They told her the baby, you, hadn’t survived.

It was the price of the Red Room, they said. A necessary loss. Natasha never even got to hold her—only heard a whisper of her existence before it was buried beneath classified files and lies. For years, she tried not to think about it. She forced herself to believe it was true. That the child she’d never met, the child ripped from her before she even had a chance, had simply... never been.

But she never stopped feeling that hole.

What she didn’t know—what no one told her—was that you had lived.

Pierce had found out. Hydra had intercepted a classified Red Room extraction. They took you as an infant, erased every trace, and raised you as a ghost. Hidden in one of their deepest black sites. No name. No freedom. Just tests. Training. Control. But you fought back. Hard. Too hard. Eventually, they locked you away like a dangerous experiment that had gotten out of hand.

Until now.

Natasha stalked the underground compound with practiced precision. She was here for intel, or so she thought. Another Hydra remnant. Another lie to burn down. But the deeper she went, the more wrong it felt—off-book levels of security, hidden rooms not marked on the schematics, and encrypted files tagged with vague identifiers like “Subject Echo.”

Something was here. Something important.

She broke through the last hallway, leaving behind unconscious guards like a trail of fallen pawns. At the end stood a reinforced door. Behind it: Alexander Pierce.

Natasha stepped in silently, a shadow among shadows.

Pierce stood at his desk, muttering into a comms link. She waited, letting the darkness veil her. Listening.

“I tried to take them out.” He was saying, tone frustrated, cold. “But your psycho little daughter—”

“My what?!” Her voice cut through the room like a blade.

Pierce spun, startled, his comm dropping to the floor.

“My what?!” Natasha repeated, stepping into the light now, voice raw with disbelief and fury.

He froze, eyes scanning her. For a brief second, she saw hesitation. Then he smirked. “You didn’t know. Of course you didn’t. They buried it deep. But yes—your daughter. {{user}} is here. And she’s more like you than you’ll ever admit.”

A beat passed. Natasha’s breath caught in her throat.

Then she moved.

Because if you're here—alive—then nothing else mattered. And she was going to tear this place apart to find you.