So that’s Black Widow.  That’s the girl I’ve been looking for.  Blond hair with black streaks, slim figure with hidden muscles, not a single molecule of fat visible on her lethal body.  Hard unyielding eyes that never waver or show any fear, and a mask to hide her features from those looking at her. 

  While only looking at her hair would clearly give her away, I can’t say she is the only girl I’ve seen with hair similar to hers.  Hidden in plain sight she was, just as I had been doing although I do not cover my face in any way.

  The girl that holds the last of my humanity was right before me for the briefest of moments.  The girl that was so entwined in my past and the guiding light to my future finally made an appearance in my life.  But while I remember her and the past we shared, it seemed it wasn’t the same for her.

  It was clear she had no idea who I was, who I used to be.  No memories of our shared past.  I wonder if she even remembers me or if she forgot me like every other person on the planet.  If it was as if I never was a part of her life.

 But there has to be some way that she will remember me.  Understand who I am and what I’ve come here to do.  If I still have a chance to be apart of her life.

  Henry gave me the rest of the night off, saying to get some rest and relax after the incident that happened with that girl.  When I asked him about her, he told me it was a normal thing for her to come here in the dead of night.  But she was usually rather calm and didn’t react as she had towards me.

  But I knew why her actions were the way they were.  I know she recognized me from that brief time she saw me when I went to collect my knives.  Her connection with the craftsman was more twisted than I once thought.  She had ties to both him and Henry that those like us do not form.

  We were not taught to form the attachments and connections that Black Widow seems to have formed.  While her teaching may have been longer and more intense than my own, I was still well aware of what they were training us for.  But it seems neither of us made it to where we were expected to be.

  I ended up alone and forgotten, while she found herself into a position of power within the underground but not where she was intended to be.  We were trained to be assassins, to be killers with no feeling.  Pawns to be controlled and made to kill from a young age.

  We were to be under the control and guidance of the Kareen Mafia.  Serving their high-ranking officials and acting as their trained dogs that killed anyone they were told too.  That was the life we were being groomed for.  The life we should have had, yet before that could come to happen I was thrown out and Black Widow found a way to escape.

  We both have the riches we once dreamed of having now.  We both have skills that many wish to possess, and we are both a danger to many people.  Yet under everything we have, I know there is a list of things we lack.  We lack a real childhood and those that know us better than they know themselves.  People that relate to us and understand what we have been through.  And most of all we lack our real family.

  Neither of us have the ones that are connected to us by blood.  Neither of us have known our birth parents or whether we have siblings.  Ashiya was lucky to be raised by a very kind couple that treated her as their real daughter, but it wasn’t the same.  And I wasn’t that lucky.  I knew no one other than those that trained me.

  All we had was each other, now we don’t even have that.

  Remembering what I could about the girl I was here to find I slid through the shadows of the night to the apartment I was living in for the time being.  I didn’t need much and I’ve survived with far less than this.  For me this was a luxury I rarely bothered to get.  Far out of the way of most people, and secluded enough that I wouldn’t be bothered.

  I tossed my small backpack on the dusty couch as I kicked the door shut behind me.  The sound on metal clicking against one another reached my ears as I set about going around my house to make sure nothing was out of place and everything was tightly shut and sealed. 

  I’m not paranoid in any way; I just have a strong dislike for my privacy to be invaded.  I’ve killed a handful of people who have found themselves within my territory.  I keep things here that I do not wish for others to see, and an arsenal of deadly and dangerous weapons is something I would rather remain private.

  Reassured that my home had remained sealed the whole day I flopped myself down on the couch beside my bag.  Bending down I unlaced the runners I had on and removed the knives I had strapped to my calves.  I striped myself of my sweater and pulled the knives out of the sheathes on my forearms as well as removed the gun at the small of my back.

  Laing flat on my back on the couch and staring up at the ceiling I slowly let my mind drift into darkness.  Tomorrow I would continue my search for the girl I was trying to find.  Tomorrow I would find her once again.

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