The next time we were called out it wasn't a covert operation. History was repeating itself and another uprising had sprung up. It wasn't a peaceful expression of dissent like the Prague Spring. It was a bloodthirsty ruckus. It wasn't on the same scale as the Hungarian Revolution – no – this wasn't a few bands of rebels. This was a whole country: rallying, rioting, revolting.
We were to be airdropped into Bucharest, as all the roads had been clogged with anthropological congestion. And the roads that weren't crammed with people were littered with upturned vehicles, nefarious tableaux of lynching and war torn flotsam and jetsam. Tanks rolled over the destruction, trying to penetrate the heart of the mobs.
Soaring at a low altitude, I could hear the harrowing sounds below. The tanks sounded like the drone of a plague of locust, the firing of tanks echoed off the surroundings and the roar of people buzzed below.
My comrades looked unbothered, staring vacantly ahead, heads bobbing with the clunking of the old plane. I was stiff and bolt upright in the seat, trying not to let my agitation show in the lines on my forehead or around my eyes. But every time a particularly graphic noise rung out I would flinch.
Alexi's hand rested atop of mine, steadying that subtle quake, but neither of us let that reassurance show on our faces.
But opposite me, Yelena's mouth shrivelled into a frown. Her eyes darting from me, to Alexi, she twiddled with the hilt of her knife. She'd worked so damned hard to have James wrapped around her little pinky, only to find I've moved on. She looked lonely without James on her arm. And seeing her so isolated comparison evoked a sense of retribution in my heart.
"We're above the drop zone!" Someone called back from the cockpit and we all migrated from our seats and did our best to stand in the bumpy container they excused as an aviation vehicle. Clinging onto bars and rails on walls and the roof, we watched the bay door open.
Wind rattled through like air entering a flute. A red light glowed close to the door and we all froze patiently. A buzzer sounded and it clicked green, and we all dashed forwards like a stampede, exiting the plane on cue.
I can't begin to explain what skydiving is like. Just for a moment, you're weightless, you're free, you're flying. For just a moment you feel like a bird: free of responsibilities and only thinking of the wind beneath your wings: or outstretched arms in my case.
The way the wind weaves through my hair, cool and refreshing is a serenity of no other – even if I am hurtling towards the ground. My lungs are overtaken with invigoration and exhilaration rushes through my veins with the adrenaline.
And there's a surreal moment where you pull the chute and spiral down, like leaves on the thermals.
But this wasn't a leisurely airdrop into the countryside. This was me landing directly in the heart of a country stricken by the worst kind of oppression and wrecked by the people who refused to be oppressed any longer.
My descent was bumpy. It was at a steep angle, swerving to dodge projectiles aimed at me. Civilians had armed themselves with anything they could get their hands on and they hurled it at anyone bearing the Soviet hammer and sickle.
I could see bursts of fire below as Molotov cocktails were thrown and shattered into flames, gunfire erupted as clips were unloaded skyward and large chunks of pavement were left looking like a crater by stray grenades.
I veered awkwardly as I finally made for the rooftops of the castellated buildings that bordered a square. I landed with a stumble and a roll to gradually lose impetus and ended up tangled in the strings of my parachute. The moment I raised my head, I narrowly avoided a spate of bullets sprayed in our general direction and ducked beneath the battlements to untangle myself.
Alexi plopped down next to me and began to wriggle free of the lines in a similar manner.
"It's like nothing I've ever seen!" I cried, trying to be heard over the din.
"Horrific, isn't it?" He raised his voice.
He was quicker to squirm free and began making his way across rooftops in a low squat, his rifle clutched in his tactically gloved hands.
I heard the footfalls of my team behind me and their buckles clink to the floor as they disarmed themselves of parachutes, and gunfire as they surely followed in Alexi's wake.
But I took a moment, just a moment to stay low and peek over the brim of the building and into the cacophony of violence occurring below. And just for a second, I felt like a child all over again.
'Natalia! I told you to keep your head down!' I could hear a voice passing through my mind: authoritative, parental, homely. 'A girl of your age doesn't need to see such things.' I remembered seeing armies of blue-collar workers baying for the blood of the royal family. I remember marches in the streets. I remembered banners and flags and chants. I remembered the bloodshed as they went to hunt down the Tsar and any remaining drop of blue-blood.
I could see a man, a face- A name-
But then my memories slipped through my fingers like sand and my temples pulsed with resistance - the mental programming was blotting everything out.
The scene before me wasn't much different.
To an untrained eye it might appear just as meaningless brutality, uncoordinated people participating in primitive rallying and crying unsavoury things. To the eyes of the state it might look like mania. But it was people fighting bureaucracy.
The tanks weren't much help in controlling wave after wave of common folk. They simply clambered over them, they ravaged them: pulling the drivers and executing them. The people were like a tidal wave: monolithic and unstoppable. They moved not as individuals but as a sprawl of rebellion and they chewed up and spat out whatever came into their path.
It was a bloodbath: people being gunned down as they ran at our people, only to give way to more and more. But the people power was seemingly limitless.
Clouds of smoke rose from within the hordes, spiralling from hand grenades, tear gas and arson attacks – and it drifted across the square which had been transformed into a battlefield. It obscured the nightmarish scenes broiling within the pit of despair.
I finally stopped my snooping and made my way across the battlements, eyeing up my fleet who had posted themselves at different rooftops ahead. I bounded my way across gaps between buildings and flung myself across alleyways until I levelled with Yelena.
She had already set up; her sniper rifle steady on its stand, loaded and her eye pressed to the eyepiece. She picked people off one by one just like fish in a barrel. But it did nothing to still the commotion or dampen the spirits of the people.
Romanian flags of blue, yellow and red soared in the wind and they had strung them high between lampposts and on buildings. Flags from which they had cut out the Soviet insignia – they billowed with holes punctured through the centre.
Slowly, they were swathing across the city and reclaiming what the government had monopolised for so long.
I could tell Yelena was keeping an eye on me for my inactivity, but I was too stunned into submission by the scene playing out before me. And within me, a part of me I'd tried to subdue for the longest time, felt victorious on their behalf. They were freeing themselves.
"Do you remember what happened the last time you didn't do your duty, Natalie?" Yelena took her time to cast her eyes over to me, cocking the rifle and inserting a new bullet.
"I don't remember much, courtesy of you..." I spat, snagging the pistol from my belt and unloading it: I didn't have it in me to do anything more than crowd control.
She trained her eye down the barrel of the sniper once again. "But you returned the favour of course..." A shot was fired, and the gun recoiled with a puff of smoke. Her red lips arched into a triumphant smile.
I fired off a round into the scene below, not truly aiming for anyone, but warding people away. "And you decided to one up me..." I reloaded.
She gave a gleeful grin as she fired off another killing shot. "James..." She sighed dreamily. "You know what, even with that disgusting arm of his; I can see why you like him. In bed, he's practically feral..."
She didn't know about how uncomfortable my first time was. She couldn't have. Not unless he had spilt everything. She didn't know about how he turned away from me with disgust after defiling me. She didn't know of how I craved romance and he gave me nothing but heartless sex.
I cocked my gun. And she didn't stop talking.
"I don't think he even remembers you, Natalie..."
That name, it wasn't my name.
"His beautiful Tsarina wasn't adored after all..."
I clenched my fingers around the grip of the gun, trying to control the infuriated shake in my hand.
"Not adored by anybody..." She snorted. "Not even Lukin seems to be impressed by you these days... You're not his Black Widow after all..."
I swallowed thickly and fired off a miscalculated shot, chipping the monument at the centre of the square.
"I don't want, James..." I said in a level voice, but a flicker of anger let on. "Let alone need him..." I fired off another badly aimed shot and she laughed. "He's all yours."
As she loaded another round into her gun she turned to me with a poisonous smile. "That's right! You have little Alexi now..." She lifted the rifle up so it was cradled in her arms and pointed it directly at him. His eye to the eyepiece of another sniper, with a limited field of view, he had no idea of the firearm trained on him. "And do you know what? It would be so easy just to kill him now..." She stood tall above the battlements and placed one boot on the raised ledge of the building. "Say he was picked off in the fighting. No one would know-"
I interjected her prattling. "Are you insane?" I blinked twice and my mouth hung open.
"It would be so easy..." She cocked the rifle. "Just a hole between his eyes, no one would ever recover his body in this mess-" Her hair whipped around her in the cordite-stinking breeze.
"You're completely insane-"
What she hadn't factored in, was that presenting herself so proudly on the rooftop left her prone. There was a flash, a plumage of smoke and the sound of a rocket. One of the civilians in the square had somehow obtained a rocket launcher and one was heading straight at us.
It took her a moment longer to realise, but I had already sprinted and leapt out of the way. She scrambled, but the blast hit too soon.
The precipice crumbled around her and a landslide of fractured stone and metal foundations slipped from beneath her feet. She slid with it and more came crashing down from above her.
I was showered with debris and my ears rung from the explosion. But as the rush of smoke cleared and the last of the dust settled, I could see Yelena hanging on by her fingertips; the building crumbling under her hands. As she tried to clamber up the vertical surface, her feet eroded the crumbling mass and slipped away.
"Natalie!" She yelped like a frightened pup. "Natalie!"
And I could see her grip faltering and her time ticking. Keeping low, I clambered towards her. Peering down at her and beyond her, there was a mob of baying Romanians just waiting for her to fall; seeing the Soviet crest displayed so proudly on her uniform.
The moment I was in range, she tried to reach my boots.
She glanced down and paled before looking back to me.
"Natalie, please! Help me up!"
I stopped and stared at her.
Her clammy hands began to slide and more dust and plaster chipped away as her fingers flexed for traction.
"My name is not Natalie!" I growled at her.
"Nat, Natalie, Tsarina, Natalia – it's all the same, now help me!" She demanded.
I saw her arms twitch as her strength failed her. A sea of bullets were haphazardly shot at her and she flinched as they narrowly missed: she was becoming their piñata. And she was seconds away from dropping.
"You're right..." I agreed, keeping my features cold, watching her dangle helplessly.
"I know I'm right! Now help me!" Panic was evident in her voice and finally fear washed over her features. Her tone was urgent, insistent and her breathing was fast and shallow. I'd finally seen her fear.
"Not about my name. You're wrong about that..." I leant in close, eye to eye with her, out of the rebels view. "You're right about the fighting. It would be easy to kill you now-"
And I watched as revelation dawned on her face. The reality of impending death had finally sunk in. She made a sobbing noise. "Natalia, I beg of you!" I saw tears well in her eyes; not the same jealous maniacal ones I'd seen once before – genuine fear.
But it wasn't remorseful. It was selfish; afraid of her demise.
"No one would know. They would've thought you were picked off in the fighting..." I changed tenses. "They'll never find your body."
She startled as more bullets soared in her direction and she kicked her legs in panic. "Natalia, please?! Please?! Help me! Please?! I'm begging you!"
After everything she'd done to me, after all the pain she'd cause me, after all the harm she'd done; I saw no reason to show her kindness.
I looked her in the eye as I nudged her first hand off the edge and she swung dangerously. "I am the Black Widow. Never forget that." I squished the rest of her remaining fingers one at a time under the butt of my gun and then her hand gave in and she plummeted.
She collided with the ground with a horrendous thwack.
The fall? That didn't kill her. It just mangled her enough to render her helpless.
But the second she touched the ground, the people fell in and ravaged her carcass like a flock of starved vultures.
A/N - Bonus update! I finished my exams and I'm feeling good so I thought I'd type this up! And yes; this has been the moment you've all been waiting for - Yelena is finally dead. Confirmed dead. Pietro Maximoff dead (joke's on me when he returns in a future movie).
Don't talk to me about the season finale of 'Game of Thrones'. I'm in denial.
As of lately I've been completely binging on Muse's new album 'Drones'. I've loved them for a good couple years; but this new album is a gem. It puts 'The 2nd Law' to shame - even Matt Bellamy thinks it's the best album yet. It's so political and makes such a refreshing change from electronic instruments, sampling, autotune and "but your booty don't need explaining". Who ever said that teenagers aren't interested in politics? And who on earth decided that all we want to hear songs about is romance and sex, sung by preppy women and boybands?
'Drones' is practically the soundtrack to this book (I mean: '[JFK]' and 'Defector' fit perfectly just from the song titles) - I've been listening to it on repeat whilst writing this! If you don't listen to Muse, now is a good time to jump on the bandwagon.
In case you didn't pick it up, this chapter is actually about the Romanian Revolution of 1989 - yes, a time jump, but time goes fast when your mind is being played with.
Wow this has been a long author's note. Probably a reflection of how much energy I have now exams are officially over.
Dedication goes to Iron_Man_Wanna_Be! x
(P.S. - If you haven't had a dedication and would like one, please, please just ask!)