Novi Grad, Sokovia

Spring 2015

"Hello, Katerina," Nadine said, her voice low and darkly pleased. Katerina grinned just as menacingly.

"Nadya. This has been a long time coming; ready to die for real this time?"

"I'm not the one who's going to die, Zhirova," Nadine said calmly back, forcing her body to stay loose as the dark-eyed woman began to circle.

Eyes not leaving the other woman for an instant, Nadine pulled the comm from her ear and tossed it aside, ignoring Natasha's sudden cry of warning through the earpiece as the redhead realized what was happening. She wasn't interested in having the Avengers in her head for this fight. Nadine fought back a snarl as she shifted, matching Katerina's movements, testing her as she was being tested. "You gave Strucker my daughter." Katerina's grin widened, but she ignored the accusation.

"They almost destroyed me because of you." The dark-eyed woman lashed out with a hard kick, just barely missing Nadine. "They moved up my Graduation because of you; then they told me to find you. And if I failed?" The blonde assassin was already twisting out of the way, turning to grab at her old groupmate's ankle and wrenching Katerina off balance.

But Katerina recovered quickly, shifting her weight so that she was taking advantage of Nadine's move. The first swing Nadine managed to dodge, but the other woman adjusted, managing to land a hard, close-quarter kick to Nadine's side that nearly had her crumpling from the force. But, knowing that to do otherwise was likely to get her killed, she forcibly shoved the pain as far away as she could. The Treatments may not have worked on Katerina, but there was no denying that she was a powerful woman who knew how to make the most of the strength she had. As her breath gusted out of her, Nadine jerked instinctively away from yet another strike from the other woman, just barely redirecting the blow before she caught her opponent hard across the face with her elbow. Katerina cried out in surprise as her lip split, her expression darkening as she probed the bleeding wound with careful fingers.

"It was the last test, you know, finding you," Katerina snarled, lunging forward. "I almost managed it too; I almost had you outside Kiev." Nadine blocked the violent sequence of punches, slashes and kicks Katerina rained down on her, forcing the blonde to stagger back. She gasped in pained surprise as Katerina managed to pay her back for her lip, opening up a gash along Nadine's cheekbone. "They'd have made me Black Widow if I'd caught you, you know. You were the best, after all, until Romanoff caught Madame B's eye." Nadine couldn't help but laugh at the declaration. It was enough to startle the dark-eyed assassin, giving Nadine a chance to regroup, an opportunity she took full advantage of as she caught hold of and twisted Katerina's wrist, jerking the other woman off balance and giving herself enough time to properly settle herself before lunging. Rage flashed in Katerina's eyes as the tables turned on her, suddenly struggling to hold her own as Nadine was now the one on the offensive.

"She had Madame B's eye even before I left, Zhirova. I was never going to be Black Widow; you certainly were not, even if you had found me." She was goading her former groupmate and Katerina knew it. A brittle, jagged smile pulled at Katerina's mouth as she forced herself to ignore Nadine's taunts.

"If I hadn't found HYDRA when I did, they probably would have killed me, you know. Keeping tabs on you wasn't enough; they wanted you dead, and I hadn't delivered. You were their star pupil; I was never supposed to live to Graduation, no matter that I deserved it. And I did, just as I deserved the place I carved out for myself, working for HYDRA's Inner Circle before they were stroked off and Strucker inherited me." The jagged grin became a smug glower.

"And I did that by giving them you...and giving Strucker your daughter." The declaration only broke Nadine's focus for a split-second, but it was enough. With a deft, twisting roll, Katerina managed to evade Nadine's swinging fist and latch onto her arm, pulling the blonde off balance. With an angry cry, Nadine let the other woman pull her off balance to drop to one knee. A victorious laugh burst from Katerina. A spear of pain lanced up from her knee as she landed hard on the stone floor, but Nadine ignored it, forcing back a laugh of her own as Katerina did exactly what the blonde anticipated; Katerina got too close as she lunged in to kick Nadine's supporting leg out from under her before going in to end it.

With silent, calculated precision Nadine pushed herself around and up to meet her old groupmate, curling her leg around the other woman's weight-bearing leg even as she used Katerina's momentum against her. She was done playing games. Taking full advantage of her enhanced speed and strength, in a matter of seconds and a handful of precise, calculated moves, Nadine had Katerina pinned on her back.

The fight was over, and Katerina knew it. Nadine's eyes were piercing, glacial shards as they glared down at her former groupmate.

"I should have killed you years ago," Nadine admitted, her tone as cool and deadly as her gaze. Even pinned as she was, vulnerable and at Nadine's mercy, Katerina had the audacity to grin, the blood from her split lip staining her teeth morbidly. She raised her upper body as close to Nadine as she could manage, pinned as she was.

"You should have," she hissed, a nearly hysterical cast to her tone. Nadine just looked down at her impassively.

"Where's Nina?" Katerina only laughed at the question, falling back against the flagstones.

"Have you any idea how many volunteers Strucker had," the dark-eyed woman's eyes closed, as though recalling a fond memory; it was all for show. She was trying to get under Nadine's skin. "Do you know how many volunteered for the chance to become Enhanced?" Nadine hesitated, eying her former groupmate warily as the anxious fear their fight had pushed aside returned with a vengeance at the growing glint in Katerina's eyes. "They died screaming, you know, as the Sceptre's power ripped them apart."

"I don't care about them," Nadine snarled, hands clenching tight on Katerina's jacket, wrenching her upward with a jerk, "I only care about my daughter. Where's Nina!" Katerina chuckled almost cheerfully before abruptly wrenching her arm free from Nadine's hold. With a faint metallic 'snick,' a short, gleaming blade slid out of Katerina's wristguard just fast enough that Nadine couldn't quite keep it from slicing into her side. As a sharp blaze of pain bloomed against her ribcage, Nadine managed to swallow most of her reaction, though a faint, startled cry gasped from her throat.

But the pain faded quickly from her awareness, the adrenaline from the fight, her anger and her desperation causing Nadine to react instinctively, snatching at Katerina's forearm even as she drew back to strike again, wrenching the blade free from the other woman's wristguard and making quick use of it herself before even truly deciding to do so. Katerina's eyes widened involuntarily, a soft groan choking free from her throat as her own blade was used against her. Grimly satisfied that Katerina was again subdued, Nadine leaned forward, her free hand bracing against her groupmate's chest.

"Where's. My. Daughter," she ground out again. Katerina merely shifted with a grimace that nearly resembled a grin, trying to lean up toward the blonde again despite Nadine's restraining palm. It forced her own blade to twist further in her side as she did so, the dark-eyed woman not seeming to care that the attempt was causing her to bleed out faster.

All the blood drained from Nadine's face as Katerina answered, her dark gaze sharp and cruel.

"With the other volunteers by now, I imagine," Nadine didn't even register her grip loosening as horror began flooding through her, Katerina's hissing words echoing and burning through her like acid. "Strucker believed she inherited some Enhancement from you and her assassin daddy and that it would help her survive his experiments; nonsense if you ask me. He started on her almost as soon as she got here." Nadine couldn't move, couldn't breathe. She searched Katerina's face—her eyes specifically, as they'd been her tell for as long as Nadine had known her—for any hint, any trace of falsehood, desperate to catch her out in a lie. The HYDRA agent's gaze was unwavering and unrepentant.

There was no lie in her eyes.

And Nadine's hand closed around Katerina's throat.

The satisfaction only intensified on Katerina's face as she realized she'd done what she'd intended; she'd gotten to Nadine and snapped her control. But it felt like she'd done more than that. Nadine felt something more than her control break inside her; it was as though her heart, her reason and her restraint had cracked all at once.

Everything seemed to turn off; every emotion, every pain, every thought of her little girl, all of it. She was cold, hard, hollow...ruthless. The mother in her was shunted aside, devastated and broken and helpless. The Ghost took over. And the Ghost knew nothing of mercy when fixed on her target.

The Ghost felt nothing but purpose.

She felt nothing as the shadow of fear began to surface in those dark eyes. She felt nothing as Katerina's body began to struggle instinctively beneath her, smearing the blood that was pooling beneath the deep wound on her side. Her glittering eyes were growing dull, but the laughing glint was still there, refusing to fade.

A mindless rage simmered beneath the blankness that had come over her. Nadine wanted to choke that glint away, the urge dark and visceral and uncontrollable in the face of Katerina's words and the only conclusion to be drawn from them reverberating like a shockwave inside her skull to the exclusion of all rational thought. Even the desperate denial and the bitter, consuming grief was silenced.

She couldn't stop. She didn't want to stop.

Distantly, someone else was speaking, yelling even. But Nadine didn't care. Her fingers tightened further, desperate to erase the horrible, unsaid words that laughed behind the other woman's vacant eyes.

And then an arm was wrapping around Nadine's shoulders and another around her waist as she was wrenched back, the single-minded purpose holding her together snapping as her grip on Katerina's throat did. A hoarse, furious cry broke free from the blonde even as she thrashed against the pair of strong arms pulling her away, fighting to free herself.

"Let me go," she shrieked, her voice cracking and frantic, all but mindless as her desperate, grief-fuelled rage finally crashed in on her, "let me—let me go—" After a heartbeat her training kicked in and she twisted in such a way that the hold finally broke, and in her hysterical, infuriated state, she immediately turned on the one who had pulled her away, not even hearing the way he called her name, trying to get through to her. Pained grunts answered her lashing fists as her first few strikes hit home, but she was unfocused and disoriented from the intensity of her grief and fury that he was quick to recover, catching her wrists easily.

"Nadine!" Somehow it was enough to snap her back to herself, her blurred gaze flashing up to meet his. Captain Rogers' gaze was wary as he watched her, his brow furrowed with bewilderment and concern.

He didn't understand.

It was too much, and the blurring worsened, Nadine barely comprehending as the first hot tear spilled over onto her cheek. It startled Rogers, whose grip abruptly eased. Her rage bleeding away with every panting, ragged breath, Nadine's face fell to her freed hands, her head throbbing as her entire body began to ache from the weight of Katerina's cruel taunting and what it implied.

"Ryker, what happened?" Nadine choked at his cautious question. She could only shake her head as it felt like her heart finished breaking, no longer held precariously together by her rage-fuelled purpose. His hand landed on her shoulder, his grip firm and steadying. But it did little to stem the flood of despair and the emptiness of her failure from rising in her chest. She couldn't breathe. Her legs gave way beneath her, and she sank to the cool floor. She barely noticed Steve lowering himself to kneel next to her, his hand still on her shoulder.

"Nadine?"

"She's gone...she didn't—she—they ki—" a harsh, gasping sob tore through her, keeping her from voicing her worst fear, her living nightmare. Rogers paused, his grip easing for an instant with surprise and confusion before tightening again.

"What?" But then realization seemed to hit him and his voice softened, "your daughter?" Nadine choked again, unable to say anymore, her shoulders falling as she suddenly wanted nothing more than to curl in on herself and whither away for her anguish. Steve's other hand rose to land on her other shoulder, turning her to face him, giving her a gentle shake to draw her attention back to him. She nearly started at the faint, hesitant frown on his face.

"Nadine, one of the Enhanced took her with him when they abandoned the base. She's okay. She's just...not here."

A/N: Thanks for reading!

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