Knives On My Body, Blood On My Hands
Chapter Two
Agony is a Room
(i’ve bled in there)
IVAN VANKO strikes a deal with The Assets mother — Aida Liu, one of Hydra’s deadliest assassins, said to have gone toe to toe with Lady Shiva — three months before she gets pregnant with her. Though, at the time she hadn’t gone by The Asset, only by the name her mother had picked for her.
Honora Liu is not made for love, nor is she made for kindness. From the moment Honora Liu is ripped into being alive she has known life is pain, and life is horror and she has known that she has been made to make it that way from the bottom of her tar-black heart.
Three months before Honora Liu is born, Ivan Vanko and Aida Liu make a deal to create the perfect weapon. To unite Hydra and the Red Room and lead them against whoever stood against them.
It was, as you imagine, quite the responsibility.
•☽○☾•
THE RED ROOM is a cluster of buildings in the woods, isolated from the greater populace. The KGB leaders that come to survey the objects they pour their money into don’t blink at the girls' bruise-kissed knuckles or how some of their shirts are drenched in blood after they get out of training.
Their eyes roam the room, taking in a distinguished training room that girls like Honora — girls destined to be the incendiary soldiers, burning and searing into those in their way — spend every minute of their day in. Honora is the youngest there at the ripe age of four. She’s there because she’s Honora Liu and two months ago she clutched an army knife in chubby hands and kills her roommate because when she tries to spare her roommate, her roommate tries to slice her throat open.
•☽○☾•
Honora is five when she kills again. It’s the first time she kills a person, except that it isn’t. It’s maybe the tenth, twentieth, hundredth time she kills someone. Everyday when she walks into the too cold training room, she leaves with the blood of her sestras on her hands. She kicks their teeth in, breaks their legs, breaks their arms, breaks their face. She kills her sestras, the same girls that teach her how to braid her hair and pull on her pointe shoes, but it's not the same as killing a person. Because her sestras are not really her sestras, they are each only weapons in the Red Room’s arsenal and disposing of a weapon is so much easier than disposing of an innocent.
The man tied to chair in front of five year old Honora Liu has been trembling in his seat since she walked in, shaking and Honora can barely hear the muffled words coming from behind the thick straw bag otop his head, but Honora has disposed of enough weapons to recognize what asking for mercy sounds like.
“He betrayed the Motherland, Honora” and that's her fathers, Ivans voice, whispering sweetly into her ear. She closes her eyes - only for a second and never longer, because it’s rare for her father to be soft with her. From the moment she is brought into this world, kicking and screaming, she has only ever known the anger only a father possesses. Sharp and bruising, her fathers anger follows Honora like a tattoo seared into an already broken mentality.
When she opens them, the trigger is pulled and she thinks that time has slowed only so she can see the result and then she’s placing a thinly made porcelain mask, keeping everything hidden, but breakable if you apply too much pressure.
•☽○☾•
IN THE RED ROOM, there was never any time to actually feel things. It was a statement that Honora knew, breathed and lived by. It’s the cold harsh truth and while Honora is a spy, she's never been a liar.
But the truth can’t explain to her why Honora can’t breathe. Or why she has to curl her hands into fists to stop them from shaking, dig her nails into her palm so hard they leave blood pouring from the cuts. Or why killing someone has this much of an effect on her.
Honora doesn’t know how to push her emotions down, not yet at least. Hasn’t figured out how to separate her morality from her actions. Hasn’t figured out that she was damned from the beginning. But it’s fine because she may not be good at compartmentalization yet, but she is good at acting like she is.
She can’t stop the tears from welling at night or the crescent shaped scars that have formed on her palms but she can keep her eyes blank, face still, and pound into her opponent’s body until her trainers have to physically drag her off of the poor, dead girl.
She learns, eventually. How to push her emotions down. How to disappear within herself when they send her on more missions. (Learns how useful the skill is when they start her seduction training when she’s eight). And by the time she’s nine, she’s lying on that metal table, getting her choice removed from her body, getting it chopped, chopped away until her lip is bleeding from how hard she bites it and everything is numb, not because of anesthetic (no anesthetic for weapons) because Honora can’t feel anything because she won’t let herself feel anything.
TAGLIST:
@jayjayspixiepop , @nightlychaotic
AN: yeah, I know this is really short but i figured it was better to post what I had now rather than let it fester in y’alls mind. also, yes Honora Liu is Marinette. That’s her real name mostly cause I’m sick of seeing Marianne or Marin for her name. The events in these chapters are what happen before she joins Hydra and becomes The Asset. In case that wasn’t clear.
