Retribution
Natasha joined them. No one said no. No one argued. No one even attempted to suggest she should stay at the compound. Perhaps no one dared to, because they saw that glint in her eyes that suggested what she would do if anyone did. She needed to go. To see those who had done horrible things to her, and to pay them back in full. She wasn’t sure how. What she would do when she found them. If she could even do anything. She had a gun, and her aim with her left hand was good because she had trained with both hands, but her body was not entirely 100%. Not even 20%, really.
It would be enough. She would make sure of it.
It had taken three days to make the proper preparations. Three days in which she worked twice as hard at trying to get herself back into shape. After eating a small amount of plain rice without too much of a reaction from her body, she continued to add small amounts of other solid foods to her diet, refusing to give in to her own weakness.
Everyone was there, squeezed onto the quinjet like sardines. Before it might have made her annoyed or uncomfortable to have so many different people all together on one mission, knowing too many people was a crowd that could make things go pretty bad.
It was mostly quiet, other than a few murmurings between Tony and Bruce, and Thor talking loudly about Asgard’s conquests, probably in an attempt to make things happier and less tense. Or at least, to distract her from her racing thoughts, repeatedly harking back to the past few months of near-endless abuse. Well, the past month and a half had been endless recovery – or sort of recovery, in some cases. Her healing was still slow, and although she could mostly move without pain from her ribs, the worst of the broken ribs was still lagging behind, tormenting her every breath. Her broken arm was mostly healed, but it still hurt her to even make a fist, and she couldn’t quite put the strength into holding onto something, like her gun.
Her preferred gun hand – or any weapon hand, really – was her right. She was, of course, formidable enough with her left to do what needed to be done, but her aim would be difficult because of the atrophy and ache that still burned in her muscles.
She was squashed on the quinjet, between Coulson and Clint, and directly across from Tony, who was next to Vision and Rhodey. She noticed that Steve and Sam were sitting a ways from Tony, and knew that they likely had not yet gotten around to apologies and clearing the air, so to speak, but this was all a start. Everyone was working together and able to be in the same room as one another, and she was definitely relieved about that.
Maybe this would work out.
The location was remote. They cloaked the quinjet before landing quietly. While they doubted Ross and his remaining men would have enough firepower to do anything against the whole of the Avengers and the remaining members of SHIELD, they didn’t want to give the man a chance to escape if he knew they had arrived.
Get in. Destroy everything. And kill those responsible.
That was the mission. No one had explicitly said kill, other than Thor, but everyone knew that was what they were going to do. No sitting in a jail cell, getting three meals a day, receiving medical care and decent human treatment in Ross’s future. Even Steve had not made a word or motion to argue against that, being the righteous and non-murderous kind of person he was. He had his limits. Everyone did. She had reached her limit on abuse, having faced it for her entire childhood, escaping it as an adult, only to find it once again.
She was tired of being hurt. Tired of being hit and beat on, treated like she was less than human. She had been. She was. While what the Red Room had done to her made her less than human, what SHIELD and the Avengers had changed had brought it back. Made her a person again.
Then Ross had gone and stripped all that away. Treated her like an object, something that could be broken and tossed away, not important enough to even care for.
She was angry. It had taken a month and a half for that self hatred, the feeling like she had deserved what had happened to her to change – to be angry about it. To know it had been wrong, and she really didn’t deserve it. That she was loved and cared for by other people, and useless objects like she used to be weren’t loved or cared for.
“Get out of your head,” Clint whispered in her ear.
She glared at him, half seriously, but she knew he was right. She would focus on the mission. She could do this. She was improving.
She still managed to flinch when Tony abruptly stood up as the jet landed, spooked by the sudden movement, but she didn’t fall into a fully blown panic attack like usual, so that was an improvement. She was a bit fed up with herself and her public panic attacks, hating how weak they made her look and feel in front of the rest of the team, and hating how humiliating it was above all.
Coulson had told her there was no reason to feel humiliated. She didn’t feel disgusted when anyone else on the team had a panic attack, only concerned. Why should it be any different when she had one in front of them?
Because unlike them, she was a weapon – an object. She was trained to be emotionless.
She did not answer. The words were trapped in her mind, but never did quite come out out loud. She didn’t want the pitying looks they would give her if they knew.
She struggled to her feet, managing to stand with some difficulty, but quickly finding her balance once she was up. A cold mask fell across her face, eyes going blank as they often did at the beginning of a mission. She had four targets. Four marks. And she didn’t quite care if she was the one to get them, as long as they were taken care of.
She did at least want to get the satisfaction of seeing their expressions, when they knew karma had finally come for them.
It was also fitting that Ross and his men were hiding out at an abandoned warehouse – the same type of building in which she had initially been caught, many months ago. It was also fitting that none of them had been living the high life at all, hiding away, trying to avoid being caught in the public eye whatsoever.
Sam, Vision, T’Challa, Tony and Rhodey went to the roof of it, to cut off that exit and work their way down. Wanda was working perimeter, ready to use her power to block in anything, including bullets or missiles to avoid any potential collateral damage. Natasha was with Clint, waiting to go in after the initial wave of agents, which consisted of Fury, Coulson, Hill, and Thor and Valkyrie. Bruce was staying behind, to avoid a hulk out in the midst of a busy city that probably could not be contained easily.
Normally she would be in the initial strike, but she was injured and in no shape for physical combat. She would only be allowed in once the way was clear, and Clint was very adamant about her following those orders, much to her annoyance.
Coms went quiet as the attack began. Then doors burst inward, and gunfire started, and the top of the warehouse lit up with flashes of red and yellow. She began to stumble forward, occasionally needing support from Clint or a wall to lean on as she went, but she kept herself on her feet, determined to carry this all through. Several unknown men had already surrendered, throwing their weapons down. Militia types, who were only here because they were paid as security, but decided that the money from a corrupt man like Ross wasn’t worth their deaths.
She found Weasel first. Well, Clint did, specifically, stiffening next to her as his eyes immediately fell on a thin, tall man, that had managed to hide from the initial strike force, positioning himself under a cart, behind some bookshelves. He had just pulled himself out when they approached, and he grinned savagely at her, gun raised, looking as much like a freak she she had really expected.
“I’ve missed you, beautiful,” he sneered, in that sickening voice that made her stomach lurch, reminding her of being bound and blinded and gagged, unable to move as he touched her over and over, weak and helpless.
Clint jerked next to her, ready to shoot.
She was faster.
A loud bang from her gun. Weasel dropped his gun, eyes going wide in shock, mouth opening in a silent scream of pain as his hands went downwards. Clint relaxed next to her. She looked coldly at the man, and Clint grabbed the gun from the floor in case the injured man was able to recover from the pain in his most sensitive place. He was alive, but she found some satisfaction in her choice for letting him live, if only so that he would live, at least partially castrated.
Clint cuffed him to a wall, and they kept going.
Three targets.
They weren’t talking much, if only so she could keep her focus entirely on what was going on around her, rather than losing what energy she had on keeping up a conversation. Already she was fatigued, her body wanting to get back to resting. But she wouldn’t rest until she had finished her job.
Somewhere up ahead, there was a lump lying on the ground. Clint too out an arrow, letting it fly. There was a man aggressively tied onto the ground in a hogtie, looking very bruised and worse for wear. He was huge, very muscular, with arms like logs. She did recognize this one, only because it was the man she had kicked in the groin when she attempted to escape. Who had then spent every single day coming in and beating her – she knew he had been the one to smash her head and face repeatedly against the wall of her cell. Bull.
Clint’s arrow had pierced directly through the middle of the man’s hands. She ignored the hateful look on his face, the gun feeling heavy with the thought of killing. Only one person really needed to die tonight.
She did not encounter Dagger. But she did hear Tony on the coms, saying they got one of the assholes, and since she had already seen the other two assholes, it had to be him. That just left Ross. And knowing Ross, he would be hiding out in the deepest, darkest safe room in the place, letting all his men get captured or killed in the fighting rather than come out and face what was going to happen.
It would only be a matter of time. Her fingers twitched around her gun. Tonight, Ross would be dead. He would get what he deserved, and everyone would be safe from the bitter man’s cruelty.
She stumbled a bit more as time went on, but still kept herself up. She was definitely getting tired. Finish the mission. Then sleep.
Something flashed out of the corner of her eye. A fist smacked into her jaw and she crumpled to the ground, unable to keep her footing. For a long moment she lay motionless on the ground, her limbs weak and numb. Somewhere, she could hear the sounds of a fight, and it was that sound – the sound of Clint fighting – that made her struggle out of her daze and raise her head, just in time to see Ross slam an electric baton into Clint’s chest, making the archer convulse and fall to the ground.
She snarled in rage, trying and failing to launch herself upward, only managing to grab hold of a support beam and drag herself to her feet, struggling to regain balance. Ross turned on her, his eyes cold and desperate, and she suddenly felt her spine go completely stiff by a burst of complete panic.
She hadn’t seen his face since she had been captured, when he had looked at her with a smug grin on his face, his eyes twinkling cruelly with excitement, right before he had sent her to the cell to be beaten and abused, over and over.
“Romanoff. I didn’t break you as well as I hoped. You’re pathetic enough that I might just do that now, before they take me down,” Ross sneered. He knew he wasn’t getting out of here alive. She went to raise her gun, only to realize she had dropped it when she fell, and had not grabbed it again before getting back to her feet. The process of diving down and grabbing it, and then jumping back up again, would take too long and be too unlikely for her healing body to take.
She was really not ready for hand to hand combat yet. But she wasn’t going to have a choice – Clint was still struggling to recover from the electricity and Ross was advancing on her, electric baton at the ready. She inwardly blanched at the thought of electricity – not again.
She dodged his jab, slamming her good hand directly into the inside of his arm, forcing him to drop the baton. She then kneed him in the stomach, right before an elbow she was unable to move in time to dodge caught her in her healing ribs. The breath wheezed out of her, and she curled in on herself with a cough, pain lighting up her senses. Angry, refusing to let pain slow her down, she threw herself forward. Ross was not a fighter, and although he could hit pretty hard, he had no skill – and he had not anticipated her immediate attack, expecting her to take time to recover.
She managed to get her good arm around his throat, her other out in an attempt to balance. Without hesitation she bit down on the side of his neck as hard she could, ignoring the taste of blood in her mouth when she broke skin. She didn’t have the body strength or muscle mass to haul her legs up to choke him out with her thighs, so she simply threw all of her weight on him, forcing him back.
She felt his fist on her side and her stomach, one hand grabbing at her back, fingers digging with bruising force into her shoulder. She did not let go.
Ross yelled in pain, before grabbing her almost healed broken arm and squeezing.
Lights burst in front of her eyes, and she felt herself recoil away on instinct, screaming out. She managed to stay on her feet just long enough to squint at him through tears of pain and lash out, with all the force she had managed to get back, with her good arm – her fist smashed into his throat, making direct contact, and he collapsed to the ground instantly, coughing and gagging and struggling to breath.
She could see Clint struggling to his feet nearby, and she was stumbling back, grabbing her aching arm just as her knees gave out, and she sank to the ground.
“Holy fuck, Nat. Are you okay?” She heard Tony’s voice, and turned to see the roof squad advancing around the corner, with iron man aiming a repulser at Ross in case he tried anything else. She took a moment just to breath, looking at them and then back at the man that had been in charge of her torture.
“Not as pathetic as you, clearly,” she hissed at him, watching with some satisfaction as his eyes turned into small pits of hatred, although he still hadn’t recovered from the hit to his throat to respond immediately.
“Looks like we found the ringleader in torture,” Tony said.
Ross looked at him coldly, and then at the rest of the Avengers as they approached. “You freaks don’t even classify as human. She isn’t even a person. Just a weapon from Russia,” Ross sneered.
She felt cold, a ghost of a memory flickering through her mind.
“What are you?”Madame B had asked her.
Natasha stared back at the woman, green eyes cold and empty.
“A weapon.”
Clint snarled. “Go to hell.”
There was a gun in her hand. She stared at Ross, raising it to his head. One pull of the trigger, and he would be dead. She would have her revenge. He would not be able to hurt her or anyone else ever again. She would be the weapon she was always meant to be.
“You’re a person, not a weapon,” Clint had told her a long time ago.
Natasha lowered he gun.
“I’m not going to kill you,” she said. He looked surprised. Clint looked surprised also, until he saw the expression on her face.
“I am not,” she clarified, and he paled. This was far more satisfying than shooting him would have been. “You were never going to make it out of here alive,” she added.
She didn’t know how they were going to do the job. She knew her team were not torturers, or evil. She knew they would do what was necessary to get justice, but then it would be over. They would heal and come together again, officially, as the Avengers. This was them, avenging.
She stood and walked away, leaving the team to avenge her.