The Black Swan (Bucky Barnes x OC)

Chapter 17

Moscow, Russia
1999

Natasha was fifteen the first time she'd seen her.

She remembered it quite well. 9am in the morning of a winter day of 1999.

Madame B. would make them all watch videos of her sometimes. Shooting. Killing. Dancing. But she'd never seen her in person before. This was the first time.

They called her the Black Swan. She'd heard it, the servants whispering it after leaving food for her when the girl was awake. And Natasha knew she wasn't awake most of the time because she'd seen her in that chamber multiple times. Sleeping. Looking so peacefull with her eyes closed. She'd seen how they carried her from one place to another like a suitcase full of clothes, transporting her from one side of the country to the other to complete her assignments.

And in spite of the name they'd given her, the girl seemed everything but dark.

Black Swan didn't suit her.

She was pure light. Even with the tears in her eyes that were rolling down her cheeks as she danced piece after piece in front of her and twenty other girls watching her every move. They could all tell she was crying. And they all knew she was in pain. But her movements never failed. They were precise. Perfect.

It was snowing outside. It was always snowing. And the white light coming from the window reflected perfectly on the girl's beautiful red hair. For a moment, Natasha forgot where she was. Who she was. And she just watched. It was beautiful. She was beautiful, but the way her feet moved like they knew every step by heart was mesmerizing. She made ballet look easy, and for a moment Natasha thought she could love it. She thought she could be like that red haired girl dancing in front of her.

She felt a connection so strong.

It was obvious that she didn't want to be there either. Of course they were forcing her to stay. But when she danced... it made Natasha feel like maybe that could be the moment where she could run away from her own reality too. Maybe when she put on her shoes and started dancing, she could pretend to be somewhere else.

She was sure that the girl was doing the same.

But the minutes became hours, and the hours felt like days when General Dreykov stepped into the room and sat on his chair, enjoying the show the girl was putting on for everybody. The air was even heavier when he was around. His presence absorbing the energy from everyone around him until time just stopped spinning and you feel trapped in that moment.

Twelve in the afternoon.

Two o'clock.

Three.

Five.

Seven.

The evening fell upon them, and none of them had even moved. The girls were still sitting around the dance floor. Madame B remained in her chair, bored; and General Dreykov kept looking at Katherine moving around the room like she owned it.

Even when her feet started to fail and he screamed at her to keep dancing, he started to believe the truth in everything his father had told him about her. How beautiful and hypnotic she was.

Dimitri Dreykov didn't love many things. He didn't even love his own son. But hell, did he love Katerina Bowman more than anything. Maybe even more than himself.

He had seen the way his father looked at her. Even when he forced her every night to be with him and he heard her screams from the other room, when he finished he could hear the love in his father's words. In his own twisted way, that was love for him.

And in moments like those, Dmitrievich Dreykov was thankful he never received one single amount of it.

But of all the things his father had left for him the night he died, Katherine was the best of them. The relentless, smart, strong soldier that he'd put so much effort on helping to create.

He still resented her, though. After all, she was the thing his father loved the most, and God knows how much he hated his father. If it had been up to him, he would have murdered him long before he died on his own, so Dreykov always thought that best way of hurting him even after his death, was by torturing Katherine.

He would have never had her dancing for this long.

But he liked to say to himself that he was nothing like his father. So he screamed and screamed when he noticed her muscles were giving up and her body started to become sore. She was a super soldier, right? She should be more than able to handle it.

He ordered her to keep dancing even when she couldn't take another step. Even Madame B was uncomfortable with the torture she was witnessing, but Dreykov never had enough. He'd never admit how much like his father he was, but deep down he knew it. He could see it on times like this.

He wasn't proud of it. But he loved the power. The bloody feet of the girl in front of him was proof of how powerful he was, and he had a room full of girls to witness it with him.

After twelve long hours, Katherine couldn't take it anymore. She kept dancing, but the girls around her closed her eyes with pain by the sight of her tights getting wet. She'd peed on herself. She'd been dancing for so long. But for Dreykov that was amusing. His laughter filled the room as he stood up to walk towards her. She kept dancing but her sobbing was louder and louder now. She was crying because she felt humiliated. Crying because she had a man laughing in her face while her legs were covered in her own urine. Because she couldn't even remember her own name but somehow she knew every choreography by heart. Because she didn't know who she was, but she was sure she didn't belong in that place.

Before she could help it, her feet finally failed and she fell to the floor, making Dreykov's laughter grow louder and louder. Without thinking about it twice, he stood in front of the girl lying on the floor, and no hesitation crossed his eyes when he opened his pants, pulled his cock out and started peeing on her too. She cried louder. He laughed even more. And when he was done, he looked down at her and walked away.

He had proven his point.

He left the room with chuckles and Madame B finally called it for the day. And in that precise moment, after witnessing the most traumatizing thing she's ever been a part of, even after everything she'd been through, Natasha Romanoff knew that one day she'd kill General Dreykov with the same smile on her face like the one he had right then.