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rage is a quiet thing (nothing cuts like a mother)
Perhaps there is a universe where every choice that is made creates a new universe. And every choice made in that universe creates another universe. And on and on until there are infinite universes beyond the capacity of human understanding.
It is not implausible. After all, the vast expanse of space means that barely anything has been discovered. There are mathematical calculations being done, quantum mechanics studying subatomic particles and quantum outcomes, interactions of particles within the universe. Until it is proven, or not, the likelihood of there being multi-universes is just as likely as the opposite.
However, it is not proven and nearly impossible to discover.
Melina Vostokova is certain the answer will not be discovered in her lifetime. So, she does not concern herself with it.
Yet perhaps it means that there is still a chance out there that, somewhere, somehow, there is a world where she took the children and ran, twenty-one years ago. Where they did not return to the Red Room. Where maybe Alexei followed, too, and they were all a family in the years to come.
Somewhere, there is a world in which they are together, and they are happy.
But not in this one.
In this universe, Melina grips her Blaser R93 sniper rifle, the scope trained on the three moving figures far away, on the overgrown path leading up to her farm.
She sees him first.
His beard is long, his hair gray, he is older, fatter, but she recognizes him immediately.
And then-
It is Natasha, the face she has seen so many times on the television, saving the world with superheroes.
Behind her is Yelena, Melina knows, even though she does not recognize her immediately. The last time she had seen that face was when she had cradled it between her bloodied hands over two decades ago, on the hot tarmac in Cuba. Yelena is taller than Natasha now, bigger, more muscular.
Melina’s grip on her gun is steady, even as she takes a shaky breath.
It is something she has dreamed of, but never allowed herself to hope for. That she would see them all again. But she never imagined it would be the four of them together, at once.
She stands there, staring at the approaching figures, watching them get closer.
Knows what she has to do.
What is she is supposed to do.
So similar to that time she made her choice in Ohio, the last time they were together.
The way she tells herself it is what she has to do, that she has no choice. The same way she had done twenty-one years ago.
The words are hollow now, meaningless even to herself.
But she has made so many mistakes, she cannot redeem herself anymore.
She’d sold her soul to the devil, sealed her fate, dipped her hands in blood again and again—when she put on the mantle of the Iron Maiden to torture and murder, when she abandoned her daughters to the Red Room, when she condemned a child to the fate of becoming Taskmaster.
Her regrets and mistakes are far too many to even begin counting.
So what is one more?
It is what she has to do.
She is marble, she is unbreakable.
“Honey, we’re home.”
And just like that, it is like the twenty-odd years never happened.
She remembers his voice, perhaps younger and less rough, but with the same love and joy as he returned home in Ohio after a day at the North Institute. The way he would greet her, then Natasha and Yelena as they bounded into his arms.
She cannot help but stare at the them. His smile, the wrinkles near his eyes are new but the sparkle in them is still the same. It makes her knees weak.
She wants to pinch herself. Wonders if she is dreaming.
And her daughters—all grown up. A reminder of the time lost. Of the years she had stolen from them.
Yelena stares back too, and the look in her eyes makes Melina’s heart clench. The pain, the anger in them.
The ghost of a happy, innocent child chasing fireflies in an American backyard.
Melina cannot meet her eyes.
Natasha refuses to look at her.
“Hey, no funny business.”
It is the first time Natasha speaks to her.
“I am putting away my weapon,” Melina says as she sets the rifle down—technically not a lie, but not much different either.
Natasha seems to accept her statement, turning to leave Melina alone in her armory.
Time feels like it slows down, every beat of her heart seems to thunder in her ears.
It feels like she is back in Ohio, where she had to pick between two decisions that would have changed the trajectory of their lives forever.
Back then, she had returned to Dreykov, like a dog with its tail between its legs.
And today, she knows that she is still that creature, chained in a cage and pacing the four walls, never to be truly free. As Dreykov reminds her constantly, she is no one without him, without the Red Room.
Her hand trembles ever so slightly as she presses the emergency button notifying the Red Room.
Whispers a quiet apology to her family who trusted her so foolishly for a second time.
“Are there any booby traps around here? Anything that we should know about?” Natasha is standing by the sink, helping herself to a glass of water.
Her house is the booby trap, and Melina is a jinx.
“I didn’t raise my girls to fall in traps.”
Again, technically not a lie.
“You didn’t raise us at all,” Natasha retorts.
The words cut. She knows it was Natasha’s intent. Had seen the similar fire in the sullen girl that had been thrust into her arms just before they flew to America. The distrust, the fire in her eyes. The way she wanted to lash out but was always wise enough to hold her tongue.
And Melina wants to shout at her that she had been so young, so naïve back then, but she had tried her hardest raising two young girls, despite never having known a mother’s love herself.
But she holds her tongue. Knows what she had done at the end of those three years outweighs any good she had tried to give them during that time.
“Oh, maybe so,” she admits instead. “But if you got soft, it wasn’t on my watch.”
She had always been proud of them all those years ago. Alexei always bragged that his girls were the best and the strongest, and while she had simply smiled and nodded along, deep down inside, she agreed with him every time.
“You’re a coward.”
The words are like a slap across the face. It stings harder because Melina knows Natasha is right.
She should have been braver, should have done something, tried something, instead of hiding behind the excuse of following orders, as if that could possibly absolve her of the guilt and responsibility.
It makes her think of all the nights during those three years when she would find Natasha in the kitchen after a nightmare. All the times when she could have said something, done something, to comfort that little girl, but didn’t, because she didn’t what or how to say it. Even though she knew what she must be going through, the memories, the bad dreams that they could never shake off.
It wasn’t that she was unable to relate to Natasha, it was that she hadn’t been brave enough to talk about it. Too scared to confront her demons, and thus she had abandoned her daughter to fight hers on her own.
Melina knows that if she could find some way to turn back time, to go back and change things, she would do so in a heartbeat.
Somewhere, perhaps, there is a world in which she did figure it out. A world in which she would go back to Ohio where the girls were still little, a world where she would be braver, where she would have made the right decision.
A world in which they could have been free.
(But not in this one.)
“Please don’t say that. It was real. It was real to me—you were my mother. You were my real mother, the closest thing I ever had to one.”
Melina turns to face Yelena, a lump forming in her throat as she looks into the tear-filled eyes of her younger daughter. Thinks about how the last time they had seen each other was when Yelena was a tiny six-year-old, that she had missed every moment and milestone in the little girl’s life since that day in Cuba.
“The best part of my life was fake, and none of you told me.”
It wasn’t fake, Melina wants to cry, explain to her, that the love had always been real. She had loved Yelena and Natasha so, so much, even though she didn’t always know how. How she had tried her best to keep tabs on them even afterwards, even during the times she didn’t even know if they were alive.
“And those agents you chemically subjugated around the globe? That was me.”
Melina’s head snaps up so fast. She is sure she must have misheard.
But looking straight into Yelena’s eyes, she knows her daughter is telling the truth.
It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room.
It makes her head spin.
Time slows to a crawl, she feels everything and nothing at all.
Thinks of the hours she spent locked in her lab, wrestling with formulas and chemicals and equations. The stacks of notes, the sleepless nights, the ever-present loneliness she tried to forget by burying herself in her work and research.
Remembers reading through the results of the first trials, making the necessary adjustments and changes until it all worked correctly.
It nauseates her, to realize that the science that she had found solace in the past twenty-odd years had been used for… this.
In her mind, she can still hear Dreykov’s voice reminding her, the world functions on a higher level when it’s controlled. She had repeated that over and over as if it were a mantra that would wash her hands clean, absolve her of the guilt, somehow make sense of what she had done.
Now she understands why she had never been allowed to access further results of the test subjects once the formulation had been complete.
She reaches out her hand, in comfort or apology, but Yelena slaps it away, grabbing the bottle of vodka and storming from the room.
Alexei hurries after Yelena, leaving her with Natasha at the table.
When she looks up at her older daughter, the look Natasha gives her across the table makes her stomach turn.
It is the same familiar look Natasha had given her back in their kitchen in Ohio, the evening they had to leave so suddenly.
The look of grief, anger, and above all—betrayal.
It makes Melina loathe herself.
“You’re not even the first mother that abandoned me.”
The way it is phrased catches Melina off guard.
The realization that Natasha had never learned what happened to her mother.
It breaks her heart.
She feels she owes it to Natasha to tell her the truth, as much as it pains her to do so, to see the look of devastation in Natasha’s eyes as she tells her everything.
The weight of the confession settles over them, the horror, the shock rendering them momentarily silent.
“I’ve always found it best not to look into the past,” Melina says, finally, recalling the sleepless nights when she would replay the years in Ohio like a movie in her mind—how the regrets and loneliness would eat her up from inside. How the only way she could make herself move on was it to try desperately to forget it, not think about it. Rationalize, compartmentalize.
But Natasha sees right through her and reaches for the photo album tucked between the books on her shelf.
“Then why did you save this?”
Melina finds herself unable to give an answer, she still doesn’t really know why she had saved it. In the heat of the moment, just as they were about to run, she had nearly forgotten about it, but after Natasha had tried to take it, she could not leave it there. Leave it to be forgotten, disposed of, burned, destroyed like every other part of their American lives would be.
Apart from the Red Room’s records, they would be the only photographs of Natasha and Yelena as children.
Yet, it was hanging on to memories that only caused her pain and heartache.
She had smuggled it out with the rest of the research, hidden among the data stolen from the North Institute.
Natasha flips open the cover, recalling the day they had spent taking all the pictures.
It has been years since she has seen the photos too, the memories are still too painful to relive, so Melina finds herself gazing at Natasha instead.
So different from the little girl in the pictures.
Natasha, all grown up.
The one that got away—who was brave enough to do what Melina had never been able to.
A Black Widow, an Avenger.
The best in her cohort, the saviour of the world.
And yet, she should not have had to be one.
She should have been a little girl who was allowed to live her teenage years free from death and destruction, worrying only about crushes and science projects and what she would wear for prom. She should have been allowed to go to college, pursue her passion, have the option of a family and children and the life that comes with them.
Instead, Melina had stolen that choice from her twenty-one years ago.
“Let’s stop this,” she pleads, taking the album from Natasha’s hands. Mourning the years that were robbed from them.
All the regret and shame that she had tried for years to ignore is resurfacing and it is almost more than she can bear.
“Why are you doing this?” Natasha asks.
“Why does a mouse born in a cage run on that little wheel?” Freedom had never been an option for her. She had always known she was doomed to live and die in the Red Room, under Dreykov’s control. “Do you know I was cycled through the Red Room four times before you were even born? Those walls are all I know. I was never given a choice.”
And every time she had even thought of escape, or her handlers had sensed she had a mind of her own, they had sent her back to be cycled through again. Until she was so broken down that she knew the only way she would survive would be through obedience—unquestioning obedience. She had excelled then, finding it easier to simply do instead of thinking about the why.
She had become marble, hard and cold. It had become the only way she knew how to live.
Natasha shakes her head, “But you’re not a mouse, Melina. You were just born in a cage, but that’s not your fault.”
The earnestness with which she says it nearly takes Melina’s breath away. She knows this is Natasha’s way of forgiving her, a forgiveness she knows she would never deserve.
And yet, she knows that Natasha is right once again. It was not her fault that she was born into this life.
Even as a child, she had spent countless nights chained to her cot, cursing her existence and wondering how different her life could have been if she had been born to another mother, if she had never been found by the Red Room. Known that she would have given anything to change that part of her destiny.
The times she had dreamed that maybe in a different universe, she would have been born to parents who loved her and took care of her, where she would have gone to school and become a real scientist. In a different universe, she would never have grown up behind the doors of the Red Room, never learned a hundred different ways to kill a man. Would not have been raised on violence, blood, and death.
A different world in which she was not a mouse in a cage, a dog obeying every command from its master.
(But not in this one).
In this world, she stares at Natasha, her eyes filling with tears. Almost at a loss for words. Cannot believe that Natasha has such a big heart, that she could even love her after all she had done.
“Tell me, how did you keep your heart?”
Natasha fights backs tears of her own. “Pain only makes us stronger, didn’t you tell us that?”
Melina feels her stomach drop.
Love only brings pain.
The Red Room had reminded them of that enough times. Drilled it into them, taught them that it was wiser to have no attachments.
She remembers telling Natasha to keep her heart when she had been so, so little.
Her beautiful blue-haired girl with a heart of gold, wonderstruck by fireflies in their backyard.
A heart that Melina knows had been broken and bruised so many times, just like her own, but yet she kept on loving.
Natasha meets her eyes. “What you taught me kept me alive.”
It is in that moment that Melina knows she cannot do it. She cannot go through with what she is supposed to do.
“I’m sorry, I already alerted the Red Room. They’ll be here any minute.”
Seeing the tears that fall from Natasha’s eyes at her admission is too much for Melina to bear.
She takes a shaky breath, turning and heading towards the kitchen.
Her grief gives way to anger.
The rage that has been simmering below the surface for years, that she had tried so hard to suppress finally bubbling up.
Rage at Dreykov, the way he had stolen her daughters’ innocence, their childhoods, and their lives. The way he had done so to so many other girls. How he had forced them to kill and destroy.
She sees what the Red Room has done to them, after five cycles she knows everything that has happened behind those doors. The unimaginable pain and torment her daughters had to go through.
She sees it in Yelena’s quiet rage, so different from the tantrums she used to throw, screams that would shake the walls of their house. Knows she had been left to sob and wail until she realized no one was coming for her, that her cries for her mama and papa and sister were useless. That she was all alone, a helpless child in a place where no one cared if she lived or died.
She sees it in the look in Natasha’s eyes, the distrust and wariness, the furrowed brow. It is the same as what Melina sees every morning in the mirror. She recalls how Dreykov had talked about Natasha, the all-too-familiar glint in his eyes that made the goosebumps rise on her skin, a hunter gloating over his kill. She knows what he did to her, and it makes her want to be sick, makes her skin crawl, reminds her of how dirty she had felt, the feeling she could never wash away no matter how hard she scrubbed in the shower. The fact that she and her daughter are bonded by the same thing he stole from them.
She bites the inside of her cheek so hard it bleeds, the familiar copper taste bringing her back to reality.
Time is ticking. They have to move quickly.
Emotions cloud judgement, so she does what she does best—compartmentalize, rationalize, strategize. Pushes the memories and thoughts out of her head, she can deal with them later. For now, she draws up a plan.
Her heart pounds in her chest, the gravity of the situation finally settling in over her.
After over four decades, she realizes she does not know how to survive outside of the Red Room.
Perhaps she will not survive this.
But it is a price she will pay, gladly, to destroy the place and the man that had stolen so much from all of them.
She turns to Natasha, “There is still something we can do.”
Her tablet flashes, announcing that the Red Room will arrive in exactly eight minutes.
She flicks the hidden latch on the decoy shelf, pushing it open to access her armory.
Melina knows this is what she should have done twenty-one years ago.
But perhaps it is not too late to do it now.
In another universe, there exists a world where Melina Vostokova never returned the girls to the Red Room. Perhaps in that world they went on to have a happy family and a normal life.
But in this world, the choices that were made over twenty years ago cannot be undone. In this world, Melina will always have to live with the consequences of those actions.
Nevertheless, it seems that the universe has been kind enough to give her a second chance. A chance to try to right her wrongs, pay back all the karma that she owes. It is the least she can do for her family.
So in this world, Melina loads her weapons next to Natasha. Readying herself for the battle she knows will come. She knows they do not have much time, the Red Room is arriving any minute now.
But she is ready to face them, side by side with the people she loves.
It will not change anything in the past, it cannot undo the damages done.
But in this world, Melina makes a choice, one that she can finally say is the right one.