Avengers An Eternal Inferno

I've been an avid reader of fan-fiction for years now and I thought it was time to finally take the leap and publish something of my own. First-timer here so please don't be _too_ harsh.

I do not own the Avengers or any of its characters. That honour resides with the marvellous Marvel.

The sun had faded from the horizon hours ago, so many in fact that its glow was only a memory that burned within her mind. Her last memory of light, for dawn would never come. Not for Natalia.

Her breath came and went in gasps, expelling steam as it met with frigid air. Fear had consumed all reasonable thought once the sun set, bringing with it night and death, and leaving Natalia in a state of crazed terror. She half hoped they might take pity on her, allow her soul to rot in the very cell that had stripped her of a childhood, of humanity, but they would never.

A painless death, no matter how slow, would never be enough. Natalia had heard them jeer at the screams before. Their cheers drowned out only by the begging cries.

They were to be her pleas soon.

Voices flooded the hall, reprieving her from fear for only a moment, echoing through the corridor that led to the cells. There had been no sound for so long that all Natalia had heard in the those last hours was the frantic beating of her heart within the cold, cramped cell. Desperate to beat, to live, despite that any attempt was to be in vein. Both it and Natalia were branded with death. It was why she resided in that tiny, yet so familiar, cell. The only distraction being a minuscule, bared window from which Natalia had watched the day pass. Her last day.

Daring to inch forward to get a better glance at the approaching footsteps she realized with ever mounting dread there was only one set.

Was it time?

He round the tight corner without a pause, taking his typical long strides until he stood before Natalia's cell, looking down at her pitiful form. And it was pitiful. Long, flame red hair mattered with mud and limbs so frail she doubted whether she would be able to even stand.

It was her eyes, however, that bore the true scars of her abuse. Even she could not guess what he saw within those. The pair of emerald eyes had once been a pathway to the soul that she could no longer find. Perhaps it had already moved on predicting the imminent and gruesome demise of her body.

"I'm sorry." Natalia managed to choke out. The plea had been uttered so many times she had lost count, but he was beyond listening. Beyond reason.

"It's time to go."

"No, please. Please!"

Men approached rapidly even as she pleaded hopelessly, but Natalia couldn't bear to pause her tongue. The cell door was wrenched open and her body pulled from it, thrown to the hard floor. Her tattered evening dress splayed across the stone and still she could not silence her fear. Her pleas becoming more frantic.

"Please! I'm sorry, so sorry! I can change, I'm trying to change. To make it right. Don't let them take me!" The men had a firm grip of her now, and soon they began to drag her away, further down the corridor.

For the first time in her life she could not read the emotion in the eyes of the man above her as he spoke. "I don't have a choice."

"But you know I'll burn!"

He said nothing to answer her. They pulled her away, but before they could round the corner she called out again, one more time, in absolute desperation.

"No, please! FATHER!"

He had always come when Natalia called, always comforted me as she cried, but now he did nothing. He simply stood with his head held high in the same clothes she had last seen him in and watched as they dragged her from sight.

His only daughter.

It had been freezing in her cell, like a thousand knives caressing her skin, but as soon as she left the air took on an almost feverish heat. Outside the burning flesh and dancing flames had left smoke and ash scattered throughout the stars. Natalia's legs refused to function any longer while she was pulled roughly forward, jeers and slurs meeting her. The crowd that had gathered roared unseen until her captors with one last thrust pulled them all into the clearing outside the cell block.

The sight that met her was one she carried with her always.

My sisters, both women and mere girls, were chained to large wooden piers that reached high into the sky, burning. All of them. Some were still screaming, thrashing at their bindings while they burned, but most were silent. All at different stages of ash, either still in the flames melting slowly, hanging as charred bones against the pier or pure ash with no shape or form. No evidence that the dust had once been life.

For there was no life here, only death, just as it should have be. The screams and torture that she could see with her own eyes could never exist in a good world. A righteous world. No. The flames, the evil here, had to be hell.

There were hundreds of piers, spread all throughout the clearing, and the crowd gathered watching, still yelling their slander. Monsters they called us. _Monsters?_ As if they were the evil here. The abomination of humanity within that clearing.

Natalia was dragged forward and finally thrown against the dirt in front of a clean pier, and one that would burn with her. There was no point in standing, in running, even if she were able too. The hundreds of familiar faces that had gathered would never allow her to escape the fate they had sentences her to. Would not miss the opportunity to burn even one more soul in this damned clearing.

She lay in the dirt while rough hands fastened shackles to her wrists and ankles, both far too tight, before they wrenched her into a standing position. The crowd continued to leer but only one face among them concerned her. Natalia's father stood with guards she recognised from her youth, his eyes focused on anything other than her, ignoring her screams as she was chained forcefully to the pier.

They waisted not a second in fetching the flames that would render her to ash. In those last few seconds, before the inferno began, her father glanced towards her. His eyes were icy, and he stared with a hatred she had never seen upon his usually gentle face. It was a loathing of her, she realized, of what she had allowed herself to become. He didn't look away as the men spread flames around her and her pier. He watched without blinking for a few moments, fixated – just as she was – on the fire that crept slowly towards her. He said nothing, took no action, and after a few moments turned suddenly to walk away from the clearing with that same, strong, long stride.

Natalia never screamed for him again.

The flames licked at her feet tauntingly while they grew higher and nearer. Chains locking her in the inferno. The heat itself was unbearable. Even before the fire touched her skin. Smoke clouded her lungs and soon- just like the others – she was no longer screaming but choking on the fumes.

Dying slowly, but none dying none the less. It was only seconds later that a new sensation took hold and everything else began to mean very little.

She was burning.

Years later Natalia found that she had very little memory of actually being consumed by the flames. The pain had been so extensive that, even though she had experienced it personally, it was difficult to truly recall it.

She could not remember, but never truly forgot.

The sensation of melting flesh, of what had seemed like eternal torment, was not so easily wiped from the memory, no matter how painful or potentially destructive. It had been her turning point. The pivotal moment in which the world changed, and she lost the first inch of her soul to the inferno.

For her, no longer chained to her pier but abandoned on the nursery floor of her childhood home while her parents burned, the decent into hell was simple. And it was where she stayed.

Burning eternally in a hell she had earned.

Natasha's eyes snapped open to find more darkness, only this darkness was different. It was no longer suffocating, no longer polluted with screams.

But her skin was still burning.

Her legs were tangled within something strong and she fought frantically to free them. To escape the warmth that surrounded her in favour of the cool air she could feel just out of her reach. She had almost succeeded, ready to launch herself away from her bindings, when scolding hands closed around her arms and pulled her further back into the pit of heat.

Before she could even begin to thrash, to pull away from the burning heat by any means possible, a voice broke through her panic.

"Natasha?"

That one word, murmured against her feverish skin, was all it took for the world to snap back into focus.

Clint was on his knees beside her, careful not to lean to close lest she break his nose _again_, his hands wrapped gently around her own arms as she lay – half upright – in his bed. In his room. In the living quarters of S.H.E.I.L.D.'s New York base.

Safe.

And so not burning.

"Hey, hey," He soothed, moving closer now that her eyes focused on his own blue-grey irises with recognition, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her towards him. "It's alright. You're alright." She nodded against his collar bone, sweat ridden hair sticking to his skin as she fought to contain her shaking.

He brought them both back down to lay against the mattress but knew better than to pull the blankets back across her. Her skin was on fire, heart beating wildly against his own bare chest, but he knew that she would stay like this – wearing only his training sweater in the dead of winter – until her lips turned blue before she allowed him to pull the covers back over them.

"You're here," He continued to murmur into her ear, pulling her flush against him as the air's chill bit at him. "You're safe. It was just a dream."

She had never, in the three years they had shared the same bed, been able to tell him that he was wrong. That they weren't dreams.

That the fire had been real.

And she had burned.

Please review! If a few people enjoy this story it might give me the

confidence to upload more in the future :D


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