Subject Age: 10
"Let the weapon become an extension, Natalya, it's a part of you."
Natalya is finally in her niche. God, she'd missed this. Her suspension had originally been only two days, but her subsequent threatening of her tutor had extended that suspension to two weeks, the duration of which had been filled with visits from the Red Room guards.
(Please no. I'll be better—)
She holds her gun in her right hand, her left hand steadying the long barrel like she'd learned. She could have easily squeezed off the 30-round magazine with decent accuracy, but her trainer halts her.
"No. Left hand."
Natalya grits her teeth as she switches hands. The deep, gouging burns left by the cattle prod are, for the most part, centered on her left side. Firing a gun will be extremely painful. Instead of complaining, she just breathes, hoping that it won't cause her too much pain.
She squeezes the trigger once. The long barrel recoils, shoving into her shoulder and directly in one of the healing burns. Her shoulder is on fire. Despite her attempts at pain control, an agonized growl slipped through her teeth, and the barrel on the gun dips away from the target, and Natalya's eyes widen in panic.
She cannot fail. Not again.
We must never disappoint our country.
We are disappointed in you, Natalya.
Making no further sound, she agonizingly brings the weapon back to the center eye of the target.
The weapons trainer is as indifferent, as parentally firm as the rest of them. "You must ignore the pain, Natalya," she says. "If you give into it, you have lost the battle before it has begun. It is necessary for you to learn how to fire with perfect accuracy while injured. If you cannot perform this task, how can we expect you to fulfill your duty to your country?"
Natalya is tougher with physical strain rather than mental. Easier to just grit her teeth and move on. "I understand," she manages, and finally empties the rest of the magazine, each shot sending tongues of flame licking through her arm and shoulder, radiating down through her side.
The trainer steps forward, "You must learn to fight the pain, Natalya."
"How?" She realizes how broken she must sound, and tries to bolster her pain tolerance (one thing she'd learned she had a generous amount of after her stubbornness had landed her heavy bouts of discipline a significant number of times).
The trainer sighs. Natalya tenses. She can't think I'm weak. "Think of the science of it, Natalya. What is pain?"
"The firing of certain cautionary nerves that deliver pain signals to the brain that would deter the action that causes the pain," the girl responds automatically, quickly. Facts are easy. "It's a survival instinct.
"Yes," the trainer says, "survival instinct. Physical whims which you cannot overcome?" She says it like a question.
"No. I can do it."
"Good," her trainer says, handing her trainee another full magazine.
Natalya takes the bullets, effortlessly loading the large gun. It seems at home in her small hands. She aims at the target once more.
Before she begins squeezing off the rounds, there is the voice of the trainer again, "As you said, it is a survival instinct. Our instincts are purely physical. If you are strong enough, you can overcome your physical obstacles. Pain," she says, pressing closer to Natalya, "is nothing more than mental weakness. We do not tolerate mental weakness here, do we Natalya?"
We do not tolerate mental weakness.
Pain is weakness.
I am not weak.
She doesn't get it right away, the burn still there as she fires one bullet. The fire burns her, and she tries to hide the wince, but she knows her trainer saw it. I'm not strong enough. Why can't I be strong enough? "Natalya, you must focus."
"I am focused," she defends. She wants to empty the gun into the target. Most of her shots have been either on the center or very close to it (a very good day) so far, and she doesn't understand why they are still going.
She wants to stop. Her shoulder throbs.
The trainer narrows her eyes. "If you were focused, you would feel no pain."
Natalya raises the weapon again, "But my shots are pretty much perfect," she voices her thoughts (something she should know not to do by now), "Why are we still doing this?"
Without warning, the trainer yanks the weapon from Natalya's hands. "Because the shooting is not your lesson today," she answers with calm, terrifying patience. "Learning to function with your pain is." And with that, the teacher grabs Natalya's left shoulder, already screaming from the recent trauma, and digs her fingers in.
Natalya cannot help but scream.
She thought the blunt end of her gun recoiling against the wounds was painful; it's nothing compared to her trainers fingernails digging through the thin shirt she wears. The burns feel like they're bursting, and it feels as if her shoulder might be wrenched from the joint.
Her knees shake, but she doesn't fall. Her body jerks away and her free hand pulls at the trainer's wrist, but she doesn't let go, maintaining the relentless pressure. "Survival instincts cannot always save you," she says, speaking over Natalya's cries. "Look at me, Natalya," she snaps, trying to catch the girl's eyes, "No matter how much pain you are in right now, your survival instincts cannot save you."
The sounds coming out of her throat are strangled, pathetic, pained, and she can't stop them. Why can't I be strong enough?
"Are you weak, Natalya? Everyone speaks so highly of you. Will I have to tell them all what a failure you are when you can't tolerate a little pain?" She forces the girl down to her knees.
Those words strike her heart harder and more viciously than any whip, prod, or beating she'd ever received. "No!" Natalya screams, but this time not in pain, but in anger. She pushes up against the trainer's hand, standing so that she can look the trainer in the eye. "I am not weak." She doesn't realize that she no longer feels the pain in her shoulder.
And then the trainer stops, withdrawing her hand. Natalya's body sags in relief, but her mind is clear.
"You are dismissed, Natalya."
