After what I'm sure was the longest period of rest I've had in my life, I was awoken with a slap to my face.

My wilted head veered off with whiplash. Before my sight had even cleared, I was aware of the heated prickling on my rouged cheek. I could feel the echo of bony fingers resounding on my face. "Mother... Fuck!" I spat, giving an injured whine.

Brought back to the land of the woken, my head lulled back into the hard back of a chair. Squinting with bleary eyes, I looked down at my arms and legs. I was secured to a metal chair by inbuilt leather straps at my wrists and ankles, and the chair was secured to the floor with concrete.

Around me were four grey walls; just like everywhere in the damned red room facility. Above me, a single bulb blinked and buzzed, dangling from the ceiling without any kind of lampshade. The light was dingy and didn't reach the cobwebbed corners of the dank room.

Cold air kissed my skin, and I became aware of the sound of dripping.

Finally, I directed my attention to the owner of the hand that had battered my face. Drowned in his shadow, I was met by the dimly lit complexion of Aleksander Lukin.

"And what do you call this?" He asked, waving a diamond ring under my nose, a fleering look on his face.

My eyes flicked down to my hand - lacking in a ring - and back up to his daggers glare.

"I don't know..." I lied through my teeth, breathing harshly, still half asleep.

"Guess again..." He stepped back a couple steps and smiled at someone behind me.

All of a sudden I was drowned by a deluge of water. Ice cold, probably imported from a nearby river or lake. I gasped and guttered on the water that entered my mouth an nostrils. Thrashing and gasping, I finally paid attention.

He threw the ring in a nondescript direction, eyesight obscured by water and the room drowned in darkness, I could keep track of the precious object. I only heard it tinkle as it hit the floor an was gobbled up by the dark recesses of the bland room.

"You've done nothing but fail!" His hand lashed my opposite cheek and my head flailed off to the other side. My head bashed into the back of the chair as he whacked it to one side. The water only served to worsen the blow, amplifying the density of the beating. I managed to repress my expression of pain to only a whimper and bit my lip. "But disobey!" I recovered, centralising my head and allowing gravity to naturally rearrange my hair. "You've never been any good!" My other cheek stung from the collision and my forehead throbbed as a bruise started to bubble up under the skin. "This is the last straw. You're the last of your division."

I could feel the hatred brewing in my stomach, the anger sizzling under my skin and the vengeance awakening in my nerve endings.

With nothing to lose, I verbally retaliated.

"What have I done?!" I rasped, still groggy from the chloroform that hadn't left my system. "My parents died in an arson attack, and it was your people who lit the bonfire under them!" I struggled in the seat until I could throw myself forwards as I spewed verbal abuse. "Seven!" My voice crackled in my throat. "I was seven when you ripped me from the only man I could call family! You lashed me!" Almost demonstratively, Aleksander slapped me across my face again, and I chomped down on my tongue accidentally as he did so. Groaning in pain, I summoned as much saliva as I could and spat out a glob of blood and spit on his face. "-beat me until I was your bitch! Until I was too terrified to talk..." And once I admitted to that fear, the quiver began to re-enter my voice and my eyes welled up with tears; the anger transmuting into sadness. "Too agonised to stand..." I rattled at the bonds securing my ankles to the chair. "I lost myself, my right to live a full life, to age, to have thoughts and feelings were forbidden! I was drop kicked into an adult world of murder, of torture and mind games!" And in all of my vitriol, pathos bled through, in the form of furious tears. "You tore my womanhood from me, my womb extracted from me! I slaughtered innocents! I fucked filthy men! And I killed my companions!" finally having dabbed the globule of spit and it's residual dripping line off his face with his silk hanky, he slapped me around again. I remained indignantly poised, glaring him down and taking the beating flawlessly. "When I found love, you washed his mind until it was a disintegrating sponge. Until he didn't remember me. He used me! Abused me!" I writhed in the bindings hatefully. "The first sign of true love..! My fiancé... You killed him! You killed Alexi... You killed him in cold blood!" I began to blub, bleating out a helpless sob. "The first man I truly loved, slaughtered the man I truly love..."

He have an amused chuckle and smirked at his lackies posted around the room, armed in case I tried escaping.

What was the point in trying run? I had nothing waiting for me outside of the facility except death by hypothermia.

"Why do you bother fighting it Natalia?" He soothed in a voice so sweet that it made me bitter to my core. "You've nothing left to lose. Don't you see it? Your sister agents are dead. You're alone. No family. No lover. No future. What's left for you? A frozen body clock, a tampered brain? You're as desirable as last year's rubbish."

And as much as I told myself I didn't care and didn't value his opinion, it still got under my skin and made me feel crushingly worthless.

"It's your fault! It's all your fault!" I screamed so loud that my voice became a croaky incoherent bellow. "I never asked for this! For this life!" I tossed my head back, trying to force back the tears into my eyes - blinking frantically - my diaphragm still twitched with the sobs I tried to rid myself of.

"My father gave it to you! Whether you like it or not!" He snatched my chin in his hand and made me look into his eyes. "You should be dead..!" He hissed. "You should've lived your ninety years and be in the ground; you ungrateful bitch!"

"Please..?" I whimpered. "Just end it then... You're right. You're right... I've nothing left to lose." Fidgeting in the seat, I managed to upturn my wrists, bearing them in a gesture of suicidal submission. "Please, one final favour?" I shut my eyes and braced myself for peace "Relieve me..." I was met with nothing out silence. "Please?" I urged. "Please?!"

The hand clawing at my chin smoothed across my cheek in an affectionate gesture that made my stomach twist and jerk. "Oh Natalia..." His drawl was unnervingly aloof for someone who'd just heard someone begging for death.

"Please?!" I beseeched, my eyes springing open - large, wide, manic. "I don't want to do it..." I begged breathlessly. "Not anymore... Just finish it..." Pleading was my final act of humiliation and weakness, but I wanted my out. "I don't want it. I don't want your kindness. I don't want to be spared. I don't want to be alive. I don't want to live like this..." I blurted all in one string of sobbed words.

"No."

My features were drowned with utter confusion. "What do you mean, 'no'?" I parroted in perplexion.

"You understand..!" He said almost reverently, triumph in his voice. "Natalia, I've been holding my breath since I clapped eyes on you..." He leant in close, practically nose to nose with me and grinned a predator's grin. "This is what true subordination looks like. Sacrifice. Honour. Obedience. You're not yet spent, you're only coming to use." He paced away, tugging at the lapels of his outrageously expensive suit.

"I'm not, I'm not!" I said just to be contrary, just to prove my point. "Just shoot me, please... Please?!"

"I still have use of you," he said casually, walking towards the door. "And I'm going to wring every last drop of use out of you..." Turning as he reached the door, turned into a silhouette by the surrounding light, he turned and said: "You're going back to Budapest."

The moment he left the room, another rag drenched in chloroform was clamped over my mouth, and the next time I was awake, I was in a chair in Faustus' surgery.

I was buckled down to the chair that had become so familiar to me. Even the smell of the room had become familiar to me: the smell of the old cracked leather, offensively pungent chemicals and the smell of coagulated sweat and.

The straps that held me down we're eating into my wrists, leaving pressure wrinkles on my dainty wrists - but not nearly enough pressure to out me out of my misery.

Above me hummed machinery, machinery that spelt my impending doom. I'd become well acquainted with what it did.

I thumbed though my memory, trying to ingrain certain thoughts into my head, in some ardent hope it wouldn't flush them all away. So much progress had been made in the years since I had last been in touch with the torture device.

"Ready, Natalie?" Came Faustus' eerie voice, ricocheting off all of the walls and echoing back into my ears.

I turned my head towards him to see him grin with his rotten teeth, the winkles of his face deepening as he did so. He clutched a lever in his dry and being old hand and pulled it down, triggering the mechanism to lock onto my head.

The scene that had played out so many times in my restless nightmares had come to life. Unfortunately the experience wasn't one I was going to wake from.

There were a few small zaps that burned my scalp and my cheek and I made a few gasping noises in coordination.

Realising the painful procedure wasn't going to be a quiet one, Faustus' grubby sausage fingers stuffed a rubber guard into my mouth. I gnashed he'd my teeth resistantly, but my mouth was plugged up all the same.

That's when the true pain started and I shrieked around the piece of plastic stuck in my mouth. And like sad slipping through my fingers I felt my memories get away from me and my identity start to slip away from me like leaves caught in the wind. And in the midst of my howling and agong, I white out.

I was grateful for that much.

"Natasha..." His old scratchy voice lulled me from my induced unconsciousness. "Natasha Romanoff?"

I could feel dried tears making my face sticky and the remaining feeling of breathlessness from sobbing and my throat felt raw.

"Yes sir?" I responded like a puppet, feeling trapped in my own mind - in a sphere of fear and confusion.

"Lukin wishes to see you, you will go to him," he instructed monotonously, powering down the machine.

And with another "yes sir" I got up and went on my way.

When I arrived in Lukin's office, he was awaiting me, an arsenal of goods at his feet.

"What do you know?" He requested to know.

"Service..." I retorted cooly.

"Good, now allow me to give you a goodbye present..." He stalked towards me and walked me back to the wall. Shoving his hand into my hair, he forced me back against it, jarring my head off the wall hard enough to make me wince.

His lips clamped over mine, but the collision with the wall was enough to undo the fragility of my newly programmed brainwashing. I remained unreactive until he pulled away. Knowing my own mind, I falsified the Catalonia of a freshly washed brain.

He handed me the duffle bag and case. "I'd been wanting to do that for the longest time... Shame what Faustus does takes the fight out of you..." He clucked his tongue. "Leave, Natasha - and know, if you fail, if you disobey, I will have you killed..."

I tried not to let the nervous quirk of my lip give away the game, and inflectionlessly said "Yes, sir."

A/N - It is really early in the morning, 1:30am, but I had the inspiration and I wanted to run with it! So finally, Nat is going to Budapest, and y'all know what that means!

Dedication goes to @thewinterstucky for writing a Stucky fanfiction after being inspired by 'Who Am I?' You should all go and check it out and show some love and support, it's called 'Resurrection'! X