BLOODY BALLERINA ▹ barnes-romanoff ✓

thirteen.

Ruin (n)

1) the sum of what we are

The Soldier could hardly remember what happened next. He knew he must have been screaming, screaming like he did whenever they wiped him because that was what this felt like. It was as if he had just lost all of it again. The memories, the hope, the light. It had been sixty-six years that he was owned by HYDRA, but only sixty of those years were agony because he had her for nearly six years. The near laughs, the speaking, the listening, the teaching, the smiles, the remembering, the dancing, it was all taken away from him. Everything good that was her was washed away until he felt like he wasn't anything anymore. She made him human. She made him want to remember, but now that she was gone, it was like the beginning all over again.

The doctors' bloodied hands fell to their sides and they stepped back from the father and daughter. The guards that had been standing around raised their guns ever so slightly, unsure of what exactly the Soldier was going to do. They merely watched as the Soldier's shoulders wracked and his chest heaved with the tears he wouldn't let fall. The doctors and guards had given up. She was an asset to HYDRA, of course, but it was no secret that they all hated her. She was a pain.

Svetlana had a habit of getting into things when she was feeling a wee bit bolder. Most often, the small girl would follow the Soldier around and never allow herself to be more than ten feet from him if she could help it. However, on her brave days, she'd stray from the Soldier's side and get near the machine that had taken so much from her papa. With both fear and hate mixed onto her expression, she'd just glare at it until someone would have to roughly yank her away to get her refocused.

The ten year old also had this annoying habit of dancing all around the facility when she was supposed to be training. She'd twirl and spin, ignoring whatever commands she was given. The Soldier would always sit by, not once stepping in until the guards made a move against her.

Then there was the fact that Svetlana always asked too many questions: Where was the Soldier going when he left without her? What was the Russian word for 'idiot'? What country were they in? Why didn't the guards know English? What color was the sky that day? Who exactly were the targets that she and her father were sent to kill? What day was it? Why were the guards doing what they did to her and her father? What was in the files that were kept in the Superior's office?

Perhaps it was even that they disliked her because she was so liked by the Superior. He was, after all, the reason she wasn't dead already. He had saved that little girl's life continually. From the very beginning when he would not allow Madame B. to end her life when Natalia Romanova was pregnant with her, to when he offered the Soldier a choice to save her as a four year old, and to the reason that the guards had not just simply killed her themselves. They disdained the fact that their boss wanted that little killer alive and then there was the incident a few months before. The one that showed that Svetlana Anastasiya knew her worth.

The guard yanked at her red hair, pulling her head back as her blue eyes glared up at him, "Zachem? Pochemu vy dumayete, chto ya ne ub'yu vas?" Why? What makes you think I won't kill you?

She had shaken her head with a small smirk, one that she could have only gotten from the mother she had never known, "Vy ne mozhete." You can't.

The guard leaned very close, "I pochemu ya ne mogu?" And why can't I?

"Potomu chto ty nuzhen mne. YA nezamenim dlya vas. YA tvoya rezervnaya kopiya, tvoy kozyr'," she had spoken slowly with both bitterness and mockery in her hissing voice, "vash Plan B." Because you need me. I'm indispensable to you. I'm your backup, your trump card, your Plan B.