All the Colors of Earth (Natasha Romanoff)

1.8

⚠️ this chapter touches on sensitive subjects such as death of children, sexual abuse of children⚠️

My happy feeling only lasted a few hours.

A knock on my door a few hours later and I knew from the look on Natasha's face that she had read my file. That and she punched me, sending me to the floor where she got on top of me, holding me down, "You murdered children."

"Would you believe me if I said it was self defense?" I asked as I stare into her eyes. Eyes that were full of hate. The anger coming through our Bond almost made me sick as wave after wave of pure fury coursed from her into me.

"Self defense? Against children?" She seethed.

"Against the people who were buying the kids." Something in her eyes changed and I asked, "can you please get off of me?"

Wordlessly she gets up and takes a seat at the desk while I pick myself up off the floor and sit on my bed. "Thank you."

"Explain," she demands.

I nod, "yes, I killed kids. But it was an accident," I look at her intensely, "Natasha I was trying to save them."

"From who?"

I shake my head, "I don't know that they had an official name, I just called them the Smiles."

"Smiles?"

"You can't look at me differently when I tell you, ok?" She seems reluctant but she gives me a single nod. Taking a breath I continue, "when I came to earth I was six, and I was alone. I didn't speak any language that was spoken here, I had no idea how anything here worked. No idea what humans were capable of." A familiar pit starts to form in my stomach, "I landed in Russia during the winter. My planet is tropical and I was not prepared at all for the bitter cold of that place."

"My pod didn't survive the crash, it's a miracle that I did. Luckily, or not, I crashed outside a town and I made my way there hoping that someone could help. But nobody did. I had no money, I was freezing, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. So when a man gave me his coat, gave me food and welcomed me into his home, how was I supposed to know what he would do? What his friends would do?" I take a pause to center myself, to feel the blanket under my hands. I would not get lost in this memory, not now. "I called them the Smiles because they all smiled when they came to visit me. Always smiling, even when I cried and begged them to leave me alone, but of course they couldn't understand me."

"I was there for years, I'm not sure for how many but it was long enough for me to hit puberty. And once that happened, the Smiles didn't want me anymore. So they took me to meet other people, people who wanted someone my age. I was put in a large metal container with other kids and they were all just as scared as I was. In the dark of that container my powers came to me for the first time. I saw each and every one of them. I still see them." By now tears had started to fall down my face and I rubbed them away, "periodically the Smiles and the Others would come and take one of us. We tried to stop them, tried to fight back but.. we were kids against grown men."

"By the time they came for the third one us, my entire body was vibrating. I thought it was just adrenaline but when they grabbed her, the girl across from me, I screamed. And everything exploded. Everything except me. I must have passed out because when I woke up there were sirens and each one was like a shockwave through my head. And when the first cop showed up, he smiled at me and I froze. He took me to a police station and they processed me and tried to ask me questions but I couldn't understand Russian that well, let alone speak it."

"After a few hours they gave up and put me in a room by myself. The next person to come in was one of the Others. Somehow he had survived and he had come to take me. When I saw him, my body started to vibrate again and the police station exploded. I got away and I ran for years. From the police, the Smiles and the Others. I didn't stop until I met Peter and his crew and they taught me how to survive. It was only years later when I got busted for impersonating an official member of the British government and I got processed that I found out they had pinned the explosion and the death of the children on me. Called me a child terrorist. So I got sent to prison and the rest you know."

I finally look at her, and she's looking at me with a guarded expression. We stare at each other for a long while, longer then I would have liked. Finally she starts talking, "I was part of a program when I was a child that trained us to infiltrate and kill. We were taken from our parents, bought or kidnapped it didn't matter. We were forced to fight for our lives everyday, and if you failed you were 'reconditioned.' And if you survived the years of torture then you'd graduate the program and get your entire reproductive system yanked out of your body against your will and then they'd send you out into the world to kill whoever they wanted."

Sighing heavily I say, "I guess we have a lot to talk about then."