Science and Magick (LokixOC)

Chapter Thirteen

"So, can I ask you something?" Bruce requested, breaking the comfortable silence they had been sat in as he drove through the city.

Zoë looked over at him from the passenger side and smiled "Of course, you can ask me anything Dr Banner" she agreed.

Bruce shook his head "Bruce" he corrected.

Zoë blushed a little and nodded "Right, sorry. Bruce" she apologised. It was strange being on a first name basis with her childhood idol.

He smiled and glanced at her before looking back over at the road "Honestly I have a lot of questions" he admitted.

Zoë chuckled "I bet, well it doesn't look like the traffic is going to move anytime soon. We've got time" she smiled. While normally she wouldn't be this open to answering questions about herself, she wanted to build trust with the avengers, considering she was now one of them. God, it only just hit her. Zoë was an avenger.

"Well... about Hydra..." Bruce trailed off, struggling to find the right words.

Zoë sighed and pulled her hair into a ponytail, it was a nervous habit she had developed when she was young that she hadn't been able to shake. She couldn't explain why but she always felt far too vulnerable when her hair was down. "When my great grandfather escaped to America, he didn't know his wife had their child while she was captured. I believe he was told she and the foetus had been killed when he left as punishment. Well she died during labour and Hydra kept the child in hopes that Erskine's intelligence would be passed on genetically. They raised that child to believe her father had been taken by the Americans by force, along with his research, and killed once he had served his purpose. As you can imagine she believed it wholeheartedly, dedicating her life to living up to the genius her father was and finish his mission to supply Hydra with the super soldier serum"

"When Hydra had the tesseract, my grandmother volunteered to be tested on with it despite still being just a child. Luckily the results were inconclusive and so she and the experiment were dismissed and forgotten about. Hydra kept working her though, she was a brilliant scientist... just not as brilliant as her father. Eventually she had my mother, continuing Hydra's hope for the genetic material being passed on. My mother is brilliant too, she just wasn't brilliant with biology. Her talent was with physics, that's where she met my father, she was working as a Hydra informant in the German military, making and perfecting missiles"

"Hydra only began to see the rewards they were hoping for when I was born. I showed signs of my scholastic gifts early on, by the time I was fifteen I was already on my way to Oxford to get my degree. I was Hydra's pride and joy" Zoë said bitterly. She had been so incredibly proud, she had loved her home. She gave them everything because they asked it.

She took a deep breath and shook her head "Anyway, just like my grandmother and my mother before me I was told the great stories of Dr Erskine and his super hero serum. Oh how the injustice of it all shaped me, I was so so determined to be the scientist my great grandfather would be proud of. To avenge him. God I was so naive" she whispered the last sentence, shame tugging at her heart.

Bruce reached over and tapped her shoulder "You were only a child, you can't blame yourself for believing something that had been told to you your whole life" he sympathised softly.

Zoë smiled over at him and nodded, tapping his hand gratefully. "When the news of Captain America being dragged out of the ice reached home I was more determined than ever to perfect the serum. I'm ashamed to admit that I believed if I figured it out then I'd figure out how to reverse it... and kill Steve" she confessed "I was so ruled by hatred, that's why I didn't deserve his forgiveness or his friendship. I have done horrible things for Hydra in the name of vengeance. He is a much better man than I deserve" Zoë finished.