𝐍𝐎 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐃𝐄𝐄𝐃

CHAPTER ONE

Elena's memories were less like experiences and more like ghosts haunting her. They lived in the shadows of her mind never touching her but always lurking.

In her dreams, she lived in a dark room, with nothing but an obscure face with a twisted grin standing over her. Something there was a sharp pain in her abdomen. Sometimes there was electricity in her brain.

Sometimes she was back in her grandparent's apartment in Brooklyn, and she saw her baby sister with her neck sliced open, and her sister called her a murderer.

Sometimes when she woke up she couldn't remember anything but a strange sinking feeling. Most nights when she slept she woke up shaking and had to rock back and forth while repeating the words "You're safe" over and over again until her heart felt steady. But no matter how often she whispered those words to herself in a dark room, they never connected with her. She wasn't safe. She never would be again.

Elena doesn't sleep very much anymore.

Instead of sleeping, Elena is sitting in a diner a block away from her apartment with a plate of half-finished pancakes while drawing. She found that drawing the images in her head made them less haunting.

Sitting sideways in the booth she was sitting in, her sketchbook propped up by her knees, she drew a man in a black mask and red goggles standing in the corner of her studio apartment.

"Are you ready for the check hun? You've been sitting here for a while now," Elena looks up from her sketchpad to see the waitress standing over her. She gave the woman a tight smile and a nod, deciding it was time to head back to her apartment.

Her eyes are heavy and her back is sore and she is forgetting how to speak to people. It was nearly 4 AM and she had to get up for work in two hours.

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Elena must've had another nightmare because she woke up with that pit in her stomach and a bloody nose. The books in her apartment were scattered across the floors, indicating that she had thrown them off the shelves with her mind in her sleep.

Whatever she was dreaming about, it was intense. It took several bloody tissues to stop the blood from her nose and two Tylenol to get rid of the headache.

Elena put makeup on to cover the dark circles underneath her eyes. She wore a white button-up cardigan over a plain black dress that flared out at her waist and ended at her mid-thigh. She also wore a pair of warm white leggings underneath the dress to keep her legs warm. A compromise because she didn't like tight pants

Elena was a teenager when they took her. She was still discovering the things she liked, like dresses and warm tights. Every time she discovered something new she wanted she felt like she was somehow defying her captors. It felt like these were pieces of her that they never took away.

A year ago she had found a silver necklace with a hummingbird charm holding a tree branch in an antique shop. It reminded her of an old necklace her mother had given to her. She wore it every day now.

She remembered she liked art so she bought a canvas and paint and filled sketchbooks with messy artworks. She wore a large leather jacket with every outfit because it keeps her warm in the chilly New York weather and made her feel safe.

She watched old horror movies and had a bookshelf full of the books her older brother read to her when they were children. Her favorite thing though was her hair.

The first thing her captors had done was cut off all her hair, but ever since she escaped she had been allowing her hair to grow, and now it hung in thick dark waves and fell past her chest. Her hair held all her pride and joy in it, and it reminded her that it was years since she escaped HYDRA.