Chapter Text
She’s seventeen, a fully fledged graduate, when she first meets the Soldier. They’re old enough now, in the Red Room, to know that friendships only cause pain and connections will always be used against you, and yet the other girls in the room whisper at night, warnings.
Don’t let him get to your neck.
He won’t stop unless the handlers say so.
A machine. A man. A monster.
Monster. It sticks with her through those first few days before she is taken into the training room. The handlers taught them from young ages that they were monsters, they were the things to be feared and so to hear the word whispered with such fear sends a feeling through her body that she doesn’t think she’s ever felt before.
She has. 1997 on an air strip in Cuba, a small blonde girl’s hand clutched in her own.
But she understands it when they bring her face to face with him. There’s a blankness in his eyes that she’s never seen before, not even in the older graduates. A blankness like all that was human was stripped away in something that she has never been forced to endure. He scares her, but she follows orders.
The first time, she wakes up, gasping for air on the training room floor, bruises forming around her neck. He stands in the corner, waiting for orders and a handler crouches down in front of her. She knows without words that they’re disappointed, she knows without words that they wouldn’t make him stop next time.
In the dorm, the other girls peer at her, eyes flit over the bruises on her neck, their camaraderie like the soothing creams she won’t get.
They never watch the others fight him, not like they watch two girls fight to the death. They don’t get to learn his fighting style. She thinks that might be the point. One girl at a time, pulled out of their other lessons, other preparations, and sometimes- mostly- they return.
Every night they wait, handcuffed to their beds, unspeaking, waiting to see if the last girl to be taken that day will be shoved in or not. She keeps her eyes shut every time, not wanting to see their injuries, remembering that they only stop him the first time.
He will kill them.
“Again.”
He stands in front of her again, but she is prepared this time, knows he has super strength, knows that he cannot be taunted or seduced like any normal man. None of their field training will work in here: in here, it is pure survival.
He starts almost immediately, knocking her to the ground. Blood trickles from her nose, he must have burst a blood vessel, and she can taste it in her mouth, either from there or from the split lip. The taste is familiar, grounding. He knocks her down again.
A song plays in her head. A man, almost the same brunet colour singing into a spatula, a woman and a girl laughing. The importance.
I get knocked down, but I get up again.
A last taste of happiness.
She hurls herself back up at him.
The moves he performs are the same as before and she dodges them effortlessly, proud of herself until she realises he has her backed against the wall and is leaning to grab her throat. She remembers being in that exact position, reaching for another girl’s throat, knowing that it was a case of me or her, remembers the feeling of bones grinding, lungs gasping. They had always looked panicked in those final moment, no matter how far along they were in training.
She would not be one of them.
Lunge. Jump. Use your legs, wrap them around the opponent’s head. Grab onto their hair. They can’t see now, can’t hear if you position correctly.
She squeezes her thighs together, feels his head leaving imprints on her skin and squeezes harder. His hands come up to her legs, grabbing, pulling, scratching, ripping her uniform and cutting into her skin. He’s disorientated. She ignores the pain and uses her body to throw their combined weight backwards.
He lands hard. Blinking up at her, surprise an actual emotion in his eyes, but she doesn’t allow that to throw her, pulls a knife out with the move and presses it to his throat, doesn’t dig in. He’s valuable to them, they wouldn’t like it if she kills him, but she has proven her strength.
Something else flashes in his expression, recognition maybe, familiarity. Something… human.
“Steve…” the word is breathed, almost silent and she can’t see his lips move through the mask, if they even do. His expression blanks out again almost immediately and she doubts. She imagined the sound, the word, the name.
A throat clears. She climbs off, sheathes the knife. Hands turn her around. They’re smiling, proud.
“Get her a new uniform.”
She’s passed the test.
Later, in ballet, she can feel eyes on her. The other girls, the handlers. It’s never a good thing. Still, she performs the moves with a little more vigour than normal: she can defeat the soldier.
“Surprise,” one girl hisses at her later, “is your only weapon against him.”
She unlaces her shoes and stands. No one said anything, any communication can be used against you, but she holds the advice against her chest.
“Again.”
They’re more lenient now, now that she has come out of five fights with him unscathed (mostly) allowing her to tap out of some of the more extreme moves, teaching her how to escape almost impossible holds.
She likes to think that he knows her now, recognises her, thinks that she can see something in his eyes, but it’s hard to read an expression when she can only see part of his face. He doesn’t know her name and she doesn’t know his. They are Soldier and Widow respectively. She has used that against him before, called him Soldier, ordered him to stop and he has. That was their third fight. One of the handlers had actually laughed at that, allowed her to escape the room early.
Maybe he calls her Red, maybe he thinks of her as Widow. He must know her.
His body hits the mats, her landing a few feet away from where she had released herself from the same hold she prefers. Crouched, one hand to balance, one out behind, just in case, ready to pounce again. He doesn’t move.
She creeps closer, a knife at the ready, prepared if this is a trick. He still doesn’t move. She presses the tip of the knife to the back of his head. Nothing.
“Soldier?” She whispers, lips not moving, can’t let the handlers see.
He turns his head at that, the black mask somehow off, revealing his lower face and she is struck suddenly by the softness of his angles, the slight shadow of a beard, the way it reminds her of a man that once cared for her, so buried in her subconscious that she can’t even call the name to mind.
“James.” He corrects, smiles up at her carefully. “Good job, Widow.”
“Natas—”
Hands grasp at her shoulders pulling her up, away, out of the room. She doesn’t dare look back.
The next time she sees him, the mask is back in place and the eyes are blank again. Humanity, once again, wiped.