BLOODY BALLERINA ▹ barnes-romanoff ✓

eleven.

"I was created to strip lungs of their breath, to destroy pretty little things and burn them to the ground, to bring the world to it's knees, and hear my name spoken only in fearful whispers. I was to be. To be a monster."

The Soldier never let on that there was any care between him and the girl. Not truly. It was easier for her, of course, because all of everyone knew that Svetlana remembered her father. She was at times allowed to try to make him smile and show him kindness when they were around the guards and the doctors. The fact that he could not made him believe it to be simply another form of HYDRA's tortures, but he knew he could survive it. He could survive anything, especially with the eight year old child by his side. Even if he couldn't touch her, if he couldn't hold her, or tell her to close her eyes when the violent things happened, he was, at least, able to see her. He could see her distractedly stare off into space as she so often did, pressing her fingers to her opposite palms, see her as she would mumble quiet stories to herself, see her as she watched the guards with narrowed eyes whenever they pushed her around.

Their lives continued as bloodily as to be expected.

They were allowed to keep their shared living quarters, but another cot was provided and that meant that all potential of any contact at all was shattered. Yet, before the girl went to sleep each night, they would make sure to both lay on their sides so they could at least see each other if needed. The Soldier hardly ever slept, even if a mission left him nearly dead in exhaustion. There was this bitter sick fear within him that if he closed his eyes, even for a moment, little Svet would be taken from him once again. He did not remember overly much about his days after she was taken, but he could remember the misery of it, of being left behind, of being torn away.

It was some kind of dark, raging, immobilizing misery.

It was a feeling he had only felt twice before in his life. Try as hard as he may, he still couldn't exactly place what or who those memories were attached to, but he knew well enough that he wasn't going to let himself feel it again.

They trained in the cage during the day if there were not missions. The first time the Winter Soldier had attempted to train the girl by showing her a simple arm release, she had taken his metal arm, flipped her small body over it, and sent a harsh kick at the back of his knees. While he hadn't fallen down, he might as well have by how shocked he was. He couldn't believe that such a small, fragile being as his daughter was able to accomplish such a feat.

And she only got better.

Or, perhaps, it ought to be stated that she only got worse.

The Red Room had broken the girl, surely, but the Siberian facility did something more foul. It peeled apart the cracks of the girl's person until HYDRA's tentacles could reach beneath the depths and curl into her soul. It curled around the girl's interior and it smothered out the light, the goodness, and the purity that her father had named her for. Svetlana became a separate person from whom she was on missions. Svetlana was small and kind and innocent. The other, as Svetlana had grown to call her in her mind, was a thing to be feared. Then, slowly, the "other" turned into a much different name. Perhaps it was the way that she killed that eventually gave her the renown she held.

The Bloody Ballerina.

It was whispered about her on the streets during dark events when they feared the coming of the ghost and the child that trailed behind him. Men, women, and children alike shuddered at the thought of the seemingly heartless girl that had so violently, so unforgivingly taken many lives.

It was always a flash of red that her targets saw first. Even if her hair was usually pulled back into a tight bun, it still stood out like fire in the darkness. It was the graceful spin that came next as she ducked away from their moves to resist the unchangeable. Her toes would lift her as she methodically slipped back to avoid their attacks. In the most simple of missions, all she would need to do next was lift up one perfectly pointed foot and curl her body around until she faced them. In a matter of seconds, she would wrap her legs around their chest and throats. By that point, there was only one last thing for the targets to see: two small hands take hold of both their chins and their necks before the hands gave a quick, perfect twist. And then the targets became victims.