Stubborn and scaredy Natty to her small doctor girlfriend. 💛🖤
An angel on earth. 🖤💛
The Great War. 🖤💔❤️💛
Scarlett Johansson
Accidents. 🖤 II.
Sorry. 🖤
Hidden Love. 🖤💛
Agatha Harkness
Red Days, Purple Loves. 💔💛
In The Shade Of Harkness 💔💛❤️🖤
I don't write:
top reader, g!p reader
I write:
Anything! Just not some hardcore weird ideas. You guys can suggest on my Ask, feel free to do so and I'll check it when I have time. (≧▽≦) Have fun reading!
summary: an ancient witch curses an infant princess to a fate that cannot be undone. condemned to watch the child grow from the shadows of the old forest, wanda expects only regret. instead, the years soften a heart she believed long buried, and she finds herself protecting the very soul she once sought to ruin.
au/background: a maleficent inspired au featuring ancient witch!wanda maximoff x princess!reader.
authors note: welcome to my very exciting first attempt at a long series! i’m going to be stretching my limits as a writer and challenge my ability to write a slow burn type story. i’m so so excited for this! after re-watching one of my favorite disney movies for the 100th time, i couldn’t resist running with this idea. comment if you’d like to be added to a tag list <3
Word count: 20.85k
Warnings: abduction, torture, fluff, dark fic, magic, rescue. MDNI
Relationship: Agatha x Rio x You
Summary: For centuries, you were never alone. Until the moment you were.
The first time you saw Agatha and Rio, the world had just ended.
At least, that was what it felt like.
Salem smoldered behind you, smoke still curling into the pale morning sky as the sun began to rise. The town you had grown up in had become little more than charred wood and memories. The people who had raised you were gone. The neighbors who had whispered about your magic were gone. Everything familiar had vanished in a single night, leaving behind only silence and ash.
You should have been grieving.
You should have been terrified.
Instead, you found yourself sitting beside a lake just beyond the edge of town, watching the sunrise paint gold across the water.
The moment felt strange even then.
For years, your family had treated your magic like a curse. Every spark of power beneath your skin had been met with fear, disappointment, or anger. They wanted you quiet. They wanted you obedient. They wanted you to become the kind of woman who never asked questions and never stepped beyond the life that had been chosen for her. Every dream you carried felt too large for the world they had built around you.
Now there was no one left to tell you who you were supposed to be.
The realization should have felt freeing.
Instead, it felt lonely.
You remembered pulling your knees to your chest and staring across the lake, trying to imagine what came next. The water reflected the colors of dawn in shades of pink and gold while birds called from the trees overhead. For the first time in your life, there was nothing expected of you.
No home.
No family.
No future.
Only a sunrise.
The sound of footsteps drew your attention. Two women stood several yards away.
One was dressed in dark clothing, her posture confident despite the destruction that lingered behind her. There was power in every movement she made, the kind that seemed to bend the world around her. Even before you knew her name, there was something impossible about her.
The second woman stood slightly behind her. Everything about her felt older than the earth beneath your feet. You would spend centuries trying to explain Rio Vidal to people and never quite succeed. There had always been something cosmic about her, something vast and eternal hidden beneath her smile. Looking back, perhaps part of you recognized what she truly was even then.
Neither woman spoke immediately. They simply watched you. You watched them right back. The silence stretched long enough that it should have become uncomfortable, yet somehow it never did.
Years later, Agatha would claim she approached first because she was worried you might be injured.
Rio would argue that Agatha had simply been staring.
Agatha would insist that was not true.
Rio would laugh every single time.
You never once received the same version of the story twice.
What you did remember was the way the morning light caught in Rio's dark hair. The way Agatha looked at you as though she had discovered something unexpected. The way neither of them treated you with fear. For perhaps the first time in your life, nobody was looking at your magic like it was a problem that needed fixing.
You often wondered if they knew, in that moment, how much they would come to mean to you. If they knew they would become your home. That they would become your family. That decades later, you would still wake up between them, still laughing at Agatha's terrible jokes, still listening to Rio talk to her plants as though they were old friends.
Perhaps they did.
Perhaps they didn't.
What you knew for certain was that they sat beside you as the sun climbed higher into the sky, and somewhere between the silence and the sunrise, your life changed forever.
It had been like that ever since.
Time passed in the strange, beautiful way they always seemed to when shared with people you loved. You watched empires rise and fall. You witnessed wars, revolutions, and enough questionable fashion choices to fill entire museums. Entire countries changed names. Languages evolved. Music transformed. Humanity stumbled forward, generation after generation. Through all of it, somehow, the three of you remained. Some years were filled with joy. Some years were filled with grief. Some years were spent simply surviving. Yet no matter where history carried you, no matter how much the world changed around you, Agatha and Rio were always there.
Now, you shared a small house not far from a university campus. It was almost laughable how ordinary your life had become. You had spent lifetimes outrunning hunters, surviving wars, and witnessing the rise and fall of nations, yet your greatest concern that morning was locating an article buried somewhere inside a digital archive.
The university library buzzed with activity around you as students filled nearly every table. The low hum of conversation mixed with the sound of turning pages and tapping keyboards while sunlight streamed through the tall windows overlooking campus. Someone was whispering frantically about an exam they clearly should have studied for sooner while a printer somewhere nearby sounded moments away from giving up on life entirely.
You loved places like this. Always had.
There was something magical about knowledge gathered in one location. Thousands of stories waiting to be discovered. Thousands of voices refusing to be forgotten. Every shelf, every archive, every carefully preserved document represented someone’s life, someone’s memory, someone’s attempt to leave a mark behind.
Your family would have hated it.
The thought made you smile despite yourself.
They had spent years trying to convince you that curiosity was a flaw. That asking questions made you difficult. That a woman's place was inside the boundaries someone else created for her. Every book you opened had been treated like a challenge to their authority. Every opinion had been an argument. Every dream had been dismissed before it ever had the chance to grow.
If they could see you now. A young Queer woman pursuing another degree simply because you wanted to.
The thought was satisfying.
Several months earlier, you had announced over dinner that you wanted another degree.
Agatha had stared at you over the rim of her wine glass. "You already have seven."
You had shrugged. "I'm bored."
Rio nearly choked on her tea, laughing.
The conversation had somehow turned into a twenty-minute debate about whether seven degrees was already excessive. Agatha argued that it absolutely was. Rio argued that you had earned the right to do whatever you wanted. You had pointed out that neither of them complained when you spent months buried inside archives researching obscure historical events. Agatha had muttered something about that being different. Rio had immediately asked how. Neither of you ever received an answer.
Despite their teasing, neither woman had ever denied you knowledge. They remembered the young woman Salem had tried to silence. They remembered the girl whose family had demanded she make herself smaller to fit inside the life they wanted for her. Every degree, every conference presentation, every article you published felt like a quiet act of defiance against the people who once insisted your voice did not matter.
Which was precisely why you found yourself sitting in the library at eleven-thirty in the morning, fighting with a stubborn digital archive while texting your wives about lunch.
The article loaded slowly enough that you had time to question every life decision that had brought you to this moment.
A progress wheel spun lazily in the center of the screen while your foot bounced beneath the table. When the page finally appeared, your eyes immediately scanned the title, hope rising in your chest for the briefest of moments before disappointment followed close behind. Wrong source. Again.
A groan escaped you as you leaned back in your chair, one hand dragging down your face. Three hours. You had been sitting in this library for three hours chasing a citation that seemed determined not to be found. Somewhere, buried inside thousands of scanned documents, journal articles, and archived records, was the source you needed. Unfortunately, it appeared to be playing an elaborate game of hide-and-seek.
Your fingers drummed against the edge of the table while you clicked back to the search page. The database responded with all the urgency of wet paint drying. As the screen struggled to load, your attention drifted toward the massive windows overlooking campus.
Outside, autumn had settled across the university in earnest. Golden leaves drifted through the air every time the wind picked up, collecting along sidewalks and beneath benches before scattering again moments later. Students crossed the quad in clusters, backpacks slung over shoulders and coffee cups clutched in their hands. A group sat near the fountain, laughing loudly enough that the sound occasionally carried through the glass whenever the library doors opened. Somewhere in the distance, a bicycle bell rang before disappearing beneath the hum of campus life. The sight made you smile.
There had been a time when a place like this would have felt impossible. Back then, your family had viewed curiosity as something dangerous. Questions led to trouble. Knowledge led to independence. Independence led to disobedience. They had spent years trying to convince you that wanting more was a flaw.
Now you sat in a university library pursuing another degree simply because you wanted to.
The thought never failed to amuse you.
Around you, the library remained alive with quiet activity. Students moved between shelves carrying armfuls of books. Someone highlighted passages in a textbook nearby with the concentration of a person desperately trying to memorize an entire semester in a single afternoon. The steady rhythm of keyboards filled the air while whispered conversations rose and fell between rows of tables.
It was ordinary.
Wonderfully, beautifully ordinary.
Not the kind of ordinary people noticed while living it, but the kind you had learned to treasure. A crowded library. A research project. Students worried about exams. The promise of returning home at the end of the day.
The sort of ordinary people fought wars to protect.
Your phone vibrated beside your laptop. The smile appeared before you even looked at the screen.
Aggie: 💜
You opened the message.
Alive?
A laugh escaped immediately. Debatable.
The response came so quickly she had clearly been waiting. Tragic.
The archive hates me, Aggie. It is actively working against me.
Three dots appeared. Maybe it knows you're a historian.
You rolled your eyes. That's discrimination.
It's self-defense.
The laugh that escaped this time earned a glance from a student several tables away. You immediately pressed your lips together, trying—and failing—to contain your amusement. Decades of loving Agatha Harkness. And somehow, she still managed to make you laugh at the most inconvenient times.
Another message appeared. And yet you're losing.
You snorted. Rude.
Accurate. Before you could respond, another text arrived. When are you coming home?
Your eyes drifted across the battlefield occupying your table. Open notebooks. Printed articles. Color-coded sticky notes. Three different pens. A half-empty water bottle. Enough research material to suggest you had no intention of leaving anytime soon.
When I find this article.
The typing bubble appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. So never?
The laugh that escaped this time was loud enough that you immediately clapped a hand over your mouth. The student nearest you looked up from their textbook with an amused smile. You mouthed a silent apology. They returned to reading. You looked back at your phone.
Aggie. I'm hungry.
You're a witch.
And?
Make food.
Several seconds passed. Then a photograph appeared. You opened it. For a moment you simply stared. The image appeared to contain the remains of a grilled cheese sandwich. At least, you assumed it had once been a grilled cheese sandwich. Now it looked like something recovered from an archaeological excavation. The bread had somehow achieved a shade of black usually associated with volcanic rock.
Your smile was louder than any laugh that you could have made. How did you even do that?
I got distracted.
By what?
The answer arrived so quickly it felt rehearsed. Thinking about my wife.
Heat bloomed instantly across your cheeks. Gods.
Your smile lingered as another message appeared. Rio says bring coffee.
Then another. Rio says you're taking too long.
Then a third. Rio says she loves you.
A pause followed. I also love you, but the coffee remains a priority.
Your chest ached with affection.
You could picture the scene perfectly. Agatha sprawled dramatically across the couch as though you had abandoned her for decades instead of a few hours. Rio tending to her plants while pretending not to encourage the theatrics. At some point Rio would offer a perfectly reasonable solution. Agatha would ignore it entirely. Somehow the conversation would become your problem. It always became your problem. The thought settled warmly in your chest.
Home. Not the house itself. Not the walls. Not the furniture. Them. It had always been them. After wars, losses, rebuilding, grief, joy, and finding your way back to one another again and again, home had stopped being a location a very long time ago. Home was Agatha stealing your side of the bed. Home was Rio talking to her plants as though they were old friends. Home was knowing that no matter how frustrating your day became, there were two people waiting for you at the end of it.
Your smile softened as you looked down at the messages one last time before setting your phone beside the laptop and turning back toward the archive, completely unaware that within the next few minutes, the ordinary life you had spent lifetimes building was about to shatter.
The archive continued its personal vendetta against you.
Another article loaded. Another dead end. Another source that looked promising until it wasn't. Your fingers moved automatically across the keyboard, opening tabs, scanning abstracts, checking footnotes, and closing windows with the practiced rhythm of someone who had spent far too many years buried inside archives. If anyone had asked, you would have told them you were being productive.
The growing pile of rejected sources suggested otherwise.
With a sigh, you reached for your water bottle and took a long drink. The water had long since lost the chill it possessed that morning, but you welcomed it anyway. Across the room, someone stood to leave, gathering notebooks and charging cords while carefully trying not to disturb the students around them. A librarian pushed a cart between the shelves, reshelving books with the sort of quiet efficiency that only came from years of practice.
The normalcy of it all settled around you like a blanket. No one in this room knew that you had watched empires collapse. No one knew you remembered a world before electricity. No one knew you had stood beside Agatha while entire galaxies unfolded around the two of you, or that Rio had taught you the names of constellations that no longer existed in quite the same way they once had. To everyone around you, you were simply another graduate student losing a fight against a database.
Honestly, you preferred it that way.
The archive loaded another page. Your eyes skimmed the title. Then paused. A small flicker of excitement sparked in your chest. Maybe. The article looked closer than the others. Not perfect, but close enough to justify opening it. You clicked the link and waited for the document to load.
A shadow fell briefly across your table. You assumed it was another student passing by. The library was crowded enough that people were constantly moving through the aisles. You barely looked up.
The article finally opened. You immediately leaned closer to the screen, scanning the opening paragraphs. The author referenced a source you hadn't seen before. Your pulse quickened slightly. That was promising. Very promising. A smile tugged at the corner of your mouth.
Finally.
Then a voice interrupted. "Excuse me."
You looked up.
A man stood beside the empty chair across from you. At first glance there was absolutely nothing remarkable about him. He looked like any number of professors you had encountered over the years. Older. Well dressed. Neatly groomed. The sort of person who blended easily into a university setting.
"Is this seat taken?" he asked politely.
Your gaze drifted around the room. Every table nearby was occupied. Students had begun claiming spots along the windows and against the walls, some balancing laptops on their knees while others sat cross-legged on the floor beside outlets. Midterms were approaching. The library had become a battlefield.
"Go ahead."
"Thank you."
The man offered a small nod before lowering himself into the chair. His movements were measured and deliberate, neither rushed nor hesitant. For a moment, you thought nothing of it. Why would you? It was a crowded university library in the middle of the day. People shared tables all the time.
Your attention returned to the article glowing on your screen.
The source was finally looking promising. The author referenced several collections you hadn't encountered before, and you quickly opened three new tabs before you could lose the trail. Your pen scratched across a yellow legal pad as you jotted notes in the margins. Half-finished thoughts. Page numbers. Citation reminders. Questions to chase later. The sort of notes that looked completely incomprehensible to anyone except the person who wrote them.
Several minutes passed.
The library continued around you. A student nearby quietly cursed after dropping a highlighter. Somewhere deeper in the building, a cart rattled across the floor as books were reshelved. The heating system kicked on overhead with a soft hum, pushing warm air through the room. Someone laughed near the circulation desk before immediately lowering their voice when a librarian looked in their direction.
Normal. Everything felt normal. You reached for your water bottle without looking away from the article. Your fingers missed. The bottle rolled off the edge of the table. Before it could hit the floor, the man leaned forward and caught it.
The movement was fast. Not impossibly fast. Just fast enough that it caught your attention. For a moment, you stared. Then a small laugh escaped you. “I’m so sorry.” The man smiled faintly as he handed it back. "Good reflexes."
Something flickered across his face. "Occupational habit."
The answer was simple enough that most people would have let it pass without a second thought. You certainly tried to.
"Thank you."
"Don’t mention it."
You unscrewed the cap and took a drink before returning your attention to the article. Yet something lingered. Not the interaction itself. The feeling.
A small thread of awareness tugged somewhere in the back of your mind. You couldn't explain it. The exchange had been perfectly normal. Polite. Forgettable. Still, as you lowered the bottle back onto the table, you found yourself glancing up again.
The man sat quietly across from you. No laptop. No notebook. No textbook. No phone. Nothing. The realization lingered for a moment before you dismissed it. Plenty of people came to libraries for reasons other than studying. Maybe he was waiting for someone. Maybe he had finished working and was simply taking a break.
You returned to your article. Another minute passed. Then another. The feeling remained. Concern settled into your chest first. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to make you notice.
Outside the windows, students crossed the quad beneath a brilliant autumn sky. Golden leaves danced through the air whenever the wind picked up, scattering across brick walkways before gathering against benches and tree roots. A group of students hurried toward class carrying coffee cups and backpacks while another sat beneath a tree arguing passionately about something that probably felt world-changing.
Life carried on.
The concern lingered. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it became unease. You had lived long enough to know the difference between anxiety and instinct. Anxiety spiraled. Instinct whispered.
This felt like a whisper.
You found yourself paying attention without meaning to. Watching the reflection in your laptop screen. Tracking movement from the corner of your eye. Listening for things you couldn't quite name. The man wasn't reading. Wasn't typing. Wasn't checking his phone. He was simply sitting there. Looking around as if looking for someone. Waiting.
The realization settled heavily in your stomach. Not enough for fear. Not yet. Enough for worry. Enough that old memories began stirring. You had spent lifetimes outrunning people like him. Not this man specifically. The people behind him. The cause. The obsession.
For as long as there had been magic, there had been hunters. They called themselves different things depending on the era. Religious orders. Secret societies. Protectors. Purifiers. Guardians. The names changed. The symbols changed. The methods changed.
The mission never did. They wanted witches gone. Some wanted power. Some wanted answers. Some convinced themselves they were saving humanity.
Entire families dedicated themselves to the cause. Journals filled with names and observations were passed from one generation to the next. Children inherited grudges against people they had never met. Parents taught their sons and daughters that hunting witches was a sacred duty. One generation failed. The next picked up where they left off. Again. And again. And again. The hunt never truly ended. It simply learned patience.
Your fingers stopped moving across the keyboard. The article in front of you blurred. The concern became worry. The worry became recognition. Not of the man. Of the feeling.
The same feeling that had warned you before traps. Before betrayals. Before moments where survival depended entirely upon noticing danger before it revealed itself.
Quietly, you clicked save on your notes. Then saved them again. Just in case. The action felt ridiculous. Paranoid. You almost laughed at yourself. Maybe Agatha was rubbing off on you. You could already hear her voice. "See? This is why I don't trust people." The thought almost made you smile.
Almost.
Instead, you found yourself reaching for your phone. A quick text. Maybe you would head home early. The article could wait. Agatha would be insufferably pleased. Rio would pretend she hadn't expected exactly this outcome. Life would continue. You just needed to leave.
The moment you closed your laptop, the man's expression changed. Only slightly. But enough.. Not dramatically. Just enough. Like someone realizing the game was about to end. Enough that your pulse immediately quickened
You slid the computer into your bag. Reached for your phone. Prepared to stand. Then the man spoke. "I've been looking for you for a very long time."
You blinked at him. "Excuse me?"
The man's smile didn't falter. His gaze swept over you slowly. "You reek of them."
Your stomach dropped. "What?"
"The women you've been hiding with." His smile sharpened. "Their magic is all over you." His eyes never left yours.
"I've been tracking that scent for years. And you… You reek."
Every sound in the library seemed to disappear. The voices. The keyboards. The turning pages. All of it vanished beneath the sudden roar of blood in your ears. Slowly, you looked up. The smile waiting for you wasn't friendly. It wasn't warm. It wasn't the smile of a stranger making conversation. It was recognition.
And for the first time in a long time, genuine fear unfurled inside your chest. Because nobody should know who you were. Not really. Not after changing names. Not after entire lifetimes spent disappearing before anyone could notice you never seemed to age. Nobody should have been able to find you.
Yet somehow, this man had. And the certainty settling into your bones told you something far worse. He hadn't just found you. He had been hunting you.
The realization hit like ice water down your spine. For a moment neither of you moved. The library continued around you, completely oblivious to the danger sitting quietly between rows of books and half-finished essays. Students typed away at laptops. Someone laughed near the circulation desk. A printer somewhere in the building emitted a noise that suggested it was losing a battle with modern technology.
No one noticed. No one knew. You forced yourself to breathe. One slow inhale. One slow exhale. Maybe there was still time. You had escaped hunters before. You had survived worse than this. Slowly, carefully, you slid your phone into your pocket.
Agatha. Rio.
The thought of them steadied you. You only had to get outside. Only had to put distance between yourself and whatever this was. One call. One text. One warning. They could handle whatever it was. The three of you together. Not alone.
The man watched every movement. Still smiling. Still patient. As though he already knew how this would end.
“Dude. I have no idea what your issue is. But I’d go talk to a doctor if you could smell women on me.” You pushed your chair back. The legs scraped softly against the floor. Ready to leave. Ready to run. Ready to get as far away from him as possible.
You adjusted the strap of your bag. Prepared to stand. Prepared to walk away. Prepared to run if necessary. Then the man spoke.
"I wondered if you’d recognize me."
Something cold settled in your stomach. Not because you recognized him. You didn't. That was the problem. The certainty in his voice implied history. Familiarity. It implied that somehow, impossibly, this wasn't the first time your paths had crossed. Every instinct you possessed immediately began searching through centuries of memories, faces, names, and places.
You found nothing. The room lurched. At first, you thought it was panic. Then the floor seemed to shift beneath your feet. Your breath caught sharply in your throat as dizziness slammed into you without warning. One hand shot toward the table, fingers gripping the edge hard enough that your knuckles turned white. The polished wood dug painfully into your palm, but you barely felt it.
Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. The realization arrived with startling clarity. This wasn't fear. This wasn't anxiety. Someone had done something.
The room tilted again.
Students blurred at the edges of your vision as though the world had suddenly lost its focus. Sunlight fractured across the library windows, turning into smears of gold and white. The steady sounds of keyboards and turning pages seemed strangely distant.
Your magic surged instinctively. A reflex. A lifetime of survival condensed into a single moment. You reached for it the same way someone might reach for a lifeline. For protection. For escape. For anything. The familiar pulse of power answered beneath your skin.
Then immediately slipped away. Your stomach dropped.
No.
You reached again. Harder this time. Desperately. A protection spell. A ward. A rune. Anything that would buy you time.
Your fingers twitched against the tabletop as you attempted to trace a symbol into the wood. The motion was so practiced you didn't even have to think about it. You had cast spells in forests, battlefields, hidden covens, city streets, and burning buildings.
The symbol never formed. The magic dissolved before it could take shape. Like smoke scattered by the wind. A sharp spike of panic shot through your chest.
Power gathered beneath your skin. Then vanished.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Every attempt slipping through your fingers before it could become anything useful. The sensation was horrifying. Not because your magic was gone. Because it wasn't. You could still feel it. Somewhere beneath your skin. Somewhere inside your soul. But something was pulling at it. Draining it. Drawing it away from you thread by thread. Like watching someone siphon blood from your veins while remaining powerless to stop them. The man remained seated. Watching. Patient. Interested. As though he were observing the final stages of an experiment.
Your pulse hammered in your ears.
Agatha.
The thought came instantly. Instinctively. You reached for the bond connecting your souls. For the familiar warmth that always lingered somewhere inside you. The steady presence of Agatha's magic had been a constant in your life for longer than most civilizations had existed. Even when continents separated you. Even when decades passed. Even when circumstances forced distance between you. She was always there.
You reached for her. Nothing. Your breath hitched. Not broken. Not gone. Just quiet.
The absence struck harder than the failing magic. For as long as you had been theirs the bond had been a living thing between the three of you. A comforting awareness resting somewhere beneath every waking moment. You never had to search for it because it was simply there.Now it felt distant. Like hearing a voice from the far end of a tunnel. Panic clawed its way up your throat.
Rio. You reached again. For her.
For the impossible gravity of her existence that had anchored you through centuries of war, loss, and endless change. For the familiar pull of her soul against yours, constant and unwavering no matter how far apart you were. For the quiet certainty that came from knowing Death herself loved you with a devotion that transcended time, fate, and reason. You reached for the warmth hidden beneath her darkness. For the comfort of her presence wrapping around you like a protective embrace. For the promise she had always represented—that no matter where you wandered, no matter what dangers found you, you would never truly be alone.
For home. For Rio. For the certainty that if you called, she would answer as she promised you she always would. Nothing answered.
Not Agatha. Not Rio. Only silence.
The realization shattered through you. Whatever was happening wasn't merely suppressing your magic. It was isolating you. Cutting you away from the two people who had been at your side for lifetimes.
The room spun violently. Your vision darkened around the edges. Students became indistinct shapes.
The library dissolved into blurs of movement and sunlight. You tried to stand. Tried to force your body to move. Tried one final desperate time to reach for your magic. For Agatha. For Rio. For home. The silence that answered felt endless.
The last thing you saw was the man rising slowly from his chair, picking up your water bottle. Calm. Certain. As though he had known from the moment he sat down exactly how this would end.
Then darkness swallowed everything.
**************
Back at home, Agatha and Rio knew exactly where you were.
The library. Or, more specifically, buried somewhere beneath a mountain of articles, footnotes, and half-finished notes while attempting to track down a source that had probably been hiding from historians since the invention of the printing press.
They had received approximately seventeen texts about a stubborn archive, three complaints about missing citations, and one dramatically worded message accusing a database of personally conspiring against historians.
Neither woman was surprised. This was normal. The two of them had lived long enough to recognize the signs. Once a topic captured your attention, the rest of the world had a tendency to disappear. Hours became minutes. Meals were forgotten. Entire afternoons vanished beneath stacks of books, highlighted passages, and increasingly specific research questions that somehow always led to three more.
Agatha claimed it was one of your most frustrating qualities.
She also secretly adored it.
The small house sat comfortably beneath the warm glow of the afternoon sun. Light spilled through the windows and stretched across hardwood floors worn smooth by decades of living. Books occupied nearly every available surface. Some were stacked neatly on shelves while others had found homes on end tables, windowsills, and chairs because somebody—which Agatha insisted was you and Rio insisted was Agatha—refused to put them away.
A half-finished mug of tea rested on the coffee table. Somewhere in the kitchen, the remains of Agatha's attempted lunch still occupied the stove after she had declared the entire experience "a personal attack."
Rio had laughed so hard she nearly dropped her watering can.
Now she stood near the large windows overlooking the backyard, tending to the collection of plants that had steadily overtaken the house over the years. Vines curled around bookshelves. Flowers bloomed in places flowers had absolutely no business blooming. Small pots occupied every patch of sunlight they could find.
Rio considered this perfectly reasonable.
Agatha disagreed.
Frequently.
Usually while discovering a new plant where a plant had definitely not been the day before.
At the moment, Agatha lounged across the couch with all the dramatic elegance of a woman convinced she was suffering immensely. A book rested open in her lap, though she hadn't turned a page in nearly twenty minutes. Every few moments, her gaze drifted toward the front door before returning to the same paragraph she clearly wasn't reading.
"You know," she said eventually, breaking the comfortable silence, "she's been at the library for hours."
Rio didn't look up from the fern she was trimming. "She's researching."
"She's been researching for three days."
The corner of Rio's mouth twitched. "Mm."
Agatha sighed dramatically. "I miss our wife."
That finally earned her a glance. Rio's expression softened immediately. "We'll see her in a few. She’ll come home."
Agatha huffed. "I know she'll come home. I still miss her."
The response drew a quiet laugh from Rio before she returned her attention to the plant in her hands.
Outside, the wind stirred the trees surrounding the property. Leaves rustled softly against one another while sunlight filtered through the branches in shifting patterns of gold and green. Somewhere beyond the forest, a bird called out. The house responded with the familiar creaks and groans of a place that had been lived in, loved, and filled with memories.
Everything felt normal. Comfortable. Safe. The sort of afternoon the three of you had spent countless times together.
Then the bond went dark.
The watering can slipped from Rio's fingers before she even realized she had let go of it. Water splashed across the hardwood floor, soaking into the rug beneath her feet. Agatha was already standing before it hit. The book tumbled from her lap and landed forgotten among the couch cushions as every instinct she possessed immediately snapped toward the sudden absence where your presence should have been.
For a moment, neither woman moved.
The silence that followed felt wrong in a way Agatha couldn't immediately explain. The bond hadn't broken. If it had broken, they would have known. They would have felt it. This was something else entirely.
The connection was still there. Somewhere. They could feel the outline of it lingering at the edge of their awareness. It was like standing outside a familiar house and knowing someone was inside while being unable to see through the windows. Like hearing the faintest echo of a voice and realizing you couldn't make out the words.
The bond wasn't gone. It had been smothered. Buried beneath something unnatural. Agatha felt her stomach drop. The certainty arrived immediately, settling into her chest with terrifying clarity. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
"Rio."
She barely recognized her own voice. Across the room, Rio slowly lifted her head. Every trace of color had vanished from her face. The sight sent a fresh wave of dread crashing through Agatha because she realized instantly that Rio had felt it too.
The impossible thing. The thing that should not have been possible. For a heartbeat neither woman spoke. Agatha could practically see the thoughts racing behind Rio's eyes as she reached for the bond. Searching. Listening. Looking for any sign of you.
Finding only silence. Not absence. Not death. Silence. And somehow that was worse. You should have been there. A familiar warmth resting quietly at the edge of her awareness. The steady presence she had carried for so long she could no longer remember what it felt like not to have it.
Instead, there was only distance. Distance and a terrifying quiet that seemed to grow heavier with every passing second. Something shifted in Rio's expression. Agatha felt her heart sink. Because she knew that look. She had seen it before.
The look that appeared whenever Rio stopped being merely Rio and became something far older. Something that existed beyond names and faces and centuries. The air in the room seemed to change around her. Leaves trembled on nearby plants despite the absence of wind. A flowering vine slowly curled tighter around the bookshelf beside her as though reacting to something the rest of the world could not feel.
Death had noticed the silence too. Agatha's pulse hammered against her ribs. "Something's wrong." The words left her mouth in a whisper. Neither of them questioned it. Neither hesitated. After everything they had survived together, there was only one explanation for a silence like this. And neither woman wanted to say it aloud.
Rio moved first. Her eyes closed. Agatha watched as her wife reached outward with senses no mortal being possessed. The room seemed to grow impossibly still around her. The leaves stopped moving. The house itself felt as though it were holding its breath.
Rio listened. Not with her ears. With something older. Something woven into the fabric of existence itself. Agatha had watched her do it countless times over the centuries. Watched her locate souls across impossible distances. Watched her sense the final breaths of kings and beggars alike. Watched her know things no living creature should ever know.
For one terrible second, hope sparked inside Agatha's chest. Rio would find you. Of course she would. She was Rio. She was the Original Green Witch. Death. If anyone could find you, it would be her.
Then Rio's eyes opened. The hope died immediately. Because she had never seen that expression on Rio's face before. Confusion. Not uncertainty. Not fear. Confusion. As though she had reached into a place where an answer should have existed and found nothing waiting for her.
"I can't… feel her." The words barely rose above a whisper.
Agatha stared. "What?"
Rio swallowed. The motion looked strangely human. Vulnerable. "I can't feel her Agatha."
The room seemed to tilt beneath Agatha's feet. That wasn't possible. Rio could feel every soul. Every life. Every death.
Every heartbeat moving through the world. She had once located Agatha on another continent without so much as a map. She had found her through wars.Through oceans. Through centuries. And now she couldn't find you?
"No." The denial escaped before Agatha could stop it. Rio's jaw tightened. Agatha reached for the bond again. Harder this time. Desperately. You.
Come on, my love. Answer. Nothing. Only silence. The quiet was becoming unbearable. Agatha suddenly found herself reaching for her phone. Her fingers shook as she opened your messages.
The last text stared back at her. The last ordinary conversation. The last joke. The last piece of normalcy. Her thumb immediately pressed your contact. The call connected. Once. Twice. Three times.
Straight to voicemail. Something cold wrapped around her spine. Not fear. Not yet. Something worse. Because fear required uncertainty. And every instinct Agatha possessed was rapidly becoming certain of one thing.
You were gone.
***********
Consciousness didn’t return all at once.
It came in fragments, slow and disjointed, like something dragging you back piece by piece instead of allowing you to wake naturally. The first thing you became aware of was the cold. It pressed into your back, into your shoulders, into every part of you that touched the surface beneath you. It wasn’t the kind of cold that came from weather. It felt deliberate. Deep. Like the stone itself had been waiting for you.
Then came the sound.
A steady, uneven drip somewhere in the distance. Water striking stone in a slow, echoing rhythm that filled the silence in a way that made it feel heavier. Beneath it, there were voices. Low. Blurred. Too far away to understand, but close enough that you knew they were speaking about something—someone—with intent.
You didn’t open your eyes yet. You listened. You tried to gather yourself. Your body didn’t feel right. It felt… distant. Heavy. As though you had been laid out and forgotten for hours, your limbs no longer entirely under your control. Your breath came shallow at first, catching in your throat before settling into something uneven and strained.
Then you felt it. Pressure around your wrists. That was what forced your eyes open. The ceiling above you came into view slowly, your vision struggling to focus as the world swam in and out of clarity. Rough stone stretched overhead, uneven and cracked with age. Shadows moved across it, cast by a flickering light source somewhere just out of view. The dimness of the space made it difficult to tell how large the room was, but the echoes told you enough.
Enclosed. Maybe underground. Maybe not.
Your gaze shifted. The movement sent a wave of dizziness crashing through you, but you forced yourself to look. Iron. Bands of it. Your wrists were secured above you, stretched just far enough to make any attempt to pull away painful. The metal wrapped tightly around your skin, thick and unyielding, etched faintly with markings that pulsed just beneath the surface. More restraints circled your arms, your torso, your legs. Each one placed with intention. Each one layered.
Not just to hold you. To contain you. Enchanted iron. The realization hit with terrifying clarity. You could feel it. Not just the weight of it, but the magic threaded through it. Crude compared to your own, lacking the nuance and depth you had spent centuries mastering, but effective. Brutal in its simplicity. It pressed against your skin like a constant pressure, like something pushing back against you. Like something that knew what you were.
Your magic stirred instinctively. It rose beneath your skin the way it always had, answering fear with power, reaching outward for something to hold onto— And then it faltered. The sensation made your breath hitch sharply. You tried again. Harder this time. Desperately. A spark. A thread. Anything. The response came in the form of pain.
It tore through you, sharp and immediate, forcing a broken sound from your throat as the magic collapsed before it could take shape. It didn’t disappear. You could still feel it there, coiled somewhere deep inside you, but every attempt to reach it felt like pushing against something that refused to let it through.
Like something was taking it. Draining it. Slowly. Deliberately.
“Careful.”
The voice cut through your thoughts. You turned your head toward it, your vision still struggling to steady as figures came into focus. At first, they were little more than shadows moving at the edge of the room, but as your eyes adjusted, shapes became people.
More than one. Several. They stood at varying distances, some closer, some further back, but all of them watching you with the same unsettling focus. Papers were spread across a nearby table. Books. Notes. Objects you couldn’t fully make out from where you were.
This wasn’t random. This was prepared. One of them stepped forward. They moved slowly, deliberately, crouching just enough to bring themselves into your line of sight. You didn’t recognize their face, but something about the way they looked at you made your stomach turn.
It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t even hatred. It was curiosity. Measured. Interested. Like they were looking at something they had spent years trying to find.
“Awake,” someone else said behind them. There was the faint scratch of a pen moving across paper. Recording. Documenting. Your pulse began to pound harder. They hadn’t killed you. That realization settled heavily in your chest as everything else began to fall into place. They hadn’t meant to. They had taken you alive. The horror of that realization was worse than anything else.
Death would have been simple.
This was not.
“Let’s begin.”
The words settled into the room with quiet authority, as though this moment had been prepared long before you ever opened your eyes. There was no urgency in them, no uncertainty. Only expectation.
The first question came immediately.
“How old are you?”
You said nothing. Your mind was still catching up, still trying to understand how they had done this, how they had found you, how they had managed to break through protections that had held for lifetimes. Silence felt like the only thing you had left that belonged to you, the only control you could still claim in a situation that had stripped everything else away.
For half a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the iron tightened. The sensation did not begin as pain. It began as pressure, something deep and invasive that moved through your body rather than against it. The bands around your wrists pulsed faintly, and suddenly it felt as though something inside you had been seized and pulled downward. Your breath caught sharply in your throat as your muscles tensed instinctively against the restraints, your body reacting before your mind could understand what was happening.
Pain followed. Not sharp. Not clean.
It was wrong.
It felt like something reaching into you and pulling at threads that were never meant to be touched, something interfering with the very foundation of what you were. A broken sound escaped your throat before you could stop it, your fingers twitching uselessly against the iron as the sensation spread through your chest and down your spine.
“Answer,” one of them said calmly.
Your jaw tightened as you forced yourself still, forcing yourself to remain silent despite the way your body trembled beneath the strain. You would not give them anything. You would not let them take that from you too.
Another voice spoke, quieter this time, almost thoughtful. “They always try that first.”
The pressure returned, stronger now, more deliberate. It coiled through your chest and into your core, dragging against your magic in a way that made your vision blur at the edges. You could feel it then, unmistakably—something pulling at your power, not violently, but with precision. Testing. Measuring. Learning.
You bit down hard enough to taste blood.
Still, you did not answer. “Who is in your coven?”
The question landed heavier than the first. Your silence was immediate. The response came just as quickly. The iron flared again, and this time the pain spread outward, radiating through your limbs in a slow, grinding wave that made it difficult to breathe. It wasn’t just pain. It was depletion. You could feel something being taken alongside it, drawn from you in careful increments, as though they were deliberately avoiding taking too much at once.
Your breath came uneven as you tried to steady yourself, your thoughts scrambling for something to hold onto.
Agatha.
Rio.
Home.
The names rose instinctively, but the comfort that should have followed did not come. That silence pressed harder now, more suffocating than the restraints themselves.
“Who else do you know?”
The voice came from closer this time, the speaker stepping just within the edge of your vision. You forced your gaze toward them, your sight still struggling to focus as their features came into view. There was no anger in their expression. No cruelty. Only interest.
That was worse. You remained silent. A pause followed, but it was not hesitation. It was assessment.
“Record that,” someone said behind them. “Subject resists initial questioning.”
The word hit harder than the pain had. Subject. Not person. Not witch. Subject.
The iron pulsed again, and this time the sensation drove straight through your core, tearing through the place your magic should have been strongest. You felt it then in full—something siphoning it away, drawing it out in thin, controlled threads. Not enough to destroy you. Just enough to weaken you.
Your body arched instinctively against the restraints, a strained sound escaping your throat as the pressure intensified. Somewhere in the room, someone murmured in quiet approval.
“Responsive,” a voice noted.
“Expected,” another replied.
The questions did not stop. They came faster now, layered over one another with increasing precision. Names you had used. Places you had lived. Moments in history you had witnessed. Some spoken outright, others referenced indirectly, as though they were watching for reactions more than answers.
They were not searching. They were confirming.
“Salem.” The word cut cleanly through everything. Your breath stilled. “You were there.”
It was not a question. It did not need to be. Cold dread spread through your chest as you forced yourself not to react, not to give them even the smallest confirmation. But they were watching too closely. You could feel it in the way their attention sharpened, in the subtle shift of their posture.
“Mark that,” someone said quietly.
“Physiological response noted.”
Your stomach dropped. They were not just listening to what you said. They were reading everything else. The iron tightened again, and the pain followed, deeper now, more invasive. It dragged through you like something searching, probing the limits of what your body could endure. Your magic responded reflexively, trying to rise, trying to defend—
And once again, it was pulled away. Drained. Thread by thread.
“Fascinating,” someone murmured.
You forced your eyes open fully, locking onto the nearest figure you could focus on. You needed to see them clearly. Needed to understand what you were facing. What you saw only made the dread deepen.
There was no chaos here. No frenzy. Everything was organized. Intentional.
Crosses had been carved into the stone behind them, faint but unmistakable. Old designs, altered over time, stripped of their original purpose and reshaped into something functional. Tools were laid out nearby, not scattered but placed with care, each one positioned as though it had a specific role to play.
This had not been improvised. This had been built. Refined. Passed down. They had not simply found you. They had been preparing for you. Or someone like you. The room quieted again, just slightly, just enough that the next question settled into the space with unsettling clarity.
“How do you keep surviving?”
The voice was softer now, almost contemplative. Your heart stuttered.
“What makes you so special?”
The words lingered, heavier than the rest, because they were not asked out of ignorance. They were asked because they believed there was an answer. And as the iron held you in place, as your magic slipped further from your grasp, as your connection to Agatha and Rio remained silent in a way that should not have been possible, one terrible truth settled deep into your bones.
They didn’t need you to speak. They had time. And they were willing to take everything from you until you did.
*******
The house no longer felt like home.
It felt like a place waiting for something to break.
Every room held a quiet that had long since stopped being peaceful. The usual sounds—the soft settling of wood, the distant rustle of leaves outside, the faint creak of old floorboards—seemed sharper now, louder in the absence of your presence. Even the light filtering through the windows felt wrong, too still, too unmoving, as though the day itself had begun to hesitate.
Hours went by.
Neither of them stopped.
Neither of them rested.
Neither of them even remembered what it felt like to breathe without effort.
Agatha had lost track of how many times she had tried to reach you. The calls blurred together in her mind—your name lighting up her screen, the sound of it ringing into nothing, the inevitable drop into silence. At first she had left messages, her voice steady out of habit, out of denial, as though you would hear them later and laugh about how dramatic she had sounded. By the fourth, her voice had cracked halfway through your name. By the fifth, she had said nothing at all.
Now her phone sat abandoned on the kitchen counter, the screen dark, the last message still open as though it might somehow change if she looked at it again.
She had turned to magic instead. Not the careful, practiced kind she preferred. Not the kind that required thought or structure. This was something older. Sharper. Pulled from instinct rather than intention. She had searched the house first, every room, every corner, every place you might have returned to without them noticing, even though she knew—knew—that you were not there. After that, the spells had become less precise. More desperate. None of them had worked.
Rio had stopped pretending to be human somewhere around the second hour. It wasn’t a decision she made consciously. It simply… slipped. The careful balance she maintained, the quiet restraint that allowed her to exist in the world without overwhelming it, began to unravel piece by piece as the silence where you should have been stretched longer and longer.
The air around her changed first.
It grew colder, not sharply, but steadily, until Agatha became aware of it in the way one notices a storm approaching before the sky fully darkens. The warmth that had filled the house only hours before began to drain away, replaced by something heavier, something that pressed against the skin and settled into the bones.
Then the plants began to react. Leaves turned slowly toward her, as though drawn by something unseen. Vines tightened around their supports, curling inward instead of reaching outward. A flower that had been in full bloom that morning began to wilt, its petals softening and folding in on themselves as though the force sustaining it had weakened.
Agatha noticed. Of course she did. She had seen this before. She had seen what happened when Rio lost control. But never like this. Not with you missing. Not with the bond still there and yet impossibly silent, as though something had wrapped around it and smothered it without breaking it completely.
Rio stood in the center of the room, utterly still, her eyes unfocused in a way that had nothing to do with distraction. She was reaching outward in ways no human mind could comprehend, stretching her awareness across distances that bent the very edges of reality. Agatha could feel it happening without even trying, the subtle shift in the world around them, the quiet imbalance creeping into things that had always existed in harmony.
The line between life and death was not meant to be disturbed. And Rio was disturbing it. Not out of recklessness. Not out of anger. But because she was searching. Because she could not find you. And that was something the world itself did not know how to withstand. Agatha paced. Relentlessly.
Back and forth across the length of the house, her movements sharp and uneven, her thoughts racing faster than she could keep up with them. Every possibility surfaced at once, colliding into one another until she could no longer separate them. Hunters. Old enemies. Forgotten grudges. Spells cast centuries ago that might have left something lingering. Mistakes she had made. Things she had overlooked. Protections she should have strengthened.
Her hands shook. She hated that. Hated the loss of control. Hated the way fear was beginning to seep into places she had spent lifetimes fortifying against it. “We’ll find her.”
Rio’s voice cut through the room. Calm. Too calm. Agatha turned toward her immediately, the movement sharp enough to betray everything she was trying to hold in place.
“Rio—”
“We’ll find our wife.”
The words were steady.
Certain.
And that certainty was what made them terrifying. Because Rio wasn’t calm. Agatha knew her better than anyone. That voice was not calm. It was contained. There was something vast beneath it, something ancient and immeasurable pressing against the edges of her control. Terror, grief, and something far more dangerous were being held in place by nothing but willpower, compressed into a single line of certainty that threatened to fracture at any moment.
“It’s been hours,” Agatha said, and she hated how her voice sounded. Thin. Strained. Not quite breaking, but close enough that she could feel it.
“I know.” Rio did not look at her when she answered. She did not need to. She knew. Of course she knew. She felt time differently than Agatha did. She felt the presence of life and the absence of it in ways no one else could. She understood what it meant for you to be missing in a way that went beyond distance.
And still—
She couldn’t feel you. The house creaked softly as something shifted in the distance, a quiet reminder that the world had not stopped, even if it felt like it had. Neither of them moved. Neither of them stopped.
It was somewhere around the sixth hour that everything changed.
Agatha had been moving again, her pacing carrying her into the far end of the house where older wards still lingered beneath the surface of the walls. This part of the house held history in a way the rest of it did not. Layers of magic had been built here over decades, reinforced and reshaped with each life the three of you had lived within its walls. Some spells had been cast in protection, others in desperation, and a few in quiet moments of fear that none of you had ever spoken about afterward.
The air here always felt different. Heavier. Aware. It was the kind of place where magic did not simply exist—it remembered. That was where she felt it.
At first, it was nothing more than a flicker at the edge of her awareness, so faint she might have dismissed it under any other circumstance. But there was nothing normal about this moment, and Agatha had lived too long to ignore something that felt even slightly out of place.
She stilled instantly. Every muscle in her body went rigid as her senses sharpened, her awareness stretching outward as she reached for the disturbance again. It was subtle, buried beneath layers of interference that made it difficult to grasp fully, but once she found it, once she let herself feel it—
Recognition struck like a blade. Familiar. Wrong. Her breath caught in her throat.
No.
That wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
Her mind reached for it anyway, dragging the sensation forward whether she wanted it or not. The shape of it settled into place first, not visually but instinctively, like something her magic had learned to recognize long before her mind could name it. Then came the intention behind it, the way it pressed against the edges of her awareness with something deliberate, something crafted, something meant to bind and suppress.
And then came the memory. Not one. Many. Layered. Repeated. Recognition didn’t come from a single moment. It came from a pattern. From the slow, horrifying realization that this was not new. That this feeling—this mark, this presence—had existed before.
They had hunted you all before.
Not once. Not by chance. But with purpose. In another life. Another century. Agatha staggered back a step, her hand catching against the wall as the memory fully took hold. It wasn’t just the knowledge of it. It was everything that came with it, every piece she had buried, every moment she had refused to revisit because it had come too close to ending everything.
She remembered the chase. The fear that had settled into her bones when she realized someone was tracking you—not randomly, not blindly, but with intent. She remembered the way you had tried to brush it off at first, how you had insisted it was nothing, how you had smiled through it even as the danger grew closer.
She remembered how late they had been. How they hadn’t understood what was happening until it was already too close, too real, too dangerous to ignore.
She remembered the moment they almost found you. How close they had come. How easily it could have gone differently. How easily they could have lost you before they ever had the chance to build the life they now took for granted.
And now—
Now all she could see was that moment repeating, not as a distant memory but as something unfolding again in real time, something she could not stop no matter how hard she tried. Only this time, she wasn’t there. This time, she hadn’t arrived yet. This time, you were already gone, and there was nothing between you and whatever had taken you.
A sharp, uneven breath tore from her chest, the sound breaking free before she could contain it. Her grip tightened against the wall, fingers digging into the surface as though she could anchor herself against the weight of the realization settling into place. It was crushing in its certainty, undeniable in a way that left no room for hope to exist untouched.
“I can’t do this again.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them.
They weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be. Rio went completely still. The shift was immediate and absolute, the kind of stillness that did not belong to anything human. The air in the room seemed to tighten around her, as though something vast had suddenly drawn inward, collapsing into a single point of focus centered entirely on Agatha. Even the house seemed to react, the faint creak of wood and rustle of leaves outside falling into an unnatural quiet, as though the world itself had paused in recognition.
Because Agatha did not say things like that. Not after everything they had survived. Not after centuries of standing unshaken in the face of things that should have broken her. Agatha Harkness did not admit fear.
Not like this. Not ever. But this wasn’t just fear. This was memory pressing too close to the surface. This was loss that had never truly left them. This was the echo of something that had already nearly destroyed all three of you once before.
Rio turned slowly.
For the first time since the bond had gone quiet, her attention shifted fully back to Agatha. The searching stopped. The reaching stopped. Everything that had been stretching outward across impossible distances collapsed inward in an instant, focusing entirely on her.
There was no need for explanation. No need for clarification. She knew.
She knew exactly what Agatha had felt the moment that sigil brushed against her awareness. She knew exactly what memory had surfaced, what fear had followed, what conclusion Agatha had already reached before she spoke the words aloud.
Nicky.
Not just the absence of him. Not just the grief that had followed. But the life you had all shared together before everything broke. His absence. The aftermath that had followed. The way it had hollowed something out inside all of you, leaving behind a grief that had never fully faded, only settled into something quieter over time but never truly gone.
The way the house had felt too large, too empty, every room holding echoes of something that was no longer there, every silence heavier because it used to be filled with him. She remembered Agatha in those first days, the way she had moved through the world like something hollowed out, her sharp edges dulled by a grief so profound it stripped everything else away and left something fragile in its place.
She remembered you, too.
The way you had held on even as you were breaking, the way your hands had still reached for them without hesitation, grounding them in something that refused to disappear. The way you had refused to let either of them vanish completely into that loss, even when it would have been easier to fall with them. The way you had stayed, had endured, had kept loving them through something that should have ended all of you. The three of you had not walked away from that loss unchanged. You had survived it together.
Barely.
And now—
Now that absence was pressing in again, creeping into the edges of everything they had rebuilt. Not the same. But close enough that it made something deep and instinctive recoil in recognition. Too close.
Agatha met her gaze, and for once there was no deflection, no sharp wit to soften what she was feeling, no distance placed between herself and the truth of it.
“I cannot lose her.”
Her voice was steady. But the fear beneath it was unmistakable, raw in a way Agatha never allowed herself to be. It wasn’t the kind of fear that panicked or scattered. It was the kind that settled deep, rooted in knowledge, in memory, in the understanding of exactly what it would mean if they failed.
For a moment, Rio said nothing. The stillness stretched between them, heavy with everything that did not need to be spoken aloud, every memory shared, every loss carried, every piece of you that existed in both of them.
Then something shifted. Subtle, but undeniable. The control she had been holding fractured, just enough for the truth beneath it to surface. Not outwardly, not in a way that would shake the world yet, but internally, where the weight of what she was containing had nowhere left to go. For the first time since the bond had gone silent, the depth of her own fear became visible. It was quieter than Agatha’s. Contained in a way that made it no less devastating. But it was there. Clear. Unavoidable.
“We won’t.”
The words were not whispered. They were not uncertain. They were not something she was trying to convince herself of. They were a promise. And this time, the certainty did not feel contained.
It felt inevitable.
*****
They thought they were prepared.
That belief had been built carefully over years, over generations, passed down like doctrine alongside prayer and scripture. The building itself reflected that kind of thinking. It stood half-forgotten on the far edge of old church property, its stone walls weathered by time and neglect, its windows clouded with dust and age. The air inside was thick with the smell of damp wood, old incense, and something metallic that lingered too long to be anything but blood.
It was the kind of place no one questioned.
The kind of place no one came looking.
Inside, everything had been arranged with intention. Symbols carved into the floors and walls layered over one another in careful, obsessive patterns, twisting older magic into something rigid and cruelly efficient. Iron had been shaped and reshaped, etched with runes stolen, altered, and forced into purpose, each band designed to suppress, to drain, to break. Candles burned low in uneven rows, their flames flickering weakly as though even light struggled to survive in a place like this.
They had built this place to hold something powerful. To contain it. To study it. And at the center of it—
You.
Bound. Bruised. Barely holding on.
Your body felt foreign, like something you were trapped inside rather than something you controlled. Dark bruises had bloomed across your ribs and arms where the restraints held you too tightly, where they had tightened them again and again when you refused to answer. Your wrists were raw, the skin split in places where iron had rubbed and bitten too deeply, dried blood flaking where it had been left too long.
There were cuts you didn’t remember receiving. Thin ones. Deep ones. Some fresh, others already healing unevenly, your magic trying and failing to keep up with the damage being done. Every breath scraped painfully through your lungs, your chest tight and aching, your body trembling beneath the strain of exhaustion and whatever they had been doing to pull your magic from you.
It never stopped. That feeling. That pulling. That slow, relentless draining that left you weaker each time it flared. Tears slipped down your face despite your efforts to stop them, trailing through dirt and dried blood, your vision blurring as another voice cut through the haze.
“Answer me.” It was sharper now. Less patient. “How long have you lived like this?”
You said nothing. Your silence had long since stopped being tolerated. The iron responded immediately, tightening with a violent pulse that sent a wave of pain tearing through your body. Your breath broke into a gasp, your back arching instinctively against the restraints as the force reached inside you again, pulling at your magic, dragging it downward like something trying to strip you from the inside out.
Still—
You didn’t answer.
“Who taught you?” another voice demanded, closer this time. “Who gave you this power?”
Your head dipped forward, your strength faltering as you tried to stay present, tried to hold onto something that wasn’t this room, these voices, this pain. Agatha. Rio. Home. The names felt distant now, like something just out of reach, something you could almost grasp if you just—
“Look at me.” A hand caught your jaw, fingers digging in as your head was forced upward. Pain flared along your neck, your vision swimming as you tried to focus on the face in front of you. “Who else is with you?” they pressed. “How many are there?”
Your lips parted. No sound came. You shook your head weakly, not in answer, but because it was the only movement left to you. A mistake. The iron flared again. This time it tore through you so sharply your body jerked hard against the restraints, a broken cry slipping past your lips before you could stop it. Your fingers curled uselessly as your magic tried to rise in response, tried to defend—
And was dragged back down. Stolen. Thread by thread.
“Stupid girl.” The words were muttered, dismissive, edged with frustration rather than rage. “You think silence protects you?”
Another voice, colder. “You think we haven’t already learned enough?”
A hand released your face abruptly, letting your head fall forward again as your breath came in uneven, shaking pulls. Your body felt too heavy to hold upright, every muscle straining just to keep you conscious.
“We know what you are,” someone continued, pacing just out of view. “We know what you’ve done. The lives you’ve lived. The places you’ve been.” A pause. “We know you were there.”
Your stomach dropped.
“Salem. New York. Chicago. Philly. Spain. France.” The word cut through everything. Your breath stilled, your body going rigid despite the exhaustion weighing you down. They noticed. Of course they did.
“See?” one of them said quietly. “She hears it.”
“She knows we’re not lying.”
The scratch of a pen followed, calm and methodical. Your chest tightened painfully. They weren’t guessing. They weren’t searching. They were confirming.
“How do you keep trying to heal?” another demanded. “Why do you persist when others don’t?”
Your silence stretched. The iron tightened again. Pain followed. Deeper now. More invasive. It dragged through your very soul, through the place your magic should have been strongest, pulling harder this time, more deliberately, as though they were growing impatient with how little you were giving them. Your body trembled violently against the restraints, your breath breaking, your vision darkening at the edges.
“Answer,” they snapped.
You couldn’t. Even if you wanted to. Your voice felt gone. Your strength was gone. All that remained was the refusal.
“Useless,” someone muttered.
“No,” another corrected quietly. “Not useless.” A pause. “Not yet.”
You were so tired. Your head fell forward again, your body sagging against the restraints as the room blurred further, the voices around you fading into something distant and indistinct. Your heart stuttered unevenly in your chest, your breathing shallow, your magic barely more than a faint, flickering presence beneath your skin.
You had promised them you would be careful. The thought came dimly. You had promised. Another tear slipped free, tracing slowly down your temple, catching briefly at your ear before disappearing into your hair.
You tried, one last time, to reach for them. For Agatha. For Rio. For the bond that had never failed you before.
Silence answered. It wasn’t just absence. It was suffocating.
It pressed in around you, heavy and unrelenting, settling into your chest in a way that made it harder to breathe. For the first time in longer than you could remember, the bond did not answer. Not a flicker. Not a whisper. Nothing but a vast, endless quiet where something warm and constant had always been.
Your chest tightened painfully. So, this was how it ended. Not in fire. Not in some final, desperate stand. But here. Alone.
A weak breath slipped from your lips, your body sagging further against the restraints as the last of your strength bled out of you. The room blurred at the edges, the voices around you fading into something distant and indistinct. You barely registered the movement anymore, the presence of them, the way they circled and watched and waited.
It didn’t matter.
Nothing did.
Your head dipped lower, your vision slipping further into darkness as your heartbeat stuttered unevenly in your chest. Your magic flickered faintly beneath your skin, no longer something you could reach, only something you could feel being taken.
A slow, quiet ending. You almost welcomed it.
Then—
Something broke. It wasn’t loud at first. Not the way you expected. It wasn’t an explosion or a crash or anything that made immediate sense.
It was wrong.
A deep, splitting force that moved through the building like a fracture racing through bone. The walls trembled faintly, dust loosening from the ceiling in a soft, drifting fall that caught in the candlelight. The voices around you faltered, confusion rippling through the room as heads turned toward the source of the sound.
You didn’t lift your head. You couldn’t. Your body didn’t respond the way it should anymore. Another impact followed.
Closer. Stronger. The structure groaned under it, the sound of stone protesting as something struck again with enough force to carry through every surface, every wall, every layer of protection they had built into this place.
Your breath caught. Not from the pain. From something else. Something instinctive. Something that reached deeper than exhaustion. Magic. Not theirs. Not the crude, stolen thing they had twisted into control.
This was something else entirely. Something familiar. The air shifted. Even from where you hung, barely conscious, you felt it. A change in pressure. A change in presence. The kind of shift that didn’t belong to the physical world so much as something layered just beneath it.
Hope hurt.
It tore through your chest so sharply it almost felt like pain, your body reacting before your mind could follow. Your fingers twitched weakly against the restraints, your head lifting just slightly as your breath hitched in something dangerously close to disbelief.
No.
No, that wasn’t—
Another strike. This one shattered something. You heard it. Felt it. The crack of something breaking apart under force it had not been built to withstand, followed by a surge of energy that rippled through the structure of the building itself.
And then—
Magic answered. It didn’t slip into the room. It tore into it. Purple light burst through the outer space, violent and undeniable, crashing against the wards with a force that made them flare in resistance before splintering apart. The symbols carved into the walls flickered erratically, their structure failing under the pressure as something far stronger pressed through them without hesitation.
Your name followed it. You didn’t know if you heard it or imagined it. It cut through everything. Sharp. Breaking. A sound that did not belong to the composed, controlled woman you knew.
Agatha.
Your breath hitched, your chest tightening as something inside you surged in response, weak but desperate and alive. She was here. She found you. The room erupted into motion around you. Voices rose in sharp, overlapping commands, the careful control they had maintained fracturing into something urgent, something unsteady.
“She’s breached the outer—”
“How did she—”
The next impact silenced them. It wasn’t controlled. It wasn’t measured. It was fury.
The doorway to the outer room gave way under the force of it, splintering inward as wood and stone broke apart in a violent collapse. Purple magic followed, crashing through the space like a storm finally unleashed, tearing through the protections they had built as though they had never existed at all.
Agatha stepped through it. Not careful. Not restrained. Her power moved with her, not something she wielded but something that surged outward, striking anything that stood between her and the space beyond. The air itself seemed to burn with it, thick and charged and impossible to ignore.
Her eyes scanned the room. Searching. Feral.
“Where is she?” Her voice cut through everything, sharp and breaking in a way that sent something twisting painfully through your chest.
You tried to answer. Tried to make a sound. Nothing came. Your body failed you again, your head dropping as your strength slipped further away.
But she was closer now. You could feel it. Her magic pressed against the edges of the room, overwhelming, tearing through what remained of their defenses as she pushed forward without hesitation.
They had prepared for her. They had expected her. They thought they understood what she was. They were wrong. Because Agatha was not the thing they should have feared most.
The shift when Rio entered was not loud. It was not violent. It was quiet. Terribly, horribly quiet. Every candle in the room went out at once. Not flickering. Not dimming.
Gone.
Darkness swallowed the space for a fraction of a second before the dim, fractured light from the outer room spilled inward again, but it felt different now. Heavier. Thicker. As though the absence of light had weight to it.
The enchanted symbols carved into the walls shuddered visibly, the magic within them collapsing inward like something suffocating. The iron around your wrists pulsed once, sharply, before going still, its force faltering as something far greater pressed into the space.
The air changed. Cold. Not the kind that came from temperature. The kind that came from absence. From something being removed. Every person in the room felt it. They didn’t understand it. But their bodies did.
Their breathing faltered. Their movements slowed. Something deep and instinctive recoiled all at once, a recognition older than thought, older than belief. One of them turned. Slowly. And saw her.
Rio did not need to move. She didn’t need to raise her voice. She didn’t need to do anything at all. Her presence alone bent the space around her, reality thinning slightly in acknowledgment of something that had existed long before anything in that room had been built. The balance they had tried to control, to manipulate, to cage—it shifted the moment she stepped inside.
“What are you?” one of them whispered.
The question trembled. Not with curiosity. With fear. Rio looked at him. And when she spoke, her voice did not rise.
“The reason your heartbeat has an ending.” The words settled into the room like something final. And then—
Everything gave way.
Power surged outward from her, not cast, not shaped, but released. It moved through the space like something ancient and inevitable, something that did not need permission to exist. The foundation of the building shuddered violently, cracks racing through stone as the air itself seemed to buckle beneath the weight of it.
The guards dropped.
Some collapsed instantly, their bodies hitting the ground with a dull, final weight that echoed too loudly in the ruined quiet, as though whatever force had been holding them upright had simply… let go. Limbs slackened mid-motion, weapons slipping uselessly from their hands, their chests no longer rising as they struck the stone floor without resistance.
But others remained.
Frozen. Rooted where they stood as if something deeper than instinct had seized control of their bodies and refused to release it.
Their weapons hung loose in their hands, fingers no longer tight enough to grip, their knuckles pale and trembling. Their breaths came shallow and uneven, each inhale catching like it might be their last, each exhale stuttering as though their bodies were already beginning to understand something their minds could not yet grasp.
They stared. Not at Agatha. Not at the destruction she had carved through their defenses.
At Rio.
Watching. Unable to move. Unable to look away. Unable to understand what they were seeing—but understanding, somehow, that they should not have been seeing it at all.
Fear rooted them in place. Not fear of death. Something deeper. Something older. The kind of fear that bypassed thought entirely, that lived in bone and blood and memory, something passed down long before language had ever given it a name.
Because they could feel it now. The shift. The imbalance. The wrongness of the air pressing in around them, thick and suffocating, as though the room itself had begun to collapse inward under the weight of something it was never meant to hold.
They had not captured something powerful. They had taken something that belonged to something older than power. And it had come to take you back. For one suspended moment, no one moved.
The outer room trembled in the aftermath of shattered wards and broken magic, the remnants of their careful preparations flickering weakly along the walls before dying out completely. The smell of burned sigils and cracked iron filled the air, sharp and acrid, mixing with the damp rot of the building and the faint metallic tang of blood.
Dust drifted slowly downward from the fractured ceiling, catching in the dim light that struggled to hold against the growing darkness. The silence that followed was not empty.
It was waiting.
Then—
Agatha heard you. It was barely a sound. A broken thing. A soft, uneven gasp that scraped out of your chest like it hurt to exist at all, like every breath was something your body no longer remembered how to do. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t clear. It shouldn’t have carried this far.
But it did. And it cut through everything. Through the silence. Through the fear. Through the magic still thrumming violently in the air. It cut through her with a precision no spell could ever match. Her head snapped toward the source instantly.
Not here. Not in this room. Beyond. Through the reinforced door at the back—the one layered in thicker wards, deeper carvings, heavier iron. The one they had guarded more carefully than anything else. The one they had hidden you behind.
You. Another sound followed.
A weak, fractured groan, your breath catching again as your body struggled to remember how to function. Every inhale seemed to fight against something inside you, your chest rising unevenly, your shoulders trembling under the strain of simply staying alive.
Even from this distance. Even through stone and failing magic. She could hear it. And it was wrong. So wrong it made something violent twist in her chest. You didn’t know where you were. You didn’t know what was real.
Somewhere in the haze of pain and exhaustion, drifting at the edge of consciousness, you thought—maybe—you heard them. Maybe your mind was trying to comfort you. Maybe this was the last kindness your body would give you before everything stopped. Maybe you were already gone.
Another gasp tore from your lungs, sharper this time, your body jerking faintly against the restraints as the cold and the pain and the exhaustion all collided at once. Your heartbeat stuttered in your chest, uneven and wrong, the rhythm faltering in a way that should not have been possible.
Rio’s head snapped up. Agatha was already moving. Nothing else mattered.
Not the hunters. Not the men still standing, still watching, still frozen in place as their understanding of the world unraveled around them. Not the building shaking under the strain of broken wards and unleashed power. Not the magic, wild and furious and barely contained.
Just you.
She didn’t even feel the distance as she crossed it, her body moving faster than thought, faster than breath, her magic surging ahead of her in a violent, uncontrolled wave. It struck the reinforced door before her hand ever reached it, slamming into the symbols carved into its surface with enough force to make them flare in desperate resistance.
The carvings burned. The magic within them screamed. Ancient patterns twisted and strained, trying to hold, trying to obey the purpose they had been given. They failed.
Purple cracked through them like lightning splitting open a storm, fracturing the symbols, shattering the magic beneath them as though it had never existed at all. The iron embedded in the structure bent under the force, a sharp, metallic scream tearing through the room as the entire doorway buckled inward.
Another broken sound came from inside. Weaker. Closer. Agatha didn’t hesitate. The door exploded inward. Wood splintered. Iron tore free. Stone cracked and gave way as her magic ripped the entire structure apart, sending debris scattering across the floor in a violent collapse. Dust filled the air, thick and choking, as the barrier between you and her ceased to exist.
She stepped through it without slowing. Without thinking. Her focus locked onto the center of the room— And everything stopped. Because there you were.
Bound.
Bruised.
Bleeding.
Your body sagged against the restraints, your head barely lifted, your skin pale beneath streaks of blood and shadowed with deepening bruises. Cuts marked your arms, your shoulders, your ribs—some shallow, some not—each one a testament to what had been done to you while she hadn’t been there. Your chest rose unevenly, each breath a struggle, each inhale fragile in a way that made something inside her fracture completely.
Agatha moved before the dust had even settled.
She was at your side in an instant, her hands already reaching for you, already shaking before they even touched you. For a split second, they hovered, just above your skin, like she was afraid—
Afraid you might not be real. Afraid you might disappear if she moved too fast. Then Rio stepped fully into the room. The shift followed her. It didn’t surge.
It collapsed.
The magic holding you snapped under the pressure of her presence alone, the iron restraints cracking with a sharp, splintering sound before tearing free from your wrists and falling uselessly to the floor. The runes carved into them burned out in an instant, whatever power they held extinguished like a candle in a storm.
You dropped. Agatha caught you. Her arms wrapped around you immediately, pulling you against her chest with a force that bordered on desperation, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other bracing your body as though she could hold you together just by refusing to let go.
“My love. We’re here.” Her voice broke. She didn’t try to hide it.
Her hands moved over you, frantic and searching, brushing your hair back from your face, fingers trembling as they traced the line of your jaw, the bruising already blooming there, the dried blood at your temple. She checked your wrists next, her breath catching sharply at the sight of them—raw, split, marked with deep impressions where the iron had bitten into your skin.
Too tight. Too long.
Her fingers pressed lightly over your ribs, your shoulders, your sides, trying to map the damage, trying to understand how much of you was still holding. Your breathing. She needed to feel you breathing. You gasped again. It wasn’t a full breath. It scraped. Caught. Your chest barely rose under the effort, your body trembling weakly against hers as though even that small act was too much.
Rio was beside you now. Too still. Too focused. But her hands—
They shook. Barely. But enough. Enough that Agatha felt it without looking. Your heart skipped. Just once. But it was wrong. Rio felt it instantly.
“You… you found me…” you rasped, the words barely forming, your voice splintering apart as it struggled through your throat. Your lips trembled with the effort, your breath hitching painfully between each broken syllable as though even speaking cost more than your body had left to give. Your fingers twitched weakly against Agatha’s sleeve, a faint, instinctive attempt to hold onto her, to anchor yourself to something real before everything slipped away.
Agatha felt it. That small, fragile movement. It nearly undid her.
“Yeah, babe… we’re here… my brave girl.”
Her voice softened around the words, but there was nothing steady beneath them. Her hands tightened around you as she pulled you closer, one arm braced firmly around your back, the other cradling your head against her shoulder like she could physically keep you here, like she could hold your soul in place if she refused to let go.
She pressed you closer than she should have. Closer than your injuries allowed. She didn’t care. Her eyes moved over you again, slower this time, more deliberate, as if she could force herself to understand what she was seeing if she just looked hard enough.
And this time—
She saw it. Not just the bruises. Not just the blood. She saw you. How far gone you were. Your skin had gone pale beneath the mottled bruising, a sickly contrast that made every mark stand out more violently. The cuts along your arms and collarbone looked darker now, your blood no longer bright but dulled where it had begun to dry, where it had soaked into fabric and skin alike. Your breathing didn’t flow—it stuttered, uneven and shallow, your chest barely rising beneath her hand. Your body wasn’t holding itself up. It was leaning into her because it had nothing left. Because you couldn’t. Her stomach dropped. Her hands stilled for half a second.
Her eyes widened. Panic didn’t creep in. It hit. Hard. Fast. Complete. She pulled back just enough to look at you again, her gaze darting across your face, your throat, your chest, searching for something—anything—that told her you were still here in a way she could fix.
Her mind moved too fast. Spells. Bindings. Healing. Blood magic. Anything. Everything. There had to be something. There had to be—
“Aggie…” Your voice dragged her back. It was weaker now. Fainter. Like it had to travel too far to reach her.
Her gaze snapped back to you instantly, her hands tightening again, her entire body curling instinctively around yours as if she could shield you from everything—pain, death, the world itself.
“I’m here, I’m right here—don’t—don’t go anywhere, stay with me—” Her words tripped over each other, no longer careful, no longer controlled.
You turned your head. Just barely. Your vision swam, unfocused, your eyes struggling to land on anything clearly as they drifted past Agatha and found Rio. She was already looking at you. She hadn’t looked away. Her brown eyes were wide, too wide, something breaking behind them in a way that didn’t belong to someone who had existed as long as she had.
“Rriioo…” you tried again. But the word didn’t come out right. It broke. Your breath caught halfway through, your chest stuttering as your body tried to pull in air and failed. The sound that followed wasn’t breath—it was wet, fractured, a faint, choking gurgle as blood slipped where it shouldn’t, as your lungs struggled to do something they no longer knew how to do.
Agatha felt it before she fully understood it. The wrongness. The shift. Her breath hitched violently. “No—no, no—no—”
Rio broke.
“Don’t make me do my job,” she sobbed, the words tearing out of her, raw and shattered and human in a way that felt impossible for something like her. Her hands hovered helplessly for a moment before finally reaching for you, afraid and desperate all at once. “Please… don’t make me do my job—please—”
Agatha’s head snapped toward her. Panic sharpened into something desperate. Something feral.
“RIO, IF YOU TAKE HER, I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU,” she gasped, her voice cracking completely now, every ounce of control gone as her grip tightened around you like she could anchor you through sheer will alone. “Don’t do this to me again—don’t you fucking dare—fix it—fix it now—please, my love, please—”
Her forehead pressed hard against yours, her breath uneven and shaking as her hands trembled against your body, trying to keep you here, trying to force your body to respond, to breathe, to stay.
You tried. You really did. But everything was slipping. The room blurred, the edges of it softening, fading into something indistinct and unreachable. Their voices stretched and warped, like they were being pulled further and further away from you with every passing second.
Your body felt too heavy. Too distant. Like it no longer belonged to you. The last thing you felt was them. Agatha’s arms around you. Rio’s hand against yours. Their warmth. Their fear.
And then—
Everything went black.
*****
At first, there was nothing.
No pain. No weight pressing down on your chest. No cold biting into your bones. The ache that had been consuming you was simply… gone, replaced by a quiet that felt impossibly gentle. It wrapped around you without pressure, without expectation, like something that has been waiting patiently for you to arrive.
The world returned slowly, unfolding around you in soft, golden layers. The scent of wildflowers drifted through the air, warm and sweet, carried on a gentle breeze that brushed against your skin like a memory you didn’t have to fight to hold onto. The sky stretched endlessly above you, impossibly blue, the sunlight spilling across the field in soft waves of warmth that settled deep into your bones.
You knew this place.
Not as it ended.
But as it once was.
The lake shimmered nearby, light dancing across its surface in quiet, shifting patterns. The sound of water against the shore is steady and grounding, a rhythm that feels older than everything that came after. You could hear the tall grass moving in the breeze, the soft rustle anchoring you in something real. Something peaceful.
Warmth spread through your body, slow and steady, filling the hollow spaces left behind by pain. It settled into your chest, your arms, your hands, until you realized you are no longer shaking.
You were no longer hurting.
You we’re
At peace.
Then you heard it.
A laugh.
Soft at first, like something carried on the edge of memory, but unmistakable in the way it reached into you and pulled. It grew clearer with each passing second, bright and unrestrained, and your chest tightened before you even understood why.
A boy’s laugh.
The sound settled into you like something sacred, something you had held onto for so long it became part of you. Hearing it again felt like remembering how to breathe after forgetting.
And then you saw him.
Running toward you.
Small, bright, alive in a way that made your breath catch painfully in your chest.
Nicky.
His laughter carried across the field as he ran, his arms already reaching for you, his feet kicking up soft grass beneath him. The sunlight caught in his hair, turning it gold at the edges, wrapping around him in something warm and glowing.
You didn’t think. You didn’t question. Your arms were already open, reaching for him before your mind could catch up, your body moving on instinct alone as he closed the distance between you.
He collided with you in a burst of laughter, the impact small but real, and you wrapped your arms around him instantly, pulling him close, holding him tighter than you ever dared to before.
He was warm. So warm. Your hands pressed against his back, your fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt like you were afraid he might slip away if you didn’t hold on tight enough.
“Mama!”
The word broke something open inside you.
You laughed and sobbed at the same time, the sound catching in your throat as you buried your face in his hair, breathing him in. He smelled like everything you remember—sun-warmed air, soft earth, something clean and bright that is entirely him.
“I missed you,” you whispered, your voice trembling as you pulled back just enough to see his face. Your hands came up to cup his cheeks, your thumbs brushed softly over skin you thought you would never touch again. “God, I’ve missed you so much.”
He smiled at you as if nothing had changed. Like you were never apart. And for a moment—just a moment—you let yourself believe it.
Your breath caught again, sharper this time, not from fear but from the overwhelming need to look. Really look. Your eyes traced every part of him, memorizing, drinking him in like you were afraid the world might take him again if you didn’t hold onto every detail.
Your thumb brushed just beneath his eye, your touch reverent, like you were confirming it again and again—like if you traced the shape of him enough times, you could make this real in a way that wouldn’t disappear.
He wasn’t pale.
He wasn’t fading.
There were no shadows beneath his eyes, no fragile stillness in the way he held himself. His cheeks were full of life, warmed by the sun, his skin glowing in a way you had only ever imagined in quiet, desperate moments you never let yourself linger on for too long.
Your breath caught.
He wasn’t sick.
The realization settled slowly, gently at first—and then all at once, overwhelming in its weight. You felt it in your chest, in your throat, in the way your hands tightened just slightly against his face, as if acknowledging it too fully might break whatever fragile miracle this is.
He looked—
Healthy. Whole. Alive in a way you never got to keep. Your gaze flickered over him again, softer now, deeper, taking in the small details you never realized you had memorized. The shape of his eyes, the way they held steady when he looked at you, something grounded and quietly knowing that felt achingly familiar.
Agatha.
You saw her in him so clearly that it almost stole the breath from your lungs. The depth of it. The quiet intensity beneath the surface. The way something bright lived just behind his smile.
And Rio.
In the warmth of his skin, sun-touched and glowing. In the curve of his smile, in the steadiness of his gaze. In the way something ancient and gentle seemed to exist within him, even now.
He is both of them. He is all of you. Perfectly, impossibly yours.
Your chest tightened, something tender and painful blooming there as you held his face just a little closer, your fingers trembled against his skin as you tried to take in everything at once, as if you could carry it back with you.
As if you could keep him.
Your thumb brushed just beneath his eye again, your touch soft, reverent. “My little love,” you whispered, your voice quiet and breaking all at once. “You look…” Your breath stutters. “So much like your Màmi and Mommy.”
The words slipped out before you could stop them. And you didn’t take them back. Nicky’s smile didn’t falter when you said it.
If anything, it softened.
Something in his eyes shifted—not confusion, not surprise, but something deeper, something that felt like understanding far beyond what he should’ve been capable of. He leaned into your touch just slightly, as if grounding himself there, as if he wanted you to feel him, to know that he is real in this moment.
“I know,” he said gently.
The words were simple, but they settled into your chest with a weight that felt intentional.
Your breath caught again, and for a moment, you just looked at him. Really lookedd at him. Your hands still cradled his face, your thumbs brushing faint, absent circles against his skin like you were afraid to stop, afraid the moment you do, this will end.
You didn’t speak right away. Didn’t need to.
Your hands remained where they were, cradling his face, your thumbs brushing slow, absent circles against his skin as if the motion itself could keep time from moving forward. You let yourself feel him—really feel him—the warmth of him beneath your palms, the softness of his cheeks, the steady, easy way he breathed.
Real. So real. For a moment, the world narrowed to just this. Just you and him.
The breeze moved gently through the field, lifting the edges of his hair where it brushed your fingers. The scent of wildflowers lingered in the air, warm and familiar, wrapping around you both as the sunlight settled across your shoulders. It soaked into your skin, soft and golden, warming your face, your hands, the space between you.d
You exhaled slowly.
Not from exhaustion.
From something deeper.
Relief.
Your hands slide from his face, not letting go, just moving—one settled at the back of his neck, the other pulled him closer as you drew him into you again. He came easily, like he always had, fitting against your chest as though he belonged nowhere else.
Because he didn’t.
Your arms wrapped around him fully now, holding him close, your chin resting lightly against the top of his head. You felt the weight of him there—small, solid, steady in a way that your body recognized immediately, something it had always known how to hold.
The sun pressed warm against your back.
The grass shifted softly beneath you.
And for a moment—
Everything was still.
You breathed him in again, slower this time, letting it settle into your lungs, into your chest, into something deeper than memory. His arms came around you in return, easy and certain, no hesitation, no fear—just presence.
Just him.
Your fingers pressed gently into his back, grounding yourself in the shape of him, the way he fit beneath your hands. You let your eyes fall closed, your cheek resting lightly against his hair as the quiet stretched, unbroken, and full.
You didn’t rush it. You didn’t reach for anything else. You just… held him.
Feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin, the steady rise and fall of his breathing against you, the peace of it settled into your bones.
And for the first time in so long—
You let yourself have this.
Completely.
The moment stretched. Not fragile. Not fleeting. Just full.
You stayed there, holding him, your breath slow and even, your body no longer fighting, no longer bracing for what came next. The warmth of the sun settled deeper into your skin, the breeze soft against your arms, the quiet wrapping around you like something that didsn’t need to be questioned.
Nicky shifted slightly in your arms. Not pulling away. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to speak. You feel it before you hear it—the subtle change in him, the way his weight adjusts, the way his head tilts just enough beneath your chin.
“Tell Mommy and Màmi I love them,” he said softly.
The words were simple. But they settled deep.
You didn’t pull away right away. You didn’t rush to answer. You just held him for a second longer, letting the words exist between you, letting them take root somewhere inside your chest where you knew they would stay.
You nodded, your hand lifted just slightly to brush through his hair, smoothing it back the way you’d done a thousand times before.
“I will,” you whispered.
And you meant it. Every part of you did.
He shifted again, just enough eto look up at you. You followed the movement naturally, your hands easing back to his face, your thumbs brushing faintly along his cheeks as your gaze found his again. There was no fear there. No hesitation. Just that same steady, quiet certainty.
“It’s not your time yet, Mama.” The words landed differently than you expected. Not sharp. Not breaking.
They didn’t tear through the moment or shatter it—they settled into it, as natural as everything else had been. Like something you already knew, something you just hadn’t said out loud yet.
Your breath left you slowly. Not in resistance. Not in panic. Just understanding. Your forehead rested gently against his, your eyes slipping closed for a brief moment as you let it settle fully into you. The truth of it. The shape of it. The way it didn’t feel like something being taken, but something being given back.
“I know,” you murmured softly.
And this time—
You did.
Your hands lingered on his face just a moment longer, your thumbs brushing beneath his eyes in one last, quiet motion. You took him in again—not because you were afraid to lose him, but because you could. Because you were allowed to have this moment exactly as it was.
You felt the weight of him settled against you again—solid, warm, real in a way that made your chest ache with it.
You pressed your cheek into his hair, slower this time, letting yourself linger there. Breathing him in. Not just once. Again. And again. Like you were trying to carry it with you. The scent of him—sun-warmed air, soft earth, something bright and alive—sank deeper into your lungs, into your chest, into something that felt like it would stay long after everything else faded.
Your hand moved gently against his back, slow, absent, familiar. The kind of touch that didn’t need to think. The kind that had existed in you for as long as he had.
You felt his breath against you. Steady. Easy. Alive. There was no wheeze. No crackle in his chest. Just clear, strong, steady breath.
And for a moment—
You let your eyes close. Not to hold on.
But to feel it fully. Every part of it. The warmth of the sun across your shoulders. The softness of the breeze moving around you. The quiet. The peace. Your son in your arms.
“I love you,” you whispered.
The words didn’t break. They didn’t rush. They settled into him, into you, into the space between you like something that had always been true and always would be. You felt him shift slightly against you, just enough to tilt his head, his voice soft and close where it brushed your shoulder.
“I love you too, Mama.”
Your breath caught. Your fingers tightened faintly against him, not enough to hold him back—just enough to feel him there. To know.The moment didn’t shatter.It didn’t slip. It held.Like the world itself paused around you, giving you this—fully, completely, without taking it away too quickly.
You stayed there. Just a second longer. Letting it settle. Letting it become something you would carry. “Be strong, Mama.”
And then—
Something shifted. Not abruptly. Not cruelly. Just gently. Like the tide beginning to turn. The warmth began to change. Your arms loosened—not because you had to, but because you understood.
Because you knew.
The field softened at the edges, the light dimming just slightly, the scent of wildflowers faded, the breeze stopped as the world gently began to let you go.
And this time—
You didn’t reach for him. You didn’t need to. Because you know he wasn’t leaving you. Not really. He was never gone.
****
Something broke.
Not the world you just left.
You.
Pain hit first.
Not slowly.
Not gently.
It crashed into you all at once, violent and consuming, tearing through every inch of your body like your nerves had been lit on fire. Your chest seized, ribs locked tight as if they’ve forgotten how to expand, your lungs refused air for one terrible, suspended second—
And then—
You gasped.
It ripped out of you.
Raw.
Broken.
Air clawed its way into your lungs like something foreign, burning as it forced its way down, catching halfway before your body jerked, trying to pull more, trying to survive. The movement sent pain lancing through your ribs, your shoulders, your wrists—every place they touched you, every place they broke you.
Too much. It was too much. Your throat tightened, something wet catching there—blood—and your next breath stuttered, uneven, breaking into a sharp, choking sound that tore through your chest instead of filling it.
And then—
Warmth. Not sunlight. Hands. You felt them before you understood them.
Agatha.
Her arms were wrapped around you, pulling you tight against her chest, one hand braced at your back, the other cradling your head against her shoulder like she was afraid you might slip away if she loosened her grip even slightly. She was holding you too close, too tightly—but you didn’t have the strength to move, to protest, to do anything but feel her.
She was shaking. You felt it in the way her body trembled around yours, in the uneven rise and fall of her chest, in the way her breath stuttered where it brushed your temple.
Something warm hit your cheek. Then again.
Tears. Her tears. They slipped down from her face onto yours, warm against your skin, trailing along your temple, catching against your jaw. You felt them without opening your eyes, the way they fell unchecked, the way she didn’t try to hide them.
“—No, no, no, stay with me—stay with me—” Her voice is shattered. You’ve never heard it like that before. “I’ve got you—I’ve got you—please, don’t you leave me, do you hear me—”
Her hand shifted, gripping at your sleeve, your arm—no, your hand. You felt it then, your own fingers barely curled, weak and unresponsive, tangled in the fabric of her clothing. You held her without even realizing it.
And she felt it. Her breath caught violently. “There—there you are—baby, come on—come back to me, my love—”
Another presence grounded you. Rio. Her hands were at your chest—firm, steady, one pressed just beneath your collarbone, the other lower, anchoring you in place. You felt the difference in her touch immediately. Not frantic. Not searching. Focused. Controlled. But trembling beneath it.
And then—
Magic. It moved through you. Not around you. Through you. It flooded your veins like warmth and pressure all at once, threading into your chest, your ribs, your lungs, forcing something inside you to remember. It didn’t hurt—not like everything else—but it’s overwhelming, filling every hollow space left behind.
You felt her. Ancient. Steady. Terrified.
“Breathe,” she said, her voice low, strained beneath the control she was forcing into it. “Come back. Stay with us—stay—you’re okay. Everything will be okay.”
Your body didn’t want to listen. It hurt too much. Every breath was wrong; every movement splintered with pain. But something responded. A weak inhale dragged into your lungs again, uneven, stuttering—but there. Alive. Your chest spasmed with it, your ribs protested, your body shaking as it tried to catch up, to follow, to survive.
And beneath it—
Another thread. Faint. Soft. Familiar yet new. It brushed against your chest, your heartbeat, your breath.
Nicky.
Not fully there. Not like before. But felt. Like warmth lingering after a touch. Like something left behind just long enough to guide you back.
Your heart stuttered—
Then catches. Then beats. Stronger. Agatha let out a broken sound, something between a sob and a gasp as she felt it, her grip tightened instinctively as she pressed her forehead against yours, her breath shaking where it brushed your skin.
“There you are—there you are—good girl, stay with me, baby, please—”
Her voice broke completely on the last word, the sound of it raw and unguarded in a way you had never heard before. It trembled through her chest and into yours, where you’re pressed against her, where she refused to let you go.
Rio’s hand pressed firmer against your chest. Her magic surged again—steadier now, deeper—threading through you with purpose, anchoring, holding, forcing your body to stay where it belonged.
“Again, sweetheart,” she said, low and steady despite the strain beneath it. “Breathe again. I know it hurts—fight through it.”
You did. It wasn’t smooth. It wasn’t easy. It felt like dragging yourself through broken glass just to take in air—but it came.
Another breath. Then another. Each one stuttering, uneven, catching halfway before forcing deeper, dragging pain with it—but filling your lungs all the same.
Your fingers twitched. Stronger this time. Still weak. But yours.
They tightened just slightly against Agatha’s sleeve, grasping without thought, holding on like your body knows exactly where it needs to be- even if your mind hadn’t caught up yet.
Agatha saw it. Felt it. Her breath caught again, her hand immediately closed over yours, pressing it tighter into her chest like she needed to feel the proof of you there.
“That’s it—good—don’t let go—”
Your eyelids fluttered. Heavy. Pain dragged through your body again as your chest rose, your ribs protesting, your lungs still learning how to work.
Tears slip from your eyes this time. Not from grief. From pain. From breath. From being alive.
Your eyes opened. Just barely.
The world bleeds in slowly—blurred shapes, dim light, shadows flickering against walls lined with something ancient, something familiar. Candles burn low, their flames steady but soft, casting gold across wards carved deep into the wood and stone. The air hums with layered magic, thick and protective, wrapping around you like something that refuses to let harm reach any further.
And you know it.
Not just the magic.
The place.
A memory settled into you as your vision struggled to focus—old wood, incense, the quiet weight of protection woven into every inch of the space.
A house.
One from decades ago.
One tucked far from everything.
Close to Lilia.
To Jen.
To Alice.
Safe.
They brought you somewhere safe.
The realization settled slowly, heavily, as your breath stuttered again, your chest rising unevenly against Agatha as your body continued to fight its way back.
Your lips parted.
It took effort. More than it should’ve.
“Aggie…” you rasped, the word breaking apart as it left you, your voice raw and barely there.
Her name. It was enough.
Agatha made a sound—half sob, half laugh—her forehead pressed harder against yours as her hand moved to cradle your face more firmly, her thumb brushed against your cheek like she was afraid to lose the feeling of you.
“I’m here—I’m here, Sunshine. I’ve got you—”
Your gaze shifted. Slow. Heavy.
“Rio…” it came softer, thinner, but still yours.
Rio exhales sharply, something in her posture breaking just slightly, her hand still steady against your chest, still holding you there.
“I’m here,” she said, quieter now. “You’re safe, Sweetheart. Stay with us.”
Your throat tightened. Not from pain this time. From something else. “I’m… I’m sorry…” You managed the words catching, fragile, and uneven. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean—”
Rio’s hand shifted immediately, her other hand rose to your face, steady, grounding. “No,” she said, firm but soft, cutting the words off before they could fully form. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
There was no hesitation in it. No doubt. Only certainty. “You hear me?” she added, quieter now, her thumb brushing lightly against your cheek, wiping away a tear you didn’t realize had fallen. “Nothing.”
Agatha nodded against you, her grip tightening again, her voice still shaking but resolute. “Not a single thing.”
Your breath stuttered again, your chest tightening as emotion rose too quickly for your body to keep up with. Tears slipped more freely now, trailing down your temples, into your hair, across Agatha’s hands where she’s holding you.
You’re here.
You’re alive.
You’re in their arms.
But it—
It hurts.
The realization hit all at once, your body catching up fully now, every bruise, every cut, every place they touched you flaring awake like it had been waiting. Your ribs ached with every breath, your wrists burned, and your throat tightened as the taste of iron flooded your mouth.
Blood.
You swallowed instinctively.
A broken sound slipped from you before you could stop it, your fingers tightening weakly against Agatha’s sleeve as your face twisted, your body trying to curl in on itself despite the way she was holding you together.
“It—” your voice fractured, barely more than air. You tried again, breath catching. “It hurts…”
The words are small.
But they break something open.
Agatha’s grip tightened instantly, her hand coming up to cradle your face more firmly, her thumb brushing frantically along your cheek as if she could soothe it away.
“I know, I know—baby, I know—”
But Rio moved. Fast. Controlled. Purposeful.
Her hand left your chest for only a second, and you felt the absence of it immediately—like something vital slipping away—before she reached for something just out of view.
Glass.
Liquid.
Magic.
She’s back just as quickly, one hand returning to your chest, steady, grounding, while the other brought the vial up.
“I know,” she said, her voice low, firm, but threaded with something softer underneath. “I know it does, my love.”
Her thumb brushes once, briefly, against your collarbone, anchoring you there as her gaze lockd onto yours.
“But you’re still here,” she continued, quieter now. “You’re so brave. So strong.”
There’s no exaggeration in it. No softness meant to comfort. Just truth.
“You made it back to us.” Agatha shifted slightly, helping guide you as Rio tilts the glass toward your lips, her hand steady despite the tremor you can feel beneath it.
“Easy,” Agatha murmured, her voice still shaking but gentler now, her forehead brushing yours again. “Just a little—”
The rim touched your mouth. Warm. Faintly bitter. You hesitate—not from fear, but from instinct—your body unsure of anything right now.
“Trust me,” Rio said quietly.
You do. Your lips parted. The potion slid into your mouth, thick with magic, and the moment you swallowed it.
It burned. Not like the pain that was tearing through you. Different. Deeper. It spread fast, threading through your chest, your ribs, your throat, pushing into every place that hurt and demanded it to mend.
You gasped softly against it, your body tensing as it worked through you, your fingers tightened again against Agatha’s sleeve. “Still hurts—” you breathed again, weaker this time, more breath than voice.
“I know,” Rio repeated, softer now, her hand pressed more firmly against your chest as her magic followed the potion, guiding it, steadying it. “Let it. It’s helping to heal you.”
Agatha’s hand never left your face, her thumb brushed away fresh tears as they fell, her other arm tightened around you like she was holding you through every second of it.
“I’ve got you,” she whispered. “We’ve got you.”
And you believed her. Even through the pain. Even though the way your body still shook. Because you’re here. You’re breathing. You’re in their arms.
Alive. Broken. But still theirs.
The realization settled into you slowly, not all at once, but in quiet, steady waves that moved through your chest with each uneven breath. The pain was still there, sharp and insistent, but beneath it—threaded through it—was something stronger.
Warmth.
Safety.
Them.
Your body shifted before you fully thought about it, instinct pulling you closer as your fingers tightened faintly in the fabric of Agatha’s sleeve again. Holding onto it like a lifeline holding you here to her. You leaned in, your head turning just slightly, your breath still unsteady as you pressed more fully into her chest, seeking something grounding, something solid.
She adjusted immediately. She always did.
Her arm tightened around you, one hand sliding more securely along your back, supporting you as you moved, as if she already anticipated what you needed before you could ask for it. Her other hand remained at your face, her thumb brushing softly along your cheek, slower now, gentler, as though she was trying to memorize the feel of you beneath her touch.
Your eyes lifted to hers. It took effort. More than it should’ve. But you did it anyway. Her face was still too close, her expression still fractured with relief and fear and something softer beneath it all, something that only ever existed when she looked at you like this.
Like you’re her everything.
Your lips parted slightly, your breath catching—not from pain this time, but from something quieter, something instinctive. You didn’t speak. You didn’t need to.
You just lean. It was small. Barely there. But she understood. Agatha always understood.
Her breath stuttered, her gaze softened instantly as she closed the distance the rest of the way, her hand steadying your jaw as she leaned in. The kiss she pressed to your lips was impossibly gentle—careful, reverent—like she is afraid even this might hurt you.
It wasn’t deep. It wasn’t desperate. It is relief. A quiet, trembling confirmation that you are here. That you were breathing. That she had you. Your lips moved faintly against hers, weak but real, and you felt the way her breath caught at that, the way her hand tightened just slightly at the back of your neck as if grounding herself in the moment.
When she pulled back, it was slow.
Reluctant.
Her forehead lingered against yours, her breath still uneven as it brushed across your lips.
Rio was there before the space could settle.
You felt her shift closer, her hand leaving your chest only long enough to move upward, her fingers brushing gently along your jaw, tilting your face just slightly toward her. There was something quieter in her movement, something steadier—but no less full.
Her eyes meet yours. Searching. Confirming. And when she leaned in, her kiss was just as soft. Just as careful. Her lips pressed lightly to yours, grounding rather than claiming, her hand steaded against your face as though she was anchoring you here—in this moment, in this body.
Alive. Her breath lingered for a second when she pulled back, her forehead resting briefly against yours, her thumb brushing once beneath your eye, catching a tear before it could fall.
Neither of them rushed. Neither of them let go.
You remained between them, held, supported, their hands on you, their presence wrapped around you from both sides as your breath continued to stutter and settle, your body still shaking, still healing, but no longer alone in it.
And for the first time since the pain returned—
You didn’t feel like you were fighting it by yourself.
Your lips parted again.
It took effort.
Your throat still burns, your chest still tight, the taste of blood lingered at the back of your mouth—but the words sat there, pressing forward, something you neededd to give them.
Your fingers tightened faintly where they still clung to Agatha, grounding yourself before you try.
“Nicky…” you managed, your voice rough, fragile, barely more than breath.
Both of them stilled.
Completely.
You felt it.
The way Agatha’s body went rigid around you, the way Rio’s hand stilled against your chest, her magic faltering for just a fraction of a second.
The room seemed to hold its breath with them.
You swallowed, wincing faintly as it pulled against your throat, your gaze flickering weakly between them.
“He… asked me…” your voice caught, breath stuttering, but you pushed through it. “He asked me to tell his Mommy and Màmi…”
Your chest rose again, uneven, your grip tightened just slightly as emotion pressed in behind the words.
“That he loves you.”
Silence.
Not empty.
Not hollow.
Full.
Agatha broke first.
A sharp, shattered inhale that turned into something dangerously close to a sob as her hand came up to your face again, trembling, her forehead pressing harder against yours like she needs to stay anchored there.
Rio closed her eyes.
Just for a second.
But you saw it.
The way her composure fractured—not outwardly, not in the way Agatha did—but inward, something deep shifting beneath the surface as her hand pressed more firmly against your chest again, like she was grounding herself through you.
Through your heartbeat.
Through your breath.
Through the fact that you came back.
“You saw him…” Agatha breathed, the words barely there, breaking apart as they left her.
You nod.
It’s small.
But it’s enough.
“He wasn’t—” your voice faltered again, softer now, something almost fragile in it. “He wasn’t sick…”
Agatha let out another broken sound, her grip tightened as her hand slid into your hair, holding you closer, her breath unsteady against your skin.
Rio exhaled slowly.
Controlled.
But not unaffected.
“Of course he wasn’t,” she murmured, quieter now, her thumb brushing once, gently, against your collarbone. “He wouldn’t be.”
Your chest tightened, but not from pain this time. From something softer. Something that lingered. You were still shaking.
Still hurting. But here. And they heard him. Through you.
And somehow—
That mattered.
It settled into the space between all three of you, quiet and heavy and full, something sacred in the way it existed without needing anything more.
You remain where you are, held between them, their hands still steady on you, their presence wrapped tightly around your broken body as your breath continues to even out, your heartbeat steadier now beneath Rio’s hand.
When Maximoff Medical Systems comes under public scrutiny for allegations of exploitation, inflated pricing, and prioritizing profit over patients, the Maximoff family needs a way to restore trust—fast. Their solution? An arranged marriage between two powerful heirs.
To repair their image, Wanda Maximoff, the future CEO of M.M.S, is forced into an engagement with Y/N L/N, the daughter and future CEO of Heartbeats United, a beloved global organization known for its humanitarian efforts, environmental initiatives, and unwavering commitment to helping people
Through this, Maximoff Medical Systems gains the credibility and goodwill tied to Heartbeats United’s name, while Heartbeats United receives expanded funding, greater outreach, and the opportunity to help even more communities in need.
Together, the two companies launch "Love, Hope", a joint initiative dedicated to supporting children through education, life-changing experiences, and granted wishes. Wanda and Y/N are chosen as the faces of the project.
There’s only one problem.
Wanda is already in love with Natasha Romanoff, a successful CEO of the country’s most elite and renowned security firm. Though Natasha hates the arrangement, she stands by Wanda through it all.
What neither of them expect, however, is falling for the one person they were never supposed to want. Y/N L/N.
(Chapter 1 will be posted soon :D)
Credits: The cute dividers are taken from @kthis who made free dividers :D
Warnings: Age gap (N=31, r=23), parents death, infection
Word count: 14k
A/N: I apologize if the spacing looks weird, I had to fight once again to fit everything in. I won’t spoil too much, but don’t get your hopes up for this one…it might be my first cruel work on here. 🥸
The ramp of the quinjet lowered with a hydraulic hiss. Steve was already halfway down and barking something over his shoulder to Sam about debriefing.
Natasha remained seated for a moment longer, one elbow resting on her knee and her weapon dismantled in her gloved hands. She pulled the slide back again, testing the resistance and her jaw tightening when it caught just slightly, but enough. Enough to matter and to have nearly cost her on the mission.
Clint noticed, because Clint noticed things other people didn’t with her, “That thing still giving you trouble?”
“It jammed twice.” she said coolly. “And the recoil feels wrong.”
Clint winced in sympathy. “That bad?”
“It nearly got me shot.” That sobered him. He shifted his bow from one shoulder to the other. “Did you have Y/n look at it?”
Natasha’s brows drew together. “Y/n?” she repeated, unfamiliar with the name. Clint blinked as if surprised. “You don’t know you?”
Natasha gave him a flat look that should’ve answered the question on its own. He huffed out a laugh. “Tony’s little tech nerd.”
Her expression sharpened instantly. “Tony’s what?”
Clint held up both hands. “Not like that!! She works in the lab. Tiny thing with a scary brain. Fixed my bow trigger assembly once when it kept locking under tension.” He gave his weapon an affectionate pat. “Actually improved it, I’m still mad about it.”
Natasha snorted softly, but the tension in her shoulders didn’t ease. “And how old is this genius?”
Clint shrugged. “Young.”
“That inspires confidence.”
“I’m serious.” He fell into step with her as they headed inside. “She knows her stuff.”
“So does Tony.” Natasha replied.
Clint gave her a look. “Yeah, and Tony also tends to ‘improve’ things until they explode or develop sarcasm.”
She almost smiled at that. “Besides..” Clint added, pushing through the glass doors into the tower, “if Stark couldn’t figure it out, she probably can.”
Natasha slowed a fraction and that caught her attention more than she wanted it to. “You’re exaggerating.”
Clint shook his head. “Nope.”
There was an irritating sincerity in his voice that made it hard to dismiss. Natasha glanced down at the weapon in her hand. Something about entrusting one of her guns, one of the few things in this world she relied on without hesitation to an unknown person made her instincts bristle. Minutes later, when the elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, noise spilled out immediately. Something sparked with a sharp snap followed by an irritated mutter and music played low from unseen speakers. Natasha stepped out and paused.
The lab was a disaster. Tools lay scattered across half the available surfaces. Open blueprints overlapped each other in messy stacks and an Iron Man gauntlet sat disassembled beside what looked suspiciously like an upgraded toaster. Natasha’s gaze flicked over the wreckage with thinly veiled judgment. Of course Tony would call this organization. Then she heard it, the sound of someone bumping into something solid. Natasha turned toward the noise and moved silently through the maze of workstations. That was when she saw her.
A young woman, crouched beside an open cabinet and one hand buried elbow deep in wires and components, the other gripping a screwdriver between her teeth. She looked up at the sound of Natasha’s footsteps and Natasha knew that look. She had seen intelligence in Bruce, calculation in Tony, precision in Vision. This was different and for a beat, neither of you spoke, then Natasha said, “I’m looking for Y/n.”
The girl blinked and then, to Natasha’s immediate irritation, laughed. “Well.” She said, removing the screwdriver from between her teeth and rising to stand, “that makes this easy.”
Natasha’s expression didn’t change. “Why?”
The girl wiped your hand on her shirt and offered a small smile. “Because you already found me.”
Silence and Natasha let her gaze travel over you slowly now. Young, far too young and no visible signs of combat training or calloused knuckles. No scars she could immediately see from where she stood. You looked like a university student who’d accidentally wandered into the world’s most dangerous workshop. This was the person Clint trusted with precision weaponry?
Apparently you caught every shade of doubt that crossed Natasha’s face, because your smile thinned with practiced patience. “I get that look a lot.”
Natasha folded her arms. “Do you.”
“Mhm.” You tilted your head. “The ‘you look twelve, why are you allowed near expensive equipment’ look? Very common.”
“You don’t look twelve.”
“That is somehow worse.” Your gaze flicked to the dismantled weapon in Natasha’s hand. “You came for a reason.”
Natasha hesitated only a second before extending the gun toward you grip first. “It’s misfiring. Slide resistance feels off and jammed twice in the field.”
Your whole posture changed the moment the weapon entered your hand. The shift was immediate and startling. You turned the gun over once, fingers moving with familiarity rather than carelessness and eyes scanning its construction.
And then, without missing a beat, you said, “Modified Glock platform. Custom balancing on the frame, reinforced internals, personalized grip pressure compensation…Tony didn’t do this. Someone older, way more patient.”
Natasha stared at you. That was the first crack in her certainty. Most people saw “gun.” Maybe “expensive gun.” Very few could identify custom work from a glance, and fewer still noticed the old craftsmanship buried beneath later upgrades.
“Go on.” Natasha said carefully.
You looked up then and for the first time there was a flicker of satisfaction in your expression. “You’ve got wear here.” you murmured, thumb brushing lightly along the side. “Not enough to matter by itself. The real issue is probably in the recoil spring housing or the feed alignment. Maybe both if you’ve been using this configuration for a while.”
Natasha said nothing and you took that as permission to continue and walked toward a marked shooting lane built into a reinforced section at the far end of the lab. Natasha’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
“Testing it.”
You opened a case of ammunition with casual efficiency and Natasha moved instantly, “Stop.”
You looked over your shoulder and Natasha stepped closer. “You don’t load a weapon unless you know how to handle it.”
For one suspended moment, the lab seemed to hold its breath. You turned fully then, one hand resting lightly on the workbench and the other still holding the magazine. “I’m twenty three, by the way.” you said evenly. “And I know what I’m doing.”
Slowly, Natasha dropped her hand, “Well, then.”
You loaded the gun with deliberate movements and checked the chamber, adjusted your stance and faced the target downrange. Natasha expected awkwardness, some hesitation in the shoulders, some weakness in the wrist, some sign that this was theoretical knowledge at best..Instead, you planted your feet, lifted the weapon and fired. Three shots cracked through the lab in controlled succession. The sound reverberated off metal and glass and Natasha’s eyes flicked to the target.
Centered.
You lowered the gun, expression thoughtful rather than impressed with yourself. You fired twice more, slower this time, clearly listening to the mechanics between each shot. Then you pulled the slide back, tilted the weapon, and made a small considering sound.
“Huh.”
Natasha crossed her arms tighter. “You found something.”
“Yeah.” You ejected the magazine and set the gun on the table. “It’s exactly what I thought. Slight feed misalignment and a worn spring assembly that’s compensating badly under pressure. It’s subtle, but at your fire rate?” Your eyes lifted to Natasha. “Subtle is enough to get you killed.”
Natasha glanced at the gun again, then back at you. “Can you fix it?”
You gave her a look that was almost offended. “Yes.”
That actually pulled the ghost of a smile from Natasha. “How long?”
You picked up the weapon again and walked toward a crowded workbench lit by an overhead lamp. “A few hours. I want to take it apart properly, check whether anything else got thrown off by the wear, and make sure it’s field-stable after.”
Natasha leaned one shoulder against a nearby pillar. “And if I need it before then?”
You set the gun down on a black mat and reached for tools. “Then I’d tell you not to use it.”
There was something unexpectedly calming about the answer and Natasha watched you for another moment, watched the way you moved through the clutter with total ease, as if this maze of metal and madness were an extension of yourself. You never seemed to search for tools, your hands just found them. Natasha let her gaze drift around the lab, there were signs of you everywhere once she started looking. A mug abandoned near a terminal, filled with cold tea rather than coffee, blanket thrown over the back of one chair and a stack of scientific journals marked with sticky notes in different colors. Not a visitor, then.
“Who are you?” Natasha asked finally.
You didn’t look up from the weapon you were dismantling. “That’s a broad question.”
Natasha’s gaze moved to the side wall and stopped. There, half hidden behind a hanging holo-display, were framed photographs. In one, Tony looked years younger, thinner in the face, his smile less curated somehow. Beside him stood a man in military uniform, broad shouldered and stern, though there was warmth in the way he looked at the camera. Another photo showed that same man crouched beside a much younger you, maybe seven or nine, holding a little toy robot with an expression of absolute delight. In another, Tony had one arm around the man’s shoulders and the other around little you, who were perched on a lab stool and grinning. Something in Natasha’s chest went unexpectedly still and glanced back at you. You hadn’t turned or followed her gaze. But Natasha knew you’d noticed anyway.
“You work here.” Natasha said, quieter now.
You smiled faintly, still focused on the internal pieces laid out before you. “Pretty much.”
Natasha studied you for another moment, sensing the edge of something private there, some line she could cross if she pushed harder, so she chose not to. “I’ll have it ready in a few hours.” you said. “You can come back then.”
Natasha inclined her head once. “I will.”
She turned and left the lab with quieter steps than she had entered with. But by the time the elevator doors closed, the image of you standing in that pool of workshop light and grease-stained, unbothered, frighteningly competent had rooted itself somewhere in her mind.
When Natasha returned later, the tower had fallen into the softer hush of evening. She stepped out of the elevator expecting the same controlled chaos as before, instead, she slowed.
Tony was there, that alone wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was the way he was sitting. Tony was not a man who sat still unless he was performing stillness for someone else’s benefit. He lounged, sprawled, prowled, gestured, paced. He filled silence so it didn’t have the chance to become uncomfortable. But now he sat on the edge of a worktable, shoulders squared, elbows on his knees and listening. You stood in front of him with a datapad in one hand and a wrench in the other, speaking quickly about something Natasha couldn’t fully hear from the doorway.
She stayed where she was for a moment. The dynamic between them was…startling. Not assistant and employer or mentor and student, not exactly. You didn’t perform deference for him and Tony, who bulldozed through most conversations like they were designed for him to win listened when you spoke.
Pepper appeared at Natasha’s side so quietly that even Natasha was mildly annoyed she hadn’t noticed her approach. “Well.” Pepper said, amusement threading through her voice, “that expression means you’ve either found a new problem or a new mystery.”
Natasha turned her head. “Maybe both.”
Pepper followed her gaze toward Tony and you and sighed “Ah.”
Natasha hesitated, which for most people would have looked like no hesitation at all. “Who is she?”
Pepper’s eyes softened immediately. She crossed her arms, looking out into the lab for a moment before answering. “That depends how far back you want me to start.”
Natasha said nothing and Pepper took that as permission. “Her father worked for Tony years ago.“ she said quietly. “Not lab staff, but security. He was former elite military, very good at what he did, very serious, very impossible. He was assigned to Tony during some of the uglier weapons contracts overseas.”
Natasha glanced back at the old photographs in her memory. The uniformed man.
“He was with Tony in Afghanistan.” Pepper continued. “In the convoy.”
Natasha’s attention sharpened. The convoy and the attack that changed everything..The one that ended with Tony captured, wounded, dragged into that cave where the first Iron Man suit was born from blood and scrap metal and desperation.
Pepper’s voice lowered further. “He went with Tony when they were attacked. He made it through the initial hit and made it all the way to the cave.” She swallowed once. “But the people holding them…they made an example of him.”
For the first time in a long time, Natasha had no immediate response. Pepper stared out at you, who were now pointing at something in a holographic display while Tony argued with exaggerated offense. “They killed him in front of Tony.”
The words settled heavily between them and suddenly the shape of everything shifted. The pictures, the familiarity..the way you belonged here.
Natasha looked at Pepper. “What about her?”
Pepper shook her head. “Gone before that. She didn’t really have anyone left. Tony never says it outright, because guilt makes him defensive and weird and louder than usual. But he blamed himself..For all of it. For the convoy, for the weapons and what happened to her father. So when he came back…” She exhaled softly. “He made sure she had a place. At first it was supposed to be temporary. Safe housing, schools, support, all of that.”
Natasha looked back toward the lab floor. You were laughing at something now, shaking your head while Tony pretended to look wounded. “It wasn’t temporary.” Natasha said.
Pepper smiled sadly. “No. It wasn’t.”
“She grew up here.”
Pepper nodded. “Around the lab, around Tony, around every terrible influence this tower had to offer. Mostly Tony.” A pause. “She’s brilliant. Honestly brilliant, Natasha, the kind that makes people uncomfortable because she sees things too fast.”
Natasha thought back to you diagnosing her weapon in under a minute, Yeah..that fit.
“She used to sit on a stool and watch Tony work for hours.” Pepper continued. “Then she started asking questions. Then correcting things. Then solving things before anyone else had the chance.” A small smile touched her lips. “The first time she told Tony one of his calculations was sloppy, I thought he was going to faint from indignation.”
Natasha let out the smallest breath of amusement. Pepper’s expression gentled. “He loves her. In his own impossible way. Not always perfectly, but completely.”
Something in Natasha tightened unexpectedly. Maybe because she understood imperfect love better than she understood perfect versions of it. Maybe because families built from loss always struck closer than she liked. Or maybe because the girl she had dismissed on sight was suddenly no longer just some overconfident twenty three year old in a grease stained shirt. She was a survivor. A child of violence who had somehow grown into brilliance instead of bitterness.
Natasha looked at you differently after that and perhaps she hated that she had to be told the story to get there. Pepper nudged her lightly. “You came for your gun, didn’t you?”
Natasha’s gaze flicked to your workbench. “I did.”
“Then rescue it before Tony decides to redesign it into a satellite.”
That, at least, sounded believable. Together, they stepped fully into the lab. Tony looked up first. “Ah, the assassin returns. For legal reasons, I assume not for me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Natasha said.
You turned at the sound of Natasha’s voice and the moment you saw her, you straightened immediately and set aside the datapad. The easy humor in your face shifted into focus again, though this time Natasha noticed it came with something else too. Without a word, you reached for a case on the bench and opened it. Natasha’s gun rested inside on dark foam, cleaned, reassembled, every piece gleaming with careful attention. You picked it up with both hands and offered it to her.
“I replaced the spring assembly, corrected the feed issue, and rebalanced the internal tension.“ you said. “Also adjusted the slide response slightly so it should feel smoother under rapid fire. I didn’t change anything major without asking.”
Natasha took the weapon and it settled into her hand like something familiar and newly sharpened at once. She checked the weight firs, then the slide.
“Try it.” you said, almost too quickly, then visibly reined yourself in. “If you want.”
Natasha moved to the lane and loaded a test magazine. Tony, Pepper and you all watched. She raised the gun, narrowed her focus, and fired. Each shot landed true and the recoil settled exactly where it should. When the magazine emptied, Natasha lowered the gun slowly and for a heartbeat, the room was quiet.
Natasha turned back toward you and you stood very still. And there it was again, that contrast Natasha found herself noticing too much already. The confidence was real and the intelligence, undeniable. But beneath it was something softer, harder to earn. A kind of old watchfulness, as if part of you was always bracing for dismissal anyway.
“It’s better.” she said and because apparently Natasha had not been clear enough, she added, “Much better.”
A flash of relief lit your face so quickly it was nearly gone before anyone else could have noticed, but.
“Good.” you said, trying and failing to sound casual. “I told you I knew what I was doing.”
Natasha looked at you for a long moment. “Yes.” she said quietly. “You did.”
Something passed between you both. A shift in the air like the beginning of static before lightning. You seemed to feel it too, because your finger tightened slightly around the edge of the bench. “If anything feels off after extended use.:” you said, voice softer now, “come back.”
Natasha’s gaze held yours. “I might.”
Tony looked between you with immediate suspicion. “I don’t like whatever this vibe is..”
Pepper sighed. “No one asked, Tony..”
You laughed softly under your breath and ducking your head as if to hide it. Natasha found, to her annoyance, that she liked the sound and she holstered the gun and turned toward the elevator. But when she reached the doors, she glanced back once, you were already back at the bench, talking to Tony again, one hand moving animatedly as you explained something technical. It should have been easy to leave the moment there. Natasha had spent most of her life walking away from moments. But later, alone in her room, cleaning a gun that no longer needed cleaning, she found her mind drifting back downstairs.
Natasha lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, irritated with herself. It was ridiculous, she barely knew you. You were a scientist, too young and too clever. Far more interesting than Natasha wanted you to be. And yet she could still hear your voice. I’m twenty three. And I know what I’m doing. She closed her eyes and for the first time in a while, someone had surprised her. And somehow, that was the most unsettling part of all. Because she had a feeling this would not be the last time you got under her skin.
Days later, the party had started out louder than Natasha expected and she had, for reasons she still wasn’t entirely sure how Tony had talked her into, ended up behind the bar. But not that she minded, it gave her something to do with her hands. She moved with effortless precision behind the polished counter, pouring whiskey, sliding glasses across the surface, opening beer bottles with economical movements. “Another?” Sam asked, raising his empty glass with a grin.
He laughed and took the drink from her hand. Natasha turned toward the shelf behind her, reaching for another bottle just as she heard a voice at the bar.
“Am I too late to be dramatic and order something impossible?”
Natasha turned and paused. You stood on the other side of the counter, half leaning against it, smiling at her. For one strange, stupid second, the noise of the room dulled. Natasha had seen you in the lab, in grease smudged shirts and oversized clothes and a halo of static energy that seemed to belong to solder smoke and machine light. But this..this was different.
You looked softer tonight, though no less bright. You wore dark jeans and a simple fitted top beneath a loose jacket, like you still hadn’t fully accepted that this was a party and not just a temporary interruption before you returned to the lab. Your hair was down for once, falling around your shoulders in a way that made you look younger and older at the same time. There was no grease on your cheek now, no ink on your fingers that Natasha could immediately spot. And somehow that was more distracting than it should have been.
Natasha recovered quickly, “That depends.” she said. “Do you have ID?”
You stared at her for half a heartbeat and then laughed and Natasha felt something unexpectedly soft unfurl low in her chest. It was such an open sound, like the kind that slipped out before someone could decide whether to hold it back..And Natasha hated how much she liked it.
“God..” you said, laughing harder now. “Was that a joke?”
Natasha leaned one forearm on the bar. “I’m capable of humor.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t. I’m just…pleasantly surprised.”
“You say that like it’s rare.” You tilted your head, smiling at her with that same impossible brightness. “It feels rare.”
For a moment Natasha only looked at you. Then she reached for a glass. “What are you drinking?”
You glanced over the bottles lined behind Natasha, all expensive and gleaming under the lights, then back at her. “Cola.”
Natasha blinked once. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You’re at Tony Stark’s party.”
“Yes.”
“There are bottles behind me worth more than some people’s rent.”
“I know.”
“And you want cola.”
You smiled, a little sheepish now. “I’m not a big fan of alcohol.”
Natasha picked up a clean glass and filled it with ice. “Bad experience?” There was no pressure in the question, just quiet understanding. You watched the cola fizz into the glass. “No dramatic story, actually. I just don’t like feeling out of control.”
Natasha’s hand stilled for the smallest fraction of a second before she slid the drink toward you. “That.” she said, “I understand.”
Your eyes flicked up to hers and something softer entering them. “Yeah.” you said quietly. “I figured you might.”
Their fingers brushed briefly as you took the glass. The contact was slight, still Natasha felt it and apparently she wasn’t the only one, because your smile shifted just a little afterward. Natasha straightened and glanced at the room. “You don’t usually come up for these.”
“I know.”
“So why tonight?”
You took a sip of your drink before answering. “Because Pepper threatened to drag me upstairs herself if I stayed in the lab all night.”
“That sounds like Pepper.”
“She said and I quote, ‘You are twenty three years old. Go stand near people and pretend you’re not married to a circuit board.’”
Natasha snorted into a laugh before she could stop it and you looked absurdly pleased with yourself for causing it. “There it is..” you said.
Natasha narrowed her eyes. “Don’t make a thing of it.”
“Too late.”
The conversation came easier than Natasha expected. That was what unsettled her most. She was good at talking when talking had a purpose. Extracting information or manipulating a scene. But this didn’t feel like that. It felt…easy.
You stayed at the bar long after receiving your drink, and Natasha did not ask you to move along. They talked between orders and interruptions, in fragments at first, then longer stretches. About the music, which you claimed was “Tony trying to prove he has mature taste.” About Steve, who looked like every loud laugh in the room physically stressed him. Natasha learned that you didn’t sleep enough, forgot to eat when you were working, and had a habit of carrying around three different pens despite claiming you were “fully digital now.” You learned that Natasha preferred bourbon over vodka, which shocked you on principle, and that behind the dry remarks and unreadable face was a sense of humor sharp enough to catch you off guard whenever it surfaced. And every time you laughed, Natasha felt that same warmth again.
Eventually the crowd shifted toward the center of the room where Thor, with all the grandeur of a king and all the smugness of a man very sure of his own mythology, had set Mjolnir down on the low table like a challenge. Natasha stepped out from behind the bar and somewhere in the movement you ended up beside her, the two of you settling close together on the edge of a couch with the easy momentum of people who had already decided, without saying it, to keep each other company.
“Ah, yes..” you murmured, sipping your cola as Rhodey rolled his shoulders dramatically. “Male ego. Nature’s most renewable resource.”
Natasha turned to look at you, and the deadpan delivery nearly made her smile outright. “You’ve been around Tony too long.”
You kept your eyes on the scene in front of you. “That implies I had a choice.”
Rhodey grabbed the hammer first and nothing happened. You clicked your tongue sympathetically. “A strong showing.”
Natasha crossed one leg over the other. “Very graceful.”
Then came Tony, of course, because Tony would rather combust than let Rhodey fail alone. He used both hands. Then the gauntlet. Then logic, as if somehow technology would convince an ancient magical hammer to reconsider. Steve gave it a try next and the room grew subtly quieter. Even Natasha leaned forward slightly, watching the set of his jaw, the way his hand tightened around the handle. There was the faintest shift, so slight Natasha would’ve missed it if she weren’t trained to notice impossible things. Thor sat up so fast it was almost comical, but it stopped and Steve let go. The room erupted into noise again, but Natasha felt you shift beside her, both of you catching the same detail and filing it away without comment.
Someone, Sam, maybe, or one of the others looked over at you suddenly and said, “Your turn.”
You nearly choked on your drink. “What? No.”
“Come on!”
“You built half the weird stuff in this tower.” someone else added. “That’s basically wizard adjacent.”
You held up both hands. “Absolutely not.”
“Scared?” Clint asked from across the room, grinning.
You pointed at him. “Deeply, yes.”
The room laughed and Natasha angled toward you. “Try it.”
You turned to her in mock betrayal. “You too?”
“You’ve been making comments all night. Back them up.”
You narrowed your eyes. “You do it.”
Natasha’s expression remained cool. “I have nothing to prove.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then why are you panicking?”
“I’m not panicking!” you said quickly. “I’m preserving the mystery.”
Natasha looked pointedly at the hammer. “Afraid it’ll crush your ego?”
You clutched your chest. “That was mean..”
“It was accurate.”
You leaned in a fraction, lowering your voice conspiratorially. “You know what I think?”
Natasha did not move away. “What?”
“I think..” you said, smiling wildly now, “you should do it.”
Natasha let out a soft incredulous breath. “No.”
“Do I sense fear?”
Natasha turned fully toward you then, one eyebrow arched. “Careful.”
That only made you grin harder. For a fleeting second the room and the hammer and the noise around them seemed to blur at the edges. It became just this, your bright eyes, the playful challenge in them, the warmth of your shoulder nearly brushing Natasha’s and then the world split apart.
A metallic crash tore through the air and glass shattered somewhere to the left. The room lurched from laughter into violence so quickly it barely felt real. Natasha was on her feet before the first scream fully landed and she moved on instinct, grabbing the nearest civilian and shoving them behind cover just as one of the drones opened fire across the bar. Then she heard it, “Y/N!” Tony’s voice completely in panic.
Natasha snapped her gaze through the chaos and found you half crouched near the couch they’d been sitting on, helping a woman to the floor behind overturned furniture.
“I’ve got her!” Natasha shouted back.
She didn’t wait to see if Tony heard, she was already moving. A drone lunged into her path and Natasha shot it clean through the head and grabbed you by the wrist just long enough to pull you behind the nearest pillar as bullets tore through the space you’d occupied a second earlier.
“You okay?” Natasha demanded and you nodded too fast. “Yes.”
“Stay down.” That should have been the end of it.
But fights never stayed simple. Another drone crashed through the upper railing and landed hard enough to shake the floor. Natasha fired twice, rolled under a spray of sparks, came up low and fast and then something slammed into her side. Pain burst through her ribs and her gun flew from her hand, skidding across the floor out of reach.
She hit the ground hard and breath punching out of her lungs. The drone turned toward her with terrible mechanical precision, arm lifting and weapon charging. Natasha twisted, reaching for a bla- a shot rang out.
The drone jerked once and dropped beside her in a heap of sparking metal. For a second Natasha didn’t understand what had happened. Then she looked up and stood a few feet away, Natasha’s gun still in your hand. Your face had gone pale and you stared at the weapon like it had burned you. Then immediately, almost violently, you dropped it. The gun clattered against the floor and Natasha pushed herself upright despite the ache in her side. “Y/n..”
Your eyes snapped to hers. “Are you okay?” Natasha asked. It was the same question as before, but now it meant something different.
“Yeah.” you said, though the word came thin. “I’m okay.”
Natasha rose fully and picked up her weapon. “You saved my life..”
There was no time to answer properly because another drone shrieked somewhere behind them and Natasha touched your arm only briefly. “Stay with me.”
Together you moved, Natasha fighting, you staying low, helping steer terrified guests out of open lines of fire. You weren’t built for battlefield chaos, not like the others, but you adapted. And then, as suddenly as it began, it ended. The room fell into a ragged silence of smoke, sparks, broken glass and everyone breathing too hard.
Natasha stood among the wreckage, chest rising and falling. Around her, the others regrouped and Tony’s face had gone hard in the way it always did when fear turned directly into anger. Then his first gaze went to you. “You hurt?”
You straightened from where you had been helping someone up. “I’m fine.”
He looked unconvinced, but there were bigger fires burning now and they all moved to the lab. The mood there was nothing like the warmth of the party before. Broken drone parts had been dragged in for analysis and FRIDAY’s voice had replaced JARVIS’s familiar calm, and the absence of him was its own kind of wound. Natasha stayed near the back at first, leaning against one of the tables while the others argued in widening circles. Everyone was talking and no one was listening, in the middle of it all was the gaping fact that Tony had created something catastrophic and kept it to himself long enough for it to breathe.
You stood near one of the side consoles, silent now. You looked tired in a way the others didn’t yet. Not physically, though that too, your shoulders were too tight and your hands flexed and curled at your sides when you thought no one was looking. Once, your eyes drifted toward the place where JARVIS’s core systems usually displayed and something in your expression changed. You stepped forward and everyone else was still fighting with each other when you cut in, voice not loud, but precise enough to slice through all of them. “Stop!”
It worked. Maybe because you rarely demanded the room unless you had something worth saying. Maybe because they all knew it. Tony turned first. “Y/n-”
“No!” You moved closer to the main display, “You’re all arguing about who’s responsible and yes, great, that’s definitely a conversation, but it doesn’t matter if we don’t figure out what he wants next!”
You pulled up fragments of code, satellite maps, intercepted data, broken command strings salvaged from the drone they had brought down. “He talked about peace.” you said, eyes scanning. “He quoted Stark. He called the Avengers a roadblock. He didn’t attack this tower just to scare us.” Your fingers moved faster. “He’s not thinking like a person. He’s thinking like a mission with no moral limiters.”
Natasha watched Tony watch you and there was fear there still, yes. But also trust, absolutely and immediate. You zoomed in on one data trail and then another. “There.”
Bruce leaned forward. “What?”
“He took something before he left.” You pulled up a set of missing files, then connected them to external systems. “Not just access.“ You looked from screen to screen, putting the pieces together so fast Natasha could almost see the pattern forming in real time. “He’s building toward something bigger. He’s not running, he’s preparing.”
“For what?” Steve asked.
“To end the fight permanently.” you said. “His definition of peace is extinction level control.”
The words settled like ice into the room and Tony moved beside you. “Can you track where?”
“Not exactly yet. But I can narrow the likely targets if you stop arguing long enough to let me work.” That might have been rude coming from anyone else. From you, in this moment, it was simply true. Natasha saw the subtle shift then, everyone recalibrating around your conclusion, not because you demanded authority, but because you had earned it. After some minutes, when everything settled again, Tony looked over at you and asked quietly, “You sure you’re okay?”
You didn’t look at him when you answered. “I’m okay.” But Natasha heard the difference. She knew what “I’m okay” sounded like when it meant please don’t ask me to feel this right now. Eventually, after too much adrenaline and too many revelations, the room thinned. You closed out one last screen and stepped back too, “I’m going to bed.” you said quietly. Tony looked like he wanted to argue or stop you to check you over again just to make sure you hadn’t hidden an injury because you thought everyone was too busy. Instead he only nodded. There was something achingly paternal in the way he said it.
You gave him the faintest smile and turned toward the hall. Natasha found herself moving after you before she had quite decided to. The corridor outside the lab was much quieter, the noise of the tower fading behind you both and for a few moments, neither of you spoke. Then Natasha said, “You’re not fine.” You glanced over, tired but amused. “That was fast.”
“You dropped my gun like it had insulted you.”
“I probably would’ve preferred it insulting me.” You shook your head once, as if trying to throw off the whole moment. “I just..” You exhaled shakily. “I hate that.”
Natasha’s gaze softened almost imperceptibly. “Shooting?”
“I can shoot. I know how. My dad made sure I knew how to protect myself. But I don’t like it..I don’t want to.” A pause. “Not people.not even things pretending to be people.”
They walked a little further and the adrenaline had burned off enough now that the emotional aftermath was settling in. Natasha knew that feeling intimately. The emptiness after violence and the way your body realized all at once what it had just survived. “I really am okay.” you said after a moment. “Just…not good with things that sound like that.”
Natasha understood more than she said. “You did what you needed to do.”
“I know.” You stared ahead. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“No.” Natasha said. “It doesn’t.”
That seemed to ease something small in your expression. You reached a long stretch of hallway lined with doors and quiet art Tony had almost certainly bought to prove he had taste and you slowed a little.
“Thanks.” you said.
Natasha looked at you. “For what?”
“For earlier.” You hesitated. “At the party. At the fight. For…not making me feel stupid after.”
Natasha stopped walking and you stopped too, “You could never look stupid.” Natasha said before she had fully decided to say it. Your eyes widened just slightly, caught off guard and then your smile came back,
“That..” you said softly, “might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Natasha crossed her arms, „You’ve known me for two conversations.”
“Exactly. High praise.”
That drew a real smile from Natasha this time and you noticed it immediately. Then you smiled too, almost wildly happy in a way that made you look younger than twenty three and somehow even more luminous. Natasha had the absurd urge to just keep you looking like that.
You resumed walking, slower now, neither in much hurry to end the moment. “I liked talking to you tonight.” Natasha said at last.
You turned your head toward her so quickly that Natasha almost regretted it, not because it was wrong, but because the look on your face was so unguardedly pleased it hit harder than expected.
“I liked talking to you too..” you said and Natasha held your gaze for a beat. “Even when I made fun of you?”
You grinned. “Especially then.”
They had reached your door now and you paused in front of it, one hand resting lightly on the frame, suddenly looking less like the brilliant scientist from the lab and more like simply a girl at the end of a very long night, standing in the soft hallway light with tired eyes and a smile you couldn’t quite hide.
Natasha stopped beside you and for a second neither of you moved. “Goodnight, Y/n.” Natasha said.
Your smile softened. “Goodnight, Natasha.”
The use of her first name, spoken so gently, sent a quiet warmth through her chest she chose not to examine too closely. You opened the door, then hesitated and looked back over your shoulder.
“I’m glad it was you.” you said.
Natasha’s brow furrowed slightly. “What?”
“At the bar.” you said. “When I came upstairs. When the robot attacked. After.” Your smile turned shy, but no less sincere. “I’m glad it was you.”
For once, Natasha had no immediate clever answer. So she told the truth, “I’m glad it was me too.”
You looked like that sentence might keep you awake all night. Then you slipped inside your room and closed the door softly behind you. Inside, leaning back against the door the second it shut, you pressed a hand to your own face and let out one breathless, disbelieving laugh. You were smiling so hard it hurt. Not because of the party..Not because you had survived an attack, or helped decode a global threat, or held yourself together in front of Tony and the Avengers and everything else pressing in from all sides. But because Natasha Romanoff had walked you to your door. Because she had smiled..because Natasha had said she liked talking to you.
You slid down onto the edge of your bed still grinning helplessly at nothing, heart too awake to let the rest of your body catch up and out in the hallway, Natasha stood there for one beat longer than necessary. Then she turned and headed toward her own room. Halfway down the corridor, she realized she was smiling too.
The next morning, Natasha woke earlier than usual. Not because she had slept well, it really was the opposite. She had spent most of the night drifting in and out of shallow rest, her mind sliding helplessly between images she did not especially want to revisit. And, far more distracting than any of those should have been, the memory of you standing at her door in the dim hallway light, smiling like Natasha had handed you something precious without realizing it. That one stayed.
Natasha stood in the kitchen now in gray training clothes and bare feet, one hand wrapped around a mug of black coffee she had let go lukewarm without noticing. She was alone at first and then she heard footsteps. She looked up automatically and you walked into the kitchen with the particular kind of exhaustion only highly intelligent people and people who refused to sleep ever seemed to perfect. Your hair was a mess, tangled from sleep and there was a faint pillow crease still pressed into one cheek.
Natasha’s chest warmed instantly so suddenly, so quietly, that for one stupid moment she only stood there holding her coffee and staring. There you are, some traitorous part of her thought. You looked up, spotted her and smiled. It was sleepy and soft and so immediate that Natasha felt the warmth in her chest deepen into something almost dangerously tender.
“Morning.” you said, voice still rough with sleep and Natasha swallowed once before answering. “Morning.”
You shuffled toward the coffee machine, paused, then glanced over your shoulder. “Are you judging me?”
Natasha lifted one brow. “For what?”
You gestured vaguely at yourself. “Existing like this.”
Natasha let her gaze move over the oversized sweatshirt, the mismatched socks and the unruly hair. There were many things she could have said, “You look tired.”
You snorted softly. “That was kinder than what I expected.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“I’m learning that.”
The coffee machine hissed to life and you leaned against the counter while it brewed, your shoulders still a little slumped with sleep and for a few seconds neither of you spoke. It should have been awkward but it wasn’t. Natasha found that unsettling in the now familiar way you unsettled her by making silence feel easy.
“How’d you sleep?” Natasha asked.
You made a face. “Badly.”
“Nightmares?” You glanced at her, then away. “Not exactly. Just one of those nights where your brain keeps replaying everything in the worst order possible.”
Natasha’s fingers tightened slightly around her mug. “Yeah.”
You looked back at her then, and there was no performance in your face. “You too?”
Natasha gave the smallest nod and the coffee finished. You poured some into a mug, then added an amount of sugar Natasha found mildly offensive and enough milk to turn it a lighter brown. She watched you in quiet disbelief. “That is not coffee anymore.”
You pointed the spoon at her. “This is a hard morning. I’m adapting.”
Natasha almost smiled. “To sugar?”
“To survival.”
That got a soft breath of laughter out of her and you looked unreasonably pleased. You took your mug and crossed to the island, stopping on the opposite side from Natasha. For a moment Natasha only looked at you, she should say something else, she thought, something casual, something that would stop this dangerous, slow feeling from unfurling every time you entered a room. “You sure you’re okay?”
The same question from last night and your smile changed. “I’m okay.” you said. Then, after a small pause: “Still don’t like guns. Still don’t like robots trying to kill people. Still slightly offended the universe ruined my cola.”
You both smiled then and you wrapped both hands around your mug and studied Natasha for a moment over the rim. “And you?”
Natasha tilted her head. “And me what?”
“Are you okay?”
The question landed differently coming from you. Natasha was not used to being asked things she didn’t know how to deflect. “I’m fine.” she said automatically and your expression turned knowing in a way that was becoming increasingly dangerous. “That sounds fake.”
“You’re bold before nine in the morning.”
“I’m observant before nine in the morning.”
Natasha looked down into her coffee. “I’ve had worse nights.”
You nodded like you understood what that answer really meant and wouldn’t force more from it than Natasha was willing to give. It should have made Natasha feel relieved, instead, it made her feel seen. Which was worse.
“Good.” you said quietly. “I mean..not good that it was bad. Just good that it wasn’t worse.”
Natasha looked at you again. You, clearly realizing how badly you’d phrased that, groaned and dragged one sleeve over part of your face. “I should not be allowed to talk before coffee..“
Natasha did smile then. “There.” you murmured. “Worth embarrassing myself for.” Natasha shook her head, more amused than she wanted to be and then the morning ended. FRIDAY interrupted with updates and footsteps started appearing in the hallway. The tower woke around them and you both had work to do.
But the day dragged. Natasha told herself that was because everyone was strained after the events of the previous night. Because Tony was impossible when he was guilty or Steve was angry, Bruce withdrawn, Thor absent, Clint restless, and the whole tower felt like it was bracing for something worse. All of that was true..still, it did not explain why she read the same report three times without absorbing a single line. Or why every passing thought seemed to drift, irritatingly, toward the kitchen that morning.
By midday, Natasha was irritated enough with herself that she went to the gym and put an hour into the punching bag. It helped! For almost twenty minutes..And then by late afternoon she found herself standing outside the lab with her gun in her hand and an excuse she knew was weak. You looked up the second Natasha entered and smiled. Natasha hated what that did to her pulse.
“Hey.” you said, straightening. “What happened?”
„I think it broke again.“ you blinked and walked over, took the weapon gently and looked at it. Then you looked at Natasha, then back at the gun. Natasha held steady under the scrutiny.
“There’s nothing wrong with this.” Natasha folded her arms. “You checked quickly.”
“I don’t need to check slowly.” You turned the gun in your hand once, then held it out toward Natasha but did not let go right away. “The slide tension is perfect. The balance is exactly where I set it. Also, you cleaned it.” Natasha narrowed her eyes. “And?”
“And you only clean it like this when you’re restless.”
There it was again..that infuriating perception. Natasha exhaled once through her nose. “You’re assuming.”
“No.” you said lightly. “I’m observing.”
You handed the gun back and Natasha took it, but instead of leaving, she stayed right where she was. “You caught me.” Natasha admitted.
You laughed, “You came all the way down here pretending your gun was broken just to see me?”
It sounded much worse when you said it out loud..Natasha resisted the urge to retreat immediately from the conversation and hated that the urge existed at all. “I came..“ she said carefully, “because I was in the area.”
You stared at her. “The area?” you repeated.
Natasha kept her expression perfectly neutral. “Yes.”
“You were in the basement tech lab area.”
“I move around.”
That made you laugh harder and Natasha, despite herself, stayed to listen to it. “Okay.” you said, still smiling. “Sure. Of course.”
Natasha gave you a dry look. “You don’t believe me.”
“Not even a little.” You leaned back against the bench, crossing your arms loosely. “You could’ve just come down here, you know.”
Natasha looked at you. “Without a reason?”
You held her gaze. “Seeing me can be a reason.”
For a heartbeat neither of you moved. Then you looked away first, suddenly busy with a screwdriver that definitely did not need adjusting and a faint flush had risen into your cheeks. Natasha felt something low and warm settle inside her.
She stayed for twenty minutes. Long enough to ask what you were building, long enough to watch you explain it with increasing animation, your hands moving faster as you talked, your eyes lighting in that unmistakable way they did when your mind fully caught fire. Natasha understood perhaps half of the science and almost none of the equations, but she found she liked listening anyway. She liked the shape of your thoughts. The way excitement transformed you and the ease with which you moved from brilliant to awkward to teasing and back again.
By the time Natasha left, the restlessness that had driven her downstairs had gone strangely quiet. That should have warned her but it did not.
Two days later, she returned because she claimed the grip felt different. It did not, you knew it instantly. This time you took the gun, squinted at it dramatically, and said, “Terrible..I’ll need at least six hours alone with it.”
Natasha crossed her arms. “You’re mocking me.”
“Yes.” you said. “But gently.”
Natasha should have left, instead she leaned one hip against the workbench and asked, “What are you working on?”
You brightened at once. “I’m glad you asked..”
She had not asked because she was glad, she had asked because it was the fastest available cover for the fact that she was standing in Tony Stark’s lab again with no legitimate reason to be there. But within minutes you had launched into an explanation of drone interference shielding, a new stabilizer for one of Clint’s ridiculous trick arrows, and three separate complaints about Tony’s filing system, which apparently involved “vibes, arrogance, and complete disrespect for naming conventions.” Natasha listened and watched..and left much later than she meant to.
After that, the pattern formed almost without permission. A missing knife sheath buckle, a comm unit that “sounded strange“, a holster strap that “might not be sitting right.” Once she came down carrying nothing at all and had the audacity to claim she was looking for Tony. You, who had long since stopped pretending to believe her, just leaned against a table and said, “Tony is upstairs.”
Natasha looked around the lab. “I know.”
“You’re very bad at this.”
Natasha arched a brow. “At what?”
You smiled, far too fondly for Natasha’s peace of mind. “Lying to me.”
There were other moments too. Natasha passing the kitchen and finding you half asleep over toast and scientific journals, then quietly taking the burned piece from the toaster before it could set off the smoke detector. You appearing at the shooting range door with a tool kit because Clint had mentioned Natasha was there, and you “just happened to be nearby.”
Natasha discovering, after a late briefing, a cup of black coffee already sitting on the counter near her usual seat in the conference room because you apparently remembered how she took it. You asking once, very casually, “Do you always scowl when you read, or only when the report is boring?”
Natasha replying, “Do you always hover in doorways, or only when you’re trying to distract me?”
You grinning. “Only when it works.” .And it did work. The problem, Natasha realized slowly and with some alarm, was not just that she liked being around you. It was that she was beginning to look for you.
In rooms, in passing conversations, in the spaces between one task and the next. Natasha would enter the kitchen and check automatically if you were there. She’d hear footsteps in the hall and know, absurdly, whether they were yours before turning. She found herself memorizing the difference between your work clothes and your sleep clothes, between your distracted smile and your delighted one, between the laugh you gave everyone and the quieter, softer one you seemed to save for when Natasha said something unexpectedly kind.
And you..you noticed. Natasha could tell you noticed because you started waiting less carefully. Smiling sooner. Letting your eyes linger a beat longer but neither of you said anything. But something was happening. Natasha had spent so much of her life around false intimacy that genuine tenderness felt almost more destabilizing than violence ever had. And yet she kept returning.
It went on like that for weeks. Time lost shape around the pattern of finding each other. Every excuse Natasha invented became thinner. Every smile you gave in response became more obvious in its affection. There were moments where the air between you felt so charged Natasha could almost hear it, when your hands brushed passing tools, when Natasha leaned too close to look at a screen, when you said her name in that softer voice you seemed not to use for anyone else.
Still, neither of you crossed the line. Until one afternoon Natasha walked into the lab and found you humming under your breath while sorting through a tray of tiny metal components. You looked up at the sound of Natasha entering and immediately laughed. “No.”
Natasha stopped. “No?”
“No fake equipment emergency today.” You pointed a screwdriver at her. “I’m setting boundaries.”
“That confident?”
“You’ve used gun problems twice, communication issues three times, and one completely fictional knife imbalance.”
Natasha lifted a brow. “You noticed.”
You stared at her. “Natasha.”
The way you said her name was almost enough to undo her on the spot. She stepped further into the lab and you set the screwdriver down slowly. Something in the air shifted and Natasha stopped on the other side of the bench and looked at you for a long moment, letting the silence stretch.
There were many ways Natasha knew how to do difficult things. This one felt absurdly harder than most of them. She had faced weapons pointed at her without blinking. Had lied to kings and killers and monsters. Had survived rooms built to break people. And still, this..standing in warm afternoon light with one brilliant girl looking at her like she mattered made her pulse feel less manageable than combat.
“You know.” Natasha said at last, voice lower than usual, “for someone so observant, you’ve missed something.”
Your breath caught just slightly. “What?”
Natasha held your gaze. “I keep coming back.” she said, “because I want to see you.”
Natasha took one step closer and the space between you narrowed. “I don’t need an excuse.” she continued, “Not really. I just…” She exhaled softly, something like a laugh at herself. “I wasn’t sure how not to make it obvious.”
At that, you smiled and then smiled harder. And then, to Natasha’s helpless affection, smiled so much it looked almost impossible for one face to hold. “You are saying this..” you said with happiness, “while standing in front of a week and a half of evidence.”
Natasha actually laughed once under her breath. “Yes.”
You put both hands over your own mouth for a second as if trying to physically contain how much you were smiling and failing completely. That made Natasha’s chest ache in the gentlest way.
“There it is..” Natasha murmured.
You lowered your hands. “There what is?”
“That smile.”
You looked positively luminous now. “You did that.”
For a beat, Natasha could only look at you. Then she decided there was no point in halfway measures anymore. “Come to dinner with me.” she said.
You blinked and Natasha went on before either of you could retreat. “A real dinner. Somewhere outside this tower. No broken weapons or fake emergencies. No pretending I was in the area.”
Your eyes widened just slightly and Natasha’s voice softened. “A date.” And that did it..you smiled so widely Natasha thought, absurdly, that if Tony walked in now he’d probably assume some major scientific breakthrough had happened.
“Yes.” you said immediately. Natasha felt warmth spread through her so suddenly and completely it almost left her unsteady. You laughed again, softer this time, shaking your head at yourself. “Sorry. I could’ve played that cooler.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
Your expression turned almost unbearably fond. “You asked me on a date. There was never any chance of cool.”
Something in Natasha’s face must have softened, because your own smile gentled in response.
“When?” you asked.
“Tomorrow night?”
You nodded too quickly. “Tomorrow night is perfect.”
“You don’t know where we’re going.”
“I don’t care.” Natasha’s brow lifted. “That sounds irresponsible.” You leaned forward slightly over the bench between you, eyes bright. “I trust you.”
The words hit deeper than they should have or perhaps exactly as deep as they should have. Natasha looked at you for a moment longer, then let herself smile. “Tomorrow night.” Natasha repeated.
“Tomorrow night.” you echoed, still smiling like the sun had personally chosen you. Natasha turned to leave before she could do something reckless like stay there just to keep looking at you.
Halfway to the door, she heard you call after her.
“Natasha?” You stood where she had left you, hands braced against the workbench, happiness still written all over your face in ways you had clearly made no effort to hide.
“I’m really glad your gun was broken all those times.” you said.
Natasha smiled and the sight seemed to light you up even more. “Me too.”
The next day, Bruce was at the central console, reading through streams of salvaged code with the deep frown that meant his mind was moving too fast for his body to keep up. Tony stood a few feet away, one hand braced against the edge of a workbench, flipping through projected diagnostics with terse and irritated flicks of his fingers. And you sat cross legged on a wheeled lab stool in the middle of it all, staring at a broken Ultron processor fragment as if you personally intended to insult it into revealing its secrets.
There was a difference in you today. Tony noticed it first because Tony noticed changes in the people he loved with the intensity of a man who would rather die than admit how often he worried. “You’re smiling at dead code..” he said without looking up. “That’s either deeply concerning or wildly adorable. I haven’t decided which.”
You didn’t glance away from the screen. “Maybe I’m in a good mood.”
Bruce looked up briefly over the rim of his glasses. “That’s suspicious.”
You gasped softly in mock offense. “Wow. Betrayed by both of you in under ten seconds.”
Tony finally turned his head, narrowing his eyes at you. “No, no. There’s a thing here.” He pointed at your face. “That expression. That is not your usual ‘I’m about to defeat technology with hatred’ expression.”
You rolled your stool back a little with a nudge of one socked foot. “I have more than one expression.”
Tony snorted. “Questionable.”
Bruce, far kinder and therefore far more dangerous in moments like this, asked mildly, “Does this have anything to do with tonight?”
You blinked once and Tony straightened immediately. “Oh my God.”
“No.”
“Oh my God!” he repeated, more delighted now. You dragged both hands over your face. “Please don’t do this.”
Tony’s grin went wicked in under a second. “Romanoff..” Bruce tried to hide a smile and failed. “Tony.”
“What?” Tony said innocently. “I’m just connecting data points. Bright mood, distracted behavior..Rechecked one outfit three times in the reflection of the vibranium cabinet this morning..”
You whipped around on the stool so fast it squeaked against the floor. “How do you know that!?”
“Because this is my lab and you are not subtle.”
Bruce coughed into one hand, clearly suppressing laughter now. You groaned and slumped forward until your forehead nearly hit the console. “I hate both of you.”
“No, you don’t.” Tony said immediately, “You are glowing and I’m very happy for you and also personally offended.”
You lifted your head just enough to glare at him. “You are impossible.”
“And yet beloved.”
Bruce, still scanning the code, added quietly, “You seem really happy, Y/n.”
That softened something in you and you looked down at your hands and tried very badly to hide a smile. “I am.”
Then the doors to the lab slid open and Natasha stepped inside. It was ridiculous, the way your entire face changed. It happened in an instant, like someone had turned a light toward you from the inside.
Natasha saw it and despite all the training in the world, despite every hard lesson that had taught her to contain every visible reaction before it could betray her, she felt that same quiet warmth bloom low in her chest. It had been happening more often lately.
Natasha leaned one shoulder against the doorframe as it shut behind her. She had changed out of training clothes and into something simpler. The kind of look that always seemed effortless on her even when it absolutely wasn’t.
“Hi.” you said, and even that one little word sounded too bright.
Natasha’s mouth curved at one corner. “Hi.”
She stepped further into the room and for a second, neither of you said anything else.Not because you had nothing to say, but because you had too much and there were people here and the air had changed again in that charged, delicate way that always seemed to happen when you looked at each other too directly for too long.
Tony, naturally, ruined it. “She’s been weird all day..” he announced and you whirled. “Tony!”
Natasha arched one brow. “Weird?”
“Glowy“ Tony corrected. “Distracted and smiling at inanimate objects.”
“They’re not inanimate, they’re inactive!” you shot back automatically.
Bruce murmured, “That wasn’t really the point..”
Natasha folded her arms, eyes still on you. “Is that true?”
You looked somewhere between horrified and delighted. “I am being publicly slandered.”
Natasha let the silence stretch just enough to make you squirm. Then she said, very quietly, “A little.” And just like that, your expression softened into something almost helplessly fond.
Bruce removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We are working.”
“Yes, Doctor Banner, we’re aware.” Tony said. “Unlike these two, who are apparently starring in a deeply irritating subplot.”
You reached behind you without looking and threw a rolled up cleaning cloth at him. He caught it midair with a look of personal betrayal. Natasha stayed where she was a moment longer, then moved closer to the main console.
“What are we looking at?”
Bruce’s expression shifted immediately, all humor draining out beneath the seriousness of the work. He tapped one of the projected files open. “Recovered fragments from one of Ultron’s secondary processing cores. We thought it was dead. It wasn’t.”
“Anything useful?” Natasha asked.
“Maybe.” you said, rolling your stool aside so Natasha could see the data. “Or catastrophic..still deciding.”
Natasha glanced at you. “Comforting.”
You smiled. “I try.”
Bruce pointed to a dense string of layered architecture. “This section doesn’t map cleanly to the rest of Ultron’s behavioral code.”
Tony’s jaw tightened. “Which means if he built it as a contingency, he expected to lose parts of himself and survive anyway.”
Natasha looked back at the processor fragment on the containment platform. She had lived too long to trust things that looked harmless. “You think it’s still active.”
“We think..” Bruce said carefully, “it might become active if it finds the right pathway.”
That did not improve anything. You spun slowly on your stool, studying line after line of code. “We’ve kept it isolated. Sandbox only. No live connection to tower systems. No remote access, nothing it should be able to jump through.”
Tony folded his arms. “Should being the important word there.”
Natasha’s gaze lingered on you for a beat. “And after this?”
You looked up. “After this what?”
“Tonight.”
It was a simple question and it landed like a spark. Your entire face lit again before you could stop it. “Tonight..” you repeated, trying and failing to sound calmer than you felt. “Right.”
Tony muttered something about needing stronger alcohol and Bruce looked fixedly at a blank corner of the lab. Natasha let herself enjoy your visible happiness for just a second longer. “Are you almost done here?”
You glanced at the processor shard, then back at Natasha. “I should be.”
“That doesn’t sound confident.”
“It’s science..” you said. “Confidence is how things explode.”
Tony lifted one finger. “Correct!”
Natasha’s mouth twitched. “Should I be worried?”
You leaned in just slightly, lowering your voice like this wasn’t a room full of people with excellent hearing. “About the date or the lab?”
“Both.”
A tiny laugh escaped you. “Date? No.”
“And the lab?”
You glanced at the processor again, and for the briefest second something in your face tightened. “Undecided.”
Natasha held your gaze another moment, then nodded once. “Don’t be late.”
Your expression turned wonderfully stricken and pleased at the same time. “I won’t.”
Natasha almost smiled, then pushed away from the console. “I’ll leave you to it.”
But she didn’t go far. Only to one of the side stations, where she pretended to check a tactical update while the voices behind her rose and fell through the rhythm of work. For a few minutes, the lab felt almost normal. You were alive in this room in a way you were nowhere else. Natasha listened with half an ear and found herself already thinking ahead to later, to where she might take you, to what you might wear, to whether you’d be nervous or smiling or both.
Then suddenly every screen in the lab flickered and Bruce stopped typing. A tone sounded overhead, but not yet an alarm but close enough to make every nerve in Natasha’s body sharpen. “FRIDAY?”
The AI answered immediately, but her voice carried a subtle distortion Natasha had never heard before. “Sir, I am detecting unauthorized activity within the isolated processor chamber.”
You were already moving. You slid off the stool and crossed to the containment platform, bringing up diagnostics in a blur of blue light. “That’s not possible..”
On the sealed tray in the center of the chamber, the damaged Ultron fragment pulsed once red, the color hit the room like a gunshot. “Back up!“ Bruce said sharply.
Natasha was already moving closer to you, not away and the red pulse flashed again. Then the chamber glass filled in one terrible second with branching silver black threads, like frost racing over a window except this frost moved with intention. It spread across the inside of the containment case in writhing, microscopic filaments, splitting and rejoining, devouring the surface in spiderweb patterns too fast to track.
You went pale. “What the hell-”
Bruce’s voice changed first. “Tony..?”
Tony was already seeing it. “I know.”
Code erupted across the nearest screens in violent bursts. “FRIDAY, lock it down.” Tony snapped.
“I am attempting containment.” she said and this time the distortion in her voice was worse.
The chamber itself gave a high mechanical shriek and Natasha saw it then , a seam opening beneath the processor cradle, venting a faint silver vapor into the reinforced casing. Not smoke, but particles. Thousands of them, moving like dust with a mind of its own. Bruce’s face lost what little color it had. “Oh no.”
“What?” Natasha demanded.
Bruce stared at the readings with naked horror. “It isn’t just code..”
You were typing so fast your hands blurred. “It’s built into a nanite substrate-”
“A hybrid vector.” Bruce finished, already moving toward another terminal. “Digital transmission and airborne replication. If the chamber breaks seal-”
“It spreads through the lab.” Tony said and Bruce looked at him. “Through the tower.”
Natasha’s stomach dropped cold. “How far?”
Bruce didn’t answer fast enough, but you did. “If it gets into the main ventilation or system core, not just the tower..” you said, voice thin now, all the brightness burned out of it. “Outside..Hospitals, defense grids, anything what’s connected. Anything breathing near enough to inhale particulate expos-“ Now, the first real alarm went off.
The lab shuddered and heavy blast shutters began dropping over the exterior glass with deafening force. Internal doors disengaged with a series of mechanical clanks. The central chamber hissed as pressure systems shifted around it. On the main display, a tower map lit up red and yellow in spreading sectors.
Your eyes flicked over it once and widened. “No.”
“What?” Natasha snapped.
You pulled up the quarantine sequence and felt the blood drain from your face. “The inner seal didn’t engage.”
For one impossible second nobody moved. Then everything happened at once. On the display, one quarantine door, the final barrier between the infected chamber and the rest of the lab remained half open, jammed on some internal fault. Past it, silver black particulate already streamed into the air like glittering ash.
“If that door doesn’t shut..” Bruce said, voice low with dawning certainty, “..the whole floor is exposed.”
Tony was already running toward the emergency override panel. “FRIDAY, manual seal!”
“Manual seal unavailable from current terminal.” she replied. “Override required at interior control station.”
Natasha turned sharply. The interior control station was on the wrong side of the spreading breach, way too far and too late: “Everyone out.” Tony ordered.
“Tony-” you started.
“Now!”
The command in his voice cut through all argument and Natasha grabbed your wrist. “Move.”
They ran. Bruce was ahead, sprinting for the outer corridor and Tony slammed one control after another as he moved, trying to trigger backup containment from every available point. The lab lights strobed red white red white. Behind them the infected chamber screamed as metal warped under pressure. Screens burst one by one into static, code spilling and crawling. Natasha kept hold of you as you ran, fingers locked around your wrist and for one split second in the middle of the catastrophe, she felt you squeeze back. Then you looked over your shoulder and saw it. The main quarantine display on the wall to their left flashed a single brutal message in red:
FINAL SEAL FAILURE - MANUAL ENGAGEMENT REQUIRED Below it, a countdown began.
00:09
00:08
“No..” you breathed and Natasha saw you see it and tightened her grip immediately. “Don’t.”
But you had already turned enough to understand what it meant. If the final seal stayed open, the virus would leave the chamber entirely. It would get into everything and everyone. Natasha yanked at you harder. “Y/N!”
Tony had reached the outer threshold, Bruce just ahead of him, both of them shouting now, the exit corridor only a few yards away. But the countdown kept falling.
“I can close it!” you said.
Natasha’s heart lurched so hard it felt like impact. “No!”
“There’s an interior override-”
“Y/N, no!”
Tony turned, hearing it and his face changed in a way Natasha would remember for a very long time. “Don’t you dare.”
00:05
There are moments in life that do not feel like decisions until after they are over. This was one of them. You pulled free, a sharp twist of your wrist, and a burst of movement, instinct carrying you before thought could catch up. Natasha’s fingers slipped and for one stunned half second she thought you were only stumbling. Then you ran back toward the interior station.
“No!” Natasha shouted, the word tearing out of her raw and uncontrolled and Tony was yelling too now. Bruce swore and turned as if he might go after you, but the chamber behind them cracked with a noise like splitting bone and a stream of silver black particles burst wider into the open air.
00:04
You reached the panel ans slapped one hand against the glass screen, the other flying over the controls with terrifying speed. The inner barrier began to descend.
“Y/N, GO!” Tony screamed, but you were already too deep. The final seal came down with catastrophic speed and the outer quarantine doors, sensing the containment completion, roared shut in automatic sequence. Natasha lunged too late. The blast door slammed between them with a force that shook the floor and silence hit like a physical blow. Someone was breathing too hard, maybe all of them, but the kind of silence that comes when reality fractures so violently the mind cannot keep up.
Natasha stared at the sealed glass and steel wall in front of her. On the other side, through the reinforced quarantine barrier, you stood frozen at the manual override station. Your hand was still resting against the panel and your chest rose and fell too fast. The red emergency lights painted your face in flashes and for a second you only looked at the door, not understanding, but then it arrived. Natasha saw the exact moment it did. You stepped back once, eyes widening, gaze flicking from the sealed barrier to the spreading silver black haze still trapped in the inner chamber behind you. You hadn’t meant to stay, that was the unbearable part. You had only meant to save them..
“O-Oh my God..” you whispered, though no one could hear it through the glass. Natasha hit the barrier hard enough that pain shot through both palms.
“Y/N!”
The sound of her own voice shocked her too loud, too raw and stripped of every layer of control she usually wore like armor. Your head snapped toward her. On the other side of the barrier, you looked impossibly young all at once. Not because you were weak, because shock had peeled everything else away. Tony reached the glass an instant later. “Open the damn door!” he barked.
Tony whirled toward the nearest terminal like he might tear it apart with his hands. “I said open the-”
“Tony.” Bruce’s voice was quiet and terrible. He stood a few feet back, staring at the containment readings projected overhead. The numbers changed too fast, pulsing with contamination growth, airborne density, system corruption markers. His face had gone deathly still.
“If that seal opens..” Bruce said, every word forced out through horror, “..it gets out.”
Tony looked at him as if he had spoken in another language. Bruce swallowed once, “Not just here. Everywhere.”
Natasha’s hands stayed pressed flat against the glass. On the other side, you took one shaky step towards her. You stopped just inches from the barrier, your face when you looked at Natasha..God. It was shock, yes. Fear, absolutely. But beneath both there was something worse. You looked apologetic, like you were sorry.
“Open it..” she said, voice low and lethal now, not looking away from you. “Find a way.”
Tony was already doing exactly that. He tore through one interface after another, dragging up release protocols, purge options, venting pathways, reverse seals. “There has to be a bypass. There is always a bypass.”
“There is..” you said, but they couldn’t hear you through the barrier, but they saw the shape of the words. Tony stared and you lifted a trembling hand and pointed once toward the exterior control panel. Then you shook your head. No bypass they could use, not safely.
Bruce reached the same conclusion a second later. “She’s right.” Tony rounded on him with a fury so sharp Natasha half expected the room to ignite. “Don’t.”
Bruce didn’t flinch. “The viral particulate is stable only because the quarantine is holding pressure and temperature around it. If we break the seal now, we aerosolize the entire substrate.” He looked toward you again, devastation cracking through his voice. “We wouldn’t just lose the tower.”
Natasha could barely breathe around the pressure in her chest. On the other side of the glass, you pressed one hand lightly against the barrier and it wrecked Natasha. Without thinking, sh lifted her own hand to match it on the opposite side. Glass between them..Only glass and it might as well have been the end of the world. Your eyes locked on hers, you looked stunned still, like part of you had not caught up with what your body had done. You looked like someone who had been on the verge of leaving for dinner and had instead stepped directly into a nightmare. Natasha’s throat tightened so hard it hurt.
Tony’s voice broke the air behind her. “FRIDAY, I want every containment model, every antiviral option, every nanite disruption sequence, every goddamn solution you can think of.”
“Yes, boss.” FRIDAY replied immediately.
Bruce was already moving toward another station. “We need to know whether exposure’s begun, whether it’s only airborne, whether it can cross skin, whether it mutates-”
Tony snapped, “Then figure it out!”
“I’m trying!”
Natasha barely heard them. All of her attention stayed on you. A thousand things crowded at once behind her ribs, all fighting for the same impossible space, fear, helplessness, rage and beneath all of it a terrible, piercing tenderness she could no longer deny or control. This was supposed to be your night..She had been thinking, only minutes ago, about dinner and laughter and where to take you and whether you would smile like you always did when you got nervous and excited at the same time. Now there was a reinforced quarantine wall between you and a virus on the other side that could kill millions if it escaped.
Your eyes flicked down once, then back up. You mouthed something and Natasha read it instantly. I’m sorry. Something inside her snapped. “No.” Natasha said, fierce and immediate, even though you couldn’t hear. She shook her head hard once. “Don’t.”
You stared at her and Natasha swallowed against the burn in her throat and forced the words out anyway, slower this time, so there would be no chance of misunderstanding. “You do not apologize.” Recognition flickered in your face and then pain. Then something so soft and shattered in your expression Natasha had to curl one hand into a fist against the glass just to keep from breaking with it. Behind her, Tony spoke again, but his voice had changed. It had gone quieter, which was somehow worse.
“She saved us..” No one answered because what answer was there? That was the truth sitting in the center of the room, bright and merciless. You had seen the failed seal..You had understood what would happen if no one acted..and you had run back and now you were sealed inside because of it.
Tony stopped moving altogether. He stood at the console staring through the glass at you, and for one terrible instant Natasha saw not Iron Man, not the billionaire genius, not the man who always had another idea, another machine, another impossible save. Just Tony. Just a man who had once watched your father die because of the world he built and now stood helpless on the other side of another door. His face crumpled for only a second, so brief most people would have missed it. Bruce looked between them all and seemed to age five years in as many breaths. “We’ll find something.” he said, and it was impossible to tell whether he was promising them or himself. “We’ll find something.”
Natasha’s hand stayed where it was, you’re stayed there too. And in the awful quiet between alarms, Natasha remembered the way you had smiled that morning in the kitchen. The way you had promised not to be late. The way your whole face had lit when Natasha walked into the room. The way you had looked seconds before everything went wrong, alive with anticipation, with happiness, with the fragile hope of something beginning.
All of that was still here. Trapped and held in place by glass and steel and the knowledge that opening one door could condemn millions. Tony took one step toward the barrier. “Kid.” he said, voice breaking on the word and your eyes shifted to him. He put his palm flat against the glass too, a few feet away from where Natasha stood.
“I’m getting you out.” he said and no one in the room believed in impossible things more stubbornly than Tony Stark. And the first time, Natasha needed him to be right. Your lower lip trembled once before you caught it between your teeth and steadied yourself and nodded.
The sight nearly undid Natasha. She pressed her hand harder against the barrier and on the other side trapped in the poisoned light of the sealed lab, you fought to hold back your tears, while the virus hissed and shimmered behind you like a living threat. The date never came, the night had not even started and still, somehow, everything had already changed. Three people outside the glass stood there in helpless, brutal clarity, staring at the girl inside and knowing with absolute certainty that if that door opened before they found a cure..millions would die.
So no one touched the release and you remained on the other side of the barrier, alive, frightened, brilliant and unbearably out of reach.
I was wondering if I could request a Natasha Romanoff x Step parent reader, so Natasha is divorced and has two children, and the reader is trying to be the best step parent they can be but the kids just miss their other parent and basically want to know when they can see them again, and Natasha is basically also neglecting the reader speaking a lot with their trying to figure out scheduling, and the kids wanting to spend time with just the four of them and Natasha agrees which doesn't make things easier since it's obvious the ex still has feelings for nat, so this leaves reader questioning stuff, sorry if it's a long request
Outsider
Natasha Romanoff x Reader
[A/N] Starting to slip into the festive spirit with this one a little - though do not mistake, this one is angsty 😂 Thank you for the request lovely, hope you enjoy ❤️
When you go into the living room you find Natasha on the couch, with her son Jacob sat on her lap and her daughter Elena cuddled into her side. Before you’ve even had chance to open your mouth both of her children glare at you, making it clear that neither of them wants you interrupting cuddle time with their Mother. You give the three of them a small smile before taking a seat on the armchair by yourself.
You’d begun dating Natasha a year ago and you’d known she had kids from the very start. Natasha had been unable to give birth after her childhood in the Red Room so she’d adopted two children with her ex-girlfriend Rosalie. Although you’d known Jacob was five and Elena was seven you hadn’t known anything else because Natasha hadn’t wanted to introduce you to them too soon. After dating for seven months Natasha had moved in with you and had finally let you meet her two children.
It hadn’t been a good start.
On that first day you’d met Natasha at the local park with a picnic where she’d introduced you to them both. You’d been so nervous and had really wanted them to like you so you’d tried really hard to relate to them both. Maybe too hard – perhaps they could sense it because they hadn’t taken to you at all. Your experience with children was relatively limited. You’re an only child with no nieces and nephews, and your job involved working with older people. Children were a bit of a mystery to you and clearly they could both sense that.
Over the next couple of months you’d continued to try but neither of them were having any of it. Any suggestion you made was met with apathy at best or hostility at worst. You’d tried your best to research the children’s interests – you now knew more about Roblox than you would’ve ever cared to learn but neither of them responded to your questions or discussions. You made the ‘6 7’ joke and they’d both given you an unimpressed look. Even simple things you’d loved as a child like movie night were met with moans and groans then they’d go home to Rosalie and complain they’d been bored all weekend.
God, how you hated Rosalie.
Not only was Rosalie one of the most gorgeous women you’d ever seen, making you feel incredibly insecure, she also clearly still harboured feelings for your girlfriend. Natasha had reassured you the break-up was mutual, that Rosalie wasn’t interested in her like that anymore but you suspected that wasn’t the truth. And even if it had been, Rosalie was clearly still attracted to her.
“Oh, no, they can’t go trick or treating.” Rosalie had told you with a tinkly laugh when you’d had them both over for Halloween “We don’t encourage begging.”
So instead you’d tried to throw them a small Halloween party at home to make it exciting for them only for both the children to complain and ask why they’d couldn’t go trick or treating like they had last year with Mommy.
Natasha found the whole thing amusing which only heightened your frustration “I’m trying my best but they still don’t like me.” You’d complained one night, folding your arms “What am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing, they’re still just upset about the split.” Natasha had said, rubbing your shoulder as she sat next to you on the bed “It’s not about you.”
“Jacob told me he hated me this morning. Just because I asked what type of cereal he wanted.”
Natasha kissed your cheek “He’s a kid, kids say stupid stuff. He didn’t mean it.”
“Okay, well can you talk to them? Because they’re not being very nice to me.”
Natasha had given you a look and your cheeks had heated up, realising how childish your words must sound. But they were true – the children weren’t very nice to you and Natasha never really told them off or asked them to apologise “Love, they’re only young and they’re still adjusting to me being with someone new.” Natasha said “Give them some time.”
Now here you are, marooned onto the uncomfortable armchair in your own home because your girlfriends kids won’t let you anywhere near her. Elena gives you a pointed look and then kisses Natasha’s cheek “I love you Mama. I wish you and Mommy were still together.”
Natasha simply kisses Elena’s cheek in return and doesn’t say anything. You feel another stab of irritation but don’t say anything, knowing you’ll only be fuelling the fire. Jacob looks up at Natasha this time “Mama, Mommy said you’re both going to take us to see Santa this year.”
Your eye-brows furrow. Natasha hadn’t mentioned anything about you and her taking the kids to see Santa. You’d figured Rosalie would want to do that, given you’d had them for Halloween. Natasha’s voice interrupts your thoughts “That’s right, Mommy got in touch with me and we’re both going to take you see Santa. Won’t that be fun?”
You falter at that “Both of you as in… You and Rosalie?”
Natasha gives you a small smile “Yeah, we both wanted to take the kids so it made sense to go together.”
It does make sense. Sort of. Except… Where’s your invite? Natasha is dating you now; it would be weird for her to go with just Rosalie… Right? Maybe it would be nice for the kids for both parents to be there but they’re not a couple anymore and you’re worried it will send them a confusing message. It doesn’t help that whilst both the children look delighted Elena also throws you a smug look.
You swallow hard and try to put on a bright smile “That’s great! You know, when I was a kid, it was tradition to put the Christmas tree up the first weekend in December and then we’d all have hot chocolate. Do you guys wanna help?”
“We get a real tree the weekend before Christmas. Fake ones are ugly.” Elena says, wrinkling her nose.
“Yeah, we want a real tree!” Jacob says, copying his sister.
“Maybe we could have two trees this year?” Natasha suggests “Y/N has a really nice fake tree, it looks almost like the real thing-”
“No, we want a real one Mama!” Elena says with a pout.
Natasha just laughs and doesn’t push the issue any further, pressing a kiss to the top of her daughters head. You feel your eyes prickle with tears and blink quickly – it’s dumb to get upset over something like a Christmas tree but the kids constant rejections of anything you suggest is starting to get to you. Not helped by the fact you know Natasha is going to be spending time with her ex. You take a deep breath. They just need time, you keep telling yourself. They’ll warm to you eventually.
December is one of your favourite months but you’re not in the festive spirit this year. Natasha asked if you wouldn’t mind honouring the children’s tradition of picking out a real tree the weekend before Christmas so the house feels barer than usual for the majority of the month. Every suggestion of a festive activity you could do with the kids is met with more rejection. Ice-skating hurts their feet apparently. The new Christmas film at the movie theatre looks boring. They don’t want to walk around the Christmas light trail. When you suggest having a living room sleepover beneath the tree the day you put it up they both look at you like you’re insane.
You feel even worse when you see the photos Natasha took when her and Rosalie took the children to see Santa. Mostly they’re of the kids and at first you’re pleased they had a nice time. But then there are family photos – Natasha and Rosalie look like a couple. Rosalie’s arm is around Natasha in all of them. It makes you feel insecure but Natasha barely notices.
The biggest bomb shell comes when Natasha returns from dropping the kids’ home. The plan has been that Rosalie will have them for the next couple of days then you’ll have them on Christmas Eve leading into Christmas Day before they head home Christmas evening to be back with Rosalie. Natasha appears in the doorway “Hey… Change of plan about Christmas.”
You pause the TV and look over at her from the couch “What do you mean?”
“The kids want us both there for Christmas so I’m going to go to Rosalie’s on Christmas Eve and stay there until Boxing Day.”
There’s a long silence as you analyse Natasha’s face, looking for a hint of guilt – an understanding that she knows this is wrong. You find nothing though. She hasn’t mentioned you and although you already know an invite hasn’t been extend to you, you have to ask “So what about me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll be at Rosalie’s and I’ll, what, just be at home? By myself?”
“You could go to your Mom’s.”
You purse your lips. You have a difficult relationship with your Mom and Natasha damn well knows that “How is this fair? It’s like two days until Christmas, she’s not expecting me. We have plans Nat, I got food in-”
“It won’t go to waste, we can have a late Christmas dinner on Boxing Day.”
“No! This- Nat, come on.” You stand up, running a hand through your hair “Look, the kids taking their time to accept me is one thing. They’re only kids. But you running off to be with Rosalie every time she says jump-”
“Rosalie didn’t ask, the kids did-”
“Through Rosalie! Nat, you’ve broken up, you’re confusing the kids by constantly doing things as a four as if you’re still with her-”
“Are you serious? How is this confusing? We’re still their parents even if we’re not a couple-”
“My own parents broke up when I was young, they didn’t keep getting back together to do ‘family’ things because there was an acknowledgement that whilst they both still loved me they didn’t love each other anymore and they weren’t a joint family anymore! We have plans for Christmas, you can’t just ditch me to spend it with your ex-”
“I’m not! I’m spending it with the kids-”
“They were due to come here! It’s not like I’m keeping you away from them! You would’ve seen them anyway and I wouldn’t have been left out!” You fume, folding your arms.
Natasha rolls her eyes “So this is about you, not about whether it’s confusing for the kids.”
“I’m your girlfriend Nat and you’re really happy to just leave me by myself in favour of being with your ex?”
“With the kids Y/N, stop being so goddamn selfish! They’re only little!”
“You seriously think this is me being selfish? That two days before my favourite day of the year you’ve pulled the plug on all of our plans? Even if I wanted to I can’t go to my Mom’s now. So I get to just spend the day by myself whilst you’re with your ex-”
“Oh for- Look, I guess I could ask Rosalie if you could come but the kids kind of wanted it to just be the four of us-”
“I don’t-” You let out a frustrated groan “I don’t want to spend the day at your ex’s house Nat. Tell her we had plans and that we’re going to stick to them. The kids will need to deal with the fact that Christmases with their parents are separate now-”
“I’m not talking about this with you anymore, you’re being so unreasonable.”
“I- You think I’m being unreasonable? Are you serious?” You follow Natasha into the kitchen as she keeps her back turned to you “And if I suddenly announced I was going to spend Christmas with my ex, you-”
“You don’t have children Y/N!” Natasha shouts, turning around and getting right in your face “You don’t get it! The kids don’t want to spend Christmas with you, you try too hard! You’ve put them off at every turn, you-”
“Don’t you dare fucking shout at me like that. Your kids have been difficult since day one and I have done my best to be accommodating and now you’re going to act like I’m the problem?”
“You’re the one being bitchy about me spending Christmas Day with my own kids so yes, I would say you're definitely the problem right now."
“Fuck you Nat.” You snap, storming out of the kitchen “Fuck you!”
You go into the bedroom the two of you share, so much pent up anger inside of you that you’re not sure what to do. With a frustrated grunt you whack your pillow a few times before sitting down and burying your face in your hands. You can’t do this anymore. Those kids not liking you was one thing but this is too much. You’re beginning to suspect most of the kids complaints aren’t even coming from them directly anyway, they’re coming from Rosalie.
A few times you’d seen the unexpected side to Nat’s children, the kind of moments that had you convinced they were finally warming to you. Natasha had been called into the compound at the last minute, leaving you to look after them both so you’d take them both to the zoo. Jacob had held your hand the entire time you’d walked around while Elena, ever the animal lover, had told you fact after fact about the various animals in the pens. You’d all sat down to watch the sea lion show and Jacob had wanted to sit in your lap whilst Elena had kept letting out excited squeals.
Away from the influence of their parents they were sweet kids. You could even see yourself loving them one day. But the longer they remained under Rosalie’s thumb, the longer this would get dragged out.
An hour goes by and you just sit there, letting everything run through your head. Natasha doesn’t come to check on you once. You have to accept the difficult truth – this isn’t the kids’ fault. And now it isn’t even Rosalie’s. Yes, she’s chasing Nat and undermining your relationship… But Natasha is letting her. And maybe she’ll always let her.
Another thirty minutes go by before Natasha finally comes in and she sees you packing your suitcase. She sighs “What is this?”
“I’m leaving. Maybe just for Christmas but maybe forever, I haven’t decided yet.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?”
“No, I don’t.”
Natasha sighs as she watches you continue packing “So you’re going to your Mom’s after all?”
“No, I’m going to Maria’s. Turns out she’s spending Christmas alone too.” You’d become close with Maria Hill after spending time at the compound with Natasha. If Natasha was too busy you and Maria had gravitated towards each other until you’d become firm friends.
Natasha purses her lips “So you’re really going to get mad at me for spending Christmas with my ex then go spend it at Maria’s house like I’m meant to be totally cool with that?”
“I’m mad at you for a lot of things Natasha and quite frankly, I’m done. I love that you put those kids first, that’s how it should be. But now you’re prioritising Rosalie over me and I won’t stand for that.”
“So you’re done? You’re not my girlfriend anymore?”
“Looks like it.”
Natasha’s expression falters at that though she tries her best to school it back into a disinterested frown “Just because I want to spend Christmas with my children?”
“Your stubborn insistencies that that’s my problem rather than addressing the actual problem – the problem I’ve told you about multiple times and you don’t take seriously. If you want to run around after Rosalie then fine but I’m not interested.”
You grab your suitcase and head down the corridor. Natasha hesitates, wanting to call out to you but she doesn’t. You open the door and slam it closed behind you.
Natasha stands in the hallway of the apartment that you’d shared, not sure what to do with herself now. Her phone beeps, a selfie from Rosalie of her and the kids. Natasha sighs. Her kids come first. That’s what she tells herself.
You hadn’t made the priority list at all. And now you were gone. Probably for good. Natasha runs a hand through her hair. How had it all gone so wrong? She'd thought she could balance her old life with her new one but... Maybe she hadn't managed it.
Natasha Romanoff died. You grieved her. Buried her. But she left you something behind: a box. A riddle. A key. A whisper from the grave. And one message: “Find me.”
Just the silence in the jet. The way Steve kept looking at you like he wanted to say something, but didn’t. Couldn’t. The way Clint avoided your eyes entirely. The way your own hands wouldn’t stop shaking, no matter how tightly you pressed them to your thighs.
It wasn’t supposed to be her. That thought kept looping like static in your head. Not her. Anyone but her.
They gave her a lake.
A still, silver surface surrounded by trees that looked like they hadn’t aged since the Cold War. Stark had “pulled strings” to keep it private, but you could feel the tension behind every word exchanged, the kind of tension that comes when people don’t know how to mourn someone like her.
What do you say at a funeral for a woman who had over a dozen codenames, three birthdates, and no grave?
Natasha Romanoff deserved more than this. More than a hidden gathering. More than a folded flag.
And yet... there it was. A casket they all pretended wasn’t empty. A ceremony no one knew how to start.
Steve looked at you when it came time to speak. Just a quiet nod, nothing forced. But you understood what it meant. You knew her. You were hers. Say something. Anything.
Your boots crunched over the gravel path as you stepped forward. The air bit your lungs. The trees whispered. The silence waited.
You stared at the casket. Not because it meant anything. But because it was the only thing you could look at without breaking.
You cleared your throat. Spoke, not to them, but to her.
"She hated flowers," you said quietly. "Thought they were a waste. Said funerals always had too many roses and not enough truth."
A weak chuckle rippled from somewhere behind you. Clint. Maybe.
"She wasn’t a hero. Not the way some people define it. She didn’t wear the word easily. Didn’t trust it. And maybe she was right not to."
"But she saved lives. More than any of us know. Not because she had to. Not because it was written in some prophecy. But because she chose to. Every single day."
"She chose to stay. She chose us. Even when it cost her."
Your voice cracked. You let it.
"She used to tell me that red in the ledger never goes away. That the past doesn’t let people like her move on. But…"
You swallowed, eyes locked on the coffin.
"I hope she knew, at the end, that she was more than the things she did to survive. That to me, she was the reason I did anything at all."
"And wherever she is, if there’s anything after this, I hope she’s finally not looking over her shoulder."
"I loved her."
"I still do."
"And I don’t know how to let her go."
You stepped back before the shaking in your knees gave out. The wind brushed against your cheek, too soft to be cold. Just enough to make you look over your shoulder.
Just enough to feel like her.
The others said their pieces. Short. Measured. Stark barely spoke. Bruce cried silently. Clint left a blade on the coffin.
You didn’t touch it. You couldn’t. If you did, it would be real.
You stayed until the sun went down. Until the casket was lowered, and the earth swallowed what was never really there.
And when the last of them left, when the engines of the quinjet faded, you knelt beside the headstone.
Pressed your fingers to the name.
NATASHA ROMANOFF
Daughter. Avenger. Loved.
And whispered…“You promised you'd come back.”
No one answered.
But you swore, for half a second. You felt someone watching.
You unlock the door to your apartment well past midnight.
The light in the hallway flickers like it always does, casting her boots, still lined up by the door, in shifting shadow. You hadn’t moved them before the mission. You thought they’d be waiting for her return.
Now, they just look like they’re missing someone.
You close the door quietly. Silently. Like she’s still asleep in the other room. You know she’s not. But you do it anyway.
The apartment smells like old coffee and worn leather. Familiar things. Things she touched. Lived in. You breathe through your nose like that can somehow keep her here.
You should sleep. You should sit. You don’t. Instead, your feet move on instinct, carrying you into the bedroom, then to the closet. You slide the door open gently, like it’s something sacred.
And there it is.
Tucked between her old SHIELD issued jacket and the black hoodie she always stole from you... a box.
Matte black. Wooden. No markings on top. No dust. Like it had been placed recently. Like it was meant to be found tonight.
Your stomach knots.
It has no lock. No latch. But the way it hums under your fingers as you reach for it makes your throat close up.
You carry it to the bed like it’s fragile. Set it down. Then you just… stare.
You recognize her work. The minimalist smoothness. The silence. Natasha Romanoff didn’t leave messes. She left traps. Plans. Choices.
You slide the lid open.
Inside...
A photograph.
A small brass key, old and ornate.
A folded piece of paper, wrapped in red ribbon, sealed with wax.
That symbol again. The hourglass black widow.
Your breath catches as you reach for the note, fingers tracing the edge of her seal. You break it. Unfold the paper with trembling hands. Her handwriting punches straight into your ribs.
“If you're reading this, it means I’m gone. But you already knew that.”
“I always said goodbye too late. So this time… I said it early. But I didn’t leave you nothing.”
“You know where to start. Where I disappeared. Find me.”
--N.
You look down at the photograph.
It’s a black and white shot, grainy, slightly creased. You don’t recognize the building, but it feels familiar. Cold concrete, half-hidden street signs, a shadow of a woman in the window reflection. Natasha. Watching.
The note crumples slightly in your hand as your grip tightens.
You whisper into the quiet, “What the hell did you do, Tasha…”
There’s no answer.
But the room feels heavier now. Like something just woke up.
Like her ghost hasn’t left.
And the key?
It’s waiting.
You lift the photograph first.
It’s heavier than it should be, cardstock thick, edges worn soft like it’s been handled too many times. The image is stark: a narrow street, concrete buildings pressed close together, a faded sign in a language you don’t immediately recognize. The angle is wrong, too low, too intentional. Surveillance, not memory.
You tilt it toward the lamp.
There, in the glass of a darkened window, barely visible unless you’re looking for it, her.
Hair pulled back tight. Shoulders squared. Watching whoever took the photo.
Watching you, now.
Your thumb rubs over the corner of the image, and something catches. You flip it over.
Nothing written. No coordinates. No names.
Just a faint indentation, like someone pressed too hard with a pen and then erased the words.
Natasha’s favorite trick.
You grab a pencil from the nightstand, turn the photo face down, and gently shade over the back.
Letters emerge slowly. Uneven. Intentional.
“Where I vanished.”
Your chest tightens.
Not where she died. Where she disappeared.
The difference matters.
You close your eyes.
Vilnius. The safehouse. The mission she never debriefed. The one where she went dark for seventy-two hours and came back with blood on her hands and nothing to say.
You swallow.
The key is next.
Old brass. Heavy. Too ornate for anything modern. It warms quickly in your palm, like it’s been waiting to be held. There’s a symbol etched near the bow, a tiny hourglass, identical to the wax seal.
You turn it over.
Stamped along the shaft, nearly invisible:
“LOCKS ARE LIARS.”
You snort softly despite yourself. “Of course they are,” you murmur. “So are you.”
Your gaze drifts back to the note.
You hadn’t unfolded it all the way before. You do now, flattening it carefully against your thigh.
On the inside, beneath her earlier words, is something you missed.
A riddle.
Written smaller. Tighter. Like she didn’t want it found too easily.
“I have no door, but I can be entered. I have no voice, but I answer truth. I disappear when watched. Find me.”
Your pulse quickens.
You read it again.
No door. Can be entered. Answers truth. Disappears when watched.
You think of interrogation rooms. Files. Cover identities. The Red Room.
Then you think smaller. Closer. You look around the apartment.
Bathroom. Bedroom. Kitchen.
Your eyes land on the mirror above the dresser.
You stand slowly, the box still on the bed behind you. Your reflection looks wrong, eyes too hollow, skin too pale. Like someone peeled something vital out of you and forgot to put it back.
You step closer.
Mirrors don’t lie. But they don’t keep secrets either.
You breathe onto the glass. Your reflection fogs. Disappears.
You smile, sharp, sad.
“Cute,” you whisper. “You’re saying I should look where I can’t see.”
You wipe the mirror clean.
Behind it, taped to the wall with surgical precision, is another folded paper.
Your hands shake now as you peel it free.
Another note. Another riddle solved.
Natasha 2.
You 0.
The paper smells faintly like gun oil and her perfume.
“Good. You always were smarter when you were angry.”
You huff a broken laugh.
“Next rule... Don’t follow what I left behind. Follow what I took away.”
Your mind races.
What did she remove? What’s missing?
You scan the room, heart pounding harder with every second.
Her nightstand. Her side of the bed. The drawer she never locked because she said, “If they’re in here, a lock won’t stop them.”
You pull it open.
Empty. Too empty.
The indentation of something rectangular still marks the felt lining.
A book. A journal. Her ledger.
Your breath stutters.
You kneel, reaching under the bed, fingers brushing dust and shadows, and then wood.
A false panel. You pull. It slides free with a soft click.
Inside, a smaller compartment. And inside that…. A second box.
This one is metal. Cold. Heavier.
And engraved on the lid, in that same precise script...
“You don’t have to forgive me. You just have to finish this.”
Your heart slams against your ribs.
Because now you understand.
This isn’t grief. This isn’t closure. This is a mission.
And Natasha Romanoff never left missions unfinished.
You carry the second box to the kitchen table, center of the apartment, under the single overhead light, the only place in your world that doesn’t still feel like hers.
The metal is cold. Not the kind of cold that fades in your hand. The kind that sinks into your bones.
You don’t hesitate this time. You unlatch it.
It opens with a soft, deliberate click. The sound makes the hair on your arms rise. She wanted you to hear it.
Inside....
A folded cloth -- black silk, soft and strange.
A flash drive.
Three loose photographs.
A chess piece.
And a letter. Not sealed. Just… waiting.
You reach for the cloth first. You unfold it slowly, laying it flat on the table.
It’s a map.
Hand drawn, chaotic and incomplete, not geography, but memory. Lines like threads, looping between dates and codenames, scrawled in black ink:
Volgograd / Vanya.
Berlin / D-17 safehouse.
Paris: Track 6 -- didn’t run.
The Quiet Room.
BUDAPEST -- REDACTED -- FIND ME.
Some are crossed out. Some circled. One word is underlined three times in blood red ink...
KEYFRAME.
You blink. That’s a spy term. Code embedded in media. Messages hidden in videos, frame by frame.
Your eyes flick to the flash drive.
Of course.
You plug it into your laptop. It buzzes once. No folders. No files. Just a single video file titled...
SEVEN MOVES AHEAD.mp4
You hesitate only a second before clicking it open.
It’s grainy. Surveillance angle.
A chess board. Two hands moving pieces. Her hands, delicate, sure, scarred knuckles. She plays both sides. You recognize her signature move... queen’s pawn, four spaces.
Then the screen goes dark.
White text fades in, one line at a time.
“You said once I only loved puzzles because I could control the end. That wasn’t true. I loved them because I knew you’d solve them.”
A frame flashes too fast to catch. You rewind. Pause. Frame by frame. There, in the sixth second....
A still of a red painted bench. A bus stop sign. Coordinates, blurred but just legible in the upper corner.
47.9863° N, 37.1989° E (dont come at my googling idk if this is accurate)
Ukraine. A town called Dobropillia. No one’s heard of it. Which makes it perfect.
You write it down fast, hands shaking.
But there’s more. You turn to the photos.
Each one has a sticky note with her handwriting, three words max.
PHOTO 1:
A man’s silhouette, face blurred, standing outside a crumbling brick building. A former handler? Sticky note...
“He remembers me.”
PHOTO 2:
A spiral staircase, the light catching something metallic three floors up.
Sticky note...
“The key fits here.”
PHOTO 3:
A red typewriter. Missing several keys. On its side, scratched in Cyrillic: “Chitat' mezhdu strok.” You translate instantly.
“Read between the lines.”
You stare at them all laid out.
The queen chess piece is still in the box. Black, same as the one in the first riddle. You pick it up.
It’s heavier than it looks. You turn it in your palm. The base is hollow, not removable, but clickable.
You press. It opens.
Inside, a paper scroll.
Tightly rolled. You uncoil it with shaking fingers. Her handwriting, again, a riddle...
“No ink, no voice, no pulse. Yet I hold your whole life. If I’m gone, you are too. I live in light. I die in heat. Take me with you.”
You stare at the lines, reading them aloud under your breath. The answer comes like a whisper.
“A flash drive.”
You look back at the one still in your laptop.
The video’s done. But there’s something else. A second hidden folder appears after it ends... Q-File
You open it.
One file. Text only. Encrypted.
You can’t access it.
But the name chills you...
WidowProtocol.003.locked
You know that number.
003 was her Red Room designation. Before she defected. Before she became yours.
And that means whatever’s in here isn’t just a breadcrumb. It’s a memory vault.
And it’s locked. To you.
You push up from the chair. Too fast. The room tilts slightly. You steady yourself on the table’s edge. You’re not grieving anymore.
You’re chasing a ghost. You’re solving her like a cipher. And maybe, just maybe, she’s still alive, somewhere between truth and illusion, stringing you along like her last game of cat and mouse.
You shove the photos, the drive, the note, the map into a duffel bag. Grab the key. Your knife. The queen. The scroll.
Your hands hover over the last thing in the box, the letter. You haven’t opened it yet.
Not because you forgot. Because you’re afraid it will end this.
You slide your thumb under the edge.
“You’ll know what to do once you leave. Just don’t forget what you are. You’re not a civilian. You were never meant for peace. You were meant for this. And you’re not alone. See you in seven moves.”
--N.”
You sit still for one last moment. Then you flick the light off.
The apartment disappears behind you. You don’t lock the door.
You won’t be back.
Dobropillia, Ukraine
Population: 28,170 (note to self : 28,170 on google)
Secrets: buried
Your boots hit the tarmac with a soft thud. A sky of wet slate stretches overhead. Cold. Borderline unwelcoming. The air tastes like dust and something metallic.
Nobody meets you. No fanfare. No black cars. Just wind and a distant dog barking through alleys that haven't seen paint in twenty years.
Dobropillia is small, the kind of town that stays forgotten on purpose. But it’s exactly the kind of place Natasha would’ve used. The kind of place people don’t ask questions, because they don’t want answers.
You grip the strap of your bag tighter as you cross into the center square. The GPS coordinates from the photograph place the bench exactly here, between a rusted fountain and a shuttered metro kiosk.
And there it is. The bench.
Paint peeling. The red barely clinging to the wood anymore. A smear of graffiti in Cyrillic that’s mostly scratched out. Someone’s initials carved into the edge.
But something’s off. You kneel. Scan the bottom edge of the bench.
There, screwed into the wood, a false panel, maybe six inches long. You feel your pulse kick.
You reach under, fingers brushing something taped to the underside.
A matchbox.
Old. Black. Red hourglass on top. Your throat tightens.
Inside, a tiny slip of paper.
You unfold it.
“Say the name of the one I couldn’t kill. Out loud. And wait.”
You stare at the paper, rereading it three times.
It’s not a trick question. It’s a trigger.
You glance around. Still no one. Just you, the wind, the stone buildings like old bones.
Your lips part. You say it quietly.
“Clint Barton.”
Nothing happens.
Then, a click behind you.
You whirl around.
A man is sitting on the bench. You didn’t hear him arrive. Didn’t feel him.
He looks fifty. Military haircut. Pale coat. No insignia. No emotion.
He slides an envelope across the bench toward you without looking.
“Romanoff said you’d be late,” he says in Russian.
You narrow your eyes. “Who are you?”
He doesn’t answer. Just stands and walks away. Vanishing into the alley like smoke.
You don’t follow. You can’t. You snatch the envelope.
No name. Just a symbol drawn in red wax pencil
You open it.
Inside is a black card. Smooth. Thick. And on it:
“If you’re still chasing ghosts, you’ve already lost the game. But if you’re ready to become one, prove it.”
Then on the bottom, a new riddle.
Written in her exact hand...
“I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?”
You're still standing in the square, Natasha’s riddle burning in your palm like a match held too long. The card is cold. The wind is colder.
You read it again.
“I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?”
Your lips move before you’ve even fully processed it. It’s instinct.
“An echo.”
The word hangs there, heavy and sharp.
You look down at the card again.
And right then, the black surface begins to dissolve, not burn, not fade, but melt, chemically, like it was rigged to respond to the sound.
Of course it was.
Underneath, scrawled in thinner, almost frantic handwriting....
“Good. You're still mine.”
A second, smaller paper is folded underneath. It has a line map drawn in black ink. No street names. Just a spiral. Buildings marked in symbols, an old phone, a triangle, a chess piece. A dot where the square should be.
Another clue is written along the bottom....
“The next echo lives underground. Three down. Left on silence. Knock six times. Ask for The Widow’s Library."
You trace the spiral again.
It’s not a map of the town.
It’s a map of the metro system. And even though the real station aboveground is sealed and shuttered, if Natasha marked this? It still works.
You head back to the metro entrance by the square. Rusted gates. Boards over the stairwell. You pry them aside, step into the darkness, and start moving.
UNDERGROUND
The air changes once you're below the surface.
It smells like mold, rust, and memory. Not the kind you remember, the kind that remembers you.
Each step echoes, bouncing down the tunnel like footsteps behind you that aren’t yours. You don’t look back. You don’t dare.
You count three levels. One stairwell. Another. Then another. Each one deeper. Older. The graffiti stops. The silence grows.
Your phone has no signal now.
At the third landing, the wall is painted in white chalk: a spiral.
You follow it.
Left.
Down a tunnel marked SILENCE in black Cyrillic.
Your footsteps fall softer now. Like Natasha is watching your weight. Testing your stealth. Your readiness.
And then... a door. Steel. Narrow. Seamless.
You knock.
Once. Twice. Then six times, sharp. Quick.
You wait. Nothing.
Then, a mechanical hiss. The door slides open an inch.
A voice, grainy, distorted, says.... “Tell me what she regrets most.”
You freeze. You know the answer.
You remember one night, curled in bed, the sheets tangled around your legs, her voice just a breath in the dark:
“Not getting out sooner,” she’d said. “Not before they made me forget how to want anything.”
So you say it. Soft. Steady.
“She regrets not leaving the Red Room sooner.”
The door unlocks. You step through.
THE WIDOW’S LIBRARY
It’s not a library.
It’s a vault.
Underground, dimly lit, filled with boxes, binders, folders. All marked with red tape. Everything is categorized in a system that doesn’t match any government you’ve ever worked with.
This isn’t SHIELD. Not the CIA. Not even HYDRA.
This is hers.
You step forward. A small pedestal sits in the middle of the room. A monitor. A headset. And a note taped to the screen:
“One move left.”
“Listen. Then choose.”
You slide the headset on. Press play.
Her voice, Natasha, fills your ears. Older. Slower. Worn around the edges.
“You came further than I thought you would.”
“Or maybe exactly as far as I hoped.”
“By now you’ve figured it out, this isn’t just for you. It’s for the ghosts. The ones we left behind. The ones that won’t stay buried.”
You close your eyes. Her voice feels like a knife and a lullaby.
“There’s one file in this room that doesn’t belong to me. One name I couldn’t say out loud.”
“You have to find it. But you can only open one folder.”
Your eyes snap open.
On the far wall a row of folders. Ten of them. Each labeled in Russian. Each one: a codename. A place. A symbol.
You step closer.
Chernaya Vdova– "Black Widow" – Red Circle
Vena– "Vien" – Passport icon
Feniks– "Phoenix" – Fire symbol
Tishina – "Silence" – Eye with a slash
Tri Sestry– "Three Sisters" – Three dots
Krasnaya Nit'– "Red Thread" – Needle and line
Tochka Omega– "Omega Point" - horsehoe
Alisa – "Alisa" – A girl silhouette
Nevesta– "The Bride" – Veil icon
Zerkalo – "Mirror" – Reflecting square
And now it’s your move. You can only open one.
One folder holds the name that Natasha couldn’t speak. One folder holds the next step. The others? Dead ends.
Which one do you choose?
You step forward, heart pounding. Each label feels like a trap, a trick of language or memory. Natasha was never careless with words. Every name on that wall is a thread, some cut, some frayed, some still bleeding.
But one folder makes you stop. Not because it’s obvious. But because it isn’t.
Folder 6: Krasnaya Nit' – Red Thread Symbol: Needle and line.
Your fingers hover. You think back, Natasha’s favorite phrase when talking about old missions...
“Every choice is a stitch. Some you don’t know you made until you bleed.”
You open it.
Not slowly. You commit.
INSIDE THE FOLDER
A single photo.
Natasha, younger, late twenties, somewhere between Widow and Avenger. No smile. Her eyes locked on the camera like it owes her something.
In the background: a subway tunnel. You squint. Not Ukraine. Not Russia. It’s New York.
Scrawled on the back of the photo...
“You stitched me back together once. Now follow the thread I left behind.”
Taped underneath the photo...
A subway token. Scratched. But the number “6” is still visible. Line 6. New York. Eastbound.
And finally, another riddle.
But this one’s different. This one’s a cipher.
"Red lives under black. Silver listens. Echo returns home. Find me where silence should scream, and speak my name into the dark."
The words echo in your head like the tunnel itself.
You close the folder, tuck the items into your bag, and step back into the concrete hallway.
Something clicks behind you, not a lock. A timer.
Whatever’s down here was never meant to be visited twice.
You’re back on the surface before sunrise.
The town is still quiet. But the silence feels different now. Not oppressive, expectant.
You book the flight to New York from a cracked burner phone left in the bench. Of course it’s there. Of course she left exactly what you’d need.
The plane leaves in four hours.
You sit in the bus station. Fingers tight around the subway token. Her scent is still on the envelope. Your pulse hasn’t slowed since the echo answered you in the square.
NEW YORK CITY
4:12 a.m. Line 6, Eastbound.
You haven’t slept in 36 hours.
The city isn’t awake yet, not really. It's limping between hours, streetlights flickering like dying neurons. The cab dropped you off near the old Lex tunnel, where line 6 used to cut deeper before the new renovations rerouted it. The pavement still smells like steam and piss. A cold fog leaks up from the grates like the city itself is exhaling secrets.
You clutch the scratched subway token Natasha left behind. It’s warm now.
You try not to think about that.
You reach the turnstile to the old maintenance entrance. Flash the token like muscle memory. It doesn’t beep. It doesn’t need to.
The gate unlocks with a soft click, and for a second, you swear you feel watched.
You descend. Step by step. Each one an echo. Each one a decision you can’t take back.
BELOW THE CITY
The tunnels are dead.
No rumble. No rats. No lights.
Your phone screen barely cuts the dark. You follow the chalk marks, spirals, arrows, chess symbols. They weren’t here when you lived here. They’re hers. You know it. The loops get tighter the deeper you go.
And that’s when it starts.
The sound.
Barely there. A breath. A whisper. Not words, just presence.
You whip around. Nothing. Just shadows stacked on shadows.
You press forward.
Another left. Then another.
You freeze.
There’s someone standing in the dark. Just beyond your phone’s reach.
Your voice cracks as you call out:
“Natasha?”
No answer. Just that same… breath.
You step forward….It’s a mirror.
Tall. Dirty. Warped.
You exhale shakily, staring into your reflection.
You don’t look like yourself.
Your eyes are sunken. Lips cracked. Skin waxy from travel and sleeplessness. You tilt your head.
So does the reflection.
But not at the same time. Your blood runs cold.
You step back. The mirror smiles.
You break into a sprint.
Left. Left. Right. Back to the spiral.
Back to the breath.
You stop only when you find the door.
Rusty. Steel. No knob.
But someone’s carved a word into the surface.
Widow.
You raise your hand. You knock six times.
tap. tap. Tap. tap. tap. tap.
Nothing.
Then, a mechanical hiss.
And a screen embedded in the wall flickers to life.
Her voice fills the tunnel. But it’s not a recording.
It’s a live feed.
“You shouldn’t have come this far,” she says.
You stagger back. The screen flickers. It’s her. Hair shorter. Eyes sharper. Still alive.
You whisper, “Natasha…”
She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t blink.
“This isn’t what I wanted for you.”
“You were supposed to bury me. Grieve. Move on.”
“Not dig up the parts I left in the dirt.”
You swallow. Tears sting the corners of your eyes.
“Is this real?” you whisper.
She tilts her head.
“Do you think it is?”
The screen glitches. Her face distorts. For a second, half a breath, it’s your face staring back.
And laughing.
You stumble back from the screen, gasping. Your hand clutches the wall like it might hold you together.
You check the monitor again.
It’s off.
Dead black. No sign it was ever on.
You try your phone. No battery. You are alone. Again.
And the sound is back, louder now. A heartbeat that isn’t yours.
The next door is ajar. Inside... a room that shouldn’t be here.
You step through.
It’s your apartment. Perfectly replicated. Furniture. Plants. Her boots. Her books.
Your breath shakes.
On the table, under the same soft lamp... The black box.
You walk to it. It opens before you touch it.
Inside.... A note. And a Polaroid.
The photo shows you. Standing in this room. Taken from behind.
You whip around. No one’s there. You look at the note.
“You never left.”
“You never made it out of the grief.”
“You’re still lying on the bed, holding my coat. Dreaming of a treasure hunt.”
Your vision blurs.
You press your palm against your chest.
“No. No, I left. I followed the clues.”
The room answers.
“Did you?”
Everything flickers. The mirror is back.
This time your reflection is still. But behind it, her.
Watching.
The moment you touch the mirror, you’re not in the tunnel anymore. Shield technology. Teleported.
You wake up on the floor of your apartment. Cold sweat. Cramped limbs. But something’s changed.
The black box is gone.
In its place: A silver case. Compact. Smooth. With a fingerprint scanner.
You press your thumb to the panel. It clicks open.
Inside....
A 9mm pistol, matte black. Modified.
A fresh passport with your photo and someone else’s name.
A single plane ticket: Tirana, Albania. One way.
And underneath the foam lining, another note.
Natasha’s handwriting. Still precise. Still cruelly familiar.
“Sometimes you can’t find the truth by walking forward. You have to pull the thread backward.”
“You’ve passed every gate. But now you carry weight. What has no name, but breaks when spoken?”
A riddle.
You whisper, automatically....
“Silence.”
As the word leaves your lips, your phone, dead a moment ago, buzzes back to life.
A single message.
From an unlisted number. No subject. Just one line.
“She’ll be waiting.”
TIRANA, ALBANIA
36 hours later
Your eyes burn from the red-eye flight. No luggage. Just the gun, the ID, and her handwriting scorched behind your eyes.
The airport is small. You’re in and out in minutes.
A car is waiting outside.
No driver. Just keys under the visor and a torn scrap of paper on the seat:
“Drive north. Until the silence returns.”
The mountains rise around you like teeth. Forests thick with fog. Trees crowding the road like they’re hiding something.
No signs. No GPS. Just intuition and the hum of the engine.
After two hours, you see it:
A cabin. Tucked between the trees like a secret. No path. No mailbox. No power lines.
You kill the engine. Step out. Gun in hand.
You approach slow. Not out of fear.
Out of instinct. Respect.
The windows are dark. The air is thick.
You cross the porch. Each board creaks like a trigger. Your hand tightens around the grip of the pistol.
You knock. Three times. Just like she taught you.
No answer.
You open the door.
The inside smells like cedar. Dust. And her.
You know that scent. You spent nights breathing it into your lungs like it was oxygen.
The fire’s out. The room’s dim. But lived in. Fresh boots near the hearth. A coffee mug with a single lipstick print on the rim.
You clear the space. Room by room.
Empty. Until...
The bedroom.
You freeze in the doorway.
Because she’s standing there. In sweatpants and a threadbare black tee. Barefoot. Hair damp, curling slightly at the ends. Skin flushed from a recent shower.
And she’s real.
She looks up from folding a blanket at the foot of the bed.
Her mouth parts slightly, eyes widening. Not with shock. Not with fear.
With knowing.
And then, softly... she smiles. That same quiet, sideways thing that always meant you found me.
Your breath catches hard in your throat.
“Nat…”
Your voice breaks. It’s not a question. It’s not even full. Just her name. Fragmented. Fragile.
Your arms shake.
The gun in your hands stays up, only because you forgot how to lower it.
You blink twice. Hard. Because she can't be here. Not warm. Not soft. Not breathing.
You almost say it again. Louder this time.
“Nat--?”
She lifts both hands slowly. No sudden movement. Fingertips splayed in surrender. Her smile deepens, but it’s sadder now. Understanding.
“Hey,” she says, gently. A hum under her breath, like she's trying to soothe a wounded animal. “You can drop it. I’m not going anywhere.”
You don’t move.
Your body won't let you. She steps forward once. Slowly.
And your knees nearly buckle.
“You’re alive,” you breathe, voice quaking with the weight of it. “You’re--”
She nods. Quiet. Controlled. Eyes locked on yours like she doesn’t dare blink either.
“Yeah,” she says, “I am.”
You step forward, the gun lowers a fraction. Still up. Still unsure. Your hands won’t stop shaking.
“How--” Your breath hitches. “You jumped.”
“Clint said--he told us--you didn’t come back.”
She nods again. One slow, solemn movement.
“I know.”
The silence between you stretches, trembling with every unspoken thing.
You feel your vision tilt, not from shock, but exhaustion. Everything starts to spin. Like the threads that held you upright for so long just snapped all at once.
She takes another step closer. Her voice low and close to breaking.
“You haven’t slept, have you?”
Your gun slips from your hand.
Hits the wooden floor with a soft, final clunk.
And that’s it. Your body gives. Your knees fold.
You expect the floor. But it’s her arms you fall into.
Warm. Steady. So impossibly familiar your soul screams with it.
She catches you like she was ready. Like she knew this would happen. And she holds you.
Tight. Desperate. Real.
Your fingers clutch the back of her damp shirt. She whispers your name into your hair like a mantra. Over and over. Like saying it enough might fix what she broke.
“I didn’t know how else to keep you safe,” she murmurs.
“You let me bury you,” you whisper.
“I know.”
“You let me grieve.”
“I know.”
You pull back just far enough to look at her. To see her. Really see.
And then the question that’s been rotting in your throat spills out:
“Why?”
And her answer is quiet. Final. Heavy with all the ghosts she never stopped carrying.
“Because I knew they’d come for you next.”
Then she kisses you.
Soft at first. Barely there. Like she doesn’t know if she’s allowed.
You melt. Instantly. A sob gets caught between your throat and her lips, and she swallows it like a secret.
Your hands fist in her shirt. Her mouth moves against yours, slow and reverent, like she’s afraid you’ll vanish if she rushes.
She pulls you closer, lifting you off the ground as effortlessly as if she’s done it a thousand times in dreams she never admitted to having.
Your legs wrap around her waist. Her hand tangles deeper in your hair. Her forehead presses to yours.
“I missed you, detka,” she whispers. “God, I missed you.”
You whimper, nodding helplessly, eyes squeezed shut. What the hell has the past few days been?
She carries you to the bed like you weigh nothing. Lays you down gently, the mattress groaning under the weight of reunion.
She hovers over you, eyes searching your face like it holds the answers to every question she’s been too scared to ask.
Her lips brush your cheekbone.
Your temple. Your throat.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into your skin, mouth barely parting as she speaks. “I’m so fucking sorry, detka. I had to protect you.”
Your breath hitches. Her thumb brushes your cheek, tracing the line of your jaw like it grounds her.
You stare up at her -- eyes wide, trembling beneath the weight of her.
The ghost. The myth. The woman who broke your heart to save it.
“I don’t understand…” Your voice cracks like something fractured. “How did you…?”
You search her eyes.
“Clint said you jumped. He said--he said you were gone. That you--”
Your voice breaks.
“You died.”
Her expression softens. Not with pity. With grief.
“I did.” A pause. “Almost.”
She exhales slowly, like the truth still burns her lungs.
“We fought. Clint and I. He tried to stop me. I made sure he couldn’t.”
“But when I hit the rocks…” She swallows. “The Soul Stone didn’t take me.”
You blink hard. Your throat is dry.
“What?”
Her voice drops to a whisper.
“The stone didn’t take me, because someone else already had.”
“Vormir gave me back.”
You shake your head, not in disbelief, but because it doesn't make sense.
“That’s not how it works…”
Her eyes darken.
“It is now. Because something broke that day.”
“Something let me go.”
“Something wanted me to come back.”
A silence coils between you, thick and electric.
You whisper, barely audible:
“What did it want in return?”
Her jaw clenches. Her body stiffens just slightly above yours.
“That,” she says, “is why I had to run.”
Her fingers move again, across your cheek, your throat, your collarbone, as if memorizing every part of you she thought she’d never touch again.
You reach up, resting your palm against her chest. You can feel her heartbeat.
And it’s real.
It’s hers. She’s alive.
You're not crazy. You're not hallucinating.
You're home.
You can’t stop touching her.
Every part of you aches with disbelief, like she might slip through your fingers again if you blink too long. But she’s here. Solid and warm and watching you like you’re the only safe thing she’s seen in months.
Her body hovers just above yours, braced on trembling arms. Her damp hair hangs loose around her face, and her lips are parted like she’s still trying to remember how to breathe you in.
Your palm finds her cheek. Her skin is hot, flushed from the shower, or from you, or both.
“I thought I lost you,” you whisper.
“You did,” she breathes. “But I found my way back.”
Her mouth meets yours again, no hesitation now, just soft hunger, the kind that unfolds slowly, like a storm on the edge of a horizon. She kisses you like she’s tasting something she was never supposed to have again.
Your arms wrap around her back, pulling her down, chest to chest. She exhales hard against your lips, like she’d been holding it in since the day she died.
You shift beneath her, arching into the kiss, and Natasha groans softly, her fingers sliding under the hem of your shirt. Her hands are warm, steady, reverent as they map your ribs, your sides, like she’s making sure you’re still real, too.
“You’re shaking,” she murmurs.
“So are you.”
She smiles against your jaw, the curve of her lips brushing your skin.
“Can I…?” she whispers, fingers still at the edge of your shirt. “Can I have you again?”
You nod, once, hard, urgent.
“Please.”
That’s all it takes.
She pulls your shirt over your head and tosses it aside, her eyes drinking you in like she’s starved. There’s nothing greedy in her gaze, just awe. A soft kind of reverence, like she’s cataloging every detail she missed.
You reach for her in turn, tugging at her shirt. She lets you take it off slowly, lifting her arms as you peel the fabric away, exposing smooth skin, scattered scars, and the body you memorized long ago in shadows and quiet mornings.
You run your hands down her sides, feeling every tremble under your palms.
“You're really here…”
“I’m yours,” she whispers.
Then she kisses you again, deeper now, with heat curling beneath every press of her mouth, every sigh against your skin.
She shifts, sliding her thigh between yours, and you gasp at the contact. Her hand cups your jaw, steadying you, thumb brushing the corner of your lips.
“I need you to feel how much I missed you,” she says, voice low and rough.
“Show me,” you whisper.
Her body molds to yours, every movement slow, deliberate, as if she’s undressing time itself between your skin and hers. When her hand slips between your legs, you gasp, arching into her touch, your nails digging lightly into her back.
“You’re so warm,” she murmurs. “So responsive. Like I never left.”
“Because you didn’t,” you breathe, hips rocking instinctively. “You never did.”
Your mouths find each other again, open and wet and wanting. Her pace is slow, not teasing, not hesitant, worshipful.Like she needs you to feel every second of her being alive.
She touches you like a memory, and then a promise.
She moves lower, her mouth trailing heat down your neck, across your collarbone, between your breasts, slow kisses, tongue flicking just enough to make you whimper and arch and breathe her name over and over.
“God, Natasha--”
“I’ve got you,” she whispers. “You’re safe now.”
And when she finally slips down between your thighs, her eyes locked on yours, green and burning, it doesn’t feel like anything you’ve ever had before. It feels like coming home.
Her mouth replaces her hand, and your back bows from the bed. Her tongue moves in circles, soft and slow, drawing you to the edge and pulling you back again and again, never rushing, never stopping.
“You’re so close already,” she whispers, voice thick. “Let go, detka. Let me have it.”
And you do. Shattering beneath her with a cry you didn’t know you were holding.
She climbs back up, kissing your face, your mouth, your neck, cradling you through every aftershock like she’s afraid you’ll break apart if she doesn’t keep touching you.
You pull her down and roll, flipping her beneath you, breathless and wild. She smiles, eyes blown wide.
“Your turn,” you whisper, voice thick with heat and love and hunger.
And you return the favor. All night.
When you finally lie tangled together beneath the sheets, skin slick with sweat and mouths still swollen from kissing, she tucks her face into the curve of your neck.
“If they find me again,” she murmurs, “I’ll run. But you’re coming with me.”
Your fingers trace the curve of her shoulder, your heartbeat still a wild drum against your ribs.
“No more riddles.”
“No more goodbyes.”
She kisses your collarbone.
And for the first time in what feels like lifetimes, you sleep.
