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

the red room.

[armeyets]

They thaw the Winter Soldier from his slumber, hand him a mission, and put him back down once he's done.

He wakes up.
He goes to sleep.
He wakes up.
He goes to sleep.

They wipe his memories. Reset the clock. He finds that his skills don't atrophy as much as it seems they should; muscle memory still carries him through fights, through the careful eye of a sniper rifle or through the unpleasant crunch of bone shattering beneath his metal hand. Sometimes he trains the rest of his handlers' assets: batches of Russian girls file through the Red Room, with thin and narrow anonymous faces, but with room to grow into stunners when they're older. They're all capable, well-trained, well-behaved.

He goes to sleep. He wakes up. The girls look older; he doesn't age.

They put the weapon on the shelf. They take him down again. Fashions in the outside world change. The designs of the guns alter slightly over the years, although the Avtomat Kalashnikova remains a reliable standard.

She's a teenager the first time he meets her and puts her through her paces in the training room.

The next time he blinks, years have passed. And then there's a stretch of time where they let him stay awake, for a while. The Soldier doesn't need his mind scrubbed when he hasn't actually been in the field for a while; there's no sensitive names or assassination details to erase when he's merely focusing on training. (There have been side-effects. Erratic behaviour. Glitches. The doctors have quietly recommended that he have some time off ice, to thaw the neurons in his brain, to let it heal and settle from the way they're gouging into it every time, over and over and over.)

So he's an instructor now, again. He's waiting on the training mats in the gym, standing at wary rigid attention, arms crossed and surveying the doorway. Tomorrow is marksmanship. Today is hand-to-hand combat, and a redhead has just entered the room for her lesson.

Memories flicker, like a faint film skipping around on the reel.

Had he seen her last year? He thinks he might have.

As she gets closer, there's a name on the tip of his tongue. It's an irrelevant piece of information; the Winter Soldier shouldn't even have it anymore, it should have been wiped with the rest. But he knows her face, and she hasn't spoken yet but he's suddenly certain that the young woman will have a surprisingly husky voice when she opens her mouth. He remembers that she has a fierce left hook; that she can climb her opponents' bodies like a spider, and he'll need to be careful to not let her get around his shoulders, her thighs around his neck.

The soldier watches her approach, and the last piece finally falls into place like the click of a lock.

"Natalia," he says.

[repaying]

The days rise and fall with the movement of the sun in the sky she only gets to see behind dusty, shuttered windows. The sun rises on her in bed, cuffed to the wrought-iron headboard and sets on the latch of metal at her wrists, the shuffle of cotton sheets pooling at her feet, the creak of an old bed frame meant to keep her at the edge of sleep, an old spring reminding her of the lumbar vertebrae in desperate need of stretching, the curve of a pelvic bone, the boney jut of a heel.

Training. Constant awareness. Sleeping too deeply could mean death.

From restless sleep they move the recruits in orderly lines to a delicate mess hall, old fashioned in design and even more old fashioned in its limited menu. (She's lucky, they give her more protein, more fat, if only for the ability to push her harder than the rest).

Natalia attends breakfast each day to find another slender face missing from the faceless crowd she schools with. There are no girlish gigglings in the hall, no whispers or notes passed. Those are scenes from books she's all but smuggled to read, a taste of a world she will never belong to, eventually turned to ash in the fireplace of the sitting room. Evidence eradicated, threat neutralized.

From meals she goes to dance, to etiquette, to language studies, to combat. Hand-to-hand today. Right. She moves with practiced ease, the poise of a young woman all but molded into the shape of a delicate stained-glass soldier, beautiful but for her deceptively sharp edges. She walks into the gym with a quiet, easy confidence, almost an air of arrogance that her instructors chide her for, and stands opposite the rigid man.

She knows his face. She knows the outline of him, of the Soldier, and she measures him from her spot on the mat just as surely as he measures her. She was young when she trained with him last, and she remembers how quiet the room had been as her fellow recruits watched, as other handlers gaped at the way they all but grappled viciously on the mats, each strike more deadly than the last.

In the end, she lost, of course. There's no way she would win against him then. She's not sure that winning now is what she wants, either. (She doesn't know what she wants).

"Sir."

She tucks her hands behind her back, cocks her chin up just so and studies him. He looks the same, with the wild eyes and wilder hair, the strong cut of a jaw over a dark uniform, the barest glint of metal at a cuff. She'd been struck by him when she first met him, taken aback by the emptiness of him. Natalia can read even the slyest of liars, but this man? His eyes, for how deep also seemed depthless.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" There's a tiny quirk of her lips. She shouldn't toe the lines of propriety, she'll get lashings for it later. She wouldn't be their prize student if she didn't.

[armeyets]

Her question doesn't fit the formula.

The man isn't expecting it, and so she can see that stillness as he pauses, then blinks in confusion (as if there's a faint light turning on behind his eyes, a bulb now flickering in a dark room). And his head cocks, as if he's trying to parse the question. It isn't a matter of him not understanding. The girls had wondered at first if he even understood Russian — their trainer never spoke — but when he did eventually open his mouth, his Russian was textbook-perfect. Although there's a muddled undefinable accent that hasn't gotten better even in all his years; perhaps it never will.

"Training," the Soldier says, and his gaze is hard with its curiosity, boring through her. "Did they not tell you?"

No sense of humour. He would be so very boring, this clockwork automaton of a man, if he weren't also so mysterious.

But he wasn't supposed to speak at all. They're meant to launch right into it, wordlessly falling into line and beginning their training. It's the common refrain around the facility: bruised knuckles and black eyes; the smell of powdered chalk on the girls' hands from the gymnastics lessons; the brutal impact of hitting the balance beam, the impact ricocheting through their bones. Ballet lessons and legs bent and feet arched, all their weight carried on their tiptoes. Miniscule bone fractures and pulled tendons and sprained wrists. The facility is a factory, and it is turning out perfect specimens.

All of the girls would look delicate to him, if he didn't already know how deadly they can be, too.

"No monitoring today." The other handlers and instructors (eagle-eyed beldames with names like Darya or Zoya) tended to supervise the beginners' group classes, but Natalia had been here long enough to earn that small shred of freedom. The slightest loosening of the leash.

[repaying]

There's a delicate, red cross-hair laser focused on that stillness, on the slow blink, and Natasha sees the victory in her statement. The other assets might not see it, for the change is nigh imperceptible, but Natalia enjoys pressing and plucking at threads that are better left alone. That are meant to be left alone. Madame B will both scold and praise her for it; it's what sets her apart.

Her name sounds strange on his tongue, and his words even more stilted, like a valenki that doesn't quite fit, keeps slipping off the heel at inopportune moments, letting the ice and snow in to nip at the sole. Curious. They shouldn't be engaging like this, in an act that to all other handlers and monitors might seem like a form of verbal warfare when they're meant to swap blows and blocks, not stilted consonants and vowels too broad.

The curiosity behind those empty eyes captures her for a moment, even if it doesn't show in her face, and her stillness matches his own, even if the curve of her lips widens just so.

"They told me."

Something deep in the core of her chastises her for her mouth, but she's been pushing boundaries lately, fighting back against the way her mind tells her to fall in line with the others. Falling in line means you get disappeared in due time, and those anonymous faces cease to exist.

"They usually reserve you for the new recruits when you're here. They must be unhappy with me." After all, a brutal, vicious beating is one way to weed out the weak, to cull the crop before they invest too much time, money, energy in something doomed to fail. "But I don't think that will come as a surprise to either of us."

Her feet stay flat on the mat; she's shown up barefoot today, bandages and blisters wrapping her toes from years of pointe shoes and heavy, steel-toed boots. She looks nothing like the uniform, clean battalion of girls moving throughout the antique halls. Her hair falls wild around her face, braid fallen from its bun and tie in errant waves, set aflame by the hot spring sun scorching her back through the fitted jumpsuit they're made to wear for training. A silent scream of a challenge, the look of a dog waiting to bare its teeth.

[armeyets]

Natalia had stood out right from the start, even before her obvious skills turned his head for the first time during a lesson, made him take note of her. The other girls looked pale and washed-out next to her with their sallow skin (they didn't see the sun enough, nevermind the northern latitude of wherever-they-are) and white-blonde hair, or dark like a weed. Whenever they lined up in those neat tidy rows, she looked like a blazing fire amongst kindling: a crimson rose growing in a fallow field.

(Somewhere, with the distant and hazy vagueness of a dream, it stirs up an almost-memory like the silt being disturbed at the bottom of a deep, icy lake. A redhead standing on a boardwalk, laughing and leaning coquettishly against the carnival machine while he fumbles in his pockets for more money, trying to impress her. The coins in his hands are not rubles.)

"Perhaps they're measuring your improvement," he finally offers. A speculation. The Soldier uncrosses his arms and shifts his weight on the mats, leaning over to unlace his boots and then set them tidily by the side of the room. Everything in its place, regimented and orderly.

"You could win."


She likely won't, but he is curious — in a way that feels like a long-dormant machine finally humming back to life, his curiosity and interest in the outside world finally piqued again, even if it's only to see how much Natalia has improved. Which new tricks she's picked up since the last time he was thawed. What new challenges she'll throw his way during this fight.

[repaying]

"They're always measuring my improvement."

There's something to be said for the ceremony of every class, every training session, every lesson. The orderly placement of boots along the edge of the mat warrants a sigh breathed through her nose, because those boots with their laces neatly tucked behind leather tongues means the clock has long since started. Her shoulders loosen, her posture relaxing as she raises her hands to scoop fistfuls of wild red away from her shoulders, drawing a messy ponytail at the back of her head, but her eyes never leave him.

The metal arm, she remembers, hurts. A concussion, a fractured rib, all from a series of solid punches. He's sturdy, and if her memory serves her he's whip fast, in a way a man with a build like his shouldn't be. Her eyes flicker to his and they're less empty, the spark of curiosity bringing out something similar in her. To see the tiniest hint of humanity in something bleak is a blessing, even if that humanity is found in the cogs of an old machine.

Natalia will walk away from this injured, beaten, and she'll be made to dance it off tomorrow, but she can't tame the tiny lick of something deep in her chest. He's watching her as his opponent, isn't he? And not a tool. There's a soft huff between a flash of white teeth, a tilt and bob of her head, without the poise and quiet reserve of the asset she was trained to be. The ease is the calm before the storm.

"I could. But you won't let me."

She breaks toward him suddenly, muscles giving no warning before she launches across the mat, toes sinking into the foam as she plants herself and aims a heel at the center of his chest, a blow with every intention of unseating him, rocking him back onto his heels.

"Good luck," said on a whisper, not in Russian, but in English.

[armeyets]

The unexpected flare of English catches his attention, jolting like the twinge of an atrophied muscle, the language itself like pins-and-needles.

He's let his guard down. With conversation, and for a fleeting moment he realises why it's so forbidden — why anything outside the lesson is discouraged — because he has been distracted, and suddenly Natalia is surging across the room like a tidal wave, crashing into him. His weight tips backward and she drives him down to the mat, one foot slamming the breath out of his lungs. Hardwired instinct takes over: the Soldier rolls with the impact, letting himself go end-over-end backwards on the padded floor, rolling backwards in order to heave her off him.

But she gets back to her feet faster than he does. Part of his brain keeps ticking, filing away those notes on her performance: she's flexible, more than he is. He's strong and fast but by way of brute machine: the man starts advancing forward, right fist snapping outwards and then his left (even faster and stronger), that whiplash movement of whining metal and hinges humming in his shoulder. She ducks and weaves, but he's indomitable; whenever her scattering of blows collide, he just takes it and keeps going. A particularly solid hit (that left hook, he knew he had to look out for it) has his jaw cracking and head snapping slightly to the side, his shoulders tight as he bears down—

And then the Soldier's closed the distance, his mind shutting off in favour of old habits taking over. One arm around her like a lover's embrace, the pair of them grappling; bare feet sliding on the mat before he gets his balance again, an elbow against her throat. Wrestling Natalia is like trying to wrestle water. She keeps sliding out of his grasp.

But his strikes have weight. That metal fist can crack through walls.

In another time and another place, he would have been mindful of that; would have pulled his punches. The Winter Soldier, however, has not been taught to relent, and so she has to keep dancing on tiptoes, knowing that she can take a blow from his right hand more easily, but not the left.

[repaying]

The Soldier surges forward and it takes every ounce of focus for her to move in step with him. Every forward step he takes, she counters back on the same leg, letting him swing, and ducking in to land a flurry of blows herself, that left hook slamming into jaw just for the right to follow a jab at his throat. She doesn't have the strength to crush a windpipe, but it's enough to stun for a few seconds, give her ample time to create distance.

That's what she needs in this fight. Distance. Time to dodge the weight of his blows and use her speed and flexibility to her advantage. The Soldier barely grunts at the impact, it doesn't buy her time at all. The blink of an eye and he's on her, all but wrapped around her like they're performing some intricate dance instead of fighting and it takes everything in her to twist out of his hold any time his arm lashes round her, but they fit in a way that makes this fight harder.

Their bodies read one another's, two practiced soldiers, two machines using all the information their disposal to neutralize the threat.

The elbow to the throat takes her by surprise. She can't avoid it, what with the swing coming from the right arm in rhythm with the left. The right hand catches her once, twice, knuckles skirting her jawline, grazing the rise of her rib cage as she manages to twist enough to avoid a blow to the vulnerable soft of her gut. She grunts, teeth bared as she blocks the punch, but he has her tangled up in him, her range of motion limited. She uses his weight against him instead, letting her feet slide on the mat, her knees buckling so that the very weight of the arm at his throat knocks them off kilter. She wraps her free arm around his waist and pulls as she falls backward, buckling her knees up between them and all but bucking him over her as her back slams down to the mat.

He's heavy, all tailored muscle and bones made stronger by the serum, but she's got the lower body strength for it, the speed, the technique. She comes up rasping, rolling back to her feet and launches herself at his back, much like she had years ago but with more finesse; legs wrapping his chest, arms curling around his throat and applying pressure.

It’s a mistake, letting him close again, but she has no other option.

[armeyets]

There is no such thing as an exhibition fight in the Red Room: the real world won't hold back, and so neither does their training. They're both graceful enough that their battle looks and feels like a dance. Ballroom waltzing is an outdated corner of the Widows' curriculum, but it's occasionally useful for infiltrating certain corners of society — he hasn't been tapped for those particular lessons, but he would have approached them with the same exacting discipline. It's still a give-and-take, a flowing movement across the mat.

Natalia flips him, and that scramble up his spine is exactly like he suspected she might do— scurrying up the tall man like he's a tree, latched onto him and strangling him. He tries to jab his elbow into her sides and tries to grab at her, but he can't reach that far behind; his metal fingers dig into her thighs hard enough to bruise the next day, his handprints all over her, but her grip just tightens harder through the pain.

He's choking, and can feel the air caught in his windpipe. The Winter Soldier is enhanced, strong, fast, but he does still need to breathe. He's going to pass out if she keeps this up.

So he drops. Again. Just tumbles back and lets them both crash to the floor, all his weight landing on her; he's still wheezing as he rolls away from the young woman and back to his feet. A little slower than before. His human hand rubs at his aching Adam's apple, almost contemplative, as he scrutinises her again. Some of his automatic unthinking routine has been interrupted again, like a train derailed off its tracks. When he speaks again, his voice is cracked and hoarse, disheveled hair falling into his face:

"Good."

[repaying]

The drop takes her by surprise and it shows in the soft intake of air on the way down. There's no disengaging, not unlike a freight car hurtling its way off a track without time to apply the brakes. Weight and force mean everything here and they plummet. In a split second decision her arms slide away from his throat, hands seeking purchase in the fabric of his shirt, clawing at his chest and shoulders.

(Weak, something sinister snarls in the back of her head, holding him by the throat on the fall could have done major damage to his spine, after all). She doesn't want to kill him.

The air rushes out of her lungs in a hot stab of pain, his weight oppressive, her head a sick crack against the mat and the concrete beneath. Her vision swims as she rolls onto all fours, dazed, but keenly aware of the fact that he's back up and on his feet. It would be easier if he kicked her, if he picked up the fight, but the downtime makes her feel the bruises rising under the skin of her thighs, the angry throb of pain along her jaw from the graze of a metal fist, the way her breath catches in her throat in a desperate wheeze with every flex of rib and muscle.

A spider curls in on itself when its hit when it cannot run, legs a spindly fortress against the outside world, the master at playing dead. And like the spider she uncurls, but keeps her body low to the ground even as she climbs to her feet. Her head spins sickly on the climb up.

"Finish it." Through gritted teeth, frustrated, petulantly demanding in a way that would never be tolerated from an asset. The frustration doesn't grace her eyes, where her brow furrows, blue eyes a cloud of confusion, curiosity. She wipes at her mouth with the back of her sleeve, the charcoal fabric coming back wet with a hint of blood, the taste of copper acrid on her tongue.

[armeyets]

They're both panting, woozy, and he can feel his heartbeat pounding like a drum in the back of his head. There's bile in the back of his throat from the strangulation. The Soldier's been pushed harder than he expected to be; she really has improved by leaps and bounds in the interim. While he sleeps in that frozen coffin, the rest of the world continues without him, and everyone else keeps training and practicing and getting better. It's a cautionary tale, a valuable reminder: he should never get complacent. Shouldn't treat his training of these girls as something to sleepwalk through.

(And his handlers would, after all, punish him if he started slipping.)

"Fine," the Soldier says. Taking orders comes naturally to him, even if those orders are snarled by his trainee. He might be an inhuman metal statue, but something inside him is still pliant, moulded to obedience, carved into compliance.

When she takes one last exhausted punch at him, he ducks her and starts to swing.

—but then, at the very last moment, there's stutter of hesitation — reconsideration — and he abruptly stops and switches sides, his right arm flying into a solid punch instead. He doesn't use the left. Instead it's his flesh-and-bone fist to Natalia's cheek, a ringing blow that brings her down to the ground again, that'll ruin her pretty face (does she have a pretty face? he's forgotten how to tell) with a black eye tomorrow.

But it's not the metal arm. Not the one could have shattered her ribs, pulverised them until her own jagged bones punctured her lungs. Not the one that could have killed her.

When Natalia's vision clears and when she next looks up at him, he's standing there with a calloused hand extended, offering to tug her back up to her feet.

[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?"

oh, i hope some day i'll make it out of here;

[repaying]

The invisible leader board carried through word of mouth and quiet stares begins to undeniable shake. The names rearrange themselves as girls slip and rise in the rankings and today, Natalia is a name whispered in confused awe instead of reverent fear.

There's power in the whispers, where words become carefully crafted weapons aimed not at the speakers but those who created the invisible ladder to begin with. Her name usually sits at the top, brought low only by the occasional lesson Madame B insists she learns. A few slips in the rankings means less food some days, means harsher training, means crueler punishments. To be beaten harder is to be made stronger.

It starts in ballet, where, in her solo, she slips. Her footing goes awry and the fall she takes is less than graceful, planting her on her back, stunned. She needs help up, which earns her another slash, another mark on her card. But the confusion in the handler's eyes bolsters her, dials up the absolute blood lust at the power it gives her. Had they noticed the way she wormed her way in, a quiet poison forged into the shape of a star student?

She spends a week stuttering in all of her combat courses, taking hits where she would normally dodge, tripping over her feet like her heavy boots are somehow heavier. One handler takes a nasty knife to the thigh, only to strike her clean across the face with a set of brass knuckles, her cheek turned as if waiting. But they don't see the calculated movements, don't see the edge in her eyes when she bites back the pain. They're so baffled at first, that their Natalia is failing.

Nat takes to the mess hall with the ease of a woman who owns the place, but she always has that air to her. Better to walk like the ground underfoot owes her something than to fear what might be hiding beneath it. They fill her tray with lukewarm stew from the bottom of the crock, a stale end of bread, an apple lacking luster. Edible, all of it, but a pointed punishment. It's not enough to sustain the training, to fuel her until she makes it to supper she might not get.

She doesn't care if she never eats again if she succeeds. Placing herself at a table alone (all the other girls slowly shift down in their seats, away from her end of the mess hall), she stares down at her tray, her reflection in the watery stew cold and empty. Reminiscent of someone who showed her kindness, a kindness that only made the beast hunger to be freed from its cage.

[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.

[armeyets]

Failing on purpose is harder than succeeding.

You have to balance it just right. Self-sabotage enough of your performance to slip down in the standings, but not enough to tumble off the leader board entirely. Perform well enough that they'll keep you in the programme, but not enough to graduate. Planting the little seeds of failure and letting them spread like a weed. It's a delicate knife's edge balance to walk, and an even more difficult task than simply playing along. And she's good at it, like she's good at everything else.

But therein lies the problem.

She has always been good at everything else.

The Winter Soldier occasionally monitors training he isn't personally involved with, standing silently beside the handlers and behind the long stretch of one-way mirror. It's good for him to know the girls' capabilities. They never ask him for his opinion — he wasn't thawed in order to have opinions — but he's there to watch, to listen, to learn. Sifting the weak from the strong like they're separating the wheat and the chaff.

And amongst that array of well-oiled machines, girls standing en pointe and bending low at the waist, the knobs of their spines curving in a delicate arch, one figure always draws his attention more than the rest.

He should be looking at them all equally, letting his attention skim over them, but his pale blue eyes keep getting drawn back to the southeast corner of the room. He knows Natalia's performance well enough to note that there's something wrong with it, like a skip in a record (no— when would he ever have listened to a vinyl record? when has he ever?). Something is subtly off about her. It does occasionally happen with the girls. Sometimes they're ill — Siberia is not kind, nor is their diet — and sometimes they're pushing themselves to keep dancing and fighting through stomach aches, through monthly cramps, since perfection is still expected from them. But she has never let that bring her down before.

It sticks with him like there's something caught in his teeth. He carries it with him, in the back of his mind, even as the days drag on. And on this day, he files into the mess hall with a couple other soldiers, his shoulders squared and almost hunched like a dog awaiting a kick. He takes his rations. (There's more protein for the soldier programme lately; the hollow men all have that strange emptiness to them, but he is the very best of them.)

Looking into the hall, he notes the widening gyre of space around the redhead. Girls who ordinarily sat beside Natalia Romanoff without a thought are now staying away, as if it's contagious. As if failure is catching.

The Soldier's tray hits the table with a small clatter, and he swings a leg over the prison-style bench. He sits down beside her, looking straight ahead and down at his food, not looking at her. (He's already spent enough time looking at her.) He starts shoveling bites into his mouth, perfunctory, not enjoying it. It's fuel for the machine.

But then he speaks. Even if it's addressed low, under his breath and to the plate, he is of course speaking to her:

"You need to stop," the Soldier says. Not hesitating to make his point; instead, he launches right into the topic like he's a bulldozer.

[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.

[repaying]

Another week of stumbles should be the killing blow; they'll fail her, pull her from the programme and re-evaluate her, where she can, once again, fail spectacularly until they decide to terminate her. That's what happens to the girls who can't meet the standard, who can't find the bar and soar above it. Madame B hauled her by the scruff one day to watch, her face pressed against the two way mirror as they brutally cut down a girl she had trained beside for months.

Irina, perhaps? Annika? The name hadn't come to her then but the image of the girl's wide, fearful eyes remains burned against the backs of her eyelids. Let them try and do that to her. Let them.

A quiet befalls the din of the mess hall when the soldiers enter, all of them gaunt with endlessly empty eyes, faces a blank canvas awaiting the masterstroke of an artist (a killer). The quiet doesn't last, the girls begin to pick up their chatter once again, practicing different languages with one another over steaming stews and vegetables. Her eyes track the boots of one, in particular, not meeting his face, her glance fleeting so as not to draw attention.

Natalia. The bizarre Russian tilt of his words haunts her, and she's done some digging, but to no avail. The files on the soldiers are kept carefully tucked away behind many locked doors, only half of which she has successfully picked.

She stirs a spoon idly in her stew, the contents gone cold, heat run off with her train of thought twenty minutes ago. But she feels him approach long before he sits down, like the fine raise of hair on the arm, the moment before a storm crashes. Soldiers aren't meant to sit with assets, but some do, when they need to monitor conversation, when there's whispers of turncoats, failure. His place beside her is nothing more than another burn on her record, but this one she feels deep, white-hot.

"Stop what? Eating?" A huff through her nose, performatively indignant, her eyes settling on her tray. She can't help but wonder if his eyes are still a clear blue, deep and vast and empty, save for the small light someone has turned on and forgotten to turn off. Are there more switches to be flipped? Nat thinks so. "We could trade. Fair warning that the bread went stale last week."

She picks up the nub of bred, cracks the flaky crust on the table top, letting its thunk reside between them before she drops it onto his tray.

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.)

[armeyets]

The bread unexpectedly fills his vision, a projectile deposited onto his tray. There's a tension taut in the man's shoulders as he hunches over his food — does he ever relax? — but out of the corner of her eye, just at the corner of his mouth and half-averted profile, she can see a flicker of a muscle. Something that might've been a smile, once upon a time.

"It's edible if you dip it in the stew," the Soldier says. His own bowl is heartier than hers: more chunks of meat, less watered-down. There's the faintest hesitation as he looks down at the piece of stale bread, considers her jokey proposition, and then goes ahead and takes it entirely seriously.

"Fine," he says (which seems to be one of his favourite words, confirmation and agreement and disgruntlement all at once), and with a swift movement of his hands and a flash of metal fingers, he takes their two bowls and swaps them. Quick and businesslike sleight-of-hand, like a pair of orphans ducking the view of a stern matron. (In a way, that is exactly what they are.) It's likely still dangerous in case anyone starts to wonder why one of the soldiers is swapping food with a widow — but it is still less dangerous than what she's been doing.

"But I don't mean that." He isn't looking at her; his gaze is roaming everywhere but, making sure there's still a no-man's land around them. That no one can eavesdrop easily. "I mean your examinations."

Nat, he thinks, but doesn't say aloud.

[repaying]

Any other soldier would swat her across the face for her mouth. Any other soldier would drag her by the arm to her handlers and give a report of her behavior, rote and lifeless, as though the men with empty eyes were nothing but a mobile security network. Eyes unseeing but documenting every detail. But something in her gut tells her he won't.

Another smart remark waits at the tip of her tongue but it dies when a flash of hands swaps their bowls, seamless and subtle. No one bats an eye, save for Nat, who stares down at the warm broth and chunks of meat with wide, curious eyes. Curling her hands around it, she cradles it close for its warmth, like a flame in a bitter Russian winter. She hasn't had anything warm like this in weeks.

Why would he do this for someone like her?

"What about them?" There's an imperceptible softness to her words, awed briefly by the simple swap of bowls across metal trays. There are no kindnesses here, no notes or food shared under table tops, only competitors and assets and soldiers. Machines. Machines don't need kindness to operate. The gesture is so simple, but she takes the boon for what it is and begins to eat, spooning up the meat first. Savoring. Follow routine and no one knows any different. The other assets aren't as sharp-eyed or keen, and for once she's grateful for it.

"Succeeding will do nothing for me. I fail? They beat me. I do well? They beat me. It's a simple equation."

[armeyets]

He hadn't taken bread for himself, so he enjoys the one she gave him (and tells himself that, of course, this was merely a transaction). The Soldier rips it automatically into pieces, soaks the hardened piece of loaf in the watery stew before eating it.

The girls have been trained in etiquette — formal cutlery, which spoons to use for dessert, which glasses for which drink, the delicate dab of handkerchief to mouth — but there's nothing refined about the way they eat in the mess hall. It's brute efficiency, wolfing down the food before that harsh bell rings and they're summoned to their next training. He speaks between bites, too.

"But fail enough, then you fail permanently," the Soldier points out. A curt explanation. And surely she knows this. They all know this: their handlers have them tiptoeing along that knife's edge, like dancing bears earning their keep — and tearing out each others' throats when they need to. He's watched those particular fights when two girls are plucked from the line and set on each other. When they know it's no longer a test or an examination or an assessment; it's a fight to the death, a battle for the right to live.

He's been awake long enough now to be bitterly grateful that they've poured enough resources into him and his arm, and that it's rare enough to find people compatible with the serum, that they can't wash him out. Won't wash him out, thanks to that sunk cost fallacy. And yet he remains obedient, still. Dutiful. (He has no choice but to be.)

He does what he can, however, like straying a foot just ever-so-slightly over the line. Sometimes a rebellion is as small as a bowl of food; an offered hand.

"Recalibrate," he says, and it's vague enough that anyone else might have wondered what it meant. "You pushed it too far, too quickly. You are better than that and they know it."

They might know about her ploy already. Perhaps they knew the Soldier was about to talk to her about it, too. Perhaps all of this is predictable and planned and manipulated, and they're all just rats running in the maze and there's no purpose to any of it.

But it's worth a try anyway.

[repaying]

Everything about her life is a show of marionettes, the strings invisible as they pull and manipulate. Nat has carefully, skillfully cut a few of them loose but it's not enough. His being here now feels like a loose string, but she knows better. Why else would their finest Soldier be here alongside their star pupil?

But maybe they don't anticipate this: the warm bowl of stew, the flicker of humanity behind pale eyes, the flutter of something dangerous in her chest. Strange, that a man made to be a soldier, reminds her of what it's like to feel alive. To feel human. Is that what it is? That strange twisting feeling? A glimpse into the world she might have been part of had she not been brought here?

Her fingers close around the bowl again and she draws it close to her chest, blowing on it to sooth some of the heat before she takes another bite. The meat doesn't have much flavor but it's filling. She's not sure she can finish it all, but she will regardless. Gifts aren't given in a place like this, and she's been taught to take every opportunity she can, when she can.

"A permanent failure would definitely surprise them," she murmurs, dry and not at all the delicately trained assassin she should be. Her mouth goes loose around him, around everyone these days, but that's exactly how she needles her way in. She spins a web and presses the sinews into the finest little cracks in the shells of those around her, expertly laying out her trap until its time to ensnare her mark. But with him, she huffs a derisive snort at the end, no webs to press, no cracks to cleave open.

A moment of silence, another few bites of the stew, hearty and warm and bland, but hers. "I don't have any other options. I've done the math a dozen times."

There's no other way out of this place, away from the graduation ceremony. (She's heard the screams of the girls before her who graduated, heard stories of how they bled for weeks after, how some don't survive the procedure at all. Weak, Madame B says. They're weak). Her fingers grip the bowl, her knuckles white from the tension.

I'm afraid. I'm weak.

[armeyets]

Seated beside her and listening to her explanation, the Soldier goes motionless for a moment, that machine-like shoveling of food into his mouth stilling as he listens and considers. It's like the temporary failure of a motor, something breaking down between head and arm and hand: a wrench in the gears, grinding the machinery to a halt. Until he starts moving again with another spoonful of stew, another mouthful of sustenance to keep him alive and ticking one more day.

The words permanent failure. They sting. There's the instinctive aversion to failure that comes with the Red Room itself — the knowledge that whenever he disappoints them (as he does, always, disappoint them), he'll be wiped clean again with the electricity and the diodes pressing against his temples and the whiff of burning flesh and that scream, caught in his throat, the scream as his memories are razed out of him with fire. He obeys, he always obeys, but the sight of that chair has been carved somewhere deeper and more instinctive than memory. A kind of primal fear response.

Maybe graduation is like that for her, too. Fear.

But permanent failure, she says, and the Soldier can't define that uncomfortable lurch in his chest at the thought of it. Like someone just tightened a fist around his heart, squeezing the air out of him. Imagining this field of weeds now being less one bright red rose.

"Given the option of death or pain, Nat, wouldn't you choose pain?" he asks, his voice low and practically a whisper now, and his first use of her name aloud. It's a terrible choice, and therefore perhaps no choice at all,

but it is, after all, the only one she has.