Synopsis

Zola Barnes, daughter of Natasha Romanoff, and the adoptive daughter of Clint Barton is raised in the red room for the first few years of her life. She grew up to the feeling of the Winter Soldier's metal fist punishing her for every mistake she made. She was thirteen-year-old Natalia's liability in the red room, but she was Clint Barton's world once he took the two of them in instead of pursuing his mission to kill them.

Their lives change as they work for SHIELD alongside Clint, run from their old captors with his help, and hide in hotels and safe houses. Though Zola can hardly speak English or understand what is happening to her, she builds relationships with her mother, whom she used to be denied of seeing. She gets closer to Clint, who she genuinely believed was her father. She didn't know any better.

Thankfully, she was happy to lose the one relationship she never asked for. She'd longed for a father figure, but the relationships she had with everyone in the Red Room, especially the Winter soldier, were not that. As unfortunate as it was for Bucky, who wanted nothing more than to be a part of his daughter's life, he was forced to watch her grow up in someone else's care from a distance. They wiped him so often, he would hardly remember her, anyway.


Still, in the small moments where he could remember, he hoped that one day he would win her trust back as Bucky, not the Winter Soldier that she knew.



BOOK ONE IN ZOLA BARNES SERIES.Creative Commons (CC) Attribution