After a long moment, she laughed self-deprecatingly, her voice carrying a weariness and vulnerability she'd never shown before.
"I... don't know."
"I don't know what Loki's true purpose is. I don't know what the Tesseract will ultimately bring. I don't even know if... our so-called Avengers are truly protecting the world, or bringing about an even greater catastrophe."
"I'm like someone walking in the dark, unable to see the direction, unable to see the future."
She looked up. In those green eyes that were always full of confidence and allure, for the first time, there appeared a hint of... confusion.
"You... seem to know the answers to everything. So I came."
"I want to buy an answer from you." She paused, then added, "A transaction."
She was accustomed to measuring everything in terms of "transactions." That was the first survival rule she'd learned in the Red Room.
"A transaction?" Cloud laughed, his smile carrying a hint of pity. "Even now, you still think everything can be traded?"
He stood up and slowly walked to Natasha's side, crouching down to meet her eyes.
"Natasha, you don't want an answer."
His voice was soft as a feather, yet it struck heavily upon Natasha's heart.
"What you want is just a light."
"A light that can illuminate the path beneath your feet."
With that, he extended one finger and gently touched Natasha's smooth forehead between her brows.
Natasha's body trembled violently.
She didn't dodge.
She didn't know why, but instinctively, she trusted this man completely.
"Close your eyes, relax," Cloud's voice came like the most ancient hypnotic incantation. "I won't hurt you. I'm just taking you to see an old movie that belongs to you."
He activated the power of the Yata Mirror—the one that belonged to Chizuru Kagura but had been elevated countless times by him!
This wasn't simple illusion.
It was the retracing of cause and effect, the replay of memory's stream!
Natasha felt her consciousness instantly pulled from her body.
The scene before her eyes spun and transformed rapidly.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself in a dark, damp basement reeking of disinfectant and blood.
Various instruments of torture hung on the walls.
A group of girls around her age were engaged in brutal combat training.
A cold-faced middle-aged woman was viciously lashing a girl who had fallen to the ground with a cane.
"Fight! Or die! In the Red Room, there are no weaklings!"
That voice, like a devil's curse—a nightmare she could never escape.
This was the Red Room!
The deepest, darkest, most untouchable place in her memory!
"No... no!" Natasha's consciousness form began to tremble violently. She clutched her head and let out a silent scream.
She wanted to flee, to break free!
But just then, a warm, broad hand gently grasped her cold one.
She turned and saw Cloud.
Somehow, he too had appeared within this phantasm of memory. His face showed no pity, no sympathy—only calm.
"Don't be afraid," he said softly. "It's already passed. It's just an image, nothing more."
"No! It isn't!" Natasha's emotions completely collapsed. "It's me! It's part of me! The blood on my hands can never be washed away!"
She pointed at the young woman in the phantasm—the cold-faced girl going through her "graduation ceremony"—the past her.
She watched "herself" personally kill the only friend who had ever protected her.
"Look... that's me! A killer! A monster!" Her voice was full of self-loathing.
"Is that so?" Cloud's expression remained calm.
He didn't refute her. Instead, he took her hand and walked to stand before that phantom.
He pointed at the young Black Widow with empty eyes.
"Look more carefully."
"Look at her eyes."
Natasha was forced to look directly at the "self" she least wanted to face.
She saw it.
In the deepest part of that young girl's hollow, numb gaze, she saw a faint light—one nearly extinguished.
Within that light was defiance, pain, a desperate longing for life, and the tiniest glimmer of hope for salvation.
"Do you see it?" Cloud's voice sounded in her ear. "She isn't a monster. She's just a child who was forced to wear a monster's skin."
"She killed her friend, but she was also using that to protect the last bit of humanity left inside herself."
"She never gave up."
Cloud's words struck like lightning deep into Natasha's soul!
Yes... she had never given up.
If she had truly given up, she wouldn't have later chosen to betray the Red Room, chosen to join S.H.I.E.L.D., chosen to spend the rest of her life repaying that blood debt.
She had always thought she was atoning.
But only today, guided by another person, did she truly see herself clearly.
She wasn't atoning.
She was just trying to find the real self that had been lost in the Red Room.
The phantasm began to shatter like glass, piece by piece.
"Is our transaction still valid?" Cloud's voice sounded again.
Natasha's consciousness gradually returned to reality.
She found that somehow, tears were streaming down her face.
And she was leaning in that man's embrace, like a child who had finally found something to rely on.
"...It's valid." Her voice was thick with emotion, but filled with an unprecedented determination.
"Good." Cloud smiled, then spoke slowly in a commanding tone:
"Then I've already given you my answer."
"Now it's your turn to pay your due."
He lowered his head, looking at the peerless agent in his arms who had finally shed all her disguises and shown him her true vulnerability for the first time.
Then, under Natasha's surprised, shy gaze—yet without a hint of resistance.
He gently pressed his lips to hers.
...
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