In Their Hands ✧･ BARNES ✔

𝟎𝟏| один.

   NOBODY KNEW ABOUT THEM. They were silent and deceiving. They were silent and successful. They were always moving. They were intelligent and cold-hearted. They were manipulative and strategic. You would never see them coming, nor would you ever know their next move. They were so diligent at what they did; they were so perfect at what they trained them to do. You wouldn't find them after, you could never trace their footsteps. They were never weak. 

   That is how every girl within the Red Room was trained to be. Intelligent, cold-hearted, selfish, manipulative, trace-less, perfect, quick, but never weak. Never. 

   They didn't care about your age, or who your parents were, or who you might've been before. They raised you to kill. They manipulated you. They would hurt you and get you to do what they wanted. It was always in their control. It was always in their hands. You could only comply.

   They always had favorites, and the favorites were pushed the hardest. The most was expected of them, so they were hurt the worst but never treated any better. They barely feed you or treat you as if you are human. In some cases, they will tell you that you're not. You cannot disagree or choose to disobey. Always, you must comply.

   Even if you were the heir of the best assassins to be born out of the Red Room- as was Zola Iona Barnes- you were treated as if nothing. They might have expected more of you, but you would never be treated as anything more than the others. If anything, you would only be treated much worse.

   They kept the young girl in cages when she was too young to understand or to proceed with missions. The most she was fed was most likely a piece of bread every now and then. She would slowly eat and savor the only taste of the only food she had ever known in her three years of life. If she ate it too fast, then it would be gone, and she would have to wait another day or two to be fed again. 

   There was a small window to the side of her cage. It was the only place where she had ever seen light. One beam of light that struck through the window every day was the only sense of the outside world that she had. She was way too short to gaze outside of it, and even if she climbed on her shabby metal bed she still wouldn't be able to see.

   She didn't know much about her parents. Even if she didn't know it, her parents were still working in the Red Room facility. Her mother was just separated with the older group of girls, and her father was their weapon. Her mom was just thirteen years old when she gave birth to Zola. She wasn't supposed to be able to have children since they had sterilized her, but maybe they were being merciful or simply made a mistake. 

    Zola's mother knew that Zola was alive and unfortunately being held within the facility. She knew that James was still here as well. They would never have gotten rid of him. 

   Natalia was trained by James. She had always had some kind of one-sided infatuation for the soldier. She was usually trained by James rather than the Soldier,  but this specific day it was definitely the Winter Soldier. It must have been the guards' doing because they sat by and let it happen. They let him put the baby inside of her, even if she didn't want it, and even if they claimed to have sterilized her.

   Maybe they let it happen so that the baby could be used as a threat for the both of them, or maybe because they could use her to try and break Natalia's mask of deadpan. Maybe they wanted to make her life just a little harder.

   The young girl held her legs close to her chest and whimpered quietly. When the boots of the guards slammed on the floor in front of her cell, she tried to hide her face away. She hoped that maybe she was hidden enough and that they wouldn't come to take her. All they ever did to her at this age was switch her from cell to cell while pulling her hair and punching her and hurting her consistently.