Black Widow: Forever Red

by Margaret Stohl

  There.

  He pulled out a half-eaten apple and hurled it at the radio on his desk. The radio exploded into plastic parts—but at least the music stopped. His aim was better than his judgment.

  Alex sat up. “Stop yelling. If you really want to know, I’m already totally dressed.”

  He got out of bed in his boxers, shivering as his feet hit the cold floor. The feel of it brought back his nightmare—that he had been lost in a forest in the winter, sinking deeper into the snow with every step, until he was up to his waist in the freezing white with only bare trees and white sky around him.

  And then the snow covered my head, and I couldn’t breathe at all….

  It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt so real it was more like a memory. His feet were practically numb from frostbite.

  “I don’t hear moving,” shouted the voice behind his door, interrupting him.

  Alex moved.

  His mother stopped him at the front door, yanking the earphones out of his ears. He took in her cat-hula-girl sweatshirt and mom jeans with a nod.

  “New sweatshirt?” It wasn’t, and he grinned as he said it.

  Mrs. Manor rolled her eyes. She was a travel agent and had an exotic cat sweatshirt for every locale. This one said MEOW-NA KEA BEACH, HAWAII.

  Of course it did.

  Alex’s mom firmly believed everyone needed to have a thing, and it seemed that cats and vacations—preferably cats on vacations—were hers. Stanley, her tabby, went everywhere with her.

  “Forgetting something?” Mrs. Manor held up a bus ticket, looking smug.

  “Never.” Alex pocketed the printed ticket and grabbed his fencing bag from its spot by the closet, because he’d forgotten that, too. “Thanks, Ma.”

  “The bus leaves right after school. You’re going straight to Penn Station. Stay with the team. Don’t wander off from the coaches. If you get into trouble, I’ll be at your grandparents’ house.” Mrs. Manor sounded stressed. By Alex’s own calculations, this possibly had something to do with the last tournament, when the entire team had gotten busted while trying out the slots in Atlantic City.

  Alex smirked. “What trouble? It’s the North American Cup, Ma. Not a war zone.”

  She shook her head. “You’re a what trouble magnet, Alexander Manor. It’s in your blood. Everywhere you go is a war zone.”

  “Not—” Alex checked his ticket. “Philly.” That was apparently where he was going. He made a mental note. Cheesesteaks.

  He hugged her as well as he could, shouldering his backpack and dragging his fencing bag. “I’ll behave. No trouble. No war. Not even a skirmish.”

  “No fighting, no biting,” she said. “No black cards, this time. Please. Not even a red.”

  “Promise.”

  “Don’t say that. I think we both know it will only lead to disappointment.” She sighed. “Better to keep the bar low.”

  “How about, I won’t get arrested? I could maybe promise you that.” Alex kissed his mother’s cheek. “Back on Sunday. Do not clean my room while I’m gone. I’ll know if you throw one thing away.”

  She shrugged, unfazed. “And I already told you, I’m calling Hoarders. If they decide to pay us a visit, I’m not going to stand in their way.”

  “I told you, it’s a collection. Not one thing. Not Taylor Stark. Not Jabba the Hut, not a single Avenger.” He grinned, and his mother shrugged, still smiling. “Swear.”

  She answered by shoving his customary morning donut into his mouth.

  As Alex bounded down the sidewalk, his mother’s smile faded. For a moment, Mrs. Marilyn Manor looked as if she were made of steel. When Alex rounded the corner, she took out a cell phone and punched in a few numbers. Then she stepped farther out onto the porch, scanning the street as if she was looking for something. Her eyes darted from car to car, hedge to hedge, rooftop to rooftop. If there was anything there, she didn’t seem to see it.

  Mrs. Manor shivered despite her sweatshirt and pocketed her phone.

  Behind a neighboring chimney, a black-gloved hand dropped a pair of binoculars. There was no doubt about it. Marilyn Manor was worried about the right problem; she was just looking in the wrong place.

  There were eyes on the Manor family. That was the what trouble now. And whether or not trouble was in Alex Manor’s blood, as his mother suspected, it made no difference. There was more to worry about, this time, than teenage boys let loose in Atlantic City.

  S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY

  CLEARANCE LEVEL X

  LINE-OF-DUTY DEATH [LODD] INVESTIGATION

  REF: S.H.I.E.L.D. CASE 121A415

  AGENT IN COMMAND [AIC]: PHILLIP COULSON

  RE: AGENT NATASHA ROMANOFF A.K.A. BLACK WIDOW, A.K.A. NATASHA ROMANOVA

  TRANSCRIPT: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, LODD INQUIRY HEARINGS.

  DOD: So we did have eyes on the boy?

  COULSON: No, sir. Not to my knowledge.

  DOD: Not S.H.I.E.L.D. eyes, Agent Coulson?

  COULSON: Let me put it this way--whatever was going on with Alex Manor, or whatever you want to call him, it wasn’t under my purview.

  DOD: Then whose purview was it?

  COULSON: Not mine. That’s all I know.

  DOD: And the girl? Ava Orlova? When did you first encounter her?

  COULSON: That would be when Ivan Somodorov was trying to microwave her in Odessa, I guess. You know the rest. The hostage grab, when she was just a kid. And then Philly.

  DOD: Ah. Which brings us to Philly.

  COULSON: None of that was her fault.

  DOD: Because she was your average teenage girl? I find that hard to believe.

  COULSON: Ava Orlova was never your average teenage girl. But then, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if she was, would we?

  DOD: You tell me, Agent.

  THE FORT GREENE YWCA

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  “Prosypaysya, Ava!” Wake up!

  The slam of a fencing blade into her chest brought Ava back to reality. As she opened her eyes, the latest daydream faded.

  Tattoo Boy saying good-bye to his mother, the one with the strangely hard eyes. But something else, too. Someone. Watching from across the street.

  Someone with a gun.

  The blade hit her again, and Ava found herself automatically kicking her foot beneath her attacker’s outstretched leg—taking her down, slamming her to the floor beneath them. Her heart was pounding.

  That’s new.

  Ava now stared awkwardly down at her friend Oksana, who was flat on her back on the wooden strip. “Sorry. I don’t know why I just did that.”

  “Never mind why—where did you learn how to do that?” Oksana Davis was laughing—Ava could see her twinkling brown eyes and equally brown skin through the mesh of the mask. Still, she was surprised.

  “Nowhere. It just sort of happened, I guess.” Ava pulled off her mask. She knew it wasn’t much of an explanation, but it was the truth; lately, all kinds of things had just been happening to Ava, and she couldn’t explain any of them.

  “Jeez. Your lessons are really starting to pay off.” Oksana sat up.

  The Y had started giving basic fencing classes two years ago, and Ava and Oksana never missed them if they could help it. They were allowed to use the equipment whenever they liked, so they found themselves hanging out at the Y most afternoons when toddler classes and retirees weren’t occupying the room.

  Both girls took to the sport. Neither girl fit anywhere particular in the world, and they’d gradually made a habit of not fitting in next to each other. When they’d met at the Auburn shelter in Fort Greene, Ava barely spoke—but Oksana spoke Russian. Her late mother had been a ballerina. Her father drove a cab. Every conversation Ava and Oksana had was a tiny glimpse of home for both of them. Even if Oksana had never been there herself, Russian had been her mother’s tongue.

  Which had brought them both to fencing, something Ava had begun back in Ukraine at her primary school when she was six years old. Oksana had let Ava drag he
r into their first épée class at the Y, but from then on, Oksana had been the one with the advantage, thanks to her endlessly long limbs. Though Ava was fast and strong and sometimes utterly fearless, she was a good two inches shorter than her willowy friend.

  So why did I just win this bout today? Ava wondered. She didn’t even remember practicing that attack. And she was still so disoriented from what she had seen in her daydream, she had been totally unprepared to defend herself.

  “One lucky move.” Oksana grinned. “Besides, you’re thinking about your dream boyfriend again. Tattoo Boy inspires you.” She pulled off her mask. Half her brown curls had escaped the boho scarf she wore wrapped around her head, as always.

  “No I’m not.” Ava could feel her face turning red. “I mean, he doesn’t.” She sat down against the wall and unzipped her borrowed fencing jacket, printed with the faded letters of somebody else’s name.

  “You know you’re a terrible liar. It’s one of your best qualities.” Oksana sat herself down next to Ava. “So tell me. What is Tattoo Boy up to today?”

  Ava hung her head. The dreams had almost become a joke between them, as if Tattoo Boy was their shared imaginary friend. “Something’s wrong. And the dreams are changing.” She looked at her friend. “They’re turning into nightmares.”

  “Go on.”

  Ava looked away. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t real.”

  Oksana laughed. “This is America, Ava. Some people fly around in iron suits. Some climb buildings like spiders. Others pound cities into plaster with giant green fists or alien hammers. How do you know what’s real anymore, myshka?”

  Ava knew it was all too easy to fantasize about getting saved by a super hero, especially when you were stuck in the kind of life they had. She only shrugged. “Do you think those people are heroes, Sana?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  Ava didn’t answer. She wanted to tell Oksana about Black Widow, just as she wanted to tell her everything about the dreams and show her the sketches. But there were some parts of yourself you just couldn’t share, not even with your only friend. Because there were some parts of yourself that didn’t make sense, not even to you.

  Not even in a world where people flew around in iron suits.

  Is Alexei real?

  Maybe.

  Possibly.

  It was also possible that she’d invented him. But Ava knew she hadn’t invented the Black Widow, and she—the woman in black, that was how she thought of her—was in her dreams too. Of course, they’d actually met, once, so maybe it was all some kind of psychological mumbo jumbo. Traumatic memories played out in the safety of dreamland or whatever.

  But not Alexei.

  He wasn’t there in Odessa that night, was he?

  As if on cue, the ghost words floated back into her head, the ones that had stayed with her for almost eight years now.

  OPUS.

  LUXPORT.

  KRASNAYA KOMNATA.

  When she was ten, she had snuck onto her tutor’s laptop and looked up OPUS, but as far as she could tell, it was either some type of classical music composition or a cartoon character. LUXPORT was the name of a big Ukrainian export company, more boring than criminal-looking. KRASNAYA KOMNATA, that one she couldn’t understand at all.

  Krasnaya Komnata.

  Red Room.

  That was the literal translation. But so what? Which red room mattered to Ava, or even her mother? Red like the Russian flag? Red like her Russian blood?

  Or maybe just red like the flames that had come after the warehouse exploded. Maybe her mind was just remembering that night, trying to make sense of it. Maybe the room was just her memory.

  Red what?

  Now Oksana was poking her with a blade. “Speaking of trips, we’ve got to leave really early tomorrow. Like six in the morning.”

  Ava tried to piece together what her friend had been talking about. “Six? That’s the first bus? And how are we going to pay for a bus all the way to Philly?”

  Oksana smiled. “Who said anything about a bus?” She unplugged her blade, letting it clatter to the floor. “I’ve called us a cab.”

  Ava looked surprised. “Your dad is going to drive us all the way to Philly?”

  Oksana shrugged. “Once Nana said it was time we started competing, my dad said yes. He wasn’t going to be the one to crush our dreams.” She grinned. “Well, my dreams. We already know what your dreams are about.”

  Ava shoved her. “At least they’re not about Nana.” Nana was their volunteer coach, an Armenian firecracker who taught classes for free on Thursdays. Between the three of them, every other kid in the class now knew how to curse in Russian. “You know we have to register for tourneys.” It was the best Ava could come up with. A fencing tournament was the farthest thing from her mind. She’d had an uneasy feeling all day, and now she felt sick to her stomach.

  It’s the gun in the dream. I can’t stop thinking about it.

  “What if I said same-day registration was still open? And that Nana told me she wanted us to go?” Oksana smiled.

  “I guess I’d say we don’t have equipment,” Ava answered. She was still distracted.

  Maybe it’s an omen, she thought. Maybe bad things are coming.

  Oksana looked around. “And then I’d say we could use this stuff.”

  “And then I’d say excellent. Because these gloves don’t smell like someone died in them.” Ava peeled hers off, dropping it on the floor.

  Oksana smiled. “Oh my God, Ava. You’re chicken? Ty trushish? Is that even possible?”

  “I’m not chicken.” Ava wiggled out of the jacket, which was three sizes too big.

  “You? Ava Orlova, who fears nothing?” Oksana was amazed.

  Ava shrugged. “I’m not scared of a little metal blade with rubber on the end, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m Russian.”

  I survived a madman in Odessa and an explosion and a Black Widow, too.

  She had never talked about that night, not to Oksana. Not about the warehouse or Odessa. That didn’t mean she didn’t think about it, though.

  The time when everything fell apart.

  “Tournament blades don’t have rubber tips, remember?” Oksana said, finally.

  “Same difference.”

  “Okay,” Sana gave up. “We don’t have to go.”

  They sat side by side in silence. There was nothing more to say. Ava knew how much Oksana must have wanted to go to the tournament; Oksana barely spoke to her father unless she absolutely had to, as if he himself had something to do with her mother’s death or the fact that she was now alone.

  But she’s not. We have each other.

  Ava could feel Oksana’s eyes on her.

  “Okay,” Ava said slowly. She shrugged off the feeling that had settled over her. There were no omens. The bad things had all already happened, and dream boys didn’t die. As far as Ava knew, they didn’t even live. “Okay, fine. You win. We’ll go.”

  Oksana held up her fist with a smile and Ava bumped it. Then she leaned her head on Ava’s sweaty shoulder and began to catalog the random collection of used fencing gear in the room.

  Between the battered blades and smelly masks and oversized jackets and broken-zippered pants, Ava forgot all about the gun and the ghost words and the woman in black. She stopped wondering why or how her parents had disappeared—or who was responsible. She stopped thinking about boys who were not real and heroes who were not heroic.

  By the time the girls hit the freezing-cold showers, everything was back to normal, if living in the basement of a Y like—and with—a stray cat could be considered normal. It was as normal as anything else Ava had known.

  The icy blast of water was almost literally mind-numbing.

  At least clarifying.

  That’s why Ava never minded the cold; she depended on it.

  It pushed away her memories and made her head hurt less, which was important because the one thing Ava could not afford to do wa
s feel.

  She had felt too much already.

  She already knew she was going to have to be her own hero.

  S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY

  CLEARANCE LEVEL X

  LINE-OF-DUTY DEATH [LODD] INVESTIGATION

  REF: S.H.I.E.L.D. CASE 121A415

  AGENT IN COMMAND [AIC]: PHILLIP COULSON

  RE: AGENT NATASHA ROMANOFF A.K.A. BLACK WIDOW, A.K.A. NATASHA ROMANOVA

  TRANSCRIPT: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, LODD INQUIRY HEARINGS

  DOD: And you made zero contact with the asset prior to engaging?

  ROMANOFF: No, sir. After further reflection, I had decided it would be best to–to cut ties.

  DOD: Why?

  ROMANOFF: Sir?

  DOD: Why cut ties? From what I’ve read, you pulled the asset from burning wreckage. You spoke her language and identified with her as an orphan of war, almost a sister.

  ROMANOFF: I’m not sure I would say that.

  DOD: Then I’d be curious to know what you would say. It strains credulity, Agent Romanoff, that after you saved her life and brought her to this country, you never spoke to the child again.

  ROMANOFF: I’m not exactly the big-sister type, sir.

  DOD: And yet you had no problem involving her in field ops? When you knew yourself to be putting this minor asset’s life at risk?

  ROMANOFF: Yes, sir.

  DOD: And? This didn’t worry you?

  ROMANOFF: Like I said, I’m not exactly the big-sister type.

  DOD: I’m starting to pick up on that.

  PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION CENTER—

  DOWNTOWN PHILLY

  THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE

  “You’re crazy.” Dante shook his head. “And we’re late.”

  But Alex wouldn’t budge from the sidewalk in front of the convention center. “I’m serious. Someone’s following us. A woman. It’s creeping me out. I saw her at Penn Station, and I think I saw her just now.” He looked from one end of the crowded downtown street to the other. As he did, he took a half cheesesteak out of his pocket and unwrapped the greasy paper. Alex always ate when he was stressed out—the junkier the better. He took a bite of congealed cheese-beef. “Maybe she’s CIA.”