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The house was silent, the blanket of night muffling sound but not thought, pushing most of its inhabitants into sleep or quiet contemplation. Natasha hadn’t even turned on the lights when she went into the small room with the computer equipment and data, the screen she turned on providing more than enough illumination.
Strangely, it was easier for her to relax here, in this refuge for Widows. The woods around the house were deep and empty of everything except the creatures who naturally lived there, and the alerts and traps those who lived in the house set. The house itself was full of other Widows, who had some of the same alertness, the same paranoias drilled into them, and while she would never let her guard down completely, she had less fear here of outside threats, unexpected attacks. It wasn’t exactly safe, but it was comforting knowing she was among people who took their protection as seriously as she did hers.
The screen in front of her glowed and flickered as she ran and reran silent recordings, watching every angle of the security footage multiple times. She studied each intently, pausing it here and there, running it back to go over a moment again, looking at every movement, each small flick of the eyes, twitch of the face. She’d run these recordings so many times she practically had them memorized but she still couldn’t find what she sought. She allowed herself a small moment of frustration and scrubbed at her face with her sleeves, knowing the answer had to be here, if only she could see it.
She missed the quiet steps approaching the door to the room, but she couldn’t miss the voice that spoke, a second before her hands came away from her face. “It is late. You might consider sleeping.” Melina spoke quietly from the door, as though trying to avoid breaking the night with sound.
She didn’t come into the room but her eyes took in the empty glass and plate on the table that had been full when they came into the room, the active computer equipment generating the flickering glow as the recording she’d been watching reached the end and restarted, and Natasha’s slight dishevelment, the last only visible to the very small group of people familiar with Natasha who also had the training to see it.
Natasha turned towards her, saw her taking in everything in the room, and acknowledged her presence with a small tilt of her head, enough to indicate she could come in the room. Melina took the gesture in and stepped fully into the room, coming over to look at the screen but stopping far enough away that she wasn’t encroaching on Natasha’s space.
Natasha observed her closely, watching her face as she absorbed the recording and recognized it, scrutinizing Melina’s reactions as closely as she’d been studying the screen. There was a small movement in her face, not really an expression, more of a minute tightening around her mouth and eyes, something that wouldn’t be noticeable if Natasha hadn’t been watching so closely. It was there for only an instant then it was gone quicker than it had come.
Melina dismissed the screen as unimportant and refocused on Natasha. “Staring at screens in the dark makes your eyes tire more quickly. You should turn on a light.” She started to turn back towards the door, her hand stretching towards the light switch, when Natasha’s voice made her pause.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what I did wrong that day.”
Melina turned back to Natasha, the light switch momentarily forgotten. She said nothing though, just looked at her evenly, waiting.
“He knew it was me from the moment I stepped through the door of his office. I’ve been going through the footage trying to figure out what I did to give it away. I can’t see it.” She tasted something bitter in her mouth with those final words. They weren’t a concession of defeat but something too close to it for her peace of mind.
“He is dead. What does it matter now?” Melina’s voice was practical and something about the very calm of it seemed to bump up against something inside Natasha, hitting a button she didn’t know was still there until this moment.
“I’m usually better than that. I have to be in order to do my job and survive. I need to know what I did so I can do better .” The anger in her words surprised even her.
“Be unbreakable?” Melina’s eyebrow raised in challenge, the most expression she had shown so far.
“So I can stay alive.” She tried to say the words in a flat tone but even she had to admit they had a slight edge to them.
Melina looked at her for a long moment then her eyes flicked to the screen where the recording still played. She moved closer, going around Natasha and reaching for the controls, stopping the video and beginning the process of shutting the equipment down.
“When he unveiled me, Dreykov said ‘when you look into the eyes of a child you have raised, no mask in the world can hide them’. I don’t know what I did that made him recognize me.” The words were barely a whisper.
Melina shut the screen off and her response came nearly as quietly in the now darkened room. “He was an intelligent man, capable of making connections others didn’t or couldn’t see. I don’t think he recognized you as yourself initially. He just knew you weren’t me and then made the connections from there.”
“How could he know that so quickly?” The question was quiet but sharp.
“I watched that same footage, you know, everything we could recover, I’ve seen it all. I saw the footage of Yelena strapped down in medical while they prepared to cut open her skull.” There was something pained in her voice. “I saw you letting those girls nearly kill you because you were trying so hard not to hurt them, knowing they were under his control.”
“I wasn’t letting,” a hand touched her shoulder lightly, cutting off the words.
“Natashka, I have seen you fight. Lie to yourself if you must, but not to me, not about this. You did not fight the way you could have because you were trying not to kill them. You have years of experience in actual combat and the ability to think freely for yourself. They didn’t. It was one of the limits of the technology. They can’t be more creative than they were told to be.”
There was no reply, just the darkness between them so Melina continued. “I watched the footage and I noticed when you were disguised you moved as I did all those years ago.”
“You still move the same.”
“No.” She was definite. “I move the same on the surface but Dreykov knew me too, possibly better than you. He had decades of intimate contact as I was one of his favorites.”
Natasha shuddered under the hand still on her shoulder and Melina’s grip tightened, somehow signaling sympathy while warning her to stay quiet.
“You knew how I moved then. You studied it, emulated it, remembered it. You didn’t have the time to study how I moved after,” she broke off for a moment, started again, “after we finished the mission. I moved differently then.”
“Because of the bullet to your shoulder?”
“Because my hearts had been ripped out.” There was something unfiltered and raw in how she said the words, like they were being pulled out of her by a wire.
Natasha was suddenly glad for the darkness preventing them from seeing each other’s faces. She had no idea what her own expression looked like but she didn’t want to see Melina’s just then.
“He knew. He knew . I did all I could not to let it show. He was a cruel man, in many ways, and he enjoyed knowing. He enjoyed knowing and using that knowledge for further cruelties, acts and gifts that looked like favoritism and rewards to anyone else.”
Something about the word “gifts” sparked a thought in Natasha’s mind and she said with certainty, “The photo album.”
“Yes, a gift from him. Meant to remind me. Remind me that I was a mouse in his cage and I ran on his wheel at his bidding, subject to his orders, only allowed whatever he gave, which he could also take away. You did not break, Natasha. Nothing you did could have told him it was you, except that he knew it was not me, and so the only other person it could be was you. Not an error on your part, but on mine because I didn’t warn you. I’m sorry but it wasn’t a thing I could have found words for then.” Her hand on Natasha’s shoulder loosened, then squeezed again briefly before lifting away. “I’m glad you survived.”
Natasha wasn’t sure she was talking about Dreykov’s office anymore. She felt like asking so many questions, using this darkness as cover for all the things she wanted to know but only one was able to get past her lips as she sensed Melina begin to pull away. “Was it real for you?”
She knew by the indrawn breath Melina had heard the question and she sensed the woman’s attempt to withdraw from the room halt.
“Yes.” If Natasha hadn’t been holding her breath, she wouldn’t have heard that quiet word.
“It was real for me. All of it, by the end. It was real.” Melina stood still, halfway between Natasha and the door. “We were taught we could never be mothers, that they had taken that from us when we graduated. I wasn’t a very good mother; I never knew how to be. I have two daughters, who I have hurt and betrayed and who suffered irreparable harm because of my actions. But it was real.”
She stepped out of the room, her silhouette briefly visible as a darker shape against the dark hallway, and went quietly down the hall.
Natasha sat and began to breathe again, deliberate and slow breaths. When it seemed as though she was alone again in this part of the house, she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, letting her thoughts review the conversation she’d just had with the same intense scrutiny she’d used for the recordings.
She didn’t jump when the hall light came on unexpectedly, but she was still startled by it, looking up to find Melina coming back in the room, carrying some sort of bundle, which she deposited on the table next to the empty plate and cup. Those she scooped up as soon as her hands were free and went back out, leaving Natasha to look curiously at the pile of cloth on the table. It appeared to be a blanket and…socks? She didn’t touch them, merely looked at them in confusion.
Melina returned again, carrying a plate and cup, possibly the same ones she’d just left with, but now the cup was full of liquid and the plate held a sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly, Natasha’s favorite. She set them down again on the spots just vacated before she stepped back and looked at Natasha, her hands started going to her hips in an old familiar gesture before she stopped herself and left them at her sides.
“It is late and the house is cold. If you must sit in the dark, at least be sensible about it.” She turned and started to leave the room without waiting for a response, but in the light from the hall, Natasha could see now what she meant about how differently she moved. It hadn’t been noticeable before because she hadn’t known how to look.
Natasha considered what she could say, something that was true, that would reassure her in some way. She felt like she needed to, at least a little. “I’ll go to bed soon.”
Natasha chose her words carefully, as the older woman paused in the doorway. “Thank you, Melina.” Somehow, the way she shaped her name seemed to hold another word inside it, one she couldn’t say just now, maybe not ever again, but in that moment, she meant it, and she saw by the slight relaxation in her shoulders that Melina had heard it and understood. Then she moved on and was out of sight.
Natasha put the socks on, grateful for the warmth on her cold feet.