Red Hand Annie

Alone

Setting: Where we last left Winter & Annie...

(Annie's p.o.v.)

I wake feeling physically weak and extremely cold; I look around my surroundings cautiously as I slowly sit up right in the snow and...trees? What happened? Where am I? How did I get here? I feel the warmth and crackling sound of the fire in front of me; did Will make this? Where is he? I glance round more and find myself alone; glancing over my self I find my hands are still in the cast iron gloves, I'm still in the hospital like gown and I can feel the shock collar round my neck still. Not entirely sure of what's going on or my surroundings, I feel an urgency to get out of these iron gloves and as far away from where ever here is as possible. Chewing on the inner of my lips, I lift my iron bindings up, over the fire in hopes that it'll melt the metal enough for me to get out of it.

I've been burned by Will's fire abilities before, I can handle the heat for the most part; I just want these things off of me and get as far away from here-where ever here is exactly- as possible. I miss Lucas and Howard and Pepper and Dad...I even miss running the diner and having the Avengers come in checking up on me everyday-even if most of them annoyed the crap out of me. What was that?! I look around frantically panicking as I hear something or someone getting closer to me...

"The hell are you doing?" Come a rough, and slightly dry husky voice from behind me

"!" Winter?

I go into shock starring at him as he forcibly rips my arms away from over the fire, moves the smoking meta into the cold, wet snow and I do nothing to stop him. I feel my heart rate speeding up as he gets closer to me while doing this; what's going on here? The last thing I recall is being in that cage in the hydra base. Now in somewhere in the woods, alone, with Winter? What the hell happened? What did I miss and where's Will? Probably having seen me look around in confusion, Winter starts talking...

"That collar must've shocked you pretty good," he says in a low voice

"!" The collar...my baby!

I start panicking when I realize that my baby could be laying dead inside me from that god awful collar; seeing my panic, Winter tries to calm me down by pulling me towards him. He hugs me into his side; I can feel the awkwardness as both of our walls go way up and I can feel my heart beating as if it's having an anxiety attack as I can hear his getting faster as well. Yet I strangely find myself soon being calmed down by both his sent as well as his real hand running through my tangled, messy, hair in a soothing way. It's in this moment of quiet that everything up until I blacked out comes back to me in flashes and I now have some general idea of how I got here. Having been starring into the snow, as I get these flashes, I don't even realize that I've zoned out until I feel the cold touch of Winter's metal hand on my stomach and I once again feel my heart quicken in beat.

We sit there like that quietly for a while: me having a internal panic attack, him being more gentle than I've ever known anyone to be, and we just stay like this as if waiting for something to happen. The silence only intensifies as his metal hand gently rubs my stomach and he just stares at my swollen belly with great intensity that I feel extremely uncomfortable. I have to tell him that it's his...but how? I stare at him as I ponder this in my head along with many other questions in my head. There's so much to think about right now, too much that it's both overwhelming and frustrating and making my head hurt like crazy.

"Did you feel that?" His rough voice rings out, snapping me from my thoughts

"..." I shake my head no, and in all honesty, I was too deep in thought to feel anything

"Hm," he huffs with a slight snicker as I see a small smirk form on his face, "here," he says quietly as he takes my hand that's closest to him and puts it over where his metal hand just was on my stomach, "feel it now?"