Chapter Text
2027
"So-" Yelena started.
"Nope." Bucky retorted exasperatedly.
"I was just saying," she stubbornly went on, "The lock system on the door looked three times more expensive than the couch."
Bucky's eyes narrowed as his crossed arms flexed uncomfortably. His seated form was tense, shoulders all the way up to his ears.
The history was too deep, he thought, and half of it is still lost to the blurry cloud that covers the gaps in his memory. He said he remembered everything, he hadn't lied. However, it felt impossible to explain what mind control does to memory, how his brain would store all the details but restrict his access. File and lock everything away and throw out the key.
He's aware that he has probably stored all his past interactions with the woman at the apartment in his mind's filing cabinet, But there also lived a large and very temperamental cluster of fog that occasionally bit his hand every time he reached in.
"I also saw something else in there that…" the blonde looked upward, as if searching for the right english words in the ceiling, "Well, she had ballet shoes. Ones I've seen before."
Bucky stilled, back straight on the leather couch. He had sat here for all of two minutes before Yelena tracked him from the adjacent kitchen with bag of chips in her hand. Her eyes sharply assessed his expressionless face, demanding answers he knew would be hard to provide. The soldier shrugs a shoulder, feigning nonchalance with his gaze firmly on the opposite window. "Maybe she likes ballet-"
"Bucky Barnes, if you start down that route you will not like how far I can dig." The blonde widow snapped lowly, eyes narrowing as she crunched the chip bag closed in her fist.
A worn-out sigh unclenched his shoulders and his eyes flicked up.
"She was from the Red Room." Bucky voiced, decidedly vague.
"Widow?" she probed, her head leaning forward.
"No." he replied, raking his fingers through his hair, "trained like one, though."
"But that means-" Yelena hesitated, confusedly searching through her past for a clue.
Leaning his elbows on his knees, Bucky took an expanding breath through his teeth.
"Do you know a Dr. Lyudmila Kudrin?" the question was uttered in bursts, like hesitation was pausing every word. Bucky hoped, for her sake, that Yelena didn't know the name.
1990
Dr. Kudrin's office proceeded the lab entrance, and was meticulously structured. Every book, paper, pen, and tool was lined up in clean, vertical shapes. Nothing was out of order, including the woman herself.
Prim and sharp in her starch-ironed collars, she looked up from her research papers. Her thin brow arching faintly at a sharp knock on the door. "Yes." she allowed, back straightening against her leather desk chair.
the door clicked open, and an officer walked through to stand before her desk. "Officer Pavel, Dr." He said stiffly with his arms behind his back, "There's been news of the woman in the accident, she did not survive the crash."
She hummed unsympathetically, having anticipated the reports of her sister-in-law's fate. "The child?"
"Government child services took her yesterday." The officer confirmed.
Dr. Kudrin stood slowly, resting her palms on her desk, "The child is too old to be ignored." she decided, frowning in thought, "fetch her and use my blood relation to handle the cover up with the orphanage."
"Yes, Dr."
The woman was never deceived by the temptations of child-rearing that had been fed to all the girls around her. Lyudmila firmly believed in her superior intellect, and that it would be a waste to do anything other than what she intended to do in this lab.
there was no maternal instinct that can override the power of her will, there will be no attachment that can take her from her purpose. that's what Dreykov saw when he gave her her own lab, and funded her genius.
While the scientist could not stand children- she never had to either-, she knew that her niece would have an innate intellectual potential, one that she can use to her advantage. Deeper in her heart, Dr. Kudrin detested the thought of someone with her blood out there. She coveted and took pride in it, and hated her brother for not protecting it's purity when he married that soft woman.
She straightened behind the lab bench when she heard the knock on the door. The little girl pulled into the room by the officer was barely five years old, mousily silent. Her dress and jacket were fitted and clean, but the knees of her stockings were scuffed. The Dr saw how her eyes peeked up from behind locks of black hair, timidly trying to see and not be seen.
the death of her parents must still be shattering her world, she thought. It might prove too challenging to rewrite five years of countryside childhood, but Kudrin was determine to secure her bloodline tightly to her purpose.
"Alya Kuznetsova," the older woman murmured, thoughtfully surveying the child, "that will have to change."
Reaching her hand to touch the edges of the girl's long black hair, the Dr saw the small shoulders flinch. "That too."
"Contact General Dreykov," She said, turning to address the officer, "Kozlov will have to accommodate her with the rest of the orphans. I'll have use of her when she's developed the rest of her cognitive faculties."
2027
"When she arrived with Kudrin in Siberia," Bucky continued, looking at the blank screen of the TV, "they referred to her as Alka."
"Like Alkonost?" Yelena asked, tilting her head.
"I… don't know what that is."
The blonde rolled her eyes dramatically, muttering something about 'fake Russian'.
"It's a mythical lady from Russian stories."
He hummed thoughtfully. He remembered the night she told him her real name to the hum of a HYDRA jet mid-flight. After that, the name Alka didn't matter as much.
"Did she know Natasha?"
The question interrupted his pondering, and he turned to Yelena. She leaned forward in her chair, her brows apprehensive, as if she wasn't sure she wanted to know.
"I don't know, 'Lena." Bucky confessed softly.
Yelena let out a sigh and leaned back, her legs stretched out on the coffee table.
"So she came to Siberia for what?"
"You're not gonna like this."
"I'm asking, aren't I?" Yelena quiped flatly.
Bucky sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. Everything he knew about her came from seeing her red room file once, and from her telling him directly.
"From what I rememeber," He began, squinting as he mentally sifted through the information, "Alya worked for Kudrin's lab since she was 16. When Dreykov got in contact with HYDRA in '05, they wanted his chemical mind control research."
Her bomber jacket creaked against the leather of the chair and he could see her fight a tremor. Knowing Yelena was intimately familiar with the chemical invention did not make this any easier.
"Kudrin developed it, and dreykov wasn't willing to give up her knowledge just yet." Bucky explained, "so he sent Alya instead."
"Did it work?" She asked in a hushed voice.
"No."
Yelena blinked in surprise, her raised brows urging him to elaborate.
"My metabolism, I guess, or drug resistance. They had to redesign it specifically for the Winter Soldier."
He had been drugged for decades before then, and his brain was in tatters from torture and electroconvusive sessions, there were too many factors that skewed the redroom drug.
He turned to look at his teammate, who looked pensive as she digested the information. Bucky had connected some dots a long time ago, but there were still things that evaded him.
"When did she get out?" the blonde wondered.
"I.. dont actually know." He stalled, looking to his knees, "last time she was with me at the base was before DC. By the time I realized, Alya had aready been a ghost for two years."
"Huh.." Yelena hummed and her eyes flickered around, as if piecing something together. A puzzle piece she had long forgotten to be curious about.