Bre's Blorbo Torture Chamber- I mean, Writing Room

All Shifters had mates. It was an absolute certainty — there was not one who didn't have a mate, somewhere in the world. Grace knew that.

He knew that.

And yet.

"You don't have a girlfriend. You don't even have a dog."

And yet, where all Shifters felt a pull in their chest, he felt nothing. Nothing but a yawning void that stretched on and on no matter hard he tried to find the end, find the bond that would lead him to his mate. To his life-long partner.

To the one person that would love him, no matter what.

To the one person that could love him.

He knew all Shifters had mates.

And yet.

But it was fine. If Shifters could survive the deaths of their mates, then surely he could survive the absence of his.

Right?

"Grace have mate, question?"

Grace barely suppressed a flinch. Rocky didn't know the significance of that question. He couldn't. There wasn't the same intent behind it as the other Shifters always had when asking. But still, that familiar ache he tried to hard not to think about returned full-force, and he ducked his head.

"Ah… no." He swallowed. "I mean, I used to have a girlfriend. But she wasn't my mate. And she left me for this guy named Mark."

A pause, then, "Rocky hate Mark."

A slight smile tugged at Grace's lips. "Yeah, me too." But he couldn't blame her. Who would want a guy like him?

Maybe that was why he didn't get a mate.

Rocky didn't ask him about his mate again, and he almost forgot about it. It was easy, with everything they had to do on the Hail Mary. All the preparation for Tau Ceti and their fishing trip, all the flight training, all the little experiments he kept himself busy with in the times between.

Then he almost died.

Then Rocky almost died.

It was hard to think about the lack of a pull in his chest when his best friend wouldn't wake up.

It was only after they went their separate ways that the loneliness began to sink in again. Grace kept himself busy as much as he could, but he'd never been a solitary person, no matter how he avoided other Shifters like the plague. Shifters were pack creatures, even foxes like himself, and to not have anyone around...

Well, it was torture.

Maybe that was why he went after Rocky, even if it meant never going back to Earth. Rocky was his best friend, his pack, his home. Stratt was right that he didn't have anyone to miss him back on Earth. What could he lose by saving Rocky?

He certainly couldn't lose a mate he didn't have.

So he changed course with more certainty than he would have expected. He would save the only friend — the only pack — he had. He needed to.

(He still couldn't help but feel a tinge of regret, though. What if he'd been wrong? What if his mate was out there somewhere, waiting for him to find them? But it was unlikely. And Rocky... Rocky didn't deserve to die for such a tiny chance of finding one person back on Earth when he couldn't even feel them.)

(Who would want a coward like him anyway? He would have let them die by refusing to go on the Hail Mary.)

It took months to catch up to Rocky, but despite Grace's many fears, he was alive and healthy. Rocky moved back onto the Hail Mary, and they continued their journey to Erid together.

And for a little while, things continued as usual.

Then they found Leaf, as Grace had dubbed him. (He had a little plant pendant, and it was better than Blood Human — Rocky's idea.)

Leaf was… Grace didn't even know how to describe him. Injured was such a vast understatement. Burns and cuts littered his body, including a really nasty burn on his face, so nearly all of his visible skin was covered by bandages, and most of his left arm had been ripped off — because it was definitely not a clean cut. It was all very... horrific, to say the least. He'd lost a lot of blood, too.

But he was alive, somehow, and he was looking better by the day with Armando's help. He still never fully regained consciousness, though, just waking up in short, confusion-hazed bursts before passing out again.

When he did wake up, it wasn't the pleasant rise to consciousness Grace had been hoping for.

Rocky rolled into the room, trilling in panic. "Grace! Grace! Rocky hear Blood Human bone break! Something wrong!"

Grace's head snapped up, and he tugged off his goggles, nearly causing his glasses to tumble off his ear. "What?" He pushed his glasses back onto his ear and stood. "Why would he be breaking any bones?" He rushed to the room before Rocky could respond.

Leaf must be properly awake now, and if a bone broke, then that meant he was probably freaking out over being here and maybe he fell? Or he was struggling against Armando, and it's not like Grace knew what the guy had been through before they found him, so this was probably really freaky for him, there was no telling what he was thinking right now—

Grace skidded to a stop in the doorway and froze.

Leaf was writhing on his bed, Armando hovering above him but not touching. He let out a low, pained whine, and oh. Oh. This was familiar. Too familiar.

Grace had barely managed to wiggle out of the sack thing he was trapped in before the bone in his forearm snapped. A scream tore from his throat as his other arm followed suit, then his left leg, then his right. They twisted and contorted out of his control, and he screamed again, sobbing and begging for someone to hear him, to help him, to please just make it stop, it hurt, he didn't want to die—

Somehow, the guy they'd picked up from the middle of space was Shifting, for the first time in a while from the looks of it.

What were the odds?

As another sharp crack resounded through the room, Leaf turned just a little too far and tumbled off the bed. He didn't seem to notice. He was in too much pain anyway.

Grace winced and crouched down next to him. "Hey, look at me."

Leaf jerked, his eyes flying open and landing on Grace. One of his eyes was a deep, bright red, with a black sclera, and Grace recalled briefly seeing that earlier and brushing it off as a weird trick of the light. Guess it wasn't, but he could think about that later.

"Take a deep breath," Grace said, keeping his voice steady and calm. "I know it hurts, but it won't last forever. Just stay calm. Don't fight it."

Leaf looked terrified. Did he not remember anything? It was possible. Grace recalled the terror he felt when he Shifted for the first time on the Hail Mary — he hadn't known what was happening, and he'd thought he was dying.

"It'll be over before you know it," he continued. "Just breathe with me. Okay?"

Leaf still gave no response, but Grace couldn't blame him.

Grace took an exaggerated breath, hoping Leaf would follow along. After a few breaths, he did, albeit much more shakily. Every time a bone broke, his breath would hitch, and occasionally he let out a whine, but he was doing surprisingly well with the pain. He must have had a really high pain tolerance.

Grace continued to guide him through taking deep breaths, talking to him gently throughout. He hoped it helped.

Grace's first Dhift here took minutes. They were very long and painful minutes, but no more than that.

Leaf's Shift took hours.

When the Shift finally stopped, Leaf laid on the floor, panting heavily and not moving an inch.

The wolf in front of Grace was huge — he had to be at least five feet tall, and over twice as long. His long fur was a mix of black and gray, and as he opened his eyes, Grace noticed that one eye was amber, and the other was that same strange red. His left front leg was missing, too, which made sense. Shifting didn't magically bring back missing limbs.

He was beautiful.

Grace had the sudden urge to reach out and touch Leaf's fur. He just looked so... soft.

No, he chided himself. Bad Grace. Do not touch a stranger's fur after he just Shifted. That would not be appreciated. That would be very, very bad—

His fingers brushed against the fluff, and immediately, an electrifying shock spread from his fingertips to his very soul. The bond he hadn't noticed had formed in his focus on Leaf suddenly pulled taut, drawing him closer to the wolf in front of him. His breath hitched, and his eyes burned with tears.

His mate.

After all this time. All the years he'd spent dodging other Shifters with prying eyes and probing questions. All the years spent mourning a bond he could never feel. All the years spent burying himself in his work to not think about what he was missing.

All the years spent thinking he didn't deserve to have a mate.

And his mate was right here.

He barely registered the tears slipping down his cheeks, nor did he register the familiar pain of bones breaking as he Shifted into his fox form willingly for the first time in a while. He curled up against Leaf's stomach and rested his snout on Leaf's side, just watching him and relishing in the painless little sparks of electricity where they touched. It felt better than anything Grace had ever experienced before, and even though he knew he should, he couldn't pull away.

His mate was here. He couldn't leave.

Because if he did, he was certain that all of this would disappear.

~*~

Something was wrong.

Every inch of his body ached with a dull, throbbing pain — which was much better than the sharp stabbing pain from earlier, but it still wasn't pleasant — and he couldn't make his body work, no matter how hard he tried. And he just felt... off. Very, very off. His skin prickled, and his entire body didn't feel the way it should, and smells and sounds and feelings were assaulting his senses and it was just too much but he couldn't stop it—

He shut his eyes and focused on what he could recall about the man that had been talking to him earlier. His mind was still hazy, and he hadn't been able to focus on much aside from the pain, but he remembered the man's face and voice. He remembered them from before, when he was first being lifted from what he'd thought would be his grave.

It was his Angel.

His Angel had stayed with him the entire time. His Angel didn't stop the pain — he probably couldn't stop a punishment like this, because it had to be a punishment. But he stayed anyway, offering gentle words of comfort Simon wished he could have paid more attention to. His Angel deserved to be listened to when he spoke.

The more he focused on the soothing voice of his Angel, the more he was able to calm himself. He didn't know what was happening, but his Angel was near. He would be okay.

He laid there for a while before he managed to lift his head. He immediately noticed why he had felt so wrong — instead of a human, he was some weird furry creature he had never even seen before.

Panic made his chest tighten, and he tried to get up. But his limbs still wouldn't cooperate — no wonder. His body wasn't his body — and all he managed to do was move his legs a little. He drew in a sharp breath and looked around quickly, searching for his Angel. Maybe he could help, maybe he could fix it or at least tell him what was happening—

Something brushed against him, and he turned his head to see something orange and absolutely tiny pressed against his stomach (probably his stomach. He figured it had to be in the same general area, right?). And he... stopped. The panic began to ebb away, and he finally took notice of the weird feeling where the orange ball was touching him. It was like he was being shocked, but in a somehow painless way. And there was this weird feeling in his chest, too, like something deep inside him was being pulled on.

Had that been there earlier? He didn't think so, but it was comforting in the way only familiar and safe things were.

Something was definitely wrong.

Grace cracked open his eyes, the world around him slowly coming into focus. Metal arms (???) hovered above him, tools held in their claws just inches from his face. A female voice echoed around him, asking him a question he didn't listen to, and he let out a gurgling noise and turned his head to the side to avoid whatever the arms were holding.

What the fudge was going on?

As the arms reached for him again, he turned his head to the other side. Whatever it was trying to do, it was very determined to do it.

He needed to get out of here.

He tried to move his arms, but they felt like jelly, and the most he could manage was a bit of feeble twitching. Not helpful. Trying to move his legs yielded the same results. But the metal arms were coming in for another attack, so he had to do something.

That something was apparently rolling over and tumbling right off the bed onto the cold, hard floor.

(Emphasis on cold and hard. There wasn't much covering his body, at least not anything thick enough to fight off the chill, and uh. Ouch. What a painful landing. He was pretty sure he'd ripped a few things out of his skin, too.)

Since he couldn't get his arms and legs to cooperate, he began scooting forward in a fashion that reminded him a lot of an inchworm. It mostly seemed to work; he was getting somewhere, albeit very slowly. Until the metal arms grabbed the end of the sack he was in and started pulling.

(And it was a sack, or at least seemed to be, at a glance. Which was weird, because who the heck sleeps in a sack? He could understand if it was a sleeping bag — even if it didn't make sense for someone to use one in a bed — but it definitely was not. Why was he naked in a sack???)

As his bottom half was lifted into the air, he lurched forward and miraculously slid out of the sack. He noted that he was not, in fact, naked; whatever he was wearing was just clinging to him like a second skin, and he hadn't quite registered before that it was actually separate.

He didn't exactly feel self-conscious about his body (at least, he was pretty sure he didn't. He couldn't remember much, now that he was thinking about it... but no, he needed to focus. That panic could come later), but who wanted to be naked in a strange place? Not him, that was for sure.

Relief over clothing aside, he hurriedly continued his inchworming forward. He just needed to get out of reach of those arms—

The first crack made his ears ring, and for a long moment, he didn't even register that it came from his own body. Then the pain crashed into him, and he screamed.

His arm. It was broken— how was it broken? What had he done? He hadn't hit it on anything, he still couldn't even move it—

Another scream tore from his throat as his other arm snapped. He distantly noted that the metal arms reached for him but didn't touch him, but he didn't get a chance to think about it as both of his arms broke again, higher up this time, twisting and contorting into impossible angles, completely out of his control, as if they had a mind of their own. Then his legs followed suit, and he sobbed and retched. The pain was overwhelming.

"Stop— please—" he gasped out between ragged breaths and sickening cracks. "Please— someone— help—" He screamed again as his spine crunched, and he didn't know how he could even speak or scream anymore, his throat was raw and aching and he could barely even breathe, what was happening to him what had he done to deserve this someone please help him he didn't want to die—

The time blurred together. Hours, minutes, days. He didn't — couldn't — know how long it took for the screaming and the crying and the begging to stop. For the breaking to cease and the pain to fade away into a dull, throbbing ache. By the end, though, he was left trembling on the ground, shivering from the aftershocks of pain and the cold, cold floor underneath him.

No one had come. Despite all of his pleas, no one had helped him. Even the metal arms weren't hovering anymore, and the voice was no longer speaking.

He had been left to suffer alone.

Slowly, he lifted his head, a soft whine rising up unbidden. In his haze, it took him several seconds to realize that his vision was off. Everything looked bigger — much bigger, like he'd suddenly shrank a bunch — and none of the colors were right, as if he was seeing everything through a weird, muted camera filter. What…?

Now that he was focusing more on his senses, he noted that the smells in the room, something he (understandably) hadn't noticed before, were now much sharper. The air was sterile and a bit stale — no human activity in a while. Why? — and there was a faint smell of metal and plastic surrounding him, like that was what the entire room was made of. Much more prominent than those smells, though, was the unmistakable scent of blood. He looked around and spotted the IVs dangling from the bed he'd been on. So that was what he'd ripped out earlier.

He rested his head back against the floor and closed his eyes, already struggling to not pass out. He was exhausted, and his body still ached and trembled. What had even happened? He wasn't dead… probably. But he'd felt each and every one of his bones break and… wait…

Images flickered through his mind, brief and falling through his fingers like crumbling sand but still lingering just long enough to give him some amount of clarity.

His bones were breaking again, but for once, he'd made the choice himself. He stood on all-fours and shook out his fur, then nosed out of the doggy door he'd installed just because of this. Under the cover of dusk, he started to run.

He'd missed this freedom. Why did he always put it off so long?

His eyes snapped open, and he lifted his head again, turning to look at his body. His very small, very furry, and very orange body.

It was so obvious that something was wrong — the once twinkling sea of stars and Tau Ceti's solar system had been replaced with what Grace could only hope was pomegranate molasses. That was a stupid, impossible hope, but he was friends with a rock alien…

He wondered if he was dreaming; he even pinched himself like you were supposed to to check whether or not you were. All he got was a sharp pain in his arm and no change outside the window.

Was he hallucinating, maybe? He had hit his head pretty hard not long ago... but he felt fine, mostly. He didn't think he got enough brain damage to start seeing things that weren't actually there.

But this couldn't be real.

Could it?

(Yet, he'd seen so much since waking up on the Hail Mary. He'd experienced so many things he hadn't believed were possible, even back before his entire life and career had been shattered by his mouth and its lack of a filter and when he was so confident in his theories of life without water. How much of a stretch was this, really? There were so many planets and solar systems that scientists could only dream of seeing someday. Who knew what was really out there?)

Still, this seemed a little extreme.

"Mary," he said slowly. "Where are we?"

"Unknown. Recalibrating," she answered, in that same steady voice he'd grown accustomed to. Usually, it was calming. Now, not so much.

"What do you mean, unknown? How can you not know where we are?" Panic shot through him, but he forced himself to take a deep breath. He'd handled everything up to this point. He could handle this, too.

(But until now, he'd had Rocky by his side. Rocky, who was currently unresponsive and too still and maybe not even alive anymore. He couldn't afford to think like that, he knew that, he didn't need the pain and fear and anxiety and loneliness those thoughts brought him, but he couldn't help it. His friend, his best friend, might be dying and he couldn't stop it. He couldn't do anything but sit around and wait and stare at this unknown place they'd somehow arrived at while he was unconscious.)

(It was all his fault.)

Mary answered him with those same words, but he wasn't really listening. He ran his hands down his face, knocking his glasses even more askew. They nearly slipped off his ear, but he grabbed them and tugged them off before they could fall. He had multiple pairs — something he'd found out the last time he broke one. Thanks, Stratt — but that didn't mean he needed to break these. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to take a deep breath in, hold it, then back out. Again. Again. And again, until his heart didn't feel like it was going to explode out of his chest. Only then did he open his eyes and look outside the window.

No change. Still that foreboding mass of red instead of the planet he should be seeing.

He took another deep breath as the panic threatened to bubble up again. He needed to get it together. Otherwise, he and Rocky would never make it back home.

They had to go home.

(Even if Grace really had nothing to go back to.)

"Okay. Okay, fine. Keep trying to figure out where we are." Grace dragged his eyes away from the window. He needed to go check on Rocky. He doubted anything had changed, but—

He needed to check.

So, he went over to Rocky and sat next to him, continuing the silent vigil he'd promised when he first discovered his friend like this.

Rocky had saved his life. This was the least he could do in return.

~*~

"Where are we, question?"

Grace paused and looked up. It had been only a couple days since Rocky had woken up, and Grace hadn't told him yet that they were at an unknown planet. It was pure cowardice, he knew it — he didn't want to tell Rocky that they might not make it home because he couldn't figure out where home was. But somehow, Rocky knew they weren't at Tau Ceti anymore, and the truth couldn't be hidden any longer. Rocky wasn't stupid.

"I… I don't know." Grace sat back in his seat and sighed. "We're not at Adrian anymore. Nowhere near it, as far as I can tell. Mary can't figure out where we are, either."

Rocky was silent for a moment. "Grace not say that earlier."

Grace swallowed. "I know. I'm sorry."

"Why Grace not say, question?"

"I—" The excuse died on his lips. He didn't want to lie to Rocky. Not after everything they'd been through together. "I was afraid to."

(Funny, that he could dangle off the side of a space ship without hesitation, but he couldn't just tell the truth to his friend. He was such a coward.)

"Why—"

"Radio signal detected," Mary said, and Grace was ashamed of the rush of relief he felt at the interruption.

"What? Where?" He stood and hurried over to the monitors, watching Rocky follow in his passageway from the corner of his eye.

"Radio signal detected," she repeated, because of course she wouldn't elaborate.

Sure enough, though, one of the screens showed a radio signal coming from the surface of the planet below. But how could there be anything down there to even send a signal to begin with?

"Tune into it. Who's on the other end?" Grace couldn't help but feel a spark of excitement. If there was someone here, maybe they would know where here was. Their odds of getting back to Tau Ceti were going up.

There was a sharp burst of static from the speakers, and Grace winced slightly. It gradually quieted down, and he pressed the button to speak.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" He found himself holding his breath as he waited, listening to the static crackle softly. Nothing. His stomach dropped. "Please, can someone hear me?"

More static, then—

A soft groan. It was nearly inaudible, but Grace, as laser-focused as he was, heard it. Someone was on the other side.

Someone was on the other side.

But something was wrong.

"Are you okay?" It was probably a stupid question with an obvious answer, and he doubted he would get anything from asking it, since the person hadn't said anything before. Still, it couldn't hurt, right?

There was no response.

He blew out a breath. "Okay. Okay, we need to figure out what's going on down there. Mary, scan the surface of the planet and see what you can find."

"Grace think find new human, question?" Rocky asked.

Grace didn't look away from the screens. "I really hope so. Maybe they'll know where we are."

"Yes, good. Save new human. Go home." Rocky bobbed up and down. "Hurry hurry hurry."

"We have to wait to see what's on the planet, Rock. We can't do anything if we don't know what's going on down there."

"Mary slow. Need go faster."

Grace sighed. "I know she does." He couldn't blame Rocky for being impatient; he was too. They needed to get out of here as soon as possible, and right now, this was their only chance to possibly figure out where they were.

(Or maybe he just wanted another human being around. Rocky was great, but he wasn't human. It would never be quite the same.)

(Was that being ungrateful? He was so lucky to have someone here with him at all. He shouldn't be complaining. But the prospect of having another human here, even if only for a little while, was a relief.)

A couple minutes later, a blinking dot showed up on the screen.

"Object detected," Mary said, confirming it without prompting.

Grace frowned. "It doesn't look very big. What is it?"

"Maybe small ship," Rocky suggested. "Like Grace ship."

"I don't know… I don't think it is." Grace dragged his gaze away from the screen to look at Rocky. "But either way, something's definitely wrong."

"Then Grace Rocky get ship. Save other human."

Grace sighed and made his way over to the window, staring at the odd planet they'd found themselves at. "But how do we get there? It's not like we can land on it."

Rocky tapped his feet on his enclosure, drawing Grace's attention back to him. "Grace Rocky go fishing."

Grace paused. "That's… actually a good idea."

"Of course. Rocky always have good idea." For a rock, Rocky looked quite proud.

"Yeah, yeah. Sure you do, bud." But a slight smile formed on Grace's face.

It looked like they were going fishing again.

(He just hoped it went better this time.)

~*~

Grace stared at the man silently, absently chewing on the end of his pen. The guy had barely even twitched in the hours since he'd been brought in; Grace would think he was dead if not for the heart monitor's semi-steady beeping. He was barely even breathing.

Rocky rolled over in his hamster ball, checking on Grace for what felt like the millionth time. "New human not died. Why worry, question?"

Grace sighed, also for what was probably the millionth time. "He looks… rough." An understatement. Half of the guy's face was covered in sharp teeth. Teeth. Not regular human teeth, but sharp monster type of teeth. And the rest of his face was covered in boils of some kind. Not to mention his arm, which looked like it had been ripped off.

"But new human not died," Rocky repeated. "No need worry."

"Just because he's alive right now, doesn't mean something can't happen to him." Grace glanced at the monitors again.

"Grace paranoid. Nothing happen to new human. New human live now."

He sighed again and set down his pen. He really needed to stop chewing on it; if another pen exploded in his face, he would never live it down.

"Maybe I am being paranoid. But I think I have a pretty good reason to be. He lost a lot of blood." He adjusted his glasses, even though they weren't trying to fall yet. "We have to make sure he stays alive now that he's here."

"Grace still paranoid." But Rocky didn't argue it any further.

It was another couple hours before the man shifted more noticeably, and Grace's head snapped up. Grace had almost fallen asleep; he hadn't been sleeping well recently, with the whole ending up at an unknown planet thing, and it had been a while since he'd slept anyway. So, he was tired (though he'd been constantly telling Rocky he wasn't).

The man groaned softly and opened his eyes. He looked very confused as his eyes flicked around the room, which was understandable. Grace had no idea what happened to him, but this place was nothing like the submarine thing he'd been in, so it had to be weird.

Grace stood and came over, careful not to get close enough to loom over him. "Hey there. How are you feeling?"

The man immediately tensed and tried to sit up, but it was obvious that he was struggling. He had to be pretty weak right now.

Grace raised his hands to show that they were empty. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. You're safe."

The man stared at him, studying him in a way that made it painfully obvious how many times he'd done it before, then slowly settled back down. He still looked tense, but at least he wasn't struggling anymore. Good.

Grace gave him a small, slightly awkward smile. He was glad he'd had some time to get used to the guy's appearance; it was pretty creepy, but he didn't want to treat him any differently. That wouldn't help him relax. And, y'know. He didn't want to be a jerk. "My name's Grace. I found you in that submarine thing and brought you up here to get some medical care."

The man still said nothing.

Grace's smile grew a little more awkward. "So… how are you feeling? Any pain? You're on some pretty strong painkillers, so there shouldn't be any, but I can give you more if there is, I think." He said the last part quieter, but he was pretty sure the man heard him anyway.

"No," the man said. His voice was quiet and raspy. "I feel fine."

"Good. Great." Grace let out a soft sigh of relief. "I'm glad."

The man continued to stare at him. He felt like the guy was trying to see into his soul.

"So…" Grace tried. "What's your name? Because I need something to call you."

The man seemed to hesitate. Then, "Simon."

"Nice to officially meet you, Simon." Grace readjusted his glasses, noting how Simon tracked the movement. "Just a warning, there's someone else here. I'll try to keep him out so you can have some peace, but he doesn't know what personal space is—"

"Grace! Rocky hear talking." Right on cue, Rocky tumbled into the room.

Simon immediately jerked back with more speed than Grace would have expected and nearly fell off the bed.

Grace sighed. "Rocky, you can't just barge in here."

"This Rocky home too. Can go everywhere. Not need permission." Rocky said it matter-of-factly, like it wasn't up for debate. It never was, with him.

Grace bit back what he wanted to say — he didn't think Simon's first impression of his and Rocky's relationship needed to be an argument — and instead turned to Simon. "Sorry, I was going to introduce you more… slowly. Should've known that wouldn't happen, but can't change it now, I guess. Simon, this is Rocky. He won't hurt you. Rocky, this is Simon."

Simon didn't relax, just staring at Rocky in confusion and probably fear. Again, Grace wondered what happened to him, for him to have this reaction. He knew it was weird to meet an alien, yeah, but even he hadn't been quite this freaked out.

(He was going to ignore his scream first, think later reaction the first time he met Rocky.)

"See? New human fine. Rocky always right."

Grace sighed. Again. How many times had he done that now? A million and a half? At least it wasn't a Simon-related sigh this time. "I know, I know. But you're scaring him, so shoo."

"Grace can't kick Rocky out of home."

"I'm not kicking you out of your home," Grace said. "I'm telling you nicely to get out of this room."

"Not nice. Mean mean mean. Grace kick Rocky out like Rocky not Grace best friend."

"That is not what's happening—"

"Grace hate Rocky. Grace not want Rocky around. So Rocky leave. Sad sad sad." Rocky then rolled out in the most diva-like fashion that Grace had ever seen, which was surprising considering he was a rock. He shouldn't be able to walk like that.

Grace groaned. Rocky had to be the most dramatic rock that ever existed. Unless all Eridians were like that? It was possible, but this felt like a Rocky thing. Not that he'd ever find out.

Grace turned back to Simon. "Sorry about that. Look, I promise Rocky's harmless. He's just really… hyper sometimes."

Simon glanced up at him. He looked less nervous now, and he was laying on the bed again, which was good. Grace didn't want him freaking out and reopening the wounds Armando had stitched up. Whatever blood the guy had left in his body needed to stay there.

He let out a soft huff and rested his head back against the pillow, not responding. Grace didn't think he would. He didn't seem like much of a talker.

That was fine. As the resident yapper, Grace could talk enough for the both of them.

(He really, really hoped Simon wasn't so antisocial that he'd hate it.)

"Well, I'll leave you be. I'm sure you're exhausted. Healing takes a lot of energy, and uh… you've got a lot of healing to do." Grace waved. "I'll keep Rocky out. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Simon echoed softly, and Grace counted that as a win.

~*~

Simon was confused. Very, very confused. Last he remembered, he was in the iron lung, staring down that monstrous thing in the blood. He was in pain, and he was dying, and he knew he would never make it out. He knew he would never get to live. He hadn't wanted to die, but he'd been forced to accept that he would. He'd wished things could have gone differently — he'd wished he could be given another chance.

What he'd done was important. He knew that. But that didn't mean he wanted it to happen.

And now…

Now, he was in a strange, bright place with a man he didn't recognize and some creature that was definitely a monster of some kind, because even he knew that rocks weren't supposed to have legs and move. That man kept assuring him that the thing was harmless, but Simon wasn't sure he believed that. The… argument(?) the two had shared put his mind at ease a little, though. It was a bit amusing.

The man himself was odd, too. Almost everyone Simon had ever known had an ulterior motive of some kind. This guy, though… no matter how hard Simon looked, he couldn't see any of the usual signs of that. He was open, not even bothering to hide what he was feeling and thinking, and he looked so… friendly.

(It had to be a trick. It had to be. No one was nice without a reason; no one did kind things without expecting something in return. He must just be better at hiding it. He couldn't be trusted, no matter how his personality already made it easier to relax around him.)

And he introduced himself as Grace… what kind of name was that? Simon had never met anyone with that name, but he knew what grace meant — unearned and undeserved salvation, something only provided in death, according to his brothers and sisters at Eden. But he didn't want to die, so why would he be granted salvation like this? Didn't only those who accepted the Father's teachings get peace in death? He rejected their teachings. So how could he have gotten salvation?

It just wasn't possible for him to.

So, then, what was this? Could it be a hallucination from the blood? But he didn't know this man at all, and before, all he'd seen were visions of people he knew. And the kindness Grace was showing him was a far cry from the screams and hatred of those hallucinations.

That left him with one final explanation: he was alive, and this (admittedly cute) stranger had actually saved him from his death.

Yeah, right. As if that was possible.

But no matter what this really was… it didn't seem half bad. He could be content with this, he decided, for however long it lasted.

~*~

Grace yawned and stretched as he trudged out of the don't go crazy room, feeling his back pop. He'd decided to sleep in there last night, something he was beginning to regret now. The hard metal platform wasn't exactly comfortable to lay on for several hours, but oh well. He was pretty sure Simon appreciated being left alone, so Grace supposed that made it worth it.

As he headed down the corridor to check on Simon, he paused at the window. His mouth dropped open, and he rubbed his eyes quickly. Still, nothing changed.

Outside the window was not the sea of red he'd been expecting, but Tau Ceti.

Clint wasn't sure when he realized that he was not Clara Barton.

It had to be somewhere in his teens — late teens, at that — because he couldn't recall ever truly thinking about it before that one mission, when he was made to dress up in a nice business suit because for some reason, that's what the target liked. Young women who could wear a suit and wear it well.

It wasn't much like a man's suit. It was still tailored to perfectly fit Clint's body, form fitting and showing everything that needed to be shown to get the target's attention, and then some.

But compared to a dress, it was amazing.

He'd spent probably a little too much time staring at himself in the tiny bathroom mirror in the safehouse before his handler practically had to drag him out, but he couldn't help it. For once, he wasn't in clothes that made him want to shrivel into nothingness. He was almost comfortable, something so foreign to him it felt impossible.

But perhaps, it wasn't so impossible after all.

Yeah, maybe that was when he realized something was wrong. Not with him; with his body.

He didn't get another chance to wear a suit after that. It was still a miracle that he'd gotten the chance to begin with. But afterwards, he paid more attention to how he felt, both when he was dressing up for missions and when he was just in normal clothing and training gear inside the compound.

He soon realized that he'd always been uncomfortable, even before his body grew to be more distinctly female as he aged. He'd always hated looking at himself in the mirror, hated how he felt when he moved, hated thinking about it even though it was all he could think about.

Yet he somehow hadn't noticed.

How had he never noticed?

But that answer was obvious. Madame, the other girls, even the guards. They'd all acted as if it was normal to hate your body — they just framed it as the girls needing to be perfect to survive in this place. They had to have the perfect body, the perfect looks. They were failures otherwise, and much more easy to dispose of. There was no room for anything but perfection.

He often wondered if this was the reason he hated his body. It had to be, right? What other reason could there be?

It took him a long time to realize the true reason.

It was a picture on the cover of a magazine, of all things. He'd just killed his target and was about to leave when he saw the magazine on the coffee table. He should have kept walking, but he still paused and just… stared.

There was nothing particularly special about the man on the picture. He was well-muscled, sure, but he looked like your average guy, albeit one that went to the gym a lot more than most. Still, Clint was enamored, though surprisingly not with the man himself.

He just… wanted that body.

More than anything, he wanted that body.

There was a brief moment where he second-guessed himself. Was he just mistaking attraction for… whatever this was? This… envy? But a quick glance at the photo didn't make him feel any other way. The man was handsome but not in a way that made Clint want to be with him.

Clint really just wanted his body to look like that.

It seemed silly that he hadn't figured it out before, but how could he have? The Red Room wasn't exactly the best place to discover yourself. All Widows were tools. Female tools, and that's all they could ever be.

But Clint didn't want to be that anymore.

He never told anyone about this discovery. Even if he had anyone to tell, he wasn't stupid enough to believe anything good would come out of it. At best, he would be killed, and at worst, he would be put in the chair, that awful device that seemed more myth than truth but had definitely been used to fix defective Widows before. Neither was a good option. He didn't want to die, but he certainly didn't want anyone to try to "fix" him.

So, he kept it to himself. It wasn't really hard — there weren't any obvious signs of it, and if asked, he could brush off any visible discomfort as that need to be perfect. It had been drilled into them enough times that the lie was quite believable. Really, this was much easier to hide than his growing deafness, which was a whole other issue that he was barely managing to conceal.

He was so glad he was a good liar. He'd be doomed otherwise.

He did sometimes wish he had someone to confide in, to tell all these secrets he was keeping close to his chest. He wished he could tell someone that he didn't want to be a woman. He wished he could tell someone he didn't want to be called Clara. He wished he could tell someone that he wanted to look like the man on that magazine.

He wished someone could tell him that it was okay to want all of this.

But there was no such thing as a friend in the Red Room, and he would never be able to tell anyone without risking it being held over his head like a guillotine.

And then came Natalia.

She was Madame's favorite. That much had always been obvious — she was the best in their class, excelled even when she tried to fail (and that had been such a bold move, trying to fail out of graduation. If Clint was being honest, he admired her for it), and seemed to get the most rewards out of everyone. She was the best of the best, completely unmatched by everyone, even Clint, and he liked to believe that he was pretty good himself. Everyone either hated her or wanted to be her, or both. (Except Clint, but he wasn't like everyone to begin with. He couldn't hate someone he didn't know, and if he didn't even want to be Clara, why would he want to be Natalia?)

And of all the Widows that could have been chosen, he was paired with her for a long-term mission in Budapest.

If Clint had to pick a day when his life truly began, as cheesy as it sounded, he would pick that day.

~*~

The sky was cloudy and gray, and as Clint stepped out of the door of the compound, a single snowflake fell onto his nose, causing him to glance up. More snowflakes were beginning to drift down, slowly right now, but he knew it could get much heavier in an instant. He was glad they were leaving soon; the flight would have to be delayed if a bad storm hit, and he really didn't want that. He didn't usually like his missions, but he preferred traveling a lot more than being cooped up in the compound under the guards' watch and Madame's scrutiny.

Anything was better than that.

Clint folded his hands behind his back as he stood beside his handler and waited. He knew another Widow was joining him on this mission; he hadn't been told any details yet, but obviously, the mission wasn't something he could do on his own. Of course, he much preferred working alone — what Widow didn't? They were trained to work alone and never trust anyone, which made teamwork very difficult — but he wouldn't complain. There was nothing he could do about it anyway.

They didn't have to wait long. Less than a minute later, a handler and the Widow stepped out of the compound.

Clint kept his surprise off his face, but he couldn't stop from staring at her. They'd picked her, of all the possible candidates? Just how high profile was this mission?

It wasn't like Clint was a terrible Widow. He had been second in the class only to this girl standing in front of him. But to put two of the best together on one mission… this was definitely not something they could afford to mess up.

Not that they could ever afford to mess up. Failure wasn't tolerated.

Natalia met his gaze, and he paused. There was an odd look in her eyes, something between disdain and curiosity and maybe a bit of confusion. A whole myriad of emotions seemed to be hidden behind her eyes, locked away in a way similar to Clint's own. It made him wonder what she was thinking — what was going through her head right now? Because unlike most of the other Widows, he couldn't see what she was thinking, and that made him dangerously curious.

He didn't know why he even bothered to wonder. What she was thinking and feeling didn't matter. The only important thing right now was the mission, not some mysterious Widow he didn't know. It's not like she cared about him.

(He bothered because he was scared that someday, someone would look right through Clara and see Clint, and as much as he wished to be recognized for who he truly was, he knew it would all be over for him if that happened.)

They were locked in a silent staring contest for several seconds before their handlers ordered them onto the plane — something he only noticed because Natalia turned towards them. Had he really been that distracted? He looked away from her and got into the plane quickly, sitting in the seat he was directed to. He discreetly scanned his handler's face as he went past, but the man thankfully hadn't seemed to notice Clint's lapse in attention.

Widows were always, always supposed to be aware of everything around them, especially their handlers. Clint was normally very good at this; he wouldn't know if someone spoke to him otherwise. But if he ever slipped up… well, it wouldn't take much for someone to figure out that he'd been defective all along.

Clint glanced around the plane as it started to move. The handlers were talking to each other, both already holding a glass filled with amber liquid. Whiskey, judging by the bottle next to them. Gross. They could've at least picked something better.

He turned his attention to Natalia and blinked. She was staring at him again, that odd mix of emotions once again on her face, barely visible but still there. Less disdain and more confusion, with perhaps even more curiosity than before, too. But what could possibly be so interesting about him that she was staring at him so much? She was barely even blinking.

"Is there something on my face?" Clint asked after a beat, already growing tired of watching her watch him. He kept their handlers in his line of sight to make sure they didn't hear him talking, but his voice was low enough that they shouldn't notice.

He'd learned the hard way not to speak unless given permission to.

Natalia's eyes flicked over to the handlers before settling on him again. "No." He assumed her voice was just as quiet; the handlers still didn't react.

"Then why are you watching me?"

She didn't answer. Typical.

"If you want to know something, just ask." Not that he planned on telling her anything that she could possibly use against him, which was pretty much anything truthful.

"You're odd," she said slowly. "Different. Why?"

Clint kept his expression neutral the best he could. He couldn't allow himself to react to that, because that was exactly the thing he was afraid of. If she already suspected that he was different — that there was something wrong with him — he couldn't give her proof. He had to be much more careful.

"Why do you think I'm different?" He needed to get a better idea of what she was seeing.

"You're hiding something." Her eyes were calculating. He didn't like that. "What is it?"

"There are no secrets in the Red Room." He kept his voice level and maintained eye contact, not wavering at all. Just like he was trained. "I am not hiding anything."

Natalia's eyes didn't leave his, her expression unchanging. "If you insist."

She didn't believe him. Was she really so good at reading people that not even he could lie to her? With how he'd mastered the art of deception, he hadn't thought that was possible. But he should've known better than to underestimate her. He'd seen what happened when others did that.

Clint said nothing else after that, just watched her back in silence. Arguing it would only make her more suspicious, and he really couldn't afford that. Not if she was already going to be watching him and trying to figure out the secrets he was keeping — and he didn't doubt she would. Loyal Widows were always looking for an opportunity to destroy those they believed could be defective.

This was going to be a long flight, and a very long mission.

~*~

Natalia hadn't exactly been thrilled when she was informed that she would be going on a long-term mission with another Widow. She had always done better on her own, and Madame and Dreykov both knew that. And since they both knew, she hadn't planned on that changing anytime soon, but for some reason, it had. She was being sent on this mission with another one of those bratty little girls that either thought they were on the top of the food chain, or believed they could kill her to get there.

As if she would ever let that happen.

But even though her last partnered mission had gone terribly wrong (entirely the fault of the girl she'd been teamed up with. The idiot had literally tried to stab her in the back, jeopardizing the entire mission. That was the only time Natalia had nearly failed), there was nothing she could do to get out of it, so off she went with another one of those stupid girls she hated so much.

Except, oddly enough, when she locked eyes with Clara (at least, that's what she believed the girl's name was. She couldn't quite recall; she'd never made a habit of learning the other girls' names. That made killing them feel more personal, and Natalia didn't want to feel anything), she didn't notice any hatred. The look in the girl's eyes was one of surprise and quiet curiosity, and a tinge of wariness, all expertly concealed but not enough to fool Natalia. There was also this thoughtful expression on her face, but it didn't seem to be malicious at all — and Natalia knew how to recognize malicious intent.

Was this one of the girls that idolized her? She knew some did, as absurd as that was. But this girl didn't have that starry look in her eyes, the one that made Natalia's lip curl far more than the hateful looks did.

Natalia didn't understand. She'd never encountered a girl that didn't look at her in either hatred or adoration.

What was this girl trying to do here?

Then their handlers ordered them onto the plane, and Natalia noticed something else peculiar — there was just a brief moment where she didn't even react until Natalia turned towards their handlers, and while it was so small that their handlers didn't seem to notice, Natalia did. It could have been brushed off as just a lapse in attention, but Widows didn't have lapses in attention. At least, not ones significant enough to keep them from hearing direct orders from their handlers. They wouldn't even make it to graduation if they did.

Something was very odd about this girl.

Natalia watched her out of the corner of her eye as they took their seats, and as the plane began to move, she turned her attention to the girl fully. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a scar on her jaw. Nothing else stood out; there didn't seem to be anything particularly remarkable about her, and yet…

"Is there something on my face?" she asked suddenly, voice a harsh whisper. Impatience and irritation dominated her expression.

Natalia glanced at their handlers, but the fools weren't even paying attention to them, too busy talking about some of the stupid rumors the guards liked to pass around. There was nothing useful to glean from their conversation, so she turned her attention back to Clara.

"No," she answered, keeping her voice lowered. She may not get punished too harshly for speaking — being Madame's favorite did come with its perks — but that didn't mean she cared to bring attention onto what she was doing. She didn't need their handlers watching her any closer for the duration of the flight.

"Then why are you staring at me?"

Natalia gave no response. She didn't need to justify anything.

"If you want to know something, just ask," Clara tried again.

Natalia almost quirked a brow. She wasn't stupid enough to believe that she would actually get a truthful answer. Still, she said, "You're odd. Different. Why?" She was curious to see the girl's reaction.

The girl was surprisingly good at hiding her emotions; everything Natalia had seen so far had been small and almost unnoticeable — almost. But Natalia was observant, she always had been, and so she could see the exact moment when the girl's shoulders tensed ever so slightly and her earlier wariness came back much more obvious than before. There was also a slight tinge of anxiety on her face that couldn't just be brushed off.

She was hiding something, and it was big.

How interesting.

"Why do you think I'm different?" The girl didn't break eye contact, and other than the hints of emotion Natalia could still see under the surface, there was no indication she was lying.

She was good. Just not quite good enough.

Natalia wondered how much pressure it would take for the girl to crack; would she give in now, or would it take more effort on Natalia's part to make her confess?

"You're hiding something. What is it?"

"There are no secrets in the Red Room. I am not hiding anything." The girl stubbornly held strong. This interrogation was going nowhere.

"If you insist," Natalia said, letting the subject drop. She knew now that whatever this secret was, it was bad enough that the girl across from her was not only determined to keep it quiet, but afraid for it to come out. It made Natalia all the more curious, but she wouldn't get the answers to her questions like this.

She would, though. No matter what, she would find out what was going on with the odd girl that had piqued her curiosity more than any other before her.

Natalia crept through the forest silently, gun in hand. Her eyes flicked around, but she saw nothing. There were no flashing eyes watching her, no monstrous forms hidden in the trees. That was a bit odd, but she wouldn't doubt that it was here somewhere, hiding and waiting for her to let her guard down enough for it to attack.

As if she'd let that happen.

The beast had been terrorizing the village that had hired her for about a week now. It had already killed four people for sure, and one other had vanished two days ago and was presumably dead. The people were terrified, and were willing to pay a hefty sum of money to get the beast killed, despite being a fairly poor village.

Natalia didn't mind. She knew what it was like to lose people to these monsters.

Unfortunately for her, though, she'd come at just the right — or wrong, really — time. It was a full moon, which meant the beast would be at its strongest right now. But, she had to track it down at night or she would never be able to lure it out, so she couldn't wait until daytime, or even until another night. She needed to stop it from killing more people.

She'd done this many times before, so she wasn't too worried, but she knew better than to believe she couldn't be taken down easily. Overconfidence got Hunters killed, no matter how good they were at their jobs.

She was fairly deep into the forest when she saw something odd. There was an arrow embedded in a tree. Not necessarily unusual, per se, but she would've thought that any hunters in this village would collect their arrows to use again, not just leave them in the forest. That's what all the poor villages she knew of did.

She looked around, and she noticed that there was another arrow in a tree and a bow on the ground. That was even more strange.

In fact… the more she looked around, the more things she found. Spilled arrows, the archer's quiver… even their clothes, which were ripped and torn. She realized quickly that this was probably the missing villager she'd been told about. He had clearly been attacked, most likely by the beast.

The strangest thing, though, was that she only found a small amount of blood near the outer ring of the clearing.

Something wasn't right.

She heard a twig snap, and she turned her head to the noise, but didn't raise her gun yet. When these things hunted, they were silent unless they had a reason not to be. Either something else made the noise — unlikely. She hadn't seen any animals in these woods yet. They'd probably been scared off — or it was trying to bait her into a trap.

She wouldn't fall for it.

She scanned the area again. It was hard to see through the trees, even in the decently bright light of the moon, but she could still make out some things, at least.

The leaves rustled, and she caught a glimpse of fur through the brush. It was not at all stealthy, and she wondered how this could be a trap if it was attracting her attention to itself like this. Unless there were more than one in the area? The beast she was hunting could have a mate, but that was rare. Still, she couldn't rule out the possibility of that, so she kept looking and listening for signs of another.

She couldn't find anything, though.

She finally raised her gun as the bushes rustled again, and a russet wolf stepped out.

There it was.

~*~

Clint wasn't a capital H Hunter, but he was a regular, lowercase H hunter, and a pretty good one at that, so he figured he could at least try to hunt this monster that had been killing the people in his village. How hard could it be? Those Hunters did it all the time, and they often went after several at once, so surely he could handle just one.

And, hey. Maybe if a Hunter did show up — he doubted it, but still — and he killed the monster before them, they'd be impressed and would train him. He'd do anything to get out of this place, even if it wasn't likely to happen.

With this hope in his mind, he grabbed his bow and headed out into the woods.

The moon only somewhat illuminated the dark woods, and he mostly had to rely on his memory of the paths he usually took to make his way through. He didn't know where he would find the monster, but it had to be around here somewhere; knowing his luck, it would probably find him first.

He had almost gotten to the end of his usual route, a small clearing he used to trap big animals, when something moved in front of him. He paused and gripped the nock of his arrow a little tighter, raising his bow and pointing in that direction. Nothing moved again, but he didn't relax. Had that been the monster, or was he just being paranoid? There could still be other animals out, even if he hadn't seen any yet. It had looked pretty big, though…

After several long moments, he let out a soft sigh and lowered his bow. Maybe it had just been some other animal. He needed to move on.

The only thing that saved him was pure luck. He turned and caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and he barely rolled out of the way of the lunging wolf. He immediately pointed his bow and let go of the arrow. It should have hit the wolf in the side at the very least, but it was fast. Scarily fast — it moved to the side quicker than Clint could blink, and the arrow hit a tree.

The wolf stopped and turned towards him, and as it stepped into the moonlight, he finally got a good look at it.

It was black like a shadow, so dark that it almost seemed to suck in the little light around it. Its eyes glowed red, and scars marred its face, making the already terrifying creature look even worse. It was also huge, its head level with his even on all fours. Its lips pulled back, showing off fangs sharper than daggers.

This was the monster that had been killing his village.

Clint now realized just how stupid of an idea this was.

There was a moment where neither of them moved, just staring each other down. Then, the monster lunged, and while Clint managed to dive out of the way, its claws still caught his shoulder. He cursed as he tumbled to the ground a little harder than he'd intended.

He grabbed another arrow and nocked it, then shot at the monster's head, shoulder screaming in pain. It moved out of the way, because of course it couldn't be that easy, but the arrow nearly grazed its ear. So close…

He got to his feet while it was distracted and tried to grab another arrow, but the wolf rammed into him hard enough to knock the wind out of him and send him flying. His back slammed into a tree, the force sending his bow across the clearing, and he crumpled to the ground, wheezing.

This was bad. Really, really bad.

As the wolf advanced on him, and he fumbled for another arrow, he realized that he was going to die here, all because he'd been stupid enough to believe he could take on this thing by himself, with no training, and make it out of this horrible village alive. But that had never been in the cards for him, had it? He shouldn't have even tried.

Hunting this monster was never going to save him.

But, if he was going to die… he would at least go down fighting.

As the monster loomed over him, Clint gripped the arrow and drove it into the creature's eye. It howled in pain and jerked back, and he grabbed his hunting knife and went straight for its throat. His hand just barely brushed its fur — coarse and matted — when its jaws snapped around his arm. He couldn't bite back his scream as it yanked him forward and shook him around. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for it to kill him, but after a few agonizing moments, it dropped him.

He cracked open his eyes and slowly lifted his head. The monster was nowhere to be found.

What?

He dragged himself to his feet and pressed his hand to his arm. It wasn't bleeding as much as he'd thought it would, which was weird. That thing had bit him hard. He should be bleeding a lot, right?

He stumbled over to the middle of the clearing, looking around for any sign of the monster. It really did seem to be gone, though, but why? It could have killed him just as easily as it did the other three villagers.

He suddenly swayed, legs giving out and sending him crashing to the ground. He gasped in pain as fire lit up beneath his skin, spreading from the bite all the way throughout his body. Something was very, very wrong.

There was a crack, and he yelped as he watched his injured arm break. His other arm followed suit, then other bones, all breaking and twisting and contorting his body into some other shape. His skin prickled painfully, and fur began sprouting out of it, agonizingly slow. He screamed, both out of pain and terror, but there wasn't anything he could do except watch and pray that this was just a horrible nightmare.

It felt like hours before the pain stopped and he was left trembling on the ground. Slowly, he lifted his head, breaths coming out in sharp pants. His limbs were still tingling, but at least it didn't hurt anymore. Somehow.

Now that he wasn't in a pain-filled haze, he realized just how off his body felt. Nothing felt like it should, and he struggled to move his arms and legs. What had that bite done to him? Was his body so broken and mangled that he couldn't move anymore? But if that was the case, why was the pain gone?

He could actually see in the darkness now, too, and several different scents were assaulting his nose — had the woods always looked and smelled like this? They hadn't, right? But maybe it was just the adrenaline heightening everything. That had to be it.

He tried to drag himself to his feet, but he still couldn't get anything to work properly. He growled in frustration and turned his head to look at his body to see what was wrong — and he froze.

He was a wolf.

Just like that monster.

He really, really hoped this was a bad dream.

~*~

Two days later, and Clint still hadn't figured out how to reverse his transformation. He was pretty sure he was going to die before he figured it out — he had learned how to move around, but he was struggling to move quick enough to actually catch anything to eat. He didn't know how long whatever he'd been turned into could go without food, but at this rate, maybe it would be better if he starved. Then he wouldn't have to live as this monster.

Was he going to start attacking people, if given the chance? He didn't want to kill his village, even if they'd never been kind to him. It could be instinctual to these monsters, though, and if he couldn't fight it…

Yeah, it was better if he died.

At least he wouldn't have to worry about anyone coming to look for him. They probably wouldn't even notice he was gone.

He didn't venture far from where he'd been attacked. He wasn't entirely sure why he didn't go farther from the village, but maybe he had some hope that someone — the monster or another person — would come here and finish him off. It wasn't likely; he hadn't even caught a whiff of the monster's scent nearby and he doubted anyone would come out here, so the chances of anyone coming across him were slim.

As he wandered back to the clearing that night, a new scent caught his attention. He paused and lifted his head, sniffing the air. He couldn't quite figure out the smell — he definitely wasn't very good at that yet — so he moved closer, peeking through the bushes into the clearing.

A red-haired woman was standing there with a gun in her hand, looking right at where he was. She looked calm and calculating, definitely not someone from around here, and there was a very familiar symbol on the side of the gun.

She was a Hunter.

So, his village had managed to hire one after all.

He slowly stepped out, locking eyes with her as she raised her gun. He lowered his head and braced himself, waiting for her to shoot. At least he wouldn't have to live like this any longer.

But darkness never came.

~*~

Natalia knew many things about werewolves. One of the biggest things was that they were never submissive. They would rather fight until they died than submit to others, especially humans.

But for some reason, this one was submitting to her.

Against her best judgment, she lowered her gun slightly. Something wasn't right about this. It was almost like the beast wanted her to kill it. But that didn't match what she knew about them, and it certainly didn't match what the one killing the villagers would have done. This werewolf also didn't fit the descriptions she'd been given — the one attacking the village was much bigger and black, supposedly. She wasn't sure how much she trusted the descriptions of terrified bystanders, but this was definitely not the same werewolf.

She should kill it. It was her job to kill it, regardless of whether or not it was currently attacking anyone. It would eventually turn vicious and kill people anyway. But, she hesitated.

It opened its eyes and looked up at her, and the confusion in its eyes just looked so… human.

She quickly raised her gun again. What was she thinking? This thing wasn't human. It was a dangerous monster, even if it was submissive now. And it wanted to die, if it was just standing there and not leaving. She should just kill it and move on.

But she couldn't make herself pull the trigger.

Why was she so weak?

"Why are you just standing there?" she snapped. "Leave or I'll shoot you."

It just laid down and rested its head on its paws, looking quite pitiful.

Why wasn't it leaving? Was it just distracting her so that the other werewolf could come and kill her? But that didn't make sense.

None of this made sense.

It slowly scooted forward, and she took a step back to maintain distance. It stopped and watched her before standing and going over to the bow. It nudged the weapon with its nose and looked up at her.

She paused. Was it—? But that wasn't possible.

A bite. Cracking bones, twisting features. A look of terror in her sister's eyes, then animalistic hunger. Gunshots ringing out, blood on the ground. All of them dead. Her fault.

She flinched back. "Get out of here."

The werewolf whined and nudged the bow again. Its eyes flicked over to the gun as it ducked its head, clearly waiting.

"You're the hunter," she forced out. "It bit you, didn't it?"

It nodded its head.

She needed to get it together. She couldn't get distracted. "Are you trying to get me to kill you?" She needed to know what was happening.

It nodded again.

Okay. Okay, fine. She could work with this. "Can you track down the werewolf killing the villagers?"

It didn't nod this time, but the answer was obvious. A werewolf had the best senses of any other creature. Of course it could track down another werewolf.

Natalia took a deep breath. "I'll kill you if you take me to the werewolf." It was so absurd to say that. But if this werewolf actually wanted her to kill it… this would make her hunt much easier.

It slowly nodded and started walking around the edge of the clearing, nose to the ground. After a bit, it glanced at her before slipping into the trees.

Natalia cursed under her breath as she wove through the trees, listening to the sound of gunfire gradually fall quiet. She hoped they'd lost their pursuers; they were far too outnumbered to fight them head-on, so they needed to get out and make a new plan before they could complete the mission.

(And they would complete the mission. She refused to let these guys win.)

She glanced over to her left. She could still see Clint through the trees, which was a relief. She was glad he'd made it out alright. With all of those bullets flying around, she'd been worried he would get hit. She'd nearly gotten hit herself.

She slowed slightly and looked behind her to double-check that no one was following. She couldn't see or hear anyone, so at least their targets had stopped chasing them for the time being—

Her foot landed on something, and she let out a pained scream as something sharp closed around her ankle. She hit the ground hard, white-hot pain spreading through her leg. She looked down at her foot, stomach dropping.

She'd stepped on a bear trap, of all things.

She snapped her head over to where she could see Clint disappearing into the trees. "Clint! Help!" She desperately hoped that he had his hearing aids in.

He didn't give any indication that he'd heard, which meant he'd either taken them out or turned them off.

He didn't even realize she was down.

He disappeared completely moments later, and she fought down the urge to yell for him again, as useless as that would be. She didn't want someone else to hear and track her down.

She couldn't fight like this, not if she had to face multiple people — and that was most likely what would happen. She needed to get out before someone came.

This wasn't going to be easy.

"Well, look what we have here." A familiar voice came from behind her as she painstakingly started to pry off the bear trap. "Someone wasn't watching where she was going."

Natalia froze and slowly turned. Right there were the men she'd thought they'd lost, all of them grinning as they stared her down.

~*~

Clint frowned as he watched the woods. Several minutes had passed since he'd come out, but there was still no sign of Nat. Had she just come out in a different place? But that didn't make sense. They'd been running next to each other last time he checked. She must have split from him at some point, then. He kicked himself for not noticing; he'd just been focused on getting the heck out of there and not getting shot, he hadn't thought to look for Nat. That was stupid.

There was a good chance that she was on her way out of the woods now, or she was already out. He knew she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and he really shouldn't worry about her. But…

He sighed and headed back into the woods. It couldn't hurt to look for her. He'd just have to be careful to avoid the guys they'd been running from, just in case those guys were still searching for them.

Natalia's breaths came in sharp pants as she ran through the forest, weaving around trees and ducking under low-hanging branches while attempting to keep her quick speed. She couldn't afford to slow down.

"You can't keep this up forever," a voice rang out. It echoed through the trees, making it hard to pinpoint where it was coming from. She was pretty sure he was still behind her, though. "Sooner or later, I will catch you, so you might as well just give up."

She would not. She refused to.

The frigid winter air stung her lungs with each ragged breath, and her legs burned from how long she'd been running. But she had to be close by now, right? If she had been going north this entire time like she thought she was, then it was only a matter of time before—

Her foot caught on a root hidden by snow and fallen leaves, and she cursed as she went down hard, pain exploding in her ankle. She just laid there for a moment, dazed.

This was horrible. Why had she ever agreed to go on this mission?

Right. A lot of lives were at stake because of some insane superpowered guy, and for some reason, Fury thought she and Clint were the best equipped to deal with him.

She was going to have some words with Fury when they got back.

If they got back.

Natalia drew in a ragged breath and sat up. One look at the awkward angle her ankle was in confirmed that it was broken, which was not good for her and the mission. If she couldn't get out of here…

"Where are you?" The voice rang out again, its tone taunting. "You can't escape me forever. I will find you."

He was close. Too close. She needed to keep moving.

She grabbed onto the closest tree and dragged herself to her feet, hissing in pain as the bark scraped against her frostbitten hands. It had been easy to ignore the pain earlier, but it was worse now that she was trying to use her hands.

She cursed herself for letting her gloves get wet, but this whole mission was disastrous. The frostbite was only one small part of the entire horrible experience, and if she didn't get to the town, it was going to end in her death.

She painstakingly broke a larger branch to use as a walking stick and kept going, even if exhaustion was dragging her down. Just a little further, and she'd be in the clear…

(At least, that's what she hoped. If she wasn't close, she didn't think she would make it. Not now that she could barely walk.)

As she came to the treeline, she sighed in relief; she could see the town now. She really would make it after all.

There was a sharp laugh behind her as she hobbled towards the town. Chills ran down her spine, and she tried to move faster. She couldn't let him catch her now. If she could just get a little further… the town wouldn't be able to protect her, but Clint should be there by now, and he could help—

Something slammed into her back, and she was thrown forward. She hit the ground with a pained cry, turning to look at her attacker quickly.

The man grinned as he advanced, hovering just over the snow. "Told you I'd catch you."

Natalia gritted her teeth and fumbled with her Widow Bites, trying to activate them. Her fingers were too numb, though, and she couldn't get them to work properly. This was bad. Really, really bad.

The man held out his hand, and she was slowly lifted into the air. "That was fun, but I was growing tired of chasing you around. It's time to end this."

Natalia tried to struggle, but there was nothing for her to struggle against. "You aren't going to win."

He hummed. "But I already have."

She choked as her air was cut off. She tried to stave off panic — was this really how she was going to die? No, it couldn't be. She would do something. She had to. But what could she do? What options did she really have? She'd hoped Clint would be here, but he clearly wasn't—

There was a thunk and a strangled gasp, then she suddenly fell to the ground. She coughed and lifted her head, relief filling her when she saw the arrow through the man's head. Clint really had come.

Clint ran over to her side. "Nat! Are you okay?"

"Took you long enough," she muttered, slowly sitting up.

"I know. I'm sorry. I had to get in the right spot so he wouldn't notice me. I didn't expect you to come out right there." He helped her stand, wrapping an arm around her waist to support her. "Let's get you inside, okay?"

She leaned against him heavily. "I want hot chocolate and about twenty blankets."

Shouting jolted Clint awake, and he sat up quickly. There were heavy footsteps outside the door followed by the smash of a bottle. Relief briefly flickered through him; at least his father wasn't barging in here and beating him this time.

But then he paused. There wasn't anyone else in the house, was there? His mother died years ago, so it couldn't be her.

Clint stood and padded over to the door, cautiously poking his head out. The house was pitch black, not even any lights from outside coming through the windows, but he could still hear shouting, so he let that and his memory guide him down the hall. He occasionally had to stifle panic when he bumped into something or a floorboard creaked, which felt odd to him — he had always known exactly where to walk to avoid making noise — but the noise didn't falter for even a moment, so his father must have really been absorbed in the beating. That was very good for Clint, but not so much for whoever the victim was this time.

It felt like hours before Clint reached the end of the hall, though it couldn't have been more than a minute. He hesitated; he could just go back to his room and save himself from the risk of being caught and having his father's anger turning on him instead. But he knew he couldn't just walk away now. He'd already come this far, so he reluctantly poked his head into the dimly lit room.

His father was bent over someone's prone form as he repeatedly slammed a beer bottle into their head, each hit connecting with a sickening thunk. Clint wasn't even sure the person was still breathing — had his father finally gone too far?

His father abruptly paused, the bottle hovering over the person's head, and then slowly turned, a terrifying grin spreading across his face as he locked eyes with Clint. "So, son, you finally decided to join us?"

A chill ran down Clint's spine. What was going on?

"You're a little late, though," his father continued. "You missed most of the fun." He stood, the bottle falling to the floor. "Why don't you finish it for me? I know you love a good kill, just like your old man."

Clint couldn't move. He was completely paralyzed, only able to watch as his father stepped back and disappeared into the shadows of the room as if he had never been there at all. But the bloody body underneath the single flickering light proved otherwise.

There was a crack, and Nat jerkily turned her head to look at Clint. Her face was partially caved in, shards of glass sticking through her skin. "Why didn't you come?" Blood dripped from her cut throat, but her voice, distorted like radio static, still reverberated through the room. "Why did you let me die?"

Blood began to trickle towards him from the pool underneath her body, but he still couldn't get his limbs to work. He couldn't even speak — not that he would know what to say.

"You should have saved me. Why didn't you?" There were more cracking sounds as her body twitched, and she began to drag herself towards him. "Why did you kill me just like he killed your mother—"

She grabbed his arm, and he screamed, shooting upright. His chest heaved as his eyes darted around the warmly lit bedroom until his gaze settled on Nat.

Nat, who was alive and breathing and not dead—

He sobbed and wrapped his arms around her tightly, burying his face in her hair. "I'm sorry— I'm so sorry, please—"

Nat rubbed his back and tapped into his shoulder, S-A-F-E. There was a brief pause, then, N-I-G-H-T-M-A-R-E.

It hadn't felt like a dream. It had been so horribly real, and he clung to her tighter, hoping her warmth would replace the feeling of that ice-cold hand grabbing his arm.

Nat kissed his neck and tapped S-A-F-E into his shoulder again.

He grabbed her other wrist and pressed his fingers to her pulse. Her heart was beating steadily, much calmer than his.

She was alive.

He hadn't killed her after all.

Clint didn't calm down for a long time that night. When he finally did, he put in his hearing aids and just listened to Nat talk, and they stayed like that until dawn.

Six years ago, Natalia left the Red Room.

Five years ago, she met Clint Barton.

Three years ago, she married him and moved to a quiet farm in Iowa.

These years had been the happiest of her life.

One thing always bothered her, though. Clint knew that she hadn't had a good life before meeting him, but he had no idea that she was raised to be a weapon. He didn't know about the Red Room, he didn't know about her true past, he didn't know what she'd done. She intended to keep it that way, but she still felt guilty that she'd been lying to him all this time.

But she didn't think she could handle losing her love, so she continued to lie.

She should have known better than to believe that she could keep her secrets forever, though.

When she got home from the dance studio, she immediately noted that the house was dead silent. Clint was the loudest person she'd ever met, ever when he was wearing his hearing aids, and there was always some noise going on in the house when he was home. And he was home, because his truck was parked in the driveway.

Something was wrong.

She nimbly avoided the creaky floorboards as she made her way down the hall, scanning the rooms for any signs of an intruder. Nothing was amiss except for the silence, which just made her worry more.

She paused when she got to the kitchen. On the floor were the shards of a shattered plate. Clint was far more clumsy than she was, but he never dropped dishes. At least, not without cleaning them up and then rushing off to buy more before she noticed.

She looked around the kitchen quickly and bit back a curse. All of the knives were gone. The intruder, whoever they were, had prepared for her to come back. Did they know who she was?

She picked up the largest and sharpest of the shards and continued to search through the house. She prayed to whatever god was listening that Clint was alright; her mind kept running through all of the horrible things that could have happened to him, despite her best attempts to just stay focused on finding him.

How stupid she had been, to think this wouldn't happen. Why hadn't she prepared for it?

Right. She was selfish and didn't want Clint to see her any differently. Now, he was paying the price.

She pushed open the door to the bedroom and sighed in relief when she saw Clint. He was tied to a chair and gagged, and he had a cut on his head, but he was alive and seemed otherwise unharmed.

His eyes widened, and he started struggling against the ropes. As he stepped closer, he yelled something that she couldn't make out with the gag and looked behind her.

She barely turned in time to duck under an outstretched hand and drive her own fist into the attacker's gut. She quickly followed it with an uppercut to their jaw as they doubled over.

The attacker grabbed her neck and slammed her into the wall, and she gripped the shard tighter so she wouldn't drop it. Without thinking, she drove it into the attacker's neck, right into the carotid artery. Just like she'd been trained.

They stumbled back and sank to the floor, hand coming up to press against their neck. As they locked eyes with her, she finally got a good look at their face, and she froze. The person, a young woman, looked a lot like—

The woman scoffed, not looking at all afraid despite death looming over her. "That was easier than I thought it would be."

Natalia stared at her. "What?"

"You killed me… just like you killed Milana," the woman spat. "How does it feel?"

Natalia tensed, her heart hammering in her chest. "Who told you that?" No one was supposed to know about that mission.

"I was there." There was so much hatred in the woman's eyes. "I watched you murder my little sister, even as we begged you for mercy."

No. Of all the people that had to come for her— of all the people she'd hurt— "I didn't want to hurt her. I never did. I didn't have a choice."

"There's always a choice. You just didn't care." The woman was clearly fighting to stay awake, but she was losing a lot of blood. "You don't deserve a family. Now… he knows what a monster you are." Her eyes glazed over, her expression fixed in rage and disgust.

Natalia didn't look at Clint as she untied the ropes keeping him bound. He wasn't good at hiding his emotions; she didn't want to see what he thought of her in this moment. She didn't want to see the man she loved grow to hate her for all the horrible things he now knew she'd done.

She hated how she trembled as she stared down at her feet. She was Natalia Romanova, the best Widow in decades, yet she was so terrified of how this was going to play out.

Clint cupped her cheeks and brought her head up. His touch was surprisingly gentle, but she supposed it would only be a matter of time before he came to his senses and showed his hatred and disgust.

"Nat. Look at me." There wasn't any anger in his voice, just genuine concern. When she dragged her gaze up, his face mirrored his voice. "Are you okay?"

He was asking if she was okay? After everything that had just happened to him?

"I—" She bit the inside of her cheek hard. "You should worry about yourself—" She reached up to brush his hair away from the cut on his head, but stopped when she saw the blood on her hand. Now that the adrenaline was starting to fade, she noticed that she'd cut her hand at some point. Oh.

"You should know me better than that by now." He grabbed her hand and inspected it. "Let's get this cleaned up."

She let him pull her to the bathroom, not protesting as he cleaned and bandaged her hand. Even after all these years, she didn't understand why he was so insistent on taking care of her before himself. It was somehow still so foreign to her.

"I think we have a lot to talk about," Clint said as he tied off the bandage. "I need you to tell me what just happened and what you've been hiding." He cupped her cheek again. "But I won't force you to tell me now. I'll wait until you're ready."

Clint had decided that this was probably one of his worst missions to date, and that was saying a lot, considering how many crappy missions he'd been on in his many years working for SHIELD.

About five minutes in, he discovered two things — one, there were about a dozen or so more bad guys than there were supposed to be, and two, the rickety old vents he was crawling through were not very sturdy.

Basically: he was traversing through the vents to spy on some super important bad guy meeting and fell through the ceiling, right onto the table that was also apparently not very sturdy, as it collapsed under his weight.

Naturally, the couple dozen guys in the room surrounded him pretty quickly, and he could only fight off so many considering he likely had a minor concussion from the fall and was, y'know. Seriously outnumbered.

As he was tied to one of the chairs in the room, he started to wish he hadn't taken the mission (well, he had been wishing he hadn't taken it from the moment he climbed into the dusty vents that threatened to send him into a coughing fit, but still). However, Nat was sick and he'd figured a little spying couldn't get him in too much trouble, yet here he was, in a whole butt-load of trouble.

Nat was never going to let him live this down.

Clint sighed. "Look, guys, I'm sorry I rained down from the sky and broke your ceiling — and your table — but why don't you just let me go? You won't see or hear from me again, and I'll even pay for the damage. Scout's honor." Was he allowed to say that if he'd never been a boy scout?

None of the guys seemed impressed. Tough crowd, huh?

A bigger guy stepped forward. Not the leader; that guy had probably already left. Safety concerns and all that. "Who sent you?"

Clint shrugged. "No one. I just like checking out old vents."

The punch to his jaw sent his head snapping to the side painfully. Man, that guy had a mean right hook.

"Who sent you?" the guy repeated.

"Are you deaf or just dumb?" Self-preservation? What was that? "I told you no one sent me. I'm just a vent enthusiast."

This time the hit landed right in the middle of his face, and he felt his nose crunch.

He let out a curse, eyes stinging. He hated being hit in the nose. Ouch.

"That wasn't very nice," he said, because he just couldn't keep his mouth shut. "I just washed this shirt, y'know, and now it's going to be all bloody." Seriously though. He'd just gotten out the bloodstains from the last mission he'd worn it on.

The guy predictably didn't seem to care. "Are you here to gather information? Are you a spy?"

Clint gave him an irritated look. "Did your girlfriend dump you or something? Because you've got a lot of anger and it seems like you're taking it out on me—"

The hit collided with his jaw again, but this time, his hearing aid came flying out. As the world became muffled, he watched another guy crush the aid under his boot.

That was a problem.

"Okay, that really wasn't nice. Who breaks a guy's hearing aid? Now I'm gonna have to get a new one." And he had no idea what they were saying. His head felt too foggy for him to properly read their lips, which was going to be very bad for him.

The guys talked to each other for a while before the big guy turned to Clint and pulled out his gun.

Well. This just went from bad to worse.

He caught the guy say something about being useless, and he flicked off the safety and pointed it at Clint's head.

Despite everything that had happened in the past to make Natalia so mistrustful, she had allowed herself to believe that Clint had meant it when he said that he was going to get her freedom. He'd seemed so earnest in that moment; he definitely hadn't been lying, at least not on purpose. He fully intended to make good on his promise, as far as she could tell.

So, instead of going back to the Red Room, she stayed with him and did something she never thought she was capable of.

She fell in love with him.

The strange love she had for him was the only reason she got on that plane, despite all of her alarm bells ringing at the way the SHIELD agents looked at her and how she was going to be trapped with them for hours on the way back to America. This couldn't possibly end well. Something bad was going to happen, to her or to Clint, and she knew she would regret ever stepping foot on the plane.

But, she knew Clint would do his best to make sure she stayed safe, and that reassured her somewhat. After everything they'd been through to get to this point, he wouldn't just let something happen to either of them, and he certainly wouldn't let SHIELD finish the job he'd been sent to do.

When the plane landed, Natalia reluctantly followed Clint off. Immediately, they were swarmed by men in uniforms, and her stomach dropped as she was pulled away from Clint.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Clint tried to chase after her, but one of the agents stopped him.

"Protocol. You're going to be questioned separately," the agent said. "If you don't cooperate, I'll have to detain you and you'll have to wait even longer to see her."

Clint looked furious, but he stopped struggling and turned to Natalia. "It'll be okay. I'll sort this out, I promise. Just trust me."

Natalia bit back a protest and simply nodded. "Alright."

It wasn't him she didn't trust.

She didn't fight as she was pulled away from the only person she knew was safe, and she silently observed her surroundings as they went into the building, trying to memorize the path they took. Not that it would be easy to escape; there were agents everywhere, and she didn't doubt that they were all just as capable as Clint. Anxiety began to eat at her the farther down they went, but she didn't show it. She couldn't afford to, when she was around so many threats and unknowns.

She was led into a hallway two floors down from the main floor — they really didn't want her to escape, did they? — and then into a door. She quickly realized that this wasn't some interrogation room; it was a cell. She was being locked up.

She should have known.

She swallowed back the panic threatening to bubble up. This was probably just temporary. Clint was going to get her out of here soon… right?

She was shoved into the tiny room — it was smaller than her little bedroom in the Red Room had been, and that had barely been big enough for a bed — and she turned to look at the men that had brought her here. "This doesn't look like an interrogation room." She kept her tone light and not accusatory. She didn't want to anger them right now.

"You'll be questioned later," one man said flatly, but his eyes betrayed the lie. He didn't think that anyone was going to come question her.

She opened her mouth to respond, though she wasn't quite sure what she could say, but the door slammed shut before she could get a word out, leaving her in the too-small cell that didn't even have a way to see out.

Her breathing began to quicken, and she slowly sank to the floor, weakly tugging at the handcuffs they hadn't removed. As irrational as it was, she felt as if the walls were closing in on her, squeezing her tighter and tighter until she couldn't breathe and she couldn't even focus on the techniques she'd taught herself years ago to make the panic go away—

She wasn't going to get her freedom. She probably wasn't even going to see Clint again. She was trapped with no way out, and all because she'd finally let herself trust again.

And the only coherent thought on her mind was, I wish I hadn't stayed.

~*~

Fury watched through the cameras as the Black Widow had an anxiety attack — or at least, appeared to. Then, he turned his gaze to the other camera footage, which showed Agent Barton pacing his cell and yelling at the camera. Never before had Fury seen this man so angry.

Fury let out a sigh. What a mess.

He turned to Maria. "Barton needs to be evaluated as soon as possible. I need to know how badly he's been compromised."

Maria raised an eyebrow. "What if he's not actually compromised?"

His eyes flicked over to the screen again. "Then he's got a lot of explaining to do."

Natalia turned and bolted out the door, trying to slam it shut behind her. A gloved hand caught it before it could shut, however, and the guard threw it open.

She cursed and ran faster. She couldn't let them catch her. Not now. If she could just get to the trees—

A shot rang out, and she cried out in surprise and pain as a bullet hit her leg. She tumbled to the ground, panic beginning to quicken her breaths. She scrambled to stand, but it was too late; the guards were already on her.

They grabbed her arms and yanked her to her feet, and immediately, she tried to use one of the many moves she knew to get out of a hold like this. One jammed a taser into her side, and she bit back a scream of pain at just how high the voltage was. It stunned her enough for them to drag her back into the compound without much of a fight.

Madame leveled her with an unimpressed stare. "Tsk. You didn't really think I would let you leave, did you? You belong here."

Natalia gritted her teeth and glared with as much fury as she could muster. Which was a lot. "I will never be your obedient little pet. Not anymore. And there's nothing you can do to change that."

Madame raised an eyebrow. "We'll see about that." She waved her hand. "You know where to take her."

The guards both gave a single nod and dragged Natalia down the hall. She struggled weakly, but she knew it was pointless. There was no chance she'd escape now.

But, at least if they killed her, she wouldn't have to live without her love anymore. And if they just tortured her, well. What was a little pain compared to the torment she'd been in?

She was brought to a wing of the facility that she had never been to before. They turned down a hall with a few doors on either side, but she was dragged into the room at the very end.

There wasn't much in the room, but it was enough to make her uneasy. Right in the center were chains with thick cuffs hanging from the ceiling, and right next to those was a controller of some sort with wires attached to it. There was also a large screen on the left wall from the door.

Was this…? But it couldn't be. That was just a rumor to keep the girls in check.

The guards lifted Natalia up and clasped the cuffs onto her wrists, then let her go so she dangled by her wrists. Her feet didn't even reach the floor.

Madame stepped in front of her. "You shouldn't have tried to run again. If Dreykov finds out, he will have you killed."

"Then let him," Natalia spat, refusing to show her apprehension. "I will never be loyal to you or him."

"You will be when I fix you." Madame nodded to the guards.

They attached the wires from the machine to her temples, sidestepping her easily when she kicked out at them. She wondered how often they did this; they didn't hesitate at all.

"What are you doing?" Natalia tried to pull herself out of their reach, but one grabbed the ankle of her injured leg and yanked her back down. "Let go—"

"Why don't you trust me?" Madame almost looked hurt, but Natalia wasn't fooled. "I raised you, so I know what's best for you."

"You're a monster. A monster that took away the only person that truly loved me! The only person that actually cared!" Tears stung at Natalia's eyes, and she blinked them away quickly. She couldn't break in front of Madame. "The only person that I love."

Madame shook her head. "You will see reason, one way or another." With that, she and the guards walked out of the room.

Then, the screen flickered to life, and Natalia's punishment began.

~*~

Days later, when she was finally pulled down, she didn't fight. She obediently followed the guards to her room to await her next order, and not once did she consider running.

She was no longer Natalia Romanova, a woman who loved and was loved.

Natasha shivered as she trudged through the snow, the cold weighing her limbs down and forcing her to go at a snail's pace. If it hadn't been for all the times she'd trained in the freezing cold of the Russian mountains, she was certain she wouldn't be able to withstand the weather. As it was, she was already considering turning around and going back — guilt and the cold both weakened her willpower, and she was sure that if she begged for forgiveness, she wouldn't be punished too harshly for this.

No. She couldn't go back. If she did, she would never leave again, and she would never be free.

She wished they hadn't moved so far from civilization. She'd been walking for a long time now, but she hadn't come across anything.

She had to press on, though. She couldn't give up now. She had to get away before—

A hand grabbed her arm and forced her to turn. Relief and dread filled her simultaneously.

"Natasha." Clint's eyes searched her face. "What are you doing out here?"

Natasha's resolve crumbled. "I—" What could she say? She didn't want to hurt him, she just—

He sighed. "Come on. Let's go home before you freeze."

All she could do was nod and let him pull her back to the cabin. He'd followed her tracks — of course he had. Why hadn't she thought of that? There wasn't enough wind and snowfall to hide them. But it didn't matter now. That was her only chance, and she'd let him catch her.

As soon as the door shut and the warmth of the cabin engulfed her, Clint rounded on her and slapped her cheek so hard it sent her stumbling back against the door. The pain was made worse by the cold, and tears stung at her eyes, though she wasn't sure if it was from the physical pain, or the emotional.

"Don't you ever try that again," he spat, his expression full of fury. It was an expression she'd come to know well since they'd moved here, unfortunately. But like the flip of a switch, his face changed, and he looked more concerned than angry. "I was so worried when I woke up and you were gone. I mean, did you even consider how I would feel when you were nowhere to be found and a blizzard was on the way? You could have died out there, and I don't think I could handle that."

Guilt made her insides twist. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I just don't like being so isolated with nothing to do."

He cupped her cheeks. "I know it's hard, but you did choose to move up here. You wanted this, so now you have to live with it."

That was true… she had wanted to get away from the city. It was too chaotic for her in comparison to what she'd grown up with. But she hadn't wanted this. She hated the isolation and boredom. It had never been like that in New York, as unpleasant as it had been there.

"Natasha." Clint's hold on her face tightened slightly. "You're not exactly alone. You have me. So be grateful. You could still be stuck in the Red Room, murdering little girls like the monster you used to be."

He was right. She never would have left if it hadn't been for him. She never would have changed if it wasn't for him.

She just wished he was still the same kind man she had fallen in love with.

"I am grateful," she said quietly. "Thank you for coming to get me. I'm really sorry I left, but I promise I didn't mean to hurt you."

"It's okay. Just don't do it again and I won't have to punish you more." He wrapped an arm around her waist and led her over to the couch. "There will be consequences for today, but I'll go easy on you since you haven't done this before."

"Thank you." She sat down with him and leaned into his side.

He kissed the top of her head, but the action lacked any true warmth. Unless she was just being too harsh on him because she'd been caught… "Of course. I love you."

"I—" Before they moved here, she wouldn't have faltered. But now… "I love you too."

She wasn't sure how true that was anymore.

~*~

Elsewhere, Clint stared down a screen showing a blinking red dot. Finally, he had unscrambled the signal, after months of being blocked and redirected.

Weeks passed before Natalia could even begin to pull herself out of the fog she'd been in. Ever since she'd watched Clint die, she'd been running on autopilot. She'd wake up, go to classes, eat if Madame decided she did well enough, then go back to her room for the night and repeat the next morning. It was the same thing, day after day, with little change.

Back in her training days, she'd found comfort in the routine.

Now, she felt like she was going insane.

But she couldn't leave, that much was clear. She was trapped, forced to live in the compound she had watched her only love die in, with the wretched people that had killed him.

She couldn't become a total robot, however, even if she wanted to retreat into the back of her mind and never come out. She had to pull herself together and stay focused.

On the day she finally came out of the fog, Madame greeted her with a smile.

"Natalia," Madame said. "You look more like yourself again."

But Natalia would never truly be "herself" again.

"Yes, Madame," she agreed, because what else could she do? "I'm feeling much better."

"Excellent." Madame cupped Natalia's cheek, the touch almost motherly. "I knew you would come to your senses eventually."

Disgust welled up within Natalia, but she showed none of it.

Madame didn't notice. "I'm so glad you've realized how useless that fool was. I was worried about you for a while there." She patted Natalia's cheek and turned away.

It's not like you care, Natalia thought, but didn't voice it. It would only bring more trouble.

The day proceeded as usual. She attended her classes, ate dinner — she was given more this time. She felt sick at the reward — and returned to her bedroom.

She was so, so tired of living in this torment.

She didn't want to keep doing this.

She'd taken to picking the locks on her handcuffs with a hairclip she'd stolen so she wouldn't have to dream, which meant she was wide awake when the guard came into her room that night. As he came up to her bed, something inside her snapped.

"You deserve so much better," Clint had said to her once. "Your body is yours. It doesn't belong to anyone else, especially not the Red Room."

He had died trying to get her out. What would he say if he knew she was letting all of this happen instead of actually trying to leave?

He would be so disappointed in her.

It was all too easy to kill the guard. He hadn't even gotten a chance to fight back before his body was dropping to the floor.

She grabbed his keycard and slipped out of the room, shutting the door behind her as quietly as she could. She glanced around but didn't see anyone, so she began making her way through the compound as quickly as possible. She knew she wouldn't have much time; she wouldn't be surprised if Madame was monitoring her closely now that she'd already tried to escape once before. She had to get to the door before anyone else.

She refused to let Clint die for nothing.

She didn't let herself relax when she reached the exit, just quickly swiped the keycard and pushed open the door.

"What do you think you're doing?" Madame demanded as she rounded the corner, flanked by the same two guards as last time.

Natalia should have known Madame would be here. Of course that woman wouldn't just let her leave. But failure was not an option right now.

Natalia kept a hand on the door handle. "I won't be your slave anymore."

Madame scoffed. "After everything I've done for you, you're just going to leave? When your parents abandoned you, I gave you a home. A family. And you're just going to throw all of that away?"

Natalia had believed that the Red Room — that Madame — was her family before.

But then she met Clint, and he became her home. Her family.

And Madame ripped that away from her.

"You're not my family. You never have been." Natalia shifted her weight, preparing to run. "I only wish I'd realized that sooner."

"Barton messed with your head, Natalia. He just wanted you for himself, like any other man. That's why you need me. You are fooled by his lies too easily."

"He loved me. And I—" She swallowed. "And I love him." If only she had said it sooner.

Madame rolled her eyes. "Love—"

Natalia didn't wait for Madame to finish that sentence. She turned and bolted out the door, slamming it shut behind her. Several shots rang out, and a bullet hit her shoulder just before the door closed. She stumbled from the force, but didn't stop.

If she did, she was certain she would die, and all of this would be for nothing.

The snow, falling thick and heavy, was both a blessing and a curse. She wasn't dressed to be in this weather — her thin shirt and pants wouldn't even keep her dry — but the snowfall provided the perfect cover for her to slip away into the night, and for that, she was grateful.

She didn't know how far the nearest town was, but she wouldn't stop until she got there. And she would get there. She would be free.