A ray of sunshine
“What the hell do you mean Dreykov is still alive!?"
“He did not die in t…”
“I don’t fucking care what you think! I’m fucked because Natasha didn’t make sure that that bastard is dead! Her and that ridiculous Brandt doppelgänger with the fucking bow!”
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The sun had shone in from the window and Benji’s apartment with its messy floors and peculiar decor had been lit up. Ethan and the rest of the team were at HQ, but Benji had a day off. The laptop that Benji had been working on needed to be moved to a more shadowy corner, maybe Benji could move to the couch next to the bookshelves. Peculiarly devoid of books, instead full of trinkets and, to an outsider, meaningless memorabilia with only a few random novels to at least hold up some semblance of normalcy.
After working for an hour, then another hour of just playing this and that, Benji had gotten hot. The sun had heated up his apartment, so he had gone to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Three quick knocks coming from his front door had rang out, startling Benji enough to stand there for a few seconds, trying to remember if he had invited someone. No one from the team was supposed to get out of HQ this early. Having made up his mind Benji had quietly put his glass of water down, taken the handgun hidden underneath the kitchen sink, in the cabinet, and creeped to the door. Another set of knocks had been heard. Benji had ignored them and looked from the peephole, attempting to see who was at the door.
“Please. I know you’re there. I need you to open the door”, a quiet plea had been heard.
Benji had been taken aback when he had seen who was standing there. He had quickly opened the door to see a Black Widow standing in the corridor, clutching her stomach.
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“You need to deliver zese to Natasha,” Oksana said after Benji had at least attempted calmed down.
“I can’t leave! Why the fuck did you come here?! You can’t hide here, if Dreykov is still alive then he’ll know already that you’re here!”
“Zat is incentive to help me, yes? Look, I vill die without medical help. I need you to give the Red Dust to Natasha. I von’t make it there, even if I survived”, Oksana pleaded. “Please, you are only one I could trust. Yelena and I separated in L.A., she v…”
“Belova is here?!” Benji bellowed. “The country is crawling with Widows! You…you’re dying. You haven’t bled too much, but that bullet will kill you.”
“I know that, that is vhy I came here.”
“Fucking dammit.”
“I…gimme a minute,” Benji muttered. His work with the IMF had truly given him a new chance. After the bombing in Budapest that had supposedly killed Dreykov he had cut contact with the Red Room and had become fully loyal to the IMF after years of pretending. He guessed it helped that IMF was much smaller than other organizations like SHIELD, you tended to see the same faces in the break room. And Ethan…dammit he liked the guy. At first Benji was irritated by him. The guy had to be completely insane to do half of the things he does as a non-enhanced! There were others as well. Jane, Brandt, Luther and Ilsa had become a lot like a family to him. After he had left for the field, he had less interactions with other agents at HQ but he was still on friendly terms with most of the old techies. Jane was amongst those at HQ now, she had become an instructor after a mission gone wrong left her with a fucked up knee. Brandt had to run the show after Hunley’s death and no new secretary had been appointed. He had managed to take in some underlings of his own already! Benji should send him flowers to congratulate the not-promotion. But he, Ethan, Ilsa and Luther stayed in the field. Ilsa had come to the IMF after being released from MI6. He had thought about jokingly suggesting that they change notes, but decided against it. No need to screw around with that subject. Luther stayed in the field sporadically, he was getting too old and even in the field he stayed mostly in the shadows. Ethan… well sometimes Benji wanted to test to make sure that he wasn't enhanced because Ethan never seemed to get old. Injuries did weigh him down more nowadays, but that didn’t keep Ethan down. Benji still had to blunder in the field a little when the others were looking, but he could just “improve” and play a little harder. It felt good to go full-out some days.
Benji had two choices. 1. Leave the dying Widow here and continue to try and get the package to safety. Or 2. get rid of the body when the widow dies, try to act normal and pray that Dreykov hasn't figured out that he has something to do with this. He still kept in contact with some widows, but kept himself clear out of the Red Rooms dodge. Dreykov knew where he was without a doubt, just like he knew exactly where the Iron Maiden was lurking.
Leaving would mean leaving his current life and his surrogate family. The moment the IMF finds out about him running away with some mysterious package he would be branded a rogue agent.
But he couldn’t just throw the girls away or god forbid condemn more girls to the same fate. He just couldn’t.
Dammit. He didn’t even get to say goodbye.