Insane in my Russian Brain - P. Parker

Chapter Fifteen

"Where are you going?" Natasha stood from the table where she was seated with Melina, walking towards the door out of the house. Alexei had left to go check on Yelena and Kat, and the last thing Natasha wanted to do was sit there with her adoptive mother awkwardly.

"To do this myself."

"Don't. You won't survive."

"I wish I could believe that you cared." She walked into Melina's living room, flicking on the light switch. "But you're not even the first mother that abandoned me."

"No, you weren't abandoned. You were selected by a program that assessed the genetic potential in infants."

Natasha walked closer to Melina, her face a morph of shock and tears. "I was taken?"

"I believe a bargain was struck, your family paid off. But your mother, she never stopped looking for you. She was like you in that way with your daughter. She was relentless."

"What happened to her? How do you know about my daughter?"

"Dreykov had her killed." She looked over to the room beside her, the one that the rest of their family was in. "And as for your daughter... she lived a good life. She tried to help people as much as she could."

"Lived a good life? No, no, Melina, what?"

Melina tried not to be obvious with her glances toward the wall. She didn't want to give away that Natasha's daughter was Kat, it just wasn't in her place to say. "I've read up in all of her files. She was strong and was possibly going to live up to your glory. But, the Red Room lost contact with her seven years ago. No one has heard from her sense.

Natasha looked down, a tear spilling down her cheek. "I've always found it best not to look into the past."

Natasha tried to clear her mind, keeping it off the subject of what seemed to be her deceased daughter. "Then why'd you save this?" She held a book in her hands, one she had known all of her childhood in Ohio. A photo album with pictures of her and Yelena.

She flipped through the contents, taking a moment to pause on each of the pictures. She admired the kids who had memories like these that weren't fake. "I remember this day. We shot Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and summer vacation all in one day. Different backdrops."

"Mmm." Melina hummed, thinking back to the times with their "fake" family that she had tried to push to the back of her mind.

"I knew all the presents under the tree were just empty boxes, but I didn't care. I want to open every single one. Just for a second, I hoped it would feel real."

She flipped to the back of the book, seeing a picture taped in there of a little girl with a pink bunny, right before Melina snatched it from her hands, closing it tight. "Stop this."

"Why are you doing this?"

Melina turned around, facing Natasha. "Why does a mouse born in a cage run on that little wheel? Do you know I was cycled through the Red Room four times before you were even born? Those walls are all I know, I was never given a choice."

"But you're not a mouse, Melina. You were just born in a cage but that's not your fault." It wasn't Ekaterina's fault that she was probably under some form of mind control at the moment.

"Mhm. Tell me, how did you keep your heart?"

"I want to find her." Natasha looked down, sniffling. "I want to tell her about you. About how the pain only makes us stronger." She looked at Melina, pressing her lips in a thin line. "Didn't you tell us that? What you taught me kept me alive."

Melina opened her mouth, too speechless to say anything comforting to Natasha. "I'm sorry. I already alerted the Red Room. They'll be here any minute."

Natasha nodded. She had expected nothing less from Melina. "And what are we gonna do about it?"

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"Let's not keep him waiting." Melina faced taskmaster, eyeing the bodies of what she considered her family. Of course, this wasn't the real Melina. This was Natasha in disguise, hoping to find an entrance to the Red Room and take it down once and for all.

Hoping to find her daughter alive, and safe.