Это ваш новый Семейный

This Is Your New Family


They were told they would become ballerinas for the Bolshoi Theatre. They were told they would perform for audiences all across Russia. They were told they would be cared for. They were told they would be loved.

They were lied to.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States of America were constantly watching each other, waiting for the other to be the first to attack. Tensions were at an all time high as the world dreaded the beginning of a third great war.

It was at this time that the Red Room decided to resurrect the Russian Assassin Program. This time, however, things would be different. No longer would the girls all interact with each other. No longer would they all be trained by a single headmistress. No longer would they be allowed to fail. They would be more than assassins. They would be perfect.

The Black Widow Ops Program would consist of twenty-eight orphaned girls, brought into the Red Room with promises of once again becoming part of a family. Once they arrived, they were separated into fourteen groups of two, each girl being paired with one of relatively the same age and told that this was their sister now. Each pair of sisters was assigned to a personal trainer and told that this was their father now.

After being assigned to their new families, the girls were led off to separate rooms for the first brainwashing session. The first session was the longest and the most brutal, with every girl spending a full twenty-four hours being experimented on- their minds and bodies inhumanely toyed with. Two girls from separate families were dead already after the first session, and their sisters were reassigned to each other.

These two girls were Natalia Romanova and Veronika Luzhkov. They didn't know it yet, but these girls would grow to become two of the most skilled assassins the Red Room has ever produced.

Natalia and Veronika were the daughters of Ivan Petrovich. He raised them to be ruthless, yet deceivingly meek. On the outside they grew to be two stunning young ladies- thanks partially to the physical alterations done to every Black Widow- but on the inside, they were void of any scrap of sympathy. They were taught that love was for children, and that loyalty was fluid.

At the snap of a finger, they wouldn't hesitate to kill any of the other girls. If they had, they would have been killed themselves. Besides, if the girl wasn't strong enough to fight them off, it wasn't as if she deserved to live in the first place.

They were the perfect specimens of what the Red Room represented- beauty and death.

The experiments continued for decades with the help of Dr. Lyudmila Kudrin. Using the weaker girls that would have been killed eventually anyway as test subjects, he developed his own formula for extending the other girls' lifespans considerably. By the time the girls were well into their thirties, they could still pass for fourteen years old. On top of that, the Kudrin Treatment made the girls superhumanly fit, healthy and resilient.

Countless measures were taken to keep the girls in line. They were handcuffed to the beds when they went to sleep and weren't released until breakfast, which consisted of a small piece of bread and a cup of water. After breakfast they were taken to a viewing room where they sat at wooden desks and watched movies such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Sleeping Beauty to learn how proper young women were meant to act. If they learned this, they would be better at concealing who they truly were.

The movies had also been infused with multiple subliminal messages by the Red Room. These messages were used to communicate that failure was never an option, and that only the very best were worth anything. There is no glory in second best, they told the girls. Second best only means that you are the best at being the worst.

After watching and reciting movies, they were taken to the outdoor training grounds. There the girls were pitted against each other in merciless combat that didn't end until one girl was dead or incapacitated, depending on the decision of the headmistress.

Dinner came after group training. The girls returned to their 'apartments'- two bedrooms and a bathroom for the girls and their assigned father to share- for lunch, which was always followed immediately after by more Kudrin Treatments.

The Kudrin Treatments were followed by individual training between the families. Natalia and Veronika greatly preferred this training to fighting with the other girls. The only challenge either girl could find was in each other, meaning the only real training they felt they received was when the two of them fought. The other girls were much too easy to take down.

The day ended with the girls laying in their beds while their fathers re-attached the handcuffs. Every day was the same for the girls, and whether they liked it or not, they never said a word about it to any of their betters.

However, when all the compound was dark and the elders were sleeping, two of the girls opened their eyes and turned to face each other.

"Как вы думаете, мы когда-нибудь оставить здесь?" Natalia asked one night, as quietly as she had been trained to speak. Do you think we will ever leave here?

Veronika's face was expressionless, but her words betrayed her care for her surrogate sister. She dared not let anyone other than Natalia know, but she had a distinct feeling that her loyalties to Natalia were anything but fluid. "Они не могли бы быть обучение с нами ни по какой причине. Однажды, в конце концов, они будут посылать нас в мир, сестра." They could not possibly be training us for no reason. One day, eventually, they will send us into the world, sister.

Natalia nodded once in understanding before turning her face back towards the ceiling. Veronika assumed they were done speaking for the night, but Natalia had one more thing to say before sleep took her. "Я надеюсь, что придет день, в ближайшее время, Ника." I hope that day comes soon, Nika.

"Как и я, Лия." As do I, Lia.


A/N

Hello readers! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of Sestra (Russian for Sister). Just a few quick notes on the story:

This was a prologue of sorts, just to give you a glimpse into how Natasha and Veronika know each other. This is not a story about living in the Red Room, though there will be frequent mentions of it throughout the story.

The majority of this story will be set after the end of Avengers, but before the collapse of SHIELD. This is slightly AU, due to the fact that I'm using the comics version of the Red Room and Natasha's backstory. Veronika is my original character, however, and is in no way affiliated with the Marvel Comics or Cinematic Universes.

I won't be using much Russian in this story, but since both Natasha and Veronika are native Russians and as of yet have never left Russia, I thought it made more sense for them to speak Russian rather than English. If I do use Russian later on, it will be with the same set-up where I will have whatever they say translated in italics at the end of the sentence.

Also, their nicknames are pronounced Nika (nee-kuh) and Lia (lee-uh).

Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll stick around to find out more about Veronika and how she'll interact with the Avengers.


Chapter 2 Preview

"Am I?" The woman glanced down at her feet as she took a step closer to Tony with her left arm draped over the bar before looking back up at him through her lashes, one eyebrow raised. "It's worked so far, hasn't it?"