FILE n°888 | SUBJECT RED
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the red room academy
russia, unknown
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september 13, 2002

A small speck of snow, fell through the winter sky of Russia. Yes, the newspapers that were being handed out in the small town a few thousands of miles away from here were right: snow was falling all over the large empire that was Russia. It was falling on every roof of every house of every village, on the treeless hills, and on the majestic forests falling softly upon the lake nearby, covering the thin layer of ice with a thick layer of powdery white. It covered the side walks and the park benches, the only imperfections sustained by the thick coat of frozen water were the foot prints of two lovers holding hands, or the angel shape created by a small child.

The small snow crystal continued its decent into the white covered wasteland and was blown towards the intimidating black building built in a Gothic style. The snowflake flipped and twirled mid-air as it finished it's decent on one of the narrow windows, falling softly among all the other snow specks that have been falling for a few months already. Light green eyes follow the end of the tiny speck of snow's journey behind the thick layer of glass that separated the green eyed girl from the outside world.

Natalia Alianovna Romanova brushed a strand of her deep red hair behind her ear as she turned her distant green eyes on another snowflake. Normally snow would be associated with joy and new changes and more fun. But what did she know of fun? For the seventeen year old girl, snow was associated with sadness, bleakness or death. Those were the only things she had ever experienced or brought upon someone.

Natalia was the best student of the Academy. She was credited with over two dozen of assassinations in the past year or so. She was the Black Widow. A statue made of marble that never failed. Not once has she failed a mission, not one.

That is, up until this day.

The Black Widow was graceful, ruthless and silent. She was detached and was forbidden of any human interactions. Love, a family, stability, that was child's play. Love was for children and she was no longer a child.

Yet, when James came into her life, all the defensive walls she had built around herself came tumbling down. They were young, they still were, and rules hadn't stopped them from being foolish and in love. He loved her and she loved him. He was the Winter Soldier and she was the Black Widow. The Soldier and the Assassin.

They got married on a day like this. White. The ground was covered in snow and they didn't have much time. It was her first mission and he was her handler.

She was injured.

Blood was pooling through her black stealth uniform that every girl in the Red Room wears during missions. It was a simple task. Infiltrate, spy, question, kill. Yet, she had gotten shot on the way back to their lift that was waiting for them.

James had angrily yelled at her, but that was his way of letting her know he was scared. Oh, how scared the Soldier was at the idea to loose the Assassin.

"Natal'ya, ne spi!" He yelled. Natalia, stay awake!

They had hidden for a few hours while he bandaged her wounds and the seventeen year old watched a he occasionally slapped her face to keep her from falling asleep. After all, they couldn't let anyone know that Natalia had been shot and that she had shown weakness. She was supposed to be made of marble, not glass. When they were both able to walk and right before they had to head back to the vehicle, James squeezed her hand and whispered:

"Vykhodi za menya zamuzh, Natal'ya." Marry me, Natalia.

"Ya obeshchayu, Dzheyms." I promise, James.

They couldn't have a ceremony, they couldn't have rings, all they had were a few words and a promise. A promise to love each other forever. And they did. They were both so in love. And from this love came a child. A child that was in her womb. Natalia didn't tell the Winter Soldier that she was expecting his child. How could she? His Superiors had taken him away once they found out. They always took him away and she would never have him back.

When the Madame had found out about the child, she was furious. She tied down Natalia to a chair and trained a gun on her stomach, ready to blast the wretched thing to bits. But she never pulled the trigger because Alexander Pierce, HYDRA's leader and James' superior had insisted they let the child live. The Madame refused but after all, she wasn't loosing much, said the Superior, she gained a new assassin and HYDRA gained a new Soldier. One bred of the two most dangerous and feared assassins in the whole world. The child could be anything they wanted it to be and they could do whatever they wanted with it once the mother knew it was dead.

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They forced her to give birth at only five months along so she could resume her training quicker. The Madame locked herself and a few guards in a room along with Natalia and had let the poor girl give birth without any help whatsoever as she just stood there as stiff as a broom as Natalia gave birth to the child focused on not making a single sound that would indicate that she was in pain which would give Madame B an immense kind of satisfaction. Oh, but how painful it was. She had no knowledge of childbirth, or sexual anatomy in general, how could she? The only things they were taught were how to kill and how to kill well. Educating the girls on something that would eventually be taken from them seemed pointless, so they didn't.

But through the three days she spent stuck in that cold, lightless dungeon with her legs spread open with unhelpful eyes trained on her most private parts, Natalia had only wished for her baby to be held in her arms before anyone else's, she wanted him to know that his mother had not given him away idly. She wanted him to know she had fought for him. That someone in this world had his back, even though he would never meet her. She hoped for a boy, so the Madame could never get his hands on him. She hoped for a boy because she couldn't take care of a girl. She couldn't bear to see a daughter that looked exactly like her, she wanted a boy that had James' blue eyes and her lips, a baby boy that would never have to set a foot in this wretched place.

Finally when it was over, after three grueling days; the guard reached down to grab her small, fragile child by the back of her neck, dropping the poor limp baby into the waiting mother's arms. Instinctively, her hand cradled her baby's hair while the other gingerly rubbed her chest, trying to get her to warm up. She looked so cold.

"Rebenok mertv." The child is dead. The words felt like a kick in Natalia's stomach as she felt her baby's lifeless bones hang useless in her arms. The bloody skin did not feel warm, it was ice cold, drained of all life. She had spent months protecting the small child that her and James had created only for them to kill her. Just like everything she loved.

They told her it was her fault. She was so stressed and unfit to be a mother, she had killed her own child, the perfect piece that her and James' love had made. Her body was so frail and tired, that her muscles had choked her own baby, preventing the sweet thing from breathing and killing her. And with those words, they ripped out a piece of her heart she didn't know existed until it was torn off her cold, wasted stone of a heart.

"Vybrosi eto." Said the Madame to the Guard who only nodded in her direction. Throw it away.

Natalia forced herself to grind her teeth against each other as she bit down forcefully on her bottom lip as a single tear leaked from her lifeless pale green eyes and traced its way down her young face. "No, please," She was begging now, and the Black Widow never begged. "She's crying, I know she is. I heard her cry." Her voice was so small, quietly pleading with the people in the room to believe her. She could still hear her daughter cry. She sucked in a breath a she traced the small tufts of red hair her baby had and forced herself to be anywhere but here. Her baby was a girl. Not that it mattered anyway because just as quickly as she held her, her baby was yet again yanked from her grasp and dropped in a bin. They had done it again.

"Please, can't you hear her crying?" 

They had taken everything away.

"Why can't anyone hear her cry? Pochemu ty ne slyshish', kak ona plachet?" 

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Later that night, she returned to the dorms like nothing had happened, like she hadn't been gone and locked away for the past five months. They had thrown her a rag and a bucket of cold water to clean herself off and sent her on her way as if she meant little to nothing. She slipped into her cold bed, pulling the thin sheets over her head while the guard handcuffed her to the bed post. She was so numb, she didn't even register the sound of his footsteps away and the door closing behind him, leaving her in the dark once again.

For a few minutes, nothing happened. All that Natalia could picture in her head was her angel girl's curly and bloodied red head and how soft it felt. The only sound her ears registered was the sound her daughter's skull made when it collided with the bottom of the metallic bin.

Then, she heard it. The soft, timid call that sounded from the bed across hers. "Natasha?" There was only one person in the Red Room who called her Natasha, a slightly more American version of her Russian name. And that person was her honorary sister, Yelena.

She couldn't bear to look into the twelve year old's curious blue eyes and answer her persistent questions about where she'd been and what she'd been doing. She felt humiliated, wronged and like a failure, the last thing she wanted to do was relive the horrors she had endured during the past five months with the most innocent girl in the Red Room.

She didn't answer. Yelena wouldn't dare pry and risk getting caught by a guard talking past curfew.

A few minutes passed and Natalia was sure the child had given up on getting answers and gone back to sleep. Just as she was mulling over the question in her head, she heard the slow padding of careful feet on the cold cement floor and froze. She forced her eyes shut and tried to relax her muscles, thinking this was another one of the guards checking for any bold night owls amid the rows of worn down bunk beds. As the footsteps grew closer, she was able to recognize the strangled breathing of Yelena and instantly relaxed. The already thin mattress dipped slightly as the twelve year old lowered herself into her sister's bed, her warm body acting like a heater against Natalia's cold back.

A beat of silence. Then, when Natalia finally turned around, she was able to meet her sister's blue eyes staring intently at her green ones. It was dark, yet that didn't stop the older sister from noticing that during the last five months, her sister had considerably changed. When Natalia left, she was still eleven. Somewhere along the five months she'd been gone, Yelena turned twelve. She had lost some of the baby cheeks she had when Natalia first met her and her hair had grown longer, less curly and frizzy than when she had left.

"What happened?" Yelena whispered, grabbing her sister's hand and squeezing it tight, like the gesture would force the answer out of Natalia faster.

The seventeen year old took her time to answer, so much that when she finally whispered the response to the twelve year old's question, her sister was surprised she even answered.

"I lost Lelya."

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WOHOOO I JUST STARTED BOOK THREE OF THE MORNING STAR SERIES!
Who is already in love with our the little baby that Natalia Alianovna gave birth to? I know I am!
AAAA! I have so much planned for her it's not even funny!

edit 12/2021 : i was listening to 'barbie girl' while writing this lmao.

edit 08/2023 : i'm literally obsessed with this chapter, it's the one thing i've barely edited in the 4 years that i've had this fanfic out.