[He wasn't wrong. She tried to downplay it, but the truth was that Ivan had beaten her, tortured her, experimented on her. A lot of it she still didn't entirely remember, but there were pieces- the handcuffs, the screaming, electricity that arced through metal pressed to her skin. Pain and some strange emotion halfway between anger and resignation.]
To say I worked with him overstates the facts. Ivan thought he could build a new world by tearing down just about every intelligence apparatus and government agency from the inside out. Better for who, I don't know. He believed in pain, though.
[She doesn't think it's something he could do something with, not directly, at least. But it does have overtures to the OPUS project. That had been the method of it, after all. And sure that's a sideways reference to the fact that he'd tortured her, but if Pierce knew anything about the Red Room at all, which he clearly did, then that wasn't anything that he didn't already have on her.
He closes the distance and she stands still. Bravery, or maybe foolishness, but neither of them are afraid of a physical confrontation, which makes the subject of distance more of an allegory, the philosophical subject of what it says about them. He speaks and she's quiet for a moment, because that sentiment all but catches her breath, and not in a good sort of way.
We are the same, you and I. Natasha had said those words to her when she was nine years old. And again, when she'd been seventeen and angry, with Russian snipers taking position on rooftops. She'd punched her in the face, then. For daring to pretend at some connection when the woman had left her. Had given her a charm and told people to laugh at her to make her harder, colder. And now Pierce stands there in the kitchen, and there's those same words: we are the same. That echo in her memory of something that had always been a cruelty, a comparison, a legacy she could never achieve or escape. Мы такие же.
It makes her heart pound in her chest, makes her forget to breathe and for a moment her blue eyes glow. She makes herself blink, try to rein in her emotions but that's never been easy for her, and for a breath there's something on the air. That way that thunderstorms feel on a summer's night. She sighs, shakes her head and her eyes fade.]
It's getting late, isn't it? I didn't mean to keep you so long.
no subject
To say I worked with him overstates the facts. Ivan thought he could build a new world by tearing down just about every intelligence apparatus and government agency from the inside out. Better for who, I don't know. He believed in pain, though.
[She doesn't think it's something he could do something with, not directly, at least. But it does have overtures to the OPUS project. That had been the method of it, after all. And sure that's a sideways reference to the fact that he'd tortured her, but if Pierce knew anything about the Red Room at all, which he clearly did, then that wasn't anything that he didn't already have on her.
He closes the distance and she stands still. Bravery, or maybe foolishness, but neither of them are afraid of a physical confrontation, which makes the subject of distance more of an allegory, the philosophical subject of what it says about them. He speaks and she's quiet for a moment, because that sentiment all but catches her breath, and not in a good sort of way.
We are the same, you and I. Natasha had said those words to her when she was nine years old. And again, when she'd been seventeen and angry, with Russian snipers taking position on rooftops. She'd punched her in the face, then. For daring to pretend at some connection when the woman had left her. Had given her a charm and told people to laugh at her to make her harder, colder. And now Pierce stands there in the kitchen, and there's those same words: we are the same. That echo in her memory of something that had always been a cruelty, a comparison, a legacy she could never achieve or escape. Мы такие же.
It makes her heart pound in her chest, makes her forget to breathe and for a moment her blue eyes glow. She makes herself blink, try to rein in her emotions but that's never been easy for her, and for a breath there's something on the air. That way that thunderstorms feel on a summer's night. She sighs, shakes her head and her eyes fade.]
It's getting late, isn't it? I didn't mean to keep you so long.