A/N: A small fic idea I have had in my head for a while, centered around some of the punishments Strike Squad had to endure under S.T.O.R.M. Therefore I shall state now this fic pretty much contains minors being physically and mentally tortured. Nothing graphic, no blood, no gore. It's going to be short, only three chapters so I will be finishing it!
God he hated this. Why did it always him that got sent to solitary. Because he was small right? and weak right? and nerdy right? It wasn't his fault he had come last in battle again, he'd been training extra hours to try and get better, and it wasn't his fault that he'd tripped and fallen and knocked over his team mates causing a chain reaction that threw a cup of hot coffee off the table and onto her.
He drew his knees in closer, holding in the whimpers and cry's he desperately wanted to make. If she heard him he'd be confined even longer. And frankly two weeks without human contact is more then enough for him, he didn't need to make it worse for himself.
The cell was small, dark and overly hot. There was no bed, it simply wasn't large enough, and if he sat with his back against the wall and stretched out his legs he could almost touch the other wall. The one time Bravo had been sent in he'd come out with leg cramps for a month.
Every morning food was brought to him from a flap under the door. Although food wasn't the best word for what it was. Lumpy, congealed slop in a bowl was all he had with a bottle of water. At dinner he was given stale bread and a small cup of milk. It was only ever enough that he didn't rot away.
One time, the worst time, he'd given up eating. For three days he let the food pile up and refused to open the bottle of water. It wasn't until the fourth day that she stepped in. The metal bars throughout the bottom of the floor, which he had always wondered the purpose of, suddenly crackled with electricity. Not enough to kill but enough to convince him to start eating again.
By the end of the first week he would start muttering to himself just to make some kind of noise and drown out the silence. If he got too loud she would shock him and he'd go back to quiet muttering again. It was a habit he began to carry with him even outside of solitary.
Even now, now when they were free and when the room was boarded up, it still sent shivers down his spine to so much as look at. He would still mutter at him self and often whenever he felt he failed or mucked up would hide himself away in a a self imposed solitary confinement.
He tried not to think about it to much, not now that things were all better, but bad thoughts had a way of sticking and he found his mind going back to those memories more often then he found pleasant.
Tango was in the gym again. There was not a day that went by when she wasn't in there, often with Bravo on the other side of the room. They used it the most. Lately however, since they were freed, Bravo had been coming less and less, only about once or twice a week now for an hour or two.
Not Tango. She stayed. She kept herself strong. She had to be strong. She was a woman after all and according to her women were weaker then men, had to work harder then men, and if not they would fail at all that they did. So she kept it up.
She might be in jail now but that didn't mean she should let herself get weak. She had to keep working keep staying strong. If she didn't then she would fail, she'd be left behind as her team of men grew stronger then her without effort of thought and leave her behind.
There was not a month that passed that she wasn't pointing out some fatal weakness or flaw she had. After every session she would stay back and listen as she rattled off flaw after flaw then if she had not improved herself over two weeks she would step in a punish her.
She worked hard, truly she did, but more often then not it wasn't enough and she was still weak. She would punish her, lock her in the gym and watch until she was satisfied. Sometimes it was three hours sometimes it was a whole day. She was not allowed to stop until she proved herself or simply could not do so any longer and passed out.
Passing out really only made it worse though, it only served to show how weak she was. If she passed out during a session she would be left were she was, given a bottle of water and confined to the gym for three days. If she hadn't improved she was sent to solitary. Luckily that didn't happen often, mostly it was X-ray that garnered that punishment.
She grew stronger every day and every day felt as though she was getting weaker. Now that she was gone she didn't have to push herself so hard but she did, unable to break both the habit and the fears that had been forced onto her. She never told anyone, so no one knew how hard she worked or why.
But she didn't need them to know, all she needed to do was keep getting stronger, no matter what. One day she would show her, show her how strong she was and then she wouldn't be able to put her down any longer. So she kept going to the gym, day and night, and refused to stop until all weakness had been expelled from her body. She would show her, she truly would.
A/N: Please do leave a review, I love them so much!