The Irony of it All

5

  “Who are they?” Natasha heard Sam ask the question, but her head was still spinning. She stood, arms crossed over her chest, body turned towards the team, but her head was turned towards the one way window. She stared past the glass and at the two teenagers. 

They were asleep. Well, more accurately, unconscious, thanks to her stun gun. They were so young, but obviously enhanced as they packed quite a punch. Taking on four Avengers was no easy task. 

    But why did they look so familiar. Were they somehow connected to her past? No, there were a lot of things Natasha couldn’t remember from all the brain wiping she’d gone through, but she was sure she would have remembered these two. 

    It amazed her how peaceful they seemed when they slept. A big difference from the machines of destruction that wiped out the lab with ease. The boy seemed to be older, and she was quite sure they were siblings. They didn’t quite look exactly alike, but they had a few similarities. The blond hair and green eyes were just two of them. 

    She caught herself then and snapped her head away. She usually never looked twice at children, unless they were Clint’s and Laura’s. Not to say she didn’t like children, and not to say she did. She found babies to be ugly and smelly, not repulsive, just...fat. She was not a baby person that was for sure. She had never really wanted children. When the red room had taken her ability to have children away, she had been heartbroken. But that was simply because her choice to have them, her possibly wanting them in the future, was stripped from her. It made her feel inhuman. It was at that point that the Red Room had truly made her a monster. She would never be able to create life, only destroy it. So why was she so drawn to these two kids that she felt comfortable, peaceful, happy, but also disturbed, as she watched them sleep?

    The question that Sam had asked, “Who are they” came back. “We have no way of knowing if they are from the past or the future.” Bruce said. “All we did was open up the portal! No one should have been able to pass through, at least on that opposite side! Whoever they are, I don’t know how they got here.”

    “Wasn’t the portal designed to locate those of a specific gene set or something?” Scott asked.

    “Yeah, but we didn’t enter any DNA.” Rhodey answered. “So how on Earth did two Russian speaking super destroyers land in 2015?”

    “Well we could just ask them.” Tony said, nodding his head to the glass. Everyone turned to see that the boy was starting to sit up, and looking around the room, as the girl slightly stirred beside him before continuing to slumber on.

    “Can he not see us?” Scott asked.

“It’s a one way window, holographed to look like a wall on their side.” Tony said, tossing a holographic paper into a holographic trash can behind him. “Widow,” He called. “You’re our in house interrogator, so you got dibs.” He paused as he turned on the microphones in the holding cell. “Plus, she’s kind of the only one who speaks Russian.”

As Natasha entered the holding cell, she entered her cold assassin persona. She wasn’t here to be all sweet and comforting, she was here to get answers. The boy turned to her, his mouth momentarily opening in surprise and shock before he clamped it shut again and the emotion disappeared. He made no move, simply staring at her. “Vy govorite na angliyskom

 ( Do you speak english )?” She asked, she voice void of emotion.

    “Yes.” He said, surprising her with the lack of a Russian accent, but she didn’t let it show. 

    “Do you prefer Russian or English then?” She said, transitioning back into her second language. 

    “YA znayu, chto oni mogut uslyshat' nas. Skol'ko iz nikh govoryat po-russki (I know they can hear us. How many of them speak Russian)?” So Russian it was then.