Retnikopf: Widow Of Siberia (old Version)

Chapter 8 - The File Room

Vienna's heart felt tight. She turned her head back hoping to see her but she was greeted with Yelena instead. She frowned a little as the voice kept speaking.

"Don't go in without me."

Vienna looked at Yelena in confusion. Her sister gave her a small smile as their mother walked past her into view. Melina beamed as she looked at her youngest.

"What's in there that you don't want me to see?" Vienna asked, watching Melina as she walked towards her.

"Nothing," Melina told her, putting an arm around her shoulders and giving her a hug, "just a few things I'd rather tell you myself."

---

"So?" Vienna asked, taking a box that said 'project red widow' on it off of the shelf.

"You know the basis of the experiment, I don't need to explain it to you," Melina said, once she gained a nod from Vienna she continued, "What I wanted to tell you myself was about your parents. Your biological parents. Draykov selected a widow to not undergo the graduation ceremony straight away. So that they could be used in this experiment."

"Did he kill her?" Vienna asked as she turned the pages of a file to read more about the beginnings of the experiment.

"No."

"It was you," Vienna breathed as the files on parents sat in front of her, a picture of Melina papercliped to the top of the page, "why didn't you tell me?"

"I wasn't allowed," Melina told her, taking a step forward to look at the file with her, "they didn't want you to get attached in that way, but the attempts, the children, that were taken away from all comforts got sickly and died. Why bring in another widow when your mother was right there. They didn't want you to die, it was wasting their money."

Vienna went quiet for a moment as she read the file. She wanted to be annoyed at Melina but as she saw the number of attempts she had gone through all anger turned into sadness for her. Six. Six times Melina got pregnant. Six times that baby died.

She turned the page not wanting to go any further with it. To her surprise the man she thought she would see wasn't there.

"I thought it was Alexei," Vienna frowned, looking down at the page, "I heard him shouting about it. How I was his child, he was my real father."

"No, you were given to him as a test for the Ohio mission," Melina explained, "I thought you were going to go with us but Draykov didn't want the confusion when we stole from a Hydra base. Since this was an experiment joint with Hydra, the winter soldier gave the dna necessary to produce a viable subject."

Vienna went quiet again. James never said anything to her either. She thought he was just being nice to her out of pity for everything she'd been through.

"He doesn't know," Vienna turned to see Alexei standing in the doorway, glaring a little but he looked happy to see them, "I made sure of it, you are my daughter. My little girl, I wasn't going to let some raccoon looking old man take that from me."

"Am I why you went to prison?" Vienna asked him, frowning at him as she tried to think it through.

"I may have become angry and done something bad when I found out they had taken you," Alexei told her, walking over to where Yelena was flipping through some other files while she was also caught up on what happened in the experiment, "they took you middle of the night, no warning. Your mother got to you, got to hold you before they took you to Siberia. I was shouting, and I may have hit some people as the plane took you away. No one told me what they would do to you."

There was a short silence as Alexei stopped talking, his voice shaking a little as the guilt in his voice game through.

"You knew, you both knew," Yelena said in disbelief, putting down the file she was reading, "you knew she was alive and you didn't say anything."

"When Natasha got out, everything changed," Melina told her calmly, watching her daughter tear up, "they separated us again. Alexei went to prison, I was sent to a farm to work on pigs, they took you and Vienna to opposite ends of the country and into experiments they didn't tell us about. They didn't trust us again, not like they did before."

Getting overwhelmed with everything she was being told, Yelena slammed the file closed and took it with her as she left the room, "I'm going to get this to Fury."

Alexei went to follow her to make sure she was okay but Melina shook her head gently at him, she knew she needed some space. He glanced back at Vienna who was still staring at the picture of Bucky that was clipped to the file.

"Why am I blonde?" she asked, a frown deep on her face as she looked between Melina's dark brown hair that was almost black and Bucky who had a similar colour.

"You know Hydra, they're nazis," Melina sighed, closing the file to stop it from bothering Vienna, "they wanted you to be the 'pinnacle of perfection' , like Rogers. So they changed you a bit."

With her face scrunched up, as the idea made her uncomfortable, Vienna asked, "do I even look like you?"

"A little," Melina smiled as she reached up to pinch Vienna's cheek, "in the cheekbones."