∆ {3¹⁴} {A PERFECT WORLD} ∆

THEIR COFFEE WAS indeed, cold, by the time the two women returned to it half an hour later. They'd spent the time whispering reassurances to each other's ears, and cuddling, trying to let the other know that they were safe, and both knew they would fight, and even kill for each other if they had to. It was an almost unbreakable bond, formed on a foundation of trust that both women knew would be incredibly hard to break. If anyone came between the two of them, they'd be sorry for it. 

The sun had risen much farther above the horizon by that point, lighting up the fields outside the house as the light reflected off the dew, though it was hard to see through the mist that unfurled over the farm, as if helping to any malicious intent or interest. It was pretty, but Roxi could barely bring herself to take her eyes off the beautiful redhead in front of her, the golden light streaming through the window lit up her face magically, and traces of gold swirled in her forest green eyes. Natasha turned to her, a soft smile resting on her face as she laced their hands, enjoying the few tranquil seconds they had while the time lasted.

Unfortunately, that wasn't long, because they were soon disturbed by another knock, this one less gentle, more fast, the person behind the door clearly eager to get on with whatever they were going to do. This time, instead of Steve's calm, slightly nervous voice, Tony's loud, impatient one called out to the two women.

"We need you downstairs to discuss the plan, if you're not too busy." Natasha rolled her eyes while Roxi glared slightly at the door as she heard the man's footsteps trail back down the stairs, though the woman next to her caught her attention again soon enough. The redhead smiled at her softly, and Roxi felt as if her heart was melting at the sight of it. 

"We should probably change out of our pyjamas," Natasha suggested, and a hint of a blush slid onto Roxi's face; she'd completely forgotten they weren't wearing normal clothes. 

"Right, yeah," she mumbled, feeling the warmth spread slightly, avoiding Natasha's gaze and knowing smirk. They arrived downstairs a few minutes later, neither of them showing any sign that anything remotely personal had happened overnight, though clearly, that had been far from the truth. Natasha took a seat at the wooden dining table that Clint had insisted on building a few years ago, and Roxi stood behind her, resting on the back of Natasha's chair, both women's faces carefully calm.

"Ultron took you folks out of play to buy himself time." It was Fury who had begun to explain, and though Roxi had no idea when or how the hell he'd gotten here, that was the least of her worries. Occasionally, she had to remind herself that they were going up against an army of virtually possessed robots that Tony had designed, lead by a homicidal metal maniac, who clearly had his own vision of a perfect world. She supposed they all did. Steve's was back in the 40's, with Peggy and Bucky, and the Howling Commandoes, ready to take up arms and fight whenever he needed. Tony's was with Pepper, probably in a quiet spot, maybe with a kid, simply the happy family life, with the least amount of disturbances at all possible. Thor would have a life on Asgard, with Jane, his mother, father, Loki, his friends, ready to do whatever he needed as future king. Bruce's would be one where he had no fear of the Hulk, maybe one where he had control, somewhere calm, with Elizabeth Ross, a girl he liked from before the accident. Clint's was right here, with his family, and his soon-to-be-born son, a quiet life, probably quite similar to Tony's. Natasha's, she hoped, would be with her, with out looking back on her past, maybe even still working for SHIELD.

But Roxi, all she knew about her 'perfect world' was that she didn't really have one. She knew one thing about it; that she wanted Natasha in it. But other than that, her mind was far to muddled, too confused for her to decide on anything definite. Part of her yearned for battle, ached for it, although she knew it was bad for her, and she almost felt drawn towards fights, violence, and she felt as though a life with out them would be boring, dull. She felt as if it would drive her crazy, and if she didn't have a safer way to exert her emotions, she'd only end up hurting people that she didn't want to hurt, especially Natasha. But too much combat would force her to be twitchy all the time, constantly on high-alert, probably flinching at something as simple as someone breathing, and then she'd hurt someone too. Her past was impossible to forget, while her name wasn't 'public' information, and she felt as if she had to keep it hidden, and consequentially, it made it impossible to deal with her past and move past it. A slight frown appeared on her face as she realised that she didn't have a clear idea of what she really wanted in the future. All she'd ever focused on was staying alive another minute, surviving another day, then moving onto the next. It had been a cycle, an endless circle, but now that she stopped and thought about, the circle stopped too, and her order of life slowly began to unravel, string after string falling out of place as she thought more and more. If she wasn't careful, she'd get caught up in the knotted net of her own tangled life, and beneath the string, lay wires, wires that could cut her, hurt her, make her bleed, and if she stayed caught up in her own life, her old life, for too long, she'd get herself killed.

No, she couldn't have a perfect life, it was impossible. No fairytale ending. She'd set herself up for this years ago, when she'd been taken into SHIELD, and had refused to tell the kind agent who was looking after, who coincidentally, was Phil Coulson, her first name, because she was too scared to go back to him. They wouldn't have sent her back, she knew that now, that SHIELD valued new recruits that had potential, and most probably would do anything they could to keep them out of danger, at least until they were trained. But then they could deal with the danger. Especially now, with Fury across the room from her, she knew that he had helped her in ways she couldn't imagine. He'd taken her in, taught her how to fight, taught her not to be scared of people she could beat, helped her begin to forget. It hadn't lasted, but that wasn't his fault. SHIELD had help her a lot. But now SHIELD was gone, and Roxi knew that it was her responsibility now. She had to deal with what she was scared of, she had to deal with protecting herself, and Roxi was fine with those two. She'd been doing it for years, able to hide her emotions, take down a room of armed agents if she moved fast enough. But the last one she still struggled with. She still found it hard to deal with her past, to ward off painful memories, and that was why, she supposed, it'd affected her so badly when Wanda Maximoff messed with her head, showing her not only fantasies, but memories of times gone by, and not the ones that she would put in a photobook to look back on with a smile in future years. No, these were the ones that she would burn, and then throw the ashes to the wind, hoping for them to land in the sea, where they would drown at the bottom of the ocean, hoping they would be gone from her mind. But they would still be they, no matter how hard she tried. And recently, they were starting to rise to the surface, however much she didn't want to.

"My contacts all say he's building something." Fury's voice was slightly distant, and Roxi fixed her eyes on Lila, who was hurrying around the room with a pile of drawings in her hands, giving them to various people. She took one from the girl with a hint of a smile, still slightly zoned out as her thoughts invaded her mind. It seemed as though the phantoms of her past were determined to continue haunting her, whispering tales of what she had done in times gone by, taunting her as if the voices knew exactly what tormented her at night. And they did, because the voices were her. It was only when she looked down at Lila's drawing that she broke out of her haze, and smiled softly at the image of two women silhouetted against the light night sky, a ball of silver in the corner, that was probably meant to be the moon. Lila had probably seen she and Natasha last night when they were coming back to the house, and she showed it the the redhead in front of her, her eyes gleaming slightly. This was one of those photo album memories, one of the ones she would treasure, and Natasha looked up at her for a moment, a similar look in her eyes, and a soft smile resting on her lips.

Roxi saw Fury glance at them out of the corner of her eye, and saw his mouth turn up into a smirk as he started talking again, and shot him a glare that no-one else could've picked up, but his smirk only increased. 

"With the amount of Vibranium that he made off with; I don't think it's just one thing," Fury finished as Lila gave Natasha the final sheet of paper in the pile, which Roxi peered over the redhead's shoulder to look at, absentmindedly taking a cup of coffee from Laura in the other hand, with a slight 'thanks'. The drawing was of a field of roses and lemon trees, each flower a squiggled dot of red, the lemons were small balls of unrealistically bright yellow, but the drawing made both women smile, however hidden the action was.

"What about Ultron himself?" Steve asked, drawing both women's attention away from the paper to him, Roxi having a sip of her coffee every now and then as the scene unfurled before her.

"Oh, he's easy to track, he's everywhere. The guy's multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit," Roxi choked on her drink at Fury's joke, everyone's eyes moving to her as she drew a chair up and sat down, her eyes beginning to water as Natasha slapped her gently on her back.

"You alright there, Amelia?" Stark asked, a dart in his hand. This time, he received glares from all four ex-SHIELD Agents, and quickly dropped the subject, his eyes widening as he took a step backwards, holding his hands up in surrender.

"Still doesn't help us get an angle on any of his plans," Fury began to explain again, after getting a small nod of confirmation that she wasn't going to choke to death on the coffee she had in her hand. Tony threw the dart, which landed in the second ring, and Roxi smirked into her drink as she took another sip.

"Is he still after launch codes?" He asked as he prepared to throw another dart, though Roxi was waiting for Clint to show him how it's done.

"Yes, he is, but he's not making any headway," Fury assured, cutting up a piece of bread on a chopping board.

"I cracked the Pentagon's firewall in high school on a dare," Tony boasted, and Roxi was reminded why she wouldn't choose to spend time around him if she were offered the option.

"Yeah, well, I contacted our friends at the Nexus about that," Fury explained, his attention fully focused on the bread, which he had cut the crust off of, and was now folding in half.

"Nexus?" Steve asked, looking up at the sound of the unfamiliar word. Roxi didn't know the details, but she didn't need to. She was an assassin, not a hacker, though Natasha (who she now sat next to) seemed to be very good at both.

"It's the world internet hub in Oslo. Every bite of data flows through there; fastest access on earth," Bruce explained, looking down with every other word, his voice trailing off slightly towards the end.

"So what'd they say?" Clint asked, holding a dart by its tip in front of the window, examining it for a second as if he had never seen one before.

"He's fixated on the missiles, but the codes are constantly being changed," Fury admitted, picking up a glass of apple juice as he took a bite of his sandwich.

"By whom?" Tony's neck snapped to the side so quickly that he might as well have got whiplash as his head followed the dart that Clint had thrown from halfway across the room, hitting dead centre, not that Roxi had expected anything else.

"Parties unknown," Fury explained, following the looks that Tony and Clint sent at each other.

"We have an ally?" Natasha asked softly from beside Roxi, who took the redhead's hand under the table, rubbing small circles on the back of the the woman's hand, more for her own reassurance as the voices continued to whisper tales of time gone by, and reminded her of what she'd done. Blood, metal, gunpowder, fire. Images, smells, feelings, swept through her body. The cloying, swirling, blood, that rose to her waist, numbing her legs as the putrid, metallic smell rose to her face. The cold, almost painful metal that seemed to burn into her hand as she held the grip. The harsh, powerful, smoky smell that came form the chamber of the gun, that only reminded her of death, and the way blood pooled on the floor, especially in her memory of her first mission, whether it was the real version or not. And the fire, it was so hot, and it surrounded her, heated her skin, but it was as if she could feel it burning the flesh of her back once again, as if her skin was being scalded off, and suddenly, the mess of scars on her back began to itch with phantom pains, causing her to shift uncomfortably in her seat, flexing her hand slightly, trying to stretch it out, but it only succeeded in drawing Natasha's attention to her.

"Ultron's got an enemy. That's not the same thing." She could barely hear Fury's voice. It sounded faint as her hands began to shake as she held her metal mug in her hands, the coffee sloshing around inside it.  All she envision, see, hear, feel, even smell, was the tearing of metal. It was a horrible sound, a grinding that dug into the depths of her mind, determined to bring up the most painful, darkest memories possible. It turned them up, out of the earth of her head, to add to the fray that seemed determined to make her panic. The metal was the worst. The image of it tearing before her, by her hand. It seemed testament that she could tear anything apart, even metal, maybe even her newfound family.

All the while, Natasha was watching Roxi, concerned, worried, not knowing for sure which demons were taunting the woman inside her own head. In a way, it made the redhead blame herself. She couldn't find a way to help the woman she liked, who sat next to her, hands shaking and eyes gleaming with emotion. 

Roxi sat there distantly, terrified of what she might accidentally do if she didn't get control of her powers, or even her own mind, soon. But with the current evidence, the latter didn't look like it was going to happen soon, or maybe ever.

But Natasha sat in Clint's kitchen, worried for someone more than she'd ever been in her life. She found it hard to comfort people, and even though she liked to think she knew Roxi better than anyone else, she still found it nearly impossible to help her with whatever she was so caught up in, especially because she herself was still shaking off the effects of the mind control.

So together, two broken women, wallowed in the wickedness of their own minds, hoping their demons would leave them alone, and if they fought long and hard enough, and maybe they would. But they would have to go through hell and back a few times before they got there.

{A/N:} Heyyy look I updated lmao. Sorry I've missed a few, I'll be doing the same as I am for my missed Point Blank updates, so I'll write them and then then publish them all in one day, a kinda 'big update' day. This chapter actually took about 5 hours to write ;-;, but I hope you like it. I had to split it in the middle of the scene, because I wouldn't have enough time to finish the scene and still get the chapter up today, which I wanted to, because I've already missed two.

My holidays also end on Monday, and then I'm doing distance schooling, so the amount of updates will go back down again. That also means that I'll probably write updates on time (for once) so I'll try my best. Like normal, please ignore any errors (like spelling), for the moment, I am not looking through and correcting them, because it takes so long, or feel free to point them out, I don't mind which.

I may or may not have ordered an A3 Black Widow film poster to go on my wall which arrived today (really happy about that).

Also, just a friendly reminder; any work in this fanfic you do not recognise from the films is MINE, and using it, or writing something very similar without my permission is piracy, it is illegal. Thanks :)

Happy New Year, and I'm excited to carry on with this book this year. Please vote and comment to let me know what you think, until next time.

3070 Words

Written: 02 / 01 / 2020

Published: 02 / 01 / 2020