Chapter 7
Liho curls with Natasha as Clint drops her in her lap.
The blood transfusion almost half way through.
“Tell me again,” she demands to Tony.
He nods.
“It’s got tracers in it. They can’t detect it, but we will be able to find you. There’s another under your skin on your hip, and you’ll have one in your clothes. We’re coming with you as far as we can, and we have the location of the Red Room or where we suspect it is.”
She nods.
“It’s not enough,” she surmises.
“No,” Tony agrees, “it’s not.”
Natasha watches the blood flow into her arm.
“What are you sedating me with?”
She knows the ins and outs, they’d made the plan together.
They leave for Resi in the morning, ten hours form now.
The quinjet ready to go.
“It’s a painkiller compound with a light sedative. I’m hoping that the combination takes away the pain but also doesn’t leave you out of it for too long.”
There’s apprehension curling in her gut, going in blind to Russian compound is not her favourite part of this plan. They could do anything with her.
“Then what?”
Tony shrugs.
“Then we wait.”
Natasha falls silent.
“They have a week,” Bruce says, speaking for the first time. “If they haven’t been able to cure you in that time, then they don’t intend to. A week. Okay?”
Clint feels her freeze at that.
A week was a lifetime in hell.
“If you can get word to use before that,” Steve says softly, “we will come and get you straight away.”
There’s a scoff as Clint rolls his eyes.
“She’s not going to summer camp,” he argues.
“No,” Steve says slowly, “I know, but she’s done it before… got out?”
Natasha rolls her eyes. Liho ruffles in her lap, tuning in to the tension in the room.
“Stop,” she commands Clint, who looks red in the face ready to rebuke him.
“Fine. Is there anything else?”
Tony shakes his head.
Bruce avoids her eyes.
Steve looks at her with resignation.
Clint crosses his arms.
“You can go,” she tells them.
There’s protest, but she holds up a hand and shakes her head.
“If I’ve got to do what I know I have to, you all need to leave.”
There’s a hardening in her heart.
Bruce leaves first, then Tony, and lastly Steve holds his position at the door.
“I’m staying outside if you need anything,” he tells her, and like the solider he is, he stands watch.
“You too,” she tells Clint.
But it’s too much of an ask.
“No.”
She stares him down.
“No,” he says again. Arms crossed across his body,
“I’m not leaving you alone in this.”
Natasha sighs.
“I’m always alone in this.”
He crawls next to her, moving Liho out of the way.
Gently gently picks up her hand, and kisses it.
“You’re not alone, you’re never alone. Even when it feels like it, even when the world is dark.”
He picks up a pen from the side table and draws a little arrow on her hand. And then another.
Small signs, no bigger than her little finger nail, drawn sporadically on her body.
“They’ll go, but you’ll see where they were and remember,” he says, capping the pen and pushing next to her. She still feels the light pressure of the pen, and knows that he’s right.
She motions for the pen and draws them on him too.
“Don’t forget,” she whispers.
Staring at him, she takes in everything about him. His hair, his wrinkles, his eyes and nose and mouth. Things to help her through.
If they take her memory, what’s left of her?
“You’ll be with me tomorrow?”
“Every step of the way.”
.
Natasha doesn’t sleep, but she does lose time.
Chunks of time missing from the clock and she grimaces to herself that she can’t do that when she’s there.
To be fair, she hasn’t even thought more than a day ahead. One step at a time, sometimes only minute by minute.
If she thinks too far ahead, she knows she’ll spiral; and that’s one thing she can’t do.
Clint dozes in and out, his hand always on her. Liho, even though she’s not used to being here, stays at the end of the bed.
She knows Steve doesn’t leave his post. Tony’s likely watching cameras, Bruce probably meditating nearby.
The television plays renovation shows, that Clint complains about, making her lips twitch; and they both complain about the timelines in which things get done.
He offers her candy, the Russian candy Tony had delivered, explaining he’d picked it up when he got Liho. She takes it, shares it and they talk of favourite candies, ranking them together.
If she didn’t know what she knew, she could almost pretend that…
She lets go of that thought.
The nurse apologises when she enters, explains that the last lot of antibiotics are as long lasting as they can be, and that the fluids are laced with painkillers. No sedative this time, as requested.
She wants to remember as much of this night as she can.
It may be her last as Natasha Romanoff.
.
An hour from Georgia, Bruce disconnects the lines attached to her.
He takes her vitals, and gently gives her a wet cloth to wipe the dried blood away and the sweat on her face.
She hasn’t had to do so much in the past couple of weeks and she’s embarrassingly exhausted.
“I think they won’t keep the lines we put in, so better we take them out than they do,” he reasons.
She agrees of course, and holds the cotton wool over where her IV line was, staunching the blood.
Clint doesn’t let go of her.
Steve goes through the exchange again.
It’s going to be at the private airfield, the location only just chosen so neither could be set up there.
In order to stay as close to her as possible, they’re going to sedate her, with Steve carrying her and Tony flanking them both.
Clint continues to surveil the location with the satellites that Tony has tasked. He has two options for sniper perches. He assumes the Russian’s will be on the left, so he choose the one on the right, near where the quinjet will land.
Bruce is going to stay, already commenting that he doesn’t like this, a growl from the hulk breaking through.
Tony pushes next to her on the other side, slips a bracelet on her wrist.
“One more thing,” he explains, “this has a tracker, I’m hoping they keep it on them, it’s made of verbrainium, so unlikely they’ll throw it away. When they take if off you it will ping it’s location every five minutes. It’s also powerful enough that it will map out the location of where it is.”
Natasha rests her head on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he says ever so quietly. “This is my fault.”
She scoffs.
“This is not your fault,” she whispers back vehemently.
The others pretend to not listen as Tony stares and Natasha breathes.
“They’ll fix me and you’ll come get me, okay?”
He nods vehemently. She think she can see tears in his eyes.
.
Clint swears. A long string of expletives as he rushes from his perch.
“No, nonono no,” he breathes, sprinting to where Steve is holding Natasha’s sedated body.
He’s so glad she’s out because if she was there, he’s sure she’d be backing out of the exchange right about now.
“Stop,” he tells the others, but it’s too late.
Dreykov stands in front of four other widows ordering them to take Natasha from Steve. They all hold guns directed at the two men, and he reluctantly gives her over, placing her on the gurney.
It’s done before Clint is even half way to the drop point.
“Stop,” he shouts into the comms.
This can’t be happening.
They’ve just given her to the devil.
The one man she betrayed, killed his daughter and took his throne.
This wasn’t the plan.
Dreykov wasn’t part of the plan.
He’s back from the dead and Natasha is fucked.
“What’s wrong?” Tony asks, his face shield covering his face as he answers only in comms.
“Get her back, she can’t go with him,” Clint huffs, trying to talk and run.
But time is not on their side.
“Clint… she needs to,” Tony’s voice is placating, like Clint is just trying to stop the exchange. He doesn’t know what Dreykov has done to her, what their history is.
He’s supposed to be dead.
“He’s supposed to be dead, goddamnit.”
Dreykov is back in his truck.
The Russians are backing away with Natasha in tow and they’re standing there sending her to a fate worse than death.
“No!”
Tony flies up in annoyance, leaving Steve on the ground.
“What’s wrong?”
Clint stops and shoots towards Dreykov’s truck, fear at what they’ve just done.
“We’ve killed her,” he mutters, shell shocked.
.
Dreykov smiles.
The Black Widow has come home.
He’s going to have so much fun.
Pleasure curls in his gut at seeing her helpless.
He orders the doctors on site of the makeshift hospital in Koban.
He feels better being back in Russia and all the protections that entails; sure that the Americans won’t follow them in without an international incident.
Staring at her, he orders her the widows to undress her and make sure there is nothing tracking them into the hospital.
They remove her bracelet and hand it to him, her only jewelry. He’s suspicious of it, he knows she wouldn’t come with jewelry she knows would get removed.
He taught her strategy better than that.
Handing it back to one of the widows, Dreykov tells her to send it to the Kremlin.
Let them deal with it.
She leaves immediately, and he turns his attention back to his defector.
Now dressed in a hospital gown and handcuffed to the bed, he orders her torso to also be strapped down. He’s not taking any chances.
The doctors take blood, scans are completed, even though they all know what’s wrong.
They’ve had years of this. The nanites that course through her system are the old technology; he knows exactly how to help her.
Dreykov smiles.
He knows exactly how to take her apart too.
He tells them if the diagnosis and recovery is not completed in the next 24 hours, he will kill them.
He’s sure the other avengers have a plan to rescue her.
He needs her better, because then he can start work on her.