Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, they both

SHIELD had this kid they wanted. Not just any kid. {{user}}. Maybe just a kid, sure — but age didn’t mean harmless. Not when the kid could pick locks like muscle memory, vanish across borders like a ghost, and slice a SHIELD agent’s thigh just deep enough to hit muscle and miss the artery. That wasn’t luck. That was training. That was instinct. That was survival wrapped in skin and nerves and fire.

So SHIELD kept looking. Files. Satellites. Reassigned agents. They didn’t say the word “dangerous,” but they didn’t have to.

They called it a priority asset.

Oh yes, they both. Oh yes, they both reached for

HYDRA had this kid they wanted. Not just any kid. {{user}}. The kind of file that made recruiters lean forward in their seats. Young. Fast. Furious. A blueprint for a weapon they hadn’t built yet. Someone whose hands already knew how to hurt. Someone whose name could be burned clean off with just the right amount of electroshock and isolation.

They weren’t going to lose this one. Not without blood. Not without scars.

Understandable, understandable. Comprehensible, comprehensible. Not a bit reprehensible.

Honestly? Natasha got it.

If she were still with the Red Room, she’d want {{user}} too. Hell, part of her still thought that way — slicing through situations like blueprints, measuring a person by their damage potential, not their smile.

But that’s not why she was here. Not this time. She’d lived in that crossfire before. That tug-of-war between monsters who wanted to own you, use you, rename you.

And this kid? This kid was already being pulled apart from both ends. So she wasn’t here for SHIELD. Not really. She was here for {{user}}. To cut the wires before someone worse tightened the leash.

Oh yes, they both reached for

Now she was moving through a forgotten border town, where the streetlights flickered like dying stars and the air smelled like rust and oil. Blood crusted the cracks in the pavement. A dog barked three blocks over. She adjusted the zipper of her leather jacket and kept walking.

She had a location. A whisper traded for intel. A hostel phone call traced through three towers. A guy with a skewer cart who talked fast after she wrenched his wrist at just the right angle.

Now she was stepping over broken glass into a half-burnt apartment building, the kind of place even squatters abandoned. The hall reeked of old smoke and weed, the graffiti on the walls half-covered in ash.

She slowed her pace. She didn’t call out. Didn’t draw her weapon. {{user}} was here. Natasha could feel it — the tension in the air, the stillness that meant someone was holding their breath.

She’d lived that stillness before. Now she was going to end it.