Natalia Romanova was the golden child in the Red Room - the star pupil, the teacher's pet, the best of the best. Everybody knew it, including all the girls in her cohort, including Y/N Y/L/N.
But just as she was the favourite, Y/N was the least fav...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Picking the right time to talk to Nat about how I felt was proving to be difficult, since I was never too good at initiating conversations about my feelings, and it wasn't something I could seamlessly fit into conversation.
A few weeks passed since that particular therapy session with Doctor Anderson when it finally came up, though not how I would have imagined.
I was eating breakfast one morning when I got a call from Natalia herself, which was unusual since never called at this time and it was definitely the middle of the night in New York, where she was.
"Hello?" I asked between bites of cereal. I heard her shallow breaths and swallowed my food before straightening up nervously. "Nat, are you okay?"
"Sorry," she said tentatively. "I shouldn't have called."
This didn't sound like the usual Nat I'd been befriending lately, this sounded like the Nat who used to call me after a tough assignment, the one who didn't want to talk about her eighteenth birthday, the one who tried to fail her graduation tests in the Red Room...
"What happened, Nat?" I asked carefully, frowning. "What's wrong?"
She exhaled deeply. "Nothing. Sorry."
I recognised her hesitance – it was the same hesitance I possessed when I'd first spoken to her in the middle of the night a few months ago.
"It was a nightmare," I muttered, "wasn't it?"
She didn't agree, but it was obvious. "I'm fine. I just needed to check if you were still–" A pause. Then nothing.
"What is it?" I asked, breakfast long forgotten as I stared into the distance worriedly. "You can tell me, Nat."
Sighing, she asked, "Can I?"
"That's what friends are for." Sensing her hesitation and thinking back to what Doctor Anderson and I had spoke about, I added, "Because we are friends, Nat. Please. What was it?"
There was a soft rustle on her side of the call, like blankets shuffling against bedsheets. And then she breathed out nervously and spoke.
"It was about you."
Already, I had so many questions, but I waited patiently for her to continue.
"Your hands were around my throat."
I looked down, wincing at the memory. It still haunted me, too, sometimes, remembering how I'd almost killed her.
