Author's Note:
I still don't own anything, except this increasingly darker fic idea.
Warning: gruesome descriptions of injuries and torture. Still am not a doctor, so might not be super accurate :/
Please review!
The world consisted of a constellations of stars, and Wanda was floating. Nothing hurt, and everything was alright. Pietro was there.
"Pietro?"
He smiled, and his face was her face.
"Time to wake up. I'll see you some other time."
She bolted awake, and choked immediately. A metallic gag was tightened around her throat, and her hands and feet were shackled in heavy, lead containers bolted to the wall. The wall? Where was she? Her head pounded as her brain lagged behind. Then she remembered.
"Natasha?" She whispered into the darkness.
Nothing.
The silence was so loud, a buzzing filled her ears.
"Help," she whispered, the words scarping against her hoarse throat.
"Help."
Her eyelids were so heavy, and so was so disorientated. She had to get out of here.
She strained against her binding, trying to flex her fingers, trying to flick on her powers.
Nothing.
Nothing?
A coil of panic shivered down her body, as every fibre of her being suddenly awoke.
She tried again to no avail.
Suddenly some harsh, fluorescent white lights switched on.
An earsplitting squeal of feedback reverberated in Wanda's skull, as her eyes adjusted to the change in lighting. The cell was small, with plain concrete walls, a low ceiling, no windows, and a heavy metal door. A heavy metal door next to which was a long horizontal plane of glass, through which Wanda could see the pale, blood-smeared form of Natasha lying in a heap on the floor, a long IV line snaking from her into a large container. Wanda couldn't tell if she was breathing.
"Natasha!" Screamed Wanda, fear running rampant through her chest again. "NATASHA!" Her anxiety was through the roof as she struggled against the shackles, trying to ignite her powers.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
She stopped. She stilled. Her heart dropped.
"Oh. You recognise me."
The voice spoke from a hidden speaker, the slow, lilting, accented voice filling every crevice of the cramped cell.
A wave of panic threatened to engulf Wanda, as she struggled to breathe.
"No, no. I thought you died."
Baron Strucker's disembodied voice chuckled.
"Oh, Wandalein, did you really think I was dead? That Ultron had killed me?
Did you mourn me?
Did you mourn me like you mourned your brother? Did you forget the one who gave you EVERYTHING?"
He laughed.
"And I've taken it all away."
The voice fizzled out, and a current of electricity ran through Wanda as the voltage was turned on. She clamped her mouth shut, but against her efforts, a scream was ripped out her, wild and wailing as the fire coursed through her veins.
"Remembering how we made you? To be made, first you had to be unmade. Pity we have to break you again."
The pulsulating music started, and Wanda recognised it. It was from the experimentation labs. Where HYDRA first had started working on their volunteers. Where Wanda and Pietro, young and hearts full of hatred and pain, survived a month as every other young experimentee died, one by one.
"You've become WEAK Wanda. Those Avengers are repressing you, afraid of you, using you, wasting you. Let me help you. Let me make you who could be. Let me finish what I started. Let me finish was Tony Stark stopped. Let me create the Scarlet Witch."
Cold and dark. Dark and cold. Cold and dark and empty and silent and peaceful. Until Natasha heard Clint.
Clint? she thought. Can you hear me? Where am I? Did we survive Budapest?
Something was wrong. She couldn't open her eyes. Was she even awake? Was she dreaming? Hallucinating? But Clint? She could hear him. He was talking. It was his voice. Why couldn't she understand?
What are you saying Clint? Are you alright Hawkeye?
Suddenly she heard him coughing. Gasping. Rasping. And her vision cleared, the fog rolled away, and she was seeing Clint on a large TV screen. His face was bruised and bloodied, and his was staggering through a forest fire. His clothes were wet, and his hair tousled in his face.
Clint?
He seemed to hear her, because he looked up, his stormy grey eyes meeting Natasha's. They were so tired-looking, framed with deep purple rings, and he coughed again, blood-splattered spit frothing at his lips.
He seemed to smile, a half-grin tugging at chapped lips, when one of his own arrows was fired from off-screen, and pierced his abdomen.
CLINT! Natasha was screaming as blood was staining his suit, pouring between his hands, as he was staggering, stumbling, and falling head first into the flaming inferno around him.
"NO!"
Wanda's head shot up, from where she had passed out, vomit splattered in her hair from the torture. Through the strategically placed glass she could see Natasha, awake, watching a screen where Agent Barton was dying in the forest they had just left, screaming.
Just a quick, angsty update 3