A Different Call

The Start of the End

This is for this whole book I do not own any characters of Marvel or Marvel itself.
                                                                              Natasha's  P.O.V.

I sat down in the cheap hotel room, paint peeling from the walls and the few rays of light that managed to fight their way through the dusty windowpane. Trying to catch my breath, although it was hard with the dust and most likely mold that was floating in the air. I had been through all of Europe and back over the past month, running from an unknown assassin and was becoming somewhat unsettled. It wasn't the assassin themselves who worried me, I had faced plenty of those, but rather the fact that they kept finding me. I sat and ran my hands through my hair, trying to think what my next move would be, although it was hard with all the knots that had formed in my hair. I knew my stamina would not last for long, I was underfed when I had escaped the Red Room and the few pounds I had managed to gain had quickly vanished over the last few weeks, as I was not able to stop and withdraw any money from the multiple accounts that I had created to try and lay low. The endgame was coming the only question that still hung in the air was who was going to strike the fatal blow, him or me.

Through the thin walls, I could hear a group of people chatting in Russian. It had been so long since I had heard it spoken that it seems like one of the many I was forced to learn by the Red Room rather than the native tongue that I was born with. I started to sing an old lullaby I had overheard as a kid, a time when the most I had to worry about was whether or not my mother would stop me for wearing mismatched socks before I went to play with the other neighboorhood children. I had been having more and more trouble remembering a time when I was innocent and didn't have blood on my hands, a time when I could feel anything other than the need to survive. I felt something wet on my check and first looked up to see if there was a leak above me before realizing that it was a tear that had come from my own eyes. I quickly wiped it away and snapped back to reality, no matter how depressing it appeared, although at this point my life was just a series of depressing moments strung together by death. I couldn't afford to cry, as it showed weakness and wasted energy I didn't have.

I got off and the bed took a quick shower to try to get rid of the layer of grime I had gotten from being on the run. I then went and lied down on the bed, hearing the springs creak under my weight, I don't know which would be worse death by my tracker or death via mattress spring. I put my gun under my pillow as I lay down, making sure to keep a tight grip on the handle in case the tracker got ballsy and decided to make his move during the night. I tried to keep my hair out of my eyes so I would have a clear sight if I woke up, though my curls were having no part in it and my wet hair decided that it wanted to stick to whatever exposed skin it could find. I need to get a shorter haircut. I close my eyes and hope for a few hours of dreamless sleep before I had to be on the run once again, though sleep had become increasingly harder to come by without the handcuffs that I usually slept with.