Chapter Text
In another world, things are different. In another world, there is no Ohio - not as it could have been, at least.
They are ambushed the moment they exit their charter flight; surrounded by men with guns and no reservations about pulling the trigger.
Melina tugs the girls behind her. Hands up in surrender - the tremble in her arms is not entirely forced.
Alexei is not so smart.
He breaks off the wing to their plane and throws it, using his brute strength to create the distraction to run. A super soldier, as it turns out, is no match for a well-aimed bullet.
His body ricochets with a thud and Yelena runs out, screaming for her daddy. Melina tries to reach for her, to be met with a bullet to her shoulder.
She falls.
She wakes without opening her eyes. Letting her other senses come to life, alerting her of the simple facts of that around her and allowing her to make simpler conclusions.
She is restrained. Tied to a bed and head pounding from a drug-induced haze. That is nothing new to all the times she has woken before.
The room smells sterile. Ammonia and peroxide burning her nose, with an undertone of something clinical. The infirmary is never so clean. Bloodied and rusted with both time and use. So, this is not Red Room.
There is no low buzz of life outside; staff or civilian. She rules out a public hospital.
So, this is a capture.
She blinks open her eyes, taking stock of the monitors and tubes attached to her and eying her vitals until she is assured her death is not imminent. The restraints are simple. She could undo them and be out of here in minutes, if she wanted.
She is not sure she wants that.
The door opens on her right and two men walk in, both wearing suits and one with a too kind smile that does not reach his eyes. She does not mirror it.
(Beneath her mask, she tenses.
She should have expected this. Restrained, injured, alone. This was an inevitability - an eventuality. She has lived through worse.)
“Do you speak English?” The first one asks.
His voice is soft, as though speaking to a small child, and she suddenly remembers Yelena and Natasha. Small and vulnerable. Even more alone than she.
“Where are my children?” She asks.
It is a lie for their cover, but they do not know that. They do not need to know that.
“The girls are fine. They’re safe, with one of our female agents in another room. You can see them, once you’ve answered our questions.” The second man answers. He is less soft. Her gaze flits over the eyepatch he wears, wondering what he hides behind it, before she nods. Hesitant and submissive.
“What is your name? Who do you work for?” The first man questions, moving to sit in one of the plastic chairs tucked against the wall.
“Whatever I am told it is, and whoever I am told to work for.”
It is honest. Too honest, perhaps. She flinches at her own words.
“And who tells you those things?” The second man re-phrases without missing a beat. Sharp and alert.
“Red Room. KGB. Whoever needs me most.” She replies.
The first man speaks again, with his soft voice and too kind smile that still does not reach his eyes. “The girls - your children - are they from the same place?”
She hesitates.
Natasha is Red Room through and through. Stolen for the potential she is too young to realise she has, groomed and shaped to be the best. A mouse born in a cage, running round and round on its wheel.
But Yelena…Yelena was loved. Snatched from an addict mother who still did everything in her power to put a roof over their heads, and trafficked into an even crueller world.
“Yes.” Melina answers simply. The easiest truth to tell.
For if they were not Red Room before, they would be.
Something flashes across both of their faces. Sorrow. Disgust.
Pity.
It is laughable that something that sickens them so much is all she has and ever will know.
It sickens her, too.
They do not ask her anything else. The first man leaves, returning minutes later with the girls.
She expects Yelena to cry.
The girl is young. Small.
Untrained.
It is not surprising that she sobs as she is lifted onto Melina’s bed, allowing her to crawl up her chest and throw her arms around her. She rubs the child’s back and closes her eyes for a minute, before opening them again.
Natasha stands in the doorway, tears staining her cheeks and hands clenched into fists at her side. It is only when she looks in her eyes that she sees the primitive fear of a child waiting for a punishment yet to come.
“Come here, baby.” She coos. Lifting the arm not wrapped around Yelena out for the other girl to come to.
Natasha is smart. So smart for her age.
She runs to her side and presses her face into her shoulder, playing the part of a worried daughter who wants their mother’s comfort. To manipulate her emotions so easily seems wrong on a child so young and small; years of training apparent.
Melina’s thumb brushes at the girl’s face. Wiping away her tears with a tenderness that could have once been real.
“Forgive me, mama. I’m scared.”
The second man returns that night, when the girls are asleep.
His name is Fury, she has learned. She expects him to live up to it.
She does not expect him to leave her untouched.
“We want to give you the chance to defect. Work for S.H.I.E.L.D., maybe help us take down the Red Room whilst we’re at it.”
“And if I don’t?” She asks.
For she can see a future in which she and the girls are hunted until they are caught. Taken back to the Red Room and punished for their treason, or living their lives in fear of exactly that. She sees no reason for this S.H.I.E.L.D. to be any different.
“We’ll keep tabs on you. Set you and the children up with a safehouse, give you a fresh start.” He responds. As though it could ever be that simple.
Melina shakes her head.
She is not that stupid.
“You cannot promise such foolish things,” She hisses, glancing at the children. Natasha’s eyelashes twitch - a tell of her eavesdropping. Melina cannot blame her, “You cannot keep them safe.”
“We will do everything we can to protect you - all three of you - no matter what you choose. I’m sorry if that’s not enough.” He responds. Gentler than before; as though he, too, knows they can never be free.
“What do you think I should do?”
She looks at him with an unmasked face. Vulnerability no longer veiled with an iron front and a marble exterior. Broken. Raw. Tired.
“I think you want to do good. This is your chance to do just that.”
He says it as though it is the only answer to her question and nothing else matters. She stares at him, taking in his seriousness for all it is worth. He tells no lies.
“Okay,” She breathes. Hesitant and near-silent, “I will work for you.”
They are housed in a room until she recovers. Provided with a bed and clothes and other luxuries she cannot afford.
She counts her debts in tallies, indenting them on the side of the bed-frame in scratches and notches.
One day, she will pay it back.
Someday.
Melina comes to learn quickly about the children.
Yelena is three and plays quietly with the pony toy one of the agents had gifted the child. She mumbles in small, incoherent voices as she makes the doll prance and trot around the confinement of the room, until she wears and climbs onto the mattress to sleep.
That is when she is good.
Other times, she wears and cries inconsolably. Wailing sobs that must be heard down the corridor that she cannot stop.
Melina is not a mother. She does not know where to start.
She shushes the child. Hands her the pony toy she so desperately loves and begs her to quieten.
When that fails to work, she does the next best thing and holds the child flush to her chest until her cries cease and her limbs stop flailing. Yelena sleeps curled into her; red-faced and spent.
Regardless of the outcome, Natasha sits and watches from the corner of the room.
The girl is seven, Melina recalls. Her kill count is already in double figures.
Natasha, she learns, is even more terrified than she. Feigning sleep at night and blinking awake during the day - the toll of exhaustion evidently heavy on her small frame.
She shrinks into corners and cowers slightly under every touch. Aware. Hypervigilant.
Melina cannot blame her. She was the same.
(A little girl, grown too fast. Abused in the name of a country that did not even know her name. Destroyed and rebirthed at the hands of a man who saw her as just another pretty face. A resource, not a person.
She sees herself in Natasha’s eyes. It does not bring her comfort.)
She finds herself wondering if this is her punishment for lying about being their mother; forced to fit a role that was carved out of her and thrown away to the dirt. To suffer each and every time she sees herself, or every time sees the girl she could have once been, if things were different.
Yet, somehow, it does not seem cruel enough.
Fury asks her about the Red Room, one day, when he escorts them for a walk around the grounds.
Yelena skips ahead; pony in hand and bright grin on her face.
Natasha trails behind five steps. The perfect shadow.
“What do you mean?” She asks, “What are you asking?”
“Our information is limited. Outdated and incomplete. I’m asking what you know, what you’re willing to tell us.”
Years of memories resurface from the back of her mind she had pushed them to. A lifetime of cold, dark rooms and training and discipline.
She thinks of the first time she ever killed someone. Nine years old, with her arms locked around her classmate’s neck.
She thinks of the Madames who raised her, and the Guards who broke her. Thirteen years old and bleeding onto her mattress in the dark of night. She did not cry. She did not remember how to.
She thinks of her graduation. Flashes of blood, blinding pain, and an emptiness she has continued to feel since.
“It is a cruel place. I am certain your information tells you that.” She offers, with a finality in her voice.
Melina does not want to talk about the things that made and unmade her. Not like this.
He nods as though he understands.
She knows better than to believe such things.
“Ah, Melina,” Dreykov purrs, tracing her cheekbone with his knuckles, “My greatest weapon, yet.”
She flinches under his gaze, lowering her head in submission. She can feel the smile in his breath as his tobacco-stained hands slide down her body, ready to grope and claim.
Then, he grabs her face. Rough and unrelenting as her cheeks bruise under his grasp, forced to look him in the eyes.
“You thought you could escape me?” He shouts. Burning with fury and spitting pure venom. She whimpers. “You thought I wouldn’t find you? You foolish girl.”
With that, he throws her to the floor. Blood on her tongue, sob dying out in her throat.
“I’m coming for you,” He promises, even as his voice fades out, “I will bring you home.”
It is Natasha that wakes her from the nightmare, with her wide, green eyes and trembling hands.
She jolts when Melina gasps, but does not scramble back into her corner as Melina would expect. Instead, she speaks. Voice soft and low as she whispers into the dark. “You see him when you sleep, too.”
Melina does not need to clarify who he is. They both know.
“Yes,” She admits, “Yes, I do.”
She finds Fury, that same day, and pushes him into an empty room. He does not flinch as she locks the door behind them, but looks at her with gentle knowing.
Behind closed doors, she tells him everything he needs to know.
The training. The assassinations. The rapes and honeypots and abuse. The graduation ceremony. Exactly what it means to be Dreykov’s favourite.
She tells him how Natasha and Yelena are not her children, but were cover for the mission. The one S.H.I.E.L.D. intercepted and stopped. Tells him about the soviet super soldier serum and everything the Red Room wanted to do with the information they were to steal.
He does not interrupt her. Just listens.
And then, when she finally breaks, he offers a hand. A simple act of kindness that is the first she has been shown before.
“We will take it down. If it’s the last thing I do, I promise you, he will die.”
She looks at him. Truly looks at him, from his one eye to his slightly greying hair, and the wrinkle lines around his mouth and eyes.
He is honest. Earnest.
The first good man she has ever known.
“They want you all to have therapy,” He tells her, days later. In the gym as she does stretches and exercises to test her shoulder, “You and the girls. They think it’ll help.”
She breathes through her nose, clenches her fists, and refrains from telling him exactly what she thinks of that. “And who is they?” She asks.
“Keller. The psychologists,” He lists, “Me. I think it will be good for you. I…I think you need it. I know the girls need it.”
His words are dangerous. Teetering between the line of being concerned and being an order. She knows not which is worse.
“Natasha-”
She whips around to face him, unbridled fear and shame escaping through every crack in her voice, “The last time Natasha was alone in an office with a man, she was raped. I know because he did the same to me whilst she watched. Do not tell me what’s best for my children.”
Her chest heaves. Head reels from the truth just spoken as the memories of the mission debrief come to mind. Recognition flashes through his eyes but he does not flinch. Does not turn away from her in disgust.
“Dreykov.” He answers. Simple. Knowing.
“Do not speak his name.” She trembles.
He does not apologise, but she would not want him to. Instead, he sits on a bench near them, giving her space to breathe and talk.
“I told you all you needed to know, but that does not mean it was everything,” She explains, simply. The truth is objective - it is what makes lying so easy, “There are things I will not talk about. This is one of them.”
She knows the end is coming four months in, when she walks past a group of rookie agents on a tour and spots a Widow from the class below hers.
She does not say anything. Not at first.
Not as she continues to walk down the corridor with her face impassive and unreadable. Not as she checks the room Natasha and Yelena are in, ensuring they are still safe and sound. Not as she reaches Fury’s office and knocks in the pattern they share.
Melina enters before he tells her to and he sits upright when he sees her face.
“He knows. He’s here.”