𝑩𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒏 ✘ 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐀 𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐅𝐅

{2⁹} {THE LAST OF THE REAL ONES}

∆ {2⁹} {THE LAST OF THE REAL ONES} ∆

THE QUINJET HAD been utterly silent on the journey back to the Triskelion. Nobody had spoken, as if afraid the entrancing silence that bound the three of them. After the gunshot, and Venus' carefully odd reverie, they had returned to the SHIELD-issue vehicle with more tension brewing between them than when they'd arrived. 

The snow had stopped too. It no longer danced in the air so carelessly, no longer flitted across Venus's vision, or settled on one of the three's eyelashes. It was a shame, Venus reflected. The white had brought out the deep green of Natasha's eyes so well. A large part of her found it slightly disconcerting that that had been what she'd focused on, especially with the images of her conditioning so recently resurfaced inside of her mind.

She didn't regret shooting the mirror. In fact, she was almost glad that she had done it. Almost, because simply being in that building had allowed the ideals of the Red Room to seep into her mind once again, as potent as the poison that they'd put in her veins.

Another part of her was simply happy that she wasn't as far gone now as she had been in Budapest. That, with all things considered, had been a nightmare to clean up. Of course, shortly after that, she'd decided that running as if she were a scared child wasn't going to get her anywhere. So, she'd headed to SHIELD. She'd let them to think they'd caught her, allowed them to inflate their egos with lies that she'd become to adapt at telling. Then, eventually, after a month spent in that small holding cell, Natasha had remembered her, and she'd been let out. But only if she joined STRIKE Team Delta with Clint and Natasha, just as she had.

And yet, no matter how hard she'd attempted to escape the Red Room, to leave it behind her, she'd ended up exactly where she'd started. Staring as herself, meeting her own venomous, golden eyes in the surface of that cracked mirror. Perhaps she'd always end up there. Yes, she'd shot the mirror, destroyed the way that the had Red Room controlled her as literally as she could. Yet, it would always remain embedded in her mind, It would never truly be gone, even if the physical version of the torture lay shattered on that rotten, dark, hardwood floor.

It would remain exactly where they had put it, embedded into the very programming of her mind, just as they had intended. It seemed that that part of her would always belong to her past: to them. She would never be able to get rid of it. This mission had proved that in a far more dangerous way than she would've preferred. 

She also knew that both Clint and Natasha had become suddenly more aware of her, of the way she was acting, even of the threat that she still possessed. They seemed to have forgotten about it as time had passed, but apparently, her odd actions today had served as enough of a reminder that Venus was still a liability. They had grown comfortable with her, as she had started to with them. Complacency was never a good emotion to have, especially when the person you now felt so safe with was one that you barely knew. And the true Venus shad never shown herself to anyone. She hadn't felt safe enough to, not with the words of those above her still haunting her mind.

Natasha, without a doubt, had been the closest to discovering the true Venus. She'd been so close to opening up, to letting simply one person in, and the only person she ever could've imagined it being was Natasha. And yet, the fear of failure, of what they could do to her, what they would do to her, kept her from doing that. From opening up, from becoming somebody that they never wanted her to be.

She had become such a perfect little soldier. A role model of exactly how they wanted their girls to be. Not girls, but machines. Heartless, ruthless, cold. Even when she'd turned to SHIELD, it had been as a way  to protect herself from them, so that she wouldn't have to face them. That was because she was an assassin. She was not one to face problems head on, with a brute force like the kind that some at SHIELD seemed more inclined to use. Instead, she skirted around them until she found a more discreet way to fix the issue, and then carried out her plan with a lethality that would make even the best warriors in the world quake.

Because that was who she was. Not who she had become, but one of the fundamental parts of her that she would never be able to shake off, never be able to rid herself of. But perhaps, she could allow the other parts of her, the more genuine parts to take over, if only for a little bit and with the right person.

Just maybe, if she could build up those parts within herself, she would be able to communicate how she felt with Natasha, be able to be truly herself for the first time in her life. Not someone who donned a mask out of fear of others, or because she was so used to it. Not someone who killed without compassion because it was what she was used to, but herself. And her true self could be considered naïve, innocent, foolish, because she allowed herself to be blind to the horrors of the world in hopes of holding onto the fleeting idea that she would be able to live a normal life, have a family, to survive and not worry about it every day.

She would be making up for lost years, Venus decided as her knuckled over the wooden surface of Natasha's door, and she would not waste that time.

She knocked.

{A/N:} Ik, ik, there's no dialogue I'm really sorry. There should be quite a bit next chapter though and Venus is finally gonna open up, even if its only a bit after 23 chapters lmao. We're getting there, bare with me. Also, you guys enjoying these updates?  I hope so because they're SO much work wow. Ngl I wrote half this chapter in Science today and that saved me a bit of time. Hopefully I can get another one written tonight and then I can move onto Gilded Nightmares. Oh the joys of writing a shit ton of everything. Oh well, it'll be worth it. Thanks :)

1125 Words

Written: 29 / 04 / 2021

Published: 27 / 05 / 2021 

JABBERJAY_011