There Was A Little Girl, Chapter 2- A Murder Where Nobody Dies (Life In The Red Room)
Thank you, kind sirs
You've made me what I am today
A bundle of broken nerves
A mouthful of words I'm still afraid to say
- Gothic Lolita, Emilie Autumn
She remembers finally finding out that the strange man in the even stranger uniform had lied.
Mr. Ivan Petrovitch hadn't brought her to another home. He had brought her to the Red Room facility, a place where she and other girls were trained and conditioned as killing machines.
It was akin to a jungle, a survival of the fittest.
Only the best would survive.
My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova.
She had timidly introduced herself to the nineteen other girls she was told to share a dormitory with.
They had laughed at her, saying that it didn't matter what her name was here. They'd taken one look at her pigtails and ribbons and told her that she was a baby. They sniggered at her small and bony frame and told her that she would be the first to die among them all.
She had crawled onto the hard and stiff bed underneath the rough covers, holding on to the only items she had in remembrance of Papa, Mama, and the little girl with pig tails: Mama's necklace, her photo, and her yellow ribbons.
She didn't like this place already. It wasn't a place where she would find friends. The other girls were mean to her and she didn't understand what they meant at all.
The next day, she did.
She was woken up at the break of dawn and had her very first taste of the training that was expected of her from then on. It was tiring, and she had been relieved to have completed it and finally have lunch, since breakfast was apparently not given here.
As she collected her lunch and sat down at a table all by herself, she turned her head towards the back of the mess hall where a huge commotion had been started. Suddenly, a gunshot rung through the air and the mess hall fell to silence. All she could see was the limp body of a girl not much older than herself being careless dragged out of the mess hall by a warden.
She looked around the mess hall.
The other girls have already returned to finishing their food, nothing showing on their faces that would indicate that they had just witnessed a girl being shot.
She learned quickly and followed suit.
It wasn't until late at night when she had finished yet another few rounds of physical training that she heard the girls in the dormitory whispering among themselves about why the girl was shot. They said the girl had fallen sick one too many times. She was a runt and would have died long before she completed her training anyway. She was a liability, that was why.
She realized that was what the girls had meant the day before. And at that moment, all she wanted was what they said to not be true.
My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova. I will not be a liability. I will survive.
She remembers her training increasing with intensity each day. She had thought her second day at the Red Room was as tiring as it could possibly get.
She was wrong. But it didn't matter. All that matter was she was getting better, faster and stronger.
It was a good thing. She would become an asset to Mother Russia if she was good enough. Mother Russia was all that mattered and it would be what she would fight for eventually.
That was what she was told.
She remembers the room full of white, the men dressed in white.
They looked like doctors, except she remembered that Papa and Mama used to tell her that doctors were the good guys. These men didn't look like good guys.
She remembers being forcibly pushed into a chair and strapped down with bindings too tight for her comfort.
She remembers hearing pitiful screams and cries.
She remembers they belonged to her.
She didn't know, how long it took or what was happening.
What she did know, was that she had stopped crying and screaming abruptly when they started taking her apart there and then.
She still doesn't know how much they took from her though; they had carefully made sure of that.
But she does know that she had walked out of the room with cold and dead eyes, thinking to herself.
My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova. I will be a world class ballerina. But first and foremost, above all else, I am going to fight for Mother Russia. The blood I will spill is not important. What is important is what is in my blood. It is the blood of Mother Russia. I am a child of Mother Russia, and I will fight for Her and Her alone.
The doctors had said she could be excused from training that afternoon. They said she could have the afternoon to herself for being such a good girl that day, and that Mother Russia would be proud of her.
She had gone back to the empty dormitory then, not feeling quite right.
It was when she felt the volcano in her tummy that she sprinted to the dingy bathroom next to the dormitory, and emptied her insides into the rusty toilet bowl.
It really didn't feel right at all.
Who am I?
My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova. I...
I don't know.
I don't remember.
She tries to remember why she wasn't, and maybe still isn't, so sure anymore. She tries to remember what there was to her name that was so important. She tries to remember the memories they had taken from her.
She fails each time.
Sometimes, she cries.
My name is Natasha Romanoff, but that is all I know.
My name was Natalia Alianovna Romanova, but that is all I want to remember.
She remembers the first time she was allowed to be in the same training session as the other girls in her dormitory. It hadn't taken very long to happen; she had found that she was a fast learner. It wasn't before long either, that she slowly became better than half of them. It was easy, she had thought to herself. She knew she wasn't the brawniest, but she was smart and sharp, and she was quick and agile. It was an advantage she had over the bigger and taller girls, some who towered over her petite frame.
And then there was the first time she was pitted against one of the other girls.
They didn't tell her what exactly she was supposed to do, except to fight the girl standing on the opposite end of the mat.
She remembered that girl. She was one of those who had laughed at her on her first day at the Red Room.
She immediately knew what she had to do. She felt it in her bones. She threw it into the new techniques she had just learnt not long ago.
It was anger.
Before she knew it, she was being pulled aside and was told that it was enough. She was told that she had done well.
Looking at the girl barely moving on the ground in front of her with a bloodied face and shallow breathing, she wasn't quite sure if that was what she would have called a good thing.
But then, her instructor had patted her on her head and praised her. He said she had the potential.
So she smiled a smile that her olive green eyes did not reflect, and thought about the many other different ways that she could have done it, perhaps on the other girls that had laughed at her too.
She counted.
With only the new set of techniques she'd just learnt, there could be fourteen other ways, or thirty seven. Depending on whether she was allowed to use her feet.
She smirked to herself as her instructor pitted her against another four girls for the rest of the session.
That night, when she returned to her dormitory, she didn't feel a thing when she caught a glimpse of two of the girls with whom she sparred sitting on their beds with bruised limbs and faces, throwing her wary glances every now and then.
She didn't feel a thing when she saw another three empty beds, belonging to the other three girls she had injured during the sparring session.
She didn't feel a thing when only two of them returned from the infirmary.
She never wondered about the last one, the first girl she had fought.
But she knew that she never came back, and sometime later, she realized.
I am Natalia Alianovna Romanova and I will be the best. Only the best will survive.
I will kill, or I will be killed.
She remembers the day she almost lost the photo of Papa and Mama and the little girl's yellow ribbons.
She was nine then.
She had just finished her quick shower after another long and tiresome day and was prepared to hit the hay when she walked into the dormitory and saw the girls crowding around her bed.
That was when she saw the photo in the hands of Yelena Belova and the strips of bright yellow thrown carelessly on the floor.
It was no secret that Yelena abhorred her for being the top girl in every single class, leaving her in second place all the time. And there she was, with the rest of the girls huddled around her, holding the photo with a high-pitched laugher.
Oh look, little Natalia, eating ice-cream with her dead parents, how sweet.
Yelena mocked, dangling the photo before her as the laughter of the other girls that filled the dormitory egged her on.
Give it back.
Her voice was venomous, laced with anger and hatred.
Make me, you pathetic bitch.
The sound of the photo ripping filled her ears and before she knew it, she was on top of Yelena, her hands like a vise around her neck and the photo left in halves on the floor.
The other girls had screamed at her to stop, trying to pull her back, but her strength was only fuelled even more by her rage. Yelena's face was turning a nasty shade of purple and her hands were clawing at her, struggling to get rid of her.
The wardens had heard the commotion and rushed in, knocking her on her head with the back of their guns before she finally loosened her grip.
She scrambled for the torn halves of the photo and the ribbons and clutched them to her chest protectively. Seconds later, she found herself being dragged out of the dormitory.
She was told that she had to be punished for her deplorable deplorable.
That night was spent alone in an empty and cold dark room without windows and light.
She shivered and folded her legs into her body, feeling tiny in the huge space filled with nothing. Her hands tightened around the pieces of Papa and Mama's photo and the crumpled ribbons, vowing to keep them with her every single second in the future.
A single drop of tear then rolled down her cheeks, as the thought that the room was exactly like her, empty and filled with nothingness, invaded her mind.
She thought she was losing her mind then, or that she already had.
In the dark, where her breathing became faster and shakier, she tried to hold on to who she was, among the other things she had been made to believe she was.
A pathetic girl. A liability. A prima ballerina. A fighter. A killer. A murderer. An assassin.
No.
My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova.
She repeated to herself, over and over again, keeping herself grounded to something in the darkness of nothing until the next morning, when the door was unlocked and she was dragged out of the room, her eyes straining at the sudden invasion of light.
And when she was sent off to training again, she smirked to herself as the other girls, especially a very sulky Yelena, stayed clear of her.
They feared her, and that made her feel powerful. It made her feel good.
My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova, and I will hold the power of fear over them, as long as I am the best.
She remembers the day they took her body apart, like taking her mind apart hadn't been enough.
They'd taken her to a similar white room as before.
She didn't scream this time.
All she did was grit her teeth as the men in white injected chemical after chemical into her, using large needles that ought to have terrified a child her age. But she had just closed her eyes and bit down on her tongue. She wasn't that little girl anymore, after all.
Soon enough, her clenched fists relaxed, and consciousness slipped from her mind. What happened to her in the white room after that wasn't made known to her, but she figured it out soon enough.
She had left the room feeling sore all over, and particularly in her lower abdomen, across which she found a stitch afterwards.
The next day during training, she had found her body being stronger and faster, her mind sharper and her senses heightened.
She had thought that the time she spent in the white room must have been a blessing.
It isn't until years later when she learns about the monthly cycle that naturally occurs in the bodies of other women her age that she realizes that the Red Room had taken yet one more thing from her in that white room.
Sometimes, she sees whole perfect families, hanging around in the park or across the street, and she has to turn away before the pain gets the better of her.
She doesn't let herself dream of it. She knows it would destroy her, so she reminds herself.
My name is Natasha Romanoff, and I will never, can never, have a family.
Get over it.