Don’t let them take your heart

They couldn’t take her heart.

Yelena knew this. Not in a logical, tactical way - because, of course, her superiors could rip that vital organ away from her whenever they pleased. No, Yelena knew this in a way she couldn’t quite explain. The knowledge was ingrained in her, deeply, instinctually, and it burned within her. 

Her “father” had told her, when she had done something reckless, or kind, “You have heart, Маленький волк.”

“Your heart is your strength, sestra.” Her sister had told her, in one of the rarer moments when they were utterly alone together. 

“Such heart, in one so young.” Had been said, in voices so different from the cold ones she was now surrounded by, when she would give her ice cream to another girl, or share a toy without having to be asked.

Her heart, her heart, her heart. 

It was supposed to be the thing that kept her alive, pumping blood and life through her veins. 

Throughout her childhood, it had been that and more. Bringing warm, innocent flushes to her cheeks and giddy laughter to the room. It had made her overflow, sometimes, with happiness. It had made a young, blonde girl kind and full of love. 

It wasn’t supposed to be the thing that brought her lashes from brutal whips for giving half her meal to another girl. It wasn’t supposed to garner her cold, disappointed stares, or raging, frightening lectures. It wasn’t supposed to be the thing that led her straight into traps. 

Her “mother” had told, commanded- begged Natalia as they were separated. As they were pulled into lives that would be nothing but cruel to them. “Don’t let them take your heart.” 

She would have said it to Yelena, too, if she had been given the chance.

Mama, Yelana silently begged, trying not to cry as her little hands were yanked into the shackles that tied her to the cot. (If she cried, they would beat her again, she knew. It had happened before.) Why did you want us to have hearts so badly if it just keeps making me hurt?

As Yelena grew, she began to understand.

At age seven, she had found that the heart that the woman who wasn’t her real mother had wanted her to keep only brought her beatings. 

Мама, is my heart just meant to keep my pain?

By age ten, she was full of rage. She learned, and fought, and danced, and followed orders. She had killed men without blinking. But all the while, she burned inside. She screamed and raged in that heart of hers with every perfect, obedient thing she did. 

Did your heart hold your rage as well, Отец?

Age twelve taught her tact. She could use every type of weapon to perfection, but, of course, it was not enough. She was a woman now. She was a spy as well as a soldier and an assassin, they told her. You are beautiful, they told her. You are better than all the rest. (Later, she would learn they had said that to many of the widows-to-be.) And so she learned seduction, strategy, and battle tactics until her head ached as much as her body did from dancing and fighting. And that beating heart of hers held her objections, her disgust, her pain, and rage, and despair. It swept the remains of the glowing child she used to be far, far away.

Do you use your heart to hide yourself away as I have, sestra?

By sixteen, the only part left of her that held even a hint at who she had been was her heart. She was older. She had learned a million things that no one, no matter their age, should know. But she knew them. Her golden hair had paled to a dirty shade of wheat, and she had filled out with lean muscle and a soldier’s build. (She could never have had a dancer’s curves as the red room wanted, but her beauty would do as it was, for once.) Her bright, expressive eyes were now cold. Calculating. A child soldier, a spy, a seductress, a strategist, an assassin- that’s what she was. Every part of the woman she could have been was scraped raw and torn away, warped and molded into another widow for them to use until she broke. 

Yelena didn’t plan on breaking.

But then again, no one does.

By eighteen, she had graduated. A black widow in full. The ceremony had left her reeling, but the red room didn’t care.

She was a weapon, they told her. She was marble, she was diamond, she was steel, and blood, and glass. She was the whisper of a winter breeze and the raging fire. She was anything she was told to be. 

Would Melina have told the girls to keep their hearts if she had known how brutally they would be broken?

Yelena Belova was sent another mission. This time, she wasn’t sent alone.

Another widow was assigned along with her. 

Yelena caught the widow’s large, dark eyes, assessing the woman just as she was surely assessing Yelena. 

Bianca Fedorov. Brown hair, brown eyes, 5’5 and strong. Taught and skilled in all the arts Yelena had been. (Deep down, something inside her snorted at calling the gruesome things they learned ‘art’. But it didn’t matter either way.) 

Yelena nodded at the same time as the other woman. It would work.

The mission, of course, was executed flawlessly. In training since childhood, along with the consequences of failure, the superiors didn’t expect anything else. They infiltrated the business, Bianca grabbed the files while Yelena shot the CEO and hid the body. Then they blew it up. Nothing but ashes left behind, and no traces of the widows at all. 

Neither Yelena nor Bianca mentioned the stolen glances the two had shared. They didn’t mention how as they fled the building, Bianca took a knife for Yelena and, in turn, the blonde widow killed the witness and any other seen. They didn’t mention the conversation the two had in fleeting moments of calm, the conversation they could never have had anywhere else with their superiors nearby. They finished the mission and did their jobs to perfection, just as they had been trained to do. That was all anyone needed to know.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” 

Bianca’s soft voice had shocked Yelena as they perched on the top of a building, watching the cooperation they had destroyed burst into flames. 

Widows didn’t talk like that. They didn’t speak of what they found pleasing or otherwise. They were weapons, tools; they didn’t have opinions. And they certainly didn’t talk to other widows as if they were close friends. 

But, Yelena’s twisted, bleeding, hidden heart tugged at her to answer. “Yes. It is.”

And that thought was twisted too, but fire was beautiful, even as it turned all around it to ashes. 

Maybe the world deserves to burn. 

Yelena didn’t know why some of the rage her heart had been holding had slipped out when that knife had caught Bianca’s shoulder. She didn’t know why, when Bianca grabbed her hand to pull her away from the man’s dead body, she ached for more of that touch. 

But, the two broken women waited for the fire to finish eating up the building, the files, the people. They waited so they could make sure it was all gone. And, as they waited, they talked.

Bianca, her voice soft and hoarse, told her how tired she was. How she didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to fight anymore. How she missed her mother and her brother.

And Yelena, despite all her conditioning, told Bianca of her rage. How she wanted to stop all of this, to save all the little girls they continued to bring in and beat into widows. Yelena told her of the only family she remembered. Of Melina, and Alexei, and Natasha. 

They talked, and it hurt, and Bianca grabbed her hand. And, in those brown eyes - still so expressive and emotional, even after all their training - Yelena found the courage to use her heart again. 

So, they didn’t tell their superiors about their conversation, or of what came after. They had completed the mission, and their trainers were satisfied with that. (But of course, they couldn’t have been. They were never satisfied.)

That night, Yelena didn’t sleep. 

“Don’t let them take your heart.” Her mother had said.

Yelena knew they couldn’t take it. They could turn her into a monster, and she would still have that sliver of love in her.

During their morning run, short and fast (And blessedly outside, though she used to think cursedly), Yelena’s hand drifted to the two-inch blade in her pocket. 

Her eyes caught on Biancas, and the woman nodded discreetly. 

A small smile tugged at her lips. 

It was the smile they’d taught her. A ruthless smile, a violence-loving smirk, a grin to terrify victims. 

Yelena bet they never expected it to be aimed at them. 

She unleashed the monster they created. 

It’ll be fun.

She spun, and hit, and sliced, and stabbed. 

Bianca followed suit. 

They tried to choke Yelena and she bit and clawed like a wild animal. She was swing and knuckle, grace and steel. She was a death they forged and she took out twenty agents before the widows descended. 

She couldn’t find Bianca.

She didn’t want to hurt them, she couldn’t bring herself to. It was as much their fault as it was hers and she was done with it. But they were willing to hurt her. 

For a while, all she felt was pain. She was used to pain. She welcomed it. It had been her company her whole life, from skinning a knee playing with her sestra to beatings to fighting tooth and nail on assignments. It knocked her down, but it also sharpened her. She reckoned no one within the realm of normal thought that pain made them better, but, she guessed it was a good thing she wasn’t normal then. 

“You're a brave girl. Your pain only makes you stronger.”

Her mother was right. But that didn’t mean it hurt any less.