Trigger warnings for self harm.
All Natalya had ever wanted was a family, but people like them didn't get family, did they? They got war and death and famine and hurt hurt hurt but family was out of the question because your ally one day is your enemy the next and it's not something you can afford.
She just wanted someone to wrap her up in their arms oh so tight, tell her that it would be alright, that it got better, but it wouldn't get better and that wasn't going to happen. Natalya just wanted a sister, a brother, someone she could look to and count on and who would be there, physically be there, but she wasn't ever going to get that, was she?
She didn't deserve it.
So she did what she could, caused pain to herself when she couldn't to others, and oped that one day all the pain put together would be enough and it would just. Stop. Not death, necessarily, but after so much life (if it could be called that), she wouldn't object to it.
(The first time, it was a screwdriver. She'd dragged it across the inner skin of her forearm, watched the skin grow red and form welts, saw the skin tear - but never too much, no, never past the first few layers of skin. It was mesmerizing, almost, and her mind was finally empty of all the screaming that was usually in it, all the while repeating to herself, like a mantra, that it didn't count if she didn't bleed.)
Of course Natalya never told anyone. It would be terrible for them, would it not, to be forced to recognize that the cold bitch that they loved to antagonize had actual emotions, that they hurt her, that she wasn't steel but glass, already shattered into oh so many pieces.
Good thing she wore long sleeves.
A/N: This is all just projection. If I continue this at all, it's just going to be my mental state as told through APH Belarus - that's why the "and hopefully, recovery." is in the description