My Avengers (1)

Chapter 5

(SHIELD, Y/n's POV)

The needle pierces my skin, then pushes through the bone of my skull and penetrates the soft tissue of my brain.

I scream in agony as fire fills my body.

"Turn it on. Now."

The switch clicks again, and the burning is counteracted by the electricity being shot through my veins. Up and down my arms and legs, across my torso, through my head, but it concentrates towards my hands. That's where it's the strongest.

"Now then, what am I thinking?" List says as he bends so that we're eye to eye.

"I don't.... I don't know," I sob at this man who intimidates me. Scares me. He shouldn't, but he does. I'm more powerful than he is, but without knowing how to control it, that power is useless.

"What am I thinking?" he yells at me.

"I don't know!" Sparks crackle violently between my fingers.

"Sir? Sir. Should I switch it off?"

"No! Not yet."

His eyes narrow at me, and I can feel his breath on my face, "Tell me now. Or she dies," he says as he points to the unconscious girl in the chair next to me.

"No. Please, no."

"3!....... 2!......."

"Chitauri!" I scream at him. "You're thinking about Chitauri."

"Yes? What about them?"

"I don't know. I don't know what it is. I can just see that. And something else. A name."

"What name? Tell me!"

"Laufeyson!"

I slump down in my chair, exhausted.

With a satisfied grin, List nods to the technician and the machine is switched off. The energy is still there, but the intensity is lessened. Compared to what it was, it may as well not be there at all.

"Well done y/n. Well done."

I slowly turn my head towards the girl who's life was momentarily in my hands. Long, soft red hair, a gentle face. She looks peaceful. Maybe she's dead already. There are no restraints on her, and I don't know why. I don't know why I'm being tied down and she isn't. Is it for my safety?

Or for theirs?

A hand on my shoulder snaps me out of my daydream, but I quickly slap it away and stand up, looking frantically around me, arms shaking and firing electricity in random directions.

I'm in a pale grey room, with no windows, and just a few tables and chairs. There's only me and this other person in here.

How did I get in here?

Is it a cell?

Have I been locked up again?

"What? Where....."

"Hey, hey! Calm down!" Two leather covered hands grab my wrists. "Y/n? Are you okay?"

"Let me go! Let me-"

"Stop it! You're safe. Okay? You're safe."

My hands calm their thrashing and me eyes focus on a worried face surrounded by red curls.

"Romanoff," I breathe deeply. "Sorry. Yeah, I'm okay."

I'm shaking slightly, and I can feel cold sweat slipping down my back, but I'd rather be here than back there.

"How um, how long was I like that?" I'm gasping ever so slightly, trying to get enough oxygen into my body when I feel like I'm suffocating.

"I don't know. I was actually just coming to find you. Does that happen a lot?"

"Yeah, a fair bit. Usually just when I'm sleeping though."

"Night terrors? Jesus, what happened to you for you to have those?"

I wrap my arms around myself in a defensive stance as my breathing evens out, "I'd really rather not talk about it."

"Hey, that's fine," she raises her hands in surrender. "But that seemed like you were going through some scary shit. If you need to talk, I'm here."

"I've managed this long on my own, I think I've got it."

She opens her mouth to say something else, but I interrupt her, "You said you were looking for me? What's going on?"

"Uh yeah, we've found a potential match on Loki. But if you need a second-"

"Nope. Let's go," I stand up, ready to march out of the room, but then realise I don't actually remember the way back to the main room, so I look back at Romanoff. "After you."

She looks at me, almost warily, then shakes off the concern and nods, walking quickly out of the room. 

"You could have told me about the mission by the way," I say as we're walking.

"What do you mean?"

"When you found me. You never actually told me what we were doing. I had to be briefed by Fury."

"Oh. Sorry about that. I guess I was just more worried about making sure you'd actually come."

"Well if I'd have known what we were doing, I never would've come."

"What?" she stops and turns to look at me. "Really?"

"Really. There's no way I want to go looking for the Tesseract. Are you crazy? None of you have any idea what that thing is. What it does."

"And you do?"

"Considering they used it at Hydra, I'm gonna say yeah."

"Hydra? They used the Tesseract at Hydra?"

"Well they used to. Considering it's now in the hands of someone else, I'm gonna assume not."

"What did they use it for?"

I shrug, then my eyes spot the doorway into the main room, so I start heading towards it, "An energy source."

I'm not exactly lying. It gave me a bit of energy if nothing else. I just still don't know if I can trust these people or not, so I'm not giving everything away at once. A few white lies here and there won't make much difference.

We're all doomed in the end.

"Sixty seven percent match," a man says as he watches figures bounce around on his screen next to a photo. "Cross matching now...... Seventy nine percent match."

"Location?" another man who I recognise to be Agent Coulson asks from his side.

"Stuttgart, Germany. Some grand concert hall. Sir, I'd be careful, he's not exactly making an effort to hide."

"He wants us to find him, so we will," Fury announces. "Rogers, you're up."