Take Me Home

Would You Have Recognized Her?

Present

"She didn't remember anything?" Bruce asks in disbelief. Luke shakes his head.

"absolutely nothing. We did scans and tried cognitive tests but nothing. Those notes should be there." Bruce reaches for the papers searching through them. "It was tiring for her. She had to relearn a lot of things. Thank god we had the pod or she would be in a wheel chair her whole life."

Tony looks down rubbing his face tiredly. "I would've found a way to fix her."

"There's nothing." Bruce says in shock throwing the papers down. "Nothing that shows a problem. How-"

"So you had no clues. Nothing to know who she was?" Clint says.

"Yes, it was difficult. Before her there were only a limited amount of people allowed to have "modern" interactions. The elders let us slowly reach out but most didn't help. We managed to get some movies and music, a camera but that's all that was allowed."

"That's why the correspondence with you always took so long." Tony mutters as Luke nods.

"If you reached out then you would've known we were looking for her." Steve half accused. Luke sighed softly before reaching for a folder on the bottom of the pile pulling copies of three pictures from the back. He slowly hands them out to everyone before he sits back and waits.

The first one is a woman with bruises and cuts marking her face making her unrecognizable. Her eyes are swollen shut. It's hard to tell her condition fully with almost every part of her broken and battered. The second there is less bruising and cuts but her eyes and cheeks are sunken in. She has no hair on her head and a dead look on her eyes. The last picture, she has chin length hair and looks healthier. There's a haunted look in her eyes but she looks alive, filled with a spark the other two pictures lack. Bucky lets out a strangled groan grabbing all three pictures.

"This is how you found her?" He choked up. That's when Clint falls into his chair with a slight sob. The others either push the photos away or grip them tight with tears in their eyes. Bucky turns away for a moment while Loki stands up before he starts pacing.

"Would you have recognized her?" Luke says softly knowing that by their reaction there was no way. "The people we know who had contact with the 'outside world' knew this face." He points at the pictures forcing them to look at it again. "How were they to know this woman was this woman?" He says pulling out the photo that the Avengers had of her. She is smiling into the camera, her hair long and flowing in the wind. She's in her famous pose, carefree, happy and smiling wide. There's a look in her eyes that's slightly mischievous but happy. A shine that she lacks now. Putting the last picture and this picture next to each other there's no way to tell it's truly her. Yes features are the same but not enough to say positively it's her just enough to know it's a possibility. She needed a few facial reconstructions to repair the damage that healed wrong so to some she might look like a relative to the happy girl she used to be. "I had a suspicion but she never looked like this, not once when she was with us. Her hair is under her collarbone because she said she hates long hair. I rather keep her from rejection because you were in too much pain and possibly too many false claims to really look. Even if she wasn't Nia, you would help her heal and find her family. I took that chance."

The avengers are quiet as they take in what Luke has told them. Seeing visually how she was breaks them in a way the 5 years she's been missing never has. There were tons of imposters, false information and attention seekers but seeing her like this, it was worse than all of that.

"Just please," Luke pleads after a tense silence, wanting them to know how serious he is. "Be patient with her. We will not hesitate to take her back-"

They all scream but Luke just holds his hand out. "If you cause her more harm by trying to make her remember or be who you used to know, we will protect her."