for repaying.

[armeyets]

the red room

pre-graduation: sparring | mess hall
post-graduation: hurt/comfort | a week at the dacha


present-day

post-civil war: domesticity

【 au 】 the americans

---

no name / margaret atwood
This is the nightmare you now have frequently:
that a man will come to your house at evening
with a hole in him — you place it
in the chest, on the left side — and blood leaking out
onto the wooden door as he leans against it.

He is a man in the act of vanishing
one way or another.
He wants you to let him in.
He is like the soul of a dead
lover, come back to the surface of the earth
because he did not have enough of it and is still hungry

but he is far from dead. Though the hair
lifts on your arms and cold
air flows over your threshold
from him, you have never
seen anyone so alive

as he touches, just touches your hand
with his left hand, the clean
one, and whispers Please
in any language.

Comments

[repaying]

Her muscles refuse to move fast enough, her fist not strong enough, her vision a messy cross-hair aiming too wide, too broad. The punch misses, her heart thumps heavy in her ears, her lungs burn for want of air, and that left fist glints in the dim light, the metal a gleaming warning. She can't dodge. Her bruised thighs can't redirect the momentum of her failed punch fast enough, she can't duck the hit.

It's a peaceful moment where she exhales the air from her lungs, lets her muscles relax, knowing that any undue tension will only make for more injuries. This way, she might be able to avoid the whiplash from the impact. Might. She tries, still, arm raised to skirt his. No impact.

She's on the ground a moment later, struck from the unassuming side, her vision a mess of black and white, mouth hot with blood. She sputters from the mat, hands braced on the old, weathered vinyl topper. Natalia feels the Soldier close before she sees him, the pad of his feet on the floor as familiar to her now as her own breathing.

Know your enemy, they say, and yet she's learned nothing of the empty man with the conflicted eyes. It's proven in the hand offered to her and at first she stares at it, dizzy-eyed and baffled. Handlers don't offer help. If the asset can't pick themselves from the battlefield even upon the brink of death, then what use are they?

Blue eyes travel the line of his flesh arm, to the shoulder she all but sunk her claws into, to the face framed by sweaty, shaggy hair. The flesh hand whose knuckles sunk into the meat of her cheek, and not the flash of metal she'd seen before. When did he work his way through the dented chinks of her armor? How did the Soldier pinpoint the fragment of human being she leaves on her sleeve as a reminder to herself that maybe, just maybe, Natalia Alianovna Romanoff, might have a place out in the light, away from the webbed shadows.

She takes his hand, pulls, and needs more assistance than she likes getting to her feet. Her hand lingers in his, stabilizing, her center of gravity off, her mind still reeling from the blow.

"You didn't kill me."

A whisper, the words as confused as the roiling ocean of her eyes.

"Why?"

[armeyets]

It's the crucial question, and one that he was hoping she wouldn't ask, because he doesn't have the ready answer. The Soldier's mouth purses into a thin line. And then he's startled to glance down and realise that their hands are still linked, his arm steadying her like she's leaning her weight against a wall, a steady unyielding foundation.

Helping her up had been an unnecessary gesture in so many ways. Sympathy is not in the curriculum. Sympathy and tenderness has been burned out of them, over and over and over, surgically excised every time it grew back like a tumour. Perhaps he's grown ragged around the edges again; perhaps he's been awake too long.

Another man might have reached out to check on her injuries, grazing his fingertips over the already-swelling heat in her cheek that she'll need to ice down.

But he is no longer that man. This one lets go of Natalia's hand and withdraws back into his own personal space, re-establishing that distance between them even if it feels like something's already been incorrigibly breached; a brick in the wall loosening, the mortar crumbling, compromised. He's grown unaccustomed to skin-to-skin touch that has nothing to do with a brutal beatdown or with inflicting pain. He had not realised how unaccustomed until just this moment. His fingertips feel like they're burning.

"They have invested in you," the Soldier says stiffly. "Too many years of training. Too much time. You are close to graduating. It would be a waste of resources to cut you down so close to the finish line."

It's more words than he's said to her in so very long, a justification and a perfectly rational explanation to cover his tracks. (It could be that he's trying to convince himself at the same time.)

[repaying]

The olive branch that his hand had been still leaves her stunned in its wake, his retreat leaving an invisible but palpable void on the air. Her hand drops back to her side but she marvels quietly at the warmth blooming into her palm. It's different, because she's been close to other handlers for dance and etiquette lessons, but all of those movements had been scripted, carefully prescribed, formulaic in the making despite the grace of the movement.

She focuses instead on the timbre of his voice, a sound still unfamiliar to her hears, but she absently checks its cadence, the broadening of his vowels and the softer edges of his consonants. Russian by name, but practice? She doesn't know. But he's speaking at length for a man who speaks only with the empty threat of his eyes and the cold cut of a fist.

Measuring the distance between them now, she forces herself to stand a little straighter, chin a little higher even though the motion makes her see stars. But the word 'graduation' makes the light rush out of her eyes, the very ocean itself crawling far from the shore. It veils her expression in something dark, her jaw setting, a muscle flexing. Anger, perhaps, is what it looks like, but she can feel fear that creeps from the pit of her gut up the back of her throat.

She could turn her fear, her ire, on him, but what good would it do? A tin soldier in human guise, a machine meant to break them, with cloudy, curious eyes that make her doubt. (Doubt is dangerous in a world like this, doubt creates questions that need answers. The Red Room doesn't like giving answers).

Her lips pull to one side, her bruised face producing a half smile that's both warm and confident in a way she shouldn't be. Not after the beating she's taken, but this is what makes her exceptional in their eyes.

"Thank you." A pause, a curiosity in her eyes as she measures him against the man from years and years ago. "Am I dismissed?"

[armeyets]

His gaze automatically slides over the jutting cliff of Natalia's shoulder, back towards the doorway, as if he's searching for someone to answer that question in his stead. But their handlers and monitors aren't here for once; he's on his own, to make this judgment call independently. But he's not accustomed to making decisions, either. Even for something as little as this. These particular instructions haven't been set out before him or hardwired into his bones, besides the vagueness of "train them". He'll have to be the one to decide when she's done for the day.

So he decides.

"Dismissed," the Soldier finally says. His right hand clenches at his side and then the fingers unfurl. Everything feels like it's on pins and needles, like parts of his body are waking up after a slumber. It reminds him of his resuscitations, each one a painful but miraculous resurrection: first coming to slowly, and then all at once, a drowning man clawing his way up from a frozen lake. Everything feels too awake and too alive, humming in his body. It might be the adrenaline, his heartbeat, the impact buzzing from their fight.

But his expression doesn't change. Apart from that faint light in his gaze, that empty stare, his face remains a desolate landscape as he watches her.

[repaying]

The room feels different without the watchful eye of the handlers, the monitors. That they allowed the Soldier private access to her at all is unheard of, but she knows these moments are meant to test her. (To test him?)

The tiniest lick of disappointment washes through her at being dismissed so soon, but she knows it's foolish to expect little else. And while this interaction isn't altogether different from all of her other countless combat sessions, something about it leaves her rattled. But he dismisses her and she gives a careful nod of her head, in case she disturbs the way her vision has settled around the throbbing in her cheek, in the back of her skull.

"Nat, by the way," she says after she has turned her back to him, unwilling to see the empty void of his face as she dares to peel back that tiny chink of armor he'd found before, revealing something soft and vulnerable underneath. "Natalia is who they want me to be. I want to be something better."

The shrug of a slender shoulder, the careful toss of her ponytail so it falls off her shoulder, and she slips away out the door as quiet as she came.

end

[armeyets]

The Soldier blinks and watches her go; that last remark feeling like an unexpected parting blow, a gunshot ringing in his ears.

"Nat," he repeats after she's already gone. His mouth forming the unfamiliar syllable, trying it out on his tongue, the short clipped sound of it. The diminutive isn't Nata, Natasha, Tasha — the stress of it isn't in the right place for Russian. The choice feels more English.

And when he says it aloud, his own accent wavers and slips, like an old snakeskin sloughing off.

For just a moment there, he sounds American.

And then it's gone again, almost as quickly as it came. The Soldier goes to drink some water and re-wrap his palms and knuckles, with a glance at the old weary clock above the door carving out the minutes like a school gymnasium, and he waits for the next asset to file in (with a handler this time; this one has not earned the breathing room in her leash yet). Another anonymous girl to train, to run through her paces far more easily than he did the previous one. More sparring sessions sliding one into the next into the next, until the clock's hands turn around and the sun sets and it's time to end for the day, as if his own gears are winding down. He sleeps in a cold dormitory, and wakes up the next morning to do it all again.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

(Her name is still ringing in his ears.)