Prologue
They kept her in the control room for an entire week. She was much older than the girls they usually selected to join the academy. It took much longer, therefore, for them to wipe her mind of her childhood memories and replace it with the classic Red Room mantra:
You have always loved ballet.
You trained hard to be accepted into this program.
You love your country.
You would do anything for your country.
You would kill for your country–
And so on.
She must have been chosen for a reason. Perhaps she belonged to a prestigious family gone awry, or she had displayed a certain aptitude for violence even at her young age. Or maybe it was simply because she was already beautiful: wispy blonde hair with glacier blue eyes and prominent cheekbones. She was hardly more than a child, but she could easily bring a full-grown man to his knees with the right smile. Right now her eyes were dazed, absorbing her surroundings in mute shock.
Natalia, as one of the older girls, was assigned to give her the grand tour of her new, inescapable home.
"Nice to meet you, Hana," she said, reaching automatically to shake the younger girl's hand. Hana's little palm weakly squeezed her own, palms slick with sweat. That was strange: she was just released from the control room, its impossible her old self was already breaking through—
"And you, Miss Natalia." Gentle, comforting warmth spread up her arm, settling above her shoulder blade. The words were long gone, but Natalia remembered them well.
She did not freeze. She did not blink. Natalia simply smiled, dropped the girl's hand, and finished the tour. She never spoke to Hana again.
It was better this way, she thinks. Hana will not survive the Red Room. She is made of the finest glass, and glass will shatter under pressure. Hana would not make it to graduation.
Soulmates are for children. Natalia could not afford to be a child.
Two years later, Natalia defects to S.H.I.E.L.D., and tries not to think of small, un-calloused palms and dazed, glacier-blue eyes. When asked, she tells them that her platonic soulmate is dead, because she probably is. Weak, dainty Hana could not have survived the horrors of the Red Room.