The Winter's Sun (Bucky Soulmate Fanfiction)

Chapter 8: Pasts Tainted Red

AN: Alright guys fair warning, I did use google translate. So to anyone who actually speaks Russian, I am deeply sorry if I got it completely wrong. Thank you to everyone who's reading this story and everyone leaving reviews. I love hearing what you guys think.

Molodoy: young one

Uchitel: teacher

~*~

Winter looked out at the group of young girls that he had spent the last couple of years training. None were excellent, but a few were passable. The one with the red hair would be one of them, he was sure of it. There was a certain coldness she had at her disposal that would allow her to do the things necessary to survive.

The girl they called Natalia did not look like much at first, but underneath those childish features lied a fighter who would do whatever it took to see tomorrow. This was something Winter had come to begrudgingly respect about her.

It was hard to remember that despite their lethal nature, these girls were nothing more than children. And children were naturally drawn to what they didn't understand, which is why whenever he wasn't training them he could feel their eyes roving across his form trying to categorize all the different ways that made him a threat. Those eyes had all quickly scattered when he sought after them. All except Natalia's.

She had gazed at him as though she were trying to break him down layer by layer just so she could see what made him tick. She stared unabashedly and not even his iciest glare made her flinch away. But the worst part wasn't her ever-present eyes, it was her questions.

When Hydra first sent him to what they were calling the Red Room Academy, he had thought this whole assignment seemed senseless. What was the point of training twenty-eight girls when they only intended for one to survive? Winter thought it was a waste of potential.

He was going to break them down, push their boundaries further then they thought possible, and he would do it all without an ounce of regret. This was the mission his handler had given him, and he would complete it with swift efficiency.

At least that was the plan.

All it took was one little red headed girl to throw him off with her lack of fear towards him. She still got on his nerves with her incessant need to engage him in conversation, but over the few years Winter had come to realize that it was the norm for them now. She would ask him a question and he would either answer it or ignore her and she would take it in stride.

Sometimes when he would look at Natalia the flashes of a young girl with brown hair, so similar to his, would flood his senses and the name Rebecca would echo in his head. But he had learned long ago that echoes hurt, so he cast it from his mind as though it were nothing. He couldn't tell if that made it easier or more difficult to be around Natalia.

"Собираетесь ли вы сегодня спарринг или мы просто тренируемся?"

Speak of the devil and she shall appear.

"English Natalia." Without looking up he flung one of his knives at her head, "You know better by now." Just like he expected, Natalia simply tilted her head out of the danger and let the blade sink into the wall behind her. He would have been pissed if she let it hit her. Not because she would have been injured but because after how long he spent training her, such a failure on her part would make him look like an inadequate teacher.

Although Winter understood every word that she had said, it was still wrong for her to converse in Russian with him. In order to improve on their language skills, the girls were instructed to only speak English when they were with him. Something about how good spies would be able to speak English fluently, but the best spies had the power to fool you into believing they were American from birth.