The Crime of the Widow

12|. It Was Real to Me

MELINA ENDED UP back down with a tablet in her hands. She pressed some buttons and all three of us watched closely. Next she spoke into the tablet saying "Come in" to someone. All of us were waiting in suspense and wondering what was happening.

Well, that's when the door swung open and some little steps started to tread through to the dining room where we all sat. And then a pig walked into the dining room.. Yes, a pig. I looked over to Yelena with eyebrows raised and questionably eyes, which she shrugged her shoulders in response.

"Did that pig just open the door?" The red head asked Melina. My eyes stared at the pink pig with random splotches planted all over him, he even stood there waiting for whatever he was waiting for.

Meanwhile, Melina let tapping away on her tablet, occasionally looking down to the animal. "Yes. I did." The lady reached down to the pig and started to feed it, shaking her head as she spoke to him. "Good boy, Alexei. Good boy." A smile made its way to my lips when I looked over to Alexei, only to find him deadpanning at Melina.

"You named a pig after me?" Alexei asked.

"You don't see the resemblance?" Melina's face was puzzled as she stared straight into the man's eye with no emotion and just pure confusion.

"It's a striking one." I said.

Alexei, turned half of his lips into a smile, fixing his gaze at everyone one of us. "See, he sits just like dog. Amazing. Now, watch." Her fingers grazed the tablet, swiping a full 100% green bar all the way to a red 0% one. "Stop breathing." She commanded.

My eyes closed for a moment, listening to the once noisy pig grunting. I breathed out as Melina began to talk once more, making anger grow larger by the second. "We infiltrated the North Institute in Ohio. It was a front for S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists. Actually, it was Hydra scientists at that time. In conjunction with the Winter Soldier project and the W3P, they had dissected and deconstructed the human brain."

Yelena eyes started to tear up, she gazed at Natalia, as I did the same. The red head kept glancing at the two of us, having an idea of what was happening.

But, the blondes look wanted my heart to break, but finding out that my so called mother was behind all the torture, broke it even more.

"To create the first and only cellular blueprint of the basal ganglia." Melina continued. "Was the hub for cognition. Voluntary motor movement, procedural learning." She looked over to Alexei, talking lowly to him. "We didn't steal weaponry or technology. We stole the key to unlocking free will."

With a thud, the pig fell to the floor, wheezing as his belly quickly moved up and down. "What are you doing?" Natalia asked, even the man, Alexei, began to worry about the animal.

Melina looked over to the eldest daughter, purely confused. "Oh, I am explaining that the science is now so exact, the subject can be instructed to stop breathing and has no choice but to obey."

"Okay, you made your point. That's enough." Natalia leaned over the table and began to speak louder with more force, which Melina looked taken back by, but she nodded and started to click on her tablet. Her fingers did the exact opposite of what she did earlier and thankfully the pig started to twitch with big breaths.

"Yes, all right. Well, don't worry, Alexei could've survived 11 more seconds without oxygen. Good boy. Now, you go back, back home where it's safe." As the woman began to speak, the pig started to walk out of the room and back to his humble abode. "You go. You go back home, back home where it's safe. Good boy, Alexei. The world functions on a higher level when it is controlled. Dreykov has chemically subjugated agents planted around the globe."

Yelena took a drop breath and a gulp, looking over to the woman by her side. She didn't dare to to meet her eyes though, anger was building up inside her too. But sadness trumpeted. Her eyes were now red, glossy. She looked like she was about to cry any second, and Melina was not helping. "Do you know who they tested it on?"

The woman seemed to be in deep thought for a moment, before answering with a shake of her head. "Hmm... No. That's not my department."

Alexei looked like he didn't believe her for one moment. "Ah, come on, come on. Don't lie to them. Hmm?"

"I'm not lying." The woman squinted her eyes.

"You're Dreykov's architect, huh?" The man asked.

"What were you? If I was his architect, you were his partner. You were his business partner." Melina motioned her head.

"No, no, no. I was patsy!" With a bang of his fist, Alexei got way to angry. Meanwhile, we all were watching the the two.

"Don't give me that..."

"He sell me ideology."

"Stop with the politics."

"All the while, bigger..."

"Shut up!"

The words echoed throughout the room. Everyone fell silent with the stern words of Natalia, and Melina and Alexei felt offended. The red head leaned over to the man and stared into the depths of his sounds. "You are an idiot." The man looked like he had accepted the fact, he gently nodded and confused to stare at the the red head as she moved over to the woman. "And you're a coward. You're a coward. And our family was never real, so there's nothing to hold on to. We're moving on."

"Never family, huh? In my heart, I am simple man. And I think that for a couple deep undercover Russian agents I think we did pretty great as parents, huh?" Alexei spoke.

"Yes, we had our orders, and we played our roles to perfection." Melina spoke out. She wasn't quite understanding why her eldest 'daughter', if you would call her that, was acting the way she was. And it was infuriating Natalia to death, then acting like they did nothing wrong.

"Who cares!" Natalia angrily said. "That wasn't real."

Yelena was shook by this, she broke her gaze off of the window ahead of her and looked over to Natalia. She tried to suppress the emotions, she couldn't believe her ears. "What?" She quietly asked, and everyone heard her.

"That wasn't real who cares." Natalia repeated, not fully realizing what was going on with her youngest sister. But me, I felt someone shot a bullet through my heart. I sat there with tears threatening to spill from my eyes, I stared at the empty plate sitting in front of me, a duo ding the hard cold stares from the others.

"Don't say that." Yelena puckered her lips, gazing over at the red head who finally understood what was happening. Natalia brushed her nose and looked over to me with sadden eyes and guilt filling her as the blonde continued to speak. "Please don't say that. It was real. It was real to me." The blonde looked over to the woman who was sitting next to her, listening intently. "You are my mother. You were my real mother. The closest thing I ever had to one. The best part of my life was fake."

She took a deep breath, trying to control the tears. I tried my best not to look at her, because every time I did I felt an immense amount of guilt and sorrow, a felt a grief and hurt by just looking at her. "And none of you told me." She said.

Before she turned to Melina again, Yelena banged the table softly, shaking everything on it. "And those agents you chemically subjugated around the globe? That was me. Mmm." Melina looked down with realization in her eyes, like she couldn't even believe what she had just said.

"And you," Yelena said to Natalia. "You got out. Dreykov made sure no one could escape." She turned to me, sucking in her lips with anger. "Did you even know?" She asked me. I stayed silent, not answering nor looking her in the eyes. "Are you gonna say anything?" She asked.

Everyone was quiet. No one even dared to speak as they thinker. Melina reached out to touch her, but Yelena quickly pulled back. "No. Don't touch me." Her hands swiftly picked up an alcohol bottle as she zoomed out of the room with everyone watching her.

"Yelena." Natalia breathed out.

"No." Yelena spoke quickly.

As soon as she left with sliding the door shut, Melina looked over to the man. "I had no idea."

"It's okay, it's okay. I'll go talk to her." Alexei said before he left the three of us in silence, and anger rising in me.