It's new, I know and I haven't updated anything in months, but this is the reboot for A Silver of Hope. I really hated starting with Katherine in The Avengers. It's gonna take way too long to get to where I need her to be. Anywho, Katherine is mostly the same, but a little different because of the obvious change in storyline. Let me know how you feel. I'm already somewhat ahead in chapters so I'm posting every Monday starting next week.
Silver Strings
Chapter One
There's a Silver Lining in All Things
The evidence was clear. Both Tony and Bruce cracked the codes of this particular hard drive and everything pointed to a large Hydra base in Brussels, Belgium. According to their intel, the building housed labs and storage for weapons. It was a best kept secret what with being hidden in the mountains. The plan was simple. Thor and Tony fly over the base in search of guard towers and secret weapons bunkers, and when the front line is destroyed, the ground team gets deployed.
This was it, Brussels was the last known location of the sceptre.
As usual, Nat and Clint flew. Steve stood just beside the cockpit, staring into thin air, thoughts heavy and focused. He was a leader, and his stance was so. Tony flew ahead, giving them eyes in the sky about the remote base. Bruce was to stay in the quinjet as a back up. Code Green it was called. Otherwise, he was to be their makeshift medic. Thor was pensive and anxious. The priority to him had always been the sceptre. It was the entire reason that he had returned to Midgard. And once it was safe, he could once more return to his Jane.
"I can't help but feel like we're going all in on a hunch, Cap." Nat voiced her opinion.
"We can't risk losing that sceptre." Steve explained. "Or Strucker. He's been known to use the sceptre to enhance humans."
Nat sighed. She spotted the base up ahead. "Coming up on the left!"
"Get ready." Steve ordered. Steve looked to Thor, who nodded. Nat opened the large door and Thor swung his hammer up and flew off.
"Been born ready, Cap!" Clint exclaimed.
Unfortunately for the Avengers, both Strucker and the scepter had evacuated twenty-four hours earlier. But fortunately for them, they were just about to take down his biggest intelligence base, that held one of their best kept secrets, Asset 11.
"Dr. Burkov, ze Avengers!" the Hydra agent burst into the private lab.
"You know your orders. Hold zem off!" Burkov ordered, "No surrender!" The doctor pulled out several refrigerated DNA samples and serums. He loaded them onto a briefcase and looked back at one of Hydra's prized possessions. She rested in cryo-sleep for about a year and half since her last awakening. If it weren't for the blue tint in her skin, one could say that her sleep was entirely natural. Her mid-back chocolate-brown locks lay still against her shoulders and chest. Her eyes underneath her eyelids were still. Her light blue lips were parted, as if to take a soft breath. She remained dressed in her standard feminine Hydra issued suit. It was much too late to awaken her, and as much as it pained him to leave the Asset, he must take his samples and serums to Strucker at the base in Sokovia.
Besides, should the Avengers take Asset 11, she would never truly be theirs. Because Hydra is always one step ahead of their enemy.
~Silver Strings~
"Barton, I need you on the roof as my eyes and ears. Take out their back up. Thor, I need you and Nat on the ground in the east and west corridors of the facility. Stark you take the labs and find that sceptre. I'm heading to intelligence and grabbing everything on Strucker." Steve gave out his orders, and the Avengers dispersed quickly."JARVIS, bird's eye view please?" The Captain asked, steering his motorcycle through the brisk Belgian air. Damn was it cold.
"Heat signatures evacuating buildings from your right and straight ahead. As well as hidden weapons bunkers. Take caution." JARVIS advised.
"Stark, for you the scepter is priority." Steve ordered. "Nat, I need you and Clint on the ground. I've made about 30 guards so far."
"Should be fun." Nat shrugged nonchalantly.
"Guys, I'm picking up a high energy source and it's definitely not the scepter." Tony informed as he flew behind the building to the back entrance. "JARVIS?"
"I have detected the source to be in a large control room down the west corridor." JARVIS explained.
"Still sounds like Christmas to me." He murmured, taking out a squadron of guards that burst out the door. "Open sesame." Tony took the west wing hallway quickly. He was greeted by the brilliant sounds of a blaring alarm and scurrying doctors and alarms. Most doctors ran away empty handed. But one at the end of the hall, one doctor held a grey chrome suitcase. The way he urgently moved, you knew it was valuable. "Oh no, you don't." As Dr. Burkov continued down the hall, he could hear that the dreaded Avengers had reached him.
"Guards. No surrender!" Dr. Burkov orders in romanian. About thirty more guards traipse their way toward Tony. "Oh, boy." Tony comments as guns started blazing. Tony dodges as many as he can, and shoots the ones closest to the doctor. "Nat? I got a crazed doctor getting away with a suitcase. West Wing exit. I'm assuming they need that."
"I'm on it." Nat called back, backtracking to the west wing staircase.
Tony dodged and blasted guards until there were none left but the ones crawling to safety. He'd deal with them later. The small touch screen inside the suit's right arm whirred and beeped. Tony swiped left, and floor plans disappeared, revealing a glowing red bar that shrunk or grew, depending upon the energy output levels obtained in the area. The higher the readings suggested, the louder the beeps got. Tony followed the readings down a hall; the direction that the fleeing doctor had come from. Stark paused, coming across a password protected steel door. Quite easy for JARVIS to access, why waste time breaking the door down.
"JARVIS?"
"Bypassing the mainframe now, sir." The A.I. answered. In thirty seconds, the door was opened.
"Guys?"
"You've got eyes on the scepter?" asked Cap.
"Not exactly." Stark paused as he stepped into the room fully. The lab wasn't the largest in the facility, but the significance was blaring. If not by the excessive amount of tech, then by the high energy cradle placed in the adjacent wall of the room. There was a slot of glass used to look into the cradle, but it was covered with frost. Unable to see through, Tony decided to alarm the rest of the team. "I'm gonna need some backup. The source of power is unpredictable."
"We're already on the way. The entire facility is clear." Cap answered.
Tony moved over to the computer, beginning to work on decoding the decryption algorithms he used to crack intelligence. It took a few minutes to bypass the mainframe once more, and just a few seconds to access their files. "Amateurs." He remarked. Suddenly, a file opened. The file, the one created with the information of the cradle in the room.
The machine whirred to life.
"File name: Asset 11." The machine said. In that moment, the rest of the team filled the room.
"The scepter isn't here." Steve announced once more for Tony's sake. He stepped into the room first, and finally noticed the wall length computer that Tony was using.
"Kinda figured that out already." Tony answered distractedly as he searched for more information.
"File name: Asset 11." The machine said once more.
The red haired assassin said nothing. She shifted the suitcase from one hand to another, then moved across the room toward the cradle. The closer she got to the cradle, the lower the temperature.
"What is this thing?" Captain asked, with a tone of concerned curiosity.
"I'm guessing, Asset 11." Clint says, watching Nat's reaction to the chamber to their right.
"And I'm guessing that whatever it is, is probably dangerous." Captain directed at Stark.
"Will it lead us to the scepter?" Thor spoke.
"Well according to her file, she was apart of the experimentation used to enhance humans. A combination of her DNA and the scepter's energy." Tony answered him.
"It's probably a waste of our time then." Thor announced, leaving to stand outside.
"His highness certainly is moody today." Clint muttered, causing Nat to scoff at him.
Tony had read most of her file. Her abilities, the Assets she had also had a hand in giving abilities to, her awakenings, including the very day they had acquired her. She had no family information about her, or even her real name. It was as if Hydra thought her to be a possession, and not a human being. Unfortunately, Tony also noticed that she has a collection of confirmed kills over the course of ten years. A few foreign generals, a US senator, once she brought a whole hospital down in Nigeria to attempt an assassination of a king. And this information contrasted with the next. Her mind was a fortress, and other things that he'd have to get Bruce to look over. She's been known to escape Hydra and usually because a guard or doctor let her out, whether it was a compromisation or sympathy, the file never said. I guess it's time to meet her, Tony thought, as he commenced the thawing sequence. The outer layer of the cradle hissed as it opened, causing Nat to step back defensively. The inner layer made it easier to see the occupant inside.
"Stark?" Nat asked warily.
"If I'm right, she hates Hydra as much as we do. Enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that..." Tony trailed off as the team moved closer to take a look at her.
The bluish tint to her skin corroborated with the fact that she had been under for a year and a half. Her lips were lighter than the rest is her skin. Her hair seemed to be long and chocolate brown and curled along the edges. Her eyelashes were long and almost barely touched her cheeks. She wasn't neither tall or short, she seemed to be around an inch or two taller than Nat, putting her at 5'6". She was curvy, but lacked the body mass to even be considered as bad of an assassin as her file claims her to be.
"Proceed with caution, guys." Nat says, with her hand on the glock in her holster.
The frost started to completely evacuate the chamber, and the woman's heart began to beat. Tony turned toward the woman, curious about the medical phenomenon that seemed to be locked in the cradle like a trophy. When Tony finally laid eyes on her, he was speechless, for one of the few times in his life. The unmistakable resemblance was uncanny. The nearly perfect olive toned skin, the light pink full lips, her thin body shape, the heart shaped face, the signature mid-back chocolate locks. It was unbelievable, and Tony could feel his heart beating frantically from the panic. How can this be real? How can someone fake these details? The scar under her chin from the time she fell off her bike as a kid? How can someone have known that?
"Sir? Sir? Your vitals are suggesting that you are you in state of panic." JARVIS speaks up.
"Stark? What's wrong with you?" Natasha grew concerned for the Billionaire, who said nothing as he stared into the glass in shock.
"Stark? Do you know this woman?" Cap asked softly, seeing the look on the man's face.
Tony finally snapped out of it, "Get her out of there."
Now that she wasn't in cryo anymore, she was simply resting. The thaw of her vital organs was exhausting, and she'd need an extra day or two to wake herself up. While being asleep, she could feel the people around her, which she was used to. Doctors always crowded around her while she was asleep. But that didn't stop the feelings of familiarity. One of those voices were familiar, and she couldn't place it. She could feel the energies of the other bodies leave the room. She could feel that her body was restrained, and resisted the urge to struggle against them.
"Stark, when she wakes up, we want the truth." The man with the strong authoritative voice left the room. Her mind stilled at the name.
Stark.
Stark.
Why was the name foreign and familiar both at the same time? Why did the name make her want to recoil and reach out at the same time? Her memories were tampered with, that much she could feel. But what was real? What really happened and what was she being manipulated into thinking? Before she could continue the process, she felt soft words being spoken into her ear. "I need you to wake up, babygirl. I need some answers."
Babygirl?
Babygirl?
This had to be the dark haired man. Only he called her that. The one in her dreams who came to her graduations, sent her gifts, came to see her and tease her and annoy her relentlessly. He was family, but she couldn't tell in what way. She had to focus on recuperating and bringing her body back to one hundred percent, if only just to remember who this man was.
It took hours. Hours of sleep, dreams, then nightmares. Or better yet, different renditions of her guilt played in her mind. The nightmares were the same every night. Consistently.
Her parents, the very ones that were barely ever home. They haunted her every night in her dreams because they couldn't love her enough. At first she couldn't place the faces but her mind was trying to remember, and in turn bringing up her biggest insecurities. But then the nightmares got cruel and added the dark haired man to the hate fest. The one from her dreams that was always there to make her feel better. If he was really real, they had to be close.
Tony remained in the room for the first six hours, then left to pick up Pepper from the airport, giving Cap specific directions on what to do if she woke up before he returned. When he did, Pepper entered the hospital room frantically, wanting to know if Tony was telling the truth. Was Katie really here? Had the report of her death really been a mistake? She needed to know. Pepper and Tony stayed for two hours, then Pepper had retired to their room. She had a company to run in the morning.
~Silver Strings~
Katherine knew that the nightmares were just part of her atonement. It was waking up that seemed worse to her. Time had past and she couldn't see the light under her eyelids any longer, nor could she hear any voices. She wasn't sure what was worse, waking up alone or waking up with strangers around her. Katherine awoke to the former. The room was dark, save for the lights from the fancy machines and devoid from any sound but the beeps from the heart monitor that was beeping rapidly. When she realized that she was causing the machine to do that, she put her hand over her heart and took deep breaths. She was wearing a dull hospital gown and when she reached to move her hair out of her face, she felt a god awful pinch in her wrist. She finally noticed the IV connected to it. Though it was weirder than the other times. They weren't giving her anything but fluids. Nothing discolored or anything. She pulled the pesky needle, and with just a second passing, an alarm went off from her door. Her heart rate soared as she was startled, and she stood up quickly. She used her pent up energy and blasted the steel door open. She stepped out into a hallway, in a panic.
"Hey! Stop!" An authoritative voice that she remembered shouted. He was a tall, built, blond man, and by his state of dress she could tell that he lived there. However, Kat saw him as a threat and decided that with the current situation it wasn't worth fighting him.
"Where's the dark haired man?" She spoke low and calm. But her calm demeanor had dangerous undertones. She obviously would hurt someone if she didn't get what she wanted. She could feel her fingers tingle and her eyes narrow in warning. She had to find the dark haired man-Stark. "Stark." She clarified at the confused look.
"Stand down." She heard a feminine voice order. When she heard the click of the safety, she turned toward the new threat.
"Nat don't -
But it was too late, one unarmed threat was one thing, but an armed and somewhat hostile threat? She could see in her head what she was capable of, and she didn't like her odds. If she confronted the redhead- Nat, then she'd probably lose control and hurt someone. These people saved her, so she decided to flee. She ran down the hall in the other direction, causing Steve to chase her while Natasha called in the others. The blond was gaining on her, he was lightning fast, meanwhile she hadn't used her feet in over a year. As she could feel herself slowing down, she turned into another hall, with sleeping quarters. She ran through the first room she found and sighed in relief when she found an open balcony door. As she stepped outside, she was startled by the rain that pelted her. It was pouring.
Just as Steve bursts through the door, she lifts her leg over the railing. "Wait, stop!"
She paused at the sound of the voice. "You're not safe with me here." She told him.
"Don't worry about us, come back." Steve soothed, moving closer. "It's not worth this."
"I have to go. Tell him I'm sorry." She lifts her other leg over.
"No, stop-" Steve tried to stop her but it was too late. She let go of the railing. She knew it was going to hurt, but she had to be on her own. She could hear screams from below her and could feel the rain continue to pelt her body as she braced herself for the ground.
But then it never came, she could feel herself being encased in metal arms, and looked up to see glowing eyes. "I was already on my way Kat, you didn't have to get so dramatic."
He sounded like the dark haired man, but what was he?
"Stark."
"I usually go by Tony, but yeah." He looked away from her and flew her to the balcony, which was now empty.
"Yeah, I got her." Tony says, presumably to his comms.
Stark retracted his helmet, and shock took over. He looked so much different, the non gelled hair, the goatee, and the semi serious look on his face. His face was enough to remember his presence in her life. Her adoptive older brother, the one who claimed her as family when her own family didn't even bother.
"Tony." She spoke softly.
I'm not sure about this story yet. I may need a beta, but for now I think it's okay. Katherine is awake and confused, and more will be revealed about the ten years that she spent away.
Tell me your thoughts.