What Happened In Budapest *unedited*

Chapter 2: Preparations To Hell

    I spent the next week avoiding Barton as much as I could. If I was going to be spending a (large) portion of my life with him, pretending to love him, I needed as much space as possible first.

     If he entered a room, I would make a feeble excuse to leave, and then run back to my room as fast as I could, preferably knocking everything down in my way. Unfortunately, Fury  was determined to put us together as much as possible, so I spent most of the ‘preparation’ time hidden.

“WILL YOU STAY PUT, ROMANOFF!” Fury screamed at me as I got up to leave, seeing Barton enter the room. “YOU WILL SPEND SOME TIME PICKING OUT WEAPONS, AND YOU WILL DO IT TOGETHER!”

    I shot him a look of pure hatred, but I obeyed him anyway. I stomped over to the guns and snatched a handful of them and plopped myself down on the floor, examining them.

    I sighed and put them back at random. As I went in search of other guns, I took note of Barton watching me, like prey aware of a predator.

    “What?” I asked, self consciously.

He turned beet red and went back to stocking up his arrows. “Nothing,” He muttered. “Nothing at all.”

    I shot him a suspicious glance but kept browsing, until I found what I was looking for.  My usual pistols, easy to hold away from the face.

   

I would never admit this to anyone- I hate the guns. I have an air about me, a violent one, but honestly I’d rather just forget I could kill. I do not like the thrill of the game, it just reminds me of why I was bred... and I want to wipe all of that out.

The morning before we were supposed to leave, we were sent to a dressing room. I was slightly impressed, obviously this job was huge if they went to great lengths to get us a dressing room.

I must have raised my eyebrows when we walked in because Barton chuckled and muttered “Even the soulless are impressed.”

I waited for my revenge.

The clothes I tried on ranged from stunningly gorgeous dress to pajamas. They made me try on pajamas.

Surprisingly all the clothes I tried on were comfortable, mainly because I was given one black suit to wear underneath, and everything was styled so I could wear it underneath, but one or two dresses had no sleeves at all. They were those flimsy strapless things I’d seen people wear. They were absolutely ridiculous and I simply could not imagine (a) why anyone would wear them and (b) why would they make me wear them?

“You’ll be arriving in Budapest in this.” The seamstress lady held up a flowy, strapless sundress. “Fury wants to provoke thought of a calm, happy, peaceful personality for you. But that won’t be hard acting, will it?”

She smiled at me.

A small grin tugged at my lips, but I fought it down. Easy acting? I thought. Being calm, yes, but peaceful and happy? Those are emotions I feel I will never experience.

“Here, try this on,” A woman a year younger than I opened a velvet blue box. I stared.

“It’s just the ring!” She exclaimed. “It’s not going to hurt you!”

I picked it up awkwardly and held it between my fingers.

“Go on,” She pressured. This blonde was getting on my nerves.

I slid it on my finger, just to hut her up, ignoring the way it glinted under the bright lights. It was hard to pretend it wasn’t there, especially since I could feel it suffocating my finger.

“Could I have a glass of water?” I asked quietly.

The blonde perked up. “Sure!”

When she came back with my water, I sipped it slowly and felt the tingling of the cold water fall down my throat. The women watched me.  

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

They smiled at me. Too much smiling.

We sat in silence for a minute, and I suddenly noticed the forgotten weight of the ring. My stomach had a black pit in it, and that pit sucked out all the emotions I had except dread. I was not looking forward to Budapest.

My final prepping had to be the most ridiculous one so far. All the other things were easier- weaponry, packing, clothing, etc., but the one I was sitting in a large bathroom for was going to be very, very hard.

Makeup.

Why women would want to paint their faces is beyond me. Natural is easier- you don’t have to worry about the paints getting in the way of your fights. But apparently I need this.

            A girl walks in and I recognize her as one of the agents. Even I know she’s beautiful, strong. She’s one of the agents who gives me my space, doesn’t crowd me or humiliate me. She’s one of the few. I decided- even if I didn’t know her personally, I liked her.

            “Hello,” She says calmly. “Are you Natasha?”

            She knows very well who I am, but she’s doing it out of politeness. I’d normally take it as a weakness, but she knew what she was doing.

            “Yes,” I whispered as she pulled out a cosmetics bag from under the sink.

            “Good,” She said cheerfully. “I’d hate it if I couldn’t find you and then you ended up without this knowledge.”

            I laughed at this, but quickly disguised the chuckles as a chough.

Walk away without this knowledge. What knowledge? Just because I had never used makeup in my life did not mean I didn’t know how to apply it.

Okay, maybe I didn’t know how to smear it on my face, but really, how hard could it possibly be?

“Okay!” She clapped her hands together. “I’m going to put it on you, and then we’ll watch a quick video on how I did it, then you’ll try, and then you’ll be on your way!”