REALITY || MARVEL

ᴱᵖⁱˢᵒᵈᵉ ᶠᵒᵘʳ ᵖ.⁴ ⁻ ʷᵉ ⁱⁿᵗᵉʳʳᵘᵖᵗ ᵗʰⁱˢ ᵖʳᵒᵍʳᵃᵐ

“VERONICA!” Adalaide Malick - Strucker shouts from her daughter's bedroom. She took a book from her daughter's library from old classic fairytales and sat down on her bed. “Let’s go kid!” 6 year old Veronica Von Strucker runs into the bedroom at her mothers command. She jumped into bed and settled in next to her mother. “Ready Moma!”

Adalaide managed a small smile. Her daughter was a very enthusiastic child. A very bright one too. When Adalaide was pregnant, she had hoped for a son. Someone to carry on the Strucker and Malick name with dignity and strength. She wanted for her child to prosper the way she never got to because of HYDRA and their old ideals and values.

But Fate dealt her another card. A daughter. Adalaide and Wolfgang (yes that is Baron Strucker's name) had already decided to tell Veronica about her heritage when she was 13. But in the meantime they would build her up to accept her family legacy.

And that starts from childhood. Adalaide opens the book, letting Veronica get comfortable before she begins to read. “Tonight we are reading Cinderella. By the brothers grimm.”

Adalaide read the story from cover to back. She was taken back to her own childhood, when her mother would read her the same original tales. And look how well she had turned out. Even though Adalaide hadn’t gotten up the ladder as quickly as she had hoped, she still made a large impact in HYDRA with her discoveries in bio-engineering. Veronica blinked in confusion at her mother once the story was over. She wasn’t nearly as traumatized as she should have been from the story, but this wasn’t the first time that her mother had read her the original tales.

“Why is the book so different from the movie?” Veronica went to normal school unlike most HYDRA children, and at her school her teacher would always play movies as rewards for good behavior for the week. She had watched the German and English version of Cinderella from Disney, and none showed the image of the stepsisters mutating themselves.

“Because Veronica,” Adalaide closed the book and brushed out her daughter's hair. “Real life isn’t a movie. In real life there is no happily ever after or white knights in shining armor. People lie, people cheat and people steal.” Harsh words for a 6 year old girl. But for a child born into a HYDRA family it’s what she would always learn and continue to learn.

Adalaide learned the same lessons herself when she was a child along with her kid sister Stephanie. If Veronica was ever going to make it in life as a HYDRA agent she had to learn that life was different then what everyone said it really was. “This world is unfortunately a man's world and we need to learn how to survive. You need to learn how to win.”

Those words would forever stay with Veronica for the rest of her life.

“Alright now,” Adalaide stands and puts the book away. She tucked Veronica in for the night and spared the goodnight kiss. If she is ever going to have a chance for her daughter to make it in this man's world she also needs to know that being soft won’t get her anywhere.

Adalaide proceeded to close the bedroom door behind her and continued deeper into the house. The lab she and her husband shared was in closed quarters away from their daughters prying eyes.

"For once could you make an effort to be there." Adalaide scolds her husband, who sits in the lab working on his current project. Wolfgang barely registered his wife's arrival. At least not till she slapped him in the back of the head. "Wolfgang! That kid upstairs is yours as well you know. I can't be the one left to teach her everything."

"That's what she has her teachers for," Wolfgang reminded his wife. "And that's why you're her mother."

That simply upset Adalaide. "I am not some simple housewife. That girl somehow worships the ground you walk on, you need to at least make a goddamn effort.” While that might seem like what most mothers would want and ask of the deadbeat dad for the sake of their children, although it was part of the reason, Adalaide had different motives. As long as they raised Veronica to fit into this life, as long as she worshiped her father the transition would be easier. Veronica would have no problem fitting in as long as she saw her family as high and mighty as they were.