:: Another chapter for you guys, for having to wait so long. ::
The room was dark. That was an understatement. The room was so dark, in fact, that when the girl lifted her arm and brushed her nose with her fingers, she couldn't see the outline of her own hand. It was the kind of darkness that could eat you alive, and it made her want to scream.
But if she screamed, they would find her faster.
She straightened up from behind the desk and felt her way to the wall. From there, she moved at a crouch around the room to where she knew the door was. The classroom wasn't very large and ironically, she found it easiest to hide in smaller rooms. Yet they kept loosing her in places full of tiny hiding spots.
The hallway was just as dark as the room had been. She moved quicker here, though- she knew every step of the slick tiled floor. She'd memorized it with her toes, tracked and traced the lines of linoleum barefoot until her feet bled. There was no inch of this building she had not covered in her attempts to outsmart them.
It was only this last time that she'd become convinced it wasn't possible.
They'd found her in minutes. She'd become so used to evading for hours, even catching naps in the corners of janitors' closets and open air conditioning vents, that she grew lax with her hiding, and they snatched her up in no time. She'd fought kicking and screaming all the way out to the van.
It wasn't any use telling them that she couldn't see in the dark. No heat vision, no laser eyes, no thermal detection or x-ray lights of any kind. And they all wore thick suits when they came to fetch her, so there was no way for them to know that what they were searching for, they simply wouldn't find.
I can't do anything but kill, she wanted to tell them. And she had. She screamed it at the cell walls until her voice broke. But they didn't want to listen. There must be something more, they said to each other, when they thought she wasn't listening, slumped in the backseat of the ratty van. She'll break eventually.
I'm already broken, she whispered into the fur-covered seats.
By day she slept, and ate, and planned. By night she wandered hallways and memorized the groat on the walls. Sometimes she almost made it. Sometimes they almost slipped up. But they never did enough, and so she kept coming back. Over. And over. And over.
Today would be different. Not different like last time, when they plucked her from the air vents like a trespassing chipmunk. Different as in, she would make it out. And they would wonder how she did it, when all this time, she'd been floundering about like a fish out of water.
The reason was simple: one of her captors was wearing short sleeves.
She'd caught a glimpse of him as they carried her in. He stood off to the side, making experimental cracks with the whip they used to make her stop struggling. So he would be the one to come in and retrieve her, and therefore, he was going to die.
She would catch him in no time.
There were no more rooms to learn.
He had to find her when she wanted him to. That wouldn't be hard- she could hear him blundering around in the farthest hallway, what used to be the science wing. He was unused to the dark. She'd heard him shouting earlier about a flashlight. They weren't allowed to use them. That would make it harder for her to hide. They wanted her to hide. They wanted her to have hope. Hope was dangerous, and she could cry some nights with the weight of it.
He was coming closer. She ducked into a lab room. This one had windows that were all boarded shut and draped on the outside with thick black cloth. Many layers, most likely, because not a single ray of light made it through. None of the light switches worked either- her fingers slid over one as she made her way down the wall.
In the back were the lab tables, each one with a sink and a set of beakers and, as she'd discovered one night, briefly, before capture- one had a working bunsen burner.
She made for that one now, crouching down behind it and scooping up a beaker on the way down. A big, heavy one- she needed him to hear.
His footsteps were heavy, clumsy. Normally they were lighter on their feet, agile, like dancers- dancers dressed like ninjas in their long black clothes and covered skin. She hated them. But this one she loved, because his arms gleamed in the darkness as he passed the classroom, gleamed like a beacon, and she threw the beaker just as he disappeared from view.
The sound of it shattering was beautiful. The pieces sprayed and tinkled across the floor like an entire symphony, and she made herself very small behind the table as he came pounding, clutzily and ungainly, around the corner and into the room. His silhouette filled the doorway, though she couldn't see him, and could only hear his breathing.
He walked inside the classroom. He managed to bump into every desk he passed, and cursed and kicked as he did so. He stank like sweat and old food, and as he came near, she made herself very small. She would have to catch him perfectly, or the opportunity would be wasted.
He stepped right beside her. Another moment and he would feel her breathing on his legs.
She reared up and clapped both hands on his bare arm.
Pain surged like an ocean of blood.
###
The girl was screaming.
Natasha shot out of bed, stumbling out into the hall. The apartment was pitch black and through the windows, the twinkling lights of the city made a mockery of her thumping heart. She ran for the stairs, stumbling over the post of the stairs on the way.
The door to the girl's room was flung open, and standing outside was Steve, looking concerned but not alarmed- as Natasha pushed past him, she could suddenly see why.
The window was half-open and shattered, letting in a freezing breeze. The bedsheets were knotted and in a ball on the floor, as though tossed across the room, and curled into an equally crumpled ball beneath the window was the girl. Crouching beside her was Barnes, half-naked and covered in goosebumps, with his hand clamped tight around her bicep. Natasha almost panicked until she realized that the girl was wearing a long-sleeve shirt.
Barnes was speaking quickly to the girl, quietly and fiercely. She peered closer- in the dark it was hard to tell, but it seemed like the girl was crying. Her face was twisted with disgust and anger, blotchy and shining in the light of the moon.
"She was sleepwalking," Steve muttered in the dark behind her. "We came in and she was almost out the window."
She started to take a step forward, but Steve drew her back. "Don't," he whispered, barely a breath in her ear. "She almost killed him when he came in. Let them finish." He waved at Thor and Banner, who had just appeared on the stairs. They looked at each other, then plodded away back down. Natasha mirrored Steve, leaning just outside the door to wait.
Barnes' voice was insistent, irritated, and wouldn't stop. Every time he paused to take a breath, the girl snapped something at him. He refused to let go of her arm, though she repeatedly shook it, demanding its release.
Finally he must have said something that got through to her, because her body relaxed and, while she didn't seem to become any less angry, she did soften and wipe her face and he released her arm and leaned back, his own face giving away nothing. It had been wiped of emotion once again.
Natasha swatted Steve's hand away and entered the room. The girl looked up, made a noncommittal sound, and looked away again, folding her arms across her chest.
Barnes stood. His metal arm gleamed silver in the moonlight. "It's fine," he said. "I took care of it. Put her in another room." With that he swept past her and out of the room. Steve hesitated a moment longer before following suit.
"I don't want to go in another room," the girl said sourly. "I like the fresh air."
"Are you going to break another window?" Natasha asked. The relief she felt made her feel almost giddy.
"I didn't break it, he did!"
"Okay." Natasha kicked some of the glass aside with the side of her foot. "Do you want a room that doesn't have as much broken glass in it?"
"No. Just leave me alone!" The girl stood and threw herself back into the bed, rolling to face the wall. Natasha stood for a moment, quiet and worrying, over her, then turned and left the room. She was thinking on what to do when she heard a noise from Barnes' room. She crossed to his door and peeked inside.
He was sitting in his desk chair in the dark, spinning slowly. He paused and looked up when she peered in. He was the best at reading everyone, and at the look on her face, he got up slowly and went back out into the hall.
She left him sitting outside the girl's door and returned to her own room. Even knowing someone was keeping an eye on the girl, it took her forever to fall back asleep.