oh captain! my captain! | barnes

arrival

9:00 am
Tower Landing Pad

"Everyone here?" Steve asked behind him.

Bucky glanced around; Natasha, Bruce, Tony, Vision, Wanda.. Everyone was here except Audrey.

"Yes."

Steve turned back around and took off.

•••

Audrey woke up with a jolt. She wasn't in the well anymore. She was in tightly strapped to a chair.

"Oh Captain! My Captain!" Doctor began. She clenched her fists.

"It's not going to work!"

"Our fearful trip is done," he came into view on her left. She kept her eyes focused on a crack in the cement wall. "Our ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won."

She fastened her eyelids shut.

"The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting," she opened them. She watched the crack. A water drop fell. "While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring."

"But oh heart! heart! heart! Oh the bleeding drops of red," more water. More drops. He didn't notice. "Where on the deck my captain lies."

Her grip on herself slipped. The wall burst, the water engulfing her fastened body. Words echoed within her cardboard frame, "Fallen cold and dead."

•••

She woke on a beach somewhere; with plastic coke bottles and old flip flops lining the shore. The water licked at her calves with each tide wave.

Her eyes opened and the raw sun blinded them for a moment before she shaded herself.

She had no recollection of the trigger words or the wall breaking; nor the Avengers landing on the base, entering through her well, and flooding the whole place; nor how it wasn't intentional; nor the fact the Doctor and the Agent knew they were coming, plotted their death, their own, and hers; nor that she wasn't the only survivor and the other survivors didn't remember her.

Were there even other people? Who were they? Who are the Avengers? Who is the Villianess?

She stood, soaked and vaguely remembering the burn of water in her lungs. She was alive; she felt blind rage surging through her. She would find who did this.

She walked away from the water, towards a cityscape, towards an inevitable battle for the second time.