For Want of a Spider

Natasha stared numbly into the vial, the red dust contained within sparkling in the firelight. The past week had been a rush of activity as the four of them worked together to set up Emily’s equipment and follow the instructions given to create what was supposedly the cure for the chemical subjugation all current Widows were trapped in. More than once they had to ask Tony and Helen for help, both of whom tried to convince the group of spies to let them take care of it, but Emily and Yelena were both against it. They believed that they had to do everything for real, otherwise the Red Room would realize they were setting a trap. They didn’t want to risk losing the best chance there has ever been to take down the Red Room just because they were too lazy to do the work themselves. Honestly, she couldn’t blame either of them for it, and as such turned down the offers from her and Clint’s friends back home. Much to Clint’s disagreement; the archer was of the mind that they should take whatever help they could, though he accepted that he was ultimately outvoted.

While they worked, Emily’s source had kept them appraised of Red Room activity. The source hadn’t been able to give much thanks to Dreykov’s preference towards keeping different missions compartmentalized. The best piece of information they’d given was that a team had been sent on a mission somewhere in Ohio just a few days previously (hearing of which caused a stab of pain in her chest that she would never admit). Supposedly the target had been HYDRA, which Sam had been able to confirm after he reached out to the investigators looking into the murder. The purpose of the op was still unknown, but their source claimed they were keeping an eye on it.

Ultimately, the past week of effort had led their group to this small hunting cabin in the woods, strategically chosen to help avoid collateral damage when the Red Room inevitably acted upon the information that a new cure had been made. Their source claimed that Dreykov was made aware the day before, meaning that now all they had to do was sit and wait. Which was exactly what they were doing… Well, only Emily and her were sitting. Yelena and Clint were both sleeping. Her sister had taken the only couch while her partner claimed the attic, leaving the two of them alone, watching as the flames in the firepit slowly dwindled into embers.

“I was on a mission. When you escaped.” Emily spoke suddenly, her eyes still staring into the light.

“What?” She asked, turning to face the other woman, unsure if she heard properly.

“When you attempted to kill Dreykov. I was on a mission in Madrid.” Emily clarified. “My handler and I were undercover as an engaged couple taking an early summer vacation. Our target was some Interpol official who was close to uncovering the Red Room’s existence. He was in Madrid helping Spanish detectives look into one of Dreykov’s accounts.”

Natasha listened silently, noticing the far off look in Emily’s eyes.

“I’d just killed the target when my handler got the call. I wasn’t supposed to hear it, but I listened anyway. I… I didn’t hear everything, but I got the gist. Something had happened to the General, and all missions were being recalled.” Emily laughed humorlessly. “I didn’t believe it at first! I thought Dreykov was immortal! But then I saw the look in my handler’s eyes and something just… clicked. He never even saw me raise my gun before I killed him, and then I just ran. No plan, no resources. Just myself, alone in a nation I had very little knowledge of…” She trailed off, prodding the fire and sending fresh flames into the air. “It's funny.” Emily continued. “For the longest time I thought it was Tony Stark who was responsible.”

Natasha couldn’t help but laugh at that, and moments later Emily joined her, the tension left the other woman’s shoulders as levity crept its way in.

“Tony? Really? He wasn’t even Iron Man yet.” Natasha asked in disbelief.

“I never said it was a good guess!” Emily protested, still laughing. “It’s just, a month later Stark went missing in Afghanistan and I was just sure it was the Red Room getting revenge for the ‘Merchant of Death’ assisting an American strike against the Red Room. Of course, I eventually found out that it was another Widow, which made a lot more sense.”

“How’d you find out?”

Emily shrugged. “I ran into another escapee. One who was closer to the action. She said another Widow had tried to blow Dreykov up, and given the opportunity for multiple of us to run. Neither of us knew it was you specifically, though I guessed it was after you became famous for taking down those Chitauri in New York.”

Natasha smiled. “Whatever happened to the other girl?”

Emily’s own smile died. “We stayed in contact for a few years, until eventually she stopped responding. It was around the time of that HYDRA/SHIELD fiasco. I think Dreykov used the chaos as an opportunity to clean up as many escapees as he could find.”

The mood grew somber as the two of them were lost in their thoughts. Natasha couldn’t help but feel guilty over her failures. She failed to kill Dreykov, she failed to assure the destruction of the Red Room, and she failed to help any free Widows. Each failure damned her, and each failure painted her ledger red.

“I tried. I really did.” She said quietly. “But I think I was so caught up in the fact that I got free that I just didn’t think to follow through.”

Emily’s hand fell comfortingly onto her shoulder. “I don’t blame you. I don’t think anyone does. The fact that you didn’t just escape, but tried to bring the whole thing down? That’s amazing, especially for one of us. We were never really taught to help anyone else. It wasn’t your fault that HYDRA helped save the Room. There was no way you could’ve known.”

Natasha gave her companion a grime smile. “I should’ve known. If I had just looked into it more… If I had just looked for Yelena like I promised her I would.” She shook away the tears that formed in her eyes. She didn’t deserve to be comforted over her mistakes.

“Why didn’t you?”

Natasha turned to meet Emily’s gaze. “What?”

“Why didn’t you look for her? Both you and Yelena have said your sisters in every way that matters, so why didn’t you go to find her after you thought you freed her?”

“I always told myself that it was because it was best for her… That Yelena would be better off moving on. But truthfully? I was afraid. Afraid that she would hate me for failing to protect her. For failing to stop the Red Room from hurting her. I’m her older sister! It was my job to keep her safe, but when she needed me most, I did nothing !”

Emily’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “You were just a child too. We all were at the start. None of us can be blamed for the actions of the adults who controlled our lives for so long. And hey, we are working to bring them down now. Better late than never right?”

“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “Yeah I suppose so.”

Their conversation trailed off there, the two of them just enjoying the peaceful night. After a while, Emily finished the beer she’d been nursing and yawned, before announcing she was heading to sleep, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

Natasha stayed at the fire, staring into its depths until the final flames died, leaving only a pit of charred wood and slightly glowing embers. Only then did she return into the cabin, taking a few moments to just look at her sister while she slept. Yelena looked far more peaceful now than she ever did while awake. Hopefully that would change when the Red Room was destroyed and Dreykov was finally dead. 

Lifting the blanket higher over her sister, Natasha gave the sleeping woman a small smile before heading into one of the bedrooms and crawling underneath the covers. A small anxious part of her started thinking about how the Red Room would likely show up any day now and how the past half-year of work could reach its culmination, but she quickly shoved it aside. There was nothing to worry about, not with the team she had with her. Instead she fell asleep thinking of her families, both the Avengers, and the one that fell apart in Ohio.

Despite being the last one to go to sleep, the only person who woke up before her was Clint, who she found in the small kitchenette brewing coffee for himself, and tea for her. He knew her well enough to know when she’d be up. She accepted the tea with a smile, standing in comfortable silence next to the archer as the two of them looked out the window towards the surrounding greenery.

“Tony called earlier.” Clint mentioned.

“Oh?”

“An unregistered plane was caught entering Finland’s airspace before it fell off the radar. If it kept its same trajectory, it would be heading straight for us.”

“How’d he hear about it?” She questioned, raising an eyebrow.

“Finland saw it, the U.S Air Force heard about it from them for some reason that the Shellhead didn’t go into, Rhodey heard about it from his superiors and told Tony, who then told me.”

“That sounds like it would’ve time for that information to go down the line, did Tony say how much time he thought we had?” She asked, knowing that the timing was too convenient for it to be anyone other than Dreykov’s forces.

Clint shrugged his shoulders. “The nearest clearing that the smallest plane could land at is still at the base of the mountains, and he hasn’t picked up any major vehicle activity on satellite, so the best guess would be some time this evening. If they come straight here.”

That was good news. It meant they had at least the whole day to make any final preparations. They already had the entire perimeter set up with sensors, and had placed down some preemptive traps. The rest of their traps and defenses they had saved until they knew more, which they now did.

Knowing they were now on a deadline, Nat went to wake up the two late sleepers. Emily woke up easily, rolling out of bed the second she knocked on her door. Yelena on the other hand grumbled into her blanket and sleepily tried to beg for a few more minutes, which she refused as she pulled the blanket away from her sister, causing the blonde to curse in Russian as she tumbled to the floor.

“Get up. The Red Room is on their way.” She said, smiling at her sister’s grumbling.

“Why didn’t you just say that!? ” Yelena protested, dusting herself off after she picked herself up off the floor.

Natasha’s smile grew as she gave her sister a wink. “I thought this would be funnier. I was right.”

In a real show of maturity, Yelena deigned to respond by sticking her tongue out before walking away to get changed.

Once everyone was ready, they gathered around the kitchen table to go over their plans one more time. They had picked this cabin due to its isolation, as well as the plethora of locations to lay traps within the surrounding woods. Unfortunately they did have to handicap themselves with the traps, as they couldn’t guarantee that whatever Widows were sent wouldn’t accidentally set one off, which meant they couldn’t make the traps lethal; they wanted to save the Widows, not kill them. The attic had windows in each cardinal direction, giving Clint the perfect sniper’s (or in this case archer’s) nest. The rest of them would be hiding out on the bottom floor, waiting for the enemy to come to them. If everything prior to today went as planned, then the people coming to kill them would only be expecting Emily, giving the rest of them the element of surprise. Furthermore, the cabin itself was once a SHIELD safehouse, meaning the place was reinforced to hell and back. It would be impossible for their enemy to simply mow them down through the walls.

Each of them also had multiple doses of the ‘red dust’ ready, with Clint even preparing specialized arrows to deliver the cure. Depending on how the Red Room organized their assault, they would change who was responsible for administering the cure to the subjugated women. To Natasha, the ideal scenario would be that Clint could free them all before anyone even got close, but firefights rarely, if ever, went according to plan.

The rest of the day was spent in a flurry of activity as the four of them worked to place the last minute traps and defenses they had prepared. There wasn’t much conversation throughout the day, as anxiety for the coming fight coiled around her chest. After today they would either find out that Emily’s source was not actually a traitor to the Red Room and was instead working to trap the remaining escapees, or they would have a usable cure that they could use to free the rest of the Widows. Either way, Natasha had the feeling that whatever happened tonight would either make the last six months worth it, or set them all the way back to the beginning.

When their preparations were finished, the four of them gathered once again, eating their dinner quietly as the sun slowly began to set, casting dark shadows throughout the woods around them. The relative peace the group had found themselves in was shortly shattered by the trilling of an alarm on Clint’s phone.

“The perimeter’s been tripped.” Clint alerted, silencing his phone and standing from the table.

Natasha sighed, getting up herself as she glanced at the members of her team. “This is it. Let's show Dreykov that his days are numbered now.”

Emily and Yelena both smiled grimly with her words. The three of them had far more blood in this battle than Clint did, and even the archer knew it, as he ignored the moment the three Widows shared and made his way out of Natasha’s sight, though she knew he was heading for the attic as they had planned.

“Thank you for your help. All of you.” Emily’s voice was soft as she focused on checking her equipment again. “I don’t know how things would have gone by myself. It's… nice. Knowing that I am not alone in this fight.”

“I’m just thankful that you weren’t actually bullshitting us.” Yelena responded crassly, earning a snort from Natasha.

Emily just scoffed lightheartedly. “I think all of us are thankful for that. Our lives aren’t really built on trust.”

She was about to give her own two cents, but Clint beat her to it, his voice crackling over the earpieces they all had. “This is nice and all, but I see 'em.” Any humor immediately left the room as Natasha and her fellow Widows grew serious.

“How many, Clint?”

“I count ten Enforcers, I don’t see any Wi-... Wait. Shit!”

“What!? What is it?” Yelena demanded.

“Five Widows are working to surround us. They’ve all got sniper rifles. And gas masks.”

Yelena and Emily both swore, and Natasha felt her own frustration rising, but did her best to ignore it. “That’s fine.” The other two gave her disbelieving looks. “It’s fine . We knew Dreykov would do something to minimize the risks. The bastard is too proud to not send Widows, but he is also too smart to not send them into this fight without taking steps to minimize the risk of losing more Widows. The fact that he sent Enforcers was something we guessed would happen. And keeping them at range is smart.”

“Yeah but the gas masks ! If you hadn’t noticed, the cure is a gas, and none of us will be able to get close enough to remove the masks without getting shot.” Yelena argued.

“We don’t have to get close. The cabin is secure. If they want us dead, they’ll have to come in close.”

“Speaking of close… They’re about to enter the hot zone, so get your heads in the game.” Hawkeye told them, and Natasha silently thanked him for butting in. She loved her sister, but Yelena could be very difficult at times.

CRACK

A bullet smashed into one of the cabin’s windows as Emily went past it. The round was stopped by the reinforced glass, but cracks spread across its surface immediately with the force. Had it been a normal window, Emily’s brains would have been all over the room, and from what Natasha could see from her face, Emily knew it too, dropping to the ground and crawling the rest of the way to her cover.

“Shit! A sixth Widow snuck through. Must have avoided the sensors!” Hawkeye warned, answering the silent question of where that shot came from.

So six Widows in total, all surrounding the cabin while ten Enforcers moved in, either for the kill or to smoke them out for the Widows to deal with. Either way, the four of them were outnumbered four to one. The odds weren’t fantastic, especially with the fact that they didn’t have a good way to distribute the cure to the subjugated-assassins. Clint’s arrows would only be able to work if the masks were off, which meant they needed a different plan.

Natasha risked a peak out the corner of the nearest window and saw the shadows moving within the trees, too orderly to be anything but their assailants. As she watched, one of the shadows was suddenly pulled into the air and vanished into the dark canopy, the loud ‘ SNAP !’ of a branch signalling one of their traps getting set off by an unobservant foe.

“You see that Clint?” Natasha called, waiting to see an arrow fly into the trees and make the odds slightly more even.

“Yeah, I saw it. Can’t take the shot though, I’ve got a plan for the Widows, but that means I have to wait. You’re on your own for the Enforcers.”

Yelena swore across the room as a burst of gunfire hit the window near her, which marked the beginning of a barrage that hit every wall of the cabin, the agents of the Red Room doing everything in their power to test the strength of their shelter. Without Hawkeye returning fire, it left the Enforcers with free reign to advance on the cabin, the ten of them (now that their buddy had been freed from the rope trap) encircling the building. It pained Natasha to wait, to sit there and hope that the Red Room was still just expecting a single woman instead of four people, two of whom were Avengers.

The three inhabitants of the ground floor of the cabin waited anxiously as the rattling of bullet impacts echoed throughout the small building, the cracks of the guns that shot them getting ever closer. Eventually, after enough time had passed that Natasha was questioning just ‘ how much ammo did they bring’ , the gunfire stopped, and the Enforcers were just outside the doors. The windows were practically useless for their original purpose. The reinforced, multilayered panes of glass and plastic had successfully held against the assault, though the amount of impact points and destroyed layers meant nobody could see through them anymore.

Footsteps and Russian voices outside the cabin converged on the two doors, and Natasha wished that she could see what was happening out there. Clint had gone radio silent upstairs, and Emily and Yelena were just as in the dark as she was. The three of them were all on separate walls, their positioning making sure that both doors were in view of two of the three of them.

Everything went silent for a moment, before a violent hissing cut through the air, and sparks flew into the cabin as the agents of Dreykov began to cut through the doors. Natasha even recognized the tool they were using, most SHIELD vehicles had one to quickly escape in the case of their armored cars being overturned. From what she heard, Fury even used such a tool to escape from the Winter Soldier before the collapse of SHIELD and HYDRA. It wasn’t really a surprise that the Red Room had access to the laser torch as well.

The burning-red line that marked the already cut sections of the doors slowly grew as the lasers ran the perimeter of the entryways, and were currently cutting through the hinges. Natasha raised her pistol towards the entrance that she could see, ready to shoot whoever came through. From the corner of her eyes, she could see Yelena and Emily doing the same, though the two of them were pointing their weapons towards the door that she couldn’t see.

“Anytime now Clint.” She said, her voice tense as the final hinge was cut through. All that they needed to do now was shove the door down.

“They’re almost in position.”

BANG

Two heavy, reinforced doors were smashed in and fell roughly to the ground, immediately followed by multiple grenades. Her eyes widened upon seeing the explosives. The Enforcers clearly weren’t taking any chances. Wordlessly, lest she give away her position, Nat dove behind the nearest piece of cover… just in time for the bombs to detonate, sending shockwaves and shrapnel throughout the building. She was certain that, had she not had ear protection in, her eardrums would’ve been burst from the force. Instead, all she got was rattled to her core by the pressure waves that bounced between the walls.

From her place on the ground, she could feel the floor shake as multiple pairs of heavy boots stormed into the cabin, quickly followed by a cacophony of gunfire, bullets being traded between her allies on the other side of the building, and the invaders. Recovering from her temporary lapse in action, Nat picked herself up off the floor and peaked over the nearest counter. The piece of furniture was practically destroyed thanks to the grenades, but it was still intact enough that she wasn’t seen. That quickly changed though when she fired her first shot, aiming and successfully hitting one of the Enforcers in the back of the neck, right between the bottom of his helmet, and the top of his torso armor. The man dropped like a sack of rocks, his legs folding unnaturally beneath him as he fell next to another corpse which was the body of the unfortunate Enforcer who was the first to enter the cabin .

Two Enforcers responded quickly to the new threat she posed, snapping to face her and forcing her back into cover with suppressing fire. Over the gunfire, she could hear the surprise in the voices of the Enforcers. As much as things had fallen out of hand quickly, it was nice to know that their ambush still somewhat worked, even if the Red Room was far more cautious than they had been anticipating.

As soon as the two men shooting at her began to reload, Natasha threw herself out of cover, taking shots at the two even as more Enforcers streamed in, cutting her off from her two allies, as well as the stairs that led up to Clint. Her shots impacted their armor, making them stumble back a step or two with the force, but probably only leaving bruises. After the easy two kills they got off the bat, Natasha knew nothing would be that easy again. The Enforcers knew how to use their body armor to their advantage, curling in on themselves so the joints and other gaps in their armor weren’t nearly as easy to hit.

Being outnumbered also meant that it was way too risky to get close and fight hand-to-hand. In a normal situation, maybe it would have worked, as nobody would normally want to risk shooting an ally. That wasn’t the case with the Red Room. Their agents knew how to work together, but in the end, only the strongest would survive, so if one of the Enforcers got shot by one of their own in order to take out a target? Tough shit. The Enforcers knew this fact as well, and used it to their advantage. They had the numbers, and the firepower, so all they had to do was wait them out now that they were inside.

Of course, none of them knew of the other Avenger in the attic above them, one who just loudly celebrated over their private channel, startling Natasha for a moment with the unexpected cheers.

“One Widow has been freed! She’s acting quickly and the rest of them are distracted.” Hawkeye reported joyfully. “Getting ready to free the next when I have the chance.”

It seemed that not only their side of the fight heard the news either, as the Enforcers stalled in their assault. It was a momentary lapse, but as any Black Widow understood, hesitation in a fight was a death sentence. As the Enforcers turned to glance at each other, questioning what to prioritize, Natasha popped out of cover, seeing Yelena and Emily do the same from their own respective hideouts. The Enforcers recovered quickly, but their momentary lapse had been enough for the three of them to make strides towards, their sidearms spitting out rounds.

The Enforcers did their best to cover themselves and return fire, but it was hard to focus on shooting back when your body is getting bruised and battered by high-velocity projectiles. Natasha’s eyes were drawn to one man who had turned enough that she could see the gap in the armor behind his knees. One bullet caused him to fall to the ground, his posture broken enough that she could fire another into his neck, silencing him for good.

Two others also died, both taken out by Yelena before Natasha heard an extra loud gunshot, and a female scream. Her eyes were drawn to the pained sound in time to see Emily collapse, holding her shoulder as a splatter of blood painted the wall behind her. Nat tried to figure out which Enforcer shot her, before realizing that in the chaos, Emily had moved to be more easily seen through the doorways, and the round that hit her had to have been from one of the snipers outside.

“Yelena! Get Emily!” She shouted the order, splitting the focus of the last five Enforcers between her and her sister. Perfect. With the odds improved now, Natasha rushed the rest of the way in, using the last bullets in her magazine to make sure the Enforcers remained off target while she got in close.

Ducking beneath the first man’s attempt to smash her face in with the butt of his rifle, Natasha grabbed onto the pin of the smoke grenade on the man’s belt and yanked the safety measure out of the device before kicking him towards the open door. Next she jumped backwards and landed on the shoulders of the next nearest Enforcer, using one hand to force the man’s head to the side, Natasha gave herself a clear shot to use her Widow bites directly on his neck. In total she fired three charges, each charged high enough that the man would be down for the count for the rest of the fight… if not dead.

She knew that it wouldn’t be long before the first man she attacked got back up, and the other three would be turning to face her any second now, so she rolled into the nearest cover she could find, pressing her back against it, and looking over to her sister who was now in sight. Yelena was hunched over Emily, helping their fellow Widow hold a rag to her shoulder as the injured woman clenched her jaw in pain.

Meeting her sister’s eyes, Natasha lifted four fingers to show her just how many Enforcers were left. The Enforcer she had knocked over had recovered by now, and the rest of them had each found their own cover now, no longer trusting in their numerical superiority to give them free reign of the cabin. A tentative stalemate had fallen over the room as neither side wanted to be the first to expose themselves to the other. Every now and again, the sound of an arrow being loosed made its way down the stairs, and the occasional rapport of a sniper rifle cracked outside in the woods.

“How’re you doing Clint?” She whispered, pressing her face closer to her shoulder so her partner could hear her through the earpiece.

“Just dandy!” The man ground out, the sound of a sniper round whizzing by crackled into Nat’s ear at the same time another gunshot rang out. “The Widow I freed is playing cat and mouse with two of the others. The other three got me pinned pretty good. How’s things downstairs?”

“Emily’s been hit. Yelena and I are also pinned. There are only four Enforcers left.”

“Shit, she still breathing?”

“Looks non-lethal, hit her in the shoulder.”

“Copy. Keep me posted.”

Turning her full attention back to the matter at hand, Nat ever so slightly poked her head around her cover, trying to get a view of where the Enforcers were at. She knew that Yelena was in a bad position, as she had been forced to move and help Emily, Yelena would now be in the line of sight for the same sniper that hit the brunette, if they were still focusing on them and not Clint. That meant that, for Yelena to be of any help now, she would have to move, but that would then make her a target for the Enforcers. Every plan she tried to come up with all circled around to the fact that, unless anything changed outside, they were stuck.

Luckily, after a few stressful minutes of simply listening to whatever was happening in the woods (Clint called halfway through the waiting to say that another Widow got freed after getting stuck in one of their snares and having their gasmask removed by the first one), the Enforcers proved themselves to be far more impatient, proven by the grenade that got lobbed over their cover towards them.

The spherical explosive bounced into the gap between the three Widows, all of them sharing a single glance before Natashsa dove out of cover, sliding across the debris-covered floor and swinging her leg into the explosive, kicking it as hard as she could back to the other side of the room. Even in those couple of seconds, the Enforcers managed to get a couple shots off, one of which hit, causing a gash to spread across her leg from where the bullet nicked her. 

It was worth it though, as the grenade sailed to the other side of the room and detonated midair, shredding one of the Enforcers to pieces and scattering the others, who all ended up stuck on the floor, groaning in pain from the wounds that’d been inflicted by the shrapnel. They tried to pick themselves up, but the explosion had to have disoriented them to an extreme degree, as each of them flopped around on the ground like a bunch of blacked-out frat boys. 

She and her sister took the opportunity granted to them, the latter rolling out of her cover and across the line of sight from the doorway (thankfully no sniper round flew through the entryway) and towards the Enforcers. A few more pulls of the trigger and it was all over, at least for the ones inside the cabin.

“The Enforcers are down. How are things looking out there?” She asked, taking a peek out the open door towards the woods. She couldn’t see anything, that is until another arrow flew out of a window and sailed into the trees. A muffled explosion was followed by a cloud of glittering red gas illuminating the shadows.

“That makes three. The subjugated Widows have abandoned their rifles and are moving in to take out the three we saved. You might want to get out there Nat.”

That was all she needed to hear. The end was in sight and so, after taking a moment to check in on Emily, who waved her off, Natasha ran out of the cabin. The ground between the woods and the cabin was littered with brass shell casings, which were reflecting the last vestiges of sunlight that were peeking over the nearby mountain’s edge. The sound of fighting was making its way through the trees, and occasionally one of Clint’s nonlethal trick arrows flew overhead. Out of the corner of her eyes, Nat saw one gas mask that was pinned to a tree, its filter destroyed with an arrow sticking out of it. On the ground next to it was a rifle, and another arrow, this one one of the cure arrows they had made. Clearly the sight of one of the Widow’s being freed.

With the knowledge of the location of their traps, Natasha, with Yelena shortly behind her, weaved through the web they had laid until they reached a fight. Three on three, guns had been abandoned and Natasha was close to getting flashbacks from training in the Red Room. Luckily, with her and Yelena arriving, the odds tilted firmly in their side’s favor. Add that with the fact that all they needed to do was get the gas masks off, while the subjugated women had to actually kill them? This fight wasn’t going to be much of a fight anymore.

Natasha ran in, jumping so she could wrap her legs around the neck of the nearest Widow. The woman knew how to respond and threw herself backwards, but it was too late. By the time Natasha’s back hit the ground, she had torn the mask off the woman’s face. All that was left was pressing the release button on the capsule of red dust she had grabbed during her attack. The red cloud quickly enveloped her and the woman who was still stuck in her leg hold, though the struggle quickly ceased, and the woman’s hand lightly tapped on her thigh, as if they were simply sparring rather than having been in a life or death struggle just seconds prior.

She released her legs, and sat up slowly, watching as two more clouds of the cure wafted with the breeze and everything became silent. All in all, this small section of the woods had eight Black Widows, each of them worn out from the past battle. Some of them were on the ground much like Natasha was, others were leaning tiredly against whatever tree was nearby. Despite everything each of them has been through, the knowledge that six more victims of Dreykov’s evil were freed caused a smile to slowly grow on their faces until one of them began to laugh. It was a broken sound, one made by a woman who clearly didn’t know what it was like to truly express her emotions, one that was broken up by half-sobs as they tried to fight between laughing at the absurdity of the situation, and cry at the weight of all they had lost over their life. That Widow was soon joined by another, and another, until everyone was releasing their stress through an action none of them got to do enough in their lives.

Natasha could hear Clint asking for an update, but, just for this moment, she didn’t care. The Black Widow allowed herself the chance to revel in the fact that they have proven today, once and for all, that Dreykov’s power was not permanent. The newest generation of Widows still had a chance at freedom, and Natasha swore she would bring it to them now, to make up for her failure eight years prior. Part of her remembered what Tony had said to Loki back before the invasion, a line he had shown them in security footage after the battle. It felt relevant to her mission now, as even if she couldn’t save every girl who had been victimized by the Red Room, she would make damn sure she Avenged them.