"Just you and I, your starless eyes remain," – It's not a Fashion Statement, It's a Fucking Deathwish, My Chemical Romance
May 2012
The Girl bent her knees and assumed a fighting stance. She lifted her gaze towards her opponent: Winter. She pulled a soft smirk and threw a punch at his stomach. While she was tall, Winter was much taller. He stepped back and grabbed the Girl's wrist with a firm grip. He flipped her onto her back, but the Girl managed to wriggle out of his hold. She slid under his legs and launched herself onto his back. She wrapped one arm around his neck and her legs around his waist. She used her free arm to hit and slap at various parts of his upper body. Eventually, Winter got tired and swiftly pinned her down to the ground with his left hand. The Girl slapped the training mat three times, and Winter released her, standing up and stretching out a hand.
Ever since she had been partnered with Winter on missions, the Girl and Winter had gotten close. They would do anything for each other. Whenever Winter wasn't in cryostasis, he acted like her father at times, protecting her from any harm that could befall her during missions or whenever a HYDRA guard wanted to punish them. They had become thick as thieves in the short two years that they had spent together. It might have been HYDRA's doing, but they were inseparable.
"Well done, Солдат. (Soldier)" In the years since the Girl left the Red Room, the Girl and Winter had been relocated multiple times. They were currently in New York, under the command of Alexander Cady. He was more ruthless than Stucker, but he was well informed of the bond that had formed between the two assassins. The Girl and Winter both looked at Cady, meeting his dark eyes. "Солдат, return to your room. Patriot, follow me." Winter nodded and left the Girl to follow Cady. Two guards followed Winter, and two more guards followed the Girl and Cady. After a few minutes of silent, mindless walking Cady stopped. The Girl knew that Winter's room was only a few yards away from them. Cady opened the door and motioned for the Girl to enter. There were more guards inside, standing near two scientists smiling maliciously at the Girl. The room was dark, with flickering lights. There was a long examiner's table in the center of the room. There were eight metal restraints attached to the table. The guards inside gripped her tightly by the arm and dragged her to the table. She grunted and tugged at her arms. After a few fleeting seconds, she bowed her head and begrudgingly let the guards walk her towards the table, not letting any fear slip onto her face.
""Внимание девочек, (Attention girls)" The Girl glanced up at Madame B, standing perfectly still. "Один из вас поднимется над остальными и победит своих сверстников. Когда величайший из вас живет, вы пройдете церемонию. Это будет больно, но это для общего блага. (One of you will rise above the rest and defeat your peers. When the greatest of you lives, you will undergo a ceremony. It will hurt, but it is for the greater good.)" All the girls looked at Madame B with wide eyes.
"What kind of ceremony?" A girl asked.
"One that will remove any future attachments. Sterilization."
"Is this it? Did I surpass the expectations of my handlers?" The Girl mentally asked herself. "I'm not in the Red Room anymore though. Did HYDRA have a different ceremony? Winter must have passed it ages ago." The Girl let the guards strap her down. She watched a scientist cautiously approach her, looking at Cady for confirmation. He nodded, and the scientist lifted a needle filled with a translucent blue liquid. He quickly stabbed it into her arm, hitting a vein and filling the Girl with an unholy amount of pain. She shrieked, unable to withhold the pain. She thrashed around, heart beating at a rapid pace. "I'm dying," The Girl thought. She lifted her arms, trying to break free of her restraints. She could feel her muscles contracting and relaxing. It was as if she was being tortured by having her body pulled apart. She saw a hole rip through the exterior wall. The Girl turned towards the hole, locking eyes with a large figure. It was tall, reptilian, and clearly not human. It ran towards Cady and shot it. It bent over the man, ripping at the man's head and torso. The Girl panicked and looked towards the door. All the scientists left her and Cady to die. She kept struggling, trying to break free and ignore Cady's screams of terror. The alien kept messily gnawing at Cady's inanimate corpse, sending flesh and blood flying around the room.
After a minute, the alien realized that the Girl was strapped down. It stalked towards her and bit at her right arm. It was severed clean in half, and the Girl shrieked in pain and terror. The creature crunched on her flesh and bone before the door got knocked in. Terrified of the prospect of seeing another alien, the Girl was relieved to see Winter. He swiftly shot the alien and ran to the Girl, ripping the restraints off.
"I thought you were smaller. What happened to you, Stevie?" Winter asked. The Girl stopped in her tracks. She looked at Winter. His formerly clear blue eyes were glazed over, unfocused and looking at eye level, inches above the Girl's head.
"Who's 'Stevie'?" The Girl asked. Winter's eyes focused back on the Girl. He looked around before looking back at the Girl.
"He's my… He was," Winter paused, scouring his brain for a memory of 'Stevie'. "I… don't remember." The Girl pursed her lips. She looked back at the room and saw the creature rise in front of the window.
"That's okay, but we should leave." Winter looked back at the being, swept up the Girl, sprinted down the halls, twisting down the corridors, until they reached a small closet. Winter set the Girl down and ripped the door off its hinges, revealing a small closet filled with guns, throwing knives, and daggers. Winter picked up two Glock 17 pistols for himself and a knife for the Girl.
They started running towards their rooms, knowing that it would be safest to stick together in the center of the building instead of going outside. After running past various corridors, they found a hole in the wall where they could see outside. Winter and the Girl watched as aliens flew past them. A red-headed woman jumped onto one of the aliens and started attacking it. She was dressed in a black catsuit and equipped with a gun. She quickly disarmed the alien and threw it off the ship. She turned her head, looking for any aliens looking to attack her, and Winter pulled the Girl out of sight. She looked away, remaining unknown to the woman. Winter silently dragged her into his room, opening the door and shutting it swiftly. The Girl plopped onto the chair.
"What happened to you?" Winter asked. He had settled on the floor, to the side of the chair. His clear blue eyes met her soft hazel orbs.
"They injected me with something. It made me grow. It hurt like a bitch, though." Winter had ripped off part of his pants to form a makeshift bandage to keep the Girl's bloody stump from dripping blood all over herself. "I'm like you now, Winter." She nodded to her stump and grinned at Winter.
"Just like me."
After a few moments of peaceful silence, the door broke open. An alien stood there, ready to attack. The Girl instinctively raised her left hand at the alien, swiped away from herself, and sent the alien flying.
"Not exactly." Winter shook his head while the Girl's eyes widened.
December 2013
The Girl calmly sat down onto the ground of her small room, resting her forearms on her knees, feeling the cool metal touch her flesh. When Winter had wrapped her arm, he had kept it safe until the aliens dropped dead and their handlers found them. Eventually, a doctor had looked at her stump, and scientists had made her an arm like Winter's. It was made of dark gray metal plates layered in place of her forearm.
Her arm wasn't the only change she had gone through since New York. Her hair had grown down the length of her back and was a shade of dark brown. Her blue eyes had kept dulling down. She had grown a couple inches, reaching an impressive 5'6" stature.
After Cady's death, Winter and the Girl had been relocated to Washington D.C. under the direction of Alexander Pierce. He was old and high up in SHIELD's rankings. Winter had been in cryostasis more, and the Girl started missing him more. Since they left New York, the Girl hadn't told any of her handlers about her powers. She knew she should, but she wanted to keep it to herself. Every night, she would practice meditation and honing her abilities. She always knew she had some form of power since she was in the Red Room, but they had gotten stronger since the injection.
The door to her room slammed open, and the Girl jumped to her feet. There stood three guards. The guards walked in and dragged the Girl out of her cold, lifeless room and into the hallway. She stood behind the guards and let them lead the way. The walls looked pristine, made of marble and the roof was held up by columns. After passing multiple identical doors, the guards stopped and opened the door. Winter was seated in a large chair, and a smaller wooden chair was placed next to it for the Girl. The guards took the Girl near the chair and shoved her onto it. She fixed her posture and looked forward, emotionless and ready for her assignment. Pierce pulled out his phone and showed the Girl and Winter a picture of their next target. It was a black man, presumably 60 years old with an eye-patch.
"This is Nick Fury, your next target. He has uncovered Project Insight. A portion of our agents will be sent undercover to eliminate him, but if their attempts are unsuccessful, it will be your job to tie up any loose ends. If he escapes, there is a surplus of locations that he could be at. The most likely location is 3685 Redland Road, Captain Steve Rogers's apartment," Pierce closed his phone and put it in his pocket before looking at the silent duo. "Understood?"
"Yes, sir." They answered in unison. Pierce stepped back and let the guards escort the pair into a police van. They drove soundlessly away from the base and into the heart of the city. The guard driving the car had left them to scale the building and await further instruction on the roof of a building, feeling the cool temperature of the wind on their faces. The wind speeds were relatively low, and the temperatures were a low 15 degrees Celsius. The Girl perched herself on the edge of the roof, eyes peeled for a cluster of police cars chasing a black, broken SUV. Winter stood next to her; eyes focused on the empty streets below. A faint car engine thrummed from the east, and the pair glanced at each other, nodded, and descended the roof. Winter strutted out of the alley, completely focused on the car barreling towards him. The Girl stood behind him and launched the car into midair, flipping over them and landing upside down, while Winter shot at the car. The car's engine stopped, and the target was in the ground wriggling like a worm trying to escape death. Winter ripped the car door off its hinges, revealing a hole in the ground where the target was.
The pair turned back around into the alley they came from and ran from roof to roof, eventually hiding under the cloak of darkness that night would bring.
A/N: Hey guys. Thanks for reading this story. Sorry for not updating in a while, I've been swamped with school stuff. Oh! I joined the MCU Amino by the way. The next chapter will be the rest of TWS and I'll start the actual story bit in two chapters according to my plan. See ya later skaters!
