ROYAL ⥇ N. ROMANOFF

1.3

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

"It's been a long, long time."

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

 "Again," Strucker demanded, observing Eloise from behind a rubber shield. She groaned, pushing herself up off the ground as jolts of electricity bounced off her skin. It tickled, at best, but the little stabs still pricked her skin like tiny needles.

She'd been in the facility for a month now, or at least what felt like. Every day for the past couple of weeks was spent like this. For hours on end, they would train her abilities, shocking her and commanding her to produce electricity for them. She'd even once managed to use the electricity to her advantage, creating a shield around herself that would shock anyone that came too close but keeping it up for too long drained her energy faster than doing laps would.

But Eloise persisted, promising herself that once she got strong enough, she would break herself and the twins from the hellhole. She stood up to face Strucker. He'd promised her that Peter had been released a few days prior, even bringing her to the cell he had resided in as proof. She still didn't trust him but she would have to for now. Until she found solid proof that they still had Peter, she had to believe that he was safely sent either home or somewhere far away from here.

Eloise held her hands out in front of her once more, forcing the electricity to her fingertips. The man across from her raised a new set of targets, fresh for the taking. With calculated and precise movements, Eloise threw her arms out and took out each target. The electricity acted like knives, cutting straight through the ten planks of wood. One stray jet ricocheted off one of the rubber partitions, jetting back toward Eloise at lighting speed.

She quickly threw an arm out, reabsorbing it into her skin and dispelling it into the ground. While her body had adjusted to harness electricity, it still wasn't safe to keep it under her skin for a long time. If it got too close to her heart, it could kill her. That was one of the first lessons she'd learned. The electricity would work with her as a living being inside her but if she tried to restrain it in any way, it was quick to turn against her.

Though it was safe to say the electric chair no longer worked on her, HYDRA had figured out other ways of keeping her in line. They exploited her empathy for Peter for as long as they could and when they released him, they turned to other methods of mental torture.

Once they'd ran through the rest of her drills for that day, she was escorted to the showers where she was allowed to clean herself up before being brought back to the cells where Wanda and Pietro awaited her. They'd long since revealed their own longstanding traumas to each other, the twins imparting their memories of the bombing that took out their parents while Eloise finally let them know about her status of ex-royalty.

It was a difficult day for all of them and though Eloise didn't believe her trauma deserved to be held to the same standards, they still took her in as one of their own. In the short month she'd been at the facility, she'd even heard the three of them be referenced as "The Triplets" though Eloise was a good three years older than they were.

"What'd Strucker have you do today?" Wanda asked, her voice low as they ate the rations they were provided for dinner that night. It consisted of the same plain white rice they had every other night as well as a scoop of vegetables and the bare amounts of protein. They were allowed as much water as they wanted but they quickly learned that the guards didn't take kindly to persistent requests.