Darkened Shadows

Chapter 5

Original POV

The pain wasn't gone, but it wasn't being forced upon me anymore. I knew that I was unconscious, but I couldn't wake up; not yet at least. My body needed just a bit more rest. Normally I wouldn't be this self-aware, but the darkness flowing through me was healing me faster than normal.

I was just floating around my mind when something felt...off. I didn't know what it was, but there was something in my mind that wasn't me. Before I could think more about it, I was plunged into a rapid slideshow recounting my entire life thus-far. Every experiment, every training session, all of the punishments, the torture, the degradation, everything. Every emotion and sensation was being forced through my body once more like a fucked-up slideshow.

It wasn't until a memory I tried so hard to forget started to grow near that I finally found the strength to force whatever was doing this out of my mind. Almost immediately after, I woke up and jumped off of the gurney that I was apparently on. I made eye contact with a woman with auburn hair and a red jacket and knew that she was the one poking around somewhere she didn't belong.

"Stay the fuck out of my mind," I spat.

It was after my demand that I realized that there were other people in the room, and that this was certainly not the facility I had spent my entire life in. I cursed myself for being slow on the uptake. I was trained better than this.

The others around me had seen the stance that I had taken up and proceeded to reflect: I was ready to fight, and so were they. There was a tall blonde in an overly patriotic outfit, a man who, for some fucking reason, had a bow, a redhead who I could tell had killed before and slept fine after, a red and gold suit of armor, what looked to be a scientist(oh fuck no), and the woman I has forced out of my brain. As I was scanning the room and assessing their threat levels, I stopped cold.

"Winter? Is that really you?" It had been nine-maybe ten years since I had seen him last. He looked more human, more alive. His hair was still long, and he was still intimidating, but his aura was completely different.

Everyone then turned to the Soldier with varying looks of confusion, some more intense than others. "Buck, you know this girl?" the tall blonde man asked. He was looking at Winter with a slight look of hurt present in his eyes. Winter looked back at him with an apologetic stare.

He sighed then turned back to me.

"Yes I know her, or, more specifically, the Winter Soldier knew her. It was about a decade ago, I was tasked with teaching her close-combat and knife techniques."

I stared into his blue eyes, looking for any part of the harsh, robotic man that trained me brutally all those years ago. I searched, but I could only see a kind, and damaged man staring back at me-there was no assassin staring at me within those eyes.

The silence was broken by the suit of armor, who's helmet part had been removed to reveal a dark haired man with a goatee. "Beautiful trip down memory lane, Inspector Gadget, but hello people?! Possible hostile in the room? Am I the only one who remembers that we just pulled her out of a Hydra base?"

Shit, I keep getting distracted. I go on high-alert again just as everyone focuses back on me, this time I form knives out of shadow and prepare to fight. The strange array of people, now even more wary than before, also prepared to attack.

"Oh great she has powers."

"Stop!" an accented voice calls out, "do not hurt her."

We all turn to the woman who invaded my mind who had been focused on me the entire time. Her blue eyes bore into my, currently, black ones. Her eyes held empathy and sadness, and it was aimed at me.

"You were raised by Hydra, they are all you have ever known, yet you harbor such intense feelings of resentment and malice towards them, why?"

I could feel everyone staring at me, but I kept my gaze locked on the woman in front of me.

"You're the one who trespassed into my mind. You saw everything I lived through. Why do you think?" I was pissed. She had the nerve to ask such a question after intruding on the most personal thing a human has. I continued, "yes, I grew up within those walls and in those labs, but Hydra did not raise me, they tortured and beat a child for its entire existence and expected it to respect them. They did horrible, unspeakable things to me and had the audacity to be outraged by my resistance, by my want to escape, by my longing for the pain to end. So yeah, I fucking hate them and everything they have ever done."

My stare didn't waver. I wanted her to know how mad I was, and judging by the remorse I saw in her face, I did exactly that. Now that I was out of that god-forsaken place, I was done with being treated like shit.

"While this is all well and good, you still seem to be threatening us with those daggers that you made appear out of literally nothing, so pardon us if we still don't exactly trust you."

I turned to glare at the man in the metal suit and kept my knives. While these people seemed leagues better than Hydra, I also did not trust them.

"Feeling's mutual, tin can."

Everyone still had their weapons trained on me, which included, a notched arrow, a gun, a shield, and what looked like laser hands. The scientist was unarmed, Winter was weary of me, but not as hostile as the others, and the witchy lady had a slight red mist around her hands, but I could tell that she really didn't want to fight.

Before anyone can say anything else, I continue. "You're not the one who woke up on a gurney due to someone prodding around their mind. Who knows what you were going to do to me while I was unconscious. I don't know who any of you are, except for Winter, but even now I know he's not the same person who taught me how to slit a man's throat effectively all those years ago." I pause, feeling everyone grow even more uncomfortable by that statement. "I don't know you and I don't know why you brought me here, but if you think for a goddamn second, that I'm going to let you do anything to me that even slightly resembles what Hydra put me through," I turn to look the tin man right in the eyes, "I will go from being a 'potential threat', to the last thing you will all see before the last bits of life leave your eyes."

That really unnerved him. His eyes spoke of his slight bits of doubt, but they were overshadowed by his innate fear and unease. I really didn't want to kill anyone, but I refuse to become another experiment. The American flag stepped forward, his shield slightly lowered and his other hand extended out to me like someone would do with a frightened animal.

"We aren't going to hurt you, we were trying to take you down to the lab," I tensed, "to treat your injuries and run some tests to see if there was anything else wrong that we couldn't see." He paused for a moment to gesture to the woman in front of me. "Wanda was in your head because we needed to know your intentions and if you were someone we needed to apprehend before things got out of hand, but here we are."

I quickly assessed my current injuries: my blistered and raw neck, the various cuts and scratches across all of my limbs, countless bruises, and of course, my absolutely fucked up wings. Focusing on the darkness inside me, I closed my eyes as I sent more of it to all my injuries to speed up the healing process. Hearing gasps from around the room, I opened my eyes and addressed their shocked expressions.

"Look, I'm all better, no more boo-boos," I sass at them. "Now let me leave so that I'm out of your hair, and you're out of mine."

"If you think that we're just going to let you waltz out of here after we rescued your ass from a Hydra base, then you're dumber than a brick." Tin Can continued, "also, how exactly do you plan on getting anywhere, hmm? Those wings on your back look pretty subdued to me."

I curse under my breath, "fuck."

Before anyone could say anything else, Winter, or Buck, chimed in. "Let us take care of you. You've never been in the outside world and I know how much being a part of Hydra for a long time is like. Just let us help you Shadow."

My face grew tense and stoic, "Do not, call me that."

"Then what should we call you?"

I hesitated, as much as I had dreamt of leaving the facility and growing up as a normal girl, I had never thought of a name for myself. I faced Winter and looked him dead in the eyes as I said with utter defeat, 

"I have no idea."