Heyy, this is not an ask, I just wanted to say how much I love love LOVE A Widow's Bite. It’s DELICIOUS. like goodness gracious your writing is amazing and all the characters are so well written and it just lacks in no department?? Anyway, you haven’t updated in a while and I’m sure you have your reasons, and I want you to take all the time you need. Just know that I am waiting with open arms and open legs, and I will gobble up whatever you’re willing to give. Thank you for sharing your amazing work.
Hi!! First of all, thank you for taking the time to write this for me whoever you are, this means so much more to me than anyone could realise especially right now <3
I haven't updated in a long time, and I hate that because 'A Widow's Bite' is my most favourite creation ever. I used to be able to sit and write and build worlds for hours but now I just open my wip document and listen to my fridge hum in the background while I stare at the blank screen. I miss the writer I used to be so much.
Thank you for this, I'll try to write at least 100 more words on the next chapter just for you.
On god I love A Widow’s Bite so much even though i’m only on Chapter 4, is Natasha the Natasha we all know and love?
OMG my first ask about A Widow's Bite!!! I was so excited reading this you're so sweet, but to answer your question— yes! She is our beloved Natasha but I've twisted the story quite drastically as you can see in the later chapters on ao3.
4. A Widow's Bite | Simon Riley x Black Widow!Reader
Fic masterlist-
❋ Read all chapters on Ao3 ❋
Main tags: Innocent reader is accused of being a traitor trope, torture and interrogation, AFAB reader, questionably platonic bed sharing, strangers to lovers, sloooow burn, eventual smut, angst/hurt/comfort, kidfic
Chapter word count: 2.16k
Chapter summary: “On our side of the pond we don’t believe in coincidences. We call them patterns.”
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>>> 2004
You remember the fatal night of July 28th to be the beginning. You remember Natasha’s face, framed by her distinctive mane of auburn hair twisted neatly into a bun under a red beret, her lips twisted and tightly pursed while she chewed the inside of her cheek nervously.
It was the only time you had ever seen her so visibly shaken. You felt a flare of annoyance sweep through you at the sight.
Could she not be happy for you just this once? You were graduating, and you would be on your first real mission just next month. Couldn’t she pretend to smile for you at least?
Standing in a straight line side by side, you and the other girls wait for their widow’s bites gauntlets. Your prize for surviving this far. Truthfully, you were excited enough just at the prospect of wearing those things, to finally feel the smooth metal against your forearms, to know the power they held and what they represented.
Ahead, Madame strides between each girl, closing a pair of gauntlets around their wrists and for only a second, you can’t help but compare the metallic snick of the gauntlets locking to the sound a pair of heavy shackles make.
You shake the imagery off, practically vibrating with eagerness. Madame says a few words to each girl, and gives them a cordial smile before moving to the next like a conveyor belt.
Finally it’s your turn. Madame stands before you and fixes you with a cold gaze, you feel like she is stripping you down to your weaknesses with just her eyes and you suppress a shudder. She gestures for your hands, and you oblige, holding them out steadily for her to grasp. She locks the gauntlets around your wrists and the imagery of the shackles returns briefly with the feeling of cold metal against your skin.
You look up, searching for your role model, only to find that Natasha is not looking at you but at your wrists. The gauntlets. She is pale, looking sickly. You’re wondering why before you snap back at the sound of Madame’s voice.
“You are one of our best, 87. Remain that way.” Natasha has a smooth voice, but one like warm honey and Kalmyk tea. Madame’s voice is as smooth as gun metal, as bitingly cold as the metal on your wrists.
Any person who had not lived a life like yours, someone from the outside world, might construe her words as a compliment but you recognise it for what it really is. A warning. A command. You actually shudder just as Madame moves on to the next girl, unable to stave off the feeling of being trapped.
Now, more than ever, you need Natasha to smile for you. To assure you that things will be okay through the quirk of her lips. Your eyes find her in the audience again. She is standing there, looking beautiful as ever in her pressed dress uniform, with her hands folded behind her back in a parade rest.
She looks… close to tears? Panicked, like something terrible has happened.
She is looking at your widow’s bites gauntlets like they are the shackles you’ve simply been imagining them as. She is blinking rapidly.
Is she going to cry? you wonder. If she is crying, perhaps she is happy for me after all.
Madame’s shrill voice pierces through the air. “Girls, you are no longer my students, but graduates from the Krasnaya Komnata! Soon you will no longer be graduates, but Black Widow operatives! Let you all be grateful for your training, for it is a blessing to be one of ours.
You will change the world, you will control the balancing scales of justice. The world is on a tipping point between chaos and order, your legacy is to push it in the correct direction. You will shape the century. Do well, be proud of the gifts we have given you, and be rewarded.”
A cheer goes up, and a smattering of applause sweeps through the room.
So the time had finally come after more than a decade of training. You feel the embroidery stitched into the front of your graduation robes, a red hourglass insignia sewn right over your heart. So it has come to this. You, a Black Widow operative. At long last.
Natasha finds you in the crowd of excited girls. She pulls you into a tight embrace as soon as her fingers find your shoulder.
“I am sorry, Milenka,” she whispers into your ear, lips shielded from view by your hair. She pulls you impossibly closer to her, hugs you tighter. “I have done this to you. I am sorry. I will fix this. I swear to you I will fix this.”
>>> LONDON, UK
>>> January 12th, 2020
The phone on Price’s desk rings just a few minutes after 11 o’clock in the morning. The thing is ancient, and screams in a shrill tone that had come back from the dead (the ‘90’s) to haunt him every time it rings.
He clears his throat, then picks up. “Captain Price.”
“I thought we were over formalities, John.”
“Kate. Calling for something?”
“More like calling to give you something.”
He hums. “And what might that be?”
“Intel. We might have a lead on our mystery woman. I’m sure Garrick will be happy to hear this.”
“He’s not the only one, I’m listening.”
“Ivan Pterovich, one of Barkov’s top officers, found dead in London, sniped from a rooftop. A cell of Barkov’s surviving forces found massacred in a safehouse not too far away. Two slugs— untraceable so far. Check your inbox, we’ve got footage of the shooter making their escape down a back alley.”
He turns his desktop on, opens the message, a still frame from a dingy backstreet camera unfolding on his screen. The woman in question is looking straight into the lens, pity she’s wearing a mask. On her back is a heavy-looking pack, and the outline of a shoulder holster blending in with her black clothing with the grainy quality of the footage.
Her face is turned towards the camera, but her body is angled away with her shoulder facing the lens as she readies herself to flee the scene.
“She knew the camera was there, skilled enough to avoid it but chose not to. Not too worried about getting caught, is she?”
Laswell hums her agreement over the line. “She fits the physical profile we made of the woman at the Belarus massacre. I’m willing to bet good money that it's her.”
“Could just be a coincidence, Kate. Good old CIA paranoi finally setting in?” He doesn’t doubt her for even a second, but teasing is a natural aspect of all of their conversations by this point.
She laughs quietly, her american drawl returns a few seconds later. “On our side of the pond we don’t believe in coincidences. We call them patterns.”
A spot of blood red at the woman’s shoulder catches his attention.
At first he thinks she’s injured, but then a few clicks on the mouse later, and the image is magnified to show an hourglass of red standing stark against the dark fabric of the woman's uniform.
“On her shoulder, that’s an insignia. Any matches, Kate?”
“One.”
“Tell me.”
“In 2005, we received a message which we managed to trace back to Budapest— the sender is still unknown to this day. They claimed to be a FSB agent, and requested help with defection. We obliged with caution, we had no idea if this was a Trojan Horse ploy of some sort so we were sure to be careful. Good thing we did, because the whole thing blew up— literally.”
“That the one that ended up all over the newspapers? I remember they said it was a terrorist attack.”
“Yes, but that was the cover story. We still don’t know what exactly happened, seeing as we sent out only one agent to scout the situation and he didn’t come back alive to tell the tale. Our agent was instructed to meet with the defector at a children’s hospital. A bombing happened, destroying the hospital, just as they made contact. No survivors.”
“Christ…”
“That’s not all. A firefight went down on the street in broad daylight with what looked like an army against our agent and the defector as they tried to escape for exfil. Killed them both. Security camera footage picked up on the defector before she was killed— same insignia on her shoulder.
“John, I went through Barkov’s payroll again, trying to connect a moneytrail to this and I found it. Those were Barkov’s men in Budapest.”
They sit in silence for a few moments, letting the information sink like a stone in water as the dots connect like a spider's-web.
He lights a cigar, inhales slowly, knowing that he’ll need the nicotine rush to weather this new development in the story. Coughing clouds of hazy smoke, he asks the burning question. “So, what now?”
>>> ABERDEENSHIRE, SCOTLAND
>>> February 9th, 2020
You had never been this far up into the highlands of Scotland before on any of your previous missions.
In fact, you have never been to Scotland at all since that 2 day mission in Edinburgh all those long years ago. You remember the frigid air numbing your fingers and making you shiver to the point where you were afraid you’d squeeze the trigger by accident and kill your mark before it was time.
The wind is the same as you remember it though, crisp and cold, stroking at your cheeks until they’re left red and raw when you step off the train. It has rained recently, water has pooled in the crevices between the cobblestones beneath your boots, and the sweet scent of rain, of dampness, has lingered on the streets.
It’s both foreign and familiar. It isn’t as cold as Belarus was, but the chilling nibble of the cold on your exposed skin is familiar. It’s too grey for Belarus; the buildings are grey, the cobblestones are grey, the sky is grey, the grime coating the windows is grey… but it retains some of the charm that comes with smaller, more isolated cities that Brest Oblast in your memory had.
The similarities and differences make your head spin slightly as your brain tries to match up new and old.
It doesn’t take long to take a bus up to a smaller town, away from the busy and densely packed city of Aberdeen. You get off the bus, and proceed on foot, winding through the rain-soaked streets. There are no cobblestones here, just roads and footpaths weaving together until a web of civilization emerges. You admit that you miss the bumpy texture of cobblestone under your feet.
This part of Aberdeenshire is sleepy. Quiet and lazy, isolated and far far away from the 3 month long killing spree you had left in your wake. A perfect place to rest, to recuperate, and perhaps grow old in.
You spend close to an hour walking along rows of townhouses, the layer of mud coating your boots steadily growing thicker, until you reach a small house— more of a cottage really— and stop.
Being this far out from the centre of the town, you only have a handful of neighbours. The less potential witnesses, the better you think.
Anticipation grows in your gut with every step you advance towards the cottage, house, whatever, and contingency plans upon contingency plans run through your mind with gathering speed.
Another Widow had promised to deliver a package from the academy and guard them until you arrived at the safehouse, but she had to leave late last night for a mission. What if, in those short hours, someone had ambushed the place and taken them? What if this place was compromised? What if you were followed? What if?
After the Red Room fell apart, the responsibility of caring and raising the young students at the academy had fallen upon the freed Widow’s. These girls legally did not exist anywhere in the world, the solution was for each Widow to adopt a student, forge the papers and raise them themselves. Only Widow’s understand the threat these girls face in the outside world. What if your plan was wrong?
But no, there is a light on in the front window— the kitchen. You push open the garden gate, and step onto the porch. You raise your fist to knock three times on the heavy wooden door. You wait, trying to keep calm, and not worry because she’s here. She must be.
The door opens, and a small face appears, a single brown eye peeking at you from the crack between the open door and the frame. A toothy grin appears, and the door is thrown wide open.
Within nanoseconds, you have an armful of a child squealing with glee at your return. You hug her tight to your chest, and say simply, “I’m home now.”
3. A Widow's Bite | Simon Riley x Black Widow!Reader
Fic Masterlist- CHAPTER 3
❋ Read this on Ao3 ❋
Main tags: Innocent reader is accused of being a traitor trope, torture and interrogation, AFAB reader, questionably platonic bed sharing, strangers to lovers, sloooow burn, eventual smut, angst/hurt/comfort, kidfic
Chapter summary: "Someone as skilled and dangerous as her either needs to be on our side or neutralised."
Previous chapter | Next chapter
>>> 2004
“When you get them on the ground, make sure they never get back up,” Natasha instructs you with an arm pressed into your trachea while she holds you in a headlock. You dig your nails into the flesh of her forearm, feeling blood trickling down her fair skin, but she hardly moves, probably not even bothered by the pain. The air is humid and both of you are sweating. You sputter for breath while she pours advice, smooth and acrid as acid, into your ear.
“When your bullet hits their side, and they are begging their god for mercy, send another into their brain. When you plunge the blade into their flesh, twist.
“Tie up all the loose ends before the Moirai unravel the tapestry of your life, before the edges fray. This is how you survive in our world, malen'kiy pauk. ”
She releases you roughly, and your fingers immediately fly to grasp your raw throat, wheezing and coughing. You can hear Natasha walk somewhere in the vast room, feet making barely perceptible sounds against the padded floor that you know she does only for your sake. You’re still catching your breath when she returns, pressing a bottle of cool water into your shaking hands.
“You are about to graduate next month, and you still cannot beat me in a fight.” You can hear the smile in her voice that spells triumph, you scoff at her.
“No one can beat you in a fight, let alone me, Nat.” You’re fairly sure that you’re whining like a petulant child, something you wouldn’t dare do if you were training with Madame or the other operatives; Natasha never minds, she just tells you over and over with a distinct essence of grief staining her beautiful voice that children should act like children and that a child, ultimately, is what you still are.
You and Natasha agree on almost everything, you trust her judgement the most— after all she is your role model— but this is something you’re still not sure of.
Natasha could call you through the pitch dark, you would follow her voice to potential death— but not this. You aren’t sure if you really are a child. Surely not. Surely, you must no longer be a child after what you have seen within these walls? After what you have done?
Every time, you remind yourself that Natasha is 8 years older than you, more experienced and more weathered by the outside world. If she insists that you are a child, surely she must be right?
But you are not treated like a child, not by Madame, not by the other girls, or the doctors— and not even by Natasha.
Perhaps that is why you are sceptical of her opinion on this matter.
Natasha will insist that you are a child. She will hug you tight after let you spill your heart to her whenever she visits the academy, she will press ice packs to your bruises and bandages across your lacerated flesh after every training session you share with her, she will tie the ribbons of your pointe shoes, but then she will press a gun into your hands and teach you how exactly to slice a man’s throat before he can scream.
You’re sixteen now, and you are not as blindly devoted to Natasha as you were when you were a gangly twelve year old stumbling on stick-thin legs. You are sceptical. Your Natasha is full of paradoxes, and mysteries. You feel like the more you learn of Natasha, the more you realise how little you know.
“Milenka? What’s wrong?”
You blink blearily, and find that you have crushed the bottle between your fingers. Water pools around you in a puddle and seeps into your shoes. You hum noncommittally, and screw the cap back on.
“Just thinking,” you murmur.
“Must be difficult for you.” You smile at her teasing, even if it feels a bit forced. “What are you thinking about?”
You.
About why you’re so far away from me even now when you kneel by my side and make sure I’m alright. About why you keep coming back to the academy if you hate it so much.
Why?
Why do you prefer the name Natasha over Natalia?
Why do you hate our academy? The training is hard, but the glory of the soviet culture…
Why are you not telling me everything? What else do I not know?
Why don’t you trust me enough to tell me? Do you not trust me the same way I trust you?
“Thinking about the spices that just got delivered yesterday, nutmeg and cinnamon.” You say the names of those spices in English, tasting how those foreign vowels feel on your tongue and practically salivating. “About how they’d make a good Kalmyk tea.”
With the prospect of good tea hovering on her mind, Natasha’s eyes positively light up like fireworks bursting against an inky black night sky. It’s as if Natasha has completely forgotten about your little episode, but you know better. After six years under her wing, you have learnt that Natasha is more like a viper rather than a black widow like her call sign suggests, you know she’s just waiting to strike when your guard is lowered.
When you least expect it, she will twist the knife. For now, the blade pressed against your heart is the closest thing you have to love.
For now, you and Natasha plunge into formulating a plan to sneak out after curfew that night to steal nutmeg from the kitchen.
>>> LONDON, UK
>>> December 28th, 2019
“It looks like a training facility of sorts,” Laswell says. Her voice coming from the banged up laptop is tiny despite the speakers they have set up. They must be shit quality, probably made in France then.
Photographs are spread out on the table around them like a tablecloth made of collages showing the gun range on the grounds they found, the training rooms, the armouries, the bodies. Briefings, especially debriefings, are often as dull as they are long, and are Simon’s go-to opportunity to zone out and let his mind wander from the situation. However, the matter at hand demands his whole attention today.
“Training kids? We definitely sure about that?” Gaz asks.
Simon knows Kyle hasn’t been able to sleep properly since seeing the inside of that building, he knows Gaz keeps imagining what happened within those walls. He never speaks of how what they found distracts him during the day and keeps him up at night.
Gaz has never volunteered an explanation as to why he keeps the hair ribbon they found tied around his wrist— not that anyone has asked either.
What if what if what if... Garrick, the most compassionate of all of them, had been affected especially badly it seems.
“Who else? Fortunately for us, whoever attacked the facility didn’t bother wiping the surveillance footage for whatever reason— just copied the database then wiped it. We’ve got a good shot of her considering the cameras haven’t been replaced since at least the 90’s. The photo taken should be in one of those dossiers.”
Price shuffles through the mountains of papers and files till he finds it, placing it in the middle of the table where all of them can see it.
“A woman. I’ve combed through every single remaining file you managed to gather on the USB and that’s all we got besides her physical proportions. She blew a hole through the front door, took the children and just disappeared only a few hours before you got there. She was wearing a mask, no facial recognition software was needed in this case.”
Price huffs like he usually does when they’ve hit another dead end, moustache fluttering mildly. “Motives? Insignia’s? Nothing at all?”
“Nothing. Just a lot of theories of who she might be. Not a lot of definitive evidence to back any theory enough to follow up on yet, John. We don’t know her where her allegiances lie, and that’s something we should be concerned with. Someone as skilled and dangerous as her either needs to be on our side or neutralised.”
Neutralised. Simon almost smirks under his mask. CIA and their bloody euphemisms.
“Kate, if she were still loyal to Barkov she wouldn’t have had to kill every person in that base,” John points out. That shuts Laswell up, for a few moments at least, while she recuperates.
Soap takes the brief lull in the discussion as an opportunity to interject with his own questions. Thankfully, no stupid ones this time. “An' wha' about th'database? We have any idea what it held 'fore it was wiped?”
“Not at the moment. A prevailing theory we have put forward is that it is possible the database was her initial objective, the children just an afterthought but— I don’t believe that with the evidence.” Laswell sounds unsure when she speaks, it carries over the speakers and the air in the whole room seems to still with the realisation of just how much they’re stepping into dangerously mysterious territory settling on them.
“One of the cameras on the perimeter barely picked up on the woman arriving at the base with what looks like an An-12. It’s an old soviet-era aircraft designed specifically for transporting cargo and personnel. If that previous theory was right about the database, then it would’ve been much less conspicuous and even easier to steal a smaller aircraft. I’m of the opinion that she deliberately chose the An-12 for its… attributes.”
“So, you think the kids were the initial objective,” Gaz puts together, he’s picking at his fingers like he’s nervous but Simon knows the determined set of his shoulders.
“We don’t have enough evidence to tie any leads to this case. She could be anyone, and be anywhere at this point. We can’t allocate any more efforts or authorise further missions into this matter until we know more.”
“Listen, ma’am, if there’s kids out there then we’re obligated to get ‘em back,” Garrick says, adamant.
Garrick’s always been like this, amenable until someone’s life is on the line, especially a child’s, then it’s all set jaw and stubbornness bleeding into whatever tirade he’s about to plough on with. Clearly, compassion is what makes Gaz a strong fighter, and he displays it proudly now.
“You said it yourself, they were there just hours before we were and if our current mission is to reverse as much damage Barkov has set onto this world, then those kids have to become our priority. No one can just melt off the face of the earth. They can be found, and if we don’t even try to, then we might as well abandon this whole shitshow.”
Laswell, to her credit, takes this within stride and tries an empathic approach. “I understand that you feel this way because you care, Garrick, but we don’t have enough to authorise a mission because we don’t have enough information to even come up with a mission. There’s nothing we can do except keep digging at the moment.”
Simon watches Gaz’s fingers fidget with ends of the hair ribbon at his wrist, twirling them around his index finger over and over absentmindedly. A new nervous habit.
After another ten minutes, Simon finally zones out when the back and forth teeters dangerously into bickering territory.
>>> London, UK
>>> January 11th, 2020
Ivan Petrovich, Barkov’s favourite lapdog, steps out from the underground onto a bustling London street. Walking briskly with purpose in every step, he is on his way to a nearby safe house where he will meet with the remainder of his associates to discuss the future.
He walks for close to 10 minutes along the main street before turning sharply into a courtyard. He can see the safehouse, a block of apartments nestled between a bank and an office building. He looks like he believes he’s going to make it to the door, like he believes his colleagues are inside and living, waiting for him to assume leadership and take hold of the reins General Barkov had dropped.
He doesn’t know that his colleagues lay dead in growing pools of their own blood throughout the house, or that there is a sniper laying in wait, patient, on the roof.
You wait with your arms folded around your rifle and stare down the scope at Ivan’s face as he draws nearer with every step.
Despite being January, today is slightly sunny. The sun peeks between the gaps in the clouds and warms the ground. It’s not warm enough to forego a coat or scarf, but just enough sunlight has graced the earth for the sweat to begin collecting on your forehead. Your old tactical uniform starts to stick to your skin as the moisture builds up.
He’s almost at the door now, steps quickening slightly as he makes for the stairs. You squeeze the trigger, relish in the recoil pushing back on your shoulder.
The sound waves reverberate outwards, rippling through the quiet morning. The bullet hits him square in the chest, punches through his sternum and into his heart. A scream dribbles down the air, a civilian maybe. Ivan is writhing on the sidewalk, unable to speak, sputtering as blood pours past his lips and floods his lungs, he chokes on it as he tries to breathe. Through your scope, you can see that his lips are moving between gasps.
A voice drifts across your mind, one that comes with a memory of a humid room in Belarus many years ago. Her voice. When your bullet hits their side, and they are begging their god for mercy, send another into their brain.
Like a million times before, you trust Natasha’s orders. Without a further thought, you shift your aim and squeeze the trigger again.
The second bullet strikes Ivan’s temple, and he crumples like deadweight on the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
When you get them on the ground, make sure they never get back up.
You won’t, not when you’re so close to picking the stitches of the Red Room off of the tapestry of history. There are enough bullets to pass around.
Malen'kiy pauk= little spider
Milenka= a feminine nickname of Slavic origin, loosely meaning "beloved" or "dear one."
Kalmyk= a type of traditional Russian tea, typically made with spices, milk and butter. Tea drinking was big during the Soviet era, and is a big reason as to why Russia has a prominent tea drinking culture nowadays.
2. A Widow's Bite | Simon Riley x Black Widow!Reader
Fic Masterlist- CHAPTER 2
❋ Read this on Ao3❋
Main tags: Innocent reader is accused of being a traitor trope, torture and interrogation, AFAB reader, questionably platonic bed sharing, strangers to lovers, sloooow burn, eventual smut, angst/hurt/comfort, kidfic
Chapter word count: 1.6k
Previous chapter | Next chapter
>>> 1998
When you wake there’s an unfamiliar face looming over yours. Green eyes. A burning kind of pain sears across your left shoulder blade, and a throbbing pounds through your skull when you realise that you’re laying on the padded floor in the training room.
Green eyes move away from your field of vision, and you find yourself turning your face to find them again with your cheek pressed into the floor. Green eyes return only a few seconds later with a cooling sensation being slipped under your shoulder. An icepack, your mind supplies unhelpfully.
You can pick up on a muddled conversation drifting over you as green eyes converses with another person you can’t see. Green eyes has a soft voice, you discover, one that enhances the melodic nature of the Russian language while the second speaker sounds irritated, their voice only succeeding in grating against your eardrums.
“... let her get up herself. You of all people know we seek the best, if she cannot deliver on our expectations there is no reason to waste the time and effort.”
Green eyes don’t look away from yours, not even to address the Madame. “Madame, just this morning you explained to me that this girl has excelled far past the rest of her peers within her generation. There is no reason to let a concussion take your best candidate out of training; wasted potential all for a simple injury which could easily be overtaken within a week. If I am to remain here for the next few months to train the new girls, I want enough students to carry out my role.”
Oh, they’re talking about you.
The throbbing worsens with this realisation, must be the concussion on the horizon green eyes is talking about. A sense of panic sets into you, your pulse quickens with every degree of lucidity that returns to you.
Evidently, Madame is not pleased.
Keeping the Madame impressed with your performance is the ticket to survival here, everyone knows this. Madame is not pleased. The edge of panic simmering in your blood has developed into small tremors running through your body and a corrosive feeling coils around your spine. You lay immobile on the padded floor, because you’re not stupid enough to give away that you’re conscious enough to know what is about to happen. Best to stay quiet, let this play out and allow green eyes to advocate for you with that smooth confidence in her voice that you’re envious of.
You can’t help yourself from imagining what is running through that woman’s quick mind after seeing the best in her new generation of students reduced to nothing more than a quivering mess on the floor. Madame is not pleased.
You shudder. Madame is not pleased. Shutting your eyes, you decide to pretend to sleep this out.
Time passes, at a crawl or a sprint you don’t know, before Madame’s heeled shoes click-clack away into the distance. There are strong fingers under your shoulder now, probing at how the flesh has swelled.
“Fractured scapula…” that smooth voice mutters.
You crack your eyes open again and see green. The corners of those eyes crinkle slightly when they see you staring blankly at her. With your lucidity growing with every second, you take in the face above you. Turns out green eyes is a girl who looks to be not that much older than you. With this in mind, you figure she must be an operative from the generation just before yours.
“Your name?” she asks, clipped but not unkind.
“Generation Delta, 87th.”
She shakes her head, and a rush of panic floods through you at the premise of disappointing her. “No, girl. I asked for your name, not your position.”
The breath gets stuck in your throat, no one has asked for your name in so long. The other girls in your generation only whisper their names in the dark at night when Madame is not hovering around to hand them a beating for it.
You whisper to her your name with amazement staining the vowels. The feeling of wonder intensifies with what the girl says to you next.
“57th in Beta generation, but call me nothing other than Natasha when those bats are not around. Especially Madame. Do you understand?”
Just 8 years older then. You nod dumbly, and Natasha blesses you with a rare smile.
>>> UK
>>> December 24th, 2019
It’s the night before Christmas, and the 141 are at the nearest bar. Even though the Belarus mission technically was a failure, they’re here to celebrate.
It’s Christmas. Why the fuck not.
At the two hour mark Gaz is absolutely sloshed, laughing boisterously in a corner with a group of girls practically clinging to him, and Soap’s cheeks are becoming redder with every drink he has. Price has let go of his usual reservations and thrown himself into a couple rounds of shots, Simon is only slightly uncomfortable because he’s never seen his captain smile that wide before.
Soap keeps circling back from whichever corner of the bar he’s at chatting to random people to persuade Simon to join the fray, trudging back slightly dejected only to perk right back up with a new stranger to babble with.
Simon just shakes his head in disbelief, convinced with every attempt that Soap is more akin to a puppy than a man.
Every attempt begins the same. “Comon, Ghost, gum join uz.” Christ, the accent just gets worse with every drink Soap chugs down. Simon feels like pulling a pillow over his ears to keep that fucking Scottish accent from haunting his future dreams.
It comes to a head just before midnight, Soap has returned for another attempt and is slurring his words to the point where it sounds like absolute gibberish. Using that as an indicator, Simon decides that it’s time to go back to base.
He rounds up the boys, pulls Price away from the serious looking conversation he’s having with the bartender about pigeons, practically pries several hands— both male and female, Simon discovers— off of Gaz, and drags Johnny by his hood out of the door.
Even after all of that, Johnny is still rambling.
“I have no fuckin’ clue what you’re on about, Johnny.”
“Y'ain’t ever galled me tha’ ‘fore, LT.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Simon huffs, for his own sanity and for the sake of the headache itching at his temple. Yet, Simon feels something that might resemble fondness when Soap slings his arm around his shoulders before belting out the worst rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’ for the whole street, and beyond, to hear.
Must be the Christmas spirit getting to him.
>>> WASHINGTON D.C., USA
>>> December 26th, 2019
Senator Howard is a family man. The papers have described him in all manners and perspectives. As a politician, not everybody is going to like him, but the news generally sticks to words like “classic all-American” or “God-fearing”, and even “upstanding model citizen” on occasion.
He lives in a nice house in the suburbs, with a sprawling neat garden. The walls are painted a soft beige, and all that is missing from the idyllic setup is a white picket fence.
It’s the morning after Christmas, and the house is silent. Not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.
The living room is a mess of shredded wrapping paper, evidence to show that only hours before the children were tearing into their gifts and screaming with glee. The lights on the christmas tree blink and wink cheekily from their corner, reflecting off of the glass baubles.
Disregarding the fairy lights on the tree, moonlight is the only source of light. It streams in silvery ribbons through the gaps in the curtains.
Senator Howard is the type of man to show off his trophies. He has photos lining the walls of his home study featuring himself standing next to some of the biggest names in the country. Celebrities, household names, high-ranking army officials, and his colleagues in the senate.
He is the type of man who likes having friends, preferably ones in high places. After all, they have helped him out of many tight corners throughout his career. They have served him well over the years, as he has served them well in return.
Senator Howard is the type of man to have a photo of his family on his desk, yet seeks to spend as little time with them as possible— especially his wife. Once the children have gone to bed, tucked in under their plush duvets after a fun Christmas day of celebrations, his wife goes to the bedroom and he makes his excuses. He’s done this more and more frequently as their marriage drags on across the years; it’s become almost a normal occurrence. The wife doesn't think twice about it.
“I’ll come to bed soon,” he says, and retreats to his study to drink himself into a stupor.
His wife slips out of bed and toes on her slippers shortly after the clock on her nightstand ticks past two in the morning. She pads down the hall to her husband's study, and pushes the door open while calling his name.
She finds him sitting in the dark with moonlight spilling over him. She calls for him to come to bed again, frowning when he’s too drunk to answer. She sighs, irritated now, especially because it’s Christmas and could you not spoil our children’s holidays with this?
He doesn’t answer. She flips on the light, and finds him laying, slumped over his desk with half of the whiskey in the bottle gone. From that point on, the newspapers will only use one word to describe him:
"Dead"
For anyone bothered to look, a single golden photo frame on the wall is empty. It's ironic how having friends in high places is what killed him.
ⴵ A Widow's Bite Masterlist | Simon Riley x Black Widow!Reader
❋ Read this on Ao3 ❋
Main tags: Innocent reader is accused of being a traitor trope, torture and interrogation, AFAB reader, questionably platonic bed sharing, strangers to lovers, sloooow burn, eventual smut, angst/hurt/comfort, kidfic
Words so far: 94,028
Chapters: 26/32 (On Ao3)
Summary: Barkov is dead, the Red Room is falling apart without his leadership, and the 141 are determined to remove his legacy from the world.
You are trying to achieve the impossible: 1. Run for your freedom and 2. Kill every last person affiliated with the Red Room to prevent it from rising from the ashes.
The kill count rises, things get complicated, and it’s only a matter of time before you run headfirst into the man known only as 'Ghost'.
1. A Widow's Bite | Simon Riley x Black Widow!Reader
Fic Masterlist-
❋ Read this on Ao3 ❋
Main tags: Innocent reader is accused of being a traitor trope, torture and interrogation, AFAB reader, questionably platonic bed sharing, strangers to lovers, sloooow burn, eventual smut, angst/hurt/comfort, kidfic
Chapter word count: 1.8k
>> BUDAPEST-KELETI STATION, HUNGARY
>> November 3rd, 2019
Barkov is dead, and you are running for your life.
The city is busy despite the cold weather, and the awareness that time is running out sits heavy on the edges of your mind.
You surge through the throngs of people, and finally you enter the train station with a sense of trepidation pounding through your veins, but there are no yells, no bullets, only the sound of people bustling about the platform and the rare warmth of a pale winter sun peeking through the high windows. Your heart is throwing itself against your ribcage, and sweat beads under your collar.
Time seems to slow with every passing second as you wait in line at the ticket office. You can feel your watch leisurely tick against the rabbit-quick pulse at your wrist. You count the seconds. Feel the space between each tick stretch and unspool. You tap your feet to expel the pent-up energy, and you can feel the slim knife you slid into your boot earlier that day shift over your ankle joint with every mindless movement.
Unable to stop throwing furtive glances over your shoulder, you hand over one of your passports to buy a ticket when it is your turn, and then pick at your fingernails absentmindedly. You can't stop your eyes from darting about and scanning the crowd. There's tension stitched into every fibre and every layer of muscle in your body as you expect a hand to clamp down on your wrist or a gunshot to punch through the air or something to happen at any second, but then the ticket officer hands over to you both your passport and your literal ticket to freedom with a tepid smile. You relax— slightly.
You step onto a train heading for Warsaw with nothing but five passports, five identities, and a handgun stashed in your satchel with a bundle of cash.
The train pulls out of the station, gathering speed and, within a handful of minutes, Budapest falls behind with your past entombed within the old city walls.
>> GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE
>> VIRGINIA, UNITED STATES
>> November 5th, 2019
Barkov is dead, but his legacy is not.
At least not yet.
Despite being determined to rectify that, Laswell feels that either her skull is going to implode into a migraine or her eyes will be rendered useless if she spends any longer staring at beaming bright computer screens, and squinting at various complicated maps littered with minute scribbles and equally minute symbols.
Following the news of Barkov's death, his forces had scattered and his followers all across Russia and Urzikstan had been sent into a frenzy without a leader to guide them. The mayhem has spiralled out of control, and Barkov's bases and facilities are cropping up on the map in the dozens every time a new intelligence report lands on Laswell's desk.
The interns had long since gone home, and the clock above the door implores her to retire for the day. Laswell knows that option is probably what's healthy, but she's nothing if not obsessive at heart and a workaholic, especially when all the current leads on this case look like a massive ball of knotted yarn just waiting to be untangled.
The maps, the profiles, the photographs, the mountains of scattered files, and the wall of flickering screens— all of it— a puzzle, ready to be solved.
The job will get done, and with what the leads spiralling from Barkov look like, it needs to get done as soon as possible. As the clock steadily ticks away, and time drags Laswell into the early hours of the morning, she discovers that Barkov's secrets have secrets.
The leads spiral all across the map. France. Austria. Belarus. Poland. Siberia.
The secrets unravel, the war crimes are stacking on top of each other, and the migraine sets in. She follows a lead that seizes her attention and puts a ball of dread in her stomach but seemingly leads to a dead end.
She reads for hours about young girls, often left orphaned from Barkov's killings, taken from orphanages in Urzikstan in droves and mysteriously disappearing from the face of the Earth. Laswell sits back after a few dedicated hours of digging as far as she can into the missing children. She sits and lets her mind sweep over the facts, letting her thoughts rove over the massive void of information in the middle of the story like a tongue feeling around the bloodied gums where a tooth had been. She wonders what has happened to these girls, somehow feeling that the answer to their disappearances may fill the pothole in their intelligence.
Laswell thinks of her young niece, about how her niece is now the same age as these girls when they went missing, and decides that she will find these girls at any cost, or at least make sure their story is known and whole. All the facts or none.
Sighing, Laswell pinches the bridge of her nose, lost in thought, just as the sun peeks over the DC skyline and dyes the sky in hues of purple and orange. She pulls a pack of migraine relief pills from her desk and swallows a handful of them down with a mouthful of cold coffee.
Then, just as the coffee settles unpleasantly on her empty stomach, the thought hits her as swift as lightning.
Belarus.
A money trail showed that Barkov's forces had frequently transported cargo to and from the country. She'd brushed the information off earlier, assuming they were solely transporting weapons and deeming it irrelevant to the missing girls. Now, however...
When Laswell had just begun her career in intelligence, she'd heard whispers of a covert facility buried somewhere in the snowy eastern European countryside in mission reports, and knew that half of the intelligence community believed it to be nothing more than a ghost story meant to intrigue the recruits. She knew that those who believed in its existence were convinced the KGB— now FSB— operated it long before and long after the USSR crumbled and Belarus gained independence.
Finding the base will be difficult, it had eluded the CIA for the better part of a century after all, but Barkov's death has condemned his empire to a slow death by a thousand cuts. Eventually, someone will slip up and give away the base, and the 141 will be there to wipe away the footprints of Barkov's legacy.
>> BREST OBLAST, BELARUS
>> December 17th, 2019
Barkov is dead, and it's up to the 141 to wipe the shit stain off the map.
They don't have the full story yet, but for now Laswell has given them coordinates pointing deep into the snowy rural landscape of the Belarusian countryside.
Ghost watches a litter of workers mill around the dark tarmac like ants, clearing the runway of any stray streaks of ice and snow under a wan grey sky, and hoists his pack further up his shoulder as he and the rest of the 141 pile into a small cargo plane that looks more like a starved bird than a machine capable of flight. They amble noisily down the narrow aisle, dropping their packs into their seats and chattering amongst themselves, the sounds ricocheting off the blank walls.
Just as he’s settling in his chosen seat, someone drops heavily with a theatrical sigh into the seat to Ghost’s right. Sergeant MacTavish. Soap. Ridiculous fucking name but whatever he supposes. Soap grins crookedly at Ghost and scratches absentmindedly at a band aid taped to the jut of his bruised cheekbone — just one of many scattered across his face and knuckles that serve as clear testaments to Soap’s inability to keep himself out of trouble.
“Laswell must be havin’ a field day, right LT?”
Ghost pictures in his mind Laswell hunched over a cramped desk for the past month just to find a measly single line of coordinates pointing them to arse fuck nowhere, and can’t help but think the poor woman isn’t having anything other than hell on earth let alone a field day.
“Why’d you say that?” he asks gruffly, already feeling irritation seeping into him as he begrudgingly continues the conversation.
“The CIA finally nailing a commie base after 60 years? Must be feelin’ proud o’themselves.”
“You’d think they’d be more irritated that it’s taken them that long. We don’t even know if this is it.”
Ghost discovers that Soap is the type of guy to embellish his words with expressive hand gestures, and he does so now. “Have some faith, LT. Hear both sides of the story before jumping to conclusions.”
“The only sides the CIA will know are the sides of my boot when I fit it up their arses if this goes nowhere.”
That cracks Johnny up, and Ghost looks away to hide the way the crow’s feet framing the corners of his eyes crinkle slightly under his mask.
----------
What they find inside is nothing short of a bloodbath.
The facility was all but abandoned when they had made their way to the outer walls. No guards. No lights. No noise except the whistling of the wind sweeping over the snow.
The silence around them serves as an indicator of the deafening noise it must have taken for so many bodies to litter the floor. There are bullets embedded in the marble wall in the foyer, and the team picks their way inside over the heaps of dead guards. The blood is old enough to have coagulated, and there’s an unpleasant sticky noise every time Ghost lifts his boot to step forward.
They’re on the second level now, and the layers of spilt blood get thicker the deeper they go into the facility. Ghost passes a room before doubling back and entering, he takes a glance in and sees rows upon rows of wrought-iron beds with thin mattresses atop them. His head tilts curiously to the side as he spies a girl’s hair ribbon sprawled on the floor and a tiny pair of mary jane shoes tucked neatly under one of the beds.
Soap follows him, catching his attention silently to show Ghost the pairs of handcuffs dangling from each iron bedpost. The atmosphere is heavy, like the air in the room has a story of pain to tell and it’s suffocating them.
Price is the one to palm his radio when they regroup and relay what they’ve seen, “Watcher-1, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that the lead’s legitimate.”
“I’ll be more glad to know if you’ve found the children,” Laswell returns crisply.
“Somebody got here before us, wiped out the whole place. ‘S a bloodbath.” The air shivers with tension. “No kids in sight now, though there’s evidence to suggest that they were here some time ago.”
A few seconds pass in silence. Ghost imagines that Laswell’s eyebrows are pinched like they always are whenever she runs into a problem or defeat. A bit more than a month of searching, for nothing more than a mass grave.
A sigh comes over the line, but Laswell’s voice is determined. “We better find this somebody then.”
