There it was. The grand fireplace. Photos of a once happy and complete family still graced it's mantel as if everything was fine and this wasn't a place where little girls were taken from their families and trained to be world-class killers. At least after this it'll all be gone. Fire. The flames reached for the opening, itching to get out and devour everything in its path.

It'll destroy everything. Everything. All the hurt. All the abuse. All the hate that was bred here.

It has to be gone. Everything needs to be destroyed. Nothing good had EVER happened here, in this place of insanity and traitors and murderous spies. This place had given way to serial killers, kidnappers and betrayal. The place where sinners come to rest.

"Oh my god I hate this fucking place!" She yelled.

She hears a scream and when she turns, she thinks she sees her. She hand reaching towards her as if to touch fingertips. She reaches back. She hopes to feel the flesh she once knew covered those hands. Be when she finally reaches her fingertips the hand vanishes. Then the rest of her vanishes until all that's left eventually is the telltale sign of striking red hair- so much like hers- but then even that fades to gray before vanishing too. Just like always.

Thankfully she never sees the other one.

All she wants now is to burn t to the ground. All the memories and all the shame. Gone. Embers.

And so she makes her decision. It was time for it all to come to an end. Time for a new era for her. This time, she'd make sure none would ever repeat the tragedy and heartache that came to pass before. Exhaling the breath she was holding she reached over and looked into the eyes of the woman in front of her. She had come running into the room when the alarm went blaring. She looked into her eyes and threw that candelabra onto the concrete flooring. The flames flickered, highlighting the faces of the two women. Both looked up, one in terror and shock, the other in defiance.

"NO!" She saw the lips moving but all she heard was the echo of a woman who covered up for the many crimes of the people who kidnapped her and helped create the monster that would eventually murder anyone who got in her way.

She calmly stepped around the flames that were quickly eating up her home and gave her handlers a look that said "Good Luck."

"It's over ."

And with that she walked out the door of the Red Room forever as she heard the heavy footfalls of what she was sure were other fighters trained by the same people she has trained with. She couldn't outrun them and they gained on her as she fell over a pile of bodies stacked away ready for cremation. Remains of fighters who didn't make the cut. Thrown away like trash.

Natalie woke up, sweating. Heart beating hard and heavy she got out of bed and ran through her bathroom door. Bending over the toilet seat, shs lost what little food she had still in her stomach.

At least I got halfway through the night this time. She thought to herself. She always had nightmares of her escape but on every one she was just almost able to escape before being caught.

Ever since she'd been cornered by SHIELD and saved from the KGB she had been looking over shoulder expecting to see the telltale black and red lined windowless vans she remembered from the day she had been taken from her family.

Her captors had tried hard to ingrain false memories of what they wanted her to believe her life was like before they took her. She remembered her parents- her mother with her warm eyes that hers were duplicates of and the fiery hair that matched. Her father a man who made sure his wife and daughter never had to suffer under the horrendous rule of the dictatorship. He hid his family underneath the census. They never even knew about her and her mother until one day a neighbor ratted them out inadvertently. The next day was the beginning of the end. She was woken by her father and mother and sent down to the basement where they sent her down the passageways underneath their house. It was almost a perfect escape plan. Almost. They barged through the door before he could get through and instead he shut it behind them and faced off against the government soldiers alone. She never saw her father again. Her mother was heartbroken and even though she was able to lead them to safety just outside of Stalingrad, it wasn't long before they were found. Her mother was taken away from her before they even knew what happened. A bullet sent right through her head. Natalie only remembers her falling and falling to her knees trying to wake her up, crying when she didn't. She remembers being grabbed roughly by a man and tossed on his shoulder like she weighed nothing and a burlap sack was thrown over her head as she screamed and punched the man trying to get him to put her down.

She remembers. They don't want her to but she remembers. She had a life before this. A family. Something to hold onto. And hold onto she did. Even through the worst of the beatings and training, she held onto the most prominent of the fading memories. Those were the ones she refused to let fade away.

*

So this is actually my first MCU fic. Both of them were uploaded to Archive first. As I said on there, this will not follow any of the timelines in the MCU (since we know nothing about Natasha from the MCU). It may follow some of the Black Widow comics but not by much. I also will not be adding Clint into this because I want to write into Nat and Wanda's relationship. They were obviously close enough as we saw in Infinity War. Otherwise how would they have known where to find her and Vision? We never really got that sort of look into their friendship.