I would recommend being born into your second-life—sure it'll be boring and humiliating having someone feed you, change you, wash you and such at least you'll have a paper-trail.
Something I didn't have—which put me in a tight spot with SHIELD.
They took my arm—they actually removed my left arm! The bastards! (It seemed that Hydra had attached the arm to my nerves as it hurt when they removed it)—took some blood—I still hate needles by the way—took my DS and my pokémon, took an x-ray from me—bet'cha they'll be surprised with the metal that's been grafted to my bones (Hugh Jackman underplayed how much it hurt and I really wanted to curse Duerr for turning me into the Winter Soldier's and Wolverine's love-child or basically a cyborg which wasn't as fun as people made it out) and shuffled me into a little room with a metal-table and metal-chairs and mirror walls for two whole hours.
Coulson wasn't surprised when he opened the door to find the girl, Hope, laying on the metal table and making obnoxious noises with her mouth to show how bored she was—he had been watching her since she had been shuffled into the room and he waited to see if there was anything to find about her and the results of her blood-tests and x-ray (the kid had been through a lot).
"If you please get off the table?" he asked as he walked towards the table.
She rolled her head to the side so she could pin him with annoyed mismatched eyes—he had never seen eyes that different in colour in his life—before with a sigh, she levered herself up with her arm—her right arm and her only arm—and slid down into the seat he had placed her in two hours ago.
"Now Hope," he began as he began to spread out the file they had collected on her—it was the thinnest file he had seen since joining SHIELD. "I'm Agent Coulson from Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."
"Do you ever get tired of saying that mouthful?" she seemed honestly curious as she stared at him. "Why not just shorten it to SHIELD and silently laugh as they try to figure out what it means?"
"I'll keep that in mind," he said as he marked something down in his notebook. "Is there a reason that your skeleton is metal?"
"It's not metal," she denied as she leaned back in her chair. "It's been grafted with metal and it's to make me more immortal than I already am since it's hard to easily cut through the metal of my neck and harder to pierce my heart."
"More immortal?" Coulson raised an eyebrow in question and she tilted her head as she stared at him.
"You've run my blood, surely you know," she said simply as the short nails of her fingers tapped at the metal table—he did know, her blood was basically toxic and it was amazing that she was still alive and fully functioning minus an arm. "I don't really know exactly all that was done to me, all I know was it hurt like fuck and I don't want to go through it again."
"You won't," he reassured her and a bitter smile twisted her lips—she looked too damn young to have such a look on her face.
"Sorry if I don't believe you," she shrugged her left shoulder—it looked very wrong for there to be no arm moving with it. "I've spent the last two years with men like you—dressed in black-uniforms, blank-faced as they follow orders—so I'm not really going to trust your word."
"Do you know who did this to you?" he asked gently and her eyes shone for a moment before they flickered around the room briefly and settled on him again.
"They didn't tell me," she chose her words carefully and Coulson knew that she knew who had taken her but she wouldn't say here—an alarming picture was starting to form in his mind as the phrase 'I've spent the last two years with men like you' echoed and how she had purposely glanced around to show she knew she was being watched and recorded and kept her silence.
His lips thinned briefly before he smoothed them out and her head tilted slightly to one side—it could be written off as curiosity as she studied him, an unconscious habit, but Coulson believed that she was attempting to confirm what he thought which meant there was something rotten in SHIELD—and her dark hair came out of her ponytail and framed her heart-shaped face.
"How old are you, Hope?" Coulson asked.
"I'm not sure," she told him.
"Is your name really Hope?" he asked.
"It's the name I chose for myself when I couldn't remember my real name," she answered.
"Did you know to the world you don't exist?"
"Then how am I here?"
"Isn't that the question?"
Nothing much was said after that and I was shuffled again to somewhere else—this time an actual bedroom—with Hawkeye—the actual Agent Barton!—as my guard.
(They gave me back my left arm thankfully, I was rather attached to it after all—yeah I know, it was a really bad joke)
He got me McDonalds and battled against me on pokémon, he asked me my favourite movies—lucky The Mummy had been out for years and I could wait to get up-to-date with the movies out now—and my favourite books—Percy Jackson at the moment—and other rather meaningless questions in a mildly interested voice so not to get my guard up obviously.
He answered the questions in turn easily—of course I probably never know if he was lying as he answered or not—between either losing to me on pokémon as he had obviously just started playing the game and my high-levels destroyed his still baby pokémon and nicking fries with lightning-fast movements with me attempting—and sometime successfully—slapping his hand away.
"Why are you acting all friendly to me?" Hope questioned as she flicked through the racks of t-shirts.
"Aren't we becoming friends?" Natasha asked in an almost innocent tone with a practiced smile on her lips that just reached her eyes.
"You're lying to me," Hope near-sung as she pulled out and peered at a dark vest-top. "You're like Fury, a spy and you don't trust me or like me."
"I like you," Natasha offered as she took the vest from Hope and added it to the pile—SHIELD, or really Coulson, had decided she needed more clothes and sent her shopping with Natasha.
"You know I can't tell if you're lying or not," Hope glanced at the red-head with her pale blue eye. "You're good."
"I like you," Natasha repeated. "I just don't trust you, but I hardly trust anyone so it's not personal."
"That actually makes me feel better," Hope smiled at the faint frown that creased Natasha's face. "I like you too, but I sure as hell don't trust you or anyone in SHIELD."
"That a good trait to have," Natasha approved.
Only a spy would approve of not trusting the people who apparently saved you and was housing you, and such. Then again, being distrusting must have been one of the things that kept them alive so long.
"Can I get a DVD-player and a bunch of DVDs?" Hope asked as she held a pair of jeans to her small frame.
"Sure," Natasha shrugged despite the fact that Coulson had sternly told them only to buy clothes.
Yeah, I decided I liked Natasha. Especially when she let me buy the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy as it was at the moment, the first five Harry Potter movies, Transformers, Bridge to Terabithia, all the pokémon movies out as well as the Scooby-Doo movies (you are never too old for Scooby-Doo or Pokémon), Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty as well as a laptop.
She even picked up a Stark-player (which was basically an apple I-pod just with an SI on the back) and a $200 gift-card so I could buy music online and download it.
It was all bought by SHIELD—it was very kind of them, don't'cha think?
"I think like I should be whining about not wanting to go to school," Hope deadpanned as Coulson stopped the car outside the gates of Xavier's School for Higher Learning. "You guys realise I'm not a mutant, right? That everything that makes me 'special' came out a ton of bottles and such, right?"
"They'll still can teach you how to control your strength," he said as the gates opened.
"I can control my strength," she protested as the car smoothly drove forward.
"In Fury's words," Coulson began mildly. "You broke someone's jaw in two places with a love-tap."
"I thought that would be a good thing," she frowned at him as she twisted in her seat. "You guys want me to be an agent, right?"
"We don't want to break bones in friendly spars," he shot back shortly as he pulled to a stop in front of the steps.
"He was totally gunning for me though!" Hope protested. "I wouldn't call the hits he threw love-taps."
"You have grafted metal bones and heal abnormally fast," he pointed out drily. "He needed to hit you hard to make a bruise."
"Oh, so because I'm a freak when it comes to healing it's okay to attempt to beat the shit out of me. But when I give them a little taste of their own medicine, they go running to 'Daddy' Fury to get me in trouble," she huffed. "Because that's so fair."
"You're not a freak," Coulson almost snapped automatically—he seemed to make it a mission that she didn't feel bad about herself, and what was done to her, especially when she was diagnosed with depression and had pills shoved in her hand. "And Ward didn't go running to Fury."
"He so did," she argued despite knowing that wasn't true—he was an asshole and a Hydra agent, excuse her for being bias against him and maybe on purpose breaking his jaw in two places, she wouldn't have done it if she knew she was going to be shuffled off to school.
(Hell yeah she would, he was going to be an ass to Skye and would choose a Nazi group over the woman he obviously loved or at least cared for. Plus had she mentioned he was an ass? Because he totally was)
"Fury was watching it happen so he didn't really have to go looking for him," he sighed as he unbuckled his seat-belt.
"Come on," she whined as he opened the door. "It's August, summer-time! Not school time."
Coulson had ignoring whines down to an art-form, Hope swore as he didn't even reply to that as he began to unpack her bags from the boot.
Normally I don't whine, but I was about to be shuffled into a school with the world's most powerful Telepath—it was weird to think I was now in a world when Telepaths were actually real and not fakes—that would know exactly where I came from and I wasn't sure if it was the old timeline or revised timeline I was in—I had hoped that I would only have to deal with the Avengers, but no, I was booted into the Marvel movie-verse—because I so didn't want to deal with Jean Grey going bat-shit insane and the whole Sentinel future that we glimpsed in Days of the Future Past.
But then again it could be totally unknown for me as the X-men movies had way to many errors for those who had read the comics—or like me, read some of the comics and browsed the web to get all needed information to keep up-to-date as well as watching the cartoons.
Perhaps it was a clash between comics and movie-verses? I don't know and I wouldn't know until I stepped through the threshold—time to stop being a coward.
Hope knew she was doing what thousands of kids dreamt about doing. She was entering, and becoming a student of, Xavier's—the Charles Xavier! The Professor X—school for mutants.
She remembered when she first saw an episode of X-Men and how she wanted to be a mutant too—funny how things turn out huh?
She couldn't help looking around the large front-hall in awe—ignoring Coulson's almost smug look as she did.
"Agent Coulson?" a smooth female voice called making Hope's shoulders stiffen slightly as she turned so she could watch the woman come closer with soft barely audible footsteps.
Storm—Ororo Monroe—was a beautiful woman with lovely mocha skin, dark eyes and short white hair that surrounded an almost pixie-like face. She was dressed in a comfortable white long-sleeved top and dark fitted jeans—her smile was very bright.
"Miss Monroe?" Coulson asked in return, though it was obvious he knew it was her, and freed one hand to shake hers.
"Storm please," she asked with another smile before turning her gaze onto Hope.
Hope tilted her head stubbornly as she met Storm's dark gaze with her own mismatched gaze—some of the SHIELD agents couldn't stand look into her eyes as they found the two different shades too disturbing—but Storm's gaze did not drift away, she did not flinch away from her odd-coloured gaze, and just held out a hand with a warmer smile of greeting.
Unthinking, Hope reached out with her left hand and finally got a startled reaction from the composed older woman as cool metal encased her warm flesh.
Dark eyes widened in surprise and they glazed down at the gleaming silver hand in mild shock and Hope pulled her hand back, perhaps a bit too quickly to be polite, and stuffed both hands deep in the pockets of her unzipped dark hoody as the straps of one of her bags attempted to slid down her arm.
Dimly she realised that Coulson sighed at her action but she didn't care. She wasn't embarrassed by her metal arm, it was a sign she had survived the hell that was Hydra, and didn't hide it out of shame but because she didn't like people staring at it and, more importantly, her—she had never been that comfortable under other people's attention.
"I'm sorry," Storm's smile had turned into a grimace. "I knew about that," she gestured towards her hidden hand. "It was just a bit shocking to see it in person."
Hope gave her a strained smile.
"I get it," she said almost easily. "I'm used to it."
"You shouldn't be," Storm frowned at her. "You shouldn't have to hide part of yourself away."
"Don't worry," Hope shrugged. "I normally don't. I just thought I wouldn't overwhelm you guys on the first meeting."
"It'll take more than a metal arm to overwhelm us," Storm told her with a wry smile.
Hope just shrugged and watched as Storm's head tilted as though she was listening to something with her eyes slightly unfocused—Professor was obviously talking to her.
"The Professor will see you now," Storm gestured for them to follow her and led them towards Charles Xavier's office.
Meeting Charles Xavier went about as well as I thought—according to him, my mind was loud and talkative which I responded with that's where my childhood personality went.
He kept his calm as he asked about the curious things he saw in my mind and I let him have free rein rummaging through my mind—not the wisest choices as it brought back memories from Hydra that I could have done without.
It ended with me running towards the garden—Xavier giving me helpfully, and guiltily, directions towards it—as Xavier had to explain to a quietly furious Coulson exactly why I was running away from him after just a few minutes of meeting him.
Screaming with defiance and anger was strangely relieving, even if it was into the nothingness.
"She's got a set of lungs," Scott commented from where he was peering down at the new student that was screaming her little head off in the garden.
Logan didn't even look up from where he was completing another beer as Hank read through the paper—Logan didn't know why, there was always a mutant-hating article somewhere that made him grit his teeth in annoyance at the ignorance of people.
"She had an actual metal arm?" Jean's voice was too curious as she asked Storm. "And she could move it fully like a normal arm?"
"It was nothing like Peter's metal though," Storm said softly as she peered down at the coffee mug in her hands. "It holds no warmth of normal flesh and is just cool metal."
"Amazing," Jean's dark eyes gleamed in interest. "I wonder how it works. Hank?"
"I'm not telling you anything I have read in her files, Jean," Hank said absently as he folded the paper. "You are a good doctor that has made both Charles and I proud, but young Hope will not be one of your patients."
"Is there a reason why she's screaming in the garden?" Scott piped up as he placed a casually affectionate hand on Jean's shoulder, one of her slender hands absently drifting up to hold his.
"I'm not sure," Storm worried her bottom lip a little. "She was only meant to be welcomed formally by the Professor."
"No wonder the kid's screaming than," Logan snorted as he pushed himself to his feet. "Chuck's been snooping again."
"Logan," Jean chided lightly but he was already leaving the 'staff' room and heading to greet his new student.
When Duerr started giving me Super-Serum, I had to deal with the disconcerting feeling of my senses changing, strengthening, and learning to cope with all the different smells, sights, sounds, tastes and touches I was feeling as they grew stronger.
Still my time in Hydra, and being taught by Bucky, had taught me to stay on guard so I like to think I would have at least sense Logan without my enhanced senses—I was kidding myself, huh?
"What do you want?" Hope asked as she stared down the well-kept lawn towards the little hint of forest that the Xavier School had.
"Perhaps I'm just concerned," Logan drawled as he walked easily to her side, unlit cigar hanging from his mouth. "About why my new student is having a mental-break-down in the garden."
"I'm not having a mental-break-down," Hope snorted at the thought—it would take more than a few bad memories for her to have a mental-break-down.
"That's good," Logan's hands rested in his low-resting jeans' pocket. "I'm meant to be the one giving you a mental-break-down, not Chuck."
"So you're my teacher?" she glanced at him with amused eyes.
"I heal fast," he glanced at her with dark eyes. "Like I hear you do."
"Yep," she nodded.
"Good," he nodded to himself shortly. "You're going to need it."
And that was the start of my friendship with The Wolverine, my teacher Logan.