What I Lost || sequel to Worth It

Fifteen

3rd person POV

Ophelia paced down the aisles of some beat up gas station in rural New York. She grabbed two bottles of water, a map, and a bag of chips and walked up to the cashier.

As the young man began ringing her up, her eyes lingered on the stack newspapers to the left. The past week, every newspaper and magazine wouldn't shut up about (Y/N).

"Crazy, right?"

"What?" Ophelia tore her eyes from the newspaper.

"That girl," the cashier continued. "I don't think anyone saw that coming."

"Yeah, pretty crazy." She mumbled in response.

She finished paying and walked back to the car.

Luckily, no one had noticed the license plate that just so happened to match the one reportedly belonging to a car stolen from a family that was mysteriously killed last week.

The upside to all the attention on (Y/N) is that memories had began to come back. Lots was still foggy but progress is progress. She could put names to faces and there were a few details that she could assign to everyone but the emotional connection that once held strong was out of sight.

Although she'd never tell a soul out of embarrassment, she made flash cards for the important people. She had heard talk of the Avengers at HYDRA, but they were never spoken about like people; only obstacles.

It was difficult for Ophelia to adjust to freedom after so long without it. Every decision she made felt wrong, like she would be punished for stepping out of line even though the line didn't exist for her anymore. For anyone else, this freedom would be welcomed and celebrated but she had no one to celebrate with and no one to welcome her.

All she had was a plan. A very stupid and very risky plan but a plan nonetheless.

The Avengers compound in upstate New York still had her on file from the few times she's visited. The front gate technology would let her in and she'd go from there.

Had she considered what she'd do if there were people there when she arrived? No not really. But she'd cross that bridge when she came to it. First she had to figure out how to actually get to the compound.

Ophelia didn't have much experience with reading and navigating maps so it took a good three hours, sitting in an abandoned parking lot, to draw out her route. You would think that HYDRA would have taught her but they mostly just told her who and how to kill and dropped her off there.

She brushed the chip crumbs off of the map and held it up, inspecting the path the had drawn out. It was... not great. But it was better than nothing.

Ophelia had one thing on her side, very few people knew her face. Avoiding traffic cameras and busy places wasn't necessary when the general public had no clue who you were. There were news reports and memorial pages about (Y/N) Stark's late girlfriend but no one payed attention to that stuff. She was unremarkable and that was what made her lucky.

•••

Staring at the ceiling had become something (Y/N) was quite good at. Every day she tried to find something new about it. Whether it was a patch of mildew speckled across a clean white tile or a bit of rust around a light fixture if it was there she was going to notice it. Unfortunately for her, the ceiling was pretty garden variety and after two weeks of pure staring, she had memorized every detail.

"You remember when we had that picnic in the park?"

(Y/N) rolled on her side and pressed the flat pillow against her ear in an effort to block out the voice; which wasn't very successful considering the voice was in her head.