Whispers of the Red Room: A Love in the Shadows (winterwidow/buckynat)

CHAPTER 1 - THE RED ROOM

Natalia Romanova's nights were never peaceful. She woke with a start, her heart pounding, body drenched in cold sweat. The same recurring nightmare had haunted her since as far back as she could remember. She was just a baby in those dreams, helpless, caught in the merciless grip of a raging fire as it devoured her childhood home.

In the midst of the consuming flames, her family screamed in anguish, their voices echoing through the halls. She couldn't comprehend the horror unfolding before her, but one image stood out amid the chaos—a gleaming metal arm, reaching through the inferno, scooping her up, and carrying her to safety. Her memories of that night were fragmented, disjointed, but the metal arm remained a vivid constant.

The nightmare left her trembling, but she dared not make a sound. Silence was her only ally in the dark basement, where she and ten other girls were confined to their beds, handcuffed like prisoners. They left jagged scars in their wake as they were always much too tight.

The Red Room was a place of torment and suffering, where they were moulded into assassins, referred to as "widows". This always confused Natalia, why they were here?

Once, there had been twenty-seven girls like her, but over time, the numbers dwindled. Those who proved unworthy or attempted to escape were ruthlessly eliminated. An order given by Madam B. Natasha had always thought her cruel, and wouldn't even see a glint of remorse in her eye as girls were slaughtered. But Natalia never flinched, wouldn't make a sound... she knew better.

Natalia, now sixteen, had known nothing else. Although, she occasionally experienced flashes of what might have been memories in her dreams, though they seemed impossible to reconcile with the life she knew. In these fragments, she was still an infant, nothing much important could be held in the memories anyway, besides what was she going to do about it?

As the first light of dawn seeped through the window, Natalia's gaze fixed on the still-darkened sky. She had always been an early riser, awakening before anyone else, before the sun itself, and even before the guards who patrolled the facility.

She reached under her mattress and retrieved a key she had stolen from a guard when she was just twelve. For four years, she had kept it hidden there. Unlocking the handcuffs, she carefully slipped out of her bed, making no noise.

It had become a morning ritual, this journey to the training room, each morning. Stay the best. That was the only way of survival, and she was. However, starting from an early age Madam B ordered her not to fight at her full potential during training sessions, not in front of the girls she would say. She had the skill to outmatch her peers, but here, direct defiance meant brutal consequences, and she had no desire to invite punishment.

Despite her relatively small stature—standing at a mere 5'3" with fiery red hair— Natalia was both lean and muscular. On the surface, she didn't appear particularly intimidating, to the naked eye, she was nothing more than a pale weakling, nothing much. It made no sense for her to hold back, yet she complied nonetheless.

Though distinct, Natalia was everything BUT fond of her long locks, to her, all they did was invite the bullies. Whether it involved tripping her in front of the instructors, beating her senseless during training, or the more mainstream, knocking her out in the washroom and taking her clothes. Growing up in isolation, training to become a deadly assassin, hadn't erased the cruelty of teenage bullies.

Natalia moved with caution, ensuring not to draw any attention as she made her way out of the basement. The facility was eerily silent, the darkness concealing my actions. While night guards were a rare sight, they rarely served to keep the girls alert.

Natalia's POV:

I always tread carefully in the early morning, the slightest sound and an army of guards swarmed you. Speaking from experience. I knew this place like the back of my hand, I knew which steps squeaked, I knew just how much movement would alert anyone. These same ritual every day for 4 years will do that to a girl. Just like clockwork, like every morning, I reached the second floor. Here, we were trained in ballet, engaged in regular classes that taught them theory, languages, and history, and honed our skills in close combat, weapons training, and acrobatics, none of which I'd ever had a problem with... not that anyone else would know.

Approaching the far wall, I hooked a punching bag to the ceiling, seeing as Madam B wouldn't actually let me hit the others, this was the next best thing. I lost myself in the rhythm of the punches, the sound of my fists hitting the bag, it was almost a comfort to me...

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Hours passed unnoticed, nothing unusual to her however, the bag showing signs of wear, and her hands raw from the relentless assault.

After a while, there was distinct shuffling echoing through the corridor and the floors below. Acting swiftly, Natalia replaced the bag on the hook, took off the cover of the vent and began her climb down, taking her directly to the showers in the washroom, something she had discovered when she was 14.

This was the routine that played out every morning, day in and day out.
Officers Anton and Boris always stood a little too close to the entrance, a constant reminder of their limited freedom.
Hilda, the oldest, and biggest, had managed to give Natalia a whole new set of bruises to replace those from last week just in the few minutes she was in there. Once again, nothing new, she was always her target. Natalia had embarrassed her in their monthly assessment, a rare occasion in which she could use her full strength. And boy did she.

They followed the officers to the dining hall on the opposite side of the same level. In which meal consisted of oats and a glass of water. Nothing special, but it's all the girls new, so they took what they could get. Kept them alive, that's all they could ask for at this point.

Everyone has questions about what lay on the upper floors, all Natalia knew was that the 3rd floor housed Ivan's office and the infirmary, the place Natalia hated to admit, she spent a lot of her time. But above that? It was a mystery.

One of the floors contained some sort of sterilised white room. All the girls had gone in when they were 13, a few didn't come out, but those who did knew what had happened to them. They were 'clipped' Madam B had called it. It was explained to them that the inability to have a family would only make them better assassins, they wouldn't have ties to anyone, or be held back by my the one thing that could matter more than a mission.

After that ordeal, restlessness had spread, fueling a desire to rebel. One girl, Donna, had dared to investigate, reached the upper levels, saw something that scared her enough to escape one night, climbed out the one window in the sleeping quarters. That night we had heard a gun shot, and then a piercing scream. No one talks about it, but we all knew, Donna didn't make it very far out the gates.

After breakfast, they were directed to the dance studio for daily ballet class with Madam Sokolov. This was the only part of the day that wasn't agonising. It was strenuous, sure, but there was nothing like the feeling of getting lost in the music, this was the one place she didn't have to hold back. It beat getting beat in the training room.

Natalia yearned for a different life, a life far removed from this place of unrelenting pain and suffering. Yet, the path to escape seemed distant and uncertain, for the only way out was to be the last one standing and "graduate," to become, the widow.
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Ok it's going to start getting good, I promise.