Road to War Part II: Yes, Anastasia

Show me the ways to button up buttons that have forgotten they're buttons

She doesn't know how long she trained in the Red Room, as it was called.  She doesn't know when she found out it was more than just a weird sort of dance studio, but she doesn't think she was surprised to learn it.  Perhaps because she'd been surrounded by secrets her whole life, but becoming a secret herself hadn't seemed like much of a step.  It took years, she knew, before she was allowed to leave the facility for the first time.  She is relatively sure she was in her late teens by then.

Though she was the youngest of the Widows, she was one of the first ones to be sent out on a mission.  Of course, their numbers had significantly decreased by that time; there were only nine left of the original twenty-eight.  Only nine who passed the program.  Now, she doesn't know what happened to the others, or even why most of them disappeared.  Just one morning, the bed was carefully made but the personal belongings were gone.  It didn't happen often, she believes, less than once a month.  It made it all the more disturbing, and she knows it was to keep them in line, keep them from questioning their orders.  Unknown consequences are much more effective than had they been told what happened.

In the years since she left Russia, she has looked for files on the program, to see why the others were chosen or failed.  What happened to those who did not finish?  Had they been killed?  Assigned to another program?  She doesn't know; the data she can find is inconclusive.  Much of it has been heavily redacted if transferred to a digital copy, but the majority was kept on paper.  They didn't want the information found.  She has since given up trying, and tries to convince herself that her past doesn't matter.

It does, of course.  It always will.  She has a lot to make up for, though she isn't sure how she will do it now.  SHIELD may be reforming, and there are new Avengers to train, but her heart isn't in it after what happened.  Not yet, anyway.  So she'll lay low, but help if she can.

A shiver runs through her and she sighs; the water's gone cold.  Unsteadily, she gets to her feet and pulls the plug, drying herself off briskly as she watches the water circle down the drain.  Once she is attired in loose sweatpants and a tank top, she leaves her bathroom and does a perimeter check of her bedroom.  Frowning slightly, she laments the low-tech nature of this safe house and goes to do the same of the whole place.  It takes a few minutes and she has goose bumps from the chilly night air before she has returned to her room.  It's very late, she thinks, finally sinking into her bed.  She hopes her thoughts will still enough for her to sleep, but isn't optimistic.  There is a lot on her mind tonight.

When she came to the Red Room, she was an inquisitive little girl.  Cleverer, perhaps, than her peers, and more aware of government secrets than others, but not particularly gifted in espionage.  As far as she knows.  What they did to her, to all the girls, in the Red Room was mold perfect spies.  It started with the dancing.  She progressed to the next level of girls after less than a month, while many in the white group had been there for years.  Most of those girls did not complete the program.  Yelena did.  Yelena was slower, less graceful, but more determined to succeed than most.  Not as determined as Natalia, though.

Many of her memories are gone of the trainings.  She doesn't know if that's the result of her own repressions or something else.  But the next thing she remembers clearly after that first, frightening day, was her first mission outside.

"Natalia, come along," Madame Pauk told her at breakfast.  She obediently put down her fork and followed her mistress.  They walked to that office Natalia remembered but had not entered again in all the long years she had been in the facility.  She was too tall to swing her legs from the chair if she were invited to sit; she was almost as tall as Madame Pauk.  Her hair was long, shimmering red down to her waist, but rarely escaped the bun all of the girls wore during the day.  She was thinner than the headmistress, but in all the right places.