Lucien got off his bike and rushed toward Natasha. The distance between them was nothing to his speed - under a second, maybe less. Time seemed to stretch as he moved, his perception catching every detail of her condition as he closed the gap.
His hands were on her back before she could fully register his movement, supporting her weight as she swayed dangerously. He grabbed her carefully, mindful of her injuries, and took her into his hold.
For a second, Natasha's eyes widened in shock at his speed. Even wounded, even with her face pale from blood loss, her tactical mind was still processing information. Her eyes narrowed slightly, assessment mixing with something that might have been pride.
"You've grown faster, haven't you?" she said, her voice strained but carrying a hint of her usual sharp observation.
Lucien didn't respond. There wasn't time for conversation, and besides, what would he say? Yes, he'd grown stronger. Yes, he'd been leveling up while she'd been out there fighting without any system to help her grow beyond human limits.
Before he could say anything, Natasha's body gave out. She collapsed in his arms with a pained sound that was half gasp, half groan. "Ugh..."
Then, despite everything - despite the blood loss and the obvious agony she was in - a sly smile crossed her pale face. "Well, better for me, I guess."
Even now. Even dying, she was making jokes. That was so completely Natasha that Lucien felt something twist in his chest. She'd always used humor as a shield, deflecting from vulnerability with quips and smirks.
He lowered her carefully to the ground, his movements controlled despite the urgency screaming through his mind. Once she was down, he immediately went to work assessing the damage properly. His hands moved to her tactical suit, finding the section around her waist where most of the blood seemed to be originating.
He tore away the damaged fabric without hesitation. Modesty wasn't a concern when someone was dying.
What he saw made his jaw tighten.
The wound was gruesome. Four bullet holes clustered in nearly the same spot on her abdomen, just above her hip. But that wasn't the worst part. Around the wounds, dark veins were spreading outward like roots, black and pulsing against her pale skin. The pattern was wrong, too geometric to be natural.
"Infection?" he muttered. "That's too fast for a normal infection."
"Don't bother," Natasha said, her voice weaker now but still carrying that matter-of-fact tone she used when delivering bad news in briefings. "All of them were poisoned. The poison is probably in half my body by now."
Lucien's mind raced through possibilities.
A health potion would have closed wounds like this easily - the system-generated healing items were powerful enough to repair significant damage in seconds. However, he didn't have any on him at the moment.
He'd had around thirty potions before, a stockpile he'd built up from various dungeon rewards. But he'd given them all to Sinister a few days back when assigning him that long-term mission. He'd gained another health potion just two days ago from a quest completion, but he'd used that on the man in the alley. The father of that crying child.
And now Natasha was dying because he did not think about such a situation.
The irony wasn't lost on him, and it tasted like ash.
Natasha watched his face, reading his expressions the way she'd been trained to read people since childhood. She understood that he was trying to figure out a way to save her, running through options in his mind, searching for solutions.
"Lucien... I thought you would be able to help me, but it seems you will be on your own with this one." She reached out weakly, her hand trembling as she pulled something from her tactical suit's inner pocket. A pen drive, small and innocuous, the kind you could buy at any electronics store. But the way she held it suggested it contained something far more valuable than its appearance would indicate.
"SHIELD has been compromised," she said, each word requiring visible effort. "The Avengers have been compromised. There's something... or someone... controlling them."
She started to cough, and Lucien saw blood on her lips when she pulled her hand away from her mouth.
"It's fine," he said, his voice more tense than he intended. "Let me think. You won't die."
Natasha smiled at that - a sad, knowing smile that said she appreciated the sentiment even if she didn't believe it. She thought he was trying to reassure himself as much as her, trying to deny the inevitable because accepting it was too painful.
She didn't understand that he meant it literally.
"There's a location in this drive," she continued, ignoring his words because she had limited time and needed to get the information out. "Probably where whoever is controlling everything is based. You need to go there and... free SHIELD and the Avengers."
Another cough interrupted her, more violent this time. Her whole body shook with it, and more blood appeared at the corners of her mouth.
"But the location is encrypted," she continued once she could speak again. "So there's someone you need to visit in Hawaii. His exact coordinates are also in the drive. He will help you with the decryption. But..." She paused, taking a shuddering breath. "Once you reach Hawaii and put it in any device, and decrypt it, SHIELD and the Avengers will get your location immediately. Within minutes, you'll be surrounded."
The coughing came back worse than before. Her body convulsed with it, and Lucien could see the moment she felt death approaching. That absolute certainty that this was the end, that her time had run out.
She looked up at Lucien, and despite her weakening vision, she could see the conflict on his face. The concern. The desperate calculation as he tried to find a solution that didn't exist.
It made her chest ache. She'd known Lucien for months now, had trained with him, talked with him, watched him grow from a captive into someone formidable. But she'd never seen him look quite like this.
Like he was about to lose something he couldn't afford to lose.
"I'm sorry," she said softly, and meant it. "I'm sorry for leaving you with this burden. Please... help me with this. Help them."
"Let me think, Natasha." His voice was strained now, the calm facade cracking. "Let me think. You won't die."
He meant it. She could hear the conviction in his voice, the absolute refusal to accept what was happening. But to Natasha, who had seen death come for people countless times, who knew exactly what poison spreading through a body felt like, it sounded like consolation. Like denial.
A smile made its way onto her face anyway. She appreciated the effort, appreciated that he cared enough to deny the inevitable even when they both knew the truth.
Her hand, trembling and weak, reached up to touch his face. Her fingers were cold against his skin, and the contact left a small smear of her blood on his cheek.
"It's alright, Lucien," she said gently, her voice taking on the tone of someone comforting another person about their own death. "It's alright. Death is inevitable. It's supposed to claim us all one day."
She paused to take a breath, and even that simple action seemed to cost her. "Though I hope you live a long life—"
The coughing returned with a vengeance, cutting off whatever she'd been about to say. This time, she coughed up actual blood, not just traces but enough to spill down her chin and onto her ruined tactical suit.
"Don't trust anyon—" she tried to continue, but the coughing wouldn't stop. Her body was shutting down, the poison having spread far enough to start affecting vital organs.
"Fuck it," Lucien said suddenly, the words escaping with more emotion than he usually allowed himself to show.
A small potion bottle appeared in his hand, summoned from his inventory. The liquid inside glowed faintly with an otherworldly light that was distinctly different from the standard health potions he'd used before.
This was what had been causing the conflict on his face. The desperate calculation, the weighing of options and consequences.
It wasn't a health potion. Those were gone, used up, or given away. This was something else entirely, something he'd been saving for circumstances he hadn't fully defined yet. Something that would heal Natasha - or at least, he was reasonably certain it would heal her.
But there was a catch. There was always a catch with powerful items.
This one would change her. Fundamentally, irreversibly change her in ways he couldn't fully predict. The system description had been clear about that much, even if the specifics were vague.
But the alternative was watching her die on this concrete floor, watching the light fade from her eyes while she tried to reassure him that death was inevitable and it was okay.
And that wasn't acceptable.
Some choices weren't really choices at all.
Lucien opened the bottle's lid, the faint glow intensifying slightly as the seal broke. He moved closer to Natasha, supporting her head with one hand while bringing the potion to her lips with the other.
"Drink it."
...
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