"And one, and two, and three…"
The floor was cold. So cold.
"And four, and five, and six, and…"
The floor was so, so cold; icy cold in fact. The concrete walls were damp and covered in a fine layer of frost. If she had been a tad more aware of her surroundings, perhaps she would have noticed the puffs of her breath materializing in front of her, mist disappearing into the darkness.
"Okay girls, balancé!"
The pain in her body was a blur of feelings and sensations; where the strongest ache began and where the least painful ended she did't know, after a time they had begun to blend with one another. But as a matter of fact, everything had been pushed to the back of her mind a long time ago, because it was so cold…
Her ragged clothes no longer dripped with the remains of he last encounter but she was still soaked. Freezing from the water they had shoved her into, just like falling trough a layer of ice and into a lake; she'd known, she'd been there.
It was a constant feeling that griped at her limbs like a weed and wouldn't let go.
The soft light streamed through the ceiling windows, crashing gently against her creamy skin and bright hair.
"Aaand… pirouette!"
She felt it in her veins, traveling in her blood like a disease at a snails' pace. The cold. The use of the electric wires they had used on her feet had begun to look dim in comparison.
Why couldn't she move her broken fingers? Not that she had any desire to do so, after all, they were indeed broken, but she was so sure she had been able to move them a few seconds ago. She couldn't feel them now… She had also been trembling, shaking like a leaf in a storm that clung desperately to the branch; she… wasn't trembling now. That was a bad sign she recalled almost consciously; her sight blurring again in the darkness of the room.
The world was spinning around her. A beautiful, shapeless blur of light and soft hues of brown and white and red and mirrors and so much light.
Her world kept spinning and it was beautiful.
So beautiful.
Her body shock interruptedly every minute or so in a vain attempt to keep her warm. It was so dark and the ground was hard and the walls were damp and she was cold!
But it was strange, because she had been incredibly hot at one point, but now she was cold, like she had been dumped with little clothes in her mother country. She knew she had not imagined the electrical hotness all around her body when she looked at the limp hand and the blackened tips of her fingers, burnt like leaving a piece of meat too long on the frying pan. Her feet, too, were blackened; there was a nerve there that was connected directly to the brain, that's why it hurt more than others.
The world came into focus and she smiled.
Her lips fell down; she had not even the strength to turn her head towards her shoulder to keep herself warm. The world was dark and she was alone. The door creaked open and a thin ray of damped light burst into the room, crashing with her lax frame and the concrete wall behind.
And no one dare ever say that Natasha Alinova Romanova used the last of her breath to whimper in the darkness. The Black Widow does not whimper against flies.
Abril: No comments, just that the italics are her change of awareness between concourses and dream/hallucination/whatever.
Thanks to my ever helpful and patient beta, Mondhase, for the help!