InsaneJournal

Who: Natasha
What: An assassination
When: Recent
Where: Classified
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete Narrative



Natasha was tired. But being tired was as natural to her as breathing, or aiming down the scope of the rifle she held in her hands. Every other week it felt like she was pulled into one thing or another. Oh, she liked to joke about what happened in Orange County, but there was so much more going on than she ever let on to anyone else. Not Jemma, not Kate or Raven. Not even Logan.

Remnants of Cerberus, of Hydra were still out there, always morphing and changing and shifting into organizations that Natasha had no name for. They all did the same thing, they all represented a threat to Orange County and the world at large.

She'd hunted every last super soldier, every demonically possessed person that might have been produced and there were always more. Always. Nat had tried every stim, every energy drink, every concoction she could find to reduce her need to sleep. Not to avoid her dreams (they still haunted her) but in order to do her work. It wasn't healthy and she knew it and there were days where she crashed hard, but it was worth it. The work was bloody, an immoral grey area that she wouldn't ask anyone else to do.

There was a disconnect there. Three lives she'd lived, two dreams and her waking world. In two of them, she'd never lost her edge, never stopped the wetworks. Even in the third, the one she'd wanted to erase the red in her ledger, she'd still spilled blood for the Avengers, and the good of the world.

She set the crosshairs on the man's head, studying him, watching him. Waiting for her real target, for the leader of this cell and maybe the entire Northwest region. Her intel always came in fits and spurts, and this had been no different.

And there she was. A tall, broad woman with piercing brown eyes. Convictions in three countries and a dozen states, and yet she always seemed to get out or escape. Something to pursue at another time, as the possibility that Hydra had agents in the justice system was...

Nat frowned. Well it was probable at this point. Hydra was imply another branch of the Nazis.

Now came the waiting. Waiting for a clear shot, waiting for a potential problem or even for things to line up in such a way that she can take care of two with one bullet. Nat always liked when she got to take care of two with one bullet. She had to make sure of the ID, too, but the ID was positive.

More blood on her hand, more red on her ledger, that dream self screaming in the back of her mind. She put those thoughts down, ignored them as she always had. Her other dream self approved. Two to one.

Natasha pulled the trigger. But she was so tired.