RESURRECTION OVERTURE ▹ barnes-romanoff

восемь.

AH! The last happy chapter before things get crazy and gah, I'm excited, are you excited? This chapter has it all: flashbacks, a tinge of sadness, adorable Svet, and fluff! Be sure to comment!

Be so full that even if they take and take and take and take

You can still be overflowing.

Alison Malee

A frozen wasteland stretched out ahead, the white clouds mirroring the white earth as they hung down low. The black-gray mountain contrasted sharply with the snow that drifted throughout the land.

It was the 1999 mission that gave rise to the potential of other Winter Soldiers. The blue serum was notoriously agonizing, making its subjects seem nearly possessed by the devil as they screamed and wailed and convulsed. Svetlana had grown up around the candidates, watching as Colonel Karpov tried to use the serum on so many men and women. In her earliest years within the Siberian facility, the girl could not remember any of them that had survived the torture she was forced to witness in the gray and green toned rooms. It wasn't until she was five that they did.

Five; that was the special number.

It had been five years since Svetlana's birth when five Winter Soldiers were "born".

She had stood by Bucky within the dim medical hall; the father's light eyes dead and emotionless and the small daughter's uneasy and frightened. Four young men and one young woman sat within metal beds, breathing heavily and gritting their teeth to rein in their misery. Their faces showed the same lack of emotion that Bucky always wore during those days.

When the screaming and the banging caused from the convulsing started, Svet could not hear it. But that did not mean she couldn't see the pure torture on their faces as the doctors and soldiers bound the candidates' hands with leather straps and dragged their writhing bodies into their own personal cells with hard metal doors locking them in. As they screamed at the pain, Karpov merely let them suffer, just as he had let Bucky suffer, as he had let Svetlana herself suffer.

Yet the candidates survived; brutally, viciously, unforgivingly.

And that was how they lived.

After being taken to the Red Room, Svetlana did not see HYDRA's most elite death squad for what felt like centuries in the young girl's mind.

She was nine years old when it happened.

She was there.

She was there when they went insane.

The girl had stood straight and tight, trying to resist all of the fear that was desperately clawing at her mind. She stood within the Siberian facility's gray cage once more, her small hands curled into fists as she stared at the fight ensuing before her.