Savage

by awalkerlifeforme

She was everything people feared. She wanted to defend the world but also wanted revenge on those who wrecked hers. The ones who forced her to leave Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. Now she's back and while Steve attempts to get back the woman he's always considered his sister, Bucky hopes to thaw the ice that has formed around her heart. A heart that he had always believed was his.

5. Chapter 5

October 21st, 1941
Alberta, Canada

I was sound asleep. As sound asleep as I could possibly get. The nights here were harsh. Just about as harsh as the days were. I rarely got more than an hour or two of sleep. And that was for the past seven years. I never slept. I never ate. I barely was able to move without a harsh pain shooting through every inch of my body. Everything hurt. Moving hurt. Breathing hurt. Living hurt. I would pray to whatever God was out there to do something. Either get me out of this place or just kill me. I wanted to be put out of my misery.

And my misery continued with my morning wake-up call. A wave of icy cold water fell over my naked form. I had been curled up on the metal floor. I let out a soft cry and drove my head into the floor. My entire body was shaking with the sudden invasion of cold. It wasn't like this place was normally warm. It was always freezing. But I would always hate these mornings. The mornings that Stryker would come in and dump a bucket of ice water on me to wake me up. Mostly because he wanted to see if he could play to my weakness.

"Wake up, Victoria! We have a long day ahead of us," Stryker called to me. He was grinning down at me and I tried to curl in. I wanted to hide as much of myself as possible. He didn't deserve to see me.

At twenty-one I had developed slightly. My chest had come out to play slightly. Not that it ever mattered. Most days I spent in a lose jumpsuit so that I could do everything that Stryker had set aside for me to do that day. I had grown a little too .Not much though. Stryker barely kept me fed and the food that I did get was not exactly that for nourishment. So I mostly starved. Bones were sticking out of me everywhere. I couldn't really tell what else I looked like. I didn't have any mirrors in my room and I rarely got to bathe. Only once a month.

My body was shaking with the cold. I knew that Stryker was waiting to see if I would do it or not. I had to. As my nose began to run and my body began to convulse I knew that he had dropped the temperature further in the room than he normally did. The soft flames began to erupt around my arms and legs. A moment later the flames shot up, completely engulfing my body. Stryker watched, pleased that I had caved. The heat spread through my veins and over my skin. Once everything on me was dried I let the flames die down. My hair was still licking in flames slightly as Stryker took a step forward to me.

Pulling my legs up to try and cover myself, Stryker smirked down at me before leaning in front of me. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to snap his neck or tear his eyes out. But I knew that I couldn't. I had learned my lesson. Stryker tossed down a beige jumpsuit at me and I grabbed it, throwing the jacket over my bare form. I left the pants off, determined not to attempt to stand until Stryker left. He nodded at me to put them on anyways. I weakly tried to stand, almost collapsing a few times. The entire time Stryker was watching me with a smile. Once I had managed to pull the jumpsuit pants on me, completely covering me, I was shoved into the wall by one of the guards.

Letting out a soft grunt, I spread my legs and arms so that they could check me over. They always did. They wanted to make sure that I hadn't managed to make any type of weapon on me. After they had completely looked me over they released me. I stumbled back as they shoved me towards Stryker. He caught me as my head began to spin. I couldn't even remember the last time that I had eaten. Stryker liked to let me starve to see if my powers would be any stronger with the promise of food.

He caught me and grinned down at me. "Come on. I think you've earned a real breakfast," he told me. I had learned not to get excited by promises like this. I knew that he meant that he was just going to show me food and not let me eat it. He would, and he would keep it out of my reach. It was all just one cruel joke.

We were walked out of the room, guards on every side of me. They all had nanite guns in their hands. They held nanite bombs that would detonate if shot into me. It wouldn't kill me but it would hurt like hell. I had learned that a few years ago when I'd tried a very daring escape after William came to check on me. I'd electrocuted him and ran. I made it through the halls, taking down soldier after soldier. But Stryker and his team were faster than I was. They had caught me in a hallway not far from the edge of the building. The men with guns had surrounded me and blasted me full of the nanite bombs.

It had hurt worse than anything else I'd ever felt before. The first of the bombs went into my leg. It completely broke apart my knee and tore it out of the socket. Another had gone into my neck, tearing through my vocal chords and jugular veins. A third had gone straight through my stomach. It had torn through the lining and scrambled my guts like eggs. The last had gone into my chest. It had separated the chambers of my heart. My entire body had been on fire, I couldn't breathe; I'd wanted to die. But after about five minutes I'd been back to normal.

As punishment for my daring escape Stryker had beaten me within an inch of my life before letting me heal myself, only to do it again. And again. And again. It was all as penance for the black scars that I'd left across his chest from the electrocution. I'd been tempted to do it again. But I hadn't. Because I knew, Stryker made it painfully clear, that no matter what I did I was going to be here for the rest of my life. Even if he died I knew that Stryker would never let me walk away from here. Not with everything that I knew. Not with the reasons that I had to come back.

It hadn't been the first of the cruel things that had happened to me in the past seven years. There were the smaller things that I had come to expect every day. The bucket of ice water that was dumped on me every morning, having to sleep without clothes, not even having a mattress to sleep on, having men kick me all day long while I was trying to train, and being practically starved to death. Some things were a little worse. The food that I did eat would have been rejected by a dog. Each day men would laugh and whistle when they saw my body in the morning. Stryker constantly held the fact that he knew about Bucky and Steve over my head. He knew that I wouldn't dare make any moves while they were alive.

Despite the fact that I hadn't seen either one of the boys in the seven years that I had been gone I still loved them. They were my best friends. Every once in a while I would try and slip into their minds. But they were far away. They were hard to find. I did get glimpses of their minds from time to time. Steve was apparently still the shrimp that he had always been. I could sometimes hear other people taunting him. But he still always stood up for himself. And he was still unable to make his way into the military. I knew he wanted to do it. Bucky was also thinking about joining the Army. I was proud of him. He seemed to have the occasional woman at his side. Each time I caught a glimpse of one of them my stomach gave a painful twist. There they were, having their lives, and here I was, wishing that mine would end.

It was mostly because of the few things that Stryker would do to me when I wasn't expecting it. He would do the occasional prank that seriously hurt. More than once he had threatened to take my limbs off. One time, he had. He'd cut off my thumb and watched as it regenerated. I'd screamed the entire time in pain. Regrowing a limb hurt. The day after my escape Stryker had come in with one of the nanite bombs and shot me in the face with it. I had gone blind, both of my eyes turning to mush. My teeth had been shot out and my cheek and jaw had both been broken. I'd cried and refused to leave my room for days. I'd never felt a pain like it before.

Once a month Stryker would take me into one of the chambers and drain the Chronicle from my body. He would leave just enough to keep me alive. For the next week or so I would be extremely weak as my body regenerated the element. I knew that they were using it to advance some type of medicine. They wouldn't tell me what. I knew that it had something to do with the hydro-chamber that Stryker had briefly told me about the first time that I had walked through these halls. I wished that I could go back and scream at myself to turn and run.

Besides the occasional prank or cruel joke my days were rather monotonous. But that didn't mean that they weren't torturous. I would be woken up at just after six in the morning by the bucket of ice cold water. Twice a week I would be taken to eat. The rest of the days I would go straight to training. The guards would stay with me all day and watch as I trained. Sometimes they would help with the demonstrations and other times they would let me work by myself. Sometimes they would hit or shoot me while I worked. It was their favorite game.

Usually Stryker would come in and watch me train. He spent about one day a week watching me. But he would come in and out. About once every other month he would actually watch me all day. He decided what I needed to work more on and what I had perfected. He always thought that I wasn't good enough. It would earn me a beating from my trainers. They would shout at me that I needed to learn more and pay closer attention. They were cruel. All of them. As long as I was still able to stand they thought that I wasn't doing enough.

As for the men that I had met my first day here, I hadn't seen any of them over the last seven years. I wasn't sure why at first. I had thought that they were going to be my trainers. But they were kept on the civilized part of the building. That was the side that Stryker had first shown me. I lived on the side where people were beaten to death every day. We were kept secret from most of the compound. The men that I had been introduced with worked on the away team. They fought in missions to defend the country. They had been told that I had decided that I wanted to leave. More than once I had tried to slip into their minds but they were well trained. I couldn't do it.

My training day was with the guards that liked nothing more than to watch me fail. They thought that it was hysterical watching me fall and nearly kill myself. They also liked to beat me when I didn't do enough. I would start my day with the Atmoskinesis training. The guards were extremely careful with me when I trained there. I would start with Hydrokinesis first. I was better with it but I still wasn't all that great. I could create waves that could probably drown a person but it wasn't like I could cause a tsunami. Aerokinesis would be after that. I had gotten much better than that. I could create swirls and columns of air that could lift my own body weight. I could fly.

It was one of my favorite things to do. I needed some more practice with it. I needed to learn to not be disrupted by other streams of air. It would mess up my flying pattern and cause me to go crashing into the stone floor. Geokinesis would be the next thing that I would train with. I still wasn't great with that. I could shift a small boulder when I was really trying and could move a large one on occasion. That was about it. It usually got me a good beating because I wasn't better with it.

Pyrokinesis would be the last thing that I would work with in that section. It was one of my favorite things to work with. I could erupt my entire body into flames now without even thinking about it. My flames could shoot out of my hands about six to seven feet now. I was getting good with weaponizing the power. I had once been in the middle of a demonstration with a guard for Stryker when I'd accidentally really burned him. The man had given me a punishment of staying under the water for two minutes.

Despite the fact that I had Hydrokinesis it didn't mean that I could keep from drowning. I had tried to move the water out of the way but I wasn't good enough. Especially not without oxygen getting to my brain. At a minute and a half my heart had stopped beating and my lungs had shut down. When the man had pulled me from the water I'd been dead. The Chronicle had restarted my system a few minutes later. I'd been rewarded for surviving the drowning by being forced to go an entire week without food.

After my demonstration with Atmoskinesis we would move to Electrokinesis. Like my ability to warp fire, I had gotten extremely good with my ability to manipulate and create electricity and lightning. I could bring the electric current through the veins in my arm and warp them to the surface. I could throw the shocks as far as I cared. The most I'd been able to do was forty feet. I could throw balls of lightning at targets twenty-five feet away and hit them in the center. I could destroy lighting panels and electrocute a person without thinking about it. On Stryker's order I had been forced to electrocute another mutant a few years ago.

To this day I still wasn't sure if he had lived or not. He'd been drooling and passed out when he'd left the room. I had almost cried. I couldn't believe what I had done to another person. The other mutations that I would work with in the mornings were the smaller and more common ones. I would run on the track until my legs gave out. I had to beat my mile time each time I ran it. If I didn't I would usually get the Achilles tendon in my heel severed while I was sleeping. I would be in excruciating pain until it healed a minute later. Every day I would lift or throw trucks and other large objects to show my improving strength. Visual and audio tests were given to me once a week. I would also do an academic study once a week to see if my brain was still healthy enough to function in every way.

At that point I would be forced to watch as the normal workers in the Weapon X Program ate lunch. I would stand in the box above the rest of them and watch, starving and tired. They would always like to laugh and walk by me with their scraps of food, showing me just how close I was to food and how beaten down I was. They would throw away large chunks of their food just to laugh at the look on my face. It killed me with how much food they wasted. And I wasn't allowed to touch a tiny bit of it.

Once they were done laughing at the fact that I was slowly starving to death over and over again I would be forced back into the training room. The first thing that they would have me do was work on the telepathy. I had gotten much better with it. I could read minds almost without thinking. Some were still harder than the others. And I had also learned to control minds. Under close watch by the guards. I had once tried to order a guard to kill himself. It had almost worked if I hadn't been shot in the stomach before I could make him do it. I was almost glad that I hadn't. When I'd read his mind another day I'd discovered that he had a wife and daughter. I wasn't sure if I hated him or not. He had a family. But how could he have a daughter and yet treat me the way that he did?

We always spent a long time training me on telepathy. Once we would leave that area of the training rooms we would move to where I could make force fields. That was normally where I got the most injuries. We would test my force fields against everything. Sometimes it was easy ones. A man would try to punch the force field or they would shoot it with a smaller handgun. The worst times was when they would use high-powered rifles or attacks with heavier weapons. It got hard to hold up and if I dropped the shield I would get hit instead.

The last thing that I would do for the day was both weapon and physical training. I would learn to shoot guns and throw knives. I was good with both considering my enhanced eyesight. That didn't mean that when I wasn't moving fast enough I wouldn't get shot in the foot by one of the guards. I also did physical training where I would learn to fight in hand-to-hand combat. It was the one area where I could enjoy beating the life out of someone else. It was the one place where the trainers couldn't touch me. They would make up for the injuries that I gave them in there for the things that they would do to me during the next day or night.

Stryker walked us down the hallway that led to his room and shoved me into the office. I tripped over my feet slightly. My entire body was shaking. I wanted food. I needed it. We had to be getting close to the time that I was allowed to eat. He slammed down the reflective photo holder that he had on his desk and I sighed. In the seven years that I had been here I hadn't once seen myself in a mirror. Stryker wouldn't let me see myself. I was sure that it was something that he did for a reason but I couldn't figure out what that reason was. I was sure that I looked absolutely awful, considering all of the people that would laugh and point at me. I must have looked like I belonged in the woods.

He motioned for me to take a seat in one of the plush leather chairs and I did. Stryker had aged slightly over the years. He wasn't going completely grey just yet but he did have a few lines on his face. He was getting older. I wished that I knew what I looked like. He grabbed a glass bottle of amber liquid and began to pour it in a small glass. "I know what you're thinking, Victoria. I am a grifter. But see? I'm not. And I'm going to prove it to you by treating you the way that you deserve. Come on. You know you want some. Giggle Juice, good for the soul," he told me with a grin.

The last thing that I wanted was to share anything that he was drinking but I knew that it wasn't a question. So I took the glass from his outstretched hands. I knew that we were still in the days of prohibition, or at least I thought that we were, but I didn't care. So I took it and tilted the drink back. I had not been expecting the harsh taste. I'd taken a rather large mouthful and I coughed at the sudden burn, spitting it back out and putting the glass down. Stryker laughed and threw me a dirty rag.

"Look what you've done. You made a mess. Clean it up," he told me. I grabbed the rag and nodded at him, wiping over the wooden desk and cleaning off the spilled alcohol. My heart was thumping loudly in my chest. So loud that I was sure that he could hear it. My heart was beating at eighty-two beats per minute. I had to slow it down.

We sat together in silence after I had cleaned off the spilled drink. Stryker was leaning back in his chair, watching me. I stared down at my lap, knowing that it was a challenge. "How are you, Victoria? Been having a ring-a-ding-ding time?" He teased.

"I've been learning to hone my powers. It's been a blessing. Thank you," I told him softly. I had learned not to speak out against Stryker. It would earn me some form of punishment. He grinned at me and leaned forward in the chair. Today was going to be one of the days that he tried to bait me to see if he could get me to snap. It used to be harder. It was easier now.

He held out a small granola bar and I stared at it hungrily. I needed that. And Stryker knew that I did. "Come on, Victoria. Please tell me what you really think of this place," he told me, motioning around us.

My heart was still thumping in my chest. Ninety-six beats per minute. Too fast. Breathe... Seventy-one beats per minute. Breathe... Fifty-nine beats per minute. Better. "This place is quite something. It's tough. It's hard to live here. But I know that you are helping me. You're making me stronger. You're showing me the way that the rest of the world will treat me. Like I'm the monster that they say that I am. It's the way that I deserve to be treated. I have to learn how to hone my powers and learn my place," I told him automatically.

He grinned at me, satisfied with the answer that I had given him. It was the answer that I had learned placated him over the years. He liked knowing that he had broken me. "Good girl." Stryker tossed me the granola bar and I ate it quickly, half-choking it down. Saliva began to run down my face at the speed that I was eating it and I made sure to lick my hands clean, despite how disgustingly dirty they were from my nights on the floor. Stryker had watched me with a pleased grin the entire time. "Are you full now?" He asked me.

No. I was still starving and my stomach proved that by giving a soft rumble. Stryker must have heard it as he smirked. "Yes, William. Thank you," I told him softly. I was dying for another granola bar, or just a glass of water, anything.

He nodded and leaned back in his chair, kicking his feet up on the desk. "Today is going to be a training day. Tomorrow I'm giving you the day off." My eyebrows raised. He never gave me the day off. "We're going to be testing something. You aren't the only person to be going through it. But you are going to be the first," he told me with a devious grin.

"Aren't I lucky?" I snarled before I could stop myself. Every once in a while I let a comment like that fly and it never went over well for me. A soft blush filled my face as I turned back to Stryker. He was watching me through narrowed eyes.

He stood and walked to the front of the desk near where I was sitting. "What was that?" Stryker asked me. I shook my head, unable to find it in myself to actually say the words. He nodded at me with a grin. "Good. That's what I thought. Now why don't you go downstairs and head to the training rooms? I think it's about time for you to go to your trainers," he told me.

It sounded like it was suggestion but I knew that it was an order. "Yes sir," I told him before turning to leave. Stryker watched me leave and I could feel him lean back in his chair. Before I got too far I fell into his mind. He'd become much easier to read over the years. She'll die here. And I'll watch her go. Slow and painful. My hands shook and I felt the sparks on my fingertips as I walked through the halls.

Coming to stand in the first of the training rooms I was greeted with an empty room. I was almost grateful. I was terrified of my trainer for the Atmoskinesis. He was cruel. His name was Jefferson and he was well into his forties. Every time that he saw me I knew that he wanted to kill me. He hated me. He thought that I was unnatural. Of course most of the men that worked with me thought that I was unnatural. I was glad that he wasn't here. Just a moment alone that I wasn't trapped in that black hole that I called a room was a blessing. It was the highlight of my day. I couldn't even bathe without someone watching over. And I only got to bathe once every six months. It was disgusting.

The room that I was standing in was relatively simple. It was mostly just steel walls that were almost immovable and indestructible. We had separate rooms for me to go into to practice the Pyrokinesis. It was a fire-proof chamber that prevented me from melting the room. The walls were a deep grey and somewhat charred. We had quickly learned that I couldn't use Pyrokinesis in this room. I had nearly melted the walls. Somewhat that had been my fault. I'd been forced to help break down the walls and rebuild them; they hadn't given me food until I'd complied.

Taking the peace that I had for now I sat in the middle of the floor with my eyes closed. I was only left in peace for one minute and thirty-eight seconds before the metal door opened and slid shut with a loud clank. The deadbolt was thrown a moment later. I stayed in the middle of the floor with my eyes closed. The boots were stomping on the floor gently but I could hear them like thundering echoes in my mind. How about this? Kid ain't doing work. Might as well give her a good wake-up call.

I waited until Jefferson was at my side. He was holding a metal pipe, just over three feet long. I could feel the slightest change in the air in the room as he raised it. When he brought the pipe down to crack it over my head I turned back and grabbed it. Jefferson was staring at me with wide eyes as I grabbed the pipe tight in my hands and yanked it out of his grip. I threw it across the room, listening as it clattered against the far wall.

Jefferson was smirking at me. "Not a bad toss, kid. Come here," he said, motioning to the center of the room. I walked with him. He glanced up at the one-way mirror that we had security guards standing behind. We couldn't see them but they could see us. Jefferson turned to me briefly. "We are doing practical training today. One foot of water!" He called.

He was wearing water-proof boots, as were all of the other guards in the room. It made it so that they couldn't fall. The drain on the floor of the room closed and I watched as the vents on the side of the room began to pour water. My bare feet were hit by the icy water and I shivered, hating the feel of the cold water. The water must have been only around fifty degrees. The bottom of my torn fabric pants were quickly soaked as well. The water was just below my knees when it stopped and the vents were sealed once more.

My hands were twitching with anticipation to show Jefferson whatever version of my skill he wanted to see today. "Bring him forward!" He called to the other security guards that were watching, making sure that I didn't take it too hard on Jefferson.

They stepped aside to reveal a small boy. He couldn't have been much older than sixteen. He actually looked closer to maybe fifteen or fourteen. He was definitely a mutant. He had bright purple skin and seemed to be shriveling up at the cold water. Wherever he was from, he clearly wasn't used to this weather. I didn't blame him. It was horrible. He was wearing the same type of jumpsuit that I was wearing and I watched as the guards threw him to the ground. He splashed roughly in the water and my fingers twitched at the sight. I wanted to go and help him but I knew that I couldn't. Not without getting myself some type of punishment.

The boy stood upright, now completely drenched. His previously blue eyes had turned nearly white. He was cold. It was almost like he was some type of amphibious mutant. "What d-do y-y-you w-want f-fr-from m-me?" He asked the guards slowly. His teeth were chattering and he was curled in on himself from the cold water that was soaking his bones.

Jefferson took a step backwards and smiled at the boy. "I want you to die." My heart sank into my stomach. I didn't need to be a telepath to know what was coming next. "Victoria. Show me what you've learned. Kill him. Drown him," Jefferson sneered. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything. He was a kid. He was scared. He didn't deserve to die. Tears were brimming in his eyes. "What the hell did I just say? Do it! You think that James and Steven still live in that little apartment complex? Do you want me to find out?" He asked me with a sneer.

For once I felt my backbone straighten rather than cave in. He would not kill Steve or Bucky. Not on my watch. And damn what they did to me. I was not going to kill this kid. So I stepped in between him and my trainer. "Jefferson, he is a kid. I'm not going to kill him. Anything else. You can try to drown me again. I know that you like watching that. Just let him go. He hasn't done anything wrong. Kid, are you alright?" I asked him.

He never got the chance to answer. Jefferson stepped in front of us and raised his gun at me. More appropriately, my forehead. "Do. It. Now," he seethed. I stared at him, not moving from my spot in front of the kid.

Jefferson took the sign of rebellion about as well as I had expected he would. He pulled the trigger on the gun and my mind went blank. I fell backwards but never felt the cold water. Not until a few seconds later when the bullet had been kicked out of my head and sank to the bottom of the steel room and the wound had closed itself off. My head was throbbing softly in pain as I brought myself to stand up. Like the kid, I was now completely soaked. The water had become slightly green-tinged from the Chronicle that had escaped my head when the bullet had gone in. When I stood a quick spell of dizziness hit me before I straightened up.

The kid was looking at me like I had grown another head. Sort of true. Jefferson stormed up to me and grabbed me by the collar, shoving me back into the steel wall. A moment later he shoved me down to the water, holding me under. I could just barely hear him through the water. "You listen to me! Kill him," Jefferson ordered.

He let me up and I barely managed to stand with all of the water weighing me down. The one granola bar wasn't enough for me to have to be dealing with this. I shook my head at Jefferson, who in turn raised the gun and shot at my knee. The bones crunched together and broke apart and I dropped down onto my uninjured knee. I cried out in pain and whimpered as the bones began to seal together once more. Jefferson was still giving me a challenging glare. I stood upright and glared back at him. I will not kill him. This time Jefferson shot at my chest. My heart went into cardiac arrest and I dropped onto my hands and knees, groaning in pain and gasping for breath. It took me just under a minute to regenerate my heart and kick the bullet out of my chest.

Once more Jefferson gave me a challenging glare and once more I matched him. Chronicle was staining the beige jumpsuit that I was wearing and slowly filling the water. I prayed that one of them had an open wound. After a few moments I stood upright once more and waited. The kid was staring at me with a grateful smile. "You'll regret that," Jefferson told me.

There was nothing that they could do to me that they hadn't done before. That was until I heard his thoughts. I'll do it. "No!" I shouted, but I was too late. The bullet shot from the pistol and I watched as it flew into the kid's head. He dropped to the water and I waited an agonizing three and a half minutes for the kid to regenerate. But he never did. It wasn't one of his mutations. He merely floated in the water as a corpse. Jefferson motioned for his men to grab the body and I watched with a heavy heart as they brought his body into the corner of the room.

Jefferson waded through the water and walked over to me. He gave me a sharp grin as he walked by me. "Clean the blood from the water. You're free to go afterwards," he told me. I nodded dumbly.

Waving my hands over the bloody water I tried to remember that it wasn't my fault. I hadn't killed him. And maybe it was better that they had killed me. He would never have to know the torture that I had known, living here. It was horrible. Sometimes I begged for death in my dreams. Maybe it was the best that he had died. And a bullet to the brain had to be less painful than drowning him, which was what Jefferson had wanted me to do. I couldn't let this weigh on me. Not with everything else that I couldn't stop thinking about. The pain that I went through every day, the fact that I might never get out again, and the loss of both Bucky and Steve.

More than anything I missed my friends. I hated that they thought that I had left without telling them. I hadn't. I wanted to scream to the Heaven's and tell them that I hadn't left them. That I had been forced to stay here. I had always intended to get back to them. My hands went in an upwards motion and I swept the blood from the water. It came up in a bubble of blood with a tiny bit of water and I floated it over to where Jefferson was standing. I was fighting back tears at the thought that they were slaughtering mutants all over the world. The only reason that I was still alive was because of the Chronicle that was in my veins. They needed to know how to harness it.

Jefferson held out a bucket and I let the blood drop in. A few droplets came up to splash on my jumpsuit. He grabbed the bucket and placed it behind his back. "Leave. Go to your next trainer," he snarled at me. I didn't bother saying anything. I just nodded.

The water began to drain from the room and I waited for the minute that it took for the room to drain. Once it had Jefferson left the room, snapping at the guards to take the body of the young mutant with them. I dropped to the somewhat damp ground and sighed deeply into my hands. The door closed behind them and I heard the deadbolt throw. I'd never really seen a man die in front of me. Especially not a kid. It wasn't me that had done it but it still felt like it was my fault. Tears were brimming on the edge of my eyes but I sniffled and shook my head. They were not going to see me like this. I had to be strong. I had to be. Because I had to get out of here. It wasn't an option anymore.

Mere minutes after Jefferson and his men had walked out of the room the door was opened once more. It was another one of my least favorite trainers. It was a man very similar to Jefferson. His name was James. He was a slightly younger man, probably in his early thirties. He enjoyed watching me hurt myself but to his credit he rarely used firearms to hurt me. Instead he did things to make me hurt myself. He was holding out a file as he walked into the room. He motioned for the guards to close the door behind us and they nodded, doing so.

The deadbolt on the door was thrown once more and I rose to my feet. James stared at me for a moment and nodded, going back to his clipboard. "You know what to do. Get to it," he snapped at me. I would rather hear the harsh orders than have him beat me or tease me like Jefferson did so I nodded and walked into the corner of the room.

One of the guards stood in the corner of the room with me. I conjured the strong winds and willed them to whip around my legs. The small tornado began to spin up around me and I felt my legs lift off of the ground. I shot up with a boost of air from my hands and shot to the ceiling. The training room that I used for the Atmoskinesis was well over seven stories tall. I flew up to the top and held where I was. The tornado fell from around my hips and I instead knelt on my knees, wind columns whipping underneath my knees. It was able to keep me upright near the ceiling. I let a small smile cross over my face. This was the one time of training that I felt genuinely good.

It felt like when I was up here I didn't have to think about the rest of the world. I was free. I didn't have men trying to cut me open and use me for their experiments. It felt like I was a bird. It felt like I could fly away and go see Steve and Bucky. I wished that they could see this. I could take them with me and show them what it was like to really fly. I could scare the hell out of them. Steve hated heights. It would be hysterical. Bucky was more adventurous. But I would love to see the look on his face if I dropped him and went to go catch him before he splattered against the ground.

It would be payback for all of the times when we were younger that he would give me a wake-up call in the mornings. Of course I would never complain about the way that I was woken up again after the way that Stryker and his men woke me up. My happy thoughts of Bucky and Steve were interrupted when a sharp pain shot through my ankle. My focus dropped, and with it, my air columns. I went plummeting to the ground and before I could bring up another column of wind to stop myself I slammed into the steel ground with my arm out.

On impact I felt the bones in my wrist shatter and the same with the bones in my forearm. Two comminuted fractures in the left ulna. Fracture of the T7 thoracic vertebrae. Partial paralysis. My entire body gave a soft shutter as the Chronicle began to seep its way through my bones, rearranging the T7 vertebrae and sealing the fractures in my forearm. I'd landed in an awkward sprawl, which had resulted in the fractures. My spine straightened itself out and I looked down to my ankle to see a bullet wound closing up. The bullet itself was laying a few inches to the right, Chronicle covering the metal surface.

James was standing over me with a cruel grin. So much for not using firearms. My hands shook slightly as I came back to a stand. Every time I had to regrow a bone or pop it back into place I felt weaker. Like it might pop back out at the slightest movement. "No daydreaming. Back to it," James snarled at me. I rolled my eyes but conjured the wind once more.

An air column lifted me up and I rose to the top corner of the room where a few goalpost type circles were laid out. This was the one 'game' that the workers would let me play. They typically threw rocks or something of the sort up at me and the challenge was that I could only use wind columns to blast the rocks away. It was actually reasonably fun. That was until I was clocked in the face with a larger rock or we decided to do time tests. Those were a whole other set of problems.

James motioned for men with slingshots to stand at intervals around the room. Some were rather close to me. Others were on the other side of the training room. James held a whistle dangling limply in his mouth and shouted for me to get into position. My hands had small streams of air blowing around them as the whistle was blown. A man right underneath me threw the rock straight up at me. A wind column downwards sent it careening back through the steel floor. Another man shot one towards the rightmost goal. I sent out a small stream that blew the rock slightly off course, just enough to send it into the wall. A third and fourth rock were sent at the same time. I was able to send an air column to block the third rock from its target. For the fourth rock I sent myself forward with an air stream and grabbed it just before it hit the target. My hands were cut up from the rock and I hissed in pain as I dropped it.

A fifth rock was sent towards my head after that. I raised my right arm and threw it back outwards, sending the rock flying towards the other wall. It hit and stuck. Three rocks were then sent at the same time. You don't have enough time to block all three separately. In a sudden desperation I began to create a small stream of wind, circling it around myself. I waited until the rocks were within a foot of me to send the blast of air outwards. It flew out and the rocks all began to fly back against the wall. The stream was so powerful, more than I had ever managed, that a few of the guards were blown off of their feet. James managed to steady himself at the last moment.

He motioned me downwards and I did so. I dropped with my stream of air until I was about a story and a half off of the ground. Once I knew that I wouldn't seriously hurt myself I let the air columns drop to the ground and I dropped. My feet hit the ground first and I tucked into a roll, bouncing back up immediately after. James was standing over me and watching with a deep glare. I had a bad feeling that my stunt with the air blast was going to cost me dearly. Especially since he had almost fallen.

"Move out!" James shouted to his men. They all did and I watched as the targets began to sink back into the walls. Somehow I had gotten away without any more trouble. I let out a deep breath.

The door was slammed shut behind James and I sat in silence. The next trainer was the one that I looked forward to the most. He was by no means a nice man but he was better than most of the others that I had to deal with. He never said anything to me. Not since I had learned what he wanted me to do. He never hit me or shot me or laughed at me. He just watched me. From time to time he would give me a pointer or shout at me to move faster. But overall he was a halfway decent man. He was better than James of Jefferson. His name was Allan.

My feet were curled underneath me as I counted and waited for Allan to make his way into the room. Forty-one minutes and nineteen seconds. That was how long passed before Allan walked into the room. He motioned for me to stand and I did so. He cracked his knuckles and motioned for me to stand in the center of the room. I nodded and watched as a piece of the floor separated. From the opening in the floor a medium-sized boulder rose up. The doors shut when it had seated itself in the center of the room.

I groaned and took a step forward. I could never move boulders this big. I was absolutely pathetic with Geokinesis. My hands bundled together as I faced the rock, willing it to move. I tried everything. I tried being happy, I tried being angry, I tried being sad, I tried getting excited, and I tried being emotionless. The farthest that I got the boulder to move was about two inches. And that had taken me well over thirty seconds just to make it budge. My head was pounding and sweat was trailing down my face. It took a lot of effort.

Nothing that I was trying was working. I was convinced that I would never be able to move the damn thing. But I remembered something that Allan had once told me. Think of yourself as light as a feather, like when you fly. Imagine that the boulder is the same way. The only time I could remember myself feeling as light as a feather was when I was with Steve and Bucky. So I closed my eyes and remembered.

Bucky and Steve followed closely behind me. Tears were streaming down my face as I tripped over a few of the broken parts of the sidewalk that led back to our homes. The bottom of my school skirt was torn slightly. Johnathan and his friends had spent years making fun of me. I was twelve. I was used to it. But today they had taken it too far. Johnathan had tripped me while I was walking into the cafeteria, making me spill my lunch over myself. The water had spilled all over my white shirt, making it more than a little see-through.

Wet sock. Gadabout. Each one was worse than the last. I had run out of the lunchroom just in time to not let them see my tears. I was sure that Mrs. Rogers would get a letter later about how I had left school before the end of the day. I couldn't bring myself to care. "Buck, give her some time," I could hear Steve arguing in the background.

"No!" He shouted at Steve before running up to where I stood. He caught me around the wrist and I yanked away. "Vika, come on. Stop. Talk to us," Bucky pleaded with me. I ignored him and continued walking. "Vika, please."

My head whipped back to where Bucky stood. "Why? I'm a freak, Bucky! I always will be. They'll never let me join in with them. I'll never be one of them. I'm not normal. I've got yellow eyes! Who the hell has yellow eyes? No one. Just me. My parents didn't want me because I was a freak and they don't want to talk to me because I'm a freak."

Bucky walked up to me and grabbed my hand. "Who gives a rat's ass what they think? You're not a freak, Vika. You're a cool cat. We want you. I want you. That's all that matters. I love you, Vika." I stared at Bucky sadly. He would never love me. No one would. "Come on, say it back," he goaded.

Steve had now walked up to us and smiled at Bucky, poking me in the side of the face and tickling my sides. I laughed and shoved Bucky away from me. "I love you too, Buck. And Steve. I love you both.

"We love you, Vic. Always," Steve told me. Both boys brought me into a hug and I laughed into their chests.

Later that night I was curled up on Bucky's couch. Steve wasn't feeling well, as per usual, so he had gone to bed early. Bucky's family was out shopping. One of his least favorite hobbies. So I had decided to stay in with Bucky for a while. Steve's parents were already asleep so they couldn't yell at me to come home. My head was curled up in his lap, which I knew was highly inappropriate, but I couldn't bring myself to care. "Bucky?" I called up to him. He hummed a response. "Promise me you'll never leave me."

He looked down at me, slightly surprised at my words. "Never," he promised. I let my mind briefly slip into his. Never, Vika. I love you.

"Victoria. Open your eyes." I hadn't thought about that memory in so long. It almost felt like a distant dream now. My eyes sprung open and I saw what Allan was telling me to open my eyes for. There, right in front of me, was the boulder. The three hundred pound boulder was floating in front of me, about two feet off of the ground. I had never managed to lift a boulder that size.

A tiny bit of pride bubbled up in my chest but at the loss of the memory of Bucky and Steve it went plummeting to the ground. It hit the ground with a loud bang and a small dent formed in the metal floor. Allan gave me a small nod and whistled for the floor to open. Guns were trained on me to make sure that I didn't attempt to escape. I watched as the boulder was brought back under the ground and I sighed. There went my only chance of escape. But I knew that I had to get out of here. I would get out of here. Something had sparked in me. Something had sparked in the back of my mind that forced my feet into action. No more lying down and taking it like a dead dog.

Allan nodded at me as he turned to leave and I turned with him. I knew what he was telling me to do. He was telling me that it was time for me to leave the room. Pyrokinesis would be next. But I couldn't go in this room. We had tried it once. There were still scorch marks all over the walls from a few accidental misfires. I had nearly paid for those with my life. A few of the guards stood on each side of me, all with nanite bombs loaded into their guns. Two were in front of me, three on each side, and four behind me.

It was to make sure that I was outgunned. I knew that if I tried hard enough I could kill them all. But there would always be more. I had tried escaping more than once. It never worked. If I wanted to get out of here I would need another person. The prisoners were always kept apart and I really didn't know where anyone else was kept. Right now was not the right chance for me to escape. There would be a time. But this wasn't it. I just had to bide my time. Obey by their rules and wait. If this place had taught me one thing it was patience.

The guards stopped in front of the room that I always used and I nodded, waiting for the door to open. It did and I walked in. There were already two guards, both wearing fire-retardant suits. Since I had accidentally burned a few guards they always wore these suits. The door slammed shut behind me and I looked around myself. The room was very similar to the one that I trained in the rest of the time.

The main difference was the walls. Instead of being a dark grey steel, they were black. Fire-retardant paint was coating the walls. There were four layers on each wall. Six on the back wall, since that was where most of the fireballs went. The floor was the same type of paint but it only had one layer on it. There were targets all along the back wall. Each one was singed. The entire wall had singe marks around it. There were lines on the floor back where I was standing. Each one was five feet apart. The back one near where I was standing was seventy-five feet away from the targets.

Markham, the man that watched over the Pyrokinesis lessons, walked into the room. He rarely actually said anything to me. I had a feeling that he was afraid that I would light him on fire. After all, this was the one room that I was allowed to use it. I would be shot with the nanite bombs if I used it anywhere else. Markham nodded at the thirty foot marker and I walked up to it, facing the targets. My hands were shaking and I could have sworn that the targets were farther away today than they normally were.

The first thing that he wanted to see was the same thing that he always wanted to see. He wanted to make sure that I could still manage to control turning the power on and off. It could become dangerous if I couldn't. "On!" He shouted.

The flames filled the veins in my arms. Underneath my skin was a gentle yellow glow. It filled through my veins before beginning to spark out of my fingers. I felt the flames seep from the inside of my veins to the underside of my skin. The flames began to seep through the skin in my arms before erupting over the surface. The warmth from the flames felt like nothing more than a small tickle as they spread over my stomach, back, and legs. The flames covered my face and highlighted my hair. It felt like I was looking through an orange screen as I saw the flames that had once been my hair whip back and forth. It was the one time that I felt clean.

It was also the only time that I felt powerful. I began to levitate off of the ground a few inches, an effect from the absence of oxygen and mass, as the flames whipped softly around my body. I wished that there was a mirror. I wanted to see myself. There was a beauty in the dangerous force of fire. "Off!" Markham shouted over the roar of the flames.

Bringing them down was much easier than starting them. With the snap of my arms the flames faded and I dropped back to the ground. My body was unharmed. There was no evidence that I had just been on fire. Markham nodded and shoved me forward. My feet tripped over each other and I stared at him, waiting for his instructions. "Flame whips. Now," he growled at me.

Nodding once more I walked over to the far corner of the room where a dummy was set up. It was a new one every day. They were always destroyed. I stood back about ten feet from the dummy and crossed my arms over each other. The flames shot up with a loud roar. They were rising about a foot off of my arms, licking at the corner of my neck. With a snap of my arms downward, streams, almost like whips, of flames erupted from the end of my hands. I turned towards the dummy and flung my right arm outward. The flame soared across the chest of the dummy, singing it. The entire chest was blackened. With another flick of my left arm the flame shot out across the neck of the dummy, decapitating it.

The head rolled off of the dummy but for good measure I dropped onto my knees, swinging both arms outward. Two flames shot out, one from each hand, and severed the legs of the dummy at the knee. The torso and thighs of the dummy fell to the ground as the shins remained standing on the ground. The flames came back to my arms, still roaring over any other noise in the room. A moment later I let them sink back to my hands. They were the only flames left. The seemed almost gentle compared to the flame whips from before.

Markham motioned me back to the thirty foot line and I stood there, aiming for the center target. There were five lined up. The flames balled in my hands and I formed a small fireball. I waited a moment before stepping backwards and throwing the fireball. It hit the farthest right target. It blew off the left corner. I groaned at myself. My aim was not that fantastic. One of the guards snorted and I huffed, moving back to the forty foot line. The flames balled in my hands once more and I focused. I felt it buzzing with energy before stepping back once more and throwing. It hit the next target over. But just barely. It skimmed over the top, destroying the top corner of the target.

This time two guards laughed. Once more I let out a soft groan as I stepped back to the fifty foot line and aimed for the center target. The flame balled in my hands, licking over the edges of my fingers. It was dying for me to throw it. I took a step back and gave a false throw to the center. It would hit. It had to. I threw for real the second time and watched as the ball of fire dropped to the ground, exploding before hitting the target. Even Markham couldn't help but laugh that time. He motioned back to the sixty foot line where he was now standing and I took it, bringing the flames roaring over the middle of my forearm. Without aiming I threw it to the next target. I wasn't even close. I'd been so unfocused that it had gone straight into the far wall and exploded. The sparks had hit the guards.

It earned me a bullet in the back of the knee. I dropped to the ground in searing pain with my hands gripping desperately at the painted steel. The pain was overbearing. My eyes brimmed with tears. I love you, Vika. We love you, Vic. Always. Steve and Bucky's words in mind I stood, shaking the bullet from my knee. It dropped out and I stepped back to the seventy foot line, just one line off from the farthest away from the targets. I knew that the guards were laughing at me. They thought that I was going to miss it.

But I wasn't. Not this time. I let my eyes slip closed for a moment as I took in a breath. The flames erupted over my hands and I bunched them up softly, letting the flames begin to vibrate from the built-up energy. I imagined Bucky and Steve behind me, both cheering me on. I took a step back and looked down at the target. I let the formula for the arch of the flames develop in my mind before placing my arm over my head. With one more deep breath I raised my arm and threw the flame as hard as I could to the farthest target on the left.

Somehow it had hit the center. The first flame that I had thrown from over twenty feet away that actually hit the center. It hit the center of the target and I watched as the flames exploded. The target shattered into a million pieces, each one still on fire. Markham was staring at me like somehow I had done something wrong. Not like I had just done exactly what he had wanted me to do. He walked up to me and I waited for the berating to begin. I prepared myself to get shot in the stomach or heart, maybe even in the head.

But he just stared at me and nodded. "Keep practicing. Only one hit is pathetic. Get out," he snarled at me. I walked away without another word. It was better than having to pick bullets out of myself.

The guards that had been waiting outside all stood at attention as I walked out. They all motioned to me to begin walking and I followed, my legs becoming shaky now that the excitement of hitting the target had died down. I still couldn't believe that I had. It had only taken the thought of Steve and Bucky. As I walked back into the steel room that I normally trained in my legs began to give out. I needed to eat something. That granola bar had been the first thing that I'd eaten in well over a week.

We walked back into the room and I was shoved in. My legs gave out from under me and I collapsed, smacking my chin roughly on the ground. I groaned in pain and rolled over onto my back, unable to motivate myself to stand up once more. That was until I felt something had come down on my back. T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5 vertebrae out of place. Sixth and seventh true ribs cracked. Complete paralysis. My entire body was still as the pain began to spread through my entire body. Just because someone was paralyzed didn't mean that they were immune to pain. My back was twinging as the vertebrae began to pop back into place, rearranging my spinal column and correcting the paralysis.

Once the vertebrae were back into place I weakly stood. My knee collapsed once or twice before I was able to face a guard with a mask on. He was carrying something akin to a battering ram. He had brought it down on my back. It had dislocated the vertebrae and cracked my ribs. The man who watched over me as I demonstrated my Electrokinesis was standing over me. Everett was well over a foot taller than me and loved to watch me hurt myself. I glared at him but made my way to stand away from him. I had learned enough to not interfere with his plans.

He walked over to me and towered over me. My feet were shaking slightly as I shuffled them together. "Do you have something to say to me?" He asked me. I knew that he was baiting me so I shook my head. "Good. Get to work!" He shouted.

Tearing away on my heels I walked over to the targets first. Like in the fire room, they were sitting on the other end of the room. The lightning was much more unpredictable than the fire. I stood with my legs apart leaned down slightly, bending my knees. The electricity began to run through my arms and I stomped down roughly on my left foot. Just like that the electrical currents shot through my arms and erupted over the surface of my arms. They were crackling and jumping off of my arms slightly. It was loud, sounding almost like a train coming into a station.

The energy was dancing over my arms and hands as I gathered a ball of the current into my hands. One after another I threw them at the targets. Each one hit the center, blackening the target until they crumbled to dust. Not one missed. As the targets all crumbled to dust I let the currents return to my arm and I faced the walls. From my arms I shot electrical currents out, watching as they danced across the air. It was almost painful when they hit the wall. The energy was so harsh that after a moment I could no longer hold it. I was blown off of my feet and thrown back against the far wall. I hit and dropped weakly to the ground, where I crumpled. I couldn't convince myself to stand again.

For well over a minute I laid there and tried to convince myself to stand once more. "What are you doing down on the ground? Get up. Do your damn job!" Everett shouted at me.

He stepped down on my ankle and I cried out in pain. He didn't even give me a moment for the bones to set back in place. He merely grabbed me by the hair and lifted me up. He tossed me against the wall and shouted in my face once more. Limping over weakly to the center of the room I stood down on my ankle, feeling it shaking. I was going to fall in a second.

No. I wasn't. I'm strong. I can do this. My screams didn't register until I was already doing it. I raised my arms over my head and forced the electrical currents up harder than I ever had. They were crackling to the point where I thought that it might actually fry me. With an ear-splitting scream I brought my arms over my head and sent the shocks over me. They hit the lights on the roof and I watched as they all blew out, one after the other. The shocks flew down the walls over the ground before fizzling out. The glass of the broken lights fell to the ground and I watched as they cut a few of the guards. They shouted and raised their weapons at me. Oh good.

To my complete surprise, Everett held his hand up to stop them. "Not bad. Perhaps in the future you might actually be good. Get out of here." My jaws tightened as I stared up at him. "Unless you want to say something else," he challenged with a bright grin.

"No sir," I said softly.

"I didn't think so. Now leave," he barked at me. I nodded and walked away from him on weak legs. I genuinely thought that I might fall as I walked back through the halls to the real training room. The actual members of Weapon X used the training room all the time but I only used it when no one else was around. Stryker couldn't have me being seen.

So I could only go in when everyone else was busy. When they were either in class or a meeting or something of the sort. I walked into the room and let the doors shut behind me. The guards that watched over this lesson were already in here. This was the longest lesson that I went through. After this I would head to lunch. But most of the time I would be forced to watch while everyone else ate. Once or twice a week Stryker might be kind enough to let me have a quarter of a can of dog food. They had animals here in the Weapon X Program. I got their scraps on the rare occasions that I was allowed to eat. It was mostly so that the other guards could have a laugh.

The guards took a step back and stood along the walls. We were all waiting for my trainers to come in. They really didn't have names. Not to me. They were just sir. All of them. Mostly because they were rarely the same people. I looked around the room as I waited for my trainers to come in. None were women. I had never been trained by a woman before. I'd never even seen one in here. Not even in the people that worked for Weapon X as special agents. As far as I was concerned I was the only woman in here.

The room that I stood in was somewhat different to the one that I trained in for the Atmoskinesis. But this one had a large track along the walls for running. Four laps was equivalent to a mile. There were also cars and SUV's seated in the middle of the room, around the track. They were all reasonably new but they looked like they'd been put through hell. Mostly because it was my job to lift and throw them. I had to show them just how strong I really was. I'd had an SUV dropped on me from restraints in the ceiling before because I couldn't throw a small car. It had shattered almost every bone in my body. Despite the Chronicle fixing me within seconds I hurt all over for days.

The door to the room opened and I watched as trainers began to pour into the room. A younger man whistled for me to walk over to the track. I did so and crouched at the starting line, awaiting his instructions. "Ten miles. Going for time. Go," he told me.

I nodded and took off in a dead sprint at the sound of his whistle. My feet were barely clipping the floor before I would take off in another long stride. Despite having a small stature and short legs I was faster than most humans ever were. Including Olympic runners. My hands flew from side to side as I rounded the last corner on the first mile. They were taking it easy on me today. Normally it was twenty miles. I wondered if it was because they just wanted me to leave. If it was around the holidays they all liked to leave early to be with their families. I could never tell though. They didn't give me a calendar. They simply told me when the New Year had come.

My birthday's passed without my knowledge, Steve and Bucky's too, their graduation, what should have been mine; all sorts of things. It hurt to think about. I wished that I could have been there for everything. Twenty-five minutes and nine seconds after I had started running I came to a stop at the end of the track and collapsed to my knees. The man who was acting as trainer kicked me in the ribs and I stood painfully. My legs were shaking as I came to a full stand. I hadn't beaten my record yet. I'd set it a few months ago. Twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds.

The man in the suit swung out at me and clocked me roughly in the jaw. My head snapped back painfully as I turned back to stare at him. I should have seen it coming. "Beat the time tomorrow, or I'll beat you," he snarled before walking away.

My jaws were clenched as I nodded and walked into the center of the room where the cars were laid out. I went through the same routine that I always did. I lifted the small cars first. Those I could toss clear across the room with ease. The medium sized cars were next. I could get them pretty close to where I could get the small cars. The full-size cars would be the last of the normal cars I would throw. I could get them about halfway across the room. I would lift the SUV's last. I could barely throw those a few meters. I earned a broken hand for my efforts in trying to throw one of the heavier SUV's. A man kicked out my knee and I fell to the ground, the SUV trapping my hand underneath. As they rolled it off of me the bones all shattered. My hands were still shaking as I made my way over to the glass enclosed room.

It had one desk that I sat at. This was probably the least painful of the lessons that I went through during the day. My visual test was done first. I stood fifty feet back and read all of the lines with ease. I knew for a fact that I hadn't gotten any of the answers wrong. Not even in the bottom row. We did an audio test after that. The average person can hear as low as twenty Hz. I could hear at as low as eight Hz. While most people could only feel vibrations that low I could actually hear them. We went into the academic study portion last. I did the simple ones first; mathematics, all disciplines, languages, English writing and reading, history, and geography. I then followed with physics, chemistry, biology, and anatomy. I also was forced to recite the few things about mutation that I had learned.

Nearly an hour after I'd been forced to come into the mental stimulation room I was allowed to leave and go to lunch. Not that they were going to let me eat. I walked into the lunch room and looked around. Everyone was eating and laughing. It made my hands ball up, trying to keep the flames under the surface of my skin. I was starving, beaten, and neglected. I just wanted a damn lunch. I sat at the table in the center of the circular room, as I always did, and stared at the table. Lunch was only half an hour. It would be over soon.

My hands were folded in my lap as my stomach made a rather loud snarl. The food in here smelled wonderful. Twenty-two hours to complete dehydration. I let out a soft groan and dropped my head against the table. Thanks brain, I knew that one. My argument with myself was cut off as a brown paper bag was slammed onto the table. I turned around and stared at the guard that had dropped it. "Gift from Stryker. Eat. You have ten minutes," the man told me before stalking off.

I stared at the bag for a minute before opening it. There was only so much that they could do to me. I wasn't afraid to see what was in here. I was only afraid of disappointment. As I opened the bag I pulled the contents out. A water bottle dropped out first. My jaw dropped at the sight of it. It was not clean water. It was dark brown and probably poisonous to an average human - it would do for me. It was still something. I popped the cap off and downed it. The liquid tasted like it was from the sewers - it probably was - but it was the first water I'd had in days. I pulled a sandwich out after it. As expected, it was made with dog food. I still ate it, gagging at the taste. The guards all laughed and I ground my teeth together, fighting the urge to kill them all, it would only earn me a harsh punishment.

It had not been ten minutes when another guard came to pull me away from my meal. It had barely been four. He grabbed me by the arm and yanked me out of my seat. I hadn't been expecting it as I tipped over and fell to the ground. The guards all laughed and I grit my teeth together as I stood and walked into the academic training room once more.

Once I walked in I took a seat in front of the guard that always tested me. Two stood behind him and five stood behind me. They were all holding batons, waiting to hit me if I made one wrong move. We would be practicing my telepathy. I'd gotten very good with it over the years. I was sure that Stryker wasn't teaching me as much as he knew. He didn't want to make me too strong after all. But little did he know, in my one way of rebelling against them, I would practice all night long while the guards slept and stood outside of my door. I was better than he knew.

My trainer, Joshua, nodded at me. He was an older man with white hair. He was the only trainer that I had that wore a suit, tweed and a deep grey. "Let's begin, Victoria. What number am I thinking of?" Joshua asked me.

"Is this a joke?" I immediately asked. He had never asked me anything like that before.

Just as I opened my mouth one of the batons cracked heavily over the back of my skull. My head hit the table before I leaned back up. Chronicle seeped out of the wound on the back of my head, dampening my hair. The bone rearranging itself in my skull almost tickled. But my head was now pounding. "Answer the question!" The guard snapped at me.

Figuring that playing into the stupid game was better than another whack over the head with the baton I nodded and let myself slip into Joshua's head. For years I hadn't been able to do it. He was well trained. I still pretended like it was a problem. But it wasn't. He was easy. Harder than most, but easy. Seven. "Seven," I repeated out loud to Joshua with a questioning tone to my voice.

He nodded at me. "Good. You've been getting better." I nodded absentmindedly at Joshua. He had no idea just how good I really was. "Now, why don't you tell me a little bit about myself?" He asked.

I knew this game. He picked someone in the room, usually one of the guards, and had me recite facts about them. He had never made me do it with himself. I figured that this was supposed to be a challenge. I let myself slip into his mind and pass through the thoughts. Strange. The way her eyes do that. If I could have rolled my eyes in this state I would have. My eyes turned completely white with a black swirl, almost like the galaxy, through the middle when I read someone's mind for an extended period of time. His mind was clouded. There was a family. One little boy. A grandson. His daughter was there with her husband. A grave. His wife. A sign hung up for the city limits of a small town. A birth certificate. His own. A boy failing his way through university. Him. A desperate plea to be something else.

My mind slammed back to my own head and I smirked down at the table. He was just like the rest of them. They were all trying to make themselves seem larger than life. But they were all weak. "Trouble, Victoria?" Joshua asked me with a grin.

He thought that he had me caught. I would show him. "No, sir. Shall I begin?" He nodded at me. "You were born on December 19th, 1879. A small town in Alberta. Longview. Your parents both died when you were young. Your mother died in childbirth. Your father of the flu, when you were eight. You were raised by your grandmother. You went to University for Genetics. Mutation specialty. You failed miserably, unable to keep up with the high academic standards. There you met your wife. Her father was the Dean of Admissions. He put you through the Psychology program. There you were able to pass through, with his assistance. You got married to his daughter as a means of appreciation. Never loved her. The two of you had one child together. A daughter. She's currently twenty-six with a child of her own. A boy. Martin. He's three. Your wife died earlier this year, just after you realized that after all of your wasted years with her, you did love her."

"Enough. Thank you," Joshua cut over me.

"You haven't allowed me to finish, sir. The way that you treat me is because of what happened to you in school. You blame me, people like me, for your failures as a child. You blame people like me for everything. It makes you feel just the slightest bit better about your own shortcomings to watch me be treated the way that I am."

"Enough."

"Do you think of me as a daughter, I wonder? After all, we're so close to the same age. She was married at twenty, wasn't she? I wonder if I hadn't been taken here if I would have been married. Perhaps I would have had a child, just like your daughter. Perhaps I would have had a husband who loved me and a child that I cared for more than anything else. It doesn't matter. It was stolen from me."

"Enough."

"It was stolen from me by people like you. I'll never know love and I'll never get to have the life that your daughter does. How would you feel if I robbed her of it? The day will come that I get out of here and you people, your families, your friends, will be the first ones that I come for. You will lose everything. I'll hang her corpse over your bed. I'll paint your home in your grandson's blood. I'll leave you to watch. And then, when you're ready to die and join them, I will ensure that you live. Because you will not have my permission to die."

"Enough!" Joshua shouted, tears in his eyes. He stood from the chair and I waited for the guards to advance on me. Joshua held his hands up to stop them and I cocked am eyebrow. "I will inform Colonel Stryker of your actions today. You will be without food and water. Keep an extra set of guards on her until she learns her place," Joshua informed the guards behind me before standing to leave.

His figure had just passed me before I called out to him. "Joshua." I didn't need to be able to read minds to know that he had turned around to look at me. "That is my promise to you," I told him without looking back. His footsteps faded quickly after that as he left the room. The door slammed shut behind him and I was dragged from my chair by one of the guards.

I stumbled over my feet as the man dragged me from the room by my hair. I was more than a little tempted to light my hair on fire and watch him scramble. He was not wearing flame-retardant gloves as most of the guards were. We walked back into the training room with the track that I had been in earlier and I was thrown to the ground. I hit roughly before tucking into a roll and springing back up. My legs locked slightly as I stumbled. The guard that had been holding me before shoved me towards the center of the room.

"Shield up," he growled at me. I nodded and placed my hands in front of me. The soft blue glow extended beyond my hands and erupted in front of me. The shield was about as big as I was, protecting me from free-flying objects.

The strength of the shield flickered in and out and I watched as the guards stood across the room from me. Some objects would be easy to block. Others would be hard. They started easy. Golf balls were thrown at me first. It was easy to deflect those. Basketballs followed. Those were also easy. We then moved onto guns. The handguns were reasonably easy to stop. The rifles were harder. The shield would shake when they hit. A grenade was thrown next. That knocked me off of my feet, but the shield remained.

I thought that we were done after that. I stood with the shield up and waited for them to tell me to drop it. Before they did though, a bullet tore through the air. It did not hit my shield. It hit the unprotected side of my foot. I dropped to the ground in pain, the shield dropping with me. Just as I did another grenade was thrown. I didn't have time to bring the shield back up before it exploded. Immediately I was surrounded by pain. Nails that were stuffed inside of the grenade pierced parts of my body. The heat from the explosion charred some of my flesh. The concussion of the explosion knocked a few teeth loose.

The Chronicle went to work immediately. I felt the pieces of nails and shrapnel leave my body, clinking gently against the floor. The bullet that had been in my foot popped out, rolling across the floor. The holes in my skin began to close and I watched in pain. The blisters on my skin began to calm down and I found myself watching curiously as fresh skin replaced it. Once the heat had calmed down I'd found that it didn't hurt. Possibly because I was able to control fire. My teeth began to grow back too. Although it hurt like hell. I'd had to regrow teeth before. It was one of the most painful things to regrow. It was almost as painful as fixing issues with my spinal column.

One of the guards, the one that had shot me, walked forward with a smirk. "Not bad, kid. Stay down and wait for the last of your trainers." I gave a small grunt, acknowledging that I had heard him. He turned and left with two of his men, leaving six still in my company.

About forty-six seconds after the grenade had hit me I was able to stand once more. My legs were shaking as I faced and watched as more of my trainers walked in. These were also nameless trainers. They traded off every day. Mostly because the day after dealing with a fight with me they were unable to move. They were also the ones that went on missions with the Weapon X team. That meant that they weren't always around to help train me. I had been hoping that they would let me leave early today. I now realized that it was wishful thinking.

A younger man, probably not much older than me, motioned for me to take my stance at one of the shooting stations. I did so, walking to the one in the middle. There were two guns set out in front of me. One was a Beretta 1935. It had five bullets in it. The other was a Colt M1911. It also had five bullets in it. The target that I was shooting at was seventy-five feet away. I picked up the Beretta first and aimed for the center of the target. The first two were dead center. The third was half a centimeter too far to the right. The fourth was also dead center. The fifth was a quarter of a centimeter too far to the left. I picked up the Colt after. It was the one that I was better with. All but one bullet went straight through the center. The one that didn't was an eight of a centimeter too high.

The trainer that was working with me nodded and pointed me over to the next stand. I nodded back to him and moved over to stare at the rifle that was sitting on the desk. It was an M1903 Springfield. It was the gun that I normally used. I picked it up and aimed it at the target. It was one hundred yards away from me. But that made no difference. It was easier to use a rifle over a handgun. There were twenty bullets in the magazine and with my well beyond perfect vision I was able to shoot all of them through the same center hole. The trainer nodded at me and motioned me to put the gun back on the table. I did so and walked over to the knife-throwing center.

The guards and trainers there were wearing helmets and heavy metal chest-plates. Just in case I decided to get a little friendly with them. It was probably a good idea. I stood in front of the target and stared at the knife set in front of me. There were five laid out in front of me. They were all lighter. We had heavier ones that I could practice with too but they weren't here right now. They were probably locked up somewhere where I couldn't get to them. Or so they thought. I grabbed the first of the lighter ones and looked down the aisle.

The only target that I was using was shaped like a human and seated out thirty feet away. I was slightly less accurate with the knives but I was better than pretty much anyone else was. The first knife flew out of my hand and I watched as it sailed straight into the heart of the target. It was so strong that it had suck straight down to the handle. My second one was thrown towards the head. It hit right where the left eye would be. My third knife went into the right eye. My fourth knife went into the shoulder of the dummy. It was right where the joint was. I knew that if it was a real person they would never be able to use that arm again. My fifth knife went back towards the center of the target. Like the first, it landed in the heart of the target. But it stuck in the handle of the first. I turned back to the guards and smirked.

They were not going to appraise my actions. My trainer merely nodded and motioned me towards the raised fighting platforms. "Get back to work. You may leave after they dismiss you," he told me. I nodded and walked over.

The man that stood at the platform was the same that they always sent to me. Large. He stood at well over six feet tall. His shoulders were broader than two of mine. His jaws were set tight together and his eyes were beady as they followed my movement. He had a good amount of muscle over his form and I stared at him with a slight buzz in my fingers. I knew that I couldn't use my mutations. They would shoot me with the nanite bomb if I did. I had to use the techniques that they had taught me. Although my ability to read minds, analyze fight patterns, move faster, see better, and lift heavier objects definitely helped in a fight. He was large. He would fall harder.

The man standing in front of me was one that I had never fought before. But he looked like all of the others. I stared at him and gave him a good once over. He was doing the same with me. Large. Slow-moving. Does not think before making his moves. Rolling left shoulder. Previous injury. Muscle. Weakened muscle in left leg. Two pins in right knee. Imbalanced equilibrium. Will not react well to balancing moves. Takes time to recover from hits. Right eye has lower visibility than left. Beginnings of cataract. I'd be able to take him. I already had a plan.

I watched as he took a bow towards me. I responded with a small one of my own. He would take it as a chance to run after me. True to what I had thought the man began to sprint after me. I ducked out of the way and slid through the gap in his legs. He watched me and turned to grab me but he never got the chance. As expected, he reached out with his right arm. I grabbed it and yanked roughly. The bone snapped out of place and I used his momentary lapse of judgement to reach up and grab his left arm, the injured one. I used his weight to my advantage and jumped over his shoulder. My weight was on him as I placed his neck in between my knees and twisted. His weight worked against himself. He fell from my weight, his vision thrown off from the sudden movement. As he hit the ground he rolled over. I rolled off of him and jumped back up.

Before he got the chance to move after me I kicked out at his knee, detaching the two pins, and flipping over myself. When I landed I brought down a fist on his left shoulder, snapping it out of place. He threw a blind punch at me, and another after that. Both missed. Before he got the chance to throw a third I brought my bare foot up and stomped down over his eye, the one that was already slightly damaged. He tried to get up and stand once more but I never gave him the chance. I backed off a few steps before running forward and jumping up. I caught his neck in between my thighs and used him to swing myself around his torso, ripping him off of his feet. As he hit the ground I tucked into a roll and slid across the floor on all fours. I rose to my feet and walked back over to him. The man was fighting to stand, a difficult feat without the pins in his knee, and I stared down at him. He wasn't giving up. So I raised up my foot and smashed it down against his nose. It cracked loudly and I watched as it displaced itself.

The man held up a hand over his bloody nose and I backed off. I knew the rules. I fought until they conceded. I wasn't allowed to concede. It had led to many lost fights my first few years here. "I concede," he said under his breath.

I backed off and nodded at him. I had tried to offer my hand up a few times when I'd first been here but I learned fast that they didn't want me doing that. One man had brought his knife up and cut my hand off a few years ago. It had taken almost an hour to completely regrow the limb. It hurt more than anything else. He had laughed and invited all of his friends over to watch. It suddenly hadn't mattered that I'd beaten him into the ground a few minutes beforehand. All that mattered was that the mutant freak was in pain.

"Leave," the man snarled at me. I nodded and walked away. As I walked out of the room a group of five guards began to walk with me. They were all walking behind me as I walked through the hallway. My knees were weak and I felt like I might fall over at any given moment. I was not going to do well without food for a week?

I was already expecting a couple of good beatings over the next week. Some were worse than others. When I went without food and started to do worse in training they only beat me worse, thinking that it would help me. Actually, they probably just liked laughing at me. A tall figure came up to my side and I looked up to see a grinning Stryker. "Have a good day, Victoria?" He asked me. I decided to ignore him. Stryker preferred mental torture to physical. He wouldn't have the guards hit me. He'd just mess with me. "Would you like to know about that boy you got killed?"

That made me stop in my tracks. The kid mutant from this morning. I had almost forgotten about him. I turned to Stryker and shook my head. Clearly someone had fed him the wrong information. "I didn't kill him. Jefferson did," I told him.

Stryker grinned at me and shook his head. I stood with my hip out to the side. There was no way that I had killed him. Jefferson had. "No. You see, it actually was you that got him killed." I cocked my head to the side, silently asking him to continue. "Jefferson had to make sure that you were still compliant. The moment that he saw that you were going to do it he was going to tell you to back off. The only reason that the boy died was because you couldn't get over your ego. Do you feel foolish yet?" He asked me.

There was no way that they would have let the kid go. They hated mutants. All of them. And even if I had chosen to kill the kid I knew that they would have let me. "You're lying," I said under my breath.

I wasn't sure whether I said it as a fact to Stryker or if I was trying to convince myself. "I wish that I was," Stryker said with a small sigh. I snared under my breath before turning and stalking away. I was never allowed to leave without his permission. But today he actually let me leave.

As my feet carried away from him I thought that he was going to shout at me to get back there. But he said nothing. He just watched me leave. And none of the guards followed me. They knew that there were only so many places for me to try and leave. And I couldn't. There were too many guards. If I wanted to leave I needed help. "Sir?" One of the guards asked.

"Let her go. We'll see her again tomorrow," Stryker told him.

I was slightly surprised that he had let me go but I wasn't going to complain. I was thrilled. I never got to walk alone in the halls. I needed to be allowed to walk alone. It drove me nuts that the only time that I was alone was in my room for a whole three hours of sleep at night. And usually I couldn't even sleep that long. I stumbled down the hallways with a pounding head. I stumbled weakly into my room and slammed the door shut behind me. I felt like I was going to be sick. Today had been a long day and I was exhausted. Maybe I would get a chance to sleep for more than a few hours. I looked around the room and cocked my head to the side.

The room that I was standing in was not mine. It was decorated like the room had been when I had first gotten here. Had I walked into someone else's room on accident? I turned to leave when I heard a voice call out to me. "Kid. Can I help you?" A deep voice asked me.

The face that matched the voice was exactly what I had been expecting. Harsh and somewhat scary. But also had a hint of sweetness underneath. He was tall. He was well over six feet tall and his hair only added to the height. It was dark, about the same color as Bucky's, and flattened out in the middle. The hair on the edges was raised slightly, giving him another two inches or so in height. He had a confused but stern face. His eyes were light brown. They were pretty. He seemed to be in his late thirties to early forties. I couldn't quite tell. He was wearing a white wife-beater and pair of beige pants. He had a set of dog tags around his neck. He was an attractive man and I realized a few seconds too late that I had been staring too long.

Although he was still staring at me too. Unlike my curious gaze, his held pity. But it wasn't obvious. He'd seen some type of horrors in his life. I could tell by the hard look in his eyes. "Sorry. I thought that this was my room. It isn't. I must have gone down the wrong hall," I mumbled to him.

I turned on my heel to walk away and he caught me as I stumbled. I jumped back a few steps from him. "Hey kid, you look like hell. You want to sit down or something?" He asked me. I shook my head and walked away to leave once more. I couldn't be here. Stryker would kill Bucky or Steve if he found out that I had seen someone who didn't seem to know yet what he had signed up for. I stumbled slightly as I walked away. "Kid, you need to sit down for a second. You're going to kill yourself. You look like shit. Take a break," he told me.

The man looked like he might walk after me again but I shook my head and backed off. "I don't know what I look like but I know that it can't be any worse than I feel. I need to leave," I told him. I rose up on the balls of my feet and took a deep breath to leave before we could say anything else to each other. But just as I turned my head I saw a mirror. The man stood behind me as I looked myself over.

Despite knowing that I had to leave I couldn't help myself. I had to see what I looked like after all of these years. It was terrifying. I wasn't even sure if I looked like a human anymore. My hair was tangled in horrid clumps. Dirt, Chronicle, and sweat were built up in it. It had a disgusting mix of brown and green in it. The hair was so tangled that it all almost stuck together as one clump. It was extremely long too. It hit just around the back of my knees. My face was sunken in. Any tan that I'd had before this was gone. I was as white as a sheet. It was why I looked like a ghost with the bruises underneath my eyes and on my cheeks.

On my chest I could see my rib cage. The bones stuck out slightly. I could see the green veins underneath. My limbs were thin, almost sickly. My body had adapted slight curves around my chest and hips from age. I could tell that they would have been larger had I not been starving. My eyes were no longer their brilliant yellow. They were a pale, sickly, yellow. The whites around them now looked slightly red. I hadn't grown much either. Probably from the lack of food. I was only a few inches taller than when I'd gotten here. I was pretty sure that I was only a little over five feet tall. My nails were broken and chipped, Chronicle built up underneath. I looked like a corpse.

The man looked like he was about to place his hand on my shoulder. "Kid?" He called to me.

Just like that I slipped into his mind. I hadn't even meant to. It was like he was open and calling to me. I had to know. A woman sat on a small cot with him. She spoke to him. Logan. Wolverine. Odd. "Logan," I said softly to him.

His eyebrow cocked at me as he turned me to face him. I stumbled slightly but Logan was fast enough to catch me before I fell. He was new here. He had just gotten here. "What?" He asked me.

"Your name is Logan. You're here because you're trying to get repentance for your lost wife." If Logan hadn't looked baffled before he did now. He was staring at me like I was the Devil incarnated. "You want my advice?" Logan didn't say anything but I chose to continue speaking anyways. I didn't want him to have to go through what I was still going through. "Leave. Get out of here right now. Before they can find you and before they can stop you. Get the hell out of here. This place isn't what it looks like," I told him.

I knew that it was dangerous for the both of us to still be standing here. I had to leave and we had to make sure that Logan never mentioned me again. "Hey!" Logan called before I could leave. I turned back to him for a moment. "What's your name?" He asked me.

"Victoria."

He walked over to me and extended his hand. After a moment, I took it. I was immediately filled with everything from him. His pain, his anger, his power. I felt it all. "Victoria. Look, let me help you. I can go get Stryker or something and we'll talk to him. You need to eat something, sleep, and take a shower. You don't look too good," he told me.

I yanked my arm away from him and shook my head. "Don't you get it? Stryker did this to me." Logan's eyes scanned over me in horror once more. "He'll do it to you too unless you leave here right now. I'll try and cause a distraction for you tomorrow. See if you can meet me in the hydro-chambers tomorrow. You can see what Stryker is really about," I told him.

I had been gone for too long. The guards would be at my door in the next few minutes and I hated to think about what would happen to the both of us if they found that I wasn't in my room. "Kid," Logan called before I could leave. I turned back. "You gonna be alright?" He asked me.

For a moment I wasn't so sure. It felt like I would never be alright again. But it wasn't a choice. I had to be okay. I had to be strong. I wasn't done on this planet yet. I was not Stryker's pet. Tomorrow I was going to get up and move on. Seven years of this was enough. "I have to be. I have someone to get back to," I told him.

Logan gave me a nod and watched me as I walked down the hallway and out of his room. I followed the path back to my room and ducked inside. A few minutes later a guard came in to check on me. They grabbed the uniform off of me and I fell to the cold ground, once more stripped bare. As I laid on the cold tile floor I took a deep breath. It hurt to be here. It hurt to think that I had left Steve and Bucky for this. I had to get back to them. I had to get out of here. This wasn't fair to me. My home was not here. My home was in Brooklyn, in the Rogers's shitty little apartment, with Steve and Bucky mortifying me and ruining my life.

I wanted them to mess with me. I wanted the two of them back in my life. They were my best friends. They were everything to me. I wanted the two of them in my life for the rest of my life. As I closed my eyes and shook slightly from the blast of cold air I heard a faint voice call out to me. The first one I'd ever heard. Happy birthday, Vika. It was Bucky. I'd know his voice anywhere. I smiled slightly to myself. I hadn't even remembered that today was my birthday. It wasn't a big deal anymore. They never told me so I never knew. It was my twenty-first birthday today.

"Thank you, Buck. I'm coming home." And I meant it. Enough was enough. I was done with being here. I was done with the torture. This was the last birthday that I was spending here. I was going home.

Bucky's P.O.V.

In Brooklyn Bucky was standing on the balcony to his apartment. His parents and Steve's were both gone. They had all died over the past few years. The two boys had had friends over earlier but Bucky had sent them home without a word as to why. Steve had walked two of the girl's home, one that Bucky was courting, with an apology as to Bucky's behavior with a promise that he would be back to himself soon. His best friend always acted a little funny on this day. October 21st. It was her birthday. She would have been twenty-one.

As Steve walked back into the apartment that his parents had left him he found Bucky standing out on the balcony. Steve walked through the open window and over to where Bucky was standing. "Buck, what are you doing out here?" His best friend turned back to him with a cupcake in hand. Steve grinned. "And with a cupcake? You don't even like chocolate."

Bucky smiled and shook his head. Ever since he had tried to prove to Victoria that he could eat more than her he had hated chocolate. He'd eaten so much that he had thrown up all over himself on the carousel at Coney Island. "No. But Victoria does. Remember those awful cupcakes she made for your birthday?" Bucky asked his friend.

Steve let out a soft laugh. Victoria was an awful cook. They both remembered the horrible cupcakes that she'd made. They tasted like cardboard and she'd managed to burn them. They were horrible but because Victoria had made them they had eaten them. Bucky had pretended to like them until even Victoria had reacted. "Oh man. She was good at a lot of things but cooking wasn't one of them. Today is her birthday, isn't it?" Steve asked after a beat. He knew that it was but he wanted to see how Bucky reacted. After a moment he nodded. "You think that she's out there celebrating?"

He let out a soft sigh and for a moment Steve regretted even saying anything. He knew that Victoria was a sore spot with his best friend. He was still hurt and confused as to why she had left without a trace. "I think that she's out there. But I don't think that she's celebrating," he said.

Bucky knew that if Vika had left it hadn't been on her own free will. She had loved them. He knew that she did. They had done everything for her. She hadn't just been grateful, she had really loved them. They had all grown to love each other. "It's been seven years, Bucky." Bucky winced. He knew that. It felt like it had been even longer. "You don't think that she's moved on past us? You don't think that she's found some new life somewhere else?" Steve asked.

He wanted to soften the blow but Bucky had to get over her. He was never going to be able to have a life without her. "No," Bucky snapped. She couldn't have found another life. She had them. They were all that she needed. She had said so much. And she had once made sure that he would never leave him. So why would she leave them?

"Bucky she loved us. You know that she did. But don't you think for a second that she might have moved away and moved on with her life? Maybe someone came for her. We don't know anything about her life before she came to us. She never told us. Maybe someone came back from her. She's probably happy, wherever she is," Steve tried to reason.

For whatever reason Bucky just couldn't imagine it. She couldn't be happy. Not without them. "She isn't," he said.

Steve sighed and took a step towards Bucky. "And why's that?" He asked.

"Because she isn't here."

Steve nodded and placed a hand on Bucky's shoulder. Bucky looked down at his friend with curious eyes. "Then go find her. I'll help you. I miss her too." With that Steve walked away, knowing that Bucky needed some time to be on his own. As Bucky leaned against the railing he thought about it. Maybe he would. Maybe he just would go and find her. One way or another he had to go and find out what had happened to her.

"I will," Bucky called back to Steve. He unwrapped the chocolate cupcake and began to eat it. He hated chocolate but he loved her. The more that he thought about Steve's suggestion the more that he knew that he needed to do something. He needed to find her. He wanted to find her happy, it would be better than finding her in pain or upset, but he hated the thought of someone else making her happy. More accurately, he hated the thought of another man making her happy. It was his job. "Happy birthday, Vika," Bucky called out to the wind. And somewhere in the distance Bucky could have sworn that he heard that wind whisper back, Thank you, Buck. I'm coming home. It was the first night in a long time that he slept with a smile on his face.

A/N: Yes I understand nanite bombs aren't really a thing and probably wouldn't have existed back then even if they were real. So we'll pretend, yeah?

30's/40's Slang Terms:

Grifter: A con-man or woman.

Giggle Juice: A term used to describe alcohol, especially during the 1930's and in speakeasies where alcohol was still in its prohibition days.

Ring-A-Ding-Ding: Having a great or fun time, typically at a party.

Wet Sock: An unpopular person.

Gadabout: A woman who travels from one person to another seeking pleasure; typically sexual.

I promise that we're getting to Victoria being reunited with Bucky soon! Not quite Steve yet. Got a few chapters to go before she sees him again. I love him and I want her to be with him again but she has to go through some tough tribulations first. Let me know how you liked this chapter! I know that it was on the darker side, they won't all be like this. And we saw Logan! Anyways, thanks for all the follows and favorites! And a huge thank you for my reviews! Keep them coming! Reviews are motivation for me to write faster ;) Until next time -A

Anonymous: Thanks! I hope that you liked this one too :)

ks90: Thank you! I hope you continue to enjoy it :)