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Laura didn't push the claws further. Her arms were shaking. Not because of winter, but because of the war raging in her head—her own judgment against the lies fed by SHIELD.
Dante knew this was the most important moment.
If she stabbed him, she would never recover to live a normal life.
However, if she could look past his "mutant" status, he'd deem the little experiment a success.
SNIKT.
The metallic sound made him smile. She didn't disappoint him at all. In the first place, she didn't spare him because of the trust between them. They had fought each other and then spent like twenty minutes together. That wasn't enough to become an acquaintance, much less trust someone.
She made a selfish, clever decision for the sake of finding the truth.
Laura had finally broken free from her cage of conditioning and programmed responses.
It couldn't have happened without the dear Sarah in heaven.
"You aren't like the rest," she said in a threatening voice. "You smell like Natasha."
…Maybe she did trust him a little.
He decided to take her words as a compliment. If he smelled like Natasha—the only person looking after Laura in SHIELD—it meant Laura was starting to warm up to him.
With the little trust game out of the way, he continued his sprint.
While maintaining the pace, he laid out the rules for the meeting. Laura had to stay completely silent and show no reactions regardless of what she heard. For that reason, he couldn't let her know about Sarah's death. If she learned the truth now, she would fly into a berserker rage and tear the meeting apart—the best time for that truth would come soon.
He wouldn't have brought her at all if he didn't need her to absorb details about Logan's capture incident, specifically how the person who defeated Logan might be the culprit behind erasing Sarah's memories from her mind.
She needed to understand how thoroughly SHIELD had fucked her life before the negotiations.
The forest gave way to the edge of town. Buildings began to flash past them, reduced to streaks of color. Not a single soul noticed them. The forcefield swallowed the sound and the wind generated by his speed.
"You're fast," Laura said from his back in an amazed voice. "How do you train?"
Laura seemed impressed by the display. The real feat in his eyes wasn't the peak speed but its sustainability. He could maintain it for three or four hours if the sun stayed bright. Solar radiation was essentially infinite fuel as long as he had line-of-sight to the sky.
"WE BURN. WE CHASE THE HORIZON," Venom laughed. The symbiote was quite giddy to let loose and show off its powers, whatever was left of it after Norman's torture.
This exercise was pushing both the symbiote and its host to their absolute limits.
"I train my body and mind," he replied to Laura. "You should try it."
Her most glaring weakness was mental resilience. SHIELD had attempted to compensate for it by implanting psychic blocks. Even a veteran telepath like Emma Frost needed minutes to remove them. The protection was gone now, and she was once again an easy target for telepaths.
"How?" she asked with the same straightforwardness. "Should I tie weights to my head with a rope? No, that'll target my neck muscles. Should I slam my head in the wall to make my mind stronger?"
The young mutant was puzzled.
And he was baffled by her lack of knowledge.
Then again, the mind was entirely new territory for her. It was easy to forget she had yet to attend school. All her knowledge came from Sarah and her own observations.
He slowed to a stop in an empty alley and put a firm hand on her wrist.
"You have nothing to worry about. Logan, Emma, and I will make sure nobody controls your mind."
This was clearly manipulation on his part to bring her closer, make her just a tiny bit dependent on his protection and guidance. And it also served her long-term well-being.
In her current situation, she needed someone who understood the right incentives to push her forward toward a normal life.
Someone gentle yet capable of cruelty.
He had to be that person for her, and in return, she and Logan would be loyal to him and Silvija.
Her Wild Pack needed some serious upgrades for Symkaria's growth and his peace of mind.
Several moments passed yet Laura gave no response. And then her grip on his neck tightened ever so slightly. That was her response.
"Which way?" he asked with a soft smile, which was hidden by the mask. "The mall should be nearby."
"There." Laura pointed a finger in the mall's direction. "Only four hundred meters."
"Time?"
"One twelve."
They had arrived three minutes early. He was pretty sure he would still be a few minutes late since he had to find Natasha.
His phone buzzed before the notification sounds rang in a series.
Laura tapped a couple of times and tried to show him. "Natasha sent some photos."
He fired a symbiote tendril at a nearby building and swung upward. Momentum carried them in a smooth arc, almost like a slow motion. He couldn't help but let himself go with the flow. He even had time to perform a few backflips in the air.
He landed with a heavy thud right at the mall's entrance. It was quite crowded, the freezing temperature having no effect on sales whatsoever.
Laura handed him the phone without a word. He pulled up the photos Natasha had sent.
The first two showed the restaurant's name and the reserved room. The third was the selfie of a freckled woman wearing oversized sunglasses, a knit beanie, and a black face mask. Natasha had done a thorough job. He couldn't find a single hint of Natasha in that image.
'Absolute cinema of a disguise.'
***
(Laura's POV)
Laura shivered the moment the mall doors closed behind him. Warm air washed over her skin. There was a sense of liveliness as families—parents with children and couples—walked around the place. They laughed. They argued over nonsense.
This warmth should've been comforting, but it wasn't.
Her bones still felt like they were covered in ice.
Dante's speed had turned winter wind into ice daggers. The cold had seeped deep, despite Dante's best attempts.
'It's not going to kill me.'
She'd survived worse. Her body could heal almost anything. She only had to endure an hour or two and her body would adjust—
"Give me your hands." On the escalator, Dante dropped back a step down to be on the same step as her. Just standing on the same step as him reduced the oppressive cold. "Come on."
Laura shook her head, keeping both hands buried deep in her jacket pockets. "I'm not cold."
She forced herself to hold his gaze, because it was the way to tell a believable lie—Natasha had taught her that.
Dante looked at her for a long second, eyes narrowing like he was deciding whether to argue… or whether to do something worse.
As much as she hoped, it was impossible for Dante to be doing everything out of kindness. A favor from Logan—she didn't think he was after that either, not after the way she saw him dismiss Logan like an inconvenient obstacle.
Which meant his motive was to use her strength. To secure a killer for himself, just like SHIELD had. She just couldn't show weakness until she found out what happened to Sarah. Otherwise, he'd stop helping her.
Dante stepped past the escalator and made a small sound under his breath, frustrated. "I'll do it my way."
He raised his hands. The symbiote matter around his wrists rippled and peeled back to reveal his normal human hands underneath. He cupped her face with hands that were far too big in comparison to hers.
Her instinct was to shove him away. She almost did. But she froze the moment warmth bloomed across her cheeks. Her numbness faded away in a few seconds. He moved his hands carefully to her throat, her shoulders, her forearms, and finally touched her wrists. Each touch left behind the warmth of summer sun, melting the cold she'd been trying to ignore.
He held her wrist and coaxed her hands out of her pockets, then wrapped his fingers around hers with a soft smile. "Let's get you winter clothes."
Laura felt a strange tightness in her chest, an emotion she couldn't name. She had never been treated kindly like this. Maybe Sarah did once, but those memories were long gone. Natasha cared on some level; Laura was certain of that. But Natasha was afraid to show it. Natasha never revealed anything about her life before SHIELD either.
This was different, like Dante was bothered by her discomfort, that her suffering was unacceptable to him. Maybe he was just showing concern to act like a "family".
It didn't matter.
Laura let him pull her along. They entered one of the fancier clothing stores. He moved through the racks, fingers brushing over fabrics until he found what he wanted. He grabbed a black heavy coat and draped it around her shoulders like it belonged to him.
She cooperated and slipped her arms inside the sleeves. It was heavier than anything she had worn before. In a sense, the weight restricted her, slowed her down. Yet, she closed the buttons one by one, fingers fumbling slightly.
'I'll take it off later.'
Because it felt… good.
But wasn't this… stealing? She wasn't much familiar with the world outside SHIELD. She at least knew that shops existed for people to buy stuff with money. They had taken things without paying anything.
'Stealing is okay if nobody catches you?'
She frowned, trying to work through the logic. Maybe stealing was allowed if nobody could catch you—like a challenge to test their security. Or it could be the other way around—if the store couldn't protect its merchandise, they deserved to lose it.
While she was creating new logic, he had returned with a thick dark gray muffler and a strange winter cap covered in fur. She had never seen anything like it. The cap was warm to the touch, having flaps on the sides to cover her ears. It looked cozy.
He looped the muffler around her neck and tugged it up to cover her mouth. Then he adjusted the cap on her head and pulled the ear flaps down. She was sealed tight in fur, feeling cozy and relaxed.
He leaned and showed a satisfied smile. "This should be enough."
She glanced at the mirror nearby and was stunned into silence. She didn't look any different from the laughing and chatting carefree teens shopping around here. And her expression in the reflection… It was soft without a hint of her usual fierceness.
Receiving new clothes, being treated this way—she felt like she had become a completely different person. Not a killer. Not a SHIELD agent either. Just a normal girl.
The thought brought a fierce light in her eyes.
"I don't need it," she grumbled, gripping the muffler. She couldn't find the heart to take it off and throw it away. "Weren't we low on time?"
"It can wait."
He shook his head firmly like he was disappointed at her for asking such a question. His eyes traveled over her bundled form, and he whispered to himself, "SHIELD's deadly killer can't be this cute."
Her jaw clenched in fury. She curled her fist. But before she could punch him in the face for reducing her to something cute like a pet, he grabbed her wrist and started running.
"Let's find Widow."
Laura dropped the grudge. For now.
He dragged her into a food court, and her sharp nose immediately picked up hordes of aromatic smells. Her stomach began to rumble audibly. She hadn't eaten much earlier because of Logan and Emma's constant pestering, where every bite felt like an interrogation. What little she had eaten had been consumed entirely by her Healing Factor working overtime to repair the damage from the cold.
Now, she was hungry.
'I'm not telling him.'
Admitting hunger felt would make her look weak and feeble. She could wait until they returned to the academy and then ask Emma for some delicious pancakes.
They entered a crowded restaurant on the far side of the second floor. He walked down the hallway, through the private dining area, and found room number 12.
Laura picked up a familiar scent even from outside.
Inside, the room was small but well-kept. The room looked cozy with warm lighting and a few framed botanical prints on cream-colored walls.
A polished wooden table sat in the center with seating for six, though only one chair was occupied. Sitting in the far corner was the same woman she had seen in the photo earlier.
'Natasha.'
Usually, seeing Natasha's face would trigger an immediate impulse to stand at attention and ask for orders—a habit drilled into her through dozens of missions together. But today she felt something warm bloom in her chest.
As if Natasha wasn't just her superior.
Her mind went back to the moment she was angry at Logan. That level of fury should've triggered her berserk state, yet nothing happened today.
She looked at the man still holding her hand, still providing warmth through his palm. She had a sneaking suspicion that he was the reason for these changes.
'When I blanked out during our conversation.'
She was almost certain he had done something to her brain during that time.
Her free hand unconsciously moved to her chest, pressing against her sternum like she could feel the difference beneath her skin.
'What does he want from me?'
***
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