The Widow's Daughter ✔︎

Chapter Seventeen

"маленькая птица, how are you going?" Natasha's voice crackled through my intercom. 

I reached for it, wincing as my elbow somehow managed to get stuck in the vent's small opening, and replied, "I'm good Nat. I'm crawling through the last vent that'll lead me to Tori... Clint had to stay behind because he's too big."

I heard her laugh softly. "Will you be OK, kid?" she asked.

I took a deep breath, forcing down all of the painful memories that, in just a few moments, would resurface in the form of my long-lost sister. "I'll survive," I said, and I knew that it was the truth.

Natasha hung up. I looked forward into the cold, small vent that I was currently commando-crawling through: I could see a light at the end, soft and pulsing. I knew that, just like the light, Tori would be there, shining in the darkness, taking away all of my fears, and, for the first time in my life, I knew that I'd be OK.

I wriggled through the vent and watched as the light got closer. My heart began to pound: What if Tori didn't remember me fully? What if she wasn't there? What if this whole plan had been a trap and Tori was actually dead? What if...

What if she had been lying?

I pushed those thoughts down, determination coursing through my veins. Tori was my sister. She would never lie to me. I wriggled a little bit further until the light was almost blinding, sun spots dancing in my eyes. I could see the criss-crossing pieces of metal that kept me from Tori, and I tried in vain to break past them, using all of my immortal strength, but somehow it didn't work.

Deja-vu flashed into my brain as I heard a low, heavily-accented voice say, "Кто там?"

I looked down through the bars to see a flash of silver in a pale, tall girl's hands: a knife.

My voice trembled and cracked as I whispered in Russian, "It's me." I saw the girl freeze. "Put that knife away and help me out of this vent!"

The girl looked up, her head of messy orange hair shining in the bright strobe lights. Her face was pale and gaunt, haggard like mine once was, every inch the girl I had seen in the hologram, none of the sister I remembered.

Except for the eyes.

Green and curious, they peered at me, shining out of a face that was too thin, too cold, like feverish emerald beacons. "Kira?" she croaked.

I let the tears roll down my face as I whimpered like a child: "Hi Tori."

"маленькая птица?" the girl asked.

I was sobbing now, the air coming out of me in loud, convulsive gasps as I cried, "Yes. Yes, it's me."

Tori didn't cry. Instead, her face hardened into a dark, fierce expression of determination as she prised open the bars of the vent from the other side. I slid out of them onto her bed, which was more of an ironing board than an actual mattress. I wobbled where I stood, not caring to wipe the tears away as Tori and I stared at each other.

I was right. She was taller than me now: towering over me by half a head. She was still beautiful, like I remembered, but she had the beauty and wisdom of a person who had lived through it all, seen everything. Her fiery orange hair was short and ragged, hanging in a limp bob at her jawline. She looked like Natasha even more than I did, her emerald eyes burning with the ferocity of a lion or tiger. 

"Kira."

We hugged each other, her arms freezing cold around me as we sank into the embrace. I rested my head on her shoulder and sobbed, my tears dripping onto her oversize muddy grey T-shirt. I don't know how long we stayed there: me bawling my eyes out and her staying stoic and quiet as I ugly-cried all over her, but it felt like hours until she pulled back and surveyed my face, resting her icy hand against my wet cheek. I let out a watery laugh as she said in English, her low voice heavily-accented, "you're so beautiful now."

"You're delusional," I replied, making her laugh. I blew my nose on a tissue and wiped it on my sleeve, not caring about how many lectures I would receive from Natasha about ruining her second-best suit.

Tori sat down. "Maybe so," she said. "I can't believe you're here, Kira. I knew you'd come for me... you never break a promise, маленькая птица."

Just the endearment made me start crying again. "Apart from the time I stole Lili's Cheerios, then no. I don't."

"...Cheerios?" Tori looked at me strangely.

I gasped. "Wait... you haven't heard of Cheerios?!" I shook my head and wiped my tears away. "Never mind. I'm getting you out of here."

Tori patted the bed and I sat down, taking in every aspect of her face. "Tori, we have to leave. Now." I gulped. "Clint - I mean Hawkeye - exploded a door and he's pretty sure that the whole of HYDRA knows that we're here. We have to get you - and the girls - out of here."

Tori's eyebrows furrowed together in concern. "Kira. маленькая птица. It's not that easy, sister."

I jumped up, my hyperactive brain whirring and my ADHD making me fidget. My heart was pounding again as I cried out, "Tori, we have to leave! Nat and Bruce are going to make this place blow up soon! We need to escape!"

Tori frowned. "Kira, it's not that simple. Half of the girls are under Ivan's drugs and they will literally kill you if you get near them. You need to get me out and then we'll come back for the girls once we establish that they are safe! That was the plan." Her voice was low, and smooth, and soft, and the way she spoke made me want to curl up into a little ball and go to sleep. "You stick to the plan, маленькая птица."

I threw my hands in the air. "And this place will literally explode if we don't get out fast enough! Nat and Bruce can't wait forever and -"

"Natasha Romanoff?" Tori breathed. I could see her beginning to sweat.

"Yes! Natasha Romanoff!" I squinted at her, something not feeling quite right but shrugging it off as nothing. "She and Bruce Banner will blow this place to smithereens. We need to get out of here and take the girls with us!"

"Stop yelling, sister," Tori said calmly, taking my hand. As much as I loved her, I snatched it away. She frowned at me, her face gentle. "You've changed, маленькая птица. And not for the better."

"So what, was I supposed to stay the scared little girl who cried all the time and relied on her big sister for everything?" I demanded, the closeness of the walls making me nervous. "That girl is dead, Tori. She died nine years ago, when you died." My voice broke. "You died and you left me alone."

Tori's eyes narrowed into slits. "You left me," she argued. "I was so scared, Kira. So scared that I cried too, and crying is for cowards."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Tears poured down my cheeks as I croaked, "crying is for people with hearts."

"You are scared, sister, and that is understandable," Tori said, her green eyes cold and empty, not a shred of love reflecting in them. "But you need to get me out of this godforsaken place before Ivan and his men come for us. You only have so much time, and saving the other girls will only reduce that."

I shook my head. This Tori was different, changed. "You said it yourself," I said angrily. "The plan was to get you and the other girls out before Nat and Bruce blew it up." I dropped my hands. "You said it yourself," I repeated.

Tori squinted at me. "I said no such thing," she said roughly. "It was to get me out. That was the plan. The other girls are doomed."

That got me, I had to admit. But before I could yell at her that nobody was doomed, I stopped. This Tori was different than the Tori in the hologram. Sure, she looked and sounded the same, but she didn't act the same. Didn't speak the same. This Tori was cold and didn't love anything. My Tori burned like the fire in the darkest of nights. 

This Tori wasn't my Tori.

"You're not..." I began, and then I felt the ice-cold point of a needle slide into the back of my neck, and then everything dissolved into a lucid nightmare, beginning with a tall, dark man leaning over my limp body and saying in a voice that had haunted me ever since I first heard it in my memories:

"Well done, Tori. You made your father proud."