Gun fire and explosions make the room vibrate. Crawling farther into the corner a woman curled around herself as far from the windows and door as she could get. It wasn't the first time she'd heard gun fire and screams were a familiar occurrence. In the empty room she tried to be safe from the glass that shields viewing rooms above her. They stared with two darkened eyes into her prison. She waited for whatever horror happened next. She didn't cry out nor was she afraid. An explosion close by made the entire room shake violently. The plain cream colored walls and hard tile floor were free of anything she could be struck by but that was no comfort; there's also nothing to protect her exposed flesh. The shock wave caused glass to rain down shattering into small pieces as it hit the floor. Leaving a barrier of pain between her and the only exits from the room.
People were yelling and dying in the building around her but there was nothing she could do to stop it; fleetingly she wondered if she would stop it given the chance. A man's roar of battle burned her ears over the explosions and screams of the dying and wounded. Her thoughts were that someone big was coming, big and probably not kind at all. That was what she had come to expect each time the door opened. She whimpered and tears rolled slowly down thin cheeks. The last time it was days before they found her; buried alive in the rubble.
She remember it; she wished she could forget. He was there and smiled, he always smiled. Nothing done to her made him do anything else. She'd been pinned under a long heavy bar; it hurt to breath at first but the light came and breathing got easier then it left and it was so dark she couldn't see her hand in front of her face. She begged for death so often that she'd given up on freeing herself that way. There was something in her side that wasn't supposed to be there it didn't matter it just hurt and tore if she tried to move. She would heal if they ever got down to her and pulled it out. If not, she would lay under the rubble for all of time slowly withering away to dust. She had wondered if even that would end her miserable existence. Then came the sound of hammers, crashing stone, and men yelling. The only thing that sound offered would possibly be a sating of gnawing thirst. Her body had given up on food after a week though she was unaware that it had been that long in the perfect blackness. She couldn't tell how long it took them to reach her just that by the time they did her body was nothing more than a flesh rag full of bones. First, she smelled clean air and the hair in her face shifted a little. Then there was a great tearing sound and the beam across her body shifted making her scream. They must have heard because it didn't take them long to dig her our after that. She could still see the light when they first opened a hole into the space. It hurt her eyes but it couldn't hold a candle to the blinding pain when they thoughtlessly broke her arm pulling her and ripping the metal pole out of her side. She saw the sky for a few seconds; it was so blue. It reminded her of something she'd forgotten. Something from before her days filled either with cold and quiet darkness or unremitting agony. In the memory she saw children running through tall grass under a bright blue sky. She heard their laughter and could clearly remember the words they shouted to one another. She grabbed onto the memory and let the smell of grass fill her mind with something besides her own misery. For weeks after she had been found they just fed her and left her alone. She got to eat as much as she wanted in her new cell. There wasn't anything in the room. No bed or palate on the floor, not one item of furniture. Just a hole in the floor about as wide as her fist and the pipes they connected hoses to before they washed her. She would have thought her days of agony were over if he hadn't come to her every day. The smiling man, with his petting and soft calm voice. She put on enough weight she could stand finally but when he saw her standing it was worse than ever. Before she would get a day here or there when she would be left alone. Now everyday she was dragged in the lab his smiling cheerful voice and her own endless screams as the only sound. His voice in her ear cooing as she screamed till her voice was just one long pain filled white noise broken off and started as fast as she could draw breath. The daily attempts to invade her body trying to steal the source of whatever it is that makes her different sapped all but the memory of the children in the field. The memories of anything else were wiped with pain from her mind.
The door banging open snatched her back to the cell. Making her cower choking off a scream in the corner. She wouldn't look; fear made her completely unable to look at who ever has entered her cell.
"Hawk I have located the objective" a woman's voice says "It's a woman. I repeat the 084 is a woman. Copy." Red hair like fire frames a face with green eyes, sharp cheekbone and a full mouth that was pressed in a line of pain; too much training for a sole bullet to the gut to part her lips. In the corner hope dawned in a mind gone blank by years of pain 'not them' she thought. A voice never heard before, a face never seen in all the time since the cowering naked figure was brought here. All the others were men, never a woman among them unless one of the masked guards that drag her to and from the lab table was a woman under the armor. After staring at her for a minute the naked body shifted and she saw a lot of blood was flowing down the black suit. She hadn't noticed it against the flat black body suit but it was pooling on the floor bright against the tile. Bright and shining at the feet of the read haired woman as she glances around the door jam.
"Heal" a voice cracked from a dry throat and the slender red head spun into a crouch facing the emaciated woman in the corner. "I heal" a soft whisper crossed the space between the two women. 'Please get me out of here please' a tear stained face implored from beneath a matted shag of dark hair. "That's the plan then." The red haired woman says to no one in the room "Do you have a name? Miss, can you hear me? We're getting you out of here." her voice was like water to a soul trapped in hell. Hope for something besides pain to come with sunrise bloomed on the tortured face. An audible swallow and the creature who even dreamed of pain crawled across the room. Head down like a beaten dog afraid to look up and see rejection. "Stop moving." The red haired woman said. The painfully thin figure whimpered as the first glass dug into her hand but it was a small pain and she keeps going afraid if she stops she'd be left here. Gasping she struggled forward; her blood creating a path of bright red across the floor. The glass pushed aside or trapped in her flesh. With only a few feet between them a gun was pressed against her temple and the naked body stops. The thoughts that roll through the matted hair were scattered and unfocused. 'Name, my name, I had one,' it slips across lips the barest whisper "Althia" but the red head hears and the gun pulls away. "Stark where are you I'm hit and she's not moving very fast on her own." The red head said pressing at her ear.
'That name; he said it once he was furious he hates Stark.' It was the only time she saw him do anything but smile. Slowly eyes like jade star bursts on sapphires looked up into green eyes harden by years of training. She swallowed and whispered again. "I heal." Words she'd screamed and whispered for so long her mind wasn't sure anymore how build on the words. Her eyes question, and long delicate fingers slowly lifted turning a bloody palm to the light. To show the glass that pierced it. "Shit" the red head whispered grabbing a wrist she could wrap completely with thumb and first finger. Light came from within the woman's skin and the glass was just a small pile on out stretched palm. The red head's eyes got wide and she looked at the matted hair in awe. Shifting uncomfortably to look at her Althia whispered a question "I heal?" The red haired woman the world knows as the Black Widow looked down at the wound in her side as glass was shaken from a hand perfect except for the blood. Those tiny fingers slid over the thick polymer suit the light a pale candle between hand and the inky blackness. She lets the touch move towards the tear in her suit. Watched suspiciously as a fingertip slip into the hole. Skin touched skin and both let out a sigh of relief. Gasping the Widow leapt up and back her finger digging around for a wound that wasn't there anymore. A crunching sound and she spun on instinct. Her gun snapped up and fired off three times. A handler with a wicked looking electric prod lay dead in the door way within a blink.
The naked woman whined and whimpered as the light faded. She didn't try to heal him 'One of them. He meant pain' there is no joy in his death. He isn't her first she had many over the years and nothing stirred in her mind as death took her enemy.
The wall behind her, where moments before she cowed, exploded and the thin form screamed. In a flash the bones and flesh of the 084 called Althia flung herself over the black clad woman; shielding her. Then darkness, the woman known once as Althia feels her face give way as her head rams into the door frame.
"I'm not going to drop her." a man's voice said in indignation. Althia tensed feeling unfamiliar cloth rubs across her body and cold metal tightening aground her. "It's ok, I've got you." he said looking down at the terribly thin woman in his arms before talking to someone else. "What do you mean she's not injured? JARVIS I saw her face fold around the corner." He was silent for a minute before he whispered "What?" in shock. The glowing eyes tilt down as Althia look up blinking in confusion. "Stark, this way. Come on the whole building is coming down." The widow called.
'Her voice; she's here, close, and alive' but all Althia could see was silver, red and two rectangles of light. "Screw this" he said from somewhere behind the red and gold 'mask' the word pops in a clouded mind like a bubble. He was wearing a metal suit and it was all gold and red. She saw it as he shifted her to dangle at his side still holding her up. Painful whimpers escaped her lips as she pressed them tightly together "Give her to me and make us an exit." The Widow's strong, supple arms slid around Althia's waist and she grabbed onto the woman clinging to the hope that he could get them out if he didn't have to carry her.
'Stark' her mind repeated his name 'the man he hates so much is here!' and the thought disappears as the wall in front of the strange group did. A blinding light, a deafening whistle, and boom a large hole opened up in the wall. "Thor we're coming out the west wall meet us there" the Black Widow said her hand full of her gun is pressed to her head. 'No,' says a mind struggling up from nightmares 'that's not right she's got her finger in her ear there is something in her ear.'
Eyes flitted back and forth between the woman and the man in the metal suit. Fear and hope made chaos inside her mind and belly. Half carried; half dragged Althia tried to walk through the chunks of wall and furniture that was all that was left of the office on the other side. Bodies of people some in black body armor; some not were bloody dolls scattered at random through the room and the hallway beyond.
Winching at another of those deafening whistles and the boom of another wall being blown out by Stark the weakness of her body slowed Althia and the woman she decided was her angel. Stark babbled a steady stream of comments as he walked straight forward blasting walls till he opened onto air. A breeze blew though the dust, it was cold and wonderful against Althia's face. A blond man tall and wide in armor like none Althia has ever seen was suddenly in the room. With a roar as he skidded to a stop he raised his arm and threw a hammer as big as Althia's head right at her. It whistles by her face and she heard it strike a man behind her. He didn't even cry out only a grunt as the four watch him fly backwards. The hammer turned by itself still in the air. 'Who are these people' Althia wonders as it flew back to the large blond.
He moved with easy grace, kicking debris out of his way as if the large chucks of concrete weigh nothing. Taking in the scant hospital gown, bare, bloody, and trembling legs of their target before speaking. "Give her to me. I will carry her." his deep voice rumbles like distant thunder. The angel squeezes Althia's side and spoke soothingly "Althia, he's a friend, we're getting you out of here. Do you understand me?" she asked Althia; the only response was her body flying across the space into his arms to cling and cry, choking in the panicked attempt to comply. Althia lets the man the world knows as Thor lift her into his arms; a look of revulsion and rage on his face. He'd never seen anyone reduced to such a state.
A glimpse of a lot of air between herself and the ground as he jumped caused screams to burn her throat as the ground rushes up. Then she fainted and there is nothing to frighten her for a while.