Retnikopf: Widow Of Siberia (old Version)

Chapter 8 - Filling Her In

The stars sparkled in Natasha's eyes as she watched them fly past. Being back among the living didn't feel as strange as she expected it to. In truth, she didn't really remember being dead. She remembered falling and then standing in a strange place talking with the red skull. The time between was like a brief haze of nothingness.

Her gaze shifted as Vienna stepped up next to her.

"How are you feeling?" Vienna asked, studying her sister's face to make sure she got the true answer.

"I'm all good, happy to see you like this," Natasha smiled, "when we left off last time, it was like a worst case scenario. And then with the snap, I didn't know if you were alive or dead, I couldn't find you and I'd lost everyone else. I'm glad we get to have this time now."

"Me too," Vienna said, a soft smile on her face, "waking up in a world without you, it was like waking up in a nightmare. I have a lot of shit I've got to work through and I can't have you bailing out on me when I'm just getting started."

Natasha chuckled as they both stood watching the stars together.

"I should probably let you know before you go back to Earth," Vienna said, not taking her eyes off of the window, "your soldier boy, he remembers you."

"What?" Natasha asked, turning to look at her sister.

"James, Bucky, whatever you call him now, he remembers you," Vienna told her, "you should probably break it to Alexei slowly, he's having a bit of an issue with James at the moment."

"What did he do?" Natasha asked, slight tears making her eyes shine, having to watch the man that trained her, the man that she loved, walk around in front of her without knowing who she was had been torture. The thought of having him back filled her heart more than she ever imagined it could.

"Brings me to something else you should probably know," Vienna took a deep breath, the news was going to be uncomfortable whatever way she put it, "we found files, files that hydra wouldn't put in a data base, files on the experiment that created me. Melina is my birth mother."

"Wow, that's a lot," Natasha said, taking a deep breath as she let the information sink in, "what does that have to do with James... Wait. No. That's- don't say it. That's weird."

"Mhm, I don't think they ever met," Vienna said calmly, letting Natasha work through her discomfort, "strickly for the experiment, he doesn't even know."

"You should tell him," Natasha told her, stretching a little, "I think he'd make a good dad, or he'd try his best at least. He has a right to know, even if the circumstances of everything are as messed up as they are, he should know what you are to him."

Vienna nodded. She'd been hesitant to tell him at first and it had been easy to ignore with everything that had been going on but, Natasha was right. It would probably change their relationship greatly but her experience with family had been disfunctional to say the least anyway. What's one more wrinkle in the sheet? It had been creased to hell and back anyway