The following days pass in a rush. The day after healing Hawkeye it was discovered Althia couldn't read or write a word. Hours were scheduled with her therapist each day to teach her everything a child would learn in primary school and special exercises were recommended to work her atrophied muscles. The therapist began to notice a strange behavior while they reviewed history. On some subjects she seemed to have fragmented but exact knowledge. She would on occasion speak in a thick, smooth accent her eyes unfocused as she recited short passages. He noted that she was "like a child reciting a lesson heard so often they forgot the world around them as they quoted it." The information was disjointed though and she had no memory of how she had learned it. Some seemed to be triggered by the most common activity others by images in the history texts. Each instance was carefully noted and recorded after she left the room. Though SHIELD kept her busy as they tried to decide what to do with her she was given free time to adjust and relax each day.
When the helicarrier settled to float on the ocean she was on deck as much as possible and when in flight she spent as time in the viewing lounge listening to music or reading. She woke some mornings in peace but at least once a night she had to be held and comforted. Often times it was Lieutenant Sam McCarty who would spend hours sitting in a chair with the shaking woman curled in his lap till she fell back asleep. She responded well to his soft accent and calm manner.
It was three nights like that before her sleepy mutterings began to take on meaning to him and he asked his superiors what had been done to her. It led to the worst 30 minutes of his life. At first he thought it was a video but after a few seconds he realized the time/date stamp was flashing through hours and days. A slide show like something out of a Hellraiser movie was what he saw of Althia's imprisonment. At the end he vomited in the bathroom; a first for him. He never asked about anything else to do with Althia Sacmich's past again. He'd been in NY when it had been attacked and his boots had hit the ground in terrorist fights a dozen times but the video he was shown gave him nightmares. He started showing a patience with Althia she needed desperately and his heart opened to her the first time he made her laugh.
The nurse who spent the most time with her Sharron Mills, taught Althia to braid her hair so it lay in a thick rope between her shoulders. During one braiding lesson Althia began twisting and braiding in a complicated pattern. The hair slid through her fingers easily and quickly. Sharron asked her where she'd seen such a technic and Althia responded in a thick accent. "Mannaset, could braid faster than the wind could tangle my hair. She had the high maidens teach me their ways while she was away." Sharron quietly waved in a doctor and motioned for them to be silent. They listened together as Althia spoke. She was so focused on her efforts she didn't notice. "If you braid it simple then no respect or honor will come to you. A leader must always display their status so all may know them." The accent faded as she finished the section. She looked with a smile at Sharron who smiled back as the doctor left. The two stayed there a while longer but the doctor spent the next hour with Althia's therapist discussing the accent and odd phrases. They couldn't make any sense of why her voice took on such a cadence nor could they place the accent in any of the major culture centers.
Sharron helped Althia learn to deal with the modern world on a daily basis and they became close friends. It was her that managed to get Althia to use a steak knife to cut her food and with slow forward progress she and the therapist helped Althia move beyond the terror that crippled her. The therapist reported that there was likely some physical trauma in the woman's past that had damaged her brain leaving her with fragments of her time before she was a captive. It was also noted that though she could express the memories they only left vague impressions and a defined emotional reaction.
It was a surprise when a week after she healed him Clint Barton came by and thanked her for saving his life. The doctors had cleared him to return to active duty and he was itching to know more about the person they had been sent to retrieve. At first he was charming and warm asking her questions and flirting with her. She was reaching for a particular book when he'd asked one question that made her freeze locked in a memory.
"Do you remember your home?" he asked casually and watched slightly alarmed as her body stopped mid motion. Natasha held his arm to keep him silent and let the woman respond as she activated a recorder. Althia's voice came out soft, musical and thick. "I am home where I am needed. Where there is pain I will come and release the people from its grasp." she said her body still even with her arm raised high over her head. Clint shuddered at the strange stiffness in her posture and speech. Natasha waited a moment before she pulled him out of the room as Althia became animated again. "I love this one so much." She said as she turned to find they were whispering outside her room. Natasha had done it so often she sat down and waited for them to finish.
When they came back in Clint was just as polite and yet he disturbed her. He had dead eyes like the men from her prison and it scared Althia to look at him all of a sudden. Tasha teased him that the suave and cocky assassin couldn't charm her. It was Tasha's reactions that kept Althia from bolting. Something changed in his eyes when he looked at Althia's angel. It wasn't there when he looked back at her but she saw it. Later she would say his soul hide. It made her a little less afraid of him. She understood hiding the soul and he was always so easy with Tasha that Althia assumed she had done something strange again.
In two weeks Althia Sacmich astonished her therapist by completing a GED test with a near perfect score. The online program she had been given allowed her to move at her own pace and the therapist had little interaction other than answering the occasional question about pronouncing a word. He hadn't been expecting her to attempt the final test for some time. He immediately began testing her and discovered her mind to be capable of rapidly assimilating anything he put in front of her. It was the first time someone had referred to a photographic memory with her. She smiled because whatever it was made them happy and she liked that a lot.