PART I  ━━ 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘂𝗲.
· 。ﾟ୧ ⋆. SWAN SONG. ₊˚.༄
━━━ VALENTIZINA: THE ORIGIN
❝ innocence ❞

SHE STILL REMEMBERED February 1st like yesterday. She remembered the little Valentizina Alianovna being the only five-year-old in the room to not make a sound. Her eyes were incapable of producing tears - even in this situation it seemed. She simply stood like a ragged doll, ready to be pushed and pulled around by the man standing around her. A recollection of senses haunted her to this day. The feeling of a stranger's dry hands that wrapped around her thumb, lowering it further into the bowl of blood beside them. There was little of it, in a little China bowl too, yet still, the sticky substance was thick enough for Valentizina to grow a disliking towards the feeling. Almost as if she was surrendering to his commands, her hand fell limp in disgust, only making the job easier. For a five year old, the stench was by far the least important part. Yet for this five year old, only the stench seemed to bother her. The smell of almost nothing but everything at the same time. Of metal. Of something rotten. Yet breathe deeper, and the smell had faded into nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Valentizina's eyes stayed plastered onto the file below her, reading every word with more ease than the surrounding children.

Gifted, the man behind her thought. He noticed how her head moved from one side of the page to another, reading all the details about herself. As if it was new information she hadn't known before.

Full Name: Valentizina Nadia Alianovna
Birth Date: 01/01/1982
Nationality: British - Russian

His slender fingers tightened around her thumb, pressing it down on the paper beside the word thumbprint. Her little, feathery brows furrowed, asking herself why they needed it. But god forbid she asked them. It was all too strange. She was only young.

The five year old looked up at the crying and squealing children who tried to escape the grip of the guards, being pushed towards the right.

Yet she felt her body being spun around to face the man who knelt down, eye level to the red headed child. Her blue doe eyes narrowed in question at the guard, an act that the man took into consideration. Curiosity. Her heart didn't beat fast - nor did it skip a beat faster. It remained its calming, steady state.

"Ты боишься?"
Are you afraid?

The girl looked around, taking in her surroundings. The screams. The curse words. The blood splattering everywhere. The fits the children were causing...

Within, there was a void in where fear should be.

Should she have been scared? Valentizina did not know. She was raised in these conditions. This was like a second home.

Valentizina looked the man dead in the eye.

"нет"
No

And that's exactly why she went to the right direction, away from the other children, into an empty, dark room with guards at every corner. This very room was revealed to her when the man beside her pushed open the door, letting her tip toe inside herself, no hesitation. Her big, doe eyes scanned her new surroundings, noticing a window that had a view of the forest and the snow sprinkling on top of the trees sparingly. It was only the beginning of winter. A beginning of a snow storm that eventually would get worse. Though the weather wasn't particularly anything to be worried about at this point.

However, there was another window that looked out into the room that three men were stood in. It took form of an interrogation room.

Innocence brought back memories in where times were easier. When the mind wasn't infested with toxins of bad, bad thoughts, and your reflexes weren't plagued with a fight or flight response - which was more fight if anything, because as you grow, you realise that maybe everything wasn't so innocent; you once thought that there was no bad. Just serenity.

Innocence. The adolescence of the blue side, a time which everyone would like to go back to.

The deprivation of a childhood was equal to a deprivation of understanding who you are. There's a void in her memory where a childhood should be. She should have been a child, so why did she not recall any memories? Why was there no innocence there? Her mind was infested with mud and dirt even as a child.

Why is it that Valentizina was never innocent? Not even as a child...

Stood against the wall was a cardboard target. It took form of a man, with two bullseyes. One centred in the chest and the other, in the middle of the head.

Valentizina felt a cool sensation of metal enter her palm, making her look down at what the man was slipping into her hand.

A glock.

The red headed child looked down at the weapon, back at the target, needing no instruction for everything became clear. She didn't know how to use it. But running her pointer finger of her other hand over it, she got a good feel of it, tilting her little head to the side.

If she had innocence, she'd need instructions. But her infested mind already knew what this was. She knew what to do.

Her other fingers danced along the weapon, wrapping them around the slide, pulling it back. A clicking sound alerted the little child, making the men step back, parting their thin lips.

Valentizina raised the heavy, metal weapon up towards the target, using her other hand to help her hold a good grip on it, taking her time to point it at the bullseye of the heart. It was then that her two pointer fingers touched the trigger, breathing in the air around her, taking in the stench of alcohol. The stench that she was far too used to at a young age like this.

And she pulled the trigger, watching the way the bullet spiraled its way towards the target.

Little, young, 5 year old Valentizina's bullet flew directly in the centre of the red spot in the chest, shocking everyone around her.

She was gifted. And apparently so, she was gifted at more than just having a big brain. She was gifted with the skills of becoming Russia's ultimate weapon. Someone who would grow up to defeat anyone in site. Someone who would be manipulated and brainwashed to become emotionless. Who would learn to de-attach themselves from the act of killing and taking away a life of another human being.

And that's what she became.

Russia's greatest weapon.

An emotionless robot, ready to take the command of her rulers. Ready to take anyone out within a second. She was the best they'd ever had. The longest to survive. The most loyal. The most faithful to their craft. Her devotion towards what she was forced to do daily was taken into consideration and soon, she was known as The Impossible to the academy. It was impossible to cross her, impossible to become better than her, impossible to be her.

She was the girl who people would hear screaming in the night. Screaming in pain as a thousand electric currents ran through her body as they brainwashed her again. Screaming in insanity as she jolted awake from the nightmares of people she had killed. Her chilling screams haunted them from closing their eyes, making sweat trickle down their forehead nervously in fear.

And the worst part was that every night, after she was screaming in agony, brainwashed, haunted by her past, they faced her during breakfast as she sat perfectly still, as if nothing happened.

They noticed that every night, her body would get a little thinner, the bags under her eyes more deeper and darker, her eyes duller and more... Chilling. She never ate. Then when she eventually did, no one would ever see her gorge on food only to go a week without eating again. It was a diet that they forced her to go on to become lighter. Faster. Efficient.

As time went on, Valentizina saw people come and go at the table. Every single day, she noticed that the people sat eating became more sloppy with their actions, more pale, more tired-looking, losing any spark in their eyes they ever had. Until their heads would hit the table, their systems shutting down. And dead they were after the weakest had their food poisoned with the most fastest-working poison on the market.

Soon enough, she was the only one left standing.

The only one at the table, looking at all the empty seats.

The only assassin they had left.

The other children grew weaker. Some mentally, leading to... Deaths of their own fault. Some physically, leading them to die on a battlefield. Or, some children grew up disobedient, and the academy would never allow any sort of misfit behaviour to last longer than a day. Some were poisoned after the men believed they were becoming too weak...

But she stood standing.

And she still was to this day, maybe no longer in the academy, yet still standing either way.

And remembered.

Because it was hard to forget her. She was the one who took the the first and last bite of your bitter end, and took your life away.

And she was the best.