Romanogers Stories

Words of Comfort

Paige--13 Here's your request!

Note: italics is in the past, bold and italics is the past, but what she says in real time.

God, her head hurt. It felt like she'd been hit by a train, then had a rhino ram her head into a wall. She wasn't even sure where she was.

Everything was fuzzy, like reality was just out of her reach.

All she could remember was red. A red haze that covered everything. And then left her in the dark.

She'd grown up in the dark. The shadows. So she shouldn't have been scared, but something felt off about everything. She couldn't wrap her head around it.

Then the darkness changed, turning bright enough that she shielded her eyes against it, though it didn't help. It was somewhere deep within the recesses of her mindscape.

Blurry images flashed before her. Dark ones that she'd suppressed over the years.

A choked whimper escaped her throat as she grasped onto anything that could physically ground her, but all she met was air.

"Take her outside!" he growled impatiently. "That will teach her to obey orders."

She landed in two feet of snow with nothing on her body. The guards tore into her small body, leaving bruises that covered the expanse of her entire being. Blood dripped from her lips as something broke inside. She choked, whimpering from the pain.

The blackness was welcome.

"Whom do you serve, Romanova?"

"The Red Room, sir," she answered.

"Good," he smiled. "I have a mission for you."

"Anything, sir."

Someone was pulled into the room with a bag over their head. Ivan stepped forward and ripped it off.

It was the boy who had been nice enough to give her a scrap of bread when he found her huddled in an alleyway.

"Kill him."

They were just children, but the order was clear. And she shuddered to think of the consequences that would befall her if she refused.

The boy twisted in his restraints as she leveled the pistol. She'd give him a quick death. It was all she could offer.

She flinched so hard as the bullet went off that she tumbled backwards over the catwalk and down to the floor, landing painfully on her shoulders and neck, but she scurried backwards, still unable to see.

Panic surged within her. Tears slid uninhibited down her cheeks.

A sharp pain flared across her jaw where his brass knuckles connected.

"Don't destroy her, she's the best we've got," Madame B snarled.

"She may be the best," Ivan snapped, "but she has no problem disobeying orders. She has to be broken. Taught to follow orders or else she's worthless. Bind her tightly. Some time in the chair should solve this childish behavior."

She'd never been in the chair before. She'd seen some of the results, but was never truly scared of it.

Not until she was strapped down with no way of escape and wires were connected to her head. This was something more inhumane than she'd ever witnessed.