looked around. As she thought it would be, it was the Himalayan mountains where she had first seen Dr. Strange. And in fact, there he was in his robes and thick winter clothing, standing not that far away from the both of them. His expression was grave, sadness in his eyes as he took in the sight of Natasha in her 1873 clothing.
"You didn't stay," he murmured. "You should have stayed."
Her gaze flicked up to the Winter Soldier, but he was frozen in place. She licked her lips nervously, then back at Dr. Strange. "I couldn't. Not with him sent back."
"You didn't have to come here," Dr. Strange replied. "You could have gone anywhere else in the world. Any other time."
"Not if I wanted Anna to live the life she was meant to," Natasha said softly. No, she had to be Natalia again. Natasha had to be dead now.
Dr. Strange seemed to understand that, and he nodded slowly. "You'll find your own way out of this someday. I see that in you."
It still felt as if she had stabbed herself in the chest, and his words seemed to twist the knife. She blinked back tears before they could even form, her old training sliding back into place with no difficulty whatsoever. It should have frightened her, but it felt right. Natalia was the best of the Black Widows remaining. Seven other girls gone, disappeared into the ether.
"I'm no hero," she whispered.
His smile was fond and sad as he shook his head. "There are all kinds of heroes, little one."
Her gut twisted at that, making her think of the Grimes girls, the way they curled in front of the fireplace of the house, the sweet smiles directed toward her. Aunt Nat, Agnes said, pushing a book at her. Can we go see the stars?
"You'll find your place," Dr. Strange assured her. "Right now, though, it's not the time for cost counting. Later, when you have time, you can tally it all up."
What an odd thing to say. She still couldn't breathe because of the tightness in her chest, but before she could ask anything else, the Winter Soldier behind her moved. "You!" he said in an accusing tone, lifting a gun from a holster.
"Hold," Dr. Strange said, lifting a hand. "You got what you came for. You'll find even more in the future if you stray past your directives. I promise you, you'll find all that you seek."
And then he was gone in the blink of an eye.
"What?" Natalia asked, stunned.
"We must return," the Winter Soldier said in gruff tones. Still, she could hear a thread of disconcerted agitation there as well. He didn't like magic.
Then again, she didn't think that she did, either.
***
Of course there was the debriefing and the intense grilling that came with a completed mission, especially a failed one. Natalia locked away Anna's secrets deep inside of herself, where the spell had been buried behind her collarbones. It brought an odd ache when she allowed herself to think of it, but it no longer felt like she was stabbing at the spot. Maybe it was like scar tissue, a tighter spot that could be a weakness if anyone knew it existed, but she guarded its existence carefully, making sure no one in the Red Room would ever doubt her. Madame Bolishinko glowered at her, but Natalia kept her expression blank, mind empty, and parroted back the discussion about being like marble, about completing her duty.
The nameless man that had cowed Madame Bolishinko didn't call for her, and Natalia continued to be under her command. She wasn't punished terribly, given the failure of her mission, but seven other girls had wholly disappeared. Magic was involved. She couldn't be faulted for being unable to combat magic when she wasn't trained for it.
"You should have been able to disable a single man," Madame Bolishinko sniffed disdainfully at her, frowning a little. "Even if there had been magic."
"I have learned my lesson," Natalia promised.
"You require further training," Madame Bolishinko continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "If our best students are not yet good enough, we need to redesign the curriculum."
Rage burned in her gut, hot and fierce, obscuring the thread of fear along her spine. Natalia had done everything they asked of her, everything, and had given up her chance to escape them all for good. Ungrateful bastards. They would pay somehow, she would see to it. They would have to feel the rage for themselves.
In the meantime, she followed directions, and found herself back in the library. Scouring the connection sources, Natalia managed to hack her way through the firewalls and then past the Red Room security protocols. She delved into the St. Louis online archives, looking for genealogies that had been digitized in the city.
Gretchen Grimes had indeed died soon after the birth of her third child, just as she had thought that she would. The official cause of death was listed as puerperal fever, three days after a son was born. Jeremiah Henry Grimes had been named and baptized on his second day of life, likely while Gretchen was still somewhat aware of him. Many children died in those days, after all, especially if they were touched by fever. This boy didn't die, likely because Michael Grimes married Anna five months later. It was still likely seen as disrespectful to Gretchen's memory, but there were even mentions of the Grimes family at a city dedication for Forest Park. Clicking on the newspaper article, Natalia looked at the small family, breath catching in her throat. There were the girls, prim and proper beside the pram. Anna had her hand on it, and there was a subtle way her other hand curled around her stomach, as if protecting it. She gazed directly into the photograph, as if she knew that Natalia would look for her.
The pain behind her collarbone was sharp and painful, and she dug into the archives looking specifically for Anna's name again. It was impossible, she had gone through the graduation ceremony, there was no way for her to have gotten pregnant. But there was her name listed in 1876 as giving birth at home to a small boy named Edward Stephen Grimes. Scanning other records, it was her only child, and she died in 1901 from a fever.
Maybe she had pretended that it was her child, and had stuffed her dress. Michael would have had to go along with such a ruse, if he was willing to do so. Had he a mistress after all, and Anna agreed to give it legitimacy? That seemed like something that she would do.
Natalia touched her fingers to the screen, tracing the 1901 death certificate. You got what you wanted, Anna, she thought to herself. It felt like she was opening a wound deep inside of herself. You were right, you weren't a machine. You were more than what they made you, more than what they said we were all capable of being.
Which meant she could be, too.
Backing out of the archives and wiping all traces of her entry into the databases, Natalia put the firewalls back in place, making it look as if she had never been there.
There was training in her future, and the Winter Soldier was going to help her complete it.
And just maybe, he could also help her break free of this place. Sooner or later, she was going to get out, and she would destroy it from the inside out if she could. Once she was out of its reach, she could figure out what her place in the world would be, what she was meant to do. If she could burn it down to the ground, she would be free. She would be able to breathe, tell her own lies, tell her own truths.
It was all a matter of time.
The End
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG-13
Author Notes: Not mine! Characters you recognize belong to Marvel, and anyone else is someone I blended into the story. The original idea for this started over a year ago, when Jessy and I heard about 1872 but Natasha wasn't mentioned at all. Of course, she has since made her appearance, and reblogged panels I've seen are fantastic. This story has nothing to do with the 1872 series at all, and would be better considered a MCU AU or a little side story that could slot into canon, starting with the Red Room days. I borrowed heavily from historical events as much as I could dig up, but let's just assume that none of this actually happened. ;) Title and summary from Flyleaf's "Breathe Today."
Summary: You try your hardest to perfect your explanations
You lie until they've run out of questions
You can only move as fast as those in front of you
And if you assume just like them, what good will it do?
So find out for yourself, so your ignorance will stop bleeding through
Prior chapters:
One - Back To The Past
Two - Getting Acquainted
Three - Decisions To Make
Four - Stop Bleeding
Natasha stared at the Winter Soldier, knowing that he had wanted her to find him. There was no other reason for it to be so easy to track him down. If he didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be found; he was a ghost in the intelligence community for just that reason. As big as he was, he could move silently and be unseen if that was his mission. Usually, however, he wasn't meant to blend in and hide. He was meant to menace and threaten, to shoot and kill with impunity, to send the message that the Red Room and Department X were the ones in control.
She was only too aware of it, and knew that there would be no saving herself. Sometimes, there had to be a sacrifice. Sometimes, the hard call had to be made.
This was one of those times.
"Comrade," she said quietly, inclining her head respectfully. The carpet bag with her belongings had a strap sewn onto it that was long enough she could wear it as a cross body bag, leaving her hands free. Still, she hoped it wouldn't come down to a fight between the two of them. She could probably fight dirty enough to defeat him, but she didn't delude herself into thinking she could keep him down permanently. "I suppose I should be flattered. I had not thought I was important enough to warrant you coming to retrieve me."
"Had you defected?" he asked, voice even. "Seven girls sent in after you, and none of them returned, either."
Blinking at him in genuine confusion, Natasha's lips parted. "What?"
"Had you defected?" he repeated, insistent.
"No," she replied, shaking her head. And that was sort of true, given that she hadn't planned on it when Dr. Strange had found her. "There was a man in the mountains-"
"I'm aware," the Asset said, his voice harsh and pitiless. "Apparently, he sent all of the girls away from the mountains and didn't want to be found. But setting fire to a few villages drew him out. He was willing to talk then."
Her gut tightened when she thought of the grandmother and the boy that was her guide. Had they survived the fires? Was their village even one of the ones torched? And why should she care about strangers whose names she hadn't even bothered to learn?
But it mattered. It always mattered. She had learned that here.
"So you found the old man," Natasha said without inflection.
"Not so old," he corrected, "but yes, I did. He sent me here with some convincing."
"And a way back?" she asked in arch tones.
Now the Winter Soldier faltered. "When I complete my mission-"
"You didn't make sure," she countered, feeling something almost like hope flare in her gut. It was nonsensical, but if the Winter Soldier couldn't return and she convinced him of Anna's death, then she could leave him trapped in the past. She wouldn't have to worry about him reprimanding or killing her. She'd seen how devastating the bodies in his wake could be.
The flash of confusion in his eyes made him seem human after all, and that made her doubt leaving him behind. If he was human enough for emotions, then he could possibly trick the stupid people of the city into leading him to Anna and the Grimes family. They wouldn't be safe, not if his programming was still intact.
Hands loose and open to view, Natasha took a step forward. "Anya is dead," she said. "I haven't seen any of the other girls sent after me. I thought I was stuck here, and I don't belong in this place and time. I don't fit."
"You have no place in the world," the Winter Soldier replied, sounding as though he was merely echoing what he had heard others say. It still pained her to hear it.
"I know," she said quietly. "The item that the Red Room wanted is gone. Maybe it never existed in the first place," she lied. "Maybe it was all stories and the old man simply didn't want us bothering him anymore. I couldn't resist his magic. I have no training for that."
"It's not believed to be real." There was that confusion in his eyes again, that flicker of humanity that made him seem less robotic.
"We know better now, don't we?"
His head snapped up. "I have orders," he said, voice sharp. It was a command, likely a response to a set of trigger words.
"So do I," she told him quietly, not moving.
The harsh stance softened a bit. "They did not plan for this."
"They likely didn't know this was coming." She chanced a step forward. "We've trained together, you and I. You taught me hand to hand and weapons." In light of the uncertainty in his gaze, she stayed still and kept her hands empty and loose. "I refuse to believe they thought us disposable, when you are one of their greatest weapons. Maybe I am, but you certainly are not."
"You're not disposable," he ground out, the anger in his eyes now clearly not at her. "People matter. They have to."
She had just started to believe that herself. What kind of man had he been before he had become the Asset? Likely a very good one.
"Do you know what they wanted?" she asked quietly after the moment stretched out, long and uncomfortable even for her.
"The return of their agents and the gem."
"I haven't seen any others, and Anya is dead."
"How?" he demanded, looking at her curiously.
"The trip. It changed her somehow, made it so she couldn't survive," Natasha explained. Her voice rang with the certainty of truth. The words were vague but absolutely true, after all. What better way to lie than to twist the truth? "Anya was dead before I even got here. She can't come back, no matter how much they would wish it."
There was a slump in his shoulders, slight but still present. Oh, yes, he had been a good man once, before Department X got hold of him. He might not remember his past, he might be wiped clean by his handlers, but the body remembered. The Winter Soldier was ignorant of his own origins, but it still bled through. It was probably why he had to be wiped at all. He still had a soul, just as Natasha had discovered she had one as well. She wasn't made of marble as Madame Bolishinko liked to say, wasn't as callous as she wanted to think herself.
That was a truth that had to remain hidden if she wanted to stay alive and breathing.
"So we're trapped."
Natasha carefully stepped closer. "There was no way out given to you? No return path?" As he shook his head, she continued her approach. "Unless it was only to be triggered once you found one of us. You can't return alone."
"The old man would have said something about that, surely."
She could hear the thread of doubt in his voice, the flicker of uncertainty in his otherwise dead gaze. Something in her was thrilled that she was this close to the Winter Soldier outside of a training session. He was magnificent, well honed and obviously skilled and brilliant. For a moment, just a moment, she wondered what he would feel like under her hands, if the metal arm would be cold to her touch.
Without realizing it, she reached out and grasped his hands, both flesh and metal. It startled them both, and she could feel the chill of the metal. It warmed under her touch, and she found herself smiling up into his wary expression. "I believe we have a purpose, Comrade," she said, voice soft and sure. "We have a mission to complete."
He made an uncertain noise in his throat; he hadn't been given other orders, wasn't used to thinking outside the parameters of the explicit instructions. He was a soldier, not a spy, not the assassin trained to be anyone and anything.
A Black Widow could be anyone she wanted, but the Winter Soldier was only a soldier.
Natasha tightened her grip on his hands fractionally. "We work better together. I think this is the way we get to go home." She thought of the spell that Dr. Strange had placed inside her body, just behind her collarbone. It would bring her back to her present, to the time he had found her and paused everything to send her back to find Anya. Closing her eyes, she thought about the searing pain that the spell had caused, trying to feel for its presence.
There. Like a scar, a tightness in her muscles.
As she opened her eyes, the tightness eased and she could feel a wind begin to pick up around the two of them. She smiled at his surprised expression. "Don't let go, Comrade. I don't want to be left behind."
A lie, but a necessary one.
The Winter Soldier absolutely believed it, because he loosened his flesh hand from hers and then wrapped that arm around her, pulling her close before she could even protest his letting go. She could feel every weapon he had strapped to his body, as well as the boning in her corset and the strap of her carpet bag.
Wind spun around them, howling as if angry, and she could feel the sharp chill around them change. The scent in the air was subtly different, less damp and muddy, more like packed dirt and scrub plants. The Winter Soldier's head jerked, and Natasha guessed that he picked up the change in the scent as well. She tightened her grip on his metal hand and hooked her other arm through one of the loops holding his semiautomatic rifle in place. It was a move that shocked him, almost as much as when she buried her face against his chest, shielding her eyes from the wind as it whirled ever faster. After the initial shock, his arm tightened around her torso. His metal hand twisted loose from hers, but he didn't push her away. Instead, he curled that arm around her as well, the metal hand cradling the base of her skull in a protective fashion.
Breathing in the scent of him, Natasha thought of Anna and the girls, of Gretchen and Michael, the innocent people of St. Louis. She couldn't breathe, couldn't make her chest move. It felt as if she had stabbed herself in the chest, as if she was bleeding out.
Natasha was sacrificing herself for them all, and it hurt.
Once the wind died down and the Winter Soldier loosened his grip on her, Natasha raised her head and looked around. As she thought it would be, it was the Himalayan mountains where she had first seen Dr. Strange. And in fact, there he was in his robes and thick winter clothing, standing not that far away from the both of them. His expression was grave, sadness in his eyes as he took in the sight of Natasha in her 1873 clothing.
"You didn't stay," he murmured. "You should have stayed."
Her gaze flicked up to the Winter Soldier, but he was frozen in place. She licked her lips nervously, then back at Dr. Strange. "I couldn't. Not with him sent back."
"You didn't have to come here," Dr. Strange replied. "You could have gone anywhere else in the world. Any other time."
"Not if I wanted Anna to live the life she was meant to," Natasha said softly. No, she had to be Natalia again. Natasha had to be dead now.
Dr. Strange seemed to understand that, and he nodded slowly. "You'll find your own way out of this someday. I see that in you."
It still felt as if she had stabbed herself in the chest, and his words seemed to twist the knife. She blinked back tears before they could even form, her old training sliding back into place with no difficulty whatsoever. It should have frightened her, but it felt right. Natalia was the best of the Black Widows remaining. Seven other girls gone, disappeared into the ether.
"I'm no hero," she whispered.
His smile was fond and sad as he shook his head. "There are all kinds of heroes, little one."
Her gut twisted at that, making her think of the Grimes girls, the way they curled in front of the fireplace of the house, the sweet smiles directed toward her. Aunt Nat, Agnes said, pushing a book at her. Can we go see the stars?
"You'll find your place," Dr. Strange assured her. "Right now, though, it's not the time for cost counting. Later, when you have time, you can tally it all up."
What an odd thing to say. She still couldn't breathe because of the tightness in her chest, but before she could ask anything else, the Winter Soldier behind her moved. "You!" he said in an accusing tone, lifting a gun from a holster.
"Hold," Dr. Strange said, lifting a hand. "You got what you came for. You'll find even more in the future if you stray past your directives. I promise you, you'll find all that you seek."
And then he was gone in the blink of an eye.
"What?" Natalia asked, stunned.
"We must return," the Winter Soldier said in gruff tones. Still, she could hear a thread of disconcerted agitation there as well. He didn't like magic.
Then again, she didn't think that she did, either.
***
Of course there was the debriefing and the intense grilling that came with a completed mission, especially a failed one. Natalia locked away Anna's secrets deep inside of herself, where the spell had been buried behind her collarbones. It brought an odd ache when she allowed herself to think of it, but it no longer felt like she was stabbing at the spot. Maybe it was like scar tissue, a tighter spot that could be a weakness if anyone knew it existed, but she guarded its existence carefully, making sure no one in the Red Room would ever doubt her. Madame Bolishinko glowered at her, but Natalia kept her expression blank, mind empty, and parroted back the discussion about being like marble, about completing her duty.
The nameless man that had cowed Madame Bolishinko didn't call for her, and Natalia continued to be under her command. She wasn't punished terribly, given the failure of her mission, but seven other girls had wholly disappeared. Magic was involved. She couldn't be faulted for being unable to combat magic when she wasn't trained for it.
"You should have been able to disable a single man," Madame Bolishinko sniffed disdainfully at her, frowning a little. "Even if there had been magic."
"I have learned my lesson," Natalia promised.
"You require further training," Madame Bolishinko continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "If our best students are not yet good enough, we need to redesign the curriculum."
Rage burned in her gut, hot and fierce, obscuring the thread of fear along her spine. Natalia had done everything they asked of her, everything, and had given up her chance to escape them all for good. Ungrateful bastards. They would pay somehow, she would see to it. They would have to feel the rage for themselves.
In the meantime, she followed directions, and found herself back in the library. Scouring the connection sources, Natalia managed to hack her way through the firewalls and then past the Red Room security protocols. She delved into the St. Louis online archives, looking for genealogies that had been digitized in the city.
Gretchen Grimes had indeed died soon after the birth of her third child, just as she had thought that she would. The official cause of death was listed as puerperal fever, three days after a son was born. Jeremiah Henry Grimes had been named and baptized on his second day of life, likely while Gretchen was still somewhat aware of him. Many children died in those days, after all, especially if they were touched by fever. This boy didn't die, likely because Michael Grimes married Anna five months later. It was still likely seen as disrespectful to Gretchen's memory, but there were even mentions of the Grimes family at a city dedication for Forest Park. Clicking on the newspaper article, Natalia looked at the small family, breath catching in her throat. There were the girls, prim and proper beside the pram. Anna had her hand on it, and there was a subtle way her other hand curled around her stomach, as if protecting it. She gazed directly into the photograph, as if she knew that Natalia would look for her.
The pain behind her collarbone was sharp and painful, and she dug into the archives looking specifically for Anna's name again. It was impossible, she had gone through the graduation ceremony, there was no way for her to have gotten pregnant. But there was her name listed in 1876 as giving birth at home to a small boy named Edward Stephen Grimes. Scanning other records, it was her only child, and she died in 1901 from a fever.
Maybe she had pretended that it was her child, and had stuffed her dress. Michael would have had to go along with such a ruse, if he was willing to do so. Had he a mistress after all, and Anna agreed to give it legitimacy? That seemed like something that she would do.
Natalia touched her fingers to the screen, tracing the 1901 death certificate. You got what you wanted, Anna, she thought to herself. It felt like she was opening a wound deep inside of herself. You were right, you weren't a machine. You were more than what they made you, more than what they said we were all capable of being.
Which meant she could be, too.
Backing out of the archives and wiping all traces of her entry into the databases, Natalia put the firewalls back in place, making it look as if she had never been there.
There was training in her future, and the Winter Soldier was going to help her complete it.
And just maybe, he could also help her break free of this place. Sooner or later, she was going to get out, and she would destroy it from the inside out if she could. Once she was out of its reach, she could figure out what her place in the world would be, what she was meant to do. If she could burn it down to the ground, she would be free. She would be able to breathe, tell her own lies, tell her own truths.
It was all a matter of time.
The End