𝐴𝐿𝐼𝐾𝐸 - Peter Parker

60.

Rue's POV

"Wait for my signal," I noted holding up my hand to the three soldiers behind me and popped my head around the corner to scan the big field of broken city. We had been stationed to Iraq to collect some weapons for our next mission, and there was a lot of resistance.

I spotted one guy who was reloading his gun and fired a single shot from my machine gun, hitting him right in the chest. "GO!" I yelled and we began running across the street, shooting back at where shots were fired at us. I made sure the others came before me, since I was the leader of the group and while running I looked for the child we had been ordered to bring back too.

"Get the kid! She's over there!" Soldier X4 yelled at me while explosions surround my ears and I spotted the little girl. She couldn't have been more than three and she was dressed in a green raincoat, sobbing uncontrollably, all alone in the middle of the road.

I was myself wearing a bulletproof vest over a thin black top. It was burning outside and the sun was right over us, so the camouflage cargo pants I was wearing were drowning in sweat.

I sprinted to her, picked her up in my arm and scanned the area very quickly, before starting to run back to the vehicle we arrived in. I heard gunshots fired at us and I immediately threw myself on the ground behind a wrecked car with the girl still in my arm.

"What's so special about this kid anyway?!" I scream to drown out the gunshots, as I was aiming. When I spotted the guy who had been shooting at us I quickly shot him right between the eyes.

"We just follow orders!" X4 screamed back, while I ran to the vehicle and jumped in. She was screaming and crying even more hysterically now, so I quickly gave her a specially designed shot of anesthetic, so she passed out.

"Take her," I laid her carelessly onto X4's lap and he took her with no discussion. I looked in front of me, where X2 and X6 were sitting with their machine guns in hand, starring at me. "Tell me the reason why you absolutely need to stare at me?" I said coldly and leaned my head back on the metal wall, while we all moved synchronized from side to side because of the rough road.

"You're hit," X6 point at my arm and I look down at it and realized it was covered in blood. I ran a finger up my lower arm meeting a drop of red blood halfway to the wound. It neatly found its way onto my finger and I starred at it for a second.

"Great," I sighed and pulled the first aid kit out from under the seat and opened it, not really caring a bit about the stinging pain that suddenly occurred.

It was bleeding like a faucet so I ripped the lower part of my top off and started binding it around my upper arm where the wound was. I felt for an exit wound and luckily that bullet had flown right through my flesh. I had the fabric wrapped neatly around my arm, but now was the worst part. The part that hurt worse than actually getting the wound. I tightened it in one hard pull. "AH!" I screamed in excruciating pain and immediately started working on gaining back my breath with my teeth clasped together. I glanceded at the three soldiers in the car. Nothing. Not even one of them had turned their head to me. "Why the fuck did that hurt so much?" I panted out and glanced at my arm that was basically numb, deeply confused. The image of the first aid kit popped into my head again, but this time it wasn't under my seat. It was next to...

The car stopped and I was ripped out of the thoughts. We got out on row and was met by our boss outside. He looked us in the eyes one by one as we were standing on a row in front of him. He stopped in front of me and harshly gripped my chin to pull my face forward an inch.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" he asked as if I definitely was hiding something he already knew about, but just wanted me to admit for humiliation. The problem was that I had nothing to tell, except for the arm. But he would never grip me so hard because a bullet had passed through my arm.

"No sir," I steadily answered looking straight forward and without changing a muscle in my face. He nodded suspiciously and took a step back.

"Wipe her," he said and moved on to the next in line. What exactly he had seen in me, that made me suspicious. My heart sunk to the ground when two guards grabbed each of my arms and started dragging me away.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! I'M NOT HIDING ANYTHING!" I desperately tried screaming to him as they kept on dragging me against my will. I knew exactly what they were gonna do to me, but I could never remember why they did it. I just knew how excruciating the pain was when they turned that horrible machine on.

We arrived in the dreaded room and the doctors in there locked me in the chair and turned on the machine. "She's remembering," one of them remarked as he looked at a screen that showed my brain. "I've turned it up an extra notch, so she won't be able to remember a thing when we're finished," he then said and grabbed the mouthguard and held it outside my mouth.

"I'm not remembering anything," I firmly stated and starred angrily into his eyes, not wanting to open my mouth.

"Then what's this?" he held up a screen with a blurred out image of a first aid kit and some boy next to it on the bed.

Suddenly it clicked.

"Isn't that gonna sting like crazy?" Peter asked and pointed at the sanitizing wipe, I was unpacking. It was gonna hurt worse than it already did, but the wound had to be clear of bacteria before it could start healing.

"Maybe a little," I lied, and he stopped my hand with the wipe, from going to the wound.

"Rue, every time you say 'maybe a little', it's always much more, so thank you. Now I know it's gonna hurt like hell," he said, and blocked the wound a little with his hand.

"Will you stop your whining," I sighed out and smacked his hand away.

"Just let me do it then-" he was interrupted by my lips smacking into his both hard and gentle at the same time.

"Peter?" I sighed and began taking rapid breaths while my eyes filled with tears. It was Peter.

"See. You do remember," he said and put in the mouthguard when I was in another world recovering the rest of the memory. "I'll tell ya, they're the same each one of them," he chuckled to his partner.

"Yeah we've had X1 here for two years now and she's just not learning," the other man said and mockingly clapped down on my thigh. Two years?

The avengers. Tony Stark. Nat. PETER!

Please no! The click from the machine turning on sounded and the pain was sudden and extreme. I screamed while clenching down on the mouthguard that my teeth felt like they drilled into my gums. The feeling was too familiar when I felt it, but I would always forget just how bad the pain was because of the erased memory. 

They knew just what to keep in there and they knew just what to remove. My combat skills they kept, along with my acrobatics, gun skills, aikido and just about anything else they taught me or showed me.

The pain stopped and I took my time to gain back my strength. "Look," a man said and I opened my eyes. He held out a blurry picture where some guy was laying in a bed with a first aid kit.

"Who's that? Let me out of this chair, will you?" I asked and looked up at him. He smiled and let me free of the chair. I walked back to my team who was in the middle of eating their usual dinner. I was in the middle of opening my salad when I noticed they were all staring at me. "Stop staring, or I'll murder all six of you," I said, being completely apathetic. I took a bite and they all turned their heads back to their own food. Except one.

-

I don't even know what to say.