Picture: Dariya Romanova

Music: "Second Waltz" by Andre Rieu

All rights go to their rightful owners.

----------

EIGHT

When the signal stopped in front of a large mountain right outside Hungary, in Serbian territory, Nat lands the Quinjet with ease, barely moving the snow on the ground. She, Maria, and I sneak out into the cold weather, wearing false HYDRA uniforms. "These should get us inside," Nat says, shoving a weapon in my direction. "I know how much you adore your bow, but take that in case. A bow will send up red flags since they know you were at the SHIELD base."

I nod, grumbling to myself about how much I'll miss the bow, but I shove the gun into the right hip holster anyways. She's right. She's always right. "Do you know anything about this place?"

She shakes her head, starting to walk down the ramp into the snow, her bright red hair dancing in the breeze. She really does look Russian here. She looks at home. "I do not. This place wasn't on any SHIELD database. We're in the dark."

As she finishes the briefing, she pulls a tube of red lipstick and applies some to her lips. "Um... Natasha? Do you really think this is a good time for that?"

"Anytime is a good time for lipstick, and trust me. It will come in handy later." She turns to Maria and I exiting behind her. "Are you sure you don't want to stay here, Hill? We're in enemy territory. You could be hurt, or worse."

Maria shrugs it off, trying to hide both her excitement and her anxiety under a cool exterior. "The Quinjet is set to auto-pilot out of here if we're taken either alive or... not. Don't worry. They won't get their hands on the SHIELD tech."

Natasha looks to me, and I give her a nod. Maria is like me. Too much like me. If you send her home packing, she'll just come anyways, and that'll probably get both her and us killed in the process. I take my pistol, loading it with several rounds. "Let's go find this girl."

Natasha takes the lead, edging out further into the cold, Serbian night. It's barely past four in the morning, and the sun hasn't risen yet. The dark blanket of stars above us give us little light to go by. The only thing we have to guide us are our instincts and intuition. Luckily for these gals, I am a master at both.

Natasha stops, holding her hand up in a signal to halt and be completely still. We obey, and she turns her head to the right, pointing her fingers in that direction. "Two guards on rotation duty on our two o'clock. Quick, hide behind the trees until they pass."

I make a quick jump behind some bushes as the two guards come towards us. One of them hears the rustling, pointing his flashlight over in our direction. "Did you hear that?" one of them asks the other in Slavic. "I could have sworn I heard something."

The other guard laughs, continuing down his path. "Come on, Sven. You are hearing things again. I told you not to drink all the vodka. Come on. I am done after this rotation. Let us go have some fun with the girl, shall we?"

I turn to Natasha behind the tree beside me. "Girl?" I mouth, and she nods, motioning for Maria and I to follow her as she trails the two guards at a safe distance.

"I heard she and the Soldier knew each other, and then they wiped him because he got too close, just like they did with the other Russian girl. What was her name?"

The guard with the flashlight replies, "Romanova. Natalia, I believe. One of the last great students of the Red Room."

I try to see Natasha's face, but she refuses to let me see it. Who was this soldier that Natasha knew? Why hadn't she mentioned him? But then again, we all have our secrets. We all have chapters we don't read aloud. Maybe this soldier, this man was one of hers.

"Whatever happened to the infamous Black Widow, Sven?" the other guard asks as they round the mountain's corner to come into view of a small, metal door.

Natasha holds her hand up once again, signaling for us to stop. The guard's voices fade after that. "How do we get in?" Maria whispers as we watch the guards show I.D. before being let in. "We don't have I.D."

"Yes, we do," Natasha replies. "Follow me. Act casual."

"Nat-!" I make a frustrated sound deep in my throat. "This woman will be the death of me."

Maria gives me a shove, forcing me ahead and behind Natasha. I walk nervously up to the door, and Nat knocks several times, just as the last two guards did.

When the door opens, a very confused man steps outside. "I thought they were the last patrol for the morning."

"We were added because of the recent SHIELD operatives in the area," Natasha replies in her native tongue, getting into character easily.

The man rolls his eyes. "Da, SHIELD. What a bunch of pests. Anyways, show me your I.D."

Natasha gives the man a flirty smile and grabs him by the coat collar. "You want some I.D.? I'll show you some." She pulls the man in for a brief but passionate kiss, making all of our eyes but hers go wide in surprise.

When she pushes him away, only moments later, the man gives a drunken smile and slumps down onto the snow, fast asleep. "Sweet dreams," Maria utters sarcastically. "Nice going, Tasha."

Natasha doesn't make a comment of it either way, just snatches his I.D. and hands it to me. "You are of the male persuasion. This is for you."

I take it from her hand as she pulls the guard's body over to the woords, joining us soon after. "Thanks... I think."

"Come, we must hurry. The guard will soon be found and the base will lock down. We have only a few minutes to get this girl and get the hell out of this place. Got it?"

I give her a nod. "Yep, got it."

Natasha grabs my shoulder, making me face her. "If we can't find her, then I will get us out of here, understand?"

"Understood, now let's stop wasting time and go look for the poor girl."

----------

{Dariya's P.O.V.}

Twenty minutes of clutching my bleeding shoulder before I hear anything outside. It's a small clank, and then the door opens. The Winter Soldier stands in the doorway, looking around with frazzled eyes. "Come with me," he orders. "We're packing up and moving."

I stand from my metal chair, walking over as ordered. He takes my arm, guiding me from the cell I was in. "Where are we going? Why are we leaving?"

The Winter Soldier gives no reply, only continues to walk down the hall with me. There are two guards who follow behind us, armed and looking very upset.

Great. Just great, I think to myself.

As we enter another room, suddenly, Winter Soldier pushes me aside, pulling out a small knife and stabbing the two guards who tailed us from my cell. They barely make a sound as Winter Soldier ends them, and I suddenly start to believe that I might be witnessing my last few seconds.

When he turns around, determined as ever, I walk back, hands extended. "James, don't do this. Please."

He looks out into the hallway without replying, checking both ways. "You have exactly three minutes before they realize that those guards are down. You have to make it to SHIELD by then."

My brows pull together. "What? SHIELD?"

He comes closer. "They're here. I've seen it on the security feeds. You have to get out while you have a chance." He looks down at me, gently placing a hand on my shoulder. "I remember you, Dariya Romanova. Let me help you escape before they..." He trails off, swallowing visibly.

I take his hand, my other pressed against my shoulder. "Come with me, James. Please. We can both get away from HYDRA. I can use my powers, you can use your training. We can do this together." I continue to beg him, knowing what HYDRA will do to my only friend if they catch him helping me, or worse, he lets me escape.

He hesitates, but nods slowly. "We have to move now. We have two minutes." He sheaths his knife back into his hip holster. "Follow me. Use your powers to detect if anyone is coming close, da?"

"Da." I smile for the first time in a long time, for once in my life, having a little hope that something good might happen to me. "What made you remember me, James?"

He turns to me slowly, answering with a broken voice. "You called me James. I guess something just clicked."

James and I continue cautiously down the HYDRA base hallway, making certain to be as careful as possible. We're like shadows, like ghosts in the Serbian mountains. I turn my powers up to use them to listen for voices, boot steps, the clicking of bullets against barrels of snipers. For a HYDRA base, it's fairly silent.

"Where did you say these SHIELD agents had broken in?" I ask after a few moments.

James replies in the same, hushed tone. "No one knows they're here yet. I saw them because, well, I'm highly trained to find irregularities. I saw a group of three who weren't acting like usual HYDRA agents in the upstairs compound. They're making their way down the stairs as we speak. If we can catch them, then we c-"

A spark of blue light comes to my eyes, a puttering signal like footsteps. "Footsteps," I reply, and James cuts himself short, pulling a gun from his back and aiming it at the incoming corner. He motions for me to stand back.

There isn't anything to hide behind, no rooms to duck into. We're in the longest stretch of grey concrete in the entire base. When two more HYDRA agents round the corner on a random patrol, James aims the gun at them, not speaking. They pull out their weapons, shouting, "Stand down, Soldier! Stand down!"

When James doesn't do as they say, one of them fires a round, nearly missing James and I. James then fires back, using two rounds to put two bullets in their heads, two distinct black pulses of light. Alarms start to sound, red lights flashing above our heads and red lines of light come to my attention from my powers. "Goddamnit," James muffles a curse. "Come on. We have even less time now." He reaches out for me, taking my hand and tugging me along.

We don't get very far until we hit a large warehouse area. The ceiling is hundreds of feet high, stairs are on the other side of us going up to the surface. The entire room is filled with weapons, crates of God knows what, and other things. The whole room is dark, occassionally glowing Slavic red from the blaring alarms. "There," James points to the other side of the room. "We get to those stairs and head all the way up to the surface."

I try to cover my ears after that as we make our way through the hoard of crates and weapons. My powers, once turned on, can oveerwhelm me. I have a hard time controlling them in situations such as these. Adrenaline allows me to see everything. The red pulse from the alarms, the blue puttering of boots on the ground, the grey clank of guns being loaded, and the sharp shouting of the HYDRA officials.

James turns to me as we move through the base. "Are you okay?"

I nod. "Da. Keep moving."

Before we get into the center of the room, I look to my left to see five, large life tubes, the kind James used to be kept in before they took him out of stasis. I walk closer, looking at the names on the tubes. They only say subject number 003 and their HYDRA classification. "Dariya," James says, walking up to me. "We have to go."

"Who are they?" I ask. "We should help them. They're prisoners of HYDRA, too."

James gives me a firm look, then glares at the tubes. "Trust me. They're not worth saving."

"We are," I mumble. "What makes you say that they're not worth saving?"

"Because they're just like me, but worse. They're the other Winter Soldiers."

I drop the topic as we keep moving. We make it all the way to the stairs when the room is bombarded by soldiers, all armed and ready to fire. "Go, go, go!" James shouts, pulling me from behind him and shoving me up the stairs as he returns fire in their direction.

"You're coming, right?" I ask as I climb the stairs, one flight of nearly ten.

"Da, just go!" He continues to fire, but soon runs out of bullets. He throws down his weapon, pulling another from his back.

James and I keep climbing up, glad to be dodging most of the fire. I don't think they have orders to kill us; we're too valuable an asset. When we get to the seventh flight, we hear a group of people on the stairs above us. "Oh, yeah!" a boyish voice shouts in... excitement? "We won't get caught, she said! Sure! You're so taking the crap for this one, Natasha!"

"Shut up, mudak!" a female Russian voice replies.

When I look up, I see three people dresed in HYDRA garments. There are two women, one man. One of the women looks very young, possibly just slightly younger than me, with short brown hair. The other is clearly Russian, her bright red hair flying around her face as she aims her pistol at the men below that are now firing at both James and I and them. The man looks eerily familiar, his dark blond hair is disheveled and wild as he smiles, firing back.

"What the hell?"

James pushes me forward. "Those are the SHIELD agents. Keep moving, Dariya!"

I do as he says, slightly worried about the success of our escape. I had heard much of the formitable enemy that SHIELD is to HYDRA. I had heard of their leader, Peggy Carter, and how she aided the defeat of the first leader of HYDRA, The Red Skull. I read how Nick Fury had taken out several key bases in the last few years, after just taking over for Carter. I read how their agents were the best, and were very tough to beat.

But these three lunatics? These three looked like they just came from high school. How were they going to save themselves, let along James and I?

I make it to the top and come eye to eye with the young man who was just firing at HYDRA. He gives me an awkward smile, glancing to my shoulder. "That's my bad, sorry!"

"You're the one who shot me?" I shout.

"Do you want to be rescued or not?" the redhead asks. "We don't have all day."

I turn to look down the stairwell to James. He's fighting off the agents who are making their way towards us, barely keeping them off him. "James! Come on!"

The redhead leans over the rails beside me. "James?" James' head turns up to see her, distracted by her voice. Her eyes grow wide and she places a hand over her mouth. "James! James, it's me!"

"Natalia," he whispers, a small smile coming to his face.

I see a flash of grey before I hear the gunshot. James' face turns from a smile to shock as he places a hand on his stomach. It's pouring red. "No!" I shriek, and the blond man has to hold me back from jumping down the stairwell to get to my only friend. "James, no!"

"Go!" he shouts back, falling to the ground. He waves me back, trying to force a smile. "Go without me."

"No!"

The girl James called Natalia turns away, choking on tears. "We... We have to go."

"Now!" the girl with the brown pixie shouts as she returns HYDRA fire. "We don't have long!"

The blond man pulls me away from James as I see HYDRA overtake him. The last I see of my only friend is that of him passing out from blood loss. He could be dead for all I know, but the next time I see him, if there even is a next time, I know he won't be my James any longer.

END.