Budapest

Natasha - A Delicate Balance

This was all wrong.

Natasha hadn't seen the twins in months. Strucker claimed it was for their own protection, that she would distract them and upset them while they were settling in. The harder she pushed to see them, the more he denied her.

Russia was crawling with SHIELD agents now so the twins had been moved to Strucker's lab in Hungary – a former train tunnel underneath the capitol of Budapest. It was a far cry from Strucker's previous holdings and the move hadn't exactly put him in the best of moods.

But today marked three months since she'd last had contact with the twins of any kind and Natasha was done being put off. She was going to see them. Today.

Natasha marched into the facility, glaring at the myriad of guards on duty. Ever since HYDRA had formed and SHIELD had cracked down on their security measures around the world, Strucker had retaliated with tighter security measures of his own. It wasn't like that made much of a difference to Natasha. She could get in wherever she wanted to.

None of the guards tried to stop her. They knew she had higher access than most of them did...except for those double cells at the far end of the tunnel, always locked, with no windows, and two little children tucked inside.

Strucker was looming over a desk with half a dozen scientists surrounding him when Natasha stepped into the room. She knew he saw her, but he continued on as if she wasn't there.

"Strucker," she said. "I want to see the twins."

"You know my views on that, Romanoff," he replied without even bothering to look up from his work.

"I have a connection with them. I can get through to them where you won't be able to."

That got him to look up, with the tiniest spark of anger in his gaze. But it was quickly quelled, replaced by a small, polite – though a bit tight – smile.

"That's the problem though, isn't it?" he said. "I want them to bond with me. They will obey my orders, not yours."

A curl of dread tightened in her stomach as the realization she'd been holding off for so long finally surfaced.

"You're using them as weapons already," she said. "They're too young for that. How can you...?"

Strucker interrupted with a loud sigh of impatience. "There's no need for such righteous indignation. You were already highly trained by the time you were their age."

"I'm not the best example to use for comparison. I kill people. A lot of them."

"And your skills are coveted around the world."

Natasha closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She should have seen this coming. Maybe a small part of her had made the connection a long time ago but she hadn't wanted to acknowledge it. After Ivan's death, it had been comforting to fall back on her training and look at nothing beyond that. But seeing those small children in that lab, carried off by Strucker's men...it had hit a chord somewhere deep inside her that she couldn't quite bury no matter how hard she tried. The red fog she had locked herself into was beginning to clear and she didn't like how far things were slipping out of her control in such a short amount of time.

"Let me see them," Natasha repeated.

Strucker met her gaze, unwavering. "No."

There was a burn in her chest now, making it hard to breathe. "You didn't even give them a choice."

"Of course I did. I gave you a choice when you joined HYDRA, didn't I?"

Barely, she thought. It wasn't like she had many options in the first place. It seemed as if her life was compromised solely of "choices" like that, between a rock and a hard place, with neither option holding much appeal. Kill or be killed.