An: WARNING, chapter contains alluded to and vaguely described sexual assualt. The content rating is M for a reason. Please be careful reading it if this is something that might trigger you.
Peter nibbled his breakfast, watching as Ned gave Nikki his entire life story after the point where they'd met. At least, he thinks that's my entire life story. Sometimes I feel like MJ knows I'm Spider-Man, but Ned...Well. "Pete?" Nikki was looking at him with her head cocked. "Are you alright? You've been poking your breakfast burrito for five minutes."
"I'm honestly just wondering how much you know about my class schedule." He dug around in his backpack for it, handing his dark guardian the crumpled paper. Nikki unfolded it with surprising care and glanced over it.
"I'm sorry, Pete. I have only two class periods with you." She handed it back, looking unhappy as she did so. "Mr. Stark said I have to try this the proper way first."
"Didn't Peter say that you were supposed to be his bodyguard?" MJ raised an eyebrow at the other girl and Peter again felt the subtle rise of tension in Nikki's body. We aren't even mate-bonded and I can sense so much from her if I try even a little. This can't be normal, can it?
"Yes." Nikki answered with pursed lips. "But you should be assured, MJ that if someone so much as sneezes wrong in Pete's direction at this school I'll be there in two seconds flat." There was an undertone of threat that Peter felt was a bit unwarranted but he said nothing, just trying to figure out all the nuance involved in this one conversation.
The bell rang overhead and Nikki stood. "Pete, walk to me my first class." A tingle shot from Peter's heart, spreading warmth through all good extremities and a general fuzziness with it. I don't think I could say no to that if I wanted to. He rose smoothly to join her, happily slipping his hand into her own like it was second nature. I suppose that's exactly what it is. Second nature.
x
Nikki felt Peter slip his hand into hers and squeezed reflexively. Tony had warned her not to act so attached to Peter in public. It will make people wonder if he's an omega because you sure as hell aren't, kid. Nikki scowled a little, and shoved his voice to the back of her head. Sure she understood that the hormones involved in alpha-omega relationships rarely allowed for clear thinking, but she also felt that this was unfair. Tony didn't know her, only where she had been in the recent past. He couldn't know how she cared so deeply for Peter already that it wasn't funny.
"Here we are, Nikki." Nikki felt a twinge of fear looking into the open doorway that she suppressed hard. Hydra got Polly and I right in the doorway of that tea shop. I don't...With an enormous effort, Nikki willingly pulled her hand out of Peter's and smiled at him.
"Thank you, Peter." He stood there like he was waiting for something and Nikki again had to fight down her fear and apprehension. I could kiss him right now. She thought. You don't know him. Not yet. Tony's voice echoed. She may not have agreed with Tony on suppressing nature when it came to her and Peter, but she did agree that Peter needed to finish his schooling unbothered. This is why she left it at thanks and stepped through the door, clamping down on her personal feelings with all her might. Then she silently took a seat in the back of the class and surveyed everyone else.
Soft meat, all of it. Nikki let herself relax with the knowledge she could still handle everyone in the room if she had too. A wadded up paper landed next to her feet and she ignored it, opting instead to read the details in the room. The teacher's desk had very few adornments on it, just the nameplate which read with a French feeling in her tongue, the computer, and a small rock that looked like carved granite. The granite unnerved Nikki enough she kept her eyes on it for a solid minute before moving on, the uneasy feeling settling in her gut like a bag of wet sand. The rest of the room was decorated just as sparsely, but with enough for her to glean that it seemed to be a supplemental history class.
A second ball of paper was flicked her way from Flash's desk, and this too was ignored in favor of scoping out the teacher who'd walked in. He looked exhausted with his day already. Shaggy black hair hung in rather unkempt curls down to the middle of his neck and when he brushed his hair back to tie it in a bun at his desk, Nikki got a clear view of the bags under his eyes. Fighting the rise of nerves and bile in her belly, she slumped back down in her seat. One perk of being supernatural was that Nikki could pay the barest attention and still hear everything he said.
"I'm sorry, am I boring you miss?" The teacher caused every eye in the room to swivel on her as she startled from her rest state. "This class is a closed elective meant for people actively pursuing certain careers. If you aren't going to pay attention, you shouldn't be in it."
"You were lecturing us on the impact scared individuals can have on the state of their society from a civil level all the way up to the government. I suspect your lesson plan today probably has to do with the Red Scare, doesn't it?" Nikki furrowed her brows. "What sort of careers benefit from an entire class that focuses on the most tragic parts of history?" I'm going to shake you so hard you piss your nice pants when I get home, Tony. What the hell is all this?
The teacher seemed flabbergasted at her and started to stumble through his words. "Anyone with half a brain paying the most fleeting of attention could've still come up with that-"
"School just isn't for me. I didn't pick this class, to be honest. My sponsor did. My parents taught me to read, write, cook for myself, and do basic first aid. Whatever else I learned was up to me. And I read so much history those first two years of educational freedom I could probably teach this class myself if I could stand most people my own age." Nikki made herself meet his eyes. "Just let me rest, teach. I never feel very awake during the day." Fortunately enough, he chose to drop it at this and Nikki was left to ponder her thoughts deeply enough she drifted into an actual sleep. He looks pissed.
x
Tony hung up the phone. He had just spent three hours talking to the man on the other end of the number attached in Fury's email. Elijah Mikaelson had been overjoyed to hear that his daughter...niece...godchild...to hear that his family was safe. After he relayed that Nikki remembered absolutely nothing apart from her name and Polly Richards, he told Elijah about her insistence that she had been betrayed.
Elijah had quietly agreed with him and then said he was sending some of Nikki's things in the mail to help with jogging her memory. "I'll be in touch." Tony looked at his watch and then called into the next room. "She made it through first period with no incidents, Pep! I win that back rub!" As the words were leaving his mouth, the home phone began to ring.
"Better answer that, Tony!" Pepper shouted back at him.
"Yeah, yeah Pep. Don't forget to pay up." He answere the phone. "Stark residence. If you have this number, no you don't." Peter's voice came over the line, sounding frantic. "Whoa, Petey slow down. I can't understand you!"
"Nikki had an incident in her first period class. I guess she remembered something and..." Tony could hear clear shouting in the background of the call. Something about a werewolf. "She shifted in front of the class and now I can't find her to issue the commands you taught me."
"Shit- alright kid, keep looking. I'm on my way." Tony began to hurriedly get ready for a dangerous encounter.
"I could hear the screaming from across the school." Peter sounded so haunted that for a moment Tony's heart stopped.
"Has she hurt anyone, Peter?" Tony felt his gut harden with the idea he'd have to kill a child today.
"No, Mr. Stark." Peter sounded like he was in pain himself. "She was screaming in pain as her bones broke and snapped and reshaped and..." Peter gagged like he was going to puke. "She ran. I'm getting into the security cameras now."
"Be careful." Tony hung up and went for the door, grabbing the keys to his fastest car.
x
Nikki was hungry, a whole new kind of ache in her gut that consumed every thought that touched her mind. It had been days since she'd been kidnapped by the Russians with the mutli-headed serpent crest. They had torn Polly from her arms and thrown Nikki into a very uncomfortable cell designed to keep her from ever really resting in between the torturing. She had also not been given anything to eat for that duration, blood or food wise. Each day she forgot some other part of herself when they dragged her out, beat her, and rooted around in her head. Every day the pool of what Nikki could recall about herself was growing smaller and smaller. If it kept up much longer, she was going to have to start prioritizing things she couldn't live without remembering.
Another cramp tore through her stomach and Nikki groaned, curling onto her side as her pupils narrowed into slits in pain. Sometimes the hunger pangs would hit so sharply that she would completely lose whatever thought had been in her head. The boba had been the only thing she'd had for...two days before they even kidnapped her. Nikki groaned and tried to sit up, determined to look for a way out. Her arm gave out and she fell back on her side, eyes glazing over as she stared at the door. Where are my parents? I'm supposed to check in every day. I don't understand how I haven't been found by now. The door slid open, going from the bottom to the top.
Rumlow appeared in the doorway, his hand clenched around the back of a beaten and battered Polly Richards. He threw her in, a cruel smirk on his face as he slammed the door shut behind her. Nikki rolled over, turning her back to Polly and biting down on her lip hard enough to draw lots of blood. The smell of Polly's injuries was both enticing and sickening and Nikki couldn't stand it either way. "Nikki!" Polly started to run to her, and fell over half way where she continued to crawl at a rapid pace until she was holding Nikki in her arms. "Nikki you look awful! You aren't healing at all."
"Rumlow made me drink something absolutely foul that I think had vervain and flakes of silver when we got here." Nikki tried to turn her head away but Polly wasn't having that, touching their foreheads together as she rocked with her.
"How'd he make you, the champion of underground fighting drink anything?" Nikki experienced a visceral flash, recalling his tongue shoved down her throat as it spilled that horrid potion into her jaws.
"Don't wanna talk about it." Nikki gagged. Enjoying Polly's eyes. They were gorgeous even filled with fear. Nikki's stomach contracted painfully and her grip on her humanity fled even further into her mind.
"We'll make it out of this, Nikki." Polly promised and pulled Nikki closer as she laid down. "Let me get warm. They kept my cell so cold." Nikki tried to resist, but Polly was currently stronger than her. She felt her mouth water as it opened and then clamped down over Polly's neck. A hot gush of coppery and salty liquid filled her mouth even as her bones cracked and split. Polly wasn't the only one screaming.
x
Klaus hung up the phone, turning to look at his omega in the bed behind him before he shot a text to his siblings in the group chat. "You two come watch our lovely Vincent. I have to go to Nikki. I have to. Its finally too bad to ignore." He got two thumbs in response, almost immediately and began to pack the essentials, his mind numb with a dull red rage and under that a deep black sadness. I'll take them all out for what they've done.
