Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it.

The Russian in this chapter is in italics, with the translations both in the chapter itself and at the end of the chapter. I do apologize for how long it took to get this new chapter up, Real Life ATE ME! *gasps for air*

Either way, I hope you all enjoy! Please please please review! It really does encourage me to continue posting to this story.

Chapter 8: Valya and the Proposal

It took some finagling but eventually Marina had been installed in a hospital conference room, her boys sprawled around the table. Jason watched her carefully, the files still firmly in his custody. "Are you sure, Marishka? You don't have to do this," he insisted, not surprised when she shook her head stubbornly.

"I need to do this, sladkiy. The past will have no hold over me anymore."

Jason's eyes flicked toward Will for a moment, deferring to the eldest brother almost as an afterthought. Marina may be the oldest seated at the table, but she'd handed over her role as de facto leader to Will long ago; except for Marina, none of The Brothers Grimm would dare flout a direct order. Heaving a heavy sigh at the elder brother's solemn nod, he reached out to hand her the files. He watched her carefully as she reached slowly to take them, and knew that despite her determination to see it through, she was not looking forward to sorting through the files of dead operatives that she at least still counted as friends. Flipping open a notebook in front of him, Jason prepared to keep meticulous notes on each of the names she read. He knew Marina, and knew that she would want to do something to commemorate each fallen former comrade once they'd returned stateside. Nevermind the fact that they'd come to Croatia to kill her.

Each name passed her lips in a reverent whisper as she paged through the files, her face paling further with each face she flipped past. "Nastia Ilianovna Dmitriyeva. Florentina Germanovna Gurkovskaya. Rozalina Abramovna Yeltsina. Zoya Konstantinovna Yanayeva. Katya Vasiliyevna Azarova."

Finally, her whole demeanor broke and her face crumbled into real, heartbreaking grief as she found a name that she not only knew, but called beloved. "O Bozhe, net. Ne Valya. (Oh God, no. Not Valya.)"

Jason scribbled the name in the notebook open in front of him, making sure to place a large star beside the name so that he would know that this name was special. Will's voice was gentle as he spoke, "Valya? Kto Valya, samaya malen'kaya? (Who is Valya, my little one?)"

Marina bowed her head over the file, fingers tender and loving over the picture of a stone faced blond with steel cold grey eyes. "Valentina Sergeyevna Obolenskaya. We were born in same village in Sibir', in Кемерово. Our mothers were friends. After my mother died, her mother used to watch me while my papa was away. She was my best friend; no matter what the Gospozha did to try to make us betray one another, we remained loyal to each other. I can't . . . why would she . . . I don't understand."

Seeing her start to crumble, Will stood from his chair and moved to crouch beside her. "Marishka, eto ne vasha vina. Vy zhe sami skazali, vy predali Rossiyu, kogda ty ukral nas v storonu, chtoby zashchititʹ nas. Ty predatelʹ ikh seychas. Valya sdelala svoy vybor, yestʹ ne chto inoye, vy mogli by sdelatʹ. (Marishka, this is not your fault. You said yourself, you betrayed Russia when you took us away to protect us. You're a traitor to them now. Valya made her choice; there is nothing else you could have done.)"

"No, Misha, ona mertva. Potomu chto ona byla poslana, chtoby ubitʹ menya, i my ubili yeye v pervuyu ocheredʹ. Kak eto ne moya vina? (But, Misha, she's dead. Because she was sent to kill me and we killed her first. How is that not my fault?)"

Will pressed his lips to her forehead, murmuring against her skin. "Ona sdelala svoy vybor. Vy sdelali vash. Tolʹko odin vinovat v lyubom iz eto Akademiya. (She made her choice. You made yours. The only one to blame for any of it is The Academy.)"

The couple sat there for a long moment, with the other three boys looking on before Will finally moved back. "Marishka . . . samaya malen'kaya . . . tell us about the Red Room."

Marina looked up at him with red rimmed brown eyes, before taking a deep breath and making a conscious effort to straighten her spine and regain composure before nodding her agreement. "I was born January 31, 1941, in Кемерово, Sibir', Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Republik (Kemerovo, Siberia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). My mother died with I was only a year old and I don't really remember her very well. My Papy was a soldier for Materi Rossii, and he had been a part of the Revolution that overthrew the Tsar. I was four when my father received notification that I had been selected, based on his loyal service, to become a part of an elite corps of children and that they would be coming for me. My father protested; I was all he had left, and he would not give me up so easily. The Akademiya came for me in June; my father tried to fight and they put him down like a sobaka. I remember screaming as I watched them kill him, fighting with the woman who was holding onto me and trying to get to him. I didn't get the chance to say goodbye; I didn't get the chance to do anything except watch as my father's body fell to the floor of our little home and the soldiers set it ablaze."

Here she took a breath, looking up to see the looks of horror on the faces of her boys. She reached out and squeezed Kenny's hand, seeing that the gentlest of them all was nearly in tears. "It wasn't so bad. Valya was taken with me. And life in Sibir' was hard, even for those who were in the good graces of Materi Rossii i yeye Suprugi. The Akademiya offered three full meals a day, and we were never cold or ill-clothed. It was hard and the Gospozha was cruel, but all of us girls had each other. Gospozha tried so hard to break us of our humanity, turn us into remorseless automatons, who served only Rossiya and cared little for morals or ethics. Some of us capitulated; others only grew stronger for being able to retain that small part of ourselves.

"I still remember the day I took my first kill, and was given my codename. Gadyuka. The Viper. He was an upper level diplomat; they had evidence he was collaborating with the SSHA (USA). It was the height of the Kholodnaya Voyna and that was treason of the worst kind in the SSSR. I seduced him and then killed him while he lay sleeping in the bed beside me; I was 15 and he was probably 50. He was the first of the men whom I have killed, but he was not the last."

Clint leaned forward, eyebrows furrowed. "How many girls were there?"

Marina shrugged lightly. "I don't know, not truly. They called it 'The Akademiya' only because they passed it off as a boarding school for special, talented girls. There was always a new class coming in and another class going out. I was there officially as a singer, 'training' to be a classical singer for the Soviet Opera. I actually sang in Prokofiev's Maddalena in 1955. I was 14 and the papers who reviewed the opera said that I had a voice like a Botticelli angel."

"How many were in your class?"

Marina was quiet for a moment as she thought, before answering in a tired whisper, "There were eighteen of us who made it through to graduation."

"Made it through?"

"Those of us who couldn't," there was a pause as Marina stumbled over her thought, asking, "How do you say it, Clint? When someone can't succeed at something?"

Clint swallowed, "Hack it. They couldn't hack it."

"Those of us who couldn't 'hack it' disappeared, and we never saw them again. There were a couple girls who slit their own wrists. We started out with around 45 of us, and eighteen of us graduated."

"Yebat'," Jason swore softly, his eyes dropping closed as he considered what she was saying.

"And these women? The ones who died today?"

"They were all in my class. They were my friends, and I never would have wished them dead."

Will took a deep breath, laying a hand over her hand. "Marishka . . . I need to know . . . who else was in your class?"

Marina cocked her head at him for a moment, trying to understand the source of that question, before her eyes widened and she choked. "No, Misha."

"Samaya malen'kaya, if they come for you again, I want to know who it is we're going to kill. Tell us; who else was in your class?"

The brunette bit down on her lip, looking between the four men at the table and seeing the cold determination in each of their eyes. "Promise me, Misha. No matter what happens, you'll offer them a better chance. And if you can't, or they won't, it'll be a clean kill."

Each of them nodded immediately, though Will was the only one to speak, "We promise."

Sucking in a stabilizing breath through her nose, Marina bowed her head and began to list names. "Galina Igorovna Yuryeva. Yelena Mikhailovna Yolkova. Yekaterina Maximovna Baryshnikova. Inga Romanovna Sidorova. Klara Nikolayevna Varuskina. Mariya Eduardovna Zarubina. Oksana Anatolyevna Zhivenkova. Svetlana Antonovna Putina. Tatyana Vladimirovna Aliyeva. Yuliya Petrovna Loginovskaya. Then there was Viktoriya Viktorovna Dubrovskaya and Nika Stanislavovna Belinskaya; after Valya, they were my best friends at the Akademiya."

Seeing the devastated tears in her eyes, Will got up and moved to her side. Lifting her carefully from her seat, he sat and settled her against his chest. For the first time in her life, Marina took the opportunity she was being offered and began to sob. She cried for her murdered father, her destroyed childhood, her lost innocence and for the lives of the women she had once known and called family. One by one, each of the brothers got up from their chairs and gathered around her, laying a hand on her and offering her the same love and support she had always given them freely.

It was a long time before she stopped crying.

Jason was right, and as soon as they were back stateside, Marina insisted on a memorial for the women who had died in Croatia. Will and Marina had always planned to buy a place together in New York City, and it was in a little cemetery outside the city that Marina purchased a small plot with enough space for a dozen tombstones. In the center of the little plot stood a single statue of a homely girl with a deformed right hand, whom Marina referred to simply as The Saint. It took Jason about an hour to link the statue of the woman with Saint Germaine Cousin, the patron saint of abused children and young women. Each woman who had died in Croatia was given a marker there, with flowers placed on each headstone every Christmas, Easter and birthday. Marina cared for the little plot tenderly, refusing to allow anyone else to do so, choosing to remember the women as the girls they were before the Academy transformed them into assassins.

Over the next year, the Brothers Grimm encountered several other Red Room assassins while they were on assignments. Some were women she had known, and others were not. Each time Will kept his promise. If he could, he offered them the chance to defect, to do something different with their lives. Many took the offer, each knowing that soon Russia would have no more use for them and there would be little to stop their handlers from turning on them. They took their newfound freedom and simply disappeared, taking what they had learned and hiding from any who sought them out. Others refused Will's offer, and it was after the deaths of these women that Will would hold Marina in his arms as she wept late at night, after their headstones were erected in her plot and they were alone in their quarters.

The Brothers Grimm were deployed to Bangui, Central African Republic, in May of 1996, when everything changed again the day Three Star General Nicholas Fury showed up and demanded a meeting with the by now notorious Major Marina Petrovka, former KGB spy and current officer in the United States Army.

Nineteen year old Capt Clint Grimm leaned up against the wall and frowned as he watched Marina change from her fatigues into her dress greens. Her 29 year old Lt. Colonel was overseeing a bombing operation, in which 25 year old Capt Jason Grimm was in charge of communications and 21 year old PFC Kenneth Grimm was manning one of the heavy guns. The order to report had come while all three were unavailable, and Clint was certain that there was a rat. "Marina, you can't seriously be meeting with this guy."

Marina glanced back over her shoulder with a wry grin as she stripped off her soiled khaki tanks and hauled on a clean white undershirt. After living in the same quarters for so long, none of the Brothers Grimm were squeamish about their modesty around each other, and Marina was in too much of a hurry to even pretend any. "Dorogoy, he's a General and he wants to see me. I can hardly refuse a superior officer."

Clint pouted, slouching backward against the wall and folding his arms petulantly across his chest. "I don't like it, Marishka."

Marina hurriedly buttoned up her uniform shirt and began to tuck it into her pants. "I know you don't, dorogoy. And admittedly, I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you to trust me."

"I trust you fine. It's him I don't trust."

The brunette pulled on the drab green coat and fumbled nervously with her necktie, before Clint stepped forward to swat her hands away and fasten it for her. "You're nervous."

"Of course I'm nervous. The only time the brass ever wants to see me is if they have some new question about my loyalties. I've never met this one; and I don't know how to approach the interview."

Clint nodded calmly, fingers nimble on the buttons of her coat as Marina fidgeted helplessly. "Do you want me to call Will? Screw the mission; you know he'd ditch it in a heartbeat if you were in trouble."

"No!" Marina squeaked, eyes flashing wide. "Don't tell Will. You'll only freak him out. I don't worry as much about you guys when he's the voice on comms. We don't know that there's any reason to worry yet. Just . . . let me meet with General Fury, and then we'll figure out what to do from there."

The teenager's hands were warm and familiar on her shoulders as he held them firmly, his steely grey eyes staring calmly into her slightly more panicked chocolate brown. "You're sure?"

"No, but it's the only plan I've got."

Clint chuckled, wrapping his arms around her shoulders as he hugged her lightly. "It'll be okay, Marishka. He threatens you, we'll kick his ass. Simple as that."

The pretty brunette laughed outright at the thought of the Brothers Grimm beating up a three star general for her, even as she acknowledged that they would totally do it if they thought the man was trying to upset her in any way. "Thank you, dorogoy. I needed to hear that."

The responding grin was sly and wicked as the teenaged sniper agreed, "I know. Go on. Don't want to keep the general waiting."

Marina snapped off a cocky salute, getting an equally sarcastic one in return, before she took a deep breath and left the barracks behind. She was led by a stone faced gentleman in a suit to a conference room inside Base Command, the other man speaking only once they were stopped at the door. "General Fury is not a man who appreciates being kept waiting."

Her lip curled angrily at the implied threat. "And I'm not a woman who appreciates being coerced. I have a twitchy trigger finger, and you're not Army. So I would keep that in mind, Suit," she snarled, before turning to the door and essentially ignoring the man's existence.

Moving inside the conference room, she stopped just inside the door, her body ramrod straight and her eyes on the wall over the man's head as she snapped off as respectful a salute as she felt was necessary. "Major Marina Petrovka reporting, as requested, sir."

The tall black man hummed an absent agreement, flicking away her salute with a careless disregard for protocol and gesturing toward the empty chair across from him. "Shut the door, Major, and come sit with me. I have a proposal for you."

Marina's eyes narrowed suspiciously, as she remained standing where she was. "What kind of proposal, General Fury sir?

Fury flashed her a shark's grin, his one visible eye twinkling with amusement as he gestured once again to the chair across the table from him. "Come sit, Major."

Unable to see any way to avoid it, Marina moved cautiously toward the chair. Sitting down, she only just noticed the files laid out on the table in front of the man. They were separated into two stacks, one of the piles containing an extra file that was much thicker than any of the other files on the table. The man reached across the table, offering her his hand. "I think we got off on the wrong foot, Major Petrovka. My name is Director Nick Fury. While I was once a general in the Army, I have been retired for some years now. Currently, I head up the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division."

"The what!?"

"We prefer the moniker S.H.I.E.L.D., Major Petrovka. I would assume you've met my subordinate, Agent Coulson."

"Is he the blank faced govnoyed who brought me here?"

Fury laughed with a nod. "I think you'd probably like him, Major, under different circumstances. I get the feeling that you both take the same extreme care with those charges you call your own."

Marina's eyes narrowed at the use of the word, her voice a low growl as she asked, "Charges?"

There was that shark's grin again as Fury flipped open one of the files on the table and tossed it in front of her. Taped to the inside cover was a picture of a 12 year old William Cahill and Marina felt her eyes widen as her heart stopped in her chest. "Why, the Brothers Cahill, of course, Major Petrovka. Or should I say, Miss Peters?"

Notes:

Here are the Russian translations for the chapter:
Sladkiy - Honey (Marina's nickname for Jason)

Samaya Malen'kaya - My Little One (Will's nickname for Marina)

Valya - an intimate diminuitive of Valentina used by family and friends

Kto . . . - who is . . .

Sibir' – Siberia

Кемерово - Cryllic for Kemerovo, a city in Siberia

Gospozha - the Madam (of the Academy)

Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Republik - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or U.S.S.R.

Papy – Daddy

Materi Rossii - Mother Russia

Akademiya - The Academy

sobaka – dog

Materi Rossii i yeye Suprugi - Mother Russia and her Consorts (leaders)

Gadyuka – Viper

SSHA (Soyedinennyye Shtaty Ameriki)- USA (United States of America)

Kholodnaya Voyna - the Cold War (espionage war between USA and Soviet Union)

Yebat – Fuck

Misha - intimate diminuitive for Michael (Will's middle name)

Dorogoy - Darling (Marina's nickname for Clint)

Govnoyed - Bastard