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PROLOGUE
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IVANNA NILEOLAVNA KNEW PAIN.
Or she thought she did.
Ivanna learned very early on that physical and emotional pain were two different things. Both had to be buried, hidden, and never brought up for the sake of not receiving a harsh punishment. She grew up in the Red Room-one of Dreykov's girls. She'd never known a sense of family, nor would she ever be able to locate a biological connection or create her own. So, when she was assigned to be part of an undercover family in Ohio, she grasped onto that feeling. She felt safe anytime Alexei read her a story to bed, and loved when Melina took care of her injuries. And, for once, she didn't feel alone whenever she played with Yelena and Natasha. Those falls from the swingset or her bike...they would be the last pain she'd ever felt in her life.
In 1995, when Alexei and Melina simply let Dreykov take the girls back, Ivanna was scared. She did not want to return to the little soldier life she'd been forced to experience. To feel unloved and alone, and like a pawn. Ivanna struggled and fought, crying to be let go-to go home. But it didn't work.
She was ten at the time.
By the time Ivanna was fifteen, she was amongst a small group of Dreykov's Girls to be experimented on. And this was different than the serums they usually gave them. Ivanna had cried in pain for hours, so many hours. It writhed through her body, causing her to curl up and contort in the bed, her cries echoed on the walls of the small room they left her in-until the pain simply stopped. Ivanna remembered rolling onto her back, simply staring at the bare ceiling above her as the door was finally opened and she was lifted from it, dragged into a training room, and forced onto the sparring mat. There had stood Natasha, someone she rarely saw anymore. The people watching, the scientists, simply waved a hand. Natasha made the first move, easily kicking Ivanna in the face and causing the older teen to stumble slightly, still disoriented from her night.
Ivanna knew what a kick felt like. She knew the impact it would have, or what it should have. The blonde lingered on her knees on the floor, a look of confusion on her face as she brought her hand to her lip. She pulled her fingers away, stunned to see blood on the tips of them. Her eyes widened, and she rubbed her fingers over the area, again and again. She expected to feel the sharp stabbing pain that came from having a split lip. But she felt nothing. Ivanna glanced in the direction of the scientists, her brows drawing together as one commanded Natasha to strike her once more.
The redhead did.
The blonde didn't feel anything.
Pain immunity. That's how they explained it to her. It would make it so she could focus when out, so that she wouldn't be stopped by the pain of anything when doing her work. A clear mind meant the task could get done faster.
And she was the only one of the girls to properly take the dosage.
Like that, Ivanna was training with him more often. The Soldier.
It was strenuous, tiring. And he was much faster, more agile, and stronger.
However, the serum left her with more than pain immunity. As she would discover during a session against The Soldier. He had her on the ground, pinned and holding her down. She was coughing up blood and struggling beneath the weight of his body, the strength of his metal limb. In a desperate attempt, or maybe an act of stupidity, Ivanna had grasped his metal arm. She used all the force she could to try and get him to release his grip, but he did not relent, and nobody called him off. All of the force she could, as it turned out, left The Soldier crying out in a way she hadn't expected, a jolt of what looked like lightning striking up his metal arm from her hands. His arm jerked, as if his nerves had been hit, and she kicked him off of her, gasping for air as she dragged her body away from his own. Ivanna Nileolavna had shocked The Soldier. And whether that ability had been intended or not, it would certainly be useful.
Eventually, Natalia Romanova and Ivanna Nileolavna would go from the trainees within the Red Room to official Black Widows. Psychologically changed from the little girls they had once been to the perfect soldiers in the eyes of Dreykov and his people. They did as they were trained and instructed, without any protest or struggle, until they appeared on S.H.E.I.L.D.'s radar. When Hawkeye was sent by the director to eliminate the women in Budapest, he saw a chance to instead utilize their abilities and what they could provide. Taking the chance to escape the Red Room, Natasha sold out Dreykov and, not wanting to lose a constant or worse, Ivanna, followed suit. The attempt was unsuccessful.
But they were free.
At least somewhat.
Scientists wanted to poke and prod at Ivanna, see what was in her blood that had caused these biological changes, the Red Room's testing had left her with. And frankly, Ivanna longed to know the answer as well. It was easier, being tested on. She couldn't feel it; she wasn't strapped to a bed, but she was still a subject and not a person.
Defecting to S.H.E.I.L.D. allowed Ivanna a new life, where she took on a new last name, Nichols, and changed herself in ways she liked. They helped break her and Natasha's psychological manipulation, but of course, traumas would remain. She got to pick her wardrobe and opted for darker hair, something different. There were a few things that Ivanna couldn't seem to shake in her first few years free. The dreaded fear that the Red Room would find them and force them back. The pit of loneliness seemed to grow more and more, even with the new colleagues she found herself surrounded by. The guilt in what she had left behind by escaping-who she had left behind.
Ivanna slowly learned to adapt and further harnessed the abilities forced upon her by the Red Room. She and Natasha had many nights together, knowing they were all they had for one another, even as Natasha grew closer to Clint Barton and his eventual family. They welcomed Ivanna always. But that would never change the longing for more things of her own. And she didn't believe she would know what that was until the day she was assigned to take a case file to an old gym, where she would run into the one and only, Steve Rogers.
