Russia
Winter 1996/97
He was a legend, a myth, a ghost story. How on earth the Red Room had been able to get the Winter Soldier to appear in the flesh to test its recruits was a mystery to Nadya and it was a development she wasn't sure she liked.
Before it had happened, she would have been thrilled. The chance to test her skills against an agent and assassin of the caliber of the Winter Soldier? She would have leapt at the opportunity to face him.
Now that she had...
It wasn't so much because she had never beaten him while sparring—no one had come close, though Nadya had come closest, so it was a moot point—it was him himself.
There was something...wrong...about him. It took some time to figure it out, but eventually Nadya was able to place the feeling.
He was hollow. Empty. He was a blank slate, a shell of a man who only seemed to exist to follow orders. And it scared Nadya. It also inspired a great welling of pity for the man. Because he was incredible. Stronger than anyone she'd fought or even met and faster than should have been possible. The way he moved was captivating and watching him fight was like a witnessing deadly dance. His body was sculpted and perfected into the ultimate weapon, easily drawing Nadya's eye whether she wished it or not. And he was obviously smart and definitely creative; the best fighters had to be. Assassins even more so, and he was the best. Which was a big part of what made the reality of him so, well, upsetting and tragic.
When he stood waiting for orders or his next match, he seemed so lost. He seemed disoriented, even childlike in his uncertainty as he waited, still and ready, for whatever he was instructed to do next. She'd never even heard him speak. Something awful had been done to this man's head to turn him into the Winter Soldier, to wipe him clean of whoever he'd been before, and it sent a chill down Nadya's spine. It was more than simple brainwashing, more than indoctrination; those she was intimately familiar with, having been taught to recognize and beat them even as she'd been a recipient in her early years. His steel-blue eyes were virtually dead as they scanned and analyzed his opponents, his face—younger and handsomer than she'd expected given his reputation and the stories about him—was blank no matter the painful hits he took or how often he soundly beat and even nearly killed the young but deadly girls sent up against him.
Because they were all deadly. Natalia's group was the youngest to be permitted to train against him and you didn't survive to their age without kills, both of the weak and of those brought in to train against. Of the younger girls, Natalia fared the best, her size, speed and ferocity off-putting to man used to going up against grown men and women. Katerina, the only other girl left from Nadya's group, fared the best next to Nadya herself, her hand-to-hand and close-quarter combat skills second to none; before the Treatments, Katerina had been the only one capable of beating Nadya, the blonde often only just barely surviving their matches out of cleverness. But then, being only a couple months from graduation, it would have been incomprehensible for it to be otherwise.
He was unbeatable.
Nadya watched with calculating eyes as Lena struggled against him, crying out angrily as she twisted free from the grip he'd secured across her shoulders, earning a brief reprieve. It would only be moments, though. Nadya could see the brunette from the group after hers was tiring fast, her honey-brown hair clinging to her damp face. Nadya couldn't help but clench her teeth. This was the third round Madame B had insisted on for the younger girl. Only the purpose seemed to be bent more toward humiliation, this time, rather than training.
Across the room, Natalia's wide eyes met Nadya's, her green gaze hard with the same frustration Nadya felt. Each girl was on her own in the Red Room, fighting only for her own success. That was the way of it. But Nadya could hardly stand this. Lena was going to break eventually, within the next handful of months, she suspected; Nadya had been here long enough that she could see the early signs. But she was not on the verge of breaking yet, not today.
An idea swiftly formed in her mind as she glanced back to the Winter Soldier before her grey eyes darted to the head of the room. Madame B's attention was fixed solely on Lena. Another minute and the younger girl would be done. And judging by the hard look in their taskmistress' eyes, she might not be allowed to get up again once she went down. Nadya couldn't agree with that. Even if her fate was already virtually written, Lena had gone up against him three times now, and had done well each time regardless of the abuse she'd suffered already. She hadn't earned that fate today.
Catching Natalia's gaze again, she pointedly flicked her eyes to the fighting pair in the centre of the room. Intrigued, the younger girl's head canted fractionally, indicating her interest. The two girls had grown close enough that they needed little more than minute gestures to communicate; a skill being put to good use today. Hiding the grin that threatened to curl her lip, Nadya slowly curled the fingers of her left hand around her opposite wrist before shifting her right arm behind her back. The corner of Natalia's mouth twitched. It was enough of a sign for Nadya, who answered with a slow, deliberate nod.
It all happened so fast no one had time to react, including the Winter Soldier. In unison Natalia and Nadya sprang into action, sprinting onto the floor. Just that little bit closer, the redheaded girl reached him first, darting beneath his metal arm as it recoiled to slam first her leg then her knee into his side, crushing a grunt from him and causing his grip on Lena to loosen before dropping and rolling away from his grasping metal fingers. Not willing to pass up the opening, knowing full well it could be her life if she did, Lena was immediately latching on to the flesh forearm that had been holding her and twisted around him, using her weight to wrench the limb behind him as she slammed into the back of his legs with her body, effectively hobbling him.
Even as she did so, Nadya had used Natalia's ready shoulder as a Launchpad, springing onto his back to perch on his shoulders, her fingers latching beneath his chin to yank his head back hard against her hip. A flicker of rage passed over his face as he staggered, his steel-blue gaze boring into hers as the closest thing to shock she'd seen flashed to life in his eyes.
Springing to her feet as soon as Nadya's foot had cleared her shoulder, Natalia was darting around him again, using Lena as her own springboard to drop her own weight onto his metal arm, pulling it away from where it had been scrabbling at Nadya's folded knee. Then, with a swinging motion that caused the Winter Soldier to sway worryingly beneath them, Natalia let herself collide into his back before landing nimbly on her hands and driving her boots up into the back of his knee right as Lena released his other arm. With a lurch he collapsed to his knees, his whole body jolting as a pained bellow choked out of his throat.
Somehow, Nadya managed to hold on as he staggered, her eyes still locked with his as her jaw clenched from the effort of keeping his head and neck immobilized. But as his knees slammed into the floor, she let the impact jerk her sideways from her perch and cause her legs to slip from his shoulders, one to hook around the elbow of his metal arm and the other to drive her heel into his sternum as she deliberately swung further to the right.
It was too much for his equilibrium to handle and he collapsed sideways, his right arm pinned by his own weight. The combined grip of Nadya's thighs and hands held his upper body hostage even as Natalia tangled his legs with her own weight and added her grip to restraining his metal arm against Nadya's leg. A look of utter astonishment on her face, Lena had leapt free the instant he'd begun to fall.
Nadya was still caught by the way his vivid eyes remained latched, stunned, on hers.
A single, muffled thud echoed through the room, already silenced by the crash of the Winter Soldier falling to his knees.
Recognizing the signal to yield, Natalia too leapt back, her disbelief flashing in her eyes even as a satisfied smirk teased her lips as she surveyed the Winter Soldier lying prone before them. It took another moment for the sound of his pinned hand thumping the floor to reach through his compelling gaze to register in Nadya's brain. Blinking abruptly she pried her clenched fingers apart even as she had to consciously relax her legs. As soon as he was free of her grip, he snapped to his feet with an abrupt jerk. Rolling warily to her own feet, Nadya watched him out of the corner of her eye as he paced just beyond her reach, his face not quite so blank as before as a faintly perplexed and troubled look fell like a shadow across his face.
Madame B surveyed the three of them, her eyes falling particularly on Nadya and Natalia. Nadya nearly jerked with surprise as she looked up to the Training Mistress.
The very corner of the older woman's lip was nearly—not quite, but nearly—tilted into a smile.
A/N: Thanks for reading!
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