look after you × winterwidow & oc

II. ekaterina

"We managed to hide for maybe six or seven months before they took him away. We got too bold, they caught on. I didn't see him for over a year after that." she exhaled loudly. "I thought I would never see him again, that this was it."

She did see him again. But James didn't remember. They wiped him. Fried his brain to get her out of his head. Because the weapon was starting to become human. Weapons don't feel, don't care and most definitely they don't love. Convinced that they got rid of a problem, of anything that could be more important than the mission's success, they sent them out together again and again.

They were still working together as well as they used to, like a well-oiled machine, not affected by passing time. Their fights together, not against each other resembled dance, with every move perfectly timed and matched with the other person. But otherwise, there was nothing from what they used to share. Trying to find that adoration he looked at her with before was pointless. The man that called her zvezda, that held her close every time he got a chance and could spend an entire night peppering every inch of her body with kisses, she was convinced he was gone. That Soldat took control over James, whom she lost even before really having him.

Until one night something snapped inside his head and he remembered. He caught her by her arm and looked her in the eyes and Natasha just knew that he was back, that he broke through his conditioning. Hearing someone say her name was never so pleasing as it was then. She doubted that she could ever forget that evening, they spent in a dimly light room, with his arms closed around her waist, her head rested on his chest and him muttering that one word over and over again like a maniac, afraid it would slip away from him again the moment he stopped. She felt like they were above everything, no one else mattered, and nothing and no one could come between them. Because he remembered. Brainwashing wasn't enough to tear them apart.

"Not long after that, we were sent on our first mission to States." Natasha resumed after she got lost in her thoughts for a moment and went silent. "We went undercover, posing as newlyweds. Pretending was never as easy as it was then." small vacant smile tugged on her lips. "And it was our only taste of what a normal life together could be like."

It was a short moment of bliss, too short for their liking, even though were stalling. The mission took them almost two weeks even though they could've easily eliminated the target in half of that time. They talked about it a lot, imagining what they could have, knowing well how slim their chances of getting anywhere near it were. It was also the first time the subject of getting out came up. The first time Natasha thought about looking for a way out for real. It wasn't just pointless dreams anymore. It was becoming something big and authentic.

And was even more after he learned about Katya. 

Katya was almost one when they first told him, using her as leverage to force him into obedience. Showed him pictures, of a tiny, thin baby with a tuft of black her on top of her head and blue eyes, the same as his. She already had scars all over her delicate body. He knew they could've been just lying to him, using a random child to affect him, especially since no one had used his lack of memories of anything that could somehow connect to creating a child against him. But something made him believe them without hesitation. In the face of all Hydra and Red Room have done, creating a baby without the parent's or rather sperm donor's knowledge, would be the smallest of their crimes.

And Katya was a prize the Red Room was supposed to pay to Hydra for using Soldat. Dreykov got him as a trainer for the girls and used one of them as an incubator for the future world's most perfect and flawless assassin and Hydra's objects for further experiments with extraterrestrial powers and super soldier serum. They were all just pawns in a much bigger game, just machines and spare parts for them to use when they felt like it.