Budapest

Chapter 26

Natasha Romanoff

"What now? We don't know where your enhancers are." Clint says. I can tell how annoyed he is that I just decapitated Ivan, but I had realized early on that he knew nothing.
"He didn't have them." I say.
"Then what are we doing here then? I thought this was supposed to be a scouting mission. What the hell were you thinking just running straight in there!? You could have had some kind of withdrawal, and then you would have been an easy target!" He yells, putting his arrows away.
I stay silent, walking amongst the dead bodies to collect ammo. When I'm finished I walk towards the fence, just about ready to slap Barton even if he just saved my life.
I jump over it without even bothering to hold it down.
"You're not walking away without an explanation Natasha!" I hear him also jump over the fence, with little grace.
I just about walk straight into a tripwire before Barton grabs me and pulls me back. I push his hand off of my shoulder and move to step over the trip-wire.
"Natasha, you knew he didn't have them with him didn't you?" He says, now a bit gentler.
"You know you didn't have to follow me." I say, ducking under a beam.
"How did you even get through all this without dying or raising alarm anyway?" I add as an afterthought.
"Visual learner. I saw where you stepped." He answers.
We reach the spot where I had left him earlier.
I sigh and start calculating possible plans from here. Ivan is no longer after me but I'm sure KGB and SHIELD still want my head..even with Barton here.
"So what's the plan now?" Clint asks.
"I..." My thoughts pull me away from concentrating on him. I haven't had enhancers for over 14 days. I should have already had my relapse. Usually it's around 7 days where I have to have another dose of the serum...so why have I lasted so long? Unless...
"We need to break into KGB." I state, looking straight at Clint.
He gapes at me, lost for words for a little while before he gets out,
"You're mental. You can't just break into KGB, especially if you're about to have a relapse."
I grab him strongly by the scruff of his shirt.
"I should have had my relapse over 8 days ago. I've never gone this long without behind tied to the organization but I'm still walking. They have a chip in my brain that could explode at the push at a button. Why have they not turned my brain to mush? They must still need me for something...or I would have been dead days ago. Something tells me they've taken some of my memories and changed them, to make me go on some crazy quest to find these enhancers when maybe I never needed them in the first place. I want to break into the KGB to kill the rest of these bastards and find out why they are toying with me." I finish, leaving Clint looking scared out of his mind.
"You mean, you're starting to believe that maybe the idea that you'll have a relapse is just in your head..you've just made it up?" He enquires.
"No. I haven't made it up. Someone else has made me make it up." I start to walk back to where we had last camped before I stop abruptly, he probably has no idea what I'm on about.
"Look, Clint, in your files it has very limited data on the KGB at all, correct?"
"Yeah..." He says uneasily.
"Well I've been on the inside. I have almost all their information, their darkest secrets...the secrets that could bring the whole company down, in here." I point to my head.
"But, somehow they've stopped my mind being able to connect with certain parts of my memories at will. And I think, while they did this, they added in some of their own."
"Like that time you had an enhancer relapse." He catches onto my thinking.
"Have you ever heard of Captain Amercia?" I ask.
"Heard of him? My handler won't shut up about him. It's like he has some kind of man crush-"
"Yeah not necessary. What I'm starting to believe is that they have been able to get some kind of serum, like the super-soldier serum, into my body, and my mind. But they don't want me to know all this because maybe I'll be able to sort through my mess of a mind and work out a way to bring them down. But as soon as I even get close to telling the good guys about all of it, boom. My brain is mush. I want to break into KGB and get these assholes to reverse whatever they did to my brain." I stare directly at Clint. Either he's in or he's out. Frankly, I'm quite surprised he hasn't asked what Ivan was talking about.
"Are you going to help me get my real memories back Clint? Or are you going to go back to SHIELD and tell them that I'm still alive?" I reload my gun but don't put it in my holster.
"I'll help but on one condition." He doesn't meet my eyes.
"Name it."
He swings his bow in front of him, setting off a tripwire that sends five bullets into the tree trunk near my head.
"You don't shut me out."