Chapter Text
O
Melina learns to be air: silent, invisible, everywhere.
Traversing minefields without making a sound. Slipping past world-class security without detection. Traveling to more countries than most people can name before she enters her teens.
With each passing test and year, every muscle grows stronger — pain, she tells herself, will do that. Make her stronger. Make her the best.
She learns to welcome it.
With each passing test and year, every organ grows stronger, too. Every organ except her heart, which she’s not quite sure is there anymore at all. Not after snapping the neck of a girl she once called sister. Leveling a village of civilians. Slitting the throat of a child before they had the chance to cry out for their mother.
Somewhere along the way, they realize her strongest organ is her brain and put her in the science labs. She knows she’s a mouse caged in, but when they grant her the chance to run on the wheel, she can imagine, for just a moment, what it might feel like to be free.
She learns about plants. That the iris sibirica is her favorite flower — its colorful petals persisting through below-freezing temperatures.
She learns about the body. How the nervous system connects with the brain — techniques to trick yourself into feeling relaxed.
She learns about elements. That the symbol for gold is Au and silver is Ag — that there are even more fantastical riches than these hidden in science that she can discover. That, by being a scientist, she can do anything.
But even from the wheel, she can see the bars of the cell — see, for the first time, just how thick and deep they really are. How trapped she is and always will be.
She learns about plants. That the ricinus communis is the deadliest one in the world — able to kill someone quickly.
She learns about the body. How the nervous system connects with the brain — how to tune out the screams when she’s forced to cut a girl open to see for herself.
She learns about elements. That the symbol for arsenic is As and the symbol for mercury is Hg — that there are even more terrible things hidden in science that they will force her to discover. That, even by being a scientist, she is still air.
She learns the symbol for air, for oxygen, is O, and she finds it fitting.
The shape of that wheel she constantly runs on.
The shape of a zero.
The shape of nothing at all.
Change
They ship her to America and force her to play something they made sure she’d never be: a mother.
That first day in Ohio passes by like cement — hard and slow. Trying not to tense up when Alexei wraps an arm around her shoulder, putting on a show for the neighbors. Trying to get Natasha to fit in and play with the other kids. Trying to figure out what foods to make Yelena so she’ll eat something.
But the first year in Ohio passes by like the breeze — soft and fast. Trying not to get too used to her husband wrapping an arm around her while they sleep, warm and secure — so different from the chill of handcuffs. Trying to call her eldest daughter in for dinner, tear her away from her big group of friends from school. Trying to get her youngest to slow down so she doesn’t choke shoveling mac and cheese into her mouth.
Year two goes even faster until suddenly, before she knows it, it’s the beginning of year three.
Soon, she knows, they’ll ship her back to the Red Room and force her to pretend this was never real.
She wishes she could catch the time, pin it down like a butterfly.
But just like the butterfly behind glass, she knows they’re dead if she tries to make them stay.
She knows that time is fleeting and time is air and she has no choice but to keep breathing.
Even if it’s getting harder and harder to swallow the truth.
Breath
She’s washing the dishes when she hears Yelena yell — a petrified sound that cuts through the air and pierces her eardrum. She’s heard bones cracking and bombs exploding, many times by her own hand, and yet somehow, this is worse.
It’s strange, Melina thinks, to be screamed for instead of screamed at. For someone to scream because they want her near and not because they want her to back away.
She’s out the door in an instant, running toward the swingset and forgetting everything she’s been taught in training: about examining her surroundings before diving into potentially precarious situations. About self-preservation. At this moment, she doesn’t care about any danger that might befall her, doesn’t care much about herself at all.
All she cares about is the little girl — her little girl — huddled in the dirt, swing still blowing back and forth behind her like a metronome counting down their rapidly dwindling days.
It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s happened. She’s fallen off the swing, the brutal landing knocking the wind out of her.
“Hurts, Mommy,” Yelena cries, sobs shaking her body.
“Where, baby?” Melina asks, eyes scanning for any injuries that a first-aid kit couldn’t fix. “Show me where it hurts.”
Yelena points to her cut knee, her scratched elbows, her chest. Melina knows she must be talking about her lungs and not her heart. Her heart is still there, full, intact — Melina hasn’t found it in herself to break it yet. (Though, really, it might have been the more merciful thing to do. The more humane thing before sending her to a place without humanity.)
Melina racks her brain, thinking back to her lessons in the lab and finding a scientific solution to unblock the airway: stay calm, direct her focus, apply grounding pressure. She kneels down to Yelena’s level, preparing to implement the strategy, but before she can, Yelena jumps into her arms. She latches onto her, burying her tear-streaked face in her neck.
It catches Melina by surprise — her turn to have the wind knocked out of her — but she recovers in an instant.
It terrifies her, how natural it feels to hug back. It terrifies her more, knowing she’ll have to let go.
Yelena falls asleep as she holds her, taking deep, greedy breaths as if she’s storing up. As if the air might leave her again. And of course, it will. People will soon be trying to take the air from her every second she manages to stay alive.
But that second is not now.
Melina carefully cleans her wounds, whispering empty promises all the while.
Message
Here’s the thing about Alexei: he makes the easy things hard. Turning bedtime into an hour-long affair, indulging Yelena with ridiculous voices and far too many stories. Insisting he can fix the leaky pipe himself instead of just calling a plumber. And the lunches. Always the lunches.
Alexei makes them a whole to-do. Pulling out a cookie cutter and molding Yelena’s sandwiches into the shape of her favorite animal (a dog). Driving out of his way to pick up Natasha’s favorite juice pouches — a kind they only carry in the grocery store across town (so bright orange it stains her tongue). Writing notes on the napkins in the utensil drawer so Melina will find them when she goes to prepare her own meal (notes with words she memorizes without meaning to. Words like my wife and my love and the very air I breathe. The most beautiful words she’ll take to her grave alongside the ugliest skeletons in her overflowing closet).
She stupidly mentions them once, to a group of moms she’s trying to infiltrate, led by the truly insufferable PTA president Barb Williams. They’re talking about something frivolous, as per usual — romance and how they keep it alive. The concerns of people who have never had to fight tooth and nail to keep themselves alive.
They talk of dinners and date nights, candy hearts and candles, before turning to her and asking about Alexei.
She immediately brings up the notes because the best lies always have a grain of truth to them. (She immediately regrets bringing up the notes because it’s not a lie. Not anymore.)
Barb smirks, says she can see a blush threatening to creep into Melina’s cheeks and promises that their racy letters — her dirty little secret — is safe with them.
But she has it all wrong. It’s one of the only things that doesn’t make her feel dirty or little, and she wishes it was still her secret. Hers to keep. Something that belonged to her now.
Something that was ever hers to begin with.
For Melina, letting go has always been second nature. The only thing that lasts is the Red Room, the only person she has is herself — two truths so ingrained and universally acknowledged that loss is almost simple in its familiarity.
But she already knows this will not be the case when it comes time to say goodbye to Alexei — to the family they made together. That it will be the most complicated thing she’ll ever have to do.
That’s the thing about Alexei, after all. He makes the easy things hard.