Cornelia Street - Avengers

A Selection

"But I gotta be careful. Gotta watch what I say."

Siberia, 2015

(BITTERSUITE, Billie Eilish)

...

Eighteen years old, Alyona had been crafted to be strong and obedient. Hard and cruel, but careful. She was everything that Massimo had intended her to be from the very beginning of time. Alyona had changed a lot in the past year. She was nobody's daughter but HYDRA's. A weapon, an unwilling pawn within their chess match.

Dreykov's original intentions to have her lead the Red Widow program forged in her name had succeeded, but she had grown far too powerful to even fight with them. It was a bore, child play that benefited no one. 

And as The Red Widow program was thriving, the Red Room's hope for her died right alongside it. Massimo's vision had ceased to exist right before his eyes.

HYDRA didn't need Alyona Krasnaya any longer, for she had died long ago, but what was left in her wake was no longer their Red prodigy. Their Crimson Assassin bent and moulded to their every whim. It was something entirely different, someone born in the wake of Alyona's death. Someone not even HYDRA could control. 

Under the trials of Squad 88 in Sokovia, HYDRA was forced to bear the brunt of more than a thousand deaths. Experiments who had failed to respond to the brunt of a strange stone containing valuable yet unknown power, a power which had been extracted for the very trials.

Out of 2,765 total experiments, only four had survived. And she was one of them. To their advantage, she truly was unstoppable now, but to their downfall. She now had the power to turn against them, had she wanted to. But if there was one thing that Massimo had left, it was the Super Soldier serum. 

Alyona disagreed with it tremendously. But there was no way he would listen to her, he no longer saw her as his own daughter, she was simply HYDRA's creation. But she would never forget the screams of the new men and women brought in as subjects. Alyona was forced to sleep and wake amongst the echoes of their nightly screams, and upon morning they were even worse. 

Even if they never lived more than a week. Despite the absence of their training, they were still so much stronger than Alyona, and even the majority of the other Siberian soldiers.

Alexander Pierce, whom she would come to know, had even called upon his Winter Soldier to train them, and she was forced to watch the exhaustion and agony seeping into James' body every day. 

She was forced to bandage his broken skin and limbs every moonlit night that she would sneak into his quarters, forced to listen to him scream as she held his hand to her heart, holding his tear-stained skin in her hands as she mended his body. Nonetheless, she was forced to watch endlessly. What else could she do?

"I would like to test your limits," Alexander Pierce informed Alyona as she stepped inside his office downstairs.

"Yes sir. What do you have in mind?" She asked politely, tucking her hands behind her back. He turned to stand by the window, one which would appear as a mirror to those on the other side, but was nothing but clear glass to them. Straight into the new Soldiers' training room. 

She watched him closely as he watched James fight with the other soldiers, a brutal and seemingly endless fight that tore her soul apart to watch. The Winter Soldier was the world's greatest assassin, but a man's soul could truly only take so much.

With each punch thrown, each kick delivered, Alyona couldn't help but marvel at the sheer power and grace with which James fought. There was a primal ferocity in his gaze, a fire that burned. It was as if he was tapping into a primal instinct.