Chapter Text
She stood to attention. Back straight, chin up, eyes forward.
Drip, drip, drip, from a gash in her arm and trickling down her wrist, the back of her hand and the knife she was still gripping tight; thick red fluid pooled on the cement floor beneath her but she stayed as she was. Back straight, chin up, eyes forward.
One of her handlers, name not important, surveyed her handiwork, and a swift nod was all the dismissal she was going to get; she snapped her heels, one-hand salute smearing her forehead crimson. But that was par for the course, and she knew that no reprimand would be given.
She turned and walked out of the room, falling easily into the casual step of the unaffected. She did not bother to glance back at the body; she did not need to, never needed to. Her job here was finished.
All her life she had moved from one target to the next, on and on and on, back straight, chin up, eyes forward. She'd moved swiftly and fluidly, dropping body after body, hands stained crimson at the end of every mission but always pure and clean by the time a new day dawned.
She never asked questions. She'd never learned how.
She'd watched, from afar, as people around her laughed and cried; as they displayed anger and heartache and fear and joy, emotions beyond her comprehension. Nearing adulthood now, she knew how and why people behaved the way they did, but none of it meant anything to her. She understood human emotion only as a means of anticipating her targets' moves.
The perfect soldier, they sometimes called her, when she had been particularly efficient. But the sentiment meant nothing to her. She only ever did as she was told.
“Your next mission is ready,” they informed her, once she was back inside the compound, having gone straight to the briefing room as she always did, before even washing the blood off her hands. The wound on her arm had long since stopped bleeding.
One of the men in her unit stepped forward and produced a pile of still photos, laying them before her one by one, and she let her eyes slowly trace each face, feeling a spark of recognition every time. The millionaire, the shadow, the spider, the shield...
She looked up at one of the men, whichever one was nearest to her, allowing the vaguest hint of confusion to show on her face.
Her handlers had tasked her with killing the Avengers.
It was a suicide mission. This, in itself, did not bother her – nothing bothered her – but she needed to make sure that this was the outcome her handlers intended.
The man gazed back at her blankly, his face a mask, but she had learned to look through masks long ago. And she knew, just from looking at his face, that she didn't have to voice her question and risk a reprimand for insubordination. She cast her eyes down to survey the pictures once more.
She knew, like she knew most things, that Hydra was falling apart. They were losing assets and allies. Their control of SHIELD was slipping.
This truly was not a mission they expected her to return from. Best case scenario, she calculated, she would take out three or four of their enemies before she was neutralised herself. But at this point, three dead Avengers was a reasonable trade for Hydra's perfect soldier. Hydra was adapting to a new reality, the reality that Natasha Romanoff had created when she'd exposed them to the world. And it was willing to bury its past to secure its future legacy.
She was part of Hydra's past. She needed to be buried.
She nodded once, to indicate that she understood the full implications of what was to be her final mission.
“Watch out for that one,” one of the men told her, stepping forward and placing one outstretched finger on the very edge of Captain America's photograph, as though even touching his likeness repulsed him. “He'll be able to predict your moves.”
She nodded again. She knew he would, as she knew most things.
Steven Grant Rogers, she silently recited as her eyes lingered on the stoic, proud face of America's iconic hero. A series of images she'd been made to memorise materialised in front of her mind's eye, a life in still pictures. A wealth of facts, some useful, most not. She knew who he was. She knew what he was. It meant nothing; he was her mission.
“Do you accept your mission?” a third man spoke, stepping out of the shadows. This was part of the protocol: she must acknowledge she had fully understood and committed to her task. It was a formality (she could not actually refuse an order), but necessary before she could proceed.
She opened her mouth to respond. And that was when the first bomb fell.
≈
She could smell the blood and guts long before she dropped down into the barracks.
Everyone at her briefing had died instantly. She had not, of course. It took more than a bomb to kill her.
The barracks was one of the few spots that had not been wrecked apart by explosives, but clearly, SHIELD – because that was who must be behind this attack – had already come through here, as evidenced by the bloody and broken bodies littering the room.
They were clean shots, she noted; the bodies were mostly undamaged, apart from well-placed gunshot wounds. It was honourable work, done with no intent to cause suffering. SHIELD had clearly sent their best men for this mission, which could only mean one thing: the Avengers were here. Based on their ruthless style of attack, she deduced that their objective must be to wipe out the compound, taking no prisoners. Just as she, in turn, was set to wipe out the Avengers.
That was the good thing about war, she mused, as she methodically checked the bodies of her comrades, looking for survivors: everyone was playing by the same rules.
It was easier like this, fighting on an even playing field, as opposed to when you were sent after someone who begged for their life. It didn't matter to her whether or not they begged, not exactly, but... yes, she decided. This was easier.
A light flickered overhead. The room was deadly silent, as lower-level Hydra agents and technicians lay in pools of their own blood, some still in their beds where they'd slept. No sign of movement anywhere.
This was a problem.
Her handlers had tasked her with killing the Avengers, but she had not had a chance to accept her mission before the attack started. Protocol dictated that if she could not accept her mission, she could not carry it out. And if she could not carry it out, she had no business lingering here; usually, in the case of an attack which might put her life in unnecessary danger, she was to seek refuge at one of Hydra's safe houses. Protect the asset: that order would always override anything else she had been told, unless express command had been given. She was very valuable to her superiors. Or at least she had been.
A gasp, followed by a stuttering wheeze, caught her attention. Someone was alive, after all.
She turned to locate the source of the noise, and found, to her mild surprise, one of her handlers: he was sitting propped up against the far wall, half-hidden from view by an overturned table, a deep, bloody gash running from his hip to his neck. A blade, she determined. Or a shield.
She estimated that the man had minutes, at most, but that was more than enough time for him to complete her mission brief.
He was one of the younger ones. Cropped black hair, an unremarkable face, an old scar running up his temple from his eyebrow and splitting his hairline. He was hardly much older than she was, and she had seen him go through training right on this very compound. Every once in a while, she had noticed him watching her.
Now, he was bleeding out on the floor, and she crouched down in front of him, one hand reaching out to touch his shoulder.
“There is nothing I can do for you,” she told him, making an effort to soften her voice for his benefit. His eyes were closed, but she could tell from his breathing pattern that he was still conscious.
She had no obligation to him. He had recently been promoted to her team of handlers, and as such she was to mind his instructions, but not otherwise engage.
But he was dying. She estimated that this small courtesy of kindness would be a permissible indiscretion.
He opened his eyes blearily, and she waited as his eyes found their focus, and he recognised her face.
“It's you,” he breathed, but offered no context for his redundant observation. She remained patient, reminding herself that he had not been trained like she'd been trained. He was liable to make irrelevant statements in inappropriate situations, as most normal humans were.
“You are dying,” she told him, because she could not think of a way to break it to him more gently.
He chuckled. She waited out the nonsensical reaction; she knew some people became sentimental in the face of death, and would respond to simple statements with bursts of emotion.
As he gathered himself, she considered the young man in front of her. Since completing his training and being promoted to asset handler, he had personally sent her to kill dozens of people, and had himself gunned down enemies and civilians alike as a willing servant of Hydra. She did not feel sorry for him now. But she did not wish for him to suffer, either.
“Yes,” he said at last, slurring his words. “It appears I am.”
A round of gunfire sounded, not too far away.
“They're coming back around,” she prompted, in case he had forgotten that they were under attack. “I need you to give me the go-ahead to commence my mission.”
She would not normally make such a bold request. She would not need to. But SHIELD had been efficient, and this compound now contained the body of every single Hydra agent left who had known about her existence. There was no one to authorise her mission but him, and he was fading fast.
The idea suddenly occurred to her that this man might be the last person alive with the authority to give her an order. She frowned slightly, the ghost of uncertainty forming in her mind.
Somewhere close by, a man shouted in English, his accent American. She tightened her grip on her handler's shoulder incrementally. “My mission is to kill the Avengers,” she clarified, in case he hadn't been notified.
He was losing focus again. His nonsensical smile was back.
“I know what they are to you,” he said, like it meant something.
“Yes,” she said placidly; she knew it, too, and it was of no consequence. He was wasting time. “Do I have your permission to eliminate the targets?”
One or more of the Avengers were here, in this facility. If they attacked her, she was expected to protect herself, to fight back in whatever way necessary for her survival. But if her handler wanted her to go on the offensive and specifically target Hydra's most high-profile enemies, she needed the instruction. She could not initiate an independent mission without explicit consent.
When he tried to laugh, his breath rattled wetly in his throat, and there was blood on his lips when he croaked, “No. No, don't do that. I think maybe this...” He glanced around the room, eyes already glazing over again. “I think maybe this is your chance, Solnyshko.”
She blinked at him, momentarily thrown by the term of endearment. Little sun? she thought, nonplussed. He'd called her that before, a few times, when he'd first been transferred to the covert Hydra branch overseeing her operations. She had ignored it then, on the basis of it being inconsequential, and he had eventually stopped speaking to her altogether, unless giving a direct order. “I don't copy, sir,” she stated frankly.
He wasn't smiling anymore, and she heard thundering footsteps right outside the barracks. She waited. There was no protocol for this.
He coughed, and whispered, “Go... to them.”
She watched the dying man closely, trying to make sense of his words.
“To complete the mission?” She asked, needing confirmation. She never did anything without clear instruction. It occurred to her that she wasn't sure she could.
He coughed again, and looked sad now, which seemed like a more appropriate expression on a man who was about to die.
“From this point, you no longer have a mission." He spoke the words almost gently, like it was she, rather than him, who was dying.
The lights flickered and went out, leaving her and her handler in total darkness. She listened for approaching enemies, and realised she could no longer hear the man's wet, rattling breath.
She hesitated only for a second, torn in something she couldn't identify as indecision, before rising swiftly and jumping for the ceiling, hands closing around the vent and pulling herself up, simultaneously pulling down the graft and swinging herself through the opening, crawling along the familiar system of pipes, fleeing the facilities in less than a minute flat, without encountering a single enemy.
She emerged a few clicks beyond the perimeter fence and ran towards the mountain without looking back, running uphill for three miles straight before she slowed, turning and gazing down to where the Hydra base was still burning far below her, the fire lighting up the dark sky, the thick smoke obliterating her view of the stars above.
As the flames rose up and the closest thing to home she'd ever known was destroyed, she allowed herself one small, rare moment of reflection.
Until yesterday, her life had been an endless string of missions. She'd never been programmed or conditioned; they'd never had to control her by force. She had been born and bred for one purpose only, allowed no human emotion but what she needed to understand her targets' motivations and behavioural patterns. She had developed no instincts to revolt, no desires that might have compromised her obedience.
She was nothing but a soldier. She did nothing but what she was told.
And now it was all gone. All of it, everything that had given her purpose. And she was nothing without purpose.
But perhaps there was something there, after all: not something conscious, not an awakening inclination or passion, but simply a spark, just enough to keep her from lying down right there on the mountain and waiting for death, like a dog that had lost its master.
She had no mission now. She had no handlers. What was left of Hydra was unaware of her existence, and there was no protocol for re-establishing herself with a new group of Hydra agents. She was alone – she was, as hard as the concept was for her to comprehend, unattached.
There began to form the beginnings of new thoughts in her head, the inklings of new possibilities, as she held the odd realisation that, for the first time in her life, she had something almost incomprehensible to her: she had a choice.
Her dying handler had told her, Go to them. She knew who he'd meant, of course. But she didn't know why he'd said it.
If not to kill them, why would she go? What would it accomplish?
She thought of the young handler, and how he'd always treated her a little bit differently from how the others had treated her. She had never reacted to his smiles or his erratic specks of kindness, as it had made no difference to her missions and she'd had no need for distractions. But if his final request had been for her to seek out the two men, then maybe... maybe his reasons had been valid, if unnecessarily sentimental. Maybe he was trying to guide her in the right direction, one last time.
After all, maybe he understood the one thing which she had never quite been able to acknowledge, even in her own mind: that these men held the answer to the only question she had ever had.
In the glow of the raging fire, she could see two figures running away from the compound, rushing towards a large airborne transport vessel, and she knew instantly, instinctively, that it was them. Go to them.
She stayed perfectly still, watching them enter the vessel, then watched as it lifted, tilted, and sped upwards, flying right over her head, whipping her long blonde hair up around her face. She turned to follow it with her eyes, tracking it as it disappeared over the mountain and into the distance.
Want was a concept so far removed from her reality, she wasn't sure she truly knew what it felt like. She had nothing to pull her in any particular direction, towards any particular thing. But she was pretty sure she did seek knowledge: she had always soaked it up like a sponge, needing facts like normal people needed the touch of their loved ones.
She took a step, then another, wondering if this was what it felt like to make a choice.
It was a long way from the deep forests of Kronotsky to New York City. Maybe, along the way, she'd figure out what to say to the two men she would not have hesitated to kill in Hydra's name. The two men whose blood ran through her veins.