She had once loved the color red. When she was little, her father had scrounged up enough money for red hair ribbons and presented them to her.
"For my littlest pearl," he'd said with a proud grin. Her brother had pouted. Papa had always liked her more, even if he loved Mikhail just as much. She had worn the ribbons every day to school, shining proudly in her hair. Mama and Papa had always believed in the power of education.
They were dead now. Nothing more than red spilled across the snow. She hated the color red now.
She was older now. She'd blossomed into a beautiful young woman, she was told. She didn't like to look in mirrors. There was always red slashed across her lips- it was alluring, her teachers said.
She had different teachers now. They were nothing like the teachers of her childhood. They did not encourage or instill hope. They beat her when she was wrong and stripped her of her regular speaking voice. They taught her seven different languages and her hand was hit with a switch if she spoke any of them with even the slightest deviation from the natural accent. She was used to it by now.
Her first night at the school, she had curled up into a ball on the hard pallet that served as her bed. She was beaten for that too. Beaten until her back was crimson with her own blood. The housemother had a bit of red on her face; that was hers too.
She was older still. She was no longer beaten and she had killed. It was lucky that school had beaten any trace of religion out of her once Mama and Papa had died—that was fuzzy too now. Blood on fresh snow but surely they had died for the greater good, the Cause.
She was lethal now. A weapon and nothing more. Missions were given and completed. She gave the men she killed, powerful men, very little thought. Her red lipstick was worn as a badge of honor.
There were other men who she wasn't ordered to kill. She seduced them, wormed her way into their lives. She made herself their mistress- most of them had wives and children. She took them to bed, made them feel young again. Men would tell her anything if they could only imagine she might come back for another round.
It was her specialty; her superiors praised her, inferiors came to her for advice. Her body was a small price to pay for state secrets.
She rarely thought of home anymore; in fact, she scorned the idea. They'd taken that from her along with her childhood.
A trained killer, a trained seductress, with no conscience. That was what they wanted her to be and that was almost what she was, if not for a hit gone awry.
Red splashed across the snow- it wasn't supposed to be this way. Poison was her usual order of the day, until it proved unsuccessful. It was unsuccessful here.
She had extracted the information they wanted, of Erskine's defection to the United States, of the plans they had for the serum; there was no reason to kill him but the order came anyway.
Red splashed across the snow. She was gone before there were witnesses, but not quickly enough to miss the cries of a new widow and a little girl asking her papa to wake.
She'd done the same thing once, hadn't she? Had she? Was that her? There was her brother. He pulled her away. He always was more practical. She'd hidden her face in his shoulder. Hadn't she?
Her memories were shattered, confused and broken. She knew nothing except this: no longer did she want to do this.
She could not run. They would find her. She could not end her life. She wanted to live. But she did not want to kill anymore. In her bunk at night, she pulled out a small black journal, the one luxury she was allowed. She began to fill it with names, with what she could remember of those she'd ended or ruined. It had been found before; she was allowed it because she had claimed it as a trophy, a way of keeping her head held high. It was not a trophy. It was her shame.
She was called in for another meeting, another briefing. She refused to go. Let them kill her. Let them do what they wished. She would not kill again.
Unceremoniously, she was yanked from her bed and dragged to the chamber. She did not fight but she certainly not help.
"You're disappointing me." Her handler spoke in Russian, her mother tongue.
"I won't kill anymore," she spit.
"You don't know what is being asked of you."
"I won't do it. Whatever it is. Kill me if you like. I am done."
His smile wasn't a smile and she'd have shivered if she hadn't been trained to suppress all emotion. "You will take this assignment and thank me. I have been kind to you. I have kept you safe, made you what you are."
"I don't want to be anymore."
He slapped her across the face and she knew her cheek was red with his fury. Her pale skin showed marks easily; it had always kept her from being too badly beaten- no one wanted permanently soiled goods. She stood tall.
Her handler nodded to the men behind her. Two of them left. "You will take this assignment because you are the best we have and I ask it of you."
"No."
"Bring him in."
She turned and her stomach dropped. She might not have her memories, but the man who was dragged in was unmistakable and she'd forgotten him until now. Man was perhaps too kind a word; he'd been beaten within an inch of his life. But his eyes lit up when he saw her. "Margarita."
"Mikhail!"
The depth of emotion welling up in her surprised her. She'd thought emotion had been trampled out of her long ago. But she had to protect him. She needed to.
"You will take this mission or he will suffer and you will watch."
Her brother shook his head no and tried to speak. He was cuffed upside the head by a guard for his efforts.
She bowed her head. "What is my target?"
Within hours, she was on an airplane and no longer herself. Margarita Karpov was no more. She was and always had been Margaret Carter, known to friends and family as Peggy, born in Hampstead, England. Her family had perished in the Great War. She was an agent of the Strategic Scientific Reserve and she'd been assigned to help recruit the best and brightest in order to determine the first human subject for the project known as Rebirth.