My heartbeat thumped in a fast, but steady, rhythm. It was loud enough to drown out the sound of gunfire snapping off in the distance, or the shouts of my friends and team from a nearby alley. All noise faded away, except for the thumping of my heart and a sharp, persistent ringing in my left ear. I sat with my back pressed against the remains of a brick wall, doing everything I could to try and steady my heart to ease the panic. The sky was still raining debris and ash, and the rifle across my lap felt heavy with the weight of guilt and the fear of what I would have to do to survive.

I'd been training for this moment for years. I knew how to use the rifle. I knew how to follow orders and come out alive on the other side. But nothing prepared me for the feel of real battle. Not after watching two of my closest friends die right in front of my eyes, their blood was still splattered on my skin, and my heartbeat thumped wildly from fear and adrenaline. I wondered if I could have saved them. If I'd just used my gun when I had the chance. If I hadn't frozen.

That was when I knew for sure I was going to die. It was pointless and silly to believe I'd somehow make it out of this alive. The rifle trembled in my hands, and my breathing was shaky and uneven. I knew, without a doubt, that I'd probably die before I ever fired a single round. But I couldn't just sit there and wait for death to find me. I'd already taken refuge behind a wall like a coward. The knowledge of my impending death seemed to give me a burst of confidence. I was going to die whether I took a stand or not, but I wasn't going to die hiding behind a wall.

So I stood to my feet and winced as pain shot through my body like a zip of electricity. The blast had knocked me several yards away. I didn't think anything was broken but certainly bruised and scraped. Everything ached and burned, and I could already feel blood seeping out of my ear and sliding down my neck. When they found my body, I'd probably be in pieces, but at least they'd know I wasn't hiding and crying behind a wall.

I used the unsteady bricks to push myself up and cautiously searched the courtyard for a sign of movement or a place to run. A man appeared from behind the haze of smoke and ash and instantly spotted me. He had his gun raised in my direction before I could even draw breath. It was too late to dive back behind the wall, and my fingers gently stroked the trigger of my rifle. All the while, my thoughts raced, and my heart pumped. I argued with the voice in my mind, telling me what I had to do, telling me not to think about it. They'd killed people. I watched a child die. The least I could do was take one of them out with me.

But I hesitated, and he wasn't going to wait for me to make up my mind. He fired first and met his mark on the first shot. My left shoulder exploded with pain, and I tumbled backward into the crumbled cement blocks, until I was flat on my back, staring up at a smoky blue sky.

I wasn't supposed to die like that. It wasn't until that very moment that I realized just how short my life had been. All the things I'd never done or get to do. I'd never fall in love or get married or have a family like my mother wanted. I spent my life telling myself I didn't want those things, but now that I knew it would never be an option, it stung. Death wasn't as easy to accept as I thought it would be.

The sound of a loud beeping broke through the ringing in my ears. I blinked, and instead of the smoke-filled sky, I saw the ceiling of my bedroom. The tree outside the window made shadows on the walls that twisted like the scars on my skin. I took a deep breath and counted my now steady heartbeats. One, two. Three, four. Then I reached up to rub the damaged skin on my shoulder, where the bullet had struck me and left behind a web of scars that looked like twisted pink branches.

The bones still ached from time to time, and I could even recall that sharp blast of pain like it had only just happened. I remembered feeling like my entire arm had been torn off. I remembered the feeling, no the knowledge, that I was going to die. I mourned all the things I'd never have.

The alarm grew louder the longer I ignored it. So I rolled onto my side and slammed the palm of my hand against the button on the top. The beeping halted, and the silence filled my ears with that familiar low ringing. Then the wind blew and made the old windows creak and howl like wailing ghosts. The twisted shadows moved along with the sound and reminded me that my hearing hadn't taken significant damage. The ringing was from the silence, and not because I'd been on the receiving end of a grenade toss.

I sat up and pulled the covers off of my bare legs. The wood floor against my feet was sharp and cold, and the chill prickled my skin. Summer was approaching, but I was always so cold. As if my body just never recovered from all the blood I'd lost.

The memories were getting bad again. When I first got home, they almost consumed me. To the point where I hadn't just accepted death as an inevitability, but eagerly welcomed it. For a while, I'd made enough progress with therapy to make the memories less intrusive and sharp. I thought for a time that recovery might still be within sight and I could get to work on building the life I almost lost. But I never did it. Recovery always remained just out of my grasp, and I never bothered to try and reach for something I didn't think I deserved.

The girl who walked out onto a battlefield that day felt like a stranger to me now. I'd been dealing with dreams and intrusive thoughts for six years, and it was hard to imagine a time when they didn't plague me. I had vague memories of happiness and confidence, but now it felt like something I'd watched in a movie. Something I'd seen but couldn't relate to. The bubbly teenage girl who'd shipped out from Ohio was not the same woman sitting in a bed in DC running her fingers over puckered pink scars and making no plans for the future beyond the day that lay ahead.

My therapist always told me that perseverance was one step closer to recovery. I was good at persevering, even if I'd never get the hang of recovery. Of course, in the end, none of that mattered. My therapist had been working for Hydra all that time, but I was looking for any scrap of motivation to convince myself not to crawl back into bed.

I took a hot shower to wash the chill out of my bones and relieve some of the aches in my shoulder muscles. I ran my fingers over the scars as I stood beneath the water, getting familiar with them again.

They told me I was lucky to be hit in the shoulder. The bullet tore through some muscle and lodged itself in me, but it managed to miss major arteries and merely skimmed my bones. If I'd been hit anywhere else, I probably very well would have met death that day. But I hated when they told me that. My chest was armored, but my face was exposed. The shooter could have hit my chest to knock me out. I would have avoided years of tormenting pain, both physically and mentally. And a shot to the face would have just ended it all.

Everyone thought he'd just missed, but I could never get myself to agree. I saw the look on his face right before he pulled the trigger, and though my mind couldn't bring up any specific features or details about him, he knew what he was doing. A shot to my chest was too risky. It might have knocked me out if he was lucky, but given our distance in that courtyard, the reality is that he would have just given me enough motivation to fire back. And since he hadn't aimed for my face, I determined that he never wanted to kill me at all.

We were in the middle of a war, and he had a chance to take out an enemy. But he didn't. He aimed for my shoulder and only removed me from the playing field. It was the one piece of the puzzle that never seemed to fit.

The sun was starting to rise when I finally made my way down to the kitchen on the first floor of my small house. I decided to forgo breakfast and packed my coffee in a shiny silver mug with the SHIELD logo on the side. I stuck a packet of crackers between my lips to fill my stomach before the day started and looked at the counter where I'd left a pink switchblade sparkling on the tile.

It was a gag gift from my sister Clara. She'd bedazzled it herself. It was a joke to the people who didn't start to shake whenever they held a gun. Clara thought it was an accurate representation of who I used to be and who I was now. I laughed the first time I saw it. I never thought I'd use it at all, let alone that someday I'd have to use it to fight off Hydra in a chaotic office.

Somehow it became my weapon of choice. It wasn't as fatal as a gun, but it was still a decent weapon. Despite the shiny rhinestones glued to the pink handle. So I snatched it off of the counter and slid it into my pocket before working up the courage to leave my house for the first time in days.

I hope you guys like this. I hope to get updates out regularly. I'm really excited to share it. Also, this story is like a burnt crispy marshmallow. Soft and gooey in the center. But a bit charred on the edges. I hope you read it and I hope that you like it. :D