FILE n°888 | SUBJECT RED
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HYDRA facility
siberia
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january, 2006

It had been a month since the small red headed child that he had named Sashenka had been revealed to the Soldier.

When he first laid his eyes upon the premature infant he had been sure that she was a survivor. No child could survive that amount of abuse and still have it in their heart to trust someone. Luckily for both of them, that someone was him.

During the course of this month, the Soldier had tried focusing on keeping the child alive and try to make her feel better. Unfortunately, when he was away on missions, his little Sashenka would still get dragged from their shared cell by the guards to be beat, tortured and humiliated in front of the rest of them for mere entertainment purposes. The Soldier had been ready to murder each and every single man in that facility when he had returned to see his daughter curled up in a ball in the dimly lit corner of the room that he had taken several hours to get her to leave in the first place. But after all, what could he do? The more he refused, the more Sashenka suffered.

It had taken him again, several hours to get her to crawl back up on the scratchy cot they both shared and once she was deep asleep for the night, snuggled up on his chest like a little koala bear, he had promised himself that he would feed her himself with his own food and that she would get better than how she looked, curled up against him.

As soon as the first tray of food had slid under the trap door in the morning, he had picked Sashenka up and had sat her cross legged in front of the food tray. Normally, he wasn't here to feed her during the day, but, he would make sure she would eat from now on. His daughter could not be weaned on cat milk for her whole life, he would not allow it.

She watched curiously, her big blue eyes looking quizzically at the fork and spoon he was using, eyeing the knife wearily. She knew he wouldn't harm her, but she preferred to be ready if the guards were to barge in and pick up the weapon.

The Soldier noticed her red brows curiously furrowing as he split the porridge like portion in half for the both of them.

"Dlya yedy" He gestured to the fork and spoon in his hands. When she showed no sign of understanding, the Soldier had taken a spoonful of his portion and had shoved it into his mouth, chewing lightly on it. He almost burst out laughing at the way she jumped back in surprise when he let out a small accidental burp that had no doubt scared her. For eating.

"Lozhka" He pointed out. Spoon.

When she slowly nodded he felt a surge of pride and continued.

"Vilka." Fork.

"Nozh." Knife.

Sashenka nodded along as he pointed to different items on the plate to try to name them and their functions. She was smart, the Soldier noticed. As soon as he ran out of items to list on the plate, his little girl reached out uneasily, watching him suspiciously with her big blue eyes as she slowly took the spoon from his hands and dipped it it the grayish porridge in front of them. He watched, fascinated, as she opened her mouth as wide as she could and shoved the spoon inside, chewing loudly. The Soldier reached out to wipe a small bit of porridge that was dribbling down the corner of her mouth, making sure to present his open palm to her, to make sure she knew he wasn't going to harm her as he wiped the substance away.

During the next few weeks, the Soldier gave up almost all of his meals for his daughter, hoping he could nurse her back to a somewhat normal health situation which was a huge challenge in itself considering she was still being abused when he had no choice but to leave her during missions.

After he had realized that a whole month had passed since he had met his daughter he noticed that she was looking slightly healthier. Her red hair was looking healthier, it was less dry and her cheeks looked less sunken than a month ago. Her skin had gone from looking a sickly gray to just pale, which the Soldier considered improvement. He also noticed she would sleep more and be less and less irritated. She was slowly coming out of her timid shell and started opening up more to him. She was not scared of his metal arm, for the first time in sixty or so years, someone was not afraid of what his arm could do to harm them. No, Sashenka loved the arm, she poked it, scribbled on it with coal and wrapped her tiny fingers around his index when she wanted to show him something. She trusted him completely, she knew her father would never lay a finger on her.

Of course, this all had to come to a startling halt.

He was on a mission in America, his mission was simple: he had to kill a rich business man who had stolen classified documents from another Hydra facility in Sokovia, while he was working there. When he discovered the documents, he had gotten so scared of the horrifying experiments that they were leading on some of their subjects that he had resigned and decided to flee the country, go back to his family in Los Angeles and he was planning on leaking the documents to the public.

Of course, you don't simply resign from HYDRA, this man and his entire family had to be eliminated. But it wasn't easy for HYDRA to just kill him like this, it would be too risky, no, they needed someone who could do the job quickly and leave no witnesses. That 'someone' was their best asset, the Winter Soldier.

For once, the Soldier was dressed in civilian clothes as he was walking down the crowdy streets of Los Angeles towards the hotel that he was supposed to stay at until night time, when he would be heading to Josh Rivoli's house to kill him. As the Soldier walked down Hollywood Boulevard he couldn't help but imagine that if he and Sashenka ever managed to escape or if they had never been involved with HYDRA, they maybe could have been two of many tourists that were visiting this crowded street.

He could picture it so clearly now, Sashenka dressed in a bright coloured shirt and him wearing one of those awkward 'dad' shirts that he could see everywhere. They would walk down the boulevard, taking pictures on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, then they'd stop for ice cream, he was betting that Sashenka's favorite flavor would be mint chocolate. After ice cream he would probably take her shopping and sit on one of the chairs with the many dads that had been dragged into shopping by their wives and daughters, and watch with an amused air as she tried on half the clothes in H&M.

As he walked further down the street he could also see some couples walking down the same street, having fun, giving each other a piggy back ride. This of course made him think of Natalia. His memories of her had somehow been coming back faster now that Sashenka was in his life as he could now see so much of her mother in her. The way she smiled at him, and the sound of her scratchy little laugh that always brought him back to when Natalia had tried to teach him ballet during one of the few moments of peace that they managed to take at the Red Room Academy.

"Put more weight on your leg James!" Natalia scolded him as she watched him fall again as he failed his tenth attempt at a pirouette today. Her laugh echoing through the empty room, bouncing off the glass walls, creating an echo.

"Hey! I don't have the body of a ballerina like you do, my love." He gratefully accepted the hand she was holding out to him, stood up and wrapped her in a hug as they both slowly swayed to the piano music that was playing on the recorder.

Their moment of peace was quickly interrupted as the door of the room creaked open, both of them jumping apart due to the irritating noise.

"Are you both done?" A blond girl with bright green eyes and a thick Russian accent asked the two lovers. She had her hair in two long braids, her stray hair falling in front of her round face, she was dressed in a white night gown, that all the girls at the Academy wore to bed, and her she was wearing sloppily tied ballerina slippers.

"Yelena! I told you to stand outside to tell us if the Madame comes back!" Natalia scolds her 'sister' as she pauses the record player.

James was pretty sure the two were not related, it was complicated but he knew they looked out for each other, Natasha being two class above Yelena had taught the girl how to survive here. In return, the young Belova, who had was working hard to ascend to the rank of captain when she grduated, had gotten close to her instructor Colonel Starkovsky and the physician Lika Medvedev and was able to access the keys to rooms that were usually kept locked when not in news, like the ballet studio. And she always made sure the Madame never discovered Natalia and James together in exchange for some tips from Natasha on the next days fights'. 

As they left the room, Yelena held the door open and waited for Natalia to pass so she could give James a weak kick in the back of his leg. James glared at the young girl and grabbed her by the back of the neck, ruffling her hair as she mumbled something in Russian that sounded really close to: Train Station whore, which he chose to ignore.

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It was ten o'clock at night, and the street his hotel was in was empty.

It was time.

He grabbed the gun from under his bed and left through his window. He stuck to walking down dark and poorly lit alleys so he could remain hidden. The only people he saw were a group of gang members, passing crack and other illicit substances around. He chose to ignore them, just like they pretty much ignored him.

He made it to his target's house a few couple of ten minutes away from town. It was a cozy, white, little house, with a beautiful front porch and a garden that seemed to be tended to everyday. A family house. 

The front door was not locked, so he crept his way in. The living room was empty and no lights were on, so he took the stairs up the first floor. Family photos aligned the walls leading up to the upstairs bedrooms : A man at graduation, a couple getting married in front of a church, that same couple beaming as they held a newborn baby girl in their arms at the hospital. It went on, a blurry shot of that red headed baby girl's first steps, her first day of school, her first playdate, everything had been snapped to be immortalized and remembered by her parents. 

It made his chest constrict. 

He didn't have to look hard to find the man, he was laying in bed with his wife, she was reading a book and he was going over some papers. It was too late to run when the man felt the cold barrel of the gun press against his forehead.

"Ne dvigaysya, ili ya zastrelyu tvoyego muzha". He spoke, looking the woman directly in the eyes, as she had reached over to grab her phone from her night stand. Don't move, or I'll shoot your husband.

The woman's pale hands were trembling as she let the phone fall the floor. Her brown eyes were wide with fear.

"You are the Winter Soldier." The man let out in a shaky breath. "You are credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last two years."

""Vy chitayete moy fayl? Kto yeshche?" He pressed the barrel of the gun closer the his head. You read my file? Who else?

"I only saw four files!" The man screamed, pleading for his life. "Wanda and Pietro Maximoff's, yours and Subject RED's!"

"Tri iz nikh imeyut smysl, no Tema RED ne v Sokovii. Tol'ko moya papka izvestna vsey HYDRA." He pressed again. Three of them make sense, but Subject RED is not in Sokovia. Only my folder is known to all Hydra."

His fingers squeezed a little tighter around the trigger. The man screamed and said, "The file said that Subject RED was supposed to be transferred to the Sokovia facility today! I've told you what you want now please-"

Josh Rivoli never got the chance to finish his sentence, because the Soldier pulled the trigger and the man slumped over mid sentence, blood trickling down the side of his face, where a bullet was lodged.

His wife, Helena Rivoli, didn't have time to scream for her husband. The Soldier left the room, leaving both bodies on the bed to bleed out. He placed the gun in John's hand, making it look like the man had killed his wife and child before being overcome with grief and shooting himself next. The media would always find a way to make that story plausible. Besides, thanks to his metal arm, there would be no prints to recover.

The Solider was on a mission, he needed to get back to Siberia before they could transfer Sashenka, before they took everything from him, once again.

Just as he was about to leave the house a small voice called out from one of the other rooms.

"Mommy?"

The Soldier turned around and was quick. He looked away as he pulled the trigger and the small girl, about his own daughter's age, with her exact shade of red hair, fell over, dead. He had killed a five year old child. He tried not to stare into her blue eyes, or to look at her lips that were partly open, revealing two missing front teeth, just the ones Sashenka had lost a few days ago.

He was responsible for the murder of three other innocent people tonight.

Josh Rivoli. Helena Rivoli. Lola Rivoli.

The ledger never stopped dripping.   

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"S vozvrashcheniyem, soldat. YA slyshal, tseli byli unichtozheny, zamechatel'no" His superior spoke to him as he marched into the facility, gripped tightly by the guards that had brought him back. Welcome back, soldier. I heard the targets were destroyed, wonderful.

He pushed the guards away from him, surged forward and grabbed his superior by his coat. Behind him, he could hear the alerted yells of guards calling for help as soon as they started witnessing his reckless behavior. But Sashenka was not here anymore, so he could be as reckless as he wanted.

"Gde ona? Gde moya doch'?" He said as he slammed him into the steel door at every word of his sentence. A horribly dark and twisted part of him already knew the answer to this question, but he was still foolish enough to believe that HYDRA would never do such a thing to him. Where is she? Where is my daughter?

His hand started closing in dangerously hard against the man's throat, thumb pressed against his Addam's apple in order to choke the answer out of him using that same metal arm that Sashenka had grown to love. No more colouring, no more reaching for his thumb to show him a new corner of the cell and ask him to say the words to describe it. She was gone, and all that remained was an assassin's metal arm. 

He didn't get to see the man reply, because pretty soon, the guards recovered from being pushed away by the Winter Soldier and one of them was on his feet, sticking the cattle prod at his neck. The voltage was too powerful to resist and the Solider fell to his knees. He let out a sluggish grunt as they stuck the needle in his arm and he passed out.

He got his answer quickly enough, though.

Because when he woke up in his little cell the he shared with Sashenka, he was all alone and she was gone. He did not know if he would ever see her again, for all he knew she could never return to the facility. That meant that he would never get to finish telling her about all the awesome toys he grew up with like the Slinky or the electric train set he used to play with after school. He would never get to finish recounting the baseball match he attended with a friend where the Brooklyn Dodgers were playing at Ebbets Field. He had loved to watch her brows furrow and her eyes wander around their cell as her old man recounted stories from his childhood.

She was probably telling herself that her father sounded old and reminiscent but he hadn't cared. Even though he knew she did not understand a single rule in baseball and could not understand how the sport was played, she still listened to her Papa talk.

Thanks to HYDRA, Sashenka had once again been robbed of a childhood with at least one of her parents by her side.

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author's note : phew! sashenka has been taken to sokovia where maybe she'll get to meet the maximoffs?

i don't know, i guess you'll just have to keep reading to find out hehehe.

not gonna lie I had a lot of trouble writing this chapter because there were a lot of things i wanted to include but I didn't know how to. also, how did y'all feel about that little yelena cameo? don't worry she's gonna play an important role in the future of this book!

author's note (editing) 27/08 : i was actually so nervous to include yelena in this story because when i first wrote this, the black widow movie was only a rumor and whether or not yelena would be in it was still to be determined, but in the end i'm super glad i took a chance on her because she is one of my favorite characters in the marvel comics along with daredevil :)

edits august 2023 : ngl i felt super proud of myself 4 years ago when i thought of having sash shipped off to sokovia.