Chapter 38 ━━ Endgame

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The moment Hedeon steps into the study room, his eyes lands on the brunette in her late thirties sitting on her desk, inspecting the red colour rook in her hand. A sudden headache forms, making him clutch his head with pain as if something in his mind is fighting to break free. 

"Play chess with me. It's only fun if I meet a worthy opponent." Nadia speaks with a heavy Russian accent, gesturing at the board of chess with red and white chess pieces laying on the desk in front of her. Her eyes are still glued to the rook in her hands. 

"A worthy opponent?" The former supersoldier asks, letting go of his head even though the headache is yet to fade away. "You must be really good at chess." 

Nadia finally looks up with a smirk. "Hedeon, you're flattering me." 

"If you really want to play against me, I'll play with you." Hedeon shrugs and joins her on the desk. He wonders why the room is only under the minimum protection of two guards. 

With a satisfied look, Nadia begins to arrange the red pieces on her side while the former Destroyer adjusts the white pieces into place. "Life is like chess. After you make your move, you should not regret it." 

"No regrets. Of course." Hedeon dryly chuckles. "Is that why you wiped out the Smirnovs?" 

"Mikhail tried to bring down the redroom with his loving daughter. I had to do something. Nothing personal. I am the one who schemed the plan, every single bit of it. I was the one who ordered you to kill them all." Nadia admits proudly, watching his reactions carefully. "I don't know if you noticed, but your father loved you in his own twisted way. He took care of sweet Antonia for you. He even let you slip out and when you came back, he injected you the supersoldier serum to make you powerful enough to fight back. But power doesn't come out without a struggle." 

"I didn't ask for it." Hedeon responds. 

"You were proudly embracing it, weren't you?" Nadia smugly points out. "Yelena and Alina. Two valuable people in your life and all their lives are all in my hands. What do you have? Let me make a fair offer. If you give me yourself. I'll let everyone live." 

"You'll let them go if I give you myself? Do you mean it?" 

"I do mean it. So? Will it be a yes or no?" 

"I don't want to." 

"Why not?" 

"You look like a con artist, that's why. I don't make deals with people like you. I'll take everyone back on my own." 

"Since you're too stubborn, feel free to see what it's like to destroy everything you love with your own hands." Nadia taunts with an evil smile passing in the corner of her painted lips. "Now I see it as it is. Antonia was one persistent brat. She got that annoying trait from you." 

"My sister died because of you." Hedeon recalls with accusation burning through the sentence. "And she was innocent." 

"Your sister? You truly are broken beyond repair, Hedeon. I don't know if I should feel happy or pity about you." Nadia leans back in her chair with an amused expression plastered on her face. "Talking about feelings, it was so confusing. You were always with Katie Bishop. But that look you give to Yelena Belova. You should make up your mind for one. Oh, unfortunately there aren't two options anymore. And I'll make sure there's no option for you anyway." 

"It looks like you forgot something very important. I was the deadliest piece of the board not because of a supersoldier serum. In other words, you're going to die here today by my hands." 

"This is why I love you. You're in such danger that there's no hope in the eyesight, but you still never give up. I'm going to have you." 

"That's absurd. I'd rather die before I become yours." Hedeon stands up. 

"From now on, you'll wish you were dead." Nadia states firmly. 

Before Hedeon reacts to her, a gun smashes it into the side of his head. Pain explodes in his cheeks and jaw. He is already off balance, and crumpling to his knees, then flat onto his stomach. He put his hands under him to get up, but a crushing weight fell on his back, slamming him to the hard tile and knocking the breath from his lungs. A knee digs into his spine and he feels hard metal press against his skull. 

"Get him up." Nadia roars from her spot. He could only imagine how enraged the woman's face must look. The guard pulls the former supersoldier to his feet by the back of his shirt, keeping the business end of the gun pressed against his head while the Red King stands in front of him. His head snaps to the side, before turning to glare at the woman again. Smack! His head snaps to the side once more, the guard holding him at gunpoint grabbing the back of his neck to keep him upright. "Have you changed your mind yet?" 

A smirk craves on Hedeon's face this time. "It feels like an insult for me of you thinking that a little beating will make me agree with your sloppy proposal." 

"You ran away to fight in the wrong war. The real war was fought here, in the shadows." 

"You didn't fight in the shadows. You hid in the dark." 

"Real power comes from undetectable influence." 

"If no one's noticed, then why even do it? You’re nothing. You have nothing." 

"You wouldn't be so glib if you had any notion of the scope of what I’ve built. I own this world. Me." 

"You seem desperate to impress me." Hedeon taunts her this time. 

Nadia's face burns red. "I don't need to impress you. I don't need to impress anyone. These world leaders, these great men, they answer to me and my Red army. All these kids were trash. They are thrown out into the street. I recycle the trash. And I give them purpose. I give them a life." 

"You control all of that from here?" 

"And with you under my control, I can finally come out of the shadows again." 

Hedeon gestures at the console. "All from that little console?" 

"Yeah." Nadia replies and the former supersoldier begins to smile. "Oh, you find this amusing? Why are you smiling?" 

"Then what? Should I cry? I went through so much trouble to get information out of you." Hedeon doesn't hesitate. He swings his elbow backward into the face of the guard behind him just as he kicks the knee of the one in front. Both fall to the floor, knocked out in cold, leaving no protection for the Red King. "Don't take it personal, but, uh… Thank you for your cooperation." 

Hedeon picks up a gun and points it to the woman, ready to blast her skull. But then, nostalgia fills in him as he feels an invisible force is stopping him from pulling the trigger. 

Nadia snickers as he gasps both in shock and helplessness. "You thought you could win?" 

The former supersoldier's face turns into a smirk this time. "The pheromonal lock, huh? I walked down that aisle long time ago." 

Nadia chuckles. "What are you going to do?" 

"Sever the nerve." Hedeon replies and slams his face right into the table and groans as it results in breaking his own nose and severing his olfactory nerve. Wiping the blood oozing through his nose by his sleeve, he looks up to see the woman looking horrified at the sight. Without thinking twice, she presses the emergency alarm and the room fills with guards within mere seconds. 

Out of the corner of his eyes, Hedeon sees guards dragging his mother into the room, and is being held at gun-point as well. More free guards are training their weapons on the former supersoldier. His heart aches with despair. 

"Don't even think about it." Nadia demands as the supersoldier trails his eyes across the room, calculating his next moves. "Or I'll splat your mother's brain on the wall. You don't want that now, do you, Hedeon?" 

Something muffles the rest of her words. Imagining one of the guards hurting his mother makes Hedeon tremble with rage. His hands are in fists as if wanting to break someone at any moment to release his anger. "I'm what you want and let her go." 

Nadia laughs. "How touching." 

"I won't say it twice. Will it be me or her?" 

"It's cute that you think you can bargain, my weapon." 

His face drops and he visibly pales. The weight of the two words that were used by the Red King in his time as Destroyer hits him hard. It unlocks the unpleasant memories that are hidden deep inside his brain and his headache intensifies, making him scream in pain. Every single blurred memory unfolds one by one which contains the Red King's identity until he is forced to go through one of the darkest memories of his past which shocks him even more. 

Seventeen year old Hedeon is standing at the end of twenty year old Nadia's bed with no expression on his face where the latter is laying on her bed, naked. 

Nadia scoffs, having no reaction from the boy in front of him at her attempt of seduction. "Pleasure me." 

"No." Hedeon replies and turns to leave but stops when he hears the calling. 

"My weapon." 

Hedeon glances back blankly, the slightest control he has on his brain is long gone. "Ready to comply." 

Nadia smirks satisfied. "Pleasure me." 

Without any control of his mind, the Destroyer obeys the demand without having a choice to decline. And it isn't the last time, only the beginning. 

Hedeon chokes, gulping the lump in his throat and his eyes are glassy where soon tears run down his eyes. "You didn't." 

"Come on, don't be such an eyesore. You're a weapon and weapons don't weep." Nadia says, tapping her painted nails on her desk with a bored expression before it turns into a devilish smirk. "I always had a thing for you, Hedeon. You were this skinny boy struggling with Intermittent Explosive Disorder and has no control of his own mind. Last of the Dreykov bloodline and a killer machine. I watched you grow up to this masterpiece. I'm greedy and couldn't stop myself from wanting you." 

The memories of the two year girl's image pops in his head and realisation dawns upon him as everything connects together. It makes him weep with great sorrow and pain all at once. "Antonia?" 

"Such a cute little girl we had together until your brat of a sister killed her." Nadia has no ounce of sadness lingering in her voice, rather being amused by his pain.

"Stop tormenting my son, Nadia!" Alina tries to move with tears on her own only for the guard to press the gun harder against her head. "Please." 

Nadia opens her mouth to reply when screaming of men echoes outside the room. "What was that?" 

"The calling of your death, bitch!" Alina spats and suddenly the Widows begin to ambush the room and fight with the guards. 

Coming into his senses, Hedeon notices the Red King slipping out through a door but before he takes any action, his eyes catch his mother launching at a guard that has his gun pointed at Viktoriya, who is fighting off another guard. The guard pushes the elder woman aside causing the latter to bang her head hard against the wall beside them. Just as he takes a step to go for his mother, the familiar blonde stops him. 

"I got her. Finish the fucking game. Go!" Yelena demands but just as he nods and turns to leave, she grabs his arm pausing him. "Hedeon, don't die." 

"I'll survive. Somehow I always do." He says with confidence and rushes towards the way the Red King escaped, not before giving his mother a look. Coming upon the fallen enemy units, some are still trying to fight despite being all shot up. 

Just when the next guard closest to him tries to stab him in the ankle with a combat knife, Hedeon prevents it by holding the butt of the rifle, and swinging it into the guard's thrusting arm. The guard growls back at the former supersoldier in contempt, as he tries to recover from the blow for a second attempt when Hedeon slams his left foot down on the guard's arm, pinning it to the metal floor beneath. 

The guard's teeth bared like a wild animal, as he aggressively tries to free his arm. Hitting the former Destroyer in the knee with his free hand and sooner dropping to a kneel from the building pain with each swift blow. 

Hedeon's joint slams hard into the guard's chest winding him. Slamming the butt of the rifle down onto the guard's throat, Hedeon crushes his windpipe. Raising up to his feet once more, only to be pelted by another guard a few meters down. 

Son of a bitch, that hurts! This new jackass has hit him with a few rounds from a fair distance resulting in him staggering as the large caliber bullets hit him hard. 

Growling through gritted teeth, Hedeon forces his battered body toward the guard, keeping an eye on his target as the guard fumbles for a fresh magazine. 

Picking up an empty rifle from the floor, the former supersoldier throws it at the guard since he is still too far away. The guard barely had the full mag halfway into the heel of the pistol when it hit him. Glancing off of his body with a dull thud, it hits him awkwardly before clattering to the floor. 

The guard somehow does manage to reload the pistol, but not prime it before the supersoldier is upon him. 

Hedeon kicks the guard's hand with his injured leg, sending both the hand and pistol hard right into the guard's stomach who groans from the impact, he tries to pull the slide back. 

Kicking the weapon up, Hedeon slams the pistol into the guard's his face busting his nose before leaning down and grasping him by the throat, and raising the dazed combatant up with both hands, holding him in midair as the guard flails at Hedeon, fighting to keep his life. It is cut short as a small burst of rifle fire hits him in the back which the bullets are intended for the former supersoldier. 

Using the corpse as a meat shield, which absorbs the sporadic fire, Hedeon borrows the dead guard's gun, fires down on the next enemy into the dead and the next few respectively. 

"If you think you can fucking hide from me, you're damn wrong, Nadia!" Hedeon shouts, just as he approaches the large storage room. 

"Shit, shit, shit." 

Hedeon hears a female voice frantically spouting off as he follows the voice and successfully corners the Red King to her horror. "Check mate." 

"This is my game! You think you can beat me at my game?!!" 

"Yes, it is my move now." 

"You think you have any moves at all? You will tear them apart. You aren't meant to save the world, Hedeon. You are meant to destroy it. It's your destiny." Nadia speaks as she steps back only for back to hit the wall. 

He raises an eyebrow while looking at her, an amused look on his face. "Thanks for the lesson. But I don't need you to tell me who I am." 

As the last attempt of survival, Hedeon watches as the woman takes her pistol from her holster to bear down on him but with the sudden adrenaline rush pumping through his veins, he manages to catch her mid way through the motion with his left hand, bringing a heavy fist to meet her face with his right. 

The pistol goes off into the air when he hits her again before taking hold of her arm with both hands, unpinning the pistol hand. He breaks it at her forearm and she howls in pain letting the pistol drop from her grip. 

"I am done being your plaything, Nadia!" He glares at her before twisting around with her arm still in his iron grip and grapples her over his shoulder, feeling hers dislocate as he propels her over his. 

Nadia screams in more pain as she travels to the bloodied floor below. Feeling her grip on his back from her good arm, they both tumble downward, and hitting hard on impact with the unforgiving surface. 

Static dances before Hedeon's eyes from the blow, face hurt from her hard pelvis. Sharp point pain in his kidneys as she strikes repeatedly into his kidneys. Foreplay is over now. Trying to ignore the sharp pains of her assault on his back, Hedeon manages to shift himself to the top and wrap his hands around her neck. 

Realising his next move, Nadia whimpers. "You're not thinking clearly." 

"I'm thinking like a Dreykov and I'm taking this kinda personally." He whispers softly and twists sharply until he hears a snap and the woman is on the floor with no life in her eyes. 

Hedeon gets on his feet and takes a few steps ahead but just as the adrenaline rush leaves his body, he loses his balance and topples right into the floor with a thud, making him groan as a series of pain hits him. 

He's glad that his olfactory nerve is no longer functioning as he doesn't really notice the smell of blood. But he grimaces at the taste of blood lingering in his mouth. He cannot tell what is going on with his injuries, except it feels a lot worse than it turns out to be. He is just being right on the verge of total blackout, fighting to stay awake and not panic and get some air in with shallow, controlled breaths. 

After it feels like hours, Yelena bursts into the room and to him. "Hedeon. Oh god." 

"Is mom okay? Is she safe?" He asks with concern. 

"Alina's fine and yes, she's safe. She's treating the Widows. Let me take you to her." Yelena responds and tries to help him up. "Help is on the way." 

"No, let me stay here with you. I don't want to distract mom from treating other heavily wounded Widows. They need it more than me." 

"Hedeon, no. For God's sake, you need someone to treat you before you die from blood loss. You can't heal yourself anymore, remember?" 

"You said yourself that help is on the way." Hedeon insists with his puppy eyes. "Please?" 

"Fine." Yelena sighs knowing that there is no possibility of changing his mind about it. So instead, she places his head into her lap and inspects his wounds. "How much does it hurt?" 

"Not much." He lies through his teeth even though his whole body is squeezed in pain at the moment. He isn't even sure if he will be able to handle it anymore. 

"Liar." Yelena calls out, seeing through his lie easily and notices his tired look. "Talk to me. Keep talking. Don't close your eyes. Please." 

"Don't I look awful? In the end, I wanted to look especially pretty." He mumbles at the verge of sleep. 

Yelena smiles up at him. Filthy as he is, covered in blood and dirt, he is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. "You are the prettiest in my eyes no matter what." 

He hums with a smile. "Good to know." 

"Keep talking. Say anything. Don't give up. They'll be here. Just hold on." 

"I lost her. I couldn't even get to know her." 

"Who?" 

"Antonia. I had a daughter, Lena. I couldn't protect her." Hedeon sadly sighs. "If I won't make it, promise me you will take care of yourself. You always see the best-" 

Yelena stops him in the mid way through his rambling. "I heard that before." 

"I want you to know that I always loved you. I still do." Hedeon pours his heart out. "And I was afraid to lose you to that prick. So I got jealous." 

"I know. It wasn't real. Noah and I weren't together. We came up with a plan to make you jealous. It worked." Yelena confesses. 

"That was rude." He tiredly murmures as his eye heavy lids closes for a better comfort, only for the frightened blonde to call out to him which wakes him with a startle. 

"Hedeon! Open your eyes!" 

"I'm tired. Just a few seconds." 

"No! I'm not losing you again. So fucking open your big whiskey brown eyes and look at me! Keep talking." Yelena pleads, not wanting to lose him again. 

Hedeon softly smiles. "You're the most gorgeous girl I've seen in my entire fucking life. And I always knew that you're the one for me-" 

"Hedeon?" 

The new voice gathers the attention of the couple. Clint Barton stands before them with a worried expression plastered on his face at his brother's state. 

"Hey, did you come running here because you were worried?" Hedeon asks as both the blonde and the older brother helps him up before taking him out. 

"Don't be ridiculous." Clint rolls his eyes as they head towards the medical hut. Shield agents are bustling all over the place, some helping the wounded Widows as the others are already starting to investigate the secrets of Red King's lair. 

"Goodness, my brother sure is the best." 

"Stop that, you dope. You're heavy. Can't you walk straight? Geez. Look at the state of you." 

"Love you too, Clinton."