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jaceyneedsabetterusername · 4 years

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Can’t Lose You

Pairing: Zuko x Reader

Summary: Y/N, a servant in the palace, and Zuko, the prince of the Fire Nation, never should have been allowed to be friends growing up but after three years, things have changed for the both of them.

Warnings: Descriptions of burns/ injuries (the scene where Ozai burns Zuko)

Word Count: 7300 (it’s a long one y’all)

A/N: I know that they never once mention cards in A:TLA but I had a hard time figuring out how to do the scene with Azula with something like Pai Sho pieces.

Part 2 out now! Can’t Get Rid Of Me

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It was a beautiful day on Ember Island, with the sun shining brightly, the waves crashing in beautiful roars, and the lizard-birds cawing overhead. The sun warmed your skin as you carried your basket full of blown glass beaded jewelry into the marketplace, small glass orbs of every color swishing around like liquid almost in the woven basket. The normal crowd bustled around you in three categories: 1) The Rich Kids: These were the teenagers whose parents were generals or socialites in the Fire Nation military. They were either here on vacation or enjoyed living in an exotic place. Their lives revolved around partying, shopping, and drinking. 2) The Merchants and Artisans: Another set of locals, just much less affluent than the former group. These were the people who lived on Ember Island full time and were the only reason things ran. They provided services from cooking to clothing to furniture. 3) The Tourists: These were the citizens from the mainland that came to Ember Island to take in the sights and relax. You were a part of the second of these categories.

Creating glass beads was never something you saw yourself doing. Especially not several years ago. Artisanal work was something that seemed so far out of anything you could do. See, you’d grown up in the palace… sort of. Your parents had been servants in the palace prior to your birth which led you to a life of servitude yourself.

It was a miserable life no matter how much your parents insisted it was better than living in one of the poorer villages outside of the palace, where people were treated like they were from other nations. Every day from the age of eleven, you’d been bossed around by anyone who had a title. “Get me water!” “Get me food!” “Wash my clothes!” “Make my bed!” You were nothing. Most of the time, they didn’t even use your name. Most of them didn’t even know your name. But that wasn’t even the worst of it because there was always Azula.

The sun shone brightly in the little courtyard full of flowers and the little pond with turtle ducks that you and Zuko loved to play with. Zuko had been your best friend since his mother had allowed you to play with the royal children. Both of your parents were servants in the palace and, in the early years of your life, you were too young to work around the castle when you weren't in school. When Ursa found out, she insisted that you play with Zuko, Azusa, Mai, and Ty Lee, despite Ozai's insistence that his children should not associate with people below them. It was the one debate that Ursa ever seemed to win.

Despite her victory though, it didn't mean that your 'play dates' were much fun. At first, you gravitated towards Azula, Ty Lee, and Mai, as they were the girls and who Ursa first introduced you to with the assumption you guys would be friends. While Mai and Ty Lee both loved you and treated you well, Azula took after her father and treated you like scum. She'd feign niceties and then turn on you and do horrible things. She treated Zuko very similarly so the two of you bonded over your mutual dislike of his sister.

The two of you became best friends and did everything together. You ran around the halls of the palace but always made sure to hide away from Ozai, fearing he'd do something to you or your parents if he found you with his son. Although nothing was outright romantic between the two of you, Ursa saw the little sparks between you two when she was with you. She noticed the way your guys' little cheeks would burn red if your hands accidentally touched or saw the way your gazes would linger a little longer on each other when the other looked away. Unlike her husband, she had no problem with your little unspoken crushes. Thankfully, Ozai was never involved in his children's personal lives much anyways so he didn't notice but it wasn't long until Azula caught on.

She would corner you and pretend to want to have "girl talk" about boys and crushes. It was never long until she brought up her brother. "I know you like Zuko. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. I think it's cute that you think you have a chance. But you know he's a prince right? And even though you get to play royals with us, he could never marry someone of such low class." Even at ten years old, her words stung. You'd always had little fantasies that maybe he'd sweep you away from your predestined life of servitude one day. He didn't even have to sweep you away to a life of royalty, you just wanted him to sweep you away to anywhere. But maybe Azula was right. Zuko was royalty and you were far from it.

So your friendship continued for the next several years until his banishment. In secret, he taught you firebending from a young age. As a servant, it didn't matter much if you were a firebender, you didn't get training because your parents neither had the money or the time nor were either benders. He taught you the basic moves and, though he wasn't as skilled as his sister, you were greatly appreciative of his teaching and actually knew almost as much as he did.

One day, just days after your eleventh birthday, you and Zuko sat at the edge of the pond, trying to oure turtle ducklings to you with pieces of bread. "I've almost got him!" Zuko whispered excitedly, the baby duck only two or three feet away.

You couldn't wait to pet him! They were so soft when they were ducklings!

"Hey, Y/N! Come here!" Azula called from across the grass field. You stood up and looked cautiously at her, already distrusting all of her motives.

"Why?" You asked skeptically.

Her eyebrows furrowed, "My mother may let you play with us but I am still a princess and you obey me! Besides, it's just a card trick." Azula's personality switched quickly, which scared you as a young child, but after a quick look of fear to Zuko, you walked over.

Mai and Ty Lee stood back, both watching as you came over to their group and leaned down to look at the cards Azula lied on the rock. "What's the trick?" You asked, hoping she really did just have a magic trick.

She sprawled them out, "Pick one and look at it but don't show me. You can show them though." She waved her hand to her other friends as if they didn't actually matter. Without much thought, you picked one that was buried slightly and looked at it. 8 of diamonds.

"Now put it anywhere in the deck." You did as she instructed and handed her back the deck. She closed her eyes tightly and threw all the cards up in the air before swinging her arms in controlled movements, ropes of fire coming from her hands. One rope singed a single card from midair while the other wrapped around your calves, sending a searing hot white flash of pain through your body.

"Y/N!" Zuko yelled when he saw the flames wrap their way up your legs and he ran towards you. You crumpled to the ground, tears falling freely as you cried in pain. Mai and Ty Lee gasped at what their friend had just done but didn't say anything out of pure terror of what she'd do if they did.

Azula reached down and picked up the single singed card, a hole burnt straight through it. She inspected the card, "Eight of diamonds. Was this your card?" She asked as if you weren't on the ground, sobbing in pain with blisters forming up your legs from something she'd done.

"Mom!" Zuko called out as he sat there beside your crying form, unsure of what to do or say, anger flaming up within him.

"Oh calm down, Zuzu," Azula rolled her eyes, "Your girlfriend is fine. It's a second-degree burn at most."

"She's not my girlfriend!" Zuko hissed, throwing a fireball at his sister that she easily dodged, "You're a monster!"

Ursa came running out quickly at her son's plea for help, "What on earth is going on here?!" She crouched next to you and could see the skin on your legs already boiling up from between the seared tears in your pants, "Azula, what have you done!?" Ursa was furious as she picked you up.

Azula scoffed, "We were only playing, mother. It was an accident."

"No it wasn't! Azula hurt her on purpose!" Zuko defended you, jumping up to stand beside his mother.

Ursa looked at Ty Lee and Mai who looked terrified and didn't even make a move but the look in their eyes confirmed what Zuko said. Ursa held you close to her body before gripping her daughter's wrist roughly, "You have no idea how much trouble you're in."

And she did. Azula had never gotten in so much trouble in her life, though, of course it did nothing but fuel her hatred for her mother and you and make her side further with her father She blamed you entirely and had harbored resentment against you for having the nerve to return the next day (something you did only because Zuko had begged you to since he wasn't allowed at your house.) Since that day, you never feared her again. You hated her. You didn't think it was possible to hold so much resentment for some as you did for her but you swore one day you'd get your shot to firebend her ass into a pile of ashes without receiving capital punishment, the only thing that kept you even remotely professional over the years.

You shuttered at the thought. The scars that crawled up your calves like vines tingled whenever you thought about that day. It was far from the last time that Azula was ever mean to you but it was the worst thing she’d ever done to you physically. Mentally, well that was another story.

That was why you’d run away to Ember Island. Even though you too were a fire bender, you could never retaliate against Azula, who took a sick pleasure in torturing you. At one point, you thought it would be worth the inevitable death or imprisonment that was sure to come with retaliation but when you got close, so close that Azula could sense that you were about to fire at her, she brought up your parents, and what she could do to them. It was enough to make you stop that day but it was that night that you left the castle, leaving only a note for your parents to briefly explain before disappearing. With the impending war and attacks, Ember Island seemed like a good enough place to set up. It was far enough away from Azula to be safe but vacationing didn’t seem high on anyone’s priorities list.

So this was your new life and you loved it.

The trip to the market was a quick one. You only had to drop off the beads to the artisans who made jewelry from them- you were only the bead maker. The rest of the day was open for you. As you walked back, you came to a split in the road. One, you knew led directly back to the house you were staying at. The other, you couldn’t recall having ever taken in all your time here.

“Let’s see what’s down here.” You hummed to yourself, looking for a little something to change up your routine. This was what you loved about no longer being a maid in the palace. Freedom. Freedom to go where you want, when you want, with who you want, to do whatever you want. The road itself was dirt with the occasional rocks around. It was lined with the large tropical plants found all around the island. At first, there were scattered stores which began to mix with houses before becoming entirely residential. These houses were quite a bit nicer than the houses in the residential area you lived in. Fire Nation flags hung from many of them. “Generals?” You questioned aloud to nobody but yourself.

Down the road just a bit further, maybe a quarter mile down, the dirt road became much less maintained but there was still a path. After a while of walking, you saw that it led up a small hill to a large house that seemed hidden away from almost the entire island. It was large and beautiful, with traditional architecture built up in red tiles. The walls were practically windows, which you figured would be fantastic considering the wonderful view of the ocean from here.

The road dead ended into this one home so you knew you should turn around now but the curiosity was killing you. This house looked luxurious but abandoned. The windows, though not broken, were dusty and looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in years. You couldn’t imagine anyone who owned such a magnificent vacation home allowing it to get so dirty unless it hadn't been used in a long time.

Figuring you probably wouldn't get caught, you decided to check out the house and walked around the building. Heck, if it were abandoned, maybe you could even move in and fix it up. That wouldn’t count as stealing right?

You wandered around the house until suddenly-

“Guys, someone’s coming!” A girl’s voice exclaimed from the side of the house that faced the beach. Your heart stopped and before you could even jump to hide in a bush, there were running footsteps coming towards you. Within seconds, a group of people about your age were staring at you.

Your hands flew up in defense, “I am so sorry. I thought the house was abandoned and-” As you spoke, your eyes scanned across the faces until you noticed one in particular that made everything stop, “Z-zuko?” You couldn’t believe your eyes. Your best friend in the world, even after all this time, stood ahead of you, looking so different than you remembered but also exactly the same. His hair that you’d always known to be tied up to perfection and his royal clothing always neatly pressed, a desperate attempt to be as perfect as he could for his father, was now ragged and relaxed. His hair was down, grown long and dangling over his eyes in some spots. His clothing was that of commoners instead of royalty but you couldn’t help but notice the taut muscles and small scars that he’d acquired over the time of his exile.

“Y/N? Is that really you?” Zuko’s eyes were wide with total shock and his skin paled as if he’d seen a ghost. He honestly never thought he’d see you again but there you stood, looking more beautiful than ever. He almost didn’t even recognize you. All throughout your childhoods, you’d always looked the same, day in and day out. Your hair was always down with the exception of the signature Fire Nation bun and you wore off-red servant’s garbs. But now, now you looked exquisite. Your hair was similar to how it was, still flowing down with the bun on top, save for the two small braids that framed your face. Instead of robes, you now wore a crimson crop top that crossed around your neck with an asymmetrical skirt of the same color over black capris. But the thing he noticed most of all was the gold arm band around your bicep that he’d given you for your birthday the year before he was banished.

You nodded fervently and almost ran towards him but your knees nearly buckled when you collided. Thankfully, Zuko had his arms wrapped tightly around you, hugging you so tightly he lifted you to your toes anyways. You couldn’t help the overwhelming surge of emotions. Somewhere between relief and love and fear and confusion. When Zuko was banished, you were terrified you’d never see him again.

“How is this possible? Azula told me you were dead.” Zuko finally set you down and looked into your eyes.

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, “What? No… I’m-” You struggled to figure out where to start, “After you were banished, I stayed for another two years but without yours or your mother’s defense, she just got worse and worse. One day, I just- I almost snapped. I could feel the warmth in my hands. I almost attacked her but she began to threaten my parents. Deep down, I knew I couldn’t beat her. I haven’t had a teacher since you left. I didn’t hurt her but I ran away that night. After a while of wandering, I ended up here. I don’t know why she told you I was dead but it sounds like something she would do.”

Zuko looked away angrily, “She’s always been a monster to you. To both of us. When I went back to the palace, I asked about you and she told me that you’d gotten sick and died shortly after I left. She only said it because she knew I’d be devastated and I fell right into the trap.”

A part of your heart twinged from the feeling of being loved. Even after all this time apart, in which you were scared he’d forget about you, he just admitted to being devastated when he’d thought you’d died.

You were unsure of how to respond to the look on Zuko’s face, a strange mixture of anger and relief. Pure bitterness for Azula. After a brief moment, you reached out for him and pulled him in for another hug, again holding onto him like you’d never let him go again. The very thought of losing Zuko another time made your heart jump to your throat in the worst of ways. “I’m here now though. No matter her threats or lies, here we are.”

“You know her?” A young bald boy with arrows on his head asked from back with the rest of the group. You’d forgotten there were more people there but when you looked back, you noticed the rest of the group.

Zuko turned to face the group but kept his hand placed on the small of your back, keeping you close to him, “This is Y/N. She was my best friend back at the palace. Y/N, this is Suki, Sokka, Katara, Toph, and Aang. Aang is the avatar.”

The boy named Sokka looked suddenly distressed, “You’re just going to tell a friend from the Fire Nation palace that Aang’s the avatar?! What if she tries to kill him?”

You shook your head at the accusation, your eyebrows raised in a desperate attempt to convince them that you were being truthful, “Oh no! I’ve never agreed with the Fire Nation’s goals! If you’re the avatar, you need to stop Ozai.”

“I can vouch for her. Even when we were kids, she told me in secret that she didn’t believe that there was any superior element and that the Fire Nation shouldn’t be invading the other nations. Even when I did….” Zuko’s face fell with guilt for what his past self believed, “But I promise, if anyone from the Fire Nation would be on our side, it’s her.”

Suki stepped forward, her face kind and curious, “You said you ran away from the palace? Are you royalty too?”

You snorted and Zuko actually cracked a small humorous smile as well, “Oh no. A servant actually.”

“A servant?” Katara questioned, “I don’t mean to be rude but if you’re a servant and Zuko was a prince, how were you friends?”

Zuko stiffened up a little bit while you tried to hide the sadness you felt revolving around the circumstances, “My parents were the only royal servants to have a child. Zuko’s mother saw that I didn’t have any friends in the palace and allowed me to play with Zuko, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee.” The memories of Ursa were all fond. Aside from Zuko, she was the only member of the royal family who treated you with any kindness. When she disappeared, you and Zuko mourned your loss of her together, even though you never did find out the truth about what happened to her that night.

“You were forced to play with Azula? That must have been traumatizing.” Toph chimed, genuine apology in her sarcastic tone.

You shifted awkwardly from side to side, one hand shooting up to rub your opposite bicep as those scars that snaked up your calves seemed to burn with awareness, “Yeah, it kind of was.” Your voice was lower than it had been, as the incident had been somewhat of a sore spot for you.

Katara followed Zuko’s inconspicuously downcast gaze to where your legs were visible beneath your tight black pants that you wore beneath your asymmetrical red skirt. She was automatically hit with a pang of guilt when she saw the ever so slightly raised red vine-like scars that trailed up your legs and disappeared beneath the pants and immediately had an idea of how you’d acquired them. “I’m so sorry. We didn’t mean to-”

“It’s okay, you didn’t know,” You insisted sincerely, “Besides, they don’t bother me much anymore.”

Eager to shift the topic, Aang jumped into the conversation, “Well I don’t know if you’ve got a home here or anything but you're welcome to stay with us.” He offered cheerily. Everyone else seemed in agreement, or at least didn't outright object, and how could you possibly say no to getting to spend time with Zuko again?

"I'd love to. Thank you."

Later that night, you and Zuko left the group by the campfire to disappear into the house. "So, this is the infamous summer house you'd always leave me for." You chuckled in remembrance, memories of having to watch your best friend disappear for weeks at a time while having to pretend you didn't care for the sake of keeping your friendship 'appropriate', especially after Ursa disappeared.

"I always wanted to take you here. It's so much different now. Everything's different…" he trailed off, coming to a stop in the middle of a large, mostly empty room. The moonlight streaming from the windows cast a nostalgic shadow on the room and you couldn't help but remember the last time you saw each other.

It was sickening. The entire arena was filled to the brim with people, mostly Fire Nation elite, all surrounding the main floor. Servants weren't supposed to be permitted but Iroh had snuck you in. Iron had taken you in as much as he could, seeing how important to Zuko you were. In a way, you too felt like he was your uncle. When you'd gone to him, begging him to stop the Agni Kai, he insisted that he'd tried to talk sense into his brother but was unsuccessful and that the most he could do to help was sneak you into the audience.

So there you stood, surrounded by hundreds of animals who cheered for the murder of their thirteen year old prince by a well experienced war general, all because Zuko thought it wasn’t right to sacrifice hundreds of soldiers. “I’m not afraid to face the general,” Zuko had told you as he practiced his firebending with you all day before the Agni Kai, “I meant no disrespect, but I refuse to take back what I said. If this is what it takes, then this is what I’ll do.”

When Zuko walked out into the open arena, the room went silent. Nobody would dare boo their prince but you were sure that if he were anyone else, they would have. He knelt down, facing away from where his opponent would take his place, staring at the ground. Your heart was in your throat with fear for your best friend. Although Zuko was your secret firebending teacher and much better than you, he had a tendency to crack under the gaze of people he was desperate to impress. The general he was supposed to fight was definitely not someone you’d imagine was one to take it easy on a kid, even if he was the prince.

Zuko’s opponent came out in the shadows and shadowed his kneel, facing away from Zuko. When it was time, they both stood up and stepped towards each other. When they did, everyone gasped. Where the general was expected to be stood Ozai himself. An audible gasp and murmur ran through the crowd.

“Oh no-” You stopped breathing entirely, “What’s happening?” Even from your obscured seat, you could see Zuko’s eyes widen in shock and panic. Confliction was written all over his face.

The man beside you chuckled sadistically, “By speaking out in the Fire Lord’s war room, he has not only disrespected the general but the Fire Lord himself. This should be good.” You turned away from the man in utter disbelief that someone could say something like that about a literal child about to be harmed by his father.

Ozai stepped forward, hands up and ready to deflect any attacks from his son but the way he moved showed that he didn’t expect his son to make any move. He was testing him and Zuko had failed to impress. Zuko fell onto his knees, shaking in fear. He hung his head low, “Please, father! I only had the Fire Nation’s best interest at heart. I’m sorry I spoke out of turn.”

“You will fight for your honor.” Ozai continued to step towards him, an unyielding expression on his face.

“I meant you no disrespect. I am your loyal son.” Zuko begged, laying all of his dignity on the line in front of the nation’s most influential people.

Ozai wanted no part of it, “Rise and fight, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko’s forehead laid on the ground as Ozai came to stand above him, “I won’t fight you.”

His father stood tall and loomed over his small child, “You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.”

When Zuko looked up, tears streamed down his cheeks, knowing that his father had no consideration of mercy. All you could hear were Zuko’s screams and the roar of flames leaving Ozai’s fist as you watched your friend be brutally burned. Your tears were unstoppable and unconsolable as you genuinely thought he killed Zuko. When the flames stopped, he was on the ground, holding his face and sobbing in pain. Ozai turned his back, something between pride for winning and embarrassment for the way his son reacted to the duel on his face.

“The way you have behaved during this Agni Kai was more disgraceful than speaking out of turn. You have brought shame on yourself and the royal family. The punishment is banishment. Unless you can capture the Avatar, you are no longer welcome in the Fire Nation.” You gasped at what Ozai had said before he turned away and left, head straight and lips tight.

You began to run and push your way through the crowd, thanking goodness for your smaller stature compared to the adults all around. You had to find Zuko and make sure he was okay. You didn’t care if you’d get caught or in trouble, you just needed to find him. Being a servant had its perks in knowing the palace inside and out. It became obvious that nobody was going to help the prince until, while on your way through the halls, you ran into Iroh who too was looking to help the boy.

Finally, you’d made your way to him and Iroh carried him to a washroom. You quickly ran over and retrieved a bowl of cool water while Iroh leaned him back. “Pour the water on the burn.” He instructed.

“Close your eyes.” You told Zuko, although his eyes were already shut tight in pain. The cool water flowed from the bowl and onto his face, which looked red and blistered already. This was by far the worst burn you’d ever seen. Zuko struggled slightly against the liquid but stopped crying and calmed down when the water became soothing.

Iroh had located bandages and began to bandage his nephew’s face.

“I-I can’t believe what happened.” Zuko stuttered out, “He banished me.” You weren’t sure you’d ever seen him so pale. “Where do I go, Uncle? What do I do?” He began to work himself up again as the weight of the last hour really settled.

Iroh turned to put down the gauze, “You must leave the Fire Nation, Prince Zuko,” He began and Zuko looked panicked again, “But I will go with you.”

You both turned to Iroh, “Uncle, no! You’re whole life is here.”

“The world is no place for a boy to wander alone. And there is not much here for me in the Fire Nation palace anyways.” You all knew he was referring to the rumors of him being the weaker brother, the disgraced general. “I will accompany you.”

Zuko placed his hands on his knees and braced himself as he thought through the situation, “I must find the Avatar. It’s the only way to regain my honor.”

Both you and Iroh looked apprehensive but you were much more vocal, “Zuko, what your father did you today was not what fathers are supposed to do. Someone behaved shamefully today but it was not you.” You insisted, heart aching for him.

“I need his respect. My honor is the most important thing. I’m going to find the Avatar and when I do, my honor will be restored and I will regain my rightful spot as prince.” Zuko looked pained and troubled. It was clear he knew what he wanted to do but had no idea how he would do it, not that he’d let that stop him though.

You got quiet, looking down at where his knuckles were turning white from the tight grip on his own knees. Gently, you placed your hand on his and waited for him to look up just enough for you to make eye contact, “I’m going with you then.” You said finally.

Zuko’s uncovered amber eye met yours before he shook his head, “I can’t let you do that. Your parents are here.”

“I hate it here.” You insisted desperately, “I’ll come back for them some day but I can’t leave you. You’re the only person that cares about me here.”

Iroh placed his hand caringly on your shoulder, “Zuko is right, Y/N. This is his journey but I do not think it’s yours. It’s best if you stay.”

“But… but…” The tears were threatening to spill over as you managed to choke out, “I can’t lose you.”

There was barely a moment between when the words left your mouth and when Zuko’s lips met yours. At first, you were taken off guard and almost pulled back but when your brain registered what happened, you leaned into the innocent kiss. Your brain ran wild. Was this heat of the moment or had he really felt the same way you did? When he pulled away, you felt cold, “I’ll come back for you one day. I promise.”

“So, speaking of different, you sure look like a different Zuko than the one I knew. Last I heard around the palace, you were super intense and obsessive about finding the avatar.” You asked, teasing towards the end.

Zuko inhaled awkwardly, his hand coming to rub behind his neck, “Yeah… I was. Until I realized that my father was a monster and that the Fire Nation had caused nothing but harm and destruction. It took a lot of convincing but they actually let me join them and become Aang’s firebending teacher.” He gestured back to the group who was all laughing, most likely at something Sokka said.

“Well, he’s got the best teacher around.” You giggled, hitting his arm gently.

Zuko turned to look at you, “What about you? Things look pretty different for you too.”

A boulder sat just ahead of you, perfect for the two of you to use as a seat. You leaned back against the stone and Zuko did the same beside you. “Well, when I left the palace, I didn’t know where to go. But then I remembered you telling me about Ember Island and figured that it was far enough away to get me away from Azula but still in the Fire Nation so I wouldn’t have to create a whole new identity. When I got here, I saw an old lady struggling to make it to the market and asked if she needed help. Turns out she’d been making glass beads for years and needed an apprentice. After spending the day together, we ended up striking up a deal. She’d teach me how to make the beads in exchange for room and board. So this is where I’ve been for the last year.”

Zuko sighed, “I really did mean to come back for you.”

You exhaled heavily. It had been a sore point for you for a while. You waited for him for two years, over which Azula told you lies about him being killed or disappearing. It was just another fuel for her mental abuse. “I honestly was really angry about it for a long time. But-”

“No, you had every right to be. But believe me when I tell you it was probably best that you didn’t come. Searching for the Avatar made me someone I didn’t recognize. I became a monster.” He looked away from you, most of the last three years worth of misdoings coming back to haunt him.

You squeezed his hand, “I doubt you were as bad as you think you were and I’m sure Iroh would tell you the same. Where is Iroh anyways?”

He sank even deeper, “Another one of my many mistakes.”

Your heart immediately dropped, “Is he…?

Zuko shook his head, “No, no. He’s alive. I’m just sure he hates me.”

“Zuko, I don’t think you could do anything that would actually make your uncle genuinely hate you. That man holds so much love and respect for you.” Iroh’s love and devotion to Zuko was undeniable and you weren’t lying when you said that there was probably nothing that would make Iroh’s feelings change.

“I hope you’re right.” Zuko looked off into the distance before looking back at you, “But for what it’s all worth, I’m really glad to see you again.”

A smile blossomed on your face, “I’m really glad to see you too. I missed you so much.” Even after all the years, it felt as if no time had passed. He was still your Zuko.

You hadn’t realized that the gap between your bodies had closed to just a mere inch or two until you found yourself leaning your head onto his shoulder without thinking about it. Zuko stiffened up a little bit at the contact, looking around paranoid. He knew logically that there was nothing saying you two couldn’t be friends - or more - anymore. But his gut reaction was to be on his guard, just like when you were children, trying to hide your frowned upon friendship.

Zuko had always looked back fondly on those memories while he was banished and not one day went by when he didn’t think about you.

Iroh walked onto the deck of the large ship to see his nephew standing against the railing and staring into the distance over the ocean. It was like he had the sixth sense for his nephew, always able to see what was going on in his head better than Zuko did. Iroh approached the prince and stood just behind his shoulder, “You’re thinking about Y/N again?” He asked, though it really was more of a statement.

Zuko looked back over his shoulder towards his uncle, “I just wish I knew she was okay. She’s stuck there with Azula and you already know what she’s done to her! But now I can’t protect her. I should have let her come so I’d know she’s safe.” He looked away angrily, hanging his head, upset with how he’d handled everything.

“You care for her, Prince Zuko.” Iroh began before getting interrupted by the eager and emotional prince.

“Of course, I care for her! She’s my best friend.” Zuko had never really had any other real friends. Sure, Mai and Ty Lee were cool when they weren’t around his sister but none of them were you.

Iroh could see the conflict in the boy’s eyes, “But you care for her as more than that, don’t you?”

Zuko’s eyes widened. It shouldn’t have come as a shock to him but hearing his secret feelings spoken aloud finally felt like it was actually real. With anyone else in the world, he would have denied it but Iroh was different. “We can never be together.” Zuko confessed, heartbroken all over again. This was why he didn’t admit it to himself.

“Why’s that?” Iroh asked, as if the answer weren’t obvious like it was to you and Zuko.

His face scrunched with distress, “Because I’m a prince and… well she’s not even the daughter of a general. I don’t care about her wealth or status but it’s not allowed.”

“Well, lucky for you, for once, you’re banished. I don’t think anyone would care much if you were to be with her now.” Iroh pointed out.

Zuko groaned, “I’m not even allowed into Fire Nation territory let alone the palace. I’d never be able to take her away like this. I need to find the Avatar, have my honor restored, and then I’ll find her again and I’ll never let her go.”

“True love will find a way, Prince Zuko. Remember that happiness and love is more important in this world than titles.”

Now, you were beside him, your head unashamedly laying on his shoulder and was it his imagination or was your leg touching his now? Zuko cleared his throat, “Y’know, I can’t help but think about how we left things off three years ago,” You shifted to look up at him when he spoke.

You knew he was talking about the kiss - that one forbidden kiss that had haunted your lips since he left. It had consumed many of your nights as well. “I think about it too. A lot.” You confessed, much less embarrassed than you ever would have imagined.

Zuko tried to hide the little jump in his chest when he heard the way you agreed, like it wasn’t a bad memory but far from it. “You do?”

You nodded with a warm smile on your face (or maybe it was just your cheeks burning from the confessions), “I liked you for so long, of course it was something to remember.”

“Liked?” Zuko questioned nervously, “As in past tense?”

“Yeah, as in past tense.” You began and Zuko’s heart dropped.

“Oh…”

“‘Cause now… I think- I think I fell in love with you a long time ago.” You looked up directly into his eyes, heart in your throat as you waited for a response.

Zuko’s jaw dropped in disbelief and he stuttered over his words, “There wasn’t a single day I didn’t want to come back and take you away so we could be together.”

You and Zuko stared into each other’s eyes as the weight of what was being said sunk in. Everything felt heightened right now, like else in the world mattered but Zuko. All you could see and hear and feel was him from his scent of woody spices and smoke to the way the moonlight reflected off his perfect skin - scar included. You could literally feel the warmth radiating from his body, a warmth you had a feeling hadn’t been there in a long time.

“What’s there to stop us from being together now?” In all the futures you’d imagined with Zuko, this wasn’t really a scenario you’d thought of. The two of you sitting on a rock at Zuko’s family summer house after years of not seeing each other- Zuko, a banished and disgraced prince and you, a former servant runaway- but now seeing each other without the shroud of all the barriers of titles and statuses.

Your lips had already been dangerously close when you were talking, making the ever so slight move inwards to close the gap feel effortless. The question you’d posed was responded to with a long, deep kiss. Zuko’s lips had changed so much since the last time you’d kissed them. The smooth soft lips that had lingered in your memory were now rougher and slightly chapped, weathered from years of hard work like the rest of him, though still soft enough to be familiar.

Zuko’s hand came up to rest on the point where your jaw met your neck to guide your lips to his just ever so slightly deeper. He was lost in you, in your lips, in your scent, in your tase, in your touch. This moment was everything he’d dreamed about almost every night on his quest for the Avatar. Like everything else, this felt so different yet so familiar.

Finally, you pulled away and this time you didn’t feel guilty or immediately look over your shoulder. You got to just be with Zuko. It was as if you were entranced by him, unable to take your eyes away. If you could’ve picked one moment to last forever, this would be it.

That was until Zuko sighed and turned his face away, “There’s a war.”

“So we’ll fight together.” Your hand that was still on his squeezed tightly.

Zuko turned back to you and gripped your other hand, holding them close to his body, “Losing you the first time was hard enough. I can’t lose you again, Y/N.”

You swallowed hard, “I know I’m not the most skilled Fire Bender in the world but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold my own. I don’t plan on dying in this war and you better not be planning on it either.”

“That’s not what I mean. I just… I love you Y/N,” He confessed, his typical Zuko-esque flusteredness creeping into his tone, “But now after knowing you feel the same way and knowing what we could be, I just don’t know if I could handle risking losing my best friend and the person I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

Your breath abandoned you when those three words left his lips, I love you. They were the three words you’d dreamed of hearing him tell you for years. But now he was using them as an excuse to not be with you. “I love you too, Zuko. I’ve loved you for so long. But what difference does it make if we fight this war as a couple or as friends? If we love each other, the pain of losing the other would be the same.”

Zuko’s gaze fell to where your fingers were interlaced and he brought them up to his chest, looking at the contrast of his larger calloused hands to your smaller, slightly softer ones. “I can’t lose you.” He repeated, closing his eyes, but this time it sounded like a final decision.

You pulled your body closer to his, your intertwined hands pressed between your chests, as you looked up at him, “Then don’t push me away.” Your plea was low, barely above a whisper, but by the way Zuko looked, you could tell it had some affect. “Please, let us do this together.”

Zuko found it difficult to argue with you because it was like arguing with himself. You were the vocalization of everything he wanted deep down. “Okay,” He answered finally, “But only if you help me rebuild the Fire Nation when it's all over. Together.”

#zuko #zuko x reader #zuko fanfic #zuko imagine #Avatar The Last Airbender #atla #atla imagines #can't lose you #can't get rid of me

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diamantinemind · 6 years

Text

Lightning Never Strikes Twice

Summary: In the heart of a tropical Cuban summer, Natalia infiltrates a subterranean laboratory run by a former Nazi geneticist. When his scientific research on mutation begins to produce results and his shadowy ties to the Hellfire Club are exposed, Natalia knows what she must do to avoid a second Cuban Missile Crisis, or, even worse, a World War III. Unfortunately for her, she isn't the only one in the neighborhood with plans for the Nazi.

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Mutant!OC (Enemies to Friends)

Word Count: 18,484

A/N: Thanks for reading! Feedback is always appreciated.

So laden with humidity was the morning jungle air that Natalia felt as though she were breathing water. Serpentine wisps of fog slithered low along the earth and tumbled under the churning wheels of her army green jeep as the tires sought traction against the hardscrabble stones and tangled roots of the hilly rainforest trail. The jeep rocked from side to side as it climbed ever higher up one of the many steep-sided mogotes rising like rounded towers from the fertile karstic depression of Viñales Valley where locals grew world-renowned tobacco in the red dirt of the valley floor. Unlike most other mogotes whose sides were almost vertical in the Pinar del Río province of Cuba, this specific rock formation had a marginally more forgiving slope before it too ultimately reached a point where almost 200 meters of limestone abruptly jutted skyward. Luckily, Natalia didn’t need to get to the curved top of the mogote; her destination instead resided hidden in the densely wooded hillside.

Glancing up through the windshield of her canvas-roofed off-road military utility vehicle and the emerald patchwork of tropical tree boughs intertwining overhead, Natalia could see the ridiculously blue Cuban sky warmed to cruel temperatures by the late summer sun beyond. A pair of rosy-throated green parrots took wing from a grove of nearby plantain trees with their raucous “yaaart yaaart!” squawks as she drove on. Her eyes tracked the birds as they flew over the top of the jeep, blotting out a window of cerulean left open by the verdant royal palms and fruit trees before disappearing into the mass of branches and frond-like leaves. She promptly redirected her gaze to the way before her as it wound through the forest, little more than a footpath made wide by frequent vehicular use.

For almost two months, Natalia—well, Natalia as young biologist Wilhelmina Fischer on this job—had contributed to the wearing and widening of this particular path. She drove from her hut at the edge of a tobacco field up this mogote under the weight of the morning sun’s heat, and she drove back down it to return to her temporary home in the evening when the scorching light speared through the treetops in shafts of scarlet comparable in intensity to the fire-flowered boughs of the ornamental flamboyán trees dotting the valley landscape. During the interim between her drive up and down the steep hill, she spent her time like many pleasure-seekers who traveled to the Viñales Valley area: in a cave.

The cave that Natalia-Wilhelmina visited daily, though, was not one of the typical biodiverse limestone caves honeycombing western Cuba. Naturally. Anything that Natalia found herself involved in could summarily be described in terms synonymous with “atypical,” and a pre-Columbian network of tunnels-and-subterranean-chambers-turned-Nazi-scientist’s-underground-genetics-lab certainly fell within the realm of atypicality. Shady government assistance in the form of Havanan scientists on loan from Fidel Castro himself and the procurement of test subjects from the local population by Cuba’s own armed forces further added an air of macabre mystery to the matter. The pièce de résistance—as if villagers being stolen in the night by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces to be forcibly experimented upon by an aging U.S.S.R.-employed Nazi doctor with a staff of the island’s best researchers wasn’t bad enough—was that, unbeknownst to the K.G.B. prior to Natalia’s arrival, a platoon of Hellfire Club heavies and gunners under the auspices of New England’s Black royalty had been shipped discreet to Cuba from America’s northeastern seaboard to act as guards.

Americans in Cuba, especially those associated with Natalia’s least favorite socialite group, were never a good sign. The last time it had happened—nearly four years ago now—Rodina and the United States had nearly declared nuclear war on one another, Professor Charles Xavier had become a cripple, and the metal-bending mutant Erik Lehnsherr had adopted the identity of Magneto, no thanks to New England’s Black royalty who had engineered the whole thing and who appeared to be doing the same yet again. What they yearned to achieve by sparking mutually assured destruction was still uncertain and why they were interested in a little-known Nazi egghead under Soviet protection this time around was even more nebulous.

Hellfire presence, concerning as it may have been for the fate of the tenuous cessation of outright hostilities existing between the world’s two largest superpowers, was not Natalia’s official reason for adopting the identity of the scientifically-minded daughter of a former Schutzstaffel doctor from Buchenwald. Rather, it was the lead researcher and his recent unsanctioned genetic tinkering that had piqued her handlers’ interest and had spurred them to send her flying to the West Indies from Novosibirsk at thrice the speed of sound in a MiG-25 with the assistance of strategically-placed Soviet tanker aircrafts and aircraft carriers for aerial and marine refueling; however, the longer she stayed in Cuba, the more closely she found the Hellfire Club and her target to be tied and the more she felt the nature of her mission had changed. Gone was the notion of a simple subterfuge and reconnaissance assignment. Now Natalia feared she was faced with a full-blown subversionary operation to singlehandedly shatter American influence in Cuba to thwart what could very well be a shot at triggering bio-nuclear war. Again.

The jeep’s engine purred like a jungle cat—one that was obviously nonendemic, mind you, since the apex terrestrial predator on the island was the Cuban boa and the biggest indigenous mammal anywhere near the size of a large cat was an oversized waddling rodent called the hutia—as Natalia gradually made her way through the dense rainforest to the guarded cave entrance tucked into the side of the mogote. Her eyes were once more drawn skyward, attracted by some inexplicable magnetism to the slivers of pure blue piercing through the jungle canopy. While Natalia had successfully grown accustomed to the perpetual mugginess of the Cuban summer after having spent close to eight weeks living undercover as Wilhelmina Fischer, the too-blue vault of heaven was another story.

Blue was the color of the White royalty’s eerily similar arctic gaze, icicle-sharp and diamond-hard. Blue was the color of the dreams of wide-eyed children born ignorant of Russian winters and the faith-filled lies people told themselves to make do. Blue was the color of the deceptions she fed dignitaries, the color of the breathy fictions whispered in the ears of inebriated rich men before she cut their throats and let their red lifeblood stain the expensive satin sheets in which they had intended to fumblingly fuck some false version of her that she had artfully crafted just for them to want to fuck. Blue was lovely, deadly; it was the thorn you missed behind the rose, the innocent lie that struck merciless pain, the bewitching desert mirage that led many a man to his doom.

Natalia understood blue, and for that very reason, she did not trust it.

Of all things to have been unsettled by, though, from nonconsensual genetic modification and human experimentation to seemingly unified support of such horrors from the Cuban government and New England Hellfire Club, it was the cloudless blue that affected her the most. Grasping despots, personified pond scum with pockets deeper than some oceanic trenches, and human suffering were the stuff of Red Room lullabies, the familiar and comfortable reality of a Black Widow. These were the things Natalia knew, the things that all Rossiya-matushka’s children knew just as well as they knew the sky was not blue but grey.

Grey like the industrious spirit of the U.S.S.R. Grey like the gritty hearts of those raised in such a brutal motherland. Grey like the evolutionary will to survive that had been carved into their bones by ice and steel and war. Grey like a matter of circumstances, like that which was not all things to all people all of the time, like the truth.

Natalia snorted, her knuckles whitening on the steering wheel. The truth. Govnó sobáčʹje.

What was Natalia’s truth nowadays?

As valid of a question as that may have been for a free-loving bohemian from Greenwich Village or a nonsensical Beat lounging around San Francisco to ask themselves, such a question teemed with potentially fatal implications for not just one of the U.S.S.R.’s most vital assets like Natalia but for any Soviet. It was a question she never would have found herself asking years ago, and its answer posed a far deadlier risk than the question itself: she wasn’t sure.

What she had once held to be the indisputable truth was now… not. Ever since a blond-haired psychic nuisance had crossed her path like a damned black cat in West Berlin, Natalia’s life had been overturned. Though that had been over three years back and Natalia had run into the White King and his equally as dangerous royal relative one other time since, she was only just now realizing that the actual fallout of the West Berlin Incident and the events which transpired in Paris’s Musée de l’Armée was much more than just the K.G.B.’s reactions to either of her two botched missions.

Vasily and her other handlers had bristled when their higherups had castigated them for their failures, for Natalia’s failures, but they had not been unnecessarily cruel with her in dealing her punishment. Restraint, sensory deprivation, electrocution, suffocation, beatings—she had gotten off lucky. Others in her position but without her erstwhile spotless track record would have been executed afterward or sent to one of the psikhushkas where all the political dissidents were swept away to live broken lives of unrelenting misery. Worse yet, she very well could have been left as a psychic chew toy for Comrade Sokolov and the rest of the Novosibirsk-based psy-ops team who were charged with surveilling the minds of the Widows for impurities and bolstering their conditioning should cracks appear. That would have probably been the worst possible outcome, because Natalia’s conditioning had certainly begun to splinter around the time that she had been painfully reminded that Rodina did not appreciate the national shame that failure begets.

Though it was treasonous to admit or to even think, Natalia was relieved that the threat of the psy-ops team was gone these days. It had been over a year since Comrade Sokolov and his peculiar band of psychics had wound up with their brains boiled down to a thick beetroot borscht in the basin of their skulls. They had not travelled alone across the gossamer-thin veil separating this world from what lurked beyond, though; all around the globe, every agent with psionic abilities permitting extrasensory access to an individual’s innermost psychological developments employed by the Soviet government had likewise suffered from the same calamity. Some brainiacs the K.G.B. had in Siberia had determined the mass die-off to be due to some kind of psychic anomaly which autopsies later revealed had dealt trauma so severe to the central nervous system of each operative that the inside of their heads had looked more like bright red Ukrainian soup than grey matter.

After lab technicians and intelligence officers had spent five weeks examining the bodies and investigating the international locations of the deaths, the gathered information was returned to the same Siberian scientists, who were then able to conclude that the anomaly had begun in Novosibirsk with Comrade Sokolov’s psy-ops team and had rippled outward to affect roughly 50 other agents stationed in various U.S.S.R.-controlled and allied countries. Due to the metaphysical nature of the event and the sheer lack of both quantitative data and living expert sources, the K.G.B. could only surmise that a paranormal plague was the culprit. The scourge allegedly traveled from psychic to psychic along the telepathic network established among and connecting each of the K.G.B.’s psy-ops agents to one another, and after ravaging each and every one who had been able to peer into the hearts and minds of others, it had effectively decimated key Soviet communication lines, crippled an entire intelligence community’s vision and audition, and set all oversight practices of special agents like Natalia back to the Stone Age.

And this had all happened within minutes of Natalia’s return to the K.G.B. outpost in Novosibirsk from her unfortunate mission to the secret Queens-centered Stark Industries lab where one of the many veteran agents who had been assigned to supervise her in the field had exploded due to his own ineptitude and the defector Anton Vanko had, within a millimeter of his life, survived the blast that his and Howard Stark’s experimental ray gun had caused and that had ruined Natalia’s chances of snagging Citizen Vanko without being spotted. Even though that mission a year ago had prompted the K.G.B.’s realization that she didn’t need field supervision since the babysitters they kept pairing her with only got in her way and mucked up her assignments, Natalia still felt it was no coincidence that all the telepathic and empathic psy-ops agents had bit the dust moments after her return from the New England Hellfire Club’s sphere of influence. The White King had clearly been involved. What she didn’t know was why he had done it.

Natalia had gone over it all in her head when she had free time on her hands between missions or while on lengthy stake-outs, and each time she came up with the same conclusion. This had not been the act of a man concerned with self-preservation. Not his own anyhow.

It was not as if any of the psy-ops agents could ever have dreamed of harming him; he and the White Queen were in a league of their own many kilometers beyond the reach of even Comrade Sokolov’s impressive psychic powers. If threat of harm was not the reason for destroying in one fell swoop some of the Soviet Union’s most dangerous and perceptive minds, then it must have been threat of detection which moved him. That posed the question, though: what was the White King trying to hide from the K.G.B.?

It was anybody’s guess, really. The man was an enigma even after a week or more of solid K.G.B. surveillance in Paris. However, if anyone in this world could suss him out (barring the White Queen), Natalia knew it would be herself.

Ever since their first meeting, Natalia had swiftly understood two newfound concepts. For starters, being compromised had engendered an undeniable change in her that she was forced to secrete against all odds from highly-trained psychics and astute handlers, and second, the White King had become a nearly constant fixture in her mind. With that being said, she would not personally categorize her interest in him as being obsessive. Really, it wasn’t. Peculiar at times, yes, but more than anything, she tended to favor the term “scientific.”

She wanted to know him, to comprehend how that glittering brain of his turned inside the diamantine facets of his crystal skull and what icy mental paths it wandered. He was a puzzle, a challenge to be conquered, and at times, a phantom that graced her with his presence—mental, more often than not. Of course, the times that she could swear she felt him beside her were all some elaborate and surreal fantasy her half-broken brain cooked up, and his ghostly companionship most definitely should have troubled her. It didn’t, or it didn’t any longer. She had grown used to it now, just as she had gotten used to the absence of Tchaikovsky, her psychological programming’s corrective tool of choice, playing in her mind.

The White King was one of the planet’s deadliest men, yes, and he endangered everything the Red Room had raised her to hold dear; however, she recognized in him some unnamable characteristics kindred to her. She could feel the unassailable certainty of the matter down to the marrow in her bones, and she didn’t know quite what that meant for her… or for him, especially since she was doubtful of so many things anymore. She couldn’t quite place their shared traits try as she may, but she did know they existed nonetheless and that she was as convicted of this as she was the fact that he had also been testing her in Paris.

Natalia had been observed enough times in her life as an agent of the K.G.B. by her handlers and as a student of the Red Room by Headmistress and the other instructors to know when she was being analyzed, when her every move and countermove became evidence of her skillset, proof of her combat prowess, a manifestation of her cognitive abilities to process multiple streams of information and to rapidly respond to shifting tactical situations. She had never been in any true danger with the White King. Not the life-threatening kind that Headmistress had posed when Natalia had failed an exam or the kind her handlers would present should they ever discover how deeply compromised she was. Natalia possessed no evidence to corroborate such a claim about her wellbeing in Paris with a world-class psychic enemy other than that it seemed that the White King had been holding back at times and that, despite being a physically and mentally imposing man, there was a softness to him. As externally glacial and stoic as he may have been, the image of the White King standing exposed before his bedroom window in his Parisian penthouse, silver identification tags dangling against his naked chest from his stout neck or pressed to his lips in a bittersweet moonlit kiss, belied such cold airs and haunted her almost as much as the fancied notion of his presence did. Which was often. Weekly anymore.

As for the changes she had noticed within herself? Natalia knew no succinct way to explain or even describe the full range of her condition. This was, in part, because she had gone for so long without verbalizing—physically or psychologically—anything occurring to her; although, without the psy-ops team around to detect her wayward brainwaves, she had recently begun to mentally process what had happened and what was yet happening. It was also because there was a daunting amount of shit she had to unpack, and it filled her with an existential species of dread only recently discovered to her. All she could safely say for now was that when the White King had rapped his knuckles on the glass walls of her consciousness, he had left some cracks behind. Intentional or not, those cracks had since widened into great chasms which had shaken everything Natalia had once thought she had understood to be the absolute truth.

Housed in her head were memories of a childhood and adolescence that she was no longer certain had occurred, memories of dancing at the Bolshoi in her favorite pointe shoes with all the other girls from the Red Room Academy or deconstructing a colorful matryoshka doll intermittently painted with images of Walt Disney’s animated princesses and with characters of Slavic fairy tales. And there were memories completely new to her—recollections of a kind and grizzled soldier carrying her on his shoulders as a girl no older than four, of a metal-armed man with a red communist star painted over the interlocking plates of his bionic shoulder teaching her how to snipe a target the size of a pierogi many kilometers away—arising from the depths of her brain as though the anchor which had weighed them down had been cut loose. Even her own name felt wrong, incomplete somehow like she was only living a half-life.

She supposed she may have been. How was she to know? Natalia was only a maybe-orphan-ballerina who killed and lied and sabotaged and spied on command for her stern Rossiya-matushka. Natalia knew exactly where she stood and what she was in the eyes of her motherland, though: a weapon, an asset, something useful until it become outdated or outgunned and then it became disposable. She didn’t want to be just that, but it was hard to be anything else when all arrows seemed to indicate that Natalia’s personal truth—grey like every other Soviet’s but not the same shade she had thought it to be, perhaps a bluish grey hue that she was still trying to determine—was all wrapped up in exactly what she yearned to be more than.

Natalia sighed. Her mind jostled her worse lately than the rough terrain jostled her jeep when she made her daily expedition up and down this tangled jungle incline. As if on cue, she hit a particularly pronounced rut in the earth that made the whole vehicle shake. Natalia did not so much as blink as her hands flew instinctively around the steering wheel to maneuver herself out of the deep furrow carved into the ground by the summer rains and localized tropical storms Viñales Valley had been struck with since mid-July.

She was closing in on the entrance to her target’s lab. Up and around a gnarled pine bearing a scoring in its thick bark of a three-tined pitchfork, the international emblem of the Hellfire Club, and then the hillside flattened out into a miniature plateau. Hellfire guards would be waiting at the maw of the cavern for Wilhelmina and the other scientists on loan from the Cuban government who had to make a similar climb up the mogote in off-road military vehicles. Continuing her ascent, Natalia spotted on a pine trunk ahead the three prongs of the carved fork, and she could palpably feel how close she was to uncovering the exact nature of the relationship between the New England branch of the Hellfire Club and an aging Nazi geneticist employed by the U.S.S.R. and cracking this whole case wide open. She just hoped she could do it all before her target perfected his genetic experiments and kindled the nuclear firestorm that could consume the planet.

Grim-faced, Natalia jotted down her observations on the clipboard in her hands as she made the long walk from the subterranean compound’s containment cells to the main lab. Light bulbs hung from the tunnel ceiling overhead on lengths of exposed wire. The orangish light they shed upon the uneven floor and rough-hewn walls colored her paperwork peach and made the ink curling across the pages little more than a collection of pitch-dark spiderwebs. The tunnel was wide enough to allow the passage of two average-sized people, but only if both spelunkers were to curl their arms into themselves as they passed one another. The staffer approaching Natalia from the opposite direction pressed himself flush to the cave wall as she marched by him, shoving her clipboard into his idle hands.

“Miss?”

Natalia could hear the timorousness in the staffer’s voice. She kept walking.

“Patient 24’s cell will need a thorough sanitization.” Her ponytail snapped behind her like a blood-soaked lash. “Put those documents in his file and be sure the cleaning crew is dressed in full hazmat gear when they begin to clean.”

She didn’t linger to hear the staffer’s response.

The tunnel culminated in a set of rusting doors leading to the cavernous main lab beyond. A Hellfire sentry donning one of the Club’s standard-issue full face masks stood before the weatherworn egress, hands clasped behind his back. Blank of expression and features other than two square slots for eyeholes, two circular punctures through which respiration via the nostrils could be achieved, and a rectangle about the mouth sizable enough so as to not hinder or muffle speech, the masks given by the Hellfire Club to its soldiers and its lowest-ranking members served little practical purpose besides maintaining the anonymity of the Club and its affiliates and reminding their wearers of their ignoble stations among world leaders, socialites, and the elite. Upon catching sight of Natalia’s glower, the sentry’s eyes widened in alarm, and he scrambled to swing the doors open for her.

If there was one positive aspect of being Wilhelmina Fischer in Cuba’s westerly tropical pine forests, it was the influence she held as assistant researcher of the lab’s leading scientist, her target. She strode by the masked soldier and into the clinical whiteness of the fluorescent lamps that carved the darkness of the half-lit corridor behind her with chirurgical precision, her short heels clicking on the much smoother earthen floor of the main laboratory. The Hellfire guard surreptitiously shut the steel doors, plunging the stone corridor he guarded into semi-blackness once more.

Natalia quickly assessed the lab, noting the positioning and activities of the select few scientists permitted clearance to the compound’s innermost sanctum and locus of scientific progress. Rodríguez appeared to be studying blood samples in the far corner as García and Álvarez put their heads together over comparative models of the sex chromosomes of homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens mutandis to observe the presence of the enigmatic X-Gene on the latter and its absence on the former. Delgado stood nearby to take notes while Lacoste, Guerrero, and Hernández debated the possible catalysts for mutation and the even rarer mystery that was secondary mutation, the phenomenon of an existing mutant undergoing further mutation that produced new and/or enhanced preexisting metahuman abilities: the production of a mutant-specific hormone from the hypophysis upon the onset of puberty (which occurred for a high proportion of recorded cases of primary X-mutation), stress, trauma, irradiation, environmental factors, prenatal conditions, etc.

None of Fidel Castro’s pet scientists paid her any attention as she crossed the lab. Wilhelmina was, after all, a common sight around the underground research facility, and despite being the only female professional on the premises, she had stopped turning their heads after week two. Schooling her features to exude the amicable and admittedly exotic warmth typical of Wilhelmina, Natalia forced herself to choke down the day’s bitter disappointments and her burgeoning resentment toward this place and these people. It tasted like char and ice chips on her tongue. She came to a stop an arm’s length behind and to the right of her target, a gesture of respect—no matter how artificial it may have been—to his title as he adjusted his wire-framed eyeglasses and considered a report Delgado had drafted from his previous observations of his respective cohort of test subjects.

For having covertly lived upon Cuban soil for almost two decades after fleeing his German homeland at the end of World War II, the old man’s native accent had not waned: “Fräulein Fischer, how is your cohort handling their genetic therapy?”

Natalia’s jaw clenched almost imperceptibly, though her German accent remained unruffled and her pleasant façade did not so much as even glimmer with disgust: “Exposure to extreme nuclear radiation has caused numerous cancers in the entire cohort, Herr Doktor, instead of triggering any latent mutations in those with recessive or not yet activated X-Genes in our homo sapiens mutandis subgroup or altering the allosomes of our homo sapiens sapiens subgroup in such a way as to synthetically create an X-Gene or to create a temporary genetic shift.”

“Your prognosis?” Her target perused Delgado’s report with squinted eyes.

Her prognosis? Cataracts and senescence. Her professional recommendation? Execution.

“A rapid decline into death unless a life-preserving mutation manifests in either subgroup within the next day,” she instead said.

“What of Patient 24?”

Natalia crossed her arms behind her back to keep from strangling the withered fool: “Patient 24 has expired. The mutation he developed during the last round of gene therapy reacted dramatically to the presence of an additional dose of radiation that you recommended he be exposed to.”

“The reaction, Fräulein Fischer?”

“Plainly, Herr Doktor, he exploded.”

“Exploded?”

“His viscera are on the ceiling and his bones turned to a gelatinous substance akin to Götterspeise.” Natalia blinked. “I did not witness it with my own eyes, but all evidence does seem to suggest Patient 24 detonated one hour post-exposure.”

If Natalia’s intention in being so colorfully vivid with her details of the death of a young mutant boy whose skin had turned magenta and whose tears had melted stone upon his penultimate exposure to high levels of atomic radiation had been to make her target feel a semblance of remorse, she failed.

“A pity,” The doctor now flipped through the report in his hands. “I had such high hopes Patient 24 would be auspicious for our program’s goals.” The man set the papers aside and turned to Natalia, smiling at her as though he weren’t discussing the death of an innocent boy kidnapped two weeks ago from one of the neighboring towns. “Regardless, his sacrifice shall pave the way for a future success, no?”

“Of course, Herr Doktor,” Natalia smiled coolly.

Not to be confused with the more remarkable German aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun who had been responsible for crafting the V-2 rockets unleashed by the Nazis upon London in 1944 and who had been shuttled like many of his brightest colleagues to the U.S. under a joint top-secret O.S.S./S.S.R. project called Operation Paperclip, Natalia’s target was the comparably unimpressive Wernher von Blitzschlag. Despite not being able to provide the U.S.S.R. with ballistic missiles or rockets of any kind to aid in the space race or the larger Cold War, von Blitzschlag enjoyed baronial ties and their related luxuries from pre-republican Germany and his genetic research on the nature of mutation while stationed as an SS doctor at Buchenwald like the father of Natalia’s alias was found by the N.K.V.D. (one of the several parent agencies that would ultimately birth the modern K.G.B.) to be promising enough to conscript him (at gunpoint) for employment by the Soviet Union. He had officially—and happily—been on Soviet payroll for over 20 years now.

von Blitzschlag’s coerced service was a part of Operation Osoaviakhim, otherwise known as Russia’s less amicable parallel to the American Operation Paperclip. Operation Osoaviakhim, like Operation Paperclip, enlisted ex-Nazi and -HYDRA specialists with strategic value to serve as assets in the then upcoming Cold War. Dissimilar to most of Operation Osoaviakhim’s recruits who were transported directly to the motherland, von Blitzschlag was shipped to Cuba along a ratline not unlike the one Wilhelmina Fischer’s father had been sent along to Paraguay from the Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii. Aside from the difference in relocation destination, the other vital distinction between von Blitzschlag and his old wartime colleague from Buchenwald was that Natalia had assassinated the latter four months back to impersonate his daughter and gain the trust of the former for deep surveillance purposes. If the dark susurrations about Cuba’s resident German noble were true, which Natalia could doubtlessly say they were given the presence of New England Hellfire Club forces onsite at his research compound, then von Blitzschlag would soon be meeting a fate as similarly bloody as his one-time compatriot, and she wouldn’t even need to phone in to the K.G.B. ahead of time to get confirmation to take the kill. Not when it was something of this magnitude.

“Is Delgado’s research going any better, Herr Doktor?” Natalia nodded down at the report von Blitzschlag had previously set aside.

Like Natalia, Delgado and the other Cuban scientists in the main lab at present also had their own research cohort assigned to them by von Blitzschlag. What differentiated each researcher’s test group from the next was not species, for each scientist oversaw subgroups within their cohort containing both homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens mutandis; rather, the distinction was method of mutation stimulus. Natalia had been assigned irradiation, García stress, Lacoste trauma, and so on and so forth.

Delgado, though, had been attempting to extract from mutant cadavers likely supplied by the Hellfire Club a pituitary hormone only produced by mutants. He had initial troubles with isolating the hormone upon extraction, which complicated his endeavors to then inject said hormone into his test subjects, and from what Natalia could tell, he was still not an expert at the task. He had, though, accumulated just enough accidental successes in either kickstarting an X-mutation in his mutant subgroup or causing a temporary genetic shift in baseline humans that produced fleeting superhuman abilities to become worrisome.

“Delgado is growing closer by the day to mastering the isolation of the mutagenic hormone,” von Blitzschlag readily supplied. “In the meantime, he has taken to calling it mutant growth hormone, MGH acronymically, and firmly believes it holds the key to mutation as opposed to other mutation-causing stimuli.”

“MGH?” Natalia said with a cock of her brow. “Aptly named. Do you think his research holds any actual merit?”

von Blitzschlag glanced in Delgado’s direction and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially upon seeing that the man was not paying attention to ether of them: “I am unsure as of yet, but his results are the most promising in our program thus far. In my experience, that means he’s stumbled on to something.”

Natalia took a calculated risk: “I’m sure that will make the program’s benefactors happy.”

von Blitzschlag’s eyes narrowed in scrutiny, and he drew slowly back from her. He studied her for another moment before snagging Delgado’s report and holding it flush under his bony arm to the side of his sparrow-thin torso. He shrugged noncommittally before motioning for her to follow him as he began to circle the room.

“It should make our benefactors content, yes,” the old man said over his shoulder to her as he examined Rodriguez’s collection of blood samples. Rodriguez docilely stepped aside to make room for von Blitzschlag to peer into his microscope and adjust the equipment’s magnification settings to suit his cataracted vision. “The Soviet Union will certainly appreciate our work, no, Fräulein Fischer?”

Natalia canted her head. She fought the urge to crack his skull into Rodriguez’s microscope for trying to mislead her and then using the broken shards of his eyeglasses to torture him into spilling the information she needed to close this case before it became an international crisis. Instead, she laughed easily.

“Come now,” Natalia said. “Do be serious, Herr Doktor.”

von Blitzschlag’s narrow shoulders tensed as he continued to inspect the blood sample. He may have been a decent geneticist, but in the science of deception, he was rather mediocre: “I beg your pardon, Fräulein?”

“I’ve seen Soviet soldiers before in the labs where I studied, Herr Doktor,” Natalia’s tone was plain, unassuming. Her jade eyes softened. “The men who have been guarding your research facility since my arrival are not men of the U.S.S.R.”

“And what led you to such a startling conclusion?” von Blitzschlag pushed off from the microscope and walked away from her.

Natalia followed him to his lab station where he set down Delgado’s report before quickly storing it away in a locking drawer and pocketing the key. Natalia’s gaze lingered on the lock. A hairpin would suffice if she felt like taking her time. Otherwise, a swift kick would do. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with Delgado’s research once she got her hands on it, but she knew for damn sure that it wasn’t staying here where the Hellfire Club could swoop in like rapacious vultures and scavenge it. She’d likely capture it in microdot and destroy the original documents.

“Though Papa raised me in Paraguay,” Natalia shifted her eyes to von Blitzschlag as he turned to face her, “he sent me abroad under Soviet auspices to the best laboratories in Russia when he discovered I had inherited his scientific aptitude.”

“Genetics are funny, no?” A small smile curled von Blitzschlag’s thin, withered lips. His eyes gleamed as though seeing not the face of Natalia-Wilhelmina but her sire, the man he had once worked alongside during the war. He motioned for Natalia to lean in to him, and when she did, he said sotto voce, “You are as clever as your father, little Wilhelmina. Some are Cubans courtesy of Prime Minister Castro, who has recently developed a keen interest in the promises of genetic research. The rest, though, are Americans sent by interested parties from the East Coast—”

The second the word “Americans” had tumbled off her target’s tongue, Natalia had already brushed aside a strand of Titian red hair and displaced the pen gun resting behind the pale shell of her ear. Her fingers deftly found the trigger on the end as it fell into her hands, and if pressed, the pen would release a jet of poison gas designed to induce cardiac arrest from a crushed cyanide capsule contained within the body of the sleek writing utensil. A fitting albeit generous end for an old man who deserved a fate much worse. All Natalia had to do was angle the nib in the general direction of von Blitzschlag’s face, and there would be one less Nazi left on this Earth.

Or there would have been had Natalia not hesitated, her finger hovering over the trigger of the pen gun. She couldn’t quite explain what gave her pause, why she couldn’t bring herself to finish it. It certainly wasn’t for a lack of desire to kill the man. That she had zero qualms about. In fact, she’d probably be doing the universe a service to exterminate von Blitzschlag like the wretched vermin he was. Something just felt indescribably… off—a ghost of a whisper in the passages of her mind, a perplexing tug on the ropes of her bowels that sent a static-like prickling across the lining of her stomach.

And then she heard it: the flight of hastening footfalls. Never a good sign.

Stiffly, Natalia straightened her spine, slipped the pen back behind her ear, and turned to face the door of the main lab which would open to a tunnel and series of chambers that ultimately culminated in the mouth of the cave. von Blitzschlag blinked in confusion before turning a questioning look upon the far door. By the sound of the swift yet heavy footsteps echoing off the limestone and growing ever nearer, it was one of the Hellfire guards. In case it wasn’t, though, or in the dire instance that her cover had somehow been blown and she’d have to fight her way out of a network of subterranean passageways in the heart of a mogote, she’d planted weapons all around the compound that she couldn’t easily conceal on her person in civilian clothes and lab coats.

Natalia was more than prepared to snag the Makarov she’d strapped to the underside of von Blitzschlag’s lab station, level it on the doorway, and rain leaden rounds upon whosoever found themselves unlucky enough to be on the business end of her pistol. Her hands itched for the hidden semi-automatic, but she curbed her anticipation for the time being. The second she drew a weapon, her ruse would be shattered. Wilhelmina would be discovered to have been a spy the whole time, or at least Natalia’s version of her; the real Wilhelmina had died with her father.

The lab doors burst open, and just as Natalia had expected, a panting Hellfire soldier stood upon the threshold. His huffs of breath carried oddly from behind his blank mask, somehow sounding both muffled and magnified at once in the dead silence of the main laboratory. As all other eyes curiously turned to him, the Hellfire militant caught his breath and approached the old S.S. doctor.

“What in the devil has gotten into you, soldier?” von Blitzschlag blustered, color rising to the crinkling paper-thin flesh stretched over his hollow cheeks. His moment of sentimentality and candor was apparently entombed in the past like Natalia’s opportunity to cleanly assassinate the man.

“My sorry, Herr Doktor,” the soldier butchered his German as though it were a fat old sow and the blade of his tongue were dull and stumbling. “Perimeter guards radio. You have ghost.”

Natalia blinked slowly. von Blitzschlag stared at the soldier incomprehensibly. The soldier, in turn, shuffled his feet self-consciously.

“I have a what?”

“Ghost, Herr Doktor.”

“Are you absolutely certain of that, soldier?”

“Ja,” he nodded sharply. “Ghost.”

von Blitzschlag glanced to Natalia. She shook her head. He looked back at the soldier. As von Blitzschlag attempted to address what was clearly a translational error, Natalia canted her head. In the distance, likely outside the mogote, she could hear the rumble of engines. Several engines. Perimeter guards radioed ahead. The German word for “guest” could easily be misspoken as the word for “ghost” by a novice in the language.

“We have company,” Natalia interrupted von Blitzschlag as he was in mid-diatribe. The Hellfire soldier looked relieved despite Natalia’s inability to see his facial expression behind his mask. “A motorcade.”

“At this time of day?” von Blitzschlag scowled, rounding on her. “For what?”

Natalia offered a noncommittal shrug of her shoulders before the old man whipped back around on the soldier and bit out more sharp words about the man’s linguistic ineptitude. Natalia turned her eyes to the open lab doors and peered into the dim corridor beyond. The engines died. She strained her sensitive ears. She could just make out the thud of boots contacting soft jungle earth and sharp rock. Voices speaking Spanish in the Havanan dialect.

Feet pounded on hard stone, and Natalia watched on in interest as another Hellfire soldier emerged from the dark corridor and skidded to a gasping halt in the main lab a short while later. Around pants of breath in marginally better German, he choked, “Prime Minister Castro… onsite—progress report—Doktor…”

The smirk on her lips fell. Fidel Castro was here?

“The prime minister?” von Blitzschlag seemed equally as surprised by the news. “He’s always sent the Second Secretary to get his progress reports and never in broad daylight. What is he thinking?”

Natalia was wondering that as well. In the months she had spent here, never once had the Cuban government made an appearance during the day. It was easier for all parties involved for von Blitzschlag’s Cuban patrons to roll through under cover of night when untoward attention from the local population would not be drawn to the mogote and to the lab within. Moreover, most of those visits had been supply drop-offs, whether the supplies be more research fodder or rations for the soldiers, scientists, and subjects stationed in the cave. The rare visits of a more official nature had been made by Prime Minister Castro’s second-in-command, his brother Raúl, like Natalia’s target had said. Fidel Castro himself, though, that was new.

And because Natalia was no bleary-eyed guitar-picking American fool, new things made her highly suspicious. If she were being honest with herself, most things made her suspicious.

“Go!” von Blitzschlag barked at the Hellfire soldiers before him, drawing Natalia’s attention away from her own thoughts. “I want a full entourage to lead the prime minister to me.”

“But, Herr Doktor,” the second guard spoke up again, “the prime minister has brought his own entourage to accompany him.”

Natalia’s eyes snapped to the Hellfire soldier.

“He has?” the old man frowned. “How many men does he have with him?”

“Around 15, Herr Doktor.”

Natalia cast her eyes once more to the open laboratory doors. She could hear the Hellfire soldiers and Cuban guards on loan from Castro himself interacting with the new arrivals at the mouth of the cave. That wasn’t a military entourage accompanying Castro, though; that was a strike team.

She needed to get out of this limestone burial mound. Unfortunately, there was only one ingress and one egress not counting the ventilation shafts that drew in fresh jungle air from outside but were too tight for her to crawl through—Natalia would know; she had tried—and it was through the mouth of the cave where Castro and his soldiers were likely standing with enough arms to make a clean departure uncertain. Natalia’s glower could have corroded steel. She had half a mind to start digging her way out of her earthen prison with her bare hands. She hated being cornered.

“No matter,” von Blitzschlag waved his hand dismissively. “I want a respectable entrance for the prime minister. Escort him to me. Make haste!”

The two Hellfire soldiers darted back into the dim of the tunnel leading to the cave entrance. Natalia braced herself on von Blitzschlag’s lab table, hand ready to slide out of sight and wrap around the grip of a Makarov when the need arose. She tuned out the old man as he barked orders at the other scientists present. In minutes, Natalia could faintly hear that the Hellfire guards had returned to the cave opening and had informed Castro and his men that they would be leading them to the main lab.

Silence. Finally, a grunt of acquiescence. Then the marching of many boot-shod feet filled the mogote caverns and passageways with its rhythmic noise, echoing off the roughhewn stone like a heavy tropical rain. This rain, though, only harbingered the spilling of garnet blood rather than offered a cleansing rinse to wash the gore away in cloudy pink rivulets.

The closer the pounding of the feet drew, the nearer Natalia’s hand inched toward the gun concealed under the lab station. Upon first sight of the large shadowy mass of bodies approaching in the half-lit corridor, her fingers grazed the pistol’s butt. She made a split-second decision, shifted her grip on the gun, unsheathed it from its hidden location, and surreptitiously tucked it into the tundra-white folds of her lab coat before the first of many Hellfire and loaned Cuban soldiers ushered in von Blitzschlag’s visitors. The Hellfire and lent Cuban cave guards fanned out their front ranks to reveal in the heart of the procession a group of stern-faced dark-haired men in olive drab battle fatigues and boots so finely polished the black leather of their shoes flashed white under the fluorescent laboratory lamps. Some of the men had loaded kalashes slung over their shoulders. RPD light machine guns hung at the sides of others. All possessed pistols holstered on their pouched tactical belts not unlike Natalia’s own semi-automatic.

Der’mó. Squeezing into the vents and slithering through the ductwork was starting to sound more and more appealing to Natalia.

An acrid-sweet smell filled the room. A faint orange glow amidst a charred ring of greying tobacco and blackening paper caught her attention. The cigar hung from the man’s lips, wisps of fragrant white smoke spiraling idly around his bushy beard and above his head of gently curling ebony hair. He had a strong sloping nose, a high bronze-toned forehead, rounded cheeks, and thick brows three shades darker than the color of his intense eyes. He scanned the laboratory, taking stock of his Havanan scientists who bowed their heads in respect when his gaze fell upon them, and the room plunged into silence. He stepped forward, and the sound of his heel striking the cavern floor may as well have been the sound of an atom bomb detonating in the cavern where the test subject containment cells resided just a corridor away.

Leisurely, he crossed the laboratory, his military retinue following two steps behind him. He was perhaps one of the tallest men in the room, or at least the air of confidence and unquestionable rule he exuded made it seem that way. As he made his way to von Blitzschlag, his eyes caught Natalia’s. A chill racked her body, sending icy tendrils to crystallize down the length of her every nerve and back again into her spine. He winked, an action so subtle and so swift it could have never happened. But it had, and Natalia’s eyes narrowed into hard chips of emerald. The man stopped before the Nazi Cuba had been harboring before the onset of the Revolution which had procured the island nation a new head of state and affiliation with communism, and he extended a hand in greeting. A Rolex watch sparkled on his tanned wrist. The hair of his arms peeked out from beneath the sleeve of his fatigues like dark penstrokes of ink and dotted the back of his outstretched hand.

“Prime Minister Castro,” von Blitzschlag shook Castro’s offered hand as eagerly as he slipped into the foreign language of his sanctuary, “what an unexpected though nonetheless pleasant surprise. What brings you to us today?”

“Doctor von Blitzschlag,” Castro nodded measuredly, letting his hands rest upon his tactical belt and his elbows to turn outward. “I’ve come to see what progress you’ve made in your genetic studies.”

“Ah, well,” von Blitzschlag gave a tremulous laugh. “If that is all, why not send the Second Secretary?” The Cuban prime minister stared unflinchingly at the old man, his thunderous quiet speaking whole volumes of information that words alone could only have wished to convey. von Blitzschlag, after enduring several beats of stuffy silence, wrung his hands anxiously and attempted a chuckle: “Of course, the Second Secretary is a busy and important man—”

Natalia cleared her throat seconds before Castro’s dark left eyebrow rose to pass wordless judgment on the former S.S. doctor. While her target found her prompting instructive and began to quickly launch into an explanation of the recent scientific developments made deep in the bowels of the mogote, Natalia canted her head and studied Fidel Castro. That feeling of off-ness, though it had never truly vanished but rather had merely waned, was waxing yet again, and the tingling at the base of her skull told her the world leader before her played a large part in her unsettlement.

She had seen that supercilious arching of an eyebrow before, had felt its spectral curve of dispassionate and noiseless criticism beside her when she herself wanted to roll her eyes at the ignorance of her superiors or the annoyances of her former “partners.” She studied Castro’s bearing, an intersection of military precision, monarchical superiority, and the sort of occasional unconcern that such power permitted a man to express around those he knew posed so little threat to him it was laughable. It was a manner of conduct and bodily awareness Natalia knew intimately from past and imagined experiences.

She flicked her gaze around the room, wondering why she had not earlier paid more attention to the prime minister’s team of bodyguards. The 15 battle-worn but proud men standing around their leader as he conversed with von Blitzschlag should have been among the first subjects of her scrutiny. Typically, they would have been. The longer she considered Castro’s men, though, the more she struggled to actually observe differences between them. And to even anchor her focus on them for that matter.

Their faces all seemed to blur together, their hair medium-length yet respectable, their jaws squared, their eyes the color of dried tobacco, their builds eerily uniform. There was nothing unique to any one soldier, save perhaps the arm he carried. Even that, though, served only to distinguish him from his compeers by parting the unit of soldiers into two still sizable categories: those who wielded handheld machine guns and those who wielded assault rifles. Their singular lack of differentiation, like a compelling whisper in her ear, urged Natalia to shift her focus back to their leader, to allow them to remain indistinct stage props to Castro’s commanding drama.

She shook her head as though to dissipate a fog clouding her mind. Natalia forced herself to ignore the tricky subconscious murmuring and began to vivisect each Cuban soldier with her gaze. They weren’t all the same. They couldn’t be.

And they weren’t. Natalia narrowed her eyes at the soldier standing two meters apart from her. He watched her from his periphery, nostrils flaring faster than typical. The pulse beneath the coppery flesh of his neck fluttered like the futile wing-flaps of a pinned butterfly; Natalia could see each rapid beat right there on his throat as he writhed on the needle of her stare. Another soldier four down the line rested his hand on the stock of his gun for reassurance. And the man on the other side of Castro, the one anxiously shifting his weight from foot to foot? He looked as though he were trapped in a banya with no comfort of cool breeze or frigid waters into which he could plunge.

What had Castro’s men to be so agitated about? They were among tovarisches—there was no need to act as impaled lepidopterans. They behaved as though they were hiding a hellish coal under their tongues, burning in their lie and incandescent fear of being caught. So scalding and brilliant was their fear, though, that it betrayed any attempt at concealing the falsehood at work. These men were certainly not spies or assassins. No, they were foot soldiers, field agents, decent ones but ones unused to espionage. And they weren’t Castro’s men either. Not the real Fidel Castro’s anyhow, because the Castro before her was himself not the authentic Cuban prime minister.

As Natalia furtively slipped her hand inside her lab coat for her pistol, she once more caught Castro’s eyes. They bore into her, warning her as von Blitzschlag shared confidential information with him, one of the Soviet Union’s most dangerous enemies and the disguised compatriot of the old man’s Black royalty benefactors from the New England Hellfire Club. What right did he have to warn her? Complicated feelings for the psychic or not, he was yet again meddling in her missions and Natalia did not appreciate it. He wouldn’t cause her to fail again, and she had seen and heard enough to warrant the immediate termination of all subversive activities and scientific developments in Cuba.

She drew the Makarov from her coat and let her Red Room training guide her actions even as his voice skated across the neural pathways of her brain: “Natalia, don’t—”

POP POP—

The default double tap of a life’s worth of education echoed throughout the cavern: the first shot to strike the target, the second shot to slow the flow of blood to the nervous system.

“With more than one traumatic strike to the body,” Headmistress had once told Natalia many moons ago as she had placed a Luger Parabellum pistol in Natalia’s child-pudgy hands, “death by blood loss is hastened, little one. A psychological stop is created by the brain’s inability to accurately process the pain signals it receives from two different locations.” Turning her to face the red-painted silhouette of a man on the far side of the shooting range with crimson-gloved hands, Headmistress said, “Adjust your grip, Natalia, and fight the recoil. Do not disappoint me.”

Except this time, neat twin dots of red didn’t blossom on her target’s chest, one after the next in a steady and precise line. The two bullets she had just fired in rapid succession, though, did hang immobilized in the empty air between herself and a horrified but otherwise unharmed von Blitzschlag. Natalia scowled, cursing that goddamned psychic capitalist aping the Cuban prime minister within a stone’s throw of her. She’d shoot him too if she knew he wouldn’t just freeze her bullets or let them ricochet off his diamantine skin.

In the three seconds of stunned silence following Natalia’s thwarted execution of the elderly Nazi doctor she had been compelled to work under for months in the interest of global security and U.S.S.R. preeminence, several things occurred. First, von Blitzschlag’s wide-eyed bespectacled gaze snapped up to meet Natalia’s exasperated glare. She didn’t have to be a mind reader to know his thoughts; she could see them unfolding across his face in all their confused terror and betrayed indignation, could hear them as he slurred “Wilhelmina—?” at her. Second, the White King’s voice entered her mind with a chill like frozen rain on the Ob as it wended northward around Novosibirsk to empty into the Kara Sea: “Oh, comrade, I wish you hadn’t done that.” Third, the telekinetically frozen bullets adjusted their original trajectory, unthawed, and whizzed in opposite directions across the cavern. Natalia tracked them as they screamed through the air, watching as one disappeared in a spray of bright burgundy blood from a Hellfire soldier’s exposed neck and as the other drilled a neat hole through another Hellfire guard’s expressionless beige mask and exited out the backside of his skull with much less tidiness and much more bone fragment, shredded brain tissue, and wine-dark gore. And fourth, the corpses fell, and so too did the White King’s illusion.

The image of cigar-puffing Fidel Castro dissipated in a pall of sparkling vapor, and in its place stood none other than New England’s White King himself. Despite the tropical humidity and summer heat, his ash blond hair was swept up in a dramatic coif like that which the cinematic rebels and American youth adopted to proclaim their autonomy, and he wore a milk-white lambskin catsuit with the garment’s single zipper tugged roguishly down to mid-breast to bare sight of his gilt-haired décolletage and the silver dog tags resting in the valley of his chest. The White King had the sleeves of his blatantly expensive form-fitting leather number rolled to three-quarter length and its Napoleonic collar gently curled, and he accessorized the catsuit with matching fingerless leather gloves with silver-hard knuckles, a flashy belt of interlocking silver loops, and chic white military boots that bore not a speck of dirt on them.

All around him, a glittering cloud lifted from the soldiers posing as Cuban militants and then faded into nothingness. Natalia’s eyebrows quirked in surprise. von Blitzschlag recoiled in shock. Dressed head-to-toe in heavy black tactical armor emblazoned with an aquiline emblem on the right shoulder and already drawing their guns, the soldiers were S.H.I.E.L.D.

von Blitzschlag’s cave guards responded as well as one would imagine they could under such breakneck-paced revelations as Natalia-Wilhelmina’s betrayal, the brutal slaying of two Hellfire soldiers, Fidel Castro being not Fidel Castro, a whole entourage of Cuban soldiers who were also not who they appeared to be, and shifting battlefield dynamics that delivered grave tidings for their hopes of making it out of the mogote they had once thought to be their home base. von Blitzschlag’s Cuban militia on loan from the real Fidel Castro froze up on the spot, which was to be expected of foot soldiers whose only glimpse of the superhuman and supernatural was that which occurred in strict containment deep in the bowels of the mogote and tended to die precipitately after. The Hellfire Club gunners and heavies who had offered their services as ill-fated escorts reacted with a little more promise. They scrambled for their weapons. Some were even able to return fire as the air filled with the cacophony of merciless gunfire and the staccato reverberations of bullets sundering the sanctity of the main lab off the cavern walls.

As Natalia dove for cover under von Blitzschlag’s heavy laboratory station, she spied the rear lab doors being thrown open to release another wave of Hellfire Club reinforcements who must have heard the howls of war echoing from within the chamber and come scrambling. As the Nazi doctor stumbled back, Natalia raised her Makarov and fired at von Blitzschlag—once, twice, thrice—but he had been swept up by jostling mass of bodies emerging to his rescue from the dimly-lit corridor leading to the containment cells before she could even graze him with a bullet. Instead, she dropped two Hellfire gunners who tripped a third as they collapsed and sent him tumbling into the path of an errant bullet aimed from a gun somewhere on the other side of Natalia’s cover. The third Hellfire guard rolled onto his back as feet pounded around him, blood trickling from a hole shot clean through his trachea. In the chaos, there was no way of knowing if he had been killed by the shot of friend or foe; he was just dead with a bullet lodged in the demolished C6 or C7 vertebra of his spinal column.

Of all the hairy situations she had found herself in, this was likely going to become one of the hairiest. The way she saw it, she had two options: try to find von Blitzschlag in the tumult and finish the mission before S.H.I.E.L.D. did it for her—or worse, detained him and hauled him off to America—or try to slip away in the opposite direction with her tail tucked between her legs like the last time the White King had crossed her path and suffer the potentially fatal consequences for her failed assignment. Either way, she had three rounds left in her current magazine and two more detachable fully-loaded magazines strapped to the underside of the lab table above her head. 19 bullets, a cyanide pen gun, two stilettos, and a pair of gold bracelets fashioned from a series of ten-centimeter cylinders not unlike ballistic-tipped boattailed bullets that contained compressed gas compartments that could either pneumatically launch a grappling hook and retractable coil of cable the K.G.B. was calling a Widow’s Line or release the tagging agent known as spy dust to track the movements of targets to which the chemical clung. The bracelets couldn’t be used for much else at the moment, but they were still prototypes that she and the K.G.B.’s Operations and Technology Directorate were collaborating on. Right about now, it would be beneficial if they could also serve a more direct offensive purpose like shoot grenades or a jet of aerosolized poison gas. She reached overhead, tugged the magazines free of the adhesive securing them to the underside of the lab table, and pocketed them.

Natalia looked out from beneath her cover and scanned the main laboratory as best as she could. Behind a lab station nine meters away, Lacoste and Guerrero cowered in fear. Hernández, who had just a few minutes prior been standing beside them, was nowhere in sight. Delgado’s legs stretched out across the cave floor in an expanding pool of blood, motionless, the rest of his body concealed by the corner of a lab table. That left von Blitzschlag, who had only processed some of Delgado’s latest research before locking it away in the drawer to Natalia’s left, as the sole inheritor of what were likely the obscure secrets of mutation. Lest even more people gain access to intelligence that could launch a third global war, Natalia needed to get Delgado’s documents before she chose to either—

The fresh jungle air drawn via ventilation shaft into the mogote’s interior sizzled with power, with an invisible current of energy that made the hairs on Natalia’s arms stand up beneath the crisp white sleeves of her lab coat. Psionic energy. More precisely, psionic energy being galvanized to produce physical results: telekinesis.

No sooner had she identified it than it made its intentions blatantly clear. The only forewarning as to what was about to happen was an almost imperceptible vibration in the air around Natalia, and then the lab station—and consequently her cover—was gone. Comprised of a heavy-duty four-meter-long table with an industrial top and attached cabinets and drawers filled with scientific equipment, laboratory utensils, and folios of research notes of varying sizes and weights—Bunsen burners, old microscopes, glass slides, semi-rusted tongs, Delgado’s reports, aged treatises on Mendelian genetics and Darwinian theory—the lab station in its entirety was just gone.

Perhaps that wasn’t quite accurate.

It was indeed gone from where it had been rooted to the earth, but it was not wholly gone. It was actually quite difficult to overlook as it hurtled boulder-like through the air between Natalia and the charging Hellfire soldiers. At least 10 of the Hellfire Club personnel that had spilled forth from the tunnel failed to evade the speeding lab station and were resultantly and mercilessly mowed down by it to bloody and broken pulps. With a resounding crash and a spray of stone dust and blood, the wrecked lab station collided into the doorway leading to the test subject containment cells and nearly barricaded the passageway. Those Hellfire forces who had narrowly avoided a gruesome and crushing death were understandably shaken but did not spend much time hesitating before returning fire on the White King, his S.H.I.E.L.D. escorts, and Natalia who was caught between the two opposing forces with nowhere to hide thanks to the White King’s telekinetic assault.

So much for procuring Delgado’s research anytime soon. Squatting in the open but below the notice of most combatants, she did a split-second scan of the room. She needed new cover, and she needed to put a dent in the crowd blocking her from von Blitzschlag. She strafed the Cuban guards and Hellfire Club soldiers with her three remaining rounds before pitching forward onto her shoulder, rolling swiftly across the stone floor to remove herself from the line of fire, and coming up to a crouch behind another nearby lab station. As she mechanically reloaded her semi-automatic with a fresh magazine, she observed what she could of the scene.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents beyond the White King gunned down the last of von Blitzschlag’s entourage that had ushered the United States’ premier extra-governmental military intelligence and counter-terrorism agency directly into the heart of the Hellfire-sponsored Cuban mutation operation. Unsurprisingly, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents appeared to have suffered remarkably fewer injuries in the confrontation than the initial group of Hellfire heavies and gunners and loaned Cuban guards, all of whom had been taken unawares and had sustained numerous casualties. Simultaneously, prismatic sparks popped and sizzled in the air around the White King where the bullets fired at him by his own Hellfire Club forces flattened into brazen disks of steaming metal and fell impotently to the ground, their deadly trajectory halted by some kind of energy shield surrounding the King that was just beyond the perception of the naked eye until something struck it and sent up a shower of glittering firework-like flashes of light.

Was the man she had met time and time again in the waking world and in the fantastical realm of her delusions not the White King of the New England branch of the Hellfire Club? Were those soldiers firing upon him now not members of that very same chapter of which he reigned in tandem with his kin and their Black Court colleagues? Had he not slaughtered his own associates with the efficiency and callousness of the executioner who stands at the ready to swing his gruesome blade at the swiftest offense? The Cuban exploration into the very core of mutagenic research was being funded, staffed, and fully supported by the White King’s ebony counterpart and his tenebrous consort, and yet if the White King is present with S.H.I.E.L.D. and is killing his own men, he obviously must not be a proponent of the Black Court’s cause. Were the Courts at war?

“That’s certainly one way to put it.” Natalia froze in place as the White King’s voice flourished in her mind like a collection of silver-tipped snowflakes spiraling in a winter gust: dazzlingly pretty and unassumingly portentous of potential devastation. She absently recognized that those same words could be applied to herself and all the other Widows as well. “How goes it, comrade?”

He’d spoken directly to her through some manner of telepathic link three times since she had sparked the current shoot-out, and Natalia was only just now realizing that she should be concerned about that. Perhaps it was the necessity of being hyperaware of her position at the center of the battle that diminished the psychological energy she could invest into worrying about other matters like her compromised mental conditioning being potentially exploited by a world-class psychic four meters away or her unconcern with the fact that the White King was trying to start a psychic conversation with her and was actively listening to her thoughts to do so. It was a little disconcerting, obviously, but it certainly did not send her into an apoplectic rage-panic like it might have in years previous.

Natalia glanced up at him from the shadow and safety of the lab station she had shoulder-rolled to after he had psychokinetically chucked her last sturdy fortification as though it had weighed nothing. A dusting of psionic silver swam in lazy circles in the arctic blue waters of his irises, and he raised a gilded brow at her in question. Like he wasn’t currently under fire from over a dozen different guns.

She felt the urge to laugh. She checked the impulse and scoffed instead.

“Come now, Natalia,” she could hear his telepathic tongue click of disapproval as he turned his body to face her fully. The driving rain of Hellfire bullets dwindled to a mere pitter-patter as the soldiers reloaded to continue their assault. He crossed his arms, and a shimmer in the air flashed outward to envelop the S.H.I.E.L.D. gunmen scattered behind him and Natalia herself. What had he done? “Have you really any room to cast derision so freely? You were, after all, working for a bleeding Nazi.”

Natalia bit her tongue. Shook her head. Knew she shouldn’t but peculiarly wanted to anyway. She took the bait.

“I was not working for a Nazi, zasránec,” she thought out at him in what she hoped to be an indignant hiss; she had done it before, but it had been quite some time—years, in fact—since she had psychically conversed with someone. The last time had been with Comrade Sokolov. “I was spying on a Nazi.” After a moment of pause, she felt compelled for some odd reason to make the White King believe her. Guardedly, she told him, “I was going to kill him. I did attempt to shoot him in front of you, after all.”

As though sensing her strange desire to be transparent with him, which he probably was, the White King uncrossed his arms and leveled his silver-blue eyes on her: “I know.”

Something unbidden unfurled in Natalia’s chest. It slipped its warm fingers through the glacial cracks between her ribs before gliding away to slumber deeper in the cold shadows and swampy conifers of the taiga of her heart. Natalia liked it. Widows didn’t like anything, though. They were as frigidly desensitized to their own wants and feelings as the Russian tundra was locked in ice and snow. She stared at the White King before gesturing with her loaded gun to the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents regrouping behind him after having finished off the first group of cave guards.

“What’s the S.H.I.E.L.D. backup about?” She narrowed her eyes at the White King. “You aren’t S.H.I.E.L.D., are you?”

“Not in any official sense,” the White King offered.

The storm of bullets resurged to batter his telekinetic shield as he stood indifferent to the attack and watched her as closely as she did him. A burst of radiant stardust shot out from the space above Natalia’s head as a bullet collided into what must have been the White King’s expanded psychokinetic shield and deflected before her very eyes. The smoking disc of bronze that had once been a lethal round made a tinny tink! when it fell before the toe of her heeled patent leather shoes, drawing her gaze down to it and then back up at the White King. He was defending her—that had been the shimmering distortion she had perceived in the atmosphere of the cavernous main lab when he had earlier crossed his arms over his chest.

She watched as Hellfire bullets peppered the White King’s telekinetic barrier all across the chamber and set off similar miniature detonations of crystalline powder, listened to the ringing ping ping ping! as the shots ricocheted to the cave floor, smelled the copper tang of spilled blood and the chemical acridity of gun smoke in the air. Movement behind the White King caught her attention. The American operatives were splitting their ranks in two. As half went to tend to the medical needs of the cowering Cuban scientists and remove them from the scene, the others fanned out on either side of the White King and began returning fire at the second wave of Hellfire reinforcements.

“As for them,” the White King flicked his hand dismissively at the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents around him as their handheld machine guns and assault rifles rat-tat-tat-tat-ed. “Well, you know how it is. Guilty by association or some other nonsense I’ll try not to take umbrage over just because I have the displeasure of being analogous in rank to Sebastian Shaw and Selene Gallio in the Club.”

Natalia recognized the former of the two names the White King divulged and only vaguely at that. Sebastian Shaw was of no greater importance to the K.G.B. than any other bourgeois American capitalist with a multimillion-dollar company. He was by no means an outstanding candidate for the position of Black King of New England’s branch of the Hellfire Club from Natalia’s perspective. He was a self-made millionaire but was no Stark, Frost, Getty, or Rockefeller—people who really lived like royalty in America and who would likely hold the most socioeconomic clout to warrant their holding of Hellfire monarchical titles. This much Natalia knew, but the extent of her knowledge ended there on the topic of Sebastian Shaw. As for Selene Gallio, Natalia hadn’t even a guess.

“So, it really is just the Black Court behind this genetic research, then?” Natalia said, filing the information of the Black King’s and Queen’s identities away for later use.

“It does appear that way, yes but I’ve never known Shaw or his Roman witch to hold any stock in eugenics.” Elias nodded as Hellfire gunners and heavies collapsed around the room, their bodies riddled with bullet holes. He turned his head and observed their deaths dispassionately as more soldiers trickled into the chamber from over the mangled lab station blocking the corridor to the containment cells. He said coldly, “Or at least not eugenics practiced through actual scientific means. Shaw’s sect of the Hellfire Club has typically been concerned with matters of mysticism, spiritualism. The pseudosciences. The appropriation and weaponization of marginalized belief systems to grasp at power and what they perceive to be ultimate truth.”

Natalia readily absorbed this knowledge too even though she and the K.G.B. already knew as much about the Black Court. Regardless, it was a rare occurrence to uncover any intel on the culture and goings-on of any branch of the Hellfire Club, especially that branch in New England famed for its esotericism and… perversities—

“Shaw’s doings, the perversities,” the White King interjected. “Trust me when I say that my branch’s reputation being besmirched in such a manner brings me no joy.”

Natalia raised her eyebrows at that but made no comment. They weren’t companions or colleagues or even acquaintances with whom you could lapse into casual conversation. No, they were rivals, ideological enemies. He was a filthy capitalist warmonger, a freewheeling libertarian, a bourgeois Westerner, an American if not by birth then by willful residence. Everything Rodina wished to erase from the world. Moreover, he and his royal kin were nearly the number one threats to the U.S.S.R.’s mission behind the United States in its entirety and the activities of S.H.I.E.L.D.

“Must we really revisit all the Communist propaganda?” he psychically sighed in exasperation. “That drivel is all so hackneyed.”

“If you don’t like what I think of you, then get out of my head,” she said, her tone as flat and keen as the edge of a Caucasian shaska.

“Unlike most of your dearly departed psychics who were employed by the K.G.B. in life,” the White King responded coolly, if a bit pedantically. “I don’t have to be in your head to hear your thoughts, Natalia. To me, your mind is like a radio transmitter generating brainwaves and mine the receiver that captures them; after having encountered you as often as I have, I’ve become quite adept at decoding your encrypted thoughts.”

Natalia tensed at the mention of the K.G.B. psychics. It was something to have concluded that he had been involved in their deaths on her own, but to hear him speak so flippantly of them was something else entirely. She knew he had been the one who had done it, the one to have killed them, and she knew that he had done it to hide. What did he strive to hide, though, and why did Natalia get the sneaking suspicion he was lying to her about the way he had become so skilled in reading her mind?

The White King’s piercing eyes held a touch of something… soft in them. Soft like the polished face of a pale sapphire—still hard yet not uninvitingly so or sharp enough to cut. He had heard everything she had thought. And now he… pitied her? Natalia scowled and slowly rose to her feet. The action drew several Hellfire Club guns her direction, but with the White King’s barriers up, she did not worry about evading the shots she attracted.

One of the White King’s S.H.I.E.L.D. agents approached her from behind, likely to medevac her under the misperception she was like one of the other scientists caught helplessly in the crossfire. She rounded on him, and he froze in place, first out of surprise and then out of the wariness one might hold when confronted with a snarling volchitsa in the woods. His wide eyes darted from her face to the Makarov in her hands and then to the White King over her shoulder. The agent’s grip tightened on his firearm as though he stood a chance.

“Leave her be,” the White King said aloud, stepping to Natalia’s defense. “She is with me.”

Natalia turned on her heel to glower at the White King as the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent carefully backed away from her: “I am not with you.”

“Well, you’re not with the Nazi, and you’re not with the Black Court, and we both know you haven’t been with the K.G.B. for quite some time now—at least, not with them in the way that really counts,” he said pointedly. “So, if not with me, who are you with, my dear Natalia?”

She closed the distance between them in a few short, menacing strides and glared up at the White King. He knew. He knew about her secret, about her conditioning, about her questionable loyalty to the U.S.S.R.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she ground out between clenched teeth.

“Do I not?” he replied, unruffled by her aggression. “How delightfully shocking. I love being wrong; it happens so infrequently.”

“Tell me,” Natalia demanded, her voice rising above the raucous sound of the White King’s forces massacring the Hellfire Club soldiers about them who vainly continued to attempt to pierce their King’s psychokinetic defenses. “Tell me why you’re doing this.”

“You haven’t pieced it together yet, my dear?” The White King canted his head curiously down at her. “Or are you still trying to blind yourself to the truth?”

A chill pricked Natalia’s spine and crystallized in icy veins down her back. He studied her. Not like a lion might its quarry. Like a lion would another lion, and that made it even worse. He had as much of an interest in her as she did him.

He was… hiding her?

“You make it sound so incriminatingly shameful, Natalia,” he smirked dryly, his eyes wandering to the fighting around them.

Her brows furrowed in confusion: “So you are covering my tracks, then.”

“Something like that.”

His eyes narrowed in irritation, and he pressed his lips thin as the Hellfire gunners precipitately increased their futile efforts to shatter the telekinetic shield preventing them from landing a single hit. The cavern floor was now painted with both crimson pools and stripes of blood and disks and misshapen cylinders of bronze-gold bullets.

“A secret such as your own is worth safeguarding, Natalia, and you will need all the help you can get to keep it safe…” The White King’s nostrils flared, and he set his sharp jaw. Gunfire bounced ineffectively off his psychic defenses. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, my dear—” His eyes blazed with a celestial silver fire as he turned away from her to scowl at the numerous Hellfire militants who hopelessly continued to rain leaden fury upon the White King, Natalia, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents returning their hostility blow for much more potent blow since their ammunition was not being impeded by any psychic resistance: “You pestiferous lot of botfly larvae are testing my patience with your ignorance and grating gunfire, and unfortunately for you all, I have so little patience to be tried anymore. Now, be good pests, drop your sad little mechanical weapons, and kneel.”

Natalia could feel psionic energy crackle through the air in the wake of the White King’s edict. She should not have been as surprised as she was to see the Hellfire Club gunmen promptly cease their shooting, allow their guns to fall from their grasp and clatter off the stone floor, and stiffly drop to their knees as though to make an obeisance before their monarch. Natalia combated the desire to skirt away from the White King, to put as much distance between herself and his psychic reach as possible. But she knew there was no distance on this planet great enough to accomplish such a feat, and so she stayed by his side and observed as he motioned to the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who had also halted their firing out of curiosity and awe. They returned to their senses, and as he turned back to her, the row of genuflecting Hellfire mercenaries trembled with each tearing bullet that passed through their body and crumpled boneless to the cavern floor.

“My apologies,” the White King massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger wearily. “I tire of such shows of mindless obduracy quite swiftly—”

“Where’s von Blitzschlag?” Natalia cut him off, her eyes searching.

“Likely slipped over the debris blocking the corridor,” he sighed, dropping his hand and fixing her with an intense ice blue look. “My men will pursue him.”

And as he said it, so it happened. The S.H.I.E.L.D. gunmen scrambled up and over the mangled lab station, leaving Natalia and the White King to stand alone in a silent cavern filled with corpses. The agents responsible for evacuating the scientists had left just before the White King’s telepathic command.

“Anyway,” the man broke the quiet. “Your secret—”

There was no point in feigning ignorance—she knew that he knew—but she did it anyway out of habit and with a biting edge since she also knew the chances of incapacitating him on the spot out of spite were infinitesimal: “I have no secret, Your Majesty.”

“Please, Natalia, you yourself are a secret,” the White King scoffed. “Moreover, I think we have long since surpassed the point in our professional relationship where formalities could be safely dispensed.” He held out his gloved hand for her to shake. “Frost, darling. Elias Gideon Frost.”

Natalia was so surprised that her mouth hung ajar for lack of a caustic response. The White King’s—no, Elias’s—hand hung in the empty space between them, expectant and waiting. She didn’t take it.

Elias Gideon Frost. The White King. That meant the White Queen must have been… Emma Frost, the other CEO and co-president on the board of Frost International. Their shipping, transportation, and personal electronics conglomerate was an everyday feature of Western life. Their company’s name was on the sides of airplanes, trains, and ocean freighters, was responsible for facilitating direct distance dialing of telephones and for aiding demoralized housewives in their daily chores by mass-producing electric vacuum cleaners and portable record players with which to bribe their children to leave them be. Combining the revenue of Frost International with the vast inheritance they had accumulated over the centuries of the family’s residence in New England, they were perhaps the richest people in the world.

After several long seconds of stunned silence, she trailed off uncertainly, arms crossed almost self-consciously over her bust, gun dangling loosely from her grip: “You do realize that I am Russia’s premier espionage agent, right…?”

“And you’re not exactly what I would call ‘faithful to the cause’ any longer, are you now?” The White—Elias smiled charmingly before he gave a helpless sort of shrug and dropped his extended hand back to his side. “Also, I suppose it was beginning to seem unfair to me that I knew both your identity and the deadly secret about your conditioning that you’re withholding from your superiors while you knew little to nothing about me, so… I divulged.”

Natalia hesitated, found herself wondering what else he knew about her. She had to assume he knew everything. What did that mean? Obviously, she was beyond compromised at this point. But it also meant that the numerous instances when she could almost feel his spectral presence beside her may not have merely been delusions produced from the instability of her fissuring mental conditioning. They may have been authentic, which in turn meant that her lack of distress about his ghostly companionship could also be authentic. And so was the fact that she felt a bone-deep connection to the man, a chill of similitude, that she could not rightly explain.

So much for being “rivals” and “ideological enemies.”

It was too much to process at the moment, especially with… Elias standing before her.

She closed her eyes to compose herself. She had a mission still to do. She had to kill the Nazi before S.H.I.E.L.D. got their hands on von Blitzschlag. His knowledge could not leave this limestone rock formation, and if the Americans nabbed him, he would very much be leaving Western Cuba and so too would his knowledge. She tightened her grasp on her Makarov.

“The Nazi cannot die,” Elias shook his head. “Not yet anyway.”

“You can’t have him,” Natalia, just as resolute, said. “I will take him off the board even if I have to go through you to do it.”

“I appreciate the bravado, sweetheart,” Elias snorted, “but let’s not forget that the last time we went toe-to-toe, I was holding back, and you still dashed off with your tail between your legs.”

“Is that so?” Natalia said. “How is the arm, by the way? I’m glad to see it’s still attached.”

“I’m sure you are,” he muttered, his right hand falling to his hip and settling there in annoyance, his arm akimbo before it pivoted back at the shoulder so that his elbow pointed directly behind him rather than arrogantly outward.

Out of inculcated muscle memory, Natalia stilled. Headmistress, the frigid custodian of the Red Room’s trainees, used to stand like that when her pupils failed to impress her. Natalia viscerally recalled the cold shine of the bronze buttons affixed to her grey military jacket and the chilled glint of her blunt-cut platinum bob before she meted out a punishment. It was a liminal stance, the Headmistress’s and Elias’s, a fleeting physical manifestation of a boundary that had yet to be crossed but was soon to be if the situation failed to improve in the next five seconds.

Like elastic, Natalia’s mind snapped to first identify the offense which had caused the displeased gesture and then second to rapidly determine a solution which could correct the state of affairs to avoid exacerbating the discontentment into ire. And then Natalia also remembered that Elias wasn’t Headmistress, that Headmistress was on the other side of the globe, and that Natalia hadn’t even seen the woman in over half a decade. Yet the impression she had left upon Natalia lingered like an echo, like a scar—

“A scar is not the mark of a mistake made, Natalia,” Headmistress had sternly said while suturing the first wound she had sustained from the field: a gut-shot from a knife centimeters shy of being fatal. Natalia had been seven. “It’s another lesson—that you are stronger than whatever it is that gave it to you.”

It had been an unforeseen parting blow from her first victim, a Yugoslavian criminal fresh from prison, after he had surprisingly managed to endure having his throat slit. Natalia had leapt partially through his open car window as he had driven by to make the kill, her leather boots scrabbling for purchase on the outside of the car door. In her juvenile mind, it should have worked, should have been a simple kill. Instead, it had been a struggle.

She had been forced to clamber more fully into the car to cut the Yugoslavian’s throat. He had thrown her off him with astonishing force, slamming her hard against the metal interior of his car’s roof, and had turned the blade on her and stabbed her in the stomach. Fire had burst through her belly and scorched the breath right out of her lungs. She had not cried out when she had been stabbed, and she had not cried out when she had ripped the blade free from her side either. She had exchanged blows with the Yugoslavian in the cramped quarters of his car, finally knocking his head into the steering wheel and disorienting him long enough to gouge out his eyes and end the ordeal. The Yugoslavian’s wide-eyed twelve-year-old son—he had been riding shotgun, the only witness to the assassination—had been covered in his own urine and his father’s blood. The boy had been her second kill, a much more successful throat slitting than the first. There could be no witnesses. There hadn’t been.

She had been a fool to go on such a mission so early in her training without supervision of a handler. Natalia knew that now as a Black Widow, and Headmistress had told her as much before she had stitched her injury all those years ago.

“You will endure many such lessons in your life, little spider.” Headmistress had wiped her bloodied hands with a rag after she had sewn the last stitch. The oil lamplight of the catacombs of the Red Room had flickered spectrally across her face and pale, pale hair. It had been around midnight when Natalia had managed to drag herself back to the Red Room. She had collapsed at the foot of Headmistress’s bed from exhaustion and pain. “Not all of them will be from enemies. Consider yourself lucky that you’re around to face the consequences of venturing out alone and engaging the Yugoslavian.”

The memory slid away as stealthily as it had approached. It had been… real. Natalia felt its authenticity in the lack of a glimmer, the absence of distortion around its edges. It had been one she had simply forgotten, not one that had been suppressed by years of psychic oversight and mental conditioning. Or maybe it had been suppressed. She couldn’t tell that much information from such recollections yet, though she was beginning to get an aptitude for at least determining whether the flashes of her past which blossomed to life once more in her mind were truthful or were in some way fabricated.

Natalia blinked slowly. Had Elias heard…? Had he seen? She studied his face. She had no way of knowing for sure, but she didn’t think he had, and if he had, then he also had the decency to pretend like he hadn’t. Perhaps there were some benefits of his top-class breeding, after all. She also had no true way of knowing how much time had lapsed—the resurgence of memories tended to steal seconds to whole minutes from her—but she didn’t feel that it had been any longer than a few beats.

Before she could ask for confirmation of her suspicions, which she would never even consider, obviously, a scream, graveled and filmy with age, pierced the air between Natalia and Elias. von Blitzschlag. The bright fluorescents of the main lab dimmed to half power. In unison, she and Elias glanced up at the cave ceiling to inspect the lighting as it began to flicker indecisively, the hum of voltage audible as it surged weakly and spasmodically through the power cords strung from the limestone overhead. Natalia wrinkled her nose. The chlorinous scent of ozone curled in the cavern from afar.

“Well, that’s quite inauspicious,” Elias drawled, dropping his gaze from the faulty lights moments after Natalia did. Right hand still on his hip, he lifted his left forefinger to his temple. The silver-studded knuckles of his fingerless white leather glove gleamed in the low light.

“Detect anything?” she checked, uncrossing her arms and leveling her pistol at the partially obstructed corridor from where the scream and odor of lightning originated.

“The old fool has done something,” Elias muttered, his irises flashing silver. “Injected himself with—”

“Chyort voz’mi…” Natalia cursed under her breath in realization.

“He’s abruptly developed electrokinetic mutant abilities of some sort despite not being a mutant.” Elias’s metallic eyes snapped to her. “You seem to know something about this?”

Natalia grasped that, were she to provide an answer, she would be freely giving away vital information to an enemy—or whatever she and Elias were. She found that she didn’t care all that much. She took a quarter-step toward the half-blocked corridor, pistol still trained on the empty space of the doorway above the wrecked lab station, and relayed everything she knew.

“Bloody hell,” Elias hissed, dropping his left hand to his side. His eyes returned to their unnervingly cold blue. “I should have known the Black Court’s incitement of the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t going to be the end of their plotting to make the whole damned planet their playground.”

“At least it’s not nuclear warheads this time,” Natalia said, stepping closer to the doorway.

“No,” the White King frowned. “It’s just the rapacious exploitation of mutant bodies by other mutants. How imperialistic of Shaw and his miserable peers.”

“Isn’t it a little hypocritical of you to be condemning imperialism?” Natalia cut a glance across to Elias. “White King and all?”

“It would do you well to not liken me to that unscrupulous ogre and his cronies, Natalia dear,” Elias’s voice was glacial, his eyes narrowing. She’d struck a nerve. His tone gradually lost its frigidity yet lost not a single milligram of inflexibility as he said, “I believe an elderly momentarily-mutated Nazi demands our attention.”

She found herself resisting.

“There is no ‘our.’” She stepped around bodies to reach the tunnel’s ingress, gun poised. “Or a ‘we’ or a ‘you and me’ or an ‘us.’ We are not comrades. We are not partners. We are nothing, Elias.”

“You must adore Camus and Sartre, sweetheart,” Elias’s lips tugged into a slight sneer as he walked beside her, blatantly ignoring her claims of disrelation. “You sound like a veritable existentialist.” He mocked her Russian extremely well and grumbled in a way she supposed was meant to mimic her own delivery of the line, “‘We are nothing,’ Citizen Frost, in an unfeeling and unfathomable universe where l'existence précède l'essence.”

“I…” Natalia scowled, shaking her head. She didn’t know those people, and she didn’t know what existence preceding essence had to do with anything. They were French surnames, though, and the French were perhaps even more of bourgeois prigs than the Americans if it was at all possible. Elias’s aping of her was beginning to make her question that notion, however. “You’ve been haunting me psychically and now you are following me physically. When will you catch the hint that I am not interested in your attention?”

“Is that true, Natalia?” Elias spread his hands wide.

The mangled lab station lifted from the ground and its foundation of crushed corpses. It hovered in the air, metal groaning, before it drifted several meters to the side out of the way of the corridor and settled once more upon the hardened earth. Meanwhile, the bodies rolled like felled trees to either side of the doorway, stacking upon one another like logs in a woodpile.

She remained silent. She didn’t know if that was true. Were he out of her hair altogether, her life likely would have been much simpler and safer, but there was also a part of her mind that she frequently silenced which was strongly opposed to such a notion. And besides, in her field of work, there was no such thing as safety.

Elias filled the quiet for her: “We’re apex predators, red in tooth and claw, the two of us; it only seems natural for us to fall into each other’s company—”

Gunfire exploded down the corridor, the thunderous sound of it reverberating off the walls of the stone tunnel. Natalia thought of the withered, bird-boned body of von Blitzschlag and could hardly imagine him needing more than one bullet to tip him headfirst into the grave which he had one foot in already. So, why did it sound like every single S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who had pursued him had opened fire on him?

The lights dimmed once more, plunging the mogote’s interior into near darkness. As Natalia’s eyes adjusted to the diminished lighting, the echo of electricity snapping like a snare drum carried to her from the distance. So too did the agonized cries of men and the bitter stench of char. The blue-white flash of lightning and the orange-red flare of wildly-aimed gunshots sparked at the end of the tunnel, casting elongated shadows of thrashing and twisting and falling men against the limestone walls.

What exactly was happening in the test subject containment chamber?

“Mass electrocution, that’s what,” Elias said grimly. Blue irises dappled with dancing whorls of metallic grey, he moved to step into the poorly lit tunnel. Natalia lowered her pistol and stilled him with an outstretched hand. He turned an impatient glower on her: “I just lost four men in there to cardiac arrest; I can feel the whirring of their minds bleeding out into the atmosphere like the ebb tide to the sea as we speak. Why do you insist on halting me?”

“Because you’re going in without a plan?” Natalia frowned. Her frown morphed into a scowl when she realized that it sounded like she cared that Elias seemed to be aimlessly walking straight into a fight with a mutated Nazi geneticist who could apparently hurl thunderbolts (the irony of the German’s surname was not lost on her in that moment). She quickly postscripted her initial query with something that made her seem much less invested in Elias’s welfare to preserve her own dignity and maintain the façade that they were “nothing,” as she had so plainly put it just moments ago: “And because you’re going to bag von Blitzschlag, and I would sooner attempt to cut off your arm again than let you take that Nazi.”

“I’m a Frost, sweetheart,” he flashed a beguiling grin. “I have everything planned.” He attempted to stride past her and brush aside her outstretched hand. She deflected his dismissive gesture, wrapped her fingers about his wrist, and jerked him back, causing him to stagger inelegantly away from the doorway. He frowned down at her iron grasp: “As for the Nazi, I never explicitly said you couldn’t have him, Natalia. By all means, the baron is yours for the reaping.”

Natalia’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. Elias shifted his focus from where her fingers were wrapped about his bare wrist to her skeptical emerald eyes. He held her gaze and dryly quipped, “If your handsiness is part of an elaborate attempt to peel me out of this designer leather catsuit to delight in a roll on the blood-soaked earth, sweetheart, I doubt even your extensive Widow training could help you to accomplish such a feat.”

She relinquished her hold on him with an exasperated roll of her eyes. Of course sex would be the first conclusion a Westerner like him would jump to. She could defend her motives for having grabbed Elias, obviously, but they both knew his remark held no actual weight to it, so instead, she expressed her confusion regarding Elias’s unforeseen concession of von Blitzschlag: “I don’t follow. Will you not need to haul von Blitzschlag back to America to pacify S.H.I.E.L.D. and prove you and the White Queen are innocent?”

“The White Queen is currently in Havana doing just that.” Elias said. “She’s collecting evidence of Shaw’s and Selene’s meddling in Cuban governmental affairs and shattering whatever spell Selene cast upon Prime Minister Castro and his closest allies that charmed them into unwittingly getting their hands dirty for the Black Court’s gene experiments.”

That certainly answered one question that had been lurking in the rear of her mind ever since she realized Elias was in Cuba: where was his companion? Just as she was contemplating the merits of inquiring about the exact nature of his relation to the White Queen, to Emma Frost, Elias spoke, derailing her thoughts.

“I’m here to glean intelligence on the Black Court, Natalia, and to do that, I need one living Nazi,” he said, gesturing for her to follow him into the nigh-Stygian blackness of the roughhewn tunnel. “I admittedly did not anticipate Baron von Blitzschlag to be such a slippery worm of a man, so I suppose I’ll now have to root through his head after we first ensure he does not rampage out of this cave and lay siege to the outside world with his newfound powers.”

He walked into the shadows of the corridor, melting into the darkness as fully as could be expected of a man dressed in a bespoke white leather catsuit and combat boots. Natalia lowered her pistol and fell into step behind him. She would have walked beside him had the tunnel not been so tight.

“After I acquire what information I seek, I care little for the baron’s fate,” Elias carried on. “Personally, I think all of his kind should die, so if you would like to exterminate him like the vermin he is when I’m finished—” he cast a meaningful look over his shoulder at her, his luminous silver eyes glowing like twin moons, before returning his focus to the tunnel before them. “—make him anguish. One does not simply commit the atrocities he has in his tragically long life only to earn a sentence of luxuriating in the mercifully gradual demise of dotage; no, he deserves torment and eternities of exquisitely agonizing pain.”

After several reflective moments of thought that had been backgrounded by the nearing shouts of men, the thunder of guns, and the coruscating light of arcing electricity ahead of them, Natalia asked, “Why don’t you stick around for the payoff, then? You seem to be invested in dealing some kind of vengeance.”

The scent of ozone and singed flesh had been intensifying the closer they had drawn to the containment cells. The caustic malodor almost overwhelmed her now, burning her nostrils with its pungency as the end of the corridor loomed less than a dozen meters away and offered a glimpse awash with blue light into the next cavern chamber where lightning flashed and shadows spun vertiginously across every surface.

“I’m on a tight schedule which hinders me from delivering even a third of the hell he has incurred,” Elias seemed saddened by this, his tone adopting an unexpected wistfulness. “After my own hands, I trust yours to be the most capable of inflicting such retribution.”

Natalia nodded despite Elias’s inability to see the action from where he strode before her. Torture was indeed within her wheelhouse. Though she would have no issue with doing what Elias asked of her—she was, after all, going to induce cardiac arrest in the Cuban-harbored geneticist the first time around—she hadn’t initially planned on making von Blitzschlag’s death anything but efficient. Why was Elias so determined to deal as much pain as possible to the Nazi? They didn’t seem to have any personal history—

“Because he’s a Nazi, Natalia,” Elias coldly replied to her thoughts. “And despite looking the part of the perfect Aryan, I don’t particularly agree with Nazism’s clamoring for cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, and sexual genocide, even if it’s to ‘purify’ the collective conscience of humanity.” Elias abruptly came to a halt before her, causing Natalia to nearly stumble into him. He rounded on her, his eyes glinting and dog tags winking, and his already arctic tone sharpened, became like a blade of ice: “Moreover, I don’t enjoy knowing that I would have been marred with a bloody pink triangle superimposed with a mutant ‘M’ and laid out on a laboratory table in some ghastly camp to have the secrets of mutantkind and so-called ‘deviant’ sexuality ripped out of my body had I not possessed the manifold privileges I did at the time.”

Natalia’s eyes drifted subconsciously to the military identification tags that hung on a chain from Elias’s neck and rested upon the bed of his exposed pale gilt-haired breast. It was the closest she had ever been able to clearly observe them. Her mind flashed to nighttime Paris, to the image of Elias placing a kiss upon those very dog tags as he surveyed the electric city skyline from his penthouse dominating Avenue Montaigne three years prior. From her position atop a lower rooftop across the street, she had been incapable of reading them, but now, despite the dark, she could study them clearly for the first time. It was immediately apparent that they were not his own tags.

James B. Barnes. Serial number 32557038, immunized for tetanus in ’42, tetanus toxoid injected a year later in ’43, blood type B. Mr. G. M. Barnes, next of kin, residing at 160 State Street in New York, New York. Catholic.

Natalia’s attention flew from the dog tags as much by the feeling that she had observed something she perhaps should not have as by the subtle tensing of Elias’s broad shoulders beneath the leather of his catsuit. His gloved hand flew to the two thin metal plates, and he enclosed them in his fist. They did not look at one another for a long beat, casting their eyes askance in the dark until their gazes finally wandered back to meet.

“Natalia…” his face was tight, his voice a half-step away from vulnerable and a quarter-step away from threatening.

They stared at one another and shared a pregnant pause in the blue-wavering blackness. She had all the information she needed from those dog tags and his prior confession to ruin him in at least four different ways off the top of her head. Had Senator Joseph McCarthy still been in any significant position of power and been actively stoking the flames of his Lavender Scare, the number would have been higher. If she were who she had been three years ago, regardless of McCarthy’s clout at the time, she would have done them all. And he would have outed her to the K.G.B. in response. The silence stretched between them, grave and palpably filled with opportunity.

“A secret for a secret, Elias,” she cleared her throat. “Protection for protection.”

Elias’s silver eyes glimmered like moonlit water, peaks of polished steel flashing as they rode waves of gunmetal gray emotion. He was silent, and Natalia found herself recognizing for not the first time the otherworldliness of the man before her. She had seen… a lot. But Elias and his lunar silver irises that cast light in the dark tunnel like cold lanterns, like far-flung stars were on the far side of the weird spectrum. And so was she, Natalia Alianovna, the maybe-orphan-ballerina who killed and lied and sabotaged and spied on command and whose name no longer felt complete.

“If the baron has self-administered mutation-producing hormones to engender quasi-mutant powers, he will essentially be a mutant in everything but permanence, correct?” Elias swung his gaze over his shoulder toward the containment cells and the chamber that held them where von Blitzschlag continued his rampage against the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

“As far as what little research has been done on the matter has to say, yes,” Natalia nodded as Elias turned his face back to look at her. “Why?”

“Regardless of what mutation is possessed, every mutation in the known spectrum of mutantkind manifests from and is controlled by the same areas of the central nervous system,” Elias informed. “If one has the anatomical knowledge, the psychic prowess, and the psionic equivalent of a surgeon’s precision with a scalpel, they could telepathically inhibit another mutant’s abilities through the implantation of numerous psychic barriers to block the proper channels.”

“Can you do it?” Natalia asked.

“I have done it in the past,” Elias spoke carefully. “Though the baron will be the first non-mutant I will have attempted to suppress in such a way. Luckily, since his mutations aren’t permanent anyway and his death impends, a summary version of the more permanent procedure can be performed.

“Well, if you depower him,” Natalia said levelly as another surge of lightning lit up the chamber to Elias’s back and limned him in cyan light. “I’ll take him down without fear of being fried. Once that’s done, you can get whatever information you need, and I’ll make sure he never sees the light of day again.” Elias quirked a golden brow at her, and she added, “After torturing him. Extensively. Because he’s a Nazi. And Nazis all deserve to die. Agonizingly.”

“Splendid,” Elias clapped her on the shoulder and grinned, his white teeth flashing in the dark like his unearthly psionically-charged irises. “Well, I must say, Natalia, this is going to be a doddle.”

“I should hope,” she said as she prepared her semi-automatic for the upcoming fight. Just in case. She offered Elias an almost-smile and jerked her chin toward the cavern to spur them both into motion. “After all, what is a baron to a widow and a king?”

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