A Haunting Past: an Avengers/x-men fanfiction

Do I have to?

Banner's POV

Allison's bones are slowly healing from the painful ordeal that they had to experience.  Her body just wasn't ready to heal itself quite yet so I had to give her a dose of morphine so she could relax.  I haven't really had any sleep over the past couple of days and today wasn't going to be any different.

Allison's screams woke me up as I sit up at my desk.  She's having another nightmare that she refuses to talk about.  I walk over to the bed and I gently shake her awake.  Her eyes open and she frantically looks around.  She relaxes slightly but the look in her eyes tells me everything I need to know.

"I'm sorry." She says through the tears.  "I didn't mean to wake you up."

"Allison you're fine." I say as I sit next to her on her bed.  I rub her back gently as she tries to calm down a bit.  "You're going to have to talk about what happened eventually."  She bites her lip as she looks down at her bandaged knee.

"Do I have to?" She asks and I remember that she's just a child.

"Is everything ok?" A sleepy Natasha asks as she stands in the door.  I nod but she wasn't asking me.

"I want to talk about it." Allison finally says and I sigh relieved.

"Who do you want to talk to?" Natasha asks but Allison is having a hard time handling her emotions.  "Come here." Natasha sits down and Allison curls up against her.  The tears fall down her face as Natasha tries to soothe her in Russian.

"I was so scared..." Allison sobs.  "They didn't even try to take the pain away when they cut into.....my skin...." Allison's body is shaking as she tries to get out what happened.  "Then they started drilling.  It hurt so much, Natasha."  Allison was crying so hard now.  Natasha looked worriedly at me as Captain and Clint showed up in the doorway.

"You're safe now." Natasha says as I get off of the bed.  I walk over to the cabinet and I pull out a syringe filled with the sleeping serum I designed for her.  Natasha keeps talking to her as I quickly inject it into her shoulder.  She becomes tense for a second but then she relaxes.  "We need to get her counseling."  Natasha lays her back on the bed.

"It's PTSD." Sam says as he appears in the doorway.  "What the hell did she go through anyways?"

"It would give you nightmares just hearing it." Natasha replies as she tucks in Allison.

"I could be her counselor." Sam offers and everyone looks at him.  "What it's what I'm trained to do."

"For soldiers but not children." I reply but Captain looks like he's really considering it.  "Let's just see how she is in the morning."  Everyone but Natasha leaves the room.  "Nat?"

"Go get some sleep, I'll stay with her."

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