Author's Note: This chapter title comes from Macbeth by William Shakespeare.
Chapter Eighteen - Stars, hide your fires (let not light see my black and deep desires)
After she passed out for the fifth time that day, Strucker ordered her to return to her room. She moved down the hallway, scratching at the collar around her neck. And then she paused, glancing back. Danielle flickered and reappeared down the hall. She drew back, eying the bustling area down below. Beyond that was the door that she knew led to the outside. Danielle bit her lip and scratched at her collar again, slinking into the shadows to hide.
She gripped at the collar and charged the Tesseract to her hands and wrenched. With a creak, the collar twisted but didn't break. She felt a flood of energy back into her body and the ache in her bones vanished, replaced by the roar of the noises and lights and smells around her. Danielle took a struggling breath against the new way the collar was bent up against her throat.
She'd never flickered to somewhere she couldn't see before, but she had to try. Danielle focused on the unknown beyond outside the wall and slipped right through the spatial rip. She yelped in surprise when she found herself falling from a good ways in the air. Danielle landed, but the impact was mostly softened by snow. She took a moment to catch her breath. Then she looked up and flicked away, landing again behind a tree.
An alarm went off.
Danielle swore and flickered away again, but she wasn't fully recovered from her multiple fainting spells. She flickered up into a tree and clung there, trying to catch her breath.
"Four Blue, I do hope you realize that I am not as easily fooled as this. We were alerted, of course, when your collar went offline."
She looked down, freezing, and found Strucker and several guards walking among the trees in search. Danielle stayed perfectly still.
"You realize, of course, that you have a tracker in you as well. With that, we have no chance of losing you. Also . . . the collar is designed to emit a constant electric charge immediately upon complete loss of power. Which, if I'm right, should be fairly soon if you did enough damage to it."
Liar, liar, liar, she hissed mentally. But she knew that Strucker never lied. He preferred to stab in the front, using truth as a devastating weapon to manipulate and kill. She lifted a hand to her twisted collar and fear wrapped itself around her throat.
"Don't worry, Four Blue. I can wait."
Danielle was disappointed when she woke up again. She let out a long, tired breath. "Why won't you just let me die?" she whispered.
"You know you can't die."
At Strucker's voice, Danielle jerked around. Or at least she tried. The metal cuffs digging into her skin kept her from moving. Danielle writhed on the table, fighting against the clamps holding her head in place. Staring down at the floor, she searched for any hint of access to the Tesseract; she found nothing but agony.
"What are you going to do with me?"
"Teach you a lesson. You seem to be under the impression that you are all these other things: a daughter, a Stark, an . . . innocent. How many of your fellow innocents have you killed? Could you really call yourself one of them anymore?"
There was a long stretch of silence. Electricity sparked around her neck and burned. She screamed.
"Answer the question. Are you an innocent or are you not?"
"I . . . ." Danielle bit on her lip to stop herself. If she could have, she would have shaken her head.
More electricity. More screaming.
"Answer. Which are you?"
"No."
Pain. Screaming.
"Answer."
"I . . . I'm not."
"Exactly. And you know what you are?"
She couldn't stop the whimper twisting inside her. "Wh-what am I?"
"Take a look."
A man, not Strucker, crouched down in front of her and brandished a red hot pocket in her face. But instead of a sharp end, the Hydra symbol was staring back at her.
"You're Hydra's," Strucker hissed, close to her ear. And then she heard him quickly step away. "Go ahead. Make sure she doesn't forget."
The man in front of her moved and Danielle jerked against her shackles. "Don't you dare!" she screamed. "Keep that away from me! Don't you—"
Her screaming demands turned to an agonized wail and jerked and pulled and twisted to try to get away from the heat boring itself into her shoulder. Her wail turned to sobs and that turned to her begging for it to stop. The pressure was gone, but the pain was still there.
Strucker knelt down in front of her. "Do you understand now?"
She whimpered.
"What are you?"
Danielle screwed her eyes shut and felt the salt sticking down her face.
"What are you?"
"I'm . . . Hydra's."
"Kill him."
Wanda hesitated, frozen with her red wrapped around her victim. "I— Are you sure?"
Strucker watched with a frowned. "Stop." The moment the red fell away, he glanced at Danielle. "Kill him."
Her collar was still tight around her throat and she only felt the pinch under her skin, not the crawling energy. So instead, she stepped forwards. The man's eyes widened in fear and he scrambled back. Danielle caught his arm and tripped him, slamming him into the floor. With her knee on his back to keep him down, she gripped his head. And she snapped his neck.
"Thank you for the example." Strucker looked back at Wanda. "Did you learn anything?"
Wanda stared at Danielle with wide eyes and only nodded. Danielle hated herself for the terror she saw there.