A/N: Ok Ladies and gentlemen I'm uploading two at a time here, so it's this chapter which is technically the last chapter and then the epilogue. The reason I'm uploading two is because I'm going on holiday tomorrow so I think it's best if I get it done before I go. I'll talk more in the next chapter. For now, read, review and enjoy.
"Has she said anything?"
"No Sir, not since we brought her in."
Nick Fury watched as the hostile individual known as Phoenix, sat in her prison room. It was a plain grey tiled room with nothing but a table and two chairs, it was almost identical to the charred room she had escaped from several days ago. On the opposite wall there was a two way mirror where Director Fury watched as Phoenix sat silently on one of the chairs, faced towards him but keeping her head down. Her eyes were closed, occasionally she could be seen whispering something, forming words with her mouth but making no sound.
He had been watching her for several minutes now and she had not moved a single inch. Less than twenty four hours ago she had killed the man who had made her what she was. The best Fury could tell was that she was in a state of shock or was suffering from some kind of depression. The only way to find out what was going through her head was to talk to her.
Fury nodded to two agents before entering the room. He made no hesitant moves as he strode confidently to the chair opposite Phoenix at the table in front of her. She didn't make a move, but it was obvious that she heard his entry, her eyes were open now, although she still face downwards, her eyes tracked his movements. "Do you know who I am?" he asked her.
Fury watched as Phoenix shifted, she moved her arms onto the table, leaning on them with her elbows and unclenching her fists so her hands were flat on the table. The fingers of her right hand tapped on the table slowly. Director Fury leaned forward. "I asked you a question," he raised the volume of his voice slightly. "Do you know who I am?"
"Nicholas J Fury. Director of SHIELD," her answer was robotic, like she was speaking out of an archive.
Although she spoke, she barely moved at all, except for the continuing movement of tapping her fingers on the table slowly. It was a sign of partial comatose. Which wasn't surprising considering everything that had happened to her. A vacant look was clear in her eyes as she continued to stare at one spot on the table in front of her.
"Good, you can talk" he commented, analysing every slow tap of her fingers against the metal on the table. "Are you aware of the damage and devastation you have caused over the past week?"
The tapping stopped, Fury counted the pause. Five seconds before the tapping began again, more frantic and quickened this time. "I assume you know a lot about SHIELD from what Doctor Blake has told you. Well then you will know that we have a containment facility known as the FRIDGE, we keep a lot of dangerous and volatile people there Phoenix. People like you."
Pause, silence. The tapping started up again, faster.
"I've had a discussion with my superiors, and it was by the order of the Secretary to the World Security Council that I came to the decision that your unique abilities would be wasted in a place like the FRIDGE," as he spoke Phoenix twitched, the hand that she wasn't tapping against the table, jerked slightly, her fingernails making a scraping sound on the desk as she did so. Whether it was voluntary or not Fury didn't know. "Maybe if you put you're skills to good use, you could attempt to undo what you've done."
The tapping reached it's climax and Phoenix slid her hand across the table in an arch motion, making a scratching sound with her nails. Her entire body went rigid and she begun breathing heavily. After a second she stopped and for the first time since she had been brought in Phoenix looked up, looking Fury directly in the eye. "Are you offering me a position at SHIELD?" Phoenix asked. Her voice was soft and cracked, sounding like someone had jammed something down her throat.
"If you're willing to take it," he replied.
"No," she hissed, hunching her neck into her shoulders and looking away.
"You only have two options," Fury put his hands on the table and attempted to meet her gaze. "Either you accept SHIELD's offer or you refuse, and we lock you away in the FRIDGE where you will never see the light of day again."
"No," Phoenix shook her head slowly, her voice becoming unusually breathy. "End it. Kill me now."
The Director said nothing. He stood up and moved towards the door. This girl was too smart for her own good. Not to mention far too calm. What was her game? Was she hoping to make a daring escape at the last minute? It didn't seem likely, the way she was acting, her words were entirely serious. Phoenix was wishing for the end to her torture.
"I'm not going to kill you," he told her as he walked out. "You get two options, SHIELD or the FRIDGE. You have 24 hours."
"Why don't you just kill me now?" she demanded standing up and running to the two way mirror. She banged on it hard and fast. The Director was suspicious at the sudden loss of her calm manner. He moved closer to watch her. Her eye's were wide and red rimmed, filled with anguish as she shrieked while furiously pounding on the window. "Kill me now! Kill me! Please just kill me!" she was shouting now, and tears had begun falling from her eyes. She was throwing herself at the window not, ramming her shoulders into it with a crazed force.
"KILL ME!"
"We still haven't heard anything," Natasha paced up and down the hallway she waited in. Steve sat on one of the chairs. She appreciated the company but she had a feeling that he wasn't here for her. He blamed himself for what Doctor Blake had done to Phoenix and the others. Natasha disagreed, but she was too concerned about Phoenix to give support to the Captain. "It's been too long already. We've got no idea what's happening, they could've already killed her for all we know."
"You need to calm down," Steve tried to reassure her. "You're helping her by freaking out."
"I'm not freaking out," she snapped. Took a deep breath and took control of her emotions. "I just want to know what's going on. God dammit, where the hell is Fury?"
"He'll show up."
"Agent Romanoff, Captain Rogers," the Director entered the hallway as if hearing his own name. Natasha noticed that it made the Captain slightly curious, but she was used to the suspicious behaviour of her boss. "Phoenix is in an interrogation room and has been since yesterday. Earlier I gave her the options of either joining SHIELD or being placed into the FRIDGE. At this current stage she is refusing both options."
"Let me talk to her," Natasha requested. "I can convince her."
"Go right ahead," he stepped aside and motioned to the door he had just exited out of. "No one else seems to be getting anywhere with her."
They walked inside the room and saw a small control room with a door that led into another room. There were monitors on the right and three chairs positioned in front of a two way mirror. Through the mirror they saw Phoenix sitting at a silver table. She wasn't tied up or chained.
Phoenix sat with her head bowed as she fidgeted with her hands. She looked annoyed or angry. More than anything she looked like she wasn't up for a fight, an argument perhaps, but it was clear she had no intention of escape. It made Natasha sick just thinking about it.
"I should warn you that she's not exactly in the best of moods," Fury told them as he led them to the door that would take them to Phoenix's room. "There's a likely chance she may become aggravated."
Natasha nodded to her boss and then to Steve, indicating that she would allow his presence in the room. Natasha walked in first, with Steve following behind. Phoenix glanced up when they entered but her face showed no emotion. Her eyes followed them as Natasha and Steve sat down across from her. She looked at them expectantly. Natasha could she that Phoenix wasn't even trying to put on her act.
Natasha was the first to speak. "You've got a death wish," she said. "That much is obvious. What I really want to know is why you've got a death wish. You've already proven that you can escape from here without much effort. You've found out the truth about Doctor Blake, if wanted to you could live a normal life. So why don't you?"
Natasha waited for an answer, but she didn't get one. Phoenix kept her silence. She looked tired, like she was finished with the world. Natasha realised she didn't need Phoenix to talk, to figure out why she wanted death. She could see it spread all across her body language like graffiti.
"You think you've got nothing to live for," Natasha concluded. Phoenix still remained silent. "You'd be surprised how much there is to live for actually. You could join SHIELD. You could have a life. It would give you a chance to save yourself and you would be helping people."
"That's what he said to me," Phoenix spoke softly and quietly, it made it look like she hadn't smiled her whole life. She stared at the table; she didn't seem to be focusing on anything in particular, only her own thoughts. "He told me that we were saving people. That everything we were doing to take down the government would save the world. He lied. They all lied, every single one."
"I haven't lied to you have I?" Natasha cocked an eyebrow at Phoenix, who snapped her head upwards to look at Natasha with narrowed eyes.
"You all lie," she muttered. "SHIELD is a greedy tyrannical organisation controlling people and taking away livelihoods. You purposely wanted your acronym to spell SHIELD because you are trying to convince us that you are protecting mankind, when really you have no care for mankind, only power. You would rather see us dead then let us help the human race."
"That's not true," Natasha informed her.
Unexpectedly, Phoenix shot to her feet and threw the chair she had been sitting on across the room in a violent display of anger. She proceeded to wheel her attention to Natasha and Steve, slamming her fists onto the desk and screeching. "THIS IS YOUR FAULT!" she screamed at them, bearing down on them in a near terrifying manor. "YOU DID THIS! YOU TURNED MY MASTER AGAINST ME! YOU ARE POISON! ALL OF YOU! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO BE KIND? YOU'RE THE ENEMY, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO FEAR ME, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO HATE ME! WHY DID YOU MAKE ME LISTEN? I DIDN'T WANT TO HEAR."
Her knees buckled, she dropped to the ground in an instant, landing on her side and attempt to curl into a protective position, however her trembling body that racked because of her distressed sobbing made moving around correctly near impossible. Steve moved to try and help, but Natasha pulled him back into his seat. it was too much of a risk, if they pushed her further she could turn around and kill them without a moment's hesitation.
"Make it stop," Phoenix began to beg, her voice trembling. "The pain won't go away. Why can't it just end?"
"Doctor Blake began conducting illegal human experimentation in the early 2000s, his goal was to recreate the super soldier serum used on Captain America, but he was doing his first trials on children," Natasha began her explanation while Phoenix lay on the floor. "In the year of 2004, he experimented on a five year old girl. This girl had no name, and Doctor Blake called her Test Subject 7, because it was his seventh trial. He succeeded, the girl had acquired superhuman abilities. And because of her ability to control fire, Doctor Blake named her Phoenix."
The sobbing stopped, they heard Phoenix draw in a breath and then nothing until she spoke. "No, that's not right," her words were jumpy, and there were long pauses between each syllable. "He saved me, my abilities are natural. I'm...no...can't. I didn't have a life before age five, I've always been with Doctor Blake. This isn't right."
"Phoenix we found his log book, documenting every single thing he did," Natasha spoke softly and rose to her feet slowly, moving gently towards Phoenix.
"No," her voice wavered. "No. He would never lie to me, this is a trick it has to be. My Master. I-I-I can't. This is... A lie. No."
Remarkably, Phoenix managed to pull herself to her feet amidst the violent shaking that racked her body. Looking at Steve, Natasha saw that he was barely keeping it together, the guilt was getting to him. Even though all of this was Doctor Blake's fault, not Captain America.
Phoenix and Natasha now stood face to face on the other side of the table from Steve. Now that she could look at Phoenix properly, the first thing Natasha noticed were the scratch marks around her neck and arms, and the dark crescents that rimmed the space underneath her eyes.
"I'm not going to kill you Phoenix," Natasha told her, making sure her voice was firm so that Phoenix knew her mind wasn't going to be changed.
Phoenix's mouth trembled as she fought back another violent bout of uncontrolled sobbing. "Why not?" She questioned.
"I don't want to kill you because I think there is still hope for you Phoenix," Natasha answered. "Even after everything you've done."
"I won't join SHIELD," Phoenix shook her head adamantly. "You are greedy, and care for no one else other than yourself. I will never become one of you. Ever. I will never follow anyone who uses people like tools to gain power. You aren't saving humanity, you're destroying it."
"Listen to yourself!" Natasha snapped, causing Phoenix to flinch at her sudden sharp tone. "You keep repeating the same things over and over again because it's all you know. Think about it for a minute Phoenix. It's not SHIELD who are using people to gain power, that was Doctor Blake."
"No, that's wrong," Phoenix shook her head, but Natasha could see that the statement had rocked her. "My Master was going to destroy those people, he was going to save humanity, keep it safe."
"Who brainwashed you?" Natasha began bombarding her with questions, questions she knew had the same exact answer. "Who forced you to kill? Who planned to kill you once you were of no use to them anymore? Who treated you like nothing more than a weapon that they were going to use to destroy everything, including humanity?"
With every word Phoenix was coming closer and closer to the edge. Realisation seemed to dawn on her, but she still shook her head, refusing to see the truth. Natasha stepped forward at the same time that Phoenix took a wobbly step backwards. She was becoming unbalanced, mentally and physically.
"It was Doctor Blake all along Phoenix, you were following the same kind of person that you were trained to oppose," Natasha was playing a big risk, she realised too late, if she pushed Phoenix beyond breaking point there was no telling what would happen.
Phoenix was angry, but not the furious type of anger she had shown during her attacks, but a mournful type of anger, making her look like she was ashamed of everything she had ever done in her entire life. As she looked down at the ground and then up again, something changed in her appearance and she stepped towards Natasha, moving her arms up. She looked like she was going to attack.
"Natasha!" Steve shouted a warning but Phoenix moved too quickly.
At the last moment, her face just inches from Natasha, Phoenix broke and fell, Natasha managing to catch her before she hit the ground. Steve had shot to his feet to prevent an attack but his concern was not necessary, Phoenix had no intention of attacking. Phoenix couldn't keep herself upright and she was pulling Natasha down with her, so Natasha slowly sunk to her knees, allowing Phoenix to fall to the ground as well. She began weeping as she buried her face into Natasha's shoulder in a feeble attempt to hide herself away. Natasha was partway at a loss for what to do or say, she wasn't used to comforting others.
"Nothing makes sense," Phoenix whimpered, her voice muffled and near incoherent due to her shaky voice. "I was meant to save people. Protect them. Not this."
"You can still do that Phoenix," Natasha spoke softly. "If you join SHIELD you can help people. I'll train you, and I'll teach you everything I know. You think that your life is over, well make a new one for yourself, don't just end it, that's taking the easy way out."
Phoenix stopped weeping for a second and pulled away from Natasha, standing up and stepping back. "All I want is for the pain to stop."
"First rule is that life is always painful, and it's always unfair," Natasha told her. "I was given the exact same choice as you when SHIELD found me. You can either give up. Or you can go out there into the real world and make a difference, you can live, and you can fight for what you really believe in."
Phoenix looked Natasha dead in the eye, her mind was a foggy haze that she couldn't make sense of. Laying out her options in front of her Phoenix drew over them. She couldn't escape, not from him, not from everything he did to her. Why did they want her? Heather was right, she was a monstrosity. How could she learn to be human if she'd been raised a demon? But Natasha, she shone in front of Phoenix like a light, it was transfixing, her gaze, there was something, what was it? Phoenix hadn't seen it before. Sincerity, honesty.
Truth.
Phoenix looked to Captain America, the great hero that he had told her about. He set Steve Rogers out to be a God because of what flowed through his veins, but he was a human being, a real human being. Phoenix felt no desire to bow before him, he was just a man. Ordinary, plain, simple, but none of those things at the same time. He had something different about him as well, something completely alien to Phoenix.
Kindness.
"Tell Director Fury that I accept his offer."