Made of Marble
Taskmaster was gone.
After their successful mission in Ohio, she and her teacher made their way back to the Red Room. It had taken them a few days to cover their tracks, as it would’ve been noteworthy to future investigators had the two of them arrived one day, then flown out the next right after a murder had taken place. When they had finally returned, and Payton had woken up from being sedated on the way in, there was tension everywhere. When Payton woke up, she was not alone in the medical bay. A dozen other Widows were all waking up from sedation around her, all of them seemingly recalled from missions around the globe.
When Payton had fully regained control of her limbs from the drugs, she had been immediately escorted to Dreykov’s office and told that, effective immediately, she would no longer be training under Taskmaster. No reasoning was given, and she knew she wasn’t supposed to ask. Instead, she accepted the information gracefully, and did the same when informed that she would be moved to be under direct tutelage of Madame B. The Madame was known to Payton, as she had had lessons under the women previously, but she had never been her main instructor. Payton also knew that Madame B was ruthless to the Widows under her tutelage.
Over the coming days, Payton learned just how ruthless the Madame truly was. Training under Taskmaster was hard of course, spending most of every day in combat training and physical conditioning would be to anyone, enhanced or not, but Madame B revealed in making the girls she trained hurt. ‘Widows are made of marble’ she would always say, but nobody was ever born that way, they had to be made to be that strong, and as Dreykov had told her at the very beginning, a person had to be broken before they could be built back up, stronger than ever.
Even her powers weren’t much help when it came to the training under Madame B. Payton may be stronger, faster, and far more durable than any other girl in the Red Room, but that merely meant that she could be pushed harder, train longer, and take more abuse than the rest of the Widows as well. Gone were the full days of sparring and normal exercise, now she was being cycled through the true Red Room program. She’d been confused when the first place she was taken for her new training regime had been a dance studio, but she quickly learned.
When she was a young girl, Payton remembered that she had expressed interest in ballet to her parents and had been enrolled in a beginner program. She’d loved the idea of dancing, and the gracefulness that ballerinas displayed. She hadn’t made it through the first day before the true extent of her asthma and other health issues came to light; her interest in dancing came to an end with an ambulance trip and a night spent in the emergency room.
Now, thanks to Oscorp, she didn’t have those health issues and was able to dance, even though now she was told to, rather than wanting to. Payton had to learn quickly, going through a crash course on the positions and moves she’d be expected to perform. Luckily for her, she was always a fast learner, and when the dancing started she was able to keep up with her classmates after a few fumbles that had Madame B scowling.
The Madame’s scowl had faded over time, and had been replaced with intrigue as the blonde woman watched Payton dance, and forced her class to repeat the routine again and again and again. Her new instructor had noticed what Payton had been quickly discovering herself, and that was she had an inhuman ability to balance in almost any position imaginable. She’d never been in a situation that had led her to discover that particular fact about herself yet, but once Madame B had noticed it, the woman had latched on to the idea of testing it. Forced into holding positions that would have the normal person swaying to keep their balance, Payton remained still as a statue.
Between her superhuman equilibrium, durability, and stamina, Payton’s own ballet sessions would usually last hours longer than the other Widows. The class she started the day with would leave, and others would cycle through the room all while Madame B kept her eye on her, insisting that Payton had a long way to go to be acceptable in her eyes.
It wasn’t just ballet that she’d been instructed on over the past few days either. She still did have hand-to-hand combat lessons (though thanks to Taskmaster’s instruction and her own abilities she was one of the best in the Red Room now, only beaten by Widows who were being cycled through the Red Room for a second or more round of training.), acrobatics, and classroom instruction for multiple different fields. The latter of the three was the only other thing she’d done besides combat training when under Taskmaster’s mentorship, as it had been necessary to begin teaching her the languages Dreykov wanted her to know (mainly Russian of course), and things such as tactics, camouflage, and her least favorite, the art of seduction.
Payton knew that Widows were expected to use all their assets to accomplish their missions, bodies included. She couldn’t help the disgust that curdled through her at the thought of what she’d learned were called ‘honeypot’ missions. Payton also knew that Madame B knew she was disgusted by them, seeing through Payton’s attempts to hide her feelings on the matter and punishing her with more intense training anytime the Madame felt necessary. Though she considered herself lucky that more training was her punishment. She’d seen the Widows who were accosted by Enforcers or the other instructors and dragged off to isolated rooms for their own ‘punishments’, only to show up later with bruises or bite marks on their necks, and dead looks in their eyes.
For some reason she had been spared that fate. Whether it was Dreykov or Madame B’s orders, she didn’t know and didn’t care as, besides more training, her other punishment was in some ways just as awful, merely in a different way. On the worse days, when her supposed infractions were bad enough, or her internal weakness more obvious, Payton was sent to the medical wing for… tests.
Whoever ‘Melina’ was, Payton didn’t know. But she was more than aware of the fact that the woman was failing at achieving whatever goals Dreykov set for her in regards to Payton’s DNA. Spinal taps, bone marrow samples, blood draws, anything they could think of they would do in order to get more samples to send to her, and they revealed in making the process as painful as possible no matter what they did. She was never given anesthesia, and they always seemed to make sure they hit areas that made her body ache and burn. She took it all as she was supposed to. She was supposed to be made of marble, and marble couldn’t bleed. It couldn’t hurt or cry, or anything else. Marble was strong, and between Dreykov and Madame B she would become strong herself.
Despite her want, her need, to be as strong as Dreykov wanted her to be, she could never shake off the pain and horror that rattled her to the core every time she witnessed a death. It would happen almost every day. Two Widows would be put against each other in a fight, and the winner would kill the loser. Every time it happened, she felt her heart constrict and her lungs freeze as another life was taken. She couldn’t understand it. Why couldn’t she shake that weakness from her? It felt that, despite being in her true home, part of her past just refused to leave.
Which ultimately led to where she was now, standing across from another Widow, the sparring mat they occupied surrounded by other girls and women waiting for the fight to begin. Dreykov and Madame B both stood at the back of the room, their faces as emotionless as stone as they waited for her and her opponent to stop circling each other and fight.
The other Widow is almost a decade older than her and on her second cycle through the Red Room. Apparently the woman’s performance on missions had been disappointing to the General, and her time in training since she had been recalled from whatever mission had been equally so. Dreykov had brought her aside an hour previously and told her she would be bringing his judgement down upon her. It had been clear that the General knew what the results of the fight would be. It wasn’t so much a test for both her and the other women as it was an execution, an example for the others of a new standard brought about by her own existence.
As she stared down the woman whose death had already been decided, Payton found herself waiting. She realized that she didn’t want to start this fight. She didn’t want to kill this woman. While she was supposed to be fighting in this ring, she was already fighting within herself. This was her duty, her purpose wasn’t it? So why was her heart not in it? Why was she hoping that the other Widow would refuse to fight and take her fate out of Payton’s hands? The adrenaline and the confusion caused her hands to shake and her heart to flutter in her chest.
BACK
Superhuman reflexes had Payton leaning backwards, just as a booted heel swung past where her head had been moments earlier. The older woman’s eyes widened as she realized just how fast Payton truly was. The distance between her foot and Payton’s jaw had been a hair’s breadth, the speed at which Payton moved faster than the blink of an eye. Ignoring her internal struggle for now, Payton’s jaw clenched as the back of her head tingled and she leaned to the right, dodging a punch meant for her throat. She responded quickly, sending an open-palmed jab into her opponent’s face, feeling her nose crunch beneath the heel of her palm.
The Widow stumbled backwards from the force of the blow and blood gushed freely from the now broken nose. Her opponent blinked rapidly, trying to clear her eyes from the tears that reflexively formed as a result of the blow.
Payton almost gave her the chance to recover, but then her mind was filled with memories of a sterile room and needles and pain and somuchpainIcantstandit. She followed through, another punch sent into her opponent’s left clavicle, which snapped against her fist resulting in a cry of pain. Taskmaster had taught her to see how an enemy fought and respond accordingly, and from what she had seen, all Widows were taught to fight the same way. All of them were experts at close quarters combat, but they were not brawlers. They relied on speed, acrobatics, and the fact that they were pretty women to throw their opponents off balance. Payton could’ve used her full mobility, as she did in her final sparring match against Taskmaster, but all that would be doing is giving her opponent space to breath, space to use her trained agility to her advantage.
She moved in closer, getting in the Widow’s space, dodging another kick and another jab as she sent her own heel into the side of the woman’s knee. From the resulting ‘pop’, Payton figured she had torn the woman’s ACL, further proven by her attempt to stand failing, and her leg giving out beneath her. As her opponent collapsed, Payton brought her knee up, violently slamming it into the bottom of her jaw and sending her sprawling onto her back.
There was no fear on the Widow’s face. For all her supposed failures, the defeated Widow, lying broken and bloody on the red mat which hid her blood, was made of stronger marble than Payton was. The woman knew she was going to die, but she showed no fear, and even her pain was mostly suppressed as she kept her face as blank as she could.
Payton hesitated, her eyes darting over and meeting Dreykov and Madame B’s, both of whom nodded at her. Slowly, she knelt down over the other woman, reaching a hand down to grab the small knife that all Widow’s kept hidden in a boot. She lifted it over her defeated opponent, ready to stab down into her chest and end her life… and froze. Her arm shuddered as she couldn’t bring it down, causing confusion in the woman’s eyes as her death was delayed.
“Kill her!” The General shouted, his voice furious as she heard him stomping towards her.
The knife stabbed down a few more inches as a result of the order, her brain responding as directed by his words, but her arm froze once more. Rough hands grabbed at her hair, forcing her to look up at the red face of General Dreykov, fury lining every muscle in his body.
“I gave you an order!” He roared, spittle spewing from his mouth.
“I…I can’t!” She responded, and it was the truth. She physically couldn’t bring the knife down, as whatever the weakness inside her was fought back against the marble that was being built. The stone that would’ve carried the knife down.
“What do you mean ‘you can’t’?!” Dreykov questioned, his voice deathly quiet.
“I don’t know General.” She responded subserviently, lowering her eyes in shame as she still tried to bring the knife down, and still failed.
BANG
A gunshot ended the Widow’s life, a hole entered one temple and exited the other. The red blood shined in the lights of the room.
“Take Payton to the medical bay. Tell them to figure out what happened!” The General demanded, and two Enforcers immediately came and grabbed her by her arms, dragging her away from the room as the uncaring eyes of nearly two dozen Widows followed the action. Before the doors slid closed, Payton saw Madame B approach Dreykov, the two of them discussing something that even her enhanced hearing couldn’t pick up. A small tingle vibrated in the back of her skull before a needle pierced her neck, and after another minute of being dragged through the halls, the world turned dark.
When she woke, she was once again contained within the familiar walls of the medical facility, surrounded by doctors who had clearly just finished poking and prodding at her, if the soreness in her body was any indication. She couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but it must have been at least a few hours, as Dreykov and Madame B were both present, but wearing different outfits than they were the last time she saw them. The two of them had just entered the room, and Payton guessed that the sound of the door sliding open was what had caused her to shake off the last of the drugs that had kept her unconscious.
The two of them blatantly ignored Payton as they approached the medical staff.
“Have you figured out how she broke free of the subjugation?” The General asked, his voice cold as ice.
“She never did, General.” The lead doctor answered swiftly, before moving on to clarify. “We believe that she had never been fully under the effects of the chemical subjugation. In our experiments with the subject over the past months we had discovered that her accelerated metabolism causes her body to filter out foreign agents faster than most can set in. It's why we distribute the much more potent tranquilizers for her whenever she needs to be put under.” The man paused for a breath. “The way the subjugation chemicals work is that they alter brain function, which requires the chemicals to naturalize themselves in a subject’s body, otherwise their system would fight every step of the way. We believe that Payton’s particular resistance to chemical agents had allowed her body to better fight off the subjugation from the start, before whatever survived her system had naturalized itself, and as such was no longer viewed as a foreign contaminant.”
“Then why was today the first time she had disobeyed orders?” Madame B queried.
“We can only speculate…” Another doctor offered apologetically, though he was waved on by the General. “We know that at least some of the original dose of the subjugation had taken root in her mind. Enough to give us control, but not enough to fully suppress her natural instincts. The Payton Parker who lived in New York was a weak girl who would never hurt anyone. From the reports we read from Taskmaster’s original findings, she wouldn’t even defend herself from people who harassed her at school. That weakness persisted thanks to her metabolism, but it wasn’t strong enough to stop her from following orders when she was just in training. Our hypothesis is that by killing Colonel Karpov in Ohio, her basic instincts had been forced into overdrive, which eventually built up to her being unable to kill the defect as ordered. Her brain, under our control, attempted to follow orders, but a subconscious part of her prevented it.”
“Can this issue be resolved?” Dreykov asked, approaching her on her medical bed and staring into her eyes. She stared back silently. She had not been requested to provide input in this discussion, so she had nothing to say.
The lead doctor nodded his head, handing Dreykov a tablet. “We believe we already have. We utilized a second, stronger dose of the subjugation agent and observed her brain functions. There is already less chaotic activity taking place within her neural pathways as there was prior to administering the agent. The only way to be sure though would be to test her again.”
Dreykov nodded sternly, his eyes trailing over whatever he saw on the tablet appreciatively, though Payton couldn’t see the screen. Based on context clues she figured it was the results of whatever procedures she had gone through while she was under.
“We have some prisoners in the cells. They were meant for the next target practice lesson for Class Three, but we could spare one.” Madame B offered, moving up to look at the tablet herself.
“Good.” Dreykov accepted, handing the tablet back to the nearest doctor. “Release her. Child, you will follow me.” He ordered.
Once her bindings were released, Payton lifted herself off the exam room table quickly, swinging her legs over to the ground and following the General and the Madame out of the room. The three of them stalked through the halls without a single word passing between them as they went down floor after floor until they had gone farther into the bowels of the Red Room than she had ever been before.
The trio eventually exited into a wide room containing multiple cells, each having glass walls that revealed the prisoners within. Nearly two dozen people were all cramped into the small rooms, three or four people per cell. Each had a black bag tied tightly over their heads, and their hands were restrained behind their backs. Some were crying, others begging to be released, and the rest were deathly silent, their shoulders hunched as if they already knew and accepted their fate.
Dreykov nodded towards one of the guards, who opened a cell door, and promptly pistol whipped the first person who tried to make a run for it. The second was grabbed by the neck and thrown to the ground at all of their feet. The cell door slid closed once more and the guard held his gun out to Dreykov, who motioned for him to give it to her instead. She understood what the General wanted without the man speaking so much as a word and so, she took a step forward and grabbed the gun from the guard’s hand. Her own small hand wrapped around the grip, her finger sliding into the trigger guard and feeling the small lever twitch beneath her index finger.
Payton approached the sniveling prisoner on the floor. The man was flopping around, trying to right himself without being able to use his hands to assist him. In a quick jerk from the guard, the man was lifted to his knees before her, and his mask was ripped from his face. He looked normal to her. His clothes, crumpled and dirty as they were, made it seem like they had taken this man straight from whatever cramped cubicle he worked in. Cracked glasses sat askew on his face, one lens completely missing, causing his eyes to look mismatched in size, not helped by the puffy red skin that surrounded them from his tears.
She met his stare head on, his pleading eyes meeting her emotionless cold glare, his whimpering increased as she raised the pistol towards his forehead.
“Please! Please don’t! You don’t ha-”
BANG
Payton pulled the trigger, the gunshot silencing all the other prisoners as they realized what had just happened. The barrel of the pistol smoked in the cold air of the brig, and Payton silently passed the weapon back to the guard and turned to look at Dreykov, waiting for his reaction. Internally? She was pleased. She killed the man and that pathetic weakness that had been rotting her core made no appearance. She was truly made of marble now, and from the look in the General’s eyes; he knew it too.
“Well done child.” He praised, placing his hand on her shoulder, his onyx ring shined in the corner of her vision. “Madame B will escort you back to your bunk, and your training will resume tomorrow.”
Nodding, Payton turned on her heels and followed Madame B back up the stairs, trailing only a few paces behind the blonde woman all the way back to the bunk room. It was clearly nighttime, as when she entered the other Widows were all already asleep, their arms restrained to the metal frames. She strode over to her own bunk, laying down on the stiff bed and raised her left arm, allowing the Enforcer who watched over the room to restrain her own wrist above her head and fell asleep.
The next few days were back in her normal routine. Hours upon hours of ballet, followed by classroom instruction, weapon training, and ending the day with acrobatics. She’d not been required to fight another Widow yet. The occasional gunshot that echoed through the halls always signified the death of another defect, but she had not been present for any of them.
Dreykov came for her again during one of her classes, striding into the room and silencing the Madame who was instructing them all on the best poisons for making deaths seem natural. The lesson had gone over different spider venoms that would cause death in their victims, which caused a pleased feeling deep within her as the spider within seemed to vibrate in recognition of its own kind. Had the class not been ordered to silence, Payton thought she might’ve been purring.
Having been dragged out of her class, Payton followed the General all the way to the briefing room that she recognized from when she went on the mission with Taskmaster a few weeks prior. Her previous mentor was actually present in the room again as well, giving her a nod in recognition as she entered and stood alongside him.
“We have a mission for you.” Dreykov began. “Taskmaster has located the Winter Soldier in Bucharest. The two of you will go, and use the trigger words found in this book-” He lifted the red book they had retrieved from Ohio into the air “- and bring the Soldat to heel.”.
A new mission was surprising, as none had been sent out since Payton had returned to the Red Room. But the General knew best, and she would not fail him.
“Bit risky bringing a Widow along these days isn’t it?” Taskmaster questioned, referencing something that Payton was not in-the-know about.
Wordlessly, Dreykov opened a small briefcase, revealing a small collection of vials containing a pinkish liquid. “Melina has developed a temporary countermeasure for the cure that the Avengers had developed.” He said, his voice dripping with disdain when he mentioned the team of heroes. “It will only work on Payton, allowing her metabolism to treat the red dust as a hostile virus, rather than a cure for the subjugation. Each is a strong enough dose to last for a few hours in her system, and will act as a safeguard in the case that the Avengers somehow show up.” While his words seemed to say that the Avengers weren’t expected to make an appearance, his voice seemed to insinuate the opposite. But it wasn’t her place to question it. “You will leave within the hour. As soon as the mission is complete, return to the Red Room immediately. We can afford no delays.”
Taskmaster left the room, leaving Dreykov to approach her. “Your training has gone so well young Widow. I can already see the signs that you will be the best of them all, better than Natalia, better than Yelena. Osborn had outdone himself with the experiment that created you child, and I am all the better for it. You will not fail me, Payton. For you are a Widow, and you are made of marble.” He paused, looking over her. “I have discussed it with Madame B. Your quick advancement has been remarkable, and she believes that you are ready for the graduation ceremony once you return. You will of course have some training left to complete, but complete this mission and you will have earned the right to graduate into a true Black Widow.”
Payton nodded in acquiescence. She didn’t know what the graduation ceremony entailed, but she knew it was a huge honor to be offered it so quickly. Madame B always told her that graduation was the greatest honor a Widow could achieve in the Red Room. She would not fail. She would collect the Winter Soldier for Dreykov and return victorious, for as he said…
She was made of marble.