TWENTY-THREE

I'm cold and broken

It's over I didn't want to see it come to this

I wonder if I will ever see your face again

And I know that I will find a way to shed my skin

It's simple I know that I will suffer in the end

Fast I fade away

It's almost over

Hold on

Slow I suffocate

I'm cold and broken

Alone

It's hopeless, the end will come and wash it all away

Forsaken, I live for those I lost along the way

And I can't remember how it all began to break

You suffer, I live to fight and die another day

- "Fade Away," Breaking Benjamin

Two weeks had passed since Alana had been taken from him.

Two weeks he had lain on the cot in the concrete room, numb and suffering.

Two weeks had passed, and she was about to be released from the hospital.

Coulson had told him that he was about to be moved to a different facility at the same time.

He didn't care.

He didn't care about anything but revenge anymore.

Revenge against S.H.I.E.L.D. for taking her away from him. Revenge against Thor and against Odin for sending him here in the first place.

Revenge against this entire damn world for not allowing their love.

He would get his revenge.

But he couldn't very well do that from inside a cell, now, could he?

So for the first time in a year, he began to plot and plan, his heart finally completely gone and only one goal in his mind.

Escape.

Alana was feeling much better now.

She had woken up in an unfamiliar hospital, surrounded by a platoon of doctors and one extremely uncomfortable-looking man in sunglasses.

Coulson, she had remembered with difficulty, pulling the name forward from a haze of pain. That was his name.

He had explained to her that she had been wounded in combat and that S.H.I.E.L.D. had brought her here to heal.

When she said she couldn't remember anything from her sixteenth year or her twentieth to twenty-second, (apparently her birthday had passed while she was in the hospital) he said that she had been diagnosed with amnesia and that her memories might never come back.

As she tried to take all of that in, her memories just gone, vanished with a single battle, he mentioned that it was probably best that she couldn't remember how she'd been hurt, that she definitely shouldn't want to.

A female doctor with short red hair who looked slightly out of place scowled at him when he said that, her hands flexing unconsciously as if she wanted to strangle him.

Alana had stifled a giggle, thinking that they probably would have been friends if circumstances were different.

But she never saw the female doctor again, and had recuperated alone. She didn't really mind so much.

Except, one time, she had been downstairs in the lobby and heard a beautiful melody being played on the piano. She had walked towards it, trying to see who was playing, but her head ached sharply and she had instead been walking down the hallway of her house, towards a bedroom from which music was emanated. She cracked open the door, but before she could see who was playing, she found herself back in the hospital.

When she mentioned it to Coulson, he had looked like a deer in the headlights, but then a doctor passing by told her that it was probably a flashback, something that might have happened during her amnesia.

As she had walked away, she thought she heard Coulson whisper, "You weren't supposed to tell her the truth."

All this puzzled her, but she couldn't make sense of it all, so she pushed it to the back of her mind.

She was finally being released, after two weeks and a clean bill of health… except for the amnesia.

As she walked towards the car that S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided to take her back to her house, she felt as if someone was watching her and turned around.

There, down a slight hill, another person was being prodded into the backseat of another S.H.I.E.L.D. car. And was he… handcuffed?

She supposed she shouldn't be surprised, the hospital was a government one, and they probably fixed up criminals there too.

She couldn't make out his face, but something in the way he was struggling almost seemed like he was trying to run towards her.

But that was ridiculous.

So she turned and walked back up to the car, and she did not look back again.

End of Book One

A/N: Thanks for 6,000 views, guys! One book down... and plenty of feels for you, I'm sure! Thanks for sticking with me! Please drop a review and tell me if I should continue, or if you hate me, or Coulson, or... you know, if you liked it. ;D