There's an entire world catching at her heels.
A memory of what had been reality. A reminder of what had been insanity.
But she learned.
She learned to run as hard as she could, lungs burning and heart pounding to escape the pain. She learned to strike down to defend herself, leaving a wreckage of blood and death behind her. She learned to hide the tears until they no longer existed. She learned to survive.
But in reality, she's a dead man walking. She's always known, and it's only matter of time before the world realizes as well.
So she hides. She learns. She walks like she's made of rock, and strikes like she herself is a weapon.
(destruction)
When she takes her first kill, it's the man who held her down when the other one raped her.
She takes pleasure out of his screams. She shivers with the power of vengeance. She learns from the movements and the reactions. It's a process designed by the Red Room to teach she was nothing.
She killed the other next, a mere cowering mass of fear and tears.
She stiffens when they inject drugs into her system to try and make her stronger. She lunges forth with teeth gnashing when they fire bullets at her. She launches pure hatred when they make her kill.
But she dances to their tune because she is weak and she knows that she has no escape.
So she takes this life.
(danger)
She escaped when she turned sixteen. A child, some would say. Arms riddled with scars from needles and knives and operations and tests. Brain exposed to the world beneath the righteous. Heart turned to ice with the blood of a child staining her fingertips.
She's drowning.
She spends several weeks on the move. The Red Room clings to her, and she hides like a coward. It's when she first makes her move and slaughters a room full of corrupt officials; she begins to make a name for herself.
She likes this life.
She understands it and carries out, because she can do no more.
She builds a throne of the dead, and rules the world of death.
She's a dangerous opponent, they all whisper.
(dance)
When she meets Clint, he's nothing to her.
He is merely a bastard who's firing arrows at her skull as if he is the Robin Hood. She's firing bullets at him like her life depends on it, because it does. Her entire back is ripped open, and she doesn't understand why every breath hurts a little more than the last.
She relents first, because she wants the death.
She dances and lures and taunts him, bringing each strike closer until she is dancing with the Reaper.
Her world smells like sweat and blood, and he's breaking through it so easily.
She's just so tired, it's overwhelming.
She slips, last moment. She strikes her head hard against shattered glass, and for a moment tasted gasoline and vodka. All she can see is red, burning through her.
He doesn't kill her.
She hated him for that.
(annihilation)
She accepts living as a tool.
She doesn't mind it too much. She's living under one name to the next, jumping into a world head first. She grows numb.
She's depressed, they say. They give her pills that she flushes down the toilet.
They can't understand her feelings anyways. Fury can send every therapist to her, and they'll say the same. (she's broken she's used she's lost she's beyond all hope)
She smashes her head against walls, and delivers angry punches into rock. She cuts neat little scratches into her flesh to try and make the pretty ugly. To make her outside match her inside.
Clint finds her sometimes. Watching slowly as she unravels into a form of a child. Lost to the sway of murder and death and pain and sin.
Greed rules the world.
She's just a pawn in the game.
(acceptance)
She meets the Hulk quietly.
A world of poverty and illness shakes outside the flimsy little walls. Starved children dart past cracked windows, and hunched over women hobble down darkened streets. It reminds her of her childhood.
He's there, and he's talking so calmly and slowly and her heart is racing.
He's a ticking time bomb, just waiting to destroy her.
She's in control, she imagines, as she snatches her gun out and levels it to his skull.
It's a good lie.
She's the Master of the Universe, the Red Room once whispered to her.
Lies and lies and lies and lies and she's sickened by it all.
(wait)
The unite.
They fail.
She's alone.
She waits for Clint.
She meets Loki.
Loki knows her. He knows the secrets within. The things of her no one knows because they aren't Clint and Loki has Clint to himself. He knows everything.
He knows how many men took her. He knows how many times they electrocuted her when she failed the task. He knows how she ripped her skin open in feverish moments, unrestrained and so broken.
She hates Loki. She resents him for knowing her.
She will kill Clint in every intimate way he fears first before the archer manages to find way to lay hand upon her.
But he is coming, and she is here, and her world has caved in. Trapped and ensnared.
(strike)
Her world is drowning in red. She drowns in blood of the innocent she slaughtered for money and life.
She's guilty and damned, she knows. But she doesn't mind it so.
She can only taste metal and pain, and she can hear his pain as his body shifts into a nightmare. She shivers in fear, because she in vulnerable. Not superhuman, not ready and not safe.
She has no advantage.
She never has.
Her redredred world is broken by the livid green that strikes her. She pulling free of the wreckage, launching herself upwards. She's grappling hold of life, trying to flee from the hunter.
("Do you fear the living?" They ask her, voice turned dull by a white mask.
She holds her head high and looks him in the eye. He fires the gun and all she can feel in pain. She still stands. Two more bullets and she finally kneels.
She shakes her head slowly. A bitter pain spirals through her.
"You should.")
It's only the arrival of the God that saves her.
She's powerless.
Numb.
(ready)
She fights him, because she must.
It's a death sentence, she supposes.
They're locked in an endless dance of death and reapers and pain, striking and recoiling. He's lost to a world of ice and blue, and she's drowning in a world of her own and blood. Master of the universe.
A knife makes way to her neck, but she resists.
She sends him reeling, smashing against a railing.
And then she knows the fight is over.
She strikes him one more time, because it feels good.
(war)
The city is an entire battle zone. Death line the streets, buildings reduced to rubble. She's been here so many times, lost to the mayhem and destruction.
But of course, it's different this time. There are invaders from a different realm trying to annihilate the entire world, and she can't give up.
She fights with Loki, and she holds her own. Pride builds within, and she grapples for control.
She can save the universe, or she can damn it.
But she holds on and plunges to staff into mechanisms, ceasing the turmoil.
But within she is broken.
(fade)
She leaves.
(return)
She returns, guns loaded and ready to go. Her eyes flash with something that breaks the dullness. A spark of life, tainted with reality.
She's a kaleidoscope.
They approve her return of course. Because she is a hero now.
She's no longer drowning, and no longer throwing pills away. She has a knife sheathed away in case someone gets to close, and she needs to strike. She pulls her hair back, viewing the world clearly without locks of crimson destroying it.
She's a hero now, they say.
She knows better, in the end.
(rebirth)
She sheds little tears. She tries to forget and move on from the past. But she couldn't, and never would.
She accepts the truth.
She carries on.
She is the Master of the Universe, the wielder of pain and destruction.
The finest weapon ever crafted by men.
She is human.