Memories.
Title: Memories
Series: #3 in The Secrets of the Red Room
(#1 - Bloodlines, #2 - Soldiers)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: PG
Pairings: none
Disclaimer: Not mine! Takes place within the MCU with nods toward comic books.
Summary: Her memories could not be trusted any longer. It was unsettling to realize that.
When Natasha was thirteen, she was still the best and the brightest of the Red Room students, excelling in all classes she was attending. She requested extras, especially for intelligence and espionage, and threw herself body and soul into conquering all aspects of them. In her language classes, she relentlessly practiced so that she obliterated accents and could pass for a native. The slang and idioms were a problem, but that would come with exposure in the country in question once she was out in the field. There were still missions with the Winter Soldier, and he didn't have the empty gaze of a man whose mind was wiped clean. But it was proving to be far more difficult than she realized for him to set up a safe getaway.
After a particularly rigorous hand to hand lesson, a heavyset woman with harsh features that Natasha didn't recognize approached her. She had on the standard black button down dress that most of the watchers wore, and a white nurse's cap was pinned to her head, the mousy brown hair scraped back severely and tied into a very tight bun at the nape of her neck. She looked at her clipboard, then at Natasha. "You are Natalia Alianovna Romanova?"
"Yes."
"Come with me. You have a scheduled physical exam."
She frowned slightly; this was not something she had been informed of. "But I had a German class scheduled next."
"That is rescheduled. Come with me."
Her voice was brusque, and there was no overt reason to refuse her. But Natasha filed this away as she fell into step beside the woman. Her steps were sure and purposeful, her entire demeanor one of irritation. They passed through the education complex and into the medical areas, but somehow they managed to avoid Ivan's office. That was irregular; most handler offices were located between the education and medical areas to make it easier for them to interact with their charges and make changes to schedules. Natasha knew better than to ask about that irregularity at this point. The woman likely wouldn't answer her anyway.
The doctor wasn't one that Natasha recognized of the usual array of three that serviced the bloodlines. The instruments on the tray also were not standard, but he had brushed off her "Is there a concern, doctor?" with a hand wave and lack of answer.
Alarm bells were ringing. But if she fought them, if she resisted, everything would go so much worse for her.
They were alone in the room, another irregularity. Natasha didn't even bother to ask after this one, not when he wouldn't answer if there were any concerns. The usual ones would have said if illnesses were running rampant in other arcades, if there were upcoming standards of physical exercise that she had to be measured against.
That meant that whatever this was for, it wasn't ordinary in the slightest.
After the standard physical, the doctor drew up a syringe from the tray. Without saying anything, he injected her in the arm. She cried out and yanked herself out of his grip.
Whatever it was, it slowed her reaction times. The yank had her slide sideways, and she actually fell off of the exam table, striking the side of her head. She didn't hit the examination tray, unfortunately, but there was a racket that could definitely be heard outside the door. The doctor swore and reached for her, and he swore even more colorfully when she hauled herself unsteadily to her feet and pulled on the alarm cord to get her balance back. The alarms would sound throughout the medical area and into the handler offices.
But her coordination was still off. And the worst part was that her consciousness fled.
When she came to, she was lying on the exam table wearing a flimsy paper gown. She hadn't been wearing it with the exam before. There were voices raised outside the room, and there was no difficulty whatsoever in coming off of the table and creeping toward the door to listen.
Ivan. And the doctor.
"...without my authorization. And under sedation? There is no need for a gynecological exam under sedation," Ivan was yelling. She could imagine the tightness of his jaw, the flash in his eyes at the injustice of it. "She is the Natalia, she has had thousands of examinations by now, there was no need for this."
The doctor mumbled, sounded like the words new protocol were used.
If anything, that made him fly further into a rage.
"You have no authority! Unless the lack of nurse and the sedation was for your own personal pleasure, Mikhail," he sneered. "Unless the perversions they whisper about you are in fact truth."
The doctor sputtered, denying it, again falling back on the new protocol excuse. There was the sound of footsteps, and Natasha hurried back to the exam table. She laid herself down and put her arms at her sides, closing her eyes and breathing evenly as if she was still unconscious from the drugs that the doctor had injected her with.
Ivan strode into the room, door banging open and hitting the wall. It rebounded and struck the doctor in the arm, making him yelp.
Natasha didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't change the tenor of her breathing.
"Still unconscious. You filthy cretin, you could ruin all of her potential by overdosing her and destroying her." Ivan's snarl of anger was not feigned, but Natasha knew that the words were for the Red Room's benefit. He didn't believe she was a commodity. He never treated her as an object to be used and abused. Of course, he was her grandfather, but no one in administration knew that.
She didn't react to the sound of him backhanding the doctor.
Gently picking her up, Ivan strode through the door. Natasha kept her body limp and her ears open, trying to figure out what she was missing.
"Oh yes, I've heard of you, Mikhail," Ivan snarled.
"Jealousy, Ivan," he started to say.
"Comrade Bezukhov to you," Ivan snapped, still angry. "You have no leave to speak so familiarly with me."
The set down must have deflated the doctor, as he didn't say anything else. Natasha was brought into Ivan's office, and she was laid down on the settee. He dropped his suit jacket over her body to give her a little more warmth than the flimsy paper gown. Had he even found her clothes, or had they been missing? Natasha wasn't about to feign waking to ask. She would learn far more by what Ivan did next.
What he did next was directly dial someone on his phone. It was old, as most office supplies and electronic equipment was. The newest items were saved for the bloodlines, so that they would have training with current technologies. Office staff had no need for such things. The older model meant that Natasha could clearly hear the other end of the line.
"Comrade Tarasov, I have grave concerns about an event that just occurred. Doctor Mikhail Chedov had taken the Natalia away from her classes, sedated her, and performed some kind of gynecological exam without other medical staff present. She is still unconscious, and she was taken from her classes three hours ago."
Tarasov clucked his tongue. "I believe she is thirteen."
"Yes."
"No reported start to her menstrual cycle."
"Doctor Tsitnikov had submitted all physical exam data. Her last exam was two months ago."
"I understand this, Comrade Bezukhov," Tarasov said in soothing tones. Natasha automatically didn't trust him. "I am surprised that Comrade Khalski hadn't discussed anything with you."
"The last meeting I had with Khalski was five months ago. It did not go well."
"Ah. You were opposed to the personality protocols, then?"
"The Natalia has never countermanded orders, has always excelled at tasks we require of her and has performed to perfection. There is no need for such flimsy tools."
"They are hardly flimsy."
That seemed to give Ivan pause. "So Khalski has started perverting the bloodlines."
"It's no perversion. But yes, the protocol has been performed, and there were no difficulties in any of the Gertas that were used."
"Our predecessors had no need of such tactics," Ivan said, voice tight with displeasure. "The bloodlines were all loyal, all performed above and beyond expectations. Protocols such as this will destabilize minds, alter memories we wish to keep. You see what the Winter Soldier is. The protocol will scrub the girls clean and render them useless for our purposes."
Natasha wanted to scream or throw up. Scrub her mind? Erase Natalia? Erase the knowledge that Ivan was her grandfather and the Winter Soldier was her father?
Or had they done it already? Had this doctor done some kind of procedure while she was lying unconscious in a paper gown? What kind of protection could she have given herself if she was out of it, if he had her sedated and naked beneath his awful gaze?
Her memories could not be trusted any longer. It was unsettling to realize that.
"Oh, they won't be scrubbed completely clean. The Black Widows are not to be blunt objects, but finely tuned weapons with far more finesse."
"They are loyal to us. Such protocols are unnecessary."
"Your way of thinking is old fashioned," Tarasov sighed. "More and more, they move to implant the memories the cover stories will require. No need for such exhaustive training in the new girls if we can give them what they need."
"There won't be muscle memory. There won't be the instinct needed to get the job done."
Tarasov snorted. "Of course it can. The eight year old Gerta had killed one of the rejects from Department X. She had no skills before we gave them to her. She performed admirably."
A chill rolled down Natasha's spine that had nothing to do with the lack of clothing.
"I do not authorize such experimentation on the Natalia."
"Comrade," Tarasov began in a condescending tone, "it is not your authorization to give."
She needed out of the Red Room, and she needed out now.
***
While in position to lie in wait to snipe at their target, Natasha made a clicking noise. It was their signal that she had something to say off record. He grunted and touched her shoulder, indicating that she had his attention and could speak.
"They plan to put memories in," she said without preamble, not taking her eyes off of the target.
"My contact is dead. That's what's taking so long."
"Do you need a contact?"
"We will if you plan to disappear for good."
"They may erase things," Natasha said tightly. Her entire body was thrumming with tension, but she kept her hands steady on the sniper rifle. This was training, and a way to eliminate one of the enemies of the Red Room in a very public way.
"The Red Room has a farther reach than you think. They work with Department X. They're off book. There is nowhere you can hide without help."
"Unless I work for someone else."
The Winter Soldier made a clucking noise. "One jailer is the same as any other."
"There must be one that isn't as cruel."
"I can look, if you like." He paused. "There is SHIELD."
"They killed my mother," Natasha snapped, barely able to suppress a tremor in her hands.
"No, they didn't," the Winter Soldier told her gravely.
Moving her finger from the trigger to the guard, Natasha let out a slow breath. "Ivan told me it was SHIELD. Please don't tell me it was you."
"Natalia was being auctioned. The job was not what Ivan thought it was." He put a hand on the rifle. "I'll do this."
"It's my job."
"You won't be able to focus if I tell you what actually happened."
She was just barely hanging on as it was, so she reluctantly took her hands from the rifle and let him pick it up. He adjusted the sight and settled in to look for the target. "Tell me."
"She was the Natalia, and ruthlessly effective when she put her mind to it. You remember this."
"Yes, I do. And she taught me well."
"The problem was, she didn't wish to go into the field any longer. She wanted to stay in the arcade with you. She wanted to guide you. Shape you into something other than a soulless killer. She had somehow managed not to be one despite the influences around her."
Natasha was shaking. He had been right to take the rifle from her.
"So someone decided that she was worth more sold than kept. I didn't find out until it was too late and she was already in position. But it wasn't an infiltration job, not the way she thought it was supposed to be. There were five rival families within the Vory, a representative from Hydra, one from the Ten Rings, one from Black Spectre and one from the Hand."
Closing her eyes, Natasha wrapped her arms around herself and managed not to rock herself in an effort to soothe the pain rising in her chest. She knew those names from her espionage classes, and knew full well what they were all capable of.
"I got in. It was messy, but the point was not to be subtle. I didn't have the protections in place and it would be a struggle to escape Estonia when the Red Room was on alert. I told Natalia this, and she was the one to make the call."
"What?"
"She would not be bought and sold like chattel. She would not be raped and abused. She would not allow them to degrade her in such a manner."
"You could have killed them all, the both of you."
"But then you would be left behind. If I ran with her, no one would be able to get to you."
"Am I so important?" Natasha demanded, her voice breaking.
"You were to Natalia Ivanova."
She flinched when the sniper rifle went off, bucking slightly in his hands. "I'm just me."
"You have always been her life," the Winter Soldier said quietly. "The choice was her life or yours. And you know what choice she made."
Natasha was shaking, and she didn't understand why the Winter Soldier was hoisting her up and propelling her across the rooftop. It didn't register why the sniper rifle was broken down and packed away in an unassuming attache case. There was no meaning to their sitting in a hotel room under assumed names.
Her mother could have lived, but chose to die so she could possibly escape. Certain death to pay for an uncertain future.
"They may put memory overlays," the Winter Soldier was telling her urgently. Had she missed part of the conversation? "But they will not erase. They cannot afford to. They will suppress, they will push aside and hide what they don't wish you to see. But that means you must put the memories in a safe place. Put them with your secrets."
"Lock box," she whispered. Natalia had spoken of that occasionally.
"Yes. I keep my memories of Natalia there. They won't erase her."
They both hoped that would be the case, in any point.
"I must cultivate a new contact. I can make overtures to SHIELD if you wish."
"I would rather be dead than stay with them," Natasha hissed, eyes flashing. It felt like life was finally flooding through her. "I would rather burn them all to the ground. I would set them all on fire for what they have done."
"If left unchecked, they will grow bolder. They will change history not just in Russia, but in the world at large. Their aim grows farther, their reach higher."
"How soon?" Natasha gasped. "How soon could you get me out? How long must I wait and pretend I still have their interests at heart?"
"I don't know," he said, voice as soft as gentle as he could make it. After a moment's hesitation, he pulled her in for a tight hug. "I will move as fast as I am able. But they keep watch over me, too. I have to prioritize your wellbeing over my own, but I have to be able to move about."
"Stupid," she said, tears spilling over and running down her cheeks. It burned. "This is so stupid. Can't I just walk away? Can't we fake my death?"
"An Olga tried that. It didn't work."
"What happened?"
"You don't want to know."
"I want to know."
The Winter Soldier blew out an unsteady breath. "She was bound. Abused. Then used as target practice for trainees in Department X."
"Those trainees must have fewer restrictions," Natasha said sourly, shuddering.
"Where do you think the boys go?"
She stopped, and pulled back to look at him with a stunned expression. "What?"
"The boys. The ones that the Black Widow program can't use. Where did you think they went?"
"I don't know," she murmured. "No one ever had ideas..."
"There is a male version of the Black Widow program. Why waste the boys? Their lineages are impeccable, after all. They have the genetics to be great assassins and snipers. And the best ones can be bred back into the Black Widow program. It isn't always the higher ups in administration as a reward to themselves."
The thought of an old Comrade was bad enough. Somehow, a faceless boy looking like one of her sisters made her shudder in revulsion. Then again, sex in general was fairly repulsive, and just thinking about it turned her stomach.
"I may be able to approach a Hydra double agent. He's buried within SHIELD, can bring their resources to bear. In exchange for not killing him, he can get you out."
"What about you?"
"I'll be harder to hide." Nodding at his metal arm, the Winter Soldier sighed. "They invested over sixty years in me. They won't want to give that up."
"I'm the Natalia. Do you think they'll give me up? I'm the last of my name. If I'm gone, the bloodline will end. They'll only have twenty-seven."
"And you mentioned removing Yelena Belova."
"Which would leave them twenty-six, if that was possible. But I don't think it is. Yelena is the last, and still a small girl." Natasha scrubbed at her face. "As much as I would want to bring her, I can't. I've thought about that."
"She couldn't come with you, but perhaps alternate means could be used."
There would be all those other girls still left. Twenty-six bloodlines left behind in the Red Room arcades, but Natasha knew that the administrators would still jealously guard her and Yelena against any theft. They wanted all of the bloodlines. If anything, they would plan to breed her extensively and rebuild the Natalia bloodline again. Yelena would get the same treatment when she reached her majority, too.
"Who would you even ask?" Natasha asked, unable to suppress a shiver.
"You wouldn't know him."
"Will I know who to expect?"
He took in her breaking voice and tremulousness, correctly interpreting it as extreme emotion, primarily fear. "I'm working on Drakov." He brought both his hands to her shoulders to keep her from shaking too hard. "You would pose as his daughter."
"And what would I do as Drakov's daughter?" she asked, hiccupping. "How do I even pass as a real girl if I keep considering threats and how to respond to them? I could pretend, maybe. I could pass as some ordinary preteen, but-"
"Drakov works for SHIELD and Hydra. You wouldn't be ordinary."
"Alian! That isn't helping!"
The Winter Soldier glowered deeply at her. "That is an alias. We don't know my true name."
"Not the point. Does Drakov even have a daughter?"
"Irrelevant."
"Relevant. If he suddenly has a daughter no one knows about?"
"Even if he has a daughter, you would have to be her."
"Meaning?"
"You replace her."
Natasha grew very still and nearly fell off the bed. "My life for hers?"
"Freedom has a price."
"He won't let us kill his daughter so I could take her place. This is stupid."
"Do you want to escape the Red Room or not?" the Winter Soldier snapped.
"At what price? What cost is it going to be? Is it even worth it?"
"Are you squeamish over death? When you would have put a bullet in that man's brain tonight? When you've killed since you were nine years old?"
"I thought there was a reason for those!"
"There is a reason for this one! Your survival is not cheap, not insignificant, not something to throw away. Natalia. You must live, and you must do whatever it takes."
Natalia Ivanova Romanova had said she would be willing to give her life for Natasha. She had always said that Natasha could and should take the first opportunity without regret. Leave her behind, leave the other girls behind.
She looked at the Winter Soldier with a bleak expression. "Or do we destroy the Red Room."
"That is madness."
"Is it?"
"If there is a daughter, kill her and take her place. Become Drakov's daughter. You cannot destroy the Red Room. It is more widespread than you think it is."
Because if Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov could not protect Natasha, she could not work within its system. She could not trust in them, just as she couldn't trust her memories any longer. Her mind would be suspect, and she would lose everything that made her who she was.
"Even if I get out, it cannot stay. They would still be dangerous, still do unspeakable things with the bloodlines in their possession." A chill flooded her, and she looked up at the Winter Soldier with a bleak expression. "It wouldn't be just Drakov's daughter. I'd have to kill all those girls. I'd have to burn it all out in order to set us all free. The bloodlines would have to be destroyed in its entirety, or else they would simply rebuild."
"Natalia..."
Natasha recoiled and drew away from him. "One life or a hundred or a thousand. How much is my life worth? If we did an accounting, how much am I worth?"
"Your life is not a ledger. There are no checks and balances."
But there was, wasn't there? There had to be.
"I'd have to kill them all. This is what you won't tell me. For me to walk away, I would have to kill them all. That's why you've delayed. That's why your contacts die. Because there is no other way to escape. There's no other way to set me free. Their lives in exchange for mine. Put another girl in my arcade, burn it all to cinders. They'll think I died in the fire."
"They have your dental and medical records."
"Those will burn, too."
The Winter Soldier closed his eyes. "I wish you weren't as clever as you are."
So that was the plan. Get her out, destroy it all.
"Am I worth that, Alian?" Natasha asked in a quiet, broken voice.
He pulled her back into his arms. "You are my daughter. You are the Natalia. You are everything we wished you would be." He kissed the top of her head tenderly, a hitch in his breath sounding suspiciously like a sob. He must have mourned Natalia Ivanova still.
"How long before it's done?" she whispered.
"I will contact Drakov, then send a message to you." He held her tightly, desperately. "I will make all of the arrangements. I'm not sure how long it will take."
"Contact him," she said, ashamed of herself. She clutched him tightly, thinking of Yelena's baby smile, the Tatianas and Vasilissas and Minervas and Magdalenas, the girls she grew up with and played with and laughed with, the ones she argued with and fought with, learned with and competed with. Her sisters in the arcades, one and all.
It would hurt when they burned. Every soul a black mark against hers, a debt she would have to someday repay.
"If I can, I can save some," the Winter Soldier said. "But I cannot promise anything."
"I understand."
"You never would have been ordinary," he murmured into her hair. "You couldn't ever be, not where you were born or who you were born to. There was nothing simple in store for you."
He held her as she wept for what could never be.
***
Nicole frowned as she left the ballet studio. Something had felt off all day. She wanted to say it was after she had heard strains of music while half asleep, but that was just silly. Shaking her head, she pushed aside the feeling of wrongness once again. Her bright red hair was still tightly tied back in a French braid, and she called over to Francesca. The two were ambassadors' daughters, the only two that knew Italian. Poor Francesca was a gawky, gangling thing, desperate for friends, and Nicole had felt sorry for her. Francesca invited her over to her home for visits and sleepovers and movie marathons. If she fell asleep early, too tired from practice, and Nicole walked about the house on autopilot, she didn't remark on it. Nicole moved like a ghost through hallways she shouldn't have known about, downloaded and shifted around files with finesse that she really shouldn't have had.
Francesca looked over at Nicole, her ample chest heaving a little with the effort from the day's practice. "Are you all right?" she asked, worried about her only friend.
"Yes, just dizzy for a moment there."
"You're still coming over, right? I think my father is supposed to be back tonight."
"How is Mr. Drakov doing?" Nicole asked with polite interest.
Shrugging, Francesca pulled her bag out of her locker. "Same, I guess. It's not like he talks to me very much. Super secret political bullshit, if you ask me." There was some bitterness she couldn't hide, but it was no secret to Nicole. Francesca wished her father had any time for her at all, but since her Italian mother's death, her father buried himself in work.
"Oh. Someone must have wanted to give you a message," Francesca said with a frown, seeing a small envelope in her change of clothing. She passed it over to Nicole and started changing clothes, not bothering with a shower.
The locker room was empty, so Nicole saw no point in asking who might have made such a mistake. She opened the envelope and blinked in confusion at the message.
Then suddenly things shifted in her mind, and it all made sense.
All is ready. You will have to balance your ledger after tonight.
Francesca was concerned at the look on Nicole's face. "Are you okay?" she asked tremulously.
Natasha looked at Francesca and pasted a sweet smile on her face. "Yes. Yes, I am. I think I was lost for a little while, but everything is going to be okay now."
And even better, she remembered all the girls she had been for the Red Room.
The End
Series: #3 in The Secrets of the Red Room
(#1 - Bloodlines, #2 - Soldiers)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: PG
Pairings: none
Disclaimer: Not mine! Takes place within the MCU with nods toward comic books.
Summary: Her memories could not be trusted any longer. It was unsettling to realize that.
When Natasha was thirteen, she was still the best and the brightest of the Red Room students, excelling in all classes she was attending. She requested extras, especially for intelligence and espionage, and threw herself body and soul into conquering all aspects of them. In her language classes, she relentlessly practiced so that she obliterated accents and could pass for a native. The slang and idioms were a problem, but that would come with exposure in the country in question once she was out in the field. There were still missions with the Winter Soldier, and he didn't have the empty gaze of a man whose mind was wiped clean. But it was proving to be far more difficult than she realized for him to set up a safe getaway.
After a particularly rigorous hand to hand lesson, a heavyset woman with harsh features that Natasha didn't recognize approached her. She had on the standard black button down dress that most of the watchers wore, and a white nurse's cap was pinned to her head, the mousy brown hair scraped back severely and tied into a very tight bun at the nape of her neck. She looked at her clipboard, then at Natasha. "You are Natalia Alianovna Romanova?"
"Yes."
"Come with me. You have a scheduled physical exam."
She frowned slightly; this was not something she had been informed of. "But I had a German class scheduled next."
"That is rescheduled. Come with me."
Her voice was brusque, and there was no overt reason to refuse her. But Natasha filed this away as she fell into step beside the woman. Her steps were sure and purposeful, her entire demeanor one of irritation. They passed through the education complex and into the medical areas, but somehow they managed to avoid Ivan's office. That was irregular; most handler offices were located between the education and medical areas to make it easier for them to interact with their charges and make changes to schedules. Natasha knew better than to ask about that irregularity at this point. The woman likely wouldn't answer her anyway.
The doctor wasn't one that Natasha recognized of the usual array of three that serviced the bloodlines. The instruments on the tray also were not standard, but he had brushed off her "Is there a concern, doctor?" with a hand wave and lack of answer.
Alarm bells were ringing. But if she fought them, if she resisted, everything would go so much worse for her.
They were alone in the room, another irregularity. Natasha didn't even bother to ask after this one, not when he wouldn't answer if there were any concerns. The usual ones would have said if illnesses were running rampant in other arcades, if there were upcoming standards of physical exercise that she had to be measured against.
That meant that whatever this was for, it wasn't ordinary in the slightest.
After the standard physical, the doctor drew up a syringe from the tray. Without saying anything, he injected her in the arm. She cried out and yanked herself out of his grip.
Whatever it was, it slowed her reaction times. The yank had her slide sideways, and she actually fell off of the exam table, striking the side of her head. She didn't hit the examination tray, unfortunately, but there was a racket that could definitely be heard outside the door. The doctor swore and reached for her, and he swore even more colorfully when she hauled herself unsteadily to her feet and pulled on the alarm cord to get her balance back. The alarms would sound throughout the medical area and into the handler offices.
But her coordination was still off. And the worst part was that her consciousness fled.
When she came to, she was lying on the exam table wearing a flimsy paper gown. She hadn't been wearing it with the exam before. There were voices raised outside the room, and there was no difficulty whatsoever in coming off of the table and creeping toward the door to listen.
Ivan. And the doctor.
"...without my authorization. And under sedation? There is no need for a gynecological exam under sedation," Ivan was yelling. She could imagine the tightness of his jaw, the flash in his eyes at the injustice of it. "She is the Natalia, she has had thousands of examinations by now, there was no need for this."
The doctor mumbled, sounded like the words new protocol were used.
If anything, that made him fly further into a rage.
"You have no authority! Unless the lack of nurse and the sedation was for your own personal pleasure, Mikhail," he sneered. "Unless the perversions they whisper about you are in fact truth."
The doctor sputtered, denying it, again falling back on the new protocol excuse. There was the sound of footsteps, and Natasha hurried back to the exam table. She laid herself down and put her arms at her sides, closing her eyes and breathing evenly as if she was still unconscious from the drugs that the doctor had injected her with.
Ivan strode into the room, door banging open and hitting the wall. It rebounded and struck the doctor in the arm, making him yelp.
Natasha didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't change the tenor of her breathing.
"Still unconscious. You filthy cretin, you could ruin all of her potential by overdosing her and destroying her." Ivan's snarl of anger was not feigned, but Natasha knew that the words were for the Red Room's benefit. He didn't believe she was a commodity. He never treated her as an object to be used and abused. Of course, he was her grandfather, but no one in administration knew that.
She didn't react to the sound of him backhanding the doctor.
Gently picking her up, Ivan strode through the door. Natasha kept her body limp and her ears open, trying to figure out what she was missing.
"Oh yes, I've heard of you, Mikhail," Ivan snarled.
"Jealousy, Ivan," he started to say.
"Comrade Bezukhov to you," Ivan snapped, still angry. "You have no leave to speak so familiarly with me."
The set down must have deflated the doctor, as he didn't say anything else. Natasha was brought into Ivan's office, and she was laid down on the settee. He dropped his suit jacket over her body to give her a little more warmth than the flimsy paper gown. Had he even found her clothes, or had they been missing? Natasha wasn't about to feign waking to ask. She would learn far more by what Ivan did next.
What he did next was directly dial someone on his phone. It was old, as most office supplies and electronic equipment was. The newest items were saved for the bloodlines, so that they would have training with current technologies. Office staff had no need for such things. The older model meant that Natasha could clearly hear the other end of the line.
"Comrade Tarasov, I have grave concerns about an event that just occurred. Doctor Mikhail Chedov had taken the Natalia away from her classes, sedated her, and performed some kind of gynecological exam without other medical staff present. She is still unconscious, and she was taken from her classes three hours ago."
Tarasov clucked his tongue. "I believe she is thirteen."
"Yes."
"No reported start to her menstrual cycle."
"Doctor Tsitnikov had submitted all physical exam data. Her last exam was two months ago."
"I understand this, Comrade Bezukhov," Tarasov said in soothing tones. Natasha automatically didn't trust him. "I am surprised that Comrade Khalski hadn't discussed anything with you."
"The last meeting I had with Khalski was five months ago. It did not go well."
"Ah. You were opposed to the personality protocols, then?"
"The Natalia has never countermanded orders, has always excelled at tasks we require of her and has performed to perfection. There is no need for such flimsy tools."
"They are hardly flimsy."
That seemed to give Ivan pause. "So Khalski has started perverting the bloodlines."
"It's no perversion. But yes, the protocol has been performed, and there were no difficulties in any of the Gertas that were used."
"Our predecessors had no need of such tactics," Ivan said, voice tight with displeasure. "The bloodlines were all loyal, all performed above and beyond expectations. Protocols such as this will destabilize minds, alter memories we wish to keep. You see what the Winter Soldier is. The protocol will scrub the girls clean and render them useless for our purposes."
Natasha wanted to scream or throw up. Scrub her mind? Erase Natalia? Erase the knowledge that Ivan was her grandfather and the Winter Soldier was her father?
Or had they done it already? Had this doctor done some kind of procedure while she was lying unconscious in a paper gown? What kind of protection could she have given herself if she was out of it, if he had her sedated and naked beneath his awful gaze?
Her memories could not be trusted any longer. It was unsettling to realize that.
"Oh, they won't be scrubbed completely clean. The Black Widows are not to be blunt objects, but finely tuned weapons with far more finesse."
"They are loyal to us. Such protocols are unnecessary."
"Your way of thinking is old fashioned," Tarasov sighed. "More and more, they move to implant the memories the cover stories will require. No need for such exhaustive training in the new girls if we can give them what they need."
"There won't be muscle memory. There won't be the instinct needed to get the job done."
Tarasov snorted. "Of course it can. The eight year old Gerta had killed one of the rejects from Department X. She had no skills before we gave them to her. She performed admirably."
A chill rolled down Natasha's spine that had nothing to do with the lack of clothing.
"I do not authorize such experimentation on the Natalia."
"Comrade," Tarasov began in a condescending tone, "it is not your authorization to give."
She needed out of the Red Room, and she needed out now.
***
While in position to lie in wait to snipe at their target, Natasha made a clicking noise. It was their signal that she had something to say off record. He grunted and touched her shoulder, indicating that she had his attention and could speak.
"They plan to put memories in," she said without preamble, not taking her eyes off of the target.
"My contact is dead. That's what's taking so long."
"Do you need a contact?"
"We will if you plan to disappear for good."
"They may erase things," Natasha said tightly. Her entire body was thrumming with tension, but she kept her hands steady on the sniper rifle. This was training, and a way to eliminate one of the enemies of the Red Room in a very public way.
"The Red Room has a farther reach than you think. They work with Department X. They're off book. There is nowhere you can hide without help."
"Unless I work for someone else."
The Winter Soldier made a clucking noise. "One jailer is the same as any other."
"There must be one that isn't as cruel."
"I can look, if you like." He paused. "There is SHIELD."
"They killed my mother," Natasha snapped, barely able to suppress a tremor in her hands.
"No, they didn't," the Winter Soldier told her gravely.
Moving her finger from the trigger to the guard, Natasha let out a slow breath. "Ivan told me it was SHIELD. Please don't tell me it was you."
"Natalia was being auctioned. The job was not what Ivan thought it was." He put a hand on the rifle. "I'll do this."
"It's my job."
"You won't be able to focus if I tell you what actually happened."
She was just barely hanging on as it was, so she reluctantly took her hands from the rifle and let him pick it up. He adjusted the sight and settled in to look for the target. "Tell me."
"She was the Natalia, and ruthlessly effective when she put her mind to it. You remember this."
"Yes, I do. And she taught me well."
"The problem was, she didn't wish to go into the field any longer. She wanted to stay in the arcade with you. She wanted to guide you. Shape you into something other than a soulless killer. She had somehow managed not to be one despite the influences around her."
Natasha was shaking. He had been right to take the rifle from her.
"So someone decided that she was worth more sold than kept. I didn't find out until it was too late and she was already in position. But it wasn't an infiltration job, not the way she thought it was supposed to be. There were five rival families within the Vory, a representative from Hydra, one from the Ten Rings, one from Black Spectre and one from the Hand."
Closing her eyes, Natasha wrapped her arms around herself and managed not to rock herself in an effort to soothe the pain rising in her chest. She knew those names from her espionage classes, and knew full well what they were all capable of.
"I got in. It was messy, but the point was not to be subtle. I didn't have the protections in place and it would be a struggle to escape Estonia when the Red Room was on alert. I told Natalia this, and she was the one to make the call."
"What?"
"She would not be bought and sold like chattel. She would not be raped and abused. She would not allow them to degrade her in such a manner."
"You could have killed them all, the both of you."
"But then you would be left behind. If I ran with her, no one would be able to get to you."
"Am I so important?" Natasha demanded, her voice breaking.
"You were to Natalia Ivanova."
She flinched when the sniper rifle went off, bucking slightly in his hands. "I'm just me."
"You have always been her life," the Winter Soldier said quietly. "The choice was her life or yours. And you know what choice she made."
Natasha was shaking, and she didn't understand why the Winter Soldier was hoisting her up and propelling her across the rooftop. It didn't register why the sniper rifle was broken down and packed away in an unassuming attache case. There was no meaning to their sitting in a hotel room under assumed names.
Her mother could have lived, but chose to die so she could possibly escape. Certain death to pay for an uncertain future.
"They may put memory overlays," the Winter Soldier was telling her urgently. Had she missed part of the conversation? "But they will not erase. They cannot afford to. They will suppress, they will push aside and hide what they don't wish you to see. But that means you must put the memories in a safe place. Put them with your secrets."
"Lock box," she whispered. Natalia had spoken of that occasionally.
"Yes. I keep my memories of Natalia there. They won't erase her."
They both hoped that would be the case, in any point.
"I must cultivate a new contact. I can make overtures to SHIELD if you wish."
"I would rather be dead than stay with them," Natasha hissed, eyes flashing. It felt like life was finally flooding through her. "I would rather burn them all to the ground. I would set them all on fire for what they have done."
"If left unchecked, they will grow bolder. They will change history not just in Russia, but in the world at large. Their aim grows farther, their reach higher."
"How soon?" Natasha gasped. "How soon could you get me out? How long must I wait and pretend I still have their interests at heart?"
"I don't know," he said, voice as soft as gentle as he could make it. After a moment's hesitation, he pulled her in for a tight hug. "I will move as fast as I am able. But they keep watch over me, too. I have to prioritize your wellbeing over my own, but I have to be able to move about."
"Stupid," she said, tears spilling over and running down her cheeks. It burned. "This is so stupid. Can't I just walk away? Can't we fake my death?"
"An Olga tried that. It didn't work."
"What happened?"
"You don't want to know."
"I want to know."
The Winter Soldier blew out an unsteady breath. "She was bound. Abused. Then used as target practice for trainees in Department X."
"Those trainees must have fewer restrictions," Natasha said sourly, shuddering.
"Where do you think the boys go?"
She stopped, and pulled back to look at him with a stunned expression. "What?"
"The boys. The ones that the Black Widow program can't use. Where did you think they went?"
"I don't know," she murmured. "No one ever had ideas..."
"There is a male version of the Black Widow program. Why waste the boys? Their lineages are impeccable, after all. They have the genetics to be great assassins and snipers. And the best ones can be bred back into the Black Widow program. It isn't always the higher ups in administration as a reward to themselves."
The thought of an old Comrade was bad enough. Somehow, a faceless boy looking like one of her sisters made her shudder in revulsion. Then again, sex in general was fairly repulsive, and just thinking about it turned her stomach.
"I may be able to approach a Hydra double agent. He's buried within SHIELD, can bring their resources to bear. In exchange for not killing him, he can get you out."
"What about you?"
"I'll be harder to hide." Nodding at his metal arm, the Winter Soldier sighed. "They invested over sixty years in me. They won't want to give that up."
"I'm the Natalia. Do you think they'll give me up? I'm the last of my name. If I'm gone, the bloodline will end. They'll only have twenty-seven."
"And you mentioned removing Yelena Belova."
"Which would leave them twenty-six, if that was possible. But I don't think it is. Yelena is the last, and still a small girl." Natasha scrubbed at her face. "As much as I would want to bring her, I can't. I've thought about that."
"She couldn't come with you, but perhaps alternate means could be used."
There would be all those other girls still left. Twenty-six bloodlines left behind in the Red Room arcades, but Natasha knew that the administrators would still jealously guard her and Yelena against any theft. They wanted all of the bloodlines. If anything, they would plan to breed her extensively and rebuild the Natalia bloodline again. Yelena would get the same treatment when she reached her majority, too.
"Who would you even ask?" Natasha asked, unable to suppress a shiver.
"You wouldn't know him."
"Will I know who to expect?"
He took in her breaking voice and tremulousness, correctly interpreting it as extreme emotion, primarily fear. "I'm working on Drakov." He brought both his hands to her shoulders to keep her from shaking too hard. "You would pose as his daughter."
"And what would I do as Drakov's daughter?" she asked, hiccupping. "How do I even pass as a real girl if I keep considering threats and how to respond to them? I could pretend, maybe. I could pass as some ordinary preteen, but-"
"Drakov works for SHIELD and Hydra. You wouldn't be ordinary."
"Alian! That isn't helping!"
The Winter Soldier glowered deeply at her. "That is an alias. We don't know my true name."
"Not the point. Does Drakov even have a daughter?"
"Irrelevant."
"Relevant. If he suddenly has a daughter no one knows about?"
"Even if he has a daughter, you would have to be her."
"Meaning?"
"You replace her."
Natasha grew very still and nearly fell off the bed. "My life for hers?"
"Freedom has a price."
"He won't let us kill his daughter so I could take her place. This is stupid."
"Do you want to escape the Red Room or not?" the Winter Soldier snapped.
"At what price? What cost is it going to be? Is it even worth it?"
"Are you squeamish over death? When you would have put a bullet in that man's brain tonight? When you've killed since you were nine years old?"
"I thought there was a reason for those!"
"There is a reason for this one! Your survival is not cheap, not insignificant, not something to throw away. Natalia. You must live, and you must do whatever it takes."
Natalia Ivanova Romanova had said she would be willing to give her life for Natasha. She had always said that Natasha could and should take the first opportunity without regret. Leave her behind, leave the other girls behind.
She looked at the Winter Soldier with a bleak expression. "Or do we destroy the Red Room."
"That is madness."
"Is it?"
"If there is a daughter, kill her and take her place. Become Drakov's daughter. You cannot destroy the Red Room. It is more widespread than you think it is."
Because if Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov could not protect Natasha, she could not work within its system. She could not trust in them, just as she couldn't trust her memories any longer. Her mind would be suspect, and she would lose everything that made her who she was.
"Even if I get out, it cannot stay. They would still be dangerous, still do unspeakable things with the bloodlines in their possession." A chill flooded her, and she looked up at the Winter Soldier with a bleak expression. "It wouldn't be just Drakov's daughter. I'd have to kill all those girls. I'd have to burn it all out in order to set us all free. The bloodlines would have to be destroyed in its entirety, or else they would simply rebuild."
"Natalia..."
Natasha recoiled and drew away from him. "One life or a hundred or a thousand. How much is my life worth? If we did an accounting, how much am I worth?"
"Your life is not a ledger. There are no checks and balances."
But there was, wasn't there? There had to be.
"I'd have to kill them all. This is what you won't tell me. For me to walk away, I would have to kill them all. That's why you've delayed. That's why your contacts die. Because there is no other way to escape. There's no other way to set me free. Their lives in exchange for mine. Put another girl in my arcade, burn it all to cinders. They'll think I died in the fire."
"They have your dental and medical records."
"Those will burn, too."
The Winter Soldier closed his eyes. "I wish you weren't as clever as you are."
So that was the plan. Get her out, destroy it all.
"Am I worth that, Alian?" Natasha asked in a quiet, broken voice.
He pulled her back into his arms. "You are my daughter. You are the Natalia. You are everything we wished you would be." He kissed the top of her head tenderly, a hitch in his breath sounding suspiciously like a sob. He must have mourned Natalia Ivanova still.
"How long before it's done?" she whispered.
"I will contact Drakov, then send a message to you." He held her tightly, desperately. "I will make all of the arrangements. I'm not sure how long it will take."
"Contact him," she said, ashamed of herself. She clutched him tightly, thinking of Yelena's baby smile, the Tatianas and Vasilissas and Minervas and Magdalenas, the girls she grew up with and played with and laughed with, the ones she argued with and fought with, learned with and competed with. Her sisters in the arcades, one and all.
It would hurt when they burned. Every soul a black mark against hers, a debt she would have to someday repay.
"If I can, I can save some," the Winter Soldier said. "But I cannot promise anything."
"I understand."
"You never would have been ordinary," he murmured into her hair. "You couldn't ever be, not where you were born or who you were born to. There was nothing simple in store for you."
He held her as she wept for what could never be.
***
Nicole frowned as she left the ballet studio. Something had felt off all day. She wanted to say it was after she had heard strains of music while half asleep, but that was just silly. Shaking her head, she pushed aside the feeling of wrongness once again. Her bright red hair was still tightly tied back in a French braid, and she called over to Francesca. The two were ambassadors' daughters, the only two that knew Italian. Poor Francesca was a gawky, gangling thing, desperate for friends, and Nicole had felt sorry for her. Francesca invited her over to her home for visits and sleepovers and movie marathons. If she fell asleep early, too tired from practice, and Nicole walked about the house on autopilot, she didn't remark on it. Nicole moved like a ghost through hallways she shouldn't have known about, downloaded and shifted around files with finesse that she really shouldn't have had.
Francesca looked over at Nicole, her ample chest heaving a little with the effort from the day's practice. "Are you all right?" she asked, worried about her only friend.
"Yes, just dizzy for a moment there."
"You're still coming over, right? I think my father is supposed to be back tonight."
"How is Mr. Drakov doing?" Nicole asked with polite interest.
Shrugging, Francesca pulled her bag out of her locker. "Same, I guess. It's not like he talks to me very much. Super secret political bullshit, if you ask me." There was some bitterness she couldn't hide, but it was no secret to Nicole. Francesca wished her father had any time for her at all, but since her Italian mother's death, her father buried himself in work.
"Oh. Someone must have wanted to give you a message," Francesca said with a frown, seeing a small envelope in her change of clothing. She passed it over to Nicole and started changing clothes, not bothering with a shower.
The locker room was empty, so Nicole saw no point in asking who might have made such a mistake. She opened the envelope and blinked in confusion at the message.
Then suddenly things shifted in her mind, and it all made sense.
All is ready. You will have to balance your ledger after tonight.
Francesca was concerned at the look on Nicole's face. "Are you okay?" she asked tremulously.
Natasha looked at Francesca and pasted a sweet smile on her face. "Yes. Yes, I am. I think I was lost for a little while, but everything is going to be okay now."
And even better, she remembered all the girls she had been for the Red Room.
The End