It wasn’t until two years later that our paths crossed again. God only knew where he retired to for that length of time. I felt ill to imagine they imprisoned him in solitary confinement for that long: four claustrophobic grey walls, deprivation of light and minimal food. I shuddered.

When we met again, I’d reached the ripe age of fifteen.

A metal hand on my shoulder that pinched like a crab’s claw and I was whirled around like the ebbing current of a stream. I was snatched in the hallway, yanked through the doorway and shepherded into a dark room.

As instantaneously as my fearful instinct snapped into play, so activated my defence training. I made a kick at the figure pinning me to the wall and knocked him back. I poised myself, squinting at the darkness, fists raised to my mouth, serving as a barricade to my face.

“Gee, kid, you have some kick there...” A voice whined, giving a low hissing groan.

With a whirr, lights flicked on: the bulbs gave a few experimental flickers as the new part of the facility was lit: but the familiar face was illuminated. His skin was still marred with the injuries of the day that we had served together, but freshly stitched with metal thread: weaving the shreds of his cheek together. His hair, it had grown: his fringe reached beneath his ears: feathered into his face. It blotted out his eyes intermittently, as it fanned uncontrollably and curled towards his eyes.

“Sir?” I cooed, my fists shrinking away and dangling at my sides.

“What year is it?” My guardian angel uttered, eyes framed with dark circles and lips chapped and split.

“Nineteen fifty-something...” I responded, unable to provide any clear marker of time.

“I’ve been out five years... At leasst” He smothered his face with his grubby hands and dropped to his knees with desolation.

“ Are you alright?”  I inched forward as if approaching a wild stallion.

“Yes ... No ...” He sighed deep, when he unmasked his hands, his face was covered with tears. “Sorry... Do you speak English?” The man stumbled in my language.

“A small bit...” I managed to spit out. “I told you before...” I admitted fearfully. “What happened to you you?” I walked cautiously towards the troubled man, taking my care, fearful of his secretive intentions.

“I’ll be honest with you, kid... I ain’t sure.” His lip quivered as he fought to restrain the tears. He looked up at me through his curled dark lashes, eyes weepy with water and pain written across his face.

“You have a name?” I pried, hoping to finally get it out of him. I took his lithe calloused hands in mine, in some attempt to console him through his scattered anguish. The metal plates were odd on my skin: disjointed, craggy and smooth like a pebble on the beach. But so cold: icy to the touch, inherited from the inhospitably cold surroundings in the base.

He shook his head at me, eyes downcast, with that same soppiness: that same humanity that I hadn’t seen echoed in another soul that dwelled in the dingy walls of the facility.

“How come? Everyone has a name...” I soothed in a tentative voice, daring to lace my fingers with his and smooth his trembling hands. “Any guesses?” I articulated with hesitance.

“You’re too little to understand, angel... Sorry, what is your name?” He cupped his hands over mine, cradling them and forcing a smile. He had a sinfully sensual smile.

“I’m fifteen, not little...” I babbled in disjointed English.  “Natalia Alianovna Romanova... That’s what I told you...” I explained. “What is it you wanted, sir?”

“You don’t need to call me, sir,” he kindly told me, squidging my hands, a shred of his former self surfacing. “Just to see if you were okay. I can’t remember much, but I remember your face,” he crooned, eyes scanning me like a wordy document, trying to make sense of me like figures and foreign characters. “You were... You... They were going to hurt you...” He cupped my cheek, thumb grazing over my jaw line. “Are you okay?”

“Why does it matter to you so much?” I inquired, green eyes fixed on him in investigative scrutiny. “No one here cares...”

“I don’t know...” He sat back, his knees feld under him. His temples began to throb and a few passing words echoed through his mind like it was a cavern. “Nothing makes sense... This happens... Sometimes...” He cradled his pulsating head.

You know, sometimes I think you like getting punched?

“Thank you...” I spluttered, touching him on the shoulder. Gratitude blazed in my heart, he managed to tangentially save my life, giving me what I needed to win fights.

 “What for?” His eyebrows knit together, meeting and scrunching in the middle.

“You don’t remember..?” I mirrored is addled expression, cocking my head like a pup.

He looked frightened and guilty. And then scuffed to his feet. “’M sorry kid, I gotta go...” He staggered and swayed, clutching his head, rushing back out.

And he practically ran away, feet dragging.

But it wasn’t much later we met again: officially, roped together for a mission. I had a disguise crammed into my hand - relatively ordinary dregs of feminine clothes of such un-uniformity I wasn’t used to – and was ushered to change with a couple other girls in the locker room.

Again, I was escorted and I was appointed my usual mission partner and greeted him with concealed relief. A slight tangle of fingers, a bond that breached the boundaries of the rules. It was a mute communication of fidelity, of familiarity and comfort.

In such a hostile environment, where those around me behaved like automatons, blindly following orders as if they had been lobotomised and stripped of emotions; it was reassuring to know that another thinking and feeling human being was my companion.

Time and again I played the weeping child, cooing for her mother and father, sniffling like a mouse. I rubbed my nose like it was clogged, dabbed at my eyes with scrunched up sleeves and hugged strangers; just as a distraction.

I never understood how they fell for it. Perhaps it was the pudgy cheeks, or the make-up-less visage or my height that made them pity me. Faultlessly they pitied me.

But what changed? The Winter Soldier wasn’t there to kill the target I lured, I was expected to do it. What so many of the girls who accompanied me on those missions didn’t realise was that when I cried, it wasn’t always pretence. It was fear. It had become my duty to kill the targets.

I stayed mute. I avoided speaking out in debriefings about the part I played in the mission. I tirelessly acted the damsel in distress in the field whilst my comrades did the dirty work, bloodying their hands at a youthful age, painting their ledger with red. None of the girls seemed to notice, indoctrinated completely with the soviet regime; their minds poisoned and empathy wiped. No guilt dirtied their consciences, no regret plagued their minds, and no hesitance slowed their hands.

What gave them the right? What gave me the right? Or anyone the right to take lives? Are some humans somehow worth less than others? Is there any dignity in stealing that life from someone? I refused.

No one took note of the sobbing red head, doing her job to occupy the foe whilst the others crept in and snapped the guards necks, whilst they pilfered the vaults and decoded the security systems. That was until Yelena Belova.

Ever since I stole her title, outranked her, exposed her weaknesses to the squad, she’s had my name written in red. She’d been biding her time, undermining me, finding a way to achieve her revenge. And she saw her chance. She’d known about the conversation I’d had with Karpov; she’d known my ultimate weakness was my humanity. But she was sadistic.

I saw her train her eyes on me, track my every move during the mission and it wasn’t until the end of debriefing when everyone else trotted back to the chamber, that I was irked by her absence. Janus was the god of two faces; she was his incarnate.

I’d had a niggling sensation, anxiety nagging away at the back of my mind as I retired for the night and I was cuffed to my bed. When the lights turned died, my mind sprung to life.

They gagged me first, so I wouldn’t ruin the slumber of the other girls.

With a slight clinking off the cuffs as I struggled and the squeak of the bed frame as I was ferried out they wheeled me out of the dormitory. I wailed into the gag and thrashed on the bed, wriggling until I reclined into a sitting position.

I was scolded by a hand across the cheek and pressed back into the lumpy bed, a palm splayed across my face, cutting up my sight. The musty smell of cigars once clasped between those fingers filled my nostrils and yellow stained nails clawed my cheeks.

I thrashed my ankles, indignantly trying to break free. The cramped corridor echoed with the sound of rattling chains, scratching against metal. My muffled screams were dampened almost completely by the gag. No one batted an eyelid at my weepy eyes like the strangers I manipulated every day, no one cared for how the metal nipped at my skin, slicing into my wrists and ankles, renewing lacerations and bruises pinched perpetually. My sniffles elicited no caring embrace

I thrust my fist through the loop of the cuff and snatched one of the escorting individuals hands. I bent it up through the bedposts and I heard a howl and snapping fingers. I shoved my foot through the binding at the bottom and kicked a man in the gut. There was a bump as the bed was wheeled over his foot.

“Sedate her...” Karpov’s voice drifted to my ears.

A swing of the arm, a swift stab, a small sting. I could feel the ice cold drug flood my veins and the light slowly shrunk inwards.

Sensation returned. Temperature first, and I was clasped at the ankle by a metallic ring, lying on an ice cold floor. The stench of damp tainting the air. I was damp, bedded in a puddle. Dripping, cavernous, resonant. Crying. I could hear someone crying.

My eyes fluttered open like the beating wings of a dragonfly and I squinted into the darkness. I loosened my joints, fatigued by the remaining sedative circling my system. A head cock to relieve the tension in my neck with a click of the joints, a flex of the fingers to limber them, a curl of the toes to enable them.

“Do you know what you’ve done, Natalia?” Vasily’s decrepit voice – with the waver of a dying man – was still dreamy above me.

“No,” I spitefully retorted.

I was bludgeoned in the ribs by his steel capped boot. Repeatedly, I squirmed like a worm and tried to scratch myself away with my nails, only to be snapped by the chain attached to the floor.

“Get up, you pathetic waste of space...” He hissed. Even in his old age, he could fracture my ribs, I was counting the cracks as they occurred, each beat of the boot relinquishing a yelp from the back of my throat. “Get up!”

I made fast work of steadying my sea legs and standing up. Only to have my jaw snatched and a gun pressed into my hand. Before I’d even conjured the idea to turn the barrel on him, another was clicked at the back of my head.

“Here’s the bargain, Natalia... You see that whimpering mess in the corner?” I managed to pinpoint a chained girl in the corner, quaking and sobbing. She had curled in on herself. “You’re going to kill her. For too long have I let you get away with it... Letting others do your dirty work, calling it honour... Calling it good heartedness. It’s weakness! Unless you can prove to me you have the lions heart I’ve been flogging into you for years, I will do to you, what I do to her.”

“You won’t!” I gasped in a sob, my hand trembling and my chest jerking as I tried to remain composed.

The bullet popped from his gun and it buried itself in my foot. “I’m not kidding around, Natalia...”

I threw myself at the floor, the revolver clattering from my grasp, rocking back and forth grasping the mauled foot. Ruby red was gushing from where the bullet was wedged in the flesh and bone.

“Do you want one in both feet?!” He admonished, snatching me by the neck and forcing me to look at my victim.

“No, sir! No, sir! Sir, please?! Please don’t make me do this?! Please?!” I writhed at his feet, pressing kisses to his shoes, smothering him with love, beseeching him, worshipping him, trying to wrench sympathy from his stone cold heart. I wrapped my arms around his middle, stained his suit with tears.

He slammed me across the face with his rock-hard hand, his skin rough as a cat’s tongue. It was punishing and my cheek flared with heat. I was sitting in a puddle of my own blood, it was pooling around me; pain reeked from my body.

“Prove to me I have need of you Tsarina...” He wrapped his hand in my hair and used it as a leash to level my head. “I will kill you like your disgrace of a mother and father. Shower you in petrol and leave you to burn, like a martyr, that’s what you want, isn’t it? Like Ivan Petrovich. What would he say now, Natalia?”

“Nothing! He’s dead!” I bellowed, my throat constricted with shrieks of anguish. I couldn’t even see the girl I was meant to kill my eyes were so blurred with tears. The salt-water leaking from my eyes intermingled with the blood on the floor and I hugged my exposed body in the hope of concealing my vulnerability.

“Take the gun!” He urged, toeing it towards me; hanging me from my hair, the ice cold muzzle kissing the back of my neck, pain dancing in my ribs, agony spewing from my foot.

A barbaric hand whipped me across the face, and lashed me the other side.

“Do it, Tsarina... Do it.”

He cocked the gun and my ears rang with fear. I couldn’t breathe; mewls trapped in my throat, my whole body shaking, my heart palpitating.

I lurched for the revolver, fumbling with blood-covered hands, dirtying the grip with my own life’s plasma. I heard the squeak of the stiff trigger on his antique gun as he prepared himself to execute me. It was kneejerk. I flicked the hammer and clicked the trigger. Once, twice, three times; flashes flickering in the darkness of the dingy cellar I was dwelling in.

She croaked, coughing up blood. I had the dignity to put her out of her misery; aiming this time – going for her head. I saved her suffering with one killing shot.

That’s when my innocence was shattered once and for all; it wasn’t my blood on my hands – it was hers. The nameless girl I euthanized. It was selfish, self preservation, fear driven. Death driven. It wasn’t Karpov’s fault. He didn’t shoot the girl. It was me. She was the first blood-stained tally on my ledger; and there was no striking it out.

Desensitised, demoralised and disenfranchised; that's what I was. Loyal to the death, to the Soviet Supremacy. Eternally devoted.

A/N - I've updated two stories today and I almost feel proud? But - there's always a but - on the downside I've done no more art or graphics coursework, or studying. But hey, I have done something. And this is technically only the first day of half-term, and I deserve a break, don't I? 

I keep promising myself "Oh, I'll start tomorrow!" I'm going to keep believing that.

Oh hey, yeah: I've started a new fic, it's running parallel to this to give me somewhere to go to refresh myself if I get writers block; because it's so damn different. It's a Guardians of the Galaxy fic called 'Infinitum'. I admit, It was originally going to start out as a Star Trek fic (I started it last summer), then I realised I had nowhere for that to go: so I've transplanted it into this new setting and it's slotted in perfectly. I've started with a full story plan which is a first. I have an ending and everything. Even this one, I've got the next sixty chapters planned (yes, it's going to be a long ride kids, but you should know how I work by now; I don't do half arsed), and then I have a desired end result and a vague "middle bit" plan with random excerpts already cobbled together. Annyway! Please check it out; and remember, if you like my stories, votes, comments and follows are all highly appreciated! Thank you!

Dedication goes to LuvNiallerxx! x