Katya couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched. It was probably just paranoia, she knew, but she worried that her softened vigilance was missing something, like a drone of her own following her around, that she couldn't get out of her head. It was there when she kissed Peter goodbye, it was there when she showered after, it was there when she made dinner for herself in the empty compound kitchen and it was there when she packed her lunch for school the next day out of the leftovers. It was there when she finished up her homework, it was there when she facetimed Peter as they went to bed, and it was still there now, long after they'd hung up because he'd fallen asleep on camera, as one of them did every night, and she lay awake staring at her ceiling.

The plant, which she'd mounted on the wall beside her bed- the glass terrarium was at an angle so the ivy spilled out, hanging far past the bottom- was beautiful in the moonlight, each individual leaf glinting off the silver beams coming through her curtains. It was so sweet of him to notice those little details- because it was true, she did love plants, but she'd never voiced as much. If she had her way, she'd live in a terrarium of her own, filled with trees and flowers and ferns and vines- things she could nurture through life and watch grow, with her help, watch strengthen and thrive, alive and well, surrounding her, rather than the constant destruction she felt she needed to keep at bay.

The tracker lay on the bedside table beside her, still blinking in Aneszka's apartment. Still no movement.

She loved training Peter. Truly, she did- he was improving so much, and it was so satisfying to watch, and to know she was genuinely helping- but the hour she'd had alone in the gym before he'd arrived hadn't been enough, and she was limited with what she could do. If things played out the way they most likely would, Aneszka wasn't going to go down without a fight, and, though Katya was confident in her skills- Widows were weapons. They all were. But only about one in twenty made it through the training of each generation's class; Katya was the only one who survived her class of 39. To be a fully established, graduated Widow, you had to be the best of the best. And she'd be willingly throwing herself into the fire to get close enough to use the counteragent. Which she knew she'd do, a million times over, but it'd be cool if she didn't die in the process.

Sleep wasn't even pretending to be an option, so Katya rolled out of bed and made her way to the desk, where her school stuff sat next to her laptop, along with the envelope Yelena had sent her. She dumped out it's contents, re-reading the note for the billionth time- it was a comfort thing, at this point, she wasn't looking for any new information- and she plugged in the USB.

The program started up, opening to Aneszka's file, where she'd left it. She studied the young woman's face, as she had a hundred times, taking note of every curve in her features, the arch of her brow, the tiny box braids her hair was pulled back in-before moving back down to the drop-down list of subjects, and finding her own name- or at least, what she assumed was her own name. Hers was one of a handful that had no last name attached, instead accompanied by a series of numbers that Katya didn't recognize, but it was the only Katya on the list, and she'd been the only Katya she knew of at the Academy- at least, in her time there. She clicked on it.

Immediately her own face stared back at her, that same vaguely aggressive, vacant stare every girl's picture had. She didn't remember having it taken, but it had to have been recently- probably right after she Graduated, before she was set to go on her first mission. It wouldn't make sense for her file to have a picture of her from when she was twelve, or ten, or six, or a baby- nobody looked the same their whole lives. But here she was, staring at herself in two french braids, as if she was staring at a mirror. An angry, lifeless mirror.

Katya 010805382

Age: Fifteen

Strengths: Close range shot, Krav maga, Silat, LINE, Knifework

Stationed : TBA

Additional Notes: Requires 2x/day dose CXPM, 2x/day dose Diazapam, Midazolam in emergencies. DO NOT USE TWELVE POINT HOLD; as of Incidents I84939 and I2738 resulting in fatalities; DISCONTINUE UNIT if 3x Midolazam does not work. Vibranium restraints only.

What the fuck did that mean? She recognized some of the chemical names as medications, and a quick google search informed her they were some of the heaviest sedatives in current psychiatric use, but she had no idea what CXPM was, and neither did English or Russian google. Katya didn't realize when her hands had begun to shake, but they were, so she sat on them to try to stop it. She vaguely remembered being injected quite regularly, but they all were daily with at least the conditioning serum. What the hell had happened during 'Incidents 84939 and 2783'?

Discontinue unit if 3x Midolazam does not work. As if she were a toy prototype.

Technically, she had been.

She felt her eyes beginning to heat up, and she began scanning through the rest of the Widows's files; even the ones that were grayed out and stamped as ELIMINATED, but most of the Additional Notes sections were blank, or if they had anything in them it was either a single medication prescription or an incident file number. Nothing like hers. Why did she have to be sedated so often? Who'd died during these incidents? They had to be referring to staff, as deaths during sparring each other had been normal- what was wrong with her? What was she?

Her vision began to waver and she realized she was crying again- she still hadn't gotten used to the sensation- and she didn't know what to do with herself. It was almost as if she…wanted to tear herself apart.

But she couldn't. She was free. She'd been saved, and lucky enough to have this second chance at life, and she couldn't throw it all away but everything hurt-

Not like she'd been cut, or beat up, or broken any bones, but it was pain all the same, and she didn't understand it. She didn't know what to do with it. All she knew was that in that moment she felt so destructive-

She took a deep breath and glanced back at her plant, willing herself to focus on that rather than the boiling confusion inside of her. She started to count it's leaves, anything to take up the space in her head that was currently occupied by a hurricane. She readjusted her hands underneath herself so the pressure was more even,, and tried to focus on that as well. Anything to calm this down.

And it worked, a bit. It took long minutes to do so, but it worked- at least, she was no longer shaking. And her crying had slowed. But she still needed to hit something.

So, slipping her pajamas off and quickly replacing them with leggings and a t-shirt, she headed down to the gym.

—- -

She tried to turn her head, but she couldn't, something hard and metal keeping it in place. She tested her hands, and legs, and was met with the same. Someone was sticking a needle in her arm, though she could barely feel it- her limbs already felt heavy, her head fuzzy, and she knew she had to kick back but this time the restraints were made out of some sort of metal she couldn't get out of.

"You should be honored," a man's voice told her, as she felt something cold rush up the needle and through her arm, "Graduation is the highest accolade you can achieve. You were only one who made it this far. And so young."

Fear clenched in her chest as her limbs grew heavier. She'd heard rumors about Graduation, of course, and had an idea of what it was, but what scared her the most right now wasn't the restraints - it was all the images of the empty, hollow eyes of the girls she'd seen come out of the Graduation ward throughout the years.

She fought the restraints as best she could, trying to wriggle her wrist out of the one around it, but it was locked tight.

"Rest, my child. And be grateful."

She wasn't ready for this. She didn't want her light to go out. She'd never been able to recognize herself in the mirror immediately, and now she was worried she never would.

It was five in the morning when Tony interrupted her.

"I'd say good morning," he began, before he'd even finished getting off the elevator, "But FRIDAY informs me you haven't slept at all."

"It could still be a good morning." She muttered through gritted teeth- not out of anger anymore, just out of effort- as she continued her work on the boxing bag. After an hour of being down here on her own, she'd begun to feel a lot better, if anything just due to the physical exhaustion managing to overtake her emotional fatigue. She'd started off with the bag, then moved to movement drills to work on reflexes, form, and timing, and was now back at the bag. Tony continued towards her, still in his bedclothes, as if she wasn't unleashing a flurry of kicks that could easily hit him if he came too close. "Why are you up?"

"I could ask you the same thing."

"I asked you first."

"I'm up because FRIDAY alerted me there was movement in the gym, and when I saw it was you I figured I'd let you work through your own shit, but it's been over two hours and you're still here, so," He tossed his arms out. "I'm awake."

"Well at least you answered your own question with that." Katya stopped kicking, wiping her brow with her forearm, but it was futile as every inch of her dripped with sweat. "I'm working through my own shit."

"Can I ask what shit that is?"

For a long moment she wanted to say no, but it suddenly came tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop it. "When Yelena sent me the stuff for the mission, part of it was a copy of Dreykov's old files, and I saw my own and it was just a little-" she cut herself off , gesturing to the slowly swaying bag. "Overwhelming."

"And how long had you been putting that off for?"

Katya looked at him as if she didn't know exactly what he meant, but it wasn't fooling anybody. "About a week."

"That's a lot of build up."

She sighed, elbowing the now stationary boxing bag because she could. Tony didn't flinch. "Yeah."

"What was in there that upset you so much?"

Katya elbowed the bag again, "Just…I had a lot of 'additional notes', and none of the other girls did. Some things I kind of half remember, others I don't remember at all…It all pointed to me being a very, er, problematic pupil."

Tony studied her for a moment, and Katya knew without him having to say is that he wanted a look at the files. But it that was what came out of his mouth next-

"Tell you what, Kid," he reached forward and pulled her into a half hug. "Before two weeks ago you had no idea those files existed, right?"

"Well, I always guessed there was a possibility, but I didn't know-"

"-that you'd ever see them, right, and you were already your own person. But the files were out there, and the files are dead, old information. And if you hadn't read them, you'd still be the same person you were two weeks ago, one week ago- hell, yesterday. So why would dead, old information change who you are now?"

Katya considered this, her face pressed flush against his ribs suddenly. She felt kind of bad, she was getting his t-shirt all sweaty-

"You spent your life in training, right? And you learned all these skills. And that's just what they are, they're skills- there's nothing good or bad about any type of knowledge. It's what you do with that knowledge that ends up making it good or bad, get what I'm saying?"

Katya nodded, the once dry t-shirt now sticking to her face as she did so.

Tony continued, "So technically, using that logic, whatever it is that's stuck up in this head of yours-" he ruffled the back of her hair with the arm that wasn't half pinning her to him. "Could be gifts, Katya. Maybe they were intended to cause pain and suffering by the people who taught them to you but they're under your control now. Use them as gifts."

She'd been struggling with that thought proces since she'd Woken, but for some reason when Tony put it so plainly it sounded an almost stupid notion to be confused by in the first it was his words or her sheer physical exhaustion, she at least didn't feel as hopeless as she had all night, for the moment at least. She nodded against his t shirt again and turned her body a bit to wrap her arms around him in a hug- the first one she'd ever initiated between the two of them, she realized. He hugged her back without hesitation. A moment passed, before he pulled away, "Now go shower, or you'll be late for school."

Katya snickered at Tony's paternal tone and pushed herself the rest of the way away, peeling off the gauze from her hands and feet as she walked towards the trash can to deposit them in. She turned back, just as he was headed to the elevator. "Tony?"

"Yeah, kid?"

She offered him a small smile. "Thanks."

Tony nodded in response, along with a mock salute as the elevator doors closed around him.