The sun and temperature have both risen considerably by the time they arrive in Yakutsk. In the cargo bed, Yelena tugs the canvas out of the way so she can see the train yard and old tracks pass. Their brother parks the vehicle between two out of the way stacks of empty, rusting freight cars. She leans out over the tailgate just a little to squint up at the early afternoon sky, which is bright and clear. The snowfall from last night is wet and slushy on the ground, turning the top layer to mud above the hard permafrost the city was built on, and there are still wisps of fog drifting in off the river in the distance.
It's summer, she thinks, and is surprised that it has been so long since the last test.
She ducks back in and lets the tarp fall into place when she hears Yevgeniy open the driver side door. Natalia quirks a brow at her in the dark, nudging her gently with one shoulder.
Yelena nudges Natalia back, and shares a small, secret smile with her. She doesn't know what angle Natalia is working, looking out for her the way she has been since they lost Tatyana, but she knows better than to throw away an opportunity to get ahead.
Yevgeniy pulls back the canvas and drops the truck's tailgate, counting the girls off as they exit, ensuring he still has all ten. She makes sure to stay close to Natalia as they await further direction.
---
There is a safe house here that they will have to occupy by force. Yevgeniy splits the girls into two teams, and makes it very clear to them that in order for the mission to be successful, they must all come back undetected and uninjured.
Yelena isn't sure how the rankings work across different classes, or if their placement on the teams means something important or not. Ekaterina and Natalia are with the twins, tasked to acquire uniforms for them all from one of the city's more prestigious gymnastics academies, while the rest go with Yevgeniy to secure the safe house.
This is a test. And to pass, Yevgeniy says they have to take the safe house without sustaining any injury, but Yelena knows that an injury that goes undetected by an instructor is – in practice – the same as one that has not occurred.
Oksana gives her look that is all teeth and the muted promise violence behind their brother's back, and Yelena sets her jaw resolutely and pretends to ignore her.
She has become very good at not giving away when she is hurt, or when she is going to hurt someone.
---
Yelena has a simple relationship with the Red Room's ranking system. She had been one of fifteen when she first joined the program, in the same class as Tatyana and Oksana. The matron promoted competition among the younger girls, and had told them often that Natalia was the best Black Widow the Red Room had ever seen. She was the hand of the collective, and was helping their parents build a warm future for the glory of Soviet supremacy.
Only the best, the matron had said, would be allowed to graduate. It didn't take the girls long at all to learn that the strong ones at the top of the class received more food and better medical attention than anyone else, and weak girls died.
It was very simple. There were a lot of girls who were weak. They all died and were buried in the field behind the big house.
This is where it gets complicated:
Yelena knows she isn't strong. She has been fighting to hold onto second place for most of her life and the girl in second place cannot afford to be seen struggling. Second place is, arguably, the most dangerous rank to hold in the Red Room. It has none of the benefits of being first and all of the brutality and vulnerability associated with being thrust into the spotlight. No one rises unseen from second place, and whoever is in third is always ready for the perfect moment to strike.
Maybe she would have been a good agent elsewhere in the Red Room or some other part of Department X, but a Black Widow is more than just a good agent, and no matter how hard she tries, Yelena can't seem to meet those exacting standards. She knows that she isn't particularly adept at any of the tasks they trained on. She has to try so much harder than the other girls to make it all look effortless and not let anyone know that this is the best that she can do.
She is like Tatyana was, and Tatyana is already dead.
So Yelena has to rely on being clever instead of good if she wants to survive. And she does. She wants to graduate and be a Black Widow and keep all her secret inadequacies hidden and safe. Her best, she knows, won't always be enough, but it doesn't have to be. She just has to fake it long enough to make it out of training, and then she doesn't have to worry about the other girls in the program anymore. If even the careful gazes in the Red Room can't expose Yelena as the fraud she truly is, then no one can.
---
The assault on the safe house doesn't go as planned.
Or maybe it does. Yelena's not sure what this mission is supposed to be testing, after all.
---
“Longing,” a man says, and Yevgeniy hits his knees with a gasp, metal fingers twitching. He grits his teeth as the man goes on, in a flat, calm voice, “Rusted.”
“No.” Her brother tries to stand, but his body refuses to cooperate. Darya is shaking behind him, her mouth open and no sound coming out. They were supposed to do this undetected, but they've already failed, so Oksana doesn't draw her knife and Yelena doesn't reach for the pistol Yevgeniy gave her. A guard approaches from the kitchen. He has a rifle, and they are not supposed to fight the guards. That only ever makes it worse.
“Seventeen.” The guard takes Sophia's hand and leads her away. Isolda reaches for her, but the man, who Yelena is starting to think might be Yevgeniy's handler, grabs her by the wrist. “Daybreak.”
“Run,” Yevgeniy begs as he starts to slip under the conditioning. Yelena's never heard her brother beg before, not even when the doctors cut him open in the basement at the big house. It's weird to see so much of his face; she knows it hurts, knows that it has always hurt, but normally she doesn't have to see it.
Mariya breaks away and dashes for the stairs up to the second floor.
“Daybreak.” Sophia disappears with the guard into the kitchen. Isolda is staring at the handler's fingers. She is breathing very fast. Oksana has turned her head to watch Yelena with dead, icy eyes. “Furnace.”
“Stop,” Isolda whispers. Yelena doesn't know how she's even capable of speech right now. Her own heart has jumped up into her throat and she's thinking about punishments and their failing grades and how Oksana is going to overtake her in the rankings and then kill her while no one is looking.
“Nine.” Yevgeniy goes blank and still, the plates of his metal arm shifting, the machinery humming as his handler looks down at him. The man is standing in front of their brother's complacent ghost, a mocking smile on his lips as he says, “Benign.”
“You're hurting me!” Isolda's voice is shrill and piercing and terrified, and her eyes are wet and she's crying and Yelena can't remember ever seeing any of the girls cry.
She doesn't remember seeing Yevgeniy wake or move, but he's suddenly on his feet with his metal hand at the juncture of the handler's throat and jaw. She hears the bones crunch, the bloody gurgle of pain, the man's last, wheezing breath over shattered teeth. Her brother is snarling and forcing the man to stumble back clumsily as he is half-carried across the room. They slam into the wall hard enough to dent the plaster.
Yevgeniy drops the handler's limp body, and storms into the kitchen after the guard.
There's a gunshot, and Sophia finally screams.
---
Yevgeniy seems shaken when he returns from clearing the rest of the safe house. It was minimally staffed, and now that the guards have been dispatched, he instructs Isolda to take the younger girls upstairs and find Mariya. Darya has peed her pants and still won't speak, and needs a bath and new clothes. Sophia has blood in her hair again and won't stop biting her lip.
There is a bruise forming on the delicate skin of Isolda's wrist and Yevgeniy is fussing over a bullet hole in his side, but otherwise no one has sustained any injuries.
“Ksyusha, Lenochka,” he calls to them. He has stripped off his jacket and shirt and is standing at the kitchen sink, a thin blade in his hand as he starts to pry the round out of his body. “There should be passports we can use in one of these rooms. Find them.”
There's an uncomfortable moment of silence.
“Aren't you going to tell the matron we failed?” Yelena asks. He looks up from his task with a start. “When you take us back to the Red Room, I mean.”
“No. No, of course not. You didn't fail, and I'm not taking you back.”
Oksana frowns and shoots Yelena a questioning look. “We're still. . . proceeding with the mission, then?”
“Yes. Now, be good girls and listen to your brother.”
The girls glare at each other but do as they have been told.
---
They find passports in what looks like the handler's office on the other side of the safe house. Yelena also finds a dull red book with a black star embossed on the cover. Inside, the pages are worn and fading and filled with jargon and code and strange things she doesn't understand.
She turns the pages slowly, frowning. Oksana looks up from the desk. Her eyes catch on the words Homecoming and Freight car.
“What is that?” she asks mildly, and Yelena knows that she isn't stupid but she can't help the dumb way she answers:
“I think it's. . . I think it's the soldier's manual.”
They both freeze, the implication clear. Yelena is looking at the trigger phrases and control procedures for their brother. It will give her the advantage in future tests. She can tell that Oksana comes to the same conclusion in roughly the same moment that she has about what this whole disastrous scenario has been preparing them for.
Which is precisely why Oksana tries to stab her.
Yelena blocks with the book and snaps forward to strike her in the face with the heel of one palm. It quickly dissolves into a grapple, Yelena attempting to disarm Oksana and Oksana trying to get the book out of Yelena's hand. A leg sweeps Yelena's feet out from under her, and she goes down to the floor hard with Oksana's body on top of her, pinning her in place.
She twists, jackknifing her body, and breaks the hold. Oksana's blade clatters away under the desk.
They wrestle for a moment, quiet grunts and panted breaths because they don't want their brother to overhear this fight. Yelena manages to get behind Oksana with an arm locked around her neck. She squeezes, and Oksana elbows her in the gut, but she doesn't let up.
“Focus,” she grits the word out through clenched teeth. “Focus on the sound of my voice.”
“The training is hard,” Oksana spits back. One of them will trigger first and Yelena knows that whoever does will win and come out on top. “And you have to focus.”
“You are one of ten,” she says, desperately. She can't afford to lose now. She needs this more. Yelena keeps squeezing, trying to cut off Oksana's airway. “Black –”
“Widow agents with the Red Room,” Oksana finishes for her. Her face is red and her struggling is starting to get frantic with adrenaline and too little oxygen. Yelena wraps her legs around Oksana's torso, clenching down hard on her ribcage.
“You are building the glory of a nation,” she says.
“And the warmth of your parents will make up for –”
“I'm not dying in the Red Room with you,” Yelena hisses, and Oksana tries to cough. Her eyelids flutter closed for a moment, the tension in her body starting to go slack. Yelena holds on for almost a full minute after Oksana passes out before she scrambles to her feet and picks up the book. She tucks it into her waistband and makes sure that its slight bulk doesn't show under her shirt and jacket before grabbing the documents off the desk on her way out of the office.
---
“Where's your sister?” Yevgeniy asks when Yelena re-enters the kitchen. There's a field dressing over his wound and he's pulling his shirt back on. Yelena hands him the passports.
“Oksanka is checking for hidden compartments,” she says. The book feels heavy and cold against the small of her back. He nods, and smiles at her.
“You've done well,” he notes. A small bubble of pride and guilt and panic swells in her chest. “Help Isolda with the little ones.”
“Yes, Djenya,” she says, and manages not to choke on her own fear or give anything away. She stuffs her shaking hands into her jacket pockets so no one can tell she doesn't really feel calm.
Fill: Blades, Braids, & Ballet [5/?]
It's summer, she thinks, and is surprised that it has been so long since the last test.
She ducks back in and lets the tarp fall into place when she hears Yevgeniy open the driver side door. Natalia quirks a brow at her in the dark, nudging her gently with one shoulder.
Yelena nudges Natalia back, and shares a small, secret smile with her. She doesn't know what angle Natalia is working, looking out for her the way she has been since they lost Tatyana, but she knows better than to throw away an opportunity to get ahead.
Yevgeniy pulls back the canvas and drops the truck's tailgate, counting the girls off as they exit, ensuring he still has all ten. She makes sure to stay close to Natalia as they await further direction.
---
There is a safe house here that they will have to occupy by force. Yevgeniy splits the girls into two teams, and makes it very clear to them that in order for the mission to be successful, they must all come back undetected and uninjured.
Yelena isn't sure how the rankings work across different classes, or if their placement on the teams means something important or not. Ekaterina and Natalia are with the twins, tasked to acquire uniforms for them all from one of the city's more prestigious gymnastics academies, while the rest go with Yevgeniy to secure the safe house.
This is a test. And to pass, Yevgeniy says they have to take the safe house without sustaining any injury, but Yelena knows that an injury that goes undetected by an instructor is – in practice – the same as one that has not occurred.
Oksana gives her look that is all teeth and the muted promise violence behind their brother's back, and Yelena sets her jaw resolutely and pretends to ignore her.
She has become very good at not giving away when she is hurt, or when she is going to hurt someone.
---
Yelena has a simple relationship with the Red Room's ranking system. She had been one of fifteen when she first joined the program, in the same class as Tatyana and Oksana. The matron promoted competition among the younger girls, and had told them often that Natalia was the best Black Widow the Red Room had ever seen. She was the hand of the collective, and was helping their parents build a warm future for the glory of Soviet supremacy.
Only the best, the matron had said, would be allowed to graduate. It didn't take the girls long at all to learn that the strong ones at the top of the class received more food and better medical attention than anyone else, and weak girls died.
It was very simple. There were a lot of girls who were weak. They all died and were buried in the field behind the big house.
This is where it gets complicated:
Yelena knows she isn't strong. She has been fighting to hold onto second place for most of her life and the girl in second place cannot afford to be seen struggling. Second place is, arguably, the most dangerous rank to hold in the Red Room. It has none of the benefits of being first and all of the brutality and vulnerability associated with being thrust into the spotlight. No one rises unseen from second place, and whoever is in third is always ready for the perfect moment to strike.
Maybe she would have been a good agent elsewhere in the Red Room or some other part of Department X, but a Black Widow is more than just a good agent, and no matter how hard she tries, Yelena can't seem to meet those exacting standards. She knows that she isn't particularly adept at any of the tasks they trained on. She has to try so much harder than the other girls to make it all look effortless and not let anyone know that this is the best that she can do.
She is like Tatyana was, and Tatyana is already dead.
So Yelena has to rely on being clever instead of good if she wants to survive. And she does. She wants to graduate and be a Black Widow and keep all her secret inadequacies hidden and safe. Her best, she knows, won't always be enough, but it doesn't have to be. She just has to fake it long enough to make it out of training, and then she doesn't have to worry about the other girls in the program anymore. If even the careful gazes in the Red Room can't expose Yelena as the fraud she truly is, then no one can.
---
The assault on the safe house doesn't go as planned.
Or maybe it does. Yelena's not sure what this mission is supposed to be testing, after all.
---
“Longing,” a man says, and Yevgeniy hits his knees with a gasp, metal fingers twitching. He grits his teeth as the man goes on, in a flat, calm voice, “Rusted.”
“No.” Her brother tries to stand, but his body refuses to cooperate. Darya is shaking behind him, her mouth open and no sound coming out. They were supposed to do this undetected, but they've already failed, so Oksana doesn't draw her knife and Yelena doesn't reach for the pistol Yevgeniy gave her. A guard approaches from the kitchen. He has a rifle, and they are not supposed to fight the guards. That only ever makes it worse.
“Seventeen.” The guard takes Sophia's hand and leads her away. Isolda reaches for her, but the man, who Yelena is starting to think might be Yevgeniy's handler, grabs her by the wrist. “Daybreak.”
“Run,” Yevgeniy begs as he starts to slip under the conditioning. Yelena's never heard her brother beg before, not even when the doctors cut him open in the basement at the big house. It's weird to see so much of his face; she knows it hurts, knows that it has always hurt, but normally she doesn't have to see it.
Mariya breaks away and dashes for the stairs up to the second floor.
“Daybreak.” Sophia disappears with the guard into the kitchen. Isolda is staring at the handler's fingers. She is breathing very fast. Oksana has turned her head to watch Yelena with dead, icy eyes. “Furnace.”
“Stop,” Isolda whispers. Yelena doesn't know how she's even capable of speech right now. Her own heart has jumped up into her throat and she's thinking about punishments and their failing grades and how Oksana is going to overtake her in the rankings and then kill her while no one is looking.
“Nine.” Yevgeniy goes blank and still, the plates of his metal arm shifting, the machinery humming as his handler looks down at him. The man is standing in front of their brother's complacent ghost, a mocking smile on his lips as he says, “Benign.”
“You're hurting me!” Isolda's voice is shrill and piercing and terrified, and her eyes are wet and she's crying and Yelena can't remember ever seeing any of the girls cry.
She doesn't remember seeing Yevgeniy wake or move, but he's suddenly on his feet with his metal hand at the juncture of the handler's throat and jaw. She hears the bones crunch, the bloody gurgle of pain, the man's last, wheezing breath over shattered teeth. Her brother is snarling and forcing the man to stumble back clumsily as he is half-carried across the room. They slam into the wall hard enough to dent the plaster.
Yevgeniy drops the handler's limp body, and storms into the kitchen after the guard.
There's a gunshot, and Sophia finally screams.
---
Yevgeniy seems shaken when he returns from clearing the rest of the safe house. It was minimally staffed, and now that the guards have been dispatched, he instructs Isolda to take the younger girls upstairs and find Mariya. Darya has peed her pants and still won't speak, and needs a bath and new clothes. Sophia has blood in her hair again and won't stop biting her lip.
There is a bruise forming on the delicate skin of Isolda's wrist and Yevgeniy is fussing over a bullet hole in his side, but otherwise no one has sustained any injuries.
“Ksyusha, Lenochka,” he calls to them. He has stripped off his jacket and shirt and is standing at the kitchen sink, a thin blade in his hand as he starts to pry the round out of his body. “There should be passports we can use in one of these rooms. Find them.”
There's an uncomfortable moment of silence.
“Aren't you going to tell the matron we failed?” Yelena asks. He looks up from his task with a start. “When you take us back to the Red Room, I mean.”
“No. No, of course not. You didn't fail, and I'm not taking you back.”
Oksana frowns and shoots Yelena a questioning look. “We're still. . . proceeding with the mission, then?”
“Yes. Now, be good girls and listen to your brother.”
The girls glare at each other but do as they have been told.
---
They find passports in what looks like the handler's office on the other side of the safe house. Yelena also finds a dull red book with a black star embossed on the cover. Inside, the pages are worn and fading and filled with jargon and code and strange things she doesn't understand.
She turns the pages slowly, frowning. Oksana looks up from the desk. Her eyes catch on the words Homecoming and Freight car.
“What is that?” she asks mildly, and Yelena knows that she isn't stupid but she can't help the dumb way she answers:
“I think it's. . . I think it's the soldier's manual.”
They both freeze, the implication clear. Yelena is looking at the trigger phrases and control procedures for their brother. It will give her the advantage in future tests. She can tell that Oksana comes to the same conclusion in roughly the same moment that she has about what this whole disastrous scenario has been preparing them for.
Which is precisely why Oksana tries to stab her.
Yelena blocks with the book and snaps forward to strike her in the face with the heel of one palm. It quickly dissolves into a grapple, Yelena attempting to disarm Oksana and Oksana trying to get the book out of Yelena's hand. A leg sweeps Yelena's feet out from under her, and she goes down to the floor hard with Oksana's body on top of her, pinning her in place.
She twists, jackknifing her body, and breaks the hold. Oksana's blade clatters away under the desk.
They wrestle for a moment, quiet grunts and panted breaths because they don't want their brother to overhear this fight. Yelena manages to get behind Oksana with an arm locked around her neck. She squeezes, and Oksana elbows her in the gut, but she doesn't let up.
“Focus,” she grits the word out through clenched teeth. “Focus on the sound of my voice.”
“The training is hard,” Oksana spits back. One of them will trigger first and Yelena knows that whoever does will win and come out on top. “And you have to focus.”
“You are one of ten,” she says, desperately. She can't afford to lose now. She needs this more. Yelena keeps squeezing, trying to cut off Oksana's airway. “Black –”
“Widow agents with the Red Room,” Oksana finishes for her. Her face is red and her struggling is starting to get frantic with adrenaline and too little oxygen. Yelena wraps her legs around Oksana's torso, clenching down hard on her ribcage.
“You are building the glory of a nation,” she says.
“And the warmth of your parents will make up for –”
“I'm not dying in the Red Room with you,” Yelena hisses, and Oksana tries to cough. Her eyelids flutter closed for a moment, the tension in her body starting to go slack. Yelena holds on for almost a full minute after Oksana passes out before she scrambles to her feet and picks up the book. She tucks it into her waistband and makes sure that its slight bulk doesn't show under her shirt and jacket before grabbing the documents off the desk on her way out of the office.
---
“Where's your sister?” Yevgeniy asks when Yelena re-enters the kitchen. There's a field dressing over his wound and he's pulling his shirt back on. Yelena hands him the passports.
“Oksanka is checking for hidden compartments,” she says. The book feels heavy and cold against the small of her back. He nods, and smiles at her.
“You've done well,” he notes. A small bubble of pride and guilt and panic swells in her chest. “Help Isolda with the little ones.”
“Yes, Djenya,” she says, and manages not to choke on her own fear or give anything away. She stuffs her shaking hands into her jacket pockets so no one can tell she doesn't really feel calm.