I had read the occasional self-insert fan fiction in the past—they would always make themselves out as bad-asses that never get seriously hurt or killed when in tricky situations as they are the main character and authors didn't often kill of their main character.
They write themselves as indifferent, calculating to a degree or having a temper—they almost always added humour to the stories. They write about their epic friendships with the main characters, or just their favourites, or how they change the plot because they are one of the main characters and know the future—I had even read one when the self-insert accidently changed things when she hadn't meant to and how she was afraid to be the rather weak and useless twit the character's body she was possessing was in canon and I had read a self-insert that made Bella Swan likeable and not the stupid spineless twit in the books that made me want to tear my hair out.
They don't truly write about the overwhelming fear that turns you numb when you realise you are in one of your favourite dangerous bits of fiction—especially when you know what shit-storm is going to hit you in the future—and how you dimly realise that you was never going to see the people you love ever again—they tended to gloss over that as they have new families and loved ones etc.
They don't write horrible scenes where they are tortured or close to death as it's them they are writing about—a writers' imagination is a double-edged sword and they rarely want to think of themselves in that position and people hate to be helpless full stop.
They never write about being found by the enemy, the villain, as they are always part of the hero's life and train their little asses off to be totally bad-ass when they needed to be.
Why would they? It's a piece of fiction filled with them being bad-ass and such (yeah, I realise I'm repeating myself but I like describing them as bad-ass, sue me) and it's not like it was reality.
At the moment I fuckin' hated those writers as I was dealing with the reality of being thrust into one of my favourite movies as well as being in the hands of the villains—Hydra, why the fuck did I land in the damned Avengers' verse? Why couldn't I have been reborn in Scooby-Doo and chase after fake bad-guys with the lovable talking Great Dane?
It was a sad day indeed when I realised I could only think of Scooby-Doo as being the only honest-to-god safe verse out of all of the films and programmes I watch as well as the books I read, nobody could claim that Harry Potter-verse was safe—they had legal love-potions and Voldemort—and Yu-Gi-Oh regularly dealt with people duelling for their souls over a card game, though I could perhaps fade into the background in Death-Note as I would have no intention of calling either Light's or L's attention to me—call me a coward, I don't give a damn. I like being alive thank you very much.
Hope knew it would be naïve to think that Hydra would leave her alone for a couple of days, let her come to terms with the fact that she was in their hands—in another world all together—and that she would never see her mum again.
(They were once a Nazi group, they weren't remembered as being nice and considerate to their prisoners.)
But she hoped that they would be occupied by their other prisoners in glass cells in the circular room—there was an operating table in the middle of the room with medical tables, it was in perfect view of all the cells—but she was new and fresh meat.
Wanda had advised her not to fight when they came for her, told her that it made worse for her in the end, and they would delight in roughing her up to get her strapped to that table.
Logically she knew she shouldn't fight, logically she had decided she wouldn't.
Logic flew out of the window when her door opened and two towering men made their way in and panic and fear took root as her flight or fight instinct went wild—she couldn't flee, they were blocking the only door so her body automatically began to fight when they reached out for her.
She screamed—in fear or defiance, she wasn't too sure and it could have been a mixture of both—as she lashed out of them with a balled fist—she had lashed out with her left arm.
Hope was five foot three inches and had seen sticks that were thicker than her arms, she was so skinny that one could count most of her ribs when she breathed in, and had no fighting experience at all—she shouldn't have been a threat, and she wouldn't have been if they hadn't decided to hack of her left-arm and replace it with a metal one.
So the sickening snap of bones wasn't the bones in her hand breaking from a poorly thrown punch, it was the nose of the man that had stupidly forgot about the arm as he reached out with malice in his eyes.
Hoots, hollers and cheers came from the other prisoners as they watched one of their guards fall back from a tiny slip of a girl with a string of curses and an obviously broken nose.
The other guard was smart and simple shot her with a taser-gun, and she yelled as her whole body went rigid painfully and she fell, her head was shaking and her eyes rolling as bolts of electric surged through her body and straight to her left arm.
The guard didn't attempt to touch her left arm—which was a pity as she wanted to see how he liked be shot with electric—and instead dragged her by her feet out of her cell and around until she was beside the op-table, there he actually picked her up by the front of her clothes and slammed her on the table with no mercy and cuffs snapped around her slender ankles and wrists automatically.
"Arsehole," she hissed between clenched teeth.
He just smirked down at her, dark eyes amused, before walking away without a care.
"A British girl, how nice!" an aged male voice sounded delighted and she stiffened as he appeared beside her in a stark white lab-coat—he was a tall and skinny man with long spider-leg fingers.
Silver hair was cropped short and neatly brushed, square-specs sat on his slightly too large nose as cold grey eyes—they reminded her of snake-eyes—stared down at her with detached interest which was out of odds with the wide smile on his wrinkled face. He of course had a German accent, probably been around from the start of Hydra considering the wrinkles and age-spots that littered his weathered skin.
"It has been a long time since I've had a British patient," he smiled at her cheerfully, it still didn't reach his eyes, before he began looking at a file like she really was just a patient and him a doctor. "I'm Doctor Duerr, and I'll be your doctor."
"I don't need a doctor," she told him, hoping that her fear wasn't audible in her voice and cursing that she had such a pathetically soft voice that couldn't even make a poodle-puppy listen to her—she knew from experience sadly.
"They always say that," he absently said. "But I help them become better than they were before."
"Haven't you done that already?" she jingled her left arm meaningfully.
"I've just started, dear Hope," he said and she flinched at hearing her new name—it was hers and no one was taking it away again—come from his thin pale lips. "It's a nice name you have chosen for yourself."
Hope remained silent as she stared up at him.
"Let's see," Doctor Duerr spoke idly to himself. "Subject: Hope—we really should give you a surname—Age: between fifteen and twenty years of age—I doubt you'll enlighten me of your true age, no?—Height: Five foot and three inches exactly. Weight: 111 pounds—tsk, it's your lowest ideal weight for your height, and I'll have to remind them to up your food intake— Ops already done: left arm amputated and replaced with cybernetic arm, blood-transfusion from Subject Winter Soldier—seemed to have successfully retained rapid-healing from experiments during the transfusion at a much higher-rate than the Soldier's healing-ability—let's see how we can improve on that in the future, shall we? But first we must assess the strength."
She hated that sick grin on his face, she decided as she watched him ready a needle with ominous coloured liquid.
"First with poison," Doctor Duerr informed as he sipped the needle into her straining right arm.
I don't know what poison he decided to start with and I really don't want to know. All I knew was it burnt, gave me a fever and made me horribly sick—it was only the start of his tests, there was a lot of different poisons in the world, you know?
Some gave me fevers so high that I would hallucinate, some would make me seize and tremble as I lost control of my nerves, some caused me so much pain I screamed till I was spitting blood, some just made me sick till nothing but bile and blood came up with each choked heave that burnt my throat and nose—but as time went on and more poisons were injected into my veins, that had turned an angry inflamed red through my pale skin, it was easier to throw the effects off and didn't make half-as-sick as I had once been.
All the while, the doctor watched and wrote down notes with detached interest and cold snake-eyes—dear Odin and Thor, I hate that man and would happily watch Loki slaughter him or the Hulk smash him to a blood-spatter.
Modesty didn't last long in the cells where one could hear and watch the other prisoners piss and such and the showers were large, open and wasn't separated by gender—Hydra, for some reason or another, had removed all unnecessary hair from the female prisoners' body permanently which Hope didn't mind as she didn't have to bother shaving anymore which was a plus.
Her first shower was awkward and slightly frightening as the guards marched them to the changing room connected to the large shower room.
Hope and Wanda were the only women in the group of ten prisoners and had to deal with leers and such as they stripped out of their clothes and placed them on a shelf ready to be taken while they were in the shower and replaced by clean clothes.
Her movements had been jerky with how nervous she was and Wanda grabbed her hand to reassure her while Pietro loomed beside them and glowered at all the men that gave the two women a lustful look—no matter what powers they had, Pietro was faster and fiercer when protecting his twin, and now Hope too, so they backed off and just leered at them and making crude movements to show the two women just how much they wanted them and exactly what they wanted to do to them if given the chance.
Pietro had shuffled them into a corner and Wanda had made sure Hope was in the corner before the showers turned on and Pietro kept his eye out on any of the men that could attempt something stupid as they washed the sweat and such away.
I foresee me getting into trouble if for some reason Pietro and Wanda aren't with me during shower time.
The seven men I had to worry about had powers, offensive powers, and all I had was a passive power of self-healing—which meant when they were through with me, I would be able to heal up like nothing happened though I would always remember.
The only thing I had on my side was a metal arm—which was useless as I didn't know how to fight and it was obvious that the men had some sort of combat training with how they moved and the muscles they were packing.
Till I find a way to learn how to fight, I best stick with Pietro and Wanda.
"Dear Hope, is there something we can get you for you to pass your free-time with?" Doctor Duerr asked as he poked his fingers into an incision he made on her abdomen which made her hiss a breath out between clenched teeth.
"I want to know how to fight," she grimaced as she felt him wiggle his fingers inside her for a moment before pulling them out and watching the incision close with detached curiosity.
"Hmm, that would a useful skill for you to know," Doctor Duerr agreed as he reached for his pen with his blood stained gloved hand. "I would hate for something to happen to you before I can unlock your full potential."
He wrote down a few quick notes.
"It'll take time for anything to be arranged for you, so what can I get you in the mean time?" Doctor Duerr asked again.
Some would think he was being kind, Hope already knew better. The doctor had seen how bored she was getting when she wasn't fighting off poison affects or being cut into, a bored mind wasn't a good thing for a prisoner to have—they may start to get dangerous ideas of attempting to escape, and the doctor hated when his patients attempted to escape as they often had to be put-down according to Pietro and Wanda.
"Books," Hope settled on.
"A reader, huh? How nice for someone to want to expand their horizons," he smiled down at her like a pleased grandfather and her right hand balled into a fist—her mother used to say that. "What type of books?"
"Horror, supernatural," she shrugged as best she could. "I heard about a set of books called the Percy Jackson and the Olympians maybe coming out soon."
"I'll get people to look for them," he promised.
The next day I got a brand-new copy of the Lightning Thief but it didn't have a list of the other books I knew was in the series so I was sure it was 2005—which meant time-travel, yay!—and gave me five years before the Avengers' timeline started in my opinion—I didn't watch any of the Hulk movies, so the Avengers' timeline would always start in 2010 with Ironman.
Thankfully it was in English—I wouldn't put it passed them to be amused with watching me struggle to read German or French from the dim memories I had of reading the book as they all knew I didn't know any language apart from English. (Wanda was helping me learn German, Pietro didn't have the patience to teach someone German as normal people were just so slow next to him—there was a reason why he was near bouncing off walls when they didn't give him something new)
And I was able to lose myself in the world of Percy Jackson—I was really glad I wasn't thrown in that world, I had enough to deal with human monsters here that I didn't want to learn how to deal with real monsters there.
The cell on the other side of Hope's was empty which she was completely happy with as it meant that she didn't have to deal with a pervert watching her go toilet—it didn't stay empty for long after her request to learn how to fight.
Her new neighbour was Bucky Barnes and he was going to teach her how to fight and defend herself—which meant she would be getting her ass handed to her regularly till she learnt to fight back.
Their first meeting was interesting and really set the tone for the rest of their lessons.
The training room reminded her of an underground bunker with exercise mats covering the floor—there was a few punching-bags hanging from the ceiling over to the side.
"Soldier this is Hope," a guard, Alex, gestured between them. "You'll be teaching her to fight."
And he left the room which made Hope shift awkwardly under Bucky's—it was his name and she was going to use it if only in her mind—gaze.
"Do you have any experience fighting?" he asked as he began to circle her with an assessing look.
"Ah, no," she answered as he poked her right arm.
"Did you play sports?" he asked as he frowned at the thinness of her real arm.
"P.E wasn't really a subject I regularly attended," she told him with a shrug.
"What happened here?" he asked as he tapped her metal arm with his own metal fingers which gave a metallic ping at the contact.
"My arm must have been really messed up and they decided to give me a new one."
Truthfully, Hope didn't know what state her arm had been that made them decided to amputate her arm, Pietro and Wanda refused to tell her the exact state she had been in when she had been brought in. Pietro had simply told her that she had been in a fucked-up state and she should just focus on the fact she was alive and basically healthy now—which wasn't reassuring at all.
"Hmm," he said thoughtfully as he continued circling her.
A heavy blow made her fall flat-on her face with a pained sound.
"First lesson, always stay on your guard," he told her as he crouched down beside her as she pushed herself up.
He held out a hand and she took it, he pulled her up slightly before releasing her making her land on her ass with a deep exhale of breathe.
"Second, never trust your opponent," he smirked down at her annoyed face.
"Right," she grumbled slightly as she pushed herself up and on to her feet.
Bucky Barnes was a bastard, but at least he was teaching me something useful. At least I hope he was actually teaching me and not just having fun knocking me on my ass.