Title: Symbiotic
Author: SLynn
Summary: As SHIELD decides to work with someone new, the Avengers are learning just how well they really work together.
"You want to know what happened?" Carol fired back at her, waiting and watching until Natasha finally dipped her head in response. "Fine. I'll tell you. Anything specific you have in mind?"
"Why didn't you escape?" asked Natasha.
"Okay," Carol said, shutting her eyes briefly before she began. "Okay..."
As far as she could judge, it had been three weeks.
For three weeks Carol had been locked inside a cell with a single glass wall with no idea as to how it had happened.
She wasn't injured. She hadn't been interrogated. There was no one else in any of the other cells she could see into from her position. Twice a day a guard in an all black uniform brought her a meal that consisted of the blandest food known to man and slid it through a retractable slot on the floor designed for that very purpose. Every other day, using the same contraption, and possibly the same man, she was brought a small plastic dish filled with liquid soap and a towel.
Without having much choice, Carol bathed there in that cell, thankful that at least there was a sink. There was also a mattress and a toilet.
Once a week the guard brought a change of clothes.
It was a tedious existence and it had to change. She had to know what had happened and why she was being kept this way.
She'd tried attracting the guard's attention, but they steadfastly ignored her. Carol talked to them through the opening when she had the chance. When that produced no results, she screamed at them through the opening. Still, they would not respond.
Three weeks was long enough.
Carol knew, roughly, at what time everything was delivered. She'd always had a good internal clock and had come to almost sense when they'd arrive.
Sitting as close as she dared, without arousing suspicion, Carol turned her body partially away from the slot and waited as indifferently as she could.
The guard arrived. He unlocked the mechanism with a panel Carol couldn't see on her side of the cell, and bent over to slide the tray through the pass.
As soon as she heard it, she acted.
Carol slapped her left hand down on the tray and yanked it forward, the sudden change throwing the guard off balance and wobbling him forward. With her right hand she lunged forward and snatched the guard by the wrist, pulling him into the glass wall as hard as possible. He made no sound, but Carol didn't care as she got what she really wanted and the man slid to the ground.
The angle was rough, and she really only could get one arm through, but she did it. Carol got him flat on his back, her arm across his neck, pinning him to the floor as she applied pressure.
"Call your boss," she hissed through the opening. "Now!"
The guard responded with a series of strange noises and for a moment Carol worried she'd snapped his neck. But she knew she could not have done that. She wasn't strong enough and he was beginning to fight back. Not very effectively, but he had begun to pull at her arm in an effort to break free.
"Call you boss," she repeated, louder this time.
"DANVERS, CAROL S J," a voice boomed in the hallway. "RELEASE YOUR CARETAKER."
The voice was strange and mechanical. And cold. It was very cold.
"Tell me why I'm here," she shouted back at it.
"WE REQUIRE YOUR COOPERATION."
"Fuck you," she returned. "Tell me why I'm here? Tell me who you are? Tell me what the hell is going on?"
"RELEASE YOUR CARETAKER."
"No!"
"YOU GIVE US NO CHOICE."
Carol heard them coming. With the opening obstructed, she could hear what was going on in the hallway and the sound of troops running in unison was all too familiar.
Four more men arrived and began to attempt to pry her arm free. Carol fought as best she could, but with only one arm it wasn't easy. Even after they managed to pull the guard she'd been holding hostage loose, they couldn't dislodge her.
They opened the door.
Two guards marched into her cell, intent on pulling her free from the inside, and without thinking about what she was doing or why she was doing it, Carol threw her free hand up at them and - BANG!
The room was filled briefly with a bright flash light.
The two guards flew backwards into the wall and Carol was so shocked by what had happened, by what she had done, she let go. The passage slid shut and still stunned Carol watched as the two men stumbled out of the cell and locked the door behind them.
Staring down at her hands, Carol clenched her fists and tried to figure out what this could possibly be or mean. How could she have done this? What did they do to her to make this happen?
Most importantly, could she do it again?
Two days passed before she saw another guard and this time he was not alone. There were two "caretakers" now and they were both armed.
As one guard knelt down to slide the tray into her enclosure, the other opened the cell door and pointed the weapon at Carol. Without saying anything, he motioned her to the back of the cell and then for her to turn around.
Reluctantly, she complied.
A few seconds was all it took. The tray was in and they were gone.
For another two days they repeated this same routine until finally Carol just began to stand in the back of the room when they arrived, prompting the guards to no longer open the cell door and step inside. She didn't know how to get around this one, but knew that she had to regain some trust.
Carol had to get close again if she was going to attempt an escape.
That's when the first new prisoner arrived.
It was a man, in his mid to late thirties. He was tall with thick black hair and eyes almost as dark. He was awake when they dragged him into the cell across from Carol's. He seemed confused and she really couldn't blame him.
Carol had been her much longer than he had and she was still just as confused.
For the next few days they brought him a tray and her a tray and then on the third day they brought another prisoner.
It was another man but this one was much older than the first. He was going bald and the hair he did have was gray. He kept rubbing his eyes giving Carol the impression that he was missing his glasses. He was also awake.
The second man she called Phillips. The nickname just came to her and somehow stuck. She had to call him something. The first man she'd already taken to calling Bently.
Bently hadn't ever seemed to overcome his initial shock.
Phillips tried to talk to her.
It wasn't easy going. For the first few days they struggled. He knew some rudimentary sign language but was too impatient to learn any more. Eventually they were able to pass a few bits of information back and forth and Carol was shocked to discover that half a year had passed. The last day she'd recalled clearly had been in February, a mission brief that should have been routine but Phillips was insistent that it was nearly September.
Bently, evidently understanding more than he'd let on, caught her attention and assured her it was true.
What they couldn't tell her, what no one seemed to know, was what exactly had happened?
The next day, still reeling from the information, the guards arrived earlier than usual. And they arrived without any trays.
Sensing something was amiss, Carol got to her feet and watched. Without paying any attention to what she was doing, the guards approached Bently's cell.
He didn't fight them. He had no reason to. Bently obeyed their cues, walked to the back of the cell and turned around. He let them take hold of his wrists and march him out into the corridor.
With a growing sense of dread, Carol stepped closer to the glass wall that separated her from the rest of the world.
As one guard locked up the now empty cell, the other stood Bently in the center of the walkway. He was right in front of her. They couldn't have been more than five feet apart. Maybe less, even. She locked eyes with him and a split second before it happened, Carol understood.
Carol didn't hear the gunshot, but she flinched just the same.
Bently crumpled to the floor in a lifeless heap and the guards just left.
For three days they left him there. They still delivered trays of food to both her and Phillips. They still delivered toiletries every other day, just as they always had. For three full days they ignored the body laying just outside her cell, but Carol could not.
On the morning of the fourth day, Bently's body was removed and the floors were cleaned. No sooner than they'd finished, they brought in a new prisoner and Bently's cell now belonged to Daisy.
Carol was almost too shaken to attempt to talk to her, but the woman, a very young woman, drew her out. She knew quite a bit of sign language and was eager to communicate. She asked over and over where they were and what was happening but Carol couldn't say and what Carol did know, she wouldn't say.
For awhile it seemed as if things would be normal again, or as normal as it could be. Carol tried to forget it. She tried to rationalize that it might not have even happened. Phillips seemed as eager to put it past them as Carol was. Neither of them wanted to believe it was true but after another three days passed, the guards returned again early in the morning.
They were armed and this time they stopped in front of Phillips' cell.
He fought them.
Phillips and Carol both knew what was about to happen, and he fought back. In the end though, they were too strong for him. They dragged the man from his cell as he attempted to claw and kick his way free. No sooner than they had him out in the hallway, as they dragged him in front of Carol's cell, they began to beat him.
Carol screamed.
Maybe it was because he'd resisted. Maybe it didn't have to happen that way. She didn't know. All Carol knew was she couldn't stop it and it was her fault.
They beat him to death and all she could do was watch.
Three days later, they removed his body and brought in a new prisoner, this one Carol called Gee, to take Phillips' place.
Carol stopped talking and walked away from the group.
"How long did that go on for?" Bruce asked quietly.
"Um," Carol said, letting out a breath of air as she slowly turned back around and faced them. "There was Daisy and Gee. And then Gretchen. It wasn't until after Gretchen that they told me... They finally led me into the hallway and I thought... It doesn't matter what I thought," she decided, shaking off the words. "The loud-box voice from hell said I was to cooperate or they'd continue. So, I cooperated."
"With what?" Natasha asked.
"Their experiments," Carol answered. "They led me to the rooms with the machines. I didn't fight. They strapped me in and got to work but... but they didn't work on me and so the killings continued. After Gretchen was Cooper. They waited longer then. They'd begun to space them out. As soon as something didn't work quite like they wanted it to work, they retaliated. They blamed me but... I didn't know what they really wanted so... so I did what I could. It wasn't enough."
"What changed?" Clint needed to know. He didn't think he'd want to, but he did. He wanted to know and he needed to know.
"The clones," Carol answered. "To start with, that changed a lot of things. I saw less of the guards and more of the clones even thought they mostly dressed the same. My hollowed out sisters. They killed the other prisoners less often and really only as a reminder. It became more random, the killings. Something to keep me in check. Time just passed. I wasn't really keeping track any more. I would ask a new prisoner every once in awhile, but mostly I didn't even talk to them. I gave them a name in my head out of habit but... but I didn't engage them if I could help it. I knew they were going to die and that there was no way to stop it."
"And then Phil arrived," Natasha said slowly.
"Yes but..." Carol sighed. "Before Phil was Ford. Ford was about my age and smart. He kept trying to pick apart the lights, the cell, he had a working mind and he got me thinking that maybe it was possible. And then the guards just stopped coming. The first day we thought it was a fluke. The second day I began to feel a little uneasy. But by the third day, I think we both understood. They weren't coming back. Not anytime soon. They'd left. They'd left us there to whatever might happen."
"For how long?" the other woman continued to question, but her tone had changed. She hadn't expected this. Natasha didn't know what to expect, but she hadn't thought it would have been like this.
"Ford lasted sixteen days," Carol said with a grim nod. "He might have made it longer but he was sick. He was already sick when he'd arrived. I could tell just by looking at him. It took him sixteen days to die and again, all I could do was watch. I beat myself bloody against that glass wall. It wouldn't break. It wouldn't budge. On day twenty-three, the guards were back. They cleaned out Ford's cell and dropped off Phil in his place. They brought us each a tray of food like it never happened."
"The Chautari invasion," Bruce surmised.
"I think so," Carol agreed. "I think it worried them. Distracted them. Phil was different. They treated him differently than they had any prisoner before. They fixed him up. They cared for him. And when he was well enough, they pulled him out of his cell and I was certain that was the end of Bug, but instead they took him down the hall towards the rooms with the machines. By that point we were already talking the only way we could. He couldn't read lips," she said with a faint smile at Clint, "but he knew a lot more sign language than I did. He was persistent in getting me to talk, for all the good it did. When I asked him what had happened he said he didn't know. And I believed him because... I don't know. I don't know why I trusted Phil, but I did. I trusted him and I lived every day thinking..."
Carol trailed off again, growing agitated and needing another minute alone with her thoughts.
"I told him," Carol finally said. "I told him what had happened to the people whose place he'd taken. I told him what I thought might be his fate and he said it wasn't my fault. I wanted to believe it... I didn't though. I still don't. Because, yes Natasha, I should have escaped. I tried. I thought about it day and night and I tried, but I couldn't get out of there. I should have. I didn't know my own strength and I was afraid. They used the other prisoners against me and it worked. It worked extremely well so... I was scared."
Natasha couldn't think of what to say. Of anything that would refute that logic.
"When I showed up..." Clint began.
"They never kept two prisoners with me for very long," Carol said, her voice steady again after another moment's pause. "I saw you and thought you'd be next. They'd treated Phil so differently that... I thought there had to be something about him that kept him there, same as me, and that meant you were next."
"And they showed up," Clint continued.
"And I begged you not to fight them."
"You thought they were going to beat me to death," Clint said with a nod as it all began to make a morbid kind of sense. "Right there in the hallway."
"They'd done it before," she nodded. "But Phil... his reaction to seeing you. Your reaction to seeing him. They took you away to the machines and something clicked. In my head it clicked that their priorities had changed. They had a new mission or new plans. You were the only two prisoners who had known one another before it began and that had to mean something. That they might not be willing to just dispose of you both to keep me in line was something new and... I'm sorry, but I lied to you, Clint."
"What?"
"After your first attempt to escape failed," she explained. "I lied to you and said Phil had come up with a plan. He hadn't. We'd talked about it but he wouldn't agree with me. I think he understood something about why neither of you were going to be killed, but I also think it made him concerned for me. They weren't testing me any longer, they weren't hooking me up to the machines, and he was worried that I was now the expendable one. So he warned me against trying to escape. He was trying to keep me safe."
"I watched you talking to him about the plan," Clint said shaking his head. "I watched you discuss it with him."
"He was asleep," Carol admitted. "I only talked about the plan to Phil when he was asleep. That way you could read my lips and he wouldn't know any different. I had to get us out of there. I had to try. I kept thinking that even if they didn't kill you outright, their indifference might do you in just as it did Ford. That something would distract them and they'd just leave you both to rot. I'm sorry. I'm even sorrier it didn't work. After that they took you both away, locked you out of my sight, and the next thing I knew Captain America was at my door."
"And you punched him," Bruce added, hoping to lighten the mood.
"I did," Carol said with a faint grin. "I didn't believe... Phil and I had talked a lot. There wasn't much else we could do. He'd mentioned his collection before, that he was a fan, and I thought they were screwing with me. What else could it have been? I mean, Phil never got around to telling me the part where Captain America had been dug out of the ice. I couldn't have known it was really him. Plus, I hadn't eaten in fourteen days. I was a little bit... off."
"Your metabolism," Bruce started to say.
"Saved me," Carol finished. "I know it did. Twice. I don't need to eat as much to survive. I can last longer without, although at the time that didn't seem like a blessing."
"You really couldn't leave," Natasha said, hearing only a little of the last few things said, her thoughts distracted by the events Carol had described. "I should have listened to Phil. I should have trusted him."
"Me, too," Carol said. "Although he seems to think that they hooked them up permanently to those machines because of their doubles and not because of my horribly failed escape attempt. They needed the information constantly and weren't getting enough and it was something they'd have done regardless considering that even what they were retrieving wasn't very accurate."
"I have to ask," Bruce said with a shake of his head, "if Phil's always right, and he does always seem to be right, should we be doing this?"
"Yes," Natasha answered, surprising them all. "Trust is one thing, this is different. He's not thinking clearly. He's compromised."
Clint looked at Natasha with surprise, but she ignored it.
"What's that mean?" Carol asked.
"He's focused on the wrong thing," Natasha said. "The Skrulls aren't working with SHIELD because they need to. They clearly have enough resources to run their own operations. They want something. Phil thinks it's Carol but they've had her already. They stopped their experiments on her. They want something more."
"They want to know how it happened," Carol said, agreeing with Natasha completely.
"Do you really think that answer can be found at your crash site?" Natasha asked.
"If it's anywhere, it's there," Carol said with complete confidence.
"Then we have to go," she decided.