New York City, USA

Spring 2015

She wasn't entirely sure why she was sticking around anymore. She wasn't much use to anyone, it seemed.

She hadn't been able to keep her daughter safe; she wasn't trusted enough to fight; she wasn't getting anywhere with her searches...if anything she was a liability on that front...

...She'd lost Natasha...

Arguably, of course, there wasn't anything she could've done for her sister, and Natasha would probably be the first in line to make sure she was very well aware of that fact. But that didn't stop her from feeling responsible for her little sister being taken by Ultron.

She had just watched.

She wouldn't have thought it, but it somehow felt worse than not being there.

...No...that felt just as bad...

It was just a different sort of bad.

Still, she should have done something!

But at the same time, her analytical side, honed by years of training and experience, told her that as soon as Ultron had grabbed Natasha, there was nothing she could've done.

It was why, when her gun had materialized in her hand as Ultron latched onto Natasha's foot, Nadine hadn't pulled the trigger. Had she fired at the robot, not only would she have pissed him off more—he'd already proven impervious to gunfire, after all—she would've risked hitting her sister.

No, she was berating herself instead for not being prepared for something like that to happen. She should have been ready for Ultron to try something like that. It didn't matter that the Cradle barrelling through the air toward her had thrown her off balance—figuratively and literally—she should have been better prepared. She shouldn't have been drawing her gun only when Ultron appeared in the mouth of the Quinjet to snatch away her sister.

She shouldn't have been on that Quinjet... A furious sob tried to claw out of her chest. Of all the times not to challenge Rogers when he decided to give her an order...of all the times not to simply do what she felt she had to do...

But no. She'd second-guessed herself when she'd seen the chance to get on the ground herself, to potentially help. She'd stayed on the Quinjet where she was next to useless. She'd let Ultron get in her head. And she'd let Rogers' reaction shake her.

She was off her game.

And she was terrified that it might just have gotten her sister killed.

She forced down the horrified tremor building beneath her ribcage.

First Nina and now Natasha? Why couldn't she seem to do enough to keep her family safe?!

On top of it, now the rest of the Avengers were going to be turning on her if Captain Rogers' reaction to just part of her most closely guarded secret coming out was any indication.

And she didn't have Natasha in her corner at the moment to back her up, either...her head dropped to her hands.

This was just getting worse all the time.

Natasha had been right. Nadine bit back a groan. Her little sister had been urging her to tell the team the whole of her suspicions about why Strucker had wanted Nina...and by extension about her history with the Winter Soldier.

In hindsight she should have. The reaction could hardly have been worse than the one she got on the Quinjet. At least had she been the one telling it, she could have framed it better, breaking her secret gently rather than having Ultron spring it on her companions in the bluntest, most horrible way possible.

She'd been so focused on the idea that keeping her daughter's paternity such a closely guarded secret was the surest way of keeping Nina safe. She's been too sure that was the only way. She'd been so sure that she'd needed to keep it secret even from those who were helping her. Looking back now? Well, they didn't say hindsight was 20/20 for nothing.

She should have told the Avengers when Natasha had urged her to. How much of this mess could've been averted if she had? Perhaps Rogers wouldn't have turned on her so spectacularly if she had—not that she could blame him, really—and she would've been on the ground with them in Seoul. Perhaps Natasha wouldn't have been taken if Nadine hadn't been confined to the Quinjet...

...Perhaps she would've been taken instead of her sister...

God, there were so many 'what ifs' and 'should have dones,' especially in the last couple days. Had she not been so determined to keep herself so separate? Had she not been so secretive? So distrusting? So much might have played out differently.

Yeah, they might not have let her tag along at all, a bitter, pessimistic little part of her drawled.

Nadine groaned.

There really was no knowing now.

There was no telling how the Avengers would've reacted had she shared the more damning shades in her past in telling them the whole truth of Nina's appeal to Strucker.

Could've ended up playing out better...could've been far worse...

Though, considering the way Steve had been looking at her? She wasn't sure how much worse it could've been.

She couldn't get the look on his face or the things he'd said out of her mind.

And he hadn't been wrong.

What was he going to think when it came out that the Winter Soldier was Nina's father?

Neither could she understand why it was affecting her so badly. So what if the Captain wanted to condemn her for a mistake she'd made years before—a horrible, horrible mistake, to be sure—but still a mistake made by a much younger Nadine...by Nadya. She wasn't Nadya anymore. She'd learned to live with what she'd done. What did it matter what Rogers thought of her? The only opinions she truly cared about were her sister's and her daughter's. Her sister, she knew, understood what had happened all those years before and didn't hold it against her, much to Nadine's immense shock and greater relief.

Another part of her shuddered at the idea of Nina ever finding out...her sweet, light-hearted solnyshko...she couldn't bear to think how her little girl would take the revelation of who her father was or the circumstances surrounding her conception; it would break her heart...dim her cheerful brightness. How would she ever be able to look at Nadine the same way again once she found out the truth? Nadine's heart felt on the verge of shattering all over again at the mere thought.

It didn't matter what anyone else thought. It shouldn't.

But for some reason she couldn't quite fathom, it did matter.

She'd grown to respect the Captain a great deal. She admired him even, and, dare she say it, she'd grown to trust him. And that most certainly did not come easy for her. He was a good man, a good person. He cared when most people wouldn't spare a second thought. She'd met precious few people like that in her life.

The idea that he could think so poorly of her?

It stung. No, it didn't sting...it hurt.

It validated that hateful little part of her she'd tried so hard to ignore and bury for so many years that insisted she was nothing more than a monster for what she'd done, who she was. She was an assassin; a killer. She wasn't an Avenger; she had no illusions to the contrary. She was a realist. She didn't belong with them. She had just needed their help...her sister's help.

Once she had her daughter back, she'd be out of their lives and they'd be glad of it, no doubt.

Save Natasha. Nadine's shoulders sagged further as the beginnings of a sob tried to take root in her chest. Her little sister would be upset to see her go. But there was no going back into hiding, not to the specific life she'd been hiding in, at least. So perhaps she could somehow keep Natasha in her life. Because she was finding she wanted that. Very much. The clenching in her chest eased.

If they all got out of this alive, of course.

And the tremoring ache was once again intensifying.

They needed to get Natasha back. And Nadine needed to find Nina. Then it would all be okay. She could handle whatever fallout Rogers decided to rain down on her for keeping her secrets; she couldn't say she regretted keeping them. Not entirely. They had done their job. They had kept Nina safe her whole life.

It was only because the secret had been spilled that her daughter's life had been put in danger.

No, she would take whatever came and she would endure the fallout. So long as she got her family back safe.

That was all she cared about.

Nadine looked back up to the monitor in front of her, biting back a miserable moan.

Ultron was stonewalling her. He knew it was her chasing after him still, even after the stunt he'd pulled on the Quinjet.

And somehow he knew his move to spill her secret had worked. And he was rubbing it in every time he managed to head off her efforts to trace him or his base.

The video stared back at her...again.

Of all the things they had to have video of...why couldn't it have been of her and Natasha when they took the Winter Soldier down? That she admittedly wouldn't have minded seeing...but this one? The reminder of the horrible thing she'd done? Of what she'd done to him? Of how she'd been played?

Ultron was taunting her. Tormenting her.

She couldn't escape it, no matter the blocks or the firewalls she erected to try and keep Ultron from throwing it in her face over and over again.

And God...it wasn't even just that, anymore.

Every time she changed tactics, methods, approaches, even once she and Barton had made it back to the Tower, he was always one step ahead of her. No matter what she did, he was always already there. And almost as soon as she was shutting down Ultron's windows into her secrets to keep pressing on, the robot was opening more, flooding the screen with details from her past.

But she worked through it, ignoring the windows of documents she'd used to hide herself, of displays telling her he was beginning to upload details of her covers to different agencies around the world, starting to link her life to that of The Ghost.

It didn't matter, she kept reminding herself. She'd build new covers when this was over. She'd start over. None of it mattered. Not when he still had Nina. One small silver lining was that he'd left her financials alone so far...and from what she was glimpsing as she chased him, he didn't have her Workshop yet; but she very much suspected 'Nadine Ryker' was toast.

But if she could find Nina and Nat? It would be worth the loss.

The only thing she feared anymore was for Ultron to realize the surest way to get her off his trail was to use Nina against her. To threaten her daughter's safety...or her life. Thankfully, so far he seemed to be either above using her daughter against her, or he hadn't entirely realized it was an option.

If he began to make threats against Nina? Nadine shuddered involuntarily.

But it was a risk she'd had to take if she was to have any hope of getting her daughter back.

She didn't have any other options but to gamble that he had bigger things to think about than Nina. Honestly, part of her wasn't even sure why he was bothering to taunt her. Surely just evading her attempts to trace him would've been enough.

Whatever his motivations, though, she wasn't going to be capable of keeping this up for much longer. Even if Ultron was still effectively toying with her, now that he was starting to dump her life onto the Internet? He was quickly growing tired of his game. It wasn't going to be long now before he truly did start threatening Nina, the practical, strategic side of her warned anxiously. It was an inevitable eventuality that she knew in her gut was fast approaching.

But until that happened, she needed to press on. It was all she could do. And she needed to do something.

One thing had been made abundantly clear by this exercise, though: in order to beat him, they were going to need to purge him from the Internet...and Nadine couldn't help but think that was going to be impossible.

And as she looked to the video of her and the Winter Soldier again, it was also clear that she was never going to escape that either.

She'd been so foolish...so naïve to think she'd gotten away with it...

Of course she hadn't. Hell, looking back?

She should have known then that it was a set up. Or at the very least, she should have realized there were no such things as secrets in the Red Room. Her last conversation with Madame B should have been more than enough to make that fact abundantly clear.

Thinking on it now, with hindsight on her side? She couldn't help but wonder if they'd known more than just that she'd had sex with him.

She couldn't help but wonder if, somehow, someone in the Red Room had figured out she had been pregnant when she left.

It would explain how someone had managed to find her despite all her work to prevent just that. She had admittedly been banking on Nina's very existence being an additional layer of protection. A means of hiding in and of itself.

Red Room recruits didn't have babies, after all—capable or not.

But if someone in the Red Room had figured out that she'd been pregnant? It would do just the opposite. It would've made finding her—them—easier. It was the only explanation that made sense.

She'd been so stupid.

She should've known someone there would've figured it out.

It was a facility of Master Spies, after all...

Which meant it was her fault that Nina had been taken twice over. Thrice? She'd lost count at this point.

She looked up to the video, transfixed by the way the Winter Soldier's arm gleamed in the low light. Strucker wouldn't have been able to resist knowing the blood of the Winter Soldier—the ultimate HYDRA Asset—ran in her daughter's veins. So in a way, it was unwittingly his fault too, she couldn't help but think bitterly. After all, he was just as Enhanced as she was...far more so, even.

Self-loathing and reproach immediately swamped her at the utterly callous, repulsive thought, tasting bile as her stomach churned that she had even dared think it. No. None of this was his fault.

It was all on her.

Nadine's head fell to her hands as she suddenly struggled to rein in her emotions again. She hadn't felt the guilt and remorse like this in years—but then, her moment of weakness in trying to pin at least a little of the blame on the Winter Soldier certainly didn't help there. Neither did the existence of that horrible surveillance.

A gentle, hesitant touch brushed against her shoulder. Nadine jerked, barely restraining her reflex to lash out. Barton grinned thinly, holding up his hands in peace before sobering as he caught sight of what was displayed on the monitor in front of her.

Realizing the video was still playing, Nadine quickly shut it down with a few snapping keystrokes, trying—and admittedly failing—to hide her panicked urgency to do so. Of course, Barton knew—there was no way he didn't considering that he'd been on the Quinjet with her, Natasha and the Captain—but because he'd been piloting, he hadn't seen the evidence. Well, he'd had a glimpse now...

"Who else knows," he asked softly.

"Besides the four of us and apparently Ultron," she clarified dully. Barton nodded, not that she was looking at him to see it. She couldn't bear to look up and see the reproach in the eyes of yet another person she'd begun tentatively considering a friend. Her eyes were fixed instead on the blank screen where the video had been playing only a moment before, her features drawn and nearly pained. "Natasha figured it out back then, already. But as for who else, I can guess—most of the handful I can think of are dead, thank God—but I can't know for sure." She turned to Barton, her gaze suddenly desperate and tormented, visibly unnerving the archer, "you can't tell anyone, Barton. My daughter was targeted because of this. It's why I fought so hard to keep it secret, to keep her safe—"

"Your daughter," Clint broke in abruptly, unable to hide his surprised bewilderment that the blonde assassin was suddenly bringing up her daughter. Nadine's mouth snapped shut as she realized what she'd just done.

She saw the instant it clicked.

Nadine could feel the blood draining from her face to pool in a hard, roiling lump in the pit of her stomach. Barton stared at her in astonishment.

"Holy sh—Nina...she's—she's..." But he couldn't quite get himself to say it when he noticed the way Nadine's face had grown ashen upon realizing her slip. He finally just gestured to the blank screen, his own expression questioning. There was no mistaking his silent question.

After a long, tense moment, Nadine nodded, suddenly feeling all but utterly broken as she confirmed that he'd guessed her most closely held secret. Everything really and truly was falling apart. Even her hard-earned skills as a master spy were failing her.

"Well shit," he muttered, his arms crossing as one hand lifted to pass across his mouth, further muffling his voice. "That sure complicates things." Nadine's head fell to her hands again.

"I know," she muttered back, "I'm not sure why, but it does. It makes everything worse."

"Worse?" Barton's genuinely confused tone had her looking up to him dejectedly, not understanding his reaction.

"What I did," she clarified listlessly, gesturing limply to the blank screen just as he had. Barton frowned.

"How does that make it worse? You mean by keeping it a secret?" He paused, but not long enough for her to even nod in response, likely reading in her eyes that she meant to do exactly that. "Maybe I'm missing something, but with Nina's safety on the line? If the reason Strucker went after her was because of...that? You had a damn good reason to keep what happened in that place a secret." Nadine's gaze snapped up to him, her eyes wide with shock and disbelief. He couldn't possibly be saying... He sighed, coming to lean against the desk next to where she sat, his arms crossing as a thoughtful look passed over his face. "Yeah, it looks bad—it's certainly not good, what happened between you and him—but from what little I know from Nat about that place? You weren't exactly given many options to work with." Emotion clogged Nadine's throat. She couldn't hold the archer's bold, earnest gaze, her vision beginning to blur traitorously.

His hand landed heavily on her shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly as she fought to regain control of herself.

After a moment she straightened, shooting him a small, tentative smile of thanks. Smiling sympathetically himself, Barton nodded in approval, straightening himself as he pushed off from the edge of the desk.

"Now, what do you say we track down Nat, Nina and the metal bastard holding them hostage." Nadine sighed unhappily, her semi-bolstered mood already fading.

"That's all I've been working on since we got back. But Ultron's always one step ahead of me." Barton nodded stoically before glancing to her, a mischievous glint in his eye.

"Tell me; what sorts of old school spy stuff did they teach you in the Red Room?" Nadine blinked only once before it hit her. She groaned.

Why hadn't she thought of that?

A/N: Thanks for Reading!

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