CHAPTER 2.
Throughout the long return trip, Natasha clung to Peggy's side, never allowing the woman to leave her sight even for a moment. The redhead was terrified of the troops. She was convinced that the large men holding guns, and dressed in army fatigues were the same as the Red Room soldiers, and wouldn't hesitate to shoot her between the eyes.
Her fear was compounded by the fact that when they arrived at camp they were greeted by a crowd of curious, and sympathetic onlookers. The little redhead burrowed her face in the crook of Peggy's neck trying hard to fight the anxiety that was threatening to choke her, just as she had been trained to. But despite the child's best efforts, tiny tremors shook her body, her heart was racing, and her breathing was quick and shallow.
'No one is going to hurt you, sweetheart; they'll have to get through me first,' Peggy whispered fiercely in Russian. She rubbed circles on the child's back to calm her down, and fought the urge to yell at the crowd to get the hell out of the way.
Natasha believed every word she said as if it were straight from the gospel, (after all, she had witnessed the petite brunette order the men about easily), and relaxed into the agent's embrace. The little redhead closed her eyes, blocked out the outside world, and instead focused her sharpened hearing on the steady thump-thump-thump of Peggy's heartbeat.
The brunette looked down, and gave a small smile. The agent was not one to go gaga over every small child, or baby that came across her path like most adults. It wasn't that she hated them, it was just for some reason she was very indifferent towards them, and the feeling was mutual.
But the little redhead nestled against her oozing blind trust was different. The agent could feel something shifting in her mind and heart, a need to protect and nurture this small fragile little person.
The child's injuries were completely healed, and it was getting late, but they could start on a basic medical exam, and they could question her. The two females sat side-by-side on an examination table as a man dressed in a crisp white lab coat approached them.
He smiled at Natasha, and his voice was pleasant, his accent denoting that he was from the same country as the brunette.
He spoke Russian as well, and asked Natasha if she knew who her parents were, what her last name was, when she was born, and how old she was.
She looked back at him with blank eyes.
The girls all had first names, but only for identification purposes. They had to be called something. And a name was far less cumbersome, and far easier to remember than a string of numbers that were constantly growing with each failed test subject. (Natasha was 001-187.)
Parents were a foreign concept to her. She knew on some instinctual level she had them since she was alive, but that was as far as it went. The same went for her birthday, she knew she had one, but she never acknowledged it, never knew what it was or how many had passed.
They put Doe on the form, because they had to put something down, and gave her DOB as the day she had been found minus five years.
They gave the redhead a physical, fed her dinner (Her appetite surprised most of the adults, until they remembered Steve's metabolism.), and then brought her to a small bedroom with a one-way mirror. What once was a sterile white room had been quickly decorated to look like something a little girl might enjoy.
The walls were painted a pale yellow, and still smelled of fresh paint. A wooden bookshelf held several books that Peggy recognized from her own childhood, and next to that was a small toy chest that could double as a bench with a doll and teddy bear perched on top. Even the cot, standard army issue, looked inviting with a patchwork quilt covering it. Next to that was a small dresser with a desktop lamp.
'I'm impressed,' Peggy said. 'How were you able to get it all done so quickly?'
'Everyone pitched in,' said Colonel Phillips from behind. 'The furniture and the quilt were all handmade, and a collection was taken for the books and clothes,' he drawled.
In the middle of the small room, Natasha ignored the English-speaking adults, and did a 360, her eyes were wide, and bright. In the academy, the girls owned nothing, not even their own bodies.
Gingerly she made her way around, as if she were afraid that all this would fade away, and she would awaken cold, and alone, back in the Red Room. It was this thought that put a lump in her throat, and sent her scurrying back to Peggy where she clutched the woman's leg tightly, and buried her face in the woman's upper thigh. She didn't care about the room, or any of the things, but the thought that the brunette, the first person to show kindness to her, was merely a figment of her imagination was terrifying.
The colonel chuckled. 'Looks like she's taken a liking to you, maybe you should put in for her adoption,' he said, before taking his leave
Peggy rolled her eyes at that thought. Me, a mother? Preposterous, she thought. I can barely take care of a houseplant, never mind a child.
And yet, she couldn't help but feel . . .something for the poor damaged child. Empathy? Sympathy? Some bit of maternal instinct that hadn't been buried under duty, and service? She didn't know what to call it, it was too new, and too small to have a proper name.
'Come on, sweetheart. Let's get changed, and climb into bed,' the brunette said, whilst tugging the girl's hands away.
Natasha balked, and clutched Peggy tighter.
The brunette sighed. 'Do you want me to stay with you for a little while?'
The redhead nodded, and allowed the brunette to help her change. Then Peggy pulled the covers down, and helped the child into bed before tuckering her in.
The brunette sat beside the child's bed, and watched as the girl's eyes got heavier, and heavier and then finally close. Only after her breathing evened out did the older female tiptoe out of the room and shut the light out.
Back in her quarters Peggy quickly changed, and went to bed herself. She stared out the window at the stars and moon, and sighed deeply. A gentle breeze blew through her open window rippling the curtains gently. She stroked the locket around her neck, (One day it'll be a ring, I promise, Peg, Steve had said.) and hoped for a full night of peaceful slumber.
But she wasn't holding her breath.
Sleep was a rare commodity these days. And if it did come, it was only at the mercy of complete and utter exhaustion, and even then it was only for a few hours.
More often than not, her eyes would snap open, a strangled yell would escape (It was the name of the man who stole her heart, and then drowned with it). Her body convulsed, struggled to shrug the last bits of her dream from her mind, from her body.
She dreamt often of being in that plane as it sunk into icy, blue water. Sometimes she was alone sometimes she was with Steve.
She would watch.
She would struggle.
She would fail to save him.
She would fail to save herself.
She stared at the ceiling eyes wide, unblinking. If she blinked the tears would fall. She refused to cry anymore.
Her breathing was shaky, shuddering, and shallow.
(Sometimes she wondered why she bothered breathing since it hurt so much.)
Sleep was impossible after that.
If the weather was nice, she wondered aimlessly around the camp like a pale wraith. The guards, used to this, left her to her own devices. It was a common enough sight to see her ghosting around the compound, that they barely moved from their post, only offering a halfhearted salute which she barely acknowledged.
Tonight though, her subconscious led her back to the lab, and to Natasha's room. The brunette stood behind the one-way mirror and stared at the child. The light was low, but she could see the little redhead was curled into a tight little ball, taking up as little space as possible on the bed. And even under three blankets, she was shivering.
Silently Agent Carter went into the little girl's room, and retook her seat by the bed. She once again took her uniform jacket off, and placed it over the shivering child. Natasha started at the unexpected touch, and opened her eyes. They were wide and slightly unfocused, the last visages of sleep still clung to her.
'Please,' she said. Her voice was so small, so scared. There were tears in her eyes that she wiped away quickly as if they were incriminating evidence of some sort of defect. And in the Red Room's eyes they would have been.
Tears were a weakness.
Fear was a weakness.
Pain was a weakness.
Love was a weakness.
'I'll be quiet, please don't send me away.'
Peggy was taken back. She tried to reach over to touch the child's cheek in order to draw her out of whatever waking nightmare she was trapped in. The redhead flinched in fear.
'No one is going to send you away. You're safe here with me,' Peggy said. She reached again, this time she was successful. She stroked the child's face.
Natasha blinked her eyes several times, her vision resting on the brunette's face. Even with so little light she was able to see better than a cat.
'Peggy, where did you go? I was scared.' The child scrambled over to the older woman, and climbed onto her lap. Natasha was shaking as she buried her face in the crook of the brunette's neck.
'I just went to my quarters, but I'm here now, and I'm not leaving,' the agent said. She grabbed her uniform coat from the bed and wrapped it around the child. For several minutes they sat quietly.
'Natasha, what did you mean by being sent away?'
Natasha was silent for several minutes, making the brunette think she wasn't going to receive an answer. (Though in all honesty, the agent knew what the child meant.) 'If a girl was weak,' the redhead said in a near whisper. 'They called her defective, or a failure. They sometimes would come in the middle of the night for her.'
The redhead could still hear the smack of leather boots against the concrete floor of the dorms. They all huddled in their beds trying to be as small and unobtrusive as possible, praying to a God who didn't seem to give a damn about them, that they were not the one the men were looking for.
'They would take the girl away, and we would never see her again. Sometimes, I would hear gunshots in the distance. The next morning at inspection, I would always see vultures circling in the distance.'
Peggy's eyes widened in horror. She held the child tighter.
'Peggy? Are there – are there going to be vultures out in the morning?'
The brunette stiffened. Because what do you say to that? The truth? No, you won't see vultures because we're three days train drive from the academy, and even if we were close enough they'd be no vultures, just 63 little graves. That's she's the sole survivor because by some miracle the serum kicked in just in time.
(And she thanked God for that little miracle, even as she cursed him.)
'I'm afraid – I'm afraid we're too far away to see the vultures.' Because in the end all Peggy could do was tell the truth(sort of). 'Did you have friends there?'
The redhead was too young to hide her tells. She was betrayed by the minutest widening of her eyes, and a slight tightening of her jaw even as she vehemently shook her head in denial. They weren't allowed to have friends at the academy, they were raising their girls to be tigers: merciless, solitary predators of humans.
Friendships were discouraged; rivalries were encouraged, anger and hatred were encouraged. But in the darkness of the night, while the instructors slept, girls could be seen huddled together, desperately trying to hold on to what was left of their humanity.
Peggy pulled away slightly so that she could pull out her locket. She opened it, and showed the the little girl the picture.
'Do you see him? That's my . . . my dear friend. He had to go away, and I miss him very, very, much,' the brunette said, her voice thick with emotion. 'I know they probably told you it was wrong to love other people, but I'm telling you its okay. It's okay to have friends, and it's okay to mourn for them when they leave you. I won't ever think you're a failure, or defective. I won't ever send you away, and no matter what you're safe here with me.'
Peggy didn't know where these words were coming from, only that she meant every word of them. She would protect the child, and guide the child so that if she really was like Steve, she will use her strengths as a shield. But most importantly, she would love the child.
Unaware of the brunette's thoughts, Natasha stared at the small portrait of the blond man, and then back at the agent. The little girl's lip quivered as the magnitude of everything hit her. The enormity of her loss fell upon her heavily, and so suddenly that it felt like all the air had been punched out of her.
She was all alone.
'Anya . . . Anya . . .' And that was all she could get out before Natasha dissolved into tears. Peggy closed her eyes, buried her face in red curls, and held the child tightly even as she cried her own tears, (even though she promised herself she wouldn't) and railed at the unfairness of it all.
For the next ten minutes all that could be heard was a keening cry of a heartbroken child, and soft Russian words spoken with a British accent of an equally heartbroken woman.
