Many girls did not remember who they were before the Red Room. Older girls would have foggy memories of people who loved them but the orphans and those taken while young would know nothing but the Madames who raised them.
Oksana was an orphan who knew nothing before the Red Room but sharing a crowded room with foster sisters and fighting for her share of food.
She was seven when she was plucked from her foster home, pushed in front of the strict-looking woman that ‘adopted’ her and she walked right into the Red Room without knowing any better.
Oksana had been tiny and scared. She didn’t understand how the new rules worked and her very first night left her handcuffed to a bed with fresh marks on her back, bottom, and thighs.
The girl to the right side of her glared at her the first night but went on to ignore her from then on.
The girl to the left side of her would watch her with intelligent brown eyes. Whenever Oksana would wiggle to try and get comfortable or try to stifle her whimpers, the girl to the left of her would watch her and press a finger to her lips. That one little action brought Oksana some sort of comfort.
She learned the girl’s name six months later. Melina Vostokoff had been there longer than she had and was top of their class. Oksana found herself standing next to her in training and often times realizing that on the times that she stood next to her, Melina would go a little slower as if to let Oksana mimic her carefully.
Melina had never spoken more than a handful of words to her over the years. Shortly after Oksana turned fifteen, she was paired up with Melina to head out on a mission.
With just her luck, the mission went to shit and she got put into a position where she was supposed to be abandoned and left behind because of her injury. She was ready to accept her fate and die, bleeding out onto the ground.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Melina had popped up, anger in her eyes as she grabbed Oksana’s forearm to tug at her. “Get up!”
Oksana didn’t understand. Melina was breaking the rules. But Melina also knew more than her so Oksana figured that maybe she was wrong. She got up on shaking feet, blood dripping onto the ground below her as Melina tugged her arm over her shoulders to support her weight.
Melina had saved her life but had broken the rules. Oksana had been patched up in the infirmary and watched later on as Melina was brought in, severely beaten and wheezing. Melina glanced at her from the adjacent bed she was on and pressed her finger to her mouth, a small smile twitching at her lips.
Oksana owed Melina and she never forgot it.
When Oksana was twenty-two, Melina left on a long-term undercover mission with a few younger Widows and a super soldier. The bed to Oksana’s left that had been Melina’s for so long was empty for a month before a new girl occupied it.
At the age of twenty-five, Oksana was in the infirmary for treatment after being punished when Melina was brought in with a gunshot wound. She was unconscious and a little softer around the edges than Oksana remembered.
Melina was patched up and left to be for the night, handcuffed to the bed. Oksana stayed up and watched over her.
Melina woke with a start, lurching upright causing the chains on the handcuffs to rattle loudly as they were tugged. Melina looked around the room and her gaze fell onto Oksana.
“My-- the girls. Did they bring the girls?” She questioned with more emotion than Oksana had ever heard from her before. Oksana shook her head, watching the way that Melina curled in on herself.
It was a disturbed sort of fascination to Oksana to witness a side of Melina that she had never seen before. She doesn’t know how to help Melina. “There were two of them, right? I can keep an eye out,” she offered before she could think twice.
Melina blinked up at her before her head bobbed in a nod. “Natasha… and Yelena…”
The names give her everything and nothing all at once but Oksana stowed them away all the same. Melina managed to mumble their ages before she dissolved into tears.
Oksana had never seen her cry before. It wasn’t noisy but Melina let out soft hitching breaths as tears rolled down her cheeks.
They were taught not to make attachments but Oksana supposed that Melina couldn’t help it after being stuck undercover for three years, pretending to be someone much closer to a child than usual.
Oksana doesn’t think she’d be able to do the same thing.
Still, Oksana can do nothing to help further, leaning forward in her bed despite the way her damaged skin burned when pulled, and she pressed a finger to her lips.
Melina looked at her and a choked laugh escaped her lips, and Oksana couldn’t help but think that she had gone soft.
Oksana came across Natasha first.
The girl’s face was pulled in a permanent frown, her brow constantly furrowed as she ruthlessly clawed her way to the top of her class.
Oksana would take the moment to stop and watch her whenever she could, passing by the classroom she now knew was assigned to the girl’s group.
The girl had been a Widow before leaving to go undercover and she seemed to have a much easier time assimilating back than Melina.
It took nearly a month before Oksana stumbled across Yelena. The tiny girl wasn’t doing well and Oksana realized that the girl had never been a Widow before. Yelena had nestled herself near the bottom of the class, not quite last place but far from the top. She was just below average and Oksana could see the stiff upper lip that she put on, like many girls her age.
Oksana observed the way that Melina would wake up at night, oftentimes ready to sit up and look for a child that wasn’t there. She always seemed to deflate when she realized that there wasn’t and never would be a child standing next to her bed to seek her out.
Melina looked at her one night and Oksana’s eyes met the intelligent brown ones that once taught her how to survive. Melina swallowed hard like she hadn’t been dreaming of children that weren’t hers but they both knew exactly who was on Melina’s mind.
So, as carefully as she could, Oksana pressed a finger to her lips and inclined her head in reassurance. She had seen the girls and they were alive, and she hoped that brought some sort of peace to the woman. Melina sagged into her sheets and fell back asleep.
Neither of them mention it and Oksana started to wonder if Melina didn’t remember it, still disoriented from dreams of things that wouldn’t happen.
Oksana never brought it up and Melina doesn’t ask her.
Oksana was thirty-six when there was a successful defection.
She had been stationed near the girl who fled and was ordered to try and recapture her to bring her back for reprogramming. Oksana asked for a name and ID and was sent a picture.
Oksana saw the head of red hair and knew immediately that one of Melina’s girls had escaped. She teetered on the verge of throwing herself into her new mission or repaying the debt she owed.
Natasha ended up getting away and Oksana was punished for her failure.
She couldn’t remember whether she made the conscious choice to hesitate.
Natasha tried to kill General Dreykov but failed, instead leading the man to ensure that none of his Widows could leave him again.
Oksana had been part of the group of Widows to secure what was necessary for the scientists to start the formulation of information gathered fourteen years ago that had been nearly perfected.
She got to witness as the younger Widows were each injected with a syringe of shimmering liquid and watched as their bodies became empty shells for General Dreykov to puppet.
The older Widows, ones who were cycled through at least twice, were not put under, left to instead corral and lead the ones that were. Oksana had been given a set of four girls to perfect and mold to the General’s will.
Through her close work with the scientists in developing chemical subjugation, she came to the realization that Melina was the brains behind it all.
Oksana thought about the night that she reassured Melina her girls were safe as she took in the sight of the woman with the goggles perched on her head.
She doesn’t mention the blonde-haired girl who no longer cried.
Melina didn’t need to know.
Oksana still kept an eye out for Yelena despite having four Widows to look after.
Through no fault of her own, her Widows started to vanish one by one, weeded out because they simply were not strong enough for what was needed of them.
Oksana was cycled through a fourth time and then pulled aside by the General himself.
“Due to your dedication, I feel that you are the best choice for continuing the training on my best assassin,” his voice was soft and fond, never a good thing when it came to him. But Oksana knew better than to argue with him.
Nineteen-year-old Yelena Belova was dropped into her lap suddenly, nothing but an empty husk eager to please. Oksana was finally moved from the row of beds with other Widows her age into a small room packed with two beds.
She was to make Yelena Belova perfect.
It was tiring taking on a younger Widow because the responsibility was hers alone. When she had been given four girls before, they were still expected to go to training with their groups and Oksana never had to deal with them at night.
Looking after Yelena was what she expected caring for a pet was like. She had to guide her through nearly everything, the girl always waiting for her orders before dared to move. Oksana would have to tell her to eat or sleep before the girl would do it.
Oksana doesn’t give broad orders, such as telling Yelena to eat without waiting or sleep when she was in bed. She took the responsibility of being in charge of a girl’s bodily functions with little difficulty. She had to prove herself to the General and she had to keep her charge alive.
She gathered books and utilized her knowledge and she gave Yelena the tools she needed to be ruthless.
She must have done something right because when the monthly evaluations came around, the General pulled her aside and praised her methods, asking her what she had been doing that the previous Madame hadn’t. Oksana explained to him exactly what she did and he laughed, calling the previous caretaker lazy. He uses past tense and Oskana knew that if Yelena’s progress dipped then she was likely to be killed for her failure and Yelena would be passed along once again.
Oksana was a survivor, she would do what she must.
Oksana didn’t realize that the chemical subjugation would wane if not kept up with.
She awoke one night to whimpers coming from the other bed in the room and sat up to see the unfoggy hazel eyes of her charge filled with unshed tears.
She wasn’t sure what to do. For a moment, they met eyes and time seemed to stop before Oksana had to break herself out of it. She unlocked the handcuff around Yelena’s wrist, instructed her to sit up, and performed a concussion test to figure out her mental capabilities in her current state.
Yelena trembled slightly, still unsure as her mind scrambled to keep up with what was happening. The chemical subjugation seemed to take a toll on her body and her hands shook despite the way she curled her fingers into fists in her lap.
“Come,” Oksana knew that they couldn’t delay until morning to get her back under. She threw a hair tie at Yelena and ordered her to pull her hair back to look presentable. There was no way that Oksana would take the girl out with bed head. Oksana herself pulled her own hair back into a tight ponytail and watched as the girl in front of her attempted to do the same but was unable to because her fingers were uncoordinated and numb.
“Give me that,” Oksana finally said snatching the hair tie from her and doing it herself. She could tell that Yelena expected her to pull but Oksana carefully gathered her hair back and secured it quickly.
Oksana took Yelena straight to the General, disrupting his sleep. His anger over being awoken turned to fascination as he observed the way that Yelena’s eyes warily flickered around the room. He ordered Oksana to come to him if it happened again before she went to fix it.
Oksana watched as Yelena was put back under chemical subjugation and ignored the pit in her stomach at the way that fearful hazel eyes glazed over, turning the girl back into the puppet Oksana was familiar with.
Oksana kept a mental list of the times that Yelena Belova managed to slip out from under chemical subjugation. She wasn’t sure if other girls were doing it as well or if Yelena seemed to be building up a resistance to it. But it seemed that at least once a month, she was met with a pair of familiar hazel eyes.
Yelena was showering after a mission when she was thrust out of the control and the sudden ability to pilot her own body led to her slipping in the shower.
Oksana, who had been waiting for her nearby to finish and look over for injuries, heard the commotion and quickly rounded the corner to enter the stall.
A dazed Yelena peered up at her and Oksana saw the uncertain fear creeping into her eyes. She crouched down, ignoring the water soaking her uniform as she reached out to grasp Yelena’s knee.
“Look at me,” Oksana ordered and Yelena, hair still foamy with shampoo, looked up at her, confirming Oksana’s suspicions that she had slipped back into control again. Oksana attempted to have the girl get up but she was shaking so badly that Oksana left her tucked in the corner and instead twisted the faucet by their feet meant to wash away blood after long ballet sessions. Oksana tugged Yelena from the shower wall closer to her despite her whimpered protests and finished washing the shampoo from her hair and scrubbing the grime from her body.
Oksana couldn’t remember ever bathing another person before but she was finished quick enough, toweling Yelena off and dressing her before changing out of her own soaked uniform. She went to march Yelena directly to the General only to be informed that he was out for the next few days.
He had previously instructed Oksana to come to him before she had Yelena put back under subjugation. It was an order that Oksana didn’t dare disobey.
She instead guided Yelena back to the room that she shared and almost shoved a hairbrush at the girl before glancing at her shaking hands and remembering the first time the girl slipped back into control.
Instead, Oksana pushed the girl to kneel and sat behind her on the bed before starting to comb through the blonde locks of hair.
The tension slowly started to drain out of Yelena’s body and the girl started to get sleepy. Oksana braided her hair back and then instructed her to lay in bed, unsure of what else to do with her.
Yelena curled up in her bed in a ball as Oksana focused on continuing to read a book to help her better understand how the chemical subjugation worked, one recommended to her by one of the scientists.
She was halfway through reading her third chapter when a soft scratchy voice broke the silence.
“What is your name?”
Oksana looked up at the girl laying in the bed next to her. She realized that it was the first time she had ever heard her speak outside of her subjugation. The voice wasn’t the flat monotone one she was used to, it was tiny and unsure.
“Oksana,” she replied, watching the girl fiddle with the hem of her shirt unconsciously. Oksana doesn’t chide her for it, letting her self-soothe however she needed as long as she was quiet and didn’t bother her.
“Oksana…” Yelena echoed softly before she nodded and went quiet once again.
Oksana returned to her reading.
Oksana was no stranger to night terrors but she was unfamiliar with how to deal with someone else having them.
Now back in control of her own thoughts, Yelena dreamt once again, and her dreams were not pleasant.
Oksana awoke to the startled gasping of the girl in the bed to her left and she sat up immediately, turning on the lamp beside her to see better.
Yelena was sitting up, terror on her face. She flinched when Oksana sat up, her gaze falling onto her.
“Oksana--” Yelena moaned out, her skin pale and shiny with sweat. “I’m gonna be sick--”
Oksana snagged the bowl that once held the previous night's dinner and managed to shove it under Yelena’s chin moments before the girl emptied the contents of her stomach.
Oksana waited until she was finished before she dared to leave their room after ordering Yelena to stay put. Any guard that tried to stop her from being out after curfew would let her pass after she presented the bowl of sick in her hands.
She cleaned the bowl out before she returned with a glass of water. She entered their shared room once again before she paused.
Yelena was laying back down once again, curled up into a tiny ball as her lower lip wobbled in her attempts to not cry. Oksana was struck with the realization of how much Yelena reminded her of a small child.
“Sit up,” Oksana ordered and Yelena scrambled to obey, her face immediately scrunching up at the wave of nausea. “Careful. Here, take a few sips.” Oksana held the glass out before realizing that Yelena’s hands were shaking once again, this time from the night terrors.
Oksana held the glass to Yelena’s lips and remembered the times that she would have to order Yelena to drink while under subjugation.
“I’m sorry,” Yelena finally whispered to her, sounding more like a fearful child than the ruthless killer she was.
“Do not apologize for your body’s reactions,” Oksana said simply, smoothing back the hair from Yelena’s face before she could think twice. She was used to doing it to the empty shell of a body to make sure that her Widow looked presentable before going out. “Are you still feeling sick?”
Yelena shook her head, a blatant lie that Oksana doesn’t call her out on.
Oksana put her back to bed, instructing her to get more sleep before climbing into her own bed to attempt to get more of her own.
She pretended that she didn’t hear Yelena chanting Natasha’s name under her breath, pleading with someone who won’t come to save her.
The General returned two days later and Oksana presented him with Yelena. Whatever he had been doing left him in a foul mood and Oksana was punished severely.
It wasn’t the first time she had been punished in front of Yelena but it was the first time that Yelena was actually aware. Oksana didn’t make a single noise until he was finished, thanked him for correcting her, and then took Yelena to the labs to be subjugated again.
It was unnerving how much less of a child Yelena looked like as a puppet.
Oksana was aware of the next time that Yelena slipped but wasn’t sure why the girl was pretending that she hadn’t. It was obvious that Yelena was back in control because she didn’t respond to Oksana’s commands how she used to but she was putting on a pretty good show.
It amused Oksana slightly and she was curious to see what Yelena’s end goal was. So she did what she usually did when looking after Yelena, pretending that she didn’t see her nose wrinkle slightly when Oksana set a book in her lap or the way that she hesitated when Oksana instructed her to kneel in order to brush her hair back out of her face to braid it.
Okana figured out quickly that Yelena wasn’t sleeping in an attempt to keep up her ruse as long as she could. Oksana sat on the edge of Yelena’s bed, watching the girl pretend to sleep, and decided to see how far she could push.
So Oksana told Yelena about the first time she ever met Melina, watching the way the girl tensed up slightly with each mention of the woman’s name. By the end of the tale, Yelena had fallen asleep and Oksana realized that she had completely relaxed from the story.
Oksana decided that if Yelena wanted to pretend then she would too. She couldn’t imagine not being in control of herself for so long and she understood in a way that Yelena wanted freedom for as long as she could get it.
So Oksana went a little lax in her schedule. She offered Yelena a little more guidance than normal and acted like she didn’t hear the stuttered almost slip-ups.
At some point, Yelena recognized that she knew the truth but neither of them mentioned it. Yelena was too afraid to point it out and Oksana was simply amused enough to go along with it.
Despite them knowing the truth, Oksana continued to look after Yelena as she had always done. She still cut up Yelena’s food so she didn’t stress over the size of each cut, she checked her teeth after she brushed them to ensure they were pristine, and she brushed and braided Yelena’s hair before bed.
On one such night, Yelena was sitting on the ground with her knees to her chest rather than kneeling as Oksana gently tugged a brush through her hair.
“Did you know Melina well?” Yelena asked quietly. It was the first time she had broken the ruse since the beginning.
“I slept in the bed next to her for years,” Oksana replied instead because she didn’t know what defined ‘well’.
Yelena picked at the cuff of her pajama bottoms. “Will… will you tell me a little bit about her?”
Oksana paused in her hair brushing at the question. Yelena tensed up underneath her immediately.
“Nevermind. Forgive me for asking,” Yelena said quickly, straightening up from where she had been slowly relaxing in on herself.
“The Red Room taught you better about making attachments,” Oksana said instead.
“I know…” Yelena mumbled, digging her fingers into her knees. “I just-- she’s the only mother I’ve ever known… I thought she was my mother… I… I miss her…”
Oksana swallowed hard at the vulnerability she was being shown. Times like this were when Oksana likened Yelena to a small child, clumsy and unsure of themselves.
“It’s only natural to miss that maternal bond,” Oksana took a haphazard guess, having never had a mother figure herself. She continued to brush Yelena’s hair and the room lapsed into silence once again. Oksana debated about answering Yelena’s question and whether it would prove useful. “But… you were good for me today. I suppose I can tell you a little.”
She ignored the way that Yelena's shoulders tensed in excitement as she held her breath, waiting eagerly to hear what Oksana had to say. Oksana found the whole thing a little sad.
“She broke the rules for me once,” Oksana settled on, not daring to divulge details. “I should have been killed but she diverted from our mission objective to ensure my survival. I owed her a debt.”
Yelena was quiet, shifting slightly as Oksana started to braid her hair back. Oksana could tell that she had a question and waited until Yelena finally asked it.
“Are you repaying it now even though it’s over?” Yelena asked and Oksana paused in confusion. Yelena then elaborated. “Am I the debt?”
Oksana hadn’t considered that. Melina’s weak spot had been the girls and Oksana had kept tabs on them when they came back merely to ensure that they were alive, a way to repay her debt to Melina. She long ago thought that she had paid it back when Natasha fled.
But owing someone your life isn’t a debt easily repaid. Oksana couldn’t call it even until she did so in return. “Do not be foolish.”
Her answer wasn’t a no because some part of her knew that looking after Yelena was part of her awareness that she had a debt to repay.
The other part was simply because she realized why Melina grew attached to Yelena in the first place.
It then struck her the wording of Yelena’s phrase. Oksana concluded that Yelena assumed Melina had died and she doesn’t correct her assumption. Attachments were weaknesses and Yelena needed to get rid of hers.
But perhaps her own conditioning was failing as well. Widows don’t get attached.
So then why did she care?
Oksana put Yelena back under chemical subjugation two days before their monthly examinations. She realized how complacent she had been when Yelena tried to beg her not to.
Oksana had backhanded her hard and told her to be mindful of her place. Yelena had fallen quiet, looking up at her with wide eyes as her hand hovered by her reddening cheek.
Oksana was her Madame, and Yelena was just a Widow, but why did it feel so much like a betrayal?
“She scored lower than last time,” General Dreykov informed her right before she was severely punished.
Oksana realized what she had done. She had given Yelena wiggle room and Yelena got too comfortable.
“I won’t let it happen again,” she promised him.
The next time Yelena came out of subjugation, Oksana didn’t wait it out and she punished Yelena when she once again begged for more time.
“You have grown softer,” one of the other Madames commented when Oksana stood next to her to observe the class that Yelena had joined.
“I do not know what you are talking about,” Oksana replied calmly, watching the way that the woman’s eyes followed her own charge around the room.
“You think she’s yours,” the woman continued as if Oksana hadn’t spoken. She ignored whatever Oksana was about to say as she then went on. “What if she could be?”
Oksana paused, alarm bells ringing in her head and she wondered if the whole thing was a test. “Do not be foolish. You are a Widow.”
The woman eyed her. “I heard you know about how the chemical subjugation works.”
Oksana eyed her back, continuing on warily. “I know enough.”
“You know how it works then?” She checked and Oksana slowly inclined her head. “Good, good…”
The silence settled around them again and Oskana’s gaze settled back onto the blonde-haired girl with glazed eyes.
“Another failure.”
A small glass vial was pressed into the palm of Oksana’s hand, sneakily passed over by the woman standing next to her.
“I will have another one for you the day after tomorrow,” Oksana promised. She slid the vial into her uniform and continued on with her day. She secured Yelena to the bed that night and left to head to the guard’s office that she had set up in.
She opened the drawer to reveal the rack of shimmery red dust all neatly secured into vials and labeled with tape.
She set the empty vial in its original place and picked up the next in line.
She could be killed if she was caught with it. It was dangerous to go behind the General’s back and betray him.
But she thought of Yelena with her knees to her chest, looking up at her with those wide hazel eyes as she listened to Oksana quietly tell her another story, and she knew that she had to get her out.
If Oksana made the antidote to the chemical subjugation then the deal was that they would help her smuggle Yelena out in return.
Yelena would be free and Oksana would look after her. Oksana would save Yelena’s life. Her debt would be repaid.
She pretended it wasn’t because she had grown to care for the girl she practically raised.
“It worked.”
An empty vial was pressed into Oksana’s hand.
She made more.
Oksana’s luck had to run out at some point. She had been caught before she finished the next batch.
She had less than two dozen antidotes and she knew that nobody would be able to replicate it if she died.
Oksana had to leave Yelena behind as she fled with the vials. She reasoned that there was no choice. She couldn’t free Yelena if she was dead or if they destroyed the cure.
Her fingers itched for something to do at night. There was no more hair to brush or comb her fingers through, no blonde locks to weave back in a braid as the girl in front of her asked questions about how the world worked.
Oksana focused her attention on Yelena and getting her out. Once Yelena was out, Oksana could finish her mission and pass along the antidotes.
Oksana had her chance when information from a Widow who also wanted to rebel told her that Yelena would be sent on a team to assassinate her.
Oksana found it humorous that it was no coincidence Yelena was sent to take her out. But she knew her girl. She knew the way that her mind worked and how the subjugation made her think.
But being confronted with those hazy hazel eyes, Oksana realized that she had never fought again the proclaimed ‘best child assassin’. She had managed to wrestle Yelena to her knees, a firm grip on the hair that she had spent countless hours brushing. Yelena let out a few ragged gasps, staring up at her angry eyes that held no recognition. Just when she thought she gained the upper hand, Yelena sank a knife into her stomach.
Oksana couldn’t breathe, gripping onto Yelena as the girl twisted the knife. She knew immediately that she was dead.
Yelena slice the knife across her stomach and shoved her off of her like Oksana was nothing but a dirty burden. Oksana hit the ground, gasping in pain as she felt her torso immediately become soaked with warm blood. She quickly grabbed an antidote, gripping it in her palm, and when Yelena turned her over to finish the job, Oksana sprayed her.
She had never seen her antidote in action. Yelena shook her head, trying to brush the dust from her face as she blinked in dazed confusion. Her gaze then fell onto Oksana before it flickered to the bloodied knife in her hand.
The knife clattered to the floor as Yelena dropped it in shock before she crouched next to Oksana, gripping her leg as she tried to see where she was hurt.
“Oksana--” she gasped in horrified confusion. “Oh, no… what did I do?”
Oksana pressed the empty vial into her hand as she tried to breathe, the pain in her stomach overwhelming. Black spots danced in her vision as she tried to look up at the terrified girl.
Oksana curled Yelena’s fingers around the vial, knowing that her mission had come to an end. “Free the others,” she choked out.
Yelena looked down at her, tears filling her eyes just like the first night Oksana saw the true girl underneath the chemical subjugation.
Oksana couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore, letting them slide shut as she listened to Yelena cut out her tracker. She listened as Yelena tried to collect herself, gasping slightly to keep in the tears, and wished that she had something to say to soothe her.
She wanted to tell Yelena that it was okay. Things were going to be fine. She forgave her for what she did, she knew that it wasn’t her. She knew the true girl under the mind control and it wasn’t the one that killed her.
But her tongue was heavy and her mouth flooded with a metallic tang.
As she grew colder with each passing second, she felt content in knowing that she had finally repaid her debt.
Her girl was free and Oksana had no doubt that she would succeed.