Work Text:
One of the first things she was taught under the care of Leviathan was how to clean a rifle. The Mosin–Nagant, at the time, was nearly longer than she was tall, heavy and unwieldy in her small hands, with more parts and components than she could keep track of. The metal of it was cold, merciless as it pinched her thin fingers in quick response to her errors. It was just a collection of parts to her, then, a conglomerate of steel and wood that she could barely hold in her arms but was expected by her teachers to know better than her own soul.
Wood snapped threateningly across the table, the fading Cyrillic scrawl on the meter stick holding her gaze for a half second before she dared to look upwards. Her teacher was an elderly woman, face wrinkled and eyes deep-set, but even with her frail appearance she didn't dare disobey her. She was in charge, a matriarch of unchallenged reign, her word as good as law.
"Natalia," her voice was harsh as a blizzard wind, and the rasp of her voice swallowed up most of her words. What Natalia did hear, however, was that she must work faster. That such slowness on the battlefield would kill her. It set a shiver of fear down her spine.
"Take it to the Soldier," her teacher's English was clipped and sharp, hardly smooth enough to pass as natural, but she dared not to hesitate. Only English was allowed during training. Speaking their mother tongue would brand them a target to their enemy faster than anything else. The rifle felt like a weight of lead in her arms, heavy, foreign, cumbersome as she had to nearly drag the weapon to where the Soldier was waiting.
He was little more than a shadow, a silent sentinel that flitted at the edges of the room. She, and the rest of the girls, were wary of him. His face was obscured with a mask and his movements were calculated, quick, like a bird of prey. The weight of the weapon in her arms seemed insignificant as he crouched down to her level, messy hair falling in his eyes, the darkness of it stark in contrast to his pallor skin.
"The gun?" his voice was entirely unlike what she had expected. She'd expected it to be harsh, to be loud and commanding but it was soft, so soft and hushed that she almost missed it. He held his hand out, palm up, waiting for her to hand over the rifle. Natalia stood there for a moment, realizing that she'd hugged the heavy weapon against her chest as she had walked over. Handing it over was difficult, but he took it from her gently with his right hand, inspecting the weapon in front of her, checking how she had cleaned and rebuilt it.
The rifle seemed to come alive under his practiced hands. He went through the motions of loading a round into it, cycling it through, taking care to inspect every noise and movement it made as he worked it with all the ease of years of familiarity. He pulled the bolt back to clear the chamber and the rifle made a metallic grinding sound, a mechanical protest of misaligned parts. He barely faltered, pushing the bolt forward again and looking over to her again. He reached out with his left hand, taking her own hand and placing it over the rifle's chamber.
"The parts aren't lined up perfectly," his voice was still as soft and even as before, wholly non-threatening, "you can feel where they don't line up." He moved her hand over the smooth metal, the raised misaligned parts easily identifiable. His metal fingers were gentle but still as cold and unfeeling as the rifle under her hands. They were both weapons, tools to be used to wage war, and it terrified her. Still, his gentleness confused her, so foreign that it caught her off guard and she just stood there, looking up at him.
There was a moment of pause before the Soldier let go of her hand, reaching up to his muzzle. She watched as he tugged the mask away from his face, exposing his face. His features were thin, scruffy, with deep sleepless bruises under his eyes. She knew she should still fear him but some part of her felt sympathetic, felt the same as him. She realized at that moment that they were both cogs in Leviathan and HYDRA's machine. Suddenly he didn't seem as scary anymore.
During her time in the Red Room she learned how to disassemble and rebuild that Mosin–Nagant with her eyes closed. It came apart and together again easily in her hands, and she slowly understood what her teachers had meant when they wanted her to know the weapon better than her own soul. It was almost an extension of herself, a part of her body, and she knew every crack, scrape and scratch as though they were scars on her own body.
She was edging up on her teens now, no longer a wide-eyed and fearful child but an accomplished hunter of men. The Soldier now rested beside her on his belly, eye down the scope of his own Mosin–Nagant as they waited for their target to come out into the open. They were both beasts born of war, not fully human but not truly animals, either.
"Natalia," the Soldier, James, as he'd confessed one night following one of his strange absent episodes, warned softly, barely audible over the wind snaking through the trees. Her hands slid to rest over the trigger of her own rifle; it was her mission, her proving ritual, and the Soldier was only there if she were to fail.
Her gaze through the scope was clear, and soon she had her sights resting over the heart of her target where he'd moved into view. An arms dealer, barely more important than an insect to the Red Room in the long run, but she knew she mustn't fail. Her first kill had to be clean, professional, efficient. The metal of the trigger seared cold against her finger but she didn't let it distract her. She exhaled slowly, her breath a mist of warmth in the bitter winter air, and as her heartbeat slowed she took aim, tightened the stock close to her shoulder, and pulled the trigger.
The rifle cracked loudly against the rocky outcrop where she and James had hidden themselves, and she quickly sighted the scope down to see if she had hit her mark. The heavyset man was nowhere in her field of vision, a spray of crimson creeping up the wall he had been standing in front of the only sign that he'd even been there just a moment before.
"Target is down." the Soldier's voice was calm, but even she could hear the pleased edge to it. She cycled the bolt and let the spent shell casing pop out, dropping silently into the snow where the hot metal sent up a small puff of steam. Without reloading it she let herself slide down out of sight behind several large rocks, James doing the same as they knew being seen after that would put them in jeopardy. They weren't overly concerned over being found; they were a comfortable distance away and there hadn't been anyone nearby to witness it, but it was better to err on the side of caution.
She knew she should have felt excitement, accomplishment, some sense of pride in having completed her first mission and having passed initiation but instead she just felt sick. It wasn't the blood, she'd seen plenty of it in her life, both hers and not, nor had she seen the dead body for more than a second, something she had seen more times than she would like to count in her short life. She'd never killed before, though, and something felt deeply different inside of her.
"It feels terrible, doesn't it," James spoke softly, making her look over to where he was now leaning up against one of the rocks, "eventually you won't feel a thing when you pull the trigger. I don't know which is worse." his voice was hollow, the barest hint of a foreign accent creeping up into his words. Natalia swallowed thickly, trying to keep her traitorous stomach from turning over again. He was right, she didn't know which was worse, either.
"... c'mere," he said suddenly, motioning with her right hand over next to him. She put her rifle's safety on and slung its strap over her shoulder before settling in next to him, leaning heavily against his side for the warmth he provided. "You did well, Маленький паук, I'm proud of you. You've come a long way with that rifle." his voice was quiet and warm, and she smiled despite herself at the silly nickname he'd given her when she'd been just a kid. Little Spider. He was like a brother now, a solitary familial bond that she clung to desperately.
"I'm proud of you."
Those words would echo in her mind years, lifetimes later, when she found herself water-eyed with pain at the bottom of a ravine in Iraq, the Soldier's finger hovering over the trigger, a weapon of gunmetal and war like the Mosin–Nagant that fired the bullet through her stomach.