New York City, USA
Spring 2015
The view out over New York City really was quite beautiful, especially as daylight was turning to evening. But Nadine barely noticed. She didn't notice that the building around her seemed made purely to take advantage of the view afforded by its height over the rest of the city, the upper floors a glass and metal work of modern architectural art.
She had barely even glanced out outside, or if she had, she hadn't given it much consideration. No, as she sat without moving a muscle, ankles crossed and hands folded neatly in her lap, her gaze fixed rather inadvertently on the duffle lying next to the cream-coloured couch she sat on. But she wasn't really seeing that either.
She was seeing the key left hanging from the lock on the door of their apartment. And the familiar backpack tossed carelessly across the hall. The phone lying forgotten on the floor with its dark screen cracked. The scuff-marks on the worn, weathered hardwood floor.
It had all pointed to one thing.
Upon slipping away from the Avengers, Nadine had raced back to Vienna with single-minded focus. She hadn't even bothered to stop at her Workshop first. She didn't disarm. She didn't change out of her Ghost catsuit. She didn't stop.
She just went home.
She couldn't stop moving, she couldn't focus on anything but getting home, getting her daughter and getting them both far away. The only thing on her mind had been Nina, because with the fear and trepidation burning through Nadine, she simply couldn't focus on anything else. For some reason—she had refused to contemplate what that reason might be, though part of her whispered that she already knew—Baron von Strucker had wanted her daughter and needed Nadine out of the way so he could get at her.
But the instant she had reached the little apartment they shared, Nadine had frozen with terror. Everything froze. Time seemed to stop even as her blood turned to hard, burning ice in her veins. The dispassionate spy in her had taken in everything with a cool, calculating eye. Her maternal side on the other hand...with a hoarse cry of rage, Nadine's fist had violently ripped a hole in the wall.
But it was nothing compared to the way Nadine had felt like her own insides had been shredded.
They'd taken Nina.
She had been too late.
Strucker had her daughter.
And Strucker was working with Katerina.
The Ghost and the Mother in her had merged in that moment, and both wanted blood. Lots of blood.
It was only then that she'd retreated to her Workshop. She'd spent the next few hours finding everything she could, drawing on every contact she had, every resource, to find every trace of intel on Baron Wolfgang von Stucker and Katerina Zhirova.
What she found was not promising. If her contacts were right, Stucker's hideaway fortress was just that, a fortress. Not that it dampened the impulse vibrating furiously through her to storm the gates regardless and get her little girl back no matter the cost.
But the part of her that was still able to think rationally knew she couldn't infiltrate or attack the base alone, no matter how good she was at what she did. It was simply too well secured and there were too many variables for a successful infiltration, meaning the risks to Nina were far too great...unless she had backup. It meant she needed help.
And despite everything, even after all these years and everything she'd done, there was only one person Nadine felt she could possibly hope to trust.
She just needed to let herself trust her little sister with her biggest secret first.
But Nina was worth it.
She only came back from the dark place deep inside her own head at the sound of several different treads approaching.
As she looked up from where she sat, the very person she desperately needed to see walked into view.
Natasha's eyes went wide as she stopped in her tracks, shocked nearly into silence...nearly. "Nadya! What—how—what are you doing here?!" As Natasha all but stuttered with surprise, the rest of her companions were filing in after her, each freezing upon seeing Nadine sitting in a sleek, dove-grey pant-suit with measured poise on one of the couches in the heart of the Avenger's Tower.
"Wait, Intruder Alert anyone? Who is this?" Tony Stark was the first after Natasha to react, his abrupt exclamation feeling like a nail driving into Nadine's temple. Natasha, startled from her surprise, shot the billionaire a quelling look, silencing the man before he could make any more snappy quips. Satisfied that she'd made her point, the redheaded assassin turned back to her old friend, warily climbing to the level where Nadine sat on one of the cream-coloured couches. Steeling herself and pushing away the simmering rage and the anxious fear vibrating in her chest, Nadine stood, her grey eyes fixing on Natasha.
"Natalia, I need your help." The look of wide-eyed shock appeared again on Natasha's face at the blonde's bluntness, even more so than a mere moment before. "I—I don't know who else to go to, lisichka," she added softly in Russian, her nerves and her discomfort getting the better of her. Natasha didn't immediately answer her, searching Nadine's face as her mind worked furiously. A sudden flicker of uneasy supposition appeared in her sharp green eyes.
"That doesn't answer the one, very salient question that is still unanswered: who are you, and how did you get up here?" Nadine grit her teeth at Stark's renewed questioning, his irreverent tone laced with wary but genuine curiosity. Stark, along with the handful of other people who had appeared the same time Natasha had—Rogers and Barton among them, looks of recognition appearing on their faces—were slowly making their own way up to the level where Nadine had been waiting for Natasha to return. A look of utter frustration passed over Natasha' face as Nadine's expression threatened to close off at the interruption before she rounded on the billionaire.
"Shut up, Tony," Natasha snapped, sending the man a second, harsher glare. Stark looked taken aback, blinking widely in surprise. Had Nadine not been so fretful and fixated on her purpose in the Avenger's Tower, she might have been tempted to snicker at the unsympathetic looks he got from the other members of his team. Natasha's worried green eyes turned back to Nadine.
"Nadya? What's going on?" The genuine worry in her little sister's voice was enough to crack through the wall Nadine had struggling to keep her anxieties behind, setting her fear loose. She'd barely dared hope that Natasha would even want to help... Almost instantly Nadine's hands began trembling. Natasha's eyes went wide again as they fixed on the blonde's slender hands, fear and concern of her own flickering in the green depths.
In an instant Natasha had closed the space between then, reaching out to clasp Nadine's cold fingers in her own.
"What's happened," she asked, switching to Russian herself, easily picking up on Nadine's anxiety as the blonde's walls threatened to crumble further, "I've never seen you so scared." Nadine drew in a shuddering breath, her grip tightening painfully on Natasha's. Natasha didn't even flinch.
"They took my daughter," she blurted out, not even realizing she'd reverted to English. This time Natasha's brow furrowed, bewildered shock flashing across her face.
"Your daughter! Nadya, you're a Mom?" Tears suddenly threatening, Nadine nodded sharply. Natasha still looked shocked, but there was a glimmer surfacing in her eyes that Nadine recognized. "How long have you had a daughter?" Nadine fought against the instinct to shut down, to silence Natasha's questions and the familiar light growing in those shrewd eyes. But it didn't stop her own eyes and her voice from growing hard in defence regardless.
"I think you've already figured that out," Nadine said softly, the warning in her tone causing Natasha to hesitate. "She's why I left, why I disappeared. You know I would never have been able to keep her, not if I stayed. Not if they'd found out." That familiar calculating glimmer deepened. But there was renewed surprise there too; Natasha hadn't expected Nadine to admit she'd run from the Red Room because she'd gotten pregnant. Truthfully, Nadine hadn't entirely meant to admit as much, though doing so would undoubtedly save the time Natasha would have taken to figure it out. Because she knew Natasha would have figured it out eventually, especially when she learned how old Nina was...
"I—Nadya, you—the father?" Even as Natasha stumbled through her reaction, which Nadine suspected was still mostly genuine in her surprise, there was still no hiding that glint; the redhead was fishing for confirmation again, "is it who I think it is," she asked quietly, pitching her voice low enough to keep the others in the room from overhearing. Nadine's jaw clenched and she looked sharply away, her eyes fixing on the corner of the coffee table as her long-time companions, guilt and shame, once again threatened her composure.
It was answer enough.
"Oh, Nadya." Nadine's eyes snapped to Natasha at the sympathy in her little sister's voice.
"That is my business, Natalia," she ground out, her voice nevertheless wavering as she stared Natasha down. The younger woman's gaze lowered in apology. "That's not what I'm here about." Her mouth snapped shut as she fought to regain control of herself, pushing her lingering guilt aside where it was quickly overshadowed again by her fear and rage. Nadine pulled her hands free from Natasha's, clasping them together tightly as she stepped out from between the couch and the coffee table, creating a measure of distance to help her calm her agitation and get her emotions back under some semblance of control.
"That's not what's important," she resumed after a moment, her voice still faintly tremulous but once again coolly under her command. Natasha looked up again, her features once again focused and calculating.
"Who took her?" Nadine forced herself to calm the resurging vibration in her chest at the question.
"A man named Strucker." An exclamation of surprise rippled through the audience Nadine had nearly forgotten they had. Both women turned to glance at the men all waiting awkwardly but with a measure of patience as the two women had spoken somewhat privately.
"Baron Wolfgang von Strucker?" Nadine turned to the man she faintly recognized as Bruce Banner. "The last viable Head of HYDRA? Strucker's the one who took your daughter?" She nodded sharply in answer to his question. She ignored the concerned, even apologetic sympathy she glimpsed in Captain Roger's eyes and the outright apprehension and guilt in Hawkeye's. It would only distract her.
"Well, his goons did, at least," she responded bitterly. "But I know he has her. He had a hand in blackmailing me."
"Wait," Natasha broke in shrewdly, "how do you know?" Nadine's gaze grew veiled, but she sighed after a moment, giving in and answering the younger woman's question.
"Azarov gave me his name." The three Avengers who had gone after the criminal broker with Nadine all started, Natasha sighing with realization while Hawkeye and Rogers both looked incredulous, even irritated in the case of the Captain.
"And you didn't think to tell us this," Rogers asked quietly, "you didn't think that was something we needed to know?" Nadine met his gaze coldly. He didn't flinch.
"No. He threatened my daughter; Strucker's mine," she said simply. The Captain's eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and though Nadine could easily pick up his disapproval, she surprisingly didn't see any condemnation. She mentally shook her head to realign her thoughts, glancing around to the other assembled Avengers. "I have a list of a few locations where he may have taken her; I had to lean on my connections pretty hard to get it, but I do. And you've hit most of them in the last few months...save one." She paused, her strong sense of self-reliance and years of mistrust in anyone but herself telling her not to admit what she knew she needed to say next.
"But the last facility is too well guarded, too secure," she said bitterly as her matter-of-fact tone broke. "I can't extract her alone, not without risking Nina's life." She turned back to Natasha after surveying the Avengers where they had come up to gather behind their lone female member. "I'll give you the location of the facility...on one condition." She took another deep breath, steeling her resolve. "I want in."
Natasha turned to her companions. Most of their faces were virtually unreadable, but Nadine easily picked up on their collective wariness, uncertainty and outright misgiving. Nadine's heart was suddenly hammering its way up her throat, making it hard to breath past the panicked staccato; they were considering refusing.
"Lisichka," Natasha turned at the term of endearment even as Nadine realized it had whispered from her lips. But at the questioning look in her little sister's face, Nadine knew she had to give her the last piece, her last bit of intelligence.
"Azarov gave me another name," Natasha's eyes began to narrow as Nadine's voice dropped low, her rage finally making it into her voice past the fear, "who Strucker was working with; the one who told him about me and Nina." At Nadine's tone, Natasha's eyes went hard, glinting dangerously in the low light as she easily picked up on her sister's wrath.
"Who." Nadine knew she had her. The blonde assassin met the redhead's gaze with a dark, deadly light in her grey eyes.
"Katerina Zhirova."
A/N: Thanks for reading!
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