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The room was still dark when Maria started to feel her limbs again. Her wrists were tied together with the rope that hung her from the celling. As she opened her eyes slowly, she scanned the room. The only sources of light were small cracks on the wooden door of the room she was in. Maria pointed her feet to feel how far off she was from the floor. As it turned out, even with her pointed foot, she’s at least 10 inches above the surface.
She struggled to move much, her whole body felt sore. Maria didn’t remember exactly how she got there. All she remembered was going on a SHIELD mission with Natasha and a small team of agents, getting to the location, and entering a building where they had to fight some guards. She concluded that she must’ve been knocked out during the fight.
Maria used one foot to run across the opposite thigh to feel for the small knife she strapped on earlier. She felt nothing but the fabric of her suit. They must’ve stripped me of all my weapons, she thought.
Her theory was proven correct when she couldn’t feel any of the other weapons she stored all over her body.
Then, the wooden door creaked open. A shorter man accompanied by three much bigger men entered the room. She assumed the shorter one was their leader because he walked in front of them.
One of the men turned on the lights of the room with a switch near the door. The sudden brightness overwhelmed Maria’s eyes that had adjusted to darkness, forcing her to shut her eyes before she was able to open them again.
Once she adjusted to the light, the one of the men walked up to her. Maria stared deeply into his eyes, keeping herself calm the entire time. He ended up grabbing her face and pulled it upwards. She felt his fingers sink into her cheeks and jaw as he lifted her by the head, releasing most of the weight off her wrists.
Maria grabbed the higher part of the rope and used her core strength to pull herself up. She swiftly wrapped around the man’s torso, and in a quick move, she threw him into the area behind her. Maria couldn’t see what exactly happened but there was a loud crash of wood in the area she had thrown him in so she could guess that he was knocked out.
A second man was quick to react, landing a hard punch to Maria’s stomach. Even if she felt pain, she wouldn’t show it. She wouldn’t want to show these men any signs of weakness or even emotion.
The third man handed the previous one a device that Maria didn’t recognize. He turned it on, a blue spark of light emerging. As it hit Maria’s body, an electric pulse ran through her. She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her jaw tightly.
When the man finally pulled the device away, quickly learning from their past mistake, the other tied her legs together by the knees.
The shorter man stepped forward, tracing a finger up Maria’s body before stopping at her chin. He pulled her jaw closer to him before asking, “What is a pretty girl like you doing in my building?”
Maria kept her mouth shut. She looked at him without an ounce of any facial expression. “Let me ask again, why are you here and who sent you?” the man asked, increasing the pressure on Maria’s jaw.
They stayed in silence for three long minutes. The shorter man turned around and took the electric rod to shock Maria again. Despite the device being at its highest setting, Maria didn’t give them a reaction.
He resorted to slapping and hitting her in various parts of her body while repeating his questions. He wouldn’t stop until blue and purple bruises were left in spots of the attacks. Maria swallowed the pain and kept it from being visible on her face.
The man grew tired of Maria’s quietness, stepping away to get some air. One of his guards entered the room holding a tablet. The guard whispered something in the shorter man’s ear that caused him to grin.
He took the tablet and returned to Maria. “Listen girl, if you’re not going to talk, fine. Just so you know, not long from now, you’re going to end up like her.” He turned the tablet around, revealing live footage from a security camera in another room somewhere in the building.
Maria quickly recognized the prisoner inside as Natasha. Her heart dropped and body tensed when she saw the state her wife was in.
Natasha was strapped to the wall with metal restraints, her arms being held over her head and legs spread slightly apart. The top of her suit had been zipped open and her chest was exposed. Her whole body covered and dripping in her own blood from the amount of cuts and stab wounds she had.
Maria was finally able to breathe again when she saw Natasha’s head move slightly.
She’s alive.
“See, she refused to tell us the things we wanted to know. So we had to use some more forceful methods,” the man explained. “Very stubborn, though, this one.” He pointed at Natasha through the screen. “She might not last much longer.”
The man held to screen up for Maria to see what was going to happen next. A guard entered Natasha’s room with a small case in his hands. He opened it on a small table and took out a syringe filled with some kind of liquid.
He sticked it into Natasha’s shoulder, injecting it into her. “What are you injecting her with?” Maira asked furiously.
“Just a paralyzing drug. Nothing harmful,” the man holding the tablet said in a very flat tone.
The guard in Natasha’s room then used an electric rod to shock her awake. Natasha’s eyes opened with a scream that escaped her throat. When her breathing steadied, the guard held a knife to her body with a tight grip around the handle.
Maria couldn’t clearly hear what they were saying, but it seemed to her that he asked Natasha some questions or maybe even threatened her. Natasha yelled something at him. And judging by the way she said it, she was probably cursing at him.
The blade slid over Natasha’s body, ending up at the side of her hip. Maria had to turn her head away just as the blade touched Natasha’s body. She couldn’t bare to see her wife get tortured, especially when she’s just as helpless as she was.
The guard sliced into her, leaving a large cut that stopped half way down her thigh. Even though Natasha’s body was paralyzed, she could still feel every once of pain inflicted onto her. She let out a short scream, trying to suppress the feelings of torture.
Hearing the screams of pain was more than enough to make Maria feel sick to her stomach. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what else they could’ve put Natasha through.
Tears started to build up in the corner of her eyes as the screams didn’t stop. The feed was then abruptly cut off, making the man confused. He attempted to reconnect it, but it didn’t work.
He soon heard gunshots outside of the room before a group of SHIELD agents came barging in.
They came in with ICER rays, special guns that only puts the victims to a sleep-like unconscious state. The three guard men were shot first before the assumed leader was.
Leading the team was Agent Coulson. He ran up to Maria and used a small knife to cut the ropes loose. “Is every other agent out yet?” Maria asked when she reached the ground again. “No, we’re still looking for three more, including Romanoff,” informed Coulson.
“I have to find her. Do you have an approximate location?” Maria walked out of the room with Coulson. “My team is telling me she may be somewhere in the east wing, over there.” Coulson pointed at a hallway across them.
“Thank you, Coulson. I’ll meet you at the extraction point.” Maria turned and ran into the hall. She looked into each room she came across, but all of them were empty.
After what felt like forever, she finally heard noise coming from one of the rooms. The guard had left the room in a hurry when he heard about the ongoing attack on the building. He carelessly left the door open, letting Maria enter easily.
In all her years of working as a SHIELD agent, this was the most unbearable scene to look at. A pool of Natasha’s blood covered the floor and had splattered onto the wall. Her hair was a complete mess with some of her red curls covering her face.
Maria wasted no time in breaking the restraints with the tools on the table in the room. As soon as she did, Natasha’s body collapsed into her arms as she caught her just in time. Maria’s clothes were soaked in her wife’s blood, but that was the last thing she cared about. She quickly zipped her suit back up to apply more pressure to her opened wounds.
Natasha groaned as Maria moved her body to be able to lift her up, simultaneously checking her pulse which was beating much faster than it should.
With Natasha now in her arms, Maria sprinted to the extraction point as fast as she could, whispering words to Natasha as they went.
“It’s okay now. You’re going to be fine, I promise. Just hold on for me, okay? We’re almost there,” she said even though she’s nearly out of breath.
When the jet the extraction team brought was in her sight, agents came rushing to get them. “I need medics! She’s lost at least two or three pints of blood.”
A medical agent approached them and placed Natasha on a stretcher. Maria followed them into the jet where she collapsed into a seat.
The hanger door closed soon after and flew into the sky. The jet was quick to land on top of a much larger plane and all the agents got on board.
Maria followed the medics that had Natasha into the medical room that was on the plane. She stood by her side the whole time the medics worked on her.
———
When Natasha woke up nearly an hour later, she felt Maria’s hand over her own and saw that her wife was sleeping next to her with her head on her lap. She smiled at the sight before shaking Maria awake. “Babe, hey, wake up.”
Maria hummed as she woke up, sitting up straight to meet Natasha’s eyes. “Nat…” Maria leaned forward to tenderly kiss her wife.
When she pulled away, Natasha tried to sit up from her current laying position but was stopped by Maria’s hands that held her down by the shoulders. “Don’t move,” she commanded. “Medics counted eight stab wounds and more cuts than I can count on both hands. You’re not gonna want to open the stitches. And you’ll be off the field until a full recovery.”
Natasha couldn’t help but smirk at Maria, she loved it when her wife spoke to her in her commander voice. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Pain level?” Maria asked. “Uhh, mostly three but joints are five,” answered Natasha. “Good. We’ll be landing in about thirty minutes.”
Natasha didn’t even know they were still on the plane so she tilted her head and asked, “We’re still in the air?”
Maria nodded in responds. “Yes, but May’s flying skills are so great you wouldn’t even know.”
Natasha giggled lightly. “She is good,” she whispered.
“Do you need anything?” Maria asked with a hand gliding over Natasha’s arm. “No, I’m okay,” replied Natasha. “But could you please stay with me?” she added. “Of course,” Maria said softly as she curled up next to her wife in the little space they could share in the small bed and kissed her all over her face.
“I love you.”