The Girl with Wings and a Metal Arm || Avengers Fan Fic

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cosima had been at Stryker's facility for six months when the trigger words had been successfully planted in her mind. She had struggled against her will, but it wasn't strong enough. Part of Wanda's, whatever it was called, was used to put it into Cosima's mind. It had been the deciding factor in whether the trigger words were going to work or not. 

These were the words Cosima feared would grow to haunt her:

Longing

Rusted

Seventeen

Daybreak

Furnace

Nine

Benign

Homecoming

One

Freightcar.

Ten words.

Each with a seemingly symbolic meaning to the Winter Soldier, wherever he was.

Ten words that constantly caused fear in Cosima.

She began to eat her meals with what she found out to be the Maximoff twins. They would always say some of the ten words when she was eating her meal. Once they had managed to say them all and control Cosima for a while. But Cosima did not enjoy the Maximoff's company and they did not enjoy her own. They were forced together, but Cosima sought to change their hatred for each other.

She needed a friend. She had not been brainwashed and had remembered what it felt like to have Steve, Sam and Natasha worry about her for a little bit. She wanted to feel that comfort for a while longer, or until she was finished here.

So as she sat at the Maximoff's table, she planned to make an apology or whatever it was they wanted so they could be semi-friends. 

"Hi," she said shyly, taking her chair out from under the table.

"Don't want to be lonely again?" Wanda asked, taking a sip from her drink. Cosima was about to sit down when Wanda pulled her chair from under her and Cosima crashed to the floor. She got up, pushed the chair closer to the table and sat down. The twins were in stitches of laughter.

"Look, I've come to say I'm sorry."

"For what?" Pietro asked.

"For why you don't like me. I've thought about it, but I don't know why." Cosima looked at them with honesty. They looked back with smiles on their faces from holding their laughter in. 

"You must have been longing all day to say that to us," Pietro said. Cosima cringed. Her eyes closed. Her eyes reopened when she thought she could face the twins.

"Yeah, looking at your rusted cell all day long must have made you desperate," Wanda added. Cosima cringed again. All ten words had to be said in under a minute for the trigger to work.

"Please," Cosima said. "If you're gonna make fun, I'll leave. But I'm offering friendship, and anything else you might want."

"What? It's not like you could get us anything inside here, is it?" Wanda snapped.

"Come back in seventeen days and we might think about it again." Cosima cringed. She left her untouched food and signaled to a guard that she wanted to go back to her cell. 

---

That afternoon, Stryker personally called Cosima to him. She was scared. Normally it was to make sure that the trigger words were still working or to try an experiment out. Today, she hoped was different.

She entered the room he was in. He was standing in front of a glass panel, looking down at whatever was below. He signaled for her to go over to him. She obeyed, knowing the consequences.

"Don't look down just yet," he said menacingly. Cosima didn't want to get on Stryker's worse side than she'd already seen, so she didn't look.

He walked around the room a little, keeping his eyes on Cosima, making sure she didn't look down. "The Maximoffs have been causing you bother lately, haven't they?"

Cosima didn't want to say anything bad, for fear of what Stryker would do to her. She knew the Maximoff twins were his prized possession, but ever since she was taken there, it seemed Stryker was more obsessed over her. Is that why the twins hated her so much?

"I guess," Cosima said, giving nothing away.

"Come on. You can tell me," Stryker urged. "If you don't..." He trailed off, letting her think of  punishment for not telling her.

"Yes," Cosima said.

"I noticed it yesterday morning. I thought it was just playful teasing, but it got to you. It really did. At lunch, I saw it too. You still have feelings, all in tact. Did the machine not wipe them out."

"Feelings overcome the machine if it isn't used for a while."

"Is that so? It never said in any of your files," Stryker said. "Did you discover this? Or has your memory not been wiped in a while?"

"Both." Cosima's honesty was hopefully going to get her out of punishment.

"As much as I love ... feelings," Stryker said, "if you're ever going to go out on the battlefield and start being an assassin, they're going to have to be wiped away."

"What?" Cosima turned round and faced Stryker. A tear formed in her eye.

"Look. A tear. Emotion. Feelings. That's needs to be wiped away. This will help you with the Maximoffs. Don't you see? You're going to be a better person. You can look down now."

Cosima looked down. And her heart shattered loudly. There it was. The machine. The memory-wiping machine. Cosima was fueled with rage. She thought she had gotten away from her old self. Things weren't as bad here. Yes, she'd started to remember fragments of her old life in the last Hydra base, but it didn't seem as harsh as here. She couldn't let that go to killing people again. She would not allow it. "No," Cosima said. It was more of a growl than a human voice.

"Excuse me?" Stryker said.

"I. Said. No." Cosima spread her wings out full span. When she did this, she looked terrifying to anyone who encountered her - high up Hydra officer or innocent civilian. 

"Easy Cosima, or I'll have to hurt you."

Cosima's wing moved abruptly. It lunged for Stryker, but he moved out of the way quickly, dodging her wing. He threw something at her which began sending shocks through her body. She lay limply on the floor. "I can't have a beautiful specimen become overpowering, C. I need to control the beast within you. And to do that, I need to wipe out every other thought you have bar the necessary. It's gonna be bumpy, but we'll get there."

Cosima's eyelids shut.