Natasha's only five years old when she understands. When life slaps her cruelly across the face, in the shape of her step-father. Her mother is long, long gone, leagues away even though she's just passed out on the corroded couch. So far away but right there, breathing shallowly and pink eye shadow smeared and bruises already fading green.
Colours swirl in Natasha's eyes. She's only five, but Natasha understands.
The small room is white. Pure white, not with a drop of black that those painters insist on using. Natasha would say sterile if she wasn't intimately aware of the sludge coating those walls, the taint. Black paints those pristine walls in a way colour could never imitate.
The air is oxygen and death. The thin plastic mask shielding the lower half of her face is suffocating.
Natasha screams. No one answers.
Natasha is strong. She's fierce, nimble, flexible, weightless. Her ballet slippers slide across the floor, and the friction is hot. She's burning, hot hot so hot, her limbs aflame in strength. Natasha glides with a daintiness beaten into her bones. She's strong, stronger than her weak mother and bulking step-father. Both disintegrating into flameless ash.
Natasha spins, her tutu a pink so gentle and kind, the colour of emotion Natasha's never known. Natasha wears it like armour.
Natasha spins into a flawless pirouette and she's spinning spinning spinning.
The throwing knives graze but never hurt her.
The club is a full blast of colour, light, taste. Music pulses in that heavy, ever throbbing sound present in clubs and Natasha cherishes it. Hangs onto the noise, the smell, the touch. Even in the chaos, she hears the ice in her vodka and soda crack. Listens to a little red straw swirl a whisky and coke.
Natasha blinks slowly at her companion, lips the colour of roses curling into a smile. Natasha knows how to use these expressions. Caring, interest, love, adoration, awe. Using her face to express what she can never feel.
Natasha's companion smiles back, but it's genuine. It's a glimpse of a world Natasha has never known.
Natasha suddenly feels like screaming. But she knows no one will answer. So Natasha stands, ever elegant on her nimble, shattered feet. She's in heels, but the pain is nothing like the splintering of her toe nails, her bones, her skin, wrapped in baby pink. She's graceful in her six-inch Louboutin heels, stepping on red so deep she pretends it's her master's blood, and she leads her companion to the back room.
Natasha drags her long nails up a bruised hip, numbness shielding her from the pain. A large rip in her skin has long since been stitched together with the shaky precision of a field medic. Natasha touches the purple, the blue, the rimming yellow and green.
Colours confuse Natasha. Red, white, pink. A colour she can't understand, the colour of absolute zero, fills her vision.
She's half dressed, sitting on the cold concrete floor of an abandoned warehouse, knee high leather heels spread on either side of her. She's exposed before this short, stocky man with a quiver of arrows lashed to his back and an archer's brace made of Kevlar strapped to his left forearm.
He doesn't even ogle her, chance a glance between her spread legs, stare at her quivering chest. His eyes hold her own, piercing her with blue. There's nothing but blue and black in his vision and Natasha knows those colours.
Natasha looks at that offered forearm, looks at the smoky black Kevlar, and blinks slowly.
It's not intentional.
Natasha takes the arm, takes that outstretched hand, takes that opportunity because she's been screaming screaming screaming her entire life and for the first time
Someone answered.