24 hours later

Switzerland

The third time Calina awoke to her new reality, a dog was draped over her legs. Eyes still closed, she smiled at Nika's familiar warm, heavy weight, and the low grumble of her snoring. She recognised the scent of the sheets beneath her, and the golden sunlight warming her skin. She knew the sounds filtering through the door to her left, and the birds chittering away outside the window.

She was home. Back in Geneva at the Widow's base.

And her dog was with her. Loyal as always. And no doubt ready to bathe her in sloppy kisses as soon as she realised Calina was conscious.

A wave of affection hit her, so strong she almost gasped. It was orders of magnitude stronger than what she'd felt towards her canine companion for the past three years, and she frowned at the onrush of emotion.

Then she realised why - she hadn't taken the serum in over a month. Not since before the battle in New York, and the healing coma in Wakanda—

Katya!

Calina jerked upright as the memory returned. Katya had been there, in Wakanda. She'd spoken to her. She'd come back.

Everyone had come back.

Matt had come back.

Calina covered her mouth with her hand, trying to stifle the urge to cry out as she was hit by a barrage of feelings. They were the same ones that had assaulted her in Wakanda just before her panic attack, and they seemed to be back with a vengeance. In an instant she was overwhelmed by a mix of breath-stealing shock, heart-bursting joy, knee-weakening relief, and soul-tearing grief...as well as a million other things she could barely recognise.

The emotions were intense. Confusing as hell, and almost violent in their onslaught.

And her body didn't know how to cope. She didn't know how to cope.

She needed the serum.

She scrambled out of bed and fell to her knees in front of her desk drawer, ignoring Nika's startled barks and the rug burn on her new, sensitive skin. She clawed at the wood of the drawer, and tugged desperately on the handle, cursing between shallow breaths at the loss of her key. She glanced frantically around the room, looking for a way to break open the lock. She spied one of her tactical knives sticking out of the practice target attached to the back of the door. She pulled it free and wedged it in the gap between the drawer and the rest of the unit. She pushed on the handle of the knife, trying to lever the drawer open, and sobbed and begged as she strained. "Please, please, please."

The thudding of her heartbeat in her ears was so loud she didn't hear her door opening, or her sisters calling her name. Strong hands yanked her away from the desk and up to her feet. "Calina! Calina, Stop it!" Katya shouted in her face.

Calina tried to pull out of Katya's grasp, but the panic had leached away all her strength. She could feel hot tears streaming down her cheeks. Her heart continued to pound, and her breathing was so fast her lips started to tingle with the lack of oxygen.

And through all of that, she begged for relief with whispered, raggered pleas. "Please. I need it. P-please. I- I can't- please."

A sharp crack split the air.

"Anya!" Katya yelled, releasing her hold on Calina. Calina staggered back, both hands pressed to her cheek. "She hasn't seen you in five years, and the first thing you do is slap her across the face? What is wrong with you!?"

Anya shrugged. "It worked, didn't it?"

Calina swallowed as both women turned to her. It had worked. The shock of the pain had snapped her out of her frenzy. Even her heart and her breathing seemed to be calming down, as if her body could only cope with one insult at a time - and it thought the burning streak across her cheek needed all the attention.

"Calina?" Katya said, approaching Calina slowly. "Are you back with us?"

Calina swallowed again. She dropped her hands and collapsed onto the bed behind her. Nika was up on her feet, barking at the commotion, so Calina settled her with a hand on her head. "It's okay," she panted. "I'm okay."

"You are not okay," Katya whispered, a distraught look on her face. "None of this is okay, Calina. You've been taking the serum."

Calina flinched as she realised her secret was out. Sick, oily feelings of shame and guilt rose to the fore - all the more unbearable because she hadn't felt them in so, so long.

Katya sighed and pulled the desk chair around to sit and face Calina. "After your panic attack in Wakanda, the medical team thought it was best to keep you sedated while you were transferred here. They thought a more familiar, comforting environment would help you. But it obviously hasn't."

Calina said nothing, her head bowed as she clutched handfuls of her dog's fur.

"And we were gonna wait until you were more recovered before we spoke to you about this. About the serum. But it seems the conversation is more urgent than we realised."

"I'm fine," Calina finally whispered, her voice breaking. She wiped the tears off her wet cheeks, and straightened up on the mattress. "I'm fine," she tried again. "And I can explain, about all of this. I just...right now, I need to take the edge off a bit. Just to make me feel calmer. Then we can discuss it."

Katya shook her head, and gestured to the locked drawer. "Calina, we found your stash. We destroyed it all. We spoke to Melina, and she said there shouldn't be any more ill effects from cutting you off. She's agreed not to make any more of the serum, and we think—"

Calina had stopped listening after the phrase 'We destroyed it all'. Her head filled with static as she realised there would be no relief from these feelings. "You had no right to do that," she said, interrupting Katya.

"What?"

"You had no right!" Calina repeated.

"You needed our help, Calina," Anya chimed in. "For God's sake, you were voluntarily dosing yourself with Red Room shit. The Calina of five years ago would be as horrified about that as we are."

"Oh, you're horrified?" Calina scoffed. "I'm so sorry! I apologise for not living up to your high standards!"

"Anya didn't mean it like that," Katya said, trying to calm the tension in the room. "We understand that the last five years must have been difficult-"

"Difficult?!" Calina yelled, jumping to her feet. "Fuck you, Katya, you have no idea!" A part of her registered the shock on her friend's face as she swore - yet another thing the Calina of five years didn't do - but the hurt and humiliation she was feeling were too overwhelming for her to care. "You have no idea what it was like! I lost almost almost everyone I loved in the blink of an eye. I watched you guys disintegrate in front of me. You turned to dust and fucking floated away on the wind! You were gone. Half the Widows were gone. M-Matt was—" her breath hitched as struggled to get the words out.

And she fucking hated that she was reduced to this again. To the weak, crying mess who was unable to say his name or talk about losing him. "I'm sorry, okay?" she bit out. "I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to cope. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to deal with the fact that you were all gone, and the world had turned to shit, and we kept trying to help, but we kept failing and I couldn't stand all that guilt. And the grief, and the fucking pain of it all—"

She felt her breaths shallow out again, and her heart start to thud in her chest once more. She put a hand to her throat and concentrated on sucking down air, trying to ward off yet another panic attack.

Anya thrust something at her. "Here. Breathe into this. Unless you'd prefer another slap to the face."

Calina glared at her, but accepted the paper bag and brought it to her lips. She breathed into it, fast and light at first, then deeper, until gradually her breaths stabilised. All the anger leached out of her in an instant. She sat back down on the bed and hung her head. "I'm sorry," she said, this time without the note of sarcasm. She didn't quite know what she was apologising for - the panic attack, yelling at her friends, taking the serum...

Probably option D - all of the above.

Katya sat next to her and put her arm around her shoulder. "No, we should be the ones apologising. We should have spoken to you first, and been more understanding. But we just want to help, Calina."

Calina nodded. "I know. I- I'm really glad you guys are back."

"We are too. And now that we are back, you don't need that serum."

Calina nodded again.

But she had a horrible feeling that adjusting to life with her emotions wouldn't be that simple.

———

She was right.

Two days after her breakdown in front of Katya and Anya, she had another...episode...and it was even more inexplicable.

And a lot more public.

Calina was returning from her morning walk with Nika, when Inessa found her. The younger Widow had been out on assignment when Calina had arrived back in Geneva, but had tracked her down the moment her helicopter landed back on base. She practically tackled Calina from behind in the corridor leading to her room. "I'm so glad you're okay!" Inessa exclaimed, squeezing Calina tightly. "They told us it would only take a couple of weeks to fix you, but then you were in that pod for a month, and I got so worried you'd never wake up."

"Hi," Calina choked out, gently extracted herself from Inessa's hug. She could already feel the threatening sting of unshed tears at the sight of the petite, bubbly sister she'd missed so much. On top of seeing Katya and Anya on her first day, Calina had also been reunited with Sofia and Viktoria yesterday. The two Widows had come to her room, and Calina had broken down crying immediately. They'd looked freaked out at the sight of her tears - neither of them accustomed to such overt displays of emotion after the Red Room's conditioning. They'd tried their best to comfort Calina, but she'd ended up crying herself to sleep, and had woken this morning feeling wrung-out and fragile.

"You look so different," Inessa said, her eyes flitting over her features. "How did you get even more beautiful?" she teased.

Calina smiled shakily, desperately trying not to collapse into another blubbering mess. The other Widow didn't seem to notice. She just continued talking as they walked arm-in-arm down the hallway, the words pouring out of her in excitement. "We have so much to catch up on! Which is so crazy - I only saw you, like, a couple of month ago, but it's been five years. And we're now all apparently saving the world on the regular and living in Switzerland! But don't you miss New York? You'll be going back soon, right? I told Matt it would only be a couple of weeks, so he must be going out of his mind—"

Calina stopped short. "What did you say?"

"I left him a note. We were needed in the States soon after the Thanos battle, and we flew in via JFK, so I swung by your apartment. He wasn't home, but I left him a note so he wouldn't worry about you."

"W- what did you tell him exactly?"

"I couldn't go into details - figuring out the Braille took forever - so I just told him that you were safe, and that you would be with him in a couple of weeks."

A spike of fear shot through Calina, so visceral and intense that she actually flinched. She couldn't see Matt. She couldn't— she wasn't ready for that—

But now he was waiting for her...

The rational part of her brain knew that he would have been waiting regardless of Inessa's message, but rationality hadn't really been playing a big role in her life the last couple of days.

Her out-of-control, irrational emotions were in charge instead.

And they decided to channel Calina's fear into anger. "You had no right to do that!" she shouted, the same complaint she'd levelled at Katya less than two days before.

"Calina, I just—"

"No! You were always meddling, even before, and I'm so fucking sick of it!"

Inessa gaped at her, dumbstruck at the sudden outburst. But Calina just kept yelling at her sister - the one she'd been so happy to see just moments earlier. She couldn't seem to reign in her anger, or control what she was saying. "You keep interfering in my life, but all you do is fuck it up. You need to get your own life, and leave mine the fuck alone!"

She was practically screaming now, and the words kept coming. Horrible words - words that she could see were hurting Inessa.

And none of it was true. It was as if her anger had twisted her memories of her time with Inessa into something nasty and malicious. She hated the accusations and insults that were spilling out of her mouth, but she couldn't stop. Even when Inessa turned to walk away, Calina grabbed her arm, and tried to use her height to intimidate the smaller Widow.

But, of course, that didn't work. For the second time in as many days, one of her sisters struck her. Inessa used a kick rather than a slap, flicking her leg out to sweep Calina's from under her. Calina tumbled to the ground, the impact of the landing jolting her out of her rage spiral as quickly as she'd dropped into it.

"Inessa, wait," she called out to her rapidly retreating sister.

"I'm doing what you asked," Inessa replied, not turning around or slowing her strides. "I'm leaving you the fuck alone."

"Fuck," Calina hissed, pounding the carpet with her fist. Then she seemed to notice for the first time that she was sitting on the floor of a busy corridor. People were staring at her as they passed by, some with shock, others with concern. She saw Katya round the bend and stride towards her, so she scrambled to her feet and fled to the safety of her room.

She locked the door, and ignored Katya's pleas to open it and talk to her.

———

Calina decided to avoid all contact with her sisters over the next few days. She didn't want to hurt them or freak them out any more than she'd already done. She was just too...volatile...around them. Her emotions too out of control. She didn't want to risk another panic attack, or tear-filled breakdown, or fit of anger.

And those seemed to be her default settings at the moment.

Everything was just too much. Without the protection of the serum, she was feeling everything, all of the time. Her glass barrier was gone, leaving her out on the shore, alone and exposed, and getting battered by the storm.

And it did feel like a battering.

It was a constant, near-unrelenting attack. Every emotion was amplified. Every feeling unbearably intense and bewildering - bewildering, because half the time she didn't even know what she was feeling. She was in a state of perpetual confusion and always on edge, waiting for the next outburst.

Whatever form it might take.

Calina sighed and dragged her legs to the edge of the bed. It had been another fitful night of very little sleep. She rubbed her eyes and got to her feet, stretching out her sore muscles.

Nika looked up from her dog bed. She must have escaped there some time during the night, too disturbed by all of Calina's tossing and turning. Calina crouched down to scratch behind her ears. "Sorry, Neek. How about I make it up to you with a nice long walk." She hoped a stroll through the serene Swiss countryside would calm the turmoil within her - and help her stay clear of other humans for a while.

With the plan decided, she stripped out of her pyjamas...but then her gaze caught on her reflection in the full length mirror in the corner of the room. And she realised she hadn't taken the time to really re-familiarise herself with her new body. She stepped closer to the reflection, her eyes cataloguing the changes.

The healing pod had done a good enough job of preserving her muscle mass. She'd never had a six-pack or bulging biceps by any means, but her workout routine over the past few years had toned her stomach. It had given her definition in her arms, and bulked up her previously willowy frame a bit. All of that was the same.

But her scars? That was a different story.

The bullet wound in her side from the fight with Volkov's men in South Carolina was gone.

The more recent bullet wound treated with Melina's Aurum-gel was gone.

She turned again to look at her lower back, and felt the area where the pock-marked shrapnel scars used to be. They were gone.

The stab wound on her shoulder, courtesy of Katya on that mission to South Korea, was gone. It had been the first scar she'd received after leaving the Red Room, and the first one she'd ever earned in the service of helping someone. And it had been erased.

All the scars that she'd fought and bled for and earned were gone.

She knew it was just a side effect of the stem cell therapy she'd received. Shuri had explained to her that the extent of her injuries meant the doctors couldn't afford to be targeted in their healing approach. They'd needed to trigger a systemic stem cell resurgence in order to ensure all the damage was fixed. Which meant her scars were gone. And all her deeper injuries - like the stiffness in her left knee, and the ligament damage in her dislocating elbow - were healed.

She should be grateful. They'd saved her legs - and her life - after all. But it meant she was back to being flawless. The perfect blank canvas. Just like her trainers in the Red Room preferred.

And she hated that.

Although...she wasn't completely flawless.

Her fingers went to the small patch of skin behind her right ear. She rubbed the slightly raised skin, grateful that tattoo ink didn't classify as an injury to stem cells. Grateful that a small part of her had emerged from that healing pod.

She'd gotten the tattoo a couple of years ago in Shanghai. The Widows had set up a base to the north of the city for a mission, and on one of Calina's daily runs along the Huangpu River she'd noticed a vendor selling flowers at the entrance to Gongqing Forest Park. The park was the site of Shanghai's memorial, and Calina realised the anniversary of the Vanishing was right around the corner - and she wouldn't be able to make it to Matt's memorial stone in New York in time to mark the occasion.

That realisation had caused a spark of...something...within her. Nothing painful. Not like the extreme grief and sadness she used to experience. Just a slight pang of unease - the merest echo of her true, buried feelings. And she'd decided to do something to allay that unease, and to make sure she never felt it again. She'd found a tattoo parlour in the city and had gotten a permanent memorial to Matt inked on her skin.

So that she could always carry him with her.

As she stroked the mark now, all these years later, tears came to her eyes. And another feeling of...something...burned through her chest. But this wasn't a spark. Or an echo. Or a shadow. It was deep and powerful and real, and the strength of it hurt. It stole her breath, and caused silent tears to track down her cheeks.

But she didn't know what it was.

Was it grief? Sadness? But why would it be? She had nothing to mourn now. Matt was alive. He'd returned, along with the rest of her sisters.

Unless it was lingering, unresolved feelings from when she had been grieving. But how on earth was she supposed to deal with those?

Calina groaned, and scrubbed her face with her hands. God, she was so tired of this. Tired of this confusion, and of feeling so out of control. Tired of feeling like a stranger inside her own skin.

Within seconds, the unnamed emotion morphed into frustration and anger - two emotions she was acutely familiar with.

She felt a burn in her gut. She clenched her fists as the rage built within her until it felt like she wanted to tear the skin from her bones. She cried out, a wordless shout of pain. Then she picked up the nearest object - her phone - and hurled it at the mirror.

Panting, she stared at herself, jagged and broken in the shattered glass.

———

Six days after waking up in Geneva, Calina received the summons she'd been dreading.

Six days of restless sleep, and self-imposed isolation, and numerous bouts of crying and anger and panic. Six days of being bombarded with every emotion under the sun. Six days of trying not to think about Matt, and how lost and confused he must be, and how she'd abandoned him to that fate...

Six days where she felt like she was coming apart at the seams.

Compared to all of that...the dreaded summons actually felt like a welcome reprieve. So it was with only a small amount of reluctance that Calina knocked on the door to Dr Gossard's office.

"Enter," a voice from within responded.

Calina opened the door and took her usual seat in front of Dr Gossard's desk. She smoothed out a wrinkle in her trousers, adjusted the sleeve of her sweater...then finally met the therapist's eyes.

And realised that the older woman already knew about the serum. It was all there in her gaze - concern. Sadness. Compassion. And a whole lot of disappointment.

Calina winced. She would have preferred anger over disappointment. She would have known what to do with anger.

"How are you, Calina?" Dr Gossard asked softly.

Calina huffed out a laugh. "I have absolutely no idea."

Gossard tilted her head. "What does that mean to you?"

It was such a therapy question. The type of phrasing that would have rankled the Calina of three years ago. Would have caused her to reply with sarcasm - if she replied at all. But the Calina of now was feeling too defeated to care. "I seem to be cycling through about fifteen different emotions at any one point in time, so it's hard to narrow it down."

"Can you elaborate?"

Calina paused to consider how truthful she was prepared to be...but realised it didn't matter any more. This wasn't like her sessions with Gossard in the past. She wasn't in a battle to save her place on the Widow's team.

She'd already lost it.

Officially, she was still on medical leave, pending an evaluation of her fitness by the UN doctors. But unofficially, the rest of her teammates knew she was in no fit state to be out in the field - none of them wanted the emotionally unstable crazy woman watching their six or giving them orders.

She was grounded. Off the team. The exact scenario she'd always feared. So what was the point in hiding the truth from Gossard any longer?

And the truth was...she was struggling. She was really, really struggling. And there was no serum to save her this time.

So she told Gossard everything. About those first two years, and what she'd really been going through at that time. About taking the serum. How it affected her. And how she was feeling now, without it. "I can't seem to think about Matt or be around my sisters without feeling this...crushing sadness," she explained. "And I don't know if I'm sad because of all the time we missed together, or whether it's some PTSD thing, where I'm reliving the grief I felt at their loss. And when I'm not feeling sad, I'm terrified that something will happen to them again. And I can't get passed those negative emotions. They're too strong, and they drown out all the happiness I feel about them being back. And because they're so strong, it's like my body doesn't know how to contain them - I end up breaking down in tears, or lashing out in anger, or just going into full on panic mode. It's like my whole body short-circuits, and I spiral out of control."

"I imagine that would be especially difficult for you."

Calina frowned. "What do you mean?"

"For most of your life, you were under the Red Room's control. They told you what to do, where to go, what to think. They took away your freedom, your ability to feel, everything that made you a person, correct?"

Calina nodded.

"And when you were given back that control by Yelena and Agent Romanoff, you fought long and hard to keep it. I read the reports - you were shot in a confrontation with Volkov's men. You literally shed blood to retain control of your own mind, and your own emotions."

Calina scoffed. "And then I went right back to taking the Red Room serum."

"But that was still within your control. You decided to do that, no one else. And while I don't condone what you did, or believe it was the right thing to do, it was your mistake to make. The problem is, now you have no control over what you're feeling. And that's why you're finding it so difficult."

"It feels like more than just that, though," Calina said. "More than just control issues. Half the world went through what I did - losing people in an instant, and regaining them just as suddenly - but it feels like I'm the only one crumbling under the weight of that. What I'm experiencing...it doesn't feel normal."

"I can guarantee you're not the only one struggling. But you also have to remember, you were out on the front lines, fighting a war during that time. The things you've seen and experienced would only have added to your lack of emotional resilience. And..."

Gossard paused, and regarded her thoughtfully for several long moments. Calina had to resist the urge to squirm beneath her probing gaze. "What?" she eventually asked.

"And you've taken a highly experimental, brain-altering chemical for three years. I think it would be negligent of me to ignore that, and attribute all of your symptoms to an exaggerated grief response, depression, anxiety and PTSD."

"Wow, how many diagnoses is that?" Calina asked, trying to joke in the face of all her apparent mental unhealth.

Emotionally unstable crazy woman, really did fit.

"Ignore the labels for now," Gossard replied. "I think we need to run some tests first. I want to know exactly what that serum did to you."