There were a thousand prickling sensations crawling its way up my spine, a cool feeling washing over me, making me involuntarily shiver. The streets of New York were not one for the weak. The loud, chaotic noises coupled with the bright flashing lights made my ears hurt and bleed, the back of my eyes sore. Grime coated my body, and not from the three nights I spent hidden in the alleyway. My dirty and torn prisoner uniform was one that I was itching to change.
Home.
Food.
Money.
School.
I remember the list, the list that he had made for me. I remember the words that came out of his mouth, but nothing of the man itself. I can't remember his face or how his hands used to feel. I can't remember how we knew each other and what we did during that time. I remember the pain that followed, though. I remember the white, hot flashes of pain ripping through my body as I sat on the Chair, a billion times afterward, until I couldn't even remember the color of his eyes.
There were a few things that I could never forget. I remember that, after a punishment, he would take his fingers and gently trace the lines of my scars. Not a single whisper of sound would escape his lips, but the touch itself let me know that he had cared. Even after he left.
He was supposed to be my first friend; I knew him as such. The word never directly rolled off my tongue, but I assume it was implied. I had no friends. No one cared about me. But he did. He had a past and he remembered things beyond the gray, cement walls that trapped us inside our shared cell. I knew nothing else, but he cared nonetheless. That means he was my friend.
Home.
Food.
Money.
School.
I currently have not checked off a single thing from this list. Home. I see posters barely hanging onto polls. They speak of something called an apartment. I'm vaguely sure that that is a place to sleep. And a place to sleep is what a home is.
Hydra is home.
That is what they told me. I was provided a bed and, regardless of the meager quantities, I was also given food. I was also given discipline and a purpose in life. Hydra is home.
Was home.
I had escaped from my home.
Food I could steal. I found little pieces of old, now cold, food in the trash bins and alongside the street. Even run over by a car it looks more appetizing than the gray gruel of slop that I was fed. I was still hungry though, my fast metabolism zipping through the calories in taken once I placed it in my mouth. At least the gray gruel technically met all of my minimum requirements. It was never more, never enough to make me feel happy or satisfied. Everything was just enough.
Money I could steal. At night, as I stare at the small sliver of webbing that creeps out of my veins on demand and attach the sticky substances to the brown colored squares people tend to keep in their pockets. The squares have lots of pockets that are filled with cards and green cash. I have collected some cash already and I will continue to do so. I will buy food. I will buy clothes. I will get myself that apartment. The webbing was difficult to make. The skin around it was permanently stained red and the bones in my wrist never truly healed properly after the initial injury. Sharp pain shoots up my forearm as I want the webbing to come out. One day I will make artificial means of that webbing but, for now, this will have to do.
Schooling was complicated. I see lots of children that are supposedly my age walking around the streets, a backpack slinging over their shoulders without a care in the world. How can they be so carefree? Years of stress burden my shoulders. Worry constantly coats my eyes as I analyze every footprint and breath. They speak of a school known as Midtown and something about Technology. I will try to find this school and enter.
What will I say? Who am I? Even away from my home, am I S-20? Do I have to be S-20? Can I be a something or a someone? I remember they told me that names are only for important people. People of value. People that are actual people. I was told that I was nothing. I was just—
I want to be something. I want to be someone. I am no longer S-20. Name. I need a name.
YOU ARE READING
Not Anymore
FanfictionS-20 has only ever known one thing, Hydra, until one man came into his life and showed him that there was so much more. That man was his first friend. His older brother. But after one night, the two were ripped apart and S-20 cannot even remember hi...
