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bloodied-heroes · 7 years

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Breaking Point (2/?)

A/N: I was floored by the response from you guys, I’m so glad you liked part 1 (brb screaming)! I’m sorry it took me an extra couple of days (I’m trying to do weekly updates), but here is part 2! Enjoy, and let me know what you think!!

Summary: Natasha’s beloved has been captured for ten long months, and everyone is nearing their breaking point. It’s now or never, but even if the team does manage to bring her home, will she even know what home is anymore?

Pairings: Natasha x reader, Avengers x reader

Warnings: ANGST! Like, torture, injury, suffering, etc. etc. They’re getting ready for the big fight! Sad Avengers!

Part 1

She was startled out of her uneasy sleep by the echo of footsteps drawing closer. She had not been in her cell long. The blood was still slick on the floor when the guards entered. She did not tremble when the boots approached her, did not bat an eyelid when a hand was placed under her arm. She knew the routine.

Another guard placed a hand beneath her other arm. She blinked. For months she had been made to move herself to where she would be tormented. Perhaps she had resisted at first but those days were a foggy memory. Limping, sometimes dragging herself down the hall, but doing so nonetheless. It was only afterwards that they would throw her back into the cell. But today they were taking her out. Unceremoniously and painfully to be sure, but still, it was different.

Perhaps it was because she could no longer walk under her own power. She would not have been able to move herself between her crushed ankle and the thousand other injuries she bore. Was this the end? She closed her eyes and thought of the darkness. It had been waiting just behind her for months now. Soothing and wild. Most importantly painless and free.

She opened her eyes and, for the first time in months, she hoped. It was a dangerous thing, something she thought she had abandoned a long time ago. She didn’t know what world was beyond this, if any. Red hair sparkled at the corners of her memory. She didn’t care as long as it was anything other than here. Even if it was nothingness.

She watched the painfully familiar hallway pass by, and she hoped that it was the last time she would be taken down it. The route was ingrained into her, and it always ended the same.

Down the grey hallway.

Down the set of stairs at the end. There were twenty-three. Her ankle crashed down every step with agonizing regularity.

Turn immediately left.

Down another hall …

And through the heavy metal door at the end.

It opened as they approached. She was thrown to the floor and landed hard. From near the table at the center of the room came a sound of disapproval, and a woman emerged. The guards bowed their heads and left as the woman moved forward. She easily lifted the frail woman and began strapping her limbs to the angled table. The prisoner managed to stay neutral until a stab was tightened around her broken ankle. The woman laughed, the buttons of her uniform shining under the bright lights.

“We are ready,” the monstrous woman announced, before moving towards the wall and letting a taller, male figure take her place.

“Then we shall begin,” the man stated, in his usual monotone. His black eyes, visible above his mask, bore into her.

She kept her jaw clenched for an admirably long time. Hate was a powerful emotion. Eventually the searing knife broke her resolve. The sensation of the dull instrument tearing through her was a familiar torture, but that didn’t make it much more tolerable. Her shred of hope was being cut out of her. She could think of nothing beyond the pain. It was an all encompassing white that pushed the comforting darkness aside.

Had she not been battered and lost, had her screams not flowed as freely as her blood, she would have noticed that things were different this time.

She would have noticed that the guards were more on edge than the day before. The abuse was lessened in favor of speedily expediting orders. They did not abuse her as she was being moved, did not taunt her for the tortures she would undergo. Nor did they stay in the room to watch her unravel, leaving immediately after throwing her to the ground.

She would have noticed that the halls were filled with a flurry of activity. As she was dragged through the stone and concrete halls others were rushing around them. They whispered rumors that she was too broken to hear.

She would have noticed that she was brought to the children three different times. They had never gone more than once during a torture session. But three times they dragged her into an adjoining room where a group of children stood huddled in fear. She was ordered, cajoled, her wounds pressed to convince her to begin doing harm to others in order to alleviate her own pain. The routine was familiar but the extent of their efforts was new.

The third time they brought her to them every inch of her shredded body was screaming at her to end the agony. The children, standing by the opposite wall, looked at her in terror. Some closed their eyes shut at the sight of her bloody form, but all were too scared to scream. There were nearly a dozen of them, none older than seven.

“Well?” the man demanded of her. “Shall the pain stop?”

Yes, her body screamed at her. The pain was overwhelming.

She opened her mouth, her head the only part of her body she found she could move. He could hurt them instead, and what a relief a moment of rest would be. Her body begged for reprieve. She looked at the children, who were staring at her, transfixed. Their eyes were filled with fear.

No. They had nothing to fear from her. A flash of colour caught her eye, and she saw a little girl with bright red curls. They trembled as she shook. It stirred something deep within the tortured woman. No. That girl would not endure this torment, she would never condemn her to that. A primal urge to protect overcame her. She would condemn no one to this. She turned back to the glinting black eyes, her mouth still open.

“Fuck you.” He heart spoke as her body continued to scream. They were the first words that had passed her lips in a long time. They were hoarse, quiet, and brought more blood to her mouth from her shredded vocal chords.

The eyes turned fiery. Her stomach dropped in fear and anger but she kept his gaze. The little girl with red hair was staring at her as she was dragged backwards out of the room.

Had she not been as she was, she would have noticed that the usually emotionless face of her torturer was filled with rage. He picked up his instruments for the fourth time as she was again being tied to the slab. There was a hint of fear in his eyes when he asked his assistant for the time and if there were any new messages. He turned back to the table to unleash this new fury upon her.

She would have noticed that now the torture was carried out with wrath. It was being administered quickly and viciously rather than with cold calculation; done without care as to whether she lived to be tortured again. She couldn’t have noticed this, for between her whimpers and beneath the screams that came silently from her broken throat, her body was beginning to shut down.

And because of this she certainly did not hear the rumors once she was finally released and thrown back into her cell. But the guards had been hearing the whispers, and they lingered outside and talked.

“… if it really is true-”

“Don’t be such a coward! There are no moles or traitors in the organization. Nothing is about to happen.”

“Did you look at her? She probably won’t live out the day. They always told us what an important experiment she was, so why-”

“There are many possibilities. I am more concerned by your lack of faith to the organization. Should I report your cowardice or will you stop acting like a scared rat, ready to flee at a whisper?”

“… Apologies.”

Unable to move, she lay where she was thrown on the cold concrete floor. Unhearing, she was oblivious to the footsteps and rumors scampering through the corridors. Blissful waves of darkness, unfeeling, uncaring, began to wash over her. Bright blood, illuminated by the constant light, streamed towards the drain.

For more than five thousand miles two jets flew close together south over the world. Over the western North Atlantic their passengers sat in darkness and degrees of sleep, before looking down to see the scattered lights of Venezuela. Over Brazil they saw occasional patches of lights that were quickly swallowed by the dense jungle, which seemed to absorb everything. They finally began their descent a ways apart from another, in the northwestern corner of Argentina, not far from the Chilean border. It was still dark when they landed, the usually thirteen hour flight more than halved by the technology of desperate men and women.

“This is the first time we’ve all been on a mission together since … well, you know,” Clint had said as they were finalizing the mission plan.

“Since we botched Y/N’s extraction,” Natasha supplied, not meeting his eyes.

Clint looked sheepish at her bluntness. “Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“We’ll do better this time,” Wanda, the woman with long brown hair stated. It was not a question.

Natasha looked around the group that had assembled in the planning room, her red hair fallen around her darkened eyes. They were all furiously working towards the same goal, and yet they were nervous. “I’m not coming home without her.”

As they approached their destination Natasha’s comrades looked up, but she refused to look at any of them. Around her were seated Loki and Bucky, headed straight for the Janus base where Y/N was being held. At least according the Tony’s technology and the agency’s informants. They would land as close as they could to the base without immediately setting off their security. Bruce sat forward from the rest, piloting the jet through the rocky peaks, with Tony sitting next to him.

Natasha’s red hair fluttered as she glanced out the window. Y/N had always loved watching the world pass beneath her. She could watch on the flight back, Natasha determined. She had not commented upon the medical equipment that sat next to the quiet man at the helm, but couldn’t deny the way her stomach dropped when she saw it being loaded. She went over the plan again in her mind, to distract her as much as to prepare her for the coming battle. It felt like a fight for her life.

She was going into the Janus base with Loki and Bucky. They would be the strike team, getting in and getting her love out as quickly as possible. The three of them made an interesting team to be sure, but they were all strong and talented and Natasha knew she was not the only one painfully eager to get Y/N home.

Loki had been still for the entirety of the flight. His eyes had sometimes been open, sometimes closed, anger present on his face regardless. He had rarely been on the front lines with the team. Usually he was relegated to providing backup, occasionally going in to provide cover. Before Y/N had been captured she had been helping him ease onto the team. After his brother had returned home she had become his mentor when it came to working with them, and much to everyone’s surprise it had proved a resounding success. They got along so well that once she was gone no one had quite known what to do with him. He had stepped up himself to do what he could to get her back, and in doing so gained their trust. Loki was determined to properly express his gratitude for everything she had done for him. This is what he had told the team when they asked why he was going to such lengths to help. But they had seen him laugh with her and had all become closer with him because of it. And they had seen the anguish etched into his face whenever he had watched her in her torment.

Bucky had stood to check his supplies every hour or so. From his left arm metal glinted in the dim cabin lights. His dark hair tickled his chin as he leaned forward to recount the ammunition, the knives, the guns for the third time. He had sometimes worked frontline missions with the team but his own past trauma usually kept him away from the abusive cells and torturous instruments that he was now heading towards. He had immediately volunteered for the position, however. He would be able to help her, because “I’ve been in her position,” he had said, looking pointedly at the blond captain. She had helped him feel like a person, like a part of the team, like more than just his past. Now it was his turn to do what he could for her.

Tony and Bruce had been sitting together at the front of the jet. Tony’s foot tapped the ground with a nervous energy. When Bucky had stood up for his last weapons check the two scientists had shared a glance, their anxieties skyrocketing. Natasha’s withdrawal from the team since her statement in the planning room and the medical equipment that sat between them, grimly suggested by Loki, were not helping.

They shared great anxiety but expressed it very differently. Normally Y/N’s presence was better for Bruce. She would calmly sit with him in the lab when he was getting too wound up, sometimes alone, sometimes with Natasha. She would bring him food, ask the occasional question about his work, but mostly she was a calming presence. She knew when to sit with him, and he was always grateful for it.

Tony used to get practically this wound up before every mission and would descend into a cycle of pacing and heavy sarcasm. The first time this happened on a mission with Y/N she walked past him to the stereo. Sounds of stomping and clapping rung through the jet as Queen began to play. He had looked on in disbelief as she had grabbed his suit’s gauntlets and begun clapping them together, before shaking her shoulders and yelling the lyrics at him. Whenever Y/N and Tony were on the jet together for a mission Queen would start playing and she would dance around as they sang. She had played “We Are The Champions” on their way to the last mission. He hadn’t been able to listen to Queen since. She had been fighting for her life by herself and he didn’t feel like much of a champion for it.

The jet landed and Natasha, Bucky, and Loki stood. Natasha gave a solemn look back at Tony and Bruce before leading the way off the jet. The two men remained on the jet. Bruce would be monitoring communications and was on medical standby. Tony would join Steve shortly to sweep through the base after the initial strike. He was also tasked with flying Y/N out when found, if necessary. He hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. That was one of the scenarios in which they would need all of Bruce’s medical equipment.

The second jet was maneuvering more than a mile from the site, tucked between rocky crevices filled with lush trees and flowing streams. The beauty of the place was shrouded in the pre-dawn dark. When Clint was satisfied he had found an adequate landing area he brought the jet down. They would not draw unnecessary attention there but were close enough to strike.

“We’re going to give them the best damn support they could ask for,” Steve announced as they all filed out of the jet. “Wanda, Clint, Sam,” he said, nodding at each in turn. “Good luck.”

They checked their comms with each other and then with Bruce and the other jet. When Steve was satisfied he nodded at his team and began walking towards the access point where he would meet Tony and sweep the base. After the explosives Natasha, Loki, and Bucky were planting had been detonated the Captain and the man in iron would sweep through the secondary areas and acquire what information they could. They would also be able to respond if the base contained more personnel than expected.

Steve had taken much of the responsibility upon himself after the failed extraction last year. When told by an agent that according to the calculated mission odds he had done quite well, Steve had jumped up and shouted, “Y/N is not a statistic!” He must have had a murderous look in his eye because he had never seen someone from his own side run away from him with such fear. He had felt bad about that, but it was nothing compared to the guilt he shouldered after the mission.

He could still feel the pang in his gut when Natasha’s panicked voice had begun sounding over the coms. Her distress was unsettling in it’s own right, and when he realized what she was saying he ran as fast as his serum-enhanced body would allow. It didn’t help. He still arrived too late. He had found Natasha, injured, face covered in blood and heartbreak. Her knees had buckled beneath her. Steve did his best to put the image out of his mind. He would be a better captain this time.

Sam watched the captain walk away into the darkness before pulling the last of his equipment onto his back. He thought of Natasha leading her team towards the base at that moment. Her silence worried him, he had seen the withdrawal that could plague those who had lost as she had. He couldn’t fault her, though. Sam remembered Y/N, how he had asked her on a date incessantly for the first week he had been with the team. She would only smile at him and shake her head. Finally he exclaimed, “Fine, but why not?!” Her answer had been to place one hand behind Natasha’s neck, the other around her waist, and dip her to the floor while kissing her deeply. “You can’t compete with that, Sam,” Steve’s voice had chuckled from the other side of the room. Sam had ruefully smiled, knowing Steve was right. “Damn.”

He tried to focus on that happiness when he swept his metal wings behind him and soared, staying close to the treetops, up the crags before him. From there he would be able to keep an eye on all movements in and out of the base. And to make sure Y/N got out.

Behind him Wanda and Clint emerged, following Sam’s path up the rocks. From there they would be able to fire missiles and magic down upon the base. Between the two of them and Sam’s recon provided from high above, they trusted they would be able to see the mission through from start to finish.

Wanda would not lose Y/N, who had become like a sister to her. After the initial shock of her capture she had thrown herself into her work. Her brother had been killed and she would not allow her sister to be. The whole ordeal had brought many painful memories from a previous life to the surface. After having let her composure slip earlier in the day she had put on a strong face. As she approached the base she could smell hints of torment mixed with the scent of the grass and the river. They brought to mind images of her brother’s body tumbling to the ground and she paused.

Clint put a hand on her shoulder. “Natasha was right,” he said quietly. “We are not leaving without her.”

Wanda looked at him intently for a moment, about to say something. She closed her mouth and nodded, and they continued walking towards their overlook and path of descent. They would laugh together again. She had to believe it.

Clint followed her between the trees. He thought about his kids running through them, chasing their ‘Auntie Y/N.’ For the first few months after she had been taken he had pulled together a painful smile for them when they asked when she and ‘Auntie Nat’ would be coming to visit. One night they asked him again and he couldn’t muster the smile. It became an ugly grimace before he picked up his daughter and held her tight. His wife sat down next to their sons and told them that Auntie Y/N was in trouble and might not be coming back. He knew how much they loved Y/N and Natasha’s visits, and knew they wouldn’t take it well. He couldn’t have been more surprised when his daughter giggled in his arms.

“But daddy,” she had told him. “Auntie Y/N is way stronger than you, so she’s okay.”

He put her down and kissed her forehead, told her she was right, and put the kids to bed. That night he clung to his wife and cried, and she knew how scared he was for Y/N, for Natasha, for the team.

“She’ll be okay,” he muttered, following Wanda into battle.

Natasha stilled behind a tree, signaling Bucky and Loki to so the same. She was waiting to hear from Sam that he was in place and had eyes on the field. She could see their access point, once of three that were built into the landscape. The inconspicuous door looked as if it was to a small maintenance shed, but it would lead her to where she needed to go. The person she would give her life for was waiting down there. She had been for far too long and Natasha was going to end that.

Leaning against the tree she felt the rough bark through her stealth suit. Her red hair swayed in the light breeze, and she could see the leaves rustling in the first dim light of the day. She thought about how much Y/N would love this place, leafy valleys filled with trickling streams nestled between rocky cliffs, quiet and warm in the early morning. Natasha remembered how excited Y/N had been in the weeks before she went on that last mission. It was May, the height of spring just turning to summer. She had been fawning over the warm weather, positively glowing with happiness at such a simple thing as the changing of the seasons. Natasha had laughed as Y/N burst outside in a new pair of shorts, running barefoot through the grass. She had climbed trees, splashed her feet in the water, even found a water balloon from god knows where and lobbed it at Natasha. The team had found them later, soaked and laughing, drying off in the sunlight.

It was March now, later summer in Argentina, but the beginnings of spring were creeping into New York. Natasha’s memory of Y/N laying laughing in the warm grass was replaced by what she had seen the previous day. Her love was bleeding alone on a dirty concrete floor. Frail, hair cut short, covered in blood and bruises.

“In position,” Sam’s voice buzzed over the comms.

“Alright,” Steve’s voice followed. “Y/N’s waiting for you Nat.”

Natasha signaled to Bucky and Loki before striding forward, fire in her eyes.

Part 3 (coming soon!)

If you want to be tagged by lil’ old me just let me know!

@morbid-gaymer

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bloodied-heroes · 7 years

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Breaking Point (1/?)

A/N: I’m so nervous, I’ve never written a fic before but I live in the mcu tags and have so many ideas that I finally decided to start writing. Please let me know what you think!! (be kind!)

Pairing: Natasha x reader

Warnings: angst! mentions of torture (rescue-the-reader type situation)

Oh boy, here goes nothing…

She curled into a ball as much as her battered body would allow. She made no noise besides the rustle of her rough clothing. The cold concrete was the reassurance of a temporary respite, the place where she would feel her old woulds but receive no new ones. The glinting steel of blades and hooks and electrodes remained behind when they dragged her out and threw her to the hard floor. The flailing fists and feet of men sometimes entered the room, but she barely registered such simple pain anymore.

She was beginning to lose parts of herself. Her voice, adored by her friends and her beloved, had been cast aside. Occasionally sound passed her lips, but they were only screams. No singing, no laughing, not even crying.

The faces of her friends, the memories of laughing and dancing together, the knowledge that she would be putting so much that she cared about in danger - even if she didn’t know what it was that she cared about anymore - that was what had held her tongue when they interrogated her. All of those memories were gone, but so was the information that they had demanded of her.

Now they would tell her to do things. She refused and was punished, harshly. Her resistance came now from deep within, from the light that made her who she was.

Gone was the memory of lying in the desert with her love, uncountable stars twinkling above. Gone was the memory of laughing on a rooftop with her friends, watching ridiculous inventions and beautiful magic twirl around them. These were the hardest to hold on to. Happiness and love had not existed for her since she was thrown in this place.

Gone was the memory of the courtroom where the kidnappers they had captured were held on trial. Gone was the memory of the hunting the assassins and administering their punishments on site. But the idea of justice stayed with her. Her deeply held convictions of right and wrong, of standards, of morals.

One of the last memories she had, albeit faded and indistinct, was of diving between her beloved and a bullet that she hadn’t been fast enough to stop. She didn’t remember the pain - how could it possibly compare to what she was enduring? - nor the face of her love, nor the fact that she even had a love. But she remembered the halo of red hair around the blurred face, remembered seeing it dance as the head whipped around, screaming her name as she fell with a bullet in her chest. She remembered being dragged away, unable to call out to that red halo as countless soldiers descended upon them.

She was here so that the good and the loved would be safe. She was here to protect them. This was all she knew now.

She would not allow herself to be used to hurt the children they brought in front of her. She would not raise her hand against the terrified man who was beating her. She was vaguely aware that he too was a prisoner, and would not have hurt him even if she were able. Not so for the monstrous men whose eyes glinted evilly over her, who wielded knives and fire and electricity, who packed her wounds with salt, who doused her in ice water and threw her onto the cold concrete floors to freeze. She would have fought back against them if she were able. She still had the determination to live, although for whom or what she did not know.

So there she lay, curled up on the concrete floor, her legs in particular agony at the moment. She closed her eyes, waiting for unconsciousness to take her. The light overhead was always left on and she hadn’t seen a window in she knew not how long. She was only vaguely aware of an outside world, having the faintest memory of red hair glinting in the sunlight. Time was only punctuated by torture and the darkness that overcame her with pain or blood loss.

The light flickered for a moment. The ghostly form of a man stood in the corner of the room. He was tall and pale, with raven hair hanging around his face. No one could see him, for he wasn’t really there. The strength of his connection with the woman, from her fading past life, was what allowed him to come to her. But she could no longer remember him and he was barely able to see her. This would be the last time he could visit, the last time he could be certain that she still lived.

He could see nothing beyond her piercingly lit cell. He gave the slightest sigh of relief at the sight. He had come to see her before when she was in the midst of being tortured and it was a sight that he still saw when he closed his eyes to sleep.

The fresh blood from her legs continued to drip to the floor, moving over her shattered ankle. It mingled with the dried blood on the floor and trickled towards the drain. Seeing her like this, her frail form shaking with cold, pain, and her ragged breathing, made it hard to remember how she looked when she was healthy and laughing - when she was theirs. He saw how dull her eyes had become, before they closed in unconsciousness. Her breath did not come any more easily in rest. The light flickered once more and the man vanished.

“What do you mean you won’t be able to see her again? What’s happening to her?!” Her halo of red hair quivered as she interrogated the man, just returned to himself from seeing the heinous cell.

He sat heavily, haunted by the memory. The first time he had returned for seeing her he had been unable to describe it for the greater part of an hour. She had been screaming her heart out at the end of one of the early torture sessions, when she was being interrogated on the very people now looking at him. How long ago that had been.

“Loki,” the woman spoke, her voice dangerously low, “tell me what is happening. Now.”

The man, Loki, looked up at her, wrenched out of his thoughts. “The only reason I have been able to see her is because we share a strong bond, because of our friendship,” he began. “But she is losing herself…” he said slowly.

The woman continued to stare at him. She was an expert at keeping her emotions in check, at least from the gaze of others. But Loki could see the pain etched into her face, could hear the hitch in her breath.

“She no longer remembers me. Therefore, our connection is broken. I could hardly see her as it was, enough only to tell that she lived and continues to suffer.” Loki finished, looking away. He generally declined to describe the agonies she endured. Once, when he was confronted about the lack of detail he provided, with concerns that they could perhaps find her if he said more, he shared with them everything he had seen. It had been one of the more brutal torture sessions, and its revelation was met with gasps, tears, and one person going off the be sick. He had not disclosed such detail since.

“Let me see her.” The red-haired woman asked. “Please.” She added, so quietly that it would have gone unnoticed, had the room not already been deadly silent.

Loki held her gaze and nodded slowly. The others moved forward with sounds of concern, but before they made it far the image appeared in the woman’s mind. Her love lay there, curled in a ball on the concrete floor, fresh and dried blood mixing together. She was gaunt, her breaths labored, and so bloodied and bruised that she was barely recognizable.

Her red hair fluttered as she quickly sat down, burying her face in her hands.

Alarmed, a man with cropped brown hair strode over and put his arms around the woman’s shoulders. He glared up at Loki accusingly. “How stupid are you? We agreed you wouldn’t show her getting tortured, and Natasha - ”

“Clint, stop.” The redhead whispered steadily. “It wasn’t that, it was just her in her cell.” She took a deep breath, and then, “It’s okay. Thank you Loki.”

Loki only nodded. Clint continued to sit next to the woman, Natasha. He didn’t look angry though, his eyes instead filled with a deep sadness.

“It’s been so long.” A woman whose long brown hair curtained her face said, quietly. “The fact that you’ve had enough of a connection to see her this long…” She paused, looking up, “she’s so strong. And she’s been through so much, and - and ten months, ten months they’ve had her.” she shakily came to stop, tears beginning to stream down her face. A comforting arm appeared around her shoulders as well.

A tall, muscular man with a shock of blond hair spoke up. “If what Loki says is true, then it really is now or never. We won’t be able to see when she’s been moved anymore, or if she is even still…” He faltered at the thought.

Several shot him angry looks, and the woman with long brown hair hissed “Steve!” at his words.

“Anyway,” Steve started again, “Tony, I hope to God you called us here because you’ve got something good.”

Tony, a shorter man with brown hair and particularly spectacular circles under his eyes, bounced forward from the computer monitors he had been leaning against. “Better than good,” he started with a jittery energy, “I think we’ll finally be able to go and get our gal.”

Everyone in the room turned towards him sharply, with mixtures of incredulity, skepticism, and hope on their faces.

He continued, “We know enough about the group that’s holding her now. We know that they call themselves Janus and that they formed bases around the world after they split off from HYDRA in the ‘60s, and we know how they’re organized from Nat’s infiltrations of the Cambodian, Ugandan, and Mongolian bases, and from the information Loki has gained whenever he’s been able to check in on her. Between that, Wanda and Nat’s interrogation of that scumbag in Morocco, and the groundwork the rest of the team has been doing, we have a pretty good idea what we’re up against.”

“Fine Tony, but what does that matter if we don’t know which base she’s in? They all look the goddamn same.” Clint spoke out in frustration.

“That’s where the fabulous Tony Stark comes in!” Tony proclaimed, a hint of his old enthusiasm in his voice. “I found her.”

Clint felt a sharp squeeze of his hand by Natasha, before she stood up, facing the tired billionaire. “Where?”

“Argentina.”

Everyone sat in the mission room, surrounded by maps, diagrams, floor plans, interrogation notes - everything and anything they had, paper pinned to the walls and digital projections flying every which way. Only a couple hours after they’d gotten the news from Tony, sometime around noon, Natasha proclaimed that they would leave that midnight.

Steve sidled over to her while the others were studying the floor plans. “Do you really think that’s enough time to prepare?” He asked her.

Natasha shot him a look that held her answer. Whether it was enough time to prepare or not was not her concern. She had been waiting to find her love for ten agonizing months. She would wait no longer.

As she sat back down she added, “They’ve moved her at least twice already. I was so close in Cambodia. We need to go before it happens again.”

Steve nodded and turned back to the floor plan spread out before him.

As midnight approached the team walked onto the roof, the lights of the city spread out before them. Natasha glanced around. She used to love sitting with her love at night, anywhere and everywhere. They had spent endless hours staring at the bustle of the city through the early hours of the morning, and whenever they had time together the pair would go off and look at the stars. During the last fall that they were together, when the chill of autumn descended upon the city, they had spent a weekend in the southwestern desert warming their bones against the red rocks and gazing at a sky so bright that the stars touched the earth’s horizon.

It had been one of the best couple of days Natasha could remember. Her love kept joking about how her hair matched the rocks as they spent many peaceful hours walking through the canyons and cacti. It had been then that they had decided to get married. If this hadn’t happened they would have been wed a month ago. Would they ever be? Would she ever be able to sit here, on the roof, holding her love and watching the city?

Before tears could prickle her eyes Natasha swallowed her doubts and strode forward towards the jet. She was utterly determined as she climbed aboard.

“I’m coming, Y/N.” She whispered as the doors closed behind her.

Part 2

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