Torture
She looked straight ahead at the judge in front of her. Her emotionless mask already put on her face the moment she stepped into the courthouse. Even though she wasn’t on trial, this is the most scared she had ever been in a courthouse. She wasn’t even this scared when she told the government to kiss her ass a few years ago.
But now sitting up beside the judge was Madame B. A woman she thought was long dead. But here she was on trial for the crimes she committed in the Red Room. She was glad that she was being prosecuted, but she would rather just have this whole thing disappear. Because now she had to testify against Madame B, because she was the only witness left alive.
She felt the stares of Tony, Steve, Wanda and Clint burn into the back of her neck. She was thankful for their support in this, but things that none of them knew were going to come out in this trial. Things she hadn’t even told Clint. And now she had to tell the whole world. She wondered for a moment if she could even do it. She quickly shook that thought to the back of her mind. She was the Black Widow. She could do anything. Madame B had taught her that.
The judges voice snapped her out of her thoughts and back to the trial. “Madame, when did the Red Room Operation begin.?” He asked Madame B, not taking his tired eyes off the paper in front of him.
“It began in the 1940s but wasn’t successful until the last group of participants in 1985.” Madame B replied. Her icy blue eyes locked onto hers when she said that it was successful. She knew she was the only successful Black Widow that came out of the room. She hated that Madame B had called them participants. They hadn’t made the choice to be a part of the program. They were prisoners.
“When was the last group of girls taken into the custody of the Red Room?” The old judge asked, doing his best not to look disgusted.
Madame B smiled at her, the smile that gives her nightmares every night. “The last group of girls were taken in 1985 when they were all one year old. They were either taken from orphanages or taken.” Madame B’s eyes were still locked on hers. And she was determined to not look away, she would not give Madame the satisfaction.
She couldn’t really remember how she got to the Red Room, since she was only one-year old. But she could remember smoke burning her nose and choking her. She could remember screaming. But that was all. She couldn’t remember anything about her parents, she didn’t even know if she had siblings.
“Can you please name the girls that you took for the program and how many there were?” The judge asked, staring daggers into Madame. He hated her, she could tell.
“There were twenty-eight of them. Anya, Irina, Yelena, Anastasia, Katina, Annika, Melina, Lada, Tatiana, Manya, Lizabeta, Ivanna, Nina, Kira, Nadia, Alisa…” Madame B paused for a moment, clearly trying to remember more names. “And Natalia, but that is all that I remember.”
She did her best to hide the horror and disgust that she felt towards Madame B. She only remembered seventeen out of the twenty-eight girls that she took. She knew that they all meant nothing more to Madame then weapons. But she could have at least remembered their names. The girls Madame had just listed were ones who survived towards the later years of the training. But she remembered them all. She would always remember her competitors. Her sisters.
“Ms Romanoff, do you remember the rest of the girls?” The judge asked her. She replied without hesitation.
“Evva, Irisa, Larissa, Lelya, Mila, Nadka, Nastasia, Olena, Elena, Odessa and Sarra.” She said strongly. Her sisters would be remembered. They would not be forgotten like Madame B had wanted. She could tell without turning around that her friends behind her wore shocked expressions. She had never told them a single name of the other girls in the Red Room. Clint had asked but she had reflected the question and didn’t answer. They probably thought that she didn’t remember. But she did.
She remembered watching Odessa kill Sarra when she was five. She remembers Madame B slitting Evva’s throat when she was three. She remembers Anya, how her best friend had been her first kill when she was six. The Red Room had taken many things from her, but they would never take the memories of her sisters away. No matter how hard they tried. No matter how much they hurt.
Her attention was drawn to a lawyer she didn’t know the name of. He wore a suit and had his hair gelled back. In his hand was a file.
“Judge, her I have photos taken during the training of the girls in the Red Room, I have also acquired a piece of video to show.” The unknown lawyer said, standing up and going to the projector.
She froze. She had memories of the Red Room, but she had never seen any photos of her time there, let alone a video. She felt fear fill her body, but she remained still and to anyone else she looked calm. She looked up at the screen as the first picture came up.
It was a photo of all twenty-eight girls. Almost like a class picture taken at normal schools. They were all two years old in the picture. Even at that young age they had all been in the Red Room for a year and knew what was expected of them. They did not smile. They stood with their hands behind their backs and stared at the camera with cold, empty eyes. They were children, but they didn’t look like it. She quickly spotted herself in the back, it was easy as she was the only child with bright red hair. She looked so afraid. She wanted to look at the picture for hours, memorizing every girls faces and matching them to the names she knew. But all too soon the picture was replaced with another.
This was a picture taken during Sarra and Odessa’s duel, right before Odessa snapped Sarra’s neck. Odessa’s hands around Sarra’s tiny thoat. Even in the picture you could see the fear in Sarra’s eyes. And the regret and horror in Odessa’s. She saw herself in the background watching, she was holding Anya’s hand.
Looking at these photos brought back to many memories. She felt herself start to shake and her breathing start to quicken. She tried to stop, tried to hide it. But this was all too much. She wanted to run and hide and never turn back, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the screen.
The next picture was put up. This time it was a close up photo of her and Anya. They looked to be about five but she couldn’t be sure. They both had identical braided crowns carefully done. They were in their ballet costumes and tying up their shoes. She remembered those shoes and how the ribbons had to be tied so tight that they dug into her ankles and made them bleed.
The final photo he showed was of them all in their beds. This time there were only seven of them, all looking to be around sixteen years old. They all stared at the camera, wrists handcuffed to their bedposts. She saw herself in the bed furthest away. Hers had always been the bed farthest from the door.
She looked down at her hands and saw that they were clenched into fists. Blood dripping down them. She hadn’t even noticed she had dug her nails so deep into her skin. She didn’t even feel the pain. She looked back up at the screen as the video started to play. She dug her nails even harder into the palms of her hands.
The video was of her. Probably around ten years old. She was wearing a training uniform and standing in a line with all the other surviving girls. Madame B stood in front of them, hammer in hand. She looked exactly the same as she did now.
“Natalia come forward” the Madame on the video said. She watched in horror as her younger self walked towards Madame B. She knew exactly what this video was of.
“What is your purpose?” Madame B asked little Natalia.
“To be the best assassin Russia has ever had.” The little girl replied quickly.
“Good, what is your place is the world?” Madame B asked, a sadistic glint in her eyes.
Her younger self looked confused for a moment before answering, “To be the assassin Russia has ever had.”
She winced as the Madame B in the video grabbed ahold of the young Natalia’s foot bringing the hammer down with a sickening crack. But the young girl did not cry out in pain. She had been trained better than that and was already used to pain far greater than a few broken toes.
“Wrong, you have no place in the world.”