Red Room

RR50 Born to Run

It was so hard to continue working and pretending that she never saw the video before its mysterious deletion. At least she knew then a few of the agents who were in Project Echo, and one was a very close friend of hers. Luka was her rock during that time, and he still was. He was already retired by the time she had met Alec and by going off the grid after being diagnosed with cancer, HYDRA presumed him to be dead. Thea played along with their presumption and confirmed it when they investigated. They didn't like when agents were cut loose. Later he was able to care for his niece so that Thea could continue to work and monitor the Echo situation from within HYDRA. Project Echo still had no idea that the Grekov siblings knew about them.

"Do you remember being Katya at all?" Luka asked as he adjusted his position.

She didn't, that was the one life she couldn't remember at all. She remembered bits and pieces when she was Oksana but it was never Katya. "I've told you I can't. I like to think I do from fathers' stories, how we all used to be so happy, mom too." She knew Anatoli and Valentina weren't her real parents, and Luka wasn't her real brother, but they were the closest thing she had. After she had drowned and came back to life as a newborn, Valentina treated her life as Oksana differently than she had Katya's. Luka remembered how mean his mother was towards his now little sister. Anatoli had told them eventually that she couldn't handle the secrets anymore, the constant fear that HYDRA would find out about them and separate them all. She turned to alcohol and tried to kill Oksana at one point until Anatoli stopped her. That same night, she went to her favorite bar and got so drunk that she talked. Several men were there from HYDRA whom recognized her as Anatoli's wife. They were on the research team that Anatoli was a major part of. Anatoli guessed that the night HYDRA caught on was the night Project Echo was started. It was also the night he found his wife dead and started his life on the run with his two children when a small HYDRA team came after them.

"I can't believe how hard dad fought to protect us. He could have just gotten rid of me and your lives would have gone back to normal." Luka shot a glare at her to which Thea rolled her eyes. "I know, I know, he loved me like his own, but I still feel like I killed him."

Luka grabbed her free hand as he sighed. "Like you said Thea, he could have taken me and ran, but he didn't. He knew that the prolonged exposure to you was draining him, but he was terrified that if he left your side, you would come across some one else with powers and you would lose his abilities. Echo was after us and would have for sure killed you at some point, and you wouldn't ever come back. He couldn't stand that thought Thea, he loved you. And it terrifies me every day you go out there; if you died this time, there is no coming back. Dad is gone, and so are his Lazarus abilities you fed off of.

Thea's powers were extremely unique; she had the ability to absorb the powers from other gifted individuals. It would go unnoticed indefinitely until she was within a short range of a new gifted individual. Anatoli had the ability to bring the dead back to life and if he was to die, he would just come back as he was. It is unknown exactly why Thea becomes an infant again, but Anatoli eventually worked out that it was because her mother had to have been experimented on, either willingly or against her will was unknown. He concluded that whatever injections she was given at conception wanted to self-preserve itself and lengthen its lifespan. By absorbing Anatoli's powers, it reacted differently with whatever Thea carried in her body, and self-preserved by starting its host's lifecycle over again.

Anatoli was terrified by the thought. He knew that the Black Widow was Thea's mother, but he had no idea if she agreed to the twisted experimentation on her child or not. For this reason, he always told his children that she was a bad person and would come after them one day. He never told them though that she was Thea's mother, and that the god clothed in green was most likely the father.