Who: Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton When: Somewhere around 3am this morning Where: Their room at the warehouse What: It's her turn to have a mild - yet equally unhealthy - mental breakdown Rating: High for description child abuse/Red Room tactics Note: All dialogue in the memory sequence should be considered to be in Russian...I just didn't feel like translating it all out. Status: Closed; Complete
She awoke suddenly, her eyes sliding open in readiness, and it took a moment for Natasha to realize just what had awoken her. She could feel it, the distant memory pushing at the back of her mind. She didn't remember everything - or very many things at all - about her training in the Red Room, thanks to their experiments and serums, their playing around with her memories and thoughts and emotions. But when she did remember something, it often forced its way to the forefront of her mind, making her acknowledge it and accept it before she could move on and continue to function as a halfway-normal person.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she focused on Clint's sleeping form. She wanted to reach out, wanted to wake him up so that he'd be with her while the memory came, but that wasn't fair. He was still dealing with his own mental anguish, and she didn't need to add hers on top of it. Silently, the Russian slipped out of bed, barely disturbing the covers as she swung her legs out carefully and stood. Walking towards their bathroom, she stripped off her tank top and shorts, then her underwear, on the way, stepping in and shutting the door quietly before finally turning on the light. Moving over to the shower, she turned it on, adjusted the temperature until steam began to come from it, then stepped inside and pulled the curtain across behind her. Lowering her head as the nearly-burning hot water beat down on her, she shuddered as the memory hit, hard.
It had been autumn when she'd been brought there, and now it was winter. But she thought that it had been a very long time that she'd been there, so it couldn't be the same winter after that autumn. She didn't know how old she was because none of them were ever told what day it was or what year. Sometimes, they weren't even certain if it were morning or night, as meals were infrequent and never at the same time. She only knew it was winter now because she stood outside, her toes buried partway in snow, huddling naked with a group of other little girls as equally naked. They stood on the bank of a lake mostly covered with ice except for the ten yards out from where they were, because their teachers had broken it up.
"Enter the water," One of the teachers said. They were dressed warmly in fur coats, hats, even scarves. As the girls near the front of the lake began to obediently move towards the water, the redhead turned towards the man and asked curiously, "Why?" It wasn't a challenge, only a simple question. She wanted to know why they had to go into the freezing water.
The question was a mistake.
As the other girls continued to file in slowly, Natalia was abruptly picked up and taken over and thrown into the ice cold water. Sputtering and coughing, she fought her way back to the surface and stood in place, tiny arms wrapped around her as she stared up at the man in confusion and pain. "All of you must count slowly to five hundred. Then you can get out. This one will get out when I say," he said without looking at her. In her mind, Natalia counted with the other girls, then watched as they began to stumble back out of the water and were allowed to wrap themselves in blankets. She reached a mental count of two thousand sixty four before the man finally moved to stand on the bank in front of her, studying her as she shivered uncontrollably. Tears had begun to fall from her eyes and freeze on her cheeks, and her hair grew stiff as it, too, began to freeze.
"You are Russian. You don't feel the cold. Say it." Her teeth chattered as she tried to repeat his words, and she finally forced them out, "I am R-R-Russian. I - I d-don't f-feel the c-cold." "You feel nothing." "I f-feel...nothing." "Keep saying it." Her breath escaped in tiny puffs, before she finally began to repeat the words, over and over, turning it into a mantra. Eventually her shivering stopped as she started to believe her own words, becoming numb to the cold. As her mental count reached eight thousand five hundred twenty nine, the man reached out and caught her hair, dragging her out of the water. She stumbled, only remaining upright thanks to his grip on her long red strands, gasping in pain as sensation thrust its way back into her skin and bones, hurting worse than anything she'd ever felt.
The teacher leaned in close, staring into her eyes, and spoke quietly. "Right now, your fingers and toes are blue. If you don't get your blood moving again, they will turn purple, then black, then fall off, and you will be a useless cripple who will never be able to serve your country. You will shame your Mother land. Unless you run. Run and get your blood moving again." Letting go of her hair, he shoved her away. "Run!" Without even bothering to ask for a blanket or any clothes, she turned and forced herself to begin running across the frozen tundra.
As the memory faded, Natasha fell to the floor of the tub under the spray, not even realizing it had started to turn cold. Tears rolled down her cheeks, whether in remembrance of the pain or for the young girl who'd been so manipulated that she'd never questioned another single order, she didn't know. Curling up at the far end of the tub, away from the spray, she wrapped her arms around her legs and lowered her face to them while trying to not tremble, telling herself that she'd get past this. Somehow.