There is a man here.
A man.
The girls uproar — well, for them, they do. For anyone else, whispers sweep the room. They cut off when Madame shoots a harsh glare into the crowd.
It's the first time any of them can remember seeing a man, they almost forgot they were out there.
The man stares at them blankly, but something tells Mariya that he doesn't really see. His face is almost like a graveyard, with mausoleum cobwebs in his eyes and the same kind of hushed, blanketing silence that you get surrounded by death.
"This is the Winter Soldier," Madame tells them. "He is here to help you train." This time actual titters rise.
She's not sure how long he stays, there isn't a clear definition of time in the Red, but it has to be a few months.
He mostly watches, never says anything, demonstrates sometimes. He seems there more for Madame than them.
Madame lets them use him as a dummy, practice their moves on him.
Then, then the fight comes. When they enter the training room, the bleachers are back — the same ones from that dreaded exercise a year or so ago. Mariya still remembers Tatianna. She sits in the same place, just to push a thumb into the bruise.
He is standing on the mat, looking at them with the same dead gaze.
This time, when the first girl tries to practice, he fights back. She is caught off guard, she loses.
The next is more prepared. She still loses.
All of them lose, until it is just Mariya sitting on the bench, a few of the shier girls around her. This is more than a test of physical strength. This is also a test of social. If she stays, Madame will label her as weak, and even if she wins every fight from here to eternity, she will be stuck with that name, with that legacy.
She stands.
Their fight is faster than the others, not in duration, but in their movements. She can barely see anything but the blur of hands, of her twisting as she tries to take him down. She could almost close her eyes, get buoyed by the adrenaline, let muscle memory take over. It's an electrifying kind of excitement. She flips over his back, pushes him to a knee, places her hands around his neck. He stiffens, makes to move, maybe to hit her, maybe to shove her off her feet, but she twitches her fingers around his pulse point and he stops.
"Well done," Madame says. The fight is won.