Winter's Nightmare

The Avengers

Lia's POV April 2015

It'd been quiet a while since anyone had come in for the daily "treatments" they so lovingly called Lia's beatings. By her guess it had been about a month since she was all but abandoned. One day people were rushing about doing their jobs like usual. The next almost absolute silence. Since Hydra had triggered her mutant genes she'd had a never ending constant flow of other people's thoughts and emotions flowing through her head so it had been easy to keep track of her time in her isolation.

When she had been under Pierce's complete control the constant noise of everyone's thoughts hadn't bothered her. But three months ago Lia had passed by a nurse on her way through the med bay for an after mission checkup. She had caught the nurses thoughts about her. It had been back from the first day they had brought in her broken and bloody body. The soldiers telling her and the other medical staff that Pierce had expressly ordered them to keep her alive. 'How?', the woman had thought. 'Surely she would die from her wounds'. How scared they all had been if they were to fail at keeping her breathing. Deep inside Lia's subconsciousness the real her began trying to break free.

She held on to that woman's memory of herself for dear life. It made it easier to slowly filter in other thoughts from those around her to show her what she'd been doing. It had terrified her when she had found what had happened to her. What they had made her do for the last two years. The moment she broke free of Pierce's control was the moment she stopped being a willing killing machine.

His punishment for her was to lock her up. Cuffing her with some technology that kept her from teleporting and to start the conditioning process all over again. Hence the daily physical and mental torture. The mental part of her punishment was easier to keep at bay now. They'd only tried to wipe her three times before Peirce told them to stop for fear of completely breaking her mind. This let her hold onto strong thoughts and memeories about herself.

Ironically it was Pierce that helped her the most to bring everything back. He stopped because he didn't want to break her mind not knowing what it would make her into. So the "physical therapy" began. Not enough to permanently injur, but enough that she would want to willing comply. Fat chance of that happening. Lia was done being his lapdog.

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Five weeks ago

Her hands were bound above her head to a hook in the ceiling. Stretching her out just high enough that she couldn't put her feet fully on the floor. Peirce stood in the doorway to her cell his right hand running across his forehead lightly like he had the beginnings of a headache. He says, with an exasperated sigh, "Koshmar, this would go so much easier on you if you just submitted."

Lia laughed through her pain. "я могу делать это весь день старик. And my name is Aurelia!" (I can do this all day old man.) He shook his head at her and waved at the agents to continue using her as a living punching bag.

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3 weeks ago

Right now if she was being honest with herself she'd take the physical abuse over the silence. All of her own emotions and thoughts were front and center at the moment. At first she'd enjoyed the silence, but she had quickly changed her mind on that. She was mentally cursing at her earlier thoughts that the silence was like being on a mini vacation. She had nothing to distract her mind that was plagued with dark thoughts that had started to take her to a place she wasn't ready to go to. Thoughts that she didn't want to acknowledge. Thoughts she refused to give into.

She tried to concentrate on her parents faces. Remembering the times her dad and her would play the piano. Cooking old family recipes on the weekends with her mom telling her she would need to pass on the traditions to her future children. Tears slipped down her face as she tucked herself into a corner of her cell with her arms around her knees at the thought of her never getting to have a life or children. Lia just wanted to go home and she couldn't do that if she was dead. Resolved to find a way out she focused on her breathing and positive thoughts of freedom.