The Trickster's Gambit | Avengers Fan Fiction

The Trickster's Gambit - One-Shot

The Trickster's Gambit

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She'd found it.

After all these years, all the study, all the effort – from guards bribed, to towers climbed, to bullets evaded – Natasha Romanoff had finally discovered the location of the most mysterious ruin in all of Russia. And soon – maybe tomorrow – she would reach it.

Creeping through thick forest in the dead of night, she clutched her small leather satchel even more tightly against her side. Inside it was a yellowed, fragile piece of parchment, jagged around the edges faded with age, and priceless. To anyone else, it was an illegible old drawing, but Natasha knew better. The page, which she had found in a place far, far away from her home, matched two other parcels already in her possession. When joined together, she had no doubt they would make up three-quarters of an ancient map – the three most important quarters; the ones that would show the way to what would be the discovery of her life – the castle of Koschei the Deathless.

It was a legend: a deserted palace filled with treasure, inhabited by the bones of a man that couldn't die, but more importantly, filled with the history of a lost kingdom. Many doubted its existence, believing a story so far-fetched had to be myth.

But this was the big one.

Natasha could prove her father right...vindicating them both, because the map wasn't a myth or a fairy tale. It was real, and she had it.

Well, most of it.

"As much as I need," she muttered. "It has to be enough."

The new piece showed the exact location of the castle and part of the long treacherous path that led to it, until it wound off the page, onto that elusive fourth quarter. Natasha had discovered the first piece of the map inside the lining of an ancient dress, folded into a tiny square, fragile and dry. She had been on surveillance mission with S.H.I.E.L.D. in a museum of the lost Bosporan kingdom in St. Petersburg, which only existed in history books, its lands having been gobbled up by its neighbors centuries ago.

The dress had come into her hands by accident – the map along with it. Since then, she had made it her mission to find the rest of the map, searching every record and speaking to the last few descendants of the Bosporans. She'd traveled the lands, scoured great libraries and studied old texts until finally, she found another piece hidden behind an old painting.

Behind her, an owl hooted. Another night animal howled.

A twig snapped.

Her joy fading, Natasha froze and listened.

Silence.

But that didn't mean no one was there.

With stealthy purpose, she quickened her pace, sticking to shadows, alert for any movement. The starry sky provided enough light to guide her, but also made her too easily visible to any pursuer.

She was being followed. She knew that. She'd known it for weeks before she'd left the States. Whoever it was might have been at the border, patient and determined, waiting for her to return when the moon waxed full.

She also knew why she was being followed.

Spying the shapes of buildings in the nearest village – through which she'd passed weeks ago when she'd left for her mission – she walked even faster. It boasted a small, clean inn and a less than clean tavern with palatable food. She could actually see its pitched roof from where she stood, and breathed a sigh of relief. During the time she had been gone; she'd had horrible visions of the place burning down and shaken apart by a certain rampaging giant.