Changes | Marvel

THIRTEEN. Changes

All I could feel was pain. I felt dazed and drugged, but I could feel the sharp stabs of pain throughout my body. The world seems in slow motion as adrenaline ran through my veins with loud audible thumps; every sound is magnified in my brain, through the sounds of drilling and machinery. I could see colours through my closed eye lids and I could hear everything in the surrounding area.

Screams. Drills. Yelling. Beeping. More Screams. High pitched and painful to hear. They were coming from my own mouth; a sound that I never thought could come out of my own body. I could feel pressure being built up in my brain, as if I was being stabbed. Sounds started to echo, and I tried to pry open my heavy eyelids, trying to find the faceless voices to tell them to stop the pain. I could feel my voice sitting at the back of my throat, I tried to reach out to my side where I could sense someone was standing but I found that I was strapped down.

"Plea-Please." The gurgled sound came out of my throat. "Stop. Stop. Plea-Please. Just. Kill. Me." I was speaking in syllables, the most that I could get out. The throbbing in my mind began to get worse and I could hear the wails coming out of my mouth. "STOP IT!" I screamed, probably scaring the people around me. I could hear the slamming of metal on metal and the tinkering of tools. "KILL ME. STOP IT!"

"We can't do this Director." The voice echoed through my mind once I began to grow more coherent to what was happening around me. "He's begging to die, and Avery is far too young to withstand the pain she is in. She's begging for us to kill her! We need to stop this!" I hear a woman's voice.

"No, you keep that machine on. They will be fine, not right now but eventually they will be fine."

I open my eyes to reveal myself laying down at a beach. I was relaxing on a cushioned massage table, lying face down with a masseuse gently pushing down into my back, pushing out the kinks and tightness that my muscles held. I raise my head and see Phil Coulson in a similar state next to me... this was odd. How did we get here? Why were we here? Where was Tony?

"Phil?" I call out, not having the strength to lift myself up.

"Hm? Avery? What are we doing here?" He questions groggily, looking as dazed and confused as I was.

"I don't know." I wanted to get up, to see where we were but for some reason I couldn't. It was as if I was stuck to this chair.

"Where... Where is everyone?" He asks again, lifting his head so he could scan the area as best as he could.

"Once again... I have no idea? Why are we...? Where are we ma'am?" I ask the woman massaging Coulson. Hawkward.

"In Tahiti. Such a magical place." She tells us.

"Tahiti..." I mutter lowly, letting myself lay flat once more as a dull throbbing began to emerge from the back of my head. The sound of her voice had imprinted itself into my mind, it sounded so familiar yet so wrong coming from my mouth.

"Don't worry. Just relax and sleep." The woman massaging me assures me gently, I eventually doze off once more.

---

That god-damn beeping better shut the hell up right now or I swear on all things holy... It was hard to open up my eyes, they felt heavy and my body was in some pretty intense pain that I had never felt before. What on Earth had happened, the last thing I remember was getting a massage from a random woman in the middle of Tahiti. My limbs felt stiff along with my neck, as if I fell asleep on a pillow made of stone. The bed felt uncomfortably warm underneath my body and I was wondering how long I had been lying down for. Wasn't I killed by that asshole Loki? I swear I was stabbed by his mythical stick of doom but maybe I was just dreaming. Slowly, I manage open my eyes, but I wince as bright lights all around me begin to hurt my sensitive eyes. There were multiple machines taking up most of the space around the bed that had a railing up on either side of me, there were cords attached to me everywhere while my limbs were sore and felt heavy. I think the worst thing for me was the pain coming from my chest, I physically felt sweat begin to form at the pain that suddenly erupted from the wound when I tried to sit up.