Climbing Up the Walls

by fadeintoyou19

Summary:

What if Natalia Romanova, the infamous Black Widow, was born a twin?

Zinaida Romanova doesn't think she's anything like her sister. She isn't effervescent like her, she doesn't wonder or even, really, care why they do what they do. In fact, it is this ignorant expertise that gets her noticed by the wrong person, and consequently, sent off from the only home she's ever known to a bunker in Siberia where she meets the Winter Soldier.

Notes:

Pretty hard to summarize, but I had this idea about two years ago and have been working at writing this since. It's quickly become my baby, as well as the first work I've ever posted. Buckle in, because it's gonna be a long one---working up to the entire MCU timeline so far. ALSO: feel like I should mention that this is sort of the opposite of a self-insert fic, Zinaida has a very distinct, imperfect personality. She's an active participant and modifier of the narrative.

Chapter 1: Smudge the Glass

Zinaida and Natalia Romanova were never to be separated, that was their mother’s only demand.
February, 1988

Trembling chin held high, a crumbled check in her hand, Mrs. Romanova sprinted after the tall soldier with her girls in his hands. She grabbed his arm, shaking from the cold, only wearing her sleeping gown, she pulled him to look back at her. “You cannot separate them,” Mrs. Romanova said, her voice trembling like the check in her hand. “If you pull those girls apart, I will spend my last breath pushing them back together.”

Maybe there was a glint in that soldier’s reflective goggles, but in another instant, the red-headed woman was left crumbling to her knees atop the glimmering snow.

----------

Of course, The Red Room had never been too good for a promise, and by the time the twins turned eight, their fates were quickly untangling. At that age, their conditioning was comparatively light. It was more about implementing, then cementing, those core ideologies necessary to create a widow.

There were lots of sickly-sweet old misses who spoke eloquently of the widow’s purpose, their grand entrance into the world-changing, behind-the-scenes initiative. The only missions the girls went on were in alleyways behind crowded streets, or retrieving something lodged innocently inside a teddy bear. If they were honest, Zinaida and Natasha had not yet given a thought to any sinister noises around them, about the violence lodging down their throats. As the instructors explained it, they were heroic. They were soldiers in the making, waving the flag of their nation, the flag of prosperity.

During their training, the girls didn’t talk much. Not just the Romanova twins, but anyone. It was not forbidden, but they didn’t exactly know talking to each other was common practice. When there wasn’t a wig on their head, a sparring partner on them, or a small knife in their hands, they were just silent. Waiting for the next obstacle course.

Systemically, they separated the girls by age group into living quarters. Ages 1-5 in the daycare quarters, 6-10 in the children's, 11-15 in the teen’s, and 16-graduates in the widow quarters.

The children's quarters were bigger than the daycare, but while Zinaida’s previous lodging had at least wooden horses and plastic baby-dolls, each at least partially smudged with time—these new quarters were pretty much just the functional bare-bones. With concrete walls and floors, identical beds lining the place, and an all-white—probably ceramic—bathroom, the only thing that gave it any character was a giant, rounded window on one wall.

This, little to the knowledge of any Romanov counterparts, or caretakers, was the girls’ spot.

Neither of them had any idea how this had started, but the girls had always been drawn to windows. Something about seeing everything with the safety of glass in front of it, Natalia had once whispered. They’d gotten a perfect formula down now; all the girls, even the ones who had trouble, eventually drifted off at about 3 in the morning—a growing widow needs her sleep—and both of their bodies had adjusted to naturally shake them awake by then.

Then, with the specific hand signal of a pointer-finger pointed upwards, they used their light-footwork to get to the window ledge. They were small enough, still, that they could curl their legs up to fit on it. There, perched on the window ledge, the cold air seeping through the fogged-glass, they talked silently, only moving their lips and tongue to form soundless sentences.

Usually, they planned a future unburdened by the Red Room. Multiple, really. Sometimes, by Natalia’s design, where they were both professional ballerinas, residing in a town-house planted in the middle of a busy city. They each had an extensive closet, all hand-made, because Zinaida had discovered a love for stitching hidden designs on the insides of her and her sister's socks.

The night before Natalia was taken away, they weren’t ballerinas. This one was Zinaida’s favorite; they lived in a cabin up somewhere in Russia, or like Russia, where it snowed nearly all year, and they owned two dogs. Well, two dogs and two cats, because the two couldn’t agree on a preferred species. Up in their snow cabin, they kept a fire burning day and night throughout the long winters, and could sled and ski like professionals.

“And we won’t fight.” Natalia added, thinking back to their particularly rough sparring session against each other that day.

“No, not with our hands. Not even with our dogs—”

“Cats.”

Zinaida smiled at her sister, teasingly. “Not even with our cats. We’ll train them.”

“Train them? Like how we are?”

Natalia didn’t get an answer. She found helplessness, blindingly obvious, shining in her sister’s deep brown eyes. That look, that shattered-glass confusion, made Natalia want to kick herself. She knew she shouldn’t question things, shouldn’t say it out-loud. Zinaida certainly didn’t, she didn't dream the way Natalia did. Didn't want anything besides the necessity that was her sister and an occasional meal. Natalia envied that simplicity, the way Zinaida never asked why. She often worried her sister's compliance was born out of ignorance, not faith.

Chapter 2: Sharing a Face

Notes:

Not a big fan of this chapter specifically, because it's sort of jumbled. This is also my earlier writing---trust me, it gets better.

Also, some time jumps here, so let me outline a timeline:
The twins were born, canonically (well, Natalia was) on December 3, 1984 (happy birthday nat, we miss you dearly)
I guessed that they were taken at about 4 years old, because it was said in the BW movie that Nat was chosen for her IQ, and it would take at least those four formative years to really be able to see anything extraordinary in her. So, 1988, they're taken to the Red Room.
Four years later, when I'm estimating Natalia is sent away, they are eight years old. :(

March, 1992

Zinaida was shaken awake the next morning not by a sound, but by a terrible feeling crawling up her spine. When the young girl's eyes flew open, a flash of copper was all she needed to see to make her sit up straight. Natalia was crouching down below her bed, two giant soldiers behind her, and pulling out her small assortment of belongings; the red ribbon tied in her hair the day she was found, the stuffed rabbit she and her twin shared, her favorite embroidered socks (they wore a ragged “N” on the heel).

Natalia always woke Zinaida up first. If she was up without her sister, this meant she was leaving, and quickly. Zinaida laid back down, careful not to alert a guard, and hid her face in her pillow as she imitated the bird-call they’d practiced when they stayed up late enough for the thrushes to call their names.

The girl’s head snapped up, eyes strained and red. “A mission — a long one. That’s all I know. None of the other girls get a goodbye.” She mouthed. That was a rule, before what was referred to as sleep-away missions in the Room; you don’t say goodbye, a widow does not need one.

“The other girls do not share a face. Let me come with you, I can sneak away.”

“Zinaida, it will never work. And, wherever I’m going, it could be worse. You are needed here.” Lies, Natalia needed her more than this place ever could. Nonetheless, this was the situation, and she had a sister to protect. The Room would not harm her, she figured, not unless she failed. And she wouldn’t.

“Be safe. Come back. Don’t ask questions.”

Natalia nodded as she swallowed, and blinked back unlawful tears.

---

November, 1994

In the three years Natalia was away, Zinaida excelled.

She had nothing left to care about other than her training, and the harder it got, the less bruises she walked away with. By nine years old, she could proficiently shoot and kill a moving target, and had proved trilingual. She found languages easy, it was as if they were made up of a simple dialogue code that just went unnoticed to others. Once you had that key, every language was similar, and therefore easily memorized.

By ten, she had achieved an acrobatic level of flexibility, and a spy’s assimilation. She began to be sent, unlike nearly any other girl her age, as a counterpart on infiltration missions, for her ability to blend into shadows, and move like air through small spaces. She didn’t talk to a single other girl, didn’t even speak, besides when instructed to.

During the winter of her second year without Natalia, Zinaida was pulled from one of her low level ballet classes, and directed to a giant, empty office covered in shiny oak paneling. She looked to the ballet instructor who had led her there for directions, but the Madame had disappeared. So, she decided to wait tentatively in the chair in front of the desk; legs crossed and hands folded in her lap.

Zinaida was alone just long enough alone in the office space for the unfamiliarity to sink in and bring a sense of inferiority—which she could bet was on purpose—before a tall, mature woman strode in. The woman stood tall, as if constantly at attention, the way Zinaida had been taught to. When she sat, it was carefully, shifting in the seat, smoothing her skirt underneath her. Her clothes were perfectly ironed, and she brushed them off multiple times during the encounter. She wore her light, graying hair twisted back into a scalp-tugging bun. Zinaida thought she’d seen her once, smacking an older girl, while Zinaida and her age group had marched to their next class.

The young girl didn’t speak until spoken to, leaning into her natural inclination towards silence.

“You have been excelling this past year, little Romanova.” The woman started, seemingly done with her silent assessment. “I teach the older widows, after graduation from the children’s quarters.” This served as Madame’s only introduction, and the only part of the interaction with a hint of warmth to it, then it’s back to business.

“Fluidity, IQ, development, linguistics… all up to par, even in the absence of your other half.” She said, a noticeable superiority in her voice as she mentioned Natalia. The room, and the woman’s face—which watched her, eyes narrowed, searching for a reaction— all began to fade into the background, as the other side of the screen, Madame’s side, came into view.

There Zinaida had been absolutely average, floating just above the water, being just good enough to get by, until one piece was removed from her life; the distraction of her sister. Is that what Natalia was, a roadblock? Everything Madame said was right, there was an emptiness in the absence of her sister, and all of that training had sunk into its place. Did Natalia keep her stable, or subdued?

Snap back. The girl blinked, eyes focusing back on the ordeal in front of her, adjusting her posture to sit at the expected attention. “I yearn to serve my country, Madame, that is all.” The words came out of her like a breath; thoughtless.

“And serve you will.” Madame B. announced, diplomatically. “But, of course, you first need the proper training—raising—the kind that matches your level.” Zinaida ripped the skin off her nails in her lap. She kept her face empty.

“This is all to say that we’ve decided to move you into new classes, with the older widows-in-training. You will continue bunking in the children’s quarters with your age-level peers, but you will no longer be attending the same lessons as them, following a more advanced regimen.”

While Zinaida had some kind of automated response waiting in her throat — like a voice box with a string attached — it had suddenly dawned on her that it didn’t matter what she said. Without her sister, without their window-wishes, she never heard her thoughts aloud anymore. Her voice, her tongue, was not a skilled weapon, and nothing without a blade on the end seemed to matter anymore. This was the truth of the Room.

---

Zinaida stood only about 6 feet from the older widows — who were all lined up with their hands stick-straight at their sides — mirroring the rigidness she saw, allowing her skittish eyes to be the only thing in the room that moved at all. This was, of course, until the handler of the room flicked his wrist in the air – an exorbitant watch that hung unfittingly off his wrist catching the overhead lighting, as if to call even more attention to the gesture – and three changes occurred.

A tall, angular raven-haired girl closest to the handler immediately tensed at the movement, tilting her chin up and rolling her shoulders to stand rigidly at the ready. A couple spots down, a bulky blond – couldn’t be older than thirteen, but her already-toned muscles would undoubtedly make her a challenging opponent – had this look in her eyes. Glazed over, cloudy, lost somewhere, Zinaida knew the look. Some people had to go somewhere else mentally, to really be good fighters.

And finally, near the right-most end of the line, Zinaida found that she was being watched. No, scanned, that was the only word for it. Someone who was watching you, they might twitch their lip as their eyes snagged on some part of you, or lift their eyebrow slightly, but this little – well, still older than Zinaida, but probably younger than all the other girls, and really thin and dainty like a tree branch – dark-skinned girl, whose tight coils had been plaited into cornrows neatly against her scalp, scaled her eyes down Zinaida.

A fight was coming. Let your instincts carry.

Zinaida didn’t bother to watch the man’s watch twinkle with a final gesture, she kept her eyes on the blonde, knowing her bulk would have taught her to hit the ground running.

When the target began a momentum-gaining sprint at her, Zinaida bent to the ground, planting a hand to the floor and delivering a sweeping kick to the girl’s kneecap, knocking her to the ground for a quick second, as her next opponent swooped in.

Zinaida didn’t have a moment to block the small, robotic girl, who grabbed two fistfulls of Zinaida's hair and yanked her up to her knees. The pain combined with the tight, unrelenting grip had Zinaida like a puppet. Through blurred, tear-brimmed eyes Zinaida watched the last girl appear in front of her, her vision distorted by the agony coming from her scalp. Time to do something.

The girl had loosened her grip only slightly on Zinaida’s hair as she watched her teammate approach, giving Zinaida enough leeway to slam her head back into the girl's body, and jump to her feet. She took out that same girl first, slamming her foot into her nose, and another nauseating kick to her crotch. Should knock her out. As Zinaida spun around to meet the other girls, she was met with a flying – and erratic, Zinaida noted – punch from the blonde, making her duck and roll towards the other widow-in-training. Deciding to deal with the bulkiest of the opponents last, Zinaida focused in on the cat-like, raven-haired teen. Zinaida shot a narrow jab to the girl’s ribs, making her fold into herself to clutch her stomach, and followed it with a hard uppercut to her chin. When the blonde came in again, Zinaida didn’t quite whip her head around fast enough, and was punished with a mind-numbing, bare-knuckled punch to her cheekbone.

Zinaida’s jaw dropped open in a pang of throbbing pain at the punch, but she quickly recovered, blocking an incoming right hook and flipping the girl backwards by her upper arm to the ground.

She followed by jumping on top of the winded blond, pinning her into the ground by pressing her tiny knees hard into the pressure point of her arms, and snaking her still-chubby hands around her throat.

She didn’t stop, only squeezed harder the more kicks and punches and tugs she felt to her back. Didn’t stop, not when the piercing whistle signaled her to, not when the man ordered for her all three of her victims to be ‘exterminated’, not until she was dragged by her waist, hands pried off of the now sickly-pale girl. Not when there were hands patting her back and a hot meal in front of her face and not when the screams of execution rang through the walls of the room.

Zinaida lay on her back like a ghost of herself, listening to the hushed slumbering breaths of all the girls she’d never really know.

She was changed.

The mental image of her face in a dimly-lit mirror appeared every time her eyes ventured closed, body shivering from a freezing shower as her trembling hand hovered over a black and blue bruise forming on the bone of her cheek.

She did not feel young, if she ever had. Any drop of sweetness, of complacent youth left in the hollows of her bones had been ripped from her by her very own self-induced brutality.

She had been taught a certain way, fought a certain way. Treat it like a job, administer pain like measuring medicine. The raw emotions that had deluged Zinaida as she leaned over that girl, as her hands shook with the pressure, were a cocktail of many things – desperation, numbing adrenaline – but certainly nothing noble. She held death in her hands like never before, and all that had accompanied it was her voice in her head, “You won’t hurt me again”.

She’d found blood trickling from her scalp, as her fingers had pulled through her hair. The crimson had blended so well into the color of it, she’d hardly noticed. Yes, unlike Natalia’s warm copper, Zinaida’s hair color could only be described as blood-stained. For the first time, she began to wonder if this was a reflection of whatever lay inside her.

Chapter 3: Faded Blue

Notes:

Sorry this one is so short, adding it into the end of chapter two, or the beginning of four, didn't feel right. It's such a pivotal moment in Zinaida's memory, I think it deserves its own chapter.

May, 1995

18 months later, Natalia was dragged back into the cellar-like, always freezing room of the children’s quarters at an unnatural hour of the night. Particles shone through the moonlight, dancing around the two giant soldiers that gripped her arms on either side, and she hung limp, but awake, between them. She looked elastic, pulled between both gruff men as if she was hanging off two buildings. Her face looked frozen in something between soul-crushing grief and wicked resignation; mouth slightly ajar, thin inner-brows slanted and pulled together. The soldiers lifted her, then let her body crumble limply into her cold bed.

Zinaida watched the entire thing, chest rising and falling with horrified breaths as she sat up only slightly in her bed. She went unnoticed, waiting with bated breath and locked jaw as the men single-filed out of the room. The minute those double doors swung closed, Zinaida was at Natalia’s side. She wasn’t much taller than the bed frame.

Natalia lay curled into herself, face squished as she shoved herself against the uncovered mattress. Zinaida hadn’t seen it before, but now the moonlight lit the room enough for the faded blue dye in her sister’s hair to become visible. Somehow, Zinaida knew this was an act of rebellion. The Room hated unnatural colors, especially anything so bright as the blue that must’ve been a true spectacle in its prime. The short hair was disheveled, the tangled front pieces falling over her eyes.

“‘Talia.”

Her head lifted from the mattress only slightly, but it was enough for Zinaida to get a good look at those eyes. Though she looked up at Zinaida, her eyes were unfocused, completely dimmed. Tortured, the word came to mind.

Zinaida knew a thing or two about silence.

She didn’t say another word, just walked to the other side of the bed and climbed in, facing Natalia’s back and wrapping her arms hard as she could around her. It took one squeeze, and a sob escaped Natalia. The sound wrung out Zinaida’s heart.

Natalia turned to face her sister. Though neither of their bodies were big enough to shield the other, they clung to each other like missing pieces.

Tears fell down both girls’ cheeks. Zinaida wrapped her hands around Natalia’s neck, pulled her into her chest. The comfort felt instinctual, motherly. Sisterly, Zinaida didn’t know. She’d never been taught affection, but she felt it come naturally for maybe the first and last time.

Long moments of aching silence passed. Zinaida tried to comfort, Natalia tried to be comforted.

Muffled by her face shoved against Zinaida’s nightgown, Natalia’s voice was finally heard; “They gave me a sister.” She’d turned the words over in her head for long before she said it, but they still choked her all the way out of her throat.

Zinaida’s tight squeeze went limp.

“A little one.”

They’d given her a sister? They’d replaced me? They’d given her a family?

Despite Zinaida’s immediate disgust for the idea, the pieces clicked all the same. Of course, when had Natalia ever cried like that for herself? No, they’d given her someone to take care of, just as she and Zinaida took care of each other, then they’d taken her back.

Zinaida tried to pull comfort out of her soul, tried to hand it to Natalia. She began rubbing Natalia’s arm that was hugging herself, her mind reeling to connect the story. A sister? What more, a whole new family? Had they replaced her? The pieces fell into place, and despite her resistance to the idea, Zinaida understood. Natalia had never cried like this for herself. They had given her someone to care for, only to snatch her away once more.

One time, a girl had told them that twins were supposed to share each other’s pain. Zinaida understood that now, as her heart dropped into the same spot where Natalia’s must’ve been. The problem with that is it handicaps both of them. Zinaida had no consolation except the sparse comfort she had to give, and so she gave it. She pulled Natalia’s face up to her own, used her tiny thumbs, trying to wipe the muddled tears, and pressed her forehead against the top of Natalia’s head. She felt Natalia’s chin tremble underneath her.

The salt of their tears blended into some jumbled whimper, that type of sorrow you forget in maturity. They drifted off to sleep eventually, intertwined. Interlinked.

Notes:

blade runner reference... do you think i'm cool yet?

Chapter 4: Hook, Line, and Sinker

Summary:

TW: Attempted rape. This chapter is gross, because Zinaida is sent on a mission where she has to seduce and then take out an older target. He doesn't get far with her, because she's good at what she does, but it's unsettling. Proceed with caution.

September, 1996

Red Room Correspondences, Russia

[translated from Russian]

I’m writing in response to your request for an update on the girls.

N. Romanova has adapted well since reintegrating into the program. She continues to demonstrate matched success as before in academics, with notable achievements in sparring and ballet. To avoid defection, we have implemented a daily, psychologically-focused regimen, gradually transitioning to an alternate-day schedule. Additionally, standard weekly mind-adaptation sessions fit with protocol for her situation, and will be implemented. Despite initial apprehension upon her return to headquarters, N. Romanova has exhibited no significant resistance, as previously discussed.

I’d like to note that the bond between the sisters appears to have strengthened after their time apart, something that could warrant further investigation. As you know, their situation is a unique one among our girls, and this could be simply a period of readjustment. While conventional wisdom suggests that such strong connections may lead to vulnerabilities, our observations rather indicate a heightened focus on their training. It can be entrusted that the entire Room will have close eyes on them, and separation will be provided if necessary.

Z. Romanova, as well, has met her recent promotion with expected competence. Notably, she has demonstrated exceptional prowess by surpassing her peers in combat exercises, resulting in the necessary disciplinary measures under our protocols. Because of her success, Z. Romanova has transitioned completely into the advanced regimen. Romanova continues to show her highest ranks in language studies and deception tactics. Additionally, she commenced basic instruction in seduction techniques, albeit with preliminary assessments pending further evaluation.

You may entrust that detailed reports will be provided on the progress of Z. Romanova following her introduction-level honeypot mission, per curriculum. These reports will offer an in-depth analysis of her performance and progress in alignment with our shared objectives.

—

October, 1996

Lure your target. Sink your hook. Reel in your catch. Devour your prey.

Zinaida sat straight up-right in the back of a dark van. Her body swayed with the grooves of the road. Gravel, she thought. She didn’t know where she was going; she didn’t need to. Her hand went to the nape of her neck, nose scrunching as she tried to scratch her wig-covered scalp. She and her instructor had spent over an hour getting her ready.

She had sat in a luxurious vanity, one in about 30 in a large studio-like room, as the esteemed Madame Volkova had chatted, lectured, and gabbed at Zinaida ceaselessly throughout the process. As she transformed into the image prescribed of a newly rebelling teen—done-up head-to-toe in a navy shift dress, sheer tights, uncomfortable wedges, thickly laid make-up and a light blonde wig—Zinaida felt like a mere mannequin, subjected to Madame Volkova’s meticulous grooming as if she were nothing but a tool.

Zinaida was not fond of the feeling. She knew what one could do with a tool, knew what she’d done with every instruction handed to her. Madame had called her pretty, and she’d nearly shivered at the word. Pretty, though something a young girl should probably strive for, felt like nothing but danger to her. She didn’t want to be the tool, not her face nor her only suddenly maturing figure.

Anyway, she tried to ignore the itch, both underneath the wig and between her clenched fists. Instead, as she waited for the truck to grind to a stop, and ignored the stocky, armed soldier staring her down, she thought of Natalia. They’d stopped sleeping through the night again, now that they’d been moved to the teen quarters.

They sat with their knees pulled up on one of the shower floors in the bathroom; the curtain drawn for safety. From sundown to sunup, they talked, now usually in English. Natalia had become fluent, and Zinaida liked the chance to practice. Plus, if anybody were to hear, it would take longer to decipher their hushed stories. These stories, unlike before, were mostly tales of America. Twinged, yet nostalgia-filled recollections of starry nights and morning dew atop blades of bright grass. Memories of a white-blonde sister; Zinaida had quickly recovered from her initial resentment, sometimes even reveling in the idea of a younger sister, though she had never been hers at all. Zinaida forever seemed to miss Natalia, especially before missions. She’d even told Natalia a few things about the time without her; a hasty recap of her first advanced class.

(Natalia had only held her hand as she mumbled through the events, not an ounce of judgment in her eyes. Zinaida didn’t know how well she understood.)

Zinaida held a raw talent that seeped out of her recklessly; her fear drove her like a race car streaking around a curb. Not Natalia, everything she did was thought-out, practical and precise. She worked for every move she made. And her heart failed her sometimes, her compassion leaking out when it shouldn’t, but Zinaida knew to envy that, though The Room did not. Together, they could take down an empire. Perhaps this was why they were so closely watched, so tentatively.

The vehicle interrupted Zinaida’s thoughts when it parked somewhere remote, and the cock of the soldier’s head gestured for her to climb out of the car. Zinaida walked alone into the grimy bar they’d earlier directed her to and scanned the room for her target. Dark eyes, graying hair, thick beard, loosened tie. Arthur Petrov, who was of Russian blood, but raised in the United Kingdom, sitting in a little booth near the bar.

Through the piece in her ear, she spoke, head turning away inconspicuously, “Acquired. Moving in to make contact.”

Mature as Zinaida might have been dressed, she knew she didn’t pass for legal. In fact, she was counting on it. Moving from her comfortable stance at the entrance of the bar, she limbered to a spot at the bar closest to his table. Lure your target. He was a known pedophile, actively selling sex tapes of illegal encounters with little ‘blondes’ like her to his diplomatic friends. This hadn’t been a problem, considering how truly hard he’d worked to protect the motherland, until he must’ve done something to betray the KGB’s trust.

Now Zinaida would kill him.

As the bartender walked to greet her, she feigned a nervous attraction to Arthur, quick glances and lip bites and tender smiles. She pretended not to notice the bartender in front of her, until he called her attention and her head snapped and she pretended to be embarrassed.

“Oh, sorry! Could I get.. uh…” she swallowed, “Something strong?” She played with the silver necklace around her neck as he looked her up and down, disbelievingly. “Bunny, you can’t seriously think I’d serve ya?” The tattooed man laughed, eyebrows raised.

She spared another glance at her target, who was now watching her with a baited smirk. However, he hadn’t walked to her yet, so her damsel act had to continue. “I’m old enough!” She argued, eyes avoiding his gaze.

Men like bad liars. Men like to save you.

Before the bartender could say another thing, her target chimed in. “The little lady’s drink is on me.” His Russian was English-accented, a hint of a teasing amusement lacing his words. She feigned surprise, lighting her eyes up and snapping her neck around to meet the voice.

“Really?” She smiled brightly, innocently.

“Course.”

The bartender gave up his fight, turning to make the drink with a disappointed eye roll.

“Although, someone so young shouldn’t be drinking.” Arthur beckoned Zinaida to his round booth, ushering away a woman with yellow bleached extensions for his new victim to take her place. She sat down gingerly, pretending not to notice when his arm draped around her uncovered shoulders. Pretended to ignore the aversion in her stomach, and his sweat stains beneath his white-collared shirt.

“Not that young.” She murmured, seeing how truly obvious she could make it that even she didn’t believe that. It only brightened his smile. He smiled, hummed, tilted his head to ask, “What’s your name?”

“Mila.” She smiled, reaching her small hand out as if to shake his. You’re innocent, you’re sweet, you’re malleable, she reminded herself. A glass of bourbon arrived next to her, which she took a tentative sip of. It burned all the way down her throat.

He laughed, his eyes roaming over her face like she was prey. Took her hand in his gingerly, and shook, “Arthur.”

“An English name, yes? I can speak a little, if you’d like.” She said it like it was a trophy, like she was just waiting for his approval.

“Ah, a smart girl.” Then in English, “How’d you learn, darling?”

“School. But, I am…” She pretended to search for the word, “Not very good.”

“You’re perfect.” He gleamed, yellow-tinted teeth showing.

She forced herself to blush, move her head away sheepishly. You don’t deserve my English. She used the hand farthest from him to pat down the sharpened knife tucked in the band of her tights, an assurance that this would all end soon. For now, she needed to get him somewhere alone. “If you are English, what takes you to Russia?”

“Work.” He replied, tone a bit bored. He hadn’t called her here for conversation, “You have a little boyfriend, at school?”

She widened her eyes, letting that stupid blush return. Sink your hook, “Oh, certainly not! My parents… they’re controlling. It’s why I’m here.” I’m unspoiled, she meant.

“Trying to rebel?”

“Trying to try new things.” Through her eyelids, she let her gaze oh-so-unintentionally wander to his thin lips. She hoped she wasn’t rushing, but she could hardly stand the overwhelming musk of his cologne much longer.

“Good thing we met then, yes?”

His hand on her thigh. Get off, get off, get off.

She nodded eagerly. “You.. seem experienced. I’m sure you’ve had many girlfriends?” She chirped, swallowed the hate that crawled up her throat as she heard herself.

“None so cute as you.” He raked his eyes down her dress, leaned into her ear, “I could teach you many things.”

She parted her lips, batted her eyelashes, “Like… what?”

“Why don’t you follow me and I can show ya?”

She bit her lip, swallowing a hard lump in her throat before breathlessly laughing, giving him her hand, “Okay.”

He grinned, stood up, and dragged her up with him. She took a glimpse at the bartender, who was pretending not to notice the suspicious scene in front of him.

When he led her out the back door, she took another scan of the dark alley. Empty—she was lucky. She sent a quick prayer of gratitude, just in case anyone was listening.

Reel in your catch.

She pulled her gaze back when his hand grabbed her jaw, squeezing her mouth open with the force of it. Zinaida couldn’t help it, the fear peeked through her dark eyes. She knew he saw it by the grin on his face. His eyes ducked as he pressed her body up against the rough brick behind her. She felt the wall scratch against her shoulder blades as he pushed her harder and lowered his head to breathe against her exposed neck. Her hands shook, fingers hovering over the concealed weapon as she strained to stay still in his grasp.

“Such a pretty little girl.” He whispered, switching to his native english. She hated the accent, she decided. Hated how he pronounced his r’s. “Bet nobody’s ever touched ya like this, huh?”

Her hands actually shook with the effort it took not to take him out right there, but she didn’t want a fight. No scream, a quick kill. He pinched her waist when she didn’t respond, raised his head to cock his eyebrow. Grudgingly, like a puppeteer's string was forcing her head to bob, she nodded. He hummed his approval, “just a little girl, can’t wait to ruin this little dress.” His hot breath smelled like old cigars, and vodka against her neck. Disgusting.

Zinaida swallowed hard, body completely, eerily still in his grip. Need a good angle. She stayed like that, body tensed and stick-straight, as his hands squeezed her chest so hard his nails dug in, and his chapped lips pressed hard and angry against hers. His beard scratched against her chin and cheeks.

As soon as his neck was stretched out, as soon as she thought there might be any good angle, she felt her fingers nimbly slip the knife out. She steadied him with one hand clenching his shirt, used the other to drag a horizontal slit across his bearded neck. His immediate reaction was a startled gasp and a hand to examine the pain.

She watched with a slack jaw as a deep crimson covered his hand, an endless supply of oozing and squirting blood. It ran down his hand, over his shirt. He fell to the ground, choking and gasping and undoubtedly dying. She didn’t do anything—didn’t kneel down with him or apologize or even tell him that he was the evil, sick and perverted kind of man who deserved the fitting death of drowning in his own blood—she just stood there, hand clutching her stomach.

Finally, everything stopped. The gasping, the tears and the death, and he was just gone. Gone, bleeding out of his neck against the concrete of the alley. Finally, he was gone and she was speaking. “Mission accomplished.”

And then there was that same black van near the drop site, and she packed up in it. That was that, and she was a killer. She was a killer, a blood-drawer, and she didn’t have a single thought in her head. Blank, the whole ride. Blank, the whole night. Blank, even Natalia couldn’t stop her as she collapsed into her bed and fell into something of a night-long coma. She dreamt of his face the whole time. Of blood, she was up to her neck in it. And he was watching.

Notes:

I know, this is gross, but it's really hard for me to believe that it isn't something that every Widow in the Room would likely face. Also, honey-pots (drawing a target in with seduction techniques) are a BIG part of female espionage.

Chapter 5: Besides, I Have a Sister

Summary:

TW: Attempted rape. I promise, these are the only two instances of this and they simply ended up back-to-back, but it's brief and is stopped before anything can really happen. I'll dive deeper into an explanation for it in the ending notes.

Notes:

“You must leave this house.”

“How can I? These walls are my skin. This room is my heart. Besides, I have a sister”

- Steven Berkoff, The Fall of the House of Usher

1998

At fourteen, Zinaida joined her remaining counterparts in their graduating classes. The youngest in her class, she had already been made aware that there was a certain age requirement for the graduation ceremony, and she would take some extra time perfecting her practice before she was ‘deemed ready’. The older graduates among her were more brutal than ever, the competition weighing deadly on their shoulders. Sometimes, without any reason, she’d receive a cracking kick to her shin, or a slap by either the other girls or her narrow-eyed instructor.

Madame B. had been in charge of every graduating class for as long as she’d probably been alive, the other girls whispered. Yes, she seemed brewed for this very job. Weeding them out.

Nearly every class, it seemed, the girls filed into the training room—arms straight at your sides, ladies! Eyes ahead, what are you looking at, Orlova?—to find a thrashing man with a bag over his head, or three guns in a pile in the middle of the room and a timer counting them down.

Zinaida held her own. She broke three ribs, got her teeth kicked in and skin slashed with daggers, but she survived. And she always got back up. She honed her grace, though it wasn’t a natural strong suit. Where she had before loathed the meticulous, nimble fluidity practices — how often she’d had her kneecaps bruised or fractured with Madame’s sharp cane, how often she’d been knocked to the ground — she finally had become lost in the memorized bends, dips, and tense extensions. And it came in handy too, The Red Room was not raising brazen men who blindly fought their way out. No, the Widows were artists of the craft, dancing through the movements.

Sometimes she could faintly hear the instrumentals in her head as she fought.

Her death toll curved loftily, but both twins had learned by now that there was nothing effective in trying to keep track.

They didn’t haunt her the same way they used to. Zinaida suspected that was something to do with all the upgraded ‘conditionings’; hour-long sessions with tubes in her arms and looping tapes with familiar gore, cartoons, and jumbles of words she couldn’t ever quite make out. All she knew was that when they dismissed her, her thoughts came out distinctly separated. There was Zinaida, and there was a maturing widow whose eyes darted across every exit, who knew every pressure point.

The farther into the year she got, the harder they worked her. Zinaida found herself slipping into a kind of auto-pilot mode. She slept the minute her head hit the pillow, scarfed down whatever bland nutrience she was given. She didn’t think as much, didn’t miss or hate or care. Natalia, however, couldn’t seem to turn it off. Caring, it came to her like breathing.

One evening, after a particularly draining weapons practice, Zinaida ambled down the familiar corridors of the academy, her footsteps echoing softly against the stone walls. This time of the day always shined a specific light across the place, the glow of the lights emphasizing the long stretches of hallway-shadows. It was only her, having to take a different path back to the quarters that her adversaries had long moved on from, and the silent guard at her side. She had long grown comfortable with the stomp of the heavy gear and muffled murmurs from the small radio attached to his belt.

Naturally, Zinaida wasn’t really thinking about anything particular. She knew the path back to her quarters like the back of her hand, every twist and turn etched into her memory, so her mind could simply talk itself through the practiced routines as she walked.

As they neared her room, the guard's hand shot out, gripping her arm with unexpected force. Startled, Zinaida stumbled, a gasp escaping her and a hand going to the pocket where a knife might be. Before she could react, he yanked her into a nearby broom closet; the door slamming shut behind them with a muffled thud.

Darkness enveloped them, broken only by thin slivers of light seeping in through the cracks in the door. She felt her back up against something that felt like the butt of a gun—she faintly remembered this being some kind of staff storage closet—his thick armor pressing her immovably. She opened her mouth to speak, but the guard's hand clamped over it, silencing her.

"Don't," he hissed, free arm snaking out towards her.

Zinaida’s body jerked, eyes darting to his hand as her mind went into overdrive. He had to have at least three pieces on him, not to mention the pager around his belt. She was close to her room. If she could make enough noise, maybe someone would hear her. But would they think anything of it? The pained screams of little girls weren’t exactly unusual to anyone there.

“What are you doing? What do you want?” She tried, eyes flickering in the dark, to watch his hairy hand that was now wrapping around her hips. He didn’t answer, but she could make out an annoyed glance.

His eyes, the sickening sensation of his hands grabbing her like cattle, made a submerged layer of rage boil to the surface of her skin, covering her arms in infuriated goose bumps. She would kill him, he would get her hands off her body. I am a weapon. I am my own weapon.

Right as he dug into the waistband of her compression pants, began to roll them down with a rushed fervor, she shifted her knee between his crotch. At the same time that he ripped them down, she drove her knee hard upwards, and slammed her forehead against his. The pain knocked him backwards, holding his nose in his hands as he groaned like a child.

He recovered quickly, and now she’d really done it. With a sadistic smile, he forced his chest against hers twice as hard, slipped his knee between her legs to keep her still, and slapped her so hard the noise vibrated just as much as her opposite cheek slammed against the wall.

She let out an animalistic shrieking sound, thrashing against his hold to prepare her next move. She was cut off as bright light shined against her face. The closet door flung open. The first thing Zinaida saw behind it was the glimmering barrel of a gun, then the little red-headed girl pointing it.

“Get off of her, you sick fuck. Or I’ll shoot your brains out, and I won't feel sorry.”

The guard backed off of Zinaida like she was a disease, jumping off and putting his hands in the air to face Natalia.

“Good, now you’re gonna leave, and you’re going to get a new posting, or we are both going to find you.”

Though he didn’t make any move to disrespect this, he gave her a startled huff. Zinaida noticed the way his eyes flickered with some kind of fear, and it made pride replace her fear. He took another look at Natalia’s expression, then to Zinaida, who turned her lip up in a daring little grin. My sister’s here now, good luck.

His hands still high in the air, the man sighed, and slowly shuffled out of the closet. Natalia kept her gun pointed steadily at his head, only dropping her clear shot when he sprinted around the corner.

As soon as he was gone, Zinaida crashed into Natalia with a fierce bear-hug, breathing out a held sigh of relief into her shoulder. Natalia returned it, dropping her gun back down into her pocket, and wrapping both her hands around Zinaida’s back.

Zinaida pulled herself off of the other girl, wiping a hint of a tear out of her eyes. “You are a force, ‘Tal.” It was the best she could manage of a thank-you, because they didn't take courses on those. When had she ever had anything to thank anyone about?

“Should have taken the shot.” Natalia replied, in their special English, and that small smile on her face.

“No, he wasn’t worth your bullets.” The door of their quarters creaked as they slipped inside, bee-lined to the bathroom where Zinaida could change and rinse off.

Zinaida tried to busy herself, ripping her athletic shirt off with a huff and turning the faucet to the coldest setting. She felt suddenly filthy, stained with an awful vibrating anticipation she couldn’t wash off. She was overworked, over-groped.

Natalia followed after carefully tucking her pistol back underneath her mattress. She slipped into the bathroom, leaning against the door, letting her back softly knock it closed behind them, as she tilted her head to examine Zinaida’s face in the mirror. She looked even paler than usual, the way her dark baby hairs sticking frizzy and sweaty to her forehead contrasted with her pale complexion. Every part from the sunken bags under her eyes, brush-strokes of thick eyelashes to paint around her dark brown eyes, was drastically dark.

The two were twins, but they were not identical. That was apparent from their earliest years. Same thin, arched eyebrows, same cheeks and jaw, but not identical. Their noses, a centerpiece of the face, had distinct differences. Natalia’s small bump, the upturn at the end of hers. Zinaida’s was softer, straighter. More stereotypically Russian, perhaps. And then, of course, Zinaida’s internal war seemed to always taint her naturally delicate features, blushed skin and full lips, with a jagged shadow. Still, the girls shared the same striking quality. Natalia had already come to terms with her beauty, already had it under her thumb, but Zinaida was slower to it.

While Zinaida splashed freezing water over her face, taking extra time to rub her eyebrows and cheeks in a sort of self-soothing massage, Natalia broke the silence; “Are you okay?”

Zinaida’s brick wall of an expression faltered, but it was back in the blink of an eye. Any admission of her exhaustion, of how sick and violated every inch of her skin felt, was weakness. And weakness, there was no place for weakness in all of Zinaida’s carefully-crafted salvation. Yes, this was survival. Love, guilt, pain, it would not serve her survival.

Nonetheless, she felt a duty to at least show a pinch of her heart, only for her sister. “сестричка, I’m fine.” Zinaida met her sister’s eyes in the mirror, sighed and gave her a half-smile. [сестричка is a pet name type of word for 'sister'. It means sissy, basically.]

Natalia hated a white lie, but she understood completely. So much of her own self was filled with this perfected violence that absorbed any vulnerability or tenderness, and left only more blood.

Sometimes she felt like her talent took up everything else inside her, ate up any tenderness or humanity and left only more room for a kill count. Purpose, purpose, talent, stay alive. It echoed.

As much time as Zinaida would soon spend pining over, regretting and rewriting all the times where she and Natalia had sat in exhausted, filled silence, it was all they could spare. They had silence. They shared silence. They shared unspoken confessions.

Notes:

Hopefully anyone reading will have gathered this after finishing the chapter, but basically, I'm trying my best to point out that nobody is looking out for these girls. It's a very thin tight-rope of perceived safety that they're walking on, and the darkness is everywhere. Sisters are not common in the Room, and they are certainly not celebrated. It is like a blessing, Natalia and Zinaida both know, to have each other, but it also doesn't fix everything.

Chapter 6: Man of War

2000

Five girls graduated, which would have included Zinaida if she’d been old enough to undergo the procedure.

The rest died off. In the winter, Zinaida left a girl who she’d only known by her last name, Volochkova, with mousy brown hair and green eyes like her sister’s, for dead on a survival mission in the deep forest. She waited until the girl fell asleep, slumped against a tree in full snow gear, then took all their supplies—which were only enough for one, of course—and hiked until she got back to the Room. Zinaida spent the next week nursing frostbite, but she had her life, at least.

Some girls killed the others. Rumor had it that one of the graduates in Zinaida’s class, Lara, slit Mila’s throat one night because she thought she was too tough of competition. Whatever happened, Mila’s body was dragged out of the quarters one night, lying dead. Another rumor said Polina had tried to escape a couple days before the ceremony, having heard too many bad stories about complications, and the guards found her just before she got away. So, Mila and Polina didn’t make it. But that was the worst of it, others just failed.

Alas, those graduates did not include Zinaida. She spent the next year and a half training every waking hour, being tested and tried in every sense of the word. She went on any missions they wanted her to, never failing to flawlessly carry out the task given to her. Her movements – lunges, flips, high kicks, right hooks – eventually came to her completely instinctual, through muscle memory. She could fight while half-asleep. If she was honest, it was thrilling. She loved the way her handlers nodded the whole time she trained, how they watched her with their eyes wide and proud. She was a success. A prodigy, even. She yearned for more.

She was granted such. After breakfast one foggy morning, early into the first year of the new decade, Zinaida was brought down to the same training room she’d spent so much of her life in. Unlike the private, smaller one which she was usually brought to in those days, this one had tall ceilings, little windows too high up for any of the girls to reach, and a red sparring mat right in the middle of the floor. The place always smelled like sweat and blood, a grim sort of nostalgia for Zinaida.

The first widow to arrive, she positioned herself at the head of the only temporary line, another practice that had become reflexive. Madame B. stood to the right of her, and there were armed guards at every corner of the room. Something was happening. She kept her body stiff and alert, eyes ahead as she watched the other five familiar graduates file into line next to her.

Madame B, ever stiff and calculated, took a quick glance to her watch before gliding her eyes over the girls in front of her. She must have found them adequate, because she cleared her throat after a minute, and addressed them; “Hello, my widows. I unite this group again, on a leisurely day such as this one, for a surprise. We have arranged a visit with an asset from another branch with a mission to bring you a challenge.”

Every single assassin’s eyes snapped to the opposite door across the room, where the heavy metal door was swung open by two guards not of The Room. They marched into the room, and this was when they saw him. Between them was what Zinaida could only assume was the asset, a metal-armed powerhouse of a man with the coldest eyes Zinaida had ever seen.

She knew the look of evil, she knew the look of a sadist, but this was not that. No, she couldn’t place it. Lost, maybe? Was that it?

And then, the strangest thing. Like a magnet, his ice-blue eyes snapped to hers. Of course, hers had already been on his, but now they’d both caught each other in some kind of staredown.

“Girls, this is the Winter Soldier. Consider him a sparring opponent, just as you consider each other.”

Eyes still locked on Zinaida, the Soldier arranged himself center on the mat, adjusted his stance to prepare for the instructed upcoming fight. What are you? Zinaida couldn’t help but try to lift her eyebrow to ask. She might’ve been imagining it, but she could’ve sworn he returned the gesture, could’ve sworn his thick, unkempt eyebrow twitched to mimic her. So he could think, could he? Not entirely a machine, she thought. Just another tool?

Madame B. turned her head, covered her mouth with her hand as she exchanged hushed words with the two guards. A nod, and she pointed a finger at the widow center in line.

Sezja, who always kept her hair in a jagged crew cut and whose eyebrow was split with an old scar. She was talented, but so was every other girl in line. Zinaida guessed that what made her get picked first was her naturally bulky fighting style. In the earlier years, she’d fought brutally, kicked and thrashed at her opponent like a maniac. She’d been tamed over the years, had begun to incorporate strategic acrobatics into her sparring, but everyone knew she was still just as barbaric in nature.

Sezja cracked her neck on either side, and stepped up to Madame B, who directed her to the weapons rack on the side of the mat. “Something small please, Sezja.” She nodded, grabbed a small combat knife to flip between her fingers. Madame made an approving face, pointed her onto the mat where the Soldier was carefully studying his opponent, scanning over her.

On the other side, Zinaida was still studying him. Everything about him seemed like a fear tactic; the fitted mask on his lower-face, the constricting leather straps all across his jacket, and no real covering on the complicated metal arm – Zinaida imagined the feat of that arm was a real accomplishment of theirs, the way they showed it off. Even had a giant red star up top. Of course, covering the arm would be a much more practical choice, giving him both the element of surprise and animosity. But, then again, maybe he was so efficient that it didn’t matter if he stood out. Maybe it was about the impression he left.

Sezja, naturally, delivered the first blow. She lunged at him like a tiger, apparently aiming to slice off the tightly-fit facemask. Quickly wrapping her legs around his waist, she slipped her knife out and lunged it blindly at the back of his neck, where she must’ve been expecting some kind of fastening for the mask. She certainly caught him off guard, the way he stumbled back and grabbed at her. Unfortunately, his strength countered hers, and he ripped her off by the hair in a second, throwing her to the mat before she could even reach his neck with the blade.

Sezja fought as hard and feral as she always did, but he had her pinned to the ground and a knife to her neck within minutes. She’d made a stupid mistake, trying to match his brutality with her own. Though it usually worked in his favor, the Winter Soldier fought like he had more strength than he knew what to do with. Sezja was intimidated by this, maybe excited, and met it with a frantic aggression. This was common with these types of things; the girls spent so much time taking down each other, or working small jobs, that a real adversary felt like too short of a chance with too many consequences.

Mila and then Alyona went next, all taken down after one slight mistake or another. Mistakes, taken advantage of by his unnatural strength. Zinaida, by the second fight, was convinced he was enhanced. Sure, a metal arm gives you a good punch, but it wasn’t just the arm. He was quick too, unnaturally so, and pain was nothing but a mosquito to him. It pricked his skin, he smacked it off and kept going.

By the time Madame’s eyes fell on Zinaida, both women were agitated. Madame had something to prove, and Zinaida was itching to put her theories into practice.

She decided on a longer, albeit skinny and relatively thin knife, tucking it into the back of her shirt in an attempt to have it discounted as a beginning move. She stepped up to the mat, and now she was close enough to see the intricate details of his face. Though his overgrown hair and muzzling mask did their best to conceal the rings of starved bone-structure around his eyes, she saw them. She saw them, as she too saw the space between his two dark brows where barely-there wrinkles already indented his skin. A lifetime of worry.

Madame’s snap brought her turning like a gear into motion. Her eyes were a flame attracting imperfections, and there was her moth. In his stance, legs too far apart. No doubt, to accommodate for the weight of the arm.

He was just about to send a flying kick to the knee he’d noticed that she’d damaged a week ago, when she sent what she begged him to believe was a right hook to his mask. Before it hit, she dropped her other hand behind her back as she slid between his legs, pulling her knife to the ready as soon as she was on her feet again.

Just as he caught her movement and spun around, she wound up her knife and twisted it hard as she could right into the joint where she guessed his metal arm to meet flesh. She bent close enough that hopefully he couldn’t miss the remorse in her eyes, as she dug into his skin, then held her breath as she yanked it back out.

His first reaction was a gasping, choked breath as the pain hit, then a mangled groan as he dropped to his knees. She inhaled the guilt that lingered in invisible clouds all around his keeled body, hovering over him with pinched eyebrows, and praying for that to be the end of it. For him to surrender, and for her to step back into line with her sins clawing at her back.

As it always did, her humane longing got right in the way of her vision, allowing her to be pulled like a puppet to the ground when his arm shot out and wrapped her around her ankle for retribution.

Her back hit the mat with a thud, knocking a strangled wheeze out of her throat. She tried to jerk out of whatever pain she knew would soon strike, but he beat her to it; rolling onto her, cold metal stiffly trapping her neck in a pinning chokehold as he flipped himself under her.

Zinaida’s lips fell apart in a pointless gasp for air, features wrenching together. The grip was so tight enough that she knew she’d be out cold in minutes. She blinked away the helpless image of her death, of being dragged to the backrooms and slit across the throat. Blood running down, soaking into her uniform like a mark of her failure. Of being beaten to a pulp, of their angry Russian speeches being the last thing before her heart stopped. Of –

No!

Zinaida acted tactically, just as she was trained, lodging a foot under his leg that had come up to wrap around her torso, flipping it. He saw this as an opening, instinctively trying to move on top of her, but she was faster, hooking her leg and grabbing both his arms to keep them away from her neck. With space and leverage, she could finally take a real breath.

Kneeing him in the crotch for good measure, she wrestled until she was straddling him and she’d pinned him with her knobby limbs. Then her knife raised, slightly trembling, to his neck, blade pressed right up to the straining, cold veins – such an intimate sign of mortality that hooked Zinaida with the kind of ache like a cavity. It had been too long since she’d held death in her hands, the power always held a deafening, terrifying static to which her normal piggy-backing shame could not possibly compare.

The sound of Madame’s whistle faded like white noise behind the two, death-cheating fighters. Instead of fear in his eyes, there was something else. No mistaking it, he looked wild-eyed. Admiration, numbness, fascination. Some kind of blurred line between all three. Her legs finally dragged her away after another piercing whistle rang and bounced off the high ceilings, but her face kept the same awed disorientation the whole way back, stumbling into line: lips apart, pitchy eyes blinking so quick they might disappear, thin brows pinching up at the inners.

Courtesy of her own eye for such a thing, Madame B. had found a new prodigy. Zinaida could hear the blueprints being drawn out. Her bony hand gripping down on the teen’s shoulder felt like a collar.

—

If Zinaida had known about the effects of her victory, she would have let the Winter Soldier choke her blue. Everything happened so quickly. First, though she’d never know, it was just letters. A detailed report of the “training session” with Hydra’s prized asset. Madame B. had gotten carried away, that was all, boasting fancily about the pale little redhead who’d nearly slit the throat of a 260 pound assassin. The Soldier had asked one or two questions upon his return to the grimy metal warehouse he stayed trapped in.

This all coincided perfectly for Hydra, because they never did anything without an ulterior motive.

For some time now, the Winter Soldier had been proving to simply be a hassle. The more his mind was wiped, the less sanity they had to work with. Though the ability to strip a soldier of everything that made him a weakness---a human---had been a great innovation of the program, it was also completely uncharted territory that came with side effects the longer it was put into practice. Slight defections, too many questions, a random violent outburst, shakes and signs of insanity. It was all becoming near untamable, and so Hydra had been looking, though not extensively, for some kind of companion. As well trained as the guards were, they were no match for the mechanic killer they’d created. Another killer, however, could be just the thing.

The new head of the Winter Soldier program, being met with disapproval from Madame B, had gone with the idea of a trade to the head of command; the decorated Soviet general, and overseer of The Red Room, General Dreykov.

Dreykov, after some digging and biased consultations, became quite intrigued with all the extensive victories that the program had had with subjugation, mapping out the human brain, and memory erasure. Having that fail-safe tucked away in his pocket could prove to be the key to later cycles of widows, he’d decided.

Notes:

Chapter title is another Radiohead song, and it’s SO Winter Soldier. I urge you to listen to it!

Chapter 7: Prodigal Son

April 8th, 2000

From dawn to dusk, Zinaida spent the entire April eighth, 2000, in the medical wing.

An in-depth physical, must’ve been at least thirty minutes. Snapshots of every scar, bruise, and cut on her body. Sanitary gloves, cold stethoscope, held to the ridges of her spine, and inhale, exhale. Stick out your tongue for me, and everything looks good.

Two hours of a psychological evaluation, which happened to be more of a battering, a game they liked to play called How Good is Your Poker Face:

“So, Zinaida, you say you tend to fall asleep almost immediately after closing your eyes. In what state does your consciousness reside in whilst you sleep? Do you commonly have nightmares, wake up crying or sweating?”

The Winter Soldier, silent as we walked through the snow. Nothing but white, and the glint of metal and leather. The minute he opened his mouth, he was on the ground. Uniform ripped open, carving knife in my hand, blood painting the snow in my footsteps. Like an animal had gotten him, intestines out, draping over him. Couldn’t look in his eyes.

She lied easily, “Not since I was a child, I suppose. I used to dream about missions, about failing.”

He jots down a note.

“Zinaida, are you afraid of failure? Tell me, what will happen when---if---you fail?”

“You have a twin, yes, Zinaida? Zinaida, do you love her? Zinaida, if assigned the task, how would you take out your sister?”

“Zinaida, do you feel guilt?”

“Zinaida, I think killing feels normal to you. Easy, maybe even easier than this conversation. I bet you’ve already decided how you’d kill me. I bet you do that a lot. Am I correct, Zinaida? No? Hm.”

An MRI, then enough needles in her arm, and blood drained, to make her eyes flutter. Measurements retaken---she now stood at 5 '4, barefoot. Same as Natalia, down to the inch. Their bodies differed in nearly every other way; when Natalia had begun to grow steadily into her shape, curves beginning to carve her body out, Zinaida stayed scrawny. Always just below the recommended weight for her age group, always under-developed. Hands on her spine, her ribs, could always feel every bone. Always that same frown as they weighed her. Maybe her mother was thin. Maybe she was sequined like Natalia, beauty reflecting off every surface. They wouldn’t know.

By late afternoon, Zinaida had been sitting and waiting as physicians came in and out of the room, sticking something up her arm or asking her a question, for long enough to lose all interest. This was why, when the door creaked open again, Zinaida didn’t even bother to look up from her feet, which she was kicking against the floor.

“Your attention, Miss Romanova?” A familiar, haughty voice called to her. Zinaida’s head snapped up, to find the notorious Madame B. standing with her fingers clasped at her abdomen. Zinaida’s shoulders unconsciously stiffened, correcting her slouch. “My apologies, Madame.”

“Yes, very well. I’m sure such a perceptive girl like you is curious about all this, yes? An odd day it’s been, but our specialists have what they need, so why don’t I take a second to explain?”

Zinaida took a shallow breath and nodded, preparing herself.

The woman lowered herself, ever-stiffly, down into a chair opposite from the paper-sheet-covered exam table where Zinaida sat.

“In short, big change is coming for you, Romanova. You remember your sparring session the other day, with the man?”

Zinaida counted the tick of the round clock at the corner of the room, tapping her pointer finger against the table every time it moved, and she nodded again.

Madame. B sighed, seeming to examine the girl in the same way she always did. “Your victory attracted the attention of some very important people outside of The Room. The same people, in fact, who preside over the Soldier you met.”

Zinaida ignored the puzzle pieces desperately shoving themselves together in her mind, ignoring the racing, cold fear that she knew exactly what was happening.

Madame smiled, the kind that didn’t even reach half-way up her face. “We have decided that you will be a great asset to those very important people. Of greater service, unfortunately, than you could be here.”

Zinaida’s hands froze, hovering over the table. As soon as her mind repeated the words in her head, her nails dug into her palms. Hard as she could, marking half-moons deep into the skin. The pain did not bring the same control, the same power, it usually did. “A mission?” She dared to pretend to believe her question, eyes heavy and hooded, keeping a dead gaze on a medical poster in front of her.

“No, Romanova. A reassignment.”

The words, the consequences, weaved into her ears, squealed into her eardrums like they wanted to make sure she heard it louder. This place, although it might not be considered a home, was the closest thing she’d ever known to one. The only thing she’d ever known. Rigorous, weaponized femininity, beds filled on either side of her with hushed girls. Natalia was all she’d ever known. Without Natalia, what did she have? The skin on her bones? The knuckles in her fists? The blood in her veins? They meant nothing. Natalia was the one thing she’d ever been able to pour something that wasn’t violence into. Natalia was the only blood she hadn’t spilled.

“When?” She heard her voice like a speaker, heard everything suddenly overwhelm her senses. Red crescents, hints of crimson seeping out in the indents, the whistling breeze of the grated fan on the ceiling, Madame’s breathing.

“Now that you’ve been alerted, it’s protocol that you’re sent within 24 hours.”

Zinaida’s eyes finally, dazed, moved to meet Madame B.’s. She saw something she’d never seen in them before; something other than indifference or shooting anger. She saw regret, something else she didn’t dare to call guilt. This was a terrible sign, actually. One less callous might mistake it for tenderness, but Zinaida did not. Zinaida, perhaps in some kind of mentality-survival technique, told herself Madame was simply upset to lose a winner. She passed over blaring alarm bells.

For the first time in her entire life, Zinaida made a demand; “You’ll give me until morning.”

Madame B. smiled in a way that looked steeped in sorrow, brewed with familiarity. “I will,” she sighed, “I’ll send you off tomorrow myself. For tonight, I’ll have you escorted back.”

Madame had done her a favor. She’d given her room for a goodbye. Favors stick out like red ribbons among a scattered pile of crawling-away-bruised.

Zinaida and the old, shadowed woman shared some kind of look neither of them could explain. It mirrored the weight of a doomed prodigy.

When Zinaida was ushered into her room, the door swinging shut behind her by the force of the bored-stiff guard, the quarters were empty. The ever-slow clock overtop the bathroom door told her they were all at dinner, silently shoveling bland necessities, which never felt like quite enough, into their mouths, backs straight as planks of wood.

For some reason, this brought Zinaida relief. She should have packed. She should have ran to the dining hall, intertwined her fingers with Natalia’s painted ones, and ate her last meal. Instead, Zinaida ran the hottest shower the old pipes could manage, and simply stood naked on the tiles like a dead woman until the water turned shivering, and her pale arms were flushed pink by the stinging steam. She watched in a numbed appreciation as the near-boiling stream cracked like yolk down her scalp, melted into the shorter pieces in the front of her hair, and then dripped off at the thinned ends, splatting on her feet.

Zinaida was perched over the beloved window sill, head swaying with the winded trees, when she heard the muffled ring of the dinner bell, and then the clatter of dishes as they were returned to the sink. Her knees rubbed against the scuffed hardwood. The wrinkled, white-cotton sleeping gown she wore every night did little to offer her warmth, being so close, and yet still separated, from the breeze of the night. The similarly colored sweater – which she’d tugged on so carelessly that her long hair was tucked damp against her back – was a comfort she had never before relished in the way she did now.

She felt similarly at the sound of small, clacking shoes filing into the room, silent whispers growing to still-quiet adolescent conversations as the door whooshed shut behind them. Natalia, whose copper hair had been chopped to bangs at the front, the rest falling in waves from the braid she’d let down for dinner – had felt the wrong even before her eyes locked on Zinaida’s hunched back, but now it was achingly clear.

After-dinner hours were, like every other part of their regiment, strictly set with a routine. Return to the quarters, all-together file into the echo-y bathrooms, and wait in line, this time able to accompany the wait with girlish chatter, as girls took ten minute, bare-bone showers in pairs of five, one in each clear-curtained shower. The guards, usually female for the occasion, stood by the inside of the door, occasionally sweeping their eyes casually over the scene to ensure rules were followed.

Truly, the guards underestimate the girls they are watching over. It took only a few minutes of anxiously waiting in line for the showers before she was able to suspiciously rattle the shower curtain close in line, giving her a chance to slip out of the bathroom as the guard went to rattle the unknowing suspect.

Natalia beelined to Zinaida, gently tugging her by the shoulder to turn. The touch made her flinch, fists clenching as her head snapped around. She sighed in relief when she recognized her sister, and Natalia began in whispered English, “Just me, it's okay. Let’s go.”

She nodded to the door, not giving Zinaida time to snap out of her confused daze, taking her hand and pulling her behind herself out of the room, ensuring that one of the double doors whooshed quietly closed behind them.

“Natalia, what are you doing?” Zinaida frowned, head turning both ways as she nervously glanced around them for any witnesses.

“What happened, Nai?” Natalia searched her sister’s face, finding no scrapes, only a glazed-over look in her eyes.

The nickname immediately softened Zinaida, snapping her attention away from the matter of danger – it was a childhood nickname, back when they had to break up words to make their tongues form them. Zinaida loved it, always had. She thought it made her name sound almost sweet. Zinaida frowned with something mature, taking another glance down the corridor before squeezing the hand she was still holding, “It’s not safe here, anyone could walk by.”

Natalia’s lips twitched up with an idea. “There’s a balcony down the corner. Sometimes it's locked.”

Their feet moved in matching strides, turning the dimly-lit corner until they found two wooden doors filled with glass, framed by flapping curtains behind them that flapped and fought tirelessly against the wind. Despite themselves, they shared a quick smile.

They tucked the curtains between the doors to stay pinned to hide them, and sat with both their knees to their chests.

Though there was still an unmistakable chill in the air, poking up goosebumps on Natalia’s bare arms, the snow across the treetops had been dissolved by the sun, which peeked over the forest, shining orange and little tints of an disgustingly gorgeous pink.

“Do you remember the — uh, Winter Soldier I spoke of?”

Natalia’s eyebrow quirked up, eyes flashing to her sister’s face---which could only be described as mourning. “Yes.”

She spit it out; “They are sending me away. With him. Wherever he is.”

This time, Natalia’s entire head swiveled. Zinaida was nearly too afraid to look at her. When she caved, she saw disbelief blooming into indignation. “No.” She grit, as if behind her teeth there was something truly monstrous. “For-- for how long?”

Zinaida swallowed a strangling lump in her throat, letting her eyes tremble closed. “She called it a reassignment.”

Silence.

Zinaida broke it, her voice coming out panicked; “I love you. Do you know that I love you? I never say it, I –”

“No.” Her shoulders tucked her chest back defeatedly when Zinaida’s arms shot out. “No, no goodbyes. They can’t, God, — Они не могут продолжать поступать так с нами.” [they can’t keep doing this to us]

“I know, родная, but what are we to do?” For the first time since she’d learned not to, a tear rolled hot and angry down her cheek. Natalia matched her. [родная has no direct translation, but it's a term used for a person you spend your entire life with, someone who feels like another part of your soul.]

“I don’t know, Nai, run away. Anything.”

Zinaida had to tilt her head away, cough out a miserable laugh to try to cage her trembling chin, “‘Talia, there’s nowhere to run. We need — I need — to be smart about this.”

“Maybe I’m tired of being smart, aren’t you?”

Zinaida wiped her cheek, shot the same hand out again in a desperate consolation, “Do you remember when they took you away?”

Natalia’s face shadowed with something close to betrayal, her entire body stiffening at the unwanted memories.

“You remember, and you remember how it felt to be strong about it? To tell me it was okay?”

Natalia gasped with a sudden, choking sob. Zinaida took the hand of hers that she was holding and tugged on it to pull them closer together. “So, please, do not make me lie. Don’t make me tell you this is okay. It’s not, it is just happening.”

Natalia let her head fall against Zinaida’s shoulders, snaking her arms out to wrap around her neck, cradling herself into her sister as if she had a mother at all to do so with. Zinaida wrapped her own arms so tightly, fiercely around Natalia that she thought it might hurt, letting tears drop onto the top of the girl’s copper hair. “I love you, I’m so sorry. мне очень жаль.” Natalia mumbled the apology in both languages, hoping it might make it mean more.

I am sorry I let them take me. I am sorry I am letting them take you. I am sorry I am weak with you. I’m sorry, my sister, I am so sorry.

Zinaida moved her shoulder, making Natalia peek her pink-tinged face up. What did Natalia possibly have to be sorry for? “Do not say that. If you are sorry, I am evil.”

“No, I am serious. You are always the strongest. You never stop being strong, not like me. I only pretend.”

“I’d rather pretend. You have your heart, you have your душа, and I –” Zinaida took a shaky breath, closing her eyes for a second before peeling them back open, “I think I lost mine.” [soul]

Natalia shook her head so adamantly, so fearlessly, Zinaida almost believed it. Natalia didn’t even grace that damned idea with a response. She wanted to tell her the very thing that meant something, but she couldn’t think of it. Silence fell for a moment as their eyes spoke.

And then finally, Natalia had something. “Do not let them make you think they are stronger than our blood, okay? I’ll find you, if you don’t find me first.”

Zinaida swallowed the pessimism in her, which delighted in screaming its disapproval at the whittled shard of hope. Instead of listening, she let herself smile. She let herself believe in Natalia’s determination. She let herself agree.

Eventually they regained their composure, dragged themselves, and their etiquette, back up, and snuck back into the quarters. Besides an odd look from a couple girls, nobody noticed their disappearance.

--

It took only a familiar, nightmarish grip on Zinaida’s shoulder to make her bolt upright awake. In the silent, vulnerable dark of the early morning, Madame B. looked slightly less regal. “Get yourself dressed, Zinaida. And quick, they’re here.”

Zinaida blinked hard, rubbing her eyes and pulling her legs up as Madame ripped her thin blanket off. The sun was still tucked sleeping beneath the trees, and the chill of the air came unabridged through the room, brushing against Zinaida’s bare legs as she quietly stepped out of bed, bent down to pull her things out from under the metal-framed bed.

“No need to pack.”

Zinaida’s eyes rose to look at her, confusion evident on her face. “Madame---” She stopped herself, she certainly knew better than to question orders. She adjusted her question, “What should I wear?”

“Do not ask stupid questions. Your uniform, and an extra layer. This is any other day, as far as you are concerned.”

Zinaida nodded, obliging quickly, pulling on a layer of her thickest tights underneath the university-like uniform the widows wore before graduation; a pleated skirt, which went no shorter than the knees, a buttoned and collared shirt, which was usually paired with flats. This time, Zinaida tied her winter boots tight against her feet. She tugged a sweater over her slightly fussed-up hair, the same one she’d worn last night. This was not protocol, but Madame only snapped her fingers to rush her faster.

Zinaida took glances at her fast-asleep sister the entire time she dressed. She almost hoped her piercing eyes would wake her up. They didn’t, and maybe that was better. She threw a silent goodbye to her as she followed Madame B. out the door, lips moving to mime an I love you. She faintly wondered what good it was to love at all.

The walk through the familiar corridors, down the lavishly-carpeted stairs, felt like a death march. Half-way through it, Madame spoke:

“You will need to do what is asked of you, Zinaida. And I do not mean saying yes sir, using your manners, nodding your head, I mean that if they ask you to cut off your arm, you do it.”

“Yes, Madame.”

“What do we always tell you here, Zinaida?”

“Pain is weakness, fear is a disease.”

“Good. You are representing The Room in this new escapade, I expect no disappointments. Do not expect leisure, or forgiveness.”

“You will have your success story.” Zinaida took a preparatory breath, “As long as my sister remains cared for.”

Madame’s eyes flickered down to Zinaida, and then she raised her brows so quickly that Zinaida nearly missed it. “Are you trying to bargain with me?”

“Not at all, Madame. I wish to serve my country the best I can, that is all.”

Madame took a breath, eyes ahead. The silence was so loud it made Zinaida’s ears ring. “Very well.”

Zinaida could finally breathe. She would be okay. Now, she would be okay. She nodded, fingers relaxing their dig into her palms, and averted her gaze to the carpet as they rounded the corner, began down the steps to the spacious, affluent entrance where guests first arrived for a tour---the very few they had.

There were two guards with rifles held diagonal in their arms on both sides of the front doors. These ones were more wood; deep and dark and walnut, indented with a classical design. Madame B. stepped through with the kind of regality that left the other person sliding behind.

It hit Zinaida that she had never stepped to the front of the building, past the high gates, before. Just like the parlor, the sight before her was a bit impostrous. Gone were the creaky floors, peeling paint, and dusted corners; replaced by a driveway of perfectly-assembled cobblestone and verdant grass that shined with morning dew. Picture-perfect, disrupted only by the familiarly ominous black van parked right in front of brick stairs.

Madame kept her hand trapped high on Zinaida’s back as they ascended down the stairs. A man stepped out of the passenger seat, adjusting his slick collar as he held a badge wrapped around his neck out to Madame. She tilted her chin up to assess it, pursed her lips and nodded it away. The man glanced, finally, at Zinaida. He looked at her how Madame had looked at his badge, gliding his eyes down her body, jutting his lips out in approval.

Madame watched him until he took his eyes off the teenager. This was the end. Her hand on Zinaida’s back switched to a grip on her shoulder, which she used to turn the girl towards her. She stared unflinchingly, into Zinaida’s eyes.

“Women are fortresses. You are a fortress.” Madame nodded at her own words, as if trying to download them into Zinaida’s brain. As if this was a cure. As if Zinaida could wish herself immortal, manifest her own unflinching resistance into reality. The worst part is, that this was the kindest thing the woman had ever said to her. The worst part is that this was the last thing she ever would.

“Take care of Natalia.”

The van was hot, the same prisoner transport vehicles---bullet proof, sound proof---that the Red Room used on away-missions. An armed guard sat across from Zinaida, tilting his head to watch her closely.

She kept her legs crossed, arms clasped comfortingly over her abdomen, as the road bumped and carried her away. Maybe a prison was a prison.

Chapter 8: Give and Take

Notes:

No matter what I do, I can't seem to get this chapter right. It's been through a lot of editing since I first wrote it, and will probably go through much more once I get this ff done and go into a second draft, as a head's up.

By the time the trunk opened, shards of light introducing the shivering girl to the blaring cold spring of Russia, Zinaida’s legs had turned to pins and needles. The guard who’d dragged the back doors open jerked his head at her, so she pulled herself onto her feet. Ducking, hopping out of the van, she felt the tip of a rifle nudge her in the back by the other guard.

Slightly sludgy snow crunched under her boots, this was Russia alright. But not the Russia she was used to, maybe farther up north? Certainly higher, the way the wind was pulling and her ears popping.

Gun still sliding against the vertebrates of her spine, Zinaida hiked in the general direction towards what she was now making out to be a sort of underground facility. Or a bunker, she didn’t have the right classification. Only the top of the structure poked out of the snow. There, like the ground she stepped over, two thick metal doors were surrounded on all sides by camouflaging mountain rock.

When they arrived, the rock shadowing their heads, one of the guards stepped forward, announced their arrival through a transceiver, and the doors stirred, creaked open. One step through, and they were in a caged elevator. The air was as cold as it was outside, but with the staleness of a cellar. The walls, floors, everything, it all smelled of mildew.

Just as soon as the floor began to lower, Zinaida was hit with a sudden wave of longing for her home. For the warmer, library-dust and patterned carpets of the Room.

There was something different about feminine violence.

She shoved the feeling compact into her stomach and swallowed it. She did not know where she was going, what would be done to her, who would do it. She had to keep herself present with the suspense. Yes, when the falling floor hit a stop, the caging wire-walls of the elevator lifting open, she stiffened her body like a brick wall. Like a target.

One guard, the one who pressed himself up against her back, spoke, and his voice echoed through the halls they walked through, “Where’d you say?”

The other one, who Zinaida suspected to be the wiser of the two, turned around with a chiding look on his face. He jerked his head down to Zinaida, shook it, and gestured out some kind of answer with his hands. Not sign language, she knew enough of that to recognize it, this was a code.

The other guard grunted, and used a rough hand on Zinaida’s waist to turn her down a corner she wouldn’t have noticed. He pulled open another metal door, and pushed her through in front of him. The hallway that was behind it was similar, though a bit more lived in. It looked like a mix between a winding office building and a prison.

Gun loaded, hand on her back, Zinaida was guided down a hallway---two divergences at the end, two corners she could turn, but a successful escape was unlikely. On either side of the hall, steel doors lead to windowless rooms. Both numbered. After a left turn at the end, her arm was handed to a different guard, standing ready in front of another labeled, steel door. She leaned her head back to read as she was dragged past the open door, which read ‘MEDICAL’ in bold Cryllic.

And then everything blurred. Men, white flashes, name-tags and gloves, hands on her. Pulling, yanking. The skirting of creaky wheels, her shoulders shoved down and back, the back of her knees kicked to bend over cold metal. In a chair, no, a table, threaded restraints strapping her arms and legs onto an examination table, body bending to its will until she is sat slightly-upright, chest heaving, wrists jerking slightly, and eyes thrashing around the room.

They did not stop, pause, or breath, three lab coats standing at her sides, sticking tubes into her pulsing veins, flashing light into her eyes, forcing sharp dental tools down her throat, between muttered medical Russian.

Zinaida was only given a second to breathe as the nurses stepped a foot away to scribble down their observations. Still, she had a cuff squeezing her upper arm, a needle in her vein, but a foot of room. She forced air through her nose, in and out, working against hyperventilation. Chin high, control your breaths. Pain is weakness, fear is a disease. It spreads like the plague. You have no fear, for you are simply a thing. A tool. A gun, a dagger. People like you survive. Survive. Fear will not help you survive. Natalia. Survive. Assess.

Pressed and ironed lab coats, white and unstained. Name tags, pinned to the starch white. Zinaida could not make out any sensible names, but they were Russian letters. Okay, what have they done? Needle in her arm, some kind of sedative? Perhaps a priming substance? Jotting down notes, a basic examination? They were young, all three, two men and one woman. Not dirty-workers. Nurses, had to be. The constrictions around her body looked like seatbelts. A sharp enough scalpel could slice them, but it would take too much time without enough momentum. And she did not have momentum.

Breathe, I am a widow. I am a wry insect, climbing up the walls, clinging to the soles of your boots. Infiltrating where you least expect me. This was her reassignment. She had a job to do. Just a job, she willed thinner breaths through her nose, and removed herself from the equation. In her place, she inserted herself like a toy soldier, just a mini figurine, who would complete this task for her.

Eyes wide open, straight-faced, locked on the muted, empty walls of the medical room, Zinaida left herself there. And once she did, the tugs and the prodding and odd sensations blurred until they became the ties slipping off her limbs, the dizziness as she was stood up, dragged on her limp legs.

Dazily, she registered a hallway passing her by, her feet moving beneath her. Then there was the distinct thud of a steel door thudding, creaking closed behind her. Locking her in a room. No, that wasn't a good description. A cell was more like it.

Maybe it was her outstretched palms, catching herself before she banged into the grimy wall, or the resounding, vibrating clang of the cell door locking her inside, that snapped back into her body. Unfortunately, she soon realized, this would’ve been an even better time to be outside of her body.

She ran to the door, trying to catch it before it closed, but the guards were already flipping closed a small slot in the middle of the rusted metal, the slip of air through which she would’ve watched them leave her.

Her breath returned only to make a windpipe of her lungs, gasping and shuddering out of her heaving chest. Her fist pounded on the door, echoing throughout the tiny chamber she was now alone in. Despite the dim voice that screamed to cooperate, she had never in her life been trapped. Never been alone. Little scared girls had surrounded her for every minute of her childhood, and now, and now the walls of a cell were closing in on her. Muted, scraped concrete.

Holding a hand over her choking chest, Zinaida backed off the door, boots skidding against the dusty floor, backing up until her shoulder blades smacked against the wall. She snapped her head around, frantically searching for some kind of escape. There was none. Only a thin bed frame, with an even thinner mattress pressed into one corner, and a bucket in the other.

Her chin tilted back, crown of her head knocking into the wall when she could no longer look at her surroundings. Her eyes slammed shut, features crinkling up as she breathed in and out—the kind of whistling, panting breaths that left her head thrumming. She cried, but it was less tears and more panic. Her breath was gone, or maybe it was there and she was choking on it, but either way her body seemed to shut down.

With her eyes closed, vivid memories raced through her mind. Flashing like something off a film reel, like the projector-movies of the Red Room; snow-dipped window views of Russia, accompanied by naive, whispered dreams of two little girls who think they can escape the merry-go-round of death. Silent dinners, the clinking of trays. Scabbed knees, juice boxes and milk cartoons. Gathered silence, gathered fear. These bittersweet memories turned to agony in her distance from them, and she recognized in that moment that her life would never be the same.

What did it mean to be alone? To be lonely? Zinaida thought she knew, but that night—curled into herself, tights pulling at her jutting knees, hands shaking over her face, she felt a soul-crushing loneliness. A sickening, stomach-turning, bone-rattling helplessness. Before there had always been a choice—everything had been sort of incoherent and impossible to decipher, but the choices were there, there was the autonomy at least. You could choose to die, or to live. But in the cell, there were only the four walls and a loss that threatened to rip through her ribs with its fist.

Zinaida did not know how long it was before that steel trap of a door finally opened. A day, two. Long enough for her stomach to turn like rusted gears in her abdomen. Long enough to fill her hair with the distinct smell of mattress mold.

She’d crawled onto the bed at some point, maybe only to ease the creak of her joints, and pang of her stomach. No, really, she felt better now. Less. Grief had hit her all at once, all five stages at once, and then quickly subsided to nothing at all. And yet, it had not brought sleep. Just an in-depth analysis of the ceiling.

Her dead eyes peeled themselves from their locked gaze as soon as the door jiggled. Fluorescent light streamed into the room, making bright stripes across her squinted eyes, gapped only by the imposing outline of a man. The edges of a gun, lumps of pockets and devices, identified him as another guard.

Zinaida was frozen for a moment, as the figure loomed at the doorway—-as if awaiting her to snap to attention automatically.

She imagined herself in his eyes: now hunched up, crouched and shadowed in the corner of the cell, stripes of blood-red splayed around her gaping face. Rabid.

He cleared his throat, brought a lumpy bundle into the light by shoving his hands out, and then gruff Russian followed, “Get up and dress. Then let’s go.”

The twitchy girl was shaky on her feet, brushing off her wrinkled, plaid skirt as she shuffled to take the bundle of dark clothes into her arms. She hardly lingered before she began to pull her sweaty, dirty clothes off of her. Elusive orders and un-blinking gazes were nothing new to her. Stripping down in front of authority figures as they loomed ominously wasn’t either.

The relief of the pair of cheap, black leggings and stained t-shirt that hung ratty over her was a bit pathetic. They smelled old, and were sort of stiff with fold-creases. But they were a blessing at the moment.

Out of the cell, she was disoriented, tripping over herself, trying to adjust to the plunge of cold water after the night of grime.

The light was blaring, overwhelming, making her rub her squinted eyes and wrinkled nose. The click of their boots accompanied them down the same ambiguous, concrete-jail hallway. Then another door, she was hardly looking.

Instead, she was working herself up, rotating her wrists and bending her neck both ways, get your head in the game. As bad as she wanted to scream and shout and shove the butt of his gun into the guard’s bearded, shrunken features – and demand never to be locked up again – she’d been taught better. She was not so overcome. Though the Room had relied more on conditioning to keep their subjects in place, it was not a far-fetched decision to keep someone so potentially potent as Zinaida locked away. Contained.

She was not a child, couldn’t throw a fit, the voice oddly similar to that of a Madame’s shrillness in her head reminded her. Be grateful. You have been gifted a purpose, molded into something worth-while.

The mundane door led into a wider room, lit by a flickering light swinging from the center of the ceiling, and with a platformed room on the right side. The box separated a man in a suit from Zinaida and the lower floor by four metal walls and a giant, thick-glass window. No doubt some impenetrable material.

However, her gaze only glided over the telling differentiation for a second before they locked on the main attraction. She had to blink to make it real. Standing at the center of the room, head tilted slightly as he stared Zinaida down, was the Winter Soldier. Recognition zapped between them like a taut wire.

Of course, she had expected this. But the Soldier looked so mythical; wide-stanced, dark hair obscuring the sides of his face, eyes wide like some kind of security camera. It momentarily stunned her. 

Only until a crack through the intercom of the little isolating box rang through the room.

It spoke; “Zinaida Alianovna Romanova. What an honor it is, for us both, to have you in our grasp.”

For us both. The man, the old man in the suit, was referring to her. Her honor, to be there. Oh, well. With her entire body, still at the opposite side of the room, turned to the Winter Soldier, Zinaida forced her eyes to the man in the booth. Stiffly, she nodded. She didn’t speak. Zinaida knew when to be silent, when a man chose to bring a room to life with his voice.

“Yes, we have read so much about you, widow. Quite the prodigy. It is why you have been chosen for such a momentous role as the one planned for you. But, for now, we have some tests to run.”

A beat. A sigh, and a phony smile from the suit.

“Soldier?” He commanded.

Predictable.

The Soldier sprung to life, darted at Zinaida. She’d seen it coming, through her tense fixation on him. She swerved, rolled away from the puppet as he practically appeared in front of her, slipping a knife out of his tactical vest and swiping it through where she narrowly escaped from. She thieved a matching one off his person as their bodies brushed.

He flipped around to face her, meeting her furrowed, frightened and adrenaline-rushed face. And yet, she gripped the knife, swiped it around fearlessly, body braced in a fighting stance. He replied to the gesture by kicking a thick boot out to knock her down, dodged by her quick jump up, as she simultaneously jabbed the dagger at his leathered chest mid-air.

If curious, safe Zinaida was a loaded gun, this terrified version of her was an atomic bomb. She was not figuring him out anymore, no more hesitant games, just leaning into the violence. Survival allowed not a single moment for curiosity.

The Soldier winced, a groan muffled in the back of his throat, and sort of bent over, shoving his knee into her abdomen in retaliation. He coupled the move with a metal punch to her jaw, while using his right arm to momentarily hold over his already soaking wound. The two strikes were lethal, sharp metallic knuckles driving into her mouth, a crack reverberating from her back bottom teeth. Blood spouted like a ripped condiment packet onto her tongue. Through the glass, her pain was heard, a whimpering shriek trembling off her lips, knees threatening to give out.

Zinaida was sent back, reeling and gasping for breath, swiping a quick kick to the Soldier’s kneecap in a desperate attempt to escape a weak moment. The Soldier easily took the hit, closing in on her as she staggered, adjusting his knife in his grip before raising his fist in a jab directed to her shoulder. Through near incapacitating-pain, she saw the glinting blade coming at her in slow-motion, turned her body to dodge it, then jumping back to avoid an attempt for her stomach. Move quick.

Instincts, and blinding adrenaline, took her over, managing swift counter-strikes, aiming to disorient him long enough for her to regain her footing. He tried to regain control over the fight, but she danced around his fist, his knife, his legs. An opening came, she took it, moving a foot back to gain momentum before driving her knee into his stomach with every ounce of force she could find, right into the bloody slice of skin where her knife had previously made contact. The blow sent him back with an anguished groan, providing her with just enough of an advantage for a potential victory.

Zinaida took the split-second to breathe, letting her mind work through possible next moves. But The Winter Soldier is a machine, standing upright in a moment, panting as blood spilled through the leather, preparing his next attack. She swallowed blood as he stepped forward, doing a back-bend to get below his long kick to her. He backed her up with dodged attacks, attempting to corner her.

The minute he gets you to the wall, you’re done for. Stay ahead of him. Zinaida was tired, hungry, and aching. And yet, defeat was certain death. And fear jumpstarted Zinaida like nothing else. It would take something different to catch him off guard, in a match of brute strength, Zinaida was out-powered. The Soldier was bulky, lethal, efficient that way. Zinaida was a dancer, an acrobat. Fluid.

It was simple, really. As a child, it’d taken her only a mat and a day’s work to perfect her round-off. And now, paired with a back-handspring, the combo finished with her feet airborne, shooting a kick into his abdomen, skidding him backwards. In a blur, another handspring stuck the landing atop his body, sending him crashing to the ground, her heels driving into his ribs.

The Soldier wheezed, concrete crumbling under his spine with the sheer weight of his body, the momentum knocking his lungs empty and gasping. From there, Zinaida simply had to drop to her knees, chest heaving, and slip a stolen knife against the vulnerable skin of the Soldier’s neck.

Her eyes finally dropped to his. It’d been so long. When Zinaida fought, it was just bodies. Hands, legs, automatic. It was the aftermath that stung, always was. Hanging over someone’s bleeding body, watching their eyes fill with a newfound fear. And in those ice-blue eyes, so wide, it was like she was breaking through some kind of moat of empty light, finding molten lava at the core. His soul, bared like teeth. Pain twisted his features, but there he was. Someone, feeling. Fear, fascination, awe, disappointment, all clear as window-panes.

“Good. Enough, separate.” The speakers crackled, jolting the command through both of their bodies like an electric current. It was over.

Zinaida climbed gingerly, awkwardly, to her feet, the stolen knife clattering to the ground. The soldier pulled himself up after her. Him clutching his abdomen, and her clearing the gargling blood from her throat, they returned to separate sides of the room. It was hazing, returning to herself without the pumping pipes of adrenaline. The slight damp heat of transferred blood on her own concealed stomach from his wound she’d climbed atop of, the metallic red sliding down her throat, how her right ribs ached from every rising breath, it all came back like ice-water down her neck.

She didn’t dare to reach her eyes out to the Soldier, not after she’d made a cracked shell of him, because she was too weak. The suited-man reached his neck down to the microphone again;

“Congratulations, Zinaida Alianovna, you are now an asset of Hydra.”

Zinaida felt nothing. In fact, she was too busy heaving to really look up.

He hummed, then spoke again, “Now, take them away. Uh---together, actually.” He added the second part with a self-appreciative raise of his hand, then waved them away, already turning his back, mumbling observations to a scribe.

Together. As vague as the command seemed to Zinaida, the guard, who had been previously standing with his hands crossed behind his back by the door, nodded automatically, and moved forward to grab the girl by her forearm. Dragging her with him, he crossed the room until Zinaida and the Soldier were sandwiched between two guards who dragged them out the double doors on the opposite side of the room to where she had come in from.

The cell they pushed the two was nearly identical to the first one she’d been locked in – one frameless mattress, one bucket. This time, Zinaida did not even bother to chase the guards out, because her entire body ached, and she had used every scratch of energy brutalizing the man who she was now locked in a dark cell with. She’d got the message — they were officially teammates. This was his cell, and now hers’ too. For a long moment, the two hovered unsteadily at the door. He blinked at her through a gapped-mouth stare, before he snapped his lips shut, ending his pensive assessment with a decision of indifference.

He crossed the room, still clutching his abdomen as he eased himself onto the edge of the bed, sinking the mattress so barely hovered over the ground. From there, Zinaida watched, slightly awed, as he began a routine she knew perfectly. His hand shook, pulling it away from his bloody, sliced skin to begin the dirty work to repair it.

Zinaida appreciated his indifference. The isolation had driven her nearly insane, but forced socialization was just as unwanted. After taking a moment to watch, she sank to the ground in the corner near the door, and began her own work. She ripped a thin strip from the hem of her shirt, balled it into gauze, and shoved it between her bite, right where her back tooth throbbed. Caring for her wounds was the closest she ever got to self-care, though she found it gruesome and tedious. She only tended to what she needed to, what she couldn’t stand to leave alone.

She didn’t think. Not really. She had no room to confront any of the heavy emotions digging into her shoulders, because she found her guard up like a moat separating her from them. Emotion did not come easily with all the spirit of the Winter Soldier hunched over his stained mattress, pained sounds melting in the back of his throat as his fingers dug into the mile-long oozing scrape across his stomach, searching for dirt or concrete crumbs.

Zinaida often thought of guilt as something entirely separate from the other emotions, because it sank in her stomach when nothing else would. She raised her eyes from the ground, tilted her head to catch his eye. She was selfish, looking for anger. He tilted only his eyes to look back at her. And if he was angry, it was sealed under solid ice. She found only thick, murky uncertainty.

–

Food came that evening. That fateful slit in the door---the box-shaped match to the one in Zinaida’s old cell---slipped open, streaming a square of light onto Zinaida’s knees, which still sat pulled into her chest in the corner of the room. Through it, two metal trays were pushed one after another.

The Soldier pushed off the bed with a sharp inhale, bringing himself to the ground, and pulled one of the trays to himself, while nudging the other one with the same hand in Zinaida’s direction. She tilted her eyes up to furrow her brows at him, why are you not killing me? He only jerked his chin at her tray. The metal lunch trays had matching cuisines; a relatively small bowl of brothy soup, a sliver of Tushonka---canned meat---and a thin slice of bread. She brought the tray into her lap with trembling fingers, watching the Soldier steadily as he brought his bowl to his lips and downed it in one sip.

She brought her eyes back to her tray as he zeroed in on his sparse meal. Her stomach was turning empty gears, probably already beginning to gnaw away at her muscles. Zinaida was well-versed on nutrition — which meant she was keenly aware that bodies need extra calories after a taxing fight, even more with how little sustenance she’d gotten in the past days, how emotionally-draining the situation had been, and little body fat she stored, which her body would naturally turn to in a situation like this. Basically, starvation was lurking just around the corner.

She ripped off half the slice of bread with her teeth, not taking a moment to chew before she gulped it down and shoved the other half in her mouth. The Soldier peeked at her through the corners of his eyes, as she followed the bread with the canned meat before she could even swallow. She forced it all down her throat within minutes, though the old food left a sick, expired after-taste on her tongue.

Somehow, he finished even before her. When she was done, she pushed the metal off her lap, dragged her hands over her face. Her stomach churned with the unexpected satiation, and yet was left even less satisfied then before. Of course, it had all been slightly old, cold, stale and watery. Red Room meals hadn’t been much better, but they’d been enough. They’d been warm. 

Through the cracks of her fingers, Zinaida found him watching her.

“You’ll get used to it.” His voice came in scratchy, awkward Russian that echoed off the walls.

Her hands fell off her face, lips parting. Her eyes couldn’t help but search his, hello. “Not if I starve first.”

“They won’t let you.” He didn't actually smile, but the intention of cynical humor was there. “They know what they’re doing.”

Cryptic.

It felt almost like a dream, having the man speak to her. A red-herring assassin, reduced to a cellmate. And he sounded so normal, blunt, just a shaded veteran, sitting on the grimy floor with his hands propped up on his barely-crossed legs, tilting his head to stare at her through foggy eyes.

The Soldier was unmistakably, non-fallaciously human, while simultaneously lacking a sense of self, an innate understanding that had Zinaida completely fascinated. She had to figure him out, she was holding an encryption between her fingers.

A beat passed. Zinaida held her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment before kissing her teeth. “Who are they?”

The Soldier’s eyes snapped up, then clouded over. He fumbled with the question for a moment before finding his answer, like he’d had to pull it from somewhere deep. “Hydra.”

Zinaida repeated the name. She remembered the Greek legend, remembered the name from some old textbook. The monster, Hercules’ second labor. Cut off one head, three more grow in its place.

“Not solely Russian, then?”

“No.” He said it like a realization. “No… everything. Everywhere.”

His words, the way he shifted around after them, reeked of uncomfortability. Either from speaking to her, or the thing he spoke so ominously of. Fear she couldn’t place. It crowded her, spread across her.

Zinaida nodded, though her eyebrows creased with concern, fingers picking at her linty leggings momentarily. A million questions bubbled up in her throat, and yet they all conveyed an obvious weakness. A fear she’d have to bury. There was no room for that, so she decided on a simpler one; “How long have you been here?”

The Soldier’s eyes averted to the wall, throat bobbing as he digested the question. “Long time.”

I think. He was missing pieces of himself, gaps peeking out every time his features crinkled slightly. It felt as if there was a thick pane of glass between them. On his side, water filled to the ceiling. Blue reflections rippled over his face. Every word came out bubbles. She was tapping on the glass of his aquarium.

Zinaida was still studying him when he spoke again, jerking his chin to the mattress, “Take the bed.”

Never, ever before had anyone done Zinaida a favor. And yes, that was all she could make of it. What contradicted that was the absence of softness in his voice, like he was muttering out an order.

“No.” She finally said, feeling almost sickly claustrophobic with the offer. With taking from another person.

His face changed only slightly, brows pinching before he nodded, and got up.

Zinaida slept curled up in her corner, holding herself tight with crossed arms, head laid on her own shoulder. The Soldier faced the wall, entire body stiff and straight the whole night.

Notes:

Disclaimer; the kind of perpetual trauma that Bucky has experienced before Zinaida even meets him is more than any person could possibly process. After a certain amount, our brains kind of just shut off. It is in my personal opinion as someone who also has PTSD, that he would usually be in a state of numbness at this point.

Chapter 9: Seascape

Notes:

This one's pretty gory, be warned.

The hanging lamp flickered on the ceiling of a somewhat bare room of the facility with a vibrating energy. Zinaida stood tense and still, arms raised by technicians who occupied themselves with her preparation. They pulled and tugged at the black, Kevlar stealth suit she’d been fitted with, while others tested the comms, tucked weapons and devices into various spots of the uniform.

Zinaida matched the body language of the Winter Soldier spaces beside her, his eyes fixed numb and body completely still as he endured the same treatment. The technicians had tugged a black jacket across his shoulders, made from a thick, stretchy material that looked military-grade. Only his metal fingers snuck out from below the cuff, it seemed impractical to fit him without gloves, but Zinaida supposed it served as a reminder of who he was.

In front of them, flipping through a file with his thumb, stood the man in the suit who’d commanded Zinaida and the Soldier’s last spar. Who’d watched unabashedly as they fought dirtily for their lives, whose booming voice had ushered them away with a flick of his hand. And now, he stood wide-stanced, pointing out orders to the technicians without even meeting their eyes. When he took a glance up to the pair and began to speak, his voice was monotone.

“Today, a very important man is on a business trip. He will come back to find his family dead. They’re in a private neighborhood in Petersburg, you’ll be transported to the gates and the rest is in your hands. Make it ugly, but make it untraceable.”

Zinaida didn’t falter from her fixed stare ahead. As a technician’s cold hands wired an earpiece snug against her skin, her hands ran over her suit. The material was practically skin-tight, zipped up only in the back, so the darkness of it all blended seamlessly, like the night. Over her hips, she had two knives strapped to a belt, and a gun packed into a holster.

The Winter Soldier shifted on his feet, testing the weight of the padded vest, covered in filled pockets, that they’d buckled on over his jacket. His silence was different with the warpaint smeared over his eyes, and the mission settling onto his shoulders, it all contributed to his menace.

The man giving them orders looked between his soldiers, watching Zinaida for a long minute before he was satisfied. It reminded her of Madame B and her watchful eye, just waiting for a slip-up. “Don’t disappoint me,” he said, dismissing them with a wave of his hand.

Guards planted at the exit walked them up a flight of stairs, leading to a side exit to the mountaintop. Stepping from cold concrete into snow, Zinaida felt the historic weight of the bunker ease off of her back. As they filed into the open air, the night shadow of a small helicopter slid into view, its engine humming with life atop the mountain rock.

The pair filed, cramped, into the back seats of the plane. They were so close, their giant muffling headsets knocking into each other, that the Soldier could feel Zinaida’s heavy breaths, watch her slender fingers tremble on her lap. Contrastingly, he was still enough to be confused for dead.

Zinaida recalled brief lessons of the iffy art of hypnosis. Projected at the front of the dark lecture room, a Madame had flipped between pictures of civilians before and after being hypnotized in various ways. Tranquilizers, psycho-therapy, shell-shock, it all looked the same. That glassy look, the way their head swayed slightly, she was reminded of it in that stuffy helicopter, as the Soldier stared emptily at the pilot's headrest.

Even through the wall of the imposing headphones, Zinaida could hear the plane whirring in the air with a tenacity that made her heart thump harder. Anticipation raced through her veins, she knew what failure would bring with its clenched fists.

The mission must’ve been in the wealthiest part of town, because they dropped the Assets—this was what the guards had referred to Zinaida and the Soldier by, everytime they called in a report, which was every half hour—off at a private landing pad on the outskirts of the city. Then they packed them, clunkily outfitted in their garish mission suit, into a van that took them two blocks from the prestigious Petrogradsky.

The van dropped them off in the slums of Petrogradsky, and from the graffiti-covered alleys and chipped-brick twenty story apartments—they all blended together, a maze of classic soviet poverty—Zinaida could see the aristocratic, picturesque buildings painted in a fresh white or shiny red, covered in convoluted molding, all fuzzy and lit up in the distance like a fairy tale. This was where they headed.

The neighborhood was the richest in the city, just far enough from the coast to stray from the wind but keep the bragging rights. It was also filled with some of the last houses in the area, most of the district was filled with stories and stories of apartments that all looked the same and made one feel lost just by looking at them.

Up close, the mansion matching the address they were given looked more like an apartment, covered in windows that blended sleekly into the flat stone exterior, all painted up in a fresh, pale blue. Four levels, at least 25 windows, Zinaida counted. No chimney, but she thought she saw a fire escape.

The Soldier gave her a leg up into a dark window on the second floor, which was just low enough that with a bit of struggle, she could slip her knife into the crevice of the grilles and knock a pane loose.

Zinaida eased herself through the narrow window, careful not to let the pane’s broken edges snag her suit. Her boots touched down softly on thick carpet, the luxury of which made her hesitate—so unlike the concrete floors and cold steel she was used to. She scanned the room: a study, judging by the heavy mahogany desk and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

Behind her, the Soldier followed with practiced ease, his movements so silent she almost missed the shift in the air as he landed. As she crouched behind the desk cautiously, he just stepped toward the door and pressed his ear against it.

After a moment of silence as he listened closely, Zinaida peeked her head up. Holding onto the edge of the desk with her gloved fingers, she took a look around. It was the portrait hanging, almost as if it was there just for her, on the wall across from her that caught her eye.

She focused her eyes on the rich color of the painting, and made the four shapes out. Centered, sitting with her legs crossed, a woman in a sundress smiled tightly. Standing next to her, a man in a clean suit, his chin held high. At their sides, barely reaching the man’s knees, stood two little girls close in age. The older one had a more convincing smile, but they wore matching velvet dresses and the same wispy hairs falling out of their pinned-up braids.

Zinaida’s sunk like an anvil. Of course, she thought of her sister. Of course, she stumbled on her feet just at the sight of those little girls. But there wasn’t enough time to think, or to do anything, because the Soldier made a ‘pss’ sound, calling her like a cat. When they met eyes, he signaled for her to follow him with a hand motion.

When she got to the door, adjusting her belt, he cracked the door open just enough for her to slide through. She slipped through the crack of light, and found them in a hallway. Below, through a guard rail and staircase, the empty dining room was laid out on the first floor. There was a discarded child-size glass of water sitting on the tablecloth.

She signaled that the coast was clear, and the Soldier slipped into the hallway with her. They looked both ways down the horizontal hallway. Light spilled from underneath three doors; two on the right, and one on the left. They looked at each other, Zinaida pointed to herself, then left down the hallway. He nodded, and jerked his chin right. They understood each other, and parted ways.

On the left side of the hallway, the light through the bottom of the door was blue-toned, and shadowed with shapes. When she cracked the door open, she understood; through the night-light plugged into an outlet near the door, the entire room was illuminated with spinning shapes like mermaids and turtles and octopi, all framed in a blue light.

Zinaida opened the door carefully, so the hinges didn’t even creak, and the hallway pitch-black didn’t interrupt the sea-scape.

There were two baby-blue canopy beds in the room—practically mansions in and of themselves, draped in silks, frills, and stuffed animals—but she found the girls tangled up together in the bigger bed. She imagined the younger girl tapping her sister on the shoulders, lips puckered, and crawling under the warm blankets. Her stomach dropped.

Zinaida stood frozen, a hallucination in the doorway. Her legs felt like they might give out, the girl’s soft breaths, the faint smell of fresh linen, the heat from their bed, it swallowed her whole.

The younger girl stirred, tiny hands pushing her hair aside as she looked up. Zinaida didn’t do a thing, she just stared back. They watched each other. Her eyes, the only glimpse of white in the whole blue room, went wide. She moved to shake her sister awake.

Zinaida couldn’t breathe, or even feel her heart beating. The little girl grabbed ahold of her sister's shoulders and whispered in her ear. The older girl, her hair a mess in her face, groaned and slowly opened her eyes. A scream echoed from the opposite side of the hallway.

Her window was closing. The minute they opened their mouths to scream, the mission would practically fail. Zinaida felt herself kick-start, and her fingers twitched to life. She blinked hard, shook her head, and reached for her belt. Unclasping her gun, wrapping her fingers around it, and then everything happened very quickly. The older girl’s head shot up, and Zinaida fired at it. Once, twice, until she knocked back against the headboard and went still. The younger girl just gasped, unable to get a sound out, while Zinaida stepped closer. Her fingers, sweating, missed the trigger as she closed in on the girl—who looked suddenly so tiny, just swallowed in the sheets.

She stared into Zinaida’s eyes, so frightened that she shook, tears caught on her cheeks. Zinaida’s fingers caught the trigger. She pushed down, hard and slow. The bullet whipped to the child’s forehead and ripped through it. She didn’t release the trigger until the door opened, and the Soldier found her there.

She turned around. He held a bloodied knife in his hand, and a slightly sick look on his face. He left her eyes, and investigated the scene in the canopy bed. Hanging tulle obscured some of it, but the white sheets were already soaking with blood, and their bodies had fallen messily. She knew she hadn’t done the best job, the man in the suit had wanted it ugly, but the Soldier didn’t say anything about that. He just nodded.

They snuck out through the same window, got into the same van that had dropped them off, and rode to the same helicopter.

–---

“Soldier, mission report?”

Zinaida’s eyes snapped up. Behind the suited man from before — Novikov, a technician had earlier referred to him as — lay the bloodied knife and their guns, which they’d been instructed to hand over immediately upon returning. Novikov, Zinaida had put together, held a position akin to Madame B.

Zinaida and the Soldier were still suited up, the cold of the night barely brushed off their shoulders before Novikov targeted them. Her head felt hazy, much like after her first honeypot.

The Soldier began like an automated message; “Mission successful. Alternative asset and myself quickly developed a plan; entering through a window on the second floor, listening for witnesses. When we determined that the targets were sleeping, we went separate ways. She–”

“Stop. Romanova, continue.”

Zinaida’s mouth dropped open. “Uh–”

A twitch of his eyebrow, as if daring, and a stinging pain smacked against her cheek. Novikov’s palm hit her cheekbone with a slap so hard it knocked her back two steps, the sound reverberating like a whistle, as her hand shot up to soothe the fire erupting in the shape of a man’s hand across her face.

His words followed, enunciated just as sharp as the slap, “In my presence, you do not stumble, you do not mumble.”

Next to the girl who held trembling fingertips hovered over red skin, whose eyes pricked and narrowed, whose eyebrows tilted and twinged, the Soldier’s eyes twitched shut. That sound was so familiar, it could’ve had him flinching from a mile away. He had inflicted a mountain of pain, received the same, but he rarely just observed. Now, he felt like a fly on a wall, listening to the zap of a fly-swatter. It stirred his stomach into sickness.

The breath had been knocked out of Zinaida, her mouth left twitching open. With a smile and a humored exhale, Novikov continued. “You don’t seem to be understanding the chain of events here. You are Arachnid, our Asset, nothing more. You are not a Romanova, because you are not a person, and you will not refer to yourself or be referred to as otherwise. Am I understood, Arachnid?”

He stripped her of an identity with an unwavering command in his voice, and a lack of anything else. She was tripping over an avoidable bear trap, the Soldier registered. They, the countless officials like Novikov that had stared into him with the same look, creating punishments before you’ve done anything punishable. From there, they nudge you into the trap.

Zinaida didn’t understand, she’d mumbled and was now… nothing? She thought the camera might be revealed any moment, that someone would call ‘cut’ and she’d realize this was just another trick. But he stood in front of her, palms itching to slap her again, and nobody else seemed phased. They busied themselves, refused to look at her.

She forced her hands to drop straight at her side, forced his command deep into her stomach, and raised her eyes to stare blankly into his. She didn’t mumble this time, “Yes. Understood. My apologies. Shall I continue?”

When the pair of assassins were locked back in their cell that night, neither of them spoke for a long time. Zinaida stood, entire body facing the corner that had quickly become hers — she slept in it, ate in it — as the Soldier stared from the mattress. Her cheek still stung, and her stomach stirred.

Her mind was on one of its infamous rampages she told no one about. Yes, Zinaida often felt suspicious that there was some kind of turmoil growing in the pit of her stomach, the muffled kind that was ignorable during her training, missions, and initiatives. It was only in the silence afterwards that she began to feel that she trembled, with all the force it took to keep herself pacified.

In the awful, loathing, freezing silence of that cell, she clamped her nails into her palms. You are no longer a Romanova. Romanova. No longer. Zinaida Alianovna Romanova. Alianovna. Natalia Alianovna. Natalia Alianovna Romanova. Natalia. Natalia. Nai. Tal. Talia.

She remembered the twirling blue light, covering the room, wall to wall. That was how their faher would find them, bathed in the ocean. Against all her will, their bodies flashed into her mind over and over. Accompanied, a refresher on her kill count in stunning quality. Every single drop of blood she spilled, her head played it back to her.

Arachnid. Arachnid. Is that understood, Arachnid?

She said it aloud, “Arachnid.” First in Russian, паукообразный. Then her sister’s language, that’s how she thought of it, “Arachnid.”

Her English came with a thicker accent than it had before, another reminder of the distance time placed between herself.

“You’ll be okay.”

Zinaida’s shoulders straightened as pivoted to face him, the distinct accent bringing back faded blue hair. The Soldier seemed unaware of the switch in language, watching confused as her brow darted up.

“You are American.” She stated, cocking her head.

His face responded immediately to the simple sentence, brows snapping together, eyes slightly widening then going somewhere else as he tried to place an answer. His lips parted, and he licked them before finally answering. “Yes. Yeah.”

Then he lowered his head, face scrunching up as he tried very hard to sort through gasps of recollections. Flashing images; newspapers in gutters, orange dirt smeared across a baseball.

For some reason, Zinaida’s reeling mind paused. Possibly because, for just a moment, she saw something real. Something distinctly human.

Her nails withdrew from their dig into her palms, dropping awkwardly at her side as she stared at the man in front of her. A moment passed, he did not move. So, very slowly, like an animal intruding on another, she came closer, and then lowered to sit beside him on the thin mattress. He did not snap into attack, only tensed his shoulders and continued to stare at the floor with his elbows on his knees.

“My sister lived there.”

Chapter 10: Don't Get Any Big Ideas

Summary:

"Don't get any big ideas / They're not gonna happen" - Nude, Radiohead (listen to it if you haven't, it was a BIG inspiration for this chapter)

September, 2000

In early September, Zinaida began to be sent on what Novikov simply referred to as surveillance. These missions were clandestine and sustained, everything the Winter Soldier initiatives usually weren’t. The Soldier specialized in nasty hits, followed by smoke and the roaring engine as he ran from the scene. But Zinaida could pull strings.

The operation was simple; Novikov arranged transport to the various lavish meetings where the many oligarchs, politicians, and businessmen neatly discussed their plans for the motherland. Arachnid was handed recording devices the size of a pin, and figured out a way to get in. She’d steal the nametag and uniform off a waiter, sticking the microphone on a glass as she poured champagne and smiled, or she’d hold her breath in the vents and lower the device through a ceiling tile.

Those days, Zinaida learned patience beyond her sixteen years. She didn’t listen to the men, their hushed debates, incessant spokesman-ship, or their tones latent with subtext. That all meant nothing. To her, it was a silent cartoon.

She watched tight smiles, and others that gleamed pearly white, people who pulled at their stiff collars or a wife who turned a necklace on her neck. Like pacifiers. How people turned to charisma like it radiated heat.

And above all, she did her job. Over months of grainy footage and recordings, Arachnid became a coveted Hydra asset, practically laying the blueprints of Russia’s political landscape at their feet.

The staff brought onto the Winter Soldier program were thick-skinned, to say the least. They all watched her with their guns at the ready, just waiting for the little redheaded spider to slip up. But she just delivered and delivered, with her twitchy eyes that acted on nothing but a reflex to an order.

When she’d first began surveillance, she had only once acted against command. It had been after she’d returned from a summit among government officials, standing with her hands behind her back before Novikov.

He’d released her from stand-by, the aptly named procedure where she stood at attention while he played back the first bit of whatever recording she’d brought back. Pausing the tape in the middle of a man's opening speech, he addressed her; “Well done, Arachnid.”

Unsurprisingly, that was it. Looking past her, he nodded to one of the two guards standing at the exit, giving him the signal to escort her back to the cell.

She raised a hand, low and unsure. “Sir, if I may?”

Novikov’s brow arched in the exact same way it had before he’d slapped her. And if she wasn’t imagining it, the corner of his lip twitched upwards. He kept his eyes locked on her as he raised both of his pointer fingers to halt the guards who had already latched onto Zinaida’s arms. “If you may what, Arachnid?”

“If.. I may assure myself, Sir. That this is for the greater good of Mother Russia.”

Zinaida’s nationalism had been so deeply instilled, it was near unshakable. Through the grime, and the rising dead bodies, her duty to a collapsing country sometimes spilled over intensely. That, after all, was the driving force behind everything Zinaida and her other Red Room graduates had been nudged into. They had been told that they were soldiers, battling a brutal war for the greater good of their home.

But at that moment, when she dared to speak, she did not care so much about her contribution towards its success. She momentarily cared to be righteous.

Moral correctness was usually buried underneath the commands, the besieging voice that yelled to simply get by. But long evenings stuck in vents, with nothing but the men who begged for self-assurance, gave her too much time to think about herself. And all the things she couldn’t say truthfully.

Zinaida felt that she never surprised Novikov. Her success was assured, her failure was expected. He remained unphased as he took in her question. He nodded so slight and slow that it barely happened, and stepped so close that he loomed over her. She had grown scrawnier, lost about an inch of height. She felt her weakness heavy in that moment.

When Novikov’s breath fanned over her nose, she was reminded putridly of the man whose throat she’d slit on her first honeypot. Latent with cigarette smoke. She fought bile, just like she’d had as he pushed her against the brick alley wall. “Do you dare question direct orders? Do you question the intent of the very organization that has given you honor?”

Zinaida opened her mouth to speak, and her chin trembled, despite how hard she demanded herself to stay still. “Sir—”

Novikov already has his answer, and she should’ve known that. He whipped both his hands up, snapped his fingers sharp and loud. Metal knocked her to her knees instantly with a hit to the back of them, and she knew what came next. Guards stationed in non-risk areas of the bunker carried only three essentials; a metal baton, taser, and communication device.

When Zinaida picked her head up, blurry vision watched Novikov step back. He stared into her eyes, and gave an almost gentle smile. His lips twisted with false pity that soaked into her bones.

Zinaida could’ve fought back, at least attempted. But they would’ve got her eventually. One guard pinned her arms up, and she let her head lull between the bony limbs. Hints of muscle that toned her arms were the only indication that they weren’t just bone, considering their paleness.

Her eyes on the ground watched tactical boots appear in front of her. She expected a foot to raise, to knock into her ribs, but it didn’t. Instead, a jolt of electricity started at her back. An immediate shock vibrated in the vertebrates of her spine, but then jolted through her entire body. Every limb seized, cramped and spasmed with a shocking pain that took complete control of her.

Zinaida’s head fell back automatically, with a shriek that left her throat sore. Right after the guard tased her back, the one in front striked, whitened knuckles striking her chin with an uppercut. It knocked her teeth into each other.

The guards beat her with a purpose. Uppercuts were for when you wanted your opponent — or victim — to stay down. The second-long blindness they landed on you faded into a stun within another second. Zinaida barely felt her head bounce back to her spine, chin to the ceiling.

They didn’t want a fight, every following strike reinforced that. While her eyes blinked the daze away, the flat sole of a boot knocked into her back, about where he’d placed the taser. She caught herself with trembling hands against the concrete floor. The next hits came quick and nearly unplaceable in how disoriented she already was.

First, gloved hands wrapped underneath Zinaida’s armpits, and groped her breasts as she was jerked to feet that couldn’t hold her. While she was still hunched and stretching her jelly legs, a strike jabbed between her ribs. It felt like all fingers, not knuckles, ramming into the thin skin.

It was the last hit that hurt the worst. Slightly angled, she got a fist to her right eye.

That satisfied them. They knew her feet couldn’t carry her, and carried her back to her cell with her arms draped over their shoulders. On the way back, the one who’d done the majority of the beating bent to her height, and lowered his thin, curled up lips to her ear; “You should watch your mouth, малышка.” [sweetie]

The Soldier was where he always was when she returned, hunched over the deteriorating mattress, staring into the ground like it might teach him something. He was statuesque not in the dazzling way, but in how immovable he always seemed. Nothing changed, they didn’t let it. He wore the underwires of his Winter Soldier getup; a spare pair of his black utility pants, empty without pockets of weaponry, and a ribbed tank-top with a rip on one of the straps.

His eyes didn’t snap up to Zinaida immediately—the heavy door thudded enough with their exits and entries that they’d become accustomed to the sound. It was her breathing; shallow and shuddering, that drew his attention.

Zinaida sank into her favorite cell corner with her hand on her heart, fingers clutching her only shirt, as she stared vacantly at the door. A red, puffy ring already painted her right eye, the beginnings of a nasty bruise.

“What happened?” The Soldier asked.

English made Zinaida’s head spin with an unspeakable longing. Her throat bobbed before she finally answered, eyes cast to the door and an almost childlike frown on her face.

“I…” The Winter Soldier watched her lips and throat struggle to spit the words out, and he couldn’t tell if it was the remorse or disbelief that choked her, “Questioned orders.”

Zinaida didn’t know either, choking on her own throat in that corner, hunched up with her bruised knees pulled into her ribs. The way her teeth and gums thrummed with a dull pain. It felt like something vital was very slowly being pulled out of her, like drawing blood or plucking individual strands of hair. She felt like she was running out of blood.

The look on her face, relatable as it was, brought memories back in sheets. That chair, the thick metal that left marks on his legs, wires draping over him. He knew what came next, too, that all of her anger and sadness would blur into something dull, and eventually into nothing at all except nausea.

It was always something, he thought, and then immediately reverberated it in a mutter to the girl who curled in on herself.

“I had it coming.” Strands of her crimson hair, which had been cut jagged at her shoulder during the rush of some mission preparation, fell over her bruising eye as she tilted her head to look at him.

The room was dark, always so dark, and its shadows dumbed people down into their most basic outline. Hers was spider-like, jagged limbs, whites of her eyes watching from where the rest of her shadow blended into the walls.

“Not in the way you think.” He spoke in pieces, she thought.

Food didn't come for two days, though the Soldier didn't seem to notice---it was as if he ran on an endless supply of something else, something she couldn't understand. Zinaida learned her lesson.

Notes:

I originally had all of my Russian dialogue in italics to signify that it wasn't originally in English, but AO3 is very against italics, and I don't think it looks nice anyway. Pretty much all personnel on the Russian Hydra base speak solely Russian, including Zinaida for the most part. All of this dialogue, unless otherwise stated, is spoken in Russian. I clarify some words that don't have an exact translation, like малышка in this chapter. I, also, don't speak Russian, so if anything is incorrect, please let me know!

Chapter 11: Grim Reaper

Summary:

TW for emetophobia towards the end, sorry...

Late December, 2000
Moscow, Russia

“I’m in.” Zinaida muttered under her breath, shaking the white fur coat off her shoulders, into the hands of the bow-tied coat check at the door.

The farther she got past the front door—following the path of the patterned tiles that shined her reflection—the farther out of place she felt.

The Russian wealthy did not partake in the minimalism fad; every corner of the house was decked with something velvet, or animal-furred, or intricately-patterned. Curtains draped heavy with lace and batik, artwork was framed in three-dimensional gold or something similarly ostentatious.

Nonetheless, Zinaida was sure to keep her face steady, her shoulders high. She was just some high-fashion model, recently into the inner circle, looking for some company that might book her next show. Nice to look at, gawk at, talk at.

It was so easy to be a different person when she looked, felt the part. In the silk chiffon gown that draped low down her back, laid loose over her figure, with angular heels and a full-face to match, she certainly didn’t feel like herself.

Through the small piece in her ear, the Soldier responded; “Window to the right-most guest bedroom was unlocked, lead target there. Do you have eyes on him?”

The target. Zinaida searched the room, throwing small smiles to anyone who caught her staring. It wasn’t exactly difficult to find him, she just had to follow the eye-line of the three security personnel who pretended not to be such, standing ambiguously at the exits. They had the same target. In one corner of the gathering, Daniil Trubetskoy sat surrounded by velvet cushions and other guests, gesturing animatedly with his hands as he talked.

Locking her eyes on the man, Zinaida grabbed a glass off an appetizer plate and brought it to her lips before she spoke. “Target spotted, moving in. Guards posted at the stairs.”

“Affirmative.”

She was Arachnid as she stalked in, but not when she met his eye, licked red wine off her painted lips and gave a smirk.

Trubetskoy tilted his head as he smiled, raked his eyes over her. His lips moved, though his eyes caught on her, half-heartedly continuing a conversation as he assessed. She continued her saunter towards his crowd, sinking into the shallow cover of her falsified ego.

The target was young, comparatively. The son of a powerful man, she suspected, in his late twenties with enough looks and money to get most things he wanted. He wore his face clean-shaven and his light hair slicked back, habits he’d probably copied off the men his father was surrounded by. The way he carried himself, blending into the herd of said men, pointed to a non-rebellious nature.

He watched her until his chin had to raise to look into her eyes, standing above his spot on the couch. She cocked her head, dragged her eyes across his face. It all felt incredibly performative, but she sank into it.

“May I sit?”

Trubetskoy made room on the velvet love seat, patted the empty cushion. “Please,” he spoke with a permanent tilt to his lips, a gentleman in tone.

Zinaida rounded a tasseled ottoman covered in half-filled wine glasses and crumbs, and sat where he patted. As she sat, he grabbed two filled shot glasses off a passing waiter, handed one to Zinaida and kept the other for himself. They clinked the petite glasses, throwing them back before another word was exchanged. Arachnid, in all her menace, had yet to get used to the alcohol sting. Her body buzzed just seconds after the Vodka went down her throat.

“I haven’t seen you around one of these before.”

“Well,” She shrugged, “I’m new to the scene, trying to get my face out there.”

“A model, then?” He jutted his lips appreciatively when Zinaida smiled and nodded. “Are you a model with a name?”

She didn’t miss a beat as she smiled, “Varvara.” Before Zinaida had begun her advanced lessons, she’d known a blonde Varvara.

“Daniil.”

The crowd of people surrounding their couch was wide, and talkative enough that Zinaida and Daniil’s voices got lost. This made their meeting somehow more intimate.

Daniil was nervous, through his facade, downing three glasses in only a half hour of talking with the girl. Zinaida liked to believe it was her, when she talked, even through the smoke of the fallacious anecdotes, and sprawling cover stories.

The drinks, and Zinaida’s carefully practiced smile, softened Daniil to mush. A whisper at the shell of his ear planted an idea, and in another second he was whisking her to the base of the staircase, one arm around her waist. The guards shared only a look, before they curtly nodded and let the tipsy couple up for some fun.

Right after they passed the guards, Zinaida threw herself into a sensual kiss, distracting Daniil while strategically positioning herself in front of him, wrapping her arms around his neck so she could lead them. It was her first kiss, and started with a moment of hesitancy before she squeezed her eyes shut and leaned into it, dragging her rouged lips over his. Decisively messy and all strategic. His hands rubbed down her back, bare hands against bare skin, and his tongue scraped inside her mouth.

Zinaida could not decipher what exactly she felt as she kissed him. Not nothing, a lot of dull somethings. Her mind didn’t turn off---when did it ever?---racing through the plan, all of her next steps broken down into points, echoing through her head before they were interrupted by added details or intrusions or scenarios. Her morality panged, feeble and shaking it's fist, but the sound died quickly.

She led him, heels tapping against the Shirvan rug, into the guest room on the right. Just as metal fingers pulled Daniil into the dark of the room, Zinaida turned her back. She rested, forehead against the door for a moment, fingers fastening the lock slowly. She closed her eyes for a second, breathed in and out.

It did not help. She could not tune out the click of the pistol, Daniil’s cries, muffled by the barrel to his scalp and the Soldier’s hand over his mouth. It felt oddly personal, even evil, maybe.

“Arachnid.” She’d taken too long, the Soldier awaited her. Zinaida had more to do; supposed to use her leverage against Daniil to get him talking.

She took another breath, pursing her lips to exhale, and whipped around.

The Soldier had made quick work; already having tied Daniil’s feet together, his hands behind his back, and had him secured on the bench in front of the bed. Like a reaper, the Soldier loomed behind him, kneeling at the foot of the bed.

Zinaida began, attempting to tuck her hair behind her ears before realizing the red locks had been slicked up in a bun. “Speak, or move out of turn, in any way that could point to an attempt to escape, and he’ll pull the trigger. Trust me.”

She took steps closer to the man, who looked young and so very fragile in the dark, sweat dripping down his forehead, veins bulging out of his face. Zinaida was trained in interrogation, and intimidation tactics, and briefly even on torture, but she’d never done practiced it outside of the Room.

She did something right, because he froze even stiffer after her words. “Daniil Borisevich Trubetskoy, nod if you understand.” Zinaida kept her voice low and monotone, but God, it must’ve been impossible to miss the pain in her eyes. At least, it felt unmistakable. He nodded frantically, and she stifled her relief.

“Good. You are going to tell us everything you know about your father’s work.”

Daniil’s breath hitched, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. He jerked his head in refusal, “I can’t.”

Zinaida sighed, met the Soldier’s eyes in the dark---war paint smeared so heavily that only those eyes stood out---and nodded. She watched the hardwood below her as the Soldier whipped a dagger out, shoved a ball of cloth into Daniil’s mouth, then shoved the blade right into his forearm.

“Everything you know, Daniil, everything.”

Daniil spit it all out. Eventually. But that was the problem, he stumbled over the details, through pleads and apologies and weak tears. This problem was completely unfamiliar, to the two assassins raised and watered with brutality.

Fifteen minutes into the interrogation, the target was flailing.

“I don’t know—he—there are many meetings. I’m not exactly involved—”

The Soldier shot up off the bed, and didn’t waste a second driving his metal knuckles into Daniil’s cheek. Zinaida’s shoulders jumped as she watched the punch land, heard Daniil’s cheekbone snap like a plank of wood. His skin broke widely, blood beginning to drip in thick lines down that side of his face. “Where?!”

Zinaida had never been scared of the Soldier before. Zinaida had never been scared of anyone, really, only the uncontrollable strings of fate. But at that moment---covered in smeared black and leather and glinting knives---the Soldier looked absolutely vicious. Shoulders curved over the young man, his teeth bared, he screamed in his ear.

Daniil’s gag had been removed, and there had been nothing to silence his pathetic whine as his cheek shattered. And then his weeping after the Soldier snarled in his ear.

But before he had a chance for atonement, the Soldier’s head spiked up. He slapped a hand over Daniil’s mouth, looked at Zinaida and mimed walking his fingers. Footsteps. She heard them when she listened closely to the silence, heavy as they neared the door.

Two knocks rapped the door, and then a deep voice behind it, “Sir Trubetskoy, is everything alright?”

Zinaida crossed the small room to the Soldier, whose eyes were wide and his free fist already clenched, “Finish with him, while I take them out.”

He nodded, “Quiet, no witnesses.”

No witnesses was a constant phrase for them.

Zinaida got to work. She swung the bedroom door open, making the front guard lose his balance against it, jerking forward momentarily and giving her the perfect opportunity. With a steady hand to the back of his skull, she slammed him face-first against the door, while using her other hand to take his pistol out of his pocket, disassemble it, then drop its pieces to the ground. Arachnid was quick with the first guard, but not quick enough, letting his support behind him call in backup before she could pounce on him.

“Need backup, intruder in right guest –”

The minute the gun parts fell to the hallway carpet, she rammed into the backup guard, pushing his communication device to the ground as her head slammed into his abdomen. He went for the gun in his holster, but she took it before he could, flipping him around so he faced the wall, and snapping his neck in one move.

The damage, unfortunately, was already done. A herd of footsteps – probably all the security in the party, she counted six upon arrival, including the pair she’d just taken down – was already marching up the stairs.

Just before the first turned the corner, she ducked back into the room. “Soldier, get down, stay silent,” Zinaida whispered sharply through the earpiece, shoving away the unconscious guard at her door so she could hide behind it. Her breath puffing against the doorframe, she ducked her head to assess the enemy piece she’d taken. Just her luck, it wouldn’t do.

“Your suppressor, toss it!” She hissed into the darkness of the room, hearing muffled footsteps rapidly setting upon the door.

Her instincts moved her hand, catching the cylindrical invention hurled at her from across the bed. Just as she was fitting it on the pistol, the door came crashing down. They kicked it down like animals, shattering the wood into a gaping hole. Zinaida just ducked in time, wood particles falling into her hair as she moved out of the way. They shot three bullets into the dark of the room, two catching headboard and one the curtains.

When their shots didn’t hit anything, the closest guard ventured into the room. Just one step, right into her viewpoint, her back against the wall beside the door. Squinting one eye, she shot him through the head, and the trigger rang silent.

Arachnid was sticking to her commands, remaining as incognito as she could, but the security detail didn’t feel the same. They shot blind and loud, though relatively sparingly. Her cover would have been completely blown, but there was a saving grace – they had all of their men up in the hallway, and the party’s blissful chatter could still be heard through the floors. The guests were still unaware, which meant no civilian witnesses. Arachnid could deal with the rest, she told herself.

Her guard had been blown, the next guard darted into the doorway and aimed a shot right where her head would’ve been, if she hadn’t ducked, and sweeped a kick to his ankles that knocked him down. Head shot, and she moved her attention to the last two.

They were unsteady shots, both of them, scrambling for cover in the open doorway. As she tackled the bulkier of the two to the ground, his finger snapped on the trigger and she got one to the calf. It was lucky though, and she didn’t even feel it in the moment. Bullet to that one’s head, then the heart of the last standing, and they joined the pile at her feet.

With the adrenaline still pumping through her, but the room silent, Zinaida lingered over the bodies. Blood soaked the carpet, splattered across their faces and dripped out their mouths.

Her ankles, lined with the straps of her heels, were splattered too — considering that directly in front of them, a corpse lay draped on his side. Pain in her right calf slowly filtered through her racing heartbeat, where she found the evidential hole the bullet had created.

The sight was starkly real. Graphic and unmistakable. What a contrast that was, when she felt half-submerged most of the time.

“We need to go.” The Soldier’s voice from across the room was like a beating spotlight on a dusty stage---it brought her right back into the show.

She lifted her chin to meet his eye. The Soldier, having hardly broken a sweat, was holding his pistol with his finger resting in the trigger slot. Daniil’s legs sprawled on either side of his killer's faded combat boots, the hem of his dress pants lifted to reveal shiny leather shoes.

“He cooperated completely?”

He nodded, stepped over Daniil’s left calf, and cracked the window open to prepare their escape.

Zinaida imagined the man’s last moments---though he hadn’t seemed like a man to her---how he would’ve shakily uttered his very last piece of confiding intelligence, some insignificant detail, closed his eyes and felt the sweat beading on his eyelashes drip onto his lids, a moment of relief before a bullet centered in his forehead. His back against the glass cabinet of the bedside table, she’d imagined how it must be to have your life in front of your eyes, the grim reaper with his metal hand, kneeling in front of you and whisper-interrogating.

The image scarred.

–

They ate that night, metal trays knocked into each other as they slid through the slit in the door. Half a potato for each of them, boiled but unpeeled, and small cuts of fish. Zinaida had graduated from eating in her corner most of the time, beginning to sit cross-legged on the mattress alongside the Soldier.

This was, of course, dependent on her mood. That night, she hadn’t even made it to her corner when they were tossed back to the cell. Only flinching when the door slammed back close, she’d just stood with her back facing it. Arms straight and hovering at her side.

When dinner came, shortly after they returned, the Soldier had to gently move her aside just to grab the trays. At least, that had been the attention. The minute his fingers brushed against her shoulders, she’d whipped around and then shuffled back.

He gave her an appraising look, lips pursing in thin heed. She looked uncomfortable in her too-tight skin, eyes blank and landing back on an empty spot she could stare into. He brought his tray back to the mattress, set hers in the spot she normally ate.

The Soldier took a couple bites, ripped a piece of mold off the potato skin. Then paused, “Zinaida?”

To hear her name was like an ice cube to her temple. It forced her eyes to move to his.

“Eat.”

To say that her eyes softened would give the wrong connotation, it was more like they flinched.

“Can’t,” She muttered.

He swallowed, “Just.. just do it.”

It was the only way he knew to say, ‘we have to do the terrible things to survive’. Zinaida understood the connotation. But what had Natalia said; maybe I’m tired of being smart? How young she now seemed then, and it had only been about a year or so. Not that Zinaida knew her days anymore.

Her stomach churned even at the thought of her fingers on that tray, and yet she was so used to obeying that Zinaida found her legs carrying her to the mattress. Before she could sit, the odd, slightly rotten smell of the fish scraps rose strong into her nose.

Though the bony girl had nothing in her stomach, acidic bile managed up her throat. The Soldier watched, too jarred to look away and yet somehow still entirely unsurprised, as Zinaida cupped her jaw to catch the pathetic drip of vomit that made her spine stick out as she keeled.

She had been too late, and too uncaring, to make it to the putrid bucket in the corner, but that might have been fortunate, considering sticking her face into those fumes would have only made her sicker.

The Soldier had to avert his eyes for a moment. Tears pricked Zinaida’s eyes, only one single drop rolling down her cheeks before she cleared her throat and wiped it away with the back of her other hand. She coughed, swallowed, spit, trying to scrape the taste off of her tongue. It didn’t make it go away. She rubbed her spit and vomit-covered palm on the bumpy wall, there was nothing else to use.

As she rubbed her face, she turned away from him momentarily. The hem of her shirt had lifted up, revealing pale skin and the bumps of her hunched spine. It was that, her spine, that brought a rush of ache to the Soldier. For a moment, she was a much shorter, scraggly blonde, hair spiking at the nape of her neck. The image disappeared when he blinked.

How many people ever shared that same disgust? They were starved together, bloodied together, she puked acid in front of him. They tore food apart with their bare, dirty fingers.

That was what the Soldier was thinking, as she wiped her face red and raw with her other hand. He stood up on his stocky legs, boots padding on the cold concrete until he was in front of her. Then he wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding it stiffly but not suffocatingly away from her face, trying to keep her from rubbing her skin so hard.

Instinct had carried him over there, the human kind that he had thought buried beneath layers of rubble. But it wore off as fast as it came, and then he was just holding her away from herself, standing so close to her storm in all of his hollowness.

His tenderness, so purposeless, pulled her eyes up from their trance. Maybe God---he'd forgotten all about Him---had forsaken both of them by sending her there. Him too, because being so utterly helpless was a personal punishment. He was watching them tear her apart like they’d tore at him, and he could just watch.

The Soldier’s humanity was pouring back like cement filling the sidewalk, just as gritty.

Having her hand in his, curled up in his, with their scraped-up skin, was something entirely foreign. Such comfortless people they were. He held her wrist firm, though his eyes held something terrifyingly fragile. She thought, strangely, about how easily he could kill her, right then and there.

The Soldier’s hair, which had grown from all his time out, was tucked behind his ears, slightly curling out at the nape of his neck. It was dark brown from roots to end, and always kept somewhat long. This way, she could see his whole face, the ridges of his sharp nose and the lights of his eyes.

“I can’t,” Zinaida breathed, accent warping her English.

“Can’t what?”

She didn’t have an answer, instead her face screwed up like a lion, and her eyes filled with a dire certainty. And the Winter Soldier had nothing to offer, of course. No consolation, or apologies. She hadn’t expected any, yet a grimace painted her disappointment. The aftermath of her vulnerability was sour.

Zinaida pulled away like a mouse out of a trap, holding herself and settling in the corner.

Notes:

The trauma bond is SERIOUS with these two.

Chapter 12: When Fortresses Fall to Powder

Summary:

Buckle in, this one's wild. It's possible I was sort of losing my mind while writing it.

"I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon." - Anaïs Nin, from Henry and June

January, 2001

One of those sick anticipatory feelings had settled in Zinaida’s stomach since guards had awoken the Assets at what her internal clock had assumed was the early morning.

Silently, the guards delivered the subjects to a familiar wide room, lingering behind the pair and holding tight to their batons the way they always did around the Soldier. It was the very same room in which they’d dragged Zinaida the night after she arrived. The windowless room and its secluded box, where they watched her like a science experiment or a bomb.

That was the first time she’d bloodied her Hydra clothes, including the plain black t-shirt that was now pilled, thin, and ripped in small patches. Her leggings were looser, nearly baggy where they should’ve been skin-tight.

With his hands planted on its counter, Novikov was centered just as importantly in the isolation box. He looked down at them through his thick-paned glass, his mustache now connected to a five-o’clock shadow that she hadn’t seen him have before. He sounded restless when he spoke; “Center of the room. Put some space between you two, and face each other.”

He directed them like a producer, watching as they aligned themself how he commanded. Facing each other at the center of the room, about six feet between them. This positioned them directly in Novikov’s line of sight.

The Soldier seemed preemptively remorseful, looking through Zinaida instead of at her.

“Good. Now, Soldier, kill her.”

While on duty, the Soldier’s face hardly ever moved. That morning, everyone knew Novikov had managed to catch the veteran by surprise. His head moved slightly towards the box, where Novikov’s voice echoed through the intercom, eyebrows pinching.

As the Soldier took a second to process, Zinaida’s heart began to race inside her ribcage like a skittish bird. We have no weapons, was the only thing she could think of, he’ll have to use his hands.

Zinaida had never seen the Soldier question an order, much less defy it. She didn’t think he physically could. It took about five seconds of their stillness for that to set in, and then her feet were carrying her. One after another, scurrying backwards, keeping her eyes on the Soldier.

Her movement made him follow, the order resonating and sparking him to life. He took steady, heavy steps towards her, grinding his teeth hard enough that she could see his jaw move.

Despite all of her training—never let your eyes leave the target, ladies!—Zinaida looked at the box on its platform. Novikov’s lips were in a thin smile, just barely a smile at all, looking like a jittery child. Like a mad scientist, maybe. There was an excitement in his eyes. Staff behind him craned their necks to watch.

Zinaida could’ve suddenly let out a miserable laugh, seeing the crowd gathered to watch like they were dogs in the pit. Just as she swallowed this thought, the Soldier’s boot barreled squarely into her stomach. Bam, it ached immediately, like the soles of his boots had ripped through the skin. She couldn’t have stayed on her feet even if she’d tried, when her back hit the smooth concrete it sounded hollow.

Zinaida didn’t need to see his fist flying at her, she rolled away anyway. He’d used his right hand, knuckles smashing against the ground as she got to her feet.

Her head spun, and her ribs flared as she begged her lungs for breath. Air in the stuffy bunker came sparingly, she gulped it down.

Vision still adjusting, Zinaida knocked herself off balance with a high kick at the dark figure coming at her. It landed close to his collarbone, successfully making him grunt and falter. Just long enough to blink, and then he was reaching for her again.

An odd move, his fingers wrapped around the front of her shirt and yanked her towards him. He moved so fast she couldn’t block it. But he’d once again used his weaker right hand, so she just straightened her fingers and chopped at his forearm. Right as his fingers dropped the fabric, he drove his knee into her abdomen.

The force of her shirt being released pushed Zinaida back, but not enough to dodge his knee. At the center-left of her abdomen, a rib cracked on the spot, drawing a strangled whimper from her, and then she folded towards him like bent paper. He caught her through his heaving breaths, slinging an arm distractedly over her shoulder.

They met eyes for a half a second, while her hair stuck to her face and pain spun her dizzy, so she couldn’t be sure if she’d imagined the desperation in his. They were wide, almost inhumanely, bloodshot and red-veined.

Zinaida didn’t notice it at the time, but she was crying. The streaming tears rolled down to her bared teeth, salty on her tongue and wet on her lips. You’ll have to fight for your right to live, the Madame’s used to say.

Every breath she took, every pant, was like a knife to her abdomen. Nonetheless, she sure tried, taking all of her strength to plant her shaking hands on his chest, screaming as she pushed herself off. Just the movement, her spine straightening, made the cracked rib scratch against her skin. It was that—feeling the shattered bone—that meant at least one rib was completely snapped.

Wide-stanced and stiff, Zinaida managed to stand on her feet. The Soldier re-calibrated, scanning her for weak points. Really, she, in entirety, was the weak point. Though she held her clenched fists up combatively, she also staggered and swayed, wincing through every breath.

Zinaida’s only savior was that she knew her opponent, had watched him fight. He had a tell; his left foot slid back an inch before his right made a move. So when he tried to sweep her ankle, she jumped back, and delivered a sharp kick to his abdomen. Pain sparked as she lifted her leg; survival was never merciful.

The Soldier absorbed the pain, and then his fist was swinging like an anvil to her cheek. Still he used his flesh fist, but with enough momentum and embedded power that it knocked her down like a tumbling tree.

Pathetic, the Headmistress’ voice echoed. Zinaida landed on her side, listening to the pained sounds slipping through her lips. Hip to concrete, and then curled up. Knees tucked into her aching ribs like a rabbit, she brought her hands in front of her face and hugged her own skull. And waited.

He followed her to the ground, kneeling in front of her. She felt him climb on top of her, his heaving breaths, as he positioned his fists for the final blow.

She kept her eyes slammed shut. But after a long moment, no pain followed, no sound. So they flickered warily open.

The Soldier looked like he’d seen God. Petrified, a deer in headlights, as he hovered over her. His lungs were emptied, all his shaky breaths stirring in the air. There was a visceral pain in his eyes—Zinaida knew it when she saw it.

Zinaida was frozen as she was—a sheep in wolf’s clothing—lips curled and nostrils flared, tears muddled with bloody bruising. She’d taken so much time imagining death, looking over her shoulder expecting to see it there, just standing there like some kind of storybook monster. So much time, in fact, that in the face of it, she had no room for deliberation. Instead, Zinaida was thinking about her history lessons.

She was remembering when Natalia was away and she’d buried her head in all of those thick textbooks. She was thinking about how, in the midst of the Revolution, the Romanov family had dressed in their best silks, filed into the cellar and posed in a lineup as if for a family photograph. By then, they’d been moving from mansion to mansion under house arrest for a year before landing in a merchant’s house where they’d die. The Bolsheviks had called it “The House of Special Purpose.” They’d only told the family of their fate a moment before they opened fire. There was Nicholas, his wife Alexandria, their five children, and the leftover servants all lined up against that brick wall of the cellar. So, when the bullets didn’t do it fast enough, the troops resorted to their bayonets to finish the children.

Zinaida remembered the pictures. The bullet-riddled wall—so many that they’d torn the wallpaper off clean—and the noir family portrait. They’d all been so pretty, Zinaida remembered. The faces of mortars. And then how afterwards, people rumored for years that their youngest daughter, Anastasia, had escaped amidst the cellar spree. She had thought that was the most devastating part of all. She’d imagined little Anastasia, splattered in her family’s blood and dressed to the nines, sprinting through the Siberian snow. She’d imagined little Ana becoming a cotton spinner, or a baby machine, or a beggar on the street. A princess, a sister, a daughter, a mortar, a corpse, a soul, turned to a conspiracy. She’d hoped herself sick that Ana had died in the cellar. How awful it must be to survive. To die an only child while Olga and Tatiana and Maria had died holding each other. She thought, then, that she would be glad to die like that. The time for a satisfactory death like that had passed, she realized, and now, she would either die screaming or not at all.

The Soldier’s brows furrowed hard, like they were cinching together. “I can’t do it.” He said it softly at first, so soft only she could hear it. His face didn’t change, just shook his head slowly. “I can’t.”

The Winter Soldier dropped her hands, pulled himself off of her like he was rewinding. He shook his head harder, more definitely, and his chin lifted to Novikov. The Soldier said it louder, his face aghast.

Zinaida watched, still, from the ground, breathing shakily and wired with adrenaline. She couldn’t see the windowed-room, but she could imagine Novikov’s face. Unimpressed, disappointed but unsurprised. He’d jostle his tie with one hand, re-centering it, with his lips pressed into a line. He might hum, or nod slightly. She had the few terrible occasions of receiving his disappointment first hand, but had also observed it directed at lowly technicians countless times.

Sure enough, “Of course,” Novikov said, then donned his command tone, “Guards.”

 

Novikov led them through the bunker, Zinaida hanging limp and stewing between the two familiar guards, and the Winter Soldier following behind.

Their destination was a chamber of the facility that Zinaida had never been in before---she would’ve remembered it, surely. It was the biggest room she’d ever been in, steeped in a history that she would’ve known was ghastly even if she hadn’t felt the Soldier’s apprehension. She often felt they shared a thread between them, and she felt it pull taut every time he flinched.

Through the entrance, there was a clear pathway to a gated area, slightly lowered and circular. Centered in the pit was a steel chair, surrounded on either side by technology; bulky computers, thick roped wires, EKG’s. Above the chair, thick poles attached to a large steel crown of sorts. Higher up, two lamps curved like antennas to beam down on the chair.

On the outskirts of the chamber, at least six tubes glowed orange-yellow. They were human-sized, if not slightly bigger. Fog seeping from the glass condensed and obscured her vision, but Zinaida swore she saw the outline of a body in each one.

Three lab coats flooded into the room around the platform, tapping the machinery to life. Technicians joined them, sparing nervous glances to the limp girl and the Soldier whose head hung low, as they carried a spare folding chair and set it up a few feet away from the big contraption.

One guard dropped Zinaida into the folding chair, fastening her distractedly with zip ties, as the other shoved the Soldier into the metal one. A technician pressed a button and slightly make-shift metal restraints popped out of the chair’s arms, covering his whole forearms and beeping as they locked in place.

When the two assets were trapped, the guards assumed post behind the fenced-in pit, cocking their rifles at the scene unfolding. Zinaida was growing entirely unsteady, the ache in her body being replaced with gnawing anxiety. Though she was acutely aware of every movement in the wide room, her eyes never left the Soldier, who was staring resignedly back at her. His body, contrastingly, was quietly unaccepting; heels knocking against the foot of the chair and his wrists twitching against the metal cuffs.

Novikov, who had before been huddling his workers and administering orders, was now ready to begin. With a resounding clap, he appeared in the cramped area, accompanying the doctors working the machinery and the strapped-in assets. Zinaida had been so occupied with her worry that she flinched from the noise.

Novikov turned to Zinaida first, “Do you know how long you’ve been here, Arachnid?”

Zinaida looked at the Soldier. She did not want to participate. No matter, Novikov just hummed and continued, “You have been our successful agent for nine months, Arachnid.” A beat of silence passed. The Soldier’s throat bobbed.

“We took the Soldier out of his cryostatic coma specifically to come meet you, back at your little Red Room.” He had a fond smile on his face, false as it was. He didn’t turn his head from Zinaida as he spoke again, “So that’s, what, ten months, since you’ve last been in this chair, Soldier? Eleven?”

The Soldier’s eyebrows pinched, but his eyes did not stray from the grated floor. Zinaida wondered if they were designed like that to drain blood.

When he didn’t answer, Novikov frowned at Zinaida, and then burst into a shout; “Answer me when I speak to you, Soldier!”

The Soldier’s shoulders jumped, but the look on his face didn’t budge. He answered like a soldier, “Ten months, sir.”

“That’s right. You haven’t been out that long since, what, the Eighties? That’s what your files say, at least.”

Zinaida did not care much for whatever point Novikov was building towards. She could snap out of the zipties easily, if she did it fast enough. Could the Soldier break through the metal? With his left arm, certainly. Then there were the guards. They’d have orders to shoot the minute she snapped the ties. The force needed would make a scene, and then there wouldn’t be enough time.

“Well, call it an experiment. And, now we see, you’ve gotten too close. I’d suspected as much.”

He feigned disappointment. He only ever feigned, spread it over the thick hatred—the only real part. Novikov turned his back to Zinaida, bent his knees to get in the Soldier’s face. “Just pathetic. Two cockroaches sharing scraps.”

Said cockroaches looked at each other. Zinaida curved her brows into a question, what do we do? Of course, he was just expectantly sorrowful, so sorry all over his face.

“Fine, so we’ll start over. You’re getting weak, you can’t be out of the ice, so we’ll put you back in. You won’t know her.”

Novikov, with his hands on his knees, just low enough that he was still glaring down at him, searched the Soldier’s face for a long minute. Presumably looking for a sign he’d managed to hurt the asset. Zinaida, too, pulled her brows together at him so hard it made her temple sore. The Soldier didn’t give either of them the satisfaction, instead stared at the starched collar in his eyeline. Zinaida would later reflect that he was already slipping away then, preemptively. His eyes, ravenously sad as they were, had faded to an idle grief.

Novikov was impatient, it did not take him long to give up. “Okay,” He nodded, as if accepting a challenge. He stood to his full height, turned his head to the lab assistant and nodded, again, at her.

Zinaida was watching the woman bend over the computer, and then the chair was whirring. Specifically, the steel crown was lowering, dragging the plates inside it down, which seemed to move preparatively. The head of the chair knocked back, she blinked, and the plates were closing against the Soldier’s temple. Like two hands pressing hard, wait, into his skull, and then she saw electricity crackle between his skin and the steel, and then, wait?, he was screaming.

It started in his chest, crawling up his throat, pure anguish, and then it was wind blowing in her face, his screeching. He sounded oddly childlike, carelessly ripping his vocal cords, seizing beneath the battering fluorescents.

Zinaida couldn’t help it, she was screaming too, and she sounded just as pitiful as him; “Stop! Stop it, come on, no! No!”

Begging and cursing, she flailed with every bit of her strength, soles of her feet finding the floor and pushing off the ground, and then it was only the zipties burning the skin at her wrists, tied behind her back that kept it from flipping. The guard closest aimed his gun center to her skull, but she only screamed louder.

It was like watching a jack-hammer to marble, drilling and defiling until fortresses fell to powder. Men and their vulturine conquest.

It was done as abrasively as it began. Their screams died on their tongues. A guard appeared behind her, grabbed her shoulders to shove her down, and pressed a pistol to the back of her skull.

Maybe Zinaida would’ve fought, if she’d had any backup. The plates raised off the Soldier’s temple, just as the headrest snapped to sit him up. She understood why the chair had to move on its own, there was no sign of his cognizance except for open eyes and a heaving chest. Even the sadness was gone, where she’d thought it’d buried itself in his corneas, now had faded.

The crease between his brows softened, the last droplet of sweat falling to the cold floor. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t look at anything. Blank to the bone, curiosity held no place on his face.

Not a single thought ran through Zinaida’s head. She just felt shock all over her body, suspended in the moment.

The cold barrel of the gun dug into her skull, demanded her attention. She forced herself back into her body, using the smell of gunpowder as a rope. Her fingertips were always cold, blue-ish in the light. The guard held her down in the chair by her shoulders, kept shoving even when she stopped moving. His fingers dug at her bones. She hadn’t moved since the Soldier’s screaming stopped.

Guards didn’t speak to assets unless personally directed to. Novikov moved in to fill the gaps, “Look at him.”

Zinaida’s eyes had dropped, she stood frozen.

It took Novikov wrapping his fingers around her chin, digging his nails into her jaw and physically turning her head himself to make her look away. He forced her eyes to the Soldier.

He watched them peripherally, but the Soldier’s eyes were ahead like a comrade awaiting orders. Novikov placed his lips at her ear, so his breath steamed her skin, “So empty. Do you wish to be next?”

Zinaida did not know what she wished for. She knew the ache. She knew survival, embedded even deeper. She imagined being empty. She imagined being nothing but Arachnid, dethawing every half a decade and starving to death between missions. She’d die 50 years into the future, with a freshly-eighteen face, succumbing to somebody’s bullet without a thought in her head except mission failure. By then, Madame would be either dead or ancient and Natalia would be the greatest Black Widow, she’d have everyone at her feet and have forgotten Zinaida entirely. She might take place as the Headmistress. In the world of the Red Room, Zinaida’s existence would be cemented as either a fever dream or a child’s tale about imaginary friends.

Zinaida’s heart dropped to her stomach, and then lower. Perhaps it dissolved with her stomach acid. She was still very far away, while guards dragged the Soldier to cryo, his willing footsteps shuffling on the lined floors.

She did not flinch as they shoved a needle into her neck, didn’t even close her eyes before she went limp in the folding chair.
The tranquilizer wore off about ten hours later. Zinaida’s eyes snapped open with a frigid breath, jolting out of her sleep to find herself fetal-positioned on the center floor of her cell. Her hair had fallen in front of her eyes, red streaks obscuring her vision. When she brought her hands up to tuck it back, she saw where the zip ties had left fresh bruises like thin bracelets lining her wrists.

The cell was empty, nothing but pitch darkness and her usual appliances. She pulled herself up to sit, and was immediately choked by the sharp pain in her ribs, only worsened by the usual hunger pains. Zinaida had broken her ribs plenty, usually in the same spots, but she’d gotten immediate medical attention. The Red Room did not tolerate defects. Anyway, she knew the danger; having an untreated, floating rib bone so close to her organs was a death wish.

Sure enough, a quick inspection—through which she struggled to breathe, and cried again—found blood risen just beneath the skin where she felt the cracked rib. A popped blood vessel, internal bleeding.

It was shit luck, but she couldn’t just sit there and stare at her wounds. She bit her cheek to muffle the screams as got to her feet, then waddled to the door, clutching her side the whole way.

Novikov had spoken of cryostasis, “the ice.” Zinaida, by then, understood that those tubes had been filled with people. They froze the assets like raw meat, kept them in some kind of barely-living coma. It was where they’d taken the Soldier, how he’d lasted so long, why he’d been operating since at least the eighties without looking a day over twenty. How it worked, however, was beyond her. She had more pressing matters at hand.

Still adjusting, she clinged to the steel door, thick as a vault, to keep her standing. The food slot was bolted, only a glimpse of light escaped through its cracks. Zinaida felt electric, her skin crawled over her bones. She felt untethered.

She awoke to find that the shock of before had turned to a cataclysmic panic. Her mind was doing the thing where it wouldn’t stop. She blinked hard and manually, slapped her cheek, tried to make the racing stop. It was like a broken record, completely unphased by her tampering.

Images flicked by; the flurries collecting on the window glass, identically pale and slightly rosy knees lined up at the ledge. holding a towel to her shivering chest in the washroom line, one blistered foot covering the other for warmth against the tile. Natalia on the balcony, wavy hair the softest shade of red and blowing into her bangs as she cried. She was beautiful even then, rubbing her nose with her palm, absolutely picturesque.

The longing waterboarded her. It washed down her throat, left her coughing and spluttering the grief from her curled lips. She slammed her eyes open.

The shadows were closing in. She turned her back to the door, rested against it. Zinaida’s breaths, concaving her winded ribs, came out gasping. Short and shallow. She was so disconcerted, it took a moment of shaking her head around to notice a spitting image of Natalia sitting with her legs folded on the mattress.

Zinaida panted harder, blinked rapidly and knocked her head back against the door. As if physically denying the image in front of her. Natalia, or at least the ghost of her, just nodded, giving a mocking pout.

She was younger than she’d been before their departure, her hair cut to her chin and still blue-tipped at the very bottom from where Natalia had demanded to leave a trace of her past life. She was wearing one of their night white, polyester nightgowns with the buttons half done-up—Zinaida had the same one.

“No.” Zinaida muttered, slapped herself harder than she had before. Natalia blurred, but came right back. “You look pathetic.” Natalia responded, smiling softly as she did.

“Wha…” Zinaida was too malnourished to doubt the sight in front of her, to deny the existence of an impossible and unnaturally mean version of her sister.

“Really filthy. Just dripping sweat, but you’re practically blue.” Natalia spoke her English, the way she had so perfectly when she’d first returned from America.

“I – I’m starving. Everything hurts.”

“Get over yourself, little bitch. Nobody cares how bad it hurts. You’ve gotten weak, you’ve forgotten everything they made us. A couple months in here, and you check out, shrivel up into nothing. They’ll be scraping you off the ground in a couple months, incinerating you in a bonfire and I’ll never even know. You’re nothing.”

Zinaida put her head into her hands, screamed into her palms, trying to stifle the sound. She was surprised when it worked, when no more sound came. That’s when she peeked between her fingers, and found only air where Natalia had been.

Left alone with the dark again, welling on the scraps of dignity that hallucination had just torn apart, Zinaida snapped. Well, it was more like her conscience was torn away from the other parts of her. Something else took the reins, whatever was left.

Before she knew it, she’d flipped around, and her knuckles were rapping against the steel. The door was so old, gray powder rubbed off on her skin. She kept going, and started screaming. She pressed her lips up against the door to get her voice through, smelling the barely-there rust. “Hello? Hello, let me out. Let me out, fucking let me out. Where is he? You can’t take him. You need him, you need us! I need — I need medical attention, okay? Hey, let me out. Hey, hey, fucking let me out!”

This kept going, more and more erratically as she gained traction, until the slot in the door slid open. By then, her voice was going hoarse and the abdominal pain was rising like vomit up her throat. There were no handles on the inside of the door, so she clung to the thin frame to keep steady, her legs as competent as paper straws. When it opened, the box of light through the slot glared straight into her pupils.

While she was half–blinded, a male voice shouted back; “Shut up!” Zinaida finally blinked vision back into her eyes, and found that the man---one of the guards consistently kept near her cell---had placed his lips at the slot through the door.

She was thoughtless, manic, snaking both hands through the slot and grabbing the man’s vest. He tried to jump back, but her grip was vice-like, grunting as she slammed his head against the door. The thump reverberated, as he slunk down in the vest. A second guard panicked as his comrade collapsed, snatching her fingers before she could slip away and holding them as he called in the offense.

As the guard spit into his comms, frantically sputtering out codes, Zinaida yanked her hand back through the slot, dragging him---who held her fingers with one hand---with her. His body fell flush against the door from the other side. She had a vicious idea, and she ran with it; pulling his wrist to her face and tearing a chunk out of his forearm with her bared teeth.

He pulled back just before he began to scream, and she let him. As he stumbled backwards, she kept her face stuck in the slot. Once his transceiver copied his desperate requests, he looked back up at her and she saw the hate in his eyes. He looked at her like she was rabid. She just stared back.

Backup came quick, they both heard their boots thudding against the concrete outside her cell, lining up at the door. The guard, the one she’d bit, raced to where the sound came from, presumably melting into the crowd.

They arrived in front of her cell, guns cocked, and arranged themselves to cover all angles of her exit. She slammed her forehead against the door, screamed with her lips arranged at the slot; “What is it, huh? What you gonna do? You gonna fucking SHOOT ME?!”

She bared her teeth and hoped they really would.

They didn’t do anything, though, faltering and looking to each other for direction. Most of them looked nervous, others excited. A guard closest to the front, one of the taller, spoke out. His voice was hesitant, he sounded like a boy, “Step away from the door, with your hands above your head.”

Zinaida just screamed again, incoherent and absolutely ballistic. She watched them wince. The same guard as before, the most outspoken, sighed and gave a hand signal. To it, they collectively began to count down from three, while Zinaida clung unfaltering to the door. Guns cocked, they reached one, unlocked the door with a loud click and kicked it open.

She still hung on to the door as it knocked backwards, as her back hit the wall, until the force fell on her ribs and the tenderness forced her hands to drop. As she groaned and her hands fell, the previous guard, holding his body away cautiously, grabbed ahold of her upper arm. He let his gun, that was attached to a sling across his shoulder, hang, and tugged her out from behind the door.

Though she was more than a little out of it—her vision swaying and pulse thundering in her ears—the touch drew an instinctual reaction. She bent her arm, pulled her elbow up and away to escape the grip, then used the momentum to punch him in the nose. Taught to pack the most damage into each of her strikes, Zinaida had naturally aimed for the side, and broke his nose.

Blood spilled, he pinched it and backed away. His comrades went into a frenzy, surrounding her, shouting to back up against the wall with their guns in her face. Zinaida was sweltering in the damp cold of the cell, sick to her stomach and frantic as a fish out of water.

She wasn’t going to freeze again.

Instead, she went flying, sweeping her pointed leg, knocking them to the ground. More came, she punched, and kicked, and screamed. It was all a blur. She was slamming her head into a man when a thump pierced her shoulder. That, then it flew back from the impact, a punch grazed her cheek as a numb buzzing spread, and then blistering pain before she fell back. She heard shouts, her head slam, her neck jerk, but it was all just burning.

Her eyelids drooped and everything went pitch black.

 

Zinaida’s eyes were rolling to the back of her head as she pulled herself back into consciousness. She was too tired to move another muscle, but she could taste the synthetic air in her lazy breaths.

The first thing she heard was rhythmic beeping.

“Yes, sir, yes, I trust your… but we’ve seen the faults in the machine… girls’ teacher was adamant… training was embedded… separating… unwanted parts could prove difficult…”

She could only feel one of her arms, leather strapping her wrists down against linen. Through her peripheral, white fabric flashed on the side she couldn’t feel. Sterilizing alcohol wafted in the air, accompanying medical murmuring.

Unable to keep her eyes open any longer, the darkness swooped back in.

 

The darkness stood no chance against the agony. Her entire body jerked awake as soon as the plates connected against her temple. The jolts of electricity fried her body, violated her limbs, reached every crevice, flowed through her veins like her very own blood.

It was the strangest sensation. At first, she felt everything; her vocal chords ripping, the dull stinging in her shoulder, her limbs jerking against the chair. She felt white-hot fear.

And then, like water down a drain, it all gave way to the shockwaves. It was all she thought about, all she could feel, all there was. When it rammed to a stop, she was nothing.

Novikov snapped in Arachnid’s face while she was still panting, after the chair lulled. Her eyes snapped up, and they were beautifully blank. He titled his chin, “Do you know who you are?”

Arachnid searched for an answer. It took a moment, but there, in the middle of her mental abyss, was one notion. She was Arachnid. An asset of Hydra. She was made to serve them.

She repeated that, the only idea her brain had been able to form. Novikov’s eyes slightly widened, searched hers as if trying to detect a lie. Finally, he seemed to approve. He nodded, and that was that.

Notes:

Seriously, why does nobody in books ever lose their mind? Why aren't they ever allowed a slight psychotic break? I, for one, am voting to change that. My girl is emotionally exhausted, physically battered, and starving. So, yeah, she bites a chunk out of someone. If your twin sister who was coincidentally Natasha Romanoff appeared in your Hydra cell, would you be any better? I don't think so.

Chapter 13: Grace, Like a Scalpel

Summary:

“To suffer. It means God is near.
Grace—like a scalpel without anesthesia.”

Notes:

Well, everyone, we've entered a new era. These chapters will lean into the technical side of her 'career' with Hydra, because that's how she remembers this point in her life: as mission reports. If you aren't a big fan of the whole spy thing, don't worry, because time passes quick without her conscience.

February 15th, 2001
Project: Arachnid

After a month of close supervision, the subject's memory suppression and re-conditioning seem entirely effective. Bullet wound has healed as positively expected, Asset has not questioned the injury. Subject does occasionally hesitate or display confusion when given complicated directions not directly tied to missions (medical directions, behavior, etc). However, disobedience/concern/confusion has not been outwardly voiced as of yet.

Handlers posted with subject note subject’s behavior; “[Subject] avoids eye contact and dialogue, but is consistently obedient.”

If the following months pass with continued success, security around the asset will be diverted for other means, and missions will become more frequent. Project: TWS is planned to remain inactive, and branch will instead focus on current asset.

 

April 26th, 2002

Five minutes from midnight on April 26th, Arachnid perched atop the dwarfed building closest to Moscow’s most prominent Orthodox Church. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was as illustrious as its name entailed—built in the very center of Moscow, gated and made from pure white marble, it had been painstakingly constructed less than 4 years before Arachnid arrived at it that night.

What had her briefing said, it was a hundred-something meters tall? Well, though she couldn’t quite catch any real care, it would survive. The bronze surely would, the shined-to-gold bronze that capped its bubble-roofing and molded the statues inside the church. Before that night, she’d conducted a week of reconnaissance, following the church-goers in and out during their holy week. Every day, she lingered at the back of the services, examining the sky-scraping walls, the warm-pallated murals, the religious artwork covering every patch of marble, of the stark-white walls.

And every day, believers packed into the church from every entrance—all of which Arachnid knew by heart—straining to stand tall throughout the Priests’ homilies, squished into one another. The priest always spoke with a conviction Zinaida was unfamiliar with. This was to say, the Cathedral was always brimming.

But on Sunday services, Easter Sunday, at midnight, the very moment they believed their Christ had risen? The bomb would only scrape the walls after tearing through the crowd.

The Church was new, pristine, and naive. With all of its popularity, its adoration, they believed it to be secure off of virtue alone. It was not. During a baptism on the morning of the 26th, she’d slipped behind the gathering and planted a rather meek explosive behind the peak of the fencing that framed a larger-than-life mural of Jesus’ birth. This mural was one of a pair, holy scenes arranged grandly to the sides of where the priests would stand, and she’d placed identical explosives behind the other as well. Higher-powered charges were strapped to the pillars closest to where the congregation would gather.

This had taken her a few trips. She’d adorned friendly gowns and patterned shawls tied below her chin, covering her attention-demanding hair. It worked, she’d attracted no attention, and by the 26th the church was rigged to blow with only a button.

Arachnid held the button between her fingers, not sparing it a glance, and binoculars to her war-painted eyes. Squinting and holding her eyes to the magnifier, she watched the double doors to the main entrance close. “Doors have sealed. Estimated 12,000 in attendance.” She muttered into the night.

It was nearly as dark inside, lit only by candles, she knew from her research and the tall, iced-over windows. She strained to hear, but she swore she did, their easter hymns through the walls. Sure enough, she checked her watch, 11:58.

Carry out thorough recon. Rig explosives no more than twenty-fours hours before midnight. Watch doors seal, estimate count. Wait for midnight, acquire visual success.

Like a wraith—her black cloak swallowing her beneath the stars, and heavy hood falling into her eyes as she lowered her chin—the girl watched the thinnest, longest hand on her watch tick. She felt her heart beating to its tune, slow and steady.

Fifty-nine. Her thumb, which had been hovering over the small, red detonator, made contact. The button sunk beneath the pad of her finger.

She heard the explosion before she felt it; watched the flames bounce to the sealed windows, melt the ice before it shattered the glass. Arachnid couldn’t look away, the fire reflected in her wide eyes. It was like it took a deep breath after it broke free from its casing, colliding into itself, before blowing out—growing so tall it charred the ceilings. On each edge of the vast room, smoke and flames scampered up the walls, climbed to the glass.

It shook her feet on the rooftop, vibrated everything within at least five miles.

The screams came half a second after she detonated, flocking like birds, as explosive as the bombs themselves. One sparse, lucky group in the middle of the room, farthest from the pillars and the murals, stampeded to the entrance/exit, screaming. The double doors were so heavy, and the victims so panicked, that it took a large man to kick them open.

“Explosives were successful, I have eyes on a surviving group.” Arachnid ducked, adjusted herself so she lay with her stomach to the roof, and peeked only her binoculars-head up.

“Religious officials?”

“Negative, civilians.” Arachnid was sure they could hear the civilians' cries for help on the other end of her earpiece.

“Frame is in place?”

Still keeping her head low, Arachnid pulled the duffle-bag she had set aside to cradle against her chest. She unzipped it, propped it so it was just tilting over the ledge of the building. “Dropping now.”

Russian nights were windy. As she tilted the bag more, shook it, the fliers caught in the breeze like leaves. Gleaming in sloppy red ink, they swooped and twirled as they cascaded to the stone. One of the two women who had escaped, dressed to the nines and covered in ash, was amidst a coughing fit as a flier reached her. They collected at the survivors feet, a swarm of brown and red and black, thick Russian letters etched into them.

Arachnid did not know what they read, and made a point not to, because she hadn’t been directed to look. She only knew how the woman’s lips fell apart into a gasp as she read it, wailed and crushed the paper between her fingers. The other woman, cradling a small and sputtering boy in her arms, looked to the sky — which was still littered with the floating fliers. Her lips moved as she stared upwards, one side of her face burned so bad that her skin melted down her face. The man who’d kicked down the double doors had retreated back inside to stumble around the isles, tripping over bodies as he went.

Arachnid’s stomach turned, and she could only take so much of the sight before she ducked her forehead to rest against the roof tile. For a moment, she just laid there. Her breaths trembled; in, out. She listened to her heart thump.

“Arachnid?”

She blinked back to reality, spine curving as she pulled herself up to a kneeling position, then rolled off the rooftop. “Mission accomplished, fleeing to rendezvous point.” She muttered, picking gravel off her palms, which had been scraped up in the stumble to land steadily in the alley below.

About a mile and a half down the alley, Arachnid sprinted to catch the military-grade van waiting for her. She was asked for a mission report once upon entering the vehicle, and again after arrival back to base. Once everyone was satisfied with her report, they shoved her in the chair and wiped her.

After the first memory-suppression in 2001—not that she remembered that—Arachnid awoke with one clear recollection; she was Arachnid, and she lived to serve. Everything else was reflexive; her sturdy hand on a gun, her fists against flesh.

 

Meanwhile, in an undisclosed location on the other side of Russia, Natalia Romanova was being wheeled to the medical bay. They’d already shot her up with something—the prick had faded into her arm, sensation numbing and blending together—and strapped her tight into the gurney. She wasn’t sure the drugs would work, Natalia could imagine it; the whole procedure being just another test of willpower. They’d keep her wide awake, and ask her stupid questions as they cut into her flesh. She wasn’t exactly sure what they’d do in there, whether she was knocked out or not, but could imagine the horrors.

Well, anyway, it was too late now. The ceiling above her, winding archways and peeling paint, all blurred together. And then suddenly, her eyelids felt heavy. The last thing Natalia thought of before she lost consciousness was the mysterious, fading image of the sister she might’ve imagined, curled up together in her bed. That was the last time sleep had come so heavily, so willingly.

Tearing a girl’s uterus out with tools from the 80’s that looked shockingly similar to torture devices was a messy procedure. Natalia wouldn’t wake up for a week, but when she did, she was congratulated. She had survived, better yet, she had risen above the rest—she was a Black Widow.

Notes:

Couldn't help myself. I really like playing this game I call "How far apart were they?" Where I guess how close in proximity the sisters were. Unfortunately, the answers are both very vague, mostly made up, and usually sad.

Chapter 14: Democracy

Notes:

I've done a lot of research to try to make sure that Zinaida's involvement in Russian events from this time period is as realistic and 'necessary' as possible---but I am not Russian, nor have I ever been to Russia, so if you are; please correct any mistakes I make. Happy reading, people :)

September 5th, 2004

Arachnid’s involvement in the 2004 presidential election was a last resort. You see, the Kremlin had tried everything—they’d conspicuously rigged car bombs near practically everybody involved in the Yushchenko campaign, and when those didn’t work out, they crashed a giant cargo truck into his car. Nothing was successful, and by September, the election was nearly through. In just a matter of weeks, Ukraine’s next president would be chosen. And the support for Viktor Yushchenko’s campaign—a door to door approach, promising a friendly face and independence for the people—was looking worrisome.

Hydra saw an opportunity. The lengths that Putin had gone to to take out the politician were unequivocally malicious, some might say Stalin-like. Novikov believed the only thing protecting him from the fire that Yushchenko’s supporters would set under him was the Kremlin’s success in filtering media. So they had one chance to make a splash.

It had taken much tampering to get Yushchenko to the meeting that day, most of it had extended past Arachnid’s hand. She’d played a small part in the arraignment, but really, her job was to be at Volodymyr Satsiuk’s—deputy of Ukraine’s Secret Service—summer home in Kyiv. After arguments with his team, the Ukrainian special agencies behind the meeting had even agreed to move it to after his long Sunday rally.

His rally ended at 6 P.M. that September 5th. At quarter past ten, security at the front door announced a mister Viktor Yushchenko, who strode in behind them, a fairly handsome man with a thick head of hair and a politician’s look about him. The senior representatives, all from various important but vague security agencies—except for the head of the intelligence agency, who was nearly as late as Yushchenko and glared at him the entire time—stood from the large dining table. Ihor Smeshko stamped his cigar out, calling out a boisterous greeting, and introducing Yushchenko.

Viktor Yushchenko, tugging on his tie, sat in the empty chair at the head of the table. He had two security guards with him, both waiting outside of the home, but that was it.

Meanwhile, one of the cooks rushed into the hectic kitchen, tendrils escaped out of her high bun, “He’s here! Is everything ready?”

“Target’s arrived.” Arachnid whispered into the piece in her ear, tilting her chin towards the running faucet to muffle her voice. The other real servers, which she posed alongside, called out their complaints and ‘almosts’, piling the plates of entrees onto the cart that they were instructed to wheel in just as soon as Yushchenko was announced.

“Ready!” Someone called, and then it was time. Arachnid rolled the cart, while someone else carried the drinks in, and the other caterers stayed back in the kitchen. She filed into the dining room first, drinks behind her, just as Yushchenko shook hands with the attendees. His eyes flicked up to hers for just a second.

They knew to be inconspicuous, the caterers. Arachnid kept her eyes on the plates as she handed them out, one by one, to each attendee. The last went to Yushchenko, a gold-rimmed plate piled up with Chicken Kyiv and a side salad. Under the fried coat of bread crumbs, the hearty chicken filet was positively soaked in dioxin. The chemical, both odorless and colorless, had been administered by Arachnid in a dose 1,000 times the agreeable amount. Even if he only took a bite, it would take a miracle to survive the poison.

After the first part of dinner had been served, the caterers filed out of the meeting room. Arachnid slipped out to the bathroom, where she called in the success.

Before she left, stolen cook’s uniform folded under her arm, Arachnid looked through the window to the dining room. She was pleased to see only crumbs on Yushchenko’s plate. It would take over an hour to feel the effects, he’d probably be on his way home by then. For now, death on his tail, he had his hands interlocked resting atop the table, empty plate moved to the side as he engaged in stoic discussion.

Arachnid would be asleep on the floor of her cell the next day, while Viktor Yushchenko went from hospital to hospital, being tested by every level of medical professionals. None would be able to explain the abominable pain in his stomach, his legs already having given out under the stress. It would take a doctor in Austria, after his face and body swelled to a point of paralysis, unable to speak, or eat, or sleep, to diagnose the poisoning.

Word got out within the first week, while he underwent his first of about 30 surgeries in the next two years. Ukrainian families, supporters, prayed for his health, prayed for his recovery from this violent illness. Yushchenko was forced to drop out of the race, pointing the finger at his opponents for the crime done to him, but there was no feasible proof.

While the specialists working to cure Viktor Yushchenko pulled every trick out of the book, 2004 brought a new addition into Arachnid’s training. Practice sessions, she’d named them—they took her about once every other week to the big room with the viewing box and she took out whichever target sat in the center of the floor. Usually, the people were too disoriented after their blindfolds came off to put up much of a fight, but it was about the only time she was out of her cell, and Arachnid relished in the light on her skin. Fighting—hunting, killing—felt nostalgic, like her mind and her body were old friends, only reuniting when she got a target. Maybe, even, there was something very comforting about the way her body remembered. Yes, her body never forgot how to do its job. It didn’t need directions.

Notes:

The poisoning described in this chapter really did happen to Viktor Yushchenko, most likely carried out by either his opponents or by Putin's hand. Miraculously, he survived the multiple attempts on his life, though he now suffers from facial scarring and will probably spend the rest of his life continuing to treat the damage done to him. Through it all, he became president of Ukraine from 2005-2010. While I've found no coverage of these other assassination attempts like the car bombing, he's described them in multiple interviews.

Chapter 15: Still On the Payroll

Summary:

Karma Police
I’ve given all I can
It’s not enough
I’ve given all I can
But we’re still on the payroll

- Karma Police, Radiohead

October 7th, 2006

Sitting in the little gray, inconspicuous rental, Arachnid’s knee bounced against the old steering wheel. After a glance at the radio clock, she knocked the glove box open, grabbed her Makarov pistol and shoved it into the waistband of her jeans. The greatest thing about missions was that she got new everything, and none of it would ever really be hers.

Tilting the dark, anonymous shades over her eyes down, she watched the chunky, black-haired man—what had his name been? Makhmudov?—squash his cigarette into the sidewalk. All it’d taken was 38,000 rubles to convince him to buy Arachnid’s gun for her and linger around the target’s apartment that evening. She did not understand it; how much people would do, without another thought, when money was involved.

Not the mission, she reminded herself, tucking the ends of her ruby-colored hair into her sweatshirt-collar before pulling the hood up to cover the rest. That very moment, and just on time, Anna Politkovskaya turned the corner to her apartment block. Arachnid tapped her earpiece in, “Target spotted.”

Arachnid left the car through the passenger side, so as to stay undetected, and lingered behind the car like a shield until Anna reached for the door to her apartment building. “Moving in now.” Silently, Arachnid caught the door with her foot, as Anna walked down the entrance hall to the first elevator. Arachnid, silently, followed Anna’s khaki raincoat to the elevator.

Anna, who was noticing Arachnid for the first time, gave a half-smile and shuffled to the back of the shaft to make room for the younger girl. Her coat swished as she moved, and her wet boots squeaked against the tile. “Your floor?” Arachnid spoke for the first time, her fingers hovering over the elevator buttons before she pressed anything.

Anna’s brows furrowed before she nodded and seemed to catch on, telling Arachnid she was on the fourth floor. Arachnid pressed the button for the fourth, and then fifth floor—always assume targets know more than they might. Assume they’re friendly with their neighbors, assume they’ve memorized floor-companions.

Anna was softer in person—her gray bob blended into her pale, almost colorless complexion. Her nose, which was slightly arched but without any actually sharp corners, was flushed from the cold rain. She wore thin, brown oval glasses. And she seemed marvelously human, with smile lines deepening her straight face, bearing all the signs of a life lived.

Arachnid kept a safe amount of distance between the two of them in the cramped elevator, slipping her hood down to keep the journalist unsuspecting. Any minute now, she thought, and that was the very moment that Anna turned to her and braced to speak.

Despite herself, Arachnid flinched at the woman’s quick turn towards her, hand moving to hover over her waistband. She quickly recovered, before Anna’s gaze could wander, and tucked her hands safely into her pockets. Anna was too busy readying her words, anyway, “Have you recently moved in?”

Arachnid could feel the elevator flying beneath her feet, which was slightly off-putting, but also reminded her how little time she had. She met Anna’s eyes, “No, I’m visiting.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, one hand slid out of her pocket and grabbed the Makarov. Anna hummed, “I see. Well—”

The elevator whirred, ticked. Her lips were parted to add something else, when the pistol-wielding hand shot up and aimed for her head.

Make it look contract, Novikov had repeated himself three times. The first shot, square in her forehead, froze her where she stood. Arachnid caught the woman with a hand on her back, silencing her slump to the ground. Her eyes were wide open, blood trickling down her temple, as Arachnid sat her against the back of the shaft.

Once she was positioned, Arachnid got to her feet to stand over the body. She fired three more rounds to the woman’s chest, leaving bullet holes in a line across the center of her sweater, before sliding her gun back in her jeans.

The heart was bloody, three bullets to it had blood spraying across Arachnid’s nose like freckles. She was glad to slip her shades back down, pull her hood over her head, and wait for the beep of the elevator doors opening. Once they did, she took one last look at the target’s body; slumped in the shaft, with her rain jacket splayed open and her purse at her side. “Target exterminated.”

Arachnid simply took the stairs, and slipped out the back door of the apartment complex before driving to the car exchange where she’d get back in the usual van.

It was a ten minute drive to the exchange point, and Arachnid’s fingers tapped restlessly on the steering wheel the entire time. At one point, she’d ventured to wipe the blood off her face, only to find it had already begun to dry, that the metallic stench clung to her nostrils inescapably.

Mission successful. Mission successful. She just kept repeating it, first in her head, then found her arched lips mouthing the syllables. It didn’t stop the way her body vibrated, like something live and antsy.

As she pulled into the exchange point, Arachnid pulled her shoulders straighter. She found her own eyes, pitchy brown, in the rearview mirror before she left it for good. Mission successful.

—

That very same year, every soldier in Afghanistan was beginning to see the long road they had set into motion. Americans had shouted for war the minute the Taliban hit the towers in ‘01, and Afghanistan had readily welcomed the prospect, but both sides were only just realizing how deep they were in the blood spilt. There was no end in sight.

Hydra strived in war, lived and breathed for it. After all, they’d been born from it. So had the Winter Soldier.

So, they killed two birds with one stone. While Zinaida murdered the social activist and investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya in cold blood, an assassination that would catapult decades of hushed fear in and out of Russia, Novikov watched the Soldier’s cryostasis chamber be lifted into a cargo plane traveling 2,519 miles to a small Hydra base in Afghanistan.

They’d already constructed a make-shift Memory Suppression Machine there, suited for a temporary stay to do some destruction in the middle of a war zone. After all, the Russian team concluded after some deliberation, Arachnid was working more efficiently than ever.

The Soldier had proven equipped for acclimation and world-wide travel. He operated on a mission-to-mission basis, as ungrounded in borders as the organization that created him was. This all to say, Novikov neither knew nor worried about how long he’d keep the Soldier in the Middle East upon his send-off.

Notes:

Rest in peace to Anna Politkovskaya, who really was killed in 2006 just as it's been described in this chapter. The tragedy brought upon her and her family is VERY real. I hope it doesn't come off as insensitive to incorporate these things into my fictional work, but the goal is historical accuracy, always.

Chapter 16: Kindling the Revolution

March, 2009

It had taken three weeks for Arachnid to lock down the March meeting location. Three long weeks of weaving through the dark, elite circles that traded secrets and favors like currency. The Chechen resistance was a fire dwindling to smoke. By 2009, Hydra knew as well as anyone that the conflict was nearing its end, but they weren’t one to let it go quietly.

The last two weeks of February and the first of March had been a blur of quiet work. Arachnid had tailed generals, eavesdropped on whispered conversations in opulent penthouses, and infiltrated the ranks of the powerful. Every lead pointed to one thing: the Russian government was preparing to declare victory in Chechnya. They were going to make it official, tie it up with a neat little bow, and present it to the world as the end of the rebellion.

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when she cracked the window to a well-liked yet unsuspecting Colonel General's penthouse. Arachnid had left him a gift on his coffee table—a folder filled with photographs of him snorting lines of cocaine before vital operations. Alongside the folder was a burner phone that opened to the contact labeled ‘CALL.’

This evidence, if leaked, would have not only compromised all of those missions, given that every one of his cadets acted on his command, but would also have promised him a dishonorable discharge. So when he lifted the phone to his ear and her demand followed, Sokolov made the only decision he could. The location was Grozny City Hall.

Arachnid's mission evolved as soon as she confirmed the location. Novikov was thrilled. "Too perfect of a coincidence to pass up,” He had mused as the technicians prepped her, like all of her dirty work had simply been the hand of fate. In Hydra’s grand scheme, it was simply too early and too important to leave their usual crime scenes. Arachnid would need to work from the shadows.

Her task was as it always was, keep the chaos burning.

Phase one of her new mission involved arming the enemy. The second week of march, Arachnid delivered a fortune’s worth of crates to the largest Chechen rebel warehouse. Inside were assault rifles, grenades, and enough ammunition to massacre a village. She’d watched from the roof, through night-vision lenses, as the rebels had picked up her note from atop the crates, "March 22nd, 3:30 PM. Keep your eyes open. You’ll know when you know."

The day of the conference was one of tense anticipation. 18 minutes before Russian officials were due to gather at the City Hall, Arachnid was tucked into a vent above the boardroom. Below her, the preparation buzzed—waiters arranged flowers and designers tweaked paintings. She had the passing thought that any one of those employees could be riddled with bullet holes in the next half hour. Arachnid had to swallow hard when she realized the thought had planted a lump in her esophagus. Focus.

This was a good sign, not only was it the most secure room in the building, but it had also been fussed over for the past hour.

As she waited, Arachnid thought back to her briefing. This was long-coming. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chechnya declared independence under the leadership of their Dzhokhar Dudayev. Russia, steeping in the heavy hand the cold war had instilled within it, was unwilling to lose control over the oil-rich region, and launched a military intervention in 1994. In September 1999, after years of all-around instability within Chechnya, Russia launched a full-scale military operation into the Republic, successfully starting the Second Chechen War. Officially, the operation was filed as a "counter-terrorism operation" aimed at eliminating terrorist threats and restoring constitutional order. Now, in 2009, the Russian government was ready to declare the rebellion crushed.

Rebel chatter, like static through her headphones, cut her curiosity off. Her elbows brushing against the suffocating walls of the vents, Arachnid typed the message that would end her mission. In bold, it included a list of every official attending the peace talk, each name notorious among the rebel network.

Arachnid recalled persuasive tactics placed in her memory to close the message that would flash like spam into the rebel servers: Are your eyes still open? At 3:30 PM, March 22nd, the listed officials will be uniting in Grozny City Hall to finalize their agreement that the Chechnya Rebellion has been exterminated. What will you do for your home?

She hit send.

Arachnid didn't need to wait for the fallout. Her job was done. She slipped out of the vent into a bathroom stall, and walked to the nearest exit in full civilian attire—ponytail held by a snap-back hat, holding the computer inside a dead man’s cargo jacket they’d fitted her for. She felt no doubt that the Chechen rebels couldn’t ignore this fight. Sure enough, the bullets began as she strapped into the escape van. That was how Hydra operated—always one step removed, always in control.

Right around the time Arachnid walked away from what would become a massacre in Grozny city hall, her twin sister was trying to get the hell out of Iran.

With her foot like lead on the gas, Natasha turned the S.H.I.E.L.D. jeep so hard around a rocky corner that the engineer bouncing around in the backseat actually shut up for a moment. Of course, It was only until he grabbed hold of the panic bar above him, then he was right back at it. “Ma’am, I am just saying, it is a bad feeling!”

“Stay silent, stay down, and you’ll be fine!” Natasha yelled over her shoulder, the dry wind forcing strands of bright hair into her mouth. Through it, she felt sand infiltrating her lungs, clinging to her throat. They were so close to the bottom of the elevation, then they’d be on the flat dirt roads and her hands could relax their death-grip on the wheel. This was the biggest mission she’d yet been assigned for her new agency, for America, for Barton and Fury. She couldn’t fuck it up.

Through reflective goggles, Natasha glanced passingly in the rearview mirror. It was just a glance, but then another, closer look, because she could’ve sworn she’d seen a glint of metal up on the hill they’d just passed. She didn’t have a minute to let her eyes find the shape again, because she heard a pop behind her, and then a moment passed of her desperately swerving for control, before two more pff’s hit and she recognized the sound of her tires deflating.

Just as the air rushed out of the tires, the car neared another turn. Natasha, ignoring the screams of her passenger, could barely move the last working wheel to turn left of the dune in front of her. Gunshots, like pebbles of sand, whizzed past the engineer’s head, who ducked lower until his head was practically pressing against the backseat floor.

Just her luck, that was about all the car could manage, giving way to the emptying other tires, and now Natasha was facing the edge of a steep cliff with one working tire. “Cover your head, hold yourself against the floor!” She screamed, while frantically knocking the glove box, one foot holding hopelessly tight on the brake pedal. It didn’t matter, they’d gained enough momentum and lost enough control that they were already halfway off the cliff when Natasha reached her grappling hook.

The hook in one hand, and the engineer’s sweat-soaked shirt---Khourishi was his last name---in the other, Natasha watched SHIELD’s jeep fall below her. She had a pistol tucked into her boot, but everything else she’d brought crashed with it. Khourishi was heavy, at least 220 lbs, and squealing like a bald eagle. She couldn’t waste a second longer watching the car bend like scrap metal, sinking into the desert terrain, so she brought her eyes up.

The end of the grappling hook had sunk into the sharp cliff easily, but there was no telling how much weight it could take before the edge would crumble. She worked quick and tirelessly, grunting, heaving herself and the man hanging in her grip up the cliff.

It was hot, sweltering, sweat poured down her forehead and soaked into the new combat suit they’d fit her for. Her muscles were contracting, trembling by the time she shoved Khourishi up onto the edge. He panted, rolled onto his back and just laid there.

“Take cover!” She yelled at him, hearing that stubborn accent lift her lips, and pushed off her palms to lift a leg up over the cliff. Soon as she was up, she rolled onto her engineer, shoved her body in front of his own to shield him from the impending rifle she suspected was now moving in closer.

Her comms had gone down with the car. Natasha had just her widow’s-bite on her wrist, and a pistol tucked into her boots. In other words, she was fucked. She pulled the pistol out anyway, keeping her body shielding Khourishi and her eyes over her shoulder to keep watch. A glint of metal swished from behind a weak shrub, and yet it was all she could see. Her attacker was good, she could hardly hear the sand shifting in their footsteps. She fired at the bush, hit nothing but leaves. Khourishi was holding his hands over his head and trembling into the ground. And he was praying under his breath, whispering Arabic into the sand as if watering it.

Natasha lifted her crouch a bit, aiming the pistol at anything that moved, her eyes darting around the scene in front of her. There was that shrub, walls of solid dirt, and yet absolutely nowhere to find. She had just figured it out, placing her hand above her eyebrows to look up at the top of the mountain, when the Winter Soldier fired. She aimed her pistol, pulled the trigger twice, but it was too late.

Just as the bullet ripped into her left, lower abdomen, she found her attacker. It was how out-of-place, uncamouflaged he was that gave him away. His hood rippling in the wind, dark edges of his hair hanging out at his shoulders. The hand that positioned his rifle was metal, shiny silver poking out from the edge of his jacket sleeve.

The metal-armed man. Natasha had always wondered, especially after her defection, if the sister she remembered in pieces was a figment of her imagination. Perhaps the result of a very lonely child with very much blood on her hands. After Zinaida was gone, nobody spoke of her. At about 15, Natasha remembered collapsing during the middle of a ballet rehearsal. After she got her kneecaps striked, Madame had pulled her aside with a vice-like grip on the girls’ scrawny forearm. Natasha had asked about Zinaida. Madame’s face looked disgusted, “You have no family, stupid girl. Only a job to do.”

Natasha was never in any position to question things. She hardly ever had a moment of peace. Glimpses of Zinaida came in dreams, dark-brown eyes and redder hair. Little children’s socks, with a ragged “Z” branded into the ankles. The memories faded, were pushed and pushed away as the cyclical images from VHS tapes replaced them. Training videos that played on loop while they drugged her to a state of thick fog. Soviet rhymes and dark lullabies sunk into her bones. Eventually, she forgot all together.

But as Natasha fell to her knees, that face flashed into her mind. The Winter Soldier I spoke of, young, accented English said. Natasha strained to remember, heart lurching into her throat.

She could remember nothing more. But she could smell orange dirt rubbing into her kneecaps, feel the terrible ache of the hole in her abdomen, and hear Khourishi choke on his blood. There was never enough time to remember, always too many first-things-first. Madame had been right, she had only a job to do.

It was too late for Khourishi, blood already soaked his entire t-shirt. After ripping right through Natasha, the bullet had struck him fatally in the chest. He was sputtering his last few breaths when Natasha found the Soldier’s spot on the hill, squinted to find him, but found only kicked-up dirt where his rifle had been propped up.

While the bloody hole on her stomach collected dirt, The Black Widow dragged Khourishi’s body on her back for three miles before she found a car to hijack. Failure weighed heavier than him, stung worse than the gunshot.

Notes:

I love writing in Natasha's perspective so much, I keep finding every opportunity to do so. I hope y'all enjoy :)

Chapter 17: Catch Your Death

Summary:

“Your mission,” he continued, “is to release the gas they’ve created onto the base, and report back the degree of damage it’s exposure inflicts. Per usual; work with discretion, leave no first-hand witnesses. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir.” She sounded like a toy with a voice box, like someone had tugged the string on her back.

January, 2011

“Agents monitoring this military base,” Novikov grabbed Arachnid’s briefing, turned to the first page of the folder, and jabbed his thumb at the marked spot on a map of Siberia, “Have recently reported the development of a bio-weapon scientists there have nearly perfected.”

After nodding, Arachnid pulled at the stretched fabric digging into her thighs. The layer of insulation the technicians had stitched into her sleek combat suit left it feeling stuffy and constricting against her body. It didn’t help that Arachnid was growing, that she’d gotten indisputably taller in the past couple years, despite the strict Gulag diet. She was grateful for the heavy snow boots this mission required, if only to hide where her ankles peeked out from below the kevlar leggings.

She looked back up to where Novikov was running his finger in a circle around the base location. On the map, red pen marked their bunker atop the freezing mountains, and then the military base down in the wilderness about fifty miles away. In Novikov’s thick, trimmed mustache, gray hairs had sprouted and infiltrated his otherwise flint-colored hair.

“Your mission,” he continued, “is to release the gas they’ve created onto the base, and report back the degree of damage it’s exposure inflicts. Per usual; work with discretion, leave no first-hand witnesses. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir.” She sounded like a toy with a voice box, like someone had tugged the string on her back.

That evening, a team dropped Arachnid off at the outskirts of the base’s forest. She carried her Makarov pistol in its holster at her hip, and a bag strapped to her back.

The woods seemed frozen into silence. In the maze of giant trees, the only sounds to accompany them were the wildlife. Arachnid passed a Lynx, and watched as its pointed ears twitched at the sound of snow crunching beneath her boots. Chipmunks skidded across the ground, as if they were roaches fleeing from fire.

Her breath fogged up in the freezing air. The cold seeped through her clothes like they were paper, turned them stiff and brittle.

Arachnid walked until she couldn’t feel her feet. The snow boots were either old or cheap, because the snow infiltrated them before she made it halfway, melted to sludge and then water soaking her socks. By the time she smelt the smoke, her fists were bunched and teeth grit.

She ducked behind a tree when she saw the first glimpse of the base; A high, barbed wire fence. Clearly, they weren’t expecting any visitors, because she only saw one camo-uniformed soldier in sight, and he sat on a stump smoking a cigar. This wasn’t unexpected; the wilderness, especially in the merciless January cold, was its own guard dog.

The sun, though clouded by the blank snow-clouds, was setting above her. She must’ve been hiking there for hours. After she spotted the guard and the fence between them, Arachnid stood with her back against the tree as her hiding spot. She was devising a plan; she couldn’t get a shot through the fence, not with all the barbs. Instead, she slid the pack off her back.

Setting it on the ground in front of her, Arachnid unzipped the bag slow and quietly. She stared down at its contents, thinking for a moment before she reached in and grabbed her best option. After a sprint backwards, she popped the pin and hurled a smoke grenade over the fence as far as she could.

Gray smoke, like ashes, seemed to endlessly spill from the grenade canister. It started before it even hit the ground, then was left trailing in the air when both they—she and the military man who was just then spitting his cigar out and reaching half-hazardly for his rifle—heard the grenade smack against the dirt.

Arachnid imagined his inner monologue—Do what, call for backup? And what’ll they ask first, where the hell I was while it dropped! No way—Her lip turned into a small smile, only until she realized and wiped it away.

After she heard the guard running towards the smoke, Arachnid rolled out from behind another tree. She had one more tool in her hands, wire cutters that were already fogging up like her breath.

She sprinted to the fence and kneeled before it. While smoke engulfed the officer, while he coughed, choked and tripped to get out of it, Arachnid snipped away at the barbed wire. The worst thing about wire cutters is they’re only as strong as you are, like an extension of your hand. She had to cramp and twist and pull at the thick fence just to make a hole large enough that she could crawl through.

The smoke was clearing by the time she slid under. The soldier fired blanks into the murky air, shouting orders at the sound of her body skidding towards him. She caught onto him by his ankle, pulled him to the ground, and snapped his neck before his head hit the snow.

She’d had to think about the move before she did it, had to let her instincts guide her hands around his neck. When her fingers, smoke pouring through them, came at him from behind to crawl around his throat, one hand pushing into the vertebrates at the back of his neck, and the other tilting his chin up, she hardly recognized the move. She heard a voice, an order, reminding her, diagonal-up to hang the man!, and that was all her fingers needed to carry it out. Just a quiet crack, then his body melted into her lap.

The base was arranged as if it all orbited the wide, white science facility in the center of it. It was layered from thick to thin, concrete to vulnerable. The barricading fence, the soldier’s arranged behind it watching guard, then the residents, and at the very center was the laboratory. The families resided in a type of circular trailer park surrounding the facility. With the winter sun shooting down, the trailer windows were all lit warm.

Arachnid felt like a ghost. Ducking her head, moving with the shadows, making her way to the facility, she could hear the children settling down inside the campers. See the mothers, through their kitchen windows, rinsing dinner plates. Through thin walls, she heard ordinary nights play out all around her.

A type of longing struck her bone-deep, it dropped her heart limp into her stomach. For a moment, crouched in the middle of the snow, Arachnid was frozen with the feeling. She stared into a warm trailer window. The mother inside it hummed a tune, Arachnid watched the blonde woman’s head sway with her song. As if reacting to an instinct, her head then raised. She locked eyes with Arachnid.

The woman, with the stretched collar of her sweater fraying at the neck, had remarkably warm eyes. She did not look at Arachnid—the girl with the cracked lips crouching in the snow, drowning in a heavy coat, and a gun glistening at her side—with fear, or hate. She was simply curious, tilting her chin at the view outside her window.

The woman was awe-struck, and found herself absolutely frightened for that girl in the snow, who looked quite terrified, her dark eyes widened and her face gaunt. She held her hand up to the window, beckoned the girl to the trailer door with a wave. Just after she did, the girl’s eyes widened, and then she bolted past the trailers like a squirrel.

The woman set her daughter’s favorite plate back in the sudsy kitchen sink, wrapped a scarf around her neck, pulled her coat on, and stepped outside the trailer. She strained, held to the door as she bent to look all around the base, but found no sign of the girl. It was a pitch-black night, and the snow had just started back up again. Silly, she thought, I’ve begun imagining things.

Arachnid raised her gloved hands and wiped snowflakes off of her face. She tried to shake the ache in her gut, because she had just arrived at the side walls of the facility. Her body was buzzing. Now her work had to begin.

She tore one glove off, shoved it compactly into her coat pocket. The ladder was slippery, but the cold could bite her fingers off in moments. Hands then feet, she grabbed onto the tall, frozen-steel ladder and climbed to the roof of the facility. She couldn’t see a single window on the entire building. It was a stout but wide complex, most likely one or two stories, if she counted the basement.

She entered through the fire escape, then crawled through the vents. She tracked the strolling workers, followed above them until she was led to a heavy steel door. Peeking through the vent slats, she watched a pair of scientists. While one sipped his flask, the other lifted a card attached to the lanyard around his neck. He held it up to a key code next to the door, which promptly beeped green, and unlocked.

Arachnid knew she couldn’t catch the door, even if she was stupid enough to drop from the vents right then. It was a busy facility, and a particularly busy hallway, like the hive of the place was that steel door.

And behind the door, the vent pathways cut off. The room wasn't ventilated, or at least they didn’t connect to the rest of the building. The only way in was through the door.

So she waited. Another pair passed around the corner, then a few singles without a lanyard. Then she found him. All alone in the hallway, a heavy man, bald but with a thick beard, appeared at the back of the hallway, farthest from the door.

Arachnid back-crawled until she was behind the man, then kicked the grate opening out with her feet, and dropped to the floor. He didn’t see, but heard her. She was already launching onto his back as he jumped at the noise. The man was big enough that she had no choice but to play defensively, pouncing onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck, and digging her boots into his hips. With her feet propped up on his hips, she reached for the knife wrapped around her covered ankle.

With her right hand, the ungloved one, Zinaida flexed her fingers over the grip of the knife’s handle, which was a rubber texture and bumpy in her touch. The man’s flailing jerked her body around, shook the shallow breath she took.

When the man let out a scream that was far too loud, Arachnid remembered to cover his mouth with her palm. He fought hard, clawed at her hand, and flailed in the empty hallway. His nails were dull, but scratched hard enough down the back of her hand that she had to clamp her mouth shut while she jabbed her knife into his neck.

His knees buckled on her second stab, a scream abruptly turning to a crackled wheeze. He hit the ground. As he fell, his forehead knocked against the sterile tile, and the noise seemed to bounce from the walls.

By his wrists, Arachnid heaved the man into a detour corridor and propped him, knees bent and slouched, against the wall. She’d have the place quarantined before anyone found him.

Fingerprints of blood stamped the man’s lanyard as she pulled it off of his neck. She tried to rub it off with her sleeve. The blood only smeared. She gave up, turned her back to him, and made her way towards the steel door with his key-card in her palm.

When she held the lanyard to it, the steel door unlocked with a hiss. Wrapping her fingers around the door frame, she outstretched her arm and knelt so she was behind the door. Though it was improbable that any of the many scientists within the room would survive, she’d been given direct orders that they couldn’t see her.

For this purpose, she used the door as cover; crouching and letting only the one hand wrapped around the door frame in view of the scientists inside it. The door was heavy, demanding at least half her attention while she slipped her backpack off. Her actions were quick—she found the grenade inside her bag, a heavy duty one that would blast through the room and everything in it, rolled it through the doorway, then unwrapped her fingers, kicked the door shut behind her, and sprinted.

She could hear her pulse in her ears, pounding. The gas would spread through the vents like a wildfire, and her crawling was too slow to beat the flames. Instead, she pictured the layout of the facility in her mind, sprinted around corners and down corridors to the nearest emergency exit.

Arachnid did not look back. She could smell it seeping through the crack in the door. The alarm sounded right after the grenade went off, but the bustling crowds left through the farthest exits. It didn’t matter; Arachnid doubted they’d get far—she’d heard the bodies drop as soon as the gas released behind the steel door.

Notes:

Raise your hand if you've ever had to look up how to snap someone's neck... just me? Okay. Well, anyway, I'm obsessed, in a bad way, with the idea that the Red Room's conditioning is so totalitarian that not even mind control can erase it. If the Room has been operating since the 60's, I imagine their conditioning must have grown incredibly strong. This is why I've kept that voice in Zinaida's head, those Madame's voices, chiding her with those mantras and rhymes.

Chapter 18: Did We Win?

Summary:

The news of the newly-founded Avengers and their recent escapade in New York had traveled quickly to Novikov. Steve Rogers is alive and ready. So must the Assets be.

2012

They took Arachnid out of her cell early that morning, when the snow was bright and the recruits who didn’t live in the bunker had just clocked in.

Her stomach was empty. She could feel it turning as the guard led her through the halls—they’d lowered security to just one body with her after the memory suppression had proved successful. Not that she remembered this.

Arachnid went through the motions of her existence with a dull awareness and an inability for opinion.

Hospital beds, with a white-sheeted mattress and nothing else, lined the wall directly north of the entrance door. They were the only actual furniture inside the rectangular room, besides various storage closets and medical cabinets. The beds had black steel guard rails on either side of them, and a semi-circle lamp attached to the frame. Arachnid broke into a cold sweat. She—and this is the sort of thing that is very hard to explain—could tell when a place was familiar, just from the feel and the smell and the way her body reacted to it. Even without memory, she could feel it on her skin. This was a feeling the Asset got used to time and time again.

But something was different; Arachnid could tell that in the same way. She had begun to rely heavily on natural instinct—the things her body seemed to place as a rock in her stomach. Caution.

When his nurse stepped out of Arachnid’s eyeline, she knew what she was being warned of. With electrode stickers splattered across his chest and his chin lowered, a man sat upright on a bed. Without eyes to look into, Arachnid’s gaze went immediately to the metal arm. It was a spectacle, a wonder, composed of metal plating like intricate scales, sculpted identically to his flesh arm. A bright red star decorated the bicep, a symbol of his alliance.

With his shirt off to make room for the medical work, Arachnid saw the toll that the spectacle must’ve taken; a thick line of scar tissue, like a laser outline, melded to where the steel began. Scars like bolts of lightning etched diagonally around that thick line, where the procedure must’ve gotten messy.

This man was the epitome of Hydra; a bulk of muscle, war, and ravage. There was not a single part of his pale skin that was not decorated with some kind of thin scar. The kind that melted into his complexion, the kind that changed nothing about your life except the inescapable memories. And yet he held his head low like a puppy on that bed, waiting still for the next demand.

One came for Arachnid from her accompanying guard; “Sit at that bed,” He pointed at the one, two down from the man’s, “And be still.”

She did as she was told, though these were not the commands she obeyed as pacifically. Arachnid was wired for something to do, a task to carry out. She couldn’t breathe easily without an end goal.

Just two licensed nurses worked the medical bay—taking interval shifts on slow days—and a surgeon who was only called in during emergencies. That day, the nurses attended each of the Assets. They performed a simple health check; vitals, blood samples, a quick physical exam.

After unwrapping the cuff from Arachnid’s pale arm, her nurse turned her back and pulled her coworker in, “It’s a wonder she can stand.”

The other nurse pulled her stethoscope down her ears, and gave a cringed look. “That bad?” Even as the cold metal of the stethoscope fell from its spot at the center of his back, the metal-armed man just exhaled a short breath.

“Pressure’s 72/50.”

“You’ve noted it in the report, right?”

“Every time I check her.”

The other nurse sighed, shook her head as if to say, it is what it is, before returning back to her patient.

The Assets were healthy. A bit worse for wear, but healthy enough to kill and train and hurt. Once this was concluded, the real work resumed.

Novikov was already in the viewing box when the Assets arrived. He looked displeased to see them together again, from the way his lips pursed. Arachnid guessed she’d previously worked with the metal-armed man. She was smart enough to have realized they’d taken her memories from her, with that big metal chair that knocked her brain upside down. In moments like that one, when she’d walked into the training room to find her own history was better-known to Novikov than to her, she felt a momentary indignation.

Those reactive, involuntary emotions often came fleetingly to, only before something else stepped on them—her conscious, perhaps, or whatever took its place—and shoved the emotion back into hiding.

Novikov spoke as the assets, and their guards, filed through the door. “The two have been reunited. Arachnid, this is the Winter Soldier. Soldier, Arachnid.” Novikov spared but a beat, which Arachnid took to study the Winter Soldier now that she had placed his name. Still standing near the left entrance of the room, she looked to her right where he stood. He watched her peripherally. The name carried a flash of memory; a line of teenagers next to a red, padded mat. A clipped voice, a woman’s, echoed the name.

Novikov continued, “The future is coming. We must prepare.” Ever ominous, that was all the instruction the pair received before they filed in. Yes, just a second later, the right-end doors swung open, and a group of agents rushed in.

If possible, both Assets tensed up even harder, and the agents weren’t coming slowly. Arachnid’s legs moved to the ready, right foot back to power her fist. She’d guess the targets were heavily trained; women and men alike who had enough definition to show through their fighting-fit clothing, and hair either chopped off or braided back. Arachnid sized them up instinctively—she saw knives on the front-most of the group; a Soviet man with a crew cut and the only woman, who wore three dark braids folded into one down her back. Pick off the weak links; Arachnid would aim for the back of the group, a bulky grunt, and a thin and hairless man who was more aptly described as a boy.

The grunt and leading man cornered the Soldier, and the other two raced at the 20-something, ratty little red-head. The woman got there first, slipping the knife off her hip and swiping at Arachnid. She dodged by bending back, letting the woman swipe at air before she grabbed her wrist and turned the knife around at her. It would’ve been up to a test of strength whether the knife pierced through the woman’s eye or not, but that scrawny little boy jumped in.

He punched Arachnid in the gut. She managed not to stumble as she absorbed it, but accidentally loosened her grip on the woman’s knife enough to lose it. But Arachnid could smell defects, she bet on them. This boy, for example, ducked his chin as he gutted her. So when he did, while she felt her twice-broken rib hanging on for dear life, she wrapped her forearm around the back of his neck, folding him as she kneed him in the crotch. This worked like a ripple effect, he knocked his forehead on her thigh while it drove into his weak spot.

An inexperienced thing like him, Arachnid thought, would stay down while she finished the woman. While the two women circled each other in search of an opening, the Soldier took the men on with stride. To the left of Arachnid, he had already taken down the grunt: she’d heard the slam on the concrete as he’d flipped him, with his metal arm, to the ground face-down. The grunt was a pile on the floor when she saw the scene over her opponent's shoulder. With only the leaders left, the Assets striked.

Arachnid let the Soldier pounce first. That way, the woman’s shoulders couldn’t help but jump as the fight broke out, the two men exchanging their hardest blows. The Soldier stole his opponent's knife, and the blade caught a whistle as it swiped through the air. It made contact with the other man’s chest—they heard flesh tearing like sticky paper—and that was when Arachnid feigned attack.

When Arachnid jolted forward, the woman jumped, jabbing her knived hand out. Arachnid moved in diagonal paces at her, just a quick one and two, and took a strike. She could see the woman’s armor through her vest, just a thick layer of padding, but Arachnid knew the weak points. First, she punched her in the face, a nice square punch to the nose. The woman wasn’t expecting a face shot, and a nose break hurts in a way that seems to stop the lungs for a moment. While her opponent took it in stride, not letting her eyes close even as she groaned and brought a hand to it, Arachnid swiped the knife.

But the woman recovered faster than Arachnid anticipated. As soon as Arachnid moved in to follow up, the woman shot her leg out in a powerful kick, catching Arachnid square in the stomach. The impact sent Arachnid stumbling back, gasping as her twice-broken rib throbbed painfully.

She barely had a moment to recover before the woman was on her again, lunging forward with surprising speed. Arachnid ducked the first strike but wasn’t fast enough to avoid the second as the woman’s fist connected with her jaw, snapping her head to the side. Arachnid tasted blood.

Instinctively, Arachnid raised her arm to block the next hit, but the woman wasn’t done. She slammed her forearm down on Arachnid’s wrist, numbing her arm, and followed with a brutal knee to Arachnid’s ribs. Arachnid doubled over, wheezing as pain lanced through her side, and for a moment, the room spun. She felt the woman grab her hair, yanking her back upright, and in that instant, she knew she was in trouble.

Arachnid bundled all of her strength, and kept fighting. She twisted her body, ignoring the sharp pain in her ribs, and grabbed the woman’s wrist. With a fierce grunt, she yanked the arm forward and twisted hard, sending the knife clattering to the floor. The woman didn’t let go, though; instead, she pulled Arachnid into a headlock, trapping her arms as she tried to choke her out.

Arachnid’s vision blurred at the edges as the woman squeezed tighter, but Arachnid was resourceful. Using the last bit of strength she had, she drove her elbow into the woman’s side repeatedly, finally managing to catch her in the ribs. The woman grunted in pain and her grip loosened just enough for Arachnid to slip free.

Both women staggered back, breathing heavily. Arachnid’s heart pounded in her ears, her muscles burning from the exertion. The woman’s nose was a mess of blood, but she looked as determined as ever, her eyes glinting with hatred.

Arachnid knew she had to end this quickly.

This time, when the woman lunged, Arachnid was ready. She sidestepped, and as the woman overcommitted to the attack, Arachnid slammed her knee into the back of her leg, buckling her to the ground. Before the woman could react, Arachnid was on top of her, driving the knife into her shoulder.

The woman screamed, but it wasn’t over yet. With one last burst of adrenaline, the woman shoved Arachnid off, sending her sprawling onto her back. Both women scrambled to their feet, and Arachnid barely dodged another knife swipe as the woman charged again.

Arachnid grit her teeth. She had to think fast. Spotting the earlier injury to the woman’s forearm, she decided to exploit it. As the woman came in for another strike, Arachnid feigned a high block but dropped low at the last second, grabbing the woman’s wounded arm and twisting hard. The woman cried out, her grip weakening.

Taking her chance, Arachnid slammed her palm into the woman’s chest, knocking her back. As the woman staggered, Arachnid moved in for the kill. With a quick, calculated motion, she stabbed the knife into the woman’s abdomen, just deep enough to drop her. The woman gasped and crumpled to the ground.

Panting, Arachnid stood over her fallen opponent, blood dripping from her lip. Her body ached, her ribs screaming with every breath, but she’d won. She yanked the knife free, the sound of the blade slicing through flesh sending a shiver through her.

She glanced at the Winter Soldier, whose knife clinked to the floor over his target's body. He finally met her gaze, both of them bruised and bloodied but victorious.

The fight was over, and it had cost her too much energy. Her legs trembled with her weight.

They looked to the booth. Novikov stood like a pharaoh over them, hands clasped. He looked annoyed, like he’d been expecting their failure. “Okay. Again.”

Novikov sent three more teams in before he returned them to their cells. Three times, those metal doors swung open. And though the rest were less skilled than that first group, Arachnid did not have that same endless fuel that the Soldier seemed to run on. By the last group, her chin was split and bleeding down her neck, and she was pinned to the cold concrete.

A man held her down by knees digging into her wrists. He looked Italian, tanned olive skin and dark hair. And in that moment, he looked like the grim reaper. His hands were on her neck, squeezing her vision away. Because she’d stolen his knife and he’d knocked it out of her hands, by then it lay discarded on the ground. She had nothing to grab. His bones dug into her pulse.

Tears pricked her eyes. That man’s face—he looked so sure looming over her, his lip scrunched with the concentration it took to take a life—was shrouded in a dark static. Arachnid knew death when she felt it.

She closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath. In one final wave of energy, she slipped a hand out from under his knee, almost dislocating it in the process. Thankfully, he was so focused on suffocating her that he hadn’t noticed immediately. By the time he did, Arachnid was bringing it up to take a cross grip on his opposite hand around her neck, pulling her foot up and setting it next to his, effectively trapping his ankle beneath her leg, and pushing her hips up to buck him off.

Arachnid took sputtering, gasping breaths while she crawled on top of the Italian and wrung her hands around his neck. This time, it has her face curling up with concentration. She watched his blood pool, lighting his face up a bright red that even seemed to spread to those dark bulging eyes of his. Spit pooled in his mouth and dripped out of the corners of his lips. The horror was transfixing.

She hadn’t noticed the clutter happening around her until a knife clattered to the ground next to her knees. Not taking her hands off the nearly-dead man, Arachnid looked up to find the metal-armed Soldier standing beside her staring. He pointed with his chin to the knife he’d dropped for her.

She was in such a fight-or-flight state that she could just stare up at him while the target choked beneath her.

When she didn’t take the hint, the Soldier took it into his own hands. Without looking at Arachnid, he bent down, picked the knife up off the concrete, then dragged the blade across the target’s neck.

Arachnid took a slow breath. Through the straight line across his neck, she watched the Italian’s blood run like a waterfall down his black shirt, seeping into the fabric. Arachnid’s hands jumped away from his neck when it began to spill onto her wrists, and pool next to her knees.

Novikov’s voice came onto the intercom; “There we go.” He pointed to Arachnid’s accompanying guard at the door, then to the one who’d came in with the Soldier. “Take them back to their cell.”

The guards crossed the room to the Assets in the center of the room. Arachnid got to her feet slowly. They left the knife with the body on the ground, and walked to her cell.

Arachnid lived a life of constant deja-vu. The Soldier, whoever he was, was covered in it. He smelled like frost, gun powder, and blood. Walking slow and steady through the cold halls of the bunker next to him, smelling his war smell, made her feel young and weak.

It was not long before they reached her cell. There were more cells in the building, Arachnid had seen a corridor of them by the Medical Bay. She didn’t know why they shoved them in there together and locked the heavy door behind them. Arachnid had the passing thought that this was how they exterminated her. This is exactly how they’d do it, lock her in there with another animal and wait for his knock when he finished the job.

It’d work. She knew he was stronger than her, taller and obviously they'd done something to him. He wasn't normal. She knew he predated her. He’d probably had a bad week and they’d created her for a replacement, until he got his head back in the game. Evidently, he’d caught up.

The door thudded shut. Arachnid made way to her mattress, but found that he moved in the same direction. He was confused as she beat him there, and lowered herself to sit at the edge of it — the dingy mattress that had once been his. She didn’t take her boots off, per usual, just pulled her shirt up to wipe the blood off of her chin.

The Soldier gathered his bearings as she cleaned herself up. She dug in her mouth with her fingers, found no cracked teeth, then licked her lips. He was wondering why he’d gotten such a strong instinct to sit at that bed. He was wondering who this girl was, this tough and grimy girl, and why she seemed so familiar yet so changed. He felt a string between them. The whole cell seemed familiar. Familiarity made his stomach turn. He found no answers, though this was typical, so decided after assessing the situation that it was best to simply sit with his back against the wall that faced the door.

They’d wiped him after he’d gotten here, so all the earliest thing he could remember was the come-down after the jolts of electricity. He didn’t know where he’d come from, where she’d come from or how long she’d been here. He’d woken up in the chair, then they’d tossed him in the ring with the animals and he’d had to kill every one of them. That was it.

He guessed that she hadn’t had the same fate, because she seemed much more comfortable, and almost territorial within this space. She was jumpy, but not out of place. If anything, he felt like the one who wasn't supposed to be there.

Arachnid, as she found, wasn’t too bad off. The scrape across her chin wasn’t deep, and the woman’s punch had hurt her molars but hadn’t cracked anything. Her scalp wasn’t bleeding, but little strands of hair fell off between her fingers as she raked them through. Her neck might bruise, but the Italian hadn’t scraped up her skin, as far as she could tell.

The Soldier seemed completely unphased by any harm done upon him. A tiny scrape cut his cheek where he might’ve been punched, but he didn’t even seem to notice it. Arachnid felt increasingly wary in his presence. They were both itching to figure each other out. Novikov had said they’d worked together once. That didn’t explain the ball in her stomach. If she didn't know better, she'd say she felt sad.

“Why did you do that?”

“Do what?” As he replied, he was caught off guard by the faint hostility in her voice. She didn’t know where it came from.

“With the knife.”

“Oh.” He sounded like he’d already forgotten it’d happened. He was silent for a minute, eyebrows pinched as if filtering through his mind, before continuing, “It was… you were being inefficient.”

“Inefficient? How?”

He met her eyes. They were very light-colored, almost gray. He had a faint, dark stubble across his lower face. His chin was dimpled. And he had the weirdest look on his face, as if her questions were unheard of. As if he hadn’t considered the meaning behind his actions.

“You just wanted to hurt him. It was taking too long.”

The words seemed to seep deep into some raw part of Arachnid. She had assumed strangling the target was the only way at the moment, but after she’d gained the leverage of flipping him below her, she supposed, in hindsight, that she could’ve reached across the floor for the knife. If she had really wanted.

Maybe she’d wanted to hurt him. That was a new idea. Hurting people wasn’t like that. She did it because it ended the fight. Didn't she?

Already, the man with the metal arm made Arachnid feel terribly vulnerable.

She pulled her knees up onto the thin mattress and against her chest.

The Soldier watched her sink into herself. Everything about the girl was sullen; her nose was straight, defined at the tip, with deep-set eyes and thin, arched brows. Those dark eyes wore heavy, embedded bags under them. Her hair was dark red, cut jagged around her face, as if someone had grabbed her hair in their fist and swiped through it with a knife. The color matched the drying blood that she'd missed on her chin.

He felt this instinct, like his body was screaming at him. There was something he needed to do. “Do you know me?” He asked.

Arachnid met his eyes again. One eye, the other, she searched them. She knew what she was asking, what he wanted, because it was the same want she could feel pumping her heart. They longed to be recognized. She wanted him to tell her about herself, and he wanted the same from her.

If she could find something for him, maybe he could find her. She tried to pull a memory, like tangled thread, down to her conscience. Her eyes dragged to the corner of the room. There, she saw it, she could see an outline of a smaller version of herself standing in it. That’s it. That was something. She could see him on her mattress.

Arachnid pieced it together; “We... shared this cell. Once.”

He nodded, that sounded right. They were stumbling fools, the blind leading the blind, trying to piece together shattered glass. Pretending they knew what was right. But he could see it too. He followed her eyes to the corner of the room, where he’d instinctively imagined she’d go when they’d entered the cell. “Think it was mine first.” The Russian language felt stiff and unforgiving on his tongue.

Arachnid hadn’t thought of that. She chose to trust it, and tried to swallow the knowledge. Let me keep this, she thought.

They traded little snippets to each other until dinner came.

“Your Russian is bad.” She told him.

“I know.” He answered. “Arachnid, it doesn’t sound right.” He sounded out the long Russian word.

“You think I had a different name?”

“I do not know. Maybe.”

“You don't look old.”

“But I must be.”

Notes:

WE ARE SO BACK! Quick note: the word for 'Arachnid' in Russian is "паукообразный" which looks a lot harder to say than it is. Phonetically, it's just pow-koh-braz-nee, which isn't crazy, but it doesn't roll off the tongue the same way as Arachnid.

ALSO: I redownloaded Tumblr! My user is the same as on Ao3 (@ fadeintoyou19). if anyone wants to follow me on there, I think I'll start posting more about this ff on there!

Chapter 19: Hath no Fury

Summary:

I've killed before and I'll kill again
Take the noose off, wrap it tight around my hand
They say heaven hath no fury like a woman scorned
And baby, Hell don't scare me, I've been times before

- Family Tree, Ethel Cain

Novikov spent three months, from the end of 2012 through the start of 2013, testing the Assets. He threw everything he had at them, each order wilder than the last.
June, 2013

The last test started early, like they always did. They took the Assets somewhere abstractly new, a hallway on the opposite side of the bunker from the isolation cells where they kept Arachnid. In this westside corridor were the interrogation rooms.

The room they put them in was bare, standard. A metal table, with a metal chair behind it, a harsh light hanging from the ceiling, and a double-sided mirror on the north wall through which Novikov would watch.

They locked Arachnid in first, shutting her in as they spoke with the Soldier outside.

The door clanged shut behind her, leaving her alone with the steel and shadows. Arachnid knew better than to look toward the mirror, but she could feel Novikov’s gaze anyway, ever-present and ever-disappointed. The silence was vibrating.

Arachnid prepared herself. She took steady breaths, nails already in her palms, digging in. She didn’t have any instructions yet. This was always the worst part.

The door opened after a couple minutes, and the Soldier entered alone. He sat, unbound with his head down, in the chair behind the table, eyes flicking up to hers for a split-second. She could tell they’d given him a mission. After three months, she knew what that look was. Vacant, twitchy eyes, so different from the stormy man she knew inside their cell.

They had been keeping each other company, just straying from the precipice of insanity, for months now. They talked, usually, only over short meals. Zinaida had learned, tenderly, not to fear that look on his face.

But this was different. There was something different in him.

After his stride, the door thudded shut, leaving them alone in the small, cold room. The rotating camera in the corner of the room blinked red, and Novikov’s voice came through.

“The Soldier knows where Natalia is, Romanova. He knows everything about her. He can tell you.”

The air left the room in one foul swoop. Everything changed inside of her.

"What?" She couldn’t help the word as it left her mouth.

Her stomach dropped to her throat with the noise, her breath catching and swirling and then dully dying. It was as if a siren, long-muted, had suddenly switched back on. It was blaring, bright red and angry. Suddenly, she couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t remember her manners, it was just an extended voice in her head: Natalia, Natalia, Natalia, Natalia. Natalia. Natalia?

The Soldier watched her, dread pooling in his gut. He watched her pupils dilate, saw the flicker of recognition. Memory was an evil thing, and now, it seemed to claw its way out of her, content to leave nothing left.

Zinaida didn’t know what it meant, not exactly, but the name filled her with a violent urgency. Her vision was blurring, everything was screaming and trembling. Her gaze shifted, locking on the mirror in front of them—the mirror to which the Soldier’s back was turned.

She looked past the glass, not noticing her reflection, but staring right into the eyes she knew were watching. There would be no answer, she didn’t need one. She knew her mission.

Her eyes transformed, slowly moving down to the Soldier. They narrowed, dark and shaky, drilling into him.

“What do you know?” Her voice was quiet, she forced it still.

He didn’t say a word, only the faint bob of his Adam’s apple betrayed him.

Zinaida leaned forward, closing the distance between them. She kept her chin high, her stare unyielding. “Soldier, report.”

He blinked twice, eyes widening just slightly.

Good. A command still triggered something in him, a reflex running through his nerves. She pressed harder, voice like steel. He didn’t flinch, until her hand escaped her, and smacked him across the cheek. “Now.” The shake in her voice could've been mistaken for anger, but it was all fear.

Her slap turned his cheek, he stilled completely as the weight sunk in. His lips parted briefly, a shaky breath, as he debated it. She could almost see him reminding himself she wasn’t his handler, she wasn’t Novikov. He couldn't tell her anything, orders were orders. A second passed, and his mouth snapped shut, shoulders stiffening.

Fine. That was too easy, anyway.

She dropped her shoulders and sank on her knees to the cold, concrete floor. Level with him now, she softened her gaze.

“Hey, forgive me. You have to understand, I need to know,” she murmured. “I need to know. Please.”

Please work, please fucking work. You better fucking tell me, she thought. His jaw tightened, eyes shifting to the blank table.

She pushed him further, “Please. Just tell me something. Anything.”

Despite how hard his heart pounded, he kept his gaze trained downwards.

Zinaida hesitated, weighing her next move. She remembered all the times he’d tripped over his Russian, missing a vowel or knocking over a consonant, and tried something new.

She gathered her English, practicing the pronunciation mentally, before meeting his eyes with the softest look she could manage, and speaking; “Please, look at me.” She softened her voice, stilled her accent, stripping it down to its barest tones.

He blinked, startled, and finally met her eyes.

Once he was looking at her, he couldn’t look away. She let silence settle around them, letting it stretch and twist in the room, crawling up the walls. The silence was the worst part—heavy and oppressive. If it hurt her, it would hurt him. She knew it.

To his credit, he sat in the silence until it buzzed in their ears. Until she thought she might lose it, that she might tug him in and bash her own skull into his. But then, finally, his eyes softened. He let out an oppressed breath, like he’d been holding it the whole time. “She’s alive,” he whispered.

Arachnid grabbed onto his words like a lifeboat. “Who is she?”

He swallowed hard, looking almost pained. Like a cat had got his tongue, pulled it out. Like he couldn’t say more even if he wanted. Zinaida could physically feel that anger, that fear, that… raw illness—her stomach, her heart, it all seemed tied up together, straining. Her mind tried desperately to talk her off the ledge; stay soft, stay soft. Catch him with honey.

Natalia.

Slowly, she steadied herself, flat palm curling into a fist against the table. Then, she uncurled it, slipped her outstretched fingers underneath the table, finding his hand gripping his knee. Feeling like an arrow pulled back until it shook, she wrapped her fingers over his own.

Zinaida squeezed his cold, flesh hand. The Soldier didn’t move, didn’t squeeze back. His gaze darted between their joined fingers, and a faint tremor moved through him. She could see it—the way he fought, two beasts wrestling each other. He very nearly shut himself down.

Only nearly. He didn’t pull away.

Zinaida lunged for the softness in his eyes, the pang of remorse on his face. She leaned in, repeated even softer, “Who is she?”

His jaw tightened, his eyes flickering with a storm of conflicting emotions. There was something painful in his stare, a kind of fractured memory that he couldn’t seem to catch hold of. He shifted his gaze back to her face, studying her as if searching for something familiar—something safe.

“Natalia,” he said, finally. He looked at the door, frantically expecting it to burst with bullets, then back to her. “She.. she’s your sister. They say she’s your sister.”

A pang of recognition echoed in her chest, so visceral it almost felt like pain. Natalia. The name again. Her pulse quickened, and she held tighter to his hand, grounding herself. Sister. сестричка.

Arachnid was hit with a vivid memory. It knocked the wind out of her chest and pulled her in;

Wrapped around Natalia, holding her like she was fire and water. She nuzzled her face into the girl’s faded blue hair. She smelled like dirt and life and salty tears. Her sister shook with sobs. Tiny bed creaking under their weight.

As fast as it came, Arachnid surfaced back into reality. She caught her breath, rough as it was, and blinked a fresh, hot set of tears back. That was her sister. Yes, it could be nobody else. Natalia. I lost her.

She tried to hold on to the memory, but it frayed at the edges, and dissipated into the air. A bed, had it been? It was like trying to remember a dream. Her conscience fought against it, and soon enough she could only picture glimpses of the memory.

Arachnid’s chest shook. They were watching everything between them. They wouldn’t let her remember. Oh God, she had to find her sister.

She stirred into action, bolted up from her seat, dropped his hands and stood to her full height. She slammed her palms flat against the metal table. She brought her eyes up to the mirror.

“Where is she?”

She saw her reflection, like a stranger, in the mirror. Her hair like blood, her shoulders sharp and her arms long, lanky and muscled. This girl’s—nearly a woman now—cheeks blushed red with vibrant fury, her eyes dark and her sharp brows like a blade over them. Arachnid had nearly forgotten she had a reflection at all.

She couldn’t stand the silence. The wariness in the air. The Soldier, she could feel, was still as a tree in his seat, staring anywhere but at her. They were all waiting to see what she’d do.

“What did you do to me?!” Arachnid shouted, feeling like she’d been shaken out of some awful, century-long coma. Some kind of spell. But she was awake now, and finally, her breath was hot and angry huffing from her lips.

How did she have a sister? Did they love each other? Did Natalia miss her? Did they share the same eyes? Did she know her own blood was stuck in an underground bunker?

Still, nobody spoke a word. She couldn’t take it. Arachnid flipped the table over, she grabbed the Soldier by the thick material of his leather vest, and pulled him up from the chair, “Say something!” She shook him by his shoulders, shouting in his face.

Novikov’s came through the security camera, “Subdue her, Soldier.”

The command settled over the Soldier. Beneath her gripping fingers, she felt his shoulders straighten, the muscles compacting as if he was wired for this. As her wide eyes stared into his, she saw it; relief. That was the worst part.

His hands, stiffly, came up and wrapped around hers where she dug into him. He tore her off of him like she was tape, like it was nothing.

He slipped his grip down to her wrists---his hands were so strong they felt like a bear trap---then flipped her around, holding her hands behind her back, and shoved her face-first against the cold, tiled wall of the interrogation cell.

Arachnid struggled against the Soldier’s weight, pressing her into the wall, twisting her neck and her hands, trying to get out of it, “You — Stop it!”

The Soldier merely avoided her escape, holding on tight to her wrists as if riding a bull. He didn’t say a word, pushing her harder against the tile. His ability to overpower her was unsettling.

She felt like vermin they’d have to scrape off the wall. Her cheek was flat against the tile, arms behind her back and crushed beneath his grip. Her chest heaved. The door was right beside them on the wall. Arachnid had known she’d failed when she’d seen that look in his eyes, but this was worse than failure. She felt weak.

“What we did to you, Arachnid, was make use of trash. We recycled, we gave you purpose. If I were as weak as you, I might practice some gratitude.” Novikov’s voice crackled through the microphone, always reading her like a book. 

Arachnid went limp against the tile.

The door next to her cracked open, and their three guards filed in. “Take them back to their cell.” Novikov ordered.

Notes:

In this chapter, Zinaida is manipulative and violent and abusive, because it's the only way she knows to get what she needs. And she needs her sister, she needs her awfully. This anger, anguish, and guilt that she's overwhelmed by is exactly what Novikov wanted. In this way, she is as much of a helpless pawn that Bucky is in this game. Soooo, basically, I will be accepting no criticisms over her actions at this time!

Chapter 20: Compartmentalization

Summary:

"It's called compartmentalization. Nobody spills the secrets, because nobody knows them all."

- Nick Fury to Steve Rogers in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Notes:

GUYS ITS HAPPENINGGGG! I do actually really like this chapter, but if you don't know your marvel lore/the plot of CA:TWS... this is probably gonna be confusing. Actually, who knows? Maybe that's perfect, because it's told from Zinaida's perspective (mostly) and she has no idea what's happening either. Let me know if it gets too crazy, lmao

Late August, 2014

“Pierce speaking.”

Laszlo Novikov cleared his throat. At nearly 4 AM in Siberia, Laszlo had just downed his third spiked coffee. He looked down at the transfer paperwork from Alexander Pierce that had just arrived an hour ago. There were two documents, both with a dotted line at the bottom where his signature was expected.

“Mister Pierce, is it half past ten?” Is this a secure line?

“Uh, no, it’s about 3 o’clock. You must have the wrong number.”

Pierce hung up, presumably while he transferred to a secure line, perhaps swapped phones. Laszlo sighed—-that constant, dull headache seemed to pulse in his ears.

Finally, another call came through the old dial phone, and Laszlo punched the accept button.

Pierce’s voice came through first; “Hello?”

“Yes, hello. I have just received the requests, Mister Pierce. I must admit my confusion—”

“Ah. General Novikov, isn’t it? Yes, I’m glad we could speak. Things here are about to come to a head, I’m afraid. The Asset’s abilities are greatly needed.”

“And how is that?”

“Just an extermination, we’re hoping. An important one.”

“Very well, sir, but both of them cannot be necessary. The female is our own, you see.”

There was a moment of silence before Pierce’s scoff was heard on the other line, “You mean because she’s, what, Russian?” He said every word with a hint of disdain, “Not anymore, she’s not. She’s Hydra.”

“Yes, okay, but, well—” He kissed his teeth, and decided to bite the bullet. “To speak frankly, I don’t think it’s the best idea, sir.”

“Look, Novikov, I’m sure you can understand that I’ve got a lot to do. If there’s a good reason why the Asset can’t be transferred, don’t beat around the bush.”

“Yes, sir, that’s what I’m getting at---you see, recent reports place the girl as being erratic. A liability, I worry, especially concerning... any old, soft spots.”

“Okay?”

Jesus, was he going to have to spell it out? Could nobody connect dots anymore, or color between the lines? Novikov sometimes wondered if he was the only competent human on the planet. “Have you read Arachnid’s file? Are you familiar with her history?

“You mean Romanoff?”

“Yes, sir, exactly.”

“Okay, so that's what this is about? It's a small world, buddy, that’s why you people cooked up that god-awful chair, isn’t it?”

“The chair isn’t some sort of magic, Mister Pierce. It took decades, decades of intricately cutting all ties in the Soldier's memory, and even then, nothing is guaranteed. The American could always trigger a defection. Memory is a fickle thing, is that understandable?”

“Oh, Jesus. You guys unlocked mind control, isn’t that what you always say? So what, now suddenly, it doesn't work?"

“Of course, it does. It is a marvel of science, always has been. That’s not what I’m—and besides, I don’t see you people doing any better over there.”

“I —” The sound a door opening came through the other end. Novikov listened to Pierce's muffled voice, speaking tersely with some assistant. After a moment, the bristle of his hand over the phone stopped, and he spoke again, “Look, I don’t have time for this. Send the Soldier, at least. Worse comes to worst, I’ll send another transfer request for the girl, and this time you’ll sign it. Understood?”

Saszlo bit his tongue. Another migraine was budging in. “Okay. Yes, sir.”

---

Contrary to popular belief, the anger does not fade. In fact, it merely contorts, transforms into other creatures, whatever you can handle at the moment.

For the first six months after they teased Natalia’s existence, it consumed Arachnid. She didn’t speak, barely slept, and when she did it was all just filled with this blurry, half-fleshed monster of Natalia that her mind had conjured up.

It was a multi-headed viper; this storm that swallowed Arachnid. She felt confused, and helpless, scared, and angry — so angry.

Eventually, though, Arachnid had to face the music. Her brain, she believed, couldn’t handle the existence of anyone who might love her. It was dangerous, like poison, and Arachnid had no room for it. She didn’t let herself think about it. She stopped turning the name around in her head, or giving herself migraines trying to conjure memories.

Instead, she scarfed down whatever they gave her, slept whenever she could, and thought as little as possible. She tried to reenact the life that she had been living before she remembered anything. She continued living on air, sinking into the empty cracks.

And mostly, she could do it. She could push it all down. But it was the anger that she couldn’t get rid of. It was endless, expansive, and volatile. She imagined biting off the hands of the guards who slid their trays of food through the slit in the cell door. She imagined killing Novikov in thousands of awful ways. She even imagined killing this cloud of a sister, just to rid herself of the pain.

The only cure to helplessness is control. Arachnid exhibited these small feats of victory in any way she could; when they took her to the big sparring room alone, she killed her victims like some kind of demon. She was fast and cruel. She didn’t choke them anymore. Instead, she slammed their heads against concrete until their bones turned to mush. Or scratched their faces off. Or held them down and beat them to death.

She ignored the Soldier in every way she could. Though she couldn’t bring herself to kill him—to attempt, at least. She couldn’t beat him if she tried, this much felt blatantly obvious—starving him of attention worked better. He slept on the floor, always. They didn’t speak. If he ever tried, she just stared blankly at him until he accepted defeat.

Arachnid put everything she had, all of her strength and resistance, into compartmentalizing herself; it was how she survived. So she missed the signs, the subtle unraveling around her. But the Soldier, ever-attuned, sensed the smoke in the air.

For one, he couldn’t imagine ever going on such frequent, unimportant missions before—missions that blurred together in unfamiliar patterns. One day, he’d be standing watch over Novikov’s tense meetings with world leaders, the silent shadow at his side. The next, he’d be escorting Hydra operatives through hostile regions, a bodyguard with orders to intimidate. Each time, they recorded his vitals like clockwork, but he could feel cautious eyes watching for something else in him.

Back at the bunker, the changes were starker still. Rations had dwindled; meals were thinner, stretched, the taste of desperation in every bite. They’d resorted to simply pumping him with protein pills and fluids most of the time, which he’d sensed was a return to his past. There was that often-present smell of the cheapest vodka in Novikov’s breath, who had taken to loaning him and Arachnid out, summoning them for strange, off-book assignments like two pawns on a chessboard, stuck in a useless chase. Even with her tunnel vision, Arachnid had to notice the strain. Siberia felt more like a forgotten cog in the machine every day.

—

September, 2014

The Assets were sleeping when the door unlocked.

The Soldier was curled up on the floor, using his flesh arm as a pillow, and Arachnid on the mattress, facing the wall. The two slept lightly, so it took only the creak of the door and they jerked awake. It was Novikov himself who they met at the door.

They watched Novikov scrunched his nose in disgust at the smell and overall look of the cell, before he wiped it off his face. When he spoke, his voice was on edge. “Soldier, get up. You’re shipping off. Let us go, quickly.”

Arachnid sat up, “What about me?”

“Nothing about you.”

She got up, moving towards the scene where the Soldier lingered near the doorway. Novikov turned his back for a moment, grabbing the men standing guard at their cell, telling them to bring the Soldier to Cryo. That’s when the Soldier turned to face her. Even in the dark, she could see the nervousness in his eyes. He took her wrist, opened her hand, shoved something something rectangular in it, and closed her fingers.

She pulled her wrist out of his grip, and tried to inspect it, but he shook his head. They had a momentary, silent conversation. As if sensing his thoughts, she gave into an impulse, and hid the closed hand behind her back. In that moment, she forgot to be angry. He looked into her eyes, nodded very seriously, and then turned his back and left her alone in their cell.

The door slammed shut, locking her into the pitch black. Arachnid blinked hard, trying to adjust her eyes back to the absence of light. She breathed, in, out, and then climbed back onto the low mattress.

Arachnid opened her full palm, cautiously, and found a black rectangular object in it. She held it close to her face, blinked again, and recognized it. Everybody working in the bunker wore the thing clipped onto their pants. The Soldier, the weird, stupid fucking Soldier, had left her a pager.

A flood of emotions came quick and unwanted at the sight of it. Something indignant, and yet a lump formed in her throat. She bit her cheek, laid back down, and discarded the pager by shoving it under the mattress.

---

September 9th, 2014

Arachnid was alone for about a week and a half—or so she guessed, but time moved sporadically in the bunker—before a guard barged into the cell in the early morning, and dragged her by the arm out of it. After pretending it didn’t exist for a week, Arachnid found herself grabbing the pager and tucking it into her underwear’s waistband when she heard the door open.

They led her through winding hallways to the mission prep room, where Novikov stood waiting, leaning against the edge of a project table, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked older than ever before — dark bags under his eyes mirrored her own.

He spoke while the technicians filled a duffel bag with Arachnid’s things—her tactical suit, Makarov pistol, and set of daggers among them. “You’re joining the Soldier. You’ll change and prep immediately after touching down at the US base. Our fate is at stake, Arachnid. I assume you know better than to disappoint.”

Arachnid felt the anger stir in her stomach like gears turning. She sunk her nails into her palms and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He looked to her normal accompanying guards, “To the van, remember the procedure.” He told them.

They wasted no time, two guards flanking her, gripping her arms firmly as they marched her to the far exit. They led her all the way out of the facility—excitement and nerves piled up in her throat, she could smell the air the closer they got — all the way up the elevator.

She was ready for them to turn back around and laugh, or knock her out, or kill her, but instead the massive steel doors of the bunker slid open, revealing a landscape blanketed in thin, pale snow. Arachnid stopped, stunned by the open world outside—the wide, empty expanse of rock and sky, the bracing bite of fresh air. It was almost sickening, after so long spent between concrete.

A black van waited on the snowy mountain path, its dark windows obscuring the interior. Two men stood by the vehicle, watching her. She thought briefly about running—taking off down the mountain, feeling the harsh wind pull her hair back, feeling the freeze under her feet — but her guards were already securing her arms roughly behind her back, tying them tight. They pushed her to the van, ducked her head and shoved her in the backseat. She looked over her shoulder, catching one last glimpse of the snow.

One of her drivers stashed her duffel bag in the front seat, and took the passenger side. The guards secured her feet, tying them together, then shut the door. Black paper covered the backseat windows, sealing her off from the outside world. She took a breath, tried to save the smell of freedom in her nose.

Arachnid spent days in the backseat of the van, without food or peace of mind. She tried to count the nights through the tinted windows, and got to three sun-downs. Her drivers took every back-route and swerved at any sign of police. They were overly-cautious. Reports from headquarters came nearly every hour, though they were encoded and hard to understand through the ancient car radio.

On the third night, Arachnid still avoided sleep. Though the men were busy enough, chatting and focusing on the instructed route they were to take, she noticed their leering stare at her when the conversation slowed. Instead, she looked at her lap and listened intently to their conversation to stay awake.

The hot-wired radio flared with another breaking report from the U.S. The men were sick of the sound, of the reports they couldn’t understand.

The blonde man with the buzz-cut in the passenger seat groaned, turning down the radio to the lowest volume, though they kept it on per protocol. “Fucking Americans.” He grumbled.

Arachnid strained to listen to the radio report. It was in English, which made it even harder to make out. “...Helicarrier.. invading… 2504.. Captai–…”

The driver responded, a darker haired man with a thick beard, "Yep, and I'll say it again; it’s Novikov, man. You should’ve seen our branch before he took over.”

“Man, would you watch your mouth?” The blonde widened his eyes, jerking at the radio as if it was a camera.

“Oh, like he’s watching us? Yeah, right. Look, you might not remember ‘cause you were still shittin’ your diapers, but Karpov ran this place like a military base. And it worked. Then Novikov comes on in ‘99, spouts his science-y bullshit, and brings the bitch in.” The older, bearded man cocked his head in Arachnid’s direction.

The blonde snorted, sighing and leaning back in his seat. “Whatever. Karpov fucked up and got the boot. Shit happens.”

“Oh, don’t get me started! You don’t know the first—” From behind them, the men were interrupted by the whine of a distant siren nearing them.

“Hey, what is that?”

“Oh, fuck.” Anxiety settled over the car. Arachnid sat up straight and strained to look out of the car’s rear. Though it was awkward all tied up, she managed to spot a line of authorities who’d just turned the corner—Russian police first, then military vehicles following.

The blonde turned up their radio. Shouting came from every line, they made out one clear strain “---three. I repeat, this is a code thirty-three. Abandon base, I repeat, abandon base. 11-78, 10-12, 10-29h—” They repeated police codes, all of them meaning one clear thing; urgent danger. Something bad was happening, and it was happening now.

The bearded man’s cell rang, a woman's name plastered across the small screen. The police, who were speeding now to catch up with the van, had turned their lights on, flooding the tinted van with red and blue. They had them.

Arachnid’s escorts panicked. They cursed, flailed around, trying to shove various items underneath their seats.

Raw instinct beat heavy in her chest, like a drum. Arachnid took a shaky breath, her body jostling in the van as they sped and swerved down the road. She thought of the stars, of how the cold night air might taste in her lungs. Survival was primal; her body made the choice.

She lunged forward, thrusting herself into the front seat through the gap between the men. She reached for the gun she’d spotted earlier on the bearded man’s belt. It was a struggle—hands bound, fingers fumbling—but her aim didn’t need to be perfect. One bullet hit his neck, another his head.

The driver yelled, glancing between her and his slumped partner, his hands faltering on the wheel. The van swerved wildly, tires screeching as they cut across the road. Police lights flashed in the distance, closing in, but Arachnid barely noticed. She moved in a frenzy, straddling the driver and pressing the gun to his forehead. He shoved her, sending her back into the wheel with a loud, piercing honk, but she fired again, and again, until he went limp beneath her.

She didn’t stop to think. With a shaking hand, she dropped the gun and grabbed her duffel bag from the floor. Her left hand found the door handle; it took a few tries, her movements jerky, until it swung open. Without hesitation, she threw herself out of the moving van.

Arachnid hit the ground hard, skidding along the asphalt, skin tearing as she rolled to a stop. Dizzy and scraped raw, she pushed herself up. The road spun and tried to pull her back down. She stumbled, then steadied, the taste of adrenaline on her tongue. The night as her cover, she tightened her hold on the duffel, and darted across to the other side of the road, sprinting and sprinting along the pavement until she couldn’t hear the sirens.

Notes:

In my mind, Bucky is sopping wet and dragging his dislocated arm away from the river (and Steve's very messed up face) at the same time as Zinaida is pumping two men with lead and then promptly diving out of a moving car, and that pretty much sums them up.

Chapter 21: Bootstraps

Notes:

Updates might be a bit slow because school is kicking my ass, sorry people. Blame the education system, I guess. :)

Arachnid walked the side of the road until she found a giant neon sign flashing gas prices. She must’ve looked like a ghost on the side of the road—clothes torn to shreds at her side, her palms scratched up, wrists blistered and blood sprayed on her face—as she stood awkwardly near the sign.

The lit-up gas station was relatively alive, a few cars lined with people pumping gas. Arachnid slid the strap of her duffle bag onto her shoulder, walked past the pumps, and entered the convenience store.

In her head, she made an outline of her next steps; scout for victims, locate security, find a way to camouflage, and get out of whatever country she was in—probably Belarus, maybe Ukraine. If she just walked up to the gas pumps and stole a car, the cops, who were already close, would catch the license and tail her.

The convenience store was small and cluttered. There was one camera behind the register, but it looked either broken or turned off, and one man working the register. Hidden partially behind the stacks of Marlboro cigarettes and gum, he had his hat pulled over his eyes as if dozed off.

The bathroom, she noticed, was full, because there was a woman waiting in a line outside of it. That could work, she thought, distantly. Her head was buzzing, each thought had to fight through a stream of noise. Arachnid, who didn’t fully even understand the concept of this store she was in, decided to just roam the isles, like a man near her was doing.

She pocketed the smallest necessities; a miniature bottle of water, packet of dried fish (‘Balichok’), a roll of gauze, and a mini-bar Vodka to clean her cuts with. Really, though, Arachnid was watching the window, watching the gas pumps.

When she felt she had enough supplies tucked away, Arachnid slowed by the drink aisle next to the bathroom. She feigned interest in the fridge full of booze, until finally the bathroom door swung open and a woman walked out. As the Polish-looking woman who had been waiting in line traded places for the stall, Arachnid walked by, swiping car keys off the woman’s coat pocket.

She left the store, squeezing her elbows to her side to keep her stolen items in place. It was like some kind of hyper-realistic dream, with the adrenaline yet to crash. With a look back to the store—nobody was watching her yet—she fished the keys from her pocket, clicked them, and watched a tan Lada Niva light up.

Driving was a bit of a learning curve. Arachnid had a residual, mysterious knowledge of the basic workings of the car, but still her foot—sore, numb—was like lead on the pedal. After raring off from the gas station, she jerked the car down the road, following the gravel, hoping a new opportunity passed her by.

The freedom, the room to move, was absolutely overwhelming. Arachnid could only think in simple, first and second steps, before her lungs began to gasp. Get out of the country, she told herself, so began following the highways straight away from the direction she’d come, avoiding turns or back-roads. Then, refuel, so she shoved dried Balichok down her throat and downed the mini-water. The food made her stomach turn, and she ignored it. Foot on the pedal, hands on the wheel.

Arachnid drove for about four hours, far enough that she began to see signs directing her to the Poland-Belarus border. The relief of a task nearly completed was enough to let the exhaustion slip past her shell-shocked wall of determination. It came like a wave, suddenly she could feel her wrists, sore from grasping the wheel, her stomach turning, and the sleep pulling at her eyelids. This was all just added on to the giant skidding scrape across her side, and the blisters in her boots, but thinking about those was too much to bear.

Instead, she pulled her eyes open and watched the road. It was a sign for a roadside hotel off the interstate that finally persuaded Arachnid to take a detour.

Reluctantly, she pulled into the lot of a stubby hotel with two floors of identically bland rooms, and a half-fallen sign.

Then she sat in the parked car, keys in hand, head resting on the wheel, letting the cold seep in through the windows for a moment. She breathed in and out, watching it fog the dark wheel, then committed. She searched the stolen Lada Niva until she uncovered a wadded roll of cash hidden in the glove department, held together by a rubber band. She counted about 9,640 rubles, which felt like a lottery.

Arachnid waited next to the empty front desk of the small lobby until an elderly woman entered with a steaming cup of coffee and sat in the reception chair. She looked up at Arachnid expectantly.

“How much for a room?”

“720 per night, extra for accommodations.” The lady responded, sipping from her paper cup.

“Are showers included?”

The woman glanced at the wad of cash Arachnid pulled from. “No. Ten extra.”

Arachnid nodded, counted 730 rubles, and dropped them on the desk. In return, she got a key and a room number, and that was that.

Arachnid opened the door to room 362 and was hit with a rush of stale, cold air and the faint smell of sanitizing products. There was a twin bed stationed in the center of the right wall, and a bathroom in the corner of the opposite one. The room had no windows, a detail Arachnid found comforting. On the wooden bedside table sat a hooked phone.

Arachnid sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled her duffel bag into her lap, rifled around in it until she found her Makarov and placed it on the bedside table next to the lamp. She hid the bag in the closet, hidden behind linens. Then she sat back on the bed.

Arachnid sighed. She cleared her throat. She looked down at her hands to find them shaking. she turned her palms flat up, found them scabbed and streaked with dirt. Unable to fathom the idea of sleeping, especially on the high bed that felt as if it might swallow her whole, Arachnid decided to take a shower.

In the bathroom, which was so tiny it barely had room for more than the shower, she peeled off her dark, dirty clothes. Hating the feeling of her bare skin under the lights, she crossed her arms over her chest and held herself. She found her reflection in the glass.

She couldn’t remember ever seeing her bare body before. She wore her life in the filth covering her body. Her crimson hair, matted and tangled, a mess. A small littering of blood, like paint flecks, sprinkled across her chin—it was not her own. When she lifted her hair up; a round scar, from a bullet straight through the right shoulder. She could see her ribs, her collarbones, her spine. When she turned, there was the road in a nasty, skidding gash across her left side. Peeled skin from her thigh to ribs.

She turned away from the mirror feeling see-through.

Arachnid couldn’t remember ever doing this before, is what she was thinking as she pulled the shower curtain back and stepped in. The water came freezing when she turned it on, and she jumped back. She could feel a memory, like an evil, omniscient presence, lurching behind the cold water. She turned the handle farthest to the red line. Waiting for the water to turn hot, Arachnid turned her back to the cold water.

The memory pulled her in, and she was stuck in it. She had been wrong. Of course Hydra had showered her. Yes, once every couple of months, usually after the chair, the first thing they’d do is take her to the showers and hose her down.

The men would tear her clothes off. No. She tried to pull herself out of it, like resisting a waterboarding, but memory’s hands held her under. They’d pull her clothes off like peeling skin, then she’d stand shivering on the tiles, holding herself together with her hands. Her whole body would shake, it was so cold. They’d grip her by the shoulder, turn her so she was facing the wall, and then they’d step back to grab the hose.

Facing the tile, you never knew when the ice water would come. She’d shake and chatter her teeth with nervous anticipation, and then right when you didn’t expect it, the hard water would hit her back. The water had so much pressure, like a geyser unleashed, it always burned her back. She remembered it now, the freezing water, as it burned her back, somehow always finding her face and splattering it. Some guards would laugh, others wouldn’t care at all.

Then she’d turn, still holding herself, and they’d hose her again. Head to toe, they’d go, starting at her eyes and mouth, drowning her sputtering self, then down her body. It hurt every time.

Arachnid came back to the little hotel in Belarus with a gasping shriek. She literally jumped back into her body, catching herself with her palms against the shower wall. The water was turning warm against her back now, but her teeth chattered and her heart pounded. Arachnid held herself the way she had, arms crossed, nails digging into her skin.

She gasped through the rest of the shower; dragging her steaming hands down her face, pulling the tangles apart in her hair, picking gravel out of her side. She tasked herself endlessly.

Wrapped in the thin, singular hotel towel, Arachnid hoped she could shut the memory in with the bathroom door. She went to the bed, where her dirty clothes lay in a pile.

Next to the clothes; her stolen gauze. She did that part first, wrapping the thin, tacky bandages around her ankles, hoping they might stop the blisters from worsening. There was no way to cover her whole side, so she left that to time, and put her clothes on.

Well, she started to put her clothes on. It was when she picked up her thin, ratty shirt, that she uncovered the little black box lying underneath it in the pile of her clothes. She stared down at it for a long moment, realizing once again how often she would sediment a thought so compactly that it dissipated.

Arachnid, as if literally playing out the compartmentalizing of which she so often carried out, set the pager aside from her clothes. She felt oddly scared of the thing, perhaps of its power. She looked not at the box, but the headboard which she faced, as she pulled her clothes on mechanically; thin tee, leggings, then her blood-stained socks.

Then she sat on the bed. First at the edge, then scooted back across the top of the covers, hesitantly laying her head against the board of the twin bed—the mattress felt like it might give out underneath her, perhaps swallow her whole, like it was made of vapor. The sensation of softness was unsettling—then, and only then, did she reach across and grab the pager.

She pressed a button, and a bright screen suddenly glowed back at her. Flying across the screen was a message; *two new pages*.

Arachnid heard her heart beating loud in her chest. She succumbed to a momentary impulse, and clicked the same button to receive the pages. The white screen filled with the Soldier’s words, typed out in English; Don’t know if you’ll read this. They’re gone.

She clicked for the next message. “919-211-4976.” was all it said. An American number—so her suspicions were right; he had been part of it. Whatever happened to Hydra, it had happened under his watch, in America. Arachnid couldn’t form a sedimentary opinion on the matter, just that it meant something. Her head was rushing, and her ears buzzed like a wasp nest.

Arachnid’s eyes gravitated to the outdated rotary phone on the bedside table. It was so close, practically fate. Still, the thought of the dichotomous, self-effacing man with the gray eyes sent a spark of resentment through Arachnid. She felt that though they have been placed in the same bracket of suffering, he had never stooped to her level. He seemed sanctimonious, all-knowing in his brash subsistence. She had time and time again pictured that look on his face during their last trial, when she’d had him by the fabric of his vest, when she’d bared her teeth and screamed at him. It wasn’t exactly fear. No, she could place the look now; he had been disturbed. Disgusted, the word itched at the back of her throat.

And yet. And yet, the last flames of Hydra would be stamped out by morning. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to return to, no family—Natalia’s name lingered in Arachnid’s mind, an ungrievable wound---she had nothing. Neither did he.

Arachnid had stared at the page for long enough that once she picked up the phone and began to dial, she had the number memorized.

The line rang three times. She was about to set it back on its perch when he answered.

She cleared her throat, spoke casual Russian. “Is this you?”

“Yes. Hey.” Came his English, sounding shocked. Arachnid felt her heart in her throat, lips parting to let out a heavy breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

And then came the silence. She didn’t know what to say, where to start, what to ask, if she should ask. He filled it; “Wasn’t sure you’d call.”

James “Bucky” Barnes held the shitty burner phone to his ear with his metal hand. He flexed his left, flesh fingers and felt the familiar pain shoot through them. Definitely dislocated.

There was a map of Europe on the carpet next to his feet, where he’d circled safe house guesses in pen. He was inching across landmines in his mind, just waiting for the memory that would blow him apart. Above his head, he had drawn the blinds of his similarly shitty French hostel, and filled in the gaps by hanging a comforter over the window. He could smell the river water all over him like a baptism, blood still lingering in his mouth.

It had taken him maybe minutes after dragging the man—the soldier, the Captain, Steve?—to think of the vengeful redhead on the other side of the world. He had imagined her buried in the snow, or in a straight jacket, but had guessed otherwise. He didn’t know what to say. Hydra’s gone, I blew it to shit. Where are you? Wanna help me figure out what to do? I feel like I’m cheating death, what about you? You should’ve seen his face; cracked, swollen, oozing blood.

Her Russian, filled with static through the phone, finally came; “Who’s coming for me?”

“I don’t know. Everybody.”

“Novikov?”

“... No. Not him.”

She let out a heavy sigh of relief. Even through the phone, he could hear her exhaustion. That was what convinced him to say what he did next.

“I think there’s an old safehouse in Poland. It’s a long shot, but.. it’s where I’m heading.”

No response came. Bucky listened for Arachnid’s short breaths, but faded out. He moved from the burner from his ear, to find the call had disconnected.

He nodded to himself.

Arachnid shoved the phone onto the receiver like it carried infection. Her chin trembled, eyes burned. She ripped the pillows off the hotel bed onto the floor, and curled tightly into herself, holding herself as the minutes crept past 2 AM. Pull yourself together, a voice in her head reprimanded, before sleep came.

Chapter 22: Skittish

Notes:

In case anyone notices: I've gone back and changed the dates for the last couple chapters. I was originally going off the timeline someone on Reddit guessed at for when CA:TWS takes place---they placed the movie in January, 2014---but I just don't think DC looks cold enough in the movie for that, so I've moved it to September on a whim.

September 14th, 2014

She jolted out of a senseless nightmare just four hours later. Arachnid laid in bed, stiff as a board, for 45 seconds—she counted—before taking a deep breath and jumping up. The scraped gash across her side burned from her quickness, but she was restless. The sun was barely peeking over the empty sky as she started the stolen car.

It took about another five hours to meet the Belarusian-Polish border. Her heart dropped when she arrived at mid-noon, starving and paranoid, to find a dozen cars lined up behind a dozen gates, just to get to a dozen booths where they were thoroughly searched and interrogated before crossing.

Arachnid had half-expected this, though. She took a detour, backing away from the border, parking in the nearby town of Hrodna. There, with her shiv and stash of money, she shopped.

She compiled a disguise of sorts from the mall’s clearance sections, consisting of; thick, men’s jeans which were discounted for their stain on the thigh, a scarf she tied under her chin, a long-sleeve undershirt, and a fleece sweatshirt to wear over it. In the same store, she pick-pocketed a woman’s wallet, raked it for cash, then left the rest in the dressing room. Afterwards, Arachnid visited a cafe, spent $6 of the $20 pocketed on a sandwich, and threw all of her old clothes—besides her tattered boots—in the place’s dumpster. The leggings and thin shirt stunk like Hydra and blood, she was glad to be rid of them.

After the mall, Arachnid stopped in a hardware store, picked up ammo. Finally, she filled up on gas.

It was half past four P.M. when Arachnid returned to the border. There were significantly less cars there, but still, she parked in an isolated spot about a mile off. She waited until the sun went down; biding her time, unloading and reloading her Marakov, ripping nibbles off of the cold sandwich.

At 7-something, Arachnid watched three men leave their posts for a smoke break. This left a little isolated booth between the vacant ones. This was the one that Arachnid, in the tan Lada Vida, drove to.

“Ma’am.” The Belarusian man, decked in the full Militsya uniform, greeted her. She glanced inside his booth, where she spotted a phone and computer at the desk in front of him. She improvised, beginning to dig through the car, lifting up the cup holders, searching through the glove department. “Yes, sir, sorry, one moment. Trying to find my papers… Jesus...”

She grabbed a driver's manual from inside the glove department, held it in her lap and craned to look at it. “Here, this should be it. Sir, is this right?” Holding the paper just far enough away that he’d have to lean out of the booth to take it from her, she waited for him to take the bait.

He did, and right as he leaned his stomach out of the glass window, Arachnid yanked him towards her by the vest.

She pulled her pistol out from where she’d tucked it under her thigh, and pressed the barrel against his side. Then, she looked up at him; “Don’t make a sound, or I’ll blow a hole through your stomach.”

The fear that sunk into his features was all the reassurance she needed, before leaning out of the car window, reaching inside the booth. She grabbed his hand-held receiver, and pulled the cord connecting it into his computer until the curly wire snapped.

When she sank back into her seat, his dead receiver in-hand, the security guard was staring at the barrel pressed into his side. To better ensure he understood, she said; “Better keep still.”

He swallowed hard, and nodded. “But you’re making a big mistake.”

She ignored him, “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to reach across the desk and press the button that opens this gate. You are not going to make a sound, or do anything out of the ordinary.”

He looked between her, the automated gate in front of her car, and the green button on his computer screen. She jimmied her pistol deeper into his gut. Finally, he nodded.

She raised her eyebrows, like a stern mother, and he nodded again. “Fine.”

She kept her gun pointed directly at him, but let go of his shirt slightly, giving him the room to reach over and do as she commanded. Neither of them breathed, completely silent, as he pressed the button. The red gate hissed, then began to lift.

The second it moved, Arachnid yanked him back by the collar. In one move, she slammed the butt of her pistol against the crown of his skull. The thump of metal connecting to bone sent a shameful kick of adrenaline through her veins. He went immediately unconscious, slinking limp, half-way out the booth. She shoved him back in and stepped on the gas.

Arachnid felt almost guilty when she reached into her jean pocket and pulled out the pager, while driving through Poland’s slush-covered roads. There, in the only page the Soldier had sent since before their call, was an address.

She arrived at the address; a compact apartment complex tucked into the oldtown of Przemyśl. It had a classic European look, with pale, weathered stucco walls—Arachnid imagined them centuries ago, being sculpted from clay—adorned with lifted designs built from the same material. A single red drainpipe ran down one side of the building. The windows were narrow, the glass looked thick and worn. Below the apartment was a furniture store.

The apartment complex was only two stories, and the address she had been given was on the second of them. With her duffle bag slung over her shoulder, and her Makarov tucked into her pocket, Arachnid squinted to look into the spyhole on the door of 207. It was taped closed.

She resorted, displeased, to knocking. The sound of shuffling followed, and Arachnid slipped her fingers into her pocketed pistol. Just in case. A minute later, the Soldier pulled the tape off the peephole, found Arachnid standing there looking skeptical.

He undid the chain on the door, then the handle lock, and the door swung open. She tried to play off the way her shoulders jumped at the sudden noise. He watched her, standing awkwardly by the door, as she filed into the apartment. Laying on a table next to the door was his Tokarev pistol. She kept her hand in her pocket as she looked around, not yet greeting him.

The apartment was Soviet-era, that was clear from the interior. The place opened into the living room, which was all decked in a busy, auburn, patterned wallpaper. Next to the only window— which he had boarded up with sheets—was a brown couch, and a metal unfolding table, with a television set against the wall in front of it. The white-tiled kitchen, which was small and empty, was behind the couch, separated by a dividing wall.

“You’re here.” The Soldier spoke from behind her, effectively interrupting her mental sweep of the place.

Arachnid forced herself to turn around and face him. They watched each other with close eyes. The Soldier looked dauntingly human, his dark hair falling into his face, dressed in a wool sweater and cargo pants. She tried to imagine him in a second-hand store somewhere, digging through a bin, picking clothes out, but couldn’t summon an image. Across his cheek-bone, a red gash was already scabbing.

He had an expectant look in his eyes. She remembered he’d spoken to her, and that conversations were something people tended to partake in. When was the last time anyone had expected more than a “yes, sir” from her?

“I am.” She mustered up, in Russian. They stared at one another. She added, “Did you sweep the place for bugs?”

Distantly, he nodded. “All clear.”

His eyes flicked to the hand in her pocket, as if he could see through the fabric, could see her fingers wrapped around her pistol. His hand twitched, almost reaching for the handgun near the door. They were both waiting for the other to strike.

The silent stand-off went on for a few long minutes. Her heart beat heavy. She imagined killing him in the place he’d offered to her, and it was such an awful image that it made her nauseous. It was this realization that made slide her hand out of her pocket. She dropped her empty hands at her side. He watched, then they locked eyes, and he nodded ever-so-slightly. It was something of a truce.

“Are you hungry?” The Soldier asked.

“Yes.” For the first time, she responded in his English.

The Soldier walked into the kitchen, opened a drawer, and pulled out two protein bars. Where she lingered at the entrance of the kitchen, her fists balled nervously at her side, he threw one at her to catch. She did, and once he settled into leaning against the counter, she joined him on the opposite side, doing the same.

They ripped open their protein bars and scarfed them down, taking careful glances at the other as they ate. She wondered if her insatiable appetite would be a hard habit to shake.

“How was America?” Arachnid didn’t mean to sound so snippy.

His eyes darkened, then his gaze fell to the empty wrapper in his hand.

“Messy.” He muttered, jaw ticking.

Arachnid crumbled up the wrapper in her hands. She crossed across the kitchen—his whole body tensed up, freezing like a skittish cat at her sudden movement—to the plastic trash bag that he’d hung over a chair. She threw her trash away.

“I was on the way.” She told him, over her back, turning towards the hallway. She brought her duffle bag with her. At the end of the narrow hallway was a small bedroom, with an unmade mattress set on a metal bed frame. She found a closet in the room and shoved the bag inside.

It was past midnight by the time they gave up on their awful attempt at a conversation. The apartment had no heating, but the Soldier had found a fleece blanket in the same closet she’d shoved her duffle bag into. She made up a bed on the couch, though he mumbled a disagreement, with the blanket and spare pillow.

The brown couch, which was covered with some kind of slightly-fuzzy material, was still unbearably soft compared to the thin mattress she’d grown up with. It took at least an hour and half to fall asleep. She tossed and turned. She watched her Makarov lying on the folding table in front of her face. She picked it up, unloaded and reloaded it.

Finally, it was only once Arachnid abandoned the blanket and pillow, curled into herself and used her hands to lay her head on, that she’d fallen into a light sleep.

A nightmare, as if lurking, waiting for her, had swirled and unfolded in front of her eyes. Guards dragged her into the big room with the observatory box. They dropped her arms, and she walked to the center of the room. From the opposite side, more guards brought in a new target.

The person was blind-folded and stumbling. They thrashed under the bag over their head. They were small, with bruised legs and knobby knees. The men carried the target until they were right in front of Arachnid, then dropped the victim at her feet like meat.

Arachnid bent down and tore the bag off the person’s head. The first thing she noticed was their thick head of red hair. It was covering their face, they sputtered through the hair in their mouth, raising chained hands to push the strands away. That was when Arachnid saw her face; a small girl with green eyes and a button nose. Arachnid heard herself gasp. She could hardly breathe.

Blood ran down the little girl’s nose. Her left eye was swollen with a giant black eye. Her boarding school uniform was ripped and tattered. Her giant, half-closed eyes, met Arachnid’s. Her lips parted. She let out a piercing shriek, one that went on and on. Arachnid’s hands rushed down and tried to cover the girl’s mouth, but she thrashed and fought to keep going. Arachnid stumbled back, and the girl followed, crawling with her mouth wide open. Half of the girl’s teeth were knocked out of her head, just bloody gums, but she screamed with all her might.

The sound was unlike anything else. Arachnid tried to get away, tried to cover her palms over her ears, but the sound was like a blaring siren, like an air raid alarm, like a teapot whistling. Arachnid fell to the ground, scrambling away, begging for the girl to stop. She didn’t listen, her mouth agape, and was perched, about to fly through the air towards her when—

She awoke, jolting upright, gasping and sweating. Feeling throughout her limbs came back tingling. Arachnid's heart pounded, the image of the beaten girl’s bloody gums seared behind her eyelids.

She sat upright, elbows on her knees, fingers dragging through her hair, on the couch. She couldn’t make sense of it, of anything. The dream was already fading, dividing itself into pivotal stills and forgetting the rest. Why her mind seemed determine to torture her with these endless, confusing flashes of horrific memory. Arachnid understood that her mind was not in-tact, but she didn’t understand why it had to be constantly, slowly, unraveling.

She groaned, rubbing her eyes with her palms. Outside, she listened to the woosh of cars passing by, the hisses of alleycats. A pack of men knocked into a trash can, their drunk laughter spilled onto the street. Arachnid grabbed her Makarov off the folding table, held it in her hands, and began a rhythm of switching the safety on and off. It slowed her mind enough to think.

She was neither blind nor dumb. The bright-eyed, red-headed girl was Natalia. Natalia, Natalia, Natalia. The name made her stomach turn, it brought an incredible sense of uncovered fear and longing. There was a distinct sense of guilt there. Arachnid had somehow failed this girl, yet she could hardly remember her. What could she do? Where could she find a girl she had only a distant imagination of? How many Natalia’s were scattered across Russia? How many cops were scouring the streets looking for Arachnid? And yet, the shame was heavy. The missing felt existential.

Arachnid’s thoughts were cut off by the creak of footsteps down the hallway. She jolted to her feet, turned and cocked the pistol, only to find the Soldier standing in the hallway; his hair tousled and clothes wrinkled.

He froze, raised his hands slightly and faced his palms toward her. “Just me.”

Embarrassed, Arachnid sunk back into the couch. The springs creaked beneath her as she stared at the boxy 80's television set. She listened as the Soldier turned the sink on, the water hissing briefly before soft gulps echoed from the faucet.

Wiping sink water from his chin, the Soldier heavy footsteps led into the living room. He went first to the window, adjusting the blanket hung over it, lifting it slightly to quickly peek out. When he was done, he turned towards her, and she felt caught. His lips parted, hesitating to speak.

Arachnid had trouble meeting his eye at the moment. She looked, instead, to the pistol in her lap, her fingers absently tracing the worn edges of the grip. She noticed, almost absently, that her legs were trembling.

“Can’t sleep?” Her voice, though softly muttered towards her lap, filled up the silent living room. Her accent was heavy—and it sort of turned English on it's back, Bucky Barnes thought.

“No.” He didn’t speak any louder than she did, their voices were quiet and scratchy from bad sleep.

“Mm.” She hummed, “Me neither.” The last part seemed more spoken to herself, like an afterthought. Bucky Barnes, though she didn’t see it from her stare down in her lap, flexed his metal fingers at his side. The steel moved as if it was part of him now.

He had tried to sleep, before being overtaken by a nightmare about drowning in the lake with the man he thought was named Steve. It had been visceral, he could taste the fresh water rushing down his throat. He could taste it as he’d choked and sputtered, floating through the dark water. The bloody man in the blue and white uniform, whose face was cracked and swollen twice its size, had reached for him, but he was just out of reach and the man sunk down into the pitch black.

He’d walked out hoping being on his feet might take his mind off of the dream, only to find the redheaded woman—he strained to think of the name on the tip of his tongue—jumping to her feet and aiming the pistol steadily at his forehead. Bucky had managed to forget she was out there, it was hard to hold onto the present when everything else was slipping back in glimpses.

Now, he stood awkwardly in front of the boarded window, diagonal from the couch, and examined her. Her dark strands of hair were tucked behind her ears, which gave him the chance to look at the slightly ripped skin along her temple. Visible even in the dark, it looked like road burn. He wanted to know everything she knew, but didn’t want to ask.

The humming refrigerator behind them punctuated the silence. “Maybe it’s for the better.”

“What d’you mean?”

“They could find us right now. At least we would be awake.”

Neither of them had forgotten, of course. The fight was not over, she suspected it never would be. Hydra could slip in through the cracks, slide the windows open, and shove them back into the chair at any moment. This possibility felt very real, almost too real to mention. It felt sort of dangerous to even mention it, Arachnid looked up at him just to make sure she hadn’t crossed a line.

All that decorated his face was a sadness that made him look his real age.

He looked down, swallowed hard, let out a slow breath from his nose. She watched intently, it was nice to watch him while he didn’t look back. When his eyes raised up, she averted her gaze again.

“They could.” He said.

He caught her eye. They stared at each other. Her eyebrows pinched together slightly, her lips turned in a small, near-constant frown.

“I’m going out today. I’ll get food, supplies.”

He took in her words, then pursed his lips, Arachnid could see he disagreed. “You don’t know the area, or the language—”

“Ty też nie.” She interjected, indignance in her voice. Neither do you.

He scoffed, they were looking at each other clearly now. She had a look on her face, a certain type of unbowing sureness in her eyes. “Then take my burner with you.”

Notes:

"Messy." Your honor, I love him!!!! I'm so excited for y'all to watch their relationship grow, however bumpy the road may be...

Chapter 23: Sworn to Protect

Notes:

Hii! I know I already plugged my Tumblr, and I post about Zinaida on there sometimes, but that's really just my personal account. So now I've made an account on Tiktok where I'll solely post edits and CUTW-based things. It's @fadeintoyou09 (curse whoever took my username...), follow it or whatever!

The Soldier wrote Arachnid a list on a yellow pen-pad he found in one of the kitchen drawers while she checked her bandages. The rope burn looked like it might scar around her wrists, but her ankles were getting better. She abandoned the effort it took to re-wrap them, and instead left the blisters bare.

Droplets of faucet water dripping off her chin, Arachnid looked at her reflection above the sink. Frizzy red hair, sharp brows, and dark eyes. Who are you?

The Soldier leaned over the round table next to the kitchen, metal arm bracing on the wood as he scrawled on the yellow paper. He looked up when she turned the hallway corner, and they met eyes for a moment. She walked past the kitchen, grabbing her coat from where it draped over the couch and sliding it on. From her pocket, she pulled out her rolled stash of stolen cash, and flashed it to him. He nodded, having been watching her attentively.

The Soldier crossed over to her, handed her the folded piece of paper and her Makarov. She picked up his pistol from its spot near the door and they swapped hands.

“You have the pager?” She searched him once over, while tucking her gun into the back of her jeans.

From his cargo pocket, he pulled out the infamous black pager, flashed it at her. It had been what, a week since he'd slipped that to her? It felt like a lifetime had passed.

“If you come back and the blanket is off the window?” He started, “I run.” She finished.

He nodded, opening the door for her. She slipped out. Bucky Barnes watched her down the hallway, slipping her hood over her head. His stomach stirred.

Arachnid found an ATM in town first, swapping her rubles for złoty. She spent the bulk of it at the market buying noodles, canned soup, and potatoes. Then she picked up toothbrushes and toothpaste for each of them, travel-sized shower goods, and painkillers. She bought herself an extra pair of socks and another blanket for the cold.

She was on her way back, counting her change, when the public library caught her eye. Through the glass doors, she saw a terminal of computers. After a moment of hesitation, she dug her nails into her palms, and walked in.

Picking a spot among the rows of bulky computers, Arachnid sat down and looked around. There was an older man several seats down, but nobody was watching her. She got to work.

Entered as a guest, she hovered over the bar at the middle of the screen next to a symbol of a magnifying glass. Arachnid did not know how to work a computer, she realized. She couldn’t remember how she even knew what it was, per usual. She hit the bar, watched a little vertical line blink next to her cursor, and typed out five letters. Hydra.

She hit enter, the screen loaded for a second, and then she was inundated with millions of news articles and website links.

COVERT TERRORIST ORGANIZATION TAKEN DOWN: THE CAPTAIN’S LATEST SAVE

HOW HYDRA SURVIVED: UNCOVERING THE S.H.I.E.L.D INFILTRATION

BLACK WIDOW RELEASES HYDRA AND S.H.I.E.L.D FILES TO PUBLIC

It was the third headline that made Arachnid pause. A memory flashed behind her eyes; “Which one of you will be the next Black Widow?” The slender woman had tapped the tip of her cane against the floor next to Arachnid’s crossed legs. The young girls sat with bated breaths. “Who has what it takes?”

She clicked on the article.

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September 13th, 2014 – Associated Press

In a revelation that has sent governments, intelligence agencies, and corporations into a frenzy, classified documents exposing the operations of Hydra, a rogue paramilitary organization, were leaked online late last night. The files, released by Natasha Romanoff—known as the Black Widow—detail decades of covert Hydra activity, including infiltration of SHIELD, assassinations, and global manipulation.

The massive data dump, accessible to the public, implicates high-ranking officials, private entities, and even international governments in Hydra’s shadowy web. Names, dates, locations, and explicit operations are laid bare, painting a disturbing picture of a world unknowingly manipulated from the shadows.

Romanoff has declined to speak to press, but eyewitnesses from her brief conference state that she is unabashed about her own history within the released files. She left the press conference abruptly.

The files have sparked immediate outrage and panic. As the revelations spread, protests erupted in several cities, targeting officials accused of complicity with Hydra. Major governments have yet to release official statements, but internal sources report widespread chaos as agencies scramble to confirm the authenticity of the leaked documents.

Hydra, long considered an urban legend or an enemy defeated in the mid-20th century, is revealed to have survived and thrived within SHIELD’s own ranks, conducting operations under the guise of the very organization sworn to protect global stability.

As public figures scramble to address their alleged ties to Hydra, cybersecurity experts warn that the leak may have unprecedented consequences for international relations and global trust in authority figures.

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A finger tapping on her shoulder caused her to jump, closing out of the tab. She turned around to find a man, he must’ve been in his mid or late forties, smiling down at her.

“Hey.” His eyes raked her, he looked swept up.

She jumped out of her chair. “Uh, yes?”

He frowned slightly at her obvious displeasure, but plastered a smirk back on quickly, “Uh, hello. Just – Just wanted to introduce myself. Haven’t seen you around before.”

Arachnid tried to gather her composure, slipping an awkward smile on her face. “I just moved here, actually.” She strained to remember her Polish pronunciation, but the words were there in her head.

“Ah, thought so. Would’ve noticed a girl like you.” He arched an eyebrow, directing his palms at her as if proving his point.

Arachnid sighed, dipping her chin when she realized what was happening. That look in his eyes was not suspicious of her, it was just something else she’d been trained around. “Yes, well, it’s nice of you to.. stop by–”

“Of course!” He smiled wider, seeming to gain more confidence, much to her inconvenience. “Very cute. Do you have a name?”

She struggled to keep the thin smile on her face, looking behind her shoulder to the empty tab on the computer. “Irina.” Arachnid turned back to him, exhaling sharply.

“Irina, perfect. Mikael.” He held his hand out in between them, and Arachnid imagined biting it off. The thought came intrusively, and she pushed it away, taking his hand in hers. “Mikael, nice to meet you.” She noticed the wedding band on his ring finger.

He was about to open his mouth again, and Arachnid felt a cataclysmic turmoil building in her throat. She needed the balding man to leave her alone before she killed him. “Well–” He began, and her finger snapped up, shushing him.

“I’m leaving.” She stated, and then did exactly that. She stormed out of the library, and through the streets until she found an electronic store. Her heart was pounding, and her whole body trembling.

–

Arachnid rapped her knuckles against the door five times. They hadn’t established a code but she figured that would be a good enough signal. The window was still blacked out when she’d arrived on their street. A long moment passed. She didn’t bother knocking again, instead she wrung her hands together, feeling her chin tremble.

On the other side of the door, she heard the Soldier’s quiet footsteps as he approached. Through the peephole, he caught sight of her—frazzled, red strands of hair spilling from her hood, a laptop clutched in one arm and grocery bags dangling from the other. He didn’t lower his gun until the door was open, and even then, he kept it at his side.

She slipped past him without a word.

“She released everything,” Arachnid said, voice tight, almost frantic. She sped to the kitchen table, dropping the grocery bags onto the table in one hectic motion.

He followed, watching her closely. She was moving quickly, setting the computer down on the table along with the groceries, her chest rising and falling with rough breaths. It made him nervous. “Who did?”

She froze, palms flat against the table, her shoulders falling and rising with harsh breaths. “Наташа Романофф.” She said the name like a curse, “Черная вдова. Что это значит? Почему это так—Боже, как болит голова.”

She spoke rapid-fire, Bucky struggled to keep up. Natasha Romanoff. The Black Widow. What does that mean? Then she was saying her head hurt.

“Okay.” He felt an inexplicable—or very human, maybe—urge to calm her down. He’d never seen her like this—shaking, panicked. It felt like an invasion. And then, something about her right now said danger. Handle with care, or it’ll blow. Cautiously, he offered the only thing he could think of; “I’ll get you some water.”

“Я не хочу воды!” She snapped, turning towards him now. I don't want water. Her fingers were digging diligently into her collarbone, turning the skin as splotchy as her cheeks. Arachnid used her opposite hand to yank her hood down. “Я хочу... Я не понимаю. Что-то не так.” I don't understand. Something's wrong.

When she’d spun around to snap at him, they’d locked eyes. She gave herself away, that desperation in her eyes. He thought of the man—Steve, underneath him, ready to die. Then Steve had spoken, and the rush of recognition was like a flash flood. It was pure instinct, no rhyme or reason. “You know her.”

The Soldier’s words made her heart feel ragged. Natasha Romanoff could be a coincidence, but the Black Widow was a pillar, however submersed, of her conscience. Another memory rushed to her, harder, meaner this time as it pulled her under the water. A rack of slick spandex suits, glimmering under the studio lights. Wearing it, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror, the Widow’s Bite heavy on her wrist. “To be the Widow,” Madame had spoken from behind them, watching her girls haughtily, “You must embody her.”

The memory fractured, she staggered back to the surface. To the present.

The Soldier, again, was still watching closely. She could only nod, a gesture he returned, and then nudged her along; “The computer.”

“I need to know.” Was all she said.

“I’ve met her,” He muttered, the realization dawning. Bucky could see a faint image in his head, blurry, not fleshed out, of a woman with straight, red hair and some killer moves. He looked at the person in front of him of striking resemblance. Jesus Christ, he thought.

She’d already rushed past him, grabbed the computer, and dropped to the floor near the outlet. Fast, like she’d been planning this the whole way home. She muttered in Russian to the screen—too quick for him to catch.

He sat on the couch, leaving his gun at the kitchen table.

She sucked in a harsh breath, and he looked over to find blue light shining on her angular face. Her fingers flitted across the keyboard, and as curious as he was, Bucky left it to her.

Arachnid must’ve found Natasha Romanoff, because she froze staring at the computer screen. Three, maybe five minutes went by. As she read, then re-read, her face just kept getting paler. Then he guessed she’d had enough, because she shoved the computer aside and sprinted to the bathroom. He heard the lock click.

Bucky pulled the computer into his lap and confirmed his suspicions.

Natasha Romanoff, or Natalia Alianovna Romanova, as she was really named, had only one known relative. Her fraternal twin sister, Zinaida Alianovna Romanova, had an asterisk next to her name, which directed the reader to file: Arachnid. This was the only instance where Zinaida was mentioned. The rest was a memoir of Natasha’s many talents, her defection from the KGB in 2008, and then her brutal massacre of the place that had raised her.

Of course, Arachnid was Red Room. Nobody else could create her. Zinaida, Arachnid, they were the same. He was sure of it now. A memory, hazy but persistent, clawed its way to the surface. At least a decade ago, Hydra had brought her to him—no, they’d pitted her against him. Just a scrawny girl, but she was unrelenting. Figuring him out, beating him, digging her own grave.

The first time he’d seen her, though; that was in the Red Room itself. Hydra had sent him there once, he remembered the briefing beforehand. Pay attention, watch, report back. Testing something, always testing. Then he stood across from her on the red mat. It’d smelled like adolescence and blood. Her eyes had locked on his, unflinching. He’d thought she burned brighter than the rest of them—something alive in a sea of ghosts. She’d never stood a chance.

Bucky thought about reading the Arachnid file. Of course he did—he wanted to figure her out. There was something in the distance she kept, sharp but not hollow. It wasn’t like the void he carried, but it wasn’t far from it. Their files would be the same too—full of horrors he’d rather not see typed up in neat print. He wouldn’t want her reading him like a book, so he left it at that.

Arachnid—Zinaida?--- slammed the bathroom door closed, and turned the lock. She just stood there, facing the door for a second. She could hear her own breath, heavy and steaming like an animal, heaving her shoulders up and down. Her knuckles were white, death-gripping the door handle.

Relatives: Zinaida Alianovna Romanova. Fraternal twin. Status: Unknown. Natalia, Natalia, the longing burrowed in her chest. There was nothing like it, it was like looking down to find you’ve lost your leg. There it had gone, and you’d just been limping along on a bloody stump, in agony without ever questioning why. Zinaida couldn't remember how they’d lost each other.

As if at her request, another one came. The girls on the balcony, Natalia had snaked her arms tightly around Zinaida’s neck. The wind whipped at them, but they held each other tight. Tears wet their faces. Zinaida had said something, and Natalia had looked up at her from the embrace, her face flushed with tears. She had spoken with a panicked implacability, “Do not let them make you think they are stronger than our blood, okay? I’ll find you, if you don’t find me first.”

And she had been so sure. Arachnid came back to, and found herself at the sink, fists clenching the counter. Her eyes raised, and she found her reflection staring back at her. Two lines of quick tears ran down her cheeks, dropping off at her jaw. If you don’t find me first.

The emotions were like tidal waves. They didn’t stop, they didn’t crash, or subside, they just racked and racked through her body. They were indistinguishable, just a mess of pain. She couldn’t fucking take it. She couldn’t hold it. She had no place for it.

Zinaida didn’t realize what she was doing until she felt the glass lodging in her knuckles. She had driven her fist into the bathroom mirror, and her reflection had shattered like sand under her whim. A few glass shards clattered into the sink bowl, but mostly the mirror just spidered into cracks where her reflection stared back. It was easier to look at herself through the glass. There was her hair, powdery red, and her pupils blown up, and her fist trembling atop the sink.

She watched, through the cracked mirror, as her knuckles began to well up blood. She looked down at them, just heaving breaths and watching. Glass had sunk into the broken skin, and the blood wasn’t stopping. It pooled and dripped down her fingers.

“блять.” She whispered to herself, snapping back into action. Arachnid turned the sink on. She lowered her bloody knuckles under the running water, feeling almost surprised to remember her own autonomy. The sting was like a catharsis, cold water meeting her ripped skin. She used her other hand to rub the glass away, then blotted her knuckles.

When Zinaida opened the bathroom door, holding a wad of toilet paper over her knuckles, she found the Soldier next to the door, his back against the wall. He’d been waiting for her.

“Hey.” He gave a slight, awkward smile that only lasted a second.

Arachnid nodded back. She followed his eyes to her knuckles, and looked down to find the blood had soaked through the paper. Readjusting it, she looked sort of self-consciously back up to him.

Zinaida couldn’t remember ever feeling guilty about not pulling a punch before she’d met the Soldier. Yet then, hiding the blood on her knuckles, she felt a new type of shame.

She waded in the feeling, and spoke on behalf of it, “I broke the mirror.”

He nodded. “Sorry,” she added.

This time, he shook his head. “It’s okay.” He swallowed hard, searching her face. The Soldier continued, “Are you okay?”

Arachnid exhaled shakily, taken off guard by the care in his eyes. She let her shoulders slump a bit, which she’d been holding high and defensively. Just like they taught you, a low voice in her head said. Fuck off, she responded to it.

After a moment of silence as she tried to come up with a good answer to his question, which she had never been asked before, Zinaida landed unsteadily on the truth. “I don’t know.”

The Soldier did not look away from her. They stared into each other's eyes. She had expected disappointment, or some kind of follow up, or maybe for him to feel uneasy and avert his eyes, but he just looked softly at her.

Somehow, it was the best response he could’ve given. Her voice shaky and gravelly, Zinaida continued; “She’s my sister. We were raised together.” We lived for each other, she refrained from saying.

He waited, but her voice died in her throat. He filled the silence, sounding a bit apprehensive, “I.. met her. In America.”

Zinaida’s eyes snapped to alert. Now, he had something to give her.

“She was good. Smart. Worked for the good people, I think.”

“The good people?”

He looked down now—the light from the kitchen cast on his furrowed brows and the shadows under his eyes. His jaw clenched, as if he was trying to get a handle on himself. The man finally looked like a man to her, in the dim hallway of the apartment, his shoulders broad and sort of uncomfortably curling into himself. Zinaida swayed towards a decision about him.

The Soldier unclenched his jaw, darting his tongue out to lick his lips. “Her and… somebody I used to know. They’re good. Or they were.”

He put a sincere weight onto the word as he said it, like it was divine. Like a god, just as out-of-reach. Arachnid thought; what does it mean to be good? Why are we so sure that we aren’t?

The Soldier watched her carefully, the dimple in his chin becoming more prominent as he pursed his lips. “We could go back. Find them.”

She could see on his face that the idea visually unsettled him. Zinaida imagined it, standing in front of her sister in that moment, the sister she couldn’t conjure an image of, while Arachnid held her scabbing knuckles and remembered all the years she’d spent forgetting her. Natasha Romanoff, the SHIELD Agent, sworn to protect global security, the article had said. Zinaida knew what she was, that she’d spent her entire life fighting for the very opposite.

She met the Soldier’s eyes again. They wore matching expressions of shame; two killers unable to face the music. After a long moment, he shook his head. She did, too.

Notes:

I'm SO curious to know how you guys feel about Zinaida realizing the connection between her and Natasha so easily. The way I saw it; every news outlet in the world must be reporting something-or-other about Captain America and the Black Widow's "courageous take-down" of Hydra. And then the files are leaked, and there's no border left untouched, Hydra's reach spanned GLOBALLY. I don't see it taking long for Zinaida to see her sister's name in a headline, especially with how curious she is.

Chapter 24: Project: Arachnid

Summary:

In the wake of Hydra's ruin and the Winter Soldier's return, Natasha Romanoff pieces together Arachnid's story.

Notes:

A short chapter before we get back to the Assets next time!

September 17th, 2014
Washington, DC

Natasha Romanoff’s living room was like a solar system, with her at the center, and a mountain of manila files surrounding her. They were sprawled all over the living room table, on the couch cushions on either side of her, some in the small bedroom, and others in the kitchen.

She’d compiled the small Winter Soldier file for Steve while he was knocked out in the hospital, selectively keeping any mention of her sister's name out of it. This was the only way she knew to cope, the only sisterly thing she could do for Zinaida. For Arachnid. It was an awful name. The worst parts of what the Room had tried to make out of the girls; just insects, climbing up the walls and perching in their web of lies.

And now, two days after he’d awoken, Rogers was on a hunt for the very man who’d nearly killed him. She’d told him not to pull on that string, but she was a complete hypocrite.

See, Natasha Romanoff had flown directly out to Russia after seeing Steve back in the flesh. From the east coast to Siberia, the jet she’d called in from Rick took her there in only an hour and a half. She’d slipped into the Hydra base through a back exit on the mountain side after grappling up it. A strenuous entrance, but worth it. She had to be the one to know it, to know all of it. It was all she could do.

Sure, she’d kept Steve in the dark about the base. It was hard to trust a man like that, a man of all brawn and unfailing hope. Plus, it was for good reason, she told herself. Bucky Barnes did not want to be found right now, and Natasha certainly couldn’t let Steve get to Zinaida before she did. This was her sister, another thing she kept telling herself over and over again.

Her sister who’d been rotting in that awful, freezing Siberian bunker while Natasha was out trying to be good. Whatever toxic shit they’d put into Natasha’s head, whatever they’d done to make her forget, it had worked. Her mind, she kept realizing, was putty in their hands. Her very own sister, and she’d left her in Russia for decades, just starving and falling deeper into the Hydra black hole. Everything they said about the evil Black Widow was true.

She’d walked through the cell corridor. There was only one that wasn’t empty, it had the thickest walls and required a code to be unlocked. Through the slit in the door, Natasha found a bare mattress, springs poking through it from all the wear and tear. She imagined the little girl she remembered, starving in that cell. The girl with a perpetual darkness in her eyes, who was always bruised somewhere.

Natasha had thought through her path a million times. It never made sense. Here are the simplest facts she had compiled:

Your sister is gone, Natalia, how many times must I repeat myself? They’d tell her that every time she asked. And every time, it was delivered with a casual finality. Girls went missing everyday. There was no room to care. That was it, she supposed, nothing extended past the Room except for their glorious, stupid fucking mission.

She had operated at half-capacity. Somehow, and hell if she knew, but it was like they’d shut off her ability to reason. Whatever they said, went. Natasha had read somewhere that in high-trauma situations, people tend to shut out everything except what they can handle. That sounded like a sorry excuse, but maybe it was true.

But now that she’d found the key, she could remember it all. It seemed impossible to have ever forgotten, when Zinaida had been her Achilles heel for so long. She supposed that a little part of her did remember, and had been constantly mourning her sister.

After the cell, and a moment of trying to keep the vomit down, Natasha spent the rest of the day scouring the data collection. It was an old room, like a library, just shelves of papers shoved into folders, dating back to the Fifties. Most was about the Soldier, but she wasn’t here for him. On the very first shelf, which was arranged alphabetically, was a chunk of files labeled ‘Project: Arachnid.’

The digital information on Arachnid was sparse. Just some things Pierce had pulled onto the S.H.I.E.L.D servers in preparation for her and the Soldier’s arrival, Natasha gathered. And just as she’d expected, it was because everything about her was kept in Siberia.

Natasha pieced Zinaida’s story together through them, unable to keep her eyes out of the folders the whole way back to DC. The files began in 2000, after a man named Sazlo Novikov seemingly inherited the Russian-Hydra branch. Through some data mining, she identified this Novikov. He was Soviet-born, a strict psychologist turned KGB turned, evidently, Hydra. The timeline was patchy given the KGB’s hand in his files, but the story checked out. He must’ve been unhappy with the Soldiers performances, because he began compiling psychological evaluations on Barnes, frantically red-marking imperfections, and making little notes in the margins of copies of his past missions. There were also scattered notes about the Room, which he had come in contact with during his time with the KGB, and seemed quite fond of. If you looked hard, he was pictured at multiple KGB events standing with Red Room instructors; no-nonsense women with tight hairdos and an imposing stare. There was even evidence he’d worked as a temporary psychologist for the Room---which, in Natasha’s experience, just meant men with degrees who inflicted psychological torture on the girls when need-be.

Anyway, he had a vision. A replacement, or maybe a partner, for the Soldier; a Red Room girl who had already been conditioned her entire life. This, he once wrote, was the key to an Asset’s success. *You cannot, effectively, create a monster from a man; this man must know nothing but the monster, he wrote. Natasha could kill him, then herself.

So, he arranged the visit to the Room in April of 2000. He wrote, in the extra notes of the Soldier’s mission report of the visit:

Widow made a perceptible impression on the Asset. Soldier probed handlers with questions upon return.

This is where Zinaida’s name is introduced. He plotted Zinaida’s entire life out, compiled everything he could find on her, and began frequent letters to Madame B., and eventually Dreykov. Some kind of deal was made, the details weren’t included anywhere in her files, and the next paper is on Red Room parchment. A final physical and mental exam before her send-off, which had already been arranged.

In the notes about her meeting with a psychiatrist, the doctor wrote: “Patient remained undisturbed throughout exam. Romanova is non-talkative, closed-off. Acutely aware of outside perception.”

She was gone the next day. And then the missions begin. They engrossed Natasha, she felt sick to her stomach, but couldn’t stop reading. Like a car crash you can’t look away from. Natasha wanted to know everything that had happened to Zinaida, she wanted to map her out, to be able to understand her sister through the miles of papers.

Novikov had begun Project: Arachnid absolutely obsessed with Zinaida. He tried on names for her, wrote pages and pages about every encounter she and the Soldier had. He watched her every move, sure that this would be his great accomplishment. Her first year, he put her through hell with the Soldier. His goal; to see her beseech the old, rusting assassin.

At the end of the year, the sixteen year old girl has failed him. The Assets weaken each other, he writes. Natasha felt something drop lower in her stomach, some kind of leftover kernel of trust in the system that had raised her---created her. Natasha understood, in that moment, that girls like her and Zinaida were doomed from the beginning.

He pit the two assets against each other, and they both failed him. He put the Soldier back on sabbatical, and Zinaida consequently had what Novikov labeled a ‘hysterical break’. A guard posted outside of her cell that night noted hearing her speaking to herself as if having a frantic conversation with someone, right before she broke every bone in his hand. An entire squadron of Soldiers stormed her cell, and one wrung a shot off.

Natasha, reading this over and over, pumping herself with caffeine on a restless night, felt proud. The infamous Black Widow is constricting with her anger, she uses it sparingly, hones and hones and hones it. But Arachnid has enough to go around. She wondered what, who, Zinaida had been talking to, deliriously arguing with.

So, naturally, they put Zinaida in what was solely referred to as either ‘the Chair’, or the ‘MSM’. Natasha had thought the mind-erasing rumors were just ghost tales, like the Soldier himself. Horror stories you tell little girls like herself to make them act right. Evidently, she was wrong. As Novikov, elated, reported; "she can’t remember a thing. There is emptiness in her eyes like never before." Novikov is careful this time, he put her in the Chair every other week, insisting in multiple letters that he must ‘build a suppression profile’—in other words, nip every memory at the bud.

From then on, Arachnid turned out atrocity after atrocity, a dog they let off the leash to wreak havoc upon Russia. In her entire career, Arachnid never failed a mission. Neither did the Black Widow. Success is easier than it seems, Natasha knew, when there’s no other option.

Natasha closed the last folder. Her stomach turned on a childish anger that she had thought she had risen above. She would find her sister. She would fix everything.

Chapter 25: Two Jumps in a Week

Summary:

After barely settling into the Poland apartment, Zinaida and Bucky cope with many rude awakenings.

Notes:

The chapter title is from Radiohead's High and Dry. Is anyone surprised?

September 20th, 2014
Przemyśl, Poland

Monday morning, the Assets ate plain potatoes over the kitchen table. They had moved precariously through their first week in Poland.

The night before, at an obscene hour, Zinaida had padded into the living room. She’d awoken, sweating into the sheets, chest pulling her up like she was seizing, while a scream died on her tongue. She’d dreamt of the Chair—being bolted, held into the metal while the whole thing came alive with electricity. She could taste the burning in her gums after she woke, bone-deep.

They’d been taking turns sleeping in the twin bed down the hall, anxious not to step on each other's toes or get too close. But there was a quiet, precarious trust building.

The Soldier had been leaning against the kitchen counter, staring at the cabinet across from him, dead-eyed. A full cup of water sat next to him. He didn’t spare her a glance, which she took as acceptance, and crossed into the kitchen. She bee-lined for the sink to wash the taste of bad sleep out of her mouth, but the Soldier intercepted her, raising the filled up and offering it.

Zinaida nodded as a thank-you, taking and downing the glass. She settled into the chair closest to the kitchen, turning around in it to face him.

The Soldier’s face was, more so than usual, haunted. The whole week had been hard, honestly, but the nights were the worst. When the dark settled over them, like those long stretches in the shared cell. Arachnid—Zinaida, she reminded herself—wondered if he often thought of those too. She wondered many things about the elusive man who stood nearly taller than the kitchen cabinets.

They were both lost in their own storms, the memories muddled in with the pain and the current, and there was never any way to sort it. She had watched the Soldier take to the little yellow notepad in one of the drawers, occasionally scribbling something to himself—probably trying to make room for the flashes of memory.

Looking at the tile, Zinaida asked, “How much do you remember?”

He let out a haggard sigh, “Too much. It’s all over the place. Sometimes…” He looked at her, sized her up, “Sometimes it’s decades old. Or I’m a kid, or I’m at war and I’ve got both arms still.” He laughed miserably under his breath.

There was a care settling in Zinaida’s chest that she didn’t know what to do with. She looked at the man across the kitchen, and once again, she took him in. It was an odd thing, because she had known the Soldier for nearly the same amount of the time as she’d known Natalia, but it was only in the small Polish apartment that she could really look at him. Her whole life, it had taken so much just to walk the trapeze, just to keep herself steady on her feet. But now the adrenaline was wearing off, and she was just left in the destruction of the wake. And this sensitive, gaping hole in her heart that was drawn to a softness he seemed to carry around with him.

The refrigerator hummed, the Soldier ran his flesh fingers over his metal knuckles. She thought about what he’d said. Or I’m a kid and I’m at war. “You mean the Cold War?”

Zinaida knew the war all too well, but best like a looming shadow over her childhood. While the Soviet Union was swaying and creaking like a house of cards, the uneasiness spread everywhere. She remembered vivid images, seeped in propaganda, reflected on the projector screen—the imagined nuclear destruction held in the basements of NATO. The lynched men swinging from trees, promising this is the rhetoric that the aggressive West had in mind when it waged war against communism.

The Soldier tilted his chin towards his shoulder, almost shaking his head. “Well, yes. But no, before that. The.. the 40’s.”

“You fought? Before Hydra?” Zinaida’s eyebrows pinched together, she did the quick math; that would make him at least 80-something. And then, there was something on the tip of her tongue, like a clue, but she couldn’t remember it.

“Drafted.” He muttered, his voice low now, and his eyes in the past. Pain twinged his features, she didn’t know if it was from trying to conjure the memories, or actually landing on them.

“The… Ice. Cryo.” She said, and the pieces clicked. The words were familiar; she’d heard them, or said them. God, she was living inside a maze. A few memories fleeted back; glimpses of the man screaming in the big metal chair, plates connecting on his temple, and then a garbled memory of Novikov’s voice that she couldn’t make out. She couldn’t hold onto any of it.

He visibly shuddered, swallowing hard. “Kept me young.” The Soldier had tried to make the answer sound collected and unbothered, but his voice trembled as he spoke.

–--

The next morning, Zinaida sat at the kitchen table on the dingy computer while the Soldier reheated the last of the potatoes they’d boiled earlier that week.

She sat facing the kitchen, so the Soldier could see only the dusty back of the device. Checking the computer each day had quickly become a habit—Zinaida was sure that one day she’d open it to find some devastating headline in all bold across her screen—but this time, she had a specific objective.

Obsessive as she was, Zinaida had quickly familiarized herself with the entire Avengers squad, after the Soldier had confirmed that, yes, those were the ‘good guys’ he’d been referring to. And now, she was pretty sure she’d figured the Soldier out.

Just searching ‘Captain America’ yields millions of biographies, Museum exhibits and old films. In the history section of all of them, the name James Buchanan Barnes is recognizable. Captain America’s, and more importantly Steve Rogers’, number two. Best friends from a young age, she read. And sure enough, James Barnes had joined the war effort in ‘44, quickly rose to the title of Sergeant Barnes, and then joined the ‘Howling Commandos’ under his best friend.

There were figurines of James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, black-and-white film reels of the handsome boy throwing his head back laughing, his hair spiffed. There were posters and men who had played him in film adaptations. There were biographies and memorials.

Zinaida tried her best to simply feel accomplished, proud that she had been able to piece the man whom she shared a house with together, but there was a sad, pitiful jealousy nipping at her heels. She had one clear thought; if this is him, he had been a person.

Of course, there was also a secondary grief there. It was almost difficult to recognize the Soldier from those film reels and portrait pictures. In one, he wore his hair gelled, and was in full army uniform. He looked to be biting back a small smile. He looked so alive, she thought. And young. God, so young. The Soldier in front of her held his life in his eyes; a century of grimy survival. That darkness in his face was the only age he showed.

This is why Zinaida approached the topic carefully. Really, she knew she probably shouldn’t have approached it at all. Curiosity killed the cat, someone had once told her.

Between ripping off a piece of steaming potato with her fingers—the safe house had no cutlery—Zinaida kept her voice low at the quiet kitchen table, and spoke.

“So,” Awkwardly, she started, and his hands stilled, “Your name is James.” She kept the question out of her voice, because still, that felt too accusatory. Assets don’t ask questions, and she supposed old habits really did die hard.

The Soldier’s eyes snapped up. Cold blue, they widened, then adjusted as he remembered. Pain lit up his face. She’d already known the answer, but the look on his face confirmed it. He was imagining another life, a time when he had a name.

In the heavy silence, the Soldier met her eyes. She wondered what he saw in them, if he was imagining a softness in her that wasn’t there. Whatever it was, he must’ve trusted it.

“Yeah.” He said. He didn’t tell her that the only person he could remember who had ever called him by his first name was his father, who shared the same name, and echoed the disappointment that James Sr. had used when he said it. To everybody else, everybody, he was always Bucky or Buck.

Zinaida nodded. She tried to force her eyes to fill with the deepest sincerity she could, because she knew what it was like to have a name now. And to lose it.

His lips were pursed to say more, when they heard the sounds of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

Thud, thud, thud. Heavy footed, at least 4 sets of them. The Assets froze, ears perked. They listened as the static of a walkie-talkie clicked on, and then muttering passed between the strangers coming up the stairs.

They met eyes. The Soldier—James—cocked his head towards the living room, and Zinaida nodded back. She silently scooted her chair back—the footsteps were nearing the top of the stairs now—and walked to the living room window. Lifting back the heavy blanket covering it, she peeked outside. Parked a block away from their apartment was a dark, suspicious, unmarked van. Through the passenger side, she saw a computer pulled up on the dash. The rest of the street was completely empty.

She heard a faint click, and looked away from the van to find a sniper perched atop of the building directly across from the apartment. He ducked when he saw her, and she dropped the curtain. Darting away from the window, she swiveled to face James.

“Sniper.” She mouthed. Dread filled his face. This was really happening. She scampered to the bedroom, grabbing her Makarov from the bedside table, and then came back. James had picked up his pistol too.

Standing near the door, he held it to his chest like a soldier, his posture now tall and stiff. She shook her head, pointing to the window. “I’ll take him out, then we go.”

He hesitated for a moment, looking between her and the door, but then shifted his body language and nodded astutely. She blinked, and he turned into a shadow, disappearing down the hall, grabbing their closest belongings from the closet.

Zinaida crouched below the right side of the window. She’d have to get a lower angle, and it’d still be a long shot. With a pistol, nonetheless. She cocked the Makarov, clicking the safety off.

She closed her eyes, crouched so low that her knees pressed against the floor and her shoulders were hunched below the windowsill, and took a quick breath. Fear is a disease, she suddenly thought, in a voice that wasn't her own.

Zinaida lifted the tape on the windowsill. Sliding her pistol and then her head under the blanket, she moved cautiously, careful not to shift the fabric and catch the sniper's attention.

She slid the window up, slow and steady. Her heart was beating so loud she could hear its erratic pounding. The tactical unit had breached the second floor, they were heading down the hallway now, louder in their commands, quicker in their steps. They would hear Bucky, who was now sifting through a drawer in the kitchen, in a second.

Pushing the barrel of her gun out of the open window, the cold air fanned across her face. The morning sun glared on the metal in her hands. Zinaida closed one eye, keeping her hands from trembling as she aimed. He would notice her in a second. Yes, through his goggles, the sniper across the street looked down at the bottom of the window, where he’d see the top of her red hair peeking up, and it was then that she took two shots.

The bullets rang off, and lit the room up. The squad outside of their apartment were just two doors down. She heard them freeze, mutter something to each other, and then began racing down the hall. Their guns clicked, safety off. She ripped the blanket off the window, seeing that the sniper across the street had dropped.

Looking behind her, Zinaida found James. He was coming to the window now, just as the men reached the door. She heard their boots slam against the wooden frame. The Soldier had fastened all three locks, so the thin door only erratically rattled.

Zinaida pulled the window open wider, enough for them to fit through, giving one last look to James. He had her duffel bag on his shoulder, his pistol in his hand, with the little yellow notepad crushed in the same one.

Behind them, the door splintered. She slipped out the window. The Winter Soldier followed. Luckily, the apartment wasn’t too high off the ground, so Zinaida landed on her feet against the sidewalk. She stepped away, and James dropped to his feet next to her. Bundled up in the same clothes she bought near the border, Zinaida pulled her hood over her face, and they made a run for it.

Any good operative knew that the best place to hide was in plain sight. Weaving through the crowds, Zinaida and Bucky reached the train station on the edge of town. They spent the last of Zinaida’s stolen savings on tickets for the nearest train.

The streets outside were sluggish with traffic, a slow-moving chaos that worked in their favor. Aboard the train, they sat apart, keeping each other in their peripheral vision, each scanning the compartment for potential threats.

From Przemyśl, Poland, to Lviv, Ukraine, the ride was just over three hours. Heading into Slovakia seemed too predictable; Zinaida was certain the authorities would be waiting there.

An hour into the journey, when no one seemed to give them a second glance, Bucky crossed the compartment and sat across from her. Her fists were tight in her lap, nails pressing into her palms.

“What happened?” His voice was low, his tone even.

Her lips pressed into a thin line. She avoided his gaze, staring out the window instead. “I stole a car at a convenience store, drove it across the border, and parked it two blocks away from the apartment.” Her words were clipped, almost defiant. “They must’ve asked around and found us.”

James’s jaw tightened as he absorbed her explanation. The soothing, yet agitated, voice of Sarah Rogers echoed in his memory: I just wish you boys would think before you put your first up, would you do that for me? He exhaled sharply, staring down at his gloved hands, flexing his fingers.

“You have to ditch it in a junkyard.” he muttered, “Or strip the plates. Burn it. Sell it cheap. Something.”

“I know.” Her voice softened, but not by much. She knew the rules, but panic had overridden protocol. She’d been reckless, desperate to stay ahead of the inevitable.

“If they catch us—” He stopped himself, the words catching in his throat.

“We’d be worse than dead.” Her voice was flat, her gaze distant. Zinaida wasn’t thinking about the police, or even Natalia, she was thinking about Novikov. The Chair. The cell. Wipe, prep, repeat. Arachnid, report Arachnid. She was thinking about what they’d do to her if they ever found her again. The headlines might say Hydra was gone, but they hadn’t even known it was there. She didn’t think it mattered how many heads they cut off, the serpent would always survive.

James grimaced, then met her eyes again. His voice softened. “Okay.”

Zinaida exhaled quietly, tilting her chin down to hide it. She didn’t know why his forgiveness mattered, but it did.

After a long silence, she broke it, her voice barely above a whisper. “We’re out of money.”

He frowned, nodding, thinking up a plan. She glanced around, checking their surroundings. Then, in a low murmur, she switched to Spanish. “Si podemos acceder a sus bases de datos, podríamos conseguir unos de dinero. Lo suficiente.” If we can access their database, we can get some money. 

James’s face twisted in confusion and then realization. “Hydra?” he hissed.

“Yes.”

“No.” His voice was firm, but the curiosity was there. “Why would we?”

“Because we need money.”

“They could track us.”

“I know. And if they do, we’ll know they’re still there.” She waged, gleaming with determination. Half the point was the money; the other half was certainty. She couldn’t live with the constant question of whether Hydra’s ashes were stirring into life.

James stared at Zinaida, seeming to be, once again, assessing her. It was like every hour she tiptoed next to a line he hadn’t expected her to, and he had to reassure himself that she was trust-worthy. Apparently, she hadn’t crossed it yet, because he sighed with a finality.

Then his foot moved, and she looked down to watch him slide her duffel bag, which he’d stuffed with their things, over to her on the train floor. She picked it up, brought it into her lap, and unzipped the bag. Inside, the heaviest of their assortment of belongings, sat her secondhand computer.

The process wasn’t as difficult as they’d been expecting. Per usual, the knowing was just sitting inside of Zinaida like a loaded gun; she got to typing, and the directions shot through to her fingertips. She tracked the address that Romanoff Hydra Leak came from, and backtracked into the Hydra database. It was in shambles, but with a simple SQL injection, she got into the main funding system. Cyber bundles of cash, separated by each base (Russia, US, Germany, Afghan bases, the list went on), sat there for the taking. And take she did, $2,000 worth of Ukrainian hryvnia.

She hadn’t anticipated taking more than just enough for a month of bad rent, but the sheer amount of money hoarded behind that firewall was just absurd. Sure, it was scattered, streamlined and funneled, but the total was in the billions. As she siphoned money to stash themselves away with, Zinaida thought about the watered-down soup men had pushed through her tiny hole in the cell door. How they’d just dump it into a small metal bowl, and she’d bring the whole thing to her lips, feeling the curdled frozen bits drip down her chin. It was never any better than lukewarm and 3 parts water. And for the first time, she found herself angry at them for it. Her fingers moved with zeal, locking down the stolen money into a private account she’d made for the two of them, and then slamming the computer shut like whipping open a fan.

Zinaida looked across the car to find James inspecting her. He pitched his eyebrows up expectantly, and she nodded in response.

Soon after, the train slowed to a stop, the doors hissing open in a way that reminded Zinaida grimly of the bunker doors. They walked with their heads down along the streets of Lviv, until they came upon a rundown apartment, shrouded in shiny, remodeled siblings on either side of it. Hanging in the middle, was the bright red-brick apartment, skinny and stout with only about two or three floors. Plastered with duct-tape on the glass door was a yellow sign reading ‘FOR RENT’ in Ukranian.

They called the number on the door in the front lobby, and an Asian man rushed to meet them within fifteen minutes. Using the private banking account, under generic names, they bought an apartment on the first floor—good for a quick escape.

The man—Mister Salman, as he’d introduced himself at the counter—left the pair in apartment 006 after going over the ground rules; rent was due the first Tuesday of every month, and if they broke anything, they’d have to pay for it out of pocket.

James took a quick look around, as Zinaida shut and clamped down the rusty lock on the door. When she turned around, he was shoving her duffle bag, which had quickly become their main storage unit, into the empty pantry.

She hovered at the entrance, examining the room. It was worse than the Poland one, she supposed, because the kitchen was even smaller, there wasn’t a television in sight, and the only bed was the pull-out couch in the living room—if you could call it that. The main room in question was empty except for a bedside lamp on the ground, and the couch. But it was in a great area, close to the station and surrounded by markets on either side. Considering how nice the other apartments were, they didn’t expect any unlucky burglars targeting this brick relic.

Zinaida pocketed the keys after checking the lock twice. There were small, linen curtains covering the only windows in the kitchen. The floors were scuffed, worn underneath her boots.

With their bag tucked away, James meandered across the room. They were both silent, waiting for something to happen. He held onto the headboard of the couch, leaning his entire weight onto his hands. He just stood there for a moment, still with that same heavy silence of his. Then, finally, he spoke; “It’ll work.”

---

Three days later, Natasha stood outside the Poland apartment. They had cleaned up the shattered door, and in its place was a jagged, gaping hole. Ducking to avoid the splintered wood around the edges of the frame, she stepped inside.

It was completely empty. Gone was the yellow tape, the chalk outlines, the sparse furniture, picked through by every brand of authority. Natasha had arrived the day before, and watched as they conducted through the place like a first-rate crime scene, first the Police, then various intelligence agencies; CBŚ and ABW.

The article Natasha had intercepted a few days ago had described the occurrence as a drug bust involving two suspects, one male and one female. But Natasha’s gut was right, one offense of drug smuggling wouldn’t be handled like a national security threat, it wouldn’t have a SWAT team storming an apartment at nine in the morning.

Obviously, there wasn’t much to be found in the apartment. In the bathroom, where a mirror had been nailed into the wall, shards of glass had fallen behind the faucet. This wasn’t the government’s doing. In a rush, someone had ripped the door knob off of the bedroom closet. A metal arm could do that, no problem, she couldn’t help but think. Finally, gunpowder on the window sill in the living room.

Natasha couldn’t shake the feeling, no matter how hard she tried or how little evidence she had to corroborate it, that her sister had been here.

Chapter 26: You're the Reason

Summary:

Now in Ukraine, Zinaida catches James coming out of a bad nightmare, and they're forced to hold each other up.

Notes:

I'm so obsessed with Daredevil: Born Again recently. Frank Castle one day I will write a fanfic about you... anyway this is a short chapter! I'm off for spring break now so hoping to get lots of writing done!

September 28th, 2014

No matter where they were, the night stretched and rasped in the same way. The shadows lurked and shrouded and covered the pair in everything they could ignore while the sun was up.

Zinaida was on the floor of the living room, legs crossed, resting her head on her knuckles. She had decided on the train ride that it was only sensible to sleep in shifts. What would’ve happened if the authorities had found them at the crack of dawn? If even one of them had been in the single bedroom back in Poland, if they hadn’t gotten to the window on time? This was what she told James. He’d agreed, though feigning hesitancy and making some muttered comments about how they could find a mattress for her. He knew she was right to be cautious, and they were soldiers first, anyway.

Being human did not come so easily. Zinaida watched the man crumpled on the fold-out couch, and realized what was coming. He was building himself up into a dry heave, body tensing underneath the sheets. She straightened her shoulders, coming to alert.

“No,” he grumbled, voice scratchy, barely audible at first, then again, “Wait. No, wait.”

She stiffened, watching him closely. James’s shoulders jumped, body jolting and twitching. His face twisted in that visceral pain she’d recognize anywhere.

“James.” She couldn’t take it anymore, just sitting by, watching him devour himself. She came to the side of the couch, kneeling. “It’s not real. It’s okay, wake up.”

Her voice must’ve mixed into whatever hell taunted his dreams, because his eyes shot open, wide like a blind animal, and he lashed at her. He bolted off the couch, dragging them to their feet with a fierce grip on her shirt.

When he came to, his fists were white and posed, just about to punch her square in the face. They froze in place, her foot poised behind his ankle, ready to topple him over, and his knuckles inches from her face. Pupils blown, lips parting with a gasp, she knew he was back. “It’s okay.” She said, low and steady, as soft as she could be.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence between them, his rapid breathing the only sound in the dark room. They stared into each other's eyes, she watched him separate real from fake, and then his shoulders sagged. He exhaled shakily, “Shit.”

In a second, James dropped his hold on her like she was a stick of dynamite, darting back and collapsing on the couch. He sunk into the cushions, dragging his hand over his sweating face, as she hovered on her feet, unsure on how to proceed.

As the silence passed, his heavy breaths and self-loathing filling the room up, she couldn’t stand still anymore. Rounding the couch, she lowered herself hesitantly to sit next to him.

The couch was stout, she sunk immediately into the cushion, it left only an inch of space between them. Zinaida gathered her courage, tucked her hands into her lap, and faced the man beside her.
James held his chin low, features indented with shame.

"I remember," she said, her voice low, hesitant, like she wasn’t sure she wanted the words to leave her mouth. She straightened her shoulders, tilting her chin to look at his averted eyes. "My first year in the bunker. Novikov told you to kill me. Ordered you to."

Her gaze dropped, fists clenching and unclenching in her lap. "I ran. We fought. And then—you almost did it. You could have. But you didn’t." She was glad he couldn’t see inside her head, couldn’t see it as she did, the clear image of the Soldier hunched over her. The moment when his eyes turned wide and petrified. Like a sudden awakening had dawned on him. Strands of his hair had fallen between them, sweat beaded on his forehead and threatened to fall onto her. How she had known, then, exactly what he was about to do.

She paused, swallowing hard before looking at him again. Zinaida knew her voice would shake, but she kept going anyway; "You said you couldn’t. He, he put you in the chair for it. Took you away."
He met her eyes now, and she could tell that he remembered this too. It was unclear whether it was an old or new recollection, but his face twisted in a sadness that was only possible while having truly experienced the moment.

They sat in silence while he digested her words. Zinaida watched him closely. She noticed that there was a thin ring of indigo around his irises, but really they were almost entirely that pale blue. This seemed, momentarily, like such a soft and sweet thing, so unfitting on the man who killed with his bare hands.

James flicked his eyes across her face hurriedly. “You looked so fuckin’ scared,” he said, his voice uneven. “Curled up. I guess I’d thought of you as just—I dunno, another part of the mission. Another target. But then I looked down, and you were just…”

He hesitated, his hand flexing against his knee. “Young. Terrified. Terrified to die.” His jaw tightened, and he shook his head. “And I.. I realized… It’d be my fault if you did. Think I’d forgotten—” His words broke, cracking as the emotion slipped in. “Forgotten that it was really me.” His throat sounded tight—everything about him was, like he was always about to snap at the seams.

Zinaida felt her heart lurch. “I don’t know if I would have spared you.” She confessed, nearly whispering.

“I don’t know if it matters. Maybe we were dead when we got there.”

She could see it now, there was this vibrant ring of hate, despair cloaking his figure. She recognized that this made her feel angry, determined to break through it. What right did he have to wallow?

“Maybe you’re the reason I’m alive right now.”

He shook his head, a sharp motion that only deepened the heaviness in his face. “You’re the reason you’re alive.”

Notes:

Slowlyyyyy building that trust.

Chapter 27: I Don't Know Why I Bite

Summary:

As the stolen Hydra money runs low, Zinaida and James have to choose between compromising their egos or their anonymity. Struggling with the come-down from a life full of carnage to a quiet, secluded one, Zinaida gives into an old, feral urge and risks both of these things.

Notes:

"I'm not a violent dog, I don't know why I bite." - Isle of Dogs, 2018

Go watch the first episode of TLOU season 2 on HBO Max unless you hate traumatized fathers and their equally traumatized adopted daughters. But if that's the case, you're crazy.

November, 2014

In just a couple months, the Hydra money was nearing empty.

“So we take more.” Zinaida affirmed, holding the computer out to James with one hand.

He shook his head firmly and muttered a resounding “No,” glancing at the account sum reflected on the glowing screen. It wasn’t enough for a week’s worth of meals. In response to the disapproval on her face, he continued; “Just because nobody’s come to slit our throats yet doesn’t mean we can take whatever we want. I don’t like it.”

She suspected he hid behind logic, and that the real reason why James insisted they cut all ties with Hydra was because he felt like a crook stealing their money. She had recently developed a suspicion that he was trying very hard to be good.

“How else are we going to pay rent?”

James picked his paper cup of black coffee off the stone counter and chugged it like a shot glass—he had bought coffee beans with the spare change they’d saved on their last shopping trip, and had been boiling and straining a cup every morning since. Zinaida assumed it was a habit from Before. Staring at the ring of black at the bottom of the paper, he said; “I’ll pick up a job.”

That was possibly the last thing Zinaida would’ve expected him to say. She’d seen the way he cowered and shrunk into himself during any public outing, ducking his head and pulling a hood over a hat, avoiding eye contact with pedestrians. “I thought that was too…” She called up the word he’d used, “‘Risky’.”

“It is, but it’s necessary. I’ll lay low, find some odd-job that doesn’t look too deep into me.”

He had already decided, of course. Zinaida, for some reason, found herself straining to come up with reasons why he shouldn’t. “Or I could get one. What if someone recognizes you?”

“Recognize me off a picture from, what, 70 years ago? Come on, you got the money back on the train, I’ll do this.”

James brought his pistol tucked into his jeans, promised to do her single-knock and check for a pillow over the only window in their apartment. He planned to check for a posting at the construction site around the corner.

The apartment felt uncomfortably empty once he was gone. Zinaida realized it was the first time she’d been alone since entering the one in Poland. She ambled through the small apartment, itching for something to do. She first cleaned her pistol, disassembling it, running over the parts with a bristle brush while imagining James dead in a ditch, or torn apart in a back alley. When her stomach turned and the Makarov shined, she moved to the kitchen, wetting a rag and scrubbing down the counters.

The kitchen was clean in ten minutes: cabinets full of warm, clean dishes, counters shining, faucet glimmering. Zinaida still had that vibrating itch beneath her skin.

It was all too still. Too quiet, too clean. Her nerves gnawed at each other, working up and breaking apart. Standing in the middle of the spotless kitchen, wrung rag in her hand, Zinaida’s eyes flickered to the window. The pale, late-winter sunlight shined bright, casting shimmer on the glass. Through it, the city stirred. Life echoed through the streets, people crashed into each other, cursed and hummed. Raced to work.

Zinaida crushed the rug in her fist, before throwing it into the sink, and turning her back on the kitchen. She grabbed her coat off the back of the couch, and headed for the door. The cold flew in as the back door whooshed shut, but the heat under her skin was untamed. Zinaida walked quickly, her loyal boots echoing off the pavement. She didn’t know where she was going.

Her eyes scanned the streets. The sun shined over the tops of concrete buildings, all a patchwork of faded tenements, corner shops, and lines of vendors with carts of steaming pirogi or roasted nuts.
She passed them by, turning a corner and finding herself on a different street. It was colder, shaded—the sun had lost the battle, clouded by the rows and piles of old buildings piled onto one another. Walking deeper into the street, she was surrounded on either side by the exits to billowing factories, run-down laundromats, and pawn shops.

Zinaida’s stomach turned at the tenseness in the air. Her feet kept up. Halfway down, a small group of people came into view. They were gathered outside of an all-hours bar. She slowed her pace. The huddle was mostly men, except for a couple quiet girls hanging onto their men’s arms, their faces flushed, jackets strewn across their arms, their breath fogging in the air as they spoke.

She understood most of the Ukrainian, but it was the cadence of their argument; pointed, escalating like a wind-up toy, that caught her attention.

Zinaida neared closer, staying to the opposite of the street, her ears perked.

“...Been a week in a half,” A bearded man with only a ring of thinning hair around his head snarled, jabbing his point finger towards a younger man with a mop of tousled hair and a beanie over his ears.

“I said it would take some time,” the younger man bit back, puffing the collar of his flannel, “Didn’t I?” He was trying very hard to seem unaffected.

“And I told you, five days. So where is it?”

Another man, of similar age to the flannel-wearer, scoffed, shaking his head. “We didn’t make any promises, okay? No need to get your panties in a twist.” This one, by contrast to the person he defended, was largely unpanicked.

Another man, who had previously lingered towards the back of the group, stepped in. He was imposing, bulky and clearly upset. He didn’t say anything, just closed in on them, raring for conflict.

Zinaida couldn’t move, something about the scene unfolding had drawn her in, and now she was stuck. She didn’t know if it was boredom, curiosity, or an affinity for the fight.

The shove came first. One of the smaller men, sensing the trouble coming towards him, pushed the bulky man who’d stepped towards them. He skidded back, sliding out of view as the rest of the men rushed to fill his gap. They erupted in jeers, shouts, even laughter as the fists flew.

Zinaida’s pulse quickened. Blood splattered onto the street, the men tripping over each other in a bundle of punches and slaps. It was messy, unorganized, nothing like the sparring she was used to. One man was catching the blunt of it for a moment, folding into himself on the concrete as they kicked him.

But she sensed the tide turning, eyes flicking around the mess of a fight until her eyes landed on a man hunched over. He was one of the younger ones, wearing baggy clothes and a head shaved to the skin, toiling on the outskirts of the pile. Braced to jump in, his hand dug in his jean pocket. He pulled out a glimmering silver, and Zinaida recognized it in the weak light of the alley as a shiv.

Zinaida’s fingers brushed against the pistol hidden in her pocket, but she knew better. Her heart was pounding, palms itching again.

She had told herself—demanded—that she wouldn’t make a move, but when the man with a knife lunged into the pile, she followed. Knife jabbed out, he leaped into an opening, his target too distracted to notice. Zinaida slipped into the chaos like a shadow, catching the man’s wrist before the blade could catch skin, twisting it down in a simple, fluid movement. The knife clattered to the ground, and she finished her new target, kneeing him in the stomach, and landing an uppercut to his jaw.

He toppled to the concrete, she picked up the blade and slipped it into her pocket. As she was kneeling on the ground, someone heavy grabbed her from behind, yanking her towards him. In that moment, she was just another body, another face in the fight, and the thought brought a senseless peace.

She jerked the person off of her by knocking her head back against his, and slamming her elbow backwards into whatever flesh it would catch on. Everything was moving too quickly for her to catch a face, but she had started hitting and now her instincts had carried her off. Her target, whoever he was, reached for her again, his head lowered with a groan, and she finished him with a sweeping kick to his ankles.

The man she’d just kicked fell over, taking someone else down with him, and the scene practically collapsed around her. The fight was over quickly after that, the rush of anger ebbing. Nobody else reached for her, so she stumbled out of the pile. The men staggered to their feet, bruised and bloody but free of stab wounds, while she faded into the distance.

She felt dazed, her heart pounding, as she walked the streets.

By the time she reached the front door to their apartment complex, the high was subsiding, but her head still buzzed. As the serotonin dried up, an uneasiness crept in.

It was nothing, she thought, as she headed up the flight of stairs. Just a small interference. Somebody could’ve been killed. You had to step in. She was walking down the hallway of their floor now, fingers running over the handle of the knife in her pocket. She knew, distantly, that she was lying to herself. She hadn’t interfered to save a life—death had never stopped her before.

In another second, Zinaida found herself standing before their apartment. She took a deep breath, and knocked once on the door. As she did, she noticed that her knuckles were red and swollen, and shoved her hands quickly back in her packets.

James’s eye appeared in the peephole, and then the door opened. Zinaida slipped into the apartment, pulling her hood down. Their eyes met for a moment, a distinct look of worry on James’s face as he took in her flushed cheeks and rising chest. She smelled like the cold air, sweat, and faintly of booze. Then she passed him by, and barely made it into the kitchen before his interrogation began.

“Where were you?”

“Taking a walk.” Zinaida answered dismissively, keeping her gaze averted as she shrugged off her jacket. She was careful not to let the knife in her pocket slip out, as she laid her pistol on the counter. “Did you find work?”

He moved closer, so he was just at the edge of the kitchen. “I can pick up a shift tomorrow at the site. They were full today.”

That’s right, it couldn’t have been more than an hour since he’d left. If she were smart, which she hadn’t been, she would’ve said that first. She nodded, unable to feel anything but nerves about his success. He didn’t seem too relieved either.

She busied herself as he stood, almost expectantly, a tenseness radiating off of him, to the side. Zinaida had grabbed one of their small paper cups, and was moving to the sink, when he’d had enough.

“Zinaida.”

She let out a nervous breath towards the faucet, feeling caught, and slowly turned to face him. When she did, the intensity in his face took her by surprise. Every once in a while, Zinaida was reminded that he wore his life on his face—that was the only way she knew to describe it. His eyes were dark, searching her for answers, and swarming with an angry sort of worry.

She still didn’t say anything. “What did you do? Did you find trouble?”

He showed both his age, and that she’d been sloppy; he’d seen the knife in her pocket. His eyes flicked to it now, and Zinaida realized she was expecting some kind of punishment. Of course, none came, but maybe that was worse, because instead they just had to stand there while James waited for her to explain herself.

This was all uncharted territory, and Zinaida felt suddenly overwhelmed by the foreignness of it all. She flailed for a response, and leaned into an easy anger, “You’re not my handler.” She knew she was biting just to see what her teeth would catch, but bared her canines all the same.

Her words had hurt him, she could tell by the way he bit his cheek, lips curling in a frown. “No, I’m not. But you could’ve been lying dead in some ditch.”

It was either his words, or the fear in his eyes that knocked the breath out of her lungs. She let up an inch, voice dropping into a soft Russian, “I didn’t use it.” She gestured to the knife, “Nobody else did either.”

James nodded, slowly, but it was clear the argument wasn’t over, because now his guess had been confirmed. He responded in English, like he always did, “You got into a fight.”
“бог ты мой,” Zinaida scoffed, exasperated, “What does it matter?”

“What does it matter?” He threw his hands up, “You don’t think it means anything? A trained assassin, jumping into bar fights and back-alley brawls, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea? What if you lost control, hit too hard, and then you have some civilian dead at your feet? What if someone noticed you, that you fight like a damn ninja, and they got curious? What if you—”

“What if, what if, what if.” She cut him off, stepping closer, her eyes glinting with that veracity that had once before terrified him. “You’re right, that’s exactly what I am, a trained assassin. A killer. So are you.”

They had crossed that chalk line they’d drawn, they were finally being blunt. Honest with each other. It was both awful and relieving.

It hit like a punch. She continued, “At least I know what I am, at least I didn’t spend the day stacking bricks, just so we could deny ourselves easy money. You think pretending to be someone else will erase everything they made you? No, you’re stuck with it—we both are.”

Silence fell for a moment, and James was forced to sit with her words. He felt like she’d chewed him and spit him back. Zinaida had seen right through him, his words failed him. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

She laughed, short and harsh. Her face, extraordinarily beautiful, had twisted into something empty and sharp. “No? Then what are you doing? Because what it looks like, is that you’re constantly trying on different versions of yourself, trying to find something better. You’re terrified, so terrified to just sit with yourself!”

Her voice cracked, barely noticeable, but it creaked in the space between them. Her breath hitched, and she turned away before he could see it, retreating a step. James’s fists unclenched. For a moment, he just stared at her turned back, the anger fading, replaced by something heavier.

The more Zinaida chewed on him, the more it started to taste like she was describing herself. With her back turned, she wiped an escaped tear off her cheekbone, a small vulnerability she was quick to shove down. The guilt was already seeping in, determined to gnaw at her rough edges.

While her back was still turned, James broke the silence. “I’m not trying to be something I’m not,” He said, his voice low, almost gentle. She felt the softness on her back like an anvil. “I just…I don’t want to be what I was.”

Another tear, hot and heavy, ripped down her cheek. Zinaida rubbed it away with her palm, and when she turned back to him, her eyes were red and glimmering. “I don’t think I know how to be anything else.” She said, her voice hollow, like it was a confession.

Chapter 28: Lean in to the Punch

Summary:

Zinaida finds a sketchy opportunity to make some money and dives in head-first. Well, more like fist-first.

Notes:

"I wasn't a fighter 'til somebody told me / I had better learn to lean into the punch / so it don't hurt as bad when they leave." - Stay Down, Boygenius

December, 2014

The supermarket’s doors swooshed closed behind Zinaida, sealing out the warmth of the sunny city. Replacing it, the harsh, heated conditioner swept over her skin, pricking the hair on her arms.
She would never tell James, who ran constantly as hot as a furnace and kicked off his blankets in his sleep, but the cold brought her back to the bunker. When she’d woken up that morning, her thin sheet pulled up so her toes were uncovered, she wasn’t in their tiny apartment. She awoke on the cold, unforgiving concrete against her spine as she curled up on the floor of her cell. She told herself it wasn’t real, a vague and meaningless sentiment.

It’s why she’d rushed to run these dull errands as soon as the soon came up. But now, with the harsh heat embalming her, Zinaida could finally breathe. She looked around; a scarfed woman dropped a can of soup into her cart, as she turned back to her little boy and scolded him for running through the aisles. A cashier at the checkout flipped through bills with her thumb, pushing the register closed with a ping. Zinaida sunk back into her body—her older, fuller body.

She breathed in the smell of produce, and pulled the folded piece of paper from her pocket. There was James’s writing, blocky and always capitalized, coupled with her thin scrawl. As they figured out their preferences, their grocery lists were getting longer every trip.

Zinaida picked up the contents of their list—the basics, eggs and bread and carrots, along with an addition of her own. Cured pork fat, here they called it Salo. It was definitely familiar to her, though she couldn’t place the origin. Finally, she grabbed a pack of cigarettes that were being sold at the register among packets of sunflower seeds and lollipops.

It was when she was handing her items over to the cashier that Zinaida noticed something moving repeatedly in her peripheral. It was a large man, she realized, who was peeking his head out of the line as if straining his neck to catch a glimpse of her. She took one notice of him, and already, her pulse began to race. She called herself paranoid, but couldn’t ignore the feeling; it smelled like trouble.

She was determined not to make a scene—the fight with James had been turning over in her head all month—so when their groceries had been piled into paper bags, Zinaida put them over her arm, and made her way out. And just as she was about to make it through the door, the heavy footsteps behind her got closer, faster, right on her tail.

Zinaida reached for the knife in her pocket, moving the groceries into one hand. She breathed in through her nose.

“Hey—” A hand latched onto her shoulder. Zinaida spun around, grasping the handle of the knife.

It was, of course, the man she’d noticed in line; middle aged with thick, bushy brows and a distinct, pointed nose. There was nothing remarkable about him, except a vague familiarity. He searched her face, and then seemed to recognize her, because a thrilled expression came over him, and he nodded frantically.

All the while, Zinaida was carefully adjusting the tip of her blade to point at his abdomen. Through his thick jacket, and the light pressure of her application, he couldn’t feel the metal yet. This was her intention.

The man nodded, again, as he spoke; “It’s you. Yes, the girl from the fight.” He did not seem frightened, or actually, even a bit anxious. She didn’t know if this was good news or not.

The fight? Her wary confusion must’ve shown on her face, because the man laughed—more like a wheeze—and continued. “You remember, yes? In the back of the bar? I watched you knock Matvi right out, like a damn log!”

Yes, now she had placed that familiarity. This was one of the men huddled in the pile-up fight a few weeks ago, though he looked different under the lights. She’d thought she’d slipped in and out of that crowd like a ghost, but obviously, he recognized her. In fact, he had remembered her well enough to pick her out in a crowd. What if someone had noticed you? She remembered James words, and the shame in her stomach toiled and tripped over itself.

Now she was really mystified, and felt so uncomfortable and vulnerable in the interaction—worsened because the man was just smiling at her in this odd, friendly way, like they were old buddies out for a drink—that she considered plunging the knife into his stomach right then. If she twisted it hard enough, he’d drop right to the floor.

She was stuck in that decision, fingers twitching indecisively over the handle of the knife, when the mother and her son appeared behind them. Zinaida and the man, she realized, had piled up at the door of the store, and were blocking the way.

Before she could do anything, the man murmured some kind of apology to the mother, grabbed her by the elbow and led them out of the store. Then, when they stood outside, near the 50% off sign on the window of the store, he looked at her and spoke once more.

“Don’t worry, I don’t mean any harm. All’s fair, it was good fun, you know?”

He gave her a lopsided smile, and she noticed by the raise of his eyebrows that this mysterious man was actually expecting an answer now.

Instincts, probably the survival ones, kicked in. Zinaida had been endlessly grilled on social cues—social skills were the key to assimilating, they’d said. She nodded, reminded herself to breathe in and out, “Sure.”

No witnesses, an empty voice in her head said. It was a version of her own. Zinaida looked around; the streets weren’t busy, but enough people strolled through town. She’d have to hunt him, truly, herd him to an empty spot. What would she do, use the knife? Cut his throat, amble back to the apartment with blood splattered on the grocery bags? Under what pretense, because he’d spotted her as she threw herself needlessly into a fight? Then what, she’d leave his body slumped in an alley? Go back to James and wait for the consequences?

No. In the calm after Hydra, Zinaida realized, killing had become something different. Now it wasn’t victim-less anymore, it wasn’t a means to an end. There was a finality, an execution to it that Zinaida didn’t have any space for. The grip of the knife was heavy. In a split second, she made her decision.

Zinaida looked up, “I’d better go.” She muttered, forming her face into a less volatile look. At the same time, she pulled her wrist back, pocketing the knife again.
As her shoulders turned the other way, his voice stopped her. “Hey, wait a minute!”

Zinaida turned back warily, halfway sure that this would be the moment where his knuckles connected with her cheek and she’d prove herself wrong.

“There’ll be some brawls at the boxing gym on Danyla. At eleven tonight, show up, and I can set you up. It’s good money.”

She didn’t say anything, because she couldn’t think of anything to say, and because he then turned his back and walked away. The cart of beer he’d bought clinked in his arms as he left, bottles sliding between the cardboard casing.

Zinaida couldn’t shake the offer, not at all, not throughout the entire day. She unloaded the groceries and made herself lunch—carrot soup, which turned out unexpectedly pleasant. Perched on the kitchen counter, she ate it with a spoon for the first time since the Room, and scraped the bowl with the plastic utensil when it was empty. The garlic and soft, roasted carrot puree melted on her tongue and made her salivate.

Then, of course, she thought of the Gulag meals eaten in the corner of her cell, how her shaky, purple fingers would bring the metal bowls to her mouth and slurp it down. The pleasantness died quickly after that.

Cleaning the bowl in the sink, Zinaida got lost in the offer again. It’s good money, she mimicked the man’s words in her head. She imagined herself in a boxing ring, and felt a strange excitement at the idea. She’d killed without pay, couldn’t she fight for a few bucks?

Then she cursed at herself for being so goddamn reckless and pushed the idea away. The consistent meals, however scrounge-up they were, never failed to make her stomach turn. When the anxiety and satiation mixed into an awful cocktail, Zinaida opened the pack of cigarettes.

She opened the kitchen window and sat, practically bundled in the sink, to smoke a cigarette. They were Russian, she knew it from the name and the taste on her tongue. She inhaled and treasured the taste, the way it slipped down her throat and seemed to ease her nerves. The smell was bittersweet, and absolutely contagious. Zinaida was reminded firstly of the Red Room, of the younger years which she had grown to deem the better times.

The men, who never let their bulletproof vests and tool belts leave their side, would stand outside of the Children’s quarters, standing guard all night. They’d switch at midnight, she supposed, and Zinaida couldn’t remember how she knew this, but to stay awake they would sneak flasks in, and then chain smoke. At a certain point, they’d always forget their guard, and begin chatting and trading hits.

She could remember how their cigarette puffs would seep through the heavy wooden doors. The dust and moonlight would illuminate the wafting smoke, dancing in the space between the walls, which were lined up wall-to-wall with those identical beds, all filled with girls.

Soon the bud, sizzling, was nearing its end, and the smell had soaked into her hair. They had grown, those dark red locks, still in a jagged cut, but nearly past her chest. She thought about how everybody smoked, nearly every Russian she’d ever known. She could understand why now; just one cigarette and Zinaida could finally lean her head against the tile of the kitchen wall and breathe.

Her eyes shut for a moment, and immediately, she was swallowed by a memory. The old mission room faded into view; the cold, dry air of the bunker. The constant smell of mildew. Novikov’s desk, and behind it, technicians stood over their things, fidgeting with her suit, piling their weapons back into the safe.

Zinaida realized what was happening. She knew this memory, had once replayed it over and over again throughout the nights. It all flooded back, just as Novikov’s open palm smacked her across the cheek. When was that, how could she have forgotten? It didn't matter, because now it was happening again. The Soldier stood right next to her, she watched his shoulders jump at the sound, which reverberated off the walls. Everybody looked away, except her and Novikov, staring at each other. She could feel the stinging afterwards, clear as anything, how it lit her skin on fire and sunk deep into her bones. The shame was immediate. And with Novikov that close, glaring down at her, his nostrils flared and brow pinched, she could smell the spicy cologne and cigarette smoke on his uniform.

Zinaida opened her eyes with a shock, pulse adjusting to the vivid memory, and decided that was enough of that. She squashed the bud and tossed it out the window.

When their key turned in the lock at half-past five that evening, Zinaida was sitting with her knees pulled up on the couch, typing on their most prized possession: the computer she’d thrifted back in Poland. The thing was such a piece of junk that after about ten minutes of opening it, it was practically sizzling in her lap.

The door creaked open, and James slipped into the apartment, toolbox swinging in his gloved metal hand. His jeans were streaked with asphalt and sawdust, gloves tattered and already wearing thin. She noticed, in that moment, as he shot her a glance and set the toolbox down on the box they’d set near the door, that he’d grown bigger since Hydra. Stronger, with the frequent meals and the daily heavy-lifting.

She felt shameful for the prick of fear in her stomach. Everyone was a predator in her subconscious.

They locked eyes and he jerked his chin at her in a hello. She hummed in return.

“Any news on there?” He called over his shoulder, out of view as he washed his face, hands, and then drank from the faucet.

It was still Zinaida’s routine, as he knew, to surf the web every day just in case anything stood out. She looked at the screen. Staring back was an article from a New York publication, where blurry, paparazzi-like photos showed a large building in construction. On the top floors, a crane of workers seemed to be arranging a giant “A” wrapped in a circle on the exterior. The article reported, from sources close to the team, that this would be the new Avengers headquarters.

“Nothing important.” She answered. This was good, of course, because he had actually been asking about Steve—if he was okay, if he was alive, if he was looking for them. No news was good news. Every day, she searched for something about Natalia, anything new, even just her name. So far, she was unsuccessful. After Natalia—Natasha—stormed out of that press conference in January, she’d been lying low. Zinaida thought about her compulsively and constantly. Still, this mythical being they called the Black Widow didn’t seem real.

James grunted in approval, appearing outside of the kitchen as he wiped faucet water off his mouth. She could tell he had a better day, just because he lingered in the living room instead of locking himself in the bathroom or immediately starting on dinner. That was good, at least. She didn’t want to fight.

He ran a hand through his growing hair, fingers getting caught in the tangles from sweat, and gave her a once-over. Apparently, her mental turmoil was obvious—of course, not much got past him—because he stiffened at the way she stared at him.

“I can handle dinner, if…”

“No.” She quickly stopped him, adjusted her posture. Zinaida was wondering how to approach the awful decision she had come to, that she had to go to the boxing gym tonight. “No, it’s my night.” They took turns preparing dinner, whoever got the short stick got to sleep first that night.

His eyes narrowed slightly, searching her for whatever was wrong. Even her slight discomfort put him on edge, he was so sure the walls would collapse at any moment. “Okay. Then… I’ll go wash up.”
She nodded, shutting the computer. As Zinaida got up, he watched her pass him, walking to the kitchen. As her cigarette-soaked hair swished by him, James swallowed his interrogation, and headed for the bathroom.

---

Zinaida made them two bowls of ramen, with eggs stirred in this time.

Once they sat down, she knew she’d have to be quick if she wanted to catch him in a busy moment—while Zinaida’s appetite had slowly been satiated now that they fed themselves, James’s seemed only to grow. He scarfed food down like an animal, and though she wasn’t much better, he had never ever complained about being full. She often wondered what they could’ve possibly shot up his veins.

So, she caught him in the middle of a bite, as his cheeks were stuffed with noodles. “I found an opportunity. To make some money.” She started, taking a sip of water from her paper cup.
His eyes snapped up to hers, immediately suspicious. He swallowed the entire mouthful, practically half the meal, and his eyebrows pinched together. “Ya did, huh?”

“Mhm,” she nodded. “Tonight, actually. So I’ll be gone.”

For two fantastic spies, neither of them were good at acting natural. “What’s the job?” His tone was casual, but Zinaida couldn’t miss the tightness in his jaw. Or the steel in his eyes.

Zinaida spun the noodles around the tip of her chopsticks. She was quiet, keeping her voice low and calm. She wasn’t looking forward to watching their precarious peace fall apart in her hands. “Boxing.”

Zinaida wasn’t lying, she wasn’t completely sure it wasn’t just boxing.

She nodded at her own words, looking between him and the bowl. A sharp, bark of a laugh escaped out of his lips. Her eyes shot up. He looked resigned, smiling disingenuously to himself. “Boxing.”

Zinaida didn’t know what to say to that. He repeated her like quoting a line from a movie just to hear it again. She just stared at him, noticing the twinge of regret that flashed across his face. Looking back down at his bowl, he bit his cheek, then met her eyes again. “You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”

Her lips turned into a hint of a smile—this was one of Zinaida’s quirks, James knew, she never smiled when you thought she would. She nodded, because she sure had made up her mind, and piled a bite of noodles into her mouth.

He followed, swallowing another bundle of the ramen, and now his bowl was basically empty. When he swallowed, the tension had eased up, he licked his lips and looked back at her. “I dunno what to say, Zinaida. I—what do you want me to say?”

She heard herself scoff. Her face twisted, “Nothing, I don’t want anything. I want… I want you not to be so worried. So sure I’m going to fall on my face.” Zinaida couldn’t understand his worry, his constant fear around her. She couldn’t decide if it came from a good place or not.

“I’m not.” He was quick, maybe too quick, too defensive, but he was steady with certainty. “It’s not that. I just—I want to be safe. I want us to be safe.” He said, though even to him, it sounded half-baked.

James didn’t know why it bothered him so much. He didn’t understand why he felt this compulsion for her safety. He thought, maybe, deep down, that he just didn’t want another death on his hands. Maybe it was because his safety and her safety had begun to feel intertwined.

He shut himself up by shoving the rest of his noodles into his mouth, one giant bite. “I know,” She said, softly, and he didn’t let himself meet her eyes again. Why did every one of their conversations have to be so awkward, so taxing?

“James.” She cut the toiling silence, with such a softness in her voice that he immediately looked up. It might have been the first time since she’d first found out his name that she’d spoken it. Her accent tilted the consonants in such a specific way. When they locked eyes, there was a startling vulnerability on her face. He realized just how many walls she had up, just because of how stark the difference was. “I need to do this.”

Well, that was that. What was he supposed to say? Her mind was made up, as it always was. There was no hesitance with Zinaida; once she made her decision, it was as set as anything.

“Okay.”

They needed the money anyway, he told himself. Bucky wasn’t an idiot, and he wasn’t an angel, he knew why she needed to fight. It wasn’t that his fists never ached, that those instincts never itched. James was just afraid to feed the beast, but she wasn’t, and he had no right to stop her.

He hoped her control over herself was stronger than his.

Notes:

Split this chapter up into two, so the next part will be her first underground fight!

Chapter 29: Stargirl

Notes:

Yes, this was absolutely inspired by Vi's pit-fighting montage in Arcane. I'm easily influenced. Happy reading!

Mimicking the only sparring uniform she’d ever had, Zinaida showed up to the glowing boxing gym in one of James’s black tank tops and her sweatpants, covered in a heavy, navy faux-Carhartt coat. It was warm, lined with matted fleece, and as she followed a group of chatting men through the doors, she was sweating.

The gym smelled of leather and bodies, a stuffy scent that clung to the place like a second skin. The dim lights, faintly crackling on the ceiling, cast a yellow gleam over the worn-out punching bags that swayed slightly on their chains and the scuffed mats. The men, as they piled through, were talking over each other, excitedly debating the outcome of the night. They traded wads of cash, one on a Vladimir, the other on a Yusuf.

The large, energetic group of men filed through a door at the back of the place, leaving Zinaida alone and displaced in the barely-empty gym. In their place was a large man, with a shaved head and his arms folded in front of him. They locked eyes, and he jerked his chin at her. “You lost?” He called at her, voice echoing off the walls.

Zinaida’s boots kept trying to stick to the floor as she walked towards him. She kept her shoulders high, her eyes empty. She felt the odd, sudden need to prove herself. “I’m looking for someone, he said I should meet him here.” Zinaida told the bodyguard, who looked her up and down as if assessing if she was worth his time, as she realized that the grocery-store man hadn’t even given her a name.

This seemed like a last straw for a moment, like maybe this was a worse idea than she could handle, but then the bodyguard nodded. He made a humming noise of recognition, and muttered something about ‘another girl-warrior’ that she didn’t quite catch. He disappeared behind the mysterious door in the back of the room, pointing at her to remain in her spot.

She did as she was told, though the nerves were now bubbling up in her throat like a chemical experiment. Zinaida was shifting her weight on her feet, picking at her nails in her pockets, and just about to walk out when the door swung back open. The bodyguard slipped out of a pocket of yelling, loud house music, and flashing lights from behind the door. Behind him was the man from the grocery store, the big smile on his face obvious even as he turned his back to her and called out a joke to someone that had him wheezing with laughter.

The security guard stepped out of their way, going to greet the people who had just come through the door. The man from the grocery store, and from the alley fight, turned to her.
He was dressed in a tracksuit, gelled comb-over failing him, strands at the hairline frizzing and sticking up. He met her blank frown with that giant smile, raising his hands up, “Hello, my friend! Knew you’d be here, and just in time. Your spot opens soon.”

The man put his hand on Zinaida’s back, and an awful feeling ran up her spine. She darted out of his grip, but he barely seemed to notice, as he led them through the door in the back.

It was so dark past the door that the man had to tell her they were heading down a staircase, or she wouldn’t have known. As they stepped, one blind foot in front of the other, down the stairs, an arena gradually became visible.

The basement was cavernous, with low, crumbling ceilings that seemed to absorb the roar of the crowd and amplify it tenfold. The space was almost entirely dark, save for a single harsh spotlight that illuminated the makeshift arena in the center—a square, hastily roped-off pit where two giant men clashed beneath a haze of cigarette smoke and sweat. Around the edges, shadows of people moved, jeering and cheering, the drinks in their hand spilling into the crowd, and their faces only lit momentarily by a phone or a lighter.

“...Call it the pit. Fitting, eh?” The man chatted in her ear, but she could barely focus on the sound of his voice. Everything seemed to stick to her, like oil she’d never got off. The air was thick with a cocktail of adrenaline and alcohol.

Zinaida realized, annoyed, that from the smell of the sausage still coming from his hot breath, the man hadn’t stopped talking. She caught up just in time, as he said; “Forgot to introduce myself, Andriy Maksimovich. Here’s my card.” He found her hand and curled a piece of paper into it.

Before she could even make out the words on the cardstock, the floor shook beneath her boots with such calamity that the paper slipped out of her grasp. The crowd around them erupted in cheers, and she looked up to see that one of the fighters had jumped on top of the other, knocking them both to the ground with an earthquake.

She took in the sight grimly, the victim’s teeth had gnashed into the floor and knocked out of his gums. Zinaida tilted her head towards Andriy Maksimovich, “When do I go on?”

She barely made out her guide’s answer as he shouted over the noise, leading her through the crowd, “After these guys.” His gaze flicked across her face, taking in Zinaida’s wide eyes. She wondered if he could hear her heart pounding, threatening to tear through her ribs, because she dimly heard him laugh, “Ha! No worries, you’ll be great. Here—” Andriy reached into his pocket, and handed her a roll of gauze. He answered before she could ask, telling her, “Wrap your knuckles.”

She stared at him, unconvinced, but he only grinned at her, gapped teeth gleaming in the darkness. Through it, as the fight came closer, his nerves were sneaking in. She shook her head, cursing herself, but began unrolling the bandages. His arm returned on her, but this time over her shoulders, and continued leading her through the crowd. The people absent-mindedly parted for them, not sparing a glance. Zinaida allowed the touch only because she was diligently focused on rolling the gauze around her hands.

The closer she got to the ring, the louder it all became, a deafening storm of human energy that threatened to drown her in its intensity. Soon her hands were wrapped up, extra on the knuckles, and the fight was nearing its end. The blonde man, the same one who’d pummeled his opponents face into the ground a few moments ago, was assuring his victory. His aforementioned opponent, a larger brunette, had snapped one of the ropes after he’d been thrown against it, and the pair had now encroached out of the pit, as the crowd around them skirted back and squealed.

The brunette got a kick into the blonde’s abdomen, but it didn’t do much, because the blonde just punched him in the nose and then continued to choke him out. He wrung, and wrung, and wrung his neck, until finally, the bigger man’s eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness. Zinaida knew the man wasn’t dead only because his lips weren’t bloating to blue, but she doubted this was common knowledge. Either way, It didn’t seem to concern anyone, because the crowd just erupted into deafening cheers, tossing their drinks up, whistling, and shoving each other.

The victorious blonde flexed and posed in the ring for a bit, shouting out incoherent brags, until a manager shooed him out of the arena. Before Zinaida knew it, Andriy was sliding her jacket off of her shoulders, lifting the rope up and pushing her into the ring. The rope snapped back into place, and she got to her feet. Zinaida looked back to him, finding the Cheshire grin still plastered on his face, but now it pointed towards the crowd, who he riled up with a boasting speech and wild gestures towards her. Past him, into the sea of people, they were all drunk and red and screaming over each other. And their eyes were now on her, placing bets.

There was no apt description for how overwhelmed she felt. Never before had anything been so loud, so lively and sweeping, sweeping her up and carrying her. There was no deliberation, no choices to be made, this was happening and she was an active participant. The noise was thrumming in her ears, her heart was pounding, and she was sweating now, hot and sticky like the air in the basement.

When the crowd burst into a new wave of oohs and awes, Zinaida spun around and found someone in the ring with her. On the opposite side of the makeshift arena, a woman with a hooked nose and dark hair braided back into tiny braids smiled back at her. No, she sneered, the taunting smile not reaching her eyes. *Size her up*, the empty voice in Zinaida’s head whispered.

She didn’t have much time, there was an audible countdown sounding out through the people, like counting down until the ball dropped on New Years eve. Between numbers, they sounded out a name, “Mi-la-na! Mi-la-na!”

Zinaida took in Milana. They were about the same height, if Zinaida wasn’t just a bit taller. This did not put her at ease. The woman was imposing, bulky with thick, corded muscle, especially concentrated in her pale arms. In only a sports bra and shorts, Zinaida could see the lines of her abs and her broad shoulders. “Six, five..” The bags under her eyes were slightly green and yellow, remnants of a fading bruise, and there was a scabbed split on the bumped bridge of her nose. “Three! Two…” Milana stood tall and proud, feet planted steadily into the mat. Zinaida got a bad feeling in her stomach.

“One!”

Zinaida watched carefully, feeling like she’d just become lucid in some odd dream, as the woman across from her shifted into a fighting stance; stepping her right sneaker ahead of her left, bending slightly down so her shoulders were curved to protect her chest. Milana brought her balled fists up. She held her hands like a boxer.

When she was set in her position, after only a few seconds, the woman bolted at Zinaida. She was fast, and heavy set in her feet, sneakers slamming against the mat on the floor. In a second, in a blink, Milana was in front of her, right in front of her, and throwing a punch at Zinaida’s abdomen. She was aiming for the thin skin above Zinaida’s ribs. Just before knuckles could find skin, instincts kicked in, and Zinaida swerved. Her opponent skidded to a stop just before she hit the rope, punch landing on thin air.

She skidded backwards, back brushing against another line of ropes. The woman had already repositioned, found Zinaida in her escape. Before they got too far apart, Zinaida sent a kick out. It was sloppier than she could be proud of, but effective, her arched foot smacked against Milana’s waist and knocked her to the side.

Something was kicking up inside Zinaida, as the woman looked up from the impact of the blow, tilted her chin and stalked towards her. There wasn’t much space between them at all, but it would be gone in a second. Arachnid clawed at her cage.

Before her opponent could close the distance, Zinaida beat her to it. Milana reacted quickly as she zipped in, just as she’d suspected, raising her obviously more dominant left hand to swipe a punch at Zinaida’s cheek.

In a second, her thoughts emptied. The noise all faded, it all blended together and then died completely, and now it was just the silent, slow picture of the fight. Zinaida—maybe Arachnid—used her forearm as a block, turning to the opposite side as the punch hit the shield, then dropped it and landed an uppercut on the woman’s chin. She heard the noise, in the spotlighted space between them, as her teeth knocked together.

Apparently, Milana had a high pain tolerance. The boxer groaned, but it was more anger than anguish, and then she snapped back with a punch to Zinaida’s stomach, so quick that she couldn’t even begin to block it.

She was certainly a boxer. The power in the punch, which was positioned expertly, just at the tail of Zinaida’s ribs, was overwhelming. Impossibly, it felt like it had cut skin. If it was aimed any higher, she would’ve rebroken her rib.

Zinaida darted back, deciding on the defensive. The turning in her stomach, the flurry of pain from the hit, threatened to buckle her knees, but she just kept moving. Her competitor followed, watching Zinaida circle the ring, largely unbothered by her movement. Milana darted forward when she thought she had an opening, lunging towards Zinaida, and launched into a flurry of punches. Zinaida saw it coming in the knick of time, jumping out of the way. Before Malina could realize her fists weren’t landing, Zinaida sent a steady kick into her right.

That was it, she was top-heavy. Her knee bent, indisposed to the awkward hit, and Zinaida used the moment for leverage. She crouched and kicked the same hurt leg again, this time to the ankle. Just as she hoped, it rolled and then gave out, toppling Milana over. She caught herself on her hands and knees, but it would take a moment to regain her full balance. The ankles were weak.
Zinaida stayed light on her feet, finally feeling confident enough to finish it. As Milana caught herself, her attacker aimed her kick at an exposed spot on Milana’s stomach, hoping she could hit a weak point. But just as her boot flew out, Milana turned on a dime. She could hardly comprehend what was happening as a hand grabbed hold of Zinaida’s ankle and pulled her to the ground with startling strength.

She flew down like a rag-doll. In the disorienting moment as the breath was knocked out of her, a blur of dark, whipping braids crawled on top of her. Zinaida squinted, and saw blushed knuckles flying at her face. She turned her cheek in just the right moment, so the hit had missed her nose and instead cracked against her cheekbone. The pain erupted like a fire under Zinaida’s skin, blurring her vision.

Luckily, her instincts kept up where her mind couldn’t. Zinaida felt her own knee driving into Milana’s stomach. Milana reached for the pain, a visceral groan spitting through her lips, and Zinaida’s eyes caught up. She was barely able to kick Milana off of her, forgetting to support her legs against the weight of her opponent’s muscle.

Zinaida rolled out from Milana after she kicked her off. Milana crashed against the mat like a ton of bricks. For a moment, neither of them moved, catching their breath and their balance. Once Zinaida could feel the air in her lungs, she turned her head to look at the gasping figure next to her.

She found Milana in the exact same position as her; sprawled across the mat on her back, groaning through her teeth. They locked eyes. Milana’s eyes narrowed and she scrambled to her knees, as Zinaida followed. Neither of them made it to their feet before they crashed together again.

Milana grabbed Zinaida by the shoulders, short nails digging into her flesh. Zinaida brought her hand up between the hold and knocked her wrist against Milana’s—countering the hold, trying to force her forearm off. But Milana’s clutch was too strong, her arms too steady in their piercing grip. While Zinaida tried to wriggle out of the hold, Milana hit her with a crushing punch to the stomach.

Zinaida’s abs clenched as it took in the sharp, insistent hit. The pain made her guts feel like they were curdling, and she believed for a moment that she might vomit. But, of course, there was no time for that. Milana was sure this was her moment.

She was now about to initiate the next part of her plan, force all of her weight on Zinaida and force her on her back. Once she pinned her to the ground, it would be game over. She was stronger, heavier, Zinaida would be through.

But she had another second. Zinaida scoured her mind for an idea. Like a miracle, her eyes caught onto Milana’s knee. Specifically, the one Zinaida had nearly popped in. Her kneecap was swollen, red, it would bruise awfully.

Zinaida followed a whim. While Milana pushed her fingers into her shoulders and grappled with her, Zinaida slid her foot out. Switching her weight to the other knee, she flattened her foot and shoved it at Milana. Right into her kneecap. She used all of her leftover strength—it would take it all to knock her balance off.

Her combat boots made it easier. The rubber sole slammed against Milana’s knee, and it was just enough to make her topple forward. They were close enough that Zinaida didn’t even need to close the distance, she just caught Milana with an arm over the back of her neck. As she held her hovering, bent over, Zinaida sent her other knee up into Milana’s face. Her kneecap bashed against the fragile bones of Milana’s nose, her brow bone, her eyes, unabashedly.

The sound as the brutal hit connected was enough to convince her. A sound came through Milana’s lips, a gargled scream of pain, but Zinaida could hardly hear it. She was swallowed by the fight, she had ascended, accepted its ways. This was the sacrifice and she was its executioner.

Milana went limp, momentarily frozen by the pain, and Zinaida pushed her back. Milana’s spine hit the mat, and Zinaida crawled on top of her. It took a second before Milana floated back into her body, and promptly began to half-heartedly thrash beneath her. Zinaida pinned her down, knees on her wrists like so many times before, and punched her in the nose.

Milana groaned. Zinaida punched her again, this time on the cheek. Her eyes fluttered and rolled back into her head. Again, the other cheek. She vaguely felt her knuckle split open, but hit her again. In the mouth.

She was about to land another when a shrieking whistle cut through the fog. Zinaida froze, chin tilting up towards the noise. It all faded back in, and then slammed to a tilt and everything was screaming again. Jeering and cheers and laughter and glasses clinking. The crowd was there, again, and they were all watching her. They were jumping and screaming and shouting. A recognizable figure stood out in the front of the crowd. Reaching under the rope across the ring, the man—the alley man, the grocery man, Andriy, was it?—was moving his lips and grinning ear to ear. He shot a comment over his shoulder, then looked back, and gestured with a curl of his hand for her to move towards him. Another whistle sounded, a shout ushering her off, and she complied.

Zinaida ducked under the rope, landing on her shaky feet, and immediately felt Andriy clap her on the shoulder. He shook her in his hands, and she felt too dazed to do anything about it. She took in his words in her ear, and sorted them into a coherent sentence. “A fucking star! I knew it, I did!”

Zinaida turned over her shoulder, looking back at the ring. The manager in the black shirt had entered the ring and was attempting to pull Milana to her feet. He rolled her over, and she coughed out a mouthful of blood, regaining consciousness with a sputter. That was enough of a view, Zinaida looked away.

She turned to Andriy, cutting his cursing praises off with a stern voice, “Where’s my money?”

“Ah!” He didn’t stop smiling. In fact, it only seemed to widen. Andriy reached into his pocket and pulled out a rolled wad of cash. A rubber band held the thick roll in place.
Zinaida pocketed the cash without another word, and headed for the door. Andriy was pulled away by a group of spitting men before he could follow her out.

Notes:

Milana's character, who I'd like to have more time to develop because I think she's awesome, is loosely based off a Ukrainian UFC fighter named Alyona Rassohyna, who is fuckin' DOPE. Pleaseeee comment if you liked this chapter!

Chapter 30: Phantom Limb

Summary:

On a lazy Sunday, Zinaida wrangles James into target practice.

January, 2015

The sun had finally peeked that late morning, streamed through the small kitchen window, casting a silhouette of light on the hardwood. These days, it was routine to spend the cold, dark mornings inside on free days. They’d moved the only table in the house, pushing it into the kitchen to clear a makeshift ring towards the right of the living room.

“Okay, come on.” Zinaida, in a loose fighting stance, barefoot on the floorboards, motioned James towards him. She hadn’t wrapped her knuckles. Across from her, James mirrored her posture, though his face was less than delighted. He sighed, shaking his hands out.

Her lip pulled in a slight smile. So dramatic.

He hesitated too long to make the first move, and Zinaida’s excitement got the best of her. She took a small step forward, throwing a jab at his shoulder. Light, testing his reaction.

James shifted out of the way, almost lazily, keeping his eyes on Zinaida’s face. She gave him a look of expectancy, jerking her chin. He rolled his eyes—a final protest that this was, in fact, a dumb idea—but they both knew he was conceding.

There was no getting out of it now. It’d taken all last night, as James took the dinner shift, and she talked over the dishes, to convince him. She needed to get some sparring time in between fights, she’d said, but knew better than to make any friends in the fighting circle. This was an objective truth. In the underground, there was no space for women except the leftover room they’d carved out for themselves. And that space was crowded, as Zinaida was discovering, the more she moved up in the ranks.

This was the major reason. Andriy had mentioned more than once that he was planning to set her up against the male fighters soon. He said he’d start small, easy victories, but she knew not to trust his word. Andriy Maksimovich, she had come to learn, was a shallow thinker. He moved on a whim, on some misguided idea of intuition, towards whichever way the wind blew.
She needed practice against men. Against anyone, really, but mostly men. And who was better practice than the Winter Soldier?

James stepped one foot closer into her space and jabbed at her lower midsection. It was quick, but focused. Zinaida dodged—of course she did, he knew she would, it was a simple hit. She stepped back on the balls of her feet, moving to circle him in their make-shift ring.

“If I hit you too hard, will you cry?” Zinaida said, tilting her head at him. All the adrenaline of the week was catching up. Sure, maybe she was trying to rile him up. Always nudging the line, always tiptoeing, it was her nature. And if he got irritated enough, maybe he’d fight to his full ability.

“Absolutely.” He deadpanned.

“Good.” Just as her lip tilted in a grin, Zinaida shot forward. She broke the circle, aiming a high kick at his ribs. It was sharp and quick, but not unavoidable. Testing. It landed, knocking James back slightly on impact. His face pinched, hiss dying in the back of his throat, and she thought; too easy. Sure enough, as her leg flew back to her, his arm shot out. As if choking someone, his inner forearm curled over her shin and pulled her in.

She pulled her knee in, trying to break the hold, but she was late. As Zinaida wobbled on one leg, he wrangled her towards him, slight amusement dancing across his face. She was close enough to hear his breath, slightly heavier than normal. She realized he liked the fight, too, hard as he tried to hide it.

Before he could grab her arms, Zinaida drove her forearm into his face and shoved him back. Head leaning back to avoid her elbow, he let go easily, and they fell apart. She caught her balance on both feet, heat already rushing through her body.

“You’re pulling your punches.”

“No, I’m not.” James didn't even try to be convincing, she didn’t know why he bothered to deny it at all. he hadn’t even broken a sweat, hadn’t even grazed the surface of his ability. It pissed her off, it made her feel like a petulant child by having to lasso him into a simple sparring session.

“You haven’t made contact once.” She pursed her lips, raised a brow.

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s not exactly a fair fight, Zinaida. Look at you,” He pointed at her face. She’d forgotten, having not looked in the mirror yet, but it was safe to assume the swelling around her eye from last night had turned into something ugly. The short, but rough woman from last night, last left of the girls Zinaida had to beat, had gotten the lucky hit in. She’d gone the rest of the fight with the eye swollen shut, but still won in the end.

So, with the black eye, the knicks on her knuckles, and the various other bruises strewn across her body, it was safe to assume she didn’t look like the picture of health. But still, Zinaida was immediately indignant, twisting her face at his comment. “You think I can’t beat you like this?”

“I don’t think it mat—” James was cut off by Zinaida’s barefoot knocking into his knee, which was less painful than annoying. She shot closer, before he could say anything, and punched him in the jaw.

He cursed, cupping his jaw where her fist had connected. “The hell’s wrong with you?”

“You promised.” Was all she said, before she was cornering him again, and James had enough. Zinaida reached out for a hit. Quick one, two, he jumped back easily. Just as expected. And then her real move came, a lead hook to his left side. That was his metal side, as she thought of it—all it took to knock that heavy arm off balance was enough of a swing. But right when her fist closed, aiming near his ear, he slid his hand over the back of her neck, blocked the hit with his elbow, and then promptly sucker-punched her in the stomach.

The power of James’s hits, his real hits, never failed to surprise Zinaida. No man should wield fists that heavy, like anvils, and he didn’t even have to break his knuckles for it. Yet still, even as a sputtering cough pushed through her lips, they were turned with a smile.

That turning in her stomach, reeling from the pain, that was its own sort of drug. She stepped in, barely faltering, quick enough to land a strong enough right cross that landed on the sharp of his jaw. He took it in stride, grinding his teeth over the thrum of pain, pivoting low, sweeping his metal arm in a low arc that swiped both of her shins. She tumbled forward, feeling the titanium like the blade of a dagger, but managed to roll backwards and catch herself on her feet. As her feet planted, Zinaida had an idea.

She let a sharp gust of air through her lips, hunching so he can’t see the look on her face, and pushed a quiet whimper of pain out. Resting her hands on her knees, she waited.

James hesitated. She heard him freeze, shifting on his feet, leaning in. She doesn’t have to guess whether he’ll follow her with a hit or a hesitant politeness. As soon as he’d stepped within her bubble, all quiet and apprehensive and worried, she lunges. Her takedown was quick, rough; barreling into his lower body, arms curling around his thighs, and then it was just about wrapping her leg around his shin and toppling him over.

He tried to jump back at the last moment, but once she got herself positioned right, he hit the ground like a dead weight. As he growled, sucking his lips in, reaching for some kind of retaliation, she was already climbing on top of him.

Pulling her knees up to straddle James, Zinaida pulled her fist up to shadow his sharp, defined nose. It was slightly flared, fitting his scrunched face in natural resistance to her overpowering. Hesitating momentarily, knuckles pulled up and looming over his sharp face, her eyes lingered on the dimple in his chin. That slight stubble he’d grown outlined it better, that thumb print at the tip of his chin. Zinaida wondered how many punches his face had taken; scarless as it was. Still, he had such crisp features, nearly untainted.

It took only that moment of lingering in her pose for James to wrench his flesh arm out from below Zinaida’s knee. She felt the escape, nerves zipping back to life, shooting through her clenched fingers. She pummeled her fist down to catch on his face, following through with her initial intention, but he’d already gotten too much leeway. James managed to pull his wrist over his face just in time to swallow the blow of her thin, bruised knuckles.

Zinaida cursed herself, trying to launch into a set of defensive attacks, just as James made quick work with the momentum he’d gotten. He wrapped his metal hand around her hips, and all it took was that one hand to shove her down and off of him. “Мудак,” She snarled, landing on her back bone, and pulled her legs up to immediately thrash at the impending man.

Light scoff falling from him, James crawled over to her, slapped her legs away, and easily reversed their position. He didn’t need to pin her wrists under her knees, or hold her down like she always had to with her victims, all it took was that impossibly heavy weight of his body to pin Zinaida down. She was hit with that weight; that indelible glass ceiling, the simple, biological failure on her part, and wanted to spit in his face. Zinaida had to remind herself that she’d wrangled him into this in the first place. Even now, there was that careful, underlying hesitancy in his face, close as it was to slipping away.

Her arms and legs were plenty crushed under him. That was game, unrequitedly. Zinaida still thrashed, though dwindling, but James tilted his chin to the side and met her glare with a firmness. “Good game.”
Following this, James tentatively lifted his arm up in a half-surrender, giving her a hole to roll out of. That was, if she knew what was good for her, and that was a bit too much faith in her sensibility.

The minute he gave her an inch, Zinaida wiggled her leg out and immediately drove her knee up into his lower gut. Then, and only then, did she roll out from under him and hop to her feet.

“I didn’t submit.” She reminded him, still catching her breath. Being under him was like being trapped under a collapsed shelf.

James shot her a look, one of his signature ‘don’t be stupid’ looks, and then turned on his heel. Holding a hand to the sensitive tissue she’d kneed him in, he ambled into the kitchen. Turning on the faucet, he called over his shoulder to Zinaida, “You didn’t need to.”

As he very decisively did not look back at Zinaida, even just to see that hilarious disbelief he knew would be on her face, Bucky wondered if he’d gone too far. He’d seen that look in her eyes, as he crushed her with his entire weight, that unbridled fire. They both had—and this wasn’t the right word—competitive streaks, and maybe they egged on a bad side of each other. He couldn’t help himself, sometimes, when she’d become that stick of dynamite, lit up and fizzing, just counting down the seconds until everything blew up.

And though his back was surely turned, Zinaida didn’t let herself inspect the panging tissue in her stomach where he’d punched her. She had to remember to work on building more muscle in her torso, for all the suckers she took there. It was hurting bad enough that she knew it would bruise awfully and felt temporarily nauseous from the pain. At least they’d had breakfast before, or she might’ve not left the ground. Still, her determination was quickly chipping away.

“Game isn’t over.” She grumbled, just to say she’d tried, though she was following him into the kitchen now. After he got his drink of water—straight from the tap to his mouth—she grabbed a paper cup and filled it up.

“Yeah, sure. If I take the market trip, will you be okay here?”

“I’ll be fine. You didn’t hit me that hard.”

He shot her a small grin—they took her breath away every time, such rare, yet fluent smiles—before sliding open the kitchen drawer, grabbing his pistol and slipping it into the back of his belt. Then, turning to the refrigerator, he ripped the grocery list off the yellow paper pad pinned to the fridge, and headed for the door.

“Lock the door!” James called on his way out, shrugging his jacket on as he slipped out the front door.

Zinaida first took a scorching hot shower. Her showers were always short and boiling, out of weak fear that if it ventured cold, she’d be sucked into another Hydra memory. Or, somehow even worse, anything about the Room and those communal showers. Those days, everything was tainted by, and revolved around memories. They flooded back like the harsh, almost burning pressure of the shooting faucet.

Afterwards, with their one and only thin, and too-short towel around her shoulders, she searched her reflection in the mirror. Zinaida looked worse than she’d thought; her eye was red and swollen, already tinging purple. Where James had landed a hit, her stomach was all green, purple, yellow. At least she’d gained weight, though it turned quickly to muscle in her arms and legs, it was there. Sustenance in her frame.

She pulled on her softest clothes—the thin sweatpants James had bought for himself at a market, only to nearly split the hem as he tried to pull them on, and the long-sleeved undershirt she’d gotten at the Belarusian border.

Zinaida struggled in front of the bathroom mirror for at least ten minutes trying to do a french braid in her hair. She bent backwards in odd positions, popped her knees and squatted to maintain eyes on her hair as her fingers wore themselves out trying to twine it together. Her hair was getting long enough to be constantly annoying, past her shoulder now. The braid had been an instinct, but Zinaida realized in that moment that she could hardly manage one criss-cross. Miraculously, in her memories it was always braided; through her teens, she could remember the whip of her dutch braid and the red mats, and then in Hydra, when there was always someone braiding her hair back before missions.

She suspected Natalia had been the designated stylist when they were younger. Zinaida had no memories to back this up, just a hunch, but that was enough to send that stinging pain straight through her stomach.

This ache seemed to be a constant. It was why, when Zinaida dropped her hands out of her hair, standing in the bathroom like a ghost of herself, she knew where to go.

Tucked deep between the couch cushion and the arm, she pulled out the carefully folded sheet of lined paper.

Pulling her legs up on the couch, Zinaida set the closed computer in her lap as a clipboard of sorts, unfolded the piece of paper, and smoothed it against the cold metal of the laptop.

The paper was nearly as empty as it had been since the day she'd asked for James to lend it to her out of his notebook, unless you counted the lines of scribbled-out words. The only word standing was a name; Natalia.

Zinaida pierced her teeth into her bottom lip. The empty, crumpled paper seemed to mock her. She tapped the pen against it; once, twice, again and again. Then she flipped it around until the ink-covered ball was dipping into the paper, and began to form words.

I am alive, ‘Tal. I am alive, hunkering in one-bedroom apartments and beating grown men for money, sharing chores with the Winter Soldier. There is nobody else to be honest with, so I will be honest with you. I wake up every night from dreams soaked in blood and bones and guts, and replay brief memories of copper curls and your hand in mine. I am ashamed to say it's the only way I can fall back to sleep. Yesterday your voice came to me in perfect English; you were telling me they weren't stronger than our blood. The mistresses were right, we were naive---I remember that impossible feeling of dominion. Such misplaced invincibility.

Chapter 31: In Due Time

Summary:

James and Zinaida make an emergency break-away. Guilt follows them like a stray dog.

March, 2015

The bound cord, the only thing separating Zinaida from the roaring crowd, couldn’t take a moment of her weight before it collapsed. As she hit the ground, the brush of fingertips skidded against the back of her head, catching momentarily on the bundle of red hair in her ponytail. They boo'ed as she fell back.

She remembered to tuck her hands behind her head, padding it from the fall. Zinaida had gotten used to the sting of the floor—there wasn’t a single match where those flimsy ropes held up—so she didn’t take a minute dwelling on the ache it left on her spine, instead hopping right to her feet.

Fyodor, or “The Crusher” as the announcer always called him, was already barreling towards Zinaida as she slipped away from the pile of collapsed rope. He swiveled around, giant shoulders curved in and rising with every one of his heavy breaths, and watched her circle the ring.

A primal sort of fear ran through her bones. She had tried not to think about his size, all 200-something pounds of muscle he stored like on his body, but it was different in person. It was different after he’d picked her up like a sack of potatoes and thrown her into the ground. He was the sort of man, the sort of pure bulk, that Novikov assigned to beat some sense into her.

Just a man, she told herself, just a man. But her head was spinning, and he’d knocked more blood loose from her already-aching nose. He’d already gotten a killer punch on her in the start of the match, and now that throw. She couldn’t take another hit as hard as that. Zinaida had already decided; she couldn’t afford the time she’d planned to spend tiring him out. To wait for him to trip up. She had to be quicker, smarter.

Zinaida slowed her pace, skirting around Fyodor like a lion in a cage. His eyes followed, but he wasn’t dull enough to spin around with her every time she moved. She found an opening and pounced. She feigned left, then curved low, knocked into the side of his kneecap in a sharp, pointed kick. He didn’t drop, the only real effect it had was turning his face bright red with anger. Instead of jumping away like she normally would, Zinaida lingered in place just long enough for him to reach out in retaliation.

His arm extended, covered in sprawling tattoos from elbow to the wrist she grabbed onto. Pivoting to stand in line with him, she held him firmly back with her hip. She twisted his arm so it shot straight out, fighting against the crook of her armpit like a snake. Fyodor hissed out a string of crude threats and fought instinctively against the hold, and her spark of adrenaline peaked. Held between her arm and abdomen, Zinaida wrenched his forearm towards her body at an angle so awkward that it had to give out. And it did, elbow snapping out of place with a viscous pop.

Fyodor screamed something guttural, keeled over in a way that looked like he might drop to his feet—and really, that wasn’t unthinkable. It was an extraordinary pain, Zinaida knew. She didn’t stand around and find out, instead she linked her arm around his neck and pulled him towards her (she would’ve grabbed him by the shirt, but all that covered the man’s entire upper body was the hair on his chest). She had to lean backwards to dodge Fyodor’s half-hearted attempt to knock their heads together, before punching him hard and squarely in the face.

The fight was over. Zinaida had known that from the sight of Fyodor’s bleary eyes as she practically held him up, but Andriy’s grin was the confirmation. He was there, like every other fight in her uninterrupted streak of wins, dollar signs in his eyes as he lifted up the rope for her. Shaking out her fists, Zinaida climbed down into the crowd.

Andriy had his arm around her shoulder as he babbled endlessly in her ear—there were probably preposterous proposals slipped in between every sentence, just in the hopes she might agree to make him shut up—Zinaida parted through the waves of people. Most of them didn’t look at her; once she left the ring, it was like some kind of illusion broke and suddenly, their eyes were elsewhere.

Everybody except for Andriy’s recruiting friends, who he was too much of a braggart to stop inviting to the weekend matches, and who seeked Zinaida out after all of her successful matches.
Anyway, her eyes weren’t on any of them. Zinaida searched the crowd for one familiar face, the one she’d gotten to know all too well. The bar, the east exit, the staircase, she found nothing.

“Ivanna.”

She wished momentarily that she’d given a less common name to Andriy. Zinaida had to remind herself to answer to the name every time it slipped out of his mouth. Reluctantly, she tore her eyes off the rows of chairs and inebriated people. Andriy’s smile had slipped, replaced with quick annoyance. “Are you tuning me out again?”
“Are you saying anything important?”

He let out a humorless scoff, lips tilting in an empty smile. Annoyed as he was, there would be no consequence for Zinaida’s bad manners. Andriy needed her much more than she needed him. And besides, the man bent like a willow in the wind to anybody who would nod and hum in approval as he spoke—the type of man who succumbed to anything that made them feel important. It was easy to keep him in her pocket. “I was saying that thanks to my skills with a crowd, we doubled our bets on you since last time.”

“Yes, I’m sure it was your boyish charm that convinced them.”

Andriy guffawed, and Zinaida realized he thought she was being sincere. She was about to grab her money’s worth out of his stingy pocket where she knew it would be, when something wrapped around her arm.

Zinaida jerked her arm away so hard she knocked into Andriy. Her eyes darted up from the gloved hand that had grabbed her to the man it belonged to. It took a moment to recognize James, with that navy hat shadowing his face—it was ultimately those obnoxiously broad shoulders that gave him away.

“You’re here.” Zinaida, sticking to the Ukrainian she spoke with Andriy in. There was a small knot of excitement in her stomach at the sight of James, but all of this dissipated when the strobe lights knocked a ray of white light over him. Illuminated, Zinaida found an unsettling worry, bright on James’s face. No wonder his shoulders had looked so tall, he was standing stiff and guarded.

Of course, this wasn’t exactly his scene, but he’d sworn the entire week that he’d come watch her against Fyodor tonight. And this wasn’t his usual worry.

Zinaida didn’t need to ask any questions. She turned on her heel back to Andriy, who had already been caught in a conversation with a bald man in a sweatsuit, and pulled him towards her with a firm hand on the shoulder. “My money.”

Andriy sighed, already slipping into his usual stingy, begrudging act that he adopted every time he paid her. Zinaida usually preferred to simply wait and stare as Andriy slowly slid his hand into his jacket, counting the bills with a frown before he parted with them, but the look on James’s face said there wasn’t time. As soon as the wad of cash was pulled mysteriously from his brown-leather get-up, Zinaida snatched it away.

When she turned back to James, he was already striding to the staircase. She caught up quickly, following him up the stairs at the same unyielding pace he’d chosen. It wasn’t until the front door to the gym clinked shut that he finally spoke.

Front strands blown in his face by the night wind, James turned over his shoulder and threw her a weary glance. “Middle-aged man slipped in through the east exit about halfway into the fight before yours. Barely looked at the ring once before you got in.”

“Did you recognize him?” They both knew what she really meant; was he Hydra?

“No. He's fed.”

“What?” Zinaida caught up, once again, to James’s relentless pace down the street, swerving into back alleys at nearly every turn, until she was next to him. “Are you sure?”

“Clean-shaven, wore a ring and brown loafers. Pulled out his phone every five seconds to swipe a photo of you.”

Zinaida stopped. “Did he see you?”

“He had his eyes on you like a fucking hawk. Once I found you, he must’ve.”

James’s eyes had glazed over, and Zinaida recognized it at once. There was a darkness there, a vicious darkness, that she had never before seen occupy his face. He hated that man for finding them.
Finally, they had a common enemy. “Then we need to find him.” She said, already set in the decision. They’d go back, track him, take him out.

Apparently, James had seen this coming. He shook his head before she even finished, “He’s gone. Left through the same door he came in, same time as us.”

Zinaida’s eyebrows pulled together. There was another piece here. “And you let him?”

James gave her the incredulous look she’d come to know well. It was the same look he’d given her the night that knife had slipped out of her jacket pocket. “He’s a cop. What, you wanted me to slit his throat in the back alley?” He spit the words at her with a fierce darkness, which Zinaida might have appreciated more if it wasn’t laced with judgement. “We’d have a SWAT team at our door in an hour.”

“And we still will. You could have at least got whatever photos he took, saved our faces from being plastered all over the news.” His gaze flicked downwards. Her’s followed, and then they were both looking at her pointer finger jammed at his chest.

He nodded down at her finger, jaw set in that impenetrable square, and then looked up again. “Yeah, well, it’s too late now. We need to be gone before they get there.”

Zinaida froze for a second, her mind reeling like a maniac. That cop could’ve been tailing them for weeks, he could have weeks of information about her. Or he could’ve heard buzz about a girl—”Red,” that was what the crowd chanted at her—who fought like a widow, and chosen to see for himself. Either way, the Ukrainian government was no less vigilant about rumors of a Winter Soldier and his friend than the Polish had been. There was a good chance James was right; she hated that man for finding them, and she’d be momentarily happy to slit his throat in an alley, but he was already gone. And it was too late, and it was time to face the music. And James was holding an olive branch out so expectantly towards her, and before she knew it, Zinaida was telling him to “Hurry up, then.”

They practically sprinted up the stairs in their building, arriving at the thin, wooden door with two sets of locks and a small plaque on the door reading “006” in bronze letters. James pulled his keys and his pistol from his pocket, and for a second, Zinaida was overwhelmed with gratitude—of course he was paranoid enough to bring his Soviet-made handgun to her match. And then he was pushing the door open with his shoulder, slipping inside, sweeping the apartment as Zinaida watched the hallway. When James came back, uncocking his gun and giving her a nod, everything sped up.

They moved through the apartment like soldiers; Zinaida ripped clothes off their hangers in the coat closet by the door—that one, small closet held every article of clothing they owned—shoving them down compactly into the duffle bag. James flicked open drawer after drawer in the kitchen, stowing protein bars in his front pockets and flushing the rest down the garbage disposal. He didn’t forget the faux-leather clad journal, dog-eared all over, which was already halfway filled after about three months of owning it. He had begun almost compulsively tracking every bit and piece of recollection he had, waking up in the middle of the night just to scribble down something like; Coney Island. Stevie got sick.

So, within a handful of minutes, the fateful duffel bag was so full she could hardly zip it, their warmest clothes piled on top of her old spandex suit, untouched since September, and James had once again sweeped the apartment. He made sure they’d gotten rid of anything that could tie to them. Everything they couldn’t fit—spare clothes in the closet, all of the fresh groceries in the fridge, their paper plates and cups—was left untouched, in place just like the sparse furniture.

While James waited at the door, checking the bullets in his barrel, Zinaida pretended to be checking the furniture for anything they missed. Instead, she slid her hand under the couch cushion, waiting to feel the folded paper in her fingers before she pulled out. Without any pockets in her leggings to slip the letter into, she instead tucked the half-empty piece of paper into her bra.

___

 

“Now, Ladies and gentleman, today I’d like us to take a trip back to Deuteronomy. It’ll be 32:35.”

The pastor bowed his head in silent command. He didn’t need to look at the Holy Bible on the lester, this was a man who knew scripture by heart. The giant church, where every sound bellowed off the walls, was filled with the rustling of pages turning. Zinaida looked down at her lap, where there was an old, browning bible, leather-clad, already turned to the verse. In fact, there was only one sentence on the page, the rest was all empty, weathered paper.

She tried to force her eyes to focus over the words, to take them in, but for a moment, the warm lights flickered and sputtered. When she looked up, they were back to normal. Bright as ever. Nobody even spared them a glance.

Zinaida lowered her gaze again, and just as she read over the single verse, the Priest echoed it. His voice sounded vaguely familiar; deep, smooth Russian. “It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.”

Suddenly, everybody was saying it. The verse echoed off the sculpted, mural-covered walls, it seemed even Jesus in his robes was repeating it back to her. “Their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.” They said, monotone, perfectly in tandem. There was a hole of silence where Zinaida sat in the pew. Her fingers ran over the ink on the paper. She parted her lips and expected to join, but no sound came out. The muscles in her mouth tightened around her, unable to take in a breath of air in her strain to make the sound. Finally, as her eyes bulged, she made a sound; a tiny gasp of air.

It was just her luck, as soon as the gasp escaped her, the whole place went silent. Alarmed by the sudden absence of sound, Zinaida looked up from the bible. She had thought she’d heard something like someone’s hair whipping around, and now she knew why. Everybody was staring at her now.

They were blank-faced, all of them, just dead-eyed, children and mothers and fathers and grandfathers. At the aisle in front of her, a row of four children and a breast-feeding mother had all turned their heads at a 180-degree angle to face her. Like owls.

An unsettled chill rushed down her spine. The silence crept around her like a phantom. Everywhere she looked, a set of eyes was unflinchingly on her. Her gaze rose to the pew, and there the priest stood. She focused first on his face, his eyes watering, red as he stared her down. His mouth moved, but the churchgoers spoke for him. In perfect synchronicity, they recited; “Their foot will slip.”

No, something was wrong. His face was glowing, reflecting some golden light. Like a candle. Suddenly, like broken out of a trance, she was able to lower her gaze. There was a circle of wax candlesticks at his feet. The bottom of his robes were draped on the floor, a small train behind him. No, the train was caught in the candles. It was catching, and then the train was lit on fire, orange, mean flames bursting up his lower half.

He didn’t look down. His lips opened slowly, as if bracing for something important. Dimly, Zinaida knew she wanted to do something. She wanted to stand up, but the air was so heavy it seemed to hold her down. She could only watch closely as his lips spread farther and farther apart, teeth gleaming under the incandescent glow, and she realized he was about to scream.

That was the last thing she thought before an explosion rocked the place.

It seemed to come from every wall, a burst of fire and blown drywall and acidic smoke. The impact from behind blew her off her seat—maybe it blew the whole pew to bits—and Zinaida fell on her side into the aisle. Something hard—wood, concrete, maybe metal—cracked against her face. She was heading for the ground, bracing herself on her hands, and the ground burned from littered embers fallen to it, but she could see everything. The priest, whose body had been ripped apart until it was only his head, his severed head on the lester, smack-dab against the opened bible. His eyes, clouding, looked into hers.

Zinaida knew, in that moment, that she had done this. She had planted those bombs, she remembered now; one behind each of the paired murals, and two more strapped to the pillars near the meat of the crowd. The smoke and ash and fire was everywhere. The walls were stripped to their barest sheets, most everyone—families, elderly, children—were either in bloody pieces tucked in the hews, or littered in the aisles like her. They were charred and unrecognizable. Zinaida, suddenly incredibly tired, ready to give in, lowered her head. She let her forehead rest against the ash-covered tile.

The whine of a siren echoed in the distance, and for a moment, her slowing heart lurched again. Would there be another? She’d only planted those, right? And then again, it went off, so close she could hear it in her ears.

The closeness was so jarring that she jolted up. No, not up, she’d never been down; now Zinaida was throwing a thin white blanket off of herself, and blinking into a room of baby blue walls. The ash and marble was gone, the smoke and the bodies, now there was just blue. A small room, two doors, a dresser in the corner and slits of sun breaking through a pair of drawn curtains. The panic came quick, she bolted upright and whipped her head around. Though she wouldn’t admit it, the redhead knew exactly what she was looking for, and only breathed when she found it; James, reaching up from his make-shift mattress on the floor to check on her. He shot to his knees and searched her over, obviously pulled out of sleep.

She couldn’t get a word out, there was a thick dread in her stomach and screams still dying in her throat. No thoughts were coming, every train was overrode with the images from her nightmare; fire sneaking up the priest’s robes, the mangled little girl, scraps of her pink church dress whipping through the smoke. All she could do was breathe, heaving and heavy and terrified, still. James knew, of course, laying a flat hand on the bed in fear of doing anything more. “Hey.” He found her eyes, stared steadily until they focused, “You’re okay. We’re in the motel, remember?”

“I know that.” She snapped and broke her silence, even though she hadn’t known until he’d said it. Of course, they’d gotten off in Slovakia after nine hours of traveling in the hot, slow bus to reach Hungary. The sun was near rising when they’d checked in, set their bag (singular) down and passed out. She’d been stupid to sleep, with all the nightmares she’d had recently.

Zinaida peeled herself off the bed, a chill running down her spine through her sweat-soaked day clothes. In fact, she realized, these were her fighting clothes; black leggings and James’s tank that she’d had to sew multiple times now. It ripped easily, but kept her cool in the ring. And now it was absolutely filthy, along with the rest of her. The dirt brought up more memories.

The church bombing was a new memory, and each one seemed worse than the last. Recently, they’d been pouring back in sheets. She told herself to forget it, tucking the cover back under the pillow and stumbling around the corner of the bedpost. Reaching for what she thought was the bathroom door, Zinaida turned the handle and was instead met with an empty closet. She cursed under her breath, just as James mumbled something and pointed towards the actual bathroom. She reached it with a nod, slamming the door behind her and collapsing against the sink.

Zinaida washed her face twice, scrubbing her pores with the sandpaper pads of her fingers. Then, when she raised her eyes to the mirror, was so appalled by the flush of her fuller cheeks that she slapped her backhand across the pink skin. It was loud enough that she worried James would hear. If he did, he didn’t say anything when she ventured back out. Bee-lining for the duffel bag, which was propped up against the twin bed she’d slept in, Zinaida grabbed it and pulled it almost frantically over her shoulder. It’s heavy weight wasn’t as comforting as she’d, apparently, hoped, but it was enough to calm her voice when she spoke. “We should go.”

“It’s…” He was sitting on the edge of the bed, and craned his neck to look at the clock on the bedside table that Zinaida’s body partially obscured, “0500.”

It was about a two hour trip, whether by train or bus, to Debrecen from the small city in Slovakia where they’d bunkered. They had time to spare.

“And? Early squirrel gets the worm, right?”

James barked a laugh, quick and surprised. He’d said it back in Ukraine one particularly good morning, as he scraped scrambled-egg residue into the sink, about to head to the site, and Zinaida had been truly confused. Then, after his hasty explanation—”Y’know, ‘cause the bird gets there before the other ones, it gets more food. I think.”---she’d just shook her head, grumbled; “Why does it have to be a worm? It is stupid.”

Zinaida’s brows pulled together, laying a hand on her hip as James swallowed the end of his barking laugh, and he realized she’d earnestly attempted the saying. So he cleared his throat, wore his cracked smile, “Damn right.”

It was about a thirty minute walk to the station, they agreed, even though the night before was an over-exhausted blur. Normally, this would’ve been a walk in the park, but perhaps the pair had gone soft. Maybe it was because the protein bar they’d shared on the bus wasn’t cutting it, but either way, they were starving.

Having saved up a good sum between the double jobs they’d worked for months, Zinaida and James agreed they could spare some money on a hot meal. Their stomachs heartily agreed.

They stopped at a little cafe named after some Slovakian animal they didn’t recognize, and sat down at a booth closest to the door. Zinaida ordered some kind of bread and jam and salami breakfast, and James got eggs and a black coffee. Her head felt so foggy, she nearly ordered another coffee for herself, but decided to just share his. Money would get tight soon, and they’d need all they could save.

They sat in tired silence before the food came, and then dived in when it did. It turned out, even after seven months of relatively regular meals, as bland as they were, neither of the former Assets could shake their habit of eating like starved animals. Breakfast, no matter where they were, were typically quiet and focused, scarfing down fuel and shaking off the brutal nightmares.

As James stuffed his mouth with poached eggs and simultaneously gulped coffee, Zinaida watched the window. The sun was quickly stretching over the sky now, breaking through the cold-fogged windows of the cafe and beating down on her shoulder. She was trying very hard to chew and swallow the bite of bread and jam in her mouth, but couldn’t work up the courage. She felt sick, images of the church were still flashing by every other moment.

Zinaida rolled her shoulders, feeling both hot and cold in the maroon sweater she’d thrown on sometime before leaving the motel. James glanced around the cafe as he gulped down a bite, scanning the waitresses and the two other people in the place with suspicious eyes. His hair had surely grown longer, it was brushing against his shoulders now, pairing with the slight stubble around his mouth. She must’ve felt suddenly brave, because before she knew it, Zinaida was breaking through their comfortable silence, breaking through the low folk music coming from the radio in the kitchen.

“Do you believe in God?”

James’s froze, blinked at her, and then swallowed a mouthful. “Uh. I…” Zinaida had caught him off guard in a way she hadn’t expected. Something old and forgotten swam inside of his eyes, as he looked down at the checkered cloth-covered table and searched for an answer.

“I mean, were you religious?”

He didn’t miss the past tense. It hurt, in a way, how sure she was that they weren’t anything anymore. Or, at least, that they weren’t whole. “Not exactly. My Ma was, I guess, but…” James sparked with a dull pain, the kind that’s been hashed a million times, “Lost her young. Still went to church though, afterwards.”

“With your father?”

He laughed quietly, with a sad sort of irony, “No, wasn’t his scene. My, uh… Steve.” James had to rush the name out with a puff of breath. “Stevie, his Ma was real catholic. After we met, I went with them every Sunday. She insisted, y’know.” He scraped a bundle of runny yolk off his plate and shoved it into his mouth, ostensibly to shut himself up.

Zinaida realized, with a pang of worry, that she was nipping at the bit for a glimpse into the life James once had. She didn’t know if it was jealousy, or trying to live vicariously, but she knew it was trouble. Caring was trouble. She imagined little James—no, Bucky, that’s who he was—in a too-big suit and scuffed shoes, sitting through a Sunday service. It was an impossible image to conjure.

She thought of a hundred questions to ask, and found that all of them brought her too close to him. Or maybe him too close to her, but either way, she couldn’t take the proximity. Instead, Zinaida hummed in understanding and dragged a scrap of bread through a puddle of jam on her plate. She could feel through, like a stinging heat on her forehead, that James was watching her.

“Are—are you? Religious, I mean?” He sounded a bit embarrassed, and suddenly everything was awkward and stiff again.

Zinaida felt a dull wave of anger as she met his eyes, and didn’t bother to shield it—no matter how hard she could try to disguise herself, it seemed that James saw every emotion she felt. “No, I didn’t have much time for church. I was very busy training to kill.”

She didn’t miss how his eyes snapped to their surroundings, surveying the area as if the prehistoric couple in the corner booth had heard her low, sharp voice. Then he grumbled; “Yeah, okay.” And dropped the conversation, going back to his plate.

They didn’t talk about the Red Room. They didn’t talk about Hydra. Really, Zinaida didn’t know why she’d played the “I’m-a-trained-killer” card, because it wasn’t like she had him beat. They could compete forever about who was more fucked up. Maybe she’d just wanted to surprise him.

They sat in silence for another handful of stiff moments, the only sound being the hum of music, clutter of the kitchen in the back of the cafe, and their rushed chewing. James had emptied his plate and switched to chugging his coffee in short, quick sips. Zinaida just kept hearing it, like a broken record in her head; It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.

“If there’s a God, He’ll want to punish us for what we’ve done.”

James froze, mid-swallow. His eyes flicked to hers, and they looked at each other for a moment. She felt something clear and real and inexplicable. He nodded, slowly, “Probably.”

For the very first time since he’d been a shell of a man on the floor of their filthy cell, Zinaida was confused by the man in front of her. She realized this was something he’d already thought about, he must’ve turned it over and over in his brain to reach such clarity.

Notes:

big fan of sneaking religious guilt into all of my writing like an easter egg

Chapter 32: Day of Doom

Summary:

James and Zinaida lie low for a brief stint in Hungary. Trouble comes knocking.

April, 2015

Hungary was quiet. There was talk in the newspapers about Viktor Orbán, how he’d turn the country into a dictatorship overnight, but besides the unsettled chatter, the streets were quiet. Lights went out at night and stayed out, there wasn’t much partying. Zinaida had planned to investigate the underground scene, but they’d barely gotten their foot in the door before having to run again.

They'd been in the country for two weeks, staying in a hotel and living off of the free breakfasts and microwaved noodles—James looked for apartments, but a sinister feeling lingered in Zinaida’s stomach that kept her hesitancy.

The best, and newest, thing about the hotel was a small, flat TV on top of the dresser by the bed. That night, they were both sitting on the edge of the bed, Zinaida’s legs folded criss-crossed and a bowl of bland ramen in her lap. There was some game show on the television, translated to Hungarian, and Zinaida strained to pick out all of the words she knew. James had given up the hunt of trying to understand the different languages they had to adapt to with each move, and was resigned to watching the host make animated gestures and the contestants shrieks of joy as they spun a good roll.

“Okay, she’s got.. 200 thousand Forint on this one.”

“So… uh, 400 dollars?”

“In US currency, I think… about $550.”

“Jesus. What do we have to do to get on this thing?”

Zinaida was surprised to hear herself laugh. She imagined James, rugged James with his nervous glare, his shining metal arm and dark, long hair, behind those stands, clueless to every question. “Find an incredible disguise, I guess.”

He shot her an amused grin, and she met his eyes for only a second before the gaze burned too hot and she had to look away—spinning her fork to capture another bite of Ramen and looking back to the screen.

Adela, a postal worker from Slovakia who had big hopes of winning a trip to Italy for her husband and two children, hopped around with giddy nervousness as her trivia question popped on the screen.

James hunched closer to the TV like an old man, squinting to read the capitalized trivia question. He had perfect vision, of course, but imperfect translation. The host raised his hands and began, emphatically, shouting out the question. “Melyik európai országban a legmagasabb az egy főre jutó bruttó hazai termék a világon?”

[What European country has the world's highest Gross Domestic Product?]

He mumbled the question back to himself, sounding out the words until he had the pronunciation right. “What country—No European country.. Has the most—”

“Highest.” She corrected, having already translated the question. Hungarian was difficult, the alphabet seemed like an odd construction from Russian, and the pronunciation messed with her tongue, but she’d always excelled in linguistics. Then, under her breath, as the lady on the screen shook and searched for an answer, she muttered; “Luxembourg.”

“Five seconds, miss!” The host, a balding man with a toothy smile and a suit that was always too snug, warned the contestant. She winced, and, hesitating, hit the buzzer. “Kyiv?” She guessed.

“That is… Incorrect! The correct answer was Luxembourg!”

Zinaida hid her smile, but it was knocked away when she felt James’ shoulder knock into hers. Shaking off the urge to jump, she looked at him and found a grin on his face. James shook his head, kissed his teeth, “You are unbelievable.”

Of course he’d heard her muttered answer, she realized, and the smile came back. She shook him off, tilting her head down to look at her bowl, and was about to say something snarky when a knock rapped against their hotel room door.

They froze. It was upwards of midnight, probably closer to dawn, considering their nocturnal tendencies, and this place was certainly not nice enough for room service. The cleaning lady came on Friday.

They darted off the bed, moving in silence to their positions. James aligned himself with his back against the dresser, so that with a single turn he could peek into the entrance hallway. He grabbed his gun on the way, but Zinaida had already grabbed hers from the bedside table. Stepping carefully down the short hallway to the door, Zinaida avoided the creaks in the floorboards. She listened carefully, but only the sound of quick, nervous breathing could be barely heard on the other side of the door.

There was no peep-hole in the door. Zinaida could only gather a steady breath, shove down the incessant worry in her gut, and turn the knob. When, as the door swung open, she caught a flash of red hidden under dark layers, Zinaida assured herself she was crazy. It wouldn’t be her.

The door was open. With nothing but the doorframe separating Zinaida from the sight behind it, her heart kicked up a rough rhythm. Standing in the hallway, her copper hair tucked into a ball-cap, was the woman from the news article all those months ago. The same woman storming out, cool and collected, of a press conference in the video Zinaida must’ve replayed a million times.

This could not be the woman from the video. Wearing sweats and a cargo jacket, bare-faced, this woman wore an expression of barely-contained fear. She looked like she might be sick. Zinaida felt the same. No, Natasha Romanoff could not be standing in the hallway in front of her.

A rush of hot tears were dredged up from somewhere foreign, and brimmed behind Zinaida’s eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. Her brain tried, like twisting and turning puzzle pieces to try to find a good fit, to piece together the connection between Natasha Romanoff and Zinaida’s Natalia, but she couldn’t accept that right then.

“You’re not… No, you’re not here.” She heard herself mutter, but hadn’t thought the words. She was still busy, searching the woman’s face. Hidden behind the shade of the hat over her head, Zinaida stared into her nervous, green eyes. She couldn’t have forgotten those eyes if she tried. No.

Natalia’s—Natasha’s—brow quirked, moving with the tilt of her head as she searched Zinaida. Her eyes moved up and down, darting across her; searching for danger. “Yeah. I’m here.” She said. Her voice was hushed, etched with a rasp that Zinaida didn’t recognize.

Did the woman recognize anything from her? Scraps of a child? No. This isn’t happening.

Zinaida was frozen. The woman adopted a look of something akin to pity—or at least, that’s all that Zinaida could discern from it. She took a small, minuscule step closer, “Hey.”

Zinaida’s hand shot to the gun in her pocket before she could tell it what to do, unsheathing it, wrapping her fingers around the handle, so one finger hovered around the trigger. “Don’t take another fucking step.” The loaded Makarov at her side, she stared hard into Natasha’s eyes. She didn’t know what was happening, except that she couldn’t handle it.

Natasha’s eyes didn’t even widen as she glanced at the gun swaying from her sister’s hand. She had long grown numb to the sight, so numb that even a barrel to her head wouldn’t freeze her up. Of course, this didn’t mean she wasn’t scared—she was absolutely fucking terrified. Not that her sister would kill her; she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, but that she’d fuck this up even more.

“Okay. Hey, Hey—” Natasha forced her voice to be steady, she forced her hands not to shake as she raised them up in a show of peace. Nothing bad was going to happen. She wouldn’t let it. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not gonna do anything.”

Natalia took a step forward. Into the line between the hallway and the still hotel room. Zinaida choked on her own breath. In, out, she could barely make her lungs move. She couldn’t make anything move. Her mind, or her hands, or her mouth. Staring at Natasha, which was all she could possibly do, felt like staring at the sun. It burned her eyes, it burned her heart. As she stepped closer, Zinaida could smell the dark, floral scent she smelled of. Light orchids and something woody.

“It’s me. You remember—” Natasha’s fingers wrapped, just a hair harsher than she’d meant them to be, onto Zinaida’s arm. Her fingers were warm, tender, and forced a chilling shock through Zinaida’s body. Something snapped inside of her.

Well, for one, it was her wrist that snapped. Up. So that the Makarov, which had been hanging limp in her hand, was now jammed to Natasha’s skull. Cold metal against the thin skin of her forehead, and Zianida could see a drop of nervous sweat forming at the woman’s hairline. It was so quick and harsh that Natalia had to stumble back, if only to make room for the gun. And finally, with the rush of power, Zinaida felt that turmoil of fear, and that nauseating feeling in her stomach empty out of her. You remember. A callous decisiveness took over, outlined with only one sure objective; she couldn’t remember. So when she spoke, her voice was deep, shaking with a new, dangerous, misplaced anger that made her head feel dizzy, “You’re right.” Her eyes were blown wide, pupils dilated. “You won’t do anything. Because if you take another fucking step, I’ll blow your head off.”

Some feeble, weak voice in the back of her mind was telling Zinaida to stop. That she wasn’t being rational. But it was outnumbered by all of the ringing sounds screaming that she wasn’t safe.

Natasha realized, with a defeated helplessness, that she’d already lost. It was all in that look in her sister’s eyes, the look that Natasha had given every. Single. Victim before she’d taken their lives. The look that read; it’s me or you. The nervous passion that she had shown up behind that door with died out, and in its wake there was simply grief. “I’m sorry.”

She took a step back, tennis shoes stepping out of the door frame, and immediately, Zinaida kicked the door shut. She would’ve used her hands if they weren’t both stuck, clamped onto her gun. Natasha’s quiet, dejected footsteps dissipated down the hall, as Zinaida stood frozen.

She was still standing there, gun pointed at the door as if aiming for a ghost, when James finally stepped out from his spot at the closet. She felt him come up behind her, but was still unable to lower her guard, even when he laid a calloused hand on her bicep.

Her head whipped in his direction, where he stood cautiously beside her. He didn’t jump away, just lowered her frozen, locked arms with a gentle nudge. The touch seemed to revive her. “We need to go.” She bit out, breath already picking up again.

“Okay.” He responded, quickly, knowing they had to keep moving. She couldn’t spend a second thinking about it, not right then. “Okay.” He followed her gaze with his own until he caught her eye, trying to ground her with his contact. James didn’t know how he did it, just that she was breaking right in front of him, and it needed to be done. “Let’s go, then. Me and you, we’ll go.”

He squeezed her arm—a strange, unfamiliar gesture that somehow steadied them both. Then, slowly, he took the gun from her hand, careful not to jolt her back into that manic tension.

Then he backed away, and the cold, sinking feeling returned into Zinaida’s body. Taking her duffel bag out of the closet, he began packing. He moved as quick as he could, afraid that if he took too long, she’d collapse right there.

Zinaida hadn’t thought she could hold any more guilt. She had thought her heart ached the worst it possibly could, but now, she knew she’d still been naive. Rejecting her own flesh and blood had been worse than anything she’d ever felt before, yet it was a hell of her very own making. Perhaps that was the worst part. Standing frozen as ever, in the doorway of their hotel, Zinaida thought—for what seemed like the millionth time in her life—that she hadn’t even known pain before. Not this kind. Not the real kind.

Notes:

nat cameo but at what cost?!?! sorry for more heartbreak guys i promise it's only up from here (partial lie)

Chapter 33: The Bottom of You

Summary:

James and Zinaida recuperate, hit hard after Natasha's unexpected visit. Zinaida struggles to carry the shame on her back.

Notes:

"And you pushed me in / And now my feet can't touch the bottom of you" - "Moon Song," Phoebe Bridgers

TW: PTSD flashbacks, gore

April, 2015

James and Zinaida went to Romania. They sat through a fourteen-hour train ride in pure silence, as Zinaida’s head put her through her paces. She supposed she had always known there was something deeply wrong with her, but not like this. She was mean and she was evil, but she loved her sister more than life. That was the one thing she’d known for sure, the only passive thing she’d ever had.

She’d pointed a gun at her sister. At her sister. Natasha had been there, she’d finally been within arms reach, and Zinaida had been truly ready to kill her. Well, had she really? She didn’t know. When she thought back, she couldn’t remember what she was thinking, just the panic that seemed to sink into every part of her body.

This was part of the cycle Zinaida had been sucked into as they moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Bucharest. She was tired. It seemed that everything, all of these steps they took in every new place, just kept repeating.

Get a place to sleep. They found a tiny, shitty apartment on the top floor of a brick complex. It was close to a big marketplace, had a bedroom and an extra mattress abandoned in the hallway next to it. Zinaida had taken a backseat in the process—and in life, really—so the choice had been James. She didn’t bother to argue when they put their stuff down and he told her to take the bedroom, indefinitely. She was too tired.

Find a way to make money. James found a job in town, another construction gig building a three-story for a rich politician. He assured Zinaida—if you could call it that—that he could make enough for her to stay home, but she’d adamantly rejected the idea. No matter how exhausted, she had to make her own way.

The target on her back wouldn’t slow just because her feet couldn’t keep up. Survival instincts seemed to run just as rudimentary as the need for sleep and food did.

Zinaida found a position as a cleaning lady at a factory. She’d originally been searching to be part of the assembly line, but as it turned out, there were a lot of people trying to work in the Romanian clothing factories. The only job nobody was begging to fill was the two A.M. cleaning shift.

A week into their stay in Bucharest, Zinaida woke up from another nightmare. She’d gotten so used to being stripped between horrors, that all Zinaida let out as her eyes snapped open was a small, strained gasp. She was curled up towards the wall in the single bedroom, blanket in a pile on the floor like it always seemed to be.

Her stomach panged. It wasn’t hunger, no—Zinaida realized she was upset to have woken up. That was the bundle of pain between her intestines.

She rolled onto her back. The room filled with the sound of her rustling sheets underneath her, the only sound, save her quick breaths and the drum of the half-hearted air conditioning through the vent on the ceiling. Her first thought was Natasha. The recurring nightmare she’d woken up from had been the same every time Zinaida fell asleep, starting on the fourteen-hour train ride from Hungary.

She was running through a snow-covered forest. Her sleeping gown scraped through whacking branches, and the snow piled on her bare feet like freezing boots. As she ran, Zinaida tracked the small footprints in front of her. She listened carefully, through her panting, for the sound of branches snapping ahead. A turn, another turn, she knew exactly what she was following, except she didn’t. It wasn’t until she turned onto a clearer path than all the rest, and in front of her, hunched over with an arrow in her back, was Natalia. Young Natalia, after the blue was chopped away and she grew her wavy red hair back out. She was crying in that messy, child-like way—sniffling, her whole body shaking with the weight—unaware of the killer behind her, as she tried and failed to pull the arrow out. She didn’t have the nerve to pull as hard as she needed to tear through all the muscle in her shoulder.

Zinaida stepped too hard on a patch of snow, and Natalia’s head piped up. She spun around, a look of pure terror on her face. Zinaida, dazed, pulled a bow and an arrow out of some unknown location, lined the arrow on the string, and began pulling it taut. She closed an eye, steadied her shivering hand, and aimed at Natasha’s head.

Natasha always screamed before she released the arrow. This time, she’d begged, but other times she’d just get that resigned look on her face, mumble out a “sorry,” and close her eyes. It didn’t matter, because Zinaida always released it, and it always hit smack-dab through her forehead.

Shivering in boxers and a sweater, Zinaida pulled the handle on her bedroom door, wincing as it creaked open. It was 1:30 A.M. James was either asleep or shaking off a nightmare — either way, too fragile for her to handle.

The kitchen was warmer than the bedroom, even in the pitch black of midnight. Zinaida flicked on the lamp above the stove-top, illuminating the tiny kitchen with warm light. She turned and stared at the fridge, and told herself she should eat something. An egg, at least. But her stomach turned at the thought.

Whatever, she thought, grimacing as she flicked the light back off and walked back to her room. She might as well just show up early, go ahead and get done what she could. Dropping her sleeping clothes into a pile on her bedroom floor, Zinaida put on her thick, baggy, black jeans and a tee.

Sitting by the front door of their apartment sat her leather boots. They were the same ones she’d been given a few years into her stay at Hydra. They were now worn completely smooth on the soles, and she noticed the laces slowly unraveling as she bent down and tied them tight. There were always nasty oil spills in the factory that took hours to clean up, and occasionally she’d find puddles of a mystifying chemical that fizzed up when she probed it, and stank of formaldehyde. If there was anything that could keep those spills out, it was her tough leather boots.

The room faded. The fraying lace in between her fingers coated with something sticky. Zinaida looked down. A pile of blood and guts were piled onto her boots, seeping in between her socks. She could feel a chunk sliding down her ankle. She gasped, choked on her breath, and the room filled back in.

The dark kitchen, the row of shoes by the door. Zinaida’s hands were raking down the closed door, her nails had scratched lines down the white paint. It wasn’t real.

“It’s not real.” She repeated, whispered into the pitchy apartment. She dug her nails out of the door, the pinch of pain like a release as they popped away. There was the slight red tint of pricked blood, and scraped paint underneath them. That hanging, dead flesh which was surely her heart pulled. She felt the grief again, like a metastasizing cancer. “Get up. Get up.” She whispered again, and was struck with relief that she had to get up at such an ungodly hour. What would she do if James saw her like this; pathetic, hanging from the door frame, unable to pull herself to her feet?

The thought seemed to sober her up. Get up, she told herself again, and finally did. Zinaida hauled herself to her feet, checking her laces again, just to make sure she’d really imagined the gore. No blood.

She fumbled with the lock on the door, unlatching it with trembling fingers.

“Just a memory.” She said, walking out the door.

The textile factory just outside of town was absolutely silent as Zinaida turned the key in the employee’s entrance and stepped inside. It was two-stories, but Zinaida was only paid to clean the first. She was met with that dead cold, the kind that got trapped inside a place without any air to replace it. The employee’s hall smelled of cigarettes, saw dust, and oil.

She started in the hallway where she entered. Zinaida supposed this was where the real employees took their smoke breaks or their half-a-minute lunches; it was always littered with scraps of food. But first, she slipped on the thick, navy jacket that hung in her janitor’s closet, which had not her name—well, the fake one she’d put on her resume—but just “janitor” in Romanian.

She worked in silence. Sweep the dust, food, and dirt into the pan. Discard it. Douse the floor in bleach, drag the sopping mop out of its infested bin and scrub the floor until it gleams. She didn’t think much. She didn’t hum, or talk to herself, or ask herself questions. She very pointedly did not let herself question when that awful, gory flashback at the door had happened. She didn’t let herself think, period.

Somewhere between this week and the last, something precious and vital had leaked out of her body. In it’s departure, she was a sack of skin and bones. Gone was the curiosity. Gone was the anger, whatever gas she’d run on.

Flashes of Natasha were all that distracted her from the entrancing drag of the tangled mop dragging suds down the floor. It was always that look on her face—it was Zinaida’s own holy ghost—when the barrel pressed against her skin. The flash of betrayal, a flicker of anger, before it all gave way to resignation. Sorrow.

The mop handle creaked. She was digging it into the floor. Zinaida released the pressure in the same way a child releases their thumb from their mouth when you yell at them enough times.

Zinaida ran the mop over the floor a couple more times, and then took her cleaning cart to the main room. She cringed every time she entered that giant assembly room. Save for the industrial sewing machines, presses, and various machinery, the small windows on the top of the walls and the giant, echoing space made the room practically identical to the training room in the bunker.

She split the room up into three parts, and cleaned each individually. First third; sweep, douse, mop. Second; sweep, douse, mop. *I’m sorry*. The pad of her sneakers down the hall. Sweep, douse, mop.

When she finished drying the last streaks in the assembly room, her head was buzzing from the chemicals. It felt, Zinaida realized with a thrill, similar to the high she got when she fought. When she had a loaded gun in her hand. The excitement about this realization was quickly stamped out by the rush of shame.

Next were the bathrooms. The same steps; sweep, douse, mop, but with extra bleach in the toilets and a sponge to scrub down the sinks. When she was done, Zinaida checked the analog clock in the hallway. It was ten past eight, ten minutes after her shift officially ended.

She hung her janitor’s jacket up with her cart of borrowed cleaning utilities in the dusty closet where they belonged. Then she walked out the same exit she’d come; dizzy, cold without the weight of the mop and jacket holding her down.

She felt him in the chilly morning air without having to look. Still, of course, Zinaida’s shoulders jumped when she snapped around, heart kicking up before she turned and found James leaning against the brick wall next to the employee’s exit.

He had a baseball cap pulled over his face. She could tell he was nervous about being there just from the way he stood; trying too hard to look nonchalant, his shoulders crossed protectively over his body. Despite this, he gave her a small smile which she didn’t have the energy to return.

“What are you doing here?” She worked hard to keep judgement from her voice, a small show of manners for the man who had followed her so far.

“Thought I’d stop by. Radu—new boss—doesn’t need anyone in ‘til nine today.”

“Oh.” Zinaida looked down at her boots, then quickly got another glimpse of the flashback from the morning. Bad idea. She looked back up, squinting from the sun, which was suddenly knocking off James’s back. “Okay.”

He knew more than to expect anything else back from her, just the way she didn’t expect niceties from him. That was probably why, recently, when he’d become unable to stop wanting to cheer her up, Zinaida couldn’t understand it.

He nodded towards the direction of their apartment, and she started walking that way. He followed. They stepped in stride, hands tucked into their pockets.

They listened to the cars and bikes stream down the roads, jumbles of Romanian conversations escaping out cracked windows and open doors, and the pair were silent in comparison. That comfortable quiet was about the only thing that had ever come naturally for James and Zinaida, the only thing they hadn’t tripped over themselves trying to copy from the rest of the world.

The talking, however.

Two blocks away from their house, James broke the silence.

“Look, I know it’s hard right now.”

Zinaida looked the opposite direction from his careful gaze, peering down at the shrubs in the cracks of the sidewalk. She didn’t know whether she could handle responding to him. One look in his tender eyes, that tender look she knew he’d be wearing, and the fragile string she was holding onto might just snap.

He didn’t need her response. “And… I know how bad the guilt gets. It’s so easy to slip back into it, that… anger. It’s the coming out that’s hard. You know, waking up and looking at the mess you’ve made.”

“James.” She slowed to a stop, feet planting. “You’re talking about the Soldier.” She lowered her voice when she said his old name, eyes darting around the street. “The things they made you do. But me… that was me. I did that to her.”

“I don’t know if that’s how it works. I don’t know if there’s any line in the sand. I did those things, too. I didn’t become someone else.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m not. Zinaida,” His fingers tapped on her shoulder, just a brush, just enough to force her gaze up. As if he’d forgotten himself. He shook his head, “That’s not the point. I just mean—everyone’s got dirt on their hands. And we all just… We gotta cope. We gotta try to forgive.”

We. When it was just James and Zinaida, sleeping odd hours, sharing ratty clothes, walking in silence, it was easy to forget who she was with. But when Zinaida looked into his eyes, there, stopped on the sidewalk, she remembered the man she’d first met. Leftover eyeliner running down his waterline, stinking of war and freezer-burn. He was still the Winter Soldier. He was the Soldier, the hollow man with the saddest eyes she’d ever seen.

And she knew he deserved to be forgiven. Despite all the lives she’d watched him take, despite the men he’d bare-knuckle beat to death, despite it all.

So she nodded. Slow, just barely there, but he saw. And then she turned and began walking again, slow enough to let him catch up. And he did.

Chapter 34: Humanize, Feminize, Animalize

Summary:

James and Zinaida have a day off, so they visit a bookstore.

Notes:

"You make me soft (humanize, feminize, animalize), like fur." --- excerpt from one of Marina Tsvetaeva's (the Russian author of the poems Zinaida reads in this chapter) letters to Abram Vishnyak.

May, 2015

By the beginning of May, Bucky was a bit less worried that Zinaida was going to crash and burn at any moment. But they both knew she wasn’t okay, that she might not ever be. Sometimes, she spent whole nights in the living room, sitting with her back against the wall and her knees pulled up, while Bucky pretended to sleep on his mattress just across the room. Just waiting, silent, until 1:30, when the clock above the stove struck half-hour, and she’d disappear to work.

One week, Bucky had to take a work trip just a bit out of town, down to the supply store to get extra nails for the construction site. They’d hit a week of near-constant work on the luxurious house they were building. On the way out of the shop, two boxes of nails in his glove-clad hands, Bucky spotted a small, eclectic bookstore across the street. He’d never tell Zinaida how long it took, but eventually, he was able to make out the words “second-hand” and “library” in Romanian painted in the window of the store.

The next Sunday, like an odd gift, it turned out that the pair both had the day off. Rain had ruined all hopes of base-work on the construction job, and the factory had another gas leak. That was the second time since she’d started, but Zinaida tried not to think about that. It could only be a sick joke, she told him, if after everything, it was some methane that took her out.

Bucky woke up early that Sunday morning, waking quietly out of a war dream. A maze of trenches, army crawling through the rain and mud, clasping his combat helmet down onto his head. The nightmares had gotten better since they first escaped. Less frequent, for one, and at least they made some sort of sense, nowadays. At the start of their run, back in Poland, he’d hardly slept, too terrified for what would await him; always a mess of blood, body horror and haunting, empty faces. Victims screamed from the moment his eyes closed to when he awoke, left his ears perpetually ringing.

Over that, he’d take a million war dreams.

Bucky rolled onto his back, reached blindly for the journal he kept under the mattress before his eyes even opened. There’d been something new in that dream—a face. He’d popped out of the trench at the beckon of an officer, pulled his rifle off his back and propped it in the mud. He was gunning for someone, who had it been? Not just some Kraut, no, maybe he’d been Asian?

He’d left his pen uncapped, it dragged a line of ink up the mattress, but Bucky ignored it. Instead, he scratched the paper until it left ink, and then started scrawling. He wrote down every feature he could remember, dated the entry, and tagged a page of a recent dream that had been similar.

He was about to draw his hand at sketching the man in the field, shitty as he knew the product would be—Steve once said that if Bucky’s writing was chicken scratch, then his stick figures were out the other end—when a noise came from the bedroom. Bucky’s ears pricked like an animal. In all these years, his hearing hadn’t dimmed since the serum, so he listened clearly to the unmistakable sound of Zinaida choking on her tears.

He had only seen Zinaida really, truly cry once before. He’d watched her wipe fleeting tears from the corner of her eyes before they could even reach her cheek, and then sometimes, she cried in her sleep. But that was different, at least he thought so, because those were silent, stifled tears, a physical stray from a subconscious world. The only other time was after the morning after they got to Bucharest.

She’d barred herself into the single bedroom after he’d given it to her, collapsed onto her bed, and presumably immediately fallen to sleep. As far as he knew, she was silent the whole night. Exhausted. He’d already been awake the next morning when, promptly after opening her eyes, Zinaida had sat up and burst into tears. Not just tears, sobs.

He sat in the hall, silently, and listened. She was crying so hard he thought it must hurt. He worried she’d rip apart. He’d been stuck between wanting to beg her to stop and offer himself up as any assistance he could be. Listening to someone cry like that; it’s nearly unbearable. But he knew he couldn’t help. She didn’t want his help. And he wouldn’t know the first thing to do, so instead, Bucky sat and listened in something akin to reverence. He thought he owed it to her to listen, maybe even to himself.

Bucky had sat and listened, just the way he did that Sunday morning. It was just one moment, one yelling sob that was very close to a scream, and then radio silence. Just like last time, she picked herself up, somehow fashioned herself in a way where no shattering pieces could slip out, and calmly walked out of the bedroom.

“Morning.” She muttered, hunching over the sink and rinsing her face under the cold tap.

Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were red, but other than that, she was a wonderful pretender. Anyone without his keen eye wouldn’t have suspected a thing. He closed his journal, gave her his undivided attention. “Hey. You okay?”

Zinaida, dragging a clean rag down her face, turned around and rested her back against the lip of the sink. And with a very pointed, “we-aren’t-talking-about-this” look, she nodded. “I’m great.”

There was an exhaustion in her eyes, and a dark set of bags under them, that betrayed her. Bucky got to his feet and went to the window, which was on the right side of the wall where his mattress laid up against, pulling back the temporary blanket they’d hung over it. It was drizzling and the whole sky was a light gray, but nothing awful. He thought about how to bring up his grand plan.

He decided to just wave the carrot, turning on his heel back to face Zinaida. “Found a bookstore just out of town, not far from here.”

Zinaida arched a thin brow. “And you’re asking me to go?”

“I’m saying we should take a break when we get one. Live a little.”

“Live a little?” She put on his accent for that, played it up with a straight face, “What’s gotten into you?” Zinaida looked at him with her narrowed, sharp eyes. She was already trying to peek through him.

What was he supposed to tell her? That maybe, in some weird way, it was trying to pull her to her feet that brought him to his own? That he only knew how to live if he was doing it for someone else?

Bucky shrugged, played the cool card. “It’s been nearly a year. Maybe I’m tired of living like a survivalist.”

She searched him over, but had nothing to say to that.

He continued, “I wanna go. Are you comin’ with, or not?”

Bucky knew just as well as she did how to get what he wanted out of people. It was part of the job. When you left an offer hanging in the air, he knew Zinaida couldn’t help but snatch it up. She pushed herself off the sink and swung open the refrigerator door, then looked to him and said; “After we eat.”

They ate a bowl each of plain oatmeal, and headed out. Bucky wore his green cargo jacket, and Zinaida her blue Carhartt. Her men’s jeans and giant, zipped jacket slouched off her figure as she walked beside him towards the bookstore.

It didn’t take long for Bucky to find the place he’d seen the week before. Smushed between an apartment complex and a corporate building, the bookstore looked like a mushroom in the ground. Resting on the red brick wall next to the door was a cardboard box of stacked books, and a framed painting with a price tag pinned to it. On the wide window looking in hung the crooked sign he’d struggled to read before, and a handful of movie posters mod-podged to the glass. In one of them, the sight of that Hollywood-font English writing, and a beautiful, distinctly American girl made him squirm.

Bucky and Zinaida shared a look. Then she grabbed the door and pulled it open, leading the way inside. Walking in front of him, he watched the outline of a folded pocket knife in her back pocket.
The store smelled like old books and mahogany. As Zinaida walked that angular strut towards the first horizontal shelf she saw, a white cat snuck out from behind the cashier desk. Bucky watched in fascination as it ambled right to him, until its tail was whipping between his legs, and the cat was circling his ankle, rubbing against his boots. He stood still and watched, unmoving, as Zinaida got further from him, deeper into the store. She turned a corner around a shelf and picked up a small book.

The cat stopped circling and looked up at him. It had milky white fur and big, blue eyes. Bucky didn’t know a thing about cats, but by the size of it, he guessed the animal wasn’t fully grown.
Bucky wanted, maybe, to reach down and run his fingers over it’s soft back, but he didn’t. It seemed to read his mind, his rejection, and scorn him for it, taking one last look up at him and then, with a flick of its tail, retreating back behind the counter.

He respected it for that in the same way he respected Zinaida. They took space when they needed it. Speaking of, she was nowhere in sight. Bucky followed her trail, scanning over the bookshelf he’d watched her go to before. Nearly all of its content was in Romanian, although there was an assorted shelf of Russian gems on one side. He wondered if one of those small, faded books was the one he’d seen Zinaida pick up.

“James.” A softened, familiar voice came from the back of the store. He poked his head over the shelf, and found her. Standing with a book in her hand was Zinaida, her eyes sparkling. She gestured in the direction of a box, partially obscured by his view. Bucky followed her back there, and she nodded to the box.

It was round, made of a woven material, and had seemingly been discarded by the store’s owner. In the box was a stack of books, and all it took was the first novel to catch his attention. In blocky English writing; The Great Gatsby. The cover was a midnight blue, with sullen eyes in the middle of it. Bucky though he might just barely recognize it. Zinaida smiled when he looked at her, and left him there in the back of the store with his forgotten treasures.

The box was small and so was the stack of books inside of it, but they were all American classics. Or, he supposed they were classics, because he only dimly recognized a few, but how could an American book be in a rural Romanian town if it wasn’t a global sensation? He had seen very few traces of America over there, and the look of home put him slightly off. Slightly, but that strangeness was overcome by curiosity.

Bucky flipped through the books carefully, setting each one softly back in it’s box after he was done examining it. Like an archaeologist with its fossils. Like everything else he’d come to know, most were from a different time; To Kill A Mockingbird, set in a 60’s-something America that he didn’t recognize, Moby Dick and it’s weird whale story, which irked him entirely. It was one book, near the bottom of the stack, that entranced him. It had a teal, greenish cover, a black tree with yellow leaves twining through the background. A Separate Peace, the title read.

—

“Hey, listen to this.”

Bucky peeled his eyes off the page to Zinaida. She sat, her back against the arm of the couch, her knees drawn up. Bucky had his feet on the “table” —a box laying bottom-up—his arm across the back of the couch and one hand holding A Separate Peace. It was now the evening, and in the hours since their morning trip to the bookstore, he’d already finished the book. Now he reread one part, where Gene, in a moment of impulse, shakes the branch of the tree, knowing in his heart that Finny would fall.

Those two boys represented something Bucky never thought he’d be able to picture again; the beating heart of adolescence. When everything is vibrant and stinging, when he was so full of life that it spilled over.

Zinaida bent the thin collection of Russian poetry in her hands, pushed a long, dark red strand out of her face, and parted her lips. He could hear the nervousness in her voice—she spoke in that clear Russian, which sounded so fitting on her lips that he felt bad for ever making her speak English. “Как живёшь? Кашляешь? Напеваешь, чтоб мышей заглушить в мозгу? Как живётся с дешевкой: торг идет? Как целуется — с известкой?”

The words rolled off her tongue like thunder. James didn’t try to translate. “What’s it mean?”

“Your Russian is better than that, surely.”

“Tell me anyway.”

She looked him in the eyes. One of those looks that feels as if, finally, she’s looking at you. He’d caught her off-guard, she cleared her throat and pieced together the English translation.

“How’s life? Do you cough? Do you hum to drown out the mice in your mind?”

Bucky listened to the tilt of her accent, like a filter in her mouth. He knew she could sound American if she so wished, but she didn’t.

“How do you live with cheap goods; is the market rising? How’s kissing plaster dust?”

God, every line was so inexplicably Zinaida. His lips tilted, and hers followed. Her pale-pink lips, curving up kinesthetically with his. “That’s nice.” He said.

“It’s fucking beautiful, James.”

A laugh escaped his lips without thinking, and he didn’t stop it. She shook her head, and shook off that hint of a smile with it.

Bucky looked back down at the page in his lap. Gene and Finny were standing, precariously, on the thick tree branch. This is the moment that Gene’s idea of Finny—the superior boy in the mirror through which Gene can only stare and try to pose like, is shattered. Now, standing, smiling, balancing on that branch, the mirror breaks. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he. James turned the phrase over, he repeated it in his head until it echoed. I was not of the same quality as he. Gene took a step forward, he bent his knees and as sure as he’d ever been, he shook the branch. Finny swung his head back, Finny toppled off. It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him make, Gene remarked, as he watched him fall.

Bucky looked at the woman, her legs folded and her teeth gnashing into her lower lip as she fixed her gaze surely on the thin book in front of her. She looked like she was trying to digest the words on the page. And right then, he knew he understood. He knew, just the same, that he was neither of the boys. He had, throughout his previous life—as stupid and brief it seemed then, after centuries of rotting and freezing and thawing—wandered between the two, tried on the persona of the golden light and the dark thing in the corner like trying on hats, but all the same, he was neither. The years had shaven him down, and he was now so hollow that he could not compare himself to such a real, human thing.

Zinaida tilted her chin and narrowed her eyes at something on the page. If she bit down on her lip any harder she’d draw blood. I was not of the same quality as he, Bucky thought.

Chapter 35: Veins of Fury

Summary:

James gets himself into trouble. Zinaida indulges herself.

June 9th, 2015

At 10 A.M. on a Tuesday, James walked back into the apartment with his tail between his legs and his hood over his face. Zinaida was on the couch, flicking a cigarette on an ashtray, the Marina Tsvetaeva poetry collection balanced in her lap. Her eyes shot up as his hand turned the doorknob, and for a split second as he walked in, he saw the spark of fear in her eyes. Catching Zinaida off-guard was always terrifying.

Then he mumbled, “Hey.” With his giant shoulders bent forwards, and his voice scratchy, and all her fear dissipated. It was James. But when she took a closer look, the hesitation was quickly replaced with suspicion. He had his green, cargo hood over his head, his back turned at just an angle that the shadow of it shielded his face. No toolbox in his hands, though they were coated in the usual layer of fine powder and sawdust and… something red. No, his knuckles were cracked and pink. Droplets of blood escaped the ripped skin.

James could hide whatever mess had unfolded on his face, but she knew bloody knuckles any day. Zinaida had bolted off the couch and followed him into the kitchen in the blink of an eye. From studying his turned back, she noticed that he limped slightly on his left leg, and was holding his breaths to make them shallower.

He swung open the fridge, grabbed a boiled egg he’d put aside earlier, and practically swallowed it whole. Zinaida was standing on the other side of the fridge door, which she promptly pushed closed, leaving him no barrier between them. “What happened?”

She tilted her chin, trying to get a better look at his face, and he tilted his away. James was dreading this, his body language gave it away. He attempted, halfheartedly, to lie; “It’s nothing.”

“Show me.” Zinaida probed, her voice firm. He ignored her, wiping the back of his hand on his mouth, and left a drag of blood and cement residue on his stubble. She wet a rag under the sink and handed it to him, as unforgiving as ever when she said: “You’ve got some blood.”

He sighed, took his swelling hands and slipped the hood down, then wiped his face clean. Zinaida watched, greedily, scanning the handsome canvas for any marks. They weren’t hard to find. There was a bruise forming on his cheekbone, a split across his lip and the bridge of his nose. It took a good fight to break through his thick skin like that. Something dark and heavy formed in her gut.

She took a shaky breath, and felt a string of fury zip through her veins—it’s own drug. She didn’t know where the anger had come from, or who it was directed at, but she brushed it off all the same. Be practical. “Do—do we need to leave?”

“No.” He was quick, cautious not to get her anxious. The last thing they needed was another close call with the authorities. “No, everything’s okay.”

She was holding her breath now, Zinaida realized. Waiting for the next shoe to drop. He must’ve noticed, and added meagerly; “But I lost the job.”

Zinaida held his eye like a magnet. She was waiting for him to explain, but he didn’t, no matter how long she stared at him. So, eventually, when they were both sick to death of the silence, her eyes finally dropped. They caught on James’s hands, as he wrung them together. Long strands of blood were dripping from his flesh knuckles, down to his wrist. She didn’t think, just reached blindly for the discarded rag on the counter.

“You’re still bleeding.”

He looked down and took in the sight of those thick, crimson lines on his hand without a hint of emotion, certainly without fear. If anything, there was just the sickly pinch of shame forming between his brows. All it took was a step backwards in the tiny kitchen to reach the sink, where Zinaida re-wet the rag. Then she faced him again, grabbed his right wrist, and held the warm cloth to his knuckles. Wiped the dripping blood away.

James huffed in breaths through his nose like he’d just run a marathon. He watched, enraptured, as she dabbed the blood away. Zinaida could feel his quick pulse through the grip on his wrist. She noticed now that his metal hand was still gloved, and felt a dull relief. There would be no police reports about a metal armed man, just a long-haired one with the saddest eyes alive.

She released the pressure on his knuckles and peeked under the rag. The bleeding had slowed to small drops through the cracked skin. She dabbed them up diligently, and said, quietly; “As long as we aren’t found.”

James exhaled, and even that sounded sad. “We aren’t.” His voice was barely above a whisper.

She didn’t respond to that. Instead, she wrapped his metal fingers around the rag, made him hold it over his knuckles in her place. Zinaida’s eyes scanned him over again. “Your rib seems cracked. Can you breathe alright?”

He looked at her with surprise, and then a small, pitiful laugh escaped his lips. “It’s not cracked. Bruised maybe.”

She frowned. “My breathing’s fine.” James added.

Zinaida nodded, slowly and just barely.

He looked at the floor. He sighed. He parted his lips, and took a moment before he could force a sound out. And when he did, James’s voice was small and full of shame. “There’s a new kid at the sight. New to the country, I think. Asshole who works the pipes with me was pickin’ on him. That’s it, that was his big crime, and I fucking lost it on him.”

She nodded again. Zinaida pulled the rag out of his fingers, set it back on the counter, and then ghosted her fingers along his wrist. The most gentle touch she could manage without, probably, erupting into flames. “But he’s breathing, right, the asshole?”

Big mistake. James lips turned, winced, like the insinuation had physically stung. Zinaida cursed herself, but he carried on. “‘Course he is.”

“Then it’s okay. Then it doesn’t matter.”

“I beat his face in, Zinaida. I got fired on the spot.”

He couldn’t believe the way she shrugged. “You’ll get a new job. He deserved it.”

James groaned. Zinaida bit her lip, and internally demanded; say something right, for once. She shut her mouth, and forced herself to take a second. To think long and hard.

Then she met his eyes unblinkingly. “It’s okay. James, you’ve lived 70 years being told all you’re good for is how bad you can hurt someone.” He visibly flinched. She forced herself to soften up, and continued. “That’s hard to shake. But you’re doing your best, right? You’re avoiding the fight, I know you are. You just… you slipped up.”

“I can’t afford to slip up, Zinaida. I… I can’t make mistakes.”

“Yes. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

Assets don’t make mistakes. You’re machines, and machines are unfailing. The memory stung like battery acid in her throat. He recognized it too, or the look on his face said he did, at least.

He looked down again. Her words were seeping through. She didn’t thank God, instead she thanked the endless days behind a desk, watching the projector screen whir on, dissecting the brain and putting it back together. There was nothing a Black Widow did better than saying the right thing at the right time.

James clenched and unclenched his fists. It was luck that his knuckles didn’t start bleeding again when he did. “I want to be different.” He muttered, so quiet that she wondered if he meant for her to hear.

“You are.” Zinaida told him, firm and unwavering. She knew she was telling the truth. It was the most truthful thing she’d ever said.

—

Cristian Naum lived with his highschool best friends, three roommates in a 2 bedroom apartment on the street near the minute clinic. Cristian Naum’s friends called him “Cris.” Christian Naum manufactured a slit in his brow with a pair of clippers. Cristian Naum nursed a black-eye and a swollen jaw, plus the missing front tooth which you could only see when he blew a puff of smoke through the gap in his gums. Cristian Naum turned the corner towards the bar on the way back from work on a Friday night.

Zinaida followed. After three days of following him, she knew this was the chance. She knew it was the emptiest street he’d walked since she started. She tucked red flyaways behind her ears, in the rare chance he’d notice them with the sun this low. She turned the corner behind him, quickened her pace—enough to get close behind him, not so much that he’d hear. He was three feet into the empty alley.

Four. Five. Six. She zipped up in a second, took her hand out of her pocket—fingers grasping the handle of her Makarov like it was attached to her—and slammed the butt of it into his temple.

Cristian Naum let out a curse of strings and reached for the pit of blood beneath his hair, where she’d hit him. As he whipped around, already moving sloppily, Zinaida kicked him in the stomach. The worn, rubber soles of her boots knocked him into the wall, knocked him off his balance, and set him tumbling down.

Zinaida was disappointed. She’d hoped for a fight. She cornered him. Cristian Naum looked up from his slumped crouch and found a woman staring down at him, dim light of the moon framing her hood like a crown. He could see only the whites of her eyes and the pitch-black of her dilated pupils, the thrill swimming in them.

“What the fuck—You…?” Cristian Naum slurred like a drunkard. There was anger, though it went unmatched against hers, in his eyes, but it was melting into confusion. She wondered, if he’d looked up and found a man standing over him, whether there would be more fear in his eyes.

“Look at you.” She said. “Pathetic. One hit and you’re speechless.”

“You trying to rob me, bitch?”

She smiled, completely empty. To give him credit, it was funny—how out of his depth the man was.

“For that pack of cheap cigarettes? Don’t kid yourself. I’m here to hurt you.”

His face screwed together. He parted his lips, preparing to say another stupid, futile thing, but she didn’t give him the chance. Zinaida kicked him in the face, feeling the cartilage under his skin yield to her weight. Something crunched.

She didn’t just kick him, but afterwards held her boot there, suffocating his broken skin as she readied her gun in her hand. When she lifted her foot, her barrel pointed at his face, which was now stained with the wet dirt of the street and fresh, angry scrapes.

Cristian groaned with pain in the time it took his eyes to focus. When they did, he braced to scream, terrified by the shape of the pistol glimmering in the moonlight. She quieted him in time, jamming the weapon to his forehead. “Scream and I’ll shoot.”

He whimpered, but scowled at her all the same. There was so much fury in his eyes, pure hatred for the women behind the gun. The hatred was gratifying, it made her heart kick up faster.

“Good. Now, Cristian Naum, I have a friend. The man from the construction site where you work. Long brown hair, blue eyes. Beat your ass a few days ago. Tell me you remember him.”

He nodded.

“Say something, Cris.”

“I do.” His voice shook, either with humiliation, fear, or anger.

“Of course you do. It’s difficult to forget a beating like that. Now, if you want me to let you live, you are going to have to do something for me.”

He listened. There was that whirring in Zinaida’s head, the lightness, like she’d either pass out or rise off her feet and take flight.

“Tomorrow you’ll arrive early to work. You’ll find your boss and you will tell him whatever you have to. That you started the fight and you’re scum of the earth, or you’re strung off heroin, whatever it takes, until he agrees to give my friend his job back. And then you’re going to quit, and you are going to disappear. You will never so much as meet his eye again. If you do, I will know, and I will kill you.”

“You’re fucking crazy.” He said, but then his tear-brimmed eyes looked into hers, and they both knew he’d do what she said.

Zinaida was not the kind of person who bluffed. She didn’t bargain, or joke, or make a promise she wouldn’t deliver. That is why Cristian knew, from the sincerity in her eyes and her unshaking hand on the trigger, that she would kill him and she would enjoy it. There was nothing more terrifying than that.

“Yes. So do I need to kill you now, Cristian?”

“No.” He shook his head, he practically whipped it around in adamance. "No, no, you don’t. I’ll do it. Let me live and I’ll do it.”

“Good.” She said, nodding, and then fired a round into the middle of his right foot. The spot where the most veins overlapped. Zinaida knelt to the ground, clamped her hand over his mouth to muffle his screams, and leaned in. Blood seeped from his shoes into the pads of her jeans. Her breath was hot in his ear, her voice shaking with something much more terrifying than anger; “That’s for hurting him."

Notes:

omgggg i sure hope bucky doesn't figure out what zinaida did.... hehehehehe

Chapter 36: Tightrope

Notes:

James confronts Zinaida about the mysterious circumstances in which he got his job back. Their anger blurs a line.

On Saturday, Bucky went to return his spare vest and tools. For the four days since he’d been fired, he'd been searching feverishly for his next job. There was no luck, not in construction or anywhere else. All the firms had meshed together for the big mansion job in town. Zinaida was entirely nonplussed, simply shrugging every time he spoke of it.

Cris was smoking outside the supervisor’s trailer when Bucky arrived. At the sight of him, Bucky thought; if this is normal-people life, maybe I oughta get back to the bunker. He’d been dreading the confrontation since the minute he left Tuesday; tripping out of the site, his head pounding. It was like, as he rolled on top of Cristian and pounded his fists into the guy’s face, that he’d blacked out. When he woke up, Cris was a mess, and their supervisor was running out of the trailer, shouting something in Romanian that Bucky was far too dissociated to understand. However, his boss’s pointer finger was a pretty universal sign to get the Hell out of there. And he did, gladly.

How was it that Bucky had never felt this way as a kid? He was lunging into fights nose-first every other day, cleaning up a mess he and Steve started. And not once, not ever, did he think; hey, that’s a person you just beat the Hell out of. It just hadn’t been that way. Bucky supposed he just always knew they deserved it, and that was enough for him. Plus, it was Steve’s ass on the line. There was skin in the game.

As Bucky walked passed the mansion—well, at that point, it was still only really the idea of a mansion. More like metal beams stacked together—and a group of guys walking in, he felt eyes on him. A particular set of eyes, separate from every single worker on the site that was pointing and whispering. He looked towards the trailer, and found Cris staring at him like a deer in headlights. The fear in his eyes was bone-chilling, because it was so familiar; it was the fear of a victim, a prey to its predator. And Bucky was always the predator.

He blinked, and Cris was running off. Everything after that moved in a blur. It was a lot of hand-shaking and his boss repeated the phrase “a big misunderstanding” at him, then he was told to keep his tools, to get his vest on and help with the lifting. He got the job back just like that, no questions asked. Bucky couldn’t believe it.

He moved through his entire shift ready for someone to finally cut the act, to turn on him again, say they were kidding. That he’d never be forgiven. Nobody did. The rest of the workers were hesitantly accepting, they gave him plenty of looks, but worked like it was business as usual.

–---

“What did you do?”

The door slammed. Zinaida flinched, sloshed a drop of thick orange soup onto the stove-top. It was her night to cook.

James’ voice was steady, but everything else about him bristled. He dropped his toolbox with a loud thunk, and his eyes—usually exhausted, patient—were lit with something else. It was betrayal, as hard as Zinaida would refuse to accept it. Sweat dripped from his hairline to his thick brows.

Zinaida arranged her face into pure nonchalance.

“Wow,” she said, sparing him a glance as she stirred the pot. “They hired you back. Good.”

“Don’t,” James bit, striding towards her like a bull. “Let’s skip the games, okay? Just tell me what you did.”

“How are you so sure I did anything?” She raised a brow, shot him with that infuriating, practiced, mysterious look. He was getting closer and closer, and wasn’t stopping. She resisted the urge to jump out the window.

He stopped just inches away. With a rough flick of his wrist, the stove shut off. Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to protest—but he cut her off before she could speak.

“Don’t lie to me.”

He was poking the bear. Hard. She turned on her heel to face him, their noses barely apart. She could feel his heavy, unsteady breath fanning across her cheek. Soon, hers would be just as ragged.

“Careful, James.” Her voice was low, dangerous. There was that dangerous spark in her eyes. In that moment, James hated her.

“You’re the one who isn’t being careful. What, did you follow him home? Put a knife to his throat? What did you do, Zinaida?”

“I helped you.” Her voice cracked—just slightly. She got half a step closer, and the mask momentarily slipped, revealing a broken, desperate child. Then she stepped back and she was empty again. “You should be thanking me.”

He stared at her, searching her face. Then he laughed—mirthless, wild—and turned away, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I should thank—” He sputtered, “Jesus fuckin’ Christ. I.. I can’t believe you.”

Something about his disbelief hit harder than any insult. It made her feel stupid, exposed. Zinaida regretted it now. Cristian deserved every second of it, but James didn’t. She’d been stupid to think he’d understand. That he’d be grateful.

She slammed the spoon on the counter. Thwack.

“You know what? I’m not doing this.” She shoved past him, their shoulders bumping, heading for her room.

But his hand caught her wrist. Swift, instinctual. She jerked away like he burned her, but it worked. She wouldn’t walk away now.

“What?” he snapped. “Is this too close? Y’know, you seemed just fine when you were inserting yourself into my life. Playing around with it like I’m your goddamn puppet.”

Her nostrils flared, her chest moving up and down with each breath. He swore he could hear her heart beating, just as fast as his. Zinaida ripped her hand away and then they collided with his chest and pushed him back, hard. He barely moved. “Oh, please! I fucking helped! I hurt him to fix your pathetic excuse for a life. You only hurt him because you felt like it.”

James parted his lips and a shaky breath came through his gritted teeth. He looked so incredulous, like she had transformed into some mythical demon right in front of him. He shook his head, “I won’t be your excuse, Zinaida! Whatever sick shit you did to him, I know you enjoyed it. I know it fucking thrilled you, because that’s who you are!”

For a second, all Zinaida could do was stand there, mouth agape, practically gasping for air. Her head was spinning around the room, it was no longer attached to her neck. He didn’t move, neither did she. He waited for it to set in. And then it did, and Zinaida slapped him.

Bucky saw the endless blank, white landscape of snow. He saw a gray cell and a smear of blood. He tasted metal in his mouth. Zinaida watched, enthralled, terrified, as he stood and felt the sting on his cheek. His mouth twisted with hate, but then his lips split up and moved into the ghost of a smile. She blinked and it disappeared, but she knew. She knew he’d enjoyed it.

James's eyes, which had gone blank, filled back up with life again. He looked down at her, met her gaze. With a newfound calmness, and scorn, he said; “You’re a dog off a leash. You’re fuckin’ feral, it’s obvious. It’s in everything you do.”

His voice was low, not careful but precise; like stretching an arrow taut on a bow. Now the spearhead had pierced her skin.

Nothing broke inside of her. It felt like it should, like he’d said the worst, most painful thing possible, but nothing broke. There was nothing left. The pieces just stirred, knocked against each other.

“Well, I’m not the only one.” Her voice was shaking with something that was no longer anger. It had exceeded that.

James eyes widened slightly. He looked down at her, his jaw clenched so tight he might chip a tooth. Both of their chests were heaving. Her palm was stinging and buzzing at her side, just like his cheek was. There was something crackling between them, sprung, wound-up. There was something about to snap.

Zinaida curled her fingers into fists. She squeezed her nails into her palm, and released. Then she grabbed two fistfuls of his jacket and pulled him towards her.

Their lips collided. It wasn’t clear who kissed who, it was like two shots ringing off at the exact same time. All that was clear was that they’d finally found it.

There was nothing sweet in the way they kissed. It wasn’t soft, or gentle, or kind. It was blood-thirst, it was war. Teeth, pursed lips, a lifetime of tension untangling.

A tug of war ensued. James’s hands found her waist, his fingers dug into her skin and dragged her closer. Like he might pull her skin off the bone. He kissed her furiously, devouring.

Zinaida pushed his jacket back, slid her hands underneath the fabric, and gripped his arms like she could crush him with want. She squeezed the thick, corded muscle of his biceps and hated him for it. How dare he feel like that?

Her back hit the counter right as her head knocked against a cabinet. She groaned and he swallowed it. They’d tear each other apart.

It was nothing but fury, fire, and an endless, unsatiated want. It lasted maybe three minutes before Zinaida had to finally break away. She leaned her head against the cabinet and gasped for breath.

James leaned his forehead against her own, sweat mingling on each other’s skin. He blinked until his vision finally formed, and he was staring down at her. Zinaida’s pupils were blown so wide that they were little more than a black hole. Her cheeks were tinged pink, her lips bruised. He committed the sight to memory.

“Fuck you.” She whispered.

“Yeah.” He swallowed hard, still trying to catch his breath, “You too."

It took about a minute for the air to fill their lungs, and then for reality to set in. It came like a cold front.

Zinaida was pushed against the kitchen counter, the pot of soup half-cooked and forgotten on the stove. She unhooked her nails from his arms, and slowly slid them out. They fell awkward and heavy at her sides.

James’s hands were still on her hips, but they weren’t squeezing anymore. Gone was the perfect sting of his nails, now they’d been forgotten and laid idle on her.

Zinaida turned her head to the side, so his forehead slipped off of hers. The cold replaced his hot skin. And the moment came crashing down.

James was staring at her. She tried to look away, but the pull was so strong, that in a moment of weakness, she met his eye again. He wanted something from her. He practically pulled the words from her throat. Zinadia’s lips parted. “I shouldn’t have…” She meant to finish the sentence, but found no adequate word for what she’d just done, and very much shouldn’t have.

Resentment sparked in his eyes, and then he snuffed it out so quick that she wondered if she’d imagined it. James cleared his throat, and then his hands fell off her hips. She missed the touch immediately, and cursed herself for that fact. He nodded, slowly, dazed. “Yeah.”

She’d gotten so close. Terrifyingly close. He could’ve crushed her underneath him. She shouldn’t have given him the chance.

The silence hung between them, stooped and deserted. The remains of that fleeting, ecstatic moment of passion were everywhere. His fussed jacket, the sting of his stubble left over on her jaw, and his flushed, pink lips.

James turned away first. He must’ve got tired of the way she avoided his gaze, or the shame and guilt all over her face. He walked past her, went into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. The sink turned on.

The empty room was worse than the one filled by his awkward silence. Zinaida couldn’t bear it for more than a minute before she went to her room.

Chapter 37: Wearin' No Disguise

Summary:

James and Zinaida realize they have kicked off an unbeatable war.

Notes:

title to this chapter is from Lizzie McAlpine's "Pushing it Down and Praying"---which is THE fear of intimacy/shameful fear of perversion anthem. that shit went platinum in my household.

June 22nd, 2015

It had been nine days since Zinaida crashed her lips against James’s, and she had been dying a slow, painful death since.

Every day, she went through the motions. She got up early, either ate a couple bites or pulled the blanket back off the window, cracked it open, and smoked a cigarette into the warm, dark streets.
Then she went to work. She mopped, sprayed, sweeped, and thought about James. Well, not about him.

Zinaida had quickly developed a new method where she thought only about the way their lips felt together, the way his fingers dug into her skin, but scrubbed the face out of the image. One might think that she’d feel better about having touched the person she trusted most in the world, over a random man in an alley, but that wasn’t the case for Zinaida. She supposed if she had kissed a stranger, they’d at least only have that one part of her. They’d only have her desire, not her weakness, or her anger, or her care. But now James had it all.

Zinaida awoke Monday morning ready to do it all again. The lonely job, the empty stomach, the silent dinners. She had slept lightly, drifted awake every other hour with only the recognition of a dream but no memory of its contents. Just spandex, a dripping tap, and gunpowder.

She put on jeans under the holey T-shirt she’d worn to bed, and padded out of her room. With every step through the narrow hallway, the floorboards creaked under her weight. When she reached the barren living room, Zinaida immediately felt James’s presence in the room. It was an inexplicable weight in which he brought to every space he haunted.

Sure enough, James was on the couch. His mattress was made—as in, he’d tucked the top edges of the single blanket into the crack between the wall and the bed and set his pillow on top of it. He had taken his journal with him, and was feverishly scribbling onto the page. Zinaida would’ve given up everything she had to read that journal, but was never brave enough to take a look.

His head snapped up as Zinaida entered the living room. She couldn’t avert her gaze fast enough, and accidentally locked eyes with him. The electricity was immediate, like shocking a heart back to life. Like before, Zinaida suddenly knew she wouldn’t be able to go back. She’d have to act on it.

Even from across the room—a small one, granted—Zinaida saw the fire in his eyes. She knew the feeling was mutual. He knocked the journal closed without letting their eyes leave each other. It took no small feat for Zinaida to finally tear her gaze away after nearly a minute of just standing in the arch of the hallway, bristling from the draft of the room. She went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, but was distracted by a plate of scrambled eggs on the counter.

“Made you something.” James said, nearly making her jump at the sudden closeness of her voice. He was off the couch and halfway across the room, heading towards the kitchen. He’d hardly looked at her in a week, let alone gotten up and strode towards her. She felt mildly cornered.

“Oh.” Zinaida closed the fridge and stared down at the plate, as if waiting for it to pounce or disappear. It did no such thing, and then James was stepping into the boundary of the kitchen, and time was passing. She took the plate in her hands, and used the fork already set on top to take a bite. No signs of poisoning. “Thank you.” She looked in his direction, but not quite in his eyes.

“Yeah.”

Another bite. She didn’t chew, just swallowed, suddenly a fish out of water. He looked out the window, swiped his tongue over his bottom lip, and seemed to ready himself for something. Zinaida tried to come up with an excuse to leave. She had to shower, or brush her teeth, or jump out the window onto incoming traffic. Whatever would get her out of there, in that too-cold room, the hem of her shirt slipping down her bare shoulder and her stomach doing flips.

Then James was zipping towards her, closing the distance with accidentally silent steps. She was dropping her plate onto the counter to prepare for whatever he pulled when he got close enough, and then he was close enough and they were in nearly the same spot as the week before. His hand ghosted the crook of her neck, just about to settle in, and at the same moment that Zinaida realized he was about to kiss her again, James was taking in the look on her face and retreating.

Whatever he saw in her eyes, whatever pulled the slanted inner corners of her brows together and pursed her lips must’ve terrified him, because James let go like she’d burned him. He was apologizing even as he did it, as his hand shocked away from her neck and fell, curling into a fist, at his side. First his face was saying sorry and then he was murmuring it so quietly that it was almost inaudible, and he was disappearing down the hallway. Zinaida didn’t stay long enough to figure out where he’d gone, instead she grabbed her boots and walked out the door.

It stung like rejection. It had looked like rejection, and even though she knew, logically, that James would be an idiot to reach out just to reject the skin he caught. Why would he touch her only to pull away? For once in her life, Zinaida felt insecure.

James did not know where he was going either, except that he had to put space between him and the stormy, impossibly complex woman in the kitchen. He was heading down the hallway and then the door was creaking open in front of his foot, and then realized from the warm, lived-in air what he’d ventured into. That salty-sweet smell of careful, weaponized femininity. The slightest hint of Jasmine under the thicker scent of cigarette buds. He stepped back and shut the door like enclosing a bomb inside of it, then slowly slid to the ground. His back to the wall, his knees pulled up, James let his head tip forward against his kneecaps. You’re losing your goddamn mind, he thought.

Zinaida devoted half of her shift to feverishly cleaning the factory bathroom. With just a sponge, bleach, and dish soap, Zinaida scrubbed the sinks until she could see her beady-eyed reflection in them. Until she could hardly stand straight and the suds were piling in the drain, and her wrist was absolutely throbbing with pain. Every time she thought of James, of his radiator-hot fingers just about to splay across the back of her neck, she leaned harder into the work. When she was finally done, Zinaida glanced into the gleaming mirrors above the faucets, and found a crazed look in her eyes. The thick lashes and dark, seemingly constant bags under her eyes only exaggerated the wide-eyed look she had. Was that what he’d seen in her?

She wiped the expression off her face, and guiltily, like she was ashamed, tried on a smile. It curved like the whip of a rope, so hollow it might as well be plastic. The cheap smile fell to a scornful frown. Ironically, that fit just fine with her face. Zinaida turned away, bumping into the cleaning cart in her haste. She kicked it through the open door, and watched it crash into the wall.

Zinaida returned to an empty house at one in the afternoon. She took one look at the reminders of James; the neat mattress on the floor, his journal peeking out from below his pillow, her dish in the sink, and A Separate Peace lying, dog-eared every other chapter, on the box in front of the couch. Then she rushed to the bathroom, started an excruciatingly hot shower, and scrubbed herself clean.

Stubborn as cigarette smoke, the chemical smell of her cleaning cart never fully left her hair, which had grown thicker, and fell nearly past her breasts now. Zinaida stared at herself, once again, in the mirror. Then she whipped open the bathroom door, strode into the kitchen, and grabbed the sharpest knife she could find.

Back in the bathroom, Zinaida wrapped a fist around her ends. Staring only at her dead eyes in the mirror, she let the knife catch on the bundle below her fingertips, and dragged the blade through her hair. When she released her grip, there was a ponytail in one hand, a knife in the other, and her hair was cut about to her chin. She shook the remaining hair out with her hands, dropped the chopped bundle into the trash, and that was that.

The key turned in the door at six-forty-two in the evening, that same ten minute interval in which James came home everyday. When he shoved the stiff, creaking door open, Zinaida was standing behind it. Maybe four-feet away.

He didn’t see her immediately. James sighed with the same exhaustion he always did, facing the stool by the door. He put his toolbox down, peeled his gloves off. Under them, the metal glint of his hand peeked out. Zinaida never got over how real the arm looked, how much it seemed like him. Just a coat of silver paint over flesh.

There was sawdust littered sanctimoniously in his hair. James wiped his hands off on the thighs of his blue jeans, one of his two pairs—this one was only distinguishable by the small rip in the knee. Then he turned, and he saw her.

There was a flicker of surprise, his eyes widening, and then he recovered, and was distracted by her hair. It barely reached her chin when tucked behind her ears. The red glittered like embers off a fire. Her eyes were big and nervous, long dark lashes against the whites of her eyes.

“You cut your hair.” He stated, stupidly, all evidence of surprise worn off. The seriousness, the honesty in her eyes, it captivated him, it begged to be heard. They were both still, anchored down, as the door fell shut behind them.

“I did.” She muttered, taking a small step closer. And another one, then another, slowly. She inched forward until they were just centimeters away. Both of his hands, flesh and steel, twitched. His fingers dangled like they didn’t know what to do with themselves. Zinaida stared into his eyes, she stared deeper than she ever had before. She wanted him to see all of her, in entirety. And then she wanted him to make up his mind about her.

James’s brows pinched. Every breath he took seemed to hurt him. He smelled like sweat and grit and wood, and underneath that, the everlasting scent of gunpowder, which he could never shake.
Zinaida wondered distantly if she, too, would always smell of war.

She scarcely blinked. Just looked into his eyes and tipped an eyebrow. “Are you going to kiss me? Or stand there like an idiot?”

He searched her eyes, and then his lip tilted upwards on one side. They were still molded into that half-smile when he leaned in, threaded his hands through her hair, and kissed her.

It was gentle for about two seconds, before Zinaida pushed onto the tops of her toes and, wrapping her arms around his neck, slammed into him. James adjusted by moving one hand to her back, and caught them, letting their held bodies fall softly against the door frame.

Strands of her hair were falling through the spaces between his fingers, and Zinaida was pulling the fire out of him like a vacuum. She would have no tenderness. She shoved him against the door, and he shoved back, stronger, guiding them across the room without a destination in sight. Their lips moved like opposite parts of the same machine, gears turning against each other, he tilted his chin to the side and she bent the other way.

Her hands were sliding down his neck, then down his sleeves, reaching the wrist and pulling the sleeves up. Her fingers were gliding along the metal of his arm, the coolness of it was like ice on a sunburn, absolutely perfect. Slight ridges of the plates caught on her fingertips. She would memorize this feeling.

Zinaida’s back hit the arm of the couch, spine against faux, chipping leather, and then she was furiously flipping them around and he was falling onto it. His head hit the opposite arm with a hissed breath, and then he was biting down on her bottom lip in retaliation, and she was groaning back, into his open mouth. She was already climbing up him, planting her knees on either side of his hips—it was a tight squeeze on the small couch, but it was worth it. It was everything. It was even better than combat.

James’s flesh hand palmed up her back, traced the ridges of her spine with his callouses, and the other tangled in the back of her hair. His lips moved down the side of her mouth, dragged down her chin, and then to her neck. He nipped the sensitive skin connecting her jaw and neck—it felt unbelievably good, so good Zinaida thought he must’ve mapped it out in advance. Her eyes shot open, she stared wide-eyed over his shoulder at the covered windows of the apartment and let a desperate sound fall from her lips.

Her hips were just above his, but aimed right at her ass, Zinaida could feel him; hard as a rock. All of the signs were there. She could feel his heart pressed up against hers, separated only by cloth and flesh, and it was beating like a jack-hammer. His breaths were ragged and his skin flushed hot.

James didn’t hesitate, he didn’t pause from the attentive, devouring kisses to her neck, until he felt her hands slide down his stomach. She touched the buckle of his belt, and James hissed through clenched teeth, his hips lifting instinctively.

His hands rubbed down her back, then his fingers caught on the hem of Zinaida’s shirt and lifted it up. She let the cloth pull through her hair, let him pull it off and toss it across the room, but she was focusing on his belt. When she finally got the latch open, James was cupping both of her breasts in his hand, squeezing her nipples through the fabric of her bra.

Zinaida interrupted his fantasy by crashing back down against his lips, his unlatched belt buckle sticking into her bare stomach as she darted her tongue past his lips. James’s hands momentarily caught in her hair, then her hips pressed down on the lump in his pants and he couldn’t take it anymore—slipping his hand between their hips brushing against each other, and tearing down his zipper.

Zinaida moaned, her hips stuttering, when he slipped his jeans down and then there was just his boxers and her pants between them. Between what they really wanted. She was still devouring him, pressing her barely-concealed chest against his and biting his bottom lip.

James groaned, eyes snapping open just in time to watch her part, his lip pulled between her teeth, and let him go with a pop. He grinned, a masochist at heart, full canines on display. Then he reached up her back and worked the latch of her bra.

He had trouble with the snap. Mostly because Zinaida reached down and cupped his length through his boxers, and his hips bucked up, knocking their teeth against each other mid-kiss. Zinaida laughed, just a bit evil, and James rubbed his fingers over his hurt lips, “Christ.”

While he bathed in his embarrassment, mentally chastising himself, Zinaida reached her hands behind her back and in one click, her bra fell off. He caught it, gave her a scowling look, and threw it to the side.

—

Fifteen minutes later, they laid on the bare, wooden floors, each half-naked. Zinaida made no move to cover herself, just laid flat on her back, eyes to the ceiling. Bucky caught his breath, listened to his heart slamming in his chest. Reality had a way of slamming down on his shoulders, always in the worst way, right when you thought you’d escaped it.

That is to say, the loneliness had seeped back in. Zinaida seemed to be in a world of her own, so it was only Bucky there, on the floor, his belt strewn across the couch cushions and his boxers slipping down his hips. He turned his head and looked over at her. The slope of her nose, the darkness of the night shadowed across her face.

“Where are you?” He muttered.

It took about ten seconds before the words sunk in, and she looked at him. Her hair—wow, had she cut so much—fell into her eyes, and she didn’t tuck it back. Zinaida met his eyes, and a look of true, pure grief flashed across her face. Then it was gone, and she was pulling herself up, and he could see only her back and the divots of her spine as she bent down and grabbed her clothes off the floor. Her naked figure, her bare swaying hips in the dark of the night.

Zinaida spared him one last look over her shoulder as she walked to her room.

Notes:

i swear i originally intended to write a full, actual sex scene in this chapter but it's my first time attempting it and i lowkey chickened out! however, i'm okay with how it turned out---i actually think the cut from the top of their high to that awful, ringing silence afterwards adds a nice touch. very excited to see how y'all feel about this and if you understand where zinaida's head is at afterwards!!

Chapter 38: Even in Enmity

Summary:

James fights for peace with Zinaida, but gets something better.

June 26th, 2015

Made Z breakfast this morning. Call it a last ditch effort. A bowl of oatmeal. Didn’t waterboard it like Steve’s ma would, but I added her pinch of salt. Even crushed half a cinnamon stick into it. Left it in the fridge overnight, with her name on it. When I got up, hours after whatever godly hour she drags herself out of bed at, the half-empty bowl was soaking in the sink. Not a fuckin’ word.

Can’t stop thinking about that look in her eyes. It was a child’s pain, that’s what I keep thinking. Her hair in her face, a tear pricked in her eye, just about to fall. Then the next morning, when I woke up just before she left for work. One look over her shoulder, puffy-eyed. A child’s pain. You know, everything hurts worse then. There’s so many ways to fuck up a kid’s whole life, ‘cause everything leaves a mark. Look at me, talking about being a kid as if I can remember more than a glimpse of it.

I can barely recognize myself. At 21—Hell, right up until I got drafted—I would’ve been talkin’ about her for days. Calling her up, showing up to her place with flowers. A girl like her, her sleeve falling down her shoulder and her cheeks blushed, that crazed look in her eyes, like she could ruin my life and somehow still make it better. I’d be a goner. Yet here I am, feeling like I’ve murdered somebody. Guess I just keep thinking that I don't have anything else to give up. Like, it’s already all been taken. And maybe, maybe I let her take something I didn’t know I had. Maybe now I’ve got nothing again. Then maybe I’d blame it on chivalry if I was dumb enough to think I’d ever had much of that. Once, Steve had been real mad, maybe the angriest I’d ever seen him, and he said I was worse than a heart-breaker, ‘cause I was just a taker. I took girls and didn’t leave nothing, and I was never satisfied with what I stole. I don’t wanna take from her, but I think I already did.

It was Bucky’s night to make dinner. Zinaida hadn’t been in the apartment when he got home, but after his accidental rejection, she’d hardly been home at all. She came home for dinner, either to cook it or sit in silence and pick at it, but other than that, he didn’t know where she went. And he didn’t feel like he had the right to ask.

He reheated two plates of Mămăligă they’d found from a cheap street vendor, a cornbread dish that stuck to the top of the mouth and tasted like sweet porridge, with canned beans on the side. Bucky was setting the table—which meant placing down the filled plates and one, sole plastic fork each—when Zinaida’s key turned in the door. Following the groan of the door came the signature sound of her boots. He didn’t watch her in the same way you don’t look a bear in the eyes.

The table was feet away from the kitchen, pushed up against the wall so they could hear every footstep from the hallway behind it. The screech of her chair announced her as she sat down, and Bucky shortly followed, two cups of tap water in his hands. She didn’t acknowledge the water when he set it down next to her, but when he looked up, she had torn off a piece of the Mămăligă and was dragging it through her beans.

Bucky dumped his over the bread, and ate it like that. Taking sly glances at Zinaida through bites, when her head turned or her eyes dropped while she sipped her water, he did a thorough examination. He could smell the booze on her, must be Vodka. Her cheeks were slightly tinged pink, her sweater sticking to her back. How had Zinaida found a bar in this town? All that he’d seen for miles were small, family-run businesses and general stores. She must’ve really been itching to blow off some steam.

For once, they devoured their meal at nearly the same rate. She was most certainly tipsy—he’d counted four times already that she’d almost tipped over her glass, only to catch it at the last second. When she was finished, Zinaida swallowed hard and her eyes snapped up to his. She caught him already looking.

“Do you regret it?” She asked. Zinaida was giving him one of her prized looks, where she stared absolutely unblinkingly at him, anticipating his answer. Like it was a test and she had the answer key.

This was it. This was the only chance she’d give him. Bucky leveled his face into his best impression of her certainty, and shook his head. “No. No, I don’t.” She didn’t take her eyes off him, holding his level gaze as she shoveled a bite of bread and beans into her mouth. She swallowed. Then she nodded.

—

The next night, or, technically the next day, Zinaida had a 2:30 shift, like her first two weeks on the job. Since then, her hours had strayed from dawn, what with the gas-leak controversies and her “rigorous work ethic,” as an elusive manager on her report had once called it. But she was back that morning, and up at one.

It was far earlier than she’d like, but Zinaida hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d dreamt briefly of lips on her own, the peppery smell of oak, and awoken with an aching sadness in her chest and a hangover.

Her heart jumped against her ribs when she walked into the living room and found James, with his back turned, so he was sitting facing towards his pillow and out the window above it, his giant shoulders slouched and his pencil scribbling feverishly into his notebook. The light of the lamp he’d turned on, which sat unceremoniously on the ground next to him, made her eyes sting.

If he heard her bare feet padding towards him, James gave no indication, right up until she carefully sat herself onto the foot of the mattress.

He planted a hand on the mattress, like stumbling into a fighting stance, and snapped around to face the threat. It took him half a second, his eyes scouring her, to realize it was Zinaida, but then his guard was still not down. James was surprised to see her there.

Zinaida realized she had never before sat on his mattress. She could only barely feel it's springs through the foam. It was that buttoned, old kind, with small white details etched into the fabric. His navy pillow had been tossed aside, and sat between them like a barrier. It was warm when her knee brushed against it. She wondered if it smelled like him. No, she knew it would.

Her sitting there was a peace offering. They both realized it at the same time. He glanced from the journal to the much more beautiful, sleep-blurred woman next to him, and made an easy choice. The journal fell closed.

Zinaida watched it. Her chin was indented with marks, the bunched fabric of her pillow or her blanket. Bucky wouldn’t tell her, but he watched her come up with her question. Then he watched her lips move, and her scratchy voice fill the room. “What do you write about in that thing?”

Had they truly never discussed the journal? No, she guessed not. Like everything else, it was an unspoken acceptance; he’d write and she wouldn’t read it. His brow jumped up, and he shrugged, just barely. “Nothing. Anything, I guess. Memories. Dreams.”

It was the most guarded, the most embarrassed she’d ever seen him. But it was a give-and-take, after all, so if he wanted her, he’d have to give her this. She pressed on, “Dreams?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you ever have good ones?” He faltered. His brows crinkled and his eyes lowered for a moment, as he searched for a good dream and found nothing. The only thing that came close was a brief, blurry one about rolling around and finding Zinaida, her shoulders bare above the covers, sleeping softly next to him. And he definitely wasn’t going to tell her that. “No. You?”

She smiled one of those unexpected, always-at-the-wrong-time smiles, and breathed out a laugh. Then she shook her head. “No.”

They fell silent. The refrigerator hummed. The curtains moved with the morning wind of the streets, and Zinaida realized he’d cracked the window open. She watched them flutter with the dark, croaking night behind them, and wondered aloud; “What do normal people dream about?”

James laughed. He had such a boyish laugh, a scarce remnant of the thing he had once been. It seemed to move the curtains in a gust. “Jesus, I can’t imagine. Taxes, probably. Their next paycheck. Booze, sex.” He listed them off with a flick of his fingers, and they tried to imagine it.

But no, they could only gawk. It was a life they’d never, ever understand. A society they’d never join. It could often feel as if James and Zinaida were on their own planet, their own species, watching this separate world of people they didn’t belong to.

And just like that, Zinaida knew she’d made him sad again. She’d made herself sad, too. She had meant to sit with him, offer a hesitant but honest smile, something like that—instead, she had revealed too much.

There was nothing more to say, not in that moment. Zinaida had nothing to offer, and neither did he. Instead, the pair sat at the top of James’s mattress, their knees brushing against each other, and let the silence buzz in their ears. Zinaida stretched her legs out until the soles of her feet pressed against the wall.

They were just close enough to feel his constant heat radiating off of him. The urge to reach out to James, to crash her lips against his or lay her head on his shoulder, was both overwhelming and repulsive. She imagined it, and then the disgust at herself formed a hole in her stomach. But the silence was fine. The inches of space were just fine.

Half an hour later, she hauled herself off the mattress, feeling it creak with the loss of her weight, and went to work. When she got back, there was a note waiting for her on the dining table. She recognized the folded paper as a ripped sheet from James’s journal. It was labeled with a ‘Z’ on the front.

Stinking of bleach, her hands dry and cracking, Zinaida sat down at the table and carefully unfolded the note. She read it three times.

“I found a single sustaining thought. The thought was, You and Phineas are even already. You are even in enmity. You are both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone. I felt better. We were even after all, even in enmity. The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all.”

Took me a day and a dictionary to figure that one out, but I know you’ll get it. In enmity, Zinaida, we’re even.

Zinaida folded and refolded the note, until it was crisp and clean, and then she slipped it under the padding in the sole of her boot. The fabric was lifting just enough to make a hiding place. She figured if there was one constant in her life, it was those boots.

Notes:

hopefully it's obvious, but the beginning is an excerpt from bucky's journal. i've been meaning to include one for ages, and this felt like the perfect chance! i love a good bucky pov chapter.

Chapter 39: Incantation

Summary:

When a trigger breaks James out of their domestic trance, Zinaida is there to pick up the pieces.

Notes:

this might be one of my favorite chapters so far. one of my main goals in writing this ff was to grow my favorite characters, like bucky, through the lens of someone they love. in that way, zinaida is a filter to develop bucky, a perfect metaphor for how their love changes each other. anyway, hope y'all like it!

July, 2015

It was a Sunday, which meant Zinaida got a later shift. It was six in the morning and she was standing in the kitchen, watching turkey bacon sear on the stove-top. James had brought the bacon home with his last grocery trip and sworn it was a delicacy of the highest order, though he could only barely remember it from his fortunate childhood before the Depression hit.

Zinaida wasn’t paying attention. James’s mention of his life Before had sent her into a rabbit hole; she was thinking about the mother she hadn’t had. She thought about a nuclear family, a warm bassinet and a table set with candles and hot meals—and the check her parents had taken in exchange for their children. Zinaida was wondering how you measured your daughters' worth in cash.

There was a loud sizzling sound. Pops and crackles. Had she been a fussy baby? Had they been glad to give them up? The distinct smell of smoke climbing to her face, covering the scent of bacon grease. Zinaida looked down. A fire started on the strips of thin meat, then puffed out and crept towards the edge of the pan. It was a lighter shade of her hair, and moving like a sentient being.

She cursed, reached for the handle. The metal burned her skin and she pulled away, grabbed the rag on the counter instead. It was too late.

An alarm went off, the screeching beep of the smoke detector above the hood of the stove. The noise nearly drowned out the scream from behind her. Just nearly. Rag in her stinging hand, Zinaida whipped around and found James standing up.

His eyes were drowning in dread. It was the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen. The horror was palpable, it was all over his body. James darted away, like an animal trapped in a cage, trying to get away from the sound. Of course, it filled up the whole apartment with ease, and there was nowhere he could go. He was screaming, bouncing off the walls, slamming his palms against his skull.

His lips were moving. Zinaida had to strain to understand his words over the shrill alarm. “No!” He was shouting, holding his palms over his ears, “Where are you? Stay away! Отойдите, не трогайте меня!” [Go away, don't touch me!]

The Russian was all it took for Zinaida to understand. She wanted more than anything to chase him, hold him, shush him like a wailing baby, until he stopped, but she knew it wouldn’t work. One thing at a time. She turned to the fire, wacked the flaming pan with the rag. The heat seeped through the thin cotton and stung her palms, but she kept going. And then one fire was snuffed out, and there was only one—the growing grease-fire racing around the apartment.

A hoarser, louder scream rang through the room. Zinaida whipped around and faced it. That was her fatal mistake. She caught his attention. James’s head snapped towards her, his eyes wide and wrong, absolutely hysterical.

His bare feet padded against the wood floor, as he moved towards her. Shoulders hunched, fingers digging into his scalp. “Ты! Что ты задумал, кто ты такой?” He screamed, the veins of his neck taut and popping against his skin. [You! What are you doing, who are you?]

“James!” She yelled, hoping he could read her lips, but it wasn’t enough. He grabbed the stool Zinaida used to reach the taller cabinets, and whirled it at her head. She dodged, fluidly, unflinching, and it crashed just next to the window. An inch to the side, and it would have fallen through the glass and collapsed on the street below. Instead, it smashed into pieces against the cabinet.

Zinaida could feel her heart slamming against her ribs. That same, deafening beeping continued, it seemed to get louder with every second. She didn’t spare a glance at the obliterated stool, she just held James’s barely-there gaze. Slowly, she raised her hands.

The charred dish towel in her hands was a gun, or a machete, or a scalpel. It was a murder weapon, the way his gaze snapped to it. Then back to her eyes. “No. Don’t look at me. You’re not her, you’re not fucking real!”

He grabbed the still-smoking pan off the stove and pummeled it into the tile, a burst of momentary flames and smoke. The pan shattered the tile, broke through the concrete below it and left a crater in the floor.

“You, you, you—” He stumbled forward, heavy feet against the wooden floors, until his finger was in her face and she could feel his heavy, panting breaths on her cheeks, “You’re not taking me! I’m not going back! Do you hear that?!” He tilted his chin up, until his eyes were to the ceiling, and screamed into the walls, “I’M NOT GOING!”

“Years.” He mumbled, lower this time, his lips curling like he might cry. “Decades, cutting me open. Told me it was over, she told me we were free. You wanna start all fuckin’ over?”

Zinaida couldn’t say anything. Her heart was in her throat, tears forming behind her eyelids. She knew what the ache in her body was. It was his pain in her lungs. She had swallowed it, it was both of theirs now.

He parted his lips again, and this time, she could only read his lips. His voice was too low to hear over the noise. Too soft. “Please. I don’t wanna go.” James pleaded.

It was torture watching James be reduced to begging. Zinaida wanted to slap him. She wanted to kill every sick motherfucker who had ever laid a hand on him.

Her ears were ringing harder than before, her head spinning. It was the silence, she realized. The alarm had cut out. The only sound left to fill the room was his heavy, pained breaths.

It was just them, alone in it. The come-down hit him like a pile of bricks. James felt it; the exhaustion, the horror, the shame. He felt it all.

He stared at her with reverence, an aghast look on his face. Zinaida watched, horrified, as tears rimmed his eyes. She watched until she was sure one would escape, and it was at that moment that his knees buckled. James could no longer stand the weight of it; he was falling forward into her. His chest collapsed against her shoulders, and instinctively, she caught him. Like water in her hands, she held onto James, her palms on his back and his head against her shoulder.

Hot tears dampened the fabric of her shirt. Nothing about it seemed possible. James was shedding tears into the crook of her neck, relaxing his entire weight against her frame. They were holding each other.

“It’s okay,” She whispered into his hair. A muffled noise, a whimper, melted from his lips into her shoulder, and her heart broke. It became an incantation. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

He wrinkled his eyes as shut as they could go, leaned harder into her. She was leaning, too. They held each other up.

“We’re even, James.” Zinaida muttered, dragging her hands from his back up to his arms and then his face. Cupping his jaw in her hands, she shifted their weight until he was pulled up just enough to meet her eyes. “We’re even, remember?”

Looking up at her, face cupped in her hands, James seemed to have an epiphany. His heavy, half-lidded eyes searched every inch of her face, as if seeing it for the first time. Then his gaze turned tender, so tender it had to hurt—it had to hurt to believe someone as much as James looked to believe her right then. He looked at Zinaida with reverence, and then he leaned in.

James tilted his chin up, scraping the shadow of his stubble against her smooth skin, and kissed her.

Zinaida had not known it was possible for an act of romance to be so ridden, laden with guilt, but James managed it. Of course he had. He was saying sorry with every brush of his lips against hers, screaming it into her skin. Zinaida developed a theory right then and there; that it’s impossible to truly feel someone’s sadness until you’re tasting it. With that soft, terribly tender kiss, she could taste all of his sadness. It was akin to a paradoxical heaven.

They kissed until they had no choice but to part for breath. Then for a long time—thirty minutes, an hour?---they held each other. It was nobody’s business, not even Zinaida’s, how hard he may have cried into her. She only knew the sound of his breath, up and down as it evened out, and the smell of his hair.

Chapter 40: Keep Them Still

Summary:

"People you've been before / That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will / I'll keep them still." - "Between the Bars," Elliot Smith

Notes:

i'm not really satisfied with this chapter but i'll let y'all have it because it's the last moment of peace before things get crazy...

August, 2015

The temperature dropped hard and fast, like a weighted pendulum. Zinaida woke at four in the morning again, her skin bumped from the draft seeping through the window. She rolled closer to the warmth, instinctively, and found her hands wrapped around James’s torso. His skin was so warm, his arm curled over her shoulders, murmuring contentedly.

More begrudgingly than she’d like to admit, Zinaida unraveled herself from James’s sleeping body and pulled the thin blanket off of her. She was sitting on the edge of the mattress, about to stand, when a metal arm wrapped around her torso. A smile threatened her lips. His cool fingers splayed her bare stomach, her shirt discarded in the pile from the night before.

“Get back here.” James muttered, his voice deep and scratchy from sleep. She looked over her shoulder, quite literally biting her smile down, and smacked his hand softly away.

“Work.” She reminded him, leveling his half-open eyes with her own until he sighed and slowly let her go.

Zinaida chewed on a hunk of bread, watching James from the kitchen as he rolled over and pulled the blanket over his head. His hair, that soft brown, was fussed against the pillow they shared. Her heart clenched.

She was still watching when one of James’s eyes opened and caught her staring. He didn't seem to mind. “Come to the shop when you get off today, will you? Wanna show you somethin’.”

If it was anybody else, Zinaida would have said no. If it was a month earlier, she would’ve interrogated him until he told her exactly what he had planned. But it was James, looking so incredibly gentle on the mattress they now shared, so she just hummed. “It’s near the coffee place, yes?”

“Yep, just across the street.”

“Okay.” She agreed, just like that.

Work was slow. Zinaida must have been doing something right, because she showed up the week before and found a sticky note on her cleaning cart that said she’d now be working on the second floor. The second was about the same layout, if you replaced the giant machines with monotone offices, and added a break room. It was less filthy, so easier to clean. Zinaida had the floor spotless an hour before her shift ended, so she headed to the auto shop early.

From a distance, you might not even recognize it as a business. If not for the flickering neon sign above the entrance—whose letters had mostly fallen off, spelling out patches of the word ‘CARS’—you’d mistake it for just another run-down garage tucked between apartment blocks. The shop was always overbooked. Only two vehicles could fit under the covered bay at a time, but there were usually another two or three lined up in the driveway, rusted and battered, waiting their turn.

Inside, it was just as busy. With nearly a dozen men on shift, space was tight. Tools clanked, voices bounced off concrete, and somehow, they still managed to get things done.

When Zinaida walked up the drive, most of the guys were clustered in a cleared patch of gravel, eating homemade sandwiches and nursing bottles of cheap beer, laughing like hyenas. Shieling her brow like a visor from the sun, Zinaida searched the men and realized who was missing. James was nowhere among the group. Instead, she found him hunched beside a scuffed Škoda in the far corner, one knee on the concrete, grease smeared up his forearm as he scowled at a flat tire, wiping sweat from his brow.

Zinaida walked up the driveway, swerving between parked cars to get to him. A low whistle from one of the men, directed at Zinaida, made James’s head snap up. Neither of them were listening to the men and their comments. The shortest pieces of James’s hair, at the front of his face, were slick with sweat and falling into his face. It had only been a month since Zinaida sat him down in front of the bathroom mirror and trimmed his thick hair, but it was already growing back out. He had insisted she keep it long.

James dropped the wrench he’d been using, letting it clink against the cement. Squinting up at her, sun shining off her back like a halo as she stood above him, he spoke. “You’re here early. I’m almost off.”

He reached his right hand up to his left shoulder and rolled out a knot, letting the sleeve of his worker’s jacket—an open, sky-blue button-down of sorts, the cuffs undone and the name “Matthew” stitched in the chest pocket—ride up, revealing the peak of metal between his wrist and gloves. Smears of motor-oil ran across his thighs and sleeves.

“Finished up early. What’s my big surprise?”

“Uh…” He looked around at his work-space; the wrench on the floor, the flat tire and stripped car, the men who had turned back to their hilarious conversation. “I’ll show you.”

“Nonsense, Matthew, you’re working. I can wait.”

He rolled his eyes, “Yeah, well I can’t. Too damn proud of myself.” He half-smirked, as Zinaida pursed her lips and raised her brows. She hoped he couldn’t see her mind-numbing curiosity through her careful disguise of nonchalance. Truth was, Zinaida had been trying to figure out what it was that James wanted to show her the whole day. She’d come up with a list of about a million possibilities in her head. He shrugged, “Nobody around here would notice even if I caught fire and exploded—they won’t miss us.”

Zinaida thought about arguing, but James was ripping off his work shirt and walking towards the screen door that led out the back. She followed behind, privately delighted to watch his shoulders bob. There was a patch of sweat between his shoulder-blades, making his shirt stick to his back. James held the door for Zinaida, and then led her out the back, around the corner of the small concrete building, and to a bike rack near the front of the shop. Between two tin bicycles, a black motorcycle stood chained to the racks. Three different padlocks, which had been crossed over each other, kept it safe.

James just nodded to it. Zinaida looked to the bike, to James, and back again. After closer inspection, she realized the parts were different shades of black, some more navy and some more grey. One wheel had a different tread than the other.

“Did you make that thing, James?” She gave him an incredulous look.

He shrugged, playing coy, “Her name is Nelly. And no. I just assembled it.”

Zinaida scoffed, the closest thing he’d heard to a genuine laugh, and fumbled for her words. James’s lips split into a grin, his white teeth sparkling through. He cocked his head to it, “You know how to drive it?”

“Yes.” She rushed out, though she knew he'd said it just to rile her up. Just enough to make her offended he even asked.

“Then get on.” Zinaida paused, as if wondering if she’d heard him right. Her eyes snapped to his, and she arched a brow. He nodded, bent down and used his metal hand to crush the locks. Keeping it propped up with his foot, James dragged the bike out onto the street, so it rested against the curb. Once again, he jerked his chin at it.

“Are you sure it works?”

He tilted his chin down, shook his head disapprovingly, as if it was a preposterous question. “Are you doubting my mechanical genius?”

She raised her palms, “It’s a fair question.”

“Okay. You’ve had your driving privileges revoked. Now you’ll ride in the back.” There was no authority in James’s voice, as he smiled. She wasn’t sure he was capable of telling her what to do.

“Where are we going?”

James did not answer Zinaida’s question. Not as they hauled themselves onto the bike, not as she wrapped her hands around his familiar, thick waist and the engine began howling. Not as he pressed the gas and they shot down the street.

The wind in her hair was warm and sweet. It smelled like fruit as they passed the vendor stands, then gasoline as they swerved through the streets. Zinaida saw more of Bucharest, flashing her by as they rode, than she had in the last five months combined. James stopped in the middle of a bridge. He parked them by the ledge, let the bike lean against the slabs of old brick, as he guided her to the ledge and the view below it. The lake running under the bridge flowed lazily, the water clear and dark blue. In the distance, the cityscape cut it off and faded away.

Zinaida leaned her elbows against the stone railing, watching the water move, like it had a mind of its own—a destination they didn’t know about. Aside from the whooshing stream and a train whistling in the city, it was quiet. A breeze riled up the tide, the useless sun sat in the sky.

She remembered a word she’d heard before. A date. All she could think was; what a childish thing. Without taking her eyes off the water, she leaned closer to James, letting their arms press against each other. “Did you build that bike for me?”

James looked at her. He blinked fast, a tell. “Mostly.” She kept her eyes locked on his. After a moment of her steel gaze and the creeping silence, his shoulders fell and he sighed. “Yes.” Her eyes narrowed in skepticism. “Why?” James bit his cheek, looking back at the lake unfolding beneath them. Perhaps the thing Zinaida admired the most about the complicated man next to her was how he searched himself for an answer to her questions. Nobody else looked that hard, that earnestly.

After a long moment, he looked back at her. That crease appeared between his brows, as if pained by the truth he had found. “Because there are places to go. I wanted you to know that.”

Like a rosebud unfurling in her chest, Zinaida felt her heart make room for him. He grabbed her hand where it rested under her chin and put it on the railing, their fingers laced together. She almost hated him for his tenderness. “We aren’t stuck.” He vowed.

Zinaida’s eyes rounded and glimmered. She untangled her fingers from his, and laid her palm against his cheek. There was nobody around to watch them.

“I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

He frowned but melted into her touch all the same.

She finished, quiet enough that he wouldn't hear unless he listened, “I’m afraid I’ll believe it.”