And Then I Wrote Marvel

Show Me Light (Part 1) (Avengers x Reader) *

Spoilers for Agents of SHIELD season 1, and I honestly don't know where all of the sad stuff is coming from.

The people who had seen you before all this had happened were now dead by your hand. No one living had ever known who you were when you still could see light in the world. You were the only one left that could remember the person that you had been. Even if there was someone left, you would be unrecognizable to them. If you died, no light would leave your eyes--it left seven years ago, when HYDRA finally broke you.

You were just eighteen, but had already been in HYDRA's custody for three years. The experiments had begun immediately, but they only broke through after nearly a thousand days of torture. The powers made you lose control of yourself, replaced your very being with an unquenchable desire to kill and destroy. After the surge was over, you were left with the crushing reality of what you had done, all the lives that you had, just moments before, enjoyed ending.

The first time you displayed these powers was also the day that you snapped, and you were no longer capable of emotion. The powers seemed to negate them, and you were strangely grateful for that. Without emotions, you still realized the horror of what you had done, but you didn't spend eternity hating yourself for it. It haunted you, sure, you couldn't forget it, but you understood that it would do no good to beat yourself up.

When your powers had activated, and you had destroyed the lab you'd spent a good portion of your life in, as well as everyone in it, HYDRA had been able to find you easily afterward; you hadn't been able to bring yourself to run. It didn't help that you had been physically exhausted, but the real reason that you couldn't make yourself go was that you were in a state of shock. After years worth of pain, the experiments had finally paid off.

You had been listless when they came for you. Though the walls were all but gone, you could still trace the exact path from the holding cells to laboratory. You sat where your cell had been, looking around at the other prisoners that you had accidentally killed. You didn't know that so many had been there with you. So you sat there, silently and emotionlessly grieving.

The next two years, they had kept you in captivity, only releasing you when they had found your triggers. When they would let you leave the compound, it would be in set locations that they wanted you to destroy. They knew your own history perhaps better than you yourself did, and took you to obliterate places of your past.

Schools, hospitals, houses, neighborhoods, buildings, none escaped your power. Parents, siblings, family, friends, teachers, acquaintances--they were all gone. You killed them, not caring about bonds you'd had until you came out of your rage and saw their bodies.

You tried so hard to resist the triggers that activated destruction. No matter what you did, you lost yourself and power took over. You had no control over your life. Unwillingly, you had dedicated your life to HYDRA, and they were not about to let you have it back. They saw you purely as a weapon, an item that they couldn't risk losing, and you hated it.

Before they would trigger you from a safe distance, you would yell at everyone you saw to run, get out of harm's way. There was never time, of course, but it eased your conscience somewhat to know that you had tried. Some of your old friends had been so excited to see you after five to nine years of thinking you were dead that they didn't even realize that you were warning them. The trigger chemical would kick in, and the last thing you could process was their horror-struck face as you killed them.

After five years of erasing your past, destroying everything you knew so that you had no home to return to, even if you did manage to escape, HYDRA began sending you on assassination missions. They would land you unconscious beside a building that they knew that their target would be in. As soon as the unfortunate person entered, they woke you up and triggered you before anything else could happen.

It was lucky that SHIELD found you when they did. In just a year, they had managed to find a pattern in who and what HYDRA had you destroy, and saved hundreds of people from their untimely deaths that day. You had only just woken up when you were shot with an ICER, and you were freed from HYDRA.

"S/he lives," a soft voice commented as you woke in a dark interrogation room.

"Do I really, though? There is a difference between surviving and living," you returned. "Who are you?"

"Director Phil Coulson of SHIELD. Now, I only know you as the Human Destroyer. Do you have a name?"

"SHIELD? So...HYDRA can't touch me anymore?"

"We'll do our best to keep you out of their reach."

"Thank you. I don't really remember my name, by the way. I've just been called Number 37 for 10 years."

"You didn't have a name on any of the HYDRA records, either. You look like a (Y/N)."

You perked up. It would have been fitting for your eyes to light up, but there was no light to begin with. "I think that's it."

He smiled. "Well, (Y/N). Do you remember anything from your life before they took you?" You told him everything that you felt comfortable with. You could tell that he knew you were holding back, but he didn't seem to want to push you if you didn't want to talk about anything. He was waiting patiently for whenever you were ready to spill.

"Director Coulson?" you asked after a short period of silence. He was jotting down some notes, but you didn't mind.

"Yes?" he responded almost immediately, finishing his sentence and looking up.

"Something I forgot to mention. They used some chemical to trigger me. I think they made sure that I didn't know what it was. I might have heard something at some point, but it's long gone from me."

"Oh. That's interesting. I wonder--" he caught the sudden pallor of your face, and assured you, "We would never test anything on you to find out."

"I don't want to blow up again. I've killed too many people against my will."

He nodded. "I can understand that. What do you want to do?"

"Me?" He nodded, a soft, encouraging smile resting on his face. "I-I don't know. I haven't had agency for a decade."

"You can do anything, provided that you stay here. We don't want to risk HYDRA getting you back." You shuddered involuntarily. As much as you were thankful to SHIELD for freeing you from mindless killing, it seemed like you were just going from one prison to another.

"You can do what you wish with me," you answered. "I don't know how to...be a person anymore."

The cruelty of HYDRA continually surprised and disgusted Phil Coulson. "What would you think of meeting some of my top agents? Making some friends?"

You shook your head. "They'd just get hurt."

"I assure you, my agents can take care of themselves."

"Not against this."

It clicked. You weren't allowed to get close to anyone when HYDRA had you. They'd likely punish both you and them by forcing you into destructo-mode and killing the person you'd befriended. Barbaric.

In a normal HYDRA experiment situation, the phrase, "They can't hurt you anymore," would be used several times. Now, however, Phil was forced to twist it. He said, "You can't hurt anyone anymore."

"I don't want to take any chances."

"I think I know who can help you," Phil stated, an idea coming to mind. "I have a couple of friends who can relate to you almost perfectly."