adomania
(n.)
the sense that the future is approaching too quickly

•••

"Even though that they were all for the wrong people, my favorite mission were the ones I experienced with James. I wish things could have ended differently."

•••

<Good job, agents,> Colonel Luchov complimented. <No time to rest, however. The Soldier has his own priorities—and so do you.>

Luchov gave the Winter Soldier a sort of death glare. James straightened up even more—if that were possible. <Ready to comply, Colonel,> he spoke in a mechanical voice.

<Infiltration and Extraction,> he said, handing Natalia a heavy file. <You know what to do.>

James and Natalia delivered slight bows to the Russian Colonel and exited the room.

Natalia placed the file down on a conference room table, and James picked it up.

"Looks like we're going to Germany," he said as he flipped through it.

"So what are we extracting?" Natalia asked.

"Rescue mission, basically. The file doesn't give us his name. Only a picture and physical description. Where we might find him."

"I suppose we're not important enough to know such top secret things," Natalia said sarcastically with an acclimated smile.

"I guess not," he said, reading over the papers. "And as far as infiltration goes, we're breaking into a top guarded and heavily armed experimental prison on the outskirts. Not too easy. We'll definitely have our combat skills put to the test."

Natalia was listing to him, of course, but her head was buzzing so loudly with the notion of escape. Could the things James be saying be true? About the evils of Hydra. The Red Room. Russia? She wanted to say something, but ultimately she held it. Not just yet. He handed her the file.

"We've got to scope out the area. Find all possible entrances and exits. Get the floor plan. They want us to blow the place when we leave, leave behind no evidence that it was us. Any one who sees us dies. This is going to be difficult," he said as he slammed a box onto the table and began loading it with extra supplies, ammunition, and weapons. "This along with our stealth suit's tech should be enough. Make sure you have all your gear on. We are heading out."

As Natalia read over the mission brief, she saw something that truly did intimidate her. She looked up at James, eyes wide.

"He's scheduled to be executed it three days."

"That's why we've got to hurry," he told her, putting on the lay of his gear. "There's a jet waiting at the docks for us."

And with no more words, they departed to the jet and a took off for Germany.

Since their mission in London, she couldn't get the idea out of her head that there might actually be a God and a Heaven. And that she could be forgiven and someday be there.
She wanted to believe it. So badly she wanted to believe it. But every time, her mind would remind that nothing it that good. It was simply too good to be true.

Natalia yearned to speak about the possibility of escape. But she also wanted to know what happens to James. She knew she could use this to find out. And she was going to.

"James," she said, getting his attention as he was enabling the autopilot control.

"Natalia," he replied, standing up and moving to sit with her in the back.

"Did you really mean the you didn't willingly sacrifice yourself?" asked Natalia, hoping she had worded it right.

He nodded, still touchy to the subject.

Natalia looked down in disappointment. That didn't work. She had to keep working her way to it.

"And escaping. It it really necessary? Is it that bad?"

"Nata—," she interrupted him. He had answered this way so many times. Natalia didn't know if she could take it.

"No, James! You have to give me something to believe! I don't see a reason as to why we should leave and abandon our duties as citizens and soldiers to Russia," Natalia told him outright.

He stood up, his face red with anger. "I am no citizen or soldier to Russia!" he growled, pointing back at Moscow. The fact he had raised his voice slightly startled Natalia seeing that she had never witnessed him yell. "I am a prisoner. I have no power over anything they do to me or what they have me do."

"Jam—"

"No, Natalia!" he said, mocking the way she interrupted him. "I met you. I got to know you. I learned to love you. I know horrors you don't know. Horrors that will soon be very familiar to you if you step out of line... if they find out about us. I've made you the Black Widow to give you the tools to escape this life. Not to thrive in it. I would never have had the means to escape. But I thought that with you, we may have a chance. I am not a soldier. I am a slave. And whether you would like to admit it or not, you are too."

Natalia was taken aback. She just stared at him, stunned. He sat back down, burying his head in his hands. "I'm sorry for yelling," he whispered through his fingers. "I... I don't think I can live this way anymore. Whether we escape or not. It just isn't right. I would rather—" he stopped, his voice wavering, letting Natalia know that what he had been about to say was horrible and true. "I would rather have died than to live this way. You are what keeps me sane. You keep me from just ending it all. The only reason I wouldn't rather be in an entirely different hell is because you wouldn't be there with me."

Natalia didn't know how to respond. He had finally let on to the major brokenness that she had seen in him the day she met him. He had just said that if he didn't get out of this, he'd kill himself rather than do it any longer.

She knew he was crying under his hands across that cockpit. She wanted to help. She wanted to help him so badly. But Natalia didn't have any idea how. She had never been in this situation.

When she had been this way, he had held her close. But Natalia felt to small. She didn't even care about knowing how they torture anymore. She just wanted everyone that had hurt she and James out of their life. She want them dead, but that too much to ask.

"James," she said quietly, as she got up and walked across the room. "We are going to get out of this place. Soon enough, we'll never see the faces of the people in charge of this until they're staring down the barrel of our gun."

"They play with my head," he said through his hands, through his tears, and through the last wall that remained between he and Natalia. She sad down and placed her hand on his back to offer some comfort. "With my memories."

She herself would take comfort in the truth and logical ways around it, but she knew James was different. He just wanted her to agree with him. To sympathize with him.

"Only truly vile men would do that to another," she agreed. He sat up and looked upon her with red, angry eyes. "They don't see us as people. They refer to me as an asset and you a weapon."

"I don't even know who I am," he said, his voice now vacant of all feeling and emotion.

"Hey," she said, shushing him and placing a soft hand on his head. "We are not around them right now," she said softly, laying him across her lap. "Just be quiet for a while. Maybe you'll fall asleep. Don't lie to me and say you aren't tired. I know you don't sleep for days at a time."

"They gave my memories back. I knew who I was. For hours I knew how I had gotten there. What I was," he told her, tears spilling from his eyes. "Then they took it away. My mind was gone again."

She shushed gently, running her fingers through his recently cut hair. "Don't speak, James. We are going to escape. Our final mission together. Just incase we fail, we'll know we had had all the time we could together. For now, just rest until we get there."

And almost instantly his eyes grew visibly heavy and he faded off to sleep. She wiped away the wetness from his eyes and continued on run her fingers through his hair as he laid on her lap.

Instead of peaceful sleep, she saw a restless sadness left on his face, his expression still in a deep frown, though it was relaxed. They stayed there for another hour, Natalia soon drifting off to sleep.

They actually hadn't been given the chance to sleep since before their previous mission. A solid thirty minutes went a long way for someone like Natalia.

But it did end quickly, when she lifted her head off his lower abdomen, where she had fallen asleep to James squirming and screaming out violently in his sleep. A panicked expression crossed her face.

"James," she spoke softly, holding him to make sure he didn't flail off the bench, onto the floor. She shook his shoulder trying to wake him from his nightmares. He wasn't waking up.

"James, darling, wake up," she repeated, sitting him up and sling him gently. He did wake up, eyes wide and teary, beads of sweat running down his face.

Natalia watched in horror as her favorite person in the world endured such pain. He rubbed his face, wiping away the sweat and relieving some of the stress. He ran his hands then his wet hair and looked back at Natalia, a bit angry.

"There is a reason I don't sleep," he said, annoyed as he stomped into the pilot chambers.

"James," she called after him. He turned around impatiently.

"I get them too," she revealed to him. He didn't say anything as he sat down in the pilot chair and turned the jet off auto pilot. Natalia sighed and readied her things to land.

In about thirty minutes, they were landed and brought their medium sized crate with them. They hooked it on James's latches that had been installed just for that purpose and began to scope the terrain.

"These are the coordinates," James said, showing her a mapping device that Hydra had revolutionized only a year earlier.

"They're in a valley," Natalia said with a smirk, looking upon the device.

He smiled back. "Not just a valley," he said as she followed him through the late spring forest of East Germany. Then they looked out the tree line to see that they were standing on a plateau, looking down into the prison.

"I do believe this is a perfect place to set up," James said, unhooking the box and dropping it on the ground.

"We need to get down there and see what we're up against," Natalia told him. He nodded, looking out into the valley clearing where the prison was placed.

"Get your monocular and scope the rooflines, walls, foundation, walkways, windows, and ground between us the prison," he said, taking his from his belt.

Natalia peered through her monocular looking from ground mines, cameras, motion detectors, or any that might hurt their mission.

"I see three cameras along the roofline. Windows are clear. All curtained. Foundation is clear. No visible walkways. Ground untouched."

"Good job," he complimented, putting his monocular away, just as she did. "Now load the sniper rifle with the tasers and we'll take out those cameras before we leave the trees."

Natalia looked across the field art where the cameras were with uncertainty. "I was never the greatest sniper, James."

He looked upon her with confusion. "You sniped the spy pretty well last week."

She shook her head. "No, we were much closer. And if I missed that one, the entire system wouldn't go on lockdown. You know I'm better with handguns, you're better with big ones."

"Aright," he shrugged, taking out the sniper rifle and loading it with shock rounds. He crouched down and used his knee as a rest for the rifle. "Sniping is my favorite, honestly."

And in less that five seconds, he shot out all three of them and looked up to Natalia with a smirk.

She smiled warmly at his antics. "Show off."

Still smiling, he said, "Let's go." The adomania of their situation was still ever present, but at times like these they could forget about it.

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