BLACK WIDOW

hiraeth

hiraeth
(n.)
a homesickness for a home you can never return to, or that never was

•••

"i'm a ghost of whoever it is i used to be."

•••

Everything hurt. Her muscles ached and her bones creaked and moaned. Her legs. Her arms. Her stomach. And her head. Especially her head. She was so nauseous.

Natalia's hand flew to her head to maybe relieve some of the pain. She immediately remembered why she was here. Maybe there were was still time to fix this. She had to go see te damage. Maybe James was still here. She sat up in a flash and immediately regret it.

She moaned in pain as the ringing in her ears resumed and headache multiplyed. Sharp tasting acidic vomit shot up her throat and out of her mouth onto the ground to the right of her.

She groaned in pain and laid back onto her back. It was a bad concussion. No big deal. She just had to take it slow. She stood up slowly, holding her head and taking deep breaths.

It even hurt to moved her eyes. But she ignored the pain, turning her head to look down the road. Past the wreckage of the Starks' car, James's motorcycle cycle sped off into the darknesses. She failed. And it felt horrible. He was gone with the serum. Howard and Maria were dead.

But why wasn't she?

She disappeared back into the forest against her throbbing head and covered up her vomit to make sure that if anyone searched, they wouldn't know there was a third party involved.

She checked all her weapons holster to account for everything, but as her fingers brushed over the used, beaten, black leather holster, instead of finding cool metal, there was nothing. Her hip handgun was gone. It was the one she drew on James. But she knew she put it back. She always put it back.

She glanced around the forest floor to see her favorite weapon propped atop of another that was identical to hers. Well, almost identical. It was a lot newer and less used then hers. The cartridge was also removed. It was laid neatly next to the politely stacked weapons. The eight brass bullets that occupied that magazine lay in a straight line next to it.

She stared at it in though for a moment, until it all came to her. She wasn't dead because he had remembered. James came back. He came back to tell her something. But his mission is time sensitive. He couldn't wait. And that was his gun. He put it next to hers to show her that he remembered!

Natalia smiled as she sank to her knees before the art before her. He took the cartridge and bullets out to show her that he could have killed her, but didn't. It was a call for help. James was still there. All he needed was to be saved.

If he can save her, that she was positive that she could save him. She reassembled his gun and took it with her, along with hers, straddling her motorcycle as quickly as possible, and chased after him, determined to get him and that serum back.

She knew that her quickened healing abilities would clear up her head injury in an hour or so. It had already cleared up a bit.

She drove down the road just a bit, slowing down by the wreckage. Everything was just the way she thought it would be. A staged accident. She saw a rigid piece of glass of glass sticking out of a puncture in a back tire. That was how he wrecked it. Used his dagger and planted the glass to hide the murder. The back tire must have lost control and swerved into the tree.

The front bumper and hood of the car was crumpled up like tinfoil and black smoke seeped from the cracks. The windshield and mirrors were busted and the airbags deflated. Inside the car sat the dead bodies of Howard and Maria Stark.