Silas Marner.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of Marvel LLC and Disney and are being used without the express permission for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended, nor is any profit being made.
A/N: While the story was proofread several times by myself, no beta was used in the making of this story, please pardon any missed typos and/or grammatical errors.
The title of the story is from one of my favorite books: Silas Marner, by George Eliot.
I don't know why, but I've been wanting to do a story where Peggy and Natasha meet, and this is what I came up with.
Summary: The Russians thought they had failed at creating their own supper-soldier, but they were wrong. One lone girl survived, she was stronger, faster, and smarter than most adults. And she was completely alone. After Steve's death, Peggy Carter suffered through her own loss, alone. But when she found Natasha, they both found that family wasn't always the one you were born in.
~OOOOOO~
"In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."
― George Eliot, Silas Marner
Peggy Carter was not unaffected by what she was seeing, not by a long shot. She was just better, more practiced, at hiding it.
And she had better be.
She was a woman, after all, living and working in a man's world. She had to be smarter, harder and just plain better than every man, or she might as well go home, put on an apron, and start baking cookies.
Still, the scent was overpowering, like meat that had been left in the sun all day and was now rotten and rancid. The smell, left to concentrate in the closed-off space bombarded their noses and mouths, and clung to their skin and clothes once the doors were opened.
'I thought the Russians were suppose to be good guys,' she heard one of the men grouse. She could hear other men retching in the background, and could taste her own bile rising.
Because as bad as the smell was, the view was worse. Small bodies, dozens upon dozens of them, were strewn about the large Colosseum-type room like they were nothing but trash. Their eyes were wide open, and she could read the terror in them as clearly as if it were words stamped on their foreheads.
They were all little girls, their ages were indeterminate, but Peggy would hazard a guess that most if not all were prepubescent. Their were redheads, brunettes, and blondes, curled and straight-haired girls with skin tones that ranged from pale ivory to olive to deeply tanned. But not one of them, Peggy noted, had an once of baby fat on them, anywhere. Their bodies were lean and toned; their faces looked far more mature than any child should be.
The brunette briefly closed her eyes, and said a prayer that there was in deed a merciful god. And that these poor, young souls would know the peace in death that was clearly denied them in life.
Moments later she straightened her back, and turned her attention to the men milling about with their weapons drawn. They were hardened soldiers who had spent their years either fighting Nazis or Hydra, or both, and yet they were allowed to show emotions where she was not. There were several pairs of red-rimmed eyes, their owners doing their best to remain stoic. But it was hard, the death of a child was always painful, it tugged at something primal in every adult (at least in theory). Seeing multitudes of small broken bodies was enough to break even the hardest of men.
'All right gentlemen,' she started, her tone was clipped but strained. It helped focus the men's attention on her and not the massacre before them. (There was time later for a pint of whiskey, and a good long cry when she was alone.) She broke the group into teams of two, (patently ignoring any offers of help) and had them take different areas of what was left of the Red Room Academy's sprawling campus, leaving herself alone as was her preference these days.
After Steve's death, Peggy felt restless and empty. She worked alone more often than not. She took assignments meant for three and four man teams, not because she had some kind of death-wish, but because she wanted/needed to feel/remind herself that she was alive. That life went on, that there were still evil men in the world that needed to be killed. That Steve's sacrifices were not made in vain, and that even now he sits in heaven, looks down and thinks; that's my girl.
(This was the lie she told her self everyday. It was a pretty lie that hid a painful, ugly truth.)
She left the room, and strode out onto a cobbled pathway that led to a smaller building a quarter of a mile away. The night breeze felt good against her heated skin, and she was able to breathe clearly again. She inhaled, and exhaled deep shuddering breaths. Now that she was alone, she allowed her iron mask to slip, and a look of pain flickered across her face.
'Those children,' she muttered. 'Those poor damned children.'
High above, the pale moon stared down at her dispassionately, it was full and bright, causing the trees to cast eerie shadows across the path, across her face and body. Once or twice she heard rustling in the bushes, and when she shone her light over to the sound, she could have sworn she saw pale skin, and a shock of red hair flash by at impossible speeds.
She shook her head to clear it, and then continued on her way. Her hand touched her sidearm, the cold metal providing comfort, and security. The torch in her left hand made wide arcing sweeps of the pathway, and the woods framing it.
There was no way, she told herself, that there was anyone outside of herself and her troops in the compound. Certainly nothing human. Her mind was playing games with her, or maybe she saw a ghost. (She had seen stranger things in her career than restless spirits.)
There was no way that anyone could have survived such whole scale slaughter. The Russians, if nothing else were efficient, they would not allow a witness to survive and possibly reveal what monstrous experiments were being performed on these girls in the name of national security.
She also doubted there was a single file, or scrap of paper carelessly left behind, detailing anything that had been going on here.
But, if the head of the SSR wanted the place searched from top to bottom, then that was exactly what she, and her men were going to do.
There were rumors that the Russians were jealous of the great success of Captain America, and were trying to perfect their own super-soldier serum. But, unlike the SSR, they were planning for something long term, lest they would have picked a few of their best adult, male troops, given them the shot, and then sent them out to fight the Nazis and Hydra. Instead, according to SSR sources, this Academy was both lab, and training grounds to what they hoped would be a small army of amazonian warriors.
They're planning for a different kind of war, Peggy thought. One not fought out in the open with guns blazing on the battlefield, but stealthily, in the bedroom, under the cover of night, and in dark alleyways.
She finally reached the building, a squat, square brick and wooden structure. On the door was a scarlet hourglass that reminded the brunette of the black widow spider. Is that what they were doing, she wondered. Turning a crop of girls into deadly little spiders? Assassins for the state?
She pushed the door open, and as it swung inward she freed her gun from its holster, and released the safety, but kept it at her side. She stood at the entrance for a count of five, and then stepped in.
The room was large, but had very few windows, and they were high and bared. Row after row of bunk beds were revealed to Peggy by the beam of her flashlight. Doing quick math she was able to figure out that there was at least 100 of them. One hundred little girls, alone and frightened and being put through some kind of hellish training regimen.
The brunette walked up and down the rows, making the mental note that all the beds had been neatly made, military style, corners sharp, and not a single wrinkle. She bet she could bounce a quarter off them. She continued walking, the sound of her heels on wooden floor the only sound being made. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, there was no chance that there would be any kind of files in the girls' dormitory.
By the time she got to the top of the last row, she was thinking she had wasted enough time and was ready to call it day. But that was when Peggy heard a tiny whimper. She stood stock still thinking she had imagined it, but not 10 seconds later she heard it again. It was coming from under the bunk beds, and it reminded the woman of a wounded kitten.
She placed her flashlight on the ground so that it was illuminating the underside of the bed, while leaving an arm free to defend herself. The arm with the gun tensed, and her body was wired. It could be a kitten, it could also be a trap.
What Peggy saw when she bent to look, nearly took her breath away. There was a little girl, no older than five, staring at her with impossibly large green eyes huddled as tightly as she could in the corner of the room. At first she thought the little girl was just extremely dirty, but upon closer inspection, the brunette realized the girl's body was covered in soot and burns.
She must be in so much pain, Peggy thought. But what was even more miraculous than her survival, and her pain tolerance was that right before the brunette's eyes the little girls injuries were healing. Slowly, but surely new, pink skin was forming.
'The serum worked,' Peggy said quietly, and then shook her head. There are more important things to worry about. She tried to move closer to the girl, but the child moved deeper into the corner, her whimpering became agitated, her breathing was labored, and her face was twisted in a grimace of pain.
The little girl was panicking, so Peggy stopped moving. She hiked her skirt up a bit and sat on the ground, not caring on how unladylike she looked. There was a mere three feet separating the two females, and they each stared at the other, studying, and waiting for the other to make a move.
'Sweetheart, I'm not going to hurt you. I promise. The bad people who did this are long gone,' Peggy said in Russian, her voice soft. She hadn't used that tone since her brother was baby, and she used to make up songs to help him sleep.
The girl blinked at her owlishly, but didn't move. She stared at the woman's gun wearily. Even though her voice was soft, and gentle, the child knew what the brunette's weapon could do to flesh and bone. She had seen enough girls' body bleed out on cold tile floors as the men in white coats tsked, and called them failures.
'You must be in a lot pain,' Peggy continued. She made a show putting of putting the safety on her gun, and then she put it back in its holster. 'I'm not going hurt you,' she repeated. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out two pieces of peppermint candy. She unwrapped them and rolled one to the girl and then placed the other in her mouth to show it wasn't poisoned. The girl quickly mimicked her, her hunger getting the better of her.
'My name is Peggy Carter, do you have a name?'
'Natasha.' Her voice was weak, and hoarse. She was not used to speaking.
'Would you like to leave this place and come with me, Natasha?' Peggy stretched her hand out. The little girl stared at it apprehensively. Long minutes passed in silence in the bunker. The brunette heard her men in the distance. They weren't bothering to be quiet, or subtle. Peggy was worried that their noise would frighten the child into a panic. But the older female kept quiet, and still, and allowed the girl to come to her.
Slowly Natasha reached out and grasped the brunette's hand tightly. She crawled the rest of the way out from under the bed, and it was then that the older woman realized that the redhead was nearly naked. She let go of the girl's hand and took her uniform jacket off and placed it gently, mindful of causing pain, over the girl's shoulders. The little girl promptly put her arms through the sleeves, and Peggy was in awe once again at the child's pain tolerance. Anyone else would have been writhing in pain, if they were even conscious, or alive. But this little girl's only concession was a few whimpers.
What did they do to this child, Peggy wondered. The super soldier serum gave the person accelerated healing, but they still felt pain the same as anyone else. For her to be like this meant she had gone through intense training (torture?) for her to be able withstand the pain she must be in so stoically.
The brunette lifted the girl, who weighed hardly anything, with one arm and stood up. The little redhead wrapped her arms around the woman's neck tightly, almost painfully. ( Natasha was stronger than she looked). And the two left the building.