Our... Affair, it had to remain a secret. I was willing to bet what we had was an offence punishable by death. Mutiny; establishing an ensemble under the radar. And reliance, protectiveness, elation: they're all symptoms of humanity, something they'd tried to extract from me a long time ago. Humanity was the biggest threat to their regime. 

Weeks, we spent; sneaking around and engaging in drinks and conversation. The war rooms were almost never occupied, with their rickety tables and dusty maps posted in pigeon holes. One map was always unrolled and spread across the table top: a detailed map, terrain marked in with indicators of highs and lows of the Soviet States. Markers like the ones in monopoly resided atop: flags indicating countries conquered, and tokens that looked like tanks and missiles.

The generals used the war rooms, plotting their attacks; fleets of tiny tanks in lines on countries borders and telephones dotted about: one a direct line to Moscow.

But there were cabinets crammed with documents, some marked with the most curious of subjects: none of which I ventured to open, though I was tempted and had the adequate training to open. Any vault, any drawer, any door: give me a paperclip or a hair pin.  

But the stash that we raided was the cupboard with the liquor: the best, most expensive Russian vodka. We’d drink evenings away, joking of breaking free of the facility (the grim reality was the impossibility – but everything seems a little more feasible with the right amount of alcohol), grins stretched across our faces; he knew how to make me laugh. Other days I’d sob with the bottle to my lips like a pacifier, trying to drown the sorrows, his arm slung around me like a blanket.

It was tremendously fucked up. We were tremendously fucked up. Two master assassins, dwelling the rooms used to plot massacres, still laden with weapons (some days splattered with blood), sneaking around like children, living in a world of make believe, where kissing behind closed doors eased the pain, and a dash of vodka drowned it.

But of course, roving eyes and a devious mind managed to figure out our game eventually. Roving eyes and a devious mind which came in the form of Yelena Belova. She had it in for me. She always had. From the very moment we'd met eyes in the bunk room. 

I painted myself into a corner. 

Explosions, sounding off all around us; the city was being blown to high heavens in an attempt to euthanize protesters. I unloaded my cartridges, discarded my guns, and lead my personal spy through an archway into a secluded alleyway, where protesters daren't tread. He was my kind of therapy and anti-depressants; with the taste of his lips the sanity lost killing people was regained.

Figments of shrapnel still rolled in and floated on the air, but it was of no care to me. I’d been covered with worse things in my life.

My hair was dotted with flecks of grime and my cheeks smeared with the dank dusty colours of war. He was painted in a similar state; streaks of ash weaved into his dark hair, lines of mortar and clay smudged on his face. His tabard was looking beaten, buttons loose and the leather straps sagging. 

"You know we should be working," he scolded, hands cradling my hips as he steadied me against a wall. “This is a little risky.”

My head rocked back against the crumbling brick, the sounds of shouts and screams blocked out as I diverted all of my attention to him.  

“I thought you liked risky?” I reminded him of hiding behind a row of cabinets, kissing like a pair of teenagers whilst officers collected files from the room – ready to be caught red handed at any seconds.

“You’re such a bad influence,” he hissed, hands roaming my body, tracing my fluid curves and angles.

"Oh, says you." I retorted playfully, he was so easy to tempt and taunt. I nibbled my bottom lip and he looked agonised. “Stealing bottles of vodka, stealing me...” I flashed him a grin. “Encouraging such delinquent and juvenile behaviours...” I tsked, and cradled his jaw, my thumb settling on his bottom lip.

"Tell me you don’t like it and I’ll stop,” he crooned, eyes hooded, before sealing his lips over mine. 

It was nice, feeling wanted. The press of his lips to mine was the only sweetness in a sour world. He was the colour in my monochrome world. He was the symphony in my monotone life. Everything drew into focus when he kissed me

I was so infatuated with everything about him, that just for a moment; I forgot how much I hated myself. 

But it was the clack of heels on cobblestone that alerted me to Yelena's presence. The clicking stopped and shadow painted the walls of the alley. 

And we were exposed, as clear as light of day, my lips melded with his. James withdrew with, shock evident in his convulsion. Fully fledged fear was fluctuating in his eyes and torment in his blanched face. Something in his demeanour said: ‘told you it was risky’.

She gave a triumphant smirk before breaking into a dash. She was like a child running to a teacher to grass up a classmate. Her envy, it was corrosive; everything she seemed to engage with would dissolve and die: she was on a warpath to ruin me. And I wasn’t going to let her crumble the best thing ever to happen to me.

"I'm going to split her skull one day," I hissed, pecking James on the lips and deserting him in that derelict walkway. 

Yelena was tall, spindly, and used her long strides to her advantage. She could make the distance in half the ardour I could. But James taught me how to manipulate my twig-like and stubby build: odd, considering he's as bulky as a bull and towers like the Kremlin. I could move like a poison dart frog, and mould into cramped spaces like clay. 

I could hear the counterpoint rhythm of her shoes as she clattered down the maze of geometric alleys. Blind to anything but glimpses of her shadow, I relied on my ears. 

The surface was hellish underfoot, irregular; my toes caught in dips and my ankles twisted on the rounded stone embellished in the ground. I stumbled at intersections, and swerved around bends. 

With every hesitation, the sound was less and less distinguishable under the din of gunfire, its echo swilled with crackles and snaps of explosives and broken bones. 

Alternatives. I flicked through my mind for alternatives. Looking left, looking right. Looking up. I coiled on my legs like a panther on it’s hind and propelled myself towards one wall. Then bounded off the next in the tight alley and caught the rim of a window frame. I pinched it, clinging on by the tips of my fingers: my hands burned with the strain, but I managed to wriggle up. It  was only a small leap to catch the gutter on the other side of the alley and clamber onto the rooftops.

I had an eagle eye view of the swerving paths that made up the grottiest part of the city. It only took a spin and a quick mapping of the view to pinpoint the blonde in the dank surroundings. She was heading back to the war-torn square: which somehow looked a little broader from two stories up.

I started my sprint on the rooftops, brittle tiles cracking under the pelting of my feet, some slipping loose as I trampled over. I slipped about, it was like trying to run on quicksand: stay still for too long and you’ll go down; rushing over loose tiles was key.

I saw Yelena slow, her stamina was wearing thin, and she thought she’d lost me; but that didn’t mean she’d given up.

It was with a slip of heel that I set free another mossy tile from the roof and it smashed as it hit the street two stories down. She twirled around with a swish of her blonde curls, and as she eyed the shards of red pottery in disarray, she looked to the source and spied me.

I only maintained velocity as she gathered momentum. It was the hesitance as she clocked me, the time wasted in the twist of her body, and the steps wasted with the scuffing of her feet as she tried to race away.

I was still racing along the rooftops as she was gathering speed, so I launched myself at her. It was a bone-breaking drop for any normal human being; lucky thing for me they’d recoded my DNA and made me ageless and damn near indestructible. And I had the bonus of a crash mat. My arms were outstretched to break my fall and I pounced like a cat. Legs locked around her middle and arms looped around her neck. She took the worst of the fall, and she wheezed and hacked as the air was punched out of her lungs by the knock.

“Unlike you, Tsarina...” She dared pant, still cramped under me, her body trembling with pain: knees gushing red into the mortar between the cobblestone, her head scraped open. I uncurled myself and brushed myself off. “To be so violent. Didn’t think you had it in you...” Her hands were twitching, like a nervous tick: but abrasions maimed her palms where she caught herself.

Her words had the ability to get under my skin like an itch. And for the first time, I satiated that nagging itch: I slammed her in the rib with my foot, kicking her over onto her back. More shock was drummed into her and I gleaned a dose of satisfaction. “You know damn well that isn’t my name,” I growled down at her, honesty ringing true in my words. “Enough, Yelena.” She peeled herself off the floor, legs weak under her; she swayed unsteadily, blood trickling down her shins.

It made me sick to my soul how much pleasure I derived from lashing out at her; seeing her in pain like she had caused me. It was the sweetest form of retribution and waves of adrenaline were pumping through me.

“Stop, what?” She played dumb, trying to mask her insecurities with a sanctimonious game face: but her eyes told her every anxiety.

I grasped her by the throat, and as her hands shot to chisel away my grip. Her wheezing noises, they were like the overture to my victory. I bludgeoned a fist into her stomach. Once, she jerked; twice, she coughed; the third she caught. With nothing more than a snatch of the collar, I dragged her tripping across the cobbles to the other side of the alley and mashed her head into the wall. She emitted a sore sob of anguish.

“The fucking mind games...” I let her feel my pain, trying to find traction in the vertical angles of walls to keep her upright. I saw her scramble like I had, writhe underneath me like I had. “My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanov, and you can’t tell me any different. I am no Tsar, I am no ‘Natalie’ – call me by my name you impertinent bitch...” I stood over her, watching her cower in her suffering. The adrenaline coursing through me felt like a hit of a class A drug, I felt empowered, invigorated: the sensation was addictive.

“You think because you can slap me around a little you’re calling the shots now?” She spat out a blob of blood that narrowly missed my foot, her spatial awareness had gone astray.

I gave a kick to the side of her head for good measure, and watched her sprawl onto her front. She scrabbled on all fours, trying to dash away, clumsily, in her haste she staggered to her feet. A sweep of the ankle floored her again, and as she regained balance on hands and feet, I dug my heel into her coccyx and she yelped in pain. I then buried it in her nape and pressed her face down into the dirt of the street: overflowed sewage, and the blood from her lacerated knees.

She grovelled below me like I was a fucking queen. About time.

“No. I think no one should call the shots. I think you should learn to be fucking polite...” I specified removing my foot, crouching down to her level to meet her frenzied eyes. There was an inkling of concern in my heart that perhaps if I got too close I might catch the craziness that she radiated.

She laughed. She just laughed into the sludge her face was nose deep in. And the laughter dulled my revenge kick.

Blood stained her teeth an off-white, and her nose was crooked from the battering. It occurred to me in that moment, that no amount of corporal punishment would drum any sense into her. She’d been desensitised to the merciless beatings: surely having experienced some extreme brutality in her time with the red room. I had to go about it a different way.

I walked away, left her cackling like a witch, face down in the street, dirtied with drainage and detritus.

When we arrived back at the base, I was fuming, having schemed the perfect plan to dismantle her like a doll. I didn’t head off to my quarters. I didn’t even head off to James’s quarters.

I was a raging tyrant and marched down the corridor, certain of my destination. He bounded up beside me like a faithful dog.

“Where are you going?” He contested, snatching my hand and lacing his fingers with mine.

“To give Yelena that one final push. She’s teetering on the line between sanity and insanity, and I’m about to send her spiralling into the abyss.” I was glowering, my face set into a stony frown.

He struggled to keep up with my determined stride, but something mischievous was twinkling in his eyes. “And how do you intend to do that?” He didn’t dispute my master plan, but with fidelity accompanied me to the war rooms, that goal unbeknownst to him.

“I’m going to shatter her entire belief system...” I didn’t even spare him a glance, I kept my eyes on the bull’s-eye.

The war rooms were locked, but I hadn’t the patience that day to pick the petty lock, to be cautioned of incrimination. Incrimination was an interesting idea to add to the mix. With one precise snap-kick, I busted the door open, swinging on its hinges and smacking into the wall. He watched with a puffed out chest, seeing the techniques he’d helped me perfect put into perfect action. The crack as it collided with the wall was like thunder. I slithered my slender hands into gloves, and I wasn’t timid about flicking on the lights and clacking across the room in my heels.

“Want me to stay on lookout?” He politely intoned, watching my busy myself with intrigued and impressed eyes. His hands were clutched formally behind his back.

“If you could, comrade,” I gritted out, snapping him a wink and flashing a smirk.

I’d seen the filing drawers plenty of times in the room, I’d spent plenty of times doting on the titles and where they stored things. But there was one significantly missing, ‘The Black Widow Programme’ files. Once, having a late night meeting, we decided it would be particularly gratifying to steal Aleksander Lukin’s finest vodka, the one he kept locked away in his office; a compartment just off the main war room.

It only took another precisely placed kick to bust open the next door.

And during said late night assembly, amongst the giggling and kissing, the portrait of Karpov that presided on the back wall of had fallen from its place, putting a tiny rip in the canvas, revealing the most clichély placed safe.

I didn’t even bother turning on the lights. I knocked away the painting, disregarding the hellish face of my previous commander and chief. I pressed my ear to the cool metal of the safe, while my hand worked the dial. Tiny ticks were made with the twist of the dial, but a loud snap would resound every time the correct digit was entered: advanced DNA, enhanced hearing; not all bad. A series of ticks, a snap... tick, tick, tick, tick, snap. Ticking, ticking, tick, tick, snap! My hand worked in precise coordination with my ear.

And with a final audible clunk, the cogs all fell into place and the latch was released. I prized the heavy door away from the cubicle of the safe. And just as I had predicted, I retrieved the wedge of files haphazardly stashed in the safe. The Black Widow files.

There was a document for each girl, a name, a serial number. And as I flicked into the front of each file, each black and white photo had stamped across it ‘decommissioned’, in bold red print. A few were obviously decommissioned, I’d seen them left for the slaughter in training, and some dragged away. But others, they were the women ‘lost in the field’, the ones I had wrongly assumed Yelena had ‘decommissioned’.

The conspiracy was coming together. The more I flicked through, the more decommissioned faces I counted. Worry flared in my heart like a newly struck match. File after file I rifled through, reading through name after name and finding the same result.

I could feel my heart pounding against my ribcage, and my pulse was fluttering in my ears.

But there was another file in there, beneath mine and Yelena’s, underneath all the individual profiles. ‘The Black Widow Programme Overview’. It was a compilation of all the thinning files thrown together in one compacted and bulging file. It had an entire repertoire about every member of the programme, all decommissioned: with the exception of two.

With the exception of two.

To be honest with myself, it wasn’t a massive surprise, the herd had been thinning a long while; I’d just never expected it to be this thin. We were the last Black Widows. And it had been Karpov and Lukin who’d been killing off stragglers all along – with the rare exception of one or two killed in the field. This was going to destroy her.

I stuffed the files back in the safe, and slammed the door shut. I breezed back out with a triumphant smirk, leaving the office still upturned.

“Got what you came for?” James intoned, looking agitated from his guard duty. His foot was tapping with impatience and he was already making for the exit.

I swept past like a hurricane and blazed down the corridor with my head raised high. “More than what I came for.” I’d come away with more than I had in my hand. “I’m going to destroy her.”

“Are you sure leaving this place in such disarray is a good idea?” He followed after me, showing solidarity with my actions, but still peeping at the war office behind him.

“The perfect idea. No fingerprints are anywhere-“ I really wish I’d seen him pale like he did, or he’d been honest with me. “And the place is a wreck. I give the files to Yelena, let her dirty them with fingerprints, and we get away with breaking into the office of a senior, she gets punished and is rewarded with some home truths.”

I could taste triumph on my tongue, I was inhaling victory on the poorly ventilated air, I was carrying vengeance in my heart. Her room wasn’t far from mine, a bunch of empty rooms separated us: concrete walls and doors with vacant rooms.

James hung back, allowing me the relish of fulfilling my vendetta unaided. I knocked. Twice.

She attended to the door with a politely smiling face (A face still marked with the scratches I had indented), wide attentive eyes and a formal pose.  But that facade was embittered as she laid eyes on me.

“What is it you want?” Her voice was simmering with anger; monotone.

“To help you. I brought you a gift.” I revealed the files with a flourish of the wrist and extended them to her.

“A gift?” She snorted, and then gave a surprised double take at the gesture extended to her. “Is this a joke?” She locked eyes with me.

“This is the truth.” I shovelled the document into her hand and left her with the clumped pages, lumped together with gnarly paper clips and rusty staples. She lingered in the light of the doorway as I strolled casually away, her shadow drawn out long, a shaded silhouette cut out of the light gushing from her room.

As I rejoined James, she receded into her room. The door clicked shut.

“What was in that file?” He intoned conversationally, a sly smile creeping onto his lips.

“I told you... The truth.”

And as I marched away like a matriarch, pulsing with the triumph of her undoing, I heard a throat-tearing scream rip from her room, violent cries of confusion and anger.

Music to my ears.

A/N - Easter holidays feels like an absolute blessing. I've been working around the clock to complete my graphics and art coursework and its worn me down to the bone. I neglected studying yesterday in exchange for a reinvigorating reprieve. I'm in Yorkshire at the moment; nothing like waking up to the smell of manure and no 3G. 

Dedication goes to WxrMxchineRox!