ＢＲＯＫＥＮ

ᴅʀᴏᴡɴɪɴɢ

Someone was whispering your name. Calling it. You were brought out of sleep slowly.

You immediately felt it. Pain, everywhere you could imagine. You cried out softly as you tried to move every body part, to survey the damage.

All you could do was move your head, they hadn't touched it when they attacked you.

The memories of yesterday's events came flooding back to you, that cut you hadn't tended to on your face- It could be on its way to infection. The TV, the footage. The interrogation.

You found yourself realising you weren't wearing your hospital gown, that you had been for the time you'd been captured. Instead you were wearing a black polo shirt, and...trousers?

The thought of any of these scumbags changing you while you were unconscious made you feel sick.

Why were you dressed like this?

The fabric of the trousers rubbed at the bruises and fresh cuts on your leg, and you winced in discomfort, really just coming from all over.

Your thoughts drifted back. Someone was saying your name. So you were surprised to see no guards, no doctors, not one person posted in or around your cell.

But then, as if you had summoned them on cue, two guards came marching around the corner. Your breathing was ragged, you hadn't eaten, you hadn't drunk for days. You were drained. It was an effort to keep your eyes open. 

The cell stunk. You were left to do your business in the corner.

Metal clunked, and soldiers shouted as you were hauled into their arms, and carried away.

You were taken to a different room, one much higher up in the building than you had ever been taken to before. You were carried up 4 flights of stairs - you counted.

You were getting a good look at how big the facility was - you'd covered 6 levels in the time you had been here and on this level you could see rare glimpses of daylight.

So the levels of your cell, the brain-washing room and the interrogation room were underground.

At the centre of this large room stood a water tank, about 9ft in diameter. You looked around frantically at the people stood watching you , as you thrashed at the guards, no matter the pain and your body aching for you to stop, they lifted you into the tank.

The cold bit at you, shocked your body as you were plunged into it. It came up to your neck. You could manipulate and control water when you wished.

But not without use of your powers, dammit.

The same doctor, from your first day here, from the interrogation, approached the front of the tank, and gave you that all too familiar cloying smile. You grimaced.

"This will only be easy if you cooperate, Y/N." His heavy Russian accent making you feel sick.
"So we will try this again." You swallowed hard, and focused on controlling your breathing.

"What powers do you have?"

You felt this time, that you really needed to speak. You needed to say something, anything.

"I do not have any." Your voice came across hoarser than you would've liked. It wavered and shook and you hated to sound weak. What you really were.

The man shook his head back and forth slowly, a chuckle escaping his mouth. He muttered something in Russian, and guards approached you. You scrambled inside the tank, and flailed your arms.

They came over to you and they held your shoulders and head. You saw the man smile one last time before you were pushed under the surface of the water.

You thrashed against their grips, kicking at the tank with your legs and reaching up with your arms to try and pry their hands off you. The breath escaped your lungs quicker, the movement wasn't helping you at all. Your eyes were sore , open underwater, your mouth clamped shut. You screamed into the water, through your clamped lips, as you continued flailing to no effect. Then just when you were nearly almost out of all breath, your body going limp, you were heaved back up to the surface.

With this sudden movement you made the mistake of opening your mouth, and in the panic you inhaled a big gulp of water.
The moment you broke through the surface you coughed and spluttered and spat water out of your mouth.

You inhaled deep, long, heavy breaths, and it took a while before the water stopped being sucked up your throat with the breaths and all traces of water were out of your windpipe.

They went to push you back down-

"I don't-."you blurted out on instinct, and they stopped "I told you-." Your throat was raw, burning.

You were becoming dizzy, and it took you everything you had to keep your knees from giving out and you falling back under the water. Your hands shook gently against your sides in the water, the bruises and cuts on them aching.

"You were at fights. Battles. You would not be there if you weren't gifted." He said, his smile now faded, just pure impatience on his face.

He thought it was a gift. That same 'gift' that had killed innocent people on a failed mission in London. The gift that was capable of burning cities to the ground. Of drowning. Of making winds so strong it can turn objects to dust.

That wasn't always a gift.

You didn't ask to be stuck with it. Of course, like all great powers it had its perks, you felt safer with it, untouchable. But where were they now that you really did need them.

Wanted them.

You hated being compared to a hero. To being special. You didn't feel like you protected people, you felt like being with them, being able to crack at any moment, always put them in danger. S.H.I.E.L.D had trained you to be a killing machine, an assassin, skilled in the art of death. There was no escaping your past, your upbringing.

You were always trained to be dangerous.

That's partly the reason why you found yourself on the roof that night. The guilt had been eating away at you day by day. The memories. You saw their faces, staring at you with pleading eyes. You couldn't save them.

You couldn't go back in time.

The world. Your family. Would be better off without you.
Because you were a failure.

You had barely registered that guards were reaching for you. You just felt rage: hot and burning and blinding rage. They had captured you, taken you away from your family. They would pay.

Out of nowhere you erupted.

The tank you were in was blasted to pieces, so was everyone around the room- thrown against walls. Shards of glass were propelled everywhere, like knifes slicing though the air Guards came running in, their guns pointed at you, but they all soon fell to the floor.

You didn't really understand what was happening.

Maybe your power, specifically how you could control wind, had come back to you at last.

But it was in that moment, as destruction and blood lay all around you, the door open and guards running through falling to the ground as you stared at them in shock, that you knew, this was your chance.