CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

"Simply let go of the illusion that it could have been any different."

― Jeff Foster

Amelia had gotten far too used to city lights being her only stars at night that she'd forgotten how tremendous it felt to stare up at a sky, black as her own eyes, and see twinkling dots. Some people said that it scared them, how vast the sky seemed at night. Steve once told her that he liked to look up at the night sky and remember that everyone was looking at it too, Bucky, her, they were all seeing the same sky. Amelia preferred Steve's point of view and she somewhat agreed to him. There was something about those little lights in the darkness that made her feel less hopeless.

She'd left the rest of the Avengers at Clint's home, deciding to go for a walk on her own. Before she left she made sure to tell Tony so that no one worried where she'd disappeared to, and though they weren't on talking terms, she didn't want Steve to worry about her sudden disappearance.

There was something she needed to do, something that was long overdue.

It took a few minutes of walking but she eventually found herself on a secluded spot, far enough away from Clint's house so that she couldn't see the lights of his home or hear any noise. Her head remained bent, eyes remaining on the stars, as though she was allowing them to lead her. Once she'd made it to the top of a hill, the only one in sight that would allow her to be even closer to the stars, she sat herself down on the ground.

A nice breeze was parading through the air, kissing her warm skin with coolness and causing blades of grass to caress her skin, as though nature itself was trying to bring her comfort.

Amelia was done crying, she had been the moment she finally realised what the problem between her and Steve was. Maybe it was trivial, and silly, that even whilst facing Ultron her biggest concern was their relationship but it had been over a year and they loved each other, they should have been together. But there was something in the way: herself. Steve had a fear of losing someone and she was constantly making him question whether she was Amelia or AS09, and if she became AS09 again he'd definitely lose her.

Whilst it had caused her immeasurable pain that Steve had basically thrown in her face all of her worst fears, she believed that it was all her on her. She was the one making him think those things, therefore, she was the one who had to fix things.

"Pierce," she called out, eyes falling from the stars momentarily so she could search around herself. He appeared on her left, standing over her and looking down at her with one eyebrow raised. It wasn't surprising to see him shocked, she'd never called on him before. "Sit down, Pierce, we need to have a conversation." Another first. After over a year of seeing Pierce, Amelia had never had a conversation with him, she'd always either ignored him or tried tirelessly to push him away, they'd never just talked.

"On the ground?" Pierce scoffed, "what do you think I am, some kind of animal?" He gestured to the ground with disgust, as though it was a pool of mud and bugs she was asking him to sit in.

She groaned, putting her head in her hands for a moment so she could hide the way she rolled her in eyes in frustration at his behaviour, as though she should have been expecting anything else from the man fixated on making her life a living misery. "Fine," she eventually huffed, "stay standing. But listen to me, please."

It irked her to say 'please' to the man she found to be the most vilest human she'd ever met, but she tried to push her frustration aside because the conversation she was about to have was her only hope of rekindling with Steve.

She inhaled and exhaled deeply, steeling herself. "The reason you're not dead, the reason why you're still haunting me, is because AS09 isn't dead either. She's always still an option and I've been lying to myself all this time. That's why you're still here." It was a theory she'd been working on for a while but one the brunette had rejected many times because it was much easier playing pretend than it was facing her demons, or it had been.

Pierce placed his hands inside his pockets, blinking at the girl for a moment before looking back up to the stars much like she had been earlier. He didn't share the way Amelia felt about the stars, for him they were a constant reminder of just how small and insignificant he was. "It took you long enough to figure it out."

"I need to let you go," she said, gesticulating with her hands as she spoke, "I need to let it all go, I can't ever get revenge for what you did to me because you're already dead, and I can't keep holding on to the past."

"Why?" Pierce asked as he looked down to her, Amelia returning the gaze, the black ink of her eyes meeting the glacial gaze of his own for a second before she looked away.

In front of her there were only fields, like an ocean of grass with the odd tree poking up, acting as an island amongst the green waters. The grass rippled much like water would, the pushing wind creating mock waves as it guided the blades too and fro.

Amelia laughed at her father's question, not a loud guffaw, but a quiet chuckle. "Why? Because I want a life with Steve. I thought I did have a life with him after our year together but that wasn't living, that was just... playing pretend. There was always a boundary we couldn't pass, my past. But I want to be able to call him stupid things like my 'boyfriend' or 'bae', and I want to be able to openly hold his hand in public and hug him whenever I want. I want to be with him in every possible way I can." She didn't feel embarrassed to say those things in front of her father, she was actually quite proud to be able to tell her father about how she wanted an actual relationship with someone. She'd seen couples, killed plenty of them too, but she'd never thought that such a life could possibly be hers and that was because of the man stood beside her. Amelia wanted to shove her and Steve's relationship in his face as much as possible whilst screaming at him: 'See! I can be loved!'

"And you think that's a possibility?" He questioned, his words twisted with a negativity she was far too familiar with. It seemed Pierce's way, to poison his words, he preferred it to actually getting his hands dirty and perhaps that was what made him more dangerous than AS09. Whilst it took a knife for her to kill someone, all it took Pierce was a couple of words.

"I don't know," she responded, voice softer and more airy as she allowed herself to gaze up at the natural lights above her. For a moment, recognising the darkness behind them. When she was younger and first thrown into the pit, she didn't know what the word was for the black that surrounded her and conjured up all her fears, and she didn't know where it came from. Sometimes AS09 thought it came from her, and that word for the darkness was her own name. Learning that it was just because of a lack of light had eased some of her fear, not enough to make the pit any less daunting though. "I'm hoping if I forgive you, then maybe you'll go."

"But can you forgive me? All that torture I did to you, I made you into a monster."

His argument had a small smile play itself across her lips, her hands moved down to the grass so that she could pick at it nervously, "I knew you'd say that," she mused. Not at all giving away that it was one of her biggest concerns, that she'd never be able to forgive him. Though she may not have been able to grow up as a normal child, she still called him 'father', still recognised that he was her parent and was meant to be the one person who took care of her. But he didn't. Instead he hurt her. It was hard to forgive that sort of betrayal.

"Of course you did, I'm in your head," Pierce sighed, body twisting as he looked between his best creation and the terrifying reality above him, "you could fly away from here, you know? Find a Hydra base, get your old life back. A life that had less feelings in it. You'd cry less."

"No, I cried a lot more. I just never let anyone see it." She quickly rebutted, eyebrows scrunching together as memories surged of herself locked in her shower, sobbing. It was the only place she'd be able to do it, if she turned to the wall then the camera wouldn't see her face, and the water would always camouflage her tears. The crying had been one of the harder things to do because whenever she did it AS09 always felt worse, not only did she feel weak, but she'd constantly be hit with the realisation that nobody around her knew how devastated she felt with her life. Amelia shook her head, trying to go back onto her main point and not get lost in the past, "anyway, I need it to stop being an option, that's my point. When the going gets tough you're always there, telling me the option out of it. Trying to convince me to leave Steve."

It had taken her a while to recognise it - which made the ex-assassin feel a tad stupid - but that was the pattern in her ghosts behaviour. Every time she felt panicked or was being put in a situation she wanted to run from, he'd appear and whisper poison into her ear, forcing her to become AS09 again and that's why she could never let her old life go.

"So what, you forgive me and I just go away?" Pierce held his hands out, a mocking smile on his face as he taunted Amelia. She didn't have enough energy to give him a reaction though, perhaps it was because a part of her still tried to not defy him, but she didn't like that idea at all.

Amelia shook her head from side to side, "no, I don't think you'll ever go away fully, it's not like me forgiving you will get rid of all my memories." She finished tearing apart a piece of grass in her hand, dropping each scrap and allowing it to be carried in the wind like dust. Then she turned to face her father, truly looking at him for once, not with defiance in her eyes but rather, understanding, and a semblance of forgiveness.

"You burned me," she said, summarising all the pain and torture and hurt that he'd caused her into three short words, "but you also made me feel, and I'm glad you did, even if at the beginning all it was, was sadness, rage and pain. I'm glad I wasn't just a robot like the Winter Soldier because then I got to feel things for Steve the moment I met him. What you did was wrong, making me want to die, was wrong. But I'm no longer my abuse, I'm no longer what you did to me and I'm no longer my trauma." She was Amelia Stark instead, a girl who lived as though each day would be her last and never grew tired of discovering new and fascinating things. She was making a life for herself despite everything that had happened to her, and whilst she did have Steve to thank for that, she also needed to take a moment to thank herself for not choosing to end her life the moment she was able to do it. Though it had been an option that weighed down on her mind.

Pierce took his hands from his pockets and crossed them in front of his chest, grey suit wrinkling slightly, "Amelia, I'm proud of you." She couldn't help herself as she raised both her eyebrows, quickly concluding that those words weren't Pierce talking but her own mind. "But you're still wrong."

"What?"

"You shouldn't ever have to forgive me, like you said, what I did to you was wrong. I'm not the one who needs forgiving." His words came out with the same authority he'd use when giving her orders, or when he'd lie to try and justify all the killing she did. They were confusing words, disarming words, that had Amelia standing up on her feet.

"Who needs forgiving then?" She scoffed, arguing against her ghosts conclusion. The brunette had gone to the field that night sure that she needed to forgive Pierce so that she could move on from her life, that's what all the movies had shown, people forgiving their horrible parents for what they'd done to them so that they could acheive a happy ending. It had never occured to her that perhaps not all situations were the same. That she didn't need to forgive her abuser for the malice he'd committed, that despite what pop culture might say, it was up to her to decide whether all that pain could really be forgiven.

He had made her want to die. He had hit her, strangled her, thrown words at her like knives, words that imprinted themselves onto her body and never went away, words uglier than all the scars on her body.

No, Amelia decided, he definitely did not deserve her forgiveness. She deserved an apology and more off of him but she was never going to get that, that was what she needed to come to terms with. And it was okay that he'd never apologise, because though she deserved it, Amelia did not need it. She had gotten through every single day of her life without an apology, she had rose again and again from ashes, she was strong. And her kind of strength was infinite. She'd get through many more days without that apology.

The best way for Amelia to get back at her father was to have a life in spite of him. To be with Steve, and her brother, and Natasha, and experience friendship and having a family and love, all the things he'd told her she'd never truly have.

But then, that left only one question, who needed to be forgiven? Amelia and Pierce stared at one another in silence as the brunette tried to understand what Pierce was trying to explain to her. Then the realisation hit her, surprisingly due to the fact that she'd remembered how much of a monster Pierce had been to her. She'd realised that other monsters were much more easier to face than the monster inside of her. Pierce was the other monster in that scenario.

Once Amelia came to the realisation, Pierce began to nod his head, "You say that AS09 is the one that needs to go away, all of her. The life she led, and who she was. But you've forgotten something very important. Amelia Stark may have been the little girl that got kidnapped, but AS09 is who that girl had to become in order to survive. AS09 is the one that took on all the pain, who did all the killing in order to stop that little girl from being tortured. She's the one who endured it all."

What he said had been right, unsurprisingly. Amelia had forgotten that when she first killed, it had felt like she was putting up a shield, someone else standing in her place and doing all the killing. She'd been creating all these issues with Pierce's ghost so that she could ignore the real issue, AS09, the monster she'd had to become in order to survive. It wasn't that they were two seperate people, it was more that Amelia had tried so hard to forget she was once AS09 that she'd never once stopped and tried to forgive herself for all the things AS09 had done. AS09 wasn't a monster or a hero, she was something much more unfair, she was both. Amelia had turned into everyone else and run scared at the horrors of AS09's past, always fearing that AS09 would rise up again. But that wasn't the case, that had never been the case. AS09's job was done, she needed to be put to rest.

Because it was over. And that terrified both Amelia and AS09. The pain, the suffering, the torture, the killing. It was all over and they had a life to live where they could go on silly little dates and hold hands with the person they cared about, they could make pancakes and indulge in junk food, they were free. It shouldn't have been terrifying, and in some ways it wasn't, but it was a big world that they'd never thought existed before.

It was over.

Now that Amelia had finally admitted to herself the real issue, Pierce was gone. The mask she'd been using to hide from her true fears gone, and in its place stood AS09. Not the girl she'd been last year, but the girl she'd been twenty years ago. Much shorter, with a shaved head and wide black eyes that were cold and detached. Her hands were bloody and she had a knife in one of them, probably from her first kill. This was the AS09 when AS09 first came into the world, when Amelia truly became lost.

Though Amelia may have ran away from Clint's child, she didn't run away from this one. She didn't feel the need to because AS09 wasn't a threat anymore. It was time to put her to rest. The brunette slowly approached her younger self, hands shaking and tears beginning to fall from her eyes. She didn't feel weak for crying, weirdly, the tears that fell felt necessary to Amelia.

She crouched down in front of the little girl, not a heartless killer or a monster, but a survivor. "Thank you," she said, reaching out and taking the knife from her hand, "you don't need to fight anymore, it's okay, you can rest now." And then, she embraced the child, she embraced herself in a hug so tight and so warm, giving herself the treatment she'd always deserved. "You're safe."

She felt the small arms wrap around her body and she was hit with a new sensation, it was like the torn up pieces of her heart were coming back together again, beating again, filling her with warmth, with life.

When Amelia opened her eyes, there was no little girl anymore, but there were the stars. Hundreds and millions of stars, all shining down on her. On Amelia Stark.

A/N: Hello! Very nervous about this chapter and what you guys will think of it, I'm trying to leave most of it up to you and whatever you decide it to mean, but obviously I've taken from my experiences and stuff and worked it into this character. Idk.

To JohnnyStormsGirl, it's upsetting that they confessed in such a bad time but they'll get their second chance, if they don't die by the hands of Ultron that is

To Sam0728, I didn't even think it was that sad of a chapter lol, I'm still sorry! I'd say I hope this chapter was better but I'm kinda hoping it'll bring tears to someones eyes just so I'm not alone lol

To LieuDrake, oh my god thank you so much, honestly this meant so much to me thank you

To OfSeashellsandStars, exactly! I was worried I'd made the struggle between becoming Amelia too long and too difficult but such a transition was never going to be simple and easy. As someone trying to move on from a life filled with abuse to becoming my own independant person, it's been hell, I've been homeless, I've had no money, I still don't have a job despite my best efforts and I don't even want to start on my mental health. Life itself is difficult. But Amelia is trying, she's facing her demons, she's moving forward and eventually she'll get there.

To Guest, they've spent a year together and Steve's told her plenty of his war stories and a lot of those include Peggy, she was an important part of his past after all :) And yeah, their reliance on each other comes into play with Civil War

To TheQueenOfGoodbyes, it's always interesting to read other people's point of views on the character. In my mind, she's accepting it all because that's what she always did. It's a thing a lot of people who've been abused have, where they constantly blame themselves. Yeah, if it was a stranger, you can bet your ass Amelia would be all 'hell no' but because it's someone close to her and she see's herself as a monster that has the capability of hurting those close to her, it's what she learnt from the abuse and it's something. Plus, Amelia has made mistakes man. She killed someone knowing full well Steve wouldn't agree with it, and as explained in this chapter, her running away has always been an option and Steve sensed that, and she's withheld way more information from him than he has her. I'm not condoning Steve, he's done some bad shit too Sorry for how long the reply has been!

To BlueBloodsSVUOrder, thank you!

To Unajet, counselling would probably be a good idea but I think we can all agree that most of the Marvel characters need counselling even without Amelia in the universe

To .2018, thank you!