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THE UNBREAKABLE
SCULPTURE

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The room was a searing pain and it stays. It sticks in your skin and burns you to no end until you no longer recognise the body you're in.

After the last stage on the arena, the torture didn't stop. The superiors said that there was the final step on fully becoming a black widow. Something that will make them stronger and better.

But if being in that room was the price of becoming strong, then Czarina will very much prefer being the feeble girl among the five survivors. Yet she didn't have a choice. Even with all the screams and begging the doctors ears are sewn shut to even consider if the person in front of them wanted it.

Czarina was able to recover from the procedure, her body healed faster than the rest of the subjects who underwent it but after all, there was no healing strong enough to save her from becoming an empty shell of a person when the whole graduation ceremony was over.

Her voice and mind felt like it wasn't hers. Her mind belongs to the academy, her strength was for their purposes. Nothing was left to the girl to own except for the endless pain and anguish. That was all hers to carry.

Salvation from that hell came in the form of a strange sickness swallowing the girl's system slowly and agonising. The doctors said it was from the experiments and tests performed on her as a child, her body was deteriorating from the drugs and medicines used in genetic modification.

Czarina would have cracked up in a laugh at that clinic chair if she didn't hold herself. How ironic it is that they were trying so hard to make her an invincible soldier only for her body to start dying at the age of seventeen. The doctors, the Madame and the Red Room dug their own graves.

But of course they won't let such a prized possession to just slip out their hands that quick and easy. Once again the medical department of Red Room found a way to tie Czarina on that hell hole using a familiar technique from another super soldier.

Cryogenic Freezing. Until they find a way to cure her terminal disease she would be frozen and put in a suspended animation for the rest of her time. Similar to a living dead just like how the girl spent most of her life.

As the harsh ice coat all over body and the smell of gas crawled its way onto her lungs, the last thought on the girl's mind was seeing her brother again and possibly, maybe, the soldier friend that gave her a name. An anchor to the smallest bit of humanity left in her. Something that was enough for her to cling to. Czarina. That's my name. It's the only thing I have now. She told herself.

The girl knew it would be a long time but she didn't expect it to be that long.

Spring of 2009, the season of rebirth and new life, the girl came out of the ice as a newly revived super soldier. Awakened from her long slumber and reborn as what they call Nightshade. A title meant to put a claim of both Red Room and HYDRA to her.

It's been fourteen years to be exact yet she had the same age and look before being frozen.

The whole procedure was effective, she felt it in her body. She's so much stronger, more agile and has more quick reflexes than before. Even her healing abilities are so insane that she no longer needs medical assistance in major injuries. But even with all that invincibility and power there was only one good thing that happened when Czarina came out of the ice. It was meeting her brother again.

It turns out he caught the same complications too that he had to be frozen until the doctors found a way to save the twins. Making the two aged half of their supposed original ages. Nonetheless the Red Room didn't care, as the doctors have stated they would have aged slower anyway even if they weren't put in the ice. Whatever it means Czarina didn't understand what they meant that time.

Under the orders of their superior the two of them were sent in a foreign land with the mission of killing a newly resurfaced super soldier who was on the enemies. The Madame said the man had threatened the balance they sought to bring on the world. So he has to be eliminated. It was a very important mission to be done and they had no choice but to succeed. It's the sole reason they were woken up and saved from their painful demise.

Michael Rogers. That was the name drilled on their minds representing their enemies that has to be destroyed. It was the same thing all over again. Killing and destroying. She would go full blown mad if it wasn't for her big brother. Who at that time, to her surprise, already had a name too.

"Who gave you the name?"

"The Soldier. He handled us, the Wolf Spiders, for a long time." He finally revealed one day in their training.

"He gave me mine too!" Czarina exclaimed with such excitement in her voice. "Do you know where he is now?"

"No, I haven't been in the Mansion since I woke up."

In the tone of his voice it was evident that he knew the Soldier longer than she did, and wants to see him again as much as she does. Something that made Czarina feel less worried about how Liev lived through those eight years away from each other. The Soldier must have been with him almost the whole time, training him like how the Red Room did to her.

The time they spent together out of their respective schools, the Red Room and the Mansion. Felt like a tiny drop to make up for the time they were separated, the last time they saw each other were as children. And when they were reunited both of them were technically thirty year olds. So much has changed between the two of them except for one thing. The dream of escaping.

"Maybe we can finally escape in this mission. We're already strong enough. We can do it." Liev pondered the night before they were sent to the location of their target. Czarina wanted to answer, to agree. To encourage the plan of finally getting out but the lectures of the Madame repeat over and over in her head. You're nothing without us. Everything you had came from us. After all, is there any place they can go where the Red Room or their superiors won't find them? Wherever they are they'll always have a way to follow them. To hurt them. To hurt the people around them.

So she didn't give her answer that night, they went with carrying the orders given to them. To eliminate Michael Rogers. No trace. No witnesses.

What they failed to know was that the boy wasn't just a supersoldier. And when they found out about it, it was too late. Half of their assisting men had been killed, and they were trapped in an inescapable situation with the Rogers boy who have immense abilities that they are no match with. The whole thing ended in the worst possible way.

She did get out. But her brother didn't. He fell on the hands of a security intelligence organisation called SHIELD. That Michael Rogers was somehow a part of. Once again separating the two of them. Soon the very academy that molded and raised her collapsed due to the involvement of SHIELD in the picture. It only took days before they stormed each school branch and facility of the Red Room. Leaving nothing but dust of the great empire it used to be.

When she heard about the news of the Mansion finally falling, Czarina knew they were next. And judging how swiftly SHIELD did it, she knew that Liev was a part of the whole operation. It made her believe that she might be getting the freedom the girl has been yearning for a long time. She'll finally break free from their sharp claws, and they won't think about the Red Room anymore as they are already as good as dead.

But the world is just too cruel to give her that chance. In the morning, men in different tactical suits with an odd insignia decorating their chest stormed through the academy. Straight to the recital hall where Czarina was residing. The guards of the Red Room didn't stand a chance when they forcibly took the girl from the Madame. Blood was spilled all over the place, bodies littered the floor that she once danced on. All for the reason of saving and keeping her safe.

"The Director claims her. She's ours now. You cannot keep your duty of protecting them."

Czarina faced her new superiors as a broken shell of a soldier and as not the every bit of fighter she was. It made her finally realise, the worst, accept that she was made just for fighting. And her whole life will be a cycle of violence and killing, nothing more. Hoping of getting out if it will only lead to spiraling to a deeper part of hell where she was currently.

"Welcome to HYDRA. Nightshade. You've been waiting a long time for you.“

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  ASHA'S NOTES !

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Did I just text you with two chapters of all the necessary information about Czarina's past that should have been written in like a trilogy? YES. Is it lazy writing and lack of commitment in your own craft? YES. Was it effective to the readers? I don't know but if you reached this part maybe it did. My lazy ass just keeps finding a way to make this work, gods.

On a serious note, I know it's not that good (and it can bore a reader to death) to just drop a back story of an OC in the first two chapters but I think readers need to see it for clarity before reading the fic. Others who have unfinished "Vagabond" may already know who Czarina Barnes is (seriously if you know V&V you really deserve a veteran's discount).

Anyways there'll be more backstory revealed throughout the fic. This is just a quick recap of her past in the Phase 1-3 of MCU, I hope it's enough to catch up with the current timeline.

Now, we can all proceed to the official chapters of this fic. See you in the next chapter, the real thing is just starting!