This story focuses mostly around an OC. Just so everyone is aware.
I don't own anything recognizable in the following fic.
Basically, this is just a test run to see what kind of response I can get with this and how everyone feels about it. Feel free to leave improvement and ideas in a review and I will definitely try to take it into consideration, but also remember this is just the first chapter-more of an introduction than anything.
There's a little glossary included at the beginning, just Russian words that will be used, not necessarily in this chapter but most likely eventually. Most of them are pretty obvious as to why they're there, and I will add more as they come up. I've written them using the English alphabet because it is easier to guess at a pronunciation that way. Everything comes from Google translate, and we all know that's always right. Enjoy.
Cicatrix
She is already scarred beyond comprehension, but she will not make it out of this new life unscathed.
nadezhda- hope
alkaev(a)- from the verb 'alkat'; to wish; to be wished
i. Burn
Stalingrad (Volgograd), Russia / Ireland / Germany / Caribbean Islands - 1950-1999
Her earliest memory is of a knife.
She remembers the way the wooden handle felt against her palm the first time she held it, and the way the blade felt when she didn't hit the supplied target.
After that, there is a lot of red.
There is a pretty girl, several years older, with fiery red curls who calls her Nadezhda in private in a voice just as pretty as she is. She teaches her things when the others with them are asleep: how to throw the knife correctly, how to keep the different, strange men that watch over them happy. She teaches her several languages and talks of other places, beautiful, faraway places she wants to visit someday in a language that the other girls won't understand, but only when the men are away.
She teaches her how to hide the small things she wishes to keep, how to use other weapons, guns and sometimes a bow and arrow, and how to punch and kick and not even need a weapon.
The girl's hair mixes with the amount of blood that comes with her training. It is her own and others; more often than not, she makes them bleed herself.
The training is long and hard and gruesome. They teach her ways to kill, more in depth than the red-headed girl ever has. They show her more weapons, teach her combat skills and ways to seduce the mark before he is to be terminated. She learns pain: ways to inflict it and ignore it and simply be it.
She kills for the first time when she is eight; it is a girl even younger than she.
They teach her languages from all over the world- English, Arabic, German, French, Italian, Japanese and Chinese and more she is sure she'll never use again. Somehow, the handlers find a use for all of them.
They slip things into her bread that is not in the other girls', and they think she doesn't know that she hears them speak of her late into the night when she lies awake with a small coin tucked into her palm in an attempt to bring comfort. They push her harder than anyone else except for the red-headed girl, whom she fights against often. Neither of them ever seem to win.
When she is sent on her first mission, she goes with the girl with the fiery hair—Natalia, she learns. The girl calls her Nadya sometimes, but more often than not it is still Nadezhda, the same name she gave her several years before. Natalia goes in first, smiling sweetly at the men before she pulls a gun from behind her and aims it at the first guard's eye. They don't offer any trouble.
When they return, two more girls are eliminated at the hands of a particularly nasty handler, and the other girls learn to avoid them. Some do it discreetly, but those who are obvious are placed in a sparring match against either Natalia or Nadezhda; it is a fight to the death.
She learns where Natalia often disappears to, and she learns it is not by choice.
The room is full of computers and metal tables and people with goggles and white coats who murmur about her together in small groups and makes notes as they watch her. She sees a picture of herself on a file; they have given her a last name: Alkaeva. They place her in a chair in a far corner, and from there she can see Natalia strapped to a metal table, calm as the people with white coats press needles into her skin.
They do the same to Nadezhda, and it hurts. Everything burns a fiery inferno, never ending. She sees red and thinks of Natalia's hair.
When the pain fades, she is on her own cot and Natalia is across the room, reading one of the few books the handlers allow. She does not look up as Nadezhda stands, but her gaze flickers past the text for half a second. Her presence offers comfort Nadezhda will never admit.
The people in the lab coats experiment on her more and more often, and she learns to escape to a place that is all her own when the pain hits.
She trains some with a man she has never seen before, tall with long, dark hair and blue eyes whom the handlers call the Winter Soldier. One arm is bionic, steel and impossibly strong and attached to his shoulder with a series of scars. She walks away from their fights with more broken bones than she can count, but she heals in only a few days from whatever they inject her with.
She is sent on more missions, most of them alone. She takes out mark after mark; they are old men with money and small children of wealthy people and women who have done nothing wrong that she knows of, but she has been trained not to care, not to feel, so she doesn't.
More of the girls are killed. They die on missions or in sparring matches or at the hands of a handler. They are not mourned, and the bodies seemingly disappear.
When the place burns, Nadezhda is one of only five left.
She smells the smoke first. When Natalia awakens suddenly, jumping from her cot, she knows it is serious, so she grabs her boots and a small bag tucked beneath her mattress and fights her way through flames and smoke to the exit. As she clears the doorway, she hears the screams of three other girls; Natalia is just behind her.
They run for a long time; Nadezhda loses count of the days. They stick together despite all that they have ever been taught.
It is not yet winter, but it is close; she can feel the air that threatens to bite at her cheeks and nose early in the mornings and as the sun sets. It is sometime close to two weeks later when they stop at a run-down motel on the outskirts of a small town Nadezhda is not familiar with. Natalia produces a wad of money from the bottom of her backpack and no questions are asked.
They don't stay there long, a couple days at most, but they are able to steal more supplies from a small convenience store near the edge of a forest with no surveillance systems to speak of. There is another motel in the next town.
The go like this for what feels like several months.
They travel north, back into Stalingrad, as the air gets colder. The first snow of the season is starting to fall when a man corners them in an alley. He knows who they are. His request is simple. It is the first job they accept as contract assassins, but Nadezhda knows it will not be the last as she takes the kill-shot with a rifle from the roof of an abandoned building.
More people hire them; some find them, but they find most. Most of the jobs are easy, and they often have more than one contracted at a time.
Eventually, they leave Russia, traveling across Europe and Asia over the years. Nadezhda kills more than she ever could've imagined. She loses track of time.
When the Soviet Union collapses, she and Natalia are in Ireland. There is only a small radio in the motel room that is mostly static, but she can make out enough of the news to understand. Natalia pauses from where she is pinning up her fiery hair and nods once absently. Nadezhda returns it, flips off the radio, and goes back to painting her mouth with bright red lipstick. They never speak of it again.
Many of the jobs include infiltrating elegant parties with fancy dresses and thousand-dollar-or-more wine. She allows old men already with wives to touch her, dance with her. She pretends to enjoy it before she puts a bullet through each of their brains or breaks their necks. The beautiful gowns go to waste. She burns each of them after the first wear.
She is made on a job for the first time in Germany. She is by herself; Natalia is stalking the perimeter, waiting for the perfect moment. The mark is laughing drunkenly in the middle of the room, but when he sees Nadezhda watching, he sidles toward her, and she smiles slowly and looks up at him through her eyelashes as he offers a dance; she accepts with a sultry curve of her mouth.
He stands too close, presses a hand too far down her back, but she pretends not to notice or care. He whispers in her ear in German promises of what he is going to do to her. Once the song ends, he leads her away, toward the elevator. Once inside, he kisses her thoroughly. His hand wraps around her bicep and tightens; he smiles down at her wickedly, all traces of drunkenness gone from his face.
"What are we going to do with you, Miss Alkaeva?" he whispers. She aims a knee at his stomach. He falls as the elevator door opens. Natalia is there; she kills him with a single shot to his head. Nadezhda nods once, and they are gone.
She is not sad to see Europe disappear behind her.
Natalia picks the destination. They travel by boat to an island in the Caribbean Sea. Nadezhda thinks of all the years before, in the Red Room, when she had just begun training, as Natalia told her of places she wished to visit. She remembers being told of beautiful islands with white sand and strange trees and blue water all around. She does not miss the smile on Natalia's face when her feet first touch the ground.
They go several months without contracting a job. It is strange, but also nice. They travel much of the island, and visit several surrounding others until one day they come to the unspoken agreement that it is time to move on.
It is the first place in forty-nine years she is sad to leave.