I'm sorry I suck. Between graduating from high school, going to college orientation, saying goodbye to some of my best friends, I just didn't have the time. That, and this chapter was a pain in my ass. Honestly, AoU was a sucky movie, I loved it, but come on, Civil War was amaze balls. That's really been my whole purpose. To get Lucy to that point. So, I sorta left out the whole Vision thing, it's important, just not enough for me to write a whole other chapter, it was a stepping stone nonetheless. I can add an ending to the last chapter if some of y'all are confused but I really like this one so I hope it makes up for it. You have all seen the movie, I assume? You get the gist? Well, anyway, I really hope you enjoy. Took me a really long time plus it's super long. Love y'all and love to see what you guys think. I'll try to post more regularly. Oh, and Happy 4th!
Much love,
freedomintensifies
Have you ever wondered how those few lucky individuals become human conductors and get branded by their lightning strikes? On top of the 300,000 volts of electricity coursing through their bones and them being heated to a lovely 50,000 degrees fahrenheit, their blood vessels actually explode upon contact with the bolt leaving the eerily beautiful patterns on their skin. Fascinating, isn't it? They're called Lichtenberg figures, an oddly German way of naming the lightning-bolt shaped burn on their chests, but hey, that's science for ya. But with beauty, there's pain. All the voltage that courses through the victim's veins during that fraction of a second can also lead to organ failure, cardiac arrest or death. Lightning is mesmerizing, captivating, and powerful, but it is no force to reckoned with. I know, a lot of fun and very horrific facts being thrown your way, but there is a point to it all.
Lightning is caused by the static charge that builds up in the clouds, and when the protons and electrons in the cloud separate to an extranomical amount, the electrons shoot out due to the electrical field overpower, at least according to my textbook I stole from Tony. The excess charge caused by too much tension, so ZAP there it is. So now imagine, instead of a force of nature, a girl in her late teens that just lost her twin brother. The emotional trauma and distraught brought onto her by the sudden rush of the break in the sibling bond can cause the girl to lose sight of controlling her freaky powers and create catastrophic results, like too much tension in a rain cloud.
You have this girl with the capabilities to create spherical forces of energy that disrupt reality at a quasi-psionic force to cause molecular disturbances that results in spontaneous combustion, let's call her our lightning, and an innocent bystander more commonly known by the alias of Lucy Cooper. And trust that Wanda Maximoff can do a hell of a lot more damage than one measly lightning bolt.
I didn't really know how to react when this chick that I was just kicking ass with, instead of her kicking my ass as done in the previous days, collapsed to the ground screaming bloody murder and a red, wispy force exploded out of her. We were doing pretty great during majority of the battle, like we made it far enough to get the civilians off the floating chunk of Earth and the last job left was to protect the "key to the city" for as long as possible which we both willingly volunteered for. But when you become so filled with hope, the bad seems to hit you harder than a brick. I mean, losing is the inevitable? No matter how many times we fight, there is going to be one we can't win. There's going to be a moment when the bad guys get us, and as everything was unraveling around me, I gave in. I accepted my fate.
Instead, I was struck by my lightning.
-Present Time (Immediately following all of the civilians being loaded onto the Helicarrier)-
"What the hell did you do to her?" Natasha all but growled as she made her way over to the Asgardian god carrying the limp girl in her arms. Thor had just detonated the world's largest bomb, AKA a flying city, but that meant nothing to the spunky redhead when she noticed her trainee in his arms. Lucy didn't have any bumps or bruises, not even the cut over her left brow from the day before or the split lip or scraped knee. She looked the healthiest she had been since Natasha first met the bubbly but surprisingly sinister girl in that interrogation room years ago, but that wasn't the reason for Nat's worrying.
Thor looked for a place to set the young woman down, but amongst all the debris from what looked to be an explosion, he decided that continuing to hold her might be best. Thor cleared his throat and looked unflinchingly into the woman's eyes, "When we destroyed the core and I fell amongst the rubble, I noticed Lady Lucy floating in the water." He glanced down at his sleeping teammate, "I found her like this." Natasha seemed to be stunned by the fact that nobody went back for her, but they all had assumed they didn't need to. Lucy was fast and smart, she would have felt the drop of the rock and known to have gotten off, so her current state of condition had to have been caused before everything happened.
Thor had begun to call for the medical team to check Lucy's vitals, but Natasha kept her eyes fixated on her little soldier. Then slowly but surely, she reached her hand up and gently swept it through Lucy's dripping locks. The once amber brown hair that reminded Natasha of a piece of melting chocolate on a warm summer day now revealed a pale and pearly platinum blonde.
You could even say that the new head of hair compared to a Lichtenberg figure, a brand, a reminder of the moment when they almost died, one that they would look at until the day they actually did.
"Hello?" I called to no one in particular. To be honest, I'm not exactly how I got here or when for that matter. I simply stood there, waiting. Looking off into the distance in hopes to see something, anything, or anyone. I finally gave up and resumed my endless walk down a highway in the middle of the desert, if you asked me where I was, I couldn't tell you. The further I walked the more it seemed I was distancing myself from civilization. This barren wasteland of dust and dirt was all I could see for miles and miles.
It's not like the silence was unpleasant, it was just disheartening. Here I thought we were in the middle of Ultron's battle and then poof, I'm here, but like I said earlier I'm not quite sure where here is. I kicked a pebble with the toe of my boot and watched as it skipped into the distance. Over the course of how long, I found out one thing. I'm still me, but I'm not myself. I know that sounds strange, but something feels off like I should be doing something or I have someplace to go, I just can't pinpoint what that is. "Hello!" I called again even though I never expected a response, it seems like I had been calling forever.
"Hello." It wasn't a human voice that responded, but a whisper in the tumbleweeds. Something so delicate and airy you wouldn't realize it was there unless you were listening. I did a sharp turn on my heel and scanned my surroundings, but everything looked the same. I would've brushed it off as insanity if the voice hadn't been so eerily familiar. "Hello," it went again. "Hello, hello, hello."
"Who's there?" I more pleaded than yelled.
"Hello, hello, hello," it continued. The greetings had come more rapid and felt like they were circling my head like a flock of birds. Each in it's own way a combination of what felt like taunting and mockery.
"Stop!" I screamed, placing my hands over my ears and squeezing my eyes shut. It needed to stop, I needed it to stop. The silence was less deafening than the piercing noise currently consuming my eardrums. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello! But then as quickly as it started, it stopped, allowing the one single voice to come forth.
"Hi, Cici." Only one person has ever called me that, only one person was ever allowed to call me that. The little girl who had trouble pronouncing her L's way into her terrible two's. I slowly lowered my sweaty palms from ears and rose my head to properly look at the girl in front of me.
Her hair that was once a short, curly blonde blob had grown way past her shoulders to reveal waves that looked like honey dripping from a silver spoon. Her once chubby cheeks had thinned out to reveal her crystalline blue eyes that were only shaded by her long lashes, which I could now see perfectly because she was almost eye level. No, this girl still had the same freckled nose and the same chipped front tooth, but she was no longer my little mouse. She had turned into the young lady I had only dreamed she would be, and she was a spitting image of my mother.
My baby sister was all grown up.
"Mia?" I rasped, a little embarrassed by how choked up I had become just looking at her.
"Hey," she smiled, it was so wide that I could barely see those pretty blue eyes anymore.
"You've - you've grown up, you're tall and you don't have braces anymore and you're - beautiful," I stuttered. "You look just like Mom."
Her smile faded for a second, but she seemed to hold it for my sake. "You've grown up, too."
I sighed realizing I was either dead or dreaming, "No, I really haven't. I'm the same hard headed teenager with bad sense in decision making as I was back then." I let out a weak laugh and gestured towards her, "But you - I missed it, you missed it. You didn't get to grow up because I didn't save you. Mia, I'm so sorr-"
"What?" she furrowed her eyebrows and seemed pained by my apology. "Is that what you think? You didn't save me? You honestly don't remember?" I shook my head and her shoulders sagged, "Lucy you gave up everything for me. You're the reason why I'm still alive."
I took a cautious step towards her, "Mia, I know this isn't real, but please do not lie to me."
She crossed her arms and gave me a look that reminded me of Dad, "I'm not lying."
"Mia, you're dead. I killed you."
"No, I'm alive. I go to high school, I have a home, I have a family, I have friends, I have a dog. The only thing that is dead is my old life." The slight jab at the end wasn't supposed to be cruel, but it did sting a lot. She was right, that part of us was and forever will be dead. I'll never have that normalcy again, but my excitement over having a sorta living, breathing Mia in front of me seemed to lessen that pain.
"You're - you're alright?" I almost cried. I didn't care that she had moved on, or whatever happened, I just cared that my baby sister was okay. I had begun to collapse to the dusty floor when she scooped me up into her arms and hugged me, and I clung so tight to her it was like my life depended on it.
"I'm alright, Cici," she soothed, running a hand along the back of my hair. "And it's time that you see that you're going to be alright, too."
"Nat?"
It's been seven days since Sokovia. One week or seven days or one hundred and sixty-eight hours or ten thousand and eighty minutes, whatever time you use to justify it, but the result is always the same. It's been seven days since Sokovia, and seven days with an unconscious, comatose Lucille Quinn Cooper. Natasha hadn't left Lucy's side the entirety of that week, and no one had dared to tell her to get some rest because the answer would always be the same. 'No.' Natasha didn't feel guilt for what happened, she knew Lucy was completely capable of taking care of herself, but what if she had made Lucy go to the Helicarrier. What if she stayed back? What if she wasn't so focused on getting Bruce on board, maybe - she had gone back and forth on so many small things that had happened, but she knew there was nothing she could've done. There was no way she could've predicted it.
No, nothing, but she did exactly what the doctors told her to do, and that was wait. So every morning she would get a warm washcloth and run it against her trainee's freckled cheeks. Every morning she would run a brush through the blonde hair that she had started to adjust to, she could only imagine the green it would bring out in her eyes. Every morning she would pull the thin hospital sheets up to Lucy's chin and softly sing little lullabies in her native tongue. She would do this all every day, and not once has Natasha left her side.
"Hmm?" she hummed as she slumped back into the awkward plastic covered chair. She glanced up from the girl and to the door to see Steve standing there. He had stayed back a few days to help with the clean up of Sokovia, but for the days he had been home he had avoided Lucy's hospital room at all costs.
Steve slowly walked into the room and leaned against the opposing wall. "How's she doing?" he whispered. If Natasha had cared enough to pay attention, she would've noticed that the entire time Steve had been in the room he didn't glance at the hospital bed once. Even if Natasha didn't feel guilty, it didn't mean Cap didn't.
Natasha reached forward and untwisted one of the insulin tubes that was draining into Lucy's left wrist. "She's been good. Her fever went down, although I'm not sure you could even say someone has a fever when their core can heat to the temperature of the sun," she smirked and looked up at him. "But she's good, it's been pretty quiet." Steve nodded and Nat began to chew the inside of her cheek, "Wanda stopped by earlier."
Steve shoved his hands into his pockets, "Really? That was kind of her."
Nat snorted, "Yeah, real kind after she's the one who put her in here." Steve clenched his jaw as if he was going to speak up, but bit his tongue. "I know it was an accident, but Lucy was our responsibility, Steve." She reached across the bed and brushed her hand gently over Lucy's smooth skin. "And we failed her.
Steve went over and took a seat next to Nat, "She's gonna be fine." He wasn't quite sure if he was reassuring her or himself.
There was a long, awkward silence before Natasha spoke again, "How is everybody?"
Steve cleared his throat, "Well, there's still no eyes on Banner. Thor returned to Asgard to see if there was anything we could do for Cooper. Vision has taken up the responsibility of watching over Maximoff, Tony - well, let's just say Stark's duty nowadays seems to be emptying the liquor cabinet, and Barton went back home to check on his - family. ."
There was another long pause and Nat had taken the opportunity to pick up Lucy's hand. She was continuously tracing circles into the pale skin and analyzed every detail about it. She was wearing a deep red nail polish that had begun to chip towards the tip due to Lucy's nasty habit of biting her nails when she was nervous. Her pointer finger had a tan line where she wore her Claddagh ring when she wasn't fighting. The two hands holding a crowned heart were easily visible in the fine lined detail, it was supposed to represent friendship - and family. "Did you ever want a family?" she asked mildly, pretending there was no deeper meaning. "Like Clint's?" Natasha already knew the answer, Steve was America's golden boy. He probably wanted the white picket fence and the baked apple pie sitting on the kitchen table when he walked through the front door. That's what she assumed anyway, but she knew her partner well enough to know there's more to him that meets the eye, same went for her for that matter.
He shifted uncomfortably in the abnormally small chair next to her, and his first instinct was to look up at Lucy. Finally taking in her lifeless body hit him like a ton of bricks, and he almost forgot to breathe. No, he didn't have the life he dreamed of in the forties and he probably never will, but that didn't mean he didn't have a family. His voice came out quiet as if he had walked into the kitchen late at night for a bite to eat and was trying to not wake the sleeping teenager that passed out on the couch after staying up too late to watch her favorite movie. The problem was was that no matter what tone of voice he used, Lucy wasn't going to wake up. "I did - before the ice, but I feel like my view on family changed." Natasha raised an eyebrow and Steve continued, "You don't have to be related to be family, and the Avengers? That is my family, that's our home."
The next time I opened my eyes, I woke up to the sound of gunshots. Bang, bang, bang, bang! I immediately looked around my surroundings to figure out what the hell was going on, but all I was doing was sitting on the floor of a well furnished office. There were potted plants and a huge window overlooking some body of water and a obnoxious mahogany desk that sat right in front of it with picture frames scattered all over. I slowly picked myself up and grabbed one of the black frames before ducking back under. Maybe if I found out where I was or whose this was, I could find out what the hell was happening. I slowly turned the picture over to see my senior portrait staring right back at me. The brunette hair was softly swept to the side as I smiled brightly at the camera. So if this is me, that means - this is - this was my dad's office.
"Shit," I cursed, leaning back into the desk. "Shit, shit, shitty shit, shit." Here I was hugging my dead sister, and now I'm in the place where she died. Well, I thought she died, I really don't know what to believe anymore. My head was screwed up, man. As I tried to get all of my ducks in a row, someone began to open the door, and I bolted behind the desk.
"Get in," she hissed, shoving someone in front of her before locking the door behind her. The teen who was wearing denim shorts and white chucks, by what I could see, was pushing around a much younger girl, quite urgently I might add. "Mia, get in the closet." My heart stopped - Mia? My Mia? If that was the girl then that meant that that was me. I was watching myself live the worst day of my life.
"Cici, please, I don't wanna," Mia whined, she was afraid more than anything. Fear was dripping in her every word.
"Mia get in the closet," she - I - practically yelled. "Get in the closet and take this," I peered out to see a younger version of myself pull something out from the waistband of her shorts, the sight of the memory alone made me want to vomit. I was handing a twelve-year-old girl who still watched Disney Channel a .45 caliber handgun.
"No, Cici, I don't -"
"Look, Dad gave me this for emergencies and we're kinda in one right now," she pushed the gun into Mia's hands. "This is the safety right here, you click this on and off, it's on right now, but when you shoot it, make sure it's off." She wrapped her fingers around the barrel of the gun and Mia looked even more terrified. "This is the clip, I just stole a new one off the dead officer we passed in the hallway, so we should be good on bullets." She started pointing to various parts of the gun as Mia watched with a slack jaw, not knowing how her sister who screamed when there was a spider in the bathroom was remaining so calm. "This is the hammer, you pull this back when you're just about to pull the trigger, got it?" Mia stayed quiet as she stared at the deadly weapon in her hands and the other me got impatient, more frightened that her sister wasn't taking any of this in, and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Mia, I need to know you understand me, alright? It's just like firing the Wii remote at those ducks for that game you like. It's gonna be okay, we're just being precautious. You probably won't even have to use it." She pushed Mia so she was sitting in the closet and continued to lecture her as gunshots rained from outside the door. "Okay, so if anyone opens this door and doesn't knock three times, you shoot, okay? I don't care who they are, we can't trust anyone. You're going to stay in this thing no matter what, I don't care what you hear, I need you to be safe. Don't. Leave." Mia continued to wordlessly nod as silent tears streamed down her cheeks, and I watched with horror as I anticipated what would happen next. "If I don't come back before 3:30, you're gonna run like hell out of this place, and then you go to Megan's, okay?" She pulled out her cellphone from her back pocket and placed it into her childlike hand, "The password is 0504, and every phone number and address is in there." She pulled out her wallet next, "And here's some money for a bus ticket if it comes to it. Okay, I'm going to keep watch out in the office. I'll see you soon."
She gave Mia one last smile and kiss before tucking her behind the coats in the closet, "Cici?" she called silently, and I could see the tears streaming down my face as well.
"Yeah, baby girl?"
"Happy Birthday," she whispered. That's when the other me clutched her hand to her mouth to soften her sobs, and I watched, crying myself. That was the last birthday with my family.
After several moments, she wiped the tears from her cheeks and straightened up when she spoke, like the soldier she deemed herself to become at that moment in time. "Thanks, Mouse. Love you."
"I love you, too." That was the last conversation I had with my sister, and the other me seemed to know it too. She was protecting Mia from something and the loud banging on the door that ensued seemed to be what. Lucy quickly shut the door and walked over to the desk and leaned on it as the banging continued to get louder, her only weapon of defence had been given to the tween in the closet.
"Open up!" he yelled, but Lucy just sat there chewing her nails. "Open the goddamn door!" Lucy just waited and waited as the shouts became louder and louder and the lock finally broke. A tall military man with short black hair rushed in and grabbed Lucy's hair by the fistful and she did all she could to stifle her scream, "Do you not hear me when I call for you?" he growled.
"Sorry," she spat, "It was a little hard to hear over the gunshots." The sarcastic spat seemed to anger the man and he just yanked harder on her hair. "What do you want?" she groaned as her temples became white from the pressure.
"You and your sister, now, where is she?"
"With my parents," she lied.
He snorted, "Considering I just snapped their necks, that's unlikely." Lucy seemed to have already known this or she was trying really hard not to let this guy know. "Now, where's the brat?"
"Why do you need us anyway?" she panted. The man hadn't let go of her hair since he walked in, "We're just kids."
"You're legacies. Your DNA is fit for HYDRA's secret weapon."
"What are you talking about?" she grunted. "Legacies of what?"
"Your sweet old granny was the sister to one of the world's greatest assassins. One of the world's first super soldiers, and it was shown that it might be a little easier to make weapons when they're younger." He pulled out a needle from his back pocket, "Less resistance."
She snorted, "My granny was born in freaking Brooklyn and died in a car accident, how was she or her brother ever part of some freaking Nazi organization?"
"Whoever said it was by choice?" he laughed. "Or that her death was an accident? Now, get your sister and we're leaving."
"Go to hell." He started to drag the needle over the skin of her neck and I had to watch as everything started to fall into place. Everything started to all make sense. My granny's brother was the Winter Soldier. That's who it had to be, right? Brooklyn, HYDRA, super soldier? James Buchanan Barnes was Becca's big brother. She may have changed her last name, but I have no doubt that's who he was talking about. How was I so stupid as to not figure it out until now?
"We were supposed to wait to start the experiments until later, but I can always make an exception if the patient is being testy. Especially, when she won't give up the location of our other prodigy." He rolled the creepy blue liquid between his fingers and smiled, "There's so many new adjustments that I don't even know what they'll do."
"Do it," I spat, slightly, well extremely pink in the face. "I'll never tell you where she is."
Someone slightly shorter barged into the room, he was another HYDRA agent, but seemingly a lesser rank than the tall man. "Rumlow, sir, the helicopter is on the top deck. We need to evacuate, sir." Rumlow just shot him a nod, so he scurried off on his way.
"Fine." He jabbed the needle into her neck and she finally cried out in pain. "You tested my patience too long. You and your little shit of a sister could be as good as dead for all I care. We'll find someone else." He threw Lucy to the floor as soon as the last drop of the serum drained into her blood and ran out the door leaving the whole situation seemingly pointless as he obviously did not care that he orphaned the two girls. I so badly wanted to reach out and help her as the girl squirmed on the floor clutching her neck. Her veins seemed to glow under her skin and her screams to get more painful the more time that went by, but there was nothing I could do.
The serum had already begun.
After what felt like hours passed, she slowly but surely hiked herself up and stumbled towards the door to closet. "Mia," she called. "You need to go, I can't hold it for much longer." Mia quickly opened the door and looked out at her half dead sister. "Mia - go." And then, when her sister failed to move, a small, petite girl ran and single handedly jumped through the bulletproof window and exploded right outside the office. Saving her little sister but ruining her memory of her.
Steve woke up to screaming.
Not his, not Natasha's, not even the nurses or doctors.
The noise was white hot.
The type that pierces through the veil and feels like needles are stabbed into your eardrums.
The type that brings you to tears because it is so unrecognizable and inhuman that it makes you horrified of where it came from.
The type that makes your hairs stand up on the back of your neck and your breathing go rapid.
The type of noise you would never expect to rip through the vocal cords of a nineteen-year-old girl.
But it was her scream.
He had stayed out in the hallway after Natasha had nodded off again in the room. There was part of him that was on edge of his seat and wanted to leave the hospital the first second he got, and there was part of him that never wanted to leave her side, so the waiting room was a compromise. But as soon as her heard that indescribable noise, he busted through the doors of her room to find Natasha pinned to the wall and Lucy fast asleep other than the pain etched into her features and having her mouth so wide from screaming it looked like her jaw might break off from its hinges. But her eyes were closed, and she was still asleep.
"What the hell happened?" Steve shouted over the girl, not knowing which one to help first. He started to make his way towards Natasha who was almost glued to the wall, but she urged him to stop.
"Don't come any closer," she ordered, trying to peel her face away from the wall. "Some energy exploded out of her, and now I'm pinned to the wall."
Steve looked incredulous, "Is that why she's screaming?"
Natasha shrugged with the little movement in her shoulders she had, "Don't look at me, I have no idea."
Then, when Steve tried to impose the force field that had encircled his teammate, so strong that it felt like he was missing the sight of something, it dropped. The pure energy dissipated into nothing, and Lucy stopped screaming and continued her comatose state. Nat dropped to the floor and Steve fell face forwards, both left wonder what the hell had actually happened.
"You're back," I huffed, still extremely shaken and mildly crying, but overall, just happy to see her face.
She smirked and sashayed her way next to me and sat on the bench. We were sitting in front of my house, well, my old house. It currently had two young tenants living in it who were expecting a baby boy according to Nat. She made sure the home went to someone who could hold up the Cooper Cottage to all its unknown potential. "Did you ever think I'd leave?" she mumbled, partly hurt by my insinuation.
"Well," I drawled. "I wouldn't hold it against you." I was partly glad she didn't relive any of that with me, the guts, the gore, the anger. She still was just a kid, well, I was too but that's beside the point. "So this is it, huh? Is it time to wake up? Did I learn everything I needed to know?"
"Yeah," she sighed. "But I want you to know a few things, and I want there to be no interruptions or no Lucy cracks." I was about to cut her off, but she ignored me. "I really am okay, Lucy. I moved in with Megan, like you told me to, and Ms. Cathy took me in and I go to school in Peachtree City, Georgia. I changed my last name awhile back, but especially since you've been in the news so much lately -"
"Wait - I'm in the news?"
She snorted, "Avenger in a coma and you don't think that the news is gonna notice?"
My expression dropped, "I'm in a coma?" Part of me knew, part of me thought it was just a really twisted dream, and then a tiny part of me wished I was dead and went to heaven. "How long?"
"Over seven days."
I slowly nodded again, winding my finger around my mother's necklace, and tried to focus on what she was saying and not myself. "What'd you change your name to?" I nearly choked out.
"Mia Smith. So if maybe someday you can come see me, forreal, then you look me up, okay?" she smiled, nudging my shoulder. "I know you're okay, and that you're gonna be okay, and now you know the same about me." She stood up from the dusty white bench on the front porch and brushed off her ripped jeans. "I'll see you soon, Cici," she waved and then she was gone.
I followed next and stood slowly, looked at the house one more time, and left too.
I woke up that day.
There was nothing special about it. I woke up, gagging on the breathing tubes they shoved down my throat after my little episode. Natasha ran and got the doctors while Steve tried to convince me to calm down as I choked with the silent tears running down my cheeks. That was how it happened. Utterly humiliating and unspecial. All I did was open my eyes.
That's when the doctors began to file through and check my vitals and explain to me that I was 'lucky to be alive.' I didn't feel lucky, I felt weird. Everything that I learned, everything that I now knew, the burden lifted off my shoulders, and I honestly had no idea what to do with the information. I waited silently for all the doctors to leave, so Natasha and Steve could explain to me the extent of my 'injuries' and for me to fill them in as well.
"The super soldier serum is supposed to be activated by an energy source, and from what you told me, you didn't get that opportunity. Wanda's powers helped fix what Rumlow did back in D.C., ultimately restoring your DNA," Steve explained to me in a monotone voice. I nodded quietly while peeling the threads from my blanket, not wanting to reveal yet that his best friend was my great uncle.
Natasha had been scanning through a stack of papers she had fetched earlier and seemed to be astonished by its contents. "According to Helen Cho, your energy burst was an evolved version of your powers."
"So I'm not Pyro anymore?"
She smirked, "No, you can still fire-voodoo, but the heat that is generated from your core can also harnas energy allowing you to use an invisible force and not be the Burning Man while flying." I gave her a look as if how did she figure all this out in the two hours I've been awake and she seemed to read my mind. "I sent her your blood work earlier to see if she could figure out what was going on."
"Oh."
"So your sister really is alive, huh?"
"Yeah," I grabbed the spoon from the tray next to me and idled at my obscured reflection. "I wonder if she'll even recognize me."
-Peachtree City, Georgia-
"Mia?"
The girl with curly blonde bedhead seemed to tousle in her sheets before finally raising her head to look out the door. "Mm?"
"What's wrong?" the girl whispered as she sat on the comforter with her. "You were talking in your sleep."
Mia reached up and rubbed the tired out of her eyes and yawned, "Just a weird dream."
"What was it about?"
Mia stared at Megan long and hard before the next words passed her lips. "Lucy."
-One week later in Avengers' Tower-
The girl that Natasha trained was a spunky eighteen-year-old with long brunette locks that curled in every which way, but she never seemed to mind. She would throw them up into a ponytail or just leave them spilling crazily over her shoulders. The girl that Nat met at the S.H.I.E.L.D. training base a year or so ago in no way possessed the obsession over her looks as the one she saw now. No, Lucy was never vain, she was beautiful despite her disbelief. Her tanned skin that was sprinkled with delicate freckles made her dazzling emerald eyes shine bright, and her lean figure was what most girls craved at her age. No, she never cared about her looks because she never needed to, and that's the type of mindset that even the Black Widow herself envied.
But when Natasha walked into the once porcelain bathroom that was now stained with various shades of brown hair dye, she was beside herself. Lucille Quinn lay in a heaping mess on the floor with her white tank top streaked with hair coloring and her platinum hair clung to her cheeks by her own tears. The once confident, vibrant girl was almost unrecognizable to her mentor.
"I'm sorry," she sputtered through her heavy breaths, "I'll clean it up, I just -"
Natasha, although momentarily stunned, which is saying something for the agent, quickly regained her composure. "What exactly are you trying to accomplish?" she breathed as she picked up an untarnished washcloth from across the room.
Lucy sighed, guiltily placing her face into the palms of her hands, "I just wanted to be me again."
Natasha turned on the faucet allowing the cool water to soak the fluffy towel. "You're still you, nothing can take that away." When Natasha turned around next, she noticed the teenager was caressing something by her side. After closer examination, she realized it was a photo of her parents, her sister, and the girl that was sitting in front of her except with a darker head of hair.
"I tried everything," she sobbed. "But nothing will even make a dent. Everything I try to dye won't even stick to the freaking hair." She let out a frustrated grunt, "I just wanted to look the way I did when they knew me."
Natasha kneeled next to the girl and ran the towel over her burning cheeks. "But you're not that same girl, you're still you, just not the same one they knew a few years ago."
Lucy unintentionally leaned into the Avenger's touch, "I know," she mumbled. "I just thought after everything, I still always looked the same. Now, I don't even have that."
Natasha shrugged, "Well, you still look the same, just a new hairstyle." She pulled her hand away and leaned against the wall with her spy-in-training. "And eat the same, and act the same, and laugh the same, and sound the same, and smell the same -"
Lucy snorted, "Okay! Okay, I get it."
"You may not be the same, but you're pretty damn close to it." She gently brushed the blonde fringe out of the girl's eyes, "And a head of hair definitely won't be a deciding factor of that." She picked up a stray piece and twirled it between her fingers, "So, it won't dye, huh?" The girl just shook her head, "Wanna see if it'll cut?"
Lucy raised an eyebrow, that for some reason remained the usual dark brown, "You want to cut my hair?"
Nat shrugged, "Hey, if you are already getting a new hairdo might as well go all in." She looked the teenager up and down and smirked, "Besides, all that hair is not very helpful in aerodynamics."
Lucy glanced down at herself noticing that majority of the strands went far past her rib cage, "You sure you know what you're doing?" One look and Lucy knew she shouldn't second guess the woman, "Fine," she caved. Natasha gave a giddy grin before crossing the bathroom and rummaging through the drawers while Lucy reluctantly sat on the edge of the bathtub and awaited her fate.
When Natasha finally found the scissors and enthusiastically snipped away at all of P's hair, the whole getup lasted for well over an hour. There was a snip here, and a cut there, even a trim, well, everywhere. In the end, Cooper no longer looked like the mild mannered girl with a slight temper, but like the hero she had become. Her pelo now was an edgy platinum blonde bob that cut off at her shoulder blades and complimented the angle of her jaw. She looked the part she had been known to play, and it boosted the girl's spirits even if it was in the slightest.
Natasha ran her fingers through the cropped hair and smiled, "You look like a badass."
"Cap doesn't like that sorta language," Lucy quipped, but the slight jab lightened Nat's heart, she had begun to act like her normal self. "But yeah - " she continued, revealing a small smile on her delicate lips, "I do look like a badass."