When I was six, I was running through the playground one-day after one of the few friends I had when her brother accidently rammed into me and sent me flying—I cut up my knee very badly and it bled a lot.
In my mind—consumed with pained hysteria—there was a hole right through my knee. Of course I knew now I was being silly and Duerr let me experience what a hole in the knee felt—be it from a metal spike or a bullet—all in the name of raising my pain threshold.
In my first life gave me a rather high threshold of pain, I was a sickly child and was used to almost constant pain and such—I was even confined to a wheelchair if I wanted to move long distances as the pain in my legs just wouldn't let me walk far.
Still my threshold wasn't high enough to cope with Duerr's experiments—yet.
Hope felt a kinship to the corpses on the metal-tables of the morgue as she stared with macabre interest at the mirror that Duerr had 'kindly' put above her.
As usual, her arms and ankles were clamped in place though this time she had been given a sedative that made her unable to move and unnaturally calm.
He had cut a Y-incision in her torso, pulled back her flesh and clamped them in place before he took large-cutters to her ribs before removing the top of her ribcage and just peering at as her heart and lungs moved to keep her alive and writing notes—constant notes.
Part of her should have felt horror, part of her should feel sick as she had never really liked the sight of blood, but the time she had sent in this hell had dulled her emotions more than they already had been.
How long had she been here? A month, two? Four? Eight? She didn't know and part of her didn't want to know just how long she had been in Duerr's hands and under his needles and scalpel.
Finally Duerr must have gotten bored as he placed her ribs back in place and they both watched in interest as the bones mended back together before he did the same with her skin—she never needed stitches anymore—her rapid-healing seemed to get stronger every-time Duerr had his fun as well as faster.
There was ten prisoners at first when I woke up, Bucky being woken up and brought to train me had upped the number to eleven—it was taken down back to ten when one of the prisoners killed himself.
Wanda told me that he had been brought in, kicking and screaming, a few days before I was brought in. His name was Simon and he had been lucky not to be experimented on much before I was found and Duerr forgot about him in his excitement over me—lucky me, huh?
But Bucky had been firm that if they wanted me to be able to fight then Doctor Duerr couldn't play with me as much as he had been doing—I have a feeling that they want to turn me into another Winter Soldier—and Doctor Duerr's gaze fell back on Simon.
I was woken up one day to him frantically beating at his mirror, glass shards digging into his balled fists, and he was almost screaming as he did.
"Giving up kid?" Viktor, a fellow prisoner with an almost superhuman level of strength, goaded with a sneer on his harsh features.
Viktor was the more vocal about desire of Hope and Wanda, Bucky broke his nose when he made a grab for her when he was close-by—Viktor's strength had nothing against Bucky's, especially when he used his metal arm.
Bucky stood with his arms crossed over his board-bare chest with a frown as he watched Simon beat at the mirror, his discarded top on his bed. Wanda kept her gaze on her own mirror as she brushed her teeth fiercely with resolve and Pietro was just shaking his head in disgust at Simon's frantic behaviour.
"What's he doing?" Hope asked thickly, keeping her blankets tight around her as she stared across the room at the cell that Simon had been kept in.
"He's taking the coward's way out," Pietro sneered in contempt.
"What?" she asked in sleepy confusion.
"He's going to kill himself," Bucky clarified for her sleep-addled mind, deep disprovable clear in his tone.
"Don't watch," Wanda met her mismatched eyes with deep resolve and grimness in her dark green ones. "You don't want to remember it, trust me."
"Do as she says," Bucky told her firmly.
Hope turned away with her blanket tucked around her and reached for the Lightning Thief to attempt to distract her from Simon's desperate screams and the smashing of his fists.
No guards came to stop him, the men watched while Wanda and I kept our attention away as Simon used a shard of glass to slit his wrists though all of us heard his sob of relief when he finally got a large enough and sharp enough shard free.
The guards only came when his body was beginning to cool and dragged him out by his feet. They took out his bed and hosed down his cell before replacing the bed and mirror—it was like nothing happened in there.
Duerr hadn't been happy with Simon's suicide. Duerr was the power that decided if we lived or died and he hated people that undermined his power by taking their own lives.
We lost two more in the following two weeks under Duerr's hands—unfortunately the Doctor didn't kill Viktor or his two minions so Wanda and I still had to suffer their leers and such when we shower.
"You're healing ability is remarkable, I haven't anyone heal this fast before," Duerr smiled at her like he had given her a great compliment with her blood strayed across his face from when he had slit her throat and gun still smoking in his hand from when he had blown her brains out just to see if she could survive her brain being destroyed and what affect it would have on her after she healed, if she healed—his smile still didn't reach his snake-like eyes.
Her throat still hurt from the blade near beheading her with Duerr's enthusiasm so she just smiled tightly in response—she had learnt it was best to be placid with Duerr, to let him have his fun instead of fighting him—he always made it hurt worse if you dared to fight him—and in reward he would get the guards to bring them things that they wanted—books, real chocolate from England that wasn't too sickly sweet like American chocolate or bitter like the rest of Europe's chocolate, and had even been generous enough to give her a DS with a Pokémon game—she had decided if she got a third life that she wanted to be reborn in the Pokémon world, she didn't frankly care if it was game-verse or anime-verse really, she deserved to have a real damn Pokémon after all this shit.
It didn't mean that her fire was gone, oh no! she just used it against guards, that touched what they shouldn't, and against Viktor when he attempted to make her cower and bend to his will—The Winter fuckin' Soldier was teaching her to fight, Viktor was a first-class idiot to think he could make her bend easily to his will after a few weeks of being beat down by Bucky's fists all in the name of teaching her.
"Let's start playing with your strength and speed, shall we?" Duerr asked rhetorically as he fiddled with vials that she was sure was filled with different versions of their own super-serum.
There was only two scars that I ever gained in my first life. A dent (the size of my middle finger tip) in my forehead—right under the hairline—from when I was a toddler with chicken-pox and dug it out with my meaty toddler fingers. The other came from my appendicitis, a scar the size of one of my fingers, and cut into the muscle funny and pulled inwards so I would never have a properly flat belly.
In my second life I gained a mess of scars around where the silver arm joined the rest of my flesh body, a mess of vein-like scars that were jagged from under my left armpit, up my left collar-bone and down my left shoulder-blade to join under the armpit once again.
I should have more scars though; track marks up and down my arms from all the blood taken and the poisons and drugs pumped into me, five-cm length scars littering my abdomen from Duerr's attempts to up my threshold of pain, a deep scar across my throat that had cut open my vocal-cords and made me choke on blood until it healed, a burn of the gun's muzzle that put a bullet through my brain, Y-cut scar on my torso, a series of puckered holes on my knees from when spikes and bullets were put in them, the same with the palm of my hands and a deep scar of my chest from one of the guard's knifes when I wouldn't let him have his way with me and fought back—he stabbed me near the heart, confident that it would stop me, but it hardly slowed me down as rage and fear made me lash out like an animal, he was my first kill.
When Bucky, followed more sedately by a few other guards and Duerr, I was huddled against the wall with wide eyes, flesh hand curled tightly around the handle of the knife, clothes torn and covered in blood—my blood and his—with a small puddle of bile off to the side.
Bucky's face could have been made of stone as he crouched beside me and helped me towards the showers and kept his silence as he washed me as my hands shook too much for me scrub the blood off myself. He walked me back to my cell and lay a comforting kiss on my forehead before pushing lightly to enter the safety of my cell, my room.
Duerr was pleased with what I did and the guards didn't attempt to punish me—I had the sick feeling that they had watched what happened and only decided to do something when they were sure it was over and he was dead by my hand.
Hope knew that she had been with Hydra over a year when the shiny brand-new copy of Sea of Monsters were slid through her flap one day.
She had sat on the floor and held the book in her mismatched hands—which matched her mismatched eyes—and stroked the glossy cover with her unfeeling left thumb as tears blurred her vision.
April 1st 2006. That was when Sea of Monster's was first published, her birthday was March 4th and had passed her by without her even knowing it.
Wanda wasn't in the cell next to her to give her soothing words—the twins had been moved somewhere last week—and only Bucky was really her friend in this place.
She could feel his blue gaze burning into the side of her face as her shoulders shook slightly and copper filled her mouth—she wasn't going to let anyone hear her cry in this place, she refused too—from her teeth tearing through her bottom lip.
She wasn't sure if it meant she was twenty-one now or if she had been de-aged during her looks being changed and being booted into the Avengers verse—her looks placed her anywhere from her mid-teens to her early twenties—but then again, did it really matter how old she was? She was still stuck in Hydra's hands, still under Duerr's control, was still being leered at by Viktor when they showered and still had a silver arm.
I want to go home, she thought as she stared down at the glossy cover. It wasn't a new thought, it was a regular thought that crossed her mind and it was a useless thought—there was no way home, she had died remember?, and there was no home in this fucked up world apart from her cell in Hydra which was more fucked up then her life was at that moment.
Sometimes I dream of home, of laying on my sofa-bed with my laptop reading fan fiction and listening to the background noise of the TV with Mum either half-asleep on the couch, reading one of her books or watching TV.
I dream of watching Master-chief with her and making her laugh with the faces I pull at the food because I disliked food almost all together.
I dream of tarmac, greenery and other cars passing by as Mum took me on another one of our mystery tours where we sometimes got lost—we once got lost in Bodmin.
I dream of desperately clinging to sleep as Mum called at me to wake up and my poodle puppy jumping all over me to aid in making me get up.
I dream of us talking about what we would do if we won the lotto, of what house we would move in to and Mum laughing when I tell her seriously that I would still be living off her till she died.
I dream of Mum not being able to say Wolverine, of my sighing deeply with my eyes closed, of her mixing up Superman and Spiderman, of mistaking Thor for Watchmen, of her not knowing who the Avengers or X-men are.
I dream of her disapproving face when I reveal how much I spent on online comics and her stern look as she tells me I'm not allowed to buy anything more—I always do anyway.
I dream of us going to the cinema to a film that she couldn't be bothered about but I want to watch, of her teasing me about falling asleep during the film and me reassuring her that I would poke her if she looked like she was falling asleep.
I dream of the single car-crash I have been in, what was my fault after only having the car five minutes as I didn't realise I was going faster with the new car than I did with my teacher's car. I dream of her relieved laugh that we were okay that scared me more than crashing, her continually laughs as we take the car back to get fixed and she sees my hands shaking madly.
I dream of going to the Theatre to watch crime plays, of eating ice-cream during half-time as we discuss who the killer is or if they'll get caught.
I dream of old water-fights during Christmas between me and my brother—nearly twenty-two years my senior—and the scarring sight of our Gran ripping off her dress when I accidently soaked her with a cup of water instead of my brother, of her rubbing the wet dress on my face despite me hiding behind Mum, of my brother's pale face which turned a hint of green when Mum commented that at least she had been wearing a bra when he declared he was scarred for life.
But then I always wake up and am hit with the cold-hard facts. Gran's dead, I'm dead to them and in a whole new world and life to me, and I would never see my Mum or my annoying brother again.
Sometimes all I want to do is curl up under my blankets and have a good cry—despite the fact I hate crying—but I don't. I can't show any more weakness than I already have, especially with Duerr upping my strength and speed as I gain and kept muscle mass, and I'm too stubborn to let myself become a weeping-mess.
I think Mum would be proud of that.
SHIELD attacked the cars that were taking her to a new place—turns out she had been in America all this time—and Hope simply played Pokémon as guns sounded and Hydra and SHIELD clashed—not that they knew they were Hydra as they were dressed in plain black uniform.
Truly, she was getting too detached to the world if she could easily play Pokémon in the middle of a mini war-zone and not blinking when the doors of where she was being kept suddenly opened—exposing her to too much sun—and about a dozen guns being focused on where she sat in the little padded cage with her backpack of books next to her and dressed in her normal grey uniform of a vest, trousers and tennis shoes.
"Miss?" the bland voice of Phil Coulson—The Badass Motherfucker that was Agent Coulson—made her look up.
"Hold for a moment," she cut him off as her gaze pointedly moved back to the screen of her DS—yeah, she was going to act like a teenager, which she possible could be and never really grew out of—"I'm in a very important Pokémon battle."
She would later swear that she made at least one of the SHIELD agents staring at her snigger at her response to the guns facing her and such—bet-cha not everyone acted so casual as she did with guns staring her right in the face and keep playing Pokémon, but too be fair she knew that they couldn't kill her with their guns.
Horribly hurt her? Yes. Make her hurt like hell? Yes. Kill her? Nope, Hydra had already proven that she was damn-near immortal—just like Wolverine so she hadn't been getting ahead of herself.
Plus it was hard to react properly after almost two years in Hydra's hands.
"Right," Coulson agreed in that mild voice of his—not the least be ruffled by her. "Can I least have your name?"
"Hope," she made it a point not to look up as she really was in a Pokémon battle—Pikachu would be hers damn it! And not even Phil Coulson would make her lose him!
And that was how I came into the hands of SHIELD, I think it went a lot better than my first meeting with Hydra, don't you?
It was made epic by the simple fact that Coulson was there and was the one who found me obviously.
(I did, in fact, catch the Pikachu if anyone wondered and I dubbed him Thor—I was so showing him that if I ever meet him)