"Papa? Mama? Where are you? Please come out! Please. It's dark here, please!" The little girl bent down, her crimson curls falling over her face, her thin arms hugging her frail body. "I'm scared." She whispered as the tears began running down her face echoing as they hit the ground. She wondered if this was a test. She knew she wasn't supposed to admit her weaknesses, but she was frightened and lost, and she couldn't find her papa and her mama!

"Are you alright child?" She heard a voice to her left. Startled she jumped into a defensive stance, her arms curling up, her legs bent at the knees, her body coiling together as if ready to pounce at any moment. Surprised she looked at her hands curled into tiny fists. Where did that come from? She wasn't supposed to fight. Her papa always told her to use words not violence. Ashamed she dropped her hands to her sides, but try as she might, her hands wouldn't uncurl, her nails beginning to bite into her palms. "They will be so disappointed with you, Natalia." She heard a voice whisper inside her head. Natalia? Her name was Natasha not Natalia.

"Child?" The same voice asked again. Not the whispering one, but the "real" one?

She looked over to see a man dressed in red, white, and blue standing to her left. "Yes" she wanted to lie and say she was fine. Lie? Her mama had always told her to never lie because lies could and would only hurt other people. But for some reason she wanted, no, needed to say yes, to prove that she was strong, to prove that she could do it by herself, to protect herself. But she couldn't let her mama down, so instead she bit her tongue and shook her head to indicate her answer.

The man smiled at her and knelt down so they were eye to eye. "Do you speak English, child?"

"Da." She said, "I speak English." But she didn't, did she? She had never heard that language in her life yet she could understand everything the strange man was saying. He smiled again and she decided she liked his smile. It wasn't the mean smiles that so often graced the faces of the instructors she saw, but a nice, warm smile. Mean smile? Her mama and papa smiled all the time when they were happy. She had never seen a mean smile in her life, yet she had, hadn't she?

"I'm Steve." He reached a hand out towards her, causing her to jump away from him, cringing, preparing herself for the worst, but it never came. She stayed there for a few moments until she gingerly cracked open one eye and saw him standing there as if he was frozen. Slowly she crept back towards him and looked at his outstretched arm. What was she supposed to do? There was nothing in his hand. No gun. No knife. No weapon of any sort was in his hand. What did he want her to do? No gun, no knife? What was a gun? And what would she do with a knife? Her papa and mama had always told her to stay away from the knives least she cut herself on one.

"You shake it and tell me your name, child." He explained, his voice tinged with amusement and yet a hint of worry as well. Twice she had jumped away from him as if he was going to hurt her. He didn't know who she was, or what they were doing here, but he could tell something wasn't right. He watched as she took a breath, pulled herself up into the perfect military stance and reached out a careful, cautious, and trembling hand.

"Natasha." She introduced herself. "My name's Natasha, not child" she giggled as her voice gained strength. Yet somewhere, deep in her mind she heard a frosty voice correcting her saying, "No, you are Natalia. Do you understand me, Natalia?"

"Well, Miss Natasha," Natasha, was that a Russian name he wondered to himself, "Do you know where we are?" He used his hand to gesture to the woods surrounding them.

She shook her head feeling as if she had let him down, and while she knew (wait, knew?) she would be punished for not only failing in deducing their location, but for showing her emotions as well, she could feel the tears welling up in her eyes and beginning their descent to the ground. She knew that failure resulted in punishment, but that didn't make any sense. Her papa and mama encouraged her to try again whenever she failed, and never ever punished her for failing.

"Hey, it's okay to not know." Steve's gentle voice tried to reassure her. "I don't know where we are either. But," He put his hands on her arms as gently as he could although it still caused her to jump in surprise, her hands finally uncurling, "I promise everything will be okay. Don't worry Natasha."

"Promise?" She asked. "Natalia," That cold voice in her head scolded her, "Did you forget again? Promises are meant to be broken." But that didn't matter to her. Not this time anyways, she just wanted to hear him say it again.

"I promise Natasha. And I'm always honest." He watched as she smiled for the first time, her whole face lighting up and then as she threw herself at him, her sinewy arm wrapping around his neck as she hugged him.

"Okay." She pressed her tiny cheek against his. "I trust you Steve." She only hugged him for a few more seconds before she forced herself to let go. Her mind had been telling her exactly how to jerk her arms and exactly what force to use so that his neck would snap and death would be instantaneous. "Never leave any survivors or witnesses Natalia or you know the repercussions." She could hear a frigid voice warning her. Where did that come from? Her mama and papa hugged her every night before she went to sleep and her papa would never teach her something like that. He was a man of peace never of violence.

"Do you play chess, child?" Steve's voice cut across the fogginess of her mind as he pulled out a chess set from mid air? Where had that come from? He hadn't been holding it the whole time had he? Or perhaps he had been and she had just missed it. "Missed another important detail, Natalia? Oh, how we will have to work on that." The terrifying voice threatened her.

She scrunched up her nose at the name "child", (that wasn't her name!) but shook her head. What was "chess"?

"That's okay." He smiled again and patted the area across from him on the boulder that he had placed the box on. Had that boulder always been there? Natasha wondered as she sat down across from him and but accepted it as she watched in wonder as he took little black and white pieces from the box and began to set the on the wooden board.

"This piece is called a pawn." He said lifting up a tiny white rounded piece of wood and handed it to her. "Now I know it may look like it's just a little insignificant piece," He chuckled at the face Natasha had made at the tiny thing she held in her hand, "but if you get it to the other side of the board, it becomes the most powerful piece in the whole game – the queen. But it takes time and patience for it to become the queen. And this, Natasha, is called the…"

"Natalia wake up! Wake up! You have to wake up before…" Natasha could hear Yelena calling her.

Waking up immediately she looked over to find her only friend at the "Academy" sitting on her bed staring at her, a strange look in her eyes.

"What wrong?" She asked.

"Nothing, but you had a weird look on your face as you slept. Your mouth looked like this." Yelena used her fingers to force the sides of her mouth to quirk up into a tiny smile.

Natasha gently touched her mouth, covering it as the sides pulled up to mimic the expression that Yelena was trying to show her. She didn't know what would happen today. She didn't know if she would even survive or what they would "teach" her, but for some reason, she felt safer than she had ever felt in her time at the "Academy". It was as if someone was watching over her and had promised that everything would be okay. And for some reason, while she knew that promises were meant to be broken and had little value, she felt that she could trust whoever had made that promise because they were always honest.

A/N. This little story popped up in my head while I was rereading "The Time Traveler's Wife. I do not own the quote be Audrey Niffenegger, not the characters, nor anything that anyone recognizes (such as Steve's quote "I'm always honest.") However, this was unbeta'd, so I must claim all the mistakes that must be found. :/ This is also cross posted on AO3 under the name La_Reveuse. (Sorry, I just found that name to be a little too long…) Thank you for reading and I hope you had/have a wonderful day!