Chapter 6
You didn’t bother to wait for Bruce to come tell you to eat the next morning – you knew you’d have to go eventually and if you were going to go anyway, you might as well keep up the appearance of obedient omega while you were at it. You were exhausted. Your dreams last night had been plagued by monsters and tortured screams and ballet shoes.
You entered the dining room, picking up your usual apple. Nat raised an eyebrow at you, “Do you ever eat anything else?”
You chuckled. “Not at breakfast.”
Nat’s expression turned serious and she said, “I told the others what happened last night at the bar.”
“Last night was nothing,” you said with a dismissive wave of your hand.
“Being alpha commanded isn’t ‘nothing’,” Natasha growled.
You stiffened at her tone. “I said, it’s nothing,” you repeated sternly.
You saw a muscle tick in the alpha’s jaw, but she said nothing, going back to her breakfast. You felt a prick of guilt in your stomach. She was clearly irritated, though whether that was with you or with the alphas who’d harassed you, you didn’t know. Part of you wanted to apologise. That is, the omega part of you. You supposed it was a good thing that you’d learnt to ignore that part of your mind by now. But still, you felt like you had to say something.
“I don’t need you to fight my battles for me, you know,” you said, voice quiet but firm.
Natasha huffed and muttered back, “That doesn’t stop me from wanting to.”
“Deal with it.” Sure, your words were harsh, but you felt they were also necessary.
“When’s your next shift?” Bucky asked, if only to break the tense atmosphere.
“Saturday, so I’ve got a few days.”
“What happens when you have a heat?” Steve asked.
You stilled slightly. You hadn’t had a heat since… well, ever. You’d always been on suppressants to stop them. “I- uh… the same as every other omega, I suppose,” you answer vaguely. “I call in sick.” Speaking of suppressants, you’d forgotten to take yours earlier. “I’m gonna go. I’ll see you guys later.”
Wanda watched as you exited the room. She found it strange how you could change so much so quickly. Last night, you’d been sweet, open almost. Today you were back to being closed off and snappy.
“I’m gonna go check on her,” the youngest pack member stated, rising from the table and hurrying after you.
You entered your room and headed straight into your bathroom. You didn’t bother closing the door. After this, you planned on finding somewhere to practise your skills of flight. You took out the pill bottle, unscrewing the lid and placing it on the counter. You picked out a tablet and put it in your mouth, turning on the tap to cup water with your hands so you could wash it down.
In hindsight, turning on the tap was likely the reason you hadn’t heard Wanda quietly walking into your room.
“Hey.”
You startled violently at the seemingly instantaneous appearance of the alpha, spinning around and knocking the pills off the counter as you did so. The bottle clattered to the floor, pills spilling out all over the floor. You froze. Shit, shit, shit. You forced yourself to take a breath, though it felt like there were weights on your chest.
Your mind spun, but you couldn’t come up with a single excuse in time for when Wanda asked, “Y/N, are those… are you on suppressants?”
Your limbs were suddenly under your control again and you knelt down, gathering up the spilt meds. You didn’t realise Wanda had knelt down facing you until her hands were on your wrists, stopping your frantic hands from collecting the pills. You flinched but didn’t dare pull away from her. Your muscles locked, your body turning unnaturally still.
“Y/N, look at me.” Your gaze met hers. “Why didn’t you tell us you were on suppressants?”
“Are you going to make me stop taking them?” you asked shakily, eyes begging her not to give you the answer you expected.
“Y/N… they- there have been horrible side effects. You’ve got to know that.”
“I’ve never had side effects before,” you argued weakly.
“Because they’re long-term!” Now there was a severity in her gaze that you hadn’t seen before, and it made anxiety pool in your belly. You bit your lip in an attempt to keep yourself from saying anything stupid.
“It’s my body,” you muttered, finally pulling your wrists from her grasp harshly to finish collecting the pills and screw the cap back on the bottle.
“Give them to me,” she said firmly.
“What? No,” there was a hint of desperation in your voice. Wisps of red encircled your hand with the bottle and wrenched it from your fist so that it shot towards Wanda. “Wanda, what the hell. Give them back.”
“No.”
You stepped closer to the woman reaching up to try and grab the bottle from her hand that was now raised above her head. You felt like a child trying to snatch the last chocolate bar. You growled in agitation, acting on instinct and closing your hands around the alpha’s wrist. She yelped as you burnt her but let go of the bottle. It clattered to the floor, and you dove down to get it, cradling it protectively to your chest when you’d retrieved it.
The two of you locked in a staring competition. The brunette’s gaze moved away from yours to survey her wrist. Her voice shook slightly with hurt when she said, “You burnt me.”
“Well spotted,” you snapped, eyes momentarily passing over her pink skin. “It’s only first degree. You’ll live.”
“We’re not supposed to use our powers on each other.”
“That’s rich coming from you.” You met her gaze steadily, easily recalling the feeling of your feet being rooted to the ground against your will, the complete and utter terror that enveloped you as you realised you were not in control.
“Steve asked me to,” she defended half-heartedly, as if she knew it was a crappy excuse. “I’m sorry for that. Just- right… this has nothing to do with the fact you’re on suppressants, so how about we go back to talking about that for a moment.”
You huffed and looked away. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“How about the fact that they’re – oh, I don’t know – illegal?”
You clenched your jaw, teeth grinding together. “You really don’t get it, do you?” you ask, voice cold and guarded.
“Get what?”
“What it’s like to be an omega.” You take an angry step towards her. “You don’t know what it’s like to be afraid of being raped every time you step out onto the streets. You don’t know what it’s like to have strangers grab at you whenever they please. You don’t know how hard it is to resist an alpha command. You don’t know how scary it is knowing that you could drop in public at any moment and a random alpha could take advantage of you. You don’t know what any of it is like!” you took a shaky breath. “These pills ensure that I don’t go into heat in the middle of my work shift, they make it so that I don’t have to drop as often or as deeply, they make it so I can stave the drop off until I’m somewhere safe. They make it so that if I’m in a drop and an alpha comes into the space, then I can force my way out of that headspace. It’s not pleasant in the slightest, but it’s the only thing keeping me from being raped and kidnapped and- and abused while I’m vulnerable. They dull my hormones so that the alphas around me don’t go nuts when I’m anxious, or angry, or upset. These pills may very well be the only reason I’m standing here today, and if you think I’m willing to give them up without a fight, then you don’t know me at all.”
Wanda huffed out a breath and gave you a look you couldn’t quite decipher. “Steve would make you wash the bottle down the drain.” Your hand tightened around said bottle ever so slightly, but you said nothing. “Bucky would agree. Maybe Natasha too. Personally, I agree with them.” You shifted your weight from foot to foot, restless as the witch contemplated what she wanted to say to you. “But.” A spark of hope came to life as she said that simple word. “I understand why you want to keep using the suppressants. I get that you don’t trust any of us to drop you, or to not harm you during your heat. That’s… it’s understandable. This isn’t me supporting your usage of suppressants. Just… hide them better.”
You breathed out a sigh of relief and met the witch’s gaze. “Thank you.”
She shrugged, “Sooner or later you’ll have to explain to the others why you’re not having heats, or how you can ignore alpha commands. I don’t intend to help you out of the grave you dug yourself there. I don’t like the use of suppressants, and I’m not going to help you deceive the pack. If anyone asks me directly if you’re using suppressants, I’m not going to lie.”
You nodded in acceptance. These were terms you could understand. You couldn’t bring yourself to tell this woman who you barely knew to lie to her pack. You knew for a fact that if someone asked you to lie about something important to Bullet’s pack, it’d be a hard no, no matter who asked you. You were sympathetic on that account.
“I’m sorry,” you sighed, putting the suppressants back into their hiding spot. “I just-,“ you bit your lip, trying to decide what to tell her, “I’ve been on suppressants since I was thirteen, and even then it’s been hard.”
“It’s only been hard because you’ve always been alone,” Wanda disagreed gently, moving closer to you and taking your hands in hers tentatively.
You let her hold your hands, secretly enjoying the contact. Her skin was so warm and soft. Nothing like yours or Nightshade’s or Bullets, rough and calloused and littered with scars from a variety of situations you’d gotten yourselves into over the years. Her words hit you harder than expected. Probably because it was the truth. Apart from Bullet and Nightshade, you’d been alone your entire life, and even when you’d met them, you’d often felt like a third wheel to their relationship.
“We can help, but only if you let us.”
You shook your head slightly, chuckling. “You know the amount of people I’ve heard that phrase from?” she tilted her head slightly. “Every member of law enforcement that’s ever picked me up. None of them ever helped me.”
The witch grinned. “Good thing I’m not a cop then,” she whispered, stepping closer to you. Her scent surrounded you. You could feel her breath ghosting over your lips, she was so close. Your gaze darted down to her lips – only briefly – before you forced yourself to meet her eyes. You forgot how to breath. Was this what it was like to have a soulmate? Because you could get used to this.
No, a little, irking voice in your head scolded. No, stop this. Love is for children. Get out of your own little fantasy before she turns around and stabs you in the back.
No, another part of you argued. Wanda wouldn’t do that.
You wanted to believe the second voice, but you’d only met the woman what- a couple days ago? Wanda leaned towards you ever so slightly, but it was enough to force you into making a quick decision, and you’d learnt that whenever you had to make a quick decision, that it was best to take safe path. You turned your head away from the alpha, your gaze quickly finding the tiles of the bathroom floor very interesting.
Wanda cleared her throat quietly before taking a step back. You knew she was disappointed, but you were thankful that she’d respected your boundaries.
“Right, sorry. I should- I should go. I’m sorry.”
She turned to hurriedly exit the bathroom. “Wanda, wait.” The alpha ignored you, leaving your room quickly. “Wanda!” She was gone. You sighed, trying to still your racing heart as you leant against the bathroom wall.
The tower was huge. You found your way to the gym after what felt like hours of wandering, and you’d been there for the past few hours, working on flying. You’d forgotten how exhilarating it felt. You supposed it had been quite a while. The floor in here was padded, and for that you were immensely glad. You were sure that if it hadn’t been, you would’ve been black and blue by now. You’d gotten the hang of it in the past hour. It was like a switch had been flicked and you’d gone from using a little too much power to send you flying into a wall like a ragdoll or using so little power that your feet didn’t even leave the ground to being able to control speed, direction and height. It felt almost second nature now, and that had a shit-eating grin taking over your features.
“Hey.” The voice came from behind you, startling you and making you drop like a stone, four meters down to the mats. The air was forced from your lungs as you made impact. You grunted uncomfortably, trying your best to suck in a breath of much-needed air. “Oh my god, Y/N. Are you okay? I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Steve hurried over to your side, but you rolled away from him before he could make contact with you. You stood, coughing a little and testing out each of your limbs tentatively.
“It’s fine,” you muttered, slightly irritated. Okay, maybe you were holding little grudge against the alpha. It wasn’t like it was unfounded distrust of him, in your defence. He was emotional, and emotional people were unpredictable people, and unpredictable people could be dangerous, much more so if said person happened to be an alpha.
“Oh, hey Y/N.” You turned to see Natalia enter to room. You let a small smile slide onto your features.
“Hi Nat,” you greeted her.
“Steve and I were just coming down here to spar, but if you’re up for it I’d love to see what you can do.”
A lot more than you think I’m capable of, you thought. You almost looked at Steve for permission, since you were stealing his sparring partner after all. But you didn’t. No, because any action like that – one asking for his permission – tells him that he had a right to demand things of you. And that was a hard limit for you.
“Sure,” you accepted her offer.
“Right. Full contact okay with you?”
“Of course.” Full contact had been the only type of contact in the Red Room.
“Weapons?”
“Why not?” the alpha headed over to the weapons rack, and you watched her as she grabbed a pair of dual batons. You surveyed the rack yourself from afar. There was a nice-looking selection, but you were used to using your knives. You pulled up the hem of your shirt and slid your cold steel SRK out of its sheath. When Natasha turned back to you, she raised a brow at the sight of the weapon that had appeared in your hand. You shrugged. “Just in case.”
She nodded briskly in acceptance before moving back over to you. “You ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
She wasted no time in lunging at you, and immediately you could tell that she was underestimating you. She wasn’t defending whatsoever, as if she expected you to fight like an omega and stay on the defensive. God, that made you furious. You dodged a strike of her baton, and used the opportunity to duck forwards. You twisted the knife in your hand and jabbed the handle against her chest, imitating a knife to the heart. The entire movement had taken less than half a second.
“You’re dead, Romanov,” you said sternly, voice echoing that of your past trainers. “Let’s go again. This time don’t underestimate me. It’s demeaning.”
Natalia’s gaze hardened, and you knew that you’d gotten to her. You balanced your weight evenly between your feet, keeping your centre of gravity low. You knew you had to expect more of a fight from her now.
You were right. From the moment she lunged, her mind was fully in it. She struck, you blocked, you counterstruck. Metal reverberated with metal; her batons met your knife. It was intense, it was fast-paced, and it was clear that she’d had widow training.
The Red Room had had a fighting style of its own. They taught aikido, judo, karate, savate, and boxing amongst other forms of defence, and it wasn’t uncommon for the instructors to mix different styles together every once in a while. It made you unpredictable. Unpredictable was hard to fight.
It was evident that that was what Natalia was going for – she was leaning heavily into her Red Room training – and that would’ve worked, had you not been trained there too. You met her strike for strike, even earning an occasional one yourself. You twisted and turned, never letting your knife mark her skin so much as a tenth of an inch deeper than you wanted it to. You were the sort of person who liked to do things quickly – efficiently. It seemed like Natalia was a little more… showy in her approach.
A baton slammed into your ribs, knocking the breath out of you and unbalancing you. You made a last-minute decision and dropped your knife, grabbing Natalia’s right arm and sweeping your leg, hooking her ankle. The two of you crashed to the ground, but you’d been there not even a moment before she’d flipped you.
Cold metal pressed against your throat. She’d grabbed your knife. Stupid. You could smell sweat, though whether it was yours or Natalia’s, you didn’t know. God, her face was so close to yours. I win, her eyes seemed to say, her smirk seemed to say. To you, it appeared you had one option and one option only. You leant up and crashed your lips against hers. You could taste her cherry lip gloss, but you weren’t thinking about that now. No, you were thinking about how you’d felt her grip on her blade slacken before she dropped it completely to weave her fingers through your hair.
You smirked but gave no further warning before arching your hips and rolling to the side, startling the alpha. You wrapped your legs around her instantly and snaked your arms into position until you had a twister hold on her, bending her body in a way you knew was much less than comfortable. You increased the pressure slightly, knowing exactly how hard you’d need to hold to do actual damage. Still, that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful. She tapped out, and you let her go, rolling away from her body with a sly grin on your features.
“You alphas are all the same, you know,” you teased with a smirk.
“I didn’t expect you to be so good,” Natalia said, as if that was some sort of defence.
“I was an omega living on the streets. I needed to be better than good,” you said, tone serious. “I’ve gotten sloppy. I haven’t had to fight anyone who actually knew what they were doing since the-,” you stopped yourself only a moment before you said, ‘the Red Room’, and quickly corrected yourself, coughing a little. “Since I first hit the streets.”
“Yeah, when was that?” Natalia asked, rolling to face you.
“A while ago,” you answered vaguely, getting to your feet. “I’m going to go shower. I’ll see you at dinner.”
Natasha watched you leave with a thoughtful look on her face. She’d met a few people who could match her in a fight – maybe even beat her in one – but none of them had had such a similar fighting style to her. Things were beginning to slide into place. No, she shouldn’t make assumptions until she had all the facts. But still.
Evidence. She needed to gather her evidence. 1. She knew you knew Russian. 2. You know how to fight. Well, in fact. 3. You’ve been protective of your past. No, it wasn’t enough to confront you on. Not yet at least.
“Nat? What are you thinking?” Steve asked.
Natasha shook her head and stuck a smile on her face. “Nothing. Now are we gonna spar or what?”
Dinner was fairly unmemorable. You spent majority of it pushing your food around the plate waiting for the clock to tick over to seven-thirty so you could leave without looking suspicious. You’d set yourself a half-hour timer, knowing that if you didn’t, you’d keep saying ‘oh, I’ll stay for ten more minutes’ and then you’d shorten that to five, but then you’d shorten it to three, and suddenly it didn’t matter anymore so you’d just leave stupidly early and attract unwanted attention. So, you forced yourself to sit at the table with minimal fidgeting, engaging in polite conversation whenever it turned your way.
The clock finally ticked over, and you excused yourself, making your way to your bedroom, taking a detour via the kitchen to grab a bunch of food again.
When you reached your room, you immediately made your way over to the window, opening it. Looking down, your stomach dropped at the idea of jumping. But no, you’d been practising all afternoon. You could do this. Just a couple hundred metres, right? But that wasn’t the thing causing you the most worry, was it? No, you were worried about breaking the rules again.
You hated it, that your omega side was begging you to stay in the Tower, to listen to the alphas, to avoid the guilt you knew would result from breaking the rules clearly stated to you. You supposed part of you was afraid of the punishment too, but mostly it was the guilt.
But the strays needed you. They’d die in winter if you didn’t help the out food-wise. You knew that much. You had to stop being so self-centered. It was like the obedient and caring parts of your omega were raging a war. Be obedient, look after the dogs. Do as you’re told, be nurturing. You hated it. No. You’d made a plan. You’ll carry it out. Otherwise, all those bruises all over your body were for nothing. And you never did anything without a purpose.
You sat on the windowsill as you had done the previous night with Wanda, and after a moment of collecting yourself, you let yourself slip off. You caught yourself a few metres later, wobbling slightly in the air as you balanced yourself. You let out a huff of relieved laughter. You couldn’t let yourself think about the little bubble of guilt in your belly. Not now.
“Ha! Screw you, gravity!”
You were absolutely exhilarated. Invigorated. Euphoric. Ecstatic. Adrenaline coursed through your veins as you looked down on the people below you. You could see the warehouse from here! Grinning from ear to ear, you shot through the sky as if you’d been doing it your entire life. It felt like a part of you now. As natural – as necessary – as breathing. You hadn’t felt this free in… forever.
All too soon, your feet landed on solid ground and you made your way inside the warehouse.
“Hey guys!” you called out. “I’m back.”
As usual, you split the food up amongst the dogs, a ball of fire floating along beside you to light your way. You hung around for a while, playing with the dogs a little after they finished eating. You tumbled around with a few of them, but when one got a little too excited and jumped up, causing you to fall to the ground and gain a small cut and bruise on your cheekbone, you figured it was time to call it quits. Oof, that was going to be hard to explain. You looked at your watch and saw that you needed to leave.