Calina hummed along to the tune playing through her earbuds as she entered her apartment building. Of the hundreds of tracks she'd listened to over the past few weeks, she'd found 46 that she'd liked enough to add to her playlist. And of those 46, this one was by far her favourite.

Her favourite.

The concept was still so new and exciting that it made her smile.

That smile dropped when she noticed the resident of 2C shuffling towards the elevator. When the elderly lady had dropped her bag the other day, Calina's first instinct had been to pick it up and help her, but her years of conditioning had blocked the altruistic impulse before she could move a muscle. By the time she'd shaken off her training, another neighbour had already come to the rescue. Calina had been gifted with a sour look from the do-gooder, and she was left with a feeling of shame and guilt every time she encountered the lady from 2C.

Not wanting to share a ride with the source of that shame and guilt, Calina pushed open the door to the stairwell and jogged up the six flights to her floor.

Where she was greeted with another source of shame and guilt - the petite blond woman leaning against her apartment door.

What was she doing here?

The outfit she was wearing was...unexpected. An eclectic mis-mash of colours and fabrics that Calina would never have thought to pair together. Although, to be fair, like her taste in music, her fashion sense was only just starting to evolve. So far she'd struggled to move away from her usual black, but she had developed a fondness for expensive leather and silk and cashmere - sumptuous fabrics that she loved to run her hands over and which felt decadent against her skin. She carried her latest online purchase under her right arm - a satin camisole and a pair of wool wide-leg pants - and she'd been looking forward to trying them on this evening.

But it looked like her plans had changed.

"What are you doing here?" she asked her visitor.

The clothing may have been different, but the cool, assessing eyes that trained on Calina were very familiar. "What? I can't come visit my favourite sister?"

Calina rolled her eyes. "I'm not your favourite." She's wasn't her sister either. But the two of them were bonded by something far more powerful than blood.

"You're my favourite today," was the reply.

Calina raised an eyebrow. "Which means you want something."

"Busted."

"What's going on?" Calina asked.

"Can we talk somewhere more private?"

As if to underscore the lack of privacy, the elevator doors opened and her neighbour stepped out.

Matthew.

The lawyer.

The very attractive lawyer.

And the blind man who could perceive more than he was letting on.

"Let's go out," she suggested to her visitor. "There's a nice coffee shop a block away."

"What about your apartment?"

"It's too messy."

That wasn't true. There wasn't enough...stuff...for it to be messy. But it was her space - a little piece of the world she could call her own - and she was slowly filling it with the things she liked. Making it into a home, and planning her future within its wall.

The thought of her past invading it was...unpleasant.

Luckily, Matthew cut off any objection her 'sister' might have had. "Hi," he said in greeting, his voice warmer that she'd ever heard it. "Are you talking about The Hideout on 10th? I like that place too."

"Yes," she replied, grabbing her sister's arm and practically pulling her down the hallway. "Goodbye, Matthew."

He tilted his head and she could feel the confusion radiating off him. "Goodbye."

"Rude!" her sister complained as the elevator doors closed, blocking them from her neighbour's view. "I didn't get a chance to say hello."

And I hope you never do, Calina thought.

———

They didn't speak again until they were inside the coffee shop. Calina had discovered the place her first week in Hell's Kitchen and had fallen in love with it. She loved the bustle of people coming and going, the comfy arm chairs by the fire in the corner, the oversized mugs, and the aroma of freshly baked brownies.

But what she loved the most was the feeling she got when she took a seat by the window, sipped on her drink and just watched the world go by. It felt so normal.

She felt normal in this place.

Just a stranger among many, wiling away the hours.

She was loathe to introduce her past to this special place - almost as much as her apartment - but she'd panicked a bit upon seeing Matthew. She was struck by the urge to get her sister - and the secrets they shared - as far away from him as possible. There was more to him than met the eye. And until she figured what it was exactly, she needed to keep her distance.

She took a sip of her foam-topped spiced toffee latte, eyeing her companion as she did the same, curious what her reaction would be to the indulgent drink.

"Ugh," was the verdict. "How can you like that? It's so sweet."

"I like it because its sweet," Calina replied. "Because it's frivolous and unnecessary and not nutritionally valuable."

"So its a rebellion."

She shrugged. "I guess so."

"I get it."

Judging by her loud and completely indiscrete outfit, Calina figured she did.

A few moments more passed in companionable silence. It was nice to be with someone she didn't have to pretend with. Someone who knew her, and everything she'd been through. The weight of their past settled over them like a blanket, one woven from trauma and pain; oppressive and painful, but comforting in its familiarity.

But as the minutes passed Calina started to feel anxiety creeping in at the edges. She needed to know what this visit meant - and what help was needed from her. She placed her drink down on the table and leaned back in her chair. "Okay. Spill it. What's going on?"

Yelena Belova shrugged and offered her a sad smile. "The Widows need you back."

———

The emergency lights strobed in flashes of red, and the floor lurched underfoot as the Red Room slowly fell from the sky. But Calina had no thoughts of saving herself. She had been given a command - kill the Black Widow.

The traitor, Natasha Romanov.

Calina spun and kicked at Romanov's legs. The older widow jumped up to avoid the attack, then stumbled forward as Anya landed a punch to her back. The Widows circled her, moving closer. The traitor was outnumbered. She would be dead in moments-

But then...an explosion...a red mist, stinging her eyes...

Calina woke with a gasp, her heart thundering in her ears. She pawed at the lamp on her bedside table, exhaling in relief when she found the switch and light flooded the room.

Light which proved she was in her own bed.

In her own apartment.

Not there.

She collapsed back on the mattress and scrubbed her face with her hands. The nightmare was always the same, her brain tormenting her with the memory of the worst moment of her life. The moment of awakening. The moment when the fog of mind control lifted and she grasped just how violated she'd been.

Used, and manipulated, and sent out in the world to do horrible things against her will.

Again and again and again.

She sat up and swung her legs to the side of the bed. She wouldn't be getting any more sleep tonight - she never did after one of those dreams. So she padded to her bathroom, stripped off her slightly damp pyjamas and hopped in the shower.

She tried to kid herself that she was merely washing off the sweat induced by the nightmare. But the truth was, she always felt...dirty...after one of those dreams. Like a layer of grime covered her, particles of shame and revulsion clinging to her pores.

The shower helped a bit. But the fresh air and the night sky helped more.

Once dried and dressed, she stepped into the shoes by her door but left her cardigan where it was - draped over the arm of the couch. She loved wrapping herself in the thick, cosy layer of baby-soft wool but not on a night like tonight, when the scorching heat of the day had barely dissipated and a blanket of humid moisture replaced the air.

Pointedly ignoring the dossier that now sat on her kitchen table, she slipped out of the door and up to the roof.

When the comforting skyline of her new home came into view, when the warm breeze danced around her, when she tipped her head back and saw the tapestry of stars overhead...only then did her breathing truly even out.

After deciding to leave the other Widows and go it alone, she'd had her pick of literally any city on earth to live. And she'd opted for New York. She'd had a mission here several years ago and had been seduced by the rich vitality of the place. The way it seemed to have a life of its own that transcended its citizens. She loved the anonymity it afforded, the way a person could get swallowed up and lost among the 8 million other inhabitants. And she loved the way the city embodied the American dream - the notion that a person could make anything of themselves here.

So yeah, choosing to live in New York had been an easy call, for many reasons.

But choosing this particular apartment building, had been down to one reason and one reason only - the rooftop access.

She only truly felt free when she was up high under the vast expanse of the sky, no walls in sight, no barriers keeping her contained. The ability to climb one short flight of stairs and step out onto this roof at any time of the day or night was a gift she would never take for granted.

She breathed deeply as she paced along the length and breadth of the space, the repetitive motion banishing the last lingering traces of her nightmare. It wasn't surprising that the dream had come tonight. There was usually no trigger for it that she could discern, but Yelena's unexpected visit had brought everything in her past bubbling to the surface.

The dossier that she'd spent an hour studying before falling asleep also hadn't helped.

Yelena had handed her the file in the coffee shop after asking her to come back. "It's only for one job," she'd explained. "I wouldn't ask if we weren't desperate. I know you wanted out." Her words were tinged with contempt.

Calina sighed. Yelena had never understood her decision, had always made Calina feel guilty for wanting to leave her past behind. "I always said I would help if you needed me. If there was a Widow who needed me."

"There is. It's Katya."

"You found her?" Calina leaned forward. Very few of the Widows had been present in the Red Room when it went down. Most had been out on assignment, and Yelena and the others had been tracking them down one by one in order to administer the counter-agent to the mind control serum.

Melina Vostokoff - a former Widow - had created an unlimited supply of the antidote. A way to make amends for her part in creating the mind controlling serum. So now it was just a matter of finding the other women and freeing them. They'd been pretty successful over the past few months, but a few of the Widows were so deep undercover that locating them had proven difficult.

Like Katya.

She had 'graduated' the red room in the same class as Yelena and Calina. That hadn't made them friends by any stretch. They weren't allowed to form those kinds of bonds - they were too busy being pitched against each other. But they were bound together by shared trauma, and that fostered a certain respect between them. A feeling of solidarity.

It had nagged at Calina that she had left the Widows before Katya had been found.

She would absolutely help get her back.

"We found her," Yelena confirmed.

"What do you know?"

"She's embedded with the Japanese ambassador in South Korea. Dreykov was planning to reignite hostilities between the two countries, to weaken their growing economies. Katya's playing bodyguard, and apparently feeding misinformation to the diplomat and and stoking his latent resentment."

"She was always good at that."

All of the Widows had the same basic training. They'd all mastered the same set of skills that made Widows so formidable - hand-to-hand combat, acrobatics, weapons training, espionage and more. But along the way, each Widow found their 'speciality' - an aspect of training that they particularly excelled at. Trainers would then hone those abilities and handlers would tailor their missions around them.

Yelena's specialty lay in killing. She had a sniper's precision, and a ruthlessness which made her a formidable assassin.

Katya was adept at manipulation. Finding a target's weakness and exploiting it. Or nurturing it, depending on the objective.

Anya - another one of their classmates - was a computer genius and master hacker.

Calina was an expert at infiltration. Deep undercover work. Her looks were adaptable to multiple different disguises. She was an uncanny mimic of accents and voices. She spoke multiple languages fluently...and the Red Room had systematically and completely wiped her innate personality, until she was the perfect blank slate. A barren field in which any persona could take root.

"What's our in?" Calina asked.

"We've got to hit the ambassador's house and corner Katya there. It's our only option - there are too many variables outside. But the place is a fortress with a private army of guards. We need someone who can get in discretely, and then get out again with minimal disruption. If it turns into a gunfight we risk exposing the Widows."

They were all flying under the radar of the World's governments. Romanov had kept their existence a secret after the Red Room fell, and now they were operating independently, trying to keep out of reach of the Sokovia Accords.

Sparking off a diplomatic incident would definitely put them in reach.

"So who do you need me to be?" Calina asked.

"Erin Brownly, personal assistant to the ambassador. You're a similar height and build and we can use the nano mask to match her face. The trick is the voice. She speaks fluent Japanese and Korean, but with a British accent. There are a few recordings on the thumb drive in here." Yelena dug out a brown envelope from her satchel and slid it across the table.

Calina glanced inside to find a dossier on Brownly and a USB stick. "It shouldn't be a problem."

Yelena huffed out a laugh. "Only you would say that. Its why we needed to bring you in on this. But I'm...I'm sorry. For what its worth."

Calina was surprised. Maybe she had imagined the contempt from before. Maybe Yelena did understand. Or was at least trying to.

Either way..."Its worth a lot. But you don't need to apologise. I agreed to help when needed - I want to help-"

"But I know you wanted to go and build a boring life-"

"I never said boring," Calina objected.

"-in your boring apartment, next to your boring neighbour."

"He's not boring!"

Yelena raised an eyebrow, and a slow smile overtook her face, making her look almost impish. It was such a change from the steely, cold Yelena of the past that Calina barely recognised her. It looked like Calina wasn't the only Widow who was uncovering her true nature from beneath the Red Room's conditioning.

And Yelena's true nature appeared to be a troublemaker.

"Oooh, Calina has a crush! Tell me everything."

And a gossip.

Calina groaned. "I don't have a crush."

"Why not? He's pretty cute, if you like that tall, bland and built look."

Calina held back her instinctive scoff. He wasn't cute. Cute was for puppies and boyband members. Matthew was handsome. An old-fashioned term, but it fit. He was classically handsome. With his height and his broad shoulders and his sharp, stubbled jaw and his deep, measured voice...

But it wasn't his features that made him interesting. Good-looking men could be very boring, Calina knew that first hand. It was the other details that she'd noticed that made him distinctly not-bland. "There's something about him-"

"I knew it!"

"Would you listen!" Calina laughed, and realised she was enjoying herself. When she'd seen Yelena outside her apartment earlier she'd been braced for another lecture. Another guilt-trip.

She hadn't expected to laugh and joke with her. It was almost like they were true sisters.

Yelena smiled in response. "Sorry, go ahead."

"There's something strange about him," Calina explained. "About the way he moves when he doesn't think anyone's watching. With a confidence and purpose, as if he can see. And the other day, I kind of...reacted...when he got too close, and he blocked my attack. Grabbed my arm as if he knew where it was - and he was strong. He also gets hurt a lot. Bruises on his face, and he holds himself a certain way when his chest or back is sore..."

Calina tailed off as she noticed Yelena's frown. "What?" she asked nervously.

"You've been watching him a lot, then."

She had. She could admit that.

The first time she'd really noticed him had been the morning his friend - and business partner - had visited. She'd left her apartment for her daily run and had almost collided with the sandy-haired man in the corridor. He'd introduced himself as 'Foggy', one of the strangest nicknames she'd ever heard. Then he had asked her if she had a nickname, and it had thrown her a bit. She must have looked like a clueless idiot as she floundered in the conversation - something her trainers in the Red Room would have beaten her for if it had happened on assignment.

She knew about nicknames of course - it was common practice to in Russia for people to call each other by the diminutive forms of their names. But it was something done between family members. Or friends. Or lovers. It was a gesture of affection, the spoken equivalent of a hug or a pat on the back.

There was no affection in the Red Room.

Growing up, when she was called anything besides 'girl' or 'Wretched Failure' it was always her full name. And after she graduated and the missions began, she was addressed by her designation - Widow 118.

So, no, she had never had a nickname.

And while explaining this to Foggy, she'd heard the light footsteps of the man in apartment 6A. She'd seen his shadow beneath the crack of the door a split second before it opened, so she was ready for it when he pulled it open.

Or so she'd thought. It had taken all her training to remain calm and poised when the unexpected jolt of attraction had hit her.

For the first time in her life.

To the old Calina, men were simply targets. Names in files. Existing solely to be used, seduced, killed - all on the orders of other men. The men who controlled her life.

Men had never been objects of beauty that she just wanted to look at. But to the new Calina - the one slowly trying to find out what she liked and what she wanted from this life - Matthew was a man she wanted to look at.

All the time.

So...she did.

She started pacing the end of her morning run to coincide with him leaving for work; she would slow to a jog on the opposite side of the street and watch him as he turned left out of their building and guided himself down the street with his cane. She would wait in The Hideout for him to pass by on his way home, or time her daily mail collection so that she could occasionally ride in the elevator with him.

And during the course of those sort-of encounters she had started to notice things about him. Things that only someone with her training and observational skills would detect.

Like the way he would tighten the muscles of his arm, drawing it to his side as he passed someone on the street, as if he knew they were about to bump into them. The way he would suddenly cock his head, as if picking up something no one else could hear. The way his mouth would open and his tongue would dart out, as if tasting the air...

Slight movements.

Subtle. Almost innocuous.

Unlike the incident with the boxes. That had not been subtle. And it had been the biggest clue yet that there was something different about Matthew Murdock.

She'd known he was in the mail area with her - she had timed her arrival home on purpose. But something about the way that he had suddenly stepped close behind her, his arm outstretched, had triggered her instincts. And she'd reacted without thought to the feeling of threat.

And he'd responded in kind.

He'd been quick. Accurate. And strong.

Really strong.

Not wanting to give him an opening to ask her how or why she had attacked him, she had ignored the evidence of his own training. And in the elevator afterwards she had deflected his questions, not feeling confident enough to keep up the charade of her cover story.

Something else her trainers would have punished her for.

Severely.

"Is that a bad thing?" Calina eventually responded. "Keeping an eye on my neighbour? I need to know who I'm living next to."

"That's sensible," Yelena agreed. "But don't get too close. I'm worried you could get hurt. You were always more...sensitive than the rest of us."

Thinking back on the conversation from the safety of the rooftop, Calina was touched that Yelena apparently cared about her - if a little insulted that she was viewed as 'sensitive'. The way Yelena had said the word sounded like a weakness.

But Calina wasn't weak. She had survived every bit of the same training as Yelena.

And more.

Besides, she wasn't looking to get close to anyone. Not when her life was so uncertain. And definitely not when she was about to undertake a dangerous, diplomatically fraught mission on foreign soil to rescue one of her sisters.

She couldn't afford to be distracted by a handsome lawyer.

A handsome lawyer...who was standing behind her on the rooftop.