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Natasha is thirteen years old and she is Dreykov's favourite girl.
This means she is watched closer. This means she is trained harder. this means she cannot be the same as the other girls, their secret conversations and nighttime giggles. She had tried to be, after Ohio when so many were soft and new. Joined their midnight mumblings on food and family. Shared in the little warmths—hands touching, hair brushing, quick and secret hugs. All those things that made them just little girls, even if for only a second.
It didn't last long. She was too far ahead of the rest. She was the best—at fighting and shooting and following orders. At lying. She was the best, and they closed ranks without her. There were the fresh and broken-hearted little girls, and there was Natasha. Even as those hearts calcified over and nobody was calling for their mamas at night, she still wasn't one of them. Couldn't be. Because—
She is Dreykov's girl. His perfect doll, the one who is toted about and displayed to rooms of important men. The doll for them to admire and play with.
The other girls do not touch her. She gets her warmth in other ways, hands on her shoulders-cheeks-chest. Dreykov's hands, she knows by now, are soft and uncalloused. A man who had never worked a day in his life. Most men are the same, the ones she is displayed to.
They are soft, and they are weak, and they are so very powerful.
Natasha is not one to dwell on things. There is no time, no space to retreat inside the mind when everything is constantly against her. Everything she does is all body and muscle memory and all-consuming.
Here, in the passenger seat of Dreykov's sleek and shining car, there is little else to do than dwell. It is a rare time that she has to think, to live inside her mind for just a little while, rather than her body. The body which she inhabits—Natasha is not naive enough to consider it her own. Pale skin and slender prepubescent frame and red hair. It belongs to whoever would like it.
Natasha can't afford to think like this. She folds the expanse of her mind like origami-paper, until it's small enough to be tucked into the hollow of her ribcage where others keep their hearts.
She blinks, and when she opens her eyes she is a porcelain doll in the passenger seat. The world filters back in, engine rumbling, quiet radio music, the overwhelming gray of winter. She observes it all with glass eyes and cracked-china skin. The engine slows and stops, Natasha can see in her periphery Dreykov taking the keys and tucking them away in the pocket of his woolen jacket.
The car doors open, one after another, and Natasha meets the winter air like an old friend.
Russia is the only mother that she has, cold and brutal beautifully uncaring. Natasha follows perfectly in her mother's footsteps. Snow swirls in the sharp winds, bright white against her red hair, pure. She doesn't tuck her face lower into the collar of the jacket she was given to wear. Cold air freezes its way up her nose and down her throat. She lets it, standing still in winter's embrace.
Dreykov's hand lands on the back of her neck. It is big enough to wrap more than halfway around, a firm and heavy collar. Her cold glass skin greedily absorbs the warmth as she walks alongside him, two trails of footprints being swallowed by wind and snow.
She is a loyal dog, no leash required.
Natasha allows herself to be led, as is her nature. She lets cold air sting her ears red and toss the little flyaways in her face, across her eyes. She lets Dreykov squeeze gently, a facsimile of gentle caring touch, a reminder that she is his girl.
She thinks that they must look like father and daughter, to the few passerbys and cars driving by. It wouldn't be an entirely incorrect assumption. After all, he made her. Shaped her, taught her, urged her ever stronger, growing towards a warmth that only he could provide. They turn the corner, walk up the cleared stairs to a building that is far more important-looking than the rest. Government, she assumes. (Her assumptions are nearly always correct. It's another thing she was taught.)
It explains Dreykov's neatly-pressed suit, her own collared dress and high socks. She is playing the part of a diplomat's daughter today, if only in looks. (Dreykov never tells her what he wants her to be doing ahead of time. She thinks that he likes watching her pretend to know what's going on, watching her pretend not to struggle under the pressure of needing to do exactly what he wants while not knowing what it is that she needs to do. Dreykov likes to play games with her.)
His hand slides from her neck to her shoulder. They wipe their boots at the entrance and Natasha is led down the entrance hall. Dreykov exchanges some pleasant words with the woman at the front desk, is gestured towards an elevator that he guides her into.
Music does not play. Dreykov bent slightly, fitting his key into a keyhole underneath the array of buttons. Natasha stares at her reflection in the mirrored walls. Traces her eyes over her wide green eyes, her perfectly blank expression on her pale and rosy-cheeked face. Her eyes catch on where her left sleeve had rolled up, the faded ring of scar tissue wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet. It is subtle enough nobody else would notice it. Still, she tugs down her sleeve. Best not to risk it, she tells herself. (She doesn't want to remember the early nights, of crying and thrashing and pulling until the metal stained red.)
"Ah," Dreykov sighs, straightening up and giving her a smile. The elevator begins to descend, seconds ticking by in silence. Natasha subtly shifts her weight back to her heels, wanting to ask what they are doing here. She doesn't, of course. It would be weak.
The door opens. His hand is on her shoulder again, guiding her like a pet, like a frightened child. Down here it is less ornate, less indulgent in its decoration. Cool concrete, blue-white fluorescent lighting. Industrial metal doors, all of them closed. Natasha closes herself within a porcelain shell, the perfect widow.
A man nods at them as they pass, black tactical gear. "Hail Hydra," he greets. Dreykov chuckles, near silent, but returns the words all the same. They are insincere. The only care Dreykov has for organisations like Hydra is what can benefit him. He is not one to dwell on ideology or fairytales of powerful beings. He has his girls for that.
An exhibition, then. Natasha is here as an example, an object to be traded. A show of power. (There is something to be said about the way she is both strong and smart and sly and completely, utterly powerless.)
One of the doors is open. Quiet speech is barely-audible from within. She feels rather than sees Dreykov straighten up next to her. Even the most powerful depend solely on the approval of other men.
They enter the room and in it there is a table. At the table sits a man that Natasha recognises instantaneously. They are taught the faces of powerful men, taught what they do and how they do it, connections and how to break them.
This means that when she sees the secretary of the World Security Council, Alexander Pierce, she recognises him instantaneously. "Ah, hello Dreykov!"
"Alexander," returns Dreykov, using a false-cavalier tone. She nearly rolls her eyes at his opaque play for dominance. She doesn't, though, because her eyes are glass in her skull and she is a perfect porcelain doll.
She scans the room as the two men talk, trading probing remarks disguised as a casual back-and-forth. It has gray and flat walls, a warm brown table that seems out of place in the clinical environment. There are no windows—Natasha is fairly sure that they are deep underground. The room is dimly lit, a single light turned on just overtop of the table. Why turn on only one of the lights?
Natasha narrows her eyes slightly, scans the back of the room.
There is a man looking back at her. He stands in the corner, dark tactical gear, armed. He wears a glove on one hand, none on the other, which is peculiar enough to take note of. His eyes are empty. His cheeks are hollow. He looks like a dead man, eyes like a ghost.
Natasha looks at him and it is like looking at herself. It is glass eyes and stiff frame and joints locked in place, a doll, a mannequin. Natasha stands like a ballerina, heels together and toes apart. This man stands at attention.
A hand lands on her shoulder. She does not flinch, but she is abruptly snapped back to her body.
"This is Natasha," Dreykov says, sticky pride dripping from his every word. "She is the best of them." His favourite girl.
"Hello, Natasha," he says, amused look in his eyes. He is revelling in his own power, saying silently see, I can talk down to you, you are nothing, you are weak and I am strong. Natasha does not scowl at him, does not show him her strength. She stands, pretty and proper as she is appraised, observed, heavy eyes pressing over her body. She is a doll because that is what they want from her.
"I have a little someone of my own," he says, "Soldier."
The man from the corner steps forwards. There is nothing in his eyes and there is a mask over him mouth. He does not speak, and Natasha does not think he can. At her side, Dreykov's breath hitches—he had not noticed the man there. He had not realised that he could have been killed with one word. He is suddenly aware of his own mortality, if only for a second. Natasha knows this because she has seen it before. Over and over and over again.
"Ah," Dreykov says, voice stable, "So this is the famous Winter Soldier."
Natasha's eyes widen. For just a moment, she is no longer a doll. For just a moment, an older widow is whispering to her in the night, telling stories of a man with a metal arm who is the best of anything. Ghost stories, stories that everyone who lives deep enough under the surface has heard.
He is a ghost and he is standing right in front of her.
"Natasha," says Pierce, slick and smirking, and Dreykov's hand comes to rest on her back, silently saying 'this is my girl, not yours.' "Meet your new teacher."
The ghost finally looks at her, hollow eyes and face and soul. The doll looks back.