Target (Romanogers Fanfic)

Chapter 1

Red Room Facility, Belarus, 1942

Natasha felt like her lungs were going to burst. She was running faster than she ever ran in her life. Her boots pounded against the pavement, echoing in her ears, almost loud enough to drown out the sound of her own heartbeat against her ribcage. One her hand clutched the silver briefcase she stole and the other gripped her pistol so tight her knuckle turned white, ready to put her finger on the trigger at any moment. 

She risked a glance over her shoulder to see the ruins of the warehouse district she had just come from. One of the buildings was burning, flames licking out its shattered window, smoke billowing into the lightning sky of the coming dawn.

It was supposed to be one of those 'get in, get out' missions. She, along with a dozen other newly dubbed SSR agents, had gone in to scope out the warehouse. It had once been a red room science facility, and they were simply going in to see if they left anything behind. As it turned out, the abandoned group of warehouses hadn't been so empty after all. The other SSR agents were all dead; all of them either gunned down or fallen victim to the inferno.

Natasha wasn't running from the fire or from the pesky Hydra goons that had been scattered throughout the building. No, she was running from the person the thing that had killed a whole team of men, everyone but her. She hadn't seen much he was fast. Very fast. The only thing she remembered seeing of him through the smoke and shadow of the building was that he had no face he just had a skull, and it was red. The rest of him had been dressed in black as if he had been born of the smoke itself.

Usually, Natasha probably would have stayed behind to fight the adversary, to make him pay for taking the lives of those good men. But she had watched the deadly stranger take out each and every one of her agents with terrifying precision, either with his gun or a well-aimed grenade, leaving only her standing. And instead of aiming his gun at her head in the sheer delight of saving her for last, he'd aimed his gun lower, at one of her kneecaps. 

That's when she'd realized that he didn't mean to kill her. He meant to hobble her, cripple her enough so he could take her. She watched him through the haze. He slowly inched his finger onto the trigger, taking his precious time because he knew he had her. She was about to dodge; at least maybe then she could get away with a graze if she was lucky.

As it turned out, she had a stroke of luck when a fire from one of his grenades sparked against the gas line of an old water heater that sat against the far wall, at least fifty feet away. The air seemed to still for a split second, right before an explosion rocked the entire warehouse. 

Natasha had been thrown to the side, landing hard on her shoulder, hitting her head against the solid floor. Her vision went black. She could feel the heat from the explosion against her back, singeing the ends of her hair. Craning her neck, squinting through the haze, she couldn't help but think of a different building, a different fire. It seemed like yesterday, though it had been a couple of years now.

She kept telling herself to move, to run and get out of there, away from the fire and away from the strange man. Get up, Natasha. Get up! Her brain screamed at her, but she couldn't seem to move. She wondered if it would be so bad if she stayed here, waiting for the flames to engulf her. Maybe then she'd see her parents. She wasn't a believer; not in God, not in a higher power. She knew that she was alive and one day she would die. End of story. 

But maybe, maybe there was an afterlife. One could hope, right? She wondered, though, if there was an afterlife if she would really end up where her parents were. She figured it was more likely that she would go down, not up. Up... get up! Get up! Get up! Get up! Run, Natasha, run! Natasha! Run! You're almost there! She could still hear her mind, screaming at her, pleading her to get up and run.